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

Last week we asked you, oh beloved readers, to suggest some QOTW, and there were actually a number of good queries posited. So we kinda just picked one at random, and then we’ll do some others in the coming weeks. In the meantime, this week’s question, from Tim, is:

WHAT ALBUM ORIGINALLY GOT YOU INTO METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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I like music videos. I don’t mean just lame concert footage videos either. (I get it, Band, you can play your instruments like, really well. In front of people!) No, I mean the amazing, overblown, explosions and nonsensical storylines, holy shit is that a cameo by jailbait Keri Russell in bra?!, looks like it was directed by Michael Bay, epic mini-movies. In fact, Meat Loaf’s, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” has pretty much all of the aforementioned, except one. I won’t say which one, just look it up*. It is the most amazing seven minutes ever.  Except for the part where he prays to the god of, “Sex, and drums, and rock’n’roll.” Come on, now, you’re not fooling anyone.

The other night I couldn’t sleep. So I ended up watching music videos until the sun came up. I did not have a good day that day. Of course, I watched metal videos. (Okay fine, like half were Meat Loaf videos. He kind of hovers on the periphery of metal, right? He was in Rocky Horror Picture Show, he played a totally awesome biker named Eddie! Isn’t his daughter married to Scott Ian? Fringes, he’s on the fringes. Shut up, Meat Loaf is awesome. Even more so when I can’t type and write “Meat Load.” Good job proof-reading at 5:40 a.m.)

Videos were my first introduction to many bands. They were like trailers for records, and the more confusing and “deep” they were, the more interested I got. I’m not saying there are no good videos anymore, but I just can’t believe we live in a time where it’s no longer cool to shred shirtless on a cliff while your bandmate gets married but then it starts raining and the bride is dead and Axl Rose is swimming with dolphins while Stephanie Seymour beats up a girl in a bar. I mean, maybe it’s a good thing bands don’t go bankrupt after videos anymore. and the Guns N’ Roses trilogy more than borders on the ridiculous (Hi Shannon Hoon! I see you, there on the roof!) but let’s take a look at some that kind of stuck with me.

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Despite the fact that I thought that Them Crooked Vultures was the most boringest thing in the history of ever, my man-crush on Dave Grohl continues unabated. I’m not even that big of a Foo Fighters fan, truth be told. I think they’re fine, but I don’t love them or anything. Mostly, I just think that Grohl is an awesome drummer who elevates nine out of ten projects he hits skins for (see: Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), and he seems like a cool dude. Which is, of course, key.

Also, once a year I break out that Probot record, and each listen makes me appreciate it more than the last. Remember how Zakk Wylde was really pissed that Grohl was supposed to write some tracks for Ozzy? But Grohl wrote better metal songs than Wylde has in for-ever. Sheesh.

Why am I talking about all this?

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The interwebs are all aflutter today because Dave Grohl has announced that his former Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic, is going to make a guest appearance on the new Foo Fighters album — which is also being produced by Garbage’s Butch Vig, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Produced Nevermind.” This will mark the first time Grohl and Novoselic have recorded with one another since Kurt Cobain injected himself with enough heroin to kill an elephant, and then stuck a shotgun in his mouth, just to make sure that medical science didn’t get any bright ideas.

Look: I know Nirvana were cool, and I know that Cobain’s premature passing means they get to stay cool forever and ever and ever because the dude didn’t get to grow up to be lame like Billy Corgan and Chris Cornell, but I really don’t see any reason to get excited about this. Novoselic was never a songwriter; he was never even a particularly distinctive bass player. Cobain was Cobain and Grohl certainly beat the ever-lovin’ shit outta his drums, but Nirvana pretty much could have swapped out Novoselic for another bassist at any point and not missed a beat. This song isn’t gonna sound like Nirvana — you’d need to re-animate Cobain to make that happen — it’s just gonna sound like Foo Fighters. I’d wager that the bass lines won’t even be that special, since, like I said, Novoselic’s playing never had much discernible personality. So you’re not even gonna get the “What might that sound like?” curiosity factor that you might get from, say, Dave Lombardo filling in for Lars Ulrich at a Metallica show, or Duff McKagan joining Jane’s Addiction. Creatively speaking, this reunion doesn’t amount to much more than a gimmick.

