40oz

Before I start this blog, I just want you guys who are reading this to know that I'm partially writing this for myself, so that I can express in words my interest in this particular genre of music that I can't seem to find anyone IRL who listen to the same stuff as me. Or even in the Doom community really..

The first couple bands I was really interested in and started to know by name were some punk bands and pop-punk bands. I started to like a lot of music that was selected for the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series and so did my friends. We started listening to Dead Kennedy's, NoFX, Less than Jake, Anti-Flag, the Casualties, and some others. My favorite part of most of these bands is that their music had a kind of message that I could relate too, usually about politics or crazy douchebags. It was kind of the first time I was introduced to music that wasn't made purely for the fame and entertainment value, but because it was a message that they wanted to deliver.

I listened to a ton of different punk bands in my late middle school and early high school years, and being introduced to other genres of music such as Hardcore, crust, straight edge, Oi!, and a few others. I became more partial to Hardcore and Crust because the music was heavier and deeper and the lyrics/vox sounded much more fierce than whiny like some pop-punk bands and anarcho-punk tend to sound like.

After being introduced to Last.fm, I was able to find out about a ton of other bands I really started to like, and by using the "similar artists" slider I was able to listen to samples from each band and pinpoint what kind of music I really like. I kinda delved into heavier and heavier stuff and really fast stuff, which lead me to listen to Grindcore, D-Beat and Powerviolence on a regular basis. A lot of my more recent friends can't seem to relate to my taste in music and they usually ask me things like "How can you listen to this shit?" and "Are you familiar with any 'NORMAL' music?" to which I usually don't have a straight answer for.

The thing is, recently, I've been able to connect my music interests to my general personality. When I drink things like coffee or alcohol, I usually don't mix soda in my vodka or cream in my coffee or anything, I just drink it straight. Not that I think it tastes better that way, but because I like things in their purest form. When I play games or Doom wads, I usually play the games on the hardest skill first. I feel as though choosing the hard difficulty in games provides the player with the best possible experience, while choosing the lesser difficulties means that the game has been dumbed down for lesser skilled players. I found that the games I enjoy most are the games that are most difficult but not to the point where the game stops relying on human error to negatively affect the player. The way I see it, when I'm listening to grindcore, there's no intros or suspenseful buildup or progressive tone like most other genres of music. It doesn't pussyfoot around, it just cuts right to the hard parts. Doom is the same way. There's no intro or suspense. By hitting new game, you get a gun and there are monsters in front of you in the first level. It cuts right to the chase. No storyline, no suspense, just raw demon-slaying. I wouldn't enjoy Doom half as much if you were introduced to the game by wandering around without a weapon, getting directions on where to go, picking up on the storyline as you move along, and then getting to the parts where you actually get a gun and do something fun and heroic (like Doom 3 did), Those things are unnecessary to me. I just want to get right into the parts I give a shit about, and in grindcore, it does exactly that.