So last night’s question was tricky — so tricky, in fact, that only one person got it right! Necro’s real name is Ron Braunstein, and, yep, he’s Jewish. And despite his name, Darkest Hour’s Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan is, indeed, half-Jewish. I was caught off-guard when I saw Igor Cavalera included in this article at The Gauntlet (where a picture of From Exile’s Eric Guenther, who is not Jewish, is used for the entry on Daath’s Eyal Levi, who is… but I digress), but some research unearthed that fact that the former Sepultura drummer apparently converted when he got married. His brother Max also married a Jew, although I don’t think he converted. In any case, that just leaves Poison’s C.C. DeVille.

I understand why people would think that C.C. DeVille (né Bruce Johannesson) is Jewish, given that he’s loud, from Brooklyn, and has a big schnozz — hell, I used to assume that he was Jewish — but, alas, he’s not. So mazel tov to reader Joe Caperon, the only entrant who correctly answered the question. Joe wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. Go Joe!

Here’s the question for night three:

• What is the name of infamous metal-themed music retailer in Tel Aviv?

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 2″ in the subject line. All entries should include your name and mailing address in addition to your answer, and are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Saturday, December 4) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 4’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S. We need to conserve moolah to get all the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys their Hanukkah gifts!!!

-AR

Mazel tov to reader Noah Mezsick, who correctly identified the first night of Hanukkah’s trivia question — yes, Orphaned Land’s Kobi Farhi is the poor musician that I accidentally introduced to frum porn earlier this year. I hear he’s had nightmares ever since. I apologize, Kobi! In any case, Noah wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. L’chaim!

Now… ONTO NIGHT SHTAYIM!  (I think that’s Hebrew for “two.” If I fucked up, well, oops.) Here’s the trivia question:

• Which of the following metal-affiliated musicians is NOT Jewish: C.C. DeVille, Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, Igor Cavalera, Necro

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 2″ in the subject line. All entries should include your name and mailing address in addition to your answer, and are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Friday, December 3) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 3’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S. What, you want we should go broke on shipping charges?

-AR

It was a long weekend, and seemingly eight thousand fucking bands all decided to put out music videos while we were away. Let’s check ‘em out and see if any of them are decent, shall we?

First up we have a video for “Larvae” by Portal. This band pushes so many envelopes they were all offered jobs at the post office, so I’m disappointed they couldn’t come up with a more innovative video. This clip is seriously boring as fuck, as I have no idea what’s going on. Which is how some people feel about Portal’s music, I guess. So, in that regard, this video is a success!

Click to read more…

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

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means we’re taking off early today and won’t be back ’til Monday. We’re sorry to leave non-American readers high n’ dry, but PLUS ONE FOR FREEDOM, MOTHERFUCKERS.

ANYWAY, in honor of the holiday, we decided to do a special Turkey Day-themed QOTW designed to make you feel all warm and cuddly inside:

WHAT (IN METAL) ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Does Tommy Lee WANT me to hate him? When rumors of a Motley Crue/Poison tour in 2011 started to circulate earlier this week, I got all excited, both for the shows themselves, and for the rampant idiocy that would no doubt accompany those shows. Alas, Long Dong Tommy took to Twitter late Monday afternoon to put an end to my fantasies of Aqua Net and unprotected sex with strangers:

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According to Metal Undergound, Bret Michaels announced during a Canadian solo gig last night “that in celebration of Poison’s 25th anniversary, the band will be touring with fellow American rockers Motley Crue next year, who will themselves be celebrating their 30th anniversary.” That’s great news, unless you hate fun. Even with Vince Neil being bloated and winded, Tommy Lee devoting the remainder of his career to reenacting the C. Thomas Howell classic Soul Man, Mick Mars having less mobility than a corpse, and Poison being, y’know, Poison, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine this tour being anything less than awesome. Especially if they get another great glam band (by which I mean a band like Cinderella, not a latter-day cock rock wanna-be like Hinder or Saliva), to open. Seriously, just hook the alcohol dispenser up to my veins and let me go see this show. Hell, even if the just turned out to be a train wreck of drama and shit-talking, it would be awesome.

