Italy-based label Frontiers Records released two of 2011′s awesomest glam metal records, Sebastian Bach’s surprising Kicking And Screaming and Forevermore by Whitesnake, one of this year’s very very awesomest (read here). So Frontiers was already hot when two Tuesdays ago Beggars & Thieves’ new record We Are The Brokenhearted came out. The jam I heard was sweet and holy fucking shit that’s Jake E. Lee doing the solo and and AND appearing in the funny “Right Now”-style video (above at 2:17, with cameos from members of Slaughter, King Kobra, Kiss, Keel, plus a lady with huge jammerz and Kevin Churko).

Lee’s appearance in the video falls in line with recent rumors of an imminent-ish return from near-invisibility with a new project, which is an exciting prospect turned mega-exciting by his great performance on this B&T song and his seeming good health. I’m always begging anybody who has ever been in Lee’s proximity for contact info and it looks like the B&T team is next on my list. Which is a relief in a way cuz I was contemplating asking Paul Gilbert to introduce me to his Racer X bandmate and onetime Badlands drummer Jeff Martin in hope that he has Lee’s number. That sounds like a longshot but it’s not even close to my most desperate gambit so far for an interview with the dude. Jake CALL ME.

-ADF

Get Beggars & Thieves’ new album We Are The Brokenhearted here.

For a while I’ve been trying to pitch an interview to former Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee. Of course, I want to ask him about replacing Randy Rhoads for Bark At The Moon (yay!) and The Ultimate Sin (okay!) albums. And I’ve heard that he’s assembling a new band, so we’d discuss that, too. But mostly, I plan to break my wrist from petting Lee’s ballz about Badlands, his post-Ozzy heavy rock band. Well, wait, I mean, my wrist would break from petting them so thoroughly, not from using great force to pet them. I don’t want Jake to fear for his ballz here.

Ahem But it’s not just that Badlands was awesome, but interesting too. Their debut album, which I’ve privately retitled Bonerlands, convenes a creative team of super-stud Lee (fresh from parting with Ozzy), Ray Gillen (short-term singer for late Black Sabbath and early Blue Murder, total stud), drummer Eric Singer (now of Kiss, then going big like an Appice), and producer Paul O’Neill (the mind behind Trans Siberian sn’Orchestra, Savatage’s Streets: A Rock Opera). Weird team, right? It’s unclear how much Lee would ever discuss with me, cuz Badlands ended pretty acrimoniously (onstage arguments) and then sadly (Gillen’s fatal illness). But for now, let’s click play on “Devil’s Stomp” (above) and you’re jamming! Jake call me!

-ADF

Portnoy (left) with Tom Morello, John goddamn Sykes, That Metal Show host Eddie Trunk, and Doug Pinnick of King’s X

There are days when it seems like ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy is underachieving (cough Adrenaline Mob), but the wider view reveals a hard-working guy who cares greatly about quality music. His mistakes are mistakes (singing on DT records, 12-stepper lyrics, AX7), and his post-DT career so far is basically frantic, low-confidence base-covering, but hey that’s the reality of a messy break-up. You get a little crazy and scared. But with time and patience, Portnoy will land another Images And Words-sized creative success. This is my belief.

So imagine how smugly right I feel about that belief when it was announced Monday that Portnoy is pairing with hungry, mega-talented ace John fucking Sykes (Blue Murder, Whitesnake). Bonerz!
Click to read more…

Vince brought the shits back with him from Egypt and in the past twenty-four hours I’ve been hit with a cold so bad that I’m probably gonna go to sleep right around the time I hit “publish” for this post. So before I pass out, here’s a run-down of what we did while Vince was playing Camel jockey:

• We spoke to Mutiny Within’s AJ Jacobs and producer/mixer Kevin Antreassian.
• As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa discussed fate versus free will on L O S T.
• We premiered “The Last Horse” by Tiger Flowers.
• We checked out new releases by Xasthur and Borknagar and read a book by Andy McCoy, too!
• Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy is recording with Avenged Sevenfold; black is white, up is down, cats love dogs.
• The new Bullet For My Valentine song makes a lot of people angry, either ’cause you had to tweet about it just to hear it or simply because it exists.
• One thing MS Suckalos seem to agree upon: Jake E. Lee was not Ozzy’s best guitar player.

