MetalSucks

“Make love not war sounds so absurd to me.” But not as absurd as the idea of Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt touring with Rihanna, and trying to pass it off as “a high-energy experience” that really fits “‘my’ style.” Because “Umbrella-ella-ella” really requires someone who can shred. I’d almost have more respect for him if he just said “The Extreme reunion tour didn’t pay as well as I hoped and I got rent to pay.”

The announcement follows Bettencourt’s cameo on How I Met Your Mother, which is being called “the best show on television” by people who can’t find their remote and are too lazy to change the channel manually.

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The Starbucks Incident

Yes, I am going to continue to bitch about Slash. I understand that Slash is not Jimi Hendrix but this might be the single biggest betrayal to my formative years since Metallica released everything they’ve released from Load on, and I need to mourn.

So. Some lady says that the following singers are all on Slash’s new solo album, How Could Taking My Cues from Carlos Santana Possibly Go Wrong? I have added my own thoughts because that’s what we do around here. Click to read more…

Scott Weiland’s been out of Velvet Revolver for quite some time now, and there’s still no word on their search for a new singer. I had assumed that they hadn’t announced anyone because they just couldn’t find someone famous enough. I mean, let’s be real – they’re not gonna hire some unknown. If they did, they’d fail to be a supergroup – they’s just be Slash’s Snakepit III. As it stands, Slash doesn’t know Dave Kushner’s name (he repeatedly identifies his co-guitarist as “Dave Kirshner” in his autobiography), and he’s known Kushner since they were kids; what the fuck would he do with an unknown singer?

I guess there must be some other issue, though – ’cause Corey Taylor, front man for Slipknot and Stone Sour, recently revealed that he tried out for the spot:

“I had a meeting with those guys, we did some demos together, and it just didn’t work — for whatever reason… It was just really cool. It was one of those things where it’s like I could have got to jam with legends, man, in my opinion. But, you know, it was cool, and I still know those guys, I still hang out with them, and I still have nothing but respect.”

So I gotta wonder why this didn’t work out. Taylor’s voice is comparable to Weiland’s, he’s well-known, he’d probably bring in some young kids who might otherwise not give a shit about Guns Without Rose, and he’s a very charismatic and entertaining band leader. So did his personality just not gel with that of the dudes in VR? Were they worried that with two other bands, he was already over-committed? Did Roadrunner (the label that distributes both Slipknot and Stone Sour) put the kibosh on the whole thing, as they allegedly did when Taylor almost replaced John Bush in Anthrax? We might never know, but I find the whole thing pretty curious.

Weigh in with your thoughts on Taylor as the new Axl Weiland below. And while you’re pontificating, enjoy this bootleg video of Taylor performing “It’s So Easy” with Slash. It might be the closest we ever get to seeing  a Taylor-fronted VR.

-AR

So not only is Rose and whatever four to sixty-two musicians he’s calling “Guns N’ Roses” these days really returning to wreak more havoc upon Canada, but it looks like one of the tour stops will be Montreal.

Anyone remember what happened the last time GN’R played Montreal?

The above news report is completely correct, of course. The rioting was caused by the injuries sustained by James Hatfield (NOT Hetfield), and not because after Hatfield sustained said injuries, Axl Rose failed to play a complete show. Sure sure.

Anyway, dates after the jump. Here Today… Gone to Hell, which is about as close to an official fan site as GN’R has these days, says the band currently consists of guitarists Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Dj Ashba, and Richard Fortus, bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Frank Ferrer, and keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman. Hey, some of those dudes have actually played on a Guns N’ Rose record!

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Depending on who you believe, Axl Rose has been directly or indirectly responsible for four riots during the course of his career, and two of them were in Canada – one in Montreal and one in Vancouver.

So the news that Rose may announce Canadian tour dates (or at least a date) this Monday is somewhat unsettling.

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With Velvet Revolver on what is starting to look like a permanent hiatus, Slash has been off recording a Santana-style all-star solo album with lots and lots of famous collaborators. It’s actually kind of a brilliant idea, and you wonder why he didn’t do that instead of Slash’s Snakepit Mach 2, a fun band that was really never gonna pay off for him.

Now Slash has announced his first solo offering: a two-track Japanese (and thus “internet,” whether Saul Hudson likes it or not) single called Sahara, which will offer both that song, with some Japanese dude I’ve never heard of on vocals, and… a re-recording of “Paradise City” with vocals by Cypress Hill and Fergie.

Fergie.

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Aaaaannnnddd my heart is broken.

