Mouthful of Merch

So I've been teasing the big announcement all week.  Oh, I haven't?  I did once, though, right?  Yeah.  So I teased this big announcement once this week.  Since I'm like an apathetic teenager and I get distracted easily, I meant to do it more, but simply didn't, instead opting to play Bulletstorm and watch 3rd Rock from the Sun reruns.

I sure do miss 90's sitcoms.  Everyone was so clever!

But here's the big announcement, made in an anticlimactic manner befitting my lackadaisical style of writing and half-assed approach to life.  Luckily for me, however, my wife refuses to do anything half-assed, and the result is here.

MOUTHFUL OF MERCH.

That's right.  In my infinite wisdom, I've decided to start making shirts and distributing them to the masses for some reason.  Have you got a wedding or a bris to attend, but no t-shirt classy enough for a child to stare up at while he gets a hunk of his little dick sliced off?  Now you do, thanks to the classic Mouthful of Acid logo t-shirt!

Or perhaps you're at an awesome show, and you've obtained to coveted title of "Wiggity Wasted."  That's all well and good, but how do you properly show everybody that can see you that you like to live the Chug Life?  What the hell are you going to do?

Well, fret no more, because I've finally put together a t-shirt that is both refined and clean, while still being effective in telling people that you're a borderline alcoholic.  It's like one of those shirts that you can get at tacky giftshops around the world, but instead of boasting about the size and/or shape of your genitals, it trumpets forward for all the world to hear, "You'd better watch out, there's a good chance that I'm drunk."

Just like a stomach tattoo!

Perhaps you'd like to say the same thing, but also decry me as the smelly idiot that I am?

 

Now, some of us found out the hard way that Todd Jones isn't involved in any way with law enforcement and has great disdain for people who would say that he does (story here and my subsequent retraction here).  These articles launched what I've seen referred to as the Twittergate battle between Jones and J. Randall from Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

Finally I said something that qualifies as important...on the internet...to a bunch of nerds...

*Ahem*

Show the world that you have disdain for the police department and simultaneously decry the assertion of Todd Jones' involvement in public service with this attractive shirt, available for a limited time only!

All shirts are printed on 100% American shirt and come in black and slightly grimmer shade of black.  Sizes range from Men's Large to XXXL and, due to a clerical error in the ordering process, baby sizes ranging from Fat Baby Onesie to Really Fat Baby T-shirt.  All shirts are beard hair resistant and wick away spilled beer very quickly due to revolutionary all-natural beer swilling fibers (which also naturally block the odors of marijuana and B.O.).  

Proceeds from the sale of these shirts won't go toward terrorism or bad stuff, but probably won't be used to help anybody either.

Get yours today!

Maruta--In Narcosis

I have one more album to present to you this Grind Week, Maruta's 2008 offering In Narcosis.  This week has been quite a week, and between doing everything exactly the same as I usually do and staring at the wall above my computer desk, I'm beat.  Being a big, fat dynamo is difficult to keep doing nonstop all day, and with so many bands that I'm committed to stalking, I've got very little time for anything else in my life, like video games (I don't own any portable, play-while-you-lurk handheld systems) and guitar (which is usually too big to carry while you flee from the police).  But I'm not trying to transmit subtle cries for help through the Interbung today, no sir.  Today I want to talk about disappointment.

Disappointment is something that we all must deal with.  If you have kids, you probably know all about being disappointed (hi dad!).  I've been stewing on disappointment lately, and I'll tell you why.  The other night, I was walking around my apartment in my (increasingly) normal fashion, sober (?!??!?), clad in my fine sleeping shorts.  As I was walking, I disappointed myself by kicking the holy hell out of my couch, which is a large and unforgiving piece of seating when engaged with the bare foot.  I was in agony, my toenail broken into the quick and spouting blood like the neck wound of some Quentin Tarantino movie's villain during the dramatic final showdown.  I was quite disappointed in myself because:

1. I know where that fucking couch is.  I see it all the time, and yet still swung my dumb foot at it like it didn't even exist.
2. I made my toe hurt, and I need that toe for standing, which I do about ten hours a day for work.
3. It made the floor bloody.

Shit!  I was so bummed out at myself it was only kind of funny to realize how hard I had inadvertently kicked the couch.  Seriously, I hit that damn thing like I was committing a hate crime against it!  I've also been disappointed by several movies that I've seen lately and by my coworkers' collective reaction to Black Breath, which was surprisingly negative considering the fact that I assumed they would hate Black Breath.  Fuck.

