UPDATED:

Hey, so you what did you guys think of the idea I posited last week for a new band ranking system? Thanks to Jason from IKILLYA for pointing out the existence of NextBigSound.com, a cool site that aggregates a lot of the data I suggested be included in the ranking, namely social network stats and other Internet metrics. While NextBigSound allows account holders to enter their own Soundscan data, I’d love to see all those things — along with torrents, merch sales, etc — combined into a single chart that’s published once a week and accessible to the industry, much like Soundscan is now. The grand picture is so much bigger than album sales now more than ever, and I think that needs to be reflected in the main chart people analyze. For the most part, it seemed like you guys were into the idea even if you questioned its feasibility.

Anyway, this week is pretty depressing sales-wise. One look at the top six records on this week’s Current Hard Music chart should make any metalhead cry. Since there weren’t many notable new albums released last week and you surely don’t wanna just read about Nickelsuck, I also included numbers of some older albums from earlier in 2011 that are experiencing holiday sales bumps.

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Have you guys heard about the petition by Detroit Lions fans to replace Nickelback with some other band, ANY other band, as the performers at the halftime show of their Thanksgiving Classic game? Vince mentioned it while filling in for Dave Brockie during a recent “Unnecessary Roughness” column, but we never did a full piece on it, because, y’know, fuck Nickelback.

But now the band has responded via the below Funny Or Die video with Paul Scheer — co-star of MetalSucks’ collective favorite film ever, Piranha 3D, and its upcoming, sure-to-be-classic sequel, Piranha 3DD – and as much as it pains me to say anything nice about one of the worst things to happen in the history of sound… those Nickelfucks are pretty funny. There’s obviously no reason for them to take this seriously, since they’re gajillionaires, and since there was zero danger of them ever actually getting kicked off the show… so they might as well have fun with it, right?

(One thing I do have to mention, though — what the fuck happened to Chad Kroeger? I honestly did not recognize him at first. I can’t tell if he put on weight, got a haircut, had a nose job, or all of the above, but he is at least 75% less horrific looking now than he used to be.)

In related news, Metal Injection has now alerted us to the existence of Nickelblock — “a Chrome/Firefox plugin that blocks any mentions of Nickelback on the internet.” Holy shit, I am installing that immediately. You can download it here.

-AR

Interview and live pics by Emily Eve; girls on stage pic by Friedia Niimura

In one sense, making records is like using the toilet: It takes more to do number two than number one. And in the case of L.A. heavy metal semi-parodists Steel Panther, a follow-up to their wildly funny and compulsively banging 2009 debut Feel The Steel is an even bigger, stinkier challenge: This time, fans can see them coming, um so to speak. But in the spotlight’s glare, before expectant ears and faces poised to smile, lead singer Michael Starr and crew deliver a bigger, dirtier, and awesomer mass of heavy metal hilarity called Balls Out (available Tuesday). The 14-track tour de farce covers 47 amazing minutes, a range of hot-button rocker issues (drugs, gender roles, boners), and a load of singalong mega-choruses and nip-scorching guitar solos unheard since pro tools was just an aisle at Sears. To those somehow able to resist Feel The Steel, I say: You’re fucked now. Balls Out is stronger than you and your feeble protestations. Crank. It. Up.

This feat of skill and cocksmanship on display in Balls Out begs for investigation, so last week I went to hear firsthand how Steel Panther achieved the equivalent of making a Ghostbusters II better than its Ghostbusters I. And though it was a rainy, gusty Autumn night, the huge Steel Panther dressing room was buzzing heatedly as I sat down with Starr and lead bass player Lexxi Foxxx to get answers. Just nearby were lead guitarist Satchel (at whom I gazed lovingly whenever his inattention allowed) and lead drummer Stix Zadinia (with entourage) as the three of us gabbed highly about Balls Out, drugs, vaginas, immaturity, maturity, the guy from Nickelback, shaving stuff, the responsibilities of being Steel Panther, and much more.

