SHUSH NOW, YOU WHINY TWATS!

Dear Morons Of The Internet,

I hope you’re happy and well and didn’t swallow your tongue during the night while dreaming about hitting yourself in the genitals with a plank of wood with nails sticking out of it. That just wouldn’t do, would it? The rest of us, slightly less stupid people on the internet, would feel so terribly sorry for you. Tears would be shed, I’m sure. Anyway, like I say, I hope you’re happy and well and the tongue-swallowing thing didn’t happen. All the best to you!

Meanwhile, it’s time for me to write another blog. Strangely, this one is about exactly the same thing as one of the previous ones I wrote. It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it? I thought that the previous blog about this subject was pretty straightforward and easy to understand, but apparently not. I received all manner of abuse from the inarticulate, the ignorant and the irredeemably dim, including one actual threat of physical violence! Hard to believe, I know, but one must take the rough with the smooth, don’t you think? Live by the pen and die by the pen, and all that sort of bollocks.

(At this point, I feel I ought to point out that if you ARE one the “Morons Of The Internet” that I’m referring to, it would probably be sensible to stop reading this now. I know you may find this confusing, but I’m not actually aiming this blog at you. It does seem like I am, doesn’t it? It’s a little trick I use to justify what follows, to be honest. I’m not really aiming it at you, principally because I know exactly how you’re going to react and I’m not remotely interested in your opinions. Because, you know, you’re a moron! In fact, I’m aiming this blog at all the sane, rational and open-minded people that are capable of recognising things like sarcasm, irony and hyperbole, and who will probably agree with me anyway...or, at least, understand that the point I’m making is a valid one and that I’m merely writing it in an aggressive and over-the-top way for comic effect. I think all that stuff is a bit beyond you, to be fair, so if you stop reading now you’ll avoid getting all cross and hurting yourself when you bang your head against your laptop. It’s okay to be cross, of course. Even middle-aged millionaire Fred Durst gets a bit irate every now and then and has to break someone’s face (which seems a bit extreme, if you ask me, but he knows best), so you’re by no means alone in your desperate, impotent rage. Feel free to keep reading if you want to, though, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I will be calling you a cunt at least once before the end of this. Just so you know. Oh, and by the way, if you’re the person that instructed me to “GO SUCK A COCK YOU FAG” recently, could you please tap your Caps Lock key before you make your next sexually-orientated suggestion? I don’t mind the implication that I’m a practising homosexual, but I really don’t like being shouted at. Thanks.)

Anyway, where were we? Oh, I know. Download. Yes. There was an another announcement last night, as you may well know. Another bunch of bands were added to the bill, some of which I was really pleased about and some that I wasn’t bothered about at all. That, my moronic friends, is the way the festival cookie crumbles. And, being a sentient being with a decent amount of common sense, I was able to take this new information and process it using only my brain, ending up with the fairly satisfying conclusion that I will probably have a really splendid time at Download this year, even though the bill does not precisely mirror my own personal wish list of bands. Sadly, it seems that many of you were not quite so willing or able to take the announcement on the proverbial chin. So, for your benefit, I’ve prepared a little list of facts that might help you to cope with any future announcements. You might want to read them a few times, just to make sure that you understand them. Or just read them once and write an immediate and staggeringly cretinous response that basically amounts to a violent dirty protest by a brain damaged chimpanzee. It’s entirely up to you which one of these approaches you wish to take. Now, here’s the list of facts that I mentioned earlier...

1. THE WORLD IS NOT DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO MAKE YOU HAPPY

I know. It’s a fucking choker, isn’t it? Imagine my disappointment when I found out! I was livid. I even wrote a stern letter to my MP, demanding that everything in the entire world should be reorganised for my convenience and gratification, but I guess they must have mislaid it because I never got a reply. Honestly, it’s enough to make you spit! Still, I got used to the idea eventually. It’s called growing up and not being a total fuckwit. Not everything in life is perfect. Not everything that happens to you will be positive. That’s just the way it is, as Bruce Hornsby memorably sang. Whatever happened to Bruce Hornsby? He probably got run over by a bus. Or crushed by a falling piano. That would be fucking ironic, wouldn’t it? Poor old Bruce. Anyway, the point is that the world is not designed specifically to make you happy. Your parents may have given you that impression when you were a toddler, and Christ knows I try to do the same for my kids, but there will come a time when things start to happen that will piss you off. You’ll lose things. Electrical equipment will stop working. TV shows that you like will be cancelled and replaced with more banal crap about sexy vampires. Your football team will lose against a non-league club in the FA Cup. Your girlfriend/boyfriend will decide that you’re a prick and cop off with someone else instead. In front of you. While laughing and giving you the finger (but not in a good way). You will become slightly chubby. People you love will die, you will become addicted to some terrible drug and everything you have ever believed in will crumble before your eyes, leaving you in a harrowing and miserable vortex of despair and misery that will eventually cause you to abandon all hope and start listening to All-Time Low. And, as if that wasn’t punishment enough, the Download organisers will put a bill together that doesn’t give you an instant boner and make you dance around your padded cell singing ‘Walking On Sunshine’. That’s just the way it is. And some things will never change. Poor old Bruce.

2. OTHER FESTIVALS ARE AVAILABLE

I know it’s hard to accept. You’ve only ever heard of one festival and you go every year, expecting the bill to be an accurate representation of your CD collection and the beer to be free and that you will be transported from one end of the site to the other on the shoulders of people you’ve never met before...and they’re all chanting your name and offering you sexual favours and as much Hog Roast as you can eat without getting worms. That’s pretty much what Download 2009 was like for me, to be honest, so I know where you’re coming from. But what you might not realise is that there are some other festivals taking place this summer. That’s shocked you, hasn’t it? Well, it’s true. I’ve checked. In the UK alone there are several other rock/metal festivals which may or may not cater for your needs and/or send you into a blind and pitiful fit of anger. Sonisphere. Bloodstock. High Voltage. That other one in Hyde Park. Stevie Wonder’s playing, apparently. Furthermore, there are literally several festivals taking place in Europe, some of which are exclusively metal-orientated, which means that if you are genuinely allergic to listening to anything other than Slayer or Pantera, then you may be able to last the weekend without feeling outraged or threatening a music journalist with a kicking. Personally, I’m hoping to attend the very marvellous Hole In The Sky festival in Bergen, Norway. It looks awesome. However, I will definitely not be attending Glastonbury, despite the fact that Willie Nelson is on. The rest of the bill looks rubbish, but rather than going online and leaving a stream of illiterate insults on the Glastonbury forum, I have decided to exercise free will and put the whole sorry incident down to experience. After all, there’s always Download. I rather like the look of the line-up. How do you feel about it? Actually, don’t answer that. You fuckwit.

3. SKINDRED WERE THE BEST BAND ON AT HAMMERFEST THIS YEAR.

They just were. I’d love to be able to tell you that it was Iced Earth, Devildriver or Akercocke, all of whom were brilliant, but I guarantee that if you took a straw poll of everyone who attended Hammerfest this year, Skindred would be overwhelmingly voted the band of the weekend. They’re not a metal band in the traditional sense of the term, of course, and there’s no reason at all why anyone should be obliged to like them, but the fact remains that they tore the place apart and made a large room full of people very happy indeed. You can squint, dribble and bark “It’s not metulz!” at me all you like. But I’m right. Just saying, like.

4. BEING NEGATIVE ABOUT EVERYTHING IS NOT AWESOME!

It’s just dull, really. It makes you seem dull. It makes you seem extraordinarily self-absorbed and misguided and ignorant and petulant and spoilt. It makes going onto the Metal Hammer website to see what people are saying about the music we write about a tiresome experience, rather than a joyous one. It makes everyone’s lives a little less enjoyable and a bit more stressful. And, perhaps more importantly, it achieves absolutely fuck all. There are plenty of bands I don’t like, festival line-ups that don’t appeal to me, TV shows that irritate me, celebrities that I’d like to hit with a bat, alcoholic drinks that make me do sicky burps and people – lots and lots of people – that I find mind-rapingly stupid and pointless, but other than occasionally writing a moderately amusing blog about such things, as a cheap substitute for proper therapy, I really have no desire to spend any more of my life focusing on any of it than I already have to. Maybe it’s something you learn when you get older and pull your once beautiful face out of your own arse. I’m not sure. But there are few things more likely to spoil your own life than the sound of your own whining, moaning, self-important, flatulent voice, droning on and on and on about how everything’s shit and how everyone else is a wanker and WAH WAH WAH MUMMY DOESN’T LOVE ME AND I’VE GOT A CRAP MOBILE PHONE AND SMALL SEXUAL ORGANS AND A DAFT HAIRCUT AND TWILIGHT ON DVD AND WAH WAH WAH I’M SO DESPERATE TO BE COOL PLEASE LOVE ME MUMMY PLEASE LOVE ME MUMMY WAH WAH WAH DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT? WAH WAH WAH!!!!!

Seriously. Chill the fuck out. You don’t like the Download line-up. Big fucking deal. It’s still going to sell out and we’re all going to have a brilliant time. Stay at home. Enjoy some re-runs of Two Pints Of Lager. Eat some cheese. Slit your own throat. Whatever. Just stop fucking moaning. You cunts.

