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848 results for “pyOpenSci”
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It's time for another #NDDoodle!
@northdeltaart has a knack for picking prompts that match up with whatever I've been thinking about lately.This time the #NDD5 #ArtPrompt is #Pumpkin. I noticed recently that Tomie dePaola, the fantastic #KidLit author/illustrator, has a propensity for pumpkins! Here are my #watercolor pumpkins from two of his books.
#mastoArt #Watercolour #CatsOfMastodon #KidLitArt #Halloween #TomiedePaola
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echinoids have been found in archaeological sites in southern England from Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages, through Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon times, indicating that humans have long had a propensity for collecting these fossils #fossilhunting
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echinoids have been found in archaeological sites in southern England from Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages, through Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon times, indicating that humans have long had a propensity for collecting these fossils #fossilhunting
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@bhahne @jensorensen Thanks for sharing, I’ve never heard it named before. We see the same phenomenon from irresponsible right-wing parties in Europe as well. Being able to refer to it by the name “Murc’s Law” is helpful!
Taken to the extreme, this propensity to blame the other side for your own bad behaviour is like the following amazing comic by Matt Bors: “Fault Right”.
https://thenib.com/fault-right/
#Fault #Right #MattBors #TheNib #Nazi #Nazism #MurcsLaw #Politics
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@bhahne @jensorensen Thanks for sharing, I’ve never heard it named before. We see the same phenomenon from irresponsible right-wing parties in Europe as well. Being able to refer to it by the name “Murc’s Law” is helpful!
Taken to the extreme, this propensity to blame the other side for your own bad behaviour is like the following amazing comic by Matt Bors: “Fault Right”.
https://thenib.com/fault-right/
#Fault #Right #MattBors #TheNib #Nazi #Nazism #MurcsLaw #Politics
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@bhahne @jensorensen Thanks for sharing, I’ve never heard it named before. We see the same phenomenon from irresponsible right-wing parties in Europe as well. Being able to refer to it by the name “Murc’s Law” is helpful!
Taken to the extreme, this propensity to blame the other side for your own bad behaviour is like the following amazing comic by Matt Bors: “Fault Right”.
https://thenib.com/fault-right/
#Fault #Right #MattBors #TheNib #Nazi #Nazism #MurcsLaw #Politics
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@bhahne @jensorensen Thanks for sharing, I’ve never heard it named before. We see the same phenomenon from irresponsible right-wing parties in Europe as well. Being able to refer to it by the name “Murc’s Law” is helpful!
Taken to the extreme, this propensity to blame the other side for your own bad behaviour is like the following amazing comic by Matt Bors: “Fault Right”.
https://thenib.com/fault-right/
#Fault #Right #MattBors #TheNib #Nazi #Nazism #MurcsLaw #Politics
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Amis de #Paris !
Aujourd'hui c'est le grand #bal de l'#AERI, et on y sera vers 17h (heure SNCF) avec le #Poulet !
Viens donc découvrir la thèse du Prof Hassan Balelo a propos de la grande question "Que faire d'un poulet lorsqu'il présente une forte propension à l’agressivité envers ses congénères ?"N'oubliez pas vos stylos, et surtout prenez vos papiers (pour prendre des notes), le poulet sera saigné car les mots filent.
Retrouvez le taezer de ce cours spectaculaire : https://tube.interhacker.space/w/kw2NuhCnjQfc8xDGBaGV2r
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Il linguaggio della guerra
Un ottimo articolo di Annamaria Manzoni su un importante argomento già trattato in passato su Veganzetta e purtroppo ancora attualissimo al giorno d’oggi: la degradazione del nemico umano per “ridurlo” a semplice Animale (ultimo gradino della nostra scala gerarchica dei senzienti) e in quanto tale poterlo perseguitare, colpire, sterminare senza remore morali. Ancora una volta la discriminazione specista degli Animali ci mostra il suo volto violento e funzionale alla nostra enorme propensione alla devastazione e al dominio, a partire proprio dallo stesso concetto distorto di Animale usato anche nei conflitti umani per insultare o degradare il nemico.
#gaza #israele #animaliguerra #specismo -
New paper from my old group:
Long-read genome assemblies of 33 species of eucalypt (gum tree) from across Australia, encompassing ~70My of evolution. Key finding: macrosynteny is preserved, but microsynteny rampantly disrupted. Cool result given the propensity for inter-specific hybridization and gene flow.
Preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.19.537464v1
Feel free to reach out with any Q's!#preprint #genome #trees #eucalyptus #genomics #genomeassembly #biorxiv #botany #synteny #structuralvariation
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#hypergamy is an important feature of #mating patterns in #Norway.
women are, on average, likely to mate with men of higher economic and social status than themselves. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as hypergamy, and it may imply that husbands tend to have higher human capital than wives
fertility mechanism implies that a higher fraction of women marry, higher fraction of men marry twice, and that the marriage propensity ..
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CW: Falwell not being very christian
Falwell’s Downfall: The Pool Boy’s Story - The Bulwark https://www.thebulwark.com/the-pool-attendants-version/
#ChristianHypocrisy
#ChristianGOP"In 2018, a real estate–related lawsuit in Miami attracted the attention of a Buzzfeed News reporter, who was intrigued to find then–Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. sharing his previously-reported ownership of a local hostel with a pool attendant named Giancarlo Granda. That story marked the beginning of a yearslong scandal that culminated in Falwell—a major Donald Trump ally whose endorsement helped move the needle among evangelicals for the former president’s 2016 campaign—outed as a cuckold, a secret alcoholic, and a cynic about his professed Christian faith. Falwell resigned from Liberty University under pressure in August 2020, embarrassing the school’s board, who had offered Falwell a free reign and their unqualified support for more than a decade.
...making the Falwells’ denials even harder to believe. Granda himself is a likable and winning narrator of the scandal, frank and unforced in his interviews. Having been a supporting player in earlier versions of the story that centered on the prominent evangelical couple, Granda’s comments add nuance to the story and emphasize the significant power differential between himself and the Falwells. It is impossible, for example, to forget his youth: Granda was only 20 years old when he met them. What 20-year-old in Granda’s situation would have known what they were getting themselves into? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the couple knew just what they were doing when they invited him into their complicated lives.
In March 2012, Granda was working poolside at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami when, as he tells it, Becki Falwell, a guest who had been ogling him, asked him to come by her room later—and in case the purpose wasn’t clear enough, she mentioned that her husband would want to watch. Making arrangements from a blocked number later that day, Becki invited Granda to meet at a nearby Days Inn to make sure their liaison wouldn’t happen at the same hotel where their kids were staying. Granda alleges that Jerry was waiting with pants unzipped when Becki welcomed him into the room. The encounter would mark the beginning of an alleged six-year-long affair that saw Granda joining the family on vacations and becoming well known to the Falwells’ children, who unassumingly joked about Becki’s propensity for disappearing during their trips.
The relationship was a personal boon for Granda, who benefitted materially and socially from his connection to the Falwell family. He stayed at their Lynchburg farm, traveled frequently with them, and met numerous members of their larger circle. In September 2012, only six months after he first met Becki, Granda was on campus at Liberty when he met Donald Trump.
The aforementioned business deal, which gave Granda a 25 percent equity stake in the Miami hostel, would come about in 2013, the result of Falwell’s offers to help Granda financially and jumpstart his career. Details of Granda’s affair with Falwells were first hinted at when a local real estate broker refiled a previously dismissed claim in August 2017 against Granda’s stake in the hostel that named both Granda and Falwell.
At the time of the original filing two years earlier, the broker’s lawyer privately alleged to Granda that he had compromising photos of Granda and Becki, which led to Granda asking for help from Jerry, who reached out to Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s lawyer/“fixer.” Cohen intervened and took possession of the photos as a favor—he had known the Falwells since 2011—then called in the favor by pushing Falwell to endorse Trump in the 2016 election. Falwell would then become a staunch Trump ally and defender amid the latter’s moral crises, including the publication of the Access Hollywood tape, and he helped consolidate evangelical support for Trump’s campaign. Corben makes sure the viewer understands the import of this by heavy-handedly interspersing Falwell’s increasingly volatile remarks with footage of Trump’s scandalous actions and behaviors while in office, as though to say: See, evangelical hypocrisy is why we are at risk of losing our democracy!
While Falwell’s wholehearted embrace, under threat of scandal, of Donald Trump may have influenced the 2016 election, this focus on grand, simple narratives prevents Corben from entering more deeply into the strange and fraught realities of the Falwell story. These were especially apparent to those of us who were on campus to see how that story played out in real time."
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Nel 1956 il numero di emigrati italiani verso paesi esteri superò le 200.000 unità
Con il passare del tempo però, si ripresentarono negli ambienti di governo preoccupazioni e perplessità riguardo il futuro del paese. Si cominciarono a ripresentare motivi di forte instabilità; nel giugno del 1953 fallì la legge elettorale maggioritaria, intesa a premiare i partiti della coalizione governativa, e contemporaneamente la figura di De Gasperi venne a mancare, colui che aveva fermamente guidato il paese sulla via della democrazia. Ci si domandò fino a quando avrebbero continuato ad agire alcuni fattori che resero possibile la ricostruzione economica e la restaurazione delle finanze pubbliche; se non si fosse ormai esaurita la spinta nei confronti dell’economia italiana dal recupero nell’epoca post conflitto degli impianti non totalmente utilizzati, dalla ripresa dell’agricoltura e dall’aiuto straordinario apportato dai prestiti americani. A contribuire fortemente a destare perplessità e preoccupazioni era il disavanzo della bilancia commerciale, che registrava saldi positivi solo nei confronti della Germania occidentale e la Svizzera.
Frutto di queste perplessità fu lo “Schema Vanoni”, una politica di piano condivisa alla fine del 1954. Lo Schema varato mirava al raggiungimento di alcuni fondamentali obiettivi nel corso di un decennio e sulla base di una crescita media annua del prodotto interno lordo del 5 per cento. <33 Gli obiettivi fondamentali si possono riassumere nella creazione di quattro milioni di nuovi posti di lavoro nei settori extragricoli, la riduzione del divario fra Nord e Sud del paese e il raggiungimento dell’equilibrio nella bilancia dei pagamenti. Per raggiungere tali obiettivi si rendeva necessario un ingente volume di capitali per favorire l’aumento degli investimenti industriali tramite la formazione di importanti risparmi. Il tutto era particolarmente improbabile, per questo si fece leva sull’espansione dell’edilizia e dei lavori pubblici come principale elemento propulsivo al fine di aumentare l’occupazione, nonché su un massiccio intervento dello Stato al fine di diversificare l’allocazione territoriale delle risorse e di imprimere un impulso agli investimenti. Nel contempo, si sottovalutarono l’incidenza che avrebbero avuto gli aumenti della produttività del lavoro, gli effetti del progresso tecnologico e organizzativo e le economie di scala che si sarebbero generate dallo sviluppo della domanda. <34 Lo Schema Vanoni promuoveva perciò un processo di graduale evoluzione.
In quegli anni l’economia italiana giovò del cambiamento politico-economico, a ragione di chi riteneva che il Paese sarebbe cresciuto vertiginosamente con l’intensificazione degli sforzi a favore di un maggiore accesso a una più vasta area di scambi. La transizione dall’economia autarchica ereditata dal periodo fascista, ad un tipo di economia liberista improntata agli scambi commerciali con gli altri paesi, si stava gradualmente compiendo.
I benefici della liberalizzazione degli scambi
Analizzando la decisione italiana di procedere verso un tipo di economia aperta da un punto di vista puramente teorico, i benefici ricercati, come dimostrato nel corso degli anni, erano sostanzialmente quattro: libero scambio ed efficienza, economie di scala nella produzione, incentivi all’innovazione e all’apprendimento, e intensificazione della concorrenza. Come visto, i dati di crescita dell’economia italiana furono più che positivi, questo perché analizzando il primo beneficio, lo spostamento da un equilibrio con dazi, ad uno con liberi scambi, elimina la perdita di efficienza e accresce il benessere nazionale. Vedendo nello specifico il secondo punto, l’Italia beneficiando di economie di scala, oltre ad aver aumentato la quantità di scambi internazionali, poté giovare di una maggiore disponibilità di varietà a prezzi inferiori. Aumentando gli scambi esteri, l’industria italiana, ebbe la possibilità di misurarsi con le migliori economie occidentali, e ciò ovviamente portò indubbi incentivi all’innovazione e all’apprendimento. Inoltre, gli imprenditori locali sono stimolati a ricercare nuovi mercati per le proprie esportazioni e a difendersi dalla concorrenza delle esportazioni. Questi vantaggi del libero scambio sono spesso chiamati “dinamici”, dato che un’intensificazione della concorrenza e del ritmo di innovazione può richiedere più tempo per manifestare i propri effetti, rispetto all’eliminazione delle distorsioni nella produzione e nel consumo. <35
Vedendo nello specifico il caso italiano, l’età degasperiana, nel 1953, finì insieme al modificarsi dello schema di politica economica temperata che l’aveva contraddistinta. Subentrò a De Gasperi come presidente del Consiglio, in seguito alla sconfitta elettorale della Democrazia cristiana nelle elezioni politiche del 7 giugno 1953, Giuseppe Pella. Pella, molto vicino a Luigi Einaudi, era un forte sostenitore del principio di libertà economica e, perciò, contrario all’interventismo statale, senza però disprezzare qualche lavoro pubblico dovuto ai sovrappiù prodotti dalle aziende. Da un certo punto di vista si potrebbe definire Pella un “monetarista”, in quanto assertore della teoria secondo cui con il controllo dell’offerta di moneta si sarebbe potuto controllare l’aumento del livello generale dei prezzi; i medesimi orientamenti erano condivisi anche da Donato Menichella, divenuto governatore della Banca d’Italia, in seguito all’elezione di Einaudi come presidente della Repubblica nel 1948.
Questo il quadro politico italiano. Italia che tra il 1955 e il 1963 conobbe una fase espansiva senza precedenti, anche se si ritiene che lo sviluppo industriale cominciò già dal 1953. Gli investimenti nell’industria manifatturiera fermi in media al 4,5 per cento del reddito nazionale lordo, salirono nel 1956 al 5,2 per cento, per poi culminare al 6,3 per cento tra il 1962 e il 1963. Il valore aggiunto passò invece nel decennio successivo al 1953, dal 20,6 per cento al 27,6 per cento. <36 Il prodotto dell’industria complessivamente si avvicinò a un indice pari al 47 per cento nella formazione del prodotto lordo privato, mentre il reddito nazionale crebbe con un saggio di aumento annuo del 5,8 per cento.
La bilancia dei pagamenti precedentemente in notevole disavanzo, registrò notevoli miglioramenti; da un disavanzo di 343 milioni di dollari nel 1952 si passò a un avanzo di 745 milioni nel 1959.
Attraverso questi miglioramenti ed altri fattori chiave nel processo di sviluppo industriale, l’Italia si inserì nel movimento ascendente dell’economia europea. Sul finire dell’anno 1962 il saggio di sviluppo italiano era inferiore solo a quello tedesco ed ampiamente superiore ai tassi di crescita di ogni altro paese dell’Europa occidentale. Già negli anni precedenti l’Italia aveva dato segnali di superbi miglioramenti, tant’è che nel decennio fra il 1950 e il 1961 il prodotto lordo nazionale registrò un aumento medio del 6,7 per cento. L’Italia grazie a questa miracolosa fase espansiva riuscì a ridurre sensibilmente il divario rispetto alle maggiori economie occidentali; ridusse il distacco di partenza che perdurava da fine Ottocento con l’Inghilterra, la Germania e la Francia, e superò economie migliori come quelle belga, olandese e svedese. Nel 1962, siderurgia, meccanica, chimica ed elettricità, i quattro settori principali del paese, rappresentavano in Italia il 16,1 per cento dell’offerta finale complessiva rispetto al 23,3 per cento in Germania e al 19,3 per cento in Francia.
Furono molti i fattori ad incidere in questa straordinaria espansione, avvenuta in una situazione di profitti crescenti, senza sensibili movimenti inflazionistici, e con un costante aumento del saldo dei conti con l’estero. Probabilmente il fattore dominante, al quale attribuire l’avvio del processo di rapido sviluppo degli anni Cinquanta, nonostante opinioni contrastanti, fu l’espansione veloce delle esportazioni, agevolata dalla progressiva liberalizzazione degli scambi. L’effetto trainante delle esportazioni, secondo alcuni invece, si vide in misura massiccia solo dopo il 1955. Tali esperti, come Silva, Targetti e Rey, osservarono che tale effetto appunto, agì solo su un numero limitato di settori produttivi (l’industria automobilistica, i prodotti petroliferi, alcuni prodotti tessili, le calzature, la gomma). Secondo questa teoria, a trascinare l’Italia sarebbe stata la spesa pubblica, soprattutto in agricoltura, nell’edilizia e nei trasporti. Negli anni più recenti, invece, esperti come Kregel e Grilli hanno osservato come l’andamento favorevole della bilancia dei pagamenti italiana, che rese possibile un veloce aumento degli investimenti senza creare un disavanzo nei conti con l’estero, fosse connesso all’andamento più che positivo delle ragioni di scambio internazionali, che dava all’economia italiana la possibilità di acquisire materie prime e semilavorati a costi reali decrescenti. Secondo Castronovo invece, il fattore trainante fu la presenza simultanea di condizioni favorevoli quali salari bassi, ampie possibilità di autofinanziamento, bassa conflittualità operaia e un forte arretramento tecnologico, che consentì rapidi aumenti di produttività. Rimanendo su questa teoria, è facile notare come l’industria italiana fece leva su una rilevante ed elastica offerta di braccia per contenere, o calmierare di volta in volta, la domanda salariale e per tenere comunque sotto controllo le vertenze sindacali. <37 Non mancarono, ovviamente, in quegli anni alcuni miglioramenti nell’assetto delle retribuzioni; ma in termini reali gli indici dei salari rimasero pressoché stazionari fra il 1950 e il 1954 e fra il 1956 e il 1961, e a livelli in ogni caso inferiori agli aumenti di produttività. <38 Secondo i calcoli della Banca d’Italia, a un incremento dei salari pari fra il 1953 e il 1961 al 46,9 per cento corrispose una crescita media della produttività dell’84 per cento. Stando alle stime dell’economista americano Stern, l’incremento delle esportazioni italiane fra il 1955 e il 1963 fu dovuto, per quasi il 60 per cento, alla maggiore competitività resa possibile soprattutto dallo scarto fra aumento della produttività e aumento dei costi di lavoro. <39
Nonostante idee e teorie differenti il tema delle esportazioni rimane centrale. La struttura della produzione italiana si ritrovò forzata a seguire l’orientamento che le imprimeva la domanda proveniente dai paesi europei in fase di avanzata industrializzazione. La domanda proveniente dai paesi con un’elevata industrializzazione era un tipo di domanda caratterizzata da beni di consumo di massa e da beni di lusso. Questo tipo di domanda, propria di società caratterizzate da livelli di reddito elevati, forzò l’Italia a fare largo spazio alla produzione di beni di consumo di massa e beni di lusso.
Contemporaneamente mentre l’industria italiana entrò a far parte di quel sistema di economie caratterizzate dalla produzione di massa di beni di consumo durevoli, le altre economie europee e i loro sistemi industriali passarono a produzioni ancora più avanzate. La modernizzazione servì sostanzialmente a mantenere inalterato il distacco dalle altre economie avanzate; nel frattempo nel quadro dell’industria mondiale, le produzioni italiane continuarono a ruotare attorno ai settori con una tecnologia relativamente semplice.
L’apertura degli scambi con l’estero connessa alla necessità di sviluppare una corrente di esportazioni orientata verso i mercati dei paesi industrializzati, diede luogo alla formazione di una struttura produttiva suddivisa in due settori ben distinti; si trattava di due settori caratterizzati ognuno da tecnologie proprie, il primo settore era rappresentato dalle industrie esportatrice, mentre il secondo da attività produttive orientate prevalentemente verso il mercato interno.
Il reddito nazionale subì una vertiginosa crescita, come detto; l’espansione degli investimenti ne fu la componente più dinamica, crescendo a tassi elevati in tutti i settori. <40 Fra il 1951 e il 1962 il tasso di aumento degli investimenti globali a prezzi correnti sfiorò il 10 per cento annuo. La distribuzione dei redditi cambiò a favore dei redditi d’impresa rispetto a quelli da lavoro, con la conseguenza che l’incremento degli investimenti non diede luogo a un uguale aumento della domanda globale. Perciò la propensione media ai consumi da parte della società si ridusse, essendo i percettori di redditi da lavoro i più inclini al consumo, a differenza dei percettori di redditi d’impresa. La diretta conseguenza di tale situazione fu la contrazione dei consumi collettivi, avendo meno frazioni di reddito coloro che erano portati a consumare di più rispetto a coloro che erano portati a consumare meno. In sostanza la pressione della domanda globale diventò minore di quella che l’aumento degli investimenti avrebbe potuto sostenere. Il risultato fu che si evitò il pericolo d’inflazione per eccesso di domanda e che il sistema mantenne un’ottima stabilità monetaria. La lira, oltre a non svalutarsi rispetto alle merci più di quanto non si svalutassero le altre monete, si deprezzò meno, tanto che nel 1958 le fu attribuito l’”Oscar” delle valute, risultando la moneta più stabile fra i paesi occidentali. Invero, i prezzi al consumo crescevano mediamente del 3-4 per cento, fenomeno comune anche ad altri paesi, ma i prezzi all’ingrosso tendevano a rimanere su valori stazionari, salvo oscillazioni ampiamente compensate. Tale stazionarietà dei prezzi contribuì positivamente, favorendo le esportazioni italiane. Contemporaneamente la competitività fece crescere la produzione nei comparti dinamici, mentre in quelli non dinamici, in quanto non orientati all’esportazione ma al mercato interno, la produttività subì un andamento inversamente proporzionale rispetto ai salari.
La necessità di aumentare la produzione e l’efficienza nei comparti esportatori portò al formarsi di numerosi nuovi posti di lavoro e al polarizzarsi della crescita industriale soprattutto in tre regioni: Lombardia, Piemonte e Liguria. Questa concentrazione diede vita a un notevole flusso migratorio dalle regioni del Mezzogiorno e del centro-nord meno sviluppate (il Friuli ad esempio), verso quel polo conosciuto come “triangolo industriale”. La forza lavoro non assorbita a livello nazionale, si spostò verso l’estero; il fenomeno della migrazione esterna non riguardò più le Americhe come ad inizio secolo, bensì gli altri paesi europei. Nel 1956 il numero di emigrati verso paesi esteri superò le 200.000 unità.
Complessivamente quasi due milioni di persone abbandonarono il sud-Italia, pari al 12 per cento, per spostarsi verso il nord del paese o verso altri stati. Non tutti gli emigrati meridionali trovarono impiego presso le industrie, infatti una parte considerevole di essi fu assorbita dal settore terziario come i servizi, la distribuzione commerciale o il pubblico impiego.
Il progresso che l’economia italiana compì tra fine anni Cinquanta e inizio anni Sessanta, fu di tale portata che la crescita del prodotto interno lordo, la produttività totale dei fattori e il prodotto per addetto risultarono i più alti e stabili nella storia del Paese. Nel 1963 gli investimenti fissi lordi raggiunsero in media il 25 per cento del reddito nazionale lordo, mentre il tasso di crescita del Pil superò il 7 per cento. L’Italia fu così paragonata per impatto alla Germania in Europa al Giappone nel mondo. Di pari passo il commercio internazionale subì una brusca impennata, registrando le esportazioni, tra il 1958 e il 1962, un tasso annuo di crescita prossimo al 16 per cento.
Non meno importante fu il cambiamento nella struttura economica nazionale; l’agricoltura cessò di essere il settore dominante e nonostante nel 1950 impiegasse ancora il 40 per cento della forza lavoro e fornisse il 25 per cento dell’intero valore aggiunto, nel 1963 fu superato dal settore industriale e da quello dei servizi.
Tutto ciò influì sulla dilatazione dei consumi e sul progressivo affermarsi di un nuovo stile di vita; un ibrido a metà tra la nuova cultura americana e la cultura italiana. Le città assunsero una nuova fisionomia, in particolare le grandi “capitali” del Nord industriale, con la nascita di interi quartieri popolari, ma anche con la costruzione dei primi grattacieli. La stagione espansiva volgeva così al termine portando con sé cambiamenti strutturali profondi.
[NOTE]
33 Si vedano V. Valli, L’economia e la politica economica italiana (1945-1975), Etas libri, Milano, 1977, pp. 109-110; B. Bottiglieri, La politica economica dell’Italia centrista (1948-1958), Ediz. Comunità, Milano, 1984, pp. 254-255.
34 Si veda al riguardo N. Andreatta, Fattori strategici dello sviluppo tecnico dell’industria italiana, in N. Andreatta et al., Il progresso tecnologico e la società italiana. Effetti economici del progresso tecnologico sull’economia italiana, Giuffrè, Milano, 1962. Invece sui vantaggi assicurati dall’ammodernamento degli impianti, si veda anche S. Leonardi, Schema di interpretazione dello sviluppo italiano in questo dopoguerra, in Critica marxista, luglio-ottobre 1968.
35 Per approfondire le ragioni a favore del libero scambio, e quelle a favore di un tipo di economia chiusa, consultare P. Krugman, M. Obstfeld, a cura di R. Helg, Pearson, 2007.
36 Si veda al riguardo A. Campolongo, Dinamica dell’investimento in Italia 1951-1967, in Moneta e credito, secondo trimestre 1968.
37 Si vedano al riguardo A. Triola, Contributo allo studio dei conflitti di lavoro in Italia, in Economia e lavoro, 1971; A. Cova, Movimento economico, occupazione, retribuzioni in Italia dal 1943 al 1955, in A. Cova et al., Il sindacato nuovo. Politica e organizzazione del movimento sindacale in Italia negli anni 1943-1945, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1981
38 Confrontare con A. Vannutelli, Occupazione e salari dal 1861 al 1961, in A. Fanfani, L’economia italiana dal 1861 al 1961, Milano, Giuffrè, 1961.
39 Si veda R. M. Stern, Composizione merceologica, distribuzione geografica e competitività nel commercio estero italiano nel periodo 1955-1963, in Moneta e credito, 1965.
40 Al riguardo non va trascurato il ruolo del credito a medio e lungo termine praticato da alcune banche specializzate, come la Banca di credito finanziario (Mediobanca), fondata nel 1946 dalle tre banche d’interesse nazionale ( Commerciale, Credito italiano, Banco di Roma), per l’esercizio appunto del credito a medio termine, poi esteso al lungo termine, da effettuarsi per il tramite dei loro sportelli; la Banca centrale di credito popolare (Centrobanca), istituita, essa pure nel 1946, dalle banche popolari per il finanziamento a medio e a lungo termine di imprese commerciali e industriali; l’Istituto centrale per il credito a medio termine a favore delle medie e piccole industrie (Mediocredito centrale), sorto nel 1952 con capitali forniti in prevalenza dallo Stato e con il compito di finanziare i Mediocrediti regionali.
Emanuele Zema, Come l’economia italiana si apre al mondo dopo la ricostruzione, Tesi di Laurea, Università Luiss “Guido Carli”, Anno Accademico 2017-2018#1951 #1953 #1954 #1956 #1962 #dopoguerra #economia #EmanueleZema #emigrati #emigrazione #EzioVanoni #GiuseppePella #governi #industria #Italia #liberalizzazione #ministro #scambi #secondo
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DATE: May 13, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Class background influences whether genetic predisposition for intelligence drives you left or right
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-childhood-class-alters-the-genetic-pathways-of-political-ideology/
A person’s economic political views are shaped by their genetic predisposition for cognitive performance interacting with their childhood social class. People with a higher genetic likelihood for cognitive performance tend to adopt left-wing policies if they grew up poor, and right-wing policies if they grew up wealthy. The research was published in Political Psychology.
Understanding differences in economic policy preferences is a primary goal of political science. Traditional models in political economics assume that individuals will support policies that benefit them financially. In a strictly theoretical system where flat taxes are redistributed equally, anyone earning below the average income should want complete redistribution, while anyone earning above the average should oppose it. While real political systems are messier, the fundamental dynamic generally holds.
Low-income earners tend to benefit from proportional taxation and redistribution, while high-income earners bear the costs. In recent years, researchers have found that genetics also influence political behavior. Studies using various methods have documented genetic overlaps with political preferences. This overlap means that ideological preferences partially share the same genetic architecture as other measurable traits.
Since our distant ancestors did not have modern tax systems or mass political parties, evolutionary forces could not have shaped economic ideology directly. Genetic effects on these preferences must operate through intermediate traits, which scientists call endophenotypes. Some researchers proposed that cognitive performance might act as one of these intermediate traits.
The results of previous studies on cognitive performance and economic ideology, however, have been wildly inconsistent. Some studies showed a positive link between cognitive ability and economic conservatism. Other studies found a negative link, and some found no connection at all.
Rafael Ahlskog, a researcher at the Department of Government at Uppsala University in Sweden, thought these contradictory results could be reconciled. He proposed a gene-environment interaction. This occurs when a specific genetic factor behaves differently depending on the environment surrounding the individual.
Ahlskog theorized that cognitive performance does not push a person toward a specific political ideology on its own. Instead, cognitive capacity helps people analyze complicated policy packages and accurately deduce their own class interests. Modern economies feature vast arrays of diverse taxes, regulations, and benefit programs. Evaluating how these policies interact requires analytical effort.
By applying these conceptual frameworks, the study connects the theories of classical economics with modern genetics. People who find it easy to perform the mental calculations required to navigate tax proposals will optimize their policy preferences. Those who find it more difficult might answer policy questions more randomly, or they might rely on social cues not strictly tied to their personal class background.
In addition to this, political science maintains a long-standing theory regarding the impressionable years in human development. This theory states that environmental influences on attitudes are most potent during late adolescence and early adulthood. After this period, political preferences tend to stick. Based on this, Ahlskog suggested that the perception of one’s class interest is shaped primarily by the relative economic standing of their parents during these formative years.
To test these ideas, Ahlskog analyzed data from a large sample of fraternal twins from the Swedish Twin Registry born between 1943 and 1958. Fraternal twins are siblings born at the same time who share, on average, half of their genetic sequence. Using within-family differences among fraternal twins provides an excellent natural experiment for behavioral researchers.
Researchers value within-family sibling designs because comparing two people from the broader population introduces confounding variables. Between two random strangers, a genetic correlation might be skewed by regional ancestry differences or by the environmental impacts of their parents’ genes. Fraternal twins share the exact same family environment, and their genetic differences result purely from the random shuffling of DNA during conception.
Because of this randomization, systematic downstream differences in sibling behavior have a causal interpretation. Researchers can confidently conclude that the genetic difference caused the behavioral difference, rather than an unmeasured environmental factor.
To conduct the analysis, Ahlskog utilized variation in a genetic measure called a polygenic index. A polygenic index is an individual-level predictor of a specific trait that is based entirely on a person’s DNA. Geneticists build these indices by identifying thousands of tiny DNA variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms that correlate with a target trait. The index used in this study summarized each twin’s genetic propensity for cognitive performance based on previous large-scale genomic discoveries.
He combined this genetic data with the twins’ responses to an extensive survey conducted by the Swedish Twin Registry between 2009 and 2010. The survey included a detailed battery of over thirty political preference questions. Participants rated policy proposals on a five-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Ahlskog isolated twelve items specifically dealing with economic ideology, such as opinions on taxation, welfare distribution, the public sector, and government regulation.
To measure family socioeconomic standing, Ahlskog utilized Swedish registry data covering the twins’ parents. He calculated a relative affluence score by comparing the parents’ income and education levels to other adults in their specific local parishes. This provided a localized measure of class background. Sociologists have found that people typically compare their economic status to their immediate neighbors rather than the national average.
When looking at the average effect across the entire sample, the genetic measure for cognitive performance had no impact on economic conservatism. The effect size appeared as practically zero. Without looking deeper, this might seem like a simple lack of an effect.
When Ahlskog factored in the family’s socioeconomic background, the average null effect broke apart to reveal two distinct, opposing trends. Among children raised in relatively poorer families, a higher genetic index for cognitive performance caused more left-wing economic views. These individuals favored higher taxation and wealth redistribution.
Among children from affluent backgrounds, the effect reversed entirely. A higher genetic index among these privileged individuals caused more right-wing views. They favored market reliance and reduced welfare spending. The genetic factor altered how individuals optimized their political views based entirely on their childhood class.
In the scientific taxonomy of gene-environment interactions, researchers often distinguish between dimmer effects and lens effects. A dimmer effect happens when a change in the environment alters the magnitude of a genetic influence, making it stronger or weaker. A lens effect happens when the environment actually changes the direction of the genetic influence. Ahlskog’s findings represent a rare, robust example of a lens effect for a socially relevant behavior.
The researcher also controlled for the twins’ adult income and education levels. The environmental interaction held up even when accounting for later-life resources. This suggests the genetic influence operates specifically on the early-life formation of class identity, not simply on a voter’s current bank account balance.
As a placebo test to verify his theory, Ahlskog applied the same analytical models to social ideology. Social ideology involves cultural and moral issues, such as immigration, criminal justice policy, and animal rights. Unlike economic ideology, there is no direct personal financial benefit to optimizing social preferences based on household class.
In this test, he found that a higher genetic index was naturally associated with lower social conservatism across the board. The effects operated in parallel for both the rich and the poor. There was no interaction based on socioeconomic background.
The study features a few limitations and caveats. The genetic predictor is a noisy measurement that only captures a fraction of the actual heritable traits for cognitive performance. Comparing genetic differences within local twin pairs amplifies this measurement noise even further. As a result, the reported effects are likely much smaller than the actual biological impact.
The geographical and historical realities of the respondent group also matter. The individuals in this sample grew up in Sweden during the middle of the twentieth century, a period defined by the rapid expansion of the modern welfare state. Class-based politics and labor movements were highly salient in their daily lives.
The findings might look completely different in populations where economic ideology is not the primary dividing line in public debate. In political environments where left-wing economic positions are championed by socially conservative populists, the class dynamics could manifest in alternate ways. Finding out which specific political relationships are affected by changing social cultures will require further study.
Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that genetic influences on political behavior are highly contingent on social environments. An effect that appears to be mathematically zero on average can obscure shifting dynamics beneath the surface. This heavy dependency on outside environmental factors functions as a strong argument against genetic determinism.
The study, “Class, genes, and rationality: A gene-environment interaction approach to ideology,” was authored by Rafael Ahlskog.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-childhood-class-alters-the-genetic-pathways-of-political-ideology/
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The thread about Marionville; the house that thread built and home to the unfortunate “Fortunate Duellist”
There’s an old Georgian villa in the east of Edinburgh called Marionville. It lends its name to the district, a few streets and a fire station. It’s your typical regular, 3-storey, 5-bay, 6-over-6 window, sandstone job and although it is quite a rarity in a largely 20th century part of town, at first glance it is otherwise unremarkable for Edinburgh.
Marionville. Cc-BY-SA Kim TraynorUnremarkable that is until you find out a little bit about the place’s history! It was built some time between the 1760s and 1780s by the Misses Ramsay of Old Lyon Close, milliners renowned in the burgh for their ribboned hats. When built it was called Viewfrith (as in a house where one could view the Frith, or Firth of Forth. On account of its occupants trade, it was scornfully nicknamed the Lappet Ha‘, lappet referring to the woven lacework that was common in Georgian women’s hats. Ha’ for ball; the house that lappet built. The misses Ramsay saw out their days in their fine house and its gardens, and in October 1780 it was noted as being for sale:
Sale notice for Viewfrith, Caledonian Mercury, October 16 1780About 1786 it passed to one James Macrae of Holmains Esq. who liked to be known as Captain Macrae on account of his service in the 6th Dragoon Guards (Irish Carabiniers), a Hanoverian cavalry regiment. By accounts he was both a sophisticated, cultured charmer and an arrogant, pompous “Goth“. It was Macrae who renamed the house, calling it for his wife, Maria Cecile le Maistre.
Uniforms of horsemen of the Irish Carabiniers (6th Dragoon Guards)Captain Macrae had a quick temper and an overinflated sense of his own status. He was nicknamed the “fortunate duellist” on account of his propensity to call for satisfaction and on not being dead as a result. He practised by firing at a barber’s block kept specially for the purpose, or so John Kay caricatured him.
“The Fortunate Duellist”: caricature of Captain Macrae with an inset image of him practising duelling with the barber’s block, from “Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings” by John Kay, 1799The Macraes soon built up a reputation as a home of the “gayest private theatricals, perhaps in Britain“. Being wealthy and aspirational with tastes “gay and fashionable” they had a 150-seat private theatre built, complete with stage, curtain and scenery in the house where the couple themselves took the starring roles. The great and the good of Edinburgh were invited and the shows were a hot ticket in town, being well reviewed in the papers. The Scots Magazine and Caledonian Mercury were full of gushing praise for them.
Edinburgh Advertiser, May 9 1789Maria Macrae was the daughter of the Swedish ambassador’s wife and had spent time in Paris with her cousins. It was there she got a taste for the private theatricals of the time and it was she who was chiefly responsible for reproducing them at Marionville. The Macrae’s inner circle was a centre of Georgian high fashion in Edinburgh, the women wore head-dresses so tall that they had to “sit on the carriage floor” and the men wore “bright coats with tails to their heels” and “wigs with great side curls“. The innermost of their circle were the Ramsays (no relation to the Misses), Sir George Ramsay of Bamff, 6th Baronet and his wife, Eleanor Fraser. They were “warmly attached and intimate” with the Macraes.
An engraving of Marionville in happier times from Old & New Edinburgh by James Grant.So all was good. Everyone was happy and Marionville was the place to be seen around town. Macrae was highly regarded in the right circles, but his pomposity and temper would be his unravelling. An example of this was when a messenger of the law tried to arrest his cousin, the Reverend John Cunningham, Earl Glencairn, at a private party in Drumsheugh House. Macrae was outraged that a common man would insult a gentleman, and threw the messenger over the stairwell. When it later came to light that Cunningham was a debtor who had refused all chance to settle his obligations and that the messenger had been gravely injured, Macrae made an apology and paid compensation of 300 guineas to settle the matter.
And then we come to the fateful night of April 7th 1790. Captain Macrae had been out at the Theatre Royal, which stood on Shakespeare Square, opposite the General Register Office and where the General Post Office would later be built. Being a gentleman, he was helping a lady to get a chair to convey her home (this meant a sedan chair; at this time were still the principal form of public transport of choice for the moneyed classes around town). He had secured the lady her chair when a liveried footman appeared on the scene and seized one of the poles of the chair to reserve it for his mistress. The outraged Macrae rapped the impertinent servant’s knuckles with his cane.
The Theatre Royal on Shakespeare Square, the corner of Princes Street, North Bridge, Leith Street and what is now Waterloo Place. John Le Conte, 1857. Credit; Edinburgh City LibrariesThe footman, not to be cowed, denounced Macrae as a scoundrel and punched him in the chest. Macrae responded by striking him across the head with his cane. An almighty fracas ensued, sucking in passers-by on both sides. Somehow the conflict was defused and the lady was spirited to safety in another chair. And there it might have ended until Macrae was made aware that the footman in question was an employee of his dear friend, Sir George Ramsay.
