Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, metal's my religion, and yeah, it's my zone. Standing in the thunder on stage in the pouring metal rain. What a feeling, baby, the lights are exploding.

And I don't mean my gun. Metal's my religion. Yeah, it's my door. It saves me from the politics, baby. Metal's my religion.

Hello and welcome back to MetalDisciple.com's Metal Heads Podcast. My name is George. And I'm Buke. And we're back again, buddy. We are back. Three weeks in a row. We're on a roll. We're on a roll, buddy. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be around next weekend, so we are going to have a break. Goodbye streak. But hopefully it's only one. Yeah, you said that last time when it was a month and a half. Yeah. It keeps getting longer every time you tell. It's only like three, four weeks. Yeah. So last night I'm watching hockey. Uh-huh. And I hear them mention,

Dennis Weidman. Oh, I remember him. Former Cap. Yeah. Got traded to the Flames. Yeah. The other night, he was a healthy scratch, but he was playing the other day. When he played for the Caps, I'm like, yeah, I like the guy. He's not bad. Yeah, he was cool. When he got traded and other former Caps, I'm like, ah, screw him. Yeah. And it got me thinking, do you have any music loyalty to any band members or bands that, hey, like Mike from Opeth, if Michael was to,

Leave Opeth, would I be like, oh, you're Michael from Opeth.

What are you doing leaving the group? Screw you.

Or is your loyalty with the singer?

Okay.

You see where I'm going with this?

Sure.

And right off the top of my head, Sepultura.

Okay.

As far as I'm concerned, Sepultura ended when Max left.

You know, Roots was the last Sepultura album, as far as I'm concerned.

Let me think, who else?

Because, you know, you and I are huge hockey fans, Cap fans.

If Ovechkin, I love him to death. Love him, love him, love him. If he was to leave our Caps, I'm a Caps fan first. Sorry, Ove. I'll maybe watch you, but I'm not buying your jersey if you go to the Penguins. Yeah. I'm wondering if that loyalty, if you feel that strongly for anybody that you... Okay, let me ask you this. If Joey was to leave Manowar, would you say, Joey, you're Manowar. That's tough.

of course makes man o' war okay joey of course is like you know the guy yeah that pulls all the strings and writes the music and whatnot so man o' war certainly wouldn't be the same but i could still have an allegiance to eric and it would depend on what joey was going to do whether it was something good i mean can joey do good music without eric who knows let's hope we don't find out has has anyone left a group and gone off and done solo stuff and you kind of look at them like oh you're turning your and i know it's different in hockey because it's a business

But has anyone in music turned their back on the band and you're like, oh, well then screw you, dude? I don't know. Usually I tend to side with the people who leave. Like Bruce Dickinson, when he left Iron Maiden, I was all about Bruce's solo work. I tried. I didn't say screw you, Iron Maiden. I just didn't like what they did with Blaze as much. So you wouldn't have gone out and bought the Blaze jersey, bringing it back to hockey? No. Anthrax. Anthrax. You know, when Joey left Anthrax,

I didn't really care for anthrax with John Bush Joey did some solo stuff under like Bella Donna I believe it was called and I didn't really hear much of it so that was just sort of a awkward all-around situation I guess I have my own example when the whole Pantera shakeup happened and we all know all the various side projects Phil's done you know super joint down his solo stuff now I've I've followed him everywhere when when Pantera broke up and damage

Yeah.

Started happening.

I damage plan.

You didn't go to damage.

See, I did.

I was like, fuck Phil.

He's a junkie piece of shit loser.

You know, I was, I was like, it's his fault.

You know, he's, if he wasn't such a stupid junkie, Pantera would still be around.

But obviously I've changed my tune in the years since.

I think Phil is actually quite cool now.

So, you know, it was just something I was just thinking about is this kind of that kind

of translated into.

Sure.

We're so fanatical for our teams. I was just wondering if you're that same way for a band or an artist. I could have been that way with Newstead. When he left Metallica, I could have been like, Metallica, you know. I got your back, Metallica. Well, except for those few years. But when Newstead left, I could have been like, fuck Newstead, man. That's exactly what I'm going with, yes. But I didn't, you know, because then he went and like, he did that.

I bought it I listened to it I tried to support him I was like it's not really my thing but then he jumped on the board with Voivet and I was like oh hell yeah it only lasted like an album or two didn't it yeah I think it was like two yeah but you know it brought some much needed attention to a classic band that's terribly underrated yeah so it worked out just I just want to get your take all right so tomorrow King Diamond is coming to town boy that's awesome unfortunately he won't be bringing us any presents

But then it's not Christmas

So maybe he might

Well we saw him last year

Well not last year

God it was eight, nine years ago

Yeah it was a while ago

It was in like November, December

I remember he played that

No presents for Christmas

That was at Jack's

Yes

And that was a teeny little stage show

He's playing at the Fillmore and Silver Spring tomorrow

And I saw a picture of his

From all the pictures we're seeing

They're ridiculous

Yeah it's going to be an awesome stage show

He's bringing his full Valken stage set apparently

which is pretty badass. There's like stairs and it's kind of like purple velvety looking stuff. Yeah, from what I saw, it kind of looked like old castle stairs and arches and stuff. There's like upside down crosses and like the Baphomet pentagram. It's going to be pretty sweet. How do you think his voice is going to be? From what he's been saying in interviews, it's better than ever. That's awesome. Yeah. That's great. I forget, does he play any Merciful Fate? He does. He does. I was checking.

the setlist website. Unfortunately, our show is the second show, so it's going to be pretty much a last-minute know what he's playing so that I can, you know, prepare. But the last show that he did, like a month or so ago, he did play a couple of Merciful Fate tunes. And that leads me into another question. You always do that. You're always almost a setlist guy. I never look at setlists. But it depends. Because, you know, when someone like King Diamond or Iron Maiden, who has so,

many songs and albums to choose from is going to play. Oftentimes, they play a few songs that are, you know, deep tracks, and maybe I'm not as familiar with them. And so I want to know what those are so I can sort of get up to speed on them. Obviously, I know all the main big songs for the bands, but I don't like that lull in the show where they play a song that you don't know. You're like, oh, I kind of know that one, but whatever. I'll just look at my phone for a while. You know, I don't want that. I want to be like, oh, yeah,

Yeah, okay. So this is that song. Okay. Okay. I see what you're saying. Okay. I remember you did that with Overkill. See, but the thing is, you set yourself up there for disappointment because when we saw Overkill a couple years back, or was it last year, you saw the set list and you're like, oh man. This is a shitty set list. You're only playing like two or three old songs. Yeah. And you were saying that days before the show. But at least I know that, you know, if I hadn't known that, I would have been in there going, what are they doing? They're not playing anything. I would have been more anxious at the show. See, I'm the opposite.

Tomorrow, if Abigail starts up or Arrival, I just want to hear the guitars kick in. I just love that. There is something to be said for that. And sometimes I do that. It depends on the situation. If it's somebody who only has two or three albums, then I can just go and listen to all three of them. But I can't realistically get through the whole entire King Diamond catalog with paying close attention to it between now and the show. It's just not going to happen. You do prep. Yeah.

I go in tomorrow. It's like tomorrow's another day. I'm anal retentive. I'm always my wife gets mad at me. I'm always trying to plan out like at least the next couple days. I know your plan there. I didn't realize you prep your your concert music going. It's a relatively recent thing. I mean, I only found out about the setlist thing like a year ago. So this past week you've been listening to like old diamond. Well, yeah, but I haven't known what he's going to play. So I've just been listening to it. That's also do you listen to albums or do you just listen to track?

He's going to be playing. No. Oh, you mean once I know what his set list is, I build Playlist. Okay. But, you know, like this past week, I've just been picking albums going, okay, let's listen to this one. Let's listen to this one and, you know, hope for the best. Okay. Hope that I'm, you know, well-versed enough. Because I listen to so much music. I can't remember everything. If I haven't listened to something in a couple years, I'm like, what was that again? So, I'm getting old, forgetful.

Now, I'm setting myself up here. I know. I've had a couple metal flubs already on our podcast. Wasn't there a shakeup in his band like a year ago or two years ago? That's fairly recently. I think the drummer quit slash fired. Okay. Okay. I was wondering if that was going to really have any impact. According to King, it did not. Okay. And he said they're, you know, they sound better and gel better than they have for a while because of the excised unhappy person. It's going to be awesome.

I'm sure it's going to be. And then there's the opener Jess and the Ancient Ones. They're one of those bands that I never really listen to much because they're kind of, I don't know, I mean, I don't want to say too much because I actually haven't listened to it enough. I put that on my phone too, hoping to listen to it a little more. But it's not really metal, I don't think. It's kind of like that, is it female-fronted? Yeah. Is it like the Mount Salem type of sounds and stuff? Sort of, yeah. I mean, I like Mount Salem. So that's why I'm like, I want to go back and give it another chance before we see them. So, we'll see.

I called our local vinyl shop the other day Vienna Music Exchange he's gonna be there like he was at the last one I asked him that I called him the other day I said were you at that Raven show yeah I was there where I wanted to say that but I was just like oh yeah it was a pretty cool cool show right yeah well maybe we'll see him maybe we'll go in again beforehand and be like yeah we're going to the show you want to ride so here's the question we know we were we recently

the whole t-shirt, jean jacket thing a couple episodes ago. Tomorrow, are you going to wear a King Diamond shirt? I have the Abigail album cover shirt. Of course not. I've never worn a band shirt to the show, ever. I've got them. I've got the them t-shirt. I forgot I had it, so I busted it out and I washed it and I'm like, maybe I'll wear it just because I haven't worn it. I haven't had an opportunity to wear it. And so I'm like, right on, man, I might wear it.

But I've got a couple of other really obscure ones too that I'm like maybe I'll wear those instead just because they're obscure. You can't break that rule. Oh, all right. Going back to what we talked about with that. Can you I agree you don't wear a band shirt to the band you're seeing and glasses. It's Iron Maiden for some reason that seems to be the rule because it's just kind of cool to have that many Iron Maiden shirts on one place. I was wearing my trooper shirt yesterday to the gym. It's funny. I was walking

to the locker room and I walked past this chick who, she had like tattoos and stuff and she was just, you know, I was like, oh, maybe she's metal. Maybe she'll be like, nice shirt. Did you kind of blade your body? No, no. But, you know, and it was just like a stray random thought. It wasn't like I didn't put much thought. It was just one of those passing thoughts as you're walking. Didn't say anything. But as soon as I got into the locker room, dude looks up and goes, nice shirt. Of course, that's the way it works out. Of course. He was probably telling himself dry too or something.

No, no, no, he was dressed. But my wife is constantly surprised by how many people stop me and say, nice shirt. You know, my Maiden shirt, my Monomarth shirts, even my Metal Disciple shirts, which nobody would know. They're just like, cool shirt. She's like, people are always, and I was like, yeah, people are always saying that to me, random people. How many times have you and I, and it'll happen tomorrow, we always do our pre-concert dinner. It's what we do. Yeah. It's like, we're football players, and it's like our meal before

for the game. Gotta carve up. How many times have we sat down to the table and the waiter or the waitress always comments on our shirts? That's true. And then they throw out, because they're always probably younger kids, they throw out whatever new metal bands they think are heavy that they're listening to. Yeah. And we have to act like, yeah. Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, I like metalcore. It's yummy. See, I'm really excited. Any concert with you? Well, thank you. Likewise, brother. So yeah, tomorrow

We'll be getting into that. And we won't have a review next week. No, we won't. Maybe we could record something with the portable. On the way back. And then we'll just tack it on to the next one. Wouldn't that be good? Maybe bring a portable on the way driving home. Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do that. Save you from having to write something up for the website. Yeah, like I do that anymore. MetalDisciple.com. Yes. I'm having technical difficulties on the back end. Right now, my host is working on them.

But I'm having trouble updating, so hopefully this week that'll get sorted out. So my friend Josh got a hold of me the other day, and he told me about this short documentary that I should check out. It's called The Distortion of Sound. I posted this up on the Metal Disciple Facebook page last night, so if you're interested, you can check it out. Basically, it's this short documentary that talks about how over the last 20 years, music sound quality has degraded because of the digital music age.

compression, things like that. You know, MP3s strip out like up to 90% of the sound. I didn't realize it was that high. I didn't either. And so I watched this documentary. It was pretty interesting. I had people like Linkin Park slash Quincy Jones, Snoop Dogg, a range of people talking about, you know, their love of music and how gut-wrenching it is when you spend so much time making music perfect. And nobody's going to hear it. And nobody's going to hear all the little nuances because

It's getting stripped out in iTunes MP3 compression, listened to on crappy Apple earbuds or through laptop built-in speakers. And it's just kind of demoralizing for the artist to know that they put all this time and effort in and people aren't getting the full effect. My big takeaway from it, I highly recommend anybody, everyone listening to this podcast checks it out. My big takeaway from it is that, like I forget who said it, I should have written it down.

People don't care.

Right.

To be honest.

It's the convenience of it's in my hand.

It's going right in my pocket.

My earbuds are going in.

My earbuds probably cost 50 cents to make.

Yeah.

You know, cheap little speakers.

Just I'm going to put them in and I'm going to go.

Yeah.

And I've been, you know, I jumped on the digital bandwagon immediately.

You know, when the first iPod came out, I started ripping my CD collection.

You know, it took me quite a while to rip my whole CD collection.

I put it in iTunes started loading it up and back then I think I was ripping them at 128k which is just horrible even now I try to rip everything at 320k and unfortunately iTunes only sells up to 256 do they really yes I mean I don't know if they're still doing it I know they at some point started selling like on a little lossless or or at least higher quality versions but they cost a lot more so I never got into that back in the day when we first

started ripping CDs and stuff. We ripped to wave files, which are much larger. Oh, huge. And wave files, it's funny because I had to look it up. I've like not used wave files in years, but wave files are, they're not compressed. Hmm. So they're giving you a full, a fuller sound anyway than an MP3 ever could. But were CDs compressed at all? CDs are not compressed. Okay. Vinyl is not compressed. This is why vinyl sounds so good compared to MP3.

MP3s. I've got something about that to talk about, too. So, it's funny that he sent me this link because for the last, like, two weeks, I've been pondering going back. There's a format called FLAC. I remember I have a bunch of FLAC, yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch of different... Live Metallica you can buy in FLAC. Yeah, there's a bunch of different formats, codecs, that you can rip music in that's lossless, not compressed. And FLAC is probably the most well-known, I think.

And so I was like, I was going to do a test and I was going to rip a Woods of Epre album in flack and then compare it with my MP3 version, put it on my phone, listen to it with headphones on and see if I can tell the difference. And if I can, I intend to go back and cherry pick from my collection because, you know, flack files and wave files and all those, they're huge. They're like five to 10 times the size of an MP3, which is why everybody uses MP3. It's more convenient. You can fit more of them on. You can take more of it with you.

And I'm guilty of that as much as anybody else. Because I have a ton of music and I want to take as much as I possibly can with me. However, like I said, I might just go back and cherry pick, you know, the Metallica albums, the Manowar albums, the Woods of Eprey albums, put all those in a lossless format. If I have to buy another hard drive to store them on, whatever, you know, hard drives are cheap now. Back when we first started doing this, it was expensive and there was no room. And now hard drive space is so cheap, there's no reason not to. I can't imagine.

Well, actually, I can't imagine. I'm the kind of person that says, I'm just going to do a few. Just going to rip a few of them. And next thing you know, six months later, I'm just finishing up ripping all of them. I've got 12 new external hard drives. But it's something I'm looking into. And to test this theory, this morning, I was trying to think of an album that really sounds kind of crappy on MP3. And the early Anthrax albums sound kind of shitty on MP3. I've always kind of been like, yeah, it doesn't sound so good.

about that. So I busted out my Among the Living vinyl this morning and I popped that on just to do a little test. And it sounded great. I was like, wow, okay, there's a problem here. We need to do something about this. So I'm going to start getting hardcore about that. I think a large number of people, I got five, six hundred Facebook friends. I say that not to brag, but to say I could all get them to watch it. Is that going to drive any of them to vinyl? Maybe one or two?

But people don't care. Right. Sadly, in music today, people don't care. People, George, from just talking to my friends and co-workers, people don't even care about albums anymore. It's tracks. But there's still a lot of audiophiles out there, and if all the audiophiles are getting on board, at least there's a portion of the music community that's keeping this sound quality alive. All we can do is spread the word and hope people

Notice the difference.

The one thing I heard a fact, I forget where I heard it from,

but it was a couple months back, was that, I think it may have been Slagle that said this from Metal Blade,

was that the heavy metal community as a whole has always adopted the physical product extremely well over the download.

In the sense that if they release a new Metal Blade, a lot of people are still going out and getting the CD.

A lot of metal heads are still going out and getting the vinyl.

Yeah.

So I guess that's what we have going for us too, that we have a lot of passionate people here. Because we're not like pop fans. We don't have a new flavor of the week every week. Yeah. I'm still going to be going both ways with this because obviously I can't take my vinyl with me. So when I'm at home and I want a nice, pleasant listening experience, I'll throw on the vinyl. But unless I have flack files, I still need to be portable. I still want to listen to my music in the car.

and at work and wherever I happen to be. And so, you know, I obviously, it's unlikely that I can completely give up compressed music, but I can at least make the effort to change over to a lossless format whenever I can. I totally agree. I was just contacted by a band from Oslo, Norway. They're called Pigeon Lake. And they were like, hey, check us out. You know, I mean, I get these emails all the time and their name didn't really like make me go, oh, I want to hear Pigeon Lake. But then they're in there like, what do we sound like? It was like Catatonia, Alice in Chains. I was like, oh, that's kind of an interesting.

I'll download it and check it out. I download it from their website and it's in WAV files. And I was like, huh. You know, at one point this would have annoyed me because I'd have to stop and convert it to MP3. Okay, after watching that documentary now, do you convert stuff? I used to. Oh yeah, so would I. Because it just, I don't want to take up that much space for something, particularly something that I haven't even heard yet and don't know if I like. So I did in fact convert this to MP3, but I held on to the WAVs just in case. Can our phones, we both have iPhones, can they play WAV?

I googled that this morning because I've never tried it iTunes accepts wave files in the library so according to Google you can in fact play wave files on your iPhone it just takes up a lot of space I've got 128 gigabyte phone now I can put all kinds of shit on there now yeah he has that plus everybody the six plus the sitting on the table bragging to me right now it's calling to you it says I'm so big don't you want me don't you want me baby so it's it's

It's a double-edged sword here. You want the convenience, but that comes at a cost of obviously quality and stuff like that. And watching this documentary was just a real simple explanation of the loss that we're experiencing. Yep. All right. Well, before we move subjects on, I'm just going to read you a little bit from the website. You can check this all out if you go to distortionofsound.com. The little blurb on the website says,

The Distortion of Sound is an eye-opening expose of the current state of sound starring Linkin Park, Slash, Quincy Jones, and more. This documentary will open your ears and inspire you to reach for richer, more soul-stirring musicals.

experiences. One more point on this. Take away listening on the go. It seems the at-home experience has changed too for a lot of people. I was born in the early 80s. I remember when I was growing up seeing stores displaying speakers, receivers, big sound systems and stuff like that. Even simple stereos and stuff like that. How many homes do you go in now? And I go in a lot of homes to my friends and stuff like that. I don't see, and you've been in my

Mine, of course, been yours. We both have nice, nice speaker setups. My speakers are my pride and joy. Right. You don't see people even having that anymore. So I think music as a whole has changed for people. Yeah. Music, if you ask people, probably 90% of people, how do you listen to music when you're at home? I bet you they'd say grabbing their phone or their laptop. Yep. Putting earphones in. More than likely. Mm-hmm. I'm actually looking into, I was considering getting some Sonos speakers. Mm-hmm.

is sort of, it's where it is. It's not moving. It's not portable. And I've got a room set aside where all my vinyl is and I've got my turntable and my speakers set up and I've been researching. And in theory, I can hook up a Sonos speaker in there and then take some speakers and put them in like the next room, you know, put them into the kitchen and the living room area so that I can play them in there and listen in here. And I'm like, nice. I don't know. A receiver, a multi-zone receiver should be able to do that for you too. Yeah. So, you know, but wirelessly.

Oh, wirelessly. Yes. Okay. Yes. So I'm looking into that because that would be pretty cool. But yeah, haven't you noticed that too? That the whole at-home experience for listening for people has changed? Yeah, of course. I mean, you know. I know, I don't want to speak for you, but I'm going to here. Growing up, you probably knew tons of people, friends, dorm rooms, whatever, who had the big, you know, I don't know what you call them, bookcase speakers. You know, boom. I used to have one of those, I don't even know what it was,

It was a dual cassette with a radio tuner on top of that and a turntable on top of that. And you had two for the 80s. They were okay speakers, like pretty crappy speakers now. And, you know, I would like get vinyl and record it onto tape so that I could put it in my Walkman and take it with me. That was how I dealt with the problem back then. But yeah, you know, you had though, everybody had either one of those or they had like a giant boom box of some kind or, you know, if they really had money, some sort of, you know, floor speakers. Yeah. Yeah. And like the real home stereo,

like rack kind of thing but yeah now everybody's just got their phone their laptop

whatever on top of that people are listening on crummy beats headphones and yeah those things are

horrific i used to be a fan of bose headphones and even those are kind of crap

audio technica right now you could say you can kind of save money and they're actually really good

headphones yeah so if you have any discussion on this you want to share with us he's george at uh we are

metalheads or buke uh at we are metalheads or disciple of ov metal and i'm at opeth fan

On Twitter. Yep, on Twitter. Please. That reminds me, did you check out the new Instagram account I created for Metalheads? You sent me that last night. I got caught up with something. I didn't. Yeah, I was like, that's a social media avenue we haven't gone down yet. It started by you, surprisingly. Wow. Yeah, well, Randy Blythe, that's the only social media site that he's on anymore is Instagram. Did I tell you I met him? Did I tell you I met him right after you met him? I remember looking at my shoulder like, oh, you're like, I'm like,

I'm like why isn't he calling me over why did you tell me to stay here anyway and so I was like well you know why not set up an Instagram account I the first picture I put up there was the the odorous funeral pyre okay second picture was me and Randy okay and then the third picture was the Halloween don't meddle with evil record I was thinking I might use this to just like dude this is great exposure you could you have you take pictures make it the account public

Oh man, dude, you get your name out there. Yeah, I got to figure out how to, you know, how to use it. What's the account's name? It's metalheads podcast is the name of the account. And I figure like when I get cool vinyl, I'll throw a picture up there. Like when we're at King Diamond tomorrow, probably take some pictures and throw it up there. Cause I don't really have anywhere, you know, metal disciple. If, unless I was writing up a review, there's really nowhere for me to put pictures for my show or, you know, I can put it on Facebook. I suppose I do that sometimes, but I've been talking recently about the

new slipknot and how you know they've released like a song or two and i wasn't really sure whether i was going to get on board with it have you listened to any of it yet no well i have a copy of the album now and i'm actually really stoked about it it's really pretty good i think they're more of a metal band now and less of a new metal band as the album progressed some of their old habits sort of reared its head and i was like yeah that's a little more like old slipknot but some of the some of the stuff on there is pretty metal obviously it's cleaner

and more produced and, you know, meant for mass consumption. But it's still pretty cool. I was digging it, so I pre-ordered the vinyl. What are you doing? Somebody stop me! Slipknot vinyl. I got four on vinyl, too. That's a band that lost their way with me for a while, around their middle. Around their first three albums. Yeah. The first album kind of hooked me because they were different. Yes. And then they kind of lost their way for a while when all the kids started finding them. I still don't understand the hype that they

have around them? No, I think they just kind of got lucky that way. I mean, it's not like they don't have talent. They obviously have talent. I'm not going to sit here and say they're not talented, of course. But you know, it's one of those one in a million kind of things. It's like, talent only gets you so far. Luck's got to carry you the rest of the way. Good point. So anyway, that'll be cool when that comes out. Let's get into some news stories. On a more serious note, a very old and ragged looking Dave Mustaine held a press conference asking for help looking for his missing mother-in-law. She was last seen near a campground

in Julian, California on October 4th. She has Alzheimer's disease and apparently wandered away from the campground and nobody's seen her. So if, you know, you're in that area and you happen to see a confused oral lady, confused 75 year old woman wandering around, please get ahold of somebody. So I was like surprised and excited to hear that a new silos is album is coming out in January. It's called Dorman Heart. I put that on my news list earlier in the week and I was like, can't wait to talk about that. Yep. And then yesterday, lo and behold,

They release a video for a song already. It's not coming out until January. I saw it hit Twitter. I didn't watch it. It's awesome. Is it really? It is. You're one of the bands you turned me on to. I like them a lot. The song is called Mercy and you can check out the video online. Give it a listen. It's pretty badass. We saw them last year. Was that the ghost show? No, it was the down show. It was. The down show. Yeah. They were awesome live. Yeah, they were. They were really cool. From England, correct? Yes. Yep. There was another headline this week.

from your buddy Michael Ackerfeldt says he might be too old to understand what the younger generation thinks that metal really is these days. I can agree with that. Can you? Sure. I would be interested to hear your take on this. Well, I think I'm actually older than Mike. If not, we're at least relatively relatively. Relative around the same age, yeah. Yeah. And I understand this because you look at all the kids out at the malls and running around. It's all the metalcore bullshit. That's what they call metal.

And they're like, nah, man, you listen to that stupid old people metal. And those are the ones that are debuting number ones and twos on the... Bring me the fucking Horizon bullshit. I'm sorry. That is... Their earlier stuff was at least screamy, but now it's like pop. It's like, oh, we're going to play and we're going to scream and then we're going to play. We're going to sing and we're going to sound feminine. Yeah, and I'm like, when did they start doing that? It was a couple albums ago. And I was like, wow, that is just fucking horrible. Yeah, we will never discuss them on the podcast. You will never see them on the new releases and... No.

No, I mean, other than to bash on them like I am now, they're not getting on the show or on my site. But he might not understand it, but I don't think that's going to change him. No. He's just going to play what he wants. Yeah, he's going to do what he wants to do, and I can understand that. I listened to so many types of metal over the last 30 some odd years, you know? I mean, I started out before thrash. I lived in a world where there was no thrash. Heavy metal was Kiss and ACDC.

and black Sabbath and Ozzy and then along came thrash and wow okay so I like that stuff that I used to like Twisted Sister but then Metallica Slayer Anthrax it's like yeah I like this stuff too and so I've been through so many musical heavy metal evolutions in the last 30 years that I've come to like so much of it but I still don't get this metalcore shit now without you know calling these guys sellouts bands like Opeth obviously they don't have the pedigree that like a Slayer does the years and stuff like that

They're getting there though. They are. How do these bands stay current? I can't find the right word. How do they stay relevant to new generations? Or if you're putting out good stuff, do the younger generations just find you? You know what I'm saying? What prevents a slayer from kids today coming up and saying, oh, slayer, yawn. Just continuing to put out good music. If you try to change with the times, then... That's what I was going with. If you try and change with the times, people are going to see right through it.

That's called load, reload, you know, during the grunge. The Celtic Frost album? Yes, yes. Cold Lake is an example of that as well. If you try to change to fit in with the times, first of all, you're probably going to fail. Second of all, people are going to see this and go, what a sellout. It's not going to smell right to people. You really just got to do what you do, be true to what you do, and if you're true to what you do and what you do is good, the people will be there. Yeah, because if you don't understand what the

What the kids like, hey, just keep playing what you like. They'll find you. When I was listening to Among the Living earlier before you got here, I was playing Indians, and I was thinking about when we saw them at Fillmore and the war dance part, Scott stomping around and everybody just losing their fucking mind to a song that's 27 years old. 27 years old. And people are still losing their mind to this song. That is how you stay relevant.

You write good songs. What else from 27 years ago? I mean, there's some good pop music from the 80s, but you know, Debbie Gibson is probably not selling out shows with people losing their mind to her music right now. If there is somebody going apeshit right now. If there are, then more power to them. Like that guy we saw at the Ravens show

The Raven Backpatch. Someone's just going nuts for her. Yeah. Good music is good music, and that's the only thing that's going to keep you going with the fans is to continue to put out good music. Yeah, so it does get to a point where you're like, I don't understand kids these days. I can understand what Mike's talking about. Yeah. But again, people can say he's no way of understanding. He doesn't understand metal anymore anyway, so. I think he understands it. I think he's just evolving past it, you know? He still likes metal. It's probably older metal, but he still likes, you know,

He likes listening to metal. He enjoys metal. But that's not what he's writing. Alright, moving on. So out of the blue, I was surprised to see that there's a new Blind Guardian single called Twilight of the Gods, which is going to be out on December 5th with a full album to follow in January. They didn't list an album title with that. I don't know if Twilight of the Gods is the name of the album as well, or if it's just the single. I don't know. But I guess we'll find out. They've kind of been off my radar the past couple years. The only thing I... When he and the singer...

I'm going to bring his name up right now. When he did the side project Demons and Wizards, I was kind of like, hmm. Yeah, it was cool. Different, but Blind Guardian the past couple years just hasn't had that same early kind of Blind Guardian sound. I feel like they've sort of gotten into a formula for how they write their music. And so it hasn't been quite as interesting, as exciting as their older albums like Imaginations from the Other Side. So they've sort of become part of the machine and this is the way they do it. And so I'm hoping that this is going to sound,

A little more fresh. We'll see. Let's get into some new releases this week. You ever listen to the band Ancient Wisdom? No. They're not really heavy in terms of metal, but they're kind of doomy and they're kind of cool. They've got a new album coming out called Sacrificial. I got the promo for it. I only listened to like a song of it before I got interrupted, so I can't really say too much, but it sounded cool. Definitely going to go back and check that out. The album I mentioned last week, Blut aus Nord and Memoria Veytusta 3 Saturnian Poetry is also seen release.

I checked it out last week. Yeah, good stuff. It is good. Yeah, so hopefully my vinyl's on the way next up is Exodus and their new album blood in blood out featuring the return of Steve Sousa. I'm not entirely sure if this is actually coming out or not iTunes has the expected release date of October 14th, which is what I had been expecting. But my Amazon preorder of the vinyl has the date pushed back to end of November. That may just be the vinyl that's been pushed back. Maybe everything else is still on schedule. I don't know.

But it may be out this week. So you should definitely check that out. I was listening to that at the gym yesterday. Fucking brilliant. Really? Oh, yeah. Definitely a return to form for the band. It doesn't, it sounds more contemporary musically. But with Steve on vocals, it's just, I don't know. It just sounded amazing. Definitely going to be one of the top thrash albums of the year. We're going to have to do a convincing buke with Exodus, I think, because you need to get on board with these guys.

Ozzy Osbourne is releasing his like what 200th album compilation best of whatever it's called memoirs of a madman not coming anywhere near that one I already have all those you have one you have yeah I don't need another compilation pig destroyer is releasing their EP mass and volume people in this area have always gone crazy for them I've never been able to get on board with them it's just a couple minutes to me of just noise yeah well some people like it mm-hmm I think

They're okay. They're pretty cool. I listened to a little of this. This is actually like some doom

outtakes that they did on a previous session, like an old session, where they, because, you know, usually they're pretty like fast grindcore kind of stuff, and they like slowed it down. It's still like really, but, you know, but it's like more slow and doomy, so check that out. Revocation has a new album called Deathless. You're gonna check that out? Definitely. I love these guys. Like, uh, extremely. I've never been able to truly define

technical, death metal. But if there's a definition that I can say what is a technical band, death metal band, these guys. Yeah. These guys are freaking spot on with everything they do, with all their solos, with all their playing. These guys are fucking geniuses for some of the sounds that they make. I've seen the album cover for the new album. It looks pretty sweet. I haven't heard any of the music yet. Bummed that we missed them at barbecue. Yeah. Yeah, I was pretty bummed by that too. Finally, after 20 some odd years, the return of Sanctuary with their new album.

The Year the Sun Died. I know you've finally gotten into these guys recently after I convinced you to pick up their first album on vinyl. Yep. Yeah, I first heard Sanctuary right after the release of Refuge Denied. I saw them open for Megadeth on their first tour. Bought the t-shirt. Really got into these guys. And then when their second album came out, Into the Mirror Black, that's when I just lost my mind for these guys. I was like, these guys are so awesome! Josh knows what I'm talking about, don't you? These guys fucking rule.

And then they broke up. Yeah, and then you have this hype for Nevermore. I never did. No, I didn't. For whatever reason, I bought every Nevermore album. Like me, like A Cold Heart, In The Dead World. Oh, God, one of my favorite albums. For whatever reason, I just never got deep into Nevermore. I put it on once in a while. I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh. But I never got into Nevermore. Maybe we should turn the table with a convincing George. That's a good idea. Maybe we'll do that one of these weeks.

We flip-flop week to week. Yeah. But yeah, I definitely... I'm always telling myself, I need to go back and listen to Nevermore because I just haven't gotten into them. And then as soon as I listened to the new Sanctuary album, I was just boom. I was in. I was like, yes, this is Sanctuary. This is awesome. Definitely another one of the thrash albums of the year. It's not total thrash. I mean, I guess in the 80s, it would have been considered thrash now. I don't even know what you'd call it, but it's awesome. Other than Worrell, is the whole band original? Do you know?

I don't think the whole band is. I think somebody they couldn't get to come back. I'd have to look that up though. That's great. That's great. You've always been big on these guys. Yeah. So congratulations and welcome back Sanctuary. The last new release this week is a band. I actually don't know much about them. I mentioned them to you. That's why I put them on here. They're called Starkill and their new album Virus of the Mind. It's kind of like I remember the description when I texted you when I heard them for you to check them out.

Dragon Force meets Death Metal vocals. So picture the speed of the playing that Dragon Force brings. Add in heavier vocals. That's your Starkill. Yeah. Pretty cool stuff. I'm not playing this. You don't hear this. Nope. But imagine if you will, that's what they sound like.

Anyway. Imagine. I don't know what that was. That was me recreating with my mouth what it sounds like to be Starkill. So they're awesome. Yeah, I'm definitely going to give that a listen. Yep. As you can tell, it's already on my phone. With all the size you have on there. Well, thank you for complimenting me on my size. Now, what's the indie band of the week now? This week's band comes from the Netherlands. I'm going to butcher their name probably, but they said that

was going to be okay.

Sheil Magognar.

This is a two-man project.

They do a progressive atmospheric black metal.

I first came across these guys earlier in the year.

In fact, I think I played them for you.

Blew me away.

So when I was looking for someone to put on the show this week, I reached out to

these guys a couple days ago.

They kindly let me have permission to play some songs from their album.

The album is called Emergence.

Came out back in February.

And they asked me to pass this along to you.

Dear listeners, we hope you will enjoy our work.

We are a fully self-reliant two-man project, so if you like what you hear and wish to support us, please consider buying a CD on our Bandcamp page or a digital copy on your favorite music platform. All proceeds will go directly towards future productions. Thank you very much.

They do great work.

You can also find them at their own website.

And I'm going to spell this out for you.

S-H-Y-L-M-A-G-O-G-H-N-A-R dot com.

You can also find them on Facebook and YouTube.

I think after you hear this song, you're going to want to go check them out.

This is the song called Emergence.

I can't

A trap between matter and chaos Where the future and faster is wide In my dreams I have seen a reflection Of the odd world that is still begun I saw knowledge inside this arcane And perhaps I have traveled to far For a vision to bitter and horrid Now forever My soul had scars

Riding from the shadow of the desert I awoke in a better escape

The desperate struggle of a world becoming a prey I wandered off the trinity of what I saw here my heart froze A weeping tree, a speck as ash, way among the strongholds rose

I stare at this sorrowful creature Feeling what it has seen and known Now it's the end of our creation There's some thought from its branches' glue

The ones that I love

And when you make what she did to me

That my life was made to them not

I'll die!

Then I faced a keeping infinity As a choir of anger, the cries Overwhelmed me with purest and comforting Am I so locked and flashing at once? Now I strive towards action or righteousness As I breathe the undoing of life

Unfolding my destination

In a world with no hope

All right, that was Shilma Gagnar and their track Emergence from the album of the same name. You can put that right on the shirt. No, you know, metal stylings on the logo. People would still be like, hmm. Yeah, well, you know, when I first came across them and I saw the album cover and it's like a orangish, reddish,

sky with this funky tree, and it's got the logo across the top. And I was like, what? I mean, I'm used to trying to decipher difficult black metal logos, but I was just like, what? Way too many consonants in there. And when I asked the band if I could play some of their music, they agreed. And I came back and I was like, one other thing. How actually do you pronounce the name? I was like, I don't want to butcher it. He sent me a link.

to a mp3 of like the like Stephen Hawking voice pronouncing the the name so he said that was close so hopefully what I did was right he said they sort of brought it on themselves by naming the band that way so not to worry about it too much but these are the little details that I care about so hopefully I got it right stick around to the end of the podcast and we'll be playing you another song from the band named Sheil Magognar good good good I'm getting it one of these times I won't have to be a good song

I have to reference the recording every time I try to say it. All right. So given the occasion of the King Diamond concert tomorrow, you had the brilliant idea of doing our top three King Diamond albums. And if we did this in the past, forgive us. Yeah. I feel like we've talked about some of these before, but it may have been a different context. So yeah, I'm definitely going to go back and start. I'm trying to work on a new Metalheads website. And I think I'm going to, in the details for each episode, I'm going to list.

this is the band that's the top three this week. I won't say what the details are, but I'll say this is the band that was the top three and this was the band. Maybe this is the classic. This is the classic and this is the band we were listening to. That way, for our own reference, we can go back and go, oh yeah, we already did that. Or somebody else for a reference. Exactly. Being that the new website's going to have, we don't have all that much for a podcast. Metal Disciple has written reviews and video reviews and there's a bunch of different

stuff on there. But the podcast, it's pretty much the podcast. So you have room to go into detail more. So that's what I'm trying to do with, you know, recreating the site. Hopefully that'll be up soon. Can I ask you quickly before we get into this thing about King, can I ask you a King question? Sure. I always like asking you how you first found bands. And I like your stories about you always found these bands like Kill Em All when you first saw that album cover. King Diamond, you know, I know with his Merciful Fate days and obviously the way he paints his face and stuff like that with the dark images and the

I did not know Merciful Fate. Well, I, okay. That's not entirely true. I had heard Merciful Fate. I didn't know. But it was like a dubbed cassette. So all I had to go on was there was music and it said Merciful Fate. Knew nothing about who was in the band. I didn't know any pictures, but I had heard Merciful Fate before King Diamond. My first exposure that I can remember to King Diamond was like the cover of a magazine.

Circus or something. There's a picture. It's like King Diamond. It was probably like right after he left. It was like probably right when Fatal Portrait came out. It was like King Diamond. And I was like, wow, look at that dude. He's all painted up. And it wasn't corpse paint back then. It was Kiss was pretty much it. Did you have the crosses then? No. Well, I mean, it's evolved a lot over the years. So I don't think so. I think it was much more like Gene Simmons, curly black face paint kind of thing. Oh, it was. I remember seeing early pictures. The classic look. And so I remember seeing it on a magazine cover and going, huh, who's that?

that and King Diamond. I thought the whole Diamond part was a little like Neil Diamond. You know, I was like, I didn't know what to think. But then one of my classmates, he picked up Fatal Portrait and he played that for me. And I was like, wow, dude sings high. And so it was definitely an acquired taste getting into King Diamond. And then, of course, Abigail came out and that pretty much clinched it. Okay. So that's my origin story. Okay. Well, I'll get right into my top three.

Number three is The Eye. Okay. Number two is Them. Okay. Each of these albums, you know, just like we talked about a couple weeks ago, we talked about last week, they're all concept albums. They all tell a little story. Yeah. Just going track by track hearing the stories that he sings about and talks about. It's cool. And number one, you know, I really don't have a lot of backstory on any of these other than I really like them. Number one is Abigail. Yep. It's a bad one that got me into King Diamond. All the tracks are

are just awesome. Really, when George texted me a couple years back and said that it made King Diamond, what's it, Arrival, made it into, or Mansion in Darkness made it into Clerks 2, was it? No, no, actually, I think it was off of them. It was, you know what it is, when they pull up and they're blaring it out of the van. It was like the Grandma, What Was It Like song. Yeah, because like when Jay's like climbing into the drive-thru. Yeah, it was definitely something from them. And then, yeah, Abigail's number one. It's just,

That story's wicked. All the songs in that album are awesome. I think this is probably the closest in tune we've been. Wow. We have the same three albums in different order. Oh, okay. Number three for me, The Eye. The first song on The Eye, Eye of the Witch. The keyboard and the guitars and just the songwriting on that song. One of my favorite King Diamond songs. It's just brilliant. I love that album. I even was playing the vinyl of it when I got it. And my wife, who does not like

was like that was really good I was like what you like King Diamond so that's how good it is it's it's just an incredible album my number two is Abigail you are correct Abigail is an amazing album and that was really the album that like I said clinched me on King Diamond it was like yes this is a badass album but my number one is them that was the album that I got addicted to when that came out I bought the cassette and I just played the shit out of that

that album is just awesome we're not judging it on technical merit

we're just preference okay you're right we don't we don't argue on this i know if i reach for an

album it's probably that okay did you even give abigail too much to listen not a lot i mean i have it

i don't have it on vinyl yet probably give it a lot more listen once i get it on vinyl

But I've been, with a lot of bands, I'm guilty of listening to the early albums more than the more recent albums. But recently I was listening to, which one was it? It was Spider's Lullaby. Spider's Lullaby. Or possibly Puppet Master. Might have been Puppet Master. That's when we saw him on that tour. And I was like, surprised how much I actually really do like it a lot. I was like, wait, this is really good. This isn't like end of the career album. This is really good.

So I'm, you know, part of my ritual here leading up to the show is to try and give a listen to some more of these more recent King Diamond albums to become more familiar. And that's part of why I want the set list. I want to know which of these newer songs he's playing so that I can make sure that I'm familiar with them. Yeah, I like some Puppet Master, you know, since I'm late into the game to all these artists, you know, Puppet Master for me when that came out, I was just, you know, new to King. So I checked it out. I love that album. Yeah, that's good stuff. It's not, obviously didn't make my top three, but

Great stuff. Yeah. I'm so glad that he's back in good health and getting back on board. He's like, we mentioned he's releasing that best of album, but what I'm waiting for is a new King album. Hopefully that's going to materialize next year. Who would you pick King or merciful fate? Put them together. I mean, put them together. Who do you prefer? That's tough because the stuff that King did with merciful fate is kind of different. It's very similar, but it's also slightly different.

