“To feel this great urge; to hold and embrace you .I slowly dry out.
I shrink and shrink until I’m gone; nothing to make out of me.
oh what the hell went wrong? my heart gets pulled out
into your direction. It’s no use, you have forsaken me.” I sing with Anneke van Gierbsergen as her sullenly yearning voice wafted from the speakers of my car stereo.

“Seriously Mike, if you can sing the song so good, why don’t we just turn off the fucking stereo?” My friend Jay said bitingly.

“What’s
up with you dude?Are you PMSing or something?You’ve been a total dick
all day.” I said hitting him over the head with an empty water bottle.

“Oww!
Motherfucker! You want to know why? Because I can’t stand this shit
you’re listening to! It sounds too much like Evanescence and it’s
killing me.” He said trying to wrestle the bottle from my hand.

“Jesus!
Stop it! You’re going to get us both killed!” I say trying to keep the
car on the road and seize control of the bottle at the same time.

“And
you don’t know what you’re talking about dude. The Gathering is miles
above Evanescence in the sense that the former succeeds in delivering
haunting yet beautiful melodies using tepid female vocals that goes
along well with their heavier backdrop.Evanescence is just goth-pop
trash.”I added with a smug smile as the ten second water bottle
wrestling match reached its conclusion with me emerging victorious.

It
took a while for my last comment to sink in and make itself funny. Did
I just say that? Music reviews are generally funny, check out Amazon.com’s reviews
specifically on metal albums and you’ll see what I mean. Reviewers have
this habit of using phony, artsy-craftsy words to try and exude an aura
of being urbanely cultured. Check this one out:

Now, where did you last hear the phrases “Bleeding onto the floor?”, “Juxtaposing the warmth?”, or “I am a screaming poseur?” Seriously, all of this comes off faker than wacko Jacko’s nose and worse than my Michael Jackson reference.