At this past weekend’s FunFunFunFest in Austin, Texas, a heavy metal behemoth slayed all comers as far as garnering the positive headlines. No, I’m not talking about thrash legends Slayer, who closed out the fest with a brilliant set (review forthcoming) that made their Big 4 NY appearance look tame by comparison. I’m definitely not talking about The Artist Formerly Known As Mr. Kitty Litter AKA The Artist Now Known For French Onion Soup and A Wendy’s Chicken Sandwich AKA Mr. Glenn Danzig (see recap of his divantics™ here). Nope, I’m talking about Mr. Hollywood Hunk his own bad self, Mr. Ryan Gosling.

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The highlight of last week’s Big Four show at Yankee Stadium was Slayer, and with all due respect to Kerry King, Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, and, in this instance, guest guitarist Gary Holt, the highlight of any Slayer show is Dave Lombardo. Never mind that, at the age of 46, he hasn’t slowed down a bit, and is still ten time better than most drummers half his age — he’s so good he has the ability to make Slayer songs on which he did not originally play, like “Disciple,” sound better. And I say that being a fan of Paul Bostaph, who recorded “Disciple” originally.

So, while I’m as sick as discussing of the Big Four as anybody, I just HAD to post these drum cam videos of Lombardo at the concert, ’cause you can’t celebrate that dude’s excellence too much. Also, because they offer the best perspective of just how many people (41,451!) were at this damn show.

Here’s “Disciple”…

…and you can check out “Post Mortem,” “Hate Worldwide,” and “War Ensemble” after the jump.

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We have successfully arrived at Yankee Stadium and are sitting in the press box. We feel so professional!

We’re gonna put the live blog after the jump so it doesn’t eat up the entire page. You’ll hafta refresh to get updates. Sorry.

And now, enjoy the snark…

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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.

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If you’re not a musician, last night’s Metal Masters Clinic 2 — held prior to Anthrax’s so-secret-everyone-knew-about-it show at the Best Buy Theater in NYC — was probably a massive bore. But to everyone else (like me!) it was a wet dream come true; Mike Portnoy having a drum-off with Charlie Benante, Ellefson talking about famous Megadeth bass riffs, Frankie Bello talking about watching porn and playing bass at the same time, all of them jamming on some classic tunes together, and, most notably, this:

Ian, Bello, Benante, Ellefson, Portnoy, Kerry King and Phil Anselmo performing two Pantera cuts. It’s the kind of staged event that might otherwise be cringe-worthy in its attempt at spontaneity, but who gives a shit? As a fan it was really cool to see all those guys jamming up there at once. It was also my first time seeing Anselmo perform Pantera songs live.

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SHAME ON ME! I almost forgot that today is June 6, a.k.a. “The Internatinal Day of Slayer,” until our friend Zena Metal reminded me (and by “me,” I mean “anyone who reads her website”). In any case, if you’re looking for a good excuse to drink Jäger until you puke and/or get right up in the face of some random person on the street and shout “SSSSLLLLAAAYYYYEEERRR!!!!“, well, now you have one. Just tell your boss you’re going home early because it’s a religious holiday. It’s cool, I’m sure he’ll understand.

To help you celebrate, here’s some video of the band in 1991, when Tom Araya could still headbang and Kerry King still had hair. WEIRD!!!

-AR

Am I crazy or does World Painted Blood suck? Is Slayer moving forward or caving to the post-Slipknot shitty production trend? Am I a fossil who can’t deal with a classic band’s evolution? I love serial killers and hate religion, so what’s the deal? Why did critics splooge all over this record, and do fans agree?

During a recent plane trip, I played about four hours of Slayer pinball on my mobile tablet device — to the dismay of my westerly neighbor, who frowned from behind her religious-themed novel presumably at the game’s huge glowing pentagram — and it got me thinking about World Painted Blood. Like 2006′s mehtastic Christ Illusion, the 2009 record arrived amid a rush of acclaim — as though a spiteful metal media corps had a chance to bestow retroactive cheers upon a critically spurned but iconic band. Or maybe the album is awesome, and therefore deserving of warm reception even from fancy music writers at The Onion and All Music Guide. But I don’t think so.

