In the wake of Jeff Gerstmann's firing, I will be leaving Gamespot. I cannot trust nor support a website that reviews games through bribary. Jeff is one of the best game critics I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and as a critic myself, I cannot support a great critic being fired for writing an honest review. If anyone wants to take over the General Music Discussion Union, let me know, as I will only be on in the coming days to deal with that.

I have made many friends in this community, and I hope this won't be the end of my communications with you all. If any of you want to keep in contact with me, there are a number of ways to reach me.

Website: http://musicreviews666.blogspot.com/
Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/matrix_hiei/
E-Mail & MSN: matrix_hiei@msn.com
Xbox Live: Matrix Hiei

My annual top 100 list will once again be posted on January 1, 2008, however I will only be posting it on my website. I also am currently writing a Holiday Buyer's Guide, which can be found here.

I once again want to thank every single one of you for making my stay on Gamespot a truly great one. Once again, I hope to keep in contact with all of you. I love this community, but I cannot support what has happened.

I will miss you all.

After a large amount of searching, I have decided on a place to move my music blog. I will now be able to review ablums at at least a fairly constant rate, as well as post more lists, countdowns, and major project. The first project I will be posting is by far my biggest yet. I've spent a ton of time on it, and although I won't disclose what it is until it's posted it on my new blog, the first third of it will be posted tonight. I want to thank all of you that have read my music reviews and lists in the past, and hope that anyone who is interested will check out of my blog. For those who are interested, the URL is: http://musicreviews666.blogspot.com/

I once again want to thank all of you that have read and commented on my lists in the past, and I want to thank any of you in advance that choose to check out my blog down the road. Thank you once again, and I hope anyone who is interested checks out the first part of latest music project tonight. It will up sometime before 8:00 PCT tonight, and I will post a link to it tomorrow.

Thanks again, and I hope to see you on the new blog sometime soon. And no, this doesn't mean I will be leaving Gamespot. This just means that I'm trying to gain a larger audience with my writing, and I hope to one day do this as a profession.

I saw Nightwish in concert on Halloween, and it was by far the most amazing concert I've ever been to....and I've been to some truly amazing concerts in the past year. The opening band was Paradise Lost, a gothic thrash metal band that played some pretty solid music, but unfortunately had some technical issues. You could barely hear the vocals, which was thankfully fixed by the time Nightwish got out. The problem was that it took them forever to fix the mic, and the set change took over an hour. Nightwish finally came on stage at 11:00, and they started with a bang. They opened with an oustanding rendition of "Bye Bye Beautiful," the latest single off their new album Dark Passion Play, and it only got better from there. Every song was a treat to hear, and even though the concert ended well past midnight, no one wanted to go home. I also should note that this took place at a fairly large venue (many big name acts play there), and this concert was sold out! I applaud the city of Seattle for having such great taste in music, and especially for spending their Halloween attending a concert for a band very people in the U.S. have heard of. The place was pakced to say the least, but I surprisingly managed to get a spot in around the 4 or 5th row. I was right near the stage and could see everything clearly.

Anyway, the concert continued with a few more Dark Passion Play songs, and then the band got into a few of their older greats ("Dark Chest of Wonders" was the first). Many Nightwish fans had been worried that Anette (the new vocalist) wouldn't be able to sing the operatic songs of past Nightwish. She didn't do the opera parts, but she still showed tremendous vocal range while doing an excellent job on all of the songs she sang. She is far, far better live than on album, and I was one of the apparently few Nightwish fans that was extremely impressed with her vocals on Dark Passion Play. As a whole, the band is spectatular live, and you really get a sense of just how talented of musicians these people are. All of the members seemed to have a great time, as they played the entire show grinning and talking to the audience. Nightwish did a fantasic job of communicating with the audience, and all of the members said something at one point or another. There was a moment towards the middle of their set where someone in the first row passed a note to Anette on stage. She then started seeking out the person the note was addressed to, and then when found said "Do you a person named Tom? Well he has a question he'd like to ask you..." It's moments like that where a band really brings the show down to a personal level, and Nightwish did that expertly.

