serpentsatellite
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Everything posted by serpentsatellite
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Volbeat? They're all over rock radio over here in the states (the ones where rock radio still exists anyways.) Been impossible to escape for most of last year and this one.
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Maybe they're happy with the music they're making, but it's hard not to look at videos of the last arena tour and compare them to ones from the small gigs, or even ones from the T2L tour, and not feel like the band looks super bored in comparison. I posted some videos from my 2012 MotP and my 2016 MotP and the differences were pretty shocking. (If interested in YTing, the first in Minneapolis, the latter in Philly or DC.) As for people complaining no matter what they put out, that's not really a foregone conclusion. There's plenty of bands that have stuck close to their formula for decades and still retain tons of happy fans. Muse's obstacle with that is they've already deviated enough to really alienate people, and it's hard to win them back. On the other hand, look at a band like AFI. This is a band that's changed in a massive, massive way over the years (and at one point rather abruptly) with a big contingent of fans that will never warm up to the "new" music. However, the band's gigs are loaded with those old fans because the band still plays super old, deep tracks. Muse could easily have done something like that to retain fans; just make it worth people's while to show up and see some bizarre old song.
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Just because Australia didn't get a tour, doesn't mean the handful of dates the US got was "extensive" though. If touring the US was a focus for them to drive their popularity, they would have hit more areas instead of focusing on ones they knew were a sure thing for sales (and struggling in a few of those anyways.) And a tour this time around is going to be even smaller because they can't keep blowing up the size of the live show spectacle in size and cost at the same time their popularity is waning. Matt can ditch the guitar and his old fans, but these last two songs don't give me any faith that trying to "modernize" their music is going to bring them arena-level mainstream fame.
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Let's be honest, I know it's sometimes hard to get a scope of the size of the US if you don't live here, but neither of their last tours, nor them combined, is "extensive" touring of the US. Look up some of the bands that are touring here extensively, and there's no comparison at all.
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213570617594100&set=p.10213570617594100&type=3&theater
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Omg, who thought this would be a good idea? Hopefully in addition to the board, Matt doesn't read Facebook comments... "You're not Queen, so stop" had me rolling.
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tbf, I think it's a safe be you'd be wrong to say that about any album.
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Endlessly's been pretty consistently low rated going back to when the album came out, for some reason.
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Can't remember the name right now, but the guy who worked on the Psycho video (mostly the parts that got edited out/down) said that after hearing the album.
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Did they really say or imply commercial? That seems like a pretty specific, and jaded, thing to say.
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My beliefs are mainly far-left, but I also feel that the Dems have been trying to do the right thing and understand that lasting change needs to be made through compromise, instead of a pendulum swing from one extreme to the other. We were making progress as a country, but the rise of populism and moreso nationalism destroyed that. I love Sanders, for instance, but also have to face the fact that his sort of populism, similar to Trump's, opened the door for manipulation and divisiveness. All those Sanders supporters who were persuaded not to compromise and vote for Hillary aided in fucking over our country, whether you like to admit it or not.
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The problem is when people have vastly different opinions on what's debate-worthy, and what to do when people aren't willing to compromise on things that comprise civil liberty violations. I don't think it's easy, but it can be done. Unfortunately, there's "radicals" on both parties that aren't willing entertain dialogs on even the stuff that should be open to compromise. "Fake news" and memes make easy prey of those people on both sides.
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tbf, it seems like you just have, and most people probably do, a preconceived notion on what constitutes "left" and "right" to you, and that's what you're looking to see represented. Democrats have pushed the centrist agenda for quite a long time because they've been struggling to win seats and consider it a compromise. Sanders and a lot of progressives are a bit radical. Having such a wide division in the party is one of the reasons it struggles, too; not having a solid system of beliefs/wedge issues creates voter apathy. The same propaganda machines that aided Trump also targeted Sanders fans, too, remember. And it worked. That's part of this whole Russia meddling thing that's getting swept under the rug, and it's going to kill the party in the next elections, too, if people aren't willing to do some soul searching. On the other hand, to prevent exactly that division, the Republicans have embraced a shift to the far-right because it plays well with the base, and keeps them in power. It's a hell of a lot easier when you can do whatever you want as long as you're pro-gun, anti-abortion, backed by evangelical Christian leaders, etc. You don't see a lot of moderate conservative viewpoints because there hardly are any loud voices in that camp; it would be bad for their career. On a completely different note, there's some interesting studies about how people are orders of magnitude more likely to spread false stories on Twitter than true ones, and that's a rather interesting and concerning topic with no easy solution.... and telling everyone to shut off Twitter isn't a fair answer.
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I really doubt it's a self-aware, self-deprecating statement about how they're chasing an ever more elusive mainstream... More likely just something vague about how the world is changing, countries are falling out of their past (largely imagined) glory, or just something that sounded good in Matt's head like most of the lyrics.
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Having now heard this song on the radio alongside some stuff I was enjoying listening to in the same kind of style, I think I can honestly say I would like this song, a lot, if Matt's vocals weren't terrible in it. Seriously, wtf is going on with how he's singing this song?
