Queue dramatic music…..Ladies and Gentlemen of The Metal Republic I am proud to announce that “PiercingMetal Musings” – The Official Blog Of PiercingMetal.com is Seven Years old today and I can hardly believe it.

Now I realize that I had only recently shared the fact that PiercingMetal.com itself had reached its own 9th Anniversary of online time on 4/4/14 (discussed HERE) but since “7” is a lucky number I figured that it was a good idea to share that knowledge with those who find this side of the PiercingMetal brand to their liking in addition to the conventional review stuff. Thinking back on it all I remember how with PiercingMetal was only a couple of years in and was still growing as a resource for Metal Reporting when my colleague at work said to me “Ken do you blog?”; “If not then you should blog for the site as well because it lets you reach even more people”. Perhaps he was correct because he was a programmer and he was a fan of these still kind of new podcast things that were able to be downloaded and listened to via your MP3 player or on the computer. One of the podcasts he listened to spoke about the rise of blogging as a medium so I figured I would look a little more into it.

Granted this was going to be a little more work for me as a writer but I felt that the idea of adding a more personal spin on things for the site would be nice even though I was very hesitant in the beginning. At the time, PiercingMetal only had reviews of CD, DVD’s and Concerts and it was enough work to do all of those reviews and then add an additional part to it as a voice for entertainment good but I was game to give it a try. I once spoke of this originally being a Blogger blog but that was actually taking traffic away from my dotcom and the IT nerd in me absolutely hated that because it was at the time when I often heard “how many pages are being viewed” or “how many hits are you getting”. Once I learned that WordPress was a provision of my site hosting plan and that I could import the whole Blogger blog right into my domain the process began anew. The trick would be what could I possibly offer up here that would be different enough from the review writings and not lose my reading audience attention or the worst case scenario – their interest on the whole.

I started writing about the signing events that I attended because they offered a different spin on our favorite bands and they way that they interacted with fans and sadly when a musician of note died I tended to speak on their impact when they were alive in this area as well. My concert reports found leader pieces residing in the blog and since there were often many fan and merchandise shots I placed these here as well. I didn’t hate the medium any longer when it came to using it as a means of expanding my media voice and was finding it being searched differently based on the fashion in which WordPress is globally scanned across the Net. Soon enough the coverage of conventions started happening here and those have been a blast. As of this anniversary writing there are currently over 1,500 posts in the PiercingMetal Musings Blog and they feature no less than 8,500 images across their combined narratives. I’m not talking about 1500 reposted press released either but instead 100% original thoughts and ideas about our varied subjects. Whew.

Now it’s time to look ahead and plan towards Year Eight for the Blog and of course Year Ten for the PiercingMetal brand. So what can we count on with the PiercingMetal Blog as we set course for those milestones, well for starters its first important to line out a few things that will no longer appear in this part of the site. I’ll be removing the Concert Reviews leader pieces and any new Interviews will go right on the core site. The plan in the next few months is to take the traditional site and morph it into a WordPress install. Since those were added to the Blog to expand what our readers were easily finding the end result will be the same once the WordPress converts them. I do plan on upgrading the level of content in the Categories that are listed below and I’ve even explained them in a little greater detail for those who might just be tuning into the program..

Music Milestones: These are the milestones that have happened in music (duh) and usually are relegated to the anniversaries of specific albums of note. So let’s take the 25th Anniversary of Twisted Sisters “Stay Hungry” for example which has a post lauding it in the blog. I used that one since its actually coming up on its 30th year in 2014. This focus was expanded to also celebrate milestones in bands personal histories as well, so the 40th Year of KISS’ formation, the 25th anniversary of Steve Hogarth joining Marillion and other stuff like that. To me this is fun and relevant content to help increase your awareness about music we appreciate here at PiercingMetal Musings and perhaps some of these articles will encourage you to hit the online shop and make a purchase. That would be awesome and in order to help you out in that context I generally put a link to Amazon.com to lead you right to it.

Comic Book Milestones: This is very similar to the Music Milestones category but plays along with the illustrated medium and celebrates key comic issues or the first appearance of a major character in the history of a comic book company. For instance last year was the 75th Anniversary of Superman and we raised a glass in its honor. Now unlike the ability to easier purchase a Music Milestone at a given moment, when it comes to these topics of focus, you will very likely be left seeking out a reprinted anniversary edition. Similar to what I do with the Music Milestones, I embed links to the issue if an affordable edition is available on an outlet like Amazon.com – This is often the case when it comes to Marvel and DC Comics editions. As a lifelong comic book geek I really enjoy this category and look forward to bringing more of these articles to your viewing screen.

Upcoming Tours: Periodically I will be offering up these tour broadcast posts and they will not only feature exceprts from the press copy that we receive here at the Metal Command HQ but they’ll have personal insight from me on the package or artists involved and even give you links to recent works and very likely images that I had shot of these groups over the years. My goal is to keep the word out about the shows well in advance of their tickets being made available.

There’s obviously more to come than I have brought up and based on some of the ideas going on in my head there is even more than that in the planning stages so stay tuned for what is to come. e so in my brains planning stages so stay tuned for all of that. As you know the site uses all the relevant Social Netwoks to keep you in the loop so find our brand on those mediums to help you stay in the loop. If you’ve been following PiercingMetal’s Blog since the beginning I thank you for your kind attention and if you are still one of the relatively new readers I say welcome to the fold. It is my pleasure to keep you entertained and aware of the exciting music scene around us. We’re also using a whole bunch of the Social Networks and have placed them below for your easiest access.

Official Facebook
Official Twitter
Official Instagram
Official YouTube Channel
Official Google+