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If you take your girlfriend out to the middle of the woods to fuck in her dad’s camper, don’t crank Alice Cooper so loud you can’t hear here screaming for her life, okay?
Also, use a condom.
Safety first, kids.
The way metalheads describe him, Lou Reed is some sort of excavated relic from the Paleozoic era. Yes, I know you don’t like Lulu, but for fuck’s sake, the guy isn’t just some hobo Lars Ulrich found on the street begging for change and warning the world about Y2K. Reed’s the rock and roll animal, man, responsible for some of the most interesting and influential music of the 60s and 70s. Being publicly ignorant of his contributions to rock music doesn’t make Lulu‘s detractors cool; it makes them look narrow minded.
So, in order to prevent you from coming across like a complete bonehead, here are a few Lou Reed fun facts for metalheads…
Alice Cooper used to be cool, but now he is lame. And if you disagree with me, you should keep in mind that his new album not only attempts to exploit fans’ nostalgia with the incredibly dumb title Welcome 2 My Nightmare, but opens with a song called “I am Made of You,” that utilizes a severe amount of vocoder:
Like Mr. Cooper, Tim Burton also used to be really cool, but is now lame. All of his post-Ed Wood work, in fact, can be summed up thusly:
The “Top Hard Music” Chart I’ve been using for this column for the past couple of years is a mixed bag; on one hand, a lot of the “Top Hard Music” albums are really old albums that continue to sell (Metallica’s Black Album, various greatest hits collections, catalogue albums of whatever big band happens to be on tour at the time, etc) which paints a skewed picture of what I’m really interested in, namely the new stuff. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see how those older albums continue to sell.
I was recently alerted to the existence of a different chart, “Current Hard Music;” I’m not sure what the criteria is for what constitutes “Current” as some albums on this chart have been on for 90+ weeks and some artists are certainly not “current” by any means, but it does seem to paint a much better picture of the sales of newer albums. Without perrenial classics and greatest hits comps hogging up precious chart space, fewer units need to be sold for a band to get into the Top 100 on the “Current” chart. I am contemplating a move to focusing on that chart in the future. For now, I’ll stick with Top Hard Music with some added albums from the bottom of the other chart. What do you guys think?
Anyway, this week we’ve got big debuts from Pearl Jam and Opeth, big second week drops from a number of artists (Anthrax, Dream Theater and more) that still have pretty big sales numbers, and a look at some albums that came out earlier this year (Black Dahlia Murder, All Shall Perish, more).
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
I’m digging the Skeletonwitch cover this month, but Chance Garnette looks like a younger version of this guy. THERE IS NO FUCKIN’ PUMPKIN ICE CREAM IN YOUR FUCKIN’ FUTURE.
Luckily, House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects never come up in J. Bennett’s comprehensive and revealing cover story on Athens, Ohio’s premier metal outfit (although Appalachian Death Ride sound promising—thanks, Wikipedia!). The blackened thrash quintet has been refining their (witch)craft over the last half-decade while dealing with annoying member turnover. Now Forever Abomination is poised to be their breakthrough; we’re obviously in their corner either way, seeing as how SW made their stamp on the Flexi Series just a month earlier.
The ’Witch headline a Halloween rogues’ gallery in November, including a Call & Response with Alice Cooper, an amusingly acrimonious HOF on Ministry’s The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, features on Goreaphobia and Exhumed, and a new Flexi with Anaal Nathrakh dressing up to deconstruct the Specials’ “Man at C&A.” And as always there’s plenty more razor blades embedded within. Subscribers will have the issue within the next three weeks, the rest of you can order it here now.
-AB
Yeah, you could just order Decibel’s November 2011 issue, which also features Machine Head, Chimaira, and Brutal Truth — but why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?
Last week was a big, big sales week for new metal releases, I’d imagine one of the highest cumulative tallies of the year so far. The #1 through #6 entries on the Top Hard Music charts could all be considered smashes in today’s relative terms, with Dream Theater, Anthrax and others making big splashes. Arch/Matheos, Vader and Wolves in the Throne Room also had nice debuts. Let’s look at the numbers:
To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.
No, the hook (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.
But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.
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
Every year in the summer I do the obligatory trek back home to Turkey. For most people, this is kind of a nuisance, but not that big a deal. However, I need to take at least two planes and cross the Atlantic to visit my family. This is why I usually go home onlyonce a year. Or whine at them to just come to me if they have to see me.
