Top 13 albums of 2013

It’s been a while since my last post and there are a bunch of things I need to blog about but given the date I’m going to put all those things on the back burner and announce my top 13 albums of 2013.

13 Black Sabbath – 13. Appropriately in 13^th place is Black Sabbath’s ‘13’. The first album to feature Ozzy since 1978 but sadly drummer Bill Ward was left out before recording. Chock full of killer riffs, this album is solid start to finish. Classic rock & Sabbath fans should love this. Favourite Track: Loner or God is Dead?

12 Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood – Black Pudding. Mark Lanegan teams up with Duke Garwood to put out a quiet soulful beautiful album. Few tracks have much more than an acoustic guitar (or piano) and vocals. Perfect for those quiet downtime moments where you want something quiet. Favourite Track: Last Rung or Mescalito

11 Vista Chino – Peace. The band formerly known as ‘Kyuss’ & ‘Kyuss Lives’ releases their first album since 1996 and first without Josh Homme. It was hard listen to this album without expectations. Kyuss was the first band I saw live, they blew me away and instantly changed the style of music I was listening to. (Did I tell you about the time I saw Kyuss support Metallica in 1993?). I can see why some Kyuss fans will be disappointed in this but there are a bunch of good tracks on here especially if you consider it Vista Chino & not Kyuss. Some tracks sounds a touch ripped off, some flow on nicely from various Kyuss albums and others show a new style of their own. Favourite Track: Adara

10 Five Horse Johnson – The Taking of Black Heart. If you know Clutch you should know and love Five Horse Johnson. The taking of Black Heart is another quality album from FHJ. If there is a better blues/rock band out there then I’m not aware of them. Gotta love that harmonica too. Favourite Track: Mexico 

9 Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks. Trent Renzor quietly and secretly reforms a new incarnation of NIN and drops a new more mature and rather sultry dancey album on us. The only thing I particularly dislike is the use of auto-tune in track ‘Everything’. Whether it’s done ironically or not I just don’t like it. It’ll never be my favourite NIN album but it has some really great tracks on it. This should appeal to most NIN fans and also gain a new following as well. Favourite Track: Satellite

8 Tumbleweed – Sounds From The Other Side. 90’s Aussie stoner rock band Tumbleweed have been promising a new album for the past few years since reforming with their original guitarist and regularly touring. The album is an instant classic, Aussie rock at its finest! Favourite Track: Mountain

7 Red Fang – Whales & Leeches. The eagerly awaited third album from Red Fang doesn’t disappoint but with quite a few albums this year I don’t think it’s quite as good as their previous. Still that leaves it better than 99.999% of other albums that came out this year. Favourite track: Blood like cream

6 Pelican – Forever Becoming. Pelican are one of those bands I’ve always ‘sort of’ been into. While never being one of my favourites I’ve always liked what they’ve done but somehow never really got around to listening to often. A few years ago they appeared done for as a band when their lead songwriter amicably left in favour of time with his family. But fortunately they were able to replace him and have gone onto release Forever Becoming and what a cracker the new album is. If you don’t know Pelican they seem to get lumped in the same circles as Isis. Favourite Track: Vestiges

5 Big Business – Battlefields Forever. Probably their best album to date. It’s heavy, quirky and catchy as hell. What more do you want from those other two guys from the Melvins. Favourite Track: Chump Chance

4 The Dillinger Escape Plan – One Of Us Is The Killer. I’ve tried many times previously to get into TDEP but I’ve always found them way too heavy and chaotic for my tastes. With their new album I gave them another go and after a few listens a few tracks started gelling with me. I’ll probably never be truly into the intense crazy metal sections but I’m very much digging the stuff that is more like a heavy version of Tomahawk. I’m not sure what long term TDEP fans think of the album but I love this release. Favourite Track: One of us is the killer or Paranoia Shields

3 Alice In Chains – The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Ok yes the title is rather silly and so are one or two lyrics lines but this album has some great rocking songs. The album would possibly be more solid if one or two of the later tracks had been cut but the dream of the 90’s is still alive if AIC can keep putting out albums like this on. Favourite Tracks: Hollow (heavy), Voices (quieter) 

2 The Drones – I See Seaweed. Another silly album title but don’t be put off, this album is awesome. I didn’t think the Drones would be able to follow up their previously album Havilah so well but they have. If you don’t know the Drones, you should. Favourite Track: I see seaweed

 

1 Clutch – Earth Rocker. The album was released in March and about halfway through my first listen I knew this was going to be my favourite album of the year. Nothing else would have a chance in hell of getting even close to it. Not only was it the latest release from my favourite band but it’s one of their best releases ever. While I loved their more bluesy albums of recent years, this album is an awesome return to straight out rock. The album has energy and lots of it. It doesn’t get much better than this folks! Favourite Track – DC Sound Attack

So there you have it, 2013 will forever be known for a brilliant Clutch album and quality albums from some of my favourite 90’s bands like Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Tumbleweed and Vista Chino (aka Kyuss). The dream of the 90’s is still alive in Portland rock music.

