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

Hello and welcome to the Metalheads Podcast. My name is George.

This is Buke. This is Jay. This is Brew Metal Will. This is John. And welcome to episode 57, the second to last episode of the year. You guys, everybody getting their list ready? Working on it. Getting close. I was out hunting. I spent, it's rifle season here in Maryland, and I spent the whole weekend sunrise to sunset sitting out in the woods. And during the midday, when the deer,

are sleeping. I'm listening to albums. My list is all shooken up. You've got a lot of black metal on there. Who's having trouble squeezing into 25 and who's having trouble coming up with 25? I haven't even done any squeezing yet because I'm still jockeying. Number one for me is where I put all my effort into. Jay, I'm budgeting at the seams. I've got too many. You've got too many. Yeah, way too many. Way too many. I've got, I'll probably have like a dozen

mentions because I'm like, you know, I don't like that as much as I did or just hasn't like stuck with me since the June episode. And I'm like, I'm going to put something on. I like a little better now, which is sort of unfair, but fuck them. No, no, no. That's what I have to your list is for. I may have killed a few of my June list off completely. Yeah, I did. Yeah, me too. You're right, George. That's that's the new that's 2017. Fuck them. Yeah. Hey,

If you couldn't hold my attention after mid-year, well, then that's on you, isn't it? Actually, for me, there was that many good albums. Yeah. Just try harder next time. Yeah. Fuck you. Put out a double album next time. Yeah. Unless you're Metallica. And you know what will happen like we do from time to time? 2017 will roll around. They weren't mentioned. That 2016 album, forgetting that it came out. How sorry we were that we missed it. I can't believe I fucked that one up. Yeah, exactly. Our first episode in January will come around. Damn it! They were on my mid-year. What the hell?

Who the hell releases an album on December 30th? Yeah. All right. Well, we just had the pleasure of speaking with Arthur Rizik of Summerlands and Eternal Champion, among other projects. And we're going to share that with you now.

This makes me just mad

Listen to this now

Hello everyone, this is George and the rest of the guys

and we are here right now with Arthur Rizik

Hello Arthur

How you guys doing?

Pretty good

It looks like you've had a busy year

You've got two great albums from two different bands

You've got the self-titled Summerlands album, plus Eternal Champions, The Armor of Ire. And I know you've done other things as well, but those are the two that we were going to focus on today. So would you mind giving us a little bit of history about each of these bands? Well, Summerlands is started by me and Phil Swanson, the singer. Me and actually the singer of Eternal Champion, Jason Tarpey,

Like a backing band for Phil's old band Hour of 13. We were like the rhythm section, but we actually never played one show with them. And we were just in the music video. And maybe like two months later, they broke up. So after that, me and Phil had become friends through the whole experience of the music video. And, you know, he was done with a band and he was actually familiar with some of the hardcore stuff I had done.

And he was talking about just starting something for fun. So I wrote him up some demos, just recorded him, sent him. He put vocals on him. That's basically the story of Summerlin's. Eternal Champion is Jason Tarpey's band. He's my best bud. He lives in Texas. Me and him have played in bands together before, but never really our own band. He had his crossover thrash band, Iron Age.

which is one of the best hardcore bands in the history of the genre. And I played guitar in that band for a little bit. So we were familiar with each other's musical stuff and we would always be jamming classic heavy metal on tour. And he started doing Eternal Champion. I was producing them at first.

keeping band members in Texas. He's kind of a loner, doesn't really live in... He still lives in Austin. He moved out to Wimberley, which is in the middle of nowhere, and just needed somebody to keep the band going. And he was like, hey, do you want to be in the band? So I joined and basically lit a fire under the ass, and we did that LP. If you're going to live in a town called Wimberley, you're going to be a loner, dude.

Yeah, I mean, it is a lot. You're going to be the only resident of it. Dude, the first time he took me there, it was right after like a fucking hurricane or something. So they had like barely any residents to begin with. And then a lot of the town got washed away too. So it's a really like fucking gas station in a stoplight. Yeah, like Fort Stockton. Yeah, that place is nice. Is it like a West Texas kind of thing? Because West Texas, there isn't shit out there.

Yeah, they're really, it's not too far from Austin. There's probably a couple wine vineyards or whatever out there. But actually, the cool thing is there's a very small community of weird audio people, and the god of pro audio, Rupert Neve, lives out there, which is pretty crazy. So next time I visit, I'm going to go sleep on his porch or something until he lets me in.

Nice.

Hey, Arthur, I have to ask you, first off, this is the same interview I've been looking forward to for months to try and talk to you. In the year 2016, and again, I say to our listeners, if you guys hear the mumbling in the background, that's my two-year-old walking in. I have to ask you, in the year 2016, what made you guys want to return to classic 70s, 80s?

He's the metal that I love. Put your fist in the air. True metal sound. American heavy metal. Why? Are you guys crazy? That's not what's selling. That's not what people want. They want angry black metal. First of all, nothing is selling. What people are downloading. Summerlin started probably I would say 2013 or 2014. I was

I was telling somebody this story recently, but I can't remember.

But I had lost my iPod and it was actually stolen at a Clutch show that I was doing sound for.

And they stole it and somebody gave me a brand new one right before I was going on tour in Japan.

And I was at my parents' house and I didn't have my computer or anything with me.

I had probably like a thousand metal CDs from age 10 to whatever 25 I was at the point. And I put all that stuff on my iPod, all those metal CDs like Iron Maiden, Running Wild, Accept, Queensryche, Fate's Warning, the list goes on. I threw all these CDs on this blank iPod and that's all that I had.

I listened to in Japan for two weeks. It was just like, man, I've got to start playing my guitar more. I've got to start writing some stuff like this. I think that was the initial thing. It was just having all that music and nothing else and remembering that I really loved playing that stuff more than anything else. Now, had the iPod been filled with

You know, early death metal stuff, maybe where we would have seen you at now? It's possible. It's possible. It's possible. But it's also right time, right place. It would be maybe another two months that we did the music video after that tour. I'm sure that I wouldn't have been like, hey, Phil, Hour 13's done. Let's start a fucking brutal death metal band. It was all the right things falling in the right place.

I'm glad. And you said that it made you get back to playing your guitar more. And doing prep for this, Jay on the pod here is a guitarist. Jay has been for years. And Jay, I want to read you a quote I found from an interview Arthur did for Noisy. You will love this. This sums up every guitarist. This is awesome. He was asked the question, what's your theory of, what's your theory good, what's your theory of, what's your theory of, what's your theory of, what's your theory of,

What's your theory on a good guitar player? And Arthur says 99% of the time, anyone who is really good at guitar did not have a girlfriend. They were in a band at 19 or something. Because they were in their basement sitting around playing guitar nonstop, listening to the radio, pleasuring themselves, and then coming back to the guitar and playing it. There you go. You got my number, dude. So, I think that the important thing to highlight

about that quote would be that it's your early teens and your early adolescence. From there till the time that you're in your later teens is a good time for your mind to mold anything, whether it be an instrument or a sport or something else, whatever. It's really the time. And if you're distracted,

by girls and trying to chase... Tail. Tail. So you end up basically forgetting about the guitar. A lot of my friends... Okay, so George, what is your problem then? Hey, I did the same thing. Why? But you're not good at guitar yet. Sure I am. Just ask Jay. Yes, George has been sending me his files.

A lot of the guys I star that got guitars around the same time as me, age 13 for me, they basically were looking for pussy. That's what they wanted. They just wanted that. Yeah, they were that drunk guy at the party who would either get drunk. They thought that playing in a band would get them that. And I really just wanted to be like, I don't know, Dave Mustaine or fucking someone from the school.

I don't know. I don't know. I just I want I would sit in my basement pretend I was in those bands and all that everyone else was trying to write like a three chord song. We could get him at the local putt and play or whatever or the you know to play in front of some chicks. So. And the funny thing is funny thing is as you become a better guitarist in your basement when you become 1920 the girls change dramatically when you know how to play a guitar. Yeah exactly. You know.

Who's the fucking douchebag now, right? They want to play your low P string. My girlfriend suffers through me playing guitar every night. I have these videos that I find on YouTube that are just like Pink Floyd songs with no guitar solo, and then I'm sitting there for like three hours while she's trying to sleep playing Comfortably Numb or whatever.

That guy was all fingers.

It's all, yeah.

All that tone came out of his fingers.

You know, Arthur, I don't know if you've been told this.

A phrase, sorry, a way to describe your guitar playing on the Summerlin's album is, for your age, it's a very mature sound.

It's very experienced.

All that practice that you've put into it really comes forth in the product that you've put out. Well, I have a comment on that, too, which is I'm so afraid of offending you because I feel like some people would think this was a compliment. But there's like a George Lynch element there to me, to your core structures. Who would not take that as a compliment? All right. I hoped you would. But I mean, if you're

I heard George Lynch's rap song on YouTube a couple days ago. That was a Lynch Mob rap song. Really? Yeah. I actually know the guy who was singing in that band for a while. Lynch Mob's cool, but that song sucks. But yeah, I love George Lynch. Specifically in your chord selection and things like that, there are places where you kind of embrace

that part of the 80s. You know what I mean? I'm talking about the Summerland in particular. A lot of George Lynch's style is based on taking two notes and using those chords a million different ways into making his own harmonies himself. He would be writing the harmonies, the melodies, and just basically writing the song through the guitar riff. The guitar drives the whole song.

That's kind of how Summerlin's is too. I would say Dokken is a huge influence on Summerlin's. You can hear it. I hear it. Did you hear it, George? Is that something that came to mind when you listened to this? You know, I wasn't really listening in terms of trying to compare it to anything. Yeah. You know, Jay, being the person here who probably experienced the 80s the most, given my age, being in high school and college, I hear, and I read somewhere you guys don't particularly care for the retro tag on the music, which I don't think that

all but you hear all these influences i hear so many influences that you guys kind of just throw in there just to say hey this is kind of a thing that we like to do but we got our own sound i mean i hear obviously the queens right comes out the most i think and i've read in interviews you guys have mentioned that i think and i can i say it's like rage for order eric queens right because one of the things i really hear yeah you know i'll be honest there's even a song and i and forgive me for not remembering the song but there's one moment where i swear i i heard kind of the dueling guitars from

from British Steel a little bit off of like the song Steeler a little bit there's just this kind of nice pace that you guys have and you bring back the riff not the current riff which is a riff and in technicality behind it you know and then going off in 50 different directions you guys really take advantage of the riff to make it be the part of the song that's most important which I actually love being so people have gotten away from that that doesn't happen like it used to I mean it does happen but not well we're all okay we're all talking all over your hair you know I'll

I want to ask you a question since we're talking about the guitar parts. What is your primary? I'm listening. What's your primary rig? What's producing the tones on the guitar? The guitar rig? Yeah. The one on the album. Yeah, here we go. Nice and slow, Arthur. Nice and slow. Tell me about that rig. I got to write this down. The album rig is a lot of rigs.

different things, because I layered six, I think six layers of rhythm guitar on it. So it would be one, three layers for each ear. And the main one, I would probably say would be the JCM 800 that I have. Yeah, 800 is awesome. In my opinion, when it comes to getting guitar sounds, you could use anything. There's a, there's like a combo amp that we found

in the trash down the street that's one of the main guitars on the album too.

It's really all about working with the amp and then putting stuff in front of it, EQing.

Like an EQ pedal at the end of the guitar chain is really important.

My quote unquote secret guitar pedal is something that I bought in Germany. It's called an Ibanez Distortion Mod. It looks like a tube screamer with two switches on it. And it's not a tube screamer, it's a distortion pedal, but it gives you the option of a mid-range boost and a gain boost. So there's a lot for me to work with.

And I just layered like six layers of different guitar shit down for rhythm just to make it nice and thick. It is thick too, by the way. Thank you. The JCM-800, is that an 80s one that you have? No, it's a 90s reissue, I believe, with a loop, effects loop or whatever. I never had enough money to buy the JCM-800.

or the JMP that I've always wanted. I'm starting to look at guitar amps now that I'm doing a lot of music stuff. I'm starting to look at guitar amps that I say are for the studio. Quote unquote, like, oh, I need this for the studio. And then I buy it for myself. I've been talking with Soldano for a while too. I got to meet him recently. Michael Soldano.

Do you guys know who he is? Any guitar guys in there? Yeah, he's a god. He's the god of making the best 80s guitar amp. He made the Soldano Super Lead, which is Eddie Van Halen's tone. It's George Lynch's tone. It's everybody under the sun. I was even watching a Scorpions video this morning before you guys called, and I saw a line of Soldanos in the back. So that's an option for me. Arthur, let me ask you this. With all the gear you have,

Is it hard to lug all this around to try and play live? Do you have to be real selective with what you bring? Do you have to be aware of what you record with to what you're playing out with? When I'm playing live, I would use somebody's little brother's practice amp. I don't give a shit. I'll find the tone that I want while I'm there. If they're micing something up, I'll find the tone that I want and that's it.

But when it's a studio, I am particular. I'll try a bunch of different stuff. But I will always try something that is not standard. Like the combo amp that I found on the street ended up sounding really fucking sick. And the speaker was ripped in it. What was it? Was it just like a series special or something? It's a PV Rage. Yeah. Very aggressive.

You guys understand how all the things are falling into Arthur's hands that have built this band and these sound? The iPod was given to him. He's finding all these other pieces. Oh man, this is great. So both of these albums released in the same month. Were you working on them concurrently or did you do one and then the other and they just happened to come out at the same time? We started Summerlin's in like, I don't remember, but we started

And we did the drums for Summerlin's. And then a week later, two weeks later, we started the Eternal Champion record. And we did them both at the same time. I recorded the guitars and bass and drums for Eternal Champion, everything that needed to be recorded for vocals. And then my roommate, John Powers, who's also in Summerlin's, he laid down whatever else was needed.