I grew up somewhere were we didn’t get many bands. I’m pretty sure that’s partly why I moved to a large city in the States. But when I found out that the Sonisphere Festival was hitting home sweet home, right when I was visiting, I took it upon myself to take my two youngest cousins and little sister. I figured it’s my duty to take them to their first metal show. We decided not to half-ass it. We’d stick it out from start to finish and see all five bands. One day of metal culminating in Iron Maiden. None of them had ever seen them. It was the most awful and awesome day.
Avenged Sevenfold and Vinnie Paul, “Mouth For War”
Matt Cerone over at MetsBlog.com does these daily “the least you should know” wrap-ups after every game, which this season have essentially all boiled down to “they sucked.” In that spirit, here’s an abbreviated report from the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in L.A., which Axl and I had the privilege of attending and which, unlike the Mets, most definitely did not suck. We had a rip-roaring good time and got rip-roaringly drunk before realizing that oh yeah, this is L.A. and you have to fucking drive home. What a nightly buzzkill, literally! Thanks, Axl, for driving my drunk ass home.
The least you should know about the 2011 Revolver Golden Gods Awards before we have time to properly recap the event:
Fun videos after the jump! More extensive coverage coming soon.
So Revolver are doing their Golden Gods awards for the third year in a row on April 20 in L.A. (read our coverage from previous years here, here, here, and here) and the nominees have been announced.
Now, the first thing you will notice is that the nominees are more or less fairly ridiculous. For example, if these awards are to be believed, than Disturbed’s Dan Donegan is a better guitarist than Misha Mansoor, and Times of Grace (which is really just Killswitch Engage), We Are the Fallen (which is really just Evanescence), and The Damned Things (which is a supergroup) are all new bands.
That being said… I do not get particularly offended by these nominations the way I do with the Grammys. I think that’s because I know there are people who take the Grammys seriously, and think those awards actually mean something, whereas the only people who pay attention to the Golden Gods are already metal fans who either a) know that this is really just an excuse to throw an awesome party and have a big event promoting metal as a genre, or b) are eleven years old.
So check out the noms after the jump, and try not to get your panties in a twist. You should also be aware that Alice Cooper, Duff McKagan, DevilDriver, Asking Alexadria, Volbeat, and Fozzy are all performing, and that Motley Crue are getting the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award. (Their lifetime achievement: still being alive.)
So, about those nominees…
Ah, Valentine’s Day. Reviled by most, enjoyed by the smug, and shrugged off by the belligerently ambivalent. But while most of us couldn’t care less about this specific day in February, it’s still an annoyance that comes around every year. Kind of like the common cold.
Now, most places will have shitloads of “quirky” recommendations you can do with your special someone, even if you’re of the metalhead persuasion. You can hold sweaty hands in the privacy of your parents’ basement, pour each other some classy Motorhead wine, and share a blood pudding in the dreamy light of those church candles. It’s all very nice and sweet to be… nice and sweet.
But you know what’s better? DOING IT. With a killer soundtrack. So on this very special day, I’ve made you all a romantically inappropriate mix tape.
Picking “mood” songs is a little too obvious for my taste. I mean yeah, Faith No More’s “Stripsearch” (Actually, that might be more of a stripping song than a sexing one, but ,hmm, “Evidence” maybe? Heh, “Be Aggressive” might work for some. Either way, Patton’s voice = nudity.) and NIN’s “Closer” are both appropriate (for very different reasons), but that’s no fun. Go forth and find that special someone willing to get, get naked to these select songs. There’s a little something for everyone. St. Valentine would’ve wanted it that way.
Admit it: this picture makes you SO FUCKING HAPPY.
Recently, my friend sent me a YouTube link to a Bee Gees cover group. Excuse me, tribute band. That is the proper way of addressing them, as Mark Wahlberg taught us in Rock Star. I don’t like the Bee Gees. I don’t like disco. Disco is kind of terrible. Disco blows dogs for quarters. Disco is never amazing, especially not when KISS attempt it. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement. But my friends aren’t totally clueless to what I listen to, so I gave it a shot. It turned out it was a heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band. Okay, it was a little bit awesome. Weirdly enough, it worked. I only like thin-voiced men screeching when accompanied by equally high-pitched guitars, and that’s basically what heavy metal “Stayin’ Alive,” was. I turned it off about halfway through because, well, I still have my limits, but it kind of makes you stop and go, “Huh!” Metal just makes everything sound better.
