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Metalheads Podcast is a metal-themed podcast featuring George, Jay, Will, John, Matt and Markisan. The guys discuss metal news and new releases, perform in-depth interviews with great metal bands, and just generally have a blast arguing about that greatest of musical styles: Metal!
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Now, here is the podcast, Metal Heads Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the Metal Heads Podcast.
My name is George.
I'm so funny, dude.
This is Jay.
This is John.
This is the Metal Adjacent Situational Podcast.
And this is Markisan. And returning to the podcast is Dennis of Ghostbath. Welcome back, Dennis. Good to have you on the show again. Hey, good to be back. Good to see you guys. Yeah, good to see you. I'm going to just, I really did obviously sit in this introduction. George is sick, so he's going to stick with us as long as he can. He may fade in and out, but that was his voice you heard. Yeah, I was really putting some extra mustard on that to sound normal.
We're going to stick with the hot dog theme, aren't we? Yeah. Oh, boy. So Ghostbath just dropped a great new record called Rose Thorn Necklace. And I really love it, Dennis. It sounds different than what you've done before. There's, of course, the gothic despair, the grim haunting melodies, but it also kind of feels lighter in tone to me, more colorful, maybe brighter synth.
Just airy, almost a luminous production to it. Can you talk about your approach to the songwriting on this album and what you want to achieve on it? Yeah, for this one, it kind of came out of nowhere because we were planning to write a record as a full band, but that takes a while because we all live in different cities across the U.S. Like, I'm in Pittsburgh. We got some guitarists and bassists in Minneapolis and now our drummer is in New Mexico. So it takes a while to, like, get a
get everyone together to write a record and we're still working on that but in the meantime it had been like what four years since self-loather came out our last one and so we really wanted to get some new music out to tour on and stuff like that and i had all these ideas so i basically wrote and recorded it all by myself uh in this in my office here and um and then i i got a mike heller to do drums um he has his own studio and he recorded those for me he's
He's done stuff for, was he in Fear Factory and Abigail Williams and that Japanese band, Psy. Oh, yeah. I love Psy, yeah. Yeah, he's done their last couple. Was he with, do you know if he's, I'm sorry, George, is he touring with them right now when they played MDF? I don't think so, no. Okay, because they just played here. Yep, yep, I saw that. I saw some video of them, but yeah, I think, I don't think he's touring with them. Okay. Yeah. It looked awesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did see that. They're on, like, costumes and face paint. And yeah, I saw that video. What software do you use for recording? I use FL Studio. Okay. Which the reason I use it is because I learned it in, like, middle school. We had a class where I don't even remember what class it was. Some kind of computer class. And he taught us the basics of FL Studio. So I've used it since middle school. And I just kind of.
Being able to learn the workflow is just really easy for me now. And I know a lot. Nobody uses it, but it works for me. How does that work when you got to send it over to somebody to do drums? Okay, so for the drums, I just sent I just removed the program drums because I write to program drums and then yeah, sent it to him and we just sent it back and forth and he would like play the parts but also do his own thing and he would come up with ideas and I would either be like, oh yeah, that's awesome or no, make it more like the
We just kind of went back and forth on that quite a bit. As far as exporting on there, I don't know what I'm doing for that. So I had to like, I was like panning the guitars and like bringing the levels down and I just like trying to figure it out as I went. And then I just sent like a ton of waves to Jack Shirley. He's the one who mixed and mastered it. Yeah. And yeah, I just had a bunch of questions. I'm like, is this too loud? Should I keep these effects? Get rid of them? I don't know. It was like a long kind of grueling process because it's like so much
Yeah, I had to title them all perfectly so he could bring them into what he used, which I can't remember. It was like Ableton, no, Reaper, something like that, that he used on his end for the mixing and mastering of it. Yeah, and for guitar, I just used a digital, what was it? I don't know what it's called. It was a Soldano, but I can't remember the company.
Okay. You know, if it works for you, that's the important thing. Yeah. Yeah. I use the LTD SP 1000. It's pretty popular for like black metal and stuff like that. But it has like EMG active pickups. So it's way different sound than like my usual Telecaster and Strat. Interesting. Yeah. Overall, I don't know. I did make it like brighter. Like, especially compared to the last record. The last record is super dark. We were all using single coils and we recorded it.
Like through microphones, just everything we did made it more dark. And I mean, I mean, then like the tone sound, not like evil dark. So yeah, then for this one, it's just like super bright. And like, it's really weird, but I was inspired kind of by, who was it? Not, who does, fuck, what was that song? It was like a 90s band I went to go see live.
And I cannot remember who it was. Give me one thing. Sure. And they're like super bright and like compared to the other bands on the bill. I was like, I really like this. I think it's interesting. It's different. Like, I don't know, more attack and just crispy sounding. I don't know. So like I was kind of going for that, especially with like the drum mix, the guitar mix. So you use a Tele on black metal. I what? You use a Tele?
I did for every album except this new one, but live I use a Telecaster, yeah, for everything. It's interesting because we were just talking about this because John and I saw Esau about a week ago, and he played the whole set with a, it was custom, but it was a Tele, and I was very surprised to see that. I just saw another band using one, George, that I was surprised. I was like, there's something going on. That's showing up in a number of different places.
now. It's very interesting.
Or the, was he son, did he have humbuckers on it?
It was humbuckers. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah. I use sing, I use single coils. Um, and I use like a sixties model tele. So it was really weird. They have like, it's like 57 gray bottom single coil pickups. And I think that just came from like me growing up in the Midwest. Everyone was like doing like emo type music, hardcore music. And everyone was using like fenders and oranges.
And that just kind of stuck with me. And I just like, I really like the sound of them. It's like a lot more mid-range where a lot of metal guitar is like more scooped. I just feel like, I don't know, I can hear like every note in the chords. I like a mid-range too. Yeah. They're not default twangy. I mean, that's what people, you know, call them a country guitar, which it very much is and can be, but it doesn't, you know, it's got knobs on it. You can turn them in different directions. Yeah. I just, I just never really noticed
that before with anyone until I saw you sound to it. Well, John Feiby's is like, they're going out of style. Yeah. It's generally, you'll see more with a rock band, I think, or a hard rock band than you will in metal as much, but they're popping up. I think even Mikey used one on the last Opeth album. I thought I read something. He talked about it where he was really unsure about it because he didn't know how it would sound. I thought he did. I mean, I do a few things to it to make it less twangy. I use really thick gauge strings.
And the orange is very dark. So that kind of combats it also. I think those two things kind of dial back the twanginess. I would almost say I'm one of the darker guitars, less twangy, because my other guitarists use Stratocasters, but they have a really weird tone with less gain. I don't know. I think we try to sound more like rock, especially live, I think. So maybe that's where that comes in.
When you're writing the album by yourself, are you also thinking about how the band's going to play those parts live? Or is it just something that you're writing for the record? No, I don't think about that live at all. And it does bring up a lot of problems when we try to play certain songs live. Sometimes I'll have four guitar parts and we only have three guitars. Or sometimes I'm switching between perfectly clean, low on the neck, and then we have distorted high on the neck.
I just write it for the record the best that I can. And our method is basically like, okay, we think we can do this one live, then we'll get in a room and try to do it and see if it sounds good. It's kind of like trial and error. Especially even ones that we've played live, we can kind of tell what hits better, what people like, what sounds good live on a stage, other than just on the record. When I'm writing the record, I don't consider that at all, really.
So I do live in Minneapolis, Dennis, and I have run into one of your band members a couple times. I've accosted him both times. Unfortunately, he has not filed a restraining order against me that I'm aware of. But it really did get me thinking about, you know, you are a regularly touring band, and yet they live here, you're there. You know, you mentioned a drummer in Arizona. How often do you find yourself as a group getting together? Is it more kind of pre-tour to play in one room?
and rehearse and get things together? Or do you do it periodically throughout the year? I wish we could get together a lot more. And we're always changing members. We always have fill-ins. This year, I think I'm playing with three, four different fill-in members. It's just, I don't know, constantly changing and stuff. So usually it's just one or two days before the tour is all we can do. I'll fly out. The last tour we did was Central America, and so we all flew out to Albuquerque.
which is where our drummer lives and for like two days before and we just practiced
the set like twice so yeah mostly like you got to learn all the songs on your own and then when we get together it's just like trying to get the cohesiveness down and like mainly like how we're running like the we play to a click or a drummer does and like the samples and stuff like that so yeah i wish we could like practice more uh before tours and stuff but it's kind of like the first few shows are almost
Yeah.
Yeah, I just do whatever I have to do. If somebody, yeah, like this next tour coming up, we're going to Europe and two of our members live in Canada that are filling in for this next one. So we just got to figure it out. I don't even know where we're practicing yet. And you tour a lot too. Yeah. Yeah. As much as we can. Yeah. Yeah. This year we got like all over the world. We got what coming up? We got festivals in Europe in like end of July.
And then we got Mexico with Cradle of Filth for like 13 days in September. And then we got Asia, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan in October. So it was all over the place. How are those contracts for the European festivals? Do you guys do all right with that? Because I know a lot of bands will get on a European summer circuit and they say that that's pretty much their whole year. You know, most of the money they make when they tour.
Yeah, I mean, festivals, yeah, pay way, way more than like a normal show ever would. It's just, we have a lot of like overhead, a lot of like expenses, like all the flights, driver, TM, sound, everything. So usually in Europe, we just like, we've never lost money, but we'll, we'll be a lot closer to like break even depending compared to like the US where we can be playing club shows and just make it.
It's just because there's no expenses. It's enough to get over there. We get fed. We get our whole rider on the US where we get food, alcohol, whatever we want, every show. All the travel gets taken care of and then we come home with a small trunk right now. It's exposure more than anything else then, really, because you're not losing any money. Obviously, it's a free vacation in some ways, even though it's a lot of work. Of course.
And the love of the metal. Yeah. Some of those stages are pretty big in Europe, and that's a lot of people you get to play for. That goes a long way. Yeah. Yep. And yeah, we've noticed growth over the years. I mean, touring so much. All of our numbers just better and better each year, which is what you want to see, just slow, steady growth. Right. Yeah, I can see it paying off in that way, for sure.
So Rose Thorn Necklace comes after a completed trilogy of albums. So I was wondering what it was like for you to write this record and start a different chapter for the band after you finish this big epic across three records. Yeah, it was just kind of freeing, kind of just like, you know, I can make a single statement, it can be whatever I want, and just go kind of more experimental, I don't know, like with the synths and all kinds of things.
kind of different things.
Like I was just kind of like,
it's,
it's like writing like a single novel instead of,
you know,
like a trilogy of novels where they have to like kind of connect with each
other.
And also I think that's why it's like a shorter length.
It's kind of more focused and succinct compared to the,
the trilogy of records.
Was the length intentional or did you just,
just ended where it,
where you thought it should?
At first it was going to be an EP.
So the length was kind of intentional.
Because like I said, we're working on a record together as a band, but it's just going to take a while to get all together enough to get it done. And so I was like, oh, we can just like put out an EP. And then I wrote enough to make it a full length. And so yeah, we ended up making it a full length. But I did want it like shorter and more to the point and just like. Yeah, it was like 35 minutes, right? So it's a. It breezes by. Yeah. And I kind of wanted that. I don't know. I've written a lot of like
like long winded stuff. So I just wanted to, I don't know, put my hand at something like you can just listen to in around half an hour and be done with it or re-listen to it or whatever. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned synth on the album. And I definitely hear so much of that on the record and it adds a lot of atmosphere, I think, overall. Like what's your process for adding the electronic parts when you're working out the songs?
A lot of these, I don't know, the writing process is kind of weird because a lot of the songs were bits and pieces from other songs for other projects from years ago. And I was like, you know, I like this one riff with this synth, but nothing else. So I took that part and then rewrote a whole song around it and stuff like that. So it's just piecing together different things to make the overall picture what I wanted it to be.
The synth, I don't know, maybe some of it comes from my Vaporwave type background. I run a Vaporwave label, so it's a lot of electronic type music and samples and stuff like that. So I don't know, you can hear a woman crying sample, a woman screaming sample, even a breakbeat sample, all kinds of stuff like that that I put in. I don't know, I wanted it to be dancey in some ways, which you can probably hear if you think about.
it. And that just comes from like, I guess, I don't know, they call it like narco punk or like, it's a type of depressive black metal that like I'm wearing the shirt to it's a life lover does it psycho not for does it? It's kind of weird. It's like a depressive dancing. I don't know. It works. I mean, that's definitely the feel on the record because it it is dark and like lyrical
content and you know with the harsh vocals and but it has that brightness to it like we talked about before it is a an interesting meld for you and ghost bath yeah actually i really like the instrumental atmospheric tracks because they sustain the emotion a lot on there and i usually skip those kind of tracks on records because they don't feel essential but they do on this record yeah i've always liked writing the instrumental stuff and they're always like
pretty popular like even on like spotify there's some of our most popular tracks so
i know people like them but then other people just be like oh i just skip them oh they're just
like filler so yeah i mean i don't write them as filler but i understand like if i'm listening to a
record sometimes i'll skip instrumental tracks too so it just depends what what mood you're in um i think
i'll always write them they're just kind of like part of how i write and even when the band first
started i didn't have lyrics or anything so it's just kind of more focused on the instrumentals anyway
Yeah, it just sets the mood. It sets the overall atmosphere. That's the whole point of them. But a lot of people latch on to them and listen to them all the time. I love them. I do. I mean, if they're well-written and it's also the tracking, too. If they're placed properly, they can give you a break in an album while giving you something, which is what I like about them.
Because sometimes you're like, okay, that was an intense 20 minutes. Now it's like intermission, you know, the popcorn and the hot dog come out on the screen at the movies. Remember that? You guys? Okay, maybe not that old. But then I like how that can give you kind of reprieve and still give you something. So I dig them. Hot dog reference. Unintentional hot dog reference. And this record, it flows seamlessly. And I'm like, like I said, I feel like they're essential to the record.
So I like that when you write them and they complete the album. Sometimes I feel like they're just thrown in there as instrumental breaks. And you know, it's fine too, but for this one, it worked really well for me. Yeah, I think the contrast is the main reason I do it. Like if you have like really intense sort of sound, and then the contrast of like a lighter instrumental and then the changes between going into that or coming out of it.
to a harder song. I really like playing with that. Yeah. I think, yeah. And then, I don't know, I would get bored or like, every song is like the same type of sound, same density or like intense sound to it. It's just like, takes away from each track as you go, unless you have like something to like, yeah, kind of give you that reprieve or like a little break. Yeah.
I think you get a lot of variety in the record as well too like not every track sounds a little different to me which I liked as well because you can get trapped into that one kind of a style but you you never seem to do like all your records sound a little bit different so is that something that you consciously work on are you always looking for new ways to express yourself on each record I mean I definitely don't want to write the same record twice and I really make sure I don't do that on purpose
like people will be like oh why didn't you write something like moon lover or whatever it's like i
already wrote moon lover i'm gonna write something different um but at the same time like i do get
people saying oh i can tell it's a ghost bath record like i sent it the newest one to my the first
producer i worked with josh schroeder and he was like oh this is definitely a dentist record or
something like he knew like i don't know just my writing style or something like that i was like okay
that's good. So I think even though I like experiment and make things sound like different record to record, I think I still have sort of a through line, just like my artistic voice comes through in some way and people can tell it's still Ghostbath, you know. Right. Well, I mean, you play the depressive, suicidal black metal, but I know you also love listening to other bands that play in that style. Can you talk about why you gravitate towards DSBM and what does it stir in you from the beginning?
