"Go Google/YouTube it."

Yes, because the greater truths and answers to complex questions and conspiratorial claims can all be found by utilizing globally corporate and privately owned, billion-dollar, open-source tools. Clearly there is zero oversight on such information being disseminated, vetted, or leaked and classification of documents has been scaled down to now only include various gluten-free nuclear yellowcake bakery recipes with ingredients that can be purchased at your local organic foods store. Wait until you all try my latest concoction, ModusOperandi's NOFORN Nutella NockOff.

Hey!

Spam is good. Especially when combined with pumpkin spice English muffins buttered and topped with extra sharp white cheddar cheese. Open faced breakfast sandwiches are the way to go!

To develop the point a bit, in the case of completely goofy prophets of doom, it's not a beard, it's the roots of the brain, hanging out in the open air and failing to catch enough water and nutrients for the said organ.

^Now THAT is some great mental imagery!

Perhaps we should give mindshadow his own talk show, or uh, his own thread to post all of this stuff - "mindshadow's alarm haus" - and he may only post these sorts of things there.



Yeah, we'll post it on CTP once we transcribe it. I agree that they're a great band, I've seen them three times!

I'd say that's the whole problem in a nut shell.

We could probably just reopen the Symposium for him alone and it'd be filled back up in days.

I'm just delighted by his finally cracking under the strain and dropping the "Many of my best friends are black/gay/socialists/immigrants..." line so beloved of the crazies...

mindshadow, I'll throw a couple cents in here instead of writing you off entirely, because I used to have friends like you. I don't talk to them anymore. You know why? Because as much as they care about the "state of the world," (or fucking democracy or their theoretical national pride/pining for a time that never fucking happened) they're boring as fuck shit-talkers who lack the social perspective to realize when they're being self-indulgent tedious buzz kills, and then they get bent as hell when anyone moves beyond the polite tolerance they're abusing and states the obvious: "Fine, good. I can see you're very passionate about this, and take yourself to be the bringer of light to a dim and sheep-like species. I know you hate it when I say this because you feel like I'm a fatalist, but the fact remains: I can't do shit about it, no matter how often you 'warn' me. Do you have ANYTHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT!!!?? ... *years-long pause, more depression, lots and lots of ranting* .. ok no."

It's one trick pony shit, and it's NOT a sign of maturity, no matter who's giving you pandering pats on the back now and again, or how "invested" it makes you feel. You would have to overhaul the ENTIRE political system of your country to see anything like a solution, and shut-in nerds picking zits off their hairy ball theorems and holding in their farts so they don't coffee-shit themselves aren't going to be able to help you. .. no offense, guys.

I know you're trying to help. I do. I get that. But something else to reconsider as your cursor hovers over the 'submit' button is how the fuck reading the news is going to make anyone do anything but say "yep. Same ol' same ol'" and cluck their tongue and then go back to listening to Louis CK say cunt and faggot over and over. Socio-political investment is obviously important to you (and if it isn't, really, then "what the absolute fuck" as Morrigan says), so also reconsider whether your ideas for a solution would even be effective in the first place, and then get involved in something positive. Because this isn't productive. This attitude is actually pessimistic, idealistic, and it's adolescently melodramatic to nurse a pot of coffee as you stare at the table top obsessing on this.

What's wrong with idealism?

Nothing wrong with idealism... other than it never goes anywhere in most cases other than just bitching about the current state of things without any sort of real solution. If someone was motivated to actually come up with solutions to the problems they see in the world and take action and dedicate their time to solving them then it'd be pretty admirable... but some dude posting random shit no one gives two shits about in the free for all thread of a heavy metal forum is NOT that. It's a waste of time, both his and ours, and I think it's been made pretty clear on multiple occasions that no one give a shit about what he's talking about or cares to be 'enlightened' about these issues he thinks are so important.

Though it certainly is nice that when I'm away for a few days and I come back to see a bunch of mindshadow posts that I can just scroll past them and be caught up without any actual reading.

Depends. There's the inspiring dream that helps people do something beautiful, and then there's the debilitating addiction.

