WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:05.140 Metalhead Podcast, Metalhead Podcast, Go! 00:00:26.200 --> 00:00:27.900 You must listen. 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:30.060 You must listen. 00:00:31.480 --> 00:00:32.460 You must listen. 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:38.660 Now, here is the podcast. 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:40.440 Metal Heads Podcast Go. 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:42.280 Hello and welcome to the Metal Heads Podcast. 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:43.340 My name is George. 00:00:44.220 --> 00:00:44.700 This is Jake. 00:00:45.820 --> 00:00:46.420 This is John. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:47.800 This is Matt. 00:00:48.760 --> 00:00:49.880 This is Markisan. 00:00:50.300 --> 00:00:54.020 And tonight, our guest is my friend Grant McKee, 00:00:54.320 --> 00:01:24.160 who's the fabulous owner of one of my all-time favorite shops in the known universe, Bucket O'Blood Books and Records in Chicago. This store has the biggest and best selection of metal vinyl in the city, and the book side of the shop specializes in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, which makes Bucket O'Blood even more metal than you could possibly imagine. They also offer all kinds of amazing events and do partnerships with local businesses. 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:25.720 on a variety of projects. 00:01:26.470 --> 00:01:30.040 So not only is it an amazing place to shop, but it's a place you want to hang out in. 00:01:30.880 --> 00:01:39.760 Grant and his wife, Jenny, really make the bucket feel like a metal home away from home because they're the nicest, coolest people you could ever want to meet. 00:01:40.020 --> 00:01:43.440 I feel like they might be sponsoring us now, like underwateraudio.com. 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:44.620 With all that. 00:01:45.799 --> 00:01:49.280 Yeah, and with that, we're out of time. Thanks for joining us. 00:01:53.140 --> 00:02:22.860 Yeah, welcome to the cast, Grant. Really excited to have you on with us. I'm excited to be here, but I feel like anything I say is only going to ruin my reputation after that introduction. I guess I'm going to sign off. That's funny. All that needs to be said. That's funny, people that come on the show, and everybody is like, oh my gosh, I'm afraid to come on. I'm going to ruin your show. I'm going to look like a dumbass, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, it's fine. First of all, we're all dumbasses. You're elevating us. Yeah, and then afterwards, everybody was like, oh, yeah, that was great. 00:02:22.940 --> 00:02:52.340 That was fun. You know, so in case there's any jitters going on, just leave that shit, you know. Yeah. Well, so obviously the pandemic isn't the elephant that looms over every interview these days, but I think we'll get to that. But I wanted to start out first, Grant, by talking about something even more serious, which is that you recently put up videos of yourself drinking warm, super old beer that you found in the shop. And I wanted to make sure you're okay. I'm okay. I recovered pretty quickly. 00:02:52.920 --> 00:03:22.720 I didn't do it. You know, it was planned. We, uh, I had reached out to my physician, everything was cleared and, uh, talked to some beer experts who said that, you know, it wouldn't have any long lasting detrimental effect. That's good. And what was the reason for this? Beer. So were you just that hard up for beer? One of those, uh, well, I'm out of beer and I don't want to go out. There's this moldy old can. It says brewed. 00:03:28.060 --> 00:03:49.020 You know, I've never been that desperate. It was just sort of, we were cleaning up because we were closed for so long and found some things that people had left, largely from events. On the book side of things, we do a lot of book clubs and it's always BYOV, so people bring a six pack and sometimes one will get left behind. 00:03:52.940 --> 00:04:22.900 and aged. So there was some like two year old double IPAs and you know. I'm glad Will's not here. Nothing that would knock anybody down. But and the thing is like they were there that long because I know I wasn't going to drink them fresh. Yeah. Not all beers are created equal. Yes. I'm going on a trip next weekend to West Virginia to see some high school friends and I am taking the beer 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:52.840 that's in the back of the cooler that's been there a while with me to be like, hey guys. I've been saving these. Just for you. So. Cool. So. How'd you end up starting Bucket of Blood? Well, I didn't technically start it. So the store has been open for just over 10 years. Opened in June of 2010. This guy named Mark opened it. Who, well known in Chicago, ran a, or still runs a label. 00:04:52.920 --> 00:05:22.440 called Johan's Face Records. It's been a number of punk bands. So he had very much like a punk rock and sci-fi ethic to it because that was sort of what he was into. And then fast forward to three years, it's the summer of 2013, and he realizes that being a lifelong musician, he doesn't want to sit in the same place every single day, every single week, doing the retail life, and he was looking to basically unload the store, its inventory, the brand, all of it. 00:05:22.940 --> 00:05:52.860 kind of in one go to somebody that would want to take over operations. And that was when I stepped in. My wife actually kind of clued me into it. And I had a little bit of money saved up and it was kind of in the line of what I sort of envisioned myself doing at some point in my life anyway. So, you know, it sort of took those first three or four awkward steps off the table and I was just kind of hitting the ground running. And I mean, it's worked out really well. So two years after that, we moved to a location. 00:05:53.680 --> 00:06:22.880 It's technically about four times the size of the location where it started, but it's three quarters of it is like the retail space. And then the other quarter is our backroom that up until recently we used largely for events. Now it's just sort of a spillover. And then, you know, since taking it over seven years ago, we shifted the focus quite a bit. My philosophy has always been as far as like retail and sales things, like it's way easier to sell things that you like. 00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:52.180 So we still have an extensive punk and hardcore section, but definitely ramped up the metal selection, ramped up the horror selection as far as the books go. Like Markisan said, it's largely sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. And we still do all three of those, but it's the things that we like, it's the things that we care about. And it's funny, sometimes people get confused. They're like, oh, it's a bookstore. 00:06:52.300 --> 00:06:54.440 or they guys sell records or oh it's a record story 00:06:54.470 --> 00:06:55.640 but you guys sell books. I'm like 00:06:56.360 --> 00:06:58.360 why can't we do all of that? Chocolate 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:00.420 and peanut butter. What? 00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:02.640 Like I hate to 00:07:03.070 --> 00:07:04.560 bring up the ghosts of 00:07:05.420 --> 00:07:06.520 retail past and then 00:07:06.740 --> 00:07:08.740 dig through that cemetery but it's like these people 00:07:08.840 --> 00:07:10.580 have never heard of like Borders or Hastings 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:12.760 or anything like that. You know, certainly don't want to go 00:07:12.790 --> 00:07:14.380 the same way as those guys but 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:15.860 you know, why 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:18.420 you know, we get people that come in that 00:07:18.940 --> 00:07:20.679 just want to buy records. We get people that come in that just 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:50.540 I don't buy books. We get a lot of people coming to buy both. We do some movies as well, focusing on horror movies, kind of going with the whole. Oh, yeah. All that B-side horror stuff. It's great. And sci-fi. It's sort of the things that I would want to see if I walked into a store. I remember when I worked in my first one that had both records and books and movies. I was like, well, fuck me. I'm going to be here all day. I'm not going to have to go anywhere else. This is perfect. Can you just pay me in like a cot in the back? 00:07:50.680 --> 00:08:20.460 Yeah, exactly. Stay here. Thank God y'all have a bathroom. That's what happens every time I go in there because, you know, they get new inventory and you want to look through all the books and you might find a hidden gem that you didn't see last time. And I have done that a couple times just going in there. Same thing with records. That's one thing I miss is the hunt. They're going into the store with, you know, no, no intention other than going in and looking through, you know, everything. 00:08:21.060 --> 00:08:48.100 and just flipping for sometimes hours, just going through everything. And I don't know, look at that, you know. I mean, that was, I was addicted to doing that. I mean, I used to go to Tower where it was just massive and would go through everything. And then as, in the last few years with vinyl, I'd go to the smaller places, obviously, where it would not take quite so long, but still, just the hunt was fun. 00:08:50.240 --> 00:09:19.680 So I missed that. Yeah. Yeah. One of the big things that we did, especially like pre COVID times, um, when we had a lot more people coming into the store was, you know, if we got a collection of like really cool stuff, we'd be like, well, we want, we want to reward our local customers, the people that come in on a regular basis. So there would be some sort of gems where you're like, well, we don't want to just put it up for sale online. Like we'd rather have somebody come in and stumble across and be like, oh man, like I come here once a week anyway. 00:09:19.780 --> 00:09:49.760 I can't believe they have this like death jam pressing of rain and blood like I didn't know that you guys had this I got to pick this up right now. So you just mentioned online so I'm assuming particularly during the pandemic that you are subsidizing by selling things online as well. Yeah I'm pretty sure that the women at the local post office are kind of sick of seeing me but I come in there every day with like you know 12-15 packages and it's largely been through Discogs which I 00:09:49.780 --> 00:10:18.680 You know, everybody kind of uses. We do a little bit on eBay, but just the software package with Discogs makes it so easy. I don't really have to like, I just have to find the one that matches what we have. I don't have to take a bunch of pictures and like post a bunch of information. And buyers on there are generally a little bit more understanding and patient than buyers on eBay. I rarely get people messaging me the next day going, hey, I paid for this yesterday. 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:45.820 Can I get that? And give me like two or three days. Like we're quick about it, but not everything is going to turn around in 12 hours. Yeah. I'm sure we'll get to it at the end of the episode as we always do. But since we're still at the beginning and we're talking about it, where can people go to find you online to purchase things from you? Easiest thing is just we relaunched our website during this. Thanks to our credit card processor, Square. 00:10:55.059 --> 00:11:16.300 and there's a link on that to our discogs page right at the front and then the rest of the site is some pre-orders and then largely our book inventory. I followed said link already and I promise you that before this episode is over I'm going to buy some records. I bought one I bought two records today from. Awesome perfect. 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:49.320 Yeah, so obviously the pandemic has made it tough for a lot of people, especially small business owners, Grant. So how are you and Jenny doing? How has COVID affected the business? It's like a lot of other places. We're working, and I told somebody the other day, and he's like, this is kind of sums it up for everybody they know. So we're working twice as hard to make half as much while we're getting by. We were in the, depending on how you look at it, favorable position or unfavorable position. 00:11:49.400 --> 00:12:19.300 of never being able to afford to have any sort of staff. It's always just been the two of us running the place with some friends filling in here and there as we needed help. So fortunately, we didn't have to lay anybody off. We didn't have to furlough anybody, anything like that. And it's everything that we sell, we can put in an envelope and mail it off somewhere. So we've been working pretty consistently. We shut down on May 17th, which is when the bars shut down in Chicago. Retail could have been open a couple days after that. 00:12:19.360 --> 00:12:49.260 But we didn't take the chance. And pretty much since then, we've still gone in and packed up mail order stuff. We were doing, still are doing curbside pickup. We were doing delivery for a little while in the city of Chicago, but we stopped doing that when we started being open again, quote unquote. Right now we're open to a limited number of shoppers by a family. So people have to set up the time to come in. 00:12:50.579 --> 00:13:18.940 which isn't necessarily ideal, but it's met with a lot of good feedback and it's been working for us. So yeah, you know, things could definitely be a whole lot worse. I think about a lot of the friends that I have that are bartenders, my good friends over at Delilah's where I, up until this, was DJing the Metal Knight once a month. And bartenders, hairstylists, people like that, tattoo artists that just haven't been able to work or especially, 00:13:19.380 --> 00:13:49.340 here in Chicago, I don't know quite how it is in other parts of the country. You know, some of these people are in a position of being able to work full time one week and then all of a sudden, you know, the rug is sort of pulled out from under them and then restricting certain things again that last week were totally open for people. So long, long answer in a shorter form. We are sort of. Yeah, well, one of the things I love about Bucket of Blood is that you guys do collaborations, you do events, and you just mentioned the metal 00:13:49.400 --> 00:14:19.280 DJ nights at Delilah's, which is an awesome whiskey bar for people who don't know about it. Um, and Grant would do it every month, spend metal records and he would have like contests where you could win tickets and it was awesome. And you did it. What was it like to a little, uh, two in the morning or something like two in the morning, 9 PM till close. So 2 AM. Yeah. And the last one. So Grant's birthday, your birthday is on the fifth, right? So seventh. Yeah. So the last one we did, uh, in August, it was on, 00:14:19.380 --> 00:14:49.140 My Birthday and then turned into Grant's Birthday while we were doing it. So it was a pretty fun celebration. I think I remember part of that. Yeah, I took an awesome picture of you too. So I was going to ask is, are you going to, I know you did some of those online versions of them where, you know, you would do a Spotify playlist and people could play it and then you could go on Facebook and then make comments and stuff. Are you going to start that up again? I'm kind of weighing some options as far as that goes. You know, 00:14:49.380 --> 00:14:53.600 I didn't want to take any steam away from Delilah's and they sort of launched their own 00:14:54.420 --> 00:15:01.920 radio Delilah's on their website where they have like a CD recorder set up in the DJ booth so they record sets. 00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:19.340 It's a CD so it would be like what 78 minutes or whatever. So they've been doing that every night from 9 o'clock until basically the CD runs out. And they were doing old metal shops from people that were doing it before me. The metal shop DJ format at Delilah's. 00:15:19.340 --> 00:15:49.220 I was, has been there for 20 plus years. I think I'm the fourth regular DJ to do it. Um, so they were playing older ones from that. And I didn't, I didn't want to step on their toes. They're using it as a sort of springboard to, uh, draw more awareness for their GoFundMe to help out their bartenders and barbacks and staff and stuff like that. I just, I sort of eased off on that. I'm sort of brainstorming doing maybe something that's not a full five hour thing. Cause especially on a Tuesday night, you know, more than half the people would log off around midnight. 00:15:49.340 --> 00:16:18.940 which I totally get. Not me. Different time zone. I'm thinking about doing something like that on a sort of smaller scale on a different day of the week that won't conflict directly with my employers. What about some of your other activities that you do? I know you have book clubs and all that. How has that been affected? Are you still working on those? So we were able to in the store relaunch our book clubs mostly. We were doing four a month. 00:16:19.899 --> 00:16:47.760 And we're sort of taking some of those as we can. Not necessarily everything is happening on a monthly basis as it was. But there's a park about a block, block and a half north of the store. And we figure that it's close, so you can use the store as sort of a reference point for people. And we've just been meeting out there and setting up folding chairs six feet apart and yelling at each other about the fiction. 00:16:49.360 --> 00:17:18.819 playing baseball on the other side. It's worked out quite well so far, to be honest, better than I was expecting. I'm kind of hoping that things get a little bit better before the weather turns here, since obviously this will be less viable in November. I don't think anybody's going to want to be sitting out there in the cold trying to talk about the latest horror fiction. I can't believe it's like mid-September already. And that's September, August. It'll be September in a minute. Just give it a minute. It will be. Any day now. Yeah. It'll be September. 00:17:23.259 --> 00:17:49.320 I'm like it still feels like early in the year somehow. Yeah. The summer that never was. The summer that never was. The year that never was. It's crazy. So have you been talking to other record shop owners about the pandemic and how it's affecting business Grant or other business owners in the area? Yeah, definitely a little bit. You know, our 00:17:49.960 --> 00:18:19.240 Nearby the store, we're in sort of a retail desert as far as our neighborhood goes in Chicago. There's a lot of bars and, and, um, mostly bars around us. And, you know, we were friends with a lot of those people and talking to them, it's, it's a very different animal. Like they've, um, they've had to deal with a lot more restrictions than we have. We've basically gone from, you can't be open to, you can have people do curbside pickup to, okay, you can be open, but you just can't let too many people in. Whereas they've had to deal with, um, 00:18:20.340 --> 00:18:49.320 Capacity issues and now indoor versus outdoor seating things like that as far as like other retail people in the city and talking to a couple other record stores one of them he was doing appointment only like we're doing and then decided to stop doing that he's like I never really get more than four people here at a time anyway so he was able to sort of restrict his capacity just by the fact that he's sort of off the beaten path and a lot of people 00:18:49.360 --> 00:19:17.640 They still aren't really going out like they used to. Another one, he's started doing appointments about the same time we did, which was about two weeks after we were allowed to be reopened. We wanted to give a little bit of time just to see how the numbers were. And he's still doing appointments. It's funny because people have this sort of misconception that just because we're allowed to do something, we should be doing it. I always point out, I'm like, look, before this happened, we could have opened at 9 a.m., but we opened at noon. 00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:47.700 It doesn't make sense for us as a business to open at 9am. Same thing like it doesn't make sense for the corner dive bar to stay open until 2am when all their customers leave by 11.30. They're allowed to be open until 2am, but that doesn't mean that they're going to. We're allowed to just have our door open to restricted access, but if we're not comfortable doing that, we don't have to do that. America. Yeah. Do what we want. No, I think that's 00:19:47.740 --> 00:20:17.700 I think that's an interesting point because you are a business owner, a small business owner, and you can actually have your own, I wouldn't call them rules, but your own kind of decisions within the framework that work for you given the unique situation we're in. And it's interesting because I see so many places around here that are going out of business for good. I mean, they're done. And others are absolutely thriving right now just because I think, and it's not a knock on the places that went out. Maybe they just had a service or a 00:20:17.740 --> 00:20:47.700 product that wasn't necessary for a lot of people right now. But the ones that are thriving, they're very creative on how they're staying ahead of this. I hate to use this expression, staying ahead of the curve, you know, because we've heard that so much, but it's interesting the things you're saying here that you guys are making decisions within the framework that work for you. And it's working as best as it can. So that's all I wanted to say. That's all I got to say about that. It is so fucking weird though, isn't it? And it's 00:20:47.720 --> 00:21:17.520 We're seeing a similar thing here, Josh. Some people just getting decimated. I shop at a place that's in New Jersey called Laser's Edge. It's an online vendor, has been for years. I've been shopping with this guy for 20 plus years. I don't think anything in the least bit has affected his business. It's really just because that's what he's always done. It's kind of strange to think that there's a lot of that out there that nobody's thinking about. 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:47.680 Sure. Yeah. Well, Will would be pleased to know, or at least he can make fun of me when I tell him that the burrito place is here going through the fucking roof, you know, but, and they really are, but it's not, you know, but so many restaurants are going under. Our local beer store that, you know, you hear Will and I talking about, me and me, that Dominion Wine and Beer, they cannot keep beer on their shelf. Yeah. They are so busy and it's all pickup, you know, curbs. Same. So, and they have, they're doing outdoor, 00:21:47.740 --> 00:21:52.100 Outdoor Stuff Now, but man, crazy how much business they're doing. 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:55.640 Yeah. How's Beer Temple doing across the street, Grant? 00:21:55.960 --> 00:22:17.440 Oh, they're doing amazing. They've got their inside bar open. They're taking some really incredible safety measures. I was in there yesterday for a couple of years. Like, it's very limited seating, but it's still there. I bought some beer to get to go. I bought some beers there. It's, they're doing really well. 00:22:17.720 --> 00:22:47.660 And I think that kind of adjacent to that is some of the people that are suffering are actually the breweries because unless they've been able to pivot towards doing more like Rowler fills or if they have a strong packaging brand already, they're kind of doing okay. But, you know, I talk to people that are brewery reps for bigger breweries or, you know, work for some of the more well-known local ones. 00:22:47.700 --> 00:23:17.680 And they're like, you know, the bulk of our business before this was on-premise sales is people drinking at a bar. And like, now they, bars are closed or bars are very diminished. And they're like, I don't, I don't know how we're going to keep selling beer. Yeah. Yeah. I know here I've been able to get free delivery from a number of breweries. Um, they also, um, and obviously everybody does curbside. So I've been taking advantage of both, but definitely, you know, keeping that 00:23:17.700 --> 00:23:47.680 In fact, in mind, like, like, if you guys can't be open, you are getting hit hard. But I feel like there's been a good support for breweries in Minneapolis. So a good thing. Grant, I just completed my order to bucket of blood. So I just the only thing I ask is you don't, you don't ask me, why did you not have a couple of these records? But he would appreciate if you could get these mailed out before the end of the episode. By the way, Jay, you just mentioned something to me that 00:23:47.700 --> 00:23:50.900 probably is one of my biggest pet peeves if I shop in a 00:23:52.380 --> 00:23:53.640 both new and used 00:23:53.960 --> 00:23:55.700 you know CDs and vinyl place 00:23:56.140 --> 00:23:58.020 is you walk up with a CD and it's that 00:23:58.220 --> 00:23:59.980 person that's at the cash register gives a 00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:02.000 smug look like well this is 00:24:02.180 --> 00:24:04.120 fucking shit and you almost want to just 00:24:04.200 --> 00:24:05.680 say I don't want it 00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:07.580 fuck you and then just smash it and then leave 00:24:08.059 --> 00:24:09.920 it happened to me once it actually 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:11.780 happened at a tower of records I mean 00:24:11.880 --> 00:24:13.240 it's just the person laughed at what I was 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:14.400 buying and he laughed the whole time they 00:24:14.520 --> 00:24:15.760 rang it up but I just looked and thought 00:24:16.980 --> 00:24:45.080 You're not going to have this job long if you're going to be like that the whole time. I don't think that's ever happened to me. Yeah, it's in my face. It's a good thing to do. Though Grant is in that wonderfully unique position, though, of telling me that I should have had this and I should have had this long ago. Like I ordered the bonded by blood reissue, which I don't have that on vinyl for some reason. I mean, it wasn't available for a long time, at least in a current present. Look at you standing up for me. I appreciate that. Thanks, man. 00:24:45.120 --> 00:25:11.440 You know, there's like the whole idea, and I think by Fidelity, the movie really put this in people's mind that you're supposed to be like a snarky record store. Like, you know, we can feel like, I mean, on a really regular basis that I have a good rapport with, and sometimes I will be like, oh, I'm surprised that you don't have this in your collection, but I wouldn't, I'm not talking trash about it. It's just like, oh, well, I had a CD for years, and I decided that it's finally time to get a record. 00:25:12.020 --> 00:25:41.800 Is that the movie with John Cusack and Jack Black you're mentioning? Yeah. The thing that pissed me off about that movie is what they thought they were being so like hardcore and, you know, deep track type albums. It was all known stuff. There was nothing like special about the music they were talking about in that movie. Kind of pissed me off. Like, ooh, the early green day. I care about that. We should all chip in. So John should not own our record store. No. No. The point I'm making is, no. 00:25:43.020 --> 00:26:11.980 Granted just mentioned how they were kind of being they were kind of snobby about it and I'm like there was nothing to be snobby about the music they were talking about right and I agree well it's different for us because we listen to a lot of just stuff that most people don't listen to that's true yeah I like the scene at the end of that movie there were Jack Black sings that absolutely beautiful version of let's get it armed and the shock that that is and also that um and that was kind of right before Jack before Jack Black was really known as a singer necessarily I mean 00:26:12.020 --> 00:26:17.940 Tenacious D may have been around, but people know now he can sing, but that was such a cool thing. 00:26:18.560 --> 00:26:22.380 I was going to say, we should all chip in and get the Black Album on vinyl for Will. 00:26:23.840 --> 00:26:24.500 Christmas or something. 00:26:24.500 --> 00:26:25.060 Did you see it there? 00:26:25.480 --> 00:26:26.180 It is on there, yeah. 00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:27.000 It is on there. 00:26:30.060 --> 00:26:31.120 Yeah, Will's not here. 00:26:31.160 --> 00:26:32.600 He hates the Black Album. 00:26:33.620 --> 00:26:34.700 Still, you've got to have standards. 00:26:34.740 --> 00:26:36.000 I'm not going to argue with him about that. 00:26:38.180 --> 00:26:40.720 Well, then, let's start a discussion on the Black Album. 00:26:41.620 --> 00:27:11.180 - A lot of us would argue with him, but he hates it to an almost irrational level. I mean, it's like, yeah, he like almost, he could have a stroke if we're not careful. You know what I mean? - Yeah. - Well, let's talk about- - He wakes up when that comes up in the conversation. - Get off my lawn! - I'm actually surprised he didn't just volunteer hate when the anniversary came up. - Oh man. I just, you know, Marcus, I was funny you used to say, I, the first thing I thought of was, 00:27:12.320 --> 00:27:41.360 FDR speech, you know, the day of infamy. And I actually took the speech and I rewrote it as well. And I went, I went down, I don't know about four or five lines. I thought, nah, I don't want to waste my time. I'll just go with the main line. And I got the thumbs down from him as soon as he saw it. I'm surprised his ears aren't burning. He's, he's, and he's like, you know, has this like spidey sense that tells him he should zoom in real quick just to be like, 00:27:45.240 --> 00:27:48.760 I don't know where he is or what is preventing him from being here but 00:27:49.320 --> 00:27:52.540 I know he didn't he didn't tell us I was surprised but you know can't pry 00:27:54.660 --> 00:27:59.600 well let's go to some fun news I love this bucket of blood has an exclusive 00:28:00.280 --> 00:28:07.320 cassette for the new enslaved album hot how did that come about grant and uh and then you can tell 00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:37.280 I don't know people where to pick it up but I assume the website. Yeah to go in reverse order yeah just go to the website it's under first page there's pre-orders and it is on there. So there's been a resurgence in cassette collecting. I'm not sure if you guys are on board with this. Some people are some people aren't. I still have all my old cassettes but. We're aware of it I wouldn't say we're on board with the most of us. I wouldn't listen to them. I mean I don't even think I have anything to listen to. 00:28:38.220 --> 00:29:07.120 I buy cassettes, but I buy them for ambient artists. Because usually the ambient, it's like that spacey type music. I think it's better digital than it is on, you know, like a cassette or something. But I still like to have a physical thing. So I usually buy metal and vinyl ambient on a cassette. I did get the Thrasenblatt Great Brunswick Forest on cassette just because, you know, he offered it. If a band is new and they just have a demo and it's only on cassette, I'm happy to. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, but Markisan, you like that for ambient. 00:29:07.160 --> 00:29:36.320 music is you don't have to worry about when the song ends right let's be honest that's the thing we hate is like man i gotta fast forward more to get to the next song you know and you can just let it play and it's okay so the format works for that kind of music yeah that's true and even though i was the one who derailed us there i think you were going to tell us more about how that came oh yeah yeah sorry tell the story tell me we love enslave tell us it all happened a long time so we've been working as a retailer with nuclear blast for a couple years now 00:29:36.340 --> 00:30:06.300 order direct from them. Which is nice because we're able to get a lot of the European color variants on the releases that a lot of other stores aren't getting. And then earlier this year, as I'm sure you guys know, Testament came out with a new album. I have a couple customers that are very much focused on buying new cassette releases. And they did, I think, 200 cassettes for Testament. Getting back to what you were saying about certain music on certain 00:30:06.340 --> 00:30:36.300 I personally think that thrash metal sounds really good on a cassette. There's something that sort of can sometimes cut out some of the low end and so you're just like really getting that those tasty riffs. Is that also how you first experienced it? Just curious. No. Okay. No, no, no, don't let me. I don't know. No, no. So I have a couple customers that are really focused on getting cassettes of new albums and I wasn't 00:30:38.159 --> 00:31:04.460 and they had sold out directly to customers and didn't have any leftover to go to retail. So fast forward to June where Record Store Day, which is of course a huge event that we and many other record stores participate in, they do this summer camp event where people from independent record stores, people from record labels, distributors all meet up. I think it's either in New Orleans or Nashville or maybe it switches every year. 00:31:05.380 --> 00:31:10.040 And you basically go to panel discussions and have these one-on-one meetings 00:31:10.260 --> 00:31:34.360 with people. Obviously this year that couldn't happen, which is great because I've never been able to attend before anyway since I don't have anybody to work if I'm not at the store. So they did it virtually and they called it Couch Camp. So I'm sitting on my couch with my computer doing Zoom panels and then they do these one-on-one discussions. So I'm talking to one of the guys, talking to Roy from Nuclear Blast and I was like, hey, you know, like, 00:31:35.380 --> 00:32:03.620 I'd really appreciate if there was some stock set aside for your retail side of things rather than just selling everything direct. I get like the profit margin is better to sell it direct and like maybe it's just easier logistically. And he said, well, we've got a couple releases coming out that we're not planning on doing cassette releases for. He's like, but if you want to do it, it's 100 piece minimum and you just have to pay for them up front and you'll be the exclusive retailer for it. 00:32:03.860 --> 00:32:33.680 And I said, yeah, absolutely. So he gave me Enslaved and one other one that I can't talk about yet. I was hoping to be able to by now. And I said, yeah, absolutely. So we jumped on it and we got Enslaved. We got another one lined up. As you know, the album's been delayed because of all this. So it's still got a street date of October 2nd and I should be getting the cassettes in early September and just really looking forward to working with a great label and doing something fun and niche. 