Bomb Garden

by LUKE BAUMGARTEN & r & & r & Plugging a Leak & r & & r & & lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & I & lt;/span & t's pretty easy to look critically at the world. It's considerably harder to look critically at yourself and your own work. Self-analysis can be exhausting -- rewarding, too, even incredibly so, but damn. I've been directing criticism inward a lot lately for a bunch of different reasons -- mostly your run-of-the-mill quarter-life-crisis stuff. Because I take my job very seriously, and because I feel that being a writer is an indivisible part of my person -- one of the essential things that makes me me -- all the personal reflection has also made me look hard at the job I'm doing here.





I don't want to get into details of my personal assessment -- I don't even like explaining why I'm about to do what I'm about to do, it makes me feel like I'm presenting myself as some martyr -- but I've made mistakes as music editor. The biggest, in my opinion, is the job the Music section has done covering Spokane's DIY metal and hardcore scene. The job we haven't been doing, essentially.





We noticed this gap in coverage about a year ago and floated an ad looking for writers to fill the gap. No one really bubbled to the surface, so I neglected the issue. I shouldn't have.





Among other things, this lack of connection to the metal scene in Spokane led me last month to report erroneously that the local band Behold had been planning to break up after the departure of their bassist, a mistake I regret. It's the kind of mistake I never want our paper to make again.





To that end, I'm putting out another call for writers well acquainted with metal and hardcore broadly and with our scene specifically.


If you're a strong, confident writer with a love of metal and/or hardcore sturdy enough to be able to review these genres objectively -- to report on the scene but also to offer commentary on it -- then send an e-mail about yourself and a few bands (locally and those coming through town) you'd like to write about. My e-mail is luke@inlander.com. I'm on vacation this week, and I look forward to reading your responses when I get back.