My father once told me that “celebrities eat and drink and piss and shit just like us,” which was his poetic way of saying that famous folks are just people, too. And that can be a hard fact to remember, even if you’re not the type to get starstruck. Sure, your favorite Rock God might seem awesome right now, but the chances that he or she came out of the womb being Super Cool are slim to none.

Case in point: this 1987 public access footage that Metal Insider unearthed of Maynard James Keenan and his then-band, Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty, performing a song called “Burn About Out”… which is very clearly an early version of the Tool classic, “Sober.” Sure, it’s faster, the anthemic chorus is missing, and some of the lyrics are different  – but if it’s not the same exact melody, then I’m the new keyboard player for Dr. Acula.

And my point isn’t “Oh hey Maynard wrote a version of this song six years before it appeared on Undertow,” because I don’t think that’s really news — Tool actually had an early version of the song on their 1991 demo, 72826. My point is simply that once upon a time, Maynard looked totally lame, and surrounded himself with bandmates who also looked totally lame, and that’s okay, because all butterflies were caterpillars once.

Tool are currently on tour and, to the best of my knowledge, still the four coolest guys in the world, who put on pretty much the best concerts in the world. Get dates here.

-AR

Woodstock, NY isn’t just the hometown of hippies, MetalGF, and 3; Sarah Fimm, who recently released her seventh album Near Infinite Possibility, hails from the Hudson Valley’s musical locus as well. I’d never heard of Fimm before I received an email touting her new video “Everything Becomes Whole” earlier this week, but I decided to give it a shot and found myself wanting more the second it ended. Sarah’s brand of hard rock would sound perfectly at home on modern rock radio but doesn’t come off as sounding trite or angsty like so many of today’s female-fronted rock acts. It just so happens that A Perfect Circle’s Josh Freese plays on the track too, and you can definitely hear the influence.

Near Infinite Possibility is out now, and I’m hooked. Order the CD here or download the MP3 version from Amazon.

Check out Sarah Fimm’s official website for more info.

-VN

These albums might even have some good music on ‘em, too!

ANYWAY:

• As I’ve said before, I’m not really a fan of Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project, but my man crush on Keenan is such that I actually feel severe guilt over said lack of fandom. And Pusicfer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, might have the best album art of the year. Spin (still a thing!) is now streaming the entire record in advance of its release on October 18 via the cleverly named Puscifer Entertainment. I’ve listened to a lil’ bit of it and I feel about it pretty much the way I feel about all Puscifer, which is that it’s not bad, but not interesting to hold my attention against all the other great music out there right now, and really Maynard just get back to the business of TOOL as soon as humanly possible.
• Giant Squid’s Cenotes comes out October 25 on Translation Loss, and also has totally bitchin’ album art (above… FUPAs for the win). Now the whole thing is streaming at NPR (New slogan: “NPR… it’s not just for old people anymore!”). I’m actually listening for the first time now, and while Giant Squid have yet to produce anything that I love as much as Metridium Fields (“Ampullae of Lorenzini” might be one of the most beautiful songs in any genre written in the past ten years), they’re still way out ahead of most of the pack, so you should at very least give this a listen and see if you dig it. I mean, you’d do as much just to be able to make fun of Design the Skyline, so, y’know, fair is fair.

Well hello again!

I hope you’ve been enjoying everything I’ve been posting here today on Metalsucks.net.  This next interview is really something I was beyond thrilled to be able to do!

A Perfect Circle is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite bands and are also a huge inspiration on myself as well as my own band, Vestascension. So, when Matt McJunkins agreed to do an interview with lil’ ol me, well, I basically soiled myself.  Matt is a really awesome dude and everyone out there should give this a good read even if you’re not into any of the bands he’s involved with.  He provides some very interesting insight into what it takes to land an audition and what to do and what not to do if you actually land one.  Of course he also talks about his work in A Perfect Circle, Ashes Divide, Puscifer, 30 Seconds To Mars, and even gives a few details about his new project with Jeff Friedl.

Check it out below and if you’d like to know more about Matt click here to visit his official website.

-Justin Gosnell

Click to read more…

The thing about Ministry is, sure, they were innovative, and sure, their live show has a lot of cool lights and effects and shit, but I think their music gets real boring real fast. It falls under the category of “too much of the same too quickly.” To give a recent example: Remember that single “Lies, Lies, Lies” from 2006′s Rio Grande Blood? Catchy fucking song, but I was shocked to learn that it’s just barely over five minutes long — ’cause it’s just the same thing, over and over and over again, and consequently feels like it’s an hour. And their whole catalog is basically like that. I remember when Al Jourgensen insulted Trent Reznor as just some Ministrwannabe back in the day, thinking, “Well, if you ever write a song as good as ‘Head Like a Hole’ or ‘Hurt,’ you might sell that many records, too.”

