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Now, here is the podcast, Metal Heads Podcast.

Hello and welcome to the Metal Heads Podcast. My name is George.

This is John.

This is Matt.

This is Marcuson.

We're a couple men down right now.

Will will hopefully be joining us later.

And unfortunately, Jay is having some technical difficulties. As am I, apparently. And hopefully we'll be joining us at some point, but who can say when it comes to the cable company. Yeah, tonight we welcome Luis Flores, founder and editor-in-chief of one of my most favorite websites, Heaviest of Art, which offers a unique take on metal through an artistic lens.

Great to have you on Luis. Thanks for having me. Excited to be on. I know it was a couple months in the works and planning, but we're here today and excited to be chatting with you all tonight. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. So we'll just start off like, you know, where are you from? You know, what's your background in metal? This is an interesting story. So I'm not traditionally, I guess, a journalist. They didn't go to, you know, communications degree or any of that.

I'm actually in the political science field. So very different. I have no background in writing or journalism or magazine editing, any of that stuff. But Heaviest of Arts started in 2018, actually. Just some random idea, if I'm being honest. I guess I didn't see a lot of folks appreciating or, I guess, talking more about cover art, illustration, music illustration in general. So I just very spontaneously created a tour

and just started sharing album covers. Album covers with

an artist's name and then the band and that was literally the format. It was just tweeting a cool

looking album cover with the artist and then the band and just started doing that consecutively for about several months. Saw that it started picking up traction and slowly but surely it's all like maybe how do we take this to the next level, right? What if we do something more and start actually interviewing

these folks and doing actual like you know press coverage and all that sort of stuff and you know shortly after that started in i believe that was august of 2018 i launched a website somewhere in november december and and yeah slowly it started developing and evolving into to what it is today right which is which is super you know exciting to be where it's at and so very proud of where it's at the thing that we have been able to do and then of course we have uh you know hosts of different

You know, contributing writers that contribute, you know, reviews, interviews, and all sorts of think pieces to the site, you know, Drake, Tyson. I know we just had, he just wrote, we actually have an Unto Others review coming on Monday, for example. He just knocked it out the park, so shout out to the team at Roadrunner for sending that over. And then he had like a typo piece, just a variety of different things that are kind of, like you mentioned, right, dedicated to approaching metal through an artistic lens, right, through the lens of the artists, you know, and that just extends

that extends into the merch designs, which we so

love as a metal community.

All the shirts that we wear and so forth, really the graphic design element and the layout

is very important. So kind of touching it on that aspect.

It's crazy. It's like an online magazine, really.

And to come from a Twitter account, how did you go about actually

forming it and creating what it is today? How did you get the contributors

How did that work? And this is going back to me having absolutely no knowledge of anything. To be fair, I mean, when I started the website, I had no idea even what a publicist was in charge of or that band had publicists or just any aspect of that work. And slowly but surely just kind of doing my own research, you know, finding out about people like EarSplit, finding out people like, you know, there's different publicists that worked with like, you know, all these underground labels,

like, you know, 20 bucks, bin, prosthetic records,

profound lore, stuff like that. And, you know, slowly but surely, you know, reaching out to them,

getting on these press lists, getting on these different communications lists for all these new releases coming out.

And then slowly, you know, that list kept growing and, you know, the publicist relationships kept evolving from one, two, three to, you know, the 40, 50 plus that we have now, which is, which is amazing.

But sometimes those waking up to 80 plus emails is a bit exhausting. George knows that. Yes, I do. It's exhausting, but it's a good type of exhaustion where you kind of have just so much music to look forward. And it's not just metal sometimes, but it's just in a variety of different metal adjacent releases, whether that be like ambient and folk to just kind of like dark synth and electronic to just a variety of different things and being able to see all the different things coming out of metal.

But just kind of approaching it again, going back to approaching it through an artistic lens, right? Really, when I look at the stuff that we get on the site is it's kind of similar to how when you go to a record store and something just draws you, right? One, is it appealing enough to me where I'm like, okay, this is something, okay, it looks interesting. And sometimes that's just not even in the album art. Sometimes that's in the promo photos too, which is such a key element as well. I know black metal bands are very, very strong on that aspect with the promo photos, very atmospheric.

So sometimes it's sad and if that's enough to captivate me then I take it for a spin and listen to the music or if members from a particular project that I'm particularly fond of are associated with the act then I'll check it out and just various different things like that and of course and if it sticks if it appeals to me or to any of the other writers then we'll get it up and then even more so if it has a great cover we'll for sure get it up. But that's really how it started. I mean I had no again no knowledge of really what

What publicists did, how that whole aspect of it worked, where the promo releases and the holics, and then if you want to go shoot a show, then you got to contact the publicists, get on these lists, and then the photo pass, the three song limits, and all these different things that I kind of picked up along the way, whereas I wouldn't say I'm a veteran now, right? But I think I'm a little better, well-versed in that aspect of music. Trial by fire. Exactly. So I've learned.

I've had my rookie mistakes throughout the way, which happens when you're not really into, I guess, when you're not well-versed in this kind of field. But it's been a great learning process and even better just kind of community process to see, you know, you know, Markisan, of course, you know, read some of our work and then just the amount of people that have, you know, engaged with us over the years and just told us, you know, we really like this behind the cover feature. We really like this. We like that. And for us, I mean,

We write out of passion. What I tell all the contributing writers is we get bombarded with music every day. There's no reason for us to talk smack or tank on any release because it didn't appeal to us. There's so little time in a day for us to spend writing about stuff we don't like that I'd rather you use that energy and write about things. That's exactly what I... Before the podcast, I started just writing a review site.

Back in the dark ages of like 2003. And I started out feeling like, well, I got to review everything they send me, you know, because if I'm not, then if I don't like it, I need to say I don't like it. But I tried to be at least not shitting on things. But at some point I was like, you know what? There's just too much music. I'm only going to write about the things that I like because who wants to hear a shitty review? You know, what?

Why waste my time with it? So I completely understand that and agree with that. And, you know, there's so much new music coming out. It's like you're flying through space and it's just all coming at you and you're just trying to reach out and grab something as it goes by because there's so much that you can't listen to at all. Yeah, and if it's not a new album release, it's a new single or a new video and there's like, you know, 80, 90 emails every morning and then when you work with publicists from the others, you know, from overseas, they're sending you

the emails are like 2-3 in the morning on the West Coast time. So you get like a bunch of emails from the European press. And then even though we're like a U.S.-based site, we technically have readers from across the world. So we get the U.S. press. So it's just a myriad of things. But going back to your point, right, about feeling somewhat of pressure when, I mean, if you get sent out 10 albums, you kind of feel pressured at first to be like, well, I got to review all 10. But then you realize it's humanly impossible. Yeah. You know, I had the, oh, if I don't review them all, then they're going to stop sending me.

And at some point I was like, well, if they do it, I'm sorry, but I just can't do it all. Yeah. But, you know, public publicists are great. I mean, really, that's they're the ones who kind of connect us to, you know, to music, really. And then for us, I think I eventually I found the balance where I'm like, you know what, I think I can manage with just writing about things that I like rather than just, you know, either shitting it or writing a moderate review and, you know, stuff like that. I mean, I don't think I've ever written any negative or have anybody write anything.

anything negative for the site? Because again, going back to my point, when I told them, you know, if you'd be interested in running for heaviest to write, all you ask is that you don't write about things you don't like, because there's so many good music. I will connect it to any release you want me to. Just if it kick-licks with you, you write about it. If it doesn't, pass it on. Yeah. You're a happy metal guy, not angry metal guy. Exactly. And you know, and what unfortunately happens, at least that I found, was that, you know, tastes change over time.

And some of the stuff that I really trashed early on, I'm like, I love it now. And I have to eat my words. So that's another reason not to trash things because you never know when you're going to find out you actually like it. That's true. I don't think there's anything wrong with giving a fair review as long as you're not a shithead about doing it. And I don't mind reading a review. And you mentioned Angry Metal Guy because I think some of the writers are somewhat fair when they give negative reviews. And that's fine. And you could read it and say, okay, they actually

put some thought into this so I could that works I hate lazy reviews that trash stuff that have the cherry pick information on bands and it's like this is kind of lame I would rather you put effort into it and then said you didn't like it then I might actually say I'm gonna I'm gonna listen to it anyway you know so yeah I I agree with you guys but I don't have a problem with a review that's honest at least yeah yeah if it's objective and and and you know has actual points to make other

then man this sucks there's too much um i hate to use these words because i i just don't like

it but there's too much clickbait type reviews there's too much edge lording out there

yeah it's like if you don't like something just say the reasons why you don't have to

have these sayings that drive people nuts when they hear them you know about bands so you're just like

so and come back to john's point too about you know being fair and constructive in your

I think it's fair that you don't like a record and you can review it doesn't necessarily mean you have to completely shit on it right but there's ways of doing it where you're perhaps I don't know dissecting the compositional element to a record that perhaps doesn't flow well or I don't know maybe a solo seems to pour somewhere like things constructive criticism yeah something more of where you're you know making a very intentional effort to explain why perhaps it didn't resonate with you I mean not to say that the record as a whole is bad it just

perhaps it didn't connect with you personally as a writer,

but it may connect with you, right?

With whoever the reader is.

Exactly.

So I think there's a way of going about it,

but really that's what it is.

That brings up a good point.

Just thinking off the top of your head of some of your like all time

favorite bands,

ones that mean the most to you,

it's virtually impossible to find any band that has a pristine catalog.

Yeah.

They're rare.

Yeah.

You know,

some bands have a lot and they might have a few that,

but most bands that are around for 25,

30 years,

There's gonna be a stinker somewhere along the line. You know, at least with some fans. Yeah. Have you come across any reviews that you want to write or you're gonna think about writing it like, but this is one of my favorite bands, but I gotta tell you, I don't know. I'm not feeling this album. It's not working for me. And I want to try to stay on that above, you know, I don't want to rip something too hard, but this is not working for me. And it's one of my three or four favorite bands. That one actually happened. Well, and this is a concert. I think one that was

debated and I think it happens a lot because they're such a huge bands Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden was my intro to metal when I was about four or five years old. That was the band that you know set me on the path that you know I'm in the I'm on now and obviously you know I started off very early. I think when I was around earlier Brave New World had just come out and that was the album that kind of introduced me because all my uncles burned me a CD of Rockin' Rio and I had that.

And that was just mind-blowing for me. And obviously, I went back down to Catalog, and then I went down to Number of the Beasts and all that stuff. And I know they have that position, right? That they're highly regarded as, you know, obviously legends, which they are. But to be, you know, because you love them so much doesn't mean you have to give them a pass for every single record. And I like the new record. I like Sinjutsu. I like it. I don't love it. There are some songs that work for me. I think it's Hell on Earth.

It was my favorite. Very good song. But there's some songs that just don't do it. And like they're longer songs. I know Book of Souls also was a pretty moderate album. I mean, I love I went to a couple of the shows when they were touring on it. Lovely stage production, which they always have. But as an album, I didn't really feel it. I didn't love it. I mean, they still do great things. I know Adrian Smith still has fantastic guitar playing. You know, the solos are amazing. But most of their newer stuff, I can't say I'm particularly fond of.

If I were to say of the recent releases that were probably the better ones, I would say probably, and this is a matter of life and death, and I know that's probably not a popular decision. A lot of folks hate on it from what I've seen online. I think Jay likes it a lot, doesn't he? I like it too. It's funny. I know, and I agree with you, I've read a lot. I'm one of the, I don't shit on it, I'm just not a fan of the album because it's ear fatigue for me, for them. Trust me, I listen to tons of long music, but for that, for when

them, I get ear fatigue. But I seem to know everyone that actually likes that album. Literally in the world, I seem to know everyone because I'm like, I feel like I'm the one who's the worst, who looks on it the most negative. And everyone I know loves that album. So that's funny you bring that one up. Yeah, that's the one that's when I don't see that often gets a lot of love. I mean, again, it's like every album, it's subjective, it's debatable for me. That's the one that just of the recent albums, the one that connected to me the most. So Jutsu,

and a new frontier, a final frontier that, I mean, they're good albums, but, but they're, to me, they're just that right. Good album. I don't think they do anything particularly extraordinary. I mean, I think book of souls had like their longest song. Was it the 17 minutes song? I really liked that song. I know everybody rips on it, but I liked that song. I bought the, I actually have the record store day vinyl edition that that one was, it's a good one. And it has an interview on the other side, which is cool.

Yeah, they knocked that one out of the park. That's a good release right there. Yeah. Well, Luis, like, I really love your website. And one of the big reasons for that is that you choose to honor the importance of album art in metal. And I don't think there's another genre of music where cover art is so vital to the overall experience. Probably probably the only other one. Yeah, probably right. That's probably the only other one. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how and why.

cover art became so important to metal. I guess a lot of folks I'm particularly young I mean I don't want to date myself but I wasn't around in the 80s I'm you know late 90s mid 90s whatever you want to call it but you know for me I think what struck me when I first heard Iron Maiden right beyond just the the music itself was was Eddie right and having these figures I had the actual from Power Slave I had that Eddie on the

I got as a gift around that time. And so things like that, right? The imagery, it's basically super important because, again, going back to going to the record store analogy, right? Where you're going to record store and you have just countless amount of options to choose from. Like I think here in LA, like when I go to Amoeba, for example, which is obviously one of the best record stores here in the country and probably the world. There's just so many shelves of all kinds.

and all of these records that are, you know, just you can scroll through for days, if not weeks. So for metal, I mean, and I've been more intentional about this. I know you mentioned that metal is the one that embraces art the most. And I'd agree. I absolutely agree. And I say that because I've been intentional about keeping a lookout for just kind of music as a whole, right? Not just metal, but really all kinds of music and seeing what kind of cover art they employ, right? And some of our, from our monthly columns, the best, we know how we

We have the monthly best album cover column that we have every month. So I've been more intentional about including releases that perhaps aren't particularly metal, but some that have, you know, just amazing artwork. And for the most part, I mean, ever since I started doing that, I want to say about seven or eight out of 10 of the releases that I host on there are metal. And I think that'll just always be the case. And I think it's because metal just has that, that allure was always the imagery, right? You have, you know, going back to Iron Maiden and Eddie, you had

Megadeth with Vic Rattlehead. You had Motorhead. I also had

the War Pig. I forgot the name. But you have all these different

kind of visual symbols. You have the persona. You have all these

the leather, the chains. You have all this Judas Priest kind of imagery

like in the 80s, 90s. You have kind of what, that's really what made

the genre what it is. I mean, it's hard to argue and some folks might

say that I'm wrong in this, but if Iron Maiden would have never had Eddie or would have never had

all these crazy cool covers if they'd be uh they've they would have had as much commercial success as they had i'd argue they wouldn't um because they they kind of evolved i mean wait i wasn't around again but if you i look back at those videos of when they were touring uh seventh son um and they had all these amazing just the stage setup with all the derrick riggs artwork that they brought to life and you know more recently when they're touring book of souls where they had that like hashtag eddie like you know blown up to life and

I mean, I agree. The visual component of Iron Maiden definitely took them to another level. Without having that in there, I don't know if they get as successful. I agree with that. Well, yeah, because you probably don't draw on the general fan. You're going to have all the hardcore metal fans, but I do agree with you because if they didn't have those videos, I can date myself. I was there at the beginning. And I can tell you, and I know George can-

Tell us a story, Grandpa John. Back in the day before the thing called the Internet. But George, he can attest that, you know, those videos, I mean, you saw Eddie coming out. They have these, like, you thought they were live shows, but they were really just on a stage and they filmed with, like, a couple people in front of the stage, like, waving their arms up in the air. And they made them seem like they were live, but they would do a live shoot on stage and not in front of a crowd, but they would act like it was live. And they used to have Eddie come out on stage when they were

and everything in these videos you're like this is fucking amazing and i could i would bet anything

on it that a lot of the fans they got who wouldn't care about metal got hooked on that imagery right off the bat

yeah your rockin rio was my life after death that was i i saw that in high school and you know the

whole you know the big one that comes out over the drum set and everything and it was just like

Yeah, it was incredible. And even, you know, and, you know, more recently, I think that happened with, well, not so much in evolving it, but I know Bell Witch when they employed that Marius Lewandowski cover. I mean, that was just, I think I, that was one of the first covers I believe I shared on the Twitter when I was first starting off heavy support. And that thing I think was to this day probably had the most engagement. A lot of folks were still new to, you know, what, who,

who Bellwitch were, or didn't even know who Bellwitch were, but they saw that kind of just that towering, like, suffocating cover, and it was like, wow, what the hell is this? Like, yeah. I'm sorry, didn't he do the cover to the last Abigail Williams, too? Didn't he use him? And that's what got me hooked on them. I saw, I was like, oh, that's that guy. I gotta check this out. Yeah. And that's how I started liking them for that cover. I think that record, uh, Bellwitch, Mirror Reaper, uh, that's what set Marius,

into this path where like everybody's commissioning him. I think that was the first, I mean, that was the first cover I've seen from him. But after that, I mean, I've seen maybe like a hundred releases with his work. And it seems like he follows that same theme now of that, that kind of reaper cloak person or whatever you want to call it for just every cover. So yeah. Lorna shore just had an EP recently and they had like a very similar kind of reaper figure. I forgot what the actual painting is called, but it's like a red reaper.

kind of this desolate landscape. But yeah, it's kind of a continual theme he uses. But yeah, I think that Mirror Reaper record was just, it blew everything away. And obviously, he went on to get commissioned like 150 times after that. So it worked out. Yeah, true. Well, Luis, what was the first metal cover that really struck you? The first one that really struck me?

I do want to say it was in Iron Maiden. I think it was actually somewhere in time. To me, that is probably, I'd say, personally, and this is obviously kind of biased because of Iron Maiden's connection to me, but probably one of the best covers, if not the best cover ever to me because of, but not just the actual cover, but the full landscape, gateful painting with all the different nods and details. That was just... It's like a Where's Waldo of Iron Maiden. Basically. And, you know, this was when

When I started listening to metal in that early grade school era, CDs were obviously the thing. Vinyl was kind of dormant. But once I started making my own money and working and stuff like that, that was the first thing I did with my own money was go and buy myself an Iron Maiden t-shirt. I bought the actual record itself. It was a repress, of course, but I did buy that record. I still have it. It just blew me away.

I'd say for sure, somewhere in time, Iron Maiden. Just absolutely magnificent. Yeah, back in the 80s, that was how we had to figure out what to buy, was looking at the album art. And how did you get into metal? You mentioned Iron Maiden seemed like your gateway, but how did you get into it? How did you progress? How did you just fall into metal from there? Well, that was, as I mentioned, that was kind of like the entry point, but I have a lot of uncles and cousins from Mexico who

They had their own rock groups. They had their own kind of scene going on in Mexico, particularly in Sinaloa, Mexico over there. We had a very strong underground scene at the time. So they were in their early 20s, late teens doing all these things. I was still obviously young. So because they saw that I liked Iron Maiden, they would burn me a lot of CDs. And I still remember, I believe I still have a couple. They're not listenable anymore because they're all scrapped up. But last time I heard one was probably a couple years ago.

I know it had a cemetery gates by Pantera it had some children of Bodum had some Therion it had some had some corn had some just a variety of different things I mean it had I think it was some early arch enemy it had a oh sorry some construction going on early arch enemy was really good yeah it had her first two records trying to remember what else had it just had had some D.O. it had some motorhead it was just a

a mixture of things and you know a cd player was a thing at the time so i would just sit there and go through it i honestly didn't even know the song names and stuff like that but i was just like what is this is cool like and then they would burn me a cd after cd then obviously they burned me like an iron maiden tribute cd where they would just put my favorite iron maiden songs onto like a burned cd and i would have that uh i had um trying to think what else they try to get me into that kind of 80s like you know quiet riot kind of white snake uh cinderella all that all that

I was a little bit more fixated on the little heavier stuff with Pantera, with Children of Boat and all that kind of. I used to lean more towards that CD, that first CD, rather than the more 80s glam rock. We still like hair rock, too. It's great. John doesn't. All of us. Sorry, John. The one most around for it doesn't like it. I mean, I was there for all of it, too, and I still like it.

sown it for a few years in the 90s and be like, ah, that was not that shit. But at some point, I just stopped giving a shit what anybody thinks. And I'm like, yeah, I'll listen to some fucking boys and I don't care. I honestly really never liked any of that stuff. You know, just real quick, my thing was, maybe I've mentioned before, is I always thought they were just being posers on Van Halen. I just thought that every lead singer wanted to look and sound and act like David Lee Roth, which is really funny because that's what he was accused of early on from the singer from, was it Black Oak, Arkansas or something?

I just and I and Motley Crue pissed me off because I always thought they were just a bunch of posers that wore the leather and chains and were just a bunch of posers. So you know, I never even thought about like the look of bands until Metallica came along because it's like well rock stars look like rock stars and if they're wearing a lot of makeup and hairspray and stuff, that's what rock stars do and I didn't really care. I was just like if I like the music, I like the music and they came out in t-shirt and jeans and then Metallica came along and I said, hmm, okay, I might have to rethink this.

Actually, people should have caught on when Maiden were wearing spandex and Nike high tops. Wait a minute, Nike high tops, really? Hey man, I had Nike high tops. Sorry, not Nike, I had the, what was the other one? Converse Chuck Taylors? No, Reebok. Reebok, thank you, it was Reebok. Yeah, I had the Reeboks, and I had the freaking tongue hanging out and flopping over, and I see pictures now,

And I'm like, what an idiot. Between that and my suicidal tendencies, hat flipped up. And because I was a cheap bastard, I just took like a regular hat, flipped it up, and I would write different bands on there in chalk. And just sayings and stuff. Because I thought it was cool. If you go to a few underground shows here in LA, you'll notice that that hasn't left. There's still a lot of dudes that are dressed that way here. High Top, Reeboks,

the spandex type pants and the battle jacket, battle vests and leather jackets and all that stuff. So it hasn't, may have been decades ago, but it's still here. Is that what you wear when you go out to shows, Luis? Absolutely not. I like to go comfortable. If I'm shooting, I'll probably just wear something comfortable, some loose jeans. A lot of kneeling, a lot of moving around. Right, yeah. And, you know, that's why I tend to just try to shoot shows with,

I don't know that it was a little bit of a risk taking my camera into some of those pits and the divers and stuff like that I can't do that no more well that's an interesting segue to because I was going to ask you about your photography because clearly you're you love art you've made a whole site dedicated to it yeah but you do photography how did you get into that and what has that been like now that you have heaviest of art and what do you shoot well because because

I mean like what do you should you know what's your camera oh it's uh was it I forget the name it's a Canon it's a T6 I forgot I actually have it right here I'll uh let me get a quick you had me at Canon I always forget the name I always switch between uh 5d and 6d it's a 60 uh mark ii okay but I'm looking into investing in a Leica uh oh nice I've got a 5d mark ii yeah that one I

I mean, it's pretty pricey, but I guess you get what you pay for. I guess. But and I started slow with the Rebel camera because of obviously I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, let me just buy a stock starter kit. And it's not the camera. It's the photographer. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, with that camera, I actually went, I shot for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. So I shot a shoot there. I shot a Death Clock when they played here in L.A. And then there was also InterArma was at that show.

There was municipal waste. But yeah, I actually learned because of heaviest of art. I had no intentions of learning. It was just, you know, with these press releases came obviously tour announcements and all these like live coverage opportunities. So I just ran them. I'm like, what if hell, what the hell? What if I go shoot a show, right? Write a recap or something. So I bought the starter kit. I just started playing around. I remember my first show was actually here in LA at a dive bar, five star. I shot for Glacial Tomb.

Yeah, so that was, and it was, yeah, it was, you know, dive bar, very shitty lighting, very shitty lighting, just kind of very dim red light in a very tight spot. But, you know, I was still learning about aperture and learning about, you know, shutter speed and all that stuff. And then obviously. What kind of lens do you like to use live? Live, I alternate between a 50 millimeter and an 85. Usually the one I have, it's Canon.

My Canon is 85 and then I use Yongnuo. I still have it's kind of that I bought from Amazon. It's kind of like a I guess a fairly priced lenses that are I believe that one I have a 35 and a 50 for those but more for the wider shots or from getting up close. But yeah no that started because of heaviest of art that I started shooting. And then that first that first week that I shot that I remember that first week and I shot where I was still learning. I shot for Glacial Tomb.

