We at MetalSucks have dealt with the paradoxes involved with conducting a poll to determine great guitar players (read our 25 Best Modern Metal Guitarists poll here)! So we get that in a unweighted vote, the top-ranked axemen may just represent those liked by the largest number of voters; i.e. a dude who we agree is pretty good may score higher than each of our individual favorite dudes.

So when Rolling Stone magazine enlisted a who’s-who of classic rock personalities for their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time cover story, we prepared for some wacky aberrations. Let’s check out a few of the RS list’s inconsistencies:

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Monday’s post on Misery Signals’ pending new album led me into YouTubeLand where I proceded to spend too much time listening to old Misery Signals tracks. But it also led me to discover something I wasn’t expecting at all. I was aware of the free metal soundtrack to the Homefront video game released earlier this year, but I honestly didn’t pay it much attention because it was a covers album. Shame on me, because I just discovered Misery Signals’ cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon classic cut “Us and Them” and my socks have been knocked all the way into New Jersey. Like all truly great covers, Misery Signals have made this song their own while still managing to stay true to the original spirit of the song; it starts off similar to the original but all that goes out the window when the chorus kicks in just before the 2-minute mark. Holy fuck, I’ve never heard Pink Floyd sound so heavy and epic! Misery Signals also introduce some rhythmic and harmonic variations throughout, presented a marked contrast to the original that somehow just works.

I’ve always wanted to put together a comp of famous metal bands covering Floyd. Shadows Fall did that cover of “Welcome to the Machine” a while back (that was actually my introduction to SF!), Nachtmystium’s past two albums have basically been giant tributes to Floyd, Foo Fighters and Brian May did “Have a Cigar” and tons of other bands have covered Floyd throughout the years… but to my knowledge there’s never been one cohesive Metal Pink Floyd comp. “Us and Them” wouldn’t've been on my short list of songs ripe for metal covers, but I absolutely love this version. I always thought “Fearless” would be perfect (Junius would tear that song a new arsehole!), maybe “Hey You” (Queensryche!), something from The Final Cut by Opeth, any of the middle three tracks from Animals (heyo BTBAM!)… we could skip “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Money” (too obvious and Korn already butchered the former). Any other ideas?

-VN

Post-script: A forum thread from 2006 on Ultimate Metal turned up this version of “Run Like Hell” by Kittie! Best thing they’ve ever recorded. Go figure.

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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Whether you’re a tri-corner hat wearing Teabagger who thinks taxes are the work of the devil, a bleeding heart tree-hugging Lefty who believes The Man will take care of everything, or a corporate cocksucking conservative who believes GE deserves a $3.2 billion tax refund despite raking in more than $14 million in profit, today is inevitable.

Death (metal) and taxes.

Yes, normally in America, we must file our taxes by April 15. That was last Friday. Fortunately, for many of you slackers out there, Friday was also a Washington holiday to celebrate Emancipation Day; the day President Abraham Lincoln freed nearly 3,100 slaves in Washington D.C. in 1862, nine months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Normally, this momentous occasion is observed on April 16 in D.C.; however, since that date fell on a Saturday this year, taxes get pushed back until today.

So, if you are reeling from your continuing procrastination, maybe you can find a few songs here to get you through the tedium (AKA the final hours before tonight’s filing deadline). Or, maybe you are already done with your paperwork and want to stroll down the aisle of taxing tunes and moneyed music.

Some of it is from metalheads, but most comes from the world of rock.

Figures, that’s where the real money is (was) made.

The Beatles – “Taxman” (Cartoon)

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So this is pretty cool… in theory at least. Last week, the videogame Homefront was released (I haven’t played it so I have no idea how it is, although I read some decent reviews), and yesterday, the makers of the game started giving away a FREE compilation of metal bands doing covers of war-appropriate songs, sometimes by other metal bands, sometimes by non-metal artists. You can download it here, and should get on that ASAP, as they’re only giving away 25,000 of the free downloads. As of this writing, DLs are still avail, though. Also, I’m sure this thing will remain all over the internet forever and ever, so don’t freak too hard if they’re all gone by the time you get there.

Another reason no to freak out too hard if you don’t get to download this puppy? Even though this is 100% free, like most cover albums, it’s not actually all that amazing. Let’s take a look at what the album has to offer, shall we?