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Nickelback isn’t racist!

-AR

[via The Chive]

Reader John Schwarz alerted us to the existence of the Epicenter Festival, and if you told me that the show’s bookers designed it specifically to make sure that no one from MetalSucks attended, well, I’d believe it. Look at this shitfest:

There are a handful of insanely popular, maddeningly terrible modern rock acts not on the bill — Nickelback, Korn, Linkin Park, Godsmack, Creed, and Hinder all come to mind — which is too bad, because if they were playing this fest, we’d be like one major earthquake away from being done with some of the worst bands in the history of sound. The only good news about this thing’s existence is that it has made me aware of several awful bands I didn’t previously know, so that now if anyone is ever like “Hey, wanna check out Skillet?”, I can respond, “Couldn’t you just hammer a rusty nail into my penis instead?”

-AR

Art of Sucking are the first sign to a new label owned by the two members of Disturbed whose names people actually know (that would be David Draiman and Dan Donegan, not Anonymous Drummer and Dude from Union Underground), and if you’re thinking “Hm, Disturbed are the worst thing to happen to humanity since the plague, so I bet they have shitty taste in music and signed an awful fucking band,” well, you’re right. Art of Sucking are fucking awful. It’s like Nickelback tried to rip-off A Perfect Circle and did what they do best, which is fail at everything that isn’t fooling lobotomized rubes into thinking they’re worth a damn.

But Art of Sucking’s new video, for “Die Sucking,” is kind of interesting, and by interesting, I mean in a “staring at one spot on the sidewalk for five minutes” kinda way. No joke, at least fifty percent of this thing’s running time is devoted to shots of the singer walking. I would have loved to have seen the production schedule for this thing: “Day 1, band performance. Day 2, dude walking — locations TBD.”

At least Hard Eight had the good sense to have their guy running and not just walking. Difference is, someone was paid to make this piece of crap:

I am going to hire a gypsy to put a curse on this band so that everything everywhere smells like farts to them always. It may not prevent them from making terrible music, but it will make me laugh.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week, Anso DF suggested the Question of the Week; unfortunately, he did so before Slipknot announced that they’re headlining the Sonisphere Festival this year, so it doesn’t seem quite as relevant anymore. Still, it was a fun question to answer, so:

TO WHAT EXTENT WOULD A SLIPKNOT BREAK-UP BE BAD FOR METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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No one thinks of Monster Magnet music as overtly inspirational, but fans know that its restorative power is formidable. Astounding, even. There’s an empowering hugeness, a tone of amused disgust, and a lovable protagonist in Dave Wyndorf, Monster Magnet’s mainman. It follows then that Wyndorf is into comic books (presumably the source of his skill at exploding proportions) and also that his ouevre’s best moments are a druggy, sweaty Iron Man-Meets-Evil Dead trilogy for your ears: Fist-pumping. Ear-banging. Mind-mangling. Sack-jabbing. (My hope is that I’m never at at a party where onto the stereo comes “All Friends and Kingdom Come” or “Powertrip,” ‘cuz I will dropkick somebody’s flatscreen into a different time zone.)

Despite his outsized persona on record and the then-pending departure of a longtime bandmate, Wyndorf sounded loose and limber when we spoke last week about his thunderous new record, Mastermind, his admirers in the press, the status of his health/weight/dancing, his favorite idiotic music, and Ozzy’s brain.

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It used to be that if you wanted to know what you should buy, you would see what famous people liked, and buy whatever they said was cool — like how I originally got into Suicide Silence after I heard Demi Lovato talking about them. But now there is another way to find out what you should buy: shopping haul videos. A haul video is where someone goes shopping, then makes a YouTube video where they tell you about all the stuff that they bought. Usually they are really long, and made by young girls who like to talk about themselves. I don’t have a video camera, so I can’t make a video, but I thought it might be cool for you to see some of the stuff I bought at Hot Topic the other day in case you are thinking about doing any shopping and and wondering what is cool right now.

