(Father Synn is ready once again to listen to your filthy confessions after first making his own, and then to prescribe your penance. Unburden your diseased souls below.)
This week’s confessional has a special theme my brethren (and sistren). That of chances not taken and opportunities lost. Oh the sorrow. Oh the shame. Oh the goddamn fucking irritating annoyance of everyday life getting in the way!!!
Ahem.
As always, where I lead, thou shalt follow!
1. This weekend it is Hellfest in France, and although the line-up wasn’t quite enough to justify the expense and time… I also failed to realise that both Infestus and Nidingr were playing. Who I STILL haven’t seen!
2. I missed seeing Emperor live in London on their last ever tour due to a bout of cataclysmic illness (although I did finally get to see them at Bloodstock last year at least…)
3. I’ve still never seen The Ocean live (though I may be correcting that by year’s end)
4. I once missed seeing Altar of Plagues because I forgot they were playing near me.
5. Thankfully I’ve never seen Manowar live.
41 Responses to “FATHER SYNN’S METAL CONFESSIONAL (PART 7)”
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1. I had the opportunity to see Temple Of Void, Crypt Sermon and Cemetery Filth live in Philly this past Friday but had to work instead.
2. Behemoth is one of my favorite bands yet every time I have a chance to see them something fucks that up. The first year they did Mayhem fest I went and missed them because my friend and I weren’t into them yet. The most recent time they were supposed to play Mayhem fest I got tickets solely for the purpose of seeing them and then they cancelled due to Inferno’s injury.
3. Speaking of Mayhem fest wankery, I went one year specifically to see In Flames and the very show I was at they had to drop from the whole tour because of a family emergency.
4. I’ve only seen The Black Dahlia Murder once, and it was at Warped Tour of all places…
To be quite frank if you haven’t seen In Flames before now… it’s probably not worth seeing them anymore. And I say this as someone who loves both Come Clarity and Sounds of A Playground Fading.
But the new album is abominably bad, and they don’t seem to realise it… so they’re just going to keep getting worse and worse from now on I feel (and I realise that many of our commenters will likely be of the opinion that they’ve been on a downward slope for a long time anyway!)
Nice to see I’m not the only one who actually did enjoy Come Clarity and Sounds as well. I’m also in the same boat when it comes to the new album. I saw everyone hating on it bad before release but I still decided to give it a chance and well, it’s just horrible. The only way I’d even consider going to see them now is if they did Clayman in full which probably will never happen. Fortunately there are plenty of great metal bands worth seeing that it’s not a big deal to me if I never see In Flames anyway!
1. I had the chance to see Blind Guardian and Symphony X on their joint 2002 tour. Of course, it was also opening night for a play that I was the sound designer on, so I couldn’t go…
2. Amon Amarth played the same venue about 4 years ago. I easily could have gone, but somehow hadn’t listened to any of their albums yet and wrote them off as “just another melo-death band.” I bought a copy of With Oden on Our Side the day after, just to see what the fuss was all about…45 minutes later I was kicking myself.
3. Byzantine just play 3 shows in Central and Western New York. I live in the one major city in the region they didn’t play – and they cancelled the one show I could have made elsewhere.
3. I’d take this up with the if I were you. Surely you can file some sort of Official Metal Grievance claim for emotional suffering?
1. I’ve seen Slayer live once. I truly feel it was one time too many.
2. I went out of my way to catch Cheap Trick/Aerosmith with friends. Worst part is I thought Cheap Trick was pretty good live, and I enjoyed it.
3.Missed an Iron Maiden/ Dream Theater show thanks to illness.
4. Missed the Pantera ‘reinventing the steel’ tour. I passed, thinking to myself ‘Eh, I’ll catch it another time.’
5. Failed to attend the Noctis Festival night 2 (venom, nunslaughter, agalloch, grand magus, black witchery, excrementory grind f*ckers) due to shear laziness. I didn’t feel like driving 2 hours is the only excuse I can provide.
6. Forgot about Goatwhore tomorrow night, which I will be passing up to do, of all things, math homework.
I approve of your dedication my child.
Number 4… ouch. That one’s got to sting a little.
Saw Cheap Trick 20 years ago. Awesome. Saw them last year. Awesome.
I’ve missed Mastodon about 289435719034 times, and missed Revocation roughly the same amount of times due to various circumstances and bad excuses. Same goes for Gojira, Kvelertak, really most of the bands I like. I can blame about 75% on my age and lack of a fake ID, but the rest is my own stupidity.
Also, I can specifically remember getting into Katatonia after I missed their set on Opeth’s non-growling tour, and kicking myself after. Same goes for Tribulation this year with Behemoth and Cannibal Corpse – wasn’t a fan of their previous stuff, so I wasn’t too pissed when I rolled in partway through Aeon’s set. But then their new album turned out to be in my top 3 of this year, and now I’m seriously regretting missing their set.
