Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 4:30pm by MetalSucks
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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
Following the not-necessarily-logical-but-certainly-MetalSucksian conclusion that we need to counteract our recent Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012 series, in which we preview some albums coming out this year about which we are totally stoked, this week we asked our writers:
WHAT ALBUM WILL HIT YOU IN THE FACE WITH A LIMP DICK IN 2012?
Monday, September 12th, 2011 at 3:00pm by MetalSucks
Few records could be as intrinsically polarizing as Anthrax’s Worship Music, the thirteen-song set whose release tomorrow ends a maddening period of band tumult while launching a new era with singer Joey Belladonna. It’s an album with history, having been completed with a new vocalist, imperiled by the new vocalist, shelved, shuffled, completed again by Belladonna and producer Jay Ruston, and now, at least, unveiled for the world to hear. In other words, Worship Music has arrived with baggage; how much of it will fit in your trunk?
Representing at least two attitudes toward Anthrax 2011, our MetalSucks official roundtable review of Worship Music is co-authored by a John Bush era devotee (MS Co-Editor-In-Chief Axl Rosenberg) and a long-suffering Belladonna booster (MS Senior Editor Anso DF). On the fence about Worship Music? Sick of one-sided, insight-free criticism? Bemused by the way MetalSucks disagrees with itself? Then join Axl and Anso as they grapple with the meaning of this year’s most dangerous album.
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month isDecibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
A Queensrÿche Hall of Fame. This is happening. And I mean this is happening in the same way Jack Black meant this is happening when he punted Baxter off the bridge. Some-to-many of you may think this is happening in a “holy shit, Decibel is finally acknowledging this mind-blowing, flawlessly executed, classy-as-hell progressive masterwork,” and that’s what I’m looking for here. You will be very happy with Jeff Wagner’s comprehensive history of Operation: Mindcrime. Anybody who’s ever conceptualized and executed an ambitious, intricate, super-precise creative endeavor will be astonished at how these dudes maintained their integrity and vision throughout the process. Once in a (great) while, sincerity is a good thing.
Now here’s some stuff that Albert—who probably doesn’t trust me to go another paragraph without making fun of this band—wants you to know: “Silent Lucidity” is still shitty, and it’s not on this record. The “Queen of the Reich” video is completely fucking insane/amazing. Oh yeah, and the umlaut would’ve gone over the “r” or something in the whole damn magazine if it wasn’t for my world-class copy-editing eye. As you may have guessed by now, the Mindcrime HOF runs in the Mastodon issue, which actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. (I seriously hadn’t thought about it until now.)
Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Song ”Stripsearch”
Written by Patton (L); Hudson, Patton, Bordin, Gould (M)
Released 1997
Appears onAlbum of the Year album
Produced by Roli Mosimann (Swans, Wiseblood), Billy Gould
Guitars by Jon Hudson
Key lyric ”Don’t be ashamed/Next in line/Close one eye/Just walk by”
Single? Yes, AotY‘s third and final (preceded by “Ashes To Ashes” and “Last Cup Of Sorrow”)
The climate Faith No More might’ve been ailing by Album of the Year, their most grim and least cohesive release with Patton. If “Ashes” and “Sorrow” defined band mood, then “Stripsearch” hammered at it: despair. And the rise of Limp Bizkit was still to come. A 1999 FNM record would’ve been interesting.
Awesome song elevated to supra-awesomeness by a few awesome touches: There’s that cool squelchy loop, Patton’s cry-for-help backing vocals, and the track’s guitarlessness ended by Hudson’s starkly beautiful solo — that last thing makes a fan want more FNM with Hudson.
Didja know? Bassist Billy Gould was quoted saying that the five-note loop saved “Stripsearch” from sounding like Queensryche and helped it to sound like Portishead. When asked for comment, Geoffs Tate and Barrow replied, “We wish.”
A bunch of big records came out last Tuesday: Suicide Silence, Fair to Midland, Sepultura and Decapitated. After the jump we’ll take a look at how those and a few recent releases sold over the past week.
But first, a follow-up on a question I asked in last week’s column: how do the numbers for Arch Enemy’s Khaos Legions stack up against their past releases? I don’t have week-by-week breakdowns for each album to compare to Khaos Legions‘ cumulative total of 13,944 after five weeks, but these total sales figures for Arch Enemy’s best-selling albums should provide some frame of reference:
Anthems of Rebellion: 74,712
Doomsday Machine: 108,036
Rise of the Tyrant: 55,812
Wages of Sin: 71,688
With Khaos Legions falling off the charts in week six, that means they sold less than 1,092 units last week, the minimum number required to crack the Top 100 Hard Music Chart. Based on that I’d say it’s going to be a tough climb for Gossow, the Amotts and co. to match their past success this time around.
I feel bad consistently dishing on Queensryche these days because the band’s music has meant so much to me in the past… but it’s that whole thing about your heroes letting you down, ya know? Only plausible conclusion: Chris DeGarmo was my hero all along.