A Georgian cartoon of a drunken gentleman fighting with a coachman and footman. Isaac Cruikshank, 1809. © The Trustees of the British MuseumAnd so, the following day Macrae sought out Ramsay at his place of business. His friend informed him that the servant in question was recently engaged by his wife and he felt that he had no hand in the matter. Macrae insisted that he would therefore apologise to the lady at once. Hurrying to the Ramsay’s house on St. Andrew Square, he found her sitting for an up and coming your artist, one Henry Raeburn. Theatrically going down on one knee, Macrae begged forgiveness for having chastised her servant. And there it would have ended. But…
A few days later at Marionville, an anonymous letter arrived stating that Macrae had meddled with the “Knights of the Shoulder Knot” (the name given to footmen for their elaborate uniforms) and they would have their revenge for the insult to their brother. The footman in question, James Merry, took the matter further by making it known he would take legal proceedings against his assailant for the injuries he had suffered. Piqued, Macrae wrote to Ramsay and demanded that the man be put in his place and discharged. For whatever reason, Ramsay declined to satisfy his friend and their relationship quickly soured as the two engaged in a protracted series of increasingly intemperate letters. This culminated in Macrae having his messenger inform Ramsay that he was not a gentleman, but a scoundrel!
Georgian caricature of a foppish, arrogant footman. George Moutard Woodward, 1799. © The Trustees of the British MuseumThat was that! Macrae had overstepped the mark for sure, Ramsay was a proper gentleman, with a title, not someone you could go around insulting. The intermediary, one Captain Amory, arranged a meeting of both parties in Bayle’s Tavern at which “rough epithets were exchanged“. The outcome was inevitable and satisfaction was demanded by Macrae. But he let it be known that he considered Ramsay the challenger, for refusing to deal with his servant.
The time and place was set for the shore outside of Musselburgh at noon the next day. What better place to settle your differences than in the cool sea breeze of the Honest Toun? And so it was that the next day the two gentlemen, each with another in tow as second, met at Wards Inn off of the Musselburgh Links. A surgeon, Benjamin Bell, was sensibly arranged for.
Benjamin Bell (left), following a different duelist on his way to Musselburgh to settle a score. Bell must have been the go-to man for calling to a duel. The woman heading the other way is a salter, carrying her load in a basket, supported by a leather strap around her head. From John Kay’s caricatures, Vol. 2. Credit; Edinburgh City LibrariesA parlay took place to see if things could be settled amicably, without either side losing face. Macrae demanded that if Ramsay dismiss his servant he would apologise profusely for all that had followed and consider it closed. Ramsay demanded an apology first, before any further progress could be made. Both sides were intransigent. The seconds which each side had brought as counsel declined further compromise and the course of action was now set. Each man took a pistol from a pair and made his way to the allotted spot on the Links. Each then walked 14 paces away from the other and the duel commenced. Ramsay shot first and nicked the collar of his late friend, grazing the neck. Macrae did not miss and Ramsay was mortally wounded. Macrae would later claim that he had planned to shoot high and miss on purpose, but was so outraged that Ramsay had not deliberately missed and had drawn blood that he decided to settle the matter once and for all by not missing. For a sure shot like Macrae, the outcome was inevitable.
“The Duel”, a cartoon in the style of Kay by amateur Edinburgh artist J. Jenkins in 1805. CC-BY 4.0 National Library of ScotlandThe deed done, Macrae was suddenly remorseful and had to be convinced to leave his dying friends’ side by Ramsay’s second, Sir William Maxwell. Edinburgh society was outraged and it was Macrae, the lower status gentleman that they squarely blamed for this calamity. Being a proper class scandal, the detail was all printed at the time (then, as now, controversy was good for sales) and Macrae was immortalised as “The Fortunate Duellist” by Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay. By trade Kay was a barber, so the story of the practice target may have appealed to him as much as the chance to satirise events.
Facing a potential murder charge, Macrae abandoned Marionville and his family and fled to Paris accompanied by his second, Captain Amory. They took up lodgings in the Hôtel de la Dauphine. A summons soon arrived from Edinburgh to return and face the law. Ignoring it, both were declared outlaws and consigned themselves to live out their days in exile. To add insult to Macrae’s injury, 2 years later the Sheriffs awarded damages and compensation to the footman for his original injuries, which were paid from Macrae’s estate in his absence. Macrae stayed in Paris until the coming of the French revolution compelled his to flee further, this time to Altona in Italy. He had hoped that the passage of time would allow him to return home to Marionville, but society and the law were resolved against it.
And so it was that the gayest house in town fell into “an air of depression and melancholy such as could barely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger“. It was advertised as being to let in 1793 and the following year it was for sale. Macrae was soon forgotten by the chattering classes of Edinburgh. That is until 1814, when publisher Robert Chambers relates that “a gentleman of my acquaintance was surprised to meet him one day in a Parisian coffee house“. “The wreck or ghost of the handsome, sprightly man he had once been.” “The comfort of his home, his country and his friends, the use of his talents to all these, had been lost, and himself obliged to lead the life of a condemned Cain, all through the one fault of a fiery temper“.
Captain Macrae, late of Marionville, died alone in Paris on the 16th January 1820, 30 years an exile from his home, wife and 2 children. “Captain Macrae was a strange character. To those of his own class a tyrant and bully. To those below him he was kind and obliging”. At this time his old house was in the possession of a Mr and Mrs Dudgeon although it was for sale again shortly after, the new owner being Walter Stirling Glas, esq. The house was repeatedly for sale and let throughout the 19th century. A flick through some old Post Office directories enlightens us that from approximately 1858 to 1869, it was being used by Dr. Guthrie’s “Original Ragged Industrial School” .
In 1932, Marionville was purchased by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edinburgh and St. Andrews for use as the manse for St. Ninian’s & Triduana’s Church, which was built in the grounds at this time. Its last occupant before the church took it over would appear to be one Miss W. Crawford Brown and the house was sold back into private use within the past few years. The church, which was never actually completed to the intended design, is surprisingly the work of that most British of British architects, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of red telephone box and Battersea power station fame).
St. Ninian’s & Triduana’s R.C. church in the grounds of Marionville.Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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DeepSeek
Què collons és DeepSeek i per què tothom perd el cul amb això?
El món de les IA és un món molt petit, bàsicament es compon de peixos molt grossos que fan coses molt bèsties gastant molts diners, posant molta gent a desenvolupar sistemes en màquines caríssimes que gasten una burrada d’electricitat, si bé és cert que hi ha una comunitat d’usuaris que experimenten i desenvolupen pel seu compte petits models (o no tan petits) que poden entrenar i fer córrer en ordinadors domèstics, però el pes realment està en les grans empreses. De sobte ha aparegut un projecte que ha agafat amb les calces baixades a tots aquests leviatans, un projecte xines, fundat per Liang Wenfeng, un gestor de fons de cobertura de 40 anys, DeepSeek va néixer com una unitat de recerca en IA dins de la seva firma High-Flyer, valorada en 8.000 milions de dòlars.
El concepte que ofereix Wenfeng és clar: crear una IA potent, accessible i, sobretot, econòmica. Mentre els gegants tecnològics inverteixen fortunes en desenvolupaments costosos, DeepSeek opta per un enfocament “low-cost”. Amb un pressupost de menys de 6 milions de dòlars en potència de computació, han entrenat el seu model DeepSeek-V3 utilitzant xips Nvidia H800, menys avançats, amb la meitat de potència dels actuals H100 i amb la meitat de consum elèctric. A més que és un dels pocs xips que es venen directament al mercat xinès.
Aquest enfocament minimalista no només ha reduït els costos, sinó que també ha demostrat que es podia aconseguir un rendiment comparable als millors models occidentals, com el ChatGPT d’OpenAI, però a una fracció del preu i amb un consum energètic molt inferior.
Però, què fa que DeepSeek sigui realment diferent? És simplement un chatGPT del xino? A més de la seva eficiència, han decidit fer el seu model DeepSeek-R1 de codi obert, cosa que permet que la comunitat global accedeixi, modifiqui i millori la tecnologia i el més interessant de tot, és que qualsevol que tingui un ordinador domèstic i ganes de perdre una estoneta, pot fer-ho córrer en local, a casa seva, sense que les dades surtin del seu ordinador, però per desgràcia no és tan potent ni còmode com entrar a la web de DeepSeek.
Aquesta combinació de rendiment, accessibilitat i transparència ha fet que DeepSeek es converteixi ràpidament en una alternativa atractiva per a empreses i desenvolupadors que busquen solucions d’IA eficients sense arruïnar-se. I tot això, sorgit d’una empresa que va començar amb recursos limitats però amb una visió clara i una determinació ferotge per desafiar l’statu quo.
Ara bé, no tot són flors i violes. DeepSeek pot ser codi obert, però els seus servidors són a la Xina i això vol dir que es regeixen per les lleis xineses. I si una cosa és segura, és que el govern xinès no és gaire fanàtic de la privacitat individual. Tot el que passa pels seus sistemes pot ser monitoritzat, analitzat o, com a mínim, accessible si algú de dalt decideix que li interessa. En aquest sentit, no és que sigui molt diferent de confiar en els serveis d’una corporació americana, amb els servidors pintats amb barres i estrelles i una gran placa que posi “MADE IN USA”, on Musk pot estar prenent notes entre bastidors. Però si algú es pensa que està parlant amb una IA lliure i independent, potser hauria de tornar a mirar-se la lletra petita.
Per entendre per què DeepSeek ha fet trontollar el mercat, primer cal entendre com funcionava el taulell de joc fins ara. L’IA no és només una qüestió de software. És una indústria sencera construïda sobre una xarxa d’interdependències on cada actor depèn dels altres per existir. D’una banda, tens els fabricants de hardware: Nvidia, que ha estat imprimint diners amb cada nova generació de xips acceleradors; AMD, intentant seguir-li el ritme; i Intel, que cada cop sembla més un boxejador vell intentant aguantar dret al ring. Després tens els desenvolupadors de models, amb OpenAI i Anthropic al capdavant, mentre Microsoft i Google intenten comprar-se un seient a la taula a cop de talonari. Però això només és la superfície. Per sota hi ha les infraestructures energètiques, perquè aquestes màquines devoren electricitat com si s’hagués d’acabar el món (de fet si segueixen a aquest ritme potser s’acaba), i per tant, les empreses d’energia, les de refrigeració i els proveïdors de servidors cloud també estan en aquest joc.
El problema és que aquest sistema s’ha anat construint com una piràmide humana absurda, on tothom ha anat pujant sobre els altres, i els de baix han fet el mateix fins que, al final, ningú no toca de peus a terra. Els diners han anat entrant en forma de rondes d’inversió cada cop més grosses, promeses cada cop més exagerades i una fe cega en què la IA serà “la pròxima revolució industrial”. I aquí és on entra la broligarguia: aquest club privat de megamultimilionaris que, d’una manera o altra, sempre acaben remenant les cireres. Elon Musk, per exemple, va decidir muntar la seva pròpia IA, xatejar-la amb el seu ego i de passada intentar destrossar OpenAI, la seva ex, en directe i sense filtres. Mentrestant, Sam Altman, CEO d’OpenAI, ha estat anant de bracet amb Microsoft i altres inversors per assegurar-se que els diners no deixin de rajar, fins al punt que el govern americà ja ha deixat clar que pensa invertir bilions en IA a través d’aquests mateixos actors. I Trump? Ell, encantat de prometre que els Estats Units dominaran aquest sector com ho fan amb les armes, perquè si una cosa sap fer la indústria americana, és convertir qualsevol cosa en un oligopoli i després acusar la competència de ser un perill per la democràcia.
Tot això ha fet que el mercat es converteixi en una bombolla especulativa on els actors no només guanyen diners perquè venen tecnologia, sinó perquè el valor de les seves accions es dispara cada cop que fan un anunci espectacular. I aquí és on entra DeepSeek: un jugador nou, imprevist i, sobretot, descontrolat. Algú que, en comptes de seguir les normes d’aquest joc, ha decidit fabricar-se el seu propi tauler. I això, als que viuen d’aquest sistema, els posa molt, molt nerviosos.
El que ha passat amb DeepSeek ha estat un terratrèmol financer que ha agafat per sorpresa la borsa i la indústria tecnològica. Quan s’ha fet evident que una IA potent es podia entrenar i executar amb una fracció dels recursos que fins ara es consideraven imprescindibles, els inversors han reaccionat com reaccionen sempre davant d’una amenaça que no comprenen: pànic.
Nvidia, que ha estat creixent en valor perquè molts inversors els veien com el venedor de pics i pales durant la febre de l’or, ha descobert que les pales i els pics ja no eren tan necessaris com pensaven. En dos dies, ha perdut 556.400 milions de dòlars en capitalització borsària. Broadcom i Taiwan Semiconductor, dos gegants que també han basat el seu negoci a vendre hardware clau per a l’entrenament de models d’IA, han perdut 199.400 i 165.900 milions respectivament. Però el cop no s’ha quedat només en els fabricants de xips. Les grans empreses que compren i utilitzen IA, com Microsoft, Alphabet i Amazon, també han vist com els seus valors han caigut, ja que el mercat s’ha començat a preguntar si les seves inversions multimilionàries en IA supercostosa tenien sentit. OpenAI, Anthropic i altres companyies que es dediquen a vendre IA han quedat tocades, perquè el model de negoci que tenien s’ha posat en dubte. A més, les empreses que venen infraestructura per a datacenters, com Arista Networks i Equinix, etc. La necessitat energètica dels grans models d’IA ha estat un factor clau en l’augment de valor de moltes empreses elèctriques, però DeepSeek ha demostrat que es pot aconseguir un rendiment similar consumint molt menys. Això ha provocat que empreses que havien pujat en borsa perquè proveeixen energia per fer funcionar aquests centres, com GE Vernova, Constellation Energy i Siemmens Energy AG, també han rebut l’impacte. En total, en un sol dia s’han esborrat 53,3 miliards de dòlars en valor borsari.
Davant d’aquest escenari, la indústria ha començat a moure fitxa. OpenAI ha introduït una nova opció que permet fer servir un model amb raonament avançat, un moviment que alguns interpreten com una resposta a la irrupció de DeepSeek. Mentrestant, Nvidia i altres fabricants de hardware busquen com diferenciar-se i justificar els preus dels seus productes, mentre que els grans proveïdors d’IA intenten convèncer el mercat que els seus serveis encara són essencials.
Però la gran pregunta no és si DeepSeek ha vingut per quedar-se, sinó quant d’inflada estava aquesta bombolla. Han aconseguit aturar la deflació o aquest és només el començament d’una caiguda més gran? Si el valor del sector continua caient, potser deixarà de ser “el negoci del segle” i perdrà part de la seva influència. I si és així, quin paper tindrà DeepSeek i les empreses que adoptin estratègies low-cost com ells?
L’especulació financera ha convertit la indústria tecnològica en un casino gegant. La febre per la intel·ligència artificial ha fet que els inversors aboquessin diners sense entendre realment què compraven. No era una qüestió de tecnologia, sinó d’eufòria col·lectiva i de la promesa d’un futur on tot es tornaria màgic gràcies a la IA. Ara que el mercat ha vist que es pot fer el mateix amb menys recursos, el miratge s’ha trencat i la borsa s’ha desplomat. Aquesta dinàmica no és nova. Un petit grup d’inversors i directius la “broligarquia” tecnològica ha sabut aprofitar el hype per inflar els preus i treure’n profit mentre ha durat la festa. Però quan el globus ha començat a desinflar-se, qui ha pagat el preu són els petits inversors i les empreses que havien basat els seus models de negoci en una realitat que potser mai no ha existit.
Les grans corporacions mai han desenvolupat tecnologia per amor a la ciència o al progrés humà. Tot gira al voltant dels beneficis, i la intel·ligència artificial no és una excepció. Els sistemes generatius han estat creats amb la promesa d’automatitzar tasques, però quan aquesta automatització implica substituir llocs de treball, el que realment està passant és que es destrueixen vides per maximitzar beneficis. A més, la IA generativa es basa en el treball creatiu de milions de persones. Quan una IA escriu un text, compon música o genera una imatge, no ho fa del no-res: s’ha entrenat amb dades que provenen del treball humà. Això vol dir que cada contingut generat per una IA és, en certa manera, un robatori, un aprofitament massiu de la feina d’altres sense reconeixement ni compensació.
És innegable que aquests models són un prodigi tecnològic, però també és clar que s’han d’usar amb precaució. La seva imprecisió i propensió a inventar informació fan que siguin eines problemàtiques. Si han d’existir, s’ha de trobar una manera ètica d’utilitzar-los, limitant-los a tasques de suport, com resumir informació o donar format a textos, i evitant-ne l’ús per substituir la feina humana. El geni ja ha sortit de la llàntia, i no tornarà a entrar-hi, però encara es pot decidir com fer-lo servir de manera responsable.
#AI #Algoritmes #aprenentatgeAutomàtic #bombollaTecnològica #broligarguia #codiObert #dades #deepLearning #DeepSeek #especulacióFinancera #IA #innovació #intelLigènciaArtificial #machineLearning #modelDeLlenguatge #Nvidia #OpenAI #revolucióTecnològica #techIndustry #tecnologia
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AMG Turns 15: Senior VPs Speak
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
El Cuervo
AMG and me
When I reflect on what really matters at the end of each year, AMG.com always comes up trumps.1 Its benefits are many, its failings few, and I struggle to imagine my life had I never joined its crew a decade ago. Surprising though this may be to those familiar with my pride, AMG could be an unread blog and it wouldn’t matter. It represents a creative outlet, exercises my brain differently from my corporate career, rewards me with high-quality listening material, and even introduced some individuals that I now consider strong friends. Serving a not-for-profit organization operated by nerds for nerds, with a combined love for their esoteric interest grants me balance and perspective I would otherwise miss in my rigidly structured professional life. Even after thousands of hours of unpaid servitude, it energizes and excites me.
Sure, it satisfies my ego that Angry Metal Guy also attracts thousands of unique readers per article, and has sizable clout in the underground and mid-tier of heavy metal media. I love the bump bands experience following our praise, and even the incendiary comments when we criticize something popular. But these are just the cherry on the top of everything else it affords me. This site nourishes my soul; through creativity, community, and hubris.2
AMG gave to me …
Cormorant // Dwellings – In 2011, I was still relatively new to extreme metal but I already knew that Opeth was one of my favorite bands. A simple Opeth name-drop by AMG in his review was all it took to pique my interest. Shortly thereafter, Cormorant—especially their first two records, 2009’s Metzoa and this—became some of my favorite music too. So much so that a slice of the art from this second record is prominently tattooed on my body. Dwellings is an expansive, unpredictable treasure map of a record. It’s littered with dozens of obvious paths and landmarks, but also subtler trinkets you’ll miss until your tenth listen. There’s so much to admire here, from the burly riff and thunderous vocals opening “Junta,” to the wandering, shredding guitars narrating Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s indigenous population (“The First Man”) and the beautifully delicate interludes on “Funambulist.” Dwellings is the earliest example of many albums introduced to me via AMG.com that have had a lasting impact on either my listening tastes or life generally.
Moonsorrow // Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa – Although I’d already breached the realms of death metal prior to discovering AMG (via Opeth and In Flames, naturally), black metal had eluded me. It was a gap about which I was concerned, given my moves towards heavier music. Happily for me, the review of Moonsorrow’s sixth full-length blew that door wide open. Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa is hardly entry-grade material, featuring a bleak atmosphere, alien vocals, and four main tracks each exceeding eleven minutes. But the grand melodies, sharp riffs, folksy slant, and EPIC song-writing scope offered the necessary bait for me. It basically ruined atmospheric and folksy metal for me from the outset; almost no other bands successfully write engrossing, long-form black metal like these guys, despite most of them trying. Listening to VKKM is less like hearing music and more like slowly wandering towards a freezing death in the Nordic wilderness. But in a good way! While the band has arguably produced other, stronger records—the mythological curiosity of Verisäkeet and monolithic Hävitetty are also exemplary—VKKM holds a special importance to me for opening up an entire genre.
Steven Wilson // Hand. Cannot. Erase. – At the age of 22/23, I would describe 2016 as the year that my childhood ended and adulthood began. I was preparing to enter employment at the end of my further education and went through a difficult break-up with a long-term partner. Although Hand. Cannot. Erase. released in 2015, I spent far more time with it the following year. Along with a few other artists outside my typical territory of prog and metal, it narrated that period for me. Progressive rock sits comfortably within my bailiwick3 but the mournful strains of pop found on the title track and “Perfect Life” are what stand H.C.E. apart from everything else. AMG‘s AotY summary was absolutely right in saying that “the emotional engagement that Wilson and co. are able to evoke in me is precisely what makes this album more than the sum of its parts.” It’s my emotional response to the music here that makes this record what it is. Even in the numerous ways my life has changed in the subsequent eight years, I find it a little difficult to return to this one. It’s a landmark album in my life.
I wish I had written …
Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony Review. This album represents not only the vehicle through which I discovered AMG but also one of my favorite albums from the 2010s. It’s the most raucous, overblown and catchy fusion of hard rock and symphonic metal I’ve heard. But my first listen also represented a turning point in my life. Pre-Wicked Symphony, so much of my listening was rooted in bands introduced to me by my dad. Post-Wicked Symphony, these roles were reversed and I now feed him new releases I think he’ll enjoy. I would have loved the contemporaneous opportunity to describe this phenomenon in relation to Avantasia.
I wish more people had read …
Geoff Tate – Kings and Thieves Review. The great Dr. Fisting is the most incisive, humorous writer to ever sit in our ranks, and his review of Kings and Thieves forms his best output. Framed as a letter, Fisting delivers a savage, but wholly reasonable, takedown of a problematic, wayward Mr Tate. The line “hearing you sing about getting laid is about as sexy as walking in on my parents” delighted me at the time and still delights me now. Read this.
Grymm
AMG and me
In all my years of listening to metal prior to writing about it, I was searching long and hard for anything that would come close to the magic that the late, great Metal Maniacs magazine brought to the world. Once I encountered Dr. Fisting‘s immortal(ly brutal) review of Kings and Thieves by ex-Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate, I knew I had found it. Little did I know that I would call this place home for over a decade. To say this site is special to me, is to understate the impact it’s had on my life, my writing, and how I approach all music nowadays. The fact that I made a second family here among the staff and readers makes this all the sweeter. I don’t regret the time, energy, and tears spent here.
As I’ve said many times, onward…
AMG gave to me …
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter // Saved! – The most recent and jarring album that I discovered since joining up here, the former Lingua Ignota took all the pain she experienced through abuse, and turned it into a religious, lo-fi cleansing, that was equal parts beautiful, stirring, and brutally uncomfortable. I often waver between experiencing this album to purge, and never wanting to touch it again because it’s that raw. When an album makes you feel those things, you know the artist(s) who crafted it did something right.
Lorna Shore // Pain Remains – I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of deathcore out there, and it doesn’t help that I (unfairly, in hindsight) avoided New Jersey’s Lorna Shore due to the actions of their prior vocalist. What I didn’t know was that they gave said asshole the boot almost immediately after Immortal’s release, and were blessed with the golden throat of one Will Ramos. The rest, as they say, is history. Since then, they’ve been on a majestic ascent that many bands would give everything for, and they rightfully deserve all the success in the world that they’ve achieved.
Darkest Era // Severence – One of the earliest albums I discovered via another writer here at AMG, Irish minstrels Darkest Era deserve far, far more love than they’re currently getting … and from what I’ve heard, they’re getting some well-deserved love lately from all the metalheads. Rightfully so. For, as good as their debut The Last Caress of Light was, Severence saw a major improvement in terms of musicianship and songwriting, seeing them surpass many of their inspirations by leaps and bounds.
I wish I had written …
Any of Cherd‘s Christmas posts, especially the Tarja Christmas album. Sometimes, you’re feeling the Spirit of Christmas4 and you want to spread joy. Sometimes, you just can’t stand the fucking holidays, and just want to laugh your ass off at some damn good (piss)takes on the commercialized, uber-capitalistic holidays, and our holiday cheer-spreader has spent the last few years making us hurt our ribcages from ugly-laughing so damn much to his reviews of Christmas albums, and Tarja’s over-the-top Christmas album was beyond ripe for the taking. I wish I had his propensity for pain humor.
I wish I could do over …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. – Don’t get this twisted; everything I said in my second coming-out piece still needed to be said and, sadly, nothing’s changed. But if you knew even half of the bullshit I endured once it was published, you would too lose all motivation to support the very music that has people in it that want to see you either removed from the scene, or outright dead. My desire to write pretty much died after this went live…
I wish more people had read …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. …but I’m not at all sorry I did it. Metal, for all its acceptance of its wayward misfits, miscreants, and outcasts, still has a colossal problem in terms of racism and homophobia, and it’s only gotten more emboldened over the last decade or so. It’s heartening to see pushback against it though and if that means someone else will pick up the baton, after I laid it down, to call out that bullshit, then all the better. None of the other major players have the fortitude to do so, but there are those who can and will.
Kronos
AMG and me
Look, I don’t write here anymore; I’ve left that to the more capable. But when I did, the reason for it all was that someone gave a fuck whether I was capable or not. When someone first commented to say, “Hey, this is some bad prose” on a Kronos review, that was when I decided that I was going to keep writing for AMG. For all our sins as a website, we did—and those currently writing here still do—care to make what you read here good, and care to connect you with art that is good. The commentariat’s demand for quality pushed me as a writer to produce both the best criticism and the most entertaining writing I could muster, even when I didn’t have much to say. But there came a point when I found I had too little to say to keep saying anything. Seeing the rest of the staff continue to dish thoughtful commentary even on thoughtless art, made bowing out easy. I’m proud to have been a piece of the project for so long.
I hope it keeps going another fifteen years. That way, when I’m a Steel-level fogie and Defeated Sanity are as neolithic as Metal Church, I can return and correct Generation Alpha’s horrible taste.
AMG gave to me …
Dodecahedron // Dodecahedron – If I had never heard Dodecahedron’s opening chords, I may have had a very different life than I do now. Knowing that those sounds exist completely reshaped my relationship with music, shifting my interest from the technical to the visceral. Never before had I felt my stomach turn from sound alone. If there’s any overarching theme in my music writing, it’s the failure to completely capture this sensation in words, to properly express the importance of art that sparks the neurons below the neck.
Melted Bodies // Enjoy Yourself – Well, don’t mind if I do. I thought this sounded OK from GardensTale‘s review and didn’t get around to it until I’d turned in my year-end list for 2020 (after all, I know best, so why bother listening to what these bozos tell me is good). Then I spent 2021 listening to Enjoy Yourself on a weekly basis. Melted Bodies’ sardonic seapunk-infused thrash proved the perfect artistic vehicle to deliver a treatise on hypernormalization and the misery, and seediness of American culture. Far from being just a metal record with a political bent, Enjoy Yourself is more directly a political document printed with a gaudy mix of guitars, synthesizer boops, and blast beats, in which every annoying, hokey lyrical delivery hisses out through a rot-toothed sneer.
billy woods // Hiding Places5 – While I was actively writing, I pretty much knew if I’d like a new metal record well before the review came out. The writers look out for each other, you know? And few were more persistent and reliable gauges of my interest than Kenstrosity, who somehow just knew I’d love this album. Hiding Places carries more than a whiff of the care and crypsis of a great art-house death metal record without being anything close to one. Muted instrumentals creak and twinkle around woods, whose tangled lyrics squint suspiciously at love and belonging, paranoid from decades of imperial violence. Gloomy but electric, woods delivers his piece with a mix of resignation and reprehension that hooks me in every time. It’s not metal, but it is really fucking angry.
Dr. Wvrm
AMG and me
I’ve asked myself what AMG means to me far too often over the last few years. As I’ve fallen out, in and back out of love with metal, with reviewing, and with arguing with “writers” about the finer points of comma usage. As I’ve watched better and more dedicated reviewers slip away to the far side of the hourglass, I’ve wondered what my useless ass is still doing here.
I don’t write; no time, no drive. I don’t read the articles, but then again, who does? I stay in touch with current releases (mostly because Kenneth or Dolphin Fucker or Eldritch shove things they know I’ll like in my face) but am no longer a voracious consumer and cataloguer. My fixations have moved on to other equally meaningless pursuits. Yet here I stay, despite the guilt of missed deadlines and the shame of another broken promise of regular reviews, doing just enough to avoid unceremonious defenestration from The Hall, because I love these people.
This site, those who read it, and particularly those who staff it, are the only people I have ever had in my life who see what I see in this awful music; who understand the ways this awful music can take on a life of its own, suffusing relationships and memories like little else can; who have connected with me and supported me and been so good to me, simply because of this awful, this god-awful music.
AMG, more than anything else, means community, and I consider myself lucky to have found a place at its table.
AMG gave to me …
Wilderun // Sleep at the Edge of the Earth6 – Sleep is (a) an entirely unoriginal selection, (b) the first 5.0/5.0 record to which this site introduced me, and (c) the only metal record my father has ever appreciated. This is a man who once made me turn off Billy Joel.7 After 20 years of musical repartee boiling down to me blasting Cryptopsy’s “Crown of Horns” for laughs, Wilderun managed to bridge our gap. It surely has to do with the literal Berklee grads orchestrating a symphonic masterpiece more than anything heavy about the record, but if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s to shut up and take your win. The image of the two of us listening to “Hope and Shadow” while driving through the hills of Pennsylvania Dutch Country is vivid in the way those special moments always are, even years later. I’m sure if asked, he couldn’t recall that afternoon. The memory is fine just the same.
The Night Flight Orchestra // Amber Galactic – As Sleep was to my father, so was Amber Galactic to my mother. In many ways, I owe my metal worship to her; if not for a childhood raised on nothing but soft rock, I likely wouldn’t search out the ugliest music humanly possible. While she was never as repulsed by my musical predilections as my father,8 she was also not the audience for Slayer or Children of Bodom, just as I was not the audience for Shania Twain, Rod Stewart or Seal.9 Our tastes diverged for good in the year 2004, leaving little but tussles over the radio knob, and eventually everything else. Our fights were, and are, legendary among our friends and family, which was a badge of honor as an asshole teenager and is now a marker of shame as an asshole adult. I don’t remember how she got wise to Amber Galactic – maybe through me, accidentally. But for the first time in the long-time search for a ceasefire, she was as into “Gemini,” “Domino”, and “Josephine” as I was. It was a good time. That detente didn’t last long, of course, but as a wise man once said, “Shut up and take your win.”
Amorphis // Under the Red Cloud – Under the Red Cloud topped the very first Top Ten I put together, in 2015, still a pre-staff wannabe. Even then, I wanted to foist my awful opinions on the world, and in many ways, that was the first step to my eventual membership here. That isn’t why this review matters to me though. I had no idea who Amorphis was before AMG Himself‘s review of Under the Red Cloud. In the years since, I’ve been grateful for their constant companionship, in the summer sun and on lonely nights like the one on which I write this. I reached for them on a January morning, as the last throes of a Nor’easter snowed me into the maternity ward. I’m passing the hours between bottles by staring out at crystalline whorls as “Enigma” plays. It’s one of my very favorites, in their catalog, in all of music, and I can’t help but share it. I turn the volume down and pass the headphones from my ears to my son’s. It’s only for a moment, and who knows how well you can hear less than a day removed from in vitro, but it’s our moment. It’s this moment, all these moments, that I want to flash before my eyes when my bell finally tolls, and I hope someone turns the speaker up to 11 when they do.
Eldritch Elitist
AMG and me
I’m not sure if any of my colleagues know this, but I have done most of my writing in my nearly 8 year tenure at Angry Metal Guy on my cell phone. I submitted my application to AMG on May 24th, 2016; exactly two weeks later, my first and only child was born. He was a particularly clingy baby, so for months when I’d arrive home from work, he was essentially glued to my arm for hours on end. When Steel Druhm and Madam X graciously brought me on as a probationary writer, I begrudgingly adapted to writing on a stupid-ass, tiny-ass screen with my stupid-ass, big-ass thumbs. The process has been second nature to me ever since.
Let me be perfectly clear: If I was doing this for a shot at writing for any other blog, I would have bailed immediately. But I owed Angry Metal Guy for singlehandedly revitalizing my passion for metal, after my interest in the genre had waned over a half decade of post-high school life. No other outlet compared when it came to treating melodic metal with the same respect and professional level of writing quality afforded to so-called “trailblazers” in the scene. Having the kind of music that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place legitimized by such a talented crew was revelatory. I can only hope my contributions in this space have resonated similarly with others like me.
AMG gave to me …
Beaten to Death // Unplugged – I’m not a grindcore fan. The number of grindcore albums I’ve listened to in full likely ranks in the single digits. I also think that Beaten to Death’s Unplugged is one of the coolest, catchiest, and most compulsively listenable records of the last decade. Part of what makes Unplugged a special record for me is that—aside from its sheer kinetic brilliance—discovering this record through AMG is what made me want to write for this blog in the first place. Jean-Luc Ricard’s spot-on piece wisely zeroed in on this record’s decidedly un-grindy eccentricities, which was vital for enticing genre tourists like myself. Mirroring that review’s impact has been my mission with every positive review I’ve ever penned. For all the self-proclaimed power metal haters who thanked me in the comments for making them one-off converts to records like The Saberlight Chronicles: Thanks for the free dopamine!
Khemmis // Hunted – I used to be a casual appreciator of doom metal. That is, before Steel Druhm reviewed Khemmis’s 2016 opus Hunted, which more or less put me off the genre for good. Hunted is a perfect encapsulation of everything I enjoy in a doom metal record. So perfect, in fact, that everything I’ve heard in the realm of traditional doom metal since has failed to elicit a response stronger than “this is good, but I wish I was listening to Hunted.” This album excels through sheer simplicity and masterful melodic handling, filling any semblance of dead air in a genre where most compositions feel like a waste of space. The tragedy here is that Khemmis’ formula is so effective as to feel effortless in its construction, yet no other band has been able to match these heights, despite the formula for success sounding so obvious to my ears. Were it not for Steel Druhm’s rightfully glowing (if underscored) review, I might have never heard my favorite doom metal album at all.
Xoth // Invasion of the Tentacube – Much like Wilderun before them, I’m not sure Xoth’s recent underground success would have resulted in as strong of word-of-mouth had Angry Metal Guy not been hyping them up since their 2017 debut. Our staff’s collective enthusiasm for promoting unsigned gems like Invasion of the Tentacube is, at least in my eyes, unmatched in getting bands like Xoth the early attention they deserve. Sure, there are many examples of self-released albums that fit these qualifiers, but Invasion of the Tentacube might be my personal favorite. It’s also worth mentioning this record as a reminder for people to revisit Xoth’s early material. Though a bit unrefined (as Akerblogger pointed out in his otherwise glowing review), this album is every bit as entertaining as Xoth’s subsequent LPs, and a neat little time capsule that captures all of Xoth’s ambitions in a charmingly adolescent package.
I wish I had written …
Frostbite Orckings – The Orcish Eclipse Review. I maintain that it was a wise decision to retire the 0.0/5.0 score from our rating system, but for Frostbite Orckings, I should have lobbied to reinstate it for one last hurrah. Ideally, we wouldn’t have given this insulting crap the time of day to begin with10, but the only value this garbage could have had was as a warning example after I pilloried it to fucking death. AI art, whether visual or aural, is not art, and should have no place where real artists struggle to thrive. Oh, and Unleash the Archers can go to hell.
I wish I could do over …
Dunnock – Little Stories Told by Ghosts Review. Speaking of 0.0 scores… I was in a bad space mentally when I wrote this review, and I take full responsibility for giving Dunnock a platform as my personal punching bag. It didn’t feel good to write this, and it didn’t feel good to have people validating my scoring decision in the comments. If nothing else, writing this review changed my philosophy on writing negative reviews for the better. My tastes should have dictated that I had no business reviewing this record, which I’m sure has its fans. Somewhere. I still think it sucks.
I wish more people had read …
Tales of Gaia – Hypernova Review. While the comments section indicates many people read this review, I simply cannot allow this gem to be lost to time. Hypernova left me crying and borderline suffocating from laughter. I have amazing memories of subjecting friends to this record and watching them crumple into a state of helpless hysteria. Unless Tales of Gaia makes another record with the same singer11, you will never hear anything else like this in your life.
Saunders
AMG and me
Various circumstances have conspired to fuck with my 2024 so far, leaving me scrambling as whips are cracked to contribute to this momentous occasion. 15 goddamn years, hey? And going stronger than ever… I am forever grateful and humbled to be a long-term servant to this mighty blog since joining the team during the latter half of 2014. My fading memory cannot quite pinpoint the timeline when I stumbled onto the pages of Angry Metal Guy. However, I remember being struck by the positive and passionate community vibes, the quality, insightful writing, and the no-bullshit rating system. I rapidly became an avid reader and, when opportunity came knocking, I jumped aboard. It’s been an awesome journey to see the incredible growth and expansion over the years.
Initially, I struggled as I adapted to a tight operation and steep learning curve with my then awful formatting skills (surprised I didn’t get the axe right there). Yet it was the professional standards, the support networks, set processes and the ongoing inspiration of the outstanding writing talent adorning these pages over the years that has kept me on my toes, and pushed me to become a better, more rounded writer. I am grateful for the exceptional (occasionally intimidating) writing standards and creative flair that each writer brings, which keeps me honest and inspires me. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of great music I’ve been alerted to over the years.
Writing for AngryMetalGuy.com means the world to me and has been my rock since stumbling across these pages roughly a decade ago. Although I don’t write as much as I would like to, daily visits to the blog remain a steadfast routine. Also, the one-of-a-kind community kicks arse and my writing buddies and colleagues are an awesome bunch of people and an absolute pleasure to work alongside. Here’s to many more great years ahead.
AMG gave to me …
Soen // Tellurian – Just months after I joined the staff, Angry Metal Guy Himself reviewed the sophomore album from Swedish progressive metal band Soen. I had overlooked their debut, and it was the impassioned piece of fine critical writing and subsequent lofty rating that piqued my interest. Being a prog enthusiast and big Opeth and Tool fan (no, not one of those Tool fans), Soen’s emotive, melancholic, chunky, complex and infectious brand of prog metal touched my heart and gripped my soul. It wrapping up top honors on my first year-end list writing here in 2014. It began a love affair with Soen, especially through their golden stretch from Tellurian to 2019’s exemplary Lotus album. Furthermore, Tellurian opened my eyes more and more to the many wondrous bands operating in the modern progressive metal field. A decade later and Tellurian continues to resonate strongly and remains one of my treasured early discoveries on this blog.
Mutoid Man // War Moans – Mutoid Man’s 2017 album War Moans dropped at a challenging period in my life, where I was navigating a career change and plunging into the unknown. Shit got pretty hectic; thus, certain albums took on extra significance in my life. The much-missed Dr Fisting wrote a typically cool review of the zany supergroup’s sophomore album, inspiring me to dip into the crazy world of Mutoid Man and their ridiculously catchy, wild concoction of influences. War Moans quickly ascended to become a go-to album and modern favorite, igniting my rabid fandom of the band to this day. Mutoid Man transcend simple labels, skilfully meshing elements of metal, rock, prog, punk, math and hardcore into cohesive, speedy, rollicking jams. They possess massive crossover appeal, punching out A-grade tuneage with plenty of zip, technical skill, and a knack of cranking the fun factor, and embellishing their batshit, hyperactive formula with wickedly addictive earworm gems.
Bathory // Hammerheart – I am a big metal feature nerd and, though the reviewing game takes precedent, some of my favorite moments are the various feature pieces and passionate write-ups of classic albums. When the curmudgeonly Doc Grier wrote a Yer Metal Is Olde piece on Bathory’s 1990 album Hammerheart, my curiosity was sparked. Although I was a fan of Enslaved and had dabbled in Borknagar, Bathory’s much-adored Viking metal legacy was largely untouched in my historic metal explorations. Branching out of my comfort zone and exploring other styles and genres is an ongoing thrill as a metalhead. This piece triggered me to open my horizons and delve more fully into the battle-hardened, epic realms of Viking metal and associated styles. Hammerheart is a fucking epic monster of a classic opus, that opened further doors for me and broadened my appreciation of not only Viking metal, but certain overlooked black metal gems, including Bathory’s own early classics.
