So as of about two weeks it is the 8th year since this was created and the fact that it's close to being a decade old is wild to me. There has been a ton of ups and downs along the way but we're still going strong and my is still around and hasn't been banned or hacked yet so that's good (although I did get a strike once which was stupid).
As I do every year I am doing a recap of my year, both on this app and real life. So any ups and downs and important highlights I'll bring up. This year was definitely an interesting one compared to previous ones but I'll end up going on so here's my recap for the previous year of 2024.
I Got Into Power Metal
I suppose the first thing to do is talk about something metal related and that is that I got into power metal. Now I have never been against power metal and did listen to a few songs here and there but I never took it seriously or bothered to explore the genre. That is until I heard a ton of power metal when I was helping my dad in the workshop/shed and it really surprised me as my dad is very big against metal but what surprised me even more is how it just clicked. Sure it's super cheesy and goofy but the music was really fun and good and I found myself bobbing and quietly singing along to the songs and occasionally Shazaming them for later. I found myself actually putting full power metal albums on and hearing bands I never would've given the time of day years ago and also found out that power metal is absolutely fantastic to put on when needing to focus on school as I just would start hyperfocusing on my work. I've also started following channels on YouTube that promote underground power metal bands like how Unknown Melodeath did the same for melodeath and get mad that Bandcamp doesn't have a power metal tab on the metal section. I've also considered buying a few albums too and can now tell what "good" power metal is and what "bad" power metal is by listening to it and to be honest, aside from post-metal, this is the best genre that I've gotten into in recent years and would actually put this in B tier or A tier as a genre if I were to do a tier list on metal genres. Nothing will ever top melodic metalcore and melodic death metal for me but power metal for sure comes close and I was rather surprised how much I like this genre now. I'm not a "expert" on it by any means but I'm definitely into it now and it's so exciting.
Getting Into Reading and Started Writing My Book
So another big happy highlight of the year was that I got into reading. Now I've always liked reading but it was never something I got into as much as my family and friends dis and I fell out of the habit in high school, but recently I've had something driving my desire to read and it's great. So in the last year I took the plunge and I began to work on the thing I've had brewing in my mind for 6 years, my own book Refurbrished. It was originally going to be a sci-fi book but after a sci-fi youtuber explained that adding a magic system to your book makes it a sff or sci-fi fantasy book, it is a sff book due to me adding a magic system centered around radiation after being inspired by the fantasy book I was reading while I started it. It's basically mainly heavily inspired by Crysis 3 and other video games I've played before and takes place in 2447 after a cyborg wakes up with no recollection of who he is after hundreds of years and discovers who he is and the truth about the current state of the world which is like a juxtaposition between post-apocalyptic and futuristic. Not the most original story but of course there's robots, cyborgs, the radiation magic system, death, references to Christianity and the Cosmic Dao from Daoism, lots of comparisons to water of battles and duels and sword fights and even "realistic zombies" and a fictional zombie virus called the Seraphim virus (which was actually the first thing I came up with for the book). I'm really happy that I've started writing it but writing as fun as it is can be very frustrating and time consuming and so far I only have a few chapters written and tons of brainstorm documents on characters, places, 400ish years of fictional lore etc. and a ton of ideas for scenes including the epilogue of Refurbrished which is my favorite scene of my entire book but as much as I know the exact wording and prose I want to use for it I still have to write all of the brainstormed scenes and concepts into one story so it'll take some time to get there yet. Because of the beginning of my writing journey though I've gotten into reading more for the first time ever and I read over 3,000 pages last year which I'm very proud of. I've also started watching tons of YouTube videos on books and writing and found I have less impulse control on buying books compared to buying cds. Where I have to force myself to buy a cd otherwise I'll never buy it, I could go on an online book auction and spend like $20-30 on a few books and not be as concerned. I've probably spent hundreds on books from online book auctions on Whatnot and now my book shelf is overflowing with books. I have barely read any of them but I have some pretty notable ones like a few Conan books and The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorecock which was literally like one of the best books I've ever read in my life and was pleased to discover that there was a sequel, which I bought from my favorite seller who sold me the first book. I've even started talking about metal less on my YouTube channel and have started a playlist called Books where I just review the books I've read and it's super fun although it screws you over by the algorithm. So reading and writing were the 2 biggest ws for me from the past year but unfortunately now I have to talk about all the bad stuff, which outnumbers the good.
