A Month Without Metal
Have you ever felt compelled to do something crazy as a means to challenge yourself? I don’t mean like American Ninja Warrior or trying to squat 600 pounds even though you know your feeble little toothpick thighs will snap under the pressure and you will die. I mean a test of the mind. A test of your will. A test of being dumb and giving up metal for a month.
This dumb little genre of ours is what I spend roughly 85% of my time listening to, the other 15% spent on a mix of Tom Waits and 80’s/90’s pop Pandora. Why would I want to extrapolate that 15% into 100% of my listening? Well, just to see if I can make it, to be honest. I’ve been listening to this stuff for a decade now and my listening frequency has only increased as I’ve gotten older. Metal albums release in such great numbers with such frequency that I generally have something playing at all times when at home. I have to because there’s just so much to listen to at any given time. Even now I’m having trouble wrapping my head around giving that up for a month.
I admit I’ve already cheated by selecting the shortest month of the year (EXCEPT IT’S A GODDAMN LEAP YEAR UGH), but that’s pretty much where the cheating stops. I won’t be listening to any metal (or prog/dad rock…) voluntarily. I’ll be giving updates on how all food tastes less delicious without Mastodon. I’ll inform you of how The Smiths are good, but their eponymous debut isn’t as catchy as Abbath‘s. I’ll keep my truck tuned to the local butt rock station because that kind of suffering makes for great reading. Plus, why NOT select the option with the most suffering? Embrace the void when at all possible.
SO: As I go on this seemingly endless voyage across the wastes known as “other genres of music”, feel free to give me recommendations. What non-metal albums are you jamming? Do you listen routinely? Can you please tell me what happened to those other Jonas brothers? Like, why did only the one become popular? I’ll be sure to create a playlist of what I’ll be listening so you can fully experiences the depths of my desperation and suffer along at home should you so choose. Anyway, I’ll leave you with some choice metal cuts as I fling myself into the void. DIE FOR METAL AND OCCASIONALLY 80’S POP.
