JonoBlade

I didn't say every Bon Scott penned lyric was a winner. But, come on, Big Balls is genius. I liked the way he took you on a journey. The generic "hot chick in a bar" tired trope songs not so great.....but Whole Lotta Rosie? Am also especially fond of Jailbreak* and a lot of Powerage is quite introspective. However, Night Prowler....one of my favourite songs, but those lyrics are dodgy as fuck. Creepier than Chris Barnes ever managed, and inspired an actual serial killer. There can be no greater accolade. *this song was used as a musical interlude/dance scene in my 1989 high school drama production. The script was written by a teacher who had no interest in AC/DC but we campaigned for its inclusion. By utter coincidence the crime described in the lyrics was exactly the same as the character in the play committed, who was in a chain gang about to break out of prison. The heroine was called Liberty. "Big man lying on the ground, with a hole in his body where his life had been.....but it was all in the name of Liberty..." Spooky. There is a definite line. Sometimes an album's music might be decent but I'm thinking "I just can't handle that drum sound, and there's other things I could be listening to" I listened to half of Born Again at lunchtime yesterday. The record sounds like it has peanut butter smothered over it and the needle is fighting to cut through. I watched it spin around and it defo doesn't. Just awful and woolly. However, one has to be careful what one wishes for with a remix. Mike Exeter is Tony's engineer and he co-produced Priest's Redeemer of Souls which sounds really cheap.

I think Tony mentioned that they have the master tapes for this so it could be remixed. The production has been universally accepted as bad ever since it was released, which overshadowed its actual content. I'll spin again at lunchtime. It is musically not great but not that offensive. Better than Seventh Star. However, the lyrics are pretty terrible. Ian Gillan always wrote off the cuff shit lyrics with no thought to them at all. To get a writing credit for crap lyrics never seemed fair to me. Truly great lyrics like a few of the Bon Scott ones deserve the co-writer credit, but so many don't.

Probably Fetus get blamed for deathcore/slam or whatever that is. I've never heard any of those modern bands, but Fetus produced Destroy the Opposition over 20 years ago now and, to me, it is a 10/10 death metal album with oodles of groovles. Sits next to Tomb of the Mutilated, Cause of Death, Necroticism, Once Upon the Cross, Dreams of the Carrion Kind et al as an example of how it's done. Admittedly, all recent Fetus sounds fairly interchangeable and relies a bit too much on gore themes rather than political lyrics which I presume Jason Netherton introduced and then spun off into Misery Index. However, I still get some enjoyment out of it. This morning's listening: The Baddies Are Coming | El Schlong (bandcamp.com) Unholy Deification | Incantation (bandcamp.com) Make Them Beg For Death | Dying Fetus (bandcamp.com) INFESTATION / RAT RACE | Pest Control (bandcamp.com)

I couldn't imagine getting a separate pair of headphones to leave at work (which I presume is what you mean). I just got some custom IEMs from ACS which are great for commuting and in the office on the rare occasion I go in. They are basically ear plugs so I can't hear anything going on around. However, they fit so deep it is a bit of a hassle pulling them out if someone wants to talk to me. But I'd want to discourage that. @navybsn's Meze 99 do look pretty cool, but for home I have HD650s which is as much as I would ever spend on headphones. During the day in the home office I have Focal Shape 40 powered monitors. They hardly ever got used until I started working from home, but I'm getting good value from them now.

Hmm. Yeah, I do remember that part "shhh, shhh." It sticks with you so...maybe best avoided. I'm not the kind of parent that fast forwards through scenes, or at least never have before. It's all or nothing. I've looked at a few lists. I think maybe War Horse will work. She was mostly interested in WWI anyway after seeing a gripping/realistic account of life in the trenches called Blackadder Goes Fourth. Or Das Boot. I remember seeing that at about her age. It must have been six hours long on TV with ad breaks.

Make Them Beg For Death | Dying Fetus (bandcamp.com) Get some Fetus in ya! I had seen some promo a while ago, yet always a pleasant surprise when an old faithful drops a new one. Last week I posted about Battle Maximus by Gwar.....but they still haven't released the pre-order on bandcamp! Dummies.

Inexplicably my daughter has decided she likes war movies. We watched "Dunkirk" the other day which she declared the greatest movie ever made (most recently held by Mary Poppins 2 and practically every other movie she sees until supplanted by the next). Any recommendations sitting in the 12-13 age rating bracket? i.e. ideally not rated 15. Dunkirk was tastefully done. Didn't pull any punches but not too graphic. The soundtrack is pretty funny. Essentially the entire film is an ominous Hans Zimmer build up. We'll probably watch Saving Private Ryan at the weekend, even though rated 15. I recall it has some pretty grisly scenes which might be a little too much but it is a classic. Band of Brothers may also be approps. We watched the trailer for Midway and it looked like a Marvel film - just too much action over substance. So any hollywoodified examples like Pearl Harbour are best avoided. I watched Oppenheimer with my dad a month ago, he fell asleep somewhere in the middle, but I enjoyed it.

Sounds like a case of fundamentally misunderstanding technology. When I started my new job they gave me a brand new iPhone. I never turn it on except when I have to activate a security request to log into something periodically. So dumb. For $1700 each piece, government purchasing departments could support an ethical phone supplier like Fairphone. They have the weight to make a difference, but instead go with the big corporations which are completely unethical and presumably have the salespeople to take the right person out to dinner and service them with hookers. You mean, like a smaller shape? Electric cars have a big carbon footprint to make, but not to operate (unless electricity comes from dirty sources) compared to a gasoline vehicle. There are other ethical considerations like where the battery parts come from, but extra research in that area over the last hundred years probably could have solved those problems easily so it wouldn't be an issue today. However, electric cars should never have been the answer anyway, for the reason above (too many people, too many cars and roads). Car companies still want to sell the same number of cars and convince you you need a new one every year or two. The business model has not changed and is based on seeking infinite growth as it always was. The solution should be shared ownership which even a backwater like Tassie can adopt if there were the political will to do so. Always worth coming back to proportional emissions and asking yourself how you could make a positive change in your own life with minimal impact on actual lifestyle/happiness: It's interesting that aviation is 1.9% which is pretty insignificant. I've seen a few articles recently calling out rich people for use of private jets. I mean, rich people who use private jets are dicks that get no sympathy from me, but their contribution to the climate crisis is irrelevant. It just gets everyone else thinking that it is those rich fuckers' fault and not theirs. But make no mistake my friends, it is your fault. Road transport is significant. These figures do not include emissions from the manufacturing of motor vehicles or other transport equipment – this is included in ‘Energy use in Industry’. Therefore, switching to electric cars and trucks powered from clean energy sources is a significant impact. Perhaps it even makes my "shared ownership" model unnecessary. However, having less cars/trucks with greater utilisation makes for less road wear and better use of manufacturing resources. Energy use in buildings? Smaller buildings/better utilisation. Working from home is great for that. My firm now has a much smaller central London office which has greater utilisation via hot desking. Live in a modest house/apartment with no more room than you need for your max 2 children. The third impregnation and later gets coat hanger justice. I live in a low rise apartment complex with 38 other units and shared grounds. Agriculture/land use? Plant based diet. This reduces deforestation and enables efficient land utilisation. At 49 I have physiological age of 30. However, I'm happy to keep a bow/arrows and fishing line handy for societal collapse. It's all so easy without resorting to evil socialism. Just takes some politicians with fucking balls.

