What's on your mind?

[AlSymerz]

I used to enjoy the hunt for new music, I used to want to hear every band I could, but it got to the point for me where the shit just all started to blend together. Too many bands sounded the same, committing bands names to memory just wasn't happening for 90% of what I heard. I'd hear someone talk about a band that sounded good, only to realise I'd heard them months before and forgotten their music and name.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

23 hours ago, navybsn said:

The Looney tunes down here take everything as either 1) Jehoshaphat is telling us all to repent and devote our lives to him (see the recent earthquake in NJ as said evidence), or 2) that it's the end of the world and the Rapture is imminent (see any predictable natural event outside the norm a la said eclipse). Both are interchangeable and or substitutable depending on who you're talking at. I think I've personally lived through 30+ Raptures and at least a dozen extinction events.

The epicenter of the recent earthquake here in NJ was less than 10 miles from Benedict Donald's Bedminster golf club and burial ground. I'm choosing to take that as a sign from Jehoshaphat that the orange menace better watch his fucking ass.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

38 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

I used to enjoy the hunt for new music, I used to want to hear every band I could, but it got to the point for me where the shit just all started to blend together. Too many bands sounded the same, committing bands names to memory just wasn't happening for 90% of what I heard. I'd hear someone talk about a band that sounded good, only to realise I'd heard them months before and forgotten their music and name.

I never used to do this years ago because I was working stupid hours and just didn't have the time. But for me personally we've just in these last 10 or 15 years really gotten into this golden era of extreme metal where I'm finding the highest percentage of killer shit that's the kind of music I've always been looking for. I could probably let most of that old 20th century stuff go and just listen to my newer music from the 21st century and be quite happy. If I'd have had music available to me that I felt this way about back in the old days, I never would have bought 90% of the stuff that I did back then in the 70's 80's and 90's. Because there's only maybe 10% of that old stuff that I still have any interest in ever hearing again. This newer modern era black and death metal is the music I've always been meant to listen to, I was just born about 15 years too soon you see. So I'm stocking up on all this shit now while it's readily available as a hedge against the day when the torrent of killer music slows to a trickle and then inevitably peters out altogether eventually. I'll have my blackened goat filth already sorted and then everything will be apples for my few remaining twilight years walking this earth as a decrepit old goat.

[AlSymerz]

I was the other way, I used to have the time to do it. These days I could probably find the time but I tend to spend it doing other things. Years ago I used to sit down with a new CD or vinyl and listen to it start to end reading the cover and the lyrics etc but these days I tend to let music play in the back ground more and more. There are albums I do buy and listen through intently without interruption but it doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it used to.

[AlSymerz]

I just spent some time on YT looking for new music and I realised another reason why I don't do it as often as I used to. I don't have the patience for intros any more. I do need to get outside and do some work but it's not really the deadline of that which is driving me. I just don't seem to keep playing anything after a minute or so if the first track is some kind of intro that doesn't catch me.

[markm]

😪

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, AlSymerz said:

I just spent some time on YT looking for new music and I realised another reason why I don't do it as often as I used to. I don't have the patience for intros any more. I do need to get outside and do some work but it's not really the deadline of that which is driving me. I just don't seem to keep playing anything after a minute or so if the first track is some kind of intro that doesn't catch me.

I automatically skip roughly 90 seconds ahead on every YT album video i click on to hopefully skip the intros. Pisses me off when 90 seconds isn't far enough 'cause they've got a 3 or 4 minute intro. Can't imagine there'd be any metalhead in the entire world who really wants to sit through a pointless 3 or 4 minute intro. 

[AlSymerz]

If an intro or outro goes for 3 or 4 minutes that is a wasted slot that could have been filled with another song.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

8 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

If an intro or outro goes for 3 or 4 minutes that is a wasted slot that could have been filled with another song.

Well it's filler to make the albums or EP's appear longer than they really are because clearly they didn't have another actual track to put in that slot. The worst is when it's just like a short little 15 or 20 minute EP with a 3 or 4 minute intro track. Weaksauce. I just wanna tell them "Dudes, put the damn bong down for 10 minutes and write another fucking song!!"

