It’s been interesting to watch chart patterns change over the past few years; there is so much emphasis on first-week numbers now that it’s considered totally normal for a record to drop between 60% and 70% from week one to week two. I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I’m pretty sure the record execs of the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and even early ’00s would’ve scoffed at front-loading a record’s sales like that. Why so much initial hype? Why let the ball drop so quickly thereafter? It’s about the long-term career of a band, not making an initial splash; those who burn brightly at the beginning often die off faster anyway.

As the industry moves away from ownership towards streaming with services like Spotify (and the service Apple will surely launch soon), emphasis will move away from that first-week hype. As pointed out by Bob Lefsetz in a recent newsletter, if a track leaks, no big deal… just post it to Spotify and start earning income right away, even before release date. Same if an album leaks. Nothing lost, the leak is nullified. But I digress.

Let’s look at last week’s debuts, second week drops and more after the jump.

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Axl and I were joking the other night that we might have invented the phrase “still a thing” as applied to bands/people/trends that seem to have vanished from view but are apparently not just still around but quite popular. Only fitting then that the theme of this week’s Top Hard Music Soundscan charts is “still a thing.” I mean, the molasses-like state of inertia fixed upon modern hard rock radio and the associated bands over the past decade is just astounding to look at; nothing has changed in ten years.

Since there weren’t any notable metal debuts last week to crack the Top 100 aside from those in the Top 10, this week let’s look at all of numbers 1 through 10 on the Top Hard Music chart. Prepare to be astonished and baffled by the “still a thing”-ness of every single band.

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I’m going to put approximately as much work into this introduction as Throwdown put into not sounding like Pantera.

First up today we have “Wicked World,” the new video from Cold. Because Cold is apparently still a thing. And now only is this song painfully boring, but the video has no logic to it whatsoever. For example, it starts out with a teenage girl wearing a Cold hoodie. Which makes no sense, unless the video takes place ten years ago. If the video is supposed to take place in the present day, then it should really be a divorced single mother of two who works at the Circle K in a Cold hoodie.

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Scooter Ward, as photographed by Neil Zlozower.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, through some amazing technology created by the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys, we are able to take you inside the brain of an intelligent person as they are subjected to a recording by Cold:

Holy shit… what is this garbage? Do people really like this? Seriously? There are people who like this. Of all the music in the world, this is what some people choose to listen to. Uh-huh. Are the people who made this drek aware that they’re doing such a shit job? Do the members of this band actually listen to music?

Well, as it turns, the answer is, “No.” No, they don’t actually listen to music. So says Noisecreep:

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So says Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges in a piece about the (admittedly pretty sucky) band Carach Angren. But I take serious issue with this declaration.

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Thanks to MS Maniac Aaron M. for pointing out the hilariousness that is ensuing over at Ross Robinson’s Twitter account re: the new Korn record. Yeah, Robinson is producing the new Korn record — somehow I missed that too.

I have somewhat of a difficult relationship with Ross Robinson. On one hand he produced one of the bestest albums ever in the form of At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command, and he also produced landmark albums by Glassjaw and Slipknot. On the other hand he produced way more albums that are just all sorts of terrible — records by Limp Bizkit (this in and of itself is a crime worthy of corporal punishment), Korn, Cold, Soulfly, Machine Head’s cringe-worthy rap-metal phase, and Vanille Ice’s nu-metal “comeback” record. As a producer who was definitely pigeonholed into a genre (rightly or wrongly), unsurprisingly Robinson hasn’t had a whole lot of work lately.

But he sure got a nice money gig for the new Korn joint. And he’s all sorts of excited about it! Here we go:

Korn, Day one: pikt out drums/cartage broke wheel of my 24 trk tape mchn/fairchild on cymb/made catbox/knee wnt out of socket-kicks ass12:01 AM Aug 6th

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As ’90s nu-metal nostalgia reaches its peak (I FUCKING CALLED IT!), the parade of cash-grab nu-metal reunions continues. Joining the ranks of Limp Bizkit, E-Town Concrete, Crazytown, Snot, Cold, Slaves on Dope, and other terrible ear-raping bands I’m surely forgetting, TuneLab.com is reporting that Adema are reuniting and releasing a new DVD. Adema was never really known for much other from a) sucking, b) lead singer Marky Chavez being the half-brother of Korn’s Jonathan Davis. A guy I know once referred to Adema as “Pop-Korn” in casual conversation, and that’s pretty much the most hilarious / accurate thing that could ever be uttered about the band. Not to imply that Korn are genre-bending revolutionaries or anything… but, ya know.

Here’s Adema’s music video for “The Way You Like It” in case you need to be reminded of just how awful they were. I’d completely forgotten about this song… for the better.

At least American Head Charge just called it quits.

-VN

I saw Cold open for Marilyn Manson once. Even though it was a good month after Halloween (I recall only because it was Thanksgiving weekend), guitarist Terry Balsucko wore a Michael Meyers mask the whole set and stood almost perfectly still, hunched over his guitar as though he should be in the belfry at Notre Dame; vocalist Scooter Ward stood at the lip of the stage, smoking a cigarette and remaining otherwise completely stationary; and drummer Sam McCandless’ hair was dyed to look like a cheetah’s fur.

Needless to say, it was the most painful forty minutes of my life.

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“And the fifth angel blew his trumpet. And I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to the earth, and the key of the pit of the abyss was given him. And he opened the pit of the abyss, and smoke ascended out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun was darkened, also the air, by the smoke of the pit. And out of the smoke Limp Bizkit reunited and came forth upon the earth; and authority was given them, the same authority as the scorpions of the earth have.

“And in those days the men will seek death but will by no means find it, and they will desire to die but death keeps fleeing from them.”

Revelations 9:1-6

Ladies and gentlemen, Limp Bizkit have reunited.

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