Hi Atus, it's me, Brenocide...

Don't look at me like that. You're only making this harder for both of us.

Greetings, fellow metal minions!

It certainly has been a wacky couple of weeks for the blog and myself. What started out as an inside joke for the benefit of maybe 4 or 5 of my close personal friends, has turned into a bigger beast than I ever anticipated. By word of mouth alone, this blog has found itself with regular readers all over the U.S, Canada, the U.K, Norway, Germany, Estonia, Portugal, Australia, and even Japan! You'd be surprised how fast something spreads when you piss the right people off.

What started out as 2-3 views a day turned into 20, which turned into 100, then 500 and so on. Today, TNM is celebrating hitting the 5,000 views mark, fast approaching 6,000. That's nowhere near viral, but that's about 4,970 more views than your average blog ever gets. Obviously I'd be happier with 10,000 views a night, but the blog is a brand new, tiny raindrop in the vast ocean of the internet's metal community, and we gotta make those baby steps first. I just want to thank everyone for their support and especially those with enough sense of humor to not get their feelings hurt. Believe me, I knew coming into this that there would be a couple of upset folks, and there definitely were. You don't see it so much on the blog comments, but on Reddit and Facebook there were plenty of readers who didn't agree with what I had to say, and also took me, this blog, and themselves, a little too seriously.  

So again, I wanted to thank everybody, fans and critics alike, for the time they took out of their lives to read what I had to say and for their input. Seriously, if it wasn't for the nasty comments, it would have never occurred to me how horrendous white text on a black background was on the eyes. I would have blinded my entire audience and myself included. I'm also making a point to host my own images now, because it's the right thing to do. So with all my heart, Domo. Danke. Tusen takk. You guys are awesome. Thanks for reading. 

So with all that out of the way, on to the main point... I'm going to be taking a break from updating TNM for a short period of time. I'm dealing with several issues in my personal life that I need to direct my focus towards resolving. The last thing I want to do is impede my blog's steady progress, especially so early in the game, by denying you folks new content. However, I've been left with little to no choice. Life happens, and whether you like it or not, you just have to deal with it. I don't plan on taking too much time off, and I might be able to update once in a while, so I encourage you all to check back every so often to see how things go. This place could be back with a vengeance in only a couple of days or a couple of weeks. It's just too early to tell right now, but you'll know as soon as I do. Just don't expect much before the Holidays are over.

I'm also going to take this time off to brainstorm and work with some new ideas I have for the blog. For one thing, I'm currently in the market for some new writers to help me out, keep the content flowing and give you guys some different points of view. At the very least I need some folks who I can bounce ideas off of and just discuss what's metal and what's not. I'm dealing with some serious writer's block now and again, and all I ever get from people is what I shouldn't be talking about. Not very helpful. I also realize that my page design is absolutely horrendous. I've been doing my best to make this place look how I want with only Blogger's default template designer, and I just keep falling on my face. I don't know my ass from my elbows when it comes to HTML, except for some very basic formatting, so I'm going to try and get in touch with someone who can help me spruce this page up. I see a bright future for TNM, and limitless potential once I get the time and the resources. In the near future, I plan on starting a podcast, a YouTube channel, selling TNM merch, and adding some new content, like music reviews, gear reviews and eventually interviews along with new violations.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

The easiest way you can help get me this place back on its feet as quickly as possible is to spread it around. Share your favorite violations with your pals on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Reddit, your blog, your message board, through e-mails, whatever. This place has reached its popularity through word of mouth, and people sharing links, so I continue to rely on you, the reader, to spread the good word of the metal elite. Also, feel free to check out my (occasionally relevant) sponsors around the page. I'm thrilled to see that I'm finally getting advertising from the likes of Relapse Records, Musician's Friend and Guitar Center for a change.

I'm also going to begin accepting donations through PayPal. Any little amount will be of gargantuan assistance in keeping this blog up and running and increasing the already staggering progress of this site. I want to keep providing you all with an unlimited supply of neverending heavy metal awesome, and you can all help contribute to the elite greatness by tossing a buck or two my way:

Thanks for your readership and your support! Once I get things sorted out on my end, I'll be back to ordering you dudes around like a pretentious snob in no time!

Happy Holidays, and keep it Metal! \m/

Sincerely,

Brenocide