Speaking of there being no God, guitarist Greg Tribbett — one of two members of Mudvayne who is also in Hellyeah (the other being vocalist Chad Gray, duh) — sent out the below tweet yesterday, instantly breaking the heart of anyone who hates mediocre corporate rawk:

This probably isn’t a shock to anyone, given that Mudvayne have already been on unofficial hiatus since 2009. Still, the knowledge that we’ll have to put up with Hellyeah through at least 2013 is, frankly, enough to make me hope the Mayans were right, and the world is gonna end sometime next year. In fact, I think “The ongoing success of Hellyeah” was one of the things they said would be a sign of the end times, wasn’t it?

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

Click to read more…

There comes a time in the life of any moderately successful band where a decision must be made: to continue writing artistically relevant music or to throw on a cowboy hat and write about beer and puss—

I wonder which is more profitable.

Last week we explored the first of six stylistic pitfalls good bands/musicians so often fall prey to (click here to see part 1!), changes in quality of life. In this edition we will be focusing our attention on a very different, but equally devastating gaffe, and it’s a distinctly American problem at that (provided that Canada is basically America).

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

We haven’t done one one of these all summer, but we came up with a fun one for this week:

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PLAY ANY METAL BAND/MUSICIAN SOME OF THEIR MUSIC AND/OR SHOW THEM PHOTOS/VIDEOS OF THEMSELVES FROM THEIR FUTURE (OUR PRESENT), WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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This doesn’t really have anything to do with metal, but I found it kinda funny so I’m running with it.

A Scottish band called Found has released what is, at least as far as I’m aware, the first-ever edible 7″ — more specifically, a 7″ made from chocolate. According to Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci  (who came up with a headline far superior to my own):

“The first attempt was to pour chocolate over a pressed record, but the music created by the chocolate record was backwards. Instead they poured chocolate into the record mold, and presto, an edible single.”

I don’t know nearly enough about, like, science n’ shit to understand how this could possibly work, or what the band’s fans are supposed to do if they actually wanna keep the record, be it because they like the music, or because they think it’s gonna be a collector’s item, or whatever. (How easily would this thing melt? You’d have to at least keep it refrigerated, I’d imagine.)

I would, however, like to suggest that metal bands start trying this gimmick to sell their own shit. Of course, they would not necessarily have to use to chocolate. Here are some examples of what I think would be good cuisine-to-band matches:

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If you don’t know who Bobzilla is, here’s the quick version of his resumé: he was the bassist in Damageplan with Dimebag and Vinnie Paul, and now he’s the bassist in Hellyeah. In other words, he has a history of working with members of Pantera in bands that aren’t nearly as good as Pantera was.

So. Yesterday, we got the following e-mail from an anonymous reader:

“BOB ZILLA’S NEW BAND ORPHANED TO HATRED HAS GOTTEN THE THUMBS UP FROM VINNIE PAUL HIMSELF! THEY JUST RELEASED A SONG OFF OF THE UPCOMING ALBUM MASTERED BY VULGAR’S HOWIE WEINBERG AND MIXED BY LONG TIME PANTERA ENGINEER STERLING WINFIELD!”

So first of all… Yeah, no shit “Vinnie Paul himself” gave Orphaned to Hatred the thumbs up. What’s he gonna do, say his own bandmate’s side project sucks? So that endorsement means about as much as one from Bobzilla’s mommy.

Second of all… I was immediately weary of Orphaned to Hatred’s apparent desire to exploit their Pantera connection, especially because that connection really isn’t all that strong — I mean, I had about as much to do with Pantera as Bobzilla did. Seriously. Maybe he knew those dudes and I didn’t, but neither of us were in the band, and we both probably purchased approximately the same amount of CDs, merch, etc.

