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Yesterday word got out that Tom Morello was in New York to perform for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, and now, of course, there is video of that event, which you can check out below. There isn’t really all that much I can say about this, so I’ll just echo Vince’s words from yesterday: “God bless Tom Morello and the rest of the Ragers for never compromising their ideals.”
More after the jump.
It will probably not surprise you to learn that I’m a big fan of politically-themed talk shows that are hosted by sarcastic pricks and feature panels of people arguing and often insulting one another. And one of my favorite such shows is HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, which I watch religiously.
And I found this past Friday night’s episode especially fun, because one of the guests was none other than Tom Morello, who was ostensibly on the show to help promote his new solo outing as The Nightwatchman, World Wide Rebel Songs. Now, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Morello’s post-Rage Against the Machine output, but hearing him talk about the inspiration for this album (I won’t spoil it for you here) did make me wanna give it a second, and more attentive, listen. I know that anyone with political views like Morello’s will be a divisive figure, and I’m sure there are plenty of you who violently disagree with him; sometimes I think he may even be too left for me. But there’s no arguing that he’s not a smart dude with plenty of interesting things to say.
For some reason the episode doesn’t seem to be streaming on the show’s official website, but someone made a shitty rip for YouTube, so you can check out Morello’s part of the show in three sections below. And then praise him/tear into him in our comments section below.
I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as I put into trying to be sensitive to Hinder’s feelings.
We begin today’s cinemetal round-up with “Irresistible Force,” the first new video from Jane’s Addiction since whenever the last time they released a video was. The clip has some stuff going for it — like a lot of mostly-naked beautiful women, and a particularly funny moment, at the :54 second mark, when there’s some not-at-all-subtle vaginal imagery — but for the most part it’s pretty standard stoner stuff. The fact that the song is fairly boring doesn’t help.
If memory serves, the Spawn movie which came out in 1997 was pretty terrible, but we did get one great thing out of it: the soundtrack. It was pretty much like the Judgment Night soundtrack, only instead of combining metal bands with rap acts, it teamed up metal bands with electronica acts. And every song on it was innovative and amazing.
No, I’m totally kidding. The soundtrack sucked almost as bad as the movie.
…the fuck?
So the Times of Grace tour is now underway, and I don’t think I was alone in wondering if the band would playing any vintage Killswitch Engage material out on the road. I mean, it would make sense — 3/5ths of the KsE Alive or Just Breathing line-up is Times of Grace, and, clearly, this is the big selling point for the group. I mean, you don’t just start out headlining on your first tour unless you’re a supergroup or, in this case, an unofficial reunion.
But now reader Tyler Lesniewski has e-mailed us a link to the setlist from the band’s first live performance, and guess what? There’s not a single KsE song on it.
One of these men will not be on the new Kyuss album. Guess which one?
Kyuss Lives!, the ridiculously monikered Kyuss non-reunion which replaces Josh Homme with some dude no one has ever heard of, are apparently “thinking of doing another record,” according to this interview with vocalist John Garcia. I object to the use of the word “another” because in case these dudes haven’t noticed, they’ve never made a record before, but I’d like to think that the phrase “thinking of”* means “it’s not written in stone yet,” “there’s still time to stop the madness,” and “we said this to gauge the reaction of fans, possibly as represented by an incredibly smart, exceedingly handsome Jewish blogger from New York.”
So, assuming that Garcia was, indeed, trying to get a message to me to see what my thoughts were, I’d like to now respond by saying: I don’t think this is a good idea.
For whatever reason, I just haven’t gotten that excited about the Soundgarden reunion yet. Maybe it’s not “real” enough for me at this point; maybe when the band finally does a proper tour and I’m holding the ticket in my hand, I’ll suddenly be really, really stoked. Or maybe Chris Cornell has just pissed away all my good will towards him, and I’ll never care.
Whatever. Point being, I had no intention of checking out the band’s performance on Conan earlier this week, until I read Shane Mehling’s assertion on The Deciblog that guitarist Kim Thayil is so “fucking old” that “looks like Kim Thayil’s dad.” Say no more, Mr. Mehling. I love a good laugh at other people’s expense. Curiosity piqued!
