Guys, I have some really, really surprising, and upsetting, news to share. Maybe you should sit down for this one, ’cause it might be kinda hard to hear. But it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get through this together. I promise. Alright?

Are you sitting down? Okay. Good. Here we go.

Courtney Love has not been a very good mother to her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

Okay. It’s okay. I know it’s a shock. You can go ahead and cry if you need to.

See, in 2009, Frances Bean filed a restraining order against Courtney — yes, a a restraining order against her own mother. And, what’s worse, that restraining order not only restricted Love from coming near Frances Bean, but also from coming near Frances Bean’s grandmother or aunt (and for those of you playing along at home, yes, those are the same women whose finances Courtney was oh-so-concerned about back in November, when she accused Dave Grohl of being a greedy asshole who was taking money away from Kurt Cobain’s family), and, oh yeah, also from coming near the family dog. And why did the dog need protection? Well, according to newly released court documents:

Click to read more…

via Badass Digest

Dj Slashba — noun – 1. A temp. 2.  A fill-in, placeholder. 3. A pretender to the throne. 4. Someone who keeps an unlit cigarette dangling from lips. 5. A retard.

Props to our friend Nick for teaching us a new term.

Here’s some shit we did this week:

• We got a tour of the live rig used by Obscura’s Christian Muenzner.
• We debuted new music by Czar, and, thanks to our pals at Decibel, Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
• We spoke to Nader Sadek.
• We checked out the latest releases from Locrian, The Wounded Kings, and Astomatous.
• We examined Slayer’s tour rider.
• We wondered if this commercial will really help sell lingerie or not.
• We over-thought the latest ramblings of Courtney Love.
• We contemplated the most over-used words in extreme metal writing.
• We considered the music of Fallujah.
• By special request, Sergeant D. reviewed Carnifex’s Until I Feel Nothing.

Next week we have some very cool interviews, some very cool music premieres, and, oh yeah, we gorge ourselves on Turkey and celebrate ridding ourselves of that pesky little Native American nuisance. See ya then.

-AR

Yesterday, we saw video of Courtney Love flying off the handle when a fan held up a Kurt Cobain t-shirt during a recent performance; amongst other topics, her subsequent rant honed in on Dave Grohl, who, she seemed to claim, had been fired from Nirvana by Cobain. Later, as part of a kind-of-new-but-really-the-same rant, she said that “I don’t care what you listen to at home. But a guy takes money off my kid’s table… fuck him!” I wasn’t really clear what the hell she meant at the time, but a MetalSucks commenter named Chris asserted that “she was claiming Grohl is the one taking money off her kid’s table, which makes sense given the history of those two arguing over royalties and rights and whatnot.”

And bravo to Chris for apparently being fluent in Courtney, ’cause his assessment of the situation was absolutely correct. The PRP posted the below post-show interview with Love, in which she clarifies why she’s so pissed at Grohl. To hear her tell it, Grohl didn’t write any of Nirvana’s music (including the “drum riff” from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), makes a shit ton of money from the Foo Fighters (which is not hard to believe) and is consequently not hurting for money (which is also not hard to believe) — and yet he continues to own a piece of Nirvana, and recently purchased an Aston Martin with his Nirvana, Inc. credit card (thus he is “taking money off my kid’s table”) while Cobain’s mother and sister suffer from poverty. Check it out below, and get my thoughts after the jump:

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Wowee wow wow wow. A reader calling himself Geddy Lee — whom I’m reasonably certain is not the dude from Rush — just e-mailed us the above clip of Courtney Love going apeshit at this past weekend’s SWU festival in Brazil. The cause of her outbreak is that someone in the crowd was holding up a photo of Kurt Cobain, at which point Courtney pretty much loses it and says:

“I don’t need to see a picture of Kurt, asshole, and I’m gonna have you fucking removed if you keep throwing that up. I’m not Kurt. I have to live with his fucking shit and his ghost and his kid every day. Throwing that up is stupid and rude, and I’m gonna beat the fuck out of you if you do it again. Y’know what? You weren’t fucking married to him, I fucking was. You didn’t fucking get kicked out of a band by him like Dave, he did. Go see the fucking Foo Fighters and do that shit.”

