MetalSucks

Some months back, Chris Cornell took the first step to undo the self-inflicted damage caused by his god-awful Timbaland-produced solo album Scream: he re-recorded one of its songs as a straightforward soft rock tune. Since then, the former Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman has taken some considerable steps towards restoring his rocker reputation, including performing John Lennon’s “Imagine” on the September 11th episode of The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien and unexpectedly reuniting grunge rock one-off Temple Of The Dog at a recent Pearl Jam concert.

Now comes news that the much maligned Scream will receive a full-blown “rework” to better reflect the rest of Cornell’s easily digested radio-friendly solo discography. Though, Cornell has yet to make any public statement about this, the existence of another re-recorded Scream cut says it all. Listen to this new version of “Never Far Away” and imagine just how positively banal Scream (Naked) will ultimately sound.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is simply irresistible. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Tonight, Gavin Rossdale will be playing New York’s Gramercy Theatre as part of a May/June U.S. tour supporting his 2008 solo effort Wanderlust. Those of you familiar with this record or its corresponding singles know that the former Bush frontman has departed significantly from the raucous yet melodic post-grunge of his old band, opting for a softer, essentially adult contemporary sound not entirely dissimilar to Chris Cornell’s post-Audioslave offering Carry On. While this description likely wont appeal to you metal maniacs (I sure as hell didn’t buy it), here are a few reasons why you should load up on alcohol and catch one of the upcoming dates.
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Though recently convicted of murder, Phil Spector is regarded as one of the greatest music impresarios of the 20th century. His “Wall Of Sound” production style made him stand out from the pack, though the final results were not always met with appreciation by the artists with which he worked–perhaps the most noteworthy of these dissatisfied parties being The Beatles. Paul McCartney in particular loathed Spector’s approach on Let It Be, and a very different version of the album appeared in 2003. Whether or not such a revision will occur with Chris Cornell’s Timbaland-produced Scream remains to be seen, but an undeniably rock-centric version of his latest single certainly raises the question.

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Speaking of Chris Cornell’s epic fail…

You may remember that Trent Reznor took a shot at Cornell over Twitter last month. Not content to leave “Fuck You” enough alone, Reznor has now launched what is pretty much the funniest, if not most convincing, April Fool’s prank of the year, offering an alleged download of a new album, The Strobe, on the NIN website. Here’s a description of the album:

To download NIN’s new full-length album Strobe Light, PRODUCED BY TIMBALAND, enter a valid email address in the fields below. A download link will be sent to you immediately. Your credit card will be charged $18.98 plus a $10 digital delivery convenience fee. Your files will arrive as windows media files playable on quite a few players with your name embedded all over them just in case you lose them. You will also receive an exclusive photo and a free email account with our partner Google’s Gmail service.

Your email will be kept confidential and will not be used for spam, unless we can make some money selling it.

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OK, so far it seems like a one-off thing, but how incredibly awesome must it have been for Seattle concertgoers to witness 3/4 of Soundgarden reunited onstage together with Tad Doyle this past Tuesday night? (Thanks to fellow twitterer Mark Carrass for alerting me to this. Social networking fucking rules.) Sure, the (literally) massive grunge veteran doesn’t have the vocal range of Chris Cornell, but watching this sweet video footage of the band playing “Nothing To Say” makes it evident that that’s beside the point. You wont have to dig much deeper on YouTube to catch the clip for “Spoonman” featuring former Cornell cohort Tom Morello on rhythm guitar. Fortunately, no Audioslave songs were performed.

Mr. Cornell could not be reached for comment (I tried!), as he is currently in Chile in support of his latest solo album which nobody seems to like.

-GS

[Gary Suarez feels as if a weight has been lifted. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Headbanger’s Blog just alerted me to the fact that Trent Reznor allegedly left the following message on Twitter:

“You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly YOU feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell’s record? Jesus.”

All I have to say is this:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

As you were.

-AR

P.S. I know what you’re thinking: “What the fuck does that picture of Eliza Dushku have to do with Trent Reznor or Chris Cornell?” And the answer is, as far as I can tell, nothing. I did a Google image search for “Trent Reznor” “Chris Cornell” in hopes of finding a photo of the two singers in friendlier times, and instead the picture of Dushku sticking out her chest came up. And since she’s really hot, I thought, hey, why the heck not?

