BSOGM: My heavy metal podcast, newly launched on leathery bat wings

BSOGM. Say it with me: buh-sogg-uhm. It’s an acronym. It’s a hashtag. It’s all-caps nonsense. And it’s - wait for it - a podcast.

Yes, a podcast. I know. Everyone and their pet skull with bat wings has a podcast now. They’re weeds in the way-overgrown garden of internet content. But BSOGM is the biggest, ugliest, thorniest weed out there, the kind of twisted abomination fertilized by decades of heavy metal fandom, an obsession with the most obscure nooks and crannies of heavy music and, of course, the harvested excrement of many hordes of skulls with bat wings.

BSOGM stands for Bullshit Old Guy Metal, and is pretty much as advertised: two aging guys shooting the bull about their favorite bands, mostly from the 1980s and ’90s. I’m one of them, a mild-mannered 40-something headbanger of three decades. I show up and talk, and have the cojones to call myself a co-host even though the other guy does all the hard work. (And yes, BSOGM is a sibling to Dad Thrash, the hot new branding phenomenon that’s taking the world by storm, based right here at John Serba At Large.)

Anyway, the other guy: he’s my longtime friend Damian Master, about a decade younger than I, but an olde soul whose obsessive knowledge of all things heavy meets and often exceeds my own. We work together at Vertigo Music, the Grand Rapids institution that just might be the best damn record store in the Midwest. Come buy some records from us, please. Preferably some Warlock or Metal Church.

I digress. Damian is a multi-talented musician (check out his most prominent bands: the genre-defying A Pregnant Light, hardcore stalwarts Prison Suicide and raw metalpunkers Aksumite - Bandcamp here, Big Cartel store here) who, key to the BSOGM venture, has all the microphones and gear needed to record us. He not only brings the jokes and wisdom, but he also does all the engineering, editing and technical stuff, while I search the internet for monkey gifs. His payment for bearing the stress of a thousand glory-free tasks comes from my bottomless well of gratitude and comradery. It’s a currency millions of times more valuable than actual money, as I often remind him.

Our goals for BSOGM are simple: One, to get fellow metalnoggins to listen, and possibly listen to more Overkill. And two, to someday lure in Bobby Blitz, Overkill’s indestructible lead singer, as a BSOGM guest. Blitz, I’m at johnserba@gmail.com, and our imitations of your distinctively infectious laugh are deployed with the utmost respect and affection.

So, interested parties can listen to BSOGM on iTunes and the Apple podcasts app, or at our Podbean page (with more platforms forthcoming). We’ve produced four episodes so far: an introduction to BSOGM; a thorough consideration of who the Big Four would be if M*tallica, M*gadeth, Sl*yer and Anthr*x didn’t exist; and deep, dark dives on Voivod and Celtic Frost. If you’re not into this, well, POSERS GO HOME.

We also have a Patreon, if you want to put your money where our mouths are. We’re offering bonus episodes and badass mixtapes for subscribers. No, they’re not Spotify widgets, but actual cassettes with liner notes that we’ll put in an envelope and mail to you, because being so progressive it’s regressive is the true BSOGM way.

Thanks in advance for listening, and remember, get busy thrashin’, or get busy dyin’.