Border Boss

The holidays are exhausting, snow is exhausting, poor exhaust ratio is exhausting... even when you have access to full sound, this time of year can beat you down. Imagine if you DIDN'T? Imagine if you had to shovel all this snow and Cleveland's own HOMOSTUPIDS only left you about a voicemail's worth of stuff to listen to?

FIXED UPLOAD (HOPEFULLY): Travel as far as you want. Germany, Iceland, Sweden, Siberia... No matter how much reindeer meat and surstromming you eat with the locals, Mom and OVERCAST will always tell you "we have melodic death metal at home".

Today we take advice from the past and present masters... how to prevent onstage bowel troubles, offstage transmissible illness, and in-situ brainrot. But once the lights go out, the boys of DEF CHOICE pass out some magazines they found in the woods and the real party begins.

One more week in the gamer seat - now you're playing with power. Even in the library we're only about games. But you know who doesn't play? Swedish technical submission grapplers SMACKDOWN. JO-HAN... GET THE TABLES!

Doctors and unemployment counsellors hate us for this one weird trick where we leverage the very lowest form of nepotism to simply sidestep the entire rat race. It's so simple, why don't you do it? We already lost interest in your problems because because we're steady gaming. Exit 8, Platform 8, Crazy 8s... mere stepping stones on our mission to catch all of San Diego's most collectible boys, CRIME DESIRE.

We are ready to answer for our decisions. We are ready to admit that not all our choices are the good ones and that not all fitness influencers are created equal. We are ready to face the fact that non-linearity and the hollow shell of past convenience can yield mixed results. Maybe it's time for you to do the same. Maybe we could all take some cues from the youth driven passions and grievances of DRAGNET. Or no wait, hold on...

Today we speak of old men insisting on the pursuits of young men - gaming like young men, marching in the streets like young men, lip syncing like young men. But I'll tell you what's really old is pennies. First of all they are brown which is the oldest color of money and nobody knows why we have them. Did you know West Virginia named their finest band after the guy on the penny? LINCOLN, I guess?

It's time once again to start thinking of ways to be more spooky - whether it's communing with suburban witches, collecting low grade serial killers, or waiting to be summoned from your lair in the sewers. And now I see by my shibboleth timepiece that we're just about ready to wrap up our absolutely thorough audit of these 50 states with Louisiana's WE NEED TO TALK.

This week we are wearing only black. Not in mourning, but because we must walk in the footsteps of the goatfathers who came before us in respecting small businesses, cultural foodstuffs, and the chain of provenance of the swords of America. As luck would have it, you can also wear black when slamming to the music of Arkansas such as BURNED UP BLED DRY.

This week we don broad hats and cravats to pass as riverboat gamblers en route to america's most culturally productive delta, hoping the lawless highwayman strategy of putting an entire paycheck on red yields a good result. If not, at least we have the paint-peeling shriek of Mississippi's own ATOMIC JEFFERSON to keep us occupied in our cells.

This week we think about fish made of stone, snakes borne of a toddler's screen time, and the warlike tendencies of nostalgia streamers before finally solving some lifelong mysteries by checking out the hot North Dakota (maybe) sounds of Fargo(maybe)'s own GODHEADSILO.

Gang, it's just storytime this week. You've never heard so many goddamn stories. Plus we're RAPIDLY concluding our survey if American Hardcore by chalking up another challenging state. Perhaps you know these fellas from Mt Rushmore. No the other Mt Rushmore. Wait have you ever even been to South Dakota? STATE OF THE UNION has.

If you thought we were old before, check out today's episode where we discuss the finality and hopelessness of hospice and the sweet sounds of Sting as misinterpreted by booger punks. Eventually we find lots and lots to think about from Philadelphia metallic hardcore pioneers DARE 2 DEFY.

We're back from a very relaxing break to ask very tense and personal questions to famous touring artist and 3-time FSIC guest SHELBY COBRAS. By the unbelievable power of three, we turn the world of podcasting on its head discussing Korn, occult veganism, and the unacceptable place-names of Australia before interrogating some of the rarest death metal on earth from the pursed kissy lips of Vietnam's DISGUSTED.

Why don't you grab a seat there buddy. We need to talk about something and it's kind of important. It's about Mucky Pup. I know, I know... you know all about it from the kids at school. I get it. But we just want to make sure that your first time is safe and... what do you mean it's not your first time? Well did you use a flexi?

This week we are all taking a plane ride to see if any carnies will give us a body massage or at least let us bum an exotic cigarette before putting down our fried oreo pickle poutine long enough to book a train to Oklahoma to catch at least one of the 11 zippy tracks from the presciently non-libertarian THE

Steps away from the finish line on the ROAD to 200, we celebrate the internet past, the internet future, and sophisticated metacommentary on how the internet will be used in the data-beast wars. Maybe the only solution is to retreat to the deep frontier of interior Alaska where all we have to worry about is the gas wars and how to score a room in that one building where everyone lives. Luckily THE CYNICS are statewide nonstop for the last 45 years (we assume).

It's been a rough week and we are rough boys like the sexy legs in the ZZ Top "Rough Boys" video but not like the Pete Townshend Rough Boys because that is still sketchy no matter what. This week we wade through blood and bleed some more on our quest to dance all our firearms away with the pulsing singular beat of (sort of) Connecticut's XO MANOWAR I mean MAGNUS ROBOT FI- I mean XO SKELETONS.

This week one of us is humbled by the work of a powerful lesser man while the other is inspired by a powerful super man but both of us are on a convergent, patron-demanded path to learn about some 2-week iron men and the work they did as iron boys in Connecticut's own FAULTLINE.

Don't worry, everyone. We got this. We are hard at work assembling an elite, throbbing wall of well tanned leftist muscle to turn the tides of history back toward mundane center-right capitalism where we still can't afford to go the hospital. We also combat hardcore AI hoaxes and astroturfing and that's the sum total of hardcore chat this episode because today we're here for... something else. Ladies and germs, aloha from THE DAMBUILDERS.