Earlier this week I had a dream that I was working with Atreyu. I don’t know in what capacity I could possibly find myself “working with” Atreyu, since I’m not a manager, nor a publicist, nor a label rep, and they’re about as likely to end up doing a guest column here as I am to give the new In This Moment album a perfect 5-horn review, but, hey, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. Why did I have Atreyu on the brain? Was my mind trying to tell me “The glass is half-full?” Do I have  a hankering to re-watch The Neverending Story? Did I just ingest too many different substances that night? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

Here’s other shit that happened this week, some of which, believe it or not, is even more terrifying than the thought of working with Atreyu:

• Freddy Madball is counting down his favorite hard and heavy non-hardcore bands of all time, TesseracT’s Acle walked us through the history of djent, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley spoke to Converge’s Kurt Ballou about Taco Riffs, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks made some suggestions for losing NFL teams, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable contemplated the ways in which technology has changed touring, Daath’s Eyal Levi wondered, “Is this it?”, and a wide array of metal stars previewed the just-begun NHL season.
• We spoke to Kirk Windstein from Crowbar/Down/Kingdom of Sorrow, Sean Z. from Daath, Daddy X and Dirtball from Kottonmouth Kings, and Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.
• We checked out the latest releases from Abysse and Deafheaven.
• We contemplated trancecore.
• As the headline says, we heard the worst thing ever.
• We reviewed the history of terrible Limp Bizkit cover songs.
• We had fun with misheard song lyrics.
• We bemoaned the signing of another re-thrash band.
• We applauded Slayer fans’ desire to help the physically disabled.
• We had yet another laugh at Winds of Plague’s expense.

We have a special surprise for you next week. I can’t promise you’re going to like it, but I can promise you’re going to have a strong reaction to it. See ya then.

-AR

You probably know and hate Kottonmouth Kings as one of the forefathers of underground white trash hip-hop, but what many people don’t know is that frontman and KMK founder Daddy X is also a legend of the Orange County hardcore scene. He cut his teeth as the singer for the pioneering OC straight edge band Doggy Style (also featuring Brian Baker of Minor Threat/Dag Nasty and Doug Carrion of Dag Nasty/Descendents), went on to be one of LA’s most successful club promoters, and started KMK back in 1994. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also the cofounder of Suburban Noize Records (La Coka Nostra, Big B, Sen Dog, and now Crazy Town), which also signed Brokencyde and Eyes Set To Kill to their subsidiary Breaksilence. For more details on Brad’s punk rock history, check out Double Cross’ excellent post on the subject.

His punk rock resume aside, I’m actually a big KMK fan. In all seriousness, what they’re doing is the new punk rock. Clearly there’s nothing threatening or subversive about Warped Tour, Hot Topic, or whatever else “punk” has become since its inception. I’m fine with that, but my point is that punk is no longer the safe place for losers, outcasts, and pissed off fuckups that it was 20 years ago. Disenfranchised kids will always carve out a place for themselves, and I think the KMK/ICP underground hip hop scene is that place. Kottonmouth Kings are the soundtrack for the true outcasts who don’t have a place anywhere else, and I definitely support them for that.

One thing I really appreciate about the KMK/Subnoize scene is the complete lack of pretentiousness and elitism that runs rampant in the metal and punk worlds. There’s a real sense of community there, and you won’t find a nicer, more welcoming, friendly bunch of kids than the crowd at a KMK show. Are they dirty, poor white trash? Fuck yes, and that’s why I like them so much. They legitimately don’t give a fuck who you are, where you came from, or what you’re into as long as you’re there to have fun and make friends, and that counts for a whole lot in my book. These are the real underdogs and outcasts, and I’m always down for those people.