However, sometimes we are lucky enough to avoid the horrible sting of disappointment.  Literally just this morning, I was at the grocery store.  I was buying this week's groceries before work, which I always do.  The store was busy this morning, though, and as I loaded up my pointless shit onto the conveyor, I saw a dude standing behind me in line.  This dude was maybe my age, but probably younger, and he was holding a single item in his hand, a can of delicious Pringles, plucked from the vine of inspiration to set mankind free from chips that don't come packed in a tennis ball canister.

God I love Pringles.

I briefly considered being a cool d00d and inviting this forlorn fatso to cut ahead of me in line.  He had fewer items than me, and I didn't want him to just hang around.  But the store was busy, and I wanted to drink coffee at home, so I decided "fuck that guy," and checked out.  As I was loading the last of my bags back onto the cart, I noticed that this fellow had handed the Pringles to the cashier, who scanned them and gave him his total.  And this dude whips out....

HIS CHECKBOOK...

...and pays the 99 cents via check.  I immediately decided that I was glad that I hadn't allowed that asshat to go ahead of me.  I might have murdered him with lots of witnesses and would be writing my inane opinions from the Green Mile.

Disappointment avoided!

So what does this have to do with Maruta and Grind Week, you ask?  Well, in the same fashion that I decided that the dude behind me could eat a penis, I've similarly come to be skeptical of my friends' opinions of music.  I love my friends, and each of them are like a star in the sky, unique, beautiful, and special in every way.  But I know what to expect from their recommendations, and I've (finally) learned to tailor my expectations of the music the recommend accordingly.  Maruta was a band that I assumed would suck because the recommendation came from 8===D, who I love like a velvet child but whose taste in music is highly suspect.

My low expectations yielded me a pleasant surprise, though!

Maruta is a technical grind band of the highest caliber.  They're borderline tech-death (which 8===D would never admit), but they fall into the genre of "grind" by virtue of the fact that they, like Nasum before them, languish in the characteristic sudden blastbeat and turn-on-a-dime style of classic and br00tal grindcore.  I love it.  Maruta's riffs are skronky and angular, their hooks hook-y and their songs off-kilter and hateful.

It's like a dream!

I think the thing that I really like about this album is that sense of wonder that somebody could write and then remember how to play such off-kilter and borderline proggy riffs.  It's something that, as a guitar player, I've always wondered about, since the riffs seem to have such odd phrasing and arbitrary time drops and they all have to learn to play the shit as a band.  I just can't imagine teaching a drummer to play along, and a singer (who tend to be pretty worthless as musicians and humans, on average) to sing along and hit his cues correctly.  What a logistical nightmare!

But Maruta pull all of this off artfully, and add some pretty saucy soundclips to convey their anger about...well...whatever it is they're angry about (there's lots of stuff these days, and I don't look at lyrics anymore).  So, I guess what I'm asking is, have you ever listened to Maruta?  NO?  But they're a really good tech-grind band!  You should go listen to them; it's easy to steal their music from the Interbung.  I mean, show me something that isn't easy to steal from the Interbung, right?  Maybe couches, I guess.  But fuck those things.  They'll hurt your toe and make the floor all bloody.

Gridlink--Orphan

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gridlink won.  I don't know how they do it (it might have something to do with their painfully short run times on each album, though), but Gridlink wrote another album to end all albums.  It's as if they just have a stable of end-all songs sitting around one of their houses, all packed up and ready to go, twelve minutes apiece, with sweet artwork attached to it.

How?

Let me back up for a second.  It wasn't long ago that I first experienced Gridlink's full frontal maniac assault, having been thoroughly regaled about the virtues of their album Amber Gray (which I reviewed here).  Such grind perfection the world was (and still is) not prepared for!  What shall we do when Gridlink is no more and music has nowhere else to go?  The thought pains me to no end.  If there is no Gridlink for my theoretical children (who are less and less likely to exist with every news broadcast I watch), who then will my fake children look to for inexplicably brutal and amazing seven-second-long songs?  Because my kids aren't touching my Gridlink record with their grubby, disgusting hands.  Fuck those theoretical children of mine!

They disappoint me.

As much as I loved Amber Gray (and that was a lot), Orphan is better.  The riffs are sweeter and more br00tal, the tempos are faster, and there's a drumsticks-clicking-together countoff before almost every song.  And I love those!  The only thing I love more is the sizzling hi-hat countoff.  Fucking br00tal, brah!  Orphan grinds in much the same way that the previous release did, but better.  Gridlink sounds like a man with horrible diarrhea running frantically to the nearest restroom.  In his frantic scrabble for relief, the man becomes rabid and desperate, tearing through pedestrian flesh in his maddening dash to get the softshell crab he had for his birthday dinner safely out of his colon without having it land in his relatively clean pants (I think that it goes without saying that this is autobiographical).

The title track, as per usual in the metal game, is a great example of the crazed and frenzied maelstrom that Gridlink have concocted.  And have you got a hankering to hear a pretty great seven second song, the likes of which my children-who-don't-exist will be clamoring for once I finally meet my demise in a foolish and ill-advised motorcycle stunt gone horribly awry?  Look no further than "Cargo 200."  What about something a little more laid back that doesn't sound like a group of cool demons with sweet haircuts shrieking at the god that abandoned them long ago?  Fuck you, then!  Look somewhere else, you stinky hippy.
.

Hippies aside, if you aren't listening to Gridlink and sending them pieces of dismembered Barbie dolls in the mail to express your adoration, there's something wrong with you.  I mean, if you aren't staking out their houses at night to get a feel for how they live and rummage through their garbage cans, you're a bit of a weirdo, and I'd appreciate it if you'd just stop reading right here and go turn yourself in to the nearest psychiatric treatment center, which is something that people have been advising me to do for years, but since I'm so mentally spry and not at all insane, I've simply  let their voices slide off me like water while I burn the eyes out of pictures of supermodels in my mom's basement.

Because I'm well adjusted, and Naomi Campbell should be punished for giving those men impure thoughts.

I'm not going to post a link to the download, because, seriously, it's really easy to find.  I myself bought the vinyl from Vacation Vinyl as a preorder.  Blood red with great big album art!  Here's a picture of me enjoying Orphan the way it was meant to be enjoyed, physical copy and all.

I like the tangy zip.

Goes down smooth!

At any rate, you should listen to Orphan and buy it and take creepy pictures of yourself doing things to it, because that's perfectly acceptable when you're listening to musical perfection.  Make sure that you're wearing relatively clean pants when you listen to it, because that soft shell crab I mentioned before will be promptly ejected if you aren't prepared for the onslaught.

Wormrot--Dirge

I like when weird bands break into the scene all of a sudden and make a big splash.  It's fun to see when something comes out of the proverbial left field and starts ruling everything and everyone, even for just a little while.  I always get a kick out of this in the sports world, also; though I don't follow any sports anymore (writing this blog and generally being a giant fucking nerd doesn't leave much spare room to follow anything other than metal and video games religiously), I still love to see a team that I have always associated with being really bad or new or something make it to the Big Show and take it.  In fact, I was totally pumped on the Saints winning the Super Bowl whenever it was that happened, because when I was young and had nothing better to do, I followed the NFL and MLB quite closely, and I remember the Saints being one of those 1-15 teams every year.  Then one year they stormed the fucking gates and made shit happen!  It's exhilarating to see in sports, and it's even better in the metal sphere.  Enter Singapore's chief export that aren't canings (how's that for an increasingly obscure reference?), the grind boy wunderkinds Wormrot.

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Wormrot live at SXSW this year, even though it was only for a brief period.  Through the looking glass of the shitty photos I took with my wife's increasingly archaic camera, I realize more and more what everyone's talking about with Wormrot.  Truth be told, I listened to their first effort, Abuse, only a handful of times.  The classic overhype effect was working with me, though; I had heard so much about how killer the album was that my expectations were unreasonably high, and I was disappointed.  This effect is also the reason why I've never seen the movie Friday and why I was so crushingly disappointed with the movie There's Something About Mary.  When it transfers over to music, though, I am the most disappointed.  Out of everything that I know about (and I know from funny dick jokes), music is probably the thing that I know the most about.  As such, I was expecting the most mind-blowing technical grind whirlwind of heaviness and naked ladies when I first heard Wormrot, and I have to admit that I was let down.

The hype was too much for what I imagine would have otherwise been a highly enjoyable album.

Now it's time to examine their second album, Dirge, which I think still isn't out on physical copy yet.  Earache did the right thing, though, and quashed any and all leaks and album theft by simply offering the album as a free download.  FREE!  It's fun to steal, but sometimes it's even more fun not to steal!  So now there's at least one album on my iPod that was actually offered to me for free, which naturally clears my entire conscience for all the other stuff that I stole.

