Despite everything that’s gone on politically in America since 2001, the voice of Zack de la Rocha has been noticeably absent from the public debate. His less-than-amicable departure from Rage Against The Machine in 2000 halted that group for several years, and other than an EP from his One Day As A Lion project he has not released new music. Thankfully, his lack of creative output is not indicative of his dedication to human rights and civil rights, as his commitment to a new endeavor called The Sound Strike makes clear.

A reaction to Arizona’s odious, fearmongering and (in this writer’s opinion) racist legislation SB 1070, The Sound Strike is an effort to organize artists in a civil non-violent action against that state. What it amounts to is a boycott of Arizona by musicians, who vow not to perform in those states. A full list of the artists that have joined this can be found here, but the names that will matter to readers of this site include Nine Inch Nails, Rise Against and Joe Satriani as well as Rage Against The Machine and related projects like Street Sweeper Social Club. Now obviously this is a contentious issue, and I suspect more than a few of you prefer to keep your music and your politics separate. Still, these artists are taking a stand against what they see as an injustice, and even if you disagree with their positions or their choosing to boycott Arizona, you ought to respect their reasons. I encourage you to check out the above video, in which Señor de la Rocha explains his stance. Then, sign the petition and–if you’re in a band–you can add yourself to the list of artists participating in the Arizona boycott.

-GS

From TMZ:

-AR

Thanks to Clint Kaio for this amazing, amazing tip!!!

It’s kinda metal related, right?

More fun at the expense of other people’s well being after the jump. Hint: it concerns headbanging and Amon Amarth!!!

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DAVID DRAIMAN: “Okay, so our new album, Asylum, is coming out on August 31. What have you got for me?”

ALBUM ARTIST: “Okay, so I know you guys wanna work with your mascot again… I’m sorry, does the mascot have a name?”

DAVID DRAIMAN: “Shithead.”

[confused silence]

ALBUM ARTIST: “Excuse me?”

DAVID DRAIMAN: “Shithead.”

ALBUM ARTIST: “Mr. Draiman… I’m sorry I don’t know the mascot’s name, but I hardly think that warrants calling me names…”

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A true story that many of you will probably find amusing: I had no idea what a short bus was until I left New York City for college. We don’t really have a school bus system in New York because everyone was pretty much on their own to figure out how to get to school; you took the subway, the public bus, both, or you walked. Uphill both ways in 2 feet of snow, just like grandpappy. Thinking back on it now, we did have a short bus for the special ed kids in high school (and of course we made fun of them mercilessly… like that kid who always pulled his pants all the way down to his ankles at the urinal in the boys room) but I don’t think any of us knew to call it a short bus. It wasn’t until I got to college in Michigan and one of my friends was joking about the “tard car” that it all came together for me.

Anyway, credit where credit’s due: this is brilliant. This or The Apocalypse‘s guitarist put his woodworking and carpentry skills to work by motivating the entire band to convert an old short bus into a tour bus, complete with bunks, tables and benches. And they did a damn fine job. Check out the montage of them retro-fitting their short bus courtesy Metal Injection.

-VN

I know I’m a cynical bastard, but can you blame me? People do idiotic shit on a second-by-second basis. Society is like a living embodiment of Murphy’s Law.

But, hey, every once in awhile, people prove me wrong, and we get some good news. Like the fact that Behemoth’s Nergal isn’t going to spend two years in a Polish prison for tearing up a Bible on-stage (video above). From a post on Behemoth’s MySpace page:

“The District Court for Gdynia has dismissed the investigation against Adam Darski (pseudonym/nickname Nergal) accused of an offence against religious feelings (sec. 196 of polish Criminal Code). During the preparatory proceedings the defender filled the application, which was entirely accepted by the Court. The defendant’s behaviour wasn’t recognised as a crime. Moreover the Court acknowledged no causal connection/cause-and-effect relationship between Adam Darski’s behaviour and the consequence in a form of outrage of religious emotions.”

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Like myself, Dallas Coyle is a huge film dork — I love geeking out with him, ’cause the dude really knows his shit. And I’m stoked to see that he’s started to put all that knowledge to good use: He co-directed The Judas Syndrome‘s new video, “Death of the Soul,” with Frankie Nasso, who has previously helmed clips for Mudvayne, Hatebreed, All That Remains, Sworn Enemy, and Demiricous, among others.

