Perhaps inspired by last week’s stream of Deftones frontman Chino Moreno’s collaboration with Circa Survive’s Anthony Green, last week I finally got around to listening to the debut EP by another of Moreno’s projects, ††† (“Crosses”), his electronic collaboration with Far’s Shaun Lopez. I found the EP not just listenable but really, really good — after finishing it once, I started it over and listened to the whole thing again. Unlike our usual steady diet of metal, it was easy to let Crosses exist in the background while I worked, easy to enjoy the smooth electronic beats, blips, bloops and Chino’s distinct voice without devoting the music my full attention. Who ever said side-projects couldn’t be interesting?

Less than a year after the release of †, Crosses are back with their second EP… wait for it… ††. Rolling Stone is streaming the track “Prurien†” from the EP now, which you can and should listen to and download here.

Oh, and in case anyone is planning on reposting this and is wondering how you make the † symbol, it’s Option-T on a Mac (PC: I couldn’t tell ya). Copy-and-paste is sweet, too.

-VN

Photo credit: Tyler William Parker for Rolling Stone

Chino Moreno has always been one to extend his vocal talents far beyond the screaming, crooning and jumping around like a madman in high socks that he’s best known for as the frontman of Deftones. See his work with Team Sleep and Crosses, his guest appearances with Soulfly, Sevendust, Whitechapel, Korn, Norma Jean and many many more for proof that Chino’s ambition — and talent — runs deep.

The latest artist to receive the gift of Chino’s purdy voice is Anthony Green, best known as the heart-throbby lead singer of proggy alt-rockers Circa Survive, who will release his second solo record Beautiful Things on January 17th via Photo Finish. Anthony Green’s new song “Right Outside” has Chino all over it — it’s practically a duet — and the harmonies and vocal interplay are gorgeous, a whole different of Chino you’re probably not accustomed to hearing. Stream “Right Outside” at Rolling Stone, then come back here and tell us what you think.

-VN

Not Seth Putnam

One mind-blowing aspect of Devin Townsend’s Deconstruction album is its coterie of guest personnel. A who’s-who of pivotal screamers, the list includes that awesome dude from Gojira, legendary super-stud Ihsahn, and extreme metal’s loveliest alto, Tommy Rogers from Between The Buried And Me. And though Townsend rightly rushes to downplay the distraction/sketchy motives of high-profile guest contributions, it’s exciting as shit for metal fans to have those guys — plus studz from Meshuggah, Cynic, and Gwar — all in one place.

Likewise, I super-hail Chino Moreno and his 2005 Team Sleep record, which finds the Deftones frontman enlisting the non-metal voices and pens of Helium’s Mary Timony and Rob Crow of Pinback (above). Each sings awesomely on at least two of the self-titled album’s jamz (e.g. “Our Ride To The Rectory” with Crow here). Just like Townsend’s gang on Deconstruction, Crow’s and Timony’s presence legitimizes the album (ie. busy, inspired aces wouldn’t appear on some hack shit) and helps it to achieve a specialness, like the NBA All-Star game or the time I ate a pizza that a bag of Cheetos had spilled onto (aka Cheetzza©). Best of all, it makes me feel in sync with another human being (Moreno) who happens to ass-worship Timony and Crow and um Moreno. It’s like finally somebody put my needs first when making an album!

Okay here we are at paragraph three, so I bet my editors would like me to deliver on the headline’s promise :) Speaking of Team Sleep MVP Rob Crow, you love the dude cuz he’s awesome (see also: Optiganally Yours’ Exclusively Talentmaker!), and cuz he’s metal (see: his non-serious doom metal project, Goblin Cock), and cuz on his new solo album He Thinks He’s People, he offers an affectionate tribute to Seth Putnam, the recently deceased Anal Cunt mainman and author of history’s best song titles. Check it out and chuckle after the jump!

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Deftones videos sometimes feature smokin’ scene chicks (here and here), but I even dig the ones in which singer/non-actor Chino Moreno stars awkwardly (here) and the ones comprised wholly of concert footage. And I endorse the latter as an ace advertisement for Deftones’ always-killer live shows and the hot Mexican emo girls who attend them. And that’s just what we have for Diamond Eyes‘ fifth official video, “Beauty School” (above), with bonus backstage peeks and a few choice shout-outs by drummer Abe Cunningham: He flashes a DVD of Abel Ferrera’s King Of New York and dons a T-shirt from Minneapolis venue First Avenue (as he did two Fridays ago at Lollapalooza). That shirt + Cunningham makes me flashback to a 1996 Deftones show at First Avenue after which my face was punched into a different area code. I’ll never again cooperate when an angry jerk asks me to allow him a running start.

-ADF

The Deftones tour is now winding through Europe and winding up in Russia, where the scene chicks are super-hot and, according to porn, will do anal with little cajoling. Cough dates here.

