I am a strong believer in the healing and soothing effects of tea. I drink it all the time. So I was tickled by this “commercial,” which praises tea while deftly lampooning both pro-wrestling and metal culture.

I have no idea who actually did the V.O., but doncha think he sounds exactly like The Ultimate Warrior?

Hopefully the creators of this sketch are now hard at work on Fuckin’ Chicken Soup!!!

-AR

[UCB by way of The Deciblog]

Okay, so I had no fucking clue about this whole Rebecca Black/”Friday” phenomenon until a reader left a comment about it under one of our stories last week; then another reader sent us an e-mail bemoaning the fact that Black was so successful while brilliant metal musicians everywhere are struggling to make ends meet. And suddenly even Bob Lefsetz is talking about her.

So, yeah. Rebecca Black is hilariously untalented in every conceivable way — the amount of autoLaBonte she uses suggests that even her speaking voice is probably off-key, and she has the lyric writing prowess of an aborted retard fetus — and I imagine that that’s why she’s become such a sensation. I do not think there’s any reason to get upset about her “success” in the sense that even if right now she’s outselling everyone in the world at a ratio of a gajillion to one, her fifteen minutes are probably almost up. This is not a situation like the one we’ve run into with Britney Spears, where twelve years later it’s like “Holy crap I can’t believe this girl is still famous.” Unless Black and whomever is aiding her can write several more albums’ worth of stuff as hilariously idiotic as “Friday,” only VH1′s I Love the 10′s or whatever the fuck it will be called will remember this girl in twelve years. And if I’m wrong, well, I’ll just kill myself, because it will mean that Idiocracy was not fiction.

But let’s hope I’m not wrong. And while we ride out the wave of this nonsense, here’s the inevitable “clever” deathcore version of Black’s mega-hit, which was sent to us by our own Dave Mustein. I actually think this sounds even worse than Black’s original, but maybe it will give you a giggle.

-AR

Girls like Meytal Cohen should not have to wear corsets and other ridiculous outfits to get attention for their skills as a musician.

Yeah, dude, but corsets are hot!

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing you rally against when you speak out about bullshit like Revolver‘s “Hottest Jail Bait Girls in Metal” issue?

Dude, a cute Jewish girl playing Pantera? It’s like the Inception people extracted one of your wet dreams and made it a reality.

Well, do we even know for sure that she’s Jewish?

Uh, are you fucking kidding me?

Why does she keep turning to the camera and smiling?

Shhh, don’t ask so many questions. Just go with it.

I think I need to call my shrink…

Or, at the very least, your rabbi.

-AR

Thanks: Justin.X.XIII

Guys, I honestly do not give a fuck if you wear your pants or not. But don’t make me feel like a dick for wanting to discuss relevant metal bands, as opposed to, say, sit around and wonder when Queensryche are get their shit together. (Short answer: Never. Long anser: Abso-fuckin’-lutley never ever never never.)

So. We might have to spend a portion of today catching up on shit that happened last week. For example…

As you know from reading my recent interview with Chimaira guitarist Rob Arnold, the band are currently in the studio recording a new album. And apparently they’ve been swept up in all the Charlie Sheen hysteria that’s been going on as of late (seriously, motherfucker hasn’t been on so many people’s minds since Platoon came out), so they decided to record a cover of The Troggs’ classic anthem, “Wild Thing” (below). For the youngsters out there: the song choice isn’t just a reference to Sheen’s recent behavior, but also to… well, just get your ass to Netflix.

UPDATE: Metal Insider tells me that this cover is now available for purchase on iTunes.

Chimaira’s new album should be out later this year on eOne.

-AR

Thanks: Ryan Badami

We’ve all seen a movie in which a monster or alien or alien monster or monstlien spends 90 minutes terrorizing people with its brute strength and supernatural firepower, right? But at the end, some hunky guy who uses tons of hair product fells the beast with some hokey, implausible trick-move like turning on a microwave near it or mounting and riding it while attaching an IED to its nads. It’s a fundamental flaw in this type of movie; comparatively speaking, do filmmakers mean to impy that if a particularly motivated ant so desired, he or she could take me out with a wee little poison dart-shooting taser or something? Fuck that.

