MetalSucks

Anyone else relieved that Avatar didn’t win Best Picture last night? Not that the Oscars matter any more than any other award in the scheme of things, but, seriously. I’m over it with the blue cat people.

ANYWAY, the movie that did win, The Hurt Locker, is notable to metalheads primarily because the film implies that its protagonist, SSG William James (Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner), is a metalhead – or, at least, a really big fan of Ministry. When the audience first meets James, he’s blasting “Khyber Pass” by Ministry, and two other Ministry songs, “(Fear) Is Big Business” and “Palestina,” are also used during the course of the movie.

Some may find this offensive – you could argue that metal is, once again, being used as short hand for “something’s seriously wrong with this dude,” as is the case in so many films – but here’s what I think is really interesting about it: some of the biggest criticisms against The Hurt Locker are that it is (allegedly, at least) apolitical; it doesn’t take a stance on the war in Iraq, it just portrays some of the soldiers fighting over there. But Ministry are anything BUT apolitical, and one listen to their music gives away their stance on the issue at hand. Did the filmmakers realize this when they selected that particular band’s music to be in the movie? It’s hard for me to believe it was just an arbitrary decision…

-AR

Poor Joey Jordison must get bored when he’s not busy with Slipknot; besides Corey Taylor and Clown, he’s easily the most visible member of the band, even when they’re on hiatus (as they are right now). This is extra-amazing when you consider the fact that, unlike Taylor or Clown, he doesn’t really have a side-project: the one he started, Murderdolls, released one album in 2002, did a whole bunch of touring behind it, and then promptly broke-up. (MD vocalist Wednesday 13 recently hinted at a possible Murderdolls reunion, but that doesn’t actually seem to be happening.) But Jordison constantly manages to stay in the spotlight, be it through producing gigs (3 Inches of Blood’s Fire Up the Blades) or, more often, guest spots with other well-known bands: he recorded some drums for Otep’s House of Secrets (as though Otep didn’t sound enough like Slipknot already), toured with Ministry, and did a few tour dates with Satyricon before a couple of their members got arrested on a kiddie-sex charge and that trek was canceled.

And now it’s been announced that Jordison will spend the spring and summer playing for Rob Zombie.

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We just received the following press release here at the MetalSucks Mansion. I don’t usually like to just cut and paste press releases, but in this instance I feel like I need to do so in order to make my point. So:

Ministry’s Uncle Al Jourgensen is apparently in the Christmas spirit, having created a Christmas video “card” for you and his fans that is also his very first solo project.

Al and good buddy Mark Thwait (Mission UK, Peter Murphy, Mob Research), collaborated on “It’s Always Christmas Time,” a tribute to friend and band mate Paul Raven (Ministry, Killing Joke, Mob Research) on the two-year anniversary of his passing in 2007. With Christmas less than two weeks away, it’s Al’s way of spreading his very own brand of holiday cheer.

Okay. That all sounds fair enough. But then I watched the actual video in question:

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So the nominations for the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards have been announced. The nominees for “Best Metal Performance” are slightly less embarrassing than usual – I’m assuming because the popularity of metal is on the rise, so some bands with actual talent are enjoying the spotlight. Here they are:

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Nachtmystium’s Black Meddle, Pt. 1 was one of the best albums of 2008, ending up at the top or near the top of most MS staffers’ top ten lists that year. So, naturally, Nachtmystium fans everywhere have been asking the question, “Hey, where the fuck is Black Meddle, Pt. II?”

Well, hey, guess what? The band has issued an update to that very query on their MySpace page:

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Metal Legacies is an ongoing memorial to extreme music pioneers who kicked the proverbial bucket way too soon.

[MetalSucks contributor Corey Mitchell managed Eric Powell's band, 16volt, from 1996-1998. He asked Powell to write about his friend and bandmate, Raul Raven, for the Metal Legacies series.]

by Eric Powell

Life. It goes by too fast and comes at you too slow. When you are 14, all you want is to be 16 so you can get the keys to the car and just drive, just drive wherever — fucking freedom. It seems like those two years take forever. You count the milliseconds waiting for your ticket out of hell. Then you blink your eyes and all of a sudden you wonder what happened to your twenties, then your thirties, and it’s all a flash. Those two years you waited for the keys to a car, barely a blip. You look back at all the days and at all the scars, and mostly at the memories, now rich with texture and variance, they blur together weaving a sort of out-of-body, self propelled storyline that hopefully ends with some kind of impact.

