Experience:

Sam was not born and raised in West Philadelphia, nor has he spent most of his time there. He's never been in a fight, and his mother has never gotten scared enough to send him to a different city. In fact, he comes from the same area as bands like Godflesh, Napalm Death, Black Sabbath, and Anaal Nathrakh.

Sam had plans to be an academic in the area of cognitive science, but decided that after a few years of doing a promising part-time PhD 'being permanently broke was really quite awful'; instead, pursuing a career in writing about metal music and maybe self-publishing a fiction book or two he is expecting fame and fortune any day now.


During his teen years, Sam had a major crush on anything vampiric, and was responsible for his dive into metal music. Reading a book called 'Children of the Night' by Tony Thorne, the book mentioned the band Cradle of Filth as one of the first bands to incorporate aspects of vampirism into their imagery and themes. Intrigued, he picked up his first ever issue of Metal Hammer, which contained a VHS of music videos, one of which was Cradle of Filth's 'Born In A Burial Gown'. He hasn't looked back since ... except to revel in the glory days when an upcoming Cradle album was something to look forward to.

Besides starting a metal blog called A Metal Education that nobody but a few Facebook friends visit out of pity, he is busy being driven mad by his cat, obsessing over coffee, promising to tone down his God complex, and wondering why one of the poppers on his duvet won't 'pop'. Seriously, it looks identical to all the others, is it on strike or something?

Education:

After getting surprisingly good grades at A-Level, Sam went to the University of York to study philosophy, gaining both a BA (Hons.) and MA in an area no employer cares about.

His PhD was on the argued tension between folk psychological concepts of the mind, and what areas such as evolutionary psychology and computational neuroscience claim; the latter being a better bet in discovering how the mind really works, even if it means ditching supposedly 'obvious' truths about the mind that many people accept. Not many people agree with him on this. His hangup for grammar and spelling only worsened when he started doing copy editing for the academic journal MIND.

From Sam Thornton:

I love writing, am obsessed with music to the extent that it probably falls under the umbrella of a mental illness, and enjoy trying to make people smile. I'm constantly on the look out for new bands, I buy more CDs than my non-existent income allows, and have made a weird hobby of trying to make music recommendations for people based on what they currently like. Metal music is my most explored and beloved genre, but I genre-hop a lot; from hip hop artists like Immortal Technique and Tech N9ne, past pop acts like Savage Garden / Darren Hayes and the Backstreet Boys, pausing to drink a lot of ale to jazz and blues musicians like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters, all the way through to classical composers like Beethoven and Bach; I do, however, think that power metal is a crime against humanity. 

After giving up on the idea of making a career out of organ donation (apparently they don't grow back?), I'm throwing my lot in with music journalism. You can find my internet spawn at AMetalEducation.Com; it would be just super if you checked it out, basked in my brilliance, and insisted on showing everyone you know. Alternatively, please feel free to consider being my mysterious and rich benefactor (I'm willing to compromise on the 'mysterious' part). I'm also begrudgingly on Twitter.