That's Not Metal

Welcome to the That's Not Metal Archive!

2016-12-28T13:00:00.002-08:00

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

The End

2016-06-06T17:59:00.002-07:00

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 \,,/

From The Frontlines: Enforcer, Warbringer, Cauldron, Exmortus, Dead Asylum, and Torrefy

2016-02-08T14:23:00.001-08:00

“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.

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.”

Introducing the Revolutionary A7X DIET

2016-01-16T11:20:00.001-08:00

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

2016-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

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

2016-01-07T02:10:00.001-08:00

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)

2016-01-01T14:26:00.002-08:00

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

2016-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

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

The Thrash Corner: Combat in the Frozen North, Destroying Your Enemies While Surviving the Weather

2015-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

This week on The Thrash Corner we begin our countdown to the release of Winter's Doom with a series of short features written by vocalist and guitarist Alan Binger (center right above). With four weeks left until the release date we start with some advice on surviving battle in the Yukon.

Alan: Combat in the north is all about stealth. It's about speed, logistics and knowing the land. The animals are your friends. The spirits are your allies. The Vuntut Gwitchin longbow is the weapon of choice when warding off invading southerners. Frozen beer grenades are another hot item of violence but are frowned upon by some as they're viewed as a waste of liquor. Nail guns with magazines of raven beaks are used to incapacitate foes. If hit and run tactics are failing to meet their objectives, then brute force is used. Mammoth chariots with rocket launchers are effective in getting the job done. Staying warm is easy. Just do as the Russians do... vodka!

There is also a free download of the song Corpse Brigade being hosted on Pure Grain Audio. Click here to grab it. Check back next week for: Winter Witches, How to Find Them and How to Kill Them.

Merry Christmas,
Sagecutioner

Listless 2015 Part Two: Metal Injection's #1's take a big #2

2015-12-19T18:43:00.001-08:00

Don't. You'll be fucking wrong.

So many best album year's end lists. So very little time. So in that respect, on this feature of Listless, we're gonna be mixing things up a bit. Initially Brenocide and I had discussed the top 5 EPs of the year so considered by Andy Synn of No Clean Singing. However, in the case of bigger metal blog, Metal Injection, there are several year end lists already up by several different reviewers already. Each list has 10-15 full length albums, many of which neither Brenocide or myself got the chance to listen to throughout the year. By the time we would be able to finish getting through everybody's list, it would already be too late. I would be already fully recovered from my New Year's Eve hangover. And we would already have an entire 2016 of shitty metal to look forward to.

So here's how this will work.

1. I'm doing commentary on this particular set of lists solo. Brenocide will be handling the next feature on his own (more on that later), and then we'll team up again once we get more defined, singular lists from some major publications.

2. Since there are 5 different Injection staffers involved at the time of this writing, each with their own list, I'm going to zone in on what each individual thought was their #1 absolute favorite album of the year, and review that album and that choice specifically.

3. I'm going to link to their lists so that the info is available to all of you, and from them I'm going to personally pick what I thought would have been a much more appropriate number 1 album. It never ceases to amaze me how people end up arranging these things; or how they have the capability of enjoying perfectly amazing full blown metal delicacies, only to ultimately prove that they prefer inferior lameness down the line.

Let's kick things off with the first MI staffer, Daniel Cordova.

Daniel's #1: Native Construct - Quiet World

Click here for the rest of Daniel's list.

I like progressive metal as much as the next bloke, I guess. But that's one of those terms that gets tossed around more than my junk at your sister's place, so I try not to claim it outright. It's become such a loose definition; covering a wide array of avant-garde composition, jazzy interludes, and most often modernly, just djent. This isn't djent, thankfully. Native Construct seems to me like the perfect marriage of Haken's soaring highs and BTBAM's crushing lows -- and less fortunately -- BTBAM's occasional, intentional silliness. This is good music composed by very good musicians, and it's certainly worth your while. Daniel writes "Native Construct have a knack for infusing ridiculous technicality with finesse, so it doesn’t feel like just another group of musicians over-wanking on their instruments. The diversity on this album is incredible with moments of black metal, funk, and even sections that sound like they’re right out of a Broadway musical". I agree with the lack of over-wankery. The melodies alternate abruptly much like most modern prog bands, but not to obnoxious, jarring levels.

This a great album by a great band, but is it really metal album of the year material? Maybe to a guy like Daniel, whose refined penchant for prog and metal's more delicate side is made obvious with some of the other albums that made it to his list, (Caligula's Horse, Pomegranate Tigers, Leprous and Chelsea Wolfe to name a few) Yet Native Construct is the type of prog band that isn't afraid to put a too big and thick slice of cheese right on top of what would otherwise be a satisfying, juicy musical burger. The gentleman of NC are the type of performers that make suggestions during the writing process to each other such as "hey guys, wouldn't it be funny if we put some carnival sounding ragtime big tent calliope circus music in our metal?"

You know what? No. It wouldn't be funny. It stopped being funny 4 BTBAM albums ago. Stop it.

What should have been Daniel's #1 instead:

So Hideous - Laurestine

Ugh... The obvious choice. Definitely the very quintessential best among what was sort of an oddball selection. So Hideous' post black metal blends perfectly with symphonic overtones in a way that proceeds most acts that stand alone as either post black or symphonic black. Daniel's list was plagued with probably a few more questionable choices than the other MI writers (Jeff Wilson, Deafheaven, Clutch?), but I was glad to see this get a mention here.

Shayne's #1. King Woman - Doubt

Click here for Shayne's list.

Really? Out of all the ear-splitting, headbanging, soul crushing, musically proficient, undeniably awesome pure metal that the world granted us in the year of 2015, Shayne Mathis picks some slow, droning, fuzzy bandcamp EP fronted by a moaning lady as his top album? Do you even riff, bro? I mean, this album was ok -- King Woman is for all intents and purpose -- ok. Yet there was even better music a lot like it to be heard this year. Hell, your list proves that much. All the stuff on it was better. How is it that King Woman is the kind of stuff specifically that puts people on cloud nine higher than other metal albums? I think I have to smoke more herb, or something.

What should have been Shayne's #1 instead:

Mgla - Exercises in Futility

Shayne didn't get it it all wrong, hell, Shayne didin't get most of it wrong. Faceless black metal masters from Poland, Mgla was in his top 5. I'm just gonna come out and boldly state that Exercises in Futility was the best black metal release of the year. Period. Fuck you, try it with your deny it. It's in more lists than I care to share as exactly such. How the hell did King Woman top it? He had some other solid choices on his list like Yellow Eyes, Visigoth, Panopticon and Vastum to name just a few, all much better stuff. Honestly, most of his list resonates with me as a metal listener. It was really tough to pick Mgla over VHÖL as what I thought should have been his number one. He clearly has great taste, that much is apparent. I guess it's just been a rough year for him, seeing as how he mentions his dad passing after being diagnosed with brain cancer. He refers to Doubt as a "cathartic" listen for him, so we'll give him a pass as it probably helped him get to a better place. It sure didn't do it for me.

Matt's #1. Dreadnought - Bridging Realms

For the rest of Matt's list, click here.

Denver based folky-proggy-doomy-post rock group Dreadnought is another fuzzy, female-fronted no-name band that a completely separate member of the Metal Injection staff managed to select as his favorite album of the year. Did these two have a meeting before all this? If it were up to these guys, 2015 would be the year of the Doom chick. I've messed around with those type of girls before in my younger years, fellas. They might look cute with their patchy denim vests, wild hair, crusty boots, sloppy nail polish, nose rings and lack of make up, but more often than not, their entire personality begins and ends at marijuana.

My proud and blatant underground metalhead misogyny aside, Dreadnought's music is truly something to be admired. It's far from balls to the wall shredtacular metal, even at its fiercest. However, if you're in the mood for something a little different, on the softer side of hard rock and harsh vocals, Bridging Realms would be a nice backdrop of a quiet Sunday afternoon spent reading, painting or writing shitty blogs about how you hate music. Matt may be under the impression that "this album is it motherfuckers", but it is far from it.

What should have been Matt's #1 instead:

Ensiferum - One Man Army

My immense fandom for epic, Nordic metal music was something restricted to my youngest years as a budding metalhead. Time has taken its toll upon me; leaving me cynical, tired and impossibly difficult to please. Booming synthesized symphonies, viking war chants, epic wailing guitar melodies; that which once raised many a hair on the back of my neck, now only warrants an eye-roll. So overdone, so cliche', so predictable, and at this stage of my life, just plain fucking dorky. I don't like this type of music anymore, I couldn't if I tried. The latest addition to Ensiferum's many releases is itself, far from my album of the year. It wouldn't even show up if I were to prepare my own list of twenty or so. Not even for honorable mention.

However, it was earnestly the album I liked the most out of Matt's list. (Save for the So Hideous album again at his #9). I just think One Man Army probably would have been my favorite album like 10 years ago. It gave me that feeling that you poseurs probably get when you hear a Slipknot song and get embarrassed about how much you used to love that stupid shit. This guy Matt seems like the type of guy who I would start chatting with once I found out we were both metalheads, but then spend an awkward, eternal-feeling 20 minutes lying about hearing of the bands we each asked each other about. "Oh yeah, um, I think I've heard XII Boar before. Yeah, they were pretty good from what I remember. It's been a while though, haha!" Then I would go home, get on Spotify and find out that XII Boar are another Clutchy drunken party rock band that I would never even consider thinking were "pretty good". But it wouldn't fucking matter anyway, because I would tell this guy I think they're pretty good to his face even if I knew better, just so I could be polite and avoid the social conflict. God damn it, I'm sick of being polite to you twerps about your ass taste in music. Fuck guys like Matt asking me about bands I don't know about that I have to go look up and find out I wouldn't like anyway. Stop liking things that I don't like.

Gregs' #1. Ghost - Meliora

God damn it. No.

Click here for the rest of Greg's list.

What should have been Greg's #1 instead:

Panopticon - Autumn Eternal (or anything else, really...)

I would love to take this moment to gush about Autumn Eternal because it's a stellar album, but it's been discussed as such by numerous publications already, so I'll just take this moment instead to say fuck Ghost. Why...? Why has the collective heavy metal internet fallen head over heels in love with this soft radio butt rock bullshittery? I legitimately heard Circe on the local radio rock station when I was going through some shipping warehouse where they play that fucking music for pickup truck drivers. It was at like 2:00pm sandwiched between the usual Green Day and Nirvana easy-listening 90's alt hits where it belongs. Not here, not in my fucking backyard. These fucking clowns wouldn't have gotten a single toe forward in terms of exposure if it weren't for their dumb shit Papa Pope Spooky Face gimmick standing up there dangling his spidery gloved fingers in limpish frailty at his droves of adoring dumbshit fans. Fuck Ghost. This album and every other of theirs is soft and limp and fucking bullshit. It's not metal and it sucks. Get out. You're not welcome in my genre if you like this. Fuck off. B.C stands for Bull.Crap. You like this because it's pop music and pop music is easily digestable snacking for morons. It's the McDonald's of music, it's designed to be enjoyed and consumed by simple-minded morons. If you talk about Ghost to your friends, you might as well be talking about NFL or Big Bang Theory. I bet when Ex's and Oh's comes on the radio by Elle King, like it does 48 times a minute; you pudgy, greasy, pathetic cunts crank that shit on your Toyota car radios and tap your steering wheel along to the zazzy beat. Oh my god, die and then come back to life and redie.

So much.

Kevin's #1. Satan - Atom By Atom

Click here for the rest of Kevin's list.

You nailed it Kevin. We cool.

Tune in next week when Brenocide takes a gander at what Metal Sucks has to say about the year in metal music. I'm sure he'll be reasonable about it.

- Deth Leppard

The Thrash Corner: Now Streaming SANKTUARY's Newest Single "Space Race"

2015-12-18T04:29:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to The Thrash Corner, today we have a dose of metal straight from the Yukon. SANKTUARY hails from the city of Whitehorse and have been playing their brand of power infused thrash metal since 2007. Their newest single Space Race is the opening track on the upcoming album Winter's Doom, and what an opener it is. Like a cross between 3 Inches of Blood and Judas Priest, this song kicks you right in the ass and leaves you wanting more. The album drops on January 22nd, but you can listen to the single right here. We should have more features from the band being posted in the coming weeks as we count down to the 22nd of January so if you like what you hear be sure to stay tuned.

Sagecutioner

Listless 2015 - Part One: No Clean Singing Top 5 EPs

2015-12-12T20:24:00.002-08:00

Deth Leppard: Salutations once more, TRV Believers. Welcome to Listless. This will be a new End of the Year Feature on Metal Snob where we take a hard look at what some other prominent metal bloggers and publications considered this year's very best in metal music releases, and with the much appreciated assistance of Brenocide, we will harshly criticize their opinions on the matter accordingly.

Brenocide: This sounds like a cheap knock-off of Listmania over on No Clean Singing. Something everybody should check out instead, because I guarantee they're handling it in a way that's actually worth reading. Unlike some people.

Deth Leppard: See, that's where you're wrong. Listmania is a collection of the top metal album lists that other metal blogs and metal zines prepared, that Islander then posts on NCS and shares his opinions about said lists and wow yes this is going to be exactly fucking like that.

Bren: Nice.

Deth: Hey man, if we learned anything from our dealings within the metal community, it's that originality hurts. This is a fight for clicks and we will take them where we'll get them. We're going to be the I, Omega to NCS's Protest the Hero.

Bren: You could have picked anything else in the metal genre otherwise but you pick that. NCS doesn't have a Protest. They would never have that. It's implied right in their fucking name that is not their can of beans.

Deth: You know what's implied in your name? That you're some teen angst MTN DEW chugger on Xbox Live.

Bren: Whatever you say, Cock of Ages.

5. Pyrrhon - Growth Without End

Deth: Turn your head sideways and squint. What does that look like to you?

Bren: Exactly how this EP sounds.

Deth: Haha, come on, you don't think this band rips?

