Random metal thoughts

[JonoBlade]

39 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Are there any muggle religions in the wizard world?

They celebrated Christmas. I suspect it was one of those things that JKR didn't think through since it was a children's story to start with, and teen fiction by the end.

It was like having Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Although CS Lewis was Christian so wanted to crowbar it in there somehow.

While I have seen most of the MCU stuff I haven't bothered with Ms. Marvel because she's supposed to be Muslim I think. It doesn't make sense making any reference to real world religion in MCU because there can't be a one true god in a universe with Zeus and Odin. 

Seeing Russel Crowe as Zeus in the latest Thor alone is worth the price of admission. Doing his best Con the Fruiterer pisstake greek accent. It's genius.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Hadn't heard that one before. The entire plot of Harry Potter deals with issues of a villain obsessed with being the master race, and getting beaten...and major characters are gay. 

They cast a black actress to play Hermione in the Cursed Child play.  And Hagrid!

Although I think there was a throwaway line in the first act that mentioned there were no Jews at Hogwarts because they were too busy eating babies. So, you're probably right.

 

I think that could have been a little sarcastic joke they worked in. Right-wing conspiracy theory you'll hear floating around various places is that the liberal Hollywood Jewish elites are pedophiles who eat babies. You might remember the infamous case of the redneck with a rifle who showed up at a Washington DC Pizza shop to bust up Hillary Clinton's pedophile ring that he'd read online she was reportedly running out of their basement. Because them baby eaters gotta be stopped. And then of course the punchline was that pizza shop had no basement. 

The anti-semetism thing with JK Rowling apparently started when Jon Stewart mentioned publicly that he thought the hook-nosed goblin characters she had controlling the bank in one of the movies looked a bit like something off of an old Nazi propaganda poster. Sounds like reaching just a bit if you ask me. Because they're made up goblins! Mr Stewart (who I'm actually a big fan of) is certainly entitled to voice his objections. But this seems to me more like another case of cancel culture run amok. Because once that whole anti-semite thing blew up on social media Jon Stewart himself clarified his comments and said that he did not think the goblins' resemblance to Jews was intentional, he loves the Harry Potter series and he does not believe JKR is a nazi or an anti-semite. But too late, it was already out there and had taken on a life of its own.

JK's most notorious run in with cancel culture though was concerning comments she made or tweeted regarding sex being real. Which is ridiculous because if you take the time to read all the back and forth between her and Graham Norton and everyone she clearly supports and has always supported trans people. The comments (imho) were not anything like what they were blown up to be and they certainly didn't warrant anything approaching all the death and rape threats she got. They were more pro-feminist in nature than they were anti-trans. Funny how death and rape threats are perfectly acceptable and fine now apparently but even a fairly 'woke' famous person can't have an opinion on the concepts of sex and gender that questions or differs in any way from yours? Let the punishment fit the crime maybe?

I've never read or watched any of the Harry Potter books or films, I have absolutely no interest in that or any other fantasy universe, like Hogwarts or LOTR or anything like that. So I have no vested interest or big love for JK Rowling. But still I wish people would do some basic research and read the actual comments in question for themselves before they condemn someone and their "terrible world views" just because maybe they read somewhere that someone else has condemned them. And then if they still want to condemn them, that's their right. But at least do the 4 minutes of research first so you know what it is you're actually mad about and condemning.

[JonoBlade]

12 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I've never read or watched any of the Harry Potter books or films, I have absolutely no interest in that or any other fantasy universe, like Hogwarts or LOTR or anything like that. So I have no vested interest or big love for JK Rowling. But still I wish people would do some basic research and read the actual comments in question for themselves before they condemn someone and their "terrible world views" just because maybe they read somewhere that someone else has condemned them. And then if they still want to condemn them, that's their right. But at least do the 4 minutes of research first so you know what it is you're actually mad about and condemning.

Yip. 

The goblins were likely designed by a special effects department and nothing to do with JKR.

