Speaking of Slash: Vince and I caught his solo tour last month, and, for me at least, the big surprise of the evening — besides Vince’s brilliant revelation that Slash should start transitioning from rock and metal into blues as he gets older — is that Myles Kennedy is actually pretty awesome. He’s got a terrific set of pipes and a really incredible amount of range, and he’s a great front man. I think I read somewhere that he turned down the chance to be the new singer for Velvet Revolver, which is a bummer, ’cause he’d clearly do a great job (to say nothing of the fact that he’d be able to help them play old GN’R tunes that require a higher vocal register than that of Mr. Scott Weiland, which is all I really care about at this point anyway).

So for now, we have to settle for Kennedy being the frontman for Creed without Wife Beater instead of Guns without Rose. And Alter Bridge’s latest, the cleverly titled AB III, is now streaming here.

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In 1997 there was this girl that I was really into. I don’t even remember what her name was now, but I remember being very excited when I finally found myself at her place with just the two of us for company.

“Hey, wanna hear something awesome?” she asked me. The correct answer in that situation is obviously “Yes,” and so she walked over to her stereo and hit “play.” And this is what came out of the speakers:

The song ended and I figured out some excuse to leave and I left. Later I wondered if the girl really liked the song (she certainly seemed to) or if she played it knowing it was awful because she couldn’t think of a polite way to reject me, but it’s a moot point: I will never know how my relationship with that girl might have played out, all because she had to go and be the first person ever to introduce me to Limp Bizkit, and, more specifically, Limp Bizkit’s terrible covers.

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Sam Strange is a director of such momentous talent that after he once screened his latest film for Spielberg, Spielberg got a job at Jack in the Box, and had to be talked into returning to the business to direct his masterpiece, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. A little-known fact is that Strange also directed Guns N’ Roses’ infamous video trilogy, “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain,” and “Estranged.”

Now Strange has opened up about his experience to C.H.U.D. in a special guest blog. Apparently, the concept for the video came about via inception, the now-famous method of dream invasion portrayed in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Strange writes of his encounter with rock’s most dangerous front man:

The strangest story I have involves this guy Axl Rose (Real Name: Hacksel Rosenbaum). When Axl came to us he was leader of an struggling local Rock n Roll band called Guns n Roses. Axl felt destined to rock stardom, but some unhappiness deep in his subconscious kept this fate out of reach.

“So Mr. Rose, please tell us what IDEA you want us to Incept in your brain and how many tickets you think it will sell.”

“I dunno. I just wanna be a rock guy.”

“Do you know how hard it is to Incept someone? An IDEA like that is far too broad. You’ll have to think of something more specific.”

“That’s the best I can do. Here’s two billion dollars.” (Axl was super rich because his dad had been an extra in Pump Up the Volume.)

Strange also offers an analysis of each individual video, for the benefit of those of us who always found the storyline a tad confusing. Here’s an excerpt of his explanation of the “November Rain” clip (above):

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I had no intention of writing about this, but so many of you have e-mailed us about it, and we aim to please… or some shit like that.

So in case you never saw it, there’s this famous outtake from A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica in which James Hetfield talks a lot of smack about Axl Rose — or, as Hetfield calls him, “Axl Pose.” Check it out:

And now this Australian radio station, Triple M, has interviewed Hetfield, and, even though he claims to “respect” Axl, he clearly does not:

Look: whatever else you wanna say about Hetfield, he does seem to basically show up and do his job, and I’ve never heard about him dicking the fans over (unless you consider Metallica’s post-Justice output “dicking the fans over”). So it’s hard to say that Hetfield is wrong. On the other hand, y’know… just ’cause someone sucks harder than you doesn’t mean you don’t suck, y’know?

-AR

To the MetalSucks Maniac known as “Sacajewea,” we would like to say the following: YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD. It’s incredible how retarded you are, you stupid fucking idiot mongoloid half-wit retard.

We send this message because in October of ’09, Sacajewea left a comment on the very first post we ever wrote, saying he was “Just here to dig up the past;” then he left another comment, just this past June, which read:

“I did it twice. Fuck I’m retarded. If anyone sees this please find me in a recent post and tell me how retarded I am.”

On December 26, 2006 — a date that will live in infamy — we did what professionals call a “soft launch” but we just call “the day we first posted on this blog.” Our slogan was “Smart About Metal,” a play on the slogan for Film Comment magazine.

We had these two stupid South Park caricatures that Axl made at his then-job when he was bored. (Axl forgot until just now that he had a really long goatee in ’06; Vince still had phantom Jew ‘fro, where some days he can feel it, man!) We only posted once or twice a day, throughout the week, pretty much when we had time/interest. We didn’t use tags. We often didn’t post graphics or videos. Our headlines weren’t capitalized. We interviewed members of Stuck Mojo and Twisted Sister, because that’s who we could get interviews with. Believe it or not, we tried to get an interview with God Forbid… and we failed.

