Greetings defenders of the faith.
I'd like to formally welcome you to the archive page of That's Not Metal / Metal Snob. TNM was a satirical heavy metal elitist blog vaguely active from late 2010 - mid 2016. The name was changed to Metal Snob late 2015 after the name "That's Not Metal" was trademarked for use by a separate UK podcast. It finally all ended in the Summer of 2016, but was left up until the domain expired that December. Here you will find past editorials, reviews, commentary, news and more or less general shit-posting from yours truly among a few other guest writers who came and went.
Please keep in mind that every word written on this site was done so with the intention to be humorous and everything should be taken with a grain of salt, if taken at all. Although 'Brenocide' and I are one in the same, and it's still a handle I continue to use elsewhere, him and I are not the same. He was my SkankHunt42, if you will; an anonymous troll who made statements not necessarily to express a personal opinion, but to warrant a reaction. To rile readers and get under some people's skin.
This isn't to say that my own real-life position didn't shine through once in a great while here; as I found myself a podium from which I could speak and be heard a top the heap of mayhem that ultimately was this blog. However, for safety's sake, we're just going to say that this blog was written and is to be read for entertainment purposes only. The writing is poor, the language is foul, the jokes are offensive, the over-all outlook is immature and the bulk of this pile began and ended during my early to mid-lateish 20s. Some formative years of mine, where a great deal of personal growth occured for me, and where which at a certain point calling people 'cunts' on the internet for having different opinions lost a lot of its charm
I had initially planned to leave the web page in the dark after I quit writing for it, due to its content. However, there was significant interest in an archive of the site being available for readers. So here is the original site with the original material, simply reverted back to the blogspot address from whence it first came.
Keep in mind: this page is just an archive, and the site has been through multiple years of domain changes. There will be broken links, there will be images that don't work. There is no plan to fix these things, there is no plan to write new material for the site and any comments you make on the page now will likely fall on deaf ears and not be replied to.
With that said, I hope you enjoy sifting through the internet dumpster we worked so hard on for those years and maybe you'll come out of it less of a fucking poseur.
- Brendan
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Monday, June 6, 2016
The End
 |
| NOPE. NO MORE OF THIS. BYE. |
Hey guys. Bren here.
So here it is. I'm really actually, adult-time going to close the doors on Metal Snob / That's Not Metal. I'm going to ramble about this. I'm sorry for all this rambling.
To say this is a long time coming would be the understatement of a lifetime. I hate to disappoint anybody out there left who could be disappointed, but I'm making it official: That's Not Metal, Metal Snob, whatever this still is: It's over. Truth be told the ship has been sunk for years, and the time in that state easily outnumbers the days where this blog was growing, making progress and had potential. I've been sitting in the depths with my sunken, rusted pile for way longer than I should have. It's high time I swim back to shore and get on with my life.
Right now it would be so easy for me to point fingers; especially to make this easier for myself to deal with. I could tell you my full-time job or new marriage didn't give me time. I could put blame on my former, short-lived podcast-that-never-was cohost for his sudden, manic meltdown that ended a decade-long friendship. I could say it was the result of the callous lack of research on the part of certain big-name UK metal journalists who thought my original name was free to be taken, used, and trademarked, which resulted in my huffy, sudden, sloppy name change. I could say it was due to several former contributers ghosting me harder than a pretty OKCupid date. (Not including my most recent contributers, they were a really great bunch for the time they stuck around.) I could say it was all you guys and your shit fucking ad-block plugins making it so that I could make 10 times the amount of revenue in 6 minutes of roadside panhandling than in 6 months of writing. I could say it was the changing climate of internet-based entertainment favoring quick, easy laughs in the forms of clickbait lists, paragraph-long articles, Vines, YouTube videos and memes rather than TLDR editorials about how much I don't like a metalcore band. It could be because Manowar is breaking up. It's definitely because Manowar is breaking up.
I could say I'm doing this for a multitude of reasons that could somehow be skewed by my own dumb head as outside of my control. Out of the very many nails that have been deeply embedded in this coffin, I could readily choose each one to call the "final". But whether they were put there or not, we need to finally bury this motherfucker in the ground.
At the end of the day, completely, totally, all blame lands on me. I was the captain of this ship. I was the one that carelessly let it drift into the proverbial iceberg. I'm the one who's writing all these stupid analogies as a result. Real talk: my heart simply wasn't in it anymore dudes. I wasn't having any fun anymore. You saw me go months at a time without saying or doing a fucking thing, regardless of the many empty, unfulfilled, time-framed promises of content I made. I would cringe at the thought of sitting down and producing anything for this site. It always felt like an obligation I was putting off. It would hang over me and stress me out. I can't begin to tell you how many article drafts are sitting there unpublished, totally abandoned due to to their lack of quality and my lack of caring. I wrote the "meme" violation 4 times over before I finally, silently, just gave up on it altogether. I recorded those solo podcasts. I did. I then deleted those solo podcasts. I shouted out to the bands I told them I would give shout outs to. I included their music. I listened to the podcasts and they were not interesting or funny or worth listening to. I tried and I failed.
Simply put, I'd rather give you guys no content than bad content, and it's just time to admit to you all out loud that all I have left in me anymore in terms of this site is a lot of bad content.
For a successful metal publication of any sort, you need to have a lasting love and passion for discussing the genre in exactly that form. It takes time, it takes dedication, it takes effort. I wasn't and I'm not willing to give any of that anymore. I can't remember the last post I enjoyed writing, I felt it really showed in my work that I just didn't give a fuck anymore. I watched with child-like envy as many a metal blog that started well under me in exposure started to exceed me greatly in viewership over the years. The reasons for this were simple: these guys cared about what they were doing, they never stopped doing it, and they got returns for all the hard work they put into their respective sites. I was stubborn with my content, I was inconsistent, I never really knew where to take the blog. I didn't know when to kid around and when to be serious. I fucking HATED reviewing albums and I didn't like talking to musicians or care about them as people enough to interview them. Writing blurbs about heavy metal news is honestly, a fate worse than death to me. I seriously never really had a fucking metal blog here to begin with. That's Not Metal was always such a strange, misshapen, suffering mutant of a creature. So let's just take this deep breath together and finally put it out of its misery.
I'll be the first to admit that some of you might remember a post like this a couple years ago. I called it quits on TNM once before. I said all this same stuff, I said I was over it and I was ending it. Then, for whatever fucking reason, I strangely, silently started posting again. I deleted the goodbye post and I kept on like nothing happened. The milk was spoiled and tossed out but I was suddenly compelled to go digging in the trash so I could keep on drinking it. Seriously, I have plenty of analogies about ending my metal nerd rage blog.
How is this time going to be any different? For starters, when I hung it up last, I renewed the domain one more year just so people could read the stuff I previously wrote a little while longer. I'm not going to do that this time. Come December, this will all be reverted to a blogpsot.something.com html, and then potentially just deleted. My brenocide@thatsnotmetal.com email will be gone and no longer accessible, thatsnotmetal.com,metalsnob.net, those sites will simply vanish into the ether. I'm not gonna leave myself the temptation of a platform when the mood strikes for me to shit talk some band I don't like. At least not my own platform. I may eventually reach out to some other metal blogs to do some one-off contributions; (if I haven't completely alienated everybody with my asshattery) but this website and all we have done here will float away into the silent orbit of digital space trash like so many before it. It feels tragic given how much effort I've put into it over the years, but it was always inevitable, and I didn't feel right just silently taking things down for the handful of folks out there left who gave a shit.
TNM was my passion when I started this thing, it wouldn't have been fair to carry on with it now that it's definitely not. My creative aspirations lie elsewhere. I'm writing and producing music again with a new group of guys from my area. Something I haven't tried since I was much younger, and I'm having the time of my life. We're just an underground black metal band trying to have fun with it, and we will likely dwell in the land of necro-sound obscurity along with the number of daily pop-up USBM bands that came before us, but how little that matters to us makes it all the better. It's cool to be on the other side of things for a change; to create and produce and develop a real artform rather than create and produce and a develop an artform of just shit-talking or picking apart that other said artform. I'm also getting more into stuff like stand-up comedy and MCing open mics. I'm a creative person to my core, and I'm sure I'll carve a new place out on the internet somewhere at some point with a different form of content, be it musical, comedy or metal writing elsewhere or all of these things at once or maybe none of these things at all.
I will tell you right now you won't find out about it on Facebook. Fuck Facebook. That site is fucking over. If you have any interest in me and my future as a person, you can Follow me on Twitter. No creator, large or small should have to pay to get their content out to people that already made the decision to follow them. Facebook is becoming too big and greedy for its own fucking britches and that's another sinking ship I'm GLAD to jump. You all know that your timelines have become nothing but click-bait that paid to be there and your dumb aunt sharing dead memes. Seriously, delete your account if you know whats' good for you and use the other social media sites that cool people use.
For every single person who spent the time listening to me carry on these years, I can't thank you enough. It's been a fucking blast, whether you loved me or hated me. Before it's all said and done, share TNM with those unfamiliar. Let the people know of all the atrocities that occured here before our grand empire of nerd rage fizzles out into the inevitable oblivion. I love everyone of my contributors, thank you guys so much for your time. I'm sorry we didn't take this to the places we talked about, but I had a shit ton of fun trying with you guys. I'm sorry I didn't lead by example and make this place the soap box that you all truly deserved, but I hope the experience meant something, even if it was small. I want to thank The Angry Black Metal Elitist, for his contributions, it was a fucking shame to see him quit writing. The guys from Heavy Blog is Heavy, Angry Metal Guy, No Clean Singing, Metal Sucks, and Toilet Ov Hell for showing me great examples of genuine metal blogging that I could use as an example in those moments I felt like doing something quality. I want to thank my soul-sucking ex-girlfriend for making me miserable enough to take out all my anger and frustration on the metal community with a kind of funny blog; you can all blame her current absence for how much less angry/funny I am now. I'd like to thank my wife for her support through the sleepless nights of flamewarring and the hair-pulling edits of all my too-fucking-long posts. I'd like to thank RockstarBass100 for being such a great sport. I didn't feel bad about bullying you until Metal Sucks published your videos. Sorry about that, guy.
