Category: Editorials


The fuck?

Last night, Architects debuted their new song “Day In Day Out” on BBC’s Radio 1 Rock from their upcoming album The Here and Now. A low quality rip has been made available on YouTube for those who couldn’t hear it.

My initial thoughts went something like, “The fuck is this? This must be Norma Jean or something and they’re pulling a fast one on us.” This new song sounds like it came from an entirely different band, sounding as if they’re trying to appeal to an American audience, proving that Europeans think we have terrible taste.

Well, okay, we do… but cut it the fuck out.

The song itself is a bit of a grower once the shock wore off. After all, just about every similar band sounds more mainstream as they further their careers. It was only about time for Architects to reach that point. Hollow Crown was pretty unique and stood out to me, but if the rest of the new album sounds like this, it seems that they’ve traded in their crowns for ironic trucker hats. So much for being technical and proggy, right?

But what’s done is done. What do you guys think of the new song?

- JR

The biting bi-weekly bible on all things metal is back, baby. I shouldn’t have to tell you that alliteration is metal; The Number Of The Blog builds their whole week around it. No, this week’s topic is on poverty. Despite the fact that money is said to be the root of all evil (and evil being a fairly metal concept), money has everything to do with awesome and nothing to do with metal. To put it simply:

MONEY = AWESOME

METAL = AWESOME

MONEY =/= METAL

Don’t give me that look. It’s called being mutually exclusive, dipshit. Was your ACT score a whopping 7? Fuck off. No, here’s the theory behind this money/metal mathematical mix-up (more alliteration, bitches):

  1. People are attracted to awesome things. This is Theoretical Awesomeness Gravity at work, also known as TAG. This may or may not be where the body spray got its name.
  2. Things with a large mass of awesome (such as a lot of money and music) have great gravitational pull. The more awesome something is, the more gravity it has. Metal is clearly the most awesome genre of music, and being the heaviest genre, it has more mass. This is making so much sense, it’s blowing even MY mind.
  3. When an assortment of smaller awesome things are combined with a large awesome thing, you get a Solar System of Success. More alliteration. Fuck me, I’m awesome.
  4. When two very large awesome things get too close, they pull into eachother, creating a clusterfuck of debris and bullshit that could reach critical mass and implode upon itself. Sure, you could sift through the rubble to find some gems, but most of the larger chunks of awesome have been incinerated. Too much of a good thing is bad for you.
  5. Therefore, when you get money too close to metal, they pull into eachother and collide, effectively ruining everyone’s good time.

Make sense now? Don’t be silly, of course it does. I shouldn’t have to tell you why a rich man making metal is bad news. What are they going to write about? Stock portfolios? Mortgages? There’s the door to my office. Get the fuck out. The metal will be boring and uninspired, with no artistic strive other than for financial gain. That’s not metal at all, man.

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I have no idea what to write about from a metal perspective so I decided that since I’ve seen Minus the Bear live (out of the few bands I’ve seen live, cryface) and they’re one of the few good indie/math rock bands out there I’d give them an honorable mention for being totally kick ass.

So, they’re pretty awesome. They play a pretty unique style that’s really soothing and relaxing. Yet, at the same time, it’s never insipid and boring. Their best album, Menos el Oso (Minus the Bear in Spanish), evokes a feeling of carefree happiness. Imagine driving along the beach as the sun sets in a convertible, the wind flowing through your hair. If life was impeccable, this is what it’d sound like. To top things off, their music is technically inclined and the composition is even better. Tracks like “The Fix” have really comforting tapping that’s sure to send chills down your spine.

Then comes their 2007 release Planet of Ice, which showed a change stylistically. They mellowed out a bunch more and really lived up to its artwork: a cold, barren planet. Not only is the music a lot more “chill” and calm, they added a lot more synthesizers to the music. I’m not talking about acid synths or anything, but the music isn’t as technical and relies a lot more on its artificial undertones. It’s a wonderful album no doubt and the catchy choruses are abundant. The more sex-influenced lyrics may be a turn off to some, but they’re not done in an abrasive manner like R&B. Seriously, if you can’t get laid listening to “When We Escape” there is something wrong with you. I kid, of course.

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Things That Are Fucking Metal is new series of satirical comedy pieces that explores what makes metal so fucking metal. So hold tight and cut out the bitching, as it’s a joke. I know it’s sort of ruining the experience if I make it obvious, but I know there will be butthurt. So without further ado…

Metal is the musical equivalent of piledriving a shark, and much like shark piledriving, it should be left to the men to take care of. It takes testicular fortitude to write some deep introspective lyrics and pissed off music. Sure, we’ve all heard the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Yeah, that would be true if you want to listen to a song about bullshit Facebook drama and how poor their self-esteem is. No one wants to hear that shit. Get the fuck out of my office. Metal isn’t for people who get extremely butthurt and emotionally unbalanced for five days out of the month. I’ll admit, bleeding is one of the manliest and most metal things one person could do, but not when it isn’t caused by something awesome like a barfight or a motorcycle collision. The fact of the matter is chauvinism and metal go hand in hand. You can’t be metal without being manly. This is a fact of life and if you disagree, I will slap your shit.

Sure, you could make the argument that metal is a sausage festival, but did you ever stop to think that this is no coincidence? You bet your ass you didn’t, because you’re a dipshit. Women in metal are doing one of the two following things:

  1. Being eye candy
  2. Ruining it

Just look at Winds of Plague and their constant cycling of disposable female keyboard players. They could easily stick a man in that spot and get some real work done, because men have the natural instinct of getting shit done. But no, Winds of Plague are trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel and attract the lowest common denominator while trying to hide the fact that their music isn’t very good (which isn’t working, by the way). You know what happens when you have a woman in metal? They do stupid shit like taking topless pictures of themselves and stirring up drama where it doesn’t belong. Show some class, for Christ’s sake. You’re making yourselves look bad.

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Now don’t get me wrong, I really do love metal for the most part, it’s one of my favorite genres of music! There are a few aspects of it however, that I really can’t stand. I loathe them. One of the worst of these aspects that I hear over and over and over again in metal today are absolutely terrible transitions. There are many different kinds of awful transitions, but in this post I’m just going to focus on bashing one particular type of transition, the kind I hate the most. Lets get started.

Metal Band X is writing a song, they have Riff A and Riff B. How do they get from Riff A to Riff B? Well it’s quite simple really. Once Riff A has reached is climax with every member of the band playing/screaming at full force, every band member suddenly stops playing besides one of the guitarists. The said guitarist then begins playing Riff B alone. Maybe they’ll play it once, maybe they’ll play it 4 times. It depends on how long Riff B is I suppose. Anyways, after the guitarist does their thing, the rest of the band jumps back in and they all play Riff B together. Transition completed. Simple as that.

It’s really not so terrible, until you realize that this type of transition typically occurs lets say….10-20 times on your average metal album, and it gets pretty stale.

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My response to anyone getting butthurt over musical differences

Inspired by the inane ramblings of fanboys when their favorite band is under scrutiny. Everyone just needs to relax, take a deep breath and realize not everyone is out to laugh at your musical taste or bash bands simply for the sake of it. In fact, and I know this may come as a shock to many people, not everyone has the same musical taste!

Now, I like to consider myself well-informed of the internet and its happenings. Not only this, but its nature as well. I realize anyone can be an obnoxious troll, or that 12-year-olds can get their hands on a forum and make absurd and invalid fanboy arguments (see Xbox Republic), but I’ve come to wonder: is it just me or is everyone getting more uptight and angsty about a certain band not having 100% approval? Go on Last.FM, make a negative statement about a band or album and watch as the brigade of butthurt tremors the Earth in fury as they destroy the shoutbox with “fag”, “you’re retarded” and “you like x band so your opinion doesn’t matter.” In retrospect, everyone has musical differences. Bob may like T-Pain and Cannibal Corpse, but he may dislike Atheist and Death. Is it really that big of a deal? Is everyone suddenly fucking retarded? There’s a difference between making erroneous statements and having an opinion. Calling Cryptopsy crunkcore is a flatout lie, but not liking Cryptopsy‘s older work and enjoying their new stuff does not make a person ignorant, “untrue” or even stupid. The stigma of certain genres and bands is disgusting. Not everyone who likes Korn is an angst-ridden teenager nor is everyone who likes death metal weird and socially inept. But I’ll save that for another rant.

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Why do we do it to ourselves?

Not again!

We metal bloggers put ourselves through some shit for you guys in the name of entertainment. Our broseph Grover XIII over at The Number of the Blog subjects himself weekly to shitty music, just so you can speak with authority on the vacuousness of various popular musical abominations without actually having to listen to them yourself, a mantle (for it is a manly mantle) that our own glorious leader Jimmy bore for a week whilst GroverXIII gave birth (that’s what I heard on the grapevine anyway).

We also listen to and review a whole load of crap in between your Deftones, your Iron Thrones, your Dillingers and your Ihsahns.

FSM knows why – although I think it has something to do with TNOTB‘s recent Trainwreck Tuesday/Shitty Music Saturday features – but I started to notice the ridiculous number of times both Justin ‘prays nightly for puberty‘ Bieber and Ke$ha ‘probably takes it up the bum in a back alley‘ Serbert songs were played on the radio whilst I was at work. Not even just one of them either; apparently people have allowed them to record more than one song, as if that wasn’t enough. Chroist.

