Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@GirlVersusGame Lmao I went on a rant about my exp with shrooms and a movie that you weren't even talking about. Yeah, I never heard of the movie you speak of, so I immediately thought of The wall, pink floyd. The other one is an indie movie, or maybe I live in a cave, idk. Kingpin, Big Lebowski, dumb and dumber (all Jim carrey, he was a genius). Yes spies like us is a good 80's movie. Chevy and Akroyd were so good back in the day. Happy gilmour, notfor me. The only thing i ever wanted to do when seeing adam sandler is punch him in the face. Esp when he gets all amped up and obnoxious. Can't stand him tbh.

I'm a total music nerd. And I respect your taste in music and all musicians even if they are not my cup of tea. But I'm a Metal head first and foremost, even if I listen to literally everything. My motto is, "if it sounds good to your ears, then it is good,. Regardless of the genre or artist." People do a disservice to themselves by locking into one or two genre's and not keeping an open ear or mind with music. I find metal head's are guilty the most of this. Almost like if you listen to Metal you have to pound your chest and not get too mushy by listening to something that is light and far away from Metal. This is such a BS attitude to have. Cause at the end of the day, nobody cares if your CD collection contains Slayer along with Duran Duran right next to it. There's so much great stuff out there to listen. Its to the point now in 2026 soon, that there's an endless rabbit hole to fall down into youtube to find new music you never heard.

This, 100% this!
I'm also primarily metal, but will listen to anything I find interesting, regardless of genre. There are plenty of jazz, pop, r&b, industrial/synth and even a couple of country albums mixed in with my metal/rock records. It is very freeing not worrying about what other people think of the things I like, or me for liking them (which was a worry in my youth)

And I will follow up with saying "this, 100% this" right back out your my guy. You totally get it too. I love electronic synth music, choice pop/r&b. The video game Hotline Miami 2, has some of the greatest electronic synth music in it. Far from metal, but soooo good. Forza horizon series has some great synth in it too.

I'm not very good, but have played some guitar since I was in my 20's. So i have a "muscianship view" of all music, that opens my ears further. An appreciation regardless of genre. For example, being a Metal Head, most people would laugh if they knew I loved the song "rio" by duran duran. But if you listen to that song and single out the bass line, its abso genius. That bass line is incredibly difficult to play. If you listen to that bass line in isolated track form on youtube, it sounds like it could be placed in any Rush song. Sounds like Geddy lee and on his level. So being a metal head, why would I want to tether myself to just Metal and Rock, when a pop 80's classic has such amazing musicianship in it?

@StitchJones It's funny you mention Duran Duran, as they were instrumental (pun absolutely intended) in me learning to stop worrying about what other people thought. When "The Wedding Album" came out, a friend in the "heavy rock" circle at school - I was probably seventeen at the time - said that it was probably one of the best albums he'd heard that year and almost everyone of the rest of us admitted that we also liked it. After that, we found that many of us shared a love of other things that were considered "uncool" and that was from then on perfectly acceptable. The beauty of that experience was that it took away the fear of being an individual with individual likes and dislikes for most of us.
I could never live down that liked I Celine Dion, though, which we all joke about to this day, but I will, also to this day, vehemently defend her album "Unison" as one of the best pop albums of that time

@FuriousMachine Celine had vocal cords like no other. Journey is another band, even though they can be pretty metallic for an 80's rock band that I loved,. Because for my $$$ when you talk about range in vocal tones, Steve perry has got to be the greatest male singer in music. Its all subjective because music is an art form that revolves around personal taste and there are no GOATS, but to me personally Perry is the vocal GOAT.

Along with my motto of "if it sounds good then it is good, regardless of genre or artist" I also have a way of addressing what is knows as "guilty pleasures" You and me listening to Duran Duran, Celine, etc as metal heads, alot of people would label that as a guilty pleasure. That whole saying is gross to me. Guilty of what???? Guilty to who??? Therefore, whenever talking music with people, I personally rebranded it as "never feel guilty pleasure" lmao. I'm a music nerd and a general dork, don't mind me.

@StitchJones It might surprise you but I spent over a year on the road with various Metal bands (myself and MrPeanuts discussed Metal for maybe three days, we'd seen a lot of the same shows) and you mentioned Slayer too. I was friends with Tom's wife, she attends some of their shows because families have to go months without seeing each other. I looked up to her as a kind 'cool' influence because she was supporting her husband and going on tour. Most don't do that. Then we became friends on social media and her posts weren't exactly, well they were the opposite of the things Tjuz says. The last one was a kind of 'they get a whole month for this, where's our month?' I didn't know America had a Pride month. It really bothered me because Tom has said on documentaries like HeadBangers Journey 'nah God doesn't hate us all but it's a cool - lyric' then I thought 'okay but your wife hates this and that', I know the two aren't entirely connected but I just stopped listening to them after that.

I'd never seen anything like racism, etc in the Metal scene but then I only ever heard people discuss the music. Even Norwegian Black Metal bands like Satyricon were thing on stage and another off-stage. There were exceptions for bands like DragonForce, they love games so we talked games. If I went to Download or HellFest I didn't see much I think inclusion is the word. I've seen probably one hundred Metal bands live (I'm counting support like say Alestorm opening for a bigger band or someone less known for Children of Bodom) I think I said to Tjuz that it is a very male Dominated genre but it's also very missunderstood. I was able to remove gender and just see it as kids finding a way to express themselves. Like for example a moshpit, if you are in the press-pit you are right by it and the only thing separating you is security and a barrier. Any time I saw someone go down they were always picked back up. A boot hit me in the back of the head and the guy who's boot it was came up to me afterwards and was extremely apologetic.

They talked to me on the same level because we both understood the music and were kind of taken aback that I knew what I was talking about. I never ran into any trouble or issues at a Metal show, except maybe for Myles Kennedy and Slash. Slash is an absolutely wonderful person, I saw him sign CDs/etc for fans in the rain. But Charlie Sheen was on the tour and absolutely coked out of his mind, he was hanging over the balcony and making such a scene that the band stopped and had to ask him to stop. That's one of those nights you never forget because someone was making so much of a nuisance of themselves that the house lights came on and they were actually asked to stop. My opinion of him went downhill after that.

I've never seen the fans be the reason for trouble. Some of my favorite bands that come to mind would be probably Nightwish (old Nightwish) I'm checking my playlist. Kamelot, Sabaton, Rob Zombie, Breaking Benjamin, FlyLeaf, Skillet, Rammstein (my favorite live band for pyrotechnics) I kind of went off FiveFingerDeathPunch because their lead singer isn't a nice person and cares more about the money than the kids who pay to see his shows, and stopped listening to Kreator because their song 'Satan is Real' started getting a little too real, anything by Apocolyptica, Mudvayne, old Machine Head, old Fear Factory, SoilWork (Stabbing the Drama is excellent) some Ministry (their themes can be a bit much) Falling Reverse (they adapted and matured) pretty much any Symphonic or Melodic Metal band, then there's Core/MetalCore and Screamo with Underoath being one of my favorites, followed by maybe Thrice for Artist in the Ambulance (amazing album) Escape the Faith. I never could get that into Emo because it was a little too much of a downer, though My Chemical Romance is a huge exception and so was 30 Seconds to Mars until I realized what Jared Leto was really like. I tried to get into rap but had already heard too much Russian rap to bridge that gap, maybe Eminem if that counts.