I believe that was on a Thursday and I shot for possessed. They were playing at the whiskey. Uh, so that was a very good learning experience. And then it was really cool. Cause I had my second show and then I had Jeff reach out to me on, uh, on Facebook. Cause I, Hey man, let me, let me use those pictures for our socials. I'm like, what the hell? I love just as an aside, I love glacial tomb and they're responsible for the most metal thing I've ever done in my whole life. And that was, I went to Norway. I climbed a glacier.

wearing my glacial tomb shirt and took a picture yeah they agreed it was the most metal thing

they'd seen for their band but ben is such a nice dude too i know chemist has an ulp very excited for

that um so we'll have a review of that one but yeah so i shot possessed and then i shot i forget what

the third show is but yeah it was just learning you know a few youtube tutorials and then i i feel like

you learn more by doing so you know from show after show that i would go to it was just you know

And then kind of getting to know the other photographers here in the LA scene and kind of forming a bond with them and, you know, learning from them. And then, you know, as I saw that I was shooting bigger shows, I was like, you know, maybe it's time to step away from the, from the rebel T6 starter camera. And I got a, you know, the better camera. And then now, you know, that I feel like I'm, you know, now learning and I know a lot more than what I did a year ago or so. Yeah. I think it's time for, you know, an even bigger upgrade, but you know, it's been, it's been,

a good learning curve. It's been a good learning experience to shoot in shows with very good, amazing production, you know, with lighting and stuff to shooting shows at dive bars with very shitty lighting. But yeah, that's really how it came about. I learned, I just kind of picked it up as a means to produce extra content for Heaviest of Art. And then that became a whole new other thing where, you know, now, you know, again, like I mentioned, I got to shoot, you know, a Cartoon Network festival at a stadium. You know, I was offered to shoot a Riot Fest this weekend.

Unfortunately, that couldn't happen in Chicago, but shooting things of different magnitudes. So it's been amazing. And then obviously, for me, a good, I was very intentional about how I was shooting the first few months that I was still learning. You know, obviously, a lot of folks, you know, tend to skip opening bands and go straight to, you know, the headliners or the co-headliners. So I used to try to get there as early as possible when I was still learning and use, you know, the opening bands as kind of like, you know, because. Practice. Test cases.

And then there was still like, you know, crowds were so low. So I had all this space to work with. So I was shooting all these shots and then I would send them to the bands. I'm like, here, you guys can use them for your, for your socials and use them for whatever. And then it was cool, you know, for, for bands, you know, they'd be like, yeah, these are cool. You never really get pictures taken during shows. So I was like, yeah, you know, by all means, I don't, I'm not charging for any of this. This is all for me. I do it because I love it. For the love, man. I'm like, here, here's a, here's a Google folder with all the pictures. If you'd like them and use them, however you'd like.

And then that just kind of grew, you know.

It's crazy because your whole life has kind of changed because of this website.

You know, is this what you want to do?

What did you say you did before?

You're like an economist or something?

Political science?

Yeah, I work in public policy.

So I work in city politics here in L.A.

So just kind of developing, you know, community programs and overseeing, you know, just kind of budgets and all sorts of things for, you know, in that kind of public policy government field.

So it's completely separate to what I do. It started off as a fun little hobby and it became such an all-encompassing thing that just consumes a large part of my week. I won't say my day-to-day. Just waking up every morning, it's a routine to just go through emails, send out a few, working interview requests, setting up interviews and stuff like that. And it's still surreal to me that I started from not knowing shit on Twitter to sharing album covers to

You know, instead of me reaching out to folks to set up stuff, you know, working the other way around and folks really fixating on the behind the cover columns that I do and wanting to do that for their own particular artists on their label or on their, you know, PR roster and so forth.

Yeah. It's an interesting fit because you clearly you come from a job schooling where you have to be very organized because, yeah, I mean, you are.

you're very organized but you love art yeah and i'm very similar to that too because i write comics but i'm just very super detail oriented about everything which is unusual and in my industry but if you can put those two things together yeah um you can accomplish a lot and clearly you have with this site yeah no it's it's uh it it took a yeah first it was a bit you know kind of slow obviously when you're starting to get your pairings and you know getting in contact with all these publicists and getting the releases uh but now that you know you have

the platform and all these things coming your way. It's like, all right, well, how do I balance this with obviously your personal life and your full-time job and obviously social life too with friends and family and all that sort of stuff? It's been a task to find a fine balance, but I think I've done that. And I think it all goes back to kind of the point we were making earlier with not getting fixated on trying to cover as much as possible, but only covering things that really resonate with us and that we really love.

And not just half-assing stuff, but if I like a particular release, I'm going to do my research. I'm going to do the best I can do and really give my all so that it comes out as great as it can. And now you have a staff. You've got people who are working on the website. It's become a machine. It's not just you, which is great to get that kind of help on it. So getting back into the website itself, you posted best covers of the month feature, which you mentioned.

What goes into selecting the covers that are going to be included for Best of the Month? How do you decide? That one's a, well, it's an interesting one because it's kind of like for when other websites post their best metal albums or best albums. As music, art is pretty subjective. Folks like art of different kinds and music of different kinds, so I can't say it's definitive. But for me, at least when we're selecting these, I think a lot of what goes in is one, the ability for

for it to kind of garner a curiosity uh like if i see it uh at a record store on a

billboard somewhere some spotify library or band cab library if i see it i'm going to stop and look at it

twice and go okay what is this you know like is this appealing enough to try to draw uh new listeners uh to um i guess i would say the intentionality behind it i know sometimes some covers can be quite senseless i mean you know don't get me wrong i mean if you like

a guy getting beaten to death or being stabbed with a crucifix or whatever, you know, that kind of stuff. I mean, by all means, if it works for you, it works for you. But there's some covers that really go into kind of expanding upon an album's lyrics, expanding upon themes, being very intentional about that sort of stuff, and then incorporating an artist's own kind of interpretation of the entire subject. So things like that, that kind of, I guess, really expand upon the music. Another thing, which I wouldn't say is a huge,

It does play a part on the first aspect that I mentioned. Color palette. Sometimes it's pretty crucial. One for the eye to be able to capture it. I wouldn't say that if you have a good color palette, I'm going to include it. But it is kind of play a subconscious effect where if it's appealing, if it's visually appealing and you know it'll look good on a shirt or on something, it does have a certain effect. I know I just did a behind the cover piece on Whitechapel's new record,

which is coming out of Metal Blade. That one, at first when I looked at it, it was pretty interesting. It's two figures looking at each other face-to-face, but then you realize that it's kind of like a pointillism effect that Jillian, who's Ben Savage's partner, did where she was just painting meticulously thousands and thousands of blue dots in different shades to create that kind of particle effect where it seemed like energies were kind of transpiring between the two

And then if you flip it, there's a kind of a demonic figure that shows up if you look at it upside down. And there's all these different neat nods that you realize aren't really there unless you look deeper into it. So I think that would be another aspect is, I guess, inviting an inviting aspect to a cover that perhaps like kind of going back to what you guys said about the words Waldo of Iron Maiden with somewhere in time like that, right? Is it inviting to where you want to look and find different things and make a connection to the music or to the music?

to the lyrics or themes or to the album type. Because some covers are quite literal. I mean, you know, the Blackout, right? Blackout, but of that sort. So it's just a myriad of things. And, you know, in finding these, I mean, it's kind of similar to how we do our top album covers of the year. I mean, I have a running Google Doc where I'm just, you know, between like going through all the emails, press releases that I get, and then doing my own personal like Spotify and Bandcamp and just kind of,

I check regularly. If something stands out to me, I'll throw it on the list. And when it comes down to actually making one concise article or selection, then that's when I start breaking it down into what really, I guess, grabs. So is best covers of the month, is that you selecting or is it a team of people that you're working with, you talk about it, and then you choose which ones? The covers is particularly me. Okay.

So to be, I guess, to be more transparent on the entire operation of the website, I do absolutely everything. And the contributing writers do would be particularly reviews, interviews, if noted, when, you know, obviously when a particular writer does an interview, you know, that's noted on the, you know, I try to promote the hell out of everything our people do, you know, because they're all amazing. Rowan, amazing dude, Jake, Tyson, Ryan, all these people, you know,

They put amazing love into their craft. So whenever they do stuff, you know, it's very clearly noted and then we promote the hell out of it. But for the most part, like things like the top album covers and then that sort of stuff that's all me where it does kind of come together, which is the difficult task that I'm sure every magazine has is the albums of the year list, which kind of, you know, we get input from everybody, all the contributing writers. And then we try to consolidate that into one concise list that that represents us.

as a site, as writers, and that we're all happy with as far as the releases go. But yeah, that's really how... You should listen to the Metalheads podcast when we do our top 25 because it is the best list. I can imagine how... Podcasts are normally four or five hours. I can imagine that particular episode is maybe in the eight, nine hour round. That's actually one of the shorter ones. No, well, I think we topped out at around seven. We have, yeah.

So one was, but we edited it down to seven. George, didn't we break it up into two parts last year? That one time. Yeah, we had to because we were on, we were, yeah, SoundCloud was hosting it at the time, I think. And yeah, they were like over X, like you can't be over six hours or something like that. And so I had to split it in two. And I think didn't all of us have to take a vacation day from work? Yeah. But, you know, we each have our own individual lists that we put up, but then John,

does mathematical statistical stuff and assigns points to things and frequency and all this stuff. And so our combined list is completely based on merit of choices as opposed to personal ideas. Yeah, I mean, we put a lot of thought of it. And that's what I love about heaviest of art, too, is that you put so much thought into everything you do. You know, John was talking about reviews earlier. And then just there's a lot of reviews, whether it's for music or content.

where they just either shit on it or they don't put a lot of time into thinking about what matters. And heaviest art does that. And I feel like in almost every feature, when I see a cover, because we do talk about covers soon. And of course, we're going to do that tonight. When I see one, if it tells me a story, if it makes me think, what's the story behind this cover? Yeah, those are the ones that speak to me. And then usually I'll tell that story on the cast because even, you know, I don't know exactly what they were thinking.

But for me, it elicits something. It creates something in my head. And I love that part of it.

Well, actually, Marcus, it's your version of the story, which makes no, no, hear me out, which makes it even more interesting, because I might look at the same cover. I might get a slightly different story from it. And those to me are the best covers that you can have multiple interpretations of something because it is subjective. Agreed.

As opposed to like, oh yeah, look, that dude got his head cut off. Everyone knows what that means. But I, and the reason I say is because I just, while we're talking, I just went and looked at all the, this year's best of the month album covers. And you have a lot of album covers on there that are sparse. There's not much in terms of visual, but you have to focus on why you selected them. And I think those ones speak more than the ones that have just shit all over the place on the, on the, in the image. And so that's why I said that Markisan.

I think sometimes you can get tons of stories out of some things. Yeah. And that's what makes it great. A cover. Well, as if I wasn't scared enough because of Markisan descriptions that put all of ours to shame. Now I'm really terrified of what I've got on my list. I'm like, Oh, I'm going to look like a jackass. I mean, we all see things that catch our eye. You know, you're talking about color palette earlier. There's, we all have a different thing we're looking for in covers. So,

That's the beauty of art. It's open to interpretation. I actually

guest contribute to sometimes to

HeavyBlog. HeavyBlog is heavy. Their team has me over

there for their bi-monthly

gift to artwork column.

Their folks over there have

a bi-monthly column where they talk about

cover arts and their favorite ones

of recent years or recent months

or even sometimes future months.

One that had that similar effect was

I know this was probably

I guess it's not metal related but it was at Radiohead's

a moonshaped pool. Oh yeah. You know when that first I'm like what the hell is this just like that

literally just water splashing right what it looks like and then you realize how it was created and the process behind it and kind of the intentionality we have it and I was like wow this is amazing I saw the videos of how he went and got into this lake and kind of you know used paint to splash the water and then it spread and then he photographed that and then you know obviously post editing and it was just so

very intentional about the way they did it and how it kind of connects to the dreamlike soundscapes of Radiohead's music. And it was just one of those kinds of things that just kind of become one. But yeah, going back to your point, right, it really is up to the readers or viewers' interpretation. So, I mean, there's stuff on there that I absolutely love and that's why I include it. And then there's people who will be like, well, this sucks. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's subjective. Just like once we post,

are your end lists. You're going to say, well, that shouldn't be there. Well, to you, it shouldn't. I'm sure. It is what it is. It really all comes down to who you as a reader or as a viewer perceive as good and what connects with you doesn't connect with me and so forth. There's a lot of interpretations and that's the beauty of it. I think I shared your top 25 with the boys from last year. It was actually quite a good list. You guys did a good job. The covers or the albums? The albums.

Yeah, that was hard. That was hard to put together. It's very hard. We know. I was going to say, it's funny. You mentioned a year in lists. I can say that as a collective group and as individuals, I don't think we're, we have strong opinions, but no one actually, maybe I'm wrong about this, but we don't browbeat anyone with our opinions. Maybe like we're so much smarter, but I can guarantee you when the lists start dropping. Yeah. The first thing we say, Oh dude, our list is going to blow this shit right out of the way.

Yeah, for sure.

The only time I think individually and as a collective, we highbrow stuff.

Because we feel really good about our year-end list.

Yeah, when Decibel puts out their list, we are like, uh-uh, bitch.

Your list is like your kid.

It's like your baby.

It grows throughout the year.

It evolves.

I mean, in some ways, it's not different.

I mean, it parallels art, you know?

And to your point, Luis, the beauty of it is like, I mean, I can listen to somebody just

Gush over an album, how much they love it. And then I go listen to them like, oh man, I am not getting into this, but I totally appreciate their opinion on it and that they love it. You know? And so that's, you know, the things that make us all unique. Yeah. You know, and like when people listen, I had a friend of mine say like, man, I really love listening to you guys because you can help me sift through this stuff. And where I'm going with that is like, we each have a little bit of uniqueness to our opinions and what we'd like to listen to. And so somebody who's like, Hey, you know, I love saxophone. I'm going to listen to what

Matt says he loves,

I'll know to get the best albums with the best saxophone,

you know,

and things like that.

It broadens our horizons,

you know,

because of course you're going to gravitate towards certain albums,

certain art,

but when people you respect have differing opinions or share something,

you may not have been into as much,

or maybe just haven't even tried.

It adds to your,

your,

your,

your collective love for metal.

I feel like I've just being on this cast.

I feel like,

uh,

I've gotten into a lot more stuff than I would on my own. And the same thing with heaviest of art. You know, when I read that site and I see that or I, you know, read a feature like behind the cover, which I was going to ask about that next. You know, it gets me because you hear about what went into making that and the feelings behind those covers. And it matters. It actually changes your perception of it. Maybe you already had a really good one. Maybe you really loved it.

but maybe you were only lukewarm about it or you didn't think about it and then you read something like that and you're like holy shit i gotta take a second look not only at the album cover but at the music as well you know when it's it's just fascinating i mean what it what did it like what a heavy decision is to make like this this square is what i'm going to use to represent this body of work you know i mean it just stresses me out saying it out loud even though i partially do it for a living i mean just like this art is what we're going to choose and so i mean that's what makes it cool yeah and

When that happens, well, because sometimes, as you guys know, the cover is half the actual painting and the actual full painting is on the back cover. So when that does happen, I'll tend to ask, because I know, and I'll ask the artists or the musicians themselves, can you guys share the full cover so we can include on the article? I want folks to see the entire thing. I love that. And that's encouraging for folks to pick up the vinyl, right? I mean, you want to see the full thing and get the full thing and gaze at it while the record

to spinning and so forth so yeah it's hard though it's just just a square image um and then when you have fun and then that's also an interesting one because i actually just talked to uh dennis at uh from ghost bath actually not long and he used a big painting for his new uh so but but sometimes when you license existing paintings i mean obviously the conventions are a lot different so like that but since the painting is much more narrow than it is wider so then you got to worry about like how am i gonna uh

and incorporate my logo, the album title, and then do justice to the art by putting it around a particular frame. Then you got to get an artist to do the actual framing of the painting. And you want to do justice to it, especially if it's like 50, right? And you're like, I don't want to screw this up and just completely butcher it and stuff of that sort. So there's a lot that goes into the actual process. It's more than just marketing element. And we're actually interviewing Dennis of Ghostbath next month. Oh, so it works out great.

Yeah, so I just talked to him. It was Thursday. So we'll have some stuff coming up for the new release. I want to say within a couple of weeks. A good release. Yeah. Well, my favorite feature on heaviest of art is behind the cover. And that's where the band members and the cover artists come together and they talk about the process of creating the cover art. It's such an interesting read to hear the creation of the art and how it works with the music.

music. Can you talk about what it's been like to put those together, Luis? It's very time consuming. Well, so the idea was basically is exactly what you described, right? To get, well, one, I started at first thinking like, well, I'll interview the artists and they'll tell us about how, you know, they went about creating the cover. But then I realized, well, sometimes some of these musicians are, they appreciate art in a way that,

Some of them are artists themselves, actually. I love when that happens, when an actual musician is an actual artist. I know that happened with Light the Torch, actually. Their team is actually a virtual artist, 3D designer, and he actually does work in Unreal Engine and stuff like that. He did his band's own cover, so that's always extra interesting to see that. I have actually an upcoming feature for a new album when stuff like that happens. Putting these together, one, it's an interview with

Like you mentioned, the band member responsible for initiating the conversation with the artist, the artist themselves, and then I bring this together. So sometimes I do get both parties together in an interview and then they just kind of, you know, we go through the whole motions for like an hour long interview or so. We're just kind of feeding off of ideas. Other times it's just I interview the two parties separately and then I try to converge those into one piece where it seems like it's flowing. So you can read it and it makes it seem like,

all these we're all in the same room even though we kind of weren't so I'll transition it there and then you know folks will obviously share like pictures of the sketches like shout out to C-Grade for that like absolute legend and then he he loves the entire process so much that he'll share with me just like I want to say a couple dozen of sketches and graphics and stuff of how his creative process was throughout the way which for me at first was was like just amazing like yeah I got this dude who needs to illustrate for this member and again suffocation just saying I'll

this stuff over. I'm like, well, that's amazing.

So I would incorporate that.

And then for me, it was just a spontaneous idea to do that.

And then it just, like you mentioned, right?

It just connected, I think, a lot.

A lot of folks were like, well, you should do more of these.

Or, you know, you should do this record or that record.

And, like, it slowly just started, you know, kind of catapulting into what it is now.

And, you know, obviously, if you followed the column for some time, I mean, you realize that, you know,

I've had the opportunity to speak to just artists that I would have never thought that have just had such an impact on the genre. Like, for example, the most recent one I had was with Paul Romano, who, of course, does all the Macedon covers. So, yeah, we did one with him. We came as Romans. We're celebrating their debut anniversary. Of course, we had one of my favorite contemporary artists, Jose Gabriel Alegria Sabogal, who actually did the Hortum Rives new cover.

We premiered for the first time, which is amazing. We had Wes Benzcoder, of course, obviously a big metal artist. Dan Seagrave, as mentioned. I even had an opportunity to get a brief interview with Fenris from Dark Throne, Stephen Alex Ekman-Lan, Joe Duplantier from Gojira, who of course does the art for Gojira stuff. Vince Locke from Cannibal Corpse this year.

you know features that we've done this year I mean it's just been this has been mind-blowing

for me to be able to get to this level and then being able to put together features of this kind

for folks to read and then it's been connecting so for me it's always more exciting to keep well and

the artists just have to appreciate it so much because I just don't think there's another

avenue for them to really talk about their art like there is on heaviest of art yeah

sometimes you'll see art spotlighted here and there, but to really get down into the depths of what makes the art tick and how it works with the music, there is no other place to get that except for your website. So you fill this void that, I mean, it was much needed, I felt, for metal. Well, I'm glad it is. That's what I was hoping for, I guess, to take on a subject that perhaps what was underrepresented, at least in terms of,

you know media and then I know like there's there's a lot of even like major releases too that have such great releases and it's kind of unfortunate to not have any of the I guess major outlets or the big magazines and stuff take touch on that subject like it's completely overlook it and like not touch on it so I mean that's where kind of idea came about I'm like there's so much cool shit out here and like no one's talking about who did it or how it came about or stuff like that so you know that's really how that came about.

So Behind the Cover mostly focuses on art for current covers. You have done older covers. Yeah. But my question is, what's the one really old album cover that you'd like to get the artist and the band on the site to discuss? That's a hard one because I feel like the covers that at least had an impact on me very early on, I feel like they've already kind of been bombarded and covered like a million times. And I'm going to say like Derek Riggs, for example, for Iron Maiden.

George loves Derek Riggs. Yeah, I've been wanting to get him. If I would have done a Google search and no one would have covered like Summer in Time as an album cover or just any of those, I would have hopped right on it and did anything I could to find Derek Riggs' contact information and pitch an interview over to him. But that's a hard question. I'm trying to look back at what I probably try to do. Because even in some of these covers where I interview, I mean, some of these features where I interview,

who did some of the older stuff.

Like we touch on some of these old covers.

Like when I interviewed Seagrey for the first time for the Skeletal Remains piece.

I mean, we touched a little bit about what it was like working with, you know, Gorguts.

And, you know, Suffocation and how he comes about creating these like iconic figures like the one on Considered Dead.

Stuff like that.

So that's a hard question.

I think I'd probably have to give a little bit more thought.

You can think about it and then let us know later.

Absolutely, yeah. We'll keep the podcast going.

It's hour 12 of the Metalhead's podcast and he still hasn't decided.

See how fast this goes? That's only like an hour. It's crazy.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we can talk for another full day.

But yeah, no, there's just been so many covers over the years that at least the ones that particularly had an impact on me early on,

I feel like, you know, obviously given just Iron Maiden's popularity and position in metal,

I feel like that's already been covered a million times and I don't feel like I can do any show anymore than what has already been shown but I would have to give that one some thought but I mean even then just looking at the folks that I've been able to talk to in the I think behind the covers only been around for about I want to say a year and a half and I've been able to talk to so many folks and it's been amazing I know the first I guess huge or the one that kind of struck me that I guess gave me an insight

as to where this could potentially go was when I had a chance to sit down with

with Alcest and Fortifem. This was one of the first like I think it was like among the first five that I did.

So I had a chance to highlight the new Alcest record which at the time was a spiritual instinct and that one went to me I was like how the hell did I land that?

And I was like well maybe maybe let's keep this let's keep the flow going and yeah sure enough the one after that I think was My Dying Brides

Aaron Stainthorpe and Allerian Contour, who I had a couple months after that one. And then I did the Black

Dahlia release after that, and then Adam Burke after that. And it was just like, how much more can we take this? Yeah, well, I mean, now that you've done all this, you can, you, it's great because it just spirals, you know, once you get that first big interview, you're going to be able to get the next one and the next one. And now, now you've, you've established yourself as like the authority for stuff about covers, I feel.

One thing I wanted to ask, and you did mention this a little bit earlier, was mascots. And Heaviest of Art has a mascot. There's this leather jacketed orc skeleton holding up a book with creatures coming out of it. And as we know, as you mentioned, mascots are a thing in metal. We've got Maidens Eddie, we've got Leonard the Beer Wizard for Chemists. So was that something that you wanted to capture with this mascot for Heaviest of Art?

and how was it created? Yeah, honestly, I mean, obviously not to that level where we're at an eddy, but who knows, right? Seeing as how the band grows, I mean, I've been more intentional about including that little mascot into more of our graphics on our articles and the actual graphics you create for socials and stuff like that. More recently, where we had our year-end features for last year, for 2020, I commissioned

and then finding out that it's just this whole world of possibilities and

you know music and stuff like that so he basically had this mascot being blown away by a demon opening a book and that book is obviously representative of you know music or it actually could be a book because you know books have that same effect movie posters same thing and he and like we call him well we don't call him Jake from the team actually suggested that we call him Louie as a kind of play on my name so that's I guess unofficially his name of sorts but

Yeah, it just came around very randomly, actually. And he's had a few kind of iterations. We have the more recent kind of cover, like comical, like cartoonish version of it. And then before that, there was a more like one that had a little bit more of, I guess, I believe had different kinds of things on his shoulder. And it had a lot more detail as far as what kind of creature it was.

And then before that, it was like a more simple, very just simple dude with a leather jacket and a heaviest of art book on his hand and, you know, just heaviest of art shirt and just kind of a typical skull, like guy with a bullet belt underneath the leather jacket and stuff like that. So it's been slowly evolving. Personally, I would like to incorporate him a little bit more down the line into kind of the graphics that we do. And then just kind of, you know, as the months go, kind of re,

Commission you are as all of these have been commissioned, you know, obviously, I'm very big on getting, you know, putting money in artists pockets. So, you know, all of our all of our work that you know, is that you'll see on our graphics, or you'll see on like the Louis, you know, mascot or any of that sort, that's all commissioned and paid for. We want us for artists, of course, and what better to make our website and our page look good than with original art, you know, amazing artists, you know, in our community. So that's really cool.

