4 Years Ago (2017)

When I was growing up there’s like a half a dozen or 10 big giant great bands that are super groups you know. Now it’s like there are thousands of bands. Picking through everything is hard. It’s stressful trying to find all the right music you know.
George Lynch

It’s a good time for an artist to get their product out and streaming has moved distribution further away from the labels. And it pissed em off because their power came from controlling the distribution. Then the millions started coming in from streaming and suddenly their powerful again. And all they did was moan and complain.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was writing about my fandom of Tesseract, who just released the excellent “Altered State”.

And it reminded me of an Australian band called Karnivool.

Tesseract also liked Karnivool as they had a few of the Karnivool songs in the Spotify playlists they created to promote the album.

Trivium was also doing the usual PR interviews about their new upcoming album called “Vengeance Falls”, produced by David Draiman from Disturbed.

And from the interviews, the theme was, “Bigger Melodies, Bigger Hooks, Bigger Riffs.”

And in 2021, I can say that the album proved just that, giving us the concert favorite “Strife” with its Judas Priest “Sentinel” Intro.

And the lyrics from Dave Mustaine seemed prophetic to me during this period.

I was questioning why artists would spend a lot of time putting together 12 tracks just to sell them as a packages for $10. It’s an old business model. In 2021, that business model is 55 plus years old.

I can’t recall a lot of companies doing the exact same thing they did 55 years ago and surviving.

But it looks like the album won’t go away anytime soon.

When Zoltan Bathory was putting together a new band in 2004, his vision was to bring metal back to the masses.

And I think he’s done that. Every FFDP album has a certification. It’s because of the songs, which Bathory said, a song needs to be there for anything else to be added.

And I think my final douche post was written and I was asking the question if having Portnoy in your band is a good thing or a bad thing due to the many projects.

As James Hetfield once said that he is anti-side projects because it dilutes the quality of the main product.

And in the end it is quality that the people want.

I was trying to be a sociologist with the post, “The Old Rock Star Is Dead, It’s Time To Create A New Rock Star”,

You don’t want to be an artist that becomes who others want them to be. It’s okay to not be liked by everybody.

And that’s another wrap for another week.