Bren: They're ripping something, alright. What the hell is it with people's draw to squiggly noisecore bands and all 5 million of them that get haphazardly started every day throughout the globe? This is the kind of music people just pretend to like so they can maximize their edge factor among their basement show buddies. It's like, we get it Captain Crust, here's your honorary Underground Merit Badge. You can pin it somewhere to that denim shirt you found in a dumpster. Now you don't have to listen to this anymore, since you've soundly proven your point. Go listen to something good now, we promise, we won't judge.

Deth: This sort of stuff is an acquired taste, grandpappy. It's like alcohol or coffee or tobacco. It's bitter and weird at first to the untrained palate, but as you try more of it you learn to appreciate the subtle flavors and differences between the tastes that the genre has to offer. I thought this was a kick ass EP. It can't all be Tank.

Bren: It should all be Tank. Utopian concepts aside, my standards for extreme metal are just marginally different from yours. It can be raw and brutal, sure, but there's gotta be some nuance there. I'm not among the camp of metal fans that go around screaming "DEATH 2 ART" in a megaphone, then throw some pots and pans down a stairwell, record it all, and title it "experimental". I'll admit Pyrrhon gets better the more you put yourself through it. There's a progression there, they get to some riffage after a minute and a half of nothing like riffage. But I don't personally find the "ability to tolerate" totally synonymous with "enjoying". I have to wonder about most Grind/Noise fans...

Deth: I find my ability to tolerate you is totally synonymous with our friendship. There's a lot to be said for tolerance. I promise if you give this sort of stuff more of your attention, it will definitely grow on you.

Bren: Like chlamydia.

4. Exgenesis - Aphotic Veil

Bren: This was definitely something I cherished earlier in the year, and tragically lost track of. I was glad to see it here on this list so I could be reunited with it. I will not make the same mistake of misplacing these guys and their music again. THANKS ANDY YOU BEAUTIFUL PERSON.

Deth: No arguments here. I always figured you were more of a melodeath guy from past posts, and Exgenesis here undeniably continues the tradition of the Swedes doing it best.

Bren: Did you know that this was actually made by two dudes on separate sides of the globe? Jari Lindholm and Alejandro Lotero. One from Sweden, one from Colombia, (I'll let you guess which one is from where.) They created this project as a sort of online collaboration. I couldn't believe it. It's like these dudes did through file sharing and I'm sure some robust webcam sessions what most band mates couldn't even accomplish standing right next to each other.

Deth: Wow, that's awesome. It's kind of like us and what we do here. :-)

Bren: Aww, it is! Except we're not fucking talented. ;-)

Deth: I'm just glad this wasn't more of the same from Andy Synn on this list. I was concerned that this was gonna just end up you and I continuing to argue over the merits of experimental extreme deathgrind.

Bren: I'm glad too. I never enjoy watching you lose.

3. Cryptopsy - The Book of Suffering: Tome I

Bren: Yeah, Cryptopsy's cool.

Deth: BREEE. Cryptopsy has always been cool.

Bren: I'm surprised, honestly. It almost seems like too easy a pick for NCS. The writers there just live and breathe unsigned, underground death stuff. Cryptopsy seems -- I dunno -- dare I say maybe a bit typical for the NCS crew?

Deth: Cryptopsy? Pfft. Too mainstream.

Bren: So mainstream.

Deth: What sort of fucked up world do we live in where Cryptopsy is like pop music to us?

Bren: The metal blogosphere is a dark, bottomless void of which no light shall ever touch.

2. Sanzu - Painless

Bren: JUG JUG JUG JUG.

Deth: I dunno, this seems fine.

Bren: Fine is fine. But if you actually go to the original article we're referring to, Andy shared many solid EPs he thought were worth mentioning before he got to the top 5. How did this one crawl up to number 2 considering what else was on there?

Deth: Well, you claimed to appreciate riffage. You definitely got it with this one, yeah?

Bren: You're starting to catch on that I'm just an impossible man to please.

Deth: I dunno, say what you want, but I think this one's a solid pick. If there's one thing a death metal band needs to kick ass, it's groove. These guys have groove in spades.

Bren:

Deth: God, you're a dick.

1. Barús - Barús

Bren: I actually thought this one was pretty damn good. Everybody go on bandcamp and buy Barús' stuff.

Deth: I don't get it. How could you like this and not appreciate Sanzu?

Bren: I dunno if I'd say I didn't appreciate Sanzu, I just thought it was good. I didn't think it was silver medal material. I don't even think this one should get the top spot. But it's got this doom element that I'm a sucker for in good death metal music. A solid release, and I'll give it my letter of recommendation.

Deth: I don't know exactly how I feel. I might go as far as to say this is kind of djents.

Bren: Oh man, it does djent, doesn't it?

Deth: Is the ruthlessly perfect true metal elitist Brenocide actually going to come out in favor of a djent album on his blog?

Bren: It's not an album, guy. It's an EP. I'm still in the clear.

Deth: So overall, any final thoughts on Andy's EP list?

Bren: Well, we can certainly attest to No Clean Singing staying true to their namesake. And while of course there's some ways Andy and my musical opinions differ, I really have to give him credit for showcasing the variety of flavors present in modern, underground extreme music. Death metal has a lot more going for it these days than I often give it credit, and that's on display here in what I can say is a pretty solid list. I might have arranged it differently, but these guys know their stuff, and their blog belongs in everybody's bookmarks.

Go check out No Clean Singing. They have a much better blog than ours. Tune in next time on Listless, when we shoot quite a bit higher in the blogosphere and check out what the gents at Metal Injection thought was good music this year.

The Thrash Corner: Woundvac - Disgraced Convert

2015-12-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to The Thrash Corner, a new semi-regular column where I ask you to put on a fine dinner suit, grab a glass of wine, and listen to metal the way god intended. The thrash way. Because as we all know, thrash is the zestiest of all metal genres and it deserves a proper undistracted listen. There has never been a genre as robust and flavorful as thrash and there never will be. Thus, it deserves it's own corner. Don't think I'm right? Would I use this many sauce related adjectives if I wasn't? That's what I fucking thought.

Today we talk about Woundvac's newest release, Disgraced Convert. Woundvac is a grindcore band hailing from Phoenix Arizona. Now, you may ask why is a grindcore band being discussed here? Why is Metal Snob selling out right off the bat? If metal opinions are a human centipede, then Metal Snob is the head. But we are a caring head, and we make sure that we only crap the finest of music into your mouth. And Woundvac certainly deserves to pass through our digestive system and be enjoyed by all those who follow us.

This band finds a way to take grindcore, which typically has no semblance of proper musical structure, and infuse it with thrash metal. At times invoking Anthrax or Slayer in their riffage, but turning up the ferocity. Woundvac is everything the grindcore genre always could have been but never was. Is it metal? No, but it is an interesting take on what grindcore could be with a tighter focus on song structure and a slightly more controlled chaos. And if there is something grindcore desperately needs, it is the knowledge of when to control it's chaos instead of obscenely ejaculating it all over the listener. I want fucking structure in my music. I don't need some douche screaming at me while his backing band plays structureless noise. Thankfully this band manages to hold their load until the final seconds of the album.

Also, look at that fucking album cover. I don't know if that dog is supposed to be covered in blood, skinned alive, or just a big fan of red lighting, but that fucker looks like he's going to turn your genitals into his next meal. And a dog eating a man's genitals is pretty fucking metal. The only way I can imagine that being more metal is if that man was Ian Gillian and he was doing the scream from the beginning of Highway Star.

So please, take a seat, download Disgraced Convert, and enjoy the best that grindcore has to offer. Until next time, this was The Thrash Corner.

Sagecutioner

THAT'S NOT METAL is no more... Introducing METAL SNOB

2015-11-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

Connoisseurs of Kvlt

After 5 years operating under the title "That's Not Metal" unabashed, I found myself in a position where the best way to move forward was to change our title and domain completely. Someone else now owns legal trademark to the name "That's Not Metal", which is something I never thought I would have to concern myself with. The metal community as I know and love it has always been so grass roots, so DIY. I always felt like principle and the underground honor system alone would be enough to protect my brand, but I found out the hard way that just isn't the case. Lesson learned, kids: trademark your shit. With that said, I no longer hold ill will toward the individuals who now operate as TNM, the best thing for me to do now isn't to dwell on it or continue on the war path I've been on regarding this incident. What's best for me, and you the readers, is to just pick myself up and move forward.

So I would like to formerly introduce you to the new site. This is Metal Snob. Same writers, same elitism, just a different title. If you don't like it, tough titties. The name doesn't matter, and this one is short, to the point, and conveys our message and who we are. With the new brand, we still plan to deliver you the best in quality internet elitism and closed-minded metal fandom as you've always come to expect from us. We'll be posting more news, reviews, interviews and editorials than ever before. We also plan to shift the focus off our typical vitriol to bring you more underground acts that successfully meet our near-impossible standard for metal listening. Violations will still be a thing, and I plan to keep all of the old posts from the original TNM for you to read and comment on.

With that said, there's a lot of house-keeping that still needs to be done. The domain change means that every single hyperlink to anything "thatsnotmetal.com" related is now totally dead. That means we're pretty much starting fresh as far as exposure is concerned. I will need to contact every blog out there good enough to feature us in their blog roll of the change. I will also have to go through my more prominent posts to repair any links there within to my past posts, so you all can have a more reliable experience reading here. It's very tempting to just scrap all the old shit altogether and start fresh to save myself this headache, but there's a lot of good material there that me and my contributors worked hours on, and still should be given a read if you're willing to dig through the catacombs of our archive.

I appreciate your patience as the site goes through these changes. It's a work in progress, and it might not ever be 100% what it once was as far as working links are concerned, but we plan to start working on waves of newer, better, more original content for you to enjoy instead. Where TNM dwelled in a pit of obscurity, we plan for Metal Snob to rise above, and become the go to true metal elitist and comedy site that will stand on its own in an already densely saturated metal blogosphere.

If you need to contact me directly for questions or interviews regarding what's happening or what's going on. You can also e-mail me at the following:

brenocide[at]thatsnotmetal.com

We still own the TNM domain for another year so all the old e-mails will work fine if you need to contact Sage or myself. I'm working on figuring out how to route thatsnotmetal.com to Metal Snob, but so far it's proving to be tougher than I first thought.

Thanks for all the years of readership, and the continued support as we go through this difficult transition. Stay true,

-- Brenocide \,,/

Review: Lord of Doubts - Into the Occult

2015-11-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

"This is the way your career ends, Lord of Doubts, not with a bang but with a whimper"

Into the Occult is the final Release from Russian doom band, Lord of Doubts. I don't know why a career that is composed of two albums and an EP is a reason to make a fuss, but maybe this band is something special. They took the time to make their email look like a professional advertisement so they at least they have that going for them. After seeing the relatively professional way they had put everything together I had high hopes, especially after the treat I received from Exterminas. Those hopes were in vain, for in the vast wasteland that is Bandcamp doom metal, all hope withers and dies.

At first it sounded like perfectly serviceable doom metal. Not something I would seek out but I wouldn't skip it on shuffle either. And then the vocalist opened his mouth. This guy going by the name of Art has no business recording his voice. The singing itself isn't horrible because he has the good sense to do a kind of droning chant instead of actually singing. The problem is nothing about it stands out. He has the most generic emotionless voice I have ever heard in metal, and to top it off I'm absolutely sure that the reason he chose to do this emotionless chanting is because he has no real singing ability. Art, your guitar work is perfectly serviceable, in fact the instrumental tracks are the highlight of this album and are very well put together, so why did you insist on ruining your music with your voice? Maybe if you could have kept your moth shut you would have made something of your final album, but as it is, I don't think this is good enough to retire on.

As good as the instrumental passages are I would not suggest buying this. Art could have done his band a load of good by shutting his mouth and making the whole thing instrumental, but since this is the last thing they are ever going to release I guess the best thing to say is good riddance. At least Lord of Doubts can't hurt themselves anymore. You can grab the album here. There are a couple of free tracks to download if you want them. Otherwise, just let this band fall into obscurity where it belongs.

Sagecutioner

CLICK HERE to See A Collection of our FAVORITE POP STARS Wearing POP MUSIC T-Shirts!!!

2015-11-12T19:24:00.001-08:00

You'd be surprised to find just how many pop stars and mainstream celebrities out there are avid lovers of artists who -- um-- also perform pop music and are totally mainstream! Let's take a look at some of our absolute favorites:

Here we have Lady Gaga and Baby Metal looking cute as buttons together as they bond over music that appeals to masses of simple-minded boring people. Oh look, and if you'll notice, Lady Gaga is wearing a t-shirt of a band that's sold 60 million albums+ worldwide! Nothing unusual or worth fucking mentioning here whatsoever! Did you click on the page though? You're here reading this right? Oh, well that's great! Thanks for stopping by! Click on all the other things on this page too. All of it. Click it. Click all the things you can see on the page to look at and visit and read, that would be fucking awesome.

What mindless gallery of celebrities would be complete without post-teen heartthrob Justin Bieber wearing a t-shirt of a musical group that is of similar fame, popularity, and exactly as mass appealing and easy to digest as his music is? Even if you were exactly dumb fuck enough to get mad at this, how could you be mad at that face? If you want to share this with all your friends on Facebook, they would like it and it would reaffirm how good you should feel about yourself! Also, refreshing the page a bunch of times would be good too!

Skip ahead to 1:17! I don't have to tell you the music industry is really competitive, but its heartwarming to hear that Demi Lovato takes time out of her busy schedule to appreciate above ground, widely adored pop music such as herself! Hey, you know you can also check this gallery out and click all around on the other stuff on your phone and your tablet while you're at it. We don't mind, we'll wait! Read all the other stuff and share it all, do it.

What is it exactly that upsets you about this picture? Is it that Megan Fox is a woman or that she's famous? You know what's really making us angry? That you're not sharing this on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Do that! Didn't you see the caps-locked words and exclamation points in the title? We were told that those would help us.

Could you have ever even guessed in a million years that Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray was a total fucking idiot with bad taste in entry level 80's rock we all stopped being impressed by when we were 16? I know, we were blown away too! Not as blown away as you'll be by CLICKING HERE!

