Bad Times a'Brewin'

No rest for the wicked. At least, not on my watch.

It’s been a busy few months, and there’s no signs of relenting. Since the Black Metal Book Club’s debut in March 2023, a handful of milestones have been crossed.

For starters, we now have two recurring events: the classic Book Club at White Whale and Black Mass, the monthly record club at Two Tides Brewing. Between those two events, we’ve already had over ten distinct meetups. Eleven, to be exact. Every meetup since the first - which had a humble three attendees - has had at least five attendees on every occurrence, hitting as many as ten on the busiest. Our Meetup members are up to 39 people, and our Instagram followers have exceeded 80 in the first month, with little-to-no marketing. With time, I would not be surprised to see us hitting ten-to-fifteen attendees with each event.

Now, we’re preparing for a twelfth event of a third type, that being a bar crawl throughout Starland. Having maintained a several-month-long juggling routine, I’ve majorly lagged behind promoting the event, but so long as “The Usuals” show up, the event itself will promote the group in a way that I’m certain will leave its impact on this town. Blend that with our upcoming Book Club meeting on October 30th - spotlighting Bathory, of all bands - and we’re looking at a very exciting October.

However, the Book Club’s events aren’t the only marked growth. The Club has taken several strides towards solidifying as a local institution as well. Albeit trivial, a logo is in the works. While we’ve managed to get along this far without any real branding beyond a name, having an image to tie to the group will go a long way towards giving people something recognizable to latch on to.

Furthermore, as you’ve probably wouldn’t have gotten this far without noticing, blackmetalbookclub.com is in the works. While there is currently only this Substack blog sitting under the domain, there are plans to build out a larger website, of which will house information about past and upcoming events, including details on any spotlit artists.

Now that I’ve found myself talking about this Substack, it seems appropriate to discuss its purpose. Shortly after starting the Book Club’s Instagram, I tasked myself with providing regular recommendations. I fell behind on this almost immediately. This was due to not having hammered out a real workflow towards curating a continuous flow of recommendations. That issue is no more, as it has been remedied with a special Python package, crafted by yours truly, designed towards extracting new releases from Encyclopaedia Metallum, aka metal-archives.com. This Python package, called metalarchivist, is available as a beta on the Python Package Index, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The code itself can be found on the Book Club’s Gitlab account. Feel free to hack it to your needs, if that’s your thing. With this package under my belt, daily recommendations aren’t far off - so keep an eye out.

On a final note, the area of growth that has me the most excited is simply all the music being created amidst the collaboration fostered by the Club. It’s no surprise that almost every member (or maybe every) has dabbled in some form of musicianship. Naturally, we’re overflowing in guitarists, but we also count among us drummers, bassists, vocalists, and even classical instrumentalists. We’ve grown from occasional jam sessions to weekly get-togethers that end up being more like “jam parties”, with more people being present than could ever play at once. Shortly after the Club launched, talk of starting a band began immediately. At this point, we may be well beyond a band; one could reasonably assemble at least three with all the people and gear available. As for if these buds ever fully bloom into bands, I cannot say. That said, in a twist on the classic saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”: when one gets this many black metal musicians in a single room, something is bound to burn down.

Keep your hydrants on hand.

See you all on our Corpse Crawl. Next Saturday, October 21st, 6:00 PM Eastern.