I mean when I first found it I like laughed at it almost because I found like some of the most ridiculous bands with like crazy vocals like a silencer and stuff like that was like super high-pitched shriek type stuff yeah I was like okay this is ridiculous and I I just remember I was in Fargo North Dakota I used to live in Minot North Dakota I drove down to Fargo for for an event and the guys who are from Minneapolis
and I met up with them and I was like you guys gotta listen to this and I had the
like silencer cd and I put it in my car and I just like played it for him to laugh at
and then for some reason over time I like stopped listening to it ironically and actually enjoyed it
yeah it's like came around slowly grew on me I was like oh okay I actually like this I should make something like this so
Yeah, I mean, I listen to a lot of sad, depressing music. I don't know why I do that. It's just like calming to me and like something to like just kind of dwell in when I'm listening to it. I just feel like more meaningful if it's like sad for some reason. Just like the emotion to it. I just feel like that's really something that like only music or
art can really bring out of someone. So I think it's important to have it in there. And yeah, I don't know. I can kind of like. Evoke empathy. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Like kind of like a catharsis. Like it's weird. The main comment I get from people and I'm like at a show playing shows and I get this like every show is like, hey, your music like really helped me through this dark time or
this event or this depression, which sounds weird because it's focused on the darkness and depression and stuff like that, but I feel like it's somehow a release for that kind of emotion. I get that almost every show. If you think about it for a little bit, you get it. It's like catharsis. You just release that emotion.
wall by Pink Floyd and, you know, sad movies and all that stuff. I mean, it's not a unique habit, you know. It's out there. I mean, there's so much stuff that you, and I don't know, there is, I think a lot of people like that. A lot of people like to just. Well, yeah, you hear stuff like that and it's a musical form of emotion and so you can relate to it and they feel like you get what they're going through and then they're not,
alone, because they can listen to it and they know that you've written this song that captures that emotion. And that's important for people to know that they're just not by themselves. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I get that all the time. Like people, I don't know, on the surface, people will be like, oh, you're just like depressed all the time. But it's like, no, it's like a release of the negative energy. So I don't have that built up, you know, and I think same with the people listening to it.
No, it's on my albums. It's not in me anymore.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I cleansed myself.
I mean, I think that has a lot to do with me and metal too, is that people are always like, why are you listening to this harsh music with these vocals? I can't understand these growls. And it is very calming to me. There is something when I listen to it that it puts me in a happier state. And it's hard to explain that to people who don't listen to it.
But it's always been that way for me
Well Markisan you and I
Listen to a lot of
Darker ambient music
And everyone's like oh this just
Makes me feel horrible Mike
Man I get so much clarity when I listen to it
You know and it is calming
And yet
You're listening to something that sounds so
Evil I guess is the only word to use
For some of it and some of it's so dark
Almost like you're just falling into a pit
And I'm just like yeah
Turn it up man
Well, it's a good segue, too, because Dennis mentioned that he runs this Vaporwave label called Geometric Lullaby. And we didn't get to talk about this on the last cast, so I definitely want to talk about it here, Dennis. So, you know, you founded this label. It seems to have grown quite a bit. Can you tell us about, you know, what got you into that style and how it led to the creation of Geometric Lullaby?
Okay, yeah.
It's almost the same story as Depressive Black Metal, where the first album I found was kind of a joke to me.
And it was called Floral Shop, and it's kind of the most famous album in the genre.
It was from 2012.
You might have seen the cover.
It's pink, and it has a Roman bust on the cover.
But that kind of like...
I know it.
You do know it.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's the first one I found, and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
was just like chopping and slowing down samples and stuff like that. And I thought it was pretty cool. It was not until I found a band called Death's Dynamic Shroud, which is a darker vaporwave version and more artsy type style. And that really got me into it. I was like, oh, okay, this can like be used to like show different emotions also. And it's more focused on the atmosphere, which is I think what connects me to both the vaporwave I put out and the black metal. It's like really focused.
on atmosphere and like the overall feeling of the music and so i made a cassette i made my own album it's called electric specter and instead of slowing down samples i like sped them up to where a lot of the drum beats became like almost blast beats and it was like crazy sounding and like chaotic and i put that out on my friend's label who actually lives in pittsburgh um it's called business casual on cassette and then i made another one and no one wanted to put it out so i was like
Maybe I could just make my own cassettes and put it out. So I made a new Bandcamp page for just my own Vaporwave projects that I would do just for fun. And it kind of just started from there because I was like, oh, I could put out some stuff for these other artists that I like that don't have cassettes. And I started by just doing 50 cassettes at a time. I would send each cassette out with a tarot card and a crystal. And I don't know, I just made it a cool little package for people.
And they would sell out immediately. In a couple hours, they'd be gone. I was like, oh, okay. Let's see if we can do even more. So I bought five more albums, 50 each, and those all sold out. I was like, oh, this is going really well. So I moved to vinyl. That was in 2018. And since then, I've been doing the label since 2018, but I started full-time in 2020, I think.
where I basically do two vinyl a month. And it's just like darker vaporwave, dark ambient, something called slushwave. I mean, there's so many subgenres, but there's no point in talking about it right now because most people just have to listen to it. But yeah, I started working with this huge artist called Telepath who puts out very emotional, long-winded albums that can be like three LP, four LP sets just for the single album.
to fit everything onto it.
And yeah, I've been doing that ever since.
And I really, really love the genre.
It's like perfect for something if you want to like just put it on the background while you're working.
Because like more ambient based type stuff.
Yeah, I also put out just like nostalgic type stuff like Mallsoft, it's called.
It just sounds like you're shopping in a mall.
Like one of my most famous, not famous, my most popular albums I put out is called Yes, We're Open by an artist called Grossman.
and it's just like you're shopping in a grocery store in Korea or something and yeah so it's like echoey it just like sounds like you're like in a big grocery store or something like that and people just love it and yeah it's crazy how much it sells like I don't know if it's like I think it's because like it's an internet genre like people don't really play live some people do but not really it's like all online and like so people want to like collect you know the vinyl
Or cassettes, because it's nostalgic to the samples. Some of them are from the 80s, 90s, old type stuff. So the format fits to that. That's my main gig. I do all the design work. Which is really good. Thank you. I do all the design work for the most part. Sometimes I hire out. Then I'll do two vinyl a month, usually on Bandcamp Friday.
when I'm touring. So that's great. I can always go on tour and just bring my laptop and, you know, put out the releases or answer your customer emails, stuff like that. That's awesome. What's the name of the label? Can you say again? It's called Geometric Lullaby. Geometric Lullaby. Okay. And that's on, and you're centered on Bandcamp? Centered on Bandcamp. Yep. Okay. Yeah, it's good. I have a few albums from it as well. So we've talked about some of the plans and I don't know how much you want to reveal, but you know, what are your plans for this year?
for Geometric Lullaby. Oh yeah, that's fine. Because the next Bandcamp Friday, well, it's not Bandcamp. I do the first Friday of every month anyway. So I'm going to be doing cassette box sets now. So their album's up to like four hours long to fit on four cassettes. And it's like all like big artists in the genre, like telepath or in small, like upcomers and people like that. So I'm just going to do pre-orders and press those and hopefully.
I might hand ship those like I usually have a fulfillment center but I think I'm gonna I'll be home long enough to hand ship we'll see I was gonna ask you how you manage your time for all that with the with the touring and then the band and everything but sounds like you've already worked that out yeah I have a warehouse in the UK and one in North Carolina right now that the UK ships everything international because it's cheaper than shipping from the US like the US to Canada is more expensive than shipping UK to Canada yeah
But yeah, I just kind of, I can do, I have the backend online and I can edit addresses, do returns, do everything like that online. So at first, when I first started the label, I would, I was delivering pizza and I would like get off my shift, go to my house and just like package vinyl until like five, six in the morning until I passed that one. Like, all right, I can't keep doing this. Cause like, yeah, I was doing like 500, a thousand vinyl per order. So. That's so much work. I do Kickstarter.
for my comics and it's a lot of work and you know we have like i don't know 400 some backers i can't even imagine have like a thousand that is a lot to do by yourself yeah i have pictures of just like my entire rooms like floor to ceiling with like vinyl boxes and then i like pack them all into a car and like have to take multiple trips to the the post office to drop them all off and stuff fun time but i'm glad to have a fulfillment center now that's cool have you ever met any of the artists that are on that
Yeah, so mostly people don't play live, but there has been a few festivals where, like, people come out and play live for the first time. So, Electronicon, it was called, happened in New York and LA, and so I went out to those just to talk with artists, meet them, and stuff like that. So, yeah. They're pretty fun festivals, but, like, they're already, like, done, so they're not doing them anymore. So I don't even know what's going to happen. It's all, like, online festivals, like, people, like, put on
YouTube stream festival type thing where you can like go chat in the YouTube live and people like have sets with visuals because visuals are a really big component of it and so you can like watch the visuals listen to the whatever their set is and then talk to people and two festivals that way like online. Yeah. Oh, that's different. All right. Well, I have a couple more questions. I don't know if you guys have some more but I have a couple more. So I just read about this.
This band named Svalbard decided to call it a day after 15 years and four records because they didn't want to get stale. So you've got five Ghostbath albums. I think that's right. But I feel like you have a lot left in the tank when it comes to musical ideas and new ways to deliver them. Do you see yourself continuing Ghostbath for the foreseeable future and do you ever worry about the well running dry?
I think the well running dry is the bottom of any list of worries that I have because I'm just like writing too much I already have another like four records of material written that I don't know if they'll become records but it's like stuff to pull from it's ideas and like I'll even like I have like the album cover the titles like the idea and then all the demos done so it's just yeah I am like I was just talking
about Adderall.
And I was like, I'm never going to take that because I'm already so focused
and creative and motivated.
That's the last thing I need in the world.
Yeah.
I worry about that.
Not at all.
It would have to be like, I don't know.
What would make me stop the band?
I'm trying to think.
Maybe if I don't have fun with it anymore or something,
I don't know.
I can't even imagine a world where that would happen really. Everyone in my band can be like, oh, we can't go on tour and I'll just get all fill-ins and I'll still do it. Or we don't want to work on this record. Okay, I'll just do it myself or we'll do it together. Yeah, I mean, you did this recent record by yourself. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, Getting Stale, definitely not a worry of mine. I already have, like I said, the next record and then I was just right before I got on here, I was like a couple of minutes late because I was like EQ-ing
a clean guitar and I was like oh I finally got it for like something totally different to you I just bought a I bought an art piece from someone from Argentina because I found it I was like oh I need this so I like bought the license to it but yeah our the next record we're doing is a full band is like completely different and like mixes genres that I don't want to say yet but it's like something I've never heard of being done before so hopefully it turns out intriguing yes very intriguing it's great well I love
your creative energy. I've always just really admired that about your work ethic and your music. So I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, it's always a good thing. So like be in here for like 12, 16 hours a day sometimes and it ends up badly. Like I got like a skin thing from working on the last album because I was just like I would wake up, come in here, get my guitar out and just like not leave my seat or do anything. So I got like dermatitis or something starting on my own.
I love metal so much I get a disease. That's right. No, I just get like really focused and like obsessed with like completing something. Like if I have an idea, like that's all I think about, like I'll be like driving to the store or something like, man, I need to EQ that guitar different, which is what I was thinking today. So when I got back, I like started like messing with it. I like that. I hope that drive continues.
The last question I had was, have you ever worn a rose thorn necklace because it sounds like it would hurt? I have not. You should wear one on stage, see what happens. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's more dangerous than a crown because, you know, arteries there. You're going to grot yourself. All right. Well,
Anybody else got anything for Dennis? I'm good. Cool, man. The new record's really good. It's really good. I love it. So, um... Shoot. Sorry. I was on Meet Mark's one. I apologize. I do have one more question. Okay. So, with all the touring you've done, Dennis, is there anywhere regionally you haven't been or are there any, like, festivals or, you know, just things like that that are kind of on your bucket list or kind of on your long-term plans? Just places you haven't been that you want to go? Yeah, well, yeah.
Yeah, the number one was Asia, like China and Japan. And so we're working hard to make that happen this year. We should be able to do it in October. Like we got offers and stuff, but it's like a long process where you have to like submit your lyrics to their government and you have to go to the embassy in person and all these hoops to jump through for China, especially. But I mean, luckily we have somebody who's like brought bands over there before. And he's so I found out
Apparently we're big in China because of the whole China thing when we first came out. And apparently that got word over there and we released on a Chinese label. So they said we're one of the top requested bands in China. The best marketing ever. And we talked about that a lot on the first cast when you were on. Yeah, so actually that was a question I also had. Does that still come up for you, Dennis? That topic? Less so now, but yeah, every now and then we'll see.
Yeah, other than, yeah, I don't know. It's hard to gauge how big we are in China. I don't think they have Spotify there. So you can't really tell how big they are. They have websites that I can't really look up because they don't have the language to type it in or anything like that. I guess you'll know when you play there. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they said it's going to be great. They're going to be big shows. I don't know. You never know until you're there doing it. I'm excited for that.
Yeah. But also another reason for you to come back so we can just figure out how big you are in China. Sure. Kind of the first point, you know, and then we'll just kind of go from there. Yeah. They're like, this is just like second. So like there's the promoter in China talking to my booking agent at Doomstar and then he's telling me stuff. So he was like, yeah, you're like one of the top requested bands on their list, like above Mayhem, above Heilong, above all these bands. I'm like, okay.
Let's do it then
It's like a bucket list
I'll do whatever I need
I'll go to the embassy
Whatever
I think it'll be really fun
Cause like Harakuri for the Sky
Just went there
And we've toured with them
A couple times
They're friends of ours
And they said
It was great
So pretty excited about that
It'll be like your Brazil
You know how some bands
Will go down there
And they play in front of
These massive crowds
That they didn't know they had
Until they got down there
You know
Yep
That'd be awesome
Oh yeah
Screaming from Beijing
Yeah Mexico was
Pretty crazy like that
Yeah
Yeah, Mexico and Central America, those places are awesome too. We only played three shows there. That was our first time playing down there. It was just crazy. The amount of people and just how excited they were and everything was awesome. Yeah, I got to catch you when you're here. I think the last time you played, we were doing a Metalheads podcast and I couldn't go to the show. I think I told you that. Was it in Chicago? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yep. I remember.
All right. Moving on then. All right. Yeah. Did you want to just let anybody know where to find you, Dennis, social media or website and where they can get the record? Yeah. I mean, you can go to any social media network. We're on there and Ghostbath or Ghostbath Official. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever. YouTube. We've been working on that channel.
and making content for that. Just like guitar playthroughs and stuff. We have our own website, but it's kind of hard to get to. It's like lnk.bio slash ghostbath. So you can put it in the bio and stuff. So it's easier to just click through to that from other things. Right, right, right. I'm going to check out this vaporwave thing too. That's good. All right, well, next up we have t-shirt and beer check.
And Dennis, as the guest, you go first. You may remember that. Okay. T-shirt. There's a band I mentioned earlier called Life Lover. It's a band from Sweden. They're a depressive black metal band. They've been around a while, like since 2006 or something like that. And they're like a big inspiration of mine.
And I found this shirt. I was playing a festival in Berlin called War Against War last year. And the headliner was like, I don't know, some war theme bands like Kin Onan, Fieber and stuff like I don't know if you heard of that band. Yeah, of course. Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah, yeah. Talk to that guy. He's really cool. I'm friends with him. Yeah. And there's like a tent outside with like a bunch of random t shirts, random sizes. And I saw this and they had two different life lover ones in XL. I was like, Oh, I got to buy
these right away because they're like hard to find so yeah i picked this one up uh it's their album pulver and it has a woman covered in blood on the cover um and i'm supposed to beer um i just picked this up it's called mischievous uh by hell town brewing which is in pennsylvania where i live yeah it's right outside of pittsburgh um yeah it's just a brown ale which i like
Like Newcastle type stuff.
Nice.
I've been too crazy.
I don't really drink too many IPAs personally.
Cool.
Mark is on.
Yeah, I'm wearing my Holy Fawn shirt that I picked up at the show this past Thursday.
They played with Glacial Tomb, Interarma, and Rivers of Nile.
It's cool.
I love that band.
So they played a couple new songs.
So I'm excited.