So it is with 100% pure, unadulterated, forlorn love that I say the following: good God, new Queensryche blows, and in case you need any proof just listen to / watch their new video above. At least this time their much-maligned management successfully grasped the concept of how to utilize a music video in 2011 – in other words you don’t have to buy the album just to see the fucking thing – but unfortunately the song is bland, uninspired garbage and the video is your usual ho-hum collage of live clips. Of course I wouldn’t know how this video compares to their last video since I didn’t buy the album, but I did get a press advance of the new album, which is called Dedicated to Chaos and is out now by the way, and honest to god these are actually the opening lyrics from a song called “Hot Spot Junkie:”
The wifi wave, I’m addicted to the wifi wave.
An indispensable satellite tool I abuse. I abuse.
The world wide web and all the pictures on YouTube, there’s no escaping it.
Keeps on crawling under my skin.
It’s probably not overestimating things to state that Queensryche is kinda in the shit right now. Relatively speaking, of course. Not like Afghanistan- or Michael Todd-type in the shit. Not that bad. But the weeks surrounding release of twelfth album Dedicated To Chaos seem like an extended, multi-pronged PR gaffe, one which must spawn from confusion in the Queensryche camp about averse receptions to their good product. And D2C is pretty good. Srs.
Lettucereal tho Dedicated To Chaos has at least one huge problem that takes effort, stamina, and will power to endure. So we can’t label it a ‘great album’ oh my no. But aspects of it can be great — it’s just not metal. We’ll talk about that later, k? First shall I back up the above ‘extended PR gaffe’ claim? Great! No offensies!
You will be happy to know that Limp Bizkit did not claim the #1 spot on the Top Hard Music charts again this week. That spot belongs to… Pop Evil. Who? Not Limp Bizkit, that’s who.
Aside from Unearth, there weren’t any notable debuts to chart last week. After the jump, a look at how the latest records from Black Dahlia Murder, In Flames, and many more fared on the marketplace of over-priced pieces of plastic and soon-to-be-obsolete digital files.
Let’s give Axl Rosenberg a hearty golf clap forcapablyhandling Neilstein Soundscam while I was away, shall we? But the party is over, so it’s back to the grind of boring albums selling soon-to-be insignificant pieces of plastic (and soon-to-be insignificant digital files once Spotify launches).
You should all be elated to learn that Limp Bizkit claimed the #1 spot on the Hard Music charts last week (#15 overall), so let’s all take a great big sigh of relief in knowing that good music reigns supreme.
I keed. Queensryche had a solid debut, while In Flames, Symphony X and The Black Dahlia Murder had decent second weeks despite large percentage drops. Check out the numbers for those and several others after the jump.
We’ve all heard the American glory anthems, but what jamz do you count on to decode your American shame? What songwriters help to explain our fucked up shit to the rest of the world? What albums are currency to convince your foreign friends that you’re not a typical American bastard?
On Independence Day I’m ready to party, but not unconditionally. I’m usually thinking “Sure, America is silly now, but we’re getting better at dealing with a massive technology epoch shift and natural resources stuff and getting rid of cigarettes and prejudice and fat chicks, so, to this extent, I say let’s party.” Anything beyond that would be self-delusion and nationalism generated by misplaced fear.
That vibe doesn’t last. I soon default to “Man, America is about being a fucking jerk all the time” mode. This happens every year: The fourth of July holiday could be a renewal of goals, of commitment to responsible nationhood; instead, it’s a day for marathon face stuffing and drunken blather. It could be both. Speech in the morning, bongs and bikinis by brunch. Shit.
Lucky for all, America has produced not only an infinite well of parking space stealers, war profiteers, and dirty diaper litterbugs, but also a few killer songwriters who express the bullshit-osity of America to us and everybody else. Check out these angry, angry jamz:
Wanna see Queensryche’s new video, for the song ”Get Started?” Well, unless you own their new album, you’re shit outta luck.
You see, in an apparent effort to prove to the world that they don’t understand the purpose of a music video, Queensryche are requiring fans to verify that they’ve purchased the group’s latest release, Dedicated to Chaos, before they can stream the clip online.
What the fuck are Queensryche thinking? The way I see it, there are one of two possibilities:
Pretty slow week in metal releases, seeing just some new releases from Queensryche, the bass player from The Faceless, and also some band called Limp Bizkit. Details on this week’s latest metallic offerings after the jump!
It’s not fair to count Queensryche among the great, horrible post-fame implosions like Metallica or Eddie Murphy; the Seattle band’s descent into crumminess was far less cataclysmic, more akin to a weather-beaten house’s piece-by-piece collapse than the toppling of a high rise by a C4 fireball. But the sad fact remains that post-1993 Queensryche is a patience-testing proposition; albums seem tired and tend to implicate their authors as out of love with the creation of music.