All of that being said… I’ll take any excuse to post the below video of Novoselic hitting himself in the head with his bass at the 1992 MTV VMAs while Grohl taunts Axl Rose from the stage. This has to be one of the five proudest moments in MTV’s history, right?

-AR

I didn’t watch VH1′s recent Behind the Music on Courtney Love, because I didn’t know that it had been made, because who the fuck knows what’s on VH1 these days? I don’t even know what channel VH1 is on my cable system. Fuck.

ANYWAY, Elise at Reign in Blonde posted the below clip from the show, in which Roddy Bottum and a woman who claims to be Courtney Love even though she looks almost nothing like the Courtney Love I remember discuss her days as the vocalist for Faith No More. And, oh yeah, the fact that they slept together. Elise put it best: “If I’m to believe that those two banged uglies, then him being gay now makes perfect sense.” It also makes sense that he doesn’t find this annoying — he’s clearly some kind of Zen master, with infinite patience for stupidity and lack of an indoor voice.

Jump to 3:10 to see the bit about Faith No More. If you told me that the blonde lady isn’t really Courtney but the real Courtney has now had enough plastic surgery that she can successfully pull an Andrew W.K., well, I wouldn’t be surprised.

-AR

Well, no, not really.

The reliably hilarious Cracked sometimes holds these really excellent Photoshop contests; their latest asked readers to create rejected versions of famous album covers. A lot of the entries had nothing to do with metal, but a few of ‘em did – like these:

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In the last few years, something seemed to happen and I barely noticed. Suddenly, I’m no longer the young kid at the show. I’m one of the guys hiding out by the bar. I’m not crowd surfing, not covered in sweat with my shirt off, and I’m certainly not moshing. I’m also not randomly yelling “Slayer!”, but that seems to span all demographics. I became… (gulp)… an adult. I don’t know what the range is in the ages of the followers of MetalSucks, but I’ll assume that it’s a mix of younger and older metal fans. I am 29 years old, but I still feel relatively young and energetic considering my opening salvo. I’m the youngest member of my band, and younger than a good majority of my friends in bands and the industry.

With that said, I think there comes a time for all metal heads, and probably all adults for that matter, when you look at what is popular amongst the true youth culture (16-24), and you feel as if not only do you not relate to it, but it feels alien, as if it’s creation was not meant for your consumption (which it wasn’t) – and it also seems inferior to music that you grew up with. I’m only 29, and I’m already having “back in my day” moments. It kind of scared me, and I began to wonder if I was being obtuse and a little too set in my ways, or if my analysis was accurate.

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Tonight, some friends and I are getting really, really, really, really, really, insanely, stupidly, inappropriately high and going to see the re-make of A Nightmare on Elm Street at a theater that pretty much guarantees no one in the audience will give a shit about things like, say, being quiet during the movie. Of course, these days, it seems like very few people care about being quiet during the movie (or turning off their cell phone, or not texting, or leaving their baby at home, or whatever) – but slasher flicks are that rarest of genre, precisely because you want a noisy audience. The stories are always ridiculous and the kids are so annoying you’re pretty much rooting for the villain, so they work best as concert experiences – you want people shouting at the screen, screaming at moments appropriate or otherwise, and generally causing mayhem and chaos throughout the audience. I still can’t figure out what the fuck is going on in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, but I’ll never forget seeing it in theaters and the dude behind yelling out, in response to a couple’s decision not to use a condom, “MIGHT AS WELL, YOU’RE GONNA DIE ANYWAY!!!” And he was right, of course – the couple gets killed like ten seconds later.

Even with a raucous crowd, the movie might suck – and the soundtrack most certainly won’t feature anything as awesome as Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” which was the theme song for 1987′s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That’s still the best movie in the franchise, besides the 1984 original. And when I was a kid I always really liked this video, because instead of just intercutting random footage of the band with clips from the movie which had no relation to one another, they tried to cut the band into the movie to make one continuous story. Of course, the results are still cheesy as fuck, but c’mon… this song ROCKS.