The interwebs are all aflutter today because Dave Grohl has announced that his former Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic, is going to make a guest appearance on the new Foo Fighters album — which is also being produced by Garbage’s Butch Vig, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Produced Nevermind.” This will mark the first time Grohl and Novoselic have recorded with one another since Kurt Cobain injected himself with enough heroin to kill an elephant, and then stuck a shotgun in his mouth, just to make sure that medical science didn’t get any bright ideas.
Look: I know Nirvana were cool, and I know that Cobain’s premature passing means they get to stay cool forever and ever and ever because the dude didn’t get to grow up to be lame like Billy Corgan and Chris Cornell, but I really don’t see any reason to get excited about this. Novoselic was never a songwriter; he was never even a particularly distinctive bass player. Cobain was Cobain and Grohl certainly beat the ever-lovin’ shit outta his drums, but Nirvana pretty much could have swapped out Novoselic for another bassist at any point and not missed a beat. This song isn’t gonna sound like Nirvana — you’d need to re-animate Cobain to make that happen — it’s just gonna sound like Foo Fighters. I’d wager that the bass lines won’t even be that special, since, like I said, Novoselic’s playing never had much discernible personality. So you’re not even gonna get the “What might that sound like?” curiosity factor that you might get from, say, Dave Lombardo filling in for Lars Ulrich at a Metallica show, or Duff McKagan joining Jane’s Addiction. Creatively speaking, this reunion doesn’t amount to much more than a gimmick.
All of that being said… I’ll take any excuse to post the below video of Novoselic hitting himself in the head with his bass at the 1992 MTV VMAs while Grohl taunts Axl Rose from the stage. This has to be one of the five proudest moments in MTV’s history, right?
-AR
Ever seen Woody Allen’s Zelig? It’s a pseudo-documentary about a guy who immediately assumes the traits of whomever he’s with at the moment; put him in a room full of Chinese people and he’ll turn into a Chinese man, move him to a room full of Hasidim and he’ll suddenly appear to be Hasidic, and so on and so forth. It’s a(n obvious but still pretty funny) metaphor for a guy with no personality of his own.
Now, consider Slash. Guns N’ Roses folklore tells us that Slash is not the best judge of his own material, and often wanted to scrap some of Guns’ best songs; and, unfortunately, evidence suggests that this folklore is fact, and that Slash is a pretty ho-hum songwriter. Axl Rose has his legitimate insanity and over-sized, not entirely comprehensible artistic vision, but all Slash really seems to have is a desire to be like his heroes in Aerosmith and AC/DC, which is to say, a legacy act and purveyor of catchy but fairly middle-of-the-road rock. Consequently, a lot of the pressure on Slash-penned songs in the post-GN’R era is not just on the guitar playing of the Artist Formerly Known as Saul Hudson, but on the performances of whatever singer he’s working with at any given moment. Slash songs can be like underwritten roles in movies that way; you need the best character actors available to give them some personality, or they risk becoming boring.
Slash has personality (or at least persona) to burn, and it’s no shock that on Slash, his first solo record, he keeps up his up his end of the bargain in the guitar solo department. Despite the fact that he was never a revolutionary musician, Slash was always a very distinctive musician; a lot of people play the way he does, but no one sounds quite like him. But it is kind of a shock that on this, the album which is supposed to be a distinct and unique artistic statement outside the confines of his collaborations with various bands, Slash has very much allowed himself, like Zelig, to blend in with whomever was in the room at the moment.
Oh, never mind, it’s not an ad for Target. It’s a Cypress Hill video. Huh. Go figure.
I don’t know whether or not Morello co-wrote this song, “Rise Up,” but it sounds more like Rage Against the Machine than anything I’ve heard anyone do in years. And that includes the legions of RATM imitators. And, one way or the other, this is wwwwaaayyyy better than the cover of “Paradise City” the Cypress Hill dudes did with Slash.
Also, to answer your question, Cypress Hill, I can get pretty high. You?