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Oh, man, remember Demiricous?  Their Metal Blade debut, One (Hellbound), fucked our faces off in 2006, and they released an equally crushing follow-up, Two (Poverty), just a year later. They had such a bright future! They were Kerry King’s favorite band! And then… well, they pretty much fell apart. Word around the campfire is they got completely fucked by some scumbag manager, and then they fell split with Metal Blade in 2008. In 2009 they announced that they were working on new material, but 2010 came and went with no news whatsoever from the band.

But there’s news now! According to Lambgoat, they’re releasing a four-song EP/demo this Thursday, March 10 (rad cover art above). And there’s already two new songs streaming on their Facebook page! Hoo-ray!

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Poor Slayer. First they had to recruit Exodus’ Gary Holt to sit in for Jeff Hannenman while the guitarist recovers from surgery on his arm; then they got all the way to Australia, played one gig with Holt… and promptly had to cancel their next show, as part of the Soundwave Festival, because Tom Araya was sent to the hospital for an undisclosed malady. (Although it’s fair to speculate that the front man is once again suffering from the same back issues that took him out of commission last year.)

Holy shit, what is happening to these poor dudes? It’s starting to get to the point where if an Acme safe mysteriously falls from the sky and lands on Kerry King, no one should be surprised. Just watch: Slayer will finally break up due to old age, but Metallica will go on and on and on well into their 80s. Only the good die young I guess.

While we wait to hear if Araya is okay and if Slayer will be able to continue this Australian tour at all, enjoy this first — and possibly last — video of the band performing with Holt. He moves around more on stage in three minutes than Hanneman has in thirty years, so, uh, yeah.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I’m posting outside of our regular hours because I was just got a press release that Exodus’ Gary Holt has been named Slayer’s temporary replacement for Jeff Hanneman (who just had emergency surgery on his arm), and that seems like kind of a big deal. As far as I’m aware at least, it’s the first time a guitarist who isn’t Hanneman or Kerry King will play and tour with the band (I mean, I’m sure other dudes have gotten up and jammed on a song or two with the band, but it’s not quite the same thing). In fact, I don’t even know of Holt having ever really played with another band.

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Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.

So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…

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Maybe this has been around for awhile and it’s just now coming to my attention, but I saw the below on Zena Metal Wants to Conquer the World last week, and it elicited one long, giant head scratch from me:

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Crustcake posted this incredible video of Slayer performing “Hell Awaits” in 1985 at Studio 54. This is both weird and notable, and not just because it serves as a reminder that once upon a time, Kerry King had hair and Tom Araya could move his neck.

No, it’s weird ’cause Studio 54 — in case you’re young and don’t know — was a disco. A very famous disco, where lots of celebrities hung out — folks like Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger, etc. Y’know, the Hiltons and Kardashians of their day. (That was a joke.) The club closed in 1980 after a couple of its owners were caught embezzling profits, and today, it’s used as a Broadway theater.

Yep. Bernadette Peters and Jeff Hanneman have played the same venue. Amazing.

This clip apparently comes from an old VHS collection, Ultimate Revenge for Disco, and Exodus and Venom were also on the bill. But it’s new to me, and hopefully, to you as well.

-AR

As any metal fan with functioning ears and discerning taste knows, Slayer are one of the most overrated bands of all time. Sure, they have some great songs, but the vast majority of their catalog is boring, generic filler. For example, I am not sure why Reign in Blood is considered such a classic when there are only two good songs on it. I mean, if “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood” were released as the two sides of a 7″, it would probably be the best record ever released, but they decided to sandwich a bunch of crappy, lifeless songs between them for some unfortunate reason. And don’t even get me started on how tepid and uninteresting their next few records are… In fact, looking back over the past 25 years or so, it is clear to me that Slayer’s best album is a tossup between two of their mid/late 90s releases that go largely unnoticed: Divine Intervention and Undisputed Attitude.

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So the DVD of the Big Four Sonisphere thing that aired in movie theaters this summer is coming out on November 2 (and possibly earlier, depending on the part of the world in which you live), and to get people pumped, the bands are giving away a FREE video of the now-infamous “Am I Evil?” mega-jam. That’s right, it’s FREE! You can download it here.

Or, you can just watch it below. ‘Cause it’s been available on the internet for free for months anyway. Every single performance clip from the DVD is online, in fact. You can watch them all at Metal Injection. Just sayin’.

