Album of the Month - December 2023: Merciless Law - Grimoire for the Ultimate Sinner

AOTM Dec 2023: Merciless Law - Grimoire for the Ultimate Sinner

Album of the month for December 2023 goes to Merciless Law for their EP Grimoire for the Ultimate Sinner. Merciless Law is a Chilean one man project from a man called Pancho Ireland, he sings, plays the guitar and bass. Everything but the drums that are handled by Cederick Forsberg (Rocka Rollas & Blazon Stone).

December might have been a slow month for us metal fans due to christmas and all but Merciless Law released a four track EP that is worth investigating if you haven't heard it. They play heavy / power metal with great clean vocals and with some impressive guitar play that brings my mind to Iron Maiden.

You can find the album at HRR: MERCILESS LAW -- Grimoire for the Ultimate Sinner

or listen to it on Spotify: 

Album of the Month - November 2023: Destructor - Blood, Bone and Fire

AOTM Nov 2023: Destructor - Blood, Bone and Fire

Album of the month for November 2023 goes to Destructor and their fifth full-length titled Blood, Bone and Fire. For those who don't know Destructor is an American metal band from Ohio. They released their debut album Maximum Destruction in 1985. That album is generally considered to be an underground classic but when their bassist Dave Iannicca was murdered the band went away and in around the year 2000 they returned and put out a couple of solid records.

But death struck again in 2018 when the bands original guitarist Pat Rabid died due to diabetes complications. It was unclear wheter we would hear from the band again but here we are in 2023 with a brand new Destructor album. 

Blood, Bone and Fire is as I said their fifth and it's in the typical Destructor style. That US Power metal sound with a splash of speed and thrash metal madness. It's a classic sounding album in the American USPM tradition with great musicianship across the board. It won't disappoint you. 

You can order the album through: Shadow Kingdom Records

Or give it a listen on Spotify:

Album of the Month - October 2023: Heavy Load - Riders of the Ancient Storm

AOTM Oct 2023: Heavy Load - Riders of the Ancient Storm

I've decided to put a little more work into the Patreon page by shedding some light on a new album every month. After some time I will post these album of the month texts up on this website as well. I will name an album, not necessarily the best album of the month but an album that I think is cool or worthy of our attention. So to kick this album of the month thing off I decided to start with the comeback album of Heavy Load, A Swedish heavy metal band that were active from the mid 70's up until the mid 80's. They had a very epic sound and they are generally considered as pioneers of the Swedish heavy metal scene, not only for their viking themes but also for being the first actual heavy metal band from Sweden.

For me Heavy Load is one of the greatest bands of all time and when they return after 40 long years, my hype for the album was through the roof. The single 'Ride the Night' was a track that made it impossible for me to understand how 40 years have passed, when it felt like it has been five minutes when their classic sound didn't feel impacted by the passage of time. Maybe the album didn't fully live up to my hype, the production might not be perfect and there are a little bit too much keyboards on certain songs but that doesn't matter that much to me, when your heroes return and they do it so well. You just got to take a bow to the Walhalla Warriors.

I salute the heavy metal gods by naming Riders of the Ancient Storm the album of the month. Check out the music video for Ride the Night or go and listen to their full album through the Spotify link. Or why not go and order the album straight away through No Remorse Records.
Ride the Night - Music Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxH-628cHsU No Remorse Records:
https://www.noremorse.gr/products?searching=heavy+load

Metal genre chart.

METAL GENRE CHART

 I made a metal genre chart because why not? 

I have seen a few of these online but I felt like a lot of them were a bit weird to say the least so I made my own. So I hope you like it. I obviously couldn't fit every little rock genre on the chart but I think it turned out pretty good. 

Cheers!

> > > Metal Chart Download Link < < < 

Rest in Peace Gord Kirchin of Piledriver.

 

REST IN PEACE GORD KIRCHIN OF PILEDRIVER. 

Legendary frontman Gord Kirchin has passed away. He was the vocalist of Canadian Speed/Thrash Metal band Piledriver. They released their debut album Metal Inquisition in 1984 and the sophomore studio record Stay Ugly came out two years later in 1986. If you haven't heard Piledriver, They were a pioneering metal band on the Canadian scene with their cool speed metal with absolutely over the top lyrics and image. Gord Kirchin was the bands vocalist and he was also known as 'Pile Driver'. The band also underwent several stages and lineup changes, in the 90's they were known as Dogs With Jobs and in more recent years as 'The Exalted Piledriver'.