[markm]

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I would happily use the filters and shortcuts too my friend if they took me even close to where I wanted to go. But my problem is they inevitably take me much farther away from my intended destination, so they're of no use to me. Obviously it'd be so much easier for me to just be able to enjoy whatever music was readily available, like turning on the radio was for lots of people I knew back in the day. I'd love it if I could just buy like the 40 albums on the Decibel list every year and then just enjoy them and be done with it. But that method doesn't work for me. I have some pretty specific requirements for what I want from my music, and I have yet to find a reliable source (other than Marko) who consistently nails it and gives me the type of music I'll most likely dig.

How about Surge?  You guys have a lot of cross over. Where the hell is Surge, anyway?

Oh Surge!!!!

Imma start yodeling for Serge. He didn't even post his 2023 list. Sergiiiioooooo.....yodelayheehoo!!! (silence)

Sergio, Sergio, Wherefore art Thou, Sergio (nothing)

Sergio, come out and Plaaaay!!!

This is an extremely sad state of affairs. Maybe I'll do a Surge rain dance or make a Surge cupie doll or get out my Surgi crystals. 

 

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

3 hours ago, markm said:

How about Surge?  You guys have a lot of cross over. Where the hell is Surge, anyway?

Oh Surge!!!!

Imma start yodeling for Serge. He didn't even post his 2023 list. Sergiiiioooooo.....yodelayheehoo!!! (silence)

Sergio, Sergio, Wherefore art Thou, Sergio (nothing)

Sergio, come out and Plaaaay!!!

This is an extremely sad state of affairs. Maybe I'll do a Surge rain dance or make a Surge cupie doll or get out my Surgi crystals. 

 

 

Haha Surge is still alive, I just saw him post a pic of the eclipse obscured by clouds yesterday on the 13 man txt thread we're both a part of. But he doesn't really pop in there so much anymore and neither do I really. I spend more time here. He threw in the towel on his former commercial carpet cleaning business a couple of years ago and went out and earned himself a high falutin college degree. So now he's joined the actual smart people workforce and he doesn't seem to have the same kind of free time like he once used to. I'm sure he still posts on a metal forum somewhere like NCS probably, but I don't have to tell you there are only so many hours in a day for this shit.

Surge and I do have a reasonable amount of overlap musically, but his tastes seems to be just as specific as mine if not even more so, just in slightly different areas. So like we both consume a ton of black metal, but I'm more into caustic riffy Norsecore, Finnblack, first wave influenced stuff as well as black/death & war metal while he seems to be super into that fuzzily produced atmo-black right on the edge of lo-fi and some folk metal. We definitely like some of each other's stuff, we do both dig a bunch of the Finnish bands I think, but I think he and I are mainly focused in different areas and probably out hunting for different shit.

Same with death metal, he goes more for the mid-paced Swedeath, Bolt Thrower and European style bands, some Chilean death, classic death/doom and maybe some more melodic Amon Amarth type viking stuff, while I cast a somewhat wider death metal net. I like all that kind of stuff he likes as well, (not the Amon Amarth so much) but I do also tend to go more for the ugly brulal and putrid caverncore, Incantation clones and more recently I've been getting into a ton of deathgrind and old late 90's/early 00's era BDM. Mortician, Malignancy, Suffocation, Exhumed, Devourment, Deranged stuff like that which I don't think he has much interest in if any. I didn't either tbh just a few years ago, but this is where my natural progression of heaviness has taken me. Seems I need it heavier and heavier and ever more brutal to get the same high off of it if ya know what I mean.

Besides the black and death metal I know he dips his tootsies into stuff like modern day heavy metal and thrash which I have little to no interest in (unless it's been very heavily blackened) while as you probably know I'm heavily into grindcore, hardcore, punk rock, and of course boatloads of crust and stenchore, which I don't think he's too interested in. So you can see when you drill down a bit and take core samples there's not as much crossover between us cool cats as one might think.

