…Iron Maiden, for the song “El Dorado,” and Them Crooked Vultures, for the song “SERIOUSLY WHO GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM CROOKED VULTURES YOU OLD FAT FILTHY FUCKS?”

So the thing is, if you look up the word “meaningless” in the dictionary, you will find a picture of a Grammy. There’s really no reason to be bummed about this. And while I don’t think “El Dorado” is a very good song, I’m glad that Maiden won as opposed to, say, Korn. Actually, I would have been okay with any of the nominees that weren’t Korn winning.

But for Them Crooked Vultures — or, really, any of the bands that weren’t Alice in Chains — to win just proves what a joke these awards are. I don’t even feel like I have to type anything else to prove my point — just the words “Them Crooked Vultures” should make you automatically say through your yawn, “Next!”

-AR

In 1987, $lash wrote the main riff for “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as a joke during warm-up for band practice, and after Izzy Stradlin and Axl Rose recognized its potential and turned it into an actual song, The World’s Best Jew ‘Fro argued against its inclusion on Appetite for Destruction, thinking it was too ballad-y for a hard rock album. Now, twenty-four years later, $lash has finally taken his revenge  on the song that gave him his career: wearing a variation of his signature top hat that was apparently fashioned from some old clothes Rob Halford recently donated to the Salvation Army, $lash appeared on the Super Bowl half-time show with The Black Eyed Peas to assist Fergie in what Vince rightly referred to as a “mutilation” of the song.

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As promised, last night’s Super Bowl saw the debut of a Best Buy commercial starring Justin Bieber and our favorite sexagenarian celebrity slut, Ozzy Osbourne (whose last product endorsement commercial was released less than a month ago). And the commercial actually turned out to be kinda funny. Not because of the lame jokes about how Ozzy doesn’t understand technology or how Bieber looks like a girl (although I appreciate the acknowledgement that Ozzy has no idea who Bieber is), but, rather, because of the simple but true implication that the Biebers of the world will soon usurp the Ozzys of the world as Lords of Whoring.

“Ozzy’s in the background!” a crew member complains from off-camera, making explicit that which we were all already thinking anyway; even though he’s a sad, dithering old man, the Ozz Man refuses to leave the set, not because he actually has anything to contribute, but because, goddamnit, he’s got crap to hock!

But Bieber nails it on the first take. He’s the guy who’s gonna be trying to sell you shit for the next however many years, until he’s finally out of touch himself, or the sun dies, whichever comes first. Someone thought to toss in the “Bieber looks like a girl” gag to make sure that the Zakk Wylde chapter of Mensa doesn’t get too offended — “Huh huh, yeah, Bieber’s a fag, huh huh!” — but the subtext of the ad isn’t even subtle.

-AR

So, hey, remember how Ozzy Osbourne just made that Best Buy commercial with Justin Bieber, which will be airing on the Super Bowl this coming Sunday?

Well, here’s an interview the Ozz Man gave in December… in other words, just weeks before he filmed the commercial.

Now, once the offer came in for him to be given (presumably) millions of dollars to appear in a commercial with Bieber, do you think he did any research? Or do you think he just took the money and smiled pretty for the cameras?

-AR

Thanks: Etienne Alexandre

So Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber apparently have shot a Super Bowl commercial for Best Buy together, because Bieber’s fans are eleven years old and don’t care about artistic credibility, and Ozzy’s fans are, emotionally speaking, roughly the same age, and also don’t care about street cred at this point. Most, if not all, of you will probably see the ad when it airs next weekend, and even if you don’t, I’m sure it will pop up online shortly thereafter. But in the meantime, the UK’s Daily Mail has some behind-the-scenes pics, like this nightmare inducer:

Remember the good ol’ days, when Ozzy literally would have bitten this little fucker’s head off for fun? Now it’s like he and Sharon are competing to see who can wear the most eye make-up. Someday some nitwit will probably get Kelly Osbourne knocked up, and the kid won’t be able to tell which one is its grandmother and which one is its grandfather, and they’ll have to show it this picture and be like, “Your grandmother is the one not wearing matching Tron suits with the kid who grew up to become a massive drug addict.”

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Announced with fanfare in the opening minutes of New Years Day 2010, the return of Soundgarden was supposed to redeem Chris Cornell’s tarnished legacy in the aftermath of the Timbaland-produced bomb Scream. Unfortunately, the grunge superstars have to-date spent their so-called reunion trying to sell repackaged collections of previously released music sprinkled sparsely with studio outtakes and ultimately playing fewer concerts than I can count on one hand.

We’ve yet to get a clear answer as to why this has been the case (theories: Matt Cameron’s Pearl Jam obligations, Kim Thayil’s obsessive compulsive beard maintenance), and the latest announcement that an old live concert is being put on CD only makes matters worse. As a longtime devotee, I pretty much feel cheated.

