I listen to all sorts.. I just changed the CD changer in my car today. I now have:
1 - The Cardiacs - Guns
2 - Decendents - Everything Sucks
3 - Bathory - Nordland 1
4 - Dwarves - How To Make Friends And Influence People
5 - Entwine - Gone
6 - Bad Religion - The Grey Race
I listen to a lot of punk (Christ On A Crutch, Crucifix, Anti-System, Discharge, Poison Idea, old Turbonegro, etc) and rock & roll based heavy stuff (like The Devil Dogs, Supersuckers, Dwarves, Action Swingers, New Bomb Turks, The Dirtys, The Gotohells, etc).
Come to think of it, I don't really listen to a lot of metal these days unless it's it's stuff from the label or old-school. The new stuff just doesn't do it for me 95% of the time. It has to be weird, interesting or just plain old epic and enormous for me to take notice.
I'm also a sucker for genuinely heartfelt emo rock stuff, like Sense Field, Benton Falls and some of Keith Caputo's solo material. I guess Radiohead, Muse, dEUS and Kent would come into that catagory too, and it's probably why I like the new Wolverine material so much too.. Emo prog rock!
Slayer to me wrote the best metal album ever with "Reign In Blood". That album still gets my blood pumping. Discharge did the same with Punk with "Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing". The best death metal album for me is Autopsy's "Mental Funeral", a twisted, stinky, nasty slab of oderous grime. The way death metal should be.
I play bass and guitar, both badly. I wish I had the patience to improve. My mind throws up these riffs that my fingers just can't follow and it gets very frustrating. Therefore I play music that's as simple as possible in the hope that no one will notice. I have played on albums for bands like Disgust, Extreme Noise Terror, Mussolini Headkick as well as session work for The Revolting Cocks (uncredited, unfortunately). I'm supposed to be doing a band called "Born To Murder The World" with Shane from Napalm Death, Mick from Anaal Nathrakh and Attilla ex Mayhem. So far it's all talk and no action.
Me and my g/f are presently writing some ultra commercial dark-goth-rock songs in the style of HIM under the moniker of "Lugosi". It's a cynical attempt to blend her good looks with my simplistic writing style to hopefully get a label to part with a large sum of cash. We will see. A very big German label is already interested in the idea alone...
What I would like to play is another matter entirely. I have the songs in my head, I just have never had the patience to do anything about it. It's basically epic, grandiose metal on a very large scale, maybe like a cross between Forest Stream, Summoning and Hollenthon, but with a "Candlemass" style vocalist (who I may have found, but have yet to ask..). I have been collecting samples for the last three years, and I now have no job and a working version of Reason. I have no excuse not to get this going, really...
Lee B