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Chicago dark-n’-crusty sludge/doomsters The Atlas Moth, a really good band I’ve slowly gotten hip to over the past couple of years, are releasing a digital-only covers EP this fall that promises to be pretty darn sweet. Titled The One Amongst the Weed Fields, it contains darkened renditions of “California Dreamin’” (The Mamas & The Papas), “Fearless” (Pink Floyd), “Golden” (Failure), and “Five to One” (The Doors). That Failure cover is currently streaming over at Stereogum, so you should definitely check that out, but the one I’m most excited to hear is “Fearless.” Long-time readers of this site should know I’m a huge Floyd freak, and I’ve always thought “Fearless” was ripe for a metal re-interpretation.

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Wino – the nom de guerre of Robert Scott Weinrich – has been making heavy music for nearly 35 years. Starting with War Horse, Wino has since been in a string of incredible bands: The Obsessed, St. Vitus, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, Palace of Skulls and now Shrinebuider. Wino has also released solo material (Punctuated Equilibrium was released last year) and, as everyone who I have ever spoken to about him has said, is an incredibly down-to-earth, friendly and funny guy.

What’s the greatest Taco Riff of all time?

Wait, I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve got a few that I’d say right away:

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So The Village Voice – which, depending on who you ask, is either a bastion of intelligent artistic commentary or the most pretentious toilet paper in print – recently compiled a list of the fifty worst songs of the decade, and, sure enough, some terrible nu-metal found its way onto the list. Here are three notable entries, via Blabbermouth:

08. LIMP BIZKIT and JOHNNY RZEZNIK – “Wish You Were Here”
10. FIELDY’S DREAMS – “Baby Hugh Hef”
12. DISTURBED – “Land of Confusion”
14. KORN – “Ya’ll Want A Single?”
15. HINDER – “Born To Be Wild”
19. NICKELBACK – “Something In Your Mouth”
27. KELLY OSBOURNE and OZZY OSBOURNE – “Changes”

Now, I’d never argue that these are terrible songs. But of the seven songs listed above, four are covers. And I just can’t take a cover seriously as the worst pick for each of these groups.

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Los Angeles psychedelic-doom drivers Ancestors are already back with another new album after last year’s acclaimed two track debut Neptune With Fire, and this time around they’re  arguably even more ambitious. On the eight track Of Sound Mind, the band expands their scope and continues their doom-laden trip down nostalgia lane, with plenty of prog rock inspirations. And lots of guitars.

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I’m in my bunk. Everyone else is asleep. We’re riding through some windy dark mountain roads somewhere in Germany on the way to the next show. I’ve got “Ghost of Perdition” by Opeth blasting on my headphones. Figured that I would give that a spin. I haven’t really listened to them very much lately. I kinda burned out on them for a while. I never stopped loving their music, but I think I just had more than my brain could handle. When I got into after the release of Blackwater Park, all the way through the release of Ghost Reveries, I’d say that Opeth were on my iTunes at least once a day. They are a band that I’ve listened to, and listened to again, and again, and again. There’s always something new to find in their music. Not only did I listen my ass off but I went to their shows whenever possible. I saw them at least six times before I even met them. I ended up dating a member of their crew for a little while, so that meant more and more Opeth shows. Basically, I know my Opeth, and from the musicianship to the composition I think that they are one of the greatest bands of all time.

That said, I haven’t decided to listen to them in about a year before tonight. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Albums that I just absolutely love, I would consider and just be like, naaah. Maybe it’s the mental equivalent of a water-soluble vitamin like C. Once you have your dosage, the rest just gets released with your urine. Maybe your brain can only handle so much of one type of stimulus for so long before it shuts off to it. I mean that’s happened to me with other bands.

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As I mentioned earlier, Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree (and King’s X!) this past Thursday. Porcupine Tree was good, if not spectacular… they’re all great players, they write good songs, have an excellent sense of composition and are certainly quite accomplished; but at no point during the performance was I at all wowed.

Except when I realized that “Time Flies,” Movement IX from the first disc of the band’s new record The Incident, is a dead rip-off of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” (from the Animals record, a personal favorite of mine). Now, Steven Wilson has certainly never been shy about his love of Floyd, and even if not for that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Porcupine Tree’s music before that the band bows down in the alter of Floyd. But YO, this is like, too similar for comfort. Check it out:

Porcupine Tree – “Time Flies”:

Pink Floyd – “Dogs”:

I’m not crazy, right? The staccato-strummed acoustic guitar, the keyboard swells leading into each chord change, similar vocal melodies, the verse that starts “and after a while…”. The only real difference is that the P-Tree riff is in 3/4 instead of Floyd’s 4/4. Sorry Steven, you rule at producing Opeth and you’re a talented musician, but for this you get a big, fat, epic FAIL.