That being said, you do have to give Jourgensen and company their spot in history… and director Douglas Freel’s new documentary about the band,  Fix: The Ministry Movie, does look like a lot of fun. Besides covering the project’s entire history, it features interviews with Reznor (!) and Maynard James Keenan, who, in the trailer below, is, I think, but I’m not positive, is making a reference to the abandoned Tapeworm project he had with Reznor.

ANYWAY, here’s the trailer. The movie is gonna be doing four screenings (at least so far) this month and next month across the U.S.; get the screening schedule after the jump.

Click to read more…

Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project has debuted its video for “Man Overboard” over at Rolling Drone, and I’m feeling pretty conflicted about it.

‘Cause on the one hand, it’s not every day we see a CG animated steam punk video, and I applaud Maynard for continuing to at least make an attempt to venture into untested waters. Plus, as Metal Insider points out, there’s a Spinal Tap reference at the fifty-three second mark, and I’m all about Spinal Tap.

On the other hand, said CG animation is roughly on par with that incredibly poopy Iron Maiden video for “Wildest Dreams.”

So I guess you should, like, watch the video and make up your own mind. But only after you’ve already watched that way-cooler Ghost Brigade video, ’cause, like I said, it’s way cooler.

VIDEO REMOVED UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP ROLLING DRONE’S STUPID FUCKING AUTO PLAY.

Puscifer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, comes out October 18 on Puscifer Entertainment.

-AR

Maynard James Keenan has released two new video teasers for Conditions of My Parole, the new album from his Puscifer project. And I have almost no idea what the what is going on in these clips — called The Book Of Douche Bag, Volumes 1 & 2 — I do know that I found them entertaining. In fact, I wish Puscifer’s music was this much fun… it’s a real bummer to enjoy the promotions for an album more than the album itself.

Click to read more…

I may not be a huge Puscifer fan, but nothing is going to top this this year. Not even Opeth’s heads in a tree.

Conditions of My Parole is out October 18.

-AR

[via The PRP, who think it may be the best album art of the decade]

Milla Jovovich has played with Pusicfer. Therefore, it is okay for me to post this image with this article.

I’m not even really clear how many Puscifer albums there have been at this point; I pretty much gave up after 2007′s V is for Vagina. It’s not that I think Puscifer is bad, exactly, so much as the project just doesn’t excite me. It’s hard me to see it as anything but one more obstruction to a new Tool album, or even a new A Perfect Circle release. Of course, that might not be true — Maynard could stay home all day and jerk off, and it might not make a Tool record appear any faster or slower than it already would — but the fact remains that Puscifer is still my least favorite of Maynard’s various projects. And, yes, I’m including his wine.

ANYWAY, in the event you think I’m crazy and are desperate to hear some new Puscification, the fresh-out-of-the-oven track “Man Overboard” is now streaming here. It’s kinda catchy, but it basically re-confirms my minimal interest in Puscifer; in fact, if Maynard wasn’t involved, it’s hard for me to imagine I even would have sat through the entire song.

Puscifer’s new album, Conditions of My Parole, comes out October 18. Meanwhile, it’s been more than five years since the last Tool album, so hopefully there will be a new one sooner rather than later.

-AR

An anonymous reader sent us the below video, which is actually an audio recording of A Perfect Circle playing a new song, apparently called “By and Down,” at their show in Portland, Oregon last night. The quality isn’t very good, but as far as I can tell, it sounds like it could come right off of Thirteenth Step… which is fine by me! I fucking love that album.

Check out the song, then weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section. Hopefully we’ll get news of some new APC studio recordings soon.

-AR

Tool are notorious for shenanigans and delight in giving their fans tidbits of information while watching them lap it up, parse it in every single way imaginable, and discuss it in the kind of depth usually reserved for biblical debates (guilty). So when Tool posted a missive against failed rapture prophet Harold Camping and his blind followers (sound familiar?) on their comically out-of-date website last week, then followed that with a “personal guarantee” a new Tool album would come out on May 22nd or May 15th, 2012… well, you just hafta wonder.

Click to read more…

Art of Sucking are the first sign to a new label owned by the two members of Disturbed whose names people actually know (that would be David Draiman and Dan Donegan, not Anonymous Drummer and Dude from Union Underground), and if you’re thinking “Hm, Disturbed are the worst thing to happen to humanity since the plague, so I bet they have shitty taste in music and signed an awful fucking band,” well, you’re right. Art of Sucking are fucking awful. It’s like Nickelback tried to rip-off A Perfect Circle and did what they do best, which is fail at everything that isn’t fooling lobotomized rubes into thinking they’re worth a damn.

But Art of Sucking’s new video, for “Die Sucking,” is kind of interesting, and by interesting, I mean in a “staring at one spot on the sidewalk for five minutes” kinda way. No joke, at least fifty percent of this thing’s running time is devoted to shots of the singer walking. I would have loved to have seen the production schedule for this thing: “Day 1, band performance. Day 2, dude walking — locations TBD.”

