The day before yesterday I flew from Seattle to my hometown of Austin, Texas, to visit family and friends. Yet another reminder that air travel basically sucks ass. One of the few upsides for me when I do it is the opportunity to catch up on new metal releases – and man, they’ve been piling up like snow drifts since the first of the year.

But all good things come at a cost, and the price I paid on this plane trip was being subjected to an almost non-stop attack of farting. Seriously, my section of the plane was Fart Central for more than three hours. I don’t know who the perpetrators were, though I have my guesses. All I know is that I was enveloped in a noxious miasma, one wave after another, for most of the fucking trip.

If you travel by car with friends, or you’re in a metal band touring by van, and a fellow passenger cuts one, you can roll down the windows, or in case of a particularly vicious attack, you can get out of the car — preferably after it’s come to a full stop.

Those options aren’t available at 30,000 feet. You’re trapped like an animal with its leg in a bear trap. You’ve heard how wolves caught in a trap have been known to chew through their own leg to escape? That’s how I felt. Probably not as bad as being water-boarded, but if given the choice, I probably would have swapped tortures.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that Immolation, Miseration, Meshuggah, and Carnifex didn’t intend their new releases to be heard under these conditions. Let me tell you, it’s a big fucking distraction. You start getting into the music – and that’s some mighty fine music I was cranking out – and then your nose hairs start to burn, and you might as well be listening to Lady Fucking Gaga.

Anyway, forgive me. I had intended to have a review of one of these awesome albums prepped and ready to roll out today, but I really gotta have a do-over on the listening experience. Meanwhile, I’m thinking that whatever they pay flight attendants, it ain’t enough. And I’m thinking of wearing a ski mask for the return flight to Seattle. It might actually be worth the body cavity search I’d get from TSA at the security checkpoint.

Have a very metal day. We’ll get back to music tomorrow.

The week is almost over, and it’s been a good one for us.  We discovered Shining and Thrudvangar — and we also came across some random, eye-catching visual stuff that gives us an excuse for another installment of our irregular feature called “That’s Metal” — But It’s Not Music.

That visual stuff (photos and videos) happened to fall more or less neatly into the theme of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” — and each item struck us as being pretty fucking metal, even though it’s not music.  So, what the hell, we thought we’d share.

First up: Automobiles. Or more accurately roads where you can drive automobiles. This example came our way via the blog of Steff Metal, our favorite metal maven from the Antipodes. Her “Linking Horn” feature consistently turns us on to interesting shit we’d never otherwise see.

Case in point: The 19 Most Complex and Dangerous Roads in the World. Follow that link and you’ll see photos of some breathtaking roadways, like the one above — the Stelvio Pass Road in the Eastern Alps of Italy. It’s got 48 hairpin turns at an altitude of 1.7 miles above sea level. Or check out the next photo (after the jump . . .)

This post is a two-fer.  Part 2 concerns the photo above and the story in UK’s The Independent that it accompanied.  But first, Part 1:  Elise over at the excellent Reign in Blonde site put up an initial list of 2010 winter/spring tours rolling through the NYC area that she’s stoked about, and asked “What’s on your calendar?” On our NW METAL CALENDAR page, we’ve got a pretty complete list of tours scheduled for touch-down in the Seattle area so far, and here are a few I’m particularly psyched about:

JAN 26:  Hypnose, Revocation, Binary Code

JAN 27:  Nile, Immolation, Krisiun

FEB 6:  Arch Enemy, Exodus, Arsis, Mutiny Within

APR 21:  Finntroll, Moonsorrow, Swallow the Sun, Survivors Zero

Gonna be some serious headbanging at those shows.

Now for Part 2:  A year ago The Independent reported the results of a psychological survey of 36,000 music lovers.  (OK, yeah, it’s old news, but I just saw the story.) The survey showed a definite correlation between people’s personality traits and the style of music they enjoy. Check it out:

Fans of indie music, for instance, were found to have low self-esteem and little motivation, but described themselves as creative. Rap enthusiasts, on the other hand, tend to think a lot of themselves and are extremely outgoing. . . . But the study’s most remarkable discovery is that refined lovers of classical music share a high number of personality traits with those who prefer rocking out to heavy metal.

And here is the study’s summary of classical and metal lovers’ personality traits:

Classical: Classical music lovers have high self-esteem, are creative and at ease with themselves, but not outgoing.

Heavy metal: Very creative and at ease with themselves, but not very outgoing or hard-working.

Kinda cool right up til the end, huh?