You ain't a lived til you've heard Shock Me

ghost are the greta van fleet of metal - all gimmick and nostalgia and very little good music. Opus was okayish the first couple of spins.

I also fall in the "Ghost is boring and gimmicky" camp. However - I went to see Maiden last summer (when Ghost was opening) and I was amazed at how good of a live show they put on. Their entire set sounded way more energetic and "heavy" than the anemic sound on their records. After the show I went back and listened to their albums again in case I had just missed something, and their albums still sounded as boring as the first time I heard them.

So yeah, I suppose everyone calling them "arena rock" really has a point because they certainly shine there, and I still really dislike them in the studio. Don't think I've ever found such a huge discrepancy between studio and live sound before.

I really wish more bands would put an effort into putting on a show and presenting the concept of their music through a complementary image. You don't need a full trailer and a production team, but please, no more cargo shorts or Party City robes.

Ghost became way more profitable than Helloween as they sell out way more tickets. So in that sense (the only that matters to the people that organize shows beside their love for music) it's not that surprising.

Oh and I completely forgot about Xlxlx's answer to Tolkien... But the topic has already been dropped for a long time. So feel free to check Tolkien's Wikipedia page and to go further with the sources provided in the article.

On the other hand, no more "putting on a show" by having everyone dressed anonymously in black robes and wearing hoods.

Greta Van Fleet is cool though. Ghost's problem isn't nostalgia, it's just that the riffs are lame and the songs are safe to the point of extreme boredom.

Greta Van Fleet blows for the exact same reasons. at least have another influence to your sound not just the one band lol.

Well there's also the fact that this Helloween tour is a 3+ hour show with its own presentation, which makes the placement even more strange.

I am certainly an anti proponent of "let the old bands die" but I certainly can't disagree that it's been a long, long time since Helloween gave us a great album.

70s Kiss was amazing. I do not care what anyone says, or if they are not listed on this site. The first album came out in 1974. That album was heavy metal, 100 percent. They all wore leather, makeup, blew fire, had guitars that started smoking, had the drums lift up (before it was ever done). Those early albums were and still are totally killer. Firehouse, Cold Gin, Hotter than Hell, BLACK DIAMOND. If you are a metalhead and don't like the song Black Diamond, I ask what are you on? I was around, they were metal all the way.

Whether or not they're metal isn't really the point, honestly. The point is that KISS in the 70s kicked ass and if you can't put on Destroyer or Love Gun and rock the fuck out then we can't be friends.

I was just shy of 10 years old when Kiss - Alive came out. I thought then, as I do now, it is one of the best albums to have ever been released. I also think it was almost as important as Unleashed in the East to me developing into a metal head. Is it metal? IMHO fuck yeah!

I'll always go on record with my belief that Hotter than Hell is basically a protodoom album. A lot of it has to do with that lofi production but is the actual riff writing grimy as fuck. Creatures of the Night also might as well be a lost Saxon album but its hard rock leanings do make me understand why they aren't on here.

Saw Marilyn Manson live last night for the fifth time, and the guys put on a great show. Probably the best one I've seen of them, probably because of the set list, as they played several songs (both old and new) that I had never seen performed live - I especially enjoyed "Angel With The Scabbed Wings" and "Coma White". And his voice was better than I expected.

Lol, proto-doom. It's fucking hard rock and that's not a slight on it. Saxon's inclusion on the archives might have also been considered dubious if they'd only released stuff like 'Rock the Nations'. I mean, what's the most metal song on Creatures of the Night? 'War Machine"? 'Creatures of the Night'? There's obviously so much cross over between early 80's hard rock and heavy metal but KISS never had songs that managed to be out-and-out metallic. I mean, the title track on 'Creatures of the Night' doesn't even manage to reach Lee Aaron levels of heaviness. Of the 70's rock bands, Van Halen probably have a slightly stronger case, but still... not metal.

So, barring some unforeseen circumstances, and assuming this doesn't jinx anything (ha ha, I know that only happens in video games), it looks like I am a homeowner. We close in September.

I would absolutely call Creatures of The Night and War Machine out and out metal. Possibly I Stole Your Love too.

Alive III's renditions of its respective songs are nothing to sneeze at either. It practically turns I Was Made For Loving You, a corny disco song, into Neil Turbin Anthrax.


Hotter Than Hell definitely has a heavy sound, but can something really be proto-doom if it was released 5 Black Sabbath albums in?

I don't know about Hotter Than Hell, being anything close to resembling doom. Just my opinion though. War Machine is absolutely a metal song. A lot of their albums over the years had songs that were metal or rode the line of being metal. Most of the stuff after the first few albums sounds like they were just searching for a hit and threw studio leftovers on the rest of the album to fill it.

