My Guest post is up.

Afternoon all.

As promised, here's the link to my guest post over at Mike's Daily Jukebox
http://mikesdailyjukebox.com/metal-monday-guest-blog-featuring-judas-priest-skin-furyon-and-nazareth/
As you can see, I picked a fairly varied selection. Pop over and say hi.  There's a pretty good chance you'll find some other cool stuff too.

The Metal Project: 2012 (Part 2)

The Metal Project: Finding Metal Songs With Metal In The Title -  All of Them.

Just Because.

We continue our look at songs from 2012. Enjoy.

Abductor - Adictos Al Metal (Colombia)

(Enthusiastic Thrash)

Honour to: Abductor MetalMedallo

 http://www.myspace.com/abductor-medellin

And here's something a bit more traditional...

Arkanos - Mi Inferna Ley, El Heavy Metal Es (Bolivia)

Honour to: sergioledez666

It depresses me that there's nowhere near enough songs 

coming from the UK. We invented Metal, dammit.

Enter stage left, Blaze Bayley flying the flag and in a belligerent mood.

Blaze Bayley - The King Of Metal (UK)

Honour to: MegaMaiden90

Cursed Slaughter - Metal Moshing Thrash Machine (Brazil)

(I wish I knew more about Thrash -  Exodus territory, maybe?

Feel free to tell me if  that's wrong.

Preferably without using the  words "Faggot" or "Poser")

Honour to: cursedofficial

Kalevala - Folk Metal, Baby (Italy)

(The intro might have you wondering if I posted the right song

but stick with it. Music to get very drunk to.)

Honour to: vizigot037

Whereas this song is music to play while smashing stuff up

Obsessor - Speed Metal Slaughter (Germany)

Honour to: HeavyMetalSturmtrupp

Seax - High On Metal (USA)

(Enthusiastic  NWOBHM fans)

Honour to:  surfnroxx

Homepage: www.facebook.com/seaxmetal

A seax is an Anglo-Saxon machete/sword/knife thingie, if you're wondering. 

Steel Sentinel - Feel The Power Of Metal (Demo-Mexico)

Describe themselves as NWOTHM  - New Wave Of Traditional Heavy Metal-

which pretty much covers it. 

Honour to: torxk

Zarpa - En La Rueda Del Metal (Spain)

(Relentless, Teutonic style Power Metal -Except played by Spaniards.

Quite well, actually.)

Honour to: Siroco80

That's it for now.

By my reckoning, todays post pushes the total number of 

songs I've done  past the 900 mark.

Wow...just...wow.

I honestly didn't expect there to be that many. 

Anyway, see you soon for more of the same.

My First Ever Guest Blog! (+ A Blatant Plug)

  Mike over at Mike's Daily Jukebox asked me if I wouldn't mind doing a guest post over at his site. Naturally I said "Hell yes!"

 It's going to be up on Monday and I will post a link but in the meantime, if you're looking for a good daily source of music, go check out http://mikesdailyjukebox.com/
 He posts three tracks daily and depending on the days theme you could get anything from "Unlikely Duets", "Videos With Dogs In Them" "Bands with Repeated Names" or y'know, just some good songs. 

The Metal Project : 2012 (Part One)

The Metal Project is what happens when somebody wonders "How many metal songs on Youtube actually have Metal in the title?"

 The answer, as we have seen, is "Lots"

