Hey ballers! Welcome back to MetalSucks’ Hoop Logic, the only column on Earth where metal and NBA basketball collide, take a step back, and then collide again even harder. In our awesome fourth edition, God Forbid stud/NBA expert Doc Coyle takes a break from prepping new album Equilibrium (out March 26) and packing for this killer Overkill tour to talk hot NBA action with me, MS senior editor Anso DF. Hellz yeah! So join us as our Doc examines the Lin-fection that’s afflicting balls all over America, gives his prognosis for the sickly Lakers, checks for lumps on the newly announced All-Star team rosters, and more!

ITEM 1 At the peak of their dysfunction, the Knicks have unearthed an unlikely treasure in PG Jeremy Lin. Lin is the NBA’s only Asian-American and only alum of Harvard; most amazingly, Lin had hardly played before last week and was basically a last resort mid-season addition for his team. But then Lin immediately powered the woeful Knicks to five straight wins — while their two best scorers sit out — and now LINsanity fully grips the NBA. Mind-blowing, right?

Doc Coyle: At the time of this writing, the winning streak — or shall I say Lin-ning streak — is up to seven, and with a gimme game coming up against one of the NBA’s worst teams, the New Orleans Hornets, that streak should reach eight straight wins. Let’s face it, this is the biggest story in sports, to the point where it has transcended sports altogether and has become regular news. It’s all they are talking about on sports radio and ESPN. Hell, even Obama is talking about it. I don’t know if I can take it, I’ll have to go to a Lin-sane asylum. These puns never get old. Click to read more…

Hey MetalSucks readers! It’s me Anso DF, MS senior editor and NBA mega-fan. I’m up here in italics to welcome you to this week’s installment of God Forbid guitarist/NBA expert Doc Coyle’s awesome Hoop Logic column. I love NBA trends, tricks, talk, and TV, so for this third edition, I backed Doc into a corner and hammered him about the league’s hot issues. Are we metal’s Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson, but with tighter bods and fouler mouths? You be the judge!

ITEM 1 The Orlando Magic: A core of All-Star players with recent NBA finals experience. A superstar on the trade block. A dearth of team chemistry. A string of blowout losses. Are the Magic in big trouble?

Doc Coyle: I think it’s now clear that Orlando’s quick start was an aberration caused by Hedo Turkoglu’s early return to form and Ryan Anderson’s Most Improved Player-level start. Now that those two shooters have come down to earth a bit, and Jason Richardson’s and Jameer Nelson’s age is starting to show, this Magic team is more reminiscent of last season’s Magic: the best center in the league surrounded by good, not great, talent. The model is actually not too dissimilar from the Lebron James’ Cavs of 2005-2010. There are only a few guys that can carry an NBA team, but when the weight of an impending trade slowly deteriorates locker room camaraderie, the cracks will show on the court.

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“Star-Crossed”

We are one third of the way through the 2011-12 NBA basketball season, and there seems to be enough of a sample size to get a pretty good idea of how the season will shape up.  What we’ve seen is for the most part what we thought we would: Lockout Ball. With a compressed 66 game schedule, no real training camp or pre-season, and back to back to back games with 4 games in 5 nights, what you get is ugly basketball. We’ve seen tons of blowouts, scoring and shooting percentages are down, there are lots of turnovers, and the injuries among key players are piling up. Players due to miss significant time (6-8 weeks or more) include Brook Lopez, Manu Ginobli, Andrew Bogut, Zach Randolph, Al Horford and Eric Maynor, and we’ve seen plenty of guys in and out of the lineup with minor injuries. It’s too many to name.  This is what we expected.

What we — or at least I — didn’t expect was an illumination into the after-effects of the recent formation of super teams.

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[Regular MS columnist Doc Coyle recently got in touch with us to ask if he could helm a regular column about the NBA similar to the NFL columns we've run with Greg Weeks, Dave Brockie and Jeff Paulick. Sure, why not? If you all like what Doc is doing he'll write more... so show him some love! Here's the first installment of the brand new shortened 2011-2012 season. Doc's got a lot of interesting points on the lockout, the legacy of the game, what to expect this year and more. - Ed.]

This is my first foray into the world of sports blogging, but I am a diehard NBA fan and could no longer contain all of my thoughts and views on the league.  I started out watching the NBA in 1994, the year after Michael Jordan’s first retirement when the Knicks made a title run with a tough as nails, substance-over-style group of quasi-thugs.  When I get into something, whether it be comic books, action movies, heavy metal, or basketball, I tend to obsess over it.  I suppose this characterizes me as a nerd.  I’ll wear that hat because I pour over stats incessantly trying to break down the ins and outs of the game.