Sweet, sweet vindication.

I couldn't miss out on this; after all, it's not every day that the LABEL offers an album for FREE DOWNLOAD, right?  It happens about as often as getting your dick caught in a car door, which, if you're like me, has happened to you several times but not enough to call it a habit.  Realistically, though, my frenzied Interbung dash to the download (which I assume everybody who wants it already has), my real interest was not in getting new Wormrot, but to discover, like some kind of conquistador who doesn't throw smallpox blankets all over the natives, what so many other people saw in Wormrot to begin with.  I always assume with bands with this much fanfare and critical acclaim that if I don't immediately like them, it's because I'm doing something wrong.  I know this sounds kind of insane, but it's happened before with Converge, and I missed out so sorely and for so long that I have made a solemn oath to myself to make damn sure that bands that get so heavily trumpeted get a thorough shake from me.

I'm really ashamed of what happened with Converge, too.

Dirge has gone a pretty fair length in convincing me that I was just missing something when I first took a stab at Abuse, though I don't think I'm fully convinced that Wormrot are the great Pacific Island Hope that we've all been praying for.  Are they good?  Yeah, they're pretty good.  Are they as good as every metal reviewer anywhere ever is making them out to be?  I don't think so.  But they're still good.  I was really worried when I first considered doing this review that I was going to be the first person that I had ever heard of or encountered that said "Wormrot sucks."  If I thought that, I would say it, but I don't think that, and that thankfully allows me to dodge the inevitable landslide of text messages and Facebook posts about how gay I am for daring to dislike Wormrot.  If I wasn't so committed to being a conduit of truth in the vast desert of the Blogmosphere, I would consider lying about it.

But I don't have to.

However, Wormrot's grind assault isn't everything that it's cracked up to be.  I'm not praying to them at night the way that I pray to Gridlink (I've been praying for a pony).  Through all the relatively solid grind music that Dirge is stuffed with, there are still dank, inglorious moments of amateurish riffing and halfhearted guttural vokills that detract from the experience for me.  I hate to play the snob card again, but amateurish riffing drives me crazy, and there are spots throughout the album that mar an otherwise concise and enjoyable experience.  And the vokills sometimes detract very heavily from the music, the guttural belches and gurgles sounding like a lazy, hungover garbage disposal, and not in a good way.

I'd like to give Dirge more than a lukewarm review, but I can't.  I think it's pretty good, but I'm not a Wormrot convert quite yet.  Though it is some fun to see the Singaporean metal version of the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.  Who the hell would have imagined that would happen?  Good for them!

Go get the download here if you haven't already, but realistically you have, because you're a nerd and are reading my stupid nerd blog.

And mad props to Earache for giving the fans something they would have just stolen anyway.

Trap Them--Darker Handcraft

One thing that I will never get away with is my fanatical love of Trap Them.  I had always heard great things about Trap Them in Decibel Magazine, which was my metal bible right around the time Seizures in Barren Praise was released.  I had to wait and wait to finally listen to it, because when it was released I was still living in disgusting, dirty Bakersfield, California, where the smell of car exhaust is covered by the lingering smell of a commercial dairy's worth of cow farts.  There was no music scene, and finding underground music to listen to was next to impossible.  If FYE didn't have it, you were outta luck, son.  Luckily, when I moved to Austin, I found that there are a great number of record stores that deal in underground and local music, which makes finding tasty cuts from your favorite bands relatively easy to find.  But that is, of course, if you didn't just steal that shit off the Interbung, which is way easier and more cost effective.

Anyway, when I first listened to Seizures, I was completely floored and astonished that there was such a crusty and hateful album that was so damn short.  I grew up a punk rocker, and as such, I'm no stranger to the 22-minute full-length album.  But having moved away from that lifestyle gave me a new perspective, where good songs were perceived as being at least 11 minutes long with lots of guitar soloing and labyrinthine, wanky song structures.  After my first taste of Trap Them, however, I made it my business to buy up everything that they had to offer, including shirts, CD's, my signed Seizures poster, and my favorite hat, which I wear to work every day.

Realistically, it's pretty pathetic.


Darker Handcraft is perhaps Trap Them's finest moment yet.  Seemingly gone are the days of Trap Them being a band that actually deserves the "grind" tag, but since I needed one more album to review for Grind Week, having inadvertently shot my Rotten Sound load several weeks ago, I decided that their classical tag would suffice to group them in with all the other bands that they no longer sound anything like.  Trap Them has made a gradual and elegant transition into being the finest hardcore/crust band this side of Converge.  Their d-beat laden attack has only grown more fierce and focused in the intervening years between their first album, the grindalicious Sleepwell Deconstructor, and Darker Handcraft.  I enter, as evidence to this fact, my throbbing, veiny D-boner, which points itself magically at Trap Them's actual, physical location on earth, the way that a compass always finds magnetic north.

Their songwriting has only gotten stronger, also.  Opening salvo "Damage Prose" contains perhaps my favorite Trap Them riff, while "The Facts" could actually function as some perfect-world lead radio single, it's catchy riffing, midtempo swagger and Ryan McKenney's vitriolic vocal hook boring into the listener's brain like some kind of brutal tapeworm in dirty cutoff shorts.  I point to this as evidence of Trap Them's finest hour yet, and Darker Handcraft stands as a testament to all the naysayers about why I'm such an enthusiastic and rabid fan of the band.

Probably my favorite part of the band, however, is their new(ish) drummer, Chris Maggio.  I've seen Trap Them live a couple of times since he joined, and to watch that dude play is awe-inspiring.  I understand that it's strange for me, as a guitar player, to focus as much as I do on drummers and how they play, but that Maggio plays with the fury, precision and speed that he does is truly magnificent.  I also suspect that he doesn't use a double bass pedal (!), which is a surprising choice in a world where fast feet rule the drum game.  And on top of him being a badass motherfucker behind the kit, the dude is also a dreamboat.  Like, a hunky piece of beefcake.  And I do mean that in the gayest possible way.  Look at this band photo:

In a band full of beefcake, Maggio reigns as Beefcake Supreme (far right)

So hunky!  Now, is it strange for one straight man to say this about another man?  Yes, but not when I do it.  When I do it, it's not creepy at all.  It's actually cute.

Trap Them have shown the world what they're capable of with this latest offering, and if you don't like it you're wrong and I feel sorry for you.  Trap Them are achieving the dream of every band; they get better with every release, bar none.  They only get better, like fine wine, or that cheeseburger I found under the seat of my car that one time.  Like that cheeseburger, getting crustier and more hardened only gives Trap Them more character and depth, but without all the discomfort of severe food poisoning.

It's Grind Week!

Welcome, fair readers, to Grind Week here at Mouthful of Acid.  I'm happy to report that I took last week off to do some soul searching and to take a self-inventory, which looks like this:

1. Rugged good looks, despite creepy lack of chest and facial hair
2. Great taste in music, and not enough of an asshole about it to really get under most peoples' skin
3. Strong hands
4. Drinks just the right amount, which is kind of a lot
5. Guitars

And so forth.

As you can see, I'm a true winner, and with being the real deal #1 type of dude comes a refined palate for food, drink, what a really dirty shirt smells like, and music.  Since grind is awesome, I obviously love it and have been rocking some sweet new releases that I will be summing up for you over the course of this week.  Sound pretty good?  No?

Wait...no?

Well, how about if I sweeten the pot by teasing an exciting announcement that I will be making on Friday?  Now your nipples are all erect with excitement!  I'm not going to tell you anything about the announcement other than this:

It will change the way you do everything forever.

Never has there been such an important event in human history than what I'm going to unveil on Friday, and that includes man walking on the moon, the complete genocide of the natives of Tasmania, and whatever piddling crap Christopher Colombus ever did with his stupid face and ridiculous, high-pitched voice, of which there's no record, but I just kind of know that it was hilariously high-pitched and dumb.  Fuck that guy!

Or maybe it's not that important.  But you'll have to wait and see.

Protest the Hero--Scurrilous

I've never made to give you the impression that I was super tr00.  I never acted like I was the kvltest and br00talest d00d there ever was, right?  I am pretty cool, and my hair is generally perfect and thick, and I never get bug bites, but I'm not perfect.  Doing this review is going to clue you fine people in to something for which I feel deep and unwavering ambivalence (a paradox!).  I am no stranger to feeling shame, though I have developed a pretty sweet social mechanism for pretending that humiliations mean nothing to me (it helps my many, many humiliations go away more quickly and with less fanfare).  In fact, I feel shame every day, when I look in the mirror and see what my body turned into because of how I treated it like a booze sponge for so long and when I gaze at my CD collection (having one is shameful in and of itself anymore) and see all the prog that I have laying around.  And you've probably not felt shame like the first time you utter the words "I started a music blog."  Try it out, and look at peoples' faces when you say it; then you'll know the feeling of accidentally having your dick hanging out at a company picnic or something.

Spoiler alert:  I'm a massive prog nerd.  I love Dream Theater and Symphony X and well-executed clean singing (which, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist anymore), and I love wanky guitars.  Prog lyfe, bitches!  (Puts on finest puffy shirt and leather pants).

Well, needless to say that prog nerds like me got their pocket protectors in a great big bunch when the new Protest the Hero album dropped.  We rejoiced!  More powerfully wanky guitars!  More prog punk odysseys in one of the most unique musical styles in the 21st century!  And GOOD CLEAN SINGING?  Holy shit, my retainer just fell in the toilet.  My mom's going to kill me!

Unless you've somehow been living in a cave with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, or you've had "good" taste in music for the last 7 years or so, you've probably had to tangle with PTH's noodly prog attack.  In the standard style of prog, PTH's albums started off amazing with Kezia and has only improved, which defies the metal standard, where the mantra is a broken record "I liked their old stuff."  If you only like PTH's old stuff, you are wrong.  You like some good stuff, I'll give you that, but their new stuff is better, and if you want to argue about it, we can take this to the D&D board, where my level 30 Mage does the fucking talking.  That's what I thought, punk.  (Pushing glasses up the bridge of my nose)

The songwriting on this new album is no less labyrinthine than before, but the guitars have become slightly more tasteful in their incessant cascade of notes.  I like all the riffs from before just fine, but for those of you who are inexplicably "anti-wank," Scurrilous might prompt you to say "[short pause]...this band sucks.  Do you have the new Wormrot album?"  For one thing, I heard that pause, sir, and that is one short pause more than you would have put up with my prog fanciness in the past!  And yes, I do have the new Wormrot, but we're listening to this, so don't be a butthole.

The entire album is an incredible and mind-melting current of note-diarrhea, and I love it.  It's the best kind of diarrhea, after all!

Probably PTH's greatest achievement during the course of this album, however, is the singing.  I'll be the first person to tell you, and everybody that will listen, that clean singing is a dead scene and that auto tune has killed the music industry just as terribly as downloading and the reality-television-based sense of taste for the American ultra-consumer.  This has made for some very awkward Thanksgiving dinner, of course, but that my family doesn't care about my oddball crusade against Lady Gaga and Indie Rock doesn't change the fact that I'm correct and that my hair is perfect and thick and smells good.  However, PTH are the exception that proves the rule (which is a turn of phrase that I never understood, but I still imagine it's true in this case).  Rody Walker has some fucking pipes on him, and I've seen them live, too.  I can tell you that he can sing this shit perfectly on stage, even when it looks like he's about to die of the flu in front of a thousand people, which was the case in San Antonio at the White Rabbit when I watched them.  Guitars squalling and executing perfect snaking melodies, drums crashing, bass doing something, above all was Rody Walker's pitch-perfect vocal attack, which only wavered when he had to stagger off to the side of the stage to vomit.  What a warrior!  We watched the taxi take him to the hospital after the show, idly conversing with Moe and Luke in the stilted style of a dude who is struggling to find something interesting to say to a band that he thoroughly admires.

What a night!

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I love Protest the Hero, and I could apologize for it, but I won't because they rule.  If you disagree, you are wrong and probably have a beard and a tattered Eyehategod shirt that you wear everyday.  I would love to be your friend anyway, because you sound like my kind of dude and I'll bet you've got a ton of manliness that I can imitate.  But I will not renounce Protest the Hero!  Give me prog or give me...well, just make fun of me for thinking that John Petrucci can fly and isn't creeped out by how often I send him bouquets of dead flowers.  It's how I express the fact that I want to eat his skin, alright?  Don't judge me!  And Protest the Hero should be expecting some dead daisies pretty soon, because they've written what will absolutely be one of my favorite albums of this year.  Kudos, fellows, and I'll see you on April 18th when you play Austin.  (Stares really blankly, dead eyes penetrating your souls)

Great job.

If you want to experience the fun that PTH have to offer and take a brief glimpse into my horrible, nerdy world, you should perhaps to buy the album, you jamoke.  That's right, I just called you a jamoke!  This is the Interbung; I can say whatever I think is fun because if we ever meet in real life I'll cry and use my ink defense to escape.  And I can run surprisingly fast for a man my size.