So we had a lot of fun laughing about that Big Four photo yesterday, and then last night on the Metal Injection Livecast (download it here), we had a good chuckle over this second picture, in which Dave Mustaine makes his feelings about James Hetfield perfectly clear:

But I guess some clever publicist or manager was on-hand for this shoot, and saw this picture being taken and was all, “Fuck, this could be a real problem, we better make sure that we get another one where it doesn’t look like these two hate each other.” And that publicist or manager was correct. If Mustaine can play nice with Kerry King, he should be able to suck it up and play nice with Hetfield, too. (And let’s not forget that Scott Ian is no Mustaine fan, either.)

Thus, we also get this picture, which is better insofar as Hetfield is not standing so far away from the rest of the group, but is not better insofar as it is still hilariously awkward:

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Tonight is the first of the European Big Four shows, and sixteen of the seventeen musicians that now comprise those bands all gathered in one room and put their differences aside long enough to snap this picture (click on it to make it enlarge… heh heh, he said “enlarge”):

Should we over-analyze the reasons why certain people are standing near one another, or far apart, or how they’re standing? Well, this is MetalSucks, ain’t it?

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When you tune into the premiere broadcast of The Second Annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards tomorrow night on VH1 classic, you’ll see the final public appearance of our beloved Ronnie James Dio. You’ll also see Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, winner of roughly half of the meaningful awards, enjoying the metal community’s validation of their potentially dicey comeback effort, the magnificent Black Gives Way To Blue. You’ll see metal codgers like Rob Halford, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy bathe in much-deserved adulation. You’ll also see potentially ho-hum performances pumped up by mega-drummers: Rob Zombie with Joey Jordison (in his debut performance), Fear Factory with Gene Hoglan, Brian Posehn with John Tempesta (and Brett Anderson girl call me srsly) and Slash with Dave Grohl.

But at a mere 60 minutes, the broadcast can’t capture all of the April 8 event’s super moments and silly gaffes. Here’s a few things you won’t see:

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Kerry King hopes this summer’s brief Big Four Euro-tour comes to America and the rest of the world, but he can shit in one hand and hope in the other and see which one fills up first, as the saying goes; why take the risk? This morning I woke up to an e-mail alerting me to the fact that one of the Sonsiphere shows, on June 22, is going to be simulcast live into movie theaters throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe.

The idea of sitting through a metal concert in a movie theater strikes me as a pretty iffy proposition – I mean, are you supposed to try and rock out, or sit there and eat your popcorn, or what the fuck…? – and tickets are even pricier than for a normal movie (eighteen bucks here in New York), but… oh, fuck it, who am I kidding? Of course I’m gonna to this if I can.

Check out the complete listing of times and theaters here. And the trailer is below…

-AR

I just wanna throw my two cents in…

True story: when I was a kid, I thought the lyrics to “Black No. 1″ were “You can’t go out ’cause your boobs are showing.” I was confused about what the song’s title meant, but otherwise, the words made perfect sense to me. Oh, misheard lyrics. You never cease to amuse.

Even if you weren’t a Type O Negative fan or a Carnivore fan, you have to admit that Peter Steele had one of the most distinctive voices in the history of metal. You never heard the guy and thought, “Gee, who is that?” And because my mother used to work with Josh Silver’s (now sadly also departed) dad, Type O Negative always felt, somehow, more tangible to me; Steele was iconic and often seemed larger than life, but I knew he wasn’t superhuman.That he passed away so young was a very unfortunate reminder that he wasn’t The Man of Steele. But he made his mark and left something to appreciated behind, and in the end, that’s all any of us can really ask for.

Here are some happier things that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We unveiled the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2010.
• We debuted a new video by Jungle Rot.
• We spoke to Kerry King and Dave Lombardo from Slayer, Chino Moreno from Deftones, and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal contemplated depression, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa contemplated L O S T, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley contemplated the perfect Taco Riff.
• We checked out new releases by Levi/Werstler, Wormrot, and Bison B.C. and Sweet Apple.
• Ever dreamed of singing with Nevermore? We’re running pretty much the coolest contest in the history of ever.

