Last week’s most amusing news item came from Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato (above, center), who made public his thanks and apologies to local emergency responders who helped him out during a half-day drug freakout. (Reviewing Puciato’s account of the unnamed substance’s effects, one could settle on mushrooms as the likely culprit.) As party people, we at MetalSucks giggled knowingly at his beginner’s mistakes and cheered his quick rebound to good humor and sanity. Party loud, dude!

But Puciato’s boss, DEP founding guitarist Ben Weinman (above, left), isn’t as cool with his misadventure or his urge to chronicle it for the public. Nor with the potential he created for something other than Weinman to get credit for DEP’s genius. Our awesome buds at Metal Insider got the exclusive story from Weinman:

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So yesterday afternoon, Born of Osiris announced that guitarist Jason Richardson was no longer in the band. In an official statement, BOO called the split “something that just needed to happen” and promised that the group “will be a more creative, energized, and focused unit as a result.” And even though the subtext of that assertion isn’t so nice to Richardson (’cause it implies that he was in some way impeding the band’s creativity, energy, and focus), the actual text of the statement was completely cordial, advising fans that there is “No reason to tear Jason down for this” and declaring that “We still love Jason.”

Alas, when Richardson later released his own statement, he wasn’t so kind to his now-former bandmates, basically saying that he was let go for confronting the other members about what he perceived to be their substance abuse issues:

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UPDATED:

L.A. Guns is one of the most successful and influential bands in the history of metal, an act who music is rivaled only by Black Sabbath and Metallica for its importance to the history of the music we love. So of course, it makes complete sense for there to be two versions of that band, one featuring a guy who is clearly a poor man’s stand-in (or a “Dj Slashba,” if you will) for the band’s namesake, and another which switches vocalists so often that even the members of the band aren’t sure who’s performing with them at any given concert.

And because the world has so great benefitted from having two versions of L.A. Guns, and because the members of those two bands make so much money and sell so many records competing with one another, Great White has now decided to get in on the act: vocalist Jack Russell recently announced the formation of “Great White featuring Jack Russell” while his former bandmates soldier on simply as “Great White.” And if that doesn’t seem like a sound plan to you, well, hey, guess what? It’s cool, because the Great White that doesn’t feature Jack Russell says Jack Russell can’t just start another band called Great White.

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(Photo Credit: Jennifer Pottheiser for iHeartRadio)

I admit, I was skeptical about Scott Weiland’s decision to release an album of Christmas songs. I fucking hate Christmas songs. But you know what? He pulls it off.

Last night I had the opportunity to see Scott Weiland perform a private show in an intimate, 100-person setting with an 8-piece jazz band backing him up. Weiland came out wearing a white tux, his hair-slicked back all Bing Crosby-like, sobriety level dubious at best. The first three songs were all Christmas classics from his new album and he delivered them with startling sincerity and flair, his smooth baritone fitting the part perfectly. Then things got weird: an obscure STP song (“Wonderful” from 2001′s Shangri-La Dee Da) and a cringe-worthy cover of Velvet Revolver’s “Do It For the Kids,” followed by a convincing version of “Vaseline” that brought things back to reality and an impromptu jam to close the set. But you know what? He really seemed most at home, most comfortable, singing those Christmas songs.

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It’s no secret that Rick Rubin is what might be best described as a “hands off” producer. Based on what little I know about the guy, he wasn’t always that way — but these days, he has a reputation for being more a guru who comes into the studio X number of times a week and tells the band what they’re doing wrong before moving onto his next appointment. Y’know that image you have a record producer from A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica? Of the producer being present 24/7, and being so passionately involved with his work that he often argues with the band? Yeah, that ain’t Rubin.

