When Metal Hammer failed to live up to its name.

UK Metal Hammer's albums of the year in 1997. In the weird "Oh, Heavy Metal? That's not cool anymore, I listen to ____" era. They might've been the same idiots bursting out the bootleg Iron Maiden shirts but can't name any of their songs or albums.

1. Feeder - Polythene
2. Entombed - To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth
3. 3 Colours Red - Pure
4. Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape
5. Deftones - Around The Fur
6. Radiohead - OK Computer
7. Paradise Lost - One Second
8. Prodigy - The Fat Of The Land
9. The Verve - Urban Hymns
10. Faith No More - Album Of The Year
11. Sick Of It All - Built To Last
12. Misery Loves Co. - Not Like Them
13. Strapping Young Lad - City
14. Metallica - Re-Load
15. Kerbdog - On The Turn
16. Green Day - Nimrod
17. Reef - Glow
18. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Have A Ball
19. Oasis - Be Here Now
20. Life Of Agony - Soul Searching Sun

How many actual metal albums are there? Maybe 2 or 3? (if we taken in that not-so-good era Paradise Lost album). Even that Entombed albums a bit suspect. Granted this wasn't only Metal Hammer going in this direction but also Kerrang with the horrible normal font and the coverage of shit bands like Clawfinger, Stuck Mojo and Limp Bizquick.

In the future - everything will be "indie rock"

Pitchfork Media, yeah I read 'em sometimes- it's the "monkey with typewriters" thing every so often the get it right. Here's an example:

It's not just music, either. I don't know quite when it happened, but at some point a certain vague strain of "indie" dropped its last vestiges of seeming weird and became a commonplace-- sort of like in Britain, where "indie" has long been synonymous with the normal guitar bands people find fashionable. When those I'm-a-Mac, I'm-a-PC commercials came out, I even saw some ad critic describe Justin Long's Mac guy as an "indie type." Why? He's just a young middle-class-looking white guy with a haircut. (I'd be more aghast, except it's actually not hard to imagine him telling you about the New Pornographers.) And soon enough any film, book, or cultural product that came anywhere near a certain sensibility-- anything anyone would describe as "quirky" or cleverish or tender-- fell in the indie bucket, too: Garden State with its hilarious Shins scene, Wes Anderson movies, Dave Eggers (??), Juno, Zooey Deschanel's general existence, private colleges, button shirts, the Internet, IKEA, Miracle Whip, literacy, you tell me. The sensibility used to seem rarer, and then, I suppose, half the people attracted to it grew up and got creative jobs and now it floats everywhere. So huge swathes of twentysomethings, like anyone with a college education or a Mac or a strummy guitar record: indie, apparently? Which is allegedly quite the thing these days.

from Nitsuh Abebe's "The Decade in Indie"

Did ya hear, bro' the Internet is TOTALLY INDIE! So's Zooey Deschanel who can be currently be seen shilling for the cotton industry in some horrible "song-emercial". Everytime I think the metal & punk scene(s) are overwrought with b.s., I can just go on Pitchfork and be realize that it's not so bad. Now where's that Embrace of Thorns CD?