Tomorrow the Metallica of filmmakers, George Lucas, will re-release his catastrophically bad Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D, I guess because there’s nothing like sitting through a terrible two-and-a-half hour movie in the worst format available.

The silver lining, though, is that someone has taken the trailer and re-done it with death metal music, even going so far as to put DM vocals over all the actors’ lines. And maybe it’s just because I’m all hopped up on Percocet right now, but I found this extremely funny — especially because the unintelligible vocals are a vast improvement over Lucas’ shitty, shitty dialogue.

-AR

[via Film Drunk]

Attempts by young children (or, really, their overbearing parents) to out-do 8-year old Juliet’s “My First Hardcore Song” were inevitable. Next thing you know we’ll have black metal babies who are tr00er-than-thou the minute they come out of the womb… oh wait.

Today brings us 6-year old Jacob, who starts off his own official response to Juliet by telling her,”You scream like a sissy girl!” Ohhhhh! Them’s fightin’ words. Jacob’s track is like the metalcore version to Juliet’s hardcore, complete with an auto-tuned chorus, and while it’s pretty funny and well-done I think I could totally take this kid on in a dark alley whereas if I saw Juliet I’d turn and run the other way.

I hope Juliet responds to Jacob and tells him what’s what! This is what the metal world has come to, people.

-VN

[via Metal Insider]

Mash-ups have obviously been done to death, but every now and then you come across one which works amazingly well, and, well… sheesh. This Lamb of God/Ke$ha amalgamation is one of those things that’s so well-done it’s hard to believe it’s a not a real collaboration between the artists. And I say that as someone who generally thinks we as a society should give Ke$ha a cement bath ASAP.

-AR

Thank to Duncan for sharing via Facebook!

When people ask why I believe in God* I say, “Well, look at Frank Mullen. If that dude wasn’t born to front a metal band, no one was. Living proof that God takes care of his children!” Suffocation are great and all, but at least half the reason I go see them live when they play New York City is for Frank Mullen’s between-song banter. Mullen is second to NO ONE when it comes to hilarious on-stage rants, made all the funnier by his extreme Lawn Guyland tough-guy accent.

Late night revelers on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise last week got to witness Mullen deliver the ultimate between song-banter one night in the form of a [presumably very drunken] karaoke rendition of “New York, New York.” Come for the vocals, stay for the spills (x2) and the angry, drunken trash talk (there’s uterus punching involved). Make sure you watch the whole thing.

-VN

*I don’t actually believe in God.

Thanks: Frank from Metal Injection for filming this!

Remember last week when eight year old Juliet released her first hardcore song? Of course you do; you were one of 14 million people (!) who watched her video. Maybe you even bought a Juliet t-shirt (?!?).

And remember back in October when a full band of British eight year olds — The Mini Band — covered Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” prompting a response from the big guys themselves? Of course you do!

Now… here’s Mini Band guitarist Zoe Thomson ripping through a neo-classical instrumental shred tune called “Stratosphere,”  which I guess is originally by Stratovarius. Holy crap, she can play! When I was 8 years old I was still playing with Micro Machines and legos, and while I took music lessons too I certainly didn’t have the discipline or dexterity to tackle something like this. Little Zoe’s gonna be quite the accomplished musician some day… that is, if she wants to be. Until then I’ll continue to be jealous that an eight year old’s guitar abilities have topped my own.

-VN

Thanks: Hetal Bhatt

When your drum set consists of two bottles of motor oil, some kind of old shelving component, a couple of blankets and a wicker hat as a drum throne and you STILL manage to kill it, that’s the very definition of metal. And when you’re all of maybe 8 years old and you’re playing as well as this kid, in a rural area of the Meghalaya state in India no less, I’d say you’ve got a pretty bright future ahead of you if you choose to pursue it. This kid is seriously impressive – I guess those bass pedals are real, but those double-bass chops and “snare” rolls are impressive nonetheless.