I wish I had written …
For shits and giggles, I could easily go to Dr Fisting‘s Indefensible Positions takedown of Slaughter of the Soul, just for the sheer ballsyness, despite disagreeing with the sentiment. In the end, Grymm‘s killer Yer Metal Is Olde write-up of Acid Bath’s underground classic When the Kite String Pops stands out. This album (and this band) is an all timer for me and Grymm did an outstanding job of conveying why this album is so special and unique. It’s a classic YMIO entry that I occasionally go back to read, giving me the warm nostalgic feels and reminding me why I fell in love with this album back in the day, and why it still holds a place in my heart.
I wish more people had read …
AMG Goes Ranking – Dying Fetus. The Dying Fetus Ranking piece was a special moment in my decade-long career writing on this blog. A long-time favorite and pivotal band in opening my ears to the wonders of the more brutal, slammy realms of death metal, this ranking feature was a proud moment. Despite the collective efforts of my comrades Maddog and Dolphin Whisperer, fewer than thirty comments at time of writing was a little disappointing for a band of Dying Fetus’ stature. I don’t know how many actual clicks it got but I was certainly expecting / hoping for more rabble, agreements, and fiery debates than what occurred.
#2024 #AcidBath #AMGGoesRanking #AMGTurns15 #Amorphis #Avantasia #Bathory #billyWoods #BlogPost #BlogPosts #ComingOut #Cormorant #DarkestEra #Dodecahedron #DyingFetus #GeoffTate #GrymmCommentsOn #LornaShore #MeltedBodies #Moonsorrow #MutoidMan #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Soen #StevenWilson #TarjaTurunen #TheNightFlightOrchestra #Wilderun
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AMG Turns 15: Senior VPs Speak
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
El Cuervo
AMG and me
When I reflect on what really matters at the end of each year, AMG.com always comes up trumps.1 Its benefits are many, its failings few, and I struggle to imagine my life had I never joined its crew a decade ago. Surprising though this may be to those familiar with my pride, AMG could be an unread blog and it wouldn’t matter. It represents a creative outlet, exercises my brain differently from my corporate career, rewards me with high-quality listening material, and even introduced some individuals that I now consider strong friends. Serving a not-for-profit organization operated by nerds for nerds, with a combined love for their esoteric interest grants me balance and perspective I would otherwise miss in my rigidly structured professional life. Even after thousands of hours of unpaid servitude, it energizes and excites me.
Sure, it satisfies my ego that Angry Metal Guy also attracts thousands of unique readers per article, and has sizable clout in the underground and mid-tier of heavy metal media. I love the bump bands experience following our praise, and even the incendiary comments when we criticize something popular. But these are just the cherry on the top of everything else it affords me. This site nourishes my soul; through creativity, community, and hubris.2
AMG gave to me …
Cormorant // Dwellings – In 2011, I was still relatively new to extreme metal but I already knew that Opeth was one of my favorite bands. A simple Opeth name-drop by AMG in his review was all it took to pique my interest. Shortly thereafter, Cormorant—especially their first two records, 2009’s Metzoa and this—became some of my favorite music too. So much so that a slice of the art from this second record is prominently tattooed on my body. Dwellings is an expansive, unpredictable treasure map of a record. It’s littered with dozens of obvious paths and landmarks, but also subtler trinkets you’ll miss until your tenth listen. There’s so much to admire here, from the burly riff and thunderous vocals opening “Junta,” to the wandering, shredding guitars narrating Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s indigenous population (“The First Man”) and the beautifully delicate interludes on “Funambulist.” Dwellings is the earliest example of many albums introduced to me via AMG.com that have had a lasting impact on either my listening tastes or life generally.
Moonsorrow // Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa – Although I’d already breached the realms of death metal prior to discovering AMG (via Opeth and In Flames, naturally), black metal had eluded me. It was a gap about which I was concerned, given my moves towards heavier music. Happily for me, the review of Moonsorrow’s sixth full-length blew that door wide open. Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa is hardly entry-grade material, featuring a bleak atmosphere, alien vocals, and four main tracks each exceeding eleven minutes. But the grand melodies, sharp riffs, folksy slant, and EPIC song-writing scope offered the necessary bait for me. It basically ruined atmospheric and folksy metal for me from the outset; almost no other bands successfully write engrossing, long-form black metal like these guys, despite most of them trying. Listening to VKKM is less like hearing music and more like slowly wandering towards a freezing death in the Nordic wilderness. But in a good way! While the band has arguably produced other, stronger records—the mythological curiosity of Verisäkeet and monolithic Hävitetty are also exemplary—VKKM holds a special importance to me for opening up an entire genre.
Steven Wilson // Hand. Cannot. Erase. – At the age of 22/23, I would describe 2016 as the year that my childhood ended and adulthood began. I was preparing to enter employment at the end of my further education and went through a difficult break-up with a long-term partner. Although Hand. Cannot. Erase. released in 2015, I spent far more time with it the following year. Along with a few other artists outside my typical territory of prog and metal, it narrated that period for me. Progressive rock sits comfortably within my bailiwick3 but the mournful strains of pop found on the title track and “Perfect Life” are what stand H.C.E. apart from everything else. AMG‘s AotY summary was absolutely right in saying that “the emotional engagement that Wilson and co. are able to evoke in me is precisely what makes this album more than the sum of its parts.” It’s my emotional response to the music here that makes this record what it is. Even in the numerous ways my life has changed in the subsequent eight years, I find it a little difficult to return to this one. It’s a landmark album in my life.
I wish I had written …
Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony Review. This album represents not only the vehicle through which I discovered AMG but also one of my favorite albums from the 2010s. It’s the most raucous, overblown and catchy fusion of hard rock and symphonic metal I’ve heard. But my first listen also represented a turning point in my life. Pre-Wicked Symphony, so much of my listening was rooted in bands introduced to me by my dad. Post-Wicked Symphony, these roles were reversed and I now feed him new releases I think he’ll enjoy. I would have loved the contemporaneous opportunity to describe this phenomenon in relation to Avantasia.
I wish more people had read …
Geoff Tate – Kings and Thieves Review. The great Dr. Fisting is the most incisive, humorous writer to ever sit in our ranks, and his review of Kings and Thieves forms his best output. Framed as a letter, Fisting delivers a savage, but wholly reasonable, takedown of a problematic, wayward Mr Tate. The line “hearing you sing about getting laid is about as sexy as walking in on my parents” delighted me at the time and still delights me now. Read this.
Grymm
AMG and me
In all my years of listening to metal prior to writing about it, I was searching long and hard for anything that would come close to the magic that the late, great Metal Maniacs magazine brought to the world. Once I encountered Dr. Fisting‘s immortal(ly brutal) review of Kings and Thieves by ex-Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate, I knew I had found it. Little did I know that I would call this place home for over a decade. To say this site is special to me, is to understate the impact it’s had on my life, my writing, and how I approach all music nowadays. The fact that I made a second family here among the staff and readers makes this all the sweeter. I don’t regret the time, energy, and tears spent here.
As I’ve said many times, onward…
AMG gave to me …
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter // Saved! – The most recent and jarring album that I discovered since joining up here, the former Lingua Ignota took all the pain she experienced through abuse, and turned it into a religious, lo-fi cleansing, that was equal parts beautiful, stirring, and brutally uncomfortable. I often waver between experiencing this album to purge, and never wanting to touch it again because it’s that raw. When an album makes you feel those things, you know the artist(s) who crafted it did something right.
Lorna Shore // Pain Remains – I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of deathcore out there, and it doesn’t help that I (unfairly, in hindsight) avoided New Jersey’s Lorna Shore due to the actions of their prior vocalist. What I didn’t know was that they gave said asshole the boot almost immediately after Immortal’s release, and were blessed with the golden throat of one Will Ramos. The rest, as they say, is history. Since then, they’ve been on a majestic ascent that many bands would give everything for, and they rightfully deserve all the success in the world that they’ve achieved.
Darkest Era // Severence – One of the earliest albums I discovered via another writer here at AMG, Irish minstrels Darkest Era deserve far, far more love than they’re currently getting … and from what I’ve heard, they’re getting some well-deserved love lately from all the metalheads. Rightfully so. For, as good as their debut The Last Caress of Light was, Severence saw a major improvement in terms of musicianship and songwriting, seeing them surpass many of their inspirations by leaps and bounds.
I wish I had written …
Any of Cherd‘s Christmas posts, especially the Tarja Christmas album. Sometimes, you’re feeling the Spirit of Christmas4 and you want to spread joy. Sometimes, you just can’t stand the fucking holidays, and just want to laugh your ass off at some damn good (piss)takes on the commercialized, uber-capitalistic holidays, and our holiday cheer-spreader has spent the last few years making us hurt our ribcages from ugly-laughing so damn much to his reviews of Christmas albums, and Tarja’s over-the-top Christmas album was beyond ripe for the taking. I wish I had his propensity for pain humor.
I wish I could do over …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. – Don’t get this twisted; everything I said in my second coming-out piece still needed to be said and, sadly, nothing’s changed. But if you knew even half of the bullshit I endured once it was published, you would too lose all motivation to support the very music that has people in it that want to see you either removed from the scene, or outright dead. My desire to write pretty much died after this went live…
I wish more people had read …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. …but I’m not at all sorry I did it. Metal, for all its acceptance of its wayward misfits, miscreants, and outcasts, still has a colossal problem in terms of racism and homophobia, and it’s only gotten more emboldened over the last decade or so. It’s heartening to see pushback against it though and if that means someone else will pick up the baton, after I laid it down, to call out that bullshit, then all the better. None of the other major players have the fortitude to do so, but there are those who can and will.
Kronos
AMG and me
Look, I don’t write here anymore; I’ve left that to the more capable. But when I did, the reason for it all was that someone gave a fuck whether I was capable or not. When someone first commented to say, “Hey, this is some bad prose” on a Kronos review, that was when I decided that I was going to keep writing for AMG. For all our sins as a website, we did—and those currently writing here still do—care to make what you read here good, and care to connect you with art that is good. The commentariat’s demand for quality pushed me as a writer to produce both the best criticism and the most entertaining writing I could muster, even when I didn’t have much to say. But there came a point when I found I had too little to say to keep saying anything. Seeing the rest of the staff continue to dish thoughtful commentary even on thoughtless art, made bowing out easy. I’m proud to have been a piece of the project for so long.
I hope it keeps going another fifteen years. That way, when I’m a Steel-level fogie and Defeated Sanity are as neolithic as Metal Church, I can return and correct Generation Alpha’s horrible taste.
AMG gave to me …
Dodecahedron // Dodecahedron – If I had never heard Dodecahedron’s opening chords, I may have had a very different life than I do now. Knowing that those sounds exist completely reshaped my relationship with music, shifting my interest from the technical to the visceral. Never before had I felt my stomach turn from sound alone. If there’s any overarching theme in my music writing, it’s the failure to completely capture this sensation in words, to properly express the importance of art that sparks the neurons below the neck.
Melted Bodies // Enjoy Yourself – Well, don’t mind if I do. I thought this sounded OK from GardensTale‘s review and didn’t get around to it until I’d turned in my year-end list for 2020 (after all, I know best, so why bother listening to what these bozos tell me is good). Then I spent 2021 listening to Enjoy Yourself on a weekly basis. Melted Bodies’ sardonic seapunk-infused thrash proved the perfect artistic vehicle to deliver a treatise on hypernormalization and the misery, and seediness of American culture. Far from being just a metal record with a political bent, Enjoy Yourself is more directly a political document printed with a gaudy mix of guitars, synthesizer boops, and blast beats, in which every annoying, hokey lyrical delivery hisses out through a rot-toothed sneer.
billy woods // Hiding Places5 – While I was actively writing, I pretty much knew if I’d like a new metal record well before the review came out. The writers look out for each other, you know? And few were more persistent and reliable gauges of my interest than Kenstrosity, who somehow just knew I’d love this album. Hiding Places carries more than a whiff of the care and crypsis of a great art-house death metal record without being anything close to one. Muted instrumentals creak and twinkle around woods, whose tangled lyrics squint suspiciously at love and belonging, paranoid from decades of imperial violence. Gloomy but electric, woods delivers his piece with a mix of resignation and reprehension that hooks me in every time. It’s not metal, but it is really fucking angry.
Dr. Wvrm
AMG and me
I’ve asked myself what AMG means to me far too often over the last few years. As I’ve fallen out, in and back out of love with metal, with reviewing, and with arguing with “writers” about the finer points of comma usage. As I’ve watched better and more dedicated reviewers slip away to the far side of the hourglass, I’ve wondered what my useless ass is still doing here.
I don’t write; no time, no drive. I don’t read the articles, but then again, who does? I stay in touch with current releases (mostly because Kenneth or Dolphin Fucker or Eldritch shove things they know I’ll like in my face) but am no longer a voracious consumer and cataloguer. My fixations have moved on to other equally meaningless pursuits. Yet here I stay, despite the guilt of missed deadlines and the shame of another broken promise of regular reviews, doing just enough to avoid unceremonious defenestration from The Hall, because I love these people.
This site, those who read it, and particularly those who staff it, are the only people I have ever had in my life who see what I see in this awful music; who understand the ways this awful music can take on a life of its own, suffusing relationships and memories like little else can; who have connected with me and supported me and been so good to me, simply because of this awful, this god-awful music.
AMG, more than anything else, means community, and I consider myself lucky to have found a place at its table.
AMG gave to me …
Wilderun // Sleep at the Edge of the Earth6 – Sleep is (a) an entirely unoriginal selection, (b) the first 5.0/5.0 record to which this site introduced me, and (c) the only metal record my father has ever appreciated. This is a man who once made me turn off Billy Joel.7 After 20 years of musical repartee boiling down to me blasting Cryptopsy’s “Crown of Horns” for laughs, Wilderun managed to bridge our gap. It surely has to do with the literal Berklee grads orchestrating a symphonic masterpiece more than anything heavy about the record, but if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s to shut up and take your win. The image of the two of us listening to “Hope and Shadow” while driving through the hills of Pennsylvania Dutch Country is vivid in the way those special moments always are, even years later. I’m sure if asked, he couldn’t recall that afternoon. The memory is fine just the same.
The Night Flight Orchestra // Amber Galactic – As Sleep was to my father, so was Amber Galactic to my mother. In many ways, I owe my metal worship to her; if not for a childhood raised on nothing but soft rock, I likely wouldn’t search out the ugliest music humanly possible. While she was never as repulsed by my musical predilections as my father,8 she was also not the audience for Slayer or Children of Bodom, just as I was not the audience for Shania Twain, Rod Stewart or Seal.9 Our tastes diverged for good in the year 2004, leaving little but tussles over the radio knob, and eventually everything else. Our fights were, and are, legendary among our friends and family, which was a badge of honor as an asshole teenager and is now a marker of shame as an asshole adult. I don’t remember how she got wise to Amber Galactic – maybe through me, accidentally. But for the first time in the long-time search for a ceasefire, she was as into “Gemini,” “Domino”, and “Josephine” as I was. It was a good time. That detente didn’t last long, of course, but as a wise man once said, “Shut up and take your win.”
Amorphis // Under the Red Cloud – Under the Red Cloud topped the very first Top Ten I put together, in 2015, still a pre-staff wannabe. Even then, I wanted to foist my awful opinions on the world, and in many ways, that was the first step to my eventual membership here. That isn’t why this review matters to me though. I had no idea who Amorphis was before AMG Himself‘s review of Under the Red Cloud. In the years since, I’ve been grateful for their constant companionship, in the summer sun and on lonely nights like the one on which I write this. I reached for them on a January morning, as the last throes of a Nor’easter snowed me into the maternity ward. I’m passing the hours between bottles by staring out at crystalline whorls as “Enigma” plays. It’s one of my very favorites, in their catalog, in all of music, and I can’t help but share it. I turn the volume down and pass the headphones from my ears to my son’s. It’s only for a moment, and who knows how well you can hear less than a day removed from in vitro, but it’s our moment. It’s this moment, all these moments, that I want to flash before my eyes when my bell finally tolls, and I hope someone turns the speaker up to 11 when they do.
Eldritch Elitist
AMG and me
I’m not sure if any of my colleagues know this, but I have done most of my writing in my nearly 8 year tenure at Angry Metal Guy on my cell phone. I submitted my application to AMG on May 24th, 2016; exactly two weeks later, my first and only child was born. He was a particularly clingy baby, so for months when I’d arrive home from work, he was essentially glued to my arm for hours on end. When Steel Druhm and Madam X graciously brought me on as a probationary writer, I begrudgingly adapted to writing on a stupid-ass, tiny-ass screen with my stupid-ass, big-ass thumbs. The process has been second nature to me ever since.
Let me be perfectly clear: If I was doing this for a shot at writing for any other blog, I would have bailed immediately. But I owed Angry Metal Guy for singlehandedly revitalizing my passion for metal, after my interest in the genre had waned over a half decade of post-high school life. No other outlet compared when it came to treating melodic metal with the same respect and professional level of writing quality afforded to so-called “trailblazers” in the scene. Having the kind of music that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place legitimized by such a talented crew was revelatory. I can only hope my contributions in this space have resonated similarly with others like me.
AMG gave to me …
Beaten to Death // Unplugged – I’m not a grindcore fan. The number of grindcore albums I’ve listened to in full likely ranks in the single digits. I also think that Beaten to Death’s Unplugged is one of the coolest, catchiest, and most compulsively listenable records of the last decade. Part of what makes Unplugged a special record for me is that—aside from its sheer kinetic brilliance—discovering this record through AMG is what made me want to write for this blog in the first place. Jean-Luc Ricard’s spot-on piece wisely zeroed in on this record’s decidedly un-grindy eccentricities, which was vital for enticing genre tourists like myself. Mirroring that review’s impact has been my mission with every positive review I’ve ever penned. For all the self-proclaimed power metal haters who thanked me in the comments for making them one-off converts to records like The Saberlight Chronicles: Thanks for the free dopamine!
Khemmis // Hunted – I used to be a casual appreciator of doom metal. That is, before Steel Druhm reviewed Khemmis’s 2016 opus Hunted, which more or less put me off the genre for good. Hunted is a perfect encapsulation of everything I enjoy in a doom metal record. So perfect, in fact, that everything I’ve heard in the realm of traditional doom metal since has failed to elicit a response stronger than “this is good, but I wish I was listening to Hunted.” This album excels through sheer simplicity and masterful melodic handling, filling any semblance of dead air in a genre where most compositions feel like a waste of space. The tragedy here is that Khemmis’ formula is so effective as to feel effortless in its construction, yet no other band has been able to match these heights, despite the formula for success sounding so obvious to my ears. Were it not for Steel Druhm’s rightfully glowing (if underscored) review, I might have never heard my favorite doom metal album at all.
Xoth // Invasion of the Tentacube – Much like Wilderun before them, I’m not sure Xoth’s recent underground success would have resulted in as strong of word-of-mouth had Angry Metal Guy not been hyping them up since their 2017 debut. Our staff’s collective enthusiasm for promoting unsigned gems like Invasion of the Tentacube is, at least in my eyes, unmatched in getting bands like Xoth the early attention they deserve. Sure, there are many examples of self-released albums that fit these qualifiers, but Invasion of the Tentacube might be my personal favorite. It’s also worth mentioning this record as a reminder for people to revisit Xoth’s early material. Though a bit unrefined (as Akerblogger pointed out in his otherwise glowing review), this album is every bit as entertaining as Xoth’s subsequent LPs, and a neat little time capsule that captures all of Xoth’s ambitions in a charmingly adolescent package.
I wish I had written …
Frostbite Orckings – The Orcish Eclipse Review. I maintain that it was a wise decision to retire the 0.0/5.0 score from our rating system, but for Frostbite Orckings, I should have lobbied to reinstate it for one last hurrah. Ideally, we wouldn’t have given this insulting crap the time of day to begin with10, but the only value this garbage could have had was as a warning example after I pilloried it to fucking death. AI art, whether visual or aural, is not art, and should have no place where real artists struggle to thrive. Oh, and Unleash the Archers can go to hell.
I wish I could do over …
Dunnock – Little Stories Told by Ghosts Review. Speaking of 0.0 scores… I was in a bad space mentally when I wrote this review, and I take full responsibility for giving Dunnock a platform as my personal punching bag. It didn’t feel good to write this, and it didn’t feel good to have people validating my scoring decision in the comments. If nothing else, writing this review changed my philosophy on writing negative reviews for the better. My tastes should have dictated that I had no business reviewing this record, which I’m sure has its fans. Somewhere. I still think it sucks.
I wish more people had read …
Tales of Gaia – Hypernova Review. While the comments section indicates many people read this review, I simply cannot allow this gem to be lost to time. Hypernova left me crying and borderline suffocating from laughter. I have amazing memories of subjecting friends to this record and watching them crumple into a state of helpless hysteria. Unless Tales of Gaia makes another record with the same singer11, you will never hear anything else like this in your life.
Saunders
AMG and me
Various circumstances have conspired to fuck with my 2024 so far, leaving me scrambling as whips are cracked to contribute to this momentous occasion. 15 goddamn years, hey? And going stronger than ever… I am forever grateful and humbled to be a long-term servant to this mighty blog since joining the team during the latter half of 2014. My fading memory cannot quite pinpoint the timeline when I stumbled onto the pages of Angry Metal Guy. However, I remember being struck by the positive and passionate community vibes, the quality, insightful writing, and the no-bullshit rating system. I rapidly became an avid reader and, when opportunity came knocking, I jumped aboard. It’s been an awesome journey to see the incredible growth and expansion over the years.
Initially, I struggled as I adapted to a tight operation and steep learning curve with my then awful formatting skills (surprised I didn’t get the axe right there). Yet it was the professional standards, the support networks, set processes and the ongoing inspiration of the outstanding writing talent adorning these pages over the years that has kept me on my toes, and pushed me to become a better, more rounded writer. I am grateful for the exceptional (occasionally intimidating) writing standards and creative flair that each writer brings, which keeps me honest and inspires me. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of great music I’ve been alerted to over the years.
Writing for AngryMetalGuy.com means the world to me and has been my rock since stumbling across these pages roughly a decade ago. Although I don’t write as much as I would like to, daily visits to the blog remain a steadfast routine. Also, the one-of-a-kind community kicks arse and my writing buddies and colleagues are an awesome bunch of people and an absolute pleasure to work alongside. Here’s to many more great years ahead.
AMG gave to me …
Soen // Tellurian – Just months after I joined the staff, Angry Metal Guy Himself reviewed the sophomore album from Swedish progressive metal band Soen. I had overlooked their debut, and it was the impassioned piece of fine critical writing and subsequent lofty rating that piqued my interest. Being a prog enthusiast and big Opeth and Tool fan (no, not one of those Tool fans), Soen’s emotive, melancholic, chunky, complex and infectious brand of prog metal touched my heart and gripped my soul. It wrapping up top honors on my first year-end list writing here in 2014. It began a love affair with Soen, especially through their golden stretch from Tellurian to 2019’s exemplary Lotus album. Furthermore, Tellurian opened my eyes more and more to the many wondrous bands operating in the modern progressive metal field. A decade later and Tellurian continues to resonate strongly and remains one of my treasured early discoveries on this blog.
Mutoid Man // War Moans – Mutoid Man’s 2017 album War Moans dropped at a challenging period in my life, where I was navigating a career change and plunging into the unknown. Shit got pretty hectic; thus, certain albums took on extra significance in my life. The much-missed Dr Fisting wrote a typically cool review of the zany supergroup’s sophomore album, inspiring me to dip into the crazy world of Mutoid Man and their ridiculously catchy, wild concoction of influences. War Moans quickly ascended to become a go-to album and modern favorite, igniting my rabid fandom of the band to this day. Mutoid Man transcend simple labels, skilfully meshing elements of metal, rock, prog, punk, math and hardcore into cohesive, speedy, rollicking jams. They possess massive crossover appeal, punching out A-grade tuneage with plenty of zip, technical skill, and a knack of cranking the fun factor, and embellishing their batshit, hyperactive formula with wickedly addictive earworm gems.
Bathory // Hammerheart – I am a big metal feature nerd and, though the reviewing game takes precedent, some of my favorite moments are the various feature pieces and passionate write-ups of classic albums. When the curmudgeonly Doc Grier wrote a Yer Metal Is Olde piece on Bathory’s 1990 album Hammerheart, my curiosity was sparked. Although I was a fan of Enslaved and had dabbled in Borknagar, Bathory’s much-adored Viking metal legacy was largely untouched in my historic metal explorations. Branching out of my comfort zone and exploring other styles and genres is an ongoing thrill as a metalhead. This piece triggered me to open my horizons and delve more fully into the battle-hardened, epic realms of Viking metal and associated styles. Hammerheart is a fucking epic monster of a classic opus, that opened further doors for me and broadened my appreciation of not only Viking metal, but certain overlooked black metal gems, including Bathory’s own early classics.
I wish I had written …
For shits and giggles, I could easily go to Dr Fisting‘s Indefensible Positions takedown of Slaughter of the Soul, just for the sheer ballsyness, despite disagreeing with the sentiment. In the end, Grymm‘s killer Yer Metal Is Olde write-up of Acid Bath’s underground classic When the Kite String Pops stands out. This album (and this band) is an all timer for me and Grymm did an outstanding job of conveying why this album is so special and unique. It’s a classic YMIO entry that I occasionally go back to read, giving me the warm nostalgic feels and reminding me why I fell in love with this album back in the day, and why it still holds a place in my heart.
I wish more people had read …
AMG Goes Ranking – Dying Fetus. The Dying Fetus Ranking piece was a special moment in my decade-long career writing on this blog. A long-time favorite and pivotal band in opening my ears to the wonders of the more brutal, slammy realms of death metal, this ranking feature was a proud moment. Despite the collective efforts of my comrades Maddog and Dolphin Whisperer, fewer than thirty comments at time of writing was a little disappointing for a band of Dying Fetus’ stature. I don’t know how many actual clicks it got but I was certainly expecting / hoping for more rabble, agreements, and fiery debates than what occurred.
#2024 #AcidBath #AMGGoesRanking #AMGTurns15 #Amorphis #Avantasia #Bathory #billyWoods #BlogPost #BlogPosts #ComingOut #Cormorant #DarkestEra #Dodecahedron #DyingFetus #GeoffTate #GrymmCommentsOn #LornaShore #MeltedBodies #Moonsorrow #MutoidMan #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Soen #StevenWilson #TarjaTurunen #TheNightFlightOrchestra #Wilderun
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AMG Turns 15: Senior VPs Speak
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
El Cuervo
AMG and me
When I reflect on what really matters at the end of each year, AMG.com always comes up trumps.1 Its benefits are many, its failings few, and I struggle to imagine my life had I never joined its crew a decade ago. Surprising though this may be to those familiar with my pride, AMG could be an unread blog and it wouldn’t matter. It represents a creative outlet, exercises my brain differently from my corporate career, rewards me with high-quality listening material, and even introduced some individuals that I now consider strong friends. Serving a not-for-profit organization operated by nerds for nerds, with a combined love for their esoteric interest grants me balance and perspective I would otherwise miss in my rigidly structured professional life. Even after thousands of hours of unpaid servitude, it energizes and excites me.
Sure, it satisfies my ego that Angry Metal Guy also attracts thousands of unique readers per article, and has sizable clout in the underground and mid-tier of heavy metal media. I love the bump bands experience following our praise, and even the incendiary comments when we criticize something popular. But these are just the cherry on the top of everything else it affords me. This site nourishes my soul; through creativity, community, and hubris.2
AMG gave to me …
Cormorant // Dwellings – In 2011, I was still relatively new to extreme metal but I already knew that Opeth was one of my favorite bands. A simple Opeth name-drop by AMG in his review was all it took to pique my interest. Shortly thereafter, Cormorant—especially their first two records, 2009’s Metzoa and this—became some of my favorite music too. So much so that a slice of the art from this second record is prominently tattooed on my body. Dwellings is an expansive, unpredictable treasure map of a record. It’s littered with dozens of obvious paths and landmarks, but also subtler trinkets you’ll miss until your tenth listen. There’s so much to admire here, from the burly riff and thunderous vocals opening “Junta,” to the wandering, shredding guitars narrating Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s indigenous population (“The First Man”) and the beautifully delicate interludes on “Funambulist.” Dwellings is the earliest example of many albums introduced to me via AMG.com that have had a lasting impact on either my listening tastes or life generally.
Moonsorrow // Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa – Although I’d already breached the realms of death metal prior to discovering AMG (via Opeth and In Flames, naturally), black metal had eluded me. It was a gap about which I was concerned, given my moves towards heavier music. Happily for me, the review of Moonsorrow’s sixth full-length blew that door wide open. Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa is hardly entry-grade material, featuring a bleak atmosphere, alien vocals, and four main tracks each exceeding eleven minutes. But the grand melodies, sharp riffs, folksy slant, and EPIC song-writing scope offered the necessary bait for me. It basically ruined atmospheric and folksy metal for me from the outset; almost no other bands successfully write engrossing, long-form black metal like these guys, despite most of them trying. Listening to VKKM is less like hearing music and more like slowly wandering towards a freezing death in the Nordic wilderness. But in a good way! While the band has arguably produced other, stronger records—the mythological curiosity of Verisäkeet and monolithic Hävitetty are also exemplary—VKKM holds a special importance to me for opening up an entire genre.
Steven Wilson // Hand. Cannot. Erase. – At the age of 22/23, I would describe 2016 as the year that my childhood ended and adulthood began. I was preparing to enter employment at the end of my further education and went through a difficult break-up with a long-term partner. Although Hand. Cannot. Erase. released in 2015, I spent far more time with it the following year. Along with a few other artists outside my typical territory of prog and metal, it narrated that period for me. Progressive rock sits comfortably within my bailiwick3 but the mournful strains of pop found on the title track and “Perfect Life” are what stand H.C.E. apart from everything else. AMG‘s AotY summary was absolutely right in saying that “the emotional engagement that Wilson and co. are able to evoke in me is precisely what makes this album more than the sum of its parts.” It’s my emotional response to the music here that makes this record what it is. Even in the numerous ways my life has changed in the subsequent eight years, I find it a little difficult to return to this one. It’s a landmark album in my life.
I wish I had written …
Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony Review. This album represents not only the vehicle through which I discovered AMG but also one of my favorite albums from the 2010s. It’s the most raucous, overblown and catchy fusion of hard rock and symphonic metal I’ve heard. But my first listen also represented a turning point in my life. Pre-Wicked Symphony, so much of my listening was rooted in bands introduced to me by my dad. Post-Wicked Symphony, these roles were reversed and I now feed him new releases I think he’ll enjoy. I would have loved the contemporaneous opportunity to describe this phenomenon in relation to Avantasia.
I wish more people had read …
Geoff Tate – Kings and Thieves Review. The great Dr. Fisting is the most incisive, humorous writer to ever sit in our ranks, and his review of Kings and Thieves forms his best output. Framed as a letter, Fisting delivers a savage, but wholly reasonable, takedown of a problematic, wayward Mr Tate. The line “hearing you sing about getting laid is about as sexy as walking in on my parents” delighted me at the time and still delights me now. Read this.
Grymm
AMG and me
In all my years of listening to metal prior to writing about it, I was searching long and hard for anything that would come close to the magic that the late, great Metal Maniacs magazine brought to the world. Once I encountered Dr. Fisting‘s immortal(ly brutal) review of Kings and Thieves by ex-Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate, I knew I had found it. Little did I know that I would call this place home for over a decade. To say this site is special to me, is to understate the impact it’s had on my life, my writing, and how I approach all music nowadays. The fact that I made a second family here among the staff and readers makes this all the sweeter. I don’t regret the time, energy, and tears spent here.
As I’ve said many times, onward…
AMG gave to me …
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter // Saved! – The most recent and jarring album that I discovered since joining up here, the former Lingua Ignota took all the pain she experienced through abuse, and turned it into a religious, lo-fi cleansing, that was equal parts beautiful, stirring, and brutally uncomfortable. I often waver between experiencing this album to purge, and never wanting to touch it again because it’s that raw. When an album makes you feel those things, you know the artist(s) who crafted it did something right.
Lorna Shore // Pain Remains – I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of deathcore out there, and it doesn’t help that I (unfairly, in hindsight) avoided New Jersey’s Lorna Shore due to the actions of their prior vocalist. What I didn’t know was that they gave said asshole the boot almost immediately after Immortal’s release, and were blessed with the golden throat of one Will Ramos. The rest, as they say, is history. Since then, they’ve been on a majestic ascent that many bands would give everything for, and they rightfully deserve all the success in the world that they’ve achieved.
Darkest Era // Severence – One of the earliest albums I discovered via another writer here at AMG, Irish minstrels Darkest Era deserve far, far more love than they’re currently getting … and from what I’ve heard, they’re getting some well-deserved love lately from all the metalheads. Rightfully so. For, as good as their debut The Last Caress of Light was, Severence saw a major improvement in terms of musicianship and songwriting, seeing them surpass many of their inspirations by leaps and bounds.
I wish I had written …
Any of Cherd‘s Christmas posts, especially the Tarja Christmas album. Sometimes, you’re feeling the Spirit of Christmas4 and you want to spread joy. Sometimes, you just can’t stand the fucking holidays, and just want to laugh your ass off at some damn good (piss)takes on the commercialized, uber-capitalistic holidays, and our holiday cheer-spreader has spent the last few years making us hurt our ribcages from ugly-laughing so damn much to his reviews of Christmas albums, and Tarja’s over-the-top Christmas album was beyond ripe for the taking. I wish I had his propensity for pain humor.
I wish I could do over …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. – Don’t get this twisted; everything I said in my second coming-out piece still needed to be said and, sadly, nothing’s changed. But if you knew even half of the bullshit I endured once it was published, you would too lose all motivation to support the very music that has people in it that want to see you either removed from the scene, or outright dead. My desire to write pretty much died after this went live…
I wish more people had read …
Grymm Comments: On Coming Out and Acceptance in the Metalverse… Again. …but I’m not at all sorry I did it. Metal, for all its acceptance of its wayward misfits, miscreants, and outcasts, still has a colossal problem in terms of racism and homophobia, and it’s only gotten more emboldened over the last decade or so. It’s heartening to see pushback against it though and if that means someone else will pick up the baton, after I laid it down, to call out that bullshit, then all the better. None of the other major players have the fortitude to do so, but there are those who can and will.
Kronos
AMG and me
Look, I don’t write here anymore; I’ve left that to the more capable. But when I did, the reason for it all was that someone gave a fuck whether I was capable or not. When someone first commented to say, “Hey, this is some bad prose” on a Kronos review, that was when I decided that I was going to keep writing for AMG. For all our sins as a website, we did—and those currently writing here still do—care to make what you read here good, and care to connect you with art that is good. The commentariat’s demand for quality pushed me as a writer to produce both the best criticism and the most entertaining writing I could muster, even when I didn’t have much to say. But there came a point when I found I had too little to say to keep saying anything. Seeing the rest of the staff continue to dish thoughtful commentary even on thoughtless art, made bowing out easy. I’m proud to have been a piece of the project for so long.
I hope it keeps going another fifteen years. That way, when I’m a Steel-level fogie and Defeated Sanity are as neolithic as Metal Church, I can return and correct Generation Alpha’s horrible taste.
AMG gave to me …
Dodecahedron // Dodecahedron – If I had never heard Dodecahedron’s opening chords, I may have had a very different life than I do now. Knowing that those sounds exist completely reshaped my relationship with music, shifting my interest from the technical to the visceral. Never before had I felt my stomach turn from sound alone. If there’s any overarching theme in my music writing, it’s the failure to completely capture this sensation in words, to properly express the importance of art that sparks the neurons below the neck.
Melted Bodies // Enjoy Yourself – Well, don’t mind if I do. I thought this sounded OK from GardensTale‘s review and didn’t get around to it until I’d turned in my year-end list for 2020 (after all, I know best, so why bother listening to what these bozos tell me is good). Then I spent 2021 listening to Enjoy Yourself on a weekly basis. Melted Bodies’ sardonic seapunk-infused thrash proved the perfect artistic vehicle to deliver a treatise on hypernormalization and the misery, and seediness of American culture. Far from being just a metal record with a political bent, Enjoy Yourself is more directly a political document printed with a gaudy mix of guitars, synthesizer boops, and blast beats, in which every annoying, hokey lyrical delivery hisses out through a rot-toothed sneer.
billy woods // Hiding Places5 – While I was actively writing, I pretty much knew if I’d like a new metal record well before the review came out. The writers look out for each other, you know? And few were more persistent and reliable gauges of my interest than Kenstrosity, who somehow just knew I’d love this album. Hiding Places carries more than a whiff of the care and crypsis of a great art-house death metal record without being anything close to one. Muted instrumentals creak and twinkle around woods, whose tangled lyrics squint suspiciously at love and belonging, paranoid from decades of imperial violence. Gloomy but electric, woods delivers his piece with a mix of resignation and reprehension that hooks me in every time. It’s not metal, but it is really fucking angry.
Dr. Wvrm
AMG and me
I’ve asked myself what AMG means to me far too often over the last few years. As I’ve fallen out, in and back out of love with metal, with reviewing, and with arguing with “writers” about the finer points of comma usage. As I’ve watched better and more dedicated reviewers slip away to the far side of the hourglass, I’ve wondered what my useless ass is still doing here.
I don’t write; no time, no drive. I don’t read the articles, but then again, who does? I stay in touch with current releases (mostly because Kenneth or Dolphin Fucker or Eldritch shove things they know I’ll like in my face) but am no longer a voracious consumer and cataloguer. My fixations have moved on to other equally meaningless pursuits. Yet here I stay, despite the guilt of missed deadlines and the shame of another broken promise of regular reviews, doing just enough to avoid unceremonious defenestration from The Hall, because I love these people.
This site, those who read it, and particularly those who staff it, are the only people I have ever had in my life who see what I see in this awful music; who understand the ways this awful music can take on a life of its own, suffusing relationships and memories like little else can; who have connected with me and supported me and been so good to me, simply because of this awful, this god-awful music.
AMG, more than anything else, means community, and I consider myself lucky to have found a place at its table.
AMG gave to me …
Wilderun // Sleep at the Edge of the Earth6 – Sleep is (a) an entirely unoriginal selection, (b) the first 5.0/5.0 record to which this site introduced me, and (c) the only metal record my father has ever appreciated. This is a man who once made me turn off Billy Joel.7 After 20 years of musical repartee boiling down to me blasting Cryptopsy’s “Crown of Horns” for laughs, Wilderun managed to bridge our gap. It surely has to do with the literal Berklee grads orchestrating a symphonic masterpiece more than anything heavy about the record, but if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s to shut up and take your win. The image of the two of us listening to “Hope and Shadow” while driving through the hills of Pennsylvania Dutch Country is vivid in the way those special moments always are, even years later. I’m sure if asked, he couldn’t recall that afternoon. The memory is fine just the same.
The Night Flight Orchestra // Amber Galactic – As Sleep was to my father, so was Amber Galactic to my mother. In many ways, I owe my metal worship to her; if not for a childhood raised on nothing but soft rock, I likely wouldn’t search out the ugliest music humanly possible. While she was never as repulsed by my musical predilections as my father,8 she was also not the audience for Slayer or Children of Bodom, just as I was not the audience for Shania Twain, Rod Stewart or Seal.9 Our tastes diverged for good in the year 2004, leaving little but tussles over the radio knob, and eventually everything else. Our fights were, and are, legendary among our friends and family, which was a badge of honor as an asshole teenager and is now a marker of shame as an asshole adult. I don’t remember how she got wise to Amber Galactic – maybe through me, accidentally. But for the first time in the long-time search for a ceasefire, she was as into “Gemini,” “Domino”, and “Josephine” as I was. It was a good time. That detente didn’t last long, of course, but as a wise man once said, “Shut up and take your win.”
