We got so many fucking e-mails about this video of Tom Green at the Gathering of the Juggalos that I have to assume they all came from Mr. Green himself, using a variety of different e-mail addresses and IPs, or that he begged lots and lots of his friends to e-mail us and get this posted. For, surely, if this many people still thought Tom Green was worth a damn, he’d still have a television show on a major network, he’d still have a film career, he’d still be shtupping Drew Barrymore, and he most certainly would not be at the Gathering of the Juggalos, where careers (and dignity) go to die.

So why am I posting it anyway? Because my fascination with Juggalos just will not end. To any Juggalos who may be reading this site (and I know there are at least a few of you): Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?!?! You’re like the Nazis, but less organized.

I’m also posting it for the Gallagher cameo at the end. Holy shit, man — frickin’ Gallagher is still alive.

-AR

Some albums hit you immediately, and some grown on you with time. From the very moment at Madison Square Garden last month that the band played “El Dorado” live and I found myself enjoying it after having been indifferent the first couple of times I heard it, I realized that The Final Frontier was going to be one of those albums that gets better with each listen. The songs are long, they don’t follow traditional structures, and the melodies aren’t obvious; it takes time to “learn” the songs, if you will, and many listens to fully understand what you’re hearing. And now that I’ve had some time to live with this album I can confidently say that it’s a damn good record. It certainly doesn’t stack up against Maiden’s classics, but it’s the best re-Bruce era album since Brave New World and it’s got plenty for any Maiden fan to be excited about.

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Even if Iron Maiden were always pretty polished, there’s no denying that there was a punk influence on their work with Paul Di’Anno, and that said punk influence carried over to their earliest releases with Bruce Dickinson. A lot of the band’s most famous songs from those barely-separate eras — “Running Free,” “Wratchild,” “Number of the Beast,” “Run to the Hills,” “Flight of Icarus,” etc. — are under five minutes long. There was a lean and mean quality to those songs that the band gradually ditched. In fact, you can trace this progression pretty easily:

• Iron Maiden — Only three songs over five minutes, only one over seven minutes, total run time is 40:39.
• Killers — Only two songs over five minutes, only one over six minutes, total run time is 41:18.
• The Number of the Beast — Only three songs over five minutes, two of which are six minutes plus, one of which is seven minutes plus. Total run time is 40:22.
• Piece of Mind — Four songs over five minutes, two of which are over six, one of which is over seven. Total run time is 45:50.
• Powerslave — Four songs over five minutes, including “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which is more than thirteen minutes long. Total run time is 50:57.

Then the band got somewhat carried away with Somewhere in Time, which only has one song under five minutes and a total running time of 51:24, and then they reigned things in a little for Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (total run time: 43:50), No Prayer for the Dying (44:25), and Fear of the Dark (58:29). Then they made two albums I like to pretend never happened, and then Bruce Dickinson returned to the band, and, frankly, everything kinda fell to shit:

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Derek Riggs is an illustrator based in California. His website showcases the album art he’s done over the past thirty years, including his absolutely classic work for Iron Maiden. Derek is opinionated and funny; the half hour you will spend looking through the entire site shows that clearly. In 2006, he put out Run For Cover: The Art of Derek Riggs, a book that includes a bunch of his best stuff as well as several interviews.

I was hesitant to call him and ask him about his work for Iron Maiden, as that’s an old chapter in his life and he’s put a lot of that behind him. But then I thought, “Fuck it, it would be fun to call Derek Riggs, let me see if I can talk to him.” He was game, so I took a deep breath and asked him a few questions about his past.

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Here’s a weird realization I had recently: Iron Maiden have never made a good video. Not that it really matters — it’s ultimately all about the music, after all — but it does seem kinda weird.

‘Cause I think it’s impossible to say the words “Iron Maiden” and not immediately get a visual in your head. A visual of your favorite version of Eddie, or a visual of Eddie doing battle with Janick Gers or Dave Murray or Adrian Smith (or all three) on-stage, or a visual of Steve Harris holding his bass like a gun, or a visual of Bruce Dickinson being in better shape than you are. This is a band whose success has been inextricably tied to an image for thirty years… and yet they have never made a visually arresting, or even satisfying, music video.

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Four albums in, the return of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith to Iron Maiden might no longer be novel. The band’s brush with obsolesence is history, and fans have had time to again grow accustomed to a thriving, active Maiden, forever on tour and regularly releasing records. As such, it’s easy to forgive the promise of the Iron Maiden sextet’s collossal first outing, Brave New World, next to which its successors Dance of Death and A Matter Of Life and Death sound uneven (the former) and procedural (the latter).

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There has been quite a lot of debate over the new Iron Maiden artwork for The Final Frontier, both on MetalSucks and in the three dimensional world. I personally think it’s a decent idea, but poorly executed. The “alien” is, of course, Eddie, and I refuse to think otherwise because, for God’s sake, who else would it be? It’s good to branch out a bit in terms of style and artists, because the same old, same old can get a bit boring — but this seems to be case of, “If it ain’t broke, break it.” Keeping that in mind, here are my ideas on what future Maiden artwork should be. It goes without saying that I’d prefer Eddie the Head as we have come to know and love him in the following depictions. But Zombie Eddie would also be okay.

