I LOLd for an hour straight on Tuesday cuz my Twitter was blowing up with metal people’s reactions to the Casey Anthony verdict (announced around 4PM EDT). It’s a serious situation, so dudes are mad and lending their two cents. That’s natural. But man, some people think dumb. Actually, know what? I’m just gonna c+p some metal celebrity tweets below. Remember, most of the following mini-declarations are wrought in awful logic, but not everybody on the internet is ignorant and high-horsing this shit to death. Um yeah just go ahead and keep reading and oooh the suspense…

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I remember rushing home one day in 2000 with a copy of the self-titled debut of Text, a post-Refused project by three of its former members. Refused had imploded a couple years earlier (bummer), their singer Dennis Lyxzsén and his (International) Noise Conspiracy had released a snore album of middling hipster rock (more like [International] House of Pancakes), and holy shit I was desperate for more jamz a la Refused’s masterpiece The Shape Of Punk To Come (weren’t we all?). I was sweating as I loaded the CD.

Well, this story ends sadly cuz the Text album is egghead coffeehouse jive, not razor-sharp, secret-staircase art punk like Refused. Which is fine. Whatever. Since then, (I)NC mustered a few tasty jamz (like this), Text snuck out a mini-release, and Lyxzsén paired with ex-Refused drummer/Text nerd David Sandström in AC4. And now, following several unflattering covers of “New Noise,” rumors of a Refused reunion, and an anniversary reissue of Shape, it’s come to light that Lyxzsén’s voice will next be heard alongside the guy from Methods of Mayhem. Buzzkill! From Tommy Lee’s twitter:

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Billboard ran a story on Wednesday that seemed to credit Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as stating that “the film adaptation of the Crue’s 2002 memoir The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band … is now on track with Rob Zombie as it’s director. [sic]” It’s odd that this tasty bit of breaking news appeared outside of quotes while every other semi-coherent Lee mumbling was firmly attributed to the Methods of Mayhem frontman (if not represented by accurately punctuated copy). It’s extra odd because Rob Zombie would be such an odd match for The Dirt, unless there’s a new script that includes murderous hillbillies or dick-biting ghouls. And it’s super-mega-odd cuz according to Zombie, it’s untrue. He said as much Thursday on his Twitter:

Why does everyone keep asking if I am directing The Dirt? I am not. I am directing The Lords of Salem. Recording a CD after that.

Why does everyone keep asking Zombie that? Well, I am half-retarded on drugs and even I can answer that one: This rumor has Nikki Sixx’s gooey fingerprints all over it. It sounds dramatic to suggest that Sixx is launching an underhanded public campaign to railroad Zombie into helming this doomed flick, but if you think so that means you’ve forgotten that Sixx views himself as a string-pulling maestro who can bend anyone to his will. And hey I’d suffer from the same delusion if I successfully banged Kat Von D for like months. So, the lesson here is Kat Von D call me and all will see who the real puppetmaster is here.

–ADF

Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem is slated to begin shooting this Spring. Motley Crue joins Poison and The New York Dolls on tour kicking off June 7 in Dallas. Full dates here.

If MetalSucks had a GQ-style 2010 Men of the Year award, all of my votes would go to Lakers forward Ron Artest. Though best known for his jaunt into mass face-punching in 2004, Artest is since lauded for his high-profile campaign to raise awareness of youth mental health issues. To date, more than $450k has been raised in his raffle (not auction) to win his 2009-2010 NBA Championship ring; yesterday, it was announced that he will donate a portion (possibly the entirity) of next season’s $7 million salary. Plus, Artest matches his wallet-emptying with efforts to de-stigmatize mental illness in the public: In an on-court interview following that game seven championship victory, an unabashedly ecstatic Artest reserved biggest thanks for his psychiatrist. The guy has travelled light years from his rookie days of locker-room boozing at halftime (!) and semi-regular legal tangles.

To put Ron’s ascent to awesomeness into context, let’s all consider fellow amateur rapper/Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, who has just taken a firm public stand in a similarly vital debate: collecting semen from a captive whale. Uh yeah. From Lee’s semi-coherent letter to SeaWorld president Terry Prather:

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Man oh man, do I feel bad for the poor Roadrunner employee who was in charge of making this video interview with Tommy Lee. Forget inarticulate; this guy can’t even speak English. Take, for example, his answer to the question “How important are visual arts to you?”

“Um… God, they’re so important. They’re like… a car with gasoline. And I can be like… it’s like the other part of music that I think brings it all together. Like when you’re making videos for songs, it’s, it’s like a necessity. And it helps somebody who maybe doesn’t have a vision, or can’t hear what the song is maybe about. Kind of take ‘em down what you think it is.”

