John McLaughlin
I was visiting my grandparents one weekend in 2003 when a friend of mine came over and started bragging about the new guitar he bought and how badass it was that he could play the guitar solo from “Like a Stone†by Audioslave. He then looked at me and said “Hey, you should get a bass and we can start a band.†A few months later, I owned a bass. And so I became a musician.
We never actually started that band, and he eventually stopped playing, but I kept with it and gradually music took over my life, as my tastes evolved from radio hard rock/nu-metal to commercial metalcore, to Gothenburg melodeath and Opeth, to old-school death metal and classic prog, to stoner doom and psychedelic rock. It’s been an incredible journey, and I have no plans to stop or slow down.
I got my start as a music writer in early 2013 with Iron Hops, a now-defunct craft beer/heavy metal blog (oh yeah, I’m a beer nerd too). Phil Johnston messaged me about joining the Ech(((o)))es and Dust team shortly before Iron Hops shut down, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to keep writing about the thing I love most.
You can follow me on Twitter, where I tweet about a variety of things relating to music, beer, the Red Sox, UMass Basketball, marching band, and some other stuff.
Articles by John McLaughlin
While they don’t yet have a sound they can call completely their own, they’ve been able to combine their numerous influences in a way that I haven’t heard done before, which puts them ahead of many of their peers. Sat-Urn should impress any doom fan enough to get them immediately on the Shinin’ Shade bandwagon, as some very interesting things could be coming from them in future.
