Corey_Lazarus

They are a fine band. I agree with that (I think every post but the pro-Green Jelly/anti-Tool influenced bands one I've made in this thread have said that I like Tool). I just think that the majority of their fanbase needs to shut the fuck up and either LEARN stuff about music or stop getting high and try to listen to the music. Everything sounds better stoned. That's why Phish has a fanbase.

MC Lars deserves more attention, if only for how dumb and true "Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock" and "Generic Crunk Rap" are.

I'm with Y2Jerk in saying that ROTK felt more like a chore to watch after how good The Two Towers was. I'm not a LOTR fan by any means (just ask Slayer: I hate that fantasy bullshit), but I loved how well the characters were evolved in Two Towers. In ROTK...it's almost as if they were just there as two-dimensional beings with a common purpose. Boring.

Shadows Fall doing RVD's theme isn't much of a surprise. Seems like they'd fit perfectly, especially since I believe Brian Fair is a big advocate for the legalization of marijuana (that and massive amounts of liquor).

Please tell me some of these bands, because the only ones I can think of are Chevelle (their debut album, which sounded like a bunch of bad Tool covers) and local band Broken (who are fucking terrible). IMO, the best thing Maynard's ever been attached to musically has been Green Jelly.

Ask him how he can prove that the Jews are wicked.

Keep the mask on Abyss, or maybe change the mask slightly. I think ripping off Slipknot's lead guitarist, Mick, wouldn't be too bad an idea. Or maybe one of the members of Mushroomhead. Make the mask something that LOOKS scary itself.

Post-97 Gwar seems to be much more political. There are still some shining moments of hilarity (like all of We Kill Everything and a few songs here and there off Violence Has Arrived), but the last album was pretty much all political and social humor in Dave Brockie's ever-loveable sardonic tone.