Whoa! Somebody call the Fashion Police!! Here's a pic snapped of Chris Brown spotted wearing a custom leather jacket featuring artists as widely recognized as he is and anybody with a baseline understanding of music knows about. Look at him now! Look at this now! <----(Click here to find out)

Kendall Jenner might be a little old for pop punk bands, but that's okay. We all know what it's like to look back fondly on the music we thought was cool when we were children.

I'm really just gonna take this opportunity to say that I hate Amy Poehler anyway.

Hailey Baldwin is another famous person who is young, a female, and wearing the shirt of a band that was relevant enough in pop culture to be featured prominently on an episode of Viva La Bam. We can't stand for that shit. Somebody get Metal Injection on the phone, FUCKING STAT! There are CLICKS IN THEM THERE HILLS. Beverly Hills that is! Not familiar with Metal Injection? That's okay, you can navigate yourself to it somehow. But ugh, it would be such a hassle to go to the URL bar up there and click on it, type the name in, end up at Google because you typed the name in wrong, go looking around on the Google search page for that shit. I mean, imagine if you were trying to do that all from your phone. Here, you know what, out of the goodness of my heart, I'll give you a direct link to Metal Injection right here. Go ahead, it's fine. Enjoy Metal Injection.

What's that? What's wrong? It wasn't Metal Injection? Nope. You're back here. That's right. Look at Kim Kardashian wearing a t-shirt of fellow reality stars. You can't escape. You're stuck. Point is, even if you somehow managed to make it to Metal Injection, or Metal Sucks, all you're going to find is celebrities wearing celebrity shirts. That's what important in the metal news world, didn't you know? Don't you know anything? This isn't the metal blogosphere you once knew. Your community is dead. This is now the inescapable Silent Hill of rich people wearing rich people.

There's no hope here. Only despair.

Don't forget to share on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/StumbleUpon/Reddit/Pinterest/Digg/YouTube/Kik/Myspace!!

-- Brenocide \,,/

Violation: Devaluing Negative Opinions of Music (7 Reasons We Don't Have to Live in a Basement to Hate Your Band)

2015-11-12T15:54:00.004-08:00

Pictured above: Not your mom's basement.

Let's say you're on social media talking some shit...

I mean, of course you are. You are -- or at least you're trying to be -- a true Metal elitist right? Any limp little Nancy could spend their time listening to good Metal music. Just sitting around chilling to Xasthur or some shit. Oh wow, good for you. Round of golf claps for the happy listener over here, everyone. Maybe you should buy some Bose speakers so you can just sit back, relax and really enjoy yourself. Immerse yourself in the lovely sound, you complacent, satisfied fucking priss.

Fuck that noise. Literally. What makes me a true Metal warrior is the fact that I spend countless hours listening to, forming an opinion, and then complaining about shitty fake Metal. Someone's gotta do it. The sort of complacency and indifference to improper thinking that you open-minded pusscakes keep preaching is how the Holocaust happened. These scene queens aren't going to go around Hitlering up my genre with goofy trends unabashed. Not on my fucking watch.

What's the point in trying to listen to good Metal anymore anyway? They stopped making it in like 1998. I've heard it all and now I've got work to do.

"But Brenocide's here is a post where you mention liking something produced after that..." Oh yeah? You dweebs always go around telling everyone my blog is "satire" and not to take it seriously. So let's just say I was fucking kidding when I said that. The only bits of satire on this blog were the moments when I ever hinted at being anything except the greatest Metal fan that ever lived. Joke's on you, fart pie.

Not that I would care to know, but if anybody these days is producing Metal music that can qualify as even somewhat listenable, it's because of true Metal foot soldiers like myself, tirelessly discouraging musical bullshit with everflowing internet venom. You're welcome. But I digress. Let's get back to you on social media fighting the good fight like you're supposed to. Inevitably, you're gonna get some push back from the sorry sucks that don't understand everything they like or do is dumb and bad. High chance, you're going to get something very similar to this statement tossed your way among the carnage:

This degenerate numpty wrote this a couple months ago in response to my takedown of Neill Jameson's pro vinyl post. It wasn't because I was trashing Krieg that she said this, but it's the exact kind of shit you would see someone say if I was trashing Krieg. To make this more relevant, I'll do it now: Fuck Krieg. There we go. Anyway, Jameson's post was a short tirade that I thought was a poorly thought-out, open-ended take down of Metal Sucks' Vince Neilstein's anti-vinyl post; which was itself a poorly-thought out piece in support of streaming music. Long story short, the only smart person involved was me. Just like always.

Teal here shared her baseless non-thoughts during an enormous back-patting circle jerk of Jameson's internet pals getting together and stroking each other over how I disagreed with their favorite underground howler. I challenged Neill's position with research and facts. They challenged my position with how I'm a "non musician". Because in order for you to understand the basic arithmetic behind how badly record companies fuck metal artists, you have to be the metal artist getting fucked. Makes sense.

Anyway, eye-roll worthy comebacks like these are just one of many types of what I like to call the

"Performers On Stage Envy Rebuttal"

Or P.O.S.E.R for short.

This out loud assumption is a silencing technique used by music fans (and sometimes artists) to try and devalue your opinion as an informed, free-thinking listener and individual with a negative stance on any form of media. People who support the artist or are the artist immediately assume that because you are sharing a negative opinion regarding said artist, you are inherently envious of their perceived "success" in the artform. We can also classify this as "haters gonna hate logic". It only works if everyone involved is a complete fucking moron. Speaking of complete fucking morons, anybody remember Sonic Syndicate? (Me neither!)

To refresh our memories, here's a gem several years ago from The Unguided vocalist Richard Sjunnesson directed towards me when I made fun of his former band for getting butthurt over us trolling them at a show:

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

Oh yeah, so jelly over here, I'm practically a doughnut. Your band is factually the worst music in the history of the artform. You actually managed to make something like Atreyu even worse:

I'd say that's an achievement worth mentioning. Just like the Holocaust was. There that is again! See how this all ties together nicely in the end? Jealousy has never once had anything to do with how much I consistently hated your haircuts throughout the years, Richard. The same will always be true of your overdone 2004-era metalcore music. More like The Ungood, am I right fellas?

So let's look at just a few out of many pointed reasons why the POSER is a weak argument made only by complete wastes of space and air, and you should have no issues overcoming such frail objections to your sturdy, elite musical opinion:

1. Musicians Are (generally) Broke Losers

Teal pointedly asks "who is this guy?" concerning me. I suppose it's a fair question. I'd definitely want to know who I am too. I am awesome. However, she totally goes on to blow her chances of getting to know quite possibly the coolest guy anybody could ever meet when she assumes that I'm "a nobody, a non musician" outright. She suggests this without a lick of evidence to suggest either of those things. What if I was a musician? I could be Alexi Laiho over here, for all she fucking knows.

Thank God I am not. THANK THE SWEET ASS LORD.

But the major implication she or anyone with a similar comment makes here, is that anybody who isn't a performing artist is "a nobody". As if musicianship is somehow the pinnacle of human existence; something we all aspire to as human beings. I mean, I shouldn't have to state the obvious, but I'm at least a writer. That's a thing. Maybe I just like writing stuff?

Fact of the matter is, you'll never find a bigger group of nobodies than underground metal musicians. It's not 1987 anymore. Nobody who plays modern metal these days is going to enjoy the same long-term financial success of the big-haired shredders of long ago. Shit, nobody who plays modern metal these days is going to enjoy the same long-term financial success of a Starbucks barista.

Deafheaven is a highly popular punching bag among us metal elitists. And rightly so; as far as underground groups go, they're enormous. (I guess...) At the time of this writing, they have over 100k+ likes on Facebook, 21K+ followers on Twitter, and Dream House has the better part of 1.5 million listens on Spotify. The Sunbather album cover has even been notoriously featured in iPhone advertising, and with the recent release of the critically adored New Bermuda, they're climbing even higher to peaks of greater exposure. As far as extreme music goes, these guys are on top of that world. They have the sort of fame that most dive bar playing metal musicians could only dream of.

Now let's take a look at the dump they live in:

Skip ahead to 2:40 if you have issues with high blood pressure.

In this 2014 Noisey interview, the band gushes about how they finally make enough money to earn their own independence from just their music. But as the video reveals: Facebook likes, Twitter follows and streaming listens aren't dollars. These guys sleep inches away from each other all together in some shit hole apartment. Lead guitarist Kerry McCoy's sleeping arrangement is a mattress on the floor with a curtain for privacy. That's the only place he gets to bang his groupie girlfriend, who will ultimately leave him when she finds out how great it is to be taken out to dinner or driven around in a working car by a guy who's a "nobody".

This is what financial success is defined as for a metal musician: barely fucking eating. Borderline homelessness as opposed to just homelessness.

I get what you're thinking, though. "Money isn't everything", right? I can see how you feel that way. Maybe you might feel as though the money doesn't matter at all. Each individual thinks about this stuff differently. Which brings us to my next point...

2. Success is Subjective

Pictured above: "a nobody... a non musician..."

Because there is no more cash to be made anymore in the metal industry, today's artists are driven by only one thing: fame. They yearn for exposure. More recognition, more followers on social media, more attendees at shows, it's all about getting yourself out there, spreading the word. They know Metal at its most popular doesn't usually yield a livable wage, so they're willing to make no money as opposed to some money if it means more people know who they are. It's all a game for glory, and it's a rigged one. That's where record labels come in. They promise you as a musician all the dewey-eyed groupie pussy you can stand. You just need to sign away every red cent related to your craft, and they'll make you a star!

So bands take the bait. Over and over again. They still live with this archaic concept that getting signed is "making it". Yet they are reimbursed only with Instagram hearts, blog interviews, and chicks sending them nudes on Twitter. Meanwhile, some Rigs of Dad 40-somethings are paying their mortgages by playing cover songs at weddings, and the bride-to-be had no clue who they were 15 minutes before booking them.

Let's say I don't give a shit about fame or being worshiped by a mass of simpletons. Imagine that? Let's say I don't actually care if half a million shit lords drown me with compliments every time I take a selfie of my scruffy, pock-marked face. That shit is nice, but no amount of internet backrubbing is gonna pay my fucking rent. I hate people. I hate attention. The last thing I want is to be recognized while I'm out trying to enjoy myself. I hate when people I know recognize me and want to come talk to me, let alone some random pleb I've never met in my life and I have nothing to say to. That's not success to me. That sounds like a deeply rooted insecurity where you seek validation through everybody noticing you. You're not metal gods. You're attention whores.

LOOK! Somebody LOVES ME!

How I measure success is my personal financial independence and security, how often I get to relax, a working internet connection and motor vehicle, and knowing where my next meal is coming from. Sex is a plus. I have it with one woman instead of a hundred, but that's because the health of my genitalia is a measure of success to me as well. I like to buy shit like anybody, and I like to watch horror movies and listen to maybe some Metal sometimes. Oh and yeah, I like to play guitar a lot for someone who's a non musician. That's it. That's all I need to be happy. I don't need some goth-faced addlepate telling me I'm missing out on a genuine lifestyle because I'm not huffing farts in a van full of unshowered douchebags.

I used to like metal shows. When I was a child. I haven't been to a show in ages because live death metal doesn't sound good; and unless it's depressingly local fare, it's just a mass of idiots geeking out over their favorite celebrities standing somewhere in front of them. "OMG you guys it's Karl Sanders! OMG I'm gonna cry!!" Jesus Christ, grow some dignity you cuntsucks. Just about the last place I want to be is up there getting idolized by the pussants who listen to this shit. I don't yearn to be adored by weirdos. In fact, a lot of people don't. Don't feel like you've struck some chord in assuming people always wanted to be a famous rocker on world tour just because they have something negative to say about someone who's doing that.

Long and short of this point; people have all different lofty sorts of dreams of various possibilities. Some are smaller than others. Stability is what I wanted, and nothing is less stable than going out and "touring the world". I might sound like a boring fucking robot to you artsy special butterflies right now; but what everyone playing music fails to realize is they can't live like this forever. You're gonna need to be "boring" someday too. You're gonna need an escape plan when you inevitably end up with nothing. Sure, you went to Europe or Japan and you got to see some shit, but did you really enjoy those places? Did you go to the best restaurants, see the best sites, uh, go to the best restaurants? (Why else does anyone travel, seriously...) The next time I take a trip to an exotic location, I would save, and plan, and enjoy myself. I would do this on my two weeks paid vacation I'm allowed every year at my current job and get drunk and eat my way across the land. What do you get to do as a touring metal band? Is sleeping in a van you rented in Germany that much more special than sleeping in a van you own in Minnesota? Oh yeah, I'm dripping green with envy over here. Fuck off.

3. You Don't Have to Create to Criticize

Here's a common form the POSER can take from Dave Mustard himself. We see here that Dave is butthurt on Twitter over a fan giving some fairly light criticism regarding the world's worst Megadeth record. You make even the slightest comment regarding how you don't think someone's music is up to snuff, and you get met with "Yeah? Let's see you do any better."

You're gonna get this more frequently from artists than fans, because they're the ones that know first hand the difficulties associated with making music. Yes musicians, we get it: writing, playing and recording a good album is so hard. I'm sure rolling out of bed at the crack of 1pm to sit in an air conditioned studio practicing your cookie cutter guitar riff is just an intense labor of love. Which is exactly why it's such a bummer for everybody when you put in all that time and effort to produce something, and it comes out total ass.

But who am I to say anybody's album is ass? I'm a non-musician after all. How can I properly gauge the quality of a piece of music if I don't have the necessary experience to fully understand its production?

Because I have two working ears and a fucking brain.

The entire human race needs to absorb this fact I'm about to share, so spread the word as necessary: People can have opinions of things without knowing how to make said things. When's the last time you referred to something as a "piece of shit"? (Your stepdad doesn't count.) Your car, your phone, your computer, your bike, your tablet, your microwave, your TV? I guaran-damn-tee you that you had some complaint about some piece of equipment today somewhere.

