RoCkStArBaSs100 introduces himself to the internet. He loves metal — anything from Rob Zombie to Children of Bodom to Dio. Also, he plays bass — at first he thought that he couldn’t actually play it for you in this video because it’s too loud and his parents will scold him, although he eventually gets bold enough to bust out “Holy Diver” for you.

A lot of metal fans take themselves really seriously, so I think it’s cool that RoCkStArBaSs100 does some silly, tongue-in-cheek videos like this one where he announces that he is a “Professor In Metalology.” In the banter segment, he mentions that he rearranged his room and warns against reading The Dirt because it “talks about a lot of bad stuff.”

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I was inspired to put some thoughts down after reading Sergeant D.’s post about what a terrible decision it is to commit yourself to the band life at a young age, because eventually the wheels will fall off and you’ll end up just like some morose version of the Anvil story: Sad, old, broke, and disillusioned by shattered dreams of rock stardom.  I know his blog was supposed to be funny and sarcastic, and was even sprinkled with a hint of sour grapes: Not getting to be that “cool band guy,” but justice being served down the line by seeing how those guys ended up. But I have to say that post hit home for me, because in many ways it was about me. I mean generally, not specifically. I’m pretty sure Sergeant D. didn’t follow me around and base his post on me autobiographically.

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Girls like Meytal Cohen should not have to wear corsets and other ridiculous outfits to get attention for their skills as a musician.

Yeah, dude, but corsets are hot!

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing you rally against when you speak out about bullshit like Revolver‘s “Hottest Jail Bait Girls in Metal” issue?

Dude, a cute Jewish girl playing Pantera? It’s like the Inception people extracted one of your wet dreams and made it a reality.

Well, do we even know for sure that she’s Jewish?

Uh, are you fucking kidding me?

Why does she keep turning to the camera and smiling?

Shhh, don’t ask so many questions. Just go with it.

I think I need to call my shrink…

Or, at the very least, your rabbi.

-AR

Thanks: Justin.X.XIII

I mean, talk about a snub, right?!?

ANYWAY, tomorrow afternoon, Vince and I will attend the wedding of one of our oldest friends. A guy I have known since I was two years old. The very dude who was by my side the first time I heard Guns N’ Roses. I don’t think he had any idea at the time that I had just headed down a path from which I would never return. He works for a classy magazine now, and wears a suit and tie to work. I do this, and usually do it in boxers and a stinky shirt with some metal band on it.

I don’t have a point or anything. I’m just feeling reflective right now.

And now that I got that out of my system, here’s the rundown of things we did this week:

• We got a tour update from Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself.
• We spoke to Tommy Rogers from Between the Buried and Me, Oppu Laine and Mikko Kotomäki from Barren Earth, Kenn Nardi from Anacrusis, and Mike Riley and Dom Romeo from Pulling Teeth.
• We checked out new releases from As Blood Runs Black, Capsule, and Crucified Mortals and Nunslaughter.
• We checked out the newest lucky band to sign to leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS.
• We made the mistake of following Vinnie Paul onto his tour bus.
• We helped our friends at the Deciblog defend Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.
• We listened to the worst dubstep metal bastardization yet.
• We got excited about the new Scar Symmetry album.
• We sent out well wishes to Vince Neil while he’s in prison.
• We read some fan mail.

Okay now I’m gonna go pick up my new suit for tomorrow! WHOO-HOO TO BEIN’ A BIG KID! See you peeps Monday.

-AR

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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’s query was suggested by a reader identifying himself simply as “Andy” –

WHICH MODEL OF GUITAR IS THE MOST METAL?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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So as part of the promotional efforts for the current Jagermeister Music Tour with Buckcherry, All That Remains, Hellyeah, and The Damned Things, a video has been posted in which Vinnie Paul gives a… uh… well, a tour of his tour bus. Sorry, I couldn’t think of a more elegant way to say that.

ANYWAY, Paul says he believes the bus should be “a nightclub on wheels,” and depending on how you feel about that statement, you will either find his bus to be incredibly awesome or incredibly tacky. Personally, I think it’s a little bit of both; it must be nice to be able to afford such a monstrosity, and I’d probably be a little disappointed if Paul’s vehicle of choice wasn’t somewhat outlandish… but on the other hand… uhhhh, really, dude?

By the way, I know that Gary Suarez already took this tour to task for its incredible amount of product placement, but if you do a shot every time Vinnie says “Jagermeister,” you will be very, very drunk by the end of this video. Did the makers of this video seriously think we’d forget the product they’re pushing, even with their logo in the corner the entire time?

-AR

[via The PRP]

Last week I posted about “djentstep,” a sub-genre hybrid that sounds exactly like what you’d expect and is exactly as bad as you’d expect. Shockingly, most of you seemed to share in my disapproval, which was actually more of the “who needs this? meh” variety than outright haterade.