Seemingly, Cornell recognizes that the fans want to see the guys on tour, which is perhaps why he’s decided to offer up the next best thing and go out on the road by himself for a cross-country series of acoustic “Songbook” dates. It makes sense, and he can probably sell some of those live Soundgarden CDs along the way. Some press release blather and the list of dates are below the cut.
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So remember this past summer, when Vince Neil — who has literally killed and maimed people while drunk driving — was arrested in Vegas for DUI, and then subsequently flaunted his love and of boozin’ n’ cruisin’ not once but twice? Well, the Long Arm of the Law is not just gonna let this shit pass. No no no, assholes like Vince Neil need to be taught a lesson, even if they are famous. And so Vince is being handed a punishment only slightly more severe than the one I received when my parents found my cigarettes in the tenth grade. From Metal Insider:

“Neil will plead guilty to the DUI on January 26, and then will turn himself over to Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas on February 15, where he will spend the next 15 days in. Following that, he will serve another 15 days under house arrest.”

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Fieldy ain’t no Scotty Griffin.

There’s no actual connection between these two stories, besides the fact that they both made me laugh. And so:

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I know that the guy from Atreyu isn’t really named Alex Fahrvergnügen, but I can never remember how you spell his actual name, and since he can’t be bothered to learn the proper spelling of one of the easiest words in the English language, I’m not sure why I should be expected to learn to spell his name right. I mean, it took me a long time to learn to spell Guy Kozowyk’s last name correctly without double-checking it on the interwebs, but there’s a major difference between Guy and Alex — Guy is talented.

Also, Guy has a band, whereas Alex, it would seem, no longer does.

The following statement from Mr. Fahrvergnügen was pieced together from Twitter:

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You would have to be going out of your way to be ignorant not to have heard about 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner’s assassination attempt on Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon this past weekend, but in case you really don’t ever read anything besides MetalSucks — this dick wad left six people dead, including a nine year old girl and a district judge, and wounded twelve other people (as of this writing, Giffords herself is still in critical condition).

Once I got over the shock of the news on Saturday, my first thought was, “Well, someone’s gonna try and blame this on metal.” ‘Cause in the words of Chris Rock, “That train is never late.” Hell, less than four years ago, after the Virginia Tech shootings, Vince made the same prediction — and he was right. And that was, obviously, not the first instance of scapegoating metal. There’s about as much connection between listening to metal and trying to kill someone as there is between listening to country and discovering a cure for cancer, but it’s loud, angry, rebellious music that often deals in violent imagery, so it makes it easy for people to point the finger at the music we love.

Enter Rush Limbaugh, a political mind adored by millions of free-thinking, well-informed, and perfectly reasonable people around the world.

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Watch out! These young bucks are taking over the world.

Yep yep, it’s my birthday. I’m using my “Get Out of Jail Free” card to steal a Mike Portnoy story away from Vince (who usually covers all things Dream Theater-releated), ’cause I know how to party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard… [fade out]

ANYWAY, from the perspective of someone who is not as obsessed with Dream Theater as my cohort, this whole Mike Portnoy thing is getting to be pretty pathetic — like, characters from a Woody Allen movie pathetic. Portnoy is like the dude who left his wife of however many years for a younger, hotter, albeit much stupider, woman, and when that woman inevitably got bored by his old saggy balls and inability to shtup ten times a day without the aid of a little blue pill, he begged his wife to take him back. And his wife, to her credit, has been in therapy since he left, and has a new sense of self-worth — so she told him to go suck an egg. And now he’s stuck with this goddamn motherfucking ridiculous Porsche that doesn’t even run right half the time and a big house with no one to fill it.

Mike Portnoy is understandably lonely.

So how he’s dealing with his loneliness? Is he getting some alone time to, y’know, really get to work on Mike Portnoy? Did he join JDate to try and meet someone new? Is he taking that Porsche around to all the hottest clubs in town in an effort to snag another youthful bippy?

Well, kind of — what he’s actually doing is going to the Senior Center for Singles Bingo Night. Which is to say, he’s reuniting Yellow Matter Custard, his Beatles cover band, for the first time in eight years. Gee, I wonder what the occasion is?

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Former White Zombie bassist/feminist pioneer Sean Yseult on the current status of her relationship with Rob Zombie:

“As soon as you’re not in his world, you’re out of his world.”

Yep, Sean, that’s pretty much how it works! As soon as you’re not in something, you’re out of it. That’s why the words “in” and “out” are considered to be antonyms. Welcome to the English language. You’re gonna love it!