HEAVY FUCKING SPOILERS AHEAD, SO SKIP THIS ENTIRE POST IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ALL OF THESE MOVIES. I'll explain why horror fans go "apeshit" over the Evil Dead trilogy and Romero's work...so this may take a fucking while to read if you even care. EVIL DEAD TRILOGY The Evil Dead: Based off of a short film Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell made called The Watcher in the Woods (IIRC, the actual title may be slightly different), the film was an ultra low-budget Super-8 (meaning that it was shot entirely on a store-bought 8mm camera) horror yarn. Despite the lame special effects, oftentimes laughably bad acting (though the actress who portrayed Sheryl, Ash's sister, actually did a pretty solid job; ditto the actress who played Ash's girlfriend), and overall poor quality of the movie, there was something that shined through in it lacking in most horror movies since the era of Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney: heart. Everybody on the cast and crew believed in what they were doing and were dedicated to making as good a movie as they could, and it showed. The atmosphere created by the time the first attack (the infamous tree rape scene, which itself is a piece of classic 70's exploitation horror where the motto was "the more outlandishly graphic and gorey, the better," or at least it seemed to be) happens is remarkable. I watched this film with a few friends that were also into the series and indie horror in general and a room full of girls who had sat through every Jason flick, every Freddy flick, and every slasher film easily accessible without flinching, and they JUMPED when Ash fell down the basement steps before he and Scott even found the Necronomicon. THAT is atmosphere, my friend, and THAT is what true horror films are all about. Let's not forget that it featured the introduction of a few newer camera techniques, most noticeably the "force cam" (I forget the actual name given to it, but when the images on screen are what the demonic force in the woods actually sees), and was as ingenius in its direction and special effects as it was low in budget. The first movie is looked at more as a landmark in making a movie on a small budget than it is an actually quality movie, but it's truly my favorite of the three for being (oddly enough) the least cheesy. Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn: Many horror movies before it had added elements of comedy to themselves. Every group of teenagers in your run-of-the-mill slasher flick has that wisecracking best buddy who you just KNOW is gonna die because he's the one you like the most of the bunch. This movie didn't have that. It had cartoonish ultraviolence, actors that played their roles STRAIGHT and didn't wink at the camera or do tongue-in-cheek actions, and was made on just a marginally larger budget than the original was. The special effects, again, are so quality for the lack of funds that much of the props actually appear as though they're real. The cast, once again, BELIEVED in the film, and Sam Raimi did as well. That's why Raimi has directed two of the highest grossing summer blockbusters, both Spider-Man movies, and made them surprisingly good movies in the process: he gets behind everything he works on 100%. His love for his work shines through, and it shined through better in Evil Dead II than in any of the other two films in the series. And something happened, too: Bruce Campbell actually became a decent actor. Whereas he was laughably bad for the majority of The Evil Dead, he was perfect in the role of the reluctant hero that's losing his mind in Evil Dead II. Of course, some of what he does is tongue-in-cheek (most notably the first 10 minutes of the movie, a summary of sorts of the first film since they couldn't obtain the rights to use its footage from the studio that distributed it), but most of it he plays straight. Ash the prettyboy pansy is dead and arises Ash the wise-cracking asskicker. To put it in wrestling terms, Ash went from Mikey Whipwreck - that loveable loser who just can't get a break - to Steve Austin - the man who had enough and decided to start kicking some ass - in this part. One of Roger Ebert's favorite horror movies ever, and if you still can't see the appeal, I'm not even going to bother explaining it anymore. Army of Darkness: Okay, this one's the worst of the three. Had the highest budget, but whereas The Evil Dead was funny for its poor quality of special effects and lame acting, and Evil Dead II was funny because of how oddball the events happening to Ash were while he was acting serious, this one just threw caution to the wind and had every character comedic in some way, shape, or form. Has the lamest special effects of the three (odd, considering it had the biggest budget), but is also the most easily accessible for a number of reasons. 1) It plays like your typical action yarn. 2) Bruce Campbell's Ash is its most entertaining in this entry, as Ash becoems the 100% focal point rather than the events going on around him. 3) The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II are recapped at the beginning of the movie for those seeing Army as their entry into the series. This one is pure b-movie fun. Plus, it had a very good original score (the "March of the Dead" is such a great song it isn't even funny) and some action scenes that would rival the best Hollywood had to offer at the time (the fight between Evil Ash and Ash towards the end, for example, was a good use of blue-screen and stop-motion animation that would be unheard of today). ROMERO'S DEAD SERIES Night of the Living Dead: Extremely violent and graphic for its time (most horror flicks didn't feature the monsters ripping entrails out of their victims like this did), Night was one of the few horror movies that wasn't a downright "psychological" horror (like Rosemary's Baby) worth watching in the 60's. It scared an entire generation of drive-in theater go'ers, and brought the new defintion of the zombie - no longer the work of a voodoo priest but rather a flesh-craving corpse that can't be stopped - to the forefront. Plus, it had a good message to it about racism (Cooper not wanting to listen to Ben because he's black, when Ben was the one being the most rational...despite Harry having been the right one in the end about the basement, that is; that and all of the redneck hunters shooting first and asking questions later) and how man's ultimate fall will not be because of some new monstrous threat from beyond but rather petty squabbles among itself. Dawn of the Dead: This one just beats you over the head with its point. The longest zombie movie I can think of, its themes of consumerism and greed are abundant. The downfall of the main characters at the end - during their battle with the raiders (and the death of most of the raiders themselves) - is their greed. The zombies shuffle to the mall because it was something "important to them in life" (a satire on mass consumerism) and the humans kill each other just to obtain some small slice of the pie when the bigger threat is at hand. Plus, at its time, it was the most graphic horror movie made. People were ripped apart on a constant basis, heads were being blown apart (both human and zombie), and chunks of flesh and miles of entrails were torn from victims without the camera leaving much to the imagination. Day of the Dead: Romero's weakest of his Dead series (though this was due to the studio not giving him the budget he needed), the entire concept of the movie was, once again, man's inability to deal with the problem at hand (the living dead overrunning all recognized forms of government) due to bickering over petty differences. But the major theme of this one, despite the running theme in all of his zombie movies that I just mentioned, was the distrust of the military. I believe Romero finished the script just after the full removal of US forces from Vietnam, a war that we failed, and the public distrusted anything and everything military at the time due to how polarizing 'Nam was. The public viewed the military as grunts and savages, doing what they wanted through physical force and little else, and that is how the soldiers in the movie were depicted (quite wonderfully, might I add, especially Sgt. Steel, who is a cult icon in zombie lore). In the end, the military's overbearing attitude and the scientists' hatred of them let the undead into the secure base, causing the deaths of each military personnel as the three remaining scientists flee. Romero's nice little way of saying "military dictatorship only gets you so far when the problems aren't deal with." Land of the Dead: Probably the most downright entertaining of his Dead series, mostly due to acting of Leguizamo and Hopper (both of whom, I believe, requested to have parts in it upon hearing about Romero making another zombie movie), Land takes place in the present-day (well, if the zombies started taking over in 1968 like Night showed). Mankind survives by having the poor do all of the dirty work (ie. the working class) and go out into neighboring towns by leaving their fortress-like stronghold run by a corrupt dictator (Hopper, who Romero based off of George W primarily, but also off of the wealthy elite in general) in vehicles that are little more than armored/armed versions of cars found today. When Cholo (Leguizamo) saves up enough money to leave the raiders and join the wealthy elite, Hopper's character denies it and tries to have him killed (either due to outright racism or his belief that the poor should remain poor; again, a shot at the wealthy elite). So he takes matters into his own hands, commandeers the primary line of defense for the raiders (Dead Reckoning, a tank-like vehicle with enough firepower to level a city block), and threatens to destroy Fiddler's Green (the section of the city cornered off from the living dead by fences and military guards and whatnot where the "government" is located). So Hopper's character (agh, I forget the name off the top of my head) sends out the man who trained Cholo to try to kill him, but the man who trained Cholo wanted out of the whole ordeal anyway, so it's all one big moral tale about how those in power don't want those they govern to gain any sort of ground. And, of course, the zombies. They're evolving, getting smarter and remembering more about things they did when alive. One, Big Daddy (as his nametag says on his mechanics jumpsuit), leads the rest to Fiddler's Green to destroy those that have been massacring the living dead just to get some food. The zombies in this one represent the Middle East, actually, in that they were subhuman scum before but got smarter as civilization raided their areas for things that mankind really doesn't need (the majority of what the raiders took in were bottles of booze and wealthy little trinkets that aren't actually needed to survive). If you rent the DVD and listen to Romero's commentary it explains it much better than I can, but this one actually has the most interesting political metaphors in it due to the situations being similar to current events. So yeah. Romero's movies are landmarks for not only taking horror movie gore and special effects one step further, but also for being political and social metaphors which is something horror rarely is.