 2012 saw two events dumped from the UK festival calendar. The Sonisphere Festival had already announced headliners Kiss, Faith No More and Queen before pulling the plug. Meanwhile the High Voltage team decided that trying to compete with the Olympics was a bad move and put the festival on hold. As I write this, there's still no sign of a 2013 edition.
 Queensryche surprised nobody by finally shattering into two warring camps - Geoff Tate vs everybody not called Geoff Tate. According to some sources, a backstage incident led to Tate pulling a knife on another bandmember, at which point his colleagues decided they didn't want to be around him anymore.
 Last time I checked, there was a definite possibility of two different versions of Queensryche touring in 2013 and lawyers were doing The Happy Dance in anticipation of a long, lucrative court battle.
  Nightwish also parted company with their lead singer in controversial circumstances. While on tour, Annette Olzon was unable to perform one night thanks to illness. The band elected to play the show anyway by drafting in a couple of young ladies from the support acts. Annette was less-than-thrilled about this and said so. Shortly afterwards Annette Olzon was joining Tarja Turunen in the file marked "Used to sing for Nightwish" and Floor Jansen, statuesque Revamp vocalist, was flying out to fill in for the rest of the world tour.  
 And finally, Jon Lord, one of the founding fathers of this whole wonderful music scene, passed away. 

 Jon Lord 1941-2012. 

RIP

 Time for some songs. Again, I'm splitting these over three separate posts

Buffalo Theory MTL - Du Metal (Canada)

(Stoner Metal with a definite groove to it)

Honour to: MrStonebeliever

Thrashera - Only For Heavy Metal (Brazil)

(Rough & Ready Speed Metal) 

Honour to: Thrashra666999 

M-Pire Of Evil - Metal Messiah (UK)

(Features 3 ex-members of Venom - although there's a definite hint of Priest)

Honour to: HeavyMetalMaidenHell

Roar - Metal Or Death (Spain)

(More heads-down stuff. With a random bit of slap-bass in the middle.)

Honour to: Roarmetal 

Wrathblade - In Metal We trust (Greece) 

(If you know The Lord Weird Slough Feg this 
is sort of similar - vocals especially.
 If you have no idea what I'm talking about then they're 
trad metal with a touch of quirky and groovy)

Honour to: Windrider1986

And now something from the darker side of Metal

Tanathus - Alcoholic Thrash Black Metal (Colombia)

You just know that on a forum somewhere two metalheads are arguing over
 which bands are  "Real" Alcoholic Black Thrash Metal and 
which are just mainstream sellouts

Honour to: NoPosers666

Time for one from the ladies.

Hysterica - Force Of Metal (Sweden)

(Anthemic, chest-beating stuff perfect for headbanging.
I do like this one.)

Honour to: feinvictus

Seax - Metalhead (USA)

(NWOBHM- very)

Honour to: panzerhel

Band homepage: www.seaxmetal.com

This seems like a good song to end with.

Grave Digger - Metal Will Never Die (Germany)

Honour to: Chipsdevil

That's all folks. See you soon for more of the same.

Global Metal (2007)

"7 Countries, 3 Continents, 1 Tribe"

  This documentary begins with Canadian anthropologist/film-maker Sam Dunn surrounded by 60,000 jubilant headbangers at the Wacken festival. It ends with Dunn and 30,000 fans watching Iron Maiden's first-ever gig in India.

  In between, we travel to Brazil, Japan, China, India, Indonesia and Dubai, hoping to discover how and why Heavy Metal has made such an impact on fans worldwide.

  "Global Metal"can best be summed up with a series of vignettes

A Tokyo bar full of drunken salarymen singing along to "Highway Star"

Metallica playing a gig in Indonesia while outside rioting fans turn the city into an inferno.

The lead singer of an Israeli band pointing out that when people can suddenly blow themselves up right next to you, songs about demons don't seem quite so frightening
.
 The Indian resort hotel that has a Death Metal gig in one room and a Bollywood wedding in the next.

An Iranian fan standing next to the Slayer logo he's just painted on a wall.

The guitarist of Tang Dynasty explaining why the long haired look really works for Chinese men.   

  The two things that repeatedly come across in "Gobal Metal" are the way young men and women worldwide use Heavy Metal as a way of fighting back against conformity, poverty and repression. (A big issue in, say,  a nation that can have you jailed for wearing a black t-shirt) as well as the way fans worldwide don't just copy whatever comes out of The West but try and incorporate elements of their own culture and identity. (Visual Kei - a Japanese take on Metal is...interesting.)

