In a perfect world, image and looks would not matter in the slightest. But until Sammy Hagar’s alien overlords take over and create utopia, we live in a time where those very things seem to be of the utmost importantance. When it comes to music, it really shouldn’t make a difference how a band looks. The key word here is “music” — they’re not working in a visual medium, so why should image be an issue? Unfortunately, the way a group is visually presented is among their defining factors, which is also reflected in their fans. I might be crudely generalizing, but let’s face it, there is some truth in most stereotypes. I like people watching, especially on music-related occasions. I will observe the people and the musicians and find patterns, because that’s interesting to me. While there will always, always be exceptions to the rule, there are certain trends that will also always be present.

The most obvious is hair.

Click to read more…

Dubstep. Dubstep. Dubstep. That’s all I’m hearing these days. Fuckin’ dubstep. Someone please explain this phenomenon to me in terms I can understand.

Korn, badly in need of something, ANYTHING, to boost their ever-waning popularity, are the latest to hop on board the dubstep bandwagon. And I am being completely serious when I say it’s the best song they’ve released in years… maybe ever! Go listen to “Get Up,” featuring Skrillex, at Spin.com. Womp womp womp.

I love how Korn are so down and out these days that, unable to get any love from metal rags, they turn to that mainstream bastion of artistic integrity as a last resort… the mighty Spin! But even Spin doesn’t seem that interested; they seem way more excited about “Hot Los Angeles DJ Skrillex” than they do Korn. If you’re Korn you’re just itching for Limp Bizkit to finally release Gold Cobra and announce another Family Values tour so you’ve got at least something to look forward to in life.

-VN

I know it’s arrogant for us to pat ourselves on the back, but holy shit, did we kill it this week or what?

Here’s what we did:

• We brought you the first interview with Behemoth frontman Nergal since he was diagnosed with leukemia in August.
• We got the exclusive scoop on Melissa Auf der Maur’s collaboration with Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby.
• We debuted new music by Between the Buried and Me, Last Chance to Reason, and Havok.
• We debuted new videos by Protest the Hero and Becoming the Archetype.
• We also spoke to the legendary David Coverdale from Whitesnake.
• We checked out the latest release from Anthrax and Until Your Heart Stops.
• We told you what your favorite metal band says about you… and then we told you again!
• We got excited about the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2011.
• We wondered if Winds of Plague are the new Limp Bizkit.
• We protested shitty metal vocalists.

We aspire to make next week even biggerer and betterer! Check back then to see if we succeeded or not… ’til then, have a great weekend!

-AR

So as it turns out, Periphery have a rather sizable online following. Hm. Who knew?

ANYWAY, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:

• We debuted new music by the aforementioned Periphery, as well as Meek is Murder.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered some more reader questions, and we spoke to Fredrik Andersson from Amon Amarth.
• We checked out the latest releases from Drugs of Faith and Throatruiner Records.
• We reported on all the awesome metalocity at SXSW.
• We wondered if metalheads support gay marriage.
• We offered a retort to Sumerian Records head honcho Ash Avilldsen’s anti-piracy argument.
• We started the “Best of 2011″ argumentswwwaaaaayyyy early.
• We watched the best school assembly ever.
• We wondered why good musicians join terrible bands.
• We steeled ourselves for the release of the worst album of the year.

Alright, have a good frakin’ weekend everyone! See ya Monday.

-AR

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In other news that proves there is no God, THERE’S STILL NO GODDAMN RELEASE DATE FOR THE NEW MOTHERFUCKING PIG DESTROYER ALBUM.

-AR

Fred Durst has tweeted that Limp Bizkit’s long delayed reunion album/latest attempt to make people wonder if pouring Drano in their ears will make it stop, Gold Cobra, is actually going to be TWO albums.

We don’t know if they’ll be titled Gold Cobra I and Gold Cobra II or just Gold Cobra and something else (Fuzzy Warm Wet Tunnel, perhaps?), but unless neither one of them contains any actual content besides the sounds of Durst, Wes Borland, and the rest of their crew being raked over hot coals, it’s not going to matter what they call it. It will exist. And it will be awful.

