Hello and welcome to my first ever foray into the world of blogdom. Morbid Ales (as some of you may have gathered from the excruciatingly clever title) will focus mainly on my musings on heavy music and beer, and also on bringing the two together.

For most of my five-and-a-bit decades I have been an avid fan and collector of music of many styles but most enduringly of ‘heavy’ music. I don’t get too hung up on genres and sub-genres, and in my mind at least heavy music includes metal, stoner rock, punk, doom, psych, garage rock, prog rock, space rock, classic rock and everything in between. For me the seeds for all that I enjoy musically were pretty much sewn by the likes of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Motorhead, Neil Young, Radio Birdman, Celtic Frost, Rush and Bad Religion. But it is the thrill of continuing to discover fantastic new music that I most enjoy and I hope this blog will allow me to share some of these discoveries, while also doing some occasional reminiscing.

Beer. I love it. More specifically though, I love good beer. Beer made with love and passion and skill. Beer that is full of flavour. Beer that is challenging. Beer that can match my mood, the music I’m listening to, the food that I’m eating. Beer like this stunning Firehouse Coffee Stout from Woolshed Brewery that I’m drinking right now. And so logically it is highly unlikely that you will find me extolling the virtues of the generic, bland, mass-produced swill masquerading as beer that the likes of Lion Nathan and CUB seem to excel at churning out. Instead I hope to likewise share with you some of the wonderful beers that are increasingly available and how they may enhance your music listening experience, and vice versa.

While I do have some past experience in writing about music, having been lucky enough to spend a number of years interviewing and writing for the highly esteemed but now sadly defunct dB Magazine, I have absolutely no prior experience in writing about beer. Nor do I have any particular technical knowledge about beer. I just really enjoy drinking good beers and I’ll be trying to convey why.

I am fortunate to call Adelaide, South Australia home. Not only is it a wonderful place to live, not to mention home of the iconic Coopers Brewery, but we have thriving local music and craft beer scenes. And so you can fully expect me to be occasionally but justifiably parochial.

Lastly, there are other, potentially more important things in this world of ours than music and beer (hey, I never said this wouldn’t be controversial!) And so from time to time you will find me airing my thoughts and venting my spleen on various other topics.

Taste of course is in the ears, mouth, nose and eyes of the beholder and so feedback on any of my garbledthoughts is always welcome, as are suggestions and recommendations of new music and beer. So feel free to email me at jimmacka4@gmail.com or you can do the twitter thing via @jimbomckaykay

Cheers

Jimmy Mac