There are two reasons that a John 5 interview could last for days. The first is that in just more than a decade, he’s already played guitar for David Lee Roth, Rob Halford, Marilyn Manson, and now Rob Zombie, none of whom are uninteresting conversation topics. And if that got old, he could discuss what it’s like contributing songs to Filter, Garbage, Avril Lavigne, Meat Loaf, Paul Stanley, Lynyrd Skynrd, and the friggin’ Scorpions. If he still has a voice, you could next ask him about his somewhat accidental/totally awesome solo career.

The second reason is that John 5 (né John Lowery) is a total music guy. And it’s totally effortless to talk music with total music guys. You could bump into him before a show and end up blowing off the headliner just to continue a breathless discussion of Van Halen at the bar next door. I can also imagine the results if I stopped at the guitar shop on my lunch hour to find John 5 lounging against an amp: We’d innocently start comparing Rob Zombie’s band to Ozzy’s and before you know it, it’d be sundown and I would be sneaking back into the office through a window. A bus ride to the beach would be disastrous ‘cause we’d undoubtedly miss our stop by miles while merrily disputing the merits of KISS. And so on.

Sadly for me but mercifully our transcribers, my talk with John 5 last week lasted but twenty minutes. He used the word “love” a lot to genially discuss his past and present collaborators, his fifth solo album The Art of Malice (get it May 11), this year’s Mayhem tour, and the Ozzy situation last summer. After that, we just talked about Van Halen a bunch – and might’ve gone on all day. But apparently he has things to do. About a million things.

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Gene Simmons has finally gotten into the insurance business. Chaim Witz has been exploring new and exciting ways to slap the KISS logo on any and all products for the last three decades, and at this point, his marketing and merchandising efforts have long since jumped the shark. I could come up with something witty, but that would just be a waste of time. Honestly, I’m curious why it took him so long to finally get involved in this market.

Mr. Simmons’s new group, Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy, was launched last month to tap into a lucrative demographic: entertainers, sports stars and other people with a net worth of $20 million or more who need a life-insurance policy of $10 million or greater. The firm’s founders, who include David R. Carpenter, formerly of insurance powerhouse Transamerica, believe there is big opportunity to sell jumbo insurance policies to rich people.

Yes, undoubtedly there is.

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Full confession: until about an hour ago, I had no idea who the hell Ke$ha was. I think I’ve read some shit about her on Stuff You Will Hate, or maybe she just looks like someone I’d read about on Stuff You Will Hate (she’s collaborated with SYWH favorites 3OH!3); in any case, I didn’t really know any of her music.

Then I saw on The Number of the Blog that Metal Hammer played her a bunch of metal songs – including selections by Slayer, Megadeth, Horse the Band, Atreyu, DevilDriver, Steel Panther, and Kiss – to get her opinions, and decided I had better check out her music so I knew how seriously to take her reactions.

Holy shit, is this bitch ever lacking in talent. It’s like she looked at Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and said “Nah, those chicks are too classy and prude for me.” If I ever caught my daughter listening to this garbage, I’d probably send her to a convent. And given that I’m Jewish, you should know if I ever send my daughter to a convent, I mean business.

But as it turns out, Ke$ha (I assumed it was pronounced “kee-sha” but apparently it’s “keh-sha,” which sounds like a dish my mom’ll be making at Passover next week) does not have terrible taste in metal – just kinda mediocre taste in metal. Her assessment of Atreyu pretty much hits the nail on the head, and it’s hard for me to talk too much smack on anyone who has good things to do say about the recent output of Slayer and Megadeth. But Horse the Band, “too emo?” Seriously? How about a nice cold glass of go suck a dick, Ke$ha?

-AR

Nowadays, classic metal seems all the rage — some cool kid told me this while walking to the market — and with MetalSucks doing the whole “Ten Great Bands That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Heavy Metal” thing, I got to thinking: how did metal become metal? We all know the Sabbath/Priest/Zeppelin “who started heavy metal” debate, but what about the in-betweeners that were probably “heavy metal” to my dad’s mom when Pops was just growing that ridiculous mustache and finding out that drinking beer was pretty cool once you got past that taste?

