I’m not, generally speaking, a huge power metal fan, but I love Firewind, and I love their new album, Days of Defiance. Does that mean that Firewind are a very, very good power metal band, and my tastes in the subgenre are highly discerning, or does that mean that Firewind are a very, very bad power metal band, and they appeal to me because they’re so unlike most of their peers?

I don’t know and I don’t care. You could call this “poopy metal” and I’d still listen to it. The music kicks all kinds of ass, Gus G. is the man, and for all the silliness and melodrama usually associated with power metal, it features the single most pithy lyric I’ve heard so far this year, in the song “Embrace the Sun”: “You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself.” Maybe that sentiment seems cheesy, but when I first heard it, I was like, “Whoa. That is some mind-blowing shit. And if we all changed ourselves, we’d change the world, man!!!” And I wasn’t even high when I heard it!

Here’s the newly released cover art for Days of Defiance, which comes out October 26 on Century. It’s pretty much exactly the cover art you’d expect for a new release from this band, but that doesn’t make the music it contains any less rockin’.

And I’ll have an interview with Gus G. soon.

-AR

I interviewed Gus G. this past Friday. He’s such an incredibly nice and talented dude, and the new Firewind album, Days of Defiance, is so friggin’ rockin’, that mid-interview I started to feel really, really guilty that I don’t like Mr. G’s Ozzy debut, Scream. Then again, it’s not really Gus’ fault that the album is perfectly serviceable but totally generic, since he didn’t write any of the material — take one listen to Days of Defiance, and you’ll know that if Gus G. had written the album, it would be 1,000% better.

So. Here’s the new video for Scream’s second single, the de rigeur power ballad, “Life Won’t Wait.” It’s indicative of all of Scream in that it’s a totally fine, and completely unspectacular, song. And, duh, my favorite part is the Gus G. guitar solo. But, really, I wanted to post it to make sure you know that Firewind’s Days of Defiance comes out October 26 on Century, and that the first single from that album, “World on Fire,” is available for download on iTunes right now. And it’s way better than this:

-AR

The nicest compliment anyone can seem to muster about Scream is that it’s Ozzy’s best album this millenium, which is like saying that the genocide in Rwanda wasn’t the worst human rights atrocity of the twentieth century, because only a million people were massacred. Really, the best thing to come of this album is that it’s bringing Gus G. to the attention of a lot of people who might otherwise never know him. Gus is on the cover of Guitar World now, and that makes me really, really happy.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the mediocrity of Scream will turn people off to the point where they don’t check out Firewind, or one of the other eight-hundred bands with whom Gus has played. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen. And it wouldn’t have happened, I think, if Gus has been able to contribute to the writing of Scream. And he tells Metal Insider that, knock on wood, if there’s another Ozzy album and he’s the guitar player to be on it, Ozzy wants him — and the other members of the band — to contribute more:

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We’ve been wondering for a long time if Gus G. was actually gonna get to write anything for Ozzy Osbourne’s new offering, Scream, or if he was basically just a session player; we knew he came in fairly late in the process since Zakk Wylde had already done a bunch of recording for the album, but we hoped against hope that Gus would actually get to do something a little more substantial. The problem with the last however many Ozzy albums has been lackluster songwriting, and that hasn’t really been a problem for Firewind; it seemed like Gus could be just the shot of adrenaline Ozzy needed to pull a Megadeth and remind us all why we ever loved him so much in the first place.

But now Blabbermouth is exclusively hosting an EPK (that’s “electronic press kit,” in case ya don’t know) for Scream, and it contains the following quote regarding the song “Soul Sucker” from producer Kevin Churko:

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So unless you managed to stay away from a computer this entire weekend – and good for you if you did – you’ve probably already seen the line-up for Ozzfest 2010, which was unveiled this past Friday evening. While our source was right that this year’s incarnation of the tour would be scaled back – it’s only hitting six cities over the course of about a week and half – a whole lot of the bands we’d heard would be playing the fest aren’t. In fact, if you can’t quite consider it a stellar line-up, that’s probably only because so many great bands were already swept up by other big package tours; maybe I’m being too nice because a large chunk of the second stage consists of bands I really like or at least respect, my feeling is that if this line-up doesn’t send anyone running for tickets, well, it’s not exactly something to be scoffed at, either. My own thoughts on all the bands and artists after the jump… plus dates, natch.

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So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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Yesterday’s commentary on the disappointing new Raintime single had two positive effects. 1) Everyone’s favorite negative nancy Ziltoid actually agreed with me on something, not just that the new single is weak but that 2008′s Flies & Lies was a good album [just watch, he'll come back now and say something else], 2) Some modern power metal fans came out of the closet to share new bands with us, amongst them Suckalo Andy Synn to tell us about Communic.

Mr. Synn also made a good point, namely that bands like Mercenary, Firewind, Raintime and Communic aren’t really power metal. As he put it so succinctly, “No frilly shirts, no lyrics about orcs/elves/woods/battles, just big riffs and big vocals.” True enough. But I guess that if radio programmers today are calling MGMT and Vampire Weekend modern “alternative” then we can call the aforementioned bands modern power metal by the same extension.

So, Communic are pretty fucking rad. The songs on Communic’s MySpace page are exactly what I’d want from any of these bands… just big riffs and big vocals. And the cheese factor is definitely there, but that’s why we like it.

-VN

A few weeks ago Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges called for power metal fans to defend the (in his opinion) indefensible genre, a call which I readily answered because I love the stuff. Almost on cue, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable issued his own defense of power metal — I swear I didn’t prompt him — claiming that in its current unpopular state, playing power metal in 2010 is about as punk rock as you can get. I salute you, Sacha.

Raintime, one of my favorite Europowercheese bands, have come out with a new song this week on the MySpace page of their American record label, Bieler Bros. The song, “Fire Ants,” comes from their forthcoming March 16th release Psychromatic. Their last release Flies & Lies was an excellent album so I’m curious what this new record will hold for these fine Italian gentlemen, but based on the new track I’m kind of nervous. Musically the song is solid if unspectacular, but vocally it’s weak as hell. Nevermind the fact that Claudio Coassin has ditched his vocal growls completely… I’m more concerned with the fact that his clean vocals kind of suck. Perhaps this was the case on Flies & Lies and I just didn’t notice because the music and songwriting were so strong. There’s a new pre-pro track on Raintime’s own MySpace page which leaves me feeling pretty much the same way.

Way to not give me any more ammo in my power metal argument, guys. With Mercenary ditching half their band last year and Gus G.’s obligation to Ozzy over Firewind for the immediate future, what have we modern power metal fans got left?

-VN

So unless you spent your summer someplace where there’s no internet or any way to get metal news, you should be aware that Zakk Wylde a) has been replaced by Firewind’s Gus G. as Ozzy’s new guitarist and b) got the news when Ozzy did an interview announcing he was parting ways from his longtime axe-slinger, because apparently Ozzy and Sharon are too chickenshit to actually pick up the phone and make a difficult call. And so it would be completely within reason for Zakk to have nothing but terrible things to say about all parties involved – in fact, I kinda expected him to do just that. This is the man, after all, who threatened to kill Dave Grohl just for writing some riffs for Ozzy, and who basically attacked a journalist who repeated a rumor that Wylde’s pal Mike “Metal Mets” Piazza might be a homosexual.

But Wylde is actually taking the news really well, or, at least, he’s putting on a good face. From a recent interview with MusicRadar.com (via Blabbermouth):

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First, let’s just talk about how we arrived at this place we currently find ourselves:

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I wasn’t even gonna report on this because, at this point, it’s barely news – I mean, we’ve known for awhile now that Gus G. from Firewind is Ozzy’s new guitarist. But so many of you e-mailed us this morning that I guess I have to write about this.

Randall Amps has jumped the gun somewhat by announcing that, yes, Gus G. is Ozzy’s new guitar player, and, yes, he will make his debut with Ozzy tomorrow at Blizzcon. Here are some random, uncollected thoughts:

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It’s 4 pm, and right about now we’re either interviewing someone or other or watching Job for a Cowboy. Either way, I hope we’re having a fun time.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• We’re streaming Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye in its entirety!
• Current Coheed & Cambria/former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie discussed metal with us.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi is home for tour and very busy blogging for us.
• Our girl Grim Kim visited Birmingham, England, the birthplace of metal.
• We checked out the latest releases from Assjack and Dysrhythmia.
• It looks Ozzy has hired Firewind’s Gus G. to replace Zakk Wylde. And that got us thinking about the legacies of former Ozzy axe slingers Jake E. Lee and Joe Holmes.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I know I will.

-AR

Several of you justifiably called out Axl yesterday for dissing Jake E. Lee in his post about Ozzy’s probable new guitar player, Firewind’s Gus G. Lee could definitely shred, and although his  contribution to the Ozzy legacy ultimately doesn’t stack up against Rhoads or Wylde, he did write the killer riff for “Bark at the Moon” which is actually one of my favorite Ozzy riffs ever.