Well, that’s what I used to think until I saw a clip (above) of feeble Kiss frontman Paul Stanley heroically toppling the unstoppable party beast called Steel Panther. It’s incredible! That band is all-powerful and merciless — I’ve never seen even a ho-hum Steel Panther performance, in person or otherwise — yet it took Stanley about two seconds to explode a shittiness bomb in their midst and reduce their jam to rubble. Now, Kiss apologists will rush to point out that the clip’s audio quality is unkind to Stanley and suggests a toy microphone inputted direct to a 1989 camcorder. And Stanley is cold and old and just walked onstage to belt “Lick It Up.” And Panther guitarist Satchel kinda jukes Stanley with a premature move to the bridge. Sure, I guess that would justify a C+ performance. This shit is F. F for fffffail.

–ADF

Steel Panther plays Mondays at House of Blues Sunset Strip and weekends in Vegas. Dates here.

Alright, seriously, I am over it with Andy Rehfeldt. His schtick of turning metal songs into non-metal songs and non-metal songs into metal songs was funny for awhile, but the joke is getting pretty old now. I appreciate how much work must go into making these things, but it’s time for him to find a new gimmick.

For better or worse, though, you guys seem to continue to dig Rehfeldt’s work, as evidenced by the e-mail we received from the reader known as Pahkmycah, which included a link to Rehfeldt’s latest: a Radio Disney version of Bloodbath’s “Eaten.” So I’m gonna post this, and you cats can all enjoy it, while I continue to serve my role as The Last Angry Man.

-AR

OF COURSE YA DO! So thank the anonymous reader who sent us a link to the below vid. Yes, it would be way cooler if this were being played by an actual orchestra and wasn’t just a synth-simulation, but it’s still pretty frickin’ amazing that someone took the time to do this… and he did such a good job, too! Whenever my non-metal friends express disbelief that I “can listen to this stuff,” I try to tell them about the kinship between extreme music and classical music, and assert that if you took out all the screaming and had an orchestra play the same music, they would all “get” the skill involved in these compositions. But they usually just look at me like I’m crazy. Hopefully, this will do a little more to prove my point in the future…

And just for kicks, here’s an 8-bit version of the same song… sounds kinda like a Genghis Tron demo…

Click to read more…

Alright, so our friend Allie first showed this to us way back in December, and it’s pretty much the greatest thing in the history of ever. And yet, we somehow never got around to posting it. But we’re correcting that error right now!

So: MetalSucks Maniacs, meet Wild Steve. Please give him a warm welcome, and show him some respect. No, seriously: He is the heavyweight mosh skills mosh, so GET IT IN YOUR FUCKING SKULLS — YOU’LL GET FUCKING MOOSHED IF YOU FUCK WITH HIM.

Alright, so anyone wanna take any guesses as to what made him so angry before he made this video? Who fucked with Wild Steve? Who fucked with Wild Steve?!?

Here’s another clip from Wild Steve, which he apparently modeled on those videos terrorists send out. Choice moments include:

Click to read more…

Short n’ sweet: there’s this young lady named Alexandra Nicoletti who has been posting videos of herself on YouTube in which she plays piano versions of Amon Amarth songs (and some non-metal stuff, too, like a number from Beauty and the Beast), and she’s really good. Here she is doing the band’s new song, “War of the Gods”:

You can check out more at her YouTube channel. She also has a Facebook fan page if you wanna show your support that way.

The actual studio version of “War of the Gods” will appear on Amon Amarth’s new album, Surtur Rising, which comes out March 29 on Metal Blade.

-AR

Thanks to Mike Manzo for the tip.

Any metalhead who owns a small dog — or has a friend who owns a small dog — has definitely done this, and is lying if they say otherwise. I’m just shocked this pooch puts up with it for 4:08; if I ever tried to do this with Axl’s bichon, Sacha the Death Metal Nightmare Puppy, I’d probably have teeth marks on my arm before the first chorus. But man, this little guy is cute… even when he’s baring his teeth, just completely adorable.

-VN

I can’t describe this video in any way which would be more fun than just watching, soooo… just watch it.

Awesome. Totally awesome.

-AR

Forget all labels of dorkiness / loserness / awesomeness you’ve previously bestowed upon yourself. World of Warcraft all-nighters? No biggee. Masturbating 5 times in a day? Child’s play. Practicing guitar scales in your bedroom for hours? That ain’t got nothing on this 11 year-old girl who taught herself to play Rush’s already insane “YYZ” on piano, by herself, USING HER FEET TO PLAY GEDDY’S BASS LINES. I’ll let MS Maniac Steve Stamopolous take it from here:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Is Steve right, or what? This is so nerdy / awesome that I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll let the video do the talking:

I’m not sure which is more mind-blowing: this performance, or the fact that the audience could barely muster a few claps afterwards.

