MetalSucks

I’d never heard of Suicide War before this morning, when MS tipster supreme Saul Hudson alerted me to a posting on their MySpace page announcing that Kirk Windstein has joined the band:

“Yes!! It is true…. Kirk will be doing vocal duties along side Ben in SUICIDE WAR. He will also be filling the bass duties, if and when SUICIDE WAR plans to do some shows. I know some people are expecting his signature Crowbar style vocals, but he has approached this project from a completely different angle.”

Kirk Windstein’s involvement with any project is a big deal – but in case you’re wondering, the “Ben” they’re referring to in the above statement is Ben Falgoust. As in, “The dude from Goatwhore and Soilent Green.” As in, “AWESOME!” Black Label Society drummer Craig Nunenmacher (who also used to play with Windstein’s Crowbar) is also in the band, which I find a little less exciting, but whatever. The group also sports two members of Valume Nob (that’s a not a typo, by the way), an outfit I’m not really familiar with.

But who cares? Any band that has Falgoust and Windstein is, at the very least, going to be worth paying attention to. More news as we get it. In the meantime, you can check out some instrumental demos here.

-AR

So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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Rumor no more. The speculation that E1 Records has signed Black Label Society was put to rest Friday evening by Noisecreep in a post so official that it even has a quote from the label!

As Axl observed last week, E1’s been gobbling up established metal bands like Burger Conquest’s Rev gobbles up delicious bun-encased meat patties so it seems like a good match on paper. What remains in question is whether Zakk Wylde will continue to shit out stock BLS riffs and repackage them as new albums or whether he’ll actually try something different this time around. If ever there were a time for Wylde to change it up a bit I’d think now would be that time; having recently been shit-canned from Ozzy’s band, Wylde’s gotta have a whole lot of pent up aggression (and riffs) and could be feeling a bit restless, musically speaking.

Though Wylde’s output for both BLS and Ozzy has been shoddy lately, we’re still massive fans of the man and would love to see his incredible talent shine once agan. We’ll find out when the new BLS record drops on E1, tentatively this coming summer.

-VN

It was back in December of ‘08 that my man Vince first observed that E1 (then still called Koch) was signing every fucking metal band in the world. At that point, the label had recently made deals with or released albums by In Flames, Hatebreed, High On Fire, Satyricon, Otep, Throwdown and Straight Line Stitch; now there’s a rumor that they’ve added Black Label Society to their roster, too.

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Okay so that’s not really it, but who wants to bet that that’s more or less exactly what it sounds like? I mean, I bet I could have fooled at least half of all BLS fans into thinking that really was the new single, and at least seven-eighths of everyone else.

Anyways, BLS are gonna try and get a new album out by June. So I guess Zakk ignored my advice about taking some time to reflect on Ozzy firing him and then work at a deliberate pace in order to make a kick-ass new record that reminds us why we ever cared.

Swell.

-AR

I saw the below trailer, for something called Bones that apparently is not the popular television program, on SkullsNBones.com. Like that piece of garbage movie that D. Randall Blythe is in, it seems to me that the most notable thing about this movie is going to be pretty girls in flattering outfits. That, and what happens at the forty second mark.

Holy crap, did Zakk just give that little kid a beer? I understand that this is a scripted film, that Zakk did not really give that kid a beer, and that one beer ain’t gonna kill the kid anyways, but, still… that’s kind of hilarious, isn’t it? I mean, if we found out that giving little pubeless dudes booze was a key component of Zakk’s child rearing techniques, would anyone really be shocked? This is art imitating life, methinks.

-AR

Here’s Zakk Wylde talking to Tartarean Desire a few years back… I’ve added some emphasis:

“What would be a good career move is to get Eminem to sing on a Black Label album. It would stir up some controversy with the Hell’s Angels of Iron if you had Eminem rapping on a Black Label album. I go first off I hate fucking rap music, so what the fuck would I want to have that mother fucker singing on my fucking album… Because he is popular?”

And here’s Zakk ranting about rap and rap metal back in 2006:

Of course, ideals are nothing in the face of a paycheck. And so here we are, it’s almost 2010, and Zakk Wylde has recorded a guest guitar solo on Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise 20XX” for DJ Hero, a video game for people who think that Guitar Hero is too sophisticated.

