Hard to believe, but Paul Baloff, who many still consider the definitive Exodus front man, passed away ten years ago. So the band played a tribute show over the weekend, and Kirk Hammett showed up, hopping on stage to play “Whipping Queen,” a song he originally co-wrote and recorded for the band’s 1982 demo. And while I don’t forgive Hammett for “The Unforgive XIII” or whatever, I do think it was cool of him to come out and pay homage to Baloff, so… I won’t make fun of him until at least the next non-Exodus related Metallica post.

You can check out video of the event below. Former Exodus bassist Jeff Andrews joined the band for the tune, also, but no one cares about that guy. I mean, really, if the headline to this article had been “JEFF ANDREWS RE-JOINED EXODUS,” your reaction would probably have been, “Who?”

And here’s the original ’82 demo version of “Whipping Queen,” in case you’ve either never heard it before, or just want to stroll down memory lane for a few minutes:

-AR

[via The PRP]

Hate is a train
That thunders aimless through my head
And hate is the fame
Chained to the wheel until I’m dead

And with these words, so begins “Hate Train,” a previously unreleased song from the Death Magnetic sessions that the band performed last night as part of their four-night thirtieth anniversary celebration at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and a rough mix of which has subsequently been e-mailed to Metallica fan club members (audio below). They’re the most achingly poetic, not-at-all trite lyrics the band has penned since “My lifestyle determines my deathstyle.” And I don’t care what anyone says, the main riff is absolutely not just a recycled version of the one from “Fuel,” the song from the Load albums that everyone tolerates because at least it’s not “Unforgiven II.” Furthermore, “Hate Train”‘s seven-minute-plus runtime is the very definition of “warranted,” and I’m really sick of people giving James Hetfield’s vocals a hard time, because, hey, can your dog sing this well? No? Then shut up.

I guess what I’m saying is, this song is so perfect in every way that I just can’t believe it didn’t end up on Death Magnetic. Surely, it was blessed by the hand of Cliff Burton himself.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

We at MetalSucks have dealt with the paradoxes involved with conducting a poll to determine great guitar players (read our 25 Best Modern Metal Guitarists poll here)! So we get that in a unweighted vote, the top-ranked axemen may just represent those liked by the largest number of voters; i.e. a dude who we agree is pretty good may score higher than each of our individual favorite dudes.

So when Rolling Stone magazine enlisted a who’s-who of classic rock personalities for their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time cover story, we prepared for some wacky aberrations. Let’s check out a few of the RS list’s inconsistencies:

Click to read more…

Thanks to HunterMC for the LULZy pic.

Three years ago we celebrated acknowledged  the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic by re-christening MetalSucks as “MetallicaSucks” for the day, and asking the entire MS staff (and some our guest bloggers) to review the album. We did not wanna do that for Lulu, the new collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, because, well, a) it’s not a proper Metallica album, and b) seriously are you fucking kidding us with this shit?

That being said, we do love to represent multiple points of view here at MetalSucks, and we wanted to make sure that every one of our writers had a fair shot at expressing his or her thoughts on Lulu. And so, after the jump, read reviews by the seven sad bastards who all volunteered for the assignment. At the very least, you should enjoy these musings more than you did Lulu itself…

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Is Lulu just the world’s greatest troll? Even if it wasn’t, if I were a member of Loutallica, I’d probably start telling people that it is. It would really be the only logical explanation for anyone thinking that crap was listenable.

And the below video suggests that at least one member of Metallica really might have intended it as a troll. I’m not entirely clear on how recent the clip of James Hetfield fucking with a security guard was filmed. But it just may be Hetfield’s best work this century.

In other Metallica news, Rob Trujillo — who, as everyone knows, is the real big man calling the shots behind-the-scenes in Metallica — recently told  GulfNews.com that “the writing process for the new Metallica album has begun,” according to NME. Reading from a memo sent to him by Lars Ulrich’s assistant, the bassist announced that “We’ve been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we’re going to be recording during the most of next year.” I can’t remember the last time Metallica spent less than two years in the studio, so I’m think we should have a fresh new disappointment to make fun of sometime around 2013/2014.