So we did everything pretty quickly, but also because of all the distance between everybody had dragged on and just randomly came out in the same month, which wasn't planned at all. It's just what ended up happening. And yeah, we just worked on them for a while. Okay. And I noticed that both these bands are on different labels. One's on Relapse, and the other one I think was No Remorse.

While you were working on these, was anybody giving you any grief about spreading yourself too thin? Like, hey, why are you working on that album? You should be working on our album. I mean, I barely kept in touch with the remorse. Jason from Eternal Champion kept in touch with them mostly. Relapse, I think they're more psyched for me to spread myself like that because they know that I work my ass off and that for them it's just, I mean, it's got to be like free PR to have Eternal Change.

Champion Champion come out and have in every review of Eternal Champion or

interview there's Summerlin's as mentioned and vice versa so it's kind of a good thing we're kind of like

it's like free PR they must be psyched about it. Case in point right here. Hey what's it like doing with those guys at Relapse? We met a couple of them at Death Fest real nice guys and I always think they make such cool interesting choices for their releases some a lot of a lot of stuff on my end of your list is on Relapse this year.

Yeah, but you like working with them. I like them.

Rennie is the guy that approached me initially.

We had just met recently.

They were working with a band, Nothing, who are a bunch of my buds.

And I think Nothing were trying to convince me to work with Relapse.

And I met Rennie, the main guy, and he was just super, super cool.

He approached me at a show that I was doing sound for when he heard about Summerlin's. And he was like, hey, I heard about that band with Phil Swanson you're doing. Just to let you know, whatever it is, we'll put it out. He didn't even hear it. He didn't hear a demo. He was just like, whatever it is, we'll put it out. That's awesome. In my opinion, Relapse is a label that believes in their people and not just, you know. To me, that's obvious. Honest to God, that's obvious. And they always, go ahead.

They're invested in me.

You know, what I like about them, man, is they're into a little bit more of the modern stuff without question, but they recognize something great when they see some of the cool retro bands out there and stuff.

I mean, let alone, with no offense to you guys, I'm not calling you a retro band, or just to have the wisdom to...

I don't think I'm a fan of that.

You're down with it, okay.

But also, even just, they did such a nice job with the death re-releases and everything.

I am.

I'm a giant, giant Death fan. And that was also another big thing for me is that Richard Christie is one of my top three heroes of all time. So I was so psyched to be on the same label as Death or the reissuing and all that stuff and just be in the same family or whatever. And also, this was mentioned before and I didn't touch upon it, but the retro thing, I did say in an interview that I don't like.

when people call it retro. Because it's more like, to me, it speaks a undertone of style. And style to me is when someone says retro, I think of like, oh, retro means like 80s, 70s. People are concerned more with style than the music. I don't believe that retro is really a word that applies to music as much as it does style. So that's the only thing.

To be with somebody who calls it retro, my initial thought is, does this guy think I'm in my room with a picture of George Lynch on my wall? Wearing spandex. Wearing spandex. Trying to live there. So, Arthur, I was telling George this earlier, I wasn't sure if it was you that gave the interview, where you guys were talking about the suit jacket medal. Was that you? Yeah, that's me. I thought that was great because

I had to think about that for a second. I was like, shit, he's spot on. I remember all those guys went to suit jackets for about three years. That was from Chris Corey, who's a guitar player in Magic Circle. He did that interview, and he's pretty spot on. He probably obsesses over little things like that and came up with that gem, which I think I love. It may have started a little earlier in the early mid-'80s, but yes, the late-'80s, everyone had a suit jacket on.

I'm ordering mine today.

Do you have the white tank top for underneath then?

Oh yeah.

So as you've already sort of mentioned, you're a multi-instrumentalist. I can't quite say that.

It looks like between both of these bands, you've hit pretty much every instrument and vocals.

No vocals.

Well, it said background vocals, so I just assumed, but I was counting that.

But where did you

Was guitar your first instrument?

Or where did you start out?

I think like when I was in

Elementary school

I started with

Like snare drum or something

Like in

Elementary school

They don't give you a whole drum set

You can just do one

And so I had a snare drum

So that was my first instrument

Technically

But

I had a friend that did that

I tried to play drums for a while

I got a drum set in third grade and my little brother stole it from me. It was my gift. You didn't know where to find him? Yeah. No, I didn't. He just took it and he's actually a drummer and he's fucking incredible now, but he took over that. And when I was 13, I had gotten a guitar because my older cousins play guitar.

and without any lessons, did horribly. Went to visit them with the guitar, and then they taught me how to play like four songs. And from there, I learned everything. So guitar was definitely the first thing that I was like addicted to. Like we talked about earlier, I was literally just sat in my basement and pretended I was like Marty Friedman. Yeah. Now, Arthur, we mentioned, you know, we touched on the studio work you do, again, with the

the new Inquisition album, the Power Trip album, the Crip Sermon, right? That interests me. When did you, because we hear all these guys, we've heard all the stories of how did you get into playing guitar and said what led you to that, blah, blah. How did you get into that aspect? I actually find that real interesting. And what led you down that path? Were you like a techie type of guy? You liked the board?

work or did you like doing live shows? I'm very not techy. Like now, in the last few years since I've made it my profession, I've gotten, I've read so much that I missed when I was in like college and whatever. And I, and I am that person now, but before I was horrible. Like I, I really just knew what I wanted and I figured out.

Push buttons until it happened. Basically, to answer the first question, I hated going to recording studios. It felt like we were being rushed in and out. It felt like the guy who was recording us didn't give a shit about what we wanted. Just wanted to get his day money and not have to work that hard.

It is a thankless job. It does take a lot of work afterwards. So I do understand that, that how a lot of recording guys are grumpy. But being on both ends, I never wanted to be that guy. And I also wanted to be in charge of my own destiny as far as where an album that I have in my head needs to go. So being able to do everything on my own was the was that was it. That's that was what made me want to be.

So there was no formal training at all? No, I did. I went to college for a couple years at Temple University in Philadelphia. But that didn't, it really didn't do much for me. I really slept through a lot of the classes and failed a couple times. It wasn't until I started working live sound that a lot of stuff that I didn't understand.

fell into place in the studio. And I also lied my way into a live sound job. I just told them. Hey, dude, that's awesome. You got to do what you got to do. For a second there, because I play nothing, I do nothing. I literally bring nothing to the table. You gave me hope that I could take a board and I could make magic happen. It's really not that crazy.

and played with the EQ on there. That's where it started for me. Not being happy with what the car sounded like when I was really young. You were always the guy who would hit people's hands. Don't touch that. It's all sorted out, man. You need to know signal flow. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. I went through the Omega Studios recording program. It was like a year and a half program. That was the thing they pounded into our head every day.

You also need to know how to rock. That too.

You need Jack Black for that. School of rock.

Going around the world, playing

in the studio, is there any

you mentioned old amps and guitars

and old equipment you're playing and recording with.

Is there any old boards or anything you sit down with and you're like, oh, I'm going to need to really patch up this old bad boy to make some magic happen here? Remember, oh, do you mean like do I sit on any shitty boards? Yeah, like, oh man, this is kind of like the Millennium Falcon of boards. Definitely. I mean, live, there's at least three boards per tour.

that makes my head spin and smoke come out of my ears. There was one soundboard in Florida once that was so mismatched with the system that it set a PA on fire. And it happened once in New Mexico, too. Jesus. I got to do my final project on a Neve board that they used to remix the Star Wars music when they reissued them.

Neve. That's the guy that I told you I was going to sleep on. Yeah, I recognized it. Yeah. Working on his boards, that was a question I was getting ready to answer. I was saying I've worked on the old Neve boards from the 70s that Alice in Chains' Dirt was recorded on and Soundgarden, Louder Than Love, in Seattle. That was amazing. And then in the studio, when we did the last Inquisition record,

Obscure Versus for the Multiverse. That one we worked on a digital Sony board that was probably the worst board I've ever been on in my life. It sucked. It was a piece of shit. Is there anything that you take from doing your own music that you then turn around and apply when you're producing bands? Yeah, and vice versa. I learn stuff from everybody that I'm working with for the most part. And then I take everything.

and apply it everywhere because that's the point. It's just to not make shitty music. As a producer, you can't just record a band and be like, well, this band sucks and there's not really much I can do to help it. You have to be like, all right, I'm going to use every trick I have in the book to help you guys be a better band, not just now, after you leave here. To be honest with you, I thought you were going to say, let's put some clarity on this suck. Let's just make sure he really hears how bad you are. I'm going to turn down the suck fader.

You gotta help these guys out. So what is your songwriting process versus your producing process? Do you use the same? Do you start in the same place? Or is it different? And how do you do either? When I start writing, I'm basically, it is different because it's, I'll be, I'll come up with something in my head, like a melody, and then I'll usually go to the drums and record the drums.

and use the melody in my head before I even really have it as the basis for the riff. You know what I mean? I record the drums, then I'll go back and record the guitar over the drums and I'll see where I'm at basically. That's for when I'm writing. When I'm recording my own stuff versus when I'm producing somebody else's stuff, it's pretty much the same.

I make sure that whatever process is needed is applied. It's never the same thing. It's just like always get the drums and the guitar if it needs to be that way, if the guitar needs to not be there while the drums are recording, or if nobody needs to be in the room. It's a big psychological thing, and you're always working with different people, so it always changes.

Arthur, I just sent you a friend request on Facebook and you gotta say yes because I need you to help me make my band's second record sound better than the first one. And I'm not joking. I'm on the spot here. I can't deny that request anymore. Yeah, exactly. It's in public, dude. I am. I'm gonna pick your brain. Next episode, we're gonna be like, man, Arthur never even accepted that friend request. You guys gotta fire him. He shouldn't be on Facebook on the job.

So, Arthur, I was going out hunting this morning early in the day because I started by day. And as I'm sitting there waiting for the sun to rise, I'm sitting in my blind, and I see a news story comes across Reddit. And it says, a computer has, for the first time, written, produced, and, sorry, written and produced a complete song from start to finish.

Using purely machine learning driven techniques. What's this mean for the future of music? Is Skynet far behind? Yes. Some cooler songs maybe. Computer, write me a song. More random music that's out there. Good electronic music probably. I don't know. I mean, I'll tell you what. People will always be able to make good music if they just

Bust Their Asses a little bit more and not worry about what else is going on. Same thing with recording studios. People will stay in business if they just, you know, they make a niche for themselves and just work at it. So, but I would love to hear this song. Did you hear the song? I did. It's a classical song. And the crazy thing is, is the AI learned rhythm and time and song structure and everything and wrote

this song all by itself. Was there melody? Yeah, everything was there. Every part of what makes a song a song was there. Did it have a hook? I think that's sick. It's pretty amazing. So now the sky's the limit. If a computer can do this, then hey, who knows from now? Move over baby metal, here comes robot metal. Yeah, but then when it becomes self-aware, we're all screwed. So let's be careful.

Here, boys. I saw the Terminator. Yep. Yeah. Be careful, Arthur. Mark this day. If some PC is staring you down in a studio 20 years from now, today you were warned. I think somebody said something about writing hooks while you were mentioning that. Yeah, I was wondering if that. I don't know that a computer could really write a hook either. Most hooks happen on accident. Yeah, I'll buy that. You know, so, you know.

Computers can't be crazy, can they? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it would be too formulaic or, you know, something like that, that it wouldn't. Emotional. Yeah, no emotion in there. A computer would never give you Jimi Hendrix, let's put it that way. Yeah. God, I hope it doesn't learn from Nickelback. Yes. That probably was created by a computer, actually. Yeah. I have taken what you humans call music

Your Nickelback's, your Creed's, your Sugar Ray, and I bring you music. Sign me up for that album. Hey, Arthur, do you, but you don't shy away, though, from technology. If something new comes along to help you in the studio or help you write in something, you don't shy away from it, do you? Because I know some people are staunchly against new things that come along.

Well, it's just like the same thing as life. If you shy away from new things in life, you don't experience things, you don't make your life better. People are closed-minded about everything in general, just miss out on other stuff. I have a hybrid setup between really new technology stuff. I have an 8-track tape player.

that I use in the process too. I use a lot of different stuff. I'm not just all old technology or all new technology. It helps to use everything. To change gears here, and then I'll let George ask, I myself, I love real technical guitar playing. Dave

and being my favorite guitarist in metal. Revocation. Yes. Okay. Do you have a favorite? Do you say, hey, this guy is doing some pretty sick stuff? In today's? Yes. Yep. Today's metal. I really, I mean, I like a lot of guitar players. Like the dude from Crypt Sermons, Steve.

Steve Jansen, he's really into the same stuff that I'm into, like Marty Friedman and Paul Gilbert, like those 80s shrapnel records guys. He's really into all that stuff. So I think that's cool. But as for new guitar players, I haven't really been keeping too much of a tab on new stuff that's been going down. I like a lot of new bands, which is...

Well, let's start there then. Who do you like? What are some of the new bands you like? Demon Bitch from Detroit is really sick. I don't know if you guys have heard that. They have a record called Hell Friends, and it's really fucking sick. That record I've been jamming out. A lot of newer black metal, too. I've been listening to a lot of that stuff.

But I'm trying to think of more within my genre of what I've been jamming. I would say Demon Bitch is the one new thing that I've really been stuck to. And... You know, what's cool is that the genre you play in is what you listen to. That's cool. I think that's one of the reasons that kind of helps.

that sound so well. It sounds right. Yeah, it just sounds right. And that's strangely rare, by the way, I find. That's exactly what I was about to say, Jay. Perfect point. You get the Norwegian black metal guys writing this ferocious music, and they're like, what do you listen to, ABBA? Yeah, I mean... And we want to talk to them about black metal. We talk to these guys, and we want to talk to them about the bands we love. I can't lie, though. I'm obsessed with ABBA.

