Haha, man, I hate watching the bail videos for the same reason I love watching the final edits: I am every bit as viscerally connected when they hit the fucking asphalt as I am when they land a trick, so I'll sometimes actually gasp in pain when I see that shit. But if this dude lands this trick ONCE it's gonna be an all-time highlight and it's going to look fucking amazing and gravity-defying and mind-blowing when the video comes out. I'd say it's impossible but he came so close that I think he actually could pull it off if he doesn't paralyze himself trying. (And then, once he lands it, everybody else has gotta think up/pull off something crazier.)
That said, this trick is so insane that even the slam reel might be an all-time highlight. I don't really go for tricks like this because they seem a little gimmicky, but goddamn that full-body flip is NUTS, and to just keep dusting off and doing it again and again after crashing like that a dozen or more times? I don't even understand how the human body is capable of that.
I mean, just to watch the best skaters and the most interesting videos, I'd say Thrasher is the most essential, then like the Berrics, RIDE Channel, Skate Crunch, Transworld, and the Skate Nerd are all great. If you just followed those you'd see a ton of amazing stuff, and they all tag the featured skaters and brands and video sources in their posts, so if you see anybody whose style you really like, you can follow them too. A lot of them cross-post so you don't need to follow a million accounts, I just like to do that because as I said I'll just sit there for an hour and watch every video, so I don't really care if there are redundancies or if my feed gets clogged with that stuff. But I realize most rational people would get annoyed/infuriated by that.
Man, if you even knew the half of it. But I appreciate the kind words. (On the other hand, as above re: Dan, I feel I should be personally offended by YBB's response to this comment, even though he ALSO merely shared an objectively true statement of fact.)
Actually when I first started thinking about how I was gonna write this, it was entirely in comparison to Pallbearer, but after I spent some time with this album, I felt like that didn't really work, because these dudes are just blazing almost the whole time at 250 MPH while Pallbearer play these really grand, stately songs at elegiac tempos. That said, I can definitely see the comparison and I spent a week turning over the comparison in my head, trying to figure out how to phrase it. But they're really more like Earthless but with vocals and songs, or Torche but with crazy arrangements and sicker guitar work. (Both those bands had music licensed by skate brands to soundtrack videos, incidentally, relating to my metaphor up top.) FWIW, I think the song lengths on Reflections actually exceed those on Heartless, which is truly insane considering how hard these guys are going. I love 'em both, and I'm fucking stoked as hell to write about them.
BTW I don't just mean that's the same shirt, generally, that Bieber is wearing (altho it definitely is), I mean I'm pretty sure that is literally the exact item of fabric on Justin Bieber's body.
Sorry I shoulda clarified that. First off, there are more shots here: https://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/justin-bieber-wearing-the-smiths-yesterday.140095/
You could have made that, sure, but in fact no new issues of that shirt and/or bootlegs are being printed with that particular design. Do a search, you'll see.
Also, this is gonna sound totally insane, but there's a very small community of people who sell and buy these things, and I happen to be part of that community, so I know just about everybody else. I know (by reputation) the guy who procures these shirts for Bieber, and I know he doesn't fuck with unofficial or new gear. I'm also pretty sure I know where that guy got that shirt initially, and if I'm right, then I'm pretty friendly with his source, and THAT guy ALSO doesn't fuck with unofficial or new gear. I'm just about 100% positive this is the shirt Bieber is wearing:
http://www.defunkd.com/product/TH1452487536/the-smiths-queen-is-dead-vintage-t-shirt-morrissey
No joke, there's like probably less than 25 of us in the whole world who seriously follow this stuff, and there aren't that many of the old shirts in circulation. That one is legit.
Great question. I have indeed seen this shirt, and you are correct in assuming that my immediate reaction was to hit "Buy It Now." But I held off. Why? Because I own at least a dozen Morrissey/Smiths shirts already, and I have, like, enough black metal shirts to fill a warehouse. This is a slight exaggeration, but I'm confident the total is approaching quadruple digits, if not beyond that point. I don't even know what to do with them. It's becoming an issue. ANYWAY, given all the competing options, I couldn't figure out when I'd wear this particular garment, especially because I don't get much mileage out of my Taylor Swift black metal shirt (which I actually DO own).
It requires special code that no blogger is gonna bother with (except us), a fact that is probably dawning on the band right about...now. You have no idea how much joy this brings me.
Honestly one of my favorite songs/bands of all time. You just lodged this motherfucker in my head for the rest of the day, and as soon as the day is over, I'm gonna be blasting this album the whole way home. Thank you.
Yeah, the only people who will be walled-out are Freemium users, and even then only for like two weeks or something. If you're a paying subscriber, you're covered. The idea is to convert more people to paying subscribers because the royalty payouts are much higher. I think it's a risky gambit but probably a necessary one.
Of course, they said they were gonna end it forever if/when they finally interviewed U2 -- and Scott & Scott are pretty good about committing to random shit like that -- so who knows if they'll even do it at all. I'm really just Blue Turtlin' over here.
I've wasted entire days going back and forth with this shit on Reddit and could probably waste the entire night doing it here, but since I gotta go home to watch RuPaul's Drag Race, I'm gonna get serious for a sec: The new U2 is legitimately my most anticipated LP of 2017 not because I like U2 or will ever listen to the album, but because it means we get another one -- one! -- of these. Not kidding. (Maybe we get two if they do a "Bonoroo" ep.)