-VN

Since its inception in the late ‘80s, black metal has been one of the most rigid genres in terms of evolution and change. While bands like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and Behemoth trumpet the genre through its larger than life, orchestral origins, black metal’s “elite” have gained their notoriety through either a) being a part of the original church-burning generation and altering their sound as little as possible or b) miming the original church-burning generation as closely as possible, right down to the tape hisses and wall of buzz saw guitars. But after nearly two decades of existence and reverence in the metal and music worlds as a whole, many bands have moved away from their restrictive lo-fi roots and come to embrace different influences, resources, and inspirations. The band that has best exemplified this move from their base to the outer limits is Enslaved, one of Norway’s longest running black metal bands. Before American upstarts Nachtmytsium made it cool to melt your Burzum and Pink Floyd records together, Enslaved were dabbling in the dark power of psychedelia on Below the Lights and ISA. Though those who take black metal seriously insist that sticking to their guns has been the key to longevity, its shifts in sounds and ideologies has been what’s kept it alive. Those shifts have been most solidly illustrated by Enslaved, and has resulted in one of the most impressively consistent discographies in metal, right up through their latest genre-bending triumph Vertebrae.

Grutle Kjellson, Enslaved’s bass player and lead vocalist, has been with the band since the beginning. In an interview he was kind enough to grant MetalSucks via phone from his home in Norway, he talks about the importance of looking forward creatively, what influenced Vertebrae, working with longtime bandmate Ivar Bjornson in Enslaved and their experimental metal side project Trinacria, the overall importance of Pink Floyd on his band’s sound, and the fans that only want to hear songs off of their early ‘90s demos at their shows.

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It’s with great sadness today that I report that Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died today of cancer at his home in Britain at the age of 65. [NYTimes.com]

If there was no Pink Floyd, there’d be no metal. I firmly belief that. And for me personally, if Pink Floyd hadn’t sustained me musically through the nu-metal years, I may well have completely lost interest in progressive music or anything good. Who knows. So if you don’t think Pink Floyd news belongs on a metal site, you’re wrong. And besides, it’s my website. So fuck off and start your own.

If you need further convincing (or just wanna jam to some timeless tunes), check out a post I wrote a few months back with some mp3s of metal bands covering “Welcome to the Machine.”

More of my thoughts on Rick Wright after the jump…

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Nachtmystium’s Assassins: Black Meddle Part I is every bit as good as all the hype. Axl and I both placed it on our very-preliminary 2008 Top 10 lists and have waxed ecstaticly about it on multiple occasions; and earlier today, new MetalSucks contributor Sammy O’Hagar wrote a glowing 4.5/5 horns review. I recently had the opportunity to email Nachtmystium singer/guitarist/brainchild Blake Judd a bunch of questions, and wouldn’t you know it, the fine Chicagoan answered them. For Judd’s thoughts on Assassins, his Pink Floyd fetish, black metal, and other interesting tidbits click through the jump.

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“A Seed for Suffering,” the first proper song on Nachtmystium’s last album, Instinct:Decay, felt like a thrown gauntlet. After almost four minutes of pretty good black metal, the following three are a wall of psychedelic guitars all looping around a riff that wouldn‘t sound out of place on an early Burzum record. In a world as narrow as that of black metal, it was akin to handing out British flags in the dingiest pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This, of course, lead to two years of anticipation for their next record, to be put out on Century Media with an actual budget. After months of reading overwhelmingly positive press for the album, it only left one to wonder whether or not the band would collapse under the weight of their own hype or continue to establish a solid link between psychedelia and black metal.

Gods be praised, it’s the latter.

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Nachtmystium’s new record Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1, which drops June 10th on Century Media, is such a solid record that it’s sure to be on a lot of people’s year-end Top 10 lists, as Axl wrote about a month ago. If you’re one of those (like me) who are usually turned off by most black metal because of its sameness and lo-fi-for-the-sake-of-lo-fi production values, this is the record for you. If you like your metal heady and smart, this is the record for you. If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd, boy oh boy is this the record for you.

Any Floyd fan should recognize the homage in the album title immediately. Opening track “One of These Nights” is a sinister-sounding black metal interpretation of Meddle opening track “One of These Days.” The three-part, album-closing epic “Seasick” is an obvious nod to the 22-minute epic “Echoes” from that same album. And the comparisons go on from there.

