Putting this in metal discussion insofar as it relates to what happened with MetalIreland too:
QuoteBlogs waned as social media boomed. Platforms like eMusic and AOL Music invested in reviews for a while but then gave up. Often entire archives were junked. My CD single reviews are no great loss to posterity – but vast swathes of 21st-century music criticism are now literally unreadable. Every dead link on the reviews' aggregator Metacritic tells a story of neglect.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music/2024/01/the-pitchfork-years
(Do the aul interrupt page loading as soon as you see text to avoid the paywall appearing.)
Joins a raft of music related habits that are now disappearing into history.
Waiting outside the record store for the album, physical product cost of postage alone these days, crate digging (accept those with a smaller collection might still do this more), album artwork (design / presentation)....why is it all my 80's vinyl sounds better than any of its modern day reproductions?
Analogue say what you will its still king, prefect transmission of midi-chlorians digital continues to move a good direction but its still in the box as far as sound scope goes....
etc etc
Yes it's a shame, we really are at the mercy of streaming platforms now for our music, I still buy records tho of my favourite albums or good new music because you never do know if they will be available in the future to stream. That's why gigs are so important to the metal community
I never collected Vinyl,but collected cassettes from a young age and then Cds in my early teens.Nothing will ever replicate the feeling of finding an album you really wanted after sifting through hundreds of albums in a shop.Or taking a chance on an album by a band you never heard of,just going with your gut because the album art was class.All a gamble becsuse thats all the money you had that week,so if the album was shit youd be gutted!!.I sold or gave away all my collection about 7/8 years ago,i just ran out of room,kids and homelife etc.Ive been a Spotify junkie years now.I do miss looking at album art and reading inlays I have to say.
Did anyone ever find out why MetalIreland just ceased to be one morning without any prior notice? Surely your man Treacey could have sold it to someone?
Quote from: Bogmetaller on January 23, 2024, 01:14:45 PMDid anyone ever find out why MetalIreland just ceased to be one morning without any prior notice? Surely your man Treacey could have sold it to someone?
There's digging to be done across a few threads here and FB to put it together but the long and short of it was he was sick of running it, was moving on to do something else anyway with his life (was it the BBC he was working for?) and shut it down with the intention of selling the domain but was asking a demented price for it. It never sold and now we have MW here instead with a sort of weird splinter of terrible FB groups that tried to fill the void and took off during the start of 2020.
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on January 23, 2024, 12:01:53 PMhttps://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music/2024/01/the-pitchfork-years
(Do the aul interrupt page loading as soon as you see text to avoid the paywall appearing.)
Would any of ye be able to copy and paste the article text here please? I can't get the interrupt trick to work on my phone. Go raibh mhaith agat
When the music itself is of practically no value, it's no surprise we're heading to a point where all that will be left is youtube comments. Everything which used to live off the back of vital new music can't be sustained when nobody really gives a fuck about music anymore, certainly not in the way it defined us as kids, assuming most of yizzers are over 30. I don't think music plays anywhere near as important a role as it used to for most, beyond the walls of this very niche forum for what is still a largely niche form of music.
It's interesting they list Mojo as a magazine which is still healthy. The audience is those 50 and above, far less likely to have abandoned print than younger customers.
QuoteThe Pitchfork years
The announcement that the music website will be folded into GQ signals the end of an era in music criticism and popular culture.
By Dorian Lynskey
The news that the music website Pitchfork will be folded into GQ by its owners Condé Nast, with the reported loss of most of its team, is a body blow to the world of music journalism. The decision, for which the reasons remain vague (the content chief at Condé Nast Anna Wintour said it came after a "careful evaluation of Pitchfork's performance"), has ripped out the heart of online music criticism. The music-writing section of my CV is largely a cemetery of defunct magazines, but Pitchfork's demise as an independent entity feels especially shocking – because it was supposed to be the future.
I remember when, in 2001, Q magazine first decided to take its website seriously. Print, I was told, was doomed sooner or later, and online journalism would be superior anyway. Clips! Links! Comments! For a few months I was somehow paid to review the bonus tracks on CD singles. Like later experiments, that investment did not last long because the real money was still in the print magazine. Pitchfork, however, was a digital native – the flagship of an armada of new websites and blogs that constituted a brief golden age for online music journalism.