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The question is more, what are you willing and not willing to compromise to get what you want. There's no "perfect candidate" or perfect solution, but when the Brexit campaign, or "America First" or whatever became heavily racially tinged, do you give up something (small government/protectionism) you are in favor of because there's something you can't stand for attached (anti-immigrant/racist sentiments,) or go along with the bad to get what you want? I guess that's been an obvious answer to me when civil rights are involved. And if you think about it, especially in US politics, it never goes the other way. Political candidates that are advocating for aiding those in need and parties that have a proven track record in improving the economy are shunned by the people that need the help the most because of (mostly religious) wedge issues like gay marriage, abortion, and sensible gun control. So, we see all the time that people are willing to take a stand to, say, keep their assault rifles, at the expense of not just the betterment of the country, but themselves. Or to not have to bake a gay couple a cake, ffs. This is a perfect example of "thought contagion" because people can be and were easily manipulated by memes of Hillary Clinton shaking hands with Satan, or pictures of Muslims wearing burkas. And it ties in perfectly with Matt's "govt brainwashing" stuff, because a political party preys upon people with these beliefs; it lies to their faces for the power to give themselves massive tax cuts before they retire. It (at least right now) says that a child molester, or a guy who cheats on his wife with porn stars and assaults women in bars is a better person because they claim to be Christian than a person who actually acts in a way that's more keeping with Christ's teachings (you know, like loving your neighbor and helping the less fortunate.) But, of course, after all the barking about how the government controls people... this is when he chooses to abandon that whole schtick. It's hard to say "well, I loved Brexit except for the racism" loud enough that everyone hears it. Or cares. Lie down with dogs... Honestly, racist issues aside, Brexit has been fucking the country for a year, and it hasn't even happened yet. The worst is yet to come. And none of it will touch people like Bellamy. THAT is more of the concern with his ability to say "stuff's just fine when you don't let it bother you!" Matt again took a very important, very relevant issue, and boiled it down to exactly the wrong conclusion. Simplified the problem into something asinine. Like the book of VHS covers that inspired the artwork for songs they don't fit with, it's just window dressing with zero substance or thought put into it.
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I just got a notification that I can put a Thought Contagion ad onto my Facebook profile. That's, uh, kind of ironic given the subject matter...
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While I'm not sure about the numbers on the Mars one, several polls at the time registered 49% of registered Republicans believed that Hillary Clinton, George Soros and other high ranking Democrats were involved in a satanic child molestation cult based out of a DC pizza restaurant. It's comforting to say no sane individual would believe such things... but is it more comforting to say around a quarter of a country's population is mentally unstable? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/pizzagate-anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-w511904
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Just so we're clear, the government funded pedophile sex dungeon/pizza parlor is something a significant amount of people believed, and was talked about widely on Infowars and even televised on Fox News. It led to a guy firing a gun in the place trying to be a "hero" and NASA having to release an official statement that there's no sex camps on Mars, and yet people still hold rallies about it. It's important to understand there's not really any bottom to the crazy stuff masses of people will believe.
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1 US gig would be such a nightmare to get tickets to it's not even worth getting your hopes up, tbh.
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tbh, I believed conspiracy theories were something people kind of just did for fun and out of boredom. It never occurred to me until recently that people really believed in shadow governments and liberal-funded kiddie sex dungeons in pizza parlors. It was just kind of like the half alien baby on the front page of the Enquirer. Now it scares the shit out of me to know people are deadly serious about this stuff, and it's suddenly important to not dismiss that people might believe the crazy nonsense they read.
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If it were just an act to give the band a little cool factor... wouldn't that basically be intentionally spreading "fake news"?
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That Trump Tweet of Matt's actually surprised me, tbh, because Matt's prior communications were just along the lines of "it'll be fine, Congress won't let anything terrible happen" which shows his incredibly naïve understanding of American politics and the damaging forces that led to the election of Trump in the first place. And also Matt's clear nationalist stances, which he was talking about in interviews as recently as last year. (And I suppose it's hard for me to think of nationalists as anything other than far right, right now.) Brexit, for example, became heavily anti-immigrant in nature for a lot of the population, the same as the nationalist movement in the US has been heavily protectionist (and bigoted.) So, seeing Matt call Trump a Nazi made me wonder if he was really not self aware (or educated) enough to see that one couldn't be pro-Brexit (for example) with caveats like "well, except for THAT" part... Sometimes you have to say that things aren't worth the cost, no matter how much you agree with one of the parts of the whole, or admit that you're supporting something ugly out of selfishness. And this is what completely went wrong with the US; the checks and balances failed and people embraced some really evil beliefs. (The "king" line in DD is a bit scary now that Trump has suggested it would be cool for the US to move to a "ruler for life" system...) But yeah, mostly I'm just a bit in awe of how un self-aware telling people not to buy into "thought contagion" is coming from someone who's dealt in conspiracy and anti-government themes for a very long time.
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Sort of an amalgam of what Matt last heard on the radio and the last book he skimmed, really.
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You can find links to some private servers, and I'm sure it's available at musebootlegs. It's not licensed to be on YT, so it gets taken down for copyright violations. It would have been nice if the band would have uploaded it or something.