So, I imagine most people who have been coming back to this blog regularly have been wondering whether this blog is going to ever get updated again.
Honestly, I'm glad that people are still coming back to this blog. I never started it intending for it to be a big thing: I just did what I liked doing and that was it! So checking back and finding that there's still interest in it is actually quite a nice find. So thank you so much for your patience and dedication to my blog and please accept my apologies that it took so long for me to finally provide something since last time!
I'd love to say that my silence has been entirely down to workload issues (I've been doing stuff for another website, albeit under my birth name, not my scene name, and I've had a local radio show and a few other things happening over the last few weeks which have taken up more of my time than I expected), but the truth is there's been A LOT of behind the scenes stuff happening over the last bit of time. Most of it's behind me now, but it's fair to say that I've just not had the fire to be angry about the metal scene any more and, since I've been doing reviews for another site, I've not felt the need to write reviews for here.
That's not to say there's not been anything that's got me angry or that I've not wished I could write a review for here due to the lack of a word count limit here, obviously! However, I've not had a reason to put pen to paper (well, keyboard to word document, if you want to be completely accurate) for here, so this blog has been neglected a bit.
This is something I would like to change, though. So what I'm going to do is start using this blog for the stuff I can't do for the other site and maintain a more analytical examination of various things. I'm wanting to start by giving a wider look at what lead to the death of thrash metal in the eyes of the mainstream in the 90s, but I have other ideas, such as an examination as to why Spawn could be the basis for a very interesting superhero film (before you point out Spawn already has had a film, I meant a very interesting AND GOOD superhero film), why there's still a lot to be learnt from H P Lovecraft with regards to making horror works that aren't just gore fests and jump scares, why lumping animation as a medium only suitable for children is a completely inaccurate and unfair disregarding of the potential such a medium provides, why the gaming industry is badly sabotaging itself to non-gamers due to the behavior of various indie developers and those involved in both sides of the GamerGate discussion, why the return of the Squats is not likely to work in the current Warhammer 40,000 setting and why the entertainment industries as a whole, while not in the best of states, are not actually as out of ideas as you might think they are.
So, that's my plan with this blog from now on. No longer will I be doing reviews on here or angrily picking bones with the metal scene over everything I find aggravating about it, but, instead, I'll be aiming for something that is simultaneously thought provoking and discussion focused. What I plan to present from now on is not intended to be the be-all-end-all on a topic (not that I ever felt I was an authoritative voice on any topic in the first place), merely my observations and thoughts on these topics which I encourage you all to read, consider and respond to as you feel is appropriate (in a civil discussion sort of way, obviously!). Maybe I'll say something you had never thought of that gets you to look at something in a new light, maybe I'll just be preaching to the choir or maybe I'll be talking a lot of rubbish, but, in any case, I hope you'll enjoy my new direction and approach to stuff.
I'll aim to do these at least once a month (mostly because I have other stuff to focus upon and I have to do that before I focus on blog stuff), with the first article planned to be ready before the 19th of May. I've not quite decided what I want to cover for then, in all honesty, but I'm wanting to start off with something small, so I probably will start with the Squats (joke not intended!). Maybe I'll expand it to include why the Lost & Damned should get their own codex, but the main focus at the moment is the Squats!
Thanks for your time and I hope you're looking forward to seeing me return back to doing stuff here!
As a side note, I'm debating opening a dedicated e-mail address for you guys to message me at, as I want to be able to be more open with the people reading my blog. If you want me to do that, then let me know in the comments section to this blog!