Schools Been Rough
The first elephant in the room is technically the worst in of my future and that is that college this past year has not gone as swell as I hoped. Normally I work kind of hard and put a lot of focus on college but my spring 2024 semester besides having a terrible attitude and becoming lazy was a huge step up in difficulty and tasks to do and my grades were really bad. I almost didn't Chemistry 2 and I completely failed Calculus which keeps me from graduating when I was initially going to. The semester was such a disaster that I chose immediately to jump from having a full 4 course term to only doing part time with 2 classes. Since I don't have any financial aid that forces me to be full time I actually can and it did work better, it is much easier to focus on 2 classes vs. 4. The fall semester went better than the first with me just taking Ecology and Physics 1, which I ed but Physics 1 was really cutting it close. Now I'm taking Calculus again with Physics 2 which is a terrible selection on my part but I actually really like my Physics professor and think the subject matter is cool but really difficult and I am determined to Calculus this time and so far it's looking like I might; I am doing much better at this point in the class than I was originally and if I can pull it off my math requirement will be completed. I hate that school has been a disaster and I'm just losing all motivation for it after 4 years and it feeling like I'll never get it over with but there is the light at the end of the tunnel that I can really move on in my life.
Death in My Life and Altering Mental Health
The worst part of 2024 was quite the doozy though. Throughout my life death was something that I never really experienced and the closest thing to it was the death of a family friend who died in war which was sad but I wasn't very close to him so it didn't phase me much. In April though my great grandpa got very sick and so I flew up to Nebraska to be there with family during it all. It was a very rough time although I had one of my grandpa's unfinished puzzles he didn't finish before he got really bad. Death is honestly not like the movies and in real life it is a lot worse and traumatizing as it's not a sight worth seeing. His death was really hard for me and while we drifted apart over the years due to things like distance and just the way life moves in general and he wasn't as close as some of my other family his death really messed me up for a while. This was the first time really experiencing death on a personal level that I and it definitely affected my mental health too as my mental health for sure was not as good as it was in 2023. I definitely had a few mini spouts of depression and that combined with struggling to focus on one thing sometimes has for sure been a factor affecting school, motivation, and getting my book finished.
The next worst event of my year happened in June when my cat Roo died. He was my very first pet and he'd been with my family since the very beginning and I really thought he'd be with us forever but that wasn't to be. He got really sick and was bleeding and he died very early in the morning. It's terrible that I say this but losing Roo Roo messed me up more than my great grandpa even though he's only a cat but I think it's just because how much he was actually there in my life and because of the circumstances. My grandpa died in his home surrounded by many family while Roo Roo died all by himself with just me on the floor of the laundry room at like 2 in the morning, my mom was visiting my brother in Alaska and everyone else was asleep. My dad woke up to find me in the laundry room crying and then we buried him. The whole thing was terrible and I never want to watch the movie Dredd ever again as that was what I was watching before I found Roo Roo dying in the laundry room. It took quite a while yo get back on my feet and I still get sad about my great grandpa and Roo Roo from time to time.
Luckily though, I discovered an album in April that actually helped me with feeling sad and that is Anathema's album Weather Systems, which I discovered from a meme about fighter jets of all things:
It's not a metal album and it's really soft but in my opinion it's a really beautiful album and in the months since I discovered it it's become my go to sad album. All of the songs are good but the very first song Untouchables pt.1 and the final track especially really get to me and make the tears flow but listening to it while crying really helps me more in the long run and I'm so glad I discovered this album. It's also funny that this album is the one I gravitated towards as they have much heavier and probably "better" albums but like with Of Mice and Men's album Defy a part of me has decided to become autisticaly obsessed with it.
Getting to see Actual Live Shows
Now I should lighten the mood and talk about the best "metal" event from the year and that's the fact that I actually got to go to concerts last year. It sounds silly why I'm excited but let me tell you it sucks being a metalhead in Alaska as barely anyone would come and generally when a band I wanted to see would come I couldn't see them for a variety if things. This meant usually seeing live music from local bands which varied greatly in genre and in quality and most definitely fit the "memes" about local bands but there were very few that actually were good. So when I moved to Virginia I knew I would get a chance to actually see bands but the whole first year was getting situated but in 2024 I got to see more shows in a few months than I had seen in my entire life.
Early on I went with my mom to see Blink-182 and Pierce the Veil alongside a random band that was actually better than I expected. It was a fun concert and my first true concert that was more than 1 band playing. Blink-182 were actually kind of disappointing but Pierce the Veil that first time especially were awesome, they actually rocked super hard and as of now are still among one of the best bands I've seen live. I really only went with my mom and sister because I wanted to see a real show and I got it although we weren't sitting in the best seats:
It was a really fun show and then later in the year I went with my mom and sister to see Holding Abscence and Sleeping With Sirens with a random all female duo band from Australia opening and it was fun. It was the anniversary tour of Sleeping With Sirens's hit album Let's Cheers to This so they played only songs from that album and like PTV, they were absolutely amazing but PTV was and still overall the better band, post-hardcore bands absolutely rule in the concert sense. Holding Abscence were also great and I had just literally heard them for the first time earlier in the day so I was new to their band but they were awesome and if you want a mainstream modern metalcore band that is more on the poppy side but can still crush I would highly recommend seeing and listening to them. I didn't get any video or clips but I don't care, I went just to get to see a show and it was a blast.
