A Happy and hopefully Heavy New Year from the Metal Observer crew!
As we turn another page in our growing book of TMO, I figured I’d give you all a bit of an update on where we are and where we’re going.
To start things off, a huge thank you to all of you out there who have been supporting us throughout the years and even decades. For almost 24 years now, we’ve been proudly independent and poured our heart and soul (and quite a bit of money) into this website, which will not change!
First of all, apologies for the on-time issues the site has had in the past few months; we are gearing up for a change of hosts, which should give us long-term availability.
But enough of looking back, let’s look forward instead and 2024 promises to be an exciting year for TMO and we’re looking forward to all of you being able to take part in this!
Discord
Number one involves a new addition to our arsenal, our very own Discord server! It’s been around for a while, but it is officially launching now, and while we know that it’s still very empty right now and will probably take a while to grow, what better time and place than being there to help shape it? It will be a place to interact with us and with each other and we’re open to any suggestions or ideas of how to make it better. Here’s the invite.
Another thing that has been lying around somewhat forgotten is TMO’s official Subreddit, so why not put it in here as well? It can also be used to interact with the TMO Brotherhood as an alternative to Discord, which I know not everybody is fond of. Click here for /r/themetalobserver.
Ko-fi
Numero tre is our brand new Ko-Fi account, where you can tip/donate to help us keep TMO independent and thriving. For a start, it’ll get you an exclusive Discord role, but we’ll work on expanding that; again, we’re open to suggestions. The link for this is here.
Secret Steel
Remember Secret Steel? TMO’s compilation series featuring the best unsigned bands? It is back! Thrash 1 is in the works and damn, did we find some insane bands, keep your eyes and ears peeled!
YouTube
So, these things are already implemented and ready to go, but there are a few more goals for 2024 that are even bigger and more exciting. First off, we will be starting our own YouTube channel! Yes, we’re fashionably late, but we’re planning for album streams, hopefully, interviews and documentaries, and if we manage to set it up without accidentally formatting the internet, we might even dabble in some live streaming! If you consider this a promise or a threat, well, it could be either, but that has never stopped us! So, some of you may now ask, why suddenly the need for starting a TMOtube? Well, we see it as a great opportunity to bring you even more and better content. With the decades of metallic experience that the Brotherhood can boast, there’s tons of potential to create some deep and exciting content you won’t find elsewhere.
Speaking of YouTube, if you have experience with video editing or casting pods or any of the likes, we’d love to hear from you, there will be a link to a handy document a little lower down that will outline all the open positions we have at TMO at the moment.
TMO v4
And the maybe biggest goal for the year is TMO v4! We’ll be celebrating our 24th birthday on May 1st of this year and we are on only the third incarnation of the magazine. It all started out with a cobbled-together website at a time where a WordPress was closer related to Gutenberg than content management and what we were clearly lacking in technical knowledge, we made up for enthusiasm. Our second version looked a lot more like an actual website and served us for a long time before we entered TMO 3.o that you see now, which has had its challenges from the beginning and things have not been aging all too gracefully, unfortunately.
So, now we are in the planning stages for TMO v4 and we’re excited to explore what is possible! We want it to be functional, easy to navigate so you can access all of our content without getting lost and definitely also want to give it a big visual update, including new logo and all. Now, our technical knowledge when it comes to these online things is still dwarfed by our knowledge of metal, which means that we’re also looking for people who would be interested in joining us to help us with this side of things as well, whether on the graphical or technical side.
TMO Wants You!
As already mentioned, we are always looking for new talent to join us, and the sky’s the limit (unless you prefer the other direction, we’re not judging). To make it a bit easier, we’ve compiled a nice little document with all current open positions at TMO right now, reviewer/interviewer, web designer/webmaster, person with graphic inclinations and YouTube editor, so if you might be interested in joining us in any of these, have a look here.
So, here we are, and we’re excited for what the year will bring. Expect us to be bigger and better than we’ve been in a long time, and maybe you can become a part of this journey!
Up the Irons!