Man, that is heart breaking. At 24 she really is in control of her own destiny now and the bad choices that entails. With a 13 year old we still have some sway over her use of the phone. To be honest, while I whinge about it, she isn't that bad compared to others. Mostly she just chats to school friends and listens to streaming music which is basically the same as I was at 13 with a walkman and dubbed cassette tapes. The real idiocrasy of social media hasn't kicked in yet. It's hard to know whether the toxic conflicts of 13 year old girls that have played out so far are better, worse or the same with social media accounts involved. The great tragedy to me is that these kids don't have any hobbies. Just something they can call their own other than staring at a stupid screen. Yet, the internet is one of mankind's greatest inventions. It enables me to sit in my underpants typing a message to you while I'm supposed to be working. And I'm just as productive as I ever was. It enabled me to find Transfigured In A Thousand Delusions | INANNA (bandcamp.com) and transfer some money directly to them for brightening my day. It's better than being down a coal mine like my great grandad. He was a blacksmith, underground in t'pit.

I don't see following social media or spending money on collectibles as equivalent to being a metal fan or indeed a fan of any relatively obscure music or artform, where you seek to uncover new great examples in your chosen field. But I'll admit its hard to know what the distinction is or where you draw the line. I despair at my daughter spending ages wittering to friends on her phone....although why is my choice of how I spend my free time - listening to or writing metal - any better? I guess I equate a creative outlet as having carry over benefits in other parts of life, not to mention it actually makes me happy. Social media is proven to make people depressed and inadequate but, like any addiction, even in the face of awareness to the evidence, it sucks you in anyway. A collector nut might be driven to financial ruin and/or living in a cluttered environment is also terrible for mental health. Mind you, no worse than the bazillion cables I have snaking around my feet as I tap this out. Interesting point about "most metalheads" being unemployable drunken thickies. In my younger days, yes I suppose I came across quite a few. If I go back to my hometown I probably can find examples of dudes who have never gotten anywhere in life and still listen to metal as their one beacon of joy in this miserable world. But, which comes first - the meathead or the metalhead? Are these people hobbled in life because they listen to metal or were they going to be like that anyway. I think it's unknowable.

Yip. I didn't read the whole thing though because it's all been said before. Maybe it will be up to the japs to find a solution to sustainable population since they are naturally at that point now anyway. They tend to be conservative and follow rules easily. Although you can't see them slashing vehicle production anytime soon and promoting a shared ownership model. It's all about the Benjamins.

Nice tip, and all on Bandcamp. Yay! The Music of Erich Zann is one of the better Lovecraft stories. A bold move to make a thrash album about it. Listening now. Oof, if it had Martin Walkyier on vocals it would be almost perfect. As it is I think they're just on the right side of listenable but not quite up to the standard of the music. Reminds me a bit of Joey Belladonna....which we all know is an acquired taste. Unless I am missing something it looks like the Zann album (1988) has a completely different band line up to the 2020 album. The only continuity is the producer. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Fascinating. Gordon Perkins : batterie & percussion Björn Eklund : bass & accoustic guitar Rolf Stein : guitar & back vocals Vincent St. Johns : guitar & back vocals Keil : vocals & stick v Martin LeMar - vocals Peter Lake - guitar Alex Landenburg - drums Ralph Hubert - bass & classical guitar

You and my wife would get along great. She's zero tolerance / death sentence for people that litter and those boy racers you can hear late at night or early in the morning, or anytime during the day. Or anyone that rides a loud motorcycle. And elephant poachers. My dad was telling me that in the 60s/70s the zero population thing was something that was openly discussed and promoted in Britain. They had it drummed into them that they should have small families. Yet this message, the one crucial thing which will save life on Earth, is never talked about. Certainly not in the namby pamby left wing press I read. Climate crisis, blah blah blah (said in the the voice of Greta Thunberg) is front and centre in most news I come across, but the weight of human scum is absent from the narrative. I read today about Japan's concerns about its ageing population (hardly a new thing). But all the concerns are borne from a terror that reducing population will result in a drop in economic growth, since human civilisation is built on the premise of infinite growth. I mean, I am hesitant to endorse your "eradicate those who don't obey the laws and commit crimes" decree because laws aren't always fair for everyone. But, at least let's have an honest discussion about it.