Corey Taylor confirmed as much while discussing working with Rubin on Slipknot’s Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses during a recent stop on his solo tour. So that’s not really news. What is news that Taylor apparently hates the dude, who he calls “overrated” and “overpaid.” Check out video below:

In other news, Rick Rubin could probably give a fuck what Taylor or any other members of Slipknot think of him, because eighteen gajillion other bands will still pay him squillions of dollars to sit on their couch, eat his smelly blue shit, and tell them what he thinks of their record. But, hey… great work if you can get it.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Yesterday, we saw video of Courtney Love flying off the handle when a fan held up a Kurt Cobain t-shirt during a recent performance; amongst other topics, her subsequent rant honed in on Dave Grohl, who, she seemed to claim, had been fired from Nirvana by Cobain. Later, as part of a kind-of-new-but-really-the-same rant, she said that “I don’t care what you listen to at home. But a guy takes money off my kid’s table… fuck him!” I wasn’t really clear what the hell she meant at the time, but a MetalSucks commenter named Chris asserted that “she was claiming Grohl is the one taking money off her kid’s table, which makes sense given the history of those two arguing over royalties and rights and whatnot.”

And bravo to Chris for apparently being fluent in Courtney, ’cause his assessment of the situation was absolutely correct. The PRP posted the below post-show interview with Love, in which she clarifies why she’s so pissed at Grohl. To hear her tell it, Grohl didn’t write any of Nirvana’s music (including the “drum riff” from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), makes a shit ton of money from the Foo Fighters (which is not hard to believe) and is consequently not hurting for money (which is also not hard to believe) — and yet he continues to own a piece of Nirvana, and recently purchased an Aston Martin with his Nirvana, Inc. credit card (thus he is “taking money off my kid’s table”) while Cobain’s mother and sister suffer from poverty. Check it out below, and get my thoughts after the jump:

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If you thought that release of Worship Music meant that Anthrax could finally put all the Dan Nelson drama behind them, well, you thought wrong. The New York Post reports that the former ‘Thrax vocalist is suing the band for a whopping $2.65 million:

Dan Nelson says drummer Charlie Benante, bassist Frank Bello and guitarist Scott Ian falsely stated in “numerous interviews” that he had “abruptly resigned” after getting sick, forcing a cancelation of a tour.

The $2.65 million suit also alleges that Benante last month told the rock-news site Blabbermouth.net that Nelson “was a bully.”

The Long Island native says his ex-bandmates’ “intentional defamation” has caused him a loss of income and damaged his reputation.

The Manhattan federal court filing further charges that Nelson co-wrote the tunes on the band’s latest album, “Worship Music,” but hasn’t gotten his fair share of the profits.

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What do Mormons and Finns have in common? Why, they both love Bring Me the Horizon, of course!

Last month, Bring Me the Horizon vocalist Oli Sykes called out a bunch of hecklers at a show in Salt Lake City, Utah, and those hecklers responded by rushing the stage and attacking the band; then, this past Sunday, the band was playing in Helsinki, Finland, where, once again, they found themselves the victims of heckling from the crowd — only this time, guitarist Jona Weinhofen decided to bring the fight to the fans, leaping into the audience and attacking some dude, Axl-Rose-in-Indiana-in-’91 style. But it was a way good idea to teach that dumb heckler a lesson, because he totally showed that dude who’s boss and deterred future hecklers, and did not break his hand, thereby endangering the nineteen remaining dates of the tour. Oh wait.

To Weinhofen’s credit, he’s apparently going to “attempt to gig tonight playing with only 2 fingers on a broken hand,” according to his Twitter account. (I don’t know how the hell you play guitar with two fingers, but maybe BMTH songs really are that easy to perform.) Not to Weinhofen’s credit is that this is absolutely the wrong way to deal with a heckler, and now the band’s actual fans may not get to see them at all. So, yeah, losing his temper was, like, totally worth it.

Here’s video of the fight, in case you’re interested:

-AR

Thanks: Jesse

So, hey, remember how Danzig acted like a real douche at Fun Fun Fun Fest this past weekend ’cause he didn’t get a bowl of French onion soup?

Well, Slayer — who also played the festival — have never been above a little good ol’ fashioned shit talking in the press, and I guess they decided to have some fun at Glenn’s expense. ‘Cause they posted the below photo on their Facebook page, along with the caption “Great show tonight @FunFunFunFest got everything we needed.”

Bravo, Slayer. Bra-fuckin’-vo.