And just for shits n’ giggles, after the jump is the video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was directed by Samuel Bayer, the man who helmed the Nightmare remake.

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When I awoke this morning, my Twitter friends list featured a whole lot of 140-characters-or-less commentary from last night’s unintentionally hilarious Finntroll show at New York’s Gramercy Theatre. Yet tucked away between the twitticisms (see what I did there?) was an outraged comment from a friend over the gossip that Robert fucking Pattinson has landed the role of Kurt Cobain in a planned Nirvana biopic. Yes, I’m talking about the same Robert Pattinson who used the worst terrorist attack on American soil as a fucking plot device and who terrorizes us all with his continued involvement in those fucking awful vampire flicks.

I know many of you are still totally butthurt than grunge supplanted hair metal in the early 90s, forever relegating your favorite bands (which sucked) to play Indian casinos and shitty nightclubs for the rest of their “careers,” but Nirvana was one of the most important bands of my adolescence. So yeah, I’m pissed that an actor that hasn’t played a decent role in his entire life was tapped to play one of my musical heroes.

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People who care more than I do tell me that today is the anniversary of when they found Kurt Cobain’s carcass (’cause I guess it was hanging around a few days before someone stumbled upon it). That was sixteen years ago. It’s weird to think that he’s been dead longer than some of you have been alive.

I always liked Nirvana, but I never loved Nirvana. In fact I wrote an anti-Cobain piece back in 2007; I know a lot of you weren’t reading MS yet in 2007, so now’s a good time to check this out and tell me what a douche turd I am for kicking a dead man when he’s down.

Meanwhile, here’s Nirvana performing “Lithium” at 1992 MTV VMAs. I like this performance because a) Krist Novoselic hits himself in the head with a bass at the end and b) Dave Grohl goes out of his way to provoke Axl Rose, who was in attendance and performed with Elton John later that night. This lead to an infamous Rose-Cobain scuffle after the show. Good times. Good times.

-AR

As this blog’s unofficial grunge rock correspondent, I have Internet filters in place to catch for news related to the dinosaurs of that otherwise dormant subgenre. So when my tricked-out Commodore 64 started billowing black smoke, I knew that something big was happening in the world of flannel metal–well, big to the sense of old, weepy, nostalgic farts like me. So what caused this mechanical meltdown of FAIL-like proportions? Was it news that Butch Vig (producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind) would be producing the new Foo Fighters record? Hardly. As it turns out, Dave Grohl’s accompanying boast that this would be the Foos’ “heaviest album yet” overloaded my computer’s custom-made Bullshit Detector. I mean, c’mon!

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Reader Shane Gillis sent in this video, which appears to be a bunch of clips strung together of an obviously overcaffeinated Dave Grohl in the studio with Them Crooked Vultures (who are pretty “meh” even by “meh” supergroup standards). And while, on the one hand, it’s pretty funny, on the other hand, I know that in real life I hate being around people this loud and obnoxious. Guess it’s a good thing that Grohl is a rock star and we’ll never be friends. I didn’t wanna be friends with him anyway…

-AR

So the Australian branch of iTunes has apparently uploaded thirty-second clips of all the songs from Slash’s forthcoming, self-titled solo album, and, of course, someone has uploaded all of those clips to YouTube. Gotta love the internet! So I thought we’d play one of our favorite games here at MetalSucks. It’s called “Let’s make premature judgments based on not very much actual music at all.” Listen to the clips in the video below, and then get my thoughts after the jump.

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Extreme experimental metallers Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza posted a new song called “Yippiekayay Motherfucker” on their MySpace page back in October, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Danza have a full new record on the way later this year via Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label titled Danza III: The Series Of Unfortunate Events, and while we haven’t heard anything from that album just yet (unless the aforementioned Bruce Willis-inspired track will make it onto the record) we do have something to tide you over in the meantime. Here’s a statement from frontman Jessie Freeland:

Soooo, basically we were just getting bored and wanted to post a song. We can’t post any of the new stuff at this time so we decided, what the hell, let’s do a cover. The first thing that jumped into our heads was ‘Teen Spirit.’ There’s nothing special about the song to us – we basically just wanted to see if we could pull it off. So, with a little help from Jack Daniels we got it done and here it is.

