Make Them Suffer were going to obliterate my already industrial deafened ears with their awesome brand of blackened deathcore and announce to the world that they are the new force of the underground metal sound. Alas, it was never meant to be. As soon as we got into the venue, which took 15 minutes of driving around the outer-suburban wastelands of Pakenham to find, we discovered that Make Them Suffer had cancelled, citing illness within their ranks as the culprit.
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. To suggest that I could spend the rest of the evening not thinking about the fact that Make Them Suffer were not playing would be a complete and utter lie. So I had to make a choice right there and then. Do I say goodbye to my hard-earned $10 entry fee and take the gang home and wonder what could have been or do I suck it up and put up with a line-up that would never live up to my lofty expectations? In the end I made the choice that any other fan in my shoes would make. I hadn't heard any of the bands on the bill so my unconquerable musical curiosity won. more
Okay, so I've got this blog thing worked out to the point that I can hold a coherent conversation with the "blogasphere" and not get twisted up into a pretzel-shaped donut....
Well, I'm not in the mood to post a review or complain about anything so I'll do the next best thing and post a link to an awesome song. Hopefully someone out there in the blogasphere will like it and say something....more
I get out of the shower after my weekly basketball game, and sit down with my humble blog, fully intending to review some masterpiece I have stashed away on my hard drive since the beginning of the year. As soon as I get comfortable, I have to decide what album to review. Before I even open up the media player, the thought comes to my mind, most of the albums on said hard drive have been listened to a billion times in the past few months, and I really couldn't be bothered listening to them again.
So what do I do? I turn on the internet radio on my humble laptop and hope and pray that some decent metal comes out the other end. This is the problem I have with modern metal, and to a large extent music in general. Of the 90 minutes I've been listening, I've heard one song from a band I've never heard of which merited a search for their material on facebook or youtube, just to ensure I actually did heard a good song. the remaining 85 minutes have been a frustrating glimpse into the current state of our beloved metal scene.
Not since I was 19 have I put pen to paper (in internet terms that would be....gee I don't know what the internet term for that is...) for the sake of airing my own quirky musings on the state of music and associated subject matter.
I suppose I should start from the beginning, but that's a lot of history to cover in my first post so I'll be brief...
Let's just say I'm turning 42 tomorrow, getting my first tattoo (for my birthday), have an adoring wife who I am still madly in love with after 19 years of marriage, have two fantastic daughters who challenge and frustrate me no end, but who I could not imagine living without.
I come from a long and distinguished background of rebellion and sedition, having first heard ACDC's anthemic single "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" in the car outside Sunday church. While the sentiment Bon Scott was trying to impress on my 8 year old mind went in one ear and out the other, I immediately fell in love with the belligerent, unashamedly disobedient rock sound the band was torturing our family station wagon stereo speakers with. From that day forth I swore I would listen to as much rock as my hungry pre-pubescent body could handle...
...fast-forward to September 2012 and here I am at 11:20 at night listening to Swallow The Sun's entirely brilliant album "The Emerald Forest And The Blackbird" in the headphones, cranked up to already unhealthy volume levels. Having survived, and been intimately involved in, every single known sub-genre and underground movement extreme music could possibly generate in my lifetime, I made the decision to re-enter the global circus known as the "media" to share with the internet community my opinions and observations.
As I decide what to do with this monster I've just created (bringing to mind a laughable image of Frankenstein's laboratory with me at the helm) I think after 34 years of rock and metal adoration, interspersed with more than a few years of goth and trance thrown in, I probably have accumulated enough "been there, done that" cred to feel comfortable to share it with the rest of the world.
For now, I'll just keep doing what I've been doing since 1977 and tell the world what I think, regardless of whether you agree with me or not.
Saying that, here's my latest love interest, an awesome band from Perth, Australia, who are currently touring and who I'll be taking my kids to see, where I'll probably do more moshing than they will.