Hey, it’s understandable if for no other reason than their grueling tour for 1990’s triple-platinum Empire. Shows numbered in excess of 150 over 18 months, and each 2.5 hour show opened with an mini-set of mostly Empire stuff, then Operation: Mindcrime in its Tate-exhausting entirety, plus two encores. That’s enough worldwide grinding to snuff out inspiration in even the most prolific, expressive songwriter, of which Queensryche soon found themselves one short following the 1997 departure of guitarist Chris DeGarmo. By that point, Queensryche was sounding downright ragged and, evidently, uninterested in quality sonics.
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 12:12am by Axl Rosenberg
So there are a lot of things that differentiate Frank Sinatra from most modern metal musicians, but I’d like to concentrate on two:
He could actually sing.
He was an honest-to-goodness, not-to-be-fucked-with badass.
And so it makes no sense to me that, according to Noisecreep, “members of Anthrax, Twisted Sister, Deep Purple, Queensryche, Warrant and other groups have recorded their own metallic versions of some of Sinatra’s standards and classics for an album called SIN-atra.”
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 12:00pm by Vince Neilstein
With the holidays right around the corner — and all the best of, greatest hits and holiday comps that come therewith — this past Tuesday was the last big date for new album releases in 2010, though there are still a few stragglers coming down the pipe. The world of hard rock and metal made a big showing last week, with new releases from Underoath, Dio, Cradle of Filth, Oceano, Gwar, Helloween, Volbeat and a smattering of others making the Soundscan charts. Rankings, sales figures and commentary after the jump.
Call it PBS, or Power Ballad Syndrome; Queensryche are yet another band whose biggest hit was a soft acoustic number — the haunting “Silent Lucidity” — and who were subsequently written off by many MTV viewers (and any young metal fans today who happen to stumble upon the song) who didn’t care to dig into the band’s deep history. But Queensryche were anything but hair metal; instead they were arguably one of the most crucial bands in progressive metal history, most certainly of the ’80s (and ’90s). If you had to put together a simple flow chart denoting key progressive metal influence over a period of time, it’d look something like this:
Rush -> Iron Maiden -> Queensryche -> Dream Theater -> BTBAM -> ?
An extremely important cog indeed. In a time when most metal focused on sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, Queenryche made it ok to be smart and be a metalhead by writing complex musical compositions with socially conscious lyrics.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed how that rotten Paul Masvidal (armed with his lousy awesome columns about happiness) has raised the intellectual level of MetalSucks to at least high school. And I must protest. Yes, Masvidal is wonderful, but c’mon dude! We’re trying to bicker about Mustaine and boobs here, man.
It’s like his guileless insights, so eloquently stated, render sub-retards like me too self-conscious to, say, publish 6,800 words about the hand-hug from Ronnie James Dio a fortnight ago that has changed my life. And suddenly, after I complete a second extended harangue about Stephen Pearcy, my finger hovers over the button that reads SUBMIT FOR REVIEW ‘cuz I’m thinking, “Will Paul think this is bullshit? Wait a minute. This is bullshit!’ It’s like I have another editor. A silent, invisible editor by remote suggestion!
My bosses at MetalSucks love me for my looks, but by now Vince (pictured here) and Axl (here) know that my dazzling physical gifts are accompanied by a lot of blown deadlines and indecipherable twaddle about the band Junkyard and drugs. To compensate, I help out with dropped assignments and try to do a really super job on the big stories that fall to the MS L.A. Bureau. Well I direct your attention to the word try in the previous sentence cuz for the last month or so [Seven weeks, Anso. But who's counting. -Ed.], I have been failing to produce even a coherent thought about the Between The Buried and Me/Cynic/Devin Townsend show back in January. I got zilch.
But it’s not my fucking fault. Stupid tour. It was too good.
MARCH IS METAL MONTH IS UNDERWAY!!! And as Vince promised last week, there’s a free sampler now avail featuring artists from many of the participating labels. That means you can download tracks by Fear Factory, Ihsahn, Triptykon, Suicide Silence, Lacuna Coil, Queensryche, White Wizzard, and more, all for the cost of breathing. Head over to Amazon to get the absolutely free download.
We’ll also have lots more March is Metal Month goodness in the coming weeks, including additional interviews and contests. Keep checking back here, or head over to MarchIsMetalMonth.com for all the latest.
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 4:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Was Rob Zombie never cool and I was just an idiot? Or am I right that he’s only recently become kind of a let down? I honestly can’t tell.
Anyways, even if we ignore the cheesiness of the fact that Zombie is obviously trying to cash-in on past glories by making a sequel album (Has there ever been a good “Part 2″ record? First person to say Operation: Mindcrime II gets a kick in the anus.), this cover art clearly comes from the Marilyn Manson school of “Have an intern whip something up on Photoshop.” Which is not only lame, but kinda weird: Zombie went to the prestigious art school Cooper Union.
You can do better than this, Rob. C’mon. Be cool again.
Photos by Adam Haussman