As one YouTube commenter astutely noted, this kid’s kit sounds better on a cell phone camera than Lars’ kit on St. Anger did on millions of dollars worth of recording gear. And as another commenter noted, that does indeed appear to be As I Lay Dying’s “Confined” he’s playing starting around 1:30.

Someone get this guy into a band, pronto.

-VN

Thanks: Sahil

Not only is this pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s like a thousand times more br00tal than any Winds of Plague song ever. Check it out immediately, it will make your morning:

FUCK YES, right?

-AR

There seems to be some dispute about whether our friend Al discovered this video first, or our friend Ralph did. But we love Al and Ralph equally, so we’ll just thank them both.  Al found it first, Ralph brought it our attention, they’re both swell guys, fuck Facebook.

-KW

Like my good pal Axl, I’m kinda over it with Andy Rehfeldt’s “Radio Disney” versions of death metal songs… or so I thought I was. The troof: it’s just impossible not to be entertained by these, at least for one listen/watch, and to appreciate the amount of work that goes into the precision of making these live performances look convincing. But really they’re just fun, and I ain’t gonna be no fun-hater.

So: here’s Rehfeldt’s latest, for Dying Fetus’ “Grotesque Impalement.” Enjoy… or not.

-VN

Thanks: Fuzzy Dunlop

It’s hard to believe that any city of reasonable size in the year 2011 wouldn’t find the idea of releasing a completely cheesy theme song promoting itself to potential businesses and residents completely ridiculous, and that someone, ANYONE in the city’s government wouldn’t have gone, “Uh… guys?” But that’s exactly what the city of London, Ontario (pop: 352,395) has done; I can just picture the city board meeting in which this song was commissioned where some out-of-touch old fart exclaimed, “Yes, a THEME SONG will definitely inspire people to move here!” Here’s the admittedly catchy ditty, set to some classic Care Bears footage:

Of course it was only a matter of time before remixes and re-interpretations began popping up all over the Internet. Egged on by radio station FM96, London’s own Baptized in Blood heeded the call and released their own, much more rockin’ fun good times version of the song. Check it out here.

Click to read more…

Last month, Vince posted a video of a really, really beautiful young woman performing a really, really beautiful rendition of Mastodon’s “Oblivion” on the piano. But one of the key differences between me and Vince is that I like my women to be batshit crazy. So fuck traditional beauty — I much prefer Ukrainian pianist Viktoriya Yermolyeva’s piano version of the Carcass classic “Corporal Jigsore Quandry.” Watching Yermolyeva flail around at the piano gives me visions of her hurling heavy and potentially very hurtful objects at me as she tells me what a bastard I am in her native tongue. I think I’m in love!

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

So, I guess 2011 was the year in which djent simulatenously rose to prominence and jumped the shark. So it goes in the hyperspeed climate of ever-changing trends facilitated by the Internet.

The band who produced this hilariously and on-point video, What We Call Victory, are themselves kinda djenty (but certainly not bad); at least they have a good enough sense of humor to be able to poke fun at themselves. Or maybe it’s all just one big troll? They’ve got a real Kickstarter page with $570 of real money already pledged… but they were only asking for $500 to begin with, which seems, uh, a wee bit low. Something tells me someone just won a bet.

-VN

Thanks: Justin Reich

-VN

Thanks: Andrew McCann

It’s funny to me how modern pop music is basically just re-hashed early/mid ’90s dance music ala La Bouche, Bizarre Inc., Everything But the Girl, etc. Apparently this group LMFAO makes a living on these recycled beats, kinda like the Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry do… um, ok, if you say so! It’s what the kids are listening to.

Decrepit Birth drummer Sam “Samus” Paulicelli decided to have a little fun at LMFAO’s expense and recorded a drum cover of “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” I love this drum cover — it’s fun — but I LOVE LOVE those pants Samus is wearing. I’d like to see him wear those at a Decrepit Birth show. So br00tal, so tr00!

Warning: there are some gratuitous shots of a dude flopping his dick n’ balls around behind boxer briefs… technically not NSFW, but gross nevertheless.