I like the little mascot as the great sludge and fire link cover artist Luke Orem once told us you can't go wrong with skull men yeah who knows I mean I know he has like a kind of cartoon maybe I mean I've been exploring it's a little expensive but it's kind of animating him doing some sort of graphics where he's like moving and you know kind of doing different things to introduce our features and you know sky's the limit so I mean I have a lot of

of ideas that, you know, just seeing where the page goes from here to a few months to a year or so, depending if we're doing this. I mean, I do would like to eventually take this print and do something special with print, something different, not so much where we're doing like a monthly magazine or something of that sort, but something different, something of like kind of a collector's piece of sorts with a bunch of original art, a bunch of exclusive interviews and a bunch of insight on covers that you've seen throughout the years.

that you perhaps will be seeing for the first time. And then they'll be solely in this one limited book. I mean, I just have a lot of ideas. I'm like, I'm trying to. Well, that's cool. I just actually was, that was the last question I was going to ask you was if you were going to try to do a metal magazine, because I feel like the site is almost a magazine in, you know, online digital form. So, and we only have decibel in the States. That's all we got. So there's room for more magazines, but it would be cool for you to do something like that.

you know maybe you do like a one shot like that that focuses on it and then it can grow from there and it can become something else in print too that would be great yeah and i wanted to be you know i mean obviously this is still an idea i mean i'm still like with photography that i picked up because of the site i'm learning so many new skills and trades because of this website you know website design obviously um you know graphic design sort of because i create all the site graphics for the website and for the instagram as well and like twitter and all that

So obviously working with actually getting our stuff onto print and then working on the typography and then getting layouts and then getting all that stuff to fit in a particular way onto an actual print magazine is something I'll eventually pick up hopefully. But yeah, if I do do something, I want it to be right. I want it to be very intentional. So I'm not just going to rush and just do something for the sake of doing it. I want to sit on it for as much as I can, but be very proud

of what we do and obviously have contributing work from

the different writers and then folks who would like to contribute a piece.

But I wanted to be something, I guess, if it's a one-shot or something that continues,

but just something very special that you can hold and say,

I haven't read or I haven't heard of this information anywhere else.

This is exclusive to this interview.

Or this is my first look at a cover that doesn't come out until another six months.

You know, or this is like a cool look at a, like including photography, like some of my own photography, throwing that in there. Just a variety of different things. I wanted to be more so than, I guess I wanted to be completely independent from a release cycle where, you know, obviously for Decibel, they have to follow a certain cycle where, you know, if an album comes out in December, they'll probably start publishing a review for it like this month or the following month. And then they'll, it'll be kind of based off of what's coming out. Like the newest releases, obviously,

You know, they'll be on the cover of the magazine, stuff like that. I wanted to be completely independent from like a release cycle of sorts. I just wanted to be one wholly encompassing work of writing, of pictures, of art, of just different things. So I've been toying around with the idea, you know, trying to put the pieces together, but, you know, still a good amount of time away. But once it's ready and once, you know, if and when it happens, you know, we'll be excited to share.

and it'll be something that we're very proud of. Yeah, well, I'll buy it. Speaking of print, I'm assuming you're well aware of the Injustice for Art books. Yes, I have a couple myself. Yeah, yeah, I was just made me think of that. I've got a couple of those upstairs. So and there's a heavy music artwork desk stuff too, no? Yeah, I believe so. Let me let me look that up. Yeah, I know. I know when I there's a well, there's actually a couple of other

I guess you could say or platforms that actually do kind of similar work where they're promoting art as culture and then music like I don't have any music artwork if you guys haven't checked it out they're a great website they actually do have publications where they publish different kinds of art it's not always metal like or music related sometimes it's just like purely independent like dark art or stuff of that sort but but they have some good stuff and I know they they have like music interviews sometimes included in those they're a good website too

Heavy Music Artwork, like you mentioned, Justice for Art also. Shout out to them. And I actually became recently introduced to this duo. They're called Cover Art Matters on Instagram, where I became introduced to. And it turns out that they've been doing something very similar, but they do more of hip-hop. So they focus on the creation of hip-hop covers that are coming out or in recent years. And they have their own little video series, too, where they're kind of dissecting if it's a...

It's been good to see that it's not just us, but there's a couple of other platforms on the internet now that are doing this sort of stuff or that have been doing it and shining a light on the artists. Yeah, and you're connecting with them and building a community based on the love of art. That's great.

Yeah. And who knows, right? I mean, I don't know what a collaboration would look like down the line, but something of that sort where we're still kind of putting a light on artists and photographers and editors and stuff of that sort that, you know, that make releases as pretty as they can be. Right, right, right. And Justice for Art just announced they're going to be working on their fourth book and it's going to be live album covers. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, they do good work. Yeah, they do good work. Yeah, I have all three and they're awesome.

So I'm glad to see there's more than just you guys doing it.

Yeah, they do good work. I know they do print stuff.

So it's been good to see some of that stuff.

And obviously for us, that's really the goal, right?

To introduce people to music through art.

And the more the merrier.

I know there's 5,000 metal blogs and publications across the world.

Why can't there be another 5000 artwork based platforms as well where the shine is on the artist. So for us, the more the merrier. Yeah. All right. So, Luis, I mentioned we like to ask our guests at the end of the interview, what three albums would help people better understand you as a person? I think one you've already heard about a thousand times and that's Our Maiden, Somewhere in Time. It's probably my favorite Maiden record.

Favorite Maiden cover. But I would say that one particularly because of really how, well, one, the impact it had on me very early on. So that one, I mean, if you know me, you know, regardless of how I feel about recent Iron Maiden releases, I put them on a pedestal just because of what they've been able to do for me. And, you know, shortly after the period of my metal discovery and my grade school years, you know, obviously I had, you know,

You go through middle school and high school

and all these very important years of your life

and I feel like that album

in CD format really

got me through

those years and it was

always like I would put the headphones on and I would

hear that and it was always whatever the

hell is going on around me or

school or in life that was

always like let me when I'm listening to this

is what I'm doing and I'm fully immersed in

this and nobody bug me and

let me keep my headphones on and

That's really, I guess, if you were to define me. I mean, even folks who, like, follow me, like, on my personal Instagram and stuff like that, they'll know I'm pretty fond of Iron Maiden. Like, one of the things I like to do a lot is collect vintage shirts. You know, obviously, I wasn't around in the 80s and early 90s. So, for me, and actually, you could see one behind there, but that's a, I'm very big on poster collecting, too. So, that one I bought at the last show I shot before the pandemic hit, and that was Colts of Luna here at the Fonda Theater.

in Hollywood. So that one was, I always love when bands do tour posters and they, you know, commission art for that. So I buy them and I frame them. Over here, I have one for Tools Tour when they played with the Primus and Fantomas and San Bernardino. I flew up to New York to see Tools. I have another one. I have some from A Perfect Circle. I have some from just a variety of different stuff of that sort. But for me, like posters and T-shirt art. So I love

and early 90s merch bands were very intentional about that stuff and Iron Maiden had some of the best designs so I have a lot of their older shirts from those tours that I've been fortunate enough to acquire over the years so I would say Summer in Crime for sure is one a second one and it's a fairly recent one and I actually connect a lot with one of our writers Jake on that one is Heartless by Paul Bearer a few years ago that one and I tweeted this actually not a couple years ago

There was a period in Heaviest War where it was Twitter where I would really like highly praise that album. And I think it was for me, it's the closing song, A Plea for Understanding. That's a great song. I think that one actually even brought me to tears like the first time I heard it, or at least made me water. It was such a heart-wrenching song. And to me, I think that that record is really representative of the human experience of pain, of, you know, of,

of the sorrows of life. For as happy as you are as a person and as cheerful and loving and caring, there's always moments of vulnerability. And I think that record really highlights that. It really sits you back and makes you really think about what there is to appreciate in life. And obviously at the time he had lost a sibling. So for that, that's a very emotional record. For me, that's, I think, kind of what brings it a little bit down from Iron Maiden, right?

There's a more electric, more exciting person. I find myself to be a particularly, you know, very, I guess, positive, very energetic person. I'm always out and about. But I think for me, that's kind of what levels me down and puts me at the ground level where maybe sometimes I got to step back and just kind of, you know, breathe and appreciate what I have. And I guess really level me and ground me to a sense where really just kind of sit back and look at everything I have as, you know, friends and family.

and career and home I have and all these different things. And I think for me, Pauldeir is a very good representation of that. I mean, just to jump in here, I love that record. That's my favorite Pauldeir record. And I just, I got invited to do some pitches for comic book companies. And I actually referenced that album for the tone of the comic book that I want to do. So just for all the reasons you just eloquently mentioned. Yeah, no, it's again, it's, I,

Yeah, that closing song is just, I mean, obviously it has, you know, more popular songs that, you know, get played pretty often on the set list. But, you know, just a plea for understanding, one of the most amazing songs, I think, in my life. But the third record, for sure, and I wrote this down, so I wanted to make a point, because this is actually a very interesting concept that I've always kind of struggled with. I know religion is a very controversial, or I guess, interesting topic, but 10,000 Days by Tool,

For sure, you know, as mentioned, I have several tour posters around my room. One from New York, one from their shows here in L.A. recently, and then the ones from San Bernardino, but 10,000 Days, and particularly because of 10,000 Days, the song, or Wings for Marie, I know it's a two-part song, but just kind of the lyricism in that. I mean, the record as a whole is just amazing. I mean, you have, you open up with, like, Vicarious, and you have, like, just the galling of

But those two songs, the two parts of 10,000 Days or Wings from Marie, that had this similar effect of the Pawbearer's album, where it kind of grounds you. And obviously that's Maynard kind of coming to terms and struggling with his mom passing from all the health concerns that were happening. And obviously her religion and how she believed in Christ and her faith in that and how he obviously didn't.

and kind of struggling with if you love your Christ so much and you were such a loving and caring person that you saved my life, why is it that this has to happen to you kind of thing? And then for me, I personally had an experience in grade school on my, to be exact, on my ninth birthday where my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. So it was a very similar coming to terms with that similar experience where I'm like, you know, I was a bit young at the time, I guess you can say to fully understand, I guess, the complexities.

of what that meant and I guess the likelihood of survival and stuff like that. Fast forward, I still have my mother. She made it out. But it was just those next few years after her diagnosis were just back and forth. I mean, I was young. My little sister was also very young. And my father was working. And how do we maintain a life, raising two young kids and then having to go take care of your wife who's battling leukemia?

at a hospital and there was all these different things going on and for me you know music and video games were kind of my moment away from all that stuff you know because you know obviously you would visit your mom and you would see kind of all these tubes connected to her and all these you know you would see her after the chemo and you know you when you lose your hair and you realize that you know this shit is a lot more serious than than a cold or a fever or anything of what they try to tell you it was at first so I think 10,000 days I'd say is very this is a seminal record to me at least personally for how

to come to terms with some of those things and accepting of, you know, that perhaps, you know, obviously my mother lives and she made it past that. But if she didn't, what I would have thought about life without her at such an early age, you know, I think that would have changed me drastically. You know, who's to say, you know, I'm very proud that she's here now. But yeah, that record of, you know, is just huge.

Well, it sounds like it changed you even though she survived.

Yeah, absolutely. I guess it changed my appreciation towards life and just being not focusing on the bullshit, so to speak, and really taking things day by day and being happy and supporting one another. And just really, I guess, even the little things, right? Like just having a dinner with family on a regular Tuesday evening is as important as celebrating a birthday or a graduation or stuff like that. Even when I graduated from my undergrad,

That was my celebration speech to them. Technically, life had a different plan for you. She was given, I believe, very little chances of survival. They gave her about 15% chance of life throughout the entire process because it was such a steep form of leukemia where it was very advanced. She made it through and she got to see me graduate and go on and do all these different things. For me, it did change my outlook a little bit.

and then same thing with uh pallbearer's um album so pallbearer and tool are more of the

human emotional aspects of myself than you iron maidens uh somewhere in time that's more the

electric bite of it yeah it's such a good experience that you know a lot of people should go

through i think a lot of people have gone through that because of the pandemic yeah but the fact that you learned it earlier and and really appreciate the time that you have uh with people while they're here i mean

to live life that way. Absolutely. I mean, I think it shaped the way I am now. And I think it shaped my life moving forward. I mean, who's to say, right, a few years from now where I'll be. But definitely, I think those three records I'll forever cherish and hold with me and forever have saved. Well, shit, I think that might be the best answer to the three questions we've ever had. Amazing, Luis. Really great. Thank you.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. I know for as much shit as Tool gets, and I know the whole big delay with the newest record, Fear and Occlum, and whatever. I mean, what they did on 10,000 Days is truly spectacular, at least. And then it's really when you realize that music has a very transcendent power that connects with people in different ways and changes lives. I know a lot of artists on their Instagrams and YouTubes get comments and shit that say,

Like, you know, you changed my life or stuff like that. Like, that shit is true. I mean, that is absolutely true. And I had this conversation, actually, in that recent Behind the Cover we did with We Came as Romans, you know, when they did their first record, they were like, well, we want to change the world and change lives. And it sounded pretty stupid. And it's like, quite the contrary. It sounds stupid. But, you know, you're doing, you're changing the world by changing lives one by one. I mean, you're not like, you know, taking on like global warming or some crazy global aspect, but you're, but you're saving lives.

lives, you know, through music, whether you know it or not. I mean, obviously, for me, that technically changed my life, for sure.

Yeah, and people forget how important the arts are. Again, the pandemic, I think, brought it back because you couldn't go anywhere. But a lot of artists, you know, whether they're musicians or painters or comic book artists, they put out content and that helped people get through some tough times.

Yeah, and it's the platform sometimes too that people sometimes don't realize you had. And this was a question I asked Joe from Gojira too in our interviews. Because they're very big activists, environmental activists and just human rights activists. And that was one of my questions was really, you have this platform. I mean, you're headlining Bloodstock, for God's sake. What the hell? That's fucking huge. You're doing all these things. But instead of falling back and just kind of playing music or shut up and play like a lot of people,

I know they highlighted recently all the indigenous issues in Brazil, deforestation, all these things. Do you feel that artists have a responsibility or really a way to use that platform to change, whether that be policies or kind of, I know some people say separate art from politics and stuff like that, but they do the opposite. They really use it as a kind of driving force. And he had a really good answer.

I mean, say what you want. I know a lot of people talk shit and say we should stick to just playing cool riffs and all that stuff. He's like, we do the opposite. We use this platform to write about stuff that impacts us and impacts our fans and impacts our communities. And we try to help folks become aware of the different things going on in life, whether it affects you or not. Just being aware is enough sometimes. And really trying to drive change and drive folks to become more

and privy to different, you know, human concerns and stuff like that sort. So, yeah, for sure. Artists and bands have a platform and, you know, some utilize it, some don't. It all comes down to their own purpose, I guess, as musicians. And, you know, for some folks, they really tend to utilize it. And I think Gojira is one that does it very well, for sure. If only Tom Morello would take a stance on something.

Exactly, yeah.

I just saw him and his mom on the series that Dave Grohl's mom does from cradle to the stage. And his mom is awesome. It was really great. This is Hannes Brooks, man, and you're listening to the Metal Hats podcast. The hallowed tradition of t-shirt and beer check. And as the guest, you always have to go first.

I'm going to let you guys down here on the cool beers. The only thing I had in the fridge was a freaking Tecate Light, but I'll do that. It's a beer. It counts. But to be fair, I do like a lot of stouts. I do drink a lot of stouts and sours, which are obviously on opposite ends of the spectrum. But normally I would be drinking a Belching Beaver stout. Belching Beaver is good. Belching Beaver has good beers. I have their actual

The collaborations with Deftones. I was going to say, yeah, they do the Deftones. I haven't liked all of those, though. I have a few of them, actually, back in the buffet, but I haven't liked all of them. All of them are good. No, they're not all good. I think maybe a couple are. I think the Phantom Bride was good. Phantom Bride is good, and that keeps coming out, but some of the other ones, like the White Pony one they did, no. I wasn't too much of a fan of that one. Because it's not good. For the t-shirt, I have Angel in a Dark River, long sleeve.

Nice. That's my favorite album from now. Amazing album. This is a very, very proud to have this one. I don't think I've seen it around a lot. This one's originally from the press cycle they did in the early 90s. I have a lot of My Dying Bride's old long sleeves, the original copies from there. Shout out to Harry, who's the drummer from Succumb, who have a new album out of the Flenser. He's actually one of the vintage t-shirt guys I get a lot of stuff from.

So he actually sent me out with a couple of My Dying Bride pieces. So that's the picture for today. That's such a great album. My favorite album is Like Gods of the Sun, but that Angel in the Dark River is very close. I'll tell you why I like, no, I'm sorry. Let me just do this real quick. I'm sorry, George. The reason why I like the shirt being black is because there's two covers of that album, one white and one black, and I prefer the black cover on that one. So when I saw that you said, I was like, yes, I'm glad your shirt isn't white. It's black.

And then it has the cover artwork on the t-shirt, My Dying Bride. And then it has the, I can't see in the back, but basically the track list. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that, George. No worries. I was just going to say that Angel in the Dark River was my first My Dying Bride album as well. And, you know, when I heard that, I was like, what the hell? Is that violin? What is going on here? This is, you know, at the time, you're like, what is this? But yeah, I like Odds of the Sun is definitely my favorite as well.

their most gothic during that period.

Yeah.

I think.

Yeah.

I mean, after that, it kind of shit the bed for a couple albums, but.

Just one album.

The Dreadful Hours was awesome.

Yeah, right.

Fair enough.

It was.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just.

And so much growling on that.

Yeah.

I mean, they brought back the death doom for like the next four albums.

You're right.

But hey, we all like different albums, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Of course.

Hell, I might even like the industrial whatever that was that they did after.

I haven't listened to it in 33%.

No, forever.

Yeah.

I didn't like it that much.

There were periods where I was like, let me skip past this.

Yeah.

Even Paradise Lost has a period like that.

Oh, two albums.

Post and Boy.

The album is one of the best.

It's amazing.

I don't know if you guys, did you guys like the most recent album?

Yeah.

From Paradise Lost?

Yeah.

Yeah, I loved it.

Yeah, it was amazing.

Obsidian?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I liked it.

I don't think I loved it but I definitely like I like all their stuff so I like how Elise suddenly has a dark river mood lighting in the background now it's a lot darker yeah the sun's shifting so it's like for me I am drinking Maui Brewing a limiter release it's a white Russian golden imperial porter Maui's awesome I love them here in Hawaii and so I get a lot of the limited stuff

from my place. Shout out to the village tap room. Um, it's my favorite place to get beer. And then I'm wearing, uh, if you can see it, but, uh, iron maidens, Belshazzar's feast shirt. I believe you can only get it if you're in the fan club. I'm not positive, but they use this image to tease their writing on the wall symbol or single. And, um, it's a cool story actually. Um, cause, uh, Belshazzar's feast is the story of, of, of the writing on the wall.

in the book of Daniel. And it tells how this Belshazzar holds this great feast and he drinks from cups that have been looted in the destruction of the first temple. So during the feast, God makes this hand appear and it writes on the wall. And it's basically God telling Belshazzar that he's getting punished for being a blasphemous dick. And the writing says like, your days are numbered and you have been found wanting. So I thought that was pretty cool.

When they came out with the shirt, I'm like, whoa. Wasn't there like a whole conspiracy? Well, there was a guy, I think, who did a video who connected all this stuff. He's like, oh, Bruce was holding a post. He was wearing a shirt. Yeah. He connected that to like, I think it was like a tour ad mat or something that had a writing on the wall and then like all the pieces fit and then here we have an album. Yeah, and that was cool because that's basically what happened in the story too. People went and just pieced together what it actually meant. So that was neat. And it's just a neat shirt. So I'm in the mind.

Iron Maiden fan club and you get like a magazine and a special shirt and all this stuff. Are you in it too? Yeah. So did you get that crazy wooden box set? Oh, you don't even like the new album that much, but did you get that? I did not. But I've had some success in the fan club. I actually got the first of the barrier when they played here in San Bernardino. So I was like, I centered it, did some giggles and ended up being first in the barrier. So yeah, I was on the barricade for that show in San Bernardino.

What tour was that in San Bernardino? That was a weird... I think it was still the second leg of the Book of Souls tour. Oh, okay. When you said San Bernardino, that's the infamous... They played San Bernardino on the egg throwing. Yeah, with Osfest. Osfest, yeah. That's why when you said that, I was like, whoa, I wonder who's at that show. Because you said you were down in the pit. You could imagine being down in the pit. You're trying to photograph... Throw an elbow at Sharon Osbourne for us. Right.

That day was crazy because I think that was one of the only shows they had. They were touring with Ghost. Ghost was the co-headline. But for that show, they had Camelot and they had Exodus open. So they had an extra two bands open for them. So it was all four, but it was like 105 degrees in Glen Helen Amphitheater in San Marino. It was hot as hell. That blows out there when it gets that hot.

I kind of don't like that venue for that reason. Yeah. Great shirt. Great shirt. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I really like it. I just didn't get it too long ago because they started sending out the merch for the album Sinjutsu. What are you drinking, Matt? Yeah, go ahead and move on to Matt. I started the night with Surly's Age of the Liathans. Nice. It is a stout with ruby chocolate, raspberry, lactose, and vanilla. They have described it as vast, rich, and deep.

It was good. I love raspberries, but I don't love raspberry in beer because I feel like it usually takes over things. And it was actually pretty mellow in that one. So I dug it. And I've since moved on to Dale's Pale Ale from Oscar Blues. Oh, wow. It's an American pale ale, and that is what it tastes like. And that is why I love it. I'm wearing an Ashen Horde. I'll move my mic. I got one of those. I've heard to you his, their single, Arcade Convictions.

You're going to help me with his name. Jonathan LaMantia? LaMantia, yep. LaMantia. The man from LaMantia. Yeah. That's pretty awesome because I'm going to see Trevor and his wife tomorrow. I was wondering. I saw he's in Honolulu. We already made plans. We're going to meet up with them and do a hike. We're going to come back and have some beers here and then we're going to go out to dinner. I'm pretty stoked. Of course, I've met Trevor at the

I never met his wife so

yeah he's from he's from LA too

yep he's from LA

yep

alright my turn so

while Will's setting up I'll do my beers and shirt

and he could literally just jump right in as if nothing

happened

so my first is from

this is Americanized I can't

my German is terrible it's Tuschere

Fest beer it's actually from

Germany I started light

and then

New England IPAs I like. It's kind of a cool cover. Ghost in the Machine from Parrish Brewing from Louisiana. Big fan of that. Jen loves it too. It's finally in Northern Virginia. And John, to your point, you made a comment when you checked it in saying it'll be in your neck of the woods any day now. I literally have one on the way as part of my shipment this month. So I'm looking forward to it. I think the first time I ever had it, well, I don't know if you were there at that one or not. The first time I had it was at Saver.

Because Will and I have been to Saver for different reasons, but we've both been there a lot of times together. And that's the first time I ever had it. I think Looch got it for us once, and that's it. It was hard to get. Now it's showing up, so that's kind of cool. And my shirt is Opus in Kata Vanina, their last album. So I always like that cover. I like Travis Smith stuff. So he's wearing that tonight. Right on.

And Will has managed to slip in the back door. Hello, Will. Ouch. You have such a poetic way of words. Hold on, I got to get my donut. Say hello. Hello, Senor Flores. It's a pleasure to meet you. Likewise, likewise. Have you used to Will? I like it already. That's actually just more about my weight than anything else.

So, Will, what are you drinking? What are you wearing? What are you wearing, Jake from State Farm? Khakis. No cargo shorts. I'm having a Flying Dog Truth because that's what I had in my fridge and my first beer of the day, which is a crying shame because it's almost 9 o'clock at night here. And I'm wearing my, depending upon how you pronounce it,

It's either a mortiferum or a mortiferum. Mortiferum. I say mortiferum. Yeah, of course. It's probably a spherum. Yeah. But I bought this t-shirt from them when they played at Atlas. They were awesome that night. They were so good. Super nice guys. I can't wait for the new album. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's pre-ordering out right now. Oh, I ordered on Vimeo immediately. Already got it.

Speaking of those guys, I've told the story about I'll tell it really quick is I forgot the name of the guy, but one of the main guys in Mortiforum, he's like, hey, man, we got to show up in Vermont and I got this beer, Hedy Topper. Do you want some? And I'm like, wait, just going to give me some Hedy Topper? He's like, yeah, yeah, dude. You know, I give him a case of beer, gives me like a four pack of Hedy Topper. I'm like, yeah, this is a good trade. Like, seriously. I got some Pliny the Elder. You want any of those? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hedy Topper's awesome.

Cool. Right on. Hi, George. I started off with Brimminghorn. Brimminghorn and Ashenhorn together. Yes, exactly. Brimminghorn. Never mind. Brimminghorn, Svald Alfar, Blackcurrant Mead. That one's good.

Album Art sell albums, but it also sells beer. I picked up True Respite's Vinyl because I was like, it's vinyl. That's fucking cool. It's a hazy double IPA. Sorry, well, but yeah, not bad. I'm used to your shitty taste in beer at this point. Hey, if I could get a West Coast IPA out here, you know, I would. It's called Flying Dog. It's literally five miles that way. Yes.

