I interviewed Joe Payne once, and as far as I could tell from our brief time together, he’s a nice guy, so I feel bad making fun of him.

But I’m gonna do it anyway.

The former Nile bassist has spent the past three-odd years in Dino Cazares’ Divine Heresy, a band I assume we will never hear from again. I know there was never an official break-up announcement, and for all I know, the other members of the band do not believe DH to be dead. But let’s be real here — with all due respect to Tim Yeung and company, Dino IS Divine Heresy, he’s the reason anyone ever paid attention to Divine Heresy, and without him, there is no Divine Heresy.

And right now, Dino is preoccupied with Fear Factory. And I don’t foresee him not being preoccupied with Fear Factory for some time to come. So even if Divine Heresy ever do return, it most likely will not be anytime soon. Especially since Divine Heresy aren’t even listed on Century Media’s artist page right now (the band released both of their albums through that label), which is probably not a good sign of new music to come.

And this fact makes the statement Payne released to Blabbermouth last night baffling:

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Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.

So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…

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Back in 1993, music had not yet been ruined by the internet. Since information traveled through word of mouth and the postal system, it was much easier for a band to seem mysterious and larger than life than it is today, when you can see Jesse “Ripper” Owens’ Twitpics of him flying model airplanes with his daughters or whatever. The most notable example of that is, of course, the Norwegian black metal scene, but that never held much interest to me. For me and my friends who grew up on the West Coast listening to Suicidal Tendencies and Ice T, our cherished mythological metal band was Brujeria, and their 1993 LP Matando Gueros (literally means “Killing Honkeys”) was our version of Transylvanian Hunger.

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Can you imagine if everyone to whom we give endless amounts of shit followed Dino’s example? We’d have Rose Funoral cards and Tommy Lee faking his own death and Fred Durst pulling a Billy Madison and pics of Joey Belladonna with his twig and berries tucked back. That’s the kinda world I wanna live in. I believe we can make it happen if we try.

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We did a second installment of Cooking Contaminated.
• We’re streaming new tracks by Son of Aurelius.
• Eyal gave us a Daath studio update.
• We spoke to Max Cavalera and Ratt’s Bobby Blotzer.
• We suckered Decibel‘s Andrew Bonazelli into writing about the Metal Mets for us.
• We checked out some new German cheese metal releases.
• We called out David Draiman.
• We watched some great music videos, some awful music videos, and some really awful music videos.
• We made fun of the most annoying little kid in the world.
• We were sorry about Abacabb breaking up, but really happy about BOOBS!!!

Speaking of Eyal and studio updates: on Sunday I’m flying down to Atlanta to visit Daath in the studio. If you never hear from me again, assume I’ve been lost amidst a cloud of ATL purp smoke and awesome metal. But what a way to go!!!

-AR

We’ve given Dino Cazares a lot of shit on MetalSucks. And I know he’s read at least some of it. And I’ve been operating under the impression that he had no sense of humor about it whatsoever. But, hey, I’m happy to see that I was dead wrong.

These photos were taken by MetalSucks Maniac Ben Alden (right) and his friend Sam (left) at a Fear Factory show at Northern Lights in Clifton Park, NY on Friday night – and I give Dino major, major props for participating in their creation:

More photos, and Ben’s explanation of how this all went down, after the jump!

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Presenting… the baby cake.

-VN

[CakeWrecks, via MS reader Marcel Burgstad]

Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.

But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.

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I really only know Johnny Orlando, Jr., because of the work he’s done with Metal Injection, but plenty of people have told me I’m an idiot for not paying closer attention to him. And based on the below video, in which Johnny Orlando , Jr., Jr. asks members of Fear Factory, Misery Index, Revocation and Carnifex that all-important question: “Where do babies come from?”

Kudos to Burton C. Bell for trying to give the kid an honest answer, although Gene Hoglan’s response is clearly the best. Reader Xavier Luxenburg suggests that the absence of a certain guitar player is “confirmation” of his baby eating, but I think that dude actually likes ‘em a little younger than this kid.

-AR

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

On Wednesday we posted a video of a dude proposing to his girlfriend on-stage at a recent Fear Factory concert. I really thought that that was the first and last time the subject would ever come up, but, lo and behold, yesterday afternoon I actually got an e-mail from the guy – his name is Charley Ray, as it turns out, and his fiancée’s name is Alexis – saying “I never thought I’d get ‘coverage’ on the proposal…. We had a good time and it was unbelievably cool that Fear Factory let me do that.”