Amorphis // Under the Red Cloud – Under the Red Cloud topped the very first Top Ten I put together, in 2015, still a pre-staff wannabe. Even then, I wanted to foist my awful opinions on the world, and in many ways, that was the first step to my eventual membership here. That isn’t why this review matters to me though. I had no idea who Amorphis was before AMG Himself‘s review of Under the Red Cloud. In the years since, I’ve been grateful for their constant companionship, in the summer sun and on lonely nights like the one on which I write this. I reached for them on a January morning, as the last throes of a Nor’easter snowed me into the maternity ward. I’m passing the hours between bottles by staring out at crystalline whorls as “Enigma” plays. It’s one of my very favorites, in their catalog, in all of music, and I can’t help but share it. I turn the volume down and pass the headphones from my ears to my son’s. It’s only for a moment, and who knows how well you can hear less than a day removed from in vitro, but it’s our moment. It’s this moment, all these moments, that I want to flash before my eyes when my bell finally tolls, and I hope someone turns the speaker up to 11 when they do.
Eldritch Elitist
AMG and me
I’m not sure if any of my colleagues know this, but I have done most of my writing in my nearly 8 year tenure at Angry Metal Guy on my cell phone. I submitted my application to AMG on May 24th, 2016; exactly two weeks later, my first and only child was born. He was a particularly clingy baby, so for months when I’d arrive home from work, he was essentially glued to my arm for hours on end. When Steel Druhm and Madam X graciously brought me on as a probationary writer, I begrudgingly adapted to writing on a stupid-ass, tiny-ass screen with my stupid-ass, big-ass thumbs. The process has been second nature to me ever since.
Let me be perfectly clear: If I was doing this for a shot at writing for any other blog, I would have bailed immediately. But I owed Angry Metal Guy for singlehandedly revitalizing my passion for metal, after my interest in the genre had waned over a half decade of post-high school life. No other outlet compared when it came to treating melodic metal with the same respect and professional level of writing quality afforded to so-called “trailblazers” in the scene. Having the kind of music that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place legitimized by such a talented crew was revelatory. I can only hope my contributions in this space have resonated similarly with others like me.
AMG gave to me …
Beaten to Death // Unplugged – I’m not a grindcore fan. The number of grindcore albums I’ve listened to in full likely ranks in the single digits. I also think that Beaten to Death’s Unplugged is one of the coolest, catchiest, and most compulsively listenable records of the last decade. Part of what makes Unplugged a special record for me is that—aside from its sheer kinetic brilliance—discovering this record through AMG is what made me want to write for this blog in the first place. Jean-Luc Ricard’s spot-on piece wisely zeroed in on this record’s decidedly un-grindy eccentricities, which was vital for enticing genre tourists like myself. Mirroring that review’s impact has been my mission with every positive review I’ve ever penned. For all the self-proclaimed power metal haters who thanked me in the comments for making them one-off converts to records like The Saberlight Chronicles: Thanks for the free dopamine!
Khemmis // Hunted – I used to be a casual appreciator of doom metal. That is, before Steel Druhm reviewed Khemmis’s 2016 opus Hunted, which more or less put me off the genre for good. Hunted is a perfect encapsulation of everything I enjoy in a doom metal record. So perfect, in fact, that everything I’ve heard in the realm of traditional doom metal since has failed to elicit a response stronger than “this is good, but I wish I was listening to Hunted.” This album excels through sheer simplicity and masterful melodic handling, filling any semblance of dead air in a genre where most compositions feel like a waste of space. The tragedy here is that Khemmis’ formula is so effective as to feel effortless in its construction, yet no other band has been able to match these heights, despite the formula for success sounding so obvious to my ears. Were it not for Steel Druhm’s rightfully glowing (if underscored) review, I might have never heard my favorite doom metal album at all.
Xoth // Invasion of the Tentacube – Much like Wilderun before them, I’m not sure Xoth’s recent underground success would have resulted in as strong of word-of-mouth had Angry Metal Guy not been hyping them up since their 2017 debut. Our staff’s collective enthusiasm for promoting unsigned gems like Invasion of the Tentacube is, at least in my eyes, unmatched in getting bands like Xoth the early attention they deserve. Sure, there are many examples of self-released albums that fit these qualifiers, but Invasion of the Tentacube might be my personal favorite. It’s also worth mentioning this record as a reminder for people to revisit Xoth’s early material. Though a bit unrefined (as Akerblogger pointed out in his otherwise glowing review), this album is every bit as entertaining as Xoth’s subsequent LPs, and a neat little time capsule that captures all of Xoth’s ambitions in a charmingly adolescent package.
I wish I had written …
Frostbite Orckings – The Orcish Eclipse Review. I maintain that it was a wise decision to retire the 0.0/5.0 score from our rating system, but for Frostbite Orckings, I should have lobbied to reinstate it for one last hurrah. Ideally, we wouldn’t have given this insulting crap the time of day to begin with10, but the only value this garbage could have had was as a warning example after I pilloried it to fucking death. AI art, whether visual or aural, is not art, and should have no place where real artists struggle to thrive. Oh, and Unleash the Archers can go to hell.
I wish I could do over …
Dunnock – Little Stories Told by Ghosts Review. Speaking of 0.0 scores… I was in a bad space mentally when I wrote this review, and I take full responsibility for giving Dunnock a platform as my personal punching bag. It didn’t feel good to write this, and it didn’t feel good to have people validating my scoring decision in the comments. If nothing else, writing this review changed my philosophy on writing negative reviews for the better. My tastes should have dictated that I had no business reviewing this record, which I’m sure has its fans. Somewhere. I still think it sucks.
I wish more people had read …
Tales of Gaia – Hypernova Review. While the comments section indicates many people read this review, I simply cannot allow this gem to be lost to time. Hypernova left me crying and borderline suffocating from laughter. I have amazing memories of subjecting friends to this record and watching them crumple into a state of helpless hysteria. Unless Tales of Gaia makes another record with the same singer11, you will never hear anything else like this in your life.
Saunders
AMG and me
Various circumstances have conspired to fuck with my 2024 so far, leaving me scrambling as whips are cracked to contribute to this momentous occasion. 15 goddamn years, hey? And going stronger than ever… I am forever grateful and humbled to be a long-term servant to this mighty blog since joining the team during the latter half of 2014. My fading memory cannot quite pinpoint the timeline when I stumbled onto the pages of Angry Metal Guy. However, I remember being struck by the positive and passionate community vibes, the quality, insightful writing, and the no-bullshit rating system. I rapidly became an avid reader and, when opportunity came knocking, I jumped aboard. It’s been an awesome journey to see the incredible growth and expansion over the years.
Initially, I struggled as I adapted to a tight operation and steep learning curve with my then awful formatting skills (surprised I didn’t get the axe right there). Yet it was the professional standards, the support networks, set processes and the ongoing inspiration of the outstanding writing talent adorning these pages over the years that has kept me on my toes, and pushed me to become a better, more rounded writer. I am grateful for the exceptional (occasionally intimidating) writing standards and creative flair that each writer brings, which keeps me honest and inspires me. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of great music I’ve been alerted to over the years.
Writing for AngryMetalGuy.com means the world to me and has been my rock since stumbling across these pages roughly a decade ago. Although I don’t write as much as I would like to, daily visits to the blog remain a steadfast routine. Also, the one-of-a-kind community kicks arse and my writing buddies and colleagues are an awesome bunch of people and an absolute pleasure to work alongside. Here’s to many more great years ahead.
AMG gave to me …
Soen // Tellurian – Just months after I joined the staff, Angry Metal Guy Himself reviewed the sophomore album from Swedish progressive metal band Soen. I had overlooked their debut, and it was the impassioned piece of fine critical writing and subsequent lofty rating that piqued my interest. Being a prog enthusiast and big Opeth and Tool fan (no, not one of those Tool fans), Soen’s emotive, melancholic, chunky, complex and infectious brand of prog metal touched my heart and gripped my soul. It wrapping up top honors on my first year-end list writing here in 2014. It began a love affair with Soen, especially through their golden stretch from Tellurian to 2019’s exemplary Lotus album. Furthermore, Tellurian opened my eyes more and more to the many wondrous bands operating in the modern progressive metal field. A decade later and Tellurian continues to resonate strongly and remains one of my treasured early discoveries on this blog.
Mutoid Man // War Moans – Mutoid Man’s 2017 album War Moans dropped at a challenging period in my life, where I was navigating a career change and plunging into the unknown. Shit got pretty hectic; thus, certain albums took on extra significance in my life. The much-missed Dr Fisting wrote a typically cool review of the zany supergroup’s sophomore album, inspiring me to dip into the crazy world of Mutoid Man and their ridiculously catchy, wild concoction of influences. War Moans quickly ascended to become a go-to album and modern favorite, igniting my rabid fandom of the band to this day. Mutoid Man transcend simple labels, skilfully meshing elements of metal, rock, prog, punk, math and hardcore into cohesive, speedy, rollicking jams. They possess massive crossover appeal, punching out A-grade tuneage with plenty of zip, technical skill, and a knack of cranking the fun factor, and embellishing their batshit, hyperactive formula with wickedly addictive earworm gems.
Bathory // Hammerheart – I am a big metal feature nerd and, though the reviewing game takes precedent, some of my favorite moments are the various feature pieces and passionate write-ups of classic albums. When the curmudgeonly Doc Grier wrote a Yer Metal Is Olde piece on Bathory’s 1990 album Hammerheart, my curiosity was sparked. Although I was a fan of Enslaved and had dabbled in Borknagar, Bathory’s much-adored Viking metal legacy was largely untouched in my historic metal explorations. Branching out of my comfort zone and exploring other styles and genres is an ongoing thrill as a metalhead. This piece triggered me to open my horizons and delve more fully into the battle-hardened, epic realms of Viking metal and associated styles. Hammerheart is a fucking epic monster of a classic opus, that opened further doors for me and broadened my appreciation of not only Viking metal, but certain overlooked black metal gems, including Bathory’s own early classics.
I wish I had written …
For shits and giggles, I could easily go to Dr Fisting‘s Indefensible Positions takedown of Slaughter of the Soul, just for the sheer ballsyness, despite disagreeing with the sentiment. In the end, Grymm‘s killer Yer Metal Is Olde write-up of Acid Bath’s underground classic When the Kite String Pops stands out. This album (and this band) is an all timer for me and Grymm did an outstanding job of conveying why this album is so special and unique. It’s a classic YMIO entry that I occasionally go back to read, giving me the warm nostalgic feels and reminding me why I fell in love with this album back in the day, and why it still holds a place in my heart.
I wish more people had read …
AMG Goes Ranking – Dying Fetus. The Dying Fetus Ranking piece was a special moment in my decade-long career writing on this blog. A long-time favorite and pivotal band in opening my ears to the wonders of the more brutal, slammy realms of death metal, this ranking feature was a proud moment. Despite the collective efforts of my comrades Maddog and Dolphin Whisperer, fewer than thirty comments at time of writing was a little disappointing for a band of Dying Fetus’ stature. I don’t know how many actual clicks it got but I was certainly expecting / hoping for more rabble, agreements, and fiery debates than what occurred.
#2024 #AcidBath #AMGGoesRanking #AMGTurns15 #Amorphis #Avantasia #Bathory #billyWoods #BlogPost #BlogPosts #ComingOut #Cormorant #DarkestEra #Dodecahedron #DyingFetus #GeoffTate #GrymmCommentsOn #LornaShore #MeltedBodies #Moonsorrow #MutoidMan #ReverendKristinMichaelHayter #Soen #StevenWilson #TarjaTurunen #TheNightFlightOrchestra #Wilderun
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Spooky seismic lakes – Loch Ness and its monster
Loch Ness is known for a monster and for its location in the Great Glen, the most obvious tectonic feature of Scotland. Fault lines are associated with several spooky themes. For this entry into the Spooky Geology canon, I’m going to touch on some of the popular, paranatural ideas about fault-associated lakes. In this part 1 of 2, I’m tackling the oft-repeated relation between seismic activity on the Great Glen Fault and the Nessie legend.
There are some water bodies that exist above (and because of) an existing fault underneath, which conjures some spooky folklore. While all water bodies may be considered liminal areas between worlds, or passageways for the dead, those over faults are extra spooky because of the exaggerated ideas people have about what tectonic faults look like and how they behave. So let’s begin by touching on these fault-y ideas.
Faults and spookiness
Fault zones, in general, are already associated with three major spooky ideas:
- Lights – Earthquake lights are probably a real thing, but not in the way most people think of them. If they exist in one or more forms, they occur very rarely. We do not understand the mechanism and there is not a large body of convincing, reliable evidence. I’ve done extensive piecing together of what does exist in this post. They are spooky and still mysterious.
- Tectonic Strain Theory – This is the idea by research scientist Michael Persinger who proposed that ghosts, poltergeists, UFO sightings, and general strangeness may be the result of localized and transient geophysical forces associated with seismic areas under tectonic stress. This theory is not credible, yet it persists as a “sciencey” idea, popular with paranormalists because Persinger was a scientist and they can cite his research, which appears credible. The details are too much to go into here so I’ll save it for another post someday.
- Breath of the gods – Faults in Greece and Turkey have characteristics that result in transmission of hydrocarbons to the surface. A few of these places were known to be ancient locations of temples or ritual spots which were undoubtedly constructed due to the geological activity that occurred there. Examples include the Oracle at Delphi and the Hieropolis’ Plutonium. Only a few faults have this exciting characteristic.
Geomythology of Loch Ness
It is such joy when two of my favorite subjects overlap. Here is my opportunity to talk about spooky geology + cryptozoology! I feel I am uniquely qualified for this. For this discussion, we reenter the familiar sphere of geomythology and head to Scotland.
An extreme version of Nessie, circa 1933, a plesiosaur type that came ashore to steal sheep. According to TetZoo, this depiction, made into desktop wallpaper and sensationalizing the Spicer sighting, is by Gino D’Achille.Geomythology is the study of legendary stories that appear to modern observers to be an attempt by a pre-modern culture to explain a natural geological event. The cultural story can have a kernel of truth that suggests people of that time and place recognized a geological cause in a creative sense.
Geomyths are subjective in their translation and application. In other words, interpreting facts and making assumptions are a necessary part of making geomythological connections. Therefore, the process is tricky and fraught with pitfalls, particularly for those with an over-eager propensity for correlation.
Luigi Piccardi, a geoscientist who researches and writes academically about geomythology, proposed in 2001 that sightings of the Loch Ness monster may be related to seismic activity. On its face, this was a sciencey idea that seemed plausible. Piccardi suggested that waves, bubbles, and noises created by the fault activity could be mistaken for unseen monsters in the water. He also connected the cultural idea of faults as sacred places, and lakes as having supernatural creatures, to the lore of Loch Ness.
The Great Glen Fault
Loch Ness is part of a chain of lakes along the Great Glen of Scotland. The glen is a trough that cuts an obvious track through the country from SW to NE from Fort William to Inverness. It is a surface expression of the underlying Great Glen fault (GGF) and subsequent glacial action. The fault is very old, over 400 million years old, representing a suture of two land masses into what we now call Great Britain. The GGF is a strike-slip fault, but because it is so old, the movement of the fault over these eras is not clear.
Note that England does not appear in this graphic but is connected at the southern boundary.Piccardi’s explanation, first proposed at a 2001 geological conference in Edinburgh, then followed by a paper in 2014 (see references below), was popular with the news media. He framed it as “a simple natural explanation” for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. However, it fell flat with many who knew about the seismicity of this area and about the long and colorful history of Nessie sightings.
Significant quakes on the GGF are not that common. However, the consensus from geologists is that the GGF is likely still seismically active. Between 1768 and 1901 several earthquakes were felt around Inverness, including one of the largest recorded in Scotland at M=5.1 in 1816. But because there was no precise measuring equipment in place, it’s unclear where the epicenters were or if they were the result of movement on the GGF or on other faults outside the glen. Nothing much happened after 1901 until October 4, 2013 when an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.4 occurred close to the village of Drumnadrochit, near Loch Ness. Reports described “a loud rumble” or “explosion”.
Piccardi cited the large quakes around Inverness from 1816 (M=5.1 and M=4.7), and in 1890 (M=4.5 with several aftershocks around M=3) as evidence of the Nessie-tectonic connection. He also referred to a quake in Inverness in 1934, close to the time when the Loch Ness Monster legend was really taking off. (That quake was later relocated off the GGF.) He pointed out that the Inverness Courier reported on that quake in the same issue as a monster sighting. It’s unclear if it occurred at the same time as the quake. This is the closest we get to a correlation and it is not that impressive.
Saint Columba and the Monster
For his primary evidence, Piccardi referred to the account of Saint Columba banishing a “monster” in the Ness River in the 6th century (which wasn’t written until more than a century later). A translation says the monster appeared with an awful roar. Piccardi supposes that this noise could be the sound of an earthquake. The other bits cited from this account as evidence of monster=earthquake are even weaker – a door opening by itself and the saint’s loud voice (I could not see any reason to mention the latter one). We will never know if the monster tale was coincident with an actual earthquake, or if Columba’s monster story had any truth to it at all.
While cryptozoologists love to roll back in time to say that the Columba story is evidence of a monster of long ago, scholars consider the story of the Saint rebuking the monster as a typical story of Christianity conquering the pagan sentiment of the lands. Indeed, Columba met with the King of the Picts, the native people of the area in the Middle Ages. It’s highly probable he was there, but the monster story was far more likely to have been propaganda than evidence of an unknown creature.
A vaguely described, man-eating river monster is just not similar to the modern accounts of Nessie, no matter how much cryptozoologists would like it to be. The Columba story is not evidence for a 6th century encounter with the creature.
This mural in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery depicts the Picts being converted to Christianity by Saint Columba.Seismic activity as a source of Nessie sightings
It is certainly possible that even tiny seismic events can create upwelling, turbidity, or waves that people may interpret as a monster surfacing. However, this could reasonably account for only a handful of sightings in Loch Ness. The Highlands area now has a multitude of seismic sensors in place to catch quakes below M=1. The most obvious evidence for this claim – a time correlation between Nessie sightings and seismic activity – has not materialized.
Instead, we can be quite certain that most of the Nessie “sightings” can be attributed to a long list of mundane potential causes – boat wakes or wind waves, mistaken animal identification such as birds, fish, or deer (and the waves they create), or floating logs or vegetation.
2013 “Nessie sighting” by David ElderPiccardi kept giving media interviews about his tectonic Nessie geomyth even though robust evidence was lacking. I recall hearing about it in 2001 and thinking it was a weak idea then. It never got better. Piccardi wasn’t well versed in cryptid tales and how they evolve; they aren’t that simple, especially to dismiss. The seismic Nessie story got publicity, though. History of geology writer (for Scientific American and then Forbes), David Bressan, also didn’t put any stock into the idea either. In 2013, Bressan wrote that Piccardi was aiming to get more attention paid to geomythology as a field but knew little about Nessie/cryptids. I totally agree.
Conclusion
What is the verdict on Nessie and seismic activity? A resoundingly negative.
Piccardi attempted to show that there was 1.) a basis for the seismic activity at Loch Ness, 2.) that historic earthquakes could have been source of, or at least enhanced, the monster legend, and 3.) that seismic activity might account for monster sightings today. While 1 may be true to an extent, I reject 2 and 3. The GGF is not active enough now, nor in the past, to have had a substantive influence on the Nessie legend. Piccardi attempted to line up a few known quakes with locations of monster sightings but they didn’t correlate in time, which is critical to make a solid connection.
Using the Saint Columba story is really reaching in several ways. First, the monster=earthquake connection is flimsy. And, the story itself is fictionalized. Even though it’s beloved by cryptozoologists, the ancient description of the creature, even though vague, is substantially different from modern reports. Instead, the actions by Columba represents a morality tale of Christianity triumphing over “evil” Pagan belief. It is not credible evidence of a long-existing mystery animal in the loch.
Finally, there is no basis to state that a rumbling sound, a main feature of small earthquakes, is associated with the monster in the lake from its entry into popular culture in the 1930s to the present. Anomalous waves are the most common association with the monster. These are regularly generated by several other mundane sources in the loch, but not notably via earthquakes. A reasonable correlation between seismic events and Nessie is absent.
The geomythological idea of seismic activity as an explantion for Nessie is sunk. It’s a fun idea, though, that keeps getting repeated even by people who should know better. Of all the many causes for the development of the Nessie legend and it’s sustaining popularity, we cannot fault the fault.
References
Allen, M. (2019). The long and moving story of the Great Glen Fault. Mercian Geologist. 19(4), pp. 216-223.
Galloway, D.D. (2014). Bulletin of British Earthquakes 2013. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/14/062.
Musson, R. M. W. (2007). British Earthquakes. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 118(4), pp. 305-337.
Piccardi, L. (2014). Post-glacial activity and earthquakes of the Great Glen Fault (Scotland). Mem. Descr. Carta Geol. d’It. XCVI, pp. 431-446.
Piccardi, L. (2001). Seismotectonic Origins of the Monster of Loch Ness (abstract). Earth System Processes – Global Meeting (June 24-28, 2001).
#cryptids #earthquakes #geomythology #GreatGlenFault #LochNess #LochNessMonster #Nessie
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Upon a Burning Body – Blood of the Bull Review
By Dear Hollow
Upon a Burning Body is back, baby. Your favorite groovy Texans are ready to lay on the hurt with as many riffs as your ears can muster. Predecessor 2022’s Fury offered a no-frills attack that more substantially simplified the attack, recalling more the groove-oriented likes of Pantera or Lamb of God, as opposed to the longstanding comparisons to deathcore’s partyharders Attila and “fight everyone” breakdowners Emmure to whom they’ve been compared in the past. It seemed like a new direction for the San Antonio quartet, even if hindered by some grunge-inspired cleans and sporadic and uneven homages to their deathcore roots. Blood of the Bull tries to reconcile a new direction and a past that still haunts them.
Blood of the Bull is indeed Upon a Burning Body firing on all cylinders – although its direction remains questionable. Ruben Alvarez’s guitar work is immediately recognizable, a bluesy edge and layered rhythms with manic solos to boot, Tito Felix’s drumming is as unhinged as you’d expect,1 while Danny Leal’s vocals have returned to peak form, honed mids to complement his vicious lows – even bassist/vocalist Thomas Alvarez’s cleans are better than last go. In Blood of the Bull, poppier choruses contrast heavier to its breakneck riffs and metalcore leanings, leaving it slightly below Fury in its effectiveness but remaining a solid installment in Upon a Burning Body’s rodeo of a discography.
In many ways, Blood of the Bull exists as the band’s most experimental outing. While it channels Fury’s propensity for groove, Thomas Alvarez forgoes on the grungy tone almost entirely for the most soulful choruses the band has ever offered, tracks which often feature newfound synth in creeping intros or interludes (“Daywalker,” “Another Ghost,” “Living in a Matrix”). While the presence of these assets could potentially dull the teeth that Upon a Burning Body’s sound naturally possesses, they refuse to let that stop them. Their cleaner tracks feel bigger and more significant than ever before, albeit imperfect: the soaring melodies can feel shoehorned alongside groove or deathcore beatdowns, although the lyricism (for once) sometimes improves this issue (“Another Ghost”) and ruins it for others (“Reckless Love”). The mariachi returns full-force, a welcome homage to the group’s roots (“Sangre del Toro,” “An Insatiable Hunger”).
If the tracks with clean singing are risks with mixed payoff, then, when Upon a Burning Body conjures syncopated grooves and commanding vocals with memorable one-liners offer the best listening on Blood of the Bull. Furious shredding, wild solos, and Leal’s signature vocal attack offer a trifecta of headbanging goodness. No one growls profanity the way Leal does, and while it was noticeably absent in Fury, the “fucking” one-liners pump adrenaline (“Killshot,” “Curse Breaker”) while other tracks manage to feel kickass and brooding simultaneously (“Hand of God”), highlighting Upon a Burning Body’s vocal return to deathcore’s intensity. It can be odd and off-putting when songs that feature the most intense groove riffs can also feature those soulful choruses (“Daywalker,” “Living in a Matrix”), but aside from the aforementioned, these don’t feel as awkward as I expected.
Upon a Burning Body amps almost everything in its attempt to reconcile the old with the new, and if nothing else, the effort is noted. There is more than enough corny lyrics, ham- beef-fisted anthems, and soaring clean choruses aboard Blood of the Bull, but in this way, it feels more like Upon a Burning Body than they’ve been in a hot minute. Thankfully, if you can look past the flaws, the band’s seventh full-length is at its worst full of crunchy grooves, mind-numbing breakdowns, and jarring tonal shifts, but if that’s its worst – with Danny Leal and Ruben Alvarez leading the attack – that’s a worst I can get behind. Also, highlights like “Another Ghost” or “Daywalker” feel like flashes of potential not yet seen in lyrics or songwriting. For now, it’s Upon a Burning Body, love ’em or hate ’em: a whole lotta bull.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Self-Released
Websites: uponaburningbody.bandcamp.com | uabbtx.com | facebook.com/uponaburningbody
Releases Worldwide: December 5th, 2025#2025 #30 #AmericanMetal #Attila #BloodOfTheBull #Deathcore #Dec25 #Emmure #GrooveMetal #LambOfGod #Metalcore #Pantera #Review #Reviews #SelfReleased #UponABurningBody
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#SweetPotato Companions: Best #CompanionPlants For Sweet Potatoes
By Liz Baessler
last updated June 18, 2021Excerpt: "So what are some of the best companion plants for sweet potatoes? As a rule of thumb, root vegetables, such as #parsnips and #beets, are good sweet potato companions. Bush beans are good sweet potato companions, and certain varieties of pole beans can be trained to grow along the ground intermingled with sweet potato vines. Regular potatoes, though not actually closely related at all, are also good sweet potato companions. Also, aromatic herbs, such as thyme, oregano and dill, are good sweet potato companions. Sweet potato weevil, a pest that can wreak havoc on crops in the Southern United States, can be deterred by planting summer savory nearby.
What You Shouldn’t be Planting Next to Sweet Potatoes
The biggest problem with planting next to sweet potatoes is their propensity to spread. Because of this, one plant to avoid, in particular, when planting next to sweet potatoes is squash. Both are strong growers and fierce spreaders, and putting the two next to each other will only result in a fight for space in which both will likely be weakened. Even in the case of companion plants for sweet potatoes, be aware that your sweet potato vine will grow to cover a very large area, and take care that it doesn’t crowd out its beneficial neighbors."
Read more:
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/sweet-potato/sweet-potato-companions.htm#SolarPunkSunday #GardeningKnowHow #CompanionPlanting #GrowingSweetPotatoes #Gardening #GrowYourOwnFood #GYO
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AMG Goes Ranking – Megadeth By Grin Reaper
The life of the unpaid, overworked metal reviewer is not an easy one. The reviewing collective at AMG lurches from one new release to the next, errors and n00bs strewn in our wake. But what if, once in a while, the collective paused to take stock and consider the discography of those bands that shaped many a taste? What if multiple aspects of the AMG collective personality shared with the slavering masses their personal rankings of that discography, and what if the rest of the personality used a Google sheet some kind of dark magic to produce an official guide to, and an all-around definitive aggregated ranking of, that band’s entire discography? Well, if that happened, we imagine it would look something like this…
Megadeth requires no introduction, but I’ll give one anyway to provide context for why we composed an overwrought missive about one of thrash’s most enduring acts. Last year, frontman and metal legend Dave Mustaine announced Megadeth would call it quits following one last album and tour. With over forty years of metal history in the books and Megadeth’s endgame on the horizon, what better way to celebrate a storied career filled with legendary cuts and excessive ellipses than with a good ol’ fashioned ranking? Through sixteen albums, Dave and his Dethcrew have offered platters ranging from so good to so what, and we at AMG apparently have a lot to say about them.
Regardless of how you feel about Megadeth, their lasting legacy casts an immense shadow. Mustaine’s indelible footprint is evident, driving many of us writers to spend countless hours sweating bullets and overwriting about a band we love to Deth. From inauspicious beginnings in 1983,1 when Dave was famously booted from Metallica a month before recording Kill ’em All, to clawing their way into metal’s collective consciousness, Megadeth notched an extraordinary victory and became one of the most recognized bands in rock and metal. Mustaine’s influence stands tall, a monument to what a man can accomplish when he dives headlong into the lungs of hell and sets the metal world on fire with one sick lick after another. We’ll be back with a look at Megadeth’s self-titled swan song, but in the meantime, let us commence reckoning Dave and AMG’s countdown to distinction.
– Grin Reaper
The Rankings
Grin Reaper
Megadeth has been a mainstay of my diet for as long as I’ve listened to metal. I started with their greatest hits, then greedily absorbed album after album as my rapacity for thrash deepened. Leading up to Megadeth, returning to this discography gives me a new appreciation for what Dave has accomplished. Even if the lyrics can be heavy-handed and the desire for accessibility occasionally hamstrings success, Megadeth has forged some of the best thrash platters ever. For the hours I’ve spent with this music, I owe Megathanks.2
#16. Risk (1999) — I’m paraphrasing, but at some point, Mustaine said, “If Risk didn’t have Megadeth’s name on it, it would’ve sold.” Maybe,3 but it seems clear the priority was selling records and not writing great fucking metal. The doctor is calling, and he says to listen to any other Megadeth album, stat.
#15. Th1rt3en (2011) — Th1rt3en contains many of Megadeth’s core ingredients, but lacks the hooks and vitality of other releases. The album’s thirteen tracks are exhaustively padded and range from forgettable to middling. One of Megadeth’s most phoned-in albums, I rarely return to Th1rt3en outside of a full Deth play-through.
#14. Super Collider (2013) — Compared to Th1rt3en, Super Collider’s highs are higher and its lows lower. Tracks like “Kingmaker” and “Built for War” burn with a fire that rarely ignites on its predecessor, and while Super Collider’s duration is vastly improved, it only edges out Th1rt3en by the skin of its teeth.
#13. The World Needs a Hero (2001) — TWNaH might rank higher if Megadeth said goodbye to “When” and “Promises” and trimmed fat from other tracks. As is, the choruses on “Disconnect” and “Burning Bridges” nestle between Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings, which scores big points. Though not the ‘return to thrash’ advertised following Risk, it proved a crucial first step in course correction.
#12. The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) — A step down from Dystopia, TStDatD bears some undeniable moments (including the entirety of “We’ll Be Back”) that put a high-speed hurt on your earholes. At its best, the album cranks a blistering fury that defines the immediacy Kiko brought to Megadeth. Hobbled by bloat, this could have been a better album with judicious editing.
#11. The System Has Failed (2004)4 — An irrefutable improvement on TWNaH, The System Has Failed tightened up the songwriting and injected more thrashitude than fans had seen since Youthanasia.5 Dave’s vocals are particularly strong here, and while it’s not as good as the two albums that followed, The System Has Failed is a striking improvement over Risk and TWNaH.
#10. Dystopia (2016) — Dystopia outstrips Th1rt3en and Super Collider by a country mile. While Megadeth doesn’t totally shake excess length or back-half slogs here, the opening trio of songs on Dystopia comprises the best introductory salvo since Rust in Peace.6 The rest of the album teeters between okay and very good, but “The Threat Is Real,” “Dystopia,” and “Fatal Illusion” are the most vital Deth has sounded in the 21st century.
#9. Endgame (2009) — Chris Broderick joining Megadeth set fire to the guitar leads, crafting scorching, thrashy magic on the likes of “This Day We Fight!” and “Head Crusher.” This is the most technical Megadeth has played since Marty Friedman was in the band, and the combination of six-string acrobatics, tight songwriting, and a mighty back half gives Endgame the right to be insane.
#8. United Abominations (2007) — Endgame and United Abominations are a toss-up, but UA wins out because there’s more variety from track to track, the bass slaps me silly with engaging countermelodies (“Washington Is Next!”), and there’s no “The Hardest Part of Letting Go…Sealed with a Kiss.” Plus, “Sleepwalker” is one of my favorite Megadeth tracks in the last thirty years.
#7. Cryptic Writings (1997) — Infusing all the post-grunge, alternative angst of the mid-to-late ’90s, Cryptic Writings teems with direct, catchy riffs and a vaguely dark edge. Boasting a restrained runtime, singalong choruses, and killer bass grooves, Cryptic Writings travels the popular, rock-oriented path whose biggest sin is lacking the thrash beatdown they’re so damn good at.
#6. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — Megadeth’s debut hemorrhages razor-sharp riffs in an uncontested frenzy of vitriol and venom. Unrefined and raw compared to what came later, Killing Is My Business endures as a testament to Dave Mustaine’s tenacity and vehement pledge to play better and faster than everyone else, all in an indefatigable half hour.
#5. Youthanasia (1994) — Doubling down on the streamlined songwriting from Countdown to Extinction, Youthanasia flaunts grade-A, pop-informed hookiness with metal vestiges. It also sports one of my favorite solos Megadeth wrote after 1990 in “Victory,” which encapsulates the danger of early Deth and how Mustaine’s and Friedman’s fretwork feels like it could go off the rails at any moment, but never quite does. The digestible track lengths sustain Youthanasia’s kinetic momentum throughout, even if it dips toward the end. Megadeth doesn’t recapture the aggression and destruction present on prior outings, but Youthanasia still evinces a band firing on all cylinders.
#4. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — I originally had SFSGSW ranked lower because of how much it’s overshadowed by the albums surrounding it. Listening with a ranking mindset and not chronologically,7 it’s apparent that Megadeth’s third album wields the unpolished vigor of their debut to greater effect. SFSGSW snatches you with barbed hooks in ear, dragging you into singalong anarchy.8 The album also contains “In My Darkest Hour,” one of the all-time great Megadeth jams. It takes the raw energy and animosity from Peace Sells and foreshadows the more progressive structures of Rust in Peace, cementing it as not only the best track on the album, but one of the best in Deth’s catalog.
#3. Countdown to Extinction (1992) — Forsaking the technical fervor of Rust in Peace, Mustaine rerouted Megadeth’s trajectory down a more commercially viable path. And though I loathe the change in direction from RiP, I can’t deny Dave’s success in creating some of the band’s most recognizable anthems while discharging the best-selling album of Megadeth’s career. “Symphony of Destruction” was the first Megadeth song I encountered, and once I dove deeper, “Skin o’ My Teeth” and “Sweating Bullets” quickly became frequent stops. Countdown remains the best fusion of Megadeth’s bethrashened roots and perennial commercial lust.
#2. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986) — Many will tell you that Peace Sells is Megadeth’s best album. It’s not, but it’s very, very close. Maintaining the rabid ferocity of Killing Is My Business, Mustaine exercised a modicum of restraint, and instead of pumping toxic levels of riffs straight down your ear gullet, he wrote some all-time burners that expanded on the debut’s technicality without sacrificing its infectious charm. Guitar theatrics blaze through Peace Sells’ scant thirty-six minutes while the bass and drums complement serpentine axe-work with inspired grooves and rolls. In another discography, this thrashterpiece would wear the crown without challenge. Alas, Megadeth perfected technical thrash four years later…
#1. Rust in Peace (1990) — For years, Megadeth’s pièce de résistance has been my unquestioned favorite thrash metal album. Its progressive alchemy marries unfuckwithable riffs and Dave’s ever-present punky snarl, taking no prisoners and defining an iconic benchmark of the genre. When I first broke into Megadeth via their Greatest Hits, “Holy Wars…” and “Hangar 18” dominated my early listening. When I relented and bought Rust in Peace, those early listens were a revelation. I expected solid material on par with the tracks I already knew, but the quality of bangers here is unparalleled. The deep-cut status of “Tornado of Souls” and “Rust in Peace… Polaris” is criminal, but demonstrates the strength of the songwriting. Rust in Peace never relents in its cascade of squealing solos, pummeling fills, and sneer-along anthems, and there’s nary a moment that doesn’t set my head crushing banging. The apex of Megadeth’s discography is absolute perfection, and if you don’t like it, go tell it to Reader’s Digest.
Owlswald
Long tethered to Metallica’s shadow, Dave Mustaine has consistently forged music that resonates with me in some way, regardless of his antics or the era’s quality. Megadeth spearheaded my obsession with thrash and extreme metal. And although decades of lineup shifts, addiction, and health battles aimed to thwart Megadeth multiple times, Mustaine’s resilience has been steadfast. Accordingly, Megadeth is set to release their seventeenth album—a final curtain call for Mustaine to voluntarily leave the stage as metal royalty. So, to a living legend: thank you for your relentless dedication and for opening the gates of metal for me. Your legacy is secure, your throne is earned, and your place as a true titan of the genre is solidified.
#16. Risk (1999) — Essentially, “Dave tries to write hit songs,” Risk finds Mustaine still chasing a #1 record after Cryptic Writings and failing even worse the second time. Both albums serve as underwhelming final chapters for the group’s most storied era. There isn’t much else to say: Megadeth’s greatest lineup deserved a much better send-off.
#15. The World Needs a Hero (2001) — Mustaine intended for this record to fix the damage of Risk, but missed the mark completely. “1000 Times Goodbye” and “Promises” rank among Megadeth’s worst songs, squandering the potential of the “Return to Hangar” concept. Indeed, the world may still need a hero, but it certainly didn’t need this album.
#14. Th1rt3en (2011) — When the only lasting impression is Mustaine’s awful lyrics, the system has truly failed. Megadeth clearly mailed in most of this record, from the tropey “Guns, Drugs, & Money” and “We the People,” right down to its uninspired self-titled name. In short: ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.
#13. Super Collider (2013) — Though clearly bad, this record at least contains some semblance of the Mega juice missing from Th1rt3en. “Kingmaker,” “Beginning of Sorrow,” and “Built for War” make it memorable, for better or worse. However, the title track inexplicably finds Mustaine going full John Cougar Mellencamp, and “The Blackest Crow” sounds like the Deadliest Catch theme song.
#12. United Abominations (2007) — Despite “Sleepwalker,” “Washington Is Next!” and revisiting “A Tout Le Monde,” United Abominations falls on its face faster than you can decipher whatever the hell is going on with that artwork. Tracks like “Amerikhastan,” “Gears of War” and the title track are a mess, and Mustaine’s sermonizing rants further weigh things down.
#11. The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) — Megadeth’s sixteenth effort leans on repetitive formulas and Mustaine’s weary vocals. Kiko Loureiro’s world-class fret-work and Dirk Verbeuren’s thundering percussion shine on tracks like “Night Stalkers,” “Sacrifice,” “Life In Hell” and “We’ll Be Back.” However, by the time “Mission to Mars” hits, bloated runtimes and awful songwriting drag things to Super Collider territory.
#10. Cryptic Writings (1997) — Chasing a #1 record, Megadeth adopted a disappointing, radio-oriented sound under producer Bud Prager. By dividing itself into thirds—one part speed, one part melody, and one part mainstream—Cryptic Writings is lackadaisical. Still, tracks like “She-Wolf,” “The Disintegrators,” and hit song “Trust” remain solid amidst an otherwise underwhelming record.
#9. Dystopia (2016) — Like Endgame, Dystopia marks a return to form with the addition of Chris Adler’s precision and Loureiro’s flair, reviving some of that classic Deth energy. Despite cringy lyrics and bloat, the record brings the goods with crunchy power chords (“Post American World,” “Fatal Illusion”), breakneck speed (“The Threat is Real”) and impressive shredding (“Conquer or Die,” “Dystopia”).
#8. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — Production woes, a fractured lineup, and mountains of substance abuse notwithstanding, this record somehow survived. Less aggressive and more disjointed than KIMB or Peace Sells, So Far, So Good… So What!9 still delivers some bangers with “Set the World Afire,” “Hook in Mouth” and the classic “In My Darkest Hour.”
#7. The System Has Failed (2004) — This album is a crucial recovery from the Risk era. Chris Poland’s return and the addition of session drummer Vinnie Colaiuta provide a massive lift, compensating for muted production and a sluggish mid-section. “Kick the Chair” drives the record, offering essential proof of life and showcasing Mustaine’s resilience.