I know. Right. Yeah. But they make, they make shitty IPAs. So. No, they don't. They make a great IPA. I don't like them. Look at the clarity. Look at, look. I mean, I give you that. My hand behind, see my hand behind the beer. This is an amazing thing. Taste that matters. Yeah. I'm sure you guys are. I don't, I don't want to like hijack stuff because now I'm notorious because I'm always late or, um, Hey, at least you showed up. Jay, Jay seems to have been lost in a, uh, some sort of cataclysmic end of the world movie. He's like, fuck it.

I don't need electricity fuck all y'all um uh is it Louis or Luis I'm assuming it's Luis right yeah yeah so um where are you at I'm sorry I know you guys have gone through this but I just want to catch up on two things real quick LA LA okay all right so all right so do you have you clearly have power um uh yeah but I'm using natural light right now until it gets darker then we'll turn on the light but uh we're doing so um did you guys

We did the interview, that's it. Right, but you just mentioned it, that about how we're older, and Luis, you look much younger than us, and that's a compliment. Yeah. I'm wondering, did you guys talk about what you just said, George, is used to buy albums purely based on the album art? I mentioned it. Yeah, we talked for like two seconds. We did. By the way, I do that.

Even on Bandcamp, when I can listen to it, if the album cover sucks, I'm like, I'm not listening to that shit. Oh, I know. There's like so many. We know, Will. We know. Not to disparage people, but there's some people on Bandcamp that really aren't trying too hard. Or they just don't have the resources. In terms of cover work. A lot of it is the compliment to the artist. I mean, you make a fucking awesome album cover, and I'm going to definitely pay attention.

And, you know, and 30 years ago, I just would have bought it.

The band made it suck, but goddamn, that was a good album cover.

Yeah, but going back to that point, because we even talked about, like, how that applied to, like, if you're going to a record store, right? Like, Amoeba here in, like, LA. I mean, there's just so many freaking records on that shelf. I mean, you're going to pick up what looks good to you, but that is also applicable on Bandcamp, Spotify, pretty much any digital shelf. I mean, if it looks shitty, I mean, honestly, you're kind of turned off by it.

But yeah, which is unfortunate because there's some good albums that have terrible art. I mean, that was actually one of the questions I used to ask. And the first behind the cover features was I used to ask musicians like, well, what do you recall a time when an album cover kind of entranced you and maybe introduced you to a record that you perhaps wouldn't otherwise check out and actually had a very interesting one. And this, this happened to me too, where the art is actually way better than the music. And a lot of, and I forget who actually said this,

But this was, uh, this happened with Nazareth. They had amazing fun covers. Yeah. Drawn by, um, I forgot who it was, but they just had amazing coverage. But the music was just like, what the hell is this? Like, it was like the trap of the eighties. It was like, they would get good art and then just have terrible music. And you're like, ah, fooled again. And you, and you, and you consistently buy it. Cause you see the, you see the cover and it was like all these amazing covers and like you hear the music. And I was like, God damn, this is,

They got me again. Yep. Yep. Just like that. But I do find, interestingly enough, that, and maybe this is a total psychological thing that, especially now, like I'll go to new releases on Bandcamp, I'll scroll through and I'm like, okay, you may have a, like, your band name sucks. All right. I'm going to skip it. If your album art sucks, I'm really going to skip it. And it's not, I do think like if you're a good enough band, you're going to spend money on your album art.

And I tend to agree like, okay, you got cool album art, you got decent music, you got shitty album art, you guys suck. Like, I think there is a correlation. And maybe it's like, just, just my two cents. I mean, think about this. And I want to bring this up, because I have to bring up every episode. I was just down in Paris Island this week, 30, 30 years ago. And I've told this, this many, many times in this podcast, that's where I bought the black album. I really, I literally went to the,

The Marine Corps Exchange, where I bought that album 30 years ago. I was just down there. I was like, wow, this album art sucks. And then when you pick up the album, I'm like, wow, this album sucks. There you go. That's all the correlation you need. The black album. Album art sucks. Album sucks. There's only one problem with that, though. Well, you know, Spinal Tap beat them on the black album cover, and Spinal Tap's album's awesome. So I think it's just Spinal Tap at that point was a better band.

Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody hates the black album. I like it. Definitely hates it. I know two people who hate it. I mean, whatever you may think of it, it was a revolution in metal in terms of production for sure. So it's getting a lot of acclaim, at least around these last few weeks because of its anniversary. So that whole big reimagining box set thing, which I'm crazy of.

that they've been putting out too, and it's pretty interesting talking about what happened. It's like eight parts. I think there's five up now. So yeah, it's definitely worth your time, I think, if you want to go back. Because of course, when we were younger, that was such a huge album at the time. I need to check it out. The only time I took a limo to a show was to see them on the Black Album tour. That has only happened once. What did you say?

Luis,

what did you want to say?

I've only ever done that once.

And that was because an uncle of mine paid for it,

take a limo to the show.

And that was for a guns and roses.

Very recently.

Uh,

when they had that inaugural,

uh,

well,

they're,

when they came back and he did the whole stadium tour.

Well,

they're still doing actually.

They haven't stopped in like the last four years.

I'm going on Tuesday.

Yeah.

Well,

back,

back before Uber in Michigan,

drunk metal heads would get limos so that they could go to shows and get hammered and get

Here's a question just came up that I just thought of. Because you're so young, Luis, you're into metal, you're into older metal too. Do you ever get shit from your peers who probably aren't as into this music as you are? Not exactly. And part of that being because, well, it's funny because this tends to happen with a couple of the writers that used to write for me, you know,

First, when you're just kind of exchanging via email or via message or whatever, and some of the folks who actually contribute to the site, when they actually saw me in person, like at a show, they're like, what the hell, that's you? Like, this is like a, you know, someone that's older or like, yeah, man, I'm quite young. And, you know, it's funny. I had that experience with a guy named Mo who did a few things for the site. I know he's on break right now because he had a lot of other stuff going on. But I like,

I inadvertently met him because we went to Decibel

Magazine's pre-fest when they had their, I think this was 2018, in December.

We had, so we were in line to go into the show and like, you know, when you're in line, you just start talking to folks and, you know, you're here to see, you know, whatever your favorite release, whatever, you just start talking, shooting the shit.

And then, so yeah, I became friends with this guy and then this whole time we're talking, we go inside, you know, buys me a beer.

He asked me for my Twitter. I'm like, oh, well, you know, I run this thing called Heavy Sobret. I'm like, dude, what the hell? I write for that page. I'm like, what the hell? You're Mo? He works for you. Did you even know? He was like, yeah, dude. I'm like, Mo Metal Tracks from Twitter? He's like, yeah, this is my shit. Look at it. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm like, we just had this whole exchange. But yeah, it was funny. But yeah, I mean, growing up here in LA, I mean, obviously, you know, hip hop is such a big thing.

I was always metal through and through but it's funny because I had a period where

you know I mean I like all kinds of music right but you know during those like late teen years high

school years I had a period where I maybe didn't listen to metal as much and I was listening more to kind of what my peers were listening to at the time which was a good mixture of like you know like hip-hop rap and that sort of stuff so I kind of had that going on and then I think in obviously once I graduated and throughout

I was like let me reinvigorated passion and metal but I don't think there was ever really

I guess I never got shit on or like I guess told I mean there was obviously at least here in LA

they I mean rap and hip-hop is such a dominant that you know right form of music where like most folks listen to that sort of stuff so the rockers right they're all like a very particular secular group of folks in high school that you know for for the most part would wear like band shirts and you know right that's why

I was thinking like are you going out wearing your

your my dying bride shirt and people like

what's going on here you know it's the funny

thing is I even like I have this

I had this talk uh well with

my partner was uh she was

like I didn't even know you like this kind of shit when I first saw

you because I don't I don't dress the part I mean I

I wear like I have a lot of you know

band shirts and like for the most part I collect

a lot of shirts um you know from these older

eras of times where I wasn't even born

uh so she's like oh I thought you just

wore them because like you know it's for the aesthetic

Like a Kardashian? Like a Kardashian? I thought you were a poser, Louis. Who's the one who wore a morbid angel shirt? Was that Kardashian or Gaga? I think it was Jenner. I think it was Kylie Jenner. I think that's who wrote it. Wait, sorry. Is that Bruce Jenner? No, the daughter. I think Kourtney wore a cannibal corpse.

recent. Chris Barnes was talking shit about it. And they're saying it was because the guy from Blink-182 likes them. It's funny because that was the reason why the guy from Blink-182 likes them is because Bruno Mars likes them. And the reason why Bruno Mars likes them is because Fred Durst likes them. So, uh, why does Fred Durst look like Santa Claus now? Yeah. I saw that on the tour pictures. Yeah. It was like, where did that big ass bushy beard come from? Not that I give a shit, but I

I was just like wow. The same dude with a chocolate starfish and all that shit. It looks like Santa. Yeah but yeah it was a funny it was a funny thing because I normally don't I guess you can say uh dressed apart so to speak you know obviously you know uh coming from a Hispanic background and obviously in like in LA you know obviously that's a lot of uh a lot of black and brown folks um um you know rock particularly is very secular um and metal is very secular so I was

I was always kind of listening to everything. So I wouldn't necessarily, I guess, dress the part as a metalhead. Like sometimes I would wear band shirts, but like folks, oh, you know, maybe it's just the, I don't know. I got H&M or Forever 21 or something. I'm not bad. I actually listen to this thing. So they're like, well, you like all this screamo, you know, folks like screaming music. I'm like, yeah, it's cool. That's funny because metal is absolutely massive south of the border. It's huge in South America and Central America and Mexico. Yep.

Well, at least in LA high school. No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. For them to say that to you, it's. Yeah. What John is saying is in the Hispanic community. Yeah. It's huge. Like south of the United States. It's massive. Well, that was like we were touching on earlier. Like my introduction, my love for it came from my cousins and uncles who used to play in bands in Mexico and had an underground scene and they would burn CDs and give me shirts. I mean, it came from there. It didn't come from here. They would send me, you know, music. And before, you know, when Lime

and like all these different music downloading stuff like they would show me how to use it

and then like i they would burn me cds and like i was listening to children of bodem and like six

years old and like whatever and like it was all these crazy things i mean but they were the reason why

because of the strongness um you know the strong nature of the scene back in mexico but uh here in la

it wasn't as i guess prominent in the high schools that i went to if you want to know how that applies

Just look at how bands tour. They'll tour. They'll only come and play in South America and then they'll play Mexico. And then they'll come back later and play the U.S. and Canada. They actually break those two tours up. Yeah, it's interesting. If you watch, was it the Iron Maiden 4666? I was just thinking about that. And they said, hey, they figured out where is our most illegal downloads? Well, Latin America. So where do they go play? They go play in Latin America.

I used to go to Bogota, Colombia quite a bit and you would see show posters. I talked about it. I saw Sick of It All down in Bogota and it was like a massive show. So big. Yeah. Every time Maiden plays in Rio. Rush played in Rio and they played in front of 40 some thousand people. I should tell you something. Yeah. Well, Rock in Rio. 40,000 people were lost.

Here's the thing though, in the States, when you think of Hispanic culture, you don't think metal. You know what I mean? Even though it's so popular in Hispanic countries, it's crazy. For some reason, it doesn't translate over to the States, which is really bizarre. But metal's like that. I used to go to shows. Will knows this place. George knows it too. It's a place called Jack's. It used to be in Springfield. I used to go to shows there all the time. And there used to be this group of guys.

The most metal motherfuckers in there. They were by far the hardest core dudes there. Bullet belts, everything. I don't know. Jason Newstead would probably have disc damage just watching them because he had problems from headbanging. These guys would headbang so hard. Then the set would end. They'd go have a beer. And the next band would come out and they'd just go fucking insane. And I was like, I'm letting

these guys had bang for me tonight because i don't need to they're doing it is so it's there it's just when they tour i mean like for recently i know septic flesh just had like a concert tour album release and that was in mexico like the whole symphonic thing and it was like a sold-out show like crap ton of people and that's it but i think as as as i became more into heavy stavart and i started shooting i started going to craps in the shows i started that maybe it is a little stronger here in la but it but you have to

go seek it like if you go to actual metal shows here in la at least like the local shows

like you do see a lot you see a lot of hispanic folks um and i know like there's a lot of local

promoters here who who just there's i mean la prior to the pandemic had a damn show every weekend like

every day there's a show somewhere in la yeah yeah and if it wasn't like a major touring band like

that was coming by there was like a whole other show at like a smaller venue like it was just a lot and

And if you go to these places, I mean, you see a lot of Hispanic folks and which is which is really cool to see. And you also have like all these new like bands that pull out from like indigenous, all these indigenous bands that are pulling like like Blue Hummingbird on the left. Like, I don't know if you guys have heard of them, but they're like this underground band who had some pretty cool releases who do kind of like this tribal chanting and like very cool, like Native American, like very indigenous, like kind of like, I guess, soundscapes and like elements.

that they incorporate into their death metal and it's just amazing and when and even in their like stage persona they have like full attire i mean the face paint they have like the full like regalia they have the full and these are like local dive bar shows like you know for like maybe 150 people max if that and and it's crazy to see i think you have i mean it's here in la i think you just have to go seek it like you have to actively go to shows to see it what about the the stuff what is that what is that like twilight circle the is that is that the group of bands

Is that a cult? I think so, yeah. Out there in LA that... Something like that, yeah. They're like just... Yeah, I mean, I think it's... That's awesome, really. That's how it is for metal everywhere. That's some killer black metal shit that they're doing out there. To me, all it is, Marcus, I need to get back to what you were saying just real quick. I think it's just this perception, like, wow, they're black or Hispanic or they're Asian. They should... That's bullshit. Everybody knows. And the metal scene knows that, but it's just this perception. And it's a perception within those groups, too. For the mainstream, they think that Hispanics,

and black they're always into rap or hip-hop or r&b but it ends up you find it you see that perception within specific groups too and it's like what that's insane so but whatever uh well before we do the the top five metal album covers i was just going to ask you louise are you going to go to the decimal metal and beer festival uh yeah that's the plan uh you know fun fact before the pandemic hit i know uh who was it

I think it was George who actually talked about beer labels as serving as having the same effect as covers. So I was actually going to run, I was working with the team at Decibel to run a subsequent set of features leading up to Decibel Metal and Beer Fest in Philly, where we were highlighting the artwork on each of their beer cans. Oh, wow. Nice. Up at the festival, but then, you know, COVID hit and that was that. Shitstorm, yeah. So who knows? I mean, we might do that for this year's.

We're all gonna be there, so we'd love to have a one in LA. Oh, no, we're gonna be in Philly next week. Oh, the Philly. Oh, because I know there's one here in LA. I don't think I'll be the one in Philly, but I'll be the one in LA. Well, not with that attitude. I was like, yeah, I was, as far as like international shows, a few that I was gonna travel for was at Merlin Death Fest. I was gonna go to that one. Next year's looks really good. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. So I might

be out there for that one. I know the Philly edition of Melon Beer Fest is always really good. That one's very good. But yeah, so beer cans, amazing. Plus cheesesteaks. That too. Speaking of beer cans and art, just popped up in my traditional zombie dust for every episode. I need to get some more of that. Three Floyds, that's right. They're the ones who do the pig destroyer. Oh yeah.

the cool can art. Yeah. We've had, we've had a few of those. Three Floyds is my favorite. So I lived in Chicago for 20 years before I moved to Hawaii, but I'm moving back though. So yeah. My first decibel, Dylan beer fest was the one where, um, trypticon played the Celtic frost tribute. Um, well, two years ago, I believe. Yeah. We were there. We were there. No, no, that was the LA one. We got the con show. He got, right. You went to the LA.

Yeah, it was testament headline the first night, I believe. Yeah, it was testament headline the first night and then Celtic Frost. Well, trypticon headline the second night. Yeah, I was at I was at those. Yeah, because our set was a mix of trypticon and Celtic Frost. That's right, man. We need more trypticon. Well, we just talked to Hannes Grossman on the last cast. Yeah, I saw that's what we did. Yeah, yeah. More trypticon coming. Yeah, we just need a trypticon album. Yeah, the live thing was cool. I'd like a new album.

Well, we saw them, like, what? It was the day after they did the live album? No, two days. Two days? Yeah, because they played, and I think they flew out the next day or something like that. I'm blanking on the fest they were at. It wasn't Hellfest. It was... Roadburn. Roadburn, thank you. Roadburn commissioned them to finish Requiem, I think is what it was. I bought that one on vinyl. It's amazing. Oh, yes. Yeah.

I love it. I just played it not too long ago. I like watching it, actually. Because you... Marc Gason likes to watch. I do. I like the performance. I love the vinyl, but I like to watch it. I like that we're talking so much Trypticon and Celtic Frost and Jay's not here. I keep texting him that going, dude, you're missing all the shit you want to talk about. Well, it's his own fault. He knows we cast this. Please come back, Jay. Please come back. That was a good one. I had the... I think Daniel Valiani, the cover for that one, I was like, oh,

I had multiple covers too. Cause if you got the vinyl, like the book version that I got, it had a different color than the cover than the regular version, which was cool. The LA one, that was J that was where Jay actually ran into Tom, like at the hotel and got to talk to him. Oh yeah. Right. Right. Well, should we do a top five metal album covers church? Let's do it.

So, in case you are not aware, what we do here is we have a top five list that we make.

And we start with our number five and work our way up to our number one. And we each go round robin. We all do our number fives and then we do our number fours and so on and so forth. And as you've learned as the guest, you get to go first. All right. So it is sequential. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And just so people know, we're doing top five metal album covers of 2021 so far. And this can include any covers from albums that have been released already or covers for upcoming 2021 albums.

that have the art publicly released already but might not be out. So go ahead, Luis. You're number five. That's a good one. So there was a cover that I thought was going to come out this year, but then the band told me it was going to come out in January or February, I believe next year. We'll be unveiling it, which is really cool, so I can't talk about that one yet. So I was going to say that one, but then they're like, oh, so it got pushed to January because of all the vinyl

No Plant Delays That Are Going On But I Would Say Number Five For Me At Least Right Now Would Be Dan Seagrave's Work On Rivers Of Nile The Work Oh Yes I Did It Behind The Cover On Feature On That One So If You Want To Check It Out On The Site That One's Very Different To Me As Far As What Seagrave Normally Does It's Very Different As Like It Looks Like I Saw It I'm Like The Seagrave Like He Has Like The Signature Seagrave Like Sort Of Landscape Like

kind of architectural style, but it was just different. I mean, there was no real, like if you saw it, you wouldn't think it's like a death metal or even like death metal leaning kind of cover. It looks very different. And then just seeing how that evolved from sketch to stage was just kind of breathtaking. And then it's very vibrant. I know they're using it on tour right now. They're using it on their merch. They're using it on all these sorts of things. I mean, it's quite fascinating. I'd say that's my top five, well, my number five.

That's a good one. Number four. You just do number five. Yeah, we all do five and then we go around. Also, Luis, do you have a pit bull? Yeah, I don't know. Fuck yeah. I'm like walking up and down here. Is it a boy or a girl? It's a boy. He's up. Get him on here. Four and a half. Get him on here. Get him on here. Matt's been drinking. I love it. It's the Metal Pets podcast. I'll sneak him up on here. He's trying to be lazy now. He's been up and down walking through my legs here and then now he wants to. Nice.

I have a little bit of a pit bull mix. You can probably hear her snoring off next to me. Well, if you hear the podcast and you heard some snoring during the first part of my interview, then you would have heard them. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because that's usually me. But not yet, Will. Not yet. You're good. You're looking good. You're good. All right, Markisan your number five. My number five is Monolette.

Lord, I'm staying home. Uh, the EP cover by Michael Hutter. Uh, this is one of the craziest and most detailed covers I've ever seen. So it takes place in a dark medieval world where a dwindling population of demons from the old world has attempted to coexist with the human residents of a castle town. That decision, however, turns out to be a colossal mistake because the people there would rather humiliate the demons,

chase them, stab them with spears. Some of them have even decided to take it a step further just to see what happens when they pull out a demon's tongue out of its head or light a pair of hell breasts on fire or contemplate shoving a nail up the rectum of a giant gnated ostrich devil. And I should add that in this horrid world, flashing and public indecency is completely optional when clowning your demon neighbors. That is a very detailed album cover.

Also makes me say allegedly when you say ostrich. Can confirm. Can confirm. All right. Matt, I always hate to say this, but can you follow Markzahn? I can. And so what I've done this year in order to follow him, I can't describe things, but what I can do is show them in my background. And so this is it. So.

I believe it's called the Tritonus Bell. The artist is

West Bend Scooter. I looked at it and I was like, man, why do I love this so much?

Well, this is the t-shirt that we kind of collectively designed for

the 2020 version of the Decibel Metal and Beer Fest.

And I was like, Philly, metal, it's got to be like the Liberty Bell and a skull.

I was like, oh man, like there's a little bit of cheese to it, but it's got a little bit of He-Man in there. Exactly. So funny. You say that because when I look at this dude, I'm like, that's that's Skeletor. Yeah, totally. So hood menace, tritonous belt. Number five. Did you see her behind the cover on that one? Yes, I absolutely did. Absolutely. Yeah. Another good feature. Yes. From heaviest of art. Well, when I read that, I was like, okay, cool. I've, I've,

I'm on the right path here. Cool. John. All right. My number five. This album came out earlier in the year. I guess I'm the only person to listen to it, but I think we've all at some point listened to one of the bands. My pick is, and I actually brought some props. Nice, John. So it's Yari Lindholm, if I say his name correctly, in the album's trajectories. If you don't know who that is,

He's the main guy from Enshine and X Genesis. And the artist, I'm going to get this wrong, but I believe it's Lucas Jazics. Anyway, I'm a very big fan. I have been since I've been a kid of the Sun and Moon astrology artwork that you see all the time. I don't know why. It's just stuck with me since I was a kid. I saw this album cover and I was like, that's what drew me in. And then I realized who it was. I was like, oh, I like Enshine.

I like X Genesis. And so I like the album. It's an instrumental kind of dark atmospheric metal. No specific style, really. It's not like the melodic death that they does in InShine or any of the death doom from X Genesis. But just got hooked on the cover. I like the sun moon thing image. And that's my number five. And that's a holdover from my original top five we would have done at the mid-year.

Mm-hmm. Nice. Will? I'm going to ask for a mea culpa, some Catholic forgiveness on this one, just because I am the one who's always giving you guys shit because you guys never, not you guys, not all of you, mostly George, does not, and just sounds really fucked up with Luis on, but like, I didn't think I was going to be on tonight, and so I did not catch all of the artist names.

This is all about the artist. So, just forgive me. Luis may know what they are though. So, we'll see. I might. Yeah, yeah. I hope so. I did mine. Pressure. No, no, no. Name that artist, Luis. I had like a general list and then anyway. So, my number five. It's true though. You weren't even supposed to be on this cast. So, it's a treat to have you here, Will. Well, yeah. Some people say that. Yes.

So anyway, my number five is Ashen. It's a band from Perth, Australia. I talked about these guys earlier because they have an EP out that I really like. The EP is called Godless Oath. And their cover art is just really fucking amazing. It's like, think of talking about He-Man, Castle Grayskull. Everything is kind of like the castle itself and the stairs and everything is just like this grayish.

It's just like lava erupting around the back of it with it coming down the stairs that lead up to the castle but everything around it is just surrounded by like dead spines and skulls like it's it kind of reminds me of something Dan Seagrave would do like it's it's and maybe it is him I don't know it's just it's really fucking cool. Funny enough I know who did it it's uh it's Remedy Art Design.

And I say, and I know this, because he was in the run, that exact same cover was in the running to make our monthly column. Oh, really? I knew who that was. I was like, that's Remedy Art Design. Very cool dude. We have interaction with us. Where are they from? The band or the artist, I think. No, the band is from Perth, Australia, or Ashen. Where is the artist from? I believe he's Greek. Yeah, and his Giannis, I forgot his last name, but yeah,

It's a remedy our design if you want to follow them.

Very, very good to do with you.

See, I told you that Luis would know.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Luis.

I did not have time for it.

Making up for Will's shortcomings.

You know, you got a whole other round to look up your next one.

Just saying.

Yeah.

Very well.

Hey, Will's here.

Let's just let him give his list.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's not push his part, right?

I'm not one to be judging on this one.

I'm not giving him.

I'll judge.

I will judge.

I am always.

He's here.

Whenever we're doing art covers,

I'm always on point. I look up to extreme lengths that time today. You're good. You're good. Extreme lengths are your thing. That's true. All right. My number five is, and I'm going to try and, after I announce it, I'm going to try and take a page from Matt's book. We'll see if this works. Matt is a designer, so. Yeah. Well, I don't know if the picture's saved.