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Call me a Maiden fanboy, but I really, really enjoyed this most recent Iron Maiden tour’s setlist of mostly newer stuff. Especially the material from Brave New World, an album I absolutely adore and much of which I’ll likely never get to hear again in a live setting.

Here’s some pro-shot live footage from the MSG show we attended of the band playing “Blood Brothers” from that album. Bruce’s pre-song dedication to Ronnie James Dio was one of the more touching moments of the night, and the manner in which he raises the horns and looks at his hand like it’s possessed by an insidious infection that he’d allow only for his blood brother Dio is highly hilarious and so Bruce.

Also note: the audience singing along to the chorus, loudly. Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

-VN

For me, the foundation of metal is a five-sided structure (A pentagram? Nah, too obvious. A pentagon!), with each side being represented by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Pantera, and Slayer, respectively. Though the last two are debatable (but not THAT debatable), the first three are, to borrow a term, unfuckwithable. And of those three, the band that’s aged the best is Iron Maiden. Judas Priest, while still retaining most of their firepower, also dabble with overstuffed, convoluted concept albums about Nostradamus; best to stick to the Halford lineup’s original masterpieces. And while Sabbath have managed to impress on a number of reunion tours with their most cherished singer (one Ozzy Osbourne) and their most underrated (one Ronnie James Dio, RIP), I find it hard to believe the band have one more great album in them, let alone another classic to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their first six records.

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…you should really read this piece that Zach Shaw wrote for Metal Insider.

‘Cause, as is so often the case today, there are a variety of editions of the album coming out, including two different digital downloads, a double-picture vinyl, and a “Mission Edition,” which is really just a space-themed way of saying a “special edition.” Mr. Shaw even went out of his way to do price comparisons from various big-name retailers, so you can more easily decide which store/digital outlet gets your hard earned cash.

Check it out here.

-AR

Full disclosure: Bob Cock has only listened to The Final Frontier once in its entirety. He also got it just a couple days ago and still has a few other things he’s working on, but this isn’t about excuses.

Let’s face it, though: once a band has become an institution like the almighty Iron Maiden, it’s not so much about the new albums as it is about the band’s legacy. Whether it’s classics (see: Powerslave, Fear of the Dark, Killers, Piece of Mind, etc.), the venerable band’s more recent “comeback” catalog (Brave New World, Dance Of Death, A Matter of Life and Death), the swing and misses (anything – aside from a few songs – with Blaze Bayley), or the underrated (Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, Iron Maiden), you know you’re going to buy it.

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Let me start off by saying that the first thing I noticed about The Final Frontier is that there are some really long songs — up to eight, nine, eleven minutes. Hmm. This could go either way. Maiden songs that tend to go on forever are very hit or miss for me. Usually there’s a moment in there that I like, that I skip to, and then ignore all the rest. But since this is my precious Iron Maiden, I sat back and gave it more than a fair chance.

The intro is kind of an experimental jam, but with heavier guitars and bass so it doesn’t go into an overblown prog-rock musical solo. And the vocals do mercifully come in… three minutes into the eight minute song. Midway through, the track completely changes tone ,and I thought it was a different song altogether — which might’ve worked better. But overall it’s the standard title track; bellowing “The Final Frontier,” with almost orchestral back up. I really could’ve lived without the intro, though.

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A couple of years ago we celebrated/mourned the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic by turning ourselves into MetallicaSucks for a day, and having each member of the MS staff contribute a review, as well as other Metallica-related shenanigans.

We had a lot of fun doing that (and watching you all argue about it), and have wanted to do it again for some time… but rarely is an album as highly anticipated as Death Magnetic released.

But tomorrow, Iron Maiden’s The Final Frontier comes out in North America, and if the fifteenth (!) studio album from one of metal’s most legendary bands doesn’t qualify as “highly anticipated,” well, nothing does.

So we’re doing it again! Tomorrow will be all Maiden, all the time. We’ll have multiple reviews of The Final Frontier, so you can see that, no, we most certainly do not always agree here at MetalSucks; in addition, there will be lots of other Maiden-related goodness… including an AWESOME interview that The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley conducted with the legendary Derek Riggs!!!

So get stoked… for tomorrow, MAIDENSUCKS!!!

-Everyone at MetalSucks

When the Key Club in West Hollywood closed its doors in December 2009, the eight-legged party beast Steel Panther had to find a new hair rock habitat for their weekly shows. At first, it was a relief when Michael Starr and crew cock-strutted a few blocks down Sunset to the House of Whites Blues: admission got cheaper, the room bigger, and sound better. But, for the sleaze of hair rock, a music venue/shopping mall/tourist trap isn’t the preferred setting. So sometime around March, I started to long for a return to the safety of a drug-friendly sweat hole with dark corners and unpolice-able bathrooms. After all, the Key Club was once the site of Ben Gazzari’s eponymous rock club, where the sleaze don once proudly showcased his barely-legal harem and, for VIPs, his somewhat prescient home video skills; meanwhile, HoB has a freakin’ gift shop.

