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Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, metal's my religion, and yeah, it's my dope. Standing in the thunder on stage in the pouring metal rain. What a feeling, baby, the lights are exploding.

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Hello and welcome to the Metalheads Podcast. My name is George.

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My name is Will. And this is John. And Jay is not joining us this week. He could not be here, so he sends his regards and he will be here next time. But we are joined by Albert Mudrian of Decibel Magazine, the editor-in-chief himself. How are you doing, Albert? I'm doing well, guys. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks. It's a long time coming. Yeah. Yeah, so we just, it's actually been almost a month now, but we just got back.

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A month ago, from the Decibel Medal and Beer Fest in Philadelphia. So now that the dust has settled, how are you feeling about the first Decibel Medal and Beer Fest? First and last Decibel Medal and Beer Fest? Uh-oh. No, we're feeling great, honestly. For year one, we're all really happy with the way things went. Obviously, for a first-year festival, there's a lot of challenges, but I felt like,

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We kind of overcame a lot of logistical hurdles just to even get the event off the ground. And I felt like the feedback that I got from the fans, the bands, the brewers, the vendors, the venue itself, everything seemed overwhelmingly positive. So for me, I'm excited to take that momentum.

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and build the event into something even bigger and better for next year. But we're already underway with kind of building it out. We have dates set for 2018 for it. It'll be at Fillmore again in Philadelphia. Excellent. That's a definite good thing to hear. Yeah, it's a tremendous room. It's huge. It's great. But no, it's fantastic.

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It's a fantastic place, staffed by great people, and they totally get what we want to do. I think that was pretty evident probably for you guys there. You attended it, you saw the vibe, and Will, you worked it, so you had a sense of how the staff operated there. Everything fit, honestly.

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I was pleasantly surprised at the small amount of speed bumps we incurred in year one. So I don't want to test my lock too much with year two because I'm sure there will be many more exciting headaches to follow. But no, we're really satisfied, really happy with it, but we think we could do bigger and better things next year.

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Speaking of the speed bumps, were there any surprises you hadn't anticipated or any lessons learned from this first time? Get better plastic cups. That's right. I can honestly say it. I was going to bring it up. We talked ad nauseum between the three of us and on the podcast. And the only thing we could remotely try and complain about was those shitty plastic cups. Everyone just took it and just threw it away.

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Like, people were just, they were disposing of them. Like, oh, now we have no more cups. I mean, the way I look at it is if you fuck up something, it might as well be something that's easily correctable like that. Oh, yeah. And that's the whole point is that it's such a minor thing. If that's the only thing that I've heard anyone complain about, hey, you guys did a great job. Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, it's funny. It's like one of those things, like, we've obviously never,

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executed a beer fest before, so I guess we weren't thinking like, oh yeah, we need plastic cups that are of a better quality, or maybe we need to invest in actual glasses next year.

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Well, to be honest, you guys are running really two festivals here. It was a beer fest, and it was also a metal fest, so I think if that's the only thing that happened, or one of the only things, you did a pretty good job on the first go-around.

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magazine 13 years and for 13 years we have obviously produced a lot of products and put together a lot of events and I'm assuming that for the most part people like them because it allows us to continue to do what we do and I get you know feedback here and there on things that we do and stuff that we make but I've never had the response to something like this where it was just like

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People just random people just kind of stopping me there, expressing their excitement for it. People just days and days and days afterwards emailing me or calling me just to tell me what a great time they had. It was wonderfully surprising, honestly. I knew that we had something, we were going to do something good, but people's reaction to it was pretty overwhelming, to be honest.

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So does this mean that Alex just got a really big raise? It means that she probably should have one. It means I can pile even more work on her next year. Oh, yeah. Oh, you can do everything. Yeah. I told her the motto is don't get too good at anything you don't want to do. Yeah. I recall seeing you pretty much running around everywhere the whole time. Did you get a chance to enjoy much of the festival yourself?

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Not as much as I would have liked. I mean, I carved out time to see certain things, you know. I saw... I regret not seeing more of Panopticon, honestly. I saw some of it, not as much as I wanted. I regret not seeing more of Falls of Raurus, to be honest with you. But I made time to see

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some stuff like, you know, obviously Will and I, we saw all of chemists, or I saw, I'd say about 90% of chemists, and I saw at least a half an hour of sleep, I saw a lot of A and B, I saw a lot of waste, I saw a good chunk of Pig Destroyer, but yeah, there was definitely a lot of running around, and that's fine, it's kind of par for the course, honestly,

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But once all the breweries were there and once we knew all the bands were there and everybody had all their stuff together, it was just like more just answering kind of little questions here and there. And, you know, Alex Yard, who Will mentioned a moment ago, she was extremely helpful. I've never done an event and had somebody who I could consider kind of a co-producer in that sense who was,

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knew the event or the festival as well as I did. So that made a world of difference and I don't think I could have executed something like that without her or did something on that scale just by myself. I've done one-off shows that have been done really well and sold out or whatever, but not an event that scale.

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something like that.

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Let's put it that way.

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You mentioned that you're already working on next year.

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Is that,

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uh,

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is that something that's going to be like a,

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a constant thing that has to be worked on from the end of the last one to the beginning of the next one?

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Or is that something that you can sort of,

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you know,

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knock out a bunch of stuff ahead of time and then you've got some time to kill until the next show?

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I mean,

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I think it's always in your head,

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you know,

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like I,

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I think if you have something that is a,

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a recurring annual thing like that you're always like kind of looking a couple years down the line even like oh you know I'd like to do this with this in 2018 which puts us in a position to do this in 2019 and so I think it is it is kind of always on your mind and since and since I know exactly some of the things that I wanted to change from from year one to year two it's like I'm very very eager and borderline

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to get going with year two. There's a couple

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things we have to figure out.

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Some reconciliation stuff.

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Just boring

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bookkeeping

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stuff to get it sorted and then we can just

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move right into year two.

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all the groundwork

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is there. The hard stuff is

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kind of past that.

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Now

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we

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We've talked about it as a thing, but it just wasn't a thing. Now it's a thing. So once it's a thing, you just can kind of make it a better thing. And some of the learning curve stuff, I'm sure you've already worked out. Like how you get breweries from around the country and the world, if you bring in McKellar, to pour beer in a state where you have all these three-tier systems and stuff. If you already figured that out, it's like, okay, well, we just use the same distributor.

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that we used last year or you know i'm you've already had experience

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obviously with the decibel magazine tour which i went to in philly the week before the the uh the

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metal beer fest but it seems like if you have a lot of that stuff like all right we've already been

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through it once so we know how to do it it's just a matter of doing it again yeah no i mean that's that is

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true the hardest stuff is kind of uh in the rear view in that sense and now it's just kind of tweaking it

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and making it more user friendly for everyone involved. For us in the production side, for the breweries and the bands, for the fans, just making everything better. It's exciting. It was exciting to be able to do it and pull it off and it's exciting to know that it has a future and honestly I think a bright one with a lot of

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with a lot of the possibilities.

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Just, you know, even beyond, like well beyond what we're doing right now.

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So I know a few of the, I know there's a few breweries that were dying to be pouring beer at the Fest, like Oliver Ailes in Baltimore, who I know contacted Adam.

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DC Brow, who, Brandon from DC Brow, was there at the festival.

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I know those guys would love to pour next year.

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Are there other breweries that have contacted you who definitely want to do it next year and bands that has said like,

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Hey, we want to be a part of this next year. Yeah. I mean, there were, I would say that after we, like when we made the announcement back in November of last year, there were immediately at least a dozen breweries that reached out to us who wanted to be involved. And we were, you know, we were just maxed out with space by that point. But I was basically just trying to tell people, like, look, you know, you're not getting a friendly brush off.

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We want to make this a real annual event, so hang tight. I know we are going to be reaching out to some of the people you've been specifically mentioned about having them participate in year two. I want to retain a couple of the breweries from year one, but I don't want it to just be like 20.

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like 20 brand new breweries. I like there to be a little bit of a, like a little cohesion from year to year, but I think it like, I think it, I think it'd be cool. I think that there could be some people who could be there two, three years in a row and then drop out, take a year off, come back, whatever. I mean, yeah, there's some, there's some obvious ones like true three Floyd's hammer heart that, you know, have the, the Holy mountain to have like the full blown heavy metal aesthetic and, you know, narrative that it would be almost a shame if they weren't included.

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I'm sorry.

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Got something in my throat.

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Might be your foot.

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Like the good, you know, breweries who are producing beer that I like, that obviously helps.

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And Droid Theory would be a good one for you, too.

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Yeah, definitely.

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I think you'll be seeing Droid Theory there.

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I think I can, you know, pull the curtain back on that one.

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I mean, they'll be there.

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Go ahead, I'm sorry. Do you already know the bands for next year? Not that I want you to tell them, obviously you don't want to give that yet, but I was just curious if that's already in place. Not a full lineup. I mean, a couple. I kind of know the basic structure of how I need to build it out, but as far as... I've got my crazy wish list and my crazy can we pull this off idea.

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And some of these have been germinating for years. So I think there's a couple things that will come to fruition. But it's ideally, like, I would like to have, I would like to know the full lineup by, say, end of August. And then announce it in, like, October, something like that. So yeah, it's not that, like,

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It seems like it's forever away. But to me, it's right around the corner in a lot of ways. And for us, what we're doing as a magazine, as Decibel as a magazine, we want to continue to add beer coverage to what we're doing. Because I don't like the idea of announcing the festival, promoting it for

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six months and then going dark for six months. To me, that seems like, number one, it seems disingenuous, and number two, it just seems silly when you have this, like, obviously, Decibel's had a connection between metal and beer for a long, long time, but I think, like, I think those months of the year when we're not promoting the fest, we need to make that connection a bit clearer, and we've already taken some

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steps to do that. So you'll see in the coming weeks a couple more announcements that are kind of related to Decibel and beer. Along those same lines that you were just mentioning, I noticed that in one of the second last or the episode, the issue that came out a couple months ago that DC Brow actually advertised, bought advertising space in the magazine. Are they the first brewery to do that? Do you know? There were a few that did it in that issue.

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There was Phantom Carriage out in California and Society Brewery.

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Yeah, you're right.

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I can't remember if we had any breweries advertising prior to that. I don't think we did.

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I see it as a, not to be all gross, but I do see it as a potential revenue stream

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in some capacity in those months where, again, where the festival isn't going on. But I think that that's going to really depend on us becoming more an authoritative voice with the beer stuff, which is going to lead to more metal and beer contributors beyond just Adam Tepedelin. So it's something that we're going to build organically and work on so it isn't like some,

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weird, oh, all of a sudden, 20% of the magazine is beer. I don't want to turn it into that either, but I like the idea of more things kind of popping up and popping in there and appearing online, and the connection's just getting clearer and clearer. Because I think it's already there for a lot of people, but I think just being, just fleshing it out a bit more, you know?

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I mean, I mean, there's obviously I think there's a huge connection and the three of us on the power of four of us on the podcast and you I mean, we're all metal heads and all beer nerds. And I've been hosting metal nights at my various breweries and still doing now we're doing live music at Atlas. And that there's there's a huge draw between the people who come out for the metal shows and and like the collision, I like to call it between craft beer metal. I mean, it's just it's a very organic thing, it seems like.

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And if people were not, you know, here in Northern Virginia or D.C., if I keep doing these things at the brewery, people come to the brewery, well, I'm not serving you Bud Light, so if you want a beer, you're going to start drinking our beer. And people's tastes, you know, I've seen over the course of the years, my friends' tastes have changed into better beer. So it's forcing it upon them. Yeah, I also think, though, well, we don't, at least in our area, we don't see too many of those Bud Light guys coming in, or Bud Light people coming into the shows anyway.

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I think it's a little more advantageous because the beer scene has exploded so much in this area.

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They're all up on the stage like Steve Jansen and his Miller Lite.

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I think he was drinking PBR.

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Well, he was drinking Miller Lite with us.

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After like six old raspberries.

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I like that there's a lack of pretension too.

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I think that's important. I mean, I know the true guys, the chemist guys, you can give them PBRs and they'll make it work. Well, I know during the show at the fest, I know Blake and I think Scott from Pink Destroyer were drinking PBR and I know they're both beer nerds. Well, Scott, definitely. Blake is just an alcohol nerd.

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So I remember the first time I read a Decibel magazine and saw Adam's beer column and I was like, well, that's different. You don't see that in every magazine. How did that originally come about that he would have a metal beer column? Geez. I can't remember the specifics of it, but he basically informed

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me that he was a beer rider also on the side. I mean, honestly, I can't even remember at the time if he was a beer rider and a metal rider on the side or a metal rider and a beer rider on the side. He was already a contributor to the magazine, right? Yeah, yeah. He was a regular contributor. And I can't remember if he pitched. He may have done something like he may have pitched a craft beer trend piece.

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or something.

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And whatever, all I remember is whatever he pitched, it didn't seem, I kind of tweaked it and it became, for whatever reason, I thought it could work better as a column.

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I thought that was like, because I was interested in craft beer.

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This is like, I guess, 2008 or 2009, probably 2009.

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Like, I had a legitimate interest in it myself.

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And I thought, well, you know, the craft beer thing, like that could be a cool trend piece, but it's just like one month and it's here and it's gone. Whereas maybe it'd be a little more adventurous if we dedicated some monthly real estate to it and see where it went and you'd be able to gauge a reaction. You get much more than the small sample size that a, you know, one-time four-page feature creates versus,

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to 12 months of data and people will talk about it or they won't talk about it or they'll talk about it positively or negatively or whatever. So we decided to kind of go that route and it was, you know, it was before a lot of the breweries kind of made that metal and beer connection. Obviously, Three Floyds was around then and Todd Hogg was at Surly still and doing his thing, but there weren't a ton of

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There weren't a ton of those obvious metal-friendly or explicitly metal breweries that you have today. It was even interesting to me when we were doing the Metal and Beer Fest issue. We did profiles on all 17 breweries that were pouring at the festival. One of the little bullet points that we had for each of them was,

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the year that they started. And so many of them were like 2012 or 2013 or 2011. These breweries that started like clearly after the column was in place. And I'm not pointing that out in a way that I'm suggesting that the column somehow influenced that because I don't think it did. I think that it just kind of illustrates how recent this boom is and how

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just how widespread it is and how we are, I guess, in a really advantageous position considering that we do have that kind of legacy with it and an expert like Adam being the main contributor behind it.

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So yeah, I mean, it's all, it's like 10% good intuition, 90% dumb luck that it kind of all fell into place like that. Okay. There's a couple columns in the decibel that don't necessarily have a 100% direct connection. I mean, obviously Adam loves beer and metal. Richard Christie's column, which is kind of like more about horror, but you know,

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He kind of weaves into the musical aspect. For a while you had the, I forget who was writing it, but it was the parenting, the spawn of Death of Spawn or something like that. Oh yeah, Anthony Barkowitz's short-lived column and then he got too busy with his kids to continue it. Yeah, that was the most real column ever. Yeah, and you have the metal mothers, that's more direct connection. But there's a couple in there which I find interesting. I always read them. Yeah, thanks.

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For me, one of the main ideas behind Decibel when we started it was I didn't want it to just be that kind of cut-and-paste metal magazine where here are your 12 features on these metal bands and then here are 40 reviews and goodbye, see you next month. I wanted it to have some kind of personality and I wanted it to have something that

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basically didn't necessarily exist just in its own cocoon. I wanted to portray the people who played this music as potentially having other interests other than this music. And I think a lot of the humor that a lot of the writers share manifested itself in creating some of those offshoots and some of those columns. So it's always nice when somebody points out that, like, hey, I like this.

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I like these little kind of weird things that you guys do in the front of the book or whatever. So no, that's cool. I'll be honest. I kind of look for it. I have looked forward to the baseball every year when it's come out in there. Oh, man. Yeah, I'm sorry. So are you a baseball nerd too and a beer nerd and a metal nerd? Oh, yeah, big time. Okay, good. So the baseball preview was, that was really driven by me.