I don't recognize this file format so when I go to open it it may be like fuck you so but anyway my number five is Stonehealer's Conquistador which was done by Leo Ullfelder and Dave Kaminsky of Stonehealer who was that is not what I tried to put up yeah apparently that isn't

going to work.

The big gas storm behind George.

Okay, we got to just get rid of that.

That's accurate. That's 100% accurate, John. Holy shit.

All right.

It's J a decibel.

You're just going to have to put up with my shitty interpretations.

It's all good.

So, yeah, this was the only holdover from my list.

I actually lost my mid-year list because Apple, when you open a document and make changes to it, it auto-saves, even though you meant to save it as a different copy of the file. And I lost all my mid-year choices. But I know this was one, and it's the only one from mid-year. And it's, as I was going to say, Dave described it much better than I ever will. But the Conquistador on the cover, he's like this guy, he's like pale, dead flesh looking, and his head is sort of turning.

Turning into smoke and flowing away. And his chest is opened up and there's like a sunflower in there. And it's all very personal and cathartic for Dave. So that's all I'm going to say about that. Yeah. I mean, from doing the interview, that that cover art was very personal to him. It really captured what he was trying to do on the album musically. So that great pick, George. Thank you. All right. Back to Luis for number four. To me for number four.

I'm going to say Obsession, Rod of Ages. And this one is one I probably haven't seen a lot of folks praise yet. I think this releases on Transcending Obscurity, if I'm not mistaken. I don't even think it's out yet. I think it's probably out in November. But I saw this cover last year, actually. So the cover's been done for quite a long time. I mean, it was done last year. So it was going to make our year-end list for 2020.

But then the release isn't coming out until November of this year. So a whole huge push. But this one was done by Adam Burke, who obviously is so big in metal. I love Adam Burke. That dude's work is like on every other release you see a week. I own two of his original paintings, actually. Oh, there you go. Yeah, he's amazing. I mean, and we had him on the behind the covers. So very proud of that one. So this is a very interesting, it's different to his work. I mean, his works are always very atmospheric and they paint like very cool landscapes.

Like, even from the skies to the actual foliage you see on the floor to the trees, I mean, it's very detailed, but this one's different. It puts, if you're not, if you want to look it up, actually, for the folks listening, I mean, there's like two crows sitting on top of a branch while this, like a dead couple, or at least they have skulls as heads are picking at a dead deer who has already started to decompose. And then there's like, kind of like sunset skies in the background.

You can't tell it's fall, but it's very weird. So there's like a decomposing deer on the floor who's like kind of hollow. And then it's being picked at by like a dead couple while crows look overhead. So it's definitely some symbolism there, but it's very cool. Very, very Adam Burke-ish detailed and interesting. So this one's out in November if you want to check that one out. Very cool cover. Sounds awesome. He's such a good artist. Love that guy. Obviously since I bought his paintings.

Mark us on. Oh, I'm next. That's me. Uh, my number four is, uh, Traumatomy, uh, Extirpation Paradigms. Um, this is a brutal slam death band that I actually really like because they have a lot of nuance in their, their slam death. Uh, but the cover art is by Dimorph Art and, uh, it's an image of these gelatinous alien lava tech spores that have crash landed into New York City.

Infecting the entire metropolis. Inside their wreckage hole, the spores burst apart and these spiny tentacles whip out, latching on to the bodies of the dead and reanimating their heads with some kind of fire pus infection. I'm guessing they want to soak up enough bio brain energy to form a devastating invasion beast who I shall preemptively call Golobulacticon. As one would.

Marcus, I just want to give you a thank you for the shout out and the plug for my glory hole. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome. All right, Matt, what do you got? Let me grab a new one here. So one thing that we did not talk about,

but I don't remember is like how well does the album art match the music yep and this is Crypts of Despair the album is called All I Swallowed the art the artist is Nestor Avalos to me and so basically you have like a pile of skulls and like a another skeleton and some sides Luke approves with some like a really nice kind of I believe it's a reddish kind of glow around it with black I feel like this

cover encapsulates this album. This album is like dirty,

dirty Lithuanian death. And I feel like that is what this is.

Unfortunately, the listeners cannot see this,

but they can see it on web, google.com. Yeah. I mean, it's just,

to me, it's beautiful. You know,

they have that kind of uppercase and their serif text mentioned the album.

Right on. Yeah. I mean,

I can't say a whole lot more, you know, because I'm not Markisan exactly. None of us are. I mean, I like that cover a lot. That was definitely a one. It's funny because it's one under consideration. I mean, clearly there's a lot of great covers. Yeah. It's actually hard to narrow down to five, you know, so that is a great one. But in my top five, I would say everybody does a great job of communicating the music with the cover, but this is probably the best example of that. And Edger's a very cool guy too. Awesome.

All right, my turn. So my number four was 40 Years in the Making. This album cover originated on an EP. People can't see this, but this was the neophyte with the sword, the samurai sword that ended up becoming Zujutsu. That's my number four.

Really?

40 years in the coming. Yes. I love this cover. I know it's divided amongst fans. I've heard some fans say they love it and some fans say, what, they're too cheap. They can't get something but a black background. Actually, it's a green background. Mine's black. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's black. Okay. And huge. Black and huge. Black and huge. I love this album cover. I love the idea.

I also am a big fan of the artist whose name is Mark Wilkinson who people might know from you know a few Judas Priest album covers like Painkiller and Ram It Down and a few other new ones he's also done a few Maiden covers but I'm a super fan of this guy because we talked about this earlier besides metal prog covers are awesome and he did a ton of prog covers for the band Marillion and their lead singer when he left Fish

Nice. I have. I love Marillion. The Assassin. I got him to sign Lithograph. This is my favorite album cover of all time. Oh my gosh. That's amazing, John. Yeah. I'm a huge Marillion fan and I met him at Nierfest, a prog thing. You know, us prog nerds are hanging out. Nerds. He's done some amazing covers for Marillion before he moved on to work with Fish and then he's done Metal.

But if you don't know Mark Wilkinson, he's an older guy. He's been around a long time. He's 68 now. I think he's got some amazing stuff. So that's my number four. Thanks for showing us that, John. That's pretty cool. Yeah. He's got another one that's kind of fucked up. Can you guys see this? Oh, yeah. He knows you know. This guy's ripping a mask off his face. It's kind of fucked up. But there's just tons of covers because Marillion was a band in the 80s that just released single.

EPs, live albums, albums. They had so much stuff that came out. So they were kind of like Maiden a little bit. So he was kind of the prog version of all the Maiden albums. He was everything, Maiden, tons of singles, EPs, live albums. I mean, by the time they had their fifth album, they probably had like 40 different releases at that point, you know, and Eddie was just everywhere. So on the prog side, it was all this Jester stuff from Mark Wilkinson. So, yeah, I would just say that I did find it interesting that I've done some psychoanalysis,

of myself, scary place to go, by the way. And, uh, you think you got problems? Yeah. Fuck you. Um, that, uh, I find that the Iron Maiden albums with the black backgrounds are the ones I like the least. And I don't know if that's a psychosomatic thing, but, um, matter of life and death did not like book of souls did not like, Oh, Luis loves matter of life and death. Um, what are you doing? We talked about those, uh, latest records. I do.

I do like Senjitsu a lot more than Book of Souls and Matter of Life and Death, but I don't know. It could have benefited from a little bit more brightness. I think that's the point of it being black, though. At least my interpretation is that you're going to get fucking laser tagged with that sword in a second, and all you're going to see is blackness. Yeah. Like the end of The Sopranos.

I've seen some people actually redo the cover to give it a background too because they just felt like there wasn't enough going on in it. Like in a Zoom meeting? Put it up there and then never mind. No, no, like graphic designers. I know I'm kidding. Somebody got real bitchy about the cover and decided to do a different version. I wonder who that was. Yeah. So it was Mateo that did it, not Matt?

I don't have a four hole just a one and a two by the way

what?

sure

it's your choice well

yeah you know there's a joke

there's two reasons that I don't drink out of the toilet

number one and number two

I like how Luis is just ascending into the darkness

that's the love of this podcast

he's eventually just not going to be there anymore

on behalf of his face

he'll be a black screen before you know it

so just

he's just going to turn into like a

The mic is off. What happened? Where did he go? I assume this has descended into the darkness after I showed up. Yeah. And if it hasn't, I'm just pointing you guys. Yeah. Trying to make you proud, Marcus. Are you going to do your pick or are you just going to fucking say bullshit? I just may say bullshit just to piss you off for a while. Pretty easy. I'm going to be a free agent at this point. Hey, man, you're just delaying your bedtime because you're old. Yeah. Okay. My number

is the band 1914.

And their album cover, Where Fear and Weapons Meet.

It is on pre-order right now.

What would I...

Just saw that the other day.

Yeah.

As a military guy, I do like the picture that they paint, so to speak, of the Grin Reaper.

So you got a whole bunch of guys in the World War...

1914 is a band that just basically talks about 19 uh world war one and you have a bunch of soldiers that i'm assuming maybe british or allied in the trench and then they are you know there's a guy like dying and he's reaching up and then the grim reaper holding his scythe is just like like has his finger out like crooked finger out and he's just like like he's about to touch this guy like i'm going

to save you like the grim reaper is saving you from this fucking hell these guys the gas masks on i mean like yeah

world war one was kind of hell yeah they used to call it shell shock it's really ptsd like on a like

magnified by a million percent anyway it was a fucking cool album cover i don't know i i literally i've

Spent when you guys said like hey asshole you should go look it up while we're like sorry I tried I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it so I don't know that one yet actually I don't think they tagged the artist when they did not like if you look on band camp or their their actual yeah they may be on yeah they may be on nuclear blast uh I think they're on nuclear blast no there's nothing no mention whatsoever

about the artist.

Interesting.

All right.

My number four is a Seagrave-esque memoriam style cover, which is what made it stick out to me because I was like, hey, it looks like a memoriam cover.

And it is Wizard Throne and Hypercube Necro Dimensions by Dan Goldsworthy.

And like I said, this is sort of memoriam-esque. There's a lot of pointy landscape. And in the middle of the screen, there's a particularly pointy landscape with a giant hollow cube floating over top of it. And in the foreground, there are a bunch of dudes with staves that are apparently waving them in the air going, hey, we're making this thing float or opening in necro dimension, who knows.

And yeah,

that was my best mark is on.

I know it wasn't that good,

but it's mine.

Well,

have you listened to the album?

It's like,

I feel like you've,

it's like,

I feel like you've all upped your games here for cover from the last time we did this.

So well done.

Musically,

it's very ball sag off.

But yeah,

it's pretty cool car.

Pretty cool cover.

There's like planets and stars and stuff in the background.

So happy trees.

All right, number three. Number three. This one, probably, it's going to be number one for a lot of people. Well, across the metal world, it's Halloween's self-titled from this year, Liron Contour. I know a lot of folks were fond. I mean, the moment they announced the album with that damn cover, it was like, it's crazy. So I'd shared like a million times. I know that was probably one of Liron's like most,

I know he had a whole release I mean he even emailed me and like told me like hey man like we got prints and that's crazy like we'll share it on the site but yeah yeah it was just I mean and even then that that's one of those like we mentioned earlier that I mean you see the front cover yes breathtaking but it's a full gatefold painting that you have to either buy a print for or a vinyl or a CD for to fully experience it right I mean it's a it's a layer on at its best I mean it's like that kind of that Baroque style it's a lot of

little neat nods to, you know, Halloween as a band and really kind of their symbolism across the last few decades. I mean, this is vibrant. It's amazing. It's breathtaking. I mean, once they, if they ever, you know, tour in support of that and do all that stuff, it'd be really cool to see them expand upon that. And it was some, some sort of stage show of that sort, utilizing that artwork for sure. But that's, that's a really good one. So that's my number three. Nice, nice, nice. I have an Elrond contour cover on my list and it's not that one.

So, the guy's so good. He's had a funny. Yeah. My number three, and I know this was covered on heaviest of art, it is Neptunian maximalism solar drone ceremony cover art by Hervé Scott Flament. And it's from a painting he did in 2017 called Sacrifices. So unlike my number five cover, nudity is not obvious.

in this masterpiece. Here, it is required. Sweet. Because to properly worship their HR-geager-esque hell-cracking gods, this tribe of raven-haired witches must strip and sacrifice their sisters each month at their local YMCA pool, which is conveniently located near the on-ramp to the underworld. Underaudio.com. Underwateraudio.com. I'm getting there, dude.

While these savagely religious ladies have clearly benefited from the fitness center at this location, it's also clear that their squid deity very much enjoys his membership. He can get in some quality laps at the pool whenever he wants while listening to UnderwaterAudio.com. And the snack machine is always full. That's a good one. That's a running joke about UnderwaterAudio.com. Yeah, our friend Jay is not here. He likes to swim and listen to

All right, Matty. Here we go. So full disclosure, I don't know if I've actually listened to this album, but I know I saw it early on in the year. And what struck me the most is there was a time in my life where I was trying to get from Germany to Copenhagen, actually to get back to the United States. And so our train stopped in Cologne and we had to somehow find a way to get to Copenhagen.

And long story short, it was my buddy Eric, who is a friend of the podcast, and my cousin Aaron. We walk off this train. We need to get trains to Copenhagen, and my cousin just stops dead in his tracks. He cannot stop staring. It was this gigantic Gothic cathedral. It had basically everything you would dream of for what you would see on an album cover. That is it behind me. And you also have the clergy, who are skulls, and you have this blood-red overlay.

The band is Disaster. The album is called Churches Without Saints. The artist is Marcos Miller. This is my number three. Nice. Pretty cool, Matt. Yeah, you know, I was in Norway. I've told the story, I'm sure, but in Trondheim, and there's a cathedral there, and my brother-in-law, who's Norwegian, was taking us around Trondheim, and he took us, and he's like, hey, this is a giant cathedral here, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I didn't find out until years later that that's actually the one on the cover of Day Mysteries Dom Satanus that they wanted to blow up. I was like, no shit. Anyway. That's history. History. Right there. Yeah. All right, John. I'm going to conjure a little motley crew here for this one, but you'll see where I'm going. I'm just going to say skulls, skulls,

Skulls. Where else can you get a skull man ringing a skull bell that's producing skull spirits? Hooded Menace? Hooded Menace. Skull squared. Skulls. Skull cubed. Skull cubed. Come on, get it right. You're right, sorry. Yeah, I love that album cover, and I love the evolution of their character from, as we've mentioned, featured on the site that we've been talking about tonight.

What's that called again? Heaviest art. I was making a joke. It's not that I forgot. I was joking. Because you were like, you just didn't say it anyway. And then somebody follows up. It's kind of like Jay's Underwater Audio.com and Scott Travis's and Judas Priest. But I loved the feature and I loved how they talked about how that character has kind of developed with different artists over the, what, I guess six albums now. So five or six.

So I love this album cover. But as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, that's going to make my list. Just because even if it was just like a regular dude ringing a skull bell, I'd be like, that's pretty fucking cool. But it's a skull man ringing a skull bell. And I love the colors. You don't see purple that much. Outside of Minnesota. It's striking that way, for sure. But we talked about the color palette early on, and that's what caught my attention. It wasn't just because it's skulls.

But I like that it's not a traditional color that you would see on an album cover. Usually it's red or some kind of bright blood. Or skull colored. Yeah, skull colored. Or it's the black and white pen work. Or pencil work. And that's our first repeat, right? Yes. Nice. Bring on the skulls. Doing skull things with skulls. And the Vikings. Yeah. Will. Get out your dead.

My number three. We're on number three. Yep. This would be the cover for Alchemy of Flesh and their album Aegis Abominations. The artwork, I do have this one because it was listed on Bandcamp by Mike Browning. And it is a kind of Cthulhu sort of meets. God, you remember Total, is it Total Recall?

where Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to Mars. Is that right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. So like the little weird guy with the mouth and everything, but, um, and he's, he's hovering over a lake of lava. And, um, what I like about this album cover is there is so much attention to detail that you, I actually had a look closely. Like this actually looks like some sort of weird fucked up photograph of, uh, something that

It's just like yeah, it's it's no it is it is so detailed that not the album cover not his book. Oh, it's detailed. It is it is just very, very detailed where I am literally looking at this thinking that somebody photoshop some part of this like some sort of like decaying tortoiseshell.

on top of like Markisan face with george's mouth and like just like

yeah it's it's it's awesome it really is i've never seen john react like that that was the

funniest thing i've ever seen i can't tell what he's what he said this decaying tortoise shell like are you

talking about the picture of george's ass still sorry i had i had a turn i had a click off zoom to go look

at the photos, so I have no idea how you guys are reacting. All right. Well, I think you've made your point. I do love your ass, by the way, George. Next week, you can have some of that. I'll be in the same place. I mean, were you describing an album cover or a human centipede? I'm not really sure. Also, next week.

And next, George. Definitely check out. When you have to click the user agreement for iTunes, definitely check it out. Right. Which is a sub-joke for South Park where the human centipede. Right, right, right. My number three is a very colorful album cover, which almost alone gets it on here. But

Imagine if you will, to take a Marc-a-san sort of intro to it. Imagine if you will, the Empire Strikes Back, and you're in the floating cloud city of Bespin, and yet the world around you is emanating from the head of a giant fucking bird. And then you have Volkonis' Odyssey.

I know it's a good cover. By

Kiri

Buerling? I don't know how to say that.

But Fury Buerling?

Kiri? I think it's Kiri.

Kiri? Okay.

Buerling?

Buerling, I think, yeah.

I mean, how can you see this and not be just

entranced by this cover?

I mean, it's a great one. You never see yellow

like that. Yeah, exactly.

The only time you see yellow like that is J at Maryland Death Fest. Tiamat. That's true. Wild Honey. Is that yellow or orange? No, it's... Close enough. It's orange, I think. Fine, whatever. Yellowish orange. Well, that's fate's warning. Which one? That's orange also. Is it orange or yellow? Disconnected? Hmm. Hmm. Get back to me. I gotta get back to you.

Sorry, John. I'm too tired to go look. I'm too drunk to understand what I'm doing. All right. Well, let's move to number two then. Indeed. That's a good pick, George. I like that one. Thank you. Yeah, that's a good one. That one made our monthly column. Actually, I think it was like February. Oh, nice. I expected to hear more of that one, but maybe not. Well, we got picks still. I mean, come on. I know. I know. Don't shit the bed just yet.

had the great honor of unveiling exclusively for the first time.

And that was Hortum Rife's Winds of Wrath, which is coming out on Territour Possessions.

This one was done by Jose Gabriel Alegria Sabogal, who is just a fucking God tier artist who's very like, as you can say, like religious or like when you think of mosaics like in church and like all these.

Like, kind of crazy artwork with, like, demons coming out and, like, haunting. But this is literally the dude who is a very intricately detailed guy. Yeah, so Hortum Rife, Winds of Wrath is definitely my number two. I can, without spoiling too much, I know, like I mentioned, we have our year-end list coming out. This is for sure in the top ten. I mean, I have over, like, a hundred covers right now considered for the top 30 that I have to come down, but this is for sure in the top ten.

It's just if you want to look at the

full gatefold painting

there's a full gatefold for the outer cover

and then there's a full artwork for the inner cover

of the record

So there's two

That's nice

There's two artwork pieces

and there's sigils

There's more additional artwork in the actual booklet of it

but the actual outer cover

is basically

it's just breathtaking

and it's really good

So if you like good black metal

and if you like really cool art

that's a good one

That is really cool

Yeah, it's awesome. Wow. I knew you were going to bring some heavy hitters from Heaviest of Art. Good job. And I think that one's exclusive as of now to the site. I'm looking at the Bandcamp now, and they don't even have it on their Bandcamp. They don't have it on their Facebook, I believe. If you want to look at it for the first time or at any time, go to Heaviest of Art. It's up there. Sweet. Yeah, I googled the band and album title and then hit images, and you are first.

in line. There it is. So, John, I wasn't thinking of Fate's Warning. I was thinking of Merciful Fate, Melissa, because she has that yellow t-shirt. That's what I was thinking. Yes. Wrong Fate. It was a fate. Yeah, yeah, I was close. So, my number two is by Alaron Contour, Luis, and it is Craven Idol Forked Tongues. Good one. This is my number two because there's a

Hydra Dragon swirling out of an erupting volcano about to fight a bearded barbarian horse lord god in the fucking sky. And before I saw this cover, a cover never made me jealous, but I am definitely envious of the lucky spectators on this one because they somehow managed to score VIP Magma Row seats to this epic battle of the ages. And it's just a phenomenal cover. That is pretty badass.

It's a good one. I mean, yeah, Liron has so many to choose from, but yeah, I think Craven Idols is really good. Yeah, it's strong. Amazing. Matt? Okie doke. My number two, I would say epitomizes every cover that I saw for a movie in the video store as a kid that my parents would not let me rent. The band is Fulci. The album is Exhumed.

The Artwork is by Solo Michello. I mean, you have it all there. I mean, you have basically like hooded figures. You have crips in the graveyard. You have a screaming woman. Half-naked woman. Half-naked woman screaming. I mean, it just feels like a 70s horror film captured on a square. I love it. Yeah. And it's a cool album, too. Yeah. It's okay. The album's always cool. Whatever. I like it.

Arrivederci.

All right.

John.

Nice.

All right.

So my number two,

there seems to be some debate on how to pronounce this band's name.

Some people pronounce it Divni and other people pronounce it Dune.

Only Jay pronounce it Divni.

It's spelled Divni,

but I believe it's pronounced Dune.

And that is,

Edeman Anka is the album artist.

I believe it is Raald van Hosteren.

If I say it correctly.

I love art deco.

I don't know why.

I just seem to gravitate towards it.

I think it's kind of an interesting concept considering it's what 80 or 90 years old now.

But I like the idea that the cover's got some art deco themes to it.

And it's another one of those color palettes you don't normally see,

which is kind of a gold, not brown, but just highlighted with the gold kind of yellow on there. And it's got the traditional woman with the wings coming from her head, if I remember correctly, because I don't have it up right now. It's another one where the gatefold version of it is much more impressive. And you could see that where, Marcason? What's that? Where can you see that full gatefold? What site? Heaviestofheart.com?

That's correct, yes. Yeah, actually, I saw that today. I was like, oh, awesome. They have the full picture. Yeah, it's gorgeous. The full, I mean, the regular cover is great, but to see the wings spread out is really impressive. There's a full gatefold painting. I try to include the full gatefold. Yeah, there is. It gives it more depth when you do that, and that's why I love that you guys put that up there. Yeah. Thank you, yeah. Good choice, John. I really like that cover, too. Another one that was on my short list. Tiffany.

Well.

Okay.

My number

is two.

Yeah.

This is a like,

I have to admit this may be my number one,

except there I will caveat it with

there was some continuity issues that I was

hoping for and they may be there,

but I didn't have enough time to look for them.

It's chemists album,

Deceiver. You're looking for the girl? Well, yeah, of course. But so I don't want to belabor this, but I've told this on the podcast before. So my daughter has both the Hunted and the Desolation banner flags up in her room. And she's the one who's like, oh, yeah, dad. If you notice in Hunted, there's a scene here that's going on with the wizard and the

and they're being attacked and then when you look at desolation it's like well she clearly won and you know the guys that there she's fighting against like you know they're like down under her boot and all this stuff so i'm looking for that continuity of like okay what's the next almost like a comic book like okay what comes next and there is some tie-ins with it with like the octopus shield with the upside down crosses and stuff which you see which is an amulet almost by like

Quasi-Wizard warrior guy who's drowning somebody in a lake of black tar. Who is definitely not Elric, we've learned. Right. But I was actually hoping for the story to continue in an obvious way. And when I say obvious way, so a knuckle-dragging idiot Will, like myself, can really pick up on it. But when I look at this, it's like, wow, this is amazing art. This is just amazing.

And I have to assume it's Sam Turner. It's Sam Turner. Okay, all right. Yeah, I just like when you look on Bandcamp, there's no mention. They don't even mention like who's in the band anymore. Like it's just like. Well, they've talked about Sam doing the cover, but and they've said that it's a character from a previous cover. So I think it's might be a younger version of Leonard the Beer Wizard. Yeah, and it might be like, and maybe that's what's going on here. But, you know, like I said, it's not obvious. It's not as obvious to me, but I do see like the amulet.

of the occupant, the site, and the upside-down crosses. So, like, there's some stuff going on. But, you know what? I'm just going to let Evelyn figure it out. Well, and they also, Chemist always has additional artwork. Luis has talked about this, too. The band will do the cover, and it might not even be a gateful, but they'll do additional artwork that enhances, you know, what's going on with the album cover. They've done that with all their albums, actually. We'll see what happens. No glare blasts, so we'll see. Yeah.

I've probably already seen the whole thing.

That one I will tell you I haven't explored.

But hopefully, we'll see.

We'll see.

Okay.