-VN

Thanks: Fuzzy Dunlop

When I watch naked sex videos, I avoid the rough/gross stuff (cuz barf) and the solo dildo stuff (cuz yawn), so it’s weird and confusing that I so enjoy internet video of a dude playing drums to Katatonia (above). Like some porn, it’s gross (drummer) and solo (guy gratifying self), so you see the irony. But even though this stud Chris Anderson wears a cymbal company’s logo across his bosom and describes his performance as rusty, the clip looks and sounds awesome and helps fans to visualize the thoroughly tasty and tasteful drums by Katatonia dude Daniel Liljekvist. It’s, like, educational. So there’s no need to feel like a pervert for watching. So why do I cry in the shower afterwards?

–ADF

Katatonia’s upcoming 20th anniversary show on December 14 in Stockholm will feature former members and other special guests (info here). I hope they do a DVD so I can watch it alone at a motel some night.

This dude might not be as hot as Katy Perry, djent has most certainly jumped the shark, and I just recently stated that I think covers of pop songs are lame… but this is pretty sweet, I’m not gonna lie. It also happens to be infinitely more tolerable than the original. Come for the sick riffage but stay for Drewsif Stalin’s hilarious lateral head-bobs.

-VN

Thanks: NH

I haven’t played Skyrim, the latest installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise, because I’ve been too busy jingoistically killing brown people and Russians in Modern Warfare 3. But it’s on my list of things to do. And once I have begun that sure-to-be-epic journey, I suspect I will appreciate this video of a dweeb in a Symphony X shirt playing a metal version of the theme from Skyrim all the more.

-AR

[via Topless Robot]

Whether you think Avenged Sevenfold are the best thing since UYI-era Guns N’ Roses or you think they’re a bunch of total flaming Labontes, you’re gonna appreciate this video for what it is: one of the best moments of young Miguel’s life that he’ll cherish forever and ever and ever. Miguel went to see Avenged Sevenfold in Puerto Rico this past weekend and brought with him a sign that said “My wish is to play drums,” then worked his way all the way up to the front so the band would see it. Not only did the band see it, but M. Shadows decided to invite Miguel up on stage to play a song with the band, “Second Heartbeat,” as chosen by Miguel himself. Even more awesome than the fact that the band allowed this go down at all is the fact that Miguel totally nailed it — on someone else’s kit, in front of over 10,000 fans, with Avenged fucking Sevenfold… not one mistake! A hearty golf clap is in order.

-VN

Have you guys heard about the petition by Detroit Lions fans to replace Nickelback with some other band, ANY other band, as the performers at the halftime show of their Thanksgiving Classic game? Vince mentioned it while filling in for Dave Brockie during a recent “Unnecessary Roughness” column, but we never did a full piece on it, because, y’know, fuck Nickelback.

But now the band has responded via the below Funny Or Die video with Paul Scheer — co-star of MetalSucks’ collective favorite film ever, Piranha 3D, and its upcoming, sure-to-be-classic sequel, Piranha 3DD – and as much as it pains me to say anything nice about one of the worst things to happen in the history of sound… those Nickelfucks are pretty funny. There’s obviously no reason for them to take this seriously, since they’re gajillionaires, and since there was zero danger of them ever actually getting kicked off the show… so they might as well have fun with it, right?

(One thing I do have to mention, though — what the fuck happened to Chad Kroeger? I honestly did not recognize him at first. I can’t tell if he put on weight, got a haircut, had a nose job, or all of the above, but he is at least 75% less horrific looking now than he used to be.)

In related news, Metal Injection has now alerted us to the existence of Nickelblock — “a Chrome/Firefox plugin that blocks any mentions of Nickelback on the internet.” Holy shit, I am installing that immediately. You can download it here.

-AR

Did you all see the John Travolta action movie From Paris with Love? Yeah, I don’t think anyone did. But Corey Mitchell sent this to us, and it’s amazing. Enjoy:

-AR