Revamping the Metal Blog

Hey everyone. I just wanted to say thanks for bearing with me through some infrequent posting. I really do hope to make this blog bigger and better, and have begun making some changes of the small variety.

First off, I finally got around to reviewing Iron Maiden's latest album The Final Frontier. Better late than never right? You can check that out right here.

You may notice that I gave the album an "8 out of 10." I used to use a five-point scale because it worked with the job I had previously at The Daily Iowan, but I always found that to be restrictive. I think I am going to try and keep reviews to whole numbers too.

Also now on the main page, I've switched over to the "jumps" blog format in which on longer posts, you actually click on, "Read More," if you would like to do so. I feel this helps clean up the main page, and it has proven popular on a number of other major blogs.


Next up, I hope to come up with a clever name for the blog at some point in the near future. The Official Metal Show Metal Blog is good for search engines when I had my radio show (just search "metal show blog"), but it is a bit bland and unimaginative. However, just like coming up with a sweet band name, coming up with blog names is difficult, so that might take awhile.

Finally, you probably noticed the site looks pretty different in style. I don't know if I quite like where it's at right now, but the Blogger template custom designer is pretty limited as to what you can change. Hopefully it's not too much of an eye sore (the classic design of this blog wasn't too much better!)

I would like to fix up the design of the blog, maybe give it a new look. Nothing too crazy, and maybe even just another expanded blogger template for now. I would love to hire a web designer to come up with some cool site, but obviously I cannot afford that at the moment (being a recent college graduate).

I hope you will stick around to read the blog, no matter what changes are or are not made. It would be my dream to write about metal for a living (that way I could actually devote all of my working time to interviewing musicians, writing articles, and reviews), but sadly at the moment I have to take on other endeavors to save up money. The magazine/online blogging industry is a tough market to crack.

Thanks to anyone who is reading / has ever visited the site. And if you do enjoy my blog, I would appreciate it if you became a follower / bookmarked the site and checked it out every once and again.

- Eric aka Randy (journalist and longtime host of The Metal Show on Des Moines' KDPS and Iowa City's KRUI)