What is the Metalhead Box?

A (monthly) subscription based service catering to fans of extreme metal (in it’s various incarnations) by delivering high quality music and merch.

Subscription options include:

  • the standard (classic) metalhead box (a few CD’s, a poster, a shirt, and various high quality swag)
  • the budget (mini) metalhead box (shirt, cd’s, and a little less swag than the standard box)
  • the vinyl LP box (3 versions – 1 LP and a shirt, 2 LP’s and a shirt, or 2 LP)

Seriously, check these guys out. This shit is legit.

On to the Review

blasphemy shirt(stolen from the metalhead box trade group/forum, where members exchange items they received for items they wanted)

First, let’s bask in the fucking excellence that is this Blasphemy shirt. This isn’t available from their official band/merch site – this is exclusive to the fucking box. I love this fucking shirt.

blasphemy

Who is Blasphemy, you ask? Formed by vocalist Gerry Joseph Buhl (Nocturnal Grave Desecrator and Black Winds) and drummer Sean Stone (Three Black Hearts of Damnation and impurity) in 1984, the band started making waves in the extreme metal community with their demo tape Blood Upon the Altar (1989). They went by a few names (Antichrist, Desaster, and Thrash Hammer) before settling on Blasphemy. The band member’s lengthy pseudonyms were related to/the outcome of secret initiation rituals performed in the famous Ross Bay Cemetery.

The inclusion of this cemetery in the Satanic ritual abuse book, “Michelle Remembers” (which helped trigger the satanic panic of the 80’s), and the band’s association with the location helped their rise to infamy in the extreme metal scene.

They even name check it in the song Blood Upon the Altar (Ross Bay Grave/Black Mass Begins)

I would have gladly purchased the shirt alone for the price of the entire box. Keeping that in mind, the rest of the contents only add to overall value the guys at the metalhead box offer.

The other contents of my box included;

metalhead box review

  • 4 Cd’s (2 black metal, 2 death metal)
  • A Venom Poster
  • An Autograph from the guitarist of Gorguts
  • An official live bootleg of Hungarian Symphonic Black Metal act Sear Bliss
  • Gorgoroth coozie (fucking SCORE)

Final Thoughts on the Metalhead Box

For those of us who have been listening to metal since before the internet was a “thing”, I think it’s safe to say there’s been something missing for a long time.

Remember that feeling you got when you went into a record store and purchased an album purely because of the cover art? That feeling right up until you actually listened to it – especially if it turned out to be as awesome as you hoped?

Or responding to an ad in the personals of a metal magazine, checking the mail every fucking day? The day your packages finally came? Ordering label direct (because nobody in the fucking country carried the albums you wanted), having it imported, and then finding in the mail? That sense of eager, hopeful anticipation, followed by cathartic release?

That feeling that has slowly ebbed out of the lives of (many) metalheads over the past few decades?

Yeah, if you want that feeling back – get the fucking box. If you’re a newer recruit to the dark side, and you’re wondering why all the old-heads remember these events fondly – get the fucking box.

It’s mail-day times approximately six hundred and sixty five plus one.