Speaker 1hello you sexy beast welcome back to the james kennedy podcast might i just say how fine you are looking today are you feeling good thanks so much to everybody for checking out the podcast the list in the ship is growing every week so hello and welcome aboard to everybody that's just checking us out now you know i'm gonna nag you to subscribe like comment share and get involved because i do that every single time and like i said i'm gonna keep doing that until i've got every single last one of you special shout out as well to everybody that's donated to the paypal link uh that money goes directly to supporting the podcast i don't have advertising or anything like that so um you know that that your donations help to keep the podcast advertising free so we can just get down to business and enjoy the chat so thanks so much to everybody that spared some change to chip in for the podcast i know times are difficult for everybody right now so it really means a lot and thank you so much right now today man we are talking about heavy metal mental health and fatherhood i'm joined today by tristan hugh clark another welsh boy who's going to be telling us all about the metallidats and what that is and what's going on this was actually a hookup from mr tom damsel who does my photography and also did some photography for the metallidats so he said you've got to speak to these guys they've got an awesome story they're super cool they've done some great stuff and it's really taken off so i'm super stoked to be able to make this happen and welcome onto the podcast mr tristan hugh clark how are you
Speaker 2man hey no worries at all i'm just to sort of keep it themed i suppose i was always going to do it but i'm a kkk reference bear with me this is an interesting story or hang on if i was in the mormon religion you refer to as elder something or elder something else i think in the in the kkk from what i read you are known as brother something but i'm known as daddy who so i'm daddy who of metallidats that's the sort of code name so i'm daddy here when everyone else is papa something so we always refer to each other as papa or daddy and then our name that just sort of adds into the hilarity of the theme i suppose but i'm fantastic today thank you very much it was an incredibly stressful morning trying to get two very young uh girls to school or nursery on time i'm trying to uh put sun cream on them i'm gonna dry oh my god honestly it's it's madness here in the morning but uh i had five minutes in the car blasting metal music and i feel fantastic now because i also had a shower which i don't always get a chance to to do so i had a nine minute window to have a shower and i say even i managed managed to do it so i'm feeling a little bit like my old self today thank you very much how are you keeping today on the theme of checking in with our bros what's occurring with you well
Speaker 1as i said before we came on i'm currently nursing quite a brutal bourbon hangover and as you pointed out it is wednesday morning so yes that means i was getting spanned on a tuesday night so i don't have kids or anything like that so um my morning has has been slightly less superheroic than yours and i feel shamefully inadequate now in your presence
Speaker 2uh stop flirting you james okay sorry i'll
Speaker 1stop i'll stop okay so metallidads they managed dive right in tell us what it is what's happening what's going
Speaker 2on yeah sure man no problem i'll try and keep it simple so simply metallidads is a mental health peer support group specifically aimed at fathers and we are all bonded by our love for heavy metal music hence the name metallidads so we're mainly based in barry that's where the headquarters is barry beydos and i can actually see the sea from my bedroom where i'm currently sat i can actually see dover from where i am right not dover that'd be funny sorry christ your eyesight is good here uh i can see devon from my uh from my bedroom right now so we're barry based uh even though we've got members all over wales cardiff ponty murtha bridgend cardigan pont merion colwyn bay anglesey we've got people in gloucester cornwall oxford london even people in uh california paris johannesburg and sydney so online we're actually uh we're global in our reach but our mission is basically quite simple we just try to get um dads to have a bit more of a support network to compare stories and to share notes about dealing with sometimes difficult and tough situations associated with fatherhood whether whether that is directly fathering children or maybe not being able to see your children or being bereaved because you can't see your children or for example having issues like relationship or marriage problems or anything to do with weight or fitness or health and then problems and work and anything else in between so i wanted to create really a pool of knowledge where dads could dip in and ask other dads for advice on certain things and in the week on our themed facebook group we upload sort of useful articles and discussion topics for dads to sort of come out with a not to come out of the closet but sort of yeah sort of come out of the closet but sort of come out of the comfort zone to um discuss difficult things so that's the online thing we in person then we meet uh twice a week in barry for a social where anyone is welcome even if you're not a dad or even a dude you can that you turn up if you're if you're isolated or feeling lonely we meet in awesome wales zero waste shop on holton road in barry between 10 and 12 on a saturday morning and then between uh from about eight o'clock on a wednesday night we meet in barry rugby club for a pint and a game of pool and just talk a little bit about what's going on to chat rubbish and then we do random ad hoc things then uh throughout the month whenever we can depending what time of year it is we do litter picks with our families that's what we'll be doing very once in june no sorry once in july once in august once in september we do board games and burgers night we play for example have a bit of grub and play cards against humanity which is fantastic to release oh i know man but no we we had we had one uh monday last um i think this week and she was still awake it took me half an hour to get my breath back because i was laughing so much and coughing so much it's it's such a good thing for the soul it's brilliant it really is so um we then in barry we run a something called a signposting project where i have um myself and ben we have liaised with lots of mental health organizations and family services across barry the vale and cardiff just if people come to us we can actually signpost them or direct people so the traffic towards certain people and we can actually signpost them and direct people things are available to get people professional help because currently we're just a holistic approach rather than a professional um mental health approach so we do bits and bobs just try to keep duds um yeah just try to keep duds on the straight and narrow and an extra thing i've been doing for the past six months which is quite exciting because i know you like your music you're a musician yourself i've actually managed to get a foot into metal blade and napalm records where quite regularly i interview uh people from semi-famous metal bands and i actually quiz them on things like fatherhood and uh mental health so there's uh i even um that's awesome interviewed a band last week from arizona uh well mainly arizona based a band called kardashev who released an album on friday which is quite likely going to be probably one of the best metal albums of 2022 an album called liminal right so i we were even talking about how recently james hetfield from metallica basically on stage admitted to a brazilian crowd that he struggles with mental health so we discussed that for example and his thoughts from the metal angle of what people should be doing in the metal community so metallica is also trying to normalize a particular hashtag in the metal community of quite simply hashtag let there be talk very based loosely on the acdc let there be rock just trying to keep the rock and metal theme going so that's a hashtag which we are associated with and that's something i tried to put not push or encourage our metal brothers ancestors in the metal communities to sort of help uh push around and normally at the end of the interview they hold a piece of paper with a hashtag on the screen just to show they support it so that's an extra thing we've been doing as well so we sound really really really really busy and we sort of are but in the spirit of metalli dads we had a big membership increase last year and it got to the point where you were actually becoming not too successful but we're trying to keep up with what you're doing and it was becoming it was becoming too much for a little amount of people to sort of manage and it was not worth in the spirit of what we do just to sort of blow ourselves out and have mental health breakdowns because we all got families well we've got families we're trying to keep afloat so we've taken a big step back of what we potentially could have been doing at this time in a separate parallel universe because i've only got one brain i've got two children wife job i recently was hospitalized but i'll tell you about maybe in a bit uh but so yeah we've had to take a step back but we're still bubbling nicely just trying to look after the members we already have and just trying to make sure dads are supported and they get a good bit of information a bit of laughter in the form of memes or nice metal bands they can get introduced to for helps them in their day for example so that's sort of us in a nutshell as i keep it simple but i've sort of gone off on one now because that's