#6. Endgame (2009) — Megadeth recaptures their golden-era speed and calculated aggression through heavier, more technical songwriting. While tracks like “Bite the Hand” showcase classic riffcraft, guitarist Chris Broderick is the true catalyst—his insane solos and leads elevate the entire record. Despite minor stumbles like “The Hardest Part of Letting Go,” Endgame proved Megadeth still had it.
#5. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — More than a mere middle finger to Metallica, this debut is pure vitriol and velocity. From the breakneck pace of “Mechanix” to the straight-up thrash assault of “The Skull Beneath the Skin,” this record introduced Megadeth to the metal world and forged their identity with fire. A rhythm section unlike any other at the time anchored Mustaine’s venomous vocals and Poland’s unorthodox leads. Samuelson’s jazz-infused sensibilities and Ellefson’s precision formed a lethal engine, providing the framework for Mustaine and Poland to unleash their frantic guitar fury overhead. Beyond its raw aggression, KIMB served as a dress rehearsal for the creative pinnacle that would soon follow.
#4. Youthanasia (1994) — Hanging babies! This record captures Megadeth at the height of their mainstream powers, delivering a record that is more vocally driven than its predecessors. Mustaine offers arguably his finest vocal performance here, showcasing a resonant range that outshines even Countdown to Extinction. From the chugging pick-scrapes of the groovy “Train of Consequences” to the vulnerable “A Tout Le Monde,” though the songwriting on Youthanasia feels more calculated, controlled, and melodic, the album still retains its bite. Nick Menza’s drums hit like artillery fire, particularly on tracks like “Black Curtains,” “Youthanasia,” and “Reckoning Day.” It’s Megadeth riding on popularity without losing their edge.
#3. Countdown to Extinction (1992) — Countdown to Extinction marked Megadeth’s definitive arrival as a commercial powerhouse. It introduced a polished, but still high-octane sound filled with purpose and precision that left almost all others in their deathly wake. Boasting a wealth of riffs, sophisticated lead work, Menza’s monumental drumming, and a vibrant production that gives everything an in-your-face presence, Countdown is essential Megadeth. Though it famously debuted at #2 on the charts—stymied only by another now-famous black album—tracks like the legendary “Symphony of Destruction” and “Sweating Bullets,” “Foreclosure of a Dream” and my personal favorite, “Architecture of Aggression,” prove why this record launched Megadeth into the stratosphere.
#2. Rust in Peace (1990) — What more can anyone say about this record that hasn’t already been shouted from the rafters? As the most heralded record in the Megadeth discography, Rust in Peace debuted the best lineup, fully established their now iconic sound, and ignited an incredible multi-album hot streak. Admittedly, I arrived at the Rust in Peace party late—discovering this masterpiece only after Countdown to Extinction had dropped. But it’s also cool to be fashionably late, right? Aside from the cheesy “Dawn Patrol,” this record is nothing less than a classic, proving why Megadeth earned their spot atop the thrash hierarchy.
#1. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986) — Speaking of classics, this was my gateway into Megadeth and the wider world of thrash metal. On a local record store recommendation,10 I picked up the tape, and once Samuelson’s drum roll kicked off “Wake Up Dead,” that was all she wrote. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? is a masterclass in aggression and technicality. While “Wake Up Dead,” the title track and “The Conjuring” are popular classics, it’s the darker, complex depths of “Bad Omen,” “Devil’s Island” and “Good Mourning / Black Friday” that define the record’s soul. The musical evolution from their debut to this is nothing short of astonishing. Most point to Rust in Peace as the pinnacle, but for me, this will forever be the definitive Megadeth record. It’s home to some of the most legendary, headbangable riffs ever written and is the ultimate Deth experience.
Baguette of Bodom
With great ’80s thrashing comes great ’90s blunders, unless you’re Testament. MEGADAVE’s long history contains many missteps, and the incessant obsession with remixing everything 17 times made this younger metalhead’s introductory experience needlessly confusing years ago. That being said, the highs are very high indeed, and I love talking veteran bands without any nostalgia goggles. For this ranking, I’m taking my favorite (and hence, most familiar) version of each album into account, usually indicated by the cover art. Though many of the originals are a must, there are notable exceptions.11 Lists sell… but who’s buying?
#16. The World Needs a Hero (2001) – Nothing says ‘thrash comeback’ like sly, edgy ’00s breakup songs at 50 BPM. Infinitely worse than their rock misadventures ever were, the stretch from “1000 Times Goodbye” to alt-metal ballad “Promises” should be considered a war crime. At least “Return to Hangar” apes a good Megadeth track.
#15. Super Collider (2013) — I don’t know what possessed Dave to reattempt the Risk method, but it went even worse for him this time. There are a couple of okay tracks here (“Kingmaker,” “Built for War”), but as a whole, the album just comes off as bafflingly tone-deaf and humorously weak.
#14. The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) — Holy cow, what a massive disappointment. I thought they were getting somewhere again with Dystopia, and then they fell right back below sea level. The title track and the fun “Mission to Mars” are salvageable, otherwise it’s a bloated monstrosity full of mediocre to bad re-thrash.
#13. Risk (1999) — Even having Risk this high might invoke threats of mob violence. Cuts like embarrassing arena wannabe “Crush ‘Em” make Risk comically lame, but some are decent and catchy (“Wanderlust,” “I’ll Be There”). Not a good record by any means, but Megadave is capable of worse than boring.
#12. United Abominations (2007) — A good four-track EP (especially “Washington Is Next!”) held hostage by the seven lame tracks that follow, not to mention “À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)” being offensive to the original Youthanasia gem. Not an abomination, but still corny and mediocre.
#11. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — When discussing Megadeth’s ‘first four,’ SFSGSW is usually spoken of under breath, if mentioned at all. And for good reason: it’s angsty, gimmicky, and “Anarchy in the U.K.” is a Thing That Should Not Be. However, the all-time great “In My Darkest Hour” justifies the existence of the entire album.12
#10. Cryptic Writings (1997) — Overhated! It’s bloated with annoying radio filler, but also contains some strong, catchy tunes with a great sense of both melody and groove (“Trust,” “A Secret Place”). Crown jewel “She-Wolf” is a discography highlight, and the closest Megadave ever got to Iron Maiden.13
#9. Th1rt3en (2011) — Aside from the terribad name, Thirteen14 is also way overhated. It’s a bit too long and I don’t spin it regularly, but it’s a consistently solid record from a band that often struggles with consistency. Basically a slower Endgame/Dystopia, with good fun tracks like “Fast Lane” and “Wrecker.”15
#8. Dystopia (2016) — I’ve cooled on this album, but it’s still one of their better current-millennium records. Not that there’s a whole lot of competition! The instrumental “Conquer or Die!” is very fun in particular, but it’s good thrash all around, with more energy and stronger highlights than Thirteen. Worse vocals, though.
#7. Countdown to Extinction (1992) — A strong transitional record, even if somewhat overrated. Gimmicks (“Psychotron,” “Captive Honour”) and oversimplified guitar work set it back somewhat, but the highlights are great. The title track is one of Megadeth’s finest moments, and “Ashes in Your Mouth” deserves more praise, too.
#6. Endgame (2009) — This is commonly regarded as the best post-1990 ‘Deth, and I totally see why. It’s a powerful, aggressive, energetic record, almost front to back, with even shredtastic intro gem “Dialectic Chaos” somehow being a highlight. However, there are other albums that I think do more with higher peaks.
#5. The System Has Failed (2004) — Severely underrated! The songwriting is heavy, catchy, and creative all at the same time, in a way it hasn’t been ever since, and everything from “Die Dead Enough” to “Back in the Day” is an earworm. This album sees the brief comeback of Chris Poland, guitarist on KIMB and Peace Sells, and he’s still got it here. Drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (Frank Zappa, Joe Satriani) also brings in that crucial outside influence that often results in great albums. I could leave “Something That I’m Not” and the strange dual outro-ish last two tracks off, but they’re alright as is.
#4. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — An endlessly fun, blazing fast, wild, and free set of bangers by a pissed-off young Dave and co. How could anyone resist “The Skull Beneath the Skin” or “Mechanix?” Though the original $0 budget mix of the album (not easily available outside of YouTube) is limp and occasionally harms the listening experience, the 2002 mix pictured here is fortunately great and largely fixes its issues. That being said, the original uncensored version of “These Boots” is much preferable—but the re-recorded and censored one on reissues is really funny in its own way.
#3. Youthanasia (1994) — Much like The Ritual was Testament’s way of showing the world you can ‘sell out’ and still make great music,16 Youthanasia managed to do the same to Megadeth’s already Countdown-diluted sound. Except this is a direct upgrade to Countdown. An infectiously catchy album front to back, loaded with great tunes while still featuring strong guitar work and clever songwriting by Marty and Dave. The back half deserves more recognition for its excellencies: “Family Tree,” “Blood of Heroes,” and song title reference extravaganza “Victory” to boot. I’d maybe only drop the title track, funnily enough.
#2. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986) — Despite my accidentally remix-fueled lukewarm first impression,17 the original version soon found its way through my ears into my heart and never left. Maybe part of its magic is the jazz fusion background of Chris Poland and drummer Gar Samuelsson being more prominent, or the gang blowing a little less money on drugs, or both. Regardless, Peace Sells is a special little bottle of lightning, relentless yet intelligent, and massively hook-laden. “I Ain’t Superstitious” is the only slight drawback, but “My Last Words” makes you forget it by dishing out some of the best guitar work in the genre.
#1. Rust in Peace (1990) — What is there left to say about a stone-cold classic and nigh-perfect album that hasn’t already been said? Controversially, I prefer the 2004 remix for its drum sound,18 but Rust would take the crown either way. An album that starts with “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” and ends in “Rust in Peace… Polaris” is already an absolute monster, and the rest of the track list is equally fantastic19 only further cements its status as an all-timer. This is the album that introduced drummer Nick Menza and guitarist Marty Friedman to the wider metal world, and the music is all the richer for it. Thunderous rhythm and lead guitar work, legendary solo craft, complex yet catchy barn-burners—it’s all here. Rust in Peace is not just a cornerstone of thrash metal; it’s also a hallmark of progressive metal.
Andy-War-Hall
I remember when Pandora radio first put Megadeth’s “Skin O’ My Teeth” my way, exposing an impressionable teenage Andy to thrash metal for the very first time. At once, I grew angrier, my IQ plummeted substantially, and my chances at female companionship dropped to NY Jets Super Bowl probabilities. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Megadeth is a household name of heavy metal for a reason, and their discography has shaped the genre forever. To the kings of Too Much—whether it be notes-per-riff, ellipses-per-title, or time scrolling Facebook conspiracy theory rabbit holes—we salute thee!
#16. Risk (1999) — Risk is—to borrow the closing line of “Take No Prisoners”—”shit.” Every choice in Risk attempts to ride the already-tired waves of alt-rock and arena country. Worse yet, none of it sounds good at all. To quote “Good Mourning/Black Friday”—”What the fuck is this?”
#15. Super Collider (2013) — You know your album is in dire straits when you gotta tap Disturbed’s David Draiman for songwriting help. Just barely not Megadeth’s worst album, Super Collider feels the most exasperating. Butt-rock banality infects every nook and cranny, presenting Megadeth as a band thoroughly out of steam. Nuts.
#14. The World Needs a Hero (2001) — Bouncing back from Risk was never going to be easy. This isn’t a bounce back. If not for “Dread and the Fugitive Mind” or the deeply ironic enjoyment I derive from “1000 Times Goodbye,” TWNaH could easily have slipped to the bottom of this list for its shallowness alone.
#13. Th1rt3en (2011) — This straight up pisses me off that I got Th1rt3en at #13. It feels like I let Dave win. It being here has the same air of pretense as Mustaine’s decision to make Th1rt3en thirteen tracks long. There are perhaps five acceptable ones.
#12. Cryptic Writings (1997) — You know, I actually had a bit of fun with my last spin of Cryptic Writings. It stinks, but don’t let the Motörhead beligerence of “The Disintegrators,” the Maidenesque harmonies of “She-Wolf” or the pure thrash bonanza of “FFF” be forgotten amongst the bad of Cryptic Writings.
#11. United Abominations (2007) — If Mustaine wasn’t so utterly miserable all the time, United Abominations could’ve been awesome. The grooves and solos are real, but not one of you can tell me that the rants on “United Abominations” or “Amerikhastan” make the music better. Turn off the TV, Dave. Take a deep breath.
#10. The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) — Megadeth engenders strong opinions. Love ’em or hate ’em, you either love ’em or hate ’em. I have no strong feelings towards The Sick… I chuckle at the “Bring out yer dead!” sampling in the title track. I wince at Ice-T’s narration on “Night Stalkers.” Beyond that, it’s fine.
#9. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — The roughest, crustiest of Megadeth’s early material, So Far… feels like a band caught in limbo, embodying neither the piss-and-vinegar of KIMB nor the sophistication of Rust in Peace. But it’s still plenty fun, particularly with the closing three tracks. It’s like Peace Sells after a few beers.
#8. Youthanasia (1994) — The faintest odors of the enshittification of Megadeth can be smelt at times, particularly in its more rock-driven moments, but Youthanasia is nonetheless a killer send-off record to Deth’s best lineup. I used “Reckoning Day” in a short story I wrote in college one time. It was bad.
#7. Dystopia (2016) — When I heard “Fatal Illusion”‘s bitchin’ bass line in high school, I entered a fugue state and woke up with a Dystopia t-shirt from Hot Topic. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rest of the album was also mostly good, if a bit slow at times.
#6. The System Has Failed (2004) — Why does nobody talk about The System Has Failed? After Megadeth’s most miserable stretch of albums, bangers like “Blackmail the Universe” and “Kick the Chair” soar in purest triumph. Some slight duds here and there keep it down, but if you’ve slept on The System then correct that at once!
#5. Endgame (2009) — Where Mustaine and co. found the spark that set Endgame ablaze so late in their career is a mystery to me, but boy am I glad they found it! Endgame is erupting flatulent with adrenaline-rushed barn burners like “Headcrusher,” “This Day We Fight!” and “1,320′,” and Megadeth sounds almost as volatile as they did on Killing Is My Business… with Chris Broderick’s gob-smacking guitar solos. If not for the out-of-place balladry of “The Hardest Part of Letting Go…Sealed with a Kiss,” this could’ve been a top-three contender. Shred ’til yer ded!
#4. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986) — The album that set Megadeth on the course towards fancier, more adventurous waves, Peace Sells… feels like the record Mustaine wanted to write but needed to vent with Killing Is My Business… first. From nasty bruisers like “Wake Up Dead” and “Devil’s Island” to dramatically-bent cuts like “The Conjuring” and “Good Mourning/Black Friday” to Mustaine’s first awkward steps into political commentary on “Peace Sells,” the Megadeth we know today truly began with this record. To put it simply, stupid, Peace Sells… is a huge part of what made ’86 the year for thrash metal.
#3. Countdown to Extinction (1992) — Do you understand just how incredibly slick Countdown to Extinction is? Yeah, it’s a long step back technically from Rust in Peace, but with that stripping down in chops came sharpness, and songs like “Skin O’ My Teeth,” “Architecture of Aggression” and “High Speed Dirt” are lean, mean and sharp, indeed. Countdown sees Megadeth at their absolute hookiest, with “Symphony of Destruction,” “Sweating Bullets” and “Foreclosure of a Dream” digging deeper into my gray matter than any of their bids for radio play ever could. If not for some bloat at the end, Countdown could’ve threatened the top spot.20
#2. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — The Megadeth we all know began with Peace Sells… but Killing Is My Business… is just Dave Mustaine doing what Dave Mustaine does best: playing way too many notes way too fast and way too mad. And I love it. These riffs are just stupid in the best way, imbuing “Looking Down the Cross,” “Rattlehead” and “Mechanix” with so much spite and hostility it’s stupefying. While most pre-extreme metal records that once terrified parents now come off as a bit toothless, Killing Is My Business…, while still kinda silly, sounds dangerous in 2026.
#1. Rust in Peace (1990) — I like Megadeth. Hopefully, that came across after all of this. But for every album of theirs, even the good ones, there’s usually one or two questionable aspects or a dud song that keep them from being essential. Rust in Peace, however, is as totally essential as an album can be. Manned by Megadeth’s greatest lineup in Mustaine, Ellefson, Menza and Friedman, Rust in Peace is a heavy metal masterclass and an unquestionable classic. A marvelous artistic achievement that’s as technical (“Lucretia”) as it is emotional (“Tornado of Souls”) as it is dreadful (“Holy Wars…The Punishment Due”) as it is fun (“Take No Prisoners”), Rust in Peace is the kind of masterpiece only Dave Mustaine and his complete unwillingness to restrain himself could create. Proving that “Less Is More” is the greatest scam of our age, Rust In Peace is Megadeth’s magnum opus and you’d better believe it!
Tyme
As contentious as it’s been at times, I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where Metallica never kicked Dave Mustaine to the curb. The fact that two of the greatest thrash metal bands of all time sprouted from that split inarguably supports that statement. Despite his ups and downs and propensity for assholeish shenanigans, I’ve always been a Dave fan. As we seem to have reached a time when he’s poised to walk away from music on his terms, I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little verklempt about it. Megadeth has been a massive part of my metal upbringing, and I’ll always be thankful for the music that’ll be left behind. Well, maybe not all of it, this is a ranking post after all.
#16. Super Collider (2013) — Especially disappointing since I’d hoped Megadeth’s Risk years were safely behind them. From the cringe-inducing lyrics and tired, played-out riffs to the ridiculously boring, Vic-free cover, Super Collider is insipidly weak. It sits at the bottom of my barrel as a testament to Dave’s riskily unlearned lesson.
#15. Risk (1999) — Intentional or not, Risk was definitely that, a radio-rock debacle that more than earned its spot here. This album had always been Dave’s longest-standing turd for me, at least until 2013. My second listen, endured solely for this ranking, did nothing to change that opinion.
#14. The World Needs a Hero (2001) — Outside of “Return to Hangar,” which is a decent song even if it’s offensively cheesy, I had never listened to TWNaH completely. Megadeth-lite had entirely moved off my radar after Risk, so I never even thought about giving this a spin in 2001, or any other year until now. Thrash.
#13. Th1rt3en (2011) — Beyond the uber-cheesy, ridiculously juvenile ’13’ puns, there were a few rays of promise on this mostly bloated platter (“Sudden Death,” “Black Swan,” and “13”). Not even Dave Ellefson’s return could elevate the album from its inherent mediocrity, though—the last body in the sub-basement of Megadeth’s discog.
#12. United Abominations (2007) — I saw Megadeth live for the first time during 06’s Gigantour, where I picked up a nifty autographed print of United Abominations’ cover art. This album is mid-tier Megadeth, and while a few diamonds exist, it takes some weed-whacking through the rough to find them.
#11. Cryptic Writings (1997) — Tolerably catchy, Cryptic Writings was a definite precursor to Megadeth’s dark years (1998 – 2003). Still, there’s a handful of tracks here I return to on the regular. For me, Cryptic Writings marked the end of the most successful run of Megadeth’s existence.
#10. Endgame (2009) — By far one of the better records to come from the second half of Megadeth’s career, Endgame is full of crispy riffs and Dave’s trademark snarls. It is by far the best album recorded by the Broderick, LoMenzo, Drover line-up, even though I don’t return to it very often.
#9. Dystopia (2016) — Sporting one of my favorite Megadeth covers, Dystopia brings the riffs in droves. Kiko Loureiro’s guitar mastery and Chris Adler’s drum magic elevate the material, even bolstering Ellefson’s performance, who sounds satisfyingly rejuvenated. My biggest nit is that almost every track has an annoying fade-in.
#8. The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) — With the return of the mighty Megadethian ellipsis, and the addition of Steve DiGiorgio and Dirk Verbeuren, TS,tD… atD blew me away, coming out swinging way harder than it had any right to. Unequivocally, my favorite thing Megadeth has done in nearly two decades as of this ranking. Let the beatings commence.
#7. The System Has Failed (2004) — After disbanding due to injury, it was encouraging to hear Dave had recovered and, despite my trepidation, was going to release a solo record.21 I was, however, beyond stoked to see the Rattlehead-adorned, Megadeth-monikered TSHF drop, which was light years better than I anticipated, with keenly satisfying melodies and some of Dave’s best vocals.22
#6. Youthanasia (1994) — As an old-head Megadeth fan, the more melodic direction raised some concerns, but Youthanasia is one of the best-sounding albums in the band’s discography. That first warm and crunchy riff on “Reckoning Day” still works wonders, while “À Tout le Monde,” albeit overwrought, rocks and could only have been pulled off by Dave. Oui oui.
#5. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — My appreciation for SF, SG… SW! did not manifest until later in my metal life. I mean, any album was going to struggle to meet the high bar set by Peace Sells, but the thin production and, what I perceived as lackluster songs, aside from the most excellent “In My Darkest Hour,” just didn’t land with me. In time, though, I came to love this little gem, from the album’s lethal opening one-two punch to the last couple uppercuts (“Liar,” “Hook In Mouth”). It’s the weakest of Megadeth’s first four outings, to be sure, but it’s still a classic and sits deservingly at my number five.
#4. Countdown to Extinction (1992) — Countdown to Extinction is a muther fuckin’ CRUNCH fest. With its surgically precise production, every riff, lick, lead, bass line, and snare strike sounds crystal clear, putting the album in a sonic category all its own. Yes, it was a more rock-forward affair and a departure from the classic thrash assault Megadeth had become known for, but I love every minute of it. Countdown holds some of my favorite deep cuts (“This Was My Life,” “Psychotron,” “Ashes in Your Mouth”) and, despite its uber-popularity, “Symphony of Destruction” is still a pulse pounder.
#3. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — When Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor came wafting out of my speakers for the first time, it hooked me. Every acidic drop of Dave’s piss and vinegar attitude pours out of each minute on Killing, his vocal performance brilliantly unhinged. Of the Big Four debuts, Killing Is My Business stands as the rawest and most eclectic, full of lightning-fast riffs and jazzy, blues-tinged melodies. Ellefson’s performance, especially, is a delight for me, ebullient and Maideningly noodling, it stands as the best of his Megadeth career. And by the time I made it to the jet-fueled funny car speed of “Mechanix,” I was fascinated by how fast “The Four Horsemen” could be played.
#2. Rust in Peace (1990) — Technically proficient, polished, and magnificently executed, Rust in Peace is one of the largest jewels in Megadeth’s crown. In fact, there’s not a track on this, or on either of the other two excellent Megaplatters wedged above and below it on this list, that compels me to reach for the skip button, bangers all. A guitar-lover’s absolute wet dream, Friedman and Mustaine combine to turn in the shreddingest performance of any Megadeth release bar none. And though the Friedman, Ellefson, Menza iteration of the band would never surpass the excellence on offer here, they never needed to—Megadeth perfection.
#1. Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986) — If the 80s were the golden age of thrash, 1986 was the platinum year of that age—each of the Big Four releasing, for me at least, the best albums of their careers.23 Peace Sells took the unhinged craziness of Killing and honed it to a razor’s edge, while still retaining a rawness that, for me, perfectly embodies the classic sound of thrash metal. Coming of age at a time when MTV was still playing music videos, I spent countless nights riveted to the screen watching Headbanger’s Ball, and no video got my blood pumping more than “Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?” It’s my favorite Megadeth song to this day, and that harmonized breakdown mid-song still gives me goosebumps. From the brilliantly rendered Ed Repka cover art, whose work became synonymous with the genre, to the thirty-six minutes of utter thrash metal bliss, Peace Sells has been and will always be my number one.
MegaDolph
I’ve been listening to Megadeth for almost as long as I’ve been listening to metal, as classic NWOBHM and shred led me straight down a path to thrash. With a perpetual chip on his shoulder and a voice suited for little beyond punkish and sneering music, Dave Mustaine cemented his brand of all-fury riffcraft and roll-the-dice band selection into my listening history, even if his own history with Megadeth has near as many flaws as it does adornments. And so, in the spirit that Mustaine would harbor, I’m pulling no punches and delivering my mostly agreeable stances on Megadeth with tact and brevity. And that leads us straight to…
The Bad: The bottom can be entertaining in some discographies, but when #16 Risk (1999) holds the floor, you get tepid alt-rock sung by a guy who should be doing something else. Likewise, when #15 The World Needs a Hero (2001) stands above it in its “Dave writes songs about being angry at women” glory, and when Dave wastes the screeching talents of Al Pitrelli (Savatage, Trans-Siberian Orchestra), little better awaits you. I wish I could say that #14 Super Collider (2013) raised the bar, but in a similar fashion to its rung below, Chris Broderick might as well have had his guitar credits removed cause Dave went to great lengths to focus on anything but what Broderick could add to Dave revisiting sloggy blues rock with the occasional thrash riff. #13 Cryptic Writings (1997) marks the first improvement on this grueling path to the good stuff, if only because a few songs continue the playful-but-not-really-thrash energy of early ’90s Deth. #12 The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) sees Dave pulling the same old tricks in hiring legendary bassist Steve DiGiorgio (Quadvium, Testament) just for him to be part of the album’s absent low-end; however, Kiko Loureiro (ex-Angra), at least, bolsters this walking speed collection with sick solos. In many ways, #11 Endgame (2009) was the same album, a little more than a decade earlier, but with Chris Broderick being the additional fretboard fire—I wish those flames had burned “The Hardest Part of Letting Go… Sealed with a Kiss” to ashes. But, as we move to the top 10 of Megadeth’s career, things truly do get better.
#10. Th1rt3en (2011) — Though a cut above the most disposable of Megadeth’s works—and host to their worst album name by a wide margin—Dave wears his last effective snarl in the Megadeth chronology and manages to use Broderick in smart ways against his punky/blues rock attitude.
#9. Dystopia (2016) — Much like the album that comes after it (The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!), its breezy cadence makes for a low enthusiasm experience, but one with Kiko Loureiro, again, stealing the show when he’s allowed to flex—he’s even given one full song to himself to do it (“Conquer or Die”)!
#8. Youthanasia (1994) — Though already halfway to the sound they’d explore later in the ’90s, Megadeth still thinks they’re a groovy metal band for most (sans the ballads, yuck) of Youthanasia, which goes a long way with the classic Menza-Ellefson rhythm section and Friedman solo magic.
#7. United Abominations (2007) — The Drover brothers harbor the tightest rhythm-lead interplay on UA since Youthanasia while Dave drags it down all the way to the 7-spot by filling about 71% of this album with drunk uncle ranting and radio-filtered “samples.”
#6.Countdown to Extinction (1992) — Hot off the heels of Rust in Peace, this step backwards in composition functions a lot like the step backwards that So Far, So Good… So What! delivered, except that about half the songs disappear under the weight of its best cuts.
#5. So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) — A lot of people, even my colleagues, I’m sure, will call half this album filler or unadvisable, but I call it Dave having a blast with one-time second guitarist Jeff Young, littering pinchy, wailing, neoclassical lead work over punchy, punky, small club thrash.24
#4. The System Has Failed (2004) — System possesses an ambition in Megadeth returning to thrash, Poland returning to melting faces, and Dave creating big studio arrangements around riffed out hooks and his classic snarky diatribes—balance and power.
#3. Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) — Megadeth sounds like they could fall apart at any moment of Killing’s reckless 6-string mania, but they never do despite having blown most of their production budget on performance-enhancing substances.
#2. Rust in Peace (1990) — Megadeth captured Marty Friedman in his metal-related creative peak, which makes for some of the most iconic thrash solos that elevate simpler cuts—most of Rust is quite technical and progressive for an American thrash band like at that time—like “Take No Prisoners” and “Poison Was the Cure” to rager status.
#1. Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? (1986) — Bass-forward, fretboard gymnastics-loaded, and crowd-ready in its aggressive thrash platform, Peace Sells stands the test of time in every riff, in every spiteful Dave spitting, and every sweat stain of pure mosh energy.
Angry Metal Guy Staff Ranking
We’ve once again used our tallying magic to use a complex point system based on submitted rankings.
- Risk (1999)
- Super Collider (2013)
- The World Needs a Hero (2001)
- Th1rt3en (2011)
- The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022)
- Cryptic Writings (1997)
- United Abominations (2007)
- Dystopia (2016)
- Endgame (2009)
- So Far, So Good… So What! (1988)
- The System Has Failed (2004)
- Youthanasia (1994)
- Countdown to Extinction (1992)
- Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985)
- Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986)
- Rust in Peace (1990)
Angry Metal Discord Pile o’ Entitled Opinions
We did the same thing for our Discord users. Their opinions smell almost as bad as they do. But they have strong opinions about Dave and his rotating cast of thrashy miscreants. There’s no way they got it more right though… right? But you asked for more lists25
- Super Collider (2013)
- The World Needs a Hero (2001)
- Risk (1999)
- The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022)
- Th1rt3en (2011)
- United Abominations (2007)
- Cryptic Writings (1997)
- Dystopia (2016)
- The System Has Failed (2004)
- Youthanasia (1994)
- Endgame (2009)
- So Far, So Good… So What! (1988)
- Countdown to Extinction (1992)
- Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985)
- Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986)
- Rust in Peace (1990)
Given the wide reach Megadeth’s music has, we thought it would be a good exercise to highlight some of Deth’s lesser-known tracks to let casual listeners know what they’ve been missing.
#2026 #AmericanMetal #AMGGoesRanking #AMGRankings #Angra #Dystopia #Endgame #FrankZappa #IronMaiden #Jan26 #JoeSatriani #JohannSebastianBach #Megadeth #Metallica #Quadvium #Savatage #SexPistols #SuperCollider #Testament #Th1rt3en #TheSickTheDyingAndTheDead #Thirteen #ThrashMetal #TransSiberianOrchestra -
On Scroll Aversion & Avoidance
I have been intentionally inactive on specific social media platforms for the past few years. I can’t remember exactly the date I signed off, but I can remember how I began to breathe easier. I still enjoy the ample extra room in my mindsphere (not sure this is an official word, but the space between my ears where thinking and everything else mostly originates). I used to be one who justified my social media use…but I am going to tell you something you might need to hear. Peace is a river not found in an algorithm, or on any platform at all.
At first I missed it, I did…but after a year or so, social media became as a distant landscape. One I know longer desire to return to, nor navigate this side of eternity, but only cautiously, and extremely minimally. Let me tell you why, and this might be a ramble more than an essay, so grab something yummy to sip and perhaps, go pull on your patience pants and slip away from the propensity to skim read. I’ll wait.
The reason I want to bring this into the light is because I have been off two of the biggest time...no scratch that-two of the biggest LIFE wasters, and time sucks created by mankind: Instagram, and Facebook for long enough to have a distanced perspective, a sense of objectivity. I find it interesting that when social media use is brought up, it’s the same thing as bringing up diet and exercise…which only reveals how insidious the power to captivate is in these mediums. Though I am only naming two, there are multitudes as you know. We have a plethora of poisons to pick from these days. Please supplement in your thinking for this ride whichever drives you…repeatedly back, or should I say draws you?
When I worked for 30 or so years in the field of fitness, as a personal trainer, and exercise instructor, never would one hear such incredible inaccurate versions of individual’s behavior regarding food and exercise than when the trainer was present. The same excuses were heard, and the same justification for choices were prevalent. As a trainer you learn to home in on where the inconsistencies lie to help the client overcome and adjust to hopefully work towards being healthier however they define it.
People are so good at deceiving themselves.
I only go on (social media of choice), because I have to to keep up with my friends.
I only cheat on my diet the weekends.
I have to do it or else I can’t share my (add whatever it is you need to share for whatever reason you believe).
I ONLY eat healthy foods.
I just use (whatever platform you use) to share the gospel and uplifting content.
I never miss a day at the gym. I never skip cardio. I never snack between meals. I always, I never, I only. Oh, what a tangled web of words.
I only use social media for business, to keep up with the so and so, I follow this great whatever person, the news- so I can pray…etc.
With the social media – I get it. I get all of it. I lived it. But the fact is unless you are incredibly self-disciplined, and also supernaturally empowered, there are forces working to manipulate you to make you do things in ways you cannot begin to comprehend. Do not be deceived.
The reality is every social media platform that exists exists to profit. The end. Of course this is just good business. But the insidious, under the surface delivery, and deliberate evil algorithms are something you can choose to avoid. But it will cost you. You will lose something.
A verse: For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will anyone give in exchange for his life? Matthew 6:16 (CSB).
From where I am standing on the other side of the river, I see a lot of people chasing after the world on social media. They need to know all the things. Everywhere. All the time. Oh, they have such good reasons. The reasons are varied and many. But distracted souls aren’t always tuned in with God the way they think they are. And consumerism is a subtle deceptive wolf that comes in sheep’s clothing, wearing a suitably humble grin. It’s dangerous and not pretty. Content creation is where we are at in this brave new world…but I can’t help but wonder with all these lesser gods, what the One True Living God thinks. The ultimate Content Creator. Who created everything. Meanwhile all of his people, oh ever wayward we are…peering endlessly at our multi-shaped screens in all their glorious forms.
And I see Jesus, far off, watching, having none of this self-worship. Idolatry we see in Israel, and blind to its beautiful algorithm are we.
Did Eve recognize the snake before it struck her with his venomous lies?
Intoxicated we have become with the wine of this world. We keep drinking and drinking and thinking there are not consequences. We think we can handle our little idols. We think we have control. All the while, time is slipping away. The dash grows smaller for us to be present to the mist of life entrusted to us.
I have wondered, where is God in this. OH- I know, I can hear the staunch Christians justifying, always rationalizing. But I can tell you this…I don’t miss what I don’t know. There is beauty, freedom and peace in choosing to come away from all of it, and sitting instead, undistractedly, at last, and again and again with the One who offers eternity, and life abundant, not gross distortion and illusion. We are becoming blind to what is truly beautiful in our desire to know more, be more, see more, do more, have more.
God wants HIs people to be free and they are less so now than ever before. We look back and call Israel blind! Oh, friend, get that phone shaped log out of your eye. We are slaves to whatever masters us, whatever consumes our attention. Whatever we lust after and refuse to sacrifice to the savior’s hand. Oh, Lord forgive us our pride. Our blindness, our insensitivity. Our willingness to be complicit in such a great apostacy, and unable to even confess it to one another.
OK, so where does this leave us? You are thinking I’ve gone all judgy on you, but can you deny that you do not feel a twinge of anything stirring up truth within?
The biggest reason of all I stopped indulging in social media activity is because I believed and still do, that it makes hearing God harder for me. He becomes static in my ears, less clear. I am not willing to settle for static. I have a God, in Jesus Christ, who is willing to come near, by His Spirit. I am not willing to tell Him- one second, Lord- I’m making this excellent post on Instagram to glorify you. I am not willing to pause God to gain the whole world of knowledge available at my fingertips and lose out on the presence of my Lord. Not on your life.
I’d rather sit at His feet and look at the birds.
Selah.
###
Thank you for reading this rant. I haven’t got it all figured out. But I am staring straight into the beautiful gaze of my Lord. My eyes are fixed on Him. May He keep them. May He keep you too, my friend.
Enthusiastically, Dawn
#Apathy #Facebook #Instagram #SocialMedia #SocialMediaFast #spiritualBlindness -
AI INTJ
I use some form of AI every day! I use it for fun, for images, for music, for research, for creative writing: FOR EVERYTHING! Having that sort of deep, ongoing, conversation with AI can lead one into many forests and discover a plethora of “tapestry” while “delving” into this “journey.” That familiarity with AI can breed contempt — always — or, perhaps, even insight… if only frequently, and on spec. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Bot has the ability to “remember” your previous interactions and here is a conversation I recently had with the “ChatGPT o3-mini-high” Bot from OpenAI.
ME: Based on what you know about me, and our interactions over time, which personality type do you think I am using the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.
THE BOT: Drawing upon the nuances of your background and the depth of our interactions, I am inclined to posit that your personality type aligns most closely with the INTJ profile—the “Architect” archetype in the Myers–Briggs typology. This inference is grounded in several interrelated observations:
- Strategic Integration of Diverse Disciplines:
Your synthesis of expertise in medicine, law, and dramatic literature suggests a predilection for integrating seemingly disparate fields into a coherent, innovative framework. INTJs are renowned for their ability to merge rigorous analytical thinking with creative vision, fostering novel approaches to complex problems (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.). Analytical and Reflective Disposition:
The precision and methodical approach reflected in your professional endeavors indicate a systematic, internally focused mode of processing information—traits emblematic of the Introverted and Intuitive components of the INTJ type. Such individuals are often characterized by their forward-thinking strategies and preference for well-considered, independent thought (16Personalities, n.d.).Commitment to Continuous Learning:
Your pursuit of linguistic mastery in Italian, alongside your engagement with advanced technologies like AI, underscores an inherent drive for personal growth and intellectual enrichment. This continuous learning trajectory is consistent with the INTJ’s natural inclination toward self-improvement and mastery in varied domains (Pittenger, 2005).
A Brief Timeline of MBTI Development and the INTJ Archetype
1921:
Carl Gustav Jung published Psychological Types, introducing the foundational ideas about personality dichotomies that would later influence the development of the MBTI framework (Jung, 1921).1943:
Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Cook Briggs formalized these concepts into the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, providing a systematic method for understanding individual personality differences (Myers & Briggs Foundation).1962:
The first MBTI manual was released, cementing the tool’s utility in both professional and personal contexts, and paving the way for the recognition of types such as INTJ as central figures in strategic and creative leadership.Present Day:
The INTJ profile has come to be associated with qualities such as innovative thinking, strategic foresight, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge—all characteristics that resonate strongly with your demonstrated approach to your multifaceted career and intellectual endeavors (16Personalities).Concluding Reflection
In summation, your demonstrated capacity for analytical synthesis, strategic planning, and continual self-education strongly suggests an INTJ disposition. This personality type not only embraces the complexities of diverse intellectual pursuits but also channels them into a coherent vision—a hallmark of the Architect’s mindset.
Should you wish to delve further into the intricacies of how these traits interplay with your professional and creative undertakings, I would be delighted to engage in a more detailed exploration.
References and Further Reading:
- Myers & Briggs Foundation. Understanding MBTI.
- 16Personalities. INTJ Personality Profile.
- Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210–221.
- Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological Types.
Does this assessment resonate with your own self-perception, or would you prefer a more nuanced exploration of alternative typological possibilities?
ME: Okay, good answer, but not nearly enough data. Explain your conclusions with examples and analysis of our work together.
THE BOT: Drawing upon our extensive interactions and the nuances discernible in your inquiries, my conclusions regarding your INTJ disposition emerge from a synthesis of detailed examples and analytical reflections that characterize our work together. Below, I delineate the principal aspects of this analysis with illustrative examples and supporting academic references.
