Ah September, a great month indeed. The kids head back to school with new backpacks and lunchboxes, the heat of August starts to dissipate, The start of football season also kicks off the brand new Pigskin Destroyer 666 Fantasy Football League. Long awaited metal releases finally start to see the light of day. Politicians begin to build up their election campaign lies. But best of all, the fall tours begin to criss-cross the states and make many a fan in those “B” markets happy when they pass through your town.

Anyway, welcome back to our monthly exchange of ideas, site news and notes, and feedback from you the reader. We want you to have a say in the direction of the site and we figure one good meeting a month will be the best way to accomplish that. Feel free to address any of the below issues or bring up new ones of your own in the comments. I’ll edit this post when necessary with any new findings/decisions. This post is open to all visitors and blog authors, so let’s get the discussion going!
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Oh Mushroomhead… How are you still going?

Does Anyone Even Know?

Do YOU Even Know?

As most of you know I am a big SlipKnot fan. A fan of the music mind, not the image. (I know, hard to believe someone can be a fan of just the music isn’t it?)
There is some bullshit argument that has gone on for ages about SlipKnot and Mushroomhead ripping each other off and each devout fan on each side swears blind that the others are cunts.

Kinda pointless really because who cares?

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter who came up with the idea first, it matters who are the better songwriters, and unfortunately for Mushroomhead, SlipKnot are far superior.

Besides they didn’t create the dress up in masks thing, there have been tons of bands before them that have adopted “mysterious” images under variously stupid pseudonyms.

Anyhoo, Mushroomhead are apparently still around and they are planning on releasing a new album entitled: ‘Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children’

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Help Me!!!

Well, amigos, Labor Day weekend is upon us (well, those of us here in the States, anyway), and I’m going to be on a mini-vacation, visiting in-laws and friends with the missus and the baby. So, I’m leaving the site in the capable hands of des, DGR, and associates. I’m sure I’ll check in periodically, as I am prone to doing! Take it easy, homies!

I love the retro treatment here. Perfect.

Celtic Frost were certainly one of the most influential bands in all of extreme music many bands have been influenced by then during the years of their existence and even after their eventual demise in 2006. Perhaps no band was as closely associated with such an influential group, yet able to take on a style very different from them. The band of course are fellow Swiss metallers Coroner, the former road crew for Celtic Frost who clearly knew they were also destined for heavy metal greatness, hell it got them a Throwback Thursday bid at the very least.

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Thursday rears it’s ugly head once again and for some reason has become my most productive day for this website. This weeks Judging A Book comes from the always happy and incredibly sunny UK. They’ve been waiting in my inbox for a while now as seems to be the case so it’s good to finally get a chance to sample the gentlemen. They proclaimed themselves to be a UK melodeath band in this little bubble that pops up now whenever you friend request someone and as I am a fan of the genre my interest is peaked a tad bit. I haven’t clicked over to their page yet but they do have a very nice logo given the little thumbnail that I have so tally ho gentlemen! Off we go to listen to today’s group (or more like I listen and then you guys click over after I say it doesn’t suck, one of the many services I provide). Clicking over to…..

Engraved Disillusion

Photo provided by Jason Pike Photography. Damn good work there, sir.

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This week was a lot kinder to us metalheads than previous ones have been. We have some of the usual stalwarts such as Amberian Dawn whom seem determined to get their entire discography (though the drums are fun) onto the game and Evile whom are literally two tracks away from having all of Infected Nations playable by this point (yes, that does include the bonus track). We also have the fucking awesome Firewind whom also have ‘World On Fire’ in playtesting making an appearance. Then you have Bang Camaro and Shokkher rounding things out for this week so we have quite a few tunes to choose from. As always thanks to Noble for keeping track of this shit and it is still 360 only. Ps3ers got the joy of getting more Five Finger Donkey Punch this week, so let me finish the list so I can go put a sawn off in my mouth and just end it now…

Evil Inside Me – Amberian Dawn
Revolution – Bang Camaro
Head Up High – Firewind
Lionheart – Amberian Dawn
Burn Her Out – Shokkher
Time No More – Evile
Living in a Whirlwind – Warbringer

Ladies and Gentlemen.
That was one royal pain in the ass for me and DGR.
First Playlist.com doesn’t like UK folk, then it couldn’t find any of my songs. We ended up compromising heavily after getting through 20 tracks on my ipod and only finding two songs!
Oh well, here is my almost random playlist.
I think this list makes me seem a bit tr00er than I actually am, but hey it’s all good!
There are over 18,000 songs on my ipod, admittedly a lot of stuff I don’t listen to, and a lot of embarrassing shit, that thankfully didn’t surface…ok maybe it did a tiny bit. (See Evanescence and Job For A Cowboy)

Plus, SlipKnot made it in and we all know how incredibly, amazingly awesome SlipKnot are… Am I Rite?