This band is going so far out of their way to give me an aneurysm, I imagine they’ll be announcing a tour with Winds of Plague and Emmure any second now. In fact, Vince recently mistook a new WoP song for Limp Bizkit, so, y’know, have all your affairs in order and the cyanide pills at hand for when that inevitably happens.

-AR

[via Metal Insider ]

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…

I’m one of those dipshits who has shamefully mumbled, “I kind of liked the first two Korn albums…” in casual conversation. The karmic penalty has been paid frequently over the last 15 years, from the time a 5’1” girl punched me in the dick during “Faget” at the Cleveland Odeon to every time I have to endure someone trumpeting that they were raised on Morrisound death and never listened to that “poser shit.” The latter of which being just so fucking annoying — the first band (or “band”) everyone got into was either a) something nightmarish your folks played every day, like the Eagles, b) some variation of a boy band, or c) GN’R, which is the most realistic best-case scenario.

Anyway, Korn and Limp Bizkit are the focus of an exceptionally well-written ongoing Onion AV Club series called “Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation,” and just seeing that pic of Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst under their umbrella triggers many still-unreconciled memories for perhaps a few of you guys, and quite a few Decibel staffers. Shane Mehling is among the latter — if “All in the Family” were actually available in a karaoke book, I have no doubt that we could perform it without looking at the screen once. He doesn’t just own up to this on the Deciblog, but even serves up a super classy yearbook photo cementing the sickness. Luckily, this paean to idiocy was preceded by Adrien Begrand’s typically sharp/mercifully not novel-length Justify Your Shitty Taste on Iron Maiden’s The X Factor!, a lifetime contender for most disquieting, yet not even close to cool album cover. Shit, it must be 1995 week on our blog, because evidently Chris Dick just let Dez Fafara write 550 words about, uh, redheads.

We’ll end on a much radder note. If you snap up a dB subscription by Monday at 5pm, we’ll throw you a Valentine’s Day boner — an exclusive, downloadable printable Valentine’s Day by the great extreme cover artist Paul Romano (Mastodon, Hate Eternal, Withered, other highly shitty bands, although a plenty of bands are highly shitty compared to those three).

-AB

You can buy the March 2011 issue of Decibel here, or get a full subscription to get down with the sickness each and every month.

My friend Martin, who is mostly into goregrind (he’s a big fan of Cemetery Rapist), slam metal and shitty southern rap, always says EMMURE is this generation’s Limp Bizkit. Until now, I kind of wrote him off as an out-of-touch hipster who didn’t know what he was talking about, but I am starting to think he is right after leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS debuted the album’s debut music video today.

Click to read more…

BING! Still funny. Amazing.

I was kinda flattered last week when some people said they actually DO read the intros to “Worst Week.” So, uh, thanks for the ego boost!

In addition to Groundhog Day, here are some things we celebrated this week:

• The debut of new music from Scale the Summit and American Heritage.
• The formation of The Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts.
• The announcement of this year’s line-up for The New Engalnd Metal & Hardcore Festival.
• The legacy of 18 Visions.
• The incredible comedic skills of Rush’s Neil Peart.
• The impending return of Beavis and Butt-Head.
• A new Protest the Hero song.
• Academy Award winner Francis Ford Coppola’s declaration that musicians shouldn’t be rich.
• Metal Injection’s Black Metal History Month.
• Dime.

Speaking of celebrating — don’t forget that Vince is DJing at Idle Hands Bar from 7 to 10pm tonight. All the cool kids will be there. You wanna be cool, don’t you?

-AR

Well, this is just fucking amazing. Seriously. I’m not kidding. This just made my day in a way nothing else possibly could. Sometimes, something happens to restore your faith in life. This is one of these times.

Let’s start here… and keep in mind that this is a really real thing:

“The City of Austin is renaming the Solid Waste Services Department to better reflect all of the services the Department provides, including recycling, garbage collection, yard trimmings pick-up, street sweeping, litter abatement and litter control, household hazardous waste disposal, storm debris clean-up, Zero Waste initiatives and community outreach & education.”