Funny anecdote to all this – just this Wednesday, as I flew back in from Chicago to San Diego after missing an earlier flight due to pure stupidity (I thought the 2:35 departure on the ticket was Pacific time, for some inane reason), I saw Agalloch loading out of the Casbah – just barely missed them (though my youth would’ve prevented my entry into the Casbah anyway).
Huh, I live in San Diego, and had no idea Agalloch was playing.
Seems like the Casbah has been booking more metal-friendly shows, and Brick by Brick has been pulling in a ton of stuff lately. Which does help me much as a 19 year old, but it’s better than nothing for most.
I believe you can be forgiven due to problems with your age (though the restrictions in the US are still weird to me).
Yep, they’re completely inane. Kinda makes no sense that ts easier for me to drink in Jerusalem, the center of monotheism and a place still very religious and conservative, than most anywhere in the States. Don’t really have much faith in our legislature’s ability to change the age limit though.
The drinking laws are there because youths in America can’t be trusted to drink responsibly. In fact, barely anyone here drinks responsibly. It’s also no sin to miss Mastodon. I’ve seen them four times without trying to, and regretted it every time. Still better than Meshuggah though.
That’s fair. America’s binge drinking habits are atrocious, but at the same time having an age limit at 21 doesn’t help much – particularly with kids at college campuses. I’ve found that, with restrictions on alcohol consumption in younger college students but easy access to colleges in general, drinking becomes something concentrated to consuming as much as one can in a concentrated setting, often a frat party (and there are reasons why frats don’t have the best reputation in general).
I’m going to go see Kayo Dot next weekend, it’ll probably be the most metal show I attend all year.
I got kicked out of show where Cryptopsy was going to play None So Vile in it’s entirety with Lord Worm, before they even got on stage.
I’ve missed out on seeing bands like Carcass, At The Gates, and Immortal mainly because staying at home was preferable to driving 45+ minutes and then standing around a bunch of sweaty dudes for hours.
I really don’t pay attention to tours or festival line-ups. And really only go to a show when I hear about it last minute from a friend who already has an extra ticket, or it’s a band that rarely tours and I’m pretty passionate about them (example: I’ve caught both ROME California tours, they’ve been to the states a grand total of three times in the last 10 years)
I’m the dude that asks the guys running the merch booth if they have a t-shirt that isn’t in black.
Non-Black metal tshirts are the best metal tshirts.
I always look for one, normally in vain. All in all good art on a shirt will trump everything else, but I certainly look for the non-black ones first.
Driving 45+ minutes to shows generally is what deters me from a ton of shows in the SoCal area, which also helps explain how I’ve barely seen anyone live.
Side note: where’s Kayo Dot playing?
I love the songs I Live For This Shit by Waco Jesus and Euforia by Yui Makino equally.
The number of bands Ive skipped seeing because “fuck that shit..its a Wednesday and Ive got work in the morning” is quickly approaching triple digits
This trend will probably continue into July as some genius decided to schedule a Hades Archer show on a Tuesday…theres a special place in hell for that guy
Where I live often doesn’t get the Metal tours these days (particularly the sort of Black Metal tours I like – though there’s some great promoters doing their best with the Sludge and Doom scenes here), so I tend to either have to travel to Birmingham or Manchester… or, more usually, to London to really see the bands I love.
It’s GENERALLY worth it (2.5 hours or so down to London, 2.5 hours back after the show, and then work in the morning) but it’s also DEFINITELY been a factor in skipping certain tours before now.
hmmm, chances not taken and opportunities lost.
1. the first time i went to NYC i was walking around Manhattan and saw Nuclear Assault loading in their equipment to a club. I was 20 and pretty shy so i didn’t go up and say “hi”. still kicking myself.
2. In my teens and early 20s i really wanted to be in a thrash/death band because that’s all i listened to. But this was pre-iternet and metal musicians were impossible to find in my small college town where punk, bluegrass and alt rock reigned. So I compromised and performed with hard-rock/grunge/alt-metal bands since that was the closest thing i could find to what i liked. I made up for it a few years ago by starting Godless Angel at the age of 42, but i still wish i could go back in time and hold out for the the kind of band i really wanted.
3. I regret every single time if sold or traded a guitar or bass. I had some great instruments but like a dumb kid i didn’t hang onto them. Some of them would be worth thousands of dollars now.
4. I regret writing political/social/current-event/religious lyrics for a huge number of songs in my late 20s and 30s. I put so much time and effort into the music, only to undermine it with controversial lyrics that stole all the attention away from the riffs and compositions. I had some youtube videos that got tens of thousands of views, not because of the music but because of the lyrical content. I’ve removed all of them years ago because i was disgusted by the fact that nobody cared about the music, just the lyrics. If i ever share them again it will only be as instrumentals. what a massive waste of my time. I’ve corrected that with Godless Angel, horror fiction lyrics only, from now until the day i drop dead. and come back as a zombie.
