Christmas this year was memorable almost entirely for the wrong reasons, none of which I intend to go into in detail here, and that fact, combined with a lack of sleep and a decidedly low level of motivation to do any real writing, has resulted in a general inability to get anything useful done.

So I’ve assembled a bunch of random YouTube videos that I found interesting enough to watch a few times today.

THE ALL-NEW IN FLAMES

I figure most of you are too stuffed with food, alcohol, and sugary stuff to be overly bothered by the lack of deep and original thoughts anyway. Not to worry, regular service will resume sooner rather than later here.

The new IN FLAMES video looks pretty lame – but the song itself is seriously good:

Honestly, that’s the best IN FLAMES song that I’ve heard since… well, come to think of it, over a decade.

I stopped bothering with IN FLAMES years ago. Their “new direction” that they carried on with after Come Clarity was utterly boring and had no real musical merit whatsoever, as far as I was concerned. I regard their first four albums – The Jester Race, Whoracle, Colony, and Clayman – as some of the very finest examples of melodic death metal ever created.

But then they came up with the pile of shite that was Reroute to Remain, which saw a radical departure from their previous sound. There were a few good songs on that album, for sure – but for the most part it was a real snoozer.

The follow-up, Soundtrack to Your Escape, was solid but unremarkable. Come Clarity was where it started to go right again for me, but then they released A Sense of Purpose, and with that theme in mind I very purposefully hit “SNOOZE” on their future releases.

They released another three albums after that, and honestly I cannot recall a single useful thing about any of them. The only song off Sounds of a Playground Fading that I care about, even a little bit, is “Where the Dead Ships Dwell” – and it’s not actually very good.

I have no idea whether I, The Mask will be any good – the silly title suggests it will not be. But I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong, because there was a time when IN FLAMES was the gold standard in melodic death metal.

THE BEST OF FAKE NEWS

Mark Dice performed a great public service and watched a bunch of Clown News Network (alternative: Commie News Network) so that you didn’t have to:

CAN’T FLOG THE MOGG

Jacob Rees-Mogg evidently missed all of the classic British comedy sketches about upper-class twits and is determined to prove them entirely wrong:

He does so with a certain elan that I must say I quite admire.

DOCTOR WHO GETS WOKE

I’ll give you one guess as to what happened after that:

Who thought that a female Doctor Who was a Good Idea? It’s too bad that tarring and feathering is illegal these days; I can think of any number of utter numpties who thoroughly deserve such a punishment.

HOW TEAMWORK WORKS

File this under “How to Deal With People – If You Must”:

As for me, I subscribe to Sarah A. Hoyt’s philosophy, expressed so beautifully in Darkship Thieves: “Most people are only tolerable well-boiled and with lots of salt”.

Right, there you go. Enjoy your Boxing Day leftovers, then.