Let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoy Timbaland. His work with Ludacris, Jay-Z, and especially Missy Elliot has yielded great, forward-thinking results for his genre of choice. Yes, metal faithful, I think Justin Timberlake’s work with him is damn fine pop music as well. However, Timbaland’s best work has been within the confines of pop music, and I have yet to have a problem with that. His first foray into rock – or rock music as I (and many others, in that his work with No Doubt, Duran Duran, and OneRepublic haven’t exactly strayed far from the bands’ roots) know it is a spectacular, bordering on legendary, misfire. Chris Cornell – Soundgarden’s former golden-throated front man that has spent the better part of this decade coasting with Audioslave – picked perhaps the worst partner for his gravelly shout on his latest (even terribly titled) solo album, Scream. And though I am far from one to decry someone’s sense of artistic exploration, I must say that this one is hilariously misguided. The only thing keeping this album from being a so-horrifically-bad-it’s-good triumph is the familiar sound of Cornell’s shriek over a terribly mismatched backing track, a ploy seemingly utilized for the sake of a desperate stab at commercial relevancy. He’s a long way from Louder than Love, Badmotorfinger, and Superunknown, and it’s hard to see how he’d be able to make his way back.

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Can Chris Cornell please take his midlife crisis out of the public eye? If the guy wants to drive a sports car and fuck an eighteen year old, that’s between him and his psyche, but why does he feel the need to foist his desperate attempts to remain relevant upon his loyal fans?

Mere months after the announcement that Cornell was working with Timbaland comes the news that the once-great rock singer has now written a song for American Idol winner David Cook. The press release forwarded to us by MetalSucks Maniac “Porkspam” didn’t feature a comment from Cornell himself, I imagine because even he knows there’s nothing he can say at this point that won’t come across as total bullshit. ‘Cause while I don’t know Cook’s other “work,” I do know that anyone and everyone who has ever won American Idol is bankrupt artistically, spiritually, ethically, and in every other way imaginable. If you simply love to sing, you can do that in the shower; people go on Idol ’cause they wanna be famous so badly they don’t care if they have to sign their soul away (And I’ve see the contract Idol contestants have to sign – you might as well allow the show’s producers to surgically attach marionette strings to your arms and legs.).

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People Magazine is reporting that Chris Cornell’s (ex-Soundgarden, ex-Audioslave) third solo album will be produced by hip-hop guru Timbaland (Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, etc). Said Timbaland, “This is the best work I’ve done in my career,” and said Cornell, “This is the most excited I’ve been about an album in years. The music is natural, not self-conscious … open.” Timbaland said he is currently mixing the album and hopes to release it within a month (!).

This is either going to be the worst rap/rock combination since Limp Bizkit and Method Man’s “N 2 together now” (confession: I liked this song when it came out. It was still 10x better than any proper Limp Bizkit songs) or the most genius collaboration since Mike Patton and Dan the Automator. Or it could just sound like an ordinary rock record… and be mostly uninteresting like Cornell’s last effort.

-VN

You may or may not have heard in the past week about the fact that the Writer’s Guild of America – the union of writers for film and television – is on strike (you can find excellent ongoing coverage here). The mass media isn’t giving the strike much coverage because, well, the mass media is largely owned by the same conglomerates that the writer’s are striking against. See, the gist of the conflict is this: right now, when you a buy a DVD, the writer of whatever film or tv program is on said DVD gets about four cents, and the writers would like a raise so they make a whopping eight cents on each DVD; furthermore, writers currently aren’t paid when their work is streamed on a network website (usually complete with paid commercials) or downloaded on iTunes, which is to say: they’re not being paid for their work. Of course, GE and Time Warner and Viacom don’t want you to see it that way; they want you to think that the writers are greedy assholes and they want you to be upset that by the end of November, there basically won’t be anything on tv save for re-runs and reality shows (You won’t feel the effect in movie theaters until about 2009, when every shitty script the studios rushed into production to beat the strike is released. Seriously: the last time Hollywood thought there was gonna be a writer’s strike, Fox immediately gave a green light to… the re-make of Planet of the Apes. Chew on that.).

ANYWAY, leave it our favorite heavy metal crusader, Tom Morello, to take a stand for the writers, joining picketers at last week’s rally outside Fox. Video below:

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-AR

The Pulse of Radio reports [via Blabbermouth]: Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan says that he recently worked on a new song with drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford of Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine. Although Wilk and Commerford were rumored to have played on Keenan’s upcoming Puscifer album, the singer told The Pulse of Radio that the collaboration took a somewhat different shape. “They found themselves not working with (singer Chris) Cornell after the last Audioslave record and they wanted to know if I was interested in starting a band. And I said ‘No, I’ve got this other thing going on and two other bands to boot.’ But what I suggested to them was that they should start their own band and have me sing a song, and have some other singers sing a song. I think on some level they agreed, and so that’s what we kind of did. I went in and we wrote a song together and right now they’re currently trying to record that song, and I’ll go sing on it.”

Audioslave was enough. And now this? Do we really need another bad supergroup collaboration? Do we really need ANOTHER project that will delay the making of more Tool music??

-VN