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 […]
Epilogue
Immigration and customs was busy at Logan International Airport. Despite the crucial importance the officials played in preventing threats to the United States from entering its borders, they were currently more concerned with keeping the line moving. A tall, thin, olive-skinned man with shoulder-length hair hoped to use this to his advantage. “I can take the next in line,” a middle-aged official with thinning hair announced. The olive-skinned man approached. “Passport?” the official asked. The olive-skinned man dutifully handed it to him, trying to seem natural. The contents of that “passport” would be the first lies of many. “Where are you flying in from?” the official asked. “Moscow, with a connection in Istanbul,” the olive-skinned man answered. This much was true. He knew this answer would prompt a string of additional questions, especially since his passport indicated he was from neither Russia nor the US, but it couldn’t be helped. […]
Part 30: When There’s No More Room in the Other Place…
I sat in the green room of The Rusty Nail, tuning my guitar. I was still playing my guitar, not one of Charlie’s, but ever since I changed its strings after breaking one I could barely tell the difference. It had been two weeks since Charlie returned to the “mortal realm” and we won the Battle of the Bands, and there had been no sign of any “enforcement department” coming back for Charlie. That hadn’t stopped him from preparing, however. Every day we showed up to his house for rehearsal, he’d be practicing manipulating his instruments to use them as weapons, and he’d continue once we left. Once Travis asked Charlie if he and I should have been learning to use the holy weapons as well, since we’d be targeted as his “power source.” Charlie’s answer was “The best way you can learn to use these is by playing them. […]
Part 29: Fifteen Days to Slow the Shred
Click, flash! “Looks great, guys. Congratulations!” the photographer from The Sturlusson Free Press said after taking our photo with the trophy. “Can you believe this, Travis?” I asked excitedly, “We’re even going to be in the newspaper!” “I wouldn’t necessarily call that a good thing,” Charlie said in a low voice. “What do you mean?” I asked, “Look, I know winning a Battle of the Bands might not mean much to you in your 1,500 year history, but it undoubtedly means Travis and I are more brutal, right? Isn’t that what you want?” “I’m not talking about winning the Battle of the Bands,” Charlie replied, “I’m talking about what you just said: the newspaper. Remember all the institutions I told you the insiders controlled?” “You’re not seriously saying there are power-hungry frauds in our lame local paper, are you?” I looked at Charlie in bewilderment, “I’m pretty sure they don’t […]
Part 28: My Dinner with Charlie
“Man, you guys were brutal!” Adam belched into my ear as we manually disassembled Charlie’s drum set. Although Charlie could have disassembled it just as fast as he had assembled it on his own, we weren’t about to push our luck. Before our set, Rick had turned his back from the stage for only a few seconds. When he turned back our drummer, whom he had not seen enter the green room, was leaving it and sitting down at a drum set that hadn’t been there moments before. We started our set on time, so he hadn’t complained, but as someone who had probably been working in live music longer than Travis or I had been alive, that was the first time he had seen anything like that. No need for him to see it happen twice in the same night. “Thanks!” I replied, too ecstatic to even take issue […]
Part 27: The Deal’s Off
“Come on, get off your butts!” Before either Travis or I could react to anything that had just happened, the rashes on our shoulders lit up in the worst agony either of us had experienced. The day I skipped rehearsal felt like a papercut by comparison. “AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!” “Hey Charlie,” one of the intangible metalheads said, “I think your bandmates may have broken your guys’s agreement.” “Ah, crap. I forgot about that,” Charlie muttered, “Well, so have I. No need to punish them for that anymore.” The pain stopped. As Travis and I continued to lay on the ground, doubled over from the pain that had just ended, another intangible metalhead said “Nice going guys, it sounds like someone’s coming.” The intangible metalhead was right. I could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. “Lezz scare this person away!” a metalhead wearing a Kreator t-shirt, ripped jeans, a blue denim vest covered […]