(Okay, full disclosure: I was drinking a beer and cranking UFO while reading the Van Halen story, so there.)

We’ve all known 3 Inches Of Blood for more than a few years at this point, but with the rise of bands like White Wizzard, Holy Grail, the criminally underrated Wolf, Gypsyhawk, RAM, and Cauldron waving the flag for the classic metal sound, I got to thinking about the bands that inspired them. These are groups where you could look back at them and say that they aren’t even definable as “metal” anymore.

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I am going to assume that a decent portion of the followers of this site are themselves musicians with bands of their own. That is generally how it goes with metal. There are seamless lines blurred between the “fans” and the “bands” because, like myself, many metal patrons represent both categories. Without this large sector of musician fans, technically proficient bands that cater directly to this base (like Dream Theater, Meshuggah, and Necrophagiast) would be much less successful. So to those musicians, I would like to use this blog to shine a light on one of the harsh truths in all music and entertainment that many musicians choose to ignore -

Image matters a lot in this industry. In fact, it’s probably just as important as the music.
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If the you young ‘uns don’t know Stryper, well, they were like the Underoath or Demon Hunter of their day. Which is to say, they played Christian metal. Their songs had names like “To Hell with the Devil,” and “Calling On You,” and for their 1985 album, they even covered “Battle Hymn of the Republic (Glory, Glory, Hallelujah),” which may still be the single lamest metal cover of a non-metal song ever, which is really saying something.

Now the band is working on a covers album, which will include their take on songs by the homos in Judas Priest, the blasphemous, drug addled guys in Black Sabbath, and the Jews in Kiss.

I don’t really have much else to say about this… it just made me laugh. Fingers crossed that they add a song by Slayer or Mayhem to the mix…

-AR

Last week the publication of Nick “Son of Gene” Simmons’ comic book, Incarnate, was halted after it became apparent to one of the millions of readers of a manga called Bleach that Simmons was blatantly stealing from that title. At the time we thought that Nicky had taken to Facebook to demand an apology, but it turned out it was just some dude who gets his ya-yas by pretending to be the douche bag kids of famous rock stars.

But now Topless Robot reports that the real Nick Simmons has released a statement, in which he attempts to simultaneously apologize for being a worthless piece of dung and not quite acknowledge that he’s a worthless piece of dung:

“Like most artists I am inspired by work I admire. There are certain similarities between some of my work and the work of others. This was simply meant as an homage to artists I respect, and I definitely want to apologize to any Manga fans or fellow Manga artists who feel I went too far. My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium. I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles. And I am certainly sorry if anyone was offended or upset by what they perceive to be the similarity between my work and the work of artists that I admire and who inspire me.” — Nick Simmons

Hey, Nick, don’t sweat it. You were just paying homage to the artists’ whose work you admire! And it was clearly an homage, not plagiarism, right?

Dude, if ever an honest apology was warranted, this is the time. Don’t pretend you didn’t steal when the evidence is right there, schmucky.

Go to Topless Robot for more side-by-side comparisons.

-AR

SHOCKER! Gene Simmons’ son, Nick, is a total prick! I can’t believe it. I have no idea how that ever could have happened. I mean, he had such a good role model growing up.

From some dork website I’m not familiar with (via SMN):

“The American company Radical Publishing has announced that it halted the production and distribution of Nick Simmons’ Incarnate comic book series on Wednesday evening, amid allegations that the comic plagiarized Tite Kubo’s Bleach manga. According to Radical, ‘We are taking this matter seriously and making efforts now to contact the publishers of the works in question in an effort to resolve this matter.’”

What Would Tyler Durden Do (don’t ask) reports that Nicky-boy has gone on Facebook [Just some dude pretending to be Nick Simmons... oh, well. -Ed.] and demanded an apology. And side-by-side comparisons of his comic with the one he’s accused of ripping-off show that he deserves one. I mean, they’re clearly totally different (Simmons’ is the one in color, the original in b&w):

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Gene Simmons is the lowest of the low when it comes to putting his name on a product for a buck. The dude’s attached his likeness to everything from Mr. Potato Head dolls to coffee to toothbrushes, and he even attempted to sell his own kidney stone (no word on how that turned out). Mr. Witz proves the stereotype that Jews are money-grubbing scoundrels true and gives us a bad name (ok, so I’m cheap too… so what) even he does unequivocally like to rock n’ roll all night and party every day.