Lots of love,

Dom “Sucking A Cock And Really Rather Enjoying It” Lawson

AN ALL-TIME LOW FOR ROCK 'N' ROLL...HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Rock ‘n’ roll is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? That joyful, celebratory, life-affirming racket that we fill our ears with every day…it’s one of the few things that stops us all from hurling ourselves in front of a passing bus. And although most of us have neither the cash nor the freedom to truly indulge in the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, it’s still something to which we can intermittently aspire, whether via the medium of a balls-out, drunken Friday night or a brainless, debauched, oh-shit-the-neighbours-called-the-police house party. Failing that, we can always live vicariously through a handful of bands that genuinely walk it like they talk it; the true rock ‘n’ rollers that live life at full throttle, with a semi-drained bottle of Wild Turkey in one fist, a massive bag of illegal drugs in the other and a pair of swivel-eyed groupies doing something unspeakable in the general vicinity of the groin area down below. People like Lemmy. People like KISS. People like Motley fucking Crue. Bands that make an ear-smashing stiff-dick din and put on a show that makes your eyes spin, before buggering off to the dressing room to snort a huge line of tits and throw a tour bus out of the window. Yeah. Rock ‘n’ roll, baby! Living the dream, 24 goddamn 7, with a puke-encrusted t-shirt and shoes that are ACTUALLY ON FIRE RIGHT NOW AND I DON’T EVEN CARE THAT I MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO WALK AGAIN DUE TO SEVERE THIRD DEGREE BURNS!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

So yeah, rock ‘n’ roll is awesome, and it’s always good to hear about new bands that are upholding those wild and crazy traditions. On the other hand, there are few things more depressing and dispiriting than reading interviews with some of the latest generation of mainstream rock bands that are currently being fawned over by certain other publications that you may know and/or love. In a newly published interview that you can read in all its hideous, shameful glory this week, pop-punk fucknuggets All-Time Low have decided to announce that they’re “the Motley Crue of our generation”. Once the mind stops boggling, it’s worth taking a closer look at the interview, because in fairness to these simpering tools, they do seem to be dimly aware of the fact that they are far about as far removed from Nikki Sixx and his drug-munching comrades as it is humanly possible to be. All of which makes this one of the more disingenuous and ultimately meaningless non-stories to hit the internet in recent times. And that’s no mean feat.

But let’s look a little deeper into the mind-blowingly vacuous and creatively dead world of All-Time Low. I’m going to have a little peek at one of their videos on YouTube right now, just for you and in the name of journalistic integrity, research and all that other bollocks. Bear with me a second…

…right, this song is called Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t). It’s really not very good. Something inside me died about 40 seconds in, to be honest. To be fair, it’s probably not aimed at devilishly handsome but slightly overweight 37-year-old music journalists with functioning brains, but by Christ, if this is what gets the blood racing for teenagers these days, I’m absolutely delighted to be a couple of decades ahead and just that little bit closer to death. No wonder these pointless cockwads “always break stuff” when they’re drunk on half a shandy and a packet of Maltesers. It’s probably a necessary exercise in catharsis, as it slowly dawns on them that their band makes McFly sound like Behemoth and that their haircuts look like comedy wigs from a provincial theatre costume cupboard. Like far too many so-called rock bands these days, All-Time Low have no edge whatsoever. They have the slick, over-produced, sing-along tunes, without a doubt, but their music has no balls, no bite and nothing that anyone with healthy sexual organs could possibly describe as charisma. The self-consciously wacky videos, the goofy interviews in which they admit to “stealing parking cones”, the general air of smug, major label complacency…it’s all symptomatic of a generation of bands that have absolutely no fucking clue what rock ‘n’ roll is all about. There’s no hunger here. No energy. No irresistible urge to howl into the void and grab life by the knackers. It’s just safe, tame, painfully polite, utterly joyless and the exact opposite of everything that rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to represent. Lady Gaga is more rock ‘n’ roll than these twats, because at least she has the decency to be a mentalist with a penis.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing mainstream rock bands out there, and some brilliant punk bands and even some great bands that skilfully cross over from pop to punk or vice versa, but when bands like All-Time Low are being promoted as an exciting part of the rock ‘n’ roll world – our world, lest we forget – then we really are in trouble. Can you imagine being on the road with these bell-ends? After a couple of hours of forced wackiness and enough hairspray to suffocate a rhinoceros, you’d be desperate to set fire to them as they slept. Twice.

“We have more fun than most bands in the world,” says drummer Rian Dawson.

You really don’t. Now fuck off. You’re getting on my nerves.

Lots of love,

Dom Lawson xxx

HAPPY NEW YEAR...OR WHATEVER!

HAPPY NEW HEAVY METAL YEAR, FOLKS!