Okay, NyQuil time. See ya Monday!!!

-AR

An impassioned email from a reader reacting to my post about Shadows Fall covering “Bark at the Moon” the other day got me thinking that this would be a fun poll to conduct. The reader, David H., vehemently believes that Jake E. Lee was Ozzy’s best guitarist and thinks everything Zakk Wylde has done has been mediocre at best. If you’re a regular reader of this site you should know how we feel on the matter, but we want to know what YOU feel! So tell us.

For the sake of this poll, only guitarists who actually appeared on Ozzy recordings count. So no Joe Holmes, and sorry, no Gus G. (yet) either.

n

No riff is as tasty as an ’80s metal riff (pick one) and the Shadows Fall tandem of Matt Bachand and Jon Donais are two of the tastiest classic-style riffers in metal today. Put the two together and you’ve got Kobra Kai, an ’80s cover supergroup that also features current and ex-members of Fates Warning, All That Remains and Dark Day Sunday. So it couldn’t've been much of a stretch for Bachand and Donais to take their passion for ’80s metal to the big leagues by covering a song with one of the tastiest riffs ever, “Bark at the Moon;” shit, they probably already knew it.

Apparently the Shads’ cover of the Ozzy classic has been burning up the radio charts of late, but I hadn’t heard it until this live video landed in my inbox. I like how for the most part it’s a straight cover but Bachand and Donais still infuse hints of their distinct Shadows Fallian guitar style into Jake E. Lee’s masterful riffage. And while Brian Fair ain’t the best singer on the block, he sure sounds better than Ozzy “teleprompter” Osbourne these days… and he remembers the lyrics, too. Yes, folks, this is how it’s done. Yes yes, ya’ll.

-VN

Whenever hair rock is ridiculed, discounted, and slighted by metal’s sandy vaginas/haircut jockeys, it’s conveniently forgotten that the reviled oh-faced crotchboys only represent the most visually memorable/thematically asinine segment of the genre. I can’t FUCKING STAND this blind slagging, especially from dudes who weren’t there/out of diapers at the time. I was only a pre-teen (who looted a relative’s purse to buy the first Badlands tape  – sorry, Aunt Rita), yet even I knew about the movement of bands opposed to the fluffy, boob-crazy antics of Warrant, Poison, et al. Most were bluesier and dark, and therefore aimed at listeners whose incentive to purchase music lay beyond the promise of nipple-packed videos. And though it’s a microscopic distinction, I point out that the harder-edged hair rock acts put emphasis not on partying so much as on getting fucking fucked up. Also: No synths, but the occasional organ. Tight leather and denim, but no spandex. You get it. Sleaze Rock, not Splits-Off-Drum Riser Rock.

So why did these non-pretty, non-eyeliner bands get signed to major labels? I guess it’s thanks to the danger of Appetite For Destruction, but one could imagine the logic of targeting horny dudes who buy shitloads of CDs, though none offered by guys with names like Kip Winger or Mark Slaughter. (Except Florentine – total bulge-petter.) Okay, so none really went beyond Gold sales, but each landed a (probably awful) major deal: Atlantic signed Badlands, Geffen had Junkyard. Warners and BulletBoys. Columbia added to their Dokken-tainted roster both Love/Hate and arguably the most lovable and least loved, Dangerous Toys.

