Hello Heathens,

All week I’ve had Valley of the Damned by DragonForce stuck in my head. Even listening to the song a few times couldn’t get rid of the earworm so I decided to try to see if I could listen to some other power metal classics to clear it out. Some of my favorite tracks made it on to todays show and it’s always nice to visit the classic stuff. The feeling of nostalgia for this genre of metal is pretty powerful as this is mostly what we played back when Larry and Harry did the show with me. We also listened to a lot of power metal when we were just driving around. I’ll never forget trading ipods with Harry on the bus so I could listen to power metal and he could listen to melodeath. I wonder if todays youth has that same feeling of excitement when it comes to checking out what your friends are listening to. I know that things like tapes, cd’s, and dedicated mp3 players are making a bit of a comeback as people switch to curated playlists vs playlist by algorithm. I hope the younger generation of metalheads are trading mixtapes just like us oldheads did.

This is a bit of a ramble while I try to organize my thoughts on the topic, but something I’ve been wondering about these days is, does anyone have a hobby anymore? It seems with the current cycle of social media some people have turned away from having legitimate hobbies to doing things like going online to get mad, argue online, or flex on social media. I’ve been getting more interested in retro gaming for a series of games I enjoy, and the amount of “look at how many copies of this game I own” on social media is just ludicrous. Hobbies on social media feel less like community building, meeting others interested in the same things, and talking about how much you love something to now being a brand building exercise. Overall hobby communities feel less and less sincere and more and more like closeted ads to subscribe to a youtube channel, patreon, or buy their latest merch.

I’ve finally started to play Fire Emblem after putting the series off for a long time. Starting with Fire Emblem Awakening which has been a blast so far (Chapter 10). The permadeath feature in the game requires you to pay attention to what you are doing and plan ahead which makes the game feel more complex than it really is. The weapon triangle for the game still feels relevant and I’ve enjoyed experimenting with the classes in the game so far. I have some other Fire Emblem games and look forward to playing some of the older ones after I complete this game.

Keep heavy the Sabbath day.
5.18.21 Playlist