Blabbermouth reports that Independiente and the Domino Recording Company are suing Guns N’ Roses for ripping off two songs by Ulrich Schnauss for the song “Riad N’ the Bedouins,” which appears on the band’s forever-in-the-making flop of epic of proportions, Chinese Democracy. Now, a new law suits against Axl Rose and GN’R is filed approximately once an hour – Rose has even blamed said law suits in the past for being part of the reason for CD’s delay (as if) – so, normally, this would not be news.

Except that I’m 99.9% positive that Schnauss is correct, and he was ripped-off.

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Sebastian Bach, who is perpetually the most entertaining former rock star in all of hair metaldom, is going to be on yet another fucking reality show – this time VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, where former “stars” purportedly go to shed some weight, but actually go because their parents didn’t love them enough, causing them to have no sense of self-worth whatsoever if they’re not constantly in the spotlight. Although a VH1 reality show strikes me as a pretty dim spotlight. But whatever.

Bach will be joined by that dude who knocked up Britney Spears, that chick from Charles in Charge I always used to think about while jerking off, crackhead Bobby Brown, and a bunch of people I’ve never heard of.

I guess the last time I actually saw Bach up close was in 2006 when he was hanging from Axl Rose’s nuts all over the world, but in all honesty, the guy looked like he was in pretty good shape. I mean, I’m sure his liver is failing and his septum has been burned-through with coke, but he wasn’t fat or anything. If anyone has seen him more recently and can tell me I’m wrong, please do so. Nothing would make me happier than to learn that Baz had pulled a Brando.

Celebrity Fit Club will start airing in February 2010, by which time I will most certainly have forgotten about it.

-AR

I found the following quote from a recent interview with Gene Simmons to be (inadvertently) hilarious:

“This is electric church, and no one on that stage — me or anyone else — wears the makeup and platform heels by some kind of birthright. This ain’t Europe; just ’cause your dad was king doesn’t make you the king. You’ve got to earn it. And when you defile KISS, you should be thrown out.”

Gene is referring to dudes like Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and Vinnie Vincent, of course. But I have to wonder what he thinks they did that was worse than this:

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I don’t know how I missed this, but Bruce Springsteen turned sixty yesterday. SIXTY!!! And while The Boss obviously isn’t metal, he is really awesome. And far be it from me to miss an opportunity to post a video from my youth.

So here’s Springsteen doing The Beatles’ “Come Together” with a certain Hero Long Since Dead for the 1994 Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction of Elton John. For those of you who don’t remember, this really did seem cool fifteen years ago.

-AR

I became a fan of The Smashing Pumpkins the minute I heard “Drown” (or was it, “Cherub Rock?”), and as such I have followed the work of Billy Corgan throughout the lifespan of that band, not to mention his endeavors both with Zwan and on his own. Though I scoffed at the irrational backlash that accompanied the 2005 reunion sans James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky, I still have to concede that 2007’s Zeitgeist was the weakest Pumpkins release ever, and perhaps the worst album of Corgan’s career to date. The commercial failure of that record and the recent departure of longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin raised questions regarding the band’s future, though Corgan seems to have pulled a Page Hamilton (or perhaps an Axl Rose), carrying on with hired guns and invited guests. For you see, he now intends to release 44 new Smashing Pumpkins songs online for free. In the words of my beloved Internets: DO NOT WANT.

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I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve actually learned a lot from metal. For example, when I was a kid, I heard Axl Rose use the word “cunt” in the song “Bad Obsession” and subsequently asked my dad, “What’s a cunt?” To which he responded, “Your mother’s sister.” And I instantly knew exactly what a cunt was.

Metal continues to educate me every day, and this morning has been no different. Marduk have a new song, “Phosphorus Redeemer,” streaming on their MySpace page, and while I initially thought the title was just a nonsense combination of two words, it turns out that Marduk didn’t invent the phrase. Amazing!

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I’ve gotten multiple e-mails from peeps about this interview The Eagles of Death Metal front dude Jesse Hughes just gave to the Montreal Mirror.

Now, I should preface this by saying I’ve heard very little of TEODM’s music, and what I hear didn’t do anything for me. But, clearly Hughes is a funny guy.

But the statements everyone is harping on seem kinda… well… shrug. Read for yourself:

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Last week, Elise at Reign in Blonde wrote a piece entitled “TOP 5 SONGS I WOULD PROBABLY USE AS MY STRIPPER SONG.”

Improbably enough, this led to a stoned think-session where I came up with a list of the top five songs I would probably use as my own stripper song. ‘Cause I know you all wanna see me strip so badly.