Then she storms off the stage with a final flip of the bird, and then eventually she comes back and adds, “I don’t care what you listen to at home. But a guy takes money off my kid’s table… fuck him!”

Now, I have a lot of thoughts on this matter, so I’m kinda just gonna ramble here. Please accept my most humble apologies.

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…Max Cavalera recently revealed during a radio interview (video above) that he’s working on his autobiography with British journalist Joel McIver, who has previously penned such metal-themed tomes as The Bloody Reign of Slayer and Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica. The forward will apparently be written by Dave Grohl, who collaborated with Cavalera as part of his Probot project back in ’04.

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An artist named Alex Pardee made the above print, and I don’t think that there would be anything especially remarkable about it… if not for the fact that it’s entitled Captain Kirk Cobain.

Now, I think enough time has passed that making jokes about how Kurt Cobain was killed by Courtney Love himself is perfectly permissible — but it would be really swell if those jokes could be, y’know, funny. Because the whole gag here is that the names “Kirk” and “Kurt” share two letters. That’s the kind of joke Dane Cook would make. Sheesh.

Cry outrage or something else in the comments section below. If you’re really so inclined, you can order one of these prints here for the low low cost of $65 + shipping & handling + never ever knowing the touch of a woman again.

-AR

[via Badass Digest]

Before we went to see them this past Monday night, Vince and I had already heard that the Foo Fighters were gonna be backing the legendary Roger Waters on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon as part of “Pink Floyd Week.” So when the band suddenly broke into a rendition of “In the Flesh?” from The Wall towards the end of their show, we lept to our feet with excitement, ’cause we thought that maybe, just maybe, they were about to bring Mr. Waters himself out on stage to perform.

Alas, no such luck. Luckily, though, the performance they did do with Waters for Fallon is now online, and you can check it out below. Vince asked, “How does Grohl get to perform with every single one of his heroes?” But I suspect he already knew the answer: “Because he is fucking awesome.”

And while we’re on the topic of Grohl and the Foos, I mentioned earlier this week that the band did, indeed, have a very special guest at the show — Grohl’s old Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic, who played the accordian for FF’s “These Days.” You can enjoy some fan-filmed footage of that performance after the jump!

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One of the highlights of yesterday evening’s aforementioned Foo Fighters show was a guest appearance by Dave Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic*, on the tune “These Days” from the Foos’ most recent offering, Wasting Light. Novoselic’s cameo was meant to help celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the release of Nevermind, which took place this past Saturday, and even though Novoselic actually played accordian (!), not bass, on the song, it was still a fun way to commemorate the event.

Also a fun way to commemorate the event: The Dillinger Escape Plan’s cover of “Territorial Pissings” from that seminal release. It’s part of a Kerrang!‘s Nevermind tribute, which, like that magazine’s Master of Puppets anniversary album in ’06 or Metal Hammer’s more recent ode to the Black Album, recreates the entire record, with a different band covering each song. Only in the case of the Nevermind thinger, DEP is the only group that I both a) am familiar with and b) am a fan of. So you can basically listen to this and ignore the rest.

The cover doesn’t take many liberties with the original, but such a ferocious, punk-y song is still extremely well-suited for Dillinger’s particular talents. Also, they took out that wobbly Buffalo Springfield bit at the beginning, which always irritated me on the original recording for some reason.

-AR

*It should go without saying that the name following the phrase “a guest appearance by Dave Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate” would be Krist Novoselic. I mean, it’s not like they were gonna bring out the remains of Kurt Cobain and parade him around for our amusement, y’know?

[via The PRP]

As the media can’t help but remind us, September marks the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Too many journos and players have spilled ink on this topic over the past month that I’m not even going to waste my energies doing the same. That record has been essentially IGNORED for half of its lifetime, and the commentary has been cheap and useless, so why bother?