Pitchfork was founded in 1996 by the Minneapolis teenager Ryan Schreiber and professionalised in the mid-2000s when it boosted a generation of so-called Pitchfork bands, from Arcade Fire and Bon Iver to Deerhunter and Grizzly Bear. In 2006, Pitchfork staged its first annual music festival. In 2013 it won a National Magazine Award for excellence in digital media. Two years later, the acquisition by Condé Nast gave it serious financial muscle, although the publisher's announcement at the time that it hoped to bring Pitchfork's "millennial males into our roster" was ominous.
While Pitchfork has also published profiles, essays and investigative reporting, its core mission has always been thoughtful long-form album reviews. Despite its reputation for snobbery and snark (an infamous 2006 "review" of the Australian rock band Jet consisted of a gif of a chimpanzee urinating in its own mouth), its real appeal lay in the sincerity and passion of its best pieces. It offered numerous young, talented writers paid work, a global platform and conscientious editing. Its Sunday Review series, reassessing older albums, boasts some of the finest music criticism of the past decade.
During the Noughties, Pitchfork was intertwined with the figure of the hipster: the internet-savvy, semi-ironic, postmodern cultural magpie who inspired considerable angst about the distinction between serious love of art and shallow clout-chasing. How long ago that seems. The efflorescence of online music journalism began to fade as far back as 2007. Late in that decade, excellent sites such as Stylus and Idolator were shut down or bastardised. Blogs waned as social media boomed. Platforms like eMusic and AOL Music invested in reviews for a while but then gave up. Often entire archives were junked. My CD single reviews are no great loss to posterity – but vast swathes of 21st-century music criticism are now literally unreadable. Every dead link on the reviews' aggregator Metacritic tells a story of neglect.
Legacy titles struggled, too. The digital versions of NME and Spin are pale shadows of their print predecessors. The brand of Q, once the UK's biggest-selling music magazine, was recently sold off and relaunched as a skeletal news site. But Pitchfork sailed on. Like NME or Rolling Stone before it, it became synonymous with music journalism itself: loved and hated, resented and admired, essential.
The gutting of Pitchfork is not just a loss for writers and editors, but all music fans. Spotify's algorithm can introduce you to new music but it can't contextualise it or tell its stories. Replacing media "gatekeepers" with AI ones has not enriched the culture. There are new formats for music journalism – the YouTuber Anthony Fantano is perhaps the world's most influential music critic, while Cole Cuchna's podcast Dissect is a masterclass in analysis – but like any art form, popular music deserves a thriving critical culture in the written word. While some music websites survive, notably the defiantly left-field digital magazine, the Quietus, it is striking that the alleged dinosaurs of print, led in the UK by Mojo and Uncut, have outlasted most of their supposed successors.
Artists, too, will feel Pitchfork's absence. Under editor Puja Patel, the site vastly expanded from its white, male indie-rock roots – in a 2010 list its favourite song of the 1990s was Pavement's "Gold Soundz"; in the 2022 rerun it was Mariah Carey's "Fantasy (Remix)" – but it continued to review niche albums that would be lucky to get 150 words in print. While thin-skinned stars, such as Lizzo, have summoned their fan armies to persecute the writers of less-than-glowing reviews, most artists still appreciate passionate, well-informed engagement with their work. I found Pitchfork's decimal ratings system an absurdly precise affectation but the site's honour of Best New Music could launch a career. Such journalism plays a vital role in building up the stars and headliners of the future by amplifying artists' ideas and personalities and generating a wider conversation. Meanwhile, there are several one-shot magazines solely devoted to the billionaire Taylor Swift.
You could argue that music criticism, and music itself, are less culturally important in the age of streaming and social media. But Pitchfork's problem seems to have been advertising, not readership. The puzzle of how to monetise online journalism has still not been solved. Buzzfeed and Vice, the new media stars that flourished while magazines and newspapers were decimated, have recently downsized, too. Only a handful of media behemoths, such as the New York Times, seem financially secure.
The crisis is even bigger than journalism – part of what Cory Doctorow calls the "enshittification" of the internet in pursuit of shareholder profits. Most websites are shallower and uglier than they were a decade ago; most platforms less functional. As laid-off Pitchfork veteran Marc Hogan wrote in Rolling Stone, "Perhaps Pitchfork matters today because its arc parallels that of the internet itself, from nerdy and amateurish to grown-up, worldly, and inclusive, to now gated off in a Babel of AI-age confusion."
