“It smells like B.O. and shame…”

As is par for the course these days, Korn has received a shit-ton of grief for their recent collaboration with dubstep producer (and former lead singer of screamo act from First To Last) Skrillex, AKA Sonny Moore, for the song “Get Up.”

Regardless of what you all think of Korn circa 2011, video footage from this past weekend’s Coachella Festival (Korn is introduced at the 1:05 mark) appears to be evidence they’ve accomplished exactly what it is they set out to do – latch onto a new, somewhat hip musical trend; lure even more new listeners into their world; and hopefully, remind their former fans that they still exist.

You know, a blatant money grab.

I say, more power to ‘em.

-CM

Corey Mitchell is a best-selling author of several true crime books. I plan on listening to the new Explosions in the Sky extensively while working on my next one.

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Thanks: metalgf

Vince is living it up in sunny Los Angeles this week, but he just sent me this:

We’ve known since October that the Faith No More reunion would finally be hitting the U.S. this year, but now it’s extra-super-duper-official. I’m assuming this will part of a full tour – but if it’s not, I guess I’m going to Coachella in April…

-AR

No, not really… but you’d think so based on the Canadian pop duo’s new “metal” t-shirt design (above).

Part of me wants to like this t-shirt because it looks cool. Kudos to the designer for that. But the other part of me wants to say, “Man, fuck that.” The co-opting of metal culture, particularly the aesthetic, is not something that metalheads take lightly. I’m no member of the fashion police, but I think it’s fair to say that any Tegan & Sara fan wearing this shirt would be doing so ironically; “Haha, it’s Tegan & Sara but it *looks* metal. Get it?” That irony is a slap in the face to those of us who take metal seriously. I can’t speak for Tegan & Sara themselves — for all I know they could be cranking Gojira at 11 as I type this — but the likelihood of most of their fans being able to name one Metallica song outside of “Enter Sandman” (if that), let alone the name of one metal band new on the scene in the past 10 years that didn’t play at Bonnaroo, Coachella or <insert hipster festival here> is pretty damn unlikely. And something about that makes it seem rather unfair of them to bite off a hunk of metal culture for their own good.

Full disclosure: I loved Tegan & Sara’s 2004 mini-hit “Walking With a Ghost.” Fantastic song. But metal it is not.

So let’s keep apples to apples. Look; if one Tegan & Sara fan picks up a Carcass record because of this shirt, then mission accomplished. But it still rubs me the wrong way. What do you all think?

-VN

In the summer of 2006, before MetalSucks was even a twinkle in our young, stoned eyes, Axl and I headed across the pond to England’s famous Download Festival at Castle Donington to get our metal on. Our minds were literally blown; neither of us had ever been to an event of such magnitude and we were literally shocked at the seemingly endless and welcoming metal community in Europe. In 2007 and 2008 we talked of going to other European festival mainstays like Wacken and Hellfest, and though we never made it back we were continually jealous of the rich European metal festival scene.

Americans have reason to be jealous of their European forefathers no more; a glut of both indoor and outdoor festivals have hit the American circuit in the past few of years, and in 2009 even more promoters are jumping on the bandwagon with a glut of killer destination metal festivals already lined up.

Click to read more…