What Killed The Punk Rock MBA?

A cautionary tale of audience capture and low expectations

To start my first weekly newsletter of 2025, I’d like to clear up some old business on a topic from the end of 2024. To do that I first need to start in the late 00s and early 2010s, the period of time coinciding roughly with the years I graduated high school to the years right after graduating college. Back when I fit squarely in the 18-26 male demographic that pundits worry so much about I spent a lot of my time on the internet reading a blog MetalSucks. Then and now MetalSucks covered the latest news in the world of heavy metal music with a flippant and openly biased perspective. Though I’d often disagree with their takes (their dismissal of Isis as having “bad production” would send me into conniptions) the guys running the site were extremely plugged into the music industry and the metal scene specifically. In addition to introducing me to a ton of bands, MetalSucks is where I first heard of Invisible Oranges, the blog that would eventually hire me for my first real deal music writing job. It’s where I first heard of Spotify before it even made its way stateside. I first saw Anthony Fantano’s face on MetalSucks. MetalSucks was also a launching pad for a surprising range of writing talent. My friends Cat Costa-Jones and Cody Davis both have bylines on the site. It’s where I first read Gary Suarez, whose now runs the excellent underground hip-hop Cabbages. The same goes for Kim Kelly, who’s now a real deal labor reporter. And, most relevant to our subject today, it’s where I first heard of Sergeant D, aka Finn McKenty.

From 2010 to 2015 McKenty, a marketing professional and former 90s-hardcore guy, was MetalSucks’ in-house contrarian, like if Armond White typed in AIM-speak and forum-ese. Between his column at MetalSucks and his own blog Stuff You Will Hate McKenty openly trolled heavy music fans and held metalheads in particular contempt. The basic shtick was that all your favorite bands were bad and all the ones you hate are good, actually. In practice this meant that the legacy acts or critically approved metal bands of the present moment (what today might be called “journo-core”) were boring, while the stuff that metalheads dismissed as a trashy or overly-commercial (suffix: core, prefix: metal, death, crab, EZ, crunk) was where the real creative juice was at. In essence, McKenty was the heavy music equivalent of a poptimist, celebrating music geared toward fun-having teenagers over “real metal” for aging obsessives. Interspersed between these provocations was self-improvement content (get a life, workout regularly, dress like a normal person, talk to girls) delivered in the foul-mouthed and chauvinistic tone of the day’s equivalent to the “manosphere”.

Though I wouldn’t admit it in polite company (or even around most of my heavy music friends) I read Sergeant D and SYWH consistently, long after I stopped regularly reading the rest of MetalSucks. I found his insider/outsider perspective refreshing. He was right that metal heads were often close-minded and elitist, even though I didn’t think he needed to be such a jerk pointing it out. I thought he made some genuinely insightful observations about how scene taste changes over time. I didn’t love the music he posted about, but his emphasis on catchy songwriting and the renegade creativity of bands outside of the accepted parameters of good taste helped expand my palate. And maybe most importantly, getting over myself enough to endure the obvious jabs and see McKenty’s underline point taught me the lesson to not take aesthetic disagreements so personally. I don’t think the two of us would necessarily be friends, but to deny his influence on my own writing would be dishonest¹.

Let’s jump back to the present. McKenty’s name made the rounds a few weeks ago when he revealed on The Jesae Lee Show (a metalcore podcast) that he was retiring from his YouTube channel “The Punk Rock MBA”, which he launched after retiring Stuff You Will Hate, to focus on posting on LinkedIn. McKenty continued to clarify that he never cared about the bands his channel covered and actively held his audience in contempt. This announcement got a substantial amount of churn on Bluesky, Reddit, and YouTube itself where McKenty’s contemporaries and potential successors chimed in with their shock at the dishonorable self-discharge of the former Sergeant D. This is a situation where everyone, McKenty himself and his former viewers, leaves holding the L. Even if you hadn’t spent your college years contemplating the immortality of crabcore or the merits of neon monster merch, anyone who was paying attention to McKenty’s work could have seen this coming a mile away. The unceremonious death of The Punk Rock MBA offers us a two-sided cautionary tale for audiences and aspiring media members alike.

To explain, let’s fill in the gaps. After leaving MetalSucks and shuttering SYWH, McKenty started a Facebook group called “The Punk Rock MBA” with the intention of getting former underground music types hip to the wonders of entrepreneurship. I posted a few times and probably picked up a few helpful tips about the professional world just as I was starting to enter it. Around the same time, he started the YouTube channel by the same name promoting the same ideals. As he’s stated on multiple podcasts since, McKenty’s intention was to prove to potential clients that he could build a brand from scratch. For his foundation McKenty began by posting strictly marketing content, but the channel didn’t take off until he returned to the subject of music, either offering marketing advice to independent musicians or analyzing the success of the genre’s big names from an industry perspective. This work turned him onto an audience an internet generation removed from his followers at MetalSucks. Had McKenty stuck to his tribe he may still be making videos today, but he tasted the sweetness of scale and damned himself.

In short McKenty fell victim to audience capture. Once McKenty saw the numbers his videos about established bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Avenged Sevenfold were putting up, he pivoted to give his audience what they wanted. Though he experimented with videos about newer acts or his actual interests in the world of marketing and PR these videos never performed as well as the crowd-pleasers about bands that McKenty had been dismissive of since his days at MetalSucks. His absolute devotion to optimizing his channel for number-friendly definitions of success meant that any content that didn’t turn immediate dividends was cast out in favor of the stuff that did. There’s something almost poetic about McKenty’s own marketing instincts rail-roading him into making videos for the exact audience of Internet Metal Nerds that he used to troll for clicks. Even if McKenty walked away with the bag, having reached his “financial goals” (his language), it’s hard to see him as any kind of winner here. After all, McKenty only pivoted to lowest common denominator boomer metal content when he *failed* to build an audience with his marketing content. Shouldn’t it count against his expertise that he wasn’t able to market the music he thought was actually exciting?

I imagine that McKenty would respond by blaming the market, i.e. his audience. And to be certain his audience doesn’t come out of this situation looking great either. I stopped watching The Punk Rock MBA once it was clear that McKenty was only going to reheat old SYWH content or tell me what I already knew about popular bands. If I had stuck with the channel over the last few years, this recent reveal that McKenty had been sleepwalking through his research and slopping up his content would make me feel DUMB AS FUCK. How low do your standards have to be for music media that you’d let someone who openly admits across multiple platforms to not caring about the subject of his work be your source of information? You can’t call someone a liar if they tell you that they’re hustling you.

My feelings regarding PRMBA and it’s audience

So what should we take away from this affair? To aspiring “creators”, know that if you only follow what the analytics tell you, you’ll be a miserable servant to an audience that you despise even if you cash out in the end. There are easier ways to make money. Even if you optimize your work to go viral, don’t forget the age old maxim of “one for them, one for me”. If you can’t preserve your passion, you will look like a cynical grump at the end of the day. To the audience, demand more from yourself. Don’t settle for rage bait and Wikipedia summaries. Don’t let conservative Charli XCX fans tell the story of the music you love. Instead, seek out writers and video-makers who care about it as much as you do. Writers like… the one talking to you right now! I solemnly swear that the Lamniformes Brand will never slop it up for views. Whether in written, videographic, or musical form I promise to always bring you tunes that I think are fresh and hot. For better or worse, I legit love music. I may show you stuff that you might hate, but you can rest easy knowing that I, personally, can stand by it. And I promise to never, ever, ever pivot to LinkedIn.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

• As a result of moving into my new apartment I now have space for all of the Lamniformes merch that I’d previously stowed away in storage. That means that if you’ve been craving a new Lamniformes t-shirt or a cassette of Sisyphean or The Lonely Atom, now’s your chance! Hop on over to the Lamniformes bandcamp page to grab a tape & shirt.

• I spent the last month fleshing out some bonus content for my paying subscribers and had a pleasant experience doing so. I’m extremely grateful to everyone that’s joined the paying tier, and for all the new readers that signed up during the last month even without regular free letters to buoy them. Your support, not sponsorships or seed money, makes this newsletter possible. If you’d like access to last month’s Playlist Postscript marathon, as well as the other bonuses coming down the pipeline in 2025, you can sign up for $5 a month or the low, low cost of $40 a year.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here, updated with a new song every Monday-Friday.

“Old Diamond West” by Rogê (Curyman II, 2024)

A light, breezy instrumental to kick off the year. This track comes by way of Rogê, an MPB revivalist who seems like Brazil’s version of a millennial that baby boomers like. I’m inherently skeptical of any artist trying to bring back “the good stuff” when their definition of “good” is so palatable to the dinner party industrial complex, but considering that I just spent several blurbs earlier this week singing the praises of modern acts toying around with MPB aesthetics I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy this tune. My hands are tied!

“S5” by Opeth (The Last Will And Testament, 2024)

Again, I don’t want to go too in-depth on this record because I’m working on a longer piece for a publication that will pay me to do so, but one thing I appreciate about Opeth bringing back the death growls is now they’re not afraid to get real corny with them. Just listen to that “HEY!” halfway through the song. Tom G Warrior would be proud. This song, and this record, reminds me a lot of Ghost Reveries, my first and favorite Opeth record. Love the interplay of the strings, the extra percussion, the layered acoustic guitars over double bass, it’s all sick.

“Now I’m Learning to Love the War” by Father John Misty (Fear Fun, 2012)

~*My Girlfriend*~ suggested that we listen to this in the car while visiting her family for Thanksgiving, which should give you a sense of how helpful taking the month of December off is for getting a head start on these Listening Diaries. I’ve long been a FJM skeptic. The guy’s voice is too pretty in a conventionally attractive sort of way. Makes it hard to either be sympathetic or laugh at his jokes, similar to when hot people do standup. ~*My Girlfriend*~ is a fan though, so I’m trying to be more open-minded. Gotta admit, this record is pretty good! I’m a sucker for any song that demystifies the material reality of art making.

“Lion Rumpus” by Mogwai (Lion Rumpus, 2024)

I missed this single’s official release, but luckily it got submitted for a recent round in our Music League. The category was “songs about animals”. Following in the tradition of their misidentification of a bald eagle on the cover of The Hawk Is Howling, the video for “Lion Rumpus” is actually about walking dogs. Does this song earn extra points because I’ve recently started dog-walking (both personally & professionally) and because I miss New York City? Sure, but Mogwai make such consistently good music that I imagine this tune would make it here on it’s own merits.

“Co-Owner of Trees” by Mount Eerie (Night Palace, 2024)

One night, after I finalized my Best Albums of 2024 list, ~*My Girlfriend*~ suggested we throw on the new Mount Eerie while cooking. I wouldn’t say that I took it all in over the sounds of food sizzling and fans whirring (we don’t want the fire alarm to go off and upset the dog), but what I did make out surprised me in how hard it rocked. Seems like Elverum is back on his Ocean Roar/Sauna flow. Love the droning organ and the feedback on this track, can’t wait to dig into the lyrics on further listens.

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

Here are five micro reviews of albums from my vast Rate Your Music catalog. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these reviews from my stories, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.

Kid A by Radiohead (2000) - Alternative Rock

I actually HAVE seen a shooting star before, so I’m as qualified as it gets to review this record. I think the novelty/ground-breaking quality of this album gets overstated a bit by rock media. Radiohead were drawing from styles/sounds well worn by Warp Records acts for years at this point. Focusing on whether this album is original or unique also obscures what makes it good in favor of what made it noteworthy upon release. If Ok Computer described alienation, this one makes you *feel* alienated. It doesn’t tell, it shows. The songs are stripped down to uncomfortable degrees, leaving Yorke’s noticeably softer voice hanging in a brittle field of digital shards. The only time it opens up and says how it feels the results are devastating in their vulnerability. Not for everyone, but a classic for its people.

Amnesiac by Radiohead (2001) - Alternative Rock

Often cast off as a b-sides collection for Kid A. I prefer to think of this one as that record’s after-party, for whatever the word “party” means for Radiohead. What I’m getting at is that this is a lower stakes, playful version of the same genre blending experimentation on Kid A. It also has some of the band’s best songs outright, though they are surrounded by a few head scratchers. It is straight up bizarre that Radiohead of all bands can make a New Orleans style funeral march work with their style and ethos. Skip at your aesthetic peril.

In Rainbows by Radiohead (2007) - Alternative Rock

The word “important” gets thrown at a lot of records, to the point of banality. In Rainbows however deserves the distinction, regardless of how you feel about the music on it. It may not have been the first pay-what-you-want record, but it was the first domino in a chain that led to the current moment where musicians treat the first friday of the month like a holiday and the owners of Fortnite see Bandcamp as a worth while purchase [Editor’s Note: Wow, that sentence didn’t age well!]. As for the contents of the record, this is an even more overt return to rock for Radiohead, which helps explain its popularity with fans. To me, it never congeals into a complete album, but as a collection of songs it works quite well. “All I Need” is Radiohead’s sexiest jam and “Videotape” is their best closer. Cool album!

Iron Maiden by Iron Maiden (1980) - Heavy Metal

Featuring the song “Iron Maiden”, of course. The band’s debut and the start of a preposterous 7 album run of heavy metal classics. Rougher around the edges than the records that followed it, but that’s part of the charm. Maiden were at this point as much of a rock band as they were a metal band, which might make this more appealing to some and less appealing to others. What cannot be denied is that “Phantom of the Opera” RULES.

Killers by Iron Maiden (1981) - Heavy Metal

The last album with Paul Di’Anno, whose sloppy, sleazy singing made Maiden’s early work distinct from the soaring heights of their golden age within a golden age. This record feels even more rock’n’roll than the self titled but also cranks up the speed and technicality to the point where the band are on the edge of losing control. This is also where the band’s literary lyrical pretensions started to kick in, though they’d only get more silly and more entertaining from here.

1. If I were being uncharitable to myself, I think the general tone of my work at Invisible Oranges could be summed up as “Stuff You Will Hate, but Woke”.