Random Things I'll Negatively Review Instead of Super Collider

Everybody's a critic

When Megadeth -- thrash titans of Big Three fame -- released their fourteenth studio album, Super Collider, the internet couldn't band together to hate it fast enough. After gaining themselves some barely listenable momentum with End Game and Th1rt3en, expectations were particularly "high" for Megadeth's next big release. Unfortunately, those hopes were soundly dashed when the band started releasing singles from the album back in late April. These two songs, Super Collider and Kingmaker, accurately set the rest of the album up as the inevitable dad rock dump that it totally was.

People were quick to voice their disappointment, and upon hearing Super Collider myself, I confirmed that they had every right to. This wasn't a very good album. This wasn't even an okay album. Outside of some very occasional high notes, this was a pretty bad album. It's not really the end of the world like some critics are making it out to be; it had some decent guitar work, and some stylistic throwbacks to a younger Megadeth, but the compliments end there. Super Collider, like several of the band's studio endeavors before it, shall be tossed callously into my mental bin of other underwhelming, shitty Megadeth albums. There, Super Collider will lay forgotten with the likes of Youthanasia, Cryptic Writings, Risk, The World Needs a Hero... The System has Failed... ... United Abominations... ... most of the songs off of Countdown...

Wait, tell me how we all got so fucking disappointed again?

Every Metalcore Vocalist

Courtesy of Jarrod Alonge of the YouTube, who's satirical accuracy leads me to believe he's been to too many shows of this caliber. Therefore, I don't trust him. His supposed accuracy is of course, purely speculation on my part because I wouldn't ever know. Literally ever. I shouldn't even think this is funny because I don't have any idea how I can measure this video's merit as a worthy parody. I'm going to just guess at this, because if I were to take a guess at how a metalcore vocalist at a metalcore show would act, it would probably be exactly like this. He has those glasses like I have seen people wearing in pictures on the internet that are supposed to make me mad, though.

I don't go to metalcore shows. There is only TRVTAL.

Black Veil Brides Getting Busted Matters: Quit It with Fake Cabinets

I know. I've never been very nice about Black Veil Brides being a band. I hate their music, I hate their style, and over everything else, I hate what they represent. The commercialization of heavy metal music makes me take a massive, doom-scented rage shit right in my camo pants. I have a very me-me-me personality, and I don't like a lot of people liking something that takes from things that I like. Or putting bands I actually like on fashionable t-shirts for fashionable, mainstream people to wear. Sorry, you have to pay your dues to truly appreciate the Def Leppard shirt you're wearing. Even I'm still working my way up to that. No, I'm not saying I actually like Def Leppard. I'm saying I don't actually deserve to yet.

So BVB is a terrible thing I hate very much. Which is why whenever the band faces any sort of backlash or scrutiny, my brain releases the same sort of endorphins one would experience when eating birthday cake, or enjoying an assisted orgasm. BVB bashing is equally moist and delicious on both accounts. So of course, when photos started circulating the internet of the band getting busted for using sans-speaker dummy cabinets during their performance on Warped Tour, I couldn't light those candles fast enough. So rich. So decadent:

Happy Birthday to me...

Despite how eternally great it feels to be handed more reasons to put these lipstick-wearing queefbags down another peg; members of the musical blogosphere, being the sound intellectual types that we are, couldn't have played devil's advocate for these butt puckers fast enough. No one could hardly wait to point out the very sobering fact that major rock and roll groups have been doing this sort of thing for decades. We seem to have no issue shamelessly backing up any garbage act, so long as we get a chance to portray ourselves as time-tested, in-the-know, musical specialists. Slayer, Kiss, Judas Priest, Van Halen, Kiss, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Kiss; all bands totally guilty of the same sort of aesthetic trickery. Shit, even our favorite Black Metal joke band Immortal got called out for the exact same thing several years ago:

You can't handle the TRVTH...

Even BVB themselves couldn't wait to fire back at those accusing them of their very real bullshit. Underwhelming vocalist Andy Biersak, leapt onto his Twitter and posted this little gem in the band's defense:

Thus implying that when someone has tattoos, we skeptical types assume they're lying about what their skin really looks like. Have no fear, Andy. Nobody in the universe doubts that your batman tattoo was a bad idea you made all on your own. The band even went the additional mile, turning their empty cabinets around during a set to give a stern "fuck you" to all of those internet haters that hurt them so deeply square in the butt:

Along with this picture, Biersack additionally wrote: “Through some magic of technology even though our dummy cabs are turned around and empty WE STILL PLAYED A LIVE SHOW. Dear clueless cred police meatheads, the cabs are staging meant to enhance the stage show, but since you couldn’t get that we figured its time we show you what’s behind them. Now sadly it’s time for you to find a new thing to hate BVB about. We play live through DI profiling amps and you’re idiots. By the way amplifiers and speakers are two different things..unless your super cool “core” band has found a way to plug directly into cabs.” 

I just quickly want to rebut that I don't hate you fellas because you used fake cabinets. I hate you guys because your music sucks.

With that said, the argument from BVB and bloggers alike stood strong. Walls of fake cabinets is business as usual; this is the oldest trick in the book, this has been done by a countless number of legit hard rock acts. It's for stage presence, it's for aesthetic, it's part of the show, it's "aesthetic volume", it's a way to fill up all the black and empty stage space without using ovens and dishwashers a la Rush.

Shut the fuck up.

Seriously. All of you. Shut your ever-undeserving-of-cake-holes. These aren't arguments. These are barely excuses. These statements from BVB are nothing more than the ramblings of a live group attempting to hide their shame and embarrassment. You fans and bloggers pointing out how other live acts have done this sort of thing for decades isn't even scratching the surface of a satisfactory justification. This sort of live performance bullshittery is on the same exact level as Lady Gaga lip-syncing and Miley Cyrus using doubles. It was stupid and insulting when Kiss filled their stage with a wall of their own redundant pine boxes back in the late 70's and it's even worse now. I wouldn't in a million years change my stance on this if you told me that my favorite musical act of all time did this sort of thing. I would just tell you that they were worse for doing it.

Black Veil Brides getting busted for fake cabinets matters. It matters because it's opening a dialogue. It's starting a conversation about what listeners consider acceptable of a live rock performance and what they think isn't. A lot of you are easily writing this off as just part of a stage show, as part of the entertainment. A wall of speakers is just something we associate with those old MTV arena rock music videos, and it's what we come to expect from a larger-than-life, loud rock performance. Who cares if it's all for show? None of you are allowing yourselves to fully absorb the inescapable fact that this is, and always has been a direct insult to your intelligence as a concert-goer.

Bands like BVB are no better than clumsy magicians who had their simple tricks revealed. When called out for their shams, they grabbed their squashed dead doves from their collapsible cages, and with the grace of a mad cow disease victim, wagged the corpses wildly in the air shrieking "FUCK YOU HATERS IT'S JUST A SHOW". You as concert goers were never meant to know those cabinets were fake. They were planted there to convince the audience that they were what was firing out the massive sound that was being produced by completely different means. No matter how you want to spin this, BVB's fans were being lied to, and exposed lies warrant apologies, not excuses.

This sort of thing, even so slightly, can harm a band's reputation and make them seem a lot less authentic. And for what? Showmanship? See, what makes for good showmanship are things that are capable of actually adding to the entertainment. Pyrotechnics, goat skulls, some lady who's willing to participate in some blasphemous cross action. I hope I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that just having a lot of speakers on stage isn't really impressing or entertaining fucking anybody. The only people in the crowd you would possibly impress with such pointless smoke and mirrors are the other musicians. Guys who look up and wish they could afford or have room in their garage for that many fucking Marshalls. That's it. Consider a typical BVB fan for a moment. Do most of them even know what a guitar amplifier cabinet really is or what it does? If the stage was void of these false speakers, would anybody notice? I wager that the majority of their hormonal teenage eyes were much too busy being fixated on the tight jeans showing off Andy's Biersack.

This goes for every musical act possible. Even the ones who play good music. Fake cabinets are just superfluous excess. It means your band has too much money to spend on shit that doesn't matter or help your cause as an entertaining live act. It's an insult to the concert-goers who are led to believe you're any louder than the PA system allows you to be. It's an even greater insult to the smaller acts who struggle to afford the three or four real cabinets they use on stage, which aren't too far off from your non-imaginary setup. We pay, quite frankly, too much fucking money to see you people perform your music live. The least you can do is stop finding stupid ways to bullshit us. 

Now sadly, it's time for me to go find a new thing to hate BVB about. I'll keep you posted.

