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How about another pointless exercise in trumpeting sales figures that aren’t going to matter in a couple years time when no one will be paying for music ownership because music ownership will be irrelevant? Who’s in? Me! New releases this week included (Hed)p.e., Ill Niño, Monster Magnet, Forbidden, and Kylesa.
OK, let’s go.
It’s always heart-breaking when an artist you admire associates him or herself with an “artist” who pretty much stands against eveything in which you believe. Thus is the case with Sevendust’s Lajon Witherspoon, who appears on the new (Hed) p.e. track, “Stand Up,” which is now streaming over at Noisecreep. We always try to defend Sevendust as the “good” nu-metal band here at MetalSucks, but then Witherspoon goes and does something like this and all we can really do is shrug and say, “Hey, but Cold Day Memory is really fun!” and hope you still believe us.
I guess the silver lining, really, is that Witherspoon’s vocals instantly elevate this song above all other (Hed) p.e. releases. But that’s a little like saying that a three-legged dog beat a two-legged dog in a race — Well no duh-skis, y’know? And my understanding is that Witherspoon is a really nice dude. So maybe he was just too kind to tell (Hed) p.e. to suck it. Or maybe he’s legitimately a fan of that band. I dunno. I read somewhere recently that Christopher Nolan likes Michael Bay movies, so I guess you can’t assume someone has great taste just ’cause you like their work.
Side note about the song: In the interview that accompanies the track debut, (Hed) p.e. is referred to as “the leaders of the Truth Movement,” whatever the fuck that is, and then front man Jared Gomes declares that he is “worried about all the anti-government sentiment that I find in the youth.” Because that’s what metal is really all about, dude: Trusting The Man. Thank God (Hed) p.e. are here to teach young headbangers to respect authority.
-AR
Start shopping for a new bandanna (or hit the easy button and buy this), because Suicidal Tendencies kick off a proper five-week U.S. tour this week! Last month, the latest version of the band released No Mercy Fool!/The Suicidal Family, a collection of re-recorded cuts from Join The Army and the No Mercy project–and that’s as good a reason as any to play some fucking shows. Opening acts vary depending on the city, but include Cro-Mags, Death Before Dishonor, D.R.I., (Hed) P.E., High on Fire, Kylesa, and Underdog.
Immediately following the tour, Muir returns to California to play an exclusive Infectious Grooves live gig at the House Of Blues in Hollywood–the side-project’s first U.S. show in over a fucking decade. If all of this doesn’t make up for Muir’s 2008 collaboration with P.O.D. (*shudder*), I don’t know what is. All dates are below.
Once upon a time there was a band called hed (p.e.), and they wanted to make an awesome stop-motion animation video for their song “No Rest for the Wicked,” which was a totally original song title that they had thought of all by themselves. They wanted to make a stop-motion video because a) it would allow them to personally skip the video shoot and b) sometimes stop animation in videos is cool, like in Tool’s “Sober,” or, more recently, Porcupine Tree’s “Bonnie the Cat” and Serj Tankian’s “Left of Center.”
Unfortunately, the band didn’t have any money, and for some reason it didn’t occur to them to contact the instructor of the six-week intensive animation course at the local community college to see if maybe any talented students wanted to do it for the price of a credit.
But then The Singer, whose name would later be forgotten by a blogger suffering from a case of Wormrotitis* and far too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia, remembered that his nephew had said something about taking an after-school animation class. And since he had heard that just getting your nephew to do your animated video in his spare time had worked out really well for Slayer, the band decided to go that route.
But oh noes! The Singer from hed (P.E.) didn’t realize that Slayer’s Nephew was in a high school animation course, whereas The Singer’s nephew was only ten years old, and his after-school program was taught by the shop teacher, who needed to make some extra money to pay for his daughter’s braces. And so the resulting video was a complete fucking mess, and the subject of much derision.
And they all died.
The End.
-AR
*Symptoms of this condition include an inability to fall asleep due to being so jazzed from the previous night’s Wormrot show, cough, running nose, and diarrhea.
Don’t you dare call Decibel an “analog blog,” cocksucker — it’s a FUCKING MAGAZINE. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.
Haven’t seen much coverage of future Greatest Album of All-Time short-lister A Thousand Suns around these parts, aside from Axl’s assessment last month: that “The good news is that Linkin Park’s new single, ‘The Catalyst,’ doesn’t sound exactly like every other song the band has ever recorded; the bad news is, it might actually be worse.” [Also, this thing today, although that was written after Andrew handed this in. Oh, well. - AR] While Diddy respectfully disagrees with your fearless co-leader, everyone else on earth with an IQ on the right side of the bell curve is firmly ensconced in the “sweet Jesus, this is some goofy bullshit” corner.
