I knew the type of song I wanted to add here but like many people their favourites can change with mood. So I went a little backwards on the rules, I hope that's ok. I thought of the songs that have helped me through bad times, have cheered me up and helped me forget the world for a while. Despite my increasing age nothing beats screaming along to songs with a crowd at a heavy metal or thrash metal concert.

I've been to two concerts in my life. The first was actually a music festival, Warped Tour 2017 in West Palm, FL. The second one was just in August 2019. It was an Attila concert in Jacksonville, FL. If you aren't familiar with the band Attila, they are a metalcore band from Atlanta, GA. Wikipedia categorizes them under the following genres: metalcore, deathcore, and nu metal.

ShadowWork Recordings is an idea that came out of what was originally just an indivudal page for my project Contradicted on Bandcamp.

I got my first King Diamond album round about the year 1992 or 1993, I think. An aunt got it for me from a CD club she belonged to. Those still existed in those bygone, halcyon days.

"I want to see all of you motherfuckers on the ground—every single one of you... Now, on my word... when I say, 'Jump the fuck up,' what are you going to do? WHEN I SAY, 'JUMP THE FUCK UP,' WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?"

Iron Maiden kicked off the UK leg of their ‘Legacy of the Beast’ Tour at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle. The tour, inspired by the smartphone game of the same name, brought with it songs from across the bands 16 albums but most significantly it showed that the group are still at the very top of their game.

[Note: I am not a professional metal historian, nor a huge metalhead. However, to the best of knowledge, this information is accurate—also, sometimes even huge fans get facts wrong, so I wouldn't be alone in that regard if I messed something up.]

During a conversation on Facebook a couple of years ago, my friend mentioned that his adult brother had come down to visit. Apparently he was a fan of the same music that I was, particularly Bring Me The Horizon. This should've been brilliant. I had someone else to bond over one of my favourite bands with. Well, once I had passed 'the test'.

Phil Anselmo, Lead Singer of Pantera, turned 50 years old.

In a way, you could say that I found you out of boredom. I was thirteen, going on fourteen, changing, as teenagers do, or maybe it was the music around me that was changing. Or both. The pop music I had grown up with had grown boring, generic, phoned in. Nobody used real instruments or even, so it seemed, their real voices — bands of humans were replaced by bands of computers. At worst, it was lifeless. So I gave up.

As you've probably guessed, I love thrash. What I love even more is finding wickedly awesome bands and advocating them. When I published my first article late last year, I received a lot of feedback about bands that weren't included on the list. I'll be honest with you, some of those bands I did want to include on the list but at the end of the day, I could only pick 10. After a few months of scouring the web and with much deliberation, I was able to compile 10 more bands that I not only felt kicked ass, but also kept moving thrash forward. Without further delay, let's go ahead and jump in.

Well, "loud," "fast," "a load of screaming & shouting," "the devil's music," and simply "noise" are some of the most common answers you will get when you ask the public what they think metal music is.This, of course, is all just personal opinion and far from the truth. Any real metal fan will go into detail and show their passion for the genre. Before we go any further, I must put the story straight on fashion. I see so many people (usually teens and early twenty-somethings), wearing band apparel with no clue on who the band are, let alone be fans. Metal is not fashionable, it is all about the music.