The metal blogosphere is much like the American political media, in the sense that buzz words are used to carry much of the weight and attract the most attention. Where a Senatorial Candidate may tell the people that he's for "lower taxes" or "anti-gun control" to try and quickly give you a sense of his beliefs, metal bands rely on the increasingly hyper-specific sub-genres like "doom" or "sleepcore" (something I really read the other day). While these words usually mean nothing when applied vapidly, when chosen carefully they can indeed give the voter/listener a pretty good idea of whether or not they want to proceed in checking out this politician/band. For me, those words typically include "sludge," "post-rock," "doom," or "blackened," so when I saw three of the four attached to California's Cold Blue Mountain and their second album
Old Blood, I decided that yes, this would potentially be someone I'd like to learn more about before voting. Er... a band I would like to listen to.
