Since its inception by the typings of some clever music journalist in the 80s, the categorization “hair metal” (or “glam metal”) has been as amorphous and, consequently, as misused as “metalcore” has been in the aughties. And since it’s hair metal week here on MetalSucks, we thought we’d try to address this issue by pointing the spotlight on ten bands that are often, and incorrectly, deemed “hair metal.” And to that end…

It must’ve been an uphill battle for L.A.’s BulletBoys, the group that in 1988 was packaged as a Van Halen for disenchanted Hagar-haters. Living up to that billing is basically impossible, especially with a bluesy, Les Paul-playing, Slash-meets-Jeff Tyson guy in one of the bands and a technicolor fretboard wizard in the other.  Of course, one can understand why Van Halenism entered the discussion of how to market the BulletBoys in a crowded glam rock marketplace: In addition to sharing with Van Halen a producer, record label, and configuration, BulletBoys also resist lazy categorization. (Also, some endorse the uncomfortable comparison of BulletBoys singer Marq Torien to David Lee Roth, cuz Torien can do the steamwhistle-scream thing and also favors the flimsiest of double-entendres. But it ends there.) On the surface, each band puts on a carnival of crotch bulges and dirty imagery, but that’s just the flannel shirt or nappy beard or sleeve tattoo of the time. For the BulletBoys, a closer listen reveals high-level performance (if not consistently great songwriting) and a commercially icky element of sleaze. They may have looked the part, but their sound was too unfriendly, too minor key, and too darkly nasty to be glam.

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Emmure get a lot of shit here, from readers and staff alike, and I often feel like the odd man out for ranking their last record, Felony, among my favorites of 2009. Yet I experienced firsthand the collective love for the band when I caught their engaging, riotous set at the Warped Tour stop at New York’s Nassau Colisseum this weekend. To paraphrase my dear friend Elise from Reign in Blonde, who also witnessed this memorable performance, it’s easy to forget how popular Emmure are if all you rely on are metal websites. The young crowd were deeply into the band’s music, shouting along with the lyrics, windmilling wildly, and generally having a great time. It makes me wonder if you online sourpusses even know how to have fun, or have even so much as kissed a girl.

For me, the highlight of their Warped Tour set was a surprise cover of an early-Naughties dance-pop hit: Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone.” Without warning, Emmune-branded beach balls were thrown into the crowd, as frontman Frankie Palmeri led the eager audience in a singalong. After one last acapella take, the band segued quickly into “Bars In Astoria,” a song I really identified with from Felony. There was a certain artfulness to pairing the two tracks together, since “Better Off Alone” is almost certainly the type of song one would hear at a Queens nightspot over the past decade. Perhaps Palmeri has some less than pleasant memories associated with the track? Check out the fan-filmed video footage above of “Better Off Alone/Bars In Astoria” from a different date on the 2010 Warped Tour. Remaining tour dates are below.

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What do we think is going through the mind of the dude on the cover of Enslaved’s new album, Axioma Ethica Odini? He seems to be looking down, which could suggest guilt; then again, I suppose he could also just be thinking, “I wonder if I should have that thing on my penis looked at?” I dunno. I just don’t know.

Make your own suggestions in the comments section. If anyone makes me giggle, they win the satisfaction of knowing they made me giggle.

Axioma Ethica Odini comes out in Europe on September 27 and North America September 28 via Nuclear Blast and Indie Recordings.

-AR

Just last week Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe hopped on stage with Hatebreed to help out with “Doomsayer,” and I wondered why musicians on these mega-package tours don’t do cool shit like that more often — and now, it seems, Mr. Blythe has struck again! Here’s some video of him doing “Pure Hatred” with Chimaira in Idaho (potatoes represent!) recently. Looks like Blythe is aiming to be Mayhem’s MVP this year.

Chimaira’s new three DVD/CD set, Coming Alive, is out tomorrow on Ferret. I’ll have a review up ASAP.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Maiden and Slayer have been putting their names on custom-designed shoes for years. Mastodon Vans and 3 Inches of Blood Nikes were the most recent entries into the metal sneaker trend until Valient Thorr crashed their party earlier this year. Now King Diamond is along for the ride too.

