(This photo is on hand-ripped photo paper that was included under the tray card of the Roughs CD, which I still have! Credit: Jon Copeland.)

I am proud of my status as the world’s foremost Six Clips expert! Saying you’re an expert on the career of an unsigned, mostly unknown band from a decade ago is about as useless an exercise of self-aggrandizing as being the mayor of your city block, but IDGAF; Six Clips ruled! Yup, I was one of the dudes who stood up front at their shows and actually nailed the fist-pumps in the chorus of “Phoebe” on the off-beats, a distinction that only fellow hardcore Six Clips fans and the band members themselves will appreciate.

As a newly minted Ann Arbor college transplant in the early ’00s on a mission to infiltrate the city’s heavy music scene, I idolized Six Clips as soon as I discovered them, opening for Guster (lol) at a University-sanctioned event. From that moment on I ate up everything they did; as an impressionable yungin’ with hard rock aspirations of my own, Six Clips seemed larger than life to me. Later on, of course, I learned they were just normal dudez struggling to making it. I have no idea what I’d think of them if I was just discovering them now, but going back and listening to their catalogue — and I’m pretty sure I have everything the band ever recorded — this shit still holds up. Six Clips are the best band you’ve never heard of, the best band that could’ve and should’ve become huge.

Let’s explore Six Clips’ full discography, with audio, naturally.

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Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of Guns N’ Roses’ double-disc opus, Use Your Illuision. It seems like public perception has soured on these albums over the years — even Axl Rose and Slash have accused them of being bloated and over-produced — but I still love ‘em to death. For one thing, seeing as they ended up being the last proper studio albums of original material from the actual Guns N’ Roses (not Axl Rose’s solo group or whatever),  I’m glad that the band basically included every song they had written up ’til that point here. And for another thing, I love the diversity of the records — that they didn’t just end up being Appetite for More Destruction. Maybe the Illusion albums ended up being a failed experiment, but I still, to this day, find them to be a pretty exciting experiment*.

So. Since we didn’t do a “Question of the Week” this week, and I wanted to do something to commemorate this anniversary, I thought we’d play a fun game that Vince and I (and a lot of our other friends) used to play in the past: whittling these two mammoth albums down to one collection. Geffen Records actually did that themselves in 1998, releasing a twelve-song single volume version of UYI that, if you ask me, had a pretty strange selection of songs on it… but it’s an entertaining time waster to see if you can do better.

There are no rules to the game, other than a) all the songs on your track list have to come from the Illusions albums (duh), and b) it all has to fit on one CD (roughly 80 minutes), despite the fact that CDs are now obsolete. I’ve included my own personal version after the jump… I’ll be more than a little excited to see all of yours as well.

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Once upon a time, there was a band called Metallica, and they made music that sounded like this:

Then they decided to work with the guy who produced this:

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Hard to believe, but Chinese Democracy officially came out two years ago today. (You can read my original review here. I still stand by every word, and I still prefer CD to Death Magnetic.) Promotion for the album has still been anemic. Yes, the band (such as it were) has finally toured certain territories, but it doesn’t amount to much when you consider how much time has passed. And there have still been no music videos, I still haven’t gotten my motherfucking Dr. Pepper, and Axl Rose has only communicated with the press sparsely and electronically.

But that doesn’t really matter, because I don’t even think that my namesake would have the most interesting story to tell regarding the creation of Chinese Democracy.

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I’m still shocked about the unbelievably terrible tragedy that occurred this past weekend — Georgia-born Brooklyn fixture, masterful metronomic drummer Jerry Fuchs (Maserati, Turing Machine, !!!, The Juan Mclean, and more) fell down an elevator shaft late Saturday night and died shortly thereafter.

My interactions with Jerry were minimal, but every time we spoke I felt an overwhelming sense of kindness that informed me right away how good a person I was talking to. Even the first time we briefly met, I found Jerry to be so affable that we ended up deeply laughing at something or another like we had been friends since the 2nd grade. These are the types of people that we should always hope to surround ourselves with, and obviously the incredible news of his untimely death seems just plain wrong.

Before I ever met the man, I was a HUGE fan from afar — the first time I ever saw the fiery robo-prog band Turing Machine, there was no question from the beginning moments of the first song that the drummer up there was something extra-special. He played with such intensity and restraint, and witnessing Jerry’s talents behind the kit often reminded me how strong a musician can be simply with extreme precision, power, and spirit. For anyone who has ever seen him play live, you know how quickly he could get a crowd dancing and furthermore, how hypnotic the most straightforward basic rock beat always became in his hands.

Not to mention his crispy technique — those one-handed filles were deliciously ridiculous.

I can’t help but feel like the world has been robbed of a magnificent talent that was sure to have grown and grown to neo-Bonham-like status. But I also feel honored to have heard the music and met the man for a few fleeting conversations — whether it was down at SXSW or running into him at the music store up here in Brooklyn, every single conversation and live set I was ever fortunate enough to experience left me feeling a little better.

It seems friends and fans will be gathering this Thursday night at Enid’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at 7pm for an impromptu gathering to memorialize this legendary talent.

Links and videos after the jump.

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A tweet from former Nine Inch Nails touring member Danny Lohner has alerted us to the fact that Pretty Hate Machine, Trent Reznor’s awesome debut, was released twenty years ago today.

Wow. Hard to believe that that’s true – and it’s funny that so many people forget that Reznor actually started doing his thing in the 80s.

Anyways, to celebrate, here’s the video for “Head Like a Hole.” Like most people, I imagine, this video made me aware of NIN for the first time. And it’s still an awesome song.

-AR

Thanks to Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges for pointing out that today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Morbid Angel’s historic debut, Altars of Madness. As Lee notes, “Morbid Angel weren’t kings of death metal yet. Altars of Madness was the beginning of their coup.” My personal favorite Angel album, Domination, was still six years away. But it’s impossible to ignore the importance of this release to the death metal genre.

After the jump, watch nine out of the ten songs on the record, as filmed for the Live Madness ’89 concert film that captures the band performing just months after the album’s release. Live Madness is also available as a DVD that was included Altars‘ 2006 re-release.

-AR

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Noise rock legends Mclusky always put humor in the forefront, but that never stopped them from creating some wickedly grating punky rock tunes (and a couple softies to boot).

Mclusky Do Dallas, the Welsh band’s second full-length (released in 2002), might be their most famous but shit man the other album titles are fucking hilarious:

My Pain and Sadness is More Sad and Painful Than Yours (from 2000)

The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire (from 2004)

Ha, awesome! I bet Suarez is drinking a shot of Wild Turkey and excitedly peeing his pants…

MCLUSKY — “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues”

MCLUSKY — “Fuck This Band”

MCLUSKY — “Whoyouknow / Reviewing the Reviewers”

(all from McLusky Do Dallas, 2002)

-KW

Way back when in the halcyon days of 2004 whilst MetalSucks Maniac Rod Blogojovich and I resided in a flophouse on the sand-washed lower peninsula of Michigan, there was a band that absolutely blew our minds named Whiskey Fistfight. Rod has written up a description of the band far more fitting and elegant than I could have, so I’ll let him steer the ship from here:

If ever a band lived up to it’s name Whiskey Fistfight did just that. Like a night that starts out simply with a couple shots of Beam and ends with four broken knuckles and at least a pint of missing blood, Whiskey Fistfight certainly looked innocent enough. They didn’t dress in black, they didn’t have long, stringy hair, and with nary a tattoo to be seen none could have suspected the pure, five-fingered brutality that emerged from these four guys once they got their Irish up. They fought as one brass-knuckled fist: guitar playing that would put Van Halen and Dimebag to task with it’s sheer dexterity and ruthless cruelty, inexorable machine gun smattering of drums, and over all singing like two gravestones rubbing together. Whiskey Fistfight was that rarest of beasts: young, visceral, intelligent, and downright sickeningly talented.

But Whiskey Fistfight seems to have gone AWOL like so many promising Michigan bands of yore. A few minutes of Google searching turned up a long-dormant PureVolume page and another long-dormant PureVolume page of a band called Guns of Navarone, a band formed “from the escrements of what was WHISKEY FISTFIGHT.” Their official website is down. No contact info. No MySpace. Anyone know the whereabouts of the members of this once fine band?

-VN

In 1994 Ved Buens Ende released their demo For Those Who Caress the Pale and from then on everything, well, everything pretty much stayed the same as if it had never been released. Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse were released the same year, and I can only imagine that the whole underground metal scene worldwide was too busy trying to pick its collective jaw off the floor to notice a lo-fi demo from a band with a funny foreign name. The next year, VBE recorded their full-length Written in Waters and broke up without much notice in 1997. The band reformed briefly in 2006 but broke up again in early 2007 without having fulfilled any of their promises of live performances or new material, leaving Written in Waters as their first and final album.

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Methinx even Mortiis itself would likely crack a lil smile at some point during this tune…any of your hearts too dark for a bit o’sunshine?

FISHBONE – “Everyday Sunshine”, from The Reality of My Surroundings

-KW

No, silly — I’m not talking about a seminal musician or some legendary band (although in a way, I am); me’s mentioning the almighty Spinal Tap as a reference to how humor so accurately fits into this world of music criticism within which we play. It’s often hard for the most serious artists among us to remember that it can all be pretty fucking laughable, and so here’s a couple reminderz for ya (after the, y’know, jump):

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Raw

wicked

fiery

thrash

power

kill

dying

dead

METALLICA – “The Four Horsemen”, from Kill ‘Em All (1983)

-KW

Lightning + Fire = AWESOME

-KW

Okay, now that we got yesterday’s cavalcade of the new out of the way, let’s go back in time once again…

The seminal album Master of Puppets represents the time period when Metallica’s sharp, relentless sound noticeably became something more. The songwriting was a lot more grown-up, the sound full-well rounded-out, the risks were loftier…it was immediately apparent to anyone with ears and a set of ballz that this was the future of metal. With the line-up that many believe to be the band’s greatest — whiney skinsman Lars Ulrich, gruff aristocratic white-trash frontman James Hetfield, wiry, stab-ya-for-lookin-at-me-funny-eyed lead guitarist Kirk Hammett (replacing the recently-booted Dave Mustaine, who would go on to form Megadeth, metal’s greatest revenge band), and bass-player-from-the-beginning Cliff Burton, who tragically died when the band’s tour bus overturned in Sweden whilst promoting this album — this sound was destined to go down in history.

If you’ve never heard this album, then you are a virgin to the crystallization of aggressive music, and you are doing yourself and everyone else in the pit a disservice.

Obviously the title track is a classic and one of the cornerstones of this brilliant record, but for my money the two best songs are this guy right here, and the album opener, “Battery”.

METALLICA - “Battery”, from Master of Puppets (1986)

-KW

If you are a fan of the instrument they call the drums, this shit surely speaks for itself…

Part Two after the jump…

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So now that the dust has cleared (or so I thought) from the highly over-hyped (here and everywhere else) new Metallica release/debacle Death Magnetic, I’d like to go out on a limb and (re-) remind y’all just how long it’s been since these once-masterful-once-thrashers were actually worth all this debate. I will gladly go on record as saying that the last handful of Metallica albums have, well, pretty much sucked (and I don’t mean that in nearly the same way as, y’know, metal sucks), and despite some solid moments on the Black Album and a pretty entertaining documentary about the band at its touchy-feeliest (thus far), honestly this band has been mostly irrelevant since their seminal/culminatory record …And Justice For All.

And so, starting with the title track of that amazing album from 1988 (which I obviously loved when I was a ‘tweener way back then, but also was the one (no pun intended) that served as catalyst for my inevitable resurgence into metal a handful of years later), I will be going backwards in time for the next few weeks and offering some classic choice cuts from the LPs that made Metallica Metallica, when they legitimately ruled.

Enough of this new-school nonsense! Let’s git serious here, m’kay?

METALLICA – “…And Justice For All”, from — well, whaddya you think, Einstein?!?

-KW

On August 25, 1988, Metallica released what many consider to be their last great album, …And Justice for All. To my ears, this would probably be my favorite Metallica album of all time if not for the lack of bass (Which, to this day, I think was an idiotic way to haze then-new-now-former bassist Jason Newstead – I mean, why would the band punish themselves by damaging their own album? How does that pay tribute to the memory of Cliff Burton? It doesn’t). Justice features Metallica at their heaviest, and, often, their proggiest. I’ve been trying all week-end to think of words that could do Justice, um, justice – but I just can’t. And I probably don’t need to to: I’m sure you all have your own feelings on this classic recording.

So here’s Metallica performing the title track on the Justice tour in ’89. After the jump, keep the celebration going with more live clips, the now classic video for “One,” and some other cool shit.

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I hadn’t, until Andrew @ Aversionline posted a very personal homage to the Boston-based band’s seminal album Innocents, consisting of lots of lines like this: “The album’s that fucking incredible. Seriously.”

That’s the kind of passion that speaks to me as a music fan, and not that I wouldn’t listen to whatever he posted anyway — but this especially piqued my interest. And it’s fucking great, part Corrosion of Conformity badassed-ness and part punk DIY fuckyou-ness. The best part about it is that like Andrew’s post it drips with emotion, from the raw, heavy guitars to the impassioned vocals. And that voice? One of a kind.

Fans of Shadows Fall might be familiar with their cover of Only Living Witness’s “December” on the B-sides album Fallout From the War, the original of which is on OLW’s MySpace page.

Check out Andrew’s piece on Only Living Witness at Aversionline. Here’s a link to an mp3 to whet your appetite, with one more on the site:

Only Living Witness – “Downpour”

-VN

[Only Living Witness on MySpace]

Let’s get some love for Pacific Northwest metallers Nevermore around here. The first time I saw these guys was at the first Gigantour (’04?), and it was quite the spectacle — five dudes with hair below their asses windmilling in perfect unison. Nevermore deserves so much credit for being an American band forging ahead with the European style of metal in the late ’90s when literally NO ONE would touch it this side of the Atlantic, other than an underground nation of Doom 3-playing, Magic card-toting teenage geeks. Thankfully they made it through those darkest of times and forged the way for new bands like Into Eternity to carry the torch.

Nevermore – “Final Product”
Nevermore – “The Psalm of Lydia”
Nevermore – “Narcosynthesis”
Nevermore – “The River Dragon Has Come”
Nevermore – “Dreaming Neon Black”

The following video for “Voyager” from their 2003 release Enemies of Reality gives a pretty good flavor of the band. And those finger-spike thingies; oh my, where do I get my pair of those?

-VN

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