-AR

Thanks to Csantos and J.A.M. for the tips!

Holy shit, this is at least the second funniest thing I’ve seen all day. I have no idea where these old interviews are from or exactly what year they were conducted (I mean clearly it’s the early 90s sometime but I don’t know the precise dates or anything), but they are absolutely priceless, and definitely a must-watch. Highlights include:

• James Hetfield when he was still drunk, mean, and inarticulate.
• Scott Ian discussing offering to help a friend kill Joey Belladonna “and his chick and then bury them in one of his unused wells where they’ve been digging for water.” (Ian and Belladonna obviously get along much better now.)
• Kirk Hammett saying that if Dave Mustaine had never been fired from Metallica, “I would be playing with Megadeth… well, with better vocals, though. ‘Cause I can sing better than that guy.”
• Someone massacring a copy of So Far, So Good… So What? with a shotgun.
• Interviews with some of the smartest metal fans in the history of the genre.

Seriously, drop what you’re doing and watch this, you will not regret it.

-AR

Major props to Shane Gillis for sending this in!!!

I don’t know why anyone would trust anything Metallica has to say these days. Every time they have a new album coming out, they start talking smack on their last album, which is doubly offensive. “St. Anger is gonna blow Load out of the water!” “Okay we know St. Anger sucked, but seriously, Death Magnetic is gonna be amazing!!!” All they’re really doing is just continuously spitting in the faces of fans who actually take them at their word.

But in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Lars Ulrich really does go one step too far: He says that Lulu, the band’s upcoming collaboration with Lou Reed, “makes… And Justice for All sound like the first Ramones album.”

Click to read more…

Loutallica, left to right: Rob Trujillo, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lou Reed

I said I was over it with this Metallicrap when we first heard a thirty second sample of “The View,” the first single off their upcoming collaboration with Lou Reed, Lulu; I’m still over with it this Metallicrap. I have finally come to a good place in my life, a place where I realize that the only thing which will ever remind me of why I used to so worship Metallica is listening to the old Metallica albums that made me fall in love with them back in the day. They are not ever going to release something new and good again.

But let’s face it, MetalSucks ain’t a news site, exactly, but it is a site that discusses the news, and the fact that the full song has now been released is news, so, y’know, I’m posting it. I really have nothing to say about it, other than the fact that the song shares a title with a television show in which four old ladies and one obligatory young woman sit around and talk about nothing of interest seems totally appropriate. Also, I think Whoopi Goldberg and Lars Ulrich have both shtupped Frank Langella, so there’s that.

ANYWAY, the full song is after the jump if you wanna hear it. Lulu comes out November 1 on Warner Bros.

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My fellow Chimairicans: I’ve got good news and really good news. So let’s start with the good news.

EMG Pickups is apparently holding a contest wherein contestants upload videos of themselves covering a Metallica tune (on EMG-equipped instruments, natch) to YouTube for the chance to win a shitload of stuff. And I don’t really care about that, but I do care that one of the contestants is Rob Arnold, who does a version of “To Live is to Die” that absolutely rips. Seriously, Kirk Hammett hasn’t sounded this good since before he went through menopause. Check out Arnold’s cover below:

Pretty cool, no?

But here’s the better news — more dates for the second leg of Chimaira’s headlining tour in support of their awesome new album, The Age of Hell, have gotten out, and they include a stop at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey for WSOU’s 25th Anniversary concert. WSOU is pretty much the best metal radio station on the East Coast and possibly the entire United States, so I’m thrilled that such a killer band is gonna help them celebrate their birthday. And since support on that tour is coming from Unearth, Skeletonwitch, and Molotov Solution, they’ll all be playing, too, which is in no way bad news. You can get more details on that show, including ticket info, from Metal Insider.