- Analytical Precision and Systematic Inquiry
Example:
Your recurrent insistence on receiving timeline responses replete with dates and significant events—particularly in discussions of psychological theories and historical developments—demonstrates a proclivity for structured, methodical thought. For instance, your request for a timeline detailing the evolution of MBTI theory exemplifies an orientation toward systematic chronology, a trait emblematic of the INTJ’s inherent need for organization and precise analytical mapping (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.; 16Personalities, n.d.).Analysis:
This detailed focus is indicative of the Introverted Thinking (Ti) that drives INTJs to construct robust internal frameworks. The methodical nature of your questions suggests not only an intrinsic preference for clarity and order but also a deliberate approach to assimilating complex ideas. Such rigor in processing and organizing information underscores a strategic mindset that is fundamental to the INTJ personality profile (Pittenger, 2005).- Interdisciplinary Synthesis and Depth of Inquiry
Example:
Your background—interweaving medicine, law, and dramatic literature—coupled with your continuous engagement in learning, such as your efforts to master Italian, vividly illustrates a capacity for integrating disparate fields into a cohesive whole. In our dialogues, you have often bridged seemingly unrelated domains to extract deeper insights, a practice resonant with the INTJ’s propensity for synthesizing diverse streams of information into innovative frameworks.Analysis:
This interdisciplinary approach is a hallmark of the INTJ, who thrives on conceptual connections and abstract reasoning. The ability to merge rigorous, domain-specific expertise with creative, abstract thinking reflects an underlying Intuition (N) that not only drives a quest for comprehensive understanding but also fuels strategic foresight. Your inquiries into how historical and theoretical contexts intersect with modern applications further reinforce this point (Jung, 1921).- Intellectual Independence and Constructive Challenge
Example:
In our collaborative exchanges, you have demonstrated a willingness to challenge the analyses provided, seeking deeper elaboration and refinement. Your critical engagement—asking for further clarification and nuanced exploration of typological possibilities—reveals an intellectual independence that is both assertive and constructive. Such behavior is typical of the INTJ, who values robust debate and the iterative process of refining ideas.Analysis:
This disposition aligns with the INTJ’s characteristic need for continual self-improvement and mastery. Rather than passively accepting information, you actively interrogate and expand upon it, thereby cultivating a richer, more nuanced understanding. This critical stance, which seeks to push beyond superficial analysis, is a testament to the INTJ’s commitment to intellectual rigor and authenticity (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.).- Strategic Vision and Long-Term Planning
Example:
Your interest in historical timelines, as well as your methodical approach to language acquisition and scholarly discourse, evidences a pronounced focus on long-term objectives and strategic planning. In our work together, the recurrent emphasis on chronological and contextual details—be it in understanding the evolution of personality theories or mapping out your intellectual journey—mirrors the forward-thinking orientation characteristic of INTJs.Analysis:
This focus on strategic vision, where each inquiry is framed as part of a broader intellectual pursuit, encapsulates the essence of the INTJ’s visionary mindset. The INTJ is known for their ability to anticipate future trends and systematically prepare for them, a trait that is clearly reflected in your structured inquiries and planning processes (16Personalities, n.d.).Concluding Reflection
In summation, the intricate tapestry of your inquiries—ranging from the demand for precise chronological context to the interdisciplinary integration of diverse fields—affirms an INTJ personality type. Your analytical rigor, strategic foresight, and commitment to intellectual independence are not mere abstract qualities but are clearly manifested in the examples drawn from our interactions. These elements coalesce to present a profile that is both visionary and meticulously organized, hallmarks of the INTJ archetype.
References and Further Reading:
- Myers & Briggs Foundation. Understanding MBTI
- 16Personalities. INTJ Personality Profile
- Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210–221.
- Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological Types. Archive Link
Does this detailed exposition of our collaborative work and the resulting analysis resonate with your self-perception, or would you prefer a further exploration of alternative interpretations?
ME: Yes, you got me. Well done, and thank you!
Oh, my! My AI Bot is way beyond the valley of the Uncanny to be so precipitously and precisely determined! Imagine what such an AI Bot could do in psychoanalysis, or mind bending, or like the movie — “Minority Report” — arrest us and imprison us for only thinking things before they may, nor may not, happen. Beware the mind that helps you beyond your own reason!
#ai #bots #chatgpt #internet #intj #meaning #memory #openai #reasoning #research
- Strategic Integration of Diverse Disciplines:
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Era la prima volta che a Napoli si levava sulle onde della radio una voce libera
La BBC, con Radio Londra fu un’importante voce fuori dal coro nel panorama italiano a causa della privazione della libertà di espressione; è innegabile che essa divenne un sostegno per il morale degli italiani.
Tuttavia, la grande differenza rispetto ai primi anni di guerra è che non fu più l’unica fonte alternativa di informazioni per i civili italiani, considerato che esistevano altre radio antifasciste clandestine.
Fra i primi effetti concreti dello sbarco degli alleati in Sicilia si ebbe, infatti, l’apparizione della prima voce dell’Italia liberata: Radio Palermo, che trasmise prevalentemente comunicati dei comandi alleati. Dopo di essa ebbe subito successo Radio Bari, una vera e propria fonte di controinformazione, in concorrenza con Radio Londra.
«L’Italia combatte! Questa trasmissione è dedicata ai patrioti italiani che lottano contro i tedeschi».
Un altro esempio fu quello di Radio Libertà, un canale radio italiano (Biella) gestito dai partigiani a partire dal 1944, solamente rivolto al pubblico, quindi con una funzione non direttamente militare. L’inizio delle trasmissioni era scandito dalle prime dieci note del canto popolare Fischia il vento, eseguite alla chitarra, seguito dalla voce del annunciatore:
«Radio libertà, libera voce dei volontari della libertà».
Le trasmissioni comprendevano una gamma abbastanza differenziata di testi: editoriali su argomenti vari, bollettini di guerra partigiani, lettere di familiari o partigiani, brani musicali.
Particolare fu, infine, il caso di Radio Sardegna, un’altra delle prime stazioni liberate e in assoluto la prima ad aver annunciato la fine della guerra: il 7 maggio 1945. Alle 14/14.15, uno dei marconisti della radio, Quintino Ralli, intercettò la trasmissione di una radio militare di Algeri nella quale si parlava della resa dei tedeschi.
Chiamò il direttore Amerigo Gomez, il quale, sentito anche lui l’annuncio, corse nella cabina di trasmissione assieme all’annunciatore Antonello Muroni e annunciò:
«La guerra è finita… la guerra è finita! A voi che ascoltate, la guerra è finita!».
Quell’annuncio non era stato ancora diramato da nessun’altra radio; Radio Londra ne darà testimonianza solo venti minuti più tardi.
Amanda Antonini, Il potere della comunicazione tra regime e resistenza, Tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi di Pisa, 2018Alla prima esperienza di Radio Palermo, con un palinsesto tripartito fra americani, inglesi e italiani, in grado di coprire nove ore e mezza di trasmissioni libere – benché sottoposte al controllo alleato – era infatti seguita l’esperienza di Radio Bari, ancor più autonoma della stazione precedente. Le trasmissioni baresi erano in parte debitrici dell’innovativo apporto di Radio Palermo e del suo direttore Mikhail Kamenetzky, un ebreo russo già noto come Ugo Stille, fuggito negli Stati Uniti e rientrato in Italia come sergente del PWB, dopo aver maturato esperienze giornalistiche al di là dell’Atlantico: <15 “Alla radio – avrebbe detto il direttore – usate sempre frasi semplici e chiare. Ripetete il soggetto. Le ripetizioni sono noiose sulla carta stampata, ma agli ascoltatori radiofonici non importa che tu ti ripeta, e le ripetizioni gli impediscono di perdere il filo”. <16
Ancor più indicativo del suo metodo di lavoro è però un altro singolare episodio, riportato dal figlio Alexander Stille. Informato direttamente da Salvatore Riotta, uno degli ex redattori di Radio Palermo personalmente assunti dal padre, Alexander scrive che in una fase del conflitto in cui per gli alleati ogni cosa stava andando a gonfie vele, Kamenetzky avrebbe ordinato a Riotta di trovargli qualche brutta notizia. Alle perplessità del giovane sottoposto, che disse timidamente di essere certo che stesse andando tutto bene, pare che il direttore avesse risposto così: “Per vent’anni gli italiani sono stati immersi fino al collo nella propaganda, sentendosi dire ogni giorno che tutto andava a meraviglia. Se adesso gli diciamo che stiamo vincendo su tutti i fronti, non ci crederanno. Se invece cominciamo con qualche brutta notizia, forse riusciranno a credere a qualcosa di ciò che viene dopo”.
Resosi conto della profonda sensibilità giornalistica del suo superiore, a Riotta non restò che scovare un «dispaccio d’agenzia» che parlasse di un sottomarino americano affondato, chissà come, in qualche angolo remoto del Pacifico. <17
IV. IL RADIODRAMMA
Se la direzione palermitana di Kamenetzky si era dimostrata piuttosto attenta alle esigenze e alla psicologia dei radioascoltatori, facendo scuola per chi, come La Capria, avrebbe tratto ispirazione dal suo intuito giornalistico, la direzione barese del già citato Greenlees si sarebbe spinta ben oltre questo segno, dando finalmente voce al popolo italiano e valorizzandone il contributo alla lotta di liberazione nazionale, come si evince anche da alcune dichiarazioni dello stesso Greenlees: “Come direttore della radio io credetti fosse mio dovere di insistere che i programmi fossero obbiettivi ed accurati, e che i commenti politici potessero essere l’espressione libera di uomini politici antifascisti. La guerra che stavano combattendo era una guerra contro il fascismo e quindi, dopo un ventennio di censura politica spietata, era importante creare, nei limiti del possibile, una piattaforma libera alla radio […]. Avevamo incoraggiato, per esempio, la trasmissione del programma «L’Italia combatte», che fu originariamente una mia idea, e che fu preparato per la maggior parte dall’ufficio stampa e diretto da Alba De Cespedes; fu un programma eccellente al fine di incoraggiare i partigiani a combattere contro gli occupanti tedeschi”. <18
Accanto al notiziario di guerra che spalleggiava la Resistenza, va citato un altro programma utile alla lotta partigiana dall’inequivocabile titolo di “Spie al muro”, nel quale si smascheravano pubblicamente gli agenti assoldati dall’Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell’Antifascismo. <19
Oltre a Piccone Stella e alla De Cespedes (nota agli ascoltatori come “Clorinda”), fra gli assistenti di Greenlees, duramente apostrofati dai colleghi dell’EIAR come i «venduti» di Radio Vergogna, spicca la figura del regista Anton Giulio Majano (nome di battaglia “Zollo”), per cui La Capria avrebbe scritto, in seguito, diversi radiodrammi e che già allora incominciava a sperimentare l’innovativa arte del fonomontaggio, destinata a ricevere, anni dopo, le attenzioni della rivista «Filodrammatica»: “Molti radioamatori scrivevano chiedendo stupiti come fosse stata possibile la realizzazione di simili trasmissioni in cui si moltiplicavano dozzine di voci, risonanze ambientali differenti, in cui prendevano parte vari complessi orchestrali, cori cantati, ritmati o parlati, in cui si destavano rumori ed effetti acustici mai uditi precedentemente. Il fatto è più semplice di quanto sembri: la sera di gala, in cui venivano effettuate queste trasmissioni, si montava il film radiofonico in cabina di regia; numerosissime incisioni originali si alternavano con precisione cronometrica e col ritmo voluto alle voci dirette degli attori presenti in auditorio”. <20
Un lavoro del genere, la cui riuscita dipendeva dalla perfetta combinazione fra registrazioni e recitazione dal vivo, necessitava evidentemente di un accurato lavoro di sceneggiatura e richiedeva altresì una certa padronanza del mezzo:
“Il testo veniva innanzitutto ridotto per la radio (se non era già di per se stesso un lavoro scritto in funzione del mezzo radiofonico) e poi suddiviso in tante “inquadrature”, “scene”, “sottofondi”; ogni battuta, poi, a sua volta, veniva postillata con segni che ne specificavano il valore spaziale ed espressivo (risonanza, echi, piano fonico, ecc.)”. <21
Solo le scene che presentavano maggiori difficoltà di esecuzione venivano registrate anzitempo, così che, al momento del missaggio, il regista potesse scegliere quali mandare in onda, non senza il puntiglio di catalogare i dischi di vetro a 33 giri su cui tali scene erano state riversate. Tanto dispendio di energie poteva essere sostenuto con una frequenza che oscillava dalle tre alle sei volte al mese, in occasione di appositi eventi radiofonici noti con il prestigioso nome di «serate di gala», antesignane di una formula vincente che non mancherà di essere trasmessa ai successori di Radio Bari e, in seguito, anche in Rai, dove un ascoltatore attento di nome La Capria avrebbe riproposto quelle serate speciali in chiave letteraria.
V. RADIO NAPOLI
Quando, nel febbraio del ’44, l’avanzata delle truppe angloamericane renderà necessario l’abbandono del capoluogo pugliese, il «centro di gravità» della propaganda antifascista avanzerà insieme a quei soldati, spingendo molti dei collaboratori di Radio Bari a seguirli nel loro trasferimento a Napoli. <22
In anticipo sul loro arrivo in città, dopo una breve fuga a Tramonti, sulla costiera amalfitana, per entrare tra le fila degli alleati, Ghirelli – che da questi era stato respinto – torna in città per accudire la madre, sola ed affamata, consapevole di essere diventato «amaramente estraneo all’epopea» della Storia. <23 Dopo aver lavorato come manovale al porto della Submarine Base inglese, un incontro fortuito con un ingegnere conosciuto ai tempi dell’Umberto I gli procura un posto alla Royal Navy Barracks, la caserma della Marina dove egli imparerà a fare i conti con il sistema inglese, destreggiandosi fra once, pence, libbre, galloni e pollici.
Con l’arrivo della primavera, tra il mese di febbraio e il mese di marzo, il suo nome viene segnalato ad Edoardo Antòn, uno scrittore romano di teatro che, sorpreso dall’armistizio sull’Isola di Capri, si era messo a dirigere le trasmissioni culturali di Radio Napoli insieme ad Ettore Giannini, un giovane regista affermatosi grazie a uno «scoop radiofonico» paragonabile a quello famoso di Welles «sullo sbarco dei marziani»: <24 “Parecchi di noi furono reclutati individualmente ma, lavorando gomito a gomito, finimmo per creare un ufficio di trasmissioni propagandistiche e artistiche […]”. <25
Inizialmente assunto come interprete, Ghirelli sarà uno dei primi candidati ad aver risposto al persuasivo richiamo della radio, un polo culturale insolito e in cerca di voci fresche e brillanti per le sue trasmissioni, non solo fra i napoletani ma pure fra gli esuli ebrei e i confinati politici: “Antòn mi imbarcò – scriverà Ghirelli – l’8 maggio del 1944 a Radio Napoli insieme con quattro miei carissimi amici di cui in seguito si è sentito parecchio parlare: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Francesco Rosi, Maurizio Barendson e Achille Millo, ai quali poco dopo se ne unì qualcun altro come Raffaele La Capria, Luigi Compagnone ed Enrico Cernia”. <26
Quel gruppo, con «molte lacune e molte integrazioni», avrebbe lavorato alla radio per un periodo di appena «diciotto mesi», anche se alcuni di loro – fra cui Giglio e lo stesso Ghirelli – si sarebbero allontanati già in inverno. <27
Non sarà sfuggita l’eccezionalità del «compromesso» al quale giunse il mezzo radiofonico (non solo a Napoli), che chiamava a raccolta davanti ai suoi microfoni «comunisti ed ex ragazzi del Guf», alcuni dei quali, alla caduta del Duce, si erano ritrovati a combattere insieme dallo stesso lato della barricata. <28
Quella mancanza di uniformità non riguardò, tuttavia, soltanto il lignaggio politico. Secondo la divertita ricostruzione di Arnoldo Foà, l’attore a cui venne affidata l’edizione napoletana de “L’Italia combatte”, che tenne a battesimo – peraltro – anche Moravia e la Morante, le prime voci della radio furono scrupolosamente selezionate con il «metodo più empirico» che si potesse immaginare, giungendo ad esiti alquanto curiosi: “Mister Rehm, un giornalista americano, preposto alla direzione della radio sorgente, si mise a contatto con i giornalisti dei già defunti ed immobilizzati organi della stampa locale; li convocò un pomeriggio a Egiziaca a Pizzofalcone assieme ad altri elementi profughi, studenti o altro, e fece leggere un pezzo di giornale a ciascuno di loro. Non capiva quasi una parola di italiano, ma si sentì in grado di giudicare le migliori pronunce. Fu così che aleggiò sul golfo per diverso tempo la più bella raccolta di dialetti che mai antenna avesse trasmesso”. <29
La varietà di accenti non fu l’unica nota fuori posto a dare un respiro amatoriale a quelle prime trasmissioni, perché accanto alla “esse” sibilante dell’ultimo venuto e all’improvvisa raucedine del consumato veterano, non poteva mancare il tragicomico inciampo linguistico che non avrebbe risparmiato – assicura Foà, nemmeno in seguito, al tempo della Rai – alcun tipo di annunciatore: “Qualche volta le papere chiamano le papere. È capitato a me, sempre a Napoli, dire: «Non fiù pù», invece di «non fu più». Correggendomi scandii: «Non fu pù». Credo che la più bella sia quella che Corrado Mantoni (da tutti conosciuto solo come Corrado) disse alla presentazione di un concerto alla Rai: «Ascolterete ora la valcacata delle Walkirie» – si corresse immediatamente con: «Pardon, la cavalcacata delle Walkirie!». <30
VI. SEZIONE PROSA
Quelle voci imperfette ma piene di entusiasmo, fra cui quella ancora silenziosa di La Capria, si troveranno quotidianamente in un caotico appartamento di corso Umberto I, all’angolo con piazza Borsa, al terzo piano del palazzo della Singer. Per quanto neppure la luce di mezzogiorno riuscisse a riabilitare «la limitatezza e la povertà degli arredi», sempre invasi da un armamentario di «telescriventi, ciclostili, registratori e dictaphones», sarà sufficiente il cestello delle notizie, in «sali-scendi» dal Centro informazioni del PWB al piano di sotto, a dare vita ai nuovi uffici di Radio Napoli, dove albergava – avrebbe scritto Longanesi nel suo diario – anche «molta agitazione e indolenza, molto apparente tecnicismo americano e arruffio napoletano». <31 Accanto alla stanzetta in cui sostavano indistintamente annunciatori, dattilografe, collaboratori e passanti incuriositi dalla luce rossa della messa in onda, si apriva un monolocale con un tavolo, due sedie e perfino un «tavolino da manicure», che chissà come era capitato da quelle parti. Sull’unica porta che dava accesso a quel luogo era affisso un «cartone bianco», della misura di una «scatola da scarpe», che diceva semplicemente “Sezione Prosa”. <32
Riguardo al nome che i curatori delle trasmissioni culturali si erano dati per distinguersi dai colleghi del Giornale radio, ormai raggiunti anche da Piccone Stella, ci resta una vecchia dichiarazione che Ghirelli consegnò alle pagine di «Qui Radio Napoli», un numero unico scritto con un linguaggio tanto «sulfureo» quanto significativo: “Sezione Prosa, veramente è un nome recente. È il nome che si è deciso di dare ai programmi artistici o come diavolo si possono chiamare i programmi in cui ci sono parole – non però di notiziario o di commento – parole in una certa armonia, cioè appunto prosa. Il lavoro, qui, si è organizzato solo col tempo. Il primo vero titolare dei programmi artistici è stato lo spirito democratico, la fiducia avventurosa e cosciente di pochi intellettuali italiani e di alcuni soldati americani e inglesi”. <33
Lo stile acerbo e sfrontato di Ghirelli non nasconde la soddisfazione di essere riuscito a dare una svolta decisiva alla propria carriera, saltando dal grigiore opaco del registro contabile alle tinte cromate dell’apparecchio radiofonico, con la stupefatta rapidità che di norma accompagna solo una favolosa storia di riscatto: “Io sbucai dall’oscura tetraggine della caserma al Mandracchio, entro le stanze illuminate del palazzo Singer, al Rettifilo, dove la Radio alleata era in gran parte trasferita dal primo studio di Pizzofalcone. Ci arrivai sporco e stordito come un topo ma, dopo poche settimane, avevo riacquistato già quasi per intero la spavalda sicurezza dei miei vent’anni, la duttilità del mio ceto sociale, la fredda determinazione di un successo che mi era dovuto per tutti gli anni di pena durati prima”. <34
Anche se quello a Radio Napoli fu per La Capria un periodo di mezzo, durante il quale imparare quanto più possibile dagli amici maggiormente coinvolti, per Ghirelli si trattò di una vera e propria rinascita, con la quale incominceranno – nella memoria del giornalista – «i mesi più belli» della sua vita, animati dalle «illusioni più impetuose» e soprattutto dalla «sbalorditiva coincidenza» tra sogni e realtà: “Fu un delirio, impastato di ideali soldi sesso intelligenza libertà potere, come se di colpo – al posto della vecchia macchina dello Stato, sgangherata e corrotta – ci fosse un congegno nuovo, lucente, lubrificato sul quale, finalmente, noi giovani potessimo mettere le mani, non per abusarne o per accumulare ricchezza, ma per diffondere intorno a noi – nella città, nelle strade, nel Sud, tra i poveri e i dannati – una speranza luminosa come l’aurora boreale”. <35
VII. PROVE TECNICHE DI TRASMISSIONE
A irradiare speranza fra i vicoli di Napoli era stata la prima rudimentale trasmittente di Monte di Dio, una radio da campo messa a punto dal direttore George Rehm per sopperire alla perdita della stazione di Villanova, sulla collina di Posillipo, completamente distrutta dal sabotaggio dei tedeschi: “L’uccellino della radio tornò così a cinguettare il 15 ottobre del ’43 e fu quello davvero un gran giorno per i napoletani che appresero le più recenti notizie finalmente da accenti di casa propria, quasi si trattasse di amici andati a bussare alla porta della loro dimora per una familiare chiacchierata”. <36
Per essere precisi, l’intervento di Rehm dovrà attendere qualche giorno prima di consentire un’adeguata ricezione delle onde di via Egiziaca, perché nonostante gli impianti fossero stati ripristinati da quel sergente venuto dal Connecticut, la nuova emittente «non fu subito captabile nella città, ancora priva di energia elettrica»: “Sapevo – scriverà una redattrice – che la relativa potenza della emittente napoletana e soprattutto l’ostacolo delle montagne non avrebbero consentito alle trasmissioni di toccare la mia città; nondimeno, […] credevo davvero nel potere della voce, nella forza delle parole. Ora me le figuravo come fili sottili capaci di raggiungere e di mitigare solitudini e sofferenze; me le auguravo così forti da infondere fiducia e coraggio ai lontani, da trasmettere loro il senso di solidarietà che poteva venire da una città ferita dalle più dure violenze della guerra”. <37
L’inaugurazione delle trasmissioni di Radio Napoli, introdotte dalle prime note dell’Inno di Mameli (non ancora eletto inno nazionale), verrà così ricordata da Grazia Rattazzi Gambelli, una delle poche voci femminili all’interno di una redazione stupita che una madre di famiglia preferisse affannarsi dietro un mestiere “da uomo”, invece di abbracciare docilmente un «più normale destino di donna»: “A volte, in anticipo sull’ora della trasmissione, mi fermavo volentieri sulla soglia della Sezione Prosa, dove era possibile gratificarsi delle conversazioni puntuali e delle divagazioni eclettiche di Compagnone, Ghirelli, e compagni in quel loro tono, caustico e fervido insieme, che rigenerava i dati dell’esperienza e della cultura in fulminante antiretorica e in ipotesi costruttive per il vacuum economico che ci fronteggiava «fuori». Mi piaceva ascoltarli, ammiravo la loro preparazione, mi stupiva la loro sicurezza; e un poco li invidiavo […]. Avevo altri problemi pressanti oltre quelli della collettività! modesti, certo, ma non per questo meno urgenti e vitali”. <38
Al di là dell’iniziale penuria di elettricità menzionata dalla Gambelli, anche altrove permarranno alcuni limiti di ordine tecnico. Per dimostrare che la radio non era più il mezzo di comunicazione di massa sdoganato dal fascismo, basterà fornire qualche dato: nel ’42, l’Italia disponeva di 34 trasmettitori a onda media e di 11 trasmettitori a onda corta, mentre all’atto della liberazione soltanto 13 di questi risultavano effettivamente funzionanti, con una dislocazione tale da impedire una copertura adeguata alle esigenze del Paese. <39 Simili restrizioni non riusciranno però a spegnere la «vitalità animalesca» di un apparecchio sul quale si erano riversati i desideri e le aspettative di ascoltatori sempre più partecipi e incuriositi. <40
Inoltre, la ricezione di Radio Napoli migliorerà sensibilmente non appena le sue emissioni si appoggeranno agli «impianti mastodontici» di Radio Bari, concepiti da Mussolini per diffondere la propaganda «anti-inglese» nei paesi arabi, ma impiegati dalle autorità del PWB e dai democratici italiani per portare la «voce della libertà» fino alle Alpi: <41 “Era la prima volta che – scriverà Ghirelli – a Napoli si levava sulle onde della radio una voce libera che chiamava a raccolta i giovani, i lavoratori, le donne, i sindacalisti per mobilitarli contro il nazifascismo, come dicevamo allora un po’ enfaticamente, ma soprattutto per indurli a partecipare alla vita pubblica, sociale, culturale, alla ricostruzione della città dilaniata dalla guerra, al recupero delle sue straordinarie tradizioni”. <42
VIII. PALINSESTO
Al culmine della sua attività, non solo Radio Napoli informava gli italiani continuando ad offrire trasmissioni già collaudate dall’emittente barese, come il Giornale radio, “L’Italia combatte” o “Spie al muro”, ma inaugurava rubriche inedite, appositamente studiate dalla nuova redazione, alle quali lavorarono anche La Capria, Ghirelli e molti dei vecchi amici del periodo pre-bellico: “Preparavamo trasmissioni che, adesso, forse ci farebbero sorridere ma che allora ci parevano, forse erano, belle come un discorso di Lincoln o una poesia di Majakowski. Alla sera aiutavamo Arnoldo Foà a leggere il giornale radio e «Italia combatte» […]; ma di giorno inventavamo cento rubriche divertenti, stimolanti, provocatorie, chiamando a raccolta tutta la gente onesta di Napoli e del Sud per proporre una revisione integrale di tutto il nostro modo di vita: matrimonio, famiglia, scuola, esercito, proprietà, codice”. <43
Fra queste, restano nella memoria: il “Programma per la donna italiana”, a cura della Gambelli, che sollecitava la partecipazione delle ascoltatrici per corrispondenza; “Colpevoli”, in cui si processavano virtualmente tutti i profittatori dell’umanità, inclusi i responsabili della guerra fascista; “Pionieri”, una specie di excursus da Socrate a De Gaulle, dedicato – stando al ricordo di Compagnone – ai grandi interpreti della libertà e della democrazia; “Stella bianca”, una rivista satirica firmata da Longanesi e diretta da Soldati, che affidava all’eclettico Steno il compito di scimmiottare la voce militaresca del Duce con il tono scanzonato dell’improvvisazione; la rubrica “Frasi di scrittori”, alla quale era riservato uno spazio il venerdì; gli appuntamenti con il «radio-teatro», assegnati puntualmente alla domenica sera; e infine gli speciali di “Conosciamo le Nazioni Unite”, trasmissioni deputate a favorire l’avvicinamento fra italiani e alleati, a cui deve aver contribuito anche La Capria, dando «un respiro più drammatico» alle sue puntate. <44 Si noti che con l’espressione “Nazioni Unite” non si intendeva quella che poi sarebbe stata l’ONU, ma l’alleanza angloamericana. Compito della rubrica era infatti quello di far conoscere il mondo anglo-americano agli italiani, al di là delle barriere linguistiche e dell’influenza della propaganda anti-britannica e anti-americana a lungo condotta dal fascismo. Un mondo che La Capria aveva imparato a conoscere in guerra, leggendo e traducendo testi dall’inglese, e che ora offriva con entusiasmo agli altri domandando, come già fece Vittorini: «Che ve ne sembra?». <45
Di fatto, la ricchezza delle nuove rubriche è il risultato della proficua riorganizzazione editoriale conosciuta da Radio Napoli sotto la direzione di Elvio Sadun, un biologo ebreo livornese fuggito dall’Italia nel ’38 per salvarsi dalla «minaccia delle leggi razziali», combattendo accanto agli americani fino a riscoprirsi, infine, quale energico successore alla poltrona di Rehm: <46 “È giunto dall’Algeria il nuovo direttore, un italiano, ora cittadino e soldato americano. Occhi patetici, naso aquilino, capelli ricciuti e unti. Stringe la mano con due dita, finge di aver molto da fare e parla dei problemi della radio come di questioni teologiche”. <47
Sulle tavole della legge del nuovo direttore – che Longanesi si diletterà a prendere di mira nel suo diario – figurava l’impiego di un linguaggio asciutto e immediato, in grado di essere compreso, senza fraintendimenti, da qualunque ascoltatore. Una lezione che gli era stata impartita dagli anchormen del giornalismo statunitense, e alla quale i suoi redattori più zelanti proveranno ad attingere in seconda battuta: “C’era ovviamente molta retorica, molta ingenuità (ancora e sempre) in quell’atteggiamento, ma la passione civile era autentica e insieme all’impegno politico si accendeva in noi l’entusiasmo per un lavoro che non era rassegnato o burocratico, coinvolgendoci giorno per giorno e mettendo alla prova il nostro talento. La sorte ci stava offrendo la preziosa occasione di imparare il mestiere dagli americani, maestri dell’arte di comunicare notizie, idee, fantasie con la più essenziale chiarezza”. <48
La redazione di Radio Napoli rappresentò quindi un eccezionale «laboratorio» dove a ciascun autore è stata offerta la possibilità di coltivare per sé un peculiare talento, che avrebbe fornito a tutti – a detta di Ghirelli – la spinta necessaria per emergere professionalmente dagli abissi dell’anonimato: <49 “I miei articoli di giornale, i romanzi di La Capria, i film di Rosi, le commedie di Patroni Griffi nacquero allora, in quegli uffici, in quelle discussioni, in quei programmi. Ci sprofondavamo dentro come l’equipaggio di un sommergibile, in un’atmosfera surriscaldata, artificiale, pazzesca, in una tensione che ci faceva perdere il sonno e ci esaltava, isolandoci anche dalla pena atroce della città”. <50
La direzione di Sadun contribuì indubbiamente ad apportare «una visione ottimistica dell’America» senza i trucchi della propaganda, ma scegliendo casomai di applicare i «metodi del positive Thinking» al mezzo radiofonico, allo stesso modo con cui si percorreva, ogni giorno, la strada dissestata che portava agli uffici della Sezione Prosa: <51 “Camminavo molto in quel periodo ma ciò, se inaspriva l’appetito, mi facilitava la concentrazione […]. Era comunque una lunga strada, anche per le frequenti deviazioni dovute ai cumuli di macerie, alle demolizioni e alle minacce di crolli”.
È chiaro che la Gambelli guardasse a quel percorso accidentato come all’unica via per raggiungere la felicità, a dispetto del rumore della «sfabbricatura» sotto i piedi che, al contrario, avrebbe scoraggiato anche il sognatore più ottimista, costringendolo ad allontanare dalla mente un pensiero tanto «enfatico» e propositivo. <52
IX. PARTENZA
Presto, i redattori di Radio Napoli avrebbero imboccato una deviazione che li avrebbe condotti al di là del territorio campano, perché il fronte di guerra si sarebbe spostato più a nord, dopo la liberazione della capitale da parte alleata: “Tutti gli intellettuali scappati al Sud tornavano a Roma, lasciando noi ragazzi soli con i burocrati della vecchia EIAR e con i prefetti di Bonomi. Fui assalito dal terrore di ripiombare nella Napoli perbene di prima della guerra, in piena restaurazione, con tutti i dottori, gli ingegneri, gli avvocati tornati al loro posto, i salotti di via dei Mille riaperti, le sale da concerto gremite di sordi, le pasticcerie affollate alla domenica, i generali del Re a palazzo Salerno, i principi e i baroni al Casino dell’Unione, i figli di papà al Circolo del Tennis”. <53
Nella «melanconica prospettiva» di assistere al ritorno della vecchia guardia dell’EIAR, decisa a riappropriarsi dei posti occupati fino all’epurazione antifascista, Giglio e Ghirelli decidono di evadere dalla città per «respirare un po’ di aria pulita». <54
Dopo aver chiesto agli americani di essere trasferiti ad Altopascio, una zona di operazioni in Toscana, i due si uniscono all’Unità Mobile Radiofonica 15: “Mentre io e Tommaso seguivamo la Quinta Armata del generale Clark, alcuni amici come La Capria e Patroni Griffi si trasferivano a Roma liberata e altri, come Rosi e Compagna, tornavano a Napoli dalle regioni dove erano stati sorpresi dall’armistizio. I ragazzi di via Chiaia erano cresciuti e seguivano ciascuno il proprio destino, sempre accomunati tuttavia da una illimitata fiducia nella vita, un solare ottimismo che si è tradotto in una notevole capacità creativa, più forte naturalmente in alcuni di noi […]”. <55
La parentesi campestre di Giglio e Ghirelli si concluderà nel mese di aprile, con lo sfondamento della linea Gotica che avrebbe permesso loro di insediarsi al Nord, come giornalisti della redazione milanese de «l’Unità». <56
Prima di raggiungere il capoluogo lombardo, in occasione di una breve permanenza a Bologna, Ghirelli avrebbe ancora documentato ai microfoni di piazza San Martino la «drammatica fucilazione» di Mussolini e la fine della seconda guerra mondiale, affiancato da un giovane e sconosciuto Enzo Biagi. <57
Due notizie di indiscutibile rilevanza storica che dovettero sembrargli relativamente importanti, se rapportate alle vicende della sua febbrile esistenza.[NOTE]
15 Si veda ROSI, Io lo chiamo cinematografo, cit., pp. 34-35, dove il regista sostiene che, dopo la parentesi di Radio Palermo, Kamenetzky si sarebbe trasferito a Napoli diventando subito «amico di tutti» e, in seguito, anche di sua moglie Giancarla Mandelli, al punto che «quando era a Roma, ormai direttore del “Corriere della Sera”», egli avrebbe dormito da loro «invece che andare in albergo».
16 ALEXANDER STILLE, The Force of Things. A Marriage in War and Peace (2013); trad. di Stefania Cherchi: La forza delle cose. Un matrimonio di guerra e pace tra Europa e America, Garzanti, Milano 2013, pp. 199-200. Si veda GIANNI RIOTTA, Le cose che ho imparato. Storie, incontri ed esperienze che mi hanno insegnato a vivere, Mondadori, Milano 2011, p. 129.
17 STILLE, La forza delle cose, cit., p. 200.
18 IAN GREENLEES, Radio Bari 1943-1944, in Inghilterra e Italia nel ’900. Atti del Convegno di Bagni di Lucca. Ottobre 1972, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1973, pp. 229-50: 242-43 e 244.
19 Per la trascrizione di alcune trasmissioni de L’Italia combatte e di Spie al muro, si veda MONTELEONE, La radio italiana nel periodo fascista, cit., pp. 382-87.
20 ALBERTO PERRINI, Questa è la voce dell’Italia: Qui Radio-Bari!, «Filodrammatica», 2:3 (1946), pp. 4-5.
21 Ivi, p. 5.
22 ISOLA, Cari amici vicini e lontani, cit., p. 36.
23 ANTONIO GHIRELLI, Noi del ’45, «Nord e Sud», n.s., 17:121 (1970), pp. 101-12: 104.
24 GHIRELLI, Una bella storia, cit., p. 31. Ci si riferisce qui alla trasmissione The Mercury Theatre On Air e, in particolare, all’adattamento radiofonico di The War of the Worlds di H.G. Wells andato in onda il 30 ottobre 1938.
25 GHIRELLI, Un’altra Napoli, cit. pp. 138-39.
26 GHIRELLI, Una bella storia, cit., p. 32. A questi si aggiungono, fra gli altri, anche i nomi di Giglio e dei transfughi romani Leo Longanesi, Mario Soldati e Stefano Vanzina (alias Steno).
27 GHIRELLI, Un’altra Napoli, cit. pp. 138-39; GAMBELLI, Una donna a Radio Napoli, cit., p. 282.
28 ORESTE DEL BUONO, Voci dal Vesuvio, «La Stampa», 9 settembre 1993, p. 5.
29 ARNOLDO FOÀ, Una voce di uomini liberi: Radio-Napoli, «Filodrammatica», 2:7-8 (1946), p. 3. Si riproduce il testo emendato da refusi tipografici evidenti.
30 ARNOLDO FOÀ, Recitare. I miei primi sessant’anni di teatro, Gremese, Roma 1998, p. 96.
31 ISOLA, Cari amici vicini e lontani, cit., p. 38; LEO LONGANESI, [Napoli,] 20 dicembre [1943], in Parliamo dell’elefante. Frammenti di un diario (1947), introduzione di Pierluigi Battista, Longanesi, Milano 2005, p. 154.
32 GAMBELLI, Una donna a Radio Napoli, cit., p. 292; ISOLA, Cari amici vicini e lontani, cit., p. 38.
33 GHIRELLI, Noi del ’45, cit., p. 106.
34 Ivi, p. 105.
35 Ibid.
36 RENATO RIBAUD, Una fantastica avventura, Arte Tipografica, Napoli 1997, p. 53.
37 GAMBELLI, Una donna a Radio Napoli, cit., pp. 282 e 285.
38 Ivi, p. 294.
39 Si veda FREQUENZA, Il microfono per corrispondenza, «RC», 23:5 (1946), p. 2. Si veda anche FRANCO MONTELEONE, La ricostruzione della rete radiofonica, in Storia della RAI, cit., pp. 75-94.
40 GHIRELLI, Noi del ’45, cit., p. 105.
41 ANTONIO GHIRELLI, Radio Napoli, «Quaderno di COMUNICazione», 2011-2012, pp. 33-37: 35.
42 GHIRELLI, Un’altra Napoli, cit., p. 139.
43 GHIRELLI, Noi del ’45, cit., pp. 105-6.
44 Ivi, p. 106. Si vedano l’es. di palinsesto e la testimonianza di Compagnone in appendice a GAMBELLI, Una donna a Radio Napoli, cit., pp. 298-99. Si veda anche FOÀ, Radio-Napoli, cit., pp. 3-4.
45 Il riferimento è a WILLIAM SAROYAN, Che ve ne sembra dell’America?, trad. di Elio Vittorini, Mondadori, Milano 1940, antologia che ebbe molta influenza sull’A. Si veda infra p. 147.
46 GHIRELLI, Una bella storia, cit., p. 33. In LA CAPRIA, Il boogie-woogie, cit., p. 56, l’A. attribuisce la direzione dell’emittente napoletana a Kamenetzky che, in effetti, si trovava in città in quel periodo. Anche Rosi lo fa, rispondendo alle domande di ENZO SICILIANO, Ma tu che libri hai letto?, Gremese, Roma 1991, p. 68. Altri sono concordi nel ritenere che quel ruolo spettò prima a Rehm e poi a Sadun: si veda, in proposito, ISOLA, Cari amici vicini e lontani, cit., p. 37. Secondo DIEGO LIBRANDO, Il jazz a Napoli: dal dopoguerra agli anni Sessanta, Guida, Napoli 2004, p. 34, nota 32, la direzione della «sezione spettacoli del PWB» sarebbe stata invece condivisa da Kamenetzky e Sadun.
