May 2011 Numbers: Two-Hundred Seventeen Thousand, Seven-Hundred Seventy-Two
Well, there they be. We were up a bit from April, which was good, and between May 1 and 31, 2011, The Obelisk received a whopping 217,772 page views. I continue to be amazed. April was an exhausting month, May was too and June doesn’t look like it’s going to be any different, but it’s great to know people out there are checking in on the site and hopefully getting some use out of it.
I’m supposed to leave in about an hour to catch Ghost in NYC, and I have a shit-ton of work to do before I do that, so I’ll make this quick. The 217,772 page views came from an astounding 125 countries. Most visits were American (the UK was second), with California dwarfing New York, despite NYC having the single most city hits. In the “faraway places with one hit each” category are Bahrain, Oman, Montenegro, the Palestinian Territories, Kyrgyzstan and, Azerbaijan. Wherever you are, hi from Jersey.
If you kept up with the battle from last month between Finland and Sweden, then you’re probably Swedish. This month, Sweden was up 628 to Finland‘s 488. Yes, Finns, I know, I should have interviewed Amorphis, and for that, I apologize. I’ll see what I can do to rectify the situation as promptly as possible.
As I write now, there are a total of 700 members registered on the forum, with 2201 topics on all the boards and 30,399 total posts. If you haven’t registered yet, go for it. Rumor is they’re starting pantsless Thursdays on there and moderation is nil. Internet chicanery at its finest.
Let’s get down to business:
audiObelisk: I owe a podcast, and I know that. I’m away most of this weekend and I can’t seem to stop working until like 7PM every day, so it could be next weekend before it’s up. I put a poll on the forum to see what people wanted it to be, and a heavy psych theme is currently kicking “all-Black Sabbath“‘s ass, so unless the tide turns before the poll ends, that’s what we’ll roll with whenever we can roll with it. As soon as possible.
In the meantime, tomorrow I’m going to post an album from a band called Ex that rules, so make sure you check in to catch that.
Reviews: I’m still behind. Woo hoo. In the next month, you’ll see reviews of Ulver, Zombi, Dark Castle, the Melvins, Tank86, The Book of Knots, Nero Order, Lord Vicar, Zombi, and many more. Tomorrow is Orthodox. After that is Clutch. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine, but there’s a whole pile of stuff that needs to get done and so help me Robot Jesus, I’ll get there.
Features: Having Karl Simon from The Gates of Slumber pick out his favorite Saint Vitus tracks ruled. If you have any ideas for other features like that, let me know. I’d love to make more of that happen. In the meantime, I’ll have interviews coming up this month with Sourvein (that should be by the end of this week, next week at the latest), artist David D’Andrea, Witch Mountain, and more.
The Maple Forum: If you look at the frontpage of this site right now, you should be pretty well informed of what’s happening with The Maple Forum. The Blackwolfgoat album, Dronolith, fucking rules (thank you for emailing in your comments on it), and is available here. I have 25 copies left. Clamfight just issued a studio update on the recording of their next full-length, and of course we’ll have more on that as they get closer to finishing and we get closer to the release. And in case you didn’t see it, Kings Destroy killed when they played with The Gates of Slumber and Orange Goblin this past weekend. You can get their record here or here.
Live reviews: Not much news here, but I hope you’ve been digging the photos. Like I said, tonight I’m going to see Ghost in Manhattan, and then this weekend is Sea of Bones, Curse the Son and King of Salem (among others) at Fuzz Fest in Connecticut, so fun abounds. Looking forward to it.
That’s about the long and short of that. I think the air conditioning in my office has been shut off (pretty sure it’s on a timer), so I’m in a hurry to move it along with the evening, but thank you for reading, commenting, posting, whatever you’ve been doing, this month. Keep doing it. I think there’s something cool happening here and the momentum going into this summer is excellent. I can’t wait to see where this all ends up.
As always, much appreciated,
JJ Koczan
Halving Piecemeal Taskmaster
