I know there are people who got excited about James Durbin on account of him being “the metal dude” on whatever season of American Idol, but the fact that he was on that show is the very reason I never investigated his music. I hate American Idol so much that if Herman Cain or Rick Perry ran on a platform of promising to end the show forever, I would have to give serious consideration to voting for him.

And then Durbin went and stole some members from In This Moment (but not Maria Brink or the white dude with dreads, so fret not, In This Moment fans), and that was strike two against the dude as far as I was concerned.

Now his new video, “Love Me Bad,” has debuted on Noisecreep, and oh dear, is this guy ever terrible. He’s just a thinner version of the skunk that won Rock Star Supernova, isn’t he? I mean, I totally get how someone could like this if their mother and their sister are one and the same, but for those of who were bred in a wider gene pool, this shit ain’t gonna cut it.

Now let’s never speak of this douche again.

-AR

I was more than a little intrigued yesterday when we received a press release announcing the line-up for the 2011 edition (Have there been previous editions?) of Dame-Nation, “Chicago’s premier female-fronted metal festival” (Does Chicago have other female-fronted metal festivals?). The idea of doing a whole show based around bands that are fronted by women isn’t new; as I write this, the Revolver Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock tour is about half complete. And the organizers of Dame-Nation seem to only kinda-sorta know what they’re doing. But it’s their complete lack of polish that I find, well… admirable, really.

One key difference between the Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock tour and Dame-Nation is that none of the bands on Dame-Nation are famous. In other words, if the Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock tour features bands that no one would care about if not for the fact that they have attractive girls in the group, then Dame-Nation features bands that no one cares about despite having attractive girls in the group.

Maybe the bands on HCIHR have ascended somewhat higher on the metallic food chain (fiscally if not creatively) than the bands on Dame-Nation because they know how to sell themselves; HCIHR makes no bones about its own marketing ploy. Just check out the poster… what product is it actually advertising?

Maria Brink has a nice pair of sunglasses.

Now contrast this with the poster for Dame-Nation:

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Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit: Apparently not a candidate for best album of the year.

Yep yep yep: the right honorable Mr. Phil Freeman of MSN’s “Headbang” blog has revealed the 135 finalists which will soon be whittled down for his “Twenty Best Metal Albums of 2010″ list, which will presumably be published sometime in the coming weeks. You can go here to read it, and then leave Phil angry comments about how your favorite album isn’t even on this list of 135 records.

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Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.

But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.

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Or that they actually included the lyric “Welcome to the gun show.” Then again, I can’t quite believe that anyone anywhere takes this band seriously in the first place, so I don’t know why I’m so surprised.

ANYWAY, you can listen to the song here. I will say, good for this band for continuing to show some variety in their sound, even if I haven’t liked any of those sounds. Their first album, Beautiful Tragedy, was mostly generic nu-metalcore; their last album, The Dream, was more melodic and power metal-ish; and if this song is any indication, their upcoming A Star-Crossed Wasteland is going to sound like nu-metalcore by way of Black Label Society.Which is about as appealing to me as the thought of pissing on the third rail, but, hey, I know a lot of people like this band, so, y’know. Hip-hip-hooray.

In other news, Maria Brink’s blue dress now has tiger stripes on it. Variety truly is the spice of life.

A Star-Crossed Wasteland comes out July 13 on Century, and will probably outsell any three of your favorite releases of 2010 combined. Cry for our world.

-AR

I’ve spoken at length in the past about In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink and her precious blue dress, going so far as to once hypothesize that her closet must look like Homer’s on The Simpsons – just dozens of copies of the same exact outfit. But I guess I was wrong! She’s now auctioning that very dress on eBay, where the garb is described as “This is the one of a kind dress she wore in the Forever video, 2008 Ozzfest and other events.” One of a kind? Really? So she wore that for basically every performance and promotional event up until she finally got a new, pink dress in August of 2009? Man, that thing must smell.

ANYWAY, as of this writing the dress is going for $500. It comes mounted in a black frame, although I’m sure that won’t stop some creepy dude from using it as a masturbatory tool.

And while we’re on the topic: bravo to Brink for taking the leap and parting with her most precious and recognizable of assets. Well, almost.

You can bid here, if you really have nothing better to do with your money.

-AR

[via Blabs]

There’s a NSFW image after the jump. You’ve been warned.

Angela Gossow in the 2006 edition of Revolver’s “Hottest Chicks in Metal”

I love masturbating as much as the next guy who spends most of his day at the computer, but there’s no getting around the fact that Revolver’s annual “Hottest Chicks in Metal” issue – and now, apparently, accompanying calendar – is completely ridiculous. It has nothing to do with music, and there’s no equivalent issue for “Hottest Dudes in Metal,” because, well, metal is mostly a sausage fest and I imagine that a “Hottest Dudes” issue wouldn’t sell very well.

Now Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow – who has been featured in past “Hottest Chicks” issues – has spoken out against the concept… as if you needed another reason to love her. From a recent interview with KNAC:

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So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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The line-up for the 2010 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (Jesus I hate typing all that shit) has been announced. See who’ll be playing one of the summer’s biggest metal tours after the jump, along with my snarky commentary, of course…

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Honkey Grandma be trippin’.

I’m sorry. This is awful. This is objectively awful. There is nothing good about it. I can’t think of one goddamn nice thing to say. Fuck this. Fuck it in the ear.

-AR

Because we’re the metal version of The National Enquirer, we’re journalisticly obliged to post this, right? Not to do so would be negligent, right? Right?