But nothing tops the sheer absurdity of this Yngwie Malmsteen humidor. Look at the fucking thing! Who would buy that? At least it’s useful though, unlike a fucking KISS Mr. Potato Head. I’m not really the cigar-smoking type except for once in a blue moon, but if someone <ahem> were to send me one of these <ahem> I could think of a certain sticky green substance that’d be perfectly suited for storage in such a case.

-VN

I don’t want to jinx it, but lately it seems that society is drawing closer to a public consensus that Kiss sucks donkey ass. There’s a social parallel: Time is disposing of the fearful kooks who oppose gays/non-whites/drugs/Nergal, and as a result the day is in sight when we’ll all be cool/high with each other while enjoying scarier Behemoth records. Likewise, the time will come where no Kiss fans will walk the earth puking money into the wallet of Gene Simmons for no other privilege than to perpetuate a shitty band’s shitty brand. And really, thank you, poor deluded children of ’70s disco-rock crossover, for proudly snapping up those Kiss shirts, thongs, enemas, pizza pans, and diapers; the rest of us can identify/destroy you with none of the effort it takes to flush out a fan of, say, The Scorpions or Bullshit For ValKilmerTime (or whatever).

It’s amazing that such a charmless, joyless band could enjoy such sustained suck-cess. Cuz sane people will tell you that those Kiss records don’t even achieve the absolute bare minimum of being performed, produced, or mixed well — whether or not their cynically manufactured songs themselves are any good. (Save for the delightfully retarded “Heaven’s On Fire” and actual scores like “I Love It Loud” and “Detroit Rock City,” the entire catalog could be catapulted into the sun.) Only Earth’s most resentful and contemptuous dickfaces could charge money for such sub-garbage product. I mean, shit, I gobble Tums in the lobby of Jack In The Box, knowing that tonight’s pre-dinner will tax the capacities of my crap factory; but for my money I am certain to receive burger-shaped food. If Simmons ran that dump, you’d order and then be handed a blurry picture of a barf puddle photocopied onto a dryer sheet.

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How the fuck did I completely miss the news that Godflesh are reuniting? Over the weekend, reader Nicholas Antonio alerted us to a tweet by Earache Records head honcho Digby Pearson making the announcement that the industrial legends would play this coming summer’s edition of Hellfest; the tweet is apparently from late fucking October, but I don’t remember reading anything about it or receiving any other e-mails about it. Is that just a technical error – did Pearson really send the tweet just a few days ago?

No matter – Hellfest’s official website confirms that Godflesh are, indeed, playing the fest, in what is being dubbed their “only show in Europe.” Assuming that’s true, it might be worth the trip to France, where the festival will take place in June. Vince and I almost went to Hellfest a few years back anyway – and there’s a bunch of other awesome bands playing. Plus, bonus: Kiss are the headliners, which means we can leave early! Hoo-ray!

Anyways, hopefully this show isn’t just a one-off, and will lead to a full tour. More details as we get ‘em. In the meantime, here’s a silly video someone made using one of my favorite Godflesh tunes, “Anthem,” and footage from Jesus Christ Superstar.

-AR

I don’t think we’ve ever talked about Mini Kiss on the site before, but at this point, I strongly prefer them to the actual Kiss (or whatever is left of the actual Kiss). They play awesome old Kiss songs, the fact that they’re a straight-up cover band means that their wearing of the classic make-up is inoffensive, and, oh yeah, they’re midgets, which is still God’s best joke. I mean, besides tsunamis.

-AR

Q: What’s even more tasteless than making fun of cancer?

A: Metal Inquisition’s Sergeant D making fun of making fun of cancer!

How meta. So yeah Peter Criss has breast cancer. Hardee har har! Yuck it up, fuckos.

-VN

If I had a biological clock, I’d worry that’s it’s ticking. Because this is my second story about little kids today.