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Remember earlier this year, when Bret Michaels and Miley Cyrus re-recorded “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” as a duet, and then recorded a new duet with some incredibly sexual lyrics? At the time, I assumed that the 46 year old Michaels was tappin’ the 17 year old Cyrus, but as it turns out, he was probably doin’ her mom instead — at least, the rumor is that their affair is the cause of the pending divorce between Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus.

And I don’t know why Tish Cyrus would wanna fuck Bret Michaels. I guess she always had a fantasy in which she slept with a clone of herself, only the clone wore more make-up, and had the facial hair of a barely-pubescent boy.

Of course, now Bret’s publicist has denied the affair, lest it sully his good name:

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The reason all the hair-metal autobiographies have been disappointing is because the best hair metal band, Motley Crue, did it first, and did a really killer job (treating it like an oral history told from lots of different  perspectives = master stroke), and so there was really no place to go but down. Bret Michaels’ autobiography never actually materialized, Slash’s was good but not great, Steven Adler’s sucked, I only know one person who read Bobby Blotzer’s,  and now all the Motley Crue guys are dipping back into that pool for a second or even third time, only without each other because after thirty fucking years they still haven’t figured out that the unit is stronger than each individual. At this point I think it would take everyone who ever worked on Chinese Democracy, including Axl Rose, all banding together to make a The Dirt-style Roshomon piece if anything is even gonna BEGIN to compete with The Crue’s initial tome.

Now glam’s ugly twin, thrash, has started to catch on that there’s an interest in these books. And they don’t seem to be following the same pattern as cock rock. Sure, Dave Mustaine went first, but no one seems to really believe a word of his book, and it’s certainly not a definitive snap-shot of the time and place the way The Dirt is for the Strip in the 80′s. And I obviously have a lot of faith in Phil Anselmo’s upcoming collaboration with MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell, but Pantera weren’t purely thrash, and weren’t around for the Big Four’s heyday.

So. Now Noise Creep says that Kirk Hammett is doing his autobiography. (The news actually originated in an interview with Ultimate-Guitar, but I can’t find it. If anybody does, drop me a line.) There’s no word on which lucky writer will score that coveted “with” credit, but here’s a choice quote from Kirk:

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The Smoking Gun has posted a list of the per-gig earnings of some of the highest paid artists that toured this year, and a number them may interest you, our beloved Suckalos.

It will shock absolutely no one to learn that Kiss are number two on the list, and take home $500,000 a night, or that radio stalwarts Buckcherry and Shinedown respectively earn $100,000 and $85,000 per performance.

More surprising, to me at least, is that Bret Michaels gets $64,000 a night even without Poison (which means all those reality show appearances are good for something!), and that Warrant — FUCKING WARRANT — get $12,000 per show. I know $12,000/gig probably doesn’t seem like much when you consider what Kiss is getting, but I can assure you that it’s wwwwwaaaaayyyyyy more than pretty much all of your favorite metal bands are earning (unless you exclusively listen to Metallica or Korn or whatever). And that’s for a band who haven’t had a hit in two decades, and who are currently touring without their original singer, who also happens to be their most recognizable member.

The moral of the story, I guess, is that it pays to have a radio hit. As long as there’s someone who wants to hear “Cherry Pie” and “Heaven” live, Warrant will be richer than you.

Look at the complete list here.

-AR

[via Gun Shy Assassin]

I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in Darwin, and natural selection is clearly trying to send Bret Michaels a message: “You are not supposed to be here.” He’s diabetic, he’s the only person in the history of ever to almost eat it at the frickin’ Tony Awards, he’s spent half his life touring with C.C. DeVille (there’s a death sentence if ever there was one), and this year alone, he’s suffered  a massive subarachnoid brain hemorrhage AND discovered that he has a hole in his heart. Is this dude a character from a Final Destination movie or what?

Speaking of that gap in his ticker, and nature wanting him dead: In January, he’ll undergo surgery to try and fill in that sucker, ’cause unlike Extreme, the hole in his heart most certainly cannot be filled by only you. He’s gonna need, like, doctors and medicine and stuff.

