The long and the short of this review is that this DVD is unimpressive.

Immortal are a great live band, and a great band in and of themselves. When I last saw these guys when they toured Australia, it was an intense show. And the live show they played at Wacken 2007 is, by this live DVD anyway, up to the same standard.

The Seventh Date of Blashyrk is Immortal’s long-awaited first DVD. And as much as I like the band, I would hesitate to buy this release, especially at some of the inflated prices I’ve seen locally. ($48? Are you kidding me?)

For this DVD is nothing more than the band’s set at Wacken 2007. There are no stills, no interviews, no clips, no extras of any description. The title screen, in fact, says it all: it appears extraordinarily cheap. It doesn’t even feature the DVD’s title on the menu screen.

And it might be just me, but the penchant that bands (or their labels maybe?) have for releasing DVDs of bands playing Wacken is getting…. shall we say… tiresome…. CLICK HERE READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW.

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As many people do in this day and age of being overwhelmed by information, much of what I read online is via RSS feeds. I use Google Reader, simply because it’s central – and it syncs to my portable time-stealing device (otherwise known as a smart phone).

But one of the things about Google Reader is that it ‘suggests’ things you might like. Mostly it’s full of crap, but today I saw something awesome: Journalism Warning Stickers.

Here is a sample:

To read the blog post about the hows, whys, and wherefores, click here. Highly recommended.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if there was an online version?

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In the past week I’ve been given cause to think about the nature of just how fickle the music biz be, through a consideration of release reviews and the nature of textual intervention.

As any self-respecting metalhead knows, Iron Maiden‘s The Final Frontier is almost due to hit the shelves. The major press has already heard it and reviewed it. I am getting a promo sent to me but because of where we are, it’s coming from the States, so I won’t get it until the PR firm there gets theirs. Likely I’ll see it after the album has already come out. No matter. That’s beside the point.

The point is that the major press is banging on about the release with gusto. Unwarranted gusto, in my opinion. In fact, having already heard the album and listened to it a LOT, I can say that my opinion is as divided as this release is going to make Maiden fans.

For it is not a stellar release. It is tired, weary, wandering. It is not complex and nor does it break new ground. It is, however, (largely) poorly written and lacking in direction. It needed more time, more thought, more strategy. And a good, forthright producer.

I’ve come to realise that many so-called lauded critics use meaningless phrases like ‘breaks new ground’ because they can’t say anything real. And it makes me consider that, in all honesty, it is likely there are other things going on in the background.

Allow me to wander a moment by way of illustration.

This past week I received a review of a release, by one of my best writers, that is innovative. It is unique because of its fictionalised format. And this format allows the critic in question to be scathingly brutal about the release. So much so, in fact, that it gave me long pause.

It mentions a particular label in a way that I fear could get me into trouble. Not that it is derogatory, but because the format makes it appear rather factual. It is written as a product recall notice.

It is clever, intelligent, and right up my alley, in all honesty. But the legality of potential repercussions bothers me.

And it is also likely to make the label think very carefully about how it chooses to interact with us.

Do you get my drift? How is it that I am suddenly thinking about what a LABEL might think of my publication? I am enough of an antagonist to not care, and, in fact, to encourage this small rebellious review. But I am enough of a businesswoman to consider the longer term possible effects of potential damage to the great relationship we have with said label, and the enormous support they’ve given us over the past year and a half.

Combine such issues with the fact that labels, distros and PR firms give our publications what they need to survive, and throw in a desire to keep fans happy, and you have a really explosive mix.

I am not going to go so far as to suggest that reviews of The Final Frontier are a result of paid journalism. (Which happens, you mark my words, especially in pop music.) But I find it highly suspicious that such a release could be given unanimous praise when it is clearly undeserving of such.

I love Iron Maiden. But I really struggle with the largely formless beast they have created. No doubt it will become a classic and everyone will turn around to me and say ‘I told you so’.

But this is why I have made the decision to run multiple reviews. It’s a divisive album. It needs multiple perspectives.

As for this other review… Well. I need to sleep on it. Probably I will stick to my guns and publish as-is, and I will be either shot down or not. What will be will be.

The music industry is governed by relationships, and the music press is governed by relationships and money. Nothing says this quite as loudly as a global situation of praise for a formerly glorious racehorse that has suddenly gone lame.

But we’ll see. It wouldn’t be the first time I’m wrong about something. And if the album grows on me, and by some miracle I am in love with it in six months, I am woman enough to admit it.

As for other murky business behind the scenes, I have a perverse desire for people to gain some critical learning and a skeptical eye about all types of press and music. But it is there that I really know I’m dreaming.