So what do we all think of this recent band-endorsed sneaker fad in metal? Would you spend your hard-earned bones on a sneaker adorned in your favorite band’s logo? For the sake of this poll, let’s assume that any band sneakers we’re talking about are well-designed and look really cool.

Avenged Sevenfold may not be a hair metal, exactly — Guns N’ Roses (particularly Use Your Illusion-era Guns N’ Roses), who we will argue this week are very much not a hair metal band, seem to be their biggest influence — but they certainly seem to embody the spirit of hair metal, and have succeeded where so many modern hair metal bands have ultimately failed: they have created catchy pop metal and found a mass audience. And while we still haven’t heard all of their new album, Nightmare, as of yet, what we have heard suggests that it’s gonna continue in the same vein; in other words, if Avenged Sevenfold was Use Your Illusion III and Chinese Democracy was Use Your Illusion IV (or, perhaps more accurately, Use Your Delusion), than Nightmare will pretty much be Use Your Illusion IV.

Here’s the new video for the title track from Nightmare. They’re calling this the “unedited” version of the clip, although I assume they mean “uncensored.” ‘Cause, y’know. Unless all this footage cut itself together, it looks pretty edited to me.

Nightmare comes out July 27 on Warner Bros.

-AR

I first saw this ad for Yahoo! on Bring Back Glam over a week ago — but waited until this, most glorious of Hair Metal Weeks of MetalSucks, to share it with you all. My DVR generally allows me to save myself the agony of watching television advertisements these days (and Vince doesn’t even keep a television in the Neilstein Wing of the Mansion), but if I did still have to sit through those amazingly obnoxious efforts to get you to buy a product, well, I guess listening to some Crue while I did it might ease my pain.

Of course, anyone who saw Hot Tub Time Machine (which is riddled with hair metal references) knows that this is only the second best use of “Home Sweet Home” in pop culture this year — for, surely, nothing is superior to Motley Lou (spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen the movie yet):

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Axls ands Vince saids Is haves to dos this. Is hates it. Axls says “Its likes corpses paint.” Vince says “Its ‘Unholys.’ Yous likes things thats ares nots holys!” Is calls bullshits. Is quits. Fucks yous. Fucks yous and the ponys yous rodes on.

-NC

Maybe I’m a jerk, but it’s always blown my mind that Poison singer Bret Michaels has, like, never hit a correct pitch, ever. On any song. Or during any recorded live footage. One could go so far as to imply that Michaels may have never taken a singing lesson or hired a voice coach or even fucked the mouth of a karaoke contest winner. He’s a good guy, you can tell. And of course, I respect the party prowess of Bret Michaels, lovable skank-wrangler. It’s just that my ears want revenge on Bret Michaels, singer.

Also remarkable about the Michaels saga, which only recently turned scary and hammy, is the possibility that Bret-skis — for like twenty years — has somehow stood up to producers and record label honchos and his bandmates and reason and good taste, and has never seemed to mix-fix or pro-tools the living shit out of his takes. Good for him! Why cheat on a test that doesn’t matter? That dude is fucking rich anyway, and at least one of his records is a classic (next week, you’ll see that Allyson from BringBackGlam.com disagrees with me about which one), and I’m pretty sure he’s indestructible, because his brain basically exploded and yet he remains alive as fuck. My hat is way off to Bret.

However. It’s about time that someone tip Bret to the fact that he’s over-Oprahing his return from death’s doorstep. He’s gone total cheesecorn and his orange fingerprints are everywhere. Teary interviews. Book deals. Mortality-themed bandanas. And Tuesday night Star reports that now he’s gone and proposed marriage to his best girl from days gone by? Marriage, Bret? I guess this means the story arc of his new show, Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It, involves redemption or something. What’s next? Singing lessons?

-ADF

Read more about Bret Michaels and other guys who don’t sing great but no one minds all next week when MetalSucks brings back glam with Allyson B. Crawford of BringBackGlam.com. Read it or we’ll fuck your mom. Again.

