Twenty years of CoC! Congratulations and a big thank you, especially to Gino and Pedro for keeping it alive for all this time, but also to everybody else who contributed. Of course I am also sad to see CoC go because I just recently joined the staff and didn't really have a lot of time to get to know people and to contribute. Before being on the team, I'd been a reader for several years and I really enjoyed the straightforward layout of CoC without all these additional pop-ups and commercials and flashy things which make it difficult sometimes to find what you're actually looking for: a good and informative review. In addition, CoC gave room to the less well-known bands out there, and I've picked up a few over the time which I wouldn't have otherwise; so also in this aspect: CoC will be sorely missed!

It is amazing how much has changed in those twenty years. Back then, we used to connect to the Internet via dial-up modem which always made these strange electronic sounds, and computers still had these floppy disk drives even though we started to use CD-ROM drives too. The first USB flash drives had a few hundred MB when they came out and were quite expensive. If we wanted to buy music, it was mostly on CD, although we still had tapes. The used car I bought in the early 2000s still only had a tape deck! What I am getting at is that you bought your CD in a store or your ordered it somewhere and waited for it to be mailed and you appreciated its value. Today it's just a few clicks and you have your MP3 album ready to listen. As much as I do like to have all my music stored on my computer and especially those tiny little MP3 players (running with this heavy portable CD player was such a pain!), it seems that many people do not appreciate the effort that is put into the music and want it all either for free or a ridiculously small amount of money. Of course I also listen to albums online if they are available, but if I really like what I hear, I buy it because I want to support the band. Especially some of the less well known metal bands play their music as a hobby in addition to a full time job, so let's try to support them for their creativity!