Archive for September 2011
Borknagar-fan interview, and new draft.
September 24, 2011 | Author Jens F. Ryland
Everyone, say Hello to Viki! The first -fan interview is ready and Viki is a Borknagar-fan out of Russia. I sent her a few questions, let’s see how this goes:
Borknagar-fan interview, Viki from Russia
Jens; How was your first introduction to Borknagar?
Viki; I liked Dimmu Borgir for a long time . I was reading an article about I.C.S Vortex and Borknagar was mentioned. This interested me. I downloaded several songs and liked it very much. Now Borknagar is the one of my favourite bands. All albums are awesome 
Jens; Who are your other favorite bands and artists?
Viki; I also like Susperia, Chrome Division, Behemoth, Dark Funeral ,Heidevolk, Tyr.
Jens; How do you use music in everyday life?
Viki; I like to listen to music when I draw. It’s always inspire me. I usually use my iPod . Especially I like when someone ring me up. And people around me always are frightened because my mobile phone screams by Shagrath’s voice) he he ))
Jens; Is there a metal-scene where you live, do your friends listen to metal?
Viki; Yes, we have some rock clubs I think. But I know only one –“Cotton Club”. Many Russian and foreign groups are playing concerts here. A lot of my friend loves metal music. It’s a part of our lives.
Jens; Is there a concert-venue in your town or city? Do you go to concerts often?
Viki; I go to concerts very seldom, because I like Scandinavian metal bands more then Russian or Uzbek. I’m watching the concerts and videos at the Youtube
Jens; Tell us about your country and what bands are big, Is metal a popular genre in your country?
Viki; There are a lot of different rock and metal groups in Uzbekistan, but they are not very famous like Borknagar or Dimmu Borgir. For example : “Moment of Clarity”, ”Sabbathage”,”Termin Vox”, ”Wings of Origami” and other. Unfortunately, I cant’t say that metal is a popular genre in my country. I hope metal music will be more develop in Uzbekistan in future )\m/
There we go, thank you so much Viki for this little peak into the Uzbek metal-scene! Some exotic bands there to check out for us.
And Viki will get a price from us for her participation, I’ll send her one of these:
And I have another surprise for her, but it’s not quite ready yet so I can’t show you 
I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can.
This was fun and interesting and I want to see more. So let’s:
Next up; SARKE!
Same as last time, post in the comments if you want to participate. I’ll leave it open a few days to enter and then send a mail to the one we’ve picked.
—————Jens
Artisan – Borknagar – ICS Vortex – Sarke
Spiral Architect and Sonic Ranch studio
September 23, 2011 | Author Asgeir Mickelson
The Spiral Architect-album “A Sceptic’s Universe” was mainly recorded June 1998 and mixed February 1999 at Village Productions, Tornillo, TX, USA. The studio later changed its name to Sonic Ranch. A few days ago I stumbled on their new (?) website and discovered that they’ve built more studios and a mastering studio. It looks awesome with lots of great instruments, amps and state-of-the-art studio gear. Many artists have recorded albums there; Nevermore, Flotsam And Jetsam, Damageplan, Ministry, Cannibal Corpse etc… The studio we used was what is now called the “A Studio”. Its stone room was just finished when we got there and I was the first one to try it out. And, well, it definitely was a stone room since the sound was totally BOOOOOOOOM! so we moved the drums to the other room with more controlled sound… Read the rest of this entry »
Borknagar opens webshop.
September 21, 2011 | Author Jens F. Ryland
We have opened up a Borknagar Store section over at the Borknagar website. The store is handled by Amazon with their experience through years of world-wide distribution. Their CDs and merchandise is mostly manufactured by Century Media and this means it’s the real deal.
Now, go check it out.
—————–Jens
Artisan – Borknagar – ICS Vortex – Sarke
Influence: Flotsam And Jetsam
September 21, 2011 | Author Asgeir Mickelson
This is the third blog where I look back at bands that influenced me, and this time I randomly picked the American thrash band Flotsam And Jetsam out of the hat. The band has been around since the early 80s and has released lots of albums, but is probably most known for being the band Metallica’s Jason Newsted came from. I first became aware of Flotsam And Jetsam when I read about them in a fanzine some time before their debut album “Doomsday For The Deceiver” was released in 1986. If I’m not mistaking, this album is the only one that got 6 Ks out of 5 possible (!) in the well-known metal magazine Kerrang! It was indeed a good album with great songs like “Hammerhead”, “Iron Tears” and “She Took An Axe” but it’s still far from the awesomeness they delivered with the album “No Place For Disgrace” in 1988! Well, truth is I didn’t like this album much in the beginning, but my brother played it constantly so it grew on me, and I still put the album on now and then. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s this about Google+?
September 20, 2011 | Author Jens F. Ryland
First of all, I’ve closed the sign-up for the fan-interview now. Tomorrow I’ll put all the names in a box and pull out a subject for some questioning
Is anyone else then me curious about Google +? Why would you need a Google+ account if you’re already on Facebook. And if you’re both on FB and Twitter, what’s the point? I’ve been wondering about this and I started to do a bit of researching. It resulted in this little video below, but before you see it I want to give a few hints.
As the world of Social Media is quite new we are all noobs at it. No experts. As in any society there’s a development of rules going on to move away from the anarchy. At this point in time there’s not too many of us concerned about the rules here, people use the platforms more or less intuitively and post as they feel like.
When I talk about rules, I don’t mean laws. The laws involved are there to protect your privacy. The rules on the other hand are mostly spawned out of common sense and give a hint to how you should behave yourself to gain respect, sympathy, credibility and an audience. Let’s call it a guide to social intelligence.
Although most of these rules are mostly concerned about a company approach to gain customers on Social Media platforms, most of it applies to private use also. Let’s look at this list for example:
Top 10 biggest mistakes you make on Facebook pages
1. Post too many times a day on Facebook The recommended number of posts for brands is about 1 – 2 posts per day, for media companies, this can be 5 – 10 posts on a daily basis.
2. Not engaging with people in comments
3. Arguing with your fans
4. Delete negative comments
5. Running competitions against the Facebook rules + applicable laws Many companies still actually announce winners, contact them over Facebook, don’t have the proper Terms and conditions, don’t have a data policy and are still storing your details. This is something that is a very common mistake.
6. Posting one type of content Just one type of content – say photos, is typically OK, but make sure that you also post diverse types of content, that is extremely important.
7. Not using applications / tabs
8. Not responding to your fans
9. Sending your fans to your site Only sending fans to your site is not the best way of keeping your community really active and sharing.
10. Not using Facebook landing tabs Landing tabs are a very important part of your Facebook page, we have proven that using them makes your page grow over 40% faster, and in recent numbers, even more!
Source: Social Bakers
You can read the full post on the site linked above.
I guess this one has a few pointers for everyone?
Time for my video then;
If you really want to dig more into the world of Social Media, here’s a nice video- series to start with. This one’s a bit outdated as he’s not including Google +, but still talking about the last try from Google, the Buzz. But it only shows how fast this develops. 30 episodes, all around 2 min, it’s highly recommended.
————–Jens
Artisan – Borknagar – ICS Vortex – Sarke