Reader Tony Manka responded by emailing me a whole list of horrible dubstep bastardizations. The worst of those, a dub medley of Pantera riffs, is posted below. Theoretically I could envision that sample-thingy that opens “Cowboys From Hell” being turned into some kind of cool dub remix… but this just isn’t it. Feel free to disagree with me, tell me that I’m just being old, or to show your age by claiming that Pantera suck.

-VN

A couple of weeks ago, we posted news of the impending return of Beavis and Butt-Head, which is, obviously, terrific news. But reader Josh Kruk brought up a terrific point in the comments section when he wondered “How will they do video roasts since the music video is a dying (dead?) medium?” Now that MTV doesn’t really show music videos anymore, you had to wonder what B&B would be watching while engaging in their own unique brand of media criticism. (If you somehow have no idea what I’m talking about, please check out the above classic clip of Beavis and Butt-Head enjoying Pantera’s video for “This Love.”)

Well, now MTV president Van Toffler has provided an answer. Speaking to Rolling Drone, Toffler had this to say on the matter:

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Hellyeah have a new video for “Better Man,” a song unreasonable people would probably argue isn’t a power ballad. In the video, the band sits around someone’s house for no apparent reason and plays the song, all while remembering some pseudo-romantic tragic bullshit.

And if all this seems familiar, well, it ought to: sitting around a random house and playing a power ballad while remembering some pseudo-romantic tragic bullshit was one of hair metal’s silliest clichés. Take, for example…

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We love Tommy Rogers, we love Owen Hart, and, of course, we love Pantera — so combining all three makes for one awesome metal sandwich.

Rogers recently hopped on-stage with Owen Hart to join them for some Pantera covers, and, of course, someone caught it all on video. The quality’s not 100%, but it’s good enough to know that the bright ray of sunshine you felt on your face today was Dime smiling in approval.

Here’s “Domination…”

…and if you head over to Metal Injection, you can check out “Mouth for the War,” too.

Tommy Rogers will release his new solo album (under the name Thomas Giles), Pulse, tomorrow  on Metal Blade; Owen Hart’s latest, Earth Control, is out now on Vitriol. You can read my review here.

-AR

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

Presumably inspired by this week’s announcement of a Big 4 show in the U.S., this week’s question was posed by MetalSucks contributor/author of the Reign in Blood entry into the 33 1/3 book series, D.X. Ferris. Mr. Ferris was even good enough to join us for this edition of QOTW! And his query was:

IF THE BIG FOUR WERE THE BIG EIGHT, WHICH BANDS WOULD BE THE NEXT FOUR IN THE GROUP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Pantera performing the title track from Power Metal with Kerry King on May 20, 1989

So is this regular “Justify Your Shitty Taste” column on The Deciblog turning out to be the greatest thing ever or what? Up ’til now, they’ve had some Decibel‘s best writers defending craptastic releases ranging from Metallica’s St. Anger to Cryptopsy’s The Unspoken King to Helmet’s Size Matters to Ministry’s Filth Pig. But now they have their (I believe) first guest columnist declaring his love for the unlovable — namely, Wolvhammer’s  Heath Rave, giving a shout-out to Pantera’s Power Metal.

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From Classic Rock:

“Metallica still have the biggest selling album of the Soundscan era in America.

“Since 1991, when the Soundscan system was introduced to provide more accurate information on record sales, The Black Album has sold 15,620,000 copies.”

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Oops! I recently popped a Woodroe when I was informed that Corrosion of Conformity, the COC that I knew and loved, will be playing the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival this March.

Now, you may ask, why is this year of COC any different? Because they are stripped back down to the original three-piece of Woodroe “Woody” Weatherman, Reed Mullin, and Mike Dean, the same crusty trio I remember seeing up close and personal at the former Ritz Theater in Austin, Texas (which is now home to the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz movie theater) on tour in support of their hardcore-classic Animosity. That was the COC that used to be fucking dangerous. It was a show where you weren’t quite sure if you’d make it out alive. Seriously. It was back when Mike Dean looked more like a Dragworm who just stumbled in from nearby Guadalupe Street (“Dragworms” are Austin’s equivalent to homeless people) looking even more crazed and demented than Charles Manson in front of a television camera. This is the Animosity/Technocracy COC that I worshipped (minus Simon Bob Sinister on the latter EP). Nothing against Pepper Keenan, but I don’t even consider anything beyond this era to be COC.

This COC, along with D.R.I., The Offenders, M.D.C., The Fearless Iranians From Hell, and the Cro-Mags — that was the shit. Now get off my lawn!!

Anyway, time to relive my youth and to, hopefully, find more new metallic talent at this year’s SXSW. Here are some of the already announced metallish bands appearing at the world’s greatest music conference in addition to COC:

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It seems like the number of “Why did you ban me from commenting?!?” e-mails from readers has increased as of late, and the gist of those e-mails is often “Whassa matter, can’t take it when someone tells you you suck?” or whatever. And we’ve never banned anyone for disagreeing with us. We don’t give a shit if you disagree with us. We don’t agree with one another half the time — that’s part of the fun of MetalSucks.

