I saw this band, Texas Hippo Coaltion Texas Hippie Coalition, on Bring Back Glam. And not to deride the tastes of the lovely Allyson B. Crawford, but wow, does this band ever suck.

Watch the below video, for a song called “Leaving,” and ponder why this disgusting, slutty, but nonetheless probably appealing to the Tigers and Jessies of the world woman would ever let Jabba the Hutt flop around around top of her. Here was my general thought process regarding that conundrum:

1. Is she a hooker? She definitely seems to either be a stripper or to be harboring fantasies of being a stripper, but if there’s one thing The City of New York has taught me, it’s that strippers and hookers are not always the same thing.
2. Is he rich? His home and wardrobe do not suggest that this is the case.
3. Is he really funny? This video is hilarious, but not intentionally so.
4. So either she hates herself, or he has the best personality ever. He must just have the best personality ever, right?
5. Would the guy with the best personality ever write the lyric “When she is bathing/She thinks about me/When she’s masturbating/She thinks about me?”
6. She must really, really hate herself.

If you go to Bring Back Glam, you can also watch a video for a song called “Pissed Off and Mad About It,” which is apparently competing for The Hellyeah “Alcohaulin’ Ass” Stupidest-Song-Title-Ever-Even-By-Dumb-Redneck-Standards Award. The song is just as amusing as “Leaving,” although the video is not.

-AR

Amy Sciarretto of Noisecreep’s description of 12 Stones as “radio rockers” is perfect, given the band is best known for vocalist Paul McCoy’s rap cameo on the radio version of Evanescence’s smash hit “Bring Me Back to Life.” I haven’t heard a lick about 12 Stones since then and didn’t even realize they were still around until today when I saw that Noisecreep is premiering their new song “We Are One.”

Seems that 12 Stones have gotten hip to the times and dropped the rapping shtick, but unfortunately they haven’t dropped the yarler vocals and sucky radio alt-rock shtick too. They also don’t seem to realize that the four chord progression they use in this song is the same one that’s been recycled by NickelTheoryofaSmileEmptySaliva for the past decade. Oh well, you’re still about 10 years behind the curve, guys… maybe next time.

For a lesson in what’s wrong with today’s rock radio format, head on over to Noisecreep to listen to the completely generic and unoriginal new 12 Stones song.

-VN

Enough is enough. If I have to scroll down 3 fucking screen-lengths in order to hear any music, it’s too much. If the MySpace page takes half a minute to load because the images are all 500k and hosted on photobucket, it’s too much. If a video player auto-loads you deserve a punch in the face. If your heavily-photoshopped band photo and use of eye-bleeding colors makes me go blind I’m assuming you’re covering up for the fact that your music sucks. All I need something simple to visually represent the band and the player itself… ya know, where the music is. Enough with the atrocious MySpace designs already. This goes for well-established signed bands too.

I’m really digging BandCamp.com lately as a vehicle for bands to have all-in-one pages. It’s so much simpler, faster, more functional, and best of all… leaves no room for bands to over-design their page and over-hype their own wares. Labels and bands, check that out. No one uses the social networking elements of MySpace anymore anyways.

Sincerely,
VN

Okay, so “A Trash Bag with Tits” isn’t actually the name of this band – they are really just a she, and she calls herself Mary Magdalan, although that’s obviously not her real name, and it’s not even how you spell “Mary Magdalene,” so right off the bat I don’t know what the crap she was thinking.

But after MS Maniac You Don’t Know Me sent us this video, I thought “Even though all or most MS readers will probably be able to agree that this music is terrible, I bet some idiot is gonna leave a comment along the lines of ‘I’d still stick it in her,’” for the simple reason that she shows a lot of cleavage. And here’s the thing: i) cleavage isn’t hard to come by so it’s not a good enough reason alone to sleep with someone (not saying I don’t love cleavage, just sayin’, y’know, there are other things in life), ii) hopefully every once in awhile when choosing your sexual partners you take things like personality into account, and I have a hard time believing that anyone who thinks this is good music has a personality that would mesh with my own, and iii) the whole runny make-up/”I look like I probably have hepatitis” thing just doesn’t really do it for me. If you’d sleep with this girl, I think you’d probably sleep with a bag full of trash, so long as it had tits on it. Or, worse, Courtney Love. Thus, my headline.