I know it’s wrong to joke about a man having heart surgery, but, somehow, I feel like Bret is gonna pull through. Nature might want him dead, but just you watch — this dude is going to outlive us all. There could be a nuclear war, and all that would survive would be cockroaches and Bret Michaels.

And then he’d try to fuck the cockroaches.

-AR

During Hair Metal Week here on MetalSucks, the prize for Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week was a mix of glam songs compiled by yours truly. I know some of the entrants wanted me to post the track listing for that mix, and now that it’s finally completed (I’m kind of a perfectionist when it comes to mixes) and the winner, Ash Patterson, tells me he’s received his prize, it’s time to publish that track list, so you can all compile your own mix at home should you so choose.

I tried to pick songs that either a) were by bands I think most people have long since forgotten about, or b) were less famous entries in the oeuvre of more well-known bands. Hopefully those of you who actually like this kind of music will dig this.

Here’s the track list:

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

Inspired this week by the rumor that Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler may be a new judge on American Idol, we decided to ask our writers:

IF YOU HAD TO PICK ONE METAL MUSICIAN TO BE A JUDGE ON AMERICAN IDOL, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Nocturno reluctantly welcomed us into Hair Metal Week kicking and screaming, so this sappy finale is largely for him.  And those of you who like cheese.  A lot.

There’s been a lot of talk this week about what kind of sound does or does not make a band “glam” or “hair metal” or whatever the hell else you want to call it, but it’s also important to mention that for many of us the stinky cheese factor plays a huge role as well. So many of the bands in question were SO over-the-top ridiculous in their lyrics/music/attitude/wardrobe/etc. that it’s often unpossible to think about hair metal without associating how cheesy it all is.  Granted, this trend started in the 80s, so ample fromage is to be expected, but at the end of the day, doesn’t the corniness help define the genre itself?  Unless if some of you actually think that hair metal is unironically “cool”, which is okay I guess — we’re all entitled to our opinions, even if they’re wrong.

Regardless of where your tastes lie, we should all be able to agree that nowhere does the cheese fly nearly as much as in the power ballads of yesteryear…

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

Since it’s hair metal week here at MetalSucks, it seemed only appropriate to consider a glamtastic question. So we asked our writers:

WHICH HAIR METAL BAND FROM THE ’80s BEST STANDS THE TEST OF TIME IN 2010?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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After grunge got so popular that MTV’s 120 Minutes and Headbanger’s Ball somehow became practically the same show, a lot of hair metal bands tried to harden and “modern up” their sound — usually to disastrous results. Herein, a few of my favorite examples, presented in chronological order of their release.

First up we have Warrant’s “Machine Gun,” from the 1992 album Dog Eat Dog. This actually isn’t all that ridiculous, and came so early in the “let’s change our sound” cycle that I suspect it was intended more as a response to the success of bands like Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row than Nirvana. Still, it’s hardly “Cherry Pie” or “Heaven,” y’know?

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Weed: Responsible for this photo?

Do you think Bret Michaels is a nice guy in real life? He seems like he would be. But it’s been my experience that more often than not, people who achieved that level of fame and success are real douche bags. Which kinda makes sense, ’cause what kind of frail ego needs a spotlight that bright shined on it at all times?

But I know there are exceptions to this rule, and I’d like to think that Michaels is one of them. And the cops just found weed on his tour bus, so between the fact that he wrote “Unskinny Bop” and the fact that we both like to get tall, I think that Bret and I could be friends.

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You’ve been reading the MetalSucks/Bring Back Glam! countdown of the 10 Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums this week (part one here, part two here), so you’ve noticed that our Anso DF and BBG! chief Allyson B. Crawford’s Glam-crazy chemistry is like one of those Tarantino scenes where rogues trade passionate dissertations on Madonna or armed robbery. Or maybe it’s more like those Kevin Smith monologues about farting. One of those. Ahem. Oh, hey look it’s the number four album!

***

4. REST IN SLEAZE - Crashdiet

May 20, 2005 // Universal Records // p: Anders Ringman, Chris Laney, Grizzly/Tysper

The hits: “Riot In Everyone” “Knokk ‘Em Down” “Breakin’ the Chainz” “It’s A Miracle”

The heart: “Queen Obscene/69 Shots” “Tikket” “Out of Line”

Anso: I’ve been dying to talk to you about this record! Its appearance on our list blows me away for the following reasons:

Reason #1 – It was not released in the ’80s. Not even the ’90s. And yet you imply that it’s more vital to a respectable glam metal library than a hundred great records from the genre’s days of glory? Even here you rank it higher than freaking Appetite! Explain yourself!