But then I went to check out the band on their Facebook page, and I saw the below image, and that’s when I got really, really cranky:

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On February 15th, the Jagermeister Music Tour featuring All That Remains, Buckcherry and Hellyeah rolled through NYC’s Best Buy Theater. Gary Suarez published his controversial but hilarious thoughts on the show shortly thereafter, and now it’s Jacqueline Cheng’s turn… with her lens. One comment from the peanut gallery, then the pics: ATR frontman Phil Labonte has an American Flag tattooed on his entire upper right arm with “Liberty” spelled out in gothic lettering down the length of his tricep. Are you kidding me? Who the fuck is this guy?

Anyway, the pics:

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I mean, talk about a snub, right?!?

ANYWAY, tomorrow afternoon, Vince and I will attend the wedding of one of our oldest friends. A guy I have known since I was two years old. The very dude who was by my side the first time I heard Guns N’ Roses. I don’t think he had any idea at the time that I had just headed down a path from which I would never return. He works for a classy magazine now, and wears a suit and tie to work. I do this, and usually do it in boxers and a stinky shirt with some metal band on it.

I don’t have a point or anything. I’m just feeling reflective right now.

And now that I got that out of my system, here’s the rundown of things we did this week:

• We got a tour update from Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself.
• We spoke to Tommy Rogers from Between the Buried and Me, Oppu Laine and Mikko Kotomäki from Barren Earth, Kenn Nardi from Anacrusis, and Mike Riley and Dom Romeo from Pulling Teeth.
• We checked out new releases from As Blood Runs Black, Capsule, and Crucified Mortals and Nunslaughter.
• We checked out the newest lucky band to sign to leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS.
• We made the mistake of following Vinnie Paul onto his tour bus.
• We helped our friends at the Deciblog defend Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.
• We listened to the worst dubstep metal bastardization yet.
• We got excited about the new Scar Symmetry album.
• We sent out well wishes to Vince Neil while he’s in prison.
• We read some fan mail.

Okay now I’m gonna go pick up my new suit for tomorrow! WHOO-HOO TO BEIN’ A BIG KID! See you peeps Monday.

-AR

So as part of the promotional efforts for the current Jagermeister Music Tour with Buckcherry, All That Remains, Hellyeah, and The Damned Things, a video has been posted in which Vinnie Paul gives a… uh… well, a tour of his tour bus. Sorry, I couldn’t think of a more elegant way to say that.

ANYWAY, Paul says he believes the bus should be “a nightclub on wheels,” and depending on how you feel about that statement, you will either find his bus to be incredibly awesome or incredibly tacky. Personally, I think it’s a little bit of both; it must be nice to be able to afford such a monstrosity, and I’d probably be a little disappointed if Paul’s vehicle of choice wasn’t somewhat outlandish… but on the other hand… uhhhh, really, dude?

By the way, I know that Gary Suarez already took this tour to task for its incredible amount of product placement, but if you do a shot every time Vinnie says “Jagermeister,” you will be very, very drunk by the end of this video. Did the makers of this video seriously think we’d forget the product they’re pushing, even with their logo in the corner the entire time?

-AR

[via The PRP]

The unbearable brutality of winter (and the company of a damn good woman) drove me indoors for much of these past couple of months. Having not seen a single band live since December, I grew restless and twitchy on my Egyptian cotton sheets. I was born to rock, and with the snow finally melting, I seized the oh-so-golden opportunity to catch the Jägermeister Music Tour, which featured Buckcherry in the headlining slot with support from Hellyeah, All That Remains, and The Damned Things.

For some people, this might seem like a fun night out. But not for me. I was desperate.

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Hellyeah have a new video for “Better Man,” a song unreasonable people would probably argue isn’t a power ballad. In the video, the band sits around someone’s house for no apparent reason and plays the song, all while remembering some pseudo-romantic tragic bullshit.

And if all this seems familiar, well, it ought to: sitting around a random house and playing a power ballad while remembering some pseudo-romantic tragic bullshit was one of hair metal’s silliest clichés. Take, for example…

Click to read more…

Next year’s early contribution to drunk driving accidents and teen pregnancy will come in the form of a headlining tour from Buckcherry, with support in the form of All That Remains (Making their conversion from metal to radio rock official — eat that, Atreyu!), Hellyeah, and The Damned Things.

I know that Vince is a Buckcherry fan, but they always seemed like GN’R Lite to me (vocalist Josh Todd and guitarist Keith Nelson were even in Velvet Revolver for ten seconds — Nelson retains a songwriting credit on the VR track “Dirty Little Thing”). I think I’ve made my feelings about All That Remains and Hellyeah pretty clear on this site before, but in case you wandered here via a search engine, please allow me to reiterate that the facts that I’m not inbred and I expect my singers to be able to sing disqualifies me from joining these bands’ respective fan clubs. And I want to like The Damned Things because of the presence of the Every Time I Have Anthrax dudes, but I also want to understand the appeal of Glee because Jane Lynch was really funny in The 40 Year Old Virgin, and it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me.

So this isn’t as lousy as, say, a Hinder tour, but, yeah, I’m gonna pass, thanks.

If you disagree with me, you can get dates here.

-AR

[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

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The Bloody Tour of Horror rocks on! City after city fall in flaming ruin as GWAR marches on, our zombie horde growing in power and fury with each passing day. But even as we slay on a global scale I, Oderus Urungus, make the time to answer your idiotic questions, whether they be of cosmic import or complete crap-ola, and always with the typically evasive and insulting aplomb you have come to expect from me. Remember, Bloody Pit of Horror is out Nov. 9, and every album sold is another hit off the old glass dick for Uncle Odie… yes, that’s right, it actually states in my contract that I get paid in crack. And speaking of crack, we will be doing another Crack-a-Thon next year! Check gwar.tv for all kinds of shit. Now — on to your entreaties, human filth!

If you choke a smurf what color does it turn? I would find out myself but for the life of me I can’t find one of the little blue bastards. — Big P

Well, that depends on what kind of Smurf you are talking about. If you are talking about those little dwarf-like animated shit-fucks, I am sorry to tell you that they are indeed just that — animated. They don’t exist, so you can’t strangle them. You’d have more success strangling your own penis, if you possess one, or can get someone to lend you theirs.

If, however, indeed, you are talking about that peculiar species of human that serves as the collector for blister packs of cough medicine that the local “Papa Smurf” uses to cook into crystal meth, I can assure you, from personal experience, that they go just as blue as any other human.

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It used to be that if you wanted to know what you should buy, you would see what famous people liked, and buy whatever they said was cool — like how I originally got into Suicide Silence after I heard Demi Lovato talking about them. But now there is another way to find out what you should buy: shopping haul videos. A haul video is where someone goes shopping, then makes a YouTube video where they tell you about all the stuff that they bought. Usually they are really long, and made by young girls who like to talk about themselves. I don’t have a video camera, so I can’t make a video, but I thought it might be cool for you to see some of the stuff I bought at Hot Topic the other day in case you are thinking about doing any shopping and and wondering what is cool right now.

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Me BIG PIMPIN with a couple of my biatches at school lol, not everybody who listens to metal is a nerd!

Hey guys what’s up, thanks to Axle and Vince from Metal Sucks (link to their site) for letting me introduce myself to you guys!  I am a Junior in High School at Canyon Ridge High in Hesperia California, and pretty much just getting into metal. My uncle introduced me to these psyhcos of metal, he was in “Axle”s wedding (Axel isn’t his real name haha but I’m not telling you what his real name is you will have to find out!) and he has always been into metal, so I guess it runs in the family that we like Metal! I have been listening to metal of all kinds for like a year and a half now but I know there are a lot of bands I should check out but don’t know about and wanted to ask you guys for some ideas about what bands you think I should check out. I know you all are the experts lol!