I'd also like to point that after all is said and done, Metalcore as a genre is essentially over. So, we did it. Mission accomplished boys. It's time to head home.
Stay true my friends,
- Brenocide \,,/
Monday, February 8, 2016
From The Frontlines: Enforcer, Warbringer, Cauldron, Exmortus, Dead Asylum, and Torrefy
“Alright, when you meet Conan, you can either just go with it, or try to fight back. But given your stature, I’d go with the former.”
“What?”
“Oh, Conan’s a hugger.”
“He…hugs people?”
“Yeah, it’s his thing.”
“I’m not letting him hug me.”
“…When it comes to Conan…Nobody really gets a choice in the matter.”
Beth was trying to keep up with me on the way to the show. She was still pissed that I made her take the skytrain with me as opposed to me just parking my car on Hastings. When she asked why I wouldn’t, it took her a solid two seconds for her to remember why that’d be a bad idea. That street was built to have cars broken into. Apparently for her, it was cold out.
“I told you not to wear fishnets, both for weather and metal reasons.”
“Guys think they’re cute.”
“No, guys think you’re wearing them to scam free drinks off them.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well aren’t you?”
“That’s beside the point! And how are you not cold?!”
“Because I’m not wearing fishnets, you dumb broad!”
When we got to the rickshaw, it was as vacant as it usually is this early, so there was no line. The Rickshaw is my kind of venue. It proudly boasts all its scuffs, scars and stains. The place used to be a theatre that showed Kung Fu flicks, until it was closed down after people lost taste in good cinema. Anyway, it was Beth’s 19th birthday a few weeks ago, so I bought her a ticket in. No more giving the bouncers handy j’s in the alley to ignore her lack of government ID. I think we’ve all been there.
Anyone who knows me knows I love me some Traditional Metal. Cauldron are probably one of the best Canadian Trad bands out there, and Enforcer from Sweden is no slouch either. My problem was I’d have to wait a good 3 hours for them, because the opening acts were Torrefy and Dead Asylum. If it isn’t glaringly obvious already, I fucking hate Death Metal.
Throw me in a hall with a bunch of Death Metal bands on the stage, and I’ll find the nearest bench and fall asleep. It’s boring, uninspired faux technical riffs and monotonous vocals that put me out faster than any vodka bender possibly could. That being said, I don’t hate ALL Death Metal. Just 90% of it. Early stuff such as Deicide and Possessed, most Melodic Death Metal, some tech stuff like Nile and Obscura, The genre has it’s perks. But that’s a poorly written rant for another time.
The only thing that confirmed my suspicions that I didn’t like the two bands is that I slept straight through both of their sets.
When Beth kicked me awake, we leaned on the rails waiting for Exmortus. I was more interested in Cauldron, as I said before, but what little I’ve heard from Exmortus seemed promising.
“So, have they ever cleaned the washrooms here?”
“Beth, I doubt that a bottle of windex has ever actually been near that bacterial battleground.”
“… At least the beer’s cheap.”
"Beth is one of the people I keep under my wing. If it weren't for me, she'd be 6 feet underground, or worse, in a church with a Trivium shirt on."
"Jay, you're narrating out loud again."
“Shit…I’m gonna go get some beer.”
“Grab me one… AND THAT SHIT ABOUT TRIVIUM AND CHURCHES ISN’T TRUE!!!”
When I got a can of cariboo for me, and only me, I bumped into The Duke. I don’t know why I’m surprised when he shows up at a show, he always does. Maybe I think he’s going to be dead before I next see him, so I just assume he is until I hear him hobbling on his cane through the door. He shared some drunken wisdom with me until Exmortus showed up.
Now, while I did sleep through them, it was in no way their fault. I really liked the stuff they were playing, basically sounded like Melodic Death Metal with a Power Metal paint job, It’s just that the incomparable blandness of the first two bands carried over for a good chunk of the night and put me in an exhausted stupor for longer than I would’ve tolerated. So Exmortus, if you’re reading this, I appreciated your stuff, and did not hesitate to illegally download your entire discography for listening at my leisure.
I was eventually nudged from my slumber by a familiar, pale face.
“Hey, Jay.”
“…Liz?”
“No.”
“Mary?”
“No.”
“…Babs?”
“It’s Nat.”
Part of me does know her name, but another part of me just wants to see how long it’ll take for me to piss her off into throwing a punch. Her endearing character trait is that she can get drunk faster than any woman I know. not a minute had passed after she entered the door, and she had gone through 8 beers. She was boasting about how hammered she was getting, while I was coasting on one beer at a time. I sometimes envy you mortals for not having the tolerance of a god.
I practically kicked down the fucking doors when I heard Cauldron getting on stage. I carved a path to the front of the stage, probably severely injuring those in my way. From what I understand, their last few shows have been dropped/aided by guest vocalists due to Jason Decay having some sort of throat Infection. He still showed up and sang some of the songs, but periodically opted out for Olof and I think Joseph from Enforcer to do guest vocals. regardless, it was an awesome, energetic set as usual from them. It’s a damn shame they didn’t play anything from Chained To The Nite.
The next hour was sort of a blur. Beth was hanging out with her friends that showed up, Nat faded in and out of conversation with me, and I took residence back on my bench. I saw Warbringer before, but I do not remember them being this fucking boring. After a while I pulled myself up and wandered in and out of the Rickshaw. I’d go buy some junk food from next door, desperately waiting for Warbringer to fuck off, or for Conan to show up so I could have a worthy opponent in the pit. But nothing.
I considered fucking off for home. Beth’s resourceful, I thought. Perhaps those fishnets actually worked on some hapless fool and she can get a ride back and an extra 50 bucks. Dio knows she needs to learn how to survive on other people as opposed to just me. Eventually I heard a prolonged silence emanate from deep within the Rickshaw. I cautiously re-entered. When I passed through the newly ruined doorframe, I was met with a fucking encore. I hate encores. Hate it when bands intentionally put a good set off balance, and hate the people who cheer for them doing so.
I vented my frustration by getting some more beer. As I got to the counter, I was approached by some asian chick.
“Wanna buy me one?”
“…Depends, are you going to take off as soon as I hand it to you?”
“Who knows?”
Looking back, she probably would’ve hung out with me. But it would’ve been a waste of time anyway. I haven’t been able to get it up since Lemmy died.
For the next 25 minutes I was in the lobby drinking, sleeping, and smashing my head against the wall. People probably thought I was re-enacting Accept’s Balls to the Wall video, but really I was trying to stay awake. I finally got fed up with it all, walked inside, and shouted at the stage to fucking end already. They politely obliged, and I went back outside. Seriously, their encore must’ve been longer than their actual set.
There I was, standing in the pissing rain, a few minutes from going home. I was kind of pissed at how lame of a night it was so far. I’ve gotten more sleep than I do most work nights, and so far I’ve engaged in negligible skirmishes in the pit. The night was looking to be a bust. But then, some thing came down the streets of hastings. It looked like a mountain that walked like a man. A grand monolith that gives off an aura of might.
“Conan, you flaming mook! Where the fuck’ve you been!?”
In reply, Conan immediately ran towards me, barely giving me enough time to apply a counter hold. Usually our duels go on in a stalemate, but that night I was barely holding my ground. In horror, I realized that I’ve lost weight since our last encounter. Son of a bitch had the bulk advantage over me. When our duel decimated the pavement, we entered the Rickshaw. When I mentioned Beth, he demanded he meet her.
“So is she a girlfriend, or just your friend, man?”
“She’s not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Black, Power Metal or Thrash Metal, could potentially kick my ass in a one on one fight.”
“…By black, do you mean-“
“Yes.”
When we reached Beth, a massive, hearty grin stretched over Conan’s face. anyone who didn’t know him would probably think he’s crazy…and he kind of is, but really, he likes having new victims for his mighty embrace. Beth had no time to react.
“You must be ConAGH!”
He easily lifted her fairy frame into the air, unintentionally creaking her ribcage. She was unable to offer a real reply, only declarations of pain and discomfort. When her feet finally returned to the ground, she learned the she survived with just an irregular heartbeat. Also, Enforcer finally got their shit together and started playing.
Enforcer were in top form, Olof has one of those voices that doesn’t give out for the entire show, and they played all of their best songs. Katana, Midnight Vice, Death Rides This Night, and several others that I couldn’t name because I was far too focused on the bedlam in the pit.
It wasn’t one of those nights where every single person was going in, it was more like a gladiatorial arena. There were only 4-6 people in it at a time, and we all had our marks and would occasionally team up. There was this one guy who reminded me of a younger, less handsome version of me sporting the precursor to a mullet. He kept looking back at me whenever I briefly stopped to enjoy the show. Guy seemed intent on earning a spot as my pupil. But that position is already filled, Robin. I already got Batgirl.
He kept trying to show what passed for his might in the pit, tackling into me repeatedly, but I just kept walking forward as though he weren’t there. Eventually, he resigned to just being another in the pit. There was this one guy on the rim, who for some reason keep grabbing the kid as he was running by, to throw him at the front of the pit. The pit may be an arena right now, but that kind of shit doesn’t fly.
I immediately grabbed the kid by the shoulders, gained some speed and rammed into the tosser.
All that was left was to face down Conan.
Before we even started, I knew I was at a disadvantage. I accidentally lost weight after the last few months, So there was no way I’d be able to take him down head on. I’d have to use my brain against him. We bounced off each other for a bit, then I faked him out, allowing him to crash into the rim. He went into a berserker rage as he turned around, steam visibly shooting out his nose. I refused to fake him out a second time, preparing to take the full brunt of his attack.