Here’s what really happens: you use a word which is on our “no-no” list, and it gets stuck in our spam filter. Some of these words we actively do not allow on MetalSucks (e.g., slurs against minorities), and some of them just get stuck because so many actual spammers use them (e.g., “rape”). We try to be diligent about checking the spam filters and making sure none of you are getting caught in there, but sometimes we miss a few. And sometimes we ultimately don’t allow the comment onto the site (e.g., “I hate this album, this band is fucking gay” will never survive). But even then, we don’t BAN people from commenting. I think I can count on one hand the number of people we’ve banned in four years, and most of them were spammers and/or former Megadeth guitarists. So if your comment isn’t going through, consider first if you used a word we don’t allow, and if you didn’t, just shoot us a POLITE e-mail and we’ll investigage the problem ASAP. M’kay?

And on that note, here’s what we did this week:

• Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum gave us our latest Legacy Tour diary, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable worked out his black metal daddy issues, and The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks offered to write a song for any sports team that’s not from New York.
• We spoke to After the Burial’s Trent Hafdahl and American Hardcore author Steven Blush.
• We got the skinny from Darkest Hour’s Ryan Parrish about why DH and Veil of Maya got kicked off their own tour bus, and asked Jucifer’s Amber Valentine about Sean Yseult’s claim to being the only woman in metal during her tenure in White Zombie.
• We checked out the latest release from The Unraveling.
• Sergeant D. schooled us in uber-kvlt metalcore bands.
• We contemplated the worst metal albums of 2010 and the best metal songs of 2010.
• We mourned on the six year anniversary of Dimebag’s murder.
• We celebrated Ozzy Osbourne’s terrific taste in modern metal (he put Korn above Firewind).
• We had mixed feelings about the retirement of Judas Priest.
• We got excited that At the Gates are playing more shows in 2011.

Alrighty then. Next week is our last week of regular posting before we shut down for the holidays. You know what that means – YEAR END LISTS! Get ready to argue like your entire sense of self-worth depended on everyone agreeing with you all the time with no exceptions ever.

-AR

So Yahoo! has Ozzy Osbourne’s personal list of the Top Ten Metal Albums of 2010, and it may or may not surprise you to learn that it’s a really, really interesting mix of terrible and brain dead. (By the way, if you don’t like MetalSucks articles where I can really, really, really angry about something of less than no importance, then you should stop reading now.)

Okay so check out his list, and then I’ll tell you my thoughts. And before we begin, I should point out that it’s theoretically possible Ozzy didn’t actually choose these release, but, rather, than one of his handlers did it for him. But since it’s being labeled as “Ozzy’s list,” I am going to treat it as though it were written by Ozzy.

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I’d honestly snoozed on the date this time around but thankfully Noisecreep came to the rescue with a fitting tribute.

Pretty much any footage from Pantera’s 1991 Moscow show gives me instant goosebumps. I really oughtta own that DVD. They’re just SO full of energy. Ah, youth. Skip to 3:15 for Dime’s solo if you care about that sorta thing…. and dig that proto-breakdown right after it (today’s kids would be karate chopping like crazy during that part). But really you gotta watch the whole thing.

Share your Dimebag / Pantera memories in the comments.

-VN

While most new releases have trailed off into Christmas Music oblivion, there were still a few notable new metal albums trickling in last week. After the jump, a look at the meaningless sales numbers generated by new ones from After the Burial, Metallica, The Chariot and Yngwie Malmsteen with a look at a few other charting releases as well (take a look at the tags below if you wanna know who). Snarky commentary included, natch.

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This obviously doesn’t really have anything to do with the below story, but it still seemed somehow appropriate. Also, it makes me giggle.

You’ve known for some time that MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell is collaborating with Phil Anselmo on the legendary front man’s autobiography; hopefully you’re already familiar with Corey’s work not just via MS, but through his excellent true crime books, such as Savage Son and Pure Murder. If you’re not, you can check ‘em all out here.

Corey is now combining his various passions into one awesome event at 2011′s South by Southwest festival: Corey will moderate the fest’s “Reel Murder: From Crime Scene to Big Screen” panel, which will discuss “how murder has become big business in Hollywood.” In addition to Corey and Mr. Anselmo, panelists will include John McNaughton, who directed one of the most infamous true crime films ever made, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Ami Canaan Mann, daughter of filmmaker Michael Mann (Manhunter, Heat, Public Enemies) and director of the upcoming true crime film The Fields, and Hart D. Fisher, director of the serial killer thriller The Garbage Man.

The event will take place on March 15, and sounds like it’s gonna be a blast. You can get all the pertinent details here, and check out the official press release after the jump!

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[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

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