McDonald's in Britain and Ireland announcing they'll get rid of plastic straws:
http://news.mcdonalds.com/news-releases ... commitment

Fine. Now how bout getting rid of the plastic cheese?

Whoops, sorry. I don't actually read this thread but once a blue moon.

The plastic cheese is not harmful to the environment since it gets eaten, even if it is harmful to the consumers' bodies.

JSYK, Céline Dion is now mentioned in the Archives:
https://www.metal-archives.com/artists/ ... euf/635485
(see "live" tab)

OK, I'm back from Monaco/Nice. The trip was a success, both on the work front and in the fun department.

I was walking from the apartment I got for the daughters and me to the hotel I had for the work part of the trip, intentionally through a narrow, oblique street just to avoid the sun, when I saw an old lady, likely in her 80's, sitting on the side of the street, with an extremely beautiful dog. The largish canine was grey, short-haired, and smart as hell. It obviously wanted to sniff me, but the lady told him no, and he sat obediently next to her. When I got next to them, I asked if could pet him, and she said the French equivalent of "go ahead" or "free" or whatever to the dog, and he came to me, and I had a nice chat with him. I thanked her, went on my way, and everybody was happy.

It took me almost five minutes to realize that I had actually spoken Finnish to both the lady and the dog all the time, and that there had not been a language barrier of any kind. I could not decipher a word of what she was saying, but the encounter went beautifully. Animals are the great enablers, and that dog was the awesomest and goodest boy, like, ever.

That's a sweet story. It's wonderful when intention and communication are so simple and clear that the language itself is incidental. Glad you had a good trip over all, Napero, and that life is (currently) good. I haven't been around these parts much because reasons, and it's a nice thing to come back to.

The Burzum shitposting pages on Facebook have to be he best thing that ever came from that crazy Norwegian boye

Doing pretty good! We posted this video on the Facebook page a few weeks ago and I know Phil is working on a brand new video ready to come up very soon. This album is going to be a monster and I absolutely can't wait to release it.

https://www.facebook.com/CosmicAtrophy/ ... 846093141/

Wait what? Varg is a member/user of Facebook? Really?? Not fanboying here, just expressing my disbelief at the (im-)possible extent of that man's hypocrisy.

No no, what I ment was pages where people make Burzum (or Vikernes) related memes, such as:

https://www.facebook.com/VargVikernesMeme/

https://www.facebook.com/vargposting/

Well, those are definitely better than the Mortician one...

What! The mortician meme thing is a+. It sounds like you're an arch enemy fan.

For fans of John Arch and singing geeks...behold! A vocal analysis!

Interesting that he chose that song to analyze. I can tell you first hand that this is a demanding song to play on guitar, an extremely difficult one to sing, and a nearly impossible one to play and sing at the same time. My friend and I used to jam on this one all the time, and both the lead guitars and vocals fell on me. Glad we never had to try that live!

the interesting thing was that John only just had recovered from a pretty nasty nasal infection.

I just found out Helloween is opening for Ghost at Copenhell, and I'm officially pissed.

Wait what really?

Yeah, it was tough. Damnedest thing.

Happy and sleepless midsummer to everybody!

I tried making these myself for the first time. The tie wraps are an obvious breach of tradition and will bring shame on my family for seven decades, but being a ham-fisted idiot is enough of an excuse at this point of my vasta career:



Get drunk, you fools!

(and yes, there is a cat in the upper edge of the pic... Mokoma found them interesting)

Getting drunk is in progress, Napero. Happy summer solstice!

In what universe are Ghost bigger than Helloween (answer: Denmark?). Helloween have sold millions, even Ghost's fans won't remember what they sound like in 10 years.

I too think it's an odd pairing, but how many of Ghost's fans know Helloween other then perhaps them being that goofy band from the 80s? Besides, aren't Ghost's fans the same as Metallica fans, ie people who likes to go to a big rock show, but don't really care for music?
So if Ghost is touring in 10 years time, the same people will go and see them then.

And one more thing, haven't people said for a long time there will never be any new stadium bands? Well, here is one.

Are Ghost actually headlining stadiums anywhere? They play 2000 seaters here and they don't sell out.

Well Ghost are certainly bigger than Helloween here in America. Ghost gets regular play on terrestrial radio. Helloween's Pumpkins United tour, reuniting the legendary Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske with the current line up, get a whole FIVE dates in the US. :/

Same here but their popularity is growing, in particular with rock fans.
It's not so uncommon to find people with Ghost shirts, even among younger generations

Yep, nobody I know IRL except myself and my brother care in the slightest about Helloween, and not once in my life have I seen someone wearing a Helloween shirt except maybe at metal concerts. Meanwhile, I see Ghost shirts frequently, and several of my metal friends are big fans of them.

I've seen more Nocturnal Rites and Amon Amarth shirts than Helloween ones in real life. I guess chalk that up to them basically being beyond their best years at this point - and maybe they're just more of a European fascination anyway.

