So yesterday, now-former Chimaira guitarist and current Six Feet Under six stringer Rob Arnold tweeted that “Work has begun on the new project with” Andols Herrick — the twice-departed Chimaira drummer whose most recent split with the band came about over a year ago and was announced this past April — and posted the above photo, I guess in case there was any doubt that, yes, work has indeed begun on a new project with Herrick. (Although this picture, which was posted a little while later with the caption “Metal is timeless,” is much more fun.)

And, hey, it’s no secret that I’m a massive Chimaira fan — so it’s not like I bummed that these dudes are working on something new together. I am, however, a little surprised. ‘Cause remember what Herrick said following his second departure from that band? Here, I’ll remind you:

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First came the news blip earlier this month that Dave Grohl was working on a new “project” with Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy and guitarist Warren “Tasty McTasterson” DeMartini. And now Noisecreep is reporting that Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor tweeted his excitement about having recently wrapped up a recording with Grohl, too.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you… or something? My point being: the collabo with Ratt could’ve been anything, but the second announcement of Grohl teaming up with a prominent metal musician(s) this month would seem to indicate he’s working on something big, something metal. As the great Euclid deduced, a line can be drawn from just two known points, and this straight line points squarely at Probot.

Of course it’s entirely possible that Grohl is working on something else entirely. But I’m calling it right now: Probot’s second album! Having just wrapped up a massive Foo Fighters touring cycle, the timing would be perfect.

-VN

Randy Blythe is a busy man these days! Amidst his hectic barn-storming Presidential campaign schedule the Lamb of God frontman has somehow found time to stay active in the press and on the social networks. Or maybe all that stuff IS his Presidential campaign? Sly, Randy… sly.

Blythe has been quite an active user on Twitter lately, engaging in direct Q&As with fans — often for hours at a time — much like Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter did this past fall. Blythe explained his love affair with the social media outlet in an in-depth interview with Metal Insider earlier this week:

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It’s almost as if Dave Grohl isn’t confident in his perennial “Coolest Rockstar on Earth” status and needs to keep finding ways to prove his coolness over and over again. Fortunately, he never fails.

Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy spilled the beans via his Twitter account yesterday that he and Ratt guitarist Warren DeMartini would be working with Sir Grohlness, then later clarified that’s it’a “Grohl song idea open to Ratt madness” for some kind of new project.Could this be the resurrection of Grohl’s metal side project Probot? Let’s hope! But either way, I’m completely bonered about the posibility of a Grohl + Ratt collabo; with some of the best rock songwriters of the ’80s and ’90s (and ’00s and ’10s!) working together, it’s all but assured of being fan-fucking-tastic.

In other Ratt-related news, check out a cover of “Round and Round” by Ryan Adams after the break:

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If you were reading Vince’s news round-ups during the first half of our holiday break last month, than you already know that Cannabis Corpse have split with with vocalist Andy “Weedgrinder” Horn and guitarist Nick “Nikropolis” Poulos. What we didn’t get to report, however, is that the band has recruited Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe to be their vocalist for one night only, when they play a memorial show for late GWAR guitarist Cory Smoot on January 7 in Richmond, VA.

Now Blythe has released some video footage of his rehearsals for the band, and, uh, yeah, this sounds frickin’ awesome:

I can’t make it to Richmond this Saturday for the show, but if you can, you obviously should, ’cause it seems like it’s gonna be an amazing time, and it’s obviously for a good cause. Get all the relevant details here.

-AR

[via The PRP]

OMG U GUISE, Fred Durst has promised that some “huge Limp Bizkit news” is going to be announced in December. (See above tweet for details.) I am, obvs, totes excited.

What do you think it could possibly be????????? Here are some thoughts I had:

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Speaking of there being no God, guitarist Greg Tribbett — one of two members of Mudvayne who is also in Hellyeah (the other being vocalist Chad Gray, duh) — sent out the below tweet yesterday, instantly breaking the heart of anyone who hates mediocre corporate rawk:

This probably isn’t a shock to anyone, given that Mudvayne have already been on unofficial hiatus since 2009. Still, the knowledge that we’ll have to put up with Hellyeah through at least 2013 is, frankly, enough to make me hope the Mayans were right, and the world is gonna end sometime next year. In fact, I think “The ongoing success of Hellyeah” was one of the things they said would be a sign of the end times, wasn’t it?

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

You thought last week’s fracas involving Phil Labonte calling Black veil Brides frontman Andy Biersack a “faggot” was something? Well, it just gets better and better; apparently the discourse inspired Emmure frontman / space cadet Frankie Palmeri to enter the fray by sharing his thoughts on the word “faggot” via Twitter.

The ignorance displayed here by Palmeri is completely mind-boggling, but then again so is the simplicity of Emmure’s music… but I digress. If Frankie’s point is that gay people shouldn’t use the word “faggot” amongst themselves (and that by extension black people shouldn’t call each other “nigger”), I don’t follow his logic; I can’t think of any better way to rebel against homophobes/racists/etc than to take a derogatory word they coined for you and to co-opt it for your own use. Kinda like how Dino Cazares took the whole baby-eating thing and turned it right back on us; he won! By that same token, if the gay community or any individuals in it decide they don’t want to use “faggot” at all even when joking with friends, that’s fine too. It’s their choice what to do with the word.

Public drama aside, I’m glad these issues are being discussed in the metal community. Needed to happen… badly.

-VN

In 2006, with a little help from Sebastian Bach, Eddie Trunk actually got Axl Rose to come on his radio show for, like, hours, which is obviously a pretty major coup, given that Rose usually only grants incomprehensible e-mail interviews. And the chat was incredibly entertaining, even if Trunk didn’t ask any of the burning questions Rose refuses to answer (e.g., “So, like, what the fuck, dude?” ), ’cause he did get Rose to lighten up and tell some great stories about David Lee Roth, Jimmy Iovine, and the classic days of Guns N’ Roses. (That’s just one part of the interview above; the rest is easy to find on YouTube.)

And I guess Rose was happy with the way things went, too, ’cause over the weekend he apparently granted Trunk another really long interview, this time for Trunk’s television program, That Metal Show. And while the full episode hasn’t been released yet, Trunk did reveal over Twitter that Rose said that Duff McKagan’s Loaded featuring Duff McKagan will be opening some future GN’R shows. (Actually, Trunk just said “Loaded will open shows,” but presumably he meant GN’R shows. Either that, or he has no sense of how context works.)

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The current drama in the Ratt camp that’s playing out through the media is nothing short of ridiculous, but we really shouldn’t be surprised; they’ve always conducted business this way! It’s part of how they operate, like how you know Axl Rose is always going to show up late to a concert or how an abusive husband is probably gonna repeat the same behavior over and over again despite what he promises. Eventually Pearcy, DeMartini, Blotzer and co. will kiss and make nice, after which they’ll inevitably hate each other even more and sink to even deeper lows via press mud-slinging. Hopefully they can record an album as unstoppably good as 2010′s Infestation in between.

The latest: Blotz referred to the way the rest of the band handles business as “a joke,” as if the very act of him saying that was somehow not apt to be included in his own statement (so meta!). The sleuths at Metal Insider then goaded Stephen Pearcy to react via Twitter:

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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, it was announced that Every Time I Die had parted ways with bassist Josh Newton. Which, of course, raised a few questions, such as, “Who is the new bass player in Every Time I Die?”, “Is Newton still in The Damned Things despite the presence of now-former-ETID bandmate Keith Buckley?”, and “Does anyone have a Fig Newton for me? I suddenly have a really strong craving for Fig Newtons.”

Well, now at least two of those questions have been answered.

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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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The passing of Apple visionary Steve Jobs is not nearly as maddening as the Casey Anthony verdict (let’s get cereal for a moment: it’s actually incredibly sad), but the responses of the metal community via Twitter are just as lulzy! So, in the spirit of our own Anso DF’s Casey Anthony verdict vs. the metal people Twitter roast I present to you…

… THE METAL PEOPLE REMEMBER STEVE JOBS:

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This is a really long post and I apologize in advance. I’ve tried to edit it down and this is as short as I can make it without sacrificing any of the points I’m trying to drive home. Sorry.

I got home last night around 11:30 pm, and to my surprise and delight, Chimaira’s Mark Hunter was STILL GOING on his tweeting tear (new topics of discussion include the very depressing realities of touring in a van versus paying for a bus, and how a band’s road crew can sometimes make more money than the band itself does), continuing to answer HUNDREDS of fans’ questions on all facets of the music business, and pulling yet even more industry insiders, like DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara, into the mix. In fact, Hunter was still going as of about 3 a.m. EST this morning, hours after I’d finally hit the sack, and literally just as I started typing this, I noticed that he is now awake and at it again. And I would like to re-emphasize the amazingness of this conversation. Not only should you be following Mark on Twitter, but you should also read this really, really incredible interview that Metal Insider published earlier today on the whole topic — not only is it another nice summation of much of what Hunter has been discussing, but it goes into even greater depth on many of these topics.

ANYWAY, my contribution to this ongoing discussion was to express surprise that no one had brought up the topic of publicists yet; Mark promptly did address the topic (and discusses it a little more in the aforementioned Metal Insider interview), and I’m going to publish his thoughts after the jump. But I also want to take some time and express my own thoughts on the important role publicists play in this industry. ‘Cause, as I said on Twitter last night, your band does not need to be signed to have a publicist, and, yes, if you can afford one, a good PR rep is totally worth having.

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Photo by Todd Bell

I was updating MetalSucks’ Twitter account yesterday when I noticed that Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter was in the middle of an absolute Tweet-a-Thon, answering literally hundreds of fans’ questions about the music business. (He also got some other musicians and industry insiders, including including Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, GWAR front man/MetalSucks columnist Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie, and Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel involved.) And this wasn’t just non-specific generalizations, either — Hunter was being incredibly forthcoming on his thoughts about record labels, streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, how much Chimaira makes from physical CD sales, physical DVD sales, and touring, and much, much more. In fact, Hunter went on for so long that he actually EXCEEDED the limit of tweets that Twitter would allow him to send for a day, at which point he moved the conversation over to his Facebook account. I followed the back-and-forth for as long as I could, but had to bow out at a certain point to attend to other things, and made a mental note to write about it all today. And, hey, guess what? As of at least five hours ago, Hunter was still going. Wowza.

So now I’d like to go over a few of the highlights. Even if you’re not a Chimaira fan, this is worth checking out, ’cause, again, it pertains to the music industry, and is not all Chimaira-specific. And so:

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I am unbelievably excited by the news that Lamb of God have completed recording for their new, yet-to-be titled album. And now Randy Blythe himself has posted a video from the vocal sessions, which is SWEET, because it gives us a chance to hear some new music! Speaking of the clip, Mr. Blythe himself had this to say: “The lyrics are MY BEST yet. PURE GENIUS.”

Check out the video below:

AMAZING, right?!?! This album is gonna rule so hard.

Lamb of God’s latest, which Blythe also promises is “WAAAAY better than Wrath,” is expected to be released early next year.

-AR

[via The PRP]

While we continue to wait for that Killcorpse Murder project with Adam D., Corpsegrinder, and Shannon Lucas to get off the ground, here’s another newly-teased supergroup to get you all hot under the collar.

Noisecreep noticed on Friday afternoon that DevilDriver vocalist Dez Fafara and Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton announced — via their respective Twitter accounts, natch — that they were collaborating on “a bunch of KILLER tunes,” with Circus of Power, Soundgarden, and Trouble being cited as influences. And, uh, I really have no idea what that would sound like. I hear the aural relationship between Trouble and Soundgarden, but Circus of Power is where I get thrown for a loop.

ANYWAY, on Saturday The PRP strung together a bunch more of Fafara’s tweets, which seek to clarify/update the news:

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Yeah, I don’t think this gonna come as a galloping shock to anyone, but in case there was ever any doubt, the above tweet from Slipknot’s Corey Taylor has ostensibly announced an upcoming Slipknot U.S. tour.

I think this was pretty much inevitable. Maybe the band’s future was legitimately in doubt immediately following the tragic passing of bassist Paul Gray, but as soon as they announced European gigs, it was only a matter of time until U.S. shows were announced. In fact, I’m going to continue to stand by my prediction that there WILL be another Slipknot album as well.

Look: I’m not even trying to say anything negative about Taylor or Slipknot. I’m a Slipknot fan, and I’ve never hid that fact. When they tour the U.S., I’ll be stoked to go see them — they put on a fun show. I’m just saying, this news is about as surprising as the fact that the sun came up this morning.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

You guys have all seen Wet Hot American Summer, right? Well, remember this scene?

Okay, now read this.

Then close your eyes for a moment and imagine the scene above, only Sergeant D. is the popular girls (it won’t be hard), and Frankie Palmeri is the D&D dork (it won’t be hard).

Got that image in your mind’s eye?

Great. Now check this out:

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