Okay, so that’s pretty boring and whatever, right? But here’s where it gets interesting: the city is actually holding a poll, open to the public, to choose a new name for the Solid Waste Services Department. And guess which citizen-selected name is currently winning that poll in a fucking landslide?

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 for another ball-garglingly bodacious round of Guess the Next Hall of Fame and Win a Six-Month Subscription to Decibel. Albert seems to think this won’t be an easy one to guess, but I disagree — I’m setting the over/under at the first seven comments, and taking the under (although feel free to ruin that by posting Three Dollar Bill Y’all$ eight times).

I’m reluctant to offer hints since I already think the artist quote is too much of a giveaway, but will say that this is a Reunion Band, and Reunion Bands drive me up the wall. I know nobody wants you to write new songs so your brilliant legacy isn’t sullied, and I know the intra-band hatred has calcified, but how about this? Write a new song. Take the hour out of your life. Maybe three, even. Play them out. I know how potent a force nostalgia is in the metal world —particularly at our magazine — but leave the cash-in shit to the Pixies and Pavement. Extreme music shouldn’t make that compromise, even if it’s a situation where nobody was cool enough to pay attention the first time. The sequel is never as good. Fuck victory laps.

Anyway, apologies for the sound quality of this clip. As our production guru Luke said, “The Krampus is bringing digital recorders to all the naughty little dB writers next year.” Here’s a transcription, if you’re fat and lazy:

People expected me to jump in the crowd, lose my clothes and be at least a couple of sheets to the wind. I don’t know how much of that was due to our fanbase, or if it was from the media attention we had gotten. People did seem focused on my, ahem, antics. I always think of stage-diving as something that predated us. When Southern California punk rock was really taking off in the early ’80s, it was an essential part of that experience. Black Flag had us beat by at least a decade.

DECIBEL HALL OF FAME MARCH 2011

DECIBEL HALL OF FAME MARCH 2011

-AB

Check out the February 2011 issue of Decibel to read their Hall of Fame entry on Corrosion of Conformity’s Animosity – or, better still, go ahead and get a full subscription to ensure you never miss a HOF!

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

This week, Anso DF suggested the Question of the Week; unfortunately, he did so before Slipknot announced that they’re headlining the Sonisphere Festival this year, so it doesn’t seem quite as relevant anymore. Still, it was a fun question to answer, so:

TO WHAT EXTENT WOULD A SLIPKNOT BREAK-UP BE BAD FOR METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

When I fulfilled an adolescent dream and interviewed Jackyl’s Jesse James Dupree earlier this year, he told me that he was anticipating some controversy for the band’s cover of Mother’s Finest’s song “Just Like a Negro.” It’s obviously a little weird to have a bunch of white dudes doing a track with that title, and doubly so when you consider that Jackyl are southern and might be seen as, um, I think the correct terms are “crackers” and “honkeys.”

But Dupree felt confident that anyone who knew the facts behind the cover would realize Jackyl aren’t a bunch of redneck racists. He even re-wrote the lyrics with Mother’s Finest bassist Wyzard so that they’d make sense for a caucasian to sing:

“…the lyrics basically say that music makes all the colors run together and that it was the brothers who invented rock n’ roll – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino…  That’s all the song is – a tribute to that, and the fact that music breaks down the barriers.”

He also told me that he had hoped to get Sevendust’s Lajon Witherspoon to do some guest vocals on the track, but it didn’t work out for whatever reason. What he didn’t tell me, and what I didn’t know at that time ’cause I hadn’t heard the album yet, was that he did end up getting a guest for the track — the “DMC” from Run DMC, Darryl Matthews McDaniels.

And, honestly, this song is still pretty awful. I mean, watching Dupree try to dance while DMC raps is kinda funny, but I’d never actively listen to this track. That being said, I’d still argue that it’s the least worst rap metal song of the century so far. I’ll take Jackyl over Limp Bizkit and their ilk any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Jackyl’s latest, When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide, is out now.

