Angry Metal Guy Speaks

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On What We Don’t Promote, Why, and What’s Next

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On What We Don’t Promote, Why, and What’s Next

After having gone through a triumphant Listurnalia, where we here at AngryMetalGuy.com celebrated all the glory of the year that was 2021, everyone’s a bit tired. Unfortunately, this year we’re all a little extra tired because of an event that marred an otherwise glorious return to list-making, arguing about relevance, and playfully batting away criticisms from the peanut gallery. And these issues need to be addressed directly by me and publicly.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Getting Older, Hating Sludge, and Always Being Right (or Ten Years of Angry Metal Guy, a Diatribe)

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Getting Older, Hating Sludge, and Always Being Right (or Ten Years of Angry Metal Guy, a Diatribe)

As all of you know, I’ve been scarce around here at AngryMetalGuy.com, a site that is named after me. I don’t need to reiterate my long, storied history of carrying this website upon my shoulders: the ways that I have fought against a music industry that hates independent thought; the hours that I have spent organizing promos, editing reviews, and ignoring emails from n00bs who I stopped responding to. Without me there is no AngryMetalGuy.com and without AngryMetalGuy.com there is no me. But of late, a thing has been bothering me and making it hard for me to engage in this website with the passion it deserves. Well, more accurate, several things have been bothering me and I need to get them off my chest. But let me start with my big announcement.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Putting the -core in Genres

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 Speaks: Advice from an Angry Reviewer, Updated and Revised

Angry Metal Speaks: Advice from an Angry Reviewer, Updated and Revised

AngryMetalGuy.com is a popular blog. We receive hundreds of thousands of hits every month and we continue to grow at a rate that I find difficult to believe. Our readership spans the globe and continue to grow. The only countries we have never received hits from are Chad, Morocco and, to my great disappointment, North Korea. For no profit at all—actually, we run at a loss—we produced 835 posts (that’s 667,499 words) in 2017. That’s an insane amount of writing that we produce in our free time. The vast majority of those were music reviews, because none of us has the patience or desire to be part of the Metal News machine, we’re all too lazy to do feature pieces, and we love reviewing music. On top of that, the posts we produced last year had high engagement. We had an average of 46 comments on every single post, and we all know that people put their money where their mouth is when it comes to the stuff we love. Just ask Wilderun, Lör and Trials. If I do say so myself, we’re pretty fucking awesome.” Free advice costs money.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Negativity

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Negativity

Every now and again—namely, most every time we post a negative review of a popular band—some reader will comment on how it seems like we’re always trashing major label releases. They argue that we’re not being fair and that we underrate records. They explain that records have received universal acclaim and that we’re just being contrarian (even jokingly referring to me as Contrarian Metal Guy). They accuse us of being elitists who are just bashing popular bands because we want to be trve or kvlt (I gave a 5/5 to fucking [Luca Turilli’s] Rhapsody [of Fire]. lol.). I don’t think these are particularly good representations of what we do here or is reflective of why it is that negative reviews get posted. And I’m sure it’s frustrating and a bit of a shock because, of course, it’s true that we tend to rate things differently than other sites do. I have, frankly, even considered doing away with ratings altogether, because people get so obsessively focused on them. I have never openly responded to these accusations, because I don’t want to waste the time and energy. However, there is one complaint which deserves a rebuttal because it’s just flat out wrong and I want to set the record straight publicly.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Editing and the Death of the LP

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Editing and the Death of the LP

“I have heard it bandied about that the mp3 and the iPod killed the album. The line of thinking goes like this: mp3s encourage a pick and choose mentality in listeners. It is easier to put together lists of songs that a listener loves, which means that they think in terms of playlists rather than records, which has led to a degraded importance of the longplay album as an art form.” We at AMG complain about album length constantly, and now we do it in long form.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Capitalization

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Capitalization

It is not often that I feel the need to write a screed. Indeed, since the famous “On Objectivity” I have been remarkably quiet. Only Steel Druhm has weighed in with his angry opinion on a few things. But something has been growing in me. A seething blackness, a deep, dark, hatred of something that I simply cannot hold my tongue about any longer.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On the Consequences of Copyright Fights and Ownership

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On the Consequences of Copyright Fights and Ownership

Recently Steel Druhm outlined with some bittersweet memories the evolution of the music industry away from the prized formats of the CD and the LP (and cassette – but let’s not kid ourselves, liking cassettes is basically just proof that you’re trve ’cause you’re using the shittiest technology possible). But one of the things he didn’t touch on was the societal implications of the process he was talking about. Now I understand that this is a metal blog and that if I wanted to start AngrySociologyGuy.com I am free to do so; but bear with me, because I don’t feel like starting a new blog just to hash through the concept of ownership.

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Ratings, Subjectivity and Diversity

Angry Metal Guy Speaks: On Ratings, Subjectivity and Diversity

Here at Angry Metal Guy, you probably have noticed some changes lately. It has been coming up most for those who have been reading for a long time and these people have been expressing concerns about certain aspects of this website’s continued expansion and change. So I’m here to give you guys some real talk about exactly what’s up around here, how things are changing and why things are changing in the way that they are changing.