The promise implicit in tech's philosophy of "move fast and break things" was that what was broken, or "disrupted", would be replaced by something better. But like the proposition that the "long tail" would foster a more diverse culture, or social media would bring us together, or limitless free information would strengthen democracy, that turned out to be a devil's bargain. Pitchfork's fate is just one symptom of the failure of the glorious online future.
Ah, nice one man, sorry should have thought of doing that meself!
If you have your own music on digital only platforms, make sure not to put all your eggs in one basket, have your own gdrive + youtube + whatever else that you control + personally I always make sure to do a batch of physical copies.
The more of anything the less value we attach. Interested to see how things pan out as we have a 2 generations now either grown up in their 20s or growing up in the digital age - just in terms of how they create/consume music and music-related content when it faces direct competition from games/podcasts/clips/reels etc etc. I know with my stuff, 100% of the CDs are purchased from the age bracket of 25-55. Realistically is that going to continue from that cohort 10 years from now? I'm not so sure.
I see people from metal bands making tik-toks/clips/reels - not for me but I'm guessing that's how people are trying to link people back to their own work. Doesn't seem sustainable and just adds to the pile of digitally disposable content out there - again less and less value as more and more people feed into those social media systems. Subscriptions & crowdfunding will only work for the 0.001%. MetalIreland went out in an odd fashion and the money aspect was ludicrous considering how a similar forum was created so quickly after it's demise.
I could see a scenario where AI/ChatGPT etc will ramp this nonsense up and becomes impossible to filter out the crap and people will flock back to these old school forums to have actual proper interactions (unless AI bots cleverly flood this type of place too to bring the numbers up in order to obtain revenue from advertisers but maybe advertisers will become wise to fake stats too).
Spotify now implementingof a filter in terms of monetisation by removing payouts to bands with less than 1000 streams per month.
Quotea whopping 158.6 million songs, a staggering 86.2% of the total catalog in streaming services nowadays (measured using ISRCs, which stands for International Standard Recording Codes), received 1,000 plays or less last year.
24.8% of the entire streaming services catalog received ZERO plays in 2023. That's a whopping 45.6 million tracks.
Quote from: ochoill on January 23, 2024, 01:24:19 PMQuote from: Bogmetaller on January 23, 2024, 01:14:45 PMDid anyone ever find out why MetalIreland just ceased to be one morning without any prior notice? Surely your man Treacey could have sold it to someone?
There's digging to be done across a few threads here and FB to put it together but the long and short of it was he was sick of running it, was moving on to do something else anyway with his life (was it the BBC he was working for?) and shut it down with the intention of selling the domain but was asking a demented price for it. It never sold and now we have MW here instead with a sort of weird splinter of terrible FB groups that tried to fill the void and took off during the start of 2020.
Interesting. We are lucky to have Metal warfare and we should probably remind ourselves of that too :abbath:
Yep, defo lucky to have it. The chat on facebook etc is braindead. You can have a good discussion here most of the time and it's largely been civil, definitely a valuable resource.
Good online forums are invaluable and stand the test of time.
There used to be loads of websites, now there's only a handful of social media platforms and they're all shite. Forums absolutely ruled, Metal Ireland was truly pivotal for me.
I'd have to agree with the above. This forum is a great source of new music especially with people starting new threads about a band and the now listening section.
I used to buy Metal Hammer and Terrorizer all the time. MH went to absolute shit and Terrorizer became hit and miss.
I wonder how many people still buy them.
Terrorizer is gone years i think!,was an amazing mag for a long time!.
Quote from: The Butcher on January 23, 2024, 02:04:25 PMunless AI bots cleverly flood this type of place too
Like DJ Sniffles?
This place is mighty for recommendations and discussion alright. Before thqt, MI and Terrorizer forums were good, I picked up a lot based on recommendations on the Damnation forum too, unexpectedly.
MI was mighty, got me through a very boring jobless 6 months during the recession. The amount of bands I got into because of the forum was nuts. How much was CT looking for? Met him once, odd lad and yes twas the BBC he was with.
Quote from: Mower Liberation Front on January 23, 2024, 03:53:44 PMQuote from: The Butcher on January 23, 2024, 02:04:25 PMunless AI bots cleverly flood this type of place too
Like DJ Sniffles?
:laugh: the first versions of these yokes are always questionable. Honestly I'd take them over the dreaded facebook braindead groups of 'What's your favourite Slayer song??' / 'Crash Test Dummies are NOT one hit wonders' / 'Gun - Word Up is a modern cover classic' 'Show us your metal t-shirts + fingers crossed for bOObs' etc etc
Sorry lads, don't want to see any of yizzers boobs.
