Last week was a ginormous week for new metal releases, and with new ones from Killswitch and Suicide Silence this week promises to be the same. Topping last week’s crop was Dream Theater’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings which debuted at #6 on the Soundscan Charts. Wait a minute… Dream Theater debuted at #6?? Holy fuckity-fuck. Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Goatwhore also had strong debuts. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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This week in Soundscan, supergroup Chickenfoot shifted a ridiculous number of records. I’m baffled too. Elsewhere, Iron Maiden had a solid debut and bands like Nickelback, Hollywood Undead, Shinedown, Slipknot, and Metallica continued on with business as usual.

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So, Chickenfoot released a new video last week. Chickenfoot of Hagar, Anthony, Satriani and Smith fame. Chickenfoot of selling over 49,000 albums (!!) during their album’s first week on the charts fame. Chickenfoot, recipients of a collective MetalSucks Haterade Mafia shrug. The video is basically just a collection of candid, studio, live performance and “goofing around” shots, which given the band’s makeup and selling points makes a whole lot of sense. And the fact that it’s so low budget is kind of refreshing, playing down the celebrity status of the band’s members. The perfect video for a ho-hum but serviceable rock song.

In other news, Eddie Van Halen is probably still saying Michael Anthony quit Van Halen and Michael Anthony is probably still saying he was kicked out. Same shit different day.

-VN

One of the most disappointing aspects of Guitar Hero: Metallica was that you have to play with nu-’Tallica, not the Burton or even Newstead-era band we all know and love (I’m told older versions of the Four Horsemen are available as “unlockable content,” but there’s only so many hours in the day and these snarky blogs ain’t gonna write themselves.). That being said, at least the makers had the good taste to not pretend that Robert Trujillo was in the band when they recorded Master of Puppets.

Now comes this 56-second bootleg clip of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, taken at recent nerd fest videogame convention E3. At first I was like “Sweet! Look, it’s DLR and EVH when they had long hair! CLASSIC HALEN ROOLZ!!!!”

And then I saw Fatty Ding Dongs Van Halen. Who not only wasn’t in the band during the early days of VH, he wasn’t even, y’know, FUCKING BORN YET. This like when the band tried to replace their cover art photos of Anthony with ones of Fatty Ding Dongs; even Axl Rose isn’t a big enough douche vag to try and completely re-write history. Bogus. Fucking bogus.

That all of this comes in the midst of EVH claiming and Michael Anthony denying that Anthony actually quit the band, and, well, it’s enough to make you wanna listen to fucking Chickenfoot. Christ.

-AR

In case you’ve missed all 24,567 Blabbermouth posts over the past year and a half about them, Chickenfoot are a new supergroup featuring Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar and Chad Smith. Looks cool on paper, but supergroups never seem to pan out they way they ought to, amirite? The problem always seems to be that supergroups are really going for it and trying to be taken seriously, a problem from which Chickenfoot shouldn’t suffer at all since each band member is a millionaire several times over from their respective day jobs. In other words, none of them need this; it’s just for shits and kicks.

So is it any good?

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