Fueled by booze, rage and Swedish Traditional Metal, Conan surged forth, and delivered the payload of a 600 pound Canadian titan into my chest. I flew back into the rim, dazed, but not out. Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take another one like that. The other moshers were unaware of our metal combat, and continued to mindlessly slam into each other. I realized what I could do. It’s almost a dirty shot, but this is Conan we’re talking about.
It’d take some luck, coordination, and even more luck, but I could pull it off. I slammed into conan a few more times, my shoulder barely holding up. Then, the time came. Two other moshers took point at the back of the pit. Instead of bouncing off Conan, I braced for the impact, grabbed him by the arm, and the two at the back saw this opening. The two of them combined were not capable of knocking over me or Conan, let alone the two of us at once. But it got the ball rolling.
At the very second of impact, I spun Conan around on my shoulder, and backed straight into the front of the pit with a furious roar.
To this day, neither of us know who truly won, but we do know we probably killed some people that were pressed up against the stage.
Some of you may wonder what The Duke does at shows. Does he grab a seat, does he stand off at the side, does he mosh, do the owners usher him into some mythical VIP lounge? The answer is that he does indeed mosh. And he can actually throw down. But lets remember here, the dude’s old. Motherfucker was friends with the editor of the Old Testament. He knew Julius Cesar on a first name basis. The guy’s cane has a sundial built into it. He had been drinking pretty hard the whole night, but later in the pit, he took a pretty hard hit.
When he got back up, he kept swaying back and forth, but didn’t leave the pit. This is when the moshing stopped for fear of killing someone people actually knew. Anyway, Enforcer fucking killed it, and they actually stayed on stage to get their encore over with. God, I hate encores. “Hey! We’re out of here! But we’ll be back in thirty seconds to play you three more songs!” Blow me.
So, with that all done, me and Beth took the long journey home.
“So, did you actually scam any drinks?”
“…fuck you.”
“Maybe next time you’ll think and just put on some pants.”
“...”
“…By the way, you’re paying for the gas on the way back.”
“…I fucking hate you.”
“What?”
“Oh, Conan’s a hugger.”
“He…hugs people?”
“Yeah, it’s his thing.”
“I’m not letting him hug me.”
“…When it comes to Conan…Nobody really gets a choice in the matter.”
Beth was trying to keep up with me on the way to the show. She was still pissed that I made her take the skytrain with me as opposed to me just parking my car on Hastings. When she asked why I wouldn’t, it took her a solid two seconds for her to remember why that’d be a bad idea. That street was built to have cars broken into. Apparently for her, it was cold out.
“I told you not to wear fishnets, both for weather and metal reasons.”
“Guys think they’re cute.”
“No, guys think you’re wearing them to scam free drinks off them.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well aren’t you?”
“That’s beside the point! And how are you not cold?!”
“Because I’m not wearing fishnets, you dumb broad!”
When we got to the rickshaw, it was as vacant as it usually is this early, so there was no line. The Rickshaw is my kind of venue. It proudly boasts all its scuffs, scars and stains. The place used to be a theatre that showed Kung Fu flicks, until it was closed down after people lost taste in good cinema. Anyway, it was Beth’s 19th birthday a few weeks ago, so I bought her a ticket in. No more giving the bouncers handy j’s in the alley to ignore her lack of government ID. I think we’ve all been there.
Anyone who knows me knows I love me some Traditional Metal. Cauldron are probably one of the best Canadian Trad bands out there, and Enforcer from Sweden is no slouch either. My problem was I’d have to wait a good 3 hours for them, because the opening acts were Torrefy and Dead Asylum. If it isn’t glaringly obvious already, I fucking hate Death Metal.
Throw me in a hall with a bunch of Death Metal bands on the stage, and I’ll find the nearest bench and fall asleep. It’s boring, uninspired faux technical riffs and monotonous vocals that put me out faster than any vodka bender possibly could. That being said, I don’t hate ALL Death Metal. Just 90% of it. Early stuff such as Deicide and Possessed, most Melodic Death Metal, some tech stuff like Nile and Obscura, The genre has it’s perks. But that’s a poorly written rant for another time.
The only thing that confirmed my suspicions that I didn’t like the two bands is that I slept straight through both of their sets.
When Beth kicked me awake, we leaned on the rails waiting for Exmortus. I was more interested in Cauldron, as I said before, but what little I’ve heard from Exmortus seemed promising.
“So, have they ever cleaned the washrooms here?”
“Beth, I doubt that a bottle of windex has ever actually been near that bacterial battleground.”
“… At least the beer’s cheap.”
"Beth is one of the people I keep under my wing. If it weren't for me, she'd be 6 feet underground, or worse, in a church with a Trivium shirt on."
"Jay, you're narrating out loud again."
“Shit…I’m gonna go get some beer.”
“Grab me one… AND THAT SHIT ABOUT TRIVIUM AND CHURCHES ISN’T TRUE!!!”
When I got a can of cariboo for me, and only me, I bumped into The Duke. I don’t know why I’m surprised when he shows up at a show, he always does. Maybe I think he’s going to be dead before I next see him, so I just assume he is until I hear him hobbling on his cane through the door. He shared some drunken wisdom with me until Exmortus showed up.
Now, while I did sleep through them, it was in no way their fault. I really liked the stuff they were playing, basically sounded like Melodic Death Metal with a Power Metal paint job, It’s just that the incomparable blandness of the first two bands carried over for a good chunk of the night and put me in an exhausted stupor for longer than I would’ve tolerated. So Exmortus, if you’re reading this, I appreciated your stuff, and did not hesitate to illegally download your entire discography for listening at my leisure.
I was eventually nudged from my slumber by a familiar, pale face.
“Hey, Jay.”
“…Liz?”
“No.”
“Mary?”
“No.”
“…Babs?”
“It’s Nat.”
Part of me does know her name, but another part of me just wants to see how long it’ll take for me to piss her off into throwing a punch. Her endearing character trait is that she can get drunk faster than any woman I know. not a minute had passed after she entered the door, and she had gone through 8 beers. She was boasting about how hammered she was getting, while I was coasting on one beer at a time. I sometimes envy you mortals for not having the tolerance of a god.
I practically kicked down the fucking doors when I heard Cauldron getting on stage. I carved a path to the front of the stage, probably severely injuring those in my way. From what I understand, their last few shows have been dropped/aided by guest vocalists due to Jason Decay having some sort of throat Infection. He still showed up and sang some of the songs, but periodically opted out for Olof and I think Joseph from Enforcer to do guest vocals. regardless, it was an awesome, energetic set as usual from them. It’s a damn shame they didn’t play anything from Chained To The Nite.
The next hour was sort of a blur. Beth was hanging out with her friends that showed up, Nat faded in and out of conversation with me, and I took residence back on my bench. I saw Warbringer before, but I do not remember them being this fucking boring. After a while I pulled myself up and wandered in and out of the Rickshaw. I’d go buy some junk food from next door, desperately waiting for Warbringer to fuck off, or for Conan to show up so I could have a worthy opponent in the pit. But nothing.
I considered fucking off for home. Beth’s resourceful, I thought. Perhaps those fishnets actually worked on some hapless fool and she can get a ride back and an extra 50 bucks. Dio knows she needs to learn how to survive on other people as opposed to just me. Eventually I heard a prolonged silence emanate from deep within the Rickshaw. I cautiously re-entered. When I passed through the newly ruined doorframe, I was met with a fucking encore. I hate encores. Hate it when bands intentionally put a good set off balance, and hate the people who cheer for them doing so.
I vented my frustration by getting some more beer. As I got to the counter, I was approached by some asian chick.
“Wanna buy me one?”
“…Depends, are you going to take off as soon as I hand it to you?”
“Who knows?”
Looking back, she probably would’ve hung out with me. But it would’ve been a waste of time anyway. I haven’t been able to get it up since Lemmy died.
For the next 25 minutes I was in the lobby drinking, sleeping, and smashing my head against the wall. People probably thought I was re-enacting Accept’s Balls to the Wall video, but really I was trying to stay awake. I finally got fed up with it all, walked inside, and shouted at the stage to fucking end already. They politely obliged, and I went back outside. Seriously, their encore must’ve been longer than their actual set.
There I was, standing in the pissing rain, a few minutes from going home. I was kind of pissed at how lame of a night it was so far. I’ve gotten more sleep than I do most work nights, and so far I’ve engaged in negligible skirmishes in the pit. The night was looking to be a bust. But then, some thing came down the streets of hastings. It looked like a mountain that walked like a man. A grand monolith that gives off an aura of might.
He actually forgot his sword at home
“Conan, you flaming mook! Where the fuck’ve you been!?”
In reply, Conan immediately ran towards me, barely giving me enough time to apply a counter hold. Usually our duels go on in a stalemate, but that night I was barely holding my ground. In horror, I realized that I’ve lost weight since our last encounter. Son of a bitch had the bulk advantage over me. When our duel decimated the pavement, we entered the Rickshaw. When I mentioned Beth, he demanded he meet her.
“So is she a girlfriend, or just your friend, man?”
“She’s not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Black, Power Metal or Thrash Metal, could potentially kick my ass in a one on one fight.”
“…By black, do you mean-“
“Yes.”
When we reached Beth, a massive, hearty grin stretched over Conan’s face. anyone who didn’t know him would probably think he’s crazy…and he kind of is, but really, he likes having new victims for his mighty embrace. Beth had no time to react.
“You must be ConAGH!”
He easily lifted her fairy frame into the air, unintentionally creaking her ribcage. She was unable to offer a real reply, only declarations of pain and discomfort. When her feet finally returned to the ground, she learned the she survived with just an irregular heartbeat. Also, Enforcer finally got their shit together and started playing.
Enforcer were in top form, Olof has one of those voices that doesn’t give out for the entire show, and they played all of their best songs. Katana, Midnight Vice, Death Rides This Night, and several others that I couldn’t name because I was far too focused on the bedlam in the pit.
