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Six spicy takes from yours truly.

      Hot take videos/articles are all the rage these days, so why not pinch my loaf in the punchbowl?  Here are six hot takes I have regarding metal of today and past events (probably more than likely past events). 1. Stop calling it 'NWOBHM.' When Bruce Dickinson fleetingly referred to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement as "NWOBHM" in shorthand on the Classic Albums documentary on  The Number Of the Beast , it was so supposed to be just that, fleeting.  As in, not supposed to be shorthand common term.  Also, nothing like calling something that's 40, going in 50 years old new wave ay?  Here is where I feel we need to take a cue from black metal and start calling it the second wave of heavy metal.  Because really that's what it was.  The first wave was Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Budgie.  Yes there would be influential outliers that fit into neither wave (Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Motorhead) as there always are, there really is two d

Metallica, inertia, and numbers: a 1983-1995 timeline

     Love them or hate them, Metallica are the most commercially successful heavy metal band in the United States (there's arguments that Iron Maiden might be a smidge bigger globally and I'll wait for some actual statistics experts to figure that one out).  They have sold the most records out of any metal band.  You can trash talk them 7 ways til Sunday (as I am want to do) but you can't argue numbers.  That's tapered off in recent years but I think that has more to do with people just not buying records anymore/fan fatigue/let's face it, they ran out of creativity a long time ago.      There was a particular review on Metal-archives.com that, to this day might still be their most famous review.  It's the review of Master Of Puppets from writer Ultraboris where he grades the album a goose egg, and furthermore calling it "the album that killed heavy metal."  We aren't going to be discussing that review, but there is a quote from that review that w

Ranking all of Lovebites songs from weakest to best. (Updated w/Lovebites EP II songs)

     Power/speed/thrash metal band Lovebites comprise the best and most vital heavy metal band in a long, long time.  Not in recent memory have I been  so compelled to purchase every album and EP by a band.  They play heavy metal by old school rules with no emo or core bullshit, yet the infusion of what can best be called “anime music” influence has given them a fresh take on metal that only they can get away with.      The band themselves are still relatively new (7 years old as of this writing), so a challenging task such as ranking a discography by songs is not THAT difficult (they haven’t even crossed the 60 mark yet).  Still for such a compelling body of work, nothing is easy, and one else on the internet has done this yet (no, really), so allow me to the first so that everyone afterwords will base their future opinions around my glorious E-peen.  Covers such as Eagle Fly Free and Painkiller will not be included.  They’re more like rare oddities rather than quirky staples all Gre