I know I just did a “going through my C://users/Isley/desktop/organize/RANDOM/desktop_stuff_to_organize folder and posting a bunch of random memes I found” post, but I had a few more memes of a heavy kind. As usual, these are mostly deep cuts of dubious quality, but for those of you who always pop at my very specific use of the word PROG, this post is for you. Unfortunately, that person is Brian, and I’ve already sent him most of these when I made them. Still, a monthly blog deadline is a deadline, so what can you do?
I believe I made this for my wife (who asked this exact question, and got this exact lecture), but I could have sent this to a LOT of people. And for the record, Ride the Lightning is GREAT…but is it really better than Iron Angel’s Hellish Crossfire?
Speaking of thrash, let’s talk about my complicated relationship with Sepultura. Morbid Visions is a great, albeit incredibly primitive, album that might have singlehandedly invented black metal. Their next 3 albums are all great thrash albums that unfortunately leave me bored halfway through. Then they sold out and went groove metal and we speak of them no more.
Orr…is the true elitism coming full circle to realize the groove metal is actually kind of good?
Still no, but give me 10 more years and I might get there.
Speaking of groove metal that I am finally begrudgingly admitting actually goes kind of hard:
Maybe I owe my sister an apology for shitting on her Korn tape all those years ago. Metaphorically shitting on it that is (an important clarification for anyone who’s read Jock Blog–new episodes coming in 2023!!)
No matter what your subculture, elitism is exhausting, and I was ashamed to see how easily I could change a few words from a random baby play cringe post…
…into a typical The Black Vault elitist cringe post:
Let this be a wakeup call metal elitists. You don’t want to end up like this guy:
And yes, this was a function that I attended–you never think it will be you that sells out until you are sitting at the end of a long table of functioning adults in an Isengard t-shirt.
Speaking of hanging on to past metal glory, I used my actual patch wall for our work’s “post a fun Halloween background for our October zoom meeting” last year:
Not that anyone gave a shit at how kvlt my Sepultura Morbid Visions patch was.
Speaking of COVID, I jumped on one of the early fad memes with this one that, honestly, was pretty useful:
Whether you can be an elitist and still worship Slayer or not, that song is an all-timer.
Speaking of all-timer bands (and bringing things back to Metallica), my first exposure to Judas Priest in the mid-ninties was trying to figure out if they were the band that sang “Enter Sandman” after randomly hearing it on the radio as my first ever metal song. Turns out it was NOT Judas Priest, and a few cursory listens at Blockbuster Music later also confirmed that Judas Priest was far too SAWFT for my tastes (it only took a few months for “Enter Sandman” to also enter to the realm of sawftness). As the years went on, I realized that Priest actually WAS awesome, specifically Defenders of the Faith and Painkiller. As more years went on I came to appreciate their 70s output. And finally I’m here today as an apologist for their most maligned album:
Or maybe I just really love that “Desert Plains” song.
One sawft style of metal I can’t get behind is Prog metal. Like porn, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it, and I don’t care how many times Brian tries to get me to listen to Manic Impressions:
I can just never get past the…competent musicianship?
Much like I can never get into noted prog band Death (with a right side up cross logo):
Hear that Brian? Stop trying to make Individual Thought Patterns and cookie monster squeals happen.
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