You've heard of Elf On The Shelf but get ready for A Chucky Christmas

Never a doll moment, eh?

Make sure you guard your head! You wouldn't want your Russian nesting doll to turn into a concussion setting doll.

I fucking LOVE Anaal Nathrakh. I'm going to listen to Desideratum because I can't understand how this group could release a mediocre album.

I'd LOVE to see some pictures of that doll (long time interest in the paranormal, not dolls, haha). ALso, if you want to make some money, why not set up a YT channel where you post/stream it being recorded in an isolated room? You might get more views out of that than one thinks. And sell it on eBay one day.

Man, I know I'm at least a year behind the times, but the new Elder is really good. It's the first stoner doom album I've been able to enjoy in years...

I just stumbled across this and I had to share it here.

https://www.facebook.com/thrashtillmadeath/videos/1911008942304063

I'm curious to see what others think about it. Funniest thing I've seen today.

hell yeah, it's so fresh and exciting. You might like III by Weedpecker. Not exactly a doom album per se, but I found it was kinda similar to Reflections... Nice and psychedelic too.

sweet. Hopefully I'll remember it (at work at the mo), if so I will add it to THE LIST

List25 on youtube bwahahahahaha. Dumb stupid channel what shit.

Warning: Rant

Is there are a reason California gets shit for doom metal concerts?

I saw this blog on facebook just now: https://www.riffrelevant.com/2018/03/07/thorr-axe-to-embark-on-live-campaign/

Headline: Thorr-Axe to Embark on Western U.S. Tour Campaign

I thought, Oooh, maybe they'll come to Fresno! I look at the dates. Nope, no Fresno. That's not shocking. But they're not even coming to California at all? In a WESTERN U.S. tour??? That includes such "Western" states as Illinois, Michigan, South Dakota, and Wisconsin???? What in the flying fuck.

Not only do I hardly ever hear of any international doom metal bands playing California, but hardly any AMERICAN doom metal bands play California. It's really disheartening. I'm not even that big of a fan of Electric Wizard, but I instantly bought a ticket to see them in San Francisco this April because of the sheer shock of an International doom metal coming to this state. I just feel morally obligated to support it, so maybe, just maybe, others will follow.

Anyway, back to Thorr-Axe. Like I said, not much American doom metal bands aside from the ones that actually reside in California (such as Sleep and Beastmaker) play California. I guess because so many of them are based back east, because of the whole Maryland scene from back in the day? And I guess they can't afford to travel that far? Ok, fine. But when a tour is billed as a "Western U.S. Tour" which goes to the west coast, but completely excludes one of the three westcoast states, which is also the most populace state in the country, with god knows how many venues/bars they could choose from in a variety of cities (SF bay area, Sac, LA, San Diego)??? And on top of that, this "Western U.S. Tour" that excludes a humungous part of the Western U.S. includes states that far removed from the west coast, like Illinois, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Michigan? In what goddamn world are these western states, and California isn't?

The Michigan and Illinois dates are just festivals they happen to be playing concurrently with the tour duration, which is why they were lumped in.

I understand your frustration, but perhaps also consider how good you have it for metal in California on the whole? The last time a metal band came to my college town, period, was Inter Arma back in April 2016. Hell, Thorr-Axe are from this same city and they haven't played live here as long as I've been here.

We ain't called the Mid WEST for nuthin

I'm trying to make sense of this tour schedule.

The band is in Bloomington, Indiana. The tour is built around this stoner fest on 4/20 in Kalispell, Montana. They appear to be making the best of playing a festival that is a ~30 hour drive and nearly 2000 miles away and not really near anything. They would need at least another week if they wanted to go to California, and likely another to make the trek back through AZ/NM/TX and either Nashville or KC on the return.

They start on Monday the 16th, driving 6+ hours to Madison, followed by ~7 hours to Sioux Falls on Tuesday. They take the next two days to drive 18 hours to Kalispell, Montana. They drive 10 hours the next day to get to Olympia, then their only reasonable trek which is 2 hours to Portland. The next couple days, they drive 7 hours to Boise, 5 hours to SLC, 8 more to Denver to play a show on a Thursday, and then they begin a 16 hour trek back to Indiana.

It's mind-blowing to me, as a New Englander, because all but one of those treks could land me in another country.

As someone who grew up rural, I'm grateful for bands who actually do go out of the way to play in smaller towns. The fans and potential fans out there really appreciate it.

I remember when Korpiklaani did a tour of the US about 10 years ago and looking at the schedule thinking "why the hell would you fly across the Atlantic and then play shows in Iowa, their name means forest clan not corn clan."

I thought it was really cool when Crowbar and Goatwhore went through Morgantown, WV. It was in the smallest venue I've ever been in and it was a blast.

Careful there, Iowa just edged out Minnesota as the "best state in the country" somehow. Yes. Iowa.

This news was doubly shocking in Minnesota, where it was met with passive aggressive confusion.

I know this is probably a surprise, but not a single Southern state was considered in the top ten.