Now, how completely fucking unreasonable would it be for me to assume you should know exactly how to build one of these contraptions before you were allowed to properly share a negative experience with one? Do you see Ford or Chevy going around telling people "fuck you, let's see how the car you make runs" every time there's a major recall or bad review of one of their vehicles? No. At least not publicly. You are allowed to talk about how your computer sucks when it crashes and you do it often. Even though it's probably your own dumbass fault for infecting it and loading Internet Explorer with toolbars that track your every move. That's beside the point. Nobody has to be an engineer to recognize poor quality. Your experience as a consumer will always be enough.

It's right in the semantics: When you produce something, even music, it is a product. MegaDave's music is a product, and the man with the negative opinion of it is the consumer. He is an unsatisfied customer, as was anyone who was displeased with Super Collider. When Megadeth fans worldwide expressed their disdain for that album, Megadeth should have recognized it as the blunder that it was, and used that information to make the next album better. Better music means satisfied listeners and satisfied listeners means higher album sales. Instead, they unapologetically put out Dystopia as a follow up. Now, everyone with good taste is officially done with Megadeth. That's a whole group of people that could be paying for albums that aren't now. Profits down the drain. But oh well, Mustaine and the snobbish musicians like him don't give a kernel of shit if you like the music or not, because they're the artists and you're not.

Mmm, fermented with the tears of fans, vintage '97. Good year.

It might not be a very good example, because Dave Mustaine has a net worth of $20 million. He's set for life and can do whatever he god damn pleases, because he comes from a period of time where playing metal music was totally profitable. He made all the money back when there was money to be made, and he doesn't need anymore. He could release nothing but albums of fart tracks here on out, and as far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what he's been doing.

Modern metal artists, however, can't afford to have this attitude towards their listeners if they want to live off their craft. They need as much positive exposure as they can get if they intend to sell tickets and albums. Bands are up for any amount of public scrutiny because they are putting up something for sale. They need to see themselves as the businessmen or women that they actually are, and they need to see their listeners as customers. A common concept in marketing and business, is that if a customer is happy or satisfied, they will tell one other person. But if a customer is unhappy, they will tell five other people. If you were running a business and you called a customer a "fucking loser" because they didn't like how they were being treated, and proceeded to ask them "how's their fucking business going?", it wouldn't matter how shitty that customer was being. Everyone would think you were a fucking asshole and not shop at your store.

I feel like the best possible thing you can do as an artist is treat someone who doesn't like you as an unsatisfied customer, and it has literally never happened. Imagine if someone was acting like a complete shitlord on your local deathcore band's facebook page, giving everyone grief about how much they sucked, and the band responded to him by saying "We're sorry to hear you didn't like it. Thanks for the input, though." Holy shit, I would buy those guys' album regardless of how I felt about their music or their entire genre. Not to mention such a comment would take just about all the wind out of a troll's sails.

A little professionalism goes a long way. How could anyone trash a band that actually apologized if you didn't like their music? Sure, people might do it just for the sheer novelty of seeing it happen, but such a complete impossibility will always make more sense to me than "fukk u loser go jerk off in ur moms basement while we tour tha world and live our dream". And because musicians resent the idea of the professional lifestyle, they do everything they can to act against it. They do this because...

4. Musicians Believe Every Job is "Soul Crushing" because they Never Worked a Real One

I can feel this body DYING all around me!

Let me just preface this point by saying there are plenty of creative types who daylight as hardworking professionals. Even my old buddy Sjunnesson spent many years as an electrician. However, many metal musicians spend so much time focused on their craft that they neglect what many people consider basic necessities: money, education, health, stability. It's always about the music for these guys, everything else be damned. As much shit as I talked in this piece so far, I do find that sort of initiative immensely respectable. You do what you guys do for the love of the music, and without you, there would be no metal scene. I get to sit here from the comfort of my home, enjoying the fruits of your labor. For this I am thankful and I applaud you.

The issue I have is the rhetoric between these artists, who refer to day jobs that don't have anything to do with creating art as "soul crushing". This sort of phrasing was used in the Neill Jameson's article that I had mentioned previously. He tells "In order to continually deliver music to the world, there has to be a near endless cycle of touring, merchandising, and working soul-rushing (sic) jobs in order to finance activity".

I can't begin to speculate what Jameson does for a job, or even if he has one outside of black metal vocals. For all I know he could just be posing behind that record store counter up there. What I can assume is that he probably doesn't have a very stable career besides being as active a touring musician as he is; any real job would shitcan you for leaving to go on tour for months at a time. Performing artists take what they can get, given their situation. They pick up odd jobs or shitty retail gigs that any unqualified sap off the street could do because their resumes don't exactly evoke confidence in hiring managers:

Hiring manager: "6 months at Arbys, 4 months at Sunoco, 5 months at Hot Topic, how come you only stay with companies such a short period of time?"

Rockstar: "Because my true calling is shredding guitar on stage in front of all of my adoring fans."

Hiring manager: "And how do you think that's going to apply to your work here at Subway?"

At least you still get to be an artist.

When you give your all to your band, you don't have time to develop yourself professionally otherwise. Most of us start out working the shit jobs in retail, food service, mowing lawns or warehouse work. We can agree these sorts of things can be easily considered "soul crushing", although even that sentiment is relative. They are often long hours with little pay, no benefits, and there really isn't a lot to feel fulfilled about there. Band members who give the other half of their lives to playing music trap themselves in a shit job limbo, thus convincing themselves this must be how the rest of us feel all the time doing anything but music.

However, if you put in the hours, acquire skills, education and experience, you get better jobs with better pay that are more up your alley in terms of the type of person you are. This sort of thing can be more difficult for some people of different socioeconomic backgrounds than others, and I need to acknowledge that; but being smart with your time and effort in any situation will pay off for you in the long run. Millions of people work fulfilling, purposeful, life-affirming jobs, all the while not being death metal players. Holy shit, imagine that.

Even if you are stuck in the sort of scenario where you're busting your ass at low level employment and you think your job sucks; it's important to remember there is no shame in hard work. You do what you gotta do to pay the bills, that's part of being an adult. Artists feel the opposite. They believe they stand on higher ground than the rest of us, because they don't lend themselves to working life. They flake out of typical adult responsibility to go party with their buds in a van for weeks to months at a time. All while mocking us for acting like cogs in the corporate machine, because we don't spend all our time playing deathgrind in dive bars.

Whether they're living the dream or not, life on the road sucks. Band members quit like clockwork, on all tiers of fame and finance. They do it in hopes of achieving the lives that the rest of us already got a head start on. It's a grass is greener situation that has broken up a multitude of headlining acts, let alone mid-tier metal bands. How can you suggest the venom I spit is laced with envy when you got all these musicians ultimately wanting what I have when they figure out band life doesn't work forever?

I'm never gonna be a successful rock musician. I'm never gonna tour the country, let alone the world, and I'm never gonna make a name for myself on any level of fame outside of the few people that read this garbage. I have learned to be satisfied with my role in life because...

5. We Can't All Be Artists

Pictured above: Hopefully not a gyno.

Recent studies show that modern day children don't want to grow up to be doctors, firemen, police officers, teachers or scientists. No, they want to be famous. Just about all of them. We live in a digital age where young minds are consistently bombarded with entertainment media on multiple fronts: music, television, movies, video games, social media, YouTube, these are what has become important to a kid; and it's the only kind of dumb shit they want to get themselves involved in when their entitled little minds refuse to grow up. So when you're telling young millennials that their music sucks in any given comment section, don't be surprised when they all tell you how you're just mad you're not a rock star like the members of Motionless In White or Black Veil Brides. They think that you're envious of famous people, because that's exactly how they all fucking feel.

In the United States, we only have ourselves to blame for the expectations of our children. We spend every second of their existence filling their impressionable little minds with unreasonable garbage such as "when you grow up, you can be anything you want to be!" Just look at this hasbeen fucking anti-vaxxer hack up on stage telling all these kids that are drowning in college loan debt not to get the practical, honest job; but the lofty dreamy bullshit artsy one that they really want:

No. This shit isn't true. It was never true, a first world economy as a concept simply doesn't allow it. Jim Carrey might not think that "accountant" is a very fun job, but Christ, we need accountants. Corporations need newly educated accounting majors to replace old retiring ones, and here this fucking cunt is on stage shaming a room of young capable minds out of something like it. But before even considering all the corporate positions, we have to recognize that someone out there, somewhere, anywhere, needs to be willing to be paid to pick up garbage. We need garbage men. We literally totally completely factually need them. Even if we could get robots to do their job for them, who's building these robots? All the millennial daydreamers are too busy earning subscribers on their bullshit "Lets Plays" of Sonic games on YouTube, or their spending every ounce of their free time trying to get an Orange Amplification endorsement. So how about it, can Dave Mustaine over here build us an accountant garbage pickup doctor robot with his fucking records?

Yeah, that's right, let's see your robot, Dave. Fucking show me your robot, you smug WORTHLESS. COCK.

That's right. Worthless. Dave Mustaine and his entire genre of guitar noodling face puckers are not a necessity to any of us. They're a luxury, a nice little extra, their shit is just for fun. They are trained monkeys here to clap and dance and entertain the rest of us after we spend all day busting our asses at our real jobs. How much money they make from it is irrelevant. The same goes for pro athletes. On the hierarchy of human survival, arts and entertainment comes dead fucking last. A metal musician's contribution to society is easily overshadowed by the kid who has to collect grocery carts from the parking lot. That poor slob with his minimum wage gig does what he does to make it easier on the rest of us to buy our food. His contribution is small, but at least it's somewhere on that chain. Not once did listening to Washington is Next help me anywhere along the line in putting food on my plate. In fact, modern Megadeth music always puts me at constant risk of losing my lunch. Never, ever even once should you let a musical artist convince you that they stand on higher ground than you. They're just clowns in different face paint.

Fuck-O-Lantern.

Okay, yes, fine, the arts are important. But so are janitors and construction crews and nurses and farmers and everybody else. My younger brother is an EMT. Just a couple weeks go he CPR'ed some mother fucker back to life. He desperately smashed a man's ribs with his bare hands so the guy could live to see his kids the next day. The guy survived! He didn't kick it that day because my brother decided to be a certified Emergency Medical Technician instead of being some shitty deathcore bassist. So if my bro wants to go online and say your music is stupid, fuck you, he is fucking allowed.

What about me? As I mentioned in passing somewhere before, I fix copiers for my 9 to 5 day job to pay the bills. I'm obviously not saving lives, but the American workforce still needs documentation on paper. Hospitals need a working printer to print out a prescription for the pain meds for the guy who had his ribs cracked during CPR so he could live, so hey, fuck you, I helped, I guess.

Sure, it might not sound like an awesome, life-affirming career to you special butterfly big dreamers, but I've always liked taking apart and fixing stuff. I've felt this way ever since I was a little kid. At family holidays my mother always tells people stories of how as a toddler I would take apart the remote control or the toaster to see what the insides looked like. (She leaves out the part about smacking the shit out of me for doing it.) Just kidding, Mom, stop reading my death metal blog. I admit it's always a phenomenal feeling for me when I spend several hours completely disassembling a piece of equipment, finding the problem, repairing the problem, and reassembling it back to a properly working machine.

This is an unrelated photo of a child eating sand.

I enjoy my job, but it's hard work. Sure, I'd rather be getting paid to write black metal riffs, but even Dimmu Borgir realized that wasn't very lucrative and changed course. But it's fine, because my job isn't the only thing that defines me. In my spare time, I made this blog. It isn't traffic heavy, it isn't even very high quality. But I get emails and messages regularly from people around the world saying they enjoy reading it. My form of entertainment may be at the expense of someone else's form of entertainment, but it is entertainment nonetheless. The reason I posted a picture of Louis C.K up before is because I appreciate the art of comedy and making people laugh just a bit more than I appreciate metal music. I even started performing standup recently, and plan to do so more in the future. So in the grand scheme of things, I am a guy who has experience entertaining people on and off stage. Never mind the fact I used to play drums, bass and continue to play guitar; although these things are a bedroom hobby as opposed to some desperate attempt at rockstardom. Maybe I'll try my hand at local band stuff again at some point for hahas, but my love for playing isn't so dire that I would ever annually ruin my life by going on tour or trying to get signed.

Look, all of that stupid rambling is just me trying to make the point that as individuals, we are all very complex. We each have a variety of opinions, experiences, hobbies and perspectives. All of this means...

6. You Can't Indiscriminately Write Off Your Critics

Bronycide.

I'm sure it was quite a comforting thought for Sjunnesson to conclude that I'm just some depressed loser jerking off in my mom's basement to a "2-channel recorder" (whatever that's supposed to mean...). After all, if there was any truth to that, he might be on to something about me being envious and resentful of all his "achievements and hard work". But what if I'm not? What if I was just a normal, well-rounded, successful and smart guy, yet I still thought his music was a hot sack of bleached assholes? Gasp! Shudder at the thought. Imagine if independent, adult, reasonable, intelligent individuals were out there openly describing The Unguided as the single greatest atrocity since humanity began composing music? What then would you do, Richard? How could you maintain this safe space where you have convinced yourself for years that everyone who doesn't like you is envious of how totally awesome you are?

These delusional chucklefucks are kidding themselves with this rhetoric that all internet trolls are "basement dwellers". It makes it easier for them to write you off as a bitter, lonely, miserable person who's hateful comments are strictly said out of some sort of clear cut spite and envious malice. Artists are fragile, tender types. They can't handle an honest criticism from someone with an educated opinion, so they essentially stick their fingers in their ears and go "la-la-la-la-la" at something that could very well be a meaningful -- albeit difficult -- dialogue regarding their craft.

Here's an example I have of this sort of thing occurring recently. YouTube guitarists Ryan Bruce (AKA Fluff) and Jared Dines started a group together known as Rest, Repose. I myself was eager to see the type of music they would produce together, as both these individuals are solid musicians. After months of many a YouTube watchers' anticipation, this was what they released:

Needless to say, reactions were mixed. While both these guys have a slew of subscribers and fans who would enjoy anything they do regardless, this was a bit out of left field for a lot of people. Ryan and Jared after all, really push themselves as metal musicians on their respective channels. I obviously wouldn't expect any of you guys to enjoy a single thing about this music, since we're just a bunch of death metal snobs (as it should be). But looking past the content of the song itself, I was surprised by how lackluster the composition and production quality ultimately ended up. I don't think it's horrible, I appreciate raw music as much as the next bloke. But these guys have channels dedicated to recording and mastering awesome guitar tone, and they charge people to mix albums for them as a part time job. The bar was set high for them. So when a lot of stuff manages to come up kinda flat in the mix of a song they produced, it not only disappoints listeners, but puts their entire reputations as engineers at stake. Would you pay someone thousands of dollars to mix an album for you that doesn't sound exactly up to snuff? Of course things probably aren't that dire in this case, but a lot of people agreed some things could have been improved upon.

Speaking of flat, I don't doubt that their lead vocalist is perfectly capable, but the track sounded like he could've stood for maybe just a few more takes just to hit the perfect pitch in some spots. Again, I listen to black metal -- good clean music doesn't really mean dick to me -- but in the style they're going for, that sort of shit matters. The quality of the vocals was pointed out to them by several listeners, but here's how they generally reacted when being told this:

The band completely jokes off the negative reaction. I mean, sure, fuck this smug guy and his "ooh I know a professional singer teaching 6000 students ooh" comment, but what's important here is that Duane does have something to back up his critical response to the music. And to be fair, he's being really delicate with his commentary. But fuck him, whatever, he's just some troll. What does he know about anything? Why should we give a shit about what he thinks?

I can't imagine how tough it is as an artist to put yourself out there. It takes balls that not all of us have, and I do respect that. I'm sure the negative reactions can be overwhelming, especially the more exposed you become. But it's easy to forget that behind every "troll" on the internet is a real person. A person with his or her own line of hopes, dreams, experiences, and perspective. Maybe if we considered Duane as more than just another brainless troll, and actually respected him as a human being with something constructive to say, it would ultimately help the artist greatly to acknowledge him, as well as those with similar opinions. He wasn't close to the only individual with something negative to say about the singing on the track, but just about every naysayer was written off as nothing more than a hater by the band members and their fans in a similar fashion as above.

As a contrast to Rest, Repose's reaction, I present to you Exhibit A; a one Glenn Fricker of SMG Studios:

Glenn released a track of inferior quality which he received quite a bit of negative feedback about from listeners. I never had a chance to hear said track myself, but that's irrelevant. The major difference here being that he took down the song in question and apologized to everyone, promising to rework it. Glenn's advice about not getting too close to the project I feel really rings true with Fluff and Jared's new band. Rest, Repose is Fluff's baby, his passion project. Can we say that he's being objective and fair in mixing it all himself and working with good friends as band members?

Now, I don't need to tell you guys that Fricker is an infamous whirlwind of negative commentary. He talks shit about bands, about gear, about working with musicians, and tears into just about every negative comment sent his way if the person writing it deserves to be told. With all that in mind, what sets Glenn apart as a class act is the fact that not only can he dish it out, but he can also take it. He understands the value of criticism. Just because something being said to you regarding your craft is negative, it doesn't necessarily mean that it has no value and should be ignored.

You're not doing yourself any favors as a creator by shutting out every single person who is critical of your work. Yes, some people are just mean assholes. You're never going to change that, and admitedly, that sort of mindless internet bullying is the typical fare of this blog. We're proud of that and we don't fucking care. However, not everybody on the internet is just a spiteful troll out to hurt feelings for fun. Among all the criticism, no matter how vicious, there might be something you could really afford to hear.

Even if I was Richard Sjunneson's best friend, I would tell him that his band is a ripe garbage bag overflowing with Atreyu-era knockoffs that stopped being cool among teenagers a decade ago. That's important for him to know. If he wants to continue being brainlessly derivative and denying it, that's on him. But lacking originality is something I always considered to be a fate worse than death in the eyes of true artists. If somebody told me my craft was too much like someone else's, I would do everything in my power to set myself apart in the future. It is an important thing to hear from someone, whoever that person might be, and whatever intention they might have.

I'm gonna bring this all back to Teal's comment once again. Teal speaks of me, saying "we gotta stop giving assholes with no premise or experience a mouth piece". I spent hours hopefully convincing you, that you all rightly deserve your mouth piece, regardless of your "premise" or "experience" and that Teal is an ignorant fan girl stooge with her head so far up her ass, that her head is back up where it belongs without you noticing like some sort of retard inception.

But what if I had all the necessary premise and experience to comment? What if I was an experienced recording artist with first hand information to contribute to any of my criticisms? Would that truly help my case? If you really think so, you'd be surprised to learn that...

7. Artists Don't Respect Each Other Either

The POSER gets just about all of its power from the concept that my hateful comments are out of envy. Envy rooted in the fact that I'm living as an average Joe who works a 9-5 instead of partying like a rockstar. However, if I'm an average Joe, it's easy enough to explain that I don't want to be a rockstar. My aspirations are still completely my own.

But let's say I was an underground thrash metal band member, and I gave our favorite Moto Psycho up there proper shit for the lyrics of Super Collider much like that guy Matt did. If he then asked me sarcastically "how's your latest record doing?" I would then have a legitimate answer for him. How then do you think he would react? Is he really going to concede that my opinion meant something? Is he going to suddenly respect my criticism as if I were his equal?

I don't have to tell any of you how Ol' Musty treats his equals. The man has spent decades showing us: Slayer, Metallica, Pantera, Suicidal Tendencies, these are all major headliners that Dave has famously and openly feuded with. More recently he got Rotting Christ booted off a tour, as well as Suicide Silence. He also gave the late great Dissection the MegaDave treatment, getting them kicked off a fest back in '05. The guy just doesn't give a shit about other Metal musicians, especially those beneath him in terms of fame, which is close to most of them. If you say something mean about Jesus, or step on a single one of his other perceived toes, Dave will refuse to play the show until the promoter gets you to fuck off.

He probably wasn't all that upset. It's not like he... oh....

Aside from Mustaine, I feel like every other day I'm reading about somebody's beef with someone else in the metal community. Musicians find plenty of things to disagree about among themselves. While this usually is about issues working together on tour, it can typically boil down to Phil LaBonte calling somebody a faggot. (And then going on to make this music with a straight face.)

Let's face the facts: If I was a well known musician with something critical to say about another musician, I would still be told to shut the fuck up. People would call me unprofessional, they would shame me for brewing hostility in the scene, they would expect me to properly understand the hardships of being a musician and to respect my fellow artists. To a degree, I agree with this sentiment. The rules are different if you're a musician. It doesn't do you any favors to cut ties within the industry, or publicly mistreat a band beneath you in popularity.

However, because of the blindfully supportive sentiment artists are expected to have among themselves, any negative observation I would have about an artist would be devalued even further if I was an artist as well. Let's say I was an underground Metal musician struggling to be noticed, and I said the things about Sjunnesson that I have said or did the things I did. Since I would actually want things like the ability to tour the world and open for Amon Amarth, his comments regarding my alleged envy would hold that much more weight. The chances of me being actually envious of him and his 'success' would be a great deal more likely. The last thing I ever want to do is find myself in a compromised position where I am incapable of informing you that he sucks.

It seems the web of defensive bullshit enveloping the metal community is becoming more apparent here. So which is it? I can't criticize if I'm not an artist because I don't have the "premise or experience". It's clear that I also can't criticize as a fellow artist because that would mean I was "feuding", "starting beef" or being "unprofessional". At what point am I ever allowed to be a person who can open my fucking mouth and just say "wow this sucks"?

In Conclusion (TLDR version):

Everybody's opinion in music is valid, and everybody is entitled to those opinions. However, everybody should expect to have those opinions challenged, whether they be positive or negative. Arguments are fine. People should learn to embrace the opposite side of a discussion as opposed to just expecting people to be sunshine and rainbows on their side of the wall all the time. This isn't about civil rights, where one side is completely inherently wrong and one side isn't. It's art. It's subjective, so discuss the fucking subject already and stop trying to ban people from disagreeing.

Yes, even when you're challenging someone's positive opinion with a negative one, you deserve equal scrutiny. If your negative opinion isn't of substance, if it doesn't have legitimate reasons as to why you don't like something, then it has no value and should be written off as passable hate speech much in the way that most critical comments are written off by the people who don't want to hear them.

And that's just it. They don't want to hear it. They rarely have a legitimate excuse in attempting to silence you beyond that. People will do whatever it takes to undermine you if you're trying to create a difficult dialogue about the quality of the media. The most common way to do this is to attack your position in life. They'll say you're unemployed, living with your parents, that you're jealous of the people you're talking shit about. They'll tell you that you have no idea what it's like to make the thing you aren't appreciating, so you have no right to not appreciate it. They will act as if you have too much time on your hands, and that's why you spend so much of it shit-talking on the internet. What's a mean comment take to write on YouTube, anyway? 4 minutes if you want to be novel about it? Most of these same people shaming you for wasting your life talking a little smack will spend nine consecutive hours watching some dumb bullshit like Parks and Rec on Netflix without blinking a goddamn eye. You're all wastes. Just accept it and stop comparing each others shitty lives.

You don't have to be a fucking chef to think something tastes gross. In the same way that bad food wreaks havoc on your palate, so too does bad music fill your ears with misery. Chefs wants to please their diners. We are the diners of the metal community, and we're in control over whether or not your restaurant stays open. People aren't your fans until they like you, and nothing will get everyone to hate you faster than shaming other people for not being professional artists. You can't expect that sort of experience from everyone. After all, there have to be trained, employed mechanics who fix that piece of shit van you drive around every time you go on tour.

Also as just a mere listener with no experience in music production or composition whatsoever, your opinion would be the most objective, and therefore, have greater purpose. Artists are not making music for other artists, after all, they're making it for listeners. They're the ones who buy the albums, talk about the band, attend the shows, and wear the merch. Artists should strive to make these people happy, especially the ones that are tougher to please. Obviously, you can't please everyone all the time, but if you try to completely write off a listener's perspective as illegitimate because they themselves aren't creators, your concept of reality is flawed and you're a walking intellectual desert.

Thanks to Teal for being such a good sport and being the main subject for this tirade. You truly deserved it for being such a stupid asswart. Outside of the pittance I get for ads, nobody pays this blowhard for his think pieces, Teal. This isn't Noisey. If Neill Jameson wanted to whine about the scene on my platform, I wouldn't pay him dick. He would just have to want people to hear it badly enough to start typing. I maybe make $100 a year total in ad revenue from this shit hole, so after all of my hard work I get to reward myself with like an annual pizza party. You would've been invited if you weren't such a lame ignorant dipshit. Also, what about not owning CDs makes me a yuppy? When's the last time you saw somebody walking around with one of these fucking things:

It must be some sort of mini pizza toaster...

As I explained in the article you didn't read right, CD's are not only a completely dead format, they are totally fucking redundant. They are from a time period when they were the single most efficient way to distribute, acquire and listen to the digital song files of a full length album. They're just not necessary anymore. We can live stream that shit or download it all at once in minutes. You can buy and listen to just about any album from the device sitting right in your pocket. CD distribution is a completely unnecessary cost burden on bands that's propagated by format fetishists who purchase these things for the specific reason of showing off their space wasting collection to people who don't give a shit. Stream what you like, buy from bandcamp what you love.

I don't write for money, or fame. I write because I like it. You wouldn't know a single fucking thing about any of that though, Teal. Who the hell are you? What makes you think you can criticize what I write? You're not a writer. Let's see your blog, huh?

What a fucking nobody.

- Brenocide \,,/

From the Frontlines: 3 Inches of Blood's Final Show (Black Wizard and Bison B.C. Supporting)

2015-11-10T20:23:00.001-08:00

On the grim road to the Commodore, Granville street, it was all as usual on a Vancouver night. The bums were passed out outside the skytrain station with assorted items, with their signs propped on their chests. The odd wall of Hipsters here and there, begging to be punched in their horn rimmed souls. And the usual buskers, one playing Stairway to Heaven until the sky falls, and the other girl playing pure crap and charging 10 bucks for each CD with 13 tracks of acoustic pop torture.  

This was going to be a bittersweet night, to say the least. 3 Inches of Blood’s local gigs before the announcement of their final show were pretty sparse. The last time I had good notice to see them was the first time I saw them live, just after Here Waits Thy Doom was released. So this was long overdue.

  I got to the lineup around the time the doors opened. It was moving along quickly, but that was a bad thing. It meant the merch booth was going to be over-fucking-flowing. At the Rickshaw or The Venue, there’s a line, but that’s not much trouble. At the Commodore, however, it’s as thick as George Fisher’s neck. When Amon Amarth was here last, I had to hop up on the bar to get past the mob clamoring for a signed guitar pick. 

I walked around the place, mainly to find a good pillar to prop myself up against. When I got bored with that, I kept an eye out for anyone I knew. The Commodore is a deceptively ugly place. It’s like that Goth chick that would sit in the back of class of high school. She’s attractive. From a distance. There’s grime on the steps, the bar has untold pounds of gum stuck under the tables, and an ATM that works whenever the hell it feels like. They don’t allow smoking in the place because if the alcohol soaked carpet came anywhere near an open flame, the whole block would go up in a mushroom cloud.

  I elected to get some merch to pass the time. After half an hour of slowly shuffling forth, I got my crap, and dropped it off at the coat check. When I returned, I faced the massive wall that is Conan. If you’ve ever been bear hugged and lifted into the sky by a hairy Jason Momoa looking motherfucker at a show in Vancouver, congratulations, you’ve met Conan. He’s yet to lift me into the air yet. As he began to wrap his arms, I hooked my left under his right.

We forgot our kilts at home.

  He started off with a basic lift, but I applied the counterweight easily. To throw him off balance, I moved to the left, but he managed to predict this, and anchored himself to his own left. He then tried to pull me in to lose my footing, but I swiftly shifted into an iron horse stance, making his efforts all for naught. Eventually, we disengaged and caught up since the last show we were both at. Before long, Black Wizard took the stage.