I was a dedicated Knicks fan as they transitioned from the Ewing, Oakley, Starks bunch of the mid ’90s to the Houston, Sprewell, Larry Johnson squad of the mid ’90s, early ’00s. When that team was dissolved, my band started touring, and I fell off for a few years roughly until Lebron James came into the league. People love to hate that dude, but I had never seen a player like him and it re-sparked my interest in the sport. The talent pool was suddenly much more potent than what I was watching in the mid ’90s.  Jordan had no equal in his era, and I had missed the Bird/Magic rivalry first-hand. Lebron, D. Wade, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Carmelo, etc were doing some superhuman shit, and I was hooked again.  Every year, since 2006, I’ve been more and more drawn in to the point where I devour every game, article, sports-radio broadcast, twitter feed. You get the point. I might as well share my thoughts and analysis. Here it goes. Watch me spew:

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There seems to be a firestorm in the metal world regarding the state of the industry, Spotify, illegal downloading, and the philosophical struggle between capitalism and artistic integrity. Lines have been drawn in the sand and it’s getting fucking personal. I have remained rather silent on the sidelines but all of this action has inspired me to enter the fray.

But I’d like to approach this discussion from a different angle than the one that has been taken thus far – one which deals with some issues that are beyond music. Perhaps you could call it a political discussion, or a cultural discussion, or even a philosophical discussion. I want to talk about the idea of ownership, and what exactly that means in our modern, western paradigm, which is one rooted in competition-based capitalism.

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I was inspired to put some thoughts down after reading Sergeant D.’s post about what a terrible decision it is to commit yourself to the band life at a young age, because eventually the wheels will fall off and you’ll end up just like some morose version of the Anvil story: Sad, old, broke, and disillusioned by shattered dreams of rock stardom.  I know his blog was supposed to be funny and sarcastic, and was even sprinkled with a hint of sour grapes: Not getting to be that “cool band guy,” but justice being served down the line by seeing how those guys ended up. But I have to say that post hit home for me, because in many ways it was about me. I mean generally, not specifically. I’m pretty sure Sergeant D. didn’t follow me around and base his post on me autobiographically.

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For my opening salvo, I suppose I should mention that it has been a long break between blogs. I’ve been meaning to get back to it, but this summer has been a very busy one filled with the musical composition of the new God Forbid album as well as a new project I’ve been working on, in addition to the daily pursuit of living life and getting by. I hope to contribute more frequently in the near future.

If you’ve followed my articles in the past, you may notice that I often address music history, and pertaining to this site, heavy music specifically. I have a great respect for artistic pioneers and the roots of where the most admirable and brilliant music stems from. I was the type of kid who would read liner notes and interviews by my favorite bands to find out who influenced them. I would always want to climb that musical family tree to see where it lead.

In my process of discovery, there was a common thread that jumped out at me that has been consistent through metal and rock history.  There seemed to be an intercontinental ping-pong match between the USA and Europe in terms of trailblazing the cutting edge of whatever musical genre was the dominant force of the time. This goes way back before metal existed — and yet, it has helped shape the musical landscape that exists today. The torch keeps being symbolically passed from one shore to the other.

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In the last few years, something seemed to happen and I barely noticed. Suddenly, I’m no longer the young kid at the show. I’m one of the guys hiding out by the bar. I’m not crowd surfing, not covered in sweat with my shirt off, and I’m certainly not moshing. I’m also not randomly yelling “Slayer!”, but that seems to span all demographics. I became… (gulp)… an adult. I don’t know what the range is in the ages of the followers of MetalSucks, but I’ll assume that it’s a mix of younger and older metal fans. I am 29 years old, but I still feel relatively young and energetic considering my opening salvo. I’m the youngest member of my band, and younger than a good majority of my friends in bands and the industry.

With that said, I think there comes a time for all metal heads, and probably all adults for that matter, when you look at what is popular amongst the true youth culture (16-24), and you feel as if not only do you not relate to it, but it feels alien, as if it’s creation was not meant for your consumption (which it wasn’t) – and it also seems inferior to music that you grew up with. I’m only 29, and I’m already having “back in my day” moments. It kind of scared me, and I began to wonder if I was being obtuse and a little too set in my ways, or if my analysis was accurate.

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I am going to assume that a decent portion of the followers of this site are themselves musicians with bands of their own. That is generally how it goes with metal. There are seamless lines blurred between the “fans” and the “bands” because, like myself, many metal patrons represent both categories. Without this large sector of musician fans, technically proficient bands that cater directly to this base (like Dream Theater, Meshuggah, and Necrophagiast) would be much less successful. So to those musicians, I would like to use this blog to shine a light on one of the harsh truths in all music and entertainment that many musicians choose to ignore -

