Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe 2 just came out in February, but daddy needs a new cowboy hat, so Roadrunner is doing a super-duper-special edition re-release of the album on September 28. It’s not even an eight month turnaround; I don’t know if that’s a record or it just feels even faster than usual.

As is pretty much standard with these re-releases, there will be new songs included; not standard, though, is that those new songs will be interspersed throughout the old ones — as opposed to just putting them all after whatever the last song used to be, or on their own disc, or whatever — which makes HB2 George Lucas Style almost a new album, creatively if not actually. By which I mean, I’ve met bands that are ridiculously perfectionistic when it comes to figuring out their sequencing — sequencing means something, and a lot of thought goes into the flow of the record. Adding new material will, presumably, alter that flow in some regard.

Either that, or I just spent more time thinking about the sequencing of Hellbilly Deluxe 2 than Rob Zombie did.

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You asked, and he answered! Here’s Gwar‘s Oderus Urungus, the greatest singer in the history of what this putrid, worthless planet calls “metal,” to answer all your ridiculous questions…

If your name wasn’t Oderus what would it be? – Rob

That’s a good question, moron. It’s pretty hard to imagine me being named LOLA or FUNKY WINKERBEAN.  Is this typical of the types of questions I am gonna get? Completely fucking retarded ones? It never ceases to amaze me that here you have an opportunity to have all the mysteries of life revealed, but you want to ask asinine questions like this one (YOURS). Get fucked! Oh yeah, I almost forgot — it would be GENGHIS HITLER VON DOG-LOLLY! Oh no, I shit myself (again).

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Just a couple of weeks ago Rob Zombie gave an interview where he expressed displeasure over the way Ozzy Osbourne was stealing band members from him; now he’s quickly denied us of potentially weeks or even months of online shit-talking by releasing a statement which ostensibly absolves Ozzy of all responsibility for Zombie’s anger. From Zombie’s MySpace page:

“I am very happy to put this Zombie vs Ozzy crap to rest. I just got off the phone with Ozzy and all is good with us. I have known Ozzy and Sharon for many years and have never had any problems with them. In fact they have always been very cool and easy to deal with. So, needless to say I found this whole situation very strange and a real bummer. This whole thing was really always between my band and a certain ex-drummer not between me and Ozzy. I wish Ozzy nothing but the best. End of story.”

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Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie used to be friends and occasional tour mates, united by shared history of starting successful solo careers after first fronting successful bands, a tenuous connection to horror movies and all things Evil, and their mainstream appeal to meatheads everywhere.

But now 50% of Ozzy’s band consists of ex-members of Zombie’s band — that would be bassist Blasko and drummer Tommy Clufetos — and because Rob wanted to make my day, he got catty about Ozzy poaching his members in a recent interview. The video is above (the smack talk starts around the 54 second mark), but here’s a transcription of what he said:

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I really loved The Devil’s Rejects, but at this point, I’m willing to accept that it was a fluke, and that Rob Zombie is not a very talented film director. House of 1,000 Corpses was fun, but I haven’t felt the need to re-watch it since I saw it in theaters, and while I thought that Zombie’s Halloween was the worst thing ever, that’s only because I had not yet seen his Halloween II, which really might be the worst thing ever. And some people said that his straight-to-DVD animated flick, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, was pretty good, but I turned it off after about fifteen minutes. I think if I was thirteen I would have thought it was the tits, but I’m not so I didn’t.

It’s gotten to the point where the best thing about any Zombie flick is the inevitable shot of some part of Sheri Moon Zombie’s naked anatomy. Because Rob Zombie has a hot wife, and he wants you to know that he has a hot wife. Also, because a quick look at Sheri’s resumé tells me that she’s only ever worked on two projects that her husband wasn’t directly involved in: a Tobe Hooper movie I’ve never even heard of (Holy shit, did Tobe Hooper wipe out or what?), and appearing as a Nurse on an episode of Californication (a not very good show which is apparently written by metal fans who probably knew who Sheri was).

So now Zombie has released a new video for the song “Mars Needs Women,” a song which just SCREAMS for a naked chick painted red, and where the fuck is Sheri? NOWHERE TO BE SEEN! Sheesh. I’m glad Rob’s band is basically a supergroup now, but you think I wanna look at Joey Jordison’s mask instead of your wife’s hot bod? Puh-leeze. Get it together, Rob!!!

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

When you tune into the premiere broadcast of The Second Annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards tomorrow night on VH1 classic, you’ll see the final public appearance of our beloved Ronnie James Dio. You’ll also see Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, winner of roughly half of the meaningful awards, enjoying the metal community’s validation of their potentially dicey comeback effort, the magnificent Black Gives Way To Blue. You’ll see metal codgers like Rob Halford, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy bathe in much-deserved adulation. You’ll also see potentially ho-hum performances pumped up by mega-drummers: Rob Zombie with Joey Jordison (in his debut performance), Fear Factory with Gene Hoglan, Brian Posehn with John Tempesta (and Brett Anderson girl call me srsly) and Slash with Dave Grohl.

But at a mere 60 minutes, the broadcast can’t capture all of the April 8 event’s super moments and silly gaffes. Here’s a few things you won’t see:

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We knew that there would be a video for “More Metal Than You,” the song Brian Posehn co-wrote with Scott Ian for the former’s new album, Fart and Wiener Jokes, and here it is. (Also worth noting: the song features additional guest appearances by Lamb of God’s Mark Morton, Death Angel’s Mark Osegueda, Armored Saint’s Joey Vera, Dethklok’s Brendon Small, the always fashionable John Tempesta, and The Donnas’ Brett Anderson.) The animation style is fairly simple, but there are some real gems in here – including a moment when Posehn head-butts Sharon Osbourne, and then Ozzy gives him a high-five. Oh, if only Ozzy really did recognize that Sharon is a problem.

True story: when I first heard this song, I thought Posehn was saying “My cat’s name is ‘metal.’” In fact, until five minutes ago when I watched this video, I didn’t realize he was saying “Manowar.” Still really funny, though.

Fart and Wiener Jokes is out now on Relapse. I’m giving a copy away for this week’s Completely Unreadable Band Logo contest, so enter that shit now. Also, if you haven’t done so already, check out my interview with Posehn right here.

-AR

April 20th was circled in my calendar well in advance, and not just because it’s holiday we at the MS Mansion take very seriously — April 20th marked the biggest release date of the year thus far for metal releases with new offerings from Periphery, Ratt, Sevendust, another greatest hits repacking from AC/DC, Circa Survive, Airbourne and more. Let’s see how those releases fared in their first week out, as well as how other metal and hard rock records are performing after the jump.

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There are two reasons that a John 5 interview could last for days. The first is that in just more than a decade, he’s already played guitar for David Lee Roth, Rob Halford, Marilyn Manson, and now Rob Zombie, none of whom are uninteresting conversation topics. And if that got old, he could discuss what it’s like contributing songs to Filter, Garbage, Avril Lavigne, Meat Loaf, Paul Stanley, Lynyrd Skynrd, and the friggin’ Scorpions. If he still has a voice, you could next ask him about his somewhat accidental/totally awesome solo career.

The second reason is that John 5 (né John Lowery) is a total music guy. And it’s totally effortless to talk