I am Serious Man. This is Serious Wallet

As I'm off to Holland for a workshop, I figured I'd finally indulge properly in Dutch doom/death. So I did. I downed a whole bunch of bands I wasn't familiar with, listened to their albums, and put together a list of releases that I deemed interesting. While evaluating one of the records, I noticed it was very professional, but workmanlike in its nature, simply offering little actual relevant content. Sure, it all sounded adequate, but there was nothing there. The rhythms were simple, the melodies were predictable, it was pretty much derivative disposable drivel.

And that's when it hit me that about 99% of the entire death scene is, in fact, derivative disposable drivel. Sure, youthful energy, blaa blaa whatever, but the vast majority of this stuff borders on retarded musically. The melodic patterns are so trivial a preschooler with a keyboard could hand out notes for the next tremolo section or huge slamming riff. It's not musicians, it's just kids who learned to move their hands in a somewhat non-disdainful way. I don't really see a point to keep perusing this kind of stuff, just like I never went back to the first Ater demo that made me throw up in my mouth a bit.

Of course, there's the handful of magic acts, which are different and more listenable. But it's a handful.

As such, I am Serious Man now. All those death metal "researchers" were either in the original scene or are aged 25 tops. As Serious Man, I have obtained some assorted works of Arnold Schoenberg, blew the dust off my Bartok CD set, and said hello to the stray bits of jazz on my computer. I intend to go to a serious university in the UK, and I need to be adequately serious for it.

As a token of my metamorphosis, I have purchased a Serious Wallet. Up to now, I carried cash in my pockets and all forms of ID in some scruffy plastic etui. Now I have a wallet made from real leather, and it lets me carry money, cards, ID, whatever the heck I may desire. It even comes with this dubious photo slot that looks black without a photo and black with a photo inside. Urk, bad idea, designers, bad idea.

So yeah, I'm a more serious human being now. Obviously, I'm not throwing who I am out the window, merely fine-tuning the details and realizing that most death metal, which I meticulously collected for months and months, is in fact tripe.