Thanks for visiting my blog.
I'm Adam, was born in England and still live here today. I'm 33 years old now, and since I was about 12 years old I've had a fascination with rock music that grew and grew into a serious passion. Call it an obsession if you wanna be mean! It all started when I was given a 2003 remastered CD copy of AC/DC's 1976 album High Voltage (international version), and since I received that very CD I've never looked back. I've been collecting physical music ever since, and unless something weird and unexpected happens to me, I still won't be stopping anytime soon.
So I consider myself to be a 'rock fan' overall, but I guess I'm primarily a metalhead more than anything else. I'm a huge enthusiast of many different rock subgenres, but metal was the one that really grabbed me at a young age. My absolute favourite artists are Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and I particularly like '70s heavy metal and hard rock, as well as old-school metal types such as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the late '70s/early '80s along with classic speed, thrash and power metal. But I also like a lot of old punk and hardcore music, extreme metal subgenres such as black/death metal etc., blues, acid/pyschedlia, garage, stoner rock styles and more. I always say I like guitar/riff-based music best, so I'll openly admit that I generally don't get on with musical genres beyond rock-based music. You won't be seeing much - if any - pop, EDM/drum n' bass/house, hip-hop kind of stuff in my collection anytime soon, although I do have a very feint soft spot for older rap. Either way, I'm open about where I stand with music. I have a preferred style that I'm wildly enthusiastic about, and that's the ballpark I'm staying within for the most part.
I mainly collect CDs. You can view my collection here. The reason CDs have always been my thing is mostly because I started collecting the mid-2000s, and vinyl hadn't quite had it's resurgence of popularity yet at that time if I recall. CDs have always been readily available since they appeared in the '80s, but vinyl seemed to disappear from the mainstream for a very long time before it was popular again. Hell, when I started collecting CDs during my school years, MP3s and iPods were all the rage and even then some people thought physical media was becoming obsolete. How wrong they were! That said, I do somewhat still collect vinyl. My LP collection is considerably smaller than that of my CDs, but I do own a turntable and do still buy vinyl records on occasion, mostly when I go to record fairs or see something out of the blue that I like.
I started this blog back in 2017 as a bit of fun more than anything, but as I've continued to add more and more content, I realised it's actually more like a mild form of therapy for me. I don't run into many people on a regular basis that I can really be as passionate with as I'd like to be about the music I love, so documenting my thoughts and opinions on this blog really does me a world of good I think. People have different tastes in music after all! I talk to plenty of different people everyday in my day job, but not about music to the extent I'd like. It's only really at gigs and festivals where I meet like-minded people in this field, and obviously attending shows are few and far between (I've made a page listing all the concerts and festivals I've attended here). I also watch a lot of YouTube to get my 'music talk fix'. There's plenty of great channels of similarly enthusiastic people out there regularly posting videos.
For the most part I post reviews about albums in my collection. In fact, my rule is if I don't own a physical copy of it, I'm not reviewing it. I like making pages devoted to reviewing entire discographies best, but I have made pages for bands where I may only own a handful of their discography or less. I do sometimes write general music-related articles too, whether it be my thoughts on a certain era of a band's history, a new box set, concerts etc., and I do enjoy writing these kinds of posts since variety is the spice of life after all. I don't think I've ever used that saying in everyday life, but at least I can make myself look smarter than I really am by saying it on here!
There's stuff on here that I think is in dire need of an update. Most of the oldest material I wrote pre-2020 is a bit crap now in my opinion, so I've gone back and re-written some of it since the pandemic in 2020. In fact, there's reviews on here that have been updated 3 or more times as the years have passed because my opinions are continually subject to change! So I don't think the quality of all my posts is consistent throughout the blog - It's almost like you can see the evolution of my writing style at times. I'd also like to note that this blog is just one man's own opinions - some of them will be close to general peoples' consensus, others will be contrarian and unusual because I'm a human being after all. If everybody had the same opinion, life would be pretty dull. The internet is full of keyboard warriors - for example, I said once in a heavy metal subreddit on, erm, Reddit, that one of my least favourite Iron Maiden records was A Matter of Life and Death. I was immediately bombarded with "awful take" comments and the like. I'm sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to hold this particular album up in such high regard!! I never tried to argue that it was factually one of their worst albums, it's just one I personally don't enjoy as much as their others!! So if you disagree with anything on here, then more power to 'ya. Doesn't automatically mean I'm an idiot though. Doesn't automatically make your opinion right either.
So, not much else to say. Just sit back and browse!
Cheers,
Adam