-AR

[via]

I can’t even fucking believe this. Max Cavalera has been calling for a reunion of the classic Sepultura line-up for awhile now, first blaming Andreas Kisser and then Paulo Jr. for the fact that it hasn’t happened yet; and then the current Sepultura line-up released a video in which they just killed the idea dead, dead, dead. And that should have been the end of it.

Unfortunately, it’s not. From Blabbermouth:

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“I used to be the singer for Iron Maiden!”

I’ll keep this brief, because it’s the very definition of “self-explanatory.” I mean, it might be one of those “I’m  [insert minority here] so I’m allowed to use the word ‘[insert slanderous term here]‘” things, but my gut tells me it’s really just one of those “I’m not very smart things.”

So. Paul Di’Anno, 2009:

“But you need to take drugs when you’re with Iron Maiden because they’re so fucking boring.”

And Paul Di’Anno, 2010:

“Anyone who slags off on Maiden, I’ll punch them out.”

In conclusion, I very much look forward to watching Paul Di’Anno punch himself out.

-AR

So Yahoo! has Ozzy Osbourne’s personal list of the Top Ten Metal Albums of 2010, and it may or may not surprise you to learn that it’s a really, really interesting mix of terrible and brain dead. (By the way, if you don’t like MetalSucks articles where I can really, really, really angry about something of less than no importance, then you should stop reading now.)

Okay so check out his list, and then I’ll tell you my thoughts. And before we begin, I should point out that it’s theoretically possible Ozzy didn’t actually choose these release, but, rather, than one of his handlers did it for him. But since it’s being labeled as “Ozzy’s list,” I am going to treat it as though it were written by Ozzy.

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Sean Yseult, bassist for the defunct White Zombie, has just released a memoir through well respected independent publisher Soft Skull Press. Yet my mild interest in this title hit a pretty severe low after reading some shoddy and downright untruthful marketing copy. I’ve bolded the offending passage below, which inflates her role in metal to comic proportions and completely discounts reality.

I’m in the Band charts White Zombie’s rise from the gritty music scene of New York’s Lower East Side in the eighties to arena headliners during the nineties alternative-explosion that followed in Nirvana’s wake, while sharing the unlikely story of a female musician who won the respect and adoration of male metal musicians and fans. From 1985 to 1996, Sean Yseult was the sole woman not only in White Zombie, but in the entire metal scene: bands, roadies, managers, you name it—with the exception of girlfriends and groupies, Yseult was in a world by herself.

Of course, the preposterous statement emphasized above is easily disproved within seconds, as any way you slice it it’s patently false. Not only were there female metal musicians before, during, and after Yseult’s tenure in White Zombie, but there were other female bassists in metal too, including Jo Bench (Bolt Thrower) and Lori Black (Melvins). I’m not even going to comment further on it; rather, I’ll let one of Yseult’s contemporaries reminder her that she wasn’t alone. Jucifer frontwoman Amber Valentine, take it away!

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The Grammy nominations have been announced, and, as per usual, they’ve got nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. This isn’t a shock; the Grammys have been a meaningless award, and will remain a meaningless award. But if you’re morbidly curious, as I am, as to who old white dudes think are the créme de la créme of our music of choice, the nominees, and some more snarky commentary from yours truly, are after the jump.

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The Daily Show had this great bit the other day about that NOH8 campaign commercial Vince posted earlier this week, and how certain politicians who have taken a certain stance on certain issues are almost certainly going to be looked back upon as dickwads. I’m not gonna embed it, but you can watch it here if you’re so inclined.

And I’m actually not trying to make a political point. I’m trying to make a point about history. The cliché about “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is a cliché for a reason. There are no new stories. Just new versions of old stories.

So I’m sorry to harp on this Blue Felix nonsense, but it just occurred to me — I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.

Anyone remember these bands?

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I hate TMZ, but I feel obligated to tell you that the celebrity gossip site has obtained security camera footage of Sebastian Bach getting violent with the staff of a bar in Canada yesterday, and subsequently being arrested. Go here to watch, although, like I said, it’s security cam footage, which means it’s both grainy and stationary, which means you can’t actually see very much. Oh, how I wish someone had captured the glorious incident on their cell phone! But this will have to suffice.

Considerably more entertaining is this report of why Bach got so rowdy in the first place:

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Here’s a quote from a recent Noisecreep piece on Biohazard’s Evan Seinfeld. I’ve added my own emphasis in bold:

“We are in the studio, finishing our 10th studio album, and we’re working Toby Wright, who has worked with Metallica, Slayer, Deftones, Godsmack, Korn,” Seinfeld told Noisecreep. “The music is the best we’ve ever written. I’m nervous, because it’s almost too good.”

Okay, so one question: WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?!?!

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