Revenge and Carnival of Souls are the heaviest KISS albums...quite a few tracks can be considered metal off those. Hotter than Hell as proto-doom? I don't hear it, except maybe slightly in the lumbering crunch of 'Strange Ways'. I still like Hot in the Shade the most, though, it's just packed with catchy 80s hard rock anthems. Their most underrated work to be sure.

Century Media has streamed a Belzebubs' single for their debut album... I thought until now these guys were just black metal humor drawists... The single itself is pretty much okay, though nothing exceptional. Sounds like a mashup between Dissection and Amon Amarth. But at the same time I'm not a black metal fan so...

Yesterday, there was a man who was on PCP at the store. He pumped gas into a container and threw it like 3 times. Then he put the container in the front seat and lit a cigarette with the car covered in gas. After that he actually put the cigarette out on the hood of a Lexus that his girlfriend was driving! By the way, he spilled gas all over the car and trunk.

Last night I got to go on a "ride-along" with police in Sydney for about 7 hours. That was absolutely awesome. I won't give too much away but being in a police car when they're going lights and sirens to jobs is a hell of a thrill.

Yeah, like you are living TV police shows but for real.

Did the clients respect your authoritaeh, MikeyC?

Sadly no. One guy that got a ticket told me he hated me. I guess I don't have that power.

Oh but such remark is very frequent. But in the end YOU have the rights to do whatever you want.

Is this a John Sunlight story with the punchline missing?

Yesterday, there was a man who was on PCP at the store. He pumped gas into a container and threw it like 3 times. Then he put the container in the front seat and lit a cigarette with the car covered in gas. After that he actually put the cigarette out on the hood of a Lexus that his girlfriend was driving!

Suddenly I saw him whip his cock out and dip it in gasoline! He used it as a paintbrush to loinspread graffiti all over everything at the station, including a giant portrait of Donald Trump on a semi-trailer and "MAGA" on a NASCAR hat, which he then wore. Finally he went to a Lexus of the same make as his girlfriend's, and knocked on the door. A woman lowered the window and gave him an exquisite frown.

"Wet it again. I think it's dry," he said, oblivious that it wasn't the same car.

Looking up at this drug-addled man in a MAGA hat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said "doesn't look dry to me" and flicked a lit cigarette at him before speeding away.

Now we're expanding upon a known quantity!

True that. In the end the guy ended up thanking me and shaking my hand even though I literally just stood there and did nothing. I'm happy with that outcome. Such remarks are very frequent. I heard people from the nearby pub yell "FTP! FTP!" (Fuck The Police) and some other guy got a ticket from running his mouth. It was insane how much abuse they copped from literally existing. Made me look at their job a little bit differently.

In France cops are murderers (in the sense they're very very very very violent) and literally all of them are part of the far-right wing movement, that's why I despise them. Actually absolutely everyone hates them. A true anecdote that a friend of mine told me, there were two black people that went down the street after leaving their flat, one night. They saw at the opposite of the street cops starting running in their direction, with aggressive faces, yelling them to stop. The first man, who did absolutely nothing but closing the door, glanced at his friend with a face that would read something like "what the fuck dude, what did you do?" and the other man looked at him with the exact same expression on the face. So they started running because they were afraid of the cops.

Actually they didn't see the other side of the street, where there was two drug dealers that were on the run, guns in hands. These were the guys that the police was chasing actually. But the two black people didn't see them so they thought the police were after them. The cops literally stopped their case against the drug dealers in order to stop the black people and were remanded in custody for one night for "troubling behavior". Just literally because they were afraid of cops running in their direction even if they weren't chasing the two black people.

If you were living in my country this would have been a normal day. Actually I wasn't shocked that much when I learned that. You may think I'm wrong and this sounds surrealist but do live several months or years in France and you'll see that such stupidity is actually part of our every-day life.

I hate to be that guy, but if you really haven't done anything wrong maybe don't run from the police? You even mention that the actual people they were after were right behind them. Seems like poor situational awareness from both parties.

Numerous videos of police brutality on quiet, compliant victims are enough evidence to dispel that notion, or at the very lease give pause to some thought about it. Especially if you are a member of one of the many frequently targeted communities of police abuse.

If we lived in a more fair society, not running from cops probably would be the default best advice to give and act upon.

Seriously. I don't know how anyone could possibly blame minorities for panicking and wanting to run away from cops, considering everything we know. I'm just sad that it's apparently almost as bad in France as in the US on that front.

Following his own arrest, Varg actually praised the French police (juxtaposed with the supposedly tyrannical Norwegian law enforcement). For that reason, I find it quite plausible that they have a reputation for abusing minorities.

Couldn't say better. They ran away because they thought they did something since the cops were running in their direction. Maybe did they do something bad earlier and the cops were awaiting them? Not a surrealistic scenario.

It's not that bad but most of the time there are very similar acts.

Source for that? To my memory he praised the French justice system, not the police.

Motorhead is better than Judas Priest. Enough said.