After years of waiting, Dark New Day fans finally got to hear the band’s second record, Hail Mary, this past August, along with an equally impressive B-sides collection. For those of us that had waited patiently the release of these two albums was heartily welcomed, but it also raised a number of questions: why’d it take so long, and why now? what went south with the record label? why do all of these songs sound so different?

There hasn’t been any press whatsoever surrounding Hail Mary‘s release — the band put it out quietly and independently through digital retailers (they’re on Amazon) — but bassist Corey Lowery, whose past bands also include Stuck Mojo and Stereomud, agreed to chat with me last week about all things Dark New Day. We also got to talking about Corey’s new band Eye Empire, an incredibly talented group who I cannot recommend enough to fans of Dark New Day and Sevendust.

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Mushroomhead’s Jeffrey Nothing — that’s the bald singer who does the Mike Patton wanna-be vocals in the band, not the other guy who, like, screams and raps and stuff — has debuted a new solo track, “Death Masquerade,” on Revolver‘s website. And because no bands have parted ways with their singer in the last hour or so and I need shit to write about, I made myself listen to it.

Well, that’s a lie. I listened to about half of it. That was as much as I could take. It wasn’t the soporific “riff,” the mid-90s sound effects, the head-scratch-inducing vocals, or even the total lack of Pig Benis that finally broke me down — no, it was the terrible, amateurish production that made me give up. In this day and age, when there are dudes who are recording top-notching sound shit literally in their bedrooms and garages, it’s amazing that anyone, let alone anyone who makes music on a professional level, would release something that sounds like it was recorded in a potato sack. And yet, here we are.

Maybe Mr. Nothing was just trying to make me appreciate Mushroomhead? Like, “Hey, dickhead blogger, it could be way worse?” If that’s the case, then let’s have a hearty golf clap for the fellow who suddenly made me long for the days of turntables and Seal covers.

You can check out the song for yourself here. The New Psychodalia, Nothing’s solo debut, comes out October 11 via Suburban Noize.

-AR

1) Be nicer to Sebastian Bach
2) Compare penis sizes with Tommy Lee
3) Hire Phil LaBonte as a vocal coach
4) Hire Billy Milano as a personal trainer
5) Hire Tripp Eisen as a baby sitter
6) Sleep with present-day Tawny Kitaen
7) Help Danzig clean up his motherfucking bricks, bitch
8) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about politics
9) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about romance
10) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about Ted Nugent

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Believe it or not, folks still buy CDs. I know… I’m shocked too. But the weekly Soundscan numbers released by Neilsen actually do include digital downloads too. I know what you’re thinking… people still pay for music? I s’pose so. Here are the most recent week’s charting hard rock and metal releases, with my own snarky commentary, natch. Check those tags down yonder for a list of covered releases.

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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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Absolutely nothing! But I’m lumping them in together anyway. If you don’t like it, you can, in the words of Elizabeth Darko, go suck a fuck.

And so:

• Kylesa’s “Tired Climb” is streaming here. I wish I could think of something to say about it other than “It sounds like Kylesa,” but, y’know. It sounds like Kylesa. I really dig it, but if you don’t like this band, this song won’t do anything to change your mind. And if you’re like me and you enjoy Kylesa but completely understand Vince’s point about there being absolutely no need for that second drummer, well, this won’t do anything to change your mind, either — if I didn’t know that the band had two drummers, I’d never be able to tell from this song. Kylesa’s latest, Spiral Shadow, comes out October 26 on Season of Mist.
• Mushroomhead have a new song, “Come On,” streaming over at Guitar World… but I can’t listen to it ’cause I keep getting this message when I try… …and homie don’t play that. So the bad news is, I can’t tell you what the new Mushroomhead song sounds like, and the good news is, I don’t have to listen to the new Mushroomhead song. Their new album, Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children, comes out September 28 on Megaforce. And if you think it’s weird that Anthrax, Living Colour, The Black Crowes, and Mushroomhead are all on the same label, well, so do I.

-AR

Here we had this entire week devoted to hair metal, and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Let’s do this again real soon, okay?

Here’s some of the fun we had this week, be it hair-metal related or not:

• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal taught us to be mind-less, Antagonist’s Carlos Garcia taught us about the song “Sasha Grey,” and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney taught us more about corporate-sponsored live shows.
• Anso and Allyson from Bring Back Glam! counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums.
• We counted down the Top Ten Bands Most Often Miscategorized as Hair Metal.
• Vince spoke with Serj Tankian, Gary spoke with Frankie from Emmure, and Sergeant D. spoke with Samantha Maloney from Brother Clyde/Shift/Hole/Motley Crue/every band ever.
• We debuted a new track by The Binary Code!
• Leyla Ford counted down the ten worst and best hair metal band names.
• Sammy checked out the new release by Eibon.
• Dave Mustein checked out The Cool Tour.
• Someday, this little girl is going to make Sergeant D. very, very unhappy.
• I can’t tell the difference between all the members of Mushroomhead, can you?

I wanna especially thank Allyson from Bring Back Glam! for all her help this week — we love you, Allyson! Come back anytime.

Monday we return, but we’ll have a little less Aqua Net in our hair, a little less eyeliner on our lids, and a lot less skip in our step. See ya then.

-AR

I don’t wanna talk about Mushroomhead’s music. About that topic, I have nothing to say that the peanut gallery won’t say for me, and was going to say from the moment I wrote the word “Mushroomhead,” regardless of the other words by which it was surrounded.

Instead, I want to think like a Hollywood Marketing Douche and say that as much success as Mushroomhead have enjoyed, I think they would have been even bigger if a casual observer, such as, let’s say, myself, could actually tell these dudes apart.

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As I mentioned earlier this week, a little while back I got an e-mail from The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney to discuss an extremely negative review I’d given the band’s last album, Fear Will Cast No Shadow. McChesney could have been a total dick about the whole thing, but as it turns out, he’s a very even headed, intelligent, and cool dude. So what else was there to do but interview him about the band’s new album, Requiem, which will come out June 9 on Victory. McChesney was even good enough to let us debut the first single off of that album, “The Curtain Hits The Cast,” for which the band will shoot a video in the coming weeks.

I still haven’t heard the new album, but I do already like this song way, way more than anything from Fear Will Cast No Shadow; it’s catchy and it doesn’t sound overly processed, which, I think, is what The Autumn Offering were striving for. Check out the song below, and then my conversation with Matt McChesney after the jump! (FYI – for fear that this was all a set-up for Matt to have me murdered, the interview was conducted by e-mail.)

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Instead, viewers of the show selected Mushroomhead’s clip for “1200,” the song that promises to be four times better than the movie 300. The video was directed by House. That’s right: the cranky, quirky doctor with the cane directed a Mushroomhead video!

Personally, I think the choice sucks – even if you were gonna choose a Mushroomhead video from earlier this year, I’d think you’d at least go with a super-catchy guilty pleasure song like “Simple Survival” – but apparently more than 120,000 people voted in the show’s “Video of the Year” poll, so, uh, give the people what they want, I guess.

In a press release, Mushroomhead stated, “Fuck Slipknot. We are very proud to have won this award. Fuck Slipknot. We’d  like to thank all the fans who voted for us, and not for Slipknot. We’d also like to thank House for taking time out of his very busy schedule curing weird diseases to do our video. Also, fuck Slipknot.”

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/CBYdliM0QtA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR