via Badass

Reading the comments under our announcement of The Metal Suckfest has been a lot of fun — mostly because the predictions regarding which other bands will be on the bill have been so very, very wrong. Hopefully we’ll get to announce a few more bands next week, but in the meantime, you cats need to try harder and be a little more imaginative when speculating.

And while you do that, here’s how we kept ourselves amused this week:

• We debuted new music by Today is the Day, Monstro, and, thanks to our friends at Decibel, Skeletonwitch.
• We also debuted a new video by Venia.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable and Borknagar’s Jens Ryland both weighed in on the Century Media/Spotify drama.
• We spoke to Chimaira’s Mark Hunter, Dead Letter Circus’ Kim Benzie, Trapped Under Ice’s Justice Tripp, and three of the dudes from Fleshgod Apocalypse.
• We checked out the latest release from Wizard Smoke.
• We examined the evolution of deathcore.
• We felt bad for the sixteen year old who just got fired from Design the Skyline.
• We got excited about the Black Sabbath reunion, until we found out that it’s not confirmed yet.
• We carefully examined the first promo photo of Metallica with Lou Reed.
• We continued to count down  31 Days of Faith No More.

Until next week… eat your vegetables, stay in school, don’t drink and drive.

-AR

Tony Iommi just posted the below message on his official website. It’s not exactly a denial that there’s no Sabbath reunion going on, but it is a denial that Iommi has confirmed the reunion, so, uh… yeah, I guess let’s see how this one plays out.

Here’s the statement:

“I’m saddened that a Birmingham journalist whom I trusted has chosen this point in time to take a conversation we had back in June and make it sound like we spoke yesterday about a Black Sabbath reunion.

“At the time I was supporting the Home of Metal exhibition and was merely speculating, shooting the breeze, on something all of us get asked constantly, ‘Are you getting back together?’

“Thanks to the internet it’s gone round the world as some sort of ‘official’ statement on my part, absolute nonsense.  I hope he’s enjoyed his moment of glory, he won’t have another at my expense.

“to my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better.

“All the best, Tony “

-AR

Thanks to Cody Daniels for the heads up.

UPDATE: Uh, maybe this isn’t happening — check out Tony Iommi’s official statement.

They are, according to  MetalTalk.net, who broke the news yesterday, and now the Birmingham Mail, who have gotten a confirmation from Tony Iommi.

It’s not exactly shocking news; after Dio passed away, putting an end to Heaven and Hell (which was really just a reunion of a different era of Sabbath), it seemed like an inevitability. And it’s not exactly bad news, either; last time I saw this reunited line-up, at Ozzfest 2005, they put on a fun enough show, even if Ozzy is Ozzy and none of these guys are exactly vibrant and youthful. But it’s the kind of thing where I’d say if you’re either a huge Sabbath fan or you’ve never gotten to see them before, it’s worth checking out a show.

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Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based recording industry in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Song “The Real Thing”

Written by Patton (L); Gould, Bottum (M)

Released 1989

Appears on The Real Thing album duh

Produced by Matt Wallace

Guitars by Jim Martin

Key lyric ”It’s right there all by itself/And what you are, there is nothing else.”

Single? No.

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1) Be nicer to Sebastian Bach
2) Compare penis sizes with Tommy Lee
3) Hire Phil LaBonte as a vocal coach
4) Hire Billy Milano as a personal trainer
5) Hire Tripp Eisen as a baby sitter
6) Sleep with present-day Tawny Kitaen
7) Help Danzig clean up his motherfucking bricks, bitch
8) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about politics
9) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about romance
10) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about Ted Nugent

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If there’s one band who is almost universally hyped, it’s Black Sabbath. But the honest-to-god truth is that I’ve never heard an entire Sabbath album, and most of the songs I know are from other bands who covered them. In case you think I’m trolling, check my Last.fm profile. It has every song I’ve listened to since 2006, and you won’t find a single Black Sabbath song in all 45,000+ tracks.

When I was a kid, I never liked them because they looked like my parents, but I figured I should give them another chance now that I am an adult. Maybe there’s something I missed, right?? I mean, I didn’t appreciate bands like Boston and Steely Dan until my late 20s, so who knows? Well, I checked out a few of their songs the other day, and I guess I still don’t get it.