Next week brings at least one and possibly two big surprises, plus, knock on a wood, the debut of a new column by a writer you will hate. See ya then.

-AR

I hear people talk about Slayer’s Kerry King in tones that suggest that he is, like, commonly viewed as arrogant or something. And now you can tell by my tone that King rules, and that those who disagree can shampoo my crotch anytime on weekdays between the hours of noon and six. For one thing, you never hear is how King’s kick-assosity is contagious; this year, after our Golden Gods Blarpet mini-interview, I was so pumped up that I wanted to slap Jim Florentine and french Kat Von D in one motion. (After last year’s ceremony, I almost punched a hot dog vendor and licked Chuck Billy’s arm.) King is that type of guy, and once you realize this, you can see how Slayer grew into one of history’s greatest bands: good leadership.

After the jump, King and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and I chat about the American Carnage tour, Exodus, and meddling producers. Though to tell the truth, I don’t really feel like sharing it in light of the paltry number of comments on yesterday’s hard-hitting Deftones coverage. I guess your mother and I just expected better of you.

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At least half of the bands playing metal today owe huge debts to D.R.I. — also known as Dirty Rotten Imbeciles — even if the band was an indirect influence. Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman was an early fan, and Kerry King had written off punk as just some noisy bullshit before he discovered the group. Prior to the Massive Aggressive LP, Municipal Waste records were essentially D.R.I. albums. If you dig the Waste and don’t know D.R.I., shame on you. Proceed directly to iTunes or eMusic to catch up on the catalog. It’s a hardcore history lesson.

For a metal audience, D.R.I.’s Crossover is a good place to start. Beer City Records will release an expanded, remastered Millennium Edition of the album on April 13. (It’s already available on iTunes.) A lot of people with credible taste consider it the band’s signature record. I won’t say it’s their worst, but it’s definitely my least favorite — and trust me, I like D.R.I. more than the next guy. They’re gods and should be treated as such. The bonus material makes the reissue a must-have, even if you think the proper LP blows dog.

Crossover is D.R.I.’s Black Album. It was the band’s breakthrough release. But all D.R.I.’s signature elements were M.I.A. Song lengths changed drastically. Rumbling, raw production was replaced with a big-rock sound. Frontman Kurt Brecht’s lyrics were on a downswing. D.R.I. had a new direction. Some fans love the record. Some fans hate it.

One of the Millennium Edition’s eleven bonus tracks is a wicked live version of “Five Year Plan” that starts with an intro which identifies the group as “one of the hardest metalcore bands ever to come out of the Bay Area.” Now that’s old, old footage, and “metalcore” meant something very different then. Everybody was still figuring it out, and if you wanted to know where heavy music was going, D.R.I. was one of the bands to watch.

“Five Year Plan” live video

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No one can fault Dave Mustaine for putting together a tour in lieu of the stillborn American Carnage trek. But as always the Megadeth frontman aims for maximum annoyance and as such his new tour is a brazen approximation of Carnage minus Slayer. As a member of Slayer, Kerry King must be distressed to find that there’s a nearly identical alternative to his tour on the market — complete with Testament and Exodus, for a total of three thrash metal greats, just like Carnage — that’s sure to distract ticket-buyers and cool walk-up sales. And in light of the recent King-Mustaine cuddlefest at T.G.I.Friday’s, one could argue it’s yet another of Mustaine’s unconscionable and self-destructive backstabbings, at which he is only second to Eddie Van Halen in proficiency. (Unlike lead guitar playing, at which Mustaine is second in proficiency to dozens. Cheap shot alert!)

