Regular readers of this blog know that our own Brandon Stosuy is a passionate metal fan. And in recent months we’ve seen an enthusiastic response to our occasional coverage of the genre. So starting today, in the form of this as-yet-untitled, flexibly scheduled column, Stereogum will be devoting space to the best new metal music, with Brandon as our guide. Happy Halloween…

A few years ago I thought it would be fun to put my metal writing in one spot, so I asked Pitchfork if they’d let me do a column. At that time I was a regular contributor to the site, but was getting tired of straight-up record reviews (which often seemed to be more about the writer than the band being discussed), so I decided to make the column a place for long-form interviews capped with short, basic introductions that situated the subjects in some kind of context. I didn’t always stick to the plan at first (one time Peter Sotos, Mark Solotroff, and Kevin Drumm did capsule reviews for me in a bar in Chicago), but eventually the pattern emerged. The idea was that if I was covering a band, I clearly liked them, so no need to sell you on it. I also wanted to approach things honestly and to avoid some of the tongue-in-cheek or over-the-top hyperbole that can come with metal writing. I’d tried to drive that home in a piece I wrote for Slate about metal and hipsters in 2005: It was basically a joke on hipsters and a paeon to music I grew up loving in rural Southern, NJ, where all of my sister’s boyfriends had bad teenage mustaches and Metallica shirts. The personal connection to the music is important to me: For instance, as uncool as it may seem, the column’s name was clearly inspired by the Slayer album, but it was also a nod to a name my friend Alex proposed for his dog before he opted for the less flashy Nero. Anyhow, I launched Show No Mercy in June 2006 via an interview with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd…

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