America

As you should all know at this point, I attended an Amon Amarth show in Boston last week. I know you can't wait until I shut up about that band for the rest of my life, and I promise, after this post I'm going to take like a month-long hiatus from mentioning the greatest name in melodic death metal since also Amon Amarth, but their mention is required to make an excellent point. That point, as you gathered from the title, is that America sucks, and is the worst place you can ever live as a metalhead. I used to think it was the middle east, but I'll take Melechesh and Iraqi Metallica over actual Metallica any day of the week. Considering myself an official metal representative of these United States of America, I declare my country as the least metal place on Earth. Period. Blood. 

So the show was at this place called the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, MA. Amon Amarth played out to a sold out capacity crowd of 120 people, and I spend 90% of the show stepping on everybody's feet and getting yelled at by the staff for standing too close to the bar when there was nowhere else to stand except on other people's feet. I had a really great time, and got to get really close to the band. In fact, the best thing about the venue, is that you were always close to the band; whether you were on the floor, on the balcony, at the bar, or taking a dump. Johan and the gang were consistently 15 feet away. I thought this was a pretty awesome experience, until I was reminded of this piece of footage: 

There was literally one moment in time when I left the bathroom and I overheard some douchey bar patron in a different section of the venue hollering "all your songs sound the same!" What's wrong with this picture? Is it: A) Amon Amarth are playing quietly enough that I can hear this chode open his homo Boston face. B) This is a place where you're able to sit and enjoy a drink while the greatest melodic death metal act in history is playing several yards away. C) All of the above. Back in their home continent of Europe, Amon Amarth are given the massive stage/sea of faces treatment at epic festivals such as Summer Breeze, Wacken Open Air, and Metal Camp. Yet here I was, peering over 50-some-odd Red Sox hats to watch them perform on a 3-foot-tall stage, in what was more-or-less a glorified dive bar. What's going on here? Simple: This is America. We don't give a shit about death metal bands, whose growling and double-bass pedals are way too extreme and underground to be appreciated by anymore than 50-200 people at a time. This is a country where the awesome and true metal are all but forsaken, and the musical stars we worship and cater to are determined by reality TV game shows, or grew up somewhere on the Disney Channel. 

A Metal Show in America

A Metal Show in Europe

But let's not be too hasty. Aren't there metal festivals in America, too? Of course there are.

Besides the fact that prominent European metal acts travel tens of thousands of miles to be typically restricted to playing in bars and basements, most of, if not all of our "metal" bands suck ass too. Even if they were once flawlessly amazing in the 80's or 90's, a capitalist society based completely off monetary gain and commercial success guarantees that over the years, an American metal band will compromise their sound so that the brain dead majority will enjoy them and start buying their albums. In a recent Q&A with Wintersun's Jari Maenpaa in an open Metal Camp chatroom, Jari revealed that he was living off Finland's Social Security system, and is basically being paid by the government to shuffle his feet around a studio, and never finish his god damn album. Similarly, in countries like Sweden and Norway, bands can actually receive government aid in the form of cold hard cash just for being artists. That is not, nor will it ever be, the case in America. We won't ever use tax payer money to assist our poor and starving, hipster they may be. If bands don't sell merch or records, they don't eat. American musicians have to suck, or else the American population, who exists solely in the realm of everything one-dimensional and void of culture and intelligence, will never buy it. We like our movies to be full of explosions and we like our burgers to be finished in 48 seconds. Thinking is not an appreciated past-time here by any spectrum.

Then you have modern American bands like Between the Buried and Me, or The Dillinger Escape Plan and all the douchetarded fans that go along with them. If it's not some simple to digest I-hate-my-parents hard rock radio mosh bullshit like Lamb of God, then its some pot-induced groovetarded sludgey proggy Relapse Records neckbeard math metal with funky time signatures, over-stated tempo shifts, and fuzzily distorted guitars and basses played through Orange brand amplifiers. As much as I admittedly enjoy listening to some bands of the latter persuasion, (definitely not the two aforementioned) every garage-level jam band thinks they can make it in metal now. So now instead of like 5-10 great prog metal acts, we have 42,000 shitty ones. Thanks again, America. The land of the free, and the home of the unintellectual, or the pseudo-intellectual. Pick your poison, lads.  

The face of modern American Metal. Treason never looked so enticing a concept. 