To make matters worse, ‘Staine and Megadeth will use the new tour to celebrate their last great record, Rust In Peace, y’know, to add a sack-tap to this already historic cockblock. So it was already getting silly by the time the announcement came yesterday that Megadeth’s only other real member, the embittered former Mustaine bum chum David Ellefson, he of history’s greatest metal bass performance and reams of anti-Mustaine bitching, would return to the pasty creases of the Mus-taint for bass duties on the big tour. Yet more juice for the non-Slayer shows. What’s next, the return of RiP guitarist Marty Friedman? (Um please?)

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Alright, so Vince is back Tuesday, which means the balance between light and dark should be restored here at the MetalSucks Mansion. What Vince doesn’t know is that I had Higgins make some… adjustments to Vince’s wing. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be sitting on the shitter when ya flush it, Vinnie. BWA-HA-HA!!!

Here’s what we did while Vince has been away:

• We spoke to the legendary Jello Biafra and DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara.
• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle broke down the breakdown, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley ruminated some more on the format wars, andVertebrae33′s Rod Githens analyzed the best album covers of 2009.
• We checked out new releases by Six Feet Under, Valkyrja, Brainstorm, Trapped Under Ice and Sons of Azrael.
• Our staff chose some albums that will fuck your face off in 2010.
• The line-up for Mayhem Fest 2010 got the kids all riled up.
• Dave Mustaine and Kerry King <3 T.G.I.Friday’s.

Have a good weekend, everybody!!!

-AR

Dave Mustaine posts so many “updates” about what Megadeth is up to, upcoming announcements of major upcoming announcements, and the color of his stool that I feel like I know more about what’s going on in his life than I do about what’s going on in Vince’s life. But his latest, which I just read on Blabbermouth, is interesting for two reasons:

1. It seems that he and Kerry King are trying to be pals again.
2. These two metal legends chose to meet at the single blandest restaurant chain in America, if not the world.

Here’s the skinny from Mustaine:

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Photo: Michael Singman-Aste, www.PostdiluvianPhoto.com

2009 is an awesome year to be Robb Flynn or anyone in Machine Head. Your band’s been touring non-stop for two and a half years on the well-deserved critical and commercial success of The Blackening, all without doing a single U.S. headline run. You’ve opened arenas for Metallica, huge theaters for Megadeth and Slayer, played on one of the biggest U.S. touring festivals, and quite literally traversed the world several times over. Not bad… not bad at all.

At the start of their U.S. tour with Megadeth, Machine Head’s publicist contacted us about interviewing Robb. The guy’s a character, The Blackening was fantastic, and it’d been almost a year and a half since we last spoke with anyone in the band (guitarist Phil Demmel on the 2008 Rockstar Mayhem Tour), so we figured we may as well. Crazy as it is that the Machine Head machine is still heading on an album released in 2007… it’s true, and they’re not even slowing down.

After the jump, read my full chat with Robb. We spent a whole lot of time talking about things other than Machine Head; the business-like nature of touring with Megadeth (as of interview time, he hadn’t once seen Mustaine in person on the entire tour!), the down-to-earth nature of hanging out with his heroes in Metallica, mentoring the young lads of Suicide Silence, and the always entertaining subject of the constant feuding between Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth. We also chatted about Machine Head’s constant touring — a dream come true for Robb — and about what the future might hold for the band, including their next album (writing has begun). And wouldn’t you know it, Robb reads MetalSucks!

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The metal community has been using the phrase “It’s their best album since…” a lot as of late. As though spurred on by the nineteen year old kids who now play the music they created better than they do, the Elder Statesmen of Thrash – or EST – have been enjoying a renaissance.

But here’s what sets Slayer apart from the pack: while you could certainly say that “World Painted Blood is Slayer’s best album since Season in the Abyss” and be telling truth, you could have said “It’s their best album since Seasons in the Abyss” about any album since Diabolus in Musica and been telling the truth. Slayer didn’t only just recently get awesome again – they really never stopped being awesome, despite what the scene snobs might have you believe.