“Kind of take ‘em down what you think it is?” “KIND OF TAKE ‘EM DOWN WHAT YOU THINK IT IS?!?!” That fucking doesn’t mean anything!!! Why is Tommy Lee talking like an Injun Chief?!?

Once you’ve recovered from your aneurysm, you can watch the rest of the interview below. It includes a part where Tommy tells aspiring artists not to think too much, which is a skill that I’m sure comes very easily to him.

-AR

[via SMN]

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!

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One day mankind will go extinct and the remains of our civilization will later be picked over by aliens. Though they can speedily assemble collections of most homo erectus artifacts for their alien museums, their super-brains will struggle to grasp and group the arts of Earth, y’know, for their encyclopedias and stuff. So it’s in the interest of preserving and defining Glam Metal across the cosmos that we at MetalSucks have counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums. We even tapped in to the genius of Bring Back Glam‘s Allyson B. Crawford to give it that “definitive text” feel. (Read part one, part two, part three)

Thanks to Allyson and our Anso DF, Glam Metal will live on in other worlds long after our planet has become a barren hellscape. That’s comforting. Here’s the number one Best Must-Have Glam Metal Album! So, come now children of the beast, be strong and …

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Kirk Windstein is a poet. Of this, there can be no doubt. Since Kingdom of Sorrow took over our site on Tuesday, Vince and I have decided we really, really wanna take a trip to New Orleans and just go eat with the dude (well, probably get high and then go eat with the dude). But secretly, I have aspirations of someday being able to pay the man to teach my children how to speak good. I can dream, can’t I?

Here’s some other shit that went down in the Mansion this week:

• We debuted a clip from The Haunted’s new DVD, Road Kill.
• We also debuted new music by Early Graves.
• We spoke to Stephen Carpenter from Deftones.
• Ken Sorceron from Abigail Williams doesn’t wanna talk shit about Winds of Plague, so instead he just left a comment on our site saying “it its embarrassing to once again see our name next to theirs on another metal news site.” Way to not talk shit, Kenny!
• We checked out a new release by Black Pyramid.
• Sergeant D taught us about the history of metalcore and screamo.
• We engaged in debate about the new Maiden song, the new Maiden setlist, and the old Maiden album art.
• The new Methods of Mayhem song is the worst thing ever.
• Rose Funoral finally spoke out about the Uno Incident.
• Vince thinks the BP oil spill is Korny.

Next week will bring some more streams, interviews with Max Cavalera and Bobby Blotzer, and more self-righteous rage over fairly trivial topics. ‘Til then…

-AR

Fuck you, Tommy Lee.

You stupid, talentless hack. You waste of sperm and egg and food and water and air. Every day resources are wasted on you, when they could be utilized on someone else. Every seven seconds someone in the United States dies, which means you should feel guilty every seven seconds. Sure, we can’t prevent some of those deaths, but if you live while we don’t stop the ones we could prevent, well, then we have all failed. There is literally no piece of food or liquid that you’re good enough to consume. Every single bite. Should go. To another mouth.

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Oh, Family Guy. You so crazy. You already made a Tommy Lee-has-hepatitis joke some time back, but that didn’t stop you from making another one last night! And while we might be tempted to scold you picking on an easy target, well… we like to pick on Tommy Lee, too. And, besides. What a tool. He, like, totally deserves it.

Hulu fucking sucks and will never seem to let us embed despite the inclusion of an embed code, but click on the screen cap below to watch last night’s episode. The joke in question appears at roughly the 2:34 mark.

-AR

Yes, it’s true. Because Brides of Destruction, Methods of Mayhem, Sixx A.M., and Tommy Lee and Vince Neil’s solo efforts all burned up the charts, Mick Mars has decided to follow in the footsteps of the rest of his Crue and try his hand at making a solo album. It’s no surprise that it took Mick this long to catch up with the other guys, seeing as he is now made mostly of stone.

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A reader known only as “Jonas” sent us the below video of 55 Escape, a Norwegian band whose biggest influences seem to be Korn and Linkin Park, not Enslaved and Immortal.