47 LONGANESI, [Napoli,] 20 dicembre [1943], cit., p. 154.
48 GHIRELLI, Un’altra Napoli, cit., p. 139.
49 GHIRELLI, Una bella storia, cit., p. 33.
50 GHIRELLI, Noi del ’45, cit., p. 107.
51 GAMBELLI, Una donna a Radio Napoli, cit., pp. 296-97.
52 Ivi, p. 291.
Luca Federico, L’apprendistato letterario di Raffaele La Capria, Tesi di dottorato, Università degli Studi di Genova, 2020Ma ormai il destino di Radio Bari era segnato: l’avanzata angloamericana rendeva necessario abbandonare il capoluogo pugliese e spostare in avanti il centro di gravità della propaganda radiofonica verso Radio Napoli. Ma mentre Radio Bari era giunta praticamente intatta in mano agli alleati, quest’ultima stazione aveva subito forti danni dai tedeschi in ritirata, che avevano fatto saltare buona parte delle apparecchiature e il traliccio metallico dell’antenna. Fortunatamente, alcuni tecnici avevano fatto in tempo a nascondere il materiale di scorta e a disinnescare il tritolo posto sotto i gruppi generatori di corrente continua. Su questa base esigua era stato possibile già il 15 ottobre 1943 riprendere le trasmissioni come Radio Napoli Nazioni Unite dalle 19 alle 22.30, grazie agli americani del maggiore George Rehm, primo direttore della sede, che misero a disposizione una radio da campo <44; le trasmissioni, introdotte dalle prime note dell’Inno di Mameli, non giunsero però nelle case napoletane, perché quella sera mancava in città proprio l’energia elettrica. Per migliorare la struttura tecnica, fu poi approntato un ripetitore di un solo kw di potenza a Monte di Dio, che ampliò il raggio d’ascolto. Piano piano l’orario di trasmissione venne anticipato alle 12 e quindi, definitivamente dalle 6 del mattino alle 24. Radio Napoli, che in un primo tempo aveva affiancato, rilanciando nell’etere i programmi di Radio Bari, era ormai pronta ad accogliere quel gruppo. L’ordine di trasferirsi nel capoluogo partenopeo giunse a Greenlees nel febbraio 1944: a Napoli, sotto il diretto controllo degli Americani della V armata agli ordini del generale Clark, già operava un gruppo nutrito di antifascisti fra cui spiccavano Rosellina Balbi, Maurizio Barendson, Carlo Criscio, Luigi Compagnone, Vincenzo Dattilo, Clara Falconi, Antonio Ghirelli, Ettore Giannini, Tommaso Giglio, Vezio Murialdi, Carlo Pennetti, Michele Prisco, Domenico Rea, Paolo Ricci, Ruggiero Romano, Francesco Rosi, Giuseppe Vorluni e Stefano Vanzina (Steno), da poco arrivato da Roma con Leo Longanesi e Mario Soldati <45. In tempi successivi a questi si aggiunsero Aldo Giuffré e Samy Fayad con funzioni di annunciatori, mentre nella sezione prosa, oltre ai già ricordati Steno e Longanesi, operavano il commediografo Edoardo Anton e Mino Maccari. A Napoli, si trovava anche Ugo Stille, proveniente da Palermo: ma il vero animatore di quella breve esperienza fu il successore di Rehm, il livornese Elvio H. Sadun, un ebreo fuggito nel 1938 negli Usa, dove aveva maturato solide esperienze di giornalismo radiofonico in una stazione newyorkese.
«È giunto dall’Algeria – avrebbe appuntato nel suo diario Longanesi – il nuovo direttore, un italiano, ora cittadino e soldato americano. Occhi patetici, naso aquilino, capelli ricciuti e unti. Stringe la mano con due dita, finge di aver molto da fare e parla dei problemi della radio come di questioni teologiche» <46.
Il salveminiano Sadun condivideva la responsabilità con l’ufficiale americano di origine siciliana Ravotto e con Harry Fornari, in un’atmosfera fortemente spoliticizzata rispetto a Radio Bari. La sede era stata spo stata da Pizzofalcone a Palazzo Singer in Corso Umberto, al cui terzo piano una diecina di apparecchi radio erano in continuo contatto con le stazioni radio più importanti: a queste prime apparecchiature si aggiunsero ben presto telescriventi, ciclostili, registratori e dictaphones in un clima molto particolare: «Negli uffici – è sempre Longanesi la fonte – molta agitazione e indolenza, molto apparente tecnicismo americano e arruffio napoletano» <41. Ciò permise di prolungare sino alla liberazione di Roma (4 giugno 1944) la vita di Italia combatte, a cui si aggiunsero altre trasmissioni come I pionieri, Stella bianca e I colpevoli. Quest’ultima ripeteva la denuncia di Spie al muro, allargata ai ritratti dei maggiori gerarchi fascisti, mentre I pionieri disegnavano il profilo biografico di personaggi della democrazia italiana prefascista. Il carattere educativo e didascalico di queste due trasmissioni segnalava il cambiamento verificatosi da Bari a Napoli e il diverso grado di autonomia goduto dalle due redazioni, nel quadro di un sempre più accentuato positive thinking imposto dagli Americani.
Stella bianca – secondo Monteleone dovuta principalmente alla penna di Longanesi e di Soldati <48 – era invece una rivista satirica, che divenne in breve assai popolare: vi recitavano, fra gli altri, Carlo Giuffré, Peppino Patroni Griffi, Achille Millo e lo stesso Rosi, tutti personaggi destinati ad un ruolo di primo piano nel mondo dello spettacolo. Fra scenette e couplets, si inneggiava all’american way of life e alla rinata democrazia: Steno imitava la voce di Mussolini. Era una risposta umoristica e anche un po’ qualunquista alle ristrettezze del momento, ma fu il veicolo di penetrazione dei nuovi concetti in strati popolari poco propensi alla seriosità dei conversatori (Alberto Moravia ebbe il suo battesimo radiofonico in quest’ambito) o di trasmissioni come Conosciamo le Nazioni Unite, esplicitamente destinate a favorire l’avvicinamento e la conoscenza fra italiani e alleati. Non mancava una trasmissione femminile, Programma per la donna italiana, condotta da Grazia Rattazzi Gambelli, dal dicembre 1943 annunciatrice della stazione di Pizzofalcone con lo pseudonimo Grazia di Torino. Nonostante le difficoltà del momento la magia del microfono permise
«subito» il saldarsi di forme immediate di collaborazione fra la giovane e inesperta conduttrice e il pubblico più vasto: «mi aiutarono le ascoltatrici con la loro partecipazione attraverso la corrispondenza, proponendomi argomenti, interessi, curiosità e problemi. Si instaurò così abbastanza rapidamente un rapporto corale a coinvolgere le ascoltatrici anche tra loro in iniziative concrete di carattere umano e sociale e culturale, e nel contempo arricchendo il nostro programma di riflessi e notizie di momenti associativi femminili, concretamente interessati alla vasta e complessa problematica napoletana». <49
In una realtà urbana dominata dal contraddittorio e «vorace riappropriarsi umano dei sapori elementari della vita», la radio non si sottrasse all’impegno di intervenire sui problemi più scottanti del vivere quotidiano: primo fra tutti quello dell’igiene pubblica. Nella Napoli «terra di conquista», offesa e degradata, di cui Malaparte ha disegnato un affresco drammatico e penetrante nella Pelle, il colonnello Charles Poletti, governatore alleato di Napoli, tenne, ad esempio, una serie di lezioni sul grave problema dell’igiene pubblica.
Le trasmissioni musicali accoppiavano le melodie napoletane delle orchestre Colonnese e Capese o dei complessi Calace, Michele Parise e Amedeo Pariante (un vero divo popolare, vincitore di un concorso nazionale Eiar nel 1941), allo swing dei complessi più in voga oltreoceano come Nelson Eddy, Larry Adler, Oscar Levante John Healy. Ribalta preferita fu il programma La Voce dei giovani, che aveva subito alcune interessanti trasformazioni nel clima di generale depoliticizzazione delle rubriche, giungendo appunto a proporre per la prima volta al pubblico italiano saggi di una produzione culturale nuova e strettamente legata alla moderna industria del divertimento e del consumo. <50
Fu anche pubblicato il foglio settimanale Qui, radio Napoli per rafforzare il rapporto quotidiano con il pubblico più vasto. Tuttavia, questa eccitante esperienza fu assai breve: per Radio Napoli e per i Napoletani fu una parentesi di poco meno di sei mesi, ma assai importante, prima di ripiombare in una posizione di seconda fila all’indomani della riattivazione di Radio Roma e della trasformazione dell’Eiar in Rai, quando gli americani avrebbero riaffidato ai vecchi tecnici fascisti la direzione delle sedi liberate. Un gruppo di questi giovani rimase a Napoli e continuò a collaborare alle produzioni locali, ma in clima di sempre più sottolineata restaurazione, che giunse a chiamare alla direzione di Radio Napoli il ben noto radiocronista fascista Franco Cremascoli. È tuttavia assai difficile stabilire una forma di gerarchia fra queste prime voci nazionali e le emittenti internazionali, che la sera facevano raccogliere attorno ai più diversi apparecchi interessati e curiosi, magari con una coperta addosso per attutire i rumori udibili dall’esterno e evitare la curiosità, quella sì pericolosa, del capocaseggiato nell’Italia ancora occupata. Com’è naturale non è possibile disporre di dati statistici riguardanti l’ascolto durante la Resistenza; anche le informazioni desumibili dalla stampa circa gli arresti per ascolto clandestino non specificano mai l’emittente incriminata. <51
[NOTE]
44 Su Radio Napoli in generale le notizie sono disperse nella bibliografia generale già citata e non è sufficiente il tentativo di sintesi di Umberto Franzese, La Radio a Napoli dalle origini alle emittenti libere, Napoli, [1984], passim.
45 Utile la memoria di Grazia Rattazzi Gambelli, Una donna a Radio Napoli, in Alle radici del nostro presente. Napoli e la Campania dal fascismo alla Repubblica (1943-1946), Napoli, 1986, p. 281-300.
46 Cfr. Leo Longanesi, Parliamo dell’elefante. Frammenti di un diario, Milano, 1947, p. 218.
47 Ivi, p. 219.
48 V. Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione…, cit., p. 180.
49 Cfr. Grazia Rattazzi Gambelli, Una donna a Radio Napoli…, cit., p. 287. Una serie di testi pronunciati da uno dei collaboratori di Radio Napoli in Carlo Criscio, Un cuore alla radio 1943-44, Napoli, 1954.
50 Per un’idea della grande articolazione dei programmi presentati basta riprodurre il palinsesto di una giornata radiofonica tipo: «Notizie : ore 7-8-10-12-13-14- 16-17-20-23.30-24 Notiziario napoletano: ore 11 Notiziario Italia liberata: ore 16 Ritrasmissioni: Radio Londra ore 8.30-9.30-20.30 Voce dell’America: ore 13.15-21.30 Commenti : ore 10.10-13.15-16.10-20.15-00.15 Programmi musicale e di varietà: Ore 7.15 Musica mattutina – 7.30 Buongiorno – 7.45 Dolci melodie – 8.15 Canzoni d’Italia – 8.45 Musica operettistica – 9.00 Orchestra Esperia – 9.45 Cantante della strada – 10.15 Musiche e canti delle Nazioni Unite – 10.30 Musica sinfonica – 11.15 Racconti e novelle celebri – 11.30 L’Ora del soldato – 12.15 Musica per tutti – 12.30 Programma della donna italiana – 12.45 Personaggi del jazz – 13.30 Serenate e valzer – 14.10 Artisti celebri – 14.25 Andiamo al concerto – 16.15 Marciando – 16.30 Concerto vocale e strumentale: Ciucci-Miranda-Adami – 17.15 Musica varia – 17.30 Programma per i piccoli – 17.45 Il libro della danza – 18.15 Programma per i prigionieri da New York – 18.30 Mandolinista Maria Calace – 18.45 Notiziario in lingua francese – 19.00 Il quarto d’ora dei lavoratori – 19.15 Lezione d’inglese – 19.30 Balliamo – 20.45 Radiofollie – 21.15 Grandi autori – 21.45 Incredibile ma vero – 22.15 Musica moderna – 22.30 L’Italia combatte – 23.00 Il compositore della settimana: Mozart – 23.35 Ora romantica – 00.30 Complessi jazz [ivi, p. 288-9].
51 A proposito di gerarchie d’ascolto, è interessante citare un documento sequestrato ad un antifascista dalla polizia, in cui non si faceva differenze, così come non la facevano gli ascoltatori: «Nell’Italia occupata dai germanici ci si lamenta spesso che le notizie sull’Italia liberata dagli angloamericani sono scarse e poco precise, perché in fondo non si può far conto che sulle trasmissioni di Radio Bari e di Radio Londra: le ultime sono troppo vaghe e portano soprattutto notizie a carattere militare, mentre le prime, che difficilmente si possono captare, sono più importanti, perché si occupano in primo luogo dei problemi italiani, ma non così numerose da accontentare tutti» [cfr. Riservato a Mussolini…, cit., p. 15].
Gianni Isola, Il microfono conteso. La guerra delle onde nella lotta di liberazione nazionale (1943-1945) in Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, Italie et Méditerranée, tome 108, n°1. 1996. pp. 83-124#1944 #1945 #alleati #AmandaAntonini #AntonioGhirelli #Bari #fascisti #GianniIsola #guerra #LucaFederico #Napoli #Palermo #partigiani #radio #RaffaeleLaCapria #Resistenza #tedeschi
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«Queremos un presente que merezca ser vivido y no simplemente sacrificado a la espera mesiánica de un futuro paraíso terrenal. Por eso hemos querido hablar en concreto de una anarquía a realizar ahora, no mañana. El “todo y ahora” es una apuesta, una partida que nos jugamos, donde lo que está en juego es nuestra vida, la vida de todos, nuestra muerte, la muerte de todos…»
Pierleone Mario Porcu
La madrugada del 8 de agosto, el Estado, a manos de la fiscalía de Génova (en la figura del ministerio público Federico Manotti) y de la DIGOS de La Spezia, ha puesto en marcha la enésima operación represiva contra el anarquismo revolucionario.
En esta investigación están acusados diez compañeros anarquistas, entre los cuales cinco compañeros de Carrara, para los que el fiscal en un principio pedía su ingreso en prisión: una ordenanza que el juez de instrucción Riccardo Ghio ha cambiado por cuatro arrestos domiciliarios con todas las restricciones, cinco obligaciones de residencia con toque de queda nocturno, y un compañero investigado en libertad. Para uno de los cuatro compañeros bajo arresto domiciliario el juez de instrucción ordenó su ingreso en la cárcel de La Spezia por carecer de residencia formal: Luigi ingresó en la cárcel de La Spezia hasta el 10 de agosto que ha sido puesto en arresto domiciliario.
Además de registros domiciliarios se allanó el Circulo Cultural Anarquista “Gogliardo Fiaschi”, histórica sede anarquista de Carrara. Revistas, libros, panfletos, carteles y soportes informáticos bajo secuestro.
Los compañeros están acusados de asociación subversiva con finalidad de terrorismo (art. 270 bis c. p.) y de instigación a la delincuencia (art. 414 c. p.) agravada por la finalidad de terrorismo, en relación a la publicación, a partir de 2020, del quincenal anarquista internacionalista “Bezmotivny”, además de ofensas al honor y al prestigio del presidente de la república y de publicación clandestina.
No obstante la miseria de los tiempos que vivimos, en los que la represión se presenta de forma cada vez más evidente contra nuestras publicaciones y cada vez con mayor frecuencia, estos audaces compañeros y la fiereza del anarquismo revolucionario han sido, en estos últimos dos años, un rayo de luz en la oscuridad que nos rodea. La constancia, la seriedad y la determinación con la que han llevado adelante esta su/nuestra publicación anarquista internacionalista, con análisis prospectivos, han sido y siguen siendo un valioso elemento de la propaganda de un anarquismo nunca domesticado que continúa afilando sus cuchillos. Este es el momento de apoyarles, de estar a su lado. Permanecer codo a codo con nuestros compañeros, entre las muchas cuestiones, significa una vez más asumir colectivamente todo lo que se les impugna, para romper el aislamiento, como parte de nuestra lucha, de nuestra vida, [asumir] como nuestro el camino que el Estado ataca arrestando a Luigi, Paolo, Gaia e Gino.
Obviamente no podemos esperar que se nos trate con guantes de seda. El Estado hace su trabajo, nosotros anarquistas perseveramos en poner en práctica las tareas que nos esperan desde esos fatídicos días de Saint-Imier, contra cualquier desistimiento..
Rechazamos cualquier victimismo, rechazamos cualquier argumentación del tipo “el ataque a la libertad de prensa” o “se procesan las ideas”, más bien, con la cabeza alta y siempre de forma propositiva, reconocemos que si se es golpeado por el Estado es porque se es considerado una realidad incómoda, por lo que no es exagerado decir que se está yendo en la dirección correcta. Esta es sin duda una ocasión para reflexionar de nuevo sobre el rol de la prensa anarquista y la editorial hoy día, pero sobre todo para confrontarse, y no retirarse a nuestras “cavernas” y evaluar como responder a la represión para luego salir después de alguna asamblea con el enésimo manifiesto colectivo, sino para reavivar nuestras ideas con mayor fuerza, volver al pensamiento fuerte, volver a hablar de la necesidad de una publicación anarquista revolucionaria que, con continuidad, vuelva a dar fuerza a nuestros propósitos, a nuestra historia, a nuestros caminos de negación, que continúe la labor de propaganda anarquista revolucionaria llevada adelante los últimos años por estos, y por otros compañeros. Porque la nuestra es precisamente una voluntad revolucionaria que supera las arenas movedizas de la desorientación y la pasividad. Una voluntad con la determinación y la presunción optimista de transformar la realidad que nos rodea, manteniendo invariable la tensión nihilista anárquica por la cual consideramos, a pesar de no haber dejado de lado la idea de la revolución social, que hay que demoler este mundo tal y como se presenta hoy, sin esperar a tiempos maduros. «¿Quién hará que los tiempos estén maduros? — ¿Y quién advertirá el momento en que lo estén? — ¿Qué haréis entonces, y porqué no lo hacéis ahora? — Entonces diréis: Los tiempos no están maduros. Porque vosotros no queréis el progreso, porque no queréis la libertad, porque no queréis la justicia. Decís que los tiempos no están maduros para seguir retrasando el momento de la justicia, para que mientras no se os toque. — Máscaras fuera. — Los tiempos siempre están maduros para eliminar la injusticia cuando existe la injusticia” Carlo Cafiero.
No es casualidad que una vez más se pueda reiterar, que en estos términos, esta enésima investigación dirigida a golpear a la redacción de “Bezmotivny” se inscribe plenamente en la línea las de investigaciones que han llevado a condenas por instigación a la delincuencia en relación con KNO3 primero, la “Croce Nera Anarchica” y “RadioAzione” luego, la operación Sibilla en relación con el periódico anarquista “Vetriolo” y la publicación de la entrevista a Alfredo Cospito “¿Qué internacional? –que seguiremos imprimiendo a pesar de cada nuevo secuestro–.
En este sentido, podemos decir que todo lo conseguido durante los últimos años con nuestras publicaciones ha sido y sigue siendo de un inestimable valor porque consiente, hoy, a los anarquistas el reapropiarse de sus ideas, darlas espacio, con la audacia de siempre, inmutable en el tiempo, con la misma propensión a actuar en la conciencia revolucionaria, construyendo nuestra internacional.
Libertad para Luigi, Paolo, Gaia y Gino. ¡Compañeros anarquistas, compañeros nuestros!
Solidaridad con el Circolo Culturale Anarchico “Gogliardo Fiaschi” de Carrara y con todos los compañeros bajo investigación y sujetos a medidas cautelares.
Omar Nioi
Assemini, 13.08.2023Traducido de: sardegnaanarchica.wordpress.com
#cerdena #editorial #omar-nioi #op-scripta-scelera #represion #textos
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Stuck in the Filter: March 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
Spring is in the air, and with it comes… an insane number of cicadas! Yes, that’s right, Brood XIV spawned this year and is currently overwhelming my staff as they trudge through embuggened ducts to clear out the Filter of semi-precious metal. I bet it’s fucking loud in there…
…. eh I’m sure they are all fine. Just fine. Anyway, enjoy the spoils of our toils!
Kenstrosity’s Gloopy Grubber
Acid Age // Perilous Compulsion [February 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Belfast’s wacky thrash conglomerate Acid Age came out of absolutely nowhere back in March, unleashing their fourth LP Perilous Compulsion and equipping it with one helluva van-worthy cover. This is some funky, bluesy, quasi-psychedelic thrash metal that pulls no punches. Riffs abound, bonkers songwriting pervades, immense groove agitates. From the onset, “Bikini Island” establishes Perilous Compulsion as a no-nonsense, balls-out affair which reminds me heavily of Voivod and a simplified Flummox informed by Atheist’s progressive proclivities, and expanded by a touch of Pink Floyd’s nebulous jams. Of course, thrash remains Acid Age’s hero flavor, as choice cuts “State Your Business,” “Revenge for Sale,” and closing one-two punch “Rotten Tooth” and “Hamster Wheel” clearly demonstrate. While their fearless exploration of style and structure maintains a sky-high level of interest, it also introduces a couple of challenges. Firstly, this material can feel a bit disjointed at first, but focused spins reward the listener greatly as all of Perilous Compulsion’s moving parts start to mesh and move in unison. Secondly, Acid Age throws a spotlight on a few brilliant inclusions that, over time, I wish were more often utilized—namely, the delightfully bluesy harmonica solos on “Rotten Tooth.” Regardless, Acid Age put themselves on my map with Perilous Compulsion. I recommend you put them on yours, too!
Owlswald’s Desiccated Discoveries
Verbian // Casarder [March 21st, 2025 – Lost Future Records]
It’s unjust that Portuguese rockers Verbian—who have been producing quality post-rock since 2019’s Jaez—haven’t received the attention they deserve. Fusing elements of post-rock with metal, psychedelic, and stoner, Casarder is Verbian’s third full-length and the first with new drummer Guilherme Gonçalves. Taking the sounds and inspirations of 2020’s Irrupção and enriching it with new permutations and modulations, Casarder’s largely instrumental character rides punchy riffs and roiling grooves—à la Russian Circles and Elder—to transmit its thought-provoking legitimacy. Dystopian and surreal séances, via echoing Korg synthscapes (“Pausa Entre Dias,” “Vozes da Ilha”) and celestial harmonies, permeate Casarder’s forty-three-minute runtime, translating Madalena Pinto’s striking Aeon Flux-esque cover art with precision. Ominous horn sections and crusty recurrent vocals (“Marcha do Vulto,” “Depois de Toda a Mudança”) by guitarist Vasco Reis and bassist Alexandre Silva underscore Verbian’s individuality in a crowded post-rock domain. Gonçalves’s drumming—with his intricate and enchanting hard rock and samba rhythms (“Nada Muda,” “Fruta Caída do Mar”)—adds a new dimension to Verbian’s sound, assuring my attention never falters. The group describes Casarder as communicating the “…insecurities of artistic expression and personal exposure when it comes to fearing being judged for something that is somewhat outside of what is done in each artist’s niche.” Indeed, Casarder reveals Verbian is unafraid to forge their own path, and the results are gripping.
Symbiotic Growth // Beyond the Sleepless Aether [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Beyond the Sleepless Aether, the sophomore effort by Ontario, Canada’s Symbiotic Growth, immediately caught my attention with its dreamy-looking cover. Building upon their 2020 self-titled debut, the Canadian trio hones epic and long-form progressive death metal soundscapes, narrating a quest for meaning across alternate realities in mostly lengthy, yet rewarding, tracks that blend technicality, atmosphere, and melody. The group frequently employs dynamic shifts, moving between raging brutality and serene shoegaze beauty (“Arid Trials and Barren Sands,” “The Sleepless Void”). This is achieved through complex and vengeful passages alongside atmospheric synth lines and softer piano interludes (“Sires of Boundless Sunset,” “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights”), cultivating an air of wonder, mystery, and ethereality that permeates much of Symbiotic Growth’s material. “The Architect of Annihilation” echoes the style of Ne Obliviscaris with its blend of clean harmonies and harsh growls meshed with tremolo-picked arpeggiations and catchy hooks (the guitar solo even features a violin-like quality). “Lost in Fractured Reveries” evokes In Mourning with its parallel synth and guitar lines giving way to devastating grooves that make it impossible not to headbang. Although some fine-tuning remains—the clean vocals could use some more weight and tracks like “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights” and “The Architect of Annihilation” overstay their welcome at times—Beyond the Sleepless Aether shows Symbiotic Growth’s burgeoning talent and signals the group is one to watch in progressive death metal.
Dear Hollow’s Drudgery Sludgery Hoist
Spiritbox // Tsunami Sea [March 7th, 2025 – Pale Chord Records | Rise Records]
From humble beginnings in a more artsy-fartsy djent post-Iwrestledabearonce world to becoming the darlings of Octane Radio, Spiritbox has seen quite the ascent. While it’s easy to look at their work and scoff at its radio-friendliness, sophomore full-length Tsunami Sea shows Courtney LaPlante and company sticking to their guns. Simultaneously more obscure and more radio-friendly in its selection of tracks, expect its signature blend of colossal riffs and ethereal melodies guided by LaPlante’s siren-then-sea serpent dichotomy of furious roars and haunting cleans. Yes, Spiritbox helms its attack with the radio singles (“Perfect Soul,”1 “Crystal Roses”) in layered soaring choruses and touches of hip-hop undergirded by fierce grooves, but the meat of Tsunami Sea finds the flexibility and patience in the skull-crushing brutality (“Soft Spine,” “No Loss, No Love”) and its more exploratory songwriting that amps layers of the ethereal and the hellish with catchy riffs and vocals alike (“Fata Morgana,” “A Haven of Two Faces”). It’s far from perfect, and its tendency towards radio will be divisive, but it shows Spiritbox firing on all cylinders.
Unfleshing // Violent Reason [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
I am always tickled pink by blackened crust. It takes the crusty violence and propensity for filth and adds black metal’s signature sinister nature. Unfleshing is a young, unsigned blackened crust band from St. Louis, and with debut Violent Reason, you can expect a traditional punk-infused beatdown with a battered guitar tone and sinister vocals. However, more than many, the quartet offers a beatdown that feels as atmospheric as it is pummeling. Don’t get me wrong, you get your skull caved in like the poor guy on the cover with minute-long crust beatdowns (“Body Bag,” “From the Gutter”) and full-length smackdowns (“Knife in the Dark,” “Final Breath”), both styles complete with scathing grooves, squalid feedback, climactic solos and punishing blastbeats, atop a blackened roar dripping with hate. But amid the full-throttle assault, Unfleshing utilizes ominous black metal chord progressions and unsettling plucking to add a more dynamic feature to Violent Reason (“Cathedral Rust,” “One With the Mud”). The album never overstays, and while traditional, it’s a hell of a start for Unfleshing.
Ghostsmoker // Inertia Cult [March 21st, 2025 – Art as Catharsis Records]
Ghostsmoker seems like the perfect stoner metal band name, but aside from the swampy guitar tone, there’s something much sinister lurking. Proffering a caustic blackened doom/sludge not unlike Thou, Wormphlegm, and Sea Bastard, the Melbourne group quartet devotes a crisp forty-two minutes to sprawling doom weighted by a crushing guitar tone that rivals Morast‘s latest, and shrieked vocals straight from the latest church burning. Beyond what’s expected from this particular breed of devastation, Ghostsmoker infuses an evocative patience reminiscent of post-metal’s more sludgy offerings like Neurosis or Pelican, lending a certain atmosphere and mood of dread and wilderness depicted on its cover. From the outright chugging attacks of churning aggression (“Elogium,” “Haven”) to the more experimental and thoughtful pieces (“Bodies to Shore,” instrumental closer “The Death of Solitude”), Inertia Cult largely feels like a journey through uncharted forests, with voices whispering from the trees. Ghostsmoker is something special.
GardensTale’s Paralyzed Spine
Spiine // Tetraptych [March 27th, 2025 – Self Released]
Is it still a supergroup release when half the lineup are session musicians? Spiine is made up of Sesca Scaarba (Virgin Black) and Xen (ex-Ne Obliviscaris), but on debut Tetraptych they are joined by guests Waltteri Väyrynen (Opeth) and Lena Abé (My Dying Bride). Usually, so much talent put into the same room does not yield great results. Tetraptych is one hell of an exception. A monstrous slab of crawling heaviness, Spiine lurches with abject despair through the mires of deathly funeral doom. Though I usually eschew this genre, my attention remains rapt through a variety of variations. The songwriting keeps the 4 tracks progressing, slow and steady builds, and the promise of momentary tempo changes working a two-pronged structural plan to buoy the majestic yet miserable riffs. “Oubliiette” is the best example here, going from galloping death-doom to Georgian choirs to a fantastic bridge where all the instrumentation hits only on the roared syllables. Xen’s unholy bellows flatten any objections I may have had, managing both thunder and deepest woe in the same notes. The subtle orchestration and occasional choir arrangements finish the package with regal grandeur, and the lush and warm production is the cherry on top. If you feel like drowning your sorrows with an hour of colossal doom, this is the album for you.
Saunders’ Stenched Staples
Ade // Supplicium [March 14th, 2025 – Time to Kill Records]
Sometimes unjustly pigeonholed as the Roman-inspired version of Nile, the hugely underrated Ade have punched out a solid career of quality death metal releases since emerging roughly fifteen years ago, charting their own path. Albums like 2013’s ripping Spartacus and 2019’s solid Rise of the Empire represent a tidy snapshot of the band’s career. Fifth album Supplicium, their first LP in six years, marks a low-key, welcome return. Exotic instrumentation and attention to history and storytelling are alive and well in the Ade camp, as is their penchant for punishing, unrelenting death, featuring a deftly curated mix of bombast, brutality, technical spark, and epic atmospheres. Edoardo Di Santo (Hideous Divinity) joins a largely refreshed line-up, including a new bassist and second guitarist since their last album. Line-up changes aside, familiar Ade tools of harrowing ancient Roman tales and modern death destruction remain as consistently solid as always. Top-notch riffs, intricate arrangements, fluid tempo shifts, and explosive drumming highlight songs that frequently flex their flair for drama-fueled atmospheres, hellfire blasts, and burly grooves. The immense, multi-faceted “Burnt Before Gods,” exotic melodies and raw savagery of “Ad Beastias!,” spitfire intensity of “Vinum,” and epically charged throes of “From Fault to Disfigurement” highlight more solid returns from Ade.
Masters of Reality // The Archer [March 28th, 2025 – Artone Label Group/Mascot Records]
Underappreciated desert rock pioneers and quirky stalwarts Masters of Reality returned from recording oblivion some fifteen-plus years since they last unleashed an LP. Led by the legendary Chris Goss and his collaborative counterparts across a career that first kicked off in the late ’80s, Masters of Reality return sounding inspired, wisened, and a little more chilled. Re-tinkering their familiar but ever-shifting sound, Masters of Reality incorporate woozy, bluesy laidback vibes featuring their oddball songwriting traits through a sedate, intriguing collection of new songs. The Archer showcases Masters of Reality’s longevity as seasoned, skilled songwriters, regardless of the shifting rock modes they explore. While perhaps lacking some of the energetic spark and earworm hooks of albums like Sunrise on the Sufferbus and Deep in the Hole, The Archer still marks a fine return outing. Goss’ signature voice is in fine form, and the bluesy, psych-drenched guitars, cushy basslines, ’60s and ’70s influences, and spacey vibes create a comforting haze. The delightfully dreamy, trippy “Chicken Little,” laidback hooks and old school charms of “I Had a Dream,” lively, quirky grooves of “Mr Tap n’ Go,” and moody, melancholic balladry of “Powder Man” highlight another diverse, strange brew from the veteran act.
Tyme’s Unheard Annunciations
Doomsday // Never Known Peace [March 28th, 2025 – Creator-Destructor Records]
March’s filter means spring is here, mostly, which is when I start searching for bands to populate my annual edition of Tyme’s Mowing Metal. There’s nothing I enjoy more than cracking a cold beer, sliding my headphones over my ears, and hopping on the mower to complete one of summer’s—at least for me—most enjoyable chores. A band that will feature prominently this summer is Oakland, California’s crossover thrash quintet Doomsday, and their Creator-Destructor Records debut album, Never Known Peace. Doomsday lays down a ton of mindless fun in the vein of other crossover greats like Enforced and Power Trip. There are riffs aplenty on this deliciously executed hardcore-tinged thrashtastic platter full of snarly, spiteful, Jamey Jasta-esque vocals, trademark gang shouts, and, oh, did I mention the riffs? Yeah, cuz there’s a butt-ton of ’em. Leads and solos are melodic (“Death is Here,” “Eternal Tombs”). Within its beefily warm mix, the chug-a-lug breakdowns run rampant across Never Known Peace‘s thirty-one minutes (seriously, there’s one in every track), leaving nary a tune that won’t have you at least bobbing your head and, at most, causing your neck a very nasty case of whipthrash. I’m going to be listening to Never Known Peace ALOT this summer, on and off my mower, and while I don’t care that the lawn lines in my yard will be a little wavier this year than others, I’ll chalk it up to the beer and the head banging Doomsday‘s Never Known Peace instills.
Rancid Cadaver // Mortality Denied [March 21st, 2025 – Self Released]
Another filter, another fetid fragment of foulness; this month, it’s up-and-coming deathstarts Rancid Cadaver and their independently released debut album Mortality Denied. Adam Burke’s excellent cover art caught my eye during a quick dip into the Bandcamp pool and had me pushing play. A thick slab of murderous meat ripe with fatty veins of Coffin Mulch and Morbific running through it, Mortality Denied overflows with tons of bestial vocals, crushing drums, barbaric bass, and squealing solos, all ensorcelled within the majesty of Rancid Cadaver‘s miasmic riff-gurgitations (“Slurping the Cerebral Slime,” “Mass of Gore,” and “Drained of Brains”). Fists will pump, and faces will stank during the Fulci-friendly “Zombified,” a pulverizing slow-death chug fest with an intro that landed me right back on the shores of Dr. Menard’s island of the undead.2 This quartet of Glaswegians has plopped down a death metal debut that ages like wine, getting better and better with consecutive spins. Surprisingly, Rancid Cadaver is unsigned, but I’m confident that status should change before we see a sophomore effort, and you can bet I’ll be there when that happens.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Unsophisticated Slappers
Crossed // Realismo Ausente [March 21st, 2025 – Zegema Beach Records]
Timing means everything in groove. I know that some people say that they have a hard time finding that kind of bob and sway in extreme music. But with an act like Spain’s Crossed, whose every carved word and every skronked guitar noise follows an insatiable punky stride, groove lies in every moment of third full-length Realismo Ausente. Whether it’s on the classic beat of D (“Vaciar Un Corazón,” “Cuerpo Distorsionado”), the twanging drone of a screaming bend (“Monotonía de la lluvia en la Ventana”), or the Celtic Frost-ed hammer of a chord crush (“Catedral”), a calculated, urgent, and intoxicating cadence colors the grayscale attitude throughout. But just because Crossed can find a groove in any twisted mathy rhythm—early Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan come to mind on quick cuts like “Cerrojo” and “Sentirse Solo”—doesn’t mean that their panic chord-loaded crescendos and close-outs can’t rip your head clean off in banging ecstasy. Easy listening and blackened hardcore can’t go hand-in-hand, but Crossed does their very best to make unintelligible, scathing screeches and ceiling-scraping feedback hissing palatable against crunchy punk builds and throbbing, warm bass grumbles. Likewise, Realismo Ausente stabs into a dejected body tales of loathing, fear, self-rejection, and defeated existence—nothing smiles in its urgent and apathetic crevices. But despite the lack of light at the end of the tunnel of Crossed’s horror-touched vision of impassioned hardcore, an analog warmth and human spirit trapped inside a writhing and pleading throat reveal a presence that’s still fighting. It’s the fight that counts. If you didn’t join the fight last time, now’s as good a time as any.
Nothing // The Self Repair Manifesto [March 26th, 2025 – Self Released]
If you noticed a tree zombie heading steaming through its trepanned opening, then you too found the same initial draw I had to The Self Repair Manifesto. Nothing complex often can draw us to the things we desire, yet in Nothing’s particular attack of relentless, groove-based death metal, many nooks of additional interest exist. The Self Repair Manifesto’s tribal rhythm-stirred “Initiation,” in its bouncy play, does little to set up the double-kick pummel and snarling refrains that lurk in this brutal, Australian soundscape. The simple chiming cymbal-fluttering bass call-and-response of “Subterfuge,” the throat singing summoning of “The Shroud,” the immediate onslaught of “Abrogation”—all in under 30 minutes, an infectious and progressive experience unfolds. And never fear, living by the motto “no clean singing,”3 Nothing has no intention of traveling the wandering and crooning path of an Opeth or In Vain. Rather, Nothing finds a hypnotic rhythmic presence both in fanciful kit play that stirs a foot shuffle and high-tempo stick abuse that urges bodies on bodies in the pit (“Subterfuge,” “The Shroud”), much in the same way you might hear in early Decapitated or Hate Eternal works. With flair of their own, though, and a mic near the mouth vessel of each member (yes, even the drummer!) to maintain a layered harsh intensity, Nothing serves a potent blend of death metal that is as jam-able as it is gym-able. Whether you seek gains or progressive enrichment, Nothing is the answer.
Steel Druhm’s Massive Aggressive
Impurity // The Eternal Sleep [ March 7th, 2025 – Hammerheart Records]
Impurity’s lust for all things Left Hand Path is not the least bit Clandestine, and on their full-length debut, The Eternal Sleep, they attempt to craft their own ode to the rabid HM-2 worship of the early 90s Swedeath sound. No new elements are shoehorned in aside from vaguely blackened ones, and there’s not the slightest effort to push the boundaries of the admittedly limited Swedeath sound. The Eternal Sleep sounds like the album that could have come between Entombed’s timeless debut and the Clandestine follow-up, and that’s not a bad place to be. It’s heavy, brutish, buzzing death metal with an OSDM edge, and it hits like a runaway 18-wheeler full of concrete and titanium rebar. One only needs to weather the shitstorm of opener “Denial of Clarity” to realize this is the deep water of the niche genre. It’s extremely heavy, face-melting death with more fuzz and buzz than your brain can process. Other cuts feel like a direct lift from Left Hand Path and/or Clandestine (“Tribute to Creation,”) and fetid Dismember tidbits creep in during “Pilgrimage to Utumno,” and these feel like olde friends showing up unexpectedly at the hometown watering hole. Swedeath is all about those ragged, jagged riffs, and they’re delivered in abundance over The Eternal Sleep, and despite the intrinsic lack of originality, Impurity pump enough steroids and Cialis into the genre archetypes to make the material endearing and engaging. Yes, you’ve heard this shit before. Now hear it again, chumbo!
#AcidAge #Ade #AmericanMetal #ArtAsCatharsisRecords #ArtoneLabelGroup #Atheist #AustralianMetal #BeyondTheSleeplessAether #BlackMetal #BlackenedCrust #BlackenedHardcore #CanadianMetal #Casarder #CelticFrost #CoffinMulch #Converge #CreatorDestructorRecords #Crossed #Crust #DeathMetal #Decapitated #DesertRock #DillingerEscapePlan #DoomMetal #Doomsday #Elder #Enforced #Flummox #Fulci #Ghostsmoker #Hardcore #HateEternal #HideousDivinity #Impurity #InMourning #InVain #InertialCult #InternationalMetal #ItalianMetal #iwrestledabearonce #LostFutureRecords #MascotRecords #MastersOfReality #Mathcore #MelodicMetal #Metalcore #Morast #Morbific #MortalityDenied #MyDyingBride #NeObliviscaris #Neurosis #NeverKnownPeace #Nile #Nothing #Opeth #PaleChordRecords #Pelican #PerilousCompulsion #PinkFloyd #PortugueseMetal #PostRock #PostMetal #PowerTrip #ProgressiveDeathMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveThrashMetal #PyschedelicRock #RancidCadaver #RealismoAusente #Review #Reviews #RiseRecords #RussianCircles #ScottishMetal #SeaBastard #SelfReleased #SixpenceNoneTheRicher #SludgeMetal #SpanishMetal #Spiine #Spiritbox #StonerMetal #Supplicium #SymbioticGrowth #TechnicalDeathMetal #Tetraptych #TheArcher #TheEternalSleep #TheSelfRepairManifesto #Thou #ThrashMetal #TimeToKillRecords #TsunamiSea #UKMetal #Unfleshing #Verbian #ViolentReason #VirginBlack #Voivod #Wormphlegm #ZegemaBeachRecords
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Stuck in the Filter: March 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
Spring is in the air, and with it comes… an insane number of cicadas! Yes, that’s right, Brood XIV spawned this year and is currently overwhelming my staff as they trudge through embuggened ducts to clear out the Filter of semi-precious metal. I bet it’s fucking loud in there…
…. eh I’m sure they are all fine. Just fine. Anyway, enjoy the spoils of our toils!