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Me and our former managing editor Andrew Bonazelli, who we kind of separated with almost exactly a year ago around this time. So while there are other baseball fans who are staff writers, the only editorial left who gave a shit about baseball was me.

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It felt weird. It felt disingenuous again trying to do that without Andrew. So I just like I just kind of shelved it. And I've had a couple people have approached me lamenting the fact that it was not in the April streeting issue. But, you know, once my baseball team actually is competitive again. Ha! Go Phillies. Go Nats!

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I have to be honest. I have to be honest. I grew up a Phillies fan. I think he has some natitude. I think it was the Artie Lang interview that I watched on YouTube where you guys were talking about baseball. I think that was it. You were talking about going to the

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See the Phillies back in the presumably the early 80s. Pete Rose and I was actually a big Phillies fan at that time. Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Larry Boa, Pete Rose, all those guys. So I grew up a Phillies fan, but now that I'm a Nats fan, sorry. Just kidding. Oh, that's fine. I mean, you're in Northern Virginia, right? I'm in Maryland. So I'm actually equidistant between the Nats and the Orioles.

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So you should have been an Orioles fan is what you're saying. Yeah, well, I grew up in Michigan, so actually I'm a Tigers fan. All right. Okay. But I've been here for almost 20 years. Like, you know, I'm from Pennsylvania, and I moved out to Northern Virginia in December 2008, a little over a month after the Phillies won the World Series because I had nothing left to do in Philadelphia. The mountain had been climbed.

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It was conquered. There was no reason to stick around any longer. So I ended up moving to Northern Virginia. And yeah, the Nats have become a, you know, the tables have turned. They built a strong farm system. They made some good free agent signings. They made some good trades. And, you know, I would expect them to honestly run away with this division again this year.

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and, you know, we'll see what happens in the playoffs. They have not had good luck. No one in Washington has good luck there. No, well, yeah, the Capitals are adorable when you get to the postseason. I think the word you're looking for is hopeless. It's funny because I watch all of you get excited and forget what's the inevitable that's about. Oh, no, I used to get,

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I'm like, yeah, here we go again.

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No, I mean, the Flyers are the same way. Let's be honest. I mean, when the Flyers were throughout the 90s and a good part of the early part of the aughts, they did the same thing. So, no, I see a lot of what we did and what you're doing right now.

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And you never know. Once you get to the playoffs, in more or less any sport, luck plays a significant role. There's a reason teams dominate the regular season, because they're fucking good. But once you get to the playoffs and you have short series, so much of what determines your success is just gone. It's just chance. I firmly believe that.

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I mean, it's really hard for, like, unless some team is just, like, just so much better than everybody else, like, you know, like the late 90s Yankees or whatever, but those teams don't come around often, so. I think we can both agree that the Penguins suck. Yeah, yeah, no, we can both, we can both, you know. Common ground. Hope for Sidney Crosby to blow out both knees in one, you know, in one game.

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That's fine. We keep concussing him, but he keeps coming back. What do you want to say? I just want to see him cry because I fucking hate him so much. And I'm a Sharks fan. I'm from San Francisco, so there's not much. You don't even have a horse in this race. You just want to see him suffer. I get it. Anytime he gets away with murder on the ice and then whines and cries,

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about it. I just want to see his head get pummeled.

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So speaking of suffering and murder, I want to get back to metal for a second.

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All right.

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And this is a serious question for you, Albert.

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Is there another metal magazine in all of North America at this point, aside from Decibel?

00:32:33.140 --> 00:32:34.880
Other than that one that we will not speak of.

00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:39.180
I mean, I would assume Revolver is still a thing, right?

00:32:39.440 --> 00:33:08.980
Yeah, but they don't really do metal. Not really. I'm talking... They do the hottest chicks in hard rock, though, right? Yeah. And the best metalcore and screamo bands and whatever. I mean, it's... I don't know, man. I mean, I... No, man, this is not... I literally don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:39.380
I've been so consumed with my own bullshit for so long that I have a hard time kind of paying attention to what everybody else has going on. I do know that they are currently publishing bi-monthly or something like that, and that they recently got sold again, which seems to happen to them every couple of years. I don't know who keeps buying Revolver, but I don't know what they're doing.

00:33:39.440 --> 00:34:05.820
their future holds if they are going to continue as a print magazine. Because I believe the company that purchased them was a digital in nature. Did Cosmo buy them? I think they'd be very happy if Cosmo bought them. I think they could all retire early if Cosmo's publisher picked them up.

00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:38.379
I would assume that there are still interesting zines around and stuff that's just off my radar. And it's not because I'm willfully ignorant. It's just because I'm old and busy. And if somebody handed me a zine tomorrow, I'd read the whole goddamn thing. But I haven't made an effort to find anything.

00:34:38.500 --> 00:35:07.360
And I don't spend a ton of time on blogs and stuff like that. I see links that show up in my Facebook feed like everybody else does, but there isn't a site that I'm going to that I feel that I identify with, that I feel like... WeareMetalHeads.com. Yeah? Okay. Shameless self-promotion.

00:35:10.900 --> 00:35:37.380
I've just kind of got my own stuff to worry about when it comes to that. And I'm not even, you know, I'll gladly talk shit on anybody. Don't get me wrong. I just haven't, you know, I haven't tuned in. You just walked into a couple of my later questions, so I'm going to go ahead and hit you with those now. First question is, in this digital

00:35:37.440 --> 00:36:07.380
How does one keep a print magazine afloat? Well, I think the thing is, for us, we were fortunate enough to get in the door right before the infrastructure kind of collapsed of metal magazines. One thing I do remember is when we started Decibel, is I went to a Tower Records and went to the newsstand and

00:36:07.420 --> 00:36:08.080
I grabbed every

00:36:11.040 --> 00:36:12.200
or metal-centric

00:36:13.560 --> 00:36:14.540
publication I could find.

00:36:14.680 --> 00:36:15.520
And there were a bunch of them.

00:36:15.600 --> 00:36:17.500
There were names that I don't remember,

00:36:17.920 --> 00:36:19.900
magazines that were around

00:36:20.300 --> 00:36:21.220
for a couple years,

00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:23.700
none of which were very good,

00:36:24.140 --> 00:36:24.780
but there was a

00:36:26.840 --> 00:36:28.220
there was enough of a community

00:36:28.460 --> 00:36:29.739
and enough labels

00:36:31.520 --> 00:36:32.320
selling enough records

00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:34.280
that had enough money to advertise

00:36:34.760 --> 00:36:36.459
in half a dozen

00:36:36.460 --> 00:37:04.800
to 10 to a dozen publications a month. So we were able to kind of get in on that, and then you saw the war of attrition take place over time. As the years go by, that ad revenue would dry up, and a lot of those record labels had to make some serious decisions about what they were going to support.

00:37:05.960 --> 00:37:35.820
I honestly feel like we did a good job making a good magazine that had its own identity and its own voice. It kind of brought something different. And it looked good. It was a professionally laid out magazine. So we had a lot of good things in our favor. So I think the industry ended up supporting us, which helped. Us, I think part of the reason we've been able to survive is,

00:37:37.080 --> 00:38:05.860
Number one, we never really had aspirations to be some massive mainstream magazine. We never thought, oh, we can print half a million of these magazines. We were working under the auspices that we should have a circulation like Spin or something like that. All of these kind of general audience-sized publications. We were working within a niche-sized publication and just trying to get a foothold.

00:38:05.960 --> 00:38:35.940
of that. So we kind of concentrated on that, which inevitably ended up being a really good strategy, even though I don't think we were honest of it at the time. We were just, we'll just work within what we know. And it turns out that that was like what you needed to do to survive. So there was, I think that was helpful. And then I think the other thing for us particularly was, and without sounding

00:38:36.100 --> 00:39:02.940
too gross. Kind of like expanding the brand of Decibel via additional revenue streams that were actually cool. Like actually making interesting things like putting together a tour, putting together a metal and beer festival, developing a Foxy series, publishing books, doing these things, create these interesting products and events.

00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:08.100
are connected with.

00:39:10.039 --> 00:39:15.200
Like, as an example, we didn't do an award show, because who gives a fuck?

00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:22.340
Like, we, you know, I'm a fan, so I was like, what do, you know, like, what are, what do I like?

00:39:22.460 --> 00:39:34.940
Oh, I like records, and I like books, and I like to go to shows, and I like to

00:39:34.960 --> 00:40:04.940
to create these new, these unique, these products and events that were unique to us and then market them and make them, like, you know, put them out for our audience. And our audience was excited because they're not, I mean, they're like us. You know, they like the same things we like. So inevitably, yeah, I want to buy that book. Yeah, I want to make sure my subscription comes with a FlexiDisc. Yeah, I want to go to the tour. Yeah, I want to go to the

00:40:06.420 --> 00:40:34.940
So for us having a bunch of additional revenue streams, that's kind of, I think, been the other key to us being able to weather the storm when it comes to the erosion of print. And I mean, by the same token, like, we still sell a bunch of ads and that stuff is still strong. It's just been adding these other elements

00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:42.620
So if one day, just say one day the bottom did fall out of something, we have other things that we can replace it with.

00:40:43.740 --> 00:40:44.100
Cool.

00:40:44.540 --> 00:40:51.660
The one thing I appreciate about Decibel is that it definitely is not catering to the lowest common denominator form of metal.

00:40:51.860 --> 00:40:55.240
You don't see a ton of, if at all, metal core in there.

00:40:58.980 --> 00:41:26.180
You're not writing feature articles on Linkin Park and asking Alexandria to get... It's a very niche and I think for me, I know I'm a loyal subscriber, loyal follower. I read almost the entire magazine from front to back the entire time because it fits right in a genre of all the things that I love about metal, including the books, which I know we want to get to choosing death later because I read the whole

00:41:28.040 --> 00:41:32.580
It is by far the best book about metal I've ever read.

00:41:33.060 --> 00:41:37.580
Because it was all about the things that I grew up in.

00:41:38.060 --> 00:41:42.300
Being a 44-year-old man, I grew up in the 80s listening to all that stuff.

00:41:42.300 --> 00:41:44.660
So this was the perfect book for me.

00:41:45.500 --> 00:41:47.240
That's just my personal story.

00:41:48.180 --> 00:41:53.840
And then the other thing I just thought of, Albert, how you can expand the revenue stream.

00:41:54.340 --> 00:41:54.680
It's brilliant.

00:41:55.580 --> 00:42:25.460
Buy a minor league baseball team and call it the decibels. You know, there was only sell good beer. That would be fucking awesome. You know, we did. It only happened once. We wanted to make an annual thing, but I had to be a dick and move out of Philadelphia and it all kind of fell apart. But we we had a softball game one summer and it was decibel versus relapse. And we still have like our little like.

00:42:25.580 --> 00:42:55.360
three-quarters baseball uniform, decibel uniforms. And our logo was, Christ, I can't remember the year. It was late 80s when Nolan Ryan threw at Robin Ventura. And Robin Ventura charged the mound and got his ass beat by Nolan Ryan on the mound. And the image is just like, fucking Nolan Ryan.

00:42:55.580 --> 00:43:25.200
Like, in a headlock. Like, Fist is just about to meet. Is this when he was on the Astros or the Rangers? Rangers. Okay. Rangers. Yeah. I'll send you a video. It's wonderful. Because he's like 20 years older than Robin Ventura at the time. Yeah. Now that I'm 41, it's like I identify more with Nolan Ryan.

00:43:28.720 --> 00:43:54.400
Yeah. Anyway, I'll get right on that. I had another question that goes back to what we were talking about before. It's a two-part question. How does Decibel stack up against the British mags like Metal Hammer and Terrorizer? And is there any kind of rivalry or camaraderie between the magazines? I like to think there's a camaraderie, but maybe there's nothing at all. I mean, there is.

00:43:54.480 --> 00:44:24.160
There is a camaraderie between, I think, people who work on the magazines, not necessarily the magazines themselves. I am friends with a number of former Terrorizer editors, Nick Terry, who was the editor of Terrorizer from 96 to 2000, and that to me is always kind of the golden age of Terrorizer.

00:44:25.520 --> 00:44:52.680
where I thought they did their best work and they really shaped the way I wrote and what I wanted to do if I ever got the chance to do a magazine. There was elements of humor, there was this willingness and bravery when it came to coverage of not just doing Death Block and do metal, like being able to reach into Joy's Rock and avant-garde things. I always appreciated that.

00:44:53.960 --> 00:45:23.940
So, you know, Nick is a friend, and then the guy who replaced Nick, Jonathan Selzer, is a good friend, and he's now basically the number two guy at Metal Hammer UK. And there's Louise Brown, who was not Jonathan's successor, I think there was one or two very short-lived editors in between, Jonathan and Louise, who edited Iron Fist for,

00:45:23.980 --> 00:45:52.220
I think 18 issues. She and I are good friends. Now a monthly Decibel contributor. So there are these relationships with people who have worked at the magazines, but there isn't necessarily a hey, we're all in this together kind of thing with whoever the fuck the publisher is, Metal Hammer and Decibel. And part of that is to do with the distance.

00:45:54.780 --> 00:46:22.020
I'm not in London often, or wherever the hell their offices are now. So I'm not going to shows. I'm not hanging out. We're not doing that kind of thing. So it's like there isn't really a competition. We send them promo copies of Decibel. They send us promo copies of Terrorizer.

00:46:22.100 --> 00:46:51.720
and I flip through it. I don't read it, to be honest with you. It just doesn't grab me. And it's probably more reflection on my interests than necessarily what they're doing. And Metal Hammer, I honestly just haven't seen in ages because they don't send it to me and I'm not paying 12 fucking dollars for a magazine. Or whatever it costs.

00:46:52.680 --> 00:47:22.060
That's definitely one of the things I notice. If I do see it rarely, but when I do see it in a magazine stand somewhere, it's so expensive. I'm like, yeah, you know. I subscribe digitally. It's a little better that way. Yeah, I would think. But yeah, I just haven't. I know there's obviously Jonathan is there and I'm well aware of his skill set. He's great. And Dial Patterson, who wrote

00:47:22.080 --> 00:47:52.060
the book Black Metal and the compendium that we released here in the U.S. last year, which is also called Black Metal. Although it had a subtitle that I can't remember, right? Because I drank a lot of that All I See is Carrion. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got that one. I bought that one. So he writes for that and he contributes to us. So I know that there's, you know, to me, there's obviously quality writers who are

00:47:52.080 --> 00:48:22.060
are a part of it. But as far as these relationships with the magazine, I think everybody is kind of looking at what everybody else is doing. I think everybody is kind of checking everybody out here and there. But again, I think everybody is kind of so busy with worrying about their own backyard that we don't really kind of fixate on what everybody else is doing. I mean, again, I'll do my best to

00:48:22.080 --> 00:48:27.620
to mock revolver when I see it. I don't go out of my way to find it.

00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:29.500
I'll help you there.

00:48:31.900 --> 00:48:38.560
What did you think about the Metal Hammer drama back around Christmas when Team Rock shit the bed?

00:48:38.900 --> 00:48:40.100
I thought it was pretty fucked up.

00:48:41.480 --> 00:48:48.020
Because, like I said, Jonathan Selzner, who's basically the managing editor there, is a friend of mine.

00:48:48.060 --> 00:49:17.680
And knowing that he was out of a job, just like, through no fault of his own, just seemed wrong. And I don't remember the name of the company that ran it into the ground. Team Rock. Team Rock. No, but it was like, Team Rock was like this thing that they, it was this umbrella thing that they kind of, they invented, but it was a publisher that instituted this Team Rock idea. And I can't remember the name of that publisher.