For all the the talk of how “they invented metal,” I am not hearing a lot of metal here. To me it just sounds like all the other British people in the late 60s who tried to play blues. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m just saying that there is nothing metal about harmonica solos and bluegrass outros. I guess you could call the later stuff “metal,” but I definitely wouldn’t say that it’s stood the test of time– sounds more like a lulzy SNL sketch than anything resembling good metal if you ask me.

In this post, I will listen to a few Sabbath songs for the first time and share my reaction. Check it out and let me know what you think. Am I missing something?? Why do people jock these guys so hard???

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For metal fans over the age of 30, there’s little fresh news to be found on VH1′s That Metal Show; the weekly show functions mostly as a clubhouse for “remember when?” type gab with flabby old-timers. (For metal fans under 30, TMS provides a peek back in time to when the term “metal” meant “heavier than Paul McCartney & Wings.”) So I was one of tens of viewers of the TMS season seven finale, in which former Ozzy drummer Carmine Appice (above, big brother of Heaven & Hell skinsman Vinny Appice) shot ropey jets of great and hilarious news all over the sweaty boobs of the dinosaur metal world.

Wow, that’s a clusterfucked metaphor, but ahem the important thing is that the unconvincingly bewigged Appice addressed the status of Blue Murder to TMS host Eddie Trunk, who along with me makes up about half of the post-Whitesnake John Sykes supergroup’s restless, rabid fanbase. But that was only the happiest news, not the weirdest. According to Appice:

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And we can’t believe you’ve been gone a year already. Metal can never replace you.

The Revolver Golden Gods Awards will air on VH1 later this month (or something… I know we got a press release but I was too lazy to read it), and it will be interesting to see that, because I was there, but I didn’t actually see very much of the show. I saw the schmuck from Asking Alexandria drop his mic two seconds into “Youth Gone Wild,” and I saw some of Avenged Sevenfold’s performances with Duff McKagan and Vinnie Paul, and I saw enough of Chris Jericho performing “For Whom the Bell Tolls” to consider throwing myself over the balcony and ending the awards in spectacular fashion (sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the greater good). But by and large I was too busy snorting coke in the bathroom with a girl who fucking swore to me that it wasn’t a herpes sore that lying bitch! to be bothered.

So one thing I had absolutely no idea even transpired was the below montage paying tribute to the five guys who died in the past year that are relevant to the readers of Revolver, which is to say, not Phil Vane or Frankie Sparcello.

But I shouldn’t be a jerk about it, it’s really a very touching video.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

It has literally been years since we’ve done a new edition of “Board to Death,” the column in which we make fun of people on internet message boards, because we’re nice people like that. But last night Ozzy Osbourne’s intern made this announcement on the Ozzfest Facebook page…

…and while I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would care in light of the fact that there’s still The Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival featuring the Jagermeister Mobile Stage, Vans Warped Tour, The Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Tour, Summer Slaughter, Slaughter Survivors, Slaughter Slaughter, The All Stars Tour, The Cool Tour (actually I don’t think that one is coming back but still), The Old People Doing Glam for the Sake of Nostalgia Tour, The Hellmann’s Dijon Mustard Extreme Grindcore Festival, and eighteen thousand other Ozzfests that aren’t called Ozzfest. But some people do care, and those people left inadvertently hilarious messages under this announcement.

I’m not gonna do screencaps for all of these, nor am I going to identify everyone by their full name, because it’s been seven whole days since someone last threatened to sue us and I’d like to see if we can make it as far as ten days. But obviously it would be very easy for you to just go to the aforementioned Facebook page and see who I’m talking about.

And on that note, here are some of my favorite comments…

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It’s true! I thought the Osbourne clan had simply been approached by some talented young filmmaker who was interested in doing an honest, no-holds-barred documentary on Ozzy’s life and, through sheer coincidence, just happened to share the same last name as the famous vocalist. But as it turns out, the resulting film, God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (which recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival), might — and I emphasize the word “might,” because I don’t think it’s fair to call this one just yet — but it just might be an act of nepotism.

But the younger Osbourne is apparently aware of the pratfalls of sticking too close to his clan — and so now Metal Injection tells me that Jack is working on his follow-up to God Bless…, a project which will finally distance him accusations that he owes all his success to his celebrity father: a horror film entitled Black Sabbath, which, Osbourne’s producer Marc Weingarten assures fans, will feature some of the band’s music, but is “not about the band.”

