Monument - The Visual Liberation Army Blog

I was able to track one down today. I can’t get it connected to my network yet, but I’m glad i got it. I thought it would be pretty lame until i tried it and the fun of the gameplay added with the option of purchasing previous NES titles made it way too tempting, so I called all of the GameStop’s, Targets, Wal-Marts and EB Games in the area for 3 days. My priorities are obviously in the right place.

Dreamgirls
I watched this last night. This was a complete disappointment.

Now, for more working!

Music: The Minor Times : Summer of Wolves

How come everyone is doing doom bands now? It was cool at first. I’ll admit that i like a few of them and they’ve got their place. But christ! It’s like a few years back when everyone was doing those slideshow bands like The For Carnation that are boring to listen to and worse to actually watch at a show. Snoozefest!

I do like stuff like Earth, Coil, Goblin (Suspiria strk), Bossk, Melvins (they’re more rock than doom), the first Pelican ep, and Khanate. It has been noted that despite my self-righteous take on judging music that I don’t have the best taste. So, whatever.

I’ve been pretty sucked into music blogs lately. Each one has ten links to better ones and it’s taken up several hours i should be working. Hell, right now, i’m doing this instead of finishing up some stuff i said i’d have completed about a week ago. :grin:

Last week me and my girlfriend went to a show with Job for a Cowboy in Utrecht so we could meet the guys. They started early so we only saw a few songs and after the show I only shook hands with Ravi and not the rest because he somehow seemed to got lost or something when he was getting Jonny. Luckily it was being made up by a great Converge show afterwards.

I just finished artwork on a second Job for a Cowboy shirt and an Amon Amarth shirt and this week I’ll start on the artwork of They Came as Lions, I’ll have to go to the zoo though to take some photos of lions since I’ll need them in the artwork. There’s also some other stuff in the pipeline, like artwork for Periphery, which will be based on my art piece “My Body the Floor”.

Next month will have two releases with our artwork: Nodes of Ranvier “Defined by Struggle” and Three “The End is Begun”. We cannot disclose the full artwork until it will be released, but we can show you the covers.

Last night we went to the Cirque du Soleil’s new show, Kooza, and it was very good. Very creative, colorful, funny, and inspiring, a real joy to watch. I was especially amazed with the juggling act, he was incredibly skilled, I haven’t had my jaw drop in a while but that was one of those moments. I kept expecting him to screw up at some point, because I didn’t think it was possible to bounce a ball on your forehead and roll it around your neck/shoulders while juggling 6-8 bowling pins with your hands and your feet behind your back while moving back and forth the stage.

I was the “lucky one” they picked for a skit with 3 clowns, and had no choice but to go on stage and play along in front of everyone. It was pretty fun. At some point we were running around and they suddenly fell, so I thought I was meant to fall too and threw myself on the stage as well. My glasses flew away and I laid still for a while, I got up and then the clowns blamed me for pushing them as they cried. The whole “story” was that I am a small guy but I was extremely strong, so they blamed me for their fall, and when one of them confronted me I had to push him around and he’d go back as if Dennis pushed him. I of course had to raise my arms in the air and show my immense biceps after I pushed him around. They laughed.

People came up to me after on the street and congratulated me on my clown skills, it felt a bit weird.

I’m currently listening to Helloween’s remastered version of “Better Than Raw”. Another of those old school bands who still rock. They’re due for some new material though..

My fiancee just acquired her permanent residency in Canada today, it was great news. She arrived here a year ago and we never expected it to go so smoothly and so quickly. It took about 9 months to do everything, we thought it might take 2-3 years. It was a big worry for me for a while because since I work freelance I was worried they might think my income is not steady enough to be able to sponsor her, but finally it was never in consideration. Now she and we can finally move on to new things. :)

In other news, I got a box of CDs from the kind folks at Metal Blade this weekend. They asked me what I wanted so I asked for some Fates Warning/Mercyful Fate/JFAC/Amon Amarth CDs. My first ever CD was from Fates Warning, so it was cool to hear their newer material. It’s still good, thankfully.

Mercyful Fate is, of course, fronted by the legendary King Diamond. King Diamond has been my favorite metal band for a long time, it combines everything I love about good metal: crazy solos, a singer with a voice, corny horror themes, and speeeeeeeed. I need to see them in concert one day. Them and Slayer. Although Slayer’s new stuff pales in comparison to the old one, they still rock.

