Angry Metal Guy

It comes as exceptionally sad news that Mark Reale, founder/guitarist of New York metal legends Riot, passed away last night after being stricken by severe complications related to Crohn’s Disease.

Riot was an enormously influential band and their Thundersteel album was, IMO, one of the best pure metal albums ever released. Riot had just reformed that classic Thundersteel line up and recorded the very impressive Immortal Soul album a few months ago. Mark was preparing for a tour in support of that album when he was hospitalized. He leaves us at the young age of fifty-seven.

All of us at Angry Metal Guy extend our condolences to the Reale family and bandmates and wish them all the best in these difficult times. Mark is now an immortal soul and his music will live on forever. R.I.P.

Various sources are reporting Mark Reale, founding member/guitarist of New York metal legends Riot, has been hospitalized with severe complications related to Crohn’s Disease. Though there are conflicting reports as to his current condition, all suggest this is a serious and life threatening situation and at a minimum, will impact his participation in Riot‘s upcoming tour in support of their Immortal Soul album. Riot released the following statement on their website:

“We are receiving updates on his condition several times daily, and Mark is currently undergoing procedures to stabilize him. His father, in addition to several dedicated friends of the band and the family, are at Mark’s side constantly as doctors work to restore him to health. In accordance with the family’s wishes, no further details are being released at this time. While we are saddened by these developments, Riot’s music has been Mark’s lifeblood for over 30 years. We have struggled with idea of performing without him, and we are continuing to prepare with heavy hearts, but the entire Riot organization has agreed on the importance of bringing our music to the fans who have supported us for so long. Please watch this site for news on Mark’s recovery, and we ask that friends and fans pray for the best possible outcome. Thank you for continuing to support Riot during this difficult time, and we will see you at the shows.”

Mike, Tony, Bobby and Don

We here at Angry Metal Guy want to join in extending our hopes for a full and speedy recovery to Mark and all his loved ones. May the metal keep you strong and have you back in the spotlight very soon!

So, I just got this off a forum who apparently got it off of one of the band member’s Facebook pages, but apparently Joe Lombard who played the full lengths Blasphemy, Decimate Christendom, and Primordial Domination for Incantation has died. Here’s his obituary. It apparently happened on the 3rd of January, 2012.

RIP.

Edit: SMN is reporting that he committed suicide. That’s a damned shame.

Here at Angry Metal Guy we receive a lot of e-mail. I, being the aforementioned Angry Metal Guy, am the person who checks that mail and reads through different variations on how people try to get me to listen to their band. This means that I have, in fact, gained some perspective on the process (to say the least) and I’d like to offer independent bands some helpful advice in order to better have their music paid attention to. Trust me, I’ve got 420 e-mails sitting unread in my inbox right now: you want to make sure that your e-mail is the one I open. Which leads me to my first (and primary) point, actually:

Work Through a PR Firm: Now, I normally don’t encourage anyone to deal with PR. People who do PR are generally the scum of the earth. Well, except for the people who do PR in metal, at which point, they are a very useful link between a reviewer and a number of independent releases. Do not underestimate what having someone doing your press work for you will do for you. I have discovered plenty of bands through PR firms that I probably would never have listened to otherwise and more importantly because PR firms use smart strategies, even if I miss one of their e-mails (highly likely, think 420 unread emails), I still have access to the promo material with your pictures, your bio and so forth. Yes, PR firms cost money: but then again, they save you time and they garner (from anecdotal experience) way more attention than you’d ever get for yourselves. Continue reading

And here it finally comes. I want to take a little time to gaze at my navel before heading off to the races here. 2011 has been a hard year for me and for AngryMetalGuy.com. Without the help of Steel Druhm, this website probably would have gone under due to serious burnout. It stands that there are other options for both of us as reviewers, but we both love this site and the little community it has become and don’t have any desire to see it go anywhere. And, frankly, due to blood, sweat and more blood, we just don’t feel like we can really stop working on this website. So when I say to you all, that we don’t want to stop doing this largely because you guys keep coming by and reading this I seriously mean it. It’s a great feeling–even when sometimes the music industry gets goddamned lame.

2011, really, was a gigantic disappointment. The records I was really looking forward to this year definitely let me down. The new Opeth was nothing to write home about, the new Amon Amarth was the same ol’ same ol’, the new Symphony X left me underwhelmed, while the records that the scene kids got boners over were stuff that isn’t really my thing. There were some really good albums this year, but they came from very unexpected places. In other words, I could never have predicted that this list would have looked like this at the beginning of the year.