So many posts to reply to. I'm not crazy but a few are trying to paint me as such for their own youreasons- maybe I quoted the mail once too often for their liking ? We can't do much but we can at least be aware and vote accordingly. Mr Took shame on you, you claim to reside in the UK so you should know what's going on here, your loyalties obviously lie else where for your own reasons. For the rest of you simply reading my links to news articles should be adequate to understand my concerns. I knew id be in trouble for stating my friend is from Malaysia but its the truth and I've never lied on this board. I honestly don't understand the reaction I get as to me being a metal head is synonymous with truth, yet more than a few here seek to make out I'm categorically wrong- without ever offering anything firm in return, or answers to the many news articles.

Putting respective political views aside entirely, I'd wager the primary reason people don't respond/rebuttal/etc is because this simply isn't a good outlet for the particular political microcosm you espouse. You'll notice the few political discussions that do crop up in the tavern (and survive long enough to warrant respectable debate) are broad enough for the majority of board members to have relevant opinions. I know plenty of other outlets (forums, local venues, in-person discussions, etc etc) when I want to speak about local specific political issues, and I go there instead as I know the interest and discussion quality will be much higher.

You'll notice even general off-topic discussions here are about topics common enough to warrant responses from a large board population: Video games, cooking, movies etc; meanwhile hyper-specific topics (hair care, bicycle marathon training) tend to have a pretty short shelf life.

Here, let me try to help. This little bit I've just quoted is EXACTLY the issue people have with your posts. In case you haven't noticed, almost ZERO of the regular posters here are from the UK. It may come as a shock to you, but UK politics, social issues, media biases, etc. are not exactly common household topics in the rest of the world. No one bothers to read your posts because they're ALWAYS full of these cryptic goddamn allusions to UK-specific things that any readers of yours would have to figure out how to even research in the first place in order to understand what the hell you're talking about, and that's BEFORE they decide that they don't actually give a shit because it's stuff that's basically intrinsic domestic UK problems. That's why you see Canadians here linking to stories about the mayor of Toronto smoking crack, because that's sad/funny/understandable by everyone ever. However, if I went on about some domestic US issues that didn't really have any importance to people living elsewhere, and furthermore hid all of my opinions behind cryptic comments like "one party in particular" or "certain [American] media outlets" or context-less Wikipedia, YouTube or news links, I'd frankly have to have delusions of grandeur regarding my own country's domestic issues if I even begun to think that such stuff would be worth reading for non-Americans.

Ah, amen.

Every time I see a post by mindshadow my eyes instantly glaze over and I automatically ignore them on instinct, yet I'm sure in six or seven years when the bombs fall he'll get through to us all and we'll all run off to fight the good fight. Mindshadow simply needs to post more and include more links from UK based news sites. Repetition and unwavering persistence couldn't possibly irritate any MA users.

mindshadow, stick to talking about black metal. When you lapse out of your paranoid Orwellian trances long enough to discuss it, you seem to indicate that your tastes in it are pretty decent. We could even start a N.K.V.D. circlejerk club if you wanted.

Even Acrobat moved to Italy, it shows how much nobody cares about the UK anymore. Admit it, the centre of the EMPIRE has moved here, Mindshizzle.

Nuke the South of England.

I've always associated Italy with style, elegance and beautiful people with fantastic dress sense and sparkling eyes, having intelligent conversation.
Why would you want to go there, Acrobat?.

I associate Italy with pizza and pasta and popes. The three Ps if you will.

Two out of the three are good.

I really like Aion and Serpent's Egg. I heard Within the Realms... a long time ago and don't seem to have it now; will have to check it again. Into the Labyrinth is just like Aion/Serpent's Egg but longer; I think it's plenty grandiose. But that said, there is something to be said for brevity, which the former two albums do have. So I can sort of see your point.

The last P appears to be kinda not totally terrible since lately.

Actually, I have noticed a general lack of U.K. users on here.

Yeah really. I never paid attention to the Pope before this new one, but he's really cool actually.

It would be fair to say that he appears to be a definite improvement on the last pope. My feeling is that being from South America, where I'm given to believe the church's role in helping the poor and more vulnerable members of society is pretty much what it's best known for, he's brought a lot of positive, sorta back-to-basic-love-thy-neighbour vibes into an environment that really had become pretty toxic. I don't intend to trigger a long discussion on the pope/religion (I'm sure that's happened plenty before, and for that matter, plenty elsewhere too) but he seems to be a good influence on the church so far.