Kenstrosity’s Gloopy Grubber
Acid Age // Perilous Compulsion [February 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Belfast’s wacky thrash conglomerate Acid Age came out of absolutely nowhere back in March, unleashing their fourth LP Perilous Compulsion and equipping it with one helluva van-worthy cover. This is some funky, bluesy, quasi-psychedelic thrash metal that pulls no punches. Riffs abound, bonkers songwriting pervades, immense groove agitates. From the onset, “Bikini Island” establishes Perilous Compulsion as a no-nonsense, balls-out affair which reminds me heavily of Voivod and a simplified Flummox informed by Atheist’s progressive proclivities, and expanded by a touch of Pink Floyd’s nebulous jams. Of course, thrash remains Acid Age’s hero flavor, as choice cuts “State Your Business,” “Revenge for Sale,” and closing one-two punch “Rotten Tooth” and “Hamster Wheel” clearly demonstrate. While their fearless exploration of style and structure maintains a sky-high level of interest, it also introduces a couple of challenges. Firstly, this material can feel a bit disjointed at first, but focused spins reward the listener greatly as all of Perilous Compulsion’s moving parts start to mesh and move in unison. Secondly, Acid Age throws a spotlight on a few brilliant inclusions that, over time, I wish were more often utilized—namely, the delightfully bluesy harmonica solos on “Rotten Tooth.” Regardless, Acid Age put themselves on my map with Perilous Compulsion. I recommend you put them on yours, too!
Owlswald’s Desiccated Discoveries
Verbian // Casarder [March 21st, 2025 – Lost Future Records]
It’s unjust that Portuguese rockers Verbian—who have been producing quality post-rock since 2019’s Jaez—haven’t received the attention they deserve. Fusing elements of post-rock with metal, psychedelic, and stoner, Casarder is Verbian’s third full-length and the first with new drummer Guilherme Gonçalves. Taking the sounds and inspirations of 2020’s Irrupção and enriching it with new permutations and modulations, Casarder’s largely instrumental character rides punchy riffs and roiling grooves—à la Russian Circles and Elder—to transmit its thought-provoking legitimacy. Dystopian and surreal séances, via echoing Korg synthscapes (“Pausa Entre Dias,” “Vozes da Ilha”) and celestial harmonies, permeate Casarder’s forty-three-minute runtime, translating Madalena Pinto’s striking Aeon Flux-esque cover art with precision. Ominous horn sections and crusty recurrent vocals (“Marcha do Vulto,” “Depois de Toda a Mudança”) by guitarist Vasco Reis and bassist Alexandre Silva underscore Verbian’s individuality in a crowded post-rock domain. Gonçalves’s drumming—with his intricate and enchanting hard rock and samba rhythms (“Nada Muda,” “Fruta Caída do Mar”)—adds a new dimension to Verbian’s sound, assuring my attention never falters. The group describes Casarder as communicating the “…insecurities of artistic expression and personal exposure when it comes to fearing being judged for something that is somewhat outside of what is done in each artist’s niche.” Indeed, Casarder reveals Verbian is unafraid to forge their own path, and the results are gripping.
Symbiotic Growth // Beyond the Sleepless Aether [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Beyond the Sleepless Aether, the sophomore effort by Ontario, Canada’s Symbiotic Growth, immediately caught my attention with its dreamy-looking cover. Building upon their 2020 self-titled debut, the Canadian trio hones epic and long-form progressive death metal soundscapes, narrating a quest for meaning across alternate realities in mostly lengthy, yet rewarding, tracks that blend technicality, atmosphere, and melody. The group frequently employs dynamic shifts, moving between raging brutality and serene shoegaze beauty (“Arid Trials and Barren Sands,” “The Sleepless Void”). This is achieved through complex and vengeful passages alongside atmospheric synth lines and softer piano interludes (“Sires of Boundless Sunset,” “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights”), cultivating an air of wonder, mystery, and ethereality that permeates much of Symbiotic Growth’s material. “The Architect of Annihilation” echoes the style of Ne Obliviscaris with its blend of clean harmonies and harsh growls meshed with tremolo-picked arpeggiations and catchy hooks (the guitar solo even features a violin-like quality). “Lost in Fractured Reveries” evokes In Mourning with its parallel synth and guitar lines giving way to devastating grooves that make it impossible not to headbang. Although some fine-tuning remains—the clean vocals could use some more weight and tracks like “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights” and “The Architect of Annihilation” overstay their welcome at times—Beyond the Sleepless Aether shows Symbiotic Growth’s burgeoning talent and signals the group is one to watch in progressive death metal.
Dear Hollow’s Drudgery Sludgery Hoist
Spiritbox // Tsunami Sea [March 7th, 2025 – Pale Chord Records | Rise Records]
From humble beginnings in a more artsy-fartsy djent post-Iwrestledabearonce world to becoming the darlings of Octane Radio, Spiritbox has seen quite the ascent. While it’s easy to look at their work and scoff at its radio-friendliness, sophomore full-length Tsunami Sea shows Courtney LaPlante and company sticking to their guns. Simultaneously more obscure and more radio-friendly in its selection of tracks, expect its signature blend of colossal riffs and ethereal melodies guided by LaPlante’s siren-then-sea serpent dichotomy of furious roars and haunting cleans. Yes, Spiritbox helms its attack with the radio singles (“Perfect Soul,”1 “Crystal Roses”) in layered soaring choruses and touches of hip-hop undergirded by fierce grooves, but the meat of Tsunami Sea finds the flexibility and patience in the skull-crushing brutality (“Soft Spine,” “No Loss, No Love”) and its more exploratory songwriting that amps layers of the ethereal and the hellish with catchy riffs and vocals alike (“Fata Morgana,” “A Haven of Two Faces”). It’s far from perfect, and its tendency towards radio will be divisive, but it shows Spiritbox firing on all cylinders.
Unfleshing // Violent Reason [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
I am always tickled pink by blackened crust. It takes the crusty violence and propensity for filth and adds black metal’s signature sinister nature. Unfleshing is a young, unsigned blackened crust band from St. Louis, and with debut Violent Reason, you can expect a traditional punk-infused beatdown with a battered guitar tone and sinister vocals. However, more than many, the quartet offers a beatdown that feels as atmospheric as it is pummeling. Don’t get me wrong, you get your skull caved in like the poor guy on the cover with minute-long crust beatdowns (“Body Bag,” “From the Gutter”) and full-length smackdowns (“Knife in the Dark,” “Final Breath”), both styles complete with scathing grooves, squalid feedback, climactic solos and punishing blastbeats, atop a blackened roar dripping with hate. But amid the full-throttle assault, Unfleshing utilizes ominous black metal chord progressions and unsettling plucking to add a more dynamic feature to Violent Reason (“Cathedral Rust,” “One With the Mud”). The album never overstays, and while traditional, it’s a hell of a start for Unfleshing.
Ghostsmoker // Inertia Cult [March 21st, 2025 – Art as Catharsis Records]
Ghostsmoker seems like the perfect stoner metal band name, but aside from the swampy guitar tone, there’s something much sinister lurking. Proffering a caustic blackened doom/sludge not unlike Thou, Wormphlegm, and Sea Bastard, the Melbourne group quartet devotes a crisp forty-two minutes to sprawling doom weighted by a crushing guitar tone that rivals Morast‘s latest, and shrieked vocals straight from the latest church burning. Beyond what’s expected from this particular breed of devastation, Ghostsmoker infuses an evocative patience reminiscent of post-metal’s more sludgy offerings like Neurosis or Pelican, lending a certain atmosphere and mood of dread and wilderness depicted on its cover. From the outright chugging attacks of churning aggression (“Elogium,” “Haven”) to the more experimental and thoughtful pieces (“Bodies to Shore,” instrumental closer “The Death of Solitude”), Inertia Cult largely feels like a journey through uncharted forests, with voices whispering from the trees. Ghostsmoker is something special.
GardensTale’s Paralyzed Spine
Spiine // Tetraptych [March 27th, 2025 – Self Released]
Is it still a supergroup release when half the lineup are session musicians? Spiine is made up of Sesca Scaarba (Virgin Black) and Xen (ex-Ne Obliviscaris), but on debut Tetraptych they are joined by guests Waltteri Väyrynen (Opeth) and Lena Abé (My Dying Bride). Usually, so much talent put into the same room does not yield great results. Tetraptych is one hell of an exception. A monstrous slab of crawling heaviness, Spiine lurches with abject despair through the mires of deathly funeral doom. Though I usually eschew this genre, my attention remains rapt through a variety of variations. The songwriting keeps the 4 tracks progressing, slow and steady builds, and the promise of momentary tempo changes working a two-pronged structural plan to buoy the majestic yet miserable riffs. “Oubliiette” is the best example here, going from galloping death-doom to Georgian choirs to a fantastic bridge where all the instrumentation hits only on the roared syllables. Xen’s unholy bellows flatten any objections I may have had, managing both thunder and deepest woe in the same notes. The subtle orchestration and occasional choir arrangements finish the package with regal grandeur, and the lush and warm production is the cherry on top. If you feel like drowning your sorrows with an hour of colossal doom, this is the album for you.
Saunders’ Stenched Staples
Ade // Supplicium [March 14th, 2025 – Time to Kill Records]
Sometimes unjustly pigeonholed as the Roman-inspired version of Nile, the hugely underrated Ade have punched out a solid career of quality death metal releases since emerging roughly fifteen years ago, charting their own path. Albums like 2013’s ripping Spartacus and 2019’s solid Rise of the Empire represent a tidy snapshot of the band’s career. Fifth album Supplicium, their first LP in six years, marks a low-key, welcome return. Exotic instrumentation and attention to history and storytelling are alive and well in the Ade camp, as is their penchant for punishing, unrelenting death, featuring a deftly curated mix of bombast, brutality, technical spark, and epic atmospheres. Edoardo Di Santo (Hideous Divinity) joins a largely refreshed line-up, including a new bassist and second guitarist since their last album. Line-up changes aside, familiar Ade tools of harrowing ancient Roman tales and modern death destruction remain as consistently solid as always. Top-notch riffs, intricate arrangements, fluid tempo shifts, and explosive drumming highlight songs that frequently flex their flair for drama-fueled atmospheres, hellfire blasts, and burly grooves. The immense, multi-faceted “Burnt Before Gods,” exotic melodies and raw savagery of “Ad Beastias!,” spitfire intensity of “Vinum,” and epically charged throes of “From Fault to Disfigurement” highlight more solid returns from Ade.
Masters of Reality // The Archer [March 28th, 2025 – Artone Label Group/Mascot Records]
Underappreciated desert rock pioneers and quirky stalwarts Masters of Reality returned from recording oblivion some fifteen-plus years since they last unleashed an LP. Led by the legendary Chris Goss and his collaborative counterparts across a career that first kicked off in the late ’80s, Masters of Reality return sounding inspired, wisened, and a little more chilled. Re-tinkering their familiar but ever-shifting sound, Masters of Reality incorporate woozy, bluesy laidback vibes featuring their oddball songwriting traits through a sedate, intriguing collection of new songs. The Archer showcases Masters of Reality’s longevity as seasoned, skilled songwriters, regardless of the shifting rock modes they explore. While perhaps lacking some of the energetic spark and earworm hooks of albums like Sunrise on the Sufferbus and Deep in the Hole, The Archer still marks a fine return outing. Goss’ signature voice is in fine form, and the bluesy, psych-drenched guitars, cushy basslines, ’60s and ’70s influences, and spacey vibes create a comforting haze. The delightfully dreamy, trippy “Chicken Little,” laidback hooks and old school charms of “I Had a Dream,” lively, quirky grooves of “Mr Tap n’ Go,” and moody, melancholic balladry of “Powder Man” highlight another diverse, strange brew from the veteran act.
Tyme’s Unheard Annunciations
Doomsday // Never Known Peace [March 28th, 2025 – Creator-Destructor Records]
March’s filter means spring is here, mostly, which is when I start searching for bands to populate my annual edition of Tyme’s Mowing Metal. There’s nothing I enjoy more than cracking a cold beer, sliding my headphones over my ears, and hopping on the mower to complete one of summer’s—at least for me—most enjoyable chores. A band that will feature prominently this summer is Oakland, California’s crossover thrash quintet Doomsday, and their Creator-Destructor Records debut album, Never Known Peace. Doomsday lays down a ton of mindless fun in the vein of other crossover greats like Enforced and Power Trip. There are riffs aplenty on this deliciously executed hardcore-tinged thrashtastic platter full of snarly, spiteful, Jamey Jasta-esque vocals, trademark gang shouts, and, oh, did I mention the riffs? Yeah, cuz there’s a butt-ton of ’em. Leads and solos are melodic (“Death is Here,” “Eternal Tombs”). Within its beefily warm mix, the chug-a-lug breakdowns run rampant across Never Known Peace‘s thirty-one minutes (seriously, there’s one in every track), leaving nary a tune that won’t have you at least bobbing your head and, at most, causing your neck a very nasty case of whipthrash. I’m going to be listening to Never Known Peace ALOT this summer, on and off my mower, and while I don’t care that the lawn lines in my yard will be a little wavier this year than others, I’ll chalk it up to the beer and the head banging Doomsday‘s Never Known Peace instills.
Rancid Cadaver // Mortality Denied [March 21st, 2025 – Self Released]
Another filter, another fetid fragment of foulness; this month, it’s up-and-coming deathstarts Rancid Cadaver and their independently released debut album Mortality Denied. Adam Burke’s excellent cover art caught my eye during a quick dip into the Bandcamp pool and had me pushing play. A thick slab of murderous meat ripe with fatty veins of Coffin Mulch and Morbific running through it, Mortality Denied overflows with tons of bestial vocals, crushing drums, barbaric bass, and squealing solos, all ensorcelled within the majesty of Rancid Cadaver‘s miasmic riff-gurgitations (“Slurping the Cerebral Slime,” “Mass of Gore,” and “Drained of Brains”). Fists will pump, and faces will stank during the Fulci-friendly “Zombified,” a pulverizing slow-death chug fest with an intro that landed me right back on the shores of Dr. Menard’s island of the undead.2 This quartet of Glaswegians has plopped down a death metal debut that ages like wine, getting better and better with consecutive spins. Surprisingly, Rancid Cadaver is unsigned, but I’m confident that status should change before we see a sophomore effort, and you can bet I’ll be there when that happens.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Unsophisticated Slappers
Crossed // Realismo Ausente [March 21st, 2025 – Zegema Beach Records]
Timing means everything in groove. I know that some people say that they have a hard time finding that kind of bob and sway in extreme music. But with an act like Spain’s Crossed, whose every carved word and every skronked guitar noise follows an insatiable punky stride, groove lies in every moment of third full-length Realismo Ausente. Whether it’s on the classic beat of D (“Vaciar Un Corazón,” “Cuerpo Distorsionado”), the twanging drone of a screaming bend (“Monotonía de la lluvia en la Ventana”), or the Celtic Frost-ed hammer of a chord crush (“Catedral”), a calculated, urgent, and intoxicating cadence colors the grayscale attitude throughout. But just because Crossed can find a groove in any twisted mathy rhythm—early Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan come to mind on quick cuts like “Cerrojo” and “Sentirse Solo”—doesn’t mean that their panic chord-loaded crescendos and close-outs can’t rip your head clean off in banging ecstasy. Easy listening and blackened hardcore can’t go hand-in-hand, but Crossed does their very best to make unintelligible, scathing screeches and ceiling-scraping feedback hissing palatable against crunchy punk builds and throbbing, warm bass grumbles. Likewise, Realismo Ausente stabs into a dejected body tales of loathing, fear, self-rejection, and defeated existence—nothing smiles in its urgent and apathetic crevices. But despite the lack of light at the end of the tunnel of Crossed’s horror-touched vision of impassioned hardcore, an analog warmth and human spirit trapped inside a writhing and pleading throat reveal a presence that’s still fighting. It’s the fight that counts. If you didn’t join the fight last time, now’s as good a time as any.
Nothing // The Self Repair Manifesto [March 26th, 2025 – Self Released]
If you noticed a tree zombie heading steaming through its trepanned opening, then you too found the same initial draw I had to The Self Repair Manifesto. Nothing complex often can draw us to the things we desire, yet in Nothing’s particular attack of relentless, groove-based death metal, many nooks of additional interest exist. The Self Repair Manifesto’s tribal rhythm-stirred “Initiation,” in its bouncy play, does little to set up the double-kick pummel and snarling refrains that lurk in this brutal, Australian soundscape. The simple chiming cymbal-fluttering bass call-and-response of “Subterfuge,” the throat singing summoning of “The Shroud,” the immediate onslaught of “Abrogation”—all in under 30 minutes, an infectious and progressive experience unfolds. And never fear, living by the motto “no clean singing,”3 Nothing has no intention of traveling the wandering and crooning path of an Opeth or In Vain. Rather, Nothing finds a hypnotic rhythmic presence both in fanciful kit play that stirs a foot shuffle and high-tempo stick abuse that urges bodies on bodies in the pit (“Subterfuge,” “The Shroud”), much in the same way you might hear in early Decapitated or Hate Eternal works. With flair of their own, though, and a mic near the mouth vessel of each member (yes, even the drummer!) to maintain a layered harsh intensity, Nothing serves a potent blend of death metal that is as jam-able as it is gym-able. Whether you seek gains or progressive enrichment, Nothing is the answer.
Steel Druhm’s Massive Aggressive
Impurity // The Eternal Sleep [ March 7th, 2025 – Hammerheart Records]
Impurity’s lust for all things Left Hand Path is not the least bit Clandestine, and on their full-length debut, The Eternal Sleep, they attempt to craft their own ode to the rabid HM-2 worship of the early 90s Swedeath sound. No new elements are shoehorned in aside from vaguely blackened ones, and there’s not the slightest effort to push the boundaries of the admittedly limited Swedeath sound. The Eternal Sleep sounds like the album that could have come between Entombed’s timeless debut and the Clandestine follow-up, and that’s not a bad place to be. It’s heavy, brutish, buzzing death metal with an OSDM edge, and it hits like a runaway 18-wheeler full of concrete and titanium rebar. One only needs to weather the shitstorm of opener “Denial of Clarity” to realize this is the deep water of the niche genre. It’s extremely heavy, face-melting death with more fuzz and buzz than your brain can process. Other cuts feel like a direct lift from Left Hand Path and/or Clandestine (“Tribute to Creation,”) and fetid Dismember tidbits creep in during “Pilgrimage to Utumno,” and these feel like olde friends showing up unexpectedly at the hometown watering hole. Swedeath is all about those ragged, jagged riffs, and they’re delivered in abundance over The Eternal Sleep, and despite the intrinsic lack of originality, Impurity pump enough steroids and Cialis into the genre archetypes to make the material endearing and engaging. Yes, you’ve heard this shit before. Now hear it again, chumbo!
#AcidAge #Ade #AmericanMetal #ArtAsCatharsisRecords #ArtoneLabelGroup #Atheist #AustralianMetal #BeyondTheSleeplessAether #BlackMetal #BlackenedCrust #BlackenedHardcore #CanadianMetal #Casarder #CelticFrost #CoffinMulch #Converge #CreatorDestructorRecords #Crossed #Crust #DeathMetal #Decapitated #DesertRock #DillingerEscapePlan #DoomMetal #Doomsday #Elder #Enforced #Flummox #Fulci #Ghostsmoker #Hardcore #HateEternal #HideousDivinity #Impurity #InMourning #InVain #InertialCult #InternationalMetal #ItalianMetal #iwrestledabearonce #LostFutureRecords #MascotRecords #MastersOfReality #Mathcore #MelodicMetal #Metalcore #Morast #Morbific #MortalityDenied #MyDyingBride #NeObliviscaris #Neurosis #NeverKnownPeace #Nile #Nothing #Opeth #PaleChordRecords #Pelican #PerilousCompulsion #PinkFloyd #PortugueseMetal #PostRock #PostMetal #PowerTrip #ProgressiveDeathMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveThrashMetal #PyschedelicRock #RancidCadaver #RealismoAusente #Review #Reviews #RiseRecords #RussianCircles #ScottishMetal #SeaBastard #SelfReleased #SixpenceNoneTheRicher #SludgeMetal #SpanishMetal #Spiine #Spiritbox #StonerMetal #Supplicium #SymbioticGrowth #TechnicalDeathMetal #Tetraptych #TheArcher #TheEternalSleep #TheSelfRepairManifesto #Thou #ThrashMetal #TimeToKillRecords #TsunamiSea #UKMetal #Unfleshing #Verbian #ViolentReason #VirginBlack #Voivod #Wormphlegm #ZegemaBeachRecords
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Stuck in the Filter: March 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
Spring is in the air, and with it comes… an insane number of cicadas! Yes, that’s right, Brood XIV spawned this year and is currently overwhelming my staff as they trudge through embuggened ducts to clear out the Filter of semi-precious metal. I bet it’s fucking loud in there…
…. eh I’m sure they are all fine. Just fine. Anyway, enjoy the spoils of our toils!
Kenstrosity’s Gloopy Grubber
Acid Age // Perilous Compulsion [February 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Belfast’s wacky thrash conglomerate Acid Age came out of absolutely nowhere back in March, unleashing their fourth LP Perilous Compulsion and equipping it with one helluva van-worthy cover. This is some funky, bluesy, quasi-psychedelic thrash metal that pulls no punches. Riffs abound, bonkers songwriting pervades, immense groove agitates. From the onset, “Bikini Island” establishes Perilous Compulsion as a no-nonsense, balls-out affair which reminds me heavily of Voivod and a simplified Flummox informed by Atheist’s progressive proclivities, and expanded by a touch of Pink Floyd’s nebulous jams. Of course, thrash remains Acid Age’s hero flavor, as choice cuts “State Your Business,” “Revenge for Sale,” and closing one-two punch “Rotten Tooth” and “Hamster Wheel” clearly demonstrate. While their fearless exploration of style and structure maintains a sky-high level of interest, it also introduces a couple of challenges. Firstly, this material can feel a bit disjointed at first, but focused spins reward the listener greatly as all of Perilous Compulsion’s moving parts start to mesh and move in unison. Secondly, Acid Age throws a spotlight on a few brilliant inclusions that, over time, I wish were more often utilized—namely, the delightfully bluesy harmonica solos on “Rotten Tooth.” Regardless, Acid Age put themselves on my map with Perilous Compulsion. I recommend you put them on yours, too!
Owlswald’s Desiccated Discoveries
Verbian // Casarder [March 21st, 2025 – Lost Future Records]
It’s unjust that Portuguese rockers Verbian—who have been producing quality post-rock since 2019’s Jaez—haven’t received the attention they deserve. Fusing elements of post-rock with metal, psychedelic, and stoner, Casarder is Verbian’s third full-length and the first with new drummer Guilherme Gonçalves. Taking the sounds and inspirations of 2020’s Irrupção and enriching it with new permutations and modulations, Casarder’s largely instrumental character rides punchy riffs and roiling grooves—à la Russian Circles and Elder—to transmit its thought-provoking legitimacy. Dystopian and surreal séances, via echoing Korg synthscapes (“Pausa Entre Dias,” “Vozes da Ilha”) and celestial harmonies, permeate Casarder’s forty-three-minute runtime, translating Madalena Pinto’s striking Aeon Flux-esque cover art with precision. Ominous horn sections and crusty recurrent vocals (“Marcha do Vulto,” “Depois de Toda a Mudança”) by guitarist Vasco Reis and bassist Alexandre Silva underscore Verbian’s individuality in a crowded post-rock domain. Gonçalves’s drumming—with his intricate and enchanting hard rock and samba rhythms (“Nada Muda,” “Fruta Caída do Mar”)—adds a new dimension to Verbian’s sound, assuring my attention never falters. The group describes Casarder as communicating the “…insecurities of artistic expression and personal exposure when it comes to fearing being judged for something that is somewhat outside of what is done in each artist’s niche.” Indeed, Casarder reveals Verbian is unafraid to forge their own path, and the results are gripping.
Symbiotic Growth // Beyond the Sleepless Aether [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
Beyond the Sleepless Aether, the sophomore effort by Ontario, Canada’s Symbiotic Growth, immediately caught my attention with its dreamy-looking cover. Building upon their 2020 self-titled debut, the Canadian trio hones epic and long-form progressive death metal soundscapes, narrating a quest for meaning across alternate realities in mostly lengthy, yet rewarding, tracks that blend technicality, atmosphere, and melody. The group frequently employs dynamic shifts, moving between raging brutality and serene shoegaze beauty (“Arid Trials and Barren Sands,” “The Sleepless Void”). This is achieved through complex and vengeful passages alongside atmospheric synth lines and softer piano interludes (“Sires of Boundless Sunset,” “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights”), cultivating an air of wonder, mystery, and ethereality that permeates much of Symbiotic Growth’s material. “The Architect of Annihilation” echoes the style of Ne Obliviscaris with its blend of clean harmonies and harsh growls meshed with tremolo-picked arpeggiations and catchy hooks (the guitar solo even features a violin-like quality). “Lost in Fractured Reveries” evokes In Mourning with its parallel synth and guitar lines giving way to devastating grooves that make it impossible not to headbang. Although some fine-tuning remains—the clean vocals could use some more weight and tracks like “Of Painted Skies and Dancing Lights” and “The Architect of Annihilation” overstay their welcome at times—Beyond the Sleepless Aether shows Symbiotic Growth’s burgeoning talent and signals the group is one to watch in progressive death metal.
Dear Hollow’s Drudgery Sludgery Hoist
Spiritbox // Tsunami Sea [March 7th, 2025 – Pale Chord Records | Rise Records]
From humble beginnings in a more artsy-fartsy djent post-Iwrestledabearonce world to becoming the darlings of Octane Radio, Spiritbox has seen quite the ascent. While it’s easy to look at their work and scoff at its radio-friendliness, sophomore full-length Tsunami Sea shows Courtney LaPlante and company sticking to their guns. Simultaneously more obscure and more radio-friendly in its selection of tracks, expect its signature blend of colossal riffs and ethereal melodies guided by LaPlante’s siren-then-sea serpent dichotomy of furious roars and haunting cleans. Yes, Spiritbox helms its attack with the radio singles (“Perfect Soul,”1 “Crystal Roses”) in layered soaring choruses and touches of hip-hop undergirded by fierce grooves, but the meat of Tsunami Sea finds the flexibility and patience in the skull-crushing brutality (“Soft Spine,” “No Loss, No Love”) and its more exploratory songwriting that amps layers of the ethereal and the hellish with catchy riffs and vocals alike (“Fata Morgana,” “A Haven of Two Faces”). It’s far from perfect, and its tendency towards radio will be divisive, but it shows Spiritbox firing on all cylinders.
Unfleshing // Violent Reason [March 28th, 2025 – Self Released]
I am always tickled pink by blackened crust. It takes the crusty violence and propensity for filth and adds black metal’s signature sinister nature. Unfleshing is a young, unsigned blackened crust band from St. Louis, and with debut Violent Reason, you can expect a traditional punk-infused beatdown with a battered guitar tone and sinister vocals. However, more than many, the quartet offers a beatdown that feels as atmospheric as it is pummeling. Don’t get me wrong, you get your skull caved in like the poor guy on the cover with minute-long crust beatdowns (“Body Bag,” “From the Gutter”) and full-length smackdowns (“Knife in the Dark,” “Final Breath”), both styles complete with scathing grooves, squalid feedback, climactic solos and punishing blastbeats, atop a blackened roar dripping with hate. But amid the full-throttle assault, Unfleshing utilizes ominous black metal chord progressions and unsettling plucking to add a more dynamic feature to Violent Reason (“Cathedral Rust,” “One With the Mud”). The album never overstays, and while traditional, it’s a hell of a start for Unfleshing.
Ghostsmoker // Inertia Cult [March 21st, 2025 – Art as Catharsis Records]
Ghostsmoker seems like the perfect stoner metal band name, but aside from the swampy guitar tone, there’s something much sinister lurking. Proffering a caustic blackened doom/sludge not unlike Thou, Wormphlegm, and Sea Bastard, the Melbourne group quartet devotes a crisp forty-two minutes to sprawling doom weighted by a crushing guitar tone that rivals Morast‘s latest, and shrieked vocals straight from the latest church burning. Beyond what’s expected from this particular breed of devastation, Ghostsmoker infuses an evocative patience reminiscent of post-metal’s more sludgy offerings like Neurosis or Pelican, lending a certain atmosphere and mood of dread and wilderness depicted on its cover. From the outright chugging attacks of churning aggression (“Elogium,” “Haven”) to the more experimental and thoughtful pieces (“Bodies to Shore,” instrumental closer “The Death of Solitude”), Inertia Cult largely feels like a journey through uncharted forests, with voices whispering from the trees. Ghostsmoker is something special.
GardensTale’s Paralyzed Spine
Spiine // Tetraptych [March 27th, 2025 – Self Released]
Is it still a supergroup release when half the lineup are session musicians? Spiine is made up of Sesca Scaarba (Virgin Black) and Xen (ex-Ne Obliviscaris), but on debut Tetraptych they are joined by guests Waltteri Väyrynen (Opeth) and Lena Abé (My Dying Bride). Usually, so much talent put into the same room does not yield great results. Tetraptych is one hell of an exception. A monstrous slab of crawling heaviness, Spiine lurches with abject despair through the mires of deathly funeral doom. Though I usually eschew this genre, my attention remains rapt through a variety of variations. The songwriting keeps the 4 tracks progressing, slow and steady builds, and the promise of momentary tempo changes working a two-pronged structural plan to buoy the majestic yet miserable riffs. “Oubliiette” is the best example here, going from galloping death-doom to Georgian choirs to a fantastic bridge where all the instrumentation hits only on the roared syllables. Xen’s unholy bellows flatten any objections I may have had, managing both thunder and deepest woe in the same notes. The subtle orchestration and occasional choir arrangements finish the package with regal grandeur, and the lush and warm production is the cherry on top. If you feel like drowning your sorrows with an hour of colossal doom, this is the album for you.
Saunders’ Stenched Staples
Ade // Supplicium [March 14th, 2025 – Time to Kill Records]
Sometimes unjustly pigeonholed as the Roman-inspired version of Nile, the hugely underrated Ade have punched out a solid career of quality death metal releases since emerging roughly fifteen years ago, charting their own path. Albums like 2013’s ripping Spartacus and 2019’s solid Rise of the Empire represent a tidy snapshot of the band’s career. Fifth album Supplicium, their first LP in six years, marks a low-key, welcome return. Exotic instrumentation and attention to history and storytelling are alive and well in the Ade camp, as is their penchant for punishing, unrelenting death, featuring a deftly curated mix of bombast, brutality, technical spark, and epic atmospheres. Edoardo Di Santo (Hideous Divinity) joins a largely refreshed line-up, including a new bassist and second guitarist since their last album. Line-up changes aside, familiar Ade tools of harrowing ancient Roman tales and modern death destruction remain as consistently solid as always. Top-notch riffs, intricate arrangements, fluid tempo shifts, and explosive drumming highlight songs that frequently flex their flair for drama-fueled atmospheres, hellfire blasts, and burly grooves. The immense, multi-faceted “Burnt Before Gods,” exotic melodies and raw savagery of “Ad Beastias!,” spitfire intensity of “Vinum,” and epically charged throes of “From Fault to Disfigurement” highlight more solid returns from Ade.
Masters of Reality // The Archer [March 28th, 2025 – Artone Label Group/Mascot Records]
Underappreciated desert rock pioneers and quirky stalwarts Masters of Reality returned from recording oblivion some fifteen-plus years since they last unleashed an LP. Led by the legendary Chris Goss and his collaborative counterparts across a career that first kicked off in the late ’80s, Masters of Reality return sounding inspired, wisened, and a little more chilled. Re-tinkering their familiar but ever-shifting sound, Masters of Reality incorporate woozy, bluesy laidback vibes featuring their oddball songwriting traits through a sedate, intriguing collection of new songs. The Archer showcases Masters of Reality’s longevity as seasoned, skilled songwriters, regardless of the shifting rock modes they explore. While perhaps lacking some of the energetic spark and earworm hooks of albums like Sunrise on the Sufferbus and Deep in the Hole, The Archer still marks a fine return outing. Goss’ signature voice is in fine form, and the bluesy, psych-drenched guitars, cushy basslines, ’60s and ’70s influences, and spacey vibes create a comforting haze. The delightfully dreamy, trippy “Chicken Little,” laidback hooks and old school charms of “I Had a Dream,” lively, quirky grooves of “Mr Tap n’ Go,” and moody, melancholic balladry of “Powder Man” highlight another diverse, strange brew from the veteran act.
Tyme’s Unheard Annunciations
Doomsday // Never Known Peace [March 28th, 2025 – Creator-Destructor Records]
March’s filter means spring is here, mostly, which is when I start searching for bands to populate my annual edition of Tyme’s Mowing Metal. There’s nothing I enjoy more than cracking a cold beer, sliding my headphones over my ears, and hopping on the mower to complete one of summer’s—at least for me—most enjoyable chores. A band that will feature prominently this summer is Oakland, California’s crossover thrash quintet Doomsday, and their Creator-Destructor Records debut album, Never Known Peace. Doomsday lays down a ton of mindless fun in the vein of other crossover greats like Enforced and Power Trip. There are riffs aplenty on this deliciously executed hardcore-tinged thrashtastic platter full of snarly, spiteful, Jamey Jasta-esque vocals, trademark gang shouts, and, oh, did I mention the riffs? Yeah, cuz there’s a butt-ton of ’em. Leads and solos are melodic (“Death is Here,” “Eternal Tombs”). Within its beefily warm mix, the chug-a-lug breakdowns run rampant across Never Known Peace‘s thirty-one minutes (seriously, there’s one in every track), leaving nary a tune that won’t have you at least bobbing your head and, at most, causing your neck a very nasty case of whipthrash. I’m going to be listening to Never Known Peace ALOT this summer, on and off my mower, and while I don’t care that the lawn lines in my yard will be a little wavier this year than others, I’ll chalk it up to the beer and the head banging Doomsday‘s Never Known Peace instills.
Rancid Cadaver // Mortality Denied [March 21st, 2025 – Self Released]
Another filter, another fetid fragment of foulness; this month, it’s up-and-coming deathstarts Rancid Cadaver and their independently released debut album Mortality Denied. Adam Burke’s excellent cover art caught my eye during a quick dip into the Bandcamp pool and had me pushing play. A thick slab of murderous meat ripe with fatty veins of Coffin Mulch and Morbific running through it, Mortality Denied overflows with tons of bestial vocals, crushing drums, barbaric bass, and squealing solos, all ensorcelled within the majesty of Rancid Cadaver‘s miasmic riff-gurgitations (“Slurping the Cerebral Slime,” “Mass of Gore,” and “Drained of Brains”). Fists will pump, and faces will stank during the Fulci-friendly “Zombified,” a pulverizing slow-death chug fest with an intro that landed me right back on the shores of Dr. Menard’s island of the undead.2 This quartet of Glaswegians has plopped down a death metal debut that ages like wine, getting better and better with consecutive spins. Surprisingly, Rancid Cadaver is unsigned, but I’m confident that status should change before we see a sophomore effort, and you can bet I’ll be there when that happens.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Unsophisticated Slappers
Crossed // Realismo Ausente [March 21st, 2025 – Zegema Beach Records]
Timing means everything in groove. I know that some people say that they have a hard time finding that kind of bob and sway in extreme music. But with an act like Spain’s Crossed, whose every carved word and every skronked guitar noise follows an insatiable punky stride, groove lies in every moment of third full-length Realismo Ausente. Whether it’s on the classic beat of D (“Vaciar Un Corazón,” “Cuerpo Distorsionado”), the twanging drone of a screaming bend (“Monotonía de la lluvia en la Ventana”), or the Celtic Frost-ed hammer of a chord crush (“Catedral”), a calculated, urgent, and intoxicating cadence colors the grayscale attitude throughout. But just because Crossed can find a groove in any twisted mathy rhythm—early Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan come to mind on quick cuts like “Cerrojo” and “Sentirse Solo”—doesn’t mean that their panic chord-loaded crescendos and close-outs can’t rip your head clean off in banging ecstasy. Easy listening and blackened hardcore can’t go hand-in-hand, but Crossed does their very best to make unintelligible, scathing screeches and ceiling-scraping feedback hissing palatable against crunchy punk builds and throbbing, warm bass grumbles. Likewise, Realismo Ausente stabs into a dejected body tales of loathing, fear, self-rejection, and defeated existence—nothing smiles in its urgent and apathetic crevices. But despite the lack of light at the end of the tunnel of Crossed’s horror-touched vision of impassioned hardcore, an analog warmth and human spirit trapped inside a writhing and pleading throat reveal a presence that’s still fighting. It’s the fight that counts. If you didn’t join the fight last time, now’s as good a time as any.
Nothing // The Self Repair Manifesto [March 26th, 2025 – Self Released]
If you noticed a tree zombie heading steaming through its trepanned opening, then you too found the same initial draw I had to The Self Repair Manifesto. Nothing complex often can draw us to the things we desire, yet in Nothing’s particular attack of relentless, groove-based death metal, many nooks of additional interest exist. The Self Repair Manifesto’s tribal rhythm-stirred “Initiation,” in its bouncy play, does little to set up the double-kick pummel and snarling refrains that lurk in this brutal, Australian soundscape. The simple chiming cymbal-fluttering bass call-and-response of “Subterfuge,” the throat singing summoning of “The Shroud,” the immediate onslaught of “Abrogation”—all in under 30 minutes, an infectious and progressive experience unfolds. And never fear, living by the motto “no clean singing,”3 Nothing has no intention of traveling the wandering and crooning path of an Opeth or In Vain. Rather, Nothing finds a hypnotic rhythmic presence both in fanciful kit play that stirs a foot shuffle and high-tempo stick abuse that urges bodies on bodies in the pit (“Subterfuge,” “The Shroud”), much in the same way you might hear in early Decapitated or Hate Eternal works. With flair of their own, though, and a mic near the mouth vessel of each member (yes, even the drummer!) to maintain a layered harsh intensity, Nothing serves a potent blend of death metal that is as jam-able as it is gym-able. Whether you seek gains or progressive enrichment, Nothing is the answer.
Steel Druhm’s Massive Aggressive
Impurity // The Eternal Sleep [ March 7th, 2025 – Hammerheart Records]
Impurity’s lust for all things Left Hand Path is not the least bit Clandestine, and on their full-length debut, The Eternal Sleep, they attempt to craft their own ode to the rabid HM-2 worship of the early 90s Swedeath sound. No new elements are shoehorned in aside from vaguely blackened ones, and there’s not the slightest effort to push the boundaries of the admittedly limited Swedeath sound. The Eternal Sleep sounds like the album that could have come between Entombed’s timeless debut and the Clandestine follow-up, and that’s not a bad place to be. It’s heavy, brutish, buzzing death metal with an OSDM edge, and it hits like a runaway 18-wheeler full of concrete and titanium rebar. One only needs to weather the shitstorm of opener “Denial of Clarity” to realize this is the deep water of the niche genre. It’s extremely heavy, face-melting death with more fuzz and buzz than your brain can process. Other cuts feel like a direct lift from Left Hand Path and/or Clandestine (“Tribute to Creation,”) and fetid Dismember tidbits creep in during “Pilgrimage to Utumno,” and these feel like olde friends showing up unexpectedly at the hometown watering hole. Swedeath is all about those ragged, jagged riffs, and they’re delivered in abundance over The Eternal Sleep, and despite the intrinsic lack of originality, Impurity pump enough steroids and Cialis into the genre archetypes to make the material endearing and engaging. Yes, you’ve heard this shit before. Now hear it again, chumbo!
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