Surely there will be something your boy is into that gets you off the rocking chair, chasing magpies off the lawn. Even my 76 year old dad has seen the Harry Potter movies.

But LOTR, Rings of Power....sweet baby jesus, I am halfway through the last episode of the Prime series. That is 9 hours of my life I'll never get back.  Visually stunning but horse shit.

There has been an anti-woke backlash on that one since they cast Lenny Henry as a Hobbit. Funnily enough I'll put on my Oathkeepers hat and say I actually agree that having a small group of villagers or hobbits (who would most likely be from an isolated inbred population) comprised of every ethnic minority under the sun is visually distracting. They should have done it properly and made all the elves black, all the hobbits Chinese and all the dwarves jews. Or interchange into whatever stereotype is least offensive. That would make more sense because it would be a consistent stylistic choice. 

 

Then the interwebs would really lose it's collective shit. In any event, it would not have saved the atrocious writing and plot development. 

 

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Yip. 

The goblins were likely designed by a special effects department and nothing to do with JKR.

Surely there will be something your boy is into that gets you off the rocking chair, chasing magpies off the lawn. Even my 76 year old dad has seen the Harry Potter movies.

But LOTR, Rings of Power....sweet baby jesus, I am halfway through the last episode of the Prime series. That is 9 hours of my life I'll never get back.  Visually stunning but horse shit.

There has been an anti-woke backlash on that one since they cast Lenny Henry as a Hobbit. Funnily enough I'll put on my Oathkeepers hat and say I actually agree that having a small group of villagers or hobbits (who would most likely be from an isolated inbred population) comprised of every ethnic minority under the sun is visually distracting. They should have done it properly and made all the elves black, all the hobbits Chinese and all the dwarves jews. Or interchange into whatever stereotype is least offensive. That would make more sense because it would be a consistent stylistic choice. 

Then the interwebs would really lose it's collective shit. In any event, it would not have saved the atrocious writing and plot development. 

I'm very happy for your 76 year old dad, I hope he enjoyed them. My wife was into Harry Potter, we had to spend many hundreds off dollars to go to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in FLA and buy out the gift shop. My sister and her kids came with us because they've always been bigtime into Harry Potter too. For awhile there it's all I heard about at their holiday table. Nowadays her kids are a bit older in their 20's so they're all about video games, Star Wars, Japanese anime and D&D. All that nerd shit that I can't stand. So I guess I see Harry Potter as akin to that type of mainstream entertainment stuff, might as well be pop music or nu-metal or something. Lots of normies love that kind of stuff and that's cool man, but it's just not for me.

I like a good drama or a reality based earthbound action movie. Westerns, Vikings, knights in armor, seafaring tales, war movies, espionage/spy stuff, prison movies, cops n robbers, drug cartels and gangster flicks are always good fun. But I don't do horror, no Star Wars, no space ships, no supernatural, no superheroes, no aliens, no monsters, no vampires, no elves, no gremlins, no ghosts, no goblins. No cartoons or animation ever. I like sci-fi a lot as long as it's not set in space or on some made up fantasy planet and there are no monsters. I can dig futuristic tales and time travel stories if they're set on earth and limited to only human characters. Occsasionally I suppose maybe I could stomach a zombie flick like that World War Z, and I thought that one with Woody Harrelson where they shot Bill Murray was good, but that genre has been well and truly overdone.

Now my 8 year old son is into horror, graveyards, scary Halloween masks, blood, guts, what he calls "murder killers", dismembered body parts, popped out eyeballs, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, zombies, army men, more blood and more indiscriminate killing. And hot young Korean actresses. I did try to put on a Harry Potter movie for him one time several years ago and we lasted about 10 minutes, neither of us was into it. He might have been too young to understand what was going on at the time anyway. But in general I haven't been able to get him to watch any type of kids movies or kids programming since he was about 2 1/2 or 3. The only kid thing he would ever really sit still to watch was Peppa Pig. Even by the tender age of 3 1/2 when his mom died 5 years ago he was already telling me all that Disney kiddie crap was for babies, and he really honestly thinks he's 18. 