Is it me now?

It is you.

It is me because you did.

Yeah.

Okay.

My number two is by a little-known artist named Adam Burke.

And the album is called Stasis Cocoon from Sallow Moth.

Oh, I did see this like that. That's a nice one. Yeah, yeah. This is sort of like the Memoriam Seagrave thing combined with like a Godzilla Mothra crazy thing with more people standing around watching going, what the fuck? But there's like, there's space, there's spaceships, there's pointy rocks, there's a giant emanating moth, there's chasms, there's people standing around watching as if, I don't know, but.

I can't describe it very well, but those are all things that are in there. Yeah. That's a good one. Good one, George. Thank you. Poorly described, but a good album cover. No, no, you're doing a good job. I'm torn between that one and Obsessions Rite of Ages, which I mentioned as like the best bird paintings of shit of this year. I mean, those are amazing. That's a good one. Yeah. All right. Well, what's your number one? Number one. Wow. That's a...

And this one will probably change for our list, very likely. But this one was one that we briefly touched on, not through behind the cover, but in an interview with one of the band members. But this is, it's also probably going to be on our album of the year list. It's Necromanteon's Visions of Trismegistus, which was done by Zbigniew Bielak, who did the Imperial Triumphant cover, if you recall that one, the most recent one.

He does portal stuff. He did some Dark Throne stuff. He's an architect too. Talented dude. Probably already knows how to draw like crazy. He uses some of that background into his work here. That cover is basically a tribute to Slayer's Reign in Blood. Essentially. It's Slayer's Reign in Blood for a new age. They even quoted it as being a direct inspiration for the artwork. Is that a giant penis person?

I don't recall there's some genitalia on the right side there there's like legs and a giant dick I believe so let me pull it up actually interesting that's the first thing you saw George I don't remember a giant yeah I don't remember a penis on that one but but there's a bunch of genitalia there's a blood pool there's like a bunch of I love the like red and white it just yeah there's some you can look at it

for hours and just find dude actually there is a penis actually yeah there's a pretty

prominent there's some sort of headless clearly not that prominent it's uh yeah there's some

headless person with walking with a well there's a head it's just not the kind you're expecting

or he's probably hooded oh yeah well there you go

there's there's just so much going on i mean there's i you don't even know where to start i mean it's

It's very even carcass-y. There's a dissected body. Yeah. There's just so much. This one is a direct tribute to Slayer. The cover itself is just fantastic thrash. This reminds me of something I've got on the wall here in the studio. It's expanded from the square cover. It's Cathedral's Carnival Bazaar, which just has all kinds of crazy shit going on.

that Hieronymus Bosch kind of painting. It's very cool. Fantastic. All right, Mark's on number one. Yeah, my number one is Zatar, Devouring Darkness. This album's not even out yet. Is that the one I just recently posted? Yeah. You did post about it, which is crazy, which is great because you're on here and my number one cover by Bruce Pennington.

So, hold on one second. This is the most involved. Picture, if you will, dear Metalheads, the emperor of the universe. He stands fearsome and unassailable in black star fire majesty upon a cracked and slumping plateau on another world conquered. Another planet brought low beneath his dark heel.

as he looks out at a horizon he has claimed with blood magic and chaos. Slowly, he lifts his hand and the primeval fabric of the vast multiverse wilts at his command, drawing back its layers like a tapestry and an interstellar playhouse. Behind the ancient folds lies the next imminent conquest, a galaxy where the sun is

is eternally eclipsed and the rules of physics defy explanation beneath its phantom light.

The Emperor's four horsemen stand patiently in the tattered remains of the planet, awaiting further instruction as the unveiled night sphere looms in the sky beyond.

The Cosmic King laughs and thinks to himself, there is no escape for you, old Shadowstar.

Then he casually twists a finger, and the order is given. The end is certain. It won't be long now. End scene. I was just gonna do that. Have you ever been writing, like, liner notes or something? Or comic books? Or, like, band bios for press? I mean, I'm a writer, you know, I write comics, so I like to, um,

Again, what I was saying, when I look at these covers, I imagine stories out of them. Because that's what I do. I write stories, you know? And this one really spoke to me in that way. So... Luis makes a good point. Luis makes a good point in that I know about a million fucking press releases that could benefit from your work. Because... Oh, my God. Yeah, I think what I do is different, you know? Like, this is what I like about Luis's website.

something different when they're covering it. And then when I look at covers and I describe them, it's different than I think what anybody else has heard. You get that on the Metalheads podcast. So it's really fun for me to do. But that's how metal speaks to me. It's not just metal. It's the cover art. So, you know, I, I, and this, I mean, I write these in like minutes because that's, this cover just speaks to me. It says something to me. And I'm like, I know exactly what the story is. Even if that wasn't what they intended in my mind, I know what the story is.

And I need to write it down. That's how I feel whenever I write any comics. I was just thinking, you know what you need to do? You need to do a collection of short stories that are based on album covers. You're like, these are my favorite album covers and short stories that are about each of these covers. Dude, that would be fucking awesome. Yeah, it'd be fun. Yeah. I mean, I hope some of these bands, like I love Zatar to hear that, you know, because I mean, the choice of their cover art inspired me to write a book.

a little bit of a story to come up with something, you know, based on what they put out that identifies with their music. So. For those unaware that Bruce Pennington did the work for Blood Incantations Hidden Histories that was so greatly acclaimed. That's right. Yeah. That dude's super old and he did stuff long ago and now he's finding new life as an artist for metal covers because his artwork really speaks.

to metal today.

And it's great.

He doesn't even do commissions or anything anymore.

It's all this old art that people are commissioning and using for their metal covers.

Or not just metal, but other covers as well.

It's pretty great.

Cool.

Matt?

So to follow Markisan my number one album good, album heavy, love music.

Really good? Okay. So the quote from Bandcamp. Car, go fast. I don't know what to do with my hands right now. I'm Ricky Bobby. Okay. The album takes on the anomalous tale of the serpentine beast Typhon, the fiercest of all titans in Greek mythology. The father of monsters is said to have challenged Zeus to do battle for cosmic supremacy, ultimately succumbing to the Olympians' might and facing imprisonment beneath Mount Itna. According to legends,

the sporadic eruption of the volcano are due to the enduring wrath of typhon the monumental artwork displays a scene of our world on the brink of total devastation the band craven idol the album fork tongues the artist elaron cantor i mean this shit is epic i mean i don't there's dragons there's like a mountain with shit coming out of it i believe we call that a volcano i'm done winner mark drop yeah

They're spectators with VIP Magma Rose. Exactly. I dropped this mic, but I have to buy a new one on Amazon. Really good. Cargo fast. It is a great cover. And Jay loves this album. I'm surprised. Well, I'm disappointed Jay's not here because he chose this album as the month. Yeah. I think it was July, maybe. But so I'm curious to see what he would say with album covers. He texted me a few minutes ago in response to my saying, man, you're

and he said, I'll just sit here in the dark with my thoughts and feelings. I'm like, is it even dark in California yet? Is it? I guess it is. You turned the lights on. It is. I got the lights on. All right. But, all right. John. All right. Matt, that shit come out of the volcano. I believe it's called lava. Lava. Magma. Magma. Lava. My number one has been mentioned.

When I look at this album cover, I think of what Matt said earlier, and that is he pictures the merging of the music and the album cover together. And I think this one probably does it the best of all the ones I selected. And that is, well, there we go. I just lost it. Foconus Odyssey. I love that cover. I love the idea of there's a peacock with like a black hole emitting from its head, you know, and there's three, if I can count,

three. There might be more. It looks like some kind of vessels that are flying into that black hole or into that wormhole. Yeah. It's just, again, the color palette. You know, you've got colors you don't normally see, but it's got a psychedelic feel to it. And I believe that's what the music kind of portrays a little bit, which is a proggy, stonery, doomy, but psychedelic sound. And it's enhanced with adding keyboards, finally, and some harsh vocals, which you would think would not.

take it to the psychedelic realm, but it does. So that's my number one. Nice. A lot of lining up with Matt quite a bit, John. Just one. Or two, yeah. Two. That's the most. But I lined up with, no, one with Matt and one with George. Oh, yeah, that's right. We'll settle it in Chile. Yeah, we'll all line up together. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. At the hotel. Yeah.

All right. Will? I'm kind of surprised this has not been mentioned before, but it may be that you guys just suck. Well, you suck something. Anyway, the band is Oryx. They're lamenting a dead world is the name of the album.

The Artist is Ettore Aldo Del Vigo. And this shit is kind of mind trippy. And it kind of reminds me of one of the previous album covers. So it must have been the same guy, obviously. But it looks like, so you got this guy who kind of like looks like maybe an old Jesus Christ, which is what I imagine they're trying to portray here. Or a Father Time who's kind of like basically naked, laying,

kind of propped up a little bit on the side with like a red cloth around his genitalia because you know hey let's not look at that crap you know and but but exploding out of him almost like like the hellraiser movies is just like these skull these skeletons on crosses are just like ripping apart his body like

Tearing his flesh and emanating out to the upper left or the northwest as I look at it. There's green spectral vapors and ooze coming out of the sores in his knees and his legs and his elbows. It's just fucking cool. It is pretty cool. It is a great cover. We looked at the rest of the artwork. It had a great album, actually.

Have you checked out the rest of the artwork? What do you mean the rest of the artwork? I'm just looking at the album cover. That you don't see on the screen? Yeah, there's additional artwork to it that's actually very cool. No, I've not seen that. Well, there's a website you can go to where you can check it out. Well, I know. I know Heaviest. Believe it or not. Actually, it's featured on there and some of the other additional. Believe it or not, this was my number one and then I'm like, hey, let me see if Heaviest of Art has this on there. And they do have it on there. It's a nice feature on it.

Yeah. Yeah. I interviewed Tori, which is a very fascinating dude with a crazy mind. As you can see from the actual cover. Yeah. It's cool. Very cool, dude. But I think, Will, it furthers the story you were just trying to describe in the other images, which is kind of cool. Yeah. I'm looking further down on the website now. I see a guy who

who looks a lot like uh what was his name bob ross happy accidents guy

they get a will go to behind the cover and you'll find it faster no i i'm i'm there oh i'm looking i'm

well we'll navigate technology as an old go ahead george cranky man let let george bring it home i'm not cranky

well bring it on home george my number one's been mentioned and so it's kind of

kind of anticlimactic. What? Just mention it. Make it climactic. All right, well, let me. No. Watch the documentary. Yeah, it's on my list. I want to see that. I love, you know, as someone who got into doing a lot of painting at home during the pandemic, Bob Ross has become sort of a hero of mine because, damn, he can do some shit. So I want to see that.

My number one has been mentioned. It's a little bit of a cop-out because I just fucking love this band. And I don't know, I may be wearing them. But yeah, Sam Turner, Chemist, Deceiver. Pre-ordered it the other day when it was released. I love everything they do musically. I think all their artwork is amazing.

I have more chemist t-shirts than any other band ever. So it was kind of inevitable that number one would be chemists. Did you order it through the vinyl? No, I didn't buy the vinyl. I should have. Wait, wait. So you pre-ordered the digital? Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, I got it in vinyl. I got the decibel version and I got like the smoke. Where did you get it? Where did you get the other one from? You and I were talking earlier.

Blast had it. So they had a limited edition color version. It's like gray and black or whatever. I got that. I think there was only maybe 300 copies or something. Yeah, I got mine from them too. And then I got the Decibel version one when it came out. I did that one too. Yeah. I don't buy vinyl anymore, but I probably should have gotten that because I have all the other ones. So I probably will. Chemists, I mean, they've been my favorite band. It's going to get reissued, I'm sure. I hope so. I remember Chemists, or not Chemists, Decibel sent out the, like a, like a

Like, hey, tomorrow at 11, we're announcing something. And I just completely forgot about it. And I was at work. Not that I could have done anything about it. And then when I got home, I looked at my email. I'm like, oh, yeah, let me order this. Sold out. Yeah, you know, it's weird for me because I'm in Hawaii. So usually they do announcements at, you know, around 10 o'clock in the morning, you know, Eastern time. That's like four for me. Now, I'm normally up around three to four. But I actually stayed up till like 430 because I knew Canvas is going to make an announcement.

for all the different colors. So I actually stood up a little longer so I could grab the

decibel, the version of it. But I mean, they are my favorite band. Their last two albums have been my number one. So, you know, I'm really looking forward to hearing the new one. But and the album cover is always good. I love the artwork by Sam Turner. So yeah, and I hear Phil, I mean, he has a whole story that's involved with it. Even the album has a story.

So, you know, I think eventually they might actually do a comic. Where is that? I think when they were talking about the album, they also mentioned that it had a theme to it. But where did you read this? I don't remember. Talking to Phil on the phone. Facebook? No, I don't talk to Phil. I don't have Phil's number. You do. I do. Probably like, I don't know, whatever one of those metal news sites is. I don't remember.

They talked about the album. I actually, when we do new releases or news or something, I'll say more about it. But anyways, we're over three hours. I don't know if you want to stick around, Luis. I'm glad you did to do the top five. We wanted to wrap up the top five, but fortunately I have to step out. But I was like, let me make sure we stick it out to the top five so folks can get a feel for what we're doing here. Thank you. Appreciate it. Do you want to give up? We've been talking about heaviestofheart.com.

But do you want to give any social media addresses or anything about of heaviest of art? Yeah. So if you want to follow us in any of our work, it's again, it's at heaviest of art on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And then heaviest of art dot com, of course, for the website. I know we've been talking a lot about the behind the cover. So if you want specifically that there's a tab on heaviest of art dot com where you can just click on behind the cover or just heaviest of art dot com backslash behind slash.

slash cover. Sorry, Dash. But it's all there. You know, we're constantly posting new things as we get bombarded every day with press releases. So we have some cool stuff coming up. Some really cool stuff in the works. There's about 12, 13 interviews I'm sitting on that I get to materialize. Some really cool stuff with some really cool bands. We have some cool reviews coming up. Some cool art and behind the scenes stuff for some cool covers.

Very, very cool stuff coming up. So if you're interested, if this all piques your interest, you know, again, at Heavis Savard on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and HeavisSavard.com as a website. And thank you all for your support. And, you know, we look forward to putting out some more cool shit for you guys to look at. Yeah, man, you're an awesome guest. We really appreciate you being on the cast and talking about album cover art and metal and just really had an enjoyable experience with you on this cast. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you ever want to do a feature on like old people who used to just buy albums based on cover art, right here. We are the demographic. Bunch of dudes in their 40s. That's what we used to do. I'm sorry, in 50s. If we ever have a heaviest of our podcasts, we're having all of you guys on for it. Yeah, dadsofmetal.com. No, it's called the heaviest of age. Well, you know. Heaviest of farts. You know, one of the early names that I wanted to

for the podcast was like the

something gray beards like the

the coven of gray beards or the fucking

something but something to do with gray beards anyway

old fuckers

yeah

thanks again guys for having me on

look forward to connecting soon and you know hopefully it's not the last time

you know

yeah

Thank you. Take care, man. Be good.

You're listening to the Midnight Podcast.

For the sake of me not having to edit this whole thing in the correct fucking order,

we're going to continue going in reverse order,

and you're just going to have to deal with that.

But before we move on to what we're listening to,

I want to ask Will a question,

because, you know, despite everything that's going on,

shows are starting to come back,

And we just recently had our first show back at Atlas. And I would love for him to tell us about that. Who played? What was it like? How did it feel to be back? All of it. Nice. Thank you. I appreciate your interest. I will take umbrage by the fact that you said we because you were not fucking there. It was my dad's birthday party.

Sorry. I'm just giving you shit, as I always do, to you and John who live close by. Anyway. First and foremost, it was just great to see people again. I know a lot of people who, aside from artists, artists aside, musicians aside, just fans. We have regulars that I haven't seen in almost two years.

or two years or more than two years depending upon which show they showed up so it was kind of surreal you know guys like um you know guys like you know like ariel ariel yeah he was there on the first show he was there last night at the brocher show um louis uh palu the national geographic war correspondent guy who shows up uh with his lovely new wife who married in kovid chloe um you know just people like that uh just you

you haven't seen in a while. Metal Chris was there. It's just nice to just see people again that you know. Cue the Cheers theme song. Where everybody knows your name. So it was that I mean first and foremost aside from just seeing a live metal show which is my first one I haven't gone to anything else. It's the camaraderie. It's the people. It's the fans. And it's just it was.

It's really, really nice to see all these people again. Fred the Taco Guy made a... Sweet! Even though he moved to like Roanoke, he came all the way up here just to sling tacos for that show. Hassan from Ripping Headaches. Yeah. He was the promoter for the show. Oh, and maybe, well, I'm talking about all these shows. The show, I should say, that Evokin headlined. Death Doom Band. Kind of like Symphonic Death. Funeral Doom.

And they just kill it. They kill it every time. They're so tight. They're just the nicest guys. And I say that every time because they are. They're just the nicest people. Yeah, they are. And they don't travel that much either, do they? No, they do not. We saw them the first time they came down. Yep. Yeah, you guys were because it was a decibel pre-show. They're so good. Just a small interjection. So I don't know if you guys listen to this, but the Requiem Metal podcast,

did a two-parter about Evokin. And Albert from Decibel went on there to talk about the band. It's actually a really good podcast. Anyways, go ahead, Will. I feel like we should... Sorry. Go ahead, George. I just, you know, the Requiem guys, I feel like we should like... I know they go to Decibel. We need to like hook up with them and like, you know, do some sort of collab. Yeah. I was going to ask you, Marcus, when you said,

They did something on Voken. They had Albor on. Did they do it more, almost like an audio documentary thing? They talk about all of a Voken, really. They talk about the band, performances, how they developed. Do they interview a Voken? I don't. No, they're not on there, I don't think. They just talk about them.

There's other people talking about Evokin. Albert came on and talked about them. Right. Albert comes on and they're talking about Evokin and their history and their albums and stuff like that. They're just great guys. Warren was there. Apropos to Warren being there, he... Remember how before I was like, hey, look, you can see my hand behind this. You can't see my hand behind this. It's hazy. Warren was there.

our dear friend Warren Brewer is. So he is now fully at Forward Brewing Company in Annapolis. He's a brewer. And he brought this like really nice imperial style that him and I went back into like quote unquote green room and we just chilled out for about five minutes until I had to get called back to go do something else. But it was great to see Warren. I love Warren. We all love Warren. Is he going to be a decibel? I think so. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah.

I mean,

um,

so he was there,

but he,

he certainly,

he left behind a can of IOB,

IOB on their hazy IPA.

So hold on.

Yeah,

it's pretty good.

Tastes hazy.

Um,

so which is it?

So,

it tastes hazy.

I'm going to,

I know I'll,

I'll give them shit.

Like it tastes like a hazy IPA,

you know,

whatever.

It's not my bag,

baby.

Uh,

it's not my bag,

baby.

So the opening band was a relatively new band called Nixle out of Baltimore. Black metal band. I sent the link around. I meant to listen to that. I forgot. I'm sorry. It's good. And you guys know my feelings on, not my feelings. I am not the biggest black metal fan, but this is kind of like right in my wheelhouse of black metal. It's just like, it's kind of like a goat horse, like thrashy, groovy.

black metal. I mean, these guys, I really, what I really enjoy, and this happened both shows, we've only had two shows, when you discover a band that you haven't heard of before, and they're, you know, one of the more established bands, it goes, hey, you know, we got these guys, they're new, whatever, we're gonna have them open the show, and they open the show, you're like, crap, these guys are good. Wow. And Nixle was like that, like, they were just really, really good. And some of those guys have played Atlas before in different bands,

So it was kind of nice to see them again. And then next up was Genocide Pact, which is just always, always a crowd pleaser at Atlas. They're on relapsed. I mean, great, great death metal band. And what was really, really fun about their set is right toward the end. And see if you guys notice, they just like, like after, between songs, they just went.

I can't do it justice if you if you hear it live like every single person just instantly knew it was Sepuletore Troops of Doom and they just did like this little interview interlude of it and it was just like amazing but those guys are so cool they played atlas so many times you know and they're a relatively big band they're on relapse and they're just like yeah man uh they're kind of like very casually

We're here for the gangbang. We're here for the beer. Just super great guys. It was just so much fun. On the how we do it in the pandemic, you have to show your vaccine card or approve a vaccine that matches your driver's license to get in or a negative COVID test in the last 72 hours or three days. Everybody was really cool about that. DC mandate, I guess,

you have to wear a mask so i was kind of like a little bit of the mask police which is you know once we're in there you wear a mask you you you pull your mask down you take a sip of beer and you pull it back up and everyone was super cool about it like not a single person gave me or anyone else in the staff a hard time by reminding them like look dude you need you know or actually there are tons of girls there now um you need to put your mask on or keep it on or whatever so it just worked out and i and

I think everybody including myself was just very diligent about it where it's like listen we got shows back let's not fuck this up like if I have to wear a mask and pull it down take a sip of beer then that's cool like we're gonna do that so it was it was refreshing and it was like that on the first show last week and it was on like last night I mean you know I had to remind people and people even in the bands bands come out and they watch the other bands and it's like hey dude you gotta put you know put your mask on like oh yeah sorry

We'll do it.

I'm just people were cool about it.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, aside from it being, you know, super fucking hot, especially last night.

I was going to say.

Yeah, it was just brutally hot.

Balls.

Yeah.

It may be 80 degrees outside, but it's about 95 inside with 100% humidity.

If it's 95, you're lucky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been in there where it's been over 100 with you and I'm just like, fuck this.

Yeah, it is.

It's brutal.

But I put a whole bunch of fans. Like literally, I sacrifice fans for the fans. I put fans for the bands. Fans for bands. Did you sell out both shows, Will? The first show was sold out. The Evokin Genocide Pack and Nixer show was sold out. So last night it was Bracho headlined and they had their record release show. They're a local Stone or Doom band. Kind of more like a rock and

I can't really say the rock and roll just riff stoner riff metal band and I love them they're great and then Leather Lung which I think are out of Boston they played they played Alice before they were actually the people the band that contacted me first about playing and then kind of brought you decided like hey it's a record release and and Leather Lung was cool with that and the other band which was kind of surprising not surprising I didn't I never heard of them before grave bathers

They're on Bandcamp. They got a little 45-inch Tucson thing out. Very much like a proto-70s, not even a rock, like proto-70s metal. I mean, these guys look dressed. I mean, the lead singer, Drew Robinson, just kind of takes a page from Jimmy Page and Jim Morrison, the way he just, the way he sways and moves and everything on stage. It was just really, the visual of it was just very fantastic.

And what was cool was one of the guitar players, Jared, is a brewer at Tired Hands up in Philadelphia. So Grave Baiters is from Philadelphia area. So he's one of the brewers. So him and I chit-chat for a while. And super nice guy. I mean, just everybody, it was just like, I can't say this enough. I feel like a broken record. Just everybody was so cool and nice and just, it was awesome. And that's what I'll say about that. Right on. That's all I got to say about that.

To play off of your discussion about the masks and everything about COVID and shows and stuff, I'm just going to give a little bit about my day. And he so loved his podcast brothers that in one day he both got tested for COVID and I got a flu shot. So I've mentioned on previous episodes that my friend Dave,

A friend from way back the fuck when in Michigan, a good friend of mine, does not believe in getting the vaccine. And he asked me to point out that he is not a crazy, think there's a microchip in the vaccine kind of person. He just doesn't want it. Well, turns out he got COVID. And I saw him a few weeks ago.

So since we're going to Philly next week for decibel, I decided that it was time for me to go get a COVID test this morning. I spent nearly two hours getting the COVID test. I haven't heard back yet, so I'm assuming it's not a rapid one. And then later in the day, I went out and got stuck with a prick or pricked with a, yeah, anyway. But I got a flu shot because I was like, you know, I'm going to Philly. I'm already vaccinated, but since

Since flu shots are available, maybe it makes sense to get the flu shot a week ahead of time to just kind of kick the old immune system into gear and ramp it up before Philly just in case anything, you know? Just to make it, you know, work a little. So I'm a little tired today because after the fucking hell week that I had, I had to get up at 6 o'clock this morning to go out and try and get that COVID test.

And then I got the flu shot and now I feel kind of shitty. But here I am. When do you find out if you're clear? I would have guessed in a couple days. They didn't specify when I went and they stuck that thing halfway down my throat. That's a clue. Well, I mean, if you have it, are you not coming? I assume you wouldn't. Oh, no, of course I wouldn't. But I mean, there's no way that I do. I haven't seen him for like three weeks.

I just got it a couple days ago. I'm just being extra cautious. Did they mention anything about your ultra pink cheeks? I think that's the flu shot. I think that's the flu shot. Yeah. Look at Will starting to fade. Look at him. Look at him. You're crazy. You want to fuck me? Yeah. Put the lotion in widow's basket.

