I’m at the point where I pretty much prefer animated movies to live-action ones. I passed up some big deal, hotshot movie that came out recently, whose name I don’t even remember, to see Rango. I’m usually a pretty good judge, too, because I knew Rango was going to be awesome ,and it was. It looks absolutely amazing, and if you’re a nerd for animation detail, the gross, crusty animals will thrill you. Not to mention the classic movie references from Chinatown to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s also damn violent for a “kids movie.” And well, I’m a movie nerd with a deep love for filmic violence. My dad didn’t have any sons, ok? He raised me to love his Fab Four; Arnold, Bruce, Sylvester, and Jean-Claude. And Dolph, on days he felt generous.

This might be odd, but I always liked to think about what various characters’ personalities would be like. Down to their music and movie taste. I especially try to pick out the metalheads, because I want to find my animated brothers and sisters in arms. It was while musing on the subject on Twitter that I found out the talented Ms. Elise over at Reign in Blonde kind of does the same thing. Apparently, all my acquaintances are online these days. She actually compiled a list of the most metal Disney characters, and with her help, I’ve expanded the list. Here are the Ten Most Likely Metalheads in Animated Movies (excluding anime and other international releases, as the author has not done enough research on the subject.)

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Believe it or not, folks still buy CDs. I know… I’m shocked too. But the weekly Soundscan numbers released by Neilsen actually do include digital downloads too. I know what you’re thinking… people still pay for music? I s’pose so. Here are the most recent week’s charting hard rock and metal releases, with my own snarky commentary, natch. Check those tags down yonder for a list of covered releases.

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Yes, Godsuck are touring with The Band That Shall Not Be Named. Yes, this is happening because there is no such thing as God. Yes, this is terrible, terrible news. Luckily, I don’t have to actually attend this tour, and unless you fit the description of  the people on this list, neither will you.

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MARCH IS METAL MONTH IS UNDERWAY!!! And as Vince promised last week, there’s a free sampler now avail featuring artists from many of the participating labels. That means you can download tracks by Fear Factory, Ihsahn, Triptykon, Suicide Silence, Lacuna Coil, Queensryche, White Wizzard, and more, all for the cost of breathing. Head over to Amazon to get the absolutely free download.

We’ll also have lots more March is Metal Month goodness in the coming weeks, including additional interviews and contests. Keep checking back here, or head over to MarchIsMetalMonth.com for all the latest.

Apparently Sade has a new hit record and scored the #1 record last week. Who knew? Good for her… Sade’s pretty rad. I know at least one death metal dude who will be REALLY psyched to hear this news.

But I’m guessing you all care more about the new High on Fire record. Let’s find out how that and other metal and hard rock releases charted last week after the jump.

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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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The line-up for the 2010 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (Jesus I hate typing all that shit) has been announced. See who’ll be playing one of the summer’s biggest metal tours after the jump, along with my snarky commentary, of course…

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Hard to believe it’s been almost a year since Dallas Coyle and God Forbid parted ways, but there ya have it. And a lot of God Forbid fans – including this one – were wondering who was gonna take Dallas’ spot in the band. Former Himsa guitarist Matt Wicklund has been doing live shows with the group since last summer’s Mayhem Fest, and the rumors have been swirling that he was taking the job pretty much ever since -  a couple of readers e-mailed us to say that Wicklund was introduced as “our new guitar player” on-stage, and earlier this month he tweeted that he was “Getting ready to go to rehearsal!”, although rehearsal for what was left kinda-sorta vague.

Well, the rumors are no longer rumors: Wicklund is, in fact, the new full-time guitarist for God Forbid. A statement from Doc Coyle reads as follows:

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My last blog was fucking hilarious. I mean, really. It was good. No, it was better than good. It was great. Besides some of my blogs that have nothing to do with metal (Susan Boyle) I was able to write something that wasn’t serious at all. And again, it was completely hilarious. The best part of the blog was -

Half of you mother-fuckos didn’t even get it!

And Jesus, it was sad. I mean, come the fuck on. What are you guys paying attention to? One of my choices for my year end list was Joe Duplantier  – For being ‘better than everyone else.’ Oh… and one of my favorites: Ivan Moody’s ‘VOICE’ from FFDP. His voice! His god damn voice?

Wake up, you assholes!
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So The Village Voice – which, depending on who you ask, is either a bastion of intelligent artistic commentary or the most pretentious toilet paper in print – recently compiled a list of the fifty worst songs of the decade, and, sure enough, some terrible nu-metal found its way onto the list. Here are three notable entries, via Blabbermouth:

08. LIMP BIZKIT and JOHNNY RZEZNIK – “Wish You Were Here”
10. FIELDY’S DREAMS – “Baby Hugh Hef”
12. DISTURBED – “Land of Confusion”
14. KORN – “Ya’ll Want A Single?”
15. HINDER – “Born To Be Wild”
19. NICKELBACK – “Something In Your Mouth”
27. KELLY OSBOURNE and OZZY OSBOURNE – “Changes”

Now, I’d never argue that these are terrible songs. But of the seven songs listed above, four are covers. And I just can’t take a cover seriously as the worst pick for each of these groups.