Basically, we had no fucking idea what we were doing.

We can’t believe that this is our 10,000th post. We can’t believe we’re still doing this almost four years after we started. We can’t believe that so many of you are reading it. Seriously: WE WERE ONLY FUCKING KIDDING.

So…

Thanks to Kip (who has been here longer than anyone besides Vince and Axl!), Sammy, Gary, Anso, Satan (the MetalSucks contributor and the deity), Sergeant D., Bob, Leyla, Corey, Urbandale, Dave, Matt, Ferris, Dallas, Eyal, Sacha, Paul, Bulb, Arthur, Anton OyVey, Rich Hallford, David Bee Roth, Van Arseface, Mike Pattongill, Angela Gossowski, Joey V., and everyone else who has ever written for us… MetalSucks would not be where it is if not for all of you.

Thanks to everyone in the music industry who has helped us over the years, even as they must have been secretly hoping we would van flip.

And of course, thanks to all the MetalSucks Maniacs, Suckalos, annoying people who can’t use the “search” function, and dudes that have sent us death threats. We can’t tell you how grateful we are that you read our site. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now, with a complete lack of humility, Axl and Vince present their ten favorite MetalSucks posts of all time. Enjoy.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

There weren’t any real hot button topics this week, so we decided to just play a fun game that used to keep Vince and Axl occupied for many a lunch period when they were kids:

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Depending on things like our mood, exhaustion level, and the weather, Vince and I may or may not go see Adler’s Appetite tonight. (I’m a GN’R dork, but I didn’t exactly buy tickets in advance, y’know?) And while it might be interesting to see Mr. Adler live in the flesh up really, really close, I have little doubt that the gig itself will be ridiculous. As I understand it, Adler’s Appetite are basically a GN’R cover band, which I guess doesn’t make them that different from Axl’s Guns N’ Roses or Slash’s solo band, only those bands have the Voice of Guns N’ Roses and the Sound of Guns N’ Roses, and Adler’s Appetite has The Dude People Barely Missed When Matt Sorum Took His Place.

I’m not saying I don’t much prefer Adler’s drumming to Sorum’s — I do. I’m just saying, y’know. He may not be the strongest marketing draw.

Apparently Adler’s Appetite kid themselves by playing originals, too, ’cause they’ve released a snippet of a new single, “Alive.” You get the single as a free download when you buy a copy of Adler’s upcoming, guaranteed to be full of shit autobiography, which comes out in October. I really don’t believe that will attract a ton of extra buyers, though. I also don’t believe that this is an original song; I could have sworn I heard Beautiful Creatures, or maybe it was Brides of Destruction, or possibly one of the new L.A. Guns, yeah, maybe the new old L.A. Guns, or I guess it could have been Vains of Jenna… ANYWAY, I could have SWORN I’d heard another modern cock rock band play this song already. Could have SWORN it.

-AR

So Maynard James Keenan has said that Tool are working on their next album, and that “If it comes together” they may even play some new shit live this summer. I’m always totally down for some new Tool, so I won’t even say what we’re all thinking, which is “It might be nice to a get a new Tool album in under five years for a change.” I mean, we’d heard that Tool were in writing mode back in 2008, but whatever. It’s Tool. If they need that time to make the best possible record that they can, I’ll go along with it.

But a new Tool album was always a foregone conclusion; the band may very well break our hearts and throw in the towel one day, but we are (very luckily) not there yet.

So more interesting, in a way, is the news that writing has begun on a new album for A Perfect Circle. Not “more interesting” in a APC > Tool way, ’cause, come ON, that would just be a ridiculous argument to try and make. Interesting in the “Oh, cool, A Perfect Circle really aren’t done” kinda way.

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Tracii Guns is working on his autobiography. This is easily the best news you’re going to hear all day and possibly all week or even all month, for the following reasons:

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Welcome to a new feature here at MetalSucks, “Question of the Week.” Each week (duh) we’ll ask our staff a question (double duh) based around a recent hot button issue.

Unfortunately, this week there really were no hot button issues, so inspired by the Ozzfest “Unholy Matrimony” VIP package, we decided to ask our writers a silly question instead:

If you were going to be married at a metal concert, which show would it be and why?

Their answers after the jump.

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Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.

But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.

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If you read MetalSucks regularly you know we’re huge fans of Cracked.com. But they’ve gone and made this list of “The 7 Most Impossible Rock Stars to Deal With,” and while every rock star on the list is probably a massive dick, there is a major, major oversight on the list.