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I have quit jobs in many ways: through carefully worded letters, to telling one boss to go fuck herself and walking out after she was unreasonable for the last time.

But this seriously takes the cake. I’m not even going to explain it. You just have to click here to see how one woman bested her boss, quit her job, and no doubt walked out feeling pretty damn pleased with herself. And I can’t say I blame her!

Here is the first photo from the series. Click here to see the rest.

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And so, it is festival season. Summer metal festival season, that is. In Europe. And it’s always a tense, stressful time for me. And occasionally exciting.

The thing is, there are soooo many festivals this time of year. In MaF’s first year of operation I was really keen to get at least the biggest metal festival in the world: Wacken Open Air. With a little help from people locally, and some great people at a major label in Europe, I managed to score accreditation for Goatlady.

The way it worked was we did pre-tour press for Wacken, with one of the festival organisers. This was lined up through multiple publicists and friends of the WOA organising team, and took a while. But it paid off in the end.

Because in 2009, Wacken Open Air stated that they were not going to accredit new online media henceforth. And yet I managed to get my peeps on the ground, less than 6 months after the magazine had been launched.

So, with the history of 2009 intact – and the awesome travel diaries we published at the time – scoring accreditation for 2010 was a little bit easier. And I’ve managed to get photo passes as well!

Also in 2009 we managed to get Bloodstock, through similar means. Although, given Count Gorlock’s whiny reports from the festival, I despaired of ever getting accredited again.

But in 2010, again because of our history in helping to promote the festival, it was easier than I thought. In fact, Adam wrote to me, ‘you’re likely to be approved’. And just this week, we were.

So, with that behind me, I figured this year had to be bigger and better. So, with Wacken and Bloodstock applied for and out of the way, I hit Party.San, Summer Breeze, and Sonisphere Sweden.

Now, let’s be clear. It is a *rare* thing for English-language press to cover Party. San. Let alone an English-language online magazine that is based in Australia. I applied for media for Goatlady, given Party.San is on her Blitzkrieg 2010 tour - as is Summer Breeze – and we anxiously ‘waited for their go’ (as the accreditation form told us to).

Whoops of joy were to be heard from here to Perth and back when we got that accreditation. It will likely be the first time that an Australian magazine has officially covered that festival.

Summer Breeze we haven’t heard back from, despite trying to contact these guys. But you never know. They did mention early August as the deadline for response, so we’ll just keep waiting.

And today, after not covering any of the other Sonisphere festivals, and waiting anxiously for a long time, I heard that Leo scored his media accreditation. Leo moved to Sweden this year from Adelaide, he’s a mate of mine and a super dude, so I was stoked that he was keen to write for me from Scandinavia. And to cover a festival like Sonisphere as his first assignment.

Still in the works are Finnish festivals, Japan’s Loudpark festival, and a new metal festival in the UK.

It’s a damn lot of work trying to organise media for festivals overseas, especially when you’ve never been to them before yourself. (And probably aren’t likely to get there in the near future, but that’s another story.) It’s hard to know the niceties of each festival, and what they expect, unless you’ve done it before. And it’s always difficult to know whether you should hassle them, or what type of coverage they expect.

And it’s hard trying to organise photographers and writers by email, when you know that they are already busy, or that they might have to buy tickets themselves in order to gain that accreditation. Make no mistake, it’s not a freebie. It’s glorious, but Euro festival media access ain’t free.

Advertising helps, pre-festival media helps. Post-festival coverage is possible without accreditation, but just you try getting good photos without media pass!

Festival accreditations for the US are run differently to those in Europe and the UK. For Japan I’m going to have to phone the festival organisers and try my luck. And in Australia, you don’t apply formally, but you are expected to run far more for free than peeps overseas would ever expect, before promoters will even consider your request.  Then again, if we had festivals of even half the size of something like Wacken or Bloodstock, maybe things would change.

So now, what’s next on the list? Organising interviews for Goatlady at Wacken. Stay tuned for how we manage to get through this next stage of organisation, right at the last minute.

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Any industry you can think of has its politics, quirks, and customs. I’ve been thinking about the quirks of the music industry lately, in reflecting on my work with Metal as Fuck. So this article, ‘Music Industry Mores’, will appear as a bit of a regular column here.