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So unless you spent your summer someplace where there’s no internet or any way to get metal news, you should be aware that Zakk Wylde a) has been replaced by Firewind’s Gus G. as Ozzy’s new guitarist and b) got the news when Ozzy did an interview announcing he was parting ways from his longtime axe-slinger, because apparently Ozzy and Sharon are too chickenshit to actually pick up the phone and make a difficult call. And so it would be completely within reason for Zakk to have nothing but terrible things to say about all parties involved – in fact, I kinda expected him to do just that. This is the man, after all, who threatened to kill Dave Grohl just for writing some riffs for Ozzy, and who basically attacked a journalist who repeated a rumor that Wylde’s pal Mike “Metal Mets” Piazza might be a homosexual.

But Wylde is actually taking the news really well, or, at least, he’s putting on a good face. From a recent interview with MusicRadar.com (via Blabbermouth):

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Speaking of Decibel: their, um, let’s call it an “electronic division,” The Deciblog, has gotten Children of Bodom main man Alexi Laiho to supply his top five metal riffs of all time. (Thus the headline. Ah-duh.) If somebody asked me to do that, I’d probably blow my brains out, so props to Alexi for giving it a shot.

As we know first hand here at MS, posting any list like this is an open invitation for a shitstorm to rain down upon your head, but I suspect that Alexi’s list especially will cause arguments. I believe this will be the case for two reasons:

1. He’s Alexi fuckin’ Laiho, not some blogger.
2. He put a Black Label Society riff on the list.

Read the entire list here, then come back and get embroiled in some good old fashioned name-calling.

And don’t forget that we’re currently running a contest where you can impersonate Alexi for a chance to win an ESP Alexi Laiho Signature Series LTD AL-600 Scythe guitar! Enter that shit now!

-AR

In case you haven’t been following along, Zakk Wylde has been plagued by hospital visits as of late. The last we heard, he was suffering from blood clots, and things got so bad that Black Label Society had to drop off a recent tour with Mudvayne.

Now Wylde’s wife, Barbaranne, has written into the BLS official fan forum to give an update on Zakk’s condition:

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I made a joke earlier this week about Zakk Wylde taking the news of Ozzy’s new guitarist so hard that he wound up in the hospital for blood clots – but this has turned into some apparently serious shit. Not only has Wylde and Black Label Society been forced to drop off the Pedal to the Metal tour with Mudvayne, Suicide Silence, and some band where the dude has a stupid hair cut and is married to an ex-porn star, but he has to visit the hospital every 48 hours. A statement from Zakk (by way of the always helpful Blabbermouth):

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First, let’s just talk about how we arrived at this place we currently find ourselves:

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Our friends at Metal Insider made an interesting discovery over the weekend: Dope are no longer listed on the bill for the upcoming Pedal to the Metal tour. The tour is being headlined by Mudvayne and also features Black Label Society and Static-X.

MI wonders aloud if Dope have been kicked off the tour; I would obviously love if it that were the case, but I fear that the official explanation will be considerably less entertaining.

Still, for the sake of amusing myself, I’d like to pretend that Dope have been kicked off the tour (I’d also like to pretend that Static-X have been kicked off the tour, but I have no basis for that fantasy right now). So, to that end, I’d just like to serenade the members of Dope with this little ditty:

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA, YOU GOT BOOTED, HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA, YOUR BAND SUCKS.

That is all.

-AR

Last week, we told you about Zakk Wylde’s contribution to “Addiction,” an awful new song by the awful band Dope. The song now has a music video, which was directed by Kevin Custer and MetalSucks Maniac hater Dale “Happy-Go-Lucky Sunshine Fun Time” Resteghini.

Here are things about the video that I find really, really fucking weak:

1. Edsel Dope is in it.
2. Virus is in it.
3. The song.
4. That uninformed viewers may come under the impression that Virus is playing Zakk Wylde’s part.
5. How the members of Dope now dress like the members of Black Label Society instead of the members of Marilyn Manson or, more shockingly, themselves.
6. That Edsel Dope is actually wearing a Black Label Society jacket.

Here are things about the video that I like:

1. Big Fake Titties.
2. Big Fake Titties actually gets a costume change.
3. That watching it will steal less than three minutes of your life away.

The video itself can be viewed after the jump. It’s not really safe for work, and definitely not safe for human ears, so… consider yourself warned.