Here we are again, then. Another shiny new 12 months of breathing in, breathing out and trying to avoid being flattened by oncoming vehicles and large, horned mammals. I hope and trust you had a tolerable festive period and didn’t kill yourself by choking on turkey or by discovering, as I did to some considerable cost, that drinking red wine all day and then having a Sambuca/Bloody Mary drinking competition is the fastest way to ensure that Boxing Day is a whole world of horrible hell and PLEASE GOD KILL ME NOW I BLAME THE CHRISTIANS AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH! Meanwhile, I also hope that Santa brought you some nice socks and a DVD or two and whatever else it is that keeps you on the right side of thoroughly miserable in your squalid and vile part of the world. I’m a benevolent kind of guy, let’s face it. But enough of the cheery stuff. It’s pretty much beyond dispute that 2009 was a fantastic year for metal (and music in general, I’d say) but a pretty horrific, shit-stained disgrace of a year in every other respect. Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, I’m writing this, not you, so shut the fuck up and observe my New Year’s Resolutions, none of which will be kept or taken remotely serious because I’m writing them FOR COMIC EFFECT. Do try to keep up.

THREE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

1. I WILL TRY, EVER SO HARD, TO STOP SAYING NASTY THINGS ABOUT METALLICA. It’s not like I don’t absolutely love everything they did from the No Life Till Leather demo up to and (possibly) including the Black Album. Metallica are, as we all know, one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time, the undisputed kings of the thrash metal era and one of the only genuinely heavy bands to ever truly conquer the mainstream. For all that, I doff my hat to them many times and at high speed. Yes, I realise I look ridiculous, but at least I’m not Danish. The struggle for me, however, is to fall into line with everyone else and smother my critical judgement in nostalgia and sentiment, rather than face up to the fact that (a) Metallica haven’t made a classic album for nearly 20 years and (b) they’re really not that brilliant live anymore. I did enjoy them at the O2 Arena last year, but my enjoyment was primarily based on the fact that it’s always good to hear those songs being played at ear-mangling volume and seeing thousands of people singing along and punching the air in a euphoric manner. Fun is a good thing. Of course it is. But, and here’s the clincher, I’m lucky enough to have seen Metallica several times “back in the day”, when Lars could still play the drums properly and the band were tighter than an emo kid’s drainpipes. They were so much better back then and played every last riff with utmost conviction and belief. As entertaining as Metallica are these days, they are pretty damn sloppy and sound more like a bunch of middle-aged musos having a jolly good time, rather than a bone-crunching, Devil-worshipping, whisky-stinking heavy metal band at the height of their powers. Megadeth, Slayer and maybe even Anthrax (if they can get their shit together and stop making tits of themselves) will blow them off the stage at Sonisphere in the summer. I’ll bet my knackers on it. But, you know, I won’t say anything nasty about Metallica this year, and nor will any other writers at British rock and metal magazines, all of whom will dish out the customary full marks and bang on about how they’ve just seen the greatest gig of their lives. You disingenuous twats.

2. I WILL DRINK A LOT LESS AND GET SOME EXERCISE. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Oh, I crack myself up. I really do. I might give it a go, though. I do get quite envious of all the people I know that seem to have the time and money to go to “the gym” (whatever that means) and posture and preen while sweating profusely and haemorrhaging money left, right and sweetly narcissistic centre. It’s also undeniably true that our Wii Fit Plus balance board has started to emit little gasps every time I get on it to attempt another heroic bout of ski jumping. It even said “One at a time, please!” last week, in that irritating, child-like, quasi-Japanese voice that the creators of the Wii think will help to encourage you to lose more weight and stop thrusting fistfuls of Quality Street down your neck for six to eight weeks after Christmas. Not me, though. I’m on a high caffeine, low joy diet, as always. Fuck you, Nintendo.

3. I WILL TRY NOT TO CRY WHEN OPETH PLAY AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL.

Well, you know it is. You get into a band at the very beginning of their career and then you watch them evolve and grow into something truly special and meaningful…one of those bands that you know you’ll always listen to and love, and that you will want to play to everyone you know (even my mum has an Opeth CD by this point). And then you watch as that band starts to pick up a lot more press and sell a lot more records, and then finally they release an album that introduces them to a much bigger (and worldwide) audience…and then they’re not really just /your/ band anymore, but they still mean a whole lot. And then, because you’re a very lucky boy and have somehow managed to wangle a job as a music journalist despite arguably being better suited to mopping the floor in Burger King, you get to know the band on a personal level, conducting numerous interviews over a ten year period and spending loads of time with them at various venues and festivals around Europe and in the US…and let’s not forget that you also nick loads of their booze and get sexually assaulted by their singer in a coach park in New Jersey…and, well, like I said at the start, you know how it is. I fucking love Opeth and I’m so proud to see them celebrate their 20^th anniversary in style. The gigs are going to rule…they’re playing Blackwater Park from beginning to end, in case you didn’t already know…and I am going to be a very pissed and very emotional wreck by the end of it all. My boys. Wonderful.

