My wife was born without meds. I may have problems with her mom but if there's anything I can give her, it's that she's an absolute fucking tank who is pretty much immune to pain. Three kids, all vaginal birth, all with no pain meds. I can only imagine the kind of herculean pain tolerance that would require, jesus shit.

Your mother in law could probably snap a small plane in half with her bare hands.

Mainly because I feel like maybe 90% of people are going to see them as the "let's get a beer" band, so the beer lines will be real long. Good "let's get a beer" bands are ones where most people like them for some unfathomable reason.

Thanks guys! Parenthood is a pretty amazing thing. I never knew I could love someone so much.

As for the no meds thing, that's a whole big discussion with a lot in it. The main reason was that any medication given to the mother does indeed go to the child. The effects of medications to the child are debated, but we wanted to be as safe as possible for our little one. Additionally, there's this snowball effect with medication that we wanted to avoid: An epidural loosens the muscles and typically the uterus (a muscle) has trouble continuing to contract. So pitocin is given which is a a synthetic version of oxytocin which contracts the uterus. However, this often overlaps with any natural contractions, thus making them even MORE painful, so more pain medication is required... Then the mom gets so exhausted/drugged out that she can no longer push and thus a c-section is now necessary. This cycle doesn't happen 100% of the time or anything, but is very typical. There are a ton of health benefits for both mother and child to contract naturally and have a vaginal birth which I won't go into but are easily found online.

As for the pain, it was tough for sure. It hurt my wife in ways I'm unable to ever know. But she champed it just fine and was very grateful she did. Our western medical culture treats pregnancy and birth as some disease but it's really quite natural and our bodies were designed to handle it. If there are no health complications, I'm a firm believer that this is the ideal way to go. And if there were any issues, we had three trained people present who know if/when it's time to go to the hospital. And actually the midwife was at a hospital birth with very similar circumstances to ours (baby wasn't breathing right away). For us, they just rubbed vigorously her feet and hands, gave her a little air to inflate her lungs, and all was fine. But at the hospital, they cut the umbilical cord immediately (which along with the placenta, still has ~1/3 of the child's blood still in it) and rushed the kid off to whatever they do. They had to give the kid a blood transfer since he didn't have enough and as of a day or two later, he was still in the NICU when he never had to be there to begin with. I'm sure there's reasoning behind it, but from our limited perspective, it seemed quite unnecessary.

I thought the whole "natural" childbirth was just for dirty hippies but once we started researching it, my mind was made up pretty quickly. My two cents anyways! Thanks again for the congratulations. It's a joyous time for sure.

Both my grandmas' same thing but 15 kids each.. 1 or 2 died at birth or shortly thereafter, each. If there had been c-section and meds available then, it would have made a difference. 95% is pretty good as a school result, but when it comes to babies, everything short of 100% is a tragedy

Ironically the bands who talk about beer are "let's get a beer" bands. See Korpiklaani or Alestorm.

what about Tankard

Especially Tankard

Every band is a beer band. Metal sucks.

Anybody caught the Dark Tranquillity/Amorphis tour? Going Thursday night, their setlist is pretty meh and standard for like the last few years. Interested to hear how the tour has been thus far.

Tankard rectify the problem by bringing freibier. Although I’ve seen them twice now and they’ve never done that. I even saw them sober once.

Tankard is awesome. Very underrated band, esp. because a lot of people write them off as a gimmick band without any real substance. I think they have a great discography (Katzmann/Boulgaropoulos era has some real classics and the Gutjahr era too) and I LOVE Gerre's vocals. They don't have the 10/10 album but even now, after so many releases, they have a steady stream of solid 7s and 8s that contain some real gems. I would expect any serious thrash metal fan to at least have 3 Tankard albums in his collection (Chemical Invasion and The Morning After being mandatory) They are not the best band out there but they are certainly more substantial than folk pop "metal" bands that sing about beer.

When I saw them they played Freibier. And it was good.

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My wife also delivered both our kids without meds. If need arose obviously a c-section would be available but I echo Kerrick's sentiments and thinking. So did my wife. It was her choice after all. It's also disappointing how many kids are born with c-sections because a. it suits the doctors' schedule b. many young moms are just scared of normal births and c. because c-sections bring more money to the hospital.

Another thing that has been completely perverted is the feeding of babies. All those powder milk formulas and shit, nurses and doctors often get huge bribes by companies to promote them to the point you need to put up a fight to let the mother "just" breastfeed the baby - there's this very sinister and cynical approach to terrify young mothers that breastfeeding is not enough or that they must supplement with formula milk or breast feed for a couple of months then move on to formulas... It's rather disgusting really.

Congrats on the kiddo, man. Be prepared for several whirlwind years. The cliche's are true: That time goes by fast.

My boy will be 15 next week. He's always on his phone, talking to friends or his girlfriend, rolling his eyes at my truly incredible dad jokes, and asking when his Playstation account can be separated from mine. And I remember when he was still wearing diapers, and that time he stopped running around playing so he could stand upright in the living room and shit his pants and then go right back to running around with me going "OH COME ON, SURELY YOU CAN USE THE POTTY."

Tankard is awesome live and some of their records are close to great. Even the recent ones are fairly good (better than what Destruction puts out surely).

That's what I was trying to say but we have a bunch of false metalheads around here I guess!

'Regards' and 'Retards' are just one keyboard key away.

That's an email signature catastrophe just waiting to happen

Sounds like what surfer bros in the 90s would've done as a prank.

"Like, instead of 'regards,' dude, dude, we'll end this letter with 'retards'!"
"Whuh, bruh, that's gnarly~"

Are any other filthy coastal elites here like me possibly in the path of Hurricane Florence? Granted, the DC area will probably not get hurricane-force winds if the system gets this far inland, but it's looking like we'll get soaked with rain.