Reign in Blonde has made the awesome discovery of Jonah Rocks, who is a) the only four year old I’ve ever seen that can play the drums, and b) the only four year old I’m aware of that already has a stage name. He also seems to have an endorsement deal with Vic Firth. Holy poop.

For reasons that are totally beyond me, the videos of this lil’ tyke rockin’ out are not embeddable, but if you go here, you can watch Jonah play “Harvester of Sorrow” with more skill and passion than Lars Ulrich has displayed in years.

After the jump are some more links to Jonah playing. Some of these videos were made when he was only three years old!!!

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I found the following quote from a recent interview with Gene Simmons to be (inadvertently) hilarious:

“This is electric church, and no one on that stage — me or anyone else — wears the makeup and platform heels by some kind of birthright. This ain’t Europe; just ’cause your dad was king doesn’t make you the king. You’ve got to earn it. And when you defile KISS, you should be thrown out.”

Gene is referring to dudes like Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and Vinnie Vincent, of course. But I have to wonder what he thinks they did that was worse than this:

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I love Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman so much right now I could kiss him on his Quaker Jewish mouth right now (And no, I’m not kidding. And, oddly enough, Teitelman is the second Quaker Jew I’ve known. Bizarre.). See, Bram noticed what the rest of us failed to – that the riff from the new Kiss song, “Modern Day Who Gives a Fuck,” is more or less a total rip-off of The Sword’s Freya.

Think Bram is wrong? Listent to both and decide for yourself.

Here’s Kiss:

And here’s The Sword:

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I was initially optimistic about the latest cinematic update of The Wolfman (photo above right). The cast was pretty good (Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt), the legendary Rick Baker was doing the creature make-up, and music video director extraordinaire Mark Romanek was all set to helm.

Then Romanek fell out and was replaced by Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III… ugh), and the production has been plagued by endless re-shoots and release date shifts and all the other things a studio does when they know they have a dog with fleas (or in this case a wolf with fleas) on their hands.

Perhaps even less enticing: Gene Simmons is doing the “howling” voice for the titular monster.

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Am I the only one here that thinks that American bands shouldn’t be allowed to wear corpse paint? There should be a law in the metal books that states it. There’s some rules that us American metalheads must follow, like the famous “Don’t Wear Your Own Band’s Shirt Law,” for instance. It doesn’t apply to Europeans and that’s okay, they’ve got their own set of laws. It applies to us, though, and when you break it, people get to talking.

Well, I think that corpse paint should fall under the “Must Never Be Applied To The Face Of An American” law. I think it should be punishable by excommunication from the community. I’ve got my reasons.

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…the new Kiss album is going to suck puppy anus.

By the way, in case ya didn’t know: that ain’t Ace Frehley or Peter Criss you’re looking at…

-AR

When I was a teenager, if my father ever insulted me (and when he did, it was usually because I was being a little asshole and totally had it coming), he would immediately thereafter look at his watch. He was timing me to see how fast I could come up with a witty retort. That probably sounds fucked up, but I’m actually really glad my dad did that – it’s definitely one of the reasons I grew up to be such a prick, but, without tooting my own horn, I am very good at being a prick (you’re reading this website, after all) in no small part because of my old man’s insistence that I learn to properly defend myself in a verbal battle.

If only young Chaim Witz’s father had been as determined as Poppa Rosenberg to whip his son into mental shape. ‘Cause grown-up Witz (that’s “Gene Simmons” to you) is like the fat bully in the school yard – he’s way too dumb to trade barbs at an adult level, so he just says something sophmoric and unfunny and tries to claim said comment as a victory.

For example, look at this video of Simmons “debating” with music-biz guru Bob Lefsetz. Lefsetz criticized Simmons’ understanding of the way the music industry works today, and all Simmons can come up with by way of retort is to make fun of Lefsetz’s name. Forget, for a second, that’s not entertaining; it’s not even on-subject. It’s like watching Chris Farley tell David Spade “You’re a thick… candy…” in Tommy Boy. I mean, I almost feel bad for Simmons.

And now Simmons is losing a verbal war in the press with Trent Reznor, for the same reason: he just cannot hold his own in a debate.

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