Now understand that I’ve just spent three years completing a degree (First Class Honours, thank you very much), prior to which I worked at a job for a year that allowed me a certain amount of freedom with regard to what I listened to in the office. I’ve not listened to the radio in years – and with good reason. Some – some – radio music is okay. Sometimes they even get it right; I heard Faith No More’s rendition of Easy the other day.

So when I started my new job, the lack or originality shown in the radio playlists was hilarity – and I get the idea to tally the number of times Bieber and Ke$ha get played on the most banal of all the stations – one Capital FM – and relay my misery back to you, my metal bretheren. Because I can. Because I know you have to put up with it too. Because we are brothers and sisters in heavy, and so you know you are not alone.

You know what? Fuck you bretheren. What the hell kind of idea was that?

You see, in starting this, I had to continue; for the good of the article – nay, the site – nay, the internet! Before, it had been a little joke: “Hey, it’s Bieber again! What’s that, zillionth time today?!” Chuckle-chuckle, guffaw-guffaw.

But by the end of the week…well, you know what? Just read on.

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Ho boy. So yeah, this is the kettle of piranhas I was talking about at the end of the last post. Converge. Con-Verge. Con-Fucking-Verge.

No matter your opinion of them, you can’t deny that they are heavy. Once I accepted and loved them, there really was no going back; no more pansy indie or acoustic pop for me!*

Although at first, I really didn’t. Perhaps my mentor in heavy introduced them too early in the learning process, but even at that point, with Isis and At The Drive-In under my belt, I had that reaction that most of the general public have when they hear something as discordant as….Coheed. Yeah.

It was a little too much too soon. I’m sure I phased most of it out; a travesty, to be sure. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Because I fucking love them now.

There are not many like Converge. Oh sure, there are plenty of good hardcore bands. I could write reams about Botch’s influence on me (maybe later). But those with Converge’s almost undefinable quality? Not many.

As well it should have been, my introduction to Converge was by the marvel that is Jane Doe. Forty-four minutes of pure fucking caustic majesty. It’s no wonder I didn’t settle right into hardcore. I mean Concubine; fancy hitting all the drums at once then? Forty-four second-long tracks? How do they work?

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Inspired by GroverXIII of TNOTB’s series of posts regarding nu-metal, Heavy Blog Is Heavy will be counting down the top five reasons why the genre of deathcore is totally full of shit. If you want to throw in your two cents and call me out on missing out a gem that this genre has to offer, mouth off in the comment section. Be sure to check out my Five Reasons Why Deathcore Isn’t Total Shit for some better music. Enjoy!

So far…
#5. Oceano – Depths
#4. Emmure – Felony
#3. We Butter The Bread With Butter – Das Monster Aus Dem Schrank
#2. Wecamewithbrokenteeth – We’re Packing, Are You?

There was no avoiding it. I knew all week that I would have to listen to this album for this countdown and was dreading it. You knew it was going to happen, as it’s obvious that the self proclaimed “Kingpins of Death” in Waking The Cadaver would rear their ugly heads this week. When you’re talking about shitty deathcore, it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room. Great minds think alike, I suppose.

I must start out by saying that I hate slam with every ounce in me. It has to be some of the dumbest music I’ve ever heard. Sure, sometimes it’s technical, but that isn’t everything. The vocals are shit, and to me, there’s very limited quality to be found in this subgenre. But when it comes to scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of musical quality, there’s no doubt in my mind that Waking The Cadaver is the worst of the worst, especially on their album Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler. I’ve heard some of their newer stuff from their upcoming Beyond Cops. Beyond God. and they dropped much of their brutal slam sound in favor of a less shitty generic deathcore sound, but even still, the face of music will be forever tarnished by the shit stain in the undies of deathcore.

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Okay, okay, don’t take the title the wrong way. I thought their debut Eden Fire was decent at best and every subsequent album got shittier and shittier, but it was still metal. Barely, but still metal. Now the band has treaded from metal to… I don’t even know. I get it’s a ballad, but c’mon… this isn’t even trying. This is honestly one of the WORST songs I have EVER heard. See, there’s bad bands/groups like Brokencyde, but they don’t really take themselves seriously. Then there’s Sonic Syndicate, who take themselves completely seriously. You may disagree with me here, but I don’t care. I would honestly rather listen to some crunkcore autotune drivel over this pseudo-ballad crap. Christ, man, the vocalist can’t sing whatsoever and the music is devoid of any life, passion and emotion. It’s all just one clusterfuck of cash-and-run crap. If you’re gonna write some mopey, teenager shit at least do it right.

Don’t even get me started on the video. Rain? Sitting in your car looking away from the camera? Putting your hand on your head with your hood up, sulking? I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS WATCHING A COUNTRY MUSIC VIDEO. EVEN THE GOD DAMN VOCAL MELODIES SOUND LIKE COUNTRY.

The album with this abysmal excuse for music comes out August 10th. If you even care, that is.

Kill me now.

-MK

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