MetalSucks

Some unorganized observations about this video by Australian shredder lady Orianthi, sent to me by Zena Metal:

• Is that a sequined PRS? Good lord! Hideous.
• What’s with the guitar neck protruding out into all the shots? Is that an attempt to relate to the Guitar Hero generation? If so, how come none of it matches up with the song??
• She can definitely play!
• Nice dive bomb at the 3:00 mark.
• Apparently she was to be Michael Jackson’s guitarist for his This Is It shows. Eddie Van Halen… Steve Stevens… Slash… Orianthi. Hmmm. That’s some pretty righteous company.
• So many 12 year old dudes are going to have raging hard-ons for her. 12 year old Vince would’ve been ALL over this!
• All things considered, this isn’t bad. It’s middle of the road guitar/power pop made for tweens. Even if not for the shred it’d still be alright. If kids are listening to this over Ashley Tisdale, that’s a step in the right direction. But hey, this coming from the guy who genuinely enjoyed Avril Lavigne’s first record… so don’t trust me too much.

-VN

I haven’t done a blog in a while because the last blog I did really got me thinking about the mentality of people in the metal scene. Most particularly, the mentality of shit talking. We’re all guilty of it. I admitted to shit talking Bring Me The Horizon in magazines over in Europe when I was in God Forbid. I never heard them at that point. But now, I dig them and I feel pretty stupid for slagging them.

In my last blog I mentioned my excitement for the band Eryn Non Dae and how I was going to “borrow” some of their ideas for my new project. First of all, my last blog was PACKED with information about band business, touring and juicy tidbits of amazing knowledge :) But, the funny thing about the last blog was this guy ‘Jamie.’ Out of a five hundred word blog, he took the phrase “borrow ideas” and accused me and God Forbid of riding the coat tails of other popular bands. Killswitch was his biggest gripe. Then it was Opeth.

He claimed Gone Forever (2004) was a Killswitch rip and Earthsblood (2009) was an Opeth rip. This type of thing usually doesn’t bother me. In this instance I was fucking bothered. Jamie and I entered into a written brawl about the history of God Forbid and the intentions of our song writing for the last ten fucking years. Why would I waste my time to defend myself from this sort of claim?

Click to read more…

First of all, please allow me to begin by saying that I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON. Yes, I know I wrote about him too, but that was the day after he moonwalked the bucket – it’s been ENOUGH ALREADY. He died. He was talented, and he was crazy. It’s a little sad, but for for Christ’s sake, let’s keep some perspective here. There are much, much more important things going on in the world right now than the passing of the King of Pop. And besides, if I hear fucking “Billie Jean” one time, I’m going to slaughter every living soul in sight.

That being said… I had to post this. Yes, Buckethead is a weird, weird dude, and his obsessions with both Jackson and Disneyland are borderline-creepy. But he’s also a genius, and his tribute to Jackson, “The Homing Beacon,” is a beautiful piece of music. So just try to ignore that it’s one -gazillionth unnecessary tribute to MJ and just enjoy it as a wonderful bit of guitar playing.

You can stream “The Homing Beacon” here.

-AR

From MS Maniac VillanJ via Twitpic:

“Maybe the Grim (kvlt, tr00) Reaper will think he didn’t finish the job on Michael Jackson and axe this doofus.”

-VN

At the risk of sounding disrespectful: we cannot look at Michael Jackson through rose-colored glasses just because of his untimely passing. The dude was, to put it mildly, a weirdo, and probably very, very crazy. And the fact that he is now dead does not change that fact.

That being said, back when the guy was slightly less crazy (or, at least, the general public was less aware of his craziness), there’s no denying that he was major talent who had a huge impact on music. Denying this fact because of his later follies is just foolish. And even though I’ve been listening to metal since before I had pubes, I freely admit that I owned a copy of Thriller long before I owned a copy of Reign in Blood.

Jackson apparently had some kind of affinity for hard rock guitarists, or, at least, had someone in his camp who did. Besides employing Jennifer Batten for years, Jackson worked with Eddie Van Halen (“Beat It”), Slash (“Give in to Me”), and Steve Stevens (“Smooth Criminal”).

For the usual dumb reasons, none of the videos for these collaborations are embeddable, but you can easily find them on the net. In the meantime, here’s Jacko and Slash:

On a more cynical note, except at least one, if not more, of these guitarists to start exploiting their relationship with Jackson for publicity any second now.

-AR

Headbanger’s Blog — the proprietor of which was so kind as to hook me up last minute with a ticket to last night’s Children of Bodom / Testament / Black Dahlia Murder / Between the Buried and Me show — posted an awesome animated music video by the Hungarian band Blind Myself. The video was animated by 32-year-old Hungarian cartoonist Balázs Gróf and apparently took over a year to complete, featuring cartoon depictions of Slipknot, Metallica, Ozzy, and Michael Jackson. Enjoy.

-VN