  There are possibly too many of the standard travelogue shots - time-lapse traffic, Jumbo jets in flight, yada yada -  but Sam Dunn is a likeable protagonist, the interviews with bands and fans are fascinating and there's a certain enjoyment to be had in watching metalheads worldwide going nuts.

 Recommended if you like your Metal. If you don't like Metal but have always wondered if there's anything more to India's music scene than Bollywood pop and what happens when angry youngsters are exposed to  Western music, you might be pleasantly surprised:

How much did I pay for this?  About £15. And I had to order it from the USA because for some bullshit reason "Global Metal" never got a UK release.

Was it worth it: Definitely.

 Here's the Trailer if you're interested: 

 

And sometimes you hear about a gig turning into a riot. In this case, they're not kidding:

Why I Support Mens Rights

Why do I feel that somebody needs to raise the issues affecting men?


Because...Despite what people think, depression, stress and grief cannot be cured with the magic words "Man up"
Because ...The only way to get people to give a shit about prostate cancer -  a disease that kills thousands of men a year -  is to claim women are victims too.
Because...A man can get his dick cut off and stuck down a garbage disposal machine and tv hosts will call it "fabulous"
Because...Women attacking men is not only OK but is actively encouraged as some sort of bullshit "empowerment"
...But God forbid he should defend himself in any way shape or form.
Because...If the police turn up to a DV incident and get confronted with a man bleeding from a vase-inflicted cut to the forehead, they  will probably nick him instead.
Because..if a battered male tries to get help, most shelters and helplines don't want to know.
.. And a few will accuse him of being a batterer himself.
... And the media will laugh at him.
Because...Men have died at the hands of women, unable or unwilling to defend themselves.
Because... A female head teacher can get up in front of a national conference and tell them "There's no point in trying to teach boys anything. they're too stupid" and nobody will call her on it.
Because...Education has been failing boys all over the Anglosphere for years and the teaching industry cheerfully ignores them in favour of the pressing issue: Not enough girls wanting to be plumbers.
Because...Any job that is dirty, involves being away from home or could get you killed is almost invariably done by men.
..And somehow this makes them "privileged"
Because...A man can end up in prison purely because a woman regretted having sex.
Because... A male cabbie can almost end up in prison because a group of girls decided they weren't going to pay him.
Because...Male workers should not have to carry recording devices to protect themselves from false accusations.
Because..."Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply in rape cases or harassment accusations.
Because... In a divorce a  man can lose his home, his kids and his pension almost overnight.
Because... A man can be ordered to pay more in alimony and child-support than he earns.
Because... A man can be ordered to pay child support for a kid that isn't even his.
Because... A man can suddenly find himself a father despite being told she was taking birth control...
Because ...Every other month there's an article on the lines of  "Why aren't men getting married anymore? How dare they think they can devote time and money to stuff they want to do instead."
Because...Everytime I take my two little nieces to a playground, I'd like to do so without a gaggle of mums glaring at me.
Because...I resent this idea that the only thing stopping me from raping somebody is a two-colour poster.  
Because... Every time I turn on the Tv I get to watch yet another man bumbling through life, barely evolved from a starfish.

Because...I am so tired of people thinking I should be ashamed of having a penis.

Because..I would quite like to be able to say "Hey look, being a guy in the 21st Century isn't always fun" without being hammered with "patriarchy" "male privilege" "Centuries of oppression" "Womanhater" and 101 other variations on "Shut the fuck up you...you.. MAN, you

Terrible Metal Album Covers Chapter 11

Since I seem to be a bit out of ideas at the moment I shall fall back on my ever-reliable Plan B : Put up a selection of album covers that are an offence to Art, Music and the very gods themselves.

