This post is day 9 of me taking part in the #100DaysToOffload challenge.

I love metal, I’ve been listening to metal since I was 13. It was the first music genre that I actually liked: until I discovered metal I actually thought I didn’t like music at all, because nothing I heard on the radio or heard my friends listening to were interesting to me. My taste in music has expanded and changed over the years to include different types of music and genres, but metal remains the one I love the most.

Demonstrating my metal-worthiness aside, I’ve always listened to European metal bands. I had this weird elitist thought that “good” metal could only come from Europe, with exceptions for some non-European bands, and that American metal was just always bad. This is obviously false, but I just had never came across anything American that I had liked. That’s until recently.

I recently came across Black Crown Initiate, a progressive death metal band from Pennsylvania. And I have to tell you that they are amazing.

Their first release “Song of the Crippled Bull” is absolutely amazing. The music is just the right amount of metal and progressive, and lyrics are amazing. The clean vocals get the themes of the song across, while the growls give a lot of power to the songs. My favorite songs from this release are “Stench of the Iron Age” and the title track “Song of the Crippled Bull”. Other hightlights from the band I’ve listened to so far include “A Great Mistake”, “Death Comes in Reverse”, “Vicious Lives”.

I’m still making my way through their songs, but I’m glad to have discovered something from America that I absolutely love. I’m now trying to find more non-European bands that I enjoy.