I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as Clown from Slipknot puts into making sense in interviews.

We begin today with Barn Burner’s new NSFW video, for the song “Scum of the Earth.” Barn Burner played at our CMJ showcase a couple of weeks ago and they absolutely SLAYED — in fact, it was my first time seeing them live, and they were so good that I am now a 100% bigger Barn Burner fan than I already was. And I think this is video is pretty good… not, like, the greatest thing ever made or whatever, but it’s fun and it conveys the energy of the song. Unfortunately, some people are really offended by it, apparently because they are strongly opposed to the way that condiments were haphazardly utilized in order to film the video. I mean, there are  starving children in Africa who, like, don’t even have any maple syrup or ketchup or mustard, and guitarist/vocalist K. Keaglesmith just let some girl pour it all over him? What a wasteful dick!

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Interview and live pics by Emily Eve; girls on stage pic by Friedia Niimura

In one sense, making records is like using the toilet: It takes more to do number two than number one. And in the case of L.A. heavy metal semi-parodists Steel Panther, a follow-up to their wildly funny and compulsively banging 2009 debut Feel The Steel is an even bigger, stinkier challenge: This time, fans can see them coming, um so to speak. But in the spotlight’s glare, before expectant ears and faces poised to smile, lead singer Michael Starr and crew deliver a bigger, dirtier, and awesomer mass of heavy metal hilarity called Balls Out (available Tuesday). The 14-track tour de farce covers 47 amazing minutes, a range of hot-button rocker issues (drugs, gender roles, boners), and a load of singalong mega-choruses and nip-scorching guitar solos unheard since pro tools was just an aisle at Sears. To those somehow able to resist Feel The Steel, I say: You’re fucked now. Balls Out is stronger than you and your feeble protestations. Crank. It. Up.

This feat of skill and cocksmanship on display in Balls Out begs for investigation, so last week I went to hear firsthand how Steel Panther achieved the equivalent of making a Ghostbusters II better than its Ghostbusters I. And though it was a rainy, gusty Autumn night, the huge Steel Panther dressing room was buzzing heatedly as I sat down with Starr and lead bass player Lexxi Foxxx to get answers. Just nearby were lead guitarist Satchel (at whom I gazed lovingly whenever his inattention allowed) and lead drummer Stix Zadinia (with entourage) as the three of us gabbed highly about Balls Out, drugs, vaginas, immaturity, maturity, the guy from Nickelback, shaving stuff, the responsibilities of being Steel Panther, and much more.

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Marilyn Manson and Shia LaBeouf have released “Born Villain,” the LaBeouf-directed video for the title track from Manson’s new album, which also may or may not somehow relate to the documentary of the same title that LaBeouf made about the making of that album and L.A. street art. ‘Cause, y’know, nothing screams “L.A. street art” like Marilyn Manson in a recording studio. (The video is NSFW, of course, because Manson still thinks he can shock people into liking him, even though no one over the age of fetus would ever find this shocking. And, really, there’s nothing offensive in here, besides the terrible song.)

ANYWAY, the video. It is, of course, a work of pretentious douchechillery like no other. Manson often attempts to seem smart and profound by making obvious references to works of art that any ninth grader would be familiar with, and now he’s got LaBeouf doing the same thing — the Disturbia star tells MTV that ”The song has all these references to ‘Macbeth’ and all this Shakespeare and heavy theology, so we tried to make Manson’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’ macabre ‘Macbeth.’” Which is fucking irritating, for the following reasons:

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We heard awhile ago that Shia LaBeouf was directing a documentary about the making of Marilyn Manson’s new album, and that news certainly seemed both strange and cringe-worthy. But not as strange as cringe-worthy as the realization that this dynamic duo have already completed the collaboration, and that it not only covers the recording of Manson’s new opus, but also… L.A. street art. In case you saw Exit Through the Gift Shop and thought, “What this really needs is the perspective of a washed-up rock star and the kid from Battle of Shaker Heights.”

ANYWAY, the project — which is both a book and a movie — is called Born Villain, and I guess the good news is that there’s only 150 copies being made available to the public. You can pre-order one of those copies here; purchase also gets you and a guest admission to a signing/screening in Los Angeles tomorrow night. Here’s a typically low-key, unpretentious statement from Manson regarding the affair:

“Shia is in some ways an art rapist. He doesn’t take no for an answer. He has a vision that develops rapidly like a virus, and overwhelms you. Not since Hitler has there been such propaganda for something. This time it was my face…”

I haven’t done any DMT this morning, so I have no fucking idea what Manson is talking about, although I am suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to watch him have a conversation with Clown from Slipknot while people engage in competitive translation.

