Welcome to my nightmare.

So. Here we are. Or here I am, at any rate, as I doubt anyone is reading this except maybe Sami Cyanide who encouraged me to begin this in the first place, ni?

'Twas Sami who more or less told me to start writing this up as a sort of music zine. Said she could see me taking the world by storm. So I suppose I'd better do some musical talkin's, eh?

Let me just say that I am a metalhead first, and I will write as such. I may or may not swear, and I do make EXTREMELY frequent use of the universal \m/ sign. Also, expect me to mention 666 at least once in every entry.

I will most likely be talking about the music I have spent the day/days/week listening to, which spans over about four decades, from Judas Priest to bands in my hometown that haven't even been signed yet. If you're lost, it's probably just whiplash; don't let it get to you baby, there's plenty more where that came from.

Maybe I'll just tell you how I came to discover my current musical taste.

At the moment, I listen to a bizarre blend of all genres of metal, Gothic rock, Gothic pop, dark ambient, post-hardcore, dark cabaret, horror punk and the occasional "guilty pleasure", such as Savage Garden or The White Stripes. This radical shift from my pre-metal days of radio-packaged rock was brought upon in mid-late 2006, when my friend Tim brought his iPod and a set of speakers to school and played a few Ayreon tracks for us. Day Three: Pain hooked me in at once, and I was blown away by the emotion, so unlike anything I'd heard on the radio.

I devoured Ayreon, and early in 2007, another friend who goes by the name of Skelli allowed me to copy her CD collection onto the family computer. I spent the next three weeks listening to Nightwish, Wednesday 13, Cradle of Filth and The Used. To say I was hypnotized is an understatement.

On a whim, I picked up a copy of the Headbanger's Ball compilation while I was in Queensland for my father's wedding. Songs like Anthrax's Safe Home, Lamb of God's Ruin, and especially Slayer's Raining Blood helped me to simultaneously piss off my aunt and let go of my troubles, watching them flitter away on the Brisbane breeze like broken faerie wings. I will warn you now - I am a poet by nature, and I will lapse into speech you may or may not understand.

When I arrived back in good ol' SA, I purchased Anthrax's Anthrology: No Hit Wonders, featuring the hits from the Joey Belladonna-era, and Slayer's masterpiece Reign In Blood. The song that really cinched my fate for me was Angel of Death. If you haven't heard it, listen to it. Right. Fucking. Now. If you know it and love it, you know what I'm referring to - Tom Araya's high-pitched scream at the beginning, which he brings wailing right down into a guttural yell. As soon as I heard that, there was no turning back for me.

It was around the middle of last year that I began to expand my tastes to the Gothic as well, devouring dark cabaret artists in particular, such as The Dresden Dolls, Emilie Autumn, and the ever-amazing Voltaire. After all, one cannot live on metal alone.

As for Savage Garden and The White Stripes?... let's just leave them alone. And me. leave me alone on that matter, please.

Now I sit here with my hodgepodge of music, and wonder what on earth I am to talk to you all about.

I'll sign off for now, as Printmaking homework beckons, but I shall not go into detail of that on this blog.

Don't forget to hit me up on Deviant ART - http://XburiedinblackX.deviantart.com

I think you're gonna feel you belong.
~Ronnie