Many of you may be wondering why a metal site would choose to interview someone like Maddox, since he’s not a musician. The photo above answers all your questions. Maddox (on the left) is punching a The Black Dahlia Murder fan. If that doesn’t give him enough credibility, I don’t know what will.
Maddox is the man behind The Best Page in The Universe (second best, in our opinion, but we’re probably biased), a site I’ve been reading for over a decade. He’s been a huge influence on my writing and my sense of humor, and apparently I got him into Swashbuckle.
This may not be your typical DoM interview, but it brought a few metalhead pirates together — my life is complete.
Make the jump and find out what metal Maddox listens to, whether or not he’ll ever consider including us in his future books, and what suggestions he has for our site’s design.
DoM: Hey Maddox, thanks for doing this interview. How’s shit?
Maddox: Shit’s fucking awesome. My face hurts sometimes, but that’s from being so good looking.
DoM: A lot of people may be reading this thinking “What the fuck is Maddox doing on a metal site?” — What would you say to those people right now?
Maddox: I don’t know how to type out the sound of their faces getting kicked with my fist. I’ve been a fan of metal since high school, so I wrote a chapter about it in the manliest fuckin’ book ever, called “The Alphabet of Manliness.” In fact, the first sentence reads: “If manliness had a soundtrack, the score would be metal.” I listened to a fuckton of Pantera while writing the entire book.
DoM: You basically started blogging before it was even called blogging. Does it annoy you that something you did that was pretty original, say, in the late 90s, is something every pretentious douche (like myself) is doing today?
Maddox: Blogging has become annoying in different ways over the years. When the Internet was young in the 90s, blogging was obnoxious because everyone had a Geocities page with shitty animated gifs and flashing text everywhere. When Geocities died, we saw a resurgance in that shit-hole style of writing in MySpace. But before that, there was a flood of mopey goth dipshits blogging about what they ate for lunch on LiveJournal and Xanga. Now that shit is passé, and today we have “microblogging” with Twitter, which makes me want to gnaw my face off, and a billion fucking photo blogs on Tumblr. In some ways it’s less annoying, because I can simply scan a URL for “tumblr” and know not to read it.
DoM: If you were to start your site today, do you think it would be easier for you to get a lot of traffic, or harder?
Maddox: I’m a genius. Easier. C’mon.
DoM: You’re of Armenian descent yet you never brought that into your site, unlike other big bloggers who flaunt their religion, sexuality, or heritage all the time. What do you think of musicians who do the same and can’t shut the hell up about politics?
Maddox: Oh yeah, I’m Armenian but so are millions of other people. If you want to read about that, I’m sure there are tons of people writing about Armenian culture. I’m not one of them, and I don’t want to turn my site into the Armenian stub of Wikipedia, or politics or religion. Musicians who’ve always done politics should keep doing it, and musicians who haven’t, shouldn’t. The first rule of writing, and I think this extends to music and other artforms, is: know your audience. Who are you performing for? Do you think your fans would like it more or less if you had a departure from your standard form to experiment in political speech? It can be done successfully, but this is rarely the case. Being a performer or artist is kind of like being a toaster. You expect your toaster to do only one thing: make toast. But as soon your toaster starts giving you political opinions, it’s like… “shut the fuck up. Make toast.” Do your job. If you know how to walk the fine line between being a blowhard and writing great satire, you’re a genius. But most people don’t know how to walk that line.
DoM: Your website is called “The Best Page In The Universe,” but since we came along, you should really change it to “The Second Best Page In The Universe” or “The Best Non-Metal Page In The Universe.” Agreed?
Maddox: Better yet, since my site predates yours, how about changing your name to “Dose of Maddox”? Here you go:
I like the ring of it.
DoM: You’ve made it clear a bunch of times that you like bands like Pantera, Metallica, Slayer, etc… Have you been to any metal shows recently?
Maddox: Mostly indie stuff at bars. Last big show I saw was Gojira. I missed out on Megadeth when they came to my city. And Slayer/Mastodon. I kicked my own ass for missing that one.
DoM: Linkin Park are awful, aren’t they?
Maddox: Who?
DoM: You like metal. So do we. You write funny articles. So do we. (well, we try, anyhow). Don’t you feel a bit bad about not starting your own humor/metal site?
Maddox: I don’t feel bad about anything.
DoM: If you ever write a sequel to your Alphabet of Manliness book, will “Dose of Metal” be under D this time?
Maddox: If I did, it’d be called “The Encyclopedia of Manliness” and you know what? Yeah, fuck it. I’d throw DoM in there.
DoM: How about Alex under A? I’m hairy too. And awesome.
Maddox: No.
DoM: On a scale of 1 to 10, how metal are you?
Maddox: About a 7 because I still like to shower every now and then.
DoM: You’re obviously a real pirate. But what’s your take on internet piracy, especially regarding music?
Maddox: It gives me the biggest chub to see the record companies going under. Those dipshits sat on their dicks for years, suing people for nickels and dimes instead of innovating and modernizing their business. The industry was run by a bunch of heavy-fisted thugs for so long that they lost sight of what it is they actually do. We’re in a transitional phase for music, where people are actually discovering true independent artists on their own, and voting with online views.
It’s how music used to get popular, and how it should have been all along. As for piracy, I don’t pirate anything unless A) it’s not offered and B) it’s not offered for a reasonable price. The bottom line is this: I’m lazy. So if you make it easy and cheap for me to get your product, I’ll get it the legal way because that’s usually easier. But if you make your customers sign up for mailing lists, update software indefinitely, install DMCA controls and all this other bullshit, guess what? You just lost a customer to a pirate.
DoM: Do you listen to Swashbuckle? They’re also pirates.
Maddox: I do now. How the fuck did I miss this?
DoM: You seem to be a bit like me when it comes to metal. You don’t feel you need to dress/look a certain way to be able to listen to this type of music, right? What do you think about all the cliched metalheads who are probably reading (or writing for) this website?
Maddox: I don’t like to look like a stereotype. I don’t broadcast the kind of cereal I eat by dressing a certain way, either.
DoM: If you could only take three metal albums with you on a very long trip, what would those albums be?
Maddox:
1. Pantera – Far Beyond Driven
2. Sepultura – Chaos A.D.
3. Slayer – Illusion
DoM: If you were to meet Hugh Hefner, would you wear your ‘Boners rule’ tshirt to spite him?
Maddox: I can’t imagine a scenario in which a shirt proclaiming the awesomeness of boners would offend Mr. Hefner.
DoM: What do you think of our site? It kicks ass, doesn’t it?
Maddox: Not bad, could use a new logo. Hmm… where did I see one?
DoM: Do you have any advice for us?
Maddox: To the unemployed metalheads. My advice is:
1. Get a job.
2. Integrate.
Nothing like injecting a dose of metal where people least expect it to liven things up. Sneak that shit in under the radar. If you want to spike a wedding playlist with 32 tracks of metal, you need to look like you belong there so people don’t suspect it’s you. Or just do it anyway and answer queries with punches.
DoM: Last but not least, if you could sum up this interview in two words, what would those words be?
Maddox: The two words that best describe this interview are: success & adventure.
DoM: Thanks for your time!
Don’t forget to check out Maddox on Facebook, he posts a lot of photos of himself kicking ass. That’s where we stole got the photos in this article from.