Speaker 1my style i love it i'm exactly the same dude just from listening to that description i mean firstly i think it's so awesome that there's more and more things like this cropping up now for men because you know men uh classically we're not supposed to talk about these things we're not supposed to be vulnerable we're not supposed to have weaknesses we're supposed to be strong at all times and keep our emotions down you know and we're not still we're still not especially our generation and our father's generation is still not very comfortable talking about our feelings or our fears or our vulnerabilities so it's i think to see things like this popping up now you know specifically for men to to sort of um be in a comfortable space with other men going through a similar thing where they can actually talk about these issues i think that's obviously it's great for the individuals but i think it's great for society more generally as well because you know the sort of like the toxic masculinity that people talk about you know when men have to kind of repress all their feelings and their emotions it comes out in other ways you know and that affects everybody it affects parenting it affects society it affects you know substance abuse and all that sort of stuff so i think the things that you're doing with metallidads it it's it's actually it's so broader reaching probably in the the ripple effect that it has through society as well rather than just the individuals involved so i think it's brilliant to see more and more things popping up like this now to normalize the the idea that it's okay for men to talk you
Speaker 2know sorry man thanks so much for everything you just said they're really grateful that you're just on board with the entire concept now we as an organization we're not like against um the typical white van man builder in a shape or form but we're just trying to really just show that the white van man builder still has stresses and it's probably a stress they can't actually identify and the and one of the identifiable things is probably because uh keeping it in etc and there's just loads of proof just through the ages just even recently like uh just given a recent example you , about a month ago in the metal community there was a lead singer of a well-known melodic death metal band by the name of Black Dahlia Murder their lead singer Trevor Stonad at 41 it appears took his own life and he was a very well-loved person uh and it's just difficult to believe that someone as well-linked and well-loved as him still couldn't find the help anywhere in the world to basically um to unload whatever was on his mind unfortunately he's not with us anymore you know same thing happened to Chester Bennington of Linking Park uh Chris Cornell of Soundgarden slash Ordis Blavin various other projects so you know um it sort of goes back to the let there be talk hashtag really you know chatting to dudes in the metal community really it's um asking the question like you know talk you know talking about depression suicidal thoughts and stuff in songs is great it makes for really good songwriting stuff but then it sort of stops there there's actually not much more uh conversation being had and in all fairness uh a place where it does happen and it's still nowhere near uh as well as it should be is technically in a place of huge toxic masculinity which is football right and it there's actually a lot I think being done in football rugby as well you've had a lot of uh especially Welsh rugby stars you know like Nigel Owens, Gareth Alfie Thomas have come out and uh well yeah they literally both did come out actually that actually works this time sorry just keeping you in touch with that so yeah I think it's a really good thing just keeping you humorous but you know they they applied to the conversation about you know talking out loud because of struggles with um uh not struggles but yeah the internal struggle with accepting their own sexuality in public uh etc so in sports it's actually the ball has been rolling for quite a while but it really hasn't in the metal communities it's very very much right in a very uh quiet place so what we the whole metal thing even if you're not interested in metal that doesn't actually matter it's just a universe we're going for a theme we're going for helps with our branding and the yeah the themes etc you know us guys in our group we like games and we like cycling cooking um films or we mainly talk about films most of the time because we're big uh movie geeks and um so you don't have to have to like the music to be a part of us etc but we just want to tap into the the normality really that so many people have these little moments of frustrations and they actually can't put it into words and that's one thing I always struggle with is to put how I feel in a sentence I always I always tell my wife this uh is that I sometimes feel the language I possess or the language we speak in the world now whether it's Welsh English French Arabic whatever language you speak I feel language hasn't evolved yet to describe properly how you I feel that's what I feel on a regular basis so this has been a nice therapy for me and um a nice way to channel by helping others so that that's known as I think in meditation terms that's known as one of the seven switches of happiness where helping others makes you feel better about yourself so that's a massive thing I definitely believe in so that's why we we started a while really early on in the history of Metallic Dads which was a couple of years ago doing things like litter picks on Whitmore Beach the main beach on Bari Island it's a great place to just talk out loud because you've got the sea the sky in the background yeah if you can find and it's it's a nice platform to discuss things that might be difficult so when we had our first little pig it was just the three of us myself Papa Ben and our friend Papa Lewis of Sully um we were chatting about things like a difficulty of being able to conceive children we're talking about depression just talking about recent albums we liked so the next metal festival we want to go to chatting about I don't know the remaking of film coming up so it's a nice mix of things in the backdrop of the beautiful um yeah um Bristol Channel which is on our doorstep that's awesome
Speaker 1yeah you're totally right I mean like doing good for others really is one of the easiest ways to feel good isn't it you know absolutely yeah so what was your personal motivation for starting this then well it