I like your analysis and GG's retort. It is the kind of thing that might have crossed my mind in the past but now the imagery and "lifestyle" of metal is merely a blur in the background. For example, I barely even register the latest Cannibal Corpse album cover which once upon a time might have seemed cool and brutal and made one want to be associated with that scene. Probably when you're a teenager you want people thinking you're a little bit weird so they don't bother you. Metal was a cocoon in that respect. Although I truly believe I was never into it for the image even if I wore black jeans and t-shirt and had unkempt long hair. I suspect none of us here were, because we're all lifers and never grew out of it like our mums expected. It's amusing to ponder "we metalheads are extremely fake because we pretend we are something we're not and actively shun those who we pretend to be like (eg black metal church burning/murdering types)." Fake is in the eye of the beholder, because sifting through dozens of albums a year in the hope of finding a few that inexplicably connect to you emotionally is not fake. It takes quite a bit of effort which a Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or Star Wars or Marvel fan can't really claim.

It is kind of genius using out of copyright artwork. This one is apparently: “Stitching The Standard” by Edmund Blair Leighton (1911). Although you also can't stop someone else using the same artwork as you...but it will look cool in the meantime. Bouncing around bandcamp and found: 1992-1994 Discography Digital download | Timeghoul (bandcamp.com) ...because it was associated with that Blood Incantation EP. Vocals jump out a bit too much when they kick in, but pretty filthy music. And another: Testimony of the abominable | Balmog (bandcamp.com) Bought without listening as it has been a few months since I got a Balmog and they have a 100% strike rate.

Oh goodness no. I'd never get something like this on vinyl. Strict bandcamp app purchase only like practically everything I get. I think I'd only buy something on vinyl if it were vaguely suitable to play on the public stereo 30 feet away in the other room and/or if the artwork was so amazing and intricate you could get lost in it for days. Kind of like Patatrac when I was 4 years old (Patatrac by Jean jaques Loup | Oxfam Shop). By "step forward" I simply mean my warming to Horrendous. It must be progress, because I wasn't that enamoured with the last few but I like this one. And it's not because I am not open to death-prog wankery but some things bite and some don't. Like I still listen to that ridiculous The Cure meets Maiden band I flagged a few months ago. It makes no sense, but it works for me. I never heard the Horrendous demo, will check it oot. Coincidentally, Damian from Horrendous mixed a re-recorded version of the original Blood Incantation EP and that sounds great. Last night I was on the Manchester bound train via Crewe and had to sit on the floor by the door, but at least it left on time. It was a rare day in the London office for me.

Bandcamp Friday! Get some in ya Battle Maximus by GWAR This a remix of Oderus/Dave's last album and I never heard it. As a closet bohab, it is well overdue. Unholy Deification by Incantation Very late to the party, but I like the "classic" albums I have picked up in the last year, so important to support a veteran band still out there raising the fist. Ontological Mysterium by Horrendous I'm in touch with Damian from time to time for mastering services and he even mixed the last Monsterworks album. Horrendous has never quite captured my imagination (Alex-Fi used to spaff all over the production which is dynamic for sure but I've never liked the drum sound that much) but I heard this on release day a few weeks ago and it sounded quite a step forward. I'll be coming back to it for scratching the death prog wanker itch some of us baby goats have. Live in Seattle 05/28/2018 by Power Trip Presumably there'll be no new Power Trip so just have this as a greatest hits set of their short career. ...and the House of Strombo vid on youtube which I've watched quite a few times.

The Tides of Damocles | Dawn of Azazel (bandcamp.com) Often come back to this one. It is the only DoAz album I ever had. I presume they never reformed. Last saw Rigel in Auckland on The Dillinger Escape Plan's last tour. He's hard to miss at about 9 foot tall. Oldie but a goodie.... Also constantly spinning those Wedgie Doods guys I saw a couple of weeks back and admit I like it more than Russian Circles now. Goddammit. De Doden Hebben Het Goed | Wiegedood (bandcamp.com) De Doden Hebben Het Goed II | Wiegedood (bandcamp.com)

Believe it or not, I'm the Man was the first Anthrax song I ever heard and, accordingly, assumed they were a joke band. I actually liked it because I like joke rap bands. In context and with the benefit of hindsight I can admit it is just wrong. This was early 1988 and the next video on the TV show I was watching was "That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll" by AC/DC. I can't be sure, but the next promo vid after the ad break was The Shining by Black Sabbath (I only recall this because I had the foresight to dub it on VHS and watched it a million times). It really was an important evening in my metal evolution because before that all I knew was Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi.

