Angry Metal Guy

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

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

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, you’ve all noticed it. I’ve not wanted to say anything about it because it’s been a series of discussions back and forth between myself and the honorable Steel Druhm about the future of this here blog thingy. While I’m not going to get into the details of what’s going on, I just need to say a few words about the site and the future.

First, both Steel Druhm and myself (but note that I am mainly speaking for myself, as Mr. Steel Druhm has his own life and priorities) have been deeply disappointed by the decline in frequency with which we can pump out excellent material. Part of this is due to time: I currently am working on a masters degree and I have become very busy in the run up to writing my thesis in the spring semester of this year. On top of that, I experienced some serious burnout while maintaining this blog as a nearly full time “extra” job and taking an overload of courses and then summer courses.

Recently, I developed a medical condition that makes it very difficult for me to sit in front of the computer and do the work that I need to do, which has stopped the revival of the blog because I am unable to even really edit for other people. And to maintain the quality of writing we want to have here at AMG, we need to make sure that the writing is good. Great, even. So it becomes a difficult thing to do. Still, I’ve found some people who have good writing and we’re going to give it a try.

There will be some announcements about this whole thing coming up in the future. I can’t say when for sure, but let me say that I’m fighting through the pain as best I can to put up stuff and hopefully Steel Druhm will also have a renewed burst of time and energy coming up. And if this doesn’t work out now? There are contingency plans. There are always contingency plans.

So Angry Metal Guy might be kind of semi-crippled at this point and otherwise busy, but we’re doing our best to make sure that we can get back up to speed. We started out 2011 with amazing speed and huge growth. We want to regain some of that consistency and retain our new fans and old.

Thanks for reading and thanks for caring.

You guys have probably noticed that things have been very, very, very slow around here lately. This is entirely my fault. Well, it’s also the music industry’s fault since they tend to take a break in July and August due to sales of new records being lost in the shuffle because of festival season, but it’s also because after over two years of doing this pretty much every day I’m kinda burned out. And by kinda burned out, I mean pretty damn burned out. This actually isn’t the blog’s fault for real, it’s my outside life, but it affects the blog. I am going to go on a vacation here for pretty much the rest of the summer. I will post and the excellent, reliable and awesome Steel Druhm will continue to post things and we’re going to be pulling in some new reviewers to help keep the blog afloat. Hopefully, after that’s done, I will feel nice and refreshed and I will come back anew.

This doesn’t actually mean that I’m going away and taking a total break, but things are just going to be spotty around here for a while.

I know that the Internet has a short attention span and I hope that this doesn’t kill the steam that we’ve been building (we’ve really been building a head of steam in 2011, it’s been HUGE, so thank you). So hit up the RSS feed, bookmark us and come back and keep your eye out for new reviews that will keep showing up all summer from the mighty Steel Druhm. And hopefully Burned Out Metal Guy will get his fire back by mid-August.

Devin Townsend Project // Deconstruction
Label: InsideOut
Websites: hevydevy.com
Release Dates: EU: 2011.06.20 | US: 06.21.2011
By: Natalie Zed

Thinking of Devin Townsend as a musician no longer works. While his command of his instruments is awe-inspiring, to confine him only as such would be a disservice. With Deconstruction, Devin Townsend has ascended to the level of mad scientist; he’ll be aiming an interplanetary weapon at us next. Released simultaneously with Ghost, Deconstruction is part of the four-album the Devin Townsend Project cycle, which also includes the vibrant, poppy Addicted and the much softer (but still complex) Ki. Like much of Townsend’s oeuvre, Deconstruction is a concept album; it loosely follows the journey of a man who descends into hell. There, he meets the devil, who offers him a cheeseburger that contains all the secrets of the universe. Like any devilish generosity, it’s a cruel joke: the man is a vegetarian and cannot partake of the cheeseburger epiphany. Does that sound ridiculous? Of course it is, but this is a project from the man who brought us a rock opera about a megalomaniacal alien willing to wage interstellar war over a cup of coffee. In that context, it feels perfectly reasonable. Continue reading

Well, here it is folks. The final 10 [Here's the first 40: 50-41, 40-31, 31-20, 20-11 and Steel Druhm's: 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11, 10-1]. And this is going to ruffle a bunch of feathers, I guarantee it. These are, for the most part, not widely considered “favorites” and would never make fan-voted lists, but these tracks all got onto this list pretty easily. I’m not as angry about the whole Gibson list anymore, and I’ve lost a bit of steam because of that, but these tracks are all fucking fantastic, top-o’-the-line kind of shit. I hope you enjoy the list and I look forward trolling you soon. U MAD BRO!? Continue reading

Today over on Twitter I got pointed in the direction of Invisible Oranges’ (great name, btw) new post called “Are album reviews obsolete?” Here at Angry Metal Guy our “bread and butter” so-to-speak, is the album review. We do a lot of them. We average about 6 a week, and aim for 7 or more. We also enjoy doing them, but as I have previously touched on, the review is a strange thing in a strange place and, let’s face it, the music industry is screwy in kind of big ways. I thought I’d maybe add some fuel to the author’s fire by adding some more reasons as to why the review is becoming obsolete—in some ways. Continue reading

Dear Steven Adler,

I understand that you loved Guns ‘N Roses. I mean, really, it must have been the greatest experience of your entire life. It was a time when you were on top of the world. The drummer for an up-and-coming band that owned every venue they played and that got signed and sold millions of records. You had friends, chicks, cash and all the drugs you could sniff, chew on, inject, stick up your ass, and so forth to your little heart’s desire. It’s hard not to imagine that this was the high point of your life, and dude. I get that. Continue reading