The summer was a fantastic time though as I visited my Gma and Papa in Wisconsin to see them but also because there was a Metal Festival there, Rockfest 2024 and Killswitch Engage of all bands was playing and for once it worked out that I could actually see the band I had wanted to see above all bands, my favorite band Killswitch Engage:
Me and my Papa got up early and left for the day on that Thursday to see all the bands and I wore my trusted Killswitch shirt and the while time I couldn't wait to see Killswitch and get to experience what a metal festival was like, and it was fun but different than what I expected. I saw tons of metal shirts and was surprised by how little Killswitch shirts I saw but happy that I was around so many people who like the same music as me but it was also overwhelming how much people there were. It was also super hot and although I put deodorant on in the morning I probably ended up smelling just as bad as a lot of people that were there. We saw Sleep Theory first and they were really good, they were like a modern Linkin Parkesque alternative band and they were having a blast. We also saw this artist named Ayron Jones who was OK and I got to see Upon a Burning Body live which was awesome and in true metalcore fashion they absolutely destroy everything live and was surprised to find my Papa liking them as he doesn't like metal with lots of screamed vocals. My Papa bought me a new Killswitch Engage shirt too and it's my new favorite Killswitch shirt I own:
Afterwards we took a break and I got to see Killswitch Engage at the main stage and it was the best performance I've ever seen up to this date in my opinion. All of the band sounded so good and it felt so perfect to hear a bunch of popular and/or iconic songs by them live and knowing that I was probably at most 200 feet away from all of the of my favorite band of all time and that I waited for years for it was unreal. I recorded a bunch of clips but my personal favorite moment of their show was for the second to last song they played they played My Last Serenade which is like a comfort song for me and it was like a spiritual moment (that sounded cringe but I felt satisfied hearing it):
After the performance we stopped to see a rock band my Papa wanted to see but they weren't very good so we didn't see them very long and then we were tired so we left but we were bummed we didn't get to see Sevendust as we both had wanted to see them. The festival was a fun experience but as a venue overall it wasn't my favorite, although I'd love to eventually go to more of these metal festivals. I have blogs on the metal festival and the Blink-182 concert if you want more detail about them:
I also went with my mom and sister once again to see Pierce the Veil with 2 random bands I didn't know and it was fun as usual but I wasn't really into the other 2 bands and Pierce the Veil were great once again but they just weren't as good as that first show, they seemed a little bit tired and just didn't have as much energy and bravado as they did. I unfortunately didn't get any pictures but I did begin contemplating wanting to beat up this guy behind me who was acting like this elitist but it was clear that he was kind of a poser (to be fair he was with a bunch of girls so he was trying to seem cool). Speaking of live shows, I bought a 20th anniversary Killswitch sweatshirt from a vault clearing sale they did and it has become my trusty sweatshirt I now wear to every show I go to now, not the best fitting sweatshirt but I love it:
I also went out of my way and I bought myself a 25th anniversary Killswitch Engage flag which proudly hangs on the wall of my bedroom and is a purchase I do not regret at all:
Although I went to a bunch of shows I think that the best show pound for pound I went to overall was the last one I went with my mom to, which was an all Christian metal band show:
It was at this little venue called the Vanal and it was so imperative that I went as it was the last date of the tour that Impending Doom was going to be performing and we all know how important they are to my vocalist journey. The tickets were the cheapest of any of the shows I went to and the venue was awesome, a very small and compact venue with a stage and some room for people to watch and mosh right in front, the perfect place to perform if I had my own metalcore band. Since it was a Christian metal show I was around my kind of people although I always feel like a stranger wherever I go but I felt at home and everyone was very nice. Since it was our first time getting to the venue we had some trouble finding it so we ended up getting there late and missing the opening band Opponent but we got to see the other 3 bands War of Ages, Impending Doom and Demon Hunter and they were all phenomenal. I had a blast watching all of them but I do regret not going into the mosh pit, I still haven't done that yet. My favorite moment overall was when Impending Doom was playing and Brooke Reeves pointed directly at me during one of the songs and that moment of having one of my idols and one of the vocalists that really inspired me to get into vocals doing that can't be topped. Even though I wasn't as excited to see them as I was War of Ages and Impending Doom, the headliners Demon Hunter were the best band overall in of sound and performance. They were supposed to be playing songs from their newest album Exile but they only played 2 songs from that album and instead chose to play songs from their entire discography to celebrate their long time running strong as a band and it seemed as if they played like 20 songs and played for like 2 hours straight. I was super tired at the end of it but it was an awesome performance. Demon Hunter is a very versatile band and it seems like they are one of the few bands that actually has a song for everybody and Ryan Clark nailed the vocals and it's crazy how he can still sound so good live and sing and scream the way he does and he dominated as a front man, constantly talking to and interacting with the crowd and keeping everyone into it. I wasn't expecting them to be that good but they really were and seeing them live has made me want to get into them more and buy their albums on cd which is perfect considering they remastered most of them. To top it all off my mom let me get merch so I got 3 sick shirts and had my first experience of band selling their merch to me and I know that isn't really anything special but to me who's never experienced that, it was awesome to have the bassist of War of Ages to sell me me a shirt and the guitar player of Impending Doom to also sell me a shirt and they're such sick and comfortable shirts, although I will it the Demon Hunter one was the next best choice since they sold out of the size for the shirt that I had actually wanted to buy:
It was such a spectacular and amazing show and I am glad that I got to go and that Christian metal shows exist. I took tons of videos (especially of Demon Hunter) but I unfortunately can't add any more pictures. Luckily I did make a blog about it so you can hear more about it if you want and see some of the video:
Which Way to Go From Here?
