The highlight of last week’s Big Four show at Yankee Stadium was Slayer, and with all due respect to Kerry King, Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, and, in this instance, guest guitarist Gary Holt, the highlight of any Slayer show is Dave Lombardo. Never mind that, at the age of 46, he hasn’t slowed down a bit, and is still ten time better than most drummers half his age — he’s so good he has the ability to make Slayer songs on which he did not originally play, like “Disciple,” sound better. And I say that being a fan of Paul Bostaph, who recorded “Disciple” originally.

So, while I’m as sick as discussing of the Big Four as anybody, I just HAD to post these drum cam videos of Lombardo at the concert, ’cause you can’t celebrate that dude’s excellence too much. Also, because they offer the best perspective of just how many people (41,451!) were at this damn show.

Here’s “Disciple”…

…and you can check out “Post Mortem,” “Hate Worldwide,” and “War Ensemble” after the jump.

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During our Big 4 Live Snark on Wednesday, we reported that during Megadeth’s set, Dave Mustaine told the crowd he needed neck surgery, and had been in a hospital as recently as Tuesday; in fact, not only was there a rumor on Monday that Megadeth were gonna miss the show, but word around the campfire was that Exodus had even been approached about possibly taking ‘Deth’s spot should the Davester have to drop out. (Fans offended that Exodus and not Testament were approached should keep in mind in that Gary Holt was already playing with Slayer anyway, so, y’know.)

Now Rolling Drone has scored a non-scoop by getting Mustaine to say in print that which he already said at the concert: he needs neck surgery. So, in case you didn’t believe him the first time he said it, now you should believe him because he told the magazine that gave St. Anger a positive review.

The interesting part of the interview, though, is Mustaine’s claim that G-O-D fixed it so he didn’t have to miss the Yankee Stadium show despite his neck issues:

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We have successfully arrived at Yankee Stadium and are sitting in the press box. We feel so professional!

We’re gonna put the live blog after the jump so it doesn’t eat up the entire page. You’ll hafta refresh to get updates. Sorry.

And now, enjoy the snark…

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Everywhere ya look, there’s an announcement of a new and unexpected pairing: Mastodon/hip hop producer, Metallica/Lou Reed, Mike Portnoy/butt-rock, and Rob Zombie/garment care. Well, Strange Bedfellows Month continues with news that Warbringer’s just-completed third album, Worlds Torn Asunder, was produced by Steve Evetts. His name is on good punk records (Saves The Day, Lifetime), veiny hardcore (Snapcase, Earth Crisis), and Symphony X; and, natch, he’s the Flemming Rasmussen to Dillinger Escape Plan’s Metallica. So dude has some stats.

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While a press release assures us that Jeff Hanneman “has amazed his doctors with his speedy recovery from an infection thought to have been caused by a spider bite” and “has already been practicing with his guitar,” the Slayer guitarist apparently isn’t quite ready to step back into the fold yet. And Gary Holt, who has been filling in for Hanneman, has to go back to his own band — some group called Exodus. So, y’know, in case the headline didn’t already spoil the suspense… yep, Cannibal Corpse’s Pat O’Brien is the new temporary guitarist for Slayer.

O’Brien is just as strong a pick as Holt, if ya ask me; if Exodus are one of Slayer’s most revered peers, Cannibal Corpse are one of Slayer’s most accomplished disciples (no reference to the song intended). There can be no doubt that there would be no Cannibal Corpse without Slayer, and O’Brien’s style is a perfect fit for the latter band.

So Holt will continue to play with Slayer ’til April 4, and then O’Brien takes over. Here are the remaining announced tour dates with both axe men…

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I guess that Slayer/Marilyn Manson team-up from a few years back (no, not the Mayhem Fest one, the one before that) was a big hit, ’cause the band are once again doing a summer co-headlining tour with an industrial shock rocker who probably holds more mainstream appeal than they do — namely, Rob Zombie. I don’t know what the overlap of Slayer/Zombie fans actually is (Do Slayer fans think Zombie is too soft and poppy? Do Zombie fans think Slayer is too fast and lacking in hooks?), but it seems to me that this is exactly the kind of show where getting the cheapest seats available and drinking an INSANE amount throughout the evening would pretty much guarantee you a fun time.

Not hurting this line-up one bit is the fact that Exodus are playing support. It’ll be interesting to see if Jeff Hanneman has recovered and re-joined Slayer by the time this trek kicks off, or if Gary Holt will be pulling double-duty. Either way, awesome sauce.

