Year of the Metal Tiger!

A long chain of events have led me to The Evil Singing Pandas. They are a Singaporean heavy metal band, but I found out about them on a boat from Stockholm to Helsinki. The entire chain goes like this. In the middle of the Australian outback, Remy Fan of TESP meets Nicola, crazy-about-rock Italian guy working for IKEA. Because he's working for IKEA, he has to head down to Stockholm ever so often, which was where I met him last summer. Actually, to be more specific, I squeezed in beside him on the viewing deck of the Stockholm-Helsinki ship and started chatting to him. When he found out I was from Singapore, he told me to look up TESP. So I did.

The baseline is, it took an Italian guy on a Finnish ship to make me listen to CNY song in heavy metal. How ridiculous is that.

That aside, you can download the album here: Year of the Metal Tiger (link on top right of page). Your relatives are guaranteed to get a hoot out of it. It's 3 classic Chinese New Year songs done in Heavy Metal, and it's a way better way to get your dose of CNY jingles, then the crap they've been playing at Carreefour (oh Lord have mercy).  Plus, the website is fucking ridiculous. You play this game on it where you head-bang to the music and it's registered by your web-cam. The result of your headbanging awesomeness will give you your fortune for the year. WTF?

The album was produced by Tribal DDB as a CNY marketing shindig for their clients. Pretty good idea, I'd say. Plus, I love the metal tiger on the cover of the album.

The photo was taken off Blank Kanvas

This really strikes a chord with me. Dude. This is my year. I don't believe in either eastern and western astrology, but still, I can't help but feel some sense of solidarity for this arbitrary group I've been placed in with all these other people I'm supposed to share characteristics with. Like aggressiveness, impulsiveness, anti-social behaviour, etc. I read some research once that there are a lot less babies born to Chinese parents during the year of the Tiger. 

But still. It's fucking cool. I mean, better than year of the rat. Year of the Metal Rat doesn't quite have the same verve to it, if you ask me.

This was the fortune I got off the site. Man if you want to inspect your shit (like they do in Germany) you're bound to find correlations, signs and omens to the way you live, or plan to live, your life.

1. Yes, my budget will be tighter this year (parents cut off the umbilical cord to steadycash since I'm no longer in University).

2.No I don't have random groupies anymore, it wasn't like the good old days when I was tediously famous for being naked online.

3. My biggest groupies are probably men/women I've slept with... so okay. I love them. I can deal with that.

4. If I can replace sleep and food with synthetic supplements, I will. You know what do you know what nootropics are? Caffeine, alcohol and cocaine are some nootropics that are widely available at your local psychiatric clinic.