Welcome to Reviews/Resist… the web’s newest outlet for worthless opinions on metal in pop culture. We strive to provide optimal assessment. Thus, each review will be handled in two parts… from two separate reviewers. We feel that this gives you, the reader, enough variety to decide whether or not it’s worth your time to search out an illegal copy to download. R/R employs three main reviewers: Justin, Mark, and Chris; but occasionally will round up a few friends to talk shit on the stuff they don’t care to. Members of R/R are based in the Chicagoland area, and occasionally will venture out from their lairs to pass judgment on others and eat good burgers. If you’d like send us some shit to review, get us on the guest list, or simply tell us to fuck off… feel free to contact us.

About Justin

Spring, 1987. An alley-long display of fluorescent BC Rich guitars is my foray into the world of metal. That’s right… the video for “Talk Dirty to Me” rocked me to the very core. I’m not necessarily proud of the fact, but at one point, I had at least 15 Poison posters adorning my bedroom walls. In those days, I imagined Slayer was the band that the Satan-worshipers listened to while sacrificing cats in the nearby woods. Fuck, I was dumb. But hey, I was a suburban white kid who (up to that point) had been raised on a steady diet of Hall & Oats and Michael Jackson.

It only took a few years to get my shit straightened out (living in the same neighborhood as members of Broken Hope will do that to you), but thankfully I’ve come to my senses… I’m now the proud owner of this.

About Mark

In high school I wore a Megadeth shirt entitled “The Anatomy of Vic” which depicted an engineering cross-section of Vic Rattlehead and a rendering of him as the “Vitruvian Man“. Needless to say I didn’t date much.

Since then, I’ve gotten older, talked to girls, and I guess I’ve grown a bit as a metal fan as well. My musical tastes are getting more selective; and as I become a grizzled, old man, I’m very critical of bands, change and trends even more. Some may say that this is untrue, that I’m still a 13-year old kid, and that I’m too easily swayed by mindless shit, but I think this is a bit harsh. Sure, I’ve gone and seen Dream Theater on consecutive nights play different setlists BY MYSELF, and I think I’m the only person ever employed by Banana Republic that had to leave his shift early to go see Nile, but that’s besides the point.

I’m also the guy that listens to instrumental prog-metal… and the guy that saw Manowar and Immortal… and the guy that gets tired at these “festival shows” because they’re too goddamn-long dammit! OK, so maybe I’m not that sophisticated OR selective, but I am opinionated (and obnoxious), and I guess that’s what really matters for this site. So you better get ready for lots of positive reviews for Dragonforce, dick jokes and odd rants regarding the Mike Portnoy Fan Forum because they’re coming.

About Chris

I come to R/R by association with these metalheads, and they’ve known me to be a reliable source of opinion, bias, and unjustifiable poor taste for some time. I enjoy a look into almost any odd subculture, and metal is certainly fertile ground. It doesn’t hurt that I love quality riffage wherever it can be found, an aggressive beat is almost always welcome, and would it kill you to throw a hook in there every once in awhile?

Contributors

It’s true… from time to time we get lazy and would rather sit on the couch playing Halo than write about the latest Fear Factory debacle. So… occasionally we’ll bring in some friends and fellow metalheads to talk shit while we’re busy getting pwned by 12-year-olds. These are those metalheads…

About Ed

I contribute to R/R when the other guys are too thrashed out. I went to high school with Mark (we used to argue about Alice in Chains in freshman year history class), have played in various punk/hardcore, noise rock, psych, and metal bands over the years and nowadays I record extremely self-indulgent solo albums. I took a chance and purchased an Obituary tape in 8th grade, followed by a Carcass tape while visiting London shortly afterward, so that may have been the beginnings of my extreme metal listening habits. I often stray from metal into indie rock, prog, ambient, and even gothic territory also… so I can safely say I’m a music geek and will listen to anything once.

About Matt

Growing up, I used to hide a lot of metal albums from my parents so that they wouldn’t make me get rid of them. In high school however, my shirt wardrobe consisted almost entirely of band t-shirts. Some of those – especially the Danzig, Judas Priest, Fight, Ozzy, Slayer, and Led Zeppelin ones – I wore multiple times a week because I wanted to make sure that everyone in the entire high school (yes, even the teachers, lunch ladies, and janitors) knew exactly where I stood. I even took one of my little league baseball hats and painted the Van Halen logo over the front. It took me about six months to realize why girls thought I was a douche… More than 15+ years later, I still own about half of my shirts… although I miss that hat like a son of a bitch.

Nowadays, I still listen to my ‘t-shirt’ bands occasionally. I also enjoy lots of prog, doom, war, swamp, aqua, thrash, power, indie, pop, canyon, art, goth, viking, and ice metal as well. However… compared to the other R/R guys, I do a Satan-awful job at keeping up with new music and getting out to shows these days… which is why they need to kick me in the ass every once in a while and force me to do something.