Long live old school metal.

and now I’m stuck with over 2000 photos from there and I don’t have time to process them, since I’ll be working on a second Job for a Cowboy shirt (I’ll post the first one as soon as it is available), finish the artwork for Sworn Enemy and I’ll be starting a few other CD projects, besides that I’ll also have to make some work for the new Raster chapter (perhaps I should steal some monkeys to do my work). I might also do some illustrations for a game magazine, something which I’d love to do, since it’s kind of a different thing again.

It was great to have a break and “walk” in the mountains with my girlfriend, despite the facts that our ND grad filters keep falling and sliding from the cameras - I nearly dropped one from a cliff -, schoolclasses which were polluting shots, insanely placed roadsigns, a drunk polish guy staying in the appartment next to us and some of the walking paths weren’t really made for walking. We also visited some abandoned places where I shot tons of new material while inhaling flies and suspicious smells. For me the country is a goldmine, although people who live there probably think differently.

So now we’re back and things are as usual again, working on artwork and paying too much for groceries while we are being terrorized by our meowing cats and beeping guinnea pigs, something which you really start missing when you’re away. But I also miss watching Rammstein videos with my girlfriends mom and driving there and wonder if you’ll ever make it in one piece to your destination.

Next week we’ll head to a show where Job for a Cowboy plays, so we can say hi to the guys and ask for free drinks.

We’re having problems with our database, so our works don’t even show anymore. I deleted a few things in our CMS and I think it screwed things up. And now our programmer hero, Matt, is on vacation. So either we’ll find a solution ourselves or we’ll have to ask someone else to help. I think there’s a conflict somewhere in the artist/client list in the DB that is messing up the work display. If anyone knows a PHP/SQL programmer who wouldn’t mind checking it out for us, let me know. :)

edit: Johan of http://www.naboovalley.com fixed the issue. We love him lots.

We finished a couple of shirts for Coheed and Cambria yesterday. They’re quite different in style but similar in concept. I did one and Justin did his thing on the other. We have 2 more to do for them next week along with 4 for Chiodos, and a couple for Atreyu as well. Shirts fest!

We’re also working on Sworn Enemy’s new album, with Dennis doing the imagery and me the typography, like we did on the HSB/SYNT/Imperial CDs. Can’t wait to get started on it, I always love working on CDs as they are so limitless in terms of potential and ideas. As an artist it’s always great to have such freedom to create.

We’re still waiting on my business cards to arrive. I’ve been waiting for about 9 months for them now. Yes, 9 months. The kind folks at 4colorprint.com have made everything possible to make it a true pain in the ass. I just want my cards so we can FINALLY send our ads out that we prepared last year. It’s quite spiffy and full of cheap propaganda.

On the non-work side of things, I bought a new laptop for my fiancee today, hers died after 4-5 years of good service, sniff. We got a nice dual core Acer with a 17″ screen. It’ll be nice for me in case we go back to Malaysia and I need to work there, I’ll actually be able to use it for some projects. =]

We’re going to see the Cirque du Soleil in a week or two, I somehow managed to get first row tickets to their new show some months ago. I’m looking forward to it, I heard it’s really good. Never been to a circus before… except the agency I use to work at. =]

I’ve been listening to the remastered versions of Petitioning the Empty Sky and When Forever Comes Crashing by Converge all day. These are ridiculously solid albums (especially Petitioning). For the most part, I’ve honestly gotten tired of the genre of heavy music. I know this sounds pretentious, but I have overwhelmed myself in trying to catch up with all of the new bands so I feel like I’m “in the know” about everything, etc. However, I was perusing Deathwish’s site earlier and was listening to the streaming player for the new 108 album and I can’t wait for it to come out!

Also, while reinstalling a few tools in Photoshop, i’ve been perusing for new widescreen desktop wallpapers and realized that there’s a shortage of really cool ones. Maybe in a few weeks, we can put together a pack of wallpapers featuring the various flavors of Monument.

It’s an extremely busy week at Monument World Headquarters. We’ve all got a ton of projects we’re working on. Shirts (a ton), a snowboard design, a motorcycle catalogue, a website and I’ve got a large stack of cheeseburgers I really need to dive into asap.

Back to working on this site for Dark Horse Percussion at the moment, though.

It’s our pleasure to welcome you to our brand new and shiny blog. We’ll be posting here regularly about random crap (as Justin did days before we even launched, that just shows how eager he was) and updates about what we ate for dinner. It’s gonna be awesome.

And just so my first post wasn’t totally useless: I had indian food tonight.