At some point in our lives we hopefully realize that everything we do counts for something. A never ending chain of events both understated and exaggerated, and our choices link together to write a tangled, barely understandable life story. We hopefully get to a point where our experience with time develops a conscience — a self-aware state where we appreciate all that we missed and we miss all that we didn’t.

Some are born lucky, falling into a calling early, riding it like a well built clipper attacking uncharted seas, often a rough ride, but the ride never lets them down. It’s a single threaded path holding true to itself, a line drawn by our own internal and elusive drive. These lucky few charge ahead with no rules, saber in hand, slashing and gnawing effortlessly through what seem like goals in life, but come off as merely happenstance.

You can apply this babble to the chosen few who get to play music for a living, who get to tour for a living, who make it into the “club” — a silent brotherhood of merry thieves living on the outskirts of society, in the lounges of tour buses and in the dirty back stage areas of outdated concert venues. Gathering in dark hallways to share stories of their battles over catered liquors and fruit plates, duty free cigarettes, and handheld HD video cameras, a broken generator, a sprained wrist, an amp exploding, Roman candle fights in the middle of Montana. So much that can never be spoken. Things left to the moments and events that will never be uttered, the code keeping everyone’s skeletons secret to only the lucky bastards who get to live and witness the real deal. It all falls under the banner of “Rock and Roll,” right?

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This new song from the Greatest Horror Director of All Time is actually called “What?” As in, “What? Is that Al Jourgensen singing?”

But, no, seriously. Is that Al Jourgensen singing? ‘Cause if it ain’t, he should sue.

Rob’s new offering, Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls, and the Longest Fucking Title Ever Given to an Album Not Recorded by Fiona Apple, comes out November 17.

-AR

Thanks to Jonathon Edwards for the tip!

Let’s face it: Ministry without Paul Barker just isn’t the same. Nothing on Houses Of The Mole, Rio Grande Blood, or The Last Sucker offered the thrills and low-end chills of albums like Psalm 69 and Filth Pig. As a longtime industrial music fanatic, I am sick and fucking tired of being let down every time Al Jourgensen puts out new music. His latest outing, the positively plebeian cash-in Sex-O Olympic-O, should never have been released under the Revolting Cocks name. Enough is enough! The time has come for Hypo Luxa and Hermes Pan to hug-it-the-fuck-out!

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By all accounts, the Meshuggah / Cynic / The Faceless tour earlier year was exactly the masturbatory dude-fest it promised to be from the get-go. With a lineup like that, how could it be anything less than completely mindblowing? Before the show I had the opportunity to catch up with Meshuggah guitarist Marten Hagstrom. I asked him about the touring lifestyle, how the band’s sound has evolved and changed over the years, Meshuggah’s now near-legendary cult status, and one question that really got his goat about the hoardes of Swedish melodic death metal bands that have grown to popularity in recent years. Our chat, after the jump.

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My first Fuck Rolling Stone post on metal singers was such a hit I thought I’d dig back into the RS archives and stir up some more shit. So, I decided to re-read their summertime list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (also here).

Thankfully, there are a few metallic (but mostly rockish) noteworthy icons; however, extreme metal is woefully ignored. Nonetheless, the list did include Jimi Hendrix (#1), Jimmy Page (#9), Kirk Hammett (#11), Kurt Cobain (#12), Johnny Ramone (#16), Tom Morello (#26), Thurston Moore/Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) (#33/#34), Joe Perry (#48), Ritchie Blackmore (#55), Vernon Reid (#66), Eddie Van Halen (#70), Adam Jones (Tool) (#75), D. Boon (The Minutemen) (#89), Glen Buxton (Alice Cooper) (#90), Wayne Kramer/Fred “Sonic” Smith (MC5) (#92/#93), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) (#95), Angus Young (#96), Leigh Stephens (Blue Cheer) (#98), Greg Ginn (Black Flag) (#99), and Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) (#100).

And, yet another reason why we here at the MetalSucks Mansion like to say “Fuck Rolling Stone!” — coming in at #86, TOMMY Iommi…yes, “TOMMY.” How the fuck do you not know the first name of one of the true legends of not only metal, but of rock guitars? Hmmmmmmmm….Please, clue me in.

IT’S TONY, YOU FUCKS!!!