I was literally trying to buy the same guitar as the dude two days ago on eBay and I lost the auction but it's a brutal guitar Ace Frehley used it too in the early 70s on the first Kiss record it's the ugliest guitar ever it's called an Ovation Breadwinner Ovation is like an acoustic guitar company but they made some solid bottle of airs

It's ugly. Look it up. Just look up Breadwinner. It's the ugliest guitar. I've been obsessing over it for like a month. I almost bought it. I mean, I just saw that. When I had to answer the question, I think of what stuff relative I've been listening to. But I'm the same way. I'm really into like 70s AOR, like Fleetwood Mac.

whatever the Eagles, whatever you guys, you know, everything, all that shit like that. But yeah, can you guys know what? I mean, no disrespect with this at all. I'm 33. In talking to you, it sounds like you should be a guy in your late 40s. I find it really cool that you're

a younger gentleman who's, you know, kind of, this is a genre that you, you know, latched on to more. Actually, I want to give you the age test real quick. Do you know what AOR means? Me? No. No. You clearly do, Arthur. Album-oriented rock. Yeah. Some of us know it all too well. I'll know it all too well. Journeyman. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what Summerlin's is. If you think about it, we're,

We're focusing on a whole.

We focused on an album on a whole.

As opposed to doing a couple singles.

And then filler and weird shit.

I wanted to make songs that were.

Not straightforward.

But pretty much all fitting within an umbrella of a record.

We can make fun of AOR.

And I agree with you.

There's a lot of the AOR stuff I like.

But I think it's an important concept because

here's my favorite AOR concept in metal. Martin Birch.

What he did with the Maiden records, he always had this little blueprint for the Maiden records.

Exactly.

And I would think of that as AOR all over the place.

Yeah, it's not like, obviously we're not like Boston or anything, but it's definitely applicable to heavy metal.

Yeah, it's all about the flow of the record for sure.

Speaking of that, did you guys plan on having the album clock in in the mid-30s for minutes? Was that something you did? Because it seems like today it's just excessiveness on albums of 75 minutes. I love that you guys kept it under 40 minutes. It's a single vinyl. If you collect vinyl, it's awesome. You can mark my words that if ever an album that I'm playing on is more than 33, 34 minutes, that I protested it to the death.

I don't like long records either unless I'm like really like chilling out.

So basically what he's saying is if a band Arthur's in has a rough breakup, we know when it's over.

That would be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Sorry, Eternal Champion, your album's coming in at 39. I'm staying with Summerlands.

We're cutting the song.

So we're big vinyl fans on here, and I'm guessing that you probably collect vinyl.

Yeah, I've got thousands.

Yeah.

What was the last thing you picked up?

Let me think.

Because I was just on the road.

And usually when I'm on the road, I do a lot of vinyl in Europe.

Because I find tons of shit that I want.

But I didn't this time because I brought too much stuff with me to carry back.

But the last thing that I bought on vinyl was Vatican Shadow, which is actually something that I worked on. But it's like noise, techno, whatever. That's the last thing that I bought. Imagine having Arthur as your Discog's friend. That's not usual for us, but suddenly I feel like we're out of our depth here. Usually we're on the other side of that fence. Yeah. Hey, Arthur.

I bought some used Shankar group vinyls from down the street, too. That was the last metal thing that I bought. And I think World Demise by obituary I bought on vinyl recently, too. What were the Shankar titles? Do you remember? I don't remember. I listened to them once through, and then I put them away. I didn't obsess. They weren't that great. I think I just bought them because

Somebody I liked was playing drums on the record or something. That happens a lot too where I'll go to the record store and I'll find something and I'll read who's playing on it. I'm really big into individual people like if Rudy Sarzo is on a record or Vinny or Carmine Apathy. That's funny you should choose Rudy Sarzo though because he's almost on every record and what I mean is he almost made it on a few records.

He's dropping names here that I see randomly. I'm like, oh, I didn't know he was on this record. Cozy Powell plays on a zillion records. Oh, Cozy Powell name drop. I love it. Arthur can give these guys a run for his money. All those guys are great. Do you have a, because George has a pretty huge record collection in the thousands. Yeah. Do you have a Holy Grail vinyl that maybe,

Our listeners, if they have, could help you up with maybe? What you're looking for? No, I don't. And I think about this probably like once a month. I don't really care that much anymore. I don't care about collecting as much as I do. Just finding. There's a part of me, and this was something I mentioned in that noisy interview you guys brought up, there's a part of me that I don't think that, I just, I'm scared that one day the digital is going to collapse.

and that I'm not going to have the records that I was... I like having them in my hands because I've had so many iPods stolen and hard drives crash that I don't... What if I forget about something just because of the sheer amount of music that I listen to? George just got this look on his face like, Arthur, preach on, brother. George has terabytes upon terabytes and has done multiple backups

Yeah, I've got a digital backup plus I've got a cloud backup because if I lost everything, that would really suck. It's obnoxious. Here's the other thing that maybe you and some other vinyl collectors might not like. When I have them, like I said, I don't really have the time to sit and obsess like I used to with the Shankar. I can't even tell you what Shankar records I bought.

In my teenage years, that would be absurd and unheard of just because of how little money that I had back then to get what I wanted. I would obsess over every single thing that I had. And you would memorize the liner notes and everything? Yeah, of course. I don't really care that much anymore about having my collection or whatever. But there are certain things I'm looking for. There's a couple of Warlord records that I want that you can find

on eBay, but they're like $40, and I just don't want to spend $40. There's really a lot.

I've got a couple of world hearts. Deliver Us.

Just the early stuff, Deliver Us, Hammers of Destruction, and that'd probably be it. Just those two. I have the other.

Those are records that I would probably want on vinyl because I could put them on and not ever want to.

to turn them off for a second.

Yeah.

Those are hard to come by.

I think my Hammers one is in just beat to shit condition because it was the only thing I could find in a reasonable price.

That's the other thing.

I might really get to spend $40 on something that maybe even when I put it on, it's not even just so I have it.

So that's the struggle that I face when it comes to vinyl.

But I'm firmly on the other camp.

I never have it just to have it.

It's got to be something I listen to. Got it. Yeah. Is there a nation across the pond that has a lot of vinyl stores to pick from? Because here, George, John, and I, we're in the D.C. area. In Baltimore, we have Soundgarden, which is a huge store here in the country. But aside from that, we don't have a lot of shops. Is Europe like this vinyl mecca? I want to believe it is.

European people love CDs more than anything. They're like obsessed with CDs. They love CDs. But there is a lot, especially metal, more than anything, they love CDs. They have CD stores, a store called Saturn in Germany and other places nearby. That reminds me of before internet downloading, how we had these mega stores with crazy amounts of CDs. They just have everything. I've bought a couple things for there.

But yeah, they have record stores all over the place. And now, as you guys probably know, is a great time for vinyl. Because I don't even know why, but it is. And people are going crazy on buying stuff. Arthur, okay, well then you spend a living recording shit in the studio. You do a good job. Can you explain? I know this is a visual aspect here. Why cassettes? I'm holding up a bolt thrower cassette.

Why are fucking cassettes coming back? Why? I see a lot of bands on Bandcamp do cassettes. If you expect me to trash cassettes, you're talking to the wrong guy. No. Let me do it then. Now that I have the answer, now that I can give you the answer. Tell me. I want to know why you think cassettes are coming back.

It doesn't. Inferior quality. Nobody has anything to listen to them on. You have to buy a Walkman or a car made before 2002. You've got to buy the right car to listen to the music. But I have that car. I have a car with a tape player in it. Do you really? Yeah, and I love getting demo cassettes from people. There's something about it. It's the same thing.

is getting... I don't know. It's like getting something that you don't know what you're about to get into. You're like, is somebody making a cassette? They must be crazy to be doing this. They must be cool. I don't know. Have you experienced the joy of the chomped-on tape and using a pencil to try and get it back in there and straighten it out? Always. I still record some demos onto cassette. I have a cassette player with a

a boombox. And sometimes when I'm making demos, I'll take the boombox to the practice space with my iPhone on the left side of the room and the boombox on the right. And I'll use that as my drum sound. Nice. That's awesome, dude. I like that. Man, that's going across formats. In noise, cassettes have been the top format. Like in noise music, people always will buy cassettes.

And in metal, I see them coming back, but I don't really know. Hardcore, it must be like underground genres, subgenres, like really obscure stuff and cult stuff. Just people want to do it on cassette for the same reason that you make a limited vinyl, because not that many people will have it. It's a thing, yeah. It's special. It's a thing more than anything. But I do like the sound of cassettes. I do.

You know what I made you Arthur you may I I'd be lying if I say I'm not on eBay right now looking at cassette players just to maybe go back me again I'm 33 maybe go back and try and capture my childhood because I'll be honest I've I can't remember a time ever listening to metal on a cassette that's that's how I got my my metal at first my cousin the same guys that taught me how to play guitar like many years ago

before that they were giving me copied cassettes like they had like a blank cassettes they would put on like make me like a metal metal mixes they gave me like cowboys from hell they gave me death they gave me like sam mail metallica queen everything that everything heavy and hard whatever that i got into was through cassettes blank cassettes so um i guess maybe it is a nostalgic thing

But I also like I'm a guy who actually listens to noise music. Now, if that doesn't blow your mind, I mean... Now, noise. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is that like... I think Maryland Death Fest last year, a Japanese noise band like Melt Banana. Is that a noise band? No. It's a bit more orchestrated than noise. But they're borderline. They're borderline with that genre. But they're not really. They're more thrash.

How would you explain noise, then? I mean, noise, it could be, it really is unexplainable. It's just harsh. Stuff that isn't music. Stuff that isn't music. To me, Arthur, stuff that isn't music, and I know I'm going to get fucking strung out here for saying this, because I know they have a huge following, but to me, sun is not fucking music. It's, what would sun consider themselves doom, right?

Drone. I think Sun has done noise stuff. I don't have a very big understanding of what Sun's done. I'm not a giant fan. You know what it is? Take your guitar, plug it in, and throw it on the fucking ground and let that walk away. That sounds like noise to me. I am the resident Sun fan here.

them is just basically, let's say you had a heavy metal record on 78 speed and you slowed it down to a speed slower than 33.

I've heard some of their stuff. It's like Doomy, like all black metal stuff, the stuff that I've heard, but I haven't really kept up on them. Although I do know Greg Anderson from working with him on Power Trip stuff, and he's a good guy.

I'm sure he's a good guy. And by the way, I think those dudes are artists. And I mean, who was the other guy? Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley. Yeah, Stephen O'Malley. That dude's been around forever and has written in zines in the 90s, did artwork for Burzum. He's been around. Yeah, they know all those guys. The guy who is singing for Mayhem right now is doing stuff with him. Actually, I saw them live with him.

And it was pretty rad, actually. Yeah. Arthur, you know, you've name-dropped all these guys, so if you ever taken a step back and be like, is this fucking really happening? Is this, you know, how can my life take me here? This is awesome. Oh, I love it. It's all the time it cracks me up. I mean, I think, like, the biggest thing is I've been friends with Igor Cavalera since, like, 2010, I believe.

And Igor is the drummer of Sepultero. Yeah, we got that. The greatest fucking, like in my opinion, he is what thrash drumming is, is beneath the remains. And recently I was his drum tech for like a portion of a Cavalera conspiracy tour. And it was just like, am I really like changing Igor Cavalera's drum head right now?

Yeah, that was going to be my next question. When was the moment when you're like, is this really happening now? This is just, this can't be happening. To be perfectly honest, I have moments like that, but all the time I'm just like, this isn't, nothing's happening. This is like, I still feel like, I mean, it's just. When you're having that feeling, keep in mind that there's at least

One guy out there going, man, is Arthur Rizek really standing right in front of me? Yes, exactly. Yes. That's us. There's four of us here on the pod saying, is Arthur really talking to us? No worries. No, I just, I mean, it is what it is. Well, you know, Arthur, I can tell you why. Talking to you here for the last 30, 40 minutes, I think I know what a big part of that is. To speak for the rest of the guys on the pod, you're so down to earth, so easy to

I'm sure you just, you know, these guys meet you and you're like, man, Arthur's a really cool guy to talk to and hang with. So. I mean, I just, I would just, uh, treat people as I'd like to be treated, I guess. I don't know. That's a segue into my last question. Uh, and, uh, this is, is, uh, going back to the noisy interview. Uh, I hear you can be pretty wild on stage. Uh, something about a cinder block. Uh, Oh yeah. Yeah. That was a, uh,

A Noise Project of mine that I did. I did a couple shows that were pretty insane in that sense where people were definitely scared. People definitely were bummed. People definitely assaulted me back. I assaulted them. It was kind of just like a thing. When you leave, it's just an experience. Like G.G. Allen?

Yeah, I was going to say that was your GGL moment, yeah. By the third or fourth show that I did with that band, I think people were expecting it, which is why I don't do it anymore, because I just can't. Someone shows up in their front row like they're showing up for a fucking Gallagher show. Come on, Arthur. Come on, bring it, baby. Someone's wearing a shirt with a target.

Baby Powder and Glass Vases being thrown and just it would explode and people would be like why Baby Powder this is so fucked up. Exactly. Exactly. You don't want to become too predictable. Yeah of course so I mean the next the next one who knows what what's going to have to happen if I do another show I have to outdo myself and you never know. So yeah. I got a question since we're kind of doing I think wrap up

questions here.

