Captain Howdy

A bit of old school Mats Leven

The Warning - XXI Century Blood The Warning - Queen of the murder scene

I know its different economies between Canada and UK, but considering how much postage is from US and how much most European countries wanna charge these days, I would take 26CAD all day. I just got two CDs from USA this morning and they cost me $44CAD in postage. The CDs cost $44CAD as well, so $88CAD in total.

Apparently the standard postal service still has not fully recovered from Covid. On my most recent order from them the DHL shipping only cost £15 and was with me within 3 to 5 days. From USA I ordered a CD and that was £21 shipping with delivery of several weeks. Even the more expensive shipping options from Japan are more reasonable in my experience. I think shipping from Amazon Japan is about the same costs as well

back around 1999 I spoke to legendary glam scene regular, Kelv Helrazer via email (had never used anything like that before but was working in an office at the time and one of the metal mags at the time printed a list of email addresses of rock stars and journos etc) and I knew he was the guy to go to if you wanted unreleased stuff. He sent me a cassette with Poison - Crack a smile on one side and a bunch of PBF demos on the other. So this song was already familiar to me by the time they started releasing all those demos through Perris. This song always stood out to me as one of the best from those sessions. I am sure most of the songs that appeared on those three albums were as old as the songs on the debut as most of them were almost certainly written by Ariel Styles. Even the Public Enemies album released in 2017 was mostly re-recorded Styles songs from these demo sessions, with the only exceptions being the cover songs. Kristy Krash Majors only contribution to these classics was the title track of the debut, but even that was barely written by him. I was talking to Rob Wylde a few months ago about PBF and he said that barely anyone in the industry has a good word to say about Majors.

I will have to ask Rob why he didn't sign with Frontiers as I chat with him quite often. Will be interesting to get his take on them. As I say, from rumours I have heard over the last few years there is defo a certain way they do things that puts some people off of going with them. While I am sure worldwide distribution is great, if it cuts into your profit margins in a massive way, being with a bigger label might actually hurt more than it helps. I have said it many times before, but Frontiers has been getting worse in recent years. Not only are their prices often more than a lot of labels, but the sheer laziness in their bonus tracks on Jap imports sticks out like a sore thumb. You cannot blame the artists for choosing poor bonus tracks when every single artist on Frontiers now does it. And as you mentioned Midnite City, just look at their recent Jap release. A proper exclusive track. Not an acoustic, live or piano version. I just get the feeling Frontiers has grown to the point that it is now no longer an indy label in the traditional sense and has become a not so nice place to be. As for postage, do not even start me on that subject considering how much the US charges for postage and has a delivery time that the average snail could beat. I can order from Japan, pay slightly less in postage and get items within 3 to 5 days, and Japan is about 4000 miles further away than the US. A lot of sites are no longer giving us the choice of choosing to not pay duty and are including it in the postage costs, which is a shitter as in all the years I have been buying internationally (outside Europe that is), I have only been stung by customs a handful of times so was worth the risk of not paying in advance.

I don't like the HOL version. Slamers version is superior (and he did co-write it anyway)

I was talking to an artist several years ago about UK distribution (established 80s musician) and had they considered Frontiers. They out and out refused to deal with them as apparently they had spoken to them before and the deal they were offered was awful.

They said in the initial blurb that some re-records, some remixes and some previously unreleased.

First single from this compilation drops on Monday next week. A re-record of Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Also news of the album release due the same day.

I really hate the term "overrated" as its all going to come down to personal tastes. If an album or artist is successful, if you don't like them then of course you think they are overrated, but millions of people would disagree with you. I do think though that underrated is much more interesting as while yes it will come down to tastes as well, there are bands or albums that slip through the cracks and had they got more exposure who knows how people would view them. There are many bands or albums that people rave about that I really do not like, but I would never say they were overrated just because they don't interest me.

Well considering the age of most of these guys who do these lists, most of them pick 60s and 70s bands because they are probably the bands that influenced them most, so for him to pick a band that came out long after he started his career that really is recent. Most surprising to me is that he did not pick Pantera as his more "recent" band seeing as how much they influenced his sound after he left JP.

According to this, they are https://christian-metal.fandom.com/wiki/Possession Also a channel on YouTube called Christianmetalfan777 posted their stuff

Too fucking right.

Good god that was painful to listen to. Fucking awful. Does not sound anything like Sven Gali

While I love these kind of documentaries, I hate the fact that the facts are not always right and they jump all over the place with how things happened. For instance in the third episode they are talking about 1989 and how things were changing due to the rise of Metallica and metal was moving into a more pop orientated musical style with ballads, like ballads had not been a staple of the hair metal genre for most of the decade. And then examples they give are Cinderella heartbreak station, which came out in 1991 and Bon Jovi bed or roses (1992) almost as if songs like Every rose, Home sweet home, Wanted, Is this love, Honestly, The price and Sweet child did not exist.

Seems to be a new trend seeing as we had the three part I Wanna Rock: The 80s Metal Dream a month or two ago.

To be honest most of the stuff I have bought this year is either in the HH database or in the BM database, so not really sure if I have purchased anything outside of that. If we are just talking HH, then only bands I can think of that I have bought are Avenged Sevenfold and Metallica. Metallica was a decent album and A7X was a bit of a let down as it was a bit too experimental for me, especially considering how long we waited for a new album. I do like a lot of styles of music, but generally only buy singles or individual songs rather than whole albums. A couple of singles I bought that I really liked and dont belong here are Electric Callboy - Everytime we touch and Fallout Boys cover of We didnt start the fire (not normally a fan of theirs but really liked their take on this with updated lyrics)

They are in the HH database though.

Looking at some of these I would say its a stretch to say they were named after songs purely because they are already existing terms in the English language (Sweet FA & Snake charmer for instance). And Wig Wam could have just as easily named themselves after the native American structure. Is Firehouse named after the Kiss song or an actual Firehouse where Firemen work? I think there are some that are obvious such as Last in line seeing as it was a bunch of ex-Dio guys paying tribute. A band like Lovebites you might think was named after the Def Leppard song just based on that, but they have said that they are actually named after the Halestorm song. Motorhead were named after a song that Lemmy wrote when he was in Hawkwind. Deep Purple were named after a piano composition by a guy whos name I cant remember. Hanoi Rocks named themselves after the song Chinese Rocks by Johnny Thunders but changed the location name I have heard stories that Poison were named after the Kix song, but have never heard it actually confirmed by the band Sisters of Mercy took their name from a Leonard Cohen song And then there was Right Said Fred named after a Bernard Cribbins song (oh you wanted rock bands? Sorry) Not really a band that would get much love on here, and not a song, but Masters of reality named themselves after the Sabbath album. Oh and on the subject of Black Sabbath. Yes they had a song called Black Sabbath and yes they had an album called Black Sabbath, but they were named after a horror film from the early 60s.

Or are they songs named after bands that are named after albums?