May 2021 be a better year for us all.
"angry metal-fi"
Corrective Measures: Angry Metal Guy’s Stack o’ Shame Edition
“Like with video games or books, one’s “Stack o’ Shame” is the stuff one intends to do but has not been able to do for one reason or another. These reviews are all too late to write full 600-800 word reviews for. On the other hand, I am going to be way too busy this winter to be able to handle writing a bunch of TYMHM. So, I am invoking my right to rule through this (hopefully one-off) post that rounds up some stuff that I fully intended to review and didn’t. So by ways of an apology to both you, the readers, and the albums in my Stack o’ Shame, I bring you some angry, metal blurbs. Mea culpa.” Sometimes sorry is enough.
Nine Years of Angry: A Retrospective in Numbers
“We here at AngryMetalGuy.com are a bunch of nerds. Writers at AMG.com, both past and present, hold a surprising number of degrees and we get pretty nerdy about the site. We haven’t quite done diffusion analyses of opinions among writers, but we got dangerously close a few years ago. As one might expect, it means that we have a pretty nerdy readership and one such nerd just dropped a bunch of stats on us. We couldn’t help bask narcissistically in its glow and it being written, we thought that we should definitely pass it on to you to enjoy.”
Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Putting the -core in Genres
“In September of 2017 I made the awesome tech-death band Archspire the Record o’ the Month. One commenter responded: “Archspire is not death metal in any way. Amazing the way the hype goes around this ridiculous deathcore band.” To this day—despite years of touring with bands like Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation—people still refer to The Black Dahlia Murder as a metalcore band. While some people do it to troll little ol’ me, it’s also something which shows up more seriously. Yet, if Archspire is deathcore and The Black Dahlia Murder is metalcore, can please explain to me what’s “-core” about these bands?” Rotten to the core.
Angry Metal Guy’s Top 10(ish) Records o’ 2017
“We are getting dangerously close to being 9 years old. I started AngryMetalGuy.com at a time when I was a different person, and 2017 proved that more than any year of my life. I loved metal, I loved to write, I was looking for work and studying Swedish, and I was still in my 20s, and Enslaved was producing albums I worshiped. Now I’m older, busier, crankier, Enslaved mostly makes me yawn, and I’m dedicating my life to different kinds of things. But while AMG isn’t quite as ‘personal’ of a blog as it once it was, I still love it very much and it is still a reflection of my values on the Internetz.” Herein, Angry Metal Guy waxes nostalgic, bitches about stuff, and makes a big list that you will all hate because you’re objective.
Angry Metal Guy’s Supplemental List(s)
Yesterday I published my Top 10(ish) of 2016 and it’s a good list. But as has been pointed out, a lot of the supplemental material I usually include was missing. So today I’m posting a follow up: Angry Metal Guy’s Supplemental List(s). This should give you insight into some of the things which weren’t included, as well as a couple of other things I’ve been thinking about posting lists of for a while. This is being thrown together quickly and unplanned. But I just think you guys deserve it and I like list-making. It’s probably something I should list under my hobbies on Facebook.
Angry Metal Guy’s Top 10(ish) Records o’ 2016
Twenty-sixteen was a year that started so well. I’d recently performed a counter coup, reorganized things, appointed Steel Druhm to my Internet Banana Republic Enforcer for Life and I was reviewing a lot of stuff. The Record(s) o’ the Month were landing on time, and the trains were on schedule. Then tragedy struck… Alas, the good that was the beginning of the year turned into a fucking bullshit slog where I became progressively overcome by life. Longtime readers will know that I have been much less involved on the back half of this year than at any point in our long history. And I’ll just be honest, I’ve been considering even setting aside the mantle of Angry Metal Guy altogether. This year has been a year of endings, in a way. The end of my faith in humanity. The end of Agalloch’s post-Ulver reign of terror. The end of a lot of famous lives.
Angry Metal Speaks: On the Album, Its Length, and What We Review
I’ve written fairly extensively on my opinion about album lengths. I, rather infamously, gently panned the new Iron Maiden album because it was delivered totally unedited. I wrote about how the CD was the death of the album, and I wrote about why I think that a quintuple LP has failed from the outset. This has since taken on the name “The 45 Minute Rule.”
Angry Metal Guy’s Top 10(ish) of 2015
Twenty-fifteen has been a hell of a ride. It’s been one of my favorite years for music in quite a long time, and I’ve been struggling to prune this list down to 10(ish) records that I really love. But in some ways, the top 5 has never been easier for me to choose. What I find most fascinating about this list is how completely out of step I feel with what I see as being touted as the coolest parts of the underground. I seem to be pretty far afield while everyone else seems to be fawning over the latest ’70s retro doom phenomenon, hope drones, or the latest example of black metal kids missing that intensity not 15 minute songs was the cool part of black metal. This is what it feels like to have been left behind by a scene; to have lived long enough to be that old guy shaking his fist at new trends in metal.
Angry Metal Fi: Re-Mastering Remasters
“Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal.” This time we focus on why that re-master you just paid $25 for sounds like polished poo.