MetalSucks

While Anthrax, Testament, Heaven and Hell and motherfucking Motorhead are among the most anticipated bands that metal pilgrims are converging on western Germany to see, it would appear that my favored people, those crafty Norwegians, also have a few things planned for the mayhem. While Enslaved will be appearing (and hopefully represented on a good stage, because you know they fucking deserve it) some others are teaming up with foreigners in combinations that are hard to ignore.

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This is pretty straightforward, and clearly someone on Decibel’s staff needs a few extra album reviews assigned to them to pass the extra time or something, but, hey, it made me giggle.

For more, head over to The Deciblog.

-AR

(Rolling Stone ballot filled out by James Hetfield of Metallica.)

I just finished reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone (#1066/11.27.08) which has a cover story entitled “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.” Not surprisingly, the metal contingent representation is dismal. Oh sure, they tapped several genre luminaries to place their votes including Ian Astbury, Sebastian Bach, Alice Cooper, Chris Cornell, Ronnie James Dio, Sammy Hagar, James Hetfield, Tony Iommi, Maynard James Keenan, Geddy Lee, Peter Mensch (Q Prime Mgmt – Metallica, Queensryche), Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, and Scott Weiland, but what about the actual list? How many metalheads (or at least “rockers”) made the final cut?

Here are the pathetic results:

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Since its inception in the late ‘80s, black metal has been one of the most rigid genres in terms of evolution and change. While bands like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and Behemoth trumpet the genre through its larger than life, orchestral origins, black metal’s “elite” have gained their notoriety through either a) being a part of the original church-burning generation and altering their sound as little as possible or b) miming the original church-burning generation as closely as possible, right down to the tape hisses and wall of buzz saw guitars. But after nearly two decades of existence and reverence in the metal and music worlds as a whole, many bands have moved away from their restrictive lo-fi roots and come to embrace different influences, resources, and inspirations. The band that has best exemplified this move from their base to the outer limits is Enslaved, one of Norway’s longest running black metal bands. Before American upstarts Nachtmytsium made it cool to melt your Burzum and Pink Floyd records together, Enslaved were dabbling in the dark power of psychedelia on Below the Lights and ISA. Though those who take black metal seriously insist that sticking to their guns has been the key to longevity, its shifts in sounds and ideologies has been what’s kept it alive. Those shifts have been most solidly illustrated by Enslaved, and has resulted in one of the most impressively consistent discographies in metal, right up through their latest genre-bending triumph Vertebrae.

Grutle Kjellson, Enslaved’s bass player and lead vocalist, has been with the band since the beginning. In an interview he was kind enough to grant MetalSucks via phone from his home in Norway, he talks about the importance of looking forward creatively, what influenced Vertebrae, working with longtime bandmate Ivar Bjornson in Enslaved and their experimental metal side project Trinacria, the overall importance of Pink Floyd on his band’s sound, and the fans that only want to hear songs off of their early ‘90s demos at their shows.

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If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

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Have you ever known a couple that had a baby, and then the baby died, and so they had a sort of “replacement baby,” like another baby to take the place of the dead one?

Well, I guess the concept applies to bands, too, ’cause a mere six weeks after quitting Celtic Frost, Thomas Gabriel Fischer – who I will always always always insist on calling “Tom G. Warrior” – has announced the formation of a new project, Triptykon (awful name, Tom), to basically pick up where Celtic Frost left off:

“Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible, and the album I am working on will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to Monotheist. I desire the album to be a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of Monotheist.”

Well, I think we can commend Fischer/Warrior for coming right out and saying he basically wants to create Celtic Frost Version 2.0 (or 3.0, depending on how big a douche bag you are), as opposed to being the umpteenth musician to promise fans something “new” before releasing just another variation on their past discography.

What we can’t commend Fischer/Warrior for is “Cucifixus,” the demo now posted on the band’s MySpace page. Apparently, calling this new group “slightly more experimental” than Celtic Frost is the understatement of the year: the song is basically like two and half minutes of waiting for an actual song to start (has Tommy been listening to a lot of Bloody Panda lately?); put more succinctly, it sounds like Lustmord, but without all of the baggage of being, y’know, good.

Still, Fischer/Warrior is careful to say that the song “is but one of many compositions to that end. Triptykon is not defined by just this one song.” Hopefully we’ll get something more substantial (and enticing) soon.

-AR

Celtic Frost singer/guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer – a.k.a. Tom G. Warrior – has quit Celtic Frost “due to the irresolvable, severe erosion of the personal basis so urgently required to collaborate within a band so unique, volatile, and ambitious.” Which I think is just a fancy way of saying “due to creative differences.” Which I know is just a fancy of way saying “because he and the rest of the band fucking hate one another now.”

Since the band’s last offering, 2006’s Monothesist, was a major comeback for this legendary band, I imagine that this news will break the poor little hearts of many a metal head. Please join me now as we remember Tom the way I’m sure he would want to be remembered: playing “Procreation of the Wicked” in ‘86. Fuckin’ metal.

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-AR