Axl wore his most vile death metal shirt in an attempt to avoid being selected as a juror in this great City of New York, but lo and behold, his plan backfired and he was chosen anyway. So it’s been the Vince party over here since Wednesday with plenty of help from all of our most excellent contributors — special big ups to Anso DF for pitching in extra! Here’s what went down:

• We lost Riot guitarist Mark Reale. R.I.P.
• We premiered a new track by Pyscroptic, one by Exotic Animal Petting Zoo and all of Primal Fear’s new album Unbreakable.
• The Rockstar Mayhem Festival announced the first slate of bands on its 2012 lineup. Slipknot later spilled the beans that High on Fire are confirmed too.
• Ihsahn is guesting on the new Jeff Loomis solo joint and Jeff Loomis is guesting on the new Ihsahn solo joint. Will those two get a room already?
• The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman went all anti-drug on our asses.
• Tours and rumours of tours: The Mastodon / Opeth / Ghost tour is really gonna happen, Meshuggah, Decapitated and Baroness will hit the U.S. together (no dates yet), dates were announced for the Decibel Magazine Tour featuring Behemoth, Watain, The Devil’s Blood and In Solitude, while All Shall Perish, Fleshgod Apocalypse and other cool bands announced a tour too.
• Sammy O’Hagar reviewed Lamb of God‘s new album while Gary took a look at new hardcore 7-inches by Daylight, Unholy Majesty and Wrong Answer.
• We realized that Maynard James Keenan poops and pees and eats just like the rest of us.

We’ll be back next week for Axl’s triumphant return to the blogosphere. See you then.

-VN

My father once told me that “celebrities eat and drink and piss and shit just like us,” which was his poetic way of saying that famous folks are just people, too. And that can be a hard fact to remember, even if you’re not the type to get starstruck. Sure, your favorite Rock God might seem awesome right now, but the chances that he or she came out of the womb being Super Cool are slim to none.

Case in point: this 1987 public access footage that Metal Insider unearthed of Maynard James Keenan and his then-band, Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty, performing a song called “Burn About Out”… which is very clearly an early version of the Tool classic, “Sober.” Sure, it’s faster, the anthemic chorus is missing, and some of the lyrics are different  – but if it’s not the same exact melody, then I’m the new keyboard player for Dr. Acula.

And my point isn’t “Oh hey Maynard wrote a version of this song six years before it appeared on Undertow,” because I don’t think that’s really news — Tool actually had an early version of the song on their 1991 demo, 72826. My point is simply that once upon a time, Maynard looked totally lame, and surrounded himself with bandmates who also looked totally lame, and that’s okay, because all butterflies were caterpillars once.

Tool are currently on tour and, to the best of my knowledge, still the four coolest guys in the world, who put on pretty much the best concerts in the world. Get dates here.

-AR

These albums might even have some good music on ‘em, too!

ANYWAY:

• As I’ve said before, I’m not really a fan of Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project, but my man crush on Keenan is such that I actually feel severe guilt over said lack of fandom. And Pusicfer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, might have the best album art of the year. Spin (still a thing!) is now streaming the entire record in advance of its release on October 18 via the cleverly named Puscifer Entertainment. I’ve listened to a lil’ bit of it and I feel about it pretty much the way I feel about all Puscifer, which is that it’s not bad, but not interesting to hold my attention against all the other great music out there right now, and really Maynard just get back to the business of TOOL as soon as humanly possible.
• Giant Squid’s Cenotes comes out October 25 on Translation Loss, and also has totally bitchin’ album art (above… FUPAs for the win). Now the whole thing is streaming at NPR (New slogan: “NPR… it’s not just for old people anymore!”). I’m actually listening for the first time now, and while Giant Squid have yet to produce anything that I love as much as Metridium Fields (“Ampullae of Lorenzini” might be one of the most beautiful songs in any genre written in the past ten years), they’re still way out ahead of most of the pack, so you should at very least give this a listen and see if you dig it. I mean, you’d do as much just to be able to make fun of Design the Skyline, so, y’know, fair is fair.

Well hello again!