I discovered Piledriver quite early on my personal metal journey. Probably through the internet or hearsay somehow some 20 years ago. I don't remember exactly when but I laid my hands on their debut album Metal Inquisition and I just loved it from the start. It was such a catchy album. It had a speed or heavy metal vibe to it and I just loved the album so much. The over the top antics, I mean a song like Sex With Satan. Who writes a song like that? Or title-track Metal Inquisition. It's a metal anthem for the ages. However, The band could easily have been brushed off as just some type of comedic act with such over the top songs but their songs were so well crafted, heavy with lots of cool riffs and memorable choruses. Which really made their music stand out from most other Canadian bands with thrash aspirations. For me Piledriver absolutely should be up there with your Voivod, Thor, Razor, Annihilator and Sacrifice. Remembered as one of the standout acts on the Canadian metal scene.

The look was also quite insane as you can see on the image above, with all the leather and spikes and that studded leather helmet is just beyond metal. It surely takes a lots of guts for an aging and slightly overweight man to put on an outfit like that and just go out on the stage and deliver a show like there's no tomorrow. What's more metal than that? Nothing I would say. 

I definitely respect and sheer Gord Kirchins contributions to metal and I hope that everyone reading this also shares my view of his work which has been nothing but remarkable but yet so often overlooked. For me Gord Kirchin was a true metal legend and he will be missed.

Lately he battled cancer and just a few weeks ago it looked like Gord was in recovery but things took turn for the worse.

So fuck cancer and Rest In Peace Gord Kirchin.

1961-2022

PILEDRIVER Frontman GORD KIRCHIN Dead At 60 - BLABBERMOUTH.NET

RUTHLESS METAL QUIZ

Test your metal knowledge in the Ruthless Metal Quizzes. 

I've made 10 quizzes with 20 questions each. You'll get 10 minutes to answer all 20 questions and each question has four alternative answers to choose from. 

And remember folks, Google is cheating. ;) 

Test your metal knowledge here:

Ruthless Metal Quizzes

THE METAL CRYPT INTERVIEW

Recently I did an interview with The Metal Crypt. They sent me some questions so for once I'm answering questions instead of asking them. So here is the full interview. Enjoy!

Tell me a little about yourself. How did you first get into Metal, and how much would you say it has impacted your life?

My name is Jim and I run the YouTube Channel Ruthless Metal. Which is a heavy metal channel with around 50.000 subscribers. I've been promoting metal in various forms for almost 25 years now. I got into metal and hardrock as a kid. I remember seeing Metallica's One being played on MTV when I was about 10 years old and after that I became a Metallica fan and after buying all of their albums I got into Megadeth because of the Metallica ties and then I discovered that the sound that I liked so much was called 'thrash metal'.

So I started buying albums from bands that were labelled as thrash, Exodus, Testament, Kreator, Slayer and so on. This was in the mid to late 90's so there wasn't really any information to be found on this genre that besides perhaps in old magazines. There was no the metal archives, facebook or even youtube. Just a few sites that talked about metal in general. While my focus was more on thrash metal than anything else.

I loved the genre and I wanted to spread the word because I found the music so amazing, yet almost nobody knew about the genre besides perhaps the big four. So I started the first ever thrash metal site in 1998. Over the years I have interviewed 100+ thrash metal bands and written about 500 album reviews and I've written countless articles on the subject. So I've dedicated a lot of my life to the thrash genre.

In 2021 I started making metal content on YouTube but for some twenty plus years I have been promoting it in text.

I understand you initially started a website called Ruuth’s Inn back in 1998 that focused predominantly on Thrash Metal until it turned into a Facebook group. What’s the exact timeline for its run?

Yes, I uploaded the site to the internet in 1998 and I started writing album reviews and I did my very first interview in 2001 with the Swedish band The Haunted. Over the years I have interviewed bands such as Megadeth, Testament, Overkill, Sodom and a lot of other known bands. I also started a site in 2005 calles Swedish Metal From The Past, which focused on early 80's metal from Sweden and bands like Heavy Load, Gotham City, 220 Volt and such. 

