Sjunnesson, Formerly of Sonic Syndicate Weighs In On TNM After We're Done Talking About It.

HMPH!!

So a thousand centuries ago, I wrote an article about a historic moment in true metalocity where some friends and I got most of the crowd to sit down during a Sonic Syndicate set at the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts. It wasn't until several weeks after the fact, that I discovered with trollish delight, that Sonic Syndicate's collective band vagina gushed blood so furiously over the event, that they actually wrote a fucking song about it, and featured it on a full-length, studio release. The song was titled "Hellgate: Worcester", because they associate rude Amon Amarth fans as a whole with just one city they played in. The references in this song are so esoteric, ham-fisted and full of personal butthurt, that none of Sonic Syndicate's fans have a clue what it's about, and don't think too much of it. Such must be the case with all Sonic Syndicate tracks, as the band is notorious for their lack of competency with English grammar. They understand the language well enough to figure out the directions on a side of any hair spray bottles they purchase while touring in the U.S or the U.K, and I guess that's good enough for them.

My account of the whole event got featured on Metal Sucks, and it's still to this day, one of my more popular articles. I've been praised as well as reviled for the epic lulz that my fellow metal brethren and I accomplished on that faithful night, and quite honestly, I couldn't really give less of a shit. It was like a funny memory I wrote about and not a whole lot more. This was after all, just Sonic Syndicate. They're generic buttcore band #6001, and they're going to be irrelevant in a handful of years, if people are having a hard time understanding that they're musically irrelevant already. Me heckling them like a rude scumbag, even if it did result in their completely unprofessional reaction is not, nor will it ever be, anything related to a highlight in my life. It was just two articles I wrote on two particular days, among many, many others. The reception and number of views I received because of this was completely circumstantial. I'm not still bragging about it. I'm not dwelling on it. I'm not even really all that proud of what I did to them. I've moved past it to bigger and better things.

Yet the legend continues anyway...

So as you all don't care to know, Richard Sjunnesson was the former singer of Sonic Syndicate. He decided that getting rid of the screamo vocals for a more mainstream sound "didn't fly with this crow" and he moved on to different things. Probably because he can't sing anything but screamo, and didn't have a choice. He's got some other band or something now. I can't stress to you enough how little of a shit I give and how unwilling I am to look into it. What I do know is he has a blog nobody reads, and it recently showed up in my list of traffic sources. Oh boy. So he apparently had some sort of Q&A going, where all 11 of his devoted fans could ask him some questions about the industry, his music, makeup tips or whatever the fuck metalcore fans care about. Here is the question about my page, and here is his answer, unmodified for your reading pleasure:

Q: I was looking up some music and I came across an article by Metal Sucks, now me being the curious person I was decided to see what they thought of Sonic Syndicate. Needless to say the new sonic syndicate was thoroughly bashed, but even the old Sonic Syndicate was torn apart in one of their reviews. They cited sonic syndicate and said the song Hellgate Worcester, as about how the audience booed you off the stage at the Amon Amarth concert.


I mean the way I see it the metal community is divided into factions were on one of the side there's the extremists who only like straight up death metal and any progression towards individuality is met with harsh retaliation, has the metal community always branded metalcore as emo? Or am I simply misinterpreting everything horribly? What’s your experience with this?


On a Side note the logo for the That's Not Metal Website is:
“You are inferior. Your taste in music, the actions you take, and the way you present yourself all make you an inferior person in the eyes of True Heavy Metal. That's Not Metal is here to tell you why, and what you can do to better yourself and grow out of your unmetal ways in the pursuit of achieving True Metal Redemption”


I've only been listening to metal for about two years, but I always thought it was about what appeals to you and not some religious cult convinced to make you see the error of your ways and trying to christen you towards salvation via “True Metal”. Sorry about the long question and my incessant ramblings, but I’m just trying to understand the community a bit better and I thought since you’ve been in the field a while you might be able to provide some insight


Sjunnessonaphonealopoliserncuntifer: As always, sad people will be sad. Unfortunately, I can’t give much credit to individuals, or their articles, for that matter, which are based on lies fabricated on their own twisted confined version of reality—which ironically enough, has nothing to do with reality. If they were spiced up with at least a fibre of hard facts I’d be the first to say; bash all you want! Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and freedom of speech to go with it. Sadly there’s not so much of a trace of facts in those articles.


Here are some facts:
We laughed our asses of leaving the stage in Worcester. The only ones embarrassed was the crowd (and the stoned monitor guy, possibly.) Doing a six-week tour with close to no days off, there were maybe two or three gigs that we weren’t appreciated. The rest were fine and we had a great time with Amon Amarth. Now why the song exists was simply for the fact of the peculiar behaviour we got the honour to imbibe that evening. It was exotic to us! Meaning; what happened in Worcester would NEVER happen in Europe. Not saying we have more manners or higher pain thresholds over here to ENDURE the 20 min of “horrible” support-band-music without crying about it, but at least that’s not what we do. We appreciate music; we appreciate the facts there’s hard work going on behind the curtains and that bands travel far to entertain us. Even if we are not down with the music there are very few selected people that would do huge fuzz about it in similar ways. In some cultures this is called humaneness. Feel free to look the word up!