 And today's selection all have one thing in common. Somebody, somewhere thought this was "Sexy"

 Crystal Castle - October Hymns (Canada 2001)

  Because when I think of October I automatically picture an orange woman squatting 

over a clutch of pumpkins while being felt up by an ineptly drawn werewolf. 

Enforcer - Into The Night (Sweden 2008)

You can see where they thought they were going with this but the result is something 

that once seen, cannot be unseen. Congratulations guys, you just invented HP Lovecraft Porn. 

Wizz - Crazy Games (Sweden 1984)

From time to time valiant spacefarers would be lured to  the barren moon she called home.

Distracted by her clinging nightie and granny underwear they would notice too late 

that her face was only a badly-fitting mask. When it fell away, revealing the horror beneath,

their eyes would melt and she would drink their liquified brains through the sockets. 

We're still on Lovecraft porn aren't we? 

Sinful - Gonna Raise Hell EP (USA 1985)

For some reason I find myself  mentally stuck on the words "Cheap" and "Tacky"

Note that the bozos in the background are not chained to anything besides each other.  

Maninnya Blade - Merchants In Metal (Sweden 1986)

I will not make a joke about Rampant Rabbits...

I will not make a joke about Rampant Rabbits...

 I will not make a joke about Rampant Rabbits...

Moving swiftly on to something that  even by 80s standards was just wrong, wrong,wrong. 

Oral - Sex EP (UK 1985)

 

Three refugees from the Benny Hill Show try their hand at this "Metal" thing.

You know how I normally say a bad album cover does not mean a bad band?

Feel free to disregard that in this case. 

Dragonsfire - Metal Service (Germany 2010)

So what's the problem with this one.

The artist can actually draw...

He's given his covergirl proper clothes..

Ok so she doesn't look like the sharpest tool in the box but...

Wait..is she pregnant? 

Niiice.

And finally.

Iron Kingdom - Curse Of The Voodoo Queen (Canada 2011)

The curse being: You will forever suck at drawing faces.

That's all folks.  

I'm going to go off and..I dunno...read some books or something.

The Metal Project: Metal + Punk = Metalpunk!

The Metal Project began when I decided to see how many Metal songs I could find on Youtube that had "Metal" in the title. A 100-odd posts later, I'm not even close to being finished. 

 I'm going to take a break from the chronological posts for the moment to have a look down one of Heavy Metal's intriguing side alleys.
 Heavy Metal and Punk have always had people within each scene peering over the fence to see what the neighbours were doing and this has led to all sorts of cross-pollination: Thrash Metal, Hardcore, Grunge, Black Metal, Grindcore and certain of  the snottier LA Glam/Sleaze bands all resulted from fans taking a little from here and a little from there and seeing what crawled out of the incubation chamber.

Today's post is devoted to bands proudly wearing their Punk influences right alongside the Metal.  Some of them seem to be Punk bands playing Metal, others are Metal bands playing Punk and a few cheerfully describe themselves as "Metalpunk".
So if you want a no-nonsense racket with lashings of "F*** You" attitude, grab some cheap cider and step this way.

 Antichrist Hooligans - Heavy Metal Attack (Brazil 2009)

Honour to: diniz77

Crepusculo Maldito - Necro Metal Punks (Portugal 2010)

Honour to: PunkPtDiy

Hellcharger - Metal Punk Warriors (Mexico 2011)

Honour to: hellchargerMTY

Invierno Nuclear - Thrashing Metal Punk (Chile 2012-I think)

Honour to: suicinyyandel

Iron Fist - Metal Punk Mania  (Demo-USA 2012)

Honour to: Iron Fist

Massendefekt -Heavy Metal Superstar (Germany 2006)

(I suspect if I understood German this would turn out to be a Punk band

taking the piss. Screw it. it's a cool song regardless)

Honour to: boehserlumpi

Speedboozer - Metal Punk (USA 2012)

Honour to: Speedboozer

SubCaos - Metal Punx For Life (Portugal 2010)

Honour to: Proisse

The Ugly - Black Metal Punks (Sweden 2008)

Honour to: MuertePorNapalm

Tiger Junkies - Metal Punk (Japan 2008)

Honour to: felopunk

And finally, a song from Devin Townsend's 1996 Punk project.