So sure, to the uninitiated we would both appear to be mostly into black and death metal, same basic shit, right? And it's also true we do both have a strong aversion to prog, hipster black, tech death and twinkcore. But to the well traveled extreme metal connoisseur he and I actually have somewhat different and pretty clearly defined tastes. We could both make top 25 year end lists and only have maybe 4 or 5 albums in common. There I go overexplaining again. Sorry dude, I know you don't read anything I write that's more than 3 paragraphs and that was just 5.

[markm]

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Haha Surge is still alive, I just saw him post a pic of the eclipse obscured by clouds yesterday on the 13 man txt thread we're both a part of. But he doesn't really pop in there so much anymore and neither do I really. I spend more time here. He threw in the towel on his former commercial carpet cleaning business a couple of years ago and went out and earned himself a high falutin college degree. So now he's joined the actual smart people workforce and he doesn't seem to have the same kind of free time like he once used to. I'm sure he still posts on a metal forum somewhere like NCS probably, but I don't have to tell you there are only so many hours in a day for this shit.

Surge and I do have a reasonable amount of overlap musically, but his tastes seems to be just as specific as mine if not even more so, just in slightly different areas. So like we both consume a ton of black metal, but I'm more into caustic riffy Norsecore, Finnblack, first wave influenced stuff as well as black/death & war metal while he seems to be super into that fuzzily produced atmo-black right on the edge of lo-fi and some folk metal. We definitely like some of each other's stuff, we do both dig a bunch of the Finnish bands I think, but I think he and I are mainly focused in different areas and probably out hunting for different shit.

Same with death metal, he goes more for the mid-paced Swedeath, Bolt Thrower and European style bands, some Chilean death, classic death/doom and maybe some more melodic Amon Amarth type viking stuff, while I cast a somewhat wider death metal net. I like all that kind of stuff he likes as well, (not the Amon Amarth so much) but I do also tend to go more for the ugly brulal and putrid caverncore, Incantation clones and more recently I've been getting into a ton of deathgrind and old late 90's/early 00's era BDM. Mortician, Malignancy, Suffocation, Exhumed, Devourment, Deranged stuff like that which I don't think he has much interest in if any. I didn't either tbh just a few years ago, but this is where my natural progression of heaviness has taken me. Seems I need it heavier and heavier and ever more brutal to get the same high off of it if ya know what I mean.

Besides the black and death metal I know he dips his tootsies into stuff like modern day heavy metal and thrash which I have little to no interest in (unless it's been very heavily blackened) while as you probably know I'm heavily into grindcore, hardcore, punk rock, and of course boatloads of crust and stenchore, which I don't think he's too interested in. So you can see when you drill down a bit and take core samples there's not as much crossover between us cool cats as one might think.

So sure, to the uninitiated we would both appear to be mostly into black and death metal, same basic shit, right? And it's also true we do both have a strong aversion to prog, hipster black, tech death and twinkcore. But to the well traveled extreme metal connoisseur he and I actually have somewhat different and pretty clearly defined tastes. We could both make top 25 year end lists and only have maybe 4 or 5 albums in common. There I go overexplaining again. Sorry dude, I know you don't read anything I write that's more than 3 paragraphs and that was just 5.

I'll have you know I read the whole thing. Surge finds some interesting stuff, sometimes. Good dude. Glad he got a job after getting his degree. I know he was trying to make a better life for he and his wife.

[SurgicalBrute]

12 hours ago, markm said:

Surge finds some interesting stuff, sometimes. Good dude

Stop...you're going to make me blush. 😁

I am actually alive and well, and amusingly enough just happened to be looking in on the forum late last night when I saw my name go up, so I figured I'd check in. Didn't mean to completely wander off like I did, tends to happen with me sometimes when it feels like conversation at a place has gotten too quiet or fallen into too much of a rut...something else will grab my attention and off I go...and yeah, the new job, while not overly taxing by any means, definitely has moments where it needs a lot of my time (the next several weeks for example). So, that certainly doesn't help.