It wasn’t one of those nights where every single person was going in, it was more like a gladiatorial arena. There were only 4-6 people in it at a time, and we all had our marks and would occasionally team up. There was this one guy who reminded me of a younger, less handsome version of me sporting the precursor to a mullet. He kept looking back at me whenever I briefly stopped to enjoy the show. Guy seemed intent on earning a spot as my pupil. But that position is already filled, Robin. I already got Batgirl.
He kept trying to show what passed for his might in the pit, tackling into me repeatedly, but I just kept walking forward as though he weren’t there. Eventually, he resigned to just being another in the pit. There was this one guy on the rim, who for some reason keep grabbing the kid as he was running by, to throw him at the front of the pit. The pit may be an arena right now, but that kind of shit doesn’t fly.
I immediately grabbed the kid by the shoulders, gained some speed and rammed into the tosser.
All that was left was to face down Conan.
Before we even started, I knew I was at a disadvantage. I accidentally lost weight after the last few months, So there was no way I’d be able to take him down head on. I’d have to use my brain against him. We bounced off each other for a bit, then I faked him out, allowing him to crash into the rim. He went into a berserker rage as he turned around, steam visibly shooting out his nose. I refused to fake him out a second time, preparing to take the full brunt of his attack.
Fueled by booze, rage and Swedish Traditional Metal, Conan surged forth, and delivered the payload of a 600 pound Canadian titan into my chest. I flew back into the rim, dazed, but not out. Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take another one like that. The other moshers were unaware of our metal combat, and continued to mindlessly slam into each other. I realized what I could do. It’s almost a dirty shot, but this is Conan we’re talking about.
It’d take some luck, coordination, and even more luck, but I could pull it off. I slammed into conan a few more times, my shoulder barely holding up. Then, the time came. Two other moshers took point at the back of the pit. Instead of bouncing off Conan, I braced for the impact, grabbed him by the arm, and the two at the back saw this opening. The two of them combined were not capable of knocking over me or Conan, let alone the two of us at once. But it got the ball rolling.
At the very second of impact, I spun Conan around on my shoulder, and backed straight into the front of the pit with a furious roar.
To this day, neither of us know who truly won, but we do know we probably killed some people that were pressed up against the stage.
Some of you may wonder what The Duke does at shows. Does he grab a seat, does he stand off at the side, does he mosh, do the owners usher him into some mythical VIP lounge? The answer is that he does indeed mosh. And he can actually throw down. But lets remember here, the dude’s old. Motherfucker was friends with the editor of the Old Testament. He knew Julius Cesar on a first name basis. The guy’s cane has a sundial built into it. He had been drinking pretty hard the whole night, but later in the pit, he took a pretty hard hit.
When he got back up, he kept swaying back and forth, but didn’t leave the pit. This is when the moshing stopped for fear of killing someone people actually knew. Anyway, Enforcer fucking killed it, and they actually stayed on stage to get their encore over with. God, I hate encores. “Hey! We’re out of here! But we’ll be back in thirty seconds to play you three more songs!” Blow me.
So, with that all done, me and Beth took the long journey home.
“So, did you actually scam any drinks?”
“…fuck you.”
“Maybe next time you’ll think and just put on some pants.”
“...”
“…By the way, you’re paying for the gas on the way back.”
“…I fucking hate you.”
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Introducing the Revolutionary A7X DIET
 |
| A Little Piece of Heaven for us all! |
Having a tough time sticking to that New Years Res? Have you been yo-yoing up and down in the pounds department, just struggling with weight your whole life? Want to get yourself beach-body fit for the upcoming summer months? Well my friends, after hours of scientific research and study, the dietary specialists at Metalsnob.net are confident we have ultimately found the golden key to weight loss.
This isn't a scam. This isn't a gimmick. This isn't a fad. This diet is founded in hard, real, actual fucking pure liquid science, and was developed by world-renowned dietician, nutritionist, fitness coach, yoga master, mathematician, and space explorer, Dr. Deth Leppard PhD.*
Introducing, the revolutionary, fail-safe, fat-shredding, pound-melting, ultimate super diet, known as the A7X:
They say "he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." I guarantee you that if you fully utilize the A7X diet and exercise program properly, you'll be a beast in no time. This diet is such a tried and true method to lasting, quick weight loss, one could say it's Almost Easy. Say goodbye to that spare tire forever. After following the A7X in just a few weeks, you'll be body fat's worst Nightmare.
So how does it work? The A7X utilizes modern day internet streaming technology and the basics of human psychology to ensure that you strictly follow a proper diet and exercise routine. The A7X doesn't focus on the details of what you should be eating and what you should be doing. All the other diets you tried and failed dwelled so much on that sort of common-knowledge nutrition and fitness garbage. Eat right, and move a lot. Christ, we get it already. We already know what we're supposed to eat, right? We've been told time and time again: stick to food that's high in nutritional value, low calories, low carb, not processed and organic/locally grown if possible. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, non-processed meats, eggs, dairy, whole grain, etc. Don't buy into that processed junk that sells itself as "low-fat" or "low-calorie" to try and pass itself as healthy. Read the ingredients. If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. The cleaner and more natural, the better off you'll be. (If you can't pronounce quinoa, that's okay you can still eat it.) We also know what we're NOT supposed to eat: complex sugars, processed junk foods, candy, soda, beer, take out, fast food, white bread, desserts, chips and other "snack foods".
Yeah, enough already, thanks mom. We already know that the bad stuff is bad for us. However, it doesn't stop you from putting it in your mouth. There's an underlying reason you're a big pile who keeps binge eating the worst possible foods. You're sad, you're lonely, you're depressed, you're apathetic. You eat it because you love the way it makes you feel in the moment and you don't care about what it does to your body. It's all based in psychology. Your brain is what made you fat, so it's what we're gonna focus on to make you fit. We will use the power of psychology against itself to take that pile of clay you call a body and sculpt it into something truly beautiful.
So how does the A7X actually work?
"Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behavior."
- Wikipedia (reference: Science)
Aversion therapy is still very controversial, and most infamously was a form of treatment to try to "fix" homosexuality before it was outlawed in 2006. But in a nutshell, it is a simple method to get you to associate your unwanted behavior with unpleasant feelings or consequences. The success of the A7X diet is based largely on this concept. We're not going to do something so extreme and awful as tie you to a bed and zap you every time you indulge in a Snickers bar, but if you follow the rules of the A7X diet to a tee, I guarantee you're gonna at least think twice before you pick one up next time you're at the gas station or chug that soda or beer at your bud's next shindig.
So what really is the A7X diet?
One of the most exciting things about the A7X program is that not only is it worth its Critical Acclaim, but its secrets are yours for absolutely free. No subscriptions, no books, no videos, no workout equipment or supplements to buy from us to get this info. Nothing. Dr. Leppard will share his patented weight loss secrets with you at absolutely no obligation or no cost to you.
And he will tell you right now.
Shortly.
Maybe soon.
If you read a little more.
Fitness, carbs, creatine.
Here's a picture of another bicep.
Seriously, if you don't tell me I'm closing the fucking page.
Okay, okay.
The very best part of the A7X is there are only a few rules to follow. In most other workout routines and diet plans, there's all sorts of information you have to worry about. With the patented, exciting, revolutionary, scientifically proven,
That's it, I'm leaving.
Fuck you, I don't care, I already got my click from you, poseur. Enjoy your diabetes.
For those of you who truly care about your weight loss enough to make it this far, here is the secret to the patented, exciting, revolutionary, scientifically proven, ultimate, fail-safe, existential, monster, probably high-protein, liquid juice, kale is involved somewhere, penis enlarging A7X diet:
You can eat whatever you want.
That's right! With the way the A7X works, you can eat quite literally whatever the hell you want. Candy, soda, pizza rolls, Pop-Tarts, ramen, bacon, ranch dressing, you name it! So many diets try so hard to break you out of even looking at these things. You deny yourself, you can't take it anymore, you falter, you binge. The A7X diet doesn't want you to stop eating what you want. Go ahead, bring home that Chinese, grab a can of Coke while you're at it. However, the A7X utilizes aversion therapy techniques to go along with every time you eat those salty, fatty, high carb, high sugar foods.
Why am I still here...?
Because you're a glutton for punishment just like you're a glutton for Taco Bell, you fat sweaty sack of turds. Do you want women to find you fuckable? Then keep reading and shut your gaping ever-open fucking vacuumous maw you human rhinoceros so I can save your stupid life. Isn't your health worth 45 minutes of a nice quiet read? What else were you gonna do? Get those buttery hands to crust up another PS4 controller for 7 consecutive hours? Fuck you, you're like a time bomb for colon cancer.
So anyway, here's the trick:
Every time you cheat on your diet. You have to listen to an Avenged Sevenfold song while you eat your cheat.
STOP!
Before you get to eat it, take out your smart phone. Load your Spotify or YouTube app. Play this song:
Any A7X song is fine, really. Just play the first available Avenged Sevenfold track you can find in its entirety. If you're using Spotify, just go to the Avenged Sevenfold page and put it on shuffle. Play the song throughout the entirety of your candy bar experience. But wait, even if the candy bar is over, you still have to hear out the entire track. You can't just scarf it quick and shut it off so you can be in the clear.
If somehow, your cheat food experience lasts longer than one Avenged Sevenfold song, you have to continue on to the next Avenged Sevenfold song. If you're at a pizza party, put your smartphone on A7X shuffle on Spotify and let it go until you're done eating. Once you're done eating, you still have to finish the song that's currently playing. You have to do this every single time you eat something that isn't good for you.
So there it is. Every time you eat junk food, you will associate the experience with listening to Avenged Sevenfold's music. Kind of takes all the fun out of that ice cream sundae, doesn't it? Since you're here reading this, we can assume you're a smart reasonable person who wants to make positive changes in your life. Therefore, it's reasonable for me to assume that you don't like Avenged Sevenfold. It's just about impossible for me or anyone to imagine a well-rounded, good, honest, intelligent individual who can like their music.
