Politics...

I felt that today being the day it is I would voice my opinion on something I think is relevant to the decision people are making today. This semester I'm taking a course on american politics and my professor once told me something I found incredibly profound. He told the class that in America the best goal one can set for the

mselves is to find something they are good at and make a lot of money doing it. Now, on the surface this seems like a perfectly sensible goal to set for oneself; But I think it represents a prevailing attitude in this country that greed and ambition are a combination of values that are perfectly acceptable to lead your life by. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for laziness, not by a long-shot. Laziness and greed is another combination that seems to have taken roost in our country as well. In my mind both sets of morals breed the same exact kind of people; People who want to get all of the benefit with none of the sacrifice one puts you in poverty, the other puts you in the Hamptons. When I hear talk about an "entitlement generation" it usually is only being directed at the poor, but people seem to forget that there are wealthy people who also exploit holes in the rules in order to live a lot easier than the rest of us. But we don't call them "entitled" or "moochers" we call them "captains of business" or, an even bigger lie, "job creators." I'm not sorry about this but the truth is giving someone tax breaks, letting them us loopholes, and/or allowing them to outsource jobs doesn't put money back into the economy (protip: that's what fixes a broken one, like ours) it just allows them to hold on to their precious dollars. Unfortunately it seems the only way to fix these problems is to punish the whole for the sins of the few. I say instead of removing social programs that do help people who need it and a few who could go without them, we tax the rich, they can afford it. I'd rather knock a few billionaires down to millionaires instead of kicking a poor person from the street to the ditch any day of the week.

The Pit

Tonight from 10 PM to 12 AM back to 11 PM to 12 AM it's The Pit: Fall Back Edition; And we're fallin wayyyy back tonight. It's artists falling back on their favorites in the first half with covers and then falling back on the 90's with a playlist of my favorite metal, punk, and hard rock songs of that hallowed decade that spat me out. Listen live at 10 PM athttp://www.live365.com/stations/walf?site=pro

Mitch Lucker is dead...

Mitch Lucker...husband, father, and entertainer is dead. Mitch passed away yesterday morning after sustaining fatal injuries in a motorcycle accident. Mitch as most of you know was the frontman for death metal band Suicide Silence. I used to be a huge fan of the band myself, but somewhere after they released No Time to Bleed I simply lost interest in the music they produced. Needless to say I didn't keep up with the band much, but I still would occasionally watch or read interviews with the band as I still thought of them as genuinely funny and interesting people. When I logged into facebook yesterday I saw a ton of status updates from my friends that Mitch had passed, and I was instantly curious as to how and why this had happened to a guy who I had always considered to be a quality entertainer. I found out that it was because he had been drunk and driving his motorcycle, likely too fast. I honestly don't care that much about that, it doesn't matter the cause. It was the end result of a mistake he made, but even if it had just been a freak accident he'd still be dead. It upsets me when I see people who weren't fans of the band or even the genre vocally criticizing a man for making a mistake, for being human. A man beloved by many is dead, he shouldn't be a target for peoples venom, he should be an example that even people who are put on pedestals are still only human and that even they can fall sometimes. We should remember Mitch as the guy who had stomp that let it be known to every person in an audience that there was a pit...and it needed to be opened the fuck up.  

In Which I totally forgot I had a blog...and reviewed Pig Destroyer.

What has it been now? Two or three weeks since I last posted...it was definitely before the new Pig Destroyer album dropped...whatever.

Speaking of Pig Destroyer....It's review time.

Boom. I'm doing it...late.

The new album is called Book Burner, and it came out October 23rd on Relapse Records. PxDx has really put their nose to the grindstone (see what I did there?) They produced a sick, fast, and uncompromisingly heavy record in the span of time it took me to graduate high school and get a year and a half of college under my belt. My hopes were incredibly high for this one and it's fair to say they were as high as they should have been, because this album absolutely rips from start to finish. From the two singles I had heard prior to release  , "Burning Palm" and "The Diplomat" I was honestly unsure of how I was going to feel about the record. They were good songs but I knew right away they weren't going to be my favorites on the record. However the album dropped and I was pleasantly surprised by the opening track "Sis" which has become my favorite song on the album by far. It's heavy, chunky riff just makes me want to mosh...a lot. Other standout tracks are "All Seeing Eye" and "The Americans Head." All in all I would call this album a solid 9.5/10 for its flow, production, and enjoyability. I do knock it down a peg because for me because it does seem to repeat itself in some parts, but that could just be part of the overall theme of the album. 

Evil Deadhead

Halloween is right around the corner, and boy does this have me excited. For one, I'm going as a spooky banana this year. Secondly it's the time of year I break out one of my favorite series of horror movies and watch them. This year I was having trouble picking a movie to watch, but today I found my solution. Today I was in the mood for some Strapping Young Lad, a statement I just realized makes it sound like I was hot for the pool boy. Anyway, I was trolling youtube for one of their songs and came across the official video for the song "Love?" which is my favorite SYL song by a long shot. I had never seen the video before, but it made my choice clear.

If you don't see why that's clear I'll clear it up for you. This video is inspired by the Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. Evil Dead is by far my favorite series of movies. It has everything I like in movies; Action, tension, a little (read: a lot) of gore, humor, and most important of all Bruce Campbell. To make a long story short Army of Darkness, the third movie in the series, was the first horror flick I saw as a kid and it left an everlasting impression on me (probably to the chagrin of at least one of my parents). For about 5 years after I first saw it I wanted to consume every piece of media Evil Dead (and Bruce Campbell) related and I did. A lot of movies/shows, a few video games, and a couple books later I think it's safe to say that I'm a lifelong Deadite. And also eerily obsessed with Bruce Campbell. Happy Trick or Treating Boys and Ghouls.
-Sean

Album Review: Alkahest-Milk & Morphine

Sludgy, doom-ish, a little bit of black metal...I like it. (Reminds me of Tombs)

Alkahest are a doom band from Brooklyn. This album actually came out September of last year, it came my way through a review in Decibel Magazine last month. The album builds up slowly in the first 3 minutes before jumping into some very great, angry, sludge riffs. The vocals kick-in with the most excellent larynx shredding intensity. From there the album continues to sort of repeat this process of having a brooding beginning, cranking it in the middle, and then relaxing in the end. Not that this isn't great, it's actually fantastic. The band builds a tense , tight atmosphere that makes one feel they're about to go off a cliff at any second. Just when you think you'll go over, the band yanks you back for a couple of minutes before thrusting you out over the edge again. This band definitely has a rhythm down that works for them, though they should be careful of repeating themselves. Alkahest has a lot more in them and I look forward to their future releases. 4.5/5 stars

-Sean  

Kicking it off gory.

Hey there, I'm Sean. I started Nation of Grind about a year ago in the summer in between high school and college. I've gone through a couple of blogs now (a defunct tumblr and weebly) but I think I'm ready to make this my permanent address (get it because I now reside here and it's also a web address...heh internet jokes). Anyway this is going to be a main hub for news and videos that I make and find across the web as well as album reviews, as well as the possibility for a bitchy rant here and there which I'll keep to a minimum. I host a weekly radio show at my college called The Pit, you can listen to it on http://www.walf.fm, just click the mic on the upper right hand corner and follow the links.

To get things off right, I've made a reaction video to Cattle Decapitations wicked new music video for "Forced Gender Reassignment." Check it out. 

Thanks and I look forward to making this a successful blog.