[AlSymerz]

I've never watched or read Harry Potter, my wife has all the books and DVD's, there is Lego sets, hats and other Harry crap around here but I've never felt compelled to have an interest in the boy wizard. I've also never watch LOTR, the new Star Wars movies, or any of the new DC superhero movies.

My random metal thought.

Founding member and drummer of Australian thrash band Mortal Sin has gone missing and some how I've managed to get myself on the BOLO warning list.

[Dead1]

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

[AlSymerz]

Yeah I haven't seen the guy since the early to mid 90's so I'm not much help, but I'll pass the message on to those who I do know in case they haven't heard.

 

[Dead1]

31 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

Yeah I haven't seen the guy since the early to mid 90's so I'm not much help, but I'll pass the message on to those who I do know in case they haven't heard.

 

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?

[AlSymerz]

I was doing sound and lights, driving, lugging shit, moving shit, smoking shit, drinking shit. It wasn't just the thrash scene, it was the music scene/pub rock scene in general. I worked with bands from The Angles to Hobbs, from the Tatts to Armoured Angel, from the Baby Animals to Mortal Sin. I even did some country music festivals towards the end. I was mainly based in Melbourne but we did a few small tours, east coast mainly. We did some regional VIc/NSW tours and gigs for Tattoo magazine and we did the yearly tattoo show/OMC gatherings into the mid 90's for Hell Angels and Comancheros.

At one time or another I've met heaps of those bands, some of them we were first name basis, others we were a nod of the head as we passed. Very few of them were lasting friendships, partly because I severed a lot of those ties for my own well being when I got out and became a long haul truckie. I still know a few guys from bands like Mortification and Mortal Sin, I ran into Steve Hughes about 8 years ago and we still were friendly. Mat Maurer I ran into a few times when I lived in Sydney in the 00's and he was always good for a chat. Even guys like Doc Neeson and Dave Gleeson have always been friendly, but we were never close enough to share DM's

 

[Dead1]

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.

[AlSymerz]

I agree but I wasn't close enough to him to tell him he sucked

[Dead1]

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.

[AlSymerz]

We played a few gigs where they were on the bill and they were pretty wild and stupid, but a lot of us were real arseholes back then!. I met Rev Kriss Hades at a radiothon, either RRR or PBS, one year and he came across as a bit crazy.

[Dead1]

1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

We played a few gigs where they were on the bill and they were pretty wild and stupid, but a lot of us were real arseholes back then!. I met Rev Kriss Hades at a radiothon, either RRR or PBS, one year and he came across as a bit crazy.

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!  

[AlSymerz]

I don't know if they are/were like that all the time or if it was an act, but it was like that when I saw them.

There was weird stuff happening from time to time, even roadies got banned from some venues for being dicks. I don't suppose it was worse than anywhere else in the world where drugs, alcohol and stupidity merge. One band, it might have been Acheron, or something else starting with A that didn't make much of a dent in the scene got banned from Chasers during a battle of the bands type show for pissing in the band room. Plenty of guys got kicked out for being too drunk. One of my guys got told he wasn't allowed on stage where the public could see him, which was kind of hard for a fucking roadie working a multiple band show, because he had a t-shirt on that said "Fuck This Shit".

I wouldn't dare suggest any muso, roadie, groupie or hanger on was innocent of bad behaviour all the time but some times the venues were over zealous with their rules and regulations too and that made mountains out of mole hills. A band called Punch Buggy (very short lived hardcore band from the burbs) got kicked out of a pub in Collingwood because they stuck pictures of Beetles everywhere are encourage fans to play Punch Buggy during their set. It didn't even get out of control but the manager saw people hitting each other closed them down and banned them. Still to this day I don't know if he banned them because he thought it was too violent or because he was embarrassed he didn't know what punch buggy was.