As a publisher and editor, I have a slightly difficult job. On the one hand, I desperately need to give MaF its strategic guidance and build it up continuously. You know, all that small business, let’s-build-traffic-and-advertising, let’s-market-this-beast-and-grow-it-ad-infinitum stuff. On the other hand, I am embedded in the day-to-day grind of release allocating, interview allocation and chasing, editing content, moderating the site, chasing outstanding invoices, booking ads, and all that jazz. I really ought to be posting news (the news on the site is at least three weeks’ old now!!) but I haven’t had time. I can’t wait until my new News Ed is functioning… but that’s another story.

So, if you didn’t know that there was just one person doing all of that, you do now. It’s just me.

Recently though I have had some startling outcomes. The first is that my new writer (my only writer) in Taiwan totally blew me away with his Annihilator interview. It was about as perfect a stretch of copy as any editor could have hoped for. It was the perfect combination of a good interview, good knowledge, good research, and contextualisation. Not to mention that I didn’t have to change one word of it: this piece of work is absolutely outstanding. I am so happy to have Joe Reviled on the team, and I hope that he sticks with me for the long-haul.

The second is that some of the major metal labels in the world are promoting music that ain’t metal. Take Indica, for example. These guys are a slightly rockin’, girl, goth-pop band from Finland. I was badgered about Indica, literally, to put it on the site. (Indica are a Nuclear Blast band, you see.) But my problem is that Indica isn’t metal. I published a review of this release anyway, to prove to the distributor that our audience doesn’t see it as metal. His argument was that the pop media don’t take it, so where does it go?

My initial thought was, ‘in the bin maybe?’. Clearly Australia isn’t the market for it. Either that or it needs to go in the underground goth press. Wherever it goes, stuff that like will never appear in MaF again.

And herein lies the problem in Australian media. It’s far too black-and-white: there is far more out there than just pop and metal. There’s a vast array of zines and underground stuff in this country, ably held aloft by uni mags, street press, underground zines. And that underground community is just fantastic. So perhaps the local music industry bods needs to broaden their view, update their media databases, and start thinking more strategically.

I often hear about which releases apparently are popular, and which releases don’t sell (despite their apparent popularity). My response to that is ‘well, you don’t know the local market from your elbow’. What you can’t do if you’re trying to sell music is rely on hyperbole from various places. You have to be out amongst it, in the stores, talking to the kids at gigs, seeing what moves. You have to have your ear to the ground. If more distributors and labels were active in the community – properly, not as people “above” others – then I would argue that they would sell far more of it, far more accurately. Or they would at the very least be selling what people want to buy.

Market research goes a long way. And it needs to be engaged in and evaluated, constantly.

The third thing recently was when I saw a comment by a person who is not an outstanding writer (especially not by Joe Reviled’s standards). He’s a prolific music journalist, thanks to the publication that he works for. But of course, I’m in the position to argue that that publication has lower standards than mine. It is the type of publications filled with people who troll other sites like mine, for instance. Anyway, this dude happened to comment that using just first names in a review looks amateurish, and that ‘we might want to think about it’.

Fine, I thought about it. And then I thought, Fair enough, but I disagree.

I believe that having a band name and a first name (unless there are multiple band members with the same name) is perfectly legitimate. It doesn’t look amateurish in the slightest; how it does appear is casual. I would much rather my writers use just a first name if they don’t know (and don’t have time to research) full names, than to leave them out altogether. ‘Amateurish’ in music journalism is fanboy journalism.

Which brings me to my fourth incident this week. A positive review of a completely utterly shit band, called Contrive. The positive review baffled me, especially given I’d been training my writer to not see good things absolutely everywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, fanboys gush, and this wasn’t gush but it was perhaps not impartial.

Contrive are so bad that people walked out of the room very fast when they supported Devin Townsend here; and they were booed in Sydney. Their music is so bad that, if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was played by musically ignorant 15-year-old kids at a battle-of-the-bands, with too much arrogance. Yes, Contrive are a high school standard band. Although, given Hackneyed are high school kids, perhaps Contrive are actually primary school standard.

Naturally, the flack from that positive review has been enormous. And for the writer, an enormously personal attack. While part of me goes ‘oh that’s uncool’, another part loves the controversy. The third part of me thinks that if you can’t take this type of flack, then you’re in the wrong industry. Being a critic is hard work, especially if you refuse to write that a release is crap and prefer to see its positive sides – to the detriment of what the audience sees as your honesty.

I did warn my writer that everybody hates Contrive – with reason! So when he asked me to pull the review, I refused. Where is your integrity if you won’t stand by what you’ve written?

So anyway, that’s where I’m at with the ‘official’ end of the music in my life. Stay tuned for more goings on in the coming weeks.