Here’s why I find this band kind of interesting. (And moving forward, please be aware that “interesting” and “good” are not the same word.) When you think about it for a second, nu-metal seems to be a predominantly American phenomenon. Off the top of my head, I’m having a hard time even naming a nu-metal band from any part of Europe, never mind Norway. Jeff Killed John were British, but they didn’t get famous ’til they swapped the nu for core and rechristened themselves Bullet for My Valentine. Am I forgetting a really, really obvious band? Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Godsmack, Evanescence, Staind, Static-X, Creed, Hed P.E., Snot, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd, Drowning Pool, Saliva, Coal Chamber, Methods of Mayhem, 40 Below Summer, Sevendust, Ill Nino, Dope, Papa Roach, Soil, The Union Undergound… ALL AMERICAN. What the hell? No wonder the terrorists hate us.

Anyway, thanks to these sperm clots for doing their part in making America look good. Hoo-rah.

-AR

Dane Cook, a comedian so devastatingly untalented that he makes terminal cancer look funny by comparison, is collaborating with Tommy Lee, the modern era’s single best argument for using a condom. The two have recorded a track for a new Cook album (I didn’t know there was an old Cook album, but only because I don’t hate myself), and Cook describes the song as  “a little bit in the Jack Johnson vein, a little bit funky, a little jazzy.”

Of course, both Nostradamus and the Mayans predicted such a team-up when they foretold of the apocalypse, and I’d heard that the twist to the upcoming end-of-the-world thriller 2012 was that all the destruction is caused by a Cook-Lee song that’s a little bit in the Jack Johnson vein.

But I thought we had more time. I thought we had more time, damn it!

I won’t be able to do any more posting today. I have to go say farewell to my loved ones, and hopefully get laid one last time, before our world is destroyed forever. Damn you, Cook and Lee! GOD DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!

-AR

Earlier this week Earache Records was the subject of an extremely long-winded rant about the state of the metal industry. Now it’s Roadrunner’s turn.

First we get a press release announcing that Roadrunner has signed heavy rock band Hail the Villain. MS reader “Shit Sandwich” alerted us that the label also recently signed indie rockers The Jakes. Then comes the latest fracas involving Rob Zombie suddenly pushing back the release of Hellbilly Deluxe 2 saying “everything was turning into a chaotic mess” which was actually code for “I’m jumping ship to Roadrunner.” Methods of Mayhem… let’s not even go there. And the label is touting Ratt’s new record as one of its flagship releases for early 2010. I mean, I LOVES me some Ratt, but seriously?

All this following the dismissal of long-tenured A&R man Mike Gitter a few months back. Gitter brought Killswitch Engage, Opeth, Megadeth and many others onto the Roadrunner roster.

What the?!?

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Industry guru Bob Lefsetz, in one of his typically off-topic rants — in this case, a lengthy story about getting his ass checked for colon cancer (yes, really) — managed to sneak in this gem of insight about Tommy Lee:

And then they’re running late [at the doctor's office].  Which gives me enough time to read “Fortune” and find out that Tommy Lee is letting the public record his album.  Enough with the gimmicks Tommy, NO ONE WANTS YOUR ALBUM!  Yup, he records drums and vocals, you create the music and he owns it.  Huh?  Why does everybody keep paying attention to Mr. Lee.  He’s a DRUMMER!  He should be thankful that people still want to see him in Motley Crue.

I mean, right? Can we all please get a big, rousing “WHAT THE FUCK???” for Tommy Lee? Why do we even waste our breath talking about the guy? Let’s all collectively agree to stop buying into Tommy’s shenanigans and just ignore the damn guy.

But then again… the new American populace Methods of Mayhem is probably gonna give us tons of material here. Nevermind.

-VN

DUDE. Okay, seriously. What the fuck is going on this week? First Tommy Lee announces he’s reforming Methods of Mayhem, and now Vince Neil has announced he’s making another solo album (And, no, Steve Stevens won’t be on it – I checked.). What’s next? Is Nikki Sixx gonna make another Sixx A.M. album?

Wait – WHAT?!

Well fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck. It’s enough to make you want Motley Crue to keep touring.

-AR

P.S. Okay, but seriously, I’d love to see a Mick Mars side project called Mars Attacks!, and I’d love for its debut album to be entitled Creepy Human Statue. I’d give that album an automatic five out five horns.

YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Check it. Tizommy Lizee is bringing back Methods of Mayhem for real, yo. It’s been too long, playa. When’d the last MOM disc drop? Like ’01, ’02? Yooooo, that shit was HOT, son. “Get, g-get naked!” Peeps been waitin’ for a new MOM album like it was a free bj n’ shit. Tommy Lee! Givin’ da people what dey want! YEEEEEAAAHHHH BOYYYYYYY! Get down wit this shit, muthfucka!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yo, I gots to go find TiLo. Peace out, homie.

-AR