I hope you’ve been enjoying everything I’ve been posting here today on Metalsucks.net.  This next interview is really something I was beyond thrilled to be able to do!

A Perfect Circle is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite bands and are also a huge inspiration on myself as well as my own band, Vestascension. So, when Matt McJunkins agreed to do an interview with lil’ ol me, well, I basically soiled myself.  Matt is a really awesome dude and everyone out there should give this a good read even if you’re not into any of the bands he’s involved with.  He provides some very interesting insight into what it takes to land an audition and what to do and what not to do if you actually land one.  Of course he also talks about his work in A Perfect Circle, Ashes Divide, Puscifer, 30 Seconds To Mars, and even gives a few details about his new project with Jeff Friedl.

Check it out below and if you’d like to know more about Matt click here to visit his official website.

-Justin Gosnell

Click to read more…

The thing about Ministry is, sure, they were innovative, and sure, their live show has a lot of cool lights and effects and shit, but I think their music gets real boring real fast. It falls under the category of “too much of the same too quickly.” To give a recent example: Remember that single “Lies, Lies, Lies” from 2006′s Rio Grande Blood? Catchy fucking song, but I was shocked to learn that it’s just barely over five minutes long — ’cause it’s just the same thing, over and over and over again, and consequently feels like it’s an hour. And their whole catalog is basically like that. I remember when Al Jourgensen insulted Trent Reznor as just some Ministrwannabe back in the day, thinking, “Well, if you ever write a song as good as ‘Head Like a Hole’ or ‘Hurt,’ you might sell that many records, too.”

That being said, you do have to give Jourgensen and company their spot in history… and director Douglas Freel’s new documentary about the band,  Fix: The Ministry Movie, does look like a lot of fun. Besides covering the project’s entire history, it features interviews with Reznor (!) and Maynard James Keenan, who, in the trailer below, is, I think, but I’m not positive, is making a reference to the abandoned Tapeworm project he had with Reznor.

ANYWAY, here’s the trailer. The movie is gonna be doing four screenings (at least so far) this month and next month across the U.S.; get the screening schedule after the jump.

Click to read more…

Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project has debuted its video for “Man Overboard” over at Rolling Drone, and I’m feeling pretty conflicted about it.

‘Cause on the one hand, it’s not every day we see a CG animated steam punk video, and I applaud Maynard for continuing to at least make an attempt to venture into untested waters. Plus, as Metal Insider points out, there’s a Spinal Tap reference at the fifty-three second mark, and I’m all about Spinal Tap.

On the other hand, said CG animation is roughly on par with that incredibly poopy Iron Maiden video for “Wildest Dreams.”

So I guess you should, like, watch the video and make up your own mind. But only after you’ve already watched that way-cooler Ghost Brigade video, ’cause, like I said, it’s way cooler.

VIDEO REMOVED UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP ROLLING DRONE’S STUPID FUCKING AUTO PLAY.

Puscifer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, comes out October 18 on Puscifer Entertainment.

-AR

Maynard James Keenan has released two new video teasers for Conditions of My Parole, the new album from his Puscifer project. And I have almost no idea what the what is going on in these clips — called The Book Of Douche Bag, Volumes 1 & 2 — I do know that I found them entertaining. In fact, I wish Puscifer’s music was this much fun… it’s a real bummer to enjoy the promotions for an album more than the album itself.

Click to read more…

Justin M. Norton over at Invisible Oranges has been killing it this week. Yesterday, he wrote a really great piece about entitled “Why Ghost Matters,” which you should definitely check out, especially if, for some reason, you’re still not convinced that those Swedes are the real deal; now, he’s unveiled his list of the Top 10 Metal Lyricists, which, I imagine, will cause exactly the kind of shit storm that makes the internet so damn fun in the first place.

