Various: TV Pilots + First Episodes

There are many TV Series from yesteryear that I'd like to check out — either for the first time, or from a more experienced, adult perspective — but for various reasons don't have time to do so.

TV Pilots / First Episodes can help decide what to prioritise, so I'm taking that route. I typically get more joy from 70s + 80s TV than I do from modern stuff, so I'm starting there. Call it an 'age thing' if you want. I'm Generation X. Rather than let those encounters go to waste or be forgotten in the years to come, I've chosen to record some of them here. In the order watched:

Heavy Metal Magazine Adverts of the 1980-90s

Heavy Metal Magazine Adverts: '80s to '90s.

I dumped a large collection of Heavy Metal genre UK music magazines recently, from the late 80s to early 90s, titles such as Metal Hammer, Metal Forces, Kerrang, etc. I'd a quick scan through each one first to see if there was any articles that might be of interest and it struck me how adverts for album / single releases back then differed to how they are in today's world. Some were full page, but many were half or even quarter page size.

Obviously, the smaller the advert the cheaper it was to include, but the difference also speaks to how out of control advertising has become. It's no longer a helpful pointer to interested parties. It's now an insufferable shit-stain on almost all media. It even follows you around the web if you don't have your browser's cookie settings set up to prevent it. (And if you haven't, why the hell not?)

I scanned a few of the adverts for posterity's sake. Most are of albums that I own or bands that I still enjoy listening to, so the selection reflects my own tastes more than they illustrate any other point, but that's okay. This blog isn't high art.

Pics below the cut, for anyone who cares; in no particular order other than they looked like they might sit well beside one another based on colour or style. Most likely not chronological.

Nine Inch Nails: Tron: Ares (2025)

Tron: Ares. Music by Nine Inch Nails (2025)

I realised after making the Hesitation Marks (2013) post that I didn't want any of the really crap Nine Inch Nails releases on my main blog. That meant I didn't write anything about Not The Actual Events (2016), Add Violence (2017), Bad Witch (2018), or Ghosts V + VI (2020), all of which made me sigh for having dared hope they might take NIN back to its former glory.

Tron: Ares' first single, As Alive as You Need Me to Be, had a definite Fragile (1999) / With Teeth (2005) vibe, which gave me hope once again... but the end result was the same. I hoped. I bought. I sighed. [1]

But mostly I'm confused about why it even has the NIN moniker. With just a few exceptions, including As Alive as You Need Me to Be, it resembles a typical Reznor + Ross film score, which for me is something best summed up as lifeless, dull, musical enervation.

Whisky + Black Metal

Font used is Maskdown Font by madhaline studio, slightly modified.

Deep | Mlehst ‎/ Split Tape (1996)

Deep | Mlehst ‎/ Split Tape (1996)

The term 'tape-trading' acquired negative connotations due to the volume of (mostly crap-sounding) bootleg live recordings that made the rounds that way, but it was a perfectly viable method for small or independent labels and/or unsigned bands and artists to distribute demos and limited-run releases to interested parties.

It was through such channels that I bought Split Tape in '96. Only 333 official copies exist, but you can find it from time to time on places like Discogs or eBay.

Both artists play a kind of ambient/electronica with an industrial and experimental vibe. 01. The Deep track(s) in particular are a fine example of a hypnotic exchange given the time to grow from an idea into an all-encompassing mood, occasionally reminiscent of Tribes of Neurot. 02. Mlehst is noisier, less rhythmic, with two bass guitars, a drum machine, loops and samples.

I ripped the cassette to digital files many years ago for use in my mp3 player. You can find a DL link for both below the cut. [1]

Art and Illustration: Timothy Cook: Bleeding Crane?

[TITLE UNKNOWN]

Artist: Timothy Cook | Year: Unknown [1]

DIO: Fan Mag [Metal Hammer] (YEAR UNKNOWN)

DIO: Fan Mag [Metal Hammer]

Mid-May. Early afternoon. There were clouds overhead, scattered and motionless, but it was still hot. The starlings in the rear garden were being dicks, as per usual, shitting on the fence and bullying the smaller birds. The crows sat atop rooftops, deliberating on whether or not the available food was enough to warrant them bullying the starlings, in turn. It wasn't, so they merely watched and waited.

I took refuge indoors and set about the eternal struggle: getting rid of old crap to make way for new crap, specifically books. With courage to the sticking place, I braved the dust and spiders. I unearthed a bunch of Metal music mags from a bygone era. I kept a few things for later perusal (Manowar, King Diamond), but got rid of most of them. Necessity.

The DIO Fan Mag was a pull-out and keep supplement from an issue of monthly UK magazine Metal Hammer that I'd pulled-out and kept. As such, I don't know what issue it was in, but given that the info goes up to Lock Up the Wolves, it must've been around 1990. That's also why page numbers begin at 41 and end at 60. (The 8 missing pages were likely two double-sided posters that lived and died on my wall.)