As for Whitenoise and my taste, there is quite a bit of overlap. We definitely cover a lot of the same ground, and I've pulled some good reco's from him over the years, but he's right when he says we have different priorities in our music. Usually a lot of the stuff he likes best would get just get a "not bad" rating from me, and he'd probably say the same about a lot of my personal favorites. In recent years my tastes have been running toward bands that like to hide a surprising level of melody under a thick layer of fuzzy production...the so called "raw black metal" trend. Though, I'll admit, it's a trend that's quickly wearing out its welcome.  I'm also probably a lot more forgiving of the use of synth, even though I seem to be one of only 5 people who's already over that Moonlight Sorcery band that's making everyone cream their shorts.

Regarding my year end list...honestly, I got tired of trying to whittle it down to a manageable number, and since there was no real pressing need to have one, I figured why make myself nuts, and basically just kind of stopped working on it. If you want to see it "as-is" though, I'm more than happy to post my rough list.

Hope everyone is doing well

 

[AlSymerz]

I now have a solar powered computer. Technically now if I listen to music it's carbon neutral metal!

(yes like all green projects I totally ignore how much carbon was used to get to this point and only focus on this moment in time)

[markm]

3 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

Stop...you're going to make me blush. 😁

I am actually alive and well, and amusingly enough just happened to be looking in on the forum late last night when I saw my name go up, so I figured I'd check in. Didn't mean to completely wander off like I did, tends to happen with me sometimes when it feels like conversation at a place has gotten too quiet or fallen into too much of a rut...something else will grab my attention and off I go...and yeah, the new job, while not overly taxing by any means, definitely has moments where it needs a lot of my time (the next several weeks for example). So, that certainly doesn't help.

As for Whitenoise and my taste, there is quite a bit of overlap. We definitely cover a lot of the same ground, and I've pulled some good reco's from him over the years, but he's right when he says we have different priorities in our music. Usually a lot of the stuff he likes best would get just get a "not bad" rating from me, and he'd probably say the same about a lot of my personal favorites. In recent years my tastes have been running toward bands that like to hide a surprising level of melody under a thick layer of fuzzy production...the so called "raw black metal" trend. Though, I'll admit, it's a trend that's quickly wearing out its welcome.  I'm also probably a lot more forgiving of the use of synth, even though I seem to be one of only 5 people who's already over that Moonlight Sorcery band that's making everyone cream their shorts.

Regarding my year end list...honestly, I got tired of trying to whittle it down to a manageable number, and since there was no real pressing need to have one, I figured why make myself nuts, and basically just kind of stopped working on it. If you want to see it "as-is" though, I'm more than happy to post my rough list.

Hope everyone is doing well

 

Hey man! Just glad you're going well my friend. But I do enjoy listening to your picks. Congrats on the degree and the new job. And, I understand the forums can get redundant. 

[AlSymerz]

Pre-pandemic the kids used to buy me a band t-shirt for my birthday. I'd get in a few months early and order it from wherever it came from, give it to the kids when it arrived and then forget about it until they turned on up the day with a wrapped parcel. But shit it's hard to do that these days. I went looking the other day and the cheapest I can get a shirt or hoodie mailed to me is about $18 from the Helloween shop in Europe. Every other label or band shop wants up to $40 just for shipping, with many of the US labels starting at $45 and getting as high as $125 for one single hoodie.

One of the costs of buying from overseas has always been our dollar against the world. Long gone are the days of the 00's where the Aussie dollar was hitting 90c. It's just something we have to accept, but $40 to send an item worth only $20 is just not going to happen. US post, DHL mainly, was always expensive but never as expensive as it has been since the pandemic.

Labels like Roadruunner etc used to have a reasonable supply of stock in their Aussie store but these days even that's diminished when bands don't have albums out or on tour.

 

 

[SurgicalBrute]

Trust me, while not as bad as it is for you, it's not exactly all sunshine and rainbows coming the other way. I was going to buy a Runespell (aussie black metal band) shirt the other day off of Bandcamp and they wanted $20 U.S. for the shirt and another $20 for the shipping...$40 for one t-shirt.