Yea if this was at Ozzfest or one of those milquetoast US midwest rock festivals I'd totally understand. But this is a European festival. On top of that, this is the REUNITED Helloween. It's pretty much their Guns N Roses "Not in this lifetime" tour.

Anyone ever ordered anything from Test Your metal Records in Vancouver? I paid $20 USD for the Terrifier album over a month ago. Got an automated message from them saying they received my order immediately. But still no album. I'd expect something coming from Europe to perhaps take a month to ship, but this thing is coming from within Canada. I've also written two e-mails to the label in the last week, both to the "sales" address mentioned in the order receipt and the "info" address listed on their metal-archives page. no response.

Last year I ordered a CD from Do or Die Records out of Chicago. Once again the shipping seemed really fucking high, but it was meant to be a birthday gift so i just went ahead with it anyway. The guy never sent me the silly album and I let it go, so by the time I thought of filing a complaint with PayPal it was too late. I'm not going to make that mistake again. These guys who supposed run labels and won't send you stuff are just incredible. I'll give TYM a little mroe time, but eh...

was that over his entire FW career? Would certainly explain his vocals

I do wear Helloween shirts in my everyday-life haha. They are my absolute favorite band.

After all it is not that surprising. Ghost became very mainstream. Helloween still stays in their original speed/power german sound.

I checked the views on that Rats music video on youtube. Released 2 months ago, almost 9 million views already. Square Hammer has 24 mil. Yeah, Ghost is big . Definitely bigger than Helloween. Will they stand the test of time? I give them a good chance. I'm finally starting to warm up to them as well. I've been spinning their last album a lot and I can't deny it's catchiness. Maybe it's time to revisit the older stuff.

I liked that o[Opus Eponymus[/i] debut.
But I listened to the last album (not the just-released one, but the one that came out two or three years back) and thought it was so bad that I haven't really thought about them since. It's taht typical thing with the vocals being terrible, you know, and all the layering of singing tracks only makes it worse.

It's purely a legacy thing. I had the same gut reaction when I saw that Bad Religion was opening up for Rise Against a few years back. It sucks if you're a fan of the classic band but if you sit down and be real with yourself for a second, it's pretty damn obvious who is more popular in the here and now. You wanna put butts in seats? Put the bands with the biggest draw the highest up on the bill, legacy be damned.

Also I'm a strong proponent of "let the old bands die" at this point and when was the last truly great Helloween record? 2007? And before that like another decade? Maybe you can argue for Keepers III as well but don't kid yourselves, Ghost is a really big fucking deal right now and Helloween hasn't sniffed the level they're at in like thirty years, regardless of the fact that they're better.

It definitely makes sense. Helloween haven't been truly bad but their last several albums are treading water. I did enjoy God Given Right though, lot of catchy stuff on that.

I guess Ghost being so big is what it feels like to just be totally alienated and baffled at how things like that happen. Ah well.

Seven Sinners was pretty good but yeah, Helloween hasn't exactly been the biggest trailblazer in some time. Ghost is definitely the more talked about band of the two and definitely has the most interesting stuff going on. As weird as it feels to see them opening for Ghost, especially in Europe, it's pretty warranted at this point.

Kiss was the biggest rock group in the world at some point. Ghost is relevant Kiss. There are a lot of parallels you can drawn between the two. I used to be as baffled at their popularity, but I guess I like them now.. *shrugs* Not Kiss though, no one should like Kiss.

Indeed. I just meant that with most popular bands I can appreciate why they're good and even usually enjoy them. But I guess everything's got limits there.

Vacation over. Two weeks of relaxed enjoyment with my son and girlfriend. She had the second week off from her work. Unlike my vacation last year, I did not wake up the first day with a kidney stone, so it was already better. Vacation ended with some absurdly smooth luck. The second week, we went camping at the North Shore (Superior National Forest), and the first day was bleak. Rained on and off the entire 5-hour drive, and the campground was damp. After over 200 miles, my fucking car battery died in the campground, so I had to spend Monday with a tow-truck and a mechanic at a place called Cooters. That's not a joke. After that was fixed, things suddenly went crazy smooth.

Perfect weather. Sunny or partly cloudy the entire time, hovering around 70-75 degrees (F), and relatively low humidity. Even more amazing, almost no mosquitoes and we didn't encounter a single tick. In the forest. Fucking amazing. Tried fishing for the first time since I was maybe 5. Only my son caught something we could keep, a river trout. We encountered some asshole fish that apparently kept snapping our lines at one point. My son brought a friend with him, and they basically adventured the entire time at the campground.

At the end of the vacation, we started the process to hopefully buy a house and stumbled upon a garage sale filled with Sega Master System and Atari 2600 games.

Fuck that, 70's KISS was pretty damn good; especially the first album and Alive. Ghost are really fucking bland; KISS could write very memorable, cool songs and Ace Frehley was a great guitarist.