Welcome to Hell! Er, I mean, the COMMUNITY. I'm Jason Arnopp: veteran Kerrang! journalist, news editor, deputy editor and acting editor between 1988 and 2002. Let me congratulate you for becoming one of the first 666 members of Possessed By Metal, while it's still young and priced low. One of the great things about the Skool platform is that you'll pay this same monthly price for as long as you remain a member. So you've joined a community that values mutual respect, kinship and positivity among fans of all types of rock and metal. This means that we: 🤘 Exercise tolerance and realise our opinions are not facts 🤘 Are far more inclined to talk about what we love than what we dislike or hate 🤘 Leave political views at the door, along with our bullet-belts Note: this doesn't mean you have to love everything and never criticise rock and metal bands. If you don't enjoy an album, you're 100% free to say so, provided you don't judge a fellow metal fan who thinks it's the best ever. Generally speaking, though, if you're constantly angry about music, and about people with different opinions and/or lifestyles, then this won't be the group for you. (If you're unhappy about this, just DM me and I'll refund you.) But let's see, right? 🏫 New to Skool? Check out the mini course in the Classroom area (see the tab above) for some basic pointers 📚 You may be keen to grab your free download of my book How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else - exclusive to the first 666 members. 🎤 Usually priced at $15, this book gathers everything I ever learned about interviewing people across three decades. You'll find the book in the Classroom section. To download it, all you have to do is reach Level 2 in the community (see the aforementioned mini course to learn about the leaderboard or just ask me!) Here are three of the many ways you could score five points to reach Level 2: ✅ Introduce yourself in a comment on this very post! Tell us where in the world you are, your favourite metal era (80s? 90s? 00s? Now?) your favourite bands, your favourite gig ever or whatever you like.

It's easy enough to Google to find brick and mortar record stores, but not so easy to find out whether they stock rock/metal. You either have to go there or contact them to ask. And if you contact them to ask, there's always the possibility that they say, "Yes, we have rock", but what they really mean by rock is Oasis or Dire Straits. So how about we steadily build a list of record stores that members can personally vouch for stocking metal? Here's how we do this: ✅ Comment the name of a record store you've been to, that stocks metal, and tell us the town/city. ✅ Using at least one sentence, give us your review of the store. ✅ Give it a fire rating out of three! Is it 🔥, 🔥🔥 or 🔥🔥🔥? WONDERFUL OPTIONAL EXTRAS 🎁 If the store has a website and/or social media, drop the link 🎁 For bonus awesome points, take a photo of the store and/or the metal section and add it to your comment! 🎁 Wanna go all the way and REALLY ace this? Film a video of your hand flicking through the records/CDs! (You'll need to upload this to YouTube or Vimeo, then drop the link. Native video is, however, coming to Skool at some point.) If this idea takes off, I can transfer our testmonials into an archive of record store info in the Classroom section. Let's go! I'll start with a store or two in Brighton, UK. And one of my favourites in Norwich.

We talked about this in the community (or something like it) and now I've done it, during today's five hour journey from Lowestoft to Brighton. This was fun! Do let me know if you feel the same way, because it will spur me on to do it again. 😊👊🤘