Honestly, these days it doesn't matter where you're at. Shipping from overseas is an absolute shitshow.

I wonder if thats why import beers are seeming to disappear from off the shelves. My area still gets some, but the sheer number has shrunken dramatically

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

Pre-pandemic the kids used to buy me a band t-shirt for my birthday. I'd get in a few months early and order it from wherever it came from, give it to the kids when it arrived and then forget about it until they turned on up the day with a wrapped parcel. But shit it's hard to do that these days. I went looking the other day and the cheapest I can get a shirt or hoodie mailed to me is about $18 from the Helloween shop in Europe. Every other label or band shop wants up to $40 just for shipping, with many of the US labels starting at $45 and getting as high as $125 for one single hoodie.

One of the costs of buying from overseas has always been our dollar against the world. Long gone are the days of the 00's where the Aussie dollar was hitting 90c. It's just something we have to accept, but $40 to send an item worth only $20 is just not going to happen. US post, DHL mainly, was always expensive but never as expensive as it has been since the pandemic.

Labels like Roadrunner etc... used to have a reasonable supply of stock in their Aussie store but these days even that's diminished when bands don't have albums out or on tour.

Are you sure it's not just your massive XXXL size shirts that costs so much to ship? 😉

As someone who has sent dozens of parcels to New Zealand and a few to OZ as well, I can tell you I've never gotten off for anything less than $100 USD ($155 AUD) and frequently it was a lot more than that. And that was pre-pandemic. It's just not worth it. You'd be better off making a list of all the shirts you wanted and then flying out to civilization somewhere to go pick them up in person. Just make sure you wash them all first before you pack them in your suitcase so you can claim you brought them with you and won't have to pay duty.

Either that or start a metal t-shirt silk screen company down there in the deepest bushlands of Victoria and contact the bands/labels to buy the rights to make the shirts yourself down under. Then you can sell them to merch starved 'Strayan thrashers for $50 or $60 AUD a pop. ($32 - $39 US) You'll make a killing, sell the cows and retire. Band shirts always used to typically cost $20 here but in recent years $30 seems to be the new $20.

One of my late wife's mother's RNZN friends in Wellington emailed me an Amazon gift certificate for the kid's birthday in January. Problem is it's only good for the Aussie Amazon, and they won't ship to the US. Because they'd have to charge too much for shipping or else they'd lose money. I should probably message her and tell her not to send those anymore, but I don't want her to think I'm complaining or come off as entitled. I don't know why she keeps sending stuff for the kid anyway, she's not family, my wife's been gone nearly 7 years now, and the kid's own grandmother doesn't even send pressies to him anymore most of the time. 

[FatherAlabaster]

I dunno, maybe she's just doing it to be... nice? Maybe?

Outgoing shipping costs have sucked for years. I used to mail CDs and shirts and so forth for my bands, but I stopped shipping overseas because I couldn't charge a fair price unless I took a bath on it. 

I haven't noticed declining quantities of foreign beer, but the market here is (rightly) focused on local products, so I wouldn't have. 

[AlSymerz]

I'd pay a fat bastard tax if that's what it was. But even an S or L costs that much to send.

Europe is slightly less, although I still haven't found anywhere as cheap as the Helloween store yet. But pre-pandemic a shirt from the US used to cost us about $20 postage, then there was discounts for more than one. Back in the 00's when we almost had dollar parity we could often get free postage. (Obviously free postage is never free but the shirts where only $25 too)

The shirts were always just a token gift from the kids and I could have a decent shirt made and delivered from a local company for less than $50. If I wanted it identical I'd have to lie and tell them I own the copyright but they don't actually check copyright on one off prints anyway. Or I could make it my own design for whatever band I wanted. But I've always had a silly notion that I was supporting the bands, which in some cases I know I'm only supporting labels and merch companies.

