Threshold is a progressive metal band, formed in Surrey, UK in the late 1980s.

History

Threshold began their career in 1988, initially playing covers of metal groups like Ratt and Testament. As they continued playing together, they began to write their own songs, and eventually stopped playing covers altogether. Early recordings were released locally on cassette under the band name "If Not, Why?". They played their first gig at The Compasses in Egham, Surrey, with Jon Jeary on vocals and Ian Bennett on bass. In 1992, they signed their first record deal, and after adding vocalist Damian Wilson to the group alongside guitarists Karl Groom and Nick Midson, bassist Jon Jeary and drummer Tony Grinham, produced their first commercial recording, "Intervention," which was released on a Dutch progressive rock compilation album. Shortly afterwards, keyboardist Richard West joined the band, and he remains with them to this day.

The band's debut album, Wounded Land, was released in 1993, taking its name and some thematic elements from Stephen R. Donaldson's novel of the same name. Wilson was unavailable to join the band for the follow-up tour, and so Glynn Morgan was recruited to replace him. He sang on the band's 1994 second recording, Psychedelicatessen, which spawned a music video for the song "Innocent," the band's first. The following year, Morgan and the band toured Europe and recorded some of their performances for the short live album, Livedelica.

Threshold is a roleplaying enforced MUD (text-based online role-playing game) that has been in operation since June 1996. Its focus is on providing a place for roleplaying in addition to traditional MMO/MUD style gameplay. It has as many as 70-100 players online at any given time.

Owned and operated by Frogdice, Inc. in Lexington, Kentucky, Threshold was originally created by Michael A. "Aristotle" Hartman.

Gameplay

Threshold is a text-based MUD running on a custom server. The focus is heavily on role-playing, and the enforcement and stimulation of roleplaying motivate the bulk of its rules and cases of administrator intervention. It has a long-standing policy disallowing minors and one must be over 18 to play.

The game itself may be accessed via a telnet client or a MUD client. The player goes through a brief character creation, and may then begin interacting with the game world.

Setting

Threshold is a fantasy based MUD set in a world with three main continents and a chain of islands. Religion based on a pantheon of Greek-like deities plays a dominant role in the story of the mud, with the ability for players to rise through the ranks of religious organizations to gain divine powers. The concepts of good and evil serve as a core driving force of the roleplay within the game. Threshold provides a framework for a player-driven legal system where players can take the role of judges, lawyers, and the jury in order to prosecute players who are accused of breaking the law. There are fourteen guilds in Threshold which are equivalent to character classes in Dungeons & Dragons, one being a secret, unlisted guild. Players can diversify their characters further with skills acquired by joining a clan.

Threshold is a 1990 novel by Chris Morris and Janet Morris. It is the first book of its namesake trilogy.

In a futuristic world, Earth is now a preserve. A captain is transported 500 years into the future and onto Threshold, which is a space habitat. Here he meets with the daughter of a Muslim leader, one of many who are being kept from their travel to Mecca.

References

"Threshold" is the 31st episode of American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager airing on the UPN network, the 15th episode in the second season.

The series follows the adventures of the Federation starship Voyager during its journey home to Earth, having been stranded tens of thousands of light-years away. In this episode, Lieutenant Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) becomes the first known person in mankind to break the Warp 10 barrier.

Plot

Voyager's crew discovers a rare, more stable form of dilithium that they postulate could power a warp drive beyond Warp 10. This would allow Voyager to reach the Alpha Quadrant near instantaneously. Although holodeck simulations prove disastrous, Lieutenant Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) comes up with an idea after an off-the-cuff discussion with Neelix (Ethan Phillips). The next simulation is successful and a shuttlecraft, dubbed the Cochrane, is prepared for a full test flight. The Doctor (Robert Picardo) identifies a rare medical condition in Lieutenant Paris indicating a 2% chance that he will suffer lethal effects from the test-flight and recommends assigning Ensign Kim (Garrett Wang) as test-pilot. Paris convinces Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) to allow him to fly the shuttle despite the small risk.

+/-, or Plus/Minus, is an American indietronic band formed in 2001. The band makes use of both electronic and traditional instruments, and has sought to use electronics to recreate traditional indie rock song forms and instrumental structures. The group has released two albums on each of the American indie labels Teenbeat Records and Absolutely Kosher, and their track "All I do" was prominently featured in the soundtrack for the major film Wicker Park. The group has developed a devoted following in Japan and Taiwan, and has toured there frequently. Although many artists append bonus tracks onto the end of Japanese album releases to discourage purchasers from buying cheaper US import versions, the overseas versions of +/- albums are usually quite different from the US versions - tracklists can be rearranged, artwork with noticeable changes is used, and tracks from the US version can be replaced as well as augmented by bonus tracks.

History

Bandō may refer to:

People

Other

See also

Bando (disambiguation)

!!! is a dance-punk band that formed in Sacramento, California, in 1996 by lead singer Nic Offer. Its name is most commonly pronounced "Chk Chk Chk" ([/tʃk.tʃk.tʃk/]). Members of !!! came from other local bands such as The Yah Mos, Black Liquorice and Popesmashers. They are currently based in New York City, Sacramento, and Portland, Oregon. The band's sixth full-length album, As If, was released in October 2015.

Background and history

!!! is an American band formed in the summer of 1995 by the merger of part of the group Black Liquorice and Popesmashers. After a successful joint tour, these two teams decided to mix the disco-funk with more aggressive sounds and integrate the hardcore singer Nic Offer from the The Yah Mos. The band's name was inspired by the subtitles of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which the clicking sounds of the Bushmens' Khoisan language were represented as "!". However, as the bandmembers themselves say, !!! is pronounced by repeating thrice any monosyllabic sound. "Chk Chk Chk" is the most common pronunciation, which the URL of their official website and the title of their Myspace page suggest is the preferred pronunciation.