00:32:33.840 --> 00:33:03.220 and getting sort of our name on it and our brand with it. We're not going to have a logo on it or anything, but it's still kind of cool. And we've gotten all these orders from people all over the world for it. And it's, you know, for us as a store has brought some good exposure to us. My only fear is that the USPS is going to completely go to hell. And the amount that I charge people to ship it to Europe is going to skyrocket. I'm going to lose all my money on this because instead of like, 00:33:03.860 --> 00:33:33.820 Thinking that's gonna be 16 bucks to ship it's gonna be 40 bucks. Yeah, that sucks dude. By the way, I'm going to the nuclear blast website and every two minutes I'm gonna shout out a band with a record coming up and see if I get you to react to whatever the secret cassette coming is. Yeah, that sucks man. That is a bummer and I didn't even think of that. I mean, I have thought of a lot about the post office thing and how it affects business, the social security and so forth. But yeah, dude, that's fucked. But also congratulations on snagging us. That's a pretty 00:33:34.900 --> 00:34:03.820 And we're all, pretty much everybody here is an enslaved guy. Oh yeah. And the new songs sound great. Will's not that much, but he's not here. So there you go. Grant, I have a question about this that you're doing. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but now when labels are selling out of their cassettes, they're releasing new variants and they're just coloring the actual cassette a different color. And I actually lost it because like new green variant is coming out. I'm like, okay, that's really not 00:34:03.840 --> 00:34:33.020 the same as vinyl, but it is kind of funny. Have you considered that if it sells that well, you could possibly do that? And have you also considered if you did a second run that you would include an enslaved pencil with it to go with that as a little bit of a, hey, you know, we got a little extra in this, you know, it's like a special deluxe cassette edition. It's going to be a very small pencil. I don't know. I know John's talking about how you have to wind cassettes with a pencil. Right, but to fit it in there, you know. 00:34:35.079 --> 00:35:03.820 I'm not using a number one pencil be a number two yeah yeah that uh you know it's funny about the variance too in color john I don't I'm sure I was talking to one of you not long ago and we were talking about a record and I don't know for life I don't know which record it was but in any way on the front it had a sticker and it was like you know on black vinyl like it was like a brag you know what I mean it was like wow a black one as if it were any other 00:35:06.220 --> 00:35:07.880 - It still sounds the best, I think. 00:35:08.210 --> 00:35:09.720 - Yeah, yeah, so maybe there you go. 00:35:10.140 --> 00:35:12.660 - Yeah, but what color cassette shell sounds the best? 00:35:13.380 --> 00:35:13.980 - Yeah, exactly. 00:35:16.490 --> 00:35:17.240 - Remember the clear cassette? 00:35:17.240 --> 00:35:18.180 - I mean, I've definitely seen that, 00:35:18.390 --> 00:35:20.960 especially with the more cassette focused labels. 00:35:21.850 --> 00:35:23.860 Like, a place like Maggotstomp, I think he does like, 00:35:24.660 --> 00:35:26.740 he'll do like four or five sets, 00:35:26.830 --> 00:35:28.580 and it'll be a green shell, then a clear shell, 00:35:28.580 --> 00:35:29.740 or a bold shell, or whatever. 00:35:29.770 --> 00:35:32.060 And it's, I think part of it's just, you know, 00:35:32.100 --> 00:36:01.600 A, you're differentiating B, probably selling more of them to people. I probably shouldn't say this as a record store. I don't really care about color variations with the sections. Oh, no, not at all. It's kind of funny. Yeah. The stickers, though, to Jay's point, the black vinyl sticker on the jacket, I appreciate that as a retailer because when I'm listing it on Discogs, I don't have to guess what color it is. Oh, yeah. Definitely. 00:36:02.080 --> 00:36:31.700 That makes life a lot easier. Let me ask you this. Is there any reason or circumstance under which you've already heard the enslaved record? I haven't gotten to hear it yet. I've just heard the couple singles that they've released. Like I said, I should be getting my copies of the cassette early September, so I'm definitely going to get to hear it a bunch before it actually comes out. And you are bound to obviously not mail until release date or whatever. I mean, not that I'm not asking for myself. I would think we'd be getting it soon. Probably. 00:36:32.080 --> 00:37:02.040 You'll get the promo. Yeah, you'll probably get it before I do. My goal is to be able to ship them so that people have them as close to release date as possible, especially it's enslaved. So unsurprisingly, about half of our pre-orders so far have been going to Europe. So I'm hoping to get those shipped out about seven to 10 days before release date so that people can have it. How does that work? Because there are some vendors that they'll send stuff out and you'll get it. 00:37:02.100 --> 00:37:31.120 about four or five days before actual release date. What is the, is it obviously it's by label, the restriction on when you can send stuff out. I've had some labels send stuff to me two weeks early. They just forget them out, you know, and I'm curious how it is as a, you know, as a vendor, you know, as you're in the middle now, how that works for you guys. Yeah. So for most of the bigger stuff, we go through a one-stop distributor where basically we're getting new releases come out Friday. And for the most part, we get new releases. 00:37:32.120 --> 00:38:00.940 the day before. So they have control systems in place where we don't get them far enough in advance to sort of spill the beans or whatever. With smaller labels and ones that do more direct sales, I found that generally they don't really care as much about street dates. We work directly with a handful of labels. Whenever I order stuff from Dave at $20 spend, I'm like, oh, so should I wait to put this out? He's like, no, I don't really care. Just put it on the shelves and sell it. 00:38:02.500 --> 00:38:32.040 And then bigger labels, you know, like when we got the last Metallica album, they're like, you absolutely can't sell this until midnight, you know, and it was, I get it. Like basically the bigger, the scale you're at, the more restrictive they are with those. They were just doing everybody a favor though with that. So we had, we had a big party at the store and did a midnight release. We had like 40 people show up for that thing. That's great for you guys. That's awesome. Yeah. I still like it. 00:38:33.520 --> 00:39:02.060 Well, that load, reload. Yeah. It's a good thing. Will's not here because he would be totally in love with Grant. And furious at the same time. Literally frothing right now. Grant, do you ever get promos from record labels so you could listen to the album before you sell? That's weird, I think. You know, there was a couple labels I worked with that used to send us CDs 00:39:30.600 --> 00:39:32.060 I like 00:39:32.080 --> 00:40:02.040 them a lot, but it's not the same as dropping the needle on it. I listened to that record when it came in Thursday, and I'm like, this is just like blowing away listening to it digitally. So, you know, I use digital streaming services all the time, but it's more often to sort of get a taste of something or to listen to something specific that I don't have readily available. But like something that I'm really looking forward to, I'll sometimes check out a track or two, but more often than not, I'm just waiting to get 00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:30.120 that whole album. Right, right. Yeah. So Grant, I don't want to get personal, but I do like, what do you like metal-wise? Do you have a genre you like? Do you have bands you like that you gravitate towards? Yeah, tell us how you got into metal, too. Yeah. Good old thing. So I got into metal through, I guess, through hard rock. So growing up, I was listening to a lot of ACDC, Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses. 00:40:32.060 --> 00:41:00.860 I was trying to think about this, like some of the earlier metal releases that I bought. So I'm full disclosure, I'm 40 years old. So travel with me, if you will, back to, you know, the late 80s, early 90s. Like one of the first ones I remember getting and probably on cassette was Anthrax Sound of White Noise. Nice. I love that album. I do too, Marcus. That was my first Anthrax. John Bush, man, he's my favorite. 00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:29.080 I do remember the first death metal CD I ever bought, which was, and Markisan might appreciate this, Entombed Wolverine Blues. And why did I buy this? Because there was a special edition advertised in Marvel Comics with a Wolverine mini comic. That's right. Oh my God. So Marvel Comics is responsible for getting me into death. Fuck yes. You're going to have to repeat that in a minute when George comes back. 00:41:31.720 --> 00:42:01.640 And that's rare that comics and metal are crossover. I listen to most metal subgenres. I think like most people, I'm sort of a mood listener. There's stuff that I was more into six, seven, eight years ago that I'm not as into now. Some of the sludgier stuff or grind gore. I still listen to it, but not as much as I used to. These days, I'm primarily thrash. 00:42:02.460 --> 00:42:31.640 Some death metal, what they're calling traditional heavy metal, a little bit of power metal. Did I just miss the what do you actually listen to question that I've been waiting to ask? Yes. God damn it. I had to take a leak and get a beer. No, no, no. You caught the more important parts of it, but he got into assumed. What about easy listening, adult contemporary? Because I had wanted to ask, you know, well, how you got into metal, where you got into metal, 00:42:31.740 --> 00:43:00.540 What band started you? I missed all that. God damn it. Listen to the playback, George. Yeah, I don't know if you realize this, but we do record the show. I know. I mean, I'll hear it, of course. But since you didn't get to hear it, and you won't get to hear it until you're editing this, here's your teaser. It has something to do with Marvel Comics. Interesting. Yeah. I like how George went to the, that sounded like a game show contestant. 00:43:02.140 --> 00:43:31.400 It's funny, at my house, we are finally getting into the X-Men movies. This is a little bit of a spoiler, George, but I won't give too much. But there's a character I'm trying to get my son to like, and he's kind of lukewarm. And I'm like, no, you don't not like him. Like, he's the best. Well, that's the spoiler. He can't tell you. I can't tell you. But it has to do with death metal. Jesus Christ. Hey, Markisan there. I was like, oh, he's talking about something. This sounds like something I could step away for just a minute. 00:43:34.700 --> 00:44:01.100 The king of poor timing. Oh, well. That'd be fun. It's like you got something to look forward to now. Indeed. Indeed. All right. Well, John had something important to tell me. Yeah. You mentioned comics and metal. Well, something beat what we were talking about before, and that would be in 87, Joe Satriani with the Silver Surfer. Yeah. Surfing with the alien. So. That's right. So it is rare, but it has happened. And it will be happening again. 00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:02.200 Yeah, well. 00:44:02.890 --> 00:44:03.000 Yeah. 00:44:04.340 --> 00:44:13.420 I was going to say that earlier when we were talking about the color variants and stuff that I kind of got burned out on variants in the 90s thanks to comic books. 00:44:14.140 --> 00:44:19.280 I was like, no, I don't need six covers of the same goddamn issue as Spider-Man number one. 00:44:19.900 --> 00:44:20.060 Yeah. 00:44:20.440 --> 00:44:23.540 You know, and so I, you know, yes. 00:44:25.100 --> 00:44:29.520 I mean, up until then, I had been the sucker for all of that stuff. 00:44:29.940 --> 00:44:59.900 I was like, oh shit, I got foil embossed. Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. And, you know, at some point I just kind of snapped and I was like, I am buying one of something and that's it. And so if I have, when I was buying vinyl, I'm like, if it's red, it's red. I don't fucking care. You know? I personally only avoid clear vinyl. And that's largely because when I'm out spinning records at Delilah's or whatever bar I'm at, I can't see where the track is. 00:45:02.160 --> 00:45:29.560 So it's not out of any sonic thing. It's just like, I, I, there's a couple others that, that can get kind of awkward, but like for me, I'm like, I have to be able to see the grooves, even though for my own personal listening, I'm almost always just listening to an album all the way through, or at least decide all the way through. But the times that I take it out on the road, I need to drop the needle in the right spot. I gotta, I'd be able to see where that is. Yeah. I mean, we're all album guys too. Do you have a lot of customers who are song people? 00:45:32.700 --> 00:45:59.920 I mean I'll get people that are like I want to buy this album because I like this song but I seriously doubt that they're going home and like dropping the needle on track to you then picking it up and dropping it right back down there you know that's Spotify I still but I still I still will never understand those people and I don't and I'm not picking on them you know I I was thinking about this the other day and I don't know if anybody's ever said this to you but people have said it to me a couple times in my life where I'll be like you know like well what kind of music 00:45:59.960 --> 00:46:29.920 or whatever it comes up and they say i don't really like music you know what i mean or i'm not really into music and i'm like what what like what the fuck are you talking about like i mean do you eat and i don't mean like oh like i'm so like how do you not be into music at least casually even i don't get that i have a couple friends that are like that jay yeah and it is i mean and i'm not picking on them i'm just saying that is so antithetical to that's just everything that you are and everybody on this podcast too i mean you you know you just you're sociopaths 00:46:29.960 --> 00:46:30.960 They're sociopaths. 00:46:32.780 --> 00:46:51.380 It kind of weirds me out a little bit, but like, you guys were talking about sports earlier, and I haven't really followed any major sports in a long time, so it's sort of the same thing. You guys are like, I understand what you're saying, but I have no personal investment in knowing what any big team is doing. 00:46:51.660 --> 00:46:58.060 And I don't, you know, if you guys enjoy it, that's great. I'm not going to like, I'm not talking trash about it by any means. 00:46:58.600 --> 00:47:00.480 I'm the same way whenever they talk about baseball. 00:47:02.260 --> 00:47:18.020 And I get that, but for me, music, and this is this weird conceited I'm the center of the universe thing, but for me, music is somehow different than that. It's almost like a natural phenomenon or something like that. And I know some people don't like camping. I get it. You know what I mean? But this, I don't know. It's just so strange to me. 00:47:18.370 --> 00:47:28.020 Well, it's weird because music can sort of coexist with so many other things. You know, if you're watching a baseball game or watching a baseball game, you can have music on while you're washing your dishes. You can have music on while you're eating meal. 00:47:28.120 --> 00:47:58.080 You can have music on while you're doing so many other things. It's passive. You don't have to participate in it. You just have to be there. Right. And even baseball. Music's a big part of baseball. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, that's true. John Fogarty. For some reason, my wife looked up Walk On Songs today, and that's for the uninitiated. That's the song they play when the baird walks up to the plate, and they choose their own songs. You guys as well known in this podcast, somebody in Washington was using 00:47:58.680 --> 00:48:28.020 Who was that, by the way? What batter was that, George? I don't know. We'll know that. I mean, I know the players, but it wasn't one that I knew well. Actually, it was a pitcher. I think it was a pitcher, not a batter. I've never looked at these before, but my wife was looking at them, and she's neither a big metal fan nor a big baseball fan, but I don't know why she was interested. But anyway, and there were some great ones, too, like Cashmere by Led Zeppelin. Kazmier, the batter, Kazmier, who plays for I don't know who now, would play cashmere. 00:48:28.120 --> 00:48:57.120 There were like some good jokes in there. So. Well, I had that as a top five suggestion, you know, like what were our top five, you know, baseball theme songs be if we walked out on the field. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like that just for like us. Like what would your, you know, your personal walk on song. Okay. We're doing, we're doing. Where do we choose as our themes? Oh, yeah. That's totally. Yeah. You know, I tried at my wedding, I tried to get Barb to do the Imperial March, but. 00:48:59.240 --> 00:49:28.080 Hey Grant, did you happen to catch the recent Enslaved Chronicles of the Northbound Roadburn Festival stream that they put up recently? No, I've been, I think I just missed most of these streams, man. Like I watched a couple of them. I watched, was it The Sleigh at Home? I watched a chemist song from that. And I tuned in a little bit to the Metallica Mondays. I've tried 00:49:28.120 --> 00:49:57.060 to watch some of these live streams, but it's just such a different energy than being there. So I, you know, as much as I like Enslaved, I did sadly miss that one. Yeah, that was really good. All their shows that they've been putting up online have been excellent. It's nice for me because even in Hawaii, even if there wasn't a pandemic, I don't get any metal bands or any good bands here at all. So I'm kind of happy that we're going to have a little bit of a streaming. We get to see them perform live. 00:49:58.120 --> 00:50:27.900 And I'm hoping at some point they may release these on like Bandcamp or something. You know, some bands, not metal bands I follow, have been releasing a lot of live shows from previous years. Just, you know, when it's Bandcamp Friday, they'll release stuff just to generate a little revenue. And that'd be kind of cool because they played 793 at the last enslaved show. And I would love to get that live. Yeah. Well, that was a cool one because it was the, all the fan votes. Yeah. They did five fan votes and then they added two songs. 00:50:27.980 --> 00:50:57.840 It's additional to it, yeah. Well, what they should, they've been doing, they got a series of three for this. What they should do is put all of them, like on a DVD or something that comes with a, you know, download code or CD or something like that and install that. Yeah. I would buy that. They, it's not just like one guy with a camera. They, the camera work is really good on theirs and the one for Aranti Pazuzu was really good too. Yes. The camera works. Yes, yes, yes. At least they're putting a little more into it than just sitting there and one camera on them, 00:50:58.000 --> 00:51:27.940 only the whole time and they're just kind of standing there. It's moving around and giving you good close-ups of them playing and stuff like that. Well, great. I wanted to ask you about Record Store Day because that's a really big event for record stores and it's a bit different this year. How is that going to go and are you participating in it? What do you expect that to be like? Yeah, it's very, very different. So in past years, we've sort of done what a lot of stores do and then we open up 00:51:27.980 --> 00:51:57.940 early and we have the exclusive releases in. We'll get like 100 to 200 people lining up outside, which obviously we and any other record store wanted to avoid this year. So it was supposed to happen in April, got pushed to June. What they ended up doing is, for those that aren't aware, is they took the 600 or so releases that were scheduled for release in April. A few of them kind of dropped off for whatever reason. Either the label pulled them and decided to release 00:51:57.960 --> 00:51:59.760 They can release it independently or 00:52:00.700 --> 00:52:01.980 sometimes Record Store Day does 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:03.120 something where they'll do like 00:52:04.340 --> 00:52:05.920 so-and-so's new album is coming out in June 00:52:06.100 --> 00:52:07.900 but you can get it in April on this limited edition 00:52:08.140 --> 00:52:10.160 red vinyl and by this point since the regular 00:52:10.300 --> 00:52:11.560 release has already come out they 00:52:11.880 --> 00:52:14.040 sort of scrapped the Record Store Day limited 00:52:14.220 --> 00:52:14.640 one or whatever. 00:52:15.800 --> 00:52:17.920 But the bulk of it ended up getting split 00:52:17.960 --> 00:52:18.820 into three release dates. 00:52:19.720 --> 00:52:21.520 So they're calling them Record Store Day Drops. 00:52:22.220 --> 00:52:23.860 This is the last Saturday of the month 00:52:24.060 --> 00:52:25.580 for August, September, and October. 00:52:26.100 --> 00:52:27.440 So the first one is two weeks from today. 00:52:28.840 --> 00:52:56.380 All right. Two weeks. It's August 29th. I don't know when it's actually going to be out there for people to listen to. That's exactly two weeks from today. Probably be out before then. Okay. So the first one's August 29th, and it's about 175 official titles. There's always sort of some hangers-on for unofficial titles. And we actually just today sort of released our master plan to the world. 00:52:58.020 --> 00:53:27.300 So we are having people text our store starting at eight o'clock in the morning and people are going to text us with their order and their email address and we're going to text them back and say what number we received their text in since everything has a time stamp and then we're going to email them an invoice for everything that we had in stock. So let's say you're the eighth person to text and you wanted the Bowie changes now and we got five copies and the first five people wanted that, well you're not getting copies. 00:53:27.500 --> 00:53:55.980 But maybe you're getting the eight other ones. They send you an invoice, you pay your invoice, then you come by and pick it up. They don't come in the store, it's already paid for, just a curbside pickup. But this still maintains the integrity of first come, first serve, and limit one of each title per person. I like that, because I hate standing in line for two hours to get in there to go, nope, we had one copy, we sold it two hours ago, you waited for nothing. Right. Now, do you have to pick it up, or will you mail it? 00:53:57.520 --> 00:54:27.480 to pick it up. So one of the rules for Record Store Day is we're allowed to put stuff online at noon, I believe. It might be noon Eastern. I'd have to double check that. But for the first couple hours, it's supposed to maintain the integrity of supporting your local independent store. So all the text messages that we get for those first hours up until that cutoff point, we're specifying you have to be local and you have to come and pick it up. You don't have to come and pick it up that day. In fact, we're encouraging people to 00:54:27.520 --> 00:54:57.480 not do that maybe come by tomorrow maybe come by the day after that um is uh is one of the other rules is one of the other rules of record store day don't talk about record store day there is no record store day that was a that was a rule i would i would be talking way less you'd be out of record store day club by now well and also please please text at least one of those people and tell them how come you don't already have this album i mean come on british steel is on there like how do you know it's a picture disc whatever 00:54:57.680 --> 00:55:27.380 Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah. But they usually do, they press, there's almost always a priest one, isn't there? Not always, but it's usually Alice Cooper one, a priest one. You know, there's been a lot of Dio lately. Yeah, there's a Dio picture, like shape picture disc, I think. Yeah, Jay. The second Fight album, I think they did the first one last year. So if you guys remember Ron Balfour, it's post-Judas Priest and Rodgers. There's your priest right there. So Jay, when- Oh, that's right, and this British seal you mentioned. Yeah, George, sorry. Sorry. I was going to say, 00:55:27.500 --> 00:55:56.380 You know, the automatic response to your how come you didn't already have that is, oh, I do already have it. I just want this variant. Yes, indeed. No, this one's for eBay. Awesome. Well, I mean, I can always ask a ton of questions, but do you guys have any more for Grant? I had a couple just asked him what some of his favorite metal albums are so far this year and what some of his favorite books might be because they'd sell a lot of books there. 00:55:56.420 --> 00:56:25.360 But do it. Do it. Do those. All right. You should ask him the questions, though, so he knows what to say. I mean, you only have to mention a couple. You know, what are some of your favorite metal albums so far this year that you really dig? And what are some of your favorite books that have come out that you really like? All right. In no particular order, favorite albums this year, Aransi Pazuzu, Midnight, 00:56:28.460 --> 00:56:56.380 It came out months ago, so maybe you guys have forgotten. Haunt, I really dug that one. I think what else is coming out. Those would probably be my top record picks just off the top of my head. I wasn't prepared for this question. That's pretty good. I figured it was okay putting you on the spot since you own a record store. Yeah. Well, you figured wrong. Book-wise, it's, you know, I don't feel as good. 00:57:24.120 --> 00:57:25.700 I think it's going to translate 00:57:25.700 --> 00:57:55.680 in a very interesting way to film. I'm reading a book right now, so I can't say a story all the way through, but I'm like 85% through. It's a book called Infinite Detail, and it's basically by the author's Tim Mon, I think I'm saying his name right, British guy, came out last year, and it's basically like, what happens if the internet goes away? And spoiler alert, bad. Another one that came out last year that was just like mind-blowing in its 00:57:57.320 --> 00:58:25.480 It's reading of what's going on right now. There's this book called Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker. And it's about a pandemic and people can't go to live concerts anymore. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And it's like, it's kind of scary to read right now, but it's super, super well written. Wow. Well, see, we put you on the spot and you gave us some great recommendations. Thanks for that. Yeah. The whole no internet thing. 00:58:25.700 --> 00:58:55.260 I recently went through that this past year where I dropped and broke my phone and I did not have a phone for almost 24 hours and it was like the absolutely worst day of my life. I couldn't text. I'd have questions and I'd be like, I don't know the answers. It was horrible. So yeah, I mean, I guess just maybe let folks know where they can find Bucket of Blood online, maybe your social media. 00:58:55.700 --> 00:59:25.680 before we move into news and stuff. Yeah, totally. So best place to hit us up to give us your money is www.bucketoblood.com. We are on Instagram under the handle Bucket O'Blood. We are on Twitter under the handle Bucket O'Blood. So you can see funny pictures of me making goofy faces and hear me rail about how the government is ruining the post office. We're also on Facebook. You can look us up as 00:59:25.720 --> 00:59:52.220 Bucut, O'Blood, books and records. And yeah, all the information about whatever sort of virtual events we're able to do is on there. And, you know, we're a small operation and we're very customer focused. So we get communications through email, phone calls, text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all day long. And we always respond to them and we're just happy to talk to you. 00:59:53.320 --> 01:00:23.120 You know, one thing, I've never asked this, I can't believe it, but I don't, did Bucket O'Blood the name, is that from a Dio track? You know, I can't say what it came from as the store already had the name. My understanding, the original owner of the store picked that name because it was sort of a catch-all term for cops for particularly seedy dive bars. Huh. Interesting. Yeah, because the song Shivers from, 01:00:23.240 --> 01:00:52.880 The Master of the Moon. Bucket of Blood is on there. So I just wondered. I've been listening to D over the last week. So it came up like, holy shit, I wonder if that's where the name Bucket of Blood came from. Well, the term's also in the traditional song Staggerly, which most people, at least that talk to us about it in the store, are familiar with it from the Nick Cave rendition. Oh, is that a Nick Cave reference? Maybe. There's also the movie starring Dick Miller, 01:00:53.240 --> 01:01:22.880 the Roger Cohn movie about the hipster that makes statues, but he's actually making them by just covering people with clay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a great name. It looks good on a t-shirt, Marcus. Yes. We'll get to that t-shirt check. Yeah. I did like the Facebook page and I did go to the Discogs page and, you know, just flip around a little bit. And I'm a reform. 01:01:23.240 --> 01:01:51.760 You know, vinyl junkie. And so I'm looking at it, and I'm kind of doing this thing. The Dave Chappelle, like, I'm just going to look a little. I'm not going to buy anything. I'm just going to look a little. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. I got to get a beer for you. Can't do beer check without beer. But we could start. 01:01:53.220 --> 01:02:23.200 Well, we got to do the t-shirt check. Oh, yeah, seriously. Well, we could start with Grant and hope that he's back in time, or we could just wait a minute. You know what? I'm going to replenish as well. Sounds like a plan. I'll just take one second to the bathroom. You're listening to the Metalheads Podcast, the morning show you can listen to anytime. All right, well, let's do a t-shirt and beer check, and we're going to start with Grant. Okay. My t-shirt is 01:02:24.020 --> 01:02:51.280 If you guys aren't familiar with them, they're a speed metal band from somewhere in Quebec. They put out a record late last year on Svark Records. I can't remember who did their one before that, but I picked this up when I saw them last year. Before that record came out, they were on tour with CX, which weirdly enough, I'd seen them together at a festival. I know them. So Warsaw is a little bit less, because CX has the operatic and diamond vocals. 01:02:53.240 --> 01:03:22.220 like dirty, straightforward, speed metal. Cool. Awesome. I am drinking. I never know if I'm saying it right. I anger. It's Oktoberfest. I'm rocking the Oktoberfest already. Yeah. I was in the beer store the other day and I sent the guys a picture of all the pumpkin beers that are out now in August. As well as a picture of all the pumpkin food, related food in the stores as well. Yeah. 01:03:23.220 --> 01:03:53.160 So, all right, Mark is on. Yeah, well, I'm rocking my badass limited edition Bucket of Blood 666 feet apart t-shirt. Suck ass. Nice. And I actually bought two of these because they're awesome. That's super awesome, dude. That's nice. Yeah, and because I just always want to support Bucket of Blood because it's one of my favorite places. So I drank before, I just got another beer. I drank Brimming Horn, Golden Tears, Honeymead, that I got in the mail just the other day. 01:03:53.240 --> 01:04:21.960 It's quite tasty. I'm actually talking to Briminghorn about doing the special mead for the By the Horns comic. So I think we have the ingredients. You're cross promoting with everybody, man. I like it. It's fun. And now I'm drinking Coven, a Russian Imperial stop from a droid theory, which is pretty badass. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Cover. All right. Nice. 01:04:23.240 --> 01:04:51.340 Celtic Frost shirt bought in decibel last year. And I'm drinking Nightmare Men Quirida, a double India Paleo with galaxy comet and Polaris hops. It's quite delicious. Nice. Polaris. And John. So my shirt is a decibel horrendous. It's horrendous. Yes. 01:04:53.220 --> 01:05:21.740 and it's a bunch of skeletons sitting around drinking beers. That's a pretty sweet shirt, John. Kind of hard to see because my camera's at the bottom of my laptop. It's in your bottom. And then I'm drinking from Hidden Springs Aleworks, a Indian pale ale called Bear Lasers. And interestingly enough, it has a bear on it. Wow, it's like Chopping Mall. That is so Chopping Mall. Yeah. 01:05:22.600 --> 01:05:52.500 And it's got like a skull and a pizza and like a bomb and broken bones and honeybees and stuff like that. You need to drink that while you're listening to the Bayer Mace. That's what I was going to say. That's awesome. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. All right. Jay, was that coffee you were drinking? Yeah, a blue bottle of coffee, post-supper drink. My beer is chilling in the fridge. I'm going to watch the A's game after the cast. But I saw a creator shirt on there. 