Photo by Emily Di Frances

A few days before I crossed paths with the big Deftones and Dillinger Escape Plan tour last week, Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham told me that the band has only now emerged from years of intra-band discord and label battles. It kinda blew me away to hear that “it absolutely sucked” to be involved in the making of Saturday Night Wrist, a classic record which seems like the product of a thousand men’s pooled awesomeness, not of five embittered, isolated former friends (plus Bob Ezrin). The live shows from those fractious years gave no clue to their travails, either; they played awesomely killer always. Weird.

Cunningham’s words got me pumped to assess the newly happy, friendy, post-wake up call Deftones. The question: With no one to battle, would their blades grow dull? Does this band thrive on friction like fellow all-time raddest American bands Faith No More and Talking Heads? Are they poker-faced like other ego-rich Yank greats Slayer and Van Halen? Now that they are tight again, would their on-stage fury be sapped of its fuel?

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A dude could get used to the practice of semi-annually checking in with loud alternative rockers the Deftones. That’s the pattern at MetalSucks: Every other season, we pry into the personal and professional business of a band destined to be remembered as one of America’s all-time greatest (srs), the post-Cobain Faith No More and canonizer of real-head hall of fame acts like The Cardigans, Duran Duran, Suicidal Tendencies, and The Cure.

And the old Deftones — which, of course, were the young Deftones — seemed just as cocksure and drama-wracked as all those. However, this new, older Deftones is grooving smooth and hanging hard, said drummer Abe Cunningham in an epic gab with MS last week. (One never runs out of conversation topics with Deftones dudes.) Animated and way too modest, Cunningham talked me through even more Deftones details than I covered last time and last last time: The fun of recording awesome cover jams, their wake-up call when bassist Chi Cheng was seriously injured, his chemistry with Cheng’s replacement Sergio Vega and with singer Chino Moreno, their record deal then and now, and silly people like Helmet’s Page Hamilton and the big fat copycats in Shinedown.

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I just wanna throw my two cents in…

True story: when I was a kid, I thought the lyrics to “Black No. 1″ were “You can’t go out ’cause your boobs are showing.” I was confused about what the song’s title meant, but otherwise, the words made perfect sense to me. Oh, misheard lyrics. You never cease to amuse.

Even if you weren’t a Type O Negative fan or a Carnivore fan, you have to admit that Peter Steele had one of the most distinctive voices in the history of metal. You never heard the guy and thought, “Gee, who is that?” And because my mother used to work with Josh Silver’s (now sadly also departed) dad, Type O Negative always felt, somehow, more tangible to me; Steele was iconic and often seemed larger than life, but I knew he wasn’t superhuman.That he passed away so young was a very unfortunate reminder that he wasn’t The Man of Steele. But he made his mark and left something to appreciated behind, and in the end, that’s all any of us can really ask for.

Here are some happier things that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We unveiled the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2010.
• We debuted a new video by Jungle Rot.
• We spoke to Kerry King and Dave Lombardo from Slayer, Chino Moreno from Deftones, and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal contemplated depression, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa contemplated L O S T, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley contemplated the perfect Taco Riff.
• We checked out new releases by Levi/Werstler, Wormrot, and Bison B.C. and Sweet Apple.
• Ever dreamed of singing with Nevermore? We’re running pretty much the coolest contest in the history of ever.

Next week brings at least one and possibly two big surprises, plus, knock on a wood, the debut of a new column by a writer you will hate. See ya then.

-AR

A few years ago I made a promise to a friend that if and when The Deftones come through NYC we’d go to the show so he can crowd-surf for the very first time. My friend isn’t a metalhead but grew up in Sacramento and has all sorts of love for The Deftones. But since I made that promise The Deftones haven’t done a whole lot of touring for obvious reasons.

Watching The Deftones’ new video for “Rocket Skates” — the track the band released as a free download a couple of weeks back — mostly just makes me really excited to bring my friend to a Deftones show and let him experience what a real moshpit is all about. And don’t fool yourselves, people: the moshpit at a Deftones show is way rougher than most of the kvlt/tr00/br00tal bands you’re all surely thinking of while declaring The Deftones aren’t metal.

Side note: is Chino looking quite svelte these days or what?

Check out a track-by-track review of Diamond Eyes over at Metal Hammer. The album comes out May 17th.

-VN

The shelved Deftones record Eros is going to make a collector’s item some day. For one it seems like it’ll never see the light of day which in and of itself would make it a hot commodity, but more importantly it very likely could end up being the last album bassist Chi Cheng played on before slipping into a coma following his car accident. And with each passing day it seems less likely Cheng will wake up. I’m not trying to be morose and I certainly wish him and his family well… I’m just saying. You know the files for Eros are on some A&R guy’s hard drive somewhere; hopefully one day they’ll see the light of day.

