» 2026-02-21

We Regret To Inform You, The Deathcore Bands Are At It Again

It seems like every few months, another deathcore band is issuing some sort of statement about a member — typically the frontman — being accused of sex crimes. The latest trend seems to be: band gets new singer and immediately has to fire them after horrific allegations surface.

One of the more recent examples was Vulvodynia dismissing Zion Bittenbender this past November. Now, on the cusp of releasing the first album with new frontman Josh Davies, Ingested have fired him after issuing a brief statement:

Effective immediately, Josh Davies is no longer a member of Ingested. Adam Mercer will be handling vocal duties on the upcoming Bodysnatcher tour.

Davies has yet to issue a statement on the matter. The dismissal comes following a TikTok video detailing the allegations against him.

I'm wondering if the band will re-record the vocals for the forthcoming new album, or if things are too far along in the release cycle for that to be an option.

» 2026-02-20

This Website Is Always Under Construction

With the launch of this blog, I'll be slowly re-working the main Shack website over the next month or so. I don't have a firm timeline because I need to work on the content for the new site and I've also started a new job in a very different field than I've worked in previously. I'm still settling into my new role, so I don't know how ambitious I can be with my personal time just yet.

As it stands, I am looking at make 3-4 posts to this blog per week, and I'll be aiming to have 1-2 lengthy pieces on the main site each month. This is all subject to change, of course.

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

Back during the initial months of the pandemic, I decided I was going to play through all of the Final Fantasy games I recognize (anything up to 7, don't @ me). I ended up getting stuck on my playthrough of the first game, because it's an old — and rather unforgiving — game that I have only beaten once in my life.

I've yet to spend much time with parts 2 and 3, which were games I had never played before because they weren't released in North America and any ROMs I found back in my high school days were some mix of glitchy and poorly translated.

Final Fantasy IV is an installment I've had a long, frought relationship with. I love the storyline and the mechanics, but there are parts of the game that drag on and you can easily end up underpowered and stuck in areas if you don't force yourself to grind experience.

Suffice it to say, I was even more vexed when I found out that the North American version of the game was dumbed down for non-Japanese audiences. I've since played versions which include the content removed from the original North American release (confusingly named Final Fantasy II), and I will agree that the game is much harder in its unadulterated form, but not significantly moreso.

I didn't have much in the way of expectations for yet another re-release, this time for the Nintendo DS. I figured they would do a good job porting the game to a quasi-3D format and update the graphics. Instead, I got a whole lot more; rather, this iteration of Final Fantasy IV extends the original game in some very interesting ways, in addition to providing a beautiful graphical upgrade.

After failing in my first attempt because I didn't actually look into the changes in this new version — which left me horribly ill-equipped to win the game's final battle — I've since restarted my playthrough. I don't know what it is about this game in particular, but I am extremely averse to doing my homework despite getting punished for it — repeatedly. (If they do yet another re-release, I would still give myself no better than 50/50 odds.)

I'm now a little more than 2/3 of the way through the game, and I've meticulously sought out every Augment and piece of gear there is to find. I'm at the point where my characters are cartoonishly overpowered, so I'm hoping to beat this game for what will only be my third time, ever. And then I get to do it again, on a harder difficulty. (Which is not something I am aching to do immediately afterward, especially with copies of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI waiting in my queue.)

» 2026-02-14

So I Guess I Have a Blog Now

For whatever reason, I decided to build a small blog to complement the main part of The Rickety Old Shack.

Part of the rationale is that I needed an excuse to brush up on my PHP and Python coding, but I also wanted to re-focus the main site into longer form pieces.

More or less, this site is the middle-ground between the rambling I do on my BlueSky account and material that fits my somewhat nebulous, personal definition of an 'article.'