01:05:52.620 --> 01:06:22.580 I think. Yeah, I got the endless pain t-shirt on today. Kind of wore it for Will. Forgot he wasn't going to be here. Tough luck. It's white. I ordered it. It's white. I've been ordering as many white shirts as I can for walks. It's hotter balls here today. We're right in the middle of what they're calling a heat storm. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, this is a new thing. But as John can report to you, we have this wonderful thing called the Bay. And the air conditioned air is coming in off the Bay as I speak. So it's starting to cool down. But the 01:06:22.640 --> 01:06:52.000 Beer will come later. People who don't know that that's called fog. Actually, it's one of those days right now where it's a little too hot for fog, but the cool air is still there. But in any case, and then I'll be sitting down with the game after that and have a couple beers then. We're on home. Actually, let me give a shout out to them. I have to say, I ordered this from Hell's Headbangers, and I've ordered so much stuff during the pandemic, and I just want to say they are so quick with their deliveries. They delivered it before the end of the podcast, didn't they? Yeah. 01:06:52.600 --> 01:07:22.320 No, and I really appreciate that, and not to speak about one of our guest competitors, but they had a few things that I could not find anywhere else, and I ordered again from them like the following week. Well, they do all the incantation stuff, too. Not all of it, because that stuff jumps back and forth between labels and stuff, but I did get a bunch of incantation stuff from them. They have the shirts, like I got the shirts from them and stuff, but they had some battery records that I didn't have for whatever reason on vinyl, and just whatever. I've spent a bunch of money there recently. Well, Sadbanger's great. We hung out with them. 01:07:23.920 --> 01:07:52.560 We see them at the East Coast stuff, but we've never introduced ourselves to anything in any profound way. But now I'm suddenly a big fan. Cool. I'm wearing my Thrasenblatt Great Bronze Forest shirt, and I started with a local. Surprisingly, both of my beers are local, and they keep getting closer. Nepente Brewing Company, which is out of Baltimore, 01:07:53.140 --> 01:08:22.580 And this is the Alpaca Fracas Double IPA. Some pretty evil looking alpacas there. That was tasty. And then I moved on to Black Death, which apparently, I was reading the side of the can, I just said Black Death, you know, Skull bought it. It's actually brewed by Mad Science Brewing Company, Adamstown, Maryland, which is less than two miles from where I'm 01:08:25.180 --> 01:08:27.060 I could walk there in like 10 minutes. 01:08:28.319 --> 01:08:29.580 Yeah, that's as low close I guess. 01:08:30.000 --> 01:08:33.339 Yeah, I did not realize that it was. 01:08:34.680 --> 01:08:37.140 But it's a black IPA. 01:08:38.740 --> 01:08:39.080 Tasty. 01:08:41.080 --> 01:08:42.799 All right, well let's move on to the news. 01:08:55.200 --> 01:09:11.980 Of which there's not a lot of good news stuff going on. So first off, Martin Birch died at the age of 71. Did anybody see a cause of death? They've been pretty quiet about that. I think his heart stopped. Okay. 01:09:12.920 --> 01:09:42.299 I didn't see anything now. Most times they don't say. At least for a couple of days. I know we're all going to probably say some nice things about him, but I do feel honor-bound to tech Pete Way under this as well. That's right. He was only two years younger than him, but in any case, as we all know, Martin Burch produced all the great Maiden records. He produced Heaven and Hell. I believe he produced Mob Rules. He produced all the Bestie Purple records, Rainbow records. 01:09:42.900 --> 01:10:11.680 and on and on and on and on. The guy was, well, he was a legend. I mean, he, I mean, and by the way, producing with Maiden, he really helped with the sequencing of those records. So the reason that he's responsible for a lot of the eighties, cause like those Maiden records always go, killer opener, single, you know what I mean? And then they like, like he, I mean, nobody meaning he like, um, he, he helped the flow of the albums by choosing the song order. And those, those albums all flow in exactly the same way. And that's got everything to do with Martin Burge saying, no, no, no, no, no. 01:10:12.900 --> 01:10:15.660 or whatever it is. Anyway, sorry to hear it. 01:10:16.320 --> 01:10:16.520 Yeah. 01:10:17.660 --> 01:10:21.480 And 71 is not that old. I mean, it's older, but it's still not crazy old. 01:10:21.960 --> 01:10:27.240 Well, Lemmy only lived to 70 and look at the way he lived. And I know Martin Burch didn't live like that. You know, not like that. 01:10:28.320 --> 01:10:30.380 I think Lemmy got the better end of that stick then. 01:10:31.400 --> 01:10:33.280 Yeah, I did. I'm surprised he out of Pete Way. 01:10:34.820 --> 01:10:37.040 In years, you know what I mean? But whatever. 01:10:38.380 --> 01:11:07.760 And so, by the way, Pete Wade, for those people who listen and wouldn't know, was the bassist of the almighty UFO in its best moments. Pete's been out of service for a while, and it's because his health has been questionable. He was waiting for a transplant of some sort, if I'm not mistaken. Apparently he had some sort of accident, like two months ago, that he just never recovered from. That fucked him up. Yeah, sorry to hear that. Yeah. So, yeah, that sucked too. Also, one of my takeaways from the Martin Birch thing. Sorry to cut you off. No, go ahead. 01:11:08.380 --> 01:11:38.200 Yeah, just jump in any time, Grant. I read that he retired after Fear of the Dark. So he retired when he was 44. Matt, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong, a legend. He contributed a lot, but I'm hoping I can retire at 44. I just turned 45 like a few days ago. Yeah, and I'm sure he retired quite comfortably, quite obviously, you know what I mean? But I mean, he's like the big 80s metal producer name in my book. 01:11:39.040 --> 01:12:08.360 And probably most other metalheads. And he's a name we all knew. I mean, why the fuck should we know producers? I think if you're an audiophile, okay, sure, you're going to know. But he also showed up at so many interviews and so many things and so many main documentaries. I mean, I know what he sounds like when he talks. I've seen him interviewed a thousand times. He was a very visible part of the metal community. So actually, let me just say, too, that I'll tell some funny Martin Birch stories, actually, that I know that are 01:12:08.400 --> 01:12:37.220 just from a Maiden documentary. And one of them was that when they made the first Maiden record, they then they got hooked up with him for him to do Killers. And he was like, how come you guys didn't ask me to do the first one? And they were like, we were scared, man. We thought they didn't think they were worth it. He was like, fuck off. You know what I mean? Like, just come. But then another good story was, and this was when Martin Burch himself told, or no, no, well, maybe it was Bruce told it, but it's on the Maiden early years documentary. And they got on the, 01:12:38.380 --> 01:13:07.840 What is it? The prisoner when we want information, information, that whole thing. That's, as you guys probably know, it's from the prisoner. That's Patrick McGowan. And that's not from the show, actually. They actually called Patrick McGowan and asked him to do it. And so they were sitting there, like at the desk or something, like the mixing desk. And he was like, and he said, well, I think I can get a hold of him, Martin Burch. And they got somebody lined up the phone call and Patrick McGowan called and Martin Burch was like, yeah, so I've got these fellas here. We're making this record. 01:13:07.940 --> 01:13:12.480 and we're just wondering if you wouldn't mind if we did this and and patrick mcguinn said do it 01:13:13.120 --> 01:13:16.360 they hung up the phone and then martin burge was really unsettled and they all looked at him 01:13:16.440 --> 01:13:21.740 they're like dude why why did that make you so so nervous and he looked at iron maiden and he said 01:13:21.850 --> 01:13:29.020 because he's a legend and famous not like you cunts which i love i just think it's a wonderful story 01:13:29.090 --> 01:13:36.239 that martin mcguinn was unsettled him that's fantastic i wish they would have had him on the first maiden album 01:13:36.780 --> 01:13:44.000 I mean, too, because that would be that would that record would hold a different place in my heart. Yeah, if it did it. Yeah, it would sound good. 01:13:47.300 --> 01:13:48.660 I don't want to miss words. 01:13:49.240 --> 01:13:50.360 That's my point, Jay. 01:13:51.980 --> 01:13:53.120 That's where we're going with that. 01:13:53.200 --> 01:13:53.260 Yeah. 01:13:55.780 --> 01:13:58.120 Well, our next news item isn't any happier. 01:13:59.460 --> 01:14:04.640 LG Petrov of Entombed has been diagnosed with, quote unquote, 01:14:04.900 --> 01:14:34.180 Uncurable Cancer, which apparently it's bile duct cancer. So it's inoperable. They're doing chemo, but I think the best they can hope to do is hold it at bay. So all our best to him. I'm a big Entombed fan and Entombed AD. And Petra, there's a GoFundMe for him to help him through the treatment process. You know what? I'll do that. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's GoFundMe.com. 01:14:34.560 --> 01:15:04.040 backslash support dash Petrov. Wow. It's a fucking memorized. Johnny on the spot with the URL. Yeah. You know, Converge is also pitching in to help him by donating 100% of proceeds from their pound for pound, the Wolverine Blues Sessions EP. So it's like, it's an EP that features five covers of Entombe's Wolverine Blues with five different vocalists. 01:15:04.300 --> 01:15:34.160 Is it out already? I think so, yeah. And Aaron Turner's on there. Nice. Jacob Bannon from Converge, of course. I can't remember all the different people on there. I think somebody from Old Man Gloom is on there. Oh, At The Gates, Tomas Lindbergh's on there, too. Cool. So 100% of the profits from that are going towards Petrov's GoFundMe. Speaking of, just sidetracking here, speaking of At The Gates, 01:15:34.520 --> 01:16:03.900 Have you seen the band on Bandcamp called At The Plates? Yes, I saw that. The album's called Starch Enemy. Their logo is very At The Gates-like. There's only one song available yet because it's a pre-order, but it's got to be like a sludge kind of thing. The songs are like Pull The Pork and Mock The Croissant and The Mind's Rib Eye. Mock The Croissant, that's awesome. 01:16:06.560 --> 01:16:07.360 So, uh, 01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:08.580 uh, 01:16:08.580 --> 01:16:10.000 Canada's corpse gives you the munchies, 01:16:10.040 --> 01:16:10.260 then you, 01:16:11.100 --> 01:16:11.500 yeah, 01:16:12.980 --> 01:16:13.380 exactly. 01:16:16.060 --> 01:16:16.140 Yeah. 01:16:16.260 --> 01:16:17.360 That's sad about Petrov, 01:16:17.560 --> 01:16:17.820 you know, 01:16:19.060 --> 01:16:20.440 you hate when you hear it's, 01:16:20.680 --> 01:16:20.820 you know, 01:16:21.080 --> 01:16:21.820 not curable. 01:16:22.440 --> 01:16:22.560 Yeah. 01:16:24.480 --> 01:16:25.600 So I guess we'll see, 01:16:25.880 --> 01:16:27.400 but best of luck to him and, 01:16:27.520 --> 01:16:27.580 uh, 01:16:28.000 --> 01:16:28.440 hope he, 01:16:28.540 --> 01:16:28.680 uh, 01:16:29.460 --> 01:16:31.060 hope he's feeling better and doing better soon. 01:16:31.780 --> 01:16:31.980 Yeah. 01:16:33.460 --> 01:16:33.680 All right. 01:16:33.740 --> 01:17:02.740 Moving towards more joyous news, or maybe not so much, but Gojira released a new song called Another World. It was all right, I guess. I didn't actually listen to the whole thing. I'm kind of off the Gojira track these days. Kind of. I mean, I thought the last one, was that Magma? That was all right. I like Magma a lot. Yeah. 01:17:03.720 --> 01:17:33.260 You guys have that pretty high on your I think it was number one to be honest with you dude. That's before me but I think you guys had it pretty high. That's like my number nine or ten I think that year. Yeah I think it was on my own. Did anybody else listen to it? I didn't listen to it. Yeah it's fine. I mean I'm not going to pass judgment until I hear the whole album because they haven't done anything in the past that's made me like not want to listen to them but I thought the video was actually kind of cool because of the ending. I was going to say. Yeah I did it. 01:17:33.720 --> 01:17:34.560 Yeah. 01:17:35.400 --> 01:17:36.380 Reminded me of, 01:17:37.300 --> 01:17:37.800 fuck, 01:17:37.890 --> 01:17:38.360 what is that movie, 01:17:38.580 --> 01:17:39.160 Keanu Reeves? 01:17:41.540 --> 01:17:41.800 Where's the, 01:17:42.760 --> 01:17:43.340 it's animated? 01:17:44.240 --> 01:17:44.500 Oh, 01:17:46.120 --> 01:17:46.900 thank you. 01:17:47.060 --> 01:17:47.660 Scanner Darkly. 01:17:47.850 --> 01:17:48.180 Thank you. 01:17:49.260 --> 01:17:54.080 It's apparently was inspired by the French version, 01:17:54.550 --> 01:17:56.380 which is the original version of Planet of the Apes. 01:17:56.740 --> 01:17:56.940 Right on. 01:17:57.200 --> 01:18:00.980 So I did dig at the end at the Eiffel Tower was a remnant, 01:18:01.440 --> 01:18:01.680 you know, 01:18:01.800 --> 01:18:31.580 It reminded me of the Statue of Liberty at the end of the film with Charlton Heston. That's right. I forgot you. Yeah, I like the song fine. It's just a little bit of a too much of a repetitive chorus to me. It feels more like a radio friendly type metal. Yeah, but it was heavy. There was heavy parts to it. They said something before Magma came out that they were not dumbing down their music, but making their music more accessible to fans that weren't into complex metal. And I got a little nervous when I heard that. 01:18:31.800 --> 01:19:01.480 Black Albums. Yeah, but Magma's way better than the Black Album. Oh, yeah. But maybe not this one. Maybe this one's their Black Album. Magma's a good album, and the songs played live are fucking really good. Yeah, I mean, George, you can't... We saw them, and the songs off the album were great live, so I'm hoping that's the same case here. Yeah. What do you think, Grant? I gave it a listen. I didn't watch the video, but it sounds like it may enjoy it. It sounds definitely up my alley. 01:19:01.800 --> 01:19:31.720 I don't know to me. It sounded like a Gojira song. I like Gojira. I don't love Gojira. They're kind of like Tool. I hear a song, I know it's a Gojira song, I know kind of where it's going to go. It's really good. They've released like seven albums, six albums to Tool's one album. I almost added a news item because Danny Carey said they were talking about doing an EP, but I didn't want to spread fake news because I was like, you just released an album last year. Give it another five. 01:19:31.780 --> 01:19:36.200 Yeah, but they gotta start the process now, and they've got 10 years to get this done. 01:19:37.740 --> 01:19:41.880 I don't think I listened to the last one or two Gojira albums. 01:19:42.400 --> 01:19:46.700 I really like them with Mars to Sirius and the Impulse. 01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:47.280 We have all flesh. 01:19:48.660 --> 01:19:49.580 Yeah, we have all flesh. 01:19:50.060 --> 01:19:51.380 Those are the two I really dig, too. 01:19:51.940 --> 01:19:52.780 Yeah, it's good. 01:19:53.480 --> 01:19:53.820 Don't get me wrong. 01:19:54.280 --> 01:19:56.160 I think anybody that likes Gojira is going to like it. 01:19:57.080 --> 01:19:58.120 Oh, I don't know. 01:19:58.240 --> 01:19:59.520 There's a lot of fans that didn't like it. 01:20:03.620 --> 01:20:29.520 Never underestimate the vitriol of fans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember. I'm old. So I've already forgotten who mentioned a thing about no internet. And I heard that. I was like, yeah, I'm really not going to miss it that much because then I don't have to listen to everybody bitch every day. Like my shoelace, bro. Fuck the government. You know, it's like, I'm just going to have to drive over to your house, stand in front of your house and just yell things at you. 01:20:29.580 --> 01:20:59.540 you. God damn it, John. Trust me, that won't last long because I'll take care of that. I'll point you to somebody else's house to go yell all day long. So next, Venomous Concept featuring members of Napalm, Death and Brutal Truth are releasing their new album, Politics vs. the Erection, on August 28th, which I am hoping we can get a promo for before I go on my road trip next week because I really want to hear 01:20:59.580 --> 01:21:29.380 I really like Venomous Concept. The album artwork is a picture of what's his name from Mad Magazine? Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine. Half the face is Alfred E. Newman, half the face is Donald Trump. That's all you really need to know. But yeah, I dig Venomous Concept. It's kind of grindcore-y stuff. It's good shit. Just grind punk almost, really. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought of the single, I listened to the single George Lemonade. 01:21:29.560 --> 01:21:58.760 It was pretty good. I like that as a political bent, and especially in an important election year. I'm not as into the grind punk or grind core as you are, but that was all right. I like their stuff a lot. Benediction is going to release their first new album in quite some time, I believe. It's called Scriptures. It's coming out on October 16th. Honestly, I meant to do more homework on this because I don't know who's in the band now. 01:22:00.220 --> 01:22:29.540 Dave, what's his name, that used to sing with them, that was in both Roar? Is he in the band currently? He's the original singer. Yeah. All right. Well, hopefully that'll be good then, because I dig him. Unfortunately, Will's not here, but the rumor is Clutch will probably start recording a new album this winter. So, sorry, Will, you're not here, too. Just so Grant knows, so Will put a Clutch album as his number one on the 01:22:29.580 --> 01:22:58.380 top 25 medalists at the end of the year. And everybody gives him shit because we don't really think Clutch is a metal band. We all love Clutch. Nothing wrong with Clutch. We don't think of him as a metal band at all. So he gets shit all the time for Clutch. Yeah. Also, of particular interest to Will, because they're one of his favorite bands, Obituary is working on a quote-unquote monster new album in quarantine. So looking forward to hearing that whenever that happens. 01:22:58.580 --> 01:23:28.340 And I'm just joking here, but if Will was here, I was going to tell this joke, which was, you forgot, I noticed that you made a little note there on the script, and you forgot the R in boring, George. I wrote Will boing. So now John can boing, because our last news item is that Devin Townsend says he is working on a new weird alien-sounding album called Lightwork. 01:23:28.580 --> 01:23:57.300 First of all, Devin using the word weird. I mean, that's like calling water wet, right? Yeah, this might be his most straightforward album possibly. I mean, it's not even news. That guy's always working on something. I know. He's just constantly working on things. I was going to say the same thing, Marcus, on to the point where the only thing that makes it news is the word at the end, light work. You could tweet every day, Devin Thompson says he's working on a new Weird Alien sounding album, and that would be accurate, whatever day it was. 01:23:58.120 --> 01:24:27.320 But you put a title on it, I guess it's news. Well, I saw this and I thought it is Zeltoid 3 at this point, but I guess not. So. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, perhaps it exists in the Zeltoid universe, John. We shall see. It might. I mean. The Zeltoid cinematic universe. I mean, the guy wrote an album about an alien who came to Earth looking for coffee, you know, so. So there you go. I mean, it's alien sounding. So I guess this is weirder. So. All right. 01:24:28.120 --> 01:24:56.420 But apparently, the Black Album celebrated its 29th anniversary. Which, to be honest, that's a long time ago now. It's hard to believe that that album next year will be 30 years old. My 30th high school reunion was supposed to be yesterday. That's crazy. And I remember the first time we talked about it, we were all playing basketball in one of the gyms right on campus. 01:24:58.100 --> 01:25:28.060 It's not that bad. And we looked at him and just like, dude, seriously, this is bad. You know, we were going back and forth. And that just seems like yesterday. For the record, Grant, I am a big fan of the Black Album. I understand people's grievances with it. And I don't care because I'm a Metallica fan. Now, if you want to talk saying anger, I can get on board with hating that shit. But I like Metallica. Black Album is in my bottom half of their albums. But I did, in the interest of its anniversary, listen to it. 01:25:28.120 --> 01:25:56.060 all the way through for the first time in probably 20 or so years. There's something I'd never, ever, ever have to listen to again. It would be funny if it was 20 years. I was really hoping you'd say it for the first time in 29 years. I mean, I will agree it's not their best album, but if it's on, I'll listen to it. There's some solid stuff on there. I think Holier Than Thou is a great song. I think Through the Never is a great song. Yeah, good stuff. 01:25:58.120 --> 01:26:27.080 If I ever hear, you know, wherever I may roam or Nothing Else Matters again, I wouldn't mind jamming one of our inflated-branded pencils here. Nice. I mean, one of the interesting things about it, too, is that it's the 29th anniversary, and it re-entered the Billboard 200 chart and sold a shit ton of albums. Way more. I think they mention in one article I read, releases from Five Finger Death Punch. 01:26:28.120 --> 01:26:56.740 Ozzy, Lamb of God, and Tool. It outsold all of those combined on that last week. And that's just 29 next year. What's going to happen? We're going to get the box set. I'll be honest. I heard that they're doing two. They keep getting bigger and bigger. The Anjustice for All one was massive. I heard that from the Black O'Neill put it into two sets. Nobody's going to fork over $600. No. It's interesting this came up because 01:26:57.620 --> 01:27:25.120 One of the reasons why I dislike the album so much now is just because of Bob Rock. After watching all the documentary stuff in those sessions. But now I'm kind of like, you know, I kind of wish he had actually been involved for Injustice for All because we might actually have a bass on that album. You know, and it might sound polished, but at least it would sound better than it still does now. Yeah. So he probably would shit that album up too, but I mean. 01:27:25.440 --> 01:27:25.600 Wow. 01:27:26.680 --> 01:27:31.380 I gotta tell you I get I'm so frustrated you mentioned that box set and I won't even go 01:27:31.520 --> 01:27:35.660 anywhere near that thing because they didn't do anything to try to improve that sound so 01:27:36.880 --> 01:27:42.880 so it won't be on your top five packages list then well it's too bad because it is it's a pretty badass 01:27:43.660 --> 01:27:50.660 release I mean it was pretty awesome what they did it's just I can't listen knowing this story and how Lars just 01:27:51.100 --> 01:27:55.620 continuously doubles down on I'm not involved in that yes you were 01:27:55.640 --> 01:28:25.580 Stop it. Yeah. So. And I love that album, too. So. All right. Let's move on to our new releases. First up is the new Deep Purple album. Whoosh. This is their, I believe, 21st album. And, you know, I was not expecting much. 01:28:26.840 --> 01:28:27.680 It's not bad. 01:28:27.880 --> 01:28:31.500 But I put it on the other day, and I was like, this is really good. 01:28:32.510 --> 01:28:32.600 Same. 01:28:33.260 --> 01:28:33.640 I liked it. 01:28:34.420 --> 01:28:37.120 I mean, there's one or two songs where I'm like, meh. 01:28:37.320 --> 01:28:39.920 But for the most part, I was like, this is really catchy shit. 01:28:40.620 --> 01:28:44.940 It's actually pretty par for modern Deep Purple output, to be honest with you. 01:28:44.970 --> 01:28:46.620 I mean, people, Steve Morris really does. 01:28:47.900 --> 01:28:52.300 He's sort of got like the guy who replaced Piggy and Boybot. 01:28:52.380 --> 01:28:52.680 You know what I mean? 01:28:52.770 --> 01:28:54.700 Like, he is kind of got a richie. 01:28:54.820 --> 01:29:23.760 He does the kind of Indian scale minor key thing that Richie does. And so it was, but without copying him. And so that, you know, they've moved on as a real band for the last 10 years, you know, and I like it. I thought it was good too. I won't listen to it a ton, but. So, Jay, I'm going to add to my, what is that list you have all our catchphrases? And you know, my one is, you know, Scott Travis has been in Judas Priest for 30 years. I'm going to add to that now, you know, Steve Morris has been in deep purple for 30 years. 01:29:25.500 --> 01:29:54.760 And that's entirely true, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was fine. I really like that the cover depicts a deep purple astronaut being disintegrated by the Thanos snap in Avengers Infinity War. Well, you know, that's actually, which track is that? It's really cool that Earth Smite is heroes saved him, saved the band, and then they came back to record this album. I just want to say that. Man Alive. The song Man Alive is kind of about that. 01:29:55.300 --> 01:30:24.760 Yeah. And that's one of the good, one of the better songs on the record too. Yeah. Hey, but you know, more power to them for still pumping it out, you know? Yeah. They're still going and Jesus, those guys. Ian Gillen sounds great. He does. He's not, you're not going to get child in time anytime soon. Well, no, but I don't know if I want to hear child in time anymore. It's actually, I know. Fair enough. Yeah. But it might not be that good. So, but I mean, well, you guys saw him last year too, you know, and I thought that they were awesome. Yeah. Great. Great. And you, G purple fan? Uh, you know, I like, I like, 01:30:24.800 --> 01:30:54.780 I like Deep Purple. I think I'm not alone in saying that I haven't really listened to any of their albums that have come out in the last 15, 20 years. There's some decent stuff in there. You might be surprised. I like Boosh. There's a couple songs that John Nelson knows, like No Need to Shout. I thought it was a really good, just like straightforward rockin' song. The Power of the Moon. I thought that was great. I had like this really great sort of proggy, melodic guitar part towards the end. I thought that the keyboard 01:30:54.840 --> 01:31:24.700 It sounded fantastic. Guitar, there's a lot of great riffs in it. It's not something I would put on a lot, but I liked it. I'll go back to it. Yeah, I'll put it on there once in a while. The keyboard player is Don Arian. Don Arian. Yeah, which is, so that's, I mean, if you're going to, that's, they're probably, you could probably come up with a couple names, but if you're going to sit on the throne of the king, he's about as good as you could have done. Yep. Yeah. Here's an aside I just thought, 01:31:25.160 --> 01:31:52.300 So Grant, who is like your main clientele at Bucket of Blood? Is it metal? Is it like classic rock? What do people usually buy? Is it a mix? You know, what's like the biggest type of music that you sell at the shop? That's hard to say because like to some extent it's sort of what's memorable versus what actually sells. I would say at this point it is primarily a metal clientele. 01:31:54.820 --> 01:32:23.900 in classic rock would be like a fairly even split between reissues and used. It's really across the board. I get people that come in and educate me on things that bands that I don't necessarily know. There's a lot of bands out there. And then on the flip side, I'm in a position to educate people on things that I'm particularly excited about that maybe they don't know about. 01:32:25.400 --> 01:32:54.500 Not to go too much of an aside, but honestly, one of the greatest feelings in this line of work is selling something right off the turntable is somebody coming in and hearing something going like, whatever you're playing, just put that back on the sleeve. I remember that I was in Ann Arbor and I was in this, I guess it was a head shop, but I was there looking for music. It was just one of those wandering, hey, I don't know what this is, let's wander in and look what this is. 01:32:55.060 --> 01:33:24.280 It was a headshot, but they had some t-shirts and stuff. And Where He Goes Dare by The Misfits was playing. And I was like, dude, what is that? I was like, that's The Misfits. I was like, that is fucking badass. Of course, he couldn't sell it to me, but at least I knew what it was. I had to go hunt it down after that. I've been in the bucket of blood when Graham's playing something and a customer was in there with me and asked him what it was and then bought it. I definitely remember. I don't remember what the record was for the life of me, but I remember that. 01:33:24.600 --> 01:33:53.320 And I thought that was great. Awesome. Fun. All right. So moving on to our next new release. Faceless Burial and their second album Speciation. They're an Australian death metal band. Anybody check this out? Yeah, I got it. This is fantastic. This is a standout death metal record. I mean, it's a that's a lister for me. It's great. You don't think the production's too muddy? Of course not, George. 01:33:54.580 --> 01:34:23.840 Just kidding. Just kidding. There's been a lot of discussion about that. Yeah. George has limited hearing. So he's always talking about how production sucks on this or that. And what are you talking about, dude? The production actually on this record is really good. Yeah, it is. It's all right. I listened to it the first time when we got it a while back and I was like, eh, it's all right. And then I read some reviews. I was like, I must be missing something and went back and listened again. And I was like, okay, this is pretty damn good. 01:34:23.880 --> 01:34:53.760 And it just snowballed from there. Each list, and it got better. It's a good record. I agree. I liked it from the start, but then I kept spinning it, and it just got better and better. There's no fat on that thing, man. Holy crap. I'm getting a little death metal fatigued already this year because there's so much out. At some point, it's going to be really hard to differentiate for our lists, what you like and what you don't. It might even be that you don't not like it. 01:34:53.900 --> 01:35:22.700 You might like it, it's just, you just got no room for it. It was just too much. And I admit, I haven't listened to this, so I'm glad, I'm glad you guys are talking it up the way you are, because now I know, like, this is one I need to put my, and I will listen to it tonight, but you're right, John, it's getting, the saturation point is pretty high at this point. There's still some big albums coming out. Yeah. I would say that this one, though, is in the top three of old school death metal. Awesome. For this year. Easily. Well, I bet I know what might be in the top one of death metal, and that's our next album. 01:35:23.580 --> 01:35:53.560 which we did talk about a little bit before because we got the promo but that is now going to be coming out probably around the time of this episode and that is the new incantation album sect of sect of vile divinities it's their 12th album and man ain't no mud on that album it's um by the way there's a video i didn't watch the video yet did one of you guys watch the video that came out yeah the entrails of the hag queen yeah it looks cool i mean i saw the freeze 01:35:53.560 --> 01:36:23.500 of it or whatever, but. That's a pretty badass album. I think that's more or less across the board here. I'm not sure if everybody's listening to it, but I love it. Yeah. I mean, it was my album of the episode on our last cast, so I talked about it on length there. So, you know, listen to that cast to get my complete thoughts. Yeah, it gave me shit when I put it on here. It's like, all right, why are we talking about this again? I'm like, it's coming out. Yeah, but it's a phenomenal record. The only thing I'll say is that I just got my Decimal Magazine, which is ridiculous. 01:36:23.580 --> 01:36:53.520 It takes forever here in Hawaii. And they only gave it an eight, which I think is too low for that album. They gave the Bell Witch, Ariel Ruin, Snore Fest album an eight. Yeah. You know what? I totally agree with you on that to that point. I mean, I. Yeah. That's not good. All right. I'm skipping the next one. I'm going to take it and put it last because I'm going to go down a rabbit hole with that. So we'll come back to it. So next up, 01:36:53.580 --> 01:37:21.740 We have the new Necrot album, Mortal. This is their second album. They're an Oakland, California death metal band and another particular favorite of the podcast. Not in my book as good as the Incantation, but still quite good. A different thing, though, too. It's a little more digestible. It doesn't meander as much as Incantation does, and that's a compliment to Incantation. It's more like they got tighter since their last record. I agree with that. 01:37:21.860 --> 01:37:22.460 Yeah, I agree. 01:37:23.460 --> 01:37:36.980 You know, I was watching, strangely, one of those, every once in a while, and, like, I'll be looking at YouTube, and in my feed, as it were, which I don't know why I have a YouTube feed, but something will show up, and it's one of those Amoeba What's-In-My-Bag things. Have you guys ever watched those? 01:37:37.100 --> 01:37:39.300 Yeah, I watched the one with Mike Ackerfeld, yeah. 01:37:39.740 --> 01:37:47.200 Yeah, there you go. So, it's basically people, it's musicians shopping at Amoeba, and then they pull them into the back, and they're like, what'd you buy? And they show it and talk about it and stuff. 01:37:47.800 --> 01:38:16.500 And Matt Pike was there and bought the first Necrod album. I just watched this a couple weeks ago. And they went off about how both him and the bass player from Higher on Fire was there too. And they were just like, they worshipped that guitar player in Necrod. They were just like, this guy's so fucking good. And I will say something. It's pronounced Voivod. That was well played. The solos. And I made a special point of listening to the solos on the Necrod. 