Dead1

Impetigo - Horror of the Zombies

Done well then! I've seen a handful, most of which were derivative and a couple were enjoyable.

Extinction of Mankind - The Nightmare Seconds Motorhead - Overkill Slayer - Haunting the Chapel Slavenkust - Slavenkust Again thanks to the Goatmaster General for a couple of those recos. When it comes to modern metal/extreme music, crustpunk, blackened speed and blackened thrash are where it's at for me - I can generally listen to any of that stuff and find it enjoyable.

This is the truth is a lot of pop culture not just movies but video games, role playing as well as music (eg our the mainstream aspects of our beloved metal is run mainly as a nostalgia show). Western society's obsession with profit combined with a brutal IP protections and ageing populations are now acting against creativity. Why risk money into something new and unique when you can churn out some unoriginal big name franchise that will get people spending their money even if they hate it? Stuff like Iron Man, Avengers, Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Dr Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hulk etc etc? Marvel is owned by Disney.

Not with Marvel where they stay relatively true to the comic books which in turn means predictability and staleness. as most Marvel comic book characters were fully tapped out by 1990s in terms of progress. Hence the idiotic plot lines to reset the comics and then restart telling the same stories they've been doing since 1960s. Agreed, save some vague concepts, Dungeons and Dragons is very mutable even in the core settings.

Fair enough. Next thing you'll be cranking out Alcest with the good doctor whilst you both gaze at your shoes! At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness - realised why I don't like this period of ATG - it's too black metal. TSD and SOTS were far closer to death and thrash and thus more in my ballpark. Nasty Savage - Penetration Point -last chance for this one and it doesn't make the cut. Off to trade it in at the local record shop Overkill - Under The Influence Sepultura - Schizophrenia Sodom - Obsessed By Cruelty

GG, Dodsrit seem a bit too melodic for your usual tastes? Getting some real melodic post-black metal vibes from them.

Black Dahlia Murder - Verminous

So I've finally figured out how to describe a lot of modern metal production: CONSTIPATED. The density of the sound and compression literally reminds of when you've got to do a shit after eating too much rice, chocolate, and steak but can't. And when it comes out it's a really heavy turd and it doesn't even feel like relief cause you're so clogged up and it's gonna take multiple crapping sessions to clear up. A lot of deathcore as well as industrial black/death metal ala Amenta are probably the best and most extreme examples but its common in a lot of modern metal. Stylistically very often it's ultra modern, polished but the guitars and drums literally blur into one another, no discernible bass or even guitars with the only really things standing out being clicky drums and vocals.

Morgue - Artgore - Old French Goregrind. In my worthless opinion, this is quite excellent for goregrind-ish DM. Relentless, brutal, riffy but doesn't get suffocated in overly dense production. https://morgue-france.bandcamp.com/

Expunged - Into Never Shall - HM-2 Death Metal.

So they live up to the interviews! I get the feeling that was common in that era. Eg Intense Hammer Rage vocalist Spills was banned from venues cause he was too crazy!

Sarcator - Alkahest Out 4 November on Black Lion Records Melodic blackened thrash (is that a thing?!?).

Did you ever meet the Sadistik Exekution guys? Been reading a few interviews with them. They seem like they are either taking the piss or they really are horrible arseholes.

That's really cool. Have to say whilst Steve Hughes contributed a lot to Aussie metal via Slaughter Lord and Nazxul, his comedy is so not funny.

So how involved were you in 1980-90s Australian thrash scene? And you know the guys out of Mortal Sin, do you also know guys out of Slaughterlord, Sadistik Exekution and Hobb's Angel of Death? Where you involved in any of the Metal for the Brains? And any interesting stories on that scene?

In general I prefer all metal to be slightly underproduced, even power metal and melodic death metal. I can understand what you mean about too thin, but today's production is often so dense you lose clarity. Very often the guitars end up being merged with drums and base so you lose riff definition. So you end up with a wall of noise where the only things that stand out are clickety clack drums and vocals.* Eg check out out Misery Index or even Lamb of God (who I generally like) or from a truly extreme perspective Tomb Mold and Gatecreeper. The other thing is modern production is also often "plastic" sounding and very homogenised ie artificial as fuck and cookie cutter. Eg check out just about anything on Nuclear Blast or most modern mainstream "extreme" bands be they Kreator or Arch Enemy or Behemoth or whatever. So I prefer the 1980-1990s sound where clarity was key and also where production was bespoke and as much art as the performance and song writing. *Having said that I have industrial hearing loss so that might play an impact. I can't listen to low DR stuff for any duration of time lest I get a headache. As for old school production, bands like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Dismember and Entombed all managed good heavy production in 1990s. Black Metal was off course thin but remember it's goal was to go back to early 1980s extreme scene ala Bathory, Sodom, Sarcofago, Destruction etc which really was thin. And by 1999 black metal bands like Emperor and Dimmu Borgir were starting to embrace a more beefier sound and doing it quite well. Just my $0.02.

I totally agree. I find some of the modern casting decisions weird where they go for diversity but don't look at cultural contexts or geographic realism. Eg in excellent Sandman series, there's a scene set in the 18th century where Sandman argues with a white guy that owning shares in slavery related businesses is bad. They then only show well dressed black people who are clearly not slaves in the same time period which completely undermines the historical aspect of it (ie "black people oppressed and enslaved, but we never show a black slave and instead show them in nice suits."). Shows like Bridgerton (which my wife watches) are even more absurd with a lot of British aristocracy being from Indian subcontinent or Africa. It's actually a form of white washing and historical revisionism that removes some of the most ugly examples of our history and replaces them with diverse utopias. It also irritates me due to relative historical inaccuracy and that's one of my biggest pet peeves (it's why I don't enjoy most war movies despite being an avid fan in the study of warfare). As for travel, casual travel was largely impossible for most people in pre-modern societies. It would take days to travel to the next town (eg in early 1800s 200km journey between Launceston and Hobart took 3-4 days). Prior to industrial revolution most people lived in horrific poverty and lived mainly on subsistence farming and thus couldn't really travel as it was a luxury. Exceptions were where life threatening situations forced a migratory move or indeed slavery in a lot of parts of the world or where you had migratory groups looking for land eg Vikings or Goths or Turks. This tended to result in violence and very often cultural or even actual obliteration of the target group. Often it was more akin to military occupation than any kind of peaceful coexistence. Same applies all ways. I wouldn't expect white people making an appearance in a movie set in 5th century India or in a movie based on African mythology.

I heard about the Mortal Sin drummer going missing. Here's hoping he's Ok.

Are there any muggle religions in the wizard world?

Cancer - To The Gory End Carcass - Heartwork

Zyklon - World Ov Worms - had forgotten this existed! Heaven and Hell - Devil You Know

Ozzy stars in an ad: https://youtu.be/g37d0DMlZ_E

I wouldn't be surprised if it was! Back then the internet was quite empty and very limited. https://robinbechtel.medium.com/what-the-hell-was-megadeth-arizona-3519a751149d Personally I much prefer a forum to social media. It's a far better system of organising topics and information and also far easier to navigate than say Facebook. I also like the anonymity.

The problem is probably overstated like many other things. I think the situation here in Tassie is probably worse than a lot of American cities. People get randomly assaulted a fair bit - a colleague of mine was attacked in broad daylight outside his office whilst going to lunch whilst a friends of mine had his arm broken in a random attack whilst he was walking home from work. I've witnessed a couple of fights in the main shopping street in broad daylight as have my wife and others. In one case I had just witnessed a brawl between stoner hobos in a park when a police car pulled over. I told them the location of the fight and they said they weren't there for that brawl, but another altercation occurring just down the street at the same time! Back in the late 1990s/early 00s you had to walk around city in a large group even as early as 7 pm due to the so-called Adidas gang who just beat up random people. I don't go to Hobart much but again whenever I am there there is trouble in broad daylight in the main shopping area. On a business trip to Hobart a couple of weeks ago I actually commented to my colleagues it was the first time I walked through the Hobart Mall and there wasn't a fight or bogans harassing and verbally assaulting Asians. I've been threatened by beggars in Melbourne in the luxurious Yarra river district but luckily a bunch of other people turned up. Again it was probably around dinner time. I've called cops several times in my life including once when our neighbours were literally threatening to kill each other and also to report vandalism (saw two guys smashing a petrol station outside my bathroom window) or burglaries. My cousin in Sydney was badly beaten up outside a train station by an Aboriginal gang after work. He was a manager at a franchise clothing retailer and quite square. But he was white-ish and alone so a fair target in their eyes. I remember as a kid my neighbours were broken into, They were on the second story. All ground floor flats had bars on windows. The burglars climbed into the balcony somehow My parents' car was broken into twice in Sydney in under 6 months. And a couple of years ago we were waiting to go into a cave tour in the middle of nowhere when a bunch of tourists came in to report their car was broken into and stuff stolen (we never leave devices or bags visible in the car). Oh and the cherry on the cake - my parents told me that as a young boy in Sydney I came across a body who had been thrown off one of the higher floors of our apartment building. I vaguely remember talking to a police officer and a human shaped thing on the grass but I'm not sure if my mind reconstructed that based on my parents talking about it. My parents said it was a murder victim. Yet ironically I used to walk the quiet streets of Ravenswood where I lived in the middle of the night. Ravenswood is one of the most crime ridden suburbs here in Launceston and Tasmania as a whole. I did avoid the supermarket as thugs used to hang out there who would look for randoms to beat up (including a Downs Syndrome volunteer at the Library).