And the Hollywood/sorta metal news keeps on keepin’ on…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt started out as the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun (PAUL MASVIDAL UP IN DIS BEE-YATCH!), but he’s grown into a fine actor, and he’s appeared in some of my favorite movies of the past I dunno however many years. (If you haven’t seen Inception and Brick, get thine ass to Netflix pronto.) He’s also one of the founders of hitRECord, a pretty awesome website in which people from all the net collaborate on various kinds of art projects. So, really, I have nothing bad to say about the dude.

Still, there’s something kinda funny about the fact that he chose to perform Nirvana’s “Lithium” at a recent event for the aforementioned hitRECord, especially given that he seems so upbeat in interviews. Bu he’s not bad at all, and his speech partway through about how the fact that Cobain killed himself shouldn’t deter anyone from enjoying Cobain’s music is a good if kinda obvious point.

And then I found twenty bucks.

-AR

Thanks to KL for the tip.

What the fuck? Look at this press release Axl just forwarded to me:

“It was in 1983 when Howard Jones first burst upon the contemporary music scene and brought his very English song-writing and pioneering synthesizers to an unsuspecting world. His first two albums Human’s Lib and Dream Into Action were massive worldwide hits.

“Human’s Lib reached #1 in 1984 in the UK and featured the hits ‘New Song,’ and ‘What Is Love?’  In 1985 Howard released his follow up: Dream Into Action, which quickly became a Top Ten Platinum album here in the US and featured the massive hits: ‘Things Can Only Get Better,’ ‘Life In One Day,’ ‘No One Is To Blame,’ and ‘Like To Get To Know You Well.’

“Now for the first time ever, Jones will perform these first two classic albums in their entirety in the US this fall. A true icon of the 80’s and godfather of modern electronic dance music, Jones will be giving the fans what they’ve longed for.”

Okay, so first of all, I did NOT know that Howard Jones was English. I always thought that dude was from Massachusetts!

Click to read more…

Would you like have any and all future listenings of Rust in Peace and Countdown to Extinction ruined for you? Then, by all means, please check out “Fantastic Love,” the debut video from the Fanta band, featuring Marty Friedman on lead guitars.

Of course, this is not the first time that Mr. Friedman has worked with Fanta, but it is way, way more likely to create sufferers of PTSD than his previous commercial for the soda brand. Fanta must know it, too — they’ve disabled commenting from the YouTube page on which the spot appears. ‘CAUSE DON’T YOU SAY NUTHIN’ BAD ABOUT FANTA!!!

-AR

Thanks to Chris for the tip!

I’m not one to place much significance on album artwork in 2011. It’s pretty to look at and can compliment the music nicely, but when all you ever listen to are digital files you really only end up looking at the artwork once — when it’s announced and subsequently plastered across the metalwebs. But this cannot be ignored: Dream Theater used clip art for the cover of their forthcoming album, A Dramatic Turn of Events Since Mike Portnoy Left The Band.

Dream Theater might’ve gotten away with it if wasn’t for those pesky kids in Circus Maximus, whose 2005 album featured the very same $15.00 clip art image on the cover. Though the texture of the pants, hat, and positioning of one of the arms has been modified, the areas circled in the above image by some Internet smartass leave no doubt: clip art is clip art.

Luckily this is only the cover, which like I said isn’t all that important; the first song to be released from the album is pretty sweet. Still… lame. Mike Portnoy is frowning from his beach house somewhere in Long Island.

-VN

Thanks: The Number of the Blog

I haven’t a clue how the folks (folk?) at Blot Und Eisen convinced Sigh’s Mirai, Faith No More / Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance, Eyehategod’s Michael IX Williams, Agalloch’s John Haughm and Ghoul’s Digestor to submit to the Rorschach aka “ink blot” tests… but there you have it, and the results are fascinating! The Rorschach Test, for those unfamiliar, is “a method of psychiatric evaluation created by Hermann Rorschach in 1921. Psychologists use the test to examine the personalities of their patients.”

Here are just a couple of samples:

Spruance: “An orthodox church.”
Haughm: “The sky…as seen from inside a shallow grave.”
Digestor: “Hard to clean mess.”

