METAL. FITNESS. MISCELLANEOUS NONSENSE

POWER METAL FREE SINCE 2025

BOTH KINDS OF HEAVY

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After about a year of playing around with this blog, visiting Fire in the Mountains inspired me to trying taking this site to the next level. I'm proud to present the new BothKindsOfHeavy.com. No more free Weebly site here. Some of the content didn't port over as expected, so my first order of business is to try figuring that out. But in the meantime, I'll continue my regular features such as New Music Friday and hope to start adding content more frequently. Thank you in advance for reading!

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The Keening, St. Paul, 2024

The Keening, St. Paul, 2024

It's hard to believe that I'll be flying out to Fire in the Mountains in a little more than a week. Of course, I'm spending a lot of time with bands on the bill. I had a lot of fun delving into Enslaved's catalog, and while I don't have the time to highlight another band with such an extensive library, I figured I could knock out a shorter discography or two. Which brings me to another one of the festival's big draws: the reunited ​SubRosa. 

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Ronnie James Dio giving the horns

Many years ago, I briefly met Ronnie James Dio. 


I've told this story many times in person, but I realized that I had never written it down. In truth, it's a pretty small encounter, but it's never failed to bring a smile to the face of whatever metal-loving fan I've told it to, and hopefully it will do the same for you. 

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As the highest-billed band on the Fire in the Mountains lineup that I'm not super familiar with, I've decided to do a deep dive on Enslaved as the festival draws nearer. I listened to the band's entire studio album discography in order and wrote a few quick thoughts on each album as I listened to them. I skipped the live albums, collections, and other releases that fell outside the boundaries of their proper studio releases. My goal with this project it to prepare for their set at the festival, and perhaps establish a new feature for this site - I may do similar deep dives on other bands in the future. 


Read my thoughts on each album below. 

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Swans, Minneapolis 2023

Today's recommendations only includes four new releases, but one of those new releases is damn near three hours long. Which one? There's a big clue above. Read on for a very eclectic group of recommendations. 
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Definitely not a photo of the author.

Immediate caveat: I am garbage at pull-ups. I've mentioned that before, so when I say that I doubled my reps today, my pull-up performance has improved from "bad" to "slightly less bad." That said, I did genuinely make a big improvement with one simple form tip, which I am happy to pass along to you. 
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Nine Inch Nails with Boys Noize, August 2025

When times are rough - and times are indeed rough for me - music is more important than ever. Even when I'm at my lowest point, finding new music still excites me. Fortunately, there are a lot of interesting releases this week, as well as a few from rent weeks I'm only getting to now. Below we've got some heavy electronica, crushing doom, snarky punk, and fuzzy rock. Read on for more. 
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​Just over one week ago, my best friend, Nathaniel Ferris Moore, passed away unexpectedly. We had been friends for over 30 years, meeting for the first time in driver’s ed class when we were both 15. My first interaction with him was to put on an effected southern drawl and call him a dumbass because he paid another student a quarter or two for a couple of Starburst. I couldn’t believe he would spend so much on such a small amount of lousy candy. He must have thought I was funny, because rather than take offense, we started hanging out at school, then after school. Over the years, we lived together, traveled together, moved apart, and moved back together. We had so many good times together, so many occasions when we made each other laugh until we cried. Other times, we just cried (okay, usually me). And like all adult friends, we had periods when we didn’t see each other as much as we would like. Even when we didn’t see each other for months, we were always in touch. We always had something to talk about. That something was music.
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Mono, March 2025

My best friend unexpectedly passed away this week. I'm still in shock and still processing, but he loved metal of all kinds, and putting this together is helping me keep sane. My writeups may be a little thinner than normal, but there's a lot of stuff this week that he would have loved. Onward. 
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It's been far too long since I wrote any fitness-related posts, so let's correct that, shall we? Yesterday, Jeff Cavaliere published his latest video, "How Fit Are You REALLY? (7 "Simple" Tests), which I've embedded above. These tests are focused on mobility and functionality, rather than cardiovascular health, raw strength, or other important categories, and he stresses that these are not a complete look at fitness. Still, they're seven relatively quick ways you can test your fitness so you can identify weak points and train to improve them.

I put myself through these tests and did indeed find some weak points.