Around 2010 I kinda grew tired of the site and I had to pay to keep 'em online so all my sites were down for a few years. 

In 2014 I put my sites online again. Fast forward to 2021. As a hobby project I started creating a documentary on Swedish Heavy Metal from the eighties. This era is one of my favourites, not only because I'm a Swede but I really think Sweden had one of the best metal scenes in the eighties but only a handful of bands were known outside the Swedish borders. I first thought of using Ruuth's Inn since it was a somewhat established name but I decided to go with Ruthless Metal because it made it easier to understand what the channel was about.

In March of 2021 I uploaded the Swedish Metal documentary to YouTube and since then the channel has grown far beyond my expectations and now some 14 months later the channel has over 50.000 subscribers. I just planned to do a video as a hobby project but it became viral so I decided to continue making videos since I saw that people had a hunger for some old school metal on YouTube. 

Back when the site was still active, were there other contributors involved, or just you? If there were, do they still contribute to your YouTube videos?

It was like 98 percent just me. I had a few guys that wrote a review or two but I built it myself more or less. Per-Ola who made the top 25 doom metal list actually wrote a handful of reviews for my old site some 20 years ago. He is a former Sweden Rock Magazine journalist and he wrote the official Candlemass biography 'Behind the wall of doom' so he knows the doom metal genre better than anyone I've ever met.

So he contributed with that list, but so far I haven't  done much collaborations, besides a few interviews in my 'New Wave of Metal' documentary about the NWOTHM (New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal) movement. 

What would you say is your most fond memory of the old website?

Mostly I'm proud over the work that I did. Back then in the 90's nobody cared for thrash and people were unaware about just about every thrash band outsite the big four. My site didn't change that but perhaps we had a small, small part in making people aware of the thrash genre.  

In 1998 it was like winning the jackpot to find another human being that even knew what thrash metal was. I was in contact with about 10 people worldwide that were fans of thrash and heavy metal so fans like that was real hard to come by.

I doubt that there even was more than 10 thrash metal fans in Sweden in the late 90's. Now there are probably thousands of thrash metal maniacs out there. Which is a cool development.

What first inspired you to start the Ruthless Metal channel?

I ran a gaming channel 'JimRuthless' for about 2 years but I didn't get any views so I was growing tired of it and I decided to try to do a documentary on Swedish metal as I said earlier. That video took off so I decided to continue down that path instead. Plus I thought I had enough knowledge about metal to do a good job at it and when people are interested in the content that you make it was a no brainer to continue on.

It appears your first big hit was with the first part of the History of Swedish Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. Did you ever expect it to perform as well as it did?

No, my gaming videos rarely got over 10.000 views and gaming is probably more popular than 80's metal from Sweden so you just can't expect that. I had been doing YouTube for two years and I had more or less no success so when a video then goes viral with all the sudden then it's more or a surprise than anything else. 

Several of my first videos got 100.000 views so my channel got monetized within a week. A task that some channels struggle with after doing YouTube for years. So I just went all in on making videos after that. 

Currently, your best performing video is “Masters of Plagiarism” at nearly 700k views. What do you think has made this your most popular work so far?

I had to double check, damn we're nearly at 700k on that one, Last time I checked was at half a million so it is still a popular video. There are a few reasions I would say, 

1. Metallica is huge and more or less all metal fans are into them or at least know about them.

2. The title 'Masters of Plagiarism' is kinda cheeky so it peaks people's curiosity.

I think those two were the main reasons and of course you need to be able to keep the viewer interested in watching the actual video by doing some smooth editing and delivering on what the thumbnail implies. 

I also made a follow up video called Ride the Plagiarism so those videos kinda work in tandem and drives views between them. I did however use copyrighted audio so I personally don't make any cash from these videos but if it makes someone check out more of my work then it's a win for me as well.

Maybe I'll make a third video about it called 'Plagiarize 'Em All' some day, we'll see or even a 'Justice' For Metallica. Time will tell.

What is the typical process of deciding what video to make, and how does the creative process for it usually go?