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I had the displeasure of seeing Dope live once (don’t ask). They were playing at Don Hill’s, a club here in NYC that holds about 300 people, and, to my surprise, they actually managed to pack the place pretty full. So after the band before them concluded their set, Dope kept the crowd waiting for 45 minutes while their roadies set up elaborate stage dressing fit for an arena show: extra platforms and a new PA system and lighting rig (I guess the house systems weren’t good enough for the band) and giant wooden backdrops and a chain link fence (!) and who the fuck knows what else. This kind of shit really isn’t necessary for a small club gig, but it might have been forgivable had the band come out and rocked the kids’ faces off; instead, they came out and played for… 45 minutes. To repeat: the band played for as long as they kept the crowd waiting for them to play. In hindsight, it seems clear that all the rigmarole was really because without the fancy lights and props, the band knew they didn’t have much to offer.

I’m telling you this story because Dope will be opening for Black Label Society and Sevendust on their upcoming tour, which still strikes me as an odd package – that Zakk Wylde, who once proclaimed “Fred Durst can eat a dick” on his band’s DVD, would share a stage with not one but two nu-metal bands just seems weird.

Weirder still: Wylde has now recorded a track with Dope. Let me type that again, lest you think your eyes are failing you: DOPE HAVE A SONG ON THEIR NEW ALBUM WITH ZAKK WYLDE ON GUITAR.

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Our friends over at Metal Injection posted this cell phone commercial starring a certain Prince of Darkness, and I gotta say, even though it continues to make Ozzy look like a man who is battling Alzheimer’s and mental retardation, it’s pretty funny (And is certainly much more enjoyable than anything on Black Rain. Or Down to Earth. Or the last 270 Black Label Society albums).

The entire Osbourne clan apparently just signed with the William Morris Agency, so expect to see them in lots more ads like these in the coming months.

-AR

Blabbermouth published the following report from current Megadeth bassist James Lomenzo:

“Speaking of heroes, I had the pleasure of meeting someone whom I’m sure you guys would all be interested in: Mr. Dave Ellefson [former MEGADETH bassist] himself! It was really great to chat with someone whose legacy I have had the great honor to carry through for MEGADETH. What a treat to find out what a down-to-earth guy he is, and how ironic to meet him in the very same place where I had my first rehearsals with MEGADETH (S.I.R. Studios, Hollywood) round about three years ago. Lord knows I could have really used his help back then.

“Good fella and a class act!”

Since Mustaine has spent the years since he parted ways with Ellefson a) embroiled in a legal battle with his former bandmate and b) underplaying Ellefson’s role in Megadeth to anyone who will listen, and since Mustaine is generally known as, um, not the nicest of dudes on the planet, I have to imagine that this declaration of Ellefeson as a “class act” will most surely get Lomenzo fired. Seriously, this would be like a member of Axl’s nu-GN’R singing Slash’s praises in public; it’s just not a very good idea, paycheck-wise.

Maybe Black Label Society will take him back?

-AR

What the fucking fuck is going on in this clip from Fuse’s television version of the Talking Metal podcast? I don’t even mind the song so much – I have a soft spot for pretty ballads sung by big brutish metal dudes – but what’s up with the “We Are the World”-style gathering around the mic, and the slow fades of Zakk emoting in the studio, and the velveeta dripping from every pore of this clip?

By the way, the song is called “‘Till the End.” I have no idea where it comes from, but it’s not on any Black Label Society albums, to the best of my knowledge.

Also, that is current Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal on guitar. Kinda funny, considering Zakk nearly joined GN’R about thirteen years back.

-AR

Guitar Hero III featured Slash and Tom Morello as bosses and pretty much used Slash as the entire basis of the video game’s ad campaign; I guess now it’s Zakk Wylde’s turn, as the Ozzy/Black Label Society axemaster is now being featured in a trailer for Guitar Hero World Tour, which will be released on October 26.

Oddly enough, while there’s a BLS song in the game, Wylde played on neither of the original recordings of the included Ozzy songs, “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley.” I don’t know if they’ll be using re-recorded versions featuring Wylde for the purposes of the game or if they’re just depending on Guitar Hero’s younger (read: target) audience not know the difference between Wylde and Randy Rhodes.

In any case, here’s the trailer:

As is usually the case with Guitar Hero, there’s a whole lotta metal included in this edition’s “set list,” including three Tool songs and offerings by Metallica, Van Halen, System of a Down, Dream Theater and Lacuna Coil. Should be fun if you like these rhythm games.

-AR

Vince Neilstein isn’t at the MetalSucks Mansion today. He told me he had to rush to Washington to save America from our financial crisis, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find him blogging for the guys over at Metal Injection instead. He’s a slippery one, that Vince.

ANYWAY, some cool tours have been announced over the past couple of weeks, and yesterday came the announcement of a tour that strikes me as especially odd, and I feel like discussing, so let’s discuss.

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