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I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Kerry King was in Megadeth in that band’s earliest days; I don’t think he stayed with the group for more than five or six performances, and obviously never wrote or recorded with them. And while there’s been a lot of bad blood between King and Dave Mustaine in the years since, I guess the now-infamous T.G.I.Friday’s Peace Accord and the subsequent months and months of Slayer’s touring with ‘Deth really paid off, ’cause last night in Los Angeles, King took the stage to perform with Megadeth for the first time in more than twenty-five years.

Here’s footage of MegaKing performing “Rattlehead” last night. In my opinion, this is way cooler than that Big Four Jam that King missed ’cause he was busy with other stuff.

And for fun, here’s footage of King with Megadeth back in 1984, playing “Burnt Offerings.”

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So unless you live under a rock in a cave beneath the ocean, you’re aware that the Big Four did some shows together this past June; at the time, I suggested that it would be cool if they all came out and jammed together, and then they did all come out and jam together (video above courtesy Metal Injection), and it wasn’t really that cool. ‘Cause when I made that suggestion, I guess I forgot that this was all the Big Four bands now, not the Big Four bands in 1990.

So I was actually a little relieved — although not at all surprised — that 75% of Slayer did not participate in the jam (the exception being Dave Lombardo, natch). ‘Cause Slayer have always been and will always be “Cooler Than Thou.”

As it turns out, though, Kerry King would have liked to have participated, but had to do the work his lazy and decrepit band mates wouldn’t do. From a recent Revolver interview:

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So I feel like we’ve been talking about this Slayer/Megadeth tour FOR-EV-ER, and last night I finally got to see it. And despite my usual cynical instincts telling me that it might very well end up being a major disappointment, I gotta say… I had a really, really fun time.

Testament were great. That’s not really a surprise or anything — Testament have been great, Testament will be great, and if all else failed, I never really doubted for a second that they’d put on a killer show. If I don’t have much else to say about them, it’s because there was never really any suspense with regards to whether or not they’d be good. (But be advised: they went on shortly before 7 pm, so get to the venue early to make sure you don’t miss ‘em. There were far too many people not yet at the venue when they played, which was a damn shame.)

Megadeth… well, there’s really only one problem with Megadeth: Mustaine’s voice sucks. Like, at a James Hetfield level of suckitude — actually, he might sound worse than Hetfield, who can at least stay on-key or close-enough for 60% of the time. (Mustaine was almost on-key during an encore of “A Tout Le Monde,” and that was about it.) I seriously had to tune out Mustaine’s voice just to enjoy the music. He can still play guitar like nobody’s business, it’s great to have Ellefson back, and if we’re not gonna have Marty Friedman and Nick Menza in the band, than Shawn Drover and Chris Broderick are about as good as it’s gonna get, replacement-wise. But Mustaine’s vocals… it’s just embarrassing, man.

And then there was Slayer.

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Hey Suckfaces, the Big Four live in Sofia, Bulgaria concert/movie thingy has encore showings tomorrow in select markets and you should totally go! It’s the most fun ever. Even if you’re lukewarm on a band/the bands, the theater-going experience is novel and pretty easy to like. It’s communal (like a concert) and comfortable (good for old people who listen to the Big Four). Plus, the little things: set breaks are excised; the audio is that Live Aid quality which disguises not even the smallest flub or shortcut, almost sickeningly real; close-ups of guitar shredding abound; and mosh pits are way more fun in a movie theater.

But if you just can’t make it to this exciting cinema-concert event cuz you’re in jail still from the Lakers celebration parade or you’re a piteously ugly John Bush fan or whatever, here’s what you’ll miss:

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Fuck taking a photo together. What we all really wanna see is The Big Four jam, dude. For one thing, it would just be cool to see all those dudes rocking out together, maybe on a jam of some old metal classic that everyone could find mutually agreeable (if ever there was a time to pay tribute to Dio…). For another thing, since the number of people in the world who ever actually got to see Mustaine play with Metallica or Kerry King play with Megadeth is roughly equivalent to the number of people who actually paid to see Jonah Hex this weekend (e.g., almost no one), it would be terrific wish fulfillment.

Of course, it will probably never happen, because God forbid everyone put their egos and bullshit aside to do anything too cool. So for now, we’ll have to settle for Scott Ian helping to sing one chorus of “Peace Sells” with ‘Deth. ‘Cause, y’know. When I think great singing, I think Scott Ian.

Skip to the 2:40 mark for fifteen whole seconds of crossover dreams come true.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]