Pull my finger and I’ll take you on a journey to musical parody of the highest order……if you or your gay boyfriend have never sat down and watched the movie This is Spinal Tap straight through you are surely missing out, but bear in mind one of the key components in truly grasping the brilliance of this film is to be emotionally connected to this thing we call rock n’ roll. Sure, I suppose plenty of fuddy-duddies out there will cavort a chuckle or two regardless, but anyone who does or ever has has taken rock music seriously with a capital Ssssssss will find this shit unbearably uproarious…

After the jump, a collection of Tap classics and the trailer for the “documentary” itself…

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Just so you know, when Vince and I cuddle, he’s usually the big spoon.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• Misery Index’s Jason Netherton joined us for the latest edition of Cooking Contaminated.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wondered if corporate-sponsored metal shows are killing the live concert market.
• We chatted with Soilwork’s Peter Wichers, Mantric’s Ole Halvard Sveen, and Black Army Jacket’s Carlos Ramirez.
• We checked out new releases by Norma Jean and Lightning Swords of Death.
• We celebrated the excellent year currently being enjoyed by Metal Blade Records.
• Korn played to the largest audience they deserve. (That would be an audience of zero.)
• New BOO means debates by you.
• Poison the Well poisoned our week.
• We were on the Metal Injection Livecast!
• Booty shake.

Next week is hair metal week! We’ll still be reporting on regular metal, too, so don’t freak out too hard. See ya Monday.

-AR

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Since we saw Iron Maiden play a set list comprised mostly of newer songs this week, we decided to ask our writers:

IS THE MOST RECENT MAIDEN SET LIST AWESOME, LAME, OR SOMEWHERE IN-BETWEEN?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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It’s a Soilwork kinda week at the Mansion. The Panic Broadcast finally came out in North America (read my thoughts about it), Anso DF published his riveting interview with one of metal’s biggest Peters, guitarist/producer Peter Wichers, and the MetalSucks co-sponsored Panic Over North America Tour — with Soilwork (duh), Death Angel, Augury, Mutiny Within and Swashbuckle — finally got underway. Get dates here.

We’ll be seeing our favorite Soilworkers tonight at New York’s Gramercy Theater. They always put on an awesome show, but the rest of the lineup is really solid too and should make for a fun evening if we don’t drink too much beforehand at DJ Brambo’s Heavy Metal Happy Hour at the Arrow Bar on Ave. A. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen NJ’s finest Mutiny Within live — May of 2010 at Brooklyn’s tiny Trash Bar, to be exact, shortly after they’d signed to Roadrunner but long before their album had come out — so it’ll be cool to see them on a big stage, all grown up and stuff. Here’s a performance clips video of “Lethean” they recently put together.

-VN

Has it really been over three years since Machine Head released their landmark return-to-form The Blackening? It has, and thanks to Machine Head’s non-stop 3-year tour in support of it, it feels like people are still buzzing about how good it was. I spoke with Rob Flynn back in December of ’09 and he told me the touring was going to continue rolling on; finally, in the summer of 2010, the band’s touring cycle for The Blackening is over and all the guys have returned home for some much needed rest.

In Flynn’s case, returning home actually meant packing up his stuff in boxes and hauling it all out to his new abode in Martinez, CA. What inevitably happens with any big move is that you end up unearthing boxes full of old shit you’d long since forgotten about. But unlike those love letters from your high school girlfriend you’ve still got tucked away for some stupid reason, the contents of Robb Flynn’s memento boxes are actually of interest to the public, and lucky for you he’s scanned and uploaded a whole bunch of memorabilia from Machine Head’s early days and posted them to the Machine Head blog. Hand-written lyric sheets, really old photos, flyers (one of a gig opening for Rancid, one of a European headline tour with Meshuggah opening!), ticket stubs, rejected album covers of Burn My Eyes… tons of really cool shit. Check it out — it’s highly worth 2 minutes of your time.

-VN

Thanks: Lewis Clark

Two separate readers, Brett Wilcox and Spanky Gomez, have e-mailed us about Australia’s Thy Art is Murder, but I gotta ask: what’s the big deal? This band strikes me as being just about as generic as generic gets. Am I completely missing something here? Someone, please, tell me what’s so cool about this band. Sure, they’re better than a lot of their deathcore peers, but that’s like winning the gold medal (metal?) in the Special Olympics. I don’t have to fly to Australia to find a band that sounds like Thy Art is Murder — I just have to walk to the nearest local metal show.

-AR

Remember the third season of Metalocalypse? ‘Cause I barely do. Not that I don’t love the show — it just feels like it aired so goddamn long ago. What happened? How many episodes were there? I remember they got longer, but… that’s about it. Sheesh.