And then you should get a wrap-up question.

There we go.

You're hooked in, this is a silly one, but you're hooked in with Relapse, you're a Death fan.

Did you get the bobblehead?

Oh, I didn't, but I will.

I'll find it.

You need to have one.

I haven't been to the offices in a while, but I'll get everything they want.

If they're down to give me anything, I'm going to take it.

Death, literally the best death metal band.

They're in my top, probably my top five favorite bands of all time. It's a pretty sweet bobblehead. Yeah, I've seen little videos of them, so I gotta get one ASAP. But, yeah. Cool. All right. Anything else, anyone? No, I think we've taken enough of Arthur's time. Okay, thank you guys. All right, man. Thanks for coming on. Well, Arthur, we will give you the final say. Absolutely.

Anything you want to talk about? I'll plug. It can even be plugging whatever. Hey, go buy this cassette. Here's what I have to say. If anybody is here listening to this show and is down with a Summerlin's record and knows somebody that would like it, just send it over to them. Even if you need to send them legally downloaded MP3s or whatever, just send it over and spread the word. That's all.

You're a good man. You can find both the Summerlands and Eternal Champion on Bandcamp, which is where we like to get our music. Yeah, that's where I get my money. Yes, so go there and buy it. You won't regret it. Thanks, guys. It was good talking to you. You too, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. No problem. Take it easy. All right, that was our interview with Arthur Rizek. Make sure to go to Bandcamp and pick up the albums from Summerlands and

Eternal Champion.

Real Big Names Doing Stuff.

Yeah.

What I found interesting, just real quick, I don't know how much he can take this or how far, but the fact that he's in a couple bands and he's producing, it just seems like the guys that are going to stay or last are going to be multi-talented in a lot of different areas if they want to stay in music.

Yep.

I think you're right, yeah.

So good for him on the producing.

I know it's helped some guys that are actually a lot bigger, so hopefully he'll enjoy the same success.

Indeed.

All right.

So before we get into the news, I gotta get a few things off my chest. It's not me this time. So yesterday, leading up to this episode, we're using some different recording techniques than we usually do. And so, you know, I've been testing things out, and Buke was kind enough to hop on to Skype here with me to do some testing and make sure everything was working.

as it should. And guess what? It didn't fucking work. So the first thing I find out is that my internet is apparently for shit. My hardwired connection is good, but my Wi-Fi, for whatever reason, and I'm blaming it on people Christmas shopping, was almost non-existent. And we've done 56 episodes where the MacBook that we're recording on has been on Wi-Fi and I have not had any issues. All of a sudden,

I couldn't connect to anything. So I'm like, God damn you, Comcast. So that's my first rant is fuck you, Comcast. Because you give me shitty service and you don't fucking give me anything for my money. So go fuck yourself. So it took me four hours of my day and an extra $80 to bring you this fucking episode. Because I had to run out to Best Buy and buy a hundred foot Ethernet cable so I could run it halfway across the house to plug in here and there.

the studio. And I get back from, I'm talking to John. That's what happens, everybody, when you live in a mansion. This right here is called, this is mansion problem. You need 100 foot cables. First world issues. Most people are like, geez, this three meter is fucking long. Don't feel bad, George. I got to run about 75 feet every day, too, so don't worry about it. And I'm living in a small house. And so I'm halfway back from Best Buy when it starts to dawn on me. I bet those fuckers at

Apple did not include an Ethernet port on my laptop. And I get home and I set the fucking $40 cable down. $50 cable, excuse me. And I look at the laptop and I'm turning it every which way and there's no goddamn Ethernet port. Fuck you, Apple. What the hell are you doing to me here? And so, so guess what I had to do? I had to hop back in the fucking car, drive all the way to Best Buy. This is at least a half hour, both, you know, like round trip. And go drop another $30.

for an Ethernet adapter to plug into the Thunderbolt port on the fucking MacBook. If I paid $3,000 for a fucking laptop, I think I ought to be able to plug in a fucking Ethernet port. That is my excuse for your additional $30. It is my experience that all computer problems require at least two trips to the store. And the second one being a very angry goddammit trip. Goddammit is correct. So fuck you Apple, fuck you Comcast, you can both go fuck yourselves and your fucking asses.

Yeah, fuck you. Hey, man, we're losing sponsors all over the place. Yeah, fuck them. What sponsors were those again? It certainly wasn't Apple or Comcast, that's for sure. That's it. Apple just dropped off us, guys. That's it. They were like, man, we were just about to get a hold of those guys and see if they wanted some sponsor money. No, no. Yeah, we're just going to alienate everybody. That's our job. So anyway, if you're hearing this, I was successful.

then you can't hear this anyway all right let's get into the news

so our first news item is one that buke brought to my attention yesterday and that is that uh chris adler

Not content to join Megadeth and see what he could do there has apparently joined the band Nitro. Now, do either of you guys remember Nitro from the 80s? Their hair was like as big as they were? Also, the guy with the big, big, big hair was married to Lita Ford and went through a very ugly divorce. Yeah. The first time, I was not aware of Nitro, but I thought, huh, if Adler, you know,

One of the best metal drummers is joining a band. These guys must be something special. And the first thing George says is, The Nitro. Yeah. He goes, Those guys were horrible. And he goes, And then he sent me a message. He says, Big hair. Like the biggest. Yeah. The thing that I remember most about Nitro from the 80s would be thumbing through an issue of Hip Parader or something. And like the advertisement, like on the very back page, would be, you know, them.

with big hair. Hence the name Nitro, right? Big hair. So I have to ask, guys, does Nitro, probably Nitro does not strike a chord with any of you guys when you remember. They were a meme before memes existed. They were the band that all people laughed at. They were the reason that hair metal was laughed at and frowned upon. Someone back in the day could be like, hey, at least

were not Nitro, huh? That's right. It was sort of like they were the last ones to get to the party and they had to outdo everybody else and it did not work. You know what I mean? Poison may have frowned at them. Totally bizarre. I think that Speed guitarist Michael Angel is part of them and he's a real doofus. I tell you what though, Jay, nice pull on knowing members of Nitro though. I had to look it up. Yeah, Jay knows a lot about Nitro. I do, yeah. Oh, well, oh no. I'm reading it here on the web.

We will find a picture of Jay back. Jay has close hair now because he spent the whole decade of the 80s growing his nitro hair. Hair can't withstand such weight being put on it. Those guys probably all have neck problems now. Do you remember Pretty Boy Floyd? Yes. They were pretty.

So Adler, joining the ranks of Nitro. It's got to be some kind of weird April Fool's joke or something. I've got to wonder if this is a new money-making opportunity. People that are in the metal scene and are well-known hiring themselves out to has-beens so that they can get their name back out there so people will listen to them. Maybe. Because, hey, you know what? I would check them out because being a fan of Adler's,

Yeah, just having his name on there is going to get them a few album sales, I'm sure. But it's going to heavily reduce Lamb of God album sales now. Certainly from... Well, here's a picture of him right here. Here he is in the picture. Damn. It's real. I know. They're all like thug looking now, though. Yeah, compared to what they were. Yeah, well, they're old. Now, to quote Adler, maybe you guys are mistaken here. We're not talking about the same Nitro because

Chris says, I'm not sure who keeps giving my phone number to the most talented musicians on the planet. No, they are talented. But I couldn't be more thrilled. Yeah, this Jim Gillette. Chris says, I used to wonder what a metal band would sound like with all the cheat codes unlocked. Well, I don't wonder about that anymore. I'm blown away by the modern sound and groove in the material. The chaos has been harnessed and it's incredibly heavy.

Oh, Chris. They were never heavy. It'll be gone right when the album drops, right? Drops is the right word. It says Nitro at the bottom here. Nitro are writing a new album and expected to hit the studio next month with producer Josh Wilber and hopefully to release a new album in the spring of 17. Glam fans are really stoked and then they have a video for some song Freight Train. That's bizarre. Some guy shredding on a double neck guitar. Are they from Raleigh or something? I mean, why the?

Yeah, there you go, George. This is bizarre. This is the craziest news story I've heard in the longest time. I'll be missing all that. Yeah, but again... I'll be looking forward to not listening to this. Is this maybe Chris Adler? Just, hey, he was a fan of him growing up? Maybe. Maybe, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. All right, well, moving on. Moving on from that hot news, right? Yeah, a band that Chris Adler has not joined. Annika Van Geersbergen, formerly of The Gathering,

has announced a new band that I'm going to hazard a guess at and call V-U-U-R. Wasn't it who you guys were spooning over at Prog Power? I was spooning myself on this one. Apparently this band is the band she was playing with at Prog Power, which features members of Stream of Passion. Oh, so you saw them. Yeah, they weren't under this name.

I think there's maybe one or two differences in it total, but it's for the most part the same band. Yeah, the Gentle Storm band. Well, that played. They weren't on the album, but she's going to harken back to some of her earlier heavier days when she was younger, which is a good sign for anyone who's a fan of hers. Because they just had an amazing life. I don't know them at all. What are we talking about here? What do they do? Do you know any of her stuff at the Gathering? Honestly, no. Well, and you, my friend, are a poor man. Okay. All right.

I can send them to you later if you want but two albums Mandelion and

Nighttime Birds are considered classics in the the real gothic metal scene not the kind of fake

symphonic gothic metal oh very heavy guitars very kind of dark but very melodic too at the same time

and and Mandelion is actually pretty doomy on top of that they actually had to write some catchy songs because they were afraid they were too doomy

What kind of thing? Is it like a Lisa Gerard singing type deal? Or give me a song? She's not one of these high-pitched... She's not going to be Nightwish. But she's not going to be a Wallflower. She's got a really powerful voice. I would say, if you know them, Jay, a real powerful voice like Epica, maybe. But without the operatics. She's not like that at all. She's very melodic, too, when she brings it down a level, too.

Well, you guys are so excited. Hook me up. I want to know what you're going to want to miss. Yeah, she's awesome. Okay, cool. Awesome. So here we are back to hair metal again. It was just announced that Rat are headlining one of the nights on next year's M3 Festival, and I have to say, I'm kind of stoked. Why do they keep doing this? Wait, which version of Rat is this, George? Which version? This is everybody but Bobby Balotzer and obviously not. Why do they keep doing this with Rat?

And why do they keep doing the fucking M3 festival? Actually, George, just to correct you a little bit, it's everybody but Bobby Blatzer and Robin Crosby. Yeah, that's what I was about to say without Robin, because obviously he's dead. Who is still dead. He's still dead. But it's Stephen Piercy who pretty much makes rap for me, Warren Demartini, and Juan. Well, yeah, this wasn't going to go through until that guy Juan joined up though, right? Was that the big deal? Legally for them? No, somebody, Bobby Blatzer, it was

I thought that they weren't going to go forward as rat unless they had three of the guys. That may be true, but there was a legal fight over the name. Right. That's what I meant. They weren't going to push the legal aspect of it. Yes. But they won now. I don't care what they're called. If Steven Piercey's singing, I'm there. He's lost three or four or five steps. No offense. He has. I saw him. I swear it was opening for Manowar. It was either Manowar or Iron Maiden because those are the two shows.

I went to in Harpo's in Detroit. And his band Arcade, I think it was, opened for them. And boy, did he sound rough. But still, I never got to see them during the heyday, so I might have to go to that. With no offense, my knowledge of them is just as coincidental as my knowledge of Nitro. I'm personally not a big fan. I did own probably the first two, but that was around the time where Slayer was really starting to take over my life. You know what I find funny here is that you're

Talking About All These Other Guys, and Hardly Anyone's Mentioning Warren Demartini, who's like a really good guitar player. He is. Like a really good guitar player. He's just really so talented. He just happened to be in Rat. Very well thought of. And I think he's the one whose uncle was... Milton Berle. Milton Berle, yeah. Yeah. Hence the video. Hence the video, yeah. All right, so moving on, this next item, the bassist for In Flames has quit.

Oh, shit. There you go. Does anybody care? You know what? No, no. Because I don't care. You know what? I don't blame him because he's getting off a sinking ship. Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you this. That's a ship that's on the bottom of the ocean. Did anybody scan the new record which just came out? No. I'm listening to it. No urge. And there's no point, yeah. I've heard a little bit, and I was like, you know, it's all right, but it didn't inspire me to listen to the whole thing. Do you remember when they opened? You guys,

I don't think when remember they opened for Opeth on what's it two tours ago or whatever yep retours yep so I went up to Philadelphia to see them with our friend TR and in flames played and open that came on now mind you Opeth is in their prog rock stage it just blew them off the stage just crushed them just a few heavy songs we saw when we saw in us I was I saw I caught that tour John but seeing in flames now this is when they started to change but when we saw them with

Opeth at Jack's and Inflames is on their reroute to Remain. Remember, George, they all came out there wearing all white like they did in the video for that? Yeah. They were fucking amazing then because it was all their Just Erase, Clayman, Oracle, all that stuff. Yep. And again, like so many bands do, they see a little success. Well, sorry, a lot of success on a sound and Inflames latched on to that.

Now, if I know Will listens to a lot of satellite radio, Inflames now would probably be on like an octane. Oh, definitely octane. More than they're on like a liquid metal. Oh, I haven't even heard them on liquid metal in a long time. Who listens to liquid metal? It's all a bunch of bullshit. Not me. Boneyard has more metal on it than liquid metal. Yep. It's all fucking 12-foot ninja. Parkway Drive.

Well, you had your headphones off. We're talking about this, but I said Inflames had to spin 2000, 2001. They would have been all over liquid metal, but now they're on the octane. They're a hard rock band now. Yeah, yeah. Inflames back in the day was okay, but now it's becoming way too much metalcore. They've changed. They've became soft. Yeah, you hit a nail right on that head. But yes, I still do listen to liquid metal occasionally, but I do.

