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.

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*

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.

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

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.

Patent Pending "Wristband of Shame".

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?

Never skip A7X day.

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"Wait, how can that possibly be when all of these albums were released in the 80's?" I hear you ask, mouth agape with cartoonish stupor in anticipation for what could possibly be my answer. Simple, dipshit: you can listen to music released whatever year, whenever the fuck you want. Hahaha, what a bunch of dummies. You guys are all like "um, I guess the new Intronaut was pretty good I guess." Sure, you can enjoy your Nu-Metal with your bawidaba's and your boom-dada-oom-nom-nomina's because you think you have to, only because it came out in the same trivial year you're actively wasting right now.

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-

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 \,,/

The Thrash Corner: Winter Witches, How to Find Them and How to Kill Them

Welcome back to The Thrash Corner. With three weeks left on our countdown Alan brings you guidance on defeating a truly vile enemy, the winter witch.


Alan: These are the most evil beings in all of the north. They are relatively easy to find, but killing them is a whole other matter. They are found throughout the scummy bars of the Yukon; Lizards, The 98, The Casa Loma (also known as the wrinkle ranch) and so on. I have witnessed many good men and women sabotaged by their evil ways. They spike the drinks of their victims with moose tongue ointments and then proceed to swoop in on their unsuspecting prey. They then lead their brainwashed subjects to the shitters where their ice cold vaginas envelope their casualties. After a few minutes the ransack is complete and the victim is released from their evil grasp. However, they are not the same people ever again. They are soulless, heartless, cruel and cold.

To kill a winter witch, a witch hunter must be employed. Only a few remain and they do not work cheaply. This is a dangerous trade with a very high mortality rate. These spooks act as victims in the dank bars of the north. Once lead to the poop stall, the witches are tasered and chained to the toilet. From there they are decapitated using enchanted graphite hockey sticks.


Come back next week for zombies, a new song, and possibly a contest. Until next time, this was The Thrash Corner.

Happy New Year,
Sagecutioner