Dates are after the jump… they’re only playing twelve gigs for whatever reason, so the vast majority of you should prepare to be sad (or indifferent, I suppose, depending on your own personal views about this line-up):

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Slayer is already down one member, what with guitarist Jeff Hanneman currently recovering from surgery on his arm while Exodus’ Gary Holt fills in for him — or, rather, is supposed to fill in for him. ‘Cause the band got to play exactly one show with Holt before canceling their scheduled appearance at Australia’s Soundwave Festival after vocalist/bassist Tom Araya found himself in the hospital.

Lotsa folks, including us, suspected that the culprit must have been the same the same back issues that forced him to cancel touring plans last year, but this is apparently not the case. From Slayer fan site Slayerized:

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Poor Slayer. First they had to recruit Exodus’ Gary Holt to sit in for Jeff Hannenman while the guitarist recovers from surgery on his arm; then they got all the way to Australia, played one gig with Holt… and promptly had to cancel their next show, as part of the Soundwave Festival, because Tom Araya was sent to the hospital for an undisclosed malady. (Although it’s fair to speculate that the front man is once again suffering from the same back issues that took him out of commission last year.)

Holy shit, what is happening to these poor dudes? It’s starting to get to the point where if an Acme safe mysteriously falls from the sky and lands on Kerry King, no one should be surprised. Just watch: Slayer will finally break up due to old age, but Metallica will go on and on and on well into their 80s. Only the good die young I guess.

While we wait to hear if Araya is okay and if Slayer will be able to continue this Australian tour at all, enjoy this first — and possibly last — video of the band performing with Holt. He moves around more on stage in three minutes than Hanneman has in thirty years, so, uh, yeah.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I’m posting outside of our regular hours because I was just got a press release that Exodus’ Gary Holt has been named Slayer’s temporary replacement for Jeff Hanneman (who just had emergency surgery on his arm), and that seems like kind of a big deal. As far as I’m aware at least, it’s the first time a guitarist who isn’t Hanneman or Kerry King will play and tour with the band (I mean, I’m sure other dudes have gotten up and jammed on a song or two with the band, but it’s not quite the same thing). In fact, I don’t even know of Holt having ever really played with another band.

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When people talk about neo-thrash bands like Warbringer, their words usually carry a subtle hint of disdain. I concede that it’s hard not to mention what they are (neo-Bay Area Thrash) before saying how good they are (very). But to brand Warbringer (or Municipal Waste) fetishizers of a bygone era implies something vaguely untrustable, beyond a mere affection for the Thrash idiom. And it’s true, there’s little about Warbringer that suggests an original vision. All the same, their debut full-length War Without End and now the Gary Holt-produced Waking Into Nightmares are too awesome to be the creation of some tribute band; it’s simply not possible that Warbringer is comprised of five masters of mimicry. Rather, it’s clear they feel that Bay Area-native bands did shit right. And now they do.

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When I was twenty years old, I was trying to stay awake during college classes, attempting not to get fired from my shitty job before I’d saved enough money to take one of those “middle class white kids backpacking through Europe” trips, and dating a girl who Vince liked to call “The Critic” for her alleged resemblance to the cartoon character of the same name.

John Laux is twenty, and he’s the guitar player for Warbringer, one of the top bands in the current thrash metal revival. He didn’t have to backpack through Europe because he’s, y’know, toured Europe. His band just released their second full-length, Waking into Nightmares (Century Media), which was produced by Exodus main main Gary Holt. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, Laux will already have lived a much fuller, cooler life than I have.

I can’t hold it against the dude, though; he’s an awesome guitar player in an awesome band, and his success is well-deserved. John was recently cool enough to answer some of my retarded questions via e-mail. After the jump, get his thoughts on Warbringer’s latest, working with the legendary Mr. Holt, the perils of trying to help a drunken fan cross the border, and more.

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Some good news for thrash fans:

1. Warbringer have posted “Severed Reality,” the first single from their new album Waking Into Nightmares, on their MySpace page. The song sounds more or less like Warbringer – which is a good thing. ‘Cause you don’t throw on a Warbringer album when you’re in the mood for Jesu, y’know? Anyways, the band apparently just filmed a video for the track with perennial MetalSucks fave David Brodsky, and Nightmares was produced by Gary Holt (yes, that Gary Holt), so expect more Warbringery goodness in the near future. Waking Into Nightmares drops May 19 on Century – but you can see the band live as they wrap up their MetalSucks sponsored trek with Soilwork, Darkane and Swallow the Sun, or their upcoming tour with Exodus. Get dates here.
2. Bonded by Blood and their Masters of Disasters tourmates, Exmortus and Witchhaven, will be playing a FREE gig at The Water Grill in Brooklyn next Saturday, March 28. It’s thrash! It’s free! You live in America in 2009 and listen to metal so you’re probably poor! What’s not to love about a free thrash show? Details after the jump.