Speaker 2was a mix of really myself and Ben had uh sort of similarish experiences roughly on the same time but I um I think maybe three months into the pandemic when we were working from home I was me the main carer of my daughter because my wife had um I'll say main carer but I would take her for more of a ratio of the daytime because I had less um less deadlines to get work ready for and she had a lot more deadlines so you know I think early on the pandemic we can all probably have this in common we probably thought it was only going to last for three or four weeks and that everyone is going to be compliant and they'll all go away uh how wrong were we and I think three months in I was just getting really um I was just turning into a bit of a zombie or a shell really I um I'd have uh low moods for a long time I'd feel just constantly drained of energy I'd want to go to sleep at two o'clock in the afternoon I would accidentally fall asleep on the bed two o'clock in the afternoon and this went on for months that affected my patience I was irritated by tiny things my daughter was doing at this point I was doing the something I don't do now which is actually smack my daughter on the bum I never I don't do that at all now I haven't done it for about two years but I was doing it way more frequently than I probably should have because it's mainly through frustration and after a few months my wife basically heavily encouraged me to call the GP and I was reluctant to do it for quite a while but I think in one week I called the GP and through my work I can speak to um I think mental health counsel counselors or someone like a helpline and I sort of a combination of call the both one week because I just sort of knew something's not right I'm actually yeah seriously almost wishing harm on myself wow okay that's something I've never ever um never ever had at any point in my life and yeah so just sort of one night I think my wife went out uh for um for food with her friend and I just sort of and I'm not a crier really I'm reasonably an emotive romantic type of person I like them I like storytelling and stuff but I'm not wanting to cry but I just burst into tears after my daughter went to bed because it took me a while to get her to sleep and I just cracked my eyes like half an hour I thought this is not right so I called the GP and they basically over the phone diagnosed me with mild to moderate depression which is something I've probably had my entire life but not known about it and I think um within that same month then I basically reconnected with Papa Ben I was Ben's bass guitar teacher um uh 10 years 10 years prior to us having this chat and we sort of lost um lost um contact and we basically reconnected because we both realized we've become fathers since we last met and that was actually the mutual topic and we had I think a zoom conversation and um we were trying that we don't have really much friends especially with dads we don't really hang out with many of the people since becoming dads we've sort of comparing notes and we we sort of said um yeah there's no dad's groups is there it sucks it'd be really funny if you may start a group I know uh on metal music and it was just like a joke thing to start and we even like came up with the name that she just like popped on her head so that's that's the only thing you can call it surely and then the idea thought I thought wow this actually might have legs just in the regards of just a Facebook space because at this point we were early in the pandemic we couldn't meet uh outdoors uh meet up with people so it purely started first as a mainly a music sharing platform only just for dads who've got metal in common and it's basically grown from just having a band of the day or sharing YouTube videos or Spotify playlists to um me for example uploading useful articles about suicide bereavement or having discussions on do you swear in front of your children or do you bad mouth your partner for your children so it's evolved to something completely different two years on uh something we never actually envisage it to be but it's just naturally turned into this and it's actually inspired me to go a step further where I'm actually now retraining to become a psychotherapeutic counselor and hypnotherapist I'm actually just started um training so in three years time I'm hoping metallic would be able to offer free hypnotherapy and counseling sessions specifically father focused so that's something that's incredible on my uh on my radar or the mortality dad's uh radar so yeah very much started with two dudes going through tough time with father just have a chat it was purely a comedic thing and i turned into something a lot more serious and to be honest it has absolutely changed my life here in barry because i now have friends who will literally kick my door down if they haven't heard from me in two days because they might be worried that's amazing that's the type of people i want to surround myself with and that's what we're trying to do here in the mortality dad's community it just have dads who look out for other dads basically
Speaker 1that's beautiful man and thanks you know for being so open about your story as well because you know as we've said you know men aren't really supposed to be emotive like that you know we're to be dominant and manly and have answers for everything at all times you know we're not really meant to be human so i think it's great when men such as self are open and honest about you know their feelings and their vulnerabilities and their low points and i think it's super inspiring that you have turned your lowest points in life into this blossoming beautiful community that's doing so much good i think that can be an inspiration to anybody who's going through a similar spot right now that change is possible if you embrace change and choose change rather than committing to the fear of change or thinking that there's this is something that you can't do i think your story there perfectly illustrates just how much better things can be and how much more good you can do as a person when you choose that change and just to illustrate the point i mean how is your mental health now how is your life now as a result of those changes that you made and everything the great work that you've done ever since and setting up the community are things better now yeah
Speaker 2absolutely man one thing that uh i think is really important is that you know you've got to be able to be the person that you want to be and you've got to be the person that you want to be the person that you want to be and you've got to be the person that you want to be and you've got to be the person that you want to be definitely is a taboo topic is medication now uh i definitely saw what i mean medication i mean depression anxiety medication now is definitely seen i think mainly because it's the image and illusion men create in their heads or society creates in their heads that taking medication is almost a failure and even i right thought this like when i was uh told early on i had depression where i was given the option to have depression medication i even said the doctor christ no i don't want any of that stuff not like i don't know what it's not i'm not like a conspiracy theorist or anything but i didn't want to um yeah i thought no i don't want to put my body full of drugs i'm i'm okay i i can do this myself but to be honest i i gave in after a while because the way it was sold was it's not a magic pill that makes everything go away because there is no magic pill that makes everything go away and well unfortunately but it helps in quote take the edge off and to be honest since i started taking the lowest dose of something called setraline which is one of the various different types of depression medication you can have i've definitely felt a lot better my low moods have gone from potentially from every other day to probably maybe an afternoon every three weeks maybe wow something like that now from what the more i understand about depression a lot of people have it most people who have depression can completely function with it they can go to go to work look after their kids have a social life etc and most likely most of those people in that ratio will be on a type of medication and mostly the lowest dose it does help and if it helps why why um delay it and just for the sake of pride it really isn't a big deal it's it's like taking i don't know flaxseed or vitamin c it's just something i take every day well i've taken it today i've forgotten my memory's terrible but generally um i feel better because that's um absolutely my mental health is much better than it was in sort of summer uh 2020 by a long shot it really is and again it's because i'm like i'm knowing i've learned a lot more about myself i know uh how to avoid certain things that will uh i don't know how to avoid certain things that will um trigger me you know that's a word um i've never heard much of until this context before that it was just only fools and horses so trigger trigger uh my favorite show of course now um one of the most difficult two of the most difficult things i i think i found i don't want to take too much of your time when the two most difficult