-AR

Additional reporting by Antonin Skullia, Esq.

Just the other day I was thinking to myself, “Gee, what ever happened to Peter Dolving’s MySpace blogs? Obviously MySpace isn’t a thing anymore, but I can’t imagine that means Dolving has any less to say.” I always enjoyed reading The Haunted frontman’s rants; they were funny, honest, well-articulated, and best of all got the entirety of the metal Interhole in a fucking rage. Well, today I have my answer to my question; he’s baaaaack! On Facebook, natch. And the beef is most certainly still simmering on the open fire.

The latest Dolving controversy involves Watain, specifically that he isn’t too fond of his fellow Swedes. Here’s the FB status update that got it all going:

So, um Waitan from Schmockholm… They’re a an overrated band, and probably need their asses kicked, you know like generally speaking. Agree? Disagree?

And things pretty much exploded from there! A follow-up comment after several readers responded:

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On September 20th we reported that Mike Portnoy sued the other members of Dream Theater back in April, linking to the publicly available “Notice of Summons” document as proof. Later that day Dream Theater’s attorney was quoted as saying there is “no pending litigation” between Portnoy and Dream Theater. Today I choose to file a motion of “bullshit.”

A stealthy MetalSucks named Larry W. reader tipped us off to the existence of this website, a publicly searchable database of all court records in New York state. Pass the captcha, type “Portnoy, Mike” into the Plaintiff Search box (lol at him not using “Michael”), and voila, a plethora of documents relating to the Portnoy vs. DT litigation, the most recent of which was filed YESTERDAY.

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No I’m totally kidding. I don’t even know if there is gonna be any touring or live performances in support of Lulu; at this point, I think it’s safe to assume there will not be, since the amount of security guards it would take to protect the musicians from the “fans” would probably be greater than the number of people who would actually pay to see Loutallica perform that crap. (Although if they included free rotten eggs to throw at the band with every ticket purchase, I would happily shell out some cash to attend.)

And even if there was a tour, Danko Jones most certainly would not be the opener — ’cause over the weekend, the singer/guitarist took to his Twitter account and likened Lulu to some of cinema’s great financial and creative disasters, including Ishtar, Waterworld, and Battlefield Earth. And, oh yeah, then he tweeted the below:

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Earlier this week, drummer Mike Kaabe revealed that he had been fired from Emmure, and made some pretty heinous (and thus far completely unproven) accusations against the band and their manager, including claims of thievery and drug addiction. And if Emmure had just ignored Kaabe, we all probably would have already forgotten about it by now.

So of course Emmure did not ignore Kaabe, and Palmeri responded via a series of tweets this past Tuesday:

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No, I’m totally kidding, he was apparently fired from the band and he’s rrrrrreeeeaaalllllyyyy unhappy about it and now the whole thing has turned into a total shit show.

The soap opera began when Kaabe released a statement to Lambgoat earlier today, in which he explains his version of why the band gave him the pink slip. That statement follows after the jump:

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But I’m not positive. The drummer’s recent comments regarding Illud Divinum Insanus, the first Morbid Angel album he didn’t play on, are kind of hard to interpret. At first he’s all “I don’t play on that album!”, which is really just a clear cut statement of fact, but then they ask him if he’d have done anything different with the record, and here’s why it gets kinda ambiguous:

“More extreme deathgrind metal and less DJ, boring awful typical I care less industrial experimental same as everybody boring bull! This is not what Morbid has been all about!”

So, yeah, geez, I dunno. In some cultures, like the La Tierra de los Opuestos province of Mexico and the town of Mən Demək Deyil Demək in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the words “boring” and “awful” are meant as high compliments. So there’s really a few different ways his comments could be interpreted.

What do you guys think?