I'm sure they'll be putting on a new record soon. And then I am drinking figs and folklore, a fig mead from Rimminghorn that I got in the club. Very good. Very good. So I've been drinking mead. I went to the hot dog festival and I've just been drinking mead. I got this green chili mead when I was out in Arizona. And it's like, it was the weirdest mead I've ever had. It was really delicious.
a little bit left but i had to give it a break because it's so strong i don't like spicy drinks i like spicy food i like hot sauces but for whatever reason spicy drinks just give me instant heartburn well green chilies aren't really spicy george they just have a real distinct flavor to them so this mead when you smell it it just smells like those peppers and when you drink it it um it kind of you taste the honey first then you really get the pepper and then it finishes with a sweetness and i actually sent it
to John from Breminghorn, because I had never heard of a green chili meat at all. And I had not heard of the brewery. I don't have the bottle here, but he's like, I've never heard of this meateria either. He's going to have to let me know how it is. So I sent him a message about it earlier, but it was good. You know, it's one of those meads, you drink it, and the more you drink it, the more you kind of get into it. So the fig mead, instant like. Good job, Breminghorn. Matt.
I remember the first pepper infused beer I ever had I remember telling my server like I think and this is before I actually knew anything about beer but I remember telling them like I think I think the beer went bad like I don't want to say it with the guests and they're like oh yeah no it's supposed to taste like that you know and then years passed and I went and had it again and I am completely in love with beers that have been infused with pepper that said I have my Obey Will shirt on and I am drinking
a style-fashioned, and I am wearing that with a modelo. And that's me. Going full Mexican, Matt. I like it. The summer is here. Hence the hoodie. Yes. Yeah. I could live in San Francisco. That would make sense. Would not hate that. All right, cool. My turn. So it's October in my house. I'm wearing my death.
pumpkin. Oh, nice. Just figured, fuck it, I don't want to wear it once a year. So, and I am drinking, first I'll show you the image. There we go. You see that? Oh, yeah. What's that all about? It's called Obi-Wan Canobi, C-A-N. It's a double dry hub, double IPA, and it's from Mason Aleworks, featuring Galaxy and Citra Hubs. It's Thirst's Only Hope.
It is the beer you've been looking for
I saw it
First of all, a skull with a lightsaber
And a hood
I'm in
It doesn't even matter what the beer is
It's pretty good, I like it
It said on Untapped
Which most beers on there now I think are
Incorrectly said, oh it's a hazy
I poured that thing, I can see through it
So if it's hazy
It's just like a mist
Your shirt worked
He is. I knew it. The calling. Hey, so if Will's here, we can, Matt, we can ask Will, because I can't remember the name of the spicy beer he and I had to drink when we drank the book, you know, the Bible. Oh, yeah. I cannot remember what it was. It was fucking horrible. I hated it. Okay. Could not stand it. But I can't remember what it was called, so maybe he'll remember. Oh, I'm waiting for him. I'll just say I'm wearing my creator.
Nice one.
Old school.
I'm drinking a glass of water, and I'm going to hurry because I'm going to run over and get my noodles.
Now I've got some noodles on the stove.
I'll be right back.
All right.
Will must be in the same house because he's got a creator shirt on.
Yeah.
Weird.
Hey, Will.
Hi, guys.
Glad you could join us.
Well, I'll be off and on.
And just both their baseball games got canceled tonight.
So we went to the batting cage instead, had to feed them dinner so I can jump on about now. All right. Well, we're just finishing up t-shirt beer check. I didn't put much thought into my shirt today. I just threw on the Misfits shirt and I'm drinking orange Gatorade because I am not well. So I did want to get a beer I saw in the store the other day.
I didn't get it when I saw it because it was like two weeks ago and I figured I'd drink it all before today. But it was I remember the brewery, but it was like Ninja Cats or something. And I was like, I was like, that's totally sold. That's that's you guys. Yeah. So maybe next time if they still have it. Nice ghost face killer. Oh, thank you. Oh, God, that beer sucked. Oh, my God. I did not.
Was that supposed to be the spiciest beer in the world or something when we had that? I don't know if it was the spiciest, but it was up there. It wasn't steak, Adam. It wasn't the strongest. It wasn't the worst. But it was up there on both of them. Oh, man, it was rough. That's right. Strongest and worst is the steak. The biggest thing that you messaged us is like, this is bullshit. Six kinds of hot chili peppers. Thanks a lot, Adam. All right.
Let's move on to the news then. I'm wearing a creator shirt by the way and I'm not drinking any beer and I have my obituary hat and I take this creator shirt that Jay gave me. Well that's interesting because Jay's wearing a creator shirt too. Yeah. Not that he's here. He saw you and left but you know. Yeah. There cannot be two creator shirts on the same show. Yeah exactly. I noticed that it's my name on the is 11 boys major and 14 girls junior seniors for my name. That was a baseball
It was a baseball. This is what I want. This is what I'm looking for. Hi. No, it's a, the last time I had a Zoom was a baseball parents meeting Zoom. So I'm going to change that. I got to change it. Anyway. Whatever you say, Will. I'm going to mute myself. Yeah. Whatever you say. All right. Yeah. Mute yourself because now that we're getting to the news.
Oh, no, it's right. You might want to go get a beer now. The first item is Metallica's Black Album has reached 20 million copies sold. They're doing something right, Will. Where does that put it? Did anyone look to see where it is now on the list? No. Yeah, I have a little bit of information. So in the history of recorded music, there's only 13 albums that have eclipsed the 20 million mark.
So they're the 14th. And the first metal album to achieve this milestone. Yeah, because ACDC would not be considered metal. Yeah. And there's only two albums that have passed the 30 million sold mark. And that's The Eagles, their greatest hits. From Michael Jackson, right? 7175 and Michael Jackson, yes. And also, it was noted in some of these releases that Master of Puppets has now eclipsed the eight times platinum mark and could be on its way to being the band's
Next Diamond Record. Nice. Saying there's a chance. Sounds like it will be. Shot at Redemption. They got a big boost from Stranger Things, I think. They did. Yeah. I don't know if we talked about this last time, Dennis, how do you feel about the Black Album? No strong feelings, really. I don't really listen to Metallica, honestly. That's the answer Will wanted to hear. Okay. I sent Dennis the itinerary, and he's
I have a lot to say on almost all this, but the news, I don't really have any comments on any of the news. I didn't have much to say on the news. It was so funny. It's like, okay, dude, you just chime in whenever you want. That's funny. Well, we can plow through these. So the next step is there's a Judas Priest documentary in the works that will be co-directed by Sam Dunn. Sweet. I don't know.
And Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine. Oh, really? I didn't. Yes, they're co-directing and it's his first time he's directing anything. Oh, nice. I like Tom. Did they give any indication on when that would be coming out? No, I didn't see that at all, George. No. Okay, well. Just the only thing I got was there. It's called The Ballad of Judas Priest. It's just gonna, you know, track their whole 50-year journey. That's a Bob Dylan song.
Yeah.
And so that's it. So we don't know when it's going to come out. But I assume if they're announcing it, I'm going to guess next year. I'm like, I don't think it's going to come out this year. I'm going to guess next year.
All right. Is there an anniversary? Like how many years?
No, they passed their 50th.
They did, okay.
But their last tour was supposed to be their 50th and it was like the 51st year or something like that.
COVID kind of messed things up.
It was cool to see Tom Morello on there because I know he really does care, especially about these older bands and stuff. And we've often talked about the Hall of Fame and how certain bands don't get in there. And he's definitely been one to be vocal about that. Have you heard any Tom Morello's shows? He has a whole bunch of shows on different SiriusXM channels. Yeah, I've heard some. Yeah, he does a really good job. Like, the dude knows music. He does, yeah. Yeah, it's great. I like listening to it.
Yeah, I think so it's in good hands, you know, and that director's good as well. Sam will keep him in line. Yeah. Poor George. Sorry. Next up, Jay asked me to add something about the Iron Maiden set list. I know there's been people saying that they liked the new set list and that there's been people saying that it's kind of a cop out.
that it's just a hits package for their big anniversary, 50th anniversary, 40th anniversary tour. 50th this year. I liked it. I wanted you to add it on because we just did a, I don't know if it was a list, but we talked about what would we like to hear. Yeah. And, and John was like, good luck here in Phantom of the Opera. And they, there was, you know, and a few other things that I thought were kind of cool little additions. I thought it was kind of a gritty little set list, to be honest with you. Oh, I mean, yeah.
The last six songs are run of the mill. The first four, you're just like, oh, wow, I can go home. You might want to stick around because you're going to get shit on by a bird at some point during the show. That in itself, those five songs, for me, I'd be like, I'm good. I thought it was cool. I thought it was kind of one of their deeper cut set lists in a while. Do you guys have the set list? Yeah, I got it. Can you read it very quickly?
I got it up right now. All right. So right off the bat, I think we'd all agree. Murders in the room org. Seriously. I've never seen that. Yeah, that'd be cool. Wrath child. Okay. Yeah, they play it, but who cares? It's still cool. Killers. Yeah. When's the last time I played three songs from that album in a row? And then they go into Phantom of the Opera. So they made me feel stupid, which is awesome. I like that. You know, obviously, and it only occurs to me now, but it might have been a subtle nod to Paul passing. Maybe.
Maybe. Yeah.
Because then the next song is Number of the Beast, which he's not on, but it's from that early period.
So that's five in a row.
Plus, they played that at such a weird time in the show.
Clairvoyant, which they had not played in a long time.
I love that one.
Power Slave, which is cool.
I dig that.
Okay.
Two Minutes to Midnight.
Yeah, that's stock.
But still, they're playing that in a weird place right in the middle of the set.
Then they do Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner for the win, right?
Which they have not done that.
In a while.
I saw that. I saw that when they did that in Toronto. That's one of my favorite songs by them. Yeah. And speaking of which, George Sam Dunn was in my section that night. Wow. Yeah. So then they, okay, then it gets a little run of the mill here the rest of the way out except for one song. So then it's Run to the Hills, of course, but it's not an encore. It's in the, it's in the middle of the set. Seventh Son of the Seventh Son. Not a fan of that album, but that's cool. They're playing that. Then it's all the hits. The Trooper, Hallowed Be Thy Name.
The Encore actually disappointed me more than anything else. Ace's High, Fear of the Dark and Wasted Years. It's kind of... That I could see where fans might say, hey, you couldn't throw another track in there. But... So I guess I'm confused and I'm not going to say much about this, but every song you listen I love. So what are people looking for? I don't know. Deep cuts. Deep cuts that they haven't played in a really, really long time.
But I feel like they went pretty deep. Also worth mentioning is they appear to have just got it seems to me that now I've watched just pieces of it but the whole presentation now is just this one digital screen behind them. I saw that in stark contrast to the last one with the changing backgrounds in the airplane and the blah blah blah. It was kind of interesting at first I thought well that's kind of weird but then it was pretty cool looking. They did that when Tiara and I saw them yeah.
Oh, did they? Yeah. I mean, if you look at those two tours, I didn't go that one with you guys, but they did. They played deeper cuts on that tour also. So, I mean, if they're going to play the States, they're going to have to play five or six of the same songs every night because that's what half the crowd wants to hear. The other half wants to hear the deeper cuts. You give four or five of those, everybody's happy. Also, if you want a real deep cuts, you just got to go to Europe. That's all they're just doing. Well, I mean, when's the last time they played Killers in the States? I don't remember. No, you're right.
There's only one song they have to play in the same position every night. Iron Maiden. That's it. That's the only one. I'd be happy just to hear Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Actually, it would be kind of interesting to hear it with the new drummer. Oh, yeah. To be honest. And I'm sad because it's their 50th this year, but they're not going to get it to the States until next year. And I turned 50, and I really wanted to go see Iron Maiden in their 50th when I turned 50. Just like the priest.
I guess I will still be 50. Yeah, it's true. Well, and I'll still be 50 if they come before August in the States next year. So I'll see. Yeah, I'll be. We don't even know we'll get that tour. That's the other thing, too. They might switch it up a little bit. So who knows? Don't say that, John. No, maybe you'll get something even cooler. Who knows? Maybe, maybe. You know, I mean, maybe they'll play Sanctuary again in the States. I don't know. All I smell is green chilies now because I just.
I started drinking that again it's crazy it's so fragrant all right all right next up cattle decapitation is streaming a documentary about the making of terracite I don't know anything more about that I just it's cool because it's a two oh so go ahead Matt no I was just saying I have I forwarded myself the link and I have it on my radar I just have not sat down to watch it I love that kind of stuff you know documentary making of an album yeah yeah no it's a
It's a two-hour documentary, too, so it's a substantial thing. Wow. That's a long time. It chronicles the entire studio recording process. Dave Otero produced it, and we know he's done a lot of stuff with Chem-esque, a lot of bands. And the film focuses on each individual instrument's recording process with interviews from each member talking about the work once the album wrapped up. So I just thought it was interesting because I feel like there's more bands doing this lately.
We got a bloody incantation did a full length documentary for their last record. So it's cool that they're documenting the process and you can kind of see what happens behind the scenes. Even just talking to Dennis too, like all the stuff that goes into recording his records. It is fascinating to see the creative energy that goes into completing an album. Marcus, I should listen to more prog because as prog nerds,
We've been getting those for a long time. Bands love to do that shit. I love it. You know I like proc. Not as much as you, but I do like it. I'm making fun of it because every Steve Wilson thing is like a five-CD set or whatever, and one of them is always going to be the making of something. Right. But we don't get that many metal documentaries. It just seems like it's increased lately to me, so I like that. I mean, let's not overlook the flagship a year and a half in the life of Metallica. I mean, come on. That was really the quintessential.
I had it on VHS. Cliff them all. It wasn't as dramatic as some kind of monster, but maybe somebody in Kettle Decapitation quit and then came back to the band. We just, we never knew that. Just wanted to punch everyone in that other documentary. The some kind of monster. Yeah. Except for Robert. I mean, yeah, it was a good documentary, but you're right. Like you just like, come on, shut up. Especially that psychiatrist guy. He needed it the most. Like at one point they felt like, wait a minute, that guy wants to be part of the movie.
of the band.
That's what makes the documentary so good is that you hate everything about it.
And they revealed all that.
Like they did not have to do that.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
I really like those filmmakers though, too.
I was sort of disappointed in it because I liked the filmmakers.
Those are the guys who did.
Paradise Lost.
The Paradise Lost stuff.
And then also, previous to that, one of my favorite documentaries ever called My Brother's Keeper.
about some basically hillbillies who three three four brothers that live together on this farm and one of them dies and then one of them is arrested for his murder pretty much obviously he's not responsible for it but the documentary is so interesting yeah yeah and they used um but and i think they started a relationship with metallica because they use that they use metallica's music in paradise lost
Right. Yeah.
Joel Ballinger and I forget the other guy. One of them died not long ago. Yeah.
All right. So Amorphous is releasing a new album in September called Borderland.
I didn't see that one coming, but I'll be looking forward to that.
Oh, definitely. After Halo was awesome.
Oh, Halo World. I was like really high on my list.
And I was like, oh, great. Again, another album.
because they churn them out. And then I realized, oh, they've only done, this will only be the third album in like 10 years. For them, that's, you know, in eternity. They were putting them out like every year and a half, two years. And it's cool too because they said that it's going to be produced by Jacob Hansen. He's like a Grammy nominated producer and they haven't worked with him before. So I like that because, you know, it's good to just change things up. After a while, they've had the same producer for the last few albums.
and now they're going to get a different energy. So that'll be, I'm curious to see what that's going to, going to turn out to be like. So. Did anyone see the cover yet? Yeah. It's interesting. Oh, the cover's out too. Oh, you'll have to send it to us, John. I think they have it. Marcus, I think they actually released on like Facebook and Instagram. So it's, I think it should be up there. Okay. Yeah. Something slightly different for them. So. All right. Check it out. All right. And, uh, Ian Gillen says, thank God that,
Tony Iommi is finally going to remix Black Sabbath's Born Again. And I second that, brother. Because I love that. Everybody does. I love that album, and I would really like it to stop sounding so shitty. I want to love it even more. Well, there was a... I know I told you guys about this once, and I never found it again, but there was a kind of stripped down, low-key version of it that was... I don't know if it was fan-produced or if somebody got a hold of the Masters or something.
