We can’t believe it’s been seven years. This drink’s for you…

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:

Click to read more…

I mean, talk about a snub, right?!?

ANYWAY, tomorrow afternoon, Vince and I will attend the wedding of one of our oldest friends. A guy I have known since I was two years old. The very dude who was by my side the first time I heard Guns N’ Roses. I don’t think he had any idea at the time that I had just headed down a path from which I would never return. He works for a classy magazine now, and wears a suit and tie to work. I do this, and usually do it in boxers and a stinky shirt with some metal band on it.

I don’t have a point or anything. I’m just feeling reflective right now.

And now that I got that out of my system, here’s the rundown of things we did this week:

• We got a tour update from Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself.
• We spoke to Tommy Rogers from Between the Buried and Me, Oppu Laine and Mikko Kotomäki from Barren Earth, Kenn Nardi from Anacrusis, and Mike Riley and Dom Romeo from Pulling Teeth.
• We checked out new releases from As Blood Runs Black, Capsule, and Crucified Mortals and Nunslaughter.
• We checked out the newest lucky band to sign to leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS.
• We made the mistake of following Vinnie Paul onto his tour bus.
• We helped our friends at the Deciblog defend Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.
• We listened to the worst dubstep metal bastardization yet.
• We got excited about the new Scar Symmetry album.
• We sent out well wishes to Vince Neil while he’s in prison.
• We read some fan mail.

Okay now I’m gonna go pick up my new suit for tomorrow! WHOO-HOO TO BEIN’ A BIG KID! See you peeps Monday.

-AR

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week’s query was suggested by a reader identifying himself simply as “Andy” –

WHICH MODEL OF GUITAR IS THE MOST METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

I’d honestly snoozed on the date this time around but thankfully Noisecreep came to the rescue with a fitting tribute.

Pretty much any footage from Pantera’s 1991 Moscow show gives me instant goosebumps. I really oughtta own that DVD. They’re just SO full of energy. Ah, youth. Skip to 3:15 for Dime’s solo if you care about that sorta thing…. and dig that proto-breakdown right after it (today’s kids would be karate chopping like crazy during that part). But really you gotta watch the whole thing.

Share your Dimebag / Pantera memories in the comments.

-VN

[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

Click to read more…

We didn’t cover Dimebash 2010, a simultaneous tribute to Dimebag and benefit for the Ronnie James Dio Stand up and Shout Cancer Fund. Why, you ask? I don’t have a good answer. It was on literally every other metal site in the world, we don’t flatter ourselves that you read MetalSucks exclusively, and while I can’t speak for Vince or any of my other peers here at MS, I personally didn’t have anything even remotely interesting to say about it. A bunch of really cool people got up and jammed on some classics. It was for a great cause. It looks like it was a lot of fun. Go to Metal Insider if you still haven’t seen any footage from the event.

One thing which really might have pushed the event over the top from really cool to HOLY SHIT AWESOME, though, would have been an appearance by Phil Anselmo. Of course, Anselmo and Dime were on bad terms when Dime was murdered, and Dime’s family — specifically, Vinnie Paul and Rita Haney — have not made amends with Anselmo since, and have even speculated that some violent statements Anselmo made in the press prior to Dime’s shooting may have inspired the murderer. So when rumors started circulating that Anselmo was actually gonna be at Dimebash, well, that was a pretty big deal.

Anselmo didn’t appear at the event, though — but he was, Haney has now revealed, supposed to. You can watch the below video interview to get the full scoop, but the gist of it is that she no longer feels that Anselmo bears any responsibility for Dime’s murder, and while the situation is still sensitive, she seems to have finally come to peace with Anselmo. Perhaps more interesting — and sadder — still: Vinnie Paul still hasn’t.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

We’ve written about the classes of Aaron O’Keefe before; the guy is an Ohio music school instructor who teaches his classes to perform songs by the various bands of Phil Anselmo — specifically, Down’s “Ghosts Along the Mississippi” and Pantera’s “Cowboys from Hell.”

The most logical next choice for one of Mr. O’Keefe’s classes would probably be a Superjoint Ritual song, but I guess someone decided that songs like “Fuck Your Enemy” and “The Knife Rises” were inappropriate for a bunch of kids, so we’re back to Pantera. In this instance, O’Keefe’s latest class has covered “Revolution is My Name.” It’s pretty great, even if you are guaranteed to crack up laughing when the singer begins “’68, and into the world born,” before starting to go on about the 70s and Vietnam. Some of these students are as young as twelve years old, which means they were born in ’98, not ’68.

