Two days before I set out to finally launch this blog my two-year old son decided, in a fit of “Toddler Rage” over something probably, completely innocuous, to smash a metal water bottle into this laptop and almost…almost…rendered it the biggest, ugliest paperweight you’ve ever seen. This, more than anything I can think of right now, pretty much defines parenthood – a life full of ‘what the hell’ moments sandwiched between the absolute best moments that life will ever sling at you. It’s a constant up and down, but a roller coaster ride I’ve been on for 15 years now and one I would never trade for anything.
The real impetus for this blog though is two-fold – my love and fascination with both heavy metal music and being a parent. Whenever I’m at a show, talking shop with fellow metalheads and I mention to someone for the first time that I have kids, four kids specifically, I usually get this look:
Conversely, when I’m out somewhere among other parents and the topic of music comes up, and I mention in passing my love of heavy metal music I usually get a variation of this look:
You see, somewhere in the Universe it was decided that being a parent and being a metalhead were apparently deemed mutually exclusive. How to reconcile the outstanding responsibility of parenting with the all-too-often uncompromising brutality of metal music? Some of us didn’t get the memo. So the seeds for this blog began to germinate as I began to look for ways to not only write about metal, and music in general, but also to relay some of my sillier and more poignant experiences as the parent of four, beautiful, wonderful, insane children.
For the last year I put this blog on the back-burner while I tended to my duties as one of the two lead contributors to a music blog called, Lonesome Noise. With the somewhat (un)timely demise of Lonesome Noise I found myself not only in need of a new outlet for my music-related ramblings but with a heightened desire to finally launch a project that had been bubbling in my subconscious for way too long.
So what are you going to find in the world of The Metal Dad? I’ll tell you what you’re not going to find and that’s a preachy parenting blog that will try to shame you into raising your own kids a certain way. I may be a father of four, and I may consider the job that my wife and I are doing to be pretty solid, but, frankly, I have zero authority to tell anyone how to raise their kids. Like every other parent on Earth I make way too many of my own mistakes for that. You will however get a glimpse behind the curtain and I hope the stories that get related through this blog bring a smile to your face, or even make you laugh out loud.
From a musical perspective, the name of this blog is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah, we’re going to talk about metal…a lot. It’s my first love, my sonic mistress. But I love a lot of different styles of music and we are going to examine a wide array of artists from all over the musical spectrum and the physical world. My eternal hope when I write about music is that I turn someone, somewhere, on to their new favorite band. So here’s to hoping you find some of your new favorite bands.
Thanks for stopping by and welcome to The Metal Dad…
The Metal Dad 