I do find myself more and more and more like just switching over to Ozzy's Boneyard because you'll hear more made in Metallica, Ozzy, Sabbath on there. Stuff you care about. Yeah, and liquid metal. You know what? I just missed a little less Parkway fucking drive. I fucking hate them. God damn it. I think they need this. A lot of stuff that's on. Maybe they need a new station somewhere between Octane and liquid metal to put all that metal core stuff on and keep liquid metal a lot more actual real.

Is that what Octane's for, though? A bro channel. Bro metal. To let you guys know, here's a set list from a recent Inflame show on November 30th. Looking here at the 13 songs that they played, they played Bullet Ride, Only for the Week, Cloud Connected. Those are the only songs that are older than their last four or five years.

I actually have to give them props for one thing that they did and that was back in what 2008 they toured with Gojira they brought them on tour and Gojira absolutely just destroyed every venue they were in on that tour and gave them the even bigger of an audience than normal so thanks in flames for bringing on a band that's way bigger than you are now and I went to that tour and that was the only reason I went was this I think it was the first opportunity I had this might have been Gojira's

First big one, I think, Jay, is what it was. They did a headline, right? They did a headline tour for... Yeah, well, I saw them right after that, I thought. A few years after that, they headlined, I think, for Blu Font, that album. Okay. Think about it. It's pretty nice of In Flames to put Gojira on first, because that way you don't have to sit through In Flames. You can leave after Gojira. That's exactly what I did. I tried to hold out and stay an In Flames fan for a long time.

Where they're at now, though, is just... It's... It's... It's... It's poppy. Well, apparently... In Flames, I hold them in the same vein like I hold Children of Bodom now. Just a different thing. Well, apparently their bass player agrees with you. Yeah. Crazy, because the melodic death metal, when you, coming out of Sweden, when you mention those bands, who's at the top of that list? You're at the gates? In Flames?

is in the top three of them. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. How far they've fallen from that. Dark Tranquility, were they from there? That's another one. Yeah. Dark Tranquility is definitely part of that. Yep. Just here, our bass player asked me to go see them with him. The whole Gothenburg metal scene. All right. So he didn't quit in Flames to join Nitro, did he? What if Nitro like? You know what, though, guys? That was good. What if Adler joining them?

Here we are, it's May, June, whenever, next year. And John's in George Lake. So remember when I mentioned that Nitro news story, guys? Well, let me tell you about this album. Yeah. It's really good. It's going to be on four of the five top ten lists. Nobody saw that coming. So Catatonia has announced American tour dates for next year. And they're going to start here in D.C. at the 930 Club. Yeah. Why are they at the 930 Club? Hey, I don't know.

I mean, they're playing a nice venue. It's just, you don't play metal there anymore. Everybody goes to the film ward instead. But they're not really metal anymore, either. So it's just true. You know, I mean, they are, but they're not the same metal band. Again, no, but I see, I'm seeing them on end of year lists. And to me, they're not a metal band. No, not really. Not the, not the same kind of metal band. Yeah. I wonder if they're going to be allowed to bring in metal openers. Yeah. So for,

I know we brought this up before that. Sometimes we talked to the sword in Opeth. Yeah. Oh. No, no, dude. No, we got fucked on that deal with the show they're playing out in Colorado next year with Gojira and Opeth. Oh, yeah, we were talking about that. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. But just real quick, for anyone who doesn't know the D.C. area at all, the 930 Club, it's just so depressing to see them go from being not an all-exclusive metal place, but they had a lot of metal shows there, to now just being nothing but indie shit. That's where I saw my first kind of

Now it's all indie.

And it's an iconic venue.

You don't want to know my first concert.

The MTV Return of the Rock Tour.

Stained, P.O.D., Crazy Town.

Flaw must have been there.

And Dope.

Crazy Town was actually on OzFest one year.

Yep.

So was, what's his name?

Tommy Lee.

So is his methods of mayhem. Oh boy. Actually, and then Jada Pinkett Smith's band was on one too. Oh God. Do you guys remember that? Oh yeah, Wicked Wisdom. I saw them. They were at Ozfest. I remember no one could care less about that band until Will Smith came out on stage and everyone lost it. Yeah, he did that when I saw him too, I think. Man, Will's a closet Wicked Wisdom fan.

It was pretty terrible. Class it up the joint. She should stick with acting because she's not a good singer. And she should maybe even consider giving that up. You know, there's a woman that's on Orange is the New Black and she has a metal band, which I was like, what? It actually kind of rings a bell. I can't remember her name or the, I can picture her and I don't remember the name of the band, but I was like,

I never would have guessed that. That was pretty wild. Not particularly good. In flames. Yeah, in flames. In flames. So I think you need to steel yourselves for another rant here because apparently John is not the only one that doesn't like Steel Panther. Nikki Sixx doesn't like Steel Panther either. Okay, go, John. I'll say one thing. Fuck Nikki Sixx too. He can join the list with Steel Panther. I like that. Don't get on my team, dude.

Fuck you. Shut your mouth. I don't care if you support me. He's responsible for fucking Steel Panther. Yeah, he is. That's true. That's why I think that's why it was headline worthy because people are like, what? Yeah. There's another band out there now that was just debuted on iTunes, not this Friday, last Friday. That's literally Steel Panther 2.0. I forget the name of it. Give me the name. I want to download it. I'm sorry.

I am sorry. You cannot deny this. Steel Panther, they are good musicians. Yep, I will agree. So is Warren Demartini, but I don't listen to Rat. Okay. Hey, the music is just fun. It's just fun to listen to. I'll tell you, here's my thing about it. You know who did it so much better, and I don't think people necessarily see this band like that. Where now? The Darkness. Yeah. Yes.

The Darkness, though, didn't have the great lyrics that Steel Panther does. They didn't take it quite as far. The two parlor tricks of Steel Panther. So here's my two cents. I did enjoy some Steel Panther for the sheer comedy of it. The ridiculousness of it. The comedy of it, yeah. And I think their second album that came out, it just got so raunchy. The second album is not there.

is their low point, I think. All you can eat, their new one, is the best. All right. But then I will say I went to go see them at the Fillmore with a whole bunch of friends who aren't into metal or anything. And I'll tell you this. They put on a show. It was fun. It was a fun show. I mean, people were dressed up and stuff like that. So it's almost like there's two bands that I can take people to who don't like metal. Take them to Gwar for the spectacle. Take them to Steel Panther for the spectacle.

Oh, you can take him to Metallica, too. It's not even fucking metal, man. It's just... Fuck that. I'm in agreement with him. It is metal, though. It's hair metal. Yeah, but see what... Okay, so here's the thing. I honestly believe guys like us who grew up with it never honored that term. That was just hair. There was no metal in that. Corporate bullshit on MTV that none of us ever wanted. I still don't believe hair metal is a thing, personally. Because it doesn't... It's hard, Rob.

to me in high school and say, you like metal? And I'd be like, yeah, or if they knew that about me. And then they said, well, what do you think of, and then they would pull out some hair, and I was, I just wanted to die. You know, I was just like. It used to just drive my friends and I just nuts every time that happened. You wanted to say to them, no, no, no, no, I actually like metal. Yeah. So apparently Metallica was hanging out with a band called Sandman. They were a Metallica tribute band, and they received a cease and desist order.

from Metallica's lawyer.

And so they were being threatened for, you know,

apparently legally playing their songs live.

I don't know.

Copyright infringement type stuff.

Yeah.

But the guys, who of course are known to be litigious,

said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second here.

And so they actually went and like met up with the band

and hung out with them.

And they said they sent their lawyer to Alaska.

He's pounding sand, yeah.

So that was kind of cool of them.

Yeah, and I really like this story. I'm the one who sent it to George because

if you read the Brewheads columns and every time there's a Metallica tribute beer, which I wrote on a couple of them now,

I always kind of rant on, I always ask the brewers of the band or the brewers if they're ever worried that Metallica's going to sue them or this and that because they'll basically sue everybody.

And I knew that they sent a cease and desist to this band.

And I'm glad to hear that Metallica redeemed themselves.

I shouldn't even say redeem themselves because it wasn't Metallica it was the lawyer who said the cease and desist that's what Lars said it was yeah but I don't know I was like I'm not taking the heat for this anymore but I am glad that Metallica because they said in the article uh that Metallica started as a cover band they've done lots of cover songs they've done two cover EPs so how who are they to tell people they're not they're not getting hurt by this band any minimal profits this band makes I mean Metallica is probably one of only what

two or three metal bands in the world that makes money on releasing an album. Serious money. Yeah. And I don't even think profits probably comes into it with this band. They may be close, but it's not close to what they're putting into it just to do it. And they're just playing live. There's this is there's another story like this with the the band Metallica. Yeah. Who actually released albums of sort of a mashup of Beatles and Metallica music. It was fucking hilarious. So if you haven't heard that, you should check it out. Yeah. And they initially were coming down hard on those guys.

And then I think the band stepped in and said, wait a minute, this is awesome. And so then they met up with them and same kind of story. Go ahead. I was going to say, you guys, Will mentioned it, but I want to, again, direct our listeners to wearemetalheads.com. Will has been doing amazing, amazing brew head reviews on metal themed beers. He's knocked out a bunch recently.

So go on WeAreMetalHeads.com and check out his articles on metal beers. The next one I'm doing, I have two in the works. Well, I have like 10 of them in the works, but the next one I'm getting the most on is I'm going to do Hopped in Half, which is the obituary, the official obituary beer by Three Floyds. And John Tardy, the lead singer of Obituary, emailed me and said he'd try and get back to me with some of the questions I answered. So hopefully we'll have some nice input from Obituary on this one.

Has anybody had a chance to try the Toot Le Mans thing? I did. Actually, John and I had one the other day. You should say that. I had a friend send me a picture of it on Facebook. She was like, I saw this and thought of you. I'm like, I wish I could find it. Yeah, I saw that picture. I haven't seen it anywhere either, though. I will be writing that one up as well. Cool. I can tell you this. I had it in the bottle.

And John and I shared one the other day. We each had our own bottle. And I had it on draft up at this awesome place called Gorilla Mall up in LA, which is a heavy metal themed bar, which is a lot like Kuma's Cormorant. I think I talked about it in the last episode. It's way better on draft than it is in the bottle, but it's still pretty good. I mean, it's a Session Cezanne. Nice. Yeah. It's a Dry Hop Session Cezanne. It actually reminds me a lot of Siren's Lore, one of the beers that we made at Fairwinds.

I was impressed. I was worried it was going to be shit, and I ended up liking it. What's the Saison thing like? That's not a sour one, is it? No, Saison is what they call farmhouse ale. It's a particular yeast strain that comes out of the Belgian, France area that has a high tolerance for heat. You would make it in the summertime, and it almost doesn't matter how hot it gets because that yeast will keep performing. In fact, you can ramp that yeast up into the 80-degree Fahrenheit.

range, and it will still, it will actually taste pretty good, where normally if you did that, you get so many off flavors, it would be ridiculous. But it's not like, there's nothing extreme about the flavor, it's not one of those sour ales or something. No, it's not. I mean, you can make them sour, but no, it's, so the Toot in the Moon is not a sour beer, it's just a Saison. So it's not a dystopia, it's more of a rust-in-piece kind of beer. Yes, it's a rustic farmhouse beer. But what's interesting is,

Real quick, a note on the side is Adam from the Brutal Truth, the guy to extreme beers on the latest issue with Decibel, he interviewed Dave Mustaine about that beer in his Brutal Truth column. And what's interesting is that I guess everyone assumed that Dave didn't drink anymore. He does. But he does because he literally went up and had a hand in making this beer. It's a funny article to read.

in the brutal truth column because I guess Dave had not finished, tasted the final product, but Adam, the author, had. So it's kind of like a funny little exchange. And I'll say this, for all the negative things we may all say or think about Dave Missan, I'm going to give him credit for going up there and doing it because a lot of these bands will just slap their name on a beer and go there. Even if they just show up, that's good enough for me that they're there. And he wins, so. I don't know. Yeah, and it's brewed by Unibrew up in

Awesome Brewery. What was the name of that place in Europe that you sent us the link to where you could buy this stuff? You could buy all the different metal beers and wines and liquors and stuff, but the shipping to the U.S. was ungodly expensive. Yeah. It's like you buy one bottle and it's going to cost you 70 euros to ship it over here. I think it was just heavy metal, what was it called?

I'm trying to think. It was called like heavy metal

bruise or heavy metal

I forget.

It's something like that but it's based

out of Germany I believe.

Yeah.

So my sister lives in Europe

so I sent her the link and I'm like

hey if you can get any of this stuff

for like reasonable shipping and then bring it to me

that'd be awesome.

I would say that

if we sort of all pulled together

I may be willing to buck up for the shipping if I can get a couple of brew heads comms out of it. I can help you on that. I'll go have these with you. You know it's going to happen there, dude. I'm in. All right. I mean, I'll help with shipping too. You're going to go get it, Jay? I may well do. We'll pick it up when you go to Valken. Take an extra suitcase, just stuff it with a lot of shirts. I think we're going to have to look for that Saturn.

for that Saturn record store while we're over there that Arthur was talking about. Definitely. Two cool bands added this week, by the way. Yes. So, oh, I haven't checked today's yet. Have you looked at today's yet? They're doing like this advent calendar where they add two bands to the show every day from now until Christmas. And they added Ahab and Witchery. And I'm just like, Ahab! And Witchery too. I mean, I'm very excited about both of those additions. And they also added Tanker.

which is a band that I'm not particularly fond of. But think about this for a second. They're a German band that sings about beer at a German festival. That thing's going to be fucking rocking. Yeah. So it should be interesting. And Batushka, who I don't know. Oh, seriously? Ruhiria. All added today. Nice. Yeah, Ruhiria. They're cool. That picture's cool. Ruhiria. That'll be interesting. All right. Moving on to our last news item.

I saw this and I sort of double-taked. I was like, what? So, you know, we heard that Fabio had recently quit Rhapsody of Fire, whichever one it was that he was in. And apparently that was because the original Rhapsody is reuniting for a 20th anniversary tour that is also a farewell tour. What the fuck? When is this taking place?

I'm just wondering if this is going to be like one of the headlines at Prague Power. Or at Valken. Could be. Oh, it's almost assuredly, John. Surely they'll be there, won't they? At one of those. At something they'll be at. Yes, definitely. So, all right then. That's what everyone thought about that. Yeah. All right, let's move on to our new releases.

The first one is the new Ash Borer album, The Irrepassable Gate. Have you ever heard the word irrepassable before? No, especially since I think what they're trying to say is the unpassable or something to that effect is what I'm guessing. I bought this though. Did you? I listened to it. I've not been a huge Ash Borer fan in the past, but this one does sound pretty cool. So I'll probably end up getting that as well.

There's a little thing starting to happen out there with the Black Fucking Cancer thing. It's a little bit kind of in that mode. It gets into Black sometimes, and then it just gets real doomy in places. It's not amazing or anything, but I like it, actually. I listened to it once through so far, and I wasn't like, oh, God. It's pretty cool. I haven't heard this next one yet, but I'm probably going to pick it up. This is a band that Buke brought to our attention a little while back, and Ferens.

And they're having a productive year because they're releasing their second album this year. And this one is called In the Hours Beneath. It's pretty good. I like it. What manner of thing is it? I guess generally atmospheric black metal. He doesn't have the traditional screech. He's got a little bit more of a guttural voice. Gets a little doomy in places. It's cool. I like it. Excellent. It's on PayPal right now.

Name Your Own Price. Is it really? Oh yes. Definitely got to pick that up then. There's no reason not to. Next up, and I'm surprised Buke hasn't been foaming at the mouth for this one, Primordial has released a live album, Gods to the Godless Live, at Bang Your Head Festival, Germany. Yep. You know me well. I have been listening to this, and you know two things. I love the band, and I love live albums, but my problem with live shows,

really rears its ugly head on this album because I do not like, and I mentioned this to John at Radio City when Opeth was playing, I have a real problem when bands speed up their songs to try and fit a bunch in a live set. You know, Primordial, Where Greater Men Have Fallen, was my favorite album a couple years ago, was my number one. That's like the third track on this album. That's a killer song.

But they speed it up so much playing it live and they do it with a bunch of songs on here. It just messes up. Yeah. A lot of how it sounds. And I want to ask Jay. Jay, obviously being in a band playing live shows, why do bands do that? Why do they take the time of a song and speed it up so much where it ruins the flow of the song you're so used to hearing? Is it just trying to get more songs into playing it live? No, I think it's just nerves and adrenaline. You know, like, I mean,

I mean like it really in the or in the case of somebody like Iron Maiden there's 30,000 people out there and you're all excited I mean god go listen to live live after death sometime every song on there is three times faster than it is the original records so no I mean my take on it is that and I'm always shocked sometimes like I wouldn't because I'll you know we record most of our shows like on YouTube video type stuff and I've gone back and watched someone I was like Jesus Christ I didn't even know we could play that song that fast but that's funny because you know as bands get old

you know they get later in their years you listen to some of their live stuff and

everything sounds really slow so i just think it's a live setting is all it is yeah but i also

think buke um that is a shame because that particular track you're talking about requires a kind of a

mid-paced delivery that's exactly jay you just you hit it buddy for it to be as dramatic as you want

it to be so that is a shame when that kind of stuff comes down yeah that's exactly that song's just a

The Ramones were notorious for that. You listen to their albums. They're quick songs, but they're a couple of minutes. The first time I saw them, they were the headliner. It was Pine Knob in Michigan. It's sort of like Meriwether or even Jiffy Lube here. They played a headline set in 45 minutes because it was just literally double time from what they

They get older, they get slower.

I forget what song it was, but I said that to John. I resemble that remark. I'm like, you know, do you hear this? I'm living it. This Opel song was noticeably faster. When you're so used to hearing it, you pick up on it right away and it just spoils it for you. Yeah, I agree. One last thing about that Primordial, I was really bummed that there was not a live Blu-ray released with it, because that would have been pretty cool to have. Oh, that's a bummer.

So this last one is the new witchery album, In His Infernal Majesty's Service. Love it. Love it. Whoa, whoa. Just kidding. This was a sarcastic cricket. Well, George and I were already vaguely fighting over this in the smallest humorous sort of way, but I told him it was good. I was like, you gotta check it out. And he texted me back and he was like, it's pretty good. And I was like, you motherfucker. I love this record, dude. It's a lister for me.

It's getting better. See, they've got a new singer on this album, which instantly gets my back up. And I really liked Witch Creek, their last album. And so I was like, yeah, it's all right. But because it's list time, I'm like, well, I probably ought to give it another couple of listens. And it is getting better, so I hear you. I find no dead space on it. It's got super killer intense riffs on it. And it's going to be...

I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway, it is. I think pretty damn high. Top 10, probably. And I've listened to it like five times in the last two days, and it's just only getting better. Were you previously a fan, Will? No, no, no. I literally, every Friday, I try and go through iTunes and see what the new stuff is, and I checked it out. I don't own anything else by Witchery, and I listen to this, and I think I know when I like music.

I'm really going to like something. If on the first

10 seconds of listening to a new band I haven't heard,

and I think I just hit purchase.

Me too.

If I don't have any previous history with Witchery,

I just really liked it.

I immediately thought of you too, by the way.

I know.

You sent me a message last night,

and I don't think I responded,

but I was going to hopefully talk to you today.

You're on board.

You guys should definitely check out the earlier albums too.

I will.

I actually do have the older ones. It's a companion

to me to

the Breedhammer album this year too, which I

still want to pitch to people. It's that kind of

really well-written, thrashy death stuff.

They've evolved over the years.

For sure. Most definitely.

Most definitely.

It's almost like a

Destroyer 666 type of sound.

A little cleaner. A little

bit more modern, like Andy Sneap

type production. But yeah.

But that's the right ballpark. I was telling Jay earlier, Ryan, me a little bit of a, kind of like a, maybe, I don't know why I say stripped down, but a little goat whore-ish to me. No, you nailed it. That'd be a perfect tour together. Yeah. Before we get into our top three list, why don't we talk about what we're drinking? Start with us. Go ahead. Who wants to start? Whoever. I'll start. I am. I had coffee and water. I got to go to work in a couple hours. Okay. O-ring. O-ring. Where's the crickets?

Thank you.

Earlier when I was just listening in because my son was sick.

I couldn't join you guys yet.

I had the Ninkasi Slayer beer.

You know, I saw another one of those at Total Wine a day or two ago.

It looked different than the one we had.

Yes.

I think it's the same beer.

It tastes the same because now it's just called a winter ale instead of like a double alt ale.

And the label's different, but it tastes like the same beer. They do have other variations of it. They have a pumpkin version of it. They have an imperial version of it, a barrel-aged version of it. So I think it's the same beer. They just decided to change it from a double alt ale to a winter ale and change the logo a little bit. Right on. And then now I'm drinking Ponzi IPA from my own brewery, Atlas. Jeez. Which, by the way, two things about Atlas is they're going to, hopefully in the spring, they're going to have a,

like a vinyl record sort of flea market show, whatever you call it. And a guy named Mark Small is going to put that together. So we were talking about that. You weren't here during the break, but that'll happen. And then this Friday, this coming Friday is the I'm co-hosting and teaming up with yet again, Metal Chris. And he's having his DCHeavyMetal.com holiday party there. And we're having my boys in gloom.

and another local band,

great death metal band called genocide pack.

They're going to play live.

So it's going to be pretty awesome.

And hopefully we'll get some,

some recordings there.

Talk to the,

talk to the folks.

Yep.

Get a little episode of it.

Excellent.

All right.

Uh,

puke,

you drinking anything?

Well,

currently since I've been up since four o'clock hunting,

I'm only like my fourth cup of coffee for the day.

You're,

you're on the J,

uh,

the J,

uh,

you know,

This whole weekend, I've spent, the past two days, I've spent morning to night hunting. I applaud you for using your weekend to get up early, if nothing else. Damn, that's not easy. And I had a flying dog, eggnog, stout. How was that? It's like a normal stout, but nothing really jumps out at me. I just had a Commodore stout as well.

have was a brew metal will metal heads pod beer can't have an episode without bringing that up yeah i gotta say the 2016 was excellent yeah you missed it i made it you just didn't get it you know what's gonna happen guys he's finally gonna brew it one day and it's gonna be our expectations are gonna be so high it's gonna be horrible i'm gonna do just because you're giving me so much stuff about it over such a long time

I'm just calling you on it. We're watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, by the way. Hopefully you can't pick it up too much in the background. I'm going to make the most opposite beer that you like. I'm going to make a Belgian Golden Ale or something. So something for me. Yes. An IPA or something. No Imperial Stouts for you. What are you drinking, John? Alright, so I started with something from Wild Heaven.

from the Georgia-Atlanta area. Atlanta, Georgia Civilization Barley Wine. Went on to On the Wings of Armageddon, which is a metal beer from the Brutal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers from DC Brow. I have one in my fridge, and that's probably the next thing I'm going to drink. And then I'm drinking right now from Cigar City, a highlight aged on white oak. That's also in the book, by the way. Well, I have to ask. Every time I go to DC Brow, I see people buying cases upon cases of On the Wings.

As a brewer, is that as good a beer as, I assume, the people buying it? Absolutely. Would you like me to say that it is? Yeah, it's good. I'm obviously friends with those guys, but it's very, very excellent. It's their flagship. Yeah, I know. DC Brawl is my favorite brewery in the area. What I mean by that, though, is that it lives up to the flagship status, though. Yeah, yeah. They're brewing it more often because they're expanding.

And you can actually buy it in stores now where before you had to go to the brewery to get it. You had to wait in line and the whole thing. Yep, I remember. Yeah, so it is a great. It's not my favorite by them. My favorite is still the Fight Club Anti-Gravity Lager. That's not in production, but. I don't think I ever had that one. It was when they first opened up. It was amazing. But that's beside the point. Everybody outside the DC metro area is like, we don't care. Move on. Yeah. Well, cheers, John. Thank you.

And joining the podcast right now, of course, the listeners can't see, but my dog, Dio, has decided to join the pod. The most metal of dogs. I asked Gene to come over just to look at him. We're always up for looking at a dog. He's cute. Oh, really? So I had both my kids in my lap earlier, and they don't want to see my kids. It's just dogs. Are your children named after one of the greatest front men ever? No, I don't think so. My daughter is named after two heavy

Metal Songs. What's her name? Evelyn. What are the songs? Evelyn by Entombed and the song Evelyn by Volbeat. I know. It's what it works here. And I'm also... The blame is named after my father. Just funnier than it needed to be. George, what are you drinking? I'm drinking this new Guinness Rye Pale Ale. And I gotta say, it's actually

It's pretty good. I'll try it out. Yeah. I've seen it around. All right. Now let us move on to our top three, which this time the theme is favorite songs about winter slash cold slash ice slash snow.

I was going to say everybody, if not everybody has an Immortal song on here, there's something wrong with this podcast, but I had one and I ended up taking it off. Hey, guess what, Jay? So did I, Jay. I had one and I took it off. You took it off. All right. Yeah, I ended up. I'm pretty sure there's one song that I know is the first one that came to my mind, and if it's not on most of the list or everyone's list, I'll be surprised. It's not on mine because I knew it was going to be on everyone else's will. Okay. Oh, interesting.

I'll be curious to hear what that is. Did you just say winter sting? Winter sting. Winter sting. We're making words. All right. I guess we'll start with John. All right. Like Jay and I were saying earlier, it sounded like it was going to be easy. Then it became hard. Then I just figured it out eventually. I'm going to go with Isan, the barren lands off the album after. Oh, cool. If you don't know it, read the lyrics. It's very scary and cold and wintry and there's a line involved.

All right. All right, then. Will? Don't judge me, but In Winter by Kitty off their album. I'm done. I quit the pod. If a Kitty song can make it on a fucking list, I can never get shit for pronouncing a band name wrong again or anything I ever do wrong. No, you just got to haul past it.

The glory hammer laugh is off the table now. Thank you, John. Yes. It almost took a whole year, but I'm finally redeemed, baby. You're free. You're free. Hey, Will, is that from your Joe Dirt years? Yeah. That's deer tay. Let's just close it up now. I don't think we need to do it anymore. Let's lock it down. What do you got, Jay? Oh, me.

Frosthammer, Ironfire. Oh, dude. Yeah. And it is truly a lot of winter imagery in that song. Hey, George, can you go back and edit it? So my number three is Frosthammer by Ironfire. Lil' the Kitty guy. Meow. I buke. Oh, wait. There you go. There's Kitty.

That should be played before Will's selection every time. Hey, man. I'll defend it. Own that shit, dude. I am going to own it. You listen to that album, Oracle. It's pretty brutal. A bunch of corn fans are on your side now. All right, Puk, what do you got? A band that this... We have Arthur, a great guitarist on earlier.

with some chops on the guitars. Winter Sun. Winter Madness. That's a good one. Don't get no more winter than that, dude. Right on. My number three. There's going to be a black metal theme on here, just so you know. This one's a more recent one. This is Borknagar Winter Thrice or, for will, Borknagar. Drink! Drink. Alright.