-AR

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

I know what you’re thinking: “Two Limp Bizkit-related stories in as many days! What did we ever do to be so lucky?” What can I say? This entire week has felt like one long hangover.

So. Fred Durst’s feature film directorial debut, a would-be Sundance hit called The Education of Charlie Banks, was a barely-watchable piece of shit that failed to make so much as a dent in public awareness; his second film, the Ice Cube family sports drama The Longshots, tanked at the box office. But Durst gives great head (for dudes… he can’t find the clit so he’s pretty useless for women) and people are stupid, so he’s swindled someone into letting him make another movie. From Noisecreep:

“Durst is also directing his third feature film. The third film is dubbed ‘Pawn Shop Chronicles,’ and it follows a protagonist through a world of skinheads and meth heads thanks to a missing wedding ring. The film is slated to go into production early next year.”

Click to read more…

In 1997 there was this girl that I was really into. I don’t even remember what her name was now, but I remember being very excited when I finally found myself at her place with just the two of us for company.

“Hey, wanna hear something awesome?” she asked me. The correct answer in that situation is obviously “Yes,” and so she walked over to her stereo and hit “play.” And this is what came out of the speakers:

The song ended and I figured out some excuse to leave and I left. Later I wondered if the girl really liked the song (she certainly seemed to) or if she played it knowing it was awful because she couldn’t think of a polite way to reject me, but it’s a moot point: I will never know how my relationship with that girl might have played out, all because she had to go and be the first person ever to introduce me to Limp Bizkit, and, more specifically, Limp Bizkit’s terrible covers.

Click to read more…

Unless you count current metalcore bands with a wiggerish slant (Emmure, Winds of Plague, Acacia Strain, etc.), the genre of nu-metal is all but dead. Once a nearly-unstoppable juggernaut of Kikwear pants, eyebrow piercings, and chinstrap beards, today it is but a dessicated husk, barely clinging to life. At its peak, nu-metal filled the airwaves coast-to-coast, but these days you’re most likely to hear it on a beat up boombox in the corner of a windowless basement printshop or third-rate auto parts store on the outskirts of town.

While the tastes of fickle music consumers may have changed, nu-metal has never sounded better. Many kids these days are too young to have experienced this unique genre the first time around, so I figured I would share some of nu-metal’s best artists that fly a little under the radar of current tastemakers — I’ll skip the big names that we all know (Korn, Kid Rock, Bizkit) and focus on the unsung heroes. And mark my words, you’ll see indie rockers ironically listening to hed(pe) within the next few years!

Click to read more…

To the MetalSucks Maniac known as “Sacajewea,” we would like to say the following: YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD. It’s incredible how retarded you are, you stupid fucking idiot mongoloid half-wit retard.

We send this message because in October of ’09, Sacajewea left a comment on the very first post we ever wrote, saying he was “Just here to dig up the past;” then he left another comment, just this past June, which read:

“I did it twice. Fuck I’m retarded. If anyone sees this please find me in a recent post and tell me how retarded I am.”

On December 26, 2006 — a date that will live in infamy — we did what professionals call a “soft launch” but we just call “the day we first posted on this blog.” Our slogan was “Smart About Metal,” a play on the slogan for Film Comment magazine.

We had these two stupid South Park caricatures that Axl made at his then-job when he was bored. (Axl forgot until just now that he had a really long goatee in ’06; Vince still had phantom Jew ‘fro, where some days he can feel it, man!) We only posted once or twice a day, throughout the week, pretty much when we had time/interest. We didn’t use tags. We often didn’t post graphics or videos. Our headlines weren’t capitalized. We interviewed members of Stuck Mojo and Twisted Sister, because that’s who we could get interviews with. Believe it or not, we tried to get an interview with God Forbid… and we failed.

Basically, we had no fucking idea what we were doing.

We can’t believe that this is our 10,000th post. We can’t believe we’re still doing this almost four years after we started. We can’t believe that so many of you are reading it. Seriously: WE WERE ONLY FUCKING KIDDING.