Williams: “Beard of a sideshow pharmacist on display in East Cambodia.”
Mirai: “Two Rabbits In The Bush.”
Haughm: “Two siamese twin elephant embryos trying to escape each other.

Me, I just see a bunch of vaginas. I won’t ruin the rest for you; check it out at Blot Und Eisen.

-VN

“Think extended touring in China is impossible? Think again.”

So goes the motto of Honolulu, HI thrash act Corrupt Absolute, a band who have made a career of touring where no other metal bands will: China. Given, Corrupt Absolute’s total isolation and unique geographic location make China just a little more appealing and feasible than it would be for most bands, but still… fucking China! Can you imagine trying to promote a metal show in a country whose government shut down 1.3 million websites last year alone?

The folks at MetalAsFuck.net spoke with Corrupt Absolute’s Jack Doom about touring in China — how to set up shows there, what to do and what not to do, what to eat and what not to eat, and of course a few stories about what it’s like — and it’s a fascinating read. On playing China’s big cities vs. out-of-the-way locales:

Who do you think is going to mosh more enthusiastically? The jaded Shanghai hesher who sees international acts on a weekly basis, or the factory worker in an industrial town that hasn’t seen a foreign metal band pass through in two years? Tell ‘em Jack.

“I prefer to play the small places the big bands won’t go. We’ll go to small places in China where they’ve never seen a white guy and we’ll get three of four hundred people at a show. We’ll go way out in the sticks. The next shows I’m working on are way out in the western side by Burma, as far out as we can go.”

Sounds a lot like touring America, eh? Read the rest at MetalAsFuck.net.

-VN

A reader calling himself “J.A.M.” forwarded us an e-mail he received yesterday, in which Judas Priest — or, probably more accurately, their marketing team — ask fans to take a survey. Here’s a photo of the e-mail, with the reader’s real name blocked out in the event he doesn’t want the world to know it:

Now, one of the phrases in that e-mail which might jump out at you is “your thoughts on new guitarist Richie Faulkner,” a.k.a. “The Due Who Replaced K.K. Downing.” Keep that in mind moving forward.

Click to read more…

In case Coheen and Cambria bassist Michael Todd’s arrest on Sunday for threatening to blow-up a drug store unless they gave him six bottles full of prescription meds and Jeroen Paul Thessling’s decision to quit Obscura didn’t already make bassists the least popular people in all of metaldom this week: TMZ is now reporting that former Queens of the Stone Age/current Not Kyuss! bassist Nick Oliveri has now been arrested on charges of felony domestic violence. Which is bad enough, but it’s not the part of the story that’s really interesting. This is:

Click to read more…

This doesn’t really have anything to do with metal, but I found it kinda funny so I’m running with it.

A Scottish band called Found has released what is, at least as far as I’m aware, the first-ever edible 7″ — more specifically, a 7″ made from chocolate. According to Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci  (who came up with a headline far superior to my own):

“The first attempt was to pour chocolate over a pressed record, but the music created by the chocolate record was backwards. Instead they poured chocolate into the record mold, and presto, an edible single.”

I don’t know nearly enough about, like, science n’ shit to understand how this could possibly work, or what the band’s fans are supposed to do if they actually wanna keep the record, be it because they like the music, or because they think it’s gonna be a collector’s item, or whatever. (How easily would this thing melt? You’d have to at least keep it refrigerated, I’d imagine.)

I would, however, like to suggest that metal bands start trying this gimmick to sell their own shit. Of course, they would not necessarily have to use to chocolate. Here are some examples of what I think would be good cuisine-to-band matches:

Click to read more…

All rock stars wanna be actors and all actors wanna be rock stars, I guess because they think it matters how you get money, drugs, and pussy, not just that you get those things at all. And so Pirates of the Crapibbean star Johnny Depp is not only working on some material with Steven Tyler, but last night he hopped on stage with Alice Cooper during a show in London. Here’s some video for your amusement:

So, y’know. Whatever prevents Depp from making another Jack Sparrow excuse to take a nap adventure is fine by me.

Check out more videos of the performance at Metal Insider.