Here are all the dates for the first leg of the tour, which features Revocation, Impending Doom, and Rise to Remain; dates for the second leg of the tour are 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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The official website for the upcoming Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration has launched, although right now there is absolutely nothing of interest there save for this picture of the old bass player for Suicidal Tendencies and four terminal cancer patients.

Still, I thought you might wanna know that the project is moving forward; presumably the next step is either to release some actual music, or a photo of Trujillo with a bunch of burn victims.

-AR

If memory serves, the Spawn movie which came out in 1997 was pretty terrible, but we did get one great thing out of it: the soundtrack. It was pretty much like the Judgment Night soundtrack, only instead of combining metal bands with rap acts, it teamed up metal bands with electronica acts. And every song on it was innovative and amazing.

No, I’m totally kidding. The soundtrack sucked almost as bad as the movie.

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Sorry to post at such an odd hour, but this is such a bizarre story, and the number of e-mails that are flooding my inbox are so great, that I just had to get this story up now.

Remember back in February, when Kirk Hammett said that Metallica were working on a “secret recording project?” Well, in case the headline didn’t give it away, that secret recording project is an album with Lou Reed.

Yes, that Lou Reed.

No, I am not making this up. Here’s a photo from the band’s official website:

After the jump, read the band’s full statement on the matter. Following that are all my thoughts on this project.

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When I was a kid, Monopoly was always known as “That game we’ll never have time to finish.” Like, if we needed something to do, we might see what board games we had (Do kids even still play board games? I know that’s a ridiculous question, but, seriously… do they?), and someone would be like “Monopoly?”, and everyone else would be all “It takes too long, we’ll never finish it!” The result is that the game actually almost never got played. Everyone owned it, but it only got broken out like once in a blue moon. What a colossal waste of money.

And now it will be a waste of money that is even more colossalier: Metallica have announced on Facebook that they’re going to be releasing their own edition of the game next week on their webstore. Because nothing is more metal than buying and selling real estate. (Except for maybe zoning issues.)

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MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we conclude our countdown with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett…

By now you have hopefully figured out that, no, we did not really select Metallica’s Kirk Hammett as the #1 Modern Metal Guitarist. His name was raised once, but then we all laughed for thirty or forty minutes, returned to the matter at hand, and picked an actual #1. To find out that guitar player’s identity, go here.

And so we arrive at the end. Why did Mr. Hammett make the top of this list when a cadre of fantastic musicians – including Paul Masvidal, Devin Townsend, Paul Waggoner, Matt Pike, Ryan Knight, and Marc Okubo, to name but a sampling — didn’t make the cut at all?

Why, it’s simple. Not only does Hammett represent the pinnacle of what a metal guitarist can achieve, but he has represented that pinnacle for nearly three decades, pretty much without interruption.

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No guitar pedal is more well-known and widely used (or over-used if you’re Kirk Hammett) than the Cry Baby wah-wah. If you’ve got some time, dig into this new hour-long documentary on the Wah that started it all and its lasting effect on music, which our Brohemoths at Metal Injection posted over the weekend. Interviews with Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Cantrell, Slash, Kirk Hammett and Zakk Wylde should make it interesting for staunch metalheads while interviews with dozens of other guitar luminaries will delight your inner guitar-nerd.

Oh, what’s that? You’re not made of time? Make sure you at least watch the 2-minute intro sequence in which grown men do their best to vocally imitate the sound of the pedal. Because nothing says “metal” like a 65 year-old dude making funny noises with his mouth. Also, Eddie Van Halen officially sounds like he’s 153 years old.