- Brenocide \,,/

Heavy Metal Degree: At least it's not Philosophy

There's been sufficient buzz in the poseursphere recently about U.K-based academy, New College Nottingham offering a Heavy Metal Degree as one of their available majors to study. I've had multiple requests from readers to mercilessly tear into the concept of getting a degree in something like Heavy Metal, and I was originally tempted to do only such. My first reaction to such a notion, like everyone else's was "that's fucking dumb", and it is fucking dumb. What's the subject matter? What bands and genres will the professors consider relevant to metal music? Is NWOBHM even going to be it's own course? Why not offer Black Metal as it's own doctoral program? What sort of musical methods are they going to teach? Etc, etc. Judging only from the photograph of these cartoon characters they use to represent typical students in this field, my inner-elitist boils instantly to seething temperatures; my foot quivers at the ready for an ass to kick:

F

My original thought was that there's nobody in the entire world who "gets it" less than some silly turd paying tuition to be taught all about heavy metal in a formal setting. Rest assured everyone, you don't have to pay a red cent just to end up another misinformed poseur. Just ask all my anonymous commentators. With that said, I still find myself pretty torn on the whole subject. On the other side of the coin, the genre of Heavy Metal as a focus of study; especially if taught properly, is no less completely retarded than many of the other musical majors that will leave you jobless and up to your nose ring in debt for the rest of your stupid life. Think about it; Music Therapy is just one such major offered at many music academies around my country. A major where one can learn, appreciate, and study how to produce yoga balls music that can relax a fart out of someone.

...now breathe in deep, unlcench your sphincter, and release your  chi...

Hell, in the universe of realistic expectations, most recently earned music degrees are hanging up on the wall of some entitled Generation Y dipshit who didn't realize he/she had to actually work for a living. And it doesn't stop at music; there's a multitude of other completely useless and wasteful degrees one can acquire in all sorts of subjects: Art History, Latin, Film, Cultural Studies, Photography, Religion... I mean, when's the last time you hired a fucking philosopher? 

Not since you could pay him with a marble statue.

The biggest argument everyone has against this Heavy Metal degree is that it's a 'waste of time', or so thinks the Campaign for Real Education. Yet if we were to go and pull all the available college majors that can reasonably be considered a 'waste of time', then the best and brightest academies and universities of the world would shut down overnight. Tuition payments from the naive hipsters of the world trying to make a career out of fun, cool, statistically unrealistic jobs are what's keeping the campus' grass so offensively green. So with all the dumb bullshit you can waste your time and money doing in college, why shouldn't someone be able to major in heavy metal music? Heavy metal as a genre is an intriguing cultural phenomenon. A form of music that has managed to garner a world-wide fanbase of millions upon millions of people, without having any proper support or acceptance from mainstream media. It has a dense, colorful history, with a seemingly endless number of subgenres, variations and technical methods of playing. It honestly has just as much right to be included in a music school's curriculum as jazz or classical, if not more so. Especially jazz. Skippity boo bop, fuck you. 

I am however, not optimistic about what the qualifications of this Liam Maloy are -- the man who put the controversial course load together -- for teaching such a subject. If I were to go based on first impressions alone, things aren't weighing too heavily in his favor:

Nottingham's self-appointed Master of Metal Mayhem

So to sum it all up, I'm not really too strongly opposed to the concept of someone teaching heavy metal in schools. But I'm completely against what's going to be the inevitably piss-poor implementation of any such degree. Especially with Dr. Fauxhawk up there with his Rock n' Roll clown shirt at the helm of all this. I feel bad for any derpwad dim enough to think this stooge has the answer to your future career blowing up the stage as the next metal shredding all star. Or thinking that he has any real insight into the history and happenings of the genre. It sounds more like all he has to offer is some collegiate advice about the music industry, which he believes in regards to metal is "growing" and "crying out for this degree". Anyone of us who listens to metal music that doesn't involve wearing fingerless gloves, knows that is some next-level horse shit. In the case of quality metal music, the less "industry", the better.

Do you want to learn about metal? Listen to it. Aurally assault yourself with every associated album you can get your grubby mitts on from 1968 to present. Buy a guitar, look up tabs, check out lessons on YouTube if you can't afford real ones. You don't need some overpaid, chalky-fingered twat in a sweater to explain it to you at 8:30 in the morning. If, however, you live in the Nottingham area, and you had your eye on that degree in Philosophy or Yoga Farts, you might as well waste two of those years learning about something cooler. Even if that something is the extensive cultural impact Slipknot had at the dawn of the new millennium.

So feel free to sound off and tell me what you think about schools offering heavy metal degrees in the comments below. Or share some ideas for course names if you were to set up your own curriculum in the study of Metalology:

Also, special thanks to Ronnie Lopez for his recent generous donation! If you want to help keep TNM alive and ad-free, please consider a small donation. It's greatly appreciated!