My heavy metal DVD shelf was once pretty bare, displaying only The Decline Of Western Civilization and a load of one-view concert films. But just since 2005, it’s been sagging under the weight of classy, addictively watchable feature-length documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad, Get Thrashed, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and the Iron Maiden and Rush movies. The latter four come courtesy of industrious heavy metal anthropologists Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, both responsible for the launch of metal’s overdue efforts to canonize itself and shout down mainstream media’s 40-year campaign to paint metal as dumb, violent ape music. Pssht. Everybody knows it’s awesome, fun ape music.

Cough anyway Dunn and McFadyen are back with an 11-part mini-series airing Saturdays on VH1 Classic titled Metal Evolution. Think about it for a sec: That’s a total running time of about 440 minutes. If you’re not bonered about that, then … gosh, get your boner checked, okay? To date, three episodes have aired, each detailing the roots of metal in blues, jazz, and classical music; Saturday’s episode (above) traveled to England to gab with/about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (who, according to Dunn, declined to be interviewed due to an aversion to being associated with metal), and concluded with Judass Priest circa Sad Wings Of Destiny. Spoiler: Bruce Dickinson calls Eric Clapton “tame” compared to Ritchie Blackmore. SWISH! Episode schedule after the jump:

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We at MetalSucks have dealt with the paradoxes involved with conducting a poll to determine great guitar players (read our 25 Best Modern Metal Guitarists poll here)! So we get that in a unweighted vote, the top-ranked axemen may just represent those liked by the largest number of voters; i.e. a dude who we agree is pretty good may score higher than each of our individual favorite dudes.

So when Rolling Stone magazine enlisted a who’s-who of classic rock personalities for their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time cover story, we prepared for some wacky aberrations. Let’s check out a few of the RS list’s inconsistencies:

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If you live anywhere near New York Fucking City and you have half a brain in that ugly domepiece you call a head, you probably went to Day One of the inaugural Metal Suckfest at the Gramercy Theater yesterday.  And what a time it was…..we drank, we smoked, we rocked, we rolled, we laughed, we cried, we made sweet sweet love under the moonlight and then you puked all over me (gross!)……but holy bajeezus it was totally worth it huh?

Well TODAY is going to be even better!!!!!  Why/how, you ask??  1) the staff of MetalBlows will be raffling off hummers (not the cars), 2) ten radical bands (including Cynic, The Red Chord, Obscura, Fight Amp, and SIX MORE) will fuck your face right off, 3) I promise to keep that creepy guy from Metal Injection away from you, 4) free lapdances, 5) there’s a rumor going around that Lake Bukkake will play a secret set in the downstairs bar, 6) Axl will tell you all sorts of wise things about things, and 7) YOU SUCK.

Come party with us tonight, and be prepared to get a little messy……they don’t call it Suckfest for nothing!

-KW

I was bummed last month when I heard that FUBAR‘s Dean “Deaner” Murdoch (Paul J. Spence) was detained at the Canadian border and would not grace the SXSW Film Festival with his presence. So, I took matter into my own hands and tracked the one-balled mustachioed metalhead down and asked him for some sticky pearls of wisdom. Instead, he gave me a Top 10 list. – CM

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Tommy Bolin was one of the great ‘70s guitar gods, a charismatic, stylish, one-of-a-kind young talent on the rise. He played in the James Gang after Joe Walsh bolted, then stepped into Deep Purple when Ritchie Blackmore left. Bolin also recorded two solo albums that bounced back and forth from classic rock to ballsy, Zappa-esque jazz fusion. He died young, leaving behind a small-but-dazzling body of work.

When Bolin was in hard rock mode, the singer-guitarist sounded like your favorite songs from the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. The title track to Bolin’s 1975 Teaser LP is practically a blueprint for ’80s Sunset Strip hair metal like Mötley Crüe. For some reason, it’s not a nudie bar anthem, but it oughtta be. (An exhausted Crüe covered the song on 1991’s Decade of Decadence compilation, but their version is a fart.)

Bolin’s “Teaser,” album version

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So there are a lot of things that differentiate Frank Sinatra from most modern metal musicians, but I’d like to concentrate on two:

• He could actually sing.
• He was an honest-to-goodness, not-to-be-fucked-with badass.

And so it makes no sense to me that, according to Noisecreep, “members of Anthrax, Twisted Sister, Deep Purple, Queensryche, Warrant and other groups have recorded their own metallic versions of some of Sinatra’s standards and classics for an album called SIN-atra.”

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For my opening salvo, I suppose I should mention that it has been a long break between blogs. I’ve been meaning to get back to it, but this summer has been a very busy one filled with the musical composition of the new God Forbid album as well as a new project I’ve been working on, in addition to the daily pursuit of living life and getting by. I hope to contribute more frequently in the near future.

If you’ve followed my articles in the past, you may notice that I often address music history, and pertaining to this site, heavy music specifically. I have a great respect for artistic pioneers and the roots of where the most admirable and brilliant music stems from. I was the type of kid who would read liner notes and interviews by my favorite bands to find out who influenced them. I would always want to climb that musical family tree to see where it lead.

In my process of discovery, there was a common thread that jumped out at me that has been consistent through metal and rock history.  There seemed to be an intercontinental ping-pong match between the USA and Europe in terms of trailblazing the cutting edge of whatever musical genre was the dominant force of the time. This goes way back before metal existed — and yet, it has helped shape the musical landscape that exists today. The torch keeps being symbolically passed from one shore to the other.

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Twitter is arguably the most powerful tool available to musicians today, its micro-blogging mechanism allowing for real-time dissemination of information as well as a venue for direct communication open discussion with fans. Sadly, too many bands focus so heavily on the first of these benefits (Shadows Fall are a prime example of Twitter fan abuse, their profile replete with repeat tweets) that they squander any chance of actually connecting with their supporters. Interestingly, one musician who actually “gets” Twitter comes from a generation of rockers you’d expect to not “get” Twitter. His name is Glenn Hughes.

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