Anti-Social is a cover anyway. It is kind of lame to be remembered for a cover and insist on still playing it in their live set. Like Quiet Riot was always known for Cum on Feel the Noize. That song is awful. I mean Metal Health was hit or miss as it was, but the title track and Thunderbird get a clip on the nostalgia ticket. Confession: I never even heard Sound of White Noise. I never owned it. The golden era of Anthrax for me was cramming on their albums up to 1990 in time for the 22 August Wellington Town Hall gig. I still contact my best mate every year on that day to remind him how old we are. In a way Anthrax supercharged my interest in heavier music, but my interest waned because it was so starkly obvious they were the weakest of the big four. Yet, very grateful to them for making the trip and opening my eyes. Years later I did pick up Stomp and V8 in a second hand store and listened to them once each. But, I bought the We've Come For You All CD new. I have no idea why. However, I genuinely like about half of it. The intro and first proper track Contact/What Doesn't Die, some great drum work on segue between Any Place But Here and Nobody Knows Anything and the closing title track. Due to spreading out those highlights the album kind of works well. It's the last Anthrax album I ever bought and will remain that way until they dip below 50 minutes.

I was going to specifically call out Anthrax, but decided against it. They definitely lost some cred by wearing board shorts and rapping ....which is the equivalent of a bouncy castle, however I still don't recall them being referred to as "groove metal". Probably because at their height in 86-90 they were just thrash with particularly clean vocals. The term groove metal didn't exist then. While at some point I have acquired the John Bush-era albums and even especially like the last one, I wouldn't say that was "groove metal" either*. It was kind of simplified thrash, leaning to trad metal. *but then that is because, as GG states, the term is meaningless.

I'm with you on this. I always scratched my head at the "groove metal" tag. It somehow makes the music sound less serious like thrash bands playing on a bouncy castle. All great music should be groovy in one way or another.

Unholy Deification | Incantation (bandcamp.com) Oot today.

Straight to wishlist, cue for tomorrow as its teatime now. I really liked Inverloch...which I think practically is dISEMBOWELMENT, but I have still not managed to hear the original band.

Sorry for the confusion, Wedgie Doods = no bass, Russian Circles = bass. BUT, the RC guy does also put down the bass and play second guitar sometimes during the set. At which point there is no bass, BUT I suspect they use a pitch shifter on one of the guitars to emulate a bass, just for those tracks. I cannot tell you for certain if the Wedded Dudes use a bass in the studio. If it is there it is at Newsted levels. They probably do as you'd be stupid not to. True story, back in 2006 my band did three dates in a row (the closest to a tour I ever did) and....there was no bass! The bass player had to switch to drums at 3 days notice because the drummer had total kidney failure, the inconsiderate bastard. The legend bass player that saved the day. However, it was pretty metal that the drummer already recorded this entire album: Spacial Operations | Monsterworks (bandcamp.com) mere days before his kidney failure. He was complaining about fuzzy vision and headaches, but we were like "harden up cvnt." I digress. Yes, Russian Circles would be better with vocals - but then their angle is not having vocals, because I think some people actually prefer it. At least you don't have to worry whether its going to have annoying shouty ones, crooning dumb ones, nasally horrific ones or something in between. Quite rarely for me I got into Russian Circles because of a you tube video which popped up (must have been paid-for advertising). It was a short live-in-studio set which I thought was ace. I had ordered the album before the video finished. NP: Primordial Arcana | WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM (bandcamp.com)