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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
This week, inspired by Axl’s current ailment, we asked our writers:
WHAT IS THE BEST METAL TO LISTEN TO WHEN YOU’RE SICK?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
No one thinks of Monster Magnet music as overtly inspirational, but fans know that its restorative power is formidable. Astounding, even. There’s an empowering hugeness, a tone of amused disgust, and a lovable protagonist in Dave Wyndorf, Monster Magnet’s mainman. It follows then that Wyndorf is into comic books (presumably the source of his skill at exploding proportions) and also that his ouevre’s best moments are a druggy, sweaty Iron Man-Meets-Evil Dead trilogy for your ears: Fist-pumping. Ear-banging. Mind-mangling. Sack-jabbing. (My hope is that I’m never at at a party where onto the stereo comes “All Friends and Kingdom Come” or “Powertrip,” ‘cuz I will dropkick somebody’s flatscreen into a different time zone.)
Despite his outsized persona on record and the then-pending departure of a longtime bandmate, Wyndorf sounded loose and limber when we spoke last week about his thunderous new record, Mastermind, his admirers in the press, the status of his health/weight/dancing, his favorite idiotic music, and Ozzy’s brain.
Okay, let’s imagine you’re at a party on the beach, and as you’re packing a fourth slice of pizza into your face, you overhear someone state unequivocally that Bon Jovi and The Beastie Boys are more important than Rush. You’d grimace, but, hey, sales are sales and impact is debatable. It’s a party; be nice.
Then, as you resurface from a sand puddle gravity bong hit, that someone continues with an assertion that Rush is also less vital to modern music than the guy with the big spoken word hit about boffing mermaid chicks (or something) and, oh, let’s not forget the singer of a Phil Spector holiday song who went on to co-star in the Lethal Weapon films. (Jesus, does Scorsese get more than one vote?)
Finally, as you grit your teeth and instinctively glare at the source of these statements, your ears are raped by further by the spoken implication that Rush doesn’t measure up to the motherfucking J. Geils Band.
Party or no party, by now you’re mindlessly stomping this dumbshit into a dust just on principle. It’s like temporary insanity, right? “Had to be done,” you’d tell the judge. “Your honor, you’ve heard that song ‘Freeze Frame.’ Rush Pride for life!”
Just a couple of weeks ago Rob Zombie gave an interview where he expressed displeasure over the way Ozzy Osbourne was stealing band members from him; now he’s quickly denied us of potentially weeks or even months of online shit-talking by releasing a statement which ostensibly absolves Ozzy of all responsibility for Zombie’s anger. From Zombie’s MySpace page:
“I am very happy to put this Zombie vs Ozzy crap to rest. I just got off the phone with Ozzy and all is good with us. I have known Ozzy and Sharon for many years and have never had any problems with them. In fact they have always been very cool and easy to deal with. So, needless to say I found this whole situation very strange and a real bummer. This whole thing was really always between my band and a certain ex-drummer not between me and Ozzy. I wish Ozzy nothing but the best. End of story.”
We now rejoin Allyson B. Crawford (Bring Back Glam!) and Anso DF (MetalSucks) and their riveting analysis of Glam Metal’s Ten Best Must-Have Records.
Get caught up on yesterday’s action here.
***
The hits: “Poison” “Bed of Nails” “House of Fire” “Only My Heart Talkin’”
The heart: “Hell Is Living Without You” “Spark In The Dark” “I’m Your Gun”
Anso: So by 1989′s Trash, Coop had been in a booze stupor for like seven straight albums. The good news was that his successful comeback tour inspired some check-writing at Epic Records. But that support came with strict control, or at least that’s what the presence of Bon Jovi/Kiss/Aerosmith/Ratt hit-maker Desmond Child implies. So Allyson, what’s your stance on Desmond Child?
Allyson: I got to interview Alice Cooper once. One of the highlights of my life, I swear. The man rules. He was all about sobriety when we spoke and I think that’s awesome. Now, Desmond Child. Oh my. I’ve written about him before on Bring Back Glam!. I suppose he is — no, he is a genius, but damn. Aerosmith is my favorite band of all time and Child sort of took away their grit. So that hurt. But for some people he really, really helped and that’s Alice Cooper. Alice needed a hit for a new generation and Trash came along at the right time, didn’t it? Oh and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to meet and interview Desmond Child, so there you go.