And when you come back I will make sure to put you down. With extreme prejudice.
Before you do can you take some photos for my facebook page? 🙂
You know what they say – photos or it didn’t happen 😉
I missed Mastodon, Gojira and Kvelertak when they came to play in the same show as I was not into them at the time. I found out about them a few months after their show. Now Gojira is one of my favourite bands.
I’ve missed lots of bands I love this last two months due to A-Level exams. Some of them include Portal, Antediluvian, Ken Mode, Magrudergrind, Primitive Man, Pyrrhon, Converge, YAITW, Trap Them (last three all in the same show!). New year I will study when I’m supposed to (throughout the year) so I won’t need to sacrifice such gigs when exams are getting close.
I will most probably not get a ticket for the Slayer show that will take place in autumn as I don’t care about them anymore. I mean, they have not put out a face meltingly-good record since Reign In Blood. South of heaven and Seasons…. were OK but not great, songs did not flow well into each other and the energy was not there anymore.
I’ve missed Svart Crown when they came on a headline tour as I didn’t know about them at the time. I’m truly dying to see them live as their album ‘Profane’ got me into extreme metal and I love that album and everything the band has released so much! I know I might never get to see them as the headlining act, just as a support band, so that makes me really mad.
I will miss Gojira this year when they play Bloodstock as I cannot afford going to festivals yet (I’m just 18). Just come ply your own show!
Forgot to mention that I also missed Bolzer, Impetuous Ritual and Destroyer 666…. Didn’t know about them at the time 🙁
1) I can’t stand Goatwhore past their first album, which was mostly leftover stuff Sammy Duett wrote for the planned 3rd Acid Bath album.
2) I love Bandcamp but can’t stand how suddenly everyone has a black metal band who uploads every. single. demo. they. record. What happened to being discerning?
3) I hate most metal press (cept 4 u father synn and islander) because people are too afraid to say anything negative about music now. Negative press is just as important as positive press. Better yet, people forget that you don’t always need an ecstatic or extremely negative review. Some things are just okay, and you are allowed to feel that way.
Oh, and 4) I think Bolzer just sounds like a bad NWN band with Baroness riffs. Also they can’t pull off the “no bass” thing like The Body can.
Ever heard of angrymetalguy.com? They solely prove you wrong on confession #3. Go there and be enlightened.
And nay, I’m not part of their stuff, just a fan of both ncs and them 🙂
1. Bite your tongue. The best Goatwhore albums are “A Haunting Curse”, “Blood For The Master”, and “Constricting Rage of the Merciless”. I HAVE SPOKEN!!!
3. Really? I don’t think we do/say much that’s particularly negative here to be honest (the exception being my “Disappointing” list at the end of every year, which I know brings Islander out in hives every time I publish it). Though since we don’t have to please any advertisers, etc, I suppose we do get away with NOT covering stuff that we think sucks.
AngryMetalGuy certainly do a much better job of being critical than we do!
I made sure to exclude you and Islander from my anger. and I think AngryMetalGuy is more contrarian than anything else and speaks solely in hyperbole when he writes a negative review. “This album is mediocre – better say it gave me cancer!”
Oh no, I know you excluded us (thank you, btw), I was just surprised a little because we are ALSO generally only ever positive. Not saying that we’re the same of course, or that you even considered us the same, but still… we don’t tend to be negative (I don’t think? At least not very often anyway).
Though I entirely take your point about a lot of press being almost scared about being critical. The problem also arises that the net itself CAN be such a horribly critical place that it’s engendered a backlash against even honest criticism. To my mind the phrase “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” is in contention with “for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing” really!
And that’s definitely not how I read AMG – though I do often disagree with their reviews myself (though not usually in a totally drastic manner).
To my mind the phrase “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” is in contention with “for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing” really!
I know you genuinely feel that way, and continue to wonder what you’re doing hanging around here, since it’s pretty much my personal motto.
Pity mainly.
Or desperation.
Maybe a combo of the two.
Staff. I meant staff, not stuff.
I was going to visit family in germany, and I scheduled it around an Agalloch show here in the states. A week after I did that, I found out that Sol Invictus was playing in my home town during the time I was originally going to be their. Ah Cama-Satz was opening as well.
Last year, I was in Ireland, and Primordial was playing with Mourning Beloveth and a few others, FOR FREE!! Unfortunately, I had no idea how to catch a bus to Limerick, and how I could even get back. I’ve seen both here, but damn that would have been great.
One day I will see a concert in Europe. Probably be 50, but it will happen.