BTW I only have dial-up 56K internet so I can’t use MySpace, Youtube, or BitTorrid or any of that so if you can just tell me stuff to buy that is what I’m looking for. My town doesn’t have a Hot Topics but they have a lot of stuff at Walmart so anything they have there they should also have at Walmart.

I like pretty much anything that is cool and heavy, so if there is anything you guys think I should check out just let me know (you can send an email to the comments and I will see it when I look at this), here is what metal bands I already like:

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I admit, Texas Hippie Coalition’s “Pissed Off and Mad About It” is pretty darn simple and honestly not all that interesting, and ultimately I agree with Axl that it’s pretty bad. But there’s something rather endearing about these fellas in their approach to their music. Like, you know there’s absolutely no pretense involved here; these guys are exactly who they say are in all their redneck glory. Sure, their music is starkly plain, the singer comes off as a bit of yarler and ultimately they’re kind of a watered down Hellyeah (who themselves are a watered down version of someone else) but there’s something that strikes me as just more honest about these guys, and they don’t rub me the wrong way the way Hellyeah do. And that singer; I just wanna give that guy a big hug!

Is that Tuvan throat singing around the 2:18 mark? The Blogronaut would be proud.

Watch the recently re-filmed video above courtesy of Noisecreep.

-VN

Since Axl and I are very patriotic types (couldn’t you tell?) we’ve decide to close the Mansion a bit early this holiday weekend so we can get to the flag-waving festivities as soon as possible.

Kidding! We’re closing early so we can get hiiiiigh and then go see FAITH NO FUCKING MORE! Neither one of us having seen FNM before (although I had a chance to in 1997 and, for some reason, didn’t), we’ve literally been waiting for this moment for most of our lives. We will not be schmoozing with the industry types at a bar in the back, nor will we be politely bobbing our heads on the periphery somewhere… we’ll be right up fucking front, rocking the fuck out as hard as possible (old fashioned push-pit? I hope). To that end, I’m pretty sure we won’t even be drinking tonight; me because I want to remember this night perfectly, and Axl because he doesn’t wanna have to go pee-pee during the show. The man is smart, I tell you.

Here’s what happened this week in the world of metal:

• Van Halen announced plans for a DLR-fronted album in early 2011. Axl is — shockingly — skeptical.
• As part of “Be Nice Day” at the MS Mansion, we said nothing mean about new videos from Hellyeah and Papa Roach.
• We looked at new releases by Bonded by Blood (as part of “Be Nice Day”!), Ceremony and The Ghost Inside, Mastodon, Chambers, and Nattsol.
• We premiered a new track by NJ progressive post-hardcore mind-fuckers East of the Wall.
• We spoke with Warrel Dane of Nevermore and Sanctuary, and Jon Fine about Taco Riffs.
• We sat in on the meeting in which Disturbed brainstormed the artwork for their new album.
• Glenn Danzig is a crappy driver, but Vince Neil is an even crappier one.

Since July 4th falls on a Sunday this year, the gates of the Mansion will be shuttered on Monday, July 5th — like most U.S. businesses — so we can extend the partying by an extra day. See you Tuesday, Suckers.

-VN

Especially if you used it to pick up hot chicks hitchhiking in bikini tops. I mean, eventually you’d get arrested and/or shot, but up until then, I think it would be a lot of a fun! It looks like they’re having fun at that cook-out, too. We had a cook-out last week. It was fun! We didn’t steal any cops cars, but it’s New York City — unattended cop cars are not a common thing, y’know?

Vinnie Paul was in Pantera!!!

-AR

…then mazel tov, ’cause you outlasted me. And I even snorted some coke and tried to think of my grandma naked to dull the sensation, but, nope – absolutely nothing was able to prevent me from feeling like I wanted to hop in a pick-up truck, drink beer, have more children than I can reasonably afford to support, vote for people who don’t have my best interests at heart, and be all pissy about how this ain’t the America I grew up in, and it ain’t the America my daddy grew up in, either. And that’s not a good feeling. Especially since my daddy ain’t from here in the first place.

-AR