So whilst making sure I had my historical facts straight here, I managed to turn up this nugget from the Wikipedia page for Badlands, the band Jake E. Lee formed after being fired by Ozzy:

After touring with Ozzy Osbourne in support of the Ultimate Sin album, Lee was fired in a telegram from Sharon Osborne while working on one of his muscle cars back in Los Angeles. Lee was completely caught off guard at the time of his firing and was under the impression he had a solid working gig with the Osborne camp.

Heyo! Sound familiar? Maybe Sharon will officially lay the gauntlet down on Wylde via Twitter. That’d be classy.

Here are Badlands performing “Highwire” live. Lee shreds. And that’s Ray Gillen on the mic, who’d just been let go from Black Sabbath upon forming Badlands with Lee.

-VN

Here’s something else Zakk Wylde can hear about for the first time over the internet.

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High school Vince Neilstein would’ve loved Edguy if only he’d known about Edguy. Your Motley Crue-monikered editor took a break from metal during his high school years let down by the demise of the hair bands and the invasion of the nu-metal dunder-heads, completely oblivious to all the great music our European friends were creating on the other side of the pond. But when I discovered Iron Maiden my senior year it was all over, and so began my long, but deep descent into the world of metal (egged on by one Axl Rosenberg, to be sure). Tickle your funny bones with this one: summer after Senior year I went all by my lonesome to see Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden — ’cause no one else I knew gave two shits about metal — with a rolled joint ready to rock in my wallet. Needless to say, it was life-changing.

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There seems to be some kind of bug going around lately amongst European power metal bands that causes them to cover ’80s pop songs, and Firewind seem to have been bitten (see also: Raintime, Hammerfall, lots of others). But Firewind are a damn good band (see my review of their recent album The Premonition) and their serviceable cover of Michael Sembello’s classic “Maniac” is amusing — but not as amusing as this awesome video that some zealous fan put together. If you like ass, dancing, and asses dancing, check it out!

-VN

It’s a good day to be a metalhead. Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted, the long-awaited reunion of Max and Iggor Cavalera of Sepultura, finally comes out today, though it’s been on the Internet for months receiving critical acclaim (read Axl’s review). Firewind and Mercenary release a dual-shot of epic, European power-prog in the form of their new albums The Premonition (read Vince’s review) and Architect of Lies, respectively. Jucifer’s L-Autrichienne combines metal of, well, pretty much every sort for this excellent release (read Axl’s preview and Iann Robinson’s rave). Korpklaani’s folk-metal explosion Korven Kuningas also hits the shelves, which we can best describe as Tetris-metal.

Not a bad day to be a metalhead, best next week promises to be even better with new releases from In Flames, Joe Satriani, Sevendust, Nadja and The Sword.

-VN

If only American bands made power metal this awesome and bombastic Century Media might not have had to go all the way to Greece to import the likes of Firewind, whose fifth proper studio album The Premonition comes out today (March 25th). Firewind combine the ferocity, speed, prowess and production of modern power metal with a distinctly ’80s pop-metal aesthetic, making their songs both immediate and undeniable. Firewind isn’t for everyone; if you have an aversion to cheese, this ain’t for you, but if you can appreciate the nuance and juicy goodness in that slab of feta then grab a knife and a cracker and sit down for a tasty snack.

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Gotta love these cool package tours. As you may have heard by now, Arch Enemy will be doing a North American headlining run in the spring, and if the chance to see these cats live isn’t enough to get you excited, well, they’ve thrown in melodic death metal heavyweights Dark Tranquillity, Dino Cazares’ Divine Heresy (read our interview with the band here), and one of our favorite power metal acts, Firewind. In other words, this is going to be an awesome show.Check out a complete tour itinerary after the jump.

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Come on, you know exactly what this band sounds like just from their name, don’t you? Epic, bombastic, soaring European power metal, but not necessarily of the “extreme” non-stop 164th-note Dragonforce nature. Lots of delicious keyboards, big sounding drums, shredding, guitar harmonies, and soaring vocals that leave you utterly helpless against the overwhelming urge to raise your fist to the sky. And yeah, it’s cheesy as all hell, just the way we like it.

Guitar whiz-kid and primary songwriter Gus G. and the rest of his Greek bandmates are back with a new song called “Mercenary Man” on their MySpace page (no relation to the Danish metal band Mercenary — though that would certainly make for a killer tour combo). Firewind’s new album The Premonition comes out March 24th via Century Media (Europe), and they’ll be promoting the new record with a lengthy European tour throughout April and May (with festival appearances to follow, we hope. hint hint, Download Festival).

-VN