 

 

[JonoBlade]

16 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

.... I guess I see Harry Potter as akin to that type of mainstream entertainment stuff, might as well be pop music or nu-metal or something. Lots of normies love that kind of stuff and that's cool man, but it's just not for me....

There is no boundary to what is "normie" these days. Once upon a time D&D fantasy was not for "normies" but other entertainment genres you mention liking are very much mainstream (earthbound action movies, westerns, war movies, espionage/spy stuff, prison movies, cops n robbers, drug cartels and gangster flicks).

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, JonoBlade said:

There is no boundary to what is "normie" these days. Once upon a time D&D fantasy was not for "normies" but other entertainment genres you mention liking are very much mainstream (earthbound action movies, westerns, war movies, espionage/spy stuff, prison movies, cops n robbers, drug cartels and gangster flicks).

It's hard to draw parallels between the music and the film industries. You'd know better than most of us that in recent years it's become relatively easy to produce and release music yourself that can stand on basically equal footing with the industry stuff. Whereas with film that's not the case. So when it comes to chosing our film and television entertainment we are almost completely at the mercy of the industry and what they want to feed us than we are when chosing what music we want to listen to. I've found it fairly easy to avoid major label releases in the extreme metal and punk worlds, while it's effectively impossible to do that with movies. There's really no film eqiivalent to bedroom black metal on Netflix or Hulu. 

So I wasn't suggesting that those genres of film we listed aren't mainstream and consumed by normies as well, because due to prohibitive production costs all film and television is mainstream. I was just trying to make an analogy that to me personally the big budget Hollywood SFX heavy blockbuster superhero or Star Wars or Harry Potter films seem like the vapid pop music of the film world, and I tend to stay away from that stuff. I'm not a big movie guy to begin with, haven't been to a theatre in nearly a decade and even then it was only a few times because my then pregnant wife wanted to get out of the house. What I do watch I prefer to watch at home. And while I won't say never, it's pretty rare when I'll dial up what I'd consider a big budget blockbuster movie with a lot of special effects and CGI.

[JonoBlade]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

So when it comes to chosing our film and television entertainment we are almost completely at the mercy of the industry and what they want to feed us than we are when chosing what music we want to listen to. I've found it fairly easy to avoid major label releases in the extreme metal and punk worlds, while it's effectively impossible to do that with movies. There's really no film eqiivalent to bedroom black metal on Netflix or Hulu. 

Good point. I mean, you can seek out indie/avant-garde films but they are more than likely self-indulgent shit. By contrast a one man black metal band's self-indulgent shit might actually be quite good. And it still cost him a fraction of the cost of even a cheap indie movie. 

I read an article about Channel 4 in the UK the other day. It is funded by the TV license which the tories are constantly trying to run down and move toward defunding the BBC. Public funds is the best way to finance TV/film productions that take risks. I personally don't watch hardly any of it, but it is good to know it is there and so proudly (get my wife to) pay the TV license.

I presume in America, the land of free enterprise, there is much less appetite for making ground breaking art. Profit driven companies will stick to what is proven to turn the most profit. It does lead to homogenisation, although sometimes there is a recognition that an original idea may become a runaway success even if it looked like a dud on paper.

Even Marvel was poking fun at its alleged movie generation algorithm in the final episode of She-Hulk. I only watch it with my daughter because it is a strong female role-model. Literally.

[Dead1]

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.

[AlSymerz]

Maybe you need to see a doctor about all that?

 

[SurgicalBrute]

Picking up from something Jono said earlier, can I just ask, why in the fucking hell did Amazon even bother spending all that money getting the rights to so much of the LotR franchise, when it's clear as day they just wanted to do their own generic fantasy series? Don't get me wrong, I understand it was for brand name recognition, but holy shit...they'd have been so much better off going after the rights for something like Dungeons and Dragons, which actually lends itself to open interpretation, rather than try to hammer that square peg of a story into the round hole of Tolkien's narrative. It still would have been awful, because the head writers are legitimately incompetent, but at least half of the criticisms leveled against it...namely the fact that they're playing fast and loose with the timeline, motivations and established characterizations...wouldn't even exist if this had been tied to literally anything else

[AlSymerz]

Isn't that the same as what Disney does? Buy the rights then re-write shit until the fans are unhappy?