See, Ozzy and Nikki Sixx both made the list, but did so based on past exploits – e.g., peeing on the Alamo, dying of an overdose, being revived, and promptly going home to shoot-up again, etc. And, yeah. That’s some crazy shit that those guys did, and a big, big part of their respective legends. (There’s no mention of the infamous “Ozzy licked up Nikki’s pee” incident, even though it was a glorious moment in time when these two nutcases’ paths intersected.)

But at this point, I doubt that either of these dudes are quite the handful they once were.

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I tried to land an interview with Slash when his solo album came out, but, alas, it was not to be. (Must be ’cause of all the nice things I’ve said about him over the past couple of years.) But one of the things I wanted to ask him about were how involved, or uninvolved, he was with the lyrics on the album. Each song is sung by a different celebrity singer who would be perfectly capable of writing his or her own lyrics, and the few times Slash has tried to lyrics, the results have been pretty disastrous. (Remember “Be the Ball,” the Slash’s Snakepit song about pinball? Yeah, no reason you would, but did I mention it’s about fucking pinball?) But the lyrics to at least one song in particular – the Ozzy-crooned “Crucify the Dead” – seemed so Slash-specific, I thought he might have had a hand in them.

See, “Crucify the Dead” features such lyrics as “Your ego cursed you till you bled,” “Decisions past leave you alone,” “Someday you look back and you wonder why you let it all slip away,” and a reference to – CAPTAIN OBVIOUS ALERT! – “A loaded gun jammed by a rose.” So, y’know. It seemed pretty clear that the song was aimed at one of Slash’s former collaborators. And I don’t mean Rod Jackson.

Well, Ozzy has answered my question – kind of – in a recent interview with VH1 Radio:

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Did you know that we have lives outside of the metal world? It’s true! And sometimes, that life gets distracting. I LOVE writing for MetalSucks more than I love certain members of my mother’s family, but like any job, there are gonna be days when there’s some out-of-office shit going on and it’s really hard to just sit at your desk and concentrate.

Alas, today is one of those days. Thus, I present four stories that you might find of interest, but about which I have little to say. My sincerest apologies.

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Seeming as though there will never cease to be a supply of beginner and amateur bands in the world, I’ve written some of my Jumping Darkness Parade entries in their honor. A little bit of practical advice applied to whatever it is you’re doing can help move you a long way. Well, in this case I’m talking to any band, at any level, which is performing a gig and are NOT the final act of the night. If you’re in Metallica and the whole world plays by your rules, then congratulations and don’t bother reading this. But for the rest of us, stage etiquette is essential if you aspire to have an easy working relationship with your band mates, other bands on the bill, local crews, and beyond.

I want to focus on the dreaded changeover. This is the part of the night where either the pieces are laid into place to ensure an easy start to the show, or where things will begin to fall apart. How long you take to be set up and ready to play AS WELL AS how quickly you can get offstage will have a big impact on how your band is treated that night, and in the long run. If your set ends and your drummer decides to take apart his kit on stage while your guitarist sits in a corner on stage wrapping his cables, taking their sweet-ass time while another band is dealing with a fifteen minute window to get set up and started, then your band is fucking up. And also, your band is fucking up if it’s your turn to go and your drummer starts setting up his kit onstage, guitarist is fumbling with all his cables, somebody (bassist, vocalist, whoever) is nowhere to be found, and another guitarist who got his rig up quickly is noodling away annoying everyone.

Let me go on a rant for a second. Is there anything more annoying during a changeover than watching some dude stand up there and play fifteen minutes of guitar solos while the house music is still going amidst the general chaos on stage caused by everyone else trying to get the band set up? Is there a more eloquent way to say “YOU ARE FUCKING UP, SIR?” First of all, you look like a disorganized bunch of idiots acting that way. People take note. Second of all – and this relates to what I just said – you will lose the audience looking like a bunch of bumbling idiots. Third, you are most likely holding up the show and pissing off a) the headliner, b) the other bands after you, c) their crews, d) the club and their crews.

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I guess it’s “oldie-but-goodie” interview day here at MetalSucks.

So: in 1989 Howard Stern found out which hotel Axl Rose was staying at in NYC and gave him a call to try and find out about – what else? – who he’d shtupped, or who Slash had shtupped, or, y’know, just pretty much any good sexual gossip. But the thing that makes it really worthwhile is that Stern woke up Axl, and Axl is audibly groggy throughout the entire thing.

There’s all sorts of funny stuff in here, including Axl sounding surprisingly democratic about how pay is divided up amongst the band, and joking that “I leave the group every three days.” Of course, there’s no way Stern could have known he was predicting the demise of GN’R when he encourages Axl to ditch the other members and go solo… is there?