And it just didn't have all of the muck and stuff. And it kind of changed it into a hard rock blues album, sort of. I mean, it's obviously a Sabbath record and you can't make Disturbing the Priest blues at all. So it's not a complete turnaround, but it's, well, it'll be interesting to see. I don't, honestly, I've never really had a problem with the original mix just because it makes it a weirder, darker record somehow.
I mean, I found a couple quotes on it that I was surprised by. Iomi talked about the album sound and he said that when it was originally recorded in the studio, it sounded great to them and that they loved it. And then they went on tour and then somehow the sound got muffled. And he was like, I don't know if it's from the pressing or something else. And I had never heard that before, but that's what he said. And then he also said that the reason they haven't put it out, like remastered it,
they didn't have the tapes they couldn't find them for like ever and so uh his manager located somebody uh and they were in this record company's archives tucked away somewhere and uh then they finally got them and now they can they can work from the originals but um from the tapes awesome so yeah interesting oh it's gonna be super interesting as much as i love deep purple and i really do honestly it's like one of ian gillen's
Finest Moments in my mind. He sings so good on that record. It's ridiculous. Yeah. They should get Joe Barisi to do it. Yeah. Magic with the Dio. So that was cool. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right. Let's move on to new releases. First up, we have the new Behemoth album, The Shit of God.
their 13th album. Would anybody like to comment on this one? Dennis, any thoughts on this one? Yeah, I'll just say all of these that Markisan sent me. I listened for the first time like on Thursday or yesterday. So it's crazy because I listen to new music all the time. But there's like so much, I guess so many new albums coming out that I just I have not listened to any of these before.
So, uh,
behemoth I have listened to before,
just not this album.
I think, uh,
the title is just funny to me and I can't help a laugh at it.
Um,
it's a little,
I mean,
the first thing I thought was just like,
it sounds like behemoth and I didn't really,
nothing really stuck out to me.
I mean,
it's not like badly done or anything like that.
Um,
yeah,
I don't know.
I think I like that one.
Demigod is my favorite and it doesn't surpass that to me. Demigod is so unique in the sound and just the mixing and the playing. They kind of found a rail a few years ago and they're sticking on it. I totally agree with that. I just bought it without even listening to except for whatever the video that they released. Raise your hand if you've listened to the whole thing through. Okay, I got questions for you.
I checklist out. All right. All right. I know the first question. Is there any clean singing on it? That was my second question. Is there any children singing on it? I don't believe so. Third question. Are there any saxophones? No. Okay. Saxophone would make it better with all the children singing. My final question is, did Bob Rock have anything to do with this fucking album? No.
I think I'm going to like it. I think I'm going to like this one. The awesome but Lang produced it. Follow up. Did Bob Rock play a children's saxophone on it? I mean, I think it's a better record than what they've done since the last one or two. So but the shit of God definitely makes you laugh, especially the chorus on it. And I know the band didn't intend that, but it makes me laugh every time. So I agree with Dennis. But there isn't anything new on here from Behemoth. It feels like a retread to me.
a lot of the time. But, you know, it does sound like Behemoth. So if you're into that, you'll probably like it. I think it's better than at least the last one. As someone who's not a fan, I don't dislike their music because I saw them with you, George and Will. Remember, we went to the Slayer thing they played. Yeah, yeah. And I thought they were good live. But it just seems like these last few albums, they've become kind of a caricature of their persona. Yeah. And it's almost like, yeah, we got it. You don't like God. I know. I got it.
Is there anything else you'd like to talk about? It's funny you say that because somebody I know described it as I'm getting tired of the fast food Satanism. Yeah. Yeah. At some point, I mean, just get pissed at something else. It's cool. It's almost like they're cosplaying themselves. That's why I said, yeah, exactly. Yes. I mean, if that's the, look, every band's got their lane, right? And some deviate out and some like to stay in. I mean, we just talked about Amorphous. They've been in that same lane for a while.
I love it you know that's cool I just you know could be angry at other things like traffic or
something you know traffic yes I mean a lot of people get pissed in traffic it's a good thing to get mad
about and you certainly won't have kids singing on that they're not driving so yeah yeah I think it really jumps the shark and uh it yeah there's just nothing that grabs me about this it's not terrible it's not but but it's not particularly interesting yeah I don't dislike the music at all I just just was wondering
to someone who's not a fan, I should say. You know, someone who follows them. Just remember my checklist. All right? If none of those things are on that, then it's probably pretty good. Will approved. Yeah. Well, I have a question for you. When your kid's saying, what happens? What happens to you? Get out. Do you tell them to shut up? Shut your dirty, stinking kid mouth. Will's like, holy shit. What? What? What? What? I beat them. I beat them harder.
What would have made it, Markazan, is if his kids had walked by right when that question came out. That would be great. They're in the other room probably watching YouTube for some nonsense. Every now and again, I'll hear my son singing in the shower, but he's just singing dumb whatever crap he heard on YouTube or whatever, and then Evelyn does not sing. They should record it and send it to Behemoth, see what happens. Chicken Nugget, Dreamland, oh.
I love it. The shit of chicken nuggets. I love chicken nuggets. Anyway. All right. All right. Next. I just, I remembered one time our tour manager ordered a cameo from Nurgle. Really? Yeah. Like this band was always late on tour and they really liked Behemoth. And so he got Nurgle to like do a cameo to tell them to be on time for the show. That's fantastic. That's awesome.
I like it was really funny he did it his own way he's like you have to be like a Swiss watch
you know in a weird sort of way George when he said behemoth jumped the shark
Nurgle being on cameo maybe jumping the shark yeah it's really funny though but but I love that story that's a great that's a great story yeah love it
all right next up we have the fourth obsidian tongue album eclipsing worlds of scorn
New England Black Metal Band.
I just listened to this yesterday.
Well, I just listened to this yesterday.
And your sicknesses, George.
Yes, I was going to say I was huddled in bed with my headphones on, you know, listening.
Did you like it?
I did.
Yeah, I think it's pretty good.
It's a little progier for them, but it's still
the US black metal thing they got going.
Their unique sound.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I thought it was pretty beautifully crafted atmospheric progressive black metal,
but with a lot of emotion, a lot of varied intensity.
Some of the guitar melodies on this are really gorgeous.
They almost sound like wind chimes to me.
And the drumming is, it's like dynamic.
It's a standout.
The only thing I don't quite like is that deep clean chant singing. Maybe I'm chaining a little bit here. It doesn't work for me. It almost sounds a little amateurish to me, to be honest. I think it's a really good record, but if they just stuck to the Black and Shrieks, it probably would rank higher for me. But I really like this band and I like the album a lot.
Yeah. I wish Brendan would go tell Joel he needs to make a new Thrasenblatt album. Yeah. No, it's just, it was cool. I liked it. Dennis, what'd you think? I thought it was good on first listen. I think it's one of those albums I'll need like more time with. Agreed. Yeah. I don't really like, I don't know, see what I think of it. Cause I only, like I said, I only had like two days to listen through all these. So it's one that I would like come back to,
because it was good enough for that and I just I don't know to get a deeper opinion probably listen to it more that was from Portland Maine too I don't think I've known a band from that area so yeah no there's a lot going on so you definitely have to spend a few times to absorb it yeah all right next we have the seventh Pelican album flickering resonance instrumental post-metal I know we've got a bunch of fans of that band on here and I'm just yeah I'm just gonna go ahead and insert my two cents
real quick and say I liked it. That's it, George. That's what two cents gets you these days. Two cents. Go ahead, Marcus. Okay, yeah, I think it's great. I mean, it's another strong entry in the catalog. I mean, I think I'm a little biased because Pelican is my hometown band and they started the year I moved to Chicago. And plus, I just went to the album release Pickle Party. They did a pickle party for the album on the release day, which is pretty cool.
A couple weeks ago, and the band was there. But I think objectively, Pelican always delivers, and they give you a little something different each time out. So I really love the energy in particular on this LP. They sound like a revitalized band throughout these tracks, and that's probably because the original guitarist, Laurent Schroeder-Lebecke, I think is his name, he returned to the fold. So it's the first Pelican stuff he's done since 2012.
with Ataraxia, Taraxis. So you can, I feel like when I listen to this, I can feel the excitement of the original band just getting back together and having fun. And I thought that was pretty cool to hear in the record. Can you define pickle party? Is that like a sausage fest? That's a different party, Will. I was going to say that. So you didn't have to ask that question. Different party. Pickle party. And why did you not invite me? I also went to a hot dog festival today, Will.
Yeah, no, I don't know what it, so they built it as this pickle party and they had a pickle company bring different pickle, like jars of pickles and they had different dishes you could get with pickles. I guess Pelican's into this. Did you drink picklebacks? I didn't, but I had a pickle beer and it was not good. I think you commented on that, George, I think. Yeah, that was not good. The captain came with me, my buddy,
and we split the pickle beer. Because I've had a pickle beer before and I was like, this isn't for me. It tasted just like pickle juice and didn't really have much beer flavor to it. So I thought it was okay. But yeah, I don't know why they decided to do it. But they just played the album. The band was there. And you could hang out with them, talk to them, which I did a bunch, and get things signed. So actually... So you went to a pickle party and a hot dog fest. Did Justin... Did you invite Justin to Chicago? He doesn't live here, no.
Yeah, there's an annual hot dog festival, and it's right around the corner from me, and all different kinds of hot dogs. And so that was fun. We went there for a couple hours. Actually, Captain came with me to that, too. So, and they have bands and all kinds of events. So they have a hot dog eating contest and everything. So that's fun. Yeah, I have no idea why Pelican wanted to do a pickle party, but it made it a little bit more interesting. It's at this place called D-Men Tap, which I love. They have all these different meads.
and I've gotten to kind of know the bartender there it's across the street from Kuma's too and then a bucket of blood the record stores right around the corner so it's a really nice area and there's beer temple which is another really great place to get cool beers I got the gum work there so I love that area a lot so I've gotten into the bartender and I go there and I have all the means and then he tells me hey listen there's this guy who sometimes come in comes in and drops off these beads to
You want to try one? I was like, some guy? He's like, yeah, he's actually like a kid. He's like 16 years old. So I'm like, you got a mead boy that brings you mead? Of course I want this. So I tried this kid's mead. You want the mead or the boy? Which one do you want? Whatever. And so I had his meads and they were delicious, right? And so I actually wrote a note to mead boy because I don't remember his name. I just wrote mead boy and I told him how much I liked his meads. I was like, give it to him next time you see him. So yeah, I love the
community here in Chicago and Pelican is definitely a part of that. So like I said, I know this is going on pretty long, but I'm a little bit biased when it comes to Pelican, but they're an excellent band. I don't know what you guys think of the album, but. Yeah, I thought it was all right. I liked it. I haven't spun it as much as I would have liked. I've been a fan since the beginning. I think I didn't hear him on the EP, but I heard him with Australia Asia when that came out. So I'm a fan. I don't know if I like it as much as Nighttime Stories, which I thought was one of the better ones they had done in
a while. They've only released two full lengths in a long time. The last, what, 12 years? A couple EPs in there, but it's been a while. I think it's kind of the same thing with Ghostbath, because those members, they used to all be here, but now they're all spread out. So it's a little bit harder for them to get together and record. And they've only had five members. So, I mean, it's essentially the same band minus the swap out of one person. But now it's cool to have all the original guys together, which I saw them.
Oh God. When they, they used to, we used to have a place here called the rock and roll hotel on H street, which used to get a lot of post rock and post metal atmospheric bands. I mean, I saw so many of those bands in this place. It was a cool, well, I think you and I one night drank up at the top. Didn't we? Yeah. I felt like at the top bar, which was cool. Then it became just like some type place, you know? Well, it was interesting. Cause you mentioned the night, um, rock,
and Marcason mentioned Kuma's and they both got killed by the Me Too movement. So my question for you, Rockman Hotel has been closed, I think, for a while. It's a new place now. Yeah. Is Kuma's still blacklisted or are they? No, no. They cleaned out all of that and they got a new manager. Okay. I actually know the manager. He was the bassist in Immortal Bird for a hot second and now he's out of the band.
which I'm supposed to get that story but I haven't yet and he's a good dude I've had drinks with him before so when I go to Bucket of Blood I asked them the same thing a couple years ago and they're like yeah you know everything because we didn't want to go there as well because they're around the corner and so it's a much better and now the manager's there and I know him and so okay good I want to hear that good to go at some point at some point I'm bringing my kids to Chicago we're going to go to like the field museum and all that stuff and like we're going to go to Kuma's
We're going to a Cubs game and we're going to do a bunch of stuff, but I want to take them to Kuma's. See me? Well, yeah. We're just kidnapping you. I'm going to leave a note for Tracy. We're kidnapping you. We're going to the Field Museum. We'll say, you're more than welcome to come with us, but you don't have to. That'd be cool. That'd be great. How do you feel about a black van and a black bag?
I love it. Yeah. For people who are listening, Kuma's is a, it's a burger joint, but they, they have all these burgers named after heavy metal bands and they play heavy metal, uh, in the, the, the joint. So, um, so they had a few problems with how they were treating customers and the employees. Um, but that has been rectified for the last couple of years. And so it is safe to go back there. Alrighty. Any more Pelican?
No, it's cool. Alrighty. Next up, we have the fifth album from Rivers of Nile, self-titled Progressive Death. I know I've liked them in the past. I don't dislike this one. I didn't get all that far into it, though, because I just wasn't feeling the vibe. I don't know. It just...
So let's head over to Matt and see where he stands
Yeah were there any saxophones
Sorry
Sorry my night
Many moons ago
Where Owls Know My Name was my number one album
Blew my mind
And a few years later when work came out
It just it took me a lot to process it
In fact the year it came out it was not on my list
But the year after
Once I had kind of fully let it like sink in, I was just like, yes, I love this. And, you know, they went through the process of losing their singer and their bass player took over. And I, John, I'm not sure. Does somebody else in the band do the clean vocals? Actually, the drummer now is doing some and they got the guitarist from Black Crown Initiate who's doing all the heavy load of the clean singing. Okay. It's like three vocal delivery, right? Yeah. And sorry,
I poop on your album of the month, John. It's not that it's bad. It just wasn't doing it for me. I don't care. I know. I like it. I know. Yeah. I mean, that's yeah. You like what you like. Damn straight. Just to poop even further, I didn't even listen to it because I assumed there were saxophones. Oh, shut the fuck up with the saxophone stuff. I mean, unless it's the guy from the Lost Boys, I'm not listening. That guy has come here to Chicago multiple times just to hang out. Anyway. Does he still play with his shirt off, oiled
and super dreamy dreams. He does. He does the same thing. Nice. Just old, which is awesome. I'm going to have to bow out because this is too much for me to process all this pooping and saxophone. No. And so to me, this feels like now they've come kind of back into their, like they figured themselves out. You know, they've had the shift, their sound kind of evolved and this is them kind of true to form and their kind of first full release in that direction. So I'm a fan.
Yeah, I feel the same as George does. I mean, I saw them play a couple of days ago, and they're good live. But I haven't really ever been able to get into this band. I really struggle with the last record, the work. And this one was kind of a chore for me, too. I like that it sounds like, to me anyways, that they've incorporated a lot of different sounds from all their records and added some new ideas, too, to the mix. And I like that kind of growth, that kind of discovery for bands. But it's just the result. It doesn't work.
for me. I don't know what it is, if it's kind of too dense. I don't know. I don't really like it. Sounds really kind of glossy to me a little bit too. But I just I don't respond to the songs as much. So I think they're kind of one of those bands. And we've talked about this before, where I really recognize and admire their ability and their musicianship. And they're great live. But I just I don't know. I don't I don't have any affection for their for their records. So maybe that changed.
because they are so talented. Who knows what they're going to do next? But that's just how I felt with this one. Dennis, did you have any thoughts on that one? I don't know. Straight off the bat, I know it's not a record for me. Just the way the singing is. Singing and metal, I'm so particular about it that it just has to be done a certain way. I couldn't even describe
I like but yeah this just isn't it for me and I don't know it just sounds like really accessible and like has like choruses and stuff and then it also sounds like Gent which I don't listen to at all a little bit and just I don't know the work I actually really liked like out of nowhere and I don't even listen to that kind of music at all for some reason that just like that album like worked for me I really liked that one a lot I do know them I know I know their drummer like our the very first Ghostbath
tour we ever did back in like 2016. Their drummer Jared was drumming in a different band called Underling who toured with us. So I've known about them and listened to them like over the years. It's just in general it's not my kind of music and then this one I yeah I didn't even finish it. It's just I it's not for me. Like every time the the singing parts came in I'm just like I just don't feel it. Right. Right. All right next up we have Weeping Sores and their
second album the convalescence agonies john you added this one i think these guys are uh one that you enjoy yeah just want to go back to rivers and now since i didn't get a chance to say anything about oh well fuck me yeah yeah i i'm the lone dissenter on this podcast it's my album of the month sorry everybody was like not talking so i thought we were done oh no it's okay it's fine it's happened before but it's all right
Yeah, I put this on there because Markisan and I liked their last album. And I can't remember anybody else did, but I figured we only had four. It was like, well, there's that in the Obsidian Tongue. I was like, you want to throw them on just for a couple more albums. They came out at the end of the month. And it was yesterday, obviously. And you're talking about Weeping Sores now, not Rivers of Lyle. Yes. Oh, no, I got my dig in about Rivers of Lyle, so I'm done. Nothing to say. I thought you were going to talk about it.
It just didn't come up. So anyway. Damn it. George, you're getting so much. Side eye from John. I'm talking about Weeping Sores. Move on. It's good. I like this one. I like this one actually I think more than the first one. This one's got a lot of added dimensions I think. At least at the front half of the album. The second half of the album. There's only five songs but the second half seems to be a little repetitive. But the first half I thought had
some nice variation. Some, their take of death doom. It's not traditional death doom, which can be, as much as I love it, it can be a little boring sometimes because it's the same stuff from some bands, you know, every album. Their take's a little different, and I love, Will will probably at some point be bitching about cellos, you know, in metal, but I think they add some really cool kind of ominous atmosphere, especially on the first song. You know, I'm totally fine with string instruments in metal, weirdly enough.
But brass instruments don't really have a place for me. So why are you not a power metal fan then? I don't dislike. You know what? It's weird. I like old school Halloween and some of that stuff. That's different. That's good. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess we all have our age bias. It's something you listen to when you were a kid and you loved it. Sometimes when you listen to it now, Spaceballs is a great example, not music. But you watch Spaceballs now as an adult, you're kind of like, ugh.
I was kind of a dumb kid.
Yeah.
Has anything changed, Jay?
Your shorts is huge, Will.
Yeah, it totally is.
It's almost as big as mine.
But the, yeah, like, no, some of the power metal stuff.
But probably the power metal, probably the closest thing I like power metal now is, oh, my God, what's that band?
Eternal Champion.
I love Eternal Champion.
And that's more like a heavy metal US power metal kind of sound anyway.
Anyway, cellos I'm fine with cellos.
Okay.
Because I feel like it's almost ancient instruments in a way.
Like if you play an instrument that may have been played in like the Middle Ages or something like that, I'm like, yeah, okay, I can see that in metal.
Were cellos around in the Middle Ages?
I don't know, but it sounds like it were.
There was instruments that were similar to it though.
That actually makes sense.
In a weird sort of way, but like if you're putting it like a saxophone, like I don't know. No, they only came around. They only came around what in like 2010? Yeah, maybe 2009, maybe. Yeah. I mean, listen, I am not a big fan of saxophones, but then the anchor it came up and I was like, okay, I totally get saxophone now. So it just depends on what's what's coming out. By the way, John, I have no idea what band you were talking about. We're talking about Weaving Sores.
I really like this band. Really just concrete, heavy, progressive death doom with the cello, the keyboards and a lot of suffering in there. I like that it can get technical. It's slightly dissonant too, which I like as well. And then it can just bludgeon you with some simple riffs. I have to absorb this album more because I'm a little bit different than John. After a couple of spins, I think I like False Confession more, which is the album before this.
because it almost feels like they tried to add too much to this record. I don't like that sometimes. I like songs to breathe a little bit more and I felt like False Confession did that. But it could be that I've only spun it twice and I have to see how I'm going to feel with it because there is. They do eject more into it. They've definitely progressed as a band. So I don't know yet.
I like the cover a lot better, that's for sure.
Dennis loves the cover. I don't like this thing. Oh my god, I don't need to see someone weeping, bleeding sore. I like the last cover better, but I do like this one. What are you going to do? Bleed on me? I said this. He's like, I love that cover. I'm like, really? I don't. Yeah, so it reminds me of Midsommar. And I was like, that actually makes it sound better because I love that movie Midsommar. You're talking about, yeah, the movie Midsommar? I loved it. That thing was great. Yeah. I didn't get all the way through.
I did like what I heard so I need to go back and check more of that
no I mean for Death Doom it's not traditional Death Doom which is cool in itself
that I like and we all harp on that
we like we all like Death Doom but man sometimes it's the same shit from some bands
every album it's nice to get something a different take
yeah agreed
alright before I move on does anyone else have anything to say
I'd like to go back to Rivers and Al if we could. You do that. All good. All good. I've cleaned my sore. Let's move on. It's not weeping anymore. You've cleaned your sore. Oh my God. All right. I'm going to tee this one up for Jay. This is the seventh witchcraft album. I don't know how you pronounce that. I dag. It dog. I think it's Swedish. I had a G.
I think it's Swedish for Day maybe. Honestly, I wish I could say I liked it more than I do. I do like it. I don't think it's as good. I mean, they just hit such a high watermark with Nucleus. The only thing I'll say though is that I just think he's a real artist. And so I think he... I'm going to give it a chance to kind of like hit me a little harder than it has. But it also... Just some of the riffs aren't as cool and stuff. So it's kind of like... It probably could have come out before...
for Legend, which was when they started to kind of get a little more modern electric and stuff. It's good. I don't really think he makes mistakes, but when you hit as hard as you did with Nucleus, it's a little difficult to have a comedown after that. So I'm not crazy about it, but it's good. Wish I could say I liked it better than I do. It's your album a month though, isn't it? Yeah, but I love Witchcraft. That's one of your consistent bands. It's good. I mean, it's very good, but it's sort of like,
It could have come after the first or second or third record.
It would have worked better there.
I think it was good. It's catchy.
It has a return to the old sound.
It's like that occult doom sound from the earlier records.
But I feel like there's even more of a stoner metal action vibe to the songs on this one, which I kind of dig.
Yeah, I buy that.
And all the tracks are solid on it, like all the way through.
I just wish the band maybe took some bigger swings, maybe took some chances. They kind of stay in that kind of comfort zone. And I kind of wish they would have done something a little bit different throughout it. But actually, I kind of dig this one. Well, I mean, you have to only let me just at least qualify that by saying I thought Nucleus was so good that it was like it's easily one of my post 2000 favorite metal records. So, so, I mean, they were cursed from the get go unless they were going to be a good one.
to come out and do something crazy good so it fits in with the earlier works which i'm a fan of too i think sometimes when you we say things what we want to say and we can't and so i'll say it for you and that you both are wanting this album to have saxophone i get it we've all been there or at least cello well if you've all listened to an album then it would be good yeah but we everyone on this podcast has experienced that that moment where you're like oh i wish this album had a
You know what would be really good on it Matt? Will's kids singing. That would be perfect. Will how do you feel about flutes? This one time in band camp. Couldn't have teed that up in the easier for you. Yeah. You know I don't really have an opinion too much but when I did hear is it the guy from Jethro Toll who was on the new Opeth album? I didn't mind it. Like I thought
I was like, okay, like it fit in the, I guess in the moment on that album kind of fit. So I didn't mind it. He did have Opeth on his list, so. I know. Yeah, he enjoyed the show too. Jay, I think you would agree with me that there's nothing better than thinking in a moment of a song that a guitar solo is going to come up and some dude rips a big ass flute solo before the guitar solo and you're like, that's pretty badass.
I know you know what I'm talking about Jay. Of course and he famously says that and now you have to remember when they were getting their start and this man's career went on to be very different but at the time Eric Clapton was God you know in England and he said I he started playing a flute because he knew he couldn't be Eric Clapton. He didn't start on guitar and I it were hey it's all works for me. Oh it works for me too but I just love that you're like oh big guitars. Nope he's gonna rock that flute and he's gonna put that leg up on
his foot on his knee when he does it.
Yeah.
Hey, Dennis, how do you feel about
woodwinds and or brass?
He's really thinking about this one.
When we played in Mexico,
there's a band that was like jazz metal
and they made me really hate
saxophones.
They're just kind of dicks.
That's kind of my taste on it right now. Sex or dicks. Yep. Like how Dennis can just boil down shit to like one second. Sex or dicks. That sex is a dick. You know, there's a... I keep seeing this advertisement in Bisbee. And you guys have probably heard of them too, or at least some of you. But there's a metal band called Metalachi. They play mariachi music in metal. I haven't heard them yet. Oh boy. But I keep meaning to kind of check them out online. They play around.
here, strangely enough, from time and time. They hit the cantina circuit down there? Yeah, exactly. It's strange that metal optic is deep southwest. Yes, I mean, it's going to be weird, I know, but I thought maybe it was something that was more visible than it was. Okay, well, I'll tell you what, I'll stick my head in and let you all know. I just had a fucking flashback, Matt. What? Yes. Oh my gosh. I actually, I put that video on, George. He told me about it, and I watched it on
YouTube for like five minutes. Like this is like 24 hours long. Yeah. I'm done. After like two minutes. Yes. Yes. Yes. To all that. It will haunt my days. Was that the Star Wars? Yeah. It was the Star Wars Cantina song. It was on like Family Guy or something. And it's one of the I would agree it haunts me but I would go back just to hear it. Well yeah. Tomorrow. I still like the second song better. And the Cantina Star Wars. That was our last new release. And because you just did the Star Wars
I gotta know what people thought of Andor. Haven't watched it yet. Only two episodes in. Absolutely amazing. Yeah. Love it. You know I loved it too. Absolutely by far the best story production anything that Disney has done with the Star Wars period. Yeah. Not movies TV shows every period hands down. Oh yeah I agree with it because it
It shows you why there's a war in the first place and what happened and how people responded to it and what they went through. And you never really get that in the original movies, which are really fun. But this makes it serious. This makes it just this galactic struggle that is unbelievable and the character work in it. And if you watch Rogue One after you watch that series, it's completely different. Completely different context.
I did start watching part of Rogue One just the other day after watching Andor. I didn't get through the whole thing. I was kind of like, it was on the background, but like there's little bits and pieces. I was like, oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you want to know why it works? Will and I already had this conversation possibly at the pint recently. Possibly. Do you remember what I said? It works because every single person minus one dies in this story. Everybody dies. The bad guys.
That's why it works. In the Star Wars universe, when the bad guys win, the story's better. It just is. If I should expect it. Well, it has real stakes, real consequences. That's the thing. The gravitas of war is in this. I just never thought I would see that in Star Wars. The first two episodes didn't really grab me or Jay. When I was out west and Jay and Matt, we talked about it. We're like, this is weird. Why is he on this planet? When is this fucking way?
It's not going to end. Once the third episode hits, it's off to the races. You know what's funny? Sorry, Jay, just want to say this real quick. I don't want to forget this. It almost feels like Andor and Rogue One should be the prequels. It really does. For me. Well, I think they collectively, including Rogue One, even previous to Andor, that's one of my favorite Star Wars movies. It is, me too. Easily top two. Don't get me wrong. I love Darth Vader's story. Of course. And those movies just... It was just so well done.
But anyway, I'm on the same page with, and that was, at that time only, I think only the first half or first three episodes were out and they were a little long in the tooth, but then it just took off like a shot. I did. Yeah. I texted Jess, like, I don't know if you've been watching this, but it got way, way better. It's on par with the first season, maybe even better. Yeah. I had to watch that wedding episode like three times and I had to go online to find an explanation because there was like, name your price and all this stuff that
was going on. I'm like, what are they talking about? And granted, I watch these late at night and the kids are in bed. I'm half asleep. Don't say anymore. We haven't watched them. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Let's leave it at that. I just know there's a wedding coming up. It's not the red wedding, but a wedding's coming. No, no. I mean, it's just really long, John, quite frankly. I mean, I watched the first two episodes and I was like, spoilers aside, the wedding just drags on a little longer. All right. Moving on.
I'm glad to hear your opinions about it because I've been meaning to that. I gotta take a break. By the way, we can rant and tangent about Lady Gaga for three hours, but fucking talk about Star Wars for 30 seconds. Well, I haven't seen it. That's why. Haven't seen it. That's why. Slow your roll. I'll make you go back to the recycling center and do another shift. All right. You know, I'll cover your shift. Go watch it, okay? Who's there watching the place right now? Movies.
What's his name? Luis. Yeah. Luis is cool. Yeah. Don't be banging on Luis. Alright. What are we listening to?
Let's start with Dennis. What am I listening to right now? Just what have you been listening to lately? Jackasses ranting about Star Wars. Yeah, you know, what albums have you been into lately? Oh, yeah. Andor is on my list, so it's good to hear that's good. Let's see. I have my Spotify up because I never remember what I'm listening to. A band called Karg. K-A-R-G. It's the
Vocalist and drummer of Hiroquiry for the Sky. It's really good. They just put out a new album called Maradour. Definitely recommend that. Just check out this band called Dormant Ordeal. It's a Polish band. I think their drummer is from Vegas or something. I thought that was really cool. I'm listening to a lot of depressive black metal, really random stuff.
What else is on here? This crippling alcoholism album. I still don't know how much I like it or if I like it, but I keep listening to it. So I don't know. Yeah, that's a weird one. Yeah, yeah, it's like strange and it's at least interesting enough to like keep me coming back to it. We'll see. I still don't know what I think of it really. And then I don't know how many things I listen to a ton of stuff. This band called the Ripping Tins.
They're like jazz from the 90s. Wow, they better not have saxophones. Oh, they definitely have saxophones. Those saxophones are cool, though. Yeah, it's a different context for sure. It's all about the context. Thank you. It's super tight playing, super crisp and really technical. It's really cool. But people who listen to it are like, oh, this is waiting room music or something.
But I just put it on. I had a band stay at my house, like a black metal band. I was playing it. And then like yesterday, they like messaged me like, hey, who is that jazz band you're playing? So I think they did like it. And then I just found a bunch of Chinese female like pop slash folk vocalists that my friend from China sent me. And there's no way I can read or pronounce any of it. But I don't know. I'm all over the place. So have you heard?
I don't think so she I saw her on America's Got Talent and she's this like Chinese
instrumentalist she plays metal but she plays like a lot of like traditional Chinese instrumentation as well okay she's on Bandcamp and so I like bought everything she had because and she she does like covers of like Iron Maiden and things chop suey so it's
That system of a down and stuff like that. But she's just a phenomenal musician. Nice. Yeah. Check that out. I like the traditional instruments and definitely some different sounding about them. And like, especially, I don't know if it's like their scales are different, but just like the melodies really intrigue me. So it's like not American sounding at all. It's just totally foreign sounding melodies. Yeah. Cool.