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Much of my time lately has been spent hunting down pieces to (re)build my hardcopy music collection. One of these has had me tied in knots: Anvil‘s Strength of Steel on CD.

It’s rare as hell, this disc, because it’s out of print (surprise, surprise). And it’s one of those instances where you can occasionally find it – for a staggering 140 USD – and yet the vinyl is plentiful and cheap.

While it would be ace to have it on vinyl as well, it’s the CD I’m after. Do you think I can find it? Nooo, not on your life. At least, not for a price I’d be willing to pay at this point anyway. I’ve scoured eBay, Amazon, Gemm, Spun, some enormously dodgy (and now defunct) distros… and have finally hit up peeps in my Twitter network to see if I can crowdsource a copy.

Even that, I’ll wager, is doomed to fail. And so, the hunt continues.

It’s a curious process, hunting down these types of things. It turns you into a shrewd stalker: watching numerous items on eBay (when they arise), judging how far an auction is going to rise, working out what your bidding tactics might be. So for me, who haaaaates shopping, it’s become a bit of an obsession. You’d never catch me exhibiting this type of behaviour with physical stores; not only would it be impossible but I’d just throw a tantrum and give up.

The interwebs, however, are so big that I figure there must be one. Somewhere. That I can buy.

Stupidly hopeful? You bet. Having said that, I’m gonna go look some more. In the meantime, if you find a copy, hit me up. I’ll be forever grateful!

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As is usual these days, “it’s been a while” is a standard on this blog. So without breaking stride, I’ll say that ‘it’s been a while’ since I posted anything about Metal as Fuck. Tonight though I struck a total win and absolutely must share it. Because I think I finally struck that vein of gold ore in terms of managing releases/team/etc, when that team is scattered all around the world.

And it was so fucking simple. Google Docs. I <3 Google. There is nothing else that quite matches the simplicity and intuitiveness of Google Docs.

In my day-to-day work I use Google Docs all the time. The majority of my work lately has been through collaboration on shared documents, so maybe that’s why I figured I should just bite the bullet and see if it would work for me. Happily it did.

All I did was set up a spreadsheet after logging in, plonked the relevant content in, shared it (and changed the settings so that all I had to do was send the link to the team), and voila! Magic happened!

Setting up a spreadsheet that everybody can see and edit (without having the necessity of a Google account) has been a total godsend. Not only can my whole team view the sheet at once, but they can see each other making changes to it, and can chat to each other in the same window. It’s exciting to see people moving around the spreadsheet and doing their thing, and making random comments to each other. Previously, some of the team members were hooked up on Twitter, or on Facebook. Now, they can talk to each other about “work” matters.

As you know, I’m biiig on team love. Hopefully this will help us all bond a bit better.

Better yet, Google Docs has totally removed the long, hard-to-track email train, and the email-to-spreadsheet-to-email workflow that has been a total pain in the arse for me. Things get lost, people don’t know what they’ve been allocated, or where things go. And the person who looks like an arsehole without a shred of a sense of organisation at the end of it is me.

Not any more, baby!!

Of course, like any system, it’s not perfect. Those who don’t have a Google account, and therefore aren’t logged in, come up as AnonymousXXX (where XXX is a random three-digit number). It has formatting limitations, too, but it’s simple enough for my needs, and for my team’s needs. I commented in the spreadsheet window to one MaF-er that everybody with numbers is a little bit fascist. Oi, have a number, I don’t need your name! LOL But it works, so that is why I’m so happy.

Even better is that I don’t have to check it every day. I can (and have) set up a “daily digest” email notification, so I know whenever anybody makes changes to the content. It sounds so complicated, but this type of technology makes managing a team like mine just…. pleasurable! Which is the way it ought to be. The dread of management is lifting. At last.

And now that I have three editors as well, I’ll finally be able to take a bit more of a back-seat and keep an eye on the Big Picture. Strategic direction is what Metal as Fuck has been lacking for well over six months, and lest it start to drift, it needs reigning in. Now. Especially now – because MaF is starting to gain a good reputation around the world, and I don’t want to lose it.

So – ask and ye shall receive. Having new peeps on the admin team, and having this new way of managing releases to people around the world, came all just at the right time.

And perhaps even better is that I don’t even need to be in the office to see how things are rolling and keep track of it all. Thank you, Google! Thank you, mobile technology! I don’t know what I’d do without you.

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AND YOU’RE ALL GONNA GO. Yes?

It’s been a while since I built a flyer! I had a ton of fun doing this one.  I wish I’d kept images or copies at least of all the others I’ve done in my time… if anything just to see all the bands that no longer exist.

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