Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges unearthed these phone calls that Glen Benton made to evangelical radio personality Bob Larson back in 1992, and, as Lee writes, they’re a good reminder that Benton was once “ the poster boy for everything the religious right hates about heavy metal,” and not a guy who “ loves motorcycles, wrote a record about his divorce (Till Death Do Us Part), and records anti-Christian music with guitarist Ralph Santolla, a practicing Catholic.”

But, mostly, they’re a reminder that Glen Benton is just a big ol’ silly-face — in fact, I’d argue that he’s only marginally less silly than Marilyn Manson. I mean, listen to the voice he’s using in these calls, and the things he’s saying, and keep in mind (as though you could forget) that Benton is the dude who burned an inverted cross into his forehead (Benton into mirror every morning: “Still a good decision! No regrets here, friend.”), and the whole thing seems pretty ridiculous. “I’M GOING TO DEAL WITH YOU,” Benton says in a bizarrely sing-songy voice, and then he breaks into an “evil” cackle that would not have seemed out of place on an episode of He-Man. So, yeah, this is way entertaining, but it’s still pretty ridiculous.

Check out more at Invisible Oranges.

-AR.

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

So, yesterday on the Deciblog we posted a long-ass Justify Your Shitty Taste on “Guns N’ Roses”’ Chinese Democracy, which your fearless co-leader Axl Rosenberg boldly cosigned, followed by, frankly, a surprising amount of you guys (which is to say, more than one). I’m not trying to be a dick here. I mean, I can get behind about 25 percent of this mess (the ballads), but I have fairly shitty taste in rock music. As in, I still think Eight Arms to Hold You kicks ass. Whatever. It was just interesting surveying our entire staff of about 20 writers in an effort to get Chinese Democracy written up, and the only person that responded with a modicum of enthusiasm was Shawn Macomber. Fair enough. But then, cue a minor avalanche of vehement, assured hell yeahs. That’s probably the most satisfying thing about this series — watching that groundswell of minority voices band together for a day or two with a shared “fuck you, I told you it was good!”

Anyway, scrolling through the new issue’s reviews section, I don’t really see any future JYSTs. (Just wait ’til May’s The Haunted review, though.) April is more about giving credit to things that don’t hopelessly suck. Hence, we gave Jonah Hegg his second solo cover (order here). I don’t think the other four Amon Amarth dudes are sweating it; they get their chance to Vike out (ahem) in the table of contents and the actual story. Elsewhere, if you’re a J. Bennett fan, this is your issue — he goes head to head with Glen Benton (I’ll leave the obvious jokes to him), bros down in Alaska with Every Time I Die and files a long-overdue Hall of Fame on Mercyful Fate’s Melissa. If you’re a fan of any other writer on staff, well, they do stuff, too: features on Trap Them, Drugs of Faith, Primordial, Rotten Sound and Subrosa — the latter of which being almost as good as Veruca Salt in their prime.

-AB

You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibel here, or just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss a review of a future “Justify Your Shitty Taste” entry.

Kevin Dubrow is dead, and I think that most of us assumed he would take Quiet Riot (the seventh most-often-miscategorized-as-a-hair-metal-band of all time) with him to the grave. Those of us who did make that assumption, however, forgot that desperate times call for desperate measures, and an empty belly holds no room for dignity.

So Quiet Riot are re-forming.

Click to read more…

I don’t remember where I read this, but I seem to recall a story about ABBA – yes, ABBA – demoing each of their songs in every conceivable musical style, just to make sure that the inevitable Swede disco-pop version was, in fact, the track putting its best foot forward. In other words, somewhere out there, Björn Ulvaeus and company are sitting on tapes that feature a calypso version of “Dancing Queen,” a country version of “Mamma Mia,” a metal version of “S.O.S.” It would be kind of amazing if ABBA ever released those tapes, but I guess that might endanger the success of Mamma Mia 2: Holy Shit I Can’t Believe Meryl Streep Did This AGAIN.

