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This explains a lot, sadly

The PRP called out the fact that at Sunday’s Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, while accepting an award for being metal royalty, an emotional Joey Jordison revealed that he left Slipknot in 2013 because his transverse myelitis destroyed his ability to play drums.

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Trying something new

In my continuing efforts to make The Arsies the best imaginary metal tournament on the planet, I’ve started work on a new scoring system, which feeds into the First Listens. Now, instead of coming up with an arbitrary rating (0 to 4 stars), I’m scoring an album on multiple criteria. This adds up to a star rating, which hopefully will influence the battles come next January.

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Before the Arsies Begin…

Dear Arse & Ziggles:

As always, I can’t wait for the Arsies to begin. As the suspense builds, I thought I should point out something you may already have noticed: The Arsies is anti-establishment. And that’s not just an opinion statement, I can prove it. Nick Cusworth at Heavy Blog Is Heavy aggregated the best-of metal lists from major metal websites (Stereogum, Loudwire, Rolling Stone, Consequence of Sound, SPIN, Decibel, LA Weekly, Apple Music, Metalsucks, Metal Injection, Metal Hammer, and Pitchfork) to produce one mega list representing the views of the “metal establishment.”

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Metal?

I was listening to the new Haunted Shores EP today, and fact-checking myself on whether it was the side project of two members of Periphery. So I took a side trip to the excellent Encyclopaedia Metallum… and suddenly found myself reading a thread about the age-old question: are they metal?

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Metal Kitty

I’ve gotta give Mike Portnoy props for doing this even remotely well, and for seeming to know a whole lot of other band’s tunes. Also, I’m totally into forcing bands who want to promote their new albums… into playing on preposterously shitty gear.

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Sweet, sweet metal

Now here’s a labor of love that I can get behind: London-based musician Pete Cottrell has recorded a cover of Meshuggah’s “Straws Pulled At Random,” in which he’s replaced all the percussion with samples of British sweets.