SOMEDAY I WILL HAVE TINNITUS

I forgot my earplugs last night when Vince and I hit up The Faceless show here in NYC last night. This was kind of a terrifying realization. I am finally at a point where I honestly feel like metal shows are almost too loud. It’s not that I hate the music – I obviously love the music – I’d just still like to be able to hear it in ten or twenty years (I plan on dying shortly thereafter, so that’s really as far as I need to make it.). Luckily, my man Vince had an extra pair for me, but guess what? When I got home, my ears were still ringing. My point being: it seems inevitable that I will someday suffer from hearing loss in some capacity.

D.X. Ferris recently wrote an article on just this topic for The Cleveland Scene, which includes interviews with such metal luminaries as Keelhaul and Soulless. Here’s an excerpt:

Keelhaul drummer Will Scharf has played in some of Cleveland’s loudest, heaviest bands since the early ’90s. He didn’t start wearing earplugs until he was 22.

“Bad idea, waiting that long,” says Scharf. “[Now] ‘What’ and ‘huh’ are like punctuation marks in my vocabulary.”

Pondering his muffled existence, Scharf wishes someone had brought it to his attention sooner. He thinks the worst of his hearing loss was “absolutely avoidable. It’s just that most kids don’t give a shit about it until it’s too late.”

Check out the rest of the article here. It’s a good read, and if it encourages a few of you young ‘uns to start taking the protection of your hearing a little more seriously, well then, Mr. Ferris has done a good job.

And speaking of Keelhaul: thanks to Ferris for bringing it to my attention that they have a new album dropping August 18 on Hyrda Head. Head over to their MySpace page for more info.

-AR