Back to John.

All right, you know, it's not going to be a list without a prog band on there for me, so I'm going to go with a song called A Winter's Dream by Symphony X off the Damnation game album.

Which still, John and I cannot have a civilized discussion, a civil discussion about Symphony X, because him and I greatly differ on the best album.

This is not one of their best albums that we probably agree on.

I would say the Odyssey is it hands down. Hands down. And John does not agree with that. I do not, no. But that's okay. All right, Will, what do you got for us next? I got the finger ready. I got Kitty's second album. So he wants open for Kitty. Wayne Static of Static X.

So my second one is Winter's Wolves from Sword of Age of Winners. I thought you might go with that. That's a great choice, Will. That's a worthy choice from Sword. Yes, and I'll tell you another reason why I love that is because my buddy Steve Jones up at Oliver Ailes made an official Sword beer called Winter's Wolves for the band. That beer was good, man. I enjoyed that one. Yeah, I think we actually all had it at Death Fest. We went to the Pratch Street Ale House. Yeah. That's the fact we did. Yeah.

Awesome.

I had that before the sword show at the Rock and Roll Hotel also, but nonetheless.

Nonetheless.

All right, Jay.

This one, I think it will be one of those ones that I don't know if you guys will kick yourselves, but it won't have been obvious to you to think of it.

But I think it comes to mind right away for me.

Where Eagles Dare by Iron Maiden.

Nice.

It's all about attacking a tower high in the cold, cold, snowy mountains.

Right on.

Yeah.

That's a good one then. I like it. That's good. It's kind of a cool song too. It's not bad. It's not bad. Puke. I'm alone on this one I know because I'm probably one of the big fans of them. Three Inches of Blood when you think of winner, at least if you're myself or Jay or George, you think of a sport called ice hockey and Three Inches of Blood off their album Long Live Heavy Metal wrote a song Leave It on the

Ice. Oh, nice. It's a song about hockey. That is a good song. I didn't think about it from that angle. That's actually a good choice. All right. My number two, from the age of Nero, Satyricon, My Skin is Cold. Oh, nice. All right. Back to John. All right.

I'll be the first one. I don't know if anyone else had this, but you can't get any bleaker than this song title. From Amorphous, Tales for a Thousand Lakes, Black Winter Day. Nice. Oh, man. That's a big one for them. All right. That's a big one. That's awesome. Excellent. Sorry, it's weird. I'm used to having more people, and I'm like, where do I go to next? Okay. Jay. Oh, Will. Will, see? See? I told you. I'm going in the wrong direction.

I fail.

This is the song I assumed everybody was going to have on the list, but Trapped Under Ice, Metallica, or Fry the Lightning.

That was what I didn't put on my list.

It was the first song I thought of.

It was the first song we all thought of.

It was on my list two weeks ago.

Yeah, it was on mine. It came back up.

All right.

Now, Jay.

Killer, weird imagery, people trying to get through with a message on a cold, stormy winter night, No Quarter by Led Zeppelin. Yes! You guys are thinking too much. Give it a day to pull that out. Awesome. The good one, man. Awesome. The winds of Thor are blowing cold. Very cool. It could have gone like Immigrant Song, too, you know. Yeah, there's a little bit going on there, too. That's definitely Viking. I also thought of Northwind by, um... Help me out, Buk. Northwind.

Falconer. Yes. Considered it, but I don't know that it's that wintry. But anyway, no quarter. All right. Buke. George and I's favorite band, when it's nice and cold out, you know, it's just turning from fall to winter. You know, you get that first frost, just like the hearts of a band called Sentenced. Ever Frost. Off of the cold white light. Damn me! Yeah, George, literally, I watched it. It looked like he was a stroke there.

Parts of Everfrost. Oops, that's not the right one. I'll leave it. I meant to clap. I'm still learning this thing. No, that's a great one. Excellent choice. My number one is a tie from the same band from the same album. And yes, I went there. Immortal from Battles in the North, Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms, and

Cursed Realms of the Winter Demons. I mean, come on. Yeah, it was on my list for a minute. It was the one I had to take off. That and something else off of Sons of Northern Darkness, I'm considered. Yeah. But I mean, for title alone, it doesn't get any more winter than that. Exactly. It's just so raw. All right. Why don't we move on to what we are listening to?

Wasprichter Ehrim's.

The New Leprous, they have a live at Rockefeller Music Hall DVD CD set that just came out. Just started listing. Haven't gotten to it too much. And to be quite honest, the rest of my listing has been all my top 25. And I'm not going to mention what those are because that would kind of ruin it. So that's it. Spoiler alert. Just stick around. You'll hear them eventually. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to skip.

this time just because everything I've been listening to lately is pretty much what I've purchased lately. We'll cover you on the next one. We'll catch you on the next one. I'm saving you time. That would be a boo, George, not a horn. Boo! Oh yeah, I'm liking that. That's me then. Witchery, witchery, witchery. Geez, I'm listening to that over and over.

to the ash borer as mentioned the will's got me all hooked on the eerie record i'm loving that

yes um i may be the only one here that i think picked it up but that new glenn hibbs record is the

heaviest thing he's done in a long time i i want to get that i've listened to it a little bit because

he's really kind of amazing for a guy his age to still sound that good that voice yeah uh as a as a

And his playing's still good, too. Yeah. As a consolation prize, I threw all the black... What the hell is it called? No, black... Country Communion albums on my phone. There's another one coming, by the way. Yeah. This is definitely the heaviest thing he's done in a while, so that's awesome. And the Eerie record, as mentioned, and all the Witchcraft records. Constantly. Yeah, constant spinning going on in those.

Well, we're here. It's elections a couple weeks away. Now's the time to get on the podium and fucking sew your albums. I'm not going to play my hand yet. Because I like the reaction on the pod, and that's why we like doing our year-end list. But I'm going to show you on a couple albums that came out, or I've just found again recently. One that I sent to Will, and I know him and I both like. If you're a fan of classic Death Metal

Classic Technical Death Metal. The band Nucleus, and their album Sentient.

Sorry, Sentient.

Oh, that's great. You sent that to me and I bought it instantly. It was awesome!

Amazing old-school classic Death sound.

Great, great, great album.

For all my power metal people out there,

Twilight Force, Heroes of Mighty Magic.

That's kindof cool, too.

Great power metal album.

And I'm gonna stop there because again just like my friends have said

I'm just prepped for year end so I don't want to speak on anything because

I'm just getting ready for next couple weeks from now. Alright.

Play your cards close to your chest. I've got a slightly longer list than usual but not too much so don't break out the dope smoker.

I did pick up Hypnotic Dirge's entire discography. They're a record label on Bandcamp. 59 albums for $10 Canadian, which is like $750 American. Dude, I saw that. I was like, did George just drop like $1,000 today? Yeah, I went up 60 albums in a go. You're taking on our friends from Canada. Yeah, I'm not going to. I was joking. I was going to say,

I'm going to list every one of those fuckers. But I'm not. But that is a pretty good deal, so you should check that out. The first one, first actual album, I don't know if it's pronounced Bolzer, or perhaps Bolzer. They're a band from Switzerland, and this is their debut full-length called Hero. They've had some EPs that were pretty popular. And I have only gone through this once, but it's pretty interesting.

So I think you should check it out. My next couple aren't even metal. They're more electronic, like John Carpenter 80s horror music kind of weirdness. First one's called Daniel Deluxe and his album Corrupter. And then the band Voyager, where there's a three instead of an E, and their album Are You Synthetic? And it's background music kind of, you know? And it's a good palate cleanser when you want to like sort of switch styles up.

Just throw that on for a little while. And move on. The next one is one that Buk told me about. A death metal band called Grand and Worship the Kraken. I forgot about that one. Oh man, that's a good one. Yeah, it was pretty good. And let's see, what else? I picked up a band called Majesty of Revival. It's kind of a strange name. They're a Ukraine band and their album Dualism. They kind of mix

Rock, Progressive, Thrash, Gothic, Symphonic, Par Metal, and Folk Metal. That's their description. And it's interesting. So I picked it up. I picked up another one called Nordfrost. And the album's called Solstitium? I don't know how it's pronounced. But it's kind of a dark wave, dark ambient kind of thing. But it also has guitars in it.

It's kind of ambient drone-ish, but there's electric distorted guitars in there, too. Second to last one, there's a band from Czech Republic who just released their 10th album, and I hadn't really heard of them before. I think I actually heard of their last album. But to be 10 albums in, and I'm just learning about them, I thought that was interesting. They're a band called Root, and the album is called Kargeras, Return from Oblivion. It should be called I Am Root.

I am rude.

I just saw the second trailer today and it's awesome.

It's super awesome, dude.

Yeah, I can't wait.

It looks so good.

Yeah, the second, it looks just as good as the first one.

But anyway, these guys are pretty good.

They're labeled as like a black death metal, but the vocals are all like clean and like sort of like monk chant-ish.

It's weird.

So if you're looking for something different, I would recommend them.

And my last one is also not metal, but they're on Profound Lore Records, and they're called Soft Kill, and their album Choke. And I don't know if you listened last year to the band called Publicist UK? I never listened to them. There's a bunch of metal guys doing not metal stuff. And this band, Soft Kill, sounds like a mix of Depeche Mode, The Cure, and Psychedelic Furs. Oh, wow.

And it's like a very new take on a very familiar 80s sound. And it was kind of fun. And again, it was kind of chill. So I picked that up. And that's it. Why don't we move on to personal recommendations? All right. Outside of like the whole progressive metal thing that I'm always yapping on about, I'm a big kind of jazz fusion metal guy. So this pick, I'm not sure if anyone has this or knows.

about it but if you want to just get into kind of the whole metal fusion jazz thing uh and it's not recent but more recent in terms of bands doing it you might want to give this a spin it's a band called spiral architect it's called the skeptics universe it's made up of basically a bunch of black metal dudes from norway but it is just unbelievable sick technical progressive metal but with the whole jazz metal thing going on at the same time so

That's my pick. My recommendation. If you want to try something different. Nice. Will, what are you recommending for us? I can't recommend enough the new Borracho Atacama. It's awesome. You need to check it out. Local DC guys. They're cool. Yeah, they have the CD release probably on the 15th and hopefully I will be there. So go check it out. It's on iTunes, Bandcamp, everything. All right. Jay. I don't know what year this was released. George will know it.

probably.

Malice, In the Beginning.

This is like very Rob Halford-esque singer.

And you can tell like a producer got a hold of him and they made him do a couple of songs like We Rock,

or We're Gonna Rock You, or something like that.

But the rest of them are like these cool kind of like priest style, like, you know,

stellar gods and stuff like that.

Highly recommended you check these guys out.

They're like a lost Judas priest.

That was 85, Jay.

That was going to be my guess, yeah.

Yeah, License to Kill came out after that, and I thought that was like 86, 87. Yeah, License to Kill was 87. Yeah. It's like British Steel-era Priest, and it's actually a pretty good record. I liked it when I had it when I was a kid. I don't have it anymore, but just if somebody's looking, want to take a little walk through the past, get some obscure thing you haven't heard, give these guys a try. Boy, that takes me back to high school. Oh, sure. Me too. That's when I had it. Yeah. I looked it up again the other night and listened to it on YouTube. I was like, you know what? I just had to tell people about this.

Tell Them About It. An album that I don't think any of us mentioned or we may have glossed over when it came out earlier this year, but I wanted to mention it again. Because these guys, ever since George and I saw them live in the early 2000s, they went on a roll. Death Angel, The Evil Divide. This album is a great, great album. I haven't listened to it. I don't think we've touched on it at all, but Death Angel, since 2004, when they came back,

been hammering out solid releases. Yeah, they've been pretty consistent. I'll give it a shot. This is a great album from these guys. I remember those guys that shows every once in a while I run into them. Yeah, great, great, great album. And that's, yeah, that's it. All right. So my recommendation is one that I would have put on my What We're Listening To because I just picked it up.

But I saved it over here so that I could use it here. This is a band called Black Hole Generator and their first full-length album, A Requiem for Terra. They released an EP about 10 years ago. And this is the guy, the singer for another band called Vulture Industries, which is sort of a proggy avant-garde band. I don't know if John's ever heard of them. And this album is a bit more...

A Requiem to Terra, you said, George? A Requiem for Terra, yeah. And it is pretty damn awesome, so I would recommend that. Yeah. I don't mean to step on you, but Spotify says A Requiem to Terra. Well, let's see. I'm not saying you're wrong, but... Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Let me look. I'm pulling up the album now.

But fuck Spotify. Only that if you want to find it, you'll need the right name. The album's pretty cool. Well, the album that I bought says a Requiem for Terra, so fuck Spotify. George, I think you got a Chinese knockoff. Damn you, VanCamp. Track one is a Requiem for Terra. Yeah, so I think they're wrong. So for these guys might be like, why are we getting no fucking place on Spotify? What is wrong? For Spotify.

All right, let's move on to vinyl or other purchases.

John.

All right, just got two things.