things i've done which have helped me one is to cut out people who are not good for me now that can be very very difficult but i i think a lot of people in the pandemic have found out they want to be doing less of things they don't enjoy more of things they enjoy spend more time with people they enjoy and less time with people they enjoy that's definitely something i've been doing and since i've been doing that my i'm just much happier generally i don't watch the news i haven't watched the news since around june 2020 now i sort of work in politics on the side i don't go into depth so i'm i used to be i was reading articles on a daily basis looking at international politics throughout the world and sometimes knowing too much information really takes a toll on you so basically i stopped reading political articles i stopped watching mainstream media specifically mainstream media because people don't realize that the news is basically there's news everywhere there's always news the news isn't there's only five things have happened today and they're going to be on the six o'clock news nothing else happened just these five things no there's things happening all the time things are selected to sort of keep people either buying products or not buying products or to go to do specific activities i'm not gonna um i'm not i am political in regards but i don't give myself over to one political party i'm just sort of aware what everyone is doing trying to take the best of what everyone's doing and just create my own little mini party in my head i suppose that's the way i look at it so um yeah i've stopped yeah um introducing myself to information and people that are bad for me now it's very it's been very difficult i still find it difficult but that hasn't had a major effect on how much happier i am as a person and i i implore people to do the same and especially i know it's more difficult with family but um sometimes you gotta you gotta literally think of act as opposed to the years of um memories you might have with someone now during the black lives matter protest in june 2020 uh no i i'm a person that's just blatantly obvious i just i love people i want people to coexist i know it's difficult and i i don't live on cloud cuckoo land i completely understand that people can't but i try to influence those around me to do that but that got me really really down and i saw people in my family people on my friends list i was just posting can i swear
Speaker 1fucking go for it i swear all
Speaker 2over the place okay cool so i wasn't sure the people were just posting utter shite on um on facebook like um oh like one of my friends like put like a photo like a photo of martin luther king like martin luther king didn't do violent protest and why should you like oh you're gonna submit all activists in the world in one photograph oh it's that simple okay yeah no it's just that simple so people were almost simplifying really really complicated issues in in the form of a facebook photograph and memes etc and i yeah i've been cutting people out of my life i'm literally saying to people i just don't like this person um yeah and i just refuse to sort of have anything to do them anymore and yeah that is um that's something i wasn't planning on talking to you in particular but i think it's very important to me and my happiness has been absolutely paramount it really has no i'm glad
Speaker 1you mentioned it because i think that is super important for anybody listening to this you know i think that's a great tip because social media became so toxic during the pandemic um there was all the you know the the fake kind of you know fucking medical experts that came out of everybody's friends list and the conspiracy theories and all that sort of stuff and you know and of course during that time of course yeah we had the black lives matter and you know the uh the trump election and stuff so it was a very the temperature was very hot that year and a lot of fronts and and i ended up you know because i'm very active on social media i ended up having to do a lot of the things that you're talking about you know i had to start unfollowing people and defriending people and just stepping back from it all because there it was very extreme time wasn't it and uh i think in it it's in times of extremity and in times of crisis that you you kind of see people's true colors including your own yeah so yeah i did exactly the same thing you know i kind of realized okay like i actually don't like this person and i need to step back and remove that from my life because it's you know it's it's it's not good for me it's not good for my mental or my physical health so i think it like you said it's difficult to do that especially if it's family or close friends but ultimately you have to for your own
Speaker 2health you spot on one absolutely i'm glad that the um the experience has been quite mutual for yourself and you've personally seen the the benefits of doing it because um because life is short i I think that's very much the. i don't know the the motto i think i've been saying to myself a lot of the past couple years life is short um even people for example like maybe maybe our parents maybe not specifically our parents but parents of generation are probably coming to a bit more of a realization now that work isn't life either um because some people it's like work work work work work work work and unfortunately our grandparent a lot of people's grandparents generation it's still instilled in their heads and because that's how they've been conditioned to believe because in the world they still live in aka their day and their rights and wrongs and their criteria that is still the case and um i completely understand that that for them is absolutely normal and i'm not going to take your day away from you at all but no one has ownership over time society see you I'm not going to take your day away from you at all but no one has ownership
Speaker 1over time society you know of course we all make our plans and we set ourselves up in a way so that we're secure and insured against you know future surprises but the one thing you can guarantee is that life is always going to send you a curveball man you know that's what it does and there's no way you can foresee everything and i think seeking that certainty just brings a lot of tension to people's lives and it leads them to things like you know conspiracy theories or you know fundamentalist religions or crazy belief systems because we we we need that sense of certainty sense of certainty we need answers but there isn't any real certainty to life there's no certainty that we're going to make it through the day tomorrow you know you just don't know what's coming so we do need coping mechanisms we do need community we do need an outlet for that reality all that tension comes out in other ways you know especially for men like i said because we don't express stuff so um i think it's really good to see things like andy's man club yes absolutely yeah and the running punks you know jimmy watkins from the running punks was on just a couple of weeks ago they're doing a very similar thing to what you're doing with metalli dads but they're doing it with running yeah absolutely that was awesome so i think it's it's really exciting to see these things popping up and really really important and powerful i think yeah it is