-AR

Norwegian black metal is a genre whose history is fraught with controversy and full of murder and church burnings and all other manner of awfulness.  So, naturally, Norway has now given twenty of its diplomats “a black metal crash course,” according to this report:

“The objective is to show Norwegian culture in all its diversity. In the musical field, it goes from (Romantic music composer) Edvard Grieg to black metal,” its deputy head Steinar Lindberg said, adding he hoped to repeat the experience.

“In Italy, Japan or France, young people are learning Norwegian to decrypt the lyrics. Black metal is an export product and it’s important that future diplomats are interested in it,” he added.

Of course, I’m only kidding about the looming shadow of some assholes from twenty years ago being a good reason not to teach this stuff to Norwegian diplomats. Really, I guess Norway deserves a pat on the back for being so chill. So, y’know, three cheers for Norway.

On a semi-related note, my favorite part about the article where we found this story is that they opted not to use a photo of a member of Emperor or Mayhem or Enslaved, but, rather, a picture of Ronnie James Dio, who was neither Norwegian nor a black metal musician. Oh, the mainstream media. So lulzy when they try to cover metal!

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this.

Anyone who plays an instrument has moments of thanking Jeebus for all of his/her appendages & extremities.  So often we take for granted the simple inherent nature of having all (or most) of our natural human body parts and functions, and it can be rather inspiring to witness someone overcoming the odds and making good out of an undeniably tough situation.

Enter John Denner, who was born without a right hand but designed a makeshift picking device that enabled him to learn how to play the guitar.  And dude didn’t just simply learn how to play — he legitimately shreds!  Case in point:

I mean…….WTF???  Hats off to Denner.

Visit his website here.

TV news story and clips from Denner’s instructional DVD after the jomp…

Click to read more…

Apparently not content to simply piss off Halloween fans everywhere, Rob Zombie has now directed a commercial for the cleaning detergent, Woolite. And as you can see from the video above, it is a fucking weird commercial. I mean, it clearly plays to Zombie’s strengths (maybe I should say “alleged strengths?”) and image as a director, but I just can’t imagine the target audience for detergent television commercials — say, Suzie Homemaker, for example — responding to this.

Jiri Kulik, some executive at the company who makes Woolite, told the NY Times how the commercial came about:

Click to read more…

Okay, so my headline probably makes this story sound a little weirder than it actually is. But only a little bit.

Everyone remember Brian Haner, a.k.a. “Guitar Guy” or “Papa Gates?” He plays guitar for Jeff Dunham (yes, that Jeff Dunham), occasionally releases his own not-very-funny comedy videos, and, perhaps most interesting to metal fans, sired Brian Haner, Jr., a.k.a. Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates, a.k.a. the twenty-third top modern metal guitarist.

So now, perhaps enjoying the extra time in the spotlight his son’s fame has afforded him, or perhaps just looking for an excuse to spend some quality time with the fruit of his loins, Haner the Elder has recruited Haner the Younger to appear in his latest music video. Which is for a song called “Blow-Up Doll.” And is about a man and his blow-up doll. And the two Haners pass one another with their respective blow-up dolls on their way to their respective seedy motel rooms, in which they will fuck those blow-up dolls. And those rooms are right next to each so other.

So, yeah, there’s no weird subtext there or anything.

What a great bonding moment this must have been for the Haner family. “Son, I wrote a song about making love to an inanimate object, and I’d really like for you to be in the music video!” “Okay, pop! That sounds great! Count me in!”

-AR

[via The PRP]

Star Wars and Guns N’ Roses both have a special spot reserved in my geekiest of geeky heart, and probably for similar reasons: Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in theaters (and I was obsessed with/sympathetic to Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, it will shock exactly no one one to learn), and GN’R were my gateway into metal. In other words, seeing Jedi and hearing “It’s So Easy” were both major contributing factors to ruining my mother’s dreams of me ever going to medical school.

So. Now our friends over at Metal Insider have discovered the below video, filmed at Disney’s Hollywood studios’ “Star Wars Weekends” show, in which Chewbacca… and then an ewok… well, just watch. It is fucking strange, and I have no idea what the crap it has to do with Star Wars, although the audience does seem to be pretty into it.

Yep. ‘Cause I always thought that was “Welcome to the Jungle” was missing was a Jawa shouting “Wootini!” at just the right moment.

