Earlier this month, that one author that I like from MetalSucks wrote a solid article about how he's no longer collecting music on vinyl or CD's. In the article, Neilstein explains that he has embraced the digital age by means of listening to his favorite music solely on Spotify, the popular streaming service that notoriously pays each of its featured artists a billionth of a half penny per stream. He made a lot of valid points, likening vinyl to a "souvenir"; something that sits on your shelf collecting dust that you keep in your possession out of some strange sense of nostalgic guilt. That vinyl records are merely a retro-style trend propagated by contrarians who refuse to embrace the inevitable future of a strictly digital age of music.
He is right about this and I agree with him.
Soon after, Neill Jameson, lead singer of Krieg and contributor for Noisey(Vice's music blog. Deep breaths people...) posted his counterpoint to Neilstein's tirade. One that was written with such an attitude, I could actually hear the high-pitched, grating whine of the individual it was written by as I read it. Maybe that's just my personal experience with every single Noisey article, but I digress. The post made some great points about how favoring streaming music services is "insulting and irresponsible", and it comes from a position of "righteous self-entitlement". Referring mostly to the fact that Neilstein's preferred method of listening to music-- again -- pays each of its featured artists a billionth of a half penny per stream, while the listener typically gets to enjoy it all for free. Jameson is of the opinion that purchasing CD's or records from artists is a far superior method to show your support in a tumultuous industry where it is next to impossible to make a living.
He is right about this and I agree with him.
I feel like both individuals on both sides made some solid points with their respective opinions on how you should be listening to music. This didn't, however, stop each of them from missing some very big ones.
I'm the blogger the metal scene deserves, but not the one it needs right now. Or ever, really. Oh you think metal is your ally? You merely adopted the metal. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see pop culture until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding.
Has it not been April for a while? Fuck you pissant, you wouldn't even know that if it didn't tell you what month it was on your glowy little, fingerprint crusted iPhone screen. Go check Twitter, you cunt. I'm so irrelevant, I quote Batman films two Batmans ago. As you are aware, being irrelevant is what true metal is all about. Speaking of things that aren't new anymore, did you guys check out that Bman V. Sman trailer? I'm not really so angry about the fact that Daredevil is playing Batman like everyone else, but I've always wondered why Hollywood is under the impression that they can only pick actors to play super heroes from a tightly knit group of like 11 dudes. The fuck is up with that? Why get Johnny Storm to play Captain America, and then get Deadpool to play Green Lantern? It's fucking with my head. Even more than when they made that movie where Wolverine disagrees with Batman about magic tricks, so Wolverine goes to Ziggy Stardust for help. Everything's all out of order, and then there were two Batmans all along. Two Batmans fucking Black Widow behind Wolverine's back. Alfred was there too, with lots of sage Alfred advice about the whole thing. Shit's confusing.
Anyway, here's some randomly selected albums I didn't give much of a chance in April: GRUESOME - Savage Land
Relapse Records is probably gonna remaster and rerelease this in 25 years too. 5/5 Because I'm pretty sure I just listened to Leprosy again instead.
CENTAURO - Ciénagas del Engaño
No bueno.
2/5 porque la música era muy derivado GIFTGIVER - Shitlife
I don't think "featuring Frankie Palmeri from Emmure"is anything to really proudly point out on your album. That's like saying "featuring Alex the driver for Domino's" as a vocal guest. Except people actually like Alex. Plus you should know what you're getting into when there's basketball shorts right on the cover.
1/5 Shitmusic WILDERUN - Sleep At the Edge of The Earth
This album is a perfect pair of pale, white, big, pillowy, corset squeezed folk metal tits. It's deep, melodic, majestic, epic, symphonic and there are mandolins and harps and flutes and sometimes drums and an electric guitar even. Buy it. Did you know the official Massachusetts state sandwich is peanut butter and fluff? That's like the worst fucking choice of official sandwich out of 50. The term "fluffernutter" has sometimes been used disparagingly to describe something that lacks substance and has minimal to no cultural value. Even though Sleep At The Edge of The Earth came out of Massachusetts, it's no fucking fluffernutter. Unless of course that's now a new slang term for some sort of dirty sexual move. Because this album made me come.