One, I completed my Gojira vinyl collection, finally got LaFont Sauvage,

I finally got that paid an arm and a leg for it but I'm complete now on all the Jira one of the few bands I want George's pronunciation of that is the Frenchie one yeah I just went half French because we live in DC so we're going to say Linfant Linfant Plaza yeah exactly yeah I call it elephant savage yes and my other one I mentioned earlier during my what I'm listening to and that's the leprous live at Rockefeller Music Hall it's a

DVD to CD set. I mean, I buy CDs out at the ass, but those are the only two of note that I bought recently. I'm up. You're up. All right. So what I've been listening to lately and my digital purchases, I bought the Scorched Echoes of Dismemberment. Pretty awesome death metal. The album cover kind of looks like an old school horror movie poster. So it's very much in the old 80s, early 90s death metal scene.

sound to it. It's great. Buk mentioned this earlier. Nucleus, the sentient. Great old school death metal again. Witchery in his Infernal Majesty's Service we mentioned earlier. Loving that record. That will definitely make my year-end list. I bought Cultid, Oblique to All Paths. So really digging this. Mike Cultid, at Mike Cultid on Twitter. He's another guy.

with Dan up in Winnipeg that they just love beer and metal. So we followed each other on Twitter for a while. And then he friended me on Facebook and I didn't realize that Mike Klasson is in a band. So I checked out his band and I'm really digging it. It's kind of like a black metal-ish kind of band. Digging that. The next one I have is Horns, which is double S at the end, H-O-R-N-S-S. And their album Telepath. It's great. Stoner Doom. Definitely check that out.

And Local DC Boys Genocide Pack forged through Domination. They're playing live at the Atlas DC Heavy Metal holiday party on the 9th. So I'm looking forward to that. And then obviously I bought the new Borracho Atacama. Cannot recommend that album enough. It's some of the best stuff they've put out in a long time. It's a well thought out, almost concept album.

I can't say enough good things about that. And that's what I bought, and that's what I'm listening to. Excellent. Pretty didn't order much in the last, or buy much in the last. Did not get one that I know Duke's about to say, and it's because of my own laziness, so I'm not going to say it. I don't want to steal his thunder, but I'll swear when he says it. I got Death Spiritual Healing. I thought I had that. I think I ordered it, and I never got it, and I found it in a store.

the other day. So I picked that up on vinyl. And other than that, I just got Witchcraft's Firewood and The Alchemist, both on vinyl, completing my Witchcraft collection in fast order these last couple of weeks. I will say, I don't think we talk enough about death on this podcast. I love death. Death is awesome. We don't actually, Will, and you're always quick to put in the exclamation point. They are great. One of the things I would highly recommend about those reissues is that they all have really, really well written liner and

like inserts in them talking about how the records came about and some of the stuff that was going on at the time and i enjoyed reading all of them so far though i haven't got the sounds of perseverance one which is out now and i will say if you're a fan of death you definitely got to get uh the book uh choosing death uh you can buy on the decibel magazine's website uh that has a lot of the in-depth uh story about all the all the the death metal bands that came out of tampa

But they feature death quite a bit in that book. It's really cool. Check it out. I'm waiting for the Kindle version. You may be waiting a while. Yeah. That's you. Now you got to say the one that really breaks my heart. Yep. So Record Store Day happened after Black Friday. And I haven't had a lot of money recently. But before I went hunting on Black Friday, because my family was gone, I stopped by the record store and I picked up a couple albums. First off, not really a metal band, but one of my favorites.

I was my favorite

I don't like on any other I mean maybe there's a picture disco out back or something but I can show you guys if you guys want to see it I saw your picture already but I well I was really disappointed to have missed that and I got not on record store day because they didn't get it in but even though you know I'm still on the fence about the album I went in there the other day just to talk to my friends and the shipment had showed up and the Metallica hardwired record store day showed up

It's a nice red Record Store Day exclusive. Cool. And with a slip mat. Can't beat the free slip mat. So I don't think that's a particularly good cover. Unfortunately, I'm not really. The cover is horrendous. Yeah, I don't think it's great. Didn't they steal that cover from somebody else? I could have sworn somebody else did the same cover a few years ago. Yeah, it's a similar combined faces thing. Yeah. I honestly would steal it. They were influenced by it. I would put it on par with Dance of Death for Bad

covers. Indeed.

But, so that's what I got.

Brave New World, in case you guys are wondering, it's awesome on vinyl.

Shut up, man.

George is like, puke strikes again.

Yep.

And I bet it was the only copy, wasn't it?

They had two, they had, yeah, it was, actually it was.

Eh, thank you.

I had told George, I was like, ah, no, no, there's a couple places around here where people don't,

that, no, no, nobody who likes that is going to frequent.

And boy, was I wrong. I had no plans to go out Black Friday until Jay sent a message to our group saying, oh yeah, Brave New World's coming out Black Friday. So okay. I'm glad somebody got to take advantage of it. Yeah. All right. Before I get into mine, there was one that I forgot on my previous list of what we're listening to that I just picked up yesterday. It's a band called Ice Howl and their album Crack the Earth. It's kind of stoner doomy, but

a little more on the doom less on the stoner it's pretty cool you should check it out

um i do have what in the military we say i have a saved round i don't know if i mentioned this

earlier on a previous episode but i did download the when you when you were talking about how you

downloaded the entire catalog of some band up in canada uh you guys ever heard of goya yeah yeah

you mentioned it last time okay all right so i picked up all their stuff i didn't know if i mentioned

last time. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead, George. I actually don't have any vinyl. I think that might be a first. I haven't picked anything up in the last, what, week or so. How about a deep track? All right. I'm going to disagree with Buick when he says these guys aren't really metal, because I think they actually are metal. I don't think they're a grunge. John adopting a defensive posture there real quick. No, this is a pro-aggressive approach. Preemptive. I'll take it. So you're about to talk about Opeth?

I was going to bring up cannibal corpse, but they're busy playing some bar in the middle of nowhere. Good point. I just want to say, like, I know on this podcast, I give you guys so much crap about Opet. I like Opet. I just it's the priceless reaction I get on John's face every time I diss them. I mean, it's worth it every time. Well, that might have been one of your better zingers. Actually, I thought that was well placed. John and I. It's just so irrelevant. That's the whole point.

I went over John's house last week. We had a couple beers. Literally, just to go drink some beers and catch up. I said, I love listening to the podcast when I give John crap about Opeth. It's like somebody just baiting Trump into saying something stupid. You can see the misdirection he has. You like watching the moment when John's heart breaks. That's real nice. It's actually not breaking because I'm still winning. Radio City Music Hall.

Where's your band playing this weekend? Chuck's? Chuck's Barbecue? We're going to be down at the John S. Milton Middle School this weekend for a two-set appearance. Bring a hot dish or a cold dish. It's a potluck. All right, so in the vein of fuck you guys, I'll get to my pick now. Yes, Buke, I disagree with you. I think Alice in Chains is a metal band.

I don't think they're as much of the grunge as they are kind of a metal bluesy band. Like Jerry Cantrell says. But nonetheless, my point was I picked a song off of their music bank, which I don't think many people remember. Oh, God, that's awesome. But the song Get Born Again is just so freaking heavy. It's so dark. And I wish more people knew about that song. Isn't that just like a collection of stuff? It's not anything. Well, apparently it is stuff that's not from albums. Yeah, they have about, I think, 10 songs.

Weren't released before off of that. Yeah, I guess they don't have to get that. I thought it was just like a Greatest Hits collection or something. No, there's... You're going to get ripped off on that aspect if that's what you're thinking because there's not as many other songs. I can give them to you if you want them, George. I don't give a shit. It's a great box. But it's a very good box. It's all remastered because they haven't remastered any of that early stuff. Okay. Get Born Again is probably one of their heaviest songs they ever did. And it's on their Essential Alice in Chains album as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good pick. That's what I heard back there. Sorry. I turned my mic on a little early thinking you were wrapping up my kids in the background. I guess you're up. Oh. So good segue into it. It seems like a lot of times what my kids are watching influences a lot of times what I'm listening to. Kitty. Yeah.

Well played.

No, so my kids love this show Little Einsteins.

And on this show, they love this Halloween episode where they're constantly playing the Edvar Kriegs Hall of the Mountain King theme.

And it's this little... Is that Little Einstein? Yeah, so that is literally the song, Hall of the Mountain King, which was... It's Edvard Krieg's... He wrote it for the sixth scene of the second act of Henrik Ebsen's 1876 play, Pierre Gint. And so I've been listening... It's funny, because

Sean and I were talking about this last week. So I've been listening to Sabotage's Hall of the Mountain King from 1987. Nice. Cool. Nice. I knew you were going to get there eventually. I was like, he's going to Sabotage. No, it wasn't that you were taking a while. It was that I knew where you were going to end up. It would have been badass if he dropped the Trans-Siberian Orchestra song on you there.

I was going to say there's several different versions of it, one being the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is not the guys from Canatonia or something. No, it's all the guys from Sabotage. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, because that's what we were talking about, John. Okay. Jay. Mine is designed almost, it was not purposeful, but I believe it'll get a hell yeah from Buke. Off of Alive in Athens, Desert Rain by Ice Earth. Yes. What a great song. I'll give you a hell yeah, Jay.

in that one.

Yeah.

Because he didn't get his headphones on anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great song.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

What were you saying, buddy?

Only that my deep track was sort of designed for you today.

And it's off of a live in Athens, Desert Rain by Ice Dirt.

Oh, yes.

That's such a cool song.

It's such a great live album.

It is.

It's a great album.

That would turn me on to that band.

Yeah.

Fucking killer.

I think that was my first one too. John and I on the way up to New York tried to sell TR on Iced Earth in that album. It's such a great collection of their whole history. Come on TR, get with the program. Yeah, yeah. Exactly TR, what the hell? It's long, it's a long record, it's played. It's recorded. Perfect. Big crowd. Barlow sounds awesome. Yeah. That might even be one of my, it's gotta be my top two.

favorite releases by them. Anywho, so we're looking for a deep track from you. Yep. For my recommendation, I said Death Angel, but I'm going to go back to Death Angel again. Off of the Ultraviolence, I'm going the title track, The Ultraviolence. Cool. It's, you know, not probably the most popular song on the album. Kill is one probably on there, but checking, I always like

I have to check my tracks on Last.fm to see where it ranks and people tracking their plays. It's far down the list on Last.fm. On Spotify, it's actually looking here at number two. So maybe it's not a fucking Spotify deep track. Guess not. So you know what? Kill is one then. Take your choice. Fuck you. I'll make it deeper. I'll go deeper. All right. My deep track from Anthrax off

Among the Living Imitation of Life. Oh. Okay. Getting ready for the tour? Yeah. No, it's just, I just, I just happened to be flipping through it and I was like, oh, you know, I haven't listened to that song in a long time. And that was, back in the 80s, that was one of my favorite songs because it was all about fucking fake poser people, you know? No, I would almost say you can't make that a deep track because I don't think there's a deep track on that whole album. That is a great song. I love that song.

Well, I haven't heard it in years, so it can't be making the rounds too much. But anyway, so there you have it. I have a trivia question for you. Do you remember who NFL Nice Fucking Life is about? John Belushi? Yeah, nailed it. Yep. I feel smart now. Yeah, you look smart. With the glasses on and the whatnot. Yeah, the whatnot. I chose this whatnot especially for you.

Is that a je ne sais quoi? Yeah, that's certain something well nicely done. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode. We'll be back really soon with our year-end episode with our top 25 albums. So start making your own lists and carry, you know, go along with us and, you know, score it and see how many of them you get. That's going to be some no-holds-barred shit right there, dude. It's going to be a real jawbreaker this year. Yeah, it's going to be long.

I guarantee we're going to have a lot of unique titles too. I would wager there's no more than five or six that will be on multiple lists. Yeah. What's the expression, Will? Beer-fueled calamity. There it is. Yep, that's it. And I expect myself to be the fucking crickets like it is every year. We're all going to be like that, though. Yeah, don't be so sure. We all have some that are in common, and then there's a bunch of stuff that everybody's just like, whatever, I didn't really like that one.

So, you know, that's just the nature of the beast. Oh! Can't wait. Twisted Sister. Do you have an album of the year? As my wife walks in, do you have an album of the year? Come here. Hold on. She was on there with us with the GWAR episode. Say hi to the listeners. Hi. I don't have an album of the year unless you count Paddler songs. There you go. Nice shirt. Yeah, look at that. Yeah. It's not a Cannibal Corpse shirt. It's an Opeth shirt. Is that Cannibal Corpse?

All right. So we're going to get out of here now. But before we go, make sure to check us out on SoundCloud. We're on Facebook. I'm on Facebook.com backslash Metalheads. I think it's just Metalheads. Yes. But yeah, just search on Metalheads and you'll find us. We're also on Twitter. I am at Disciple OV Metal. I'm at OPEF Fan. At Catatonic J. At Brew Metal.

I do have one save round sorry go ahead John

at white cluster 69

I just want to give a shout out

and I don't remember the guy's name but when I was out

in LA with Matt Rice

from yesterday's Saints and his wife

we went to this place called Timeless Pints

and we were all wearing metal shirts and this kid just came up

to us he was in his early 20s

and we got in this like hour long

discussion about old school metal

I mean there was nothing this young 20

something didn't know and I forget his name

I promised I'd give him a shout out on

the podcast.

You failed.

You failed.

Well, I'm doing it.

I feel like you're a safe face.

No, no, but.

So do that guy.

You know who you are.

No, but my overall point is that there's a generation out there, even younger than

Buke, who are know all the stuff.

Like they know the classics.

They know in-depth Metallica Slayer, Sepultura, Celtic Frost. There's a new generation of people out there who went back and are listening to music that came out 20 years before they were born and educating themselves. So cheers to him and all those other guys out there who are just like him. But the weird part is, to them, it's Hendrix. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, these are people who lived some whole other time. This is like World War II shit right here, bro. Anyway, shout out to him. All right.

And to finish up, we're also on Instagram, we're on YouTube, we are on Stitcher, and we are Metalheads.com. And make sure to look us up on Bandcamp, too, and check out what we're buying, what we're listening to. You can see the 59 frickin' albums that I bought for $7 and see what's on there. I have yet to discover them all. I'm still digging through it myself. Just only that, I wanted to tell our listeners to be thinking about it now, which is last year.

We will see you next time.