Helloween don’t have a movie franchise based on hit Broadway show based on their music, though, so for their new greatest hits collection, Unarmed, they are, in fact, “re-imagining” all of their most famous shit. These might not be old demos (rather, they’re new re-workings), but I’m still pretty curious to see how their fan base reacts to, say, a dance version of “If I Could Fly.”

And I’m not making that shit up. Noisecreep is currently streaming a dance version of “If I Could Fly.”

Are Helloween fans open-minded people? Since it’s power metal, are they resigned to its natural cheesiness and not that bothered by the concept of a techno re-do? Or are they gonna get their panties in a twist the way, say, Deicide fans probably would if Glen Benton suddenly hired Telefon Tel Aviv to remix “Dead by Dawn?” I guess we’re about to find out.

And here’s the original “If I Could Fly,” in case ya don’t know it:

Unarmed comes out March 30 on The End.

-AR

Long time readers of this site should be fully aware that I was addicted to the initial season of Rock of Love, VH1′s completely fucktarded reality show in which Poison singer/wig wearer Bret Michaels basically moved into a mansion with a large amount of not especially attractive (or smart or personable or nice or any other quality one generally looks for in other human beings) sluts and makes them all do ridiculous things to determine which one is his one true love (And by “one true love,” I mean… I don’t know what I mean. It seems like Michaels fucks all the girls anyway, so what’s the fucking point?).

But I basically lost interest two episodes into season two. Like pretty much every reality show I’ve ever tried to watch (which, admittedly, is only three – hello Project Greenlight and The Apprentice), the gimmick go old quickly. Maybe watching a different washed up hair metal star make some groupies of Gumpian intellect jump through hoops for the chance to suck his cock would have kept me interested; as it stood, I’d had enough.

I’m not sure which season Rock of Love is on now – I think it might be the third, and I think it’s on a bus now, or some shit – but it looks like Deicide mainman/generally all around scary dude Glen Benton caught a few episodes, and, it should surprise no one to learn, he was not amused.

Click to read more…

Look: after nearly 20 years of making brutal death metal, Deicide ain’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. So while “The Beginning of the End,” the opening track of their latest offering, Till Death Do Us Part, is kind of surprising (it’s a slow, moody instrumental, as foreboding as the title would suggest, that is unsettling and in no way beautiful, like the negative version of the intro to every American New Wave album this century), everything after is exactly what you’d expect from these fearsome Floridians. Chuck Klosterman once suggested that the reason the Sunshine State spawned so much awesome death metal is because constantly being surrounded by old people makes one think about death all the time; maybe all that ponderin’ of the great beyond also makes these dudes desperate to maintain their youth, and so they just keep making the same album they did in 1990 over and over again.

In any case, it’s a moot point, ’cause like AC/DC before them and Children of Bodom after, the fact that they’re usually pretty good slides them from the “boh-ring” column to the one labeled “dependable.”

Click to read more…

If you were to have a conversation about the most important and influential death metal bands of all time, you would, without a doubt, have to discuss Deicide. They are, simply put, iconic, and while many of their peers have fallen by the wayside over the years, they’re still going strong more than two decades later. In fact, after many had written them off, their last album, 2006′s The Stench of Redemption, was released to great acclaim by fans and critics alike. Now the band has a new album, entitled ‘Till Death Do Us Part, coming out on April 28 in Europe and May 13 in the U.S.; we haven’t gotten to hear it yet, but if “In the Eyes of God,” the song currently posted on the band’s MySpace page, is any indication, it will probably make Stench look like a Gordon Lightfoot record.

So when I was recently presented with the opportunity to interview founding drummer and primary songwriter Steve Asheim, I naturally jumped at the chance – so long as I could do the interview by e-mail. Truth be told, I feared that Asheim might be too evil, even for me.

Click to read more…

Death metal lovers: you’re probably aware that Deicide have a new album coming out this spring, entitled ‘Till Death Do Us Part. Well, get excited, because the band just posted a new track from the album, “In the Eyes of God,” on their MySpace page.

I don’t have anything particularly intelligent, insightful, or witty to say about the track; like all of Glen Benton’s works, it’s fuckin’ Brutal with a capital “B,” and should incite riots and church burnings wherever it’s played. So turn your crucifix upside down and get head bangin’ already.

-AR