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Be sure to check out the brilliant documentary Get Thrashed: The History of Thrash Metal, now out on DVD. The biggest revelation is that, according to Dave Mustaine, Dave Mustaine invented thrash. The below video is his direct transcribed quote starting at 3:33 (half of Satan???):

“The sad thing, and this is really strange, when Kerry [King] was playing with Megadeth I showed him a lot of my style. Kerry’s a good guitar player, for rhythm he’s great. In Metallica, I was the only guitar player and a lot of that rubbed off on James [Hetfield]. And in Megadeth it was all my guitar playing and hired hands who learned what I was doing.

So, out of all of this, and this is totally gonna sound arrogant and I’m sorry but I am just telling you the facts, I’ve affected three bands out of the Big Five.

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Holy fucking shit, this is fucking disgraceful. The idea to re-record Bonded by Blood was already fucking pathetic, but this just nails the coffin shut on any coolness the “re-imagining” might have had. The cover art for the original Bonded by Blood looked cheap as fuck, but it looked cheap in that totally acceptable DIY-ish way. This just looks like crap. I know that Gary Holt has bills to pay and that, gas prices being what they are these days, staying out on the road, where he can fuck girls his daughter’s age, isn’t the easiest thing in the world; still, there’s nothing about this that doesn’t make me angry.

Gary, if you’re reading this, I just want you to know, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I hope your daughter sucks Lars Ulrich’s dick.

-AR

Holy shit, I don’t even know what to write. I feel so sick right now. I wouldn’t even categorize myself as a hardcore Exodus fan, and I actually really like new(ish) vocalist Rob Dukes, but the idea that the band is re-recording their seminal album Bonded By Blood just rubs me rawer than my dick after a lubeless, hour long jerk-off session.

I was just talking about re-recordings a little while back, and I think at the time that I came to the conclusion that this was a pointless but ultimately harmless exercise.

I see now that I was wrong. This is the metal equivalent of all those terrible remakes and franchise revivals that Hollywood is pumping out these days. The best case scenario is that the only people who ever listen to this are those who have heard and appreciated the original album and are just kinda curious about why the band would ever waste their time doing such a thing.

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FUCK SCOTT WEILAND. I’m glad you’ve been able to get this far based on your limited vocal range and ability to mimic the same style of on-stage dancing that Bowie and Iggy Pop were doing thirty years ago, but seriously, stop trying to compete with Axl Rose for the “Biggest Asshole” award – Axl will beat your ass every time. Calling Slash by his real name in a press release does not make you clever. Claiming the name “Velvet Revolver” was your idea does not make you cool. You’ve always had to suck off the musical talent teat of others, and every time I think about the fact that Layne Staley couldn’t get it together while you go on and on and on I die a little inside. I hope the DeLeo brothers stab you in the eyes with your fucking needles. And fuck your wife Mary, too.

FUCK ROBB FLYNN. I’m a huge Machine Head fan, but telling people that you “once punched some kid in the face for saying that Gary Holt sucked” is moronic. Metal is supposed to be about blowing off steam in a healthy way so as to avoid actual neanderthal behavior. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to fight in this world, but someone insulting the fucking guitar player from Exodus is not one of them. Put more simply: You either a) actually did punch some dude for talking shit about Holt and are therefore a bona fide moron or b) are lying about punching some dude for talking shit about Holt and are therefore a bona fide moron. Also, every Machine Head album in-between Burn My Eyes and Through the Ashes of Empires was a cock sucking trend chasing waste of time. Deal with it.

FUCK MARIA BRINK. Someone told me that if you see her up close she’s not actually hot, but after looking closely at some candid photos (like this one), I realized you don’t really have to be very close to her all to see that she looks like a fucking rodent. Has this bitch had too much plastic surgery (excuse me, “work done”), or does she really just look  like my morning crap? Also, did you know that she sells hand drawn pictures and poems on her MySpace page (I won’t link to it, go find it if you’re so fucking interested)? I haven’t read the poems but the pictures look like they were drawn by a retarded five year old. Stop wearing that stupid blue dress and trying to exploit your non-existent looks to cover up for your lack of talent. I hope Christina Scabbia kicks you in the twat.

Fuck me for writing this, and fuck you for reading it. I’m gonna go kill a fucking bunny that made fun of Alex Skolnick.

-AR