MetalSucks

Yesterday I wrote a pretty harsh criticism of God Save RockandRoll, a new blog written by the wife of Atreyu’s Brandon Saller, Ashley Jean.

Well, I guess word got back to Ashley Jean in record time: as of this morning, she has removed her improper French translation of the phrase “God Save Rock and Roll” (why oh why didn’t I take a screen cap?!?!), and has responded to some of the things I said in my blog – without directly naming MetalSucks, natch. Here’s an excerpt:

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Alright, so reader C.J. Altman follows Atreyu drummer/auto-tuner Brandon Saller on Twitter I guess. And C.J. tipped us off that Saller tweeted about God Save RockandRoll, a blog run by his wife, who is apparently named Ashley Jean and looks kinda like Saller if Saller looked like a dude. But I’m already getting off-topic.

So. Ashley Jean’s blog, God Save RockandRoll. It’s not just a blog – it’s a blog with a purpose, a theme, kinda like this one you’re reading right now. Here’s an excerpt from Ashley Jean’s first post, which is a de facto mission statement:

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So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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The line-up for the 2010 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (Jesus I hate typing all that shit) has been announced. See who’ll be playing one of the summer’s biggest metal tours after the jump, along with my snarky commentary, of course…

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Atreyu drummer / vocalist Brandon Saller has announced he’ll be playing a solo show in Anaheim this January. If badly out-of-key vocals are your thing, then I recommend you attend this show. Exactly what this show will entail, I’m not certain… continuous drum solos? Brandon on an acoustic?

Also, what the fuck is going on in the above photo? Who needs 3 fucking bass drums?

Slow news day.

-VN

Them Crooked Vultures debuted in the Top 20… how ’bout that. Not surprising given the cast of characters, I suppose. MetalSucks guest blogger Devin mothafuckin’ Townsend debuted in the Top 200, while a few other metal releases maintained. It’s all holiday shlock and best-of compilations from hereon out.

[UPDATE: Devin will be calling in to the Metal Injection Livecast tonight at 8pm EST! Make sure you tune in; get details here.]

Soundscan shite after the jump…

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Anyone remember this from a couple of years back?

Well that Taco Bell isn’t too far from the Mansion, and I’m ashamed to admit, but sometimes, in moments of stoned weakness, I purchased food there. But ever since that little incident, I haven’t eaten at a Taco Bell; I can’t. I know that ALL fast food is crap, but come ON, a man has limits.

Still, I guess it’s nice of them to start this whole “Feed the Beat” program, in which they basically give touring bands $500 worth of diarrhea food for free. And now Metal Insider is reporting that a handful of metal bands – including Atreyu, Iwrestledabearonce, Whitechapel, Municipal Waste and Earthless – are rumored to have been selected for the offer.

And as Metal Insider says, “tour support is tour support” – so I don’t blame the bands for participating. And the dudes in The Waste are probably fucked up half the time anyways, so they won’t be able to tell the difference. Meanwhile, Atreyu have been spewing crap forth from their mouths for years, so they might as well put some back into their mouths for a change.

-AR

P.S. I wanna give extra credit to Metal Insider, not just for originally reporting on this story, but for coming up with a headline that is vastly superior to my own. Nice work, Bram!

The hype around Congregation of the Damned is that it’s a return to Atreyu’s older metalcore (excuse me, “metallic rock”) outings. This is bullshit. Congregation is another ham fisted arena rock failure posing as one of Atreyu’s metalcore albums.

Now, inevitably, some punk is gonna come around here and say “Atreyu’s sound could never stay the same forever, and why would they want it to, and blah blah blah, pee.” To which I say: well, I’m not the one going around telling people this album is going to sound nothing like Lead Sails and a Plug-in Vagina. The dudes from Atreyu are.

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Luckily for Five Finger Death Punch, being total assholes who completely lack any musical talent isn’t hurting their record sales: their new album, War is the Answer, is apparently going to sell to somewhere between 35,000 – 40,000 copies in its first week of release… and that’s just here in the U.S. That probably sounds like a lot of units moved, and you’re right. It is a lot of fucking units moved. To put it in perspective with the sales of some awesome albums that came out this week…

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Last week Vince and I guested on Noisecreep’s “Creep Show” video podcast. You can watch the episode below.

In addition to the regular “Creep Show” gang – Noisecreep editor Seth Werkheiser, news columnist and writer Chris Harris, and Revolver senior writer and Noisecreep scribe Jon Wiederhorn – we joined call-in guests Brandon Saller and Alex Varwhateverthefuck from Atreyu. Because we were guests in someone else’s house, we decided to be polite and play nice with the Atreyu dudes… so apologies to anyone who was hoping we’d get into it with the metalcore (excuse me… “metallic rock”) band.

We had a lot of fun – in fact this was Vince’s second time on the show – and hope to visit with the Noisecreep family again real soon. Enjoy.

-AR

This past Friday Axl and I participated in another of Noisecreep.com’s “Creep Cast” video podcasts (you can see my last appearance on the Creep Cast here). The guest artists of the week were Atreyu’s Alex Varkatzas and Brandon Saller, who both called in and participated in the entire half-hour show. It was kinda awkward for us (as I’m sure it was for them), but we all played nice and had a good time. The podcast will be posted later in the week, at which point you’ll definitely see it posted here.

So now that the niceties are out of the way, we can go back to making fun of Atreyu again! MetalSucks Maniac Tom Fassnidge sent in this clip of Atreyu bassist Marc McKnight dropping throwing his bass as the result of an exaggerated stage move at a 2008 gig in Biloxi, MS. It’s quite funny, and the crowd certainly seemed to enjoy it; McKnight seemed to have a good sense of humor about it too, throwing his hands up in the air in defeat and waiting on the side of the stage until his techs recovered his lost axe.

-VN

So. Atreyu have a new album, Congregation of the Damned, coming out October 27, and the band has made it perfectly clear that they intend for said album to be a return to form after the lackluster results of their sell-out arena rock effort, Lead Sails and a Who Gives a Fuck? Now they’ve debuted a new song, “Stop! Before It’s Too Late and We’ve Destroyed it All,” on their MySpace. Are we convinced that the Atreyu of yore are about to make a return? Can any band that’s not Faith No More get away with having a exclamation point in a song title? Do we even care?

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We do our best to bring you new music from new bands you may actually like, but sometimes it’s difficult to fit it in given all the crap that comes across our plates daily, such as Emmure selling branded boxing gloves and Atreyu performing a shitty new song. So, here we go. Two links, no descriptions; let us know what you think.

• Struck by Lightning
• Into the Presence

Prediction: not nearly as many of you will care/comment as you did about either of the two above-mentioned articles. Prove me wrong.

-VN

An e-mail I received from long time reader Seveword earlier today:

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Longtime MS Maniac Kye just sent us the link to this video of Atreyu performing a new song, “Bleeding is a Luxury.” I don’t think I really care, but, y’know. It’s news. I think. Whatever.

Atreyu have a new album coming out, and I literally can’t be bothered to Google the name. The word Damned is in it, I think. It comes out, like, whenever.

-AR

We’ve worked pretty hard to achieve our title of the “Most Negative Site in Metal.” And we’re proud of that title. We’ve earned it, damn it.

So we’re jealous that those fuckers at The Deciblog, and not us, thought of this brilliant idea:

THE DECIBLOG SCREAMO COVER ELIMINATION BRACKET.

Luckily, they invited us to participate.

Here’s the description of how it’s gonna work:

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After the super-slick piece of polished turd that was Lead Sails Paper Anchor didn’t launch Atreyu to super-stardom, the band made it clear that they wanted to get back to their roots with their new album. In fact, here’s a recent quote from singer Alex Varkatzas where he uses that very phrase:

“We started as a heavy hardcore band, and I think we’ve gotten away from that in recent years. The last record, for example, showcased us as a rock band with heavy parts. With this record, we want to return to our roots.”

And here’s Varkatzas from the latest issue of Revolver:

“Without trying to throw anybody under the bus, we looked back at our last record, and it wasn’t 100 percent the way we envisioned it.”

And then guitarist Dan Jacobs does throw somebody under the bus – specifically, producer John “Good Charlotte” Feldman:

“We let him get his hands a little too deep into the project… It made us uncomfortable in trying to express ourselves about what we wanted. He’s a big-time producer dude who’s had much success, so we were like, He must know what he’s talking about. What do we know? We’ve never had a gold or platinum record.”

So now that Atreyu have established that they want to get away from the gloss and “return to our roots,” what would you think is the best way of achieving that goal? A tour with Hollywood Undead? Yeah, that wouldn’t be my career advice, either.

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Just yesterday I saw a kid an Atreyu shirt and thought to myself… “Where the fuck has THAT band been lately?”

Metal Hammer doth answer my query today; apparently the band is in the studio with producer Bob Marlette, who, it should be noted, is not only a producer but a talented rock songwriter (Hollywood Records A&R exec to Atreyu: “Last record flopped. We’re getting you songwriting help. Deal with it.”)

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I can’t believe that there’s going to be a new Hellyeah album. I honestly thought we’d be rid of this insipid band after one phoned-in cash-in. I guess I don’t have any real reason to be too upset though, as not only will I never ever never listen to this record, but I honestly don’t know anyone else who ever will either.

In any case, here are some things I’d rather hear than new “music” from Hellyeah:

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…don’t.

We still haven’t heard the full album, The High End of Low, but the band has sent out a six song sampler, featuring three songs we’ve already heard and three brand spankin’ new ones. And while the songs aren’t terrible, exactly, they certainly don’t sound anything like the band that made Antichrist Superstar or, um, anything else from the original Twiggy Ramirez-era.

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