All right, Markisan. Shit, hold on. I gotta have a sip of beer here. I gotta grab my tea. I'll be right back. Oh, wow. Damn. Darkness. Barrel-edged. Oh, nice. I don't know what year this is. Let's see. Can't read anything here. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
All right, I guess I'll go. So first thing I'm listening to is a band called Ataudes, Tempus Edax rerum on obscure disharmony records. It's really good blackened death doom with a foreboding atmosphere to it. I just found this the other day. Really enjoy spitting it. You know, it's got that kind of classic death doom sound, but sometimes I just need that. Next one is Cult of Fire, the one.
who is made of smoke on Beyond Eyes records. It's an atmospheric, almost tantric black metal infused with Hindu mythology and enchanted trance-like harmonies. So really different, really interesting, just kind of sucks you in. Then I have Rai Knowledge. This is a one-man band that I've been into for a few years now.
And this is another excellent cinematic record that merges ambient black, post black, and funeral doom with some folk influences in it. And the album really explores the doom side of the band a lot, which I think is really effective for their sound. And I just really love the harsh vocals on this. And then there's cleans on it, but it almost sounds like this angelic chant, which is really cool with the record.
and a lot of nice ambient textures. Chainsword chapter 12. Massive bolt thrower worship continues on this record, but I feel like this time around they're starting to really find their own sound as well. I think this is the best record that they've done so far. It rips from start to finish. Structure, Heritage, Ardua Music.
This album is monumental funeral doom magic. The balance between the massive crushing sections and the grim, heart-wrenching passages is just perfect on this. It's like one of my favorite doom records I've heard in like a few years. So if you like doom, I think you got to give this one a spin. Grin, Acid Gods. This is a heavy psych doom stoner sludge that Matt actually
I never heard of this man before Matt mentioned it last year and they put out a record last year and it's called hush and I like that record but this one is better to me because the songs are longer and they're just better crafted but yeah so they're very pretty prolific I think they've they put out something every year so far mm-hmm blood horse on the line star and iodine recordings this is a super compelling second album from a three-piece band they
They blend dark post-metal and stoner rock with a, I would say, a sly whisper of punk and a full battery of raucous, elephantine riffs. Just massive riffs on this. It's really good. I feel like this band is a little bit under the radar. It has members from different bands in it, but really good. And then this is one I've probably been spinning the most lately, Colt's Blood.
It's a harrowing ritualistic doom that conjures thoughts of ancient mythological ruins and the dark unknown that lurks in their shattered remains. And then the last one on my list is a kind of a little bit of a surprise but it's a breaths death can wait and it's an independent release so our friend Jason Roberts who came on the cast last year he sent me the new breath album.
which he says will drop sometime soon and it's very heavy and it features some of the best songs he's written so if you remember the last record they put out was very it was like all shoegaze had a little bit of heaviness to it but it was mostly shoegaze this time around like he's he's brought back the metal like he did on the previous releases and it's just a great merge of that breaths melty shoegaze sound rippled with cascading black metal and doom it's it's an excellent record
And so hopefully it'll drop soon and people get to experience that. That's what I got. Thank you. Matt. That new Dawn of Ouroboros album is still kind of been bouncing around in my head and my playlists by Illuminescence. This band that I made up a few years ago actually is releasing another album. So this could be awkward if I do list this.
But the band is Handgaming. I believe they are Norwegian. But they have this album, Satanic Panic Attack. It's good stoner metal that makes me happy. And this is kind of the follow-up to the one that I think I listed quite high a couple years ago, so have been enjoying that quite a bit. The Witchcraft album, been enjoying that as well. I was reminded of a band called Blood Ceremony, who is in a similar vein, a good Canadian kind of a
You know, stoner, traditional heavy metal. And they do have a lot of good flute kind of worked into their music. So if anybody needs any flute core, check that out. Flute core. Flute core. It's a thing. I've been listening to a ton of Radiohead just because I am metal adjacent. Oh, wow. I just got sucked into it. I love listening to it because I feel like I'm watching the opening and closing credits from every movie from 1995 to 2003.
Which albums are you listening to, Matt? Basically the first five. Oh, wow. Yeah, maybe six. I can't remember. But it's just been, like, I think there was a couple Radiohead songs used in different TV shows we're watching. I just was like, I gotta hammer this out. Because, like, I kind of listened to the first three as a young lad when I was playing in bands and stuff. And so we kind of listened to them together. And then as Kid A came out, I kind of felt like that was,
that I listened to on my own.
And actually, you know, that kind of went into a little bit of a different sound, which I really dug.
So it was a little bit different.
I love the bends, man.
That's the guitar heavy band.
I'm all right.
I see you shaking your head, George.
Yeah.
Honestly, the only thing I like by Radiohead is Creep.
I think every other song is meandering aimlessly without any hook or point to me.
You haven't listened to the Ben's at all. I have. Every single song's got huge hooks on it. Every year or so, I go back and try Radiohead again because I want to get it and I just can't get it. I love how I come back in after checking on my kids. We're talking about Radiohead. I feel like I've heard you talk about this. It must have been on the other podcast. It was. It was, yeah. Okay, I'll check that out. This is the metal adjacent portion of the evening. Hey, if you get it, that's great. I just can't wrap my brain around it. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. Um, I saw clips of side playing at MDF and I had to listen to as many as I could. And then I kind of transcribed their set list into a playlist. And I listened to that and have just been kind of diving kind of back and forth with their catalog, if you will. I also checked out acid gods by grin. Um, also the, the new worm rot album, TNT, uh, it's a live album. I kept seeing clips and I just like when I was scrolling through and,
It was the same thing every time I had to stop and listen to it. I probably did it like 10 times a day. That is a lot of fun. And then Year in the Light has a new album out. I think it's just two songs. And I'm going to butcher the name. It's Les Métrées Fouas, F-O-U-S. And that kind of sums it up for me. Thank you, sir. John. All right. To be honest, I have not listened to much music for the past.
month, month and a half. Certainly not anything I've really cared about until recently. Maybe the last week or so, I've actually reinvested myself. I've had other things I've been dealing with that have didn't seem like it was much fun to listen to anything. So I haven't really got much to talk. We've already talked about all of them. I'm not reopening the Rivers of Now Soar, but I have listened to that a little bit. We mentioned pelican, obsidian tongue, weeping sores. So they're all
The only band, and this is also recent, that I've listened to, metal-ish, is a band called Wolverine. They're a Swedish prog metal band. It's been around since the late 90s. I haven't put out too much the last few years, but I've been going through their catalogs. It's a band I like. I saw my prog power, I don't know, 10 years ago, but there's not really much to say from my perspective other than what I've been listening to really the last week or so, week and a half. That's it. It's been kind of a...
Dead Zone. Metal-wise for me. All right. Will? I'll be quick. I went to MDF on Friday, and I was super excited to see Atrophy. Actually, I'm not going to be quick. I will tell this really quick. I will tell a quick story. I'm wearing my Atrophy shirt. I know you're not supposed to wear a metal shirt of a band that's playing, whatever that night, but it's MDF. There's like a gazillion bands playing. I wore my Atrophy shirt. This guy comes up to me.
About my age, long hair. He was wearing a peace cell with his dying shirt. He's like, hey, man, I like your shirt. I'm like, yeah, man. I was like, I grew up on atrophy in my high school years. I love this. Glad they put out the new album. I love it. It was on my list, blah, blah, blah. He goes, hey, man, that's cool, man. I'll see you at the show. Fucker was a new guitar player. He's like, hey, man. I even said, what's your name? He's like, hey, my name is Nathan. I'm like, hey, I'm Will. Nathan is the new guitar player.
Oh my gosh. Atrophy. So he totally, like, what's the word? Schooled me, sold me, whatever, punked me in a way. Hoodwinked. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, that was funny. So I've been on Atrophy Kick for a while knowing that they were playing MDF. And then I was reading the newest decibel with Pelican on the cover and there was a band in there called Decrepacy. And I checked them out. So I bought their new album.
D.Affic Morning. It came out in March, but I really like it. It's kind of good. Definitely doomy, crusty kind of death, doom kind of thing. The new Midnight album, Steel Rust and Disgust. I bought that, listened to that. I don't like it. It hasn't caught me like some of the other past ones, but it's still growing on me. Jade. I think we have a bunch of Jade fans in here. Mysteries of the Flowery Dream.
Really looking at one
The New Hate came out
Bellum Regus
And then I went into an
Old School Deep Dive
Fourth Century
Their album Uncertain Future
And then I will be listening to
As I mentioned before
I just bought the new
Behemoth
Because I just didn't even
Like I don't know
I knew an album was coming out this year
I had no idea when
And then when I saw the script
Like oh it's coming out
And we check on Bandcamp
It's actually on Bandcamp
Let me buy it
So
All right.
Jay.
I'm pretty quick study to,
um,
you can wrap mine up to,
uh,
the,
um,
new releases list.
Mostly that's the vast majority of the metal.
I listened to the last week or so.
Um,
probably wrapped in with what my pick from the crypt will be.
And then I'm not sure if we're doing this new Thunderdome,
but we,
might do a thunderdome today are we doing that we are doing oh yeah we're doing it okay so i spent the last however many hours going through that and then um yeah and that's about it um i think i mentioned these guys last time i'm still on a little bit of a t-rex kick i couldn't get through the kind of weird poppy glamness of t-rex for a long time and now i'm like oh okay i get it so yeah kind of fun to get lost in a band that has a discography that is pretty solid all the way through so that's been on rotation too
Cool. Metal adjacent at best.
First up, I've got a band called Beholder and their first album in the Temple of the Tyrant.
They're an epic power metal band from Philly.
And if I'm not mistaken, George, aren't they Beholder? It's a real D&D thing, right?
Yes, it's like I have the Beholder thing, yeah.
And my friend Josh told me about them. Josh and I are big D&D people. I'm not into a lot of epic power metal these days, but this is one of the ones that wasn't super cheesy. It was a little more reined into the just like heavy metal kind of side. And the guy had a good voice, so I dug it. Ironically, my next one is a similar album called Chamber Mage by Light of Emerald Gods. It's their first album. They're from Colorado.
and not quite as cool as Beholder, but still in that same arena. And there's actually a couple other ones that I've got on my wish list that I want to check out, but I'm not going to mention them yet since I haven't listened to it. Are you recommending the Beholder? I am recommending the Beholder. It is good. I don't know that anybody here will like it, but you might. Actually, you might. Cool. Next up, I'm surprised John didn't mention this, or maybe he did and I missed it, but Chainz
their first album, uh,
prog tech death from Germany,
basically alkaloid in by another name.
Um,
and,
uh,
it's,
I haven't listened to it in a while.
That's why I didn't include it.
Okay.
Um,
and then,
uh,
already mentioned,
uh,
by Dennis,
uh,
dormant ordeal.
I really dug that one.
Uh,
their fourth album,
tooth and nail Polish death metal.
And lastly,
uh,
a band called paralyzed.
and their fourth album Rumble and Roar. They're a German hard rock band. It's really kind of ripping hard rock. I mean, Jay, you ought to check these guys out if you haven't. And that's what I've got. Great band name. Paralyzed. Yeah. All right, let's move on to Metal Thunderdome.
Metal Sunderdome! Metal Sunderdome!
Two bad center, one bad leafs!
Metal Sunderdome!
So last time, Markisan pit My Dying Bride's The Angel in the Dark River versus Skepticism's Stormcrow Fleet.
And I don't remember what our vote was.
I'm guessing it was probably My Dying Bride. It was. And the internet agrees at 62% My Dying Bride, 38% skepticism. And I told Dennis he had to give us his choice on this one. There's things I like about both and things I don't like about both, so it's actually really close for me. And this is my first time listening to both of these. Really? In both of the bands, I've never listened to them.
You're welcome. Yeah. So like the instrumentals and the ideas and the
everything on My Dying Bride except for a lot of the singing vocals I really liked.
It sounded like romantic in a way but it's just really cool to me.
So like the songs where they scream more I liked a lot more.
There's one is like sexuality of bereavement or something like that.
That was probably my favorite song on that one. I thought that was really cool. But then like the overall vibe and atmosphere of skepticism just sounded like they're in like a cave or something the whole time. It was definitely way more menacing and dark. But I think in the end, that one just is a little bit too repetitive and a little bit too slow for me. So I would pick My Dying Bride, even though I didn't like the singing too much. I just thought it had cooler
ideas and like went to cooler places and it was more interesting so that was my choice cool
all thought out all right and this time jay's got some picks for us yeah so um these um i kind of this is
actually kind of an obvious one to me i mean i had a while back we did uh mob rules versus um
and I purposely chose each iteration of those bands second album because they were both fully on their feet by that time meaning there had been Blizzard of Oz and Heaven and Hell before that but so we're talking about Sabbath and Ozzy and after the split and then what happened after the records we just mentioned that from our previous this one we've done a while back was they both put out a live record and and they also both
both were focused solely on Black Sabbath catalog. There's no Ozzy songs on the Speak of the Devil. Ozzy Osbourne, Speak of the Devil, and Black Sabbath Live Evil. So, and then John had sort of said, I had sort of implied that I thought it was kind of an easy choice about which of these was a better record at first, was my thinking on it. And I like both records quite a bit. And it's funny, John, because I was actually thinking of you when I said that, because I was under the impression of two things. One was, I
I thought I'd heard you say a derogatory thing about Live Evil at some point years ago and I might remember that wrong and second I know you appreciate what Brad Gill has pulled off as a member of Ozzy's band you know is this kind of weird last minute replacement blah blah blah blah I also think it's the smallest sense that Live Evil or excuse me Speak of the Devil has a small handicap on it because it was right after the death of Randy Rhoads it's not
It was just kind of ad hoc band that was put together. Well, it was the rest of the band. Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo, but Brad Gillis stepped in. And then to be perfectly honest with you, it's a contractual obligation album. I mean, Ozzy did it because he was pissed off and he was just like, well, we'll just go into a bunch of Sabbath stuff. But you get fairly similar set lists here, with the exception of the fact that the Sabbath stuff also includes some of the D.O. Arrow Sabbaths.
Dio era Sabbath stuff because they were on tour with Dio promoting mob rules at that time. So I'm going to pass it off to the first speaker here or first decider except to say that one little trivia point here is that on the cover of Speak of the Devil Ozzy's wearing a wig because Ozzy had famously shaved his head off on a drunken night. So this was like a weird mixed up kind of not so great time for Ozzy. Randy Rhoads had just died. He was a fucking mental mess.
That doesn't say that quality of this record isn't great, but we'll be curious to see what people think. And I also thought it would lean, John, towards Live Evil because there's a lot of D.O. worship on this podcast. That's what I expected your reason was, by the way. D.O. worship? It was the D.O. worship, yeah. We'll leave it at that. That stated my own personal choice wasn't easy, but let's do the rounds and see what people think. Dennis, do you have opinions on these? Did you listen to these? Yeah.
So I got this one last minute. So I didn't fully listen through both as much as I'd like to. But this one is actually less close than the last one for me. And I really like the Ozzy one a lot more. I think it's the mix and the sound of the record way better to me. Just the quality of the mix. And then I don't know. Yeah, I'd go back and forth. Like I had both YouTube videos open of like the same songs and kind of like see which one I'd prefer.
And every time as the Aussie, even like his vocals, just everything. I don't know. He was still at the height of his vocal power at that time. Yeah. Yeah. He sounded really good on that. But I do want to give you a sales pitch. I was going to hold on until my thought, but we're big fans here on the cast of the Joe Barassi remix of Diver Down. Or Diver Down. Holy Diver. And I think he did something else too. But in any case,
But most importantly, Live Evil was remixed recently and it's worth visiting if you get a chance. Okay. Yeah, I think I listened to both of them. It's not remastered, they remixed it. Okay. It's a fairly different record. Yeah, I have the box set version of it. I do too. I've been sitting here looking at it through this whole cast. It's the ultra master blah blah blah super deluxe. But I cut you off. I apologize if you had more thoughts there. Oh, you're good. I don't know. I didn't.