Anyway, here is my stab at the best Metal Guitarists of All Time — and for a point of reference, my Old Fartness will be shining through here, as will my love for rhythm guitarists:

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Even now that Slayer are Grammy winners, I don’t think any metalhead really gives a flying fuck about the Grammys. But, what the fuck – here are this year’s nominees for “Best Metal Performance”:

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A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity to sit down and talk with Ascension of Watchers and ex-Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell, a chance I jumped at right away. Bell was quite the gentleman, sitting through a long interview and answering my questions about the new Ascension of the Watchers album Numinosum (read my review here), his past career with Fear Factory, working with Al Jourgensen of Ministry, and a whole lot of other topics. The full chat transcript, after the jump.*

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As opposed to Ministry’s headline performance (read Axl’s review), Meshuggah absolutely fucking destroyed last night at NYC’s Irving Plaza. It seems like a good chunk of metalheads at last night’s show in NYC were there strictly for Meshuggah — after all, U.S. tours for the band are few and far between. Eight string guitars? Check. Forward head-banging? Check. Gut-wrenching, precision drumming? Double-check.

What is there really to say about Meshuggah that you don’t already know? They’re fucking awesome, they make your head spin, they are br00tal, yadda yadda. Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges (and lots of other mags you read) summed it up better than I possibly could, anyways:

Yet Meshuggah provoke a profound bodily response. People sway, nod their heads, or simply close their eyes. It’s trance music in the true sense. The key is Tomas Haake, whom only Vinnie Paul rivals in steely precision and groove. Meshuggah cut through the testosterone bullshit that “groove” in metal usually entails, and tap into something truly primal. Yes, they’re cerebral – but towards physical ends. Their sonic vice grips probably light up the same areas of my brain that addiction does. Like how certain psychedelic experiences weren’t possible before synthesized drugs, Meshuggah couldn’t have existed 30 years ago. They’re that rare band for whom today’s antiseptic, hyper-compressed production is perfectly appropriate.

See? MESHUGGAH!!!!

-VN

Vince and I saw Ministry’s (alleged) farewell tour last night, which is to say, we went to see Meshuggah (who ruled – Vince’ll have a review up a little later I think), and then we decided to stick around for Ministry, who just happened to be the headliners.

There were two distinct crowds at this show, and after Meshuggah concluded their set, suddenly all the long haired dudes with big beards split and the venue was suddenly overflowing with what we might call, for lack of a better term, hipsters, yuppies, and good old fashioned bridge n’ tunnel trash. Ministry took an unbearably long amount of time to set up, mostly, I think, because they perform from behind a chain-link fence that had to be installed (Is Al Jourgensen saying we’re all prisoners of the band, or that the band are prisoners of us all? HE’S SO DEEP!!!). Then the lights dimmed and some intro music started and I thought “Oh, swell. The band is finally gonna come out and play some music now.”

Then the intro music kept going.

And going.

And going.

Seriously, this intro was so long that it’s still happening right now. I’m still standing here, typing this review as the intro music plays, waiting for the band to come out. “Wow,” a friend of ours jokes, “live they sound exactly the same as they do on the CD!” Yes, they’ve decided to go ahead and just play an entire song from the CD over the PA system for their “intro.” And it’s not a short song, either. Another friend wonders aloud why they’ve kept the crowd waiting for so long if they’re not even on stage for the first fifteen hours of their show.

Oh-kay! The band has finally gone on now. They open with “Let’s Go” from The Last Sucker, and suddenly I’m reminded why I never really like Ministry that much: for each song, they find a cool riff, and then just play it over and over and over and over again. Sometimes they find a second cool riff and then play that for too long as a kind of bridge between bouts of playing the original cool riff. Even stoned or drunk, this shit can get real old, real fast. Add to that the fact that Jourgensen, as a performer, strives to be very, um, theatrical, which I usually dig, but, really, he’s not that good at being theatrical. He just kind of comes off like the David Cross character on Arrested Development.

Above, I’ve posted Ministry’s video for “Just One Fix.” It’s a song I generally like, and when I was a young man, I found the video, with its weird William S. Burroughs cameo and kid endless puking, to be genuinely disturbing. It’s how I’d like to remember Ministry – not the way we (allegedly) said “farewell” to them last night.

-AR

The latest Blabbermouth [via Rock N Roll Experience] news sure to cause an uproar: Burton Bell just gave an interview where he calls Deftones front man Chino Moreno “a dick,” Slipknot’s Joey Jordison a “sloppy” drummer, and asserts that the last few Ozzy albums have been full of “shitty music.”