Guitar World’s MetalKult blog is doing a 7-part “In The Studio” video series chronicling the recording of Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1. The first entry features the band members talking about the role of mushrooms and beer in the band’s writing process, as well as some other studio shenanigans and behind-the-scenes footage.

This is a fucking fantastic album. You owe it to yourselves to pick it up on June 10th.

-VN

For some reason metal bands have particularly taken to covering Pink Floyd. Actually, pretty much everyone has taken to covering Pink Floyd because, well, they’re one of the best and most important bands of all time. But of all metal covers of Pink Floyd tunes, “Welcome to the Machine” seems to get the nod more frequently than most. There’s something about that plodding rhythm that is just so visceral and brutal and ripe for metal renditions.

Invisible Oranges recently posted the original along with Queensryche’s version from their 2007 release Take Cover and Shadows Fall’s version from The Art of Balance.

Pink Floyd – “Welcome to the Machine” (Wish You Were Here, 1975)
Shadows Fall – “Welcome to the Machine” (The Art of Balance, 2002)
Queensryche – “Welcome to the Machine” (Take Cover, 2007)

Which do you prefer?

-VN

This is the news that Axl, myself, and approximately 7 other guitar dorks worldwide have been eagerly awaiting. Steve Stevens — Billy Idol’s guitarist for years, Vince Neil’s guitarist on the Exposed album, and king Brooklyn Jew (birth name: Steve Schneider –take a look at that shnoz!) — will be releasing a new solo album, Memory Crash, on January 29th via Steve Vai’s Magna Carta record label. Doug Pinnick of King’s X makes a guest appearance lending his soulful voice to one track, as does Billy Idol / ex-Ozzy bassist Brian Tichy.

Those who have followed Steve Stevens closely over the years as I have — and I’m guessing there’s maybe one of you who has — know what an underrated and incredible guitarist he is. In addition to writing all those classic Idol riffs (“Rebel Yell,” “White Wedding,” etc etc etc), Stevens absolutely tore it up on Vince Neil’s Exposed record, his 1993 post-Motley solo debut. He wrote some amazing songs, and fuck did he ever go nuts on the guitar on that album. He’s also done a bunch of experimental stuff over the years (Bozzio / Levin / Stevens) and some studio work here and there.

Stevens says about the record, it’s “a journey through another dimension, It’s virtually musical cinema.” Citing influences such as prog-rock giants Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, he continues, “I’ve always loved that about the prog records, like Dark Side Of The Moon. You enter this little theater of the mind. It’s a true headphone experience.”

Cool.

-VN

Fridays are usually a great show and someone usually smokes us out ’till we’re stupid. Most of the time we don’t actually play this song but about an hour after the show when we’re driving and the van is all quiet, someone will yell out “Vera, Vera? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?” Nonstop laughing ensues.

Pink Floyd – “Vera” (from The Wall [Disc 2])

Visit Arsonists Get All the Girls on MySpace.

[We want to sincerely thank Arsonists Get All the Girls for helping us out this week. That was fun, fellas... stop by anytime! - The MetalSucks Dudes]

People so often get caught up in the mind-blowing masterpiece — hell, career-piece — that is Dream Theater’s 1999 release Scenes From a Memory, that the band’s next release, the double-disc Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, often gets overlooked. Disc 1 is fantastic Dream Theater fare, but its Disc 2 that is truly special, another conceptual piece that never got its due because of its predecessor. And it’s this disc, a couple of tracks of which were played over the PA at last night’s Avenged Sevenfold show in NYC, that has inspired me to bring back the long dormant Album of the Day column.

Disc 2 of Six Degrees isn’t a conceptual album in that it follows one story, but rather tells the individual stories of many, troubled folks linked by their struggles with the banalities of daily life. In this respect Disc 2 is a whole lot like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but the music runs the gamut from the sweet, full-on orchestrations of “I. Overture” to Dream-Theater-at-their-heaviest “III. War Inside My Head” to the progged-out “IV. The Test That Stumped Them All” to the beautiful, incredibly well-arranged (what else would you expect?) “VI. Solitary Shell,” the latter of which inspired me to write this post last night. And it wouldn’t be conceptual if musical themes didn’t come back around also — “VII. About to Crash (Reprise)” brings back the original of the same namesake from the beginning of the album, just as “VIII. Losing Time – Grand Finale” does to the orchestral overture, bringing things full circle.

While Scenes From a Memory may have stolen the show in the minds of most DT fans, SDOIT (especially Disc 2) should absolutely be mentioned in the same breath.

-VN