01:38:17.200 --> 01:38:46.060 Somebody do it for me. Necrot. The album in question. And they are. They're all such super creative things. And there's just so many catchy riffs on it. That differentiates it from Incantation 2. Their whole thing is not the catchy riff necessarily. Not catchy. But anyway, it's good. They're different albums, but they're both equally fucking thunderous. It's a great album. I mean, it's a lister as well. I mean, I think that they've upped their game significantly since the last album. 01:38:46.160 --> 01:39:15.540 And I love the last album. Yeah. So I think they're trying it. It's like they almost they wanted to make a classic death metal album. And I mean, in many ways, they they succeeded in doing that. So we talked about the last episode. Actually, to that end, let me see if I can tell you real quick. And this is kind of relevant because we talk about length and all of that kind of thing being relevant to like, you know, how long is in that record. OK, well, it's longer than it was, but it's only 42 minutes. That's not a real long record. 01:39:16.160 --> 01:39:44.540 And it feels like it does so much more in 42 minutes. Like I would remind you that, and as a matter of example, the incantation is 60 minutes, I believe. But what is it? Leviathan is a 45-minute record. And I've always, to me, this has that kind of thing for us. Like, wow, how did they do so much in 42 minutes? That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, well, the thing I really like about it is that obviously Necroft's a newer death metal band, an old school style. 01:39:44.640 --> 01:40:12.940 And they just keep elevating. And they're amazing. And then you have Incantation, who's been around for 30 years. And then they put out this album that just blew me away. I mean, I always love Incantation, but this album, just a step up, I think, even from the last few. So it's nice to see that you have the old school guard making great albums, and you've got the new death metal guard making some amazing records as well. 01:40:14.280 --> 01:40:43.340 Grant, have you heard any of this? We have a promo, so I don't know if you've heard any of the songs or anything on these two albums. I've heard one of the singles off of Necrot. I haven't heard anything from the Incantation yet. Necrot is sort of a given for me. I know I'm going to throw that record on as soon as it comes in. I know I'm going to really enjoy it. I saw them last fall when they toured with Exhumed and Gatecreeper, and it was a phenomenal show. I really liked the last record. 01:40:45.840 --> 01:41:13.860 They don't need it, but I've been seeing Scotty really promote the hell out of it via 10 crime social media. I'm all on board. It's something I wouldn't have even had to hear a note, and I'm still going to crack open up. You're going to love it. It's way better than the last one, and the last one was great. Speaking of the promo thing, though, too, I do want to point out something really quick, which they did the coolest thing. Oh, it's rich. Yes. That was rad, dude. 01:41:13.920 --> 01:41:43.520 They made a 45 on a postcard and mailed the postcard out. Yeah, I got that too. I didn't get it. So you got one. That's awesome. Oh, hold on. I'm going to get it. What was the, okay. But so, well, and this will tell the tale better than I can, but I would like to see more of this, man. I think this is a very cool idea. Yeah. I mean, I've seen, I've seen stuff like that before. Um, I think he did a campus corpse one back today. I mean, like Scotty runs tan crimes. 01:41:43.900 --> 01:42:13.220 He's really like old school. He's very like, you know, old school promotion. He's active on social media, but he's very much like, you got to paste up, you know, flyers on telephone poles. If you're playing a show, you got to send out mail to people, send out catalogs. And yeah, I really appreciate it. He's the guy who, you know, in addition to running a label, he's on the road here because he wrote, he's for municipal waste. Like he's very much of the people. 01:42:13.920 --> 01:42:43.860 Markisan, can you hold that up so George can see it? Yeah, you know, and it says in the back, you know, enter to win a test press, post a pic or video and follow and tag Necrot. So I have to do that still. So that's a 45 he received. And now I was eventually... I don't know if you can see the grooves. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, you can totally see it. And that works too. That even works in just the aesthetic sense. I like the way the track is around his head. But so was that just mailed to you? 01:42:43.920 --> 01:43:13.880 from Taint Crimes? Is that why you got that? Do you know why you got that? Yeah, you just, you had to send them a postcard. I see. With your information. And so I just happened to have one because we bought a bunch of like Hawaii postcards. You send them a postcard and then they, you know, take your information down and then they sent me this. So in further news, I, Tony Dolan, who is the current front man in Venom Incorporated, which is the, you know, the last standing drakes of the band Venom, which actually 01:43:13.900 --> 01:43:43.880 exists anyway but it's the one with mantis in it he tony dolan is is a really cool guy and people he's the bass player and singer in that band and um people send him their records to hold up all the time and he posted about it he was like i just got this promo it's the coolest fucking thing anyway i so i forwarded that to luca just to say like i don't know if you saw this dude but this is kind of a cool little fucking thing for you uh luca from and uh yeah and he was like dude it's fucking awesome yeah no it was a cool i like when they engage with the audience you know you don't see it that often 01:43:43.920 --> 01:44:13.880 I do something like that so I'm like I gotta send this in I have a postcard I'll see what comes of it and I I guess I've probably said this before and it's it's not like a claim to fame or anything and things have changed obviously but I must have seen them a hundred times not a hundred times but so many times they open for every black metal band or death metal band that comes through have you played with them no we have not no but um I imagined that someday that might happen they're starting to blow up a little bit too much now yeah 01:44:14.260 --> 01:44:43.640 Any news on the new album there, Jay? Yeah, the plague. Things are only moving slower now. That's so funny. I was talking to somebody, a guy in another band I used to play with, and he was like, that's the last time you practiced, dude. And I said, you know, pre-March or whatever together. And he said, yeah, we tried to do a socially distanced practice the other day, and it sucked. You know what I mean? Just like, you don't want to be in that hot room sweating with three guys whose lives you don't control, you know? Mm-hmm. I have been nowhere. 01:44:43.900 --> 01:45:13.820 since March. I mean, like beer store, grocery store, home. That's it. And next weekend, I am driving three hours to West Virginia to hang out with five guys from high school. I'm like, I'm fucking dead. That's right. I'm fucking dead. Nah, you'll be fine. I will just say this. I mean, even though that'll still be sort of a closed loop, and I am of the opinion, as long as you take the proper precautions, you'll be all right. It was supposed to be in Pittsburgh, downtown Pittsburgh, because it's sort of more of the middle there in Michigan. 01:45:13.920 --> 01:45:43.860 I'm in Maryland. And I was like, well, we could still do it and just hang out at the hotel. We'd be fine. But, you know, not everybody agrees on how safe it is to be out. And some of the guys were like, yeah, I want to go out and do this and do that. And I was like, hey, how about a cabin in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia instead? Yeah. And the number four movies start just like this, George. Oh, believe me, there's been some banjos thrown back and forth. And I'm like, dudes, you don't even understand. 01:45:43.960 --> 01:46:13.700 I understand West Virginia, man. It is that scary. If it's George and a banjo, I want a video. We need that. Yeah. But, but also George on the bright side, there are also corner movies that start like this. So it could go either way. True. We have a hot tub. But that brings up a question for me for Grant. So Grant, what have you and Jenny been doing in the pandemic? Just for fun. Have you been able to do anything? Not really. You know, we've been, we've been working. 01:46:14.340 --> 01:46:43.880 I think that you know when we were open seven days a week when everything went to shit we scaled back a little bit there was no point for us to go in we sort of want to avoid having people like trying to bang on the door and coming in so we weren't going in Saturdays and Sundays for a little while the only time that we didn't go in at all was right the first week of June so George Floyd protests here in Chicago escalated into a lot of looting and riot 01:46:43.980 --> 01:47:13.860 We had some customers that messaged us and said, we want to board up your store because we don't want anything to happen to it. And we were like, not something that we had considered, not something that we were prepared for, but they spearheaded this whole thing, which was great. You made an awesome mural on there, right? Yeah. So they came by, they boarded the whole thing up. We were there, of course, to sort of help where we could. There was about eight people there boarding up the store. 01:47:13.940 --> 01:47:18.980 store. While we were doing that, the restaurant right next door got a window broken. 01:47:20.400 --> 01:47:23.360 Was purely just vandalism, not anything related to looting. 01:47:24.350 --> 01:47:27.980 For those, since you guys aren't familiar with the store, it's a lot of window space. 01:47:29.540 --> 01:47:34.200 So we were concerned, not necessarily with looting, but more with just like having all of our windows broken out. 01:47:34.210 --> 01:47:35.880 And then what would the next step be from there? 01:47:37.480 --> 01:47:40.420 So there was a week after we boarded up where we just couldn't get into the store. 01:47:40.840 --> 01:47:42.480 We don't really have a backdoor access. 01:47:43.380 --> 01:47:46.160 And we had blocked it up in a way that the store isn't accessible. 01:47:47.020 --> 01:47:48.620 But apart from that, we've been working. 01:47:48.950 --> 01:47:52.160 And like as far as going out, I mean, we've been cautious. 01:47:52.400 --> 01:47:55.220 We've gone to the Beer Temple a couple times because like I was saying earlier, 01:47:55.370 --> 01:47:58.720 they're really cautious with how their layout is. 01:48:00.180 --> 01:48:01.360 Obviously not going to concerts. 01:48:01.470 --> 01:48:02.560 We went to a baseball game. 01:48:05.160 --> 01:48:07.100 Well, can you talk a little bit about that mural? 01:48:07.280 --> 01:48:10.000 Because it's amazing, the artistry on there. 01:48:10.460 --> 01:48:40.020 So right after we got the store boarded up, which again would have been the right, I'm trying to remember the exact date. It was like the last weekend in May, first weekend in June, May 31st, June 1st, somewhere around there. We boarded up the restaurant next door that got their windows smashed. They ended up boarding up all of their windows. On the other side of us is a restaurant that closed down about a year ago and they're in the process of reopening a new place. They put up their windows, coffee shop down the street, the beer temple across the street. 01:48:40.080 --> 01:49:10.040 which is like a liquor store slash bar. And you guys might know Kuma's Corner, the heavy metal burger joint. They boarded up all their windows. We were in talks with a friend of ours who had done an art show in our store when we first opened in that location about five years ago about doing something to sort of beautify it so that it wasn't just a block of stores with, you know, plain plywood boards over the 01:49:10.960 --> 01:49:39.960 So they ended up with six artists, her and five friends. So it was these five just absolutely wonderful young women who donated all their time, brought all their own art supplies. We did a GoFundMe to cover the cost of the art supplies, which pretty much just covered that. We weren't really looking for extra handouts or anything. They were out there for four or five days. Each one painted their own person. So you can see it on our Facebook. 01:49:40.060 --> 01:50:10.040 I think it's our cover photo now. There's five people and they each are sort of wearing like ballad vests and they're each sort of just you know a message of solidarity, Black Lives Matter, you know caring for people over all else and it's actually still up. We took out one panel so that we have access to the front door but we've left the boards up and it's you know people take pictures of 01:50:11.660 --> 01:50:39.680 I think it's just a great community message. I'm looking at it now. That's pretty cool. Right on. Yeah, no, it's fantastic, you know. So, yeah, I mean, we haven't really, like, as far as, like, doing fun stuff, I mean, like I said, I go to the post office every day. We go to work. We pack up mail orders. We've been seeing some customers, but, you know, like everybody else, I've been watching more TV than I ever thought I would, and I've been reading a lot more books than I ever thought. Oh, yeah. It's funny. 01:50:40.080 --> 01:51:10.020 I thought I was going to be streaming the shit out of everything and I'm actually watching less stuff than I was before the pandemic. That's because I'm doing other things that I have more time for and so I'm like, oh, I got time to do this. Who's got time to watch TV? To an earlier discussion where my wife and I are actually, our current binging thing, there's not that many episodes, but we're about halfway through The Prisoner and it is awesome. Brilliant. All I knew about it, like, I kind of vaguely knew what it was. 01:51:10.060 --> 01:51:39.840 and I knew that Iron Maiden song, but man, that is a great show. It is really great. Yeah. I've been, we've been binging Ray Donovan. We're like season six of seven in like two weeks. Wow. Yeah. Last episode, you were on like episode three, season one. So. But I like this. Let's check, let's check in on this too. Mine. And I might've mentioned mine last night too. I'm doing, and I've done a few things, but I'm doing a Boardwalk Empire, which I hadn't walked. And I think I'm in season three now. 01:51:40.080 --> 01:52:08.840 The Hotel just got blown up that killed its mistress that season. Yeah. Cool. I love Steve Buscemi. One of my favorites. He's so great in everything he does. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to the next new release. Which is the Pig Destroyer's new EP, The Octagonal Stairway. These guys are local favorites. DC, Virginia grind band. 01:52:10.840 --> 01:52:40.000 We did get the promo for this the other day. Starts off pretty strong. I mean, I know some of this, they're not, you know, they're songs pulled from other places, kind of like a new chemist release. But the first three songs are really good. And then it's just a bunch of wankery. There's filler. There's definitely filler. Let's put it this way. The first three songs are songs. Yeah. But it's an EP. What do you want? 01:52:40.060 --> 01:53:09.540 If you've got three full songs on an EP, it's good enough to go. If you're going to do six songs for an EP, they should all be songs. That's what I thought. It was funny because I sort of accused them in the last episode of sort of saying that they were tool-like and that they didn't do, they're pretty far apart between them. But that's not entirely true because the last thing that came up before Headcage was that mass and volume thing, which was very similar to this in that one side was the song and the other side was just noise. And the song was like a doom song. But in any case, I agree, the songs, 01:53:10.080 --> 01:53:40.040 The songs are good. And then I think they're all just like, Blake, can you waste 20 minutes? You know what I mean? No, I can't. I've got Ray Donovan to watch. I don't have time to watch. So it's fine. It's fine. And those songs are strong. And I happen to think they're a really good band. And I think some of you guys do too. So it is what it is. So then we have the new Primitive Man album, Immersions. Their third album. They're a Denver band. I know 01:53:40.080 --> 01:54:08.880 Grant was talking about them earlier. Unfortunately, I cannot count myself among their fans. I don't get it, but maybe you can enlighten me. I don't know. I've been following them for a long time. I saw them live a couple years ago when they were on tour with Spectral Voice. It was an outstanding show. The new album I like, I mean, it's crushing. It's bleak. It's heavy. Kind of similar to what Jay was talking about, like, 01:54:09.860 --> 01:54:37.500 doing like kind of straightforward songs and doing more noise stuff. They had that kind of noise, more Indian record that they did a couple years ago, which I think was like P slash slash. I don't know. My brother put it on his label. So I kind of had to listen to it. But there, I don't know. It's, it's, it's crushing and bleak. It's, it's loud. It's heavy. It's, it's kind of sums up 2020. Yeah. I, I, I did see a funny tweet from them. 01:54:39.280 --> 01:55:08.480 And I'm paraphrasing heavily because I don't memorize things well. In fact, my memory is for shit, as my wife told me today. But some to the effect of we wrote our first album was a stoner doom album with a bunch of cool riffs so that we could draw people in. And then everything after that is we're doing the stuff that we actually want to do that nobody wants to hear. That was funny. I mean, I'm kind of in your camp, George, because I feel like Primitive Man gets a lot of has a lot of fans. 01:55:08.540 --> 01:55:38.380 that seem more popular for a metal band, but I can't get into them. They just have a really repetitive lull quality to their music. It's muddy. I actually fell asleep watching them perform when they opened up for Tomb Mold a couple years ago. I know Will likes them. I keep trying because I keep hearing so many great things about Front of Man, but I just can't get into the band. I bet Matt likes them. I like them. I don't love them. Isn't the one guy in Black Curse? Yes. 01:55:38.540 --> 01:56:08.500 The Guitarist. Yes. Yeah. We like The Black Curse. We love Curse. But it doesn't sound like Primitive Man. No. Completely different. So I moved the last new release to the end because, as I mentioned, I want to kind of go down a wormhole. I'm sorry if I waste the next hour on this. Oh, Jesus. So this last album is from the band 01:56:08.580 --> 01:56:37.920 And this is their UK death metal bands, their fifth album called Where Only Gods May Tread. And I was listening to this the other day and I was texting with a friend and I was like, dude, did you hear the new Ingested? And he was like, I don't really listen to them. He's like, I'm not into slam sojourney. And I was like, wait, what? 01:56:38.920 --> 01:57:08.480 I was like the only sogyny I know is misogyny. And he's like, yeah, basically. And I was like, well, what are you talking about? And he's like, go to go to metal archives and look these guys up. You know, on metal archives, you've got their origin and their status and their location and their genre and lyrical themes. Their first lyrical theme is rape. Followed by necrophilia, gore. I'm like, yeah, well, it makes sense. But I was like, all right, I get it. You know, you know, 01:57:09.060 --> 01:57:38.460 Rape is not cool by any stretch of the imagination. And I made a somewhat inappropriate joke because it says lyrical themes, rape, necrophilia, gore, parentheses early. And then, but later their themes are murder, vengeance, and domination. I was like, see, dude, now they have safe words. But terrible, I know. It's a bad joke, bad joke. But nothing jokey about rape. I'm not making any jokes. 01:57:38.540 --> 01:58:06.480 about that. But it raised a concern with me. I was like, well, let me go and see what he's talking about. Because if you listen to last episode, you know that Will mentioned a band that I bleeped out. Partly because the band name itself is offensive. But Will and I were both dumb enough to put it on our list last year. And then prior to posting the list episode, 01:58:08.540 --> 01:58:38.400 a bunch of homophobic lyrics. Right. And so we removed them from our lists and recorded replacement albums. So I was like, well, you guys recorded albums. That's crazy, dude. I know. We're a whole album's about how we don't like that band, which, you know, I was, I was iffy on the band name to begin with, but I was like, dude, the music's pretty fucking awesome. But then on that. It makes me like their name makes me think of the movie seven. I mean, if that's anything. Well, it's like, this is where we're cutting out. 01:58:38.520 --> 01:59:07.720 that, but this is where I'm heading with this is what's acceptable, what's not. So I went back and I looked and ingested, like I said, this is their fifth album, and their first album is called Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering. And on that album, they have, I only went through some of the lyrics, but there are at least three songs that are extremely violent towards women. And I was like, 01:59:08.980 --> 01:59:37.360 Okay. I get what my friend's saying. I get why he doesn't want to listen to this band. However, my problem, I was processing this and thinking about this throughout the day and thinking about what's acceptable in death metal and what's not. And it led me to another band that I really like, and this is why I wish Will was here. And Matt maybe knows where I'm going with this, but Cannibal Corpse. 01:59:39.080 --> 02:00:04.520 During the Barnes era, particularly on the Bleeding, there are at least three songs that are of extremely violent towards women nature that are extremely comparable to this Ingested album. And I'm like, all right, if I don't listen to Ingested because of this, by all rights, that means I can't listen to Cannibal Corpse because of that. 02:00:05.820 --> 02:00:35.780 I think it's so tongue-in-cheek though I mean it really is like serial killer stuff right and the the point I'm getting towards is what is acceptable what's not and obviously that's a very personal thing for every person it depends on what they're doing I think of and this is rock but stone temple pilots is sex type thing and and it was from an abuser's perspective to to raise awareness about what was going on right 02:00:35.820 --> 02:00:37.580 So, you know, 02:00:37.640 --> 02:00:38.500 no offense, 02:00:38.520 --> 02:00:39.020 but in just, 02:00:39.100 --> 02:00:40.360 it is certainly not trying to do that. 02:00:40.680 --> 02:00:41.220 No, no. 02:00:41.380 --> 02:00:41.600 So, 02:00:42.240 --> 02:00:44.500 so I kind of have two points here. 02:00:44.660 --> 02:00:47.580 One is that I'm not sure which one to go with first, 02:00:47.740 --> 02:00:48.480 but okay. 02:00:48.700 --> 02:00:50.220 So first of all, 02:00:50.240 --> 02:00:51.200 I was able to, 02:00:51.220 --> 02:00:51.320 uh, 02:00:52.300 --> 02:00:52.400 uh, 02:00:53.140 --> 02:00:54.800 rationalize that these were Barnes lyrics. 02:00:55.240 --> 02:00:56.600 I don't like Barnes air cannibal corpse. 02:00:56.780 --> 02:00:57.480 I think he's an asshole. 02:00:57.740 --> 02:00:58.020 Anyway, 02:00:58.960 --> 02:01:00.080 I listened to new cannibal corpse. 02:01:00.260 --> 02:01:00.580 I'm okay. 02:01:02.400 --> 02:01:02.600 Um, 02:01:03.220 --> 02:01:04.600 but like any band that, 02:01:05.460 --> 02:01:05.720 you know, 02:01:05.800 --> 02:01:31.480 Like, there's the Dark Throne thing where early on they said something that was anti-Semitic on the back of one of their album covers. And it was something they did just to be, they were young, they were stupid, they were, you know. But it doesn't, it never appeared to be like a particular thing with them. It was just something stupid that they said. And people moved on. And I moved on. I still listen to Dark Throne. 02:01:34.460 --> 02:02:04.400 So I went through the rest of the ingested catalog and looked. And after that first album, all of their songs, I mean, I didn't go through it lyric by lyric, but I spot checked and did title checks and stuff. And it appears to me that they've gone to a more generic death metal style lyric, which leads me to my next point is it's okay to talk about killing people in general, apparently, in lyrics, as long as you don't talk about specific people. 02:02:04.460 --> 02:02:33.880 You can't talk about Jews or Muslims. Christians are okay, though. For some reason, that's okay. But if it's generalized, it's okay. And we're sort of jaded and desensitized to the whole thing. That's true, but I don't think twice about listening to Angel of Death. Right. But then Angel of Death is... I mean, anybody that knows it, Angel of Death is historical. It's not anti-Semitic. 02:02:33.880 --> 02:03:01.140 It comes across as reporting. I mean, I guess, sort of. But, I mean, hardly. It certainly doesn't fall within the NSBM. I think if it's coming from a place of hate and they're actually ascribing to hate, then that's wrong. Because, I mean, obviously a lot of metal lyrics just sound evil, you know? Yeah, that's a good point. That's a great point, dude. And I would include Candle Corpse out of that category. 02:03:03.900 --> 02:03:33.840 is a really nice guy from all the interviews I've ever seen him in, you know, and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Yeah. And that really just is about your basic horror movie thing, you know. Right. If some specific gender or something gets caught in that meat grinder, it's not a statement. They're not making a statement about it, I'm sure. So I equate it to Jay's point. Like, if you watch a horror movie where a woman is raped or killed, I don't look at the writer of that movie and think, like, they're a bad person. I went further down the rabbit hole. 02:03:33.880 --> 02:04:03.820 I was like, oh my God, can I like, can I like the Friday the 13th movies? Cause like half the, you know, all the 80s slasher movies are about killing Whitman with big boobies, you know, it's like. Yeah. But I, that's funny. Cause I was just going to give you an out by saying cannibal corpse is basically Friday the 13th, but we kind of dropped, you know, um, destroyer 666, like a hot rock, you know, and that was with good reason. And, uh, I, we had a, we had a, uh, uh, uh, Facebook messenger conversation about, I don't know, a week or two ago, because I was talking with Joel from, 02:04:03.880 --> 02:04:32.860 from Thrasenblatt. Joel's not entirely up on the news, as the rest of us are. No, he's around a campfire in Canada. And he was talking about Moonsaro and Agaloc and how they're basically being canceled because of things they've said. And honestly, I hadn't heard about it either, so I can't really give Joel shit. And that sparked a big conversation on our feed about what's acceptable and what's not. 02:04:32.900 --> 02:05:00.840 And so when this came up, I was like, I agonized over this for a couple of hours because I was like, dude, I really like Cannibal Corpse. If I don't like this, I can't say I like this too. And I spoke with a female friend of mine and asked her perspective on it. And she was like. If it was Z, it doesn't count. It was Z. And I don't mean because she's extremely liberal, dude. 02:05:03.860 --> 02:05:32.820 Anyway. Wow. But like back to back to somebody's point, like George has a wife and George has two daughters. Clearly he is not interested in women being harmed. You mean Corpse Grinder? Yes, Corpse Grinder. I was like, I have two daughters? My bad, my bad. But I mean, clearly I, but to your point, George, like where do you draw the line? What, what, what, like what, 02:05:32.880 --> 02:06:02.460 What constitutes it being okay and not okay? I look at Campbell Corpse. I look at Corpse Grinder. He's clearly not a person who is interested in harming women. So if those elements are in his lyrics, I think that is part of the story he's telling. It's an artistic, thematic. Right. Because I dig horror movies. I dig stuff. And so to me, I am kind of jaded to it. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's another song about somebody having their guts ripped out, set on fire, and then somebody has sex with it. I get it. 02:06:05.400 --> 02:06:32.380 But to people that aren't into that sort of thing, they're like, man, that's kind of fucked up. Do you remember that cartoon that used to be in the newspaper, Bloom County? Oh, yeah. I read that. Oh, yeah, all the time. So I have to share with you one that I remember very well. Billy and the Boingers. Billy and the Boingers. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is the 80s. I mean, it's back now, by the way, but it's not as funny. But it reminds me of this one in the 80s where they were sitting there watching television and one of them goes, is this? 02:06:32.440 --> 02:07:02.380 is this a war movie? Oh, this looks really good. And then he goes, no, no, no, this is the news. And he goes, are you sure this looks like a war movie? And it keeps going back and forth like that through the several panels. And the last panel is somebody shouting, well, somebody please tell me if I can enjoy this or not. You know what I mean? So somewhere in there is the truth. So I'm wondering, Grant, have you ever come up against this? Like the stuff that you sell, if you heard, 02:07:02.460 --> 02:07:03.980 that somebody was... 02:07:04.980 --> 02:07:05.660 Antisemitic or... 02:07:05.960 --> 02:07:07.700 Like, would you sell Burzum records? 02:07:08.000 --> 02:07:10.500 Yeah, you know, do you not carry those records? 02:07:10.860 --> 02:07:12.700 How does that work as a retailer? 02:07:12.960 --> 02:07:17.680 I was going to say, honestly, like, despite everything going on as far as, like, businesses being closed, 02:07:17.840 --> 02:07:20.780 one of the biggest challenges selling media is... 02:07:23.180 --> 02:07:27.160 I don't know if this is the right word for it, but sort of policing what we sell. 02:07:28.560 --> 02:07:58.520 And there are things that we've made the decision as a business not to sell. And it's tough. It's, you know, to the point of something like Cannibal Corpse or Ingested, it's, you know, we stake our entire living. Largely our living is selling horror novels, heavy metal records, and horror movies. And, you know, you can't have something like that without something bad happening to someone. Whether that person is a 02:07:58.560 --> 02:08:28.020 a straight white woman or a straight black woman or a gay Muslim man or a straight Muslim man or whatever the case may be. It's going to be happening to somebody. It's going to be happening to a child. It's going to be happening to someone's pet. And terror and horror, whether you're speaking of a book, of a movie, of lyrical content, we've gotten to the point where the genre's been around for so long in all of those formats that the shock value has to be raised. 02:08:28.560 --> 02:08:56.860 So you're seeing things where it's it's bad things happening to more and more innocent. You know, it's children. It's it's animals. It's it's, you know, to some extent, you know, people wouldn't be wrong to say it's disgusting. But you gotta sort of draw that line between fiction and fact. And then, you know, you look at something like some of those lyrics from those ingested songs and it's, you know, at the beginning. 02:08:57.800 --> 02:09:27.720 I've sort of followed the band off and on since their first record. The first one is kind of a little bit more towards the side of almost porno grind, but from a more sort of deathcore slam musical background. Is it right to talk about those things? Not necessarily. Is it par for the course of the genre? Yeah. And it's something where it's like hearing something like that, like maybe we should keep an eye on this person that's writing the lyrics. Maybe it's just they're writing purely fiction for Shotgun. 02:09:27.780 --> 02:09:57.740 Maybe they're writing something because they're a twisted individual and this could be the start of something else. I don't really know. But there are definitely things that we have made conscious decisions over the years to stop carrying. On a less metal perspective, obviously, there's artists like Ryan Adams who he had inappropriate 02:09:57.760 --> 02:10:00.360 interactions with women under the age of 18. 02:10:00.840 --> 02:10:02.940 And abused his power over women. 02:10:02.980 --> 02:10:03.440 Abused his power. 02:10:03.540 --> 02:10:03.900 Exactly. 02:10:04.160 --> 02:10:08.740 And, you know, and Markisan, I'm sure you've seen a ton of this stuff with comic book creators lately. 02:10:09.380 --> 02:10:09.680 Oh, yeah. 02:10:09.940 --> 02:10:13.080 Warren Ellis, my favorite creator of all time, did it to like. 02:10:13.100 --> 02:10:14.400 But also not a surprise. 02:10:15.060 --> 02:10:16.920 Like, I don't think anybody was surprised about Warren Ellis. 02:10:17.080 --> 02:10:17.180 Right. 02:10:18.180 --> 02:10:18.580 Authors. 02:10:19.840 --> 02:10:25.640 And for me as a store owner, and I don't want this to sound wrong, but I mean, it's a slippery slope. 02:10:25.840 --> 02:10:26.160 It's like. 02:10:26.460 --> 02:10:26.660 Yeah. 02:10:26.960 --> 02:10:51.420 There's stuff that's clearly wrong. We don't carry Murzim records. Now, we did years ago, and I will fully admit to that. From a lyrical standpoint, there's nothing that I can derive, and I don't think that any way that's really listening to it could pull out any sort of anti-Semitic lyrics. And from what I've read about it, and I'm not an expert, there's not really an anti-Semitic to the music. 02:10:52.140 --> 02:10:53.600 But you know who he is. 02:10:53.700 --> 02:10:53.860 Yeah. 02:10:53.860 --> 02:10:54.040 Yeah. 02:11:23.780 --> 02:11:51.960 between hating a race, a gender of people, hating a sexual orientation from a person versus just having a political viewpoint. But from a store perspective, we sort of try to draw it at where is there harm being done? And anything where there's harm or potential for harm being done, we try to eliminate it from our state. 