Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
We haven’t done one one of these all summer, but we came up with a fun one for this week:
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PLAY ANY METAL BAND/MUSICIAN SOME OF THEIR MUSIC AND/OR SHOW THEM PHOTOS/VIDEOS OF THEMSELVES FROM THEIR FUTURE (OUR PRESENT), WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
Even if I haven’t exactly been thrilled with Slash’s post-Guns N’ Roses output, I never thought his guitar playing got bad; listening to No More Tears over the weekend, I was struck (again) by the fact that Zakk Wylde’s playing has become a parody of itself, but Slash still seems to have an endless arsenal of killer guitar solos left in him. If the dude could just get Izzy Stradlin to write him some decent songs, I have little doubt that the man would be able to turn me back into a fanboy faster than you can say “Saul Hudson.”
Case in point: “Kick it Up a Notch,” a new song Slash has recorded with a couple of cartoon characters. And, no, I don’t mean Axl Rose and Scott Weiland.
Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 11:40am by Axl Rosenberg
Bill Bailey is a British comedian with whom I’m not familiar… in fact, the first thing I thought when reader Charles Farmer sent us a link to the below video was that the video was going to be Axl Rose-related (Rose’s real name is William Bailey, in case ya didn’t know).
It has nothing to do with The Ginger One, though, and everything to do with Metallica. I don’t think there will be much entertainment value if I give the whole video away, so you should really just watch and enjoy for yourself.
Not bad, eh? Bicycle horns > Hetfield’s actual vocals, if you ask me…
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 at 3:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
In 2006, Axl Rose’s Nu-GN’R played what was then their first show in almost four years at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. Rose had recently made a surprise appearance on The Eddie Trunk Show*, dropping in after a texting session with Bach, whom he had not seen in many years. So at this first Hammerstein show, Rose brought out Bach, and they did a duet of “My Michelle,” and, of course, the crowd went totally apeshit.
Then they did it again for the next three nights the band played at the same venue. And then they did it again at almost every single Guns N’ Roses show since. And then Axl Rose made a guest appearance on Bach’s album, and then Bach made a guest appearance on Chinese Democracy. I mean, these guys sure did beat that gimmick until it was dead, and then they continued to beat it, just so its mother wouldn’t be able to give it an open casket funeral.
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 at 3:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Star Wars and Guns N’ Roses both have a special spot reserved in my geekiest of geeky heart, and probably for similar reasons: Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in theaters (and I was obsessed with/sympathetic to Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, it will shock exactly no one one to learn), and GN’R were my gateway into metal. In other words, seeing Jedi and hearing “It’s So Easy” were both major contributing factors to ruining my mother’s dreams of me ever going to medical school.
So. Now our friends over at Metal Insider have discovered the below video, filmed at Disney’s Hollywood studios’ “Star Wars Weekends” show, in which Chewbacca… and then an ewok… well, just watch. It is fucking strange, and I have no idea what the crap it has to do with Star Wars, although the audience does seem to be pretty into it.
Yep. ‘Cause I always thought that was “Welcome to the Jungle” was missing was a Jawa shouting “Wootini!” at just the right moment.
But wait, there’s more! They also had Lord Vader gettin’ jiggy wit… Metallica?
Fuck Nu-GN’R, and fuck Velvet Revolver, too. This band covers “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and blows of ‘em out of the water. Axl and Slash, in all their various projects, have not sounded this good in decades. If this group’s originals are even half as soulful as this cover, they could single-handedly save hard rock from the Hinders and Godsmacks of the world. SOMEONE PLEASE SIGN THESE DUDES IMMEDIATELY.