Speaker 2absolutely um yeah i think the pandemic's definitely been a catalyst for these other groups there's even been another group in barry called max's mates um who i haven't actually personally met yet but a few of the metalli dads members in barry have actually attended their their sort of monthly oh sorry weekly socials there's a great group in bridgend run by a friend of mine called rob lester it's lads and dads in bridgend they're i think on their facebook group they're nearing the i think they might have hit the thousand mark wow already i think so so they do like um going for cold water dips in porth call really early in the morning type of thing um i unfortunately i'm dealing with children that time of the morning so there's no way you can get me to or even barry island for that time of the week unfortunately but yeah it is really good because i think you need to capture the imagination so just sort of going back to the almost original idea of metalli dads now i was a part of a group called nct dance but nct is sort of like an um it was sort of like a it's almost like a national charity for parents uh i say it's a charity you you sort of have to pay membership to get a lot of benefits etc but you can become a free member now i used to meet with nct dads sort of like a national charity for parents but i think it's sort of like a national charity for well once a month to go to a pub quiz in cardiff and the guys are all really nice nothing wrong with the guys whatsoever lovely chaps but um the chat always heavily revolved around football right i i've got nothing wrong with football i like football i like all sports uh not one more than the other i'm a bit of an all-rounder where it comes to sports but when they were talking in depth like the conversation just went completely over my head i just felt like uh i just really found it difficult just to engage in conversation so that's sort of that's always stuck in my mind in and it's something my papa ben believes in as well as being a dad there's not enough to form a bond with another dad there has to be a spark or something yeah as a escapism away from being a dad and away from being married and away from maybe having internal struggles etc whether it is football whether it is metal music whether it is running yeah there needs to be a a mutual interest and once you can take the mutual interest you can actually have fun with it and that's one thing i think we do pretty well like for example every monday we have on the facebook page metal mondays where we introduce a band of the week uh sometimes it's bands people have heard of then sometimes it's obscure and most likely people haven't heard of as a way of us to upsell the people we interview from the apartment metal blade uh records so uh yeah i just think that's a really really um important thing and then again i think one thing i've been trying to work on from the beginning is to set getting the right tone i think we got the right tone in how we brand things and how we um uh get our information across because we're trying to cover three things really trying to cover metal music mental health and parenthood so trying to find a tone which sort of fits the three so we try to upload information with those three thirds of themes basically throughout the week so we've got metal monday trooper tuesdays basically where we try to get discussion topics for dads to maybe admit uh like a difficulty or or like admit a truth about a taboo topic like for example medication right as an example we have wellness wednesdays like today for example today i'm looking at my uh facebook today my dad's today wellness wednesday ah i've asked has anyone out here ever tried hypnotherapy help with anxiety overcoming a phobia or to stop smoking was it beneficial or how was it overall so ask those types of questions then fridays we have fatherly fridays um this week on fatherly friday um i think i've included the topic of wait for it your kids vomiting in public that's this week's theme because that happened to me last week for the first time i've dealt with loads of vomit in the house i'm not going to talk about it much more but there's an example where my child did it in caffelli last week after we visited caffelli castle we've all vomited in caffelli yeah yeah yeah i think i have as well so um and um so yeah we went to a cafe my daughter had a huge ice cream and we keep forgetting how small her stomach is she's almost four but she sometimes eats and eats and eats and she doesn't know when to stop and she the ice cream basically came out and 20 seconds passed and not a single person came to ask us if we needed any help wow and people were looking at us and this sort of caused me to think oh i'm gonna i'm gonna create a ranty video now and put it on the metalli dad's page so that's the theme for friday because it is a common thing that would have happened to a dad probably at least once at least definitely um so yeah that we so that's obviously a father theme a kid theme so that that's reserved for fridays so yeah we just do things like that to try to cover the entire board and like um we we put this graphic up every couple of weeks it's it's called the james ormeter appear with me it's a basically uh different photographs of james hetfield of metallica with either sad james happy james angry james we try to associate an emoji with a picture so we try to ask dads to check in and say how are they doing on that day and if they give any one of two emojis then we'd reach out to them on the day and ask is everything going do you need any support today can i get you anything that's brilliant man that type of thing so we again that's sort of tapping into the theme adding a little bit of humor over something that can be quite serious so that's the tone we've been trying to trying to master i suppose since our inception i love that
Speaker 1man i think what you're doing is absolutely brilliant and i commend you for doing it and um i totally agree with you it's uh it's great that there's this variety now so that you know if there's blokes who just want to talk about football with other like-minded blokes you know and then feel safe to talk about other things then they've got their club you know but it's great that you picked this kind of niche for the team and i think it's a great way to kind of build a niche for the metal community because i think it is a big deal in the metal community i mean you know the heavy metal has always been quite a kind of macho genre as well hasn't it you know what i mean it's a kind of a man's it's a man's sport you know so i think it's great that you've honed in on that niche which is obviously something you're personally passionate about but so are so many other people and it is a problem you know bad mental health is is a problem within the uh the metal community you know musicians i had ian winwood on a couple of episodes ago who recently wrote uh released a book called bodies um he was a music journalist for karang for like 30 years he used to hang out with like i recognize the
Speaker 2name yeah i used to read
Speaker 1oh yeah he's he's pretty much the main guy and it's all about this issue basically uh within the community of musicians and he quoted a statistic uh i hope i'm not misquoting it but i'm pretty certain he said that suicide rates amongst musicians are twice as high as the general population uh which is fucking mind-blowing when you think about it so the fact that you're doing this within the musical community and and to see that that it's spreading so well as well nationally is absolutely brilliant so you know you're doing life-saving work and you know we all we all sort of like salute you for that
Speaker 2man thanks man not actually one of our um says that on the back of one of our t-shirts for those about to talk we salute you based on the acdc song because why not
Speaker 1again that's the universe we're going for that's going to be the clip i'm going to use for the promo dude
Speaker 2yeah why not sorry i forgot to tell you i used to impersonate singers but it's been a while but he's one of brian johnson's one of the easier ones really really
Speaker 1he's going to be the hardest guy to replicate
Speaker 2no no it's quite easy he's just um no i think it's quite easy just uh he hasn't got much variation in his voice no really it'd be good to replicate him on the back in black album that's difficult because that's the only album we actually did actual tenor tenuous tenor singing as well but everything after back in black it was all the same like but could you do it for two hours straight
Speaker 1uh probably not
Speaker 2i used to um i used to be in like a classic rock tribute band when i was like between age 14 and 19 we did what do we did back in black and you shook me all night long and highway to hell i think wow jesus christ even not even though highway to hell was sung by a different singer so i try and imitate him then but like on a good day i could imitate the both of them it's almost like a party trick i used to be able to do when i had a bit more of a a singing voice when my um my vocal health was a was taken a bit more seriously so yeah i'm a bit of a muso um as well i have been since i was 14 so that's sort of a another thing i enjoy about metalli dads is my relationship as well with general music as well as metal music because rock was my first love rock and metal was definitely my first love and even as a teenager i absolutely hated school i absolutely hated school but that was when i came home from school plugged the bass guitar and stick ride the light ride the lightning on by metallica my troubles would go away absolutely go