A select few, however, have a great deal of fun acknowledging the goofy bullshittery. One such stalwart is our fully automated nü-metal reviews generator, Decibot, which just earned its first-ever bit of unauthorized-in-every-way-imaginable merch. We caught up with the honoree after a mismatched burrito-eating contest with Dino Cazares’ Boss CH-1 Super Chorus [not pictured here:], and the response was anything but mechanical:
“100,000+ custom edits to the Microsoft Word spell checker and Decibot is still at a loss for words. Show your support for the robot uprising with this handsome cotton T-shirt depicting yours truly, Decibot. Does Decibot look fat in this picture? Yes, but Vince Neilstein applies the kung-fu grip to Edsel Dope’s ding-dong every three months or so during a slow news day at the MetalSucks mansion. See? We all have things we’re ashamed of. Plus, how else will Decibot hustle up the cash for the new Linkin Park album when Andrew Bonazelli is checking the couch cushions for coins every night and the Decibel editorial board has applied a ‘No Vinnie Paul’ rule in regards to auctioning home appliances on eBay? All your fashion sense are belong to us. Be the envy of the Hot Topic nerd down the block. Decibot generally prefers to be a ‘bottom,’ but here’s the one instance where it feels good to be a top.”
-AB
Do what the robot says and buy a t-shirt, or be condemned to spend the rest of your putrid, miserable existence listening exclusively to (hed) p.e. While you’re at it, you might as well buy yourself a copy of the October 2010 issue of Decibel, or just go ahead and buy yourself a full subscription. Andrew Bonazelli could really use the money for upkeep on his collection of rare action movie novelizations… we hear that The Expendables first edition hardcovers are gonna cost an arm and a leg.
I looked it up, and that’s not Mike Shitoda.
After they reunited with C.C. DeVille circa 2000, one of the most brilliant things Poison ever did, business-wise, was to put together those summer shed tours where they take out three other prominent glam bands (e.g. Cinderella, Warrant, Faster Pussycat,Dokken, Slaughter, etc.) and only charge like thirty bucks a ticket. They were like the Ozzfest main stage, exclusively for hair bands. Talk about playing to your target audience! And I think it’s only a matter of time before Limp Bizkit follow suit. Fuck trying to win over new fans by touring with young, hip bands — just take out a few other bands that sounded kinda like you and were big at roughly the same time as you, and watch the nostalgia dollars roll in.
Why do I mention this? Because Crazy Town are reuniting for this August’s SRH Fest in California, and while I’d never heard of SRH Fest before, once I had a glance at the line-up, I realized that this basically was the shed tour of my nightmares. Kottonmouth Kings? (hed) p.e.? Unwritten Law? Did the promoter lose a bet or what? (I’ve never heard of a bunch of the other bands on the bill, but based on their names — Zero Authority, Big B., etc. — I assume that I’d hate them, too.)
How long can it be before some clever industry peeps put together a full tour with some of these bands? I bet with the right headliner, a (hed) p.e./Crazy Town bill would attract every High-School-Bully-turned-Gas-Station-Attendant within driving distance.
-AR
A reader known only as “Jonas” sent us the below video of 55 Escape, a Norwegian band whose biggest influences seem to be Korn and Linkin Park, not Enslaved and Immortal.
Here’s why I find this band kind of interesting. (And moving forward, please be aware that “interesting” and “good” are not the same word.) When you think about it for a second, nu-metal seems to be a predominantly American phenomenon. Off the top of my head, I’m having a hard time even naming a nu-metal band from any part of Europe, never mind Norway. Jeff Killed John were British, but they didn’t get famous ’til they swapped the nu for core and rechristened themselves Bullet for My Valentine. Am I forgetting a really, really obvious band? Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Godsmack, Evanescence, Staind, Static-X, Creed, Hed P.E., Snot, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd, Drowning Pool, Saliva, Coal Chamber, Methods of Mayhem, 40 Below Summer, Sevendust, Ill Nino, Dope, Papa Roach, Soil, The Union Undergound… ALL AMERICAN. What the hell? No wonder the terrorists hate us.
Anyway, thanks to these sperm clots for doing their part in making America look good. Hoo-rah.
-AR