Click to read more…

It’s 4 pm, and right about now we’re either interviewing someone or other or watching Job for a Cowboy. Either way, I hope we’re having a fun time.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• We’re streaming Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye in its entirety!
• Current Coheed & Cambria/former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie discussed metal with us.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi is home for tour and very busy blogging for us.
• Our girl Grim Kim visited Birmingham, England, the birthplace of metal.
• We checked out the latest releases from Assjack and Dysrhythmia.
• It looks Ozzy has hired Firewind’s Gus G. to replace Zakk Wylde. And that got us thinking about the legacies of former Ozzy axe slingers Jake E. Lee and Joe Holmes.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I know I will.

-AR

Dan Rodriguez at Metal Insider, where I first saw the below, wonders if the ad is “poking fun” at the Ozzy guitarist search, but I’m fairly certain it’s just a very, very unfortunate coincidence. As far as whether or not the “chimp’s name is a shot at Mr. E. Lee,” well, I would actually believe that.

-AR

To clarify my comments on Jake E. Lee yesterday: I wasn’t attacking  Mr. Lee’s technical skill. But, with all due respect to my man Vince, I’m not a fan of “Bark at the Moon” or anything else from the Lee era, for that matter. Yes, it sucks that Sharon fired him by telegram, but I actually think Zakk got it worse – ’cause Zakk’s humiliation was public. Just sayin’.

ANYWAY, I don’t make apologies for my slight to Joe Holmes. Holmes replaced Zakk Wylde after the release of Ozzmosis ’cause Zakk was off chasing a potential gig with Guns N’ Roses (Somewhere there are demos of a GN’R featuring co-leads by Slash and Zakk, and although I’m sure that music had guitar-masturbation overload, I’d still love to hear them some day. Fat chance, I know.). The big stink about Holmes at the time was that he’d been a student of Randy Rhodes and was therefore supposed to be the second coming or something.

No such luck – poor dude stayed with Ozzy until Zakk returned in 2000, and never even got to record with Ozzy… actually, as far as I know, he’s the only person to be in Ozzy’s band for so long and not get to make an album. He did get to play on the song “Walk on Water” from the movie Beavies and Butthead Do America, and worked on Down to Earth – in fact, several songs he co-wrote remain on that record, although none of them are memorable (and Earth pretty much blows, although I blame producer Tim Palmer as much as anyone).

I never saw Holmes live with Ozzy, but I did manage to find this video of him playing “Perry Mason” on Ozzfest. It’s edited all to fuck but it does give you a sense of what Holmes must’ve been like live. He’s a scrawny motherfucker, but otherwise seems to have “the look” down, at least. Also, the video has some boobies as an added bonus.

Side note: Holmes also played with Lizzy Borden for awhile, but, if I’m not mistaken, never got to play on a Borden album. It’s like the dude was cursed or something.

-AR

Several of you justifiably called out Axl yesterday for dissing Jake E. Lee in his post about Ozzy’s probable new guitar player, Firewind’s Gus G. Lee could definitely shred, and although his  contribution to the Ozzy legacy ultimately doesn’t stack up against Rhoads or Wylde, he did write the killer riff for “Bark at the Moon” which is actually one of my favorite Ozzy riffs ever.

So whilst making sure I had my historical facts straight here, I managed to turn up this nugget from the Wikipedia page for Badlands, the band Jake E. Lee formed after being fired by Ozzy:

After touring with Ozzy Osbourne in support of the Ultimate Sin album, Lee was fired in a telegram from Sharon Osborne while working on one of his muscle cars back in Los Angeles. Lee was completely caught off guard at the time of his firing and was under the impression he had a solid working gig with the Osborne camp.

Heyo! Sound familiar? Maybe Sharon will officially lay the gauntlet down on Wylde via Twitter. That’d be classy.

Here are Badlands performing “Highwire” live. Lee shreds. And that’s Ray Gillen on the mic, who’d just been let go from Black Sabbath upon forming Badlands with Lee.

-VN

Here’s something else Zakk Wylde can hear about for the first time over the internet.

Click to read more…