-AR
So the Australian branch of iTunes has apparently uploaded thirty-second clips of all the songs from Slash’s forthcoming, self-titled solo album, and, of course, someone has uploaded all of those clips to YouTube. Gotta love the internet! So I thought we’d play one of our favorite games here at MetalSucks. It’s called “Let’s make premature judgments based on not very much actual music at all.” Listen to the clips in the video below, and then get my thoughts after the jump.
If you weren’t already excited for Iron Man 2, this oughta do the trick: our friends at Metal Insider report that Tom Morello has revealed via Twitter that none other than Tom Morello is working on the score for the film in conjunction with composer John Debney (who also did the music for director Jon Favreau’s Elf, Sin City, and a whole lotta other crap). They replace Ramin Djawadi, whose score for the original Iron Man was one of the least memorable things about that flick. (MI also points out that Morello played guitar on Djawadi’s score, and had a cameo as one of the terrorists Tony Stark offs in the cave scene. There’s something kinda ironic about that, given Morello’s political views, and the fact that the portrayal of said terrorists was cartoonish to be the point of being borderline racist, but I guess that’s a different conversation for a different time.)
This is in addition to the already-announced utilization of AC/DC on the IM2 soundtrack, as well as Lamb of God’s contribution of a new song to the movie tie-in video game. If there’s gonna be a more metal-friendly mainstream movie this year, I don’t know what it is.
Here’s the new trailer for Iron Man 2, which makes it look like it’s gonna kick all kinds of ass:
-AR
Unless your New Years Eve revelry landed you in county lock-up or somewhere else without Internet access (or you just own an iPhone), you’ve likely heard the fantastic albeit unsurprising news that SOUNDGARDEN HAS REUNITED. Chris Cornell announced it precisely at the stroke of midnight (Eastern Standard Time) via his often bizarre and unintentionally hilarious Twitter account:
The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again! www.soundgardenworld.com
So Soundgarden’s back together. What the hell does that mean?
The good thing about being Rolling Stone is that even though you haven’t been relevant in twenty years, there’s some prestige attached to your name, so you can get famous people whose publicists don’t know any better to do shit for you. The glorified glossy toilet paper’s latest coup is getting a bunch of celebs to list their favorite albums and songs of the decade.
I imagine this will cause a million times more arguing than the lists published by any magazine or website staff, because if frail egos collapse under the weight of differing opinions from writers and other “experts,” than I can only imagine how people will react to finding out that Kirk Hammett likes Sinéad O’Connor more than Meshuggah.
Check out some of the lists from Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Tom Morello after the jump.
While there are more obvious statements than “supergroups more often than not fail to meet our expectations” – “fire will ruin your house” and “Guns N’ Roses have gone through numerous line-up changes” are tied with it – there aren’t many. And yet, with the announcement of a formation of one, excitement is usually the first emotion called upon. And while saying that supergroup prospects should immediately be met with caution is like saying a new car should be approached with the attitude that you will most likely wrap it around a tree, the failure/success ratio is sadly stacked toward the former. However, this usually isn’t the fault of the uber-collective, but our own gargantuan expectations assuming that this new band featuring members of other bands we like will be as good as all the involved bandmembers main projects COMBINED. And while there have been some out and out failures as of late (cough Greymachine cough), the other two most notable supergroups that reared their heads this year – scraggly doom metal gathering of titans Shrinebuilder and semi-unkempt gathering of some dudes from your uncle’s favorite bands Them Crooked Vultures – have gotten an unfair rap in the wake of their respective debuts’ releases. While to say the bands’ detractors dislike their albums because they don’t rival Neurosis, Sleep, the Melvins, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, or Led fucking Zeppelin is unfairly ignoring their actual grievances, to write off either Shrinebuilder or Them Crooked Vultures would be a damn shame, in that, while not reinventing any sort of wheel, in a year where the biggest supergroup commercially was Chickenfoot, a solid doom metal album and a solid stoner rock album are two pretty significant things to dismiss.
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.
Click to read more…
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.
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.
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?]