Anyways, this sucks. And I looked this twit up on MySpace – her DJ (a fucking DJ in 2010!!!) calls himself “Gzus” and her guitar player calls himself “Jizm,” so clearly we’re dealing with a trio of rocket scientists. If they can create a time machine – and I don’t see any reason why they can’t, given their clearly MENSA-level IQs – they should have a great career opening for (Hed) p.e. in 1997. This is a Sicks Deep level of bad.

-AR

I’m sorry to say it because I love the band so much, but Killswitch Engage should get the blame for spawning a generation — nay, now TWO generations — of shitty, terrible, god awful bands like A Late Night Serenade. Much like the case of Faith No More and rap-metal it’s an unfortunate byproduct of something that at least in theory was really cool. Maybe some day someone should make a list like that, of good bands who unwittingly spawned terrible sub-genres. Hmmm…

-VN

Thanks: Bryan

How about this band, who have concocted a song so fucking irritating it could defeat killer tomatoes?

By the way, if you want to torture a small animal, just play it the vocals at 1:24.

-AR

I didn’t watch the Grammys last night, and judging by Metal Injection’s report on the event, it doesn’t sound like I missed anything. For one thing, the award Best Metal Performance wasn’t even televised, because, well, metal heads know better than to watch this stupid show and the t.v. people want ratings, not goodwill. (Judas Priest won, in case you care; AC/DC won Best Hard Rock Performance.)

Worse, though, was a butchering of the legendary solo from “November Rain” by Slash (real name: Saul Hudson), Jaime Foxx (real name: Eric Marlon Bishop), T-Pain (real name: Faheem Rasheed Najm) and Doug E. Fresh (real name: Douglas E. Davis). Not just because the song needs hip-hop shenanigans like I need nut cancer; not just because some thought they had better put Slash’s name in big letters on the screen behind him when he came on stage, in case anyone was confused by the top hat, Les Paul, curly hair, and people yelling “SLASH!”; but really because Slash only sounds marginally better than Dj Ashba.

The funniest part? If Axl Rose is to be believed, getting Slash to even agree to record “November Rain” was like pulling teeth. I can’t wait to see what kind of shit I’ll do someday in the name of making my mortgage payments.

-AR

Here we have a bunch of clowns in black clothes with vampire-ish makeup using 4th generation Swedish metal riffs, breakdowns and alternating between screaming and auto-tuned vocals. How horribly, awfully, unbelievably generic. Fuck this band. Fuck them hard in their scrotums. So help me God if this band ends up with a record deal.

-VN

[Thanks: Matt Mitchell]

A reader known only as “Jonas” sent us the below video of 55 Escape, a Norwegian band whose biggest influences seem to be Korn and Linkin Park, not Enslaved and Immortal.

Here’s why I find this band kind of interesting. (And moving forward, please be aware that “interesting” and “good” are not the same word.) When you think about it for a second, nu-metal seems to be a predominantly American phenomenon. Off the top of my head, I’m having a hard time even naming a nu-metal band from any part of Europe, never mind Norway. Jeff Killed John were British, but they didn’t get famous ’til they swapped the nu for core and rechristened themselves Bullet for My Valentine. Am I forgetting a really, really obvious band? Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Godsmack, Evanescence, Staind, Static-X, Creed, Hed P.E., Snot, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd, Drowning Pool, Saliva, Coal Chamber, Methods of Mayhem, 40 Below Summer, Sevendust, Ill Nino, Dope, Papa Roach, Soil, The Union Undergound… ALL AMERICAN. What the hell? No wonder the terrorists hate us.

Anyway, thanks to these sperm clots for doing their part in making America look good. Hoo-rah.

-AR

I think that people think that Sergeant D. is just dicking around when he talks about his love for bands that most of the metal community (or at least a substantial portion of the metal community – we might not have the majority on this shit these days) loathes. He names his website Stuff You Will Hate for a reason. He knows you’ll hate the stuff. He’s not being ironic. It’s one of the things that makes his writing so much fun to read.

