One of life’s great challenges is sharing a great new record with your buds. See, you love it and its creators, but to express that would serve only to raise expectations of its would-be fans (ie. your music friends) before they’ve heard a note. That’s bad. But it’s just as easy to soft sell it, thereby failing to get your people excited about checking it out. And what if it was only last week that you pushed a similarly rad band to those same friends; how many times will they drop their own vibe to explore the album that’s dominating your vibe? Maybe you could change strategy and just share by example — that is, get your dudes intrigued by conspicuously listening to the irresistible, irrepressible album whenever encountering them. Nah, you’ll just seem lusty. Desperate.

But you keep searching for the correct tack. They must hear this album, you think. Why? Well, certainly not to get your own opinion validated (cough), but actually because the record is a juggernaut that will bring joy to your bros. (I mean, shit, you’d tell your brah if some hot tennis girls were overheard vowing to blow him, right? Same principle, but trickier.) So perhaps you just leave the album lying somewhere obvious — on your dashboard, in your beach bag, on your wallpaper, posted exclusively to Earth’s best metal website MetalSucks (bleh) — and wait for dudes who seek to stuff their libraries of metal with awesome records to grab it and jam. The album’s very presence there — or, in this case, here — is a big endorsement, and once it’s discovered, you could throw in a minimal comment like “Awesome singer, u jam” or casually munch some chips, like “Twice a day for weeks, no bullshit.” Then mentally cross your fingers :)

Lo-Pan’s new album Colossus is out Tuesday via Small Stone. Pre-order here and here.