It’s a pretty straight cover of a song we all grew up on, but that makes it no less awesome; as one might expect, Freeland absolutely lets loose during the choruses, screaming his guts out on Kurt Cobain’s famous lyrics. Stream and download the track below.

[this promotion has ended]

-VN

While there are more obvious statements than “supergroups more often than not fail to meet our expectations” – “fire will ruin your house” and “Guns N’ Roses have gone through numerous line-up changes” are tied with it – there aren’t many. And yet, with the announcement of a formation of one, excitement is usually the first emotion called upon. And while saying that supergroup prospects should immediately be met with caution is like saying a new car should be approached with the attitude that you will most likely wrap it around a tree, the failure/success ratio is sadly stacked toward the former. However, this usually isn’t the fault of the uber-collective, but our own gargantuan expectations assuming that this new band featuring members of other bands we like will be as good as all the involved bandmembers main projects COMBINED. And while there have been some out and out failures as of late (cough Greymachine cough), the other two most notable supergroups that reared their heads this year – scraggly doom metal gathering of titans Shrinebuilder and semi-unkempt gathering of some dudes from your uncle’s favorite bands Them Crooked Vultures – have gotten an unfair rap in the wake of their respective debuts’ releases. While to say the bands’ detractors dislike their albums because they don’t rival Neurosis, Sleep, the Melvins, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, or Led fucking Zeppelin is unfairly ignoring their actual grievances, to write off either Shrinebuilder or Them Crooked Vultures would be a damn shame, in that, while not reinventing any sort of wheel, in a year where the biggest supergroup commercially was Chickenfoot, a solid doom metal album and a solid stoner rock album are two pretty significant things to dismiss.

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The Starbucks Incident

Yes, I am going to continue to bitch about Slash. I understand that Slash is not Jimi Hendrix but this might be the single biggest betrayal to my formative years since Metallica released everything they’ve released from Load on, and I need to mourn.

So. Some lady says that the following singers are all on Slash’s new solo album, How Could Taking My Cues from Carlos Santana Possibly Go Wrong? I have added my own thoughts because that’s what we do around here. Click to read more…

Yes, my fellow connoisseurs of all things heavy, today is the day you’ve been waiting for: NIRVANA DAY! As you all well know, November 3rd sees the release of several Nirvana and Nirvana-related releases. For those of you who haven’t already created your NIRVANA DAY CHECKLIST, here’s a handy cheat sheet of the day’s releases:

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Honestly, I was never that excited about Them Crooked Vultures, for the simple reason that supergroups are anticlimactic nine out of ten times (and the fact that Queens of the Stone Age haven’t made a record I’ve wanted to listen to more than once since Songs for the Deaf didn’t help). Still, I was open to giving the band a shot.

Then I heard their first single, “New Fang.”

When Gary Suarez described this band’s music as “seriously generic and geriatric classic rock,” he wasn’t kidding.

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Reader CB Mather e-mailed me over the weekend to assert that Alice in Chains’ new song, “Your Decision,” is “an obvious rip-off” of Nirvana’s “Polly.” Now, since I absolutely loved AIC’s new album, Black Gives Way to Blue, and really, really dig the song “Your Decision,” I immediately decided to investigate…

…and there are some undeniable similarities between the songs. The vocal lines are different and the choruses are not really similar at all, but the chord progression during the verse is… well… it’s not identical, but I can see a relationship there. I don’t know if I’d call it “an obvious rip-off,” but only the most die-hard AIC fan who can’t live with the thought of anyone saying anything even mildly insulting to the band would deny the similitude of the two songs.

Here they are side-by-side. I tend to think this is just one of those times when a song kinda-sorta sounds like another song, but the fact that they’re both Seattle bands from the same era makes the connection that much more relevant.

NIRVANA PERFORMING “POLLY” ON UNPLUGGED

ALICE IN CHAINS PERFORMING “YOUR DECISION” ON JIMMY KIMMEL

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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?

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