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

L.A. Reid is the chairman and CEO of the Island Def Jam Music Group, which, of course, includes Island Records, the label to which Anthrax were signed for all of their classic Belladonna-era releases. He’s also a judge on X Factor, the upcoming addition to the long line of idiotic American Idol-style reality talent programs, and as of July 11, he’s also the CEO of the Epic Label Group. And, at least if you believe the New York Post, after starting that nifty new gig at Epic, he told execs at that label that “I don’t want no ugly people working here; I only want good-looking people.” That seems too comical to be true — it’s basically what the Colin Farrell character in the movie Horrible Bosses does, after all — but given how fucknuts the people who run the music industry are, it wouldn’t exactly be shocking if it turned out to be a legit story.

In any case, Scott Ian apparently believes it, and I guess he wanted to show his support for Reid’s completely sound and logical decision. So he tweeted a series encouraging messages regarding Reid’s alleged declaration, in which he called Reid a “TALENTLESS piece of shit” before adding:

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Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges unearthed these phone calls that Glen Benton made to evangelical radio personality Bob Larson back in 1992, and, as Lee writes, they’re a good reminder that Benton was once “ the poster boy for everything the religious right hates about heavy metal,” and not a guy who “ loves motorcycles, wrote a record about his divorce (Till Death Do Us Part), and records anti-Christian music with guitarist Ralph Santolla, a practicing Catholic.”

But, mostly, they’re a reminder that Glen Benton is just a big ol’ silly-face — in fact, I’d argue that he’s only marginally less silly than Marilyn Manson. I mean, listen to the voice he’s using in these calls, and the things he’s saying, and keep in mind (as though you could forget) that Benton is the dude who burned an inverted cross into his forehead (Benton into mirror every morning: “Still a good decision! No regrets here, friend.”), and the whole thing seems pretty ridiculous. “I’M GOING TO DEAL WITH YOU,” Benton says in a bizarrely sing-songy voice, and then he breaks into an “evil” cackle that would not have seemed out of place on an episode of He-Man. So, yeah, this is way entertaining, but it’s still pretty ridiculous.

Check out more at Invisible Oranges.

-AR.

Vince and I are going to see the Mötley Crüe /Poison/New York Dolls tour tonight, and, yes, we are excited. And while it briefly seemed as though this would be a magically drama-free tour after Nikki Sixx allegedly apologized for some not-very-nice things he and at least one of his bandmates (Tommy Lee) said about Poison, it’s become increasingly clear that Nikki either didn’t apologize, or didn’t want that apology made public. In any case, he has continued to smack-talk Poison at every opportunity, which, of course, makes us drama queens at MetalSucks very happy.

But the really wacky thing about Nikki’s insults against Bret Michaels and company — and I’ve been saying this since November, when word of the tour first got out — is that Nikki seems to be operating under the impression that Mötley Crüe never dressed like this…

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Ever since Jeff Loomis and Van Williams — a.k.a. “The Important Members” — split with Nevermore back in April, Nevermaniacs around the world have been wondering: “What the fucking fuck happened?” The band’s statement regarding the parting of ways was vague, blaming the decision simply on “internal struggles and ongoing issues within the band,” which answers absolutely zero questions about what actually went down.

Now Warrel Dane — who announced last week, via Twitter, that Nevermore will go on with Loomis and Williams (But WHY?!?!) — has given an interview to ProgPower USA, in which he attempts to explain a little more about what caused the rift. And it ain’t pretty: he declares Nevermore to be “the greatest band that alcohol ever ruined,” and says that “those guys [presumbaly Loomis and Williams] decided that they didn’t have as bad of an alcohol problem as I did.”

So, one might naturally deduce that the divorce was caused by Loomis and Williams drinking too much, right? I mean, there’s really no other way to interpret that statement.

Thing is, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell Dane is talking about.

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The Nikki Sixx v. Poison battle has gone to such ridiculous heights I’m starting to think Nikki and Bret Michaels are in cahoots and had this whole thing planned out from the very beginning. It’s certainly gotten them a ton of press, right? Who am I kidding… let’s not give either of these dunderheads too much credit for doing anything other than writing good songs 20 years ago.

There’s been so much yammering back and forth since the Motley / Poison tour was announced this Spring that I honestly can’t keep track of who said what anymore. But in the latest tidbit Nikki once again slams Poison as a second-place contender for this tour (emphasis added):

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