NokturnalBoredom

I'm eating Haribo sour gold bears. Love my gummies, but probably should be eating way less sugar.

NP: Nokturnal Mortum "To The Gates of Blasphemous Fire"

I'm not really into any current punk bands. I like stuff from the 80s and 90s though, particularly hardcore punk. I have a decent amount of hardcore & crust records in my collection but I'm largely over stuff like Leftover Crack, Dead Kennedys, and Aus-Rotten. Not really my thing anymore, but there was a period of time wherein it was. I have an Aus-Rotten LP and 7" that I rarely listen to. Probably going to trade it in the next few weeks, maybe for a copy of Sacred Reich "Surf Nicaragua" which I've heard is a solid thrash record.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. It wasn't always that way, only when massive corporation Hasbro got into it & bought out Wizards of the Coast. Now a new expansion comes out three times a year and you have to keep dropping hundreds of dollars on the new cards to be able to play at anything resembling a competitive level and most people only play at a super-competitive level. That might be more of my scene. I just wish that there had been people around to play 40k with because I'm sure I would have gotten into it much more because the idea is just that much more interesting to me albeit Games Workshop stuff is also really expensive over here. I paid $90 for a small Tau force back almost twenty years ago, I cannot imagine how much it would cost now with inflation. I'd be interested in getting into the historical thing though. Maybe like Germany versus Soviet tank battles or something, if they have stuff like that which exists, and I don't see why they wouldn't.

lol, I love Sargeist. I had that album Satanic Black Devotion back in the day and I really liked the tracks "Frowning, existing" and "Returning to Misery & Comfort" a lot. NP: The Misfits "Collection I"

That's a remarkably cool album cover.

Slayer "Show No Mercy"

Witchtrap "Evil Strikes Again"

Not a board game, but I was really into Magic: the Gathering for a while despite being absolutely terrible at it an only having won a single tournament in my lifetime. The problem with M:tG was that it went downhill pretty quickly after Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast. Individual cards used to be worth money and hold their value, now a new expansion set is printed every four months and a lot of the cards are just recycled versions of cards that already existed with different names and artwork, so the old cards do not really hold their value anymore as you know that an analogue of them will be reprinted at least every year or so. When I was first getting into M:tG n jr high, even the common cards were quality cards that you would put in a tournament deck. Now common cards are just filler to pad out the $4.75 you pay for a 15-card booster pack. They very rarely have tournament-level value, unlike back in the late 90s and early 00s. Of course, expansions only used to come out once a year back then because Wizards of the Coast did not have the workforce or budget to release a new expansion every four months, and expansions were painstakingly assembled for how they would affect the game itself. Cards were not usually simply re-printed with a different name and casting cost as they are now, so even the more valuable and useful of the common cards held their value to players and collectors. M:tG used to be a good hobby to invest money in, because your cards would hold their value. Not the case anymore, sadly. The other problem with having expansion sets come out every four months is that in order to be allowed to play in most tournaments, you have to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on new cards every four months in order to have current cards to play with. Of course, this can be remedied by playing in a more casual format called EDH/Commander where all cards going all the way back to the beginning of the game in 93 are "legal" for play, but EDH decks generally tend to cost a lot of money to assemble as you MUST have 100 cards and a lot of the time, have to rely on expensive lands and multi-colored cards in order to build a decent EDH deck. Sometimes I miss M:tG, but then I realize that like everything else, it's just not the same as it was when I was in jr high and that making-money has been prioritized over providing good gameplay.

I have one "post-black" metal LP and it's not very good. I only keep it because it was a thoughtful gift from a family member who was trying to find me new music that I'd be into and saw the words "black metal" and figured that it would be up my alley. It's not horrible music, it's just not really interesting enough to make we want to listen to it repeatedly. In case you're wondering, it's a band called No Sun Rises and the album is titled "Ascent//Decay". It's the whole Post-black metal/blackgaze thing that reminds me of hipster crap like Deafheaven that convinced a bunch of Williamsburg, Brooklyn gentrifier types that they too, were into black metal. I do really like post-hardcore though: Jawbox, Husker Du, Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, Embrace, Hot Water Music, Fugazi, etc. I have a decent amount of Post-Hardcore LPs from that era, I'm just not into the poppy stuff that was labeled as being "Post hardcore" in the 2000s save for At the Drive-In.

Nokturnal Mortum "Return of the Vampire Lord/Marble Moon"

Yeah that sounds about right. I've noticed that myself: you usually only get half the product and then "expansion sets" that you have to cough up money for in order to effectively play the whole thing.

I'd have liked it more had the "Tristania" been bigger and not sandwiched between the parts of the building. The album is fantastic, it's just the cover design that turns me off because it looks like it was poorly slapped together for such an amazing record. But hey, what the hell do you want for an independent label in 1998, you know? Goth metal wasn't as well-received then as it is now, so Napalm probably did not have a huge budget to work with when it comes to the cosmetics of a product.

This truly is a great album. Unfortunately, it's the only Cro-Mags album that I have at the moment because it's the only one that I could find. That one track "Two Hours" is pretty relevant to my life, because I always have to stop myself and think "Where do I want to be in two hours? Not sitting in a cell wondering why did I put myself here?" I listen to a lot of hardcore in addition to metal. This one is one of my favorites out of all the hardcore albums that I own.

