MetalSucks

Here’s Zakk Wylde talking to Tartarean Desire a few years back… I’ve added some emphasis:

“What would be a good career move is to get Eminem to sing on a Black Label album. It would stir up some controversy with the Hell’s Angels of Iron if you had Eminem rapping on a Black Label album. I go first off I hate fucking rap music, so what the fuck would I want to have that mother fucker singing on my fucking album… Because he is popular?”

And here’s Zakk ranting about rap and rap metal back in 2006:

Of course, ideals are nothing in the face of a paycheck. And so here we are, it’s almost 2010, and Zakk Wylde has recorded a guest guitar solo on Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise 20XX” for DJ Hero, a video game for people who think that Guitar Hero is too sophisticated.

Click to read more…

So we read on Metal Insider, who read on Drowned In Sound, who read on nme.com, that Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello used to be a stripper. Seriously. Says Morello:

When I graduated from Harvard and moved to Hollywood, I was unemployable. I was literally starving, so I had to work menial labour and, at one point, I even worked as an exotic dancer. ‘Brick House’ [by The Commodores] was my jam! I did bachelorette parties and I’d go down to my boxer shorts. Would I go further? All I can say is thank god it was in the time before YouTube! You could make decent money doing that job – people do what they have to do.

Click to read more…

Last week’s post of In This Moment covering Iron Maiden sparked such an uproar that it inspired longtime MetalSucks Maniac Hegy to send in a link of another female artist covering a (sort of classic) metal track, Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerilla Radio” as performed by everyone’s favorite Canadian yodeler Alanis Morissette. Thing is, said cover isn’t nearly as objectionable as it might seem. For one, Alanis has actually got a good voice, and I liked a lot of her earlier material in a completely non-ironic (haha, get it?) way. But more importantly, Alanis doesn’t go for the straight cover. Her version of the RATM classic is musically quite different from the original — it’s more of an “interpretation” than a cover, if you will — and unless you’re a devoted student of RATM lyrics you probably wouldn’t recognize the song until the chorus kicks in at around the 1-minute mark. Alanis, you continue to prove why Canadians are that much smarter than their American brethren.

-VN

CityPages is reporting that Rage Against the Machine were not allowed to play a show by Minneapolis police, after supposed headliners Anti-Flag finished a show at the Republican National Convention and said, “Stay put; shit’s gonna get crazy.” After the band argued with police and event organizers for 15 minutes, they descended into the crowd. Singer Zach De la Rocha then addressed the crowd with a short anti-war speech, and the band proceeded to lead the protesters in a cappella versions of “Bulls on Parade” and “Killing in the Name Of.” Morello sang the guitar parts and de la Rocha the lyrics, as 2,000+ protesters sang along in unison. Thanks to the wonders of the Internets, we have a fan-filmed video.

Fucking A, I love this band so much right now. Fast-forward to the 2:30 mark for the song.

-VN

[Thanks: Eric H. and Gabexmosh]

[Ed - Correct video is now on, sorry.]

We’re signing off early today here at the MS Mansion. There are bowls to be smoked, beers to be drank, and barbecues to attend in the waning days of summer. Enjoy your weekend! Meanwhile, some stuff that happened here this week:

• We posted interviews from our trip to the Rockstar Mayhem Festival with Mastodon, Machine Head and Black Tide. Well, the latter was not so much an interview.
• Even Dallas got in the ring to weigh in on the politics of Metallica, and we had some fun with Metallica haiku and pontificated the 3rd new song.
• Rage Against the Machine raged against the machine. So did we.
• The new AC/DC single sounds like the old AC/DC single sounds like the old…
• Axl Rose called the FBI on the Chinese Democracy leaker.
• Slipknot goes in another new musical direction with All Hope Is Gone… and possibly has a #1 record.

Toodaloo!

-VN

Not only were/are Rage Against the Machine fiercely political and idealistic, they’re also perhaps one of the only examples of rap-metal done right. The video for “Bombtrack” from 1992’s self-titled debut showcases not only the band’s political bent but their heavy as fuck riffs and grooves. Come on – don’t front. You love Rage Against the Machine. McCain’s super-hard right wing VP pick? Not so much.

-VN

Sure, they made some fucking awesome music (I probably spun their self-titled disc more than any other in the summer of ‘92). But what I want to talk about today is how, despite fame, money and age, they’ve remained fiercely political, involved and angry, always sticking to their ideals. The above picture [from Fear and Loathing via MetalSucks reader Eric H.] says it all — RATM on the front lines with 7000 other protesters at the DNC, urging Barack Obama to stick to his anti-war platform. Not only did they schedule a concert in Denver during the DNC; not only does Tom Morello frequently speak out in the press; they protest with everyone else, on the front fucking lines. That is the definition of honesty and keeping it real.

God, I fucking love this band.

-VN

You may or may not have heard in the past week about the fact that the Writer’s Guild of America – the union of writers for film and television – is on strike (you can find excellent ongoing coverage here). The mass media isn’t giving the strike much coverage because, well, the mass media is largely owned by the same conglomerates that the writer’s are striking against. See, the gist of the conflict is this: right now, when you a buy a DVD, the writer of whatever film or tv program is on said DVD gets about four cents, and the writers would like a raise so they make a whopping eight cents on each DVD; furthermore, writers currently aren’t paid when their work is streamed on a network website (usually complete with paid commercials) or downloaded on iTunes, which is to say: they’re not being paid for their work. Of course, GE and Time Warner and Viacom don’t want you to see it that way; they want you to think that the writers are greedy assholes and they want you to be upset that by the end of November, there basically won’t be anything on tv save for re-runs and reality shows (You won’t feel the effect in movie theaters until about 2009, when every shitty script the studios rushed into production to beat the strike is released. Seriously: the last time Hollywood thought there was gonna be a writer’s strike, Fox immediately gave a green light to… the re-make of Planet of the Apes. Chew on that.).

ANYWAY, leave it our favorite heavy metal crusader, Tom Morello, to take a stand for the writers, joining picketers at last week’s rally outside Fox. Video below:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/oQAzNsPLlDk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR