Pining for Autographs

WOOF.
 Take note: Suicide Silence has turkey-necked, senior citizens for groupies. 

Today's TNM post subject is credited to Samantha Landa from Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a young heavy metal drummer, and like many of our neighbors in the Great White North, probably knows how to curse you out in French. I'm also assuming she's one of the many who thinks I'm a sexist jerk. If that were the case, she'd be right. Thanks Samantha!


If you have any suggestions for what's NOT METAL, like my Facebook page and take it to the Discussions section. If I like your idea, it might be the next TNM article! LUCKY YOU. 

A metal fan who thinks another man's signature is worth any more than his own, is incredibly unbecoming of a true metalhead. Egomania and delusions of grandeur come with the territory of listening to the greatest genre of music on the planet. (See?) If you wait outside a venue, wait in a line, or approach a merch table with the intent of getting signatures from your favorite metal artists, you are a chump, and are giving them the impression that they are more metal than you are. This is lunacy, because if you are reading my articles, it means you are on a never-ending journey to be the single most metal person you know in life.

Watch this Suicide Silence music video. The entire video is a roughly edited montage of the band members performing live at a festival and signing crap for those fans sad and pathetic enough to wait in line just to say hi to them. I wait in line for roller coaster rides. If I wanted to talk to a guy with long hair that played guitar well, I'd call him from my cell phone contacts. Actually, if I wanted to talk to someone who played guitar well, I would delete Suicide Silence from my contacts. I can't see this video as anything else other than a pretentious mockery of the rest of us folks who aren't signed to a major metal label and therefore, not half famous like they are. Grow up you deathcore assholes.

Even if these band members actually are of a substantially higher metal status, you are never supposed to admit that to them by requesting their signatures. What are you going to do now that you got the bassist from White Wizzard to scribble his name on your grungy t-shirt? Show off to all of your friends how shameless and lame you are? Just because a guy like Scott Ian is a household name and has been rocking for decades, doesn't mean you are any less metal than he is. He started "The Damned Things" for god's sake. If anybody took a silver sharpie and ruined the band shirt I paid $20+ for by scribbling all over it, I don't care who they are, they're getting a skullbutt to their mouth.

If you do meet a metal "celebrity", there is only one appropriate way to go about it. Get your picture taken with them. That way, you can play it off like you were just two dudes hanging out with each other, and even have the option of claiming the famous guy wanted his picture taken with you.

This dude is totally just Lemmy's friend. You can tell because they have their arms around each other. 

If you've ever waited in a line or waited outside a venue just to get something of yours signed by your favorite metal musicians, apologize to me about it in the comments below. You're no better than those depressing man-groupies who fist fight each other for flicked guitar picks.