Case in point: he endorses this band Worthwhile, who I would label softcore – because calling them hardcore would make them seem tougher than they are. Dudes in near matching uniforms jumping in unison? The run-in-place? “It’s our time to rise/ It’s our time to shine?” That’s why you don’t let thirteen year olds write lyrics.

If the gang from Saved by the Bell ever turned Zach Attack into a “hardcore” band, I think they might sound like Worthwhile.

Also… Worth-fucking-while? Really, guys?

-AR

The band is called Next Stop Mars, and the track is entitled “Hx Porn.” That should tip you off right away as to how awful this is going to be.

Still, if you’re morbidly curious:

MS Maniac Name Not Applicable tipped us off to the existence of this band, although he rightfully recognized how awful they are…

-AR

Holy crap, have we really not done one of these since September? Daaaaaammmmmnnnn. Time really does fly when you’re having fun at the expense of others.

Anyways, this particular stain made from shit is called Abandon All Ships, which makes even less sense than most band names these days. Abandon all ships? Why? Why the fuck would any navy in the world ever give that order? What kind of mass disaster could cause the abandonment of multiple ships? I’ve heard the expression “abandon all stations,” which makes sense – if they ship were going under, you’d want to tell everyone to abandon their stations and get the fuck out while the gettin’ the fuck out was good. But why the fucking fuck would you abandon all ships?

Anyways, Suckalo Matt Poulter saw these dudes open for Protest the Hero recently, and we sympathize with Matt’s plight. On the other hand, he says that PTH played Fortress in its entirety, so at least he got something out of the deal.

-AR

There’s absolutely nothing news worthy about this video, which was apparently filmed at the 2009 Gathering of the Juggalos. And I should probably feel bad for laughing at it. That being said, I don’t.

A ridiculous number of you e-mailed this to us over the break, which tells me that we’re all going to hell together. Somebody just remember to bring some smoke.

-AR

After I posted footage of Dj Ashba butchering Robin Finck’s solo from “This I Love” last week, I invoked the wrath of certain Ashba supporters, who claimed that Ashba is a better guitarist than I’m giving him credit for. And that’s probably true. That first Beautiful Creatures album was fun, and evidence suggests that Ashba was just having an off-night.

So here’s a video of him doing a much better job as the new guitar player for Axl Rose’s Guns N’ Roses. But before you watch it, know that I still can’t get behind Ashba, for the following reasons:

1. He plays just like Slash.
2. He stands just like Slash
3. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, is he wearing a top hat?

Ashba is exactly what Guns N’ Roses doesn’t need, and exactly what Robin Finck and Buckethead were not – a Slash clone. If Axl really wants to make some claim that this new band is a legitimate band, having a member with no discernible personality of his own is a mistake.

And here are Finck and Buckethead, in happier times. Hard to believe this was nine years ago already…

Click to read more…

Shelby Cobras at Illogical Contraption may be throwing in the towel on making fun of Juggalos… but we’re above such nonsense. It’s way too much fun!

Today I have two Juggalo-related linky-dinks for some end-of-the-week lawlz. Shelby has alerted us to the existence of JuggaloFaith.com, a one-stop shop for all of your Christian Juggalo needs. The site’s creator Rev. B-Lotus seeks to justify the cause with lyrical proof of ICP’s Christianity. Some ICP lyrical examples:

“Truth is we follow God, we’ve always been behind him, the Carnival is God, may all the juggalos find him.”

“Fuck the devil, fuck that shit, we believe in life legit, ain’t you gettin’ what we say, why you throw your soul away??”

I suppose ICP could be a Christian band… which would strike me as somewhat hilarious given all the violence and idiocy they propagate. But then again, hasn’t violence and idiocy been the M.O. of religion, well… for the entire history of religion?

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a link from the excellent Juggalo-bashing blog The Juggalog. Check this out (NSFW!!). No further explanation is necessary.

-VN

Atreyu drummer / vocalist Brandon Saller has announced he’ll be playing a solo show in Anaheim this January. If badly out-of-key vocals are your thing, then I recommend you attend this show. Exactly what this show will entail, I’m not certain… continuous drum solos? Brandon on an acoustic?

Also, what the fuck is going on in the above photo? Who needs 3 fucking bass drums?

Slow news day.

-VN

Reader Luke Papadopoulos sent us the below video of Attack Attack! performing a new song. Even with the lo-fi audio, it’s easy to tell that the song is fucking awful. Still, there’s three things I’d like to point out, at the risk of coming across as a major homophobe:

1. The song is called “Sexual Man Chocolate.”
2. Attack Attack!’s current front man is named Caleb Shomo.
3. Attack Attack! previously covered Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” – and didn’t change any of the lyrics to make them gender appropriate.

In conclusion, looks for Attack Attack! to tour with Burzum sometime in 2010.

-AR

Rejected by even the lowest also-ran nu-metal mooks, (hed)p.e. have sunken so far down to the lowest dregs of society that they’ve been drawn into the only scene left that will actually accept them; Juggalos. They’ve been touring with Psycopathic artists for years now, but somehow I missed the fact that they’ve now even resorted to wearing clown makeup. Wow.

I’m surprised this band is still even making music. This is awful. Thanks, SMNnews.com, for inflicting this pain upon me today.

-VN

Reader Jared Piers e-mailed us about this unsigned band from Toronto called Speak of the Devil. Now, I’m not going to talk about Speak of the Devil’s music, because whatever. It’s incredibly generic and not for me but to each their own. Rather, I’d like to talk about the below promo photo of the band, which is the first thing you see when you go to their MySpace page.

Now, why the hell did this band take a picture of themselves looking like they just got done with a fight? Presumably it’s so they come across as a bunch of bad-asses. But they don’t like like bad-asses. They look like some kids who have make-up on intended to make them look like bad-asses, which, consequently, makes them seem incredibly not tough. It’s the exact opposite of the desired effect of the make-up.

I really, really hope this doesn’t become a trend amongst young bands. Because it’s incredibly dumb.

And that’s all I hafta say about that.

-AR

Now I’m not saying I agree with all, most, or even any of the points made in Stewert Voegtlin’s recent bitter-tastic Village Voice article (aptly entitled “Sketchy Metal”), but holy jeez a voice of dissension should be appreciated, welcome, and even necessary at times, especially when certain bands are so blindly revered by so many…..and furthermore anybody who can bring such a well-worded subtly sardonic taste to their Hateology (free album title!) a la our own Gary Suarez deserves a complimentary bong hit.

The article starts out with an analysis on Pelican’s sound (or lack thereof), positing that the Chicago band’s thang never crystallizes into anything approaching authentic emotion, but that some bands that Pelican derives influence from (Trans Am, in particular) have made plenty of music worth veneration, especially back in the day.  Hmm……agreed.

I almost joined the Train of Descent (free band name!) recently myself when I was considering writing an article — which was to be called MASTODON EVOLVED EVERYTHING ABOUT THEIR SOUND ON CRACK THE SKYE….EXCEPT FOR THE LYRICS – about the many cliches held within several of the lyrics on Crack the Skye. However, after listening to the album a few more times to get a clearer context of the lyrics to the piece as a whole, I cleaned my shorts off and reconsidered libeling the best modern progressive metal band of the decade.

But Voegtlin? This guy ain’t takin no prisoners (pls disregard double negative)……my favorite gem of haterade enclosed within the article definitely has to be Voegtlin’s response to Baroness’ John Baizley’s claim that his band’s music is influenced by “fine art, cinema, and literature”:

[This is] as stiltedly silly as name-dropping higher mathematics, physics, or philosophy, when what the band really peddles is exactly the everything-and-nothing Hallmark heft so many claim to uncover in Pelican’s wordless, aimless songs. While Baizely’s predilection to hawk such High Times erudition makes him sound more puerile than he likely is, it’s difficult to imagine him honestly striving to disseminate meta-emotional discourse through music as transparently commercial as his band’s stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle approach.

Yowza!!

More insightful dissin’ and the link to the actual article afterthejump.

Click to read more…