Also kinda funny: The actual video for “Revolution is My Name” features kids impersonating the members of Pantera. I’ve always felt that the lil’ dude playing Dimebag did an especially dead-on impersonation. Here’s that clip, on the off chance that you’ve never seen it before:

Click to read more…

I’ve been mugged and I’ve been conned, but, luckily, I’ve never had a break-in. I imagine it feels like you’ve been violated; I know that might sound funny, but I don’t mean it to. Maybe it’s not as bad as a mugging in that there’s no threat of violence, but it’s way worse in that someone invaded your most personal space.

And so I feel a lot of sympathy for Machine Head’s Robb Flynn, who recently lost a lot of valuable stuff — including a guitar gifted to him by Dimebag — during a break-in. Here’s a full statement on the matter from Flynn, including an offer of a reward for anyone who can help retrieve the stolen goods:

Click to read more…

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

There weren’t any real hot button topics this week, so we decided to just play a fun game that used to keep Vince and Axl occupied for many a lunch period when they were kids:

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

Tributes to Dimebag have become a bit passe in 2010 (or really sometime in 2008), but the lads in British thrashers Evile get a pass. For one, their cover of Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” is awesome — vocalist/guitarist Matt Drake handles Phil Anselmo’s vocals with surprising ease, and the band does the Pantera classic justice in every other way. But then there’s the sad tragedy of bassist Mike Alexander’s sudden death last Fall, and the poetic coda that the last song he ever recorded with the band was a cover of “Cemetery Gates.” If that doesn’t give Evile a license to play this song and devote it to Dime whenever they damn please, nothing does.

Suckalo Jeremy Ruemenapp was on hand at Trees in Dallas a few nights ago to catch Evile covering “Cemetery Gates” during their support slot for Overkill. Check out his video of the performance (with really good video and sound quality!) below.

If you live in the Dallas area you can catch Deftones performing a surprise set on that very same stage tonight at 7pm! Ustream will have a live broadcast of the event, so be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT / 5pm PDT tonight to watch if you can’t attend.

-VN

That’s how long it was before I heard a reference to the Black Tooth Grin, a drink which – in case ya somehow don’t know – was favored (and I believe created) by Dimebag.

I’m (obviously) all for commemorating Dimebag and celebrating his legacy when it’s appropriate. But why does it feel like Vinnie Paul constantly needs to remind us who his brother was? Does anyone in Hellyeah really think we’d forgotten? Maybe I’m not being fair, but this feels exploitative to me. It’s as though the band were aware that no one would care about them if they weren’t Vinnie’s first serious post-Dime project.

Also, the song, entitled “Cowboy Way” sucks as bad as the movie of the same title. That’s not surprising, but just in case you thought this band had maybe gotten better since their first album… the answer is apparently “Nope, they still make shitty music.”

You can listen to the song, below or, if you’re really so inclined, download it for free here.

-AR

I know I’ve written this phrase a few times in the past, but rarely is it so true: Phil Anselmo needs no introduction. You know who he is. You wanna read this interview. Period.

I will give you a little taste of the topics Mr. Anselmo and myself recently discussed via phone: his label, Housecore Records, and his upcoming autobiography, which will be co-authored by MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell. I did not utter the words “Pantera”or “Dimebag” even once, even after Phil did, because, well, what’s the point? The guy gets asked about Pantera literally all the time. It’s not like I was gonna be the interview where he suddenly slipped-up and revealed some new piece of information.

Luckily for you guys, Anselmo still has a lot to say even when he’s not talking about one of the most famous metal bands of ever. And so without any further bullshit…

Click to read more…

Of course not every band can be a Pantera or Down, but I’d argue that out of any member of Pantera, one Mr. Rex Brown has the best track record for non-Panteric projects. He wasn’t in Damageplan, a mediocre band we all pretend didn’t exist in the name of not doing any harm to Dime’s legacy; he’s obviously not in Hellyeah, who I still can’t quite believe are a real band and not some elaborate prank; Pantera and Down are only ones of Phil Anselmo’s 1,384 bands that Brown was in. Yeah, Rebel Meets Rebel was way too redneck for this Noo Yawk Jew, but at least they didn’t have a song called “Alcohaulin’ Ass.” So three cheers of Rex.