THREE NEW YEAR’S PREDICTIONS

1. THE SOUNDGARDEN REUNION WON’T SUCK BALLS.

It can’t. It’s simply unthinkable, and here’s why: there are many things that can and often do go wrong when supposedly legendary bands return after a long hiatus, mesmerised by the delicious allure of the promoter’s chequebook, but nothing can ever…EVER…detract from the overwhelming brilliance and ball-grabbing awesomeness of Kim Thayil’s beard. Never mind the fact that Kim Thayil is one of the greatest guitarists of all time or that Soundgarden were always a million times better and more interesting than Nirvana or that Jesus Christ Pose (along with the vast majority of the band’s catalogue, to be fair) still sounds utterly fresh a full 19 years after it was first released or that the four band members are generally believed to hate each other (which nearly always results in great music with lashings of electrifying edge) or that anything, no matter how tired, feeble or half-arsed, could ever be as appalling as that last Chris Cornell solo album (Dear Chris…that was fucking shit…reform Soundgarden or kill yourself…lots of love, everyone in the world xxx)…no, it’s all about Kim Thayil’s beard, and when you factor in the popular notion that he has been living in the wilderness for the last decade or so, living off fried cactus and wrestling coyotes while whacked off his grunge gourd on mescaline and Mountain Dew, the thought of the great man hitting the stage again and letting rip with those monumental riffs, that vast facial growth flapping gently amid the dry ice as vultures circle overheard…well, it’s pretty fucking exciting, don’t you think?

2. MEGADETH WILL TRIUMPH AT THE BIG FOUR SHOWS.

No, I’m not remotely predictable am I? As much as I hate the phrase “it’s a no-brainer”, this really is a no-brainer. Slayer are always good value for money, Anthrax will probably be hugely entertaining, assuming that they don’t absent-mindedly call John Bush a cunt on the way to the airport, and you can read my views on the ongoing Metallica debacle further up this page, but does Dave Mustaine ever fail to deliver the goods? No, he does not, particularly in recent times when he seems to be one of the only metal legends of his generation to truly understand what it means to honour a legacy and do things properly, performing with musicians who can really cut it, night after night, and making records that simultaneously fit perfectly with the modern era while providing plenty of old school money shots for the ageing faithful. If you don’t own a copy of Endgame yet, get to it. It was the finest metal album released in 2009 and one of the finest of the decade. Any other opinion is idiotic. And you can put that fact in your fact pipe and smoke it. Factually. Now fack off.

3. IRON MAIDEN WILL RULE ALL. AGAIN.

So predictable it actually makes my eyes ache, the inevitably glorious return of Iron Maiden, with a new studio album and yet more pant-shreddingly amazing live shows, is one of those banker phenomena that make the slow, knee-bruising crawl through another year’s worth of crushing disappointments, mild irritations and narrowly-escaped beatings just that teensy bit more bearable. A Matter Of Life And Death was one of the greatest albums that the band have ever made, and there’s nothing to suggest that they are not capable of topping it this time round. This might even be the last Maiden album, terrifyingly enough, so it’s hard to imagine Steve or Bruce or any of the band allowing a single second of it to be substandard. I’ve already got through three pairs of underpants today, just from thinking about the Sonisphere show, so I should be swimming in my own man-milk by the time summer arrives. And I can’t swim a stroke. What a way to go.

Arguably the band that most precisely encapsulates what Metal Hammer stands for as a magazine, Iron Maiden have been the soundtrack to most of my life and 2010 will be no different. I’ll see some of you at the shows, I imagine, and you’d better be singing your fucking hearts out. Either that or buying me a pint. Firm but fair. That’s my policy. Happy New Year, fuckers. Horns up!

STORMCORPORATION EP

We can rant and rave all day about how metal bands need to be brutal and technically adept, but the fact remains that the difference between truly great bands and the merely mediocre is nearly always the ability to write memorable tunes. In that regard, Stormcorporation are already several large paces ahead of most other aspirational British metal bands. The five songs on their debut EP are absolutely bulging with melodies that lodge themselves somewhere in the skull and refuse to be shifted. But it’s the combination of that melodic intelligence with an overall sound that brilliantly straddles the divide between state-of-the-art metallic crunch and old school heroics, with a substantial dose of progressive dexterity thrown in, that makes songs like A Quiet Belief In Angels and Stand Up And Be Counted so thoroughly likeable and impressive. This is unashamedly modern metal that thinks big and wears its ambition as a badge of honour, but with more than enough brains and brawn to dispel cynicism from the metal die-hard contingent. And yes, Stormcorporation are, whisper it, “a female-fronted metal band”, but vocalist G-Storm side-steps the usual stereotypes, oozes genuine, dizzying charisma and sings with disarming power and enthralling authority, particularly on EP highlight Megatronix; a classic metal anthem emboldened with myriad twists, turns and tangential leaps. It’s only on the mid-paced introspection of Serious Damage that this Preston-based quintet sound anything less than remarkable; a sturdy but traditional ballad, it proves that the band have versatility and depth, but lacks the electrifying urgency displayed elsewhere. Nonetheless, this is a debut effort that sounds like the work of a band that already know precisely what they’re doing. And what they’re doing is pretty fucking awesome. Ones to watch in 2010, without a doubt.

Check them out HERE!

JOHN LAWSON 1932-2009

Being a writer and all-round opinionated bore, words don’t often fail me, but I’m finding it extremely hard to describe how I feel this morning. Last Friday night, my father passed away after what we are, I suppose, obliged to refer to as “a long battle with cancer”. He slipped away in the night, at home and in bed with my mum (just as it should be), and he leaves a yawning chasm behind, not just for me but for my entire family and anyone who ever knew him.

I know almost everyone thinks that their parents are infallible, but my dad really was a wonderful human being. He was a kind, generous, gentle and fiercely intelligent man who never knowingly said or did anything that caused pain or sadness to another living being. Most remarkable of all, he seldom spoke unless he had something to say. God knows, the world could use a few more people like that.

In some respects I didn’t have a huge amount in common with my dad. I didn’t share his religious faith, his political views, his taste in music or his calamitous dress sense, but those things are utterly trivial when you love someone as much I loved him. The important thing is that I always knew that my dad loved me and was proud of me, despite my many faults, and that he knew that I felt the same way towards him. And I admired him immensely. I’m lucky enough to do what I love for a living, and my dad was the same. An insanely talented artist, he designed stained glass windows for a living and leaves behind an astonishing legacy of beautiful creations that, with luck, will survive for many hundreds of years. I can only hope that I will be able to make such a lasting and worthwhile mark on the world. I also hope that I can become a little bit more like my dad along the way.

I miss him terribly and will carry his memory in my heart forever, as will my mum and my two sisters, Rebecca and Helena. We all love you, Dad.

IN DEFENSE OF FILE-SHARING

He may be the only drummer of his generation to become less skilful over the last 25 years, but we really should thank Lars Ulrich for kick-starting the debate about peer-to-peer file-sharing and illegal downloading. As easy as it was to take the piss out of a rich man bleating about being denied further piles of cash gleaned from the sale of overpriced CDs, Ulrich did have a point and, to be fair to him, the Napster debacle occurred at a time when the true implications of technology’s impact on the sale and distribution of music were something of an unknown quantity. Cut the Danish buffoon some slack, I say. The debate’s still going on and it’s one that we should continue to observe, not least because the outcome is going to affect those of us that buy music far more than those that make it, regardless of what high profile pop stars might tell you.

Let’s cut the crap. If you know how to download music illegally, then the chances are that you have done so on numerous occasions. I know I have and I make absolutely no apologies for it. We now live in a culture of “try before you buy”, and just because there are plenty of unscrupulous folks out there with no intention of ever getting their wallets out to buy a new CD, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we are all amoral scum feasting on the rotting, fly-plagued corpse of artistic endeavour. I am not a thief. I just choose to use the technology available to check new tunes out before I part with my hard-earned cash for the gleaming circular artefact itself. As the wonderful Stephen Fry recently pointed out, those adverts you see at the beginning of DVDs that pompously state that “You wouldn’t steal a handbag!” are disingenuous twaddle. The act of downloading tunes for free is not morally equivalent to mugging someone. In fact, and this is where the anti-share mob fall down every time, file-sharing is basically a victimless crime, if only because of one simple fact: if you take away the ability to get music for free, record sales are not suddenly going to rise. Most people that share music and download illegally are doing so because they can and that’s never going to change, but neither is it evidence that some terrible act of immoral deviance is being committed. Instead, it’s like raiding your mum’s fridge when she’s not looking. Given the opportunity you’ll have the pork pies, cans of Sprite and Frubes away, but if your mum put a padlock on the fridge tomorrow, would you head to the supermarket to buy the stuff instead? Would you bollocks. People belong to one of two groups: those who download music and then make a judgement as to whether they like it enough to buy the real thing and those who wouldn’t pay money for the music anyway. Artists, whether new and aspiring or established and successful, are not losing royalties from either of these two groups. Threatening to criminalise people for taking advantage of technology and getting a sneak preview of music that they would otherwise not hear at all is a ridiculous way to behave. Flogging hooky DVDs and CDs on a market stall and making a profit from someone else’s hard work is stealing. Downloading the new Devildriver album and giving it a test drive before you spend a tenner on the album itself is not.

But maybe I’m viewing this through rose-tinted spectacles of STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL, because the metal world is patently different from most other areas of the music industry. Metal fans are loyal to their favourite bands and there is a long-established culture of wanting to support the bands (and complete one’s collection, natch) by making a point of buying the finished album. These days, arguably because of the downloading phenomenon, record labels are wising up and ensuring that fans have a decent additional incentive for buying the CDs by generally including a bonus DVD, extra music and/or aesthetically pleasing packaging. Frankly, after years of overcharging us all for music, it’s the least they can do. You may have enjoyed the irony of record labels complaining about “stealing” when it has been common practise for albums to be serially re-released in a cynical and blatant attempt to squeeze a few more quid out of us and exploit the devotion to their favourite bands that metal fans wear as a badge of honour. The record industry is struggling, but at least metal labels seem aware that this relationship is a two-way thing. And I guarantee that the average metal fan is far more likely to splash the cash on a new album than fans from most other genres. Yes, there will always be a minority of wankers that don’t care enough about music to keep that part of the bargain, but that’s life. People nick stuff. Boo hoo.

Things have changed a lot over the last few years. Bands now make most of their money from touring and selling merchandise. Albums are sold to promote tours, rather than the other way round. And surely that’s a good thing. After all, if rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal are about anything it’s live performance and the establishment and maintenance of a relationship between performer and audience. Also, as much as I respect Lily Allen’s concern for the plight of struggling new artists, thanks to MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and any number of other ingenious internet devices, it has never been easier to promote yourself and enable people to hear your music. Just look at Job For A Cowboy’s startling rise from total obscurity to worldwide renown. All it took was a MySpace page, a lot of word-of-mouth publicity and, whisper it, the widespread sharing of their tunes, from which they received absolutely bugger all in monetary terms…but the long term effects are more than obvious.

If you think that cracking down on people that share files is going to benefit new bands and artists, you’re mental. It will have the opposite effect. Less people will hear the music, not more, and less people will buy the CDs as a result. The horse has already bolted, Elton. We can no more go back in time to the pre-download age than we can return to an era when it was socially acceptable to wear giant comedy glasses. Established stars should be putting pressure on record companies to invest more money in new talent instead of squandering money on banal, manufactured pop bands and the endless recycling of the Elvis, Beatles and Michael twatting Jackson back catalogues, not targeting internet-savvy teenagers as they enter a mind-boggling world of freely-available musical riches that will, in most cases, turn them into devout music fans for the rest of their lives. I don’t think it’s okay to steal music and deny royalties to the people that make it, but I do think that the air is a lot thinner up there on that high horse and it does funny things to the brain. Maybe that’s why Lars Ulrich’s drumming went downhill. Just a thought.

...AND DEATH METAL FOR ALL

VIVE LE DEATH METAL REVOLUTION! OR NOT! WHICHEVER!

Last weekend I went to a rather splendid gig. No, I didn’t spend any time standing in a field watching Machine Head wipe the floor with Fatty Durst and his mates. Neither did I shed a tear while the horribly overrated Trent Reznor forgot to play his greatest hits. And, sadly, I didn’t get to see Linkin Park doing whatever it is that they do that people seem to like so much. Seriously, what the fuck is all that about?

Anyway, no, I didn’t go to Sonisphere. Instead, I went to see Annotations Of An Autopsy headline a show upstairs at The Garage in Highbury, North London. Contrary to popular belief, it’s the kind of thing that a dwindling band of us music journalist types genuinely like to do every now and then, often in preference to hanging around backstage at some dreadful corporate event, missing all the bands and wanking each other off in a frenzy of self-congratulation and mutual hatred. Yeah, I actually like going to “little” gigs. And this was, despite the increasing stature of the headliners, a pretty low-key affair, attended by considerably less than 100 people and, thanks to Sonisphere and appalling weather, generating barely a blip on the rock ‘n’ roll calendar. Nonetheless, I dragged my lardy carcass up to the Big Smoke because, and this is the main reason I’m writing this, this gig was a particularly brilliant example of how the British death metal scene is currently in an insanely rude state of health. Aside from Annotations Of An Autopsy, the bill also featured Trigger The Bloodshed, Viatrophy, Dyscarnate and the charmingly-named Fleshrot. Every single one of these bands is bringing something fresh and new – with varying degrees of originality, but that’s beside the point – to a scene that has, for many years, preferred to revel in its own obscurity and lack of ambition. But unless you’re a total dimbo, you can not fail to have noticed that the last few years have seen a massive explosion in interest in death metal and its attendant subgenres – from grindcore to, dare I say it without sniggering, deathcore – and, in the States at least, this kind of music has never been anywhere near as popular.