No amount of fat-shaming stopped you from eating all those bad foods. What people said to you in that regard just didn't make you feel bad enough about yourself to make your serious lifestyle change. However, I find it hard to believe that the inevitable taste shaming won't ultimately do the trick for you instead. If you strictly follow the A7X, imagine you and your friends are out eating at a restaurant. You sit down to eat with them and then you put your music on like you know you're supposed to. Imagine the look on their faces. Imagine what they're going to say to you.
"Wow, do you actually like this band?"
"Oh Christ, do we really have to listen to this here? Or now? Or ever?"
"What happened to you, you used to seem like a good person... Maybe we should see other people."
Still want to sit down with that big double-decker cheeseburger? That's what I thought. Better get the salad and the water with lemon. Unless you want to be fat and friendless and make everyone think you like terrible music.
This isn't to say you can't let your friends in on your diet and how it works. If you tell your usual group about how you they all have to openly listen to Avenged Sevenfold every time you eat something bad for you, guess what? Instant support network. There's no way to lose enablers faster than to punish them along with yourself for not helping you make the right choices! They will either stick around and help or be So Far Away they'll feel like the extra fat you never knew you had to lose!
The A7X is not only genius in its simplicity, but its flexibility!
We can adjust the A7X in intensity to match your needs. Many fitness friends of mine have something they call a "cheat day". They are nutritionally-minded, clean-eating angels all week, until say-- Friday or Saturday -- when they just eat whatever they want, and as much as they want on that one day. While I understand that only one day of bad eating during the week is definitely better than seven, I always thought that a bad cheat day could be all it takes to derail your hard-earned workout results from the rest of the week. So if you're the type to have a cheat day, we're gonna up the ante on the A7X to meet your needs:
Dear God. Imagine the looks you'll get walking around in this bad boy all day. Of course, the main rule of the A7X applies even on cheat day. Every moment you're gonna eat bad stuff, you're gonna listen to bad stuff. And if you're gonna do it all day, you better let people know up front what to expect from you.
You can have your own official cheat days, but on those days, you must openly wear A7X merch for the duration.
Are you really looking forward to chocolate Fridays now? Yeah, maybe not so much. Maybe chocolate Friday is starting to sound pretty lame. Maybe it might be a good idea to cancel it? Congratulations. Your workout results are now yours to keep, Monday through Sunday.
So we also know that exercise is important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. No one wants you to go to the gym everyday -- rest can be just as good for muscle development as the weight training around it -- but let's say you have a fitness routine where you go to the gym for an hour after work or school every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Let's say Wednesday comes, and you had kind of a crappy day. You're not really feeling up to the gym. That's okay! Go home, take a break, no gym tonight for you! But instead of the hour you were gonna be working out, guess what you'll be doing with that hour at home instead?
Aw yeah, son. A nice solid hour of non-stop A7X to enjoy during your break. Guess the gym wasn't such a bad idea after all?
So there it is. The weight loss technique that hits you right in the true metal so hard that you'll be hitting the treadmill, hitting the weights, taking hikes, and eating clean in order to maintain your perfect musical taste, just like you always have been. Start your A7X journey with us so you can Seize the Day and be on your way to the new you!
With proper utilization, we will be on our way to either a much fitter metal community, or just much fatter Avenged Sevenfold fans.
The A7X method can also be utilized with musical and merch substitutions from groups such as Five Finger Death Punch, Trivium, Bullet for My Valentine, Bring Me The Horizon, Cradle of Filth, Children of Bodom or even Nickelback** for those looking to add more intensity to their workout.
*Deth Leppard is not a certified nutritionist and might have exaggerated his space exploration experience.
**Not medically recommended.
"Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behavior."
- Wikipedia (reference: Science)
Aversion therapy is still very controversial, and most infamously was a form of treatment to try to "fix" homosexuality before it was outlawed in 2006. But in a nutshell, it is a simple method to get you to associate your unwanted behavior with unpleasant feelings or consequences. The success of the A7X diet is based largely on this concept. We're not going to do something so extreme and awful as tie you to a bed and zap you every time you indulge in a Snickers bar, but if you follow the rules of the A7X diet to a tee, I guarantee you're gonna at least think twice before you pick one up next time you're at the gas station or chug that soda or beer at your bud's next shindig.
So what really is the A7X diet?
One of the most exciting things about the A7X program is that not only is it worth its Critical Acclaim, but its secrets are yours for absolutely free. No subscriptions, no books, no videos, no workout equipment or supplements to buy from us to get this info. Nothing. Dr. Leppard will share his patented weight loss secrets with you at absolutely no obligation or no cost to you.
And he will tell you right now.
Shortly.
Maybe soon.
If you read a little more.
Fitness, carbs, creatine.
Here's a picture of another bicep.
 |
| Electrolytes. Hyper tension. Atrophy. Muscle memory. Biomechanics. Power steering. |
Seriously, if you don't tell me I'm closing the fucking page.
Okay, okay.
The very best part of the A7X is there are only a few rules to follow. In most other workout routines and diet plans, there's all sorts of information you have to worry about. With the patented, exciting, revolutionary, scientifically proven,
That's it, I'm leaving.
Fuck you, I don't care, I already got my click from you, poseur. Enjoy your diabetes.
For those of you who truly care about your weight loss enough to make it this far, here is the secret to the patented, exciting, revolutionary, scientifically proven, ultimate, fail-safe, existential, monster, probably high-protein, liquid juice, kale is involved somewhere, penis enlarging A7X diet:
You can eat whatever you want.
 |
| *drops weights at news* |
Why am I still here...?
Because you're a glutton for punishment just like you're a glutton for Taco Bell, you fat sweaty sack of turds. Do you want women to find you fuckable? Then keep reading and shut your gaping ever-open fucking vacuumous maw you human rhinoceros so I can save your stupid life. Isn't your health worth 45 minutes of a nice quiet read? What else were you gonna do? Get those buttery hands to crust up another PS4 controller for 7 consecutive hours? Fuck you, you're like a time bomb for colon cancer.
So anyway, here's the trick:
Every time you cheat on your diet. You have to listen to an Avenged Sevenfold song while you eat your cheat.
 |
| COME AGAIN?! |
Simple, right? That's all there is to it. Let's discuss this concept in a real world scenario. You're at your local pharmacy, picking up some necessities and you cave in. You buy that Butterfinger. That's okay, it's not the end of the world. You don't have to make it out to be "falling off the wagon" and give up on your life. Go ahead. Sit in your car, unwrap your candy bar, bring it to your lips...
STOP!
Before you get to eat it, take out your smart phone. Load your Spotify or YouTube app. Play this song:
Any A7X song is fine, really. Just play the first available Avenged Sevenfold track you can find in its entirety. If you're using Spotify, just go to the Avenged Sevenfold page and put it on shuffle. Play the song throughout the entirety of your candy bar experience. But wait, even if the candy bar is over, you still have to hear out the entire track. You can't just scarf it quick and shut it off so you can be in the clear.
If somehow, your cheat food experience lasts longer than one Avenged Sevenfold song, you have to continue on to the next Avenged Sevenfold song. If you're at a pizza party, put your smartphone on A7X shuffle on Spotify and let it go until you're done eating. Once you're done eating, you still have to finish the song that's currently playing. You have to do this every single time you eat something that isn't good for you.
So there it is. Every time you eat junk food, you will associate the experience with listening to Avenged Sevenfold's music. Kind of takes all the fun out of that ice cream sundae, doesn't it? Since you're here reading this, we can assume you're a smart reasonable person who wants to make positive changes in your life. Therefore, it's reasonable for me to assume that you don't like Avenged Sevenfold. It's just about impossible for me or anyone to imagine a well-rounded, good, honest, intelligent individual who can like their music.
No amount of fat-shaming stopped you from eating all those bad foods. What people said to you in that regard just didn't make you feel bad enough about yourself to make your serious lifestyle change. However, I find it hard to believe that the inevitable taste shaming won't ultimately do the trick for you instead. If you strictly follow the A7X, imagine you and your friends are out eating at a restaurant. You sit down to eat with them and then you put your music on like you know you're supposed to. Imagine the look on their faces. Imagine what they're going to say to you.
"Wow, do you actually like this band?"
"Oh Christ, do we really have to listen to this here? Or now? Or ever?"
"What happened to you, you used to seem like a good person... Maybe we should see other people."
Still want to sit down with that big double-decker cheeseburger? That's what I thought. Better get the salad and the water with lemon. Unless you want to be fat and friendless and make everyone think you like terrible music.
This isn't to say you can't let your friends in on your diet and how it works. If you tell your usual group about how you they all have to openly listen to Avenged Sevenfold every time you eat something bad for you, guess what? Instant support network. There's no way to lose enablers faster than to punish them along with yourself for not helping you make the right choices! They will either stick around and help or be So Far Away they'll feel like the extra fat you never knew you had to lose!
 |
| Bros before Burritos |
We can adjust the A7X in intensity to match your needs. Many fitness friends of mine have something they call a "cheat day". They are nutritionally-minded, clean-eating angels all week, until say-- Friday or Saturday -- when they just eat whatever they want, and as much as they want on that one day. While I understand that only one day of bad eating during the week is definitely better than seven, I always thought that a bad cheat day could be all it takes to derail your hard-earned workout results from the rest of the week. So if you're the type to have a cheat day, we're gonna up the ante on the A7X to meet your needs:
Dear God. Imagine the looks you'll get walking around in this bad boy all day. Of course, the main rule of the A7X applies even on cheat day. Every moment you're gonna eat bad stuff, you're gonna listen to bad stuff. And if you're gonna do it all day, you better let people know up front what to expect from you.
You can have your own official cheat days, but on those days, you must openly wear A7X merch for the duration.
Are you really looking forward to chocolate Fridays now? Yeah, maybe not so much. Maybe chocolate Friday is starting to sound pretty lame. Maybe it might be a good idea to cancel it? Congratulations. Your workout results are now yours to keep, Monday through Sunday.
 |
| Patent Pending "Wristband of Shame". |
Aw yeah, son. A nice solid hour of non-stop A7X to enjoy during your break. Guess the gym wasn't such a bad idea after all?
 |
| Never skip A7X day. |
With proper utilization, we will be on our way to either a much fitter metal community, or just much fatter Avenged Sevenfold fans.