Luckily, I can soon refresh my memory: Noisecreep tells me that the third season is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray — the latter being a first for the program — on November 2. In addition to looking purdier on Blu-Ray, that version of the disc will come with some extra extra features, including “Nathan Explosion reading from William Shakespeare’s Othello and five music videos that were featured on Dethklok’s last tour.” Holy shit, that sounds like fun. Do you think Nathan plays Iago? I would actually put on my Sunday best and go to a theater on Broadway and pay real money to see Nathan Explosion as Iago. [deep, growly Nathan Explosion voice] “I am, uh, not what I am.” I’m suddenly SO HAPPY I made the switch Blu-Ray (the dying format of physical media be damned!), I can’t even tell you.

And then hopefully at some point in the near future we’ll get more Metalocalypse episodes at a consistent enough rate that I won’t completely forget what happened.

-AR

Earlier this week, I wrote about the gay porno grind band Bear Party; subsequently, our friend Betsey e-mailed me to bring a whopping six other openly gay hardcore and punk outfits to my attention. And so I present to you…

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This is the stupidest thing I have ever read in the history of ever. From Gizmodo:

Kids around the country are getting high on the internet, thanks to MP3s that induce a state of ecstasy. And it could be a gateway drug leading teens to real world narcotics.

At least that’s what Kansas News 9 is reporting about a phenomenon called I-dosing, which involves finding an online dealer who can hook you up with “digital drugs” that get you high through your headphones.

And officials are taking it seriously.

I-dosing involves donning headphones and listening to “music” – largely a droning noise – which the sites peddling the sounds promise will get you high. Teens are listening to such tracks as “Gates of Hades,” which is available on YouTube gratis (yes, the first one is always free). Those who want to get addicted to the “drugs” can purchase tracks that will purportedly bring about the same effects of marijuana, cocaine, opium and peyote. While street drugs rarely come with instruction manuals, potential digital drug users are advised to buy a 40-page guide so that they learn how to properly get high on MP3s.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to just pop on the old Pink Floyd vinyl, roll one up and smoke it. Or just put on some Gojira, no drugs at all… that does the trick just fine.

-VN

I’ve never really understood the whole “modern raw black metal” trend. I mean, I do understand where the original “kvlt tr00″ bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem were coming from… in the 90s. After all, it’s fun to dress up in ridiculous costumes, paint faces, and make hilariously bad quality metal – it’s like Halloween. But I don’t understand how it’s persisted until now. It’s 2010, and I have to ask – WHY IS THIS TREND STILL GOING ON? I appreciate bands like Ihsahn, Lyfthrasyr, and Sear Bliss, who use black metal as a base for their music, a guide so they can later inject more experimental, unconventional aspects into their albums like saxophones, trombones, and lots of other musical stylings that are really fairly unblack. But can somebody explain to me the allure of creating music that sounds like three guys jamming it out in a broom closet in Brazil into an 8-track tape recorder?

Fine, I’m exaggerating. Lightning Swords of Death‘s The Extra Dimensional Wound doesn’t quite approach Brazilian bedroom quality — the production has quite improved from the band’s last album. But it still sucks, and the instruments – particularly the drums – are mixed really poorly. Thrudvang’s (Really? Thrudvang?) drums are clicky, tinny, and obnoxious, Autarch/Farron Loathing’s vocals get staticy and distorted as they get louder, Roskva/Jeremy Stramaglio’s guitar tone is trebly and screechy, and Menno’s bass is, of course, inaudible.

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Esteemed metal scribe Phil Freeman wrote a fun piece for Running The Voodoo Down in which he talks about the extremity of the metal shirts that are flooding today’s metal clothing market. Freeman notes that like metal itself, metal t-shirt designs have gotten even louder, even crazier, even spikier, even more outrageous than they’ve ever been. One part in particular struck me:

One option a few bands have exercised in recent years, which has pleased me greatly, has been the simple black-and-white logo shirt. I have one from Atheist, one from Entombed, and one that’s not quite a straight logo shot, but features a logo and a simple white graphic, from the L.A.-based Native American crust/grind band Resistant Culture. And, of course, Motörhead has been doing that for decades—the classic “Motörhead/England” shirt…

This. +1.

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