5/5 When I bought this album on bandcamp, Evan Berry personally e-mailed me to say thanks. Because he's a super ultra mega sweet dude who deserves every slurper he every received. Which if I know the chicks in Boston like I know the chicks in Boston, must be upwards of at least 321,643 times. That's the entire female population of Boston according to suburbanstats.org. I'm not even factoring in repeat pole smokers. You're fucking so welcome, Evan, you beautiful bastard. Hope you get another fluffer until you nutter. ABIOTIC - Casuistry
I looked at the cover and I was like "yup, this is gonna be a tech death album". It was quite exactly a tech death album. 3/5 If you think tech death is great, you're gonna be amazed at how this is also exactly just as great as that. ACID KING - Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere
Acid King has always been one of those bands that you have to be ripped out of your mind to enjoy. Remember kids: You smoke, you overdrive, you lose. For people not familiar with Acid King, they are fronted by a badass lady named Lori S, who respectfully exists within the metal scene as a person who doesn't think shit like cleavage smooshing corsets are a necessity. You'd think that'd be something worth mentioning, but this is stoner metal, and as such, nothing is worth mention.
2/5 because getting blazed hasn't been a thing since my dealer transferred to a different junior high school. BOTANIST - Hammer of Botany
Botanist is the perfect post black metal to go with your vegan three bean quinoa salad. But seriously, pretty interesting, weird artsy stuff if you feel like something different. And by different of course, I mean not metal. CHANGE MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE. 3/5: Probably as metal as flowers and stuff are ever gonna get. SULPHUR AEON - Gateway to the Antisphere
I actually listened to this whole album and I think I liked it.
4/5 Seriously though, the whole thing.
FROM FIRST TO LAST - Dead Trees
The moment I started listening to FFTL, I was like "oh great another fucking Periphery knockoff" until I realized that it was actually Spencer Sotelo performing vocals, and then I was like "oh great another fucking Periphery knockoff". The nu metal scene has become so chock-full of Periphery clones that now Periphery is copping Periphery. It's like Periphery Inception.
1/5 oh great another fucking Periphery knockoff.
MAGIC KINGDOM - Savage Requiem
I didn't listen to a second of this album before writing this. I just looked at the band name, album title and cover and guessed every note that was played and lyric that was sung.
4/5 Look, there's a dragon and a wizard and everything. SIGH - Graveward Forget any artsy fartsy hipster kids doing whatever they think is wild and different with black metal. Sigh was always, and continues to be, the black metal king of just plain batshit froot loops fucking nuts.
4/5 You're gonna be like what the fuck, but in a good way. What the fuck, though... ENDLIGHT - The Treacherous Fall
This was really good you guys, really, good job.
0/5 I lied. Stop it. I realize of course, rating albums by number is full-blown retarded, but I have lost the will to even sorta kinda care. I might do this sort of thing once a month. Maybe. If, you know, the suicide hotline operator I'm about to call is on his game tonight.
You can play through a solid state amp, or maybe I'll secede the modesty of a Peavey Valveking. Your favorite guitar could be a Korean Schecter or an Indonesian Ibanez. An instrument, that you throw a little cash at your buddy to set up proper for you with some fresh strings every five or six months. Your bridge could be as fixed as God ever intended, and maybe you might just sorta like the idea of some low-end riffing on a seven or eight string. Or you know, whatever, might not be your thing, but to each his own and all. You never spend too much on gear, because you know that any sort of solid guitar tone is always gonna be 90% the player, and 10% the stuff he shelled out the bucks for. You could have all the makings of the coolest, most laid-back, approachable, raddest guitar player ever.
But all of that goes down the shitter the second you rag on somebody else's ability to play. You my friend, are a next level cocksucker.