I'm a user from the UK, and in my several years here now (mostly as a lurker or sporadic poster I must say) it hasn't really struck me that there are lots of us about. That said, I currently live in the US, at least for one more year. But that's a choice based on a job I pursued, not any dissatisfaction with the state of the UK today. I appreciate keenly that not many people outside the UK care for our news and issues to be pored over in great detail; in the same way that certain facets of US life which citizens here are super interested in telling me about I have not much time for. Depends on one's priorities entirely.

Italy though, that's a great place to live. Acrobat, are you really in Napoli? I spent almost 6 weeks between there and Perugia earlier this year, had a fantastic time. Napoli is a hugely evocative city - dirty, smelly, dangerous (mainly scooters tearing through the narrow streets), but bustling with noise, character, and some stunning old buildings. Plus the volcano and ancient sites nearby. Amazing place!

Acrobat is teaching English there, yeah! He spends his salary in wine and beer like a true Brit!

I believe we don't have many Euros on MA outside of the Finnish armada (Napero is the best commandant ever) because the European metal scene is so tight and huge that there's no need to discuss it that much on the internets, at least unlike us North Americans. That's something we talked about before, can't remember if it was also on the forums but we definitely mentioned that in the chat. Beer_Snob (a chat regular) can easily see 2 or 3 metal gigs/week of well known bands in Belgium, that's not really something we can due to the size of our territory and the sparse population of Canada (the situation is getting better though). I believe that's a better explanation than saying "it's an English speaking forum!" since there's not a lot of Brits, Scots or Irishmen anyway and most countries (not Italy though, why do you think Acro is doing there!?) are relatively good at the language.

A friend of mine is growing some San Pedro cacti. He showed me his setup, and he's got like 16 growing currently.

Almost every time someone starts to talk about some sort of domestic UK news item I reflexively think "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE PRINCE GETTING MARRIED WE FOUGHT A REVOLUTION SO WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO CARE ABOUT THIS SHIT," no matter how serious the subject actually is. Sorry guys. You make excellent beer though.

OK, seriously, no more mindshadowing in the FFA. Please make a new thread if you want to talk about your mind's shadows, mindshadow, or socio-political issues in Britain/elsewhere.

Inquisition is blowing my mind. A lot of the riffs on Obscure Verses sound similar to each other but they're all so good. I'm having one of those "why didn't I listen to this sooner" moments.

It's really nothing different from anything they've ever done. They don't even have any interesting slower songs like the ones that were at the end of Infernal Regions such as Solitary Death in Nocturnal Woodlands or Hail the Cult. As interesting and intventive their style of black metal is, I fear they are turning into a deluxe LP kvlt edition gimmick band with "thuper kewl" artwork.

666% disagreed. The new album completely destroys. I can't stop listening to it. The general songwriting is at least on par with Ominous Doctrines but thankfully doesn't have a dud like that album did ("Upon the Fire Winged Demon" always struck me as notably not-as-good as the rest of the album) and has so many more "holy shiiiiiiiit" moments. Album of the year.

THEMIC must be one of these dudes who complains about Motorhead being too samey.

Obscure Verses is definitely a good album. I've never once listened to it and thought 'gee whiz, I wish there were slower songs' It's all at it's own varied pace and goes where ever the flow of the song takes it. Joined By Dark Matter Repelled By Dark Energy is probably my favourite track but all songs have their own flavoured hooks and catchy sections. I'm fairly sure Master of The Cosmological Black has a Metallica riff at 2 minutes in but I can't pin-point which exact song, anybody have any ideas? I like that some songs have a progressive nature to them and I also like how the music drops out on occasion and only the guitar can be heard, like a calm before the storm. Most of it has of course been done before but the way it's executed here and it's overall delivery is unlike the rest and not easily forgotten. I certainly wouldn't call it album of the year but it's got plenty of staying power and should at least be mentioned in top 10 end of year lists.

I've only listened through twice thus far and I'm quite sure how I feel yet. I definitely like it and more of the same is not bad thing at all from Inquisition, but I feel like it has a bit less balance between the sounds they mix together. It seems to lean more on the mid-paced rocky stuff and the faster, blasting sections haven't quite hit me the same as they did on Ominous.

We'll see though, my opinion of albums I've been highly anticipating usually shifts around a bit for the first couple listens or so.

Regarding album of the year, it's a tough call for me between Satan's Life Sentence and Obscure Verses...heck, maybe I'll settle on both of them being tied for the top spot with probably In Solitude's Sister in third place.