Image matters a lot in this industry. In fact, it’s probably just as important as the music.
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When it comes to music (and other things really), I tend to play devil’s advocate. If everyone is shitting on a certain band, for some reason, I become more attracted to that band and seek them out. I don’t know what it is about my personality, but I think it stems from the same perspective that inspired me to write the antagonistic blog about rethrash. It may be a character flaw, but I’m sure it has something to do with a need to be an individual. From what I gather, this website is inhabited mainly by “true” metal heads. What I define as “true” are people whom are purists in the realm of metal and usually scoff at any band or trend that reeks of premeditated commercialism or an overt play for popularity, and who usually demand a certain level of musicianship and underground credibility. These fans usually hate every Metallica record after …And Justice For All, and for that matter always prefer any particular band’s older releases, which usually have a more raw and unrefined recording quality, as well as more abstract, less traditional song writing. For example, they will prefer Carcass’s Necrotiscim to Heartwork, or Morbid Angel’s Blessed Are The Sick to Domination. Oh yeah, and these guys gave up on In Flames and Soilwork years ago.

I have a good deal of that purism in my bones, but it always seemed short sighted and close minded. You have no idea how many arguments the Adler brothers from Lamb of God and I have gotten into over the merits of a particluar Metallica or Megadeth record. If you even bring up Disturbed or Limp Bizkit on MetalSucks, it is mocked and disregarded 100% of the time. I think metal heads often have a sheep mentality because of the fear of being viewed by their peers as less credible for liking bands that aren’t considered “true” or “real” enough. We all have guilty pleasures, but the real question is “Why should we feel guilty about something we enjoy?”

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We’ve all been there. Tensions are high in some packed, sweaty venue, sparked by feverish excitement and the potential for violence. These people paid good money to enjoy some type of cathartic release. The frontman for whatever hard-nu-death-crab-metal-core outfit is brazen and demanding. Can you believe this shit? You PAID to be entertained, and this guy is telling YOU what to do! The speech goes something like this: “I want everybody in this room moving! Front to back, side to side, NO ONE STANDS STILL! When this part kicks in, I want total [Insert destructive word here like "chaos," "mayhem," or "bedlam" if you're witty]. If the person next to you isn’t moving, MAKE THEM MOVE!” Than, if the action is not adequate, this screamer/pep rally organizer calls YOU some variation of “pussy” or “faggot” or really anything to make you feel like a soft, womanly bitch of a man in order to get in that pit and kick another grown man in the face, all in the spirit of making this band look like they are awesome. But then something happens, as if the air is sucked out of the room at the moment of impact – when those glorious staccato chugs kick in, the crowd is almost always powerless to its charms regardless of the obvious lack of substance. Like junk food and reality TV, we have a love affair with breakdowns.

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A couple weeks ago, I did an interview with Metal Injection for a retrospective on the highlights, trends, and cultural significance of the heavy music scene from an insider’s perspective concerning the last ten years. Near the end of the interview, I was asked if there were any sub-genres or trends that I didn’t like, or that seemed to get on my nerves. I thought about it for a minute, and generally annoying things like nu-metal or screamo or stale metalcore just seemed obvious and an easy target, when something dawned on me. I was generally annoyed by the whole ReThrash scene.

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Last week, during one of my daily perusals of this very blog, I came across a rather scathing recounting of Killswitch Engage’s self-titled album, which came out earlier this year. This caught me a bit off guard, as I considered it to be one of my favorite albums of the year and a step in the right direction from Daylights Dies, which was at first very disappointing but grew on me after some time. I was even more surprised when I saw that most user comments tended to agree with the blog entry.

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The Adequate Response to Criticism; An Artist’s Perspective

Criticism. Criticism is something all artists who release their work on a broad scale must encounter. Many of us who do so approach these reflections in our own ways. On Metalsucks, my blogger brother, Dallas, has had the monopoly on providing that perspective in regards to God Forbid, which I think is unfortunate because I think it provides an inaccurate picture of the band’s collective or individual views. My motivations in writing this are not only to respond to the detractors of my band, but also to give an alternative view on the mindset of the motivations and mentality behind what we (who aren’t Dallas in God Forbid) do and what we hope to accomplish.

Not too long ago, Dallas released a blog insisting that he hoped our new album would get bad reviews in light of a theory that bad reviews would trigger some kind of reverse psychological effect in terms of success with the band. I guess that theory has some basis in the fact in that some bands whom although they don’t necessarily get critical acclaim, it isn’t directly tied to overall record sales or popularity (Disturbed, Insane Clown Posse, etc). The fact is, God Forbid has more or less gotten good reviews since the release of Determination, and maintained a good relationship with the metal media. In a sense, I feel like metal media has always been rooting for us. In that respect, I felt the assertion was off base because I felt pretty good about the new album. The only effect Dallas’s commentary would have is to make some people who would normally be allies into adversaries. I think what he was generally trying to say was that he doesn’t care what people think. What many people who respond to Metalsucks and Blabbermouth don’t understand is that he is mainly trying to push buttons, and even if the commentary is negative, you’re doing something right as long as people are talking about you. I think the jury is still out on that one.

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