 

Amazon AU sucks. The prices are nowhere near as good as Amazon US and never have been, we also can't get half the range of stuff the US site has. It was only ever an exercise to bite back at the Australian Tax Office who wanted to be seen 'being tough' on US companies not paying their fair share of Aussie taxes. Amazon actually restrict us buying a heap of things from the US site because we have our own local site. It sucks and must be costing them money but it wont change.

I used to buy CD and DVD's from Amazon US every few months, but now everything for us defaults to the Aussie site and 90% of the stuff we used to be able to get is not available to us. The price we pay is that we can order direct from the bands and labels but the shipping is so much more.

 

[AlSymerz]

33 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I dunno, maybe she's just doing it to be... nice? Maybe?

Outgoing shipping costs have sucked for years. I used to mail CDs and shirts and so forth for my bands, but I stopped shipping overseas because I couldn't charge a fair price unless I took a bath on it. 

I haven't noticed declining quantities of foreign beer, but the market here is (rightly) focused on local products, so I wouldn't have. 

In the 90's it used to cost us $10.50 to send a CD mailer or a t-shirt to the UK, $12 to the US and Canada.

Now days it's $14.30 to the UK and $13.55 to the US. Both are economy air travel and up to about 15 days delivery.

The same CD or shirt from a UK band/label ranges from about $25-35 (converted) and from $40 to about $90 (average) from the US. If I could buy the CD or t-shirt from Amazon like I used to it would be free postage.

 

[SurgicalBrute]

15 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I haven't noticed declining quantities of foreign beer, but the market here is (rightly) focused on local products, so I wouldn't have. 

That's definitely a factor as well...was just wasting time today, hitting a couple of nearby stores just to see what they had, and local has absolutely eaten up the majority of shelf space. Ciders and alcoholic seltzers are cutting in too. It's just that it recently occurred to me that I haven't seen certain mainstay import beers on the shelf, and what they do have seems to be just the absolute basics...mostly hefeweizens

[AlSymerz]

9 minutes ago, SurgicalBrute said:

That's definitely a factor as well...was just wasting time today, hitting a couple of nearby stores just to see what they had, and local has absolutely eaten up the majority of shelf space. Ciders and alcoholic seltzers are cutting in too. It's just that it recently occurred to me that I haven't seen certain mainstay import beers on the shelf, and what they do have seems to be just the absolute basics...mostly hefeweizens

We have high taxes on booze that increase every six months and makes many imported liquors extremely expensive so many of the local breweries got bought out by big international breweries who bottle their product here and avoid the import tax. Still makes them expensive but local booze only gets three taxes on it, imported gets four.

But it's increased the brands astronomically. At our major booze stores now there is over 140 different branded beers and many of those have multiple flavours in their range. Most boozers wouldn't handle the full range and depending on the area (inner city yuppie, urban, rural) would depend on the brands stocked but the big ones stock most of them.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

28 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

We have high taxes on booze that increase every six months and makes many imported liquors extremely expensive so many of the local breweries got bought out by big international breweries who bottle their product here and avoid the import tax. Still makes them expensive but local booze only gets three taxes on it, imported gets four.

But it's increased the brands astronomically. At our major booze stores now there is over 140 different branded beers and many of those have multiple flavours in their range. Most boozers wouldn't handle the full range and depending on the area (inner city yuppie, urban, rural) would depend on the brands stocked but the big ones stock most of them.

Why so many brands? I could see in the big smoke, but out there in the bush I thought all you bogans just kept things simple and always drank VB & Jim Beam?

[AlSymerz]

Shit, I know that bloke!

I have no idea why there is so many brands. It's the inner city yuppies that drink all the IPA and shit and that's what many of the new names on the shelf are. These numpties have no brand loyalty and they drink a different beer on every corner they come too. They talk about things like fruitiness, tang, breathability and odd words like that when they describe beer.

In general cider and other mixer drinks have over taken beer, but the traditional beers like VB, XXXX or Toohey's don't sell in any where near the numbers they used to, which is part of the reason our breweries all got sold to overseas companies.