Of course, such a marriage proposal is, um, unusual, to put it mildly, so I needed to know more. And Charles was cool enough to grant me a quick e-mail interview. After the jump, learn all the ins and outs of this most bizarre story.

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Somone is inevitably going to read the critique I am about to write of Fear Factory’s new video, “Fear Campaign,” and write off everything I say as the ramblings of a Jew who is overly sensitive about the use of Nazi imagery. If you are that person, congratulations, you’re an imbecile and I think you’d be much more comfortable reading this website instead.

Now, onto the video…

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Say what you will about Fear Factory – you’re probably correct. Their faux-industrial flourishes of synths are ignorable at best and ridiculous at worst, Dino Cazares’ stop-start riffs blend together after a song or two, their sci-fi themes cover the spectrum of cheesy to horribly cringe-worthy, Burton C. Bell’s singing sounds like Justin Broadrick’s slow brother moaning in a karaoke contest, that their whole approach could be interpreted as watered down extreme metal for the Hot Topic goth set… they’re all pretty apt if they’re not a band you grew up with (I’m looking at you, Axl Q. Rosenberg). But say you’re sixteen years old, the oldest sibling and cousin on both sides of your parents’ families, don’t have any cool uncles with Overkill patches on their denim jackets or exhaustive NWOBHM collections, don’t have any friends that are into Cannibal Corpse or Slayer or Napalm Death (or a whole lot of friends at all, really), and your parents bond over their love for James Taylor. You can’t just go from zero to Carcass. Thus, bands like Fear Factory exist: to ease the transition between Nine Inch Nails and the wealth of perverted delight death, black, and doom metal have to offer. For that reason and really that reason alone, I can never hate on Fear Factory. They don’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny, but they do what they do well, and serve as an excellent gateway into extreme metal for the unsure and uninitiated. From Fear Factory I moved to Slipknot’s first album, and from there I moved to Reign in Blood. From there, it was all downhill very, very fast.

So I was delighted to hear that Dino had waddled his way back into the FF fold; admittedly, the only thing that kept me from completely hating (as opposed to just mostly hating) Divine Heresy was Cazares’ riffing, even if it did have a tendency to grow stale in that confines of that shitty, shitty band. I stopped following Fear Factory with Digimortal (B-Real guest verse = I’m all set with your band. That even goes for Outkast, as far as I’m concerned.) and have since only thrown Demanufacture or Obsolete on every now and again for some healthy nostalgia. I’ve obviously moved on to heavier and/or more esoteric metal, and thus didn’t need the band anymore to satisfy my heaviness quotient. And oddly enough, Mechanize, the band’s reboot after two Dino-less records, is an album exactly for that audience: while still undoubtedly a Fear Factory album, for better or worse, it’s full of embellishments those familiar with and fond of metal outside the realm of Fear Factory will recognize. In doing so, the band may have made the most satisfying album of their career, and quite possibly their heaviest. Though half the original lineup is gone, the spirit remains the same, if not drastically improved.

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The other night over beers some friends and I were saying it would be great if we could run a “Win a Signed Baby from Dino Cazares” contest on MetalSucks, wherein readers would submit their best recipes for babies, and the winner would get, y’know, a baby signed by Dino. It would be the best contest ever.

Obviously that’s never gonna happen ’cause adoption laws are real strict and shit, but The Gauntlet have come up with the next best thing – the “What is Dino Eating?” contest:

I was going through the audio from my Fear Factory interview with guitarist Dino Cazares and came across this sound bite and became curious as to what Dino might possibly be eating during the interview. Post your guess in the comments and the person with the best guess will get a Gauntlet shirt. In Dino’s defense, my interviews tend to run long with people I find interesting.

I don’t know how long the interview could have possibly run that Dino couldn’t wait – I mean, it’s not like their plane crashed and they were stranded in the mountains or something – but, hey, I applaud The Gauntlet’s ingenuity in designing this contest. Between that and the “Top Ten Rivalries Involving Dave Mustaine” list they published recently, I’d say they’re on a roll.