Still, one can typically find a few kernels of corn in their shit, and indeed deep inside the crappy coverage lies the opinion of none other than Meatmen mastermind Tesco Vee, who had this to say on this momentous occasion:

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Remember a couple of years back, when we saw that video of Machine Head’s Robb Flynn rocking out at a Metallica concert while watching from the floor and not the VIP section or the side of the stage or wherever? Well, if the below footage of Dave Grohl doing likewise at a Soundgarden reunion show in Los Angeles this past July isn’t quite as cool, it’s really only because at no point does Grohl grab the camera and sing into it the way Flynn did.

It’s still pretty freakin’ awesome, though. Not only does Grohl clearly have legit love for the band, but it’s not even like he’s standing in the back — he’s right up front, getting crushed by all the other Soundgarden nerds. Seriously, I don’t know how you could not love this dude.

-AR

Thanks: Stefan Smiljanoski 

And the Hollywood/sorta metal news keeps on keepin’ on…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt started out as the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun (PAUL MASVIDAL UP IN DIS BEE-YATCH!), but he’s grown into a fine actor, and he’s appeared in some of my favorite movies of the past I dunno however many years. (If you haven’t seen Inception and Brick, get thine ass to Netflix pronto.) He’s also one of the founders of hitRECord, a pretty awesome website in which people from all the net collaborate on various kinds of art projects. So, really, I have nothing bad to say about the dude.

Still, there’s something kinda funny about the fact that he chose to perform Nirvana’s “Lithium” at a recent event for the aforementioned hitRECord, especially given that he seems so upbeat in interviews. Bu he’s not bad at all, and his speech partway through about how the fact that Cobain killed himself shouldn’t deter anyone from enjoying Cobain’s music is a good if kinda obvious point.

And then I found twenty bucks.

-AR

Thanks to KL for the tip.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

We haven’t done one one of these all summer, but we came up with a fun one for this week:

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PLAY ANY METAL BAND/MUSICIAN SOME OF THEIR MUSIC AND/OR SHOW THEM PHOTOS/VIDEOS OF THEMSELVES FROM THEIR FUTURE (OUR PRESENT), WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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So, to review the ways in bass players let us down this week:

• Coheed and Cambria’s Michael Todd robbed a pharmacy.
• Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss held his girlfriend hostage in a four-hour standoff with a S.W.A.T. team.
• Jeroen Paul Thessling quit Obscura.

Dave Grohl has been known time and again to be part of the endangered species known as “The Cool Rockstar.” Dude is a household name and could probably buy and sell this website and everyone who reads it ten times over, but time and again he manages to convey one simple idea — that he is awesome.

Well, he’s done it again.

And now I’m just that much more excited to see Grohl and his Foo Fighters live in September. HIGH-FIVES!

-AR

Axl’s somewhat recent post on kiddie-pop starlet Miley Cyrus’ screwface-inducing version of Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” brought well deserved grumbles from the so-reliable-you-can-set-your-watch-to-them commenters. Yet much of that ire was directed not at the spawn of the man who brought us “Achy Breaky Heart”, but rather at the Seattle grunge band she chose to cover. It seems anytime that the name Kurt Cobain is even alluded to on this site and others, metalheads rush to bash the man and the music he left behind, usually with the same sneering refrain: grunge killed mainstream metal. Well I’m here to say one thing to those people:
GET OVER IT.

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Of course when you set out to make a list like, say, the one we’re doing right now, of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, you are bound to piss a lot of people off — that just comes with the job.

But I always find it hilarious HOW those people get pissed off. For example, this week I saw a lot of complaints that the guitar players we’ve been selecting aren’t “modern.” And I can’t believe we have to fucking define the word “modern” for some of you idiots, but apparently we do. So:

So… which one of you jackasses would like to call up Alex Skolnick or Vernon Reid or Adam Jones and let them know they’re antiquated and obsolete? ‘Cause I saw Testament and Living Colour and Tool live just last year, and I would not want to make that call. Just because those dudes have been playing this game for awhile doesn’t mean their best days are behind them.