Okay, here we go:

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I imagine that when the members of, say, Daath get together for rehearsal, no one expects to be paid for said rehearsal. They’re all dudes who are friends – some of them even grew up together, if I’m not mistaken – and it’s not like they’re making squillions of dollars playing metal. Rehearsal, then, has to be viewed as an investment – get better as a band, put on a good show for the crowd, and, knock on wood, your band will get bigger and the money will come.

I also imagine it’s different being in someone’s solo band. If your boss is Ozzy Osbourne or Axl Rose or Dave Mustaine or Trent Reznor, there’s going to be a lot of money involved, and your creative input is going to be somewhat limited (I imagine). I know for a fact that the members of nu-GN’R are paid an annual retainer, just in case they’re needed; I assume members of certain other solo bands are given a similar (if perhaps less lucrative) deal. And actors definitely get paid to rehearse; granted, the rehearsal rate is less than the performance rate, but the unions insist that if you want an actor there for rehearsals, he or she must be compensated.

Now. Sebastian Bach’s record sales obviously are not what they used to be. But the guy still opens for arena bands, routinely plays large festivals, and, by his own admission, gets paid very large sums of money to appear on crappy reality shows. Doing something like, say, paying for his band’s member’s gas so they can get to rehearsal seems reasonable, especially when you’re talking about dudes like Metal Mike Chlasciak, who, even if he’s not exactly Zakk Wylde, has played with dudes like Halford, and is definitely a “known entity.”

Well, Baz disagrees. He’s looking for a new guitarist and a new bassist, and, more specifically, he’s looking for someone to do it for bubcus. Check out this statement from the Old Dude Gone Wild:

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When I first heard that Courtney Love was going to release her long-delayed solo record under the Hole name, I considered it “a huge fuck you to co-founder Eric Erlandson.” Though the argument has been made that the influence and involvement of Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan may have had more to do with the band’s successes than the work of its official membership, I wondered how it was even permissible for her to utilize the name. Surely there had to be legal hurdles to be dealt with that couldn’t be dismissed without consent from former members. (I mean, Axl Rose effectively destroyed Guns N’ Roses by compelling his bandmates to relinquish all rights to the name.) So I’ve been waiting for Erlandson or someone from Hole’s management to comment on Love’s unilateral decision to shamelessly cash-in on the Hole brand. Well, at last, he has:

Furthermore, guitarist Erlandson insists a contract Love signed with him in 2002 bans her from using the name Hole for any future ventures, unless he’s involved. He tells Spin magazine, “We have a contract. She signed a contract with me when we decided to break up the band, which was like 2002 or something, so I really don’t have comment on it except that I know my part in that band. The way I look at it, there is no Hole without me. To put it blunt. Just on a business level… Somebody told me (about Love’s plans) and it just sounds like something… it just sounds like the usual. I love her a lot and I wish her the best, and I’m open to discussions regarding the real Hole, and if she has a solo album together, I think that’s great. I think she should finish it and put it out and do that.”

Of course, Love has responded to this seemingly sound logic with her usual grace, tact, and impeccable grammar… via Twitter.
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Annoying as he is, I’d love to talk metal with Moby someday. For one thing, he was ever-so-briefly the producer of Chinese Democracy, and I have a feeling he has some great Axl Rose stories.

For another thing, he was the guest editor for magnetmagazine.com last week, and he had some interesting things to say about Gwar:

Have you ever seen Gwar live? No? Rectify this immediately. The best live band ever. Really.

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There’s something reassuring about knowing that people one sometimes considers cooler than him or herself were not, in fact, always so cool.

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Paleozoic UK-based periodical NME reported today that Courtney Love will release her long-delayed second solo record as a Hole album. Apparently, none of the band’s other members will actually perform on the record, save for a possible appearance on backing vocals by Hole’s last bassist Melissa auf der Maur. With a brazen move that would make Burton and Dino blush, the Gratest Bloggre On Earht has effectively delivered a huge fuck you to co-founder Eric Erlandson by co-opting the name in an attempt to save her perpetually disintegrating career.

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I was a little taken aback when I was this editorial in the New York Times this morning, written by former Guns N’ Roses/current Velvet Revolver bassist/current Loaded front man, Duff McKagan. Not so much because I was surprised to see that Duff is literate – he has a column in Playboy – but because the byline features his birth name, Michael McKagan.

Maybe it’s wrong of me to assume that the Times was being snotty – perhaps it was his idea to use his real name in the Paper of Record – but the whole thing is just kind of a head-scratcher.

No word yet on whether or not Axl Rose will now start writing for the Washington Post under the name “Bill Bailey.”

-AR

P.S. I interviewed Duff back in April. The MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys have been dragging their feet getting that shit transcribed, but at some point, you’ll get to read it.