Please, don't remind me. I remember seeing that on the news and going "well, that's the difference between a dumbass juggalo and a dumbass hardcore kid: a dumbass hardcore kid will beat you to death with his bare hands and a hammer for fucking with his friends and/or family, but a dumbass juggalo will actually TRY TO USE A FUCKING HATCHET to kill you for liking it in the pooter." I've yet to meet a single juggalo - not ONE - who could not only back up the shit they said in a one-on-one confrontation, but could also have a logical debate. J and Shaggy really need to make it known to their fans that they're a fucking gimmick. You don't hear about Gwar fans drinking a fifth of Jager and running a van full of retards off the road just for fun, but you will hear about a juggalo trying to kill people with a hatchet. It makes me fucking sick sometimes to know that there are such idiots in the world.

Because the gist of your reply that I quoted was that, and I quote, "Tool...is filled to the brim with at the very least talent." The ellipsis was for a comma and a space, just so you don't think I'm overlooking some much needed part of your post. My point was that Tool fans generally hype up the abilities of Adam, Danny, and Justin to the point where you would think they equate Adam with Steve Vai or Jimmy Page, and Justin with Les Claypool or John Myung. Adam and Justin are responsible for the actual feel of the music while Danny - the only truly musically talented member of the band - is responsible for the timing and rhythm of the song. And Adam and Justin are about on the same level as your average underground Japanese thrash band in that they're simplistic players that can play in odd timing. It annoys me that people - a lot of which consider themselves "rock experts" (note: I'm not saying you yourself claimed to be one, I'm talking about the majority of Tool fans I've met) - say they're these incredible musicians when, really, they're no better than half of the bands I listen to (and remember, I'm the "thrash/hardcore" kid of the TSM metalheads, the styles of heavy music that take the least bit of musical talent to play...besides nu-metal and emo, which are jokes in and of themselves, but that's another thread). That's what got me into the tirade about Maynard's lyrics and how he just seems to pick the largest word out of the thesaurus, but hey. I do like Tool, I might see them when they come to the Orpheum in Boston on May 21st, but that depends on who they have as supporting acts. I would be immensely bored if I were to see Tool live (much like how I get incredibly fucking bored when I see Opeth live, but they always seem to have a band I really like touring with them so I always get stuck seeing them).