And, hey, I don’t agree with all of his inclusions (although I certainly agree with some of ‘em, like one Mr. J.R. Hayes from Pig Destroyer). But, again, the debate is what’s so much fun about these kinds of things. Lists don’t really “mean” anything — they’re just the opinions of one individual or a group of individuals. But what’s great about them is that they get people thinking; even if you disagree with the choices, you have to figure out a way to articulate exactly why you disagree with the choices, to hopefully come up with a retort more sophisticated than “You’re wrong and you’re a douche for disagreeing with me.” (Although, clearly, some internetters fall back on that “reasoning,” too.)

Check out Norton’s list here, then come back and let us know who your own favorite metal lyricists are in our comments section. Two of my personal poetic heroes who I think definitely deserve to be on this list: Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk. How about you cats?

-AR

I may not be a huge Puscifer fan, but nothing is going to top this this year. Not even Opeth’s heads in a tree.

Conditions of My Parole is out October 18.

-AR

[via The PRP, who think it may be the best album art of the decade]

Milla Jovovich has played with Pusicfer. Therefore, it is okay for me to post this image with this article.

I’m not even really clear how many Puscifer albums there have been at this point; I pretty much gave up after 2007′s V is for Vagina. It’s not that I think Puscifer is bad, exactly, so much as the project just doesn’t excite me. It’s hard me to see it as anything but one more obstruction to a new Tool album, or even a new A Perfect Circle release. Of course, that might not be true — Maynard could stay home all day and jerk off, and it might not make a Tool record appear any faster or slower than it already would — but the fact remains that Puscifer is still my least favorite of Maynard’s various projects. And, yes, I’m including his wine.

ANYWAY, in the event you think I’m crazy and are desperate to hear some new Puscification, the fresh-out-of-the-oven track “Man Overboard” is now streaming here. It’s kinda catchy, but it basically re-confirms my minimal interest in Puscifer; in fact, if Maynard wasn’t involved, it’s hard for me to imagine I even would have sat through the entire song.

Puscifer’s new album, Conditions of My Parole, comes out October 18. Meanwhile, it’s been more than five years since the last Tool album, so hopefully there will be a new one sooner rather than later.

-AR

I didn’t think A Perfect Circle could get more irritating than when they released (e)Motive, but they’re going out of their way to prove me wrong. First they split up, and then they got back together, and then, just two months and four shows into their reunion run, they seemed to split up again. And now there’s this tweet, which more than implies that, no, all is well and good in APC land:

Click to read more…

I didn’t think A Perfect Circle could get more irritating than when they released (e)Motive, but they’re going out of their way to prove me wrong. First they split up, and then they got back together, and then, just two months and four shows into their reunion run, they seemed to split up again. And now there’s this tweet, which more than implies that, no, all is well and good in APC land:

Click to read more…

Of all the issues we’re forced to think about on a daily basis in this ever-turbulent world — the shaky world economy, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, political unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, illegal immigration, climate change, Rodney King — surely one of the most burning questions on the forefront of your mind is “What is like to be Maynard James Keenan preparing for a show and walking out onto the stage?” Thankfully the frontman of the best band in the world knows our pain and decided to take matters into his own hands by filming a video that answers this very question.

And uh, the answer to the question is, “It’s pretty fucking awesome.” You start by doing some kind of pow-wow with your bandmates before warming up like a boxer. Then you walk out onto a platform in front of thousands of adoringAustralians, and you’re standing next to one of the best drummers in the world. And then, presumably, you rock.

Will 2011 be the year we finally get new Tool? It’s been 5 years since 10,000 Days, and 5 years is usually how long Tool take between albums. A man can hope.

-VN

‘Cause earlier this week, Billy Howerdel sent out the below tweet:

Click to read more…

Yesterday A Perfect Circle announced their reunion, and we wondered who, besides Maynard James Keenan and Billy Howerdel, would be in the band; now we have our answer. Drummer Josh Freese, the band’s only constant besides Keenan and Howerdel, and guitarist James Iha, who joined the group for Thirteenth Step, are both returning to the fold, while bassist Matt McJunkins, who must have been teased mercilessly in grade school, will replace Jeordie White, who has since returned to being “Twiggy Ramirez” in Marilyn Manson.

