A while ago I got linked, I’m pretty sure it was from here, to this blog entry by a dude who calls himself Metallikris on his imaginatively-titled Metalliblog, in which he rates every metal musician of note that he’s met on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how nice they were to him. Now while I have a captive audience, that I can only assume our fine friend Metallikris is amongst (because he writes about this site on his blog), I would just like to ask…

What the fuck?

These people work their arses (ah-hem, asses. Sorry yanks) off for decades learning to play their instruments, fight the ridiculous uphill battle to start a band, do something original and actually get some recognition for it, do insane hours on tour, and then somehow their entire worth as a human being can be quantatively measured by how they deal with you wanting to get your photo taken with them after they’ve gotten offstage? What in the hell have you have you ever done in your life that gives you the divine power to judge ANYONE that way, let  alone talented, hardworking musicians who do things you never could?

When you say that Ralph Santolla should “get cancer quick!”or that Willie Adler’s wife is “probably fucking the local milkman”, you’re talking shit on real human beings in the name of getting some second-hand attention, and that’s just weak. And are you really surprised that Fredrik Akesson from Opeth was maybe just a little pissed off that you mistook him for Peter Lindgren, the guy he replaced in the band?

Now at this point I could drag out your self-edited imdb actor page or your hilariously self-important twitter account and let the metalsucks maniacs have their way with them, but instead I’m going to just say this:

Get a reality check, dude.

-Crack Hitler

Up to this point, the Obituary that reunited in 2003 only bothered to resuscitate their exasperating tendencies. After two, um, unsatisfactory outings, a third post-reunion album must feel like a potential strike three to many. And like the ’05 and ’07 albums, 2009’s Darkest Day can be painfully simplistic and inattentively performed. But unlike those dull albums that preceded it, Darkest Day has stretches of greatness (at least 24 bars of most songs), a pair of classics (“Payback,” “Your Darkest Day“), their best-ever album closer (The Crown-hinted “Left To Die”), and brilliant performances from the inimitable John Tardy and frowny lead guitarist Ralph Santolla.

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Look: after nearly 20 years of making brutal death metal, Deicide ain’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. So while “The Beginning of the End,” the opening track of their latest offering, Till Death Do Us Part, is kind of surprising (it’s a slow, moody instrumental, as foreboding as the title would suggest, that is unsettling and in no way beautiful, like the negative version of the intro to every American New Wave album this century), everything after is exactly what you’d expect from these fearsome Floridians. Chuck Klosterman once suggested that the reason the Sunshine State spawned so much awesome death metal is because constantly being surrounded by old people makes one think about death all the time; maybe all that ponderin’ of the great beyond also makes these dudes desperate to maintain their youth, and so they just keep making the same album they did in 1990 over and over again.

In any case, it’s a moot point, ’cause like AC/DC before them and Children of Bodom after, the fact that they’re usually pretty good slides them from the “boh-ring” column to the one labeled “dependable.”

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Okay okay okay, I had to get the lame Sebastian Bach pun out of the way.

ANYWAY, Sebastian Bach’s much ballyhooed new album, Angel Down, is now avail for streaming in its entirety on AOL music; I’ve listened to about half of it, and while I’m sure at least one of you will disagree with me, it’s really, really, really bad. Really bad.

Here’s the thing: it’s not impossible, in 2007, to make good hard rock or pop metal – hell, we’ve seen some pretty good examples of those genres this year – nor is the album bad because Bach is, as some have accused, “stuck in the 80s.” I mean, Bach is stuck in the 80s, but that’s not why this album is bad. This album is bad because the songwriting sucks. There are “hooks,” I suppose, but not good ones. It’s just boring, generic cock rock, and frankly, I don’t think anyone hanging out on the Strip in ’85 would’ve enjoyed this crap, either (then again, Pretty Boy Floyd managed to have a career, so who knows). And no amount of guest appearances by reclusive singers from more famous bands in the world can save lousy songwriting (By the way, it’s recently come to my attention that at least one of these songs was written by Ralph Santolla of Deicide and Obituary fame; I find that incredibly hard to believe, but in any case, whatever Santolla contributed didn’t do much to raise the quality level here).

So for now I’ll go back to daydreaming about Baz reuniting with Skid Row, thank you very much. Only thing is, after awhile, I’ll probably remember that the last two Skid Row albums sucked monkey balls, too, and I’ll have to be content with my one trillionth spin of Slave to the Grind.

-AR