But wait, there’s more! They also had Lord Vader gettin’ jiggy wit… Metallica?

Click to read more…

Anyone who knows anything knows that Vinnie Vincent is the best guitar player Kiss ever had; more than that, he’s pretty much the best guitar player in the history of ever. Unfortunately, he hasn’t recorded anything since the 90s, so he’s ineligible for our current list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, but if we ever do a list of the The Top 25 Metal Guitarists Ever, I have little doubt he would appear very, very close to the top, if not at the tippy top itself.

Which is why it’s so heartbreaking that he has apparently turned into a crazy old lady who looks slightly less masculine than Joan Jett (see mugshot below) and who, according to TMZ, was recently arrested not only for beating his wife, but for keeping “four sealed containers containing deceased dogs.”

Click to read more…

For metal fans over the age of 30, there’s little fresh news to be found on VH1′s That Metal Show; the weekly show functions mostly as a clubhouse for “remember when?” type gab with flabby old-timers. (For metal fans under 30, TMS provides a peek back in time to when the term “metal” meant “heavier than Paul McCartney & Wings.”) So I was one of tens of viewers of the TMS season seven finale, in which former Ozzy drummer Carmine Appice (above, big brother of Heaven & Hell skinsman Vinny Appice) shot ropey jets of great and hilarious news all over the sweaty boobs of the dinosaur metal world.

Wow, that’s a clusterfucked metaphor, but ahem the important thing is that the unconvincingly bewigged Appice addressed the status of Blue Murder to TMS host Eddie Trunk, who along with me makes up about half of the post-Whitesnake John Sykes supergroup’s restless, rabid fanbase. But that was only the happiest news, not the weirdest. According to Appice:

Click to read more…

The answers you guys have sent in for last week’s Completely Unreadable Band Logo contest have been hilarious, and not just because some of you thought the answer was Warg, War, or Swarm. Here are a few sample responses I’d like to share with you:

“Okay so this looks like IWABO. Alternative logo? Completely wrong answer? WTF?”
-Andrew Hardman

“Iwrestledabearonce went black metal? WTF.”
-Jonathan Voynar

“It’s I Wrestled a Bear Once’s new black metal logo.”
-Andrew Robbins

“BLACK METAL JUST GOT GAY.”
-Kuranes

Well, guess what? The answer WAS Iwrestledabearonce. And they are, in fact, a black metal band now.

Yep. IWABO are completely changing their sound.

Don’t believe me? Check out this new band pic by Jeremy Saffer:

Here’s a statement from guitarist Steven Bradley regarding the decision to abandon the band’s old sound:

Click to read more…

UPDATE: I somehow did not realize that this is the chick from Danzig’s video for “Mother,” about whom we’ve written before. Whoops. Still pretty funny shit, though. Thanks to everyone who pointed out my error.

If you have an erection right now but you need it to go away IMMEDIATELY so you can continue to go about your day, well, have we got a video for you! I’m not really sure what the fuck this is, or why it’s on YouTube… really, since I’ve seen this, I feel like I’m not really sure of anything anymore… other than, yeah, this a major boner killer. Like, the anti-Viagra.

It’s also incredibly funny.

Even though this whacky broad doesn’t ever get fully naked, this is definitely NSFW, so consider yourself warned.

-AR

Oh, Colin Driehorst, why did you send this to us???

Breaking news from Tyranny of Tradition;

In a continuing assault on the life and career of President Barack Obama, would-be Presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Obama of being the drummer for the metal band Overkill on the albums “Feel The Fire” and “Taking Over“.  In an interview with syndicated conservative talk radio host Jonathan Winthrop, Trump said “If you look in the liner notes at the first two albums they have someone named Rat Skates listed as the drummer.  That can’t possibly be a real name.  I believe that Barack Obama was playing drums on both of those records.”

This is another in a series of accusations made by Republicans that Obama is, in fact, a “secret metalhead”. The accusations started two months ago when Glenn Beck revealed that Obama was in a thrash band in Chicago while he was working as a community organizer in the mid-1980s.  Beck claimed that Obama’s band “mostly did Coroner and Slayer covers, but a few originals.

And then:

Click to read more…