I just hope my childhood haunts in the Outer Banks don't get too wrecked. I'll never forget evacuating during Emily in the late summer of 1993, watching this giant looming mass of grey out over the ocean as the waves started coming in. I remember looking at the news and seeing the beach houses in Avon where we always stayed partially or even fully submerged and just huge amounts of damage everywhere.

Snow me must one person who's that regarded.

So for some reason Dark Tranquility hasn't been playing a single song from The Gallery on this tour. I think I'm just going to stay at the bar until Amorphis plays when I go to this concert.

Dark Tranquillity was the only band worth seeing last night. Missed Omnium Gatherum by accident, Moonspell was whatever, Amorphis was laaaaaame.

Suck that their set list is stale as fuck. Would love to see something different finally make the rotation.

I can't imagine Amorphis being lame. The new albums awesome.

Not a fan of Amorphis. Up to Tales of Minnesota they were fine, after that, meh.

Amorphis just never sounded like they meant it. I never got a real gratification from listening even to their lauded early albums, honestly.

That's a pretty apt way of describing my feelings on them as well.

I used to feel that way, but they grew on me over the years somehow.

The debut's decent, if not essential. I can see why the second album's popular - it was certainly unique, but Elegy is total crap; sounds like a goofy high school band who all decided to buy wah pedals and sound '70s'.

Bought a whole bunch of Beatles imports this week, so the end of my weekly listenings are all Beatles.

Revolutions Per Minute - still my favorite Rise Against album to date. Really started dragging ass after The Sufferer and the Witness as far as I'm concerned, though. Haven't liked anything of theirs since, with exception to a tune here and there. Satellite is a good one. Coincidentally, they're the band The Gaslight Anthem were opening for when I discovered them.

Nice! I like them all across the board. I'm a sucker for "House On Fire", I'll admit.

Rise Against's main problem is that they wrote Like the Angel, because they've realized that they can just rewrite it a hundred fucking times in a row and release it as a single three times per album and suckers will fall for it every single time. I'm a big fan and they have a lot of great songs (even post-Sufferer, which is their version of Somewhere Far Beyond as far as I'm concerned), but I'm at the point where I'm in no rush to see them live anymore because they've been so popular for so long that they can just endlessly tour with a ridiculously safe setlist full of songs that sound the same for the rest of their careers and have no need to throw in crazy good punk songs like Bricks anymore.

I only really liked Revolutions, thanks to Tony Hawk's Underground (literally cannot stress enough how big those games' soundtracks were for me as a kid). I remember getting Siren Song when it came out and kinda hating how sterile it sounded as a result of being on an actual label. I pretty much ignored everything after that once they became full 00s alt-rock.

Just got back from seeing Ozzy live. Wasn't expecting much on account of Ozzy's age, but it was actually pretty awesome. He sounded a little worn out, but not nearly as gutted as you'd expect from a 72 year old. They played a bunch of the classics like Bark at the Moon, No More Tears, Mr. Crowley, and Crazy Train. They also played Faeries Wear Boots, War Pigs, and Paranoid, which are my top 3 songs off of Paranoid so that was pretty cool. Zakk Wylde also extended the solo on War Pigs for, no joke, 10 minutes where he was walking around in the crowd shredding all over the place. For the entire thing everyone was just like "wow that was cool but it sounds like it's almost over . . . nope, he's still going . . . and going . . . and going . . ."

The only complaints I have are that they didn't played Diary of a Madman or Over the Mountain, and Zakk played the intro riff to Crazy Train in the most unsatisfying way possible. I'm not sure how to describe it really. It was like he only used about half the notes that Randy wrote for the riff. Only on the very last repetition of the riff did he play it without cutting anything out. Even so it was an excellent concert. Top 3 material easily.

First month at the gym and I feel really great. Really simple stuff for now but finally taking care of myself.

tahu: I saw him on the first day of the tour in Allentown and thought it was pretty stellar, even though Zakk totally carried a lot of the weight. Also, let it be known my company built that cross behind them and I helped detail it on paper and got to touch it.

zdan: stick to it! Working out is one of the biggest things that keeps me happy and feeling great!

Just got back from seeing Judas Priest and Deep Purple absolutely KILL it. God damn those old bastards can outplay most young bucks like it's nothing.

Yeah. I was a martial arts geek but injuries caught up with me. Did boxing, kung fu, wrestling, some jiu-jitsu.

Then I got fat so my training at the gym now consists of building core strength and circuit training. Cannot do any heavy lifting because of injuries so I work with what I have.

That's pretty cool! You're definitely right about Zakk carrying a lot of the show though. My friend I went with and I think that super extended solo section (with an instrumental medley after that) were time for Ozzy to rest a bit.


Stone Sour opened for Ozzy last night. I had never really heard any Stone Sour before but I thought they were kinda decent . . . until Ozzy came on. After that the difference in the quality of song writing was super apparent. Even before comparing them side by side to Ozzy I wasn't super impressed with any of their solos. I was just kinda like "yep, those are notes alright." It's kind of a head scratcher for me that some of these younger, newer bands that seem to have a decent amount of talent end up with a product that's so weak.

I mean, Ozzy is famed for being better than Stone Sour. Dunno, though, Purple without Blackmore and Priest without Glen or Ken?

They were fucking badass, I had no problems with it. Couldn't even tell that the Priest guitarists weren't present judging purely from performance. They even played Painkiller and several of their other "harder" or faster songs, which I didn't see them do when they came here in 2015, and it was all flawless with tons of energy and intensity. So yeah, I had no complaints. I was never a huge Purple fan to begin with but they gained a new one after I saw them. Their keyboardist is phenomenal and I would have paid to see him put on a solo concert.