Anso: Hey, same here! His stuff is mega-cheesy, but so are delicious Cheetos. Plus, Detonator rules, so it’s easy to forgive misfires like “I Was Made For Lovin’ You.” Oh and of course I warmed to him after VH1 aired that hilarious footage of his collaboration with (and antagonism of) Vince Neil. You saw that right? “Hello-o! Successs!”
Allyson: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Oh, I’ve seen it.
Anso: Okay, Trash was buffed up by a full whack of celebrity guests: Richie Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi, Kip Winger, Guy Mann-Dude, Steve Lukather, and 80% of Aerosmith. I suppose they helped pull chicks and young people to this old man record. Did these guys make Trash more attractive to you in any way?
Allyson: Because I’m a chick? Well, here’s the thing about me. I’ll agree there are some hot guys in rock, but that doesn’t mean much to me when it comes to music I like. If the song rocks, awesome. If not, okay. I like tons of music that is mocked — often right here on MetalSucks, ha! — and I always “go my own way if you will.” Trash is awesome to me because I love the songs. “Only My Heart Talkin’” is a great love song, a completely different type of power ballad. But, back to guests. I usually don’t care about guest stars on albums. I buy records because I want to hear the real band — not a slew of guests, you know?
Anso: Yeah. I’m not an Alice Cooper scholar, but I’ll wager that Trash is his sexiest record. It’s a bit uncomfortable to hear a 41-year old Coop describe passionate banging.
Allyson: As you know, my dear Anso, sexy is in the eyes of the beholder.
Anso: Hey, let’s talk about Trash‘s super-hit, “Poison.” Can you think of any single in history with such a memorably quirky riff? It’s awesome on its own and I love how they set it against different chords in the intro.
Allyson: So I’ve talked to Alice guitarist Keri Kelli a few times. Once I said I was frustrated trying to learn bass and guitar parts for some Alice songs. And Keri said something like, “Look, if you want to learn ‘Poison’ it’s just going to take awhile.” This frustrated me because I have little patience. I think I got off the phone with Keri, looked at the guitar and then sat down with a bag of chips or something. Anyway, yes, “Poison” is freaking epic. One of the best songs of the ’80s. Then again, Alice is a master. I love when the band performs “Poison” live. The crowd always goes batshit crazy.
Anso: What else makes you love this record?
Allyson: Hmm. It’s the sum of its parts I guess. I think all the songs fit well together, there’s not really a dud and the album helped push Alice to the top again. The cover photo is iconic. It was in magazines first and then Alice chose it as his cover — so I remember seeing the image of Alice everywhere as a kid. I had this instant connection to the record I suppose.
When you tune into the premiere broadcast of The Second Annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards tomorrow night on VH1 classic, you’ll see the final public appearance of our beloved Ronnie James Dio. You’ll also see Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, winner of roughly half of the meaningful awards, enjoying the metal community’s validation of their potentially dicey comeback effort, the magnificent Black Gives Way To Blue. You’ll see metal codgers like Rob Halford, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy bathe in much-deserved adulation. You’ll also see potentially ho-hum performances pumped up by mega-drummers: Rob Zombie with Joey Jordison (in his debut performance), Fear Factory with Gene Hoglan, Brian Posehn with John Tempesta (and Brett Anderson girl call me srsly) and Slash with Dave Grohl.
But at a mere 60 minutes, the broadcast can’t capture all of the April 8 event’s super moments and silly gaffes. Here’s a few things you won’t see:
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Gene Simmons has finally gotten into the insurance business. Chaim Witz has been exploring new and exciting ways to slap the KISS logo on any and all products for the last three decades, and at this point, his marketing and merchandising efforts have long since jumped the shark. I could come up with something witty, but that would just be a waste of time. Honestly, I’m curious why it took him so long to finally get involved in this market.
Mr. Simmons’s new group, Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy, was launched last month to tap into a lucrative demographic: entertainers, sports stars and other people with a net worth of $20 million or more who need a life-insurance policy of $10 million or greater. The firm’s founders, who include David R. Carpenter, formerly of insurance powerhouse Transamerica, believe there is big opportunity to sell jumbo insurance policies to rich people.
Yes, undoubtedly there is.