My point simply being: I don’t care if you hate our choices. That’s fine. But at least try to hate our choices based on an argument that makes sense, y’know?

And on that note, here are other ways we entertained ourselves this week:

• We debuted new music from A Pale Horse Named Death and Oakhelm.
• We checked out the latest releases from From Exile, Godstopper, and Cruachan.
• We wondered which is better, old music or new music?
• We philosophized about Google’s new cloud service.
• We fretted that metal may soon be blamed for terrorism.
• We got excited about The Faceless’ new demo.
• We bemoaned the current state of In Flames.
• We wept because Dave Grohl is not going to be on the new Mastodon album after all.
• We enjoyed a vegetarian cooking lesson from a dude in corpse paint.
• We questioned the logic of the new Avenged Sevenfold video.

Next week we unveil numbers fifteen through eleven on our guitar player list; the average age of those five musicians is thirty-one, whereas the average age of this week’s selections was forty-two. So maybe you can go back to being upset because you think they suck, not because you think they’re too old to be “modern.”

-AR

Well, this news is a real boner-killer.

Last week we got all excited because the above photo of Dave Grohl in the studio with Mastodon appeared online, and, of course, all of our minds went right to “DAVE GROHL IS GONNA MAKE AN APPEARANCE ON THE NEW MASTODON ALBUM!”

Alas, it’s not to be, says Rocksound.tv, who got official word from Camp Mastodon that “the Foo Fighters frontman popped into the studio to say hello – and not to record on the new album.”

So that blows.

Bitch and moan that everything doesn’t go exactly the way we want it to with us in the comments section.

-AR

[via The PRP]

So we’re now five axe slingers deep into out list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists. We predicted that the list would get a lot of you angry, and, no shock, it has. Funny thing is, reading the comments, as of yet not one of you has correctly predicted which guitar player is gonna be #1. So, just lettin’ you know… you may be even angrier in the coming weeks, or maybe you’ll be less angry, but so far, it seems like you guys just do not see it comin’.

While you chew on that, here’s some other fun things we did this week:

• We premiered new music from Hate Eternal, Arch Enemy, and Nader Sadek.
• We enjoyed a new episode of “Cooking Contaminated,” this one featuring King Fowley of Deceased.
• We checked out the latest releases from Benighted and Zubrowska.
• We wondered if Metallica and friends have gone too far in their quest for the Big Fortune.
• We checked out some *real* hardcore.
• We weighed Donald Trump’s claim that President Obama was the first drummer for Overkill.
• We wondered why talent can’t be passed down via genetics.
• We weighed, compared and contrasted multiple metal concerts showcasing female-fronted bands.
• We prayed for Kurt Cobain to rise from his grave and off Miley Cyrus.
• We wondered whether or not Dave Grohl is gonna be on the new Mastodon album.

And so, in conclusion… I am going to get a slice of pizza now.

See ya next week.

-AR

Miley Cyrus — who wasn’t even two years old when Kurt Cobain killed himself — recently did a live cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and it’s actually pretty interesting. Not because it’s good (see headline), but because it’s literally the first time I’ve ever been able to understand the words to the song. “And I forget just why I taste?” Has that seriously been the lyric this whole time? Fuck me, I really gotta pay more attention to this shit.

ANYWAY, I’m sure this is exactly what Kurt Cobain intended to happen when he wrote the song. I mean, dude refused to tour with Guns N’ Roses, so what objection could he possibly have to Miley Cyrus?

;

I predict that this performance will seem to take on new meaning roughly five to ten years from now, when Miley’s career has tanked and she’s undergone what is commonly known as “The Full Courtney.”

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

If you are heading down to Austin for SXSW, be sure to head out to some of the metal-leaning movies on tap as part of the SXSW Film Festival. In addition to the first round of films I recently spotlighted here, even more titles have been unleashed on the unsuspecting public.

Click to read more…