After the jump, the official description of the documentary:

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Not you after today

In the past few years, my group of friends has come to include a bunch of fancy-pants musicians-for-hire. They get majorly paid for backing gigs and session work cuz they execute on their instruments with nuclear precision. And it’s great hanging out with them for their big shot habits of picking up every check and throwing exquisite summer parties. You want that — we all do. But maybe you don’t have the time to, say, top your class at Juilliard or grind out a degree from Berklee. Hey, even if you did, you’d just as soon end up posting internet clips of yourself blasting through BTBAM runs and Hammerfall solos unless you move to West Hollywood and starve for two years. Meh.

Well, here’s good news! You can still get chicks horny and sound good enough for Youtube and hold up to passing scrutiny and possibly even land a gig in a million-selling metal band! Unlike violin, for example, guitar isn’t that hard to fake provided you master picking fast and good pitch on bends. To play Steve Vai, you’d have to match his regimen of 23 daily practice hours; for the following face-melters — ear-friendly, multi-leveled solos every one — all that’s required is like 23 total minutes. Let’s call it the Hammett Workout. Not everybody is “Under A Glass Moon” material, but just approximate these imprecise, jabby solos and I swear you’ll look cool! Check it:

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Allow me to shill for a beat before the weekend: If you haven’t already bought one of our new, limited edition shirts, go get yours now!!! They’re selling fast, and soon they will be the title of a God Forbid album. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Here’s some other fun stuff we did this week:

• Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself gave us the rundown on Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks found the CFL fun and confusing, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable talked about the best and worst drives in the U.S., and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley is the latest to weigh in on free metal from Scion.
• We debuted new music from Murder Construct.
• We spoke to Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling and Christopher Drew from Nevershotnever and Eatmewhileimhot.
• We checked out the latest releases from Riotgod, Electric Wizard, Rimfrost, and First Blood and Killing the Dream.
• We asked you about old school bands you wanted to like but couldn’t.
• We joined Gene Simmons, Slash, and Dave Navarro in having NOH8 for gays.
• We laughed at both Kirk Hammett and the little girl he kicked.
• We also laughed at Sebastian Bach’s frail ego.
• We got really excited about the new single from The Human Abstract.
• We also got really excited about Decibel‘s new flexi disc series.

Have a nice, relaxing weekend gang. We’ll miss you muchly, but we’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

We’ve all had a good laugh at the expense of both Kirk Hammett and the child he kicked this week, but now Metallica have released a statement regarding the issue in an effort to put it to bed once and for all.

“In the whacky world of rock’n'roll, sometimes stuff happens which looks even weirder than it really is! And with context being vital in these situations, we just wanted to address something which happened on the tour the other night regarding a large beachball, a band member’s foot and a little girl. Some of you will have seen on Youtube (or read in some reports) that Kirk knocked a small child offstage by kicking a beachball at her. That little lady is the daughter of the stage manager and dressing coordinator, who are fortunate to travel as a family on this tour. She was thoroughly enjoying watching the beachballs drop from the rafters, Kirk was thoroughly enjoying kicking the beachballs off the stage and back into the crowd as has been done every night on the tour, and neither of them saw the other. The poor wee one happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wasn’t hurt. She didn’t go ‘flying several feet into the audience.’ And Kirk and she remain good buddies. It’s very cool that everyone showed concern and support though, so we just wanted to say ‘it’s all good’ and thanks for asking.”

I think everyone basically understood that already, but there, now it’s official. Kirk Hammett does not hate little girls. Great.

And look, they even included a picture of Kirk and the lil’ tyke just to make sure we know that they are, indded, still “good buddies!”

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When I wrote about the recent Kirk Hammett kid-kicking incident earlier this week, I bemoaned the fact that the resulting video wasn’t “in slow-motion on a loop, so you can’t watch it and laugh over and over and over again without rewinding.”

Well I guess our number one homie, Rob at Metal Injection, wanted to get me an early Hanukkah present, ’cause he has now made such a video.  And it is every bit as uproarious as I was hoping it would be. Rob even added sound effects and multiple angles!!! This might be the best film of the year. Someone let me know how I can go about submitting it for an Oscar in the “Best Documentary Short Subject” category.

-AR