  Honestly never heard of these guys before tonight. Obviously local boys, given the occasion, and they’re pretty damn good at what they do. A modern doom metal that has a strong groove and solo work that doesn’t sound like it reads from the gospel of Black Sabbath. They really know their shit, being able to get a bunch of rabid 3 Inches of Blood fans to mosh to something that sounds like Orange Goblin if they were Canadian. A Red and White Goblin, if you will.  

After their set and assurance that on their life that 3 Inches of Blood would play, I pretty much tailed Conan around the place as he talked to his real friends. I never have anyone to go with to shows, so I just follow him till he stops at some point. Let me tell you that a night with a bunch of crappy death metal bands is ten times worse when you have no one to talk shit about them with.  

One of the people we met up with is a guy I see at literally every single show I go to. His name is Dane, or Dwayne, or something like that. I call him The Duke. He kinda looks like Biff Byford if he was 20 years older, a foot shorter, and had a cane. A pretty cool guy, but we had to drop it short for Bison B.C.  

I’ve heard good things about this band, and honestly, I have no god damned clue why. They aren’t terrible by any means, but it was just putting me to sleep. Their songs just could not end, some of them had like 4 riffs, and the least interesting and most boring ones were the ones they spent the most time on playing. It was so long and arduous, it’d make latter day Iron Maiden blush. Speaking of Iron Maiden…  

After Bison cleared the stage, the subject of my opinion of the Book of Souls came up in conversation. Conan called me full of shit for hating it, but then it got ugly.  

“Look, I like Iron Maiden, but they’ve been just fucking sucking for the past 15 years!”  

“Like fucking what?!”

  “Book of Souls, Final Frontier, Dance of-“  

“Dance of Death is a fucking masterpiece!”  

“Name two good tracks!”  

“Dance of Death and Montsegur!”

  “I said two!”

  “No More Lies!”

  “More like No More Choruses!”  

“Paschendale!”

  “One of the most worthless battles in history, and one of their least engaging songs!”

  “Oh fuck you! What about Matter of Life and Death?”

  “You couldn’t waterboard me hard enough to find a good song off that wet fart!”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you! They have no bad albums! This is all coming from the guy who likes Motörhead!”

  Now this got personal. I was stealing this one, but if there was a time for it, it’d be now.  

“Seventh Synth Rock Ballad of a Seventh Synth Rock Ballad.”

  “What?!”

"  SEVENTH SYNTH ROCK BALLAD OF A SEVENTH SYNTH ROCK BALLAD!!!”

  “…”

  So yeah, it’s pistols at dawn next week, just after the Blind Guardian show.  

The lights dimmed for the final 3 Inches of Blood show. Despite the fact that they’re doing another one on Sunday, I call this their last one. They originally announced this as the last, and scheduled a second after all the pre-order tickets sold out the day it was announced. Sunday’s going to be the sloppy seconds, and I never settle for that.   Besides, I was one of the people who purchased that ticket at June 4th, 10:01 am under the impression it was their last, so I'm calling it as such.

They hit the stage with Helix’s Rock You playing, the entire crowd joining in. They began the night with Metal Woman, causing all females in attendance to sprout spikes from their shoulders, bullet belts to materialize upon their waists, and to climax instantaneously. This was a pit night for me. you could scarcely find me outside of the pit, I was the denizen of this realm, I was born and bred in there, you couldn’t put me down even if I wanted you to.  

They were going to play the show in two sets, with a short break between them. The first one consisted mostly of recent material, Leather Lord, Call of the Hammer, and a few flashes from the past like God of the Cold White Silence and Wykydtron. Hydra’s Teeth is a song that they haven’t played live in eons, so it was like a hand job after a Charles Bronson movie, exactly what we needed. It ended with their glorious tribute to Ronnie James Dio, Look Out.

  During the whole time that me and Conan were in the pit, we were often on crowd surfing duty. We stood at the front rim of the pit, and would lift the hapless dorks who did not have the frame of titans such as Conan and I upwards into the crowd. Bit of a funny story there. On the skytrain in, I was minding my own business, scowling at the tools who crossed my path, when at the other side of the car, there stood three skinny little dorks who could not possibly be any older than 18.  

I didn’t think much of them, but for some reason, my gaze was drawn to the least skinniest one. He was wearing a plain gray t-shirt, so I don’t know what I saw in him. He had a wispy little leather wrap on his wrist, didn’t strike me as anyone of importance, so I just wrote him off. But in the mosh pit of 3 Inches of Blood’s final show at The Commodore, I saw him, recognized him, grabbed, and threw him upon the crowd, beginning his ascension to True Metal. I get the feeling I’ll be calling him a poseur should I again see him, though.  

The second set was mostly of their early stuff. And for good reason. This was when previous band members came up to play (Nick Cates was already playing bass for the whole night). Matt Wood on drums for Revenge is a Vulture, Byron “Fucking” Stroud on Bass for Dark Messenger, and Bobby Froese for Destroy the Orcs. Then, something magical happened. During the wrap up to Battles and Brotherhood, they seamlessly shifted into a medley. To Heaven and Hell. One of my favourite bands playing the best song ever.  

There’s something about this song and The Fraser Valley, I don’t know if it’s like this elsewhere, but Heaven and Hell is the heart and soul of our scene. It’s covered by every other band, we jam with it, sound check with it, tune to it. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who first picked a guitar up because of this song, or that I'm alone in saying it’s the first song I learned. To hear 3 Inches of Blood play the song that’s ingrained that fucking deep in our skulls was nothing short of a religious experience… Oh, they covered Tom Sawyer some time during the night, too.  

Speaking of religious experiences…

  In the year of our Dio, 2008, Jamie Hooper left 3 Inches of Blood due to severe vocal cord issues. But on Saturday November 7th 2015, late into the night, or probably very early November 8th, he took the stage once more alongside his brothers of old. Motherfucker looks as anorexic as he always had, with that goofy tiny gap in his front teeth, screaming like a demonized goblin despite looking like a massive hipster punk. To see Jamie Hooper singing alongside Cam Pipes with the other previous members was fucking cosmic.  

I don't take photos at shows, so stolen facebook photos are all you're gonna get.

Night Marauders, The Goatrider’s Horde, and the fucking Canadian metal anthem that is Balls of Ice. But they’re missing one song. It’s the song that defines 3 Inches of Blood. The heart and soul of 3 Inches of Blood fans, Motherfucker, you know I’m talking Deadly Sinners. It was fucking majestic. Despite going one hundred percent, operating at peak efficiency, and the centre of the pit doubling as a steam room, the mosh pit went even faster. This is a song to draw blood to. Which I did to Conan with my bracer.

  Above the crowd, one lone surfer was riding the waves of chaos. One man, his hair blowing in the bedlam and metal. holding aloft his cane to the sky whilst throwing the horns. It was The Duke. Magnificent bastard damn near got up on stage, but he poured behind the rails to be swept aside. It felt like that went on forever, but that song is only so long. Once they finally concluded, with all poseurs in attendance converted or dead, leather and steel adorning the walls, and beer flowing through the crowd, then did Deadly Sinners finally end. This was the last of 3 Inches of Blood.  

The feeling of seeing a band end their career by playing one of their most well known songs is one of the most satisfying experiences one could have, but it also left everyone feeling empty. Everyone kept cheering for a good 10 minutes after they left the stage. Everyone started screaming “One more song” over and over again. Are you serious?  

What other note could they possibly end on? They gave a bitchin' set with all of the best songs from their albums, brought previous, beloved members to perform with them one last time, and brought it to a close with them all performing the song that defines both the band, the fans, metalheads in general, and pretty much all of heavy metal. You want to spoil all that by getting them to play Crazy Nights? Needless to say, I didn’t join them in the chant. I simply roared above the crowd with a mighty bellow of “LONG LIVE HEAVY METAL!!!”

  Corny, I know, but a much more fitting epitaph to one of, if not the best Vancouver metal band.  

So, this is it.

Life after 3 Inches of Blood.  

Review: Exterminas - Dichotomy

2015-11-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

My salvation from unending legions of horrible Bandcamp music.

Dichotomy is the second full length release from the Italian black metal band Exterminas, and it is FUCKING great. Up to this point Bandcamp has betrayed me time and again with horrible band after horrible band, but like a shotgun at a metalcore concert, Exterminas has saved me from a purgatory of unworthy filth.

The album has everything you would want from back metal: speed, anger, and incomprehensible vocals. While the rhythm section is certainly up to snuff, the dual guitar attack of Moloch and Eskathon are what really elevate this album. Sometimes reminiscent of Skeletonwitch, Slayer, or Belphegor but never seeming to outright rip them off, it gives them a sound close to many blackened death metal bands but still very rooted in traditional back metal. If I was going to drive into hell in a souped up muscle car with hood mounted machine guns, I would blare this on my awesome but admittedly impractical demon slaying rampage. If I could understand what Februus is saying I'm sure it would be condoning the opposite of killing the legions of hell, but as every true metal head should know, when it comes to demons you can either worship them, or murder them and both are equally metal. The less practical your chosen method of combat is the better.

The album drops November eleventh at their label Satanath's Bandcamp page where you can also get the preview track Dawn of Deceit. Grab it, and then buy the damn thing when it comes out. What else were you going to do with that money? Feed your children? Don't lie. No woman would want to birth your spawn. So instead of crying about it go buy this album. Maybe get the jewel case if you have a fetish for being able to tenderly caress a disc. Hurry though. There are only 500 physical copies and we wouldn't want your fully engorged member to go unsatisfied because it sold out.

Sagecutioner

Variety, Thy Name Ain't Metal Vocalists.

2015-11-02T22:37:00.002-08:00

It was pretty fucking windy that day, but in Hope, shitty weather is the norm. I grabbed my guitar out of the trunk and handed Beth my bass, which she reluctantly slung over her back. She didn’t want to play an instrument. I, quite reasonably, said to her “Your fucking problem”. If she was going to start a band, she was going to at the very least learn how to play an instrument so I wasn’t going to be writing everything myself.

As she climbed down the hill behind me, she was moaning and complaining.

“So, why do we have to do this here?”

“I come to Hope whenever I write, besides, you can’t write this kind of metal in a basement.”

We were down by the river under the bridge that heads past Haig. It’s always windy there, but today we needed to face north so our glorious fucking locks weren’t blowing in each other’s face.

“What about the river in Abbotsford, It’s only twenty minutes away from home!”

“Oh quit your bitching and lets make some fucking magic.”

After about a half hour showing her a couple riffs and how to play them, I started into something I was working on. A Doom/Pagan kind of bit. After playing it a few times, she started to sing over it. Could not remember, or even hear the lyrics for that matter, but it sounded pretty good. After a vain attempt of us both improvising a chorus, we took a water/smoke break. She was doing her damnedest not to talk about anything related to the potential band she wanted to start. After a bit, she coughed through the haze.

“Fuck, I can’t fucking sing.”

“Shut up, you just did.”

“Yeah, but I can’t sing well.”

I really need to give this woman an ego transplant. It’s every fucking day with this bullshit. After a few more minutes, we sat down on the rocks and started playing the riff. After I finally managed to talk her back into singing again, I decided to ask where she got inspiration to sing from.

“So, who do you try to sound like?”

“Well, I’ve always tried to take my cues from Danzig and Lana del Ray.”

I stopped and stared at her for five whole minutes.

I seriously didn’t know whether to smack her, or to start violently making out with her. Knowing her, she probably wouldn’t let me do either. On one hand, pop singer. But on the other hand, Danzig, and she did something that some of my favourite vocalists do.

They take inspiration from vocalists that aren’t metal.

Don’t get me wrong, I love metal vocalists infinitely more than any other vocalist, but seriously, in this genre, every metal vocalist rips off every other one. Doom metal bands rip off Ozzy, Death metal bands rip off George Fisher, Thrash Metal and Bobby Ellsworth, and Rob Halford is ripped off in every genre like it’s nobody’s business. Does anyone really want to be just a c-grade imitation of a legendary vocalist? Must be some people, because bands like Holy Grail and Elvenking have those losers holding the mic.

Listen, I’m not saying we need every single frontman out there to sound like they have every Prince album alphabetized in their closet or whatever, but we need some fucking variety. We need vocalists that don't step too far away from the true metal path. Singers that while taking clear inspiration outside of metal, are making it their own. It’s actually kind of why I like certain Folk Metal. Skyclad, Eluveitie, Korpiklaani, Týr, these guys all have/had vocalists that are either doing it with little influence from other singers, or are taking it from the drunk guys singing songs in their pub.

And since I suck at transitions, here's a short list of vocalists that have deviated from the tired banshee wailing.

Hansi Kürsch

If you're on this website, you already know who Hansi is, and your cock is poking through your jeans as you're reading these words. I'm not going to bore you with shit you should already know, but I will ask of you this:

Look me straight in the eye and tell me Hansi did not waste his youth hanging around renaissance fairs listening exclusively to the troubadours. Dude sounds like Freddie Mercury if he came from a time with no plumbing and bubonic plague.

He could easily bard it all up at a larp with a lute in hand and robin hood tights till everyone got sick and tired of hearing The Maiden And The Minstrel Knight. So yeah, he'd be there forever. Point is, this vibrato wielding maniac sounds like he should be boosting the morale of a dragonslaying party mid fight.

Danzig

You all know Danzig as the guy who put out Mother, the guy who got his shit shoved in by a two legged Orca, and as a fancier of kitty litter, but did you know that he actually releases albums? Because his vocal peak has to be Danzig II: Lucifuge.

Instantly shifting from a hushed whisper to his trademarked werewolf howl, Glenn Danzig is a monolith of doom metal vocals, putting to rest the notion that you have to be an Ozzy Osbourne ripoff but decent in doom. Motherfucker's been sporting the Elvis pipes for decades, and if Deth Red Saboath is any indication, it ain't going away any time soon.

...Although his touring schedule is.