At least Hard Eight had the good sense to have their guy running and not just walking. Difference is, someone was paid to make this piece of crap:

I am going to hire a gypsy to put a curse on this band so that everything everywhere smells like farts to them always. It may not prevent them from making terrible music, but it will make me laugh.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

A Perfect Circle are like the Ross and Rachel of bands. They split up, and then they got back together, and then they split up again, and then they got back together again. And now they’ve announced a summer tour, which I would go to if I were you, just in case they break-up again immediately following its completion — assuming they don’t break-up before it even starts.

I kid, I kid. I love APC, and they’re terrific live. This is their first proper tour in six years, and, at least as far as we’re aware, they won’t be playing eMotive in its entirety, so it should be worth the ticket price. So if you’ve never seen them before, here’s your shot, and if you have, well, I bet it was a long time ago and you’ll be happy to go again.

Here are dates:

Click to read more…

I didn’t think A Perfect Circle could get more irritating than when they released (e)Motive, but they’re going out of their way to prove me wrong. First they split up, and then they got back together, and then, just two months and four shows into their reunion run, they seemed to split up again. And now there’s this tweet, which more than implies that, no, all is well and good in APC land:

Click to read more…

I didn’t think A Perfect Circle could get more irritating than when they released (e)Motive, but they’re going out of their way to prove me wrong. First they split up, and then they got back together, and then, just two months and four shows into their reunion run, they seemed to split up again. And now there’s this tweet, which more than implies that, no, all is well and good in APC land:

Click to read more…

‘Cause earlier this week, Billy Howerdel sent out the below tweet:

Click to read more…

Yesterday A Perfect Circle announced their reunion, and we wondered who, besides Maynard James Keenan and Billy Howerdel, would be in the band; now we have our answer. Drummer Josh Freese, the band’s only constant besides Keenan and Howerdel, and guitarist James Iha, who joined the group for Thirteenth Step, are both returning to the fold, while bassist Matt McJunkins, who must have been teased mercilessly in grade school, will replace Jeordie White, who has since returned to being “Twiggy Ramirez” in Marilyn Manson.

McJunkinthetrunk, pictured above, was practically a shoe-in for the gig, since he’s played with both Keenan and Howerdel before, in Puscifer and Ashes Divide. Other than that, I don’t know squat about the dude. His Facebook page would suggest that he sometimes refers to himself as “Junk,” which somehow makes him a-okay in my book.

And that settles that. Matt McJunkins is now the Dave Kushner of A Perfect Circle.

-AR

Listen, I don’t think this is gonna come as a galloping shock to anyone given all the talk there’s already been about A Perfect Circle returning from their hiatus/break-up/whatever, but we just got a press release making it official. The band is apparently gonna get this party started with a five-city tour in the fall:

Shows in Phoenix (Marquee Theatre), Los Angeles (Avalon), Seattle (Showbox at The Market) and San Francisco (The Fillmore) will be three-night stops with each night featuring one of A Perfect Circle’s three albums in its entirety (Mer de Noms, Thirteenth Step and eMOTIVe).  Las Vegas (The Pearl) will be a two-night outing (Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step).

The band will also play Jimmy Kimmel on October 27.

Two quick and random thoughts:

Click to read more…

So Maynard James Keenan has said that Tool are working on their next album, and that “If it comes together” they may even play some new shit live this summer. I’m always totally down for some new Tool, so I won’t even say what we’re all thinking, which is “It might be nice to a get a new Tool album in under five years for a change.” I mean, we’d heard that Tool were in writing mode back in 2008, but whatever. It’s Tool. If they need that time to make the best possible record that they can, I’ll go along with it.

But a new Tool album was always a foregone conclusion; the band may very well break our hearts and throw in the towel one day, but we are (very luckily) not there yet.

So more interesting, in a way, is the news that writing has begun on a new album for A Perfect Circle. Not “more interesting” in a APC > Tool way, ’cause, come ON, that would just be a ridiculous argument to try and make. Interesting in the “Oh, cool, A Perfect Circle really aren’t done” kinda way.

Click to read more…

Last month we told you about Blood Into Wine, the new documentary about the winery owned by Tool’s Maynard James Keenan. The fascinating subject matter – both Maynard and the wine – combined with a cool trailer and the promise of cameos by Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, and some other famous people I care less about, suggested that this was, at the very least, going to be a fun movie.

Well, now it has release dates! The press release says that these are the “first nationwide screenings,” which suggests that other markets should get it soon. But that kind of decision often rests on how much money a film makes during its initial run. Which is my way of saying: if anyone sees this and it actually turns out to be good, please let us know, and please spread the word so that we get it here in NYC. Not be selfish or anything.

Release dates and locations after the jump.

Click to read more…