00:49:18.060 --> 00:49:47.420
But anyway, it was like part website, the print angles with Classic Rock and Metal Hammer, and then some fucking internet radio thing that they sunk a million dollars into or something crazy. So for me, and they had some really insane fat staff of like almost 70 people, and there are four or five people full-time who do Decibel.

00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:48.140
That's it.

00:49:50.980 --> 00:49:54.300
And that goes, you know, obviously we don't just do a magazine.

00:49:55.320 --> 00:50:08.020
So, like, you can do a lot if you're working hard and you have a lot of talented people who are also willing to work hard and buy into something like this.

00:50:08.560 --> 00:50:35.640
So for me, I was just like, I didn't get the business structure of it to begin with. So I wasn't terribly surprised, but at the same time, I was just like, that seems unfair because Metal Hammer, anybody, any publisher with a half a brain should be able to take Metal Hammer and make money on it. Because I understand that it's like, in Europe, it just dwarfs all the other metal magazines.

00:50:36.460 --> 00:51:05.840
It's like Terrorizer compared to Metal Hammer. It's like they have a speck of that demographic. They just don't have... This thing is huge. So it didn't make you nervous at all what happened to them? Is this finally the collapse of print magazines or anything like that? No. That's good. We have our own

00:51:05.860 --> 00:51:35.840
You have your own business. Every magazine is different. Like with Terrorizer's business structure, I'm sure, looks nothing like decibels, just as an example. And again, a lot of that is predicated on the revenue streams that you have and where you're kind of focusing your energy and where you can make money and where you can kind of develop other

00:51:35.860 --> 00:52:04.260
For lack of a better word, properties. But it's all, again, it's all... Everything we do is, for me, it's just born out of our fandom for stuff. So it's always... It always just kind of seems organic and genuine, which is, again, I think why it works. We've never really done anything that just... I'm sure we'll get there. I'm sure there'll be some colossal fuck-up in our future.

00:52:05.340 --> 00:52:35.220
But like, again, the idea that like, you know, for me, it's always been like, what's a cool, like, I have an idea that I get excited about. And then we figure out if it's financially solvent. It's not like, oh, here's a way to make money. How do we make it cool? Which I think is like what a lot of the other magazines have kind of had to revert to, you know, whether it's, you know,

00:52:35.300 --> 00:53:04.120
scantly clad, hard rock, front women calendars or whatever. It's like, oh, that's a thing. You can sell those. For me, it's more like, what would be cool? What can we do that's cool? What's an awesome book that I want to read? What's an awesome event that I want to attend? What's an awesome record I want to hear? Whatever that is. Then it's like, all right, then how does that work? How does that work from a business sense?

00:53:04.160 --> 00:53:33.620
And then if we can figure it out, then we do it. And if it doesn't work, then it's just a cool idea that's a pipe dream in my head. So no, no, I don't. When I see something else, when I see somebody else kind of struggling like that, to me, it doesn't have much to do with us. You know, I have to say, I've been reading Decibel for going way back to the early number issues. I've always noticed that there's a lot without being a lot.

00:53:34.180 --> 00:54:02.900
So we were talking about the Team Rock umbrella. All those like Prog Rock and the other Classic Rock, they come in these big, huge cardboard envelopes. And I'm thinking, man, they're spending so much money on presentation. It seems like it's killing them. You guys give all that without giving all that, meaning you're not overdoing the presentation. Between the covers, the back and front is where everything matters, I think. And you get a flexi-disc.

00:54:03.680 --> 00:54:05.080
Yeah, and you get a flexi desk.

00:54:05.340 --> 00:54:08.540
Yeah, no, I agree. I think you're right.

00:54:09.060 --> 00:54:14.820
In a perfect world, or a world from 20 years ago, I guess, or 25 years ago,

00:54:15.340 --> 00:54:22.260
it would be great that there would be all this excess money that the labels would have

00:54:22.260 --> 00:54:23.460
that they don't know what the fuck to do with,

00:54:24.060 --> 00:54:31.200
that I could justify having a crazy, heavy cover stock or whatever,

00:54:31.440 --> 00:55:00.439
Crazy printing or some of the adventurous things that some of those other European magazines have to do. But it's also, you know, we're very fortunate in that the market here is... It's not as crowded as it is over there. You know, there's like Metal Hammer and then there's like the other Rock magazines and there's Terrorizer and there's Zero Tolerance and there's Iron Fist and there's probably a bunch of other like...

00:55:00.460 --> 00:55:28.480
Is Kerrang still around? Yeah. I was about to say, there's probably a bunch of shit like Kerrang. How does anybody... That I have no idea what it is. But it's all like, they're all jockeying for positions, so they all have to wow somebody on the newsstand. Whereas, I think it's also that we've been around so long that we have a core fan base that's pretty solid in place that we can kind of just build off of.

00:55:30.440 --> 00:56:00.400
And, you know, people can kind of make their decision a little more. You don't have to kind of like wow people with like the, with the fancy printing and the fancy covers and all that stuff month to month. I think if you just continue to make something that's actually good and you have a reputation for doing that, that at least in America, that's probably good.

00:56:02.540 --> 00:56:06.240
that's going to help carry the day for you for a while at least.

00:56:06.620 --> 00:56:15.320
It seems to me that the last, I don't know if they were True Metal magazine, but the last one that was more consistent for metal was Brave Worlds.

00:56:16.120 --> 00:56:18.660
And I just remember one day it just wasn't there on the shelf anymore.

00:56:19.180 --> 00:56:24.040
This is, I guess, going back a few years, but they used to have a heavy presentation with their stuff.

00:56:24.160 --> 00:56:28.020
And I just wondered if they killed themselves on that model that they were using.

00:56:29.360 --> 00:56:59.180
I don't know what happened there. Because I think they were Canadian-based, weren't they? Yeah, they were. And they were independent. And they still do their site. So they still have the brand. Should they ever decide to get crazy and relaunch a print version? So they do have that. But yeah, I mean, there were definitely interesting magazines. I mean, there was Brave Words. I mean, obviously Metal Maniacs.

00:57:00.300 --> 00:57:01.020
Oh, yeah.

00:57:01.270 --> 00:57:04.300
It was important, super important growing up to me.

00:57:04.440 --> 00:57:12.940
I mean, I got that magazine in 91 or 92, and that was like, you know,

00:57:13.180 --> 00:57:18.140
like being able to read about Sepultura and Napalm Death on the newsstand then,

00:57:18.230 --> 00:57:19.620
that was a big deal for me.

00:57:20.200 --> 00:57:21.560
You know what was a big deal for me as a kid?

00:57:22.060 --> 00:57:22.940
Cream Magazine.

00:57:23.340 --> 00:57:24.240
I miss Hit Parader.

00:57:24.740 --> 00:57:25.480
Yeah, Hit Parader.

00:57:25.550 --> 00:57:26.180
I had that one.

00:57:26.660 --> 00:57:27.780
That's how far back I was.

00:57:27.860 --> 00:57:57.740
I remember all those. I mean, I remember also Rip. Rip, yeah. Metal Mania. And Rip for me was also, that was always like the, I don't know, like there's an article about Sepultura here, but I'd have to take this magazine with Axl Rose on the cover to the counter and I don't want to look like a poser, so no, I'm not fucking buying that. My very first rock magazine was an issue of Hip Parader with David Lee Roth.

00:57:57.880 --> 00:58:19.600
the cover and he's like got no shirt on and he's like got his thumbs in his spandex and he's pulling it down just a little bit of pubage there and my mom was just like what is this who is this handsome man it was like you know when like 1984 came out i think so it was probably now 1984 you still got on your wall don't you george dude

00:58:24.140 --> 00:58:48.860
So, Albert. Yes, sir. So, I know at the end of the year, you guys are going to do your top 40 best albums of the year. Can you give us a little insight of what you've heard already in 2017 and what you're, like, what's looking strong with The Force right now? Here, let me go to my, let me go to my recently added.

00:58:51.560 --> 00:59:19.500
and see what I've been playing. The new Municipal Waste record is great. The new Integrity record is great. Integrity is out of Philly, right? No, they're all over the place. They're part out of D.C., part out of Belgium right now. Oh, okay. I mean, it's been a great year for old school death metal.

00:59:19.780 --> 00:59:49.220
Right now, I mean, between obituary and immolation, memoriam, even though, I mean, they're a new band, but obviously the heritage there. The new suffocation is great. There's new incantation records on the way. There's this project called Expulsion, which is Matt Olivo from Repulsion and Matt Harvey from a billion fucking bands.

00:59:52.260 --> 01:00:19.280
And it's just this great throwback-ish without being too indebted to the past. So for me, there's that lockup record, which is actually surprisingly awesome. For me so far, 2007 has been defined by death metal bands who have 25 years of history at least, still

01:00:19.300 --> 01:00:49.280
making some of the best music of their career. I'm sure that kind of death metal will play a large role. There's been other records that I've really liked. I really like the Creator record. I feel like it's got a mixed response from people. I think there's still some old schoolers who, maybe not old schoolers is the right word, some Battlejack

01:00:50.320 --> 01:00:57.980
who can't deal with that band sounding different than their first five records now.

01:00:59.260 --> 01:01:11.040
But my personal opinion, I've liked creators since Extreme Aggression was the first one I got when they came out with the MTV video Betrayer in 1989.

01:01:12.420 --> 01:01:41.380
Yeah. But, I mean, Hordes of Chaos to me is their pinnacle of just unbelievably awesomeness. But Phantom Man of Christ was great. And this new record, I can't think of the name of it right now, which is embarrassing. Gods of Violence. Yeah, Gods of Violence. It was slow because I compare everything to either Extreme Aggression or I compare it to Hordes of Chaos.

01:01:42.100 --> 01:02:10.880
And it was a slow burn for me, but the more I listened to it, I just think of these guys have been around for almost, what, 30 years now? And Millie is still putting out a high-quality thrash product, and that's something to be said for that. I mean, I love it. It's definitely going to make my year-end list, for sure. Yeah, no, I'm glad that you're into it. And I think that there's got more old-school,

01:02:11.420 --> 01:02:35.980
I think the songs are good. I like the Paul Bearer record, although I haven't gone back to it lately, to be honest with you.

01:02:36.680 --> 01:02:42.220
I'll admit I've been listening to that a lot and I'm trying really hard to love it.

01:02:44.160 --> 01:03:05.340
And Foundations of Burnin for me was unbelievable. I mean, still one of my favorite records of all time. But this new one, it's like those slight guitar tone differences, slight sort of tempo. I don't know. It's obviously Paul Bearer. It sounds like Paul Bearer, but there's just this slight edge that's off of it.

01:03:05.400 --> 01:03:35.020
And whether it's guitar tones, whether it's just... They sound, I don't know, less depressed. I don't know. It's more prog and less metal, which I think is probably a transition that some people are not super into. And I get it. It's fine. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff that I have that'll be out later this year that I really like. Like the new Wolves in the Throne Room is really good. I really like the new Merker record.

01:03:38.039 --> 01:04:05.360
There's a new Paradise Lost record. There's a new Valonfire record. All that stuff is awesome. Heard some tracks from Lurking Fear. Heard the new Venom. There's a lot of interesting things on the way. It's a good solid year for metal, I guess, at the bottom line. I have no idea what it'll look like between now and then, especially

01:04:05.400 --> 01:04:35.220
since record labels have a habit of stacking releases in the fourth quarter. So I think there'll be a lot of high-profile stuff that I'll want to make sure I hear before it's all said and done. So, you know, who knows? Yeah, it's interesting because I said it on an earlier podcast this year is that it just seemed like this last year seemed like it was a doom metal year. This year seems like it's a death metal year. Like there's a lot of strong death metal out there. And like a lot of the underground stuff that I'm finding,

01:04:35.400 --> 01:05:05.360
Bandcamp. When we saw each other at Champion for the Desa Beer Brew Day, we were playing some Rude, like RUDE, and I was telling James about it. I'm like, this literally sounds like this is either Scream Bloody Gore or Slowly Rewrote sort of era old school Deathmine. They nailed it. I just feel like whether it's gruesome or there's

01:05:05.380 --> 01:05:35.320
these other death metal bands out there that are just nailing that old school sound. And they're, for whatever reason, 2017, it's like, it's the year for the throwback death metal. And they're nailing it. I think it's great. Yeah. Now there's a lot of stuff. Have you heard a Skeletal Remains? Yep. Yeah, I think so. They don't have a, I don't know if they'll get a record out this year, but like as far as bands kind of doing that throwback style right now, they're, they're at the, they're at the top of the game.

01:05:35.400 --> 01:05:53.740
for me. There's other bands that do that kind of thing that I like a lot who haven't made many records lately, but the newer one for me is Skeletor Remains, where I'm just like, whoa, this is definitely checking every box that I want out of this style of music.

01:05:54.600 --> 01:06:00.860
There's a local band to Frederick, Maryland called Inhumation, and they're doing a great job, if you know them.

01:06:01.080 --> 01:06:29.440
And then just one of the guys from our Twitter feed podcast listeners, I think it was Rick, the Excommunion album called Thronosis, which is really good. I'm digging that one. There's so much stuff out there. It's just Extremity. There's a couple I picked up actually from the latest issue of Decibel, Extremity, which is a good throwback kind of death metal sound.

01:06:31.700 --> 01:07:00.840
That's not really old school, but it's good. Yeah, no, they were, I mean, they were old school. They were around in the early 90s. They definitely qualified. They just didn't get a full length out until, shit, like 2007 or something. I was pleased to see, except God the Throne out of the Netherlands, they broke up and then all of a sudden, like, hey, here's a new album. Like, whoa, what happened? So I'm pretty pleased with them coming out. It's not, I don't think it's quite up to what,

01:07:01.080 --> 01:07:01.660
You know,

01:07:02.160 --> 01:07:05.500
Storm of Steel or whatever behind the cross that they'd done before.

01:07:05.760 --> 01:07:08.160
But I'm always a sucker for historical metal,

01:07:08.840 --> 01:07:09.340
whether it's,

01:07:09.340 --> 01:07:09.440
uh,

01:07:09.720 --> 01:07:09.840
X,

01:07:09.860 --> 01:07:09.960
X,

01:07:09.960 --> 01:07:12.940
XDO doing all this stuff about the Roman empire or,

01:07:13.400 --> 01:07:13.620
um,

01:07:14.100 --> 01:07:14.520
God to throne,

01:07:14.720 --> 01:07:15.980
always doing stuff about war one.

01:07:16.120 --> 01:07:16.700
But I mean,

01:07:17.840 --> 01:07:19.100
I'm a huge God to throne fan.

01:07:19.120 --> 01:07:20.780
So I was happy to see them coming out with something.

01:07:21.900 --> 01:07:22.020
Yeah,

01:07:22.100 --> 01:07:22.160
no,

01:07:22.240 --> 01:07:22.720
they're all,

01:07:22.840 --> 01:07:23.800
they've always been solid.

01:07:24.220 --> 01:07:24.420
There's,

01:07:24.540 --> 01:07:24.680
um,

01:07:24.840 --> 01:07:26.920
there's some good death doom on the way too.

01:07:27.180 --> 01:07:29.260
There's a band out of,

01:07:29.440 --> 01:07:29.680
um,

01:07:29.800 --> 01:07:59.780
Fuck. Michigan called Temple of Void. Yeah. Oh, we know them. Yep. Yeah. So they have a new one that'll be out in August. It's really good. There's the band Loss, who I guess, I don't think they're quite funeral doom. They're probably more death doom. Yeah, they have the new one's called Horizon List. Yeah. That one's in, I mean, there's really, like, both of those records are super powerful. Yeah, I mean, it seems like another solid year, and we're again, we're just

01:08:01.200 --> 01:08:04.140
Necrot. Forgot about them. That's one of the better

01:08:04.750 --> 01:08:06.640
old school death metal records that I've heard this year.

01:08:07.970 --> 01:08:08.719
So yeah, there's

01:08:09.230 --> 01:08:10.560
no shortage of stuff.

