Sonic Syndicate is a Band of Butthurt, Unprofessional Fairies

When Sonic Syndicate reads this blog, they are also going to write a song about it.

Hail to all, my faithful warriors of metal! I have only just returned from a splendid vacation of sun and surf in the Bahamas, to see that some friends of mine had left me some very interesting facts about a post I wrote last week, regarding a massive sit-down rebellion I staged with fellow metalheads during an Amon Amarth show where Sonic Syndicate was playing a few years ago. (If you missed the article, click here.)

Long story short, Sonic Syndicate is a Swedish screamo band that back in late 2007 made the mistake of opening for Amon Amarth, (arguably one of the hardest melodic death metal acts of all time) in Worcester, Massachusetts. They received their just desserts, as little more than half the crowd attending actually sat down on the floor for the entirety of their set. In doing so, we had hoped we would make at least a minor ding to the armor of their confidence as a band. I had no idea, being unable to interpret the vocalist's broken English, and their tenacious ability to play on at the time, just how upset the incident actually made them. The chainmail of their professionalism was utterly shattered by the massive mace that was our reaction as an audience. We broke their weak, Swedish little hearts. 

I know I'm very critical of the music that I don't like personally, and god knows I'm going to brutally fault you for liking or playing anything that I don't like. But let's be real here: I'm just some asshole. Who cares? To quote Tom Dare from a recent Metal Hammer blog: "If the huffing and puffing of trolls can knock you down, you must have built your house of straw."  (Click here to read his article, Blogs of War: Bands Vs. The Internet). Life is just like that sometimes. Haters - after all - gonna hate. God knows I have my share, being quite the avid hater myself. We do it for the lulz, it's just how we roll. Delicious, memorable, epic lulz come in the form of one thing: a reaction. Reactions are how you "feed the trolls" so to speak. If you are in a performing rock band, are signed to a major record label, and have a faithful following of fans and album buyers, you don't let this kind of stupid crap get under your skin enough to react to it. Yet it got under Sonic's skin. Way deep. 

I'd like to direct the court's attention to Exhibit A: a song off Sonic Syndicate's second major release under Nuclear Blast, "Love and Other Disasters". The song is titled; "Hellgate: Worcester". (As opposed to Hellgate: London? Who the hell knows.) You can hear the song by clicking here. Good luck listening to it. The lyrics, are as follows:

You are an inspiration to us all
Armed with your plastic sword
A narrow mind and limited brain capacity
What I don't understand is
Why you revere a guy
Who's lacking an eye and never really existed

Tell me where's the sense in this?
(Why can't you open your minds)
Tell me what's the meaning of this
(Lose lose situation)
I feel for your god of war
Your fairer expenses
Must be insane with the mount you got in your garage
Don't you get me wrong
Cause I'm still impressed
By the bastardization between a horse and a spider

Tell me where's the sense in this?
(Why can't you open your minds)
Tell me what's the meaning of this
(Lose lose situation)
Maybe you should be the one who sacrificed an eye
To gain the wisdom you so badly require

Your savage agitation won't break us, can't break us
Just sit tight and watch our power grow stronger

My "savage agitation won't break you"? You silly man, it just did. I tore your shit asunder. Sonic Syndicate wrote a song about what happened to them in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

By actually going so far as to write a song about the incident, all you did was validate our actions. We got to you, plain and simple. What we did ate at your insides so painfully, hurt your fragile, pathetic feelings so much that you had to write a song about it to get it off your chest. It's like I'm a bully on the playground and I shove you down just because I like to watch you cry; and to encourage me, you cried on cue. You sobbed and bawled and wailed in the form of a song, where you lash out at us for being the big mean bullies we were. Didn't your mothers ever teach you that the best way to deal with bullies is to ignore them?

I barely want to even get into how much this song sucks, lyrically and musically, because it doesn't matter half as much as the fact that it exists. It's also, too easy a target. For starters, I'm a guy who listens to Amon Amarth, not a devout Norse pagan. There is, believe or not, somewhat of a difference. Making fun of Odin a lot doesn't really cut me as a guy who went to a concert in Worcester, so much as its an attack on the lyrics of a superior band that invited you to tour with them in the first place. Real professional. Second, I don't know what realm of existence Sonic Syndicate hails from where the only reason people would think their music sucks is because they are "narrow-minded" or have a "limited brain capacity". I think you're a generic, scream-the-verse-croon-the-chorus, cliche, overdone Killswitch Engage knock-off with too poor a grasp on the English language to be writing lyrics in it. I guess having anything other than a positive opinion of your cookie cutter metalcore band makes me a stupid, close-minded person.

I'll admit, my competency in the Swedish language is all but non-existent. I will however, promise to all my European readers out there, if I was going to start writing in Swedish, I would learn it first. I wish I could say mascara wearing vocalist, Richard Sjunnesson had the same kind of respect when he made his announcement about leaving the band last November:

"Hmph!"

“There are only so many arguments of the ‘scary’ screaming vocals to be or not to be in various songs I’m willing to take. Seeing how there was even demands to the band (behind my back) of songs without screaming vocals and how they were later obvious downplayed in the mix might very well have been the deathblow to my emotional attachment of the band. On the other hand, that made this decision very easy for me. It allowed me to go on in life with stuff that feels more important, things that actually manage to stir my heart.”

I'll do my best to translate this, but bear with me, I don't have a lot to work with. I guess Sjunnessonomississippi didn't agree artistically with the fact that the band doesn't want to do screamo vocals anymore, and that, he says, "will simply not fly with this crow". I guess the band arguing and the painful memory of that one group of fans being really rude at that one show he performed at in one state of America a couple years ago really was really just too much for Sjunnessonolopolis to handle.

So this is a personal message to Sonic Syndicate: I am the man responsible for what happened in Worcester those years ago. I was the man who opened that Hellgate at Worcester. Comment furiously on my blog below, because it is evident you are not above doing so, and every stupid little thing said and done with negative connotations towards you and your shitty band is enough to warrant a song-sized reaction.