I wrote down about 100 video ideas back when I started the channel. You have to get organized when you do YouTube and plan ahead and create things that you can use in several videos, streamline things like intros, outros, music, backgrounds and graphics. To shave off a few hours in the creative process. Plus it's just me making this videos and since there are thousands upon thousands metal bands out there it's impossible for me to know everything about every band out there, even though some people think of me as some sort of expert.

I might have heard like one percent of all the metal bands out there, so we're all fumbling a bit in the dark when it comes to a genre that has been going strong for some fifty years with thousands of metal records being released yearly. 

So I talk about the bands that I know well and if I haven't listened to some of their more recent albums I take a month or so spinning those albums before I do a Rank 'Em All video. So the ideas are easy to come up with, what's hard is to give it a fair assessment. But on the other hand I don't try to hide the fact that I think that metal had it's peak during the 80's. But I guess most of my viewers have noticed that I rather do videos on Priest and Slayer more so than whatever is popular these days. But I also think that is a bit of my role on YouTube, guiding people away from the Slipknot's and the Marilyn Manson and the metalcore bullshit and into the bands that play metal by the old definition. Wheter it's heavy, speed, power, black, death, thrash or progressive metal. 

Which videos are you most and least proud of respectively?

The New Wave of Metal is probably the video I'm most proud over since I worked on that videos for several months. That video is by far the one I've spent the most time on and I think it turned out great. Least proud over is when I make editing mistakes. Since I copy the layover effects between videos I forgot to change some things. Like in that Metallica master of plagiarism video it says that the Rush song Tom Sawyer was released in 76 or something when it came out in 1981. I've probably recieved a hundred messages about that alone. haha

So mistakes will be made and you can't change them after you've uploaded the video. That's what annoys me the most is when a factual error slips through and now it will be there until the end of time. 

How would you say the underground as a whole changed over the course of your career/interest in Metal?

It's like day and night. The majority of people thought of bands like Nirvana, Pantera, Machine Head, Linkin Park, Korn and such as the next natural step in the progression of heavy music. All those became absolutely huge but I think something got lost in the 90's. I always thought so even through the NU metal phase when everybody jumped ship and started to get into that. 

But towards the early 2000's we saw a lot of classic bands reuniting, Ozzy returning to Sabbath, Halford to Priest and Dickinson to Maiden. Plus a lot of fans had missed the days when metal singers wasn't just screaming into the mic.

I also think the internet saved metal in some sense. Now the information is out there and available for anyone so we're no longer fighting for our existance because these days the scene is almost getting over-saturated again. 

How would you describe your relationship with the community you’ve built around the channel? Is it an active relationship, or do you try to keep it at arm’s length?

I answer 99% of all comments I get with the goal to answer every comment. But since I got like 4000 comments on my latest Metallica video. Then it's not possible for me to start discussions with everyone but I'll try to at least say 'Cheers' to those who comment. Sometimes I interact a bit more if the comment intrigues me. I think it's fun interacting with people and I also feel that it's my responsability as a YouTuber.

I try to answer the criticism too but when people starts their message with calling me an idiot or something like that then there isn't a conversation to be had. You wouldn't go up to someone and call them a moron or an idiot to their face and expect a courteous reply.

So when people do that in my comment section I send them back to poserwire, excuse me Loudwire and then I ban them. But most people don't act like morons online which is a bit of a relief. haha

What lies in store for Ruthless Metal in the future?

I don't know. I've decided to continue making videos over this summer. After that we'll see. Having a YouTube channel eats up all my spare time and I don't make enough money to live off my work. So it is a hobby for me and it takes up a little too much time for it to be part of a healthy lifestyle. So I might take a break after that or slow down the production of my videos. Unless people start joining my patreon in droves. haha.

I haven't had enough time for friends and my other interests lately so I need some time catching up on that too. But right now I'll take it day for day and we'll see how motivated I feel about it all in the autumn. No matter what, all the video content

will remain online so all the content ain't going nowhere even if I might start doing something else.

Thanks for taking the time to talk. Do you have any parting thoughts?

Thanks for the interview, check out the Ruthless Metal channel on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/ruthlessmetalYT

and the Ruthless Metal site at:

https://ruthlessmetal.blogspot.com

To quote Grim Reaper, See you in hell my friend! ;)

Cheers!

/Ruthless

Ruthless Metal Interview - The Metal Crypt