As a metalhead immerses himself into the chaotic void of despair that is metal, he eventually becomes accustomed to some of the lyrical and artistic themes that define and distinguish the seemingly unending variety of subgenres that populate the genre. Eventually he is able to guess the subgenre of a band by its name alone, even if he has never heard of the band, never heard their music, or even seen their album artwork or band logo. Fleshcrawl? Your “flesh crawls” when you are exposed to something gross, gory, or disgusting. Probably death metal. Bestial Warlust? Well, “bestial black metal” is often used to describe war metal, and this band has both “bestial” and “war” in their name, so they must be war metal. Bongzilla? Oh, come on. However, this is not a foolproof method. For one thing, many of these subgenres are all still metal and unsurprisingly share many […]
Dear Metal Bands: Stop Changing Your Logos
Despite me branding myself as the only real metalhead (which is true, shut up), I am actually pretty open-minded when it comes to metal bands experimenting with their sound. Hell, my favorite band is Katatonia. Not only are they my favorite band, I’ll even go as far as to say they have never released a bad album, even with their continuously changing sound. But just because I grant them permission to change their sound does not mean they can go around changing their logo all willy-nilly! I don’t care that a band’s image should reflect its sound and should change with the sound accordingly. I still want to see the exact same logo that the band had designed when they had barely become legal adults (if that) on every single album, every single t-shirt, every tour poster, and every other piece of band merch until the heat death of the […]
This New Convenience is Rather Inconvenient
I hate flying. I don’t hate flying because I’m afraid of being on a plane. I have a good enough understanding of statistics to know the likelihood of my flight crashing, being hijacked by terrorists, being shot down my a hostile military, or disappearing altogether are next to nothing. My basic understanding of statistics also lets me know that I have an almost guaranteed chance of encountering at least one of the following: I could write an entire essay on how utterly useless and ineffectual the TSA is, but the fact that you can now by a FastPass to skip the line has already done the job for me by proving what we knew all along: that they’re completely full of shit. However, to the TSA’s credit, they’ve actually started to implement a few changes in their security screening process that has made it slightly less of a pain in […]
All Hail the Mighty Skullet!
Metalheads are sometimes labeled as “nonconformists,” but I think that’s a mischaracterization. The way we present ourselves may not conform to the norms of the general population, but within the metalhead community we have our own norms and standards that let us easily identify each other as part of the same subculture (and more importantly, to judge poseurs who aren’t). Maybe those who pioneered the metalhead subculture were nonconformists when they started the trends of battle vests, bullet belts, camo pants, and long hair, but now that those are the established metal uniform the rest of us are just following it to the best of our ability. And some metalheads ardently follow that last part, long hair, and they’re not about to let their inability to grow it stop them. These are the SEAL Team 6 of the metalhead community. The elite of the elite. The ones who are willing […]
The Tyranny of Touch-Sensitive Controls
Do you like your electronics to be easy to use? Have good functionality? Not require regular referrals back to the owner’s manual? Apparently not, because if you did, I wouldn’t be writing this article. As a capitalist, I understand that businesses are incentivized to appeal to consumer demands. The greater variety of demands in the market, the greater variety of choices. But the inverse of this is also true, which must be why every headphones customer other than me prefers they be sleek, solid pieces of plastic, because god forbid someone prefer to have a few unsightly buttons sticking out. I used to have a great pair of Sony headphones. They had a power button, a button for play/pause, a button to turn the noise canceling on or off, a volume switch, and a fast forward/rewind switch. Each gave me an unmistakable “click” to know when I had pushed it. […]
Great Albums With Awful Cover Art
Making an album is hard. I’ve never done it, of course, because I have a real job. But I’ve listened to enough crappy albums to know how hard it must be to make a good one. You’ve already had to collaborate with your idiot bandmates, the producer, the various studio techs, your record label, to finally release your work to the world. Except how are your fans going to know what to buy? The trick System of a Down pulled with Steal This Album! only worked once. You’re going to need some original artwork for your album. Let’s hope you got a better artist than the ones who made these: Illdisposed – Four Depressive Seasons One might be able to forgive Danish death metal outfit Illdisposed for the artwork of Four Depressive Seasons. It was their first album, released on a small record label, and limited to only 500 copies. […]
And the Moral of the Story is…
I learned many lessons one night a few months ago. I was split between attending an office party for my day job, and seeing the stoner doom metal band Elder play. I wasn’t dead-set on either, since I didn’t know how many people I’d know at the office party, but I had only gotten into Elder’s music a few weeks before. Since the office party began first, I decided to start there. If it held my attention, great, but if not I’d leave early, go to the concert, and buy a ticket at the door. I had never been to this venue before, but it looked like a small dive bar when I looked it up. Elder was no Metallica, I was sure there would still be tickets available the night of the show. The office party was alright. I talked to a few people I knew, had a few drinks from […]
Popular Bands With Terrible Band Photos
With its unending list of subgenres, the genre of “metal music” consists of a wide variety of musical styles. However, the variety of ways metal music can look is almost as wide as the ways it can sound. Some bands go all-out with intricate band logos, album art, and live performances, others take a more minimalist approach, and some use a combination of both depending on the medium. One medium that is no exception to this variety is the band photo. While Mgła requires their trademark hoods, leather jackets, trees, and fog, a simple black background and street clothes are sufficient for Obituary. However, some band photos even fall short of the minimalist threshold and are just plain sloppy. Due to the inevitable fact that any metal band, no matter how popular or talented, will have some terrible photos, I will be limiting my selection to photos from Encyclopaedia Metallum. […]
Show me what you got!
I recently saw a cover band called Left to Die. I normally don’t see the appeal of cover bands, but I gave this band a go for two reasons: However, ordinarily I’m not interested in going to a cover band concert. The cover band is not the real thing, so why would they try to be? Why not be your own real thing? If I’m going to go to your band’s concert, I want to hear your band’s music. Like in that Rick and Morty episode, show me what you got. I don’t care if it sucks. I don’t care if it’s blatantly derivative of other, more successful bands. As long as you’re actually making the attempt to write and play your own music, I will be far more interested in seeing your band play than if you were a carbon copy of my favorite band (who hardly ever tours North America, so I’m […]
Guitar Legend Alexi Laiho Has Passed Away
I checked a popular metal news blog today while at work to learn that Alexi “Wildchild” Laiho, best known as the frontman and lead guitarist for the Finnish melodic death metal band Children of Bodom, has recently passed away. My heart fell into my ass upon reading this. Children of Bodom has been one of my favorite bands for almost a decade now. They were one of the first bands to introduce me to the Nordic melodic death metal scene as well as death metal as a whole. Even after going down that rabbit hole and discovering countless other bands, they still hold up, largely thanks to Laiho’s absolutely shredding guitar work. He was truly one of the best, most technical guitarists the music scene has encountered and has inspired countless wannabe rockers to pick up a guitar. I never had a chance to see him live. The one time […]