There’s elitist bullshit in every community, and the metal community is not an exception by any means. But let’s face it, metal is not exactly majority. In my book, we should stick together and don’t let the small differences embark us into some kind of ridiculous civil war. There are always bands that bridge people to even harder music. Sonic Syndicate was such a band; the community should be grateful for how bands like that convert people to the right side of the force, instead of some bullshit which-hunt that does nothing but undermine the community, and scare people away from it.


But by all means, let them have their little sexist hate society in peace. They won’t achieve anything worth mentioning in the duration of a lifetime anyway. At least our achievements and hard work took us all around the world, while they were busy jerking off to their 2-channel tape recorders in their mom’s basement. I can understand their jealousy, as we got handpicked by their favourite band to tour with them.

I should probably inform you that Manowar's lyrics are all about destroying guys like you two.

Where to begin...


Let's start with this hopeless misfit asking him the question. Leave it to some dingbat who's "only been listening to metal for two years" to ask an artist trying to move on with his life some questions about his last fucking band: "So Mr. Mustaine, what was it like playing with Metallica?" Suck a gun-flavored popsicle you evolutionary failure. I'd also like to point out that your little "side note" is not about "my logo", but in fact, my page summary. We're not even talking about my tagline. In case you're brain dead or illiterate, my logo actually reads: "THAT'S NOT METAL". Check it again if you want to make sure, retard.

So the way you see it, "the metal community is divided into factions where on one of the side there's the extremists who only like straight up death metal and any progression towards individuality is met with harsh retaliation," and... what? What's the other side like? Did you forget what you were typing mid-sentence? Since you've only been into "metal", (and I'll use that term as loosely as fucking possible) for the last two years, I might let this slide, but there is no "faction" that listens to straight up death metal as well as meets all forms of "progression and individuality" with "harsh retaliation". Because the genre of death metal is void of all things progressive, right? You're also making the assumption that as a metal elitist, I only listen to "death metal". I wouldn't have any power, speed, black, folk, thrash, prog, sludge, or doom metal anywhere in my CD collection to speak of. Also what do you consider "harsh retaliation"? We're not blowing up fucking subway cars here. The worst thing we've ever done is say "this sucks", or maybe even sat on the floor during a shitty set. As brilliant as an idea as it may seem, I'm not exactly committing jihad on bad music. I'll finally add that you're not going to find anything more void of progression and individuality than Sonic Syndicate's music.

Now for the greasy-headed, human loser that's answering this question...

Pictured here looking about as metal as usual, with thumbs fully erect.

Look Sjunney. You can call me anything you want. You can call me sad. You can say I'm incapable of achieving anything worth mentioning in a lifetime. You can say I "live in my mother's basement and jerk off to 2-channel tape recorders." You can even call me "sexist". (lolwut?) Just don't go around calling me a fucking liar. It never ceases to amaze me how you play off the incident in Worcester as being "funny" to all of you guys in the band. You walked off the stage laughing, eh? I remember it a little differently. Here's a great picture from that exact show of your band "laughing" really hard at us:

Clearly in stitches.

Oh, here's another great photo I had. It's a photo of us in the crowd, looking really "embarrassed" and ashamed of ourselves:

The anguish. The shame. It's almost palpable.

So much for "facts", eh Sjunno?

From what you said, it seems like you're really big on things not being fabricated, so let's put aside the bullshit you're telling everyone and yourself, and give the "facts" to you straight: you wrote a song about it. I'll say it again: You wrote a song about it. What are you not getting here? Stop beating around the bush and confess that we hurt your butt something fucking severe. You can play it off like it didn't get to you, and you laughed it off, but what your band did is the definition of being gotten to. Don't you understand? Is there some language barrier, here? Honestly my friend, in regards to professional musicianship, you are the quintessential epitome of pathetic. Who actually does that? Who lets the actions of a bunch of drunken hecklers during ONE SET affect them so deeply and personally, that it sticks with them enough to react in such a large scale? 

Us being a bunch of assholes during a metal show lasted for 20 obnoxious minutes. The experience could've and should've ended for your band that night with a chuckle and perhaps a late-night session of shower sobbing. But then you get up the next day, get in your tour van, drive to the next venue, spike your hair like a fruitcup, and play your set for the next group of assholes. It's how you do it. Instead, you opted to etch the experience in the band's history, to live on in your discography forever. Your sophomore release on Nuclear Blast records. Love and Other Disasters. Track 2: Hellgate: Worcester. There we are, our actions as rude douchebags eternally validated.

Write a song about this, pussy.