Even the theme of Halloween played into their set, as all of the members did something to celebrate the night that they were playing on. The vocalist came out dressed as a pirate for the first five songs (and then changed once they played "While Your Lips are Still Red," a song that features only three of the members). The drummer and keyboardist/composer had cobwebs on their instruments, and the guitarist played a few songs towards the middle with a giant pumpkin hat on that was eventually thrown into the audience. However, the best and most amusing costume wasn't much of a costume at all. Bassist and male vocalist Marco Hietala played the entire show without pants. I didn't even notice until a few songs in when someone in the audience yelled "what happened to your pants?" Part way through the set, the band addressed this. Anette wanted to say something to the audience, bust she laughed and turned to Marco and said "You know, this wasn't planned. Who exactly are you trying to be?" The response was a highlight of the night. "What? I always dress like this." Anette's reaction proved this wasn't planned, and the audience reacted with a series of laughter.

As the set reached its end ("Nemo" was the last song of the main set), the band left and was greeted with the loudest encore I've heard. Yes, even louder than arena shows for bands like Rush and Muse. The crowd was completely mesmorized, and the shouts of the band's name lasted a good a 5 or 10 minutes. Eventually, Nightwish came back out and proceeded to play the greatest song I've ever heard live. "The Poet and the Pendulum" was the first song of the encore, and they played the entire 14 minute epic. The album version of that song ranks among the best I've ever heard in any genre of music, and it's 10 times better live! Before that, it was already the best concert I had been to, but that just put it over the edge. "The Poet and the Pendulum" is beautiful, epic, heavy, and pure bliss to hear live. The set finally came to end after "Wish I Had an Angel," another older Nightwish hit that Anette did great on, and at that point no one wanted to leave. It was nearly 1:00 in the morning, and people were chanting for a second encore. What an absolutely amazing concert! This was easily the best Halloween I've ever had.

Setlist (to the best of my memory)
Bye Bye Beautiful
For the Heart I Once Had
Whoever Brings the Night
Dark Chest of Wonders
7 Days to Wolves
While Your Lips are Still Red
Sleeping Sun
Amaranth
Ever Dream
Sahara
Wishmaster
Nemo
The Poet and the Pendulum
Wish I Had an Angel

Well, I'm back, and I have a hell of a lot of blogs to read with very little time to do so. I promise I'll get to them eventually, although I can't tell you how soon. Anyway, I don't have much to say. I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm still alive and have no intentions of leaving Gamespot. I haven't been on in 3 weeks, but that's because Gamespot wouldn't let me log in for some reason. It kept giving me a stupid error message, and it wasn't until tonight that it let me get past it. It was rather annoying, espeically since I wrote an 8 page editorial about the new Radiohead album that I had planned to post here and eventually submit to a magazine or music site. I may post it if anyone wants to read it, but it's a bit late since the album has now been released.

I might as well give an update on what I've been doing these past few weeks while I'm at it. Simply put, not much of anything. Homework has been plentiful, and my free time has gone to planning out a custom Guitar Hero party that I'm having next Friday (yes, I've finally started dabbling into putting custom songs into Guitar Hero), listening to a ton of music, and playing Xbox 360. Since this is Gamespot, I might as well post my reactions to the new games I've gotten too. Firstly, Halo 3. I haven't played much of it, but that's because I can't seem get into it. It's better than the first two games, but really not that much of an improvement. It's worth the money I paid for it, but I'm already bored of it and I've only finished three levels. I also got BioShock, which I've also played very little of, but it rules from what I've played. I can't comment on the length, which I've heard is its drawback, but it's certainly fun and even revolutionary from what I've played thus far. I also have been playing a lot of Madden 08 lately, which I've nearly gotten all of the achievements for (960/100). Despite a few annoying glitches, it's a fun and deep game of football. Not as good as EPSN NFL 2K5 IMO, but it's probably the second best football game I've played. Finally, I've been playing Puzzle Quest on Xbox Live Arcade. Now THAT is an addicting game. As someone who has stayed far away from WoW, this may just be the most addicting game I've ever played. It's basically Final Fantasy + Bejeweled, and it's a steal at 1200 MS points. Oh, and I got an Xbox Live gold card, and I'm borrowing my friend's headset until I can get a charger for my wireless one, so feel free to message me if you ever want to play. Just to warn you, I suck at Halo 3, so don't expect me to be any real competition.

So yeah, that's about it. I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm still here, and I have no plans to leave GS.