To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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Not Chris Jericho

Does anyone take Chris Jericho seriously? I’d stopped paying attention to pro wrestling by the time his career started, and the one time I heard Fozzy at a listening booth (remember those?), I thought it was pretty awful.

But the guy has his fans, I guess, and some of them are probably pretty upset that he’s going to be on the latest edition of ABC’s reality show, Dancing with the Stars. (In case you’re not familiar with the program and are too stupid to grasp the basic premise based on the title, it’s a show in which “stars” dance, and, uh, stuff.) His co-contestants will include The Karate Kid, a talk show host, a woman who actually used to let Hugh Hefner fuck her, a model, a retired boxer, and the morbidly obese lady who used to be on Cheers.

Honestly, I find this much less disgraceful than Vince Neil appearing on Skating with the Stars, because there are no ice skates involved, Jericho doesn’t look as though he could audition to play the title role in The Blob, and, like I said, I never held the dude in very high regard anyway. But like I said, Jericho’s fans might be upset right now, so, uh, let’s all give them a hug or whatever.

On the bright side, maybe Jericho will fall down and break his leg or something on television, and then at least we can all have a good laugh.

-AR

When you tune into the premiere broadcast of The Second Annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards tomorrow night on VH1 classic, you’ll see the final public appearance of our beloved Ronnie James Dio. You’ll also see Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, winner of roughly half of the meaningful awards, enjoying the metal community’s validation of their potentially dicey comeback effort, the magnificent Black Gives Way To Blue. You’ll see metal codgers like Rob Halford, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy bathe in much-deserved adulation. You’ll also see potentially ho-hum performances pumped up by mega-drummers: Rob Zombie with Joey Jordison (in his debut performance), Fear Factory with Gene Hoglan, Brian Posehn with John Tempesta (and Brett Anderson girl call me srsly) and Slash with Dave Grohl.

But at a mere 60 minutes, the broadcast can’t capture all of the April 8 event’s super moments and silly gaffes. Here’s a few things you won’t see:

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When it was announced Wednesday that the second annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards will explode all over the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on April 8, I was like whoa, ’cause last year’s ReGGAs just came up in conversation the other day. But then I was like ouch, ’cause I was absolutely not invited to the press conference at the Rainbow, and goddammit that sucks, ’cause you only get so many chances to gaze adoringly at Lemmy. So okay, it’s true: I wrote a bunch of negative shit about last year’s outing. But it was an honest description of what you, sir, would’ve witnessed if you had attended and not me. And if not, duh, no one listens to me anyway ’cause I’m an idiot! Most commenters wonder openly if I’m retarded! Jesus!

At any rate, I hope they let me and Adam [Who the fuck is Adam? - Ed.] attend again this year. When he asked about it a few days ago, I expressed my sincere hope that the show would go on. Now I’m excited that it will. Things were janky last time, but it was the first metal awards ceremony in the country; improvement will come with experience. Well that’s what I was told by a fortune cookie today. And ass it turns out, that wise-ass cookie was right! First off, this year y’got hosts Andrew W.K. (who may or may not be a robot from the future) and Chris Jericho (more like Chris Hilar-icho). Plus, Rob Halford is the guest of honor! And blaow! Just look at some of these categories!

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The most interesting headline to come across my RSS reader this morning was this one from SMNnews.com: “Fozzy Song ‘Martyr No More’ Streaming.” Fozzy is still around? Fozzy of wrestler Chris Jericho fame? No shit.

A side project for Stuck Mojo guitarist Rich Ward at best and a musical outlet for Jericho at worst, apparently Fozzy have a new album coming out called Chasing the Grail. I’m not sure I’d ever listened to a Fozzy song before today, but you know what? “Martyr No More” ain’t bad at all for what it is. Rich Ward is a great songwriter and a surprisingly tasty guitar player, and though his sound hasn’t changed much, or really at all in 20 years, you have to give the guy credit for being several years ahead of the rap-metal curve (for better or worse). Take latter-day Stuck Mojo and remove some of the cringe-worthy rapping (not for nothin’ I’ve actually dug some of Mojo’s later material) and you’ve got Fozzy, which is actually kind of an upgrade. If you can just ignore all the auto-tune on Jericho’s voice, you’ve actually got a pretty decent song here. Certainly not gonna reinvent the wheel, but a good song.

-VN