Random Band of the Day
The classic Twitter-to-Substack port that has never failed
Welcome to Random Band of the Day. This series started on Twitter about a year ago.1 The conceit is simple: I click the "Random Band" button on Encyclopaedia Metallum and dig into whatever comes up. The results have been...well, a lot of things.
I've always felt that I have only scratched the surface of metal despite dedicating my life to it. Indeed, out of the 187 bands currently in the RBOTD database, I've heard 10. That's a little over five percent. At the time I'm writing this, there are 158,367 bands in Metallum. If my heard-it percentage holds and I do some quick and lousy math, that means I've encountered 8,468 of them. That's...a lot...but it's a tiny slice of a whole lot more.
The 187 bands in the RBOTD database run the gamut in terms of location, genre, and many other nerdier data points. For instance, I've RBOTDed a band in every inhabited continent. The only landmass I'm missing is Antarctica, so if someone at McMurdo Station wants to start a slam band, you have my support. I've also surfed through over 30 substyles, an eclectic array of metal that would get you banned on Spotify if you collected it into a playlist because the system would assume you're a bot. But, again, numbers only tell a smidgen of the story.
The variance between bands expands when you account for the context. I've hit bands big and small. It's still hilarious to me that Slayer was a hit (RBOTD #36), and even funnier that its Metallum ID of 72 means that 71 other bands were entered into the database before it.2 I've hit bands old (Gravestone, formed in 1977) and new (Wisp, formed in 2021). But those markers don't explain the highs of RBOTD.
There's nothing like finding something you never knew to look for. Take Push, a power metal quartet from Brazil that released one LP in 2001 on the hilariously named Megahard Records.3 I'll admit, I'm prowling around for Brazilian power metal precisely zero seconds out of every year.4 But Running to the Top is good, a frantic blast of juiced-up powah that lands in the middle of the more vein-popping American style and its nimble Euro variant. This record should be repressed by Stormspell Records and have a starring turn on NWOTHM Full Albums. It makes me want to poke around that scene for more gems. And I'd never have heard it otherwise unless it came up on my 54th click of the Random Band button.
Now, it's not always this rewarding. RBOTD has taught me how much metal is out there and how goddamn boring a lot of it is. But the good stuff outweighs the inconsequential, making 20 boring bands worth suffering through for an unexpected gem. Like, there's Defacing (RBOTD #14), a pretty ripping BDM banger from Chile. There's also Xenia (RBOTD #147), a skramzy atmo black riff machine that dropped a grower of a self-titled LP back in February. But even the good stuff tends to take a backseat to the WTF.
RBOTD almost wrapped on my 153rd click when I came eye-to-anus with a band named Fartgod. How do you top that? The Swedish death metal outfit thought it could, changing its name to Ikhon and releasing a surprisingly solid EP in 2011. Lemme tell you, no one knows Ikhon. Fartgod? That will stay with you forever. It's one of eight bands in Metallum with "fart" in the name, an exclusive club I'm going to call the Infernal IBS Circle. It also makes me laugh every time. Fartgod! It's right up there with Buttocks as one of the best band names I've stumbled across.5
Then, there's Adrenaline Kings (RBOTD #166), a decent but essentially whatever melo heavy metal crew from Austria that I wouldn't have thought about twice if it didn't have a connection to…Sextiger. Whew, doggies, now that is a spicy meatball. Sextiger's NSFW video for its "Mercedes Benz" cover is an absolute spectacle, one of those how-has-this-not-gone-viral clips that's up there with "Dimension Rap."6 I can't embed it because, oh yes, you will get fired from your life for even looking at the thumbnail in public, so here you go.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you don't find any of this interesting. Maybe you'd prefer me to write about…music you'd probably like. I'm assuming that's why you're here. But this is extremely my shit. As the name entails, it reinjects randomness into music, a sense of the unexpected I haven't felt since I was an idiot, know-nothing kid listening to the radio. That's the point: I know five percent, which is nothing. Thus, I never know what I'm going to get: a Push, a Fartgod, a Sextiger. All of it is on the table like the world's most insane jigsaw puzzle. Join me as I try to piece it together.
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Initially, the idea was to grow an audience by posting every day. Guess what: Twitter doesn't work like that.
The first band added to Metallum was Amorphis, which is the most Euro thing imaginable. Black Sabbath, the heavy metal band, was the 99th, approved in between Halford and Diablerie. You could lose a whole afternoon on Metallum numerology. 69? Dimmu Borgir. 420? Aurora Borealis. 666? Black Jester.
Roman and other boner pill emporiums: If you want to pull a Scion, start here.
Not an indictment of the Brazilian power metal scene! I don't know where to look, so I don't. Life, it is short. Yes, I own Angra albums. They're good.
It genuinely rules that one of the most-cited things I've ever written is basically my response to the fact that there was a band named Buttocks.
I think about this once a week. "Time to die/ time to fry/ time to fry to die" is something I have said out loud to multiple people at my place of work during crises. The human mind is a mystery.