02:11:55.320 --> 02:12:22.300 Like, you know, she's come out as being a pretty awful person. She has some not very modern viewpoints on a lot of things. Which was a surprise, by the way. Yeah. You know, I have to just slip one thing in here really quick. Slide it in. Oh, yeah. Unless we drag it on too much. But I will just say this. It's about navigating this new landscape or developing landscape. And related but unrelated. 02:12:22.620 --> 02:12:52.380 And at the same time, I have a cannibal corpse shirt and on the back it says red before black, which is the last album. And that's all it says. And it's a red T-shirt. And I was wearing it the other day. I was going for a walk and my wife was like, are you sure you want to walk through our neighborhood wearing that shirt? Because it kind of seems like all lives matter like that to hear red before black. It sounds like it's more. And I was like, oh shit. And all it is, is that people wouldn't know what it really meant. And I was like, oh shit, you're right. You know? And I live in a deeply ethnic neighborhood and that's fine. 02:12:52.420 --> 02:13:21.960 And of course, that's not the message at all. It's just occurred to me. But at face value. Yeah, I was so glad she caught that. I was really smart because I never would have thought about that. Even as a brown man, I wouldn't have thought about that. But that's... Well, she knows nothing about the band and all she saw was this message and she thought that could be read a different way. Totally could. Anyway, interesting times. 02:13:22.420 --> 02:13:50.820 So I wanted, so as I was mentioning, I was talking to Z about this and she was like, well, you know, the stuff that they that ingested wrote early on. Yeah, that's kind of disgusting and horrible. But what have they done since? And she was like, you know, if they if they if they maybe they learned that maybe they that wasn't what they should be doing. We don't we don't know. We would have to interview them to find out. But for whatever reason, they stopped writing songs like that. 02:13:50.880 --> 02:14:20.860 She's like, I think it's okay to like them because, you know, they're not doing that anymore. And I was like, all right. So because I was going to completely scrub this from the script and just be like, all right, I'm done. But after I did my homework, I was like, nah, I still like these guys. Yeah. For all we know, maybe they don't even play those songs live anymore. Maybe they sort of scrubbed them from their discography. I did check the lineup to see if it was like the same singer and all that. And it is, but I don't know if 02:14:20.900 --> 02:14:50.020 He wrote the lyrics and blah, blah, blah. Point is, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they've got five albums, only one of them has stuff that is of questionable, you know, that I feel like I can support. And that's what it ultimately comes down to is, you know, where do you personally draw the line on what you can support? It's tough and metal because the themes are just so horrible, heinous a lot of the time, you know. 02:14:50.900 --> 02:15:20.820 A lot of times it comes down to what do the actual musicians believe in. And we've seen that multiple times where they, you know, they actually hate a certain group, you know, or, you know, there's something like. Where they're doing songs that actively are hate songs, you know what I mean? It's easy to tell, you know, but in this case, you know, maybe they were just writing these songs and they were trying to get shock value out of it. Like Grant was talking about. And they might've been cannibal corpse fans. 02:15:21.260 --> 02:15:21.940 I don't know. 02:15:22.160 --> 02:15:22.360 Yeah. 02:15:22.620 --> 02:15:25.180 You know, and they're like, well, we're not, we're not going to do this anymore. 02:15:25.440 --> 02:15:27.720 You know, we're, we're going to shy away from that, you know? 02:15:28.020 --> 02:15:28.120 Yeah. 02:15:28.980 --> 02:15:45.760 But I think the message is you kind of got to monitor it, you know, you know, you're, you put out these albums, but if something comes up where it's, you know, wrong, basically wrong, you know, maybe you stop carrying it or you stop listening to it, but you know, it's a thin line sometimes. 02:15:46.160 --> 02:15:49.980 And the last, especially the last thing I wanted to mention, I brought it up briefly, but, uh, 02:15:52.520 --> 02:16:19.060 And John and I have actually talked about this in the past. But like I said, it is perfectly fine and acceptable for black metal bands to talk about annihilating Christians. Nobody bats an eye at that. But if somebody put out an album about annihilating Jews, which of course NSBM bands do all the time, and that is not acceptable, or if it was about annihilating Muslims, again, that would be not acceptable. 02:16:20.060 --> 02:16:48.800 And so I had a good think about that. I'm like, well, what the hell? I mean, if you're being fair, it should not be acceptable for that either. I mean, Christianity has done so much to persecute and subjugate people to their will over many centuries. So, I mean, the thing about Christianity is that it's not the minority. You know what I mean? They're not people who have been enslaved. I mean, sure, some have. 02:16:48.860 --> 02:17:18.719 But overall, in the grand scheme of things, they're not... Christianity isn't seen as a religion, as a people who ascribe to that religion, who have been hurt and oppressed over the years. And I think that's the difference. I think it comes down to just the basic argument of punching down versus punching up. Absolutely. You're not going to pick on people that are already marginalized. 02:17:18.860 --> 02:17:48.580 That makes sense. I like that. Wow. This is a completely different place, but actually really good discussion, George. I know. I told you, I was like, I'm going down the rabbit hole here. So do you like the album? I do. I do like the album. It's pretty good. Which was why I was like, hey, man, you dig this? And he's like, nah, man, not into it. And just, you know, like half my day was gone because of this. So before I came back to the point, 02:17:48.900 --> 02:17:50.740 I can live with this album. 02:17:50.780 --> 02:17:52.860 Well, I got to applaud you for just thinking about it. 02:17:52.960 --> 02:17:56.219 You know, it's kind of questions you should think about sometimes. 02:17:56.920 --> 02:17:57.139 Oh, yeah. 02:17:57.939 --> 02:17:58.679 Especially now. 02:17:58.920 --> 02:18:01.360 I mean, I had a P or Chase Rainbow, as you just said. 02:18:02.099 --> 02:18:02.400 All right. 02:18:02.440 --> 02:18:04.179 Well, good conversation then. 02:18:04.719 --> 02:18:05.519 Let's move on. 02:18:06.440 --> 02:18:07.139 The talking point. 02:18:09.059 --> 02:18:11.080 We're going to move on to what we're listening to. 02:18:35.301 --> 02:18:37.900 So Grant, what are you listening to lately? 02:18:38.679 --> 02:18:40.660 Oh man, do I have to keep this purely model? 02:18:40.700 --> 02:19:08.340 No, you can list whatever you want. Here's a couple things I've been really enjoying. I feel like current metal. In fact, I have one that is extremely not metal, and I'm glad Will's not here, but please carry on. Here's my first two non-metal ones. A group called Ice. The album is called The Ice Age. This was released on Writing Easy Records. It was a band from Indianapolis, 1970, recorded 10 songs, were never released until this year. 02:19:10.700 --> 02:19:39.320 Just great, heavy rock and roll. First nine songs have a strong Steppenwolf vibe to them, a little bit of Grand Funk, who's one of my favorites. Last track is sort of a more proggy, I guess, instrumental that borrows a lot from Peep. So it's definitely not metal, but it's definitely metal adjacent. The other one that's not metal, but might still be appealing for people, the latest from Zombie, which is called 20. It came out on Relapse a couple weeks ago. 02:19:39.389 --> 02:19:40.120 That is very cool. 02:19:40.219 --> 02:20:10.120 This is a band that I think just keeps getting better. And they've added more guitar parts on this most recent record. Like, it's got great layers of synth, great layers of, you know, bass and the guitar. And I think separates them from a lot of like synthwave bands is that that organic drum sound. They have a real live drummer and he's playing the drums the whole way through. And I think it's a phenomenal record. I love it when bands mix in synthwave with metal. Because I like synthwave in general. 02:20:10.880 --> 02:20:37.940 But to hear Synthwave mixed in with something that's actually heavy is fucking cool. Yeah. And then a couple more that I've been really jamming a lot lately. Primal Fears, latest one, Metal Commando. Love those guys. It's just feel-good music, fist-pumping in the air type of thing. Similar lines, but a little bit more aggressive is the most recent from Onslaught, Generation Antichrist. I have not heard that yet. Long-running British Thrashman. 02:20:40.220 --> 02:21:09.700 Kind of reminds me of the last X-Order record. You know, it's got a real thick groove to it. Really solid. A couple singles I've been enjoying. The new Armored Saint single. I haven't heard that yet either. They got a new record coming out on Metal Blade on October 23rd. They got a single out, came out a couple days ago on Spotify called End of the Attention Span. And it's just, it's classic Armored Saint. That was the problem. I had no attention span on. I didn't listen to it. It's like five minutes long. It's way too long for a song. 02:21:10.240 --> 02:21:40.180 I will check it out though. And then one more that you guys are going to have to keep your eyes out for because they released a lyric video yesterday. Great local thrash band, Bloodletter. They are finally putting out their first vinyl release. They have a previous record that's on Spotify. Got a new LP coming out late September, October. It's just like, I don't even know if it has a title yet. I haven't seen a title. Their singer has sent me the audio files for the whole album. It's outstanding. 02:21:40.260 --> 02:22:10.080 As a thrash metal fan, it's going to be my album 2020 for at least for. Nice. Sounds familiar. I thought maybe I'd seen something, but I don't have anything here. As a thrash fan, have you heard it in culture? In culture. That's my favorite thrash fan right now. Give it a listen. They're from an I or an E. I N C U L T E R in culture. They came out. I think it's last year. It was on my list last year. I believe. 02:22:11.020 --> 02:22:40.120 I love in culture. It's got it's evil thrash, which is what I prefer. Like, like the Witcher. Yeah. Like if you use it in a sentence, you're like, I'm in a, I'm in cult or I mean a podcast. Are we doing an album of the episode at the end of what we are listening to? So what was your album of the episode of all the albums we talked about? All the albums that you just mentioned, Grant, what would your album of the episode be from new releases or what you any, any, 02:22:40.220 --> 02:22:41.940 of anything so far? 02:22:42.540 --> 02:22:49.120 My gut says Necrot, but since I haven't, since I've only heard one song after that, I'm not going to include that in my list. 02:22:49.580 --> 02:22:51.740 So I'm going to go with Permitant Man, immersion. 02:22:52.360 --> 02:22:52.620 Right on. 02:22:52.920 --> 02:22:53.240 All right. 02:22:53.480 --> 02:22:56.300 I'm going to have to give it another listen just because Grant likes it so much. 02:22:56.400 --> 02:22:56.780 Yeah, me too. 02:22:58.180 --> 02:22:59.640 All right, Marcus, what are you listening to? 02:23:01.260 --> 02:23:05.720 Okay, so the first one I had of Exocrine, Malstrom. 02:23:07.220 --> 02:23:37.180 It's really compelling tech death with synths and there's even trumpets in there. I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. Matt just perked up. He was like, hmm? Is there some cool jazz? What? Minnesota heart. Bear Mace. We kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier. Charred Field of Slaughter. This is a really fun death metal record with a bear fetish. So the riffs are serious and the lyrics are 02:23:37.220 --> 02:24:07.180 Make You Smile. And these guys are from Chicago, so something you might consider carrying in the local metal section, Grant, if you don't already. Is the album out now? I know there was like one song. It came out on the 14th. That was yesterday. Gotcha. Yep. All right, I'm on it. Chasm of Aeons from Desert Wasteland Productions. I'm sure John knows about this, but this is a four-way split of crushing space death, and it features Cryptic Shift, which is a 02:24:32.119 --> 02:24:34.920 I like 02:24:36.860 --> 02:25:06.840 I like traditional metal and sometimes power metal and traditional metal merge and I like that and I feel like some of these power metal bands that are coming up like Judicator are just really fucking good they're just they are something in me that that other power metal bands I haven't liked as much it is a scorching it's not as flowery and like no it's not flowery it's not the high pitched vocals you know it's got that traditional metal feel but with like an elevated 02:25:08.401 --> 02:25:13.760 I like Judicator quite a bit and they've got a bunch of albums I never 02:25:13.830 --> 02:25:19.640 really listened to them before but I'm getting into all of their albums um anthropic 02:25:20.240 --> 02:25:25.840 architects of aggression this might be one for you George um it's grinding death from Buffalo New York 02:25:26.050 --> 02:25:35.280 so central New York where I'm from I'm on it um lots of heavy one minute uh and change tracks um I've liked this better than most 02:25:35.300 --> 02:26:05.180 Grind albums I've come across. It's really well produced. Chock full of great riffs. They only last like 10 seconds, but they're still great riffs. And yeah, John McEntee from Incantation posted a picture of him holding it up. I'm like, what is this album? So I gave it a shot and it was really good. Cool. That's self-released. Next one, Ascended Master. What was and what shall be again? 02:26:05.300 --> 02:26:33.580 Self-Release. This is a really good thrashy death EP with black metal-ish vocals. It clocks in around, I'd say, 25 minutes or so. So it just misses being an album by the Rain and Blood room. But this one would have challenged for my number one EP spot at mid-year if it had been released earlier. It's really good, and I'm looking forward to seeing what this band... Should have had it on there anyway, bro. 02:26:35.280 --> 02:27:04.820 If I was Will, I would have. Another EP from a band called Incursion. This is The Hunter, self-released. Another traditional heroic heavy metal band. There's not really a lot fancy with this, but I really like the vocals on it. It has a galloping style that I enjoy. Actually, I've quit a few. It's kind of a George list. Well, maybe not. Resurrexus, Wolf Death. This is self-released. 02:27:04.840 --> 02:27:34.060 This is a really, really good death metal album from Argentina that I randomly came across on YouTube. I don't even think they have a Bandcamp page. There's a technicality to the playing on this record that I really like, and they do some really interesting instrumental breaks. And they just have great riffs. I was shocked by how well it was produced for something self-released from Argentina that's nowhere except YouTube. Maybe Spotify, because Spotify seems to have a lot of stuff. 02:27:34.100 --> 02:28:04.040 They have us. Right. So yeah. Resurexis. Check it out. I was surprised by this one. Cool. Kralis. Max Cathesis. I don't even know. From Gilead Media. Progressive Death Metal record. It's really absorbing. It's really cool. I also feel like I could play it as background music because it doesn't seem like a lot of vocals. It's a lot of instrumental parts to it. It's a string. 02:28:05.440 --> 02:28:30.020 but really useful to me for writing and the more I listen to it the more I dig it. I'm always like 50-50 on Growlice but this one I kind of dig. Amanis Obsession Come Pecatum from Legion of Darkness Records. This is a crushing riff-driven black metal album from Russia. Another one that I just found recently. 02:28:34.120 --> 02:29:03.080 And then the album of the episode. So for this one, I actually, I thought really hard about choosing incantation sect of vile divinities again. But since I did that last time, I'm going to go with faceless burial speciation on dark descent records. This record has everything an old school deather like me could ever want. Disgusting pummeling riffs that make me want to hammer everything I own. 02:29:03.880 --> 02:29:33.620 Check. Vocals that sound like someone dropped a combine down the throat of a dragon? Check. Disturbing artwork of an alien landscape made of melty bones where only the most metal of us can possibly survive? Check. This is a great album. It's going to be on my list at the end of the year. Nice. All right, Matt. Sweet. Oh, by the way, before we move on, I just wanted to mention that Donald Trump's younger brother, Robert, 02:29:33.720 --> 02:29:40.620 just died oh man yeah bummer shoot one down just a few more to go i guess 02:29:44.460 --> 02:29:50.220 all right yeah now matt all right i'm keeping it to the six uh first is have a crew new 02:29:51.600 --> 02:29:57.040 you know siomin sota how long did it take you to make that one up yeah tell me about it 02:29:57.840 --> 02:30:03.120 not your mock productions uh it's the third album from the finnish pagan black metal band uh definitely 02:30:03.140 --> 02:30:08.580 still on my kick off of uh balfrey uh the second one is crawless max 02:30:10.080 --> 02:30:15.220 that's on gilead uh marcus and i only know the pronunciation because i looked it up on google 02:30:15.500 --> 02:30:21.100 translate which pronounced it for me and capex this is the concentration of mental energy on one 02:30:21.380 --> 02:30:28.000 particular person idea or object especially to an unhealthy degree that's exactly what i have for 02:30:28.020 --> 02:30:57.860 I was going to say that sums up a lot of shit in my life. Yeah. This is the second collaboration with Dave Edwardson from Neurosis. He does the vocals. The first one was in 2017. That album was called Loom. I've been listening to a shitload of Neurosis. That was just, I had one and two. And then I think it was last week, Steve Von Till's solo album came out and that just kind of pushed me even more. Most of that time has been spent through Silver and Blood. 02:30:58.000 --> 02:31:26.480 In Times of Grace, Through Silver and Blood being probably the winner of that. Wayfair, they released a new single, The Horse, The Iron Horse, Gallows from 2003, from the album A Romance with Violence, which comes out October 16th on Profound Lore. But I spent time on World's Blood. I want to say, I didn't actually look back to what it was on my top 25. I want to say it was in the probably 12-13 area. 02:31:28.440 --> 02:31:54.400 And then our message will had mentioned seeing them with soar. I also got to see them with on and panopticon. It was a most wonderful evening of my life. And that's 2019 show, which seems like decades ago. One thing I'll mention from yesterday, decoherence, unitarity, that comes on sentient moon every Friday. I don't know what your, you know, 02:31:58.040 --> 02:32:27.980 I spend a lot of time on Metal Storm. This came out. I always check out one of the things and that is the genre and this was listed as industrial metal and atmospherical black metal. I feel like most of industrial metal is behind me in my life but when you combine it with atmospherical black metal the man on my left shoulder can't help but say like you need to listen to what that sounds like. I listen to it. I like it. Reminds me a lot of Blutas Nord which totally makes sense. I guess thinking back 02:32:28.020 --> 02:32:29.560 I could see some of their work, 02:32:29.970 --> 02:32:30.080 his, 02:32:30.520 --> 02:32:32.180 their work being described as industrial. 02:32:32.980 --> 02:32:33.760 Definitely worth checking out. 02:32:33.860 --> 02:32:34.680 They're a UK band. 02:32:35.360 --> 02:32:36.020 So second album, 02:32:37.250 --> 02:32:37.700 the album, 02:32:37.750 --> 02:32:38.300 the month, 02:32:39.160 --> 02:32:39.620 or I'm sorry, 02:32:39.680 --> 02:32:40.920 the album of the episode I have, 02:32:41.000 --> 02:32:41.980 which has not come out yet, 02:32:42.220 --> 02:32:45.180 but I don't give a fuck is it's called where we live. 02:32:45.340 --> 02:32:46.100 It's by Chrome waves. 02:32:46.940 --> 02:32:50.500 Chrome waves keep showing up on my radar because a band camps, 02:32:51.040 --> 02:32:56.780 band camp keeps paying me because I follow a wolf hammer and you see a lot of their, 02:32:57.460 --> 02:33:26.260 I won't call Chrome Waves a super group, but they are definitely a group that has like members that are in other bands, including like Wolfhammer, Atlas Moth, Abigail Williams. Recently, they picked up the drummer from Skeleton Witch, but a bigger point is they, so their album is called Upcoming Album, which comes up September 25th. It's called Where We Live, the song we, they currently have out, it's called On the Precipice, but they have a collab with Brimminghorn. 02:33:26.340 --> 02:33:56.260 And it's going to be called the mead. Let's see. What do they write? Their mead corpse provider is based on the cocktail called corpse reviver. The corpse provider is made with honey, orange, lemon, juniper berry, anasi, and aged in gin barrels. And that comes out on the 25th when the album comes out. And back to Chrome Waves, they're basically like a post black, post black, post metal band. Really good. This will be their second full length. Yep. Are they from Chicago, Grant? 02:33:59.039 --> 02:34:25.260 I know I'm bored. Members are from Chicago. I think Chicago is like sort of their hub. No, I think they're actually, they're from, well, the singer I think is from Amit Seuss, which is from Minnesota, but I think they list Indiana as their hub. Maybe it's just outside of Chicago where they're listed, but. Maybe I just heard a lot about them when I was in Chicago because they're right. They play here like they're a local. Yeah. 02:34:26.360 --> 02:34:56.320 When I say not super grip, I should say they kind of mix with the Minneapolis-Chicago crowd. Yeah. Definitely. Cool. The last album was awesome. Yeah. All right, John. Sorry. I got a few. We already mentioned Faceless Burial, so I won't really go much into that other than the fact that it is a crushing album, and if you haven't heard it yet, you might want to check it out. I think it's only like 36 or 37 minutes, but it's compact, but it's 02:34:56.340 --> 02:35:25.800 It's just a brutal, not brutal death, but just a heavy crushing sound. I think you'll enjoy it. An EP, which if it was a full length album, it definitely make my list for my top at the end of the year. It's called Dystopia AD Rise of the Merciless. Never heard of them. Saw it, I think, on Angry Metal Guy. It's the second release. First release is a full length. This is an EP. It's two guys. It's just really good. 02:35:26.380 --> 02:35:32.000 progressive death with a little bit of melodic death and some technical death in there i saw they 02:35:32.380 --> 02:35:37.900 chatted with us a little bit on uh on the facebook page yeah it's cool i think the first album was 02:35:38.060 --> 02:35:44.560 one guy and now it's two guys so um small independent band but it's cool uh we mentioned bear mace 02:35:44.960 --> 02:35:50.380 charred field of slaughter i saw this i think also i don't know where i saw it either decibel or 02:35:50.380 --> 02:36:19.560 Angry Metal Guy and, you know, Bear Mace, why would I not check that out? Let's be honest. I want to know if this is a mace that is, like, made from a bear that you would strike with, or is this, like, mace to, like, drive off a bear? Like, ah, there's a bear mace. What is this? Have you ever seen Bear Mace? It's, like, a canister. It's about a, I don't know, seven, eight inches, and you hold it out, and if a bear charges you, 02:36:20.380 --> 02:36:50.360 Yeah, it's a real thing. It's advisable that you don't get yourself in that situation, but if you do. I like to tell the story about the time that I think I met a bear in the middle of the night. But 2020 seems to be the year of grizzly metal with Chopping Mall, too. Jay will appreciate this. I listened to a YouTube channel called 02:36:50.420 --> 02:37:20.300 of Tranquility. This guy's name is Pete Pardo. He's been around for a very long time. He's been doing prog and rock for years and metal. And he started out as a, it's a webzine also, but they do a lot of like ranking catalogs by bands. And he brings guests on like Martin Popoff is on there all the time. But they're going to do enslaved soon. So I've been listening to a ton of enslaved so I can be prepared for when I listen to it and I can comment on what my favorite enslaved albums are, which is silly because I listen to enslaved all the time. 02:37:20.760 --> 02:37:23.320 So that's no big change in my schedule. 02:37:24.680 --> 02:37:25.500 Blow the lights. 02:37:27.040 --> 02:37:27.460 Good choice. 02:37:28.000 --> 02:37:28.380 It's hard. 02:37:28.510 --> 02:37:30.820 Yeah, you say that. 02:37:31.240 --> 02:37:33.800 Jay and I go back and forth on this all the time. 02:37:35.120 --> 02:37:36.100 And I'm trying to do this. 02:37:36.420 --> 02:37:39.880 I'm doing this with John or alone with John, meaning I'm doing it over here. 02:37:39.950 --> 02:37:42.000 I'm trying to do my list before this comes out. 02:37:42.800 --> 02:37:44.340 And you say that, dude, you write it down. 02:37:44.510 --> 02:37:47.120 But then you start looking at those other fucking titles and it gets hard. 02:37:47.260 --> 02:37:48.280 I mean, they're all great. 02:37:49.200 --> 02:37:50.620 They're all great albums. 02:37:51.300 --> 02:37:53.100 So that's a fine choice. 02:37:53.580 --> 02:38:01.260 Yeah, it's a fun channel that I follow on YouTube because I disagree with almost half the stuff they say all the time, but that's the whole point. 02:38:01.670 --> 02:38:06.140 The point is, and he's got the expression, the line is like, hey, we all listen to music differently. 02:38:06.190 --> 02:38:07.760 We all like certain albums differently. 02:38:08.160 --> 02:38:09.000 So that's what's fun. 02:38:09.010 --> 02:38:09.920 Just put your list down. 02:38:10.400 --> 02:38:11.020 So it's kind of cool. 02:38:12.940 --> 02:38:16.800 I've been listening to a ton of the albums in our metal, Thunderdome. 02:38:17.020 --> 02:38:18.200 That's all I'll say for now. 02:38:19.239 --> 02:38:48.220 And my album of the episode I mentioned last time, but it was not my album of the episode, but it's Exist Egoista. I guess that's coming out. It's a new release also. It wasn't included in our new releases, but it's coming out the same day as Incantation and Necrote, a.k.a. Necrote. Sorry. That was not an intentional slight. No, it's fine. Necrote. Actually, the 28th of this month has got some, 02:38:48.320 --> 02:39:18.180 Big Albums coming out. It's a really great day. No, I'm just adding it now. I'm a big fan of these guys. I told you how I gave George credit for reminding me of them, even though I knew them. I completely forgot about them. Which is why I would not have left them off intentionally had I realized. How does this one compare to the last one, John? What do you think? So I, George will tell you, I sent him a message, because I know he sort of likes them too, and I know Will likes them a little bit, and I said, I don't know about this one. 02:39:18.340 --> 02:39:48.300 It's progier, and I know it's funny for me to say that, but the more I listen to it, the more I'm loving it. It's got a lot of fusion. It can be technical. It's not really death metal, but they can get death-y a little bit. They get a little worked up. It ebbs and flows more of this album than the last one, I think, in terms of it's proggy atmospheric, then it gets really heavy, then it gets real fusion-y, and not jazz, but fusion, if you like fusion, which is different than jazz, even though they incorporate 02:39:48.320 --> 02:40:18.220 Jazz Elements. And the guy, Max, the singer, he's the guy who also is sung in the tree band, Death to All. His vocals just keep getting better. So I like it a lot. Sounds like it's going to be on John's list. Possibly. It'll definitely be on my ear end. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. All right. Jay. All right. My list, I'll keep kind of brief because so many things get mentioned by the time we get to me and George. The George usually has a lot of stuff he's dug out of. 02:40:18.340 --> 02:40:48.300 Dude, Will's not even here. I'm fucking going off the rails. Oh, no. But that's stated. Some things worth mentioning are the album of the month that Will and or I think it was Markisan Turn Me On, or George, maybe it was George and Will, the Temple of Dread record. That's really good. I've listened to that a lot. I too kind of made sure to spend some extra time on the Thunderdome records this year, this week. I kind of got into a weird deep dive on the 02:40:51.999 --> 02:40:54.260 I like them more than I realized 02:40:54.440 --> 02:40:56.500 they did. Even though I did like 02:40:56.700 --> 02:41:00.500 some of them anyway, but they're all pretty fucking good. And I don't mean the 90s experimental shit. 02:41:00.540 --> 02:41:02.860 I mean once they came back from Violent Revolution on. 02:41:03.340 --> 02:41:05.300 Dude, I fucking think Renewal's a great record. 02:41:06.280 --> 02:41:07.340 And Dorama as well. 02:41:08.860 --> 02:41:10.980 You know, George, I have to be honest with you, I haven't really listened to them. 02:41:11.260 --> 02:41:13.480 So I should probably dip my fingers into them. 02:41:13.480 --> 02:41:15.440 It's just a thrashy creator. 02:41:15.840 --> 02:41:45.800 I also got stuck in a Bathory gravity well this week and the last two weeks nothing new there for me but just once you do I just remember how much I really like Bathory and how creative that dude is and then probably the biggest thing worth mentioning the big discovery for me this week which was we always learn things from each other this is a band that's been around for a few years I did not know about them Wayfarer I am super excited about this band this is the western theme 02:41:45.800 --> 02:41:51.500 black metal stuff that will posted their new track and i went listen to it i was like fuck this is 02:41:51.570 --> 02:41:57.060 fucking cool the last record is great they get honestly a little less western themed as you go 02:41:57.240 --> 02:42:02.900 backwards like as far as the influence on the music but they're always western themed lyrically but 02:42:02.960 --> 02:42:07.320 the last like two are you know what they remind me of Markisan and i know you're a fan of this movie 02:42:07.600 --> 02:42:14.060 and i'm a huge fan of this movie too and it's the neil young soundtrack to dead man the johnny johnny 02:42:14.080 --> 02:42:20.580 Dead Man's my second favorite movie of all time. I love Dead Man and I also like just the great American 02:42:21.380 --> 02:42:43.079 West ideal and all that stuff and the Plains and the Indians. This is good stuff, dude. I'm super excited about their next record. Yeah, they've leaned into that Western theme more and I think it's benefited the band. I love the last album. Like to an Enio Marconi sense, you know what I mean? Like it's got these, but you can hear the train coming down the track. He just died recently. That's true, yeah. But the last two is specifically 02:42:46.221 --> 02:43:11.260 I named the town for my lead character in my new comic book after Wayfair. It's called Wayfair. Oh, fuck yeah. Well, A World's Blood, which was their last full length. Their next full length is completed and coming out soon, and you can get one track from that, and that one is called, worth saying, A Romance with Violence. Great stuff. 02:43:13.100 --> 02:43:16.060 I did know about them because now I've got like five records to listen to. 02:43:16.160 --> 02:43:17.520 Yeah, no, that's super fun, Jay. 02:43:17.620 --> 02:43:20.520 Like you didn't know about them and now you're like, oh, I'm all into this and you buy everything. 02:43:21.080 --> 02:43:21.300 Yeah. 02:43:21.420 --> 02:43:21.660 And we. 02:43:21.800 --> 02:43:23.580 It doesn't happen that often for us. 02:43:23.720 --> 02:43:27.600 Not anymore, you know, because we all listen to so much, but this was a great discovery. 02:43:27.800 --> 02:43:31.740 So also I want to thank Will again for posting that in our chat thread. 02:43:32.340 --> 02:43:33.780 So Wayfair, one of my new favorite things. 02:43:34.000 --> 02:43:34.120 Yeah. 02:43:34.160 --> 02:43:35.040 Hope you're doing well, Will. 02:43:35.940 --> 02:43:36.040 Yeah. 02:43:36.240 --> 02:43:36.660 We miss you, buddy. 02:43:37.140 --> 02:43:37.220 Will. 02:43:37.380 --> 02:43:38.020 Wherever you are. 02:43:38.660 --> 02:43:39.460 Wherever you are. 02:43:40.400 --> 02:43:42.560 And George, that leads to you. 02:43:42.580 --> 02:44:12.160 And as mentioned, I do want to especially say, I know I already said it, but John mentioned it. And I did want to make sure before I made my final choice that I listened to both of the Thunderdome records again today. So I listened to those today. Nice. All right. I don't have like a traditionally long George list, just a slightly longer than usual. I was like, well, it's not going to be there. I'm going to just go a little extra. So get, you know, get comfortable. 02:44:12.600 --> 02:44:42.540 Oh, Jesus. Actually, it's probably not that much longer than Mark's on. Yours was pretty long. It was actually for me. First up is the band Angel Morgue and their first album. This fucking Matt just gets up and walks away. You know, that's hurtful, Matt. That's fucking hurtful. John's coming back. He's like tagging in. But seriously, Matt. How long is this going to go? Seriously, Matt, that's fucking hurtful. Jesus. All right. So Angel Morgue. 02:44:42.600 --> 02:45:10.760 In the Morgue of Angels. It's their first album. They're a New Hampshire death metal band. I'm not entirely sure how this next one is pronounced, but I'm going with Bargest. B-A-R-G-H-E-S-T. The album's called Altars of Rot. It's their third album. They're a Baton Rouge black death metal band. This next one is not out yet. It will be out, I think, first week of September. 