Don't anyone of you ever approach me about my opinion of Between the Buried and Me again. Just don't. Why even ask me? It's like asking the pope what he thinks about sodomy just to get him riled up. It's not cute, it's just retarded. You love to watch me fume and ragegasm about the latest carabiner keychain band, like you're going to get anything from me except an extremely negative response. I'm  not here to surprise you. I'm here to state the obvious in hopes that some of you dumber kids might see it for what it is. If I really wanted to surprise you, I would have written a violation about long hair, or crossing your arms at bands that suck. I cross my arms at Between the Buried and Me hard as I can cross 'em. Don't ask me questions when you already know the answer, just because you like hearing me agree with you. 

I digress. To add to the flames of the U.S's metal inferiority from the rest of the world, we just need to turn our attention to our begrudged ally across the Atlantic, Old Blighty. Where was metal invented? England. Where did Led Zeppelin come from? England. Black Sabbath? England. Judas Priest? England. Motorhead? England. Iron Maiden? England. Saxon? England. Venom? England. Bring Me The Horizon? Wait, I guess you guys suck now too. Anyway, mostly all of heavy metal's major historical landmarks and beginnings took place on that pompous little island. Then there's Accept from Germany. We just can't win. Sure, we might have formally brought the world thrash and death metal with the likes of The Big 4 and Death. But before we managed that, we had to commercially ruin heavy metal's sound with the likes of Los Angeles glam pioneers Van Halen, and we've been doing it ever since with other forms of commercialized butt rock. I also want to point out in regards to thrash and death metal, that there would be no thrash if it weren't for the likes of NWOBHM and punk music, and there certainly would be no death metal without the likes of Venom. England can officially take credit for everything good in music. Screw you, England. 

Then there's this eye-rolling fiasco of a "musical era" that's been not-so-formally referred to as the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, which none of us realized existed or had a name until we saw Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. Isn't that shit just super cute? We took NWOBHM and made it NWOAHM. How clever! See, I've always been able to pronounce NWOBHM as "new-ah-bim", but the closest thing I got for this new fangled acronym is saying something along the lines of "Now I wanna ham". Strangely fitting considering the country of its origin... 

DOWN WITH THAT CAPITALIST MONEY LOVING GEORGE W!!
Now show your support and buy your official Lamb of God t-shirt at our merch stand for $35. K, thanks.

Some of the more prominent acts credited for the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, (according to Wikipedia) are Lamb of God, Disturbed, Trivium, and Avenged Sevenfold. (As well as BTBAM and DEP. Go figure.) I'm sure Creed should fit on that list, considering the criteria, but I saw Devil Driver on there somewhere, so I'll just go with that. Lamb of God of course, is the flagship band for "metal fans" in baseball hats and baggy t-shirts who like their hardcore music with guitar solos and want to disrespect either society in general, or just their mother. Trivium and Avenged Sevenfold are probably the two worst things to happen to metal music since cancer, and I'm not even really sure how Disturbed made it to the list. If you ask me, I feel like Drowning Pool is totally getting snubbed on this one. Give credit where credit is due, Wiki writers.  

I'm looking over my playlist, and it's increasingly apparent to me that it's overrun by acts based in Europe as opposed to the States. Ensiferum, Eluveitie, Turisas, Korpiklaani, Einherjer, I don't know what the hell any of those names means in English. (Don't take this as an invitation to educate me.) All I know is that they are way better than the bands who's names I can easily pronounce in my own language. 

True Metal Redemption for living in America requires that you move to Norway or Sweden, file a claim with the local government that you sitting around with your thumb up your ass in a studio for half a decade is considered an "art form" and revel at their ability to give away free bags of money to lazy people like you who don't deserve it despite an increasingly harsh economic climate. Then grow depressed from a lack of motivation due to being offered such easy money and kill yourself.

I can guarantee you that there is going to be a wave of patriotards who are going to bring the butthurt big time because I just shit all over their favorite country. It is of course their favorite, because neither them or their families could ever afford to travel elsewhere. Most of these undereducated grabasses are going to assume that I don't actually live in the U.S.A and attack me from the assumed and incorrect angle that I'm a foreigner, despite I just pointed out that I went to a show in Boston. Either that, or they're going to bring up big-time American metal bands to debate me. Go for it. For every prominent, influential American metal act you can mention to me, I have at the top of my head, a European act way more prominent, way more influential, and way better at music. America sucks and it isn't metal. All 50 states can consecutively blow me.