I’m really glad to see Jack striking out on his own, distancing himself from his family, and trying to make it on his own merits. People have been giving this guy shit about his last name for too long. I’m sure making a horror movie that just happens to have the same name as the band that made his father famous will finally shut up people and get them to judge Jack based solely on his own talents. Good for him!

-AR

Photo by Alison Webster

This month, brutal death metal trio Hate Eternal, led by producer/guitarist Erik Rutan, has been at the center of a pitched battle between MS co-lord Axl Rosenberg and MS writer-at-large Anso DF. The conflict? Is Hate Eternal’s forthcoming Phoenix Amongst The Ashes record awesomely killer (per Axl) or is it insanely ripping (per Anso)? Does it fuck the face and slam the nutz (Anso) or does it render each listener “so fucking happy to be alive” (Axl)? Can its production and performances better be described as a high watermark of contemporary metal (Axl) or as a gift from another realm to every living music listener (Anso)? Is Phoenix a shoo-in for metal album of the year (Axl) or does it crush every other record on earth (Anso)?

Welcome to our love war.

When the time came to phone up Rutan for a discussion of Phoenix and other Hate Eternal affairs, we at MetalSucks opted to settle this battle of agreement with an interview conducted by both Axl Rosenberg and Anso DF. Unsurprisingly, Rutan took on the task with good humor and ease, only succumbing to confusion at times when Axl and Anso simultaneously rushed to hail Phoenix and its predecessor Fury & Flames. In its unexpurgated glory, we present our very special double-team interview of the great Erik Rutan.

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When word reached Lady Gaga last year that she’d been described by Ozzy Osbourne as ”very clever, very interesting,” “wacky,” and in possession of a likable zaniness, the pop singer expressed her joy by calling herself Black Sabbath’s biggest fan “in the world.” Um, yeah that’s a patent and insulting falsehood, but shit, no worries cuz flattery from an icon like Ozzy might lead to excited overstatement in response. Shit, I’d be fuckin’ pumped if Bill Ward and I liked the same cereal. So yeah.

And really it’d even be spazworthy for most if similar praise came from somebody like Monster Magnet maestro Dave Wyndorf, as it did for Lady Gaga on MetalSucks back in November. Though hmm I doubt she was similarly flattered by an aged metal drummer fop’s invite to a groping, which occured this weekend when the Iron Maiden tour shared a venue with Lady Gaga’s in Tampa, Florida. A few days before that, McBrain told an about-to-be totally nauseated interviewer:

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I was bummed last month when I heard that FUBAR‘s Dean “Deaner” Murdoch (Paul J. Spence) was detained at the Canadian border and would not grace the SXSW Film Festival with his presence. So, I took matter into my own hands and tracked the one-balled mustachioed metalhead down and asked him for some sticky pearls of wisdom. Instead, he gave me a Top 10 list. – CM

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I have never listened to Born Again, the first and only Black Sabbath album featuring Ian Gillan. Nothing against Gillan or Sabbath, there’s just only so much time in my day and there are/were other Sabbath albums higher up on the list, ya know? I was about to suggest that someone at Decibel do up one of those “Justify Your Shitty Taste” columns that’ve got us all so hot and bothered, until I searched Decibel’s site (MetalSucks readers: take note) and discovered that Greg Moffitt wrote up Born Again just last week! Said post might’ve inspired MS reader Bonytown to write in to us about the album, but we can only guess.

Listening to the two Born Again songs that Bonytown sent in isn’t really making me reconsider my decision to skip this “classic,” but watching the videos is another story entirely. They’re completely ridiculous in that way that only ’80s heavy metal videos (and modern White Wizzard videos) can be; simultaneously cheesy and completely serious with an entirely non-sensical plot (at least WW have Black Sabbath beat there), and absolute, utter hilarity. Like this video for “Trashed;” what the fuck did I just watch? And what in the fuckity fuck is that one clip of a Formula 1 race car wreck doing at the 1:17 mark???

