We need to talk about “pretend” media. And “real” media. Scroll Pittsburgh sports Twitter, and you’ll see the arguments. Bloggers and green, unproven podcasters challenging established radio hosts and reporters. Established radio hosts and reporters firing back. You’ll even find those established radio hosts and reporters beefing with one another. Somewhere along the way, the [...]
Alluvial 'Sarcoma' represents the perfect marriage of technical and palatable metal — and the result is freakin' beautiful. Alluvial slays. I knew this before diving into the band's latest release, "Sarcoma," which dropped May 28 via Nuclear Blast Records. But this album bears little similarity to Alluvial's first full-length showcase, "The Deep Longing for Annihilation." [...]
Gojira 'Fortitude' features some classic moments that will resonate with fans — emphasis on *some*... Look, Gojira rules. If you analyze my Apple Music listening history over the past three years, Gojira would account for a tremendous portion of my total listens. From their earlier work on The Link to 2016's Magma, Gojira is responsible for creating some [...]
Randall yanked his pickup left onto E Street, sending Janice into the passenger-side door with a light thud. She huffed. “So close to home,” Randall thought, “and I give her a reason to complain. Guess I’ll dip into that bottle of brown tonight. Again.” Randall dodged a pothole — then another — and made the [...]
Getting the perfect metal guitar tone represents a lifelong, never-ending quest for some guitarists. As amp and processor technology continues to improve, the options to tweak your guitar tone follow suit, growing exponentially seemingly every day. Do you need the latest Axe-FX to sound good? Should you stick to a classic, like a Peavey 5150 or [...]
Buffalo chicken dip rules. For me, it's a food group of its own, a cheesy, spicy, creamy blend of perfection. I first tasted buffalo chicken dip as a freshman/sophomore in high school. My family headed to my cousin Blainey's house for a UFC pay-per-view event, and he had whipped some up for the occasion. Love [...]
Black Crown Initiate murders me. Check my most-played songs over the past six years, and you'll see tracks from the band's debut 2013 EP Song of the Crippled Bull as well as plenty of offerings from their first two full-length albums, The Wreckage of Stars (2014) and Selves We Cannot Forgive (2016). So when Black Crown Initiate dropped Violent Portraits of Doomed [...]
It's August of 2010. Home before college kicked back into swing for the fall semester, I sat down inside my childhood house, patiently awaiting the latest mail delivery. Online tracking tells me my present should arrive today. And when you pre-order an album, you want it to arrive now. It did. At 1:04 p.m., the mailman [...]
No, not those Wiggles. Jesus. These wiggles were better. It'd make a better story if I could tell you how I got there, why I was in a bedroom looking at my aunt locked in a spiritual trance. But such is a memory from 1995-ish, yinz. I don't know what led to this. I was, like, [...]
Crock-pots suck. I made that pretty clear when I called them "the most despicable appliance in culinary history," and I stand by the sentiment today. Thing is, I received some significant blowback for that post. You crock-pot clingers just couldn't accept that your beloved plug-and-go appliance might actually make you a bad person. Which it [...]