-AR

I don’t remember which show it was at, but Vince and I recently saw the ridiculous amount of cell phones snapping photos and video at a concert and started to reminiscence about that time in 1991 when Axl Rose jumped into a crowd in St. Louis to punch some dude who taking unauthorized photos of the show, thus inciting a riot (Rose’s first of at least four). If he pulled that shit today, it would seem even more ridiculous. Hell, before I ever saw Metallica live, I had some bootleg cassette of one of their shows that I bought off some dude at a flea market (seriously) for ten bucks. The audio quality was atrocious, but I still listened to the thing like eighteen-thousand times. Today, bootlegs of live shows are just a given; security doesn’t try and stop anyone from recording the show, because seemingly everyone is recording the show. Even if they find an audio recorder on me during the traditional pat-down, just saying “I’m interviewing the band” is sufficient to get them to ignore it. But they never ask to see my press credentials or anything, ’cause they don’t really care – they can’t take away every cell phone that comes through the place.

Which is all just a long-winded introduction for the very good quality fan-filmed footage of Pestilence playing at Neurotic Deathfest last week. We would have killed to have such easy access to this kind of footage when I was younger; now it’s pretty much expected that if you play a show, it’ll be all over YouTube within a matter of hours. Check out a clip below; you can watch more at Shut Yo’ Mouth.

And if that footage makes you feel all warm and tingly where your bathing suit covers, then don’t forget that MetalSucks and Decibel are teaming up to bring you Pestilence’s first U.S. tour in sixteen years (!) starting at the end of May; Warbringer, Vital Remains, Enfold Darkness and Sacrificial Slaughter are also on the bill, so you know it’s gonna be a good time. Get dates here.

-AR

People who care more than I do tell me that today is the anniversary of when they found Kurt Cobain’s carcass (’cause I guess it was hanging around a few days before someone stumbled upon it). That was sixteen years ago. It’s weird to think that he’s been dead longer than some of you have been alive.

I always liked Nirvana, but I never loved Nirvana. In fact I wrote an anti-Cobain piece back in 2007; I know a lot of you weren’t reading MS yet in 2007, so now’s a good time to check this out and tell me what a douche turd I am for kicking a dead man when he’s down.

Meanwhile, here’s Nirvana performing “Lithium” at 1992 MTV VMAs. I like this performance because a) Krist Novoselic hits himself in the head with a bass at the end and b) Dave Grohl goes out of his way to provoke Axl Rose, who was in attendance and performed with Elton John later that night. This lead to an infamous Rose-Cobain scuffle after the show. Good times. Good times.

-AR

So Axl Rose slipped and fell while performing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in Bogota last week. And far be it from me to miss an opportunity to point at someone and laugh when they make a mistake. Problem is, I just could not think of a headline for this article that took the word “fall” or “puddle” or whatever and inserted it into the title of or lyrics from a Guns N’ Roses song. Blabbermouth, who posted this originally, used “Falling On Heaven’s Door,” which is pretty good; a commenter on that story made a not-very-clever “It’s So Easy” joke by typing “See me hit puddle… I fall down!”

So fuck it, here’s the video. Axl falls right around 1:18. At least he appears to have a sense of humor about it, which I imagine is considered “progress” in Axl’s world; Vince and I saw him slip just a little at Download in 2006, and he freaked out and threw a fit.

Please suggest your Axl-fall-down GN’R puns in the comments section below.

-AR

• Slash has been unveiling a song a day from his new, self-titled solo album, so at this point, if you’ve wanted to hear the entire record, you pretty much have. But if you’re like me, and you were too lazy to keep checking back all the various websites where the shit has been streaming these past week, AOL now has the entire album in one place. I’ll try to write a full review in time for Slash‘s release on Tuesday, but the short version is: “Hey! It’s not the total face-raping I was expecting!” Which I guess would make it Slash’s Death Magnetic. So, April Fool’s on me, I guess.
• I don’t think it will come as a galloping shock to anyone to learn that the rumors are true: Duff McKagan is the new bass player for Jane’s Addiction. Slash basically spilled the beans in an interview a couple of weeks back, and then some photos of Duff working with the band popped up online, and now he’s actually gigged with the group – that grainy video up top is footage of Duff’s Addiction covering Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love.” I’m excited that Duff will now once again be in a band that plays for more than fifty people a night, although I’m sure the dudes in Loaded are pretty bummed. Of course, between this and Slash’s solo album, I’d wager we won’t get any new developments on the Velvet Revolver front until 2012, if ever.
• Finally: the drums on Slash’s solo album were recorded by Josh Freese, who also played drums on the nu-GN’R song “Oh My God,” which featured a guitar solo by… Dave Navarro. Small world. But I find it funny that Slash and Duff are now both working with dudes who have played with Axl Rose more recently than they have.

-AR