Blind Idiot God

Hideous Divinity - The Somber Empire

Lecherous Nocturne - Just War Theory

Welp, the idiot coworker who was a constant thorn in my side managed to get himself fired for doing something so unbelievably stupid that one of the higher-ups actually asked my boss why he hired the dude in the first place. Can't say that he'll be missed.

Fallujah - Carved from Stone

Orange Goblin - Demon Blues

Inter Arma - The Cavern

Wolf - Surgeons of Lobotomy

Bloodtruth - Summoning the Heretics

Septicflesh - Anubis

Revocation - Scorched Earth Policy

Good job letting your kids buzz around on their goddamn dirtbikes in the middle of the night, you ****ing pricks. A+ parenting on display.

Exodus - Body Harvest Yup, this is some great ****. Zetro returning was enough to get my attention, and this is indeed the first Exodus album since Tempo of the Damned that I have enjoyed.

Make a point of seeing Suffocation when they hit Toronto in November. They probably won't have Frank on vocals for that one (Ricky Myers from Disgorge will be doing a good portion of the tour), but Ricky did a fantastic job on the one song that they had him do, and they're still one of the tightest, most energetic bands in the game after all these years.

Black Crown Initiate - To the Eye That Leads You

Neuraxis - Deviation Occurs

Internal Bleeding/Pyrexia/Jungle Rot/Kataklysm/Suffocation at the Webster. IB started things off with a fantastic, energetic set that Pyrexia later built on (also, the new kid that Pyrexia had on vocals was a monster). I sat out the next two because I'm not a particularly big fan of either, though I will say that Oli Beaudoin from the latter was a beastly drummer. Suffocation, meanwhile, lived up to their usual standards of excellence, though Frank was surprisingly light as far as his famed stage banter was concerned; they mostly just stuck to the music. All in all, it was an amazing show, and I hope to see more New York death metal-centric bills like that in the future.

Cannabis Corpse - Considered Dank

Pyrexia - Thy Minion

Internal Bleeding - The Visitant

To my coworker: Dude, I have no problem with you as a person. You're on the shallow side and you're not particularly interesting, but you're not a bad dude. That being said, WHY THE **** ARE YOU SO BAD AT YOUR JOB!? You've been working here for close to a goddamn month at this point and you STILL work like you just started. We all dread getting stuck loading a trailer with you because we know that it'll take far longer than it has to because the belt will be getting shut off every ten minutes just so you can sort of catch up. STOP THINKING ABOUT WHERE THE ****ING PACKAGES GO AND JUST FIND A SPOT. This isn't goddamn rocket science, dude; when packages are piling the **** up and I'm racing to load as many as I can while you're still fumbling with the same one that you've had for the past forty-five seconds, I can't help but grow immensely frustrated. Fun fact: you know the other night when our boss had me cool off before I flew into a rage and started breaking ****? It wasn't just because I was angry about all the packages jamming on the belt (not that that wasn't part of it). It was also because I was sick of having to essentially do the work of two people. Again, I don't mind you as a person, but I swear to god that I am going to strangle you one of these days.

Trap Them - Damage Prose

Parasitic Extirpation/Artificial Brain/Pyrrhon/Gigan in Holyoke, MA. The members of Parasitic are my homies and they killed it like always, and Gigan also lived up to their usual standards of quality; the vocalist that they had on this tour had a ridiculous set of pipes, and Eric Hersemann's guitar playing is always fascinating to watch. I've desperately wanted to see the other two for a while now, and neither of them disappointed me in the slightest. Pyrrhon was particularly amazing; watching the instrumentalists play ungodly technical and complex yet completely deranged-sounding material while Doug Moore was busily shrieking his head off like a man possessed was something to behold.

I've taken to calling one of the evening managers at my job "Violent J" for the past week or so because I think it's funny as hell (my high school was loaded with juggalos and I had to turn to humor to stay sane in that regard - seeing a crude Hatchetman scratched into a desk for the millionth time got a little tiresome) and because he's one of the most mellow dudes ever and the only act of violence that he commits is towards his lungs (WICKED heavy chainsmoker). Well, I saw him sporting a Tech N9ne hoodie today. Turns out that irony dogs me at every opportunity.

Kreator - Pleasure to Kill

The Black Dahlia Murder - Throne of Lunacy