And, hey, you know what? Horns up to Bell for being honest. Because while I don’t think Jordison is a sloppy drummer and I don’t know Chino well enough to classify him as a dick or otherwise, but Ozzy certainly has been making shitty music for at least three studio albums now. And why the fuck should we fault Bell for speaking his mind? It’s better than the usual being diplomatic bull crap.

Ironically enough, the last time I remember someone this prominent in the metal world really speaking out like this was Chino’s infamous Revolver interview in the summer of ‘03, when he slagged every band he was about to hit the road with for that year’s Summer Sanitarium tour (including Metallica). What goes around comes around, I s’pose…

-AR

Another fine metal Tuesday of new releases is upon us.

The most talked-about release today is In Flames’ controversial new album A Sense of Purpose. Does it represent a step towards current trends or the next logical evolution of the band? Read Vince’s Sunday Spotlight feature on In Flames for a career retrospective of the band up until this point.

Sevendust release their seventh record Chapter VII: Hope & Sorrow today, less than a week after announcing the return of original guitarist Clint Lowery, making this album kind of irrelevant. It’s the third Clint-less album, and hence the third to sound exactly the same. But it’s Sevendust, and there are a few gems within. Read Vince’s long review and short review.

Dream Theater release the aptly titled Greatest Hit and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs 2-disc retrospective set. Ironically, the one “greatest hit” has been remixed and robbed of its originality.

Retro-Sabbathian metallers The Sword release their new one Gods of the Earth today; Kip W. will have a full review shortly, but preliminary reactions have been so-so.

Elsewhere, Ministry finally release their covers album Cover Up after embarking on their farewell C U LaTour with Meshuggah. Apparently Joe Satriani has a new album out, and though we haven’t heard it we’re pretty sure we know what it sounds like. And experimental art metallers Nadja have a new one too; color me interested to hear it.

So hit your local record store (at least one city, Seattle, still has an awesome one called Everyday Music that I visited this weekend), iTunes, or your favorite torrent legal music download service and get these new jams.

Fear Factory singer Burton C. Bell is finally back with a new project, Ascension of the Watchers, along with John Bechdel (Killing Joke, Ministry) and Edu Mussi (Still Life Decay). As other Fear Factory members have gone forth and prospered in the metal world — Dino Cazares with Divine Heresy, and Christian Olde Wolbers in the producer’s chair for Mnemic and Threat Signal — Bell has been relatively quiet in recent years, and has taken a decidedly different path than his former Fear Factory brothers.

Bell’s silence is about to end, relatively speaking, with Numinosum, the debut from Ascension of the Watchers, due February 19. Numinosum is Fear Factory’s ambient alter-ego, with its atmospherics and electronics representing everything Fear Factory was not. Imagine the filler tracks on a Tool album, full of samples, atmospheric keyboards, and whispers. Picture the brooding, dark, tripped-out explorations of the soul that have always made up the majority of Nine Inch Nails’ album tracks. Now imagine those on top of beats reminiscent of a darker, dirtier Portishead — and you should have a pretty good idea of what Numinosum sounds like.

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It’s that time again; the Meshuggah camp is starting to stir with various news and rumblings. Yesterday the band announced that they finished recording their new album, titled obZen, a few weeks ago, and will tentatively release the album in early 2008 via Nuclear Blast.

Then today the band announced they will tour as direct support for Ministry on a 33-date North American run starting in March 2008, which will presumably coincide with the album release. The tour, titled “C U LaTouR,” will be Ministry’s farewell to North America, promoting Ministry’s latest and final album The Last Sucker. Hemlock will also be on the tour.

I’ve never been a fan of Ministry, but Meshuggah tours the U.S. so rarely that I’ll definitely spring for the ticket to see them; Ministry could be a fun bonus as well. Pre-sale tickets will supposedly be available here on Thursday, though the link is broken as of the writing of this post. Full tour dates after the jump.

-VN

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Prong’s new album Power of the Damager comes out tomorrow via 13th Planet Records, but why wait until tomorrow when you can hear the best track, the album’s namesake, right here? Prong singer/guitarist Tommy Victor produced the effort, and received some mixing help from Ministry’s Al Jourgensen. Prong is an interesting band with a long history I’m barely aware of, but I’m sure lots of our readers really like this band.

Steal This Track: Prong – “Power of the Damager” mp3

[See also "The Banishment"]

-VN