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Last week this guy became an interwebz sensation, when everyone seemed to collectively realize all at once that he’s clearly the best drummer in the history of the instrument:
Now the investigative journalists at Metal Injection tell me that this God amongst men is named Steve Moore, and that he was recently interviewed by City Pages, who learned that – no surprise – he started out as a metal drummer:
One last thought about Slash’s solo album, and then I promise to shut up about it for awhile.
Everyone who buys/downloads/whatever Slash the album will get “Nothing to Say,” a collaboration the axe-slinger player did with M. Shadows from Avenged Sevenfold. It ostensibly sounds like an A7X song with Slash on guitars. But what’s really interesting is that there’s an alternative version of the same exact song, this one entitled “Chains and Shackles,” on the Australian version of Slash. And this being 2010 and the internet being what it, we have both versions of the song, and therefore have a nice example of the various ways in which you can make a piece of music sound completely different from itself.
“Chains and Shackles,” you see, doesn’t have M. Shadows vocals or lyrics or melodies – it was done with ex-Queens of the Stone Ager Nick Oliveri instead. The intro, main riff, and even a large chunk of the guitar solo is completely identical in both songs – but the production style is completely different on each one, the outro is different, and “Chains” is a good minute shorter. That song has clearly been designed to sound like something off of Songs for the Deaf, and succeeds every bit as much as “Nothing to Say” does at sounding like a A7X tune. I don’t know if Oliveri and/or Shadows were personally involved with all of the changes made to each variation of the song or not, but it’s funny to see that Slash really IS like Zelig – a chameleon who just blends in with the crowd.
Here are the two versions of the song side-by-side:
By the way, if you’re wondering why one of these ended up on the album proper and the other only made it as an Australian bonus track, well… guess which two musicians share the same manager?
-AR
Ever seen Woody Allen’s Zelig? It’s a pseudo-documentary about a guy who immediately assumes the traits of whomever he’s with at the moment; put him in a room full of Chinese people and he’ll turn into a Chinese man, move him to a room full of Hasidim and he’ll suddenly appear to be Hasidic, and so on and so forth. It’s a(n obvious but still pretty funny) metaphor for a guy with no personality of his own.
Now, consider Slash. Guns N’ Roses folklore tells us that Slash is not the best judge of his own material, and often wanted to scrap some of Guns’ best songs; and, unfortunately, evidence suggests that this folklore is fact, and that Slash is a pretty ho-hum songwriter. Axl Rose has his legitimate insanity and over-sized, not entirely comprehensible artistic vision, but all Slash really seems to have is a desire to be like his heroes in Aerosmith and AC/DC, which is to say, a legacy act and purveyor of catchy but fairly middle-of-the-road rock. Consequently, a lot of the pressure on Slash-penned songs in the post-GN’R era is not just on the guitar playing of the Artist Formerly Known as Saul Hudson, but on the performances of whatever singer he’s working with at any given moment. Slash songs can be like underwritten roles in movies that way; you need the best character actors available to give them some personality, or they risk becoming boring.
Slash has personality (or at least persona) to burn, and it’s no shock that on Slash, his first solo record, he keeps up his up his end of the bargain in the guitar solo department. Despite the fact that he was never a revolutionary musician, Slash was always a very distinctive musician; a lot of people play the way he does, but no one sounds quite like him. But it is kind of a shock that on this, the album which is supposed to be a distinct and unique artistic statement outside the confines of his collaborations with various bands, Slash has very much allowed himself, like Zelig, to blend in with whomever was in the room at the moment.
So the Australian branch of iTunes has apparently uploaded thirty-second clips of all the songs from Slash’s forthcoming, self-titled solo album, and, of course, someone has uploaded all of those clips to YouTube. Gotta love the internet! So I thought we’d play one of our favorite games here at MetalSucks. It’s called “Let’s make premature judgments based on not very much actual music at all.” Listen to the clips in the video below, and then get my thoughts after the jump.
The Starbucks Incident
Yes, I am going to continue to bitch about Slash. I understand that Slash is not Jimi Hendrix but this might be the single biggest betrayal to my formative years since Metallica released everything they’ve released from Load on, and I need to mourn.
So. Some lady says that the following singers are all on Slash’s new solo album, How Could Taking My Cues from Carlos Santana Possibly Go Wrong? I have added my own thoughts because that’s what we do around here. Click to read more…
If you go here you can watch a video of Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows being interviewed about the whole nu-GN’R/Velvet Revolver rivalry. I can’t embed it because the people at Artisan News Service, who conducted the interview, are no good smelly fuck faces, but here’s a transcription of the relevant part:
“I go more towards the Use Your Illusion records, and I know that [Axl Rose] had a major part in those. You listen to the Velvet Revolver records and you can tell that it’s more of a straight-ahead rock band. And a lot of people like that… and it’s not a diss on them, but they have a short attention span… From the new stuff I’ve heard and the demos, I can tell that Axl had the biggest part in [the Illusion albums]… the lyrics… the vocal stylings… that to me was the major part of Guns N’ Roses. Even though you can’t have Guns N’ Roses without Slash and those guys, but… just, to me, Axl was the most important part of that.”
Now, that’s not exactly an inflammatory comment – in fact, it’s pretty even handed – but it’s still hard to imagine, say, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum (to say nothing of Izzy Stradlin) not taking serious issue with Shadows giving Axl so much credit and saying Velvet Revolver is for people with short attention spans.
So, I gotta wonder: did Shadows and Slash discuss Axl being the most important part of GN’R when Slash played with A7X last night?
-AR
[via Blabbermouth]
Thanks to MetalSucks reader Devin Kelly for bringing this one to our attention…
The Confession, the melodic pop metal band whose album Requiem was produced by Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows (and whose sound bore more than a passing resemblance to A7X), have apparently called it quits. A posting on the band’s MySpace page reads as follows:
This recent interview (courtesy of Melissa Smith of Prime Video Magazine) with M. Shadows (vocals) and Synyster Gates (guitar) of Avenged Sevenfold proves what anyone who has seen/heard interview footage of M. Shadows already knew: M. Shadows is kind of an idiot. The guy may be a sick performer and talented vocalist — hell, I’ll even give a nod to his abilities as a producer of both the Confession and his own band — but just listen to the guy talk, and Einstein he ain’t. Let’s just say that it isn’t a stretch to figure out why this guy actually thinks our troops are fighting for American freedom in Iraq and that there actually is an Iraq/9-11/Bin Laden connection.
Avenged Sevenfold will be released October 30th on Warner Bros. Records. Visit Avenged Sevenfold on MySpace to hear the new single “Almost Easy.”
-VN
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