Alcohol, The Emo Kids, And Me

Much has been made (among my friends, at least) of how In Flames' latest record does an excellent job of pandering to the whiny teenager set, at the more maturity variety of subjects covered in their earlier material. I had the opportunity to write up an album description (as a part of the new gig) for A Sense of Purpose... (or is it Sense of Purpose? or maybe A Sense of Purpose without the ellipses that so clearly grace the cover?), so I had to struggle with the undeniable change in the band's style - and determine whether or not I liked what they were doing - before writing up the description. I ended up doing it, because I decided I liked the album enough to want to keep it and (more importantly) want to write positive things about it, for reasons that I won't go into here because they're outside the main point of this post:

Tuesday morning, following a particularly vicious combination of tequila, beer, no dinner and a three-hour period where I passed through what astrophysicists (when they develop the instruments sensitive enough to record what I experienced) will some day call a time/alcohol continuum, I woke up with a hangover. It was not the worst hangover I've ever had, but it was pretty ugly, and as I was stumbling around my kitchen looking for foods that would nourish me without making me sick, I had a moment of connection with one of A Sense of Purpose...'s more emo moments (from "The Mirror's Truth"): "I feel like shit/but at least I feel something."

Stuff of whiny 14-year-olds with LiveJournal blogs and chips on their shoulders it may be, but damn if it didn't ring a little true after my rock star morning-after.