Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Song ”The Perfect Crime”

Written by Patton (L); Gould, Bottum, Bordin, Martin, Patton (M).

Released 1991

Appears on Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey soundtrack

Produced by Matt Wallace

Guitars by Jim Martin

Key lyric ”Look in the mirror/It seems you’re shrinking, miniature/And soon enough you’re gone.”

Single? No.

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Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Song ”A Small Victory”

Written by Patton (L); Gould, Bottum, Bordin, Patton (M).

Released 1992

Appears on Angel Dust album

Produced by Matt Wallace

Guitars by Jim Martin

Key lyric ”A cracking portrait/The fondling of trophies/The null of losing/Can you afford that luxury?”

Single? Yes. Best single ever!

Click to read more…

Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based recording industry in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Song “The Real Thing”

Written by Patton (L); Gould, Bottum (M)

Released 1989

Appears on The Real Thing album duh

Produced by Matt Wallace

Guitars by Jim Martin

Key lyric ”It’s right there all by itself/And what you are, there is nothing else.”

Single? No.

Click to read more…

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…

And now, it’s the time of the week you’ve all been waiting for: the three-hour window your folks are out of the house, allowing you to jack off comfortably Decibel’s monthly Guess Next Month’s Cover and Win a Decibot Shirt Contest! I’m going to predict this will be the first “FIRST” to get the answer right —provided, of course, that the band/musician/farm animal we’re spotlighting is in fact typed out below the “FIRST.” Unless the first person who sees this types in “System of a Down,” just to be a dick/radical. That said, it’s been a few years since System of a Down proper existed — although who hasn’t enjoyed the “Five Serj Tankian Solo Albums Nobody Cares About/Bassist ‘n’ Friend Randomly Beating the Shit Out of Brent Hinds Era” — so they could ostensibly be rocking spiked wristbands now.

But no, it’s not System of a Down. There’s your hint.

-AB

Decibel’s June 2011 issue, which features Ghost, Killing Joke, Mastodon, Hate Eternal, Gorguts, Protest the Hero, Born of Osiris, and Scale The Summit is available here, or make your mama proud and just get a full subscription.

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…

There’s been a lot of buzz about remaking The Crow with Bradley Cooper. Because, you know, nothing conveys goth-punk flair, existential angst and an unyielding appetite for vengeance like the frat guy who probably stuffed fans of the original into lockers. The producers should’ve just gone to Killing Joke mastermind Jaz Coleman. Not only would it at least be novel to see a 50-year-old Crow, but he’s been dressing the part for years.

In 1980, Coleman and his band were bloodthirsty rebels in spirit, not image. Their eponymous E.G. Records debut careened unpredictably between post-punk, metal, prog, disco and what we now know as industrial. Killing Joke influenced, well, pretty much everybody in the interior and exterior of Decibel and MetalSucks’ Venn diagram. (If you’ve never heard them, somehow, drop a jaw at the third paragraph of their Wiki page.) Add incendiary, prophetic, political screeds to taste, and you’ve got a recipe for a wicked Hall of Fame, appearing in our Ghost issue.

As usual, author Chris Dick went above and beyond to make this HOF one of the most thorough Killing Joke interviews ever; hence, we have reams of bonus content. Here’s a little bonus bloodsport to whet your appetite.

Click to read more…

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…

It’s always a plus when a band has a distinct, imaginative visual presence and it’s not commonly referred to as their “shtick.” Then again, once you read our Ghost cover story, it should be clear that the Nameless Ghoul and his minions are perfectly content with the concept of … well, whatever “shtick” translates to in Sweden. Ghost and their debut LP Opus Eponymous are polarizing for a number of reasons—sonic resemblance to another infamously pale, made-up metal provocateur being the big one—but the band clearly places as much emphasis on message as music. The hooks are intended to get you under the tent for exposure to the really subversive stuff.

We had to go across the pond to get it, though, as the Nameless Ghoul leads dB scribe James Hoare through the corridors of London’s iconic St. Bartholomew the Great (known to viewers of endearing dogshit as a pivotal setting in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). The resulting deconstruction of heavy metal as entertainment is alternately cynical and inspiring, but a great read allthe way through. Subscribers will have the issue within the next couple weeks, but the rest of you can pick it up today and get your bonus Gates of Slumber hot flexi injection.