Regardless of the wider implications, delighted to see Pitchfork go. Incredibly smug, insincere music journalism. Mind you though, they do get credit for that very entertaining Greta Van Fleet review a few years back.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/greta-van-fleet-anthem-of-the-peaceful-army/
That's glorious.
I've always enjoyed flicking through the Pitchfork reviews page clicking on names that seem familiar, names I find intriguing or just cool artwork. Was rare enough I'd read the full review but I'd often check out the music. Always found it enjoyable and there's less and less sites to do that on nowadays, as everyone mentioned.
This place will do for me for the most part. Don't find myself reading much reviews outside of allmusic ones to see what's the general buzz with things. Other than that it's word of mouth, but saying that it's a bit of a downer to see the death of the music press
The thing I missed most from MI was the hangover page - think that's what it was called? Some of the stories there were legendary
Quote from: Bogmetaller on January 23, 2024, 05:30:30 PMThe thing I missed most from MI was the hangover page - think that's what it was called? Some of the stories there were legendary
Say no more. (https://forum.metalwarfare.com/index.php?topic=1216.0)
Yeah the hangover threads are great. Was only talking about my nightmarish post Ministry one to a buddy recently, who remembered a few equally heinous ones, how some of us are still alive is baffling. The reviews were great on MI, some of the local bands having meltdowns over the shadowy elitist cabal was gas.
MI as a desert for a few years before CT pulled the plug. It was grim. Everyone seemed to have dropped off in favor of Facebook etc and there was barely a stir of activity on the forum for two or three years if I remember correctly. Luckily I had the NWN forum which was invaluable a good me through that online drought. NWN caved a few years ago too but, much like Metal Warfare, someone stepped in and started up Revelation of Doom, so both of those voids have been filled. It's encouraging to see this forum cool w roaring back in the past year or two but it's mostly old farts so what kind of life span will it have we'll wait and find out.
It's a shame to see that ZT magazine appears to have gone even though I haven't bought it since moving away. It would be nice to see paper mags make a return.
Quote from: Eoin McLove on January 23, 2024, 07:42:25 PMMI as a desert for a few years before CT pulled the plug. It was grim. Everyone seemed to have dropped off in favor of Facebook etc and there was barely a stir of activity on the forum for two or three years if I remember correctly. Luckily I had the NWN forum which was invaluable a good me through that online drought. NWN caved a few years ago too but, much like Metal Warfare, someone stepped in and started up Revelation of Doom, so both of those voids have been filled. It's encouraging to see this forum cool w roaring back in the past year or two but it's mostly old farts so what kind of life span will it have we'll wait and find out.
It's a shame to see that ZT magazine appears to have gone even though I haven't bought it since moving away. It would be nice to see paper mags make a return.
Big time man, I think it was mainly yourself, Danny, black Shepard and astygl starting topics at the end, long gone are the halcyon days of the old forum (was it pre 06?)
Quote from: ochoill on January 23, 2024, 01:27:16 PMQuote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on January 23, 2024, 12:01:53 PMhttps://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music/2024/01/the-pitchfork-years
(Do the aul interrupt page loading as soon as you see text to avoid the paywall appearing.)
Would any of ye be able to copy and paste the article text here please? I can't get the interrupt trick to work on my phone. Go raibh mhaith agat
Here ya go..
https://archive.is/CSuHt (https://archive.is/CSuHt)
Tip for everyone..if you put archive.is/ before the www of a paywall article you can sometimes get cached versions of it...
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on January 23, 2024, 04:32:12 PMSorry lads, don't want to see any of yizzers boobs.
Quote from: Eoin McLove on January 23, 2024, 07:42:25 PMIt's encouraging to see this forum cool w roaring back in the past year or two but it's mostly old farts so what kind of life span will it have we'll wait and find out.
Maybe it will be like Vinyl. But what kind of life span is a good question. Facebook and the rest are just woeful for conversation, it's all quick and disposable while at least with forums have that archival nature within them. This site could get a good 10 years or could come in waves.
This forum and a couple of blogs like No Clean Singing and Hate Meditations are the only websites I bother with anymore.
I used to go to Death Metal Underground to find new bands, but it's been taken over by white supremacist cigar enthusiasts who think extreme metal died in 1996.