The A7X method can also be utilized with musical and merch substitutions from groups such as Five Finger Death Punch, Trivium, Bullet for My Valentine, Bring Me The Horizon, Cradle of Filth, Children of Bodom or even Nickelback** for those looking to add more intensity to their workout.
*Deth Leppard is not a certified nutritionist and might have exaggerated his space exploration experience.
**Not medically recommended.
Friday, January 8, 2016
The Thrash Corner: Winter's Doom Giveaway and the Premiere of Vermin Lord
Do you want a free copy of Winter's Doom? Of course you do. Look at yourself, panting like an animal in heat. You yearn for it don't you? Well here's your chance. We have two copies of Winter's Doom for you to compete for, an I'll even walk you through the steps since your thoughts must be clouded with desire.
Step One: Dress yourself like a mighty warrior from the grim darkness of the frozen north.
Step Two: Take a picture of yourself. If you have friends, have one them take the picture for you while you pose like a golden god.
Step Three: If that friend wasn't metal, kill them.
Step Four: Send that picture along with your mailing address to, sagecutioner@thatsnotmetal.com.
Step Five: Wait until the 22nd when the winners are announced and if you sent in one of the two most metal pictures you'll get a copy of Winter's Doom sent to you in the mail.
Next up we have another lesson from Alan entitled: Frozen Zombies, Dealing with the Plague of the Yukon.
Alan: The zombies up here are seasonal and only emerge in the winter. They hibernate in the summer as they dislike the sun and its warmth. In reality, they're slow and extremely dumb, and aren't much of a threat unless you are somehow dumber than they are. In the short summer month (July) a few zombie raiding parties are sent out to exterminate any known dens in the area. They are limbed via chainsaw, doused in jet fuel and then the fireworks ensue. Some of their more valuable bones are collected and carved into drumsticks which are available on the Yukon's black market.
Alan: The zombies up here are seasonal and only emerge in the winter. They hibernate in the summer as they dislike the sun and its warmth. In reality, they're slow and extremely dumb, and aren't much of a threat unless you are somehow dumber than they are. In the short summer month (July) a few zombie raiding parties are sent out to exterminate any known dens in the area. They are limbed via chainsaw, doused in jet fuel and then the fireworks ensue. Some of their more valuable bones are collected and carved into drumsticks which are available on the Yukon's black market.
And to close out the work week, Metal Snob hosts it's first exclusive song release, Vermin Lord. So please, sit back and enjoy some new SANKTUARY.
Sagecutioner
Sagecutioner
Thursday, January 7, 2016
What To Do With Your Life Now That Soundwave Has Been Cancelled
You may not have heard if you live in a country where the metal community is too expansive to fit in a 3 bedroom suburban split-level, but Soundwave has been cancelled indefinitely. Much like the assassination of JFK and the moon landing, the cancellation of Soundwave is an event that brought not just Australia, but indeed the entire world to a grinding halt. Decades from now when I'm sitting around a roaring fire with my children burning Avenged Sevenfold albums to keep warm and stave off imminent death by hypothermia now that climate change has turned the entire planet into a totally not lame Immortal film clip, my scrotal spawn will turn to me and ask, in their infinite ignorance, "Papa Jim, where were you when AJ Maddah killed off the most mediocre metal festival in the entire history of sentient life?", whereupon I shall immediately beat them to death so that their bloody, lifeless corpses may offer me sustenance through the bitter post-apocalyptic winter.
But after I'm finished eating my children for being stupid enough to refer to Soundwave as a 'metal festival', I'll probably be in the mood to reminisce, and I might cast my mind back to that fateful day when the Australian metal community, from the ashes of the most definitively terrible music event in the entirety of creation, finally had a chance to come together and create something wonderful, and then completely ruined it.
The cancellation of Soundwave had for weeks been a limitless supply of schadenfreude for the scattered few Australians who still foresee a day where true metal will reign supreme. There had been a massive shit-fight over who should pay the cost of the refunded tickets, and it was hilarious. In the end, though, the ticket agency agreed to cover the cost of refunds a few weeks ago.
The above photo features a man named AJ Maddah, who organized and promoted Soundwave, a festival that was, for many years, the best chance most metal fans in Australia had of seeing an international metal band they liked live, even though the only true metal bands in attendance were constantly relegated to the bottom row of the promo posters.
After the initial rush I felt knowing that thousands of people who were stupid enough to shell out $185 Australian (roughly $3.18 American) to see the likes of Disturbed, NOFX, Bullet for my Valentine and Deftones would be left heartbroken (and that perpetual disappointment/rabbi beard owner AJ Maddah was out of the picture) I was left cautiously optimistic for the future of live metal in Australia.
As per the norm, my optimism didn't last long. The word on the vine was that in the wake of the cancellation, the 'alternative' music festival scene in Australia was apparently to be rescued by a crowd-funded initiative, spearheaded by Howard Jones' most recent abomination, Devil You Know (disclaimer: if you click that link, you're going to get brain cancer, and don't come fuckin' crying to me). Devil You Know decided that, in the wake of the utter humiliation suffered by the organizers of the poorly managed Soundwave Festival, they'd just take out the middle man and let the mouth-breathing Slipknot fans that vote in 'Indie' music charts fund a festival that would prove once and for all that the people who try and organize national metal events in Australia can always be relied on to completely miss the point. Thus, The Legion Festival was begotten.
So far, the fringe dwelling, uncompromisingly brutal, progressive and underground acts announced for the crowd-funded Legion Festival include eccentric, game-changing acts like... Battlecross and DevilDriver.
Here we fucking go again. Here's some free marketing advice to whatever soulless corporate RedBull pedlars are trying to coerce Australia's true metal fans (or indeed any true metal fans) into attending a festival: On behalf of myself and my fellow back-row arm folders; we are never gonna tell you what we want. Ever.
The very fact that sites like Metal Snob exist, and that even a hairy-backed Australian fuck like myself is willing to spend hours of his free time writing in defence of true metal for zero financial gain is testament to the fact that metal fans cannot be bought with flashy social media advertising campaigns, and that the only thing for which we may be unconditionally relied upon is stubbornness in the face of overwhelming opposition. In this country, and many others, metal fans are a largely untapped market. This is how the metal world has survived untold generations, by changing our minds too fast for the marketing world to keep up.
Every true metal fan has a list of 2-3 bands whose attendance would make them claw their way into any national-scale festival without question, for any price. Thus is the extent of the devotion of the trvly kvlt. But we won't just tell you which bands they are. The unrepresented masses of the metal community in Australia don't vote in Billboard polls. We probably won't buy singles, or get our music off iTunes to make it nice and easy for you to ruin the bands we like. Since even before the days of Glam Metal, through the torturous years of Nu Metal, and more recently since enduring the agonizing advent of Metalcore, we have learned to play our cards close to our chest.
These days our best options are to buy our music from the artist for a fifth of the price on BandCamp, or pirate it. You're never gonna get our opinion for free, especially if you are the sort of duplicitous douchebag who would attempt to pander to metalheads after you tried (and failed) to bring a European-style indie event to Australia.
Even if you scrape consumer data off of Facebook, there's plenty of bands whose pages I have liked just to see the hilarious jabs their slack-jawed fans take at them, or just to watch them make desperate deathrattle attempts to regain fans by posting clichéd metal memes. In a metal community as small as Australia's, there's no way you can tell what we want to hear unless you are one of us, and personally I am so abhorred by Legion's squandering of the chance to create a genuine nationwide metal event in this country given by an opportunity to step nonchalantly over the lifeless body of Soundwave that I plan to pledge money to the crowdfunding campaign and do my part to make this festival happen, just so I can intentionally not go.
-Jimmolation.
But after I'm finished eating my children for being stupid enough to refer to Soundwave as a 'metal festival', I'll probably be in the mood to reminisce, and I might cast my mind back to that fateful day when the Australian metal community, from the ashes of the most definitively terrible music event in the entirety of creation, finally had a chance to come together and create something wonderful, and then completely ruined it.
The cancellation of Soundwave had for weeks been a limitless supply of schadenfreude for the scattered few Australians who still foresee a day where true metal will reign supreme. There had been a massive shit-fight over who should pay the cost of the refunded tickets, and it was hilarious. In the end, though, the ticket agency agreed to cover the cost of refunds a few weeks ago.
Man, sometimes Master of Puppets comes on shuffle on my IPhone while
I'm driving my 17 year old girlfriend to her high school, and she's all like
'Hahaha what is this? It's so weird and angry!' but I just put on my fedora and
tell that bitch all about how she doesn't understand real music like us true metalheads.
So cash, bro. Hey, are you keen for a game of League of Legends or an episode of
My Little Pony? My parents will totally let you crash on the futon.
The above photo features a man named AJ Maddah, who organized and promoted Soundwave, a festival that was, for many years, the best chance most metal fans in Australia had of seeing an international metal band they liked live, even though the only true metal bands in attendance were constantly relegated to the bottom row of the promo posters.
After the initial rush I felt knowing that thousands of people who were stupid enough to shell out $185 Australian (roughly $3.18 American) to see the likes of Disturbed, NOFX, Bullet for my Valentine and Deftones would be left heartbroken (and that perpetual disappointment/rabbi beard owner AJ Maddah was out of the picture) I was left cautiously optimistic for the future of live metal in Australia.
As per the norm, my optimism didn't last long. The word on the vine was that in the wake of the cancellation, the 'alternative' music festival scene in Australia was apparently to be rescued by a crowd-funded initiative, spearheaded by Howard Jones' most recent abomination, Devil You Know (disclaimer: if you click that link, you're going to get brain cancer, and don't come fuckin' crying to me). Devil You Know decided that, in the wake of the utter humiliation suffered by the organizers of the poorly managed Soundwave Festival, they'd just take out the middle man and let the mouth-breathing Slipknot fans that vote in 'Indie' music charts fund a festival that would prove once and for all that the people who try and organize national metal events in Australia can always be relied on to completely miss the point. Thus, The Legion Festival was begotten.