 

[FatherAlabaster]

I don't think they got a lot of the rights. I read somewhere that they couldn't make any sequels or use stuff from the Silmarillion. They apparently based this whole storyline on a little snippet from the appendices at the end of the LOTR books.

I don't mind the story but I don't find it deeply engaging, and the characters are hit or miss. I like the dwarves a lot, the Southland humans are believable enough, the Harfoots are ok. I mostly buy Young Elrond. The Mortiis impersonator has his moments. Not sure about Obviously Gandalf. Alternate-Universe Galadriel, this Halbrand fellow, and pretty much all of the Numenorean characters and subplot are kinda bunk.

The bits of history in there are intriguing and feel like a missed opportunity. It's kind of like the Hobbit movies - fun fantasy action to turn my brain off to when I'm chilling with my wife. I love the books, and I guess there's part of me that's a stickler and scoffs at the extra bullshit the screen adaptations added, howls at storyline changes and omissions, seethes at characters I think have been misrepresented... but I also kind of don't care a lot. Especially with this one. It's just TV. Our level of commitment is such that we still haven't watched the series finale. 

As far as Amazon wanting a generic fantasy series, they already have Wheel Of Time going... maybe it's the typical Amazon thing of buying everything and undercutting everyone to capture market share?

[SurgicalBrute]

That seems to be the general model of most television and movie studios these days...Buy rights to thing with preexisting/nostalgic fanbase. Gut it of everything resembling the original property that fans actually wanted to see, so head writer(s) (who will almost universally claim to be big fans of the original IP) can actually just film the failed vanity project they really wanted to make. Act shocked when project is rejected by fans of IP, but also fails to find a new audience....repeat.

Think the real issue with LotR show is that it's like a perfect storm of butchering the lore, legitimately bad writing, incompetent show runners, mediocre acting, and following a vastly superior movie adaption. You could maybe get around one or two of those, but not all of them. It doesn't help that Tolkien was absolutely meticulous in the way he went about creating his world. People know how things are supposed to be, because he constantly wrote down and revised his thoughts about the background and history of Middle Earth. There isn't a ton of room for interpretation, like a lot of similar works might allow. 

34 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I don't think they got a lot of the rights. I read somewhere that they couldn't make any sequels or use stuff from the Silmarillion. They apparently based this whole storyline on a little snippet from the appendices at the end of the LOTR books.

They basically have the rights to all of the Lord of the Rings, the Appendices, and the Hobbit...so they have about 75% of it. What they want to do is write about stuff that happened during the Silmarillion, which as you said, they don't have the rights for, because there's slightly more wiggle room to set stories during that time. The thing is, for all the shifting, pulling and pushing they do to make it fit, they'd have been better off just going with something original

34 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

As far as Amazon wanting a generic fantasy series, they already have Wheel Of Time going... maybe it's the typical Amazon thing of buying everything and undercutting everyone to capture market share?

...and they butchered that to hell and back as well. They wanted their very own Game of Thrones, and much like Dan Snyder or George Steinbrenner in sports, they tried to buy themselves a hit series rather than actually build a good series.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not one of those people who really know LotR lore chapter and verse, nor to I particularly care about this series other than to kind of laugh at it. I just find the constant justifications the show runners keep giving for their changes, and why they actually do indeed fit into the lore, to be absolutely ridiculous. Just admit you always intended this to be a loose adaption, and move on.

[Dead1]

3 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

Isn't that the same as what Disney does? Buy the rights then re-write shit until the fans are unhappy?

 

 

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.

Quote

they'd have been so much better off going after the rights for something like Dungeons and Dragons, which actually lends itself to open interpretation,

 

Agreed, save some vague concepts, Dungeons and Dragons is very mutable even in the core settings.