Metal Warfare isn't as popular as the old MI site, but I'm still finding interesting stuff that I wouldn't have heard of elsewhere, like Gjendød and Spectral Voice.
I very much respected the way Ciaran went out with Metal Ireland - no pleading, no coaxing or looking for donations - just gone without warning and that was that!
On a similar topic to this thread, the closing down of - *and deletion of the contents of* - the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) forums a number of years back was an act of astounding cultural sabotage. Twenty years of insightful discussion of individual films (and best films to watch if you wanted to see specific actresses' norks) gone at the click of a button.
Water under the bridge now, but the bone of contention was that while you might appreciate how he did it, it was incredibly disrespectful to the group of us who had put time and effort into writing articles and reviews to delete our work without giving us a heads up first.
But also to be fair, I don't blame him for shutting down the site now.
It was a dose when he killed it, but I do understand his decision.
I'm just glad I never took him up on his offer to roll the Irish Metal Archive into MI.
Quote from: The Ancient Ones on January 24, 2024, 10:16:13 AMI very much respected the way Ciaran went out with Metal Ireland - no pleading, no coaxing or looking for donations - just gone without warning and that was that!
He did ask for donations though, he set up a link and asked people to consider "leaving a tip".
Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, but I remember a few lads whinging about it on fb at the time.
Quotebut the bone of contention was that while you might appreciate how he did it, it was incredibly disrespectful to the group of us who had put time and effort into writing articles and reviews to delete our work without giving us a heads up first.
Agreed. Complete Ballbaggery. I did speak to him around the time of the closure of the site and he implied that he'd do something with all the reviews etc but it never happened. The tip thing was insult to injury. His site, his rules and all but thought that element wasn't great. He did sterling work for the scene here over the years, his commitment was unwavering so to just toss all that material away still baffles me.
Having said that, I do miss the site for the reviews. The writing was of a high standard and the reviews were written from the heart by people that were passionate about music. The likes of sites like Overdrive etc make me sick with obnoxiously positive reviews for everything.
I had a few cuts at Eoin for his reviews at the time I remember, jesus we take it seriously
I dunno lads, have you all forgotten about the time that CT said that Land of Sunshine wasn't a proper FNM song?
Whatever about closing the whole thing and dumping it unannounced one morning...
... that was unforgivable
Lol, I remember that.
Or the 5/5 glowing review for the Steel Tormentor record
Quote from: Pentagrimes on January 24, 2024, 12:11:55 PMWater under the bridge now, but the bone of contention was that while you might appreciate how he did it, it was incredibly disrespectful to the group of us who had put time and effort into writing articles and reviews to delete our work without giving us a heads up first.
But also to be fair, I don't blame him for shutting down the site now.
I wrote all of one article for MI (Sol Niger Within for From The Vaults) and was a bit miffed when it vanished into the aether.
Some of ye lads pumped a shitload of time and valuable content onto those pages, would've been properly annoyed about it.
Even beyond the reviews, it was a cornerstone of Irish metal culture for years. So much captured, represented, and chronicled on those pages. It was super jarring to just have it all removed. Still though, this site seems to have revived the forum life somewhat. I wonder would that have happened if MI had continued.
Speaking of digital v physical, I have a 97 Corolla and so have a tape deck in my car. Once I mentioned that a shitload of people in work all went into their cupboards to donate their tapes to me. Hugely diverse array of stuff. I keep them all in a big bag behind the passenger seat so I can just reach back and lucky dip grab one easily. I've been using Spotify for a good decade, but the experience of listening to the music in physical form has been so profoundly eye-opening. I enjoy it massively more picking a tape and then listening to the whole thing over several times before moving onto a new tape. Then doing the old school fishing out the sleeve and reading the liner notes/lyrics (not while driving) has brought me right back. I feel so much more connected to the music-listening experience. I even know song titles again. It's made me really reconsider my relationship to digital music and how I consume music. When I moved to Canada I was happy to leave all my collections behind and go streaming and save the space, but now I'm really thinking about starting again...
Quote from: Ducky on January 24, 2024, 06:00:57 PMQuote from: Pentagrimes on January 24, 2024, 12:11:55 PMWater under the bridge now, but the bone of contention was that while you might appreciate how he did it, it was incredibly disrespectful to the group of us who had put time and effort into writing articles and reviews to delete our work without giving us a heads up first.
But also to be fair, I don't blame him for shutting down the site now.
Some of ye lads pumped a shitload of time and valuable content onto those pages, would've been properly annoyed about it.
Oh yeah
Quote from: Eoin McLove on January 23, 2024, 07:42:25 PMIt's a shame to see that ZT magazine appears to have gone even though I haven't bought it since moving away. It would be nice to see paper mags make a return.
Haven't seen anything official about ZT ending but it's looking that way alright. It was originally supposed to be every 2 months I think, but became increasingly sporadic and last year was every few months. Thought it was a great mag.
Back to pitchfork, it used to have the odd metal review but everything seemed to be either stuff on Profound Lore or Thrill Jockey. They wouldn't touch anything which didn't align with their own politics, no matter how tenuous the link. Now that's hardly surprising given it's owned by Condé Nast, but I don't really give a flying fuck about Dawn Ray'd latest release.
One of the biggest losses for me was Andy's In The Rectory retrospective. It was a fantastic piece and a great insight into the mood and frustration the lads dealt with when recording it.
Aragh, CT was a pretentious cunt. Fuck him.
Quote from: mishima on January 26, 2024, 07:58:40 PMOne of the biggest losses for me was Andy's In The Rectory retrospective. It was a fantastic piece and a great insight into the mood and frustration the lads dealt with when recording it.
The good thing about me being utterly spasticated with computers/ modern technology (life in general) is that I still use the same email address that I've used for nearly 20 years now . that means I still have access to my original copy of that interview/ review, so I can forward it on of needed.
Quote from: Eoin McLove on January 26, 2024, 08:46:06 PMThe good thing about me being utterly spasticated with computers/ modern technology (life in general) is that I still use the same email address that I've used for nearly 20 years now . that means I still have access to my original copy of that interview/ review, so I can forward it on of needed.
DMed ya!
Wudja sent it on to me too please? I'll DM you my email address. Cheers!
Quote from: Eoin McLove on January 26, 2024, 08:46:06 PMQuote from: mishima on January 26, 2024, 07:58:40 PMOne of the biggest losses for me was Andy's In The Rectory retrospective. It was a fantastic piece and a great insight into the mood and frustration the lads dealt with when recording it.
The good thing about me being utterly spasticated with computers/ modern technology (life in general) is that I still use the same email address that I've used for nearly 20 years now . that means I still have access to my original copy of that interview/ review, so I can forward it on of needed.
Also still using a 20yr old email address. It's like an interesting searchable archive of your life...
Well strangely enough, I went trawling through all my old correspondence with CT earlier on and couldn't find the damn review. There were so many other links to interviews and reviews there but the one pertaining to this article had no feckin attachment. Luckily, I had emailed it to someone from another forum in the last year or two (or maybe five. Time....) so I was able to retrieve it. But yeah, talk about a bit of time travel this morning.
I can't bring myself to read the article. There's something slightly perverse in reading your thoughts from over a decade ago. Better left buried by time and dust.
You's could have a look through the wayback machine and see if there's any captures of those articles:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/metalireland.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/metalireland.com)
Home from the pub (I was a pint or two in when I got the email) and have just finished reading that - jaysus it's a great read, the sort of thing you'd expect to be tucked into a reissue booklet or lyric sheet. Any fan of the band or In The Rectory... in particular needs to read it.
Nice one, cheers Andy.
One thing mentioned early on, and a thing I'd noticed before but couldn't quite put a finger on is the 'swagger' in the vocals. I'd always noticed that there was something insubstantial in their sound that I couldn't pin down and that was it. Unique in terms of the 'seriousness' and overall heaviness of the band.
So Zero Tolerance will have a new issue out in April:
https://www.facebook.com/zerotolerancemagazine/posts/pfbid02UcrzKBaz25KmhFHfYMQZk14Hv3STX2m987zrsnU9wwBH4ZPZbCnH8PAjzWdzD5Sdl
QuoteAfter a very long hiatus from the daily churn, I am writing to give you a long-overdue update.
2023 was not an easy time for me, I had a number of personal things to deal with that were simply unavoidable, and ultimately something had to give.
It is therefore with a sense of relief, excitement and a lot of behind-the-scenes planning that we're letting you know that all the pieces are finally in place to start moving forward.
Firstly, I am really pleased to announce that Paul Carter's taken on a new role as commissioning editor; having worked on the review section for aeons, this broader role will see the super organised Paul take charge of the day-to-day where editorial content is concerned. Paul will be the all important link between thinking about a deadline and meeting it to make sure future issues of Zero Tolerance are consistently out, and on time. We've also made some changes under the hood including the way we lay the magazine out; why come back with exactly the same format when you can come back on steroids? I'm sure you'll all like where we're going with things.
We have our first date in the bag for our return issue, #110 - which will be back in the racks on 19 April 2024. If you keep an eye on our social media over the weeks ahead you'll catch a few sneaky peeks at some of what's in store.
To get things moving - and because everyone loves a good list - we'll be revealing our Writers' Best of 2023 Lists via our website in the next few days.
So hold on to your seats, the world's best extreme music magazine is back and stronger than ever!
Lisa Macey
publisher
Good to see they are coming back. I hope the revamp doesn't change the focus on underground activity. That is to say, I hope they don't follow Terrorizer.
Good to see that ZT is still going.
Terrorizer of old was a good magazine but after 2005 they went downhill. I'd buy it and then wonder why I wasted money on a glossy pile of nothingness.
Their forum was good but I found it really tiresome that most of the people there automatically assumed my opinions on Maiden weren't worth anything just because I said Killers was overrated, despite the fact that on a lot of other areas I agreed with them. There was also some weird debate when people were thinking that I was trying to defend Lulu in a pretentious way when in actual fact I was just saying that given that Lou Reed once released a double album of feedback why should anyone be surprised that Metallica collaborating with him would produce weird results.
I used to post on the Kerrang! forums (made lots of friends via that place) and Hellride, now that was a decent forum with some interesting discussion. Messageboards in general are really underrated, I post here because it seems to be one of the few active ones still around. I also post on Metal Archives because that's a pretty active community.
Quote from: Cosmic_Equilibrium on January 30, 2024, 12:23:02 PMGood to see that ZT is still going.
Terrorizer of old was a good magazine but after 2005 they went downhill. I'd buy it and then wonder why I wasted money on a glossy pile of nothingness.
Their forum was good but I found it really tiresome that most of the people there automatically assumed my opinions on Maiden weren't worth anything just because I said Killers was overrated, despite the fact that on a lot of other areas I agreed with them. There was also some weird debate when people were thinking that I was trying to defend Lulu in a pretentious way when in actual fact I was just saying that given that Lou Reed once released a double album of feedback why should anyone be surprised that Metallica collaborating with him would produce weird results.
I used to post on the Kerrang! forums (made lots of friends via that place) and Hellride, now that was a decent forum with some interesting discussion. Messageboards in general are really underrated, I post here because it seems to be one of the few active ones still around. I also post on Metal Archives because that's a pretty active community.
You were on K? Always found it funny when someone would post something about the magazine or the channel, and everyone would go "Nobody here actually reads or watches them." There were a lot of good people on that board. And Davos.
Yeah, I went by the username sabbathfan on there. Met you at a meet at least once.
Yep. Those were the days. :D
The only thing I remember from the Kerrang forums was a mod who thought Lawnmower Deth was the greatest thrash band ever...
Oh. Mower?.Were you secretly part of the Big K team???
Didn't post much, read more. Vim Feugo was their user name, I think, but they went on about Lawnmower Deth a lot. I might be misremembering.
Vim Feugo posted on MI as well.
Quote from: Anvil on January 31, 2024, 09:24:37 PMDidn't post much, read more. Vim Feugo was their user name, I think, but they went on about Lawnmower Deth a lot. I might be misremembering.
Yeah, I remember Vim, I think he was from New Zealand, he was the biggest Lawnmower Deth fan I ever came across. There was a bunch of us ended up setting up countries on that Nationstates eons ago, his country was named Lawnmowerville. :D
Isn't there a Vim Fuego on here as well somewhere?
Would anyone here that wrote anything for metalireland still have digital copies of their work? Would it be worth creating a space for it on the site here?
I think that'd be cool enough but I'm sure it has been brought up before and nothing came of it
This is a somewhat related, depressing, but very interesting read. Makes you all the more glad that little golden corners of the internet like here exist!
It's an article about the 'enshittification' of internet platforms (FB, TikTok, Amazon, Google etc), how they start off really useful to their customers, and the gradual process of how they end up passing all those benfits to their shareholders at the expense of customers and businesses. Really worth reading the whole thing. If you were thinking about giving up social media or the like, this might give you the push you need!
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Yeah, it's a pity the user data model is so lucrative. Myself and I'm sure a lot of others would pay to have a tracking free option. The trouble is that makes a lot of data sets incomplete.
Quote from: Pagan Saviour on February 01, 2024, 09:36:10 AMWould anyone here that wrote anything for metalireland still have digital copies of their work? Would it be worth creating a space for it on the site here?
I had most of my interview for MI online elsewhere for a bit along with other bits I did for other sites but I honestly can't remember if they're still up. And I can't be fucked digging them out if they're not.
The big lesson from MI- and ye can all tell me otherwise but I won't believe you- is that certainly towards the end all anyone was interested in was the forum.
The Wayback machine is the only way to get it as far as I know. The closure came completely out of the blue even to the mods - we were certainly never told in advance. I asked CT if it could be reopened for a bit to get the Hall Of Fame threads saved but it was a no.
I think he was fed up paying for a site that didn't have a huge amount of engagement towards the end, plus it took so much time to run, and for very little payoff really.
How useful is the wayback machine? Like is it possible to piece together everything you want to retrieve or has it only saved snippets?
Quote from: hellfire on February 14, 2024, 08:36:11 PMYeah, it's a pity the user data model is so lucrative. Myself and I'm sure a lot of others would pay to have a tracking free option. The trouble is that makes a lot of data sets incomplete.
Be interesting to see if that value starts to decline though. People do seem to be vacating Facebook in droves, so I wonder will it ever return more towards the useful sign of things or would they just squeeze every penny until they have to put it down. I mean I guess Myspace still exists out there so I'm guessing they won't put it down...
Quote from: Dark Stranger on February 14, 2024, 10:04:26 PMThe Wayback machine is the only way to get it as far as I know. The closure came completely out of the blue even to the mods - we were certainly never told in advance. I asked CT if it could be reopened for a bit to get the Hall Of Fame threads saved but it was a no.
I think he was fed up paying for a site that didn't have a huge amount of engagement towards the end, plus it took so much time to run, and for very little payoff really.
you'd think he would ask one of the mods then if they wanted to take over the site? I understand why he didn't want to do it anymore, but I'm sure someone else would take it on as a labour of love
Sure who would want to have run it back then? It was dead as a dodo for two or three years. Nobody posted on it as I think everyone had moved to Facebook. It's a pity some of the writing was lost but the activity on this site in recent months is in no way reflective of the activity of MI before CT pulled the plug.
Quote from: Dark Stranger on February 14, 2024, 10:04:26 PMI think he was fed up paying for a site that didn't have a huge amount of engagement towards the end, plus it took so much time to run, and for very little payoff really.
I don't think he planned to close. Just got sick of the shit one day. He'd asked for my help the week or two before to remove a ton of base64 malware out of the damn thing. Don't think he knew himself he was closing it until he closed it.
I feel like I am repeating myself here but he was trying to sell the site, ultimately, that is why it went the way it did. I'm sure there is deeper reasoning behind it but that's the crux of it in the end. And he couldn't sell it then to top it all off.
Quote from: Pentagrimes on February 14, 2024, 08:39:36 PMThe big lesson from MI- and ye can all tell me otherwise but I won't believe you- is that certainly towards the end all anyone was interested in was the forum.
Yeah this is the height of it too. The site was good for anyone who actually read it but it lured nobody in and the whole thing trundled along off the forum itself. Even offline discussion of MI was around the forum, if anyone brought it up elsewhere it was the forum, the actual site was up to nothing as far as anyone was concerned. You can thank FB for the likes of that really, and just the way people want to consume media nowadays.
We had the vinyl revival era, perhaps now there's the...forum reforming era?
Quote from: Eoin McLove on February 15, 2024, 10:12:17 AMSure who would want to have run it back then? It was dead as a dodo for two or three years. Nobody posted on it as I think everyone had moved to Facebook. It's a pity some of the writing was lost but the activity on this site in recent months is in no way reflective of the activity of MI before CT pulled the plug.
I do think the nature of the site's disappearance galvanized a lot of people into realizing what they had, hence the activity on this forum now.
Quote from: The Butcher on February 15, 2024, 03:01:44 PMWe had the vinyl revival era, perhaps now there's the...forum reforming era?
It's already back via Reddit. So many good subreddits out there for every niche, with great discussion, respect, and activity. Aside from little hidden gem forums like this one, it's the best place on the internet for discussion. In recent times I've almost entirely stopped using social media and mainly just use reddit. With it's anonymous nature it also takes a lot of the narcissism out of online discussion.
EDIT: For the record, I would love old school forums and blogs to become the norm again...