But World Painted Blood finds Slayer sounding even more like the band that created the Holy Trinity than Christ Illusion did, so people are even more excited about than they were about that last offering. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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While I’ve been defending Roadrunner Records against Dave Mustaine, there’s been drama brewing in the Megadeth camp.

It all started when Mustaine gave a video interview to a Norway’s Lydverket blog. The half-hour long conversation was edited down to about four and half minutes for its final presentation, and a portion of that was devoted to Mustaine talking, for the trillionth time just this year, about being fired from Metallica. (This time he blamed it on the fact that he apparently decked James Hetfield back in the day for kicking his dog, because, y’know, Hetfield is a puppy-hating asshole and Mustaine is a saint and nothing is ever his fault.) And for reasons not entirely clear to me, Mustaine was seriously offended by the final video, and threatened that “as soon as I see that interviewer again, I am going to put him in a hospital.” (The journalist in question was actually a woman, but, hey, it’s hard to remember the little details when you never think about anything but yourself.)

Well, a full, unedited version of the interview has been released now, and as it turns out… Mustaine is the one who brought up Metallica. Mr. “I Don’t Want to Talk About Metallica Anymore.” Yes, the interviewer asks him to elaborate on his point a little, but he basically just starts talking about them, and going on and on and on… and then he brings up the whole Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame thing, which he was never asked about… I mean… Kerry King was right: give this dude some rope and he will hang himself. I’d call the dude an asshole, but really, this is just sad. Because Dave Mustaine is that guy who never got over his girlfriend leaving him, even though it was a million years ago and he’s now married to someone else.

Go to roughly the fifteen minute mark to see Mustaine bring up Metallica.

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Axe to Fall, Converge’s once-again excellent new album, is yet another stylistic shift: the majority of it is devoted to the band playing harder and more technically than they have in their post-Jane Doe era, while the closing two songs finding them venturing further away from their comfort zone than they ever have before. But even though guitarist Kurt Ballou darts all over the fretboard more than usual, vocalist Jacob Bannon changes nothing about his performance, from the breathless rambling on opener “Dark Horse” to his trademark pterodactyl-like shriek over the course of the album. But this isn’t to say that he’s in a state of creative stasis while the rest of the band moves outwards: Bannon’s hellacious scream is just as much a part of Converge’s uniqueness as is Ballou’s nimble riffing. Bannon’s work on Axe to Fall is as savage as it’s ever been, and once again adds weight and disturbing depth to the album’s metallic hardcore-fueled chaos.

Jacob Bannon’s place in metal, hardcore, and—for better or worse—metalcore is massive, with his trademark vocals incalculably influential and lyrics favoring the abstract over the melodramatic. Even outside of Converge, Bannon manages to be prominent, with a successful visual art career and running hardcore label Deathwish Inc. A surprisingly normal sounding (at least in terms of how he sounds on record), introspective guy, Bannon comes off as both wise about the metal and hardcore world while still impressed by and interested in it. In a lengthy interview with MetalSucks, he discussed the musical and lyrical intricacies of Axe to Fall, his approach to artwork in comparison to his vocal work, and people’s changing attitudes toward heavy music as they age.

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Slayer have the title track of their new album World Painted Blood up for streaming on their MySpace page.

Conclusion: it sounds like Slayer.

EXCEPT: the guitar solo. Lots of folks slag Kerry King for his one-solo-fits-all style of shred… and really, I can’t say that they’re wrong. Until now. This solo is not only different from King’s usual fare, but it’s slooooowwwwww. This solo probably has as many notes in the entire thing as most of King’s solos do in one phrase. And for that it’s seriously fucking awesome! Hanneman’s riffing and Lombardo’s drumming underneath lock in for a groove that compliments it perfectly, emphasizing the nuance of King’s solo all the more.

World Painted Blood drops November 3rd.