So far, the fringe dwelling, uncompromisingly brutal, progressive and underground acts announced for the crowd-funded Legion Festival include eccentric, game-changing acts like... Battlecross and DevilDriver.
Here we fucking go again. Here's some free marketing advice to whatever soulless corporate RedBull pedlars are trying to coerce Australia's true metal fans (or indeed any true metal fans) into attending a festival: On behalf of myself and my fellow back-row arm folders; we are never gonna tell you what we want. Ever.
The very fact that sites like Metal Snob exist, and that even a hairy-backed Australian fuck like myself is willing to spend hours of his free time writing in defence of true metal for zero financial gain is testament to the fact that metal fans cannot be bought with flashy social media advertising campaigns, and that the only thing for which we may be unconditionally relied upon is stubbornness in the face of overwhelming opposition. In this country, and many others, metal fans are a largely untapped market. This is how the metal world has survived untold generations, by changing our minds too fast for the marketing world to keep up.
Every true metal fan has a list of 2-3 bands whose attendance would make them claw their way into any national-scale festival without question, for any price. Thus is the extent of the devotion of the trvly kvlt. But we won't just tell you which bands they are. The unrepresented masses of the metal community in Australia don't vote in Billboard polls. We probably won't buy singles, or get our music off iTunes to make it nice and easy for you to ruin the bands we like. Since even before the days of Glam Metal, through the torturous years of Nu Metal, and more recently since enduring the agonizing advent of Metalcore, we have learned to play our cards close to our chest.
These days our best options are to buy our music from the artist for a fifth of the price on BandCamp, or pirate it. You're never gonna get our opinion for free, especially if you are the sort of duplicitous douchebag who would attempt to pander to metalheads after you tried (and failed) to bring a European-style indie event to Australia.
Even if you scrape consumer data off of Facebook, there's plenty of bands whose pages I have liked just to see the hilarious jabs their slack-jawed fans take at them, or just to watch them make desperate deathrattle attempts to regain fans by posting clichéd metal memes. In a metal community as small as Australia's, there's no way you can tell what we want to hear unless you are one of us, and personally I am so abhorred by Legion's squandering of the chance to create a genuine nationwide metal event in this country given by an opportunity to step nonchalantly over the lifeless body of Soundwave that I plan to pledge money to the crowdfunding campaign and do my part to make this festival happen, just so I can intentionally not go.
-Jimmolation.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Violation: Year End Lists (and The 5 Albums on Every One)
Happy New Year, poseurs.
I tell you, 2015 can snog my pimply white hairy Irish ass. What a seeping garbage bag year for "metal" and shit even trying to be like it. You want to know what Brenocide's top 5 essential albums were for the year of 2015?
5. Tank - Filth Hounds of Hades
4. Tank - Power of the Hunter
3. Tank - This Means War
2. Tank - Honour & Blood
1. Tank - Tank
 |
| 02's Still At War was only okay. |
 |
| Who? No, no that is definitely, definitely Intronaut. |
Not me, fuck that racket. Every poseurpuff "metal" band that took the time to record something this year shouldn't have fucking bothered. Like I've been saying since 1989, everything is now poseur metal copping riffs from the greats. New music is played by poseurs, loved by poseurs and should fuck off forever. What, were you born after 1976 and think you have an opinion? Haha, you baby cunt little twerp fuck off gtfo out of here with your baggy zipper pants you Hot Topic screamo little bitch. How about you listen to some of your favorite screamo bands like Gorguts and Darkthrone and cut yourself and write poems. Haha, who cares? You think you're all manly and cool because you all just hit puberty in your 20's and can grow these red wispy bullshit grayless beards on your pockmarked little baby faces and you revere mallcore trash like Dream Theater as if it were the classics. You wouldn't know a classic unless Coca-Cola printed it on a bottle you impossible nerd. I oughta slap you so hard that your dumb snapback hat will never fit on your chicken-neck topping little dumb head again you djent loving vagina. Fuck you.
Yet even though all the good metal stopped being produced in the 80's, every single year I have to suffer through another pile of derivative nonsense organized by some psuedo-intellectual metal bloggers who think they have all the answers for what you're supposed to be listening to, in order to stay hip with the latest metalcore trends. Do you know where a lot of these guys operate out of? A place like New York City. Have you been to that shithole lately? The kids there are putting mustaches on bacon or some shit.
After sifting through so many 2015 year end lists, I started to notice a distinct pattern with every list posted. While just about every single countdown has completely different albums, many of them were exactly the same. The lists were the same in the sense that every album shared on them had to meet certain criteria in order to be part of a well rounded 2015 cool kid list. Every single blogger had to feature in their list an album that somehow met these exact guidelines. We will discuss these guidelines now, sharing the most prevalent examples available on the 2015 Metal Sucks Lists along the way. If there's anything in any of these examples that might somehow be worth listening to, I'll provide links to such, since I'm such a good fucking person.
1. The "You've Probably Never Heard of It"
(May also be referred to as the "Who??" or the "You don't know what 'Best of the Year' means do you?")
In each and every single 2015 list out there, metal bloggers couldn't resist the urge to try and earn themselves their underground metal expert cred. They just about all featured a bunch of no-name, sloppy underground acts that nobody has heard of and nobody listens to. Many of these bands have only been active for a short amount of time, have maybe a few hundred to thousand social media followers at best, and just plain don't make good or interesting music. These projects are doomed to silently break up and phase out of existence once they figure out no one cares about them besides some low-level metal journalist trying to fluff up his year-end shit list. It's almost always crap you've heard a billion times before by a billion different other amateur garage bands whipping together some derivative baseline metal noise so they can cure their boredom by going out and opening up for bands only a little more popular than they are. Bloggers attempt to insincerely whip up these positive reviews for these sorts, referring to the music as "raw", or "unbridled aggression", which typically translates to "poor quality". They will tell you that a shameless knockoff act 'carries you into familiar sonic territory' and the author will gush over the 'nostalgia' that these bands provide him or her. In all honesty, these bloggers dig through their e-mails to find the deepest, darkest pit of bandcamp that they can possibly find, and drag up whatever shit has the coolest album cover, all in an effort to appear more underground and in-the-know than you are. While I find it commendable to bring exposure to lesser known acts that truly deserve it, the quality of the music will get them there over some blogger's incessant need to prove to everyone they are as anti-pop as possible.
Honorable Mentions for Total No Names in 2015:
Gloam - Hex of Nine Heads
Havukruunu - Havulinnaan
Horrendous - Anareta (Brenocide recommends even if it's not 80's, check it out)
Sarpanitum - Blessed Be My Brothers
Lychgate - An Antidote for the Glass Pill
2. The "Safe Bet"
(May also be referred to as the "No Shit" or the "Captain Obvious")
The "Safe Bets" refer to the albums strongly beloved by literally everybody with a metal blog and their grandma during the year. While there is no shortage of on-purpose elitists in the metal blogosphere who purposefully avoid gushing over the year's finest in an effort to maintain their infinitely high levels of maximum underground edge, there are some albums so good, that it would be a crime to not feature them among your end of the year countdown. No albums like that were released in 2015. Yet much in the same exact manner that millions of people agree that the Big Mac is a tasty meal, metal bloggers worldwide agreed that Tribulation's latest album was just the best damn thing since Ghost's latest album. They also shared a collective vegan quinoa salad of total adoration over Cattle Decaptiation's most recent release. It managed to squeeze its protein-starved pale face into just about every fucking list imaginable with its sub-standard death metal tropes and overblown edge factor.
It's probably more common than one would think that the Safe Bets are featured so prominently because metal blog staffers are under a deadline crunch when producing their lists. They probably took a good look around to see what everybody else liked, fluffed up their list with these easy picks, and did whatever else they could to meet the arbitrary top album number they were assigned.
Honorable Mentions for Typical No-Brainers in 2015:
Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction
Intronaut - The Direction of Last Things
Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
Tribulation - Children of the Night (Brenocide recommends even if it's not 80's, check it out)
Mgla - Exercises in Futility (Brenocide recommends even if it's not 80's, check it out)
3. The "Contrarian"
(May also be referred to as the "#problematic" or the "trollbait 0/10")
Metal fans love to be difficult -- arguing is our favorite thing to do. There's not a lot of better ways to start a raging flame war and piss everyone off than to outright claim your love for an album that most metal fans in the community amicably agree to completely hate. You want to up the ante on this concept? Take a universally reviled album and put that bad boy up on the pedestal of the year's absolute best. This underhanded maneuver ensures that there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's almost too good a troll move to resist.
Metal bloggers are S-Class contrarians. So much so, that they will convince themselves of their own breathless adoration towards the type of music that just about every other reasonable metal fan completely detests. They do this just so they can provide us with long-winded explanations for how we could be wrong about the things we know to be true. In our rage and scorn, we call upon our fellow heavy metal brethren to descend alongside us upon the blog making the offending statements, while said blog sits back and enjoys a series of clicks among the mayhem.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Honorable Mentions for Albums No One Actually Liked in 2015:
Periphery - Juggernaut
Clutch - Psychic Warfare
Myrkur - M
(Believe it or not, Brenocide recommends zero of these.)
