MetalSucks

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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Canadian stoner metallers Priestess were way too cool for their alma mater RCA Records, for whom they released only one album — 2006’s Hello Master — before being dropped. The album undoubtedly underperformed by major label standards, even with that nice sync fee they got for the inclusion of “Lay Down” in Guitar Hero III. Fitting then that stoner stalwarts Tee Pee Records have picked up Priestess to release their next album Prior to the Fire in February of 2010. Tee Pee’s roster includes a lot of acts just a tad too like wayyy stooooned ouuut maaaan for this site’s tastes, but with the release of Iron Age’s stellar thrasher  The Sleeping Eye earlier this year and the announcement that Priestess have joined their ranks, things are looking a bit heavier at the Tee Pee camp.

Priestess have a new song called “Sideways Attack” up on their MySpace page. Me rikee… it’s a bit more up-tempo than a lot of the material from Hello Master and the production is super-dry but tight, not unlike that of Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf.

Priestess performed in NYC this week twice at the CMJ Music Marathon… if you were there, kindly fill us in.

-VN

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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We all love metal. That goes without saying. That’s why we all read this site and keep up with what our favorite, and not so favorite, bands are doing. From people in bands to fans, we all pretty much live, breathe, sleep, and bleed metal.

So I guess what I’m wondering is: does it ever get old to any of you?

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I’ve gotten multiple e-mails from peeps about this interview The Eagles of Death Metal front dude Jesse Hughes just gave to the Montreal Mirror.

Now, I should preface this by saying I’ve heard very little of TEODM’s music, and what I hear didn’t do anything for me. But, clearly Hughes is a funny guy.

But the statements everyone is harping on seem kinda… well… shrug. Read for yourself:

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Metal Hammer reports that Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones (those are the dudes from Queens of the Stone Age / Kyuss, Foo FIghters / Nirvana and Led fucking Zeppelin respectively, for the uninitiated or just plain retarded), in what would be the second extremely boner-worthy collaboration involving Josh Homme to surface in the past month.

Grohl is kinda-sorta getting his childhood/ongoing wet-dream of playing drums for Zep, kinda sorta. The man can pretty much do no wrong in my book, whatwith Probot, playing with Mastodon, a million other side projects, and of course the continued quality output of Foo Fighters. A collabo with Josh Homme makes perfect sense given his stoner/metal background, and JPJ is just the icing on the cake! Gonna be some deep, stoney shit.

-VN

Regular readers of this site know full well that your editors are not fans of Isis or Neurosis. It’s not what we dislike those bands… we just don’t like ‘em. Don’t see what all the fuss is about or why people go so fucking ga-ga at their mere mention. No matter how many times people we trust say “duuuude… you gotta listen again! trust me!” every time I listen again (and there have been many), I still don’t give a fuck.

So it is with extreme surprise that I report the following: I like the new Isis song.

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It seems that all the hip music blogs were all a-twitter yesterday about the latest side-project from Jack White. Yet unlike The White Stripes or The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather actually sounds pretty darn good. Unlike with those other projects, Mr. White steps away from the spotlight and plays the drums. His fellow Raconteur Jack Lawrence handles the bass and Queens Of The Stone Age member Dean Fertita is the axeman, but the real star of the show is singer Allison Mosshart of the staggeringly good duo The Kills.

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The Obelisk, a new metal blog run by JJ Koczan of the now defunct Metal Maniacs Magazine, recently published a fascinating interview with Roadrunner Records A&R-king Monte Conner on the subject of stoner rock. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the most famous and influential A&Rs in the history of metal, if not just for the interesting stoner rock subject matter  then for the industry / label politics / A&R talk. Monte speaks all about his stoner rock heroes from Kyuss to Fu Manchu to Queens of the Stone Age, spends a good deal of time talking about why Roadrunner never ventured far into the stoner rock foray (Karma to Burn excepted — and he goes in depth about them, too), the current state of stoner rock, and why it’s never become a commercially viable genre. Take a quick look at some of the interview highlights after the jump.

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File Isis under “bands I just don’t get.” I mean, I GET it… long, drony songs, heavy, fuzzed out bass, big, loopy riffs, raw production, lack of traditional song structure… but I don’t GET IT get it. As in, see what all the fuss is about. Im fully aware of the importance and influence of this band, especially to those who grew up with more of a punk background as opposed to a metal background… but man, every time I try to listen to an Isis record (a feat I’ve attempted many times) I just get bored, zone out, and forget I’m listening to it. Kinda like when you’re reading a book but your mind is elsewhere and you get to the bottom of the page only to release you can’t actually remember anything you just read… actually, listening to Isis is exactly like that for me. Consistently.

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Apparently Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme launched into a foul string of expletives and threw a bottle at some dumbass kid, after said kid threw said bottle at him while the band was performing at the Norwegian Wood festival this past weekend. This is why I love the Internet so much — this video is an absolute must watch before it gets pulled! Some choice nuggets include:

“I’m not so sick that I can’t go down there and beat the fuckin’ shit out of you!”

“I’ll still buttfuck you in front of all your friends!”

“You chicken-shit fuckin’ faggot! Hey you, you fuckin’ pussy motherfucker! I will fuck you up!”

“This dickless fuckin’ turd has no friends anyways.”

Watch and enjoy. Why is it that when Axl Rose does this kind of thing it sparks a riot and when Josh Homme does it everyone from audience members to the blogosphere applauds? Axl, you watching this?

-VN

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Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, never one to keep his mouth shut, went off on a tirade against his band’s label Interscope and chairman Jimmy Iovine in a recent interview with Antiquiet [via Idolator]:

Antiquiet: When more big bands get free of their contracts and start to do it their own way, how do you think the labels are going to react to losing their grip on what’s been their cash cow for so long?
Josh Homme: Fuck the labels man, they suck. The last thing they’re stripping down is their own expense accounts and shit. I mean, Jimmy Iovine of Interscope records takes a private jet or rides first class to tell a band they don’t get tour support. You know what I mean? Fuck that shit, I’m tired of it. And I’m not gonna be quiet because the American label, not Canada, not Europe, but our American label’s fucking us like crazy, so fuck them. Why should I not say anything, what am I afraid of? I’m not afraid of them. One of the things most notable about us is how we work. You could not like the music, you can do anything you want, but we work and there’s no changing that fact. And all I want to do is what we agreed upon. And I’m not even bitter, people say labels are evil, no. They’re just lame. I can’t download my music from the Interscope website, because they gave that power away to iTunes.

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Turbonegro oozes with street level glam-rock grit, and they’re goddamn proud of it. Despite all of their lyrics being in English, this over-the-top band formed in the late ’80s comes from Oslo, Norway, which doesn’t particularly strike me as a geographical purveyor of rawk (obviously metal is a different story), but watching them perform this past Tuesday night at the Nokia Theater in New York (with Nick Oliveri’s Mondo Generator as support), they might as well have been transplanted from the Lower East Side heyday of glam and trash. And the truth is, that era is no doubt what got these tri-curious chaps started on their mission of filthiness in the first place.

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