Fine, fuck it, she’s got huge ta-tas. I mean look at those puppies!!

-VN

[Thanks: Brutal Jay]

Last week’s post of In This Moment covering Iron Maiden sparked such an uproar that it inspired longtime MetalSucks Maniac Hegy to send in a link of another female artist covering a (sort of classic) metal track, Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerilla Radio” as performed by everyone’s favorite Canadian yodeler Alanis Morissette. Thing is, said cover isn’t nearly as objectionable as it might seem. For one, Alanis has actually got a good voice, and I liked a lot of her earlier material in a completely non-ironic (haha, get it?) way. But more importantly, Alanis doesn’t go for the straight cover. Her version of the RATM classic is musically quite different from the original — it’s more of an “interpretation” than a cover, if you will — and unless you’re a devoted student of RATM lyrics you probably wouldn’t recognize the song until the chorus kicks in at around the 1-minute mark. Alanis, you continue to prove why Canadians are that much smarter than their American brethren.

-VN

Finally… we have a capable, intelligent, forward-thinking new U.S. president. No, it’s not Dave Mustaine. Here’s what else happened this week:

• We wondered aloud and speculated about Slayer’s co-headline tour, New England Metal & Hardcore Fest, Scion Rock Fest (aka Atlanta Metalfest), and The Faceless’ headline tour. This spring just got awesome.
• We ran to the hills to avoid a shitty classic metal cover. Meanwhile, we found Iron Maiden in Iran and on the big screen.
• We got sexi(vious) with members of Cynic and Textures.
• We looked at new releases from Satyricon, Cattle Decapitation, 16 and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder.
• Maynard got all Jiu-Jitsu on our asses and Carcass played a wedding.

Axl, myself and our girlfriends (we have girlfriends… whowouldathunkit???) are going to see The Dark Knight on the IMAX tonight. Hopefully weed will be involved. Later, suckaz!!

Less than a year ago I took it upon myself to tell the members of In This Moment that they really, seriously, no fucking around, needed to stop covering classic metal tracks. At the time, they’d already created lackluster versions of Slayer’s “Postmortem” and Pantera’s “I’m Broken,” and I’d like to think I wasn’t alone when I said “Enough is enough.”

Unfortunately, In This Moment really doesn’t give a fuck what I think, and I didn’t have the will power not to watch this:

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Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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Call it the Sarah Palin Effect: so much is already stacked against In This Moment (a metalcore band two to three years after metalcore flickered out with an incredibly attractive frontwoman equipped with a ridiculously provocative sense of fashion) that the bar is set almost comedicaly low. But much like struggling to answer simple follow-up questions during one of your first televised national interviews, any slight hint of competency already exceeds expectations, and by many, will be perceived a victory. I wouldn’t call The Dream, the band’s latest album, a victory by any means, but considering the flaccidity of the genre in which it exists, they manage to ascend from “Why do bands like this still make music?” to “Not that bad, really,” with relative ease. Though by no means a classic, it wobbles between lame metalcore and admirable pop-rock somewhat effortlessly to maybe work their way onto the guilty pleasure heap – no small achievement when considering the ocean of sneers and venom already directed their way before playing a note.

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Here’s the cover of the upcoming issue of Revolver, which is scheduled to hit newsstands October 21. As you can tell, it’s a Halloween-themed issue. So rather than just dress Maria Brink up in something sexified like they normally do, the creative folks over at Revolver stuck a wig on her, doused her with pig’s blood, and paid homage to Brian De Palma’s classic cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you sick fucks will get off on this shit, so, y’know, run and get the vasoline now.

In This Moment have a new album, The Dream, in stores tomorrow on Century. Kind of amazingly, the album actually hasn’t leaked in advance of its release!

-AR

David Brodsky videos are usually full of the kind of fucked-up imagery we’re accustomed to in the metal world – zombies, blood-thirsty beasts, patricide, population-leveling plagues, bats flying out of people’s mouths, scary old dudes licking young women in bondage gear, Devin Townsend in a tuxedo, etc. – so the fact that the video he just directed for In This Moment, “Forever,” is so sun-shiney is, at a glance, kind of a shock.

But Brodksy has what Hollywood types call “range,” and these visuals completely fit the song. And I know for a fact that Brodsky wants nothing more than to create an honorable cinematic representation of whatever band he’s working with at the moment (pun not intended), something that will satisfy the artist and their fans alike. Also, this video really, really makes me wanna go to the beach.

Century will release In This Moment’s new album, The Dream, next week.

-AR

Wow, that headline sucks. Sorry. I’m fucking exhausted.

ANYWAY, I didn’t make it to In This Moment’s listening part for their new album, The Dream, last week, but Vince told me it was a good time. And our pals over at Metal Injection managed to sneak in a camera and capture footage of the band their new song, “Forever.” It seems pretty clear that the band’s sound has evolved somewhat… time will tell if I actually enjoy The Dream or not. The album drops September 30 on Century.

Don’t forget that Metal Injection continues to be the best source pretty much anywhere for all your metal video needs. So head over there and check out some more cool shit, fer Chrissakes.

-AR

Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where we get to see inside Homer’s closet, and it’s full of identical white shirts and blue pants? I’ve kinda always assumed that’s what Maria Brink’s closet looked like: just an endless row of those blue dresses.

Well, I guess the royalities from Beautiful Tragedy are really paying off, ’cause as you can see from the above photo of Maria and some other dudes who I think may also be in the band, she finally got a new dress!

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