Speaking of Rush, here’s 3 Inches of Blood covering Rush’s “Anthem” on their current tour with Eluveitie, Holy Grail and System Divide:

Click to read more…

Behold, regular Happiness:

Now… add some death metal:

Voila.

-VN

Thanks: Ace Rimmer

I guess this guy Nardwuar is old news to Canadians, but I’d somehow never been privy to his shenanigans until reader Jason Bang sent us a bunch of his work a few weeks back.

And boy am I sorry, because I’d been missing out; this guy is like the OG troller, before trolling was trolling, before Sergeant D was Sergeant D, and loooooong before Ziltoid decided to make a Devin Townsend character his handle and infuriate the MS masses with his fuzzy purple hair. Pure genius. Watch as he toys with Slipknot’s Clown — who, to his credit, hangs in for most of the interviews — and frustrates #3 into leaving the set:

Brilliant. Higgins, one of the chief MS Mansion Monkeys, is jumping up and down right now and going “Oooooo. ooo. Ahhhh!” which is monkey-speak for “There’s an open position at the Vancouver Bureau of MetalSucks International if this Nardwuar guy is looking for a job.” So, uh, Nardwuar, waddayasay?

After the jump, watch Nardwuar troll Dani from Cradle of Filth, then watch him troll Steel Panther while Steel Panther troll him right back:

Click to read more…

One of the things I love about people who have way too much free time and no healthy outlet for their creativity is that sometimes they make things which are fun to watch when you’re high. For example, this:

According to Gizmodo, the above contraption was made by a dude named Chris Marion, and “interfaces a Guitar Hero guitar with a microcontroller, which in turn powers relays that activate solenoid valves on five fire poofers.” In other words, when he plays Guitar Hero, he gets all Rammstein-like.

Here’s another video of this terrific, universe-altering creation at work, this one set to some good ol’ Motley Crue:

Click to read more…

I knew there was a reason that I’m friends with Elise at Reign in Blog; my Sister from another Mister shares my ambivalence about any possible Sepultura reunion. Like, if it happened, that’d be ok, but if Max and Andreas never kiss and make nice-nice that’d be just fine, too. Regardless of what happens, my life will go on pretty much unchanged.

Of way more interesting substance and immediate import is this video of one tweaked out motherfucker lip-syncing to “Amen.” This is the stuff that Internet gold is made of, folks. A+++++ WDBWA

-VN

tweakin’ ain’t easy from Steven Healy on Vimeo.

Last week, we posted a mash-up of Coldplay and System of a Down that’s actually quite good; subsequently, a reader calling himself Bayon Etwork sent us a link to a mash-up of Coldplay and Dethklok that, while not as good as the System of a Coldplay song, still works pretty well. Check it out and see what you think:

And now, if you listen carefully, I think you can actually hear Charles Foster Ofdensen filing legal papers.

-AR

Reader Hetal Bhatt sent us a link amash-up of System of a Down’s “Toxicity” and Coldplay’s “Fix You,” asserting that “It sounds like a catastrophe on paper, but the shit really works!” And, hey, Hetal is right! This is actually pretty cool. Even SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian digs it. Kind of amazing, ’cause I would have assumed that this would just suck whale cocks.

The dude who made the track (who appears to be all of eleven years old) isn’t currently allowing embeds, but you can check it out here… pretty rad stuff.

-AR

I don’t think anyone’s ever proclaimed that Dragonforce are a bastion of creativity, but this 10-second ditty posted on Heavy Blog is Heavy drives the point home. Still, I can get down with The Force from time to time in the name of fun. What are you, some kind of fun hater??

Here’s to hoping ZP Theart’s replacement is a bit more creative in the lyrics department.

-VN

Download Dragonforce albums on Amazon for cheap!
for cheap!

Clever headline for a post about a viral video of penguins moshing, eh? Alas, it ain’t mine. I stole it from Metal Insider, where I first saw the video (below), and Metal Insider apparently stole it from Videogum after happily retired MI writer Dan Rodriguez brought it to their attention.

So I can’t even take credit, and, unfortunately, the pun is the best part of the joke. Yeah, the video is kinda cute, for all ten seconds, but then it goes on for another thirty-three. And it’s not even set to an awesome song. I mean, “Convicted in Life” is easily my favorite post-Max Cavalera Sepultura song, but that’s not saying much, and besides, it’s not like there aren’t approximately 8,675,439,414,173,509 other metal songs that could have been utilized.

But, yeah, enjoy it guys.

-AR