Now at this point I’m sure that two or three of you – the spottier ones that have had less physical contact with members of the opposite sex, I imagine – will be spitting your cornflakes across the room in abject horror at the suggestion that bands like Annotations Of An Autopsy and Trigger The Bloodshed can be in any way regarded as a credible part of the UK death metal scene. Well, tough shit. They are part of it and, at this moment in time, they’re doing a lot more to propagate its reputation here and around the world than any number of dogged underground stalwarts bands. Not that there’s anything wrong with the underground scene in this country, of course. There are literally hundreds of great extreme metal bands in the UK and there is a very close-knit and self-contained community of death metal die-hards that are quite content to exist away from mainstream eyes and the interference of bigger labels. That’s totally cool and I have utmost respect for anyone who would prefer their death metal to be unsullied by notions of success or popularity (and I’m not being sarcastic, believe it or not). But what I find completely objectionable and worthy of nothing but contempt and scorn is the kind of attitudes that you can easily unearth on any extreme or death metal online forum, particularly when the subject of the “new breed” of death metal bands is raised. To give you an example, there is a rather brilliant death metal band called Ingested. They’ve just released their debut album, Surpassing The Boundaries Of Human Suffering, through Siege Of Amida Records. It’s fantastic. Ridiculously brutal and deeply unpleasant on every level. But some of the moronic drivel I’ve seen written about the band, purely because they’re signed to a label that people might have actually heard of and because their album sounds like it was recorded in a studio, rather than piece together using bits of shit and twigs in someone’s shed, is enough to make me clobber the cat with the nearest shoe. Doubtless the same sneering, elitist claptrap emerges whenever a band like Annotations Of An Autopsy or The Boy Will Drown or Ignominious Incarceration (all excellent bands, by the way) dare to make music that aims for and reaches a slightly bigger audience than one you could fit in your stinking front room – and isn’t it time you tidied up and hoovered the carpet, you filthy hippie? – and then have the audacity to refer to it as death metal. Oh, what utter bastards! How dare they dilute the purity of our sacred scene! That’s not death metal! It’s got breakdowns and they’ve got short hair and their fans wear girls’ jeans and they’ve got a MySpace site and MUMMY I’VE WET THE BED AGAIN!!!!!

I’ll level with you. Purists bore the piss out of me. Listen to what you like and shut the fuck up. No one’s interested in whether you think a new band are “true” death metal or myopic and unmotivated enough to languish forever in a non-scene populated by autistic bell-ends that only ever talk amongst themselves. That wasn’t good enough for Morbid Angel or Obituary or Suffocation or Malevolent Creation or Carcass or Pestilence or any of the great death metal bands from the genre’s first and second waves. It’s not a proud achievement to aim at. It’s a deliberate choice and one you make knowing full well that its purpose is to create division and to limit the number of people that can enjoy what you do. Fair enough. It’s a bit weird, but it’s your choice. But unless you have a mental age of 11, there’s no reason why anyone should have to do anything they don’t want to do in music. The whole point of the fucking thing is to enable people to express themselves however they see fit. If you think that Annotations Of An Autopsy are a deathcore band – whatever the toasted shitnut that means - then good for you, but your opinion is no more valid than anyone else’s merely because you’ve appointed yourself guardian of some mythical code of ethics. I’ve been listening to death metal since the mid ‘80s and although I cherish the old school stuff with the same love and devotion that I regard Maiden and Megadeth records, I’m still perfectly happy to see death metal evolve and change and morph into something else, something new, and maybe even something that I don’t particularly like or understand. God knows, there are some shitty bands around at the moment, but there are also a lot of fucking fantastic ones too, just as that show in Highbury demonstrated. If you play extreme metal and you put your heart and soul into it, you can no more “sell out” than I could put on a frock and do a convincing impression of Kate Moss. Even if I sucked my gut in.

The moral of the story is this: don’t be a whiny bitch. There should be room for everyone: underground and overground, long-haired and Toni & Guy-approved, grizzled purist and clueless newcomer, old school and new school…just don’t waste your time, and the time of other more fragrant, sexually active people, trying to undermine the efforts of other hard-working and passionate musicians by filling online forums and comments pages with mindless vitriol and unqualified remarks about how death metal is being spoiled by kids with daft haircuts. Purism and elitism and that whole we-were-here-first-and-we-know-best attitude are, at best, idiotic and laughable. When the next Annotations Of An Autopsy album comes out, I’ll be first in the queue, because they’re a kick-arse death metal band with great songs. If you don’t like them, or any other new school band for that matter, don’t listen to them. No one’s forcing you. And if you don’t agree with me, so what? What kind of fucked-up world must we live in if we can’t disagree about things without resorting to childish insults? You fucking poser. Fuck you and good night.