Yeah, pretty much. It was King's story about teenage rebellion, pretty much. Think about it: the mother is a strict cunt, the other kids are complete asses to her (save for maybe one or two), and then...REVENGE. It's a wonder little goth and emo faggots don't run around wearing Carrie shirts. Oh, wait, no it's not, considering the only horror movies they know about are Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

The different attitude towards Raven is that he wasn't on top of a DYING company and FORCED down our throats. When he was on top of ECW it was growing and prospering, and he was pushed to the top because he was that over. When he was an upper-midcarder in WCW it was during WCW's most successful times (early '98, just before people caught on that the WWF had the better overall show). He was never given much of a chance to catch on in the WWF/WWE outside of a "hardcore" match here or there and commentary during Heat. So, Jarrett's been given multiple opportunities to become a legitimate main eventer and has failed constantly at it, whereas Raven has made himself watchable consistently throughout his career. That's why there's the different attitude towards Raven than Jarrett.

Jarrett's most entertaining runs following his jump to WCW in 1999 were as an upper-midcard heel in The Magnificent Seven in December '00 to March '01, and from TNA's inception through the first Jarrett/Styles encounter (so June '02 to February '03). That's a grand total of one year in the last six and a half. So, of the last 78 months, Jarrett has been entertaining (ie. worth his position) for 12 of them. That's 15.3%. Basically, since he hasn't been worth his position on the card for the rest of that time, he's NOT a true main eventer. At least HHH had a year-long string of showstealing matches, as well as a general ring presence that made people want to watch him. Jarrett...has never had any of that. TNA's big problem has already been touched upon by Coffey: they make themselves look bush league by not having any compelling angles. ECW had less of a budget than TNA does, no corporate backing, and no spot in Universal studios. They were losing money just as fast as they were making it due to necessary expansion and poor TV deals. But outside of the violence they made their mark on wrestling history by having some of THE most emotionally compelling feuds and stories in the last decade. Raven/Dreamer. Raven/Sandman. Foley/Dreamer. Funk's quest for the World title. Taz/Sabu. All of these feuds were so damn engrossing that anybody watching was glued to their seat in anticipation. It's what made the WWF the #1 company again in late '98, and brought them to their most financially successful year to date (2000). TNA: give us a reason to give a shit about anybody other than Sting or Jeff Jarrett. PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER ALREADY on Monty Brown's dissention within the ranks of Team Jarrett. Make me remember that Christian is the NWA World champion. They had a great feud in SEX/TNA that was based intially off of Russo/Jarrett but grew into something involving the bulk of the roster right before it was abruptly ended. GO BACK TO THAT FORMULA. Give everybody on the roster a reason to be doing what they're doing. Why is Matt Bentley such a prick? Why is Abyss so violent and brutal yet terrified of barbed wire (I know this was actually explained somewhat during the Abyss/Sabu series)? Why does Samoa Joe not care about the "unwritten code of respect" among the X-Division workers? What's with Sonjay Dutt dancing all the time? Why do Elix Skipper and David Young continue to follow orders from Simon Diamond if they've yet to win any noteable match? Why hasn't Raven utterly destroyed Larry Zbysko yet? What the FUCK happened to that guy's head? Answer some basic questions, give everybody a decently in-depth persona. I'm not saying round each and every character out to be some epic hero or villain, but at least give a reason for the matches going on. They do it every now and then by saying "this match's winner will advance in the X-Division rankings," but why not actually DISPLAY the X-Division rankings? Treat the X-Division as if it were something of a real sport where wins/losses are everything (which would explain why Joe, Daniels, and Styles are always near the title). Take singles wrestlers who aren't doing much and put them into tag teams to build a stronger tag team division. Push the teams that are established (AMW, Team 3D, THE NATURALS, Team Canada) as more than just puppets of Jeff Jarrett and whoever he's feuding with at the time. And give me one good fucking reason why Rhino hasn't destroyed everybody around him since it's already been proven thanks to Bound For Glory that he can.

Yeah. He's barely 6', I think. Only wrestler I've ever met was Mikey Whipwreck when I was down in Florida with my folks and my buddy Jason. I guess ECW were doing shows down there (October 2000), and I saw a guy wearing an ECW shirt walking by. Was about to just tap the guy on the shoulder and go "EC-F'N-W," but then I saw he had his folks (I'm guessing, since they were much older than he was) and a little girl (somewhere between the ages of 9 and 11). I look up to the guy's face, and see it's Mikey. I just stared in shock as he walks by (we were all in line for the Muppet 4D thing), going "that's...that's Mikey..." until my dad and Jason looked at me and shook me to snap me out of it. Was pretty cool as the three of us forced our way back in the line to find him, then I asked if me and Jason could get our picture taken with him and he was like "yeah, man." I still have that picture framed above my living room TV, and his folks were smiling incredibly wide. I need to crop and scan the picture so I can upload it somewhere. I love that pic.

I bet Rant's mad that he has AIDS.