We're talking from "sloppy playing" comment numero uno; you automatically transcend all other dukes of assholedom as the Grand Messiah King Alpha First Coming of Quadricentennial Ultra Octa Douche Crimson Elite God Mode fucking asshole.
I'm well aware that this is incredibly hypocritical of me to state as a music critic, and just by being a music critic, I am already aware of my inescapable jerk dick status. I do hate music critics, all of them. Therefore, another solid reason to hate myself. I am, and always have been my biggest critic. (As well as Sonic Syndicate's.) I'm a terrible person for being rude about how predictable the guitar playing is on any given Asking Alexandria song. Those little twats worked really hard to put those albums together, okay? Who am I to just step and in be all "shit sucks" and say it's derivative and boring and played out and simple and cookie cutter? That was like, their art, you know?
True art is played above the belly button.
But to my credit, Asking Alexandria's members are paid musicians. They're musical professionals. Their instrument is their job. We can hold up musicians of their status to a certain expectation, just as one can freely criticize a Hollywood movie or a primetime television show. Just because I'm not critical from the position of a creator, doesn't mean I can't recognize something of poor quality as a consumer. I don't have a single cross word for the playing technique of a guy such as Lee Malia of BMTH or Jake Pitts from BVB.It's the final product that raises my ire, not the manner of how said product was produced.
With that said, do you know who doesn't play guitar for a profession? The kid in his upstairs bedroom practicing tabs on his Dean ML in his t-shirt with his Gundam Wing posters proudly on display. This fella was excited that he learned how to recreate some classicriff from your entry-level fare like Slayer or Iron Maiden, and wanted to show his buds on YouTube how close he's got it. He doesn't need to hear from anybody about his misplaced string-muting, his sloppy lead playing, or maybe...
How he might have...
...missed...
The one.
Fucking.
Note. "Not bad, but then that pitch harmonic at 1:48... ouch bro. Ouch."
This sort of shit runs rampant in the guitar-playing community. Every blue collar handyman thinks you're a "complete fucking moron" because you aren't too keen on changing your strings / setting your action & intonation / adjusting your truss rod / swapping your pickups/ changing your amp tubes/ or dealing with that fucking Floyd Rose.
Because if you can't play guitars well, you might as well fix them well.
It might sound unrelated (because it is), but I fix office equipment for a living. So I'm not exactly a stranger to a screwdriver or a soldering iron. But working with customers in this field for as long as I have, it's safe to say not everybody is totally comfortable pulling their shit apart, even in the most basic fashion. Especially if said shit was expensive. Even more especially if they're smart enough to recognize they don't know WTF they're doing, and don't want to risk the very likely possibility of busting anything.
Of course, stringing a guitar is pretty basic and a vital skill for DIY gigging, but I can tell you from personal experience, it's real easy to do a sloppy job at it. You can also irreparably damage your instrument if you do it wrong. A lot of the people are just happier to have it done at their local guitar shop by a pro to make sure it's done exactly right. It's their money, it doesn't cost that much to have the shop tech do it, so B-F-D if someone wants to pay a little extra to have their ax set up by a pro. People who are tech savvy tend to consider themselves so brilliant, that you'd think they'd own enough brain cells to figure out not everyone else in the universe can be bothered to know how to do all this shit perfectly.
In my travels, I once read on a guitar forum that "changing pickups is easier than changing a tire". From the tools required, to the practice, that sort of thinking is so apples to oranges, I can't even breathe trying to work out what this human winner could have possibly meant by that. But working off that stupid analogy, let's look at things this way: lots and lots of people drive cars, but the sweeping majority of them aren't mechanics. Most people don't even change their own oil. Shit, the smartest people in the world don't change their own oil. Do you see Stephen Hawking climbing under his car? Ok, bad example.
"Wow, thanks for the Carvin kit, dad. Hope you saved enough dough on this to put me through fucking therapy."
Regardless, in the same way that people drive cars without knowing how to fix them, I think it's a reasonable expectation that you should be allowed to play music without complete knowledge of your instrument's repair and maintenance. Also, professional luthiers need to eat too:
