Now a quick look in the sport section of this site will show that I am a bit of a wrestling fan. It is something that a while back I would have been quite reticent to mention, I was kind of embarrassed by it. However, as the years go by I have realised that that is just a bit silly and have embraced my love of spandex clad men pretending to fight. Something I have less been able to embrace my love of is ‘wrestling metal’.
My Thoughts on Illegal Downloading
So earlier today I read this article after Chris Hewitt, News Editor at Empire Magazine, posted it online. Now I have verged on talking about the piracy issue in the past, but it is something I generally try to avoid. I cannot sit here and claim that I have never downloaded anything illegally or streamed it online. Of course I have. If I want to watch a film that is not in my DVD collection or on Netflixs I will download it, it is not something I am proud of but when the option is there I am usually found lacking.
Music fans and Petitions
So in the last few weeks I have seen a few online petitions going around for a variety of musical based reasons. One of these was asking Ghost as a band to break up, because they are not heavy metal (seriously how much of a twat do you have to be to create that) and another one requesting that Iron Maiden go back to having Derek Riggs design their album artwork. Of course, campaigns like this are not new. Weezer once famously had someone attempt to raise ten million dollars, which he was going to offer to them as long as they promised to never make music again. Yet in recent years Change.Org seems to be getting filled up more and more with stupid petitions and more often than ever before, they tend to be aimed at some of our favourite artists.
Feed the Rhino
Feed the Rhino have built up a reputation as one of the the best live bands on the go at the moment. Their shows tend to lead to widespread chaos no matter where they are playing and in Lee Tobin they have a front man seemingly without fear. Throw in two very good albums and you have got a band that would appear to be well on their way to big things. Add most recent album The Sorrow and the Sound and you have to assume it is almost a guarantee.
Ginger Wildheart and G.A.S.S.
Ginger Wildheart has become a bit of a master when it comes to crowdfunding in the last few years. Releasing a whole host of fantastic albums via Pledge Music and firmly establishing himself as one of the best songwriters in the world at this moment in time. Earlier this year he took that one step further with the launch of G.A.S.S., the Ginger Associated Secret Society. This site essentially took the crowdfunding model to the next level and melded with the old fashioned idea of a fan club. Fans were able to choose one of three tiers of membership that gives them access to a collection of music, diary entries and all sorts of things to keep even the most die hard fan happy. If you hadn’t guessed, I quickly signed up to said site but decided to hang off on writing about it until a few months down the line, in order to give an honest opinion of it.
The Rise of the Mastodon
Mastodon have had a pretty unique career path. Starting off as progressive sludge metal band, they have grown and evolved. Never truly leaving behind their original sound but always adapting and changing it. All of this has led to everything from appearances on Jools Holland to their latest album entering the top ten on the album charts for both the UK and America, but where do a band like Mastodon go from here? Can they go any higher than they currently are?
Music and Films
Music is integral to films. It is one of these facts that you do not always realise until you think about it. Take your favourite film and remove the music and it will be a completely different experience. It’s also true that movies have always depicted music in a variety of ways. Whether that be the ridiculousness of Spinal Tap or the freedom and enjoyment of Good Vibrations, music is a ripe subject area to be plucked and enjoyed.
A Discussion on Length
When you sit down to review an album there are many things that need to be thought about. The most obvious being whether it is any good or not. However, something that often gets overlooked is how long or how short an album is. Unless an album is ridiculously short or ridiculously long it is very rarely a point that is raised and usually for good reason. However, there is something to the idea that if an album gets it’s length wrong, it can skewer the whole thing.
Rock and Roll
Every couple of years some twat who has never actually seen a guitar writes an article claiming that ‘guitar music is dead’, as if it is some great scoop and actually true. Which of course it isn’t, yes bands with guitars more often than not fail to top the charts, which is instead full of soulless crap (in the majority anyway), but any slight scratch below the surface shows that music with guitars is far from dead. However, is it still cool? I mean of course it’s cool, but is it really cool? There was a time when rockstars were the coolest fuckers on the planet and had an amazing ability to do more drugs, drink more booze and fraternise with more young women than anyone else. Is that era dead? Are the current wave of rock bands lacking that little bit of va va voom?
Linkin Park in 2014
I’m of a generation of rock and metal fans who probably all, despite what they may claim now, at one point loved Linkin Park. They were releasing their best work when I was hitting that age where I was beginning to make my way over to the dark side, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on the traditional musical formula I’d grown up with. Therefore, to sit here and completely destroy Linkin Park would be very hypocritical, this band meant a lot to me once and while I’ve got past that, it doesn’t erase it from history. Despite that, there is no denying that their recent output has all been a bit shit, as they disappeared up their collective arses into a world of synths and musical wankery. Yet this year seems to have seen a turn around from the band, playing Hybrid Theory in full (still their best work) at Download was the first step and then they started promoting The Hunting Party, their most recent album, as a return to their rocking roots, but is it too late? Even if The Hunting Party is great is there still a place for Linkin Park in the minds of people like me?
Ramblings About Wrestling 