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So, the regular season is a quarter of the way through and we can separate the good from the not so good. I’ve compiled a quick list of suggestions for certain teams (Bills, Lions, Panthers and ’9ers) to claw their way back to the top. Where muscles and tattoos used to intimidate the enemy, today’s athletes are on ‘roids and look like human coloring books. Here are some ideas that are outside of the box.

Suggestion 1: Have your entire defensive line eat a bunch of Mexican food for breakfast and chase it with a ton of castor oil.

As they shit themselves and vomit all over their opponents’ front line, the distraction, if not the smell alone, will clear a direct path to the QB. I’m not sure how many times this’ll work, seeing as if a human vomits and has diarrhea for the length of a football game they’ll be dead, but it might get at least one slash in the win column.

A quick example: There was a young lady who won the Boston Marathon while having her “lady event” and also pooping. Was she a great runner or did no one want to come close to her? It’s a sports mystery.

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We’ve gotten a lot of e-mails these past few days about My Darkest Days’ video for “Porn Star Dancing.” I don’t know why the sudden interest in this clip — it’s been around for weeks, we just never posted about it before. In any case, the song and video feature guest appearances by Ludacris, Nickelback’s Chad Horseface (seriously, he looks like Sarah Jessica Parker with a goatee, and SJP looks like a horse), and… Mr. Zakk Wylde.

And people seem really, really put off by Wylde’s presence. One reader even declared that he was “losing respect” for Zakk. And I’m totally confused by all the outrage. Has no one else heard what Zakk has been doing for the past decade? Did everyone miss his guest spot with Dope? People are talking about this as though Picasso rose from the dead to design posters for Vampires Suck or something. I mean, it’s not like Zakk’s artistic credibility was still in good standing, y’know? This is just one more nail in the coffin that holds his coolness.

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The United States is devolving; might as well have some fun at its expense, right?

So. Earlier this year, a dill pickle was able to accrue more fans on Facebook than Nickelback; now, in another move of social networking genius, someone has started a FB page entitled “Illegal immigrants can stay, deport the juggalos.” (“Because at least illegal immigrants aren’t making a mess in Meijer toy aisles at 3 AM.”) As of this writing, the page has more than 64,000 followers, which, the page’s administrator is quick to point out, is larger than “the number juggalos previously thought represented the entire population of the world.” If Wikipedia is to be believed, it’s also more than three times as many people as attended the 2009 Gathering of the Juggalos, which makes me wonder if the next move shouldn’t be to organize some kind of anti-Juggalo rally near the location of the fest’s 2010 edition. I mean, that’s what the Tea Partyers would do, right?

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When it comes to music (and other things really), I tend to play devil’s advocate. If everyone is shitting on a certain band, for some reason, I become more attracted to that band and seek them out. I don’t know what it is about my personality, but I think it stems from the same perspective that inspired me to write the antagonistic blog about rethrash. It may be a character flaw, but I’m sure it has something to do with a need to be an individual. From what I gather, this website is inhabited mainly by “true” metal heads. What I define as “true” are people whom are purists in the realm of metal and usually scoff at any band or trend that reeks of premeditated commercialism or an overt play for popularity, and who usually demand a certain level of musicianship and underground credibility. These fans usually hate every Metallica record after …And Justice For All, and for that matter always prefer any particular band’s older releases, which usually have a more raw and unrefined recording quality, as well as more abstract, less traditional song writing. For example, they will prefer Carcass’s Necrotiscim to Heartwork, or Morbid Angel’s Blessed Are The Sick to Domination. Oh yeah, and these guys gave up on In Flames and Soilwork years ago.

I have a good deal of that purism in my bones, but it always seemed short sighted and close minded. You have no idea how many arguments the Adler brothers from Lamb of God and I have gotten into over the merits of a particluar Metallica or Megadeth record. If you even bring up Disturbed or Limp Bizkit on MetalSucks, it is mocked and disregarded 100% of the time. I think metal heads often have a sheep mentality because of the fear of being viewed by their peers as less credible for liking bands that aren’t considered “true” or “real” enough. We all have guilty pleasures, but the real question is “Why should we feel guilty about something we enjoy?”