The video just debuted on Noisecreep, and is really cool; you can check it out below. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more from Dallas Coyle, cinemetal auteur in the not-too-distant future!

“Death of the Soul” comes off The Judas Syndrome’s Underneath Blood Skies, which is out now.

-AR

Hi, everybody! I’m Aimee. I was hanging out with my friend Axl the other night when he said “You know what would be funny? If you reviewed metal [expletive] for MS.” And then he laughed for twenty straight minutes. (I think he was stoned. I’ve told him he smokes too much, but he won’t listen to me.) I reminded him that I know nothing about metal, and that my idea of heavy is the last Michael Bublé album. Still, he insisted it would be hilarious, and he is my friend, so I’m going to give this a shot.

Impending Doom. “There Will Be Violence.” Yeah, that sounds like my cup of tea!

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There obviously isn’t much to explain here. I saw it on Metal Injection and it made me laugh my ass off… hopefully it brightens your Monday afternoon a bit.

-AR

There just aren’t enough good books about metal in the world. I mean, you can only read The Dirt or Choosing Death so many times, y’know? And it’s the summer, and I want to go sit on a beach and read, goddamn it. Now, sure, I could read any number of books on any number of topics, who really gives a shit about anything but loud, obnoxious music? Amirightoramiright?

Luckily for all of us, Flavorwire has now unveiled “A Summer Reading List for Metalheads.” And it’s actually pretty helpful!

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Reader “g. shotkocker” sent us a link to listen to Fleshwrought a few weeks back, and I immediately took a liking to their aggressive but melodic brand of tech-death (think: Gorod, Psycroptic). That was before I read through their MySpace page and found out that multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis bangs the skins for Animals As Leaders and used to do so for Animosity, and before I found out that Job For A Cowboy screamer Johnny Davy was doing the same here. And that was before they’d announced they’d signed with Metal Blade. Which should prove to you that I was judging the band on the quality of their music alone, and that the music is really fucking good.

Lucky for me, we’ll be hearing a whole lot more from Fleshwrought in the near future; Metal Blade will release the full-length record Dementia/Dyslexia on August 3rd, although the record’s been done for over a year. Peep a few tracks on their MySpace page and let us know what you think.

-VN

Or so I’m led to believe by the album art for their latest offering, Warp Riders. But that’s cool! It means we can be friends. Come over to the Mansion and hang some time, The Sword.

Warp Riders comes out August 24 on Kemado Records. It will probably sound an awful lot like Ozzy-era Sabbath. Just a guess.

-AR

The teaser trailer advertising Bitter End’s forthcoming CD Guilty As Charged got my adrenaline pumping with its promise of metallic NYHC-styled aggression. Unfortunately, I was a little glum that I’d have to wait until August 3 until the disc released on Deathwish–or so I thought. Apparently, the label has decided to try a clever, though certainly not unprecedented strategy to entice people to pick this one up. If you pre-order the CD or vinyl editions now, you get the digital files for the entire album right now. Not one mere track, not a bonus track–the full LP as MP3s. Deathwish have also gone and done this for a couple other artists simultaneously, namely poppy post-hardcore act End Of A Year (bleh) and mysterious powerviolence supergroup United Nations (yay).

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Thanks God the United States team was finally eliminated from the World Cup this weekend. For one, it means an end to the annoying Facebook / Twitter / EVERYTHING updates we’ve all had to put up with; I’m relieved to not have to listen to my friends suddenly pretending to be extremely interested and emotionally invested in soccer despite having little to no prior knowledge of the players and the game. And secondly, the U.S. has no business having a good soccer team; we win at everything else, so can’t we just let the rest of the world have this one for themselves instead of mucking it up?

Anyhoo, this video is pretty well done. The best is Jens Kidman’s soccer character. Enjoy.

-VN

Thanks: Peter T.

Despite its chief generalization — an obsession with “trueness”– black metal has been at its most interesting when combined with different genres. Sure, the second-wavers/True Norwegian crew provided a great framework, but working off that framework has been the key to success. That being said, while many bands have profited from adding more ingredients to the stew (Deathspell Omega dabbling in choral music and modern classical dissonance, Nachtmystium and their hard-on for Pink Floyd and Joy Division, Drudkh integrating Eastern European folk music, and so on), sometimes adding too much causes a band to collapse under its own weight (see: Oranssi Pazuzu’s interesting but ultimately repetitive blackened psychedelia, Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War). Which is why a simple-yet-effective back and forth like the one utilized on Nàttsòl’s solid debut, Stemning, is sometimes all that’s needed to get a fresh take on what could be a tired exercise. Though not necessarily breaking then recasting the mold, the band do enough to vault their album over the top, being simultaneously crushing, lush, and understated. It’s a world that’s both new and familiar.

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Fuck me naked with a spoon, this is awful.

-AR

Fuck “hi my name is mark” for sending us this shit. Dick.

Reader Dan Metcalfe e-mailed me last night to let me know that Big Chocolate — who is already one of the busiest men in metal, even though I think he’s only like an ass hair older than the dudes in Black Tide — has started yet another project, this one with Suicide Silence vocalist Mitch Lucker. It’s called Commissioner, and they’re streaming their first track, “Consume,” right here.

And, uhhh… I don’t think this is anything I’d ever listen to. I don’t even know what the fuck you’d call this; it’s, like, death crunkcore, or something. It basically sounds like Nine Inch Nails if Nine Inch Nails was in no way, shape, or form melodic or radio friendly. So some of you may really dig this. And I’d give it another listen when there’s more of it… but my initial thought when playing the track was, “Ah-ha! I am finally an old man, for this makes almost no sense to me. Now why did I come into this room again?”

Check out Commissioner here. They don’t have any label deal or anything like that in place yet, so who knows what their future plans are.

-AR

Axl Rosenberg on Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events, the new album by Tennessee titans The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza:

…like willfully submitting to letting a tank roll over you. It is OPPRESSIVELY and CRUSHINGLY fucking heavy. In fact, “crushing,” although obviously a metal-writer cliché, is the word that most often comes to mind when I think of this record. But it is crushing. It will also make your balls rattle, if you have balls. If you don’t have balls, allow me to describe that sensation for you: it’s tingly.

The man lie-eth not. This album destroys, and though I didn’t put it on my short list for the best of 2010 so far like Axl did, I think I just hadn’t listened to it enough yet and will have to reconsider.

Check out what happens when the Danza dudes play their new album for “real people” (aka non-metalheads, aka “normies”) in Tennessee in this new Metal Injection clip. The amount of people who claim to like the record is actually more than I would’ve expected… I wonder how many of these people are just being nice? I think it would’ve been hilarious if they also played the record to fans outside a concert of, for instance, The Arcade Fire.

-VN

I didn’t go to the Big Four Live from Sofia, Bulgaria movie theater satellite thingy last Tuesday (read Anso’s review of the event here) ’cause I was in the ATL, and Vince didn’t go ’cause, well, as I understand it, he couldn’t get past the inherent weirdness (lameness, really) of watching a metal show in a movie theater. And neither of us made the encore performance, either. Of course, I never really thought it mattered; a friend and I were talking this weekend and agreed that a) this tour is almost certainly going to find its way to the rest of the world sooner or later and b) an announcement of a DVD of Bulgaria gig should be coming any second.

But even if our predictions are wrong and this tour never hits the States and there is no DVD, well, who gives a shit? Some dude is putting clips from all the performances up on YouTube even as I type this! [UPDATE: Metal Underground says there will be a DVD and Blu-Ray forthcoming. Thanks to metalguy for pointing that out!]

Here are some highlights… you can watch more here. In fact, I think this guy has uploaded more or less the entire concert, so… go nuts!

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So according to Radar Online, Vince Neil was arrested this morning in Las Vegas.  ”What as the charge?” you ask? Did he get busted with drugs? Smack a porn start? Did the LVPD finally come to their senses and arrest him for crimes against good taste?

Nope. He was arrested for… suspicion of DUI.

Vince Neil. The man who, in 1984, killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle and seriously injured two passengers in another car because he was driving drunk. The man who has been charged with vehicular manslaughter. This guy. Was driving drunk.

WHAT A FUCKING ASSHOLE.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Neil obviously doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. And Motley Crue practically made a joke out of his previous exploits when they named their box set Music To Crash Your Car To.

Classy.

Seriously, what a dick. Can we all agree right now that if Neil is convicted, his feet and hands should be cut off so he can never drive again? I mean, you could do something less severe like just revoke his license forever, but I think it’s important that this fuckhead really get the message this time, don’t you?

-AR