It’s always refreshing when a member of an older generation of musicians “gets it” and doesn’t come off as sounding like a dinosaur. It’s not surprising that Henry Rollins, who spent decades screaming his lungs out in dive bars and basements, would appreciate the DIY ethos that the Internet and ever-cheapening recording technology offer, but it’s still great to hear someone over the age of 30 acknowledging the pros of the modern musical age instead of waxing ecstatic about how things used to be.

Love his analogy of the major labels as the The Olive Garden and Subway of music with no love put into the product, and I double-love that he even acknowledges the dudes in those bands (even the horrible ones) might be motivated whereas it’s the labels don’t give a shit. Also, priceless Scott Stapp impression at 1:25.

The above clip comes from Bloodied but Unbowed, aka The Punk Movie, released in 2010.

-VN

Thanks: Jesse Z.

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…

As the killer gatefold above indicates, August’s Decibel (order here) presents an in-depth exploration of the bond between extreme music and extreme comics. Nick Green busted his ass to deliver multiple hilarious and informative profiles on the industry’s most brutally creative psychos. Today, in the interest of giving you a little cutting room floor action, here’s a quick Q&A with cover artist Tom Neely, of Henry & Glenn Forever infamy.

You submitted a variety of ideas for the Scott Ian cover. How did you settle upon the imagery you created for the foldout?

The only guideline I was given was that it had to include Scott Ian. Which, as much as I love Anthrax, was more difficult than I thought, because I don’t often make art that involves actual living people. I sketched out five or six ideas that I presented to Jamie [Leary, head designer] and Albert [Mudrian, editor in chief]. They picked my second favorite, which was actually my first sketch, and I think it ended up being the best idea overall.

Click to read more…

In 1968, Gary Moore (above, top left) was just 16 years old when he joined future Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott in the Dublin blues-rock quartet Skid Row*. So, Moore was a charter member of the Society of Overachieving Teen Guitarists that would later include Steve Vai (19, Frank Zappa), Zakk Wylde (19, Ozzy Osbourne), and Devin Townsend (19, Steve Vai). Pretty elite company.

After a pair of short stints in Thin Lizzy, Moore again reunited with Lynott in 1979 for the band’s seminal Black Rose: A Rock Legend (see Axl Rose’s Black Rose-themed tattoo here, upper left). More than twenty solo albums followed, including 2008’s Bad For You Baby.

British tabloid The Sun reports that Moore, 58, was discovered unresponsive by medical staff in a Spain hotel suite where there were “definite signs of alcohol.” The Sun also quotes a source at the hotel who has stated that Moore “seemed fine when he left [the hotel bar] around 11 pm.” A post mortem has been scheduled.

After the jump, check out the MetalSucks round up of tributes to Moore by members of Obituary, Opeth, Black Flag, Testament, Black Sabbath, and mo(o)re.

Click to read more…

Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History is one of the great rock n’ roll history books. And now it’s bigger. Originally published in 2001, the Feral House book nails the golden age of old-school hardcore, from the movement’s inception to the watershed year 1986. The book inspired a documentary, the 2006 film American Hardcore. The movie is a must-see that has inspired as much griping and controversy as the book.

Click to read more…

If Horatio Alger were alive today, he’d be tempted to write about Slayer. Defying logic, popular fads and the moral majority, the band is an American thrash-to-riches story, having not just survived, but thrived on a regimen of non-compromise. Future musicologists will no doubt struggle to explain how four guys from Huntington Park forced Reign in Blood down the world’s collective throat, then went on to sell millions of records, win two Grammys, and amass a huge, rabid fanbase. And does any other band have a holiday dedicated to them?

As the curtain closes on their third decade in the music business, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo was good enough to shoot the proverbial shit with MetalSucks when the American Carnage Tour stopped in St. Paul, MN. Read the full transcript of our chat after the jump.

Click to read more…

From the Daily What, via MS Mansion Vince Division inhabitant ELC:

God bless Henry Rollins.

-VN

Living Colour performing their new single,”Behind the Sun,” on WYNC’s Soundcheck this past Friday.

Getting to spend nearly an hour on the phone with Vernon Reid was another huge fanboy moment in my life. The band’s debut album, Vivid, was one the first cassettes (!) I ever purchased on my own, making Living Colour one of the first bands I ever listened to that weren’t introduced to me by my parents. Today, more than twenty years later, the band is releasing their fifth studio album, The Chair in the Doorway (Megaforce). The fact that it’s no less powerful or brilliant than Vivid made talking to Reid even more exciting, because my love of the music he and his band make isn’t at all rooted in nostalgia (read my review of the record here).

As you’ll see from the following transcript of our chat, Reid doesn’t exactly think in linear terms. There were definitely moments when I had thoughts such as “Why is he talking about Pokemon?”, for example. But he always comes back around to his original point, leading to many “Oooooohhhhh! I get it now!” moments in the conversation. And given the dude’s music, that makes perfect sense: while Living Colour is ostensibly a traditionalist hard rock band, they’re still constantly and thinking outside the box and trying to navigate unexplored terrain.

After the jump, check out Reid’s thoughts on the writing and recording of The Chair in the Doorway, the meaning of that album’s title, the joys of interacting with fans through the net, and more.

Click to read more…

If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

Click to read more…