MUNICIPAL WAY STUPENDOUS

I'm kinda stuck in the past but it's impossible to overlook the wave, if you will, of brilliant Metal in just America alone. Ironically, this new Metal sounds old and reminds me of the days when I was too young to notice that the world is a well-used toilet. Like Warbringer, whose drums belong to the 21st century but elsewhere is firmly rooted in pre-Titan thrash. Their Waking Into Nightmares rules my mornings -- my good morning to Los Angeles is "Born! With! The soul! Of a LIAAARR!" -- and Mantic Ritual's Executioner my nights. But the scant moments when I'm not rocking neo-Thrash are now threatened by Municipal Waste's superb, delicious Massive Aggressive, in which I'm balls deep. In general, my worship of the quartet of D.R.I. devotees has gone from casual to freaky, though for some reason I take personal offense to Burnt By The Sun, whose drummer is also in MWaste. And this fact was unknown to me when I'd already begun to bemoan his performance on Massgressive. (top heavy beats, drums don't sound big enough, more fills please, would it kill ya to choke a crash cymbal dude?). Somebody get Sid Falck in this band stat.

I'M LOBBYING FOR THE MANTIC RITUAL GIG

Thanks to fellow award-winning Metal Sucks reviewer/stud Corey Mitchell I'm all gorgor for Mantic Ritual. So my brow is furrowed in contemplation of earth's cold indifference to last month's announcement that singer/guitarist Dan Wetmore departed the band. That's a lot of prepositions in the previous sentence so sorry but anyway the Mantic story fetched but a dozen comments on Blabbermouth and I didn't even see any coverage beyond that (Metal Sucks did, however, give Ziltoid's boyfriend a column and it's great.) And for that, I'm wagging my finger at everybody in Metal even Mitchell, though he too is probably busy eye-raping the pages of this year's Best American Crime Reporting (a September occurrence that staves off suicide between summer and NBA) to publicly mourn this band-imperiling development. OK sure they've already replaced Wetmore, so there's no imminent danger. But at the same time, who can tell how the other three Mantics may rebound after being dumped for ahem photography studies. I took photo once and my big project involved two chicks kissing (Angela your knockers ruled I should've told you). Which means both that I rule and that I've already achieved the pinnacle of photog ambition so naturally I should be selected to front Mantic mark II. And that solves that BAM pick me up Sunday, k guys?