It's because Trump's anti-intervention platform during the campaign was an extension of his nationalistic agenda, i.e., Bannon and the "America First" stuff, and his alt-right supporters were the first to jump ship after the strikes on Syria, which were literally pulled from the Hillary playbook and happened to coincide with Trump distancing himself from Bannon. So I think there's suspicion among some in the media that if you vocally disagree with Trump's shift to the center (bombing the fuck out of the rest of the world), it's because you preferred him on the far right (cutting off the rest of the world to prioritize American citizens). FWIW, I feel like most moderately reputable media outlets don't subscribe to this binary, but there are enough trolls out there to make it hard to distinguish "alt-right nationalist" from "justifiably horrified rational human."
Yeah, I vaguely recall Phil expressing some genuine existential anguish when he was writing the bottom third of that list, like, "IT'S JUST NOT WORTH IT" or "WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS FATE?" or something. But he pulled it out. Dude's a warrior. I think commenters thought Tales was too low, FWIW.
Nah we gave that one to Freeman. http://www.stereogum.com/1802728/yes-albums-from-worst-to-best/franchises/counting-down/attachment/talesfromtopographicoceans/
Hey I won! You guys are the best. I was pretty happy with that comment, and I'm humbled to see it recognized by my peers. Special thanks to Chris for teeing it up for me. What a great start to the weekend!
To be clear, my entire editing process for ALL stories basically consists of, "Did you mention CRJ? If not, please justify this bizarre and unsavory choice."
Grioir: I'm not gonna identify the band in question for a bunch of reasons that I'm just too exhausted to outline here. If we cover them in any capacity going forward (I'd vote no, but I'm not the only person who gets a vote), we'll include some of that context, I promise. I'll give you one example of the shit I used to deal with covering the metal community. I had a publicist pitch me a song premiere of a band I'd covered positively in the past, but for whom some very ugly allegations had recently arisen. I told the publucist I'd take the premiere on the condition that I'd explain the allegations before talking about the music. He said OK. Then, a few weeks later (before we'd published anything), he backtracked and asked if we could move the allegations to the bottom of the story. I said I didn't like that arrangement, because it felt like we were helping the band hide something in which we'd had no involvement. So he followed that up by asking if I could just not include any mention of the allegations at all -- just leave it to the readers to find that stuff for themselves if they were interested. I walked away from the premiere entirely. It was a really gross, unsettling exchange, and here's the thing: It was very much like an identical conversation I'd had with that same publicist about six months earlier. (I didn't do that premiere either.) I'm being purposefully vague about identity here because I don't want to "out" anybody, but this stuff happened to me a lot, and it wore on me, and after the election, I didn't see how I could possibly have any interaction with any of these people anymore. I dunno if this helps explain anything but it's the best I can do for ya right now. Sorry. I appreciate you guys reading this stuff, I really do, and I started to feel deeply guilty for using my forum to share the worldviews of artists that I find genuinely repugnant and cancerous.
wg: I'm gonna apologize because I think I mighta misread your intent, and if so that's my fault, and I'm sorry. I have a lot of personal and intimate experience with Libertarians and members of the far right -- dating back beyond the advent of sites like Salon and Breitbart -- and I'm pretty distrustful of those people today. And if I mistakenly conflated you with them, that's on me, and I'm genuinely sorry. I'm not saying this to win back yr readership but because I realize I was in error, and it would be fucked up and immature of me not to own that. I shoulda listened before jumping on you. I hope you'll stay and enjoy the lawn, if you choose to do so.
You're a fucking troll dude and I'm just waiting to see how long it takes you to leave these comments and go back to Breitbart. You gone now? Good riddance.
Btw if yr "pretty sure" that Libertarianism has nothing to do with the alt-right, then you don't know shit about either one so you should shut the fuck up because you look like a damn idiot. Or a liar. You pick.
Man, gtfo with your bullshit. Take it to Breitbart or Lambgoat or wherever they accept this Libertarian trash. For old time's sake I wrote one thing about one band and didn't bring politics into it till YOU brought it up. But thanks for reminding me why I stopped writing about metal: people like you.
Also if you're "not sure" what Libertarianism has to do with the alt-right then you probably don't really wanna know, but if you change yr mind and feel like learning something beyond what they teach you in thrash songs, these are good starting points:
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/08/how-the-alt-right-became-racist-a-short-history-of-hate-part-1/ .................
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/09/how-the-alt-right-became-racist-part-2-long-before-trump-white-nationalists-flocked-to-ron-paul/
Haha yeah of course it's personal. You asked ME why I am not paying attention to your stupid fuckin' Libertarian band, and I responded by saying, "It's not just this one shitty band I'm ignoring, I am personally disgusted by the whole metal culture, as embodied by the alt-right garbage people are hyping upthread, which is why I'm not part of it anymore." Jfc. I too hope to find peace, but that's not where we're at right now dude.
We're so far into this thread that I doubt anybody will see this comment, but since you asked a question, I'll answer it. I have no idea what Havok is. As soon as I stopped contributing to Black Market I got the fuck off Metal Twitter forever. It's a cesspool full of actual human shit. I have pretty much no interaction with the metal "community" and I prefer it that way. Now I personally would not be interested in paying attention to a band espousing Freedom Caucus Randism in this political climate, but that's me. I promise you those morons at MetalSucks do not care what kind of random-ass hate-garbage they promote to their troll readership. If it's got a link, they'll cover it, so you might try them. But this is precisely why I stopped doing Black Market: this, like, "It would be a real shame if you ignored these sweet riffs just because this band is a disgusting fucking societal cancer" attitude about music. I just don't agree, period. Man, one of the bands people are all stoked on upthread (not naming names but it's not some huge secret) is fronted by an ACTUAL WHITE SUPREMACIST who thinks everyone here is a bunch of cucks, libtards, and snowflakes. He's said as much publicly. He's a proud and serious alt-right bigot. Now I'm not here to be the nazi police, so if you guys wanna give your time, attention, and money to that kinda scum, I won't stop you. But I am not fucking with it personally.
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