Of course, now Rex has another new band, Arms of the Sun, so I guess it’s possible he’s about to fuck-up his batting average. The three songs on AOTS’ MySpace page really generic bar-band stuff that sounds like it might have been cat nip for the guy who signed Candlebox fifteen years ago, but again. “Alcohaulin’ fucking Ass.” So Rex gets to keep his title belt… for now.

Check out Arms of the Sun here, then tell me why I’m being too hard on Damageplan/RMR/Hellyeah/Superjoint Ritual/whatever in the comments section.

-AR

It would appear as if Sergeant D’s days at Metal Inquisition are over. His last post on Metal Inquisition was dated February 23rd while contributions to crunkcore powerhouse blog Stuff You Will Hate are ongoing.

Sad face.

But at least Sergeant D went out on a high note (ha) with the above fantastic photoshop job. There is so much going on in this collage that I don’t even know where to start. Are the events of September 11, 2001 being glorified by insinuating Dimebag was somehow involved? Is the eagle sad about Dimebag’s death? Is everyone just really fucking stoned?? WTF??? I want answers.

-VN

Yesterday we discussed all the upcoming Pantera reissues, as well as the fact that the band’s second greatest hits collection, 1990-2000: A Decade Of Domination, is coming out on March 30. I said that it’s hard not to see this compilation as a cash-in, and now that track list has been revealed and details of how the album will be sold, it’s even harder.

For one thing, the band’s original greatest hits album, Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits, not only had six more songs than this new one will, but came with a bonus DVD showcasing twelve (!) music videos.

Here’s the track list for the new collection, A Decade of Domination…

Click to read more…

This July will mark the twentieth anniversary of the release of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell, and while I know that some of our readers who either a) weren’t born yet when the record came out or b) were in diapers when the record came out don’t “get” what the big deal is about Pantera, I’m hoping that their youthful arrogance will give way to some appreciation of history – which is to say that just because you’ve heard ten thousand bands that sound like Pantera doesn’t mean that Pantera didn’t do it first, and do it best. Remember that dude who told the Alternative Press “fuck Black Sabbath” and claimed they had no influence on his band? Remember what band that dude was in? Atreyu. You don’t wanna grow up to be a member of Atreyu, do you?

So. Pantera have an assload of reissues coming out. Details are still kinda scarce, but here’s what we know right now:

Click to read more…

I still don’t really know who This is Hell are, but they’re one of the bands that did a Pantera cover for that Metal Hammer thing, and now said Pantera cover, “Rise,” is up on their MySpace page.

And if all their music sounds like this, then, well, I’m not too sad I’ve been unfamiliar with This is Hell up ’til now. This sounds more like the worst Every Time I Die wannabes ever than it does Pantera.

Check out the song here, if you must.

-AR

As we mentioned earlier today, next Thursday we’ll run the MS staffs’ various year end lists. Of course, that means that the MS staff has to start turning them in now. And as we’ve begun the editing process, we’ve been reassured of what we already knew: opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one. But what’s more fun than smoking weed, listening to good music, and engaging in intellectual (or semi-intellectual) debate with good friends? For our money, nothing. That’s why we started MetalSucks in the first place!

Here were some sources of intellectual debate this week:

• We looked at a series of dreadful demos, the last of which was epic (and not dreadful at all).
• We spoke with Eric Peterson of Testament and Robb Flynn of Machine Head.
• Devin Townsend got deep.
• Marduk’s Mortuus body-slammed a would-be hugging fan.
• Mastodon are officially on the radar of mainstream publications like Time.
• We mourned the loss of Dimebag Darrell 5 years ago this week.
• We proclaimed Hate Eternal and System of a Down underappreciated.

Now we challenge you to start guessing which albums which MS writers will name as their favorites. Anyone who guesses correctly wins the knowledge that they probably read this site way too much when they should be working, or fucking, or doing almost anything else.

And then on Thursday we’ll unveil all the lists.

-Vince & Axl

There’s not much to say, other than we miss ya, dude. We’ll do a shot for you.

-AR