Speaker 1away exactly the same yeah no 100 man and what are you listening to these days and what's rocking
Speaker 2your boat well do you know that's actually another thing metalli dads has helped me with is my music listening now generally i think the the data shows that when you reach 24 years old you sort of reach your peak in your music career and you're going to reach your peak in your music career and you're going to reach your peak in your music career and you're going to reach your peak in your music career and you're going to reach your peak in your music career and you're listening and your taste and then after that most people just regurgitate the same music i can definitely say i fit into that category because um because of my lifestyle so from age 24 25 i sort of went i lived abroad for a bit i then was in and out of jobs went to live abroad again and i sort of came back and then i had a busy lifestyle met my wife uh was doing bits and bobs around cardiff where i lived at the time so i hadn't really had a lifestyle i well i i could actually listen to much new metal music and i was just comfortable in listening to the same stuff and after i was listening to the same stuff i got completely bored of the same stuff but me and ben in metalli dads we actually started uh our own podcast and it's the same podcast which we do the metal interviews and our fathers our podcast is called the fathers of metal podcast right love and we're on youtube on the yeah so basically type in metalli dads on youtube and that's the fathers of metal podcast so ben and i were doing something called rock perspective now rock perspective is basically me and ben in one month we would listen to as many albums as we humanly could within one month from a particular year in music so the first one we ever did was 1990 then i think we did 1984 then 2001 we were going to do 2020 but we just run out of time because life just got busy so i've been listening to so much new music because of the rock perspective shows we were doing and it's basically introduced me to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bands some bands i knew about but never ever invested the time into listening to them and i i've got definitely new favorite bands now i still go back to my old favorites yeah now and again like metallica judas priest i'm a huge fan of dragon force just because a hilarious live probably the band probably the band i've seen most of my life is probably drag and force um but i i like all sorts now i i um i like the heaviest heaviest heaviest type of metal never used to because as a singer i judge what i like by the singing right and i never liked the heavy stuff because it was growly yeah yeah and if that's a word and then i think um a week before we would do to have a second child my wife had took a tumble outside a house and we were a bit no no sorry um she didn't feel much movement in the womb so uh i drove at a hospital and i had to wait in the car park for a few hours so during that time ben and i were doing the rock respective research for the year 2001 and uh i was quite on the edge because i was worried because she was worried that there might be something wrong with the baby so i was in the car and i put on an album called jane doe by a early i think deathcore band called uh converge from 2001 and uh it's a really heavy album and the only way i can describe it is i put the album on and the heaviness and the dissonance of this music was just going over my head like water in a shower it was just going over me soothing me in a way i'd never thought this type of music could and since that day or that moment i've been able to tolerate and actually enjoy really heavy music because of this one instance and i've been able to tolerate and actually enjoy really heavy music because of this i listen to all sorts now i'm a big death metal fan all of a sudden uh the carnival corpse of my sort of gateway band into death metal i do like them this morning i was listening to the horror comedy metal band ice nine kills right who i believe are gigging in march in bristol which i might go to uh i'm a big thrash metal fan yeah i've become a massive fan over the past couple of years especially the past year of the german bands specifically destruction and creator uh so you know um in metal music specifically thrash there's something called the big four so metallica slayer mega death anthrax yeah there's also the big four in germany which would be creator sodom destruction and tankard i actually interviewed the bassist for tankard uh in one of the earliest metalli dad's interviews a guy called frank um and he was amazing he was such a nice guy and uh like um so yeah the german thrash i'm a massive fan of um again last week i interviewed a band called kardashev from arizona they technically are a band that has coined the term death gaze which is a new sub-genre of metal potentially so uh i've been listening to their album uh lots and lots and again creator the german thrash band they released an album on friday called hate uber alice and i've listened to that three or four times i had it on this morning again loving that album currently so yeah i definitely has expanded my listening but i i am currently very much into heavy thrash and death metal but then in the car then i listen i like crikey i like the book of mormon i like disney i like absolutely everything there's a time there's a time and a place for everything i'm a big fan of movie scores hans zimmer john williams um oh yeah james horner um you know and you met so yeah i got a massive uh list but heavily in the death metal camp currently isn't
Speaker 1it strange what you said it washed over you like a shower and soothe you because i feel the same when i when i listen to like a super heavy band like ginger or something like that um yeah it's strange how it is soothing to have that fucking wall of noise it's just like it's like white noise i suppose some people find white noise very soothing yeah it's weird isn't it just like aggression and that wall of sound just fucking it's like it's yeah it's like it's like a bathing in nice warm water for me it's i can't describe it but i know exactly what you mean it's a strange
Speaker 2one but this album i've been listening to recently by the band we interviewed last week uh kardashev i actually fell asleep to it the other night and it's really heavy blast beats and i actually fell asleep to it i thought wow i can't believe if i told myself a year ago i'd be falling asleep to blackened death metal with atmospheric strings and stuff i'd be laughing my ass off but i am now and it's hilarious i gotta
Speaker 1go check out all those
Speaker 2bands yeah no well i'll do i'll um you and me obviously got on the side of this we've got a group chat going so i'll um i'll give you some recommendations of stuff i really enjoyed recently because um that's what metallic does is done for me now it's sort of let me discover a lot of obscure stuff which the general rock listener would never get introduced to it wouldn't come on their radar right so my knowledge of what's out there now has increased massively so one thing i would love to because you can do this and it'll sort of hopefully come in hand in hand with a health element is to do like a doctorate in heavy metal that's something i would love to do that there are places in the world where you can do a doctorate to become a doctor of heavy metal that would just be the coolest thing ever man
Speaker 1that is fucking awesome you've got to do that man doctor of heavy metal is exactly that's the old thing in here it's like hey baby you know the doctor has spoken what are you a doctor of fucking hard rocking baby you know you You would actually be a certified doctor of heavy metal. That would be awesome. you got to do that man
Speaker 2because i'm sure there's even you could even become a doctor or lady gaga somewhere in one university in the world and i think there's some i think it's botswana is a university of gaberon in botswana you can be the you can become a doctor of all study brexit wow as a topic so yeah i know not not for me thank you no no thank you no but lady gaga any day definitely a doctor i do like lady gaga you gotta do that heavy metal one day when i get more time so probably yeah i don't i don't know when but yeah but that's something that's on my radar is one of those things i've always fancied checking out because it'd be cool like thing to add to the qualifications and be the theme damn