-VN

I was seriously worried about the fate of Demiricous, and with good reason, I’d say. The best band ever to sound exactly like Slayer that aren’t actually Slayer, the Hoosier quartet made two killer albums on Metal Blade (produced by Zeuss and ERIK FUCKING RUTAN, respectively) and were endorsed by no less a figure than Mr. Kerry King himself. But then they were, at least as I understand it, more or less completely ripped-off by their then-manager, and they finally parted ways with Metal Blade last year. No one could blame them if they broke up. Bands break up over much less these days.

But now Lambgoat is reporting that Demiricous is, in fact, alive and well, and will enter the studio in November to record a new five-song demo with Gates of Slumber drummer “Iron” Bob Fouts. They still don’t have a label and “will issue the material themselves.” That part confuses me a bit – I mean, I’m thrilled to get to hear new Demiricous music, but is it a demo to try and land them a new label, or is it a self-released EP…? Whatever. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Here’s the band’s video for “Vagrant Idol.” Holy shit, this song is heavy.

-AR

It was a mere two weeks ago that I was feeling pretty cynical about the prospects of a rumored Big Four tour becoming a reality. It just seems like there’s too much bad blood between too many of the bands for everyone to hit the road together.

But there’s also a lot of money to be made there, and in 2009 money wins every fight, even in the world of metal.

So here comes Robert Trujillo to get the rumor pot a-stirrin’ again. In a recent interview, the man/crab hybrid had this to say:

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Our friends over at Noisecreep have an interesting new interview with former Killswitch Engage front dude Jesse Leach. The gist of the interview is that he doesn’t regret quitting the band seven years ago, just before they were launched into the metal stratosphere, and much prefers making less money and being in bands no one seems to care about. (Okay, I made that last part up. But still.) Here’s the quote I found really interesting:

“I look at the band now, and I don’t even think twice. There’s no way in my brain I could fathom being on stage, doing what they’re doing. Maybe if it were on my own terms, but from what I’ve seen them do, they’ve kind of taken a goofier route with Adam D… I love it, I get it, I respect it … it’s very punk rock and tongue-in-cheek, but that’s not who I am.”

Of course I love Alive or Just Breathing, but really did not enjoy Leach’s Seemless project. Not even a little bit, not even when I was stoned. So, whatever.

He  is now apparently fronting a band called Empire Shall Fall, which is literally a one-word change from one of Leach’s lyrics for “Numbered Days.” Maybe Leach can recruit Kerry King to play guitar for that band, and they can be happily un-goofy together.

-AR

When he isn’t busy feuding with Dave Mustaine, Scott Ian or any given member of Metallica, Kerry King sometimes likes to take shots at the younger generation of metal musicians. Because, well,  Most recently, while touring with Killswitch Engage as part of the 2009 edition of Mayhem Fest, King claimed that he’s “offended by the silliness” of KSE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, whom King also alleged “puts his foot in his mouth all the time and says stupid shit.”

Well, it only took two months, but a member of KSE has finally responded.

Click to read more…

It’s Labor Day weekend here in the U.S., which means we’re shuttering the Mansion early this week, and won’t be back ’til Tuesday. We’re sure you’ll find some way to live without us.

Here’s some shit that happened this week:

• We debuted a new track from Salome.
• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima sent in his final guest-blog from the studio, and revealed the track listing for the band’s upcoming album, Scenes from Hell.
• We chatted with Trivium’s Matt Heafy, The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad, Job for a Cowboy’s Brent Riggs, and All That Remains’ Phil LaBonte.
• We celebrated the triumphant return of Beavis & Butt-Head, and decided that in their particular relationship, Vince is the Beavis to Axl’s Butt-Head.
• Tom Araya thinks Dave Mustaine is a dick, Kerry King thinks Dave Mustaine is a dick, Scott Ian thinks Kerry King is a dick, and everyone in Dimmu Borgir thinks that everyone else in Dimmu Borgir is a dick.

Alright. I’m going to enjoy a little sunshine while I still can. See ya Tuesday!

-AR