And yet, I haven’t told you the worst part yet. The worst part is the below, NSFW photo of Manson, the performance artist Narcissister, and LaBeouf, apparently preparing for his role as the guitarist from Linkin Park in We’re Not Limp Bizkit: The Linkin Park Story.

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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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MetalSucks Maniac King Cheezit sent us the below video of the EOL Robot Band (whomever/whatever that is) covering Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People,” and while I’m aware that this is not the hardest song to play (King Cheezit takes the video as “proof that nu metal bands aren’t good enough to play their own instruments”), this still makes me anxious. I mean, it really is only a matter of time until my computer is blogging on me.

-AR

This doesn’t really have anything to do with metal, but I found it kinda funny so I’m running with it.

A Scottish band called Found has released what is, at least as far as I’m aware, the first-ever edible 7″ — more specifically, a 7″ made from chocolate. According to Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci  (who came up with a headline far superior to my own):

“The first attempt was to pour chocolate over a pressed record, but the music created by the chocolate record was backwards. Instead they poured chocolate into the record mold, and presto, an edible single.”

I don’t know nearly enough about, like, science n’ shit to understand how this could possibly work, or what the band’s fans are supposed to do if they actually wanna keep the record, be it because they like the music, or because they think it’s gonna be a collector’s item, or whatever. (How easily would this thing melt? You’d have to at least keep it refrigerated, I’d imagine.)

I would, however, like to suggest that metal bands start trying this gimmick to sell their own shit. Of course, they would not necessarily have to use to chocolate. Here are some examples of what I think would be good cuisine-to-band matches:

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You all know who Shia LaBeouf is, right? He’s the incredibly irritating actor who starred in such terrible films as Transformers, Wall Street 2: Money Never Grossed, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Michael Bay, Disturbia, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Realization that Harrison Ford is Getting Way Too Old for this Shit So You’d Better Give Us Your Money Now!, Eagle Eye, and, as of this week, Transformers 3: Dark of the Fuck Yourself. (Above, watch his best performance yet, as a cranky movie star who throws some coffee at a paparazzo, and then flees.)

Well, apparently Mr. LaBeouf and his representatives sat down over the weekend, and they came to two conclusions:

• Shia’s career has too much artistic credibility.
• There are still aging franchises Shia can help ruin.

And, thus, they came to this logical conclusion: Shia should direct a documentary about the making of the new Marilyn Manson album.

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Marilyn Manson is working on a new album, and has now posted a twenty-six second teaser of a new song, for the five of us who still care. (And the last eight seconds are just screechy white noise, and there’s frequent static interruptions throughout the track, so it’s not even really a full twenty-six seconds of music.) My premature judgment of this teeny weensy lil’ clip is that Manson is trying to find some compromise between his Antichrist Superstar sound and his The High End of the Low sound, which is fine except for the The High End of the Low sound part. I’m one of the last self-admitted Manson fans in the world, and I thought that shit was unlistenable garbage.

Manson has also posted a statement about the clip and the song it contains over at his newly re-designed official website, and, as is so often the case with The Artist Formerly Known as Popular, it is a coherent, illuminating, and unpretentious.

No, I’m totally kidding you guys, it’s a fucking mess.

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I don’t have a whole ton to say about either of these line-up comings and goings, but I do have a little to say, so I’ll just say that:

• I.C.S. Vortex has re-joined Borknagar. That honestly doesn’t mean much to me because I never listened to much Borknagar. Not ’cause they’re bad, but just because I can’t say “Borknagar” without laughing. It sounds like a tr00 Norwegians euphemism for sex. “Dude, did you borknagar Bodil last night?” But I assume this is good news because Vortex was in Arcturus, and because Dimmu Borgir got a serious case of the sucks after they sacked him, which could be just a coincidence but then Arcturus. Anyways, Vortex says he’s “chuffed” to be back in the band, which means oh my god this dude is just an expert in silly words.
• Rob Zombie has hired Ginger Fish as his new drummer, which means his four-piece band now contains two former employees of Marilyn Manson. (The other being John 5, duh.) There are obviously some similarities in Zombie and Manson’s music, and they’re both technically “shock rockers,” and they were both cool in 1998, so I guess this makes sense. Mr. Fish did not mention whether or not he was chuffed to be in the band, but we hear that he did borknagar his brains out in celebration of the news, so I think we can safely assume there’s some chuffage going on.

-AR

If you follow my true crime writing career, you know that I have always been a defender against those who want to blame music and movies for the wretched deeds of serial killers, mass murderers, and other killers. I have even had others in my line of work attempt to blackball me for my passionate love of horror films and heavy metal. These folks cannot reconcile that an individual can enjoy the darkest side of entertainment and yet still be a pacifist who treats people with respect and sympathizes with those who suffer real world violence.