Speaker 1right man yeah and with your hypnotherapy and um the nlp thing you were talking about doing as well to retrain in um to converge those two things you'd be like some kind of like you'd be like some heavy metal hypnotizing wizard or
Speaker 2something yeah like dressed as like uh i don't know gandalf gandalf yeah absolutely i'm trying to think of a power metal band or like become or become like really muscly i have a sword like one of the man of war albums or something yeah yeah
Speaker 1we're in a thong yeah
Speaker 2yeah i wish i had the bod to rock a thong between you me jimmy i don't those guys are
Speaker 1fucking hilarious man just the album covers you know what i mean like what the
Speaker 2fuck this is sort of finished right on manual this is a funny topic now i i'm a i'm a patreon of a chap called dane campbell yeah dane campbell is the son of phil campbell phil campbell is the motorhead guitarist and uh phil now has a band called phil campbell and the bastard sons he basically plays with his three sons and another singer on top now the dane is the drummer i knew him from working in cranes in cardiff many many years ago and i'm a patreon to his podcast called drum for the song yeah which is a brilliant podcast uh he interviews drummers from around the world and i'm a patreon to his podcast called drum for the song lots of famous bands uh the best episode i think was matt sorum of guns and roses that was a really cool episode and uh nigel glocker of saxon i think it was the first episode but anyway so i i support him and once a month if you're a patron you get to have like a skype hangout so i've not been able to meet him i i know him anyway but i haven't been able to attend these skype hangouts for ages because i've been busy with family but one time i set time aside i will turn up so i turned up there's a bunch of blokes and then who i'm accidentally stumbles in on the on the call is phil campbell himself right and the guitarist and he accidentally clicked on the wrong link because he was looking for um a podcast on bird watching right so it was quite funny because obviously he still calls him dad and said dad what are you doing here i was like dad why are you coming to my room or if you know like in south park where stan's dad logs into world of warcraft it's like dad why are you coming to my room what are you doing here get out get out it's sort of one of those embarrassing moments it's like oh i don't know what to click it's really funny but zane then said well you're here now dad you might as well hang out to the guys because they obviously want to ask you questions and stuff and we actually got talking about a man of war right because uh because phil had never in all his metal experience he'd never heard of the genre of power metal now power metal is the the the mist of the dungeons and dragons the wizards the type of style of metal like sabaton i suppose that's the most famous current example of power metal even though they have the sub-genre of almost like battle metal technically but phil campbell had never heard of power metal i thought where the hell have you been the past 40 years sharing stages with bands surely you've been on stage next to a power metal band but i'd explain it to him they mentioned the band man of war and he told me the story that oh in his pontiacs and yeah i was in um yeah i remember in the mid-80s me and me and ronnie james dio we went to a gig and we watched man of war and they were fucking terrible they were obnoxious they were oh they were cocky and me and ronnie looked at each other and say oh we didn't like them just didn't like them they're just absolutely obnoxious bastards i thought oh my god so a man of war one of my favorite bands who's telling me that one of my favorite bands absolutely a bunch of dicks and i had to laugh it was just so funny so that's what happened recently and the fact that he name dropped the great ronnie james dio yes in his presence during this time was just awesome i thought wow okay i'll accept that i'll accept you're destroying all my favorite bands because you're with the man the mr horns himself yeah i just want to share that with you because i know you'd appreciate that's a great
Speaker 1story yeah man i know dane yeah we're thinking of him coming on the podcast at some point as well um so i'll ask him about his dad's man of war stories and we'll we'll get that confirmed on air as well i'm sure he's got
Speaker 2a lot more stories but yeah dane's dane's a top chap he was actually the first person i ever interviewed literally the same week i came up with the concept or we came up with the concept of my tally dad's like because i because i was i'm a fan of phil campbell and the bastard surgeons and i knew they were working on a new album so he was yeah he was my first guest so he was really good
Speaker 1oh that's awesome well i'll definitely go back and check out the podcast episodes as well so for um so for people listening to this i know they're going to be like super excited to get involved how can people join where do they go how do they get involved
Speaker 2yeah sure so if you want to contact us directly we are on metallic dads at hotmail.com but we again with our podcast you can find us on um on youtube just type in metallic dads and then we'll be the first thing that come up we've got the symbol of the uh the rock and roll uh the horns the two fingers pointing out and two dummies at the bottom so that's us metallic dads and uh we do have two facebook pages we've got a community group where you just like the page and that's welcome for anybody to join but if you are a dad and that is the only criteria you have to be is is just a dad even if you're not into metal music and you still want to join us uh again we do have a private group where you then join so you'll see two options for metallic dads so to join the group it is basically www.facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash metallic dads or just www.facebook.com forward slash metallic dads just for the community group and then we're on instagram and we're on twitter as well but if you live in barry or nearby we're we are in barry rugby club every wednesday night from eight o'clock and then um next week we are sorry every saturday morning from 10 till 12 and um holton road we are in awesome wales zero waste shop having a coffee or a cup of tea and a chinwag and normally uh dads bring their kids to that one as well so it's nice to see it has a bit of a family thing as well so we get regular kids turn up quite regularly just even though some might just be on their ipad whatever but they're nice and quiet and they're engaging conversation now and again so that's the way to keep in touch with us and we'd love to hear from you and if you need anything come and have
Speaker 1a chat with us that's awesome and it is you said that this is now expanded nationally as well so is this a model that people can if you know if there's not a local group near someone that's listening to this and wants to get involved can people sort of just replicate this model and set their own local group up
Speaker 2well if they want to do a local group up yes however we do have metallic dads and we do have a lot of people that are interested in this and we do have a lot of dads as a trademarked organization so when when when we do become uh well we're not aiming to become a global force we're basically just trying to look after the people we have now as i mentioned at the beginning right we're not trying to take over the world it's really much about quality keeping it manageable quantity and keeping it manageable so we do have the dream of becoming a wales-wide organization first but we do but in regards to maybe online groups um maybe that that is a possibility in the future for people to open up okay opportunities uh around that but uh yeah so currently we are just online and then we are only in barry in southeast wales but we like i'm from cardigan originally hence the accent yeah now we do have um yeah we do have members in cardigan so i'm trying to make cardigan potentially the second town of metallic dads over cardiff because we yeah so because we have a lot of people that are interested in cardigan because in a smaller town an idea like this is a lot more manageable yeah i mean at the the news of it spreads a lot easier so in a town the size of say barry ponderpreet caffilly bridge end for example cardigan haverford west aberystwyth etc um they're nice size towns for this type of idea to manifest awesome and