And the last few years, given that King has been on hiatus, I've really been revisiting the Merciful Fate collection, particularly the first two albums. And that's really been probably my preference the last few years. But there's a heck of a lot more King Diamond music out there. So I don't know what you say, you know, I love them both. Yeah. All right. So last time on Convincing Buke, I tried to convince Buke that he should really get into Overkill. And I tried to sway him with three songs from the years ago.

I hate playing with spiders skull crusher and the title track the years of decay I am ready for disappointment okay I am going to be honest here when you played when you told me to I'm trying with getting order correct when you told me to listen to years of decay mm-hmm that song started to turn me around a little bit as such I listened to it in the car yesterday and I was like how could you not love this song my mic I get goosebumps particularly at the very end yeah

When the tom drums are going, and it's da-da-da-da-da, and he's like, yes, I'm gay. I'm like, oh my god, I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. How could you not love that song? His vocals don't sound as rough as he's obviously, as age has taken its toll on him. Sure. Definitely, I could put this album right up there with other albums of its time. Yeah. I'm surprised it's not talked about more than I've seen.

I agree so you've you've give a check to George for this one

whoo-hoo George the records one and one now all right so what about the other songs like I hate I hate it was catchy yeah it was it was catchy you know what I'm saying it's you don't find that a lot in a metal song it was it was catchy I love the guitar intro I actually like back when that you know in 87 when I think it was that came out I was going to guitar lessons still and I took that song

in to my teacher and said, teach me how to play this intro. And I used to know how to play that intro. And it's pretty cool. It's good. So that's another reason why I'm so obsessed with that song. Other than the fact that the lyrics are just perfect when you're having a bad day. You know, you've turned me around on this one. I can't say how you turned me around fully to like into the, I'm going to start going back and listening to them all the time. But well, you should check out taking over. I was going to post some taking over songs as a bonus thing on Facebook, but I've just, I didn't have a

I like I do I listen to these three songs first and then I go back and listen to other songs from it you definitely pick the best songs on the album mm-hmm what'd you think of playing with spiders I mean that's it's very heavy slow it's different I don't think it fits them no it it it doesn't fit them like you know I see I'm a great looking along you know yeah all right well I'll take what I can get but going back to that that you you pick the best songs off off the album thank you

You know what you're talking about excellent

So that's be quickly become one of my favorite parts of the pod podcast

All right, you know, I have a whole list of other bands. I'm not on board with yet

Yeah, well, I think Exodus will probably the next one. Yeah, you know, I'm not into them, right? Okay

Well, I'm listening to this week. This is actually we mentioned this last week

In new releases. I'm listening to the release from rigor mortis

Ah, yes. Slaves to the Grave. I can't believe I didn't put that down as mine. I listened to that, too. I've been listening to it almost nonstop. It is fucking brilliant. You know how I'd describe it as if, tell me if you're hearing the same thing as me, it's as if Dave Brockie was doing death metal. Did you hear that, too? I did hear that. It's just, it's great. It is. This is a great release. It sounds like Dave is freaking singing death metal. It's not super, super

It's great. I put it old school death metal without the super heavy, heavy, heavy vocals. Yeah. I, uh, I was at the gym the other day when I first, you know, I got, when I get to the gym, I put on my headphones and that's when I try to listen to new music because I can really focus on it. And I put on slaves to the grave. First track is poltergeist. As soon as that track started, I almost started crying. I was like, I can't do this here. I'm at the gym. I know I'm a big wuss and all, but the reason I almost started crying,

Okay, as we've mentioned before, the guitar player on this album, Rigor Mortis' guitar player is Mike Scotia, also of Ministry. He passed away two years ago from a heart attack that he had on stage. Mike Scotia's guitar playing is something, you know, fuck Dragon Force, okay? You listen to Mike play guitar? The first time I heard and, like, recognized Mike's guitar playing was on the Ministry Psalm 69 album. Prior to Psalm 69, Ministry was kind of heavy, but Psalm 69 really stepped up in the guitar department, and that's because of Mike.

And there's a song on that album called TV2. Fastest fucking guitar playing I have ever heard. You need to hear this song. Okay. Ministry, Psalm 69, TV, like Roman numeral 2. Okay. I've heard, of course, the title track. And it's like, it is so fucking fast. And Poltergeist opens the same way. And it's like, you instantly know that's Mike. I can get a credit. I can mention them again. I was listening to the Metal Sucks podcast. Mm-hmm. And they, you know,

They played that song, Rain of Ruin. And Chuck made a quote. He goes, I have a feeling you're going to be listening to this for a while now. Instantly, you know, because as it's playing, before they tell you who it is, instantly I'm pulling out my phone and I'm sound hounding it. Who is this? This was great. It was leaving here actually last week. I've been listening to it the whole week.

really awesome album and i'm so happy that this was released as like a final tribute to mike

because you know he was gone way too soon was this what old recordings that they had i believe they were

working on the album at the time okay and then he died and i don't know if it was done at the time or if

they had to finish things up but i mean mike's the guitar player on the album so obviously he had to be

there for at least as much were you a rigger fan when they came first yeah you know it was definitely

back in the day you know cuz I wasn't really into death metal back then and this was like late 80s but yeah they're classic yeah but I am really digging on this album it's it's awesome I'm happy yeah it's it's this is um this is awesome I'm glad you brought it up cuz when I was at the gym I was composing all these things in my head that I was gonna say I was like oh I got to talk about this album and I completely forgot another thing I also listen to I wanted to quickly put this in is I mentioned it like a month ago between the barrier to me put out a blu-ray future sequence live at the Fidel tour

And I wanted to mention this because this album they play the parallax part two start to finish and it's amazing to see a band as technically proficient as they are just the drumming alone I'll let you borrow this blu-ray it is amazing to watch them play an album as technical as their stuff is start to finish it's just them in this little round studio play it and not miss a frickin

It is amazing.

I bet.

If they stopped and edited this, it's amazing editing.

Because you can't even tell one single bit.

It doesn't look like it.

Why would you bother?

Yeah, exactly.

It's amazingly done.

So if you have a Blu-ray, it's on sale at Best Buy.

I got it for like 11 bucks.

Oh, I'm there.

Yeah.

I'm getting that.

Definitely, definitely worth checking out.

It's amazing.

Yeah, I love Parallax 2 and 1.

Yeah.

So yeah, definitely going to check that out.

Yep.

All right.

Well, I've been listening to a band this week that I'm sure you haven't heard of. They're a Spanish band. They're called, and I may not get this pronunciation right either, Hellevorn. This is their third album, Compassion Forlorn. These guys play a sort of gothic death doom. It's not, it's kind of hard to describe. It's not like Daylight Dies kind of death doom. There's a lot of ethereal, airy, open space in this music. I can't even figure out how to say it properly, but it's very clean production.

The songs have just so much room to breathe. They're slow, doomy, the vocals are harsh, there's clean vocals, but the harsh vocals are well enunciated and they just sound really good. And I'm pretty sure I heard their last album, but when I saw this one, I was just like, eh, let's check it out, Death Doom, I always want to hear that. And then I listened to it and I was like, whoa, I love this. I really dig this album and I think you will too, so I'm gonna have to make sure you check these guys out because it is very good stuff.

I love when you hit me with stuff like this. I know. You know my musical tastes so well. I love when you can speak confidently that I'll like it, you know? Yeah. Okay. Well, for everybody, just to make sure, that's Helevorn, which is H-E-L-E-V-O-R-N. And the album is called Compassion Forlorn. Check it out. All right. What's your classic this week? So because you had me listening to Overkill and I was on a thrash kick, early 80s thrash kick. Yeah.

I was listening to this week other than the Rigger album. This is, this one's going to hit you too. You're not going to picket this one at all. This was, this album I actually listened to and I tried to find it on vinyl. It hooked me on first playthrough. This is Sabbath and they release History of a Time to Come. Sabat. Sabat, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's a sabat. I'm sorry. I have that on vinyl. Do you? Yeah, those guys fucking rock. This fucking album shreds, dude. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yes.

I can't think of his name right now right here the singer is Martin walk here or something yeah he was in another band skyclad skyclad yeah so yeah those guys are cool yeah cool sound man oh yeah cool sound I love yeah his vocals are really raspy really really really cool stuff the tracks a cautionary tale Hosanna in

Man, those three songs right there. Awesome, awesome stuff. And I knew it was Sabbath, and I fucking said Sabbath. Like an idiot. It's all right. I shouldn't have a microphone in front of me. It's habit, you know? But this is good. This is a great album. Yeah, and something that I only discovered recently that I never really knew much about the band members, but a few years ago I realized the guitar player is the metal producer extraordinaire Andy Sneep. I was like, what? He was in that band? Oh my God.