02:45:12.600 --> 02:45:13.480 And it's called, 02:45:13.790 --> 02:45:15.520 the band is called cult of Lilith. 02:45:16.100 --> 02:45:17.920 It's their first album called Mara. 02:45:18.620 --> 02:45:19.660 They're an Icelandic. 02:45:19.730 --> 02:45:21.140 It says Icelandic death metal, 02:45:21.140 --> 02:45:23.720 but this to me was very like symphonic death. 02:45:24.880 --> 02:45:27.260 If I recall describing this to the guys, 02:45:27.500 --> 02:45:28.320 it was like, 02:45:29.040 --> 02:45:29.360 um, 02:45:30.520 --> 02:45:34.500 flesh got apocalypse King mixed with like cradle of filth type. 02:45:35.530 --> 02:45:38.780 It was like very symphonic in a death sense, 02:45:39.220 --> 02:45:42.420 but also kind of campy in a black cradle sense. 02:45:42.480 --> 02:46:12.080 So, but I thought it was pretty cool on my first listen. You know, it was one of those things where I just casually listen. I'm like, I'm not going to like this. And I was like, wait, wait. Nope. I do like this. Hold on. I want to give Matt some shit. Welcome back, Matt. Thank you for coming back. Thank you. I was really pleased that you got up and left as soon as I started fucking talking. Dickhead. I knew I had a few minutes. Just kidding. I love you. 02:46:12.500 --> 02:46:13.260 I love you. 02:46:14.800 --> 02:46:16.300 We're up to C, by the way. 02:46:16.850 --> 02:46:16.960 Sweet. 02:46:17.800 --> 02:46:22.300 Next up is Cynicism and their first album, Lim Hymns. 02:46:22.840 --> 02:46:24.560 H-Y-M-N-S, Hymns. 02:46:25.580 --> 02:46:27.340 They're a Boston death grind band. 02:46:27.900 --> 02:46:29.160 I thought this was pretty cool. 02:46:29.760 --> 02:46:32.320 Will did not like it, but whatever. 02:46:32.610 --> 02:46:33.460 I think it's really cool. 02:46:33.540 --> 02:46:34.260 I like it a lot. 02:46:36.100 --> 02:46:38.020 Next up is not a new band. 02:46:39.040 --> 02:46:40.560 They're called Genghis Tron. 02:46:41.720 --> 02:47:11.660 They were, and still are, in fact, a New York experimental grind band. I was so excited that just a day or two ago, they announced that they're working on a new album that's going to be out soon. Actually, I can't say if it was recently, but I at least found on Bandcamp some of their material that I did not yet have purchased, which was the Cloak of Love EP and their first two albums, Dead Mountain Mouth and Bored Up the House. So I picked those up. 02:47:12.439 --> 02:47:41.680 It's cool, weird shit. It's electronic and synth-y, but it's also grind-y. It's cool stuff. While apparently they have a new singer for the new album, I'm still really excited to hear what they come up with next. Next up, we have a band that is also not out yet called Gorgatron. And their third album, Pathogenic Automation. I believe this is going to be out in the next week or so. They're a Fargo, North Dakota death metal band. 02:47:41.740 --> 02:48:11.680 band. We got the promo. I thought it was pretty cool. I did have a bit of a period this past week where I spent some time with Johnny Cash. I went through the, I just took all the American albums series, like the stuff with Rick Rubin and like basically the last albums that he did, the last four or five. Like where he covers Nine Inch Nails and stuff. Nine Inch Nails and Song Garden and all that. It was awesome. And just really, you know, the, the, 02:48:11.720 --> 02:48:17.360 really emotionally and it's cool stuff and i just took all of those albums and threw them on repeat 02:48:17.820 --> 02:48:21.420 and i repeat but shuffle and and was listening to them for a long time because 02:48:21.860 --> 02:48:25.860 because fucking johnny cash in fact i meant to wear my johnny cash shirt tonight i'm gonna pause 02:48:26.240 --> 02:48:31.200 i totally back you up on this binge george but i just wanted to take this moment then to 02:48:31.940 --> 02:48:36.300 suggest to anybody who hasn't seen the ken burns country music documentary to watch that is so fucking good 02:48:36.580 --> 02:48:41.700 it's so good and it's all about cool guys like johnny cash it's all the cool stuff so yeah i was just 02:48:41.720 --> 02:49:11.640 The Dylan Book, Dylan Biography, which should not be confused with Chronicles, because that was written by Dylan and is apparently, like, complete bullshit. Well, it's sort of like a, it's sort of, it's written into this. Anything that comes out of Dylan's mouth is apparently bullshit. Well, it goes around in circles and it just jumps timelines and stuff, yeah. But there was a lot of Cash, they were friends, and so I was like, ah, I need to listen to Johnny Cash, I'll listen to Johnny Cash in a while. And of course, 02:49:11.720 --> 02:49:41.640 I did listen to a lot of Dylan while reading that book as well. But yeah. So next, this next one I learned about from Dan Clanchard. And that is the Resin Tomb self-titled EP. They're an Australian sludge death band. Kind of dug that. Kladjen Car Talk. Kladjen Car. Next up, the new S Tool album, Exodus. This is the second album. This is a Finnish band fronted by Ville. 02:49:41.720 --> 02:50:10.880 from My Beloved Sentenced. You know, pretty much after the end of Sentenced, after Sentenced, there was Poison Black, which was all right. It was not sentenced by any stretch of the imagination, but it was acceptable. And then Poison Black ended and S-Tool released their first album. And I was like, what is this shit, dude? You are really fucking stretching. So stool then. Stool. 02:50:15.359 --> 02:50:40.580 If you know South Park at all, that was like the Russian for shit, I think it was. But anyway, so I wasn't expecting much, but I'm like, I love V-Lay, so I'm going to listen to this. And he sounds really pissed off on this album. Like, he knows that he needs to step up. And while I only got about halfway through the album, it was quite listenable. And I am going to go back and listen to it more because it's heavy. 02:50:40.640 --> 02:51:10.040 I dig the dude. Next up, Sepulchral Curse, Only Ashes Remain, first album of a Finnish black death band. I accidentally pre-ordered that a few months ago and then forgot when it came out. I didn't accidentally pre-order things because they never release when they say they do. For some reason, I did. Next up, 02:51:10.640 --> 02:51:40.600 Gladwell's not here, but the new Taylor Swift album Folklore is pretty fucking awesome. Sorry to say it. Good night. Yeah, see ya. You know, I'm only going to talk about this for about half an hour or so, so just chill out. I was like, oh, is zombie not metal enough? Nah, dude, I go all over, man. You know, I've never been particularly a Taylor Swift 02:51:40.660 --> 02:52:10.600 Swift fan. He's in love with Lady Gaga. I like Gaga. I like Madonna. Listen to the last episode. You'll hear about that from Will in unfortunate detail. But my wife's brother told her that she needs to listen to this new Taylor Swift album because it's complete. It's not like poppy. It's all like singer songwriter folky. Great. Can you go to the next album? Yes. Hold on. Give me just one minute. What the fuck? So anyway, we listened to the next album. 02:52:10.640 --> 02:52:40.600 I listened to it in the car while we were out shopping and I was like this is really good okay I'm gonna leave it at that it's a really good album actually there's one more thing to add and that is because it was called out by somebody on twitter as having stolen the cover concept from your core yeah plus Uwata by the way or no Uwata was a different one that was somebody else covering their face yeah but it is I mean it is not from an isan record wasn't it the I can't 02:52:40.600 --> 02:53:10.580 Well, Mercure was going to call it out. I think it was very similar to a Nissan. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, but the Uwata thing, I don't know if you saw that, Matt. That was Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, but the point is, it's not a stupid, dumb pop album like a lot of things. It's actually a pretty decent album. But anyway, moving on, Temple of Dread. Okay, metal, right? No! Temple of Dread, as mentioned previously, and 02:53:10.620 --> 02:53:40.580 as some of us listed as our album of the month. World Sacrifice, second album, German death metal band. And my last non-album of the episode, I'll be damned if I can pronounce it, but I'm going to go with Zithlia, which is X-Y-T-H-L-I-A. And the album is called Immortality Through Quantum Suicide. And they are, they're not listed on Metal Archive, so all I could get 02:53:40.600 --> 02:54:10.180 from Bandcamp was is that they're a Minneapolis band Matt. Oh yeah. Is it like death grind? Yes. There's like it's like white and yeah. I saw this on Bandcamp but I didn't listen to it until Josh Landau as you may have one of our listeners from a previous episode he was like dude you should check this out. So I did and I picked it up. It's cool. I dig it. Now unfortunately I could not decide on a single album of the episode so I have to. 02:54:11.300 --> 02:54:40.580 What? Hey, somebody else did that. I think Will did that. Oh my god, if it's Taylor Swift, we're moving on. It is not. No, no. The two albums that have not been mentioned yet are my albums of the episode. And I think you'll like the first one. I don't like when people don't make a decision. Sorry, I couldn't do it because I like both of these for different reasons. And so album of the episode number one is a band that's 02:54:40.620 --> 02:55:10.240 I cannot pronounce called Orms Creek. It's their self-titled album. They're a Norwegian Black Death Thrash Band. And I swear, Marcus, you told me about them. Somebody did. Did I? Somebody on here. Maybe it was Matt. Somebody told me about this. If it's black metal, probably Matt. It definitely was not an album that I heard first. I just want to point that out. Somebody told me about this and I listened to it and it's awesome. The second one is a band from Austin, Texas. 02:55:10.600 --> 02:55:40.280 They're called Skeleton. And this is their self-titled album. They're like a death thrash. It's like, it's kind of deathy, but it's very well produced and structured in a thrash sense. And I was not expecting to dig this, but I was like, when I put it on, I was like, I couldn't stop listening. Yeah, it's a good album. It was a really good album. Yeah. So there you go. Nicely done. That was way longer than mine. I don't know why you tried to compare it to mine. Dude. It's like, I just, 02:55:40.620 --> 02:56:10.580 I'm seven times longer than what I did. Okay, I just wanted to point out that you just admitted that I am seven times longer. Yay, there you go. But not thicker. Oh, I've got the girth. I've got the girth of the earth. All right, so let's move on to our metal Thunderdome, and this time it is Jay's privilege to torture us. Well, the day we started doing this was months ago, you know, whatever, some mini episodes ago, and so I really put a lot of thought 02:56:10.580 --> 02:56:40.260 to mine and wanted to make it as cruel and as devilish and terrible on people's souls as possible. So I think I've come up with a good one here. And if ever there was a Sophie's Choice. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. But so let me explain my reasoning a little bit by starting out with the previous two albums by the two bands in question. And those would be Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979 and promptly or fairly promptly started his own band. And then Black Sabbath hired one. 02:56:41.319 --> 02:57:10.560 I want to get the timeline right on this. I really kind of did a little preparation for this. They released Black Sabbath, released their debut with Ronnie James Dio in April of 1980. Much to the surprise of a lot of people, it was fucking awesome. Maybe not to the surprise of people, but it represented a pretty big switch for Black Sabbath. It kind of went to this new 80s metal sound. Ozzy's record came out in September of 1980, so it was the same year, a few months later. And you would think that with that buildup, I'm 02:57:10.580 --> 02:57:18.400 I'm not going with Blizzard of Oz and Heaven and Hell is because 02:57:19.200 --> 02:57:23.920 I think that Black Sabbath has an unfair advantage with that record. They both did very well, but 02:57:24.520 --> 02:57:28.960 Black Sabbath was a well-established band with a record label. Ozzy had to go find a whole new band 02:57:30.659 --> 02:57:35.440 and he recorded his record on Finance without a label or anything like that. 02:57:36.340 --> 02:58:05.780 I'm not trying to give Ozzy a handicap, but I do personally think Heaven and Hell is an objectively superior record. So I thought, let's make it a little tougher. Now they've both been working together for a year, and they both went back in the studio and made their next records, which were released in November, both released in November of 1981. And here's an interesting thing. I don't remember what release schedules looked like in the 80s, but it literally says here that Mob Rules was released on the 4th of November. 02:58:06.340 --> 02:58:36.060 And that diarrhea, is somebody having an emergency? Well, there's an announcement going on. Okay. Hold on one second. Sure. They usually repeat it twice. Didn't you already have your hurricane? Yeah, but, oh man, dude, the alarm's been going off nonstop this week. Oh, okay. Were there like an emergency? Thankfully, it's not that. This is just an announcement. So they'll do it again here, and then it'll be done. Let's see what that is. 02:58:37.540 --> 02:59:06.320 Attention, attention, attention, all residents, units ending in 03, you may do laundry. It is okay for you to do laundry. Okay. Dude, can you do your laundry or not? Yeah. No, I'm not in 03, but, uh, so yes, I can do my laundry. Dude, I feel like you're leaving in Big Brother 1984 over there or something like that. People with brown mustaches just concurrently order french fries in the cafeteria. No, I'm going to die here because what happens is that you're going to die. 02:59:06.360 --> 02:59:36.280 They put on the alarm all the time. Like, if somebody reports an emergency, they do this siren. And then they'll be like, go to your nearest stairwell. You know, go down to the lobby or to your designated safe area. And they'll do it for a while. And I never go down when that happens because every single time it's a false alarm. And it's happened five times this week. So I'm going to die. I know I'm going to die here because one day it's going to be real and nobody's going to believe. 02:59:36.340 --> 03:00:05.380 it because it's never been real yeah let's remember you guys were about to be struck by missiles a year before you moved there but it wasn't that long ago yeah anyway did you get to announce this or not i was well we were right there so i was i think i got in all of the earlier stuff the first yeah yeah i'm moving us on to their second release the second release of both of these outfits uh they all had a chance to work together a little longer and um i don't remember if albums released were released only on one day 03:00:06.340 --> 03:00:34.380 per week like happenstile. But according to this, according to what I found, Mobber Rules was released on November 4th, 1981, and Diary of a Madman was released on November 7th, 1981. It was days after. Three whole days later. And those are the two records that I'm putting up in the Thunderdome. Now, I forget if I make my choice or if I wait for my turn, and I'm happy to do either one. You should wait your turn. Grant gets to go first. Yeah, he's like, oh, fuck. He's making the oh, fuck face. 03:00:36.360 --> 03:01:04.320 Dude. A lot of pressure. Okay. Yeah, I gotta admit, I did... Sorry. Feel free to talk about it before you make your pick, by all means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have listened to both of these records. I couldn't even tell you how many times. Countless numbers of times. I listened to them again this week, a couple times, in preparation for this, because this is an important... This is the most important thing I'm doing this week. 03:01:06.360 --> 03:01:36.160 As are we all. It is really good. Not the podcast. The Thunderdome. The podcast is fine. The podcast is the most important part. This is the important stuff. I am, for people who know me and for people who hang out with me, I am a nonstop Dio guy. I love Ronnie James Dio. I think everything that Ronnie James Dio has done is great. Rainbow, Sabbath, I mean Elf, not maybe so much. Solo stuff, but like Dio is great. 03:01:36.360 --> 03:01:38.280 Dio is 03:01:38.780 --> 03:01:39.680 literally God 03:01:40.320 --> 03:01:40.920 the greatest 03:01:41.630 --> 03:01:42.140 literally God 03:01:42.360 --> 03:01:42.920 and in my view 03:01:43.050 --> 03:01:44.020 literally the greatest 03:01:44.170 --> 03:01:44.600 heavy metal 03:01:45.540 --> 03:01:45.940 vocalist 03:01:46.000 --> 03:01:46.500 ever 03:01:47.500 --> 03:01:48.020 and 03:01:49.700 --> 03:01:51.020 99 times out of 100 03:01:51.050 --> 03:01:51.900 I'd probably pick Dio 03:01:53.301 --> 03:01:53.820 but 03:01:55.000 --> 03:01:56.660 I think Diary of a Madman 03:01:57.080 --> 03:01:57.760 is Ozzy's 03:01:58.100 --> 03:01:58.580 best solo 03:01:59.620 --> 03:02:00.420 and I think if you 03:02:00.760 --> 03:02:01.320 put up the two 03:02:01.350 --> 03:02:02.080 next to each other 03:02:03.761 --> 03:02:04.960 I'm picking Ozzy 03:02:05.700 --> 03:02:34.940 So I think Mob Rules is a solid record. But to Jay's point, Heaven and Hell is just a barn burner all the way through. Track one to the end is great. Mob Rules I think is a little bit uneven. So I was listening to it again. There's some great songs on there. Sign of the Southern Cross is one of the best Sabbath albums. And I think that leading into E5150, then Mob Rules is one of those classic Black Sabbath three album stretches where you get 03:02:34.980 --> 03:03:04.940 that sort of weird instrumental or like special effects type of song in between to like really great tracks, great rocking tracks. But as an album, I don't think it holds up that great compared to Diary of a Madman, which and even before I knew about this Metal Thunder for the last week, week and a half, for whatever reason it is, I've had Over the Mountain and 03:03:07.359 --> 03:03:33.840 I had a couple of the songs stuck in my head, just like for whatever reason. I wake up and I'm just thinking like over the mountain. And I've just been sort of like living with this Ozzy album inside my head for no reason whatsoever for the last like two weeks. So it sort of had that advantage. Going back to the mob rules, great record. Dio to me is like Star Trek movies. He's got a really good one. 03:03:34.460 --> 03:04:04.440 Well, that's pretty good. Then a really good one. And I think Heaven and Hell and Last in Line are two, like, classic 80s metal albums. But unfortunately, those two in between, Mob Rules and Holy Diver, I think are great. But just not quite hitting there. So for this Thunderdome, taking Dire of the Madman. I'm going to ask you a small favor. Don't do it if you don't have the time. But I've put in the chat thread here a link to an article that I wrote about the meanings of running 03:04:04.480 --> 03:04:34.440 these lyrics so if you get a chance to read it that'd be really cool self-promoting yeah well i i just it is a great article i'm not but anybody who's who starts out telling me they love everything deal i mean i that's that's more like we're brothers and i would like to share my thoughts with you a good that's just exactly the kind of thinking i expected about this one so let's keep going mark us on yeah i mean uh first off i gotta say this is an amazing thunderdome from jay you know former black sabbath folk 03:04:34.460 --> 03:05:04.440 and mega icon in a second on arguably best album diary of madman grant says it is his best versus the second dio fronted sabbath record and like jay said diary was released just days after mob rule so that's just an amazing versus uh moment right here so um and also maybe jay knows this he probably does but i read that his boy martin popoff gave both of these albums perfect 03:05:04.500 --> 03:05:32.880 10 out of 10 scores in the collector's guide to heavy metal. That's awesome. I did not know that. No. Yes. So all that said, my choice for this was never in doubt. I love Ozzy, especially his time in early Sabbath. And Diary, to me, is a really good album. But Ronnie James Dio is going to master blast the fuck out of any Thunderdome opponent. 03:05:34.480 --> 03:06:02.880 In my ears, Dio Sabbath is the ultimate Sabbath. I love his voice. I love his lyrics. I love that the rest of the band sounds completely energized with him in it. And Mob Rules has some of my all-time favorite songs, Falling Off the Edge of the World and Sign of the Southern Cross. So for me, two bands enter and one band leaves its opponent in a bloody quivering heap of bat heads. Black Sabbath, Mob Rules all the way. 03:06:03.300 --> 03:06:33.260 Awesome. This is getting ugly. All right, Matt, fuck some shit up. First off, I love Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. I wish Tina Turner could be here. We had like a Tina Turner clip along with us. And to be honest, Hey, Matt, she's a private dancer. I love you, John. To Markson's point, like for me, this is not a difficult decision, but I understand 03:06:33.300 --> 03:07:03.260 I understand for some of you it is a difficult decision and for me for me personally I feel like this is a generational thing um I like when I read the Black Sabbath book was that by Mick Wall yeah yeah for him to write that Ozzy went on to have a more successful solo career than Black Sabbath did was very shocking because you know I was not aware of what was going on at the time like Black Sabbath is fucking untouchable how could Ozzy have a like a more prosperous solo career 03:07:03.300 --> 03:07:33.200 And those are definitely things that made me think like, wow, oh yeah, totally. But like, I don't love Ozzy's solo career. I don't like, I like his music, but I never loved it. I'm probably more interested. Honestly, I'm probably more interested in Randy Rhodes than I am in Ozzy's career. And so to put it up against Bob Rules to me is like, like to me, Dio is untouchable. And in this case, it does not. 03:07:33.300 --> 03:08:01.660 That does not change. And I go with mod rules. Fair enough. You know, so far, with the exception of Grant, who I wouldn't have known which way you guys have chosen what I thought you would choose. You have or you haven't? I thought they would choose. And almost for the exact reasons. I don't think I would have had Markisan logic down, but I honestly thought that the generational thing might push Matt towards the mod rules. Yeah. And partially because Ozzy occupies such a buffoonery place these days, in all honesty. 03:08:02.479 --> 03:08:05.460 He's more of a media figure than he is what he was at this moment. 03:08:06.430 --> 03:08:09.180 And to be perfectly frank, my first Ozzy album was No More Tears. 03:08:09.560 --> 03:08:17.700 Now, by no means do I feel like that is his best work, but that is where I landed on the spectrum in terms of understanding who Ozzy Osbourne was. 03:08:17.770 --> 03:08:18.660 That's where you walk through the door. 03:08:19.010 --> 03:08:20.340 Like, Mama, I'm coming home. 03:08:21.010 --> 03:08:21.780 Can I just... 03:08:21.850 --> 03:08:22.480 Mr. Tinkertrain. 03:08:23.070 --> 03:08:23.860 Can I just mention this? 03:08:24.030 --> 03:08:26.900 Because if I don't mention it now, I'll forget it later when it's my turn. 03:08:29.960 --> 03:08:59.460 Recently, you know, Ozzy put out a new album this year, which universally we pretty much thought stunk. Although I did like one song. But I was, I was in the, it was the same day as the Taylor Swift car incident. I mentioned to Barb that Ozzy did a duet with Elton John. Cause I was like, it's fucking horrible. And she's like, I want to hear this. And so I played it for her and I'm like waiting. And she's like, this is really good. 03:08:59.960 --> 03:09:29.700 She's like I want to hear the rest of the album and she really liked the new Ozzy album. I was like, oof. Even though I'll say that that's all the more reason not to like it. And I know she's your wife, but that is the rough equivalent of giving it to your mom and going, I really like that Ozzy record. That's how far he's fallen. You know what I mean? Like, no offense. But now I have to say, moving on to our next commentator here, he was the one who knew about this the first in advance. 03:09:29.960 --> 03:09:59.940 I want to believe he was one of the people who was most emotionally tortured but I think he may have had his answer pretty quick too so let's hear where you're at John so I like to bring up the fact that I was around cognizant when these albums were coming out meaning I was cutting my teeth on them and it's not because I want to say oh I'm back in my day it's not that at all actually I feel very fortunate despite the fact that my body doesn't feel fortunate at my age right now but I feel really fortunate that I was there when the 03:09:59.980 --> 03:10:06.900 this stuff was actually happening and so i remember heaven and hell and i remember blizzard of oz when 03:10:06.900 --> 03:10:16.980 they came out and they were great albums but i identified more with 1981 because i was expecting those albums when they came out 03:10:18.419 --> 03:10:25.600 so i will say it was a tough decision i mean if you listen to the 50 years of metal episode we did you 03:10:25.700 --> 03:10:29.940 probably know what my answer is going to be but it i did give this a fair shake and i listened to both 03:10:29.960 --> 03:10:59.920 I love Mob Rules. I think it's a great album. Some of my favorite songs by Sabbath are on that album. One of my favorite deep tracks off that album, Slippin' Away, I absolutely love that song. I have since I was a kid. Some people don't like it. I actually like that song a lot. Voodoo's a great song. The title track is amazing. Sign of the Southern Cross is still one of my favorite songs by the whole 03:10:59.980 --> 03:11:29.800 for the band. But when it came down to it, I identified way more with Diary of a Madman from Ozzy. And for a lot of reasons, and people listening will be able to see this. But if you look, I mean, that's all about this album. I wrote notes on it because it meant that much to me. This album, I think what happens with Ozzy is because Jay brought it up, people see him as a buffoon now because of his wife being just the, 03:11:29.840 --> 03:11:33.360 as she is. She's ruined so much of his legacy. 03:11:34.560 --> 03:11:37.720 And people don't remember how amazing his band was. 03:11:38.380 --> 03:11:42.240 Those first two albums, he had three amazing musicians on them. 03:11:42.540 --> 03:11:47.100 People always remember Randy Rhoads, but they forget, you know, Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake. 03:11:47.900 --> 03:11:52.920 Really contributed. That was a band. That wasn't Ozzy. It was a band. 03:11:53.600 --> 03:11:57.680 And his wife figured out a way to finagle it into a solo act. 03:11:58.560 --> 03:12:27.340 And the fact that when that first album came out, they were writing for hits. I mean, you think about it, there are four huge songs off that album. And Diver of Mad Men doesn't have any hits. It has Over the Mountains known. Flying High, again, gets a lot of press, but it's a deep cut album. That's what makes that album special, I think. And I identified way more with that. It's a darker album. I think the writing's better. I think the band's amazing. Some of Randy Rhoads' best solos and work is on that album. 03:12:27.420 --> 03:12:56.340 And I know Jay will agree with this. Hands down, my favorite deep track my whole life is on that album. Yeah. And that's SATO. That is just an unbelievable song. Sailing Across the Ocean? Yes. And I don't care. Sharon Arden. I don't care what she says. I don't care what she has no credibility to say it was about her. I'm going to I don't care what Bob Daisley says if he capitulates because that guy's been screwed over so many times by her. Yeah. 03:12:57.420 --> 03:13:24.880 I feel bad that his work and Lee Kerslake's work is so underscored over the years. I think it's a forgotten album too even though some of us are talking about how great it is because Randy Rhodes died during that tour and it gets forgotten because Ozzy doesn't play anything off that album. He plays Flying High again. That's it. That's literally all he plays. He plays Believer once in a while. You know, never plays over the mountain. I saw that tour. I actually saw both these tours. 03:13:25.000 --> 03:13:54.980 And so, but hands down for me, and it's close, but it's Diary of a Madman. Wow, this is a close thunderdome. Yeah. So, you know, Lee Kersley, the funny thing too is that it's actually Tommy Aldridge who's credited on the album. And Rudy Sarzo also. Yeah, well, he's credited on eight things he's not on. But, so, my turn. So, we're 2-2 right now, right? I kind of thought John would go that way. Yeah, but I 03:13:55.000 --> 03:14:22.420 I think Judge and I are going to play clean up better here together and knock it out of the park in One Direction. Pretty sure about that. Oh, I love One Direction. Kidding, kidding. Don't like, don't like. One Direction home. I really did choose this on purpose because these are two records that are deeply meaningful to me that I love both of them. I did have Diary of a Mad Men when it came out. I got it that year. I didn't get Mob Rules until sometime later, probably as much as two years later. 03:14:27.020 --> 03:14:54.100 I do think Ozzy was sort of handicapped at the time of Blizzard of Oz. It suffers for production. Again, they had to make it off the grid, so to speak. They had to just find, you know, and Ozzy had a little money no matter what he says. He had some money. So they went and they rented a studio and they wrote this stuff and came up with it. But, you know, second time around, they had this, you know, what you get behind you, which is this machine of money and stuff that put them in a good place to make a better record with it. 03:14:54.160 --> 03:14:58.300 I think Max Norman produced both of them but he sure held that better job in Dary of a Mad Man. 03:15:00.959 --> 03:15:15.100 So but they're both very close to my heart and I agree with Grant said this really well and that is I agree that I think Mob Rules has some amazing, some of Black Sabbath's best songs, some of Black Sabbath with Ronnie's definitely best songs. 03:15:15.200 --> 03:15:45.180 I personally don't think Turn Up the Night or Country Girl are that great in all honesty even though I think I'll just say them out loud Falling Off the Edge of the World, Voodoo, The Mob Rules, Sign of the Southern Cross and over and over which is great too are all like that that's honestly this is like their doomiest record in truth Black Sabbath I think this might be their doomiest record because of the stuff that's on there and that's all great and everything but I don't think 03:15:45.220 --> 03:16:14.640 "Diore of Madman" has any empty tracks on it. I think that every single song is great. I think "Tonight" is better than "Goodbye to Romance." They replaced that, thank God. I agree with it. And then they have the double one-two punch of "SATO" Diore of Madman. But then there's also the weird one-two punch of "Believer" on the end of Side One and Little Dolls on the side. I mean, fucking... And then "You Can't Kill Rock and Roll." That was the song I used to listen to in my bedroom because nobody understood me. You know what I mean? And that still almost makes me cry, that song, for some reason. 03:16:15.200 --> 03:16:45.140 P.M.R.C. era like, fuck you. Yep. By the way, Jay, I don't know if anyone else has noticed. Have you noticed that, and these are sides now because they were LPs originally. Have you noticed that the first side of Blizzard of Oz and the first side of Diary of Mad Men are structured exactly the same? Absolutely exactly the same. It goes like this. Over the mountain, I don't know. Flying high again, Crazy Train. Yeah, it just goes all the way through it, dude. It's like the Metallica albums. The first few albums were all structured. I was like, okay, this, 03:16:45.200 --> 03:17:15.140 this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and with an instrumental blah, blah, blah, yeah. And the funny thing is, is that the fourth song on both albums, Suicide Solution and Believer, probably his two darkest songs he'd ever written. Yeah. And, but, well, Martin Birch did that to Iron Maiden four albums. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That too. Um, it also has to be mentioned that, um, you know, Sabbath found Dio, who was already a known entity, but an amazing singer. And I agree, honestly, probably not even probably definitely my single favorite metal singer of all time. Um, I know him, 03:17:41.320 --> 03:17:45.180 I would go the other way. 03:17:45.220 --> 03:18:15.140 way to do this Thunderdome. But when you put something this fine up against anything that has one weak track on it, it's hard to go any other way. So I'm saying Diary of Madman. All right. You know, it's unfortunate that the Will's not here because we are an even number. So I have the option of, as you say, driving at home or putting us into a tie. 03:18:16.899 --> 03:18:45.180 I guess I'm getting the impression you might be ready to do that but I think Will might have gone I'm gonna just guess Will would have gone mob rules will totally would have gone mob rules and I'm gonna post this I'm sure that's what he'll click so when I asked you for this for the script and you told me what this was gonna be I literally fucking cringed I was like dude how am I supposed to choose between these two albums you fucking dick 03:18:46.220 --> 03:19:15.160 Well, who was it that did Holy Diver and Melissa? This is for you. There you go. And I was just like, what's the first one? And it was the first one. This was the first one where I did not have an immediate reaction. Like every one of them, while I've liked all the albums, I've been like, oh yeah, but clearly this. I literally starting this episode, hadn't made a choice yet. 03:19:17.560 --> 03:19:45.160 Because I was like, literally, a Sophie's Choice. I'm like, how do I choose? You know? Coin toss? If this was which is your favorite singer, it's definitely Dio. I love Dio. I fucking love Dio. That's why this is a hard one, though. I agree. That's why this is hard. And then, but then, and you look at the songs, 03:19:45.721 --> 03:20:14.060 And like you said, Diary of a Madman, there's no filler. And like the first side, first four songs, fucking just automatic classic. I mean, to me, You Can't Kill Rock and Roll is one of my favorite Ozzy songs. The second side, I'm not as thrilled with as other people. However, Diary of a Madman is probably my favorite Ozzy song of all time. 03:20:14.200 --> 03:20:44.180 And to me, it's probably like the first symphonic metal song. I mean, that was Randy Rhoads going, look what the fuck I can do. Oh, by the way, I'm dead now. You know, tragic. Then you go over to Mob Rules and I'm like, sign of the Southern Cross. How can I possibly vote against that? You know, that is like one of the greatest fucking songs of all time as far as I'm concerned. You know, and Mob 03:20:44.200 --> 03:21:13.960 rules. And I disagree. Turn Up the Night is not that bad. Voodoo's pretty good. I love Turn Up the Night. Well, I would, the reason I pointed that out was because not unlike, not unlike the formatting of the two Ozzy albums, the Sabbath is somewhat formatted similarly. And that is the replacement for Neon Nights and it doesn't come close. That's the Neon Nights on that record. I'll give you that. So, I gotta come down Ozzy. Wow. I didn't, after all you said there, 03:21:14.801 --> 03:21:44.180 I didn't think I would either I I mean I did not think that I lived in a world where I would choose Ozzy over Dio but Diary of a Madman dude that is exactly why I did this because I wanted because you're fucking evil dude no they have to do that because in every other in every other contest deal wins yeah so um I also wanted I mean he wins in this contest for me and yeah but you know uh but then we'll we'll 03:21:44.659 --> 03:22:13.320 The Other Way, which... Locks us up. Which ties us then, right? Wait, no, it can't be tied. It's four to two right now, so Will would make it four to three. So yeah, we win. Yeah, fuck Will. Two quick things, though, and I think John and or Grant said this. I still listen to both these records all the time. All the time. It would be weird for a month to go by for me to not listen to at least one of them and probably both of them. And that's true since the day, since back in the day. 03:22:13.600 --> 03:22:43.340 I also wanted to point out one thing I've never said to anybody about Die Ever Mad Men which is is it just me and I've fought this since 1981 or does that violin part stolen straight off of Nights in White Satin I always think of that when I if you guys know the song Nights in White Satin one would have to listen to the moody blues which I don't exactly but that's but that's their big but I know it yeah yeah in any case I always think of that but well that was fun it was really good you know yeah I actually thought that it would be awesome 03:22:46.279 --> 03:23:12.740 I thought it would go Dio. I meant to add to I had left one other I really had all these thoughts I wanted to share and I have one other brief one and that is just that the Aussie buffoon thing really when Diary of a Mad Men came out that that was all Aussie was you know there wasn't he wasn't this media figure and all this weird shit in fact he was he was the rough equivalent of almost a black metal band people you know there were so many weird rumors about him and all that shitty bats and all that stuff. 03:23:13.399 --> 03:23:42.820 You know, the biting best thing was real, but do you recall the, like, I remember in the early 80s them saying, Ozzy throws puppies into the audiences and won't play until the audience rips them to pieces. And I was like, damn. Yes, I heard those rumors too. And that was silly. It's hard to believe that was even true back then. People had such stupid rumors back then. But it goes into what that was like with the environment. What I mean was this was a much more serious record back then than it may seem now. Simply because of the change of 03:23:42.860 --> 03:23:43.200 his image. 03:23:44.119 --> 03:23:49.360 And I personally felt his output went down in quality step-by-step ever since then. 03:23:50.540 --> 03:23:53.540 Sometimes in small steps, but it went down in quality. 03:23:53.600 --> 03:23:57.880 I still liked him up through osmosis, maybe? 03:23:58.560 --> 03:24:00.140 This wasn't made by corporate committee. 03:24:01.079 --> 03:24:04.240 But certainly the quality did go down. 03:24:04.940 --> 03:24:05.040 Yeah. 03:24:05.560 --> 03:24:08.240 George, that was the jumping off point for me there, too. 03:24:08.560 --> 03:24:09.020 Osmosis. 03:24:09.020 --> 03:24:10.480 I was like, I can't do this anymore. 03:24:10.520 --> 03:24:12.360 I mean, that's like, is that the Perry Mason? 03:24:13.100 --> 03:24:42.200 Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was all right with that. But then after that, I mean, I think didn't Zach leave after that? No, that album, I think is Joe Holmes, isn't it? I think Zach had already left. Not osmosis. No, he was still on that. I think it was the next one he got kicked out. There's like down to earth was not Zach. That was fucking horrible. And what pretty much anything after that, anything after Zach is absolutely fucking horrible. Well, I think there's only two of them. I think it's just that down to earth. No, there was that black rain. 03:24:42.460 --> 03:25:12.320 Screen for me. Yeah, that's fucking horrible. Fucking horrible. I will say two things. As someone who woke up to a bat circling in my bedroom the other night. Been there, done that. Once I caught it. Once I caught it. We get about one a year. Once I caught it, the last thing I thought about doing was biting that fucker's head off. Number two, I enjoy the shit out of listening to your perspectives on it. You know, as we have this generational gap between us, 03:25:12.480 --> 03:25:42.360 We all just, you know, we come from different timelines. Rub it in, you're younger. I love the shit out of hearing about, like, what these albums mean to you, what they meant to you at that time in your lives. And I'm going to go back and listen to Diary of Madman, and I'll think about your words. Pretty fucking great. I tell you, man, like, lately, every time I hear this song, Diary of Madman, I get tears. I'm like, that's just fucking amazing. No more tears, George. No, no, no, no, there's plenty more, plenty more where that came from. Call me Mr. 03:25:43.380 --> 03:25:44.000 Well played. 03:25:46.090 --> 03:25:46.180 Indeed. 03:25:46.640 --> 03:25:46.880 All right. 03:25:46.970 --> 03:25:47.440 Well, we'll see. 03:25:47.500 --> 03:25:48.600 We'll let the audience tell them. 03:25:48.660 --> 03:25:49.060 That's awesome. 03:25:49.180 --> 03:25:49.420 Pieces. 03:25:49.980 --> 03:25:51.620 Was that everything you thought it was going to be, Grant? 03:25:52.960 --> 03:25:53.760 So far, yes. 03:25:55.979 --> 03:25:56.340 Outstanding. 03:25:56.860 --> 03:26:02.600 I honestly was very surprised that I picked an Ozzy album, as I don't generally like 03:26:02.870 --> 03:26:03.820 solo Ozzy stuff. 03:26:04.480 --> 03:26:07.660 But then listening to that album again all the way through, I'm like, no, this is the 03:26:07.890 --> 03:26:08.300 only one. 03:26:08.860 --> 03:26:09.980 This is the only one. 03:26:10.340 --> 03:26:39.900 It's always tough when it's the best album from like a really great musician. You know, it's hard to go against that. But I just love Dio too much. The thing is, like, if it was either of his other albums with Black Sabbath, I would have picked it. Yeah. Heaven Hell is my favorite Sabbath album of all time. You know, even the early Ozzy stuff, which started metal. Yeah. But the songs on Mob Rules, 03:26:40.320 --> 03:27:09.780 Just, I mean, I could just, Sign of the Southern Cross, to me, is better than all the songs on the Ozzy album. I just love it that much. It's out there. It's out there. I mean, I think part of it is just, I have a pretty severe distaste for Country Girl. Yeah. I mean, it's okay. It would be better, like, buried on inside of a Rainbow album. It has, like, a Richie Blackmore vibe to it, more than a Tony Iommi vibe. Yeah. I have his playing. 03:27:10.340 --> 03:27:11.820 on Mob Rules is phenomenal. 03:27:12.380 --> 03:27:12.460 Yeah. 03:27:14.279 --> 03:27:15.100 I don't know. 03:27:15.200 --> 03:27:17.720 I just don't like Ozzy's voice as much. 03:27:18.020 --> 03:27:18.600 Oh, I don't either. 03:27:18.640 --> 03:27:20.880 Solo stuff as much as the early Black Sabbath. 03:27:21.559 --> 03:27:27.500 It's not grating to me, but I just don't have much fondness for it. 03:27:27.500 --> 03:27:30.060 Like I don't visit that album that much. 03:27:30.240 --> 03:27:32.100 I don't have much fondness for it. 03:27:32.140 --> 03:27:35.120 Any of the Dio albums I play a lot. 03:27:35.320 --> 03:28:04.780 Yeah, I mean, that's like, throughout my entire life, I've always listened to Dio over Ozzy. But I don't know, like, listening to Dire of the Mad Men, I'm like, this is, if I'm going to pick one Ozzy album, that's the album I'm going to pick. Yeah, that's cool. And I haven't listened to that one in a really long time. And I was like, that's what I like about Thunderdome. Like, obviously, any albums that are going to be on Thunderdome are going to be really good. So I like that you say obviously, because I'm up next and I don't have a fucking clue. I'm going to be like, dude, 03:28:05.320 --> 03:28:34.020 Fucking Europe's final countdown versus Steel Panther. I'll be out that cast. I have no clue. I'm going to have to look at what's basically I need to and John already helped me by sending me a list of everything. I need to look at what's been done and see where there might be a niche open that makes sense and hopefully we'll be as fucking evil as this one. 03:28:34.620 --> 03:28:58.300 The Thunderdome so far is that the albums have been really good, but there's layers to the albums like, you know, Jay picked this one and obviously Ozzy was in Black Sabbath and then he's going up against a Black Sabbath album. They were released just days from each other, you know. All of the Thunderdome's we've picked so far just have these interesting layers that make the albums competing against each other more of an interesting battle. 03:28:58.730 --> 03:29:00.020 Yeah, there's meaning to it. 03:29:00.060 --> 03:29:29.240 I like that. I was just thinking just now as I was using the restroom that how wonderful that makes November of 1981. And then and then what happened? Then Randy dies in an airplane crash. Ozzy gets kicked out or Dio gets kicked out or leaves Black Sabbath. And that whole fucking cool party was over. It was this wonderful left one two punch for two years. And then it's just all crashing down. Jay, I had I had tickets to see Ozzy. 03:29:30.520 --> 03:29:58.800 I miss Randy Rhodes by a few months. You know, it's funny, John, but there are pictures in the, what do you call it? Internet? No, the blood on the, what is it, blood on the stage, the documentary we all just watched. Oh. Murder in the Front Row? No, Murder in the Front Row. In the Murder in the Front Row book, it's almost all, 03:29:59.320 --> 03:30:29.240 on thrash but one of the things he puts in there because he took pictures as a hobby and semi-professionally is that he was at that show at the cow palace and has this wonderful picture from that show and i have often thought was john in that audience so i'm sorry for which for the diary of madman tour yeah i was diagram madman tour and it was a deal it was at the oakland coliseum that may be the case i can't remember the it's under the thing but i i thought every time i look at that picture i think of you because it was and it was cool because it's it's such a good place 03:30:29.240 --> 03:30:58.940 to put that photo. It's like the first page of the book. It's sort of like, yeah, this is what we were all doing, and then we all did this. You know what I mean? It was crazy. I saw Brad Gillis with him, and I absolutely love Speak of the Devil. I think it's a great cover version of all the Sabbath songs, and Brad Gillis is on that album. Night Ranger! You know, I gotta say that I just wanted to thank Matt while we were on that bathroom break. I was in the bathroom, 03:30:59.779 --> 03:31:00.720 singing to myself, 03:31:01.520 --> 03:31:03.060 Mr. Tinker Train, 03:31:03.240 --> 03:31:05.280 while I was like wiggling back and forth, 03:31:05.560 --> 03:31:05.840 peeing, 03:31:05.920 --> 03:31:06.300 and I was like, 03:31:06.920 --> 03:31:08.280 Mr. Tinker Train, 03:31:08.920 --> 03:31:09.320 gruff. 03:31:10.040 --> 03:31:10.700 So thanks, Matt. 03:31:10.860 --> 03:31:11.260 Thanks for that. 03:31:11.300 --> 03:31:11.920 That's why they call me. 03:31:12.120 --> 03:31:12.480 You're welcome. 03:31:12.840 --> 03:31:12.960 Anytime. 03:31:13.940 --> 03:31:17.380 I was in the bathroom looking at this fucking fantastic bucket of blood shirt. 03:31:17.400 --> 03:31:17.660 I'm like, 03:31:17.700 --> 03:31:17.920 wow, 03:31:18.320 --> 03:31:19.540 this is a really handsome shirt. 03:31:19.580 --> 03:31:20.280 It really is cool, 03:31:20.400 --> 03:31:20.500 dude. 03:31:21.120 --> 03:31:24.060 I love 666 feet apart. 03:31:24.400 --> 03:31:24.700 Yeah. 03:31:25.260 --> 03:31:25.860 It's great. 03:31:26.080 --> 03:31:26.580 Fucking G. 03:31:26.580 --> 03:31:26.680 Yeah, 03:31:26.720 --> 03:31:27.260 it was limited. 03:31:27.380 --> 03:31:28.340 You're not doing this anymore, 03:31:28.480 --> 03:31:28.580 right, 03:31:28.740 --> 03:31:57.580 No, it was all print to order. If you didn't order during the order window, they'd go. Damn it. eBay. I know somebody who has two of them. I do. It's true. I mean, Grant and Jenny and Bucket of Blood, they do all kinds of cool shit all the time. Now that you've met Grant and you can follow Bucket of Blood, you'll get more cool stuff over the years, over the weeks. 03:31:58.860 --> 03:32:11.300 I know where I'm going if I'm ever in Chicago again, which is seems like a likely thing to happen because we know people in Chicago. Yep. So. All right, let's move on to our top five. 03:32:29.080 --> 03:32:58.680 We made a list and we all made a list and we're gonna tell you all about it right now. Final section. I'm gonna let somebody else explain this one because I don't think I adhered to the rules completely, but I did my best. Well, it's Jay's pick, so Jay has to explain it. Yeah, and I don't think you could screw it up, George, so don't worry about that. Oh, I can screw anything up. Or down, left, right, doesn't matter. My intention was, and I think some people balked at it a little bit because they were like, well, I don't own a lot of boxers. 03:32:58.820 --> 03:33:28.700 sets or special editions or whatever it is and I get that. But my feeling is that there are records that are perfectly packaged and or packaged in such a way that you just fucking love them. And by default, some of those are going to be these special edition type things of which there are some on my list. But they're also just records that you think maybe were packaged perfectly in the first place. So this really is about perfect packaging, we call it, or best special editions, whatever you want. It's kind of all encompassing. I mentioned again, mine has both box sets and some 03:33:28.740 --> 03:33:58.700 albums that are just albums. There's nothing special about it. It's not special edition. So that's it. It's albums that were, and you might think of it as what's inside the box matches what's outside the box. Great cover, great back, whatever. So you get it. Alrighty. Well then, Grant, did you, do you have a number five for us? Yeah. So I, I looked at this as, you know, there's certainly like really esoteric things. I know a lot of bands that do like, oh, if you were at the 03:33:58.740 --> 03:34:27.820 Like you get one of these five special edition ones with like a stick of incense and all this. And I try to see what I know. So I always stuff that was like wider availability. Like stuff that you could potentially still find has really cool packaging. Cool. So my number five. And for me, the packaging even outweighs the album. Although I like the album. This came out, I think, last year, possibly the year before. The Ocean Collective. It was. 03:34:30.000 --> 03:34:58.700 Phanerozoic 1, Paleozoic, and I am a sucker for a beautifully die-cut album jacket. It's had some amazing die-cut action going on on the LP sleeve. Awesome, dude. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, by the way. And we love that album, too. That's funny. Fuck. Oh, wait. There it is. I have a comment about The Ocean. Which one was it? Which album was it? It's the most recent one. It's a... 03:34:59.960 --> 03:35:00.320 Phanerozoic. 03:35:01.310 --> 03:35:01.420 Okay. 03:35:01.780 --> 03:35:02.000 Oh, I see. 03:35:03.560 --> 03:35:11.200 While it's not on my list, while I still collected vinyl, I did get Pelagio on dual 10-inch records. 03:35:11.940 --> 03:35:12.340 That's awesome. 03:35:12.430 --> 03:35:13.180 I had the same thing. 03:35:13.400 --> 03:35:13.500 Yeah. 03:35:13.939 --> 03:35:14.300 Nice. 03:35:15.880 --> 03:35:16.060 Cool. 03:35:16.220 --> 03:35:16.340 Perfect. 03:35:16.520 --> 03:35:19.140 You got exactly where I'm going with it, so let's keep watching. 03:35:19.160 --> 03:35:21.060 Well, the new one's coming out pretty soon, too, right? 03:35:21.180 --> 03:35:21.280 Yep. 03:35:21.510 --> 03:35:21.600 Yeah. 03:35:21.980 --> 03:35:22.140 Mm-hmm. 03:35:23.000 --> 03:35:24.660 I don't remember the release date for it, but. 03:35:24.880 --> 03:35:26.620 It is September 25th. 03:35:27.600 --> 03:35:28.320 Ooh, nice. 03:35:29.880 --> 03:35:58.360 All right, awesome. Great. My number five, really recent, actually. And it's a Trypticon Requiem with the Metropole Orchestra Live at Roadburn limited edition box set from Century Media Records. This is a beauty. I mean, this record's 30 years in the making, so it definitely deserves some special treatment. And it comes with a limited red 180-gram LPS. 03:35:58.460 --> 03:35:59.880 of the show. 03:36:00.540 --> 03:36:06.720 You get a 7-inch for the bonus track, which is a concert rehearsal take of the song Winter. 03:36:07.500 --> 03:36:16.780 Plus you get a CD, a DVD of the performance, a 60-page art book, three posters, an art print, and a photo card. 03:36:16.820 --> 03:36:45.400 And it's all in a gorgeous hardcover package with exclusive artwork of a nasty skull face creature that differs from the regular editions, which is more like a like a haunted angel. I bought both just so I'd have both covered. Yes, but you left out you left out my one of my favorite parts. You left out the score. It comes with the score of all things for the orchestra. Yeah. 03:36:46.160 --> 03:37:16.100 It's a great package. In the spirit of Will, I just gotta say, I got your 7-inch with a bonus track right here. I've watched the DVD a bunch of times, and I love just opening up that package. It's rare that you get something like that that you want to admire. I think that was kind of the idea that Jay had in mind for this. It's new, and it makes me feel like I was a teenager, and I got something for the first time. 03:37:16.140 --> 03:37:45.240 So many toys in that. And I've watched that DVD a million times, too. I keep thinking, please let there be a top menu of which there is not one because there's got to be some secret bonus thing here. But that's fine. I've watched the show a million times. It goes in and plays, and that's what you get. But that's fine. Wonderful choice. I'm going to say it's not on my list, but partially to choose. I thought you'd mention it. I'm shocked it's not on your list, but I know you get a lot of special editions. I buy a lot of weird shit, yeah. But it's a great choice. Matt? 03:37:46.160 --> 03:38:15.000 Before I go, I will reiterate what I bring to this podcast. And that is nothing. Okay. I had no value. I serve no purpose. I barely talk. The person who's mad in the opening is not even me. Okay. So when it comes to a top five like this, I'm being consistent. Okay. I lead a life of minimalism, which means I don't want to own things. And so I also lead a life of making shit up. So half the stuff I say probably doesn't exist. 03:38:15.300 --> 03:38:43.720 But because I'm bitchy, I don't care. I like where this is going. Before we started this, I only knew of three box sets. Only one is on my list. It is my number five. It is the Misfits Coffin Box Set Collection. Very cool. Nice. I've never seen it. I've never held it. I just know that it exists. You know what? That's like Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. 03:38:44.320 --> 03:39:13.160 I have some money. I have it in a jar. I'd like to have more. I will say this. And Grant, doing my best to support small businesses, because of alcohol and a pandemic and the internet, I have been buying more vinyl. But at the end of the day, I do not want to own a lot of things. But I do want to own shirts. So I'm probably, I don't, I don't want to order records from you or t-shirts. But I will. Do you have other shirts that are not the ones that Markazan is currently wearing available? 03:39:14.240 --> 03:39:15.560 Not presently, but soon. 03:39:16.020 --> 03:39:16.760 I'll be watching. 03:39:17.220 --> 03:39:17.760 Well, you let us know. 03:39:17.840 --> 03:39:18.900 I'll buy one when you have one. 03:39:19.660 --> 03:39:23.840 Since I do not currently buy vinyl, I will support you in that way if you let me know. 03:39:23.950 --> 03:39:27.900 I love the Bucket of Blood jersey with the frickin' skull, though. 03:39:28.340 --> 03:39:29.040 So good. 03:39:30.600 --> 03:39:32.900 Anyways, you gotta bring some of that stuff back. 03:39:32.980 --> 03:39:34.080 It's too cool not to, Grant. 03:39:35.600 --> 03:39:37.340 I'm just a little bit north, so I'll be watching. 03:39:39.020 --> 03:39:39.620 All right, John. 03:39:41.900 --> 03:39:42.180 All right. 03:39:42.340 --> 03:40:11.380 So I chose themes for all five of my picks. So five different types of packaging that I like. So my first one, people won't be able to see it, but you guys will. A visual presentation. These art books that come out, which are a complete waste of money because in the end, do you really need it? No. Yes. Yeah. But yes. But in another more accurate way. Yes. 03:40:12.340 --> 03:40:41.160 So my number five is Devin Townsend's Empath, the Ultimate Edition. Because apparently other editions weren't Ultimate yet. But this one has got two CDs, two Blu-rays. It's got tons of artwork. It's got the Cats in Space artwork in here, which that right there puts it in the top five. Cats in Space! You know, and it's, his mind is just so different than everybody else's. And it's fun to look through where it goes. 03:40:41.200 --> 03:41:08.720 And it's not my favorite album by him, but I like it a lot. But I do like these art books. I would have chosen Porcupine Trees in absentia, but it's not really metal. So I went with Empith from Devin Townsend, which actually Porcupine Trees album is actually probably more metal than Empith, but nonetheless. I have a metal adjacent one on my list. You would have been fine, John. Oh, I have a non-metal one on here too, but. Okay. Okay. So clutch. 03:41:11.220 --> 03:41:41.180 I have wills list yes so I decided to go a similar direction as John and that I've chosen different styles of packaging and but but things that like also like Marcus and that are like toys to me that they're just things that are meaningful to me and I like to handle them and and that kind of thing but I went super basic on my first one partially because it represents and so this is about representative pick it represents all of a lot of my well not all of a lot of my favorite records in the 80s that were all came out either 03:41:42.199 --> 03:42:11.160 and I just loved how every one of them and I'm choosing Hella Waits and I loved how every one of them had they all went by this format like a black back and then usually an individual photo of each band member which I liked and then they almost always had the band would choose a bunch of photos for the record sleeve and I would spend hours looking at these things and like going where is that and what are they doing and who's that guy like I really used to do that a lot this is a shitty reissue of this particular 03:42:11.200 --> 03:42:40.300 So that's like a sepia tone, which is not supposed to be. I need to replace that shit. But in any case, I just, and so many of them were formatted that way, and I used up so much of my time looking at them and imagining what it was like to live in Los Angeles and be near these guys and see their shows and stuff and stuff, because I lived in the middle of the country. So that's it. I won't say Hella Ways, but as a representation of a lot of the Megaforce and Metal Plate packaging from the 80s. And we got more complicated as we go. 03:42:41.200 --> 03:42:42.660 I like that. 03:42:45.240 --> 03:42:56.720 So as I mentioned earlier in the episode, because of my 90s comic book obsession with alternate things, I don't really do the special edition thing. 03:42:56.800 --> 03:43:26.160 And so I had a lot of trouble with this. And I ended up going with really just basically album art that either meant a lot to me or like drew me in. Basically, this is almost like my top five album covers of all time instead of just, you know, like year end or whatever. However, okay, there's only like 12 cats on this podcast. Which one is it? 03:43:26.280 --> 03:43:55.720 I'm sure it's Marcuson's cat. However, based on what Jay just showed us, that reminded me of one that I actually thought of and forgot to put on my list. So this is going to be... There's Zoso. So it reminded me of one that I had thought of earlier to put on my list, 03:43:56.720 --> 03:44:25.060 didn't. Based on, you know, I mean, when I was a kid, I did used to look at the album artwork and like read through the liner notes and stuff. But since I've been like 15, I just haven't. And so I just don't give a shit. However, in the 80s, particularly with thrash bands, there was a big thing where bands would have this inner sleeve that was a collage of like a million photos of like live stuff. 03:44:25.900 --> 03:44:54.680 And the one that stuck out to me was Game Over by Nuclear Assault. Had that. And Anthrax always did that. That whole New York thrashy kind of thing. And the punk bands, they all did that. So my honorable mention would be Nuclear Assault's Game Over. But my actual number five, just because it is one of the most badass album covers of all time that you would see this on, how could you not pick up this album, 03:44:55.480 --> 03:45:25.440 is Don't Break the Oath by Merciful Fate. Fuck yeah, dude. I don't have to remind you. I have the 3D. Yeah, there it is. 3D art of that. I'm also waiting for the original remasters, which was just re-released, and I've waited for that to show up. But they got slowed down because of the fucking pandemic. That's one of my favorite toys, for sure. Great choice. And also, it's got a great back cover, too. That big upside down. He's crossing. He's dark. I love King Diamond on the back. 03:45:25.500 --> 03:45:55.240 of all of those early records. He's basically obscured in all of them. And ironically, I do have the, like, bought it back in the 80s, Don't Break the Earth picture disc. Oh, you have the picture disc? Yeah. Yeah, so it's like that on the front and the, like, burnt cross thing on the back. So, yeah. Yeah, that's the real deal. Wait, did George actually choose or did he give us, like, 75 honorable mentions? Yeah, one, No Killer Assault, honorable mention, Merciful Fate, Don't Break the O's. All right. 03:45:55.979 --> 03:46:24.440 So back to Grant for number four. Or Zoso. I'm not sure. He's definitely got something going on. And then he's crying to get out. So I just let him out. Now he's, I don't know what he's done. He's in through the outdoor. All right, my number four. And not my first that's going to be maybe not purely metal. But when it comes to cool album packaging, one name comes to mind. 03:46:25.500 --> 03:46:53.440 That is Mr. Alice Cooper. School's out. LP sleeve folds into a school desk. Opens up. There's a pair of panties wrapped around the record. What? That is cool, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I remember that. That is awesome. Do you still have those panties? I do. Yes. So it was originally issued with three different colors of panties, and then those quickly got pulled off the market because I guess it was a fire hazard. 03:46:55.580 --> 03:47:25.060 Yeah, they're made of this really weird, light, strange, kind of, what do you call it, like a synthetic material. I'm sure they probably did burn in a second. I'm not as a spoiler alert, but I agree with you. I've got an Alice Cooper 2. His packaging in the 70s was the same, so I've got one coming up. That's awesome. Sweet. Mark is on. My number four is from Tool. They've always had A-plus packaging game. 03:47:25.480 --> 03:47:55.260 with the most creative and artistic presentations of their music. And they somehow managed to top everything they've done with last year's Fear Inoculum. It's a CD and a trifold book that features a 4-inch HD rechargeable screen with exclusive video footage, a charging cable, a 2-watt speaker, and a 36-page insert book with a download card. There's even a volume control knob on this thing. The artwork is really cool. 03:47:55.500 --> 03:48:25.460 the whole package and the video is mesmerizing weird seven minute journey through an alien cosmos with just ambient noises I thought I'd seen everything and then tool released this insanity and I actually got it from bucket oh blood because when it was coming out it was like in hot demand and then grant like put out a message hey if you want this let us know you know it's like first come first serve and and I got it 03:48:25.480 --> 03:48:53.640 that and that's just an amazing package. I've loved all the tool packages, but they definitely top themselves with this thing. I've never seen anything like it. Will just texted me. He said, I got you 36 inch insert right here with a volume knob. It's really cool. Grant, you've opened one of these things, right? You've seen it. I have not. No, I really wanted one, but I have no way of playing a CD. Oh. 03:48:55.500 --> 03:49:25.460 I didn't bother but a friend of mine from high school who I actually worked with on a comic book did some of the 3D artwork for 10,000 days. Oh yeah also another good one yeah I don't normally buy CDs either but I was like I need to know what this thing is it's crazy and yeah it's really cool. I really want it but I'm like if I buy this then I also have to buy a CD player. Do you not have a computer? Well here's the thing I have not played the CD at all you get a download 03:49:25.520 --> 03:49:55.200 code for it. And I just watched the video. I don't know. The CD means nothing. What are we talking on right now? Unless you have a like very new Mac that doesn't come with a CD drive. I just bought a laptop like two months ago. I don't think it has a distro. Yeah. I have an external CD drive that I'll use sometimes if somebody has one, I need to burn like an old disc or something like that, but I rarely use it. Anyways. Yeah. Tool. They've always done amazing. 03:49:55.500 --> 03:50:24.380 So I had to put on here and I got it from Bucket of Blood. Sweet. There you go. Matt. All right. My number four, Mayhem, A Season in Blasphemy. It's a LP box set. It's a box that looks like it could hold some LPs, but it looks like it's made of leather with the silver studs and all, maybe all a Judas Priest. And that's about all I know about it. Have you seen this and touched this one? I have not. I've seen photos. I have a photo right here. 03:50:26.859 --> 03:50:50.980 He's touched it with his mind. Exactly. Well, and looking at it on Discogs, it looks pretty fucking kick-ass. I'll tell you that. I thought so. All right. I like how Matt's like, I don't know anything about these boxes. I'm going to look them up. And then he's telling us about some really cool shit that we're like, oh, we kind of want that now. That I found on Pinterest. If I owned things, I would own this. 03:50:55.500 --> 03:51:25.260 John. So my next one is an old vinyl. I just wanted an album that I was mesmerized by as a kid. And I have it here. It's a first pressing from 1981 and it's part of our theme tonight. But what you can't tell is I spilled water on this. This is a 40-year-old damaged album cover. But I will not lie to you. I can't tell you how many hours I spent looking at that shroud cloth. 03:51:25.500 --> 03:51:55.300 saying, is it the devil? No. You know what it calls to mind, though, John? It calls to mind slightly. You can imagine it as being the first rough drawing of the creature on Holy Diver. If you really look at the way the horns work and stuff. Yeah. But I want to show you why this album makes my packaging top five. Is this not the greatest? Yeah, I've got a few of those. Insert packaging you've ever seen. 03:51:55.500 --> 03:52:24.960 What I'm holding up is a cheap piece of flimsy shit from Warner Brothers. Claire Plastic. Most of my UFO records are in that. Shame on them. John's been over here to my house, to the studio, and Jay has too, but I don't know if this was here then, but I think it probably was. But the crowning piece de resistance of the Metalheads podcast bar, 03:52:25.500 --> 03:52:55.020 is my signed copy of Mob Rules with all four members hanging framed above the bar. And yet somehow I did not choose that as my Thunderdome album. How did you come to have that in your possession, George? I got it on eBay, but it's one of those like, there was like photographs and like, you know, things that were like, you know, authenticity, blah, blah, blah. It was hundreds of dollars. It was, yeah. Oh, no, no, no. I'm sure it's authentic. I just, you know, that's fucking cool. Yeah. 03:52:55.100 --> 03:53:24.900 I actually have like photographs of them signing it like inside the album sleeve. Like actual like Kodak, like, you know, old timey photos. But so I'm like 95% sure that it's real. Plus, I've seen the signatures of these guys and they look authentic. So I've got one more straight up album coming in my list, but it's not this one. That is to say an album that is untouched in any other major way except to say it was original packaging. 