01:08:10.870 --> 01:08:11.480
Is that out yet?

01:08:13.140 --> 01:08:14.560
I think it's June.

01:08:15.980 --> 01:08:17.120
We mentioned your book

01:08:17.380 --> 01:08:18.480
Choosing Death earlier

01:08:19.819 --> 01:08:21.160
which came out I believe

01:08:22.100 --> 01:08:23.359
originally in 2004

01:08:24.259 --> 01:08:24.980
and then you

01:08:25.750 --> 01:08:27.200
did an updated version

01:08:27.980 --> 01:08:28.799
more recently.

01:08:31.180 --> 01:08:58.759
I think Will had some questions about that. But my question is, is this ever going to see a Kindle release? I've been waiting to pull the trigger on this because I almost never read physical books anymore, even though I keep buying all the metal ones that come out. The metallic is back to the front, and I've got the Celtic Frost history and all these other books. But if I actually want to read it, it needs to be Kindle so I can take it around with me on my phone. Is that ever going to happen?

01:08:59.560 --> 01:09:28.420
Don't you have like a bathroom in your house man? Can't you just fucking put the physical book in there? I read everything on my phone because I'm so busy that the way I read is like in five minute bits where I'm on the can or I'm waiting to get my oil changed or I'm waiting for my wife to get ready to leave or you know. Do you do all three of those things in the bathroom? That's how I consume my reading. You can just put the book.

01:09:28.839 --> 01:09:58.780
Like in that bathroom and it can stay in there as long as you like I mean as long as your house is big enough that you have a bathroom that your wife is like terrified to enter. Oh I definitely have my own. Right well then you just buy that fucking book and you put it in there and you leave it in there for six months and it will be your bathroom companion. It sounds like that's what I'm going to have to do. I'm thinking the answer on that one is a no. Yeah yeah because I don't give a fuck about digital books.

01:10:01.220 --> 01:10:28.820
I don't I don't I mean I think maybe someday it's a little complicated in that when when when we released the the revised and expanded hardcover edition through decibel books in 2015 we purchased the rights from the original publisher of choosing death which was feral house so we have the rights to

01:10:28.820 --> 01:10:29.620
the digital book,

01:10:30.210 --> 01:10:31.560
but I just wasn't compelled.

01:10:32.620 --> 01:10:34.820
I wasn't compelled to release it digitally because,

01:10:35.830 --> 01:10:35.920
um,

01:10:37.920 --> 01:10:38.280
I,

01:10:38.410 --> 01:10:38.500
I,

01:10:38.700 --> 01:10:40.980
I just felt it would cannibalize physical sales.

01:10:41.260 --> 01:10:41.740
Number one.

01:10:41.790 --> 01:10:42.420
And then number two,

01:10:42.430 --> 01:10:42.980
I just like,

01:10:44.330 --> 01:10:44.620
I just,

01:10:44.670 --> 01:10:45.820
I just didn't have an interest in it.

01:10:45.820 --> 01:10:46.960
It just felt like a loser.

01:10:47.400 --> 01:10:47.640
You know?

01:10:48.300 --> 01:10:48.540
Um,

01:10:49.120 --> 01:10:49.300
I mean,

01:10:49.440 --> 01:10:51.400
I just mean like a financial loser.

01:10:51.430 --> 01:10:52.640
It just didn't seem like a right,

01:10:53.020 --> 01:10:53.240
you know,

01:10:53.320 --> 01:10:54.260
like I couldn't,

01:10:55.560 --> 01:10:57.140
I couldn't justify like the,

01:10:57.870 --> 01:10:57.980
uh,

01:10:58.360 --> 01:11:28.320
Two or Three Bucks we'd make on every sale. I don't know. It just wasn't worth it for me, honestly. And then it's like further, it's all further complicated than that, that I've went and I did a new deal with Bazillion Points, my good friend Ian Christie, to do a paperback version of Choosing Death Now, which he released, which is actually like, you know, even though like, you know, we put out the hardcover version through Decibel, the paperback is a fucking monster.

01:11:28.520 --> 01:11:58.340
It weighs more than the hardcover. It's on a really heavy paper stock and it's got a huge color section and physically the dimensions of the book are bigger. So it's a really intense paperback. So there's that and I was just like, you know what, let these books just be physical for now and maybe a couple years later.

01:11:58.420 --> 01:12:27.700
down the road. We'll release it on Kindle or whatever bullshit platform is making people forget about physical books then in a few years. But for me, it's the print books. And I get it. I understand people have to consume their media. Sometimes people are just kind of limited by their lifestyle and how they can consume that media, and they want to read that stuff. I get it.

01:12:27.940 --> 01:12:57.860
I read the New York Times on my phone. I fucking get it. But as far as a book, for me, I see a book as this kind of moment of disconnecting from everything else. Albert, just do this. George, it's like vinyl. Yeah. I get it. I never thought I was going to go digital. Because I have tons and tons of physical books.

01:12:57.940 --> 01:13:25.600
And so when Kindle came out, I was like, eh, whatever. And then I tried it, and I was like, okay, I get liking books, because I love books. But this is so convenient to be able to, you know, not only can I read it on my phone, but I could sync it between, you know, my home and my work computer.

01:13:26.220 --> 01:13:56.040
So like when it's lunchtime, I can pull up my book and read it and it's synced with, and then when I go home, it's synced there and I can pick it right up again. Or you could just put it in your backpack and then take a bookmark. And that's the thing. That's the thing. And like, and I get, I, I, dude, I completely understand it. I completely understand the convenience of it. But for me, I like the idea of this unplugging where, all right, say you were, you were reading,

01:13:56.080 --> 01:14:26.040
the book on your phone or your Kindle. Or let's say you're reading it on your phone or your laptop or whatever. You could have another window open where you're getting emails or messages or alerts or texts and you are like... Distracted. You're distracted. You are pulled out of it. If it's just you and the book, it's you and the book. And there's like... I think there's just something to be said just in general for this disconnection.

01:14:26.660 --> 01:14:56.020
We're all online. We're all always, always, always, always. And I know I am too. I'm just as guilty as anyone else. I'll be fucking eating dinner and going through the Twitter feed trying to see what Trump set on fire in the last two hours or whatever. I get it. I do the same thing. Those moments are fewer and further between than ever before.

01:14:56.120 --> 01:14:57.560
where you can unplug.

01:14:58.120 --> 01:14:59.740
And I just...

01:15:00.560 --> 01:15:03.740
I want to be able to create more of those.

01:15:03.980 --> 01:15:04.580
You know what I mean?

01:15:04.880 --> 01:15:09.820
So every time there's an actual physical book that doesn't have that digital option,

01:15:10.240 --> 01:15:15.320
in my head, it's creating that experience where people are like...

01:15:17.240 --> 01:15:18.820
They're not getting those distractions.

01:15:18.980 --> 01:15:21.640
They're not getting that agitation of scrolling through something.

01:15:21.760 --> 01:15:22.740
They're just fucking reading.

01:15:24.340 --> 01:15:51.880
I find this conversation very amusing just because you're such a fan of vinyl and you're and you and you expose the virtues of vinyl because it's it's exactly everything just. Yeah but I'm also digital. Right. I have everything I have on vinyl I have in flack not mp3 so that I can listen to it wherever I need to but then when I'm home and I'm sitting down with my digital book I can listen to vinyl.

01:15:54.340 --> 01:16:24.000
But I will say, okay, obviously, tomorrow I'm going to order the book. So there you go. I have an answer, so now I know. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and, like you said, put it in the bathroom. Yeah, I mean, as long as you feel that that's a fair response, that's my take with it. Albert, I personally love that response just because I know how much I get crap on this podcast.

01:16:24.360 --> 01:16:54.320
I don't really own much of it. I own a gazillion flexi disc. I don't have a record player. But when I did see you that one time, I asked you, like, why don't you put these online? Like, they are stupid. They're on SoundCloud anymore. Oh, that's right. Thank you. Well, you know, the last couple of years, I've been subscribed to Decibel on my iPad. Okay. Because I've been reading magazines for so many years, and I never throw them away. And so I had mountains and mountains of

01:16:54.420 --> 01:17:16.180
I get Decibel, Metal Hammer, and Terrorizer. That's fine. They take up space. I get it. But I recently switched over with a little bit of overlap, I might add, back to the physical copies so that I could get the Crypt Sermon Flexi Disc.

01:17:27.500 --> 01:17:31.980
I hope you'll be satisfied with the extra paper in your life.

01:17:32.540 --> 01:17:34.600
It's the only one now, so it's not as bad.

01:17:36.640 --> 01:17:39.480
You got extra room. Playboy doesn't have naked women anymore, so you know.

01:17:40.720 --> 01:17:41.720
Cancel that right away.

01:17:42.640 --> 01:17:44.220
No, well, they're going back to it.

01:17:44.440 --> 01:17:44.720
Are they?

01:17:45.390 --> 01:17:45.520
Yeah.

01:17:46.280 --> 01:17:47.720
Why, because no one really read the articles?

01:17:48.560 --> 01:17:49.000
Exactly.

01:17:50.500 --> 01:17:51.360
Yeah, that wasn't bullshit.

01:17:52.540 --> 01:18:22.320
Hey, Albert, speaking of books, and I've got all your guys' books, but I'm missing one, and that is Volume 1 of the Hall of Fame. Any chance of that ever being reissued? It's unlikely, only because we didn't publish that. We did a deal with DiCaprio, who are the publisher that is probably most famous for the 33.

01:18:22.540 --> 01:18:52.380
and a third book album series, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. Slayer. Yeah, Slayer. And I have a couple. I think I have Slayer, ACDC, and The Afghan Wigs, I think, are the three that I actually own. So we did this deal with them, and I don't think it was as successful as they would have hoped, because they kind of let it just kind of go out of print a bit.

01:18:53.340 --> 01:19:22.520
And I don't think they ever recouped on the advance they gave us. But what I will say is I think you could easily find used copies of that on Amazon. Because they're a big legitimate publisher. And I think you can fucking grab them for like a few bucks. So while we don't have plans to put all those Hall of Fames in another

01:19:22.540 --> 01:19:28.340
volume of from decibel books that is you can still grab that pretty easily if you want i think

01:19:29.170 --> 01:19:37.940
okay cool real quick uh two quick things one's a plead and one's a question okay uh finance adams volume two

01:19:39.100 --> 01:19:47.320
decibel decibel guide to uh uh brew street beers yeah and uh so that's my plea from the three of us

01:19:49.480 --> 01:20:15.980
And I know you gotta get off. Get off. You gotta take off. I don't get off anymore. I'm married and two kids. Oh yeah, so am I. So, but later on in the script, we're gonna talk about the top three bands that we just absolutely love seeing at the Decimal Metal Beer Fest. So if you can give those to us now, if you think about it, off the top of your head. What were your feet? If you can name your three favorite.

01:20:16.840 --> 01:20:42.920
3-2-1. 3-2-1. Okay. Who played this thing? Let me look. Let's see who played. It was weeks ago now. I would say number three for me would be Sleep, who I hadn't seen for, I don't know, probably six or seven years.

01:20:51.500 --> 01:21:16.800
I remember being kind of surprised that as many people were into it back then as there were. So them on a big stage like that, in a big room with some great sound, especially for them, I think they were just a fucking

01:21:16.860 --> 01:21:18.860
Force of Nature that night.

01:21:21.040 --> 01:21:25.340
They're a little bit different in some ways than most of the other bands on the bill.

01:21:29.380 --> 01:21:35.020
To me, it was really cool to hear them after hearing Pink Destroyer.

01:21:37.120 --> 01:21:39.720
So they would have been three.

01:21:41.840 --> 01:21:45.060
Number two would have been Immolation.

01:21:47.280 --> 01:22:12.980
Just because they... That band, man. I love that band unconditionally. They make it really easy because they just keep making great records and they keep utterly annihilating audiences live. I could just watch Bob Vigna do his guitar jiu-jitsu all night up there on stage.

01:22:15.120 --> 01:22:40.740
And I know what they had to go through to play that show. The night before they flew in from Europe, they were on a European tour that was about two weeks, two and a half weeks, which I believe they booked after I booked them for the festival. So they kind of crammed it in.

01:22:43.020 --> 01:23:13.000
And I know they had to be jet-lagged as fuck. Because they literally flew in from Europe the night before. I know on like, they played the Saturday and at Friday night at 10 o'clock on Friday night, I got an email from Ross Dolan who was like, don't worry dude, we landed. And I was just like, oh my god. Great. So, like, I know like, I know that physically they had to be just wrecked and they just still

01:23:13.040 --> 01:23:42.460
completely brought it. So that would have been number two. And then number one for me would have been Chemist. Because that was actually the first time I'd ever seen Chemist. And I mean, obviously Decibel, I think as a whole are big fans of that band. Both records have charted extremely high in our albums of the year list. Their second album obviously being our number one album of last year.

01:23:44.899 --> 01:24:13.000
I had obviously watched clips online and I had friends who'd seen them but I wasn't prepared for the fact that that guitar tone that they have on their albums they actually also have live. So they were great and it just it felt really good seeing them command a stage that size because I know they hadn't really

01:24:13.020 --> 01:24:19.460
done anything like that was kind of uncharted territory for them um and just like

01:24:19.620 --> 01:24:23.020
watching them and looking at them and just like feeling like they actually belonged up there

01:24:24.440 --> 01:24:31.460
um you know it was it was just kind of like a good um just an overall just like just an overall

01:24:31.830 --> 01:24:36.160
great vibe um and to me you know it was like the first time i got to meet those guys and i've

01:24:36.210 --> 01:24:43.000
obviously been talking with them for the past uh couple years now and and um so yeah like that that

01:24:43.020 --> 01:25:12.300
All that together kind of helped create the number one spot for me in that sense. Yeah. Will had a religious experience watching them. Yeah, it was interesting because – go ahead, George. No, I was just like, you know, after that set, he was just like, oh my god! You know, he was really losing his mind over that. Yeah, it was weird because it was a little bit of an epiphany because –

01:25:12.300 --> 01:25:42.240
Chemist made my year-end list, but I think I had them at number 17. And Chemist was always a slow burn for me. It was sort of like, so obviously you get a personal connection with the band after you interview them and you know them. They're such nice guys. Yeah, I mean, they're just genuinely like the nicest fucking guys ever. But seeing them live and listening to the album as much as I did and putting it on my year-end list,

01:25:42.300 --> 01:26:11.580
But then after seeing them live and then now listening to that more, I can see that. I don't know if it would have made number one because I'm completely obsessed with the album, the Eerie album that I think you guys had at number 35 or something last year. It wasn't even on my list. No, but no, but Despo had it like at number one. Oh, yeah. You're not talking to me. No. But it was literally, it was just, it was an amazing set. Yeah, Albert, I know it's late. You got to wake up early.

01:26:13.300 --> 01:26:42.060
Albert, thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. We look forward to next year's Decibel Middle and Beer Fest. I look forward to it too. Hopefully you guys will be in the house again for that. We will. That's the plan. We were talking about how it's going to be our new Maryland Death Fest because the last few years we've been about the Maryland Death Fest and this year they kind of,

01:26:42.300 --> 01:27:09.380
They got rid of the Edison lot. And so it's not as exciting as well as this was. So this is going to be our new spring fling. As much as we bitched about the heat and the Edison lot, there's still something we love about the Edison lot. So it's kind of weird this year that it's completely endured the whole year. I'm sure MDF will be awesome. I'll be there.

01:27:13.480 --> 01:27:19.240
I'm sure it'll be great. It'll be a little bit different and it'll be something

01:27:20.500 --> 01:27:40.020
different and new and exciting. But I mean if you guys are already excited about the Metal and Beer Fest for next year that sounds great by me. And yeah. We'll be announcing stuff over the next few months. We'll start dropping some hints.

01:27:42.080 --> 01:28:12.060
But I won't give up the goods, I would think, probably until October. Okay. Well, John and I will be at a few of the days at MDF next week, so maybe we'll run into it. Yeah, I think our table is out in front of Ram's Head somewhere, so come find us. By the way, George, you could probably buy a copy of Choosing Death at the Maryland Death Fest, which I did last year. I literally was going to order it either tonight or in the morning. Order it tonight or in the morning, because you'll

01:28:12.100 --> 01:28:40.880
You'll get there at MDF and then you'll have some weird thing where you'll be bitching about carrying a book or something. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess, Ed, thank you for coming on and we'll talk to you later. All right, guys. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Howard. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. And we'll enjoy Disney. I will. All right, gentlemen. All right. Thank you for coming on.

01:28:42.100 --> 01:29:12.060
Thank you later. See you on the other side. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye. All right. That was our interview with Albert Mudrian of Decibel Magazine. Now we're going to move on to the news. Our first news item. Hansi from Blind Guardian and John from Iced Earth are working on material for a long-awaited

01:29:12.140 --> 01:29:42.060
I'm a blind guardian fan and I'm an old iced earth fan but I don't know how much I'm really looking forward to this I mean I got both of the first two albums but I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan do either of you guys I'm guessing Will is probably no what about you John I never sought them out I mean I like both bands on their own but I never went after them I don't know why it's been so long I just

01:29:44.480 --> 01:29:46.620
I don't know. I'll have to wait and see.

01:29:47.820 --> 01:29:59.620
My only comment on this is if you listen to the Howard Stern Show, which I do pretty religiously, Richard Christie, who was the drummer in Ice Earth for years, is now on the Howard Stern Show.

01:29:59.810 --> 01:30:04.160
And we met him at the, he was at the Desible Magazine Beer Fest.

01:30:05.720 --> 01:30:11.920
And Howard Stern actually talked about how great of a drummer Richard Christie is, you know, from his time in death.

01:30:12.000 --> 01:30:41.960
and iced earth and now in his own band chargwald is a dam and they actually played some iced earth on the howard stern show and they were playing um graveworms cover of bon jovi little runaway and there there was like a whole 45 minute segment this morning about richard christie and his drumming and death and iced earth and so um i don't particularly know anything about demons wizards but that's that's that's all i got to say about that all right then

01:30:43.500 --> 01:31:11.900
Speaking of things that I don't care about all that much, Danzig has released a new song called Last Ride from his forthcoming new album Black-Laden Crown. And I liked that it was sort of a return to the lucifuge sound. However, there wasn't really much of a hook. And so it didn't really grab me. I mean, it was certainly better than anything I've heard off the last few albums from him.

01:31:14.440 --> 01:31:15.600
But I don't know.

01:31:15.700 --> 01:31:17.900
I mean, if that's the best song on the album, we're going to have a problem.

01:31:18.980 --> 01:31:20.520
I mean, I like the song.

01:31:21.050 --> 01:31:21.920
And then I went back.

01:31:22.100 --> 01:31:25.340
Actually, it's a very bluesy song, which Danzig is known for.

01:31:25.920 --> 01:31:26.680
I did like it.

01:31:26.730 --> 01:31:34.080
I didn't quite notice the hook thing because I was just more pleased that I heard a song that actually sounded like Danzig and not some.

01:31:35.360 --> 01:31:35.640
I don't know.

01:31:35.860 --> 01:31:38.440
Like you said, the last couple albums have not been good.

01:31:38.440 --> 01:31:40.040
And that cover albums was.

01:31:40.540 --> 01:32:09.780
Pretty much anything since John Christ has left has not been good. And I've been saying it for years. Danzig, you need to fucking hunt down John Christ and whatever you did to piss him off or whatever you guys are fighting about, you need to bury that shit and get that man back. Because everything he's on is awesome. Everything he's not on is not awesome. I never got into him. Yeah. So I won't be looking forward to it.

01:32:10.540 --> 01:32:36.880
All right. So Iron Maiden is getting ready to release vinyl reissues of the albums released between 1990 and 2015. The first batch is actually going to be releasing just two days from now. I have No Prayer for the Dying already, although it's probably like a bootleg Russian copy with a weird cover.

01:32:38.980 --> 01:33:08.380
So I know I'm at least going to be picking up the studio albums from this reissue minus the Blaze ones. But there's definitely No Prayer for the Dying, Fear the Dark, Brave New World. Yeah, I'm thinking Brave New World for me might be it from this group of albums. Not that I don't want them, I just don't know if I need them. I haven't decided yet.

01:33:08.960 --> 01:33:38.580
Maybe Fear of the Dark. We'll see. Well, obviously, no vinyl for you, so who cares, right? No vinyl for you! No vinyl for you! All right. This next one, Possessed, who have not released a new album since 1986, not a studio album anyway, have signed with Nuclear Blast and they are working on a new album. Is this the original members? This is the original one member.

01:33:38.960 --> 01:34:08.940
the singer. And that was going to be my point was, I mean, it's cool and all. You know, the Seven Churches and then Beyond the Gates. The original Death Metal album. Right. Some people call that the original Death Metal album. Or because they had a song called, I think, Death Metal on Seven Churches. Yes. Those are definitely classics. And it's funny that Larry Lalonde of Primus was actually one of the

01:34:09.520 --> 01:34:37.840
was in this band back then. But the fact that it's just the one guy, is it still exciting just because it's one guy and a bunch of other guys who weren't in the band back then? I don't know. I mean, I'm a little excited because it is Possessed. I'm less excited because it's not the original lineup. So when it comes out, I'll take a listen. Yeah. And I'll judge it from there kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, if it's awesome, great. You know, that'd be great.

01:34:38.540 --> 01:35:00.840
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I mean, it's been 30 years, so it's really hard for me to kind of get jazzed up until I actually hear it. Yeah, exactly. If it comes back, like, say, I don't know, a band like Celtic Frost, a.k.a. Trypticon, with some kind of power like that, I'll be all over that. Yeah, definitely.

01:35:00.980 --> 01:35:30.380
And the reason I mention that is because the next item, Celtic Frost, are reissuing four classic albums on vinyl and CD and a new Best of Innocence and Wrath. So you can get Morbid Tales, Tomegatherian, Into the Pandemonium, and Vanity Nemesis, all on new pretty vinyl with apparently some extras. Cold Lake, not so surprisingly, emitted from that.

01:35:30.460 --> 01:36:00.440
You know what else is really cool about that is that we'll get Emperor's Return with Tomega Theron. It's included with that. Is it? It's not on Morbid Tales? No, I thought that they said it was going to be part of Tomega Theron, but maybe I'm wrong. That's what I thought. That's possible. I just know that Morbid Tales was originally reissued with both because Morbid Tales was an EP and so was Emperor's Return. I have to go back and look at the

01:36:00.480 --> 01:36:01.640
the post that we,

01:36:01.810 --> 01:36:02.560
I think I sent it to you,

01:36:02.650 --> 01:36:02.920
didn't I?

01:36:03.340 --> 01:36:03.580
You did.

01:36:04.300 --> 01:36:04.400
Yeah.

01:36:04.400 --> 01:36:05.400
I have to take a look at it again.

01:36:05.780 --> 01:36:05.920
Yeah.

01:36:06.080 --> 01:36:07.640
Jay ran out and like,

01:36:07.760 --> 01:36:09.020
as soon as this was posted,

01:36:09.090 --> 01:36:09.640
he bought it.

01:36:10.570 --> 01:36:10.660
Uh,

01:36:10.840 --> 01:36:14.000
cause he's a huge fan and I'm a huge fan too.

01:36:14.080 --> 01:36:15.220
Apparently not as huge as Jay.

01:36:16.080 --> 01:36:16.320
Uh,

01:36:17.020 --> 01:36:17.620
and I was like,

01:36:17.740 --> 01:36:18.040
eh,

01:36:18.400 --> 01:36:18.680
you know,

01:36:18.730 --> 01:36:19.100
I kind of,

01:36:19.620 --> 01:36:24.240
it's like $74 for each pair.

01:36:25.100 --> 01:36:27.160
So like 150 for the four albums.

01:36:28.860 --> 01:36:29.220
And,

01:36:29.420 --> 01:36:29.480
uh,

01:36:29.830 --> 01:36:30.220
I was like,

01:36:30.300 --> 01:36:53.960
I mean, I want to get it and all. I mean, I already have all of these on vinyl. But it's new. It's got more stuff. And so I waited a whole day before ordering them. And I was like, yeah, I'll wait next day. That was long enough, so I ordered them. So there you go. All right, well, not a lot of news this time. Why don't we move on to our new releases?

01:37:00.360 --> 01:37:03.340
Spend your water, money now!

01:37:03.760 --> 01:37:10.060
First up is a new album from a band called Disbelief, and the album is called The Symbol of Death.

01:37:10.760 --> 01:37:19.000
These guys are a German death thrash sludge band, and I've heard of them for many years, but I've never listened to them before.

01:37:21.080 --> 01:37:29.420
I feel like these guys were one of those bands that I would always see in the CD rack at Best Buy back in the day when I would go there and look for music.

01:37:29.980 --> 01:37:59.940
And I just never took the plunge because it just felt like I was going to waste money. But I listened to this and it's actually pretty good. So, you know. No, I really liked it. And in fact, I tried to buy it on Bandcamp and somehow it timed out on me and I didn't actually get it. But I'm actually surprised you like this, George, because it's a little death metal. I like death metal. I just don't like a lot of this shitty new death metal. I like old school death metal.

01:38:00.420 --> 01:38:29.960
I don't think you like death metal. No, I do. I do. So screw you. I don't think you've ever said a nice word about death metal ever. It's because there hasn't been a lot of good death metal lately. No, because you have shitty taste in music. No, I like good death metal. I like Cannibal Corpse. I've been listening to a really great band from the 90s lately called Unanimated. Have you heard them? Cannibal Corpse? Yeah, they're great. No, Unanimated. Yeah, Cannibal Corpse is great. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so don't tell me. I don't like death metal.

01:38:30.000 --> 01:38:58.300
Death Metal when you don't even know it. Dick. Cannibal Corpse is John's favorite band. I like Cannibal Corpse. I actually never said I had a problem with Cannibal Corpse. I like obituary. Anyway, next up is one that I do know that John likes. It's a band called Farsot. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced. F-A-R-S-O-T. Probably, if they're French, it's probably Farsot. They're not. They're German.

01:38:59.740 --> 01:39:29.580
It's probably then it's Fartsat. Fartsat. And their third album, Fail Lure. So it's like failure, but not quite. And like I said, this is a German black metal band. It's their third album. And I liked it quite a bit. In fact, it might make a mid-year list or two. And John. Yeah, I'm digging this big time since he told me about it because it's

01:39:29.620 --> 01:39:59.580
It's, compared to their first full release to this one, it's got that kind of this new, it's not new, but you see a lot of newer bands doing it, this progressive black metal sound, which I dug big time, so. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you turned me on to them. Why don't you take this next one then, Will? Well, I just can't get over the fact that John just said you turned me on. I didn't mean to turn you on. Fine, Will, I'll tell you next time we drink that you can't get it.

01:39:59.620 --> 01:40:00.260
turning me on.

01:40:02.460 --> 01:40:04.940
The next one, God to Throne, A World Ablaze.

01:40:05.120 --> 01:40:10.200
And I was happy and completely blindsided because God to Throne apparently broke up a couple years ago.

01:40:10.440 --> 01:40:11.760
And then now they put out a new album.

01:40:12.000 --> 01:40:14.880
This is their 10th album, and it's their first in seven years.

01:40:15.040 --> 01:40:16.820
So 2010 was the last album.

01:40:17.540 --> 01:40:22.700
Yeah, so I'm a big God to Throne fan.

01:40:23.900 --> 01:40:53.120
If you heard me earlier on the podcast, I do like the heavy metal bands that do the historical sort of thing, like XDO. I mentioned them not so eloquently on one of the podcasts recently about how they talk about the Roman Empire. So God of the Throne has an affinity for, not affinity, that's not the right word, but they have a writing obsession with World War I. You know, being a band from the Netherlands, we saw a lot of the trench warfare and everything.

01:40:53.200 --> 01:41:22.500
in World War I. So, I mean, it's, they're an amazing band. I have to, and I've listed this album several times. I need to listen to it a couple more times. I don't know if it's quite as good, as I was saying earlier on the podcast, as some of their previous albums, but it's, it's refreshing, and it's nice to see them back. And it still sounds like God of the Throne. It may not have quite the edge yet, but kind of like the Creator album this year,

01:41:22.660 --> 01:41:49.340
It was a slow burn for me, and I'm catching on, and I'm liking it more and more every time I listen to it. So I think the God of the Throne album for me is like that. The more I listen to it, the more I'm going to like it. But I was just very pleased to see them back. I just finished a World War I book called A World Undone, which is close, the story of the Great War. And that was very interesting. Just thought I'd put that out there. Thank you, George.

01:41:52.680 --> 01:42:20.660
with Will, but I'm not getting them, so I'm kind of pissed. That's probably because Will is just not wanting to get on to this next album. I'm sorry. No, no, just the entire time you were doing that, it just sounded like you were underwater and in slow motion because our Skype connection is not that great. So I didn't actually hear anything you just fucking said. Okay. So next up is the new Life of Agony album, A Place Where There's No More Pain. This is their fifth album.

01:42:25.020 --> 01:42:51.920
All I'm going to say is that I haven't really cared for the album or two previous to this one. I thought this one was actually pretty good. The sound is a little bit different. The vocals are a little more Alice in Chains-ish almost, which is not a bad thing. So, you know, I think Life of Agony fans might dig it.

01:42:52.680 --> 01:43:22.640
Anybody else, you might as well just move on. Our last new release is the new album from Nocturnal Mortem called, the English translation is Verity. They're a Ukraine band. They play like a folk symphonic black metal. And this is their seventh album, and it's been eight years since they put out an album. So that seems to be a trend with some of our new releases, God the Throne, of course, and Disbelief, as a matter of fact, having

01:43:22.680 --> 01:43:24.120
a lot of time between albums.

01:43:24.810 --> 01:43:26.200
And this album is pretty cool.

01:43:27.600 --> 01:43:29.860
I don't know if anybody else is listening to this yet, but...

01:43:31.740 --> 01:43:35.880
I mean, I've known about them before, but I wasn't expecting an album that was this cool.

01:43:36.160 --> 01:43:38.740
So I'm still getting through it.

01:43:39.140 --> 01:43:40.660
I've only been through it like once or twice.

01:43:42.460 --> 01:43:43.720
But I like it.

01:43:44.280 --> 01:43:47.860
I haven't checked it out yet, so I can't comment, unfortunately.

01:43:48.900 --> 01:43:50.340
Yeah, I definitely did check it out.

01:43:50.630 --> 01:43:52.080
A couple things that were interesting to me.

01:43:52.240 --> 01:44:22.140
They're from Ukraine. Hopefully not from eastern Ukraine. If you know what's going on in eastern Ukraine, they're under the Russian base. Russians essentially annexed eastern Ukraine. But what was interesting to me is just exactly what you said, George. Like, oh, the Russian, the translation from Ukrainian to English is Verity. And I'm sitting here thinking, what the fuck does Verity mean in English? I don't even know. Yeah, that's not like, what? So, yeah.

01:44:22.220 --> 01:44:50.620
It was interesting. I checked it out. I need a couple more listens to decide whether I'm going to buy it or not. It caught my attention. It was interesting. I can definitely see how you like this. It seems like you do like a lot of that. In the vein of Thross and Blot. It's got flutes. The blackish folk metal-ish sort of thing going on. I can definitely see how you like it, George. I need to give it a few more spins.

01:44:52.240 --> 01:44:54.520
Why don't we move on to our top three?