Göran Edman

Jesus fucking christ, I love this man. I love every god damned thing about his voice so much, that it's hardly even a man crush, it's almost full on gay. He's got a smooth, Stevie Wonder timbre with all the range of Paul Rodgers, who is forever at his prime. He's most notable for being Yngwie Malmsteen's vocalist for two albums before one of Yngiwe's regularly scheduled egosplosions, and for doing session work for every single band none of you even care about.

He can effortlessly switch between a low introspective murmur, to a melismatic whirlwind that isn't just there to show off. Not only is the guy skilled, but his voice hasn't aged a fucking day. Compare his short lived (and by short lived, I mean not even making it out of the recording studio) time with Talisman:

To his somewhat recent guest appearance with the ridiculously named Boguslaw Balcerak's Crylord project:

Motherfucker's a time lord. Case closed.

Doro Pesch

To this day, I am perpetually bewildered as to why Doro and her previous band Warlock are not more widely recognized as heavy metal greats. Sure, they get a name drop here and there, but hardly what they truly deserve. Every Warlock album is filled with anthem after anthem, has incredibly talented guitarists that went god damned nowhere, and of course was fronted by the Teutonic titan that is Doro Pesch.

Yeah, she has a three octave range, but what's truly impressive is that while fellow German Hansi Kürsch does utilize vibrato, Doro has been using it much more effectively for her entire career. What's more, it's just absurdly awesome when she goes as high as possible and loses the fucking leash for that werewolf of a throat.

Bill Ramp

Fuck, he looks like your dad

There are people on this planet (bafflingly ignorant people) that have never heard of Axehammer. If you fall into this sub-phylum of uncultured philistines, I recommend taking a long walk off a short cliff. Short story is that they're an L.A. metal band whose heyday is far, far removed from when they were in their prime. Yes, the Windrider album is good, but Bill's vocal performance is merely serviceable, while he was a true beast on the glorified EP that was Lord of the Realm.

You know what annoys the crap out of me? When I get recommended an album or band, and the Darwinian reject with the CD describes the vocalist as "soaring" or "operatic". Motherfucker, everyone says that! Hell, just because Dickinson had fairly wide range in his youth or Rob Halford watched opera, doesn't solely make their voices operatic.

Now Bill Ramp? I could totally see him up on stage in some frilly French dress beckoning some daffy broad to disregard her father's strict religious doctrine or something. He had a natural bellow that came much earlier than when Halford cultivated his, and very easily go from highs to lows with little notice of a break. To me, Bill Ramp and Axehammer are one of the truly lost metal bands that could've made it much further had they been in the right place and the right time.

...

After the last pack of cigarettes was spent and all the alcohol I could handle for the drive home was ingested, we made our way back to my car. We talked, mostly about subjects that had nothing to do with music, which leads me to believe that this won't go anywhere. Not the first time a band won't pan out for me. But maybe she'll go somewhere.

Lucky bitch.

Review: Sub-Mine - This Won't End Well

2015-10-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

You can't tell what it is, so it must be deep.

This Won't End Well, is the first release by Sub-Mine and hopefully the last. A flat and soulless attempt at doom metal. Is there some secret audience I don't know about eating up shitty Bandcamp metal? Because it seems to be everywhere. Back in the 80's this music never would have gotten out of the planning stage before falling flat on it's face, but thanks to the internet it is forever preserved like some kind of monument to what people that love metal but have no business playing it can do. What worries me about this kind of thing is how many mistakes the band had to make to even release this. They, assuming it is a they and not a one man band, had plenty of opportunity to realize the quality of what they were making before putting it online. Not once did they stop and try to change the course of action that led to the abomination which they have unleashed. Typically this kind of garbage is a free download, but Sub-mine feel that their failed attempt at metal is worth more than any other band that has the common sense to give theirs away for free. When I see a free album that claims to be metal I download it without listening and get to it when I have the chance, but at least it gets it's foot in the door for when I have time. When a no-name band with no real information about themselves and, as far as I can tell, no real following who's only coverage is from a record label that has no other releases and even fewer people who care about it than the band themselves, wants to charge me to download their music if I don't want to stream it, the only way they would ever get a listen from me is if I had absolutely nothing better to do. Which is almost never the case. Do yourselves a favor and make the next album free. Maybe more people will give it the time of day.

There is nothing positive here. The guitar is moody but lacks punch or any kind of talent that would make it worthwhile, ditto for bass, the vocals are similar to Theo Loomans of Asphyx but without the anger, and the drumming sounds like it was done using either a program or an electronic drum kit. Both of which are not metal. Want to play real metal? Go find a fat guy who's wearing a Pantera shirt that doesn't fully cover his gut. He's probably a drummer. Ask him to bring his cheap drum kit over to your mom's basement and be in your band. Maybe buy him a cowboy hat. Pantera fans love cowboy hats. I mean, how hard is it really, just to find someone that owns a drum kit to play along with you, the drum lines aren't very challenging anyway. On the other hand, if this is a real drummer using an actual drum kit maybe it's time to find another one.

What is by far the worst thing about this album is that is manages to be boring from beginning to end. Doom metal doesn't have to be boring. Sabbath and Danzig manage not to be. What about this genre so consistently draws people that think slow and boring are synonymous? I don't find myself contemplating suicide when listening to Cathedral, so why can't bands that are new to the genre manage at least that much? You don't need to be as good as Cathedral, just good enough to not make your listener not want to kill themselves rather than finish what you spent so much time making, assuming there is actual thought put into this album and it wasn't rushed out in the course of a week so that Sub-Mine could have a release to it's name. If the review request you send includes the phrase, "Hopefully it isn't too shitty", then you already knew how shitty it was before you sent it to me. The point of making music is to make something you think is good. If you have doubts right out the gate about whether or not it's going to be worth listening to, then don't release it to begin with. All Sub-mine accomplished with this was a release that gives any listener that wants it, the excuse to never listen to this band again. Even if they manage to release something worthwhile later, the taint of this first offering will forever tarnish their name.

I had to sit through four fillings the other day, and I literally enjoyed that more than repeat listens of this album. At least something positive came out the fillings. If you want to listen to the something less enjoyable than having holes drilled in your teeth you can find it here. I wouldn't.

Sagecutioner

TNM Presents: The PoseurDome - Two Bands Enter, One Band Leaves

2015-10-26T03:00:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, as I reached for a towel seconds after pulling out of your girlfriend, it occurred to me that for the past few weeks, not one single goddamn thing has happened in the metal world that has roused enough interest in me to elicit even the snide derision on which I so pride myself. This is in no small part due to the return of that undying idol to the poseur, bro-core worshipping fratboy masses that is the fucking guitar hero franchise.

Holy shit, is nothing sacred? Every single goddamn time one of these shitfest 'rhythm' games (for EXTREME want of a better term) gets released, every trve metal fan on the planet locks themselves in their purpose-built bomb shelters to ride out what is inevitably a nuclear winter of false buffoonery.

"Uhh, bromanski, have you ever even HEARD of Pantera? Fucking poser. Now watch me 100% Cowboys From Hell on medium."

Truly, it's a shitty time to be a metalhead. It's one of the unfortunately numerous occasions where your trendhopping buddies will swear black and blue that they've always been into metal but "Just don't like to go on about it."

Bullshit. The entire reason anyone ever listens to metal is purely and entirely for the purpose of going on about it. If you listen to metal and can go a full day without bringing it up even in full knowledge of the fact that the people you work with will think you are creepy as shit, you are nought but a filthy, flea-ridden poseur.

But metal is nothing if not incredibly enduring in the face of adversity. I sat through the unspeakable shame of the 90's metal scene AND the last two Opeth albums and yet still my faith in the incorruptibility of true metal has not been shaken.

It is days such as these, my brethren, where we must rally. We must not go quietly into that goodnight. We must demand more from ourselves, from one another, and most importantly of all, from our metal. I've decided to do my part by reviewing albums while emulating what is without any rational doubt the single greatest cinematic accomplishment spawned forth by sentient life, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Jesus Christ. I'm at half mast just thinking about it.

Not only is it a movie in which the main premise is two dudes beating each other to death in a massive cage, but it came out in the 80's, which most of you will recognize as being the decade wherein metal attained ultimate perfection. Never before has there been a more perfect emulation of the true tenants of heavy metal.

With this in mind, from now on, all my album reviews* are going to follow the example set forth by the beautiful simplicity of the ThunderDome: two bands enter, one band leaves. I'm sick to fucking death of these fucking Lord Byron metal reviews penned by pretentious knobs whose main purpose is obviously to show you how far they've gotten through their thesaurus instead of answering the only questions you want to know the answer to: is this album any good, and why?

Editor's note: TNM apologizes for the piss-poor graphical quality of the above image. Our graphics budget got spent on Jack Daniels and hair straighteners. Gotta be tough with the scruff, fellas.

Today's PoseurDome contenders come to you from beautiful, sunny Germany. Those of you clever enough to string together a sentence might remember that the last album I reviewed also came from Germany and their label thought I was so awe-inspiringly magnificent that they threw free albums at me like a chimpanzee flinging shit at the slack-jawed tourists bankrolling his captivity, hence the above two records.

You may also notice that both albums were released in 2014, and that I have rather unceremoniously decided that I don't give a pinch of shit. The reason for this is twofold:

A year in underground metal time relative to the passage of regular time is about 3.4 days, according to Einstein's theory of relativity.

My finger is so far from the pulse that the Hubble Telescope recently photographed it leaving the solar system.

Yarr - EPos

A metal band, writing songs about pirates? Revolutionary. I was barely even two tracks in and these guys had already stamped off my entire sheet for 'shitty gimmicky metal band' bingo. Mediocre musicianship? Check. 'Ironic' mashup of traditionally incompatible genres? Check. Pushing the joke beyond the point of tedium in a matter of minutes? Double fucking check.

Look, I'm not saying that pirates aren't metal. I'm saying that this album is more Captain Hook than Blackbeard. Right from the word go, it's crystal clear that these guys are having WAY too much fun. Granted, the lyrics aren't in English, so the entire album could be a pitch-black ode to raping and pillaging your way around the most depraved coastlines of history, but for the love of fuck, just listen to it. This is less a wacky death metal album and more the soundtrack for Pirates of the Caribbean on the day where the guy who was suppose to do the vocals showed up with a bad case of strep.

Yarr are desperately trying to be a heavier Alestorm, and Alestorm are fucking terrible. If for whatever reason you want to listen to some truly sick metal chops with a spoon fully of goofy bullshit slapped in for good measure, you might as well stick with Nekrogoblikon, a band that seems to have at the very least realized that if you're going to make fun of the insanity of the metal genre, you'd damn well better have the talent to back it up. Seriously, am I missing something here? What's the appeal? How in the hell did Powerwolf become one of the most popular metal bands on the planet? Does anyone actually think this shit possesses an ounce of merit? I weep for humanity.

I'll say it again for those of you stuck at the scummy end of the gene pool: metal is not supposed to be fun. It's not a joyous celebration of the diversity of humanity. This is not the fucking Rocky Horror Picture show. It's not like we all regularly dress up in ridiculous costumes, hand over hundreds of dollars and travel hundreds of miles to see hack musicians perform the same songs we've already heard a hundred times over.

Wait... Shit.

Immorium - Herbstmär

Yeah, now this is more fucking like it. Not even 25% of the way through and I've already turned into a weeping, blubbery mess on the floor of my bedroom. This is the most depressing album I have heard in years. You could be halfway through receiving back-to-back hummers from both the chicks from Butcher Babies and this album would still leave you wanting to fellate a shotgun.

I can unashamedly say that I don't particularly 'get' post-black metal. Who decided that we were collectively done with black metal to the point where we had to start prefacing shitty inferior incarnations of a once-proud genre with 'post'? If I smear horse cum all over my big mac before I eat it is it a post-burger? If I edit out every scene of Breaking Bad except for the ones where his cunt of a family do something obnoxious is it post-good television? It invariably ends up being black metal but with all the good parts taken out. I understand that it's supposed to be ambient and atmospheric and all those other words hack metal critics like to bandy about, but what atmosphere in particular are they going for? Boredom?

This album is all the shitty parts of a night at a strip club laid out end to end and repeated ad nauseam. It struts around on stage trying to get your attention and builds up complexity and rhythm to a point where you are ten thousand percent certain that you are mere seconds away from impending boobage, and then shuts off the lights like the massive tease that it is and leaves you sweaty, confused and ashamed, desperately clutching at a half-chub in the darkness as you reflect on how empty and vacuous your life must have become to reach such a devastating low point. It's all buildup and no payoff. It's all sizzle and no steak. Completely forgettable.

So, the maiden voyage of the PoseurDome is a real fuckin' doozy: one band turns metal into a complete farce, the other tries so hard to take it seriously that it forgets it's supposed to be making music. But only one may emerge victorious, and the winner is...

It's tacky, it's silly well beyond the point of frustration, but it was at least vaguely listenable, and, as the shorter of the two, the only one I managed to make it through twice. Plus, I'm concerned that if I recommend Immorium, I may be found to be legally liable when all of you start turning up swinging from your ceiling fans.

-Jimmolation.

TNM Film Review: DEATHGASM

2015-10-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

Eh.

Some chuckle-worthy dark humor, a decent metal soundtrack, and some phenomenal gore gags are often overshadowed by eye-rolling film tropes and a poor overall representation of metal fan culture in New Zealand horror comedy, DEATHGASM.

When I was approached to review metal-oriented gorefest, Deathgasm, I had some high expectations. Heavy metal? Comedy? Horror movies? It sounded like the perfect marriage of everything I appreciate in life, and to be fair, there is indeed a lot to appreciate about Deathgasm. It's a fun movie, and it's definitely something the gorehounds among us will get a kick out of. But as someone who respects great film and even greater metal music, Deathgasm's greatness ultimately did not match my excitement for it.