Palau pic's of the day!

Recently I've been tormenting some friends and family back home with photos of the view from where we stop for lunch when out diving. I thought I should extend the courtesy to the thousand of faceless readers of Pieces of Eights as well. Hope you enjoy them ;)

Long Beach

Sunset from Sam's Tours

Two Dogs

Another sunset from Sam's Tours

Jackson Beach

The rotting fruit & vegetables of Palau

While I'm getting an extraordinary amount of days off in a row, you, the readers of 'pieces of eights' are benefiting with yet another post. This time it's on the rotting fruits and vegetables available for purchase here in Palau.

Previously I've mentioned about the poor quality and limited range of produce. It is pretty common to find rotting food for sale on the shelves in here. Some of it is quite disgusting at times too.

While some produce is grown locally (which I rate highly), I'd estimate that well over half is shipped over in containers. This often means that by the time the boat gets here the food is already decaying. Tomatoes and lettuce seem to be the worst affected.
 
Once at one of the two major stores we've seen the whole fruit & veg section completely empty. You definitely have to change the way you shop here, no more can you pick a recipe then go out and get what you need. Here you either go and see what you can find or you go with a vague idea of something and see what you can work out while shopping. Often we have to stop at three different shops to get enough to cook a meal with.



And unlike back home, there is another problem I've come across here. Often you can be fighting with local restaurateurs for various produce. It's a pretty common sight to see someone loading up their trolley with every single lettuce or every packet of pork available in a store. I got so annoyed with this once that when a guy was loading up with every can of cold coffee I delicately pinched one from his trolley while he was busy with the last arm load from the fridge. YOINK!

While slightly off topic, here is a story that sums up Palau. One of the hardware stores used to stock some small part for diving equipment, this part was in such high demand that it sold like hotcakes. So much so that the store often ran out of the part. So due to the problems they had trying to keep this item on the shelves they decided to stop stocking it! Madness!

These don't look too bad actually

P.S. After originally posting this my friend Inger from Inger in Palau sent this:  "Nathan forgot to mention the frenzy when a new container comes in and the mass text messaging that goes out through the ex-pat community. "Everybody, drop what you are doing immediately and get to Surangel's. Now!!!". Then everyone gets overly-excited and buys 3 lbs of avocados to gorge on which inevitably go bad in 2 days."



How could I forget!

Ok so this isn't fruit nor veg but it's pretty disgusting either way

Independence and UN days

Ok finally I'm getting around to a long overdue post about Palau’s Independence and UN day holidays. 

October 1^st was Palau’s 19^th Independence day from when they became a republic in 1995. In true Palauan fashion the details of events where rather thin on the ground. All we knew were that everything was going to happen under the both sides of the KB bridge. Amanda was going to be working on the Airai side of the bridge with a community group running a salt awareness campaign as well. 

Both Independence & UN days had plenty of small stalls selling various bits of food however the drawcard for Independence day was the speed boat races. I believe this is a pretty big event on the Palau calendar and we noticed about a month out various boats appeared on the water in practice. Personally the races weren’t as interesting as I thought they’d be, I only ever saw a two boats in the same race and the boats didn’t seem that fast. I do know at some point in the day one of the drivers did some sort of flip and was tossed out of his boat. I understand he was ok. There were some fireworks later in the day but we had moved onto to a house warming party and missed them. Here are a few pics from the day.

Koror side of the bridge checking out the races

Now onto UN day, which to most of us ex-pats is a pretty weird holiday to have and I still don’t know the meaning of it. Either way I wasn’t complaining. Yet again various stalls were set up selling food however the draw-card for today was traditional dancing by various states. Again not the most exciting day but fun to check out some traditional dancing etc.

'Chips' style cop bikes on the right

New skate ramp built for the kids by the current Civic Action Team