01:45:19.200 --> 01:45:48.680
Which we were hoping to have Albert join us for this, but we already got his top three. So our top three bands from the Decibel, Metal, and Beer Fest. Why don't we start with John? All right. I have a feeling we may have a lot of similar bands together on this list, but that's quite all right. Well, it is a small pool that we're picking from. Right. I will predict that two of the bands will make all of our lists,

01:45:48.760 --> 01:45:50.040
Including, including...

01:45:50.040 --> 01:45:51.840
Oh, well, I don't think...

01:45:52.120 --> 01:45:53.420
Anyway, the three of us.

01:45:53.480 --> 01:45:54.180
I can agree with that.

01:45:54.880 --> 01:45:55.120
Yeah.

01:45:55.500 --> 01:45:56.300
I think we'll have crossover.

01:45:58.040 --> 01:46:06.580
My third selection is a band that I didn't think I'd ever get to see, and I thought they were great at live, and I thought their beers were awesome.

01:46:07.120 --> 01:46:07.900
That's Panopticon.

01:46:07.980 --> 01:46:08.400
Panopticon.

01:46:08.660 --> 01:46:08.840
Yeah!

01:46:09.080 --> 01:46:09.300
Yeah.

01:46:10.540 --> 01:46:10.940
Yeah.

01:46:11.300 --> 01:46:15.000
I really enjoyed their set, and I enjoyed their beers even more, so...

01:46:16.120 --> 01:46:16.480
All right.

01:46:16.760 --> 01:46:17.360
They made their spot.

01:46:18.400 --> 01:46:45.860
God bless Hammerheart for making smoky beers. Austin, if you happen for some fucking crazy reason to be listening to this, you're a genius for making all those smoky beers. And off-style smoky beers. Basically, just take whatever beer you want and just make it smoky. I love smoky beers. Not even that well. They didn't taste like ashtrays either. There was such a nice balance. It wasn't overpowering, but it was enough there to let you know that it was there.

01:46:48.400 --> 01:46:49.180
that booth a couple times.

01:46:49.580 --> 01:46:49.700
Yeah.

01:46:50.340 --> 01:46:55.100
I spoke with Tanner, who was working the booth there, and I mentioned that in our coverage,

01:46:55.590 --> 01:47:04.400
but I didn't learn this until later, that Tanner is the guy from Obsequia, or however you pronounce that.

01:47:04.620 --> 01:47:05.080
I'm not sure.

01:47:05.600 --> 01:47:07.440
There's too many vowels at the end.

01:47:08.800 --> 01:47:12.820
But that's a great band and a great couple of albums that they've put out.

01:47:14.420 --> 01:47:15.020
Yeah, they're cool.

01:47:15.340 --> 01:47:16.080
Kudos to him.

01:47:18.520 --> 01:47:45.280
Sorry, I didn't know that you were associated with that band when we talked. I'm hoping that maybe we can get him on an upcoming episode. So, all right. Will, what's your number three? My number three, Immolation. I've been never seen. So, I will say that all three of my bands that I have on my list are bands that I've never seen before because that was important.

01:47:47.660 --> 01:48:15.560
Love seeing Picnic Shure, love seeing Sleep, but I've seen them before a couple times. So Immolation, old school death metal, been around for a million years out of New York. They put on a great show. I know I'm kind of alone. I know this is not going to make either one of your guys' list, but I made Albert's list, but I love Immolation and it was great. Absolutely great to see them play live for the first time. Right on. I am with John. Number three, Panopticon.

01:48:17.640 --> 01:48:47.620
That was a very interesting set. And I thought it was really cool the way he ended it with the folky kind of song with clean vocals and everything. I thought that was really beautiful, particularly in a live setting. Yeah, I thought they by far had the biggest balls of the festival for their set list, the way they constructed it and the kind of mid pieces with the tribal sound where a lot of people might get a little bored out of it.

01:48:47.660 --> 01:49:17.300
after a couple minutes of that, but it worked really well for them. Agreed. All right. Well, what's your number two then? You know, I didn't realize this until you said it will, but I hadn't seen any of these bands either that are on my list. Me neither. So it's kind of funny. But my number two, which I have a feeling might be on another list, Crip Sermon. Loved them. Thought they were great. Excellent. I can't disagree with that.

01:49:17.660 --> 01:49:47.500
And I'm not going to say anymore because I'm sure that might come up again. My number two, Crypt Sermon. I don't want to surprise you, but my number two is Crypt Sermon. I think the rest of the list is going to be the same from here on up. Yeah, I think so. I will say that I started to learn, I should say, I didn't learn about Crypt Sermon late because they only came out with,

01:49:47.520 --> 01:50:17.100
I think it was 2015 when Out of the Garden came out. I remember it was 2016 and John and I were driving up to your house, George, for the year-end episode. And we were playing Crip Sermon. And I just, like, you know, so it was like a year later and I just found this band and I was like, hey, this band's really cool. And I've been mildly obsessed with Crip Sermon lately. It's probably the album I've listened to the most in the last,

01:50:18.440 --> 01:50:45.000
Like two months. It is. It is. Just. Like when we had. I know we had Steve on. And you know. Great guy. Great interview. You know. You have that personal connection. But even before that. Like I really was getting in the Crip Sermon a lot. And how much they sound like trouble. And how great of a. Like a traditional doom that was. Like. I cannot wait for the next album. Yep. Yeah.

01:50:47.500 --> 01:51:16.740
All right. Number one, then. John? Well, boy, geez, I wonder who else will pick this band. It's pretty obvious, I think. But Chemist, for me, absolutely just destroyed the whole festival. Yeah, Chemist. They just killed it. Are you jumping the gun there, Will? I'm sorry, did I say Chemist as well? Yes, I said Chemist as well. He's like rocking back and forth. He's like autistic, like Chemist. I really like Chemist. I'm a really good driver.

01:51:16.820 --> 01:51:18.500
Yeah, and you know, Will...

01:51:18.980 --> 01:51:20.040
I only buy my underwear, okay, Mark?

01:51:20.680 --> 01:51:24.060
Hey, Will, I'm more of a slow burn on this band than you are.

01:51:24.320 --> 01:51:29.980
I've slowly gotten into them more and more as the year's gone on since the end year.

01:51:31.200 --> 01:51:33.460
And the more I listen, the more I like them, so...

01:51:33.660 --> 01:51:35.980
What's weird is, like, I actually feel bad about it.

01:51:36.020 --> 01:51:38.440
Like, I feel like, why didn't I get it from the start?

01:51:38.580 --> 01:51:39.820
Why did it take me so long?

01:51:39.980 --> 01:51:41.580
Like, what the fuck is wrong with me?

01:51:42.260 --> 01:51:43.760
I don't know if you feel like that, but I just...

01:51:44.040 --> 01:51:45.760
Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with you guys, man.

01:51:45.820 --> 01:52:14.740
When that first album came out, Absolution, I was like, oh! Where was it on your list last year, George? It was not as high as maybe it should have been. Or was it? I don't know. I'd have to look. I would guess like 12, something like that. Was it on your list last year, John? No, it did not make money. I just didn't listen to it enough. There was just too much stuff last year, and it's just one of the ones that fell through the cracks for me. I had it on my list. It was number 17.

01:52:15.820 --> 01:52:44.660
But now that I listen to it more, easily could have been top, I would say, top six or seven. But I mean, it was anyway. Yeah. In case it isn't obvious, my number one is also Chemist. George, they were near your number 18. Oh, 18. Yeah, 18, 12, you know, somewhere around there. Just bumping them up to make yourself look good to the guys. Yeah, you know,

01:52:45.820 --> 01:53:15.760
It's because I wasn't really on a doom kick last year. I was very into the first album. I loved it. And when the second album came out, I was very excited to hear it. And I liked it. But I just wasn't in a doom spot come this time. And it's like I got it on there because I knew it needed to be there. But... I mean, we get it. It wasn't folky black metal. So, you know, it wasn't going to make your... It wasn't Frost and Black Metal.

01:53:17.260 --> 01:53:45.740
Which I still, I'm obsessed with that album too, and I'm kicking myself for that not even being on my list. I mean, shoot, probably one of my biggest oversights ever on this podcast. Well, at least you can admit it. Oh yeah, that's an amazing album. Yeah, and speaking of Chemists, if you haven't picked up their split with Spirit Adrift, is that what it was? Yeah, it's still in pre-order.

01:53:45.820 --> 01:54:14.340
I think. Yeah. Yeah. But the, the, their song is, is available and oh my God, is it awesome. It's a, it's a cover of like an old blues standard, but man, is it good? It is so good. And I'm looking forward to empty throne, which I believe is the next flexi disc. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. From decibel in case you're wondering. So yeah. All right. Um,

01:54:15.820 --> 01:54:45.240
So we've decided that we're sort of going to combine a couple of sections to make things move a little smoother moving forward. So instead of what we're listening to and vinyl purchases and personal recommendations, we're just going to give one list what we're listening to that includes what we've been listening to and what we've bought and anything we want to recommend.

01:54:45.820 --> 01:55:15.340
So, ta-da! There you go. And we'll start with John. All right.

01:55:15.380 --> 01:55:44.220
So I'm not including everything because I've bought so much stuff recently, but I'll I highlighted the ones I thought stood out the most. And one was already mentioned was the Farsat Failure or Failure, whatever you want to say it. Really, for me, I like it. Good progressive black metal from Germany. You guys have probably heard this name before, but maybe don't know much about them. A band called Arian.

01:55:44.820 --> 01:56:12.380
And it's an album called The Source. And I got the mega digit book thing with like four CDs and a DVD. It's kind of rock opera, prog rock, prog metal kind of stuff. He's been around for a long time, the main guy in the band. Another one I just picked up, I guess, what, Friday? From the different Romania. It's a band called The 13th Sun. An album called Stardust. Oh, yeah. I like that.

01:56:12.900 --> 01:56:41.740
Yeah, it's just kind of, it's prog metal, but it's not traditional prog metal. It's not the wankery stuff, if you don't like that. I think it's pretty good stuff. An album that hasn't come out officially, but we were fortunate to get a copy of the album. And it should be coming out, I think, two weeks. And that's The Flourishing Scourges' first full release. I've been listening to that a lot, and I like that album a lot. I could see that maybe climbing on the list.

01:56:42.280 --> 01:56:42.400
Yes.

01:56:43.240 --> 01:56:44.960
And it'll be out by mid-year, right?

01:56:46.140 --> 01:56:46.640
I believe it will.

01:56:46.780 --> 01:56:47.000
I think so, yes.

01:56:47.500 --> 01:56:47.960
I think it will.

01:56:50.260 --> 01:56:55.660
The next two, I was at both of these shows from these two releases.

01:56:56.220 --> 01:56:58.820
One is the Face Warning, Awaken the Guardian Live.

01:56:59.280 --> 01:57:03.200
I got some huge package box that came in the mail.

01:57:03.420 --> 01:57:05.580
Four CDs, a DVD, Blu-ray, vinyl.

01:57:06.800 --> 01:57:08.180
John, you have a huge package.

01:57:11.100 --> 01:57:11.960
You're being kind.

01:57:14.240 --> 01:57:41.060
Anyway, George and I, we saw this show in Atlanta, and this is just the works, this whole thing. We are in the package. Yes, literally. You can see us sitting in the package. I'm sitting there with my arms folded. George, you have a huge box. I'd rather have a big package. Oh, don't get sand in your box. Okay, real quick, let me finish these off.

01:57:42.060 --> 01:58:12.040
Next, Jay would actually like hearing this, is Vanden Plas, the Sephiric Live Works, which was a show they did at Prog Power back in 2011. And they finally released the CD and DVD to that, so I got that. The new November's Doom I just picked up. I can't even pronounce the word. Amartya, I think it is. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty close. Yeah, it's not one of their better ones, but it's good. I like it. And then these next two I finally got on vinyl, which was

01:58:12.060 --> 01:58:41.700
The Black Anvil As Was and The First Two Aronsi Pazuzu albums, which I cannot pronounce. Actually, it's the first album and first EP. Winnie Dianne. Yeah, he'll have to come on and pronounce them for us at some point. That's it for me. All right. Will? It's been a while since we've been on the air, so I have a somewhat long list, but I'll go through it quick in no particular order. Excommunion, Thronosis,

01:58:42.060 --> 01:59:11.440
which I think Rick, one of the guys who listens and always gives us great recommendations on Twitter. And what I like about Rick is he actually tailors his recommendations to individual members of the podcast. So great old school death metal. I like it. The Midnight Ghost Train. These guys hit me up and they want to play Atlas Brew Works. And so I took a listen to them and wow, they're really good. I was not aware of them before this. They have a new album. Not a new album.

01:59:13.760 --> 01:59:42.040
It's kind of it's like a stoner doom with some harsh vocals kind of like a hard rock country bumpkin bluegrass with harsh vocals and stuff I don't know it's hard to explain but I really like it the midnight ghost train check them out got the Razumov this this mortal road good doom metal band

01:59:42.060 --> 02:00:11.320
I like that one. Yeah. Uh, I'm digging that one. I mentioned this earlier. Lost horizon list. I pre-ordered that. Um, a, a band that I know never knew about this album ever until decibel came out, uh, cover story sound garden. They had a, apparently they had an album called ultra mega. Okay. And so I checked it out. Yeah. I never even, literally, I never even heard of this album and I don't know if it comes before bad motor finger. It does. I don't.

02:00:12.060 --> 02:00:41.660
Okay. So I had Bad Motorfinger, which went out in the 90s grunge area. I thought, well, this is not usually my cup of tea, but it's got some good songs on it. So I picked up the Soundgarner Ultrameg OK, which is kind of like a grungier, not grungier, it's a bad term. It's a grittier version of Bad Motorfinger. I picked up Extremity, Extremely Fucking Dead, which is a death metal band doing some old school stuff.

02:00:41.780 --> 02:01:11.760
I really like. I picked up Blood Feast, the feature of State of Wicked, which I have to say I'm a little disappointed with this. Blood Feast is a band out of the Philly area. They opened up the Decibel Tour in Philly, but they didn't announce that they were going on before the actual show started, so I missed them, even though I had plenty of time to see them. I think it's like a different lead singer or something. It's just not quite the old school thrash that I've

02:01:11.780 --> 02:01:41.160
East Coast Thrash that I liked. God of Throne and World of Blaze picked that up, which we'd already talked about. Picked up Hideous Divinity. Their album, Adventinous. Really liking that. Jay recommended this to me. A band called Vampire and their album with Primeval Force. That's a good one too. Kind of Celtic Frosty. Yeah. Then picked up, I think this is a band,

02:01:41.800 --> 02:02:10.960
somewhere in Europe. I think Poland. Maybe. Alter of. Betelgeuse. And their album Among the Ruins. Oh yeah. I guess it's Beetlejuice. Yeah. Beetlejuice. It's kind of like this crazy mix of stoner. Inhumation came out with a new EP. The guy's out of Your Neck in the Woods, George, in Maryland.

02:02:12.400 --> 02:02:41.760
Onto Genosis is the name of the album. It's slightly different than the previous stuff. I just think that the productions get a little bit more stepped up. It sounds a little more kind of better production. I did pick up the new November's Doom, Hamardia. I don't have a huge history with November's Doom. When they're doing the harsh vocals, I love it. When they do the clean vocals, sometimes I love it.

02:02:41.780 --> 02:03:11.760
I like it. There's a question mark on there, and I think Jay would want me to put it out there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jay with his question mark. I think sometimes they're injected when they aren't needed. And I think Paradise Lost does a little bit better job of mixing in harsh and clean when they're needed. And I'm talking about Paradise Lost, like the first couple albums, and the last one.

02:03:11.800 --> 02:03:15.720
last album. My two cents.

02:03:15.960 --> 02:03:20.900
And then the last thing is Azeroth and their album In Extremis.

02:03:21.700 --> 02:03:22.100
Check that out.

02:03:22.980 --> 02:03:23.360
Excellent.

02:03:24.660 --> 02:03:24.900
Thank you, sir.

02:03:24.940 --> 02:03:26.120
That's all I got to say about that.

02:03:26.680 --> 02:03:27.240
All right.

02:03:28.980 --> 02:03:34.860
I could have a really long list, but I have narrowed it down.

02:03:36.720 --> 02:03:38.920
So I'm going to give you some of the digital stuff,

02:03:39.100 --> 02:03:40.140
and then I'm going to give you the vinyl.

02:03:41.440 --> 02:04:10.900
First up, a band called Coldfells and their self-titled album looks like they're from Ohio. This is actually two of the guys from Nechachwin. So it's a side project kind of thing. And then there's another guy. God bless you. Exactly. And it's kind of progressive. Not all about progressive. It's doomy and blackish. Blackish doom.

02:04:11.040 --> 02:04:41.000
Let's go with Black-ish Doom. Harsh vocals, clean vocals, kind of slow. It's good. Next up, also from Rick, one that he recommended, I think it was yesterday, and I picked it up right away, called Funeralium of Throes and Blight. And they got some seriously long fucking songs. I think the longest one is, there's only four songs. One of them is like 20-something, and one of them

02:04:41.040 --> 02:04:44.720
It's 32 minutes and it's it's freaking long and it's like

02:04:46.460 --> 02:04:47.940
it's death doom maybe I don't know

02:04:48.860 --> 02:04:51.560
I just didn't have a chance to check it out yet

02:04:52.150 --> 02:04:52.860
Yeah it's pretty good

02:04:54.400 --> 02:05:02.180
Another death doom album a band called lying figures and the album the abstract escape it's their first album

02:05:02.250 --> 02:05:06.760
They're a French band death doom. I'm liking it a lot. You should check it out

02:05:07.380 --> 02:05:36.680
Next up, the Monolith Death Cult and Versus One. This is a band from the Netherlands and this is their sixth album. Kind of reminded me of a mix of Ministry and Anomath Rock. Like a really fucking heavy industrial kind of thing. Next up, Shores of Null, an Italian melodic doom band and their second album, Black Drapes for Tomorrow. I really dug their first album, Quintessence I believe it was called.

02:05:37.640 --> 02:06:06.740
It's kind of like if Alice in Chains did a Doom album. Next up, Sons of Sorath. And that's S-U-N-S. Flowers of the Lily. This is the first album from Progressive Black Band. Featuring Evan Knight of Pile of Priests. Which is why I listened to it and picked it up. It's good. You should listen to it. I love me some Pile of Priests. Love me Pile of Priests. And then I've got a bunch of vinyl. When we were in

02:06:06.780 --> 02:06:07.560
Philadelphia.

02:06:09.060 --> 02:06:10.420
We went by Vinyl Altar.

02:06:11.440 --> 02:06:14.920
And I picked up some of these, but not all of these.

02:06:15.480 --> 02:06:16.780
Black Anvil As Was.

02:06:16.960 --> 02:06:17.780
I picked that up there.

02:06:18.940 --> 02:06:19.360
Good choice.

02:06:19.900 --> 02:06:22.860
I completed my Bolt Thrower collection with Realm of Chaos.

02:06:25.020 --> 02:06:28.700
As John mentioned, I also picked up the Fate's Warning, Awaken the Guardian Live.

02:06:31.220 --> 02:06:35.560
Also from Vinyl Altar, I picked up the band Funeral and their album Tragedies.

02:06:37.199 --> 02:07:05.600
And also their Inter Arma and Paradise Gallows. I picked up two albums from Morda Stigmata. Their latest album, Hope, which you should really, really, really, really pick up. Also a previous album called Ancia. From Vinyl Altar, I picked up the Mirkur Mausoleum vinyl. And finally, I also have picked up the

02:07:09.000 --> 02:07:35.580
What do you think about the new Paul Bearer? I like it. I mean, I get that it's... I mean, I still think it's metal. I can't see not calling it metal. But I get that it's different. So, I don't know. Yeah, it is probably, as we say sometimes, a lazy comparison. But I feel as though the new Paul Bearer is kind of...

02:07:35.620 --> 02:08:05.580
It's kind of in the vein of Mastodon's last couple albums where there's some riffs in there and maybe a song in there that harkens back to the way they like their last album that was just a little harder but a lot of it's way more progressive now. I definitely don't dislike it. I listen to it a lot trying to get it. I'm trying to understand the

02:08:06.680 --> 02:08:07.020
Yeah.

02:08:08.080 --> 02:08:09.440
It's not that hard for me to like.

02:08:12.800 --> 02:08:17.900
I just love the last album so much, and it's just sort of like, ah, I'm grasping.

02:08:18.400 --> 02:08:27.000
If that's the case, it's going to be like anything Gojira puts out after from Mars to Cirrus or anything Macedon puts on after Leviathan.

02:08:27.880 --> 02:08:28.760
It's never going to compare.

02:08:29.560 --> 02:08:31.720
So I actually like the new Paul Bearer.

02:08:32.000 --> 02:09:00.700
I should probably go back and revisit it again to see how I feel now about it. But I liked it on the X number of listens I gave when it came out. Yeah. All right. We are just about at the end here. If you've made it this far, I want to apologize for the frequent and annoying fucking problems we've been having with audio today. This was almost the episode that did not happen because of technical difficulties we've been having.

02:09:01.080 --> 02:09:30.400
We've plowed through regardless. And I can guarantee you that tomorrow I'm going to take all of this fucking equipment and replace it so that hopefully next time we have a better sound. If you're a listener and you're super annoyed at this episode for all the audio difficulties, blame me because I'm the one who's like, let's go. We got to do it. Mission accomplishment. We got to go. Yeah, I was all like, we're not doing it. God damn it. And so blame me. I will take full blame.

02:09:31.000 --> 02:09:58.880
Yeah, well, I mean, despite that, I think it was a good and fun episode. It was great talking to Albert. But yes, believe me, if you're annoyed by this static and other bullshit that's been going on, know that I, too, am completely annoyed by it. And I am going to be taking steps tomorrow to figure out what the fuck is going on and remedy this. I'm telling you, man, you just had to pay the North Koreans that ransom. You could have fixed all this.

02:09:59.310 --> 02:09:59.420
Yeah.

02:10:01.820 --> 02:10:29.440
But before we go, I want to announce that Jay has had a brilliant idea. Not his first, but I'm not announcing it as such. But he came up with an idea for a new segment, and we're going to start with that on our next episode. It's, at this point, tentatively titled Skull Crusher. And what it's going to be is a little game that we're going to play between the four and the four.

02:10:29.480 --> 02:10:29.660
of us.

02:10:31.960 --> 02:10:40.700
So one person per episode will be the victim per se, who the other three people will.

02:10:41.300 --> 02:10:41.480
Okay.

02:10:41.520 --> 02:10:50.480
So the victim gets to pick a topic or a band that they would like the other three people to ask them questions about.

02:10:51.360 --> 02:10:58.860
So the other three people are going to go off and come up with something to try and ask this person that they won't be able to answer.

02:10:58.960 --> 02:11:28.920
Try and crush their skull. Yes. And so basically each episode one person will have to answer three questions from the other three and hope that they can get them right. And if they do then we will heap them with praise and if not we will bury them in derision. Answer these questions three. Exactly. And so since it was Jay's idea

02:11:28.960 --> 02:11:58.580
They will be the first victim starting with the next episode. So look forward to that next time. And until then, make sure to check us out on SoundCloud. We are on Facebook. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop. Hold the press. I got a big announcement. Do you? I mean, it's not that I'm going to Disney World next week. But you are. I am, yeah. Our buddies in Utqiaru are going off. Yeah, big news!

02:12:02.440 --> 02:12:25.680
So they got the three piece black and melodic death band, Ukiyaru, who has been a guest on the podcast, who we are friends with now based out of Wisconsin, are doing a East Coast North American tour. Not quite East Coast, but Eastern half, I guess you could say, of North America. They're not going to Jay's hood. No, no.

02:12:27.900 --> 02:12:57.800
But my brewery, Atlas, is sponsoring the tour. We have sent them plenty of merch and beer to fuel the tour. And they will be playing at Atlas Brew Works in August 15th. I think it's a Tuesday night. It is. I am scheduling my European Wacken tour such that I will be back right before this. I will be back the Sunday, and then I have Monday to get unjet-lagged, and Tuesday, Ukiaru time.

02:12:59.739 --> 02:13:27.360
Yeah, so, uh, but not, not to play second fiddle is a local DC dagger moon will be in direct support and, uh, are my good friends, our good friends and Helga Mike out of, uh, Riley's ville slash Lou Ray, Virginia out in the Shenandoah Valley, uh, with their, uh, eclectic, uh, Appalachian stoner doom metal, uh, they're also be playing. So what I love about this, this,

02:13:27.880 --> 02:13:57.860
this show that we're going to have at atlas is that it's all genre of bending metal i mean dagger moon's like a crusty doom band ukiyaru is a black and melodic death band and then you get you know you got helgamite which is the uh self-described uh jazz infused appalachian stoner doom so it's i'm so looking forward to this show but it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be huge it's gonna be huge so sad so sad

02:13:59.080 --> 02:14:27.840
I'll be there. Me too. I already bought my ticket. All right. So now, if you're not too turned off by all the fucking static, make sure to check us out on SoundCloud. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter, Instagram, Stitcher, and wearemetalheads.com. And you can also look... Disciple OV Metal? Yes, I am Disciple OV Metal.

02:14:28.320 --> 02:14:57.860
We're also at MetalheadsPod. John is... Mikeluster69. And Will is... At BrewMetalWill. And Jay is CatatonicJay. And we're also on... Look us up on Bandcamp if you want to know what we're listening to or what we're picking up. I am, I think, like... MetalheadsGeorge, I think, is my name on there. Yeah, I'm BrewMetalWill for all facets of my...

02:14:58.680 --> 02:15:27.860
And I'm still like cluster 69 69 69 69 69 69 is that a ministry reference as a ministry thing Psalm 69 yeah yeah but huge thanks to Albert oh yeah definitely enjoy talking with him yeah thanks so much just uh every time I see Albert I just I guess I personally met him three times now but it's always just a great conversation about music so it's it's awesome so it was a big a huge pleasure to have him on

02:15:28.760 --> 02:15:57.820
Yes, and hopefully John and I will see him next week. Oh, definitely. We'll stop by and see him. Yeah. All right. Until next time, we remain the Metalheads Podcast. So we're not quite done with the episode yet. We've got a few more things we want to talk about, John and I anyway. First of all, apparently during the middle of our taping of the episode,

02:15:57.900 --> 02:16:27.840
last night, Chris Cornell of Song Garden died. Yeah. We woke up this morning and he was gone, which was just bizarre. Yeah, it really was. I woke up, looked at my phone, and John was like, Chris Cornell, what the fuck? Yeah, exactly. I just, I mean, there are always, I wouldn't say there are always unexperienced,

02:16:27.920 --> 02:16:54.980
But this one definitely, I think, was probably more unexpected than most. I mean, he just played a show last night. Yeah. I guess in Detroit. In Detroit. I know Detroit's not exactly a great place to be, but come on. Yeah. And so it's been kind of a surreal day. And the details have been emerging throughout the day. Said that he died suddenly, so I assumed it was like a heart attack or something.

02:16:58.460 --> 02:17:26.099
texted me this morning and said, you hear something about a suicide? And I was like, nah, come on. That would be ridiculous. He's in the middle of a tour and he's Chris Cornell, come on. But that seems to be what they're ruling it now. There's been talk about whether it was on purpose or accidental, whether it was possibly some sort of auto-erotic asphyxiation kind of thing.

02:17:27.340 --> 02:17:56.620
I guess we won't know that until maybe more details. Yeah, I would think that no one's doing this, or at least a lot of people aren't doing this, but I would think that we should probably wait to find out first before. I mean, in every case like this, we should probably just wait to see what the results of the investigation are, only because I was reading some friends online when the suicide thing came up, and they were just like, man, what the fuck? I'll be really pissed off if that's the case.

02:17:57.320 --> 02:18:26.580
Like, oh, so if he died from drugs, that would have been cool then or something? Or you wouldn't be as upset? I don't get all that stuff. I mean, it's irrelevant, I guess, in the long run. It's the short term that people want an answer for. In the end, Rock lost a guy that a lot of people liked. I mean, a lot of people really liked his singing and the bands he participated in. Yeah, it's tragic either way.

02:18:27.320 --> 02:18:41.500
I mean, I can understand people being mad at him if it was suicide. You know, if somebody just dies naturally, it's certainly more tragic than if somebody did it on purpose.

02:18:42.019 --> 02:18:57.280
I understand that, and I don't condone suicide or hate people. I mean, I don't understand how somebody would get there, so that's not me copping out. I mean, I don't think any of us understand it, if that's what happens.

02:18:57.320 --> 02:19:26.260
happened unless you're in that person's shoes. So, come on, I mean, the same thing, remember Robin Williams. People thought, why would he do that? Yeah. We don't know what's going on in their private lives. So I would prefer to wait and see. I mean, I've gotten text messages too from friends and everything, and people just want to know because they like them so much is what I'm taking from it. Yeah. Well, it's tragic. I know I've been listening to Soundgarden all day.

02:19:27.779 --> 02:19:57.040
I didn't. I was never a big fan. I mean, it's no disrespect to them. I just wasn't a super fan. I mean, I like some stuff by them, but... It was kind of weird because Will was literally just talking about Ultra Omega OK last night. Well, yeah. You know, it's interesting. When we were up in Philadelphia and we saw Adam up there, you know, the author to the Brutal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers, we've never brought that book up before, ever.

02:19:59.199 --> 02:20:21.620
I asked him about that because he wrote the Hall of Fame piece in Decibel about that. And I said, you know, you must be excited that you got that. That's a nice grab for the magazine. And he was pretty psyched about it. And I was waiting to see what he would post it because I could be wrong. But as I understood, he was a big fan of them, at least early on. So, yeah.

02:20:23.180 --> 02:20:25.220
It just seems like we know a few people that

02:20:26.680 --> 02:20:31.160
recently that either like will getting into them or somebody who knows them or somebody interviewed

02:20:31.160 --> 02:20:34.540
them. So yeah, small world despite being big

02:20:35.620 --> 02:20:35.720
Yeah

02:20:37.000 --> 02:20:39.760
All right. Well, uh, that wasn't actually why

02:20:40.060 --> 02:20:42.500
We decided to record this piece that just

02:20:43.460 --> 02:20:44.300
Kind of happened to be that

02:20:45.140 --> 02:20:47.000
We couldn't ignore talking about that

02:20:47.500 --> 02:20:53.160
Uh, but john, why don't you, uh, go into why we're actually here now? Yeah, so

02:20:53.160 --> 02:20:57.100
I guess it's now a couple weeks after

02:20:57.720 --> 02:20:59.800
Decibel Fest I wanted back up to Philadelphia

02:21:00.540 --> 02:21:04.100
to go see what originally was supposed to be just Opeth and

02:21:04.760 --> 02:21:07.740
Gojira and then it became Opeth, Gojira and

02:21:07.930 --> 02:21:11.120
Devin Townsend project and then apparently

02:21:11.340 --> 02:21:13.700
Macedon's tour was colliding

02:21:14.470 --> 02:21:17.440
at the same time in Philadelphia kind of like Planet X hitting Earth

02:21:18.080 --> 02:21:20.400
and they ended up making this kind of mini

02:21:20.420 --> 02:21:50.080
One Day Festival up there with the two tours. Macedon's tours with Eagles of Death Metal and Russian Circles. So it turned out to be a long day. I drove up, went straight to the venue. I didn't do anything beforehand, went straight to the venue. And literally got in just as Russian Circles was getting ready to start. I think I found a space and they kicked in within like five minutes, maybe. Maybe ten max I waited.