Last week, loyal MetalSucks reader Matthew Kurtz asked me if I would write something about the Columbine Massacre as today is the twelfth anniversary of that tragic school shooting. The focus here would be on how the media and certain insecure people opted to lay the blame of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s shooting spree on heavy metal music, specifically industrial artists Marilyn Manson and KMFDM, violent videogames, and everything else other than the killers themselves.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CRIME SCENE PHOTO AFTER THE FOLD!!!

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Manson still loves pussy

Marilyn Manson’s 1998 autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, is notable for several reasons. For one thing, it was its co-author (read: the dude who listened to Manson babble on and on and then actually turned those babblings into a book) Neil Strauss’ first foray into rock star hagiography, which is to say, it was ostensibly a practice run for Motley Crue’s superior The Dirt, which Strauss which would write three years later. For another thing, it was written at the height of Manson’s stardom, so the dude did not yet know the sting of releasing an album no one cared about, which means that, throughout the course of the book, he takes himself way, way, wwwwaaaayyyy too seriously. (He seems to think that he might actually be the antichrist, claims to have given Axl Rose the idea to record a Charles Manson song for “The Spaghetti Incident?!”, and more or less accuses Trent Reznor of not believing in him, despite the fact that Reznor signed him to his Nothing Records imprint, produced his first two albums, and co-wrote and played on a whole bunch of the songs on Antichrist Superstar.) And both because and despite this fact, the book is actually a really fun read. One of the highlights of MetalSucks’ Heavy Metal Literature Night a couple of weeks ago (and someday I’ll post a wrap-up and photos from that event, I swear) was a young woman reading Manson’s list of ways the reader can tell if he is gay (I say “he” because Manson claims that all women are lesbians) — for example, if you have ever gotten any semen on you, be it your own or someone else’s, you are, apparently, gay. (Allow me to congratulate each and every male reader of this site on being gay, many of you probably just this morning.)

Why am I rambling on and on about this? Because apparently Manson has hired former LA Weekly writer Erin Broadley to pen his new, authorized biography.

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Sooo… just thought we’d take this opportunity to remind you yet again that MetalSucks, with a special assist from The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley, will be presenting Heavy Metal Literature Night at at Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn this Thursday, February 17. Members of God Forbid, Tombs, and, of course, this very website, will be doing readings from from some of metal’s greatest tomes, including Motley Crue’s The Dirt, Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods, Slash’s Slash, Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and more — kinda like what Will Forte does in the below video. Only we don’t make one of the biggest bombs of the year and get fired from Saturday Night Live at the end.

And, oh yeah, Vince is DJing!!! Come get st00pid with us. Thursday night. See ya there.

The above video (which I first saw on Movieline) is of Mad Men star Jon Hamm doing a reading from My Dad Was in ZZ Top, a new book by Conan writer John Glaser. The book uses allegedly “found” documents to tell the secret history of rock n’ roll — Hamm is reading a chapter about the secret origins of the Butthole Surfer’s moniker.

Sadly, Hamm will not be at the MetalSucks sponsored Heavy Metal Literature Night at Hank’s Saloon on Thursday, February 17 — but lotsa other cool people will be! Members of God Forbid, Tombs, and The Austerity Program will all be on hand to do readings from some of metal’s greatest tomes, including Motley Crue’s The Dirt, Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods, Slash’s Slash, Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and more; MS’ own masters of mischief, Axl Rosenberg and Vince Neilstein, will also be on hand to read and DJ, respectively.

Oh yeah, and, of course, we plan to get pretty drunk.

Even more details coming next week!!! Get excited!!!

Let’s class this bitch up.

On Thursday, February 17, at Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn, we are going to be presenting (with some serious help from The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley!) Heavy Metal Literature Night. This will be like one of those classy book readings where intellectual types sit around drinking wine while people read aloud from beautifully written, deeply meaningful texts — only instead of intellectual types, the readers will be various members of the local metal community, instead of wine we’ll be drinking beer and whiskey and whatever else leads to terrible decisions in life, and instead of beautifully written, deeply meaningful texts, we’ll be reading from some of metal’s greatest tomes, including Motley Crue’s The Dirt, Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods, Slash’s Slash, Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and other books of that nature.

There will be booze. There will be music. There will be fun.

Mark it in your calendars. More details coming next week…

Actually, I don’t know if you could call this a “cover” — it samples the guitar riff and title phrase from Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” but beyond that, it’s a new creation. According to this right wing tabloid disguised as a legitimate newspaper, the track appears in Xtina’s new film, Burlesque, which I have not seen, but appears to have been sent here by Satan to announce The Dark Lord’s imminent arrival, and the subsequent end of days. (One question for Cher: What’s wrong with your faaaace?!?!)