I suppose I really only need to “defend” the end of the list.
I still have soft spots for a few songs on Evanescences debut album. Because I am a big girl. The band otherwise though, are pretty damn bad, and Ami Lee is pretty shit live.

Anyways, without further ado, Enjoy and of course share your opinions below!

Here are some of the tracks that came up in the shuffle, but sadly did not make it into the final list…
Bad Religion – Believe It
Devil May Cry 4 – Credo Knocked Down/Kyrie Suffers
Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Mental Changes
Devin Townsend – Storm
Prolong Anoxia – Disgorge
Angelspit – Fallen Angel
Carnal Forge – A Higher Level Of Pain
Anaal Nathrakh – Swallow The World
Disarmonia Mundi – Structural Wound
Kreator – Suicide Terrorist
Job For A Cowboy – The Divine Falsehood

How do you want to die? It’s not a question I ask myself every day but from time to time it does pop into my head. Normally I just want to be buried and eaten by worms like most people, although an occasional viking send-off

or being strapped to an interstellar rocket pointed at the sun.does cross my mind. Some of you may even want to be buried in the famous Kiss Kasket.
But today, thanks to our pals at the deciblog I have come across the newest and most metal of ways to enter the afterlife.

And Vinyly is a UK firm that specializes in taking your cremated ashes and pressing them into a vinyl recording of your choice. Everything from a reading of your last will and testament to personal messages to the soundtrack of your life can live on in record form. Prices surprisingly aren’t that much more than a regular pressing making it a fairly affordable way to leave something unique for your loved ones after you’re gone.

Probably thrown at it by the mail man. That guy is such an asshole. Points to Atheist for continuing the planet theme for 2010, although theirs and The Contortionist’s Exoplanet make sense because both the albums are named after planets. The artwork for Jupiter is awesome because it’s more airbrushed than photoshop effect, and there is just so much happening in it.

Have we mentioned we’re stoked for this disc yet?

Yes, I found it on Blabbermouth but that’s because I don’t have access to our Gmail so I don’t get the fancy press releases.*tiny violin playing just for me*

This song is so good, soooooo good. I’m listening to Poetry For The Poisoned right now and early impressions are proving to be very positive. I’m liking this song and The Zodiac at the moment but it’s still a very surface listen (I.E no headphones). Also, shirtless Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strid (no terrorist keyboard, fuck the fancy umlauts or whatever they’re called) in the video if you’re into that sort of thing.

I don’t listen to this record often enough. It’s their finest moment (in studio, that is), hauntingly beautiful and unbelievably intelligent. It’s not the heaviest thing ever, unless you’re looking at emotional impact.

So yeah, we got three new black metal albums from Season of Mist, so why not review all of them in one post? It’s not laziness, it’s efficiency! Today I shall be reviewing Drudkh’s Handful of Stars (Fun Fact: Drudkh is pronounced ‘droh’), Mar de Grises’s Streams Inwards, and Otargos’s No God, No Satan.

Drudkh – Handful of Stars

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If you’re like me, you were a kid once, a long time ago (seven years is a long time, right?). Surely, part of your childhood was spent watching anthropomorthic critters being tortured through their own stupidity. Unless your heart has withered and died, you can still watch those old cartoons and have a chuckle. The old Warner Bros. and Disney cartoons are classics, and you would want future kids to have a similar experience. Surely, these cartoons are perfect, and don’t need to be changed!

That’s not what the Disney Corporation believes, though. This is the modern era, and modern children need slo-mo, instant replay and big sound effects. You know where this leads. I woke up this morning and saw that Pharyngula had posted an article (via Jhonen Vazquez, creator of the fantastic Invader Zim series) on Disney BLAM!, the latest conspiracy against everyone. Why would they do such a thing? Copyright, motherfuckers. The unimaginitive goons hired some Rob Schneider movie advertiser to give us all an America’s funniest home videos-style play-by-play. If this wasn’t bad enough, the insipid fuck shouts BLAM! loudly and obnoxiously whenever the victim gets smashed real good. We get rewinds, slow-mos and freeze-frames, because that’s what kids go for in the Michael Bay era.

I know kids. My youngest brother is 9, and we went through the whole stupid humor phase about 2 years ago. Kids will laugh at anyone saying something in a funny voice, no matter what the content is. It’s up to adults to maintain a standard for content, which is why I praise films such as Finding Nemo and Toy Story for presenting something genuinely worthwhile to a young audience. Everyone has the right to nostalagia: I don’t even know what I’d do without my childhood. Do we really want kids looking back twenty years from now and feeling cheated?

A few of the culprits:

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