This week’s playlist

Have you ever wondered what we’ve been busy blasting here at the Dose of Metal office? Of course you haven’t, we don’t even have an office, but that doesn’t mean we can’t review some new metal tracks for you, and let you readers know what’s been hogging our stereo.

This week I decided to do something I rarely do – actually check out some new music. I sometimes get so caught up in my own ways, listening to the same bands over again, that I forget their is a wealth of other music out there.

Since this week’s feature is the first, I’m going to review some new tracks from the last month or so, but from next week I’m going to keep it to mainly just new tracks released in that given week. But enough about that, let’s just get on with it shall we? Make the motherflipping jump before I pop a cap in your ass.

A metalhead’s first album

What is a metalhead? What makes a metalhead, a metalhead? What is metal? These are all questions we, from time to time, have to ask, and the answers are never quite clear. These are things that Alex has slightly touched upon in his latest DoM entrée, but one thing I’ve been thinking about lately, is why do metalhead’s always name insanely cool albums as their “first album”?

Now don’t get me wrong, I cannot pretend this rant is deep, philosophical, or even interesting for that matter, but it is something that has been bugging me for a while now.

Have you ever seen on internet forums topics about what users first album they bought was? Or maybe you’ve had this conversation with friends in real life? A lot of people name classic, even legendary albums. Led Zeppelin IV, Black Sabbath, Master of Puppets, Peace Sells…, and you get the idea. I have even seen this discussion in magazines with members of popular bands, in which their answers are nearly always the same.

Do these people have selective memory, perhaps? Are they telling the truth? Maybe they loved metal since the moment they were born and never got into any of that power rangers, teletubby or dance crap that kids naturally find appealing at an early age. To me, it just seems like people claiming their first fuck was with a Pamela Anderson look-alike, when deep down we all know it was that drunk chick that looked like she had consumed 12 too many cheese burgers.

So this brings the topic to myself. “What was my first album?” you are probably not wondering. Well, it was something so insanely brutal, extreme and heavy that it brought great concern to my parents in regards to my mental health. I’m talking about an album that inspired violence and redefined what exactly metal is. If you want to know what the first album I ever bought was, then just make the jump.

Review: Colonel Blast – For The Greater Good

Maybe you remember my review, from back in May, about the Split Roast album. A split album that contained five Death Metal bands from the UK. One of them were Colonel Blast.

I was highly impressed with the two songs of Colonel Blast back then, and hoped for the band to send me their debut album for review purposes. They didn’t, so I bought it. Usually if the band doesn’t care to send me promos for a review, I just don’t give a crap about them anymore. If they don’t want the promotion from our site, I won’t force it upon them. It’s their loss. But I found myself going back to listen to the Split Roast, just to listen to Colonel Blast, multiple times. So I decided to just buy the album and then write about it. And that’s where we are today.

If you have listened to the Split Roast yourself, keep in mind that Colonel Blast feature a different line-up on their debut album. Their original vocalist, Matt Bolton, left the band after the release of their first album to move to New York. Make the jump to read my review of Matt Bolton’s only recorded work with Colonel Blast: For The Greater Good.

Back when they were still good

I stumbled on this video, and for a moment felt like sharing it as ‘Back when they were still good: Sepultura,’ but then I remembered that Sepultura is still fucking awesome in my book. So, why post it? Just look at the crowd. Compare that to any clip you’ll find today with a bunch of tweens capturing the memory of the show they’re in on their precious iPhones. What the fuck will you recall when you look at those clips when you watch them afterwards? How you’ve spent the night standing like a zombie and looking at the show through a fucking cellphone?

Compare that to the clip above: Show takes place at something that looks like an abandoned warehouse. Metal? Check. Crazy circle pit that doesn’t stop for 7+ minutes of this video? Check. Crazy wreckless head stagediving? Check. Bunch of Mexicans creating fucking memories? Check.

Sure, there weren’t any cellphones to tape with back then, but… fuck you. You still look like a tool.

Thou shalt not be bored by this boring rant

They say you’re only as good as the company you keep, so considering what my fellow DoM writers are like, I’m fucked.

But why do we run this site? Is it for the money? Not really, because we hardly make any… So if it’s not a job, what is it? A hobby? A way to kill time? An obsession? A little bit of everything?

I really don’t know, cause if I’m honest, I don’t even consider myself a proper metalhead. I hate a lot of metal subgenres, especially those where the vocals sound like a bear coughing up a hairball. So do I really love writing about metal? Nope. So why do I do it? I have no clue.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all of my favorite bands are metal, or at least WERE metal in the 80s, but I just don’t consider myself part of this metalhead clique. I shower, I don’t wear band shirts, don’t wear camo pants (unless I play paintball or airsoft with my friends, which is totally anti-metal in and of itself). My head is the only thing that looks slightly metal. Metal head. Get it? Fuck you.

Anyway, I hate going to the barbershop so I simply shave my head, wait for it to grow a couple of weeks, then shave it again, and so on. Sometimes I shave it with a razor.  I also wear a goatee. Most of the time, I sport the Phil Anselmo ’92 look (with a bit of his 2000 look, since I also drink a lot — and eat). So my head kinda looks metal, but that’s it.

So if I’m not a metalhead, what am I? I definitely hate most genres out there. I get mad at the term ‘nu-metal’ for having metal in it, which is dumb. It’s like calling Hitler ‘nu-tolerant.’ So I can’t pigeonhole myself into a certain genre or subgenre, I guess I just like music.

Then what the fuck am I doing on a site called Dose of Metal? Why am I not running a site that handles a bit more than just metal? It probably has something to do with the way we started this thing, so keep on reading to find out…