Utah is the only red state anywhere near the top, and it's REALLY high on the list.

I blame the Mormons.

Nothing says "Republican legislation doesn't work" quite like a list like this.

So, today I had a date with this girl I met on Tinder. She was cute, nerdy, and seemingly super smart; a total winning combination for me. We went to get breakfast downtown, and then maybe walk around a bit, given the nice weather. And while we were sitting down at the table, waiting for our orders, the topic of yesterday's Women's Protest came up; this big movilization that took place all over the country due to Women's Day. Our conversation went something like this:

Xlxlx: "So, did you go to the Women's Protest yesterday?"

Date: "Fuck no, why would I?"

Xlxlx: "Sounds like you're not a fan."

Date: "No, I'm not. All of these girls asking to make baby killing legal are awful. I don't want anything to do with them."

Xlxlx: "...you mean abortion."

Date: "I mean baby killing."

Aaaaaaaaaaand that's basically what the rest of our date went like. Turns out this girl believes that modern feminism is almost entirely centered around abortion and that girls who abort are murderers who should be locked up. Needless to say, most of her political beliefs are just as wretched, such as comparing Bolivian immigrants to rats and saying that poor people "like to be poor". I had to make a rather substantial effort to not get super obnoxious trying to mock her or to just outright call her an idiot, because holy shit, never in my life has my interest in someone been killed so quickly.

I ended up excusing myself early from the date, pulling a phony "we'll keep in touch" at the end.

No, we won't.

Lame. Hey, at least you got a date with a real person! How old is your Tinder account? All I ever got was messages/responses from bots and someone told me it had something to do with the age of my profile (older) - it gets buried by the algorithm somehow.

I've been using it consistently for around a year, but every couple months I delete my account and make a new one to refresh it. Honestly, getting a date isn't the problem; I meet a couple new people every month, usually. The problem is finding someone that isn't a complete bore to talk to, either on the phone or worse, in person, haha.

Why didn't you tell her that you thought you two shouldn't have seen each other after that?

I really doubt she'll bother contacting me again. Even if I wasn't loud or aggressive about it, I made it very clear through my reactions and my comments that I thought she was full of shit. The mutual dislike was pretty clear by the end of the date.

Besides, I'm not really sure how I could say something akin to "I find every single one of your beliefs repellent and I don't want to see you ever again" without pissing off the other person

For me this wouldn't even be a bad turn of events. I love having conversations about this kind of stuff. Her position is actually defensible. You know, depending on what a individual considers to be a baby or a human being and how much moral consideration you should give it. Not saying that I agree with her on abortion. I'm personally not 100% sure on where I stand.

But then I read further into your post and realized what a horrible human being she is.

Always kind of awkward when you start hopeful and then end up wanting to get out of someone's presence as quickly as possible.


And yeah, speaking from experience, there's probably nothing quite like a racist rant from your date to really kill the mood.

I remember going to Austin with my ex and meeting her cousin and his girlfriend. The first words the dudes girlfriend said was "I'm a fascist and I'm Mexican isn't that weird lol." I had no comments and didn't speak to her the rest of the night, it was really awkward.

Awkward conversations are the best. And the worst.

Me: ''So, what do you do in your free time actually?''

Girl: ''Oh, nothing really. Just sleep once I get out of internship. You, then?''

Me: ''I play guitar, read, take singing lessons and I like to exercise, too.''

Girl: ''Don't you do anything else?''

Me: ''What? No...''

Girl: ''Me neither!''

She got ya there!

I'm in Seattle for NW Metalfest, and I almost forgot how insane the hills are in this city. Coming from Alberta, it's most certainly a change. At least the beer is cheap, though!

Speaking of dates, I went on one with the girl I met on r/personals a couple last Sunday. We met up at a nice restaurant and immediately hit it off, then took an Uber ride to the mall and walked around for awhile. We finished the evening with cuddles. She's cute as fuck, a total sweetheart, and we both have similar interests. We're hanging out again tomorrow, looking forward to it.

Blorp. Spring time is early here in MA land it seems.

You know it, man. I take it your case went more or less the same?

What's worse than a fascist? A "lol I'm zo randum" fascist.

I was under the impression that there are some quite large mountains in Alberta?
Then again, I'm from Ottawa, and about an hour to the south there is a town called Mountain, despite the conspicuous absence of anything in the area that could be called a mountain. So my people are admittedly not experts on those things

Depends where you are in Alberta, a large part of the province is pretty flat.

Yea, there are mountains, but I'm nowhere near them. I'm very much situated in the prairies, not much in the way of massive hills here, haha.

Always thought the prairies would be the most depressing place to live. We've got something similar over here, "the wheatbelt" and while it's often fairly tranquil living there would be a brutally boring existence. And the wheatbelt doesn't have super cold winters that last for 6 or so months...

She sounds just super.

How did Fox News reach her?

This is why the deep talk comes after you got the chunchuli.
But basically south american women can be really sttuborn. If you add that to the whole political/social situation and general misinformation, it becames a nightmare.