Yeah, I'm not fading. Sorry, I was looking at my phone for a half a second. Maybe we should go to what we're listening to. Yeah, let's move on. Sorry, I didn't. No, I'm glad you guys told us. So hopefully you get your results back soon. I think you're in a clear base on time. Oh, no, I know I am. I mean, I have no symptoms other than the fact that my cheeks are super pink. But hey, I'm a fucking ruddy Irishman. I'm always fucking pink.

And you just got the Irish flu. But no, I think it's because I got the flu shot this afternoon. I'm a little extra pink. I thought you were going to be like, I'm a My Little Pony. I'm always pink. Well, yeah, if I was a My Little Pony, I would definitely be pink. Either that or like a really light blue, because that's kind of cool. Brony. I'm a brony. I love a tender brony because a brony is so right. You jabroni.

What are we doing now? I don't know. Okay, what are we listening to?

It's going to be funny because we should act like we've already talked about these albums. Oh, yeah. Because they would have already been. George is not going to reorder this, right? No, I'm not. I'm not. This is total. We've been talking about doing this, John and I at least. We've been talking about doing an album or an album, an episode in reverse order. Now we're doing it. Yeah. So we've already talked about this album, even though we haven't talked about it yet. All right. Well, it's funny because the movie had.

It's the movie tenant. We're all fine. Or Memento. Memento, yeah. I hate that movie so much. Memento is a good movie tenant. At the end of the episode, you'll find out who did it. Yeah, you'll find out what albums we're talking about at the end. Well, actually, I had to change what I said because for the top five, I assumed that I was already going to talk about stuff before when we did this. So I had to change that, what I wrote down. Well, now you're fucked, laddie. See?

Let me ask you one question. All right, Matt. Do you live in a twilight world? I do. Okay. Matt, why are you so much louder? I love how Matt, like all of a sudden, like Matt, you know, of course he's got the great zingers and everything and comes in, but you're, you're, um, I'm saying what? Your loudness is really much higher. It's probably because the mic's too close to my head. No, it's good, dude. It's good for you. It's because you put your hood on your hood. And you've got

You got Bob Ross looking right over your shoulder. Hooded minace. Hooded minace. Circumcise that thing. He's hooded in a man ass. I just got a new battle vest that has a hood on it. I get it from... Fuck, I can't remember the name of the place now. Anyways, it has like a nice little hood on it. No, it's like a... Fuck, I'm too drunk. Boy, we're off the fucking rails big time. Anyway, what are we listening to?

I'm going. I want to know about this thing, man. I'm doing it. Hail Spirit Noir, Eden in Reverse on Agonia Records. This is a release from last year, but I ended up spinning this album after trying to listen to Hail Spirit Noir's new album, Mannequins, which is basically a pink glitter ball of synth dance pop. It's synth wave. That's all it is. It's designed to be a soundtrack for 80s horror film. And I couldn't, I couldn't,

I got through five tracks because the horror part of the description was pretty accurate. My ears were bleeding after that. But however, I like this band. So I decided I needed to chase it with their last record, which I liked. So it was a nice revisit. And I probably would not have gone back to this album if not for this new one off project they did called Mannequins. And I know John also listened to this one and I quite enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it.

I listen to it now more than I did the first time it came out, which is pretty cool. Stranger Things Have Happened. I like being reversed. I like that one a lot. The next one on my list is Menra de Dorn on Relapse Records. I love this band, but I just hadn't given this one enough time. It dropped in June, and I listened to it. I liked it. I don't know if I ever mentioned it, and I can't.

or even on Metal Fridays, but I went back to it recently because the opening track, it's called Ugentrust, is now the theme song for one of my favorite wrestlers on AEW, and his name is Malachi Black. And I was really stunned when I heard this on the show because I have never, ever heard a black metal track used as an entrance walk for a wrestler.

I've been spinning it ever since. And it's a great record. It's a fantastically bleak, foreboding specter of blackened post-dume. I love their last record. I think this one's even better. And now they have a bigger label. So it'll be interesting to see where this ends up. But now I have to consider it for my top albums of the year. Up next, the entire

Cynic Catalog. The first track for the double album, Ascension Codes, dropped a few days ago. And DePaul brought the technicality and the cyber vocals back to Cynic with that song, which I really like a lot. I've listened to it maybe 20 times now at this point. And I'm in love again with Cynic. So I went back and I played all the records, including both versions of Traced

and the new single reminds me mostly of Traced in Air. And so I think that's the one I've been listening to the most just because I hope that it sounds like that. I thought I think Traced in Air is is phenomenal. So both versions. Of course, I prefer the growled vocals and I don't think they actually needed to rerecord it. There's things I like on the new version. Of course,

Getting rid of the ground vocals isn't one of them, but the production, the choices on it, I do like some of it, but overall I think I like the original version better. I don't really think it needs to be recorded that much again. Traumatomy, extirpation paradigms on Gorehouse Productions. I mentioned this as an album cover, the top five, and I really like that album cover, but I've also been listening to the album.

quite a bit and it's brutal slam death and i'm not really into that as much slam is not a word you hear on this pod much no you do not but i think that i think there's a movement going on george i think i'm having a movement well you always are uh bazinga slam death you know usually it's one thing you know you know what you're gonna get i feel like they're adding new elements and colors into

to slam that I didn't hear before. And Traumatomy is doing that. And I think that's what has caused me to go back to this album. It's absolutely brutal. It's a summer slam of evil that will suplex you and your organs apart. But it has nuance to it. And I think that's what's needed in this genre because there was no nuance before. I think our organs need to be together.

It has earned more spins from me this year. So I'm wondering if, you know, in the future, I might have some slam death on the top 25. I don't know. Nice. Next one, Lowen, A Crypt in the Star, self-released. This record came out in 2018, but Thursday was the first time I ever spun it. And I randomly found this band because I was looking at art.

for our top five. And the guy who illustrated this album had done some other artworks. And I loved his art. And so I said, well, I guess I'll check out this album. I never heard of it before. Let me listen to it. And I was kind of blown away by this album. Lohan plays this progressive doom metal with a spacey Middle Eastern vibe. So the music is really heavy.

And the singer is just, it's a female singer. She's absolutely entrancing. She reminds me of, I would say, Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star. If she was Sumerian and sang in a crushing doom metal band. It's fucking so good. And they just released this year an acoustic live EP that was actually fully improvised. And they sing it. The singer does it in different languages.

And it's just stirring. It's stirring stuff. So I don't know where I was in 2018 when this thing came out. But I'm on board for this band. They're fantastic. So I would definitely check it out. It's called Lowen A Crypt In The Stars. That's their full length. And then they have an EP. I don't remember what the EP's called. It's acoustic, but it's... Wow. It's haunting. Next up, Chrome Waves.

The Rain Will Cleanse on Disorder Recordings. This is a really good post-metal record. It's just a lot softer and warmer than I expected from this band. I don't mind a musical metal hug now and again, I guess, but I would have liked a little bit more edge on this album. It's more of a headphone record or just something you put on the background, and it doesn't have that immediate connection.

It's still good.

But yeah, they definitely opted to go a little bit softer on it.

Let's see.

I got two more.

War Flurch.

War Flurch.

Psychedelic Realms of Hell on Gurgling Gore Records.

Get on this album.

You're going to like it.

This album is a it's kind of like a swamp being animated by cosmic spore beams.

It's filthy death. As Matt would say, filthy, filthy death. Dirty, dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty death. But infused with spaced weirdness. And it's just glorious. It's really well done. Great production on it. The growls are magnificent. Great riffs. Just one of those things I just found, you know, because there's a lot of death metal out there. I think they're doing a little bit. What's the name again? It's called Warflurch.

L-U-R-C-H. So, yeah. Oh, that means paint in German. Does it really? No. It does not. Oh, my turn. I mean, we get a lot of death metal. I always say this on the cast. I like death metal that gives you something a little bit different. This definitely does. We've seen some cosmic death metal, and there's some great bands that do that. This band does it a little bit differently, so I think it's quite good.

And the last one I have on here is an EP. It's from Cult Burial. It's called Oblivion. And I absolutely love this band. I was very high on their self-titled full length that came out last year. This 20-minute EP, it's an impressive follow-up. It's just pummeling. It's a pummeling evil thunder punch of sludgy death is what it is. And if we did, if we decide to do a top five at the end of the year,

for EPs, I'm pretty sure this is going to make my top five. I really like this band, and I feel like their last album was phenomenal, and then this just continues that, maybe even elevates a little bit more. I was never really high on EPs, I think, but of course with the pandemic and everything, there's a lot of bands who are releasing new music, and it happens to be EPs, and I don't mind that, because

they spent the time doing some extra music. And I'm looking forward to see what Cult Burial does in the future. There you go. Hey, Markisan. Yes, sir. After about listening to 10 seconds of War Flurch, I just bought it. Yeah, it's fucking awesome, dude. It reminds me of Tomb Mold quite a bit. It's Tomb Mold, but the spacey vibes in it are more pronounced.

and just to have a different flavor

than Tumor. But you're right.

It's in that vein of Tumor.

It's in that, like, yeah.

It's great.

And you'll like it, Will, all the songs.

I just bought it.

I'm going to like it.

I know you like the beginning,

but I'm just saying, like, the entire album,

it's solid all the way through.

So let me know what you think

when you listen to the whole thing.

I will.

Warflurch.

No pun intended.

It's actually called Tumor.

Well, I should mention also, too,

so they have an entire mythology.

I haven't read up on it, but it's kind of like Sludge, you know, where they have them. Sludge has the mollusks and like the emperor mollusk and everything. I believe Warflurch also has something similar to that, but I haven't read up on it. I just really got into the music. So. I hope it's a honey badger. I hope that wasn't too long. I'm really happy, but I think it was only seven albums.

I see where you're pointing at George. Surgery. It looks like the new cover for the Carcass album. That's exactly a war flurch. I didn't know if you were. It's a picture of Jay cutting off a piece of will on a boat. No, that's not on a boat. That's at the Sheridan. That's at the Sheridan Hotel. Matt, you're up for what you're listening to. Yeah, yeah. Hooded Menace, the Tritonous Bell.

We All Know Them, Really Good Death Doom. I feel like they just have some, just such catchy riffs. I can't think of the name of the song on this one, but it almost reminds me of like playing an 8-bit Nintendo game. Serpent Column, Catarsus? This kind of came out of nowhere. I did not realize something new was coming out. Black Metal mixed with, I mean, honestly, at some point, or sometimes I feel like it's almost a little bit of grunge mixed in. Mastiff, Leave Me the Ash.

of earth, really solid, kind of hardcore sludge out of England. Right. Hey, man, sometimes I get stiff too. Don't you? Sometimes, not always. It's not easy doing what we do, but we trudge, you know, it's the cross we bear. It's upside down, but we bear it, right? Woman is the earth, dust to forever. It's kind of cool, sludgy, atmospherical black metal. I've also been doing a lot of like, usually if I like something, I'll just add it to my band camp wish list and then it will compile to the point

where I get anxiety. And so this past week I've kind of gone through and kind of sifted out. One of those albums is by a band called Iceburn. It is called Asclepius. Reminds me of kind of a heavier, more aggressive, I'm going to say this word and I know it could get weird here, but damn it, I'm losing track. The metal band, it's not metal, Clutch, Clutch.

Right.

I don't know. I don't know. I put this on and it makes me happy. I said that out loud. Also, Chrome Waves, The Rain Will Cleanse, Mark's on, I fully agree. It's good, but it's definitely not as, it doesn't like, I don't know, it's not as abrasive as the last album, which I really dug. It doesn't have teeth, you know, it's just, it's more of like a relaxing album. Yeah, totally. It's fine, but I was surprised by that. Yep, yep, absolutely. Also,

I was sifting through my Bandcamp wishlist, Craven Idol, Fork Tongues, as Mark Sun mentioned, and was kind of the forefront of my mind through all of this. This was Jay's April, May, June album of the month. I can't remember which one. July? July, was it? August? September? Super good, polished, like thrash, or blackened thrash metal. Really dig it. I also, lastly, I started Henry Rowland's book, Get in the Van, I think is what it's called. It's much older than I,

I thought it was. So I listened to a shitload of black flag as I was driving around running air yesterday. So he's got a bunch of books. Nice. Does he really? Oh yeah. I mean it would make sense. I thought so. He seems very prolific about spoken word and writing. Yeah. Is Will alive? Yes. But it's not his turn. Yes. There he is. Oh shit. It's John's turn. John. John go. Impressive. All right.

is not going to be that extensive. We've already talked in the new releases about Carcass and Iron Maiden. Have we? I couldn't resist. Yeah, I did spin these albums during the week because of official release dates. I can't believe you hate Carcass. Apparently everybody thinks I hate this album. Just remotely close to the truth.

I like it's just not going to be my number one album. It's solid. Spoiler. We have no friends at desk. I don't care if it spoils anything. There's just too many albums out this year to worry about that. And obviously the new maiden, I've listened to that quite a bit. So for the ones that we don't know about, A Dying Planet, where the skies are gray, this is a progressive metal rock band from California.

Their main guy, guitarist, Jason Tipton, is from the band Zero Hour. I'm a huge Zero Hour fan. You guys probably don't know them, but they're a progressive metal band that came out, started in the 90s, been around a long time, but they haven't done anything in a while. But it was two brothers and a few other guys, but they're very technical, very heavy, not traditional 90s progressive metal. They have an 80s flair to their sound, which is more guitar-driven.

But this band, Dying Planet, is slightly different. It's a little more rock-based, still brass metal, but not as heavy. It's a good album. I'm actually looking more forward to the new Zero Hour album coming out. Next one, I can't pronounce any of this. I don't speak Dutch. I'll do my best, but I've mentioned the band before in the past. I think it's Fusteris. I don't know if I'm saying it right. Translates to Whispers. They, out of nowhere, released a

a new album. Just this year, they had a new album out last year, it seems like. But the album, I believe, translates to Grasped by the Spirit of the Soul Budding, or so says Google Translate between Dutch and English. Their album last year, remember, maybe by the title was Bloom, came out. It's good. It's straight black metal, but they have a unique spin on it. It sounds raw, but the production's pretty good. There's only three tracks.

There's one that's 20 minutes long. It's a good album. I haven't listened to it enough. White Stones, Dancing in Oblivion. This is a second album from Opus. Martin Mendes, the bass player, he's got a progressive death metal project. It's not really that deathy, but there's some harsh vocals. It's another solid release. I mean, it's not as good as Opus, not even close, but it's still, it's decent stuff. I like it. And then the last one, Marcus, I mentioned it, was the,

which I knew was coming but we didn't know when it was going to drop which is Cynic's song Mythical Serpents from the fourth coming album Ascension Codes they've been building up for this for a while and the new album is finally coming out it's been seven years since the last album so looking forward to that it does I agree has a Trace in the Air vibe it's more technical it's got the Vore quarter whatever they call that back

So hopefully it's a good album. It's got a lot of tracks on it. I ordered the vinyl, so I'm hoping I enjoy it. I hope so. I mean, I like everything from them in varying degrees. They don't have that much. There's only three albums and two EPs and then one compilation of old EPs from before the first album, but I'm sure I'll like it. Cool. That's it. That's all I got. Awesome. Will. I'll be quick.

before,

a new album-ish by Nixle,

the black metal band from Baltimore.

Their album is called All Knots Untied.

They played Atlas.

They opened up the Atlas's first show,

so the first band to play Atlas in like nearly two years.

They killed it.

It was great.

The next one,

Alchemy of Flesh,

which is my album of the month.

The album name is Ageless Abomination.

This is Morbid Angel Worship Done Right. It's just fucking amazing. I'm also listening to the XDO and their new album Caligula. Again, this is brutal death metal singing about the ancient Romans. Wasn't that the title of their last three albums? Caligula?

No, the last one was called Caligula Leela. Gotcha. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. Not close. Yeah. What are you thinking, George? No, I'm just joking. Sure. The one thing is one or two of the songs, they just completely go on this like departure and they have operatic female singers. Not that that is bad, but it's just sort of. It's not children.

But again, in a weird sort of way, I put it in that vein. Like, children singing is not the worst thing ever. But when it's out of character for one of your favorite bands, you're sort of like, oh, yeah, I'm not not digging that. Like, yeah. So they do have some female vocals in here, which nothing against. It's just it's a departure from what I am used to with this band.

Matt's background picture is freaking me out because there's like a big Matt, the dude from Timbs. Mike and Matt. Oh my God. Matt's barely moving. So happy together. Is that you? I can't wait for Decibel because that was taking a Decibel, right? Yeah. George has given some really good group shots. All I have are like more like, you know, not group shots.

They're up on Facebook, just FYI. That's where I was pulling them from. Nice. The podcast, Facebook, FYI. Yeah, Matt mostly has headshots to try to star in commercials. Well, as you can now see, I have a giant cheesesteak behind me because that is the focus of next week. Oh my God, cheesesteaks. I can't wait. I'm going to eat so much cheesesteaks. I started to make an itinerary. When can I get a cheesesteak? When's the best time to do that?

Well, I have a list of places that I want to get cheesesteaks from. I mean, obviously we got to go to, what was that, Jim's? Something like that. Jim's is closed right now. Yeah, but I want to try some other ones too. It is? Yes. Because it's 1122 at night? No, I believe that they are redoing the building. They're doing construction on it and it has not opened yet. What? Yes. I've looked all these up.

because I have a list of cheese steaks that I need to go to. I do as well, but I did not know that. But Jim's is closed right now. Now, I've been checking it to see if they're going to reopen at any point, but so far, they're still closed. Well, at least there's only like 350 more choices. That's true. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good places. So, I mean, Jim's is good, but I mean, the first place I'm going to go when I get there is Pat's.

It's king of steaks. I've been there many times. That place fucking rules. And it's open 24 hours. At Pat's, is there Ishka Bibbles? That's not on my list, but I think I've heard of that one. What was it? I feel like it was called Ishka Bibbles. My ex-wife is from Philly. I think that's the one that I want to go to. Okay, right on. Yeah. Hey, Will. So many of them. All this talk at cheesesteaks makes me want to get a hoagie.

I'm going to be there Thursday. So I'm going to be at the wrecking hole. Are you, is that euphemism? What was the name of it? The wrecking? What? You know what a hoagie is, dude. You're from Philadelphia. I know. I know what a hoagie is. Sorry. Nobody else does. I know. I just, I love cheesesteaks. I used to live up there. Will's from there. I want to get them, but I'm not eating them the whole time. I could tell you right now. I'm not backing my shit up for that long. So we got to go to the Decibel Medal of Beer Festival and we're going to have to eat dinner there.

Yeah, we'll be at the mercy of whatever vegan trucks they have. So we can load up beforehand, but man. That's true. We should try to pick a place to go and make a reservation where we can all go to on one of the days. I'm pretty sure there's no Philly cheesesteak hoagie place in Philadelphia that takes reservations. Yeah, probably. No, but there's other restaurants. It's like, hey, I want to get a reservation at a hot dog stand in Times Square. Get the fuck out of here.

I couldn't make a reservation there, but there's a place like Hawthorne's where it has like 500 beers on tap. That would be a good place that you can get a reservation open table. I'd like to go if we can get a chance because I haven't been there in a long time. I'd like to go to the back room at Monk's if we can do that. I would love to go back to Monk's. Yeah, I think we should try to coordinate that because with COVID and everything, they may only have certain spots, so maybe we could get a reservation. I knew someone was just up there. He didn't say anything about it.

Was it TR? No. It was another friend that was up there. I thought it was a good guess, though. Close. Yeah. I want a key stick now. You said TR would be with us for at least one day, John? He'll be there for one day, yes. Thank God. Yeah. Metalhead's Butler. Metalhead's Butler. Is he bringing us beer? I don't know. He probably will. I'm going to bring beer if I can. I'm going to bring John. Nope.

No, wait, John's going to bring me. I have a beard. I have a beard called the George. That's right. Holy shit. I forgot about that. You doing that? I have a four pack of it. So I'm definitely bringing it. I mean, I bought it specifically for decimal. Three, four. Okay. There's five of us, but, but, but, you know, it's okay. You've already had it. I've already had it. So you guys can have it. No, seriously. That was the whole.

I only got a four pack because it's all I could get because it went out like that dude so as anything

George related would right so you guys all get one of those for sure it's a good it's a really solid delicious beer so thank you sir bringing that yes where are we I think album in the episode well I wasn't no I was getting my albums but oh you guys haven't done it yet no no I I was again

I was in the middle of giving. Oh, I'm sorry. I had to go to the bathroom. What I'm listening to. Right. And then we start talking about cheesesteaks. Sorry. I will forgo whatever the rest. I'm sorry. Well, no, just finish. Dude, you're away. Do it. Don't worry about it. George, go. Well, I didn't hear any of your lists, so I want to hear it. Please. Yeah, dude, do it. You're here. I gave my list. I had to go. Oh, just give me what's left. Just a tip. Thank you.

They played Alchemy and Flesh, XDO, and then I was also going to mention that I got the Hey Ruggia. Ruggia, Ruggia, Ruggia, I believe is what they said. Out of Poland, their promo, and then the Iron Maiden. Hey, do you like the new XDO? I haven't listened to it yet. Yeah, so what I mentioned is that

I love my death metal mixed in with

history. I'm not a history buff, but I'm a history enthusiast.

And you look good in the buff.

And they're big on the whole Roman Empire

stuff, right? All the stress from work, I've lost

10 pounds, so I look even better right now.

Sweet! Well, it depends if you're

a bear, then I look worse. All the stress from work,

I've gained 10 pounds.

No, it's really good.

I like the previous one a little bit better only because this one I was describing not describing I was mentioning that they have some surprise like operatic female vocals in it that is not it's not it's not bad by any stretch of imagination just not what I'm used to and I described or someone else reminded me and it's very much like when Behemoth had kids singing it's like okay I love Behemoth this is not terrible but I don't want a Behemoth I don't want

this in XDO. Gotcha. Well, I'll check it out eventually. Yeah. All right. How many are we prepping for here, George? Not many. More than I thought. I thought it was going to have like two, but it's only one, two, three, four, five, five or six. Oh, okay. I can't count right now. But so first up, we have courtesy of James Decibel James.

I know the band, but he reminded me that this came out, and that is the new Blazin' Stone Damn Nation, their seventh album. They're a Swedish band that is basically running wild, but Swedish. It's pirate metal. It's fucking badass. And yeah. Pirate metal? Yes. From Sweden. From Sweden, because those Swedish pirates, man, they're like raiding Norway or something.

So it's kind of like Viking metal. But pirate, yeah. Yeah, but pirates. Viking pirates maybe, perhaps. But I mean, it sounds exactly like Running Wild. So if you are a fan of Running Wild like I am, you'll like it. If you're not, then fuck off. Fuck off, exactly. Next up, Hail Spirit Noir Mannequins, their fifth album. This is a Greek band. This album is pure.

Pure fucking synth wave. I don't care what you guys say. This is synth wave. It's just basic synth wave like so much other stuff. And except that two of the songs, I believe, have vocals, which is a little weird for me. I prefer my synth wave instrumental. But, you know, there was talk on the chat about, oh, this is too pop. It's not pop. This stuff would not have been popular in the 80s. This was, it's electronic music.

Pop is Debbie fucking Gibson. But there's pop melodies in there, though. There is. I listen to plenty of Synthwave, too. I know all about it. But it's not something that's going to be popular. No. But pop can apply to all kinds of music. Pop melodies. I mean, it's not like a far stretch of the imagination. Anyway, it's Synthwave, and I enjoy it. You fucking dismissed me in two seconds. I just can't shake your love.

You can next week.

Shake your love.

True story.

I just can't shake your love.

I think Tiffany just released a new album.

Next up, Will just mentioned this one, the new hate album.

We got the promo for it, Ruggia.

It's the 12th album from this Polish death metal band.

It's not out until the middle of October on the 15th, but I really, really like this album.

It's like it's death metal, but it's kind of imperial, not in a like symphonic way. It's just kind of. I don't know. It's it's that's all you need to know. The genre is. It's like but not metal. That's right. Next up, we have the new lamp of more more. I don't know.

I think it's more more. Second full-length album called Submission and Slavery. It's a black metal band from Olympia, Washington, which is basically a dude. I liked the last album. I found this one very interesting. It kind of gave me this fetid zombie feel because the first album was just straight-up raw black metal. And this album introduced some dark wave and even like some cute

type guitar work that I was like, wow, that's different. So I'm fully expecting the next album to be a Hail Spirit Noir synthwave album. I tried to listen to that because I saw it was on your, that you bought it. The production is terrible on it. Well, that's the raw black metal part. Oh gosh, I couldn't listen to more than 30 seconds of it. All right then. Next up.