And this song ain’t no better. Normally I’d say something about how it goes against everything Manson original stood for, but since he’s not exactly a bastion of creative integrity, and I think Aguilera thinks her lyrics are facetious in much the same way Manson’s lyrics were facetious, I guess I can’t cry philosophical rape.

So why am I posting this? Because I mothertruckin’ hate you, and I want you to die.

This isn’t Aguilera’s first dalliance with a hard rock/pop metal star of the 90′s — Dave Navarro plays guitar on her song “Fighter.” Nor is it Manson’s first run-in with a diva I wish would take an acid bath already: he raped our ears last year when he leant his vocals to a remix of a Lady GaGa’s “Love Game.”

Now let’s never speak of this again.

-AR

Fuck Exect for sending this to us.

No one thinks of Monster Magnet music as overtly inspirational, but fans know that its restorative power is formidable. Astounding, even. There’s an empowering hugeness, a tone of amused disgust, and a lovable protagonist in Dave Wyndorf, Monster Magnet’s mainman. It follows then that Wyndorf is into comic books (presumably the source of his skill at exploding proportions) and also that his ouevre’s best moments are a druggy, sweaty Iron Man-Meets-Evil Dead trilogy for your ears: Fist-pumping. Ear-banging. Mind-mangling. Sack-jabbing. (My hope is that I’m never at at a party where onto the stereo comes “All Friends and Kingdom Come” or “Powertrip,” ‘cuz I will dropkick somebody’s flatscreen into a different time zone.)

Despite his outsized persona on record and the then-pending departure of a longtime bandmate, Wyndorf sounded loose and limber when we spoke last week about his thunderous new record, Mastermind, his admirers in the press, the status of his health/weight/dancing, his favorite idiotic music, and Ozzy’s brain.

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Ever had something happen to you that was so out of the blue and unexpected, yet so fucking hilariously strange that you wished you could go back in time and let the younger you know it was going to happen just so the two of you could laugh about it? I just had one of those experiences, and I don’t quite know how to categorize this one. So I figured I would share it with you guys. I’ve already shared it with all my friends, but I feel like the community at large should know. And maybe you guys can help me form an opinion on this. So here goes:

Last night, around 3 a.m., I was Facebook lurking after a night on the town. To my surprise, an old middle school teacher hit me up. We’ve had no contact since I got out of that school. I haven’t gone to reunions. I’ve made no effort to keep up with anyone. That part of my life was effectively over the day I graduated. But I was happy to hear from him and we made some small talk. Eventually he said this to me: “Eyal – this has been a real treat!! Please look for me again and please drop me a message from time to time. I mean this sincerely – it was a pleasure to teach you – I loved the creativity of your mind and that you always were a self-made man! LOVE>”

Nice thing to say right? Nice to get a compliment like that from an old teacher considering what a horrible student I was. And then comes the left turn. Abruptly he changed the subject and told me there was a video he wanted me to check out. To “get my thoughts on it.” I said okay. Here’s what he sent me:

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I often associate Dimmu Borgir with Cradle of Filth, for really no better reason than I think they’re probably both gateways into black metal for a lot of kids. I can’t think of two other black metal bands that have gotten so popular in metal’s relative mainstream; I mean, I assume they’re not selling Mayhem shirts at Hot Topic (at least not yet).

Now here’s another good reason to associate CoF with Dimmu: Both bands have new albums coming out, both bands are rockin’ new gear for those albums, and both bands seem to have modled that gear on a prior Marilyn Manson look. Dimmu have gone the all-white Mechanical Animals route (although a friend recently suggested that the style might actually owe more to Antichrist Superstar Manson), and now Cradle of Filth are doing the Daryl Hannah-in-Blade Runner thing that Manson did for Holy Wood:

So that’s a little weird. I fucking love Blade Runner, but I think it’s time to declare a moratorium on this particular style of make-up, don’t you? Like, if musicians wanna start dressing like Joanna Cassidy or, better yet, Brion James, that would be swell with me… just no more Daryl Hannah, okay?

Cradle of Filth’s latest, Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, comes out in November. Watch a behind-the-scenes video (featuring the above make-up) with  a piece of a new song after the jump.

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I hate Disturbed’s music, but the fact that he’s a hypocrite who lacks any real talent aside, David Draiman strikes me as a very intelligent guy. A reader, calling himself simply “Matt,” sent this to me awhile back, and now that Lemmy has re-raised the issue, I think it’s worth discussing even if I don’t really have a solid “answer” per se.

So. This is a Blabbermouth excerpt from a recent Revolver magazine interview with Draiman. I’m going to run the entire excerpt after the jump, and then I’m going to share my thoughts.

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