That's pretty darn rootin-tootin funny.

I'm currently reading The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, and after that I'll be reading through Make Your Own Damn Movie by Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman's first "instructional" book, All I Needed To Learn About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger, was pretty damn solid. Talked a lot about his personal life, namely his complete adoration of his two daughters and his wife, and how much independent cinema means to him. Talks about the hardships of making independent movies and distributing them, especially gore and smut-laden pieces like his, and how if you make likeable characters the movie itself could be a piece of shit but you'll have a fanbase. He also went into detail about creating The Toxic Avenger with Michael Herz (originally entitled Health Club Hell or something very similar) and how it was meant to be a straight-up horror movie touching on nuclear waste and society's constant emphasis on personal fitness, but then how the idea came to make the monster (Toxie) the hero rather than the villain. Pretty good read. Last pure novel I finished, outside of Tietam Brown (yeah, fuck you Edwin, I dug it because of how Foley made both Browns likeable, even loveable to a point, but with extremely dark sides), was probably American Psycho. Not Ellis' best, though it is his most well-known, but I'd have to say his best would be either The Rules of Attraction (which is something that I have a feeling a lot of people could relate to, at least to certain aspects) or Glamorama. Haven't caught his new one yet, or The Informers, but I read some of Less Than Zero and wasn't too impressed.

You know...I'm actually going to have to agree with Carnival here. I don't care who you are, "Pass Me By" is a good song lyrically and musically. J and Shaggy have a knack (mostly J I'm guessing, since he "raps" over most of their songs) for writing mildly amusing graphic and violent lyrics that oftentimes carry an oddly positive message.

Plus half of it is one big metalcore breakdown. I realized that today. I just listened to it, and right after the "solo" (ie. tremolo picking of 4 notes) there's an Unearth-style breakdown...only the drums continue going steady instead of pausing. I find that sorta funny.

PURCHASED THURSDAY, 4/13 October 31 - No Survivors The cover art caught my eye as I was sifting through the O section at the North Attleboro Newbury Comics, looking for some Orchid albums (since I keep meaning to grab one but never seem to really want to until they're not in stock). Saw the cover had pirates and some carnage, and then I remembered about an interview with some band on Uranium about a metal/hardcore band that had a pirate gimmick, so I thought to myself that this might be it. Picked it up hoping it would be since my girlfriend nearly creamed her pants at the thought of a metal band singing about scurvy, buxom wenches, and booty, so I gave it a listen. Pretty good old-school speed metal in the vein of Baloff-era Exodus, but nothing groundbreaking. SuperCharger HELL - A Tribute To White Zombie As anybody who comes here knows, I practically worship the ground Rob Zombie walks on. I love his movies, I love his music, I want his wife...yeah. White Zombie's been one of my favorite bands since before my balls had hair, so I saw this and checked out what songs were covered. Mostly AstroCreep stuff with a few Sexorcisto tunes, and one or two songs that were either featured on soundtracks (like Scary German Guy's cover of "Feed The Gods," the original of which was on the Airheads soundtrack) or earlier White Zombie releases. Mostly industrial metal bands covering the tunes, which is fitting since White Zombie were industrial metal themselves, but these have a darker, more sinister edge to them. A few death metal covers, and one cover is really awkward: Catch 22 (yes, THAT Catch 22) covering "Thunderkiss '65." It's not as weird as you'd think, since they didn't turn it into a ska song, but rather just sorta played the riffs a little different. Actually one of the worse covers on the disc, and considering it had so much potential if it were actually a ska cover it's a small disappointment. The covers of "Feed The Gods," "Creature of the Wheel," and "Blood, Milk, And Sky" are my favorites, and the "More Human Than Human" cover and "Supercharger Heaven" cover are decent-at-best. Robby Roadsteamer - The Heart of the Rhino If you're from New England, you know of Robby Roadsteamer. He's a comedic singer, the majority of his stuff being off-the-wall whacky and misogynistic and overall prick-ish. His voice is raspy and deep in a forced way, and the man is just fucking weird. A pretty good rock n' roll album for what it's worth, but not as good as Okay, Computer (yeah, he re-recorded Radiohead's "classic" because he thought it sucked). The first track, "I Put A Baby In You," is his big "hit," and rightfully so...as it's the best song on the album. A good novelty purchase, but I have a feeling I'd be selling it if I had an iPod to download the songs onto. PURCHASED MONDAY, 4/17 The 69 Eyes - Devils After hearing one of their songs on FiendForce Record's This Is Horrorpunk 2, I saw this at Hot Topic and grabbed it without thinking. Eeeehhhhh...should've downloaded a few tracks first. Ultimately worthy of a purchase, but not at the $17 pricetag that it was. I was expecting something more fun and horrorpunk, like their song on This Is Horrorpunk 2 was, and instead got dark, almost HIM-meets-Type O Negative songs. Still good, but after a while I got bored. Doom punk? Does that make sense? That's what I'd call them. It's as if they took the gothic and overall darker elements of Shadow Reichenstein and the love themes of HIM and combined them into a sorta sappy sound. Decent to listen to, but the images of the band will throw you off if you're familiar at all with how horrorpunk bands dress (hint: it's almost identical to how they dress on the album cover, which is basically dressing like Jerry Only and Glenn Danzig).