-AR

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the current Fear Factory drama because, well, it got boring re-hashing the same old shit over and over again just to get you guys all hot and bothered in the comments (whoops, did I just say that?). To summarize, in case you didn’t read this site missed out over the summer: Dino re-friends Burton Bell and the two start working on new music under the “Fear Factory” name, while Christian and Raymond — currently working on their Arkaea project — rightly object because Fear Factory is supposedly a four-way partnership. Lawsuits and public shit-talking ensue.

Last I checked a resolution between the two warring Fear Factions hadn’t been reached. So either the four men have settled, or Dino and Burton — let’s just call them the baby-eating Fear Faction — just don’t give a fuck. The baby-eating Fear Faction, along with latter-day FF cohorts Byron Stroud [Strapping Young Lad] and Gene Hoglan [Strapping Young Lad, Dethklok, every fucking band ever] — just announced that they have a new album called Mechanized coming out on February 9th via Candlelight Records (!?!).

The new song “Powershifter” has been making the Internet rounds all weekend; stream it below. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like Fear Factory. I imagine some of you will love it and some of you will hate it; place me firmly in the “meh” camp. I loves me some Demanufcature and Obsolete, but 10 years later there are tons of metal bands out there that are way better, more interesting, and more worthy of my listening time.

-VN

I’m not just speaking in the general sense. I mean, in this video, he announces “I’ve got something for all you,” then lets one rip.

What do you think that smelled like? I’d guess half-digested babies.

-AR

Thanks to Manfred Nuggets for the link.

Burton C. Bell has remained pretty quiet on the whole Fear Factory situation up until now, but the good folks at  Rock My Monkey have finally gotten him to open up and do some shit-talkin’ of his own. It’s an audio interview, but Mr. Blabbermouth has transcribed some key portions…

…which I’m not even going to re-print here. Because it’s mostly anti-climatic. But I’ll give you the short version: Bell’s side of the story is that during the mixing of the Dino-less FF offering Transgression, Christian Olde Wolbers started having an affair with the band’s manager, Christy Priske. And I guess things got pretty serious, ’cause the two are married now. Bell found Wolbers and Priske’s shitting where they eat as “completely unacceptable,” and things got worse when Priske, Wolbers and Raymond Herrera allegedly brought Bell some new business arrangement which he also disliked. And then things really fell to shit: Bell says he refused to work with Priske, Wolbers and Herrera refused to let her go and refused to reunite with Dino, and now we have all this fun mud slinging in a public forum.

But here’s the part of the interview I actually found really interesting, and this part I will re-print verbatim:

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I don’t know if Willie Gardner is officially associated with a band known as The Douche Lords or not, but he has their name in his e-mail address and sent me a link to the band’s MySpace page this morning.

Why is this band of interest? As it turns out, they were Dino Cazares’ first band (In case ya haven’t figured it out by now, that’s Dino above).

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I’ve gotten a few e-mails today from people asking me where Vince is. Well, the truth is, Vince can’t write because he’s ill. And he’s quitting the site. No, really, he quit. We didn’t fire him. Swear it. We stand by that statement.

Here’s some other shit that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We’ve heard the new Alice in Chains album, and it is good.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered some of your questions, and will answer more in the future.
• John Bush is coming back to Anthrax because Dan Nelson quit. Oh, wait, no he didn’t. Yes he did. He probably didn’t, though.
• We spoke with Poison the Well’s Ryan Primack and Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson.
• We checked out the latest releases from He Is Legend, Magrudergrind, Novembers Doom, and Clutch.
• Unfortunately, the 10th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos really is a real thing.
• Baby-eater Dino Cazares must be stopped!!!

Alright. Time to go buy a vaporizer of my very own. See ya Monday.

-AR

Anthrax may have stolen this week’s metal gossip thunder, but we’re always happy to re-hash old feuds for entertainment’s sake here at MetalSucks. The latest news had Dino Cazares taking a shot at drummer Raymond Herrera’s playing abilities, while Burton Bell has for the most part taken the high road and remained mum. Herrera and Christian Olde Wolbers both fired back this week, and here’s Wolbers’ latest:

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Oddly enough, the baby sandwich is not the poorly Photoshopped part of this picture.

This is Ray Herrera from a recent interview*:

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