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In a triumph of e-nerd high fivery, an Internet campaign launched earlier this month to garner a simple (but delicious) dill pickle more Facebook fans than Nickelback reached its goal last Friday and now stands at more than 1.45 million fans. Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman goes inside the bun for the report:

Since Roadrunner is Nickelback’s label, and fellow Roadrunner band Killswitch Engage is temporarily without frontman Howard Jones, we think the pickle should replace All That Remains’ Phil Labonte for the remainder of the tour. I for one would pay good money to see Dillswitch Engage. Seriously, who doesn’t like Vlasic rock? I mean, what’s the dill-io with Howard Jones anyway? Roadrunner is stating that the tour will continue with Labonte, but it seems like the band has gotten themselves into quite a pickle. They should totally be relishing this tour, but suddenly things aren’t kosher.

Bravo Bram and bravo Internet. What’s Nickelback got to say about all of this? Hopefully they aren’t half sour.

-VN

MS Maniac Brian sent us a link to the below video with the message “Better than actual Nickelback?” I’ve appropriated that message for my headline, but I removed the question-mark, because, let’s face it, there is no question: this is, in literally every way, superior to actual Nickelback. Sure, it outstays its welcome a little, but so have Nickelback, and it’s still way shorter than their entire discography, so it’s still way better than actual Nickelback.

Anyway I don’t know who these dudes are, but I’d like to buy them a congratulatory beer. This made me giggle so.

What this might not be better than, however, is Pickleback. Which is clearly just the greatest dill ever.

-AR

Can a simple dill pickle garner more Facebook fans than Nickelback? It’ll take 1,380,820 fans to make that happen, but I believe in the power of the Internet and the deliciousness of pickles. Facebook user Coral Cripps created the Facebook fan page “Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?” [sic] less than a week ago on Wednesday, February 3rd. The worldwide ire for Nickelback is so strong that as of this writing the group already has 240,095 fans. When I joind the group yesterday it only had around 70,000… the Pickleback is spreading fast!

What I’d really love to see is Nickelback getting involved by mobilizing their fanbase to counter the attack of the pickle. Hey Roadrunner, get on that! It’d be hilarious. Take the joke and run with it, ala Earache/Oceano style!

Pickles 4evr!!!

-VN

This week in Soundscan, supergroup Chickenfoot shifted a ridiculous number of records. I’m baffled too. Elsewhere, Iron Maiden had a solid debut and bands like Nickelback, Hollywood Undead, Shinedown, Slipknot, and Metallica continued on with business as usual.

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The infamous Now That’s What They Call Music comp, now it’s thirtieth iteration (!), will never stop selling. Nor will Hannah Montana. Given, it’s tough for any true metal band to crack the Billboard 200, but Mastodon did just once again that by notching a #11 debut with Crack the Skye, beat out metal-wise only by Papa Roach (ugh). Elsewhere, we got some surprises from Chris Cornell, Twiztid (!?) and others. Sales figures for those and other notable hard rock and metal releases after the jump.

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Blame it on Fall Out Boy. Shortly after these emo butt dumplings covered Pantera, Madonna did the same only to be one-upped by Gym Class Heroes covering Lamb of God. Now, behold… Nickelback covering Metallica. As much as it pains me to say it, Chad Kroeger imitating James Hetfield actually sounds better than James Hetfield imitating James Hetfield in the year 2008.

-VN

[Thanks: Travis]

Apparently you aren’t the only one who thinks all Nickelback songs sound the same.

In response to this video, bass player Mike Kroeger said “I think that’s remarkable for someone to notice that there is a hit quality. If all hits sound the same, then sorry. When you are a band that has a distinct style such as us or AC/DC, that happens. When you have a distinct style, you run the risk of sounding similar.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the distinct sound of “suck:”

-VN