God. And this is, again, we talked about it last week. One of those bands that, how didn't these guys take off? Yeah, I don't know. It's because, harsh vocals. Harsh vocals in the late 80s. It just, it didn't take off until the 90s. Amazing playing. Amazing playing, amazing vocals on that album. Oh, yeah. Definitely a classic. Of course, you have it on vinyl. I've got both of them on vinyl. Really? Yep. There's, I mean, both of the Martin albums. I think there were one or two other albums with a different singer. I don't have those. Do you have the first pressing? There's probably the only

There was a second pressing with a couple live tracks that they put on, too. I think it's the original pressing. I don't recall any live tracks. Yeah, because I called our store and asked. Well, I was worried there for a second that you were going to be choosing. When you were saying you were listening to Old Thrash, I was worried you were going to pick my album. And I was like, that would be so weird if we picked the same album. But we didn't. I went with Anthrax's second album, Spreading the Disease, from 1985. Spreading the Disease is my first Anthrax album.

It's the first album to feature Joey Belladonna on vocals. And this is probably the album that caused me so much OCD over the years. I saw an advertisement in Hit Praetor Magazine, 1985. It was, I don't know, it had to be like Megaforce. It had anthrax, and it had the cover for Spreading the Disease and Fistful of Metal, which, while I don't really care for Fistful of Metal, the album cover in 1985 was really fucking cool. It was like a dude with a fist in his mouth and blood.

And there were a couple other bands like the Lone Rager and Exciter and possibly Metallica. But I remember this ad and the picture of the Spreading the Disease cover with the dude on the gurney and he's all like, ah! And I was like, ooh, that looks cool. And of course, you know, back then finding this music was next to impossible unless you mail ordered it. And I remember I went to some out-of-the-way mall on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. I can't even remember the name of it now. It's not there anymore.

But they had a little music store in there and I found spreading the disease on cassette and I was instantly hooked on Anthrax. So many great songs on here. AIR, Lone Justice, Madhouse, Armed and Dangerous, and Medusa. The Enemy. The Enemy. It's a classic and that's probably why I could never have Anthrax without Joey because that album just blew me away. I was probably more into Anthrax before I was even into Metallica. I'd heard Metallica but this was pre-Puppets. This was the first album with Frank too.

Yeah. So yeah, that is an absolute hands down classic. Should check that out. Those years, those a couple years in the mid 80s. Man, there were some strong fucking albums going out there. Oh, yeah. Wow. Makes me proud to have been around for it. Not that I had anything to do with it or any reason to be proud of it, but I'm proud. At least I'm proud of my metal, my scene for having done that. I didn't realize this looking here on Wikipedia. The video for Madhouse was banned from MTV. Believed the content to be degrading to the mentally.

insane. As if people gave a shit about that in the 80s. Huh. I remember hearing something about that, though, yeah. All right, well, here we are at the end of another episode. Make sure to check us out online. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Just go to iTunes and search on Metal Heads. We'll pop up. We're on Instagram now. That's right. Metal Heads Podcast on Instagram. We're on Facebook at MetalDisciple.com. You can also go to MetalDisciple.com and check out other stuff. We're on YouTube.

Twitter, as we mentioned before, I'm Disciple OV Metal. And I'm Opeth Fan. You can get a hold of either of us at Metalheads Pod. So check us out. Drop us a line. Let us know what you're thinking. Hopefully George will have his recorder tomorrow and we can do a little review of the King Diamond show. Yeah. Like we did at the Guar Fest. Yeah, that was fun. Oh, that's right. I forgot. I told you that yesterday. Remember when we were documenting the podcast for the Guarbecue, we talked about these guys that we met from Arizona.

These guys are epic.

And they took a Greyhound bus from Arizona to the barbecue in Virginia.

And, you know, we hung out with these guys for a little while.

50 hours one way.

We hung out with these guys Friday night after the memorial, you know, like 2 o'clock in the morning.

And we chatted with them, and it was a good time.

And I just yesterday received a Facebook message from one of the guys.

His name's Tyler.

Hello, Tyler.

And he was just like, hey, it's me.

It's your drunken Arizona buddy.

And, you know, it was great hanging out.

I just got back a couple days ago. Thanks for the shot on the podcast and wanted to know if we were going to be there next year. And I wrote him back and I was like, did you just get back? And I'm like, yeah, man, hoping we'll be there next year. So maybe if you're there, we can hook up again. That's fun. I'm definitely going back. Yeah. So it was good to hear from you, man. Keep in touch. That's great. Thanks for taking the time to write. Yeah. All right. Let's close this episode out with another song from Shilma Gagnar.

This is the track A New Dawn. See ya. Later.

We have met a thousand faces

Of the motion of past,

Underneath which a battle is raging And danger lies in losing cross The turn of roads to leave behind The shores of death will fast As we take a deep breath through a fog That's used to suffocate

The only path before us lies,

trying towards the riches of a new dawn.

But before we can relinquish the strangleholds of the past,

we must one last time revisit those depths.

Where we all need to go

Atolder minds

A bottomless

The weight of the world and the tolerance of troubled souls.

There is no turning back now To what once was As heart and death form Debuff has been forced To enter knowledge And inside

So level where you can In the dusk of the past As a new dawn, come on, rejoin it, emerges through

Ramblin' in the events

In the dusk of the past, as a new dawn emerges, emerges through our eyes, terrorized through, terrorized strength, built of the rashes of the old world.

Daring lives life, daring lives meaning, daring lives trying,

Watch the sun of a new time, a ghost of skies.

I can't wait for

Hey everyone, George here.

So Puk and I did in fact record a little bit of portable post-King Diamond show dialogue.

Unfortunately, I accidentally had the gain up too high on the portable microphone and it sounds completely blown out. You can still hear it, but it sounds kind of crappy. So if you want, here's another 10 or 15 minutes of us flapping our mouths. If the quality is too awful, then just go ahead and skip it. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. See ya. Hello, and welcome to the after party of the King Diamond Show. Population 2. Yes, that's us. George and Puke.

I just finished having a little temper tantrum.

But we'll get to that.

Yeah.

So the day today started.

I took you to Soundgarden in Baltimore.

Holy hell.

What an amazing music store this is.

I'm so glad that a place like this still exists.

It was friggin' huge, first of all.

I can't remember the last time I saw a music store this big. And Bukes been telling me how wonderful their heavy metal vinyl section is. And I'm like, uh-huh, yeah, whatever. Sure, okay. But we get there, and, I mean, granted, compared to, like, a regular music store, the heavy metal section is not that big. There's probably, like, five or six rows.

But like he pointed out

There's enough there to actually have dividers with band names on it

Yeah

And on top of that

Within

The normal A through Z

And the band names

There's various imports

Of imported vinyls

Yeah their prices for imports were amazing

20 bucks for imports

Yeah

I've

I picked up two Nick Cave albums

Granted not metal

But dark and cool anyway. That I've, you know, the boatman's call, $24.99 import. And was that the one you said you'd seen online for $100? Yeah, I haven't been able to find that online for anywhere less than $100. And like, shipping from Europe. So I was pretty damn impressed. So leaving there, you know, we were on a high note. Everything was great at that point. We drove down to, uh,

Silver Spring where the Fillmore is. It's where the show was happening. It seats about 2,000 people. So we had a couple hours to kill beforehand. We decided to, you know, do a normal concert fair for us. We're a big craft beer guy. So we decided to have a couple of local craft beers. If anybody goes to the Fillmore, we highly recommend the Quarry House Tavern. It's a dive bar. Service is a little slow.

It's a little dirty. Extremely, but they have an extensive beer menu, great pub food, burgers, that type of stuff. So we spent a couple hours there, and then we went and stood in line for the show. Yep. Doors were almost on time. I think it was just a little slow getting in. But once we got in, it was only like 50.

15-20 minutes until the first band came on, which was Jess and the Ancient Ones. Yeah, what was your thought of them? Well, I'd heard them before, the recordings anyway. For those of you who don't know what I'm saying, they're a, what, six-piece? Seven. Yeah, seven-piece. Frick. We have retro back to the prog type of? Retro stoner doom kind of psychedelic thing.

The singer, she moved around on stage like she was tripping balls like Janice Joplin.

That was the biggest distraction for me.

But the music was better than I expected.

Having heard the recordings, from what I recall, they were very...

They had that old retro, kind of crappy 70s sound, which I was just like, I'm so tired of that sound.

But live, the music was quite, was pretty heavy. Sounded good. She sang in tune. I know you and our friend that we made. Yeah, we kind of dug them. I really don't have anything bad to say. The only issue I have with them is their songs seem to go on nine, eight minutes or so.

Within the song itself, there wasn't much variation. Uh-huh. To where, you know, instrumentally, to where it just seemed like it was the same part of the song going on and on and on and on. Yeah, the song didn't seem broken up and diverse enough within the song itself to really keep me entertained through it enough. Yeah, I was thinking in my head, hashtag doom makes me.

I like Doom. I was like wow. I was yawning and there were people around me yawning. I was enjoying it but I was still getting sleepy. I was checking my phone a couple times for text messages and stuff like that. Which I have to say also I was checking our new Instagram. That's a little plug for that we do have. Metalheads Podcast on Instagram.

Check us out. Yep, I'll be putting up some pictures from tonight when I get back. I already put up a couple. And then so, it played for like, what, 45 minutes or so? Yep, yep. And then the curtain went up and we were getting ready for King. Yeah, it's really nice to have a show where there's an opener and a headliner and that's it. You know, I used to enjoy shows that had four or five openers before the headliner because I got to see all these,

You know, up and coming bands that I've been hearing about. But now it makes for such a long evening that I just get tired before the headliner comes on. So it's kind of refreshing to just have one opener, headliner, boom. Okay, now mind you, everything until this point is going great. George and I are having a great day. Only thing that kind of bummed me out is I don't carry cash. I wanted to buy a King shirt. They were only taking cash. I could have taken money out, but

I buy one online. But George and I have plenty of room all around us. Everything is looking great. It's roomy. Then right before King Diamond, I'm kind of turning around behind me, kind of leaning on the wall for the soundboard. I turn around right as the lights start to go down. I look and now it is packed all around us. And poor short George is now...

Engulfed in a sea of assholes. By assholes, I mean anybody taller than me. I can also say, I was on my tippy toes for a lot of the show. My neck is sore from trying to crane it up over people to see. I'm not that short. I'm almost six foot. But it's like I look to the left, people I can see over. I look to the right, people I can see over. Everybody in front of me.

Like 6'3", 6'4". Then, of course, there was a guy that I was screaming at you about. I wanted to punch the guy in the back of the head. Okay, I will grant you he was doing nothing technically wrong. He just happened to be in my way. And he had to be, like I said, at least 6'3", 6'4". And I call him Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch because he looked

Like he should have been at a fucking boy band show. Okay, first of all, he was big and muscular and wide. His neck took up a third of the stage. And it kept like moving in and out. I watched his neck the whole fucking show. It was like in and out. It was like flexing, yeah. I was like, what the fuck? I'm looking at everybody else. I'm like, nobody else's necks move like that. What the hell is wrong with you? And he's got like a bandana around his head with a hat on. And the hat is like,

down really far. Over his ears. Yeah, and like cocked to the side. And I'm like, you're at the wrong show, dude. And you're too tall and you're standing in my way. Fuck you, get out of the way. Oh, but no, he was, it wasn't bad enough that he was too tall. He was constantly taking pictures, which I can't fault, I do that too. But at least I try to do it from the back. But then he would like constantly throw out both hands.

and throw horns. Okay, also acceptable at a metal show. And he would make these waving with all your fingers out like, Hi! Hi! Like jazz hands? Yeah, like he was waving to King like, Oh, over here! Over here! And I'm just like, What the fuck are you doing? Put your hands down! And then he was clapping them together over his head like he was at a fucking kumbaya party. I was just like, Dude, fucking go!

I thought, well, you studied this guy. He was all I had to look at for the whole show, you know? Normally it doesn't matter, but a King Diamond show, the stage show, I was told, was really fucking awesome. I couldn't tell. All I looked at was flexing neck for the whole night. So back to King. King came out, and it was freaking amazing. The sound was fucking spot on.

Yeah, they sounded incredible. Incredible. King's voice was, you know, he was hitting those highs, no problem, going low. He was vocally gymnastic, and that made me proud. The band was sounding great. The drums were, the drummer was, oh man, was rocking. Yeah, Matt Thompson. Yes. I know this because I'm going to name drop. I have both Matt Thompson, the drummer, and Andy LaRock, the guitar player, friends of mine on LinkedIn.

And I say, I use the term friends very, very loosely. They accepted my request. That was about it. But, uh, talk about that stage show. Yeah, well, I'd like to. Um, I only saw, like, the top of those stairs. I think Grandma was out there. Well, it was in the wheelchair. Yeah. The first four or five songs, for those of you who've seen pictures, it's the stage for

The European shows. Massive backdrop. Massive inverted crosses on both sides of two massive staircases going up to the top. There's a big Baphomets pentagram in the middle. Yeah, huge platform at the top. There's like a wrought iron fence.

That kind of annoyed me. I was like, it's hard enough to see. Why do you have this wrought iron fence in front of the stage? I'm like, is this a lame decorative barricade kind of thing? But a few songs, then they tore it down, so I was like, all right. Yeah, they were kind of singing and reaching through it. Yeah, it was like a prop, but still, it was hard to see through. They had an incredibly gorgeous actress who was on stage acting along with some of the songs.

It was like the Abigail stuff? Yeah, the Abigail, the Puppet Master stuff. She was gorgeous. I believe that was King's Wife singing back up on the right side of the stage. The set list was great. If you're not me. They didn't play Abigail. They didn't play any of the tracks that weren't.

here off of Abigail.

So I was bummed by that.

A lot of people, when they ended, were kind of like, that's it?

It's over?

And see me, I knew the set list, so I was like, yep, it's over.

And I'm just staying there, because I don't read set lists, that this can't be over now.

What did you think of the show?

The show itself sounded amazing.

You know, it looked like the stage show was really awesome.

I unfortunately did really miss a lot of it.

The lights show was incredible.

Yeah.

It's a bummer.

That guy was fucking right in front of you.

Yeah.

I was like, ah, so annoying.

I tell you what, next fucking show we go to there, six inch platform, Gene Simmons fucking heels for me, boy.

I'm going to be a tallest motherfucker in that room.

Be like, ha!

And then I'm going to go stand in the middle of the fucking floor and be like, fuck y'all!

Try to sit around me.

What did you think of this at least?

It was good.

You know, I was happy.

They played Eye of the Witch.

And, you know, a couple of songs off of them.

Some Abigail songs.

Puppet Master.

I think he opened with the candle.

The fatal portrait.

I mean, King is fucking back.

Yes, in a big bad way.

Yes.

God, he was sounding incredible.

So, um, now we're headed home again.

So if you're hearing this, we're going to post it later in the week.

If King Diamond's coming through your area, and you have not seen him, you have to go out and see this show. This is my recommendation from Buke. George, you got your recommendation? Oh yeah, I mean, we saw him like 10 years ago. It might have been his last tour, period. It was a while ago. And it was a much smaller venue. It was a good show, but nothing like this. The scale of this is just amazing.

He obviously sings much better now that he's in better health. Yeah. Can't recommend it enough. Yep. And, um, that's it. Anything else you want to, any other thoughts you got about the whole day or anything? Uh, those people we were talking to, remember? Oh, yes! Uh, want to say hi to, uh, Angel. And his wife. And his wife. We met you guys. Uh, we met a nice couple.

When we were there hanging out, you guys, thanks again for talking with us. Thanks for the great conversation. Thanks for the recommendation on music. Shall I call you the prop master or perhaps the puppet master? It's always nice to meet fellow metalheads. And he's almost as old as me. Yes, almost. Which is in itself an achievement.

was the older crowd. Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely. There were a lot of females too. Speaking of which, fucking geisha bitch from hell. Geisha? Is that how you say it? The fucking blonde bitch in a kimono with chopsticks in her hair. Twice. You are saucy tonight. Well, she was a fucking bitch. It's packed full. People try to walk through. They're like, excuse me, pardon me.

me, you know, maybe they lay a hand on your shoulder or something, let you know they're coming through, okay, and you step back a little bit. She came up and fucking elbowed me and, like, tried to shove me out of the way. This is not the pit. This was the back of the room. She was just a fucking rude bitch. And then she did the same thing at the end of the show, and I, like, shoved back on her. I'm like, fuck you. I'm not going to hit a woman, but fuck you. You could just fucking say excuse me.

George is saucy tonight. I'm fucking liled up. Rawr! So, uh, I know it's probably not a professional review, but that's the way George and I do things. So that's the King Diamond show. Yup. It's, uh, again, we highly recommend it. It sounded great. Um, not to me. Yeah, he played the Merciful Fate stuff he played sounded great.

was going nuts for that. Yeah, that was awesome. So, check him out if he's coming through your area. I think this was, what, the second or third date? Second. Yeah. So, check him out. All right. We will leave you with that. And what, no podcast this weekend? Yeah, I'm going to be out of town this weekend, so it looks like we're going to have to wait until the following week for a follow-up episode. Sorry about that. It's okay. It'll be a couple weeks. We'll talk to you guys later.

See ya!