03:53:25.100 --> 03:53:52.360 But it's not with this one. My number four is representative, not unlike my number five was, of a set of albums that came out. And this was the recent Celtic Frost reissues that came out. Also, one of the reasons I didn't go with Trypticon, Markisan, because I didn't want to represent Tom. So I'm going to throw forward Morbid Tales. But the detail that went into these and the amount of shit that you got, there are two albums, two posters. 03:53:54.480 --> 03:54:24.460 and a very cool detailed book all crammed into this one normal size you know gateful album and lots of cool notes and something written by Xavier Russell and to top it off these were Tom worked on these incessantly or incessantly obsessively only to be they rejected some small thing he wanted to put in the book about and it was basically shit about noise records and how much they sucked and so and then 03:54:24.460 --> 03:54:52.300 And then they were like, no, they took it out. And he completely disowned the whole project, even though it was finished. And that makes it even better to me because that's so Tom Gabriel Fisher. It's ridiculous. So for those of you who don't know, they released Vanity Nemesis, Tomegatherion, Into the Pandemonium, and this one. I have all of them, and they're just fucking beautiful. That's a night right there. You have a good evening sitting there looking at these things and reading through the books and stuff. 03:54:52.380 --> 03:55:20.820 I mean, it looks amazing even on a shitty zoom screen. So. And they're remastered. They are remastered and then remastering made a difference. They sound so good. So that's my number five. But Morbid Tales being the specific one, I'll call it. Nice. My number four. This was, I picked this up on vinyl when it came out in the 80s. I've mentioned it recently. In fact, it was probably one of my, like on my last top five. 03:55:22.380 --> 03:55:51.780 And this is just so fucking metal that if you were like, you know, a 15 year old kid in a metal, not in a metal store, in a record store in the 80s going, I'm looking for some metal. And you're flipping through the bins and you see this. There is no doubt in your mind that this album is fucking metal. And that is Roar by Voivod or Voivod, if you prefer. It's just this rolling tank of like, 03:55:52.380 --> 03:56:22.340 parts and treads and studs and things. It's the most metal fucking thing you've ever seen. And then you flip it over and you see songs like fuck off and die. And, you know, guys named Piggy and Blackie and, you know, Snake. It was just, it was fucking amazing. And so. It says buy me on it. That's what it says. Take me home, young man. Sure did. All right. Fantastic. Back to Grant for number three. All right. My number three is the number one 03:56:22.380 --> 03:56:25.920 to always rip all the shrink wrap off of your gatefold records. 03:56:27.180 --> 03:56:28.760 What are you going to do while listening to a record? 03:56:29.320 --> 03:56:31.500 Well, if you're listening to Ghoul's Dungeon Bastards, 03:56:32.080 --> 03:56:34.480 you're going to crack open that gatefold and play the board game 03:56:35.200 --> 03:56:36.560 that's on the inside of the gatefold. 03:56:36.900 --> 03:56:38.480 Yeah, dude, that's rad. 03:56:39.100 --> 03:56:39.460 Perfect. 03:56:39.840 --> 03:56:40.320 That's awesome. 03:56:41.300 --> 03:56:41.660 Wow. 03:56:42.760 --> 03:56:43.720 Now I want to play that. 03:56:43.900 --> 03:56:44.200 Yeah. 03:56:44.380 --> 03:56:44.960 Me too. 03:56:45.760 --> 03:56:46.920 We do that virtually. 03:56:48.820 --> 03:57:18.780 I have to assume that there's like pieces that are like pop out like cardboard pieces because you couldn't fit the like you know like little plastic pieces wow the point is you can play a game and enjoy some thrashing tunes from creepsylvania that's right on that's awesome dude all right uh my number three is uh envy and variable will recurring ebbs and flows limited edition super deluxe box set on temporary 03:57:18.840 --> 03:57:45.260 Resonance Records. This is an incredible set. It collects every song ever recorded by Envy from 1992 to 2013 across 14 vinyl LPs. All remastered, 180. I think it came out in 2013. And each record has its own jacket, new artwork. It comes with a 100-minute DVD that was never released. 03:57:49.881 --> 03:58:18.660 with all 95 songs in high-quality MP3 format. Also, a 100-page coffee table book that has exclusive photos, lyrics to every single song that are transcribed in Japanese and English, as they're a Japanese band. And then the entire package is housed in this sturdy custom outer box that's printed on it, 03:58:18.800 --> 03:58:48.040 Reflective Metallic Foil Board. And there's only a thousand copies of it made. But, you know, when you think, I, this thing came out, I think was like the time I started to get into vinyl around then. Yeah, it seems about right, 2013. So getting all the albums that I've loved so dearly over these years in one set was just magnificent. One of my favorite things to spin. Awesome, dude. 03:58:48.820 --> 03:58:49.860 I'll come at once like that. 03:58:54.740 --> 03:58:56.820 Last year, I met a musician. 03:58:57.170 --> 03:58:58.740 I paid extra money to do so. 03:59:00.360 --> 03:59:07.020 And in doing so, I walked away with a backpack that I would associate a teenage girl wearing to a mall. 03:59:07.320 --> 03:59:08.360 I know where you're going. 03:59:08.930 --> 03:59:13.280 But because of this, I consider us to be best friends. 03:59:13.390 --> 03:59:13.920 I don't know. 03:59:16.020 --> 03:59:45.960 But because we are best friends in my mind, I have to have him on every top five I do, or at least try to. And that person is King Diamond. And what I'm talking about is an album by Merciful Fate called Denying Christ in Holland. It is a box set of four vinyl LPs. I know nothing else about it. It's a bootleg, but they have the coolest fucking bootlegs, dude. I love that cover. I mean, it's hard to see here, but it's just so simple. But so the best one of the best ones. 03:59:46.040 --> 04:00:15.980 ones is and it might be in that set and it's the cover of melissa but they've turned the devil instead into king diamond it's the coolest fucking painting but in any case a fine choice and they have amazingly dedicated fans who put together a killer bootleg sets yeah fine choice wow yeah i'm reliving my moment of looking over at him as as i had my arm around him and and being like thank you for all the years of music and he was like right 04:00:15.980 --> 04:00:45.400 You're welcome. I'm like, okay. I think about like any day that just sucks. I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm at King Diamond. I looked in his eyes and he looked into my soul. He's like, he looked at me and he's like, I hope your night's going well. I'm like, yeah, I just shit myself. Like, this is amazing. I was like, dude, you're shorter than me. Yeah, yeah. You guys are talking about this. I really want that deluxe edition Super 7 King Diamond figure. 04:00:46.520 --> 04:01:15.520 I think it's only up for a limited time to buy but I have not purchased it. I know Jay has. Actually the pre-order ends I think like today dude. Oh Jesus. If you really do want it you need to get on it or it's real it's very soon. Luckily you're not on the east coast where it is after midnight and it is not today anymore. Well it might be this weekend I don't know but in any case yeah it does look pretty cool. It's pretty good. It's not expensive too it's like 40 bucks or less. Yeah. You can wait for the Slayer Live on that one. That's gonna be 04:01:16.060 --> 04:01:45.520 Yeah. John, number three. So my number three is going to be a new vinyl. And the new vinyl cover depicts an old 70s sci-fi book. This album, when it came out last year, came out to a lot of fanfare and a lot of hype. I absolutely loved it. It was my number two of the year. And that is Blood Incantation's Hidden History of the Human Race. If you go in and look at the packaging, obviously, 04:01:45.560 --> 04:02:14.820 Obviously gatefold, which is cool. All the imagery inside, but it includes, along with a poster, also a 20-page booklet on the Stargate Research Society. I don't know who made this up. I don't know where it came from, but I was like, this is fucking cool. I love shit like that, dude. I love it when they throw shit like that. That's an awesome choice. I think those guys get it when it comes to vinyl. I have that too, man. 04:02:14.880 --> 04:02:44.840 And I spent a lot of time looking at that Stargate research thing. Like, what the fuck is this thing? You flip, when you flip the gatefold open, you see the one cover, but then when you look at the inside, which is a whole different image, it's just like, fuck, this is awesome. So, very cool stuff. Nice one. So, I had, my next one is, is, I said I had one more regular straight up record, and I said it had an Alice Cooper record, and that's what it is. And, you know, they knocked it out of the park there for three or four years in a row, because Billion 04:02:44.900 --> 04:02:46.860 has amazing packaging. 04:02:48.660 --> 04:02:50.240 Does this one come with a full girdle? 04:02:51.040 --> 04:02:52.220 Killer came with, yeah, 04:02:53.740 --> 04:02:57.020 Killer came with a Alice Cooper, 04:02:58.580 --> 04:03:00.460 what do you call it, calendar. 04:03:00.780 --> 04:03:02.300 And it was him hanging from a thing 04:03:02.460 --> 04:03:03.440 so the kids would hang on the wall 04:03:03.520 --> 04:03:04.600 and be like, it's practical, Mom. 04:03:05.060 --> 04:03:05.820 But in any case, 04:03:06.840 --> 04:03:08.680 what I've gone with is a highly underrated album 04:03:08.920 --> 04:03:09.600 called From the Inside. 04:03:10.979 --> 04:03:13.160 And it's the album Alice wrote 04:03:13.160 --> 04:03:43.060 after he was literally in an asylum to quit drinking. And it does all these really cool things. You open it and then you open the door. There's Alice in the door. Oh, shit. And that's cool. And then also, and this is about being in asylum. And on the back, when you open up the doors that are in the back, that's the record sleeve, the sleeve that the record is. And Alice and all the people in the asylum are coming out with a certificate that says released, which I just love. And then, and I also just love that it's just Alice's face. That's great. And I will point out, just to brag, 04:03:43.180 --> 04:03:52.900 That's just a really bad mustache for a second, but no. 04:03:53.860 --> 04:04:13.140 For sure. You know, when I went to see him, he signed like 400 things for you and you had dog, and you could also bring like, I think, two or three of your own. So I brought this in the field of record. But anyway, I love that. I love how creative they were. That's just really fantastic. That's a fucking awesome package right there, Jay. It really is, dude. And I mean, I think it's clear what I'm 04:04:13.180 --> 04:04:40.700 What I'm saying is when you pull the sleeve out, this picture's not there. It's like physical graffiti, how that works. And so there's a larger picture there. It's so good. Good stuff. All right. I'm just going to go grab my number three off the wall real quick. I hope it's Michael Jackson's off the wall. Yes. 04:04:43.180 --> 04:05:13.140 Let me go grab my off the wall real quick. That is good. And I fucked that up. I thought it would be easy to pull off and I kind of fucked it up. So it's not going back on the wall tonight. Fair enough. I guess I don't know where the parts went. All right. So this is another album cover, but it's one that I've spent a lot of time gazing at. And it's by a guy drawn by a guy. 04:05:13.200 --> 04:05:41.780 by a guy named Dave Patchett. I don't know if that name means anything to anybody. It doesn't mean anything to me. But this album cover is, like much of his work, inspired by the classical painter Hieronymus Bosch and the Garden of Earthly Delights. Perhaps you're familiar with that. I think we're going in the cathedral direction. We are going in the cathedral direction. And that is the Carnival Bazaar. Yes. It's a great album. 04:05:42.900 --> 04:06:12.360 And I got the record store promo poster for it. And it's hanging in the studio here. And it's just the coolest fucking thing. I mean, you can sit here and stare at this thing all day. Kind of like the Bosch stuff. There's just a million different things going on in it. A lot of it fucked up weird shit. And I mean, he did other album covers. You know, like The Forest of Equilibrium is similar and some of the other ones. But Carnival Bazaar was always one of my favorites. 04:06:12.900 --> 04:06:42.860 And I can just spend all day looking at this. That's cool. That's what owning records is all about, man. Indeed. Actually, I think I have a weird 10-inch version of this as well on vinyl. It's like a dual 10-inch. Anyway, Grant number two. Number two. Speaking of 10-inch records, a 10-inch EP from 04:06:43.759 --> 04:07:12.740 Cinematic Grindcore Weirdos Graf Orlok. If Alice Cooper nailed the packaging game in the 70s, Graf Orlok has done it ever since. This one, I wish I had it with me. It folds up and it's a pop-up of an alien chestburster. Oh, fucking A, dude. Name again, please. Name of the album. The artist is Graf Orlok. It is Destination Time Tomorrow. Thank you. Just want to see this. Wow. That's GRA. 04:07:12.980 --> 04:07:41.580 F. Thanks, George. I did need to hear that. Awesome. I definitely want to see this. Oh, it's beautiful. I love it. All right. Let's see. Oh, my turn. Number two for me. This is far and away my favorite Danzig record. 04:07:42.900 --> 04:08:12.000 God's Kill. It's another CD, a 1992 Special Limited Edition CD box set. And this particular package is really important to me when I was a kid because it came with this long cardboard box with the three-dimensional embossed version of the full H.R. Giger artwork. So that was my first introduction to Giger, who is now one of my favorite artists ever. 04:08:12.120 --> 04:08:40.520 Of course, I'd seen Alien, but I didn't really know who the artist was or did the designs on it. And I didn't really understand that until I got this album. So I was just blown away by that cover painting. And to have it in that format, because, you know, you get to see the full thing instead of just the, you know, part of it on the regular album cover. It just made me feel like I won a prize in an adventure park when I got this thing. And the box set also came with a VHS tape. 04:08:41.720 --> 04:09:11.660 Featuring an uncensored version of How the Gods Kill promotional music video. I haven't watched this thing in a long time, so I have no idea what made it uncensored. I was going to say, how do the gods kill when they are uncensored? I don't know, because the video, I think, was just dancing looking beefy in a tank top, crooning under blue light or something like that. Probably boobs or something. I don't know. Probably a boob in it. But at the time, I don't remember. I have no idea what's on this thing. I haven't looked at it. 04:09:11.720 --> 04:09:41.680 VHS tape in forever. But the idea of acquiring an uncensored video back then as a teenage boy was probably really something I got giddy about. You could probably send that to Mike in Temple of Void. He can totally check out that VHS for you because he's capable. It was funny. I was just thinking of him too because he was walking us through his collection. That's right. Yeah. And it had the CD, of course, and it had a different booklet. It had a photograph of the 04:09:41.700 --> 04:10:11.140 instead of the H.R. Giger cover, which was basically just shirtless dancing with the band, which was not as cool as the regular cover. But like I said, you get the full presentation of the H.R. Giger artwork. And I just remember staring at that thing forever. I just loved it. Also easily my favorite Danzig record, too. Yes. Y'all haven't heard two, I guess. Not two's good, but How They Got's Killed is just so dark. Lucifuge. Lucifuge is it, man. I like it. 04:10:11.180 --> 04:10:40.720 I think it's great. Three is good, but it's on its way to four. Okay. Two. Two is like one is we're like one. And then two is like, fuck yeah. Three is like my teen song parade. I don't understand. Oh, man. Just saying. I was I was a very, very big. He wanted to give you the full teenage experience. No, man, you're gay. That brings us to Matt. 04:10:41.180 --> 04:11:11.120 I can neither confirm nor deny that there's a box set called The Ten Year War by a band called Black Sabbath. A photograph I found of it looked like it had some of their earlier LPs on it. And I thought that was kind of neat. And that's all I know about it. You like Black Sabbath? Yeah. Does anybody own that shit? I've never heard of it. Does it exist? It's fucking cool, dude. Oh, shit. Yeah, it's super cool. 04:11:11.180 --> 04:11:41.140 real dude oh man can someone grab that and just let me know it's currently up used on um for one thousand dollars on amazon but it comes with all kinds of kick-ass shit dude books all the everything up to never say die a really cool box a cross to wear around your neck i have a huge giant rosary with it no no no it's like the ozzy cross that he wears okay i got one of those for halloween then when i 04:11:41.140 --> 04:12:08.560 It's just Thomas Gabriel Fisher. That's right. I remember it. Which, by the way, I have that Aussie cross because it came in an Aussie box that I own. Nice. Johnny boy. Oh, I'm going to be the first person to repeat one of our picks, which I didn't think we would do that. But surprisingly, I'm going to match Grant on this amazing box. There it is. Which is the ocean. 04:12:11.160 --> 04:12:39.960 Paleozoic. This CD box set is insane. And I also have the vinyl, both. They release all their stuff now with vocals and instrumental versions of all their albums. And this box came with both of those. It came with a poster, which I don't want those posters, but they come with it. There's a live DVD where they did the anniversary show for Precambria. That is a different album that came with it. 04:12:40.740 --> 04:12:45.140 There's all this studio video stuff that comes along and it came with an authentic fossil. 04:12:46.760 --> 04:12:47.960 What? Awesome. 04:12:48.060 --> 04:12:48.280 Yes. 04:12:48.670 --> 04:12:49.660 So, and it's nice. 04:12:49.830 --> 04:12:53.540 And all that is in this little brown box. 04:12:54.020 --> 04:12:54.800 That's right, dude. 04:12:55.320 --> 04:12:55.440 So. 04:12:56.020 --> 04:12:57.440 Wait, so you got that. 04:12:57.740 --> 04:12:59.720 That's the CD version and you get the vinyl version. 04:12:59.860 --> 04:13:00.920 So you have two fossils? 04:13:01.800 --> 04:13:03.080 No, no fossils with the vinyl. 04:13:03.090 --> 04:13:09.280 I just got the vinyl sizes, but I got both the vinyl, you know, the standard and then the instrumental version. 04:13:09.740 --> 04:13:10.120 Oh, okay. 04:13:10.340 --> 04:13:39.620 That's awesome. Yeah. All right. My number two is a series of box sets that have come out by sponsored by Metallica. Them own selves. Them own selves. And Master Puppets is, of course, one of the greatest metal albums of all time. I own all four of the first four of these. I'm not going to buy anything after that because all I care about. But if you've never seen one inside of one of these things, I'm not going to show it to you now because there's too much to show. 04:13:40.060 --> 04:14:07.080 But this is what I wish more bands would do. There needs to be one like this for Number of the Beast and so many of my other favorite records. There's a very detailed, many multi-page book in here. There's a live vinyl album. There's the remastered Master of Puppets. There's like 10 CDs, DVDs, all kinds of shit that you can watch. Just, they did it right, dude. When you're going to celebrate a record, that's how you do it. And so I have, like I say, the first four of those. I know George has a couple of those too. 04:14:07.140 --> 04:14:36.760 I have the first three. I was extremely disappointed when I got the Ride the Lightning and found that... The extra vocal on... Fade to Black. Yeah. I was like, wait, this is not my Fade to Black. Fuck you. And then no more. This is not... You know, you can't go fucking adding shit that wasn't there. That's the only one I've discovered. Don't be fucking George Lucas. I just thought that. Don't fucking put Anakin fucking dickhead at the end of Return of the Jedi. No. 04:14:37.120 --> 04:15:06.900 No, it wasn't there. Leave it off. It's the only instance I've found in this box set. And again, I'm done buying them because I got all the Metallica records I need with the ones. But it's an excellent box set. And there's more in there than you can, you know. But that's several series. But they are good. They are good. Other than that hiccup, they're good. I stopped buying things before the Justice one came out. And there's posters and back patches and all kinds of shit in there. I would also take this to kind of recommend it once again. I'm sure I've recommended it before. 04:15:07.140 --> 04:15:36.580 that Master of Puppets book that came out some couple years ago. And it was by the same guy who had done some really definitive volume about Jaws, the movie. And he did one about Master of Puppets. It's so fucking good. Back to the front? I can't remember what it's called. I can't see it from where I'm at. But anyway. So I did want to kind of call those out as kind of the gold standard for focus on one album box set. So I hope more bands do stuff like that. But Master of Puppets, got to have that one. It's a handsome box. It is. 04:15:37.120 --> 04:16:06.080 Yeah, come on over sometime. You and I will play all night long. I'd love to. Unfortunately, mine are sitting on my shelf in my record room that does not have blinds. And so half the album is sun faded. Sun faded, yeah. I'm like, oops. Not the one you want that to happen to when it's that fucking much money, but oh well. My number two, 04:16:07.120 --> 04:16:35.840 This is maybe making up for choices that I made earlier in the episode. There's nothing special about this release. I mean, there's probably special releases of it that I'm not aware of because this is a classic album. But the album cover, to me, has always meant a lot. It's always drawn me in. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? And that is Holy Diver. Oh, yeah. 04:16:35.880 --> 04:16:36.360 You know 04:16:36.510 --> 04:16:36.880 I saw 04:16:37.160 --> 04:16:37.860 There's a pretty good video 04:16:37.870 --> 04:16:38.200 on YouTube 04:16:38.520 --> 04:16:39.400 George of him explaining 04:16:39.540 --> 04:16:40.160 what that song means 04:16:40.280 --> 04:16:41.180 You should look that up sometime 04:16:41.400 --> 04:16:42.020 I should 04:16:42.500 --> 04:16:43.440 And it totally explains 04:16:43.450 --> 04:16:44.180 the cover of the record 04:16:44.280 --> 04:16:45.180 And you've got 04:16:45.220 --> 04:16:45.880 What's his name 04:16:47.760 --> 04:16:48.120 Murray 04:16:49.380 --> 04:16:50.180 Murray is the name 04:16:50.230 --> 04:16:50.900 of the Dio 04:16:51.360 --> 04:16:52.060 mascot by the way 04:16:52.460 --> 04:16:52.980 And he's like all 04:16:53.439 --> 04:16:54.500 And there's the priest 04:16:54.550 --> 04:16:55.180 with the chains 04:16:55.340 --> 04:16:55.760 and the water 04:16:55.840 --> 04:16:56.100 And he's like 04:16:56.140 --> 04:16:56.580 Holy shit 04:16:56.590 --> 04:16:57.020 What the hell 04:16:57.080 --> 04:16:57.440 I'm drowning 04:16:57.530 --> 04:16:58.480 And it's just like 04:16:58.540 --> 04:16:59.100 What the fuck 04:17:01.460 --> 04:17:02.160 It's always just 04:17:02.160 --> 04:17:02.680 One of the all time 04:17:02.840 --> 04:17:03.200 great covers 04:17:03.520 --> 04:17:03.720 Yeah 04:17:03.940 --> 04:17:04.680 One of the all time 04:17:04.750 --> 04:17:05.180 great covers 04:17:05.270 --> 04:17:05.860 For sure 04:17:05.880 --> 04:17:35.720 Yeah. So there you go. All right. Grant, number one. All right, my number one. And I hate to go back to the same band, but I'm going for design. Craft Orlok. Doombox. This was the 10-inch record. It came in a fold-out jacket that expands into a boombox. Now, the band made these. What? And they were available. What? 04:17:35.860 --> 04:18:05.840 They wanted them from the band, and they wanted to keep it affordable. I guess, I think they may have broken even. They probably lost money on it, but it's killer. And if you don't know the band, Grindcore band, but heavy, heavy use of samples, so think like Mortician, but with more of like an agoraphobic nosebleed slash action movie event, so they have stuff like really based on like 04:18:05.880 --> 04:18:35.520 Predator and Terminator and stuff like that. And it's lethal weapon. It's a lot of fun. But Doombox. It's a boombox. I wish you would have brought it so we could see it. I'll take pictures. Oh, that'd be good. Or a video. Cool. All right, Marcus, on top of that shit. Yeah, well, my number one is Fall of Ephrathah, the Warren of Snares box set on Alerta. 04:18:36.580 --> 04:19:05.840 Fasista Records. This is one of my most prized possessions. I've talked about this band a little bit earlier last year, but this set features the entire trilogy of records by the band. The albums Ausla, Elil, and Inlay, based on Richard Adams' classic 1972 novel Watership Down, all on 180-gram vinyl. You also get a remix record of Elil called Farn. You get a silver 04:19:05.860 --> 04:19:35.280 Foil printed and embossed box with a special matte varnish. You get thick printed vinyl inner sleeves with new amazing artwork. Also varnished a handmade metal emblem like just a chunk of metal that's an evil rabbit head. I don't even know what I was supposed to do with it. I kind of want to put it on a belt buckle but I have no idea. A 16 page booklet that describes the story, the making of the album but also 04:19:35.300 --> 04:20:04.460 The Story of Watership Down. Two silkscreened art prints on brown card paper, buttons, a cloth tote bag, and a poster. And the best part for me for this box set was that I got it after it had long sold out. And it wasn't available anywhere that I knew about. So I just decided to contact the record company. 04:20:06.640 --> 04:20:33.360 They didn't have it on their website, but I'm just like, I'm just going to send a message. And the owner emailed me back. And I just asked him like, hey, I know this is sold out, but do you have a few lying around? And the owner emailed me back. He's like, yeah, we have a few, you know, just PayPal me some money and I'll send it to you. So I love that. The moral of the story there is like always ask and maybe you can get a box set of albums about fighting an oppressive regime of evil bunnies. 04:20:34.440 --> 04:21:04.040 Just fucking ask, but you might get it. So yeah, I love it. I mean, they're one of my all-time favorite bands, and I love that novel. So those two things together just made for a really impressive band, impressive music, but also an impressive package that they put together to put their entire trilogy. They only came together to do that trilogy. That's all they planned to do, and then they just disbanded. Interesting. Awesome. Number one for me, easy. 04:21:06.380 --> 04:21:34.420 All right, Matt, what kind of shit are you going to make up now? A band I made up, they're called Iron Maiden, and they have this thing called Eddie's Archive. Does anybody know of this? Yep. Okay. The embossed metal casket contains three double CDs, the BBC Archives, Beast Over Hammersmith, and Best of the B-Sides. It also includes an Eddie Crystal Shotglass by Alchemy, and an Iron Maiden Family Tree Parchment Scrubber. 04:21:35.020 --> 04:22:04.340 rolled in an eddie pewter ring. Who would not want that? Except I don't have $600 to buy it. So things are kind of on hold. I hadn't sold mine. Honestly, I had one and I sold it too. That's the truth. Because it was the CDs. And I didn't want my CDs anymore. But that's how I got Beast Over Hammersmith. So I used to own that box. Nice. That's great. Beast Over Hammersmith. We've talked about that multiple times. 04:22:04.440 --> 04:22:34.420 So good. Yeah, absolutely. Crossing my fingers, that's going to come out on vinyl some fine record store day. We'll see. John. Right. So my number one is not a metal band, but they certainly influenced many metal bands. And this is the 40th anniversary limited edition super deluxe version. And it is in line with what Jay was talking about with Metallica. Mine is Rush, A Farewell to Kings. I'm not even going to 04:22:34.440 --> 04:23:03.940 Waste My Time Trying To Pull That Box Out. It's so freaking big. Not only does it come with the album, and it comes with a live album from that tour, the full show from that tour in London. It's both CD and vinyl. It comes with two lithographs from the artist who did the cover work. It comes with a tour program, 12-inch turntable mat. There's a 5.1 Blu-ray surround sound that Stephen Wilson mixed. 04:23:04.640 --> 04:23:33.300 It's unbelievable. It's awesome. My only gripe is they changed the album cover. And that kind of pissed me off. The cover is so stupid now. But with that said, it's an amazing box set. John, I cannot stand that. I cannot fucking stand that. I have the creator reissues. And the fact that they, I was just looking at them. Well, whatever. They altered the covers. It's like, are you fucking serious? Yeah. That's bullshit. But cool. Set. 04:23:34.460 --> 04:24:03.420 Mine, and I want to make it very clear that this can currently be purchased at the Bucket O'Blood record store slash bookstore slash so on and so forth in Chicago, Illinois, because I happen to see it on their webpage, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. And that is the Venom En Nominis Eitanis 40 Years of Sodom box set. This is the entire, well, not the entirety of what they released with the records, because some of the singles are not in here, but it does come with a lot of cool shit. Most importantly for me, a Venom, 04:24:04.440 --> 04:24:34.080 a rather detailed biography and I did not know a lot about Venom because they don't they didn't talk about a lot in the press they just talked about Venom so it's cool to hear the story I want to show you just a couple of things it's a bunch of posters and obviously it has everything up to possess the album possessed and and I inclined knock music because I was very excited about it I ordered the early super special version with the Cronus autographed piece of artwork and just to really point out how cool this thing is the cover of this 04:24:34.440 --> 04:25:03.080 is essentially a Ouija board and it comes with a single for Bloodlust and the Nominé Satanus that's the planchette for the Ouija board. How fucking cool is that? That is cool. And I have been working on collecting all of the missing parts in my Venom collection, which is getting to be pretty short at this point. They released a lot of singles, but it just so happens that Bucket of Blood Records in Chicago also had the record store Dave Manitou, which you will be sending me soon. I'm really looking forward to receiving that. 04:25:04.879 --> 04:25:06.020 Sometimes dreams do come true. 04:25:06.020 --> 04:25:07.500 Did I send you the tracking information yet? 04:25:08.020 --> 04:25:10.540 Yeah, the episode's almost over. Dude, it's on the way. 04:25:12.500 --> 04:25:14.200 Yeah, I bought a few records from you, man. 04:25:14.510 --> 04:25:18.620 But in any case, that's a magnificent box set from a band that's really close to my heart. 04:25:18.820 --> 04:25:24.740 And again, another box set where you got several sittings to just sit down and deal with it all, let alone listen to it. 04:25:25.180 --> 04:25:26.460 And I listen to it all the time. 04:25:27.659 --> 04:25:28.300 That's lovely. 04:25:28.840 --> 04:25:30.580 Yeah, it's a good soup worth the price. 04:25:30.620 --> 04:25:31.220 It wasn't expensive. 04:25:31.310 --> 04:25:33.960 I want to say it was $100 and change, you know, whatever it was. 04:25:35.181 --> 04:25:36.200 I could be wrong. 04:25:39.400 --> 04:25:48.580 So my number one, I'm continuing to be lame and not have any cool stuff with toys and interesting things about it. 04:25:48.870 --> 04:25:56.520 However, my number one, while being only an album cover, does provide hours of enjoyment. 04:25:58.280 --> 04:26:28.240 Thank you, John, for giving me my number one. As we were making this list, I was like, I don't know what the fuck to put on here. And John was like, bada bing. And I was like, oh, and that got me rolling. Because I can't tell you how long I've spent staring at the front and back cover of this album. And that is Somewhere in Time by Iron Maiden. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, because, you know, it's all the references to all the songs and the good 04:26:30.800 --> 04:26:58.080 o que é muito melhor do que o que é? O que é? O que é? 04:26:58.280 --> 04:27:27.420 Facebook will tell us. I think you're right. Yeah. But and which is so we'll see how it goes. But that was fun. It was really fun to have you Grant, especially since you obviously know about, you know, your stuff and love. You obviously love music, which you're your kind of guy. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys having me on here. Yeah, no, it's awesome to have you on Grant. So good to see you again, too. And so we miss you and hanging out and coming to the bucket of blood. So. 04:27:28.280 --> 04:27:58.000 And let's pimp a bucket of blood one more time. That's this bucket of blood dot com bucket of blood dot com is you go to his website that takes you to the discogs. He's got a lot of records to choose from. He sells other things besides records. Don't hesitate to go there. Support a small kick ass business. Indeed. Yeah. All right. Well, we are by my count, four hours and 42 minutes. It's going to edit down a little bit, but one more time. 04:27:58.080 --> 04:28:23.720 We missed you, Will. Sorry you could not be here with us today. It's weird not to have you here. Yes, it is. Hope you're having fun, whatever you're doing. And yeah, Grant, thanks for coming on. And we will be back soon with something else. All right. Love you, boys. All right. See ya. Take it easy. Bye. Thanks, Grant. Thanks, Grant. Yeah, thank you, Grant. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. 04:28:31.600 --> 04:28:33.000 BLEASE! 04:28:36.040 --> 04:28:42.060 Picking the flow of the new and new 04:28:43.640 --> 04:28:47.540 I shatter the power of the 04:28:47.740 --> 04:28:52.120 Tread me to be too late