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
While both The Deciblog’s Shawn Macomber and myself both think that Chinese Democracy is pretty great, two music critics does not a hit album make. The record shit the bed when it came out in 2008, and Best Buy, who paid untold millions of dollars for the exclusive rights to sell physical copies of the album in the United States, were left holding the bag — I can’t find the exact figure right now, but I know they had to buy X million copies outright, and I know they weren’t allowed to return/sell back any copies they failed to get off their shelves. In other words, Axl Rose and Geffen Records ended up making out like bandits despite the album’s colossal commercial failure — they ended up not losing any money on the record’s fifteen year creation process, and they even got to claim that the album went platinum, because it did, technically, ship a million units. (For the record, as of this writing, it’s sold roughly 600,000 copies.) Meanwhile, if you’ve checked the shelves at your local Best Buy recently — and I have, for shits n’ giggles — there will literally be dozens and dozens of untouched Chinese Democracy CDs.
So what the crap is Best Buy gonna do with all those unsold units? Sell ‘em for $1.99, that’s what.
I think you could count the positive reviews for Guns N’ Roses’ (really Axl Rose’s) Chinese Democracy on one hand; I oughta know, ’cause I wrote one of ‘em. I still take shit for that review, and I still stand by it. I completely, 100% understand why someone wouldn’t like Chinese Democracy, but I still completely, 100%, and without shame fucking love it.
And apparently, so does Decibel‘s Shawn Macomber because he has written absolutely EPIC defense (almost as epic as the album itself) of the record for this week’s “JYST.”
Monday, February 21st, 2011 at 5:00pm by Leyla Ford
Andy McCoy, one of the founding members of Hanoi Rocks, wrote a book. In 2008. [Our own Corey Mitchell reviewed it in 2010. - Ed.] I read it pretty recently as it came to me with a bunch of Christmas/Hannukah/New Year’s loot. My family doesn’t celebrate anything, so we basically give each other presents because the year is over. Yeah, I don’t know. We put up a tree, too.
Anyway, I kind of dropped the ball on Andy, and that’s kind of a recurring thing these days, because every once in a while I get caught up on that “having a life thing.” I did finally read it, though, and I quite enjoyed it. To an extent. Now, I love books. Reading = fun times for me. I usually have three or four books I’m juggling and one of them is almost always a music biography. But Sherriff McCoy; Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks goes on the pile of band books that really could’ve used a good edit.
Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 12:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Here’s the latest round of idiotic news revolving around the band you can pretty much blame for this website’s existence.
First of all, Corey Taylor has been heavily rumored to be the new vocalist for Velvet Revolver, and then a couple of weeks ago, he refused to contradict that rumor, thereby pretty much confirming it. Now Metal Insider tells me that Duff McKagan thinks he’s being cute by pretty much doing the same thing, telling fans during a recent online chat that “I can neither confirm nor deny” that Taylor is the group’s new singer before apparently mistaking Taylor for a can of Pepsi: “He’s the voice of a whole new generation.”
Slipknot’s been around for over a decade now, so I guess McKagan doesn’t actually know what the phrase “new generation” means, but whatever. Like I said last month, there’s absolutely no reason to say shit like this in the press unless Taylor got the job. And at this point, VR absolutely needs to start denying the rumor, or just announce Taylor as the new singer. Because now if he’s not the new singer, whomever the new singer is is gonna hafta be pretty frickin’ awesome and/or famous, or the whole thing is just gonna seem anticlimactic. In fact, if Taylor isn’t the new singer, I’d say they either need to get Robert Plant, or just announce a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses.
Which, incidentally, some morons think is what’s gonna happen. From Classic Rock:
Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
In 1987, $lash wrote the main riff for “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as a joke during warm-up for band practice, and after Izzy Stradlin and Axl Rose recognized its potential and turned it into an actual song, The World’s Best Jew ‘Fro argued against its inclusion on Appetite for Destruction, thinking it was too ballad-y for a hard rock album. Now, twenty-four years later, $lash has finally taken his revenge on the song that gave him his career: wearing a variation of his signature top hat that was apparently fashioned from some old clothes Rob Halford recently donated to the Salvation Army, $lash appeared on the Super Bowl half-time show with The Black Eyed Peas to assist Fergie in what Vince rightly referred to as a “mutilation” of the song.
Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 12:00pm by Leyla Ford
I like music videos. I don’t mean just lame concert footage videos either. (I get it, Band, you can play your instruments like, really well. In front of people!) No, I mean the amazing, overblown, explosions and nonsensical storylines, holy shit is that a cameo by jailbait Keri Russell in bra?!, looks like it was directed by Michael Bay, epic mini-movies. In fact, Meat Loaf’s, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” has pretty much all of the aforementioned, except one. I won’t say which one, just look it up*. It is the most amazing seven minutes ever. Except for the part where he prays to the god of, “Sex, and drums, and rock’n’roll.” Come on, now, you’re not fooling anyone.
The other night I couldn’t sleep. So I ended up watching music videos until the sun came up. I did not have a good day that day. Of course, I watched metal videos. (Okay fine, like half were Meat Loaf videos. He kind of hovers on the periphery of metal, right? He was in Rocky Horror Picture Show, he played a totally awesome biker named Eddie! Isn’t his daughter married to Scott Ian? Fringes, he’s on the fringes. Shut up, Meat Loaf is awesome. Even more so when I can’t type and write “Meat Load.” Good job proof-reading at 5:40 a.m.)
Videos were my first introduction to many bands. They were like trailers for records, and the more confusing and “deep” they were, the more interested I got. I’m not saying there are no good videos anymore, but I just can’t believe we live in a time where it’s no longer cool to shred shirtless on a cliff while your bandmate gets married but then it starts raining and the bride is dead and Axl Rose is swimming with dolphins while Stephanie Seymour beats up a girl in a bar. I mean, maybe it’s a good thing bands don’t go bankrupt after videos anymore. and the Guns N’ Roses trilogy more than borders on the ridiculous (Hi Shannon Hoon! I see you, there on the roof!) but let’s take a look at some that kind of stuck with me.
Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 4:00pm by Leyla Ford
Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.
So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…
Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
So Guns N’ Roses played in Australia last week, and managed to piss fans off for all the usual reasons: they were late, Slash isn’t in the band anymore, etc. I always find these complaints a little baffling, ’cause they’re not news. I mean… seriously? Axl Rose was late? Holy shit!!! And did you realize that the sun went down last night, and then came back up again this morning, too? Fucking amazing! We had no way of seeing that coming.
A more valid concern, though, is that the infamous front man may have been lip synching. This news report on the gig features video footage in which Rose’s vocals seem to be going even when he doesn’t have the mic anywhere near his mouth, which is, y’know, troubling.
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
Hard to believe, but Chinese Democracy officially came out two years ago today. (You can read my original review here. I still stand by every word, and I still prefer CD to DeathMagnetic.) Promotion for the album has still been anemic. Yes, the band (such as it were) has finally toured certain territories, but it doesn’t amount to much when you consider how much time has passed. And there have still been no music videos, I still haven’t gotten my motherfucking Dr. Pepper, and Axl Rose has only communicated with the press sparsely and electronically.
But that doesn’t really matter, because I don’t even think that my namesake would have the most interesting story to tell regarding the creation of Chinese Democracy.
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 at 11:20am by Axl Rosenberg
I hate TMZ, but I feel obligated to tell you that the celebrity gossip site has obtained security camera footage of Sebastian Bach getting violent with the staff of a bar in Canada yesterday, and subsequently being arrested. Go here to watch, although, like I said, it’s security cam footage, which means it’s both grainy and stationary, which means you can’t actually see very much. Oh, how I wish someone had captured the glorious incident on their cell phone! But this will have to suffice.
Considerably more entertaining is this report of why Bach got so rowdy in the first place:
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 1:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
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?
So Duff McKagan joined Axl Rose and his new Guns N’ Roses on-stage at the 02 Arena in London last night, playing bass for “You Could Be Mine” (video above) and rhythm guitars for “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Nice Boys.” (You can also see photos here.) Inevitably, this is going to make people ask the question: “Is the original line-up (or something closely resembling the original line-up) of Guns N’ Roses getting back together?” As MetalSucks’ resident GN’R geek, I hereby take it upon myself to provide reckless analysis regarding this blessed event. After the jump, get both sides of the argument, as provided by my drug-addled fanboy brain.