I'm glad that someone else has finally heard of Talisman. The edition I have is a very old one from the 80s where all of the pieces were cardboard or paper. I'd love to get a new edition of it with miniatures, although I am not very good at painting miniatures due to the shakes. I really wanted to get into 40k. I had a Tau set back in the day but I only ever got to use it once because there was only one other person I knew of that played it and he ended up going off to college & forgot all about 40k, Magic: the Gathering and D&D. I was looking at trying to get into Warmachine as well, but again-- nobody around here plays. Most people are into video games rather than tabletop or wargames.

I first found out about it because of a YouTube video with Will Wheaton, in that series he was doing for a while where he plays board games. I went out and bought it after watching because the concept & narrative of the game intrigued me, as it was a pretty original idea for a game and there is definitely a strategic element there. Only problem is that I rarely get to play it because I don't know anyone who plays board games. However, there is another board game that I have (that sadly, is falling apart from many years of love) called Talisman. Talisman is quite possibly the coolest board game ever made and I cannot even begin to describe it here because it is so remarkably complex, but it's essentially like Diablo on a table top. I'd look into it if you don't already know about it. I have the second edition, I believe but now they've gone much farther with it and include plastic pieces in the current one, which are easier to keep and don't tend to get damaged as easily.

Varathron "Walpurgisnacht" I like the Greek black metal sound. Granted this album has received criticism from people because it "is the best Rotting Christ album that Rotting Christ never made", but that sort of thing does not bother me. I'm a big fan of Rotting Christ, so when I read that in a review, I knew that I had to check Varathron out & this is my first outing with the band, for I have not listened to "His Majesty at the Swamp" but again, I hear good things.

I have a board game that's actually pretty fun called Tokaido. The premise is that you're a traveler in feudal Japan traveling the "East Sea Road" and the object is to have the richest cultural experience along the way. You get points based on what foods you eat, what panoramas you see, and the souvenirs that you collect along the way; whether you bathe in different hot springs & visit different temples, it's actually a really fun game and there is definitely a sense of strategy to it as you try to earn the most points during your journey.

Thinking about how my sister's wedding is in three weeks and how although I got clothing and am going to be getting haircut soon, that I am woefully unprepared for all of the stress and bullshit that I'm likely going to have piled on me that day despite not being involved in the wedding at all. I'm not going to let my family try to stress me out over it. There's absolutely zero reason for me to sweat anything that goes on with this wedding, because I don't really care how it turns out either way. I just want to eat some good food, drink a few NA beers, and enjoy the four days off that I'm going to have from work even if I'm not going to be home and am going to be in a hotel in Tampa most of the time. The guys from Anberlin are actually going to be playing a private gig afterward, so that will be cool too I guess. I liked Anberlin back when they were still an active band. No reason for me to have to stress about it being the "perfect day", it's not like it's my wedding (and if it was, I still wouldn't stress out over it because I'm not that kind of person). I'm just happy that there are only going to be like 40 people there.

Mercyful Fate "Don't Break the Oath" I catch a lot of shit from my buddy for liking Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and I sorta get it, because the way that he sings in falsetto could be construed by most people as being a little gay, but you have to remember that Mercyful Fate/King's stage presence did a lot to inspire black metal, as did their lyrical subject matter. This is the reason why they're usually classified as at least being partially relevant to black metal despite really just being a classic heavy metal band from the infancy of metal's mainstreaming in the 80s. I'll always like the two original Mercyful Fate studio albums. They really were black metal in lyrical tone, if not in sound, as black metal was just starting to be defined around that time. When I still wasted my time on Reddit, I would argue this sentiment a lot on there against new jack kids who think that they know everything because they listened to bands from the 2010s. Even George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher said that "Don't Break the Oath" is one of, if not his true favorite metal album of all time.

I just don't like how it's a black and white photo of an old building with the name "Tristania" in red, sandwiched right in the middle of the building. I'm very biased toward Necrolord covers though, so that's probably a big reason as to why. I feel like they could have done a better cover for that album, but I get that budget is something that has to be considered when recording and releasing an album.

Chokehold "Content with Dying"

Cemetery Lust "Screams of the Violated"

Same here. I have a small collection of jazz and country records that I listen to at night when I am winding down (although some would argue that John Coltrane is not very good for winding down, but I disagree.) I have stuff like Neil Young, YES, Neko Case, and a lot of post-punk and goth stuff (Joy Division, the Cure, Siouxsie). But my primary collection of LPs and 7"s is metal, crust punk, and hardcore. I'm emotionally attached to Nokturnal Mortum, Burzum, and Emperor. They remind me of a time when I had a lot more fun & actually had a social life. Now most of the time I'm either at work or sitting at home just listening to records. Lots of good times were had that those three bands provided a soundtrack for. Same story here. The majority of LPs I have are metal LPs. It's just the music that provides the soundtrack to my life in the best way possible although like I mentioned, I do listen to other stuff.

Whenever I think of Giger, I think of To Mega Therion (Celtic Frost) and oddly enough, Dead Kennedys "Frankenchrist" because of their use of Penis Landscape as a poster inside the album. I am not a huge DK fan though, I had some of their stuff and sold it off because it bored me after a while.