McJunkinthetrunk, pictured above, was practically a shoe-in for the gig, since he’s played with both Keenan and Howerdel before, in Puscifer and Ashes Divide. Other than that, I don’t know squat about the dude. His Facebook page would suggest that he sometimes refers to himself as “Junk,” which somehow makes him a-okay in my book.

And that settles that. Matt McJunkins is now the Dave Kushner of A Perfect Circle.

-AR

Listen, I don’t think this is gonna come as a galloping shock to anyone given all the talk there’s already been about A Perfect Circle returning from their hiatus/break-up/whatever, but we just got a press release making it official. The band is apparently gonna get this party started with a five-city tour in the fall:

Shows in Phoenix (Marquee Theatre), Los Angeles (Avalon), Seattle (Showbox at The Market) and San Francisco (The Fillmore) will be three-night stops with each night featuring one of A Perfect Circle’s three albums in its entirety (Mer de Noms, Thirteenth Step and eMOTIVe).  Las Vegas (The Pearl) will be a two-night outing (Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step).

The band will also play Jimmy Kimmel on October 27.

Two quick and random thoughts:

Click to read more…

So Maynard James Keenan has said that Tool are working on their next album, and that “If it comes together” they may even play some new shit live this summer. I’m always totally down for some new Tool, so I won’t even say what we’re all thinking, which is “It might be nice to a get a new Tool album in under five years for a change.” I mean, we’d heard that Tool were in writing mode back in 2008, but whatever. It’s Tool. If they need that time to make the best possible record that they can, I’ll go along with it.

But a new Tool album was always a foregone conclusion; the band may very well break our hearts and throw in the towel one day, but we are (very luckily) not there yet.

So more interesting, in a way, is the news that writing has begun on a new album for A Perfect Circle. Not “more interesting” in a APC > Tool way, ’cause, come ON, that would just be a ridiculous argument to try and make. Interesting in the “Oh, cool, A Perfect Circle really aren’t done” kinda way.

Click to read more…

One of the best parts of the Tool Lateralus tour cycle was drummer extraordinaire Danny Carey’s drum-off with various guest drummers. Vince and I saw him do it a couple of years ago with a drummer whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, and it was awesome; then, last summer, we saw him do it again with Frank Ferrer from Guns N’ Roses, and it was even awesomer. (And that was when we heard the always-brilliant Maynard James Keenan use the phrase “drumsterbation.”)

But this pro-shot video of Carey drumsterbating with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor is awesomest. I mean, these two fuckers can play, y’know. Now if only they could’ve made it a three-way with Mike Portnoy…

-AR

[via The PRP]

Last month we told you about Blood Into Wine, the new documentary about the winery owned by Tool’s Maynard James Keenan. The fascinating subject matter – both Maynard and the wine – combined with a cool trailer and the promise of cameos by Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, and some other famous people I care less about, suggested that this was, at the very least, going to be a fun movie.

Well, now it has release dates! The press release says that these are the “first nationwide screenings,” which suggests that other markets should get it soon. But that kind of decision often rests on how much money a film makes during its initial run. Which is my way of saying: if anyone sees this and it actually turns out to be good, please let us know, and please spread the word so that we get it here in NYC. Not be selfish or anything.

Release dates and locations after the jump.

Click to read more…

Puscifer, Maynard James Keenan’s bizarro electro lounge music side-project, just announced a string of East Coast and Midwest dates for Spring 2010… and while I was initially very excited, upon further reflection I’m not so sure.

I feel like I’m in a cartoon, when a character has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both strongly making the case for their cause. Here’s what mine are saying:

Angel: It’s Maynard! He’s a genius! While Puscifer might not really be your bag, Maynard’s one of the most creative guys in all of music and will surely put on a show that’s at the very least entertaining. Go to the show! Come on! Do it! You know it’s the right thing and you won’t regret it.

Devil: Don’t bother with this tripe. The music’s not that interesting, and the show won’t be what you’re hoping for. Ultimately you want this to be Tool, and it isn’t Tool at all. Don’t waste your money or your time… no reason to go to this!

I’m divided. I really don’t know what to do. Halp!

Full list of tour dates after the jump.

-VN

Click to read more…