Last week was full of candy hearts, lovely valentines and sweet surprises for some of UW-Platteville students, but not for the members of the Heavy Metal Meltdown.

Photograph by Jodi Krautkramer


WSUP Heavy Metal Meltdown hosted their new tradition anti-Valentine’s Day show. The Heavy Metal Meltdown hosts their show at 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. every Thursday on 90.5 FM.

The Heavy Metal Meltdown, WSUP’s Thursday night specialty show, is the longest-running metal specialty show in the country. It started in 1983 and has gone through many names such as Acid Bath over the years, but the concept remains the same. The UW-P students who run the show declare their dedication to providing quality metal music to their listeners. The Heavy Metal Meltdown also schedules regular interviews with metal bands, many of them very successful and well-known.

The Meltdown has contacts with every major metal record label and promotion company in the country.

“We get all the latest metal albums, most before they are even released to the public, and some before we can even legally play them on the radio,” said Andy “Pandemic” Piotrzkowski.

And when tours and interviews come around, all we have to do is let our contacts know and we get set up with interviews, backstage passes, photo passes and tickets.”

This year, the Meltdown continued their relatively new tradition of hosting an anti-Valentine’s Day show.
“In 2008, Valentine’s Day landed on a Thursday,” said Piotrzkowski. “We were all just sick of Valentine’s Day, and had joked about how it would be fun to do a show about it.”

They developed the joke into reality by creating promotional ads encouraging people to call in and break up on the air.

“It is not that we are trying to break up good relationships,” said Eli “Tumor” Scriven. “We are just giving people an incentive to end bad ones. We support independence.” Although no one actually broke up on the air, the staff still had fun with the theme. This year they celebrated with broken-heart cookies and anti-love songs.

The Heavy Metal Meltdown hosts their show every Thursday night from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. on 90.5 FM. Listeners are encouraged to call in to make requests, joke with the staff and possibly win prizes.