02:21:50.400 --> 02:21:50.980
which is kind of nice.

02:21:52.540 --> 02:21:54.720
And it started around 3.30, I think.

02:21:55.640 --> 02:21:58.940
And it was cold and windy, but it wasn't bad at that point.

02:21:59.110 --> 02:22:01.120
It was supposed to be raining, so I guess you lucked out there.

02:22:02.080 --> 02:22:06.720
Yeah, so I had the whole rain slicker on that slightly could breathe,

02:22:06.900 --> 02:22:09.320
as opposed to the poncho that makes you sweat your balls off.

02:22:09.940 --> 02:22:12.240
You know, the $5 poncho, I didn't wear that this time.

02:22:13.220 --> 02:22:15.100
And so it was windy, but it wasn't too bad.

02:22:15.110 --> 02:22:17.140
The sun was out, and Russian Circles came out.

02:22:17.240 --> 02:22:47.160
They played four songs. And they were heavy as hell. They were not loud, but heavy. And I guess it was loud for people who didn't have earplugs. But they put on a great, great show. I've seen them a few times. I've seen them for each of the last three album tour cycles. And, you know, very cool, very atmospheric for them. But they amped it up a little bit to not to compete, but to kind of blend in.

02:22:47.240 --> 02:23:17.180
better with the rest of the bands, I thought. Which, they're already a heavy band live. I mean, they're not heavy. They already are. But they added a little more oomph to their sound, which I enjoyed even more. They played, I guess, about, I don't know, 25 minutes, which was cool. And then there wasn't much of a break in between each band. Then they rolled Devin Townsend out, and he played five songs. And it was good. And it's all stuff I've seen before. As a matter of fact, I think it was every song we saw when he played down in Atlanta at Prague Power.

02:23:17.300 --> 02:23:18.020
Okay.

02:23:18.200 --> 02:23:19.660
So nothing new there.

02:23:21.100 --> 02:23:22.700
All Devin Townsend Project stuff.

02:23:22.870 --> 02:23:24.700
There was nothing from any of the earlier albums.

02:23:25.400 --> 02:23:31.100
He does do Kingdom, you know, it seems like at every show now, which is from Physicist, which is from early 2000s.

02:23:31.180 --> 02:23:34.820
But he re-recorded it with the Devin Townsend Project.

02:23:35.820 --> 02:23:38.680
And it's really funny because this came up, you know, watching him.

02:23:39.090 --> 02:23:42.300
You know, he's got his logo, the DTP that he has.

02:23:42.740 --> 02:23:43.640
It looks like Infinity.

02:23:44.940 --> 02:23:49.640
the subject of Deep Purple's new album cover came up, and we were having a good laugh about that.

02:23:50.080 --> 02:23:53.920
I was like, wait a second now. Who stole from who here?

02:23:54.359 --> 02:24:01.320
I remember that I read an interview with Devin Townsend. He said, hey, Deep Purple, if it looks sort of like ours, who am I to complain?

02:24:01.740 --> 02:24:03.020
Which I thought was really funny.

02:24:05.500 --> 02:24:10.020
So at that point, he played for a little over half an hour, about half an hour again.

02:24:11.700 --> 02:24:13.180
And Eagles of Death Metal came up.

02:24:13.560 --> 02:24:43.520
I bolted. I didn't want to see them. I have no interest in them. I'm not a fan. I know people like them. It's just not my thing. I'm not a stoner rock kind of desert rock guy at all. So I don't mean do you like them at all? No. I'm like if you got death metal in your name you gotta at least be playing metal and it's just not. Yeah or there better be some kind of a humorous side to that you know that we can all appreciate. Yeah. And it's just you know them up there playing their

02:24:43.560 --> 02:24:48.760
Where they're from in Southern California? I don't know where they're from, but

02:24:51.420 --> 02:25:00.660
What band are they The Ashes from? Queens of Stone Age? Yeah, and like Caius maybe? Yeah, that's what I thought. The one guy was in Caius too. So

02:25:01.560 --> 02:25:02.620
So when I walked around

02:25:04.600 --> 02:25:08.640
The show was in, if I didn't mention, in Philadelphia at the Electric Factory

02:25:08.640 --> 02:25:38.060
And the electric factory is a big indoor venue that is standing room only with some seats upstairs at the bar area. And it holds about 3,000 plus. I've seen a ton of shows there over the years. But they held this out not in the parking lot area. That's where all the food and the merch was located. And that's where you went into the venue. This was held behind the venue. No point in explaining it, just giving you a slight visual. And it was a huge space.

02:25:38.660 --> 02:26:08.620
If you look at any pictures that were posted by the bands, you'll see. And it was from fence to fence, from stage to building, completely solid people. Wow. I mean, it was a lot of people there. It was kind of cool, but it was on pavement, so my back was starting to get a little antsy. I had to move around a little bit. Yeah. So then the next band from there was Gojera after Eagles Death Metal. Gojera.

02:26:08.640 --> 02:26:36.840
Back to Eagles of Death Metal. The best song they played was a cover by David Bowie. It was Moonage Daydream. Wow. I was just like, okay, so your best song is not one of your songs, but it's actually by someone. I'm a big David Bowie fan, so I was thinking it's by someone I like a lot. I don't like the rest of your set. So, you know, nothing personal. Just wasn't my thing. So then Gojira came out, and they were awesome, as usual.

02:26:38.660 --> 02:27:07.340
They played a shorter set than they're playing on tour right now. Same as Devin Townsend. They played maybe eight or nine songs. A lot of stuff from the new album. But they are doing a lot per the From Mars to Sirius album, which they've been doing for a while. And a couple songs here and there from the rest of their catalog. They were great. A lot of energy. People were really into them. Pit was going pretty well.

02:27:08.640 --> 02:27:36.860
So I liked them, of course. Then it was followed up by Opeth, who originally... Opeth? Oh, I have heard of them. Yeah. Who I had originally was planning, you know, the reason for the trip was them and Gojera. And they also played a shortened set. They played eight songs instead of the nine or ten that they're playing as a headline. They did a short headline tour, you know, Gojera and Devin Townsend.

02:27:37.900 --> 02:28:07.780
It was all the same songs they played from the last time I saw them. They added one new song. They added Era to the set list. And they were great. Friends had said they thought Mike sounded really good, both clean and harsh vocals. I thought his clean vocals were outstanding. And I thought his harsh were a little better than it had been. His harsh vocals seemed to be better than they have been in the last couple of years. Nice. The band sounded great. But it was getting cold at this point. As we were getting close to dusk.

02:28:07.880 --> 02:28:37.820
And at one point, Mike had made a comment. He's like, you know, we're from Sweden and all, but it's fucking cold out here. And it was. It was getting cold. And it was windy. That was part of the problem. One thing, it was cold with no wind. But anyway, they played for over an hour. And then Mastodon came out. And I got the feeling that there were a lot of people there to see them, not just to see the other bands and Mastodon, but that a lot of people came just to see Mastodon. And they played their full set. They got like 20 songs.

02:28:38.680 --> 02:29:07.860
And I gotta tell ya, I'm not a Super Massathon fan of the last three albums. I watched them for about eight songs before I decided my back had had enough. And I left. And I knew what I was walking out on. I knew that they were gonna play some older songs off of Blood Mountain. I knew they were gonna play a few songs off remission. And it's my back was not holding up well at all. It was killing me. But you know, they sounded great. They had a big huge stage thing going on. But I couldn't help thinking the whole time, this was originally

02:29:07.880 --> 02:29:37.340
Opeth show. This was their gig. Yeah. You know, with Gojira. And Opeth, Gojira, and Devin Townsend all had shortened sets. And I think Eagles of Death Metal played one, maybe two fewer songs in their set. And everything else was the same for Macedon and Russian Circles. And, you know, somebody said to me, well, you know, they are probably a bigger band than Opeth right now. Maybe that's true. Maybe they currently are. I don't know.

02:29:39.119 --> 02:30:07.700
But still, it just seemed kind of... Douchey. Yeah, I mean, they got the play for roughly, what, an hour and 45 minutes? Opeth got, what, an hour and five or hour and ten? I'm thinking, that's kind of bullshit. Now, people might think I'm nuts and say that Massadol would be better to see. Maybe that's true, I don't know. But you bought the tickets with the expectation of a headline Opeth set. Yes, and I actually thought that Opeth and Gojira were going to split the time.

02:30:07.880 --> 02:30:37.840
which I was fine with too. Some people don't like that, but I figured, oh, if they both get like an hour and 15, maybe hour and 20 minutes, I'm fine with that. That's basically two headlines as far as I'm concerned. Right. But every band from the Opeth tour had shortened sets and not the same for Macedon. So take from it what you want. I would have liked to have heard the other two songs Opeth were playing on the tour because I believe one of them was Air Apparent, which I haven't seen in a while. And in my time of need, which I'm ready to swap that out with someone.

02:30:37.880 --> 02:30:39.100
something else off of damnation.

02:30:42.820 --> 02:30:43.780
But overall, it was good.

02:30:44.700 --> 02:30:46.420
For the most part, everything ran really well.

02:30:48.080 --> 02:30:50.920
I did not eat there because the lines were too long.

02:30:51.840 --> 02:30:53.720
And I didn't particularly care for the food.

02:30:53.960 --> 02:30:54.620
The food was fine.

02:30:54.690 --> 02:30:56.420
I just didn't want to eat the cheese steak.

02:30:56.500 --> 02:30:59.200
And halfway through the middle, Gojira, hear that, you know,

02:31:00.359 --> 02:31:03.980
in my stomach going, oh, no, I'm out of venue.

02:31:04.480 --> 02:31:04.980
Oh, no.

02:31:07.120 --> 02:31:08.680
I know that feeling well.

02:31:09.760 --> 02:31:11.120
I'm no George Costanza.

02:31:11.180 --> 02:31:13.500
I don't have every bathroom in the city, you know,

02:31:13.920 --> 02:31:14.820
memorizing where to go.

02:31:15.380 --> 02:31:16.260
There's an app for that.

02:31:17.700 --> 02:31:18.460
Yeah, I know.

02:31:20.300 --> 02:31:21.500
But all in all, it was good.

02:31:22.100 --> 02:31:23.460
You know, I enjoyed it.

02:31:24.840 --> 02:31:27.340
The cold didn't bother me as much as I thought it might

02:31:27.540 --> 02:31:29.900
because I had that, you know, rain slicker on.

02:31:29.920 --> 02:31:31.980
It kept me pretty warm, actually, for most of the time

02:31:32.680 --> 02:31:33.700
because I guess it kept all the heat in.

02:31:34.500 --> 02:31:35.820
But, I mean, the sound was fine.

02:31:36.720 --> 02:32:04.680
The Merch Lines, I've never seen them like that before for anything. It must have been about 50 people in each line. There were four or five lines. 50 people in each line solid. I was like, I'm not standing in this shit. So when I actually left a little early, I was able to go buy a shirt because I was the only person in line. That's how you do it sometimes. Yeah, but it was cool. It's an open tour, so I'm going to go.

02:32:07.260 --> 02:32:36.360
That's just what I do. That's what you do. It was cool to see Gojira again, too. I mean, I've seen Devin Townsend a lot also. Not as much as I was, but a lot. I was probably anticipating Gojira more because I haven't seen him as much. They put on a good show. I got pictures, but they all sucked. My location was not great. Will's like, oh, you've got to get some pictures to post. They just didn't come out great, so I didn't want to.

02:32:37.080 --> 02:33:06.680
There's nothing worse than putting up blurry pictures. Hey, look at this picture. And then you're looking and you're looking at the face of the musician and it's all blurred. And it's like, that looks great. Yeah. I frequently take pictures at the show and post them right away. I'm like, that looks good on my phone. And then you get home and you see what you posted and you're like, oh, well, that really sucked. Now, I was closer for most of the bands than we were at Amon Amarath. And I don't know about you, but my pictures from Amon Amarath came out great in the back of the

02:33:07.199 --> 02:33:36.680
I just think that they had the backdrop with the Vikings and they had the colors and it just seemed like colors lit up the stage a certain way and everything came out great from that show yeah but this one I just couldn't even with the light out with solid light not having to worry about a flash I still just couldn't get anything great so yeah that's it all right that's my big report and then you drove back in the morning

02:33:36.680 --> 02:34:06.500
Yeah, I came back early in the morning. I think I was on the road and I think I was home by, I want to say before 10. Yeah. Maybe 10. Between somewhere like 9.45 and 10.15 I got home. I couldn't remember. I just got up. I couldn't sleep. I just got up and left. No cars flipped over on 95? No, not like, are you referring to Annapolis yesterday? No, I was referring to our trip.

02:34:09.040 --> 02:34:36.440
Oh, that's right. Yeah. No, actually, the drive up was great. Had no issues. Hey, look, we're talking, driving, no complaints. And the drive down was fine because I left early enough. Cool. I thought you were referring to what happened in it. I know somebody got caught up in that accident. Is it talking about 50? Yeah. Yeah, I heard about that. It was shut down for like seven hours or something like that or six hours. I heard there was something in New York today, too.

02:34:38.080 --> 02:35:05.680
My wife told me that. I haven't looked it up yet. Screeching tires and screams of panic. Carl barrels into pedestrians in New York's Times Square. Fucking lovely. Wow. All right. It's unreal. It just never seems like it's going to stop. There's a picture of a burning car, and I was possibly going to New York tomorrow. Glad I'm not. It's, yeah, one dead and 22 hurt after a car hits crowd in Times Square. Crazy.

02:35:06.700 --> 02:35:36.560
Yeah, it is. It really is. Hell in the handbasket. Let's all go. Yeah, that's kind of like why I don't like going to Times Square in New York. Not a fan at all. Yeah. I don't mind going to other parts of the city, but I really don't like Times Square at all. Nah. So, just me. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we will now actually for Really Reels end this episode.

02:35:37.601 --> 02:36:06.660
Yeah, cool. Thanks for talking about it with me. And I wish we had better news other than Chris Cornell. Yeah, to be sure. And sorry we were a little long between episodes, and it might be a little while before the next episode. We're doing some modifications to the site and the podcast. And so we're on a...

02:36:07.180 --> 02:36:36.060
Yeah, definitely. I'm still having issues with the, I swapped out the mixer for a different one today and thought it was working better, but no, we still have static. So still have to pinpoint that. So yeah, you know, we got to get new, some new equipment and, uh, you know, we're changing up some of the segments and, uh, you know, some of the, the, uh, hopefully a new website and things like that. So, but we shouldn't be too long. Just, uh, if you're wondering,

02:36:36.700 --> 02:37:06.620
We'll be back soon. So. Yeah. And keep it on the horizon. It's middle of May. You know what that means. Yep. And we'll probably have something from DeathFest too. But yes, the mid-year. We'll definitely be back for the mid-year in June. So. If we're not back before then. Yeah. We'll actually probably have plenty to talk about on the mid-year. Yeah. If that's the one we do it on. Yeah. But we'll probably have some coverage from DeathFest.

02:37:06.680 --> 02:37:35.000
as well. We're only going to a couple of days, but it's just John and I. But we'll record some stuff while we're there, so I may just post that separate. Yeah, just be prepared to hear plenty of gushing talk over Aranty Pazuzu from me. Definitely. And about how awesome it is to be crammed into Ram's head. Yeah, I'll also be sweating your balls off and not being able to move.

02:37:41.541 --> 02:37:42.580
All right.

02:37:43.760 --> 02:37:48.460
This is George and John. We're signing off. We'll talk to you next time.

02:37:49.180 --> 02:37:49.300
Later.

02:38:20.779 --> 02:38:33.260
I said the show's over. Seriously, George, George, just turn it off. Turn it off. That's the end of the show. I don't know. We don't, people aren't even listening. They are listening, apparently. Seriously. Fuck you. Good night.