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The latest MetalSucks intern found that suggesting Five Finger Death Punch for “best album of ’09″ didn’t go so well.

And the hits keep on coming.

Chad Bowar of About.com is the latest to post his year-end list. Some of the usual suspects are there (Mastodon, Baroness, Coalesce) but some of the albums that seem to be ending up on pretty much everyone’s list are conspicuously absent (O Converge, where art thou?), and there are some real surprises, too. But there’s nothing that makes me wanna smack myself in the forehead and shout “What the what?!?”

Check out the list here, then continue the arguing about the best metal albums of ’09 in our comments section.

-AR

It’s hard to believe that Dime has been gone for five years, but December 8 will be the anniversary of one of metal’s bleakest moments. To cash-in on commemorate the event, Metal Hammer have enlisted a bunch of well-known acts to record Pantera covers (but not Damageplan covers, because, y’know, let’s get real here) for a CD that will come with the magazine. Metal Hammer has done this a few times in the past – I remember they had they entire Master of Puppets album re-recorded by various bands, including Mastodon, Machine Head, Chimaira and Trivium when that album reached its twentieth anniversary, and some of it was pretty good.

Get the complete track list for Metal Hammer’s Dime tribute disc after the jump, along with my thoughts in bold.

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I really like the Rockstar Mayhem Festival – it’s like someone went to Ozzfest and figured out a way to make it way better. Having two side-by-side second stages was a stroke of genius; there’s no downtime in-between bands, because one act can set up while another plays. The mainstage has been solid, too, although there’s always one co-headliner that’s totally missable – in other words, Disturbed and Marilyn Manson played those slots. But so have Slayer, Mastodon, and a bunch of other great bands, so there’s that.

Well, our pals at Metal Insider are reporting a few rumors as to whom might be on this year’s fest, and it looks as though the skipable band this year may very well be Korn.

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Not that we had any doubt Baroness’ Blue Record would have a strong debut, but it’s always nice to see the proof. And Skeletonwitch’s ripping new record Breathing the Fire had a great debut too; I’m elated to see the band sell as many records first week as they did. Elsewhere it was the usual radio rock / alt-metal suspects dominating the charts. Click through to see chart positions and sales figures.

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Five heavy hitting heavy hitters — Alice in Chains, Hatebreed, Austrian Death Machine, Steel Panther and Dethklok — all released new records last week. Solid 2nd and 3rd week performances from Three Days Grace, Muse, Megadeth, Five Finger Death Punch and others made it an all-around big week for metal. Let’s see how everyone fared after the jump.

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In honor of Alaskan metalcore band 36 Crazyfists’ new DVD, Under a Northern Sky (in stores October 27), a list of 35 other famous, metal, heavy, and/or crazy fists:

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Luckily for Five Finger Death Punch, being total assholes who completely lack any musical talent isn’t hurting their record sales: their new album, War is the Answer, is apparently going to sell to somewhere between 35,000 – 40,000 copies in its first week of release… and that’s just here in the U.S. That probably sounds like a lot of units moved, and you’re right. It is a lot of fucking units moved. To put it in perspective with the sales of some awesome albums that came out this week…

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Just yesterday Five Finger Death Punch announced the disappearance of guitarist Zoltan Bathory under bizarre circumstances that suggested the whole thing might be little more than a publicity ploy. Well, it took a flashlight and an anatomy lesson in the difference between one’s elbow and one’s asshole, but the band has located the machine that turned a little kid into Tom Hanks. In this cleverly worded statement on their MySpace blog, FFDP sez:

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Are we even on Five Finger Death Punch’s press release list anymore? I haven’t seen anything from them in a long time. I guess they don’t come from the “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” school of thought.

So I just read this statement from the band on Blabbermouth:

“We have not been able to locate Zoltan [Bathory, guitar] from FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH since Friday night’s [September 18] show in Las Vegas. He has not responded to calls, text messages, or emails, and he was last seen around 2:00 a.m. Friday night at Wasted Space in the Hard Rock Casino, taking tequila shots at the bar with a group of guys from a bachelor party who came to the show.

“If anybody has any information as to the whereabouts of Zoltan, please email ffdp AT prospectpk DOT com immediately. This is not like him and the band needs to prepare for the upcoming tour. We have already notified the appropriate authorities, but any help Vegas fans might be able to provide is very much appreciated.”

Now… that would be sad news, not worthy of being made fun of, even by someone who hates this band as much as I do (and there are few currently active metal bands I loathe more than FFDP). But Blabbermouth did some good snoopin’ and included this note with the statement:

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Five Finger Death Punch is still one of the worst fucking bands ever to have existed in this genre or any other form of music. Or just sound in general.

-AR