Allyson: Total mind freak, right? I’m sure the haters will be out on this one! Singer Dave Lepard was simply way ahead of his time. Then again, Sweden is the fertile crescent of Glam Metal these days. The kids over there know how to write a catchy riff. Crashdiet was the first Glam Metal band to be signed to a major label (Universal) in over a decade.

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Read part one, regarding Mr. Richie Kotzen, here.

The story of Blues Saraceno’s tenure with Poison is a sad, sad story indeed.

Saraceno was a solo instrumentalist, kind of in the vain of guys like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, but really more like Kenny G. Saraceno released three albums on Guitar Recordings between 1989 and 1994: Never Look Back, Plaid, and Hairpick. Although his guitar tone was certainly unique and his magazine ads brandished a hyperbolic endorsement from Dweezil Zappa (I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something along the lines of, “This guy is so good I wanna punch him.”), I’m not entirely convinced that anyone really cared about who he was for any reason other than he kinda looked like Slash. (To your left is the largest photo of Saraceno in his Slash phase that I was able to find. Seriously.)

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As much as I love glam’s favorite apparently-playing-with-broken-fingers’d clown, C.C. DeVille, there is really no denying that Poison made their least annoying — if also least famous — music without the Brooklyn-born junkie.

To wit: 1993′s Native Tongue, the band’s first (of only two) albums written and recorded without DeVille. After expiring the man born as Bruce Johannesson for excessive drug use (a true feat amongst hair metal bands), Poison hired blues shredder Richie Kotzen — then just 23 years old, nearly a decade younger than his new bandmates. Unlike DeVille, Kotzen’s playing wasn’t obnoxious, and his guitar tone was warm, and fluid. He also happened to be a better singer than Bret Michaels, as evidenced by his vocal performance on songs like “Bring it Home” and “Seven Days Over You.” Native Tongue is no masterpiece — this is Poison we’re talking about, after all — but it does feel more like a real, honest to goodness hard rock album than the cotton candy confections for which the band is known. Hell, I even seem to recall Alex Sklonick endorsing it in an issue of Guitar World.

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Maybe I’m a jerk, but it’s always blown my mind that Poison singer Bret Michaels has, like, never hit a correct pitch, ever. On any song. Or during any recorded live footage. One could go so far as to imply that Michaels may have never taken a singing lesson or hired a voice coach or even fucked the mouth of a karaoke contest winner. He’s a good guy, you can tell. And of course, I respect the party prowess of Bret Michaels, lovable skank-wrangler. It’s just that my ears want revenge on Bret Michaels, singer.

Also remarkable about the Michaels saga, which only recently turned scary and hammy, is the possibility that Bret-skis — for like twenty years — has somehow stood up to producers and record label honchos and his bandmates and reason and good taste, and has never seemed to mix-fix or pro-tools the living shit out of his takes. Good for him! Why cheat on a test that doesn’t matter? That dude is fucking rich anyway, and at least one of his records is a classic (next week, you’ll see that Allyson from BringBackGlam.com disagrees with me about which one), and I’m pretty sure he’s indestructible, because his brain basically exploded and yet he remains alive as fuck. My hat is way off to Bret.

However. It’s about time that someone tip Bret to the fact that he’s over-Oprahing his return from death’s doorstep. He’s gone total cheesecorn and his orange fingerprints are everywhere. Teary interviews. Book deals. Mortality-themed bandanas. And Tuesday night Star reports that now he’s gone and proposed marriage to his best girl from days gone by? Marriage, Bret? I guess this means the story arc of his new show, Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It, involves redemption or something. What’s next? Singing lessons?

-ADF

Read more about Bret Michaels and other guys who don’t sing great but no one minds all next week when MetalSucks brings back glam with Allyson B. Crawford of BringBackGlam.com. Read it or we’ll fuck your mom. Again.