MetalSucks

MS reader AcidBeagle sent us the below YouTube embed of a brand new Them Crooked Vultures track called “Mind Eraser.” It’s pretty good (pretty, pretty, pretty good!), but that’s about as far as I’m going to go with it.

While the prospect of a Grohl/Homme/JPJ union was indeed tantalizing in theory, the partnership has turned out to be pretty “meh” in practice. It’s perfectly fine boogie/blues/whatever rock music, but would anyone ultimately give a shit if not for the star-studded cast of characters involved? Methinksnot, but you be judge.

-VN

Honestly, I was never that excited about Them Crooked Vultures, for the simple reason that supergroups are anticlimactic nine out of ten times (and the fact that Queens of the Stone Age haven’t made a record I’ve wanted to listen to more than once since Songs for the Deaf didn’t help). Still, I was open to giving the band a shot.

Then I heard their first single, “New Fang.”

When Gary Suarez described this band’s music as “seriously generic and geriatric classic rock,” he wasn’t kidding.

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It’s hard to believe the Foo Fighters have released 6 albums already. That in and of itself would be impressive for any band, but toss in the fact that Dave Grohl has aligned himself with umpteen side projects (Probot, Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, etc) and has continued to crank out hit after hit for the Foos, and it’s pretty damn astonishing. Here we are 13 years later, and the frickin’ drummer from Nirvana has penned so many hits that he probably had to make some pretty tough choices whilst whittling down tracks to be included on the band’s Greatest Hits package, coming November 3. AND the compilation has two new songs on it.

The Foo Fighters certainly aren’t metal, but Grohl’s got undeniable metal cred and an un-fuck-withable level of bad-assery. Even when he’s singing pure pop anthems like the new track “Wheels,” which I just streamed on the band’s MySpace page for the third fucking time in a row because it’s so good.

All hail Dave Grohl.

-VN

The Intarwebs have been buzzing and seething over the inclusion of Kurt Cobain as a playable character in Activision’s popular Guitar Hero video game, his digitized ghost forever doomed to perform Bon Jovi songs at the whim of teenage boys. Most rational people assumed that this perceived offense against the deceased grunge rocker was the fault of his widow Courtney Love, who would have had to sign off the creation of this virtual atrocity. When called out on this via Twitter, by British music journo and former Cobain family friend Everett True, the unflaggingly graceful Love took the usual high road and launched into an inscrutable six hour tweet seizure railing against, among other things, former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.

Anyone with a fucking brain in his skull (NO PUN INTENDED!) should immediately question the notion that Grohl has any control over Cobain’s likeness. Logically, that responsibility would rest with the executor of Cobain’s estate. But of course, we’re talkin’ about COURTNEY FUCKING LOVE here, so logic goes out the window from the start. Fortunately, Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic have formulated a much more coherent response to the growing outrage expressed by Nirvana’s sanctimonious fans, most of whom have grown up to be the type of corporate sellouts that Cobain so obviously disdained.

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People seem to be pretty into Them Crooked Vultures, the new group featuring Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones. Ya’ll have been emailing us all sorts of live clips that have been popping up, and Blabbermouth posts news about them any time one of the members so much as takes a shit. I admit, the prospect of this band is pretty tantalizing and I’m quite excited about them myself — I just don’t need to get all in a tizzy about 30 seconds of crappy cell-phone footage and a U.S. tour that doesn’t even hit New York (prediction: CMJ. Watch for it.)

Anyway, here’s some actual, real, worth-reporting news about the band: there’s a preview of the song “Scumbag Blues,” along with some nifty old-school looking animation, posted on Them Crooked Vultures’ official YouTube account (sent in by MS Maniac Jonathon Edwards). Watch it below.

So the guy with the umbrella/cane is obviously JPJ (cane = old, and all of those platinum records on the wall behind him), but of the other two vultures which is Grohl and which is Homme? Your guesses are as good as mine.