The Last, I might add, is the new Oxygen Destroyer album. Hold on, let me take a deep breath. Sinister Monstrosities Spawned by the Unfathomable Ignorance of Humankind. This is their second album. They're a Seattle Black Death thrash band, and I think their album cover probably hangs out with one of the ones that Markisan mentioned, but I didn't mention it earlier because we weren't there yet, but it probably went along with the

Godzilla themed death globby thing. Very kaiju themed for sure. Great. I love that. Is it a full album or is it an EP? It is an album. I can't remember. It is. Okay. I toyed with buying the vinyl but now I'm trying to cut back. Okay. Yeah. And finally my last one is not even metal. Sort of like my second one. Okay. But this is a band called Thief and the album is called The 16 Deaths of My Master. And I there's not it's not like

I believe this is the second album there might be some other stuff out there but it's sort of an experimental dark electronic thing think more nine inch nails than synth wave it's it's it's like a heavier electronic kind of thing a lot of drugs and weird shit going on but I dig it I got we got the promo for it and I thought it was cool so that's my last one I love that one George that's you've mentioned a lot of weird shit on here but I've actually

I really like that record. It's not metal. But I have a subscription to that weird shit.com record company. I have a subscription to that record company because they were putting on a couple of metal albums and the subscription was so cheap. It's like, I might as well get this because that's what I would pay for the metal albums. And now I'm getting all this other stuff. And so Thief showed up and I really like that. That's good. Considered to get on vinyl. It's really good. Yeah.

I'm surprised honestly that anybody liked that one. So especially you, Mr. I hate fucking synthwave. I know I like synthwave. I just like good synthwave. Well, this is, this is, it was decent synthwave. But anyway, that is something to argue in Philly. Hey, George, just real quick, not, not to belabor the point, but according to Hill Spirit Noir, their new album is synthwave.

Synthwave meets sci-fi pop. As you will. Just wanted to let you know. I mean, it's very pop. There's just no doubt about that. Fine. They call it pop. They do. Fine. Whatever George said is wrong because the band said it's pop. Whatever George says is goddamn right because he's the goddamn podfather and you're gonna fucking like it. More or less. Synthwave podfather. Synthfather. Synthfather, yes. That's fair enough. All right. Let's move backward to new releases.

Synthwave. Synthwave. Synthwave. Synthwave. Synthwave. Synthwave

First up we have the new Infairy album, Isle Genesis. This is their sixth album. They're a Nashville Tech death band featuring Stevie Boiser from Ashen Horde. I gave this a brief listen yesterday. It is what Infairy tends to do and it was pretty cool.

I haven't checked it out yet. The style of metal they do isn't what I gravitate toward, but I have to say this is a really solid melodic tech death with lots of groovy parts, really great production on it. So, you know, if you like that kind of thing, I mean, they just really do it well. Yeah. Next up, we've got a new band from the United Kingdom. This is only their 17th album. This is Iron Maiden.

I know we haven't talked about this one at all yet, but I like it. So just wanted to say that. It's solid. I mean, I love it. I mean, I think I said it on Messenger, but it kind of feels like a continuation of Brave New World, which is my favorite Maiden album. I agree with that. That it's yeah, I mean, it sounds like that. It doesn't have the sing-songy hooks. Doesn't have Ghost of the Navigator, but no.

But it has the spirit of it. Except writing on the wall has the sing-songy hooks to it. But I just feel like all the tracks have an epic weight to them that make them a joy for me to spin. I really like it. I don't feel the runtime. I know other people have said, oh, it's so long. When I listen to it, I don't feel the runtime, even though it's like a movie-length fucking runtime. Yeah, I didn't notice that either. I really enjoy the album.

Excellent. Yeah. They could use some editing as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I like it, but Death of the Celts is half of that's just a waste as far as I'm concerned. And quite frankly, I'm getting tired of the bass intros. Yeah. Maybe a new producer next time. They've used the same producer since Brave New World. I could use a new producer. I mean, how much is he actually producing? Because let's be honest, Steve Harris has been producing them since the first album. Yeah. I mean, if we could at least get Bob Rock in,

I may sound super ignorant when I say this, but

whoever is producing them for

Number of the Beast, Peace of Mind,

Power Slave,

that's Martin Birch,

whatever studio,

who was the

mix master,

MC, whatever,

That's who I want

He's dead

I do not like

Okay, I get it, George

Did you know he's dead, though?

Yeah, yes, we just said it 15 fucking times

Okay, as long as you know he's dead

I know, but

Trying to

Anyway

Just

I don't like the mix

And I do

George gave us the Flack Files

The Flack Files

When you listen to Flack Files

It is a way different album

Oh, yeah

It's infinite

Yes, it is. Especially Bruce's vocals. Yeah. Bruce's vocals are strained in a lot of places, and this is where I almost wish he would just kind of go back to one of the reasons why I love Seven Sun is I just felt like it was kind of like his angriest vocals in some ways. And then it's just me, and maybe I'm just making shit up, but I just felt like he could emote the song.

in his vocals without trying to do the high-pitched stuff sometimes. And there are times where I'm like, you know, you don't have to do the high-pitched stuff because it's really hard for him now. And you can tell that they're strained. And it's almost like you don't have to. But I did find, the last thing I will say is that they seem very formulaic now. And it's almost like just, you know, can you just,

make something like Aces High again. Can you just make something fast? I know they're older. Maybe Nico McBrain can't keep up with a faster-paced song, but maybe just one song in the album. Something super fast. Just give me Aces High again. One song like Aces High. I may be happier. We need Will to be high. He got that with Stratego. That's about as fast as he can.

It's probably the best song on the album. I do like the title track a lot. I actually thought that was good because it was different. Yeah, I do like this. I mean, I thought Book of Souls was garbage. This is way better than that. And I think this is actually better than Matter of Life and Death, which I thought was just garbage, not garbage, just better than everything since Brave New World. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. I don't know if I think I see. I'm one of the

I actually like New Frontier quite a bit.

Yeah, it's the same. They're not doing anything that different. I know a lot of people think they are, but they're really not. It's just a matter of if the songs are quality. And I think this one's got better staying power than The Last Few. I just want some editing to trim the shit down.

Yeah. Book of Souls. I mean, well, this is a lot better editing. Book of Souls is just like. By eight minutes. Yeah. It was like, hey, well, Fish makes 15 minute long songs and just ramble on. Like, we should do that, too. It'd be Jamfest 2004. Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't feel a length on these, but I mean, I get it. Like, I wouldn't mind if they trimmed it down, you know. Well, you know what it is? I get, I'm a little tired of the two minute bass solo intro. And then with Bruce Connery,

kind of quietly singing over it. Then they get this song and it's cool. But then we got to do the 30 second to 45 second acoustic piece with the quiet Bruce again. And they do that a lot now, it seems like. And I just they've done that before. They don't have to keep doing it. And I know that's all Steve Harris. So and who's going to tell Steve Harris what to do in the band? No, not even Bruce. He's not going to say anything. So although I have to admit the writing credits, you guys notice those? They're a lot different this time.

The last three songs in the album are all Steve Harris songs. They're the three longest songs on the album. So I think it's interesting that I like the first disc better. And that was a mix of all different writers. So. All right. Well, let's move on to the next one. Then the new album from Portrait at one with none there. It's their fifth album. They're a Swedish channel, like kind of traditional metal band. I don't know where you would throw them. I tried to.

Tried to place that, and I'm just going with Trad, because it's kind of, you know, in the middle there. But I've dug them in the past, and this sounded pretty good to me. Yeah. I don't know if I'll go back to it, but I liked it when I listened to it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with John. I mean, I think it's, I mean, the songs are memorable. It's old school heavy metal with just really good solos. There's a heartfelt delivery to it. I feel like sometimes it feels

a little too dated to me, but it's still done really well. It's kind of like the record I wish Pharaoh would have put out. Yeah. Cause I like Pharaoh a lot. And, um, the, the new record, it just didn't do it for me. This one is a lot better than that new Pharaoh record. So, um, I, I, I might come back to it and listen a little bit more. Um, but it definitely, I feel like it, I wish it would have been a little bit more modern, I guess. It feels really steeped in the old school stuff, which is fine.

I mean, we like a lot of old school things, but I like when they have one foot in the past and maybe try to bring it into the present. And I don't feel that on the album that much. Well, this is a, the new wave is the new wave of 80s metal right now. It just seems like it's coming from, like speed metal, not thrash. I mean, it's called speed metal is coming back big time. Yeah. Which, wow, it was like that lasted for a year before it turned to thrash. Yeah. You know, and you remember George? Oh, yeah. I mean,

It was like there was metal and then there was speed metal. And I called it that for the longest time. And I was like, wait, what? Thrash? What? Yeah, when did it become Thrash? And it's because that's when Metallica and Megadeth and all those bands got big. But now bands are billing themselves as just straight on speed metal. I'm like, whoa. Wow. That period didn't last long. No, it didn't. Sort of like our new releases, which we are now at the final one. Wow. Four. Four. Which is Replicant.

Malignant Reality. It's their second album. They're a New Jersey death metal band. I put this one on here because there was some interest in this from other people, so I hope somebody's got something to say. Yeah, I mean, I love this one. It's crushing technical death that's somehow dissonant and catchy at the same time, and it has an exploratory streak that sometimes takes the music in directions I don't expect. I think it's one of the best records of the month.

To be honest with you, like this band's been around a little bit, but this one really grabbed me. I like it a lot. Where exactly did it grab you and why? In the feels. It grabs me by the nipple rings. Nipple rings. All right. I'll have to see those. Well, technical depth, that could kind of hurt with all the constant blast beats. It grabbed me by Will's Tank. That's where it gets right there. So one last thing about Replicant to reel it back in.

I thought it was a pretty good release. I didn't realize they're, I guess, and all those guys are in all different other bands that we like, so. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Again, I don't know how I'll go back to it, but I liked it. Yeah, I thought it was all right. Yeah. All right, let's move on to news.

Yes, we are finally at the end. We haven't done that. All right, we missed that. Okay, we're going to go backwards to forwards and then back again. I got it. Let's do this real quick. All right. So first up, Obituary is in the studio putting Final Touches on their new album and also playing a live stream on September 25th. I know Will does not like Obituary at all, so he will not listen to this. Fuck them.

You know, the same death metal shit over and over and over again since I was a young teenager and I just fell in love with. And you love every minute of it. Since I was a little willy. Who said all that nonsense? I fucking love a bitch. I was a little willy. They're literally one of my favorite death metal bands. One of the original real death metal bands out of Tampa. Motherfucking

Well, I mean, it's been four years since we had the last LP from Obituary, and the band says they're going to perform a new song during a live stream, and I would probably watch this, but we're going to be at Decibel when it happens, so I'm not going to see it. They'll probably still be up there, don't you think? Yeah, I'm sure they'll be up for at least a few days or a week. Hopefully at least for a few days, yeah. Maybe. That's cool. Surprisingly, we have a news item about that new

a new British band called Iron Maiden. So Bruce Dickinson credits his COVID recovery to being vaccinated. Hmm. Just saying. I mean, this is awesome. I mean, he said he believes he would have been more sick if he didn't have the vaccine. And he also expressed a total disbelief towards people who don't wear masks. And, and he had some colorful

for words to say against conspiracy nut jobs, really, which I thought was pretty cool. But I love that because, you know, Bruce is older. We know a lot of older people, except for John, of course, are kind of against. We are older people. What are you talking about? You know, except for Matt. It's nice to see that, you know, where somebody is a little bit older and like, you know, get the vaccine. It's fine. And you're going to help people and save lives. So that made me feel good. Yeah.

Get it. Do it. Do it now. Do it now. What the hell are you? Get to the chopper. Get to the chopper. Get to the vaccination clinic. All right. So in case you didn't hear about this already, Chemist announced their new album, Deceiver, which will be out on November 19th. And they have released the first track called Living Pyre. And it fucking rocks.

It really does

I have to say of all the new songs

I've heard that they dropped early

this is by far the one I like the most

of all the last few albums

This one just seems like it's got more teeth to it

I really like the track of course

I've seen some

Decimal writers talk about how it's like

the best album they've done

I

can't wait to listen to the record

but also I'm just really

I wish Jay was on here because I'm really curious to see if it if this album will pass the deep thoughts of the Jay Dickinson test because the band has mentioned as we know Jay he's a lyric snob the band has mentioned that Deceiver has a theme and all the songs of the album are about the ways that people are tricked into believing negative stories about themselves the fact that they're maybe they're broken or maybe they're not good enough it the album is

about mental health and the mind beasts that people have to wrangle in their heads every day. So all the songs apparently, from what I read, have that theme going through them. So maybe because it has a theme that might sit better with Jay. Doubtful. But yeah, man, I can't wait to fucking listen to this. I'm actually, I'm so jealous.

I don't get jealous that often but

jealous a decibel that they have it and they've listened

to it and we haven't we haven't heard it yet

so yeah hopefully

we get it soon so Mastodon

has announced a new double

album called Hushed and

Grim which is out October

29th and they have released

the track Pushing the

Tides

I know

this is a contentious

band on the podcast at least

for me

But yeah, I thought it was all right. I actually thought this is one of the better songs they've done in a long time. Yeah. I think I figured out what it is. It's that Troy singing. Well, they both sang. Yeah, and I don't actually mind Bram when he sings. I think when Brent sings, I just hear this. You know, I'm trying not to beat on him.

I just maybe don't like his style that much. And I like Troy better. But I know that Troy can't do the harsh vocals as much. He's all but said that. It's hard for him to do. So I just thought the song sounded better than most of their new stuff, the last few albums. I agree with that, John. I mean, I don't think it's at the level of when we loved Mastodon, but there's something, the quality of the sound on that song, it harkens back at least to what they did.

I thought. Yeah. Yeah. I quite liked it. Now I have no idea if the whole album is going to be able to deliver on that. I kind of doubt it. It's a double album. It's a double album. Oh my gosh. But I mean, I want it to be good because I like their first four albums and the EP a lot. It's just strange band, right? Because they're so talented. They put out amazing albums that just influenced metal on some

And they've continued to put out albums. And they've grown more popular. But our interest

in them has waned over the years. And you keep wondering if they're going to recapture

that sound that they had in the early days that we really responded to

that made me and everybody else fall in love with that band for those

first few releases. So, I mean, it's going to be

like Gojira, though, right? We feel that. We hear stuff. And

Here's the thing. Every episode we talk about music, new bands, new music. Listen to this. This podcast is about two things. Our displeasure of Godria's new stuff and Leviathan's or Macedon's new stuff. And penises. And penises. We just want to go back to the world of Leviathan versus, why can't I think of the name of the album? Is it Ocean Planet? Mars the Series. Mars the Series. Thank you.

I actually thought the new Gojir is decent. I know I'm in a minority there. Agreed. I'm with you. I mean, I think it's fine, John. It's just it's not going to make my list. Oh, no. I mean, and that's what I hope for. Like, Gojir is so good. They have albums that I would say are some of the best metal albums of all time. And now they're putting out albums that won't even make my top 25. That's tough. Not that it's not decent or good. It's just that it's not something that I,

I need to listen to you.

I just feel like the theme of our podcast is a song sung by Barbara Streisand.

I don't know the lyrics to it, but we are just, we're just hopeful of the past.

Something from Yentl, I think.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Well, and this is something that I wanted to mention too, because we had Luis on, but, and I think they're going to cover the artwork, or I don't know if they already have or if they're going to, but the artwork is a tribute to the band's late manager, Nick John.

That's right. So there's a tree on the cover and it represents an afterlife mythology that when you pass away, your spirit goes into this, the heart of the tree. And then it experiences all of the seasons that the tree experiences as a way to say goodbye to the natural world and then move on to the afterlife. And I thought that was really cool. Uh, when I read that, uh, again, it was, um, the band talking about what the cover meant to them.

in an article.

So now I'm curious to see what happens on heaviest of art.

If they cover that part of it as well.

But,

um,

you know,

that this is a band that's gone through a lot of shit actually.

So I always wish them.

Well,

I just don't respond to the music as well as I,

um,

you know,

those early albums,

which I think were just seminal metal records.

Yeah,

me too.

Yeah.

All right.

So we have two more items.

Sinek has revealed that Sean Malone died by suicide and have launched a suicide prevention charity initiative. I was kind of behind the times on this one until Markson told me about it, but what? I had no idea.

It literally just dropped. He just announced it, I think, last week. Yeah. I think we kind of, I don't know if I assumed or not. We didn't really assume, John, but it seemed like maybe that was it, but we never knew for sure until now. I mean, I say that because there was just some rumblings about it, but, you know, but the story, if you go back and read the write-up that Paul had for it, it's kind of hard to read.

I mean,

I don't know.

Because he said that Sean was having a hard time because his mom passed away.

Yeah.

And then he came to live with Paul for a time.

Paul said,

Hey,

come here,

you know,

get back on your feet.

You know,

I know you're not feeling right.

And for a time he did that and he,

he was doing better,

but then COVID hit and he started spiraling into a deep depression again.

And then,

And then all of a sudden he just kind of disappeared. And they ended up finding him at his mom's house where he committed suicide. So he just wasn't able to deal with loss and just the world going to shit. You know, it just took too much of a toll on him. That reminded me of Robert E. Howard, honestly. Yeah. So it's just a bummer. But yeah, the charity, the proceeds,

half of it go to this, as you were saying, George. But I didn't realize it was also he included Sean Reiner in there, too, in that, to help fund the documentary about him and Sean Malone. Right. So. Yeah, half go to the suicide prevention organizations and half go to the documentary about the lives of Sean and Reiner. So, yeah. I was kind of hoping that Sean Malone might be on the album.

because apparently he was playing again but he's not going to be on the album and that's understandable i get it but you know it's a it's a shitty story but hopefully the awareness will help so yeah yeah i mean i feel i feel really bad for their families but also paul because he he really reached out to him he brought him to his house to try to get him to to come back you know and some semblance of life where he just didn't feel the way he

you could and then it just didn't matter you know you just couldn't get over that so it is

really really hard to to read that um you know it's a bummer you know yeah it is so i mean if you

like sin it you know go ahead and grab the song if not no big deal but know that it's out there i guess

it was pretty i liked it yeah it's a yeah it's kind of really good it's kind of cool because there's two

versions of it out there.

I know it's funny.

I know Jay always says he's not a big

fretless bass fan,

but I think it's cool to listen to

because it's obviously not easy to play that way.

And he was a bass extraordinaire.

Yeah.

Right.

All right.

Our last news item.

Unfortunately, I don't know the details behind this,

A metal bassist stopped a shooter in Boise, Idaho recently. Mark San, could you give us any background on that since I did not do my homework? Yeah, I don't know the band. The band's called Greyhawk and the bassist's name is Darren Wall and he stopped a shooting before it even began at a show in Boise. And this guy apparently saw a shooter making these finger gun motions

pretending to shoot people in the crowd.

And him and a second member of the band decided to take the guy outside and just make sure he wasn't around the crowd.

And he left, but then came back with a gun.

And so they were on the lookout for this guy.

And this guy, Darren Wall, he tackled the would-be shooter.

And he got shot in the leg while doing that.

So he took down the shooter. Nobody was hurt except for him. And then the shooter was arrested by Boise police. And Darren Wall from Greyhawk, he's all right. He's resting in his home in Seattle, Washington, recovering. But what a hero in metal. He noticed something was awry and did something about it. And it could have easily ended in multiple fatalities.

if he hadn't seen this guy and what he was doing. That's awesome. I feel like I know this band because Greyhawk, I mean, that's assuming it's, is it G-R-E-Y? Yeah, that's right. That's totally a D&D thing. And as a former and sometimes current Dungeons and Dragons player, the world of Greyhawk is known to me. And as such, a band with that name kind of sticks out to me.

And I feel like I've heard them. Yeah. I mean, I just wanted to call attention to it because, you know, there's a lot of shows out there. We're going to be going to a show. And the fact that this band is like, you know, they're usually bands are focused on just playing. And the fact that he had the awareness to understand his surroundings and see this person, you know, I hope more people, not just bands, but any, any people, you know, be aware of where you are and your surroundings. And cause you never,

know what's going to happen or what people are going to do.

I wouldn't think something like that would happen in Boise.

But it could have, if not for this guy.

Yeah, that's cool.

It's really cool.

It's nice to hear about it getting stopped before it goes too far.

Right, and that was the other thing.

What a positive thing.

Usually you hear, oh, all these people got shot at this concert.

And that's why he's such a hero.

Like, he recognized it.

The guy laughed, came back, and they still recognized it.

and he was able to stop it, you know, even though he got shot. So really cool. But right on. Hey, you forgot the Judas Priest one. The news. Oops. Are we going to do that? Oh, I did. I did. Sorry. Yeah. Judas Priest has an album or two of new material, but COVID is holding up the process on that. So the basis to Ian Hill, he said in an interview, the band has this material, but they just can't.

get together to rehearse because some of the guys live in the States and a couple of others live in Britain so even though I have all this material they're not able to actually get together and finalize it but which sucks because you know COVID's holding that out and we can get some more new Judas Priest but it's also hopeful because we know they can't get an album together if they can just you know practice maybe they shouldn't go on world tour then because that's what they're doing right now

It's on the way. They're here right now. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, so I don't know what they're complaining about that. They just played North Carolina last night. Yeah. Thursday. Yeah. So finish the album, guys. Yeah. Do it on the road, you stupid bitches. Do it on the road. You got money. Yeah. All right. So this is where we would begin the episode, but we are now going to end the episode. But we still, as pointed out, have not done our album of the episode. So,

Markisan, what is your album of the episode? Shit, I don't even know. Yeah, I know. I'm thinking the same thing. Just give me one second. I gotta think about this. God damn, we talked about a lot of albums, didn't we? Fuck. He really got me stuck here. I didn't even think about it.

I'm going to go with,

you know what?

I'm going to go.

I know what I'll do.

I shouldn't have thought of this before.

I'm going to go with Cynic Traced in Air.

Because I went and I did a deep dive on the catalog.

The new song really reminds me of Traced in Air.

And I love that record.

It's pretty up there for me.

Of course, I like the previous record quite a bit, but Trace and Air, it was a while before they came back and did that record, and it's just so fucking good. So I'm hopeful that the new record, based on the song that was released, that will sound like that, because the one after it, the last album they did, I'm not very fond of. I keep trying to listen to it. I can't listen to it. The vocals don't work for me. The Salat doesn't work for me.

So, yeah, Trace Denier, this is my hope. I love the record. It's one of my all-time favorite records. I like the original one with the growled vocals, I gotta say. But also because it's the hope for what Sink has become. And I don't know, maybe this could be their last album because they recorded it, you know, and people died. I'm sure they were working on it before two of the members died. So who knows what's going to happen afterwards, but I have high hopes for it.

So yeah,

Trace Nair,

if you haven't heard it,

there's the original version with growled vocals.

And then they did a,

a new version.

I think it was at last year,

John,

or a couple of years ago,

they put a new version out.

They took out all the growled vocals,

but they kind of remixed it.

Yeah.

They remixed it,

remastered it.

And it,

I mean,

it's great.

It's just enough growled vocals.

I like both of them.

And it seems like the new one might be going down that path where

going back a little bit into the archives of of cynic instead of the um the bent knee record that came out when was that 2014 john it's been a while right yeah it's a long time so yeah that's what i'm hoping for because i like um the earlier cynic uh so yeah there you go all right that's my number one trace in there matt what you got it's a contender every time it does not always

I win Leviathan.

Oh shit.

It wins this time.

You win this time Leviathan.

You've won you Leviathaner.

All right John.

All right.

My.

I'm the episode is I'm going way out there.

I'm going to the way back machine.

I'm going to stretch the limits on this one.

I basically just gave you the title.

in so many words. I'm going with Voivod's The Outer Limits. I was telling George, I was spinning it the other day, and I was like, man, I was revisiting this album, and I really dig it, and it's just a fucking cool album. Yeah, it is. So, if you haven't heard it, listen to it. Mm-hmm. All right, Will. It'll fix your heart. Sorry. Now, Will. I'm going to go with my album of the month,

and flesh. Oh, nice. Yeah. The name of the album is Ageless Abominations. It's a lot of morbid angel. I mentioned earlier. If you like morbid angel, check this out. It's fucking awesome. What if you don't like morbid angel? I don't like it then. Then go fuck yourself. That's the correct answer. Exactly. Yeah. They definitely were influenced by morbid angel. Yeah. No doubt.

All right, well, I think for this episode, I'm just going to have to go with Iron Maiden. I mean, you know, it is what it is. There's lots of good stuff here, but Maiden's got it. This episode was shorter than the Maiden album. Barely. Barely. Like two minutes. All right. Well, here we are.

at the end of the episode, however you want to call it. We are here. And yeah, we'll be back eventually. Next week we will be in Philly for the Decibel Metal and Beer Fest. Anyway, see you next time. All right. Later. 99.

EASYOU!

Yo! Sup? Reason number four, I never got into metal. I read comic books. I was introverted enough with that. I don't think I needed to be a double introvert.