I only had a few minutes with Daddy X and Dirtball, but I was really stoked to talk to them about their punk rock roots and the upcoming album from his punk side project The Ex-Pistols. I wasn’t expecting them to be so disarmingly soft-spoken and nice. Daddy X was seriously one of the nicest, most courteous, friendly people I’ve ever interviewed — he actually reminded me a lot of Frank Mullen in a lot of ways. You might not love KMK, but I can guarantee you’d walk away from a conversation with Brad with a newfound respect for them at the very least.

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I looked it up, and that’s not Mike Shitoda.

After they reunited with C.C. DeVille circa 2000, one of the most brilliant things Poison ever did, business-wise, was to put together those summer shed tours where they take out three other prominent glam bands (e.g. Cinderella, Warrant, Faster Pussycat,Dokken, Slaughter, etc.) and only charge like thirty bucks a ticket. They were like the Ozzfest main stage, exclusively for hair bands. Talk about playing to your target audience! And I think it’s only a matter of time before Limp Bizkit follow suit. Fuck trying to win over new fans by touring with young, hip bands — just take out a few other bands that sounded kinda like you and were big at roughly the same time as you, and watch the nostalgia dollars roll in.

Why do I mention this? Because Crazy Town are reuniting for this August’s SRH Fest in California, and while I’d never heard of SRH Fest before, once I had a glance at the line-up, I realized that this basically was the shed tour of my nightmares. Kottonmouth Kings? (hed) p.e.? Unwritten Law? Did the promoter lose a bet or what? (I’ve never heard of a bunch of the other bands on the bill, but based on their names — Zero Authority, Big B., etc. — I assume that I’d hate them, too.)

How long can it be before some clever industry peeps put together a full tour with some of these bands? I bet with the right headliner, a (hed) p.e./Crazy Town bill would attract every High-School-Bully-turned-Gas-Station-Attendant within driving distance.

-AR

Let’s just get right to it: Kittie are going to be doing support for Insane Clown Posse on that group’s upcoming U.S. tour. Other artists on the bill will include Kottonmouth Kings, Coolio, and Necro, who you may remember as the “death rapper” (Still not sure what the fuck that means – in the pre-bling days all rappers talked about death a lot, so…) who dropped off of Sounds of the Underground in 2007 after getting heckled on a daily basis. (When we saw the tour, he tried to lead the crowd in a chant of “FUCK YOU FAT FAGGOT” against one such heckler. So Necro is intelligent and charming.)

This is the company Kittie will keep: a bunch of lame white-boy rappers, and Coolio.

Jesus H. Christ. Has it really come to this, ladies? I mean, I don’t really have anything against Coolio besides his own ridiculousness (there’s no joke I could write about him that would be funnier than just looking at the dude), but Necro strikes me as a true cretin (that “fat faggot” chant really rubbed me the wrong way, in case you can’t tell), and I gotta say, I have a retarded cousin, and calling ICP or Kottonmouth Kings “retarded” is a true insult to my mentally challenged kin. I may not like Kittie’s music, but they’re better than this.

-AR

I was confused about about the name of this tour because, well, being a “heavy hitter” is usually a euphemism for being “important,” and yet I’d heard of none of the other bands on this tour (Although I liked this description of the tour’s co-headliners: “Kingspade is just straight dope and they possess the freshness of the Kottonmouth Kings, but with a nice hip-hop twist.” First of all, describing a band’s music as “just straight dope” in 2008 is HILARIOUS; second of all, Kottonmouth Kings didn’t already have a “hip-hop twist?” I thought their music was, y’know, hip-hop?).

So I called (Hed) P.E.’s publicist for some clarification. I was hopeful that the band had finally taken my suggestion that they just rent out baseball bats and let “concert goers” beat the living shit out of them – hell, I even offered to buy a ticket that would cost at least as much as a sweet new band hoodie – but, alas, no. It’s just called “Heavy Hitters” because, to white kids who still think that Fred Durst is the future of music and that Kottonmouth Kings need more of a “straight dope hip-hop twist,” this is the tour of the fucking century.

-AR