I didn't know much of the history of the members and everything like that. I did know he was wearing a wig. That was one of the first things that came up when I looked up the record. I got into a Dio kick for a while, but I just really prefer Ozzy on these two right now. That's just where I'm at with it. Another interesting difference, by the way, in these two records is that Live Evil was made with the thought of making it
So they recorded multiple dates, went and picked the best tracks. Ozzy scratched this out in two nights. They went to the Ritz in New York and just banged through Sabbath songs. And which can be considered a big plus, by the way. I'm not, that's not a season. It gives it a raw asterisk. All right, mark us on. Yeah. So first of all, like kudos and all the inverted crosses to Jay for doing our first live Metal Thunderdome. So I think both of these are great albums.
But I only own one on vinyl because I adore it. And so that's Black Sabbath Live Evil. First of all, Dio. Second, I absolutely love hearing Dio cover the old Black Sabbath tracks that Ozzy had originally sung. And then it's mixed with songs from Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules. So I like that you get more of a cross-section of Black Sabbath on this.
really killer set list of Black Sabbath over the ages until that point. So I also really love the cover art on it, which features characters that are based off Black Sabbath songs, like a Screamy Man in a Straightjacket from Paranoid or a Knight with a sword emitting an eerie glow, which represents Neon Knights, etc. And then there's also like a bit of drama surrounding the record that makes it interesting to me. During the mixing of Live Evil Dio and Vinny, the
left the group.
And it left Iommi and Geezer Butler to carry on.
And of course, there are two different accounts about what actually went down.
And Iommi said that Dio was becoming too bossy.
So much so that when they were working on the Live Evil record, the band actually nicknamed him Little Hitler.
And Iommi contends that he and Geezer were concerned about Dio rehearsing with other musicians for a proposed solo album that was offered to him.
by Warner Brothers Records. And then Dio pushed back on that and said the breakup was actually due to a misunderstanding. Iomi and Butler were apparently using a lot of cocaine at that time. No kidding. And didn't show up to begin the Live Evil mixing process. So Dio and Vinny were there and they experimented with the mix for fun. They didn't set anything in stone. But when Iomi arrived days later,
He came to the conclusion that Dio was not only mixing the album without him, but he was trying to push his own vocals in the mix. So that was the tiff that was the breaking point for the band. I don't know. I've never heard about anybody doing a lot of cocaine and being paranoid like that. Yeah. But as we know, they patched things up because Dio came back to do Dehumanizer in 91, I think. And then we got Black Sabbath 2.0 with Heaven and Hell.
in the late 2000s.
And then in contrast, I think Speak of the Devil is solid.
It's all Black Sabbath songs, like Jay said, but with Ozzy's solo band playing them.
And they do a really good job on this.
And I really like Brad Gillis, who just stepped in to perform, and he crushes it on this.
But what hurts this album for me that Jay didn't mention is that a good portion of Ozzy's vocals were replaced after the fact.
So the producer Max Norman has said that three songs from the album were actually recorded at Soundcheck the afternoon of the show. So I got a quote and he said they could only do this one time. Like Jay said, it was like very quick that they did this album. So I made Ozzy play a whole show in the afternoon with no audience and recorded that. Keep that in the can and then if something happens on the night or is no good, at least we've got a choice and we'll have more material to draw from.
Three of the tracks on that record were done in the afternoon and not live in front of the audience. So he still sings on the album and the album is still good, but there's just something about needing to replace the vocals in a live record that it gives it a slight... Happened all the time during that period. I know, I know, I know. Go ahead, John, if you want to say the obvious one. Who would unleash something like that? Yeah, well, it was done in the East, so what do you expect? Yeah, there's
a ton. Even Rush has replaced stuff on Exus Stage Left. Those recordings just were never great. But point taken. Yeah, I get it. Right. It's only a small thing because he's still singing. You know what I mean? It's not like they did the studio and replaced it. But there's something in my mind that's like, it's not quite the same. And of course, with Live Evil, they're going to remix it. Like, it was just showing that they're going to do things to it to make it sound better. But as far as I know, they didn't take it.
something else. Now, they did take performances of different places. So that is true. And this is only just the one. I can tell you, Mark, there is some doctrine on Live Evil. And I mentioned that only because I have the remix version as mentioned. And some of the vocal stuff on the remix is different. But it's scattered throughout. Remixing is different than taking vocals from a different performance. Oh, no, no, no. That's what's going on. I mean, you can tell.
because I've listened to those songs so many times that there's a couple points where I was like, that's not what he did there when I listened to this. Yeah. But it's very, very minimal. And some of it was just stuff that was removed of him, you know, like a lost vocal that where he's kind of harmonizing over a guitar solo or something that's not on the original release. But it's, I promise you, it's deeply minimal. It's not like what you're talking about. Right, right. Not like the Ozzy record. But it's noticeable if you really know the record. Yeah.
So it doesn't take away from my enjoyment much from the Ozzy one, but I think I'm still going with Live Evil just because I really like hearing Dio and then performing not only the songs that he did with Black Sabbath, but the older songs with Ozzy. That was cool to hear that. And I think it might have been the first time I ever really heard those versions of the song. So that's what I'm going with, Live Evil.
All right. Matt.
So we've got one and one so far. I had heard Live Evil a couple times. I did not know Speak of the Devil even existed. So when you threw it out, Jay, I thought, oh, you know, this is easy. Live Evil, really, really good. And I just assumed Speak of the Devil was, you know, just an Aussie live album. I didn't realize it was actually Aussie's band playing Black Sabbath songs. And I started listening to it. And, you know, from my feeble
I was realizing like this sounds a little bit more raw sounds a little bit more loose the mix I
listened to had just a shit ton of bass in it like I felt like I could hear every every bass not played
individually and it was Ozzy's voice and I don't know what it was about it but I just completely fell in love with it and I go really good on it yeah yeah so to make a long story short I am a speak of the devil person wow that's cool
It didn't exist one day, and now it's your choice. John. So this was super easy for me. It has been super easy for me. You're always super easy. 40 plus years. It was the same back then. It's the same today. And I'll just say it's speaking of the devil by a mile for me. And there's a number of reasons why. I think the album sounds better overall.
the doctoring stuff that goes on on both of them. I just like the sound better. And I think it's probably because it's from the same venue where they did the recordings. I was under the impression it was only one song they redid, Markisan some curious to note the other two are. I know Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is from the session that they did beforehand. The producer didn't say, he's like, if you sit back with headphones on, maybe you can pick out which one's which. So I'd be curious if it's the encore, because apparently the band was really tight up and
until the encore end. This is based on Rudy Sarzo's comments. He said, then for whatever reasons, we decided to play the encore really loose and it's terrible. They were going to scrap the last three songs and use, apparently, use the Randy Rhoads stuff. They decided against it. I guess they somehow from the two shows put together the encore. You could tell the difference. They do sound a little loose. They're almost like they're ready to finish. The one thing I don't like about either of these albums, they're short for live shows.
They did not play long live shows. No, no. The shows. What you see on those, that's their whole sets. I mean, Ozzy never played more than about an hour and ten minutes in his shows. I know I was, I saw Diary of Mad Men. I was like, that's it. And Sabbath wasn't that much longer either. So, but another reason I like it better is because I actually like Ozzy's band better. I know it's heresy to say that Brad Gillis smokes on this album, bringing the word back.
from 10 years ago. Smoking. He's awesome on this album. And he comes in as a replacement to Last Second. And I didn't know that Bernie Torme hung around with him during all the stuff for the pre-tour when he toured with him on Diary of Mad Men to help him out to make sure everything was good, which is a really very professional thing to do considering you're out of the band. And I will say this. I don't care what anyone says. I love the first Night Ranger album. It's freaking awesome.
And I also connected more with the songs. Because they played a bunch of songs that the other versions, you know, Sabbath didn't really play, which was Symptom of the Universe. Live is wicked. It's got, to be honest with you, and you can hear Ozzy play harmonica. Right. I mean, as far as old Sabbath classics go, it's a slightly better set list. But they also play, but it's the mid period. So it's volume four, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.
and oh shit I'm drawing the one after the Sabbath boy I'm drawing a blank all of a sudden
sabotage thank you yeah I mean they play snow blind never say die gets a some love there even though
that sounds really good it does if that was the only song on that record it would have been a great record
should have just been a single that and dirty women should have been like a back-to-back and that's it
I'll wrap it up real quick here as much as I love Dio I don't like him singing old Sabbath and
there's a reason why he can sing. Ozzy is semi one-dimensional in his range. Dio has massive range. Dio uses too much range on Ozzy songs where there's not much range and it just doesn't translate for me as well. I'd rather hear him singing Dio era Black Sabbath where he sounds amazing and awesome because the music is more geared towards him. So I just didn't connect as much with it. And I was saying. I believe in that Dio deep dive article I wrote.
I referred to him singing the older Sabbath songs as the rough equivalent of a Corvette going around a dirt track.
It really it sort of is unfortunately and where he sounds good then he does a lot of the year during the songs I'm like I want to hear show me your hands during those songs we love you that's what I want to hear so and my last thing I will say if you really want a great live version of this stuff over live evil for me hands down live at Hammersmith Odeon it blows it up.
out of the water, because that's a single show, which was an album came out years later from that tour. So Marcus, I know you like it. I don't know if you've heard the live at Hammersmith Odeon. It's freaking awesome. Yeah. And it's a slightly different set list, which is if you have them both together, then you get more songs from the Dio era of Black Sabbath, which is cool. And also I think on that. Let me arrange them a little differently too. Yeah. I mean, I just, I just prefer Dio, even on the old stuff. I get what you're saying is completely valid. I just,
Well, of course, I thought that would be a sticking point. Not at all. It was like just for me back then, too. It really was. As much as there's all the shenanigans going on behind both camp scenes, both of them at the same time. And they were almost dueling with each other. They were. For three years, they dueled with each other. And then, you know, Born Again came out and Dio released his own albums, you know, and Ozzy screwed over Jake E. Lee.
George I know you would appreciate that comment yep all right well sorry everyone was just showing me her new painting that she did um John said it best I'm not going to believe her the point um having Dio try to sing old Ozzy song old black Sabbath songs with Ozzy on it didn't work for me so I'm going with uh
the devil wow yeah it just it was weird just listening to him trying to play like iron man and paranoid and all the other songs like it just like he has this range and like him trying to like take his vocal style and sing those songs where you're used to the ozzy version of them it's just kind of like it's it's it's it's almost it's not off-putting it's just kind of like huh
But I love
Dio
era Sabbath. Unbelievably.
Mob Rules and
even like Dehumanizer. I love
Dehumanizer.
The actual band
Heaven and Hell
when they came out.
Heaven and Hell album, then
Heaven and Hell band. All that stuff.
Love it.
I have to go with Speak of the Devil here, just because it's more pure. This is interesting. All right. Cool. Well, I'm glad everybody. And I did not think I would vote that way until I re-listened to it again today. And I was like, I love this. I'm going to get a Wilson Award for this. I'm sure. I'm sure. Glad Jay had you said that this was Speak of the Devil versus Madison Square Garden. I wouldn't even waste my time. I would just be like, oh, that that Heaven and Hell from Madison Square Garden is a light year.
is better. I got to dip out for a little bit because I got to get my kids to bed because we both we all have to wake up super early for guess what? Baseball. Baseball. I'm not watching your Phillies games but only because it's the only goddamn games I can watch but I've been watching. Well you saw him got annihilated 17 to 7 today by the Brewers. Yeah oh my god dude that was brutal. Yeah anyway all right I'll see you in a bit. All right. All right my turn since Jay goes last.
When you mentioned this, I too was like, oh, it's going to be cakewalk, you know? Dio greater than Sabbath over all things, right? True. But then I listened to them, and unlike everybody else, I do side with Markisan the fact that I like Dio singing the old Sabbath songs. I think it's cool because it's something different.
However, that's the only good thing about it for me, because the sound sucks. Oh, here we go. Production. Yeah. Oh, no, the original sucks. It's not good. The sound is terrible. So, and the Speak of the Devil, by comparison, sounds much better. It's just a stronger album to me. I love that they do Snowblind and are apparently partaking,
because it's really fast.
And Ozzy can't help but being like,
you know, cocaine!
Every time.
It's not normally in the song,
but he was just like,
yeah, man, cocaine!
Oh, God.
He's so annoying.
When he talks in between songs,
it's pretty annoying as well.
He seems pretty out of it as well.
I didn't mention that when I talked about that.
The rest of the band was fine,
but he wasn't.
He was just so annoying.
That's another part that I didn't like.
Yeah.
But I have to go speak of the devil. Which is funny. Wilson Award! You bring that up, Marcus, that's funny because I think the band for Ozzy, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I think they were probably all fairly okay during that show. And then in the reverse, I think the Sabbath guys were a little, you know, uh, and Dio was the one that was good. I think it sort of feels that way when you listen to them. Well, so it comes down to my pick, which this isn't easy for me.
either by a long shot and every single point spoken here today has been valid i must say and i do think on the older sabbath tracks um the um speak of the devil has a better list um say fairy where fairy where fairies wear boots is on here the wizard snow blind symptom of the universe i mean come on and never fairies wear boots was that was not very good on there i didn't think uh like that track on there i'm just talking about it's in
I know but I'm talking about the actual song on there I mean there's a lot of great songs on there that's not one of them I don't think on that on that particular record well and so and then um and then we talk about Live Evil and I and I um and by and I just think Ozzy sounds great on Speaking of the Double E so I I mentioned that again because you if you look at the Ozzy of today or even 10 years ago you know he wasn't going to be able to sing Snowblind that's like in this highest register and he was still doing it back then I like the kind of almost punk rock
to the whole thing of just coming out and cranking out these songs that they all learn together. I do think, and my choice would have been the same either way, but I probably should have warned you guys to check out the remix of this first because it's a pretty different album. I listened to the remaster, but not the remix. This is a remix, and it is like the difference between Holy Diver, Barresi versus the old one. It's that different.
And it's, in fact, it makes it sound more like a Heaven and Hell era show, the record, not the band, than a Mob Rules era show, which I think they were trying to mix it to sound like Mob Rules. That stated, Neon Nights is amazing. I think Children of the Sea is probably my favorite version of that.
is on Live Evil. For sure, my favorite version of that is on Live Evil. Voodoo is amazing. You get Sign of the Southern Cross, the Mob Rules on here. Long story short, I won't belabor the point, I'm going to Live Evil. Oh, so I am not alone. Yeah, and it was just one of my favorite records as a kid, and these both came out around the same time, and I listened to both a ton. And I just think D.O. is transcendent on that record. And even though I fully agree with, like, I don't need
to hear Dio sing an Iron Man. I just don't. But that's stated. So I'm sort of agreeing with George on some of this, you know, and that's, or, and Will, but I still, it's still overall, the performance on there, it's just so great. And they have extended version of Heaven, Hell, and Big Black Shape looked up at me and all that stuff. So good. My biggest regret about Live Evil is that they mention in the record, not only are we filming tonight, but we'll be making a new, this is for the first Black
I've got a Sabbath live record. Well, that film never fucking came out and I've always wished it would. So yeah, I'm going live evil. So that's just me and Markisan versus the world, I guess. Yeah. My faith in the universe is restored. If the day that Jay picks Ozzy over Sabbath in anything ends my reality. I went Diary of a Madman. I did too. Well, this would be the time because this is a Sabbath album. That's true. But when we did Diary of a Madman
versus Mob Rules, I did Die of a Madman because I just think it's a better record.
Okay, well.
Then Sanity has been restored.
No.
I always pick D.O.
I don't think I've wavered.
I don't think I have.
Probably not.
On any of those when it's gone head-to-head.
Even though I do love Ozzy.
Easy Lives, but man, if you get a chance, check out that remix.
I'm telling you, it's a different show.
It's a different show.
It's a very different sounding record.