Speaker 1how do you guys stay afloat then how do you keep the operation running i mean um do you function as a charity or do is it a subscription thing the people like um donate uh or do you guys fund this yourselves i mean uh how do you stay afloat how can
Speaker 2people help well thanks for asking dude so we are available on the local giving.com website so local giving.com forward slash metallic dads you can donate if you wanted to help us with our signposting project or for us to be able to run other things for fathers in the local community in barry and card if you're more than welcome to donate however so far we've done little things like some fundraising and we've basically had our um funding from grants available to us in the area so we were we had an amazing um bit of luck uh recently by having a grant from the national lottery a community fund of three and a half thousand pounds so that's enabled us to be able to put dads on mental health first aid courses which is what's going to become available to dads in autumn and we're going to be able to put dads on mental health first aid courses a large chunk of that has been set aside to for motivational speakers so we've been using the platform of the the app cameo where you can get like select to send you video messages so um we've already had um matt heafy of trivium yeah give uh give advice to new dads with newborns about the importance of staying patient etc gave us a lot of good advice and actually did a a booking for probably one of the biggest metal stars on uh cameo last night but it has to remain a secret it's going to be hopefully a happy father's day message by this particular character so i'm hoping he comes through by sunday otherwise that's 200 quid wasted for him being two days late so so yeah so hoping he comes through by sunday so i'll let you know
Speaker 1about that yeah man well dude like thank you so much for coming on give us your time today and explaining what metallic dads is it sounds like an absolutely amazing uh project that i know is going to change so many people's lives and i know it's going to inspire many people listening to this to um you know to maybe come out of their comfort zone like you said and to reach out if you know if they're if they're struggling as well and it's awesome to know that there is a group there such as this where people can do that so on behalf of all of us blokes and as metal fans you know we salute you man for everything you've done and i know it must take up so much of your time and a lot of work especially juggling family and work life as well how hard you're working on it and all of the other dads as well so on behalf of all of us thank you so much man it's been a brilliant to talk to you today
Speaker 2i've loved it thank you so much for your support and yeah just your your belief in the idea we're really really happy that uh we've captured your imagination as well so stay heavy and stay healthy love it and
Speaker 1you want to give us one more uh brian johnson to finish up with you do that too well and on that note we bid you fair well thank you dude you're welcome dude best wishes with everything we'll speak to you again soon thanks dude look after yourself cheers you too thank you bro i'm jealous that he can sing brian johnson so well that's fucking hard to sing man he's lying when he says it's easy it's not i'm more of a like if i do an impression of a metal guy i'm more of a like a james hetfield kind of low down you know oh yeah baby oh yeah i'm more down there you know but if i could sing johnson i'd be doing all the time trust me so what did you think of that super interesting yeah i do love that the conversation about mental health and you know your feelings and actually just being a normal human being it's becoming such a normal thing now you know this idea that a man has to be dominant and you know talk over people and push people around and be tough and you know it doesn't have any emotions never gets upset and takes the piss out of people who are you know it like that's such an old-fashioned outdated thing i mean it's not the fucking 1850s anymore the 1920s you know i mean it's like 2022 for christ's sake and it's always those jackasses that are trying to act like mr tough guy those are the most fucking like delicate and vulnerable and if they you know and that's a much better look there's nothing wrong with being delicate and vulnerable and you know scared or not knowing the answer to something there's nothing wrong with that you know or sensitive i mean that's a much better look i'd much rather hang out with people like that than some fucking douchebag who's trying to act like he's fucking rambo when he's clearly not you know so i think it's great that we're evolving to a place of maturity now where um you know both men and women you know and everybody can have an open conversation about these very human feelings i think it's healthy for the person it's healthy for the people that that person is in a relationship with you know their their partner or their parents or their kids or their friends and i think it's healthy for society more generally so i commend and salute groups such as the metalladads and uh andy's man club and the running punks and so so many others and i'm sure there's going to be lots more coming on the podcast as well um at the moment most of these are focused on men which tells you a lot didn't there has to be a special fucking group where men could actually just like talk about the sort of shit that women just talk about openly normally amongst themselves you know so if this seems like it's a little bit man-centric it's just because this is very much a male problem this kind of expressing your emotions rather than going and beating the shit out of somebody or as in so many tragic cases actually killing themselves so these groups are really important and yes they they are unfortunately very male-centric because that's just the way our society has brought men up to behave so for all the fellas out there get involved in these things man i mean they're great fun it's not just all sitting around talking about your problems you know it's playing heavy metal music or talking about football or you know doing fun man shit you know what i mean and but in an environment where you can actually talk to people who are mature and evolved enough as as as men to actually talk about some important shit too you know there's no shame in it it doesn't mean you're weak it actually takes a lot more courage and to be open about the fact that you have these very normal human problems and feelings and concerns and fears when any fucking dick can just pretend that they don't and act like tough guy from the movies you know that that's an easy way out actually take this it's not a sign of weakness it's a sign of strength that you're actually able to confront your problems and to do something about it takes a lot of strength and a lot of courage and i commend anybody for doing so so it's great that there are groups out there to make that process easier um do hunt down your local wherever they wherever you may be listening from and it could quite possibly be the best thing you ever do in your life so that's my rant over and out until next time i shall love you and leave you in peace one last nag before you clock off to subscribe to the podcast make sure you subscribe to the thing man it helps me out click like click share leave some comments on the page people always message me their thoughts put it on the page put it on youtube or wherever you listen to the podcast and then you know provoke a public debate in a conversation you might you might get some more shit from the people responding links and and such and so forth and if you do want to contribute to the maintenance of the podcast there is a link at paypal.me slash james kennedy uk where you can offload a few shackles on there and support the maintenance of the podcast because it does take up a few days in my week doing these things and uh equipment and you know hosting costs and things like that so if you are able to contribute that would be awesome no pressure of course you know i'll probably still keep fucking doing it anyway but um but it does help and i really do appreciate those of you that are watching this video and i'll see you in the next one bye bye have done so until next time enjoy yourselves have a great week i love you loads and thanks for the support i'll catch you next week cheers
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