Important Announcement for the New Year

After a decade of bitter infighting and rancour between two ideologically polarized camps within ICHQ, I am delighted to announce the grand opening of IllCon East, a new subdivision of IC Enterprises which is charged with ensuring East Coast considerations are factored into decision-making around marketing, product development, and systems change. This venture comes on the coattails of a debate that has been percolating beneath the surface of everyday business and has made working alongside one another no longer possible. I now present to you IllCon East's mission statement:

FUCK YOU, WEST COAST

Allow me to explain...

Here on the East Coast, being metal is a fucking chore. You have to work at it. If you're a metalhead and come from anywhere East of Sanford Parker's fiefdom, Ohio, you're already handicapped. You're fucked. You have to ship in all your bullet belts and patches from El Salvador. Out on the West Coast every other day Wormrot is playing in LA, fucking Brocas Helm is playing Gilman or whatever it's called, blah fucking blah.

2nd one from left is 9th grade me

I was just talking to These a Beast, who lives in Jersey, about what shows we'd been to recently and it was downright scornful. The only show either of has had been to in the last month was the same goddamn show, one night apart from each other. Granted, it was Inquisition, and they fucking killed, but still. West Coast's got the labels, the communal groundswell, the bands, the venues, AND legal kush. It's like the metal is being handed to you on a silver plate; all you need to do is MOSH.

And don't get me started on Black Metal. How do you have all these awesome goddamn black metal bands on the West Coast? What do YOU know about Black Metal? Any 'banger worth his Nargaroth back patch knows Black Metal is all about winter, midnight vision quests through frost-choked ravines, taking your shirt off, and takin' a pic for the album cover. What does the West Coast know about winter? Where I'm from we're living an Immortal album 30% of the entire year while your metal bands are playing flutes around the bonfire, fucking celebrating the harvest, and yukking it up over a sack of northern lights.

er, we're not all like this, promise

(Speaking of New Jersey, that's probably the most metal places on the planet ain't it? Fuck sylven forests of primordial hardwoods and awe-inspiring ocean vistas, forget Norway...New Fucking Jersey man. It's basically built on top of toxic sludge and car parts. Anyone who elects to live there voluntarily earns their spike cuffs automatically.)

is more metal than

The East Coast always seems to get left out of conversations about metal (New Yorker notwithstanding), perhaps due to regional metal xenophobia, perhaps ignorance, perhaps its the smaller profiles of the bands, maybe a combination of all this. We gave you NYDM, Dio, Grief...the nascent scuzz-BM scene (see Mutilation Rites) is giving the Black Twilight Circle a run for their money IMHO...hell we've got Florida so right there we've buttoned up 90% of the American Death Metal legacy.

ANDMANOWAR

i know u like my layout skills

Now, I'm not saying we're completely infallible. In fact, we owe you a couple of apologies: namely Liturgy, the whole Savannah/Atlanta thing (seriously, what the fuck is up with the whole Kylesa/Baroness/Mastodon scene? can someone fill me in plz thx). We MIGHT be single-handedly responsible for metalcore also, now that I think about it. Whoops lol. I hereby apologise for all our past transgressions.

So anyway, yeah, this:

WEST COAST
i detect your pose
all the way from here

EAST COAST
trve

I rest my case.

You are cordially invited to the ceremonial ribbon cutting of the brand-new, 230 acre IllCon East campus, featuring an exclusive Evoken and Cannibal Corpse showcase*, and we will vote on IllCon East's new charter. I hereby lay down the gauntlet, West Coast pussies. The metal world is overdue for a good beef with all the trimmings, don't you think? Infantile posturing in album intros, threats of violence via YouTube, all that. How great would that be? Minus the assassinations, Varg.

FUCK YOU, WEST COAST.

*not verified