The movie follows the awkward teenage metalhead Brodie, who finds himself stuck with his Christian conservative relatives after his mother gets put away for drug charges. Brodie's lifestyle, obviously, is not well-accepted by his family, and his whole interaction with them in the film can more or less be summed up by watching the first three minutes of Tenacious D's Pick of Destiny. He covers his walls in posters (more on which ones in a second), consistently wears his patch-covered denim vest (more on which bands in a second), and spends his spare moments at home wanking away on a cheap B.C Rich and a puny Marshall practice amp, much to their religious dismay. He's also not well accepted by his peers at school, constantly tortured by his own cousin and his bro dude friends in the sort of sadistic ways that you don't really see outside of cinema. That sort of "well, well, well" swirly-giving bullying that is only one example of the many in regards to Deathgasm's admittedly lazy writing. Of course, the bully cousin has a perfect blonde girlfriend who he doesn't treat exactly perfect, so she can't launch her moist, vagina into Brodie's nice-guy-with-a-bad-boy face fast enough after putting dewy eyes on him for all of 6 seconds. I think Brodie helps her pick up some dropped books or some shit as the harbinger of their inevitable romance. I groaned out loud at this moment, and I wish it would be the only time in the film I felt like doing so.

Early in the film, Brodie meets up with fellow metal maniac Zakk, who is clearly presented as the metal elitist of elitists. However, my interest in how they would go about representing his sort of character properly in the film was soundly dashed the moment he pouted his lips and nodded in true metal approval the moment Brodie expressed interest in a Trivium record. Yes, let's talk about that now... This movie, meant to put underground metalheads in the spotlight as protagonists, oozes with appreciation for Trivium, of all things. Trivium posters, Trivium patches, Trivium stickers, Trivium t-shirts. It's all over the fucking place. It baffles me that a movie that would make use of black metal music and imagery would have a mainstream vanilla metal band like Trivium present in the same piece of media so prominently.

That's not my biggest issue with how metal fandom is represented in Deathgasm. It portrays metal fans as a bunch of bullied, brooding edgelords who consistently have to reassure their fragile masculinity at every turn with artificially inflated crassness and intention to offend. It implies that there's no way anyone could listen to extreme music without having overblown hardships regarding their upbringing or social interactions. Considering the people who made this film surely must have been metal fans themselves, I was disappointed to see how inaccurately portrayed metal fans were as a whole. While it's often true that metalheads tend to be a bit less socially inclined than most people, generally the most shocking thing about us is how dully normal we all are. I didn't have a traumatic childhood and I'm not a sociopath, but somehow I find myself a black metal fan anyway. I think if the film lent itself to playing with that concept, I would have enjoyed it significantly more.

Perhaps the movie played into the metalhead stereotypes on purpose strictly for entertainment value. It's a comedy, after all. Nothing in this film is meant to be taken that seriously. I just feel it was a missed opportunity to shine some truth on the subject of metal fans. Ultimately, Brodie's crummy life and abuse is what leads him to summon a demonic presence in the pursuit of greater strength, so it all played into the main plot of the film. I guess I'm just taking it personally that it was done at the expense of his joy of metal music. The horror genre has no shortage of bullied weaklings that do something despicable out of resentment or desperation. Deathgasm just uses the perceived suffering of metal fandom as a new excuse to make that happen, and it didn't exactly sit right with me.

Finally, considering this was an independent horror film, Deathgasm's story and characters were overall very Hollywood simple. The women in the film are essentially walking blow up dolls used to enhance the male characters' plot. Eventually they get to upgrade from brainless eye candy to fighting fuck toys. So aside from the gore gals among us, this movie doesn't have much to offer the ladies. There's a chubby comedic relief buffoon, an evil organization of rich people, some sort of clairvoyant with prophesies of doom and the aforementioned lead protagonist in a new town and new school where he has a tough time fitting in. They could have done anything with this plot, and it's not as though I didn't approve of the supernatural horror that all this fluff finally leads up to. It just seemed like Deathgasm was a very typical teenage boy struggle film with a metal appreciation skin overlaying it. Just replace black metal and deadites with radioactive spider powers and this is a movie we've seen too many times before.

I didn't want to give Deathgasm a poor review. It's got a lot of cool stuff. A solid metal soundtrack, funny jokes, kickass animated transitions, good acting, and the gore gags are all spectacular. It's a mindlessly fun movie and it should just be treated as such. However, if you were looking at Deathgasm to be the essential movie for metalheads who want to see themselves portrayed properly as unlikely heroes, I'd keep looking.

2.5/5

TNM Goes To A Show: Bölzer, Watain and Behemoth at Metro Theatre, Sydney

2015-10-07T04:50:00.003-07:00

Here at TNM, since we apparently refuse to learn our lesson, we occasionally decide to voluntarily subject ourselves to the marathon of armpit stank, shirtless fat guys and 8 dollar beers that is the public gathering of metal fans at your nearest small-to-medium-sized venue. I'm talking, of course, about metal shows.

Jesus Christ, what an absolute fucking sham. You can barely convince most metalheads to part with 15 bucks for a decent record that you get to own forever, yet we're more than happy to shell out half a hundred clams to go and stand with a bunch of complete strangers and be violently shoved around for 3-4 hours just to be reminded of the fact that most of our favorite bands can't even play their own music properly.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the reason we go to metal shows isn't because we want to listen to live metal, it's because we want to show off. If you wear your cut-off denim jacket covered in patches from underground Scandinavian black metal bands to work (assuming that by some miracle you actually have a job), you're going to get sectioned.

But a metal concert is the one place on the planet where anyone even comes close to giving a shit if you've ever listened to Lich King. It's the one place you, as a modern day metal elitist, can forget for just one night that your parents are bitterly disappointed in you and everything you stand for.

In Australia, we only get maybe one or two metal shows a year (if that) which warrant even the casual raising of an eyebrow, so when I heard that Bölzer, Watain and Behemoth were coming to a city within driving distance of my house, I brushed the Cheetos dust off my lap, put on some pants and hopped right on to it.

There's three crucial parts to every decent metal show: the band sets, the crowd, and the venue, and being the journalistic equivalent of a turgid, throbbing, unyielding erection that I am, I am going to bestow upon our unsuspecting readers a review of each of the above aspects of the concert.

Ladies, three at a time, please.

The Venue

When myself and the complete poseurs I've allowed to assume are my friends arrived at the Metro, being that we were from out of town, I have to admit we were pleasantly surprised. We climbed the stairs and were greeted by a huge open bar area completely separated from the theater itself. I ordered my usual Jack and Coke and the bar staff were efficient and helpful, I waited about 45 seconds in line. The drinks were strong and reasonably priced ($7 for a Jack and Coke at a gig in Australia is a fucking steal) and the bar was intelligently placed far enough from the performance area that the barmaid could hear you placing your order and you could drink it in peace while verbally undermining your fellow metal fans and without being barged into by the token wannabe Pitmaster General and having it spill all over your combat boots.

After downing about 3-4 drinks apiece we headed inside to catch the last half of Bölzer's set (my biggest regret of the evening, more on that later) and were greeted with what is without a doubt the most intelligently constructed metal venue I've ever laid eyes upon. It appears that whoever built the Metro is a fan of Brenocide's, because the glorious oasis for the withering metal fan known as 'The Back' was basically a tiered staircase with seats and railing to lean on at each level, leading up to a top floor that had a second, equally badass bar and a gallery that stretched all the way around one side of the theater.

But if, like me, you are young, virile and in possession of a huge swinging dick, the area dedicated to pit-based shenanigans was large enough that no one was being face-slammed against the wall or buried in a pit viking's arm pit, but still small enough that everyone who wanted to be close to the band was able to do so, there were multiple staircases that lead outside if you wanted to duck out for a smoke, and the merch table was reasonable with pricing, well stocked and staffed for the duration of the show. No matter why you came to the show, the venue had you covered, and I know that liking something is not funny or metal, but I could not think of one single thing wrong with this venue. If you get a chance to check out a show at the Metro, do it, or you're a fucking idiot.

The Sets

Bölzer: I hadn't heard much about Bölzer before the show, and given that they were the opening act, we figured based on previous experience with openers that we'd be pretty safe missing half of their set in favor of drinking excessively at our hotel prior to heading in.

Talk about a rookie mistake. Bölzer are hands down the most promising new death metal act I have heard in years, and I immediately wished I had turned up for their whole set. They're a two piece band consisting of a drummer and a guitarist/vocalist that manage to produce a more interesting and complete sound than just about any similar band working today. This band got a notoriously cynical crowd of Australian metal fans (99% of whom had never heard of them) going absolutely fucking apeshit. Do your Periphery-worshiping ass a favor and add some Bölzer to your diet.

Watain: Oh, fuck. The best thing about Watain's set was that it didn't really go for long. I have never seen a band try so hard for an audience so indifferent. Out of the thousand-ish people in attendance, maybe 5-10% of the audience could have given a shit. Most of the people in the designated fun zone for Bölzer filtered out to the bar or joined the line for the merch table while Watain were playing.

It's not that it was a bad set, it's just that the people who clearly came solely to see Watain were such complete rectal emissions that it ruined anyone else's chance of enjoying the band. The pit for Watain's set was full of 19 year olds wearing corpse paint who thought that the very fact that a black metal band was playing in Australia gave them license to quite literally throw punches at one another in the pit, and the band condoned this behavior from their fans. These little shits threw full beers from the pit into the rest of the audience on purpose, which not only (criminally) wasted beer, but drove anyone who may have wanted to enjoy the set far away from the action.

They probably put on a pretty good show, but all I can tell you is that after the third chest-high lip ring sporting poseur decided to try and plant a haymaker on me for daring to be in the first half-dozen rows at a metal concert, I decided to head on out to the bar to get extra drunk for Behemoth.

Behemoth: Chances are, if you've ever seen a Behemoth set in a reasonably intimate setting, you've seen something pretty close to their set at The Metro. There's a reason these guys are one of the most enduring metal bands working today. They know how to put on a show.

It's pretty tough to beat Behemoth when it comes to showmanship. Their stage presence is one of the best I've seen from a metal band. Shit was set on fire, blood was literally rained down upon the first few rows, their costuming and lighting cues were perfect.

Musically, they aren't even close to the best black/death metal band around at the moment, but it's easy to see why 90% of the people who turned up to the gig came purely to see Behemoth. They understand their audience and their image. They played the music their fans wanted to hear with the theatrics we've come to expect from them. In terms of who played the best music, Bölzer probably has them beat, but Behemoth definitely put on a show to remember, and it was probably worth going just to see Nergal blindly throw his guitar over his shoulder at the end of their set only for it to be caught mid-air by his waiting guitar tech (seriously, no matter what that guy's earning, it's not enough).

The Crowd

Overall, I was amazed at the crowd's ability to uphold the tenants of true metal. I was not forced to bear witness to one single superfluous neck tattoo; spin kick; thumb sticking out or douchebag headbanging in the bathroom.

With the exception of Watain's set, the pit was solid. Those who fell to the ground were picked up, very few people tried to bring their beers up to the front and people who didn't want to mosh (generally) stayed out of the moshing area.

But holy shit, people, do we have to tell you all again that you're not supposed to bring your girlfriend to shows? I've never seen anything like it. No less than a dozen corset-clad harlots managed to force their boyfriends to shield them as they awkwardly shouldered their way to the front row, and these dudes then proceeded to bitch incessantly when their raven-haired fuck holes got sideswiped by metal fans possessing the gall to have a good time.

News flash, sweetheart, if you want to get to the front, get there early, and if you don't want a bunch of dudes rubbing all up on your girlfriend, don't bring her into the pit at a fucking metal show. Owning a vagina does not mean I have to stop enjoying the band and part the red fucking sea to make sure your 5'4" ass gets a closeup of Nergal dropping the opening riff to Slaves Shall Serve.

When it comes down to it, the Australian metal scene can be pretty lackluster and I was very surprised to see that we could all get together and not completely embarrass ourselves. Kudos to you, Sydney. Together we managed not to be one giant collective neck beard.

The one and only time it's ok to take a selfie. [From Behemoth's Facebook page]

-Jimmolation

Review: Stonefromthesky - Orbital

2015-09-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yep, looks like a one man band's cover art.

Stonefromthesky is a one man band from Kiev, Ukraine. Strike one right out the gate is being a one man band. Usually the term implies "Pretentious Douche". The description the artist provides of himself doesn't help much either. "The project started in 2012 as means of individual self-expression. Soon it grew into an experiment to see what one man could do on his own.". Unfortunately "what one man can do on his own" turns out to be a complete waste of time. Here is his explanation of the genres his music incorporates "Though his music has definite electronic roots, stonefromthesky’s style also combines elements of atmospheric sludge, post-metal, stoner rock, ambient, glitch, IDM, breakbeat and whatnot.", which sounds like a fancy way of saying industrial music with distorted guitars and yelling, and unless Ukraine's definition of metal is drastically different from the one true definition as etched into stone by Tony Iommi, that is not metal.

The album all tends to blend together. In the five or so listens I can find nothing remarkable, let alone metal, about this album except that portions of the track Irreversible sound like they could have come off the soundtrack to Pi. Ignore the terms sludge and post metal. They are there to lure you in. Like a trapdoor spider, this album seems safe on the surface with it's description of a experimental metal with digital elements. But what it really desires, is to let it's true nature grab you from the below the seemingly safe surface and drain the metal from your body, leaving you a husk of what you once were.

The main problem I have with this album isn't the music itself. It's that it was sent to a metal website for review, which is actually not Stonefromthesky's fault. It's your fault. You poseurs that listen to Rammstein and attempt to speak their name in the same sentence as Ministry. Ministry earned their place in metal, Stonefromthesky has done nothing to prove that he belongs in our hallowed halls. Contrary to what Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails fans may tell you, industrial music isn't metal. It never was, and it's disgusting the way it seeps into metal and tries to taint it. If your favorite metal bands include Rob Zombie, you aren't metal. Take your fancy sound effects and shove them up your ass. It's as if you're talking to someone about steak, the most metal of meats, and some cock brings up imitation meat with steak flavoring. It isn't steak. Its a monstrosity that appropriates a portion of it and pretends to be on the same level.

If you want to have a spider incapacitate you so that you may host it's young until they are mature enough to devour you alive click here. There is also a video for those of you that feel the questionable urge to see the visual aspect of what one man can do on his own. Watch it here.

Sagecutioner