I just heard a show in the background. Yeah. Who was that? Wow. Holy smokes. I will tell you though, for any listeners that partake in this, you gotta set aside the whole Dio is better than Aussie thing because you can't go into it listening that way. Cause that's, I knew that was where you were going, Jay. The thing, it'd be easy pick. Most people are going to listen. Oh, I'm going with Dio right away. Yeah. Or they're not going to listen and they're going to go with Dio. Yeah. They're not going to, oh, it's
He is a clown and all that stuff. I'm like, dude, that band was awesome. He had. I saw that band. They were incredible. And not everybody who listens to this is as old as we are, John. That's why I'm saying that, to give them both a chance. I hope they will. And here's the thing. I think you made great points, everybody who picked Ozzy. You want to hear Ozzy sing those songs that he created with the band. Even though Dio technically is a better singer. Oh, he's infinitely better.
It doesn't matter because Ozzy created those songs. He made those songs iconic. And I get that. I totally get that part of it. But I also agree with everybody's comment that it's just a more raw sounding. It's just it's a more I don't want to use the word rocking, but it's just a more. It's got much more life to speak of the devil. And. It pops a lot more. There you go. But I still just, you know, you get enough. You kind of get the best of both worlds with Live Evil.
I am curious to see which songs got replaced because I don't know those three songs that they changed the vocals on I am curious maybe I maybe maybe somebody said it and I definitely know the Sabbath bloody Sabbath was from the was it what I'm wondering now too is that it says it was recorded the 26th and 27th and I wonder if one of those if that's like the no audience show and that's the show well it might also be remember I was telling you the
was really bad. The three songs at the end. So they were talking about replacing those and putting the Randy Rhodes from a Randy Rhodes show with him playing. And they decided against that. So that's where I think they may have mixed the two days together. Possibly. What is it? It's the same three songs, isn't it? From both albums? Paranoid, Children of the Grave, and Iron Man are the three. I think. Iron Man and Children of the Grave are. There's more than that. No, no. The three songs at the end. The three encore songs.
Yeah. You know,
I think that they were all doing the same three songs during that period.
It's really weird how they did.
There's a weird controversial statement I'll make too,
because we're big Randy Rose fans and big Aussie fans,
but whatever.
I don't think this record would have been any better with Randy Rose on it.
No,
because I think Brad Gillis's style playing in his sound actually fit.
The last episode more.
He's such an underrated guitarist.
I know I say that a lot,
but he really is.
I mean, I think that this live album exemplifies how great a guitarist he is.
Yeah.
I mean, you just give somebody that and you know, like this guy came in last minute and played this and he's arguably the star of the show on that record to me.
With Bruno Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge, who are great musicians.
Yes.
And even though, you know, it's, I don't disagree with about Night Ranger, John, necessarily, but I just, it's too bad. I always think, boy, what if Brad Grill has gone down a road more like this, you know? Well, like I said, the first album, definitely. Yeah. After that. I really wonder what that, what that would have been like. Yeah. Okay. So I will say one last thing real quick. I have to say this because this comes up, it's kind of contractual, but not as contractual as Matt's contractual stuff. Right, right.
But at that time, and I saw him, albeit from the higher up at the Oakland Coliseum, Tommy Aldridge back then looks like Tommy Aldridge today. Dude, you know, it's funny. He's gone from looking like shit to now he's 70 or whatever he is. 74 now. He looks good. Because the guy hasn't changed an inch. I watched, I mentioned this a while back, but every once in a while, just because of what I watch on YouTube, something will show up and it'll be a Tommy Aldridge.
interview with at his drum set or something and i watch it every time something
like that shows up i love him he's awesome to listen to he is as a guy and as a player i mean he is
something else he's got that iconic drum fill at the beginning of over the mountain so awesome
yeah dennis is like that's a lot of sabbath and ozzy talk for one episode but you know what awesome
you know you you thought it would be too like an obvious pick and i did almost too generic a pick
and look how much conversation we got out of this and a surprise ending for you, Jay. So great job on picking this one. Yeah. Now I will make the prediction and say, I think. Oh, I, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Online. It's going to go all Sabbath. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Cool. Probably. All right. Well, let's do a pick from the crypt here. All right. We got to get George to bed. George, you're doing an amazing job. Thank you for still doing this. Did I let any slip through? I feel like one time,
Well, something slipped through, but not any coughing or anything like that. I feel like I missed the mute button when I was coughing one of the times. No, you're good. You're probably like, look at him having apoplexy over there. He's just like, ah! Oh, man. All right. Pick from the Crypt. Dennis, do you have anything for us? Can I explain what this is? Of course. Does this just have to be an older album?
We talked about it. Yeah. You can pick anything from the past, any year, that you think people should listen to. I like to pick obscure things, but it doesn't have to be. That's what I told Dennis, too. We usually pick obscure things that are, you know, but it doesn't have to be. He's like, I listen to all these obscure, like, suicidal black metal albums. Can I put that in there? Like, you put it where you want. Go for it. Yeah, I do. Okay, let's go.
It's pretty popular for depressive black metal, but I think if you don't listen to it, you should check this one out. It's called Neurasthenia by Psychonaut 4. They're a band from Georgia, the country. And you can really hear their unique influences from that region in the metal and in the depressive black metal. It's also gotten recently popular on TikTok.
which is very strange like depressive black metal has in general and so like their songs have like blown up like all of a sudden like their songs like 3 million plays on spotify out of nowhere whoa um and like yeah most people haven't even heard of them before uh but they're they're pretty crazy band like they're they're probably pretty polarizing like the vocals are like shrieky high-pitched a lot of the time but i think it really works and every time i play it for someone they're like oh this is really cool and it has that dancey
feel to it that I was talking about earlier. But like depressive black metal and dancey. And so yeah, they're also called like narco punk. Also is like another genre that you could call them. They're kind of controversial. Why the phrase narco? Where does narco come from? Like depressed? Just like doing drugs. Yeah, I don't know. And it's like a little bit punk sounding like with the beats and the danceiness of the of the drum beats. Gotcha. Yeah. So and a lot of their songs are about
Drug Use, which what I was just about to say was they're controversial. Their vocalist is in prison right now. Something with drugs, I don't know exactly what happened, but him and two other people overdosed or something bad happened. I met them a long time ago, and they were a tiny, depressive black metal band when I first started Ghostbath, and they just blew up. But this album is really interesting. I think it has an interesting sample use.
which is very depressive black metal. It uses a lot of samples of people talking. Stuff like that. I don't know. Everyone should check it out. If you haven't really listened to depressive black metal, it's a good spot to start. It is interesting that depressive black metal uses samples. That's something that hardcore would do. A lot. It's a lot of interviews of depressed people or even movie quotes of people talking about
of depression and stuff like that.
Cool.
Yeah.
Never heard of that one, actually.
I mean, I would say as a whole, we don't, I don't listen to a ton of
depressive black metal.
I like Ghostbath, but I don't listen to a ton of it.
So maybe I need to, to seek it out a little bit more.
I'll check that one out for sure.
Get to work, man.
Get to work.
You're the one we expect to check this out.
Yeah.
And I listen to so much metal.
So yeah, I'm going to check it out.
Yeah, I'd say just most of it's not on bigger labels. It's usually really tiny. They'll do 50 cassettes, and that's all that exists. It's a little bit harder to find if you're not looking for it. Right, right. I mean, your band's actually pretty big. If I think about it, I mean, you do a lot of tours, and you're just out there. You're more visible than other bands in the genre, I would say. Yeah, yeah. You don't see people who call themselves depressive black men on nuclear
or blast or anything like that right yeah like a lot of people are like i don't know some people are like oh they're not really sold out but they're just like i don't know not happy about that like we're on a big label or touring and something like that oh really some people like you're always getting back but yet you endure just wait till you go to china oh i can't wait all right all right mark's on all right yeah my uh pick is a an album by a band called
The Album is called Coven the Eternal from 1995 on Black Hand Productions. This is a pretty obscure Gothic Doom album from Canada. It came out in the early days of women really coming to metal as vocalists. So it was pretty shortly after bands like Third and the Mortal. I know John's really into that band and they just were indecisible as a, what do you call that?
All of Fame. And I was like, yes! And I love that. And I talked about Third and the Mortal on the Endless Metal podcast because I just love that record so much. So this one, Embrace, it has this slow, burning, my dying bride vibe. It's got violin in it. It's got haunted keyboard sections. And the vocalist has an angelic soprano. But there are also some great, like, rowdy, candle mask style tracks.
mixed in. So if you, I would say, like songs like Demon's Gate or Crystal Ball from Epicus Dumicus, Metallicus, like that is in there. And this is the only album that Embrace ever did. And as far as I know, the musicians, they haven't really been in any other bands since. And it was one of those CDs that I just picked up at a record shop on a whim because the cover was mysterious.
So it features this hazy, blazing sun coming up over a sepia-toned forest. And it conjures memories of scenes from the film Ladyhawk, if you guys remember that film, when we'd see the sun rise and then we'd feel the heartbreak of the curse put on the two lead characters to keep them from being together. So Michelle Pfeiffer would transform into a hawk while this black wolf would change into like Rucker Hauer's character.
at the same time so they could never be humans together and so um that's why i picked it up
because i saw that that cover i was like what kind of reminds me of lady hawk so i dug up my embrace cd
recently so i could burn it because it's the only place the only place i can even find this thing is on youtube
um the full album is on youtube somebody just put it up a few years back but it's definitely a
treasure in the realm of metal. But it was one of those early metal albums that featured a female vocalist. And so I listened to it a lot when I was in my early 20s. And I started to listen to it again lately. So seek it out. Cool. I kind of miss Rutger Hower now. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Matt. I'm going to go with an album.
from a band that I mentioned earlier. This is actually the first album I heard by this band, which is quite a bit into their catalog. But I remember hearing it. I remember thinking it was chaos. I thought it was insane. But I completely fell in love with it. I'm talking about Scenes From Hell by the band Sy. Oh, Sy comes up again. Nice. Yeah. I thought they were coming out with a new album. But they are, aren't they? No, it's just
Langman's him with like two extra songs yeah okay yeah soon enough George I'm sure it'll come out soon well I mean I don't know when they'll do something next but I thought we were getting a new album this year and we're not so anywho anywho all right John all right so I didn't have anything at all for this and then today I don't know where I was surfing I saw somebody posted
Oh, I love this album. I don't think I've mentioned it before. I could be wrong. I checked my list. I haven't mentioned this as a pick for the grip. But then I read a little further on the explanation. It says, Oh, it's the anniversary of the re-release of this album. Which I was like, well, that doesn't mean jack shit. But it made me laugh that somebody would actually post that. I'm like, well, I'm glad there's not an Iron Maiden anniversary coming up for an hour.
So I decided what the hell I'll make it my pick from the crip. That's psychotic waltz's A Social Grace which came out in 1990. I'm a big fan of this band especially this album. They're part of the whole first wave of prog metal bands like Fates Warning and Sort of Queensryche and Early Dream Theater and a few other bands like that. Watchtower, Voyvod. And I always liked this album a lot and I thought let's throw it out I don't have anything. I didn't listen to it
today because I've listened to it a million times but I always dug their version of prog metal with some technical thrash a little bit a little bit of that US power metal sound it's cool cool so there you go thank you and it's the anniversary of the reissue nice just fell in your lap there John that's awesome who knew all right well well I'm right I'm wearing creator Jay if you remember you gave me this shirt I do but we
We also both ended up with a creator shirt on today somehow. Yeah, well, I can't really see yours. You need to take your shirt off and put it in front of the camera. Or just take your shirt off and you get in front of the camera. If he takes his shirt off, you can't see the shirt. That's right. I'm so tasty under it. Well, my whole thing will just... Marcasson's not really getting what we're looking at. Clearly, clearly. Hordes of Chaos, 2009. This is probably one of the most perfect
I think of where every song is just a banger. Creator is one of my favorite bands. They had some middle period stuff that we won't talk about. Endorama rules. Yes. I do like it. You're not being sarcastic, are you? I'm not. I like it. I'm being sarcastic. Actually, no, I'm not being sarcastic. Some of the middle period stuff we won't talk about. But anyway, Hordes of Chaos came out in 2009.
songs like War Curse and all the other stuff that's on it. And the re-release, the re-remaster they did, I think last year, had a great cover of the Bad Religions, You Are the Government. I love Bad Religion. I don't know if anyone else here likes Bad Religion. But anyway, I remember
I ran around Iraq quite a bit from 2003 to 2009. And when this came out, I was rolling around Iraq and listening to Hordes of Chaos and War Curse. And just thinking how amazing this album is. So that's my pick from the grip. Love this album. Alrighty. Nice. Jay? In my constant interest and annoying habit of going metal adjacent or proto
or pre-metal. I don't know. I put this record on the other day and I was like, such a good record. More like pre-Jacku Jason. Exactly. Will. Thanks for outing me. Will, that's nice. No, I was just saying... Live Hollywood vampires. Yeah, right. I think John will appreciate this one and maybe Matt too, but I was just saying how, what if Brad Gillis had gone down this different road? So here's another guy. I wish we could have seen
go down this road and it was jimmy hendrix band of gypsies that was such a cool turnover to be in this whole new band i put it on the other day and i just remembered how good it is and it is heavy as by the way so there's that but so if you're not if you don't really know hendrix i would almost start with banded gypsies you know give it a shot two words jay machine gun gun and and that's the metal part of it too that's what gets me off the hook here
Machine Gun is. Machine Gun is. That might be one of the greatest hard rock songs ever. It's pretty great. Yeah. All right. Mine is a one and done album from 2010. A Scottish band by the name of Cerebral Boar and their one album Maniacal Miscreation. They were a brutal death metal band. When this came out, I thought it was the bee's knees.
It was really heavy
And I just happened to cross it
In my collection yesterday
And I said, hey, there's my pick from the crypt
Their one claim to fame
Was that the last thing they did was a two song split
With Carcass
Is this something on vinyl
That you came across or something else, George?
No, I got the promo back in the day
I'm sure Matt knows them because of the carcass reference.
Of course.
So there we are.
Matt, did I tell you I saw a carcass the other day and I shook Jeff Walker's hand?
You did mention that. I was very jealous.
Okay.
I've never met Jeff.
Okay.
He's a lot shorter than you think.
He's shorter than Albert Mudrian.
Wow.
And when I walked up and they were talking to each other and I walked up, I was like, wow, these are two fucking hobbits. Did not know that. He's much bigger on stage with a leg up on a monitor, you know, jamming away and singing. How tall are you, Will? 6'1". But he's laying down. I will say, and I think Jay will attest to this,
He did not partake in sharing beers with us in Philadelphia. I thought he had at least one. No, it was Bill Steer. I thought they were both standing there for a minute. They were, but I think Bill had a beer. Bill stuck around. Jeff got a little annoyed about this and took off. Oh, did he? He hung out for a few minutes, but Bill, I think, hung out for a little while. He's like, who are these fanboys? Bill is still wearing bell bottoms, no matter what. Three things I had to mention. Three-hour cast.
George, you're a fucking trooper for sticking this out.
Cause really, you should be in bed.
Will, awesome to have you on the cast because it's been a minute.
Yeah.
It's one of those weird things where like, I'm just a busy guy.
I'm like, I'm not a busy guy.
My kids are busy.
Therefore I am busy.
Right.
You're a busy dad.
Baseball, baseball, baseball.
I'm a busy, I'm a baseball dad who's crazy busy.
Yeah.
And awesome to have you on the cast again, Dennis.
Like, I hope you had fun.
I love having you on like thanks for coming back new records great too so you appreciate it yeah congratulations on that thanks for having me uh yeah I don't really do anything or go anywhere so it was cool just sorry about the news I know you didn't want to comment in the news so I'm sorry about that part yeah no that's fine yeah all right well yeah we are just under three hours so
So, record speed. Yeah, I'm going to go hit the bed like immediately. Sleep, brother. Feel better. Have a good one. Talk to you guys. I love you, brother. Take care. Thanks, Dennis. Bye, guys. Bye. Take care.