Metal and Coffee

I'm sure many of you are coffee drinkers. I came into this particular habit within the last nine months, motivated by the health benefits purportedly given by drinking a certain measure of this acid-laden water every day. In my defense - if a defense need be given for a chemical addiction - I had psychological trauma to work through, brought on by several years servitude as a busboy in a coffee shop (and not the fun, sitcom kind of coffee shop, either). In any case, after I started drinking coffee regularly, I discovered I really like it black (you know, like I like my metal).

I should mention that when it comes to beverages, if there's a possibility that people tend to distinguish the beverage by its flavors - as they do with wine, beer, and whiskey - and I like what they're drinking, I'll latch on to this concept pretty quickly and do my best to find the flavors, too. With coffee, this flavor discovery is pretty easy to do, with even the free coffees my company provides to its caffeine-starved drones having a variety of easily-distinguishable tastes, brought on no doubt in part to help their makers distinguish their products from the competition. I was on my way to get a helping when it occurred to me: flavors of coffee are like flavors of metal.

For example: I started today with a cup of some dark, evil substance whose smoky fury was the taste equivalent of blast beats and tremolo strumming, foreshadowing my selection of 1349's Hellfire as the soundtrack for the first part of my work day. After lunch, as the caloric intake and a sleepy Friday afternoon started to weigh heavily on my eyelids, I felt the desire for a more melodic dose of caffeine - the desire to taste something like a Moonsorrow guitar line - and opted for a mug of French Vanilla. Baroque, bleak, or brutal: no matter what I'm feeling aurally, there's probably a coffee taste to match that feeling orally.