So here’s to the disappointing year that was and hopefully to a much more interesting (musically) 2012. May we all see out the end of the year!

Continue reading

We made it through another year here in Angry Metal World. We overcame Terminal Reviewer Burnout Syndrome, careers and  personal lives, just to bring you more of our self-righteous, ego-driven babbling and blathering. Why did we do it? Because we care so damn much! Now, as the year grinds us all towards inevitable doom, it falls to me to get the metal wheel a rollin and name my picks for the best albums of 2011. This was a pretty solid year, so it was tough to figure out which albums belonged where, but you demanded it, so I’m delivering the goods, Yeah!

Before said delivery, I want to extend my thanks to AMG for allowing me to share in the day-to-day trials and tribulations inherent in keeping this fantastic site alive and well. Of course, all the hard work we put into this would be pointless without you, the readers (or sheeple, as AMG secretly refers to you all). Your loyal readership and regular contributions [And thirsty demand for numerical ratings! - AMG] give the site a feeling of community that many other sites lack and you’re what makes the job so damn rewarding. So, without getting too sappy, Steel Druhm loves you all (even when you don’t agree with my indisputable brilliance). Shine on, you crazy King Diamonds! Okay, enough caring and sharing, let’s get to the paring! Raise the horns for 2012 and on with the hootenanny! Continue reading

Alright! After pissing on your days by reminding you that shitty bands exist, I took the slave whip in hand and forced Steel Druhm to puke out 10 songs he really liked this year. Now the process has fallen to me, and I regret it. It’s not easy coming up with the 10 best songs from the year, and I will inevitably miss some. But I soldiered on the Angry Metal Champ I am and have produced this list of the year’s 10 best metal songs. Please, enjoy!

Continue reading

It’s a week-long reflection on the year in metal music here at Angry Metal Guy and we’re getting all sorts of nostalgic and sentimental. We’ve already covered the worsts, so now let’s get to the firsts! For the very first time, we’ve decided (by that I mean AMG decided) to name our top ten best songs of the year. Though it sounded like an easy task, once I tried to create said list, it proved quite difficult. There were so many potential candidates, it became an arduous culling process to find the ten metal gems to rule them all. While the list seems final, I’m sure I forgot some amazing stuff and I’m also sure you bastards will point it out to me. Steel Druhm awaits your scorn, disapprobation and silent judgment. Continue reading

2011 had some really great records, some great songs and some just generally fantastic moments—despite burnout, European crisis and it being our last year on earth. It also had the musical equivalents of burnout, European crisis and the end of the world. In this new annual feature, we will highlight the most horrendous shit we had to listen to this year as a price for being reviewers. Some of these things may be disappointments, whereas others might just be rehashing the painful. There are some records that you might expect to be here (like Lulu) that some of us just were smart enough to avoid, so they can’t be unheard because they were never heard in the first place. But there’s still a pretty good showing of shit going on over here. But just so you know, we’ll be working hard to make you all feel better for the rest of the week after reading this list. Continue reading

So here’s a special fucking treat if ever there was one. Ed “Hogwarts” Warby (as he’s known to friends) is writing for this blog to give updates on his HIGHLY anticipated (by this Angry Metal Guy) follow up to Burden of Grief which is one of my favorite doom records ever. He’ll be periodically checking in with the written word as watching him in his studio would be about as exciting as watching Ihsahn was in his (i.e., not fucking entertaining at all; watching flies fuck; paint dry; corpses decay without time-lapse). Enjoy! - AMG

October 3rd – 23rd

As Murphy would have it I got sick right after the Way Of Darkness weekend (which was a blast by the way, it’s always fun to hit the road with the Bullets). We drove together with Stephan and Paul’s other band Thanatos who were also performing and during the trip everyone around me was coughing and sneezing, so I was doomed from the start: bye bye singing voice, hello sore throat, running nose and general misery. In the meantime Ronnie kept working on the mix, and gradually we’ve arrived at a truly massive sound that’s both clear and huge. The guitar tone is even heavier than last time, something I didn’t think possible. Of course me being the perfectionist I am I’ve been driving Ronnie crazy with notes saying “add some delay here”, “do a slow fade there”, “some less reverb here”, and countless other details. I keep telling him it’s not as bad as last time when we had to literally work around the clock for several days to finish everything in time, but I’m sure I’m one of his more demanding clients. The end result is what counts though, and once this is done we’ll both have an album to be very, very proud of.

Continue reading