–A.B.

Decibel’s June 2011 issue, also featuring Killing Joke, Hate Eternal, Gorguts, and Scale The Summit is available here, or be make your mama proud and just get a full subscription.

Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby with Melissa Auf der Maur

When Melissa Auf der Maur, one of the most metal not-really-metal musicians on the planet today, tipped us off that she was going to be collaborating on a new project with Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby, well, we pretty much got down on our hands and knees and begged her to write a guest blog about the experience. Luckily for us, Melissa is used to having men beg her for things, and she took mercy. And so here are her recollections of how she came to learn about Shining, befriend Munkeby, and the collaboration that ensued. Enjoy!

Belgium, Summer Festival 2010 : My bearded Dutch booking agent friend, Bob, insisted I check a band he works with: SHINING. Since I saw and heard them explode out of that festival tent, they have topped my favorite albums of 2010 list with their one of a fucking kind blend of industrial, metal, and jazz: the phenomenally original Blackjazz. Check this Shining shit out:

We became fast friends, bonding over full-time music making, independent music making, intensity, keeping a hold of wicked band members on top of doing absolutely everything else that needs to be done in a band, and much more. Shining  leader/visionary/detail-oriented hard-ass worker, Jorgen Munkeby, became a friend and peer. Later in the year, Jorgen, his sax, and his snake scream joined us on stage during my Out of Our Minds Tour in Europe, in both Istanbul and Oslo (below):

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

For no particular reason whatsoever other than we thought it would be fun, this week we asked our writers:

IF YOU COULD HAVE BEEN PRESENT FOR THE CREATION OF ANY SINGLE METAL ALBUM, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Nachtmystium’s Black Meddle, Pt. 1 was one of the best albums of 2008, ending up at the top or near the top of most MS staffers’ top ten lists that year. So, naturally, Nachtmystium fans everywhere have been asking the question, “Hey, where the fuck is Black Meddle, Pt. II?”

Well, hey, guess what? The band has issued an update to that very query on their MySpace page:

Click to read more…

Metal Legacies is an ongoing memorial to extreme music pioneers who kicked the proverbial bucket way too soon.

[MetalSucks contributor Corey Mitchell managed Eric Powell's band, 16volt, from 1996-1998. He asked Powell to write about his friend and bandmate, Raul Raven, for the Metal Legacies series.]

by Eric Powell

Life. It goes by too fast and comes at you too slow. When you are 14, all you want is to be 16 so you can get the keys to the car and just drive, just drive wherever — fucking freedom. It seems like those two years take forever. You count the milliseconds waiting for your ticket out of hell. Then you blink your eyes and all of a sudden you wonder what happened to your twenties, then your thirties, and it’s all a flash. Those two years you waited for the keys to a car, barely a blip. You look back at all the days and at all the scars, and mostly at the memories, now rich with texture and variance, they blur together weaving a sort of out-of-body, self propelled storyline that hopefully ends with some kind of impact.

At some point in our lives we hopefully realize that everything we do counts for something. A never ending chain of events both understated and exaggerated, and our choices link together to write a tangled, barely understandable life story. We hopefully get to a point where our experience with time develops a conscience — a self-aware state where we appreciate all that we missed and we miss all that we didn’t.

Some are born lucky, falling into a calling early, riding it like a well built clipper attacking uncharted seas, often a rough ride, but the ride never lets them down. It’s a single threaded path holding true to itself, a line drawn by our own internal and elusive drive. These lucky few charge ahead with no rules, saber in hand, slashing and gnawing effortlessly through what seem like goals in life, but come off as merely happenstance.

You can apply this babble to the chosen few who get to play music for a living, who get to tour for a living, who make it into the “club” — a silent brotherhood of merry thieves living on the outskirts of society, in the lounges of tour buses and in the dirty back stage areas of outdated concert venues. Gathering in dark hallways to share stories of their battles over catered liquors and fruit plates, duty free cigarettes, and handheld HD video cameras, a broken generator, a sprained wrist, an amp exploding, Roman candle fights in the middle of Montana. So much that can never be spoken. Things left to the moments and events that will never be uttered, the code keeping everyone’s skeletons secret to only the lucky bastards who get to live and witness the real deal. It all falls under the banner of “Rock and Roll,” right?

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