The drumming is the only standout piece of the entire ensemble. Maynard does have a unique voice, but its pretty grating at times. Adam and Justin are fucking jokes on guitar and bass, respectively, in that the only thing they can really do is play in odd time signatures. Wow...so can a great portion of underground Japanese thrash bands. Most of them suck, too. Want to hear a band that plays in odd time signatures and DOES show that they can play some decently complex stuff while also being somewhat simple? Mastodon. And, of course, every mathcore band ever, most notably Dillinger Escape Plan (but they're more of a niche band than anything else). And, of course, there's the plethora of sesquipedalian words in your average Tool song's lyrics (that's a $5 word AND a $12 bonus word, kiddies) that make their fans believe that Maynard is some deep poet writing about every little aspect of life and faith and politics all in the same song...when he's really talking about fisting. I guess that's sorta Maynard's lyrical charm, though, that he can talk about something so vaguely that it seems as if he's using it in a metaphorical sense when he's really not. That said, I like Tool. They're pretty good. I just hate people that cream themselves over Tool as if they were the fucking Beatles or something. It's one thing to have a favorite band, it's another thing to say they're the greatest band ever. I love The Misfits. I love Slayer. I love Zombie Apocalypse. I love SOD. Would I put ANY of them on par with The Beatles or even Chuck Berry? No. Well, maybe The Misfits, but that's another conversation. As to the new single...I heard. 5 times. Today. I'm sick of it already. First time I heard it I thought it wasn't bad; the second time I thought it was pretty damn good; the third time I was singing a little medley of "Die, Die My Darling," "Hybrid Moments," "Descending Angel," and "Teenagers From Mars" in my head; the fourth time I yawned a lot and switched the stations to see if anybody was playing The Scorpions or Bon Jovi or any other 80's band; the fifth time I lit up a smoke, chugged the rest of my bottle of Mountain Dew, and then turned the radio off. Overplaying of Tool is bad, no matter how new it is. Cool, a band that has a large following that was pretty huge years ago has a new album coming out and their new single's out now. Don't System Of A Down it by overplaying it to the point where I begin to hate all of the band's work as a whole because of it.

Only remotely "emo" band I'll listen to is Comeback Kid, and that's more because they have an old-school hardcore energy to them missing from most "real" hardcore (ie. bullshit like Throwdown, Hatebreed, Bury Your Dead, etc.) these days. Can only take somebody doing a borderline scream/growl about how much they love their family and friends and how straight-edge they are to generic Drop-C chuggachugga bullshit riffs before you just want somebody to scream like a whinier young Henry Rollins.

Not a TRULY underrated songwriter, but I happen to think that the bulk of Megadeth's 90's work (Countdown to Risk) is some damn fine songs. I'd take "Trust" and "Sweating Bullets" over all of So Far, So Good, So What and a lot of Peace Sells and Killing Is Our Business. Mustaine had a knack for writing some good shit no matter what style he was playing, be it blistering speed metal or mid-tempo hard rock.

Differences being, of course, that Abyss has had at least entertaining matches with everybody he's ever feuded with. The short Abyss/Styles feud of late '03/early '04 was the best thing on TNA's weekly PPVs besides the Daniels/Ki/Sabin/Shane (now Bentley) stuff that lead to Ultimate X 2. Abyss is probably the best "big man" wrestler in the States, in that he WORKS the big man style (thus disqualifying Joe, who is a pretty massive guy but works a more technical/hard-hitting style). Abyss bumps his ass off routinely for everybody and anybody he works with, and his two signature moves (as simple as they are), the Black Hole Slam and the Rackbreaker, often look devastating. Steiner...hasn't had much quality work without a shitload of overbooking since, oh...before the New Blood/Millionaire's Club fiasco, if not longer.