Though they say that in time. Though they say that in time.
Everything will go right. Everything will go right.
It's hopelessly black.It's coming back.
Fireside, Monsoon
This has all happened before. And it will all happen again. Way back in the year 2000-ish, I launched a music review website called Firesideometer.com. The name was a nod to our slightly tongue-in-cheek reverence for the Swedish Post-Hardcore band, Fireside. Any time I talked about music with friends, it was always, “but are they as good as Fireside?”
My friend Chad and I wrote some reviews. Others found us through their love of Fireside and decided to join our cause. Some came and went. Others stuck around and became life-long friends.
We were living the dream. Labels were sending us (FREE!) albums to review, bands were granting us interviews. PMA Gunnerfeldt responded to our emails. But somewhere along the way it stopped being fun. The promo’s kept piling up. Separating the wheat from the chaff became a full-time job. And I started to feel terrible about all the negative reviews we were writing. Burning some struggling artist’s heart on a stick...well, maybe it’s a young man’s job.
So we shut it all down. Got married. Had kids. Lost the domain name to a gambling site. But a handful of Ometer staff kept in touch over the years. We never stopped sharing our inane music commentary with each other. Many great bands were shared and shat upon over Facebook Messenger, with no one but us to enjoy it. A global pandemic struck, and now I have this itch to write again.
So here’s the new mission statement. Firesideometer A.D. is a music review site. Like most sites of its ilk, it’s just a collection of opinions from some no-talent, aging dorks who may or may not know what the hell they’re talking about. We love music, especially rock and metal. And I think we have a knack for discovering cool bands that you might have missed. But I wouldn’t put too much stock in what any of us think about anything. Especially not Chris.