 Punky Bruster - Metalheads Are Punk Rockers (Canada 1996)

Honour to: NihilSubSole

If you happen to be after a bit more info on Metalpunk, the latest edition of Iron Fist magazine isn't a bad place to start. I'll freely admit that their article gave me the idea for this selection of songs. 

Link is here: http://www.ironfistmag.com/

The Art Of Women's Wrestling: Some more pics for you.

I've had a few wrestling pics loitering about my "Pics for Blog" folder for a while so I thought I'd put them up. Hope you like them.

Starting with one of the first comics to feature women wrestlers.

(Fight Comics, USA - somewhere in the 1940s)

Which I found here: Digital Comic Museum

Cheapo DVD Review: Gladiator Cop (1995)

Starring:

Lorenzo Lamas 

James Hong

Frank Anderson

George Touliatos

Christopher Lee Clements

Claire Stansfield

and

Rather a lot of men with big muscles

  A legendary sword once owned by Alexander the Great is stolen from a museum by persons unknown.

 Meanwhile burly men are turning up dead with wounds apparently made by a really, big sharp knife.

 Andrew Garrett, a cop with certain...abilities and really nice hair, finds himself pursuing the sword into the shadowy world of underground death matches.

  And does the sword have anything to do with the really vivid dreams he's been having lately...

The Metal Project: 2011 (part 3)

The Metal project:  Gathering up every song on Youtube that has "Metal" in the title. Unless it's by somebody who isn't actually a Metal band. I might post "Heavy Metal Poisoning" by Styx at some point, though. That song rocks.
 In which I post a final selection of Metal songs from 2011 before moving on to fresh hunting grounds.  I hope, as always, you find something to like.

We shall begin with a music genre I'd never even heard of before this: UnBlack Metal

I won't lie to you. This is not easy to listen to. 

 Bedeiah - Blood Metal (USA)

(Christian Black Metal, basically.

Which does seem a weird concept but ...whatever)

Honour to: 182tommy182

Something a bit more traditional...and tuneful next.

Erase - Metal Force (Greece)

Honour to: Erasegreece

Band homepage here: www.myspace.com/erasegreece

Kronos - Guerreros Del Metal (Costa Rica)

(Very 80s sounding in that distinctive Spanish/ South American way -

lolloping guitars and rough-edged vocals)

Honour to; SirDeka12

Is lolloping even a word?

Metalholic - Lei Do Metal (Brazil)

(No frills Trad Metal)

Honour to: BestialAven6er

There seems to be a bit of debate as to whether this next album came out in 2011 or 2012

Youtube says 2012,  Metal Archives says 2011 so I'll go with the latter.

Obsessor - Satanik Metal Overkill (Germany)

(Rough & ready Black/Thrash)

Honour to;  HeavyMetalSturmtrupp

Revenge -Speed Metal To The Bone (Colombia)

(Starts slow but then accelerates to neckbreaking speed)

Honour to: TRUEMETAL826

Rocka Rollas - Metal of Steel (Sweden)

(I'm not sure if this lot are taking the piss or not. Fun though)

Honour to: speedriider

And now for something I don't think I've posted before-

Rap Metal gets a lot of flak ( most of it utterly deserved)

but you know what, I rather like this one

Stillwell - Street Metal (USA)

Honour to: StreetMetalMusic

T.I.R - Metal in My Life (Italy)

(At the risk of sounding dense - am I the only

one who thought these guys are singing in Spanish?) 

Honour to: TheSteel91

And finally, just for the hell of it, here's an instrumental.

Watcher In The Sky - Dean Of Metal (Greece)

Honour to: TheDarknez1994