Except Scott Ian.

He should just stop.

If you've recently formed a band and you've labelled said band as OLD-SCHOOL THRASH on the basis you can all play a few old Testament/Vio-Lence/Nuclear Assault/Exodus riffs, your singer sounds like the guy from D.R.I, you all wear skinny jeans with white hi-tops, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good (Bonded By Blood and Gama Bomb, I'm looking in your direction). Even if you get Ed Repka to do your artwork...

As a metal fan, once you've passed the age of 30, you've got to become cynical and bitter about everything coming out now, especially from bands you loved as a teenager, constantly complaining that nothing is as good as it used to be, and new bands trying to emulate the old school feel and/or sound just don't get it and get it wrong, and the new stuff that's coming out is even shittier than glam/grunge/nu-metal.

It's funny because the non metal bands I've lives since the early nineties have released some great stuff, I thought the latest testament albums have been great, along with overkill and flotsam and jetsam and even metal church. For me it's recognising when a band still has that desire and fire rather than phoning it in.

Arguing that liking your favorite band's new shitty pop infested direction makes you "open minded". Just stop that.

Please put covers at the end of album!

One thing which used to be a metal rule is doing some kind of greeting type of thing or command at the start of the song.

Motorhead knew how to do this perfectly. 'Hello, victims!' at the beginning of "Sweet revenge", 'Over the top!' on "Poison"
'Don't touch that dial!' on "Talking head", 'Areyouready? let's go!' on "Sex & outrage", 'Shoot, shoot, shoot!' on "Over the top" etc. etc.

Another version of this was Bolt Thrower roaring the song title at the beginning like "Cenotaph" or "World eater" of course.

Desaster do a pretty good "METALLL!' at the beginning of "Metalized blood". Vader have something in this tradition on "Army-geddon" on their new album.

Anyway it's a lost art the there should be more of it.

I generally like the vocal announcement of song titles at the start of a song (or as the first lyric). Bestial Invasion by Destruction comes to mind; Schmier yelling the title of the track as it explodes into the main riff. Has good impact.

I've just seen some power metal cunts called Whiplash. Fuck off!

Totally fuck off. For that matter, back in 'the day', Overkill and Exciter were 'power metal'. Not this queer on a stick shite we have nowadays.

No album or song titles with more than 4 or 5 words. Fucking Inquisition. I like their music, but still.....

One song off their new one has 11 words. A couple others have 10, ffs

At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul.

...GO!!!

The Mass Appeal Madness version of Unchallenged Hate, you get the song title and a 'Kam Lee Vocal Wipeout'.

Except Bal Sagoth!

If a band dramatically changes their style between albums, particularly to something softer/more commercial, they must change their band logo and/or artwork style so that all fans are fairly warned.

Whatever about the typeface, inverted commas always irritated me. Got it on tapes a lot - you'd have the full/square cover art, with a black panel and the artist/album titles below. Looked cheap to me. Prime example:

So many of my tapes looked like that. The other option were to crop or stretch the artwork to fit. Stretching looked terrible.

I don't know anyone who bought fucking tapes. Apart from blank ones.

I've got about 400. CD players were fucking expensive in the 80s, and I couldn't afford a record player for a long time either. Tapes were just a lot more convenient back then too. You could stick them in your pocket, and play them in your Walkman, so you weren't stuck listening to the radio. Or boring arsed geography lectures. I thought I was the fucking man when I first got a Walkman!