4. The "Girl Power"
(May also be referred to as the "Metal with the Chick" or the "Metal Muff")
It's safe to say we've experienced quite a bit of change these last several years. Change that you do yourself no favors by not embracing. Dialogues regarding privilege, diversity, respect and fairness in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation and class just about dominate the conversation. We live in a world of forward thinkers, visionaries, and activists that are leading us forward to a modern society that is more fair, sensitive, understanding, and open to progress than it has ever been. What that can mean for us in the metal realm, is that metal isn't just a boy's club anymore, and its our duty as fair, balanced journalists to acknowledge female metal artists and their contributions to the genre. At least it should work this way. In all reality, the modern PC movement is just a vapid attempt to keep up the pretty appearances of progress while doing painfully little to alter its underlying inhibitors. Everybody is an activist now, but with no activity to show for it. Sexism and male privilege in metal will always exist in some form or another, but we can make it look a lot like less of a thing if we carefully hand select bands with ladies in them to appear on our year end lists. How fucking proper of us.
I like to believe I'm not a sexist. (Don't pull receipts on that statement, I can make jokes without being directly attributed to their content.) In fact, I am so impartial to aspects of gender in metal that what you may have under your zipper is of absolutely no novelty to me. I see positively zero reason to see your band differently or treat your music any worse or more favorably just because you have women performing it. Of course, women can be in, and have completely made up good Metal bands. While Girl School is a classic example of this, they are also one of the most classic examples of female musicians being exploited for the novelty of their gender in metal. They were called "Girl School" after all, and in fairness, their music was ultimately subpar, especially considering it was released among metal's single most glorious period in history. Girl School was -- for all intents and purposes -- just okay. Can we honestly say that the musical content of Girl School would have been anywhere on the NWOBHM map if it were just another group of young chaps performing it instead? Is it unfair of me to assume that tickets were sold for this band strictly so listeners could bear witness to the spectacle of an all-woman musical group playing metal for a change?
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, I feel this underlying sentiment seeps into the subliminal intentions of those preparing their year end lists. Since it is such an unfortunate rarity for women to perform metal music in such a male-dominated genre, your group and its music suddenly finds itself earning additional commendations simply for having a female whom exists there in some fashion. In an effort to appear progressive and hip with these changing times, socially-conscious music journalists scramble to ensure their best album collections aren't complete sausage fests. I for one, don't see any reason for there to be a genital quota in my year end list. The music speaks for itself, regardless of who's performing it. Myrkur's M was a completely unremarkable release. I was going to review it, but I ultimately decided not to because it was so remarkably dull and lackluster in terms of black metal music. Were it released by some guy, it would have been another drop in the endless ocean of okay black metal made by other guys. It would fall into obscurity with the rest of the shit that was lazily released this year at a daily rate. Yes, she's a skinny pretty Scandinavian woman with long blonde hair who made a black metal album, but I see no reason to consider her music any more noteworthy than all the skinny pretty Scandinavian men with long blonde hair out there doing this already. Who cares? Stop writing album reviews with your dicks.
You know what's a great band with a lady? Vastum. They're brutal, classic-sounding death metal and they do it damn well. But you know who did it way fucking better? Gruesome. Gruesome released an infinitely better classic-style death metal album this year and it's all a bunch of dudes, just like always. Right? I'm right about that. I'm pretty sure I'm OH SHI-
The Agonist - The Eye of Providence
Cloud Rat- Qliphoth
Dreadnought - Bridging Realms
Vastum - Hole Below (Brenocide recommends even if it's not 80's, check it out)
Sanzu - Heavy Over The Home
Royal Thunder - Crooked Doors
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, I feel this underlying sentiment seeps into the subliminal intentions of those preparing their year end lists. Since it is such an unfortunate rarity for women to perform metal music in such a male-dominated genre, your group and its music suddenly finds itself earning additional commendations simply for having a female whom exists there in some fashion. In an effort to appear progressive and hip with these changing times, socially-conscious music journalists scramble to ensure their best album collections aren't complete sausage fests. I for one, don't see any reason for there to be a genital quota in my year end list. The music speaks for itself, regardless of who's performing it. Myrkur's M was a completely unremarkable release. I was going to review it, but I ultimately decided not to because it was so remarkably dull and lackluster in terms of black metal music. Were it released by some guy, it would have been another drop in the endless ocean of okay black metal made by other guys. It would fall into obscurity with the rest of the shit that was lazily released this year at a daily rate. Yes, she's a skinny pretty Scandinavian woman with long blonde hair who made a black metal album, but I see no reason to consider her music any more noteworthy than all the skinny pretty Scandinavian men with long blonde hair out there doing this already. Who cares? Stop writing album reviews with your dicks.
You know what's a great band with a lady? Vastum. They're brutal, classic-sounding death metal and they do it damn well. But you know who did it way fucking better? Gruesome. Gruesome released an infinitely better classic-style death metal album this year and it's all a bunch of dudes, just like always. Right? I'm right about that. I'm pretty sure I'm OH SHI-
 |
| There goes any point I had here at all really. |
Honorable Mentions for Golly I hope she sees I featured her album in my year end list and messages me personally to say thanks and that conversation is the prelude for our inevitable whirlwind romance in 2015:
The Agonist - The Eye of Providence
Cloud Rat- Qliphoth
Dreadnought - Bridging Realms
Vastum - Hole Below (Brenocide recommends even if it's not 80's, check it out)
Sanzu - Heavy Over The Home
Royal Thunder - Crooked Doors
and last but not certainly not least, on everybody's 2015 shit list, we have the...
5. "That's Not Metal"
(May also be referred to as the "Open Mind" or the "I Listen to All Types of Music")
Not to be confused with The Contrarians, which are albums that can possibly be perceived as "metal" in some totally obscure perception somehow; the THAT'S NOT METAL is just a bald-faced, shameless declaration for the love of a piece of a music that should be absolutely nowhere on any metal blogger's playlist whatsoever, let alone year end list as one of their musically favorite. I'm sure it's just about common knowledge at this point that Metal Sucks keep contributors like Sergeant D, Metal GF, and Brian Storm around for the very specific purpose of pissing off metal fans. Sergeant D in particular just plain doesn't like metal music anymore, he hasn't for years. When I approached him to write a guest post for me, he personally told as much. That e-mail saying so was sent to me probably five years ago. I feel like I can take or leave metal at this point much in the same way, but unlike Mr. D, I handle it appropriately. I just go over to where two walls intersect in a corner, stand there and seethe instead of listening to anything at all. I'll continue doing exactly as much until I'm fucking dead because no other music is worth it.
Sarge instead went off and found other music that could still be worth his own time. Most of it seems like pretty common Warped Tour fare from where I'm standing, but some if it is just unapologetic pop radio music. I find this peculiar, as I can't possibly fathom how being a total girlchild is any sort of upgrade from being a manchild, but as the space gorilla always tells us, there is no need to be upset. Metal is just a phase for a lot of people. The heavy metal community will always majorly be comprised of individuals who are genuinely passionate about the music of their genre, but it's not a musical category that's renowned for its maturity. Heavy metal is easy fodder for try-hard kids trying to look tough; edge lords who get off blaring Cannibal Corpse in college parking lots, or walking around shopping malls with t-shirts that have curse words and eviscerated women featured in their prints. I'm convinced that the reason my blog plummeted in popularity so much from the time of its inception, is simply because it's been a thing for over 5 years and high school only lasts for 4.
As a person grows older, it's easy to imagine how somebody can grow out of something like metal. At some point you start to realize that all the racket is -- well -- a fucking racket. In the summer time, Mastodon's Brent Hinds came out and ousted himself a person who not only doesn't care about metal, but fucking hates it. The man claimed that his adoration for the genre was simply a "phase in his 20's". I found it unimaginable that I could possibly go through a "phase" at such a decade, where I was sure my progression to adulthood has long since completed. Yet here I am just about finished with the decade in question and I already thoroughly feel that if each and every Slayer track disappeared from existence, never ever to be played again, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it.
Finding metal music that's worth my time anymore or that provides something a little different from the rest is like trying to find the teeniest tiniest needle in the world's most massive, ever growing haystack. There's just too much shit to sift through, and even the diamonds in the rough aren't bright enough to shine through. Too many nobodies making nobody metal music that sounds exactly like all the other nobody metal. If you honestly have nothing to contribute, why fucking bother? Even if you manage to ride the coattails of better bands than you for a little while with some popularity thanks to your shameless derivative ways, do you really imagine its somehow going to last?
Considering that the grand majority of metal bands are complete ass, it almost becomes too tempting to give it all up and crank up Adele with the rest of the normals. But do you want to know what I'm gonna do whenever that time comes; when I feel that pop, indie, or punk albums start to become my absolute favorite albums of the year, to the point that I start trying to recommend them above all other albums to other people?
Stop writing for a fucking metal blog.
Honorable Mentions for Albums for Poseurs in 2015:
Adele - 25
Turnstile - Nonstop Feeling
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowell
Neckdeep - Life's Not Out to Get You
Gunship - Gunship
Ghost - Meliora (Yeah, I said it.)
(Believe it or not, Brenocide recommends zero of these, and takes back everything else he recommended prior.)
- Brenocide \,,/
Finding metal music that's worth my time anymore or that provides something a little different from the rest is like trying to find the teeniest tiniest needle in the world's most massive, ever growing haystack. There's just too much shit to sift through, and even the diamonds in the rough aren't bright enough to shine through. Too many nobodies making nobody metal music that sounds exactly like all the other nobody metal. If you honestly have nothing to contribute, why fucking bother? Even if you manage to ride the coattails of better bands than you for a little while with some popularity thanks to your shameless derivative ways, do you really imagine its somehow going to last?
Considering that the grand majority of metal bands are complete ass, it almost becomes too tempting to give it all up and crank up Adele with the rest of the normals. But do you want to know what I'm gonna do whenever that time comes; when I feel that pop, indie, or punk albums start to become my absolute favorite albums of the year, to the point that I start trying to recommend them above all other albums to other people?
Stop writing for a fucking metal blog.
Honorable Mentions for Albums for Poseurs in 2015:
Adele - 25
Turnstile - Nonstop Feeling
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowell
Neckdeep - Life's Not Out to Get You
Gunship - Gunship
Ghost - Meliora (Yeah, I said it.)
(Believe it or not, Brenocide recommends zero of these, and takes back everything else he recommended prior.)
- Brenocide \,,/
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