So…

Thanks to Kip (who has been here longer than anyone besides Vince and Axl!), Sammy, Gary, Anso, Satan (the MetalSucks contributor and the deity), Sergeant D., Bob, Leyla, Corey, Urbandale, Dave, Matt, Ferris, Dallas, Eyal, Sacha, Paul, Bulb, Arthur, Anton OyVey, Rich Hallford, David Bee Roth, Van Arseface, Mike Pattongill, Angela Gossowski, Joey V., and everyone else who has ever written for us… MetalSucks would not be where it is if not for all of you.

Thanks to everyone in the music industry who has helped us over the years, even as they must have been secretly hoping we would van flip.

And of course, thanks to all the MetalSucks Maniacs, Suckalos, annoying people who can’t use the “search” function, and dudes that have sent us death threats. We can’t tell you how grateful we are that you read our site. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now, with a complete lack of humility, Axl and Vince present their ten favorite MetalSucks posts of all time. Enjoy.

Click to read more…

FRIENDLY REMINDER: Vince and I are taking over WSOU tomorrow from 4 -8! It’s the only radio station on the eastern seaboard that’s actually worth a damn, and it’s gonna have the awesomeness that is US, so listen in!!! We’ll be taking callers, too. If you live in the area, it’s 89.5 FM on your radio; everyone else can listen on the Internet right here.

And now here’s some things we did this week:

• We spoke to Decapitated’s Vogg, All Shall Perish’s Ben Orum, Within the Ruins’ Tim Goergen and Joe Cocchi, and Iron Thrones’ Steve Henningsgard.
• We debuted a new track by Moth Eater.
• We wondered, “What’s the big deal about Lady Gaga?” as she danced to Metallica.
• We rocked out to a newly-released Soundgarden song, and we couldn’t believe that the new Limp Bizkit song has a guitar solo!
• We commended Australia for its populations’ collective child-rearing skills.
• We marveled at this nine year’s old review of Reign in Blood.
• We sang Monster Magnet’s praises.
• We asked you to help us complete this Metal Map of America.
• We watched Kiss put the “ass” in “Massachusetts.”
• We wished Behemoth’s Nergal a speedy recovery.

Okay. I hope to hear some of your voices tomorrow! Seriously, guys. Listen. Call. Don’t make me sad. If you do, we’ll schedule Nu Metal Week to take place ASAP.

-AR

People sometimes ask me why I spend so much time writing about Limp Bizkit if I hate them so much, and I really don’t have a good answer. I think it’s probably not dissimilar from the way my dad is always watching programs about the Nazis on The History Channel, even though he and his family just narrowly escaped from zee Germans with their lives — you wanna understand the monster that committed these atrocities, y’know?

And so with that in mind, I braced myself and listened to Limp Bizkit’s latest, “Walking Away.” And for most of the song, I was like, “Oh, great. A terrible alt-rock power ballad.” ‘Cause, y’know, I really thought we were finally done with those after Puddle of Mudd mercifully disappeared. In fact, the song is just so generic and lame that I wasn’t even gonna write about it; I was gonna save all my vitriol for the Gold Cobra review Vince tells me I absolutely must write (And “take seriously.” I have no fucking idea how to take a review of Limp Bizkit seriously, let alone write a serious review.).

But then at the 3:18 mark, I was caught totally off-guard — ’cause Wes Borland takes a guitar solo. I pinched myself, but I wasn’t dreaming; I looked out the window, but I had not somehow missed the start of the Apocalypse; I had the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys run a quick lab test on my weed, but someone hadn’t mixed it with a stronger hallucinogenic. There really is a guitar solo in a Limp Bizkit song now.

Granted, it’s nothing that anyone with ten fingers and five minutes to practice couldn’t play, but still… it seems like just yesterday that Hetfield and Ulrich were able to bully Kirk Hammett into not taking solos because they might “date” St. Anger, and here we are, and Wes Borland is taking a motherfucking guitar solo. What’s next for Bizkit — blast beats?

-AR

[via The PRP]