“Zero the Hour” isn’t any better. There’s some chickens… and some rats… and some live footage of the band… and some of the same wonky zombies from the first clip… and ketchup??? ok, I give up:

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So this is pretty cool… in theory at least. Last week, the videogame Homefront was released (I haven’t played it so I have no idea how it is, although I read some decent reviews), and yesterday, the makers of the game started giving away a FREE compilation of metal bands doing covers of war-appropriate songs, sometimes by other metal bands, sometimes by non-metal artists. You can download it here, and should get on that ASAP, as they’re only giving away 25,000 of the free downloads. As of this writing, DLs are still avail, though. Also, I’m sure this thing will remain all over the internet forever and ever, so don’t freak too hard if they’re all gone by the time you get there.

Another reason no to freak out too hard if you don’t get to download this puppy? Even though this is 100% free, like most cover albums, it’s not actually all that amazing. Let’s take a look at what the album has to offer, shall we?

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A brief period in the late ’80s and early ’90s yielded a fantastical number of cutting-edge metal bands. Today, fans of this pre-internet groundswell of proggy, arty, and otherwise undefinable bands can rejoice at the reactivation of Coroner, Anacrusis, and the great Atheist. But conspicuously absent is Milwaukee’s Realm, once most likely to succeed among their high-brow ilk. Realm is also noteworthy as Roadrunner A&R giant Monte Conner’s very first signing, one that preceded Sepultura, Obituary, and fellow Wisconsinites Last Crack. Aside from some classy but low-profile reissues of Realm’s dual masterpieces Endless War and Suiciety, Realm buzz has remained low — especially for a band who left fans hanging without completing their sure-to-be awesome third album. I tracked down founding guitarist Takis Kinis (also ex-Beatallica) to get answers to largely unasked questions, and his insights go beyond Realm minutiae to form a sort of Do’s and Don’ts manual for budding young bands. Incredibly, Conner himself took time to stroll down Realm’s memory lane and provide even more invaluable peeks behind the music business curtain (look for his comments in gray). Don’t understand how a brilliant band doesn’t “make it”? Want to avoid the pitfalls of youthful bravado? Thinking of covering a famous Beatles song? Just want to get hip to two of metal’s most overlooked masterpieces? Read on.

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

This week’s query was suggested by a reader identifying himself simply as “Andy” –

WHICH MODEL OF GUITAR IS THE MOST METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Back in December 2008, Ozzy Osbourne’s manager-wife Sharon hosted the reunion special of VH1′s Rock of Love Charm School and was being her usual unjustifiably smug self. But then RoL girl/giga-fox Megan Hauserman (above left) took the stage and had the nerve to return-volley each of Sharon’s old lady sour-grapes insults — culminating in a fist-pumpingly astute observation that Sharon’s only claim to fame is shepherding a sad drug casualty to creatively dubious solo success — at which point Sharon “doused Hauserman with her drink,” “punch[ed] and grabb[ed] her by the hair and refus[ed] to let go,” and “scratch[ed] her.” Three months later, Hauserman formally filed suit against Sharon for battery, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress.

The case was finally headed for court today — nearly two years after the filing — but then the parties reached a settlement Monday. It seems that part of the deal is non-disclosure of its terms, but two separate big-shot legal professionals I know each kinda conjectured to me that Sharon’s strategy likely was to wait for Hauserman to initiate settlement for a smaller amount in advance of the court date. But Hauserman doesn’t need quick cash ‘cuz she’s marrying a rich Italian hunk (as all babes should do), nor does it seem that Shosbourne holds any career leverage over her (or over anybody except for her kids, her manicurists, and Ozzy’s fleet of increasingly off-brand sidemen). So no dice. The concept of punitive damages is to ensure that even the very rich are held responsible for their wrongdoings; as such, it’s possible that Hauserman was awarded a sum large enough to be able to move me into a house opposite Osbourne’s from which I could moon, curse, and otherwise taunt Sharon on a daily basis. ‘Cuz fuck her.

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Mark LeVine is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the better part of his life trying to understand and teach about the Middle East and Muslim world.  Part of this has been fueled by his interest in music – Mark is both a performer and fan of heavy metal (and other, lesser genres).  This interest led Mark to write Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, a book that upends the simple “us vs. them” ideas about the Islamic world that tend to lead to things like war and death.  The book’s stories and message have proven so compelling that a CD of the music covered – Flowers in the Desert – and an upcoming documentary continue to tell the story, as does Mark’s website.

I was able to grab an hour of Mark’s time over the phone on Friday.  I peppered him with some questions around a topic that has plagued Americans for over a century – “What the hell is going on over in the Middle East?”

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