Diamond Eyes, the new record the Deftones have recorded in place of Eros, now has a release date (May 18th) and a new song to give fans a taste of what’s in store. “Rocket Skates” (of which we postage live footage from November’s Smokeout Festival) is available for free download today only at GunsRazorsKnives.com, although at the moment the site is spitting back error messages that “the code you entered is in use.” Thanks, fuckwads at Warner Bros.; you provided the code yourselves. Thankfully the song is posted on the Deftones’ YouTube page too which is actually a better deal ’cause you also get the lyrics. The song sounds like it’s got a White Pony type of vibe, which I like. And despite Chino Moreno’s claim that the lyrics on this album are less personal, it really seems like this song is about Chi Cheng. Have a listen for yourself.

-VN

It’s easy to be jaded after attending a billion or so live shows, but climbing the hill up to San Manuel Amphitheatre, the site of Cypress Hill’s MetalSucks co-sponsored SmokeOut festival, I was transformed into a gawking greenhorn. (I would soon be treated like one, as well.) Behind my rib cage,  calm battled with rising euphoria, and not only because I stood with a hefty joint in my shoe at the gates of a tri-county puff-athon on the nicest late-October Saturday ever; mostly, I was just tweaking to look in on a magnificent but savagely wounded band at this early stage of recovery. Yes, the SmokeOut would feature the Deftones, who have played around ten shows since an auto accident left their bassist, Chi Cheng, in a coma. And despite the puzzling news that to-be sixth album Eros had been shelved, the band already had been showing positive signs and seemed poised to reintroduce themselves via a violent new song (“Rocket Skates”) and a spritely, newly-slimmed singer (the gossip had Chino Moreno at anywhere between twenty and eighty pounds lighter). Exciting!

Two hours later, right before the Deftones took the stage, night had fallen, the denizens of the cheap seats waded ankle-deep in litter, and I was pissed off as shit.

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I hope you guys enjoyed the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far. I thought it was awesome that it got so much feedback, and shows that the site is really picking up steam. I was drawn to this site because of the humor and I think it’s coming into it’s own. I called to ask them for the blog and they were gracious enough to say, ‘yes.’ Now that I’m not in God Forbid, they may feel gyped!

With that said, a lot of my blogs have been controversial, and with me leaving God Forbid, everyone is wondering why I still have a blog here. I’ve wondered the same thing. I want to help people out in the biz the best way I can. So for a while I’m going to make this blog a question and answer sort of thing. You can ask any question but if it’s stupid, I won’t answer. If it asks about my decision to leave GF, I won’t answer. Those questions don’t help anyone. Post your questions in the comments section and I’ll try and answer as many relevant ones as possible. I will keep it up weekly if the questions keep coming.

On a side note, I am working on new music that is turning out to be pretty bad ass. Axl and Vince have heard some of the stuff, although rough, and it’s pretty heavy. The vocals are all singing. Think Gojira mixed with Alice In Chains. I’m diggin’ it, bigtime!

OK, on to some questions.

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Ever had really good foreplay followed by really mediocre sex? It sucks, doesn’t it?

During “Vipers, Snakes and Actors,” the opening track from Norma Jean’s new album The Anti-Mother, I actually became optimistic that I was hear the band return to form after the steaming pile of failure that was their last album, Redeemer. Don’t get me wrong – Norma Jean was never a great band by any stretch of the imagination – but on their Convergian O’ God, the Aftermath and especially Bless the Martyr, Kiss the Child, the Christian rockers made music that was loud, raw, and chaotic; it kept you on your toes because you never knew quite where it was going. “Vipers” promises more of the same, a complete one-eighty from the polished, bland, by-the-numbers pseudo-punk of Redeemer.

And then the second song on the album kicks in.

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The latest Blabbermouth [via Rock N Roll Experience] news sure to cause an uproar: Burton Bell just gave an interview where he calls Deftones front man Chino Moreno “a dick,” Slipknot’s Joey Jordison a “sloppy” drummer, and asserts that the last few Ozzy albums have been full of “shitty music.”

And, hey, you know what? Horns up to Bell for being honest. Because while I don’t think Jordison is a sloppy drummer and I don’t know Chino well enough to classify him as a dick or otherwise, but Ozzy certainly has been making shitty music for at least three studio albums now. And why the fuck should we fault Bell for speaking his mind? It’s better than the usual being diplomatic bull crap.

Ironically enough, the last time I remember someone this prominent in the metal world really speaking out like this was Chino’s infamous Revolver interview in the summer of ’03, when he slagged every band he was about to hit the road with for that year’s Summer Sanitarium tour (including Metallica). What goes around comes around, I s’pose…

-AR