-VN

We’ve all been cringing at Courtney Love’s latest desecration of her dead husband for a quick buck. Thankfully, the Hole frontwoman and executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate isn’t standing in the way of an absolutely awesome reissue of Bleach, Nirvana’s classic grunge/sludge debut. First released twenty years ago on Sub Pop, the album has been remastered for the label under the direction of bassist Krist Novoselic and original producer Jack Endino.

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Last month I reported on the tantalizing supergroup combo of Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones. In the past few days that post has become tremendously popular, either because ya’ll really want to know about this group or because my headline of HOMME + GROHL + JOHN PAUL JONES = BONER is attracting people curious about the dick size of the aforementioned men. But we’re pretty sure it’s the latter, because the supergroup, now dubbed Them Crooked Vultures (how fucking perfect is that??) made their live debut this past Saturday evening at a Lollapalooza afterparty to a sold out crowd at the Metro in Chicago.

The Internet’s a buzzin’ with news and speculation about the band. I’ve seen no less than a dozen Facebook/Twitter posts; Spin.com has a list of funny things overheard at the show; Blabbermouth has a 30-second teaser of the song “Nobody Loves Me And Neither Do I” which I’ve re-posted below. Pretty much any excuse to talk about this band… oh wait.

No word yet on a release date for an album. Check out the teaser clip below… it sounds pretty much like you’d expect it to, which is a great thing.

-VN

Metal Hammer reports that Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones (those are the dudes from Queens of the Stone Age / Kyuss, Foo FIghters / Nirvana and Led fucking Zeppelin respectively, for the uninitiated or just plain retarded), in what would be the second extremely boner-worthy collaboration involving Josh Homme to surface in the past month.

Grohl is kinda-sorta getting his childhood/ongoing wet-dream of playing drums for Zep, kinda sorta. The man can pretty much do no wrong in my book, whatwith Probot, playing with Mastodon, a million other side projects, and of course the continued quality output of Foo Fighters. A collabo with Josh Homme makes perfect sense given his stoner/metal background, and JPJ is just the icing on the cake! Gonna be some deep, stoney shit.

-VN

Okay, not quite. But I’d like to imagine that’s what they’re thinking.

According to The Huffington Post, Dave Grohl and company are not pleased that McCain has been using the Foo Fighters anthem “My Hero” for his campaign. A statement from the band reads as follows:

“The saddest thing about this is that `My Hero’ was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential. To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song.”

The band allegedly didn’t learn about McCain’s use of the song until they read about it in news reports.

So I guess the Foo Fighters won’t be touring with Sammy Hagar anytime soon, eh?

-AR

[Thanks to Dan Bennett for the tip!]

If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

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- Lemmy. Check.
- Melvins. Check.
- Venom, King Diamond, Max Cavalera. Check.
- led Zeppelin (sort of). Check.

Next up – Metallica.

In an open letter to Metallica [Blabbermouth via Idolator], Foo Fighters / ex-Nirvana skinsman Dave Grohl did a little hint-hint, nudge-nudge at the godfathers of thrash:

Dear METALLICA,

Hey, it’s Dave! Remember me? Yeah, I’m the guy that’s been listening to your band faithfully since 1983. I bought your first album ‘Kill ‘Em All’ from a mailorder catalogue called Under The Rainbow, I think. Actually I can’t remember. It was 1983 for Christsakes! But that album changed my life and I’ve been listening to your albums ever since (even ‘St Anger’!).

I can’t wait to hear the new shit, and no matter what you guys do I’ll always be first one at the shop waiting to hear it. I’m sure you’ll come out and blow everybody’s fuckin’ minds, because you’re fuckin’ METALLICA!

Good luck. And don’t release it until it’s kick-ass.

Yours, Dave Grohl.

P.S. Are you finished recording the drums yet?

At this point why wouldn’t Metallica hire on Dave for a guest spot at some point? He’s definitely reached that elder-statesman / overall bad-ass status in rock culture that allows him to do this type of thing, and lord knows they could use the cred. I mean, who doesn’t like Dave Grohl?

Plus, the dude is sickly talented behind the kit, in stark contrast to what some of you had to say about Metallica’s current drummer.

-VN