You’d want maximum possible sleaze, too, once you survey the crowd. It’s mostly tourists (literally and figuratively), but filled out with solitary guys like me, unaccompanied and dead serious, fidgeting through extended bouts of boob-flashing  (our sighs seem to say “Just show ‘em already and let’s get on with the Whitesnake covers!”) and secretaries-gone-wild sing-alongs (not to be a sandy vagina, but I submit that “Don’t Stop Believin’” is not hair rock). Our visual mating call is a non-ironic hair metal shirt and a general vibe of impatience for the super hits.

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We’ve been meaning to do some “Metalcal Marijuana” interviews forever, but being potheads, we naturally came to execution of said interviews rather slowly. But once we finally got our asses off the couch to begin the new series, we had to answer a key question: “With whom shall we start?”

Knowing that Denver, Colorado’s Cephalic Carnage are also big smokers (they’ve described their music as “hydrogrind”), and knowing that they have an awesome new album, Misled by Certainty, coming out August 31 on Relapse (pre-order it here), CC front dude Len Leal seemed like an ideal place to begin.

I called Mr. Leal last week, just as Cephalic were pulling into Cincinatti for the latest date on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter Tour; it should go without saying that he was incredibly, uh, affable. After the jump, get his thoughts all things weed, the use of weed in Cephalic Carnage, and, oh yeah, the band’s new album.

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When Randy Blythe was nineteen years old and Jamey Jasta was thirteen years old, a really silly white dude who is named Rob Van Winkle but insisted on calling himself “Vanilla Ice” released a song entitled “Ice Ice Baby,” which was a huge megahit. There can be no doubt that Blythe and Jasta were aware of the song’s existence, for such was its prevalence in pop culture. Of course, we have no way of knowing what these someday-modern metal legends thought of the track, but I think we can reasonably assume that at no point did the thought “Someday Vanilla Ice will come see me perform and we will hang out backstage after the show” cross their respective minds.

And yet, this:

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‘Cause sometimes you just wanna grind up against the hot girl standing next to you…

• Wormed: Reader Dan Wolfson suggests Wormed are “possibly the most brutal and fucked up band ever… like if portal did grindcore with an inhuman vocalist named Phlegeton…seriously…it’s not your average brutal shit…this is past brutal….” and I’d be inclined to agree. This is serious. And brutal. And seriously brutal. Stream “Uncoloured Plasma Orifices Transported” above.
• Demeanor: Spazzy deathgrind from Kentucky. I’m not sure where in Kentucky these guys are from, but I guarantee they’d scare the no-alcohol-drinking bible thumpers where the MetalSucks Mansion Kentucky Korner Vince Division is located screaming down to the road. They incorporate a bunch of other styles of metal into their grind attack too, which is sweet. [Thanks: Chas Lee]
• Ninety Minute Reflex: This is more just grind than deathgrind… but at least it’s good grind. It’s fast, angry, and heavy as fuck… and there’s even a good sense of power-groove in the music, pretty amazing given the overall grind template. [Thanks: Chris Vigilante]

-VN

The internet is cool, but I’m totally relieved that it was invented after my teen years. I spent those years trashing all bands disrespectful enough to not copy Van Halen (then Metallica, then Carcass), so it’s awesome that my half-baked opinions didn’t appear online for all to see, say, in the comments section of some virtual argue-dome for uptight virginal nerds. But no, only a handful of people heard my most misguided, sexual angst-driven opinions. That’s a small victory.

So, for example, I’m super-glad there’s no proof that I instantly and angrily dissed the few oddball bands that Headbangers Ball would try to slip in among the Testament and Slaughter. No one can prove, per se, that at first I was really offended by Faith No More and their irreverent treatment of heavy music (Rap? Black Sabbath cover? Bright colors?). I might’ve also taken a firm and retarded stand against last-video-of-the-night types like Masters of Reality and King’s X. Oh, and I positively wiped my ass with Mordred. Okay, I was right about that last one.

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Most of the time metalheads seem to inadvertently make fun of themselves just fine by playing into their stereotypes, but for the rest of the time we’re lucky we have folks like comedy troupe Shit Baby Panic and stand-up comedian Steve Hughes to make fun of them (us) for us. Pointing out homophobia in the metal community is a pretty obvious target because it’s so rampant, but Hughes does a fine job of making anyone who’s ever called someone else “gay” in jest feel silly about themselves. To wit:

-VN

Thanks: Adam Muirhead

Thorriors of the world rejoice and once more cast off your deodorant. Sweaty eminence Valient Himself and his minions from Burlatia (located inside the planet Venus, in case you’re not up on your interstellar geography) have returned to get feral on the collective ass of the human race.

Not hip to Valient Thorr? Allow me to share the recipe. Start with five guys who look like they escaped the Dawn of Man exhibit at your local museum. Pulverize classic guitar rock (Ted Nugent, AC/DC, MC5), push tempos into the red and sprinkle with Anthrax-style choruses. Of course, it’s not Valient Thorr until you add the secret sauce, which is delivering this balls-out gumbo with the recklessness of genuine article punk and enough perspiration to submerge North Americans in an ocean of their malodorous secretions.

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