Eight years is a really long time to be doing something, especially if you get nothing out of it. I have loved my time here but it's no secret that my interest of staying on here and the lifeblood of this little community is fading away. I find myself listening to way less metal these days and finding it harder to motivate myself to finish all of the unfinished drafts for blogs I've started and unsure on whether I should go through with whatever fun ideas I come up. It doesn't help to that Amino itself doesn't work sometimes like preventing me from finishing my "big" magnus opus blog because it won't let me link YouTube videos in the cool way for some reason. I don't know I'm just getting tired and feeling like I want to move on with my life and actually want to make something of it. Even though I'm starting to get tired of this app metal and my love of it will never go away as it's clear to me by this point that metalcore and 5-7-8 is permanently in my blood and it's looking like I'll be the only old person in the retirement home bobbing around to Bullet For My Valentine and Killswitch Engage like I was as an angsty teenager in 2018 when I discovered and grew to enjoy them for myself.
Metal by itself isn't really anything special it's just music at the most but it's become something more to me, something that makes me happy, an outlet that helps me get through like every other outlet. I always say I will be all done with metal and that I'll never listen to it again and I'll stop listening to it but despite what I do I always come back to this silly, amazing and expansive genre of music. If I didn't there would be no reason as to why I would see all the bands in concert that I have and to possibly see more like Pierce the Veil with Sleeping With Sirens, Breaking Benjamin and Staind, the 20th anniversary tour of The Poison by Bullet For My Valentine and Ascendancy by Trivium, and hopefully my beloved Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall with 2 other bands I'm not familiar with. It's looking to be amazing for shows and I definitely have been spoiled with that.
Where I go in life from here I don't know. My path could take a direction I didn't want or didn't expect or something I've wanted to do in my life could be fullfilled like become officially baptized in the Orthodox church or I could actually have my own band, something I've wanted since I was 16 years old; one never knows for sure, only God knows what's willed of me. What I do know is that like I said last year, my time here on Amino is drastically waning. It has been a great 8 years and I've contributed so much to this silly little place but I know I can't stay here forever and this place is nothing like it was nor will it ever be. This isn't a goodbye but it definitely is once again another announcement that I am definitely moving on slowly from here and that most of my time left on here is just trying to enjoy what I can with what little time left this app has before it becomes officially dead and trying to make the blogs I wanted to make but never got to or just any random stuff I can come up with. It has definitely been a wonderful time on here and I definitely will never forget this place.
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Anyways that was my 8 years on Metal Amino blog. It's wild that I was first reccomended this app by someone I don't even talk to anymore (Drew) in 2017 when I was still in high school and now it's 2025 and this even though I haven't used it actively the entire time is nearly a decade old. It's probably kind of narcissistic but it helps me to focus my thoughts without having to spend most of my night writing something in my journal. I hope you all enjoyed the blog and I hope you all have a good day or night. Goodbye :wave:
Kyrie Eleison ☦
Comments (1)
I think it's quite amazing that it's been 8 years and you are still here. I know you said that you're slowly moving away from amino, but nevertheless you are still here. I also moved away (didn't even open the app once for more than a year) but it's such a good feeling to come back once in a while and even though it's not the same it still feels like home.
Let me know if you need any help with that calculus class (I teach calculus and recently helped my son get an A in that class).
I wish you the best with all the future endeavors! 🤘🤘🤘