The Heavy Shit

The digital future shows no signs of letting up. Not sure if anyone checked out Apple Music yet but Beats1 so far ain't for us. Maybe they'll expand their playlists and add a bit of rock here and there but it's a safe bet metal won't get a look in. 'Tis fine, there are a heap of online metal stations around the globe and here at home — former scribe for this very column, Mr Andrew Haug, does a sterling job on his own dot com and the mighty Higgo has given new life to Distortion online since departing the Ms. Plus there are lots of metal shows on community radio if you tune in, the majority in Melbourne on stations like PBS and Triple R. Sydney's Triple R just bade farewell to Danny Kaleda and Monday Night Metal, which had been going for 30 years! That's gotta be a record.

Anyway, Lars Ulrich from Metallica has spoken out about streaming being the future (it's also the present really) and that it's more suited to established and bigger bands as people tend to just look up bands they know on platforms like Spotify etc. True, to a point. You do not know the name of your new favourite band yet — how could you? You can't just punch their unknown name into the search bar and bring up their stuff. So how do you find new stuff? News feeds are a mess of a million things and you can't check them all out every day. Good old radio still introduces you to lots of new stuff you may not necessarily find on your own.

Mr Metallica told the BBC that "Streaming probably does benefit artists with higher profile. A lot of playlists that are being made available for people seem to feature higher-profile artists." A pretty general statement if ever there was one but a guy like that isn't trawling the underground for gems like he used to.
He also said creativity is getting hard to come by. "A lot of the stuff is just regurgitated — this year's flavour. It's not leading-edge like The Beatles, Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix, taking us all by the hand into these completely unknown, uncharted musical territories." Well, let's hope their next record is a little more creative. The big deal made about Death Magnetic having eight minute-long songs like the days of yore didn't sit with me all that well. They were eight minutes all right, but full of repetition. Four-minute songs played twice through, ha ha. Still, it was better than the one that came before it.

Of course someone in his position wouldn't really need to be as bothered with album-generated income as the majority of everyone else. MSI — multiple streams of income — is evident within the metal world's embrace of branded alcohol of late. Iron Maiden's Trooper beer (not bad) and Motorhead's merlot (yet to try it) are two of the more well known ones and now we can add a limited edition Anthrax bourbon to that list. The Devil You Know is a limited edition, high-end bourbon the band worked with Knob Creek Distillery to produce. It's a small batch run so is likely to sell out fast like their Indians blend did last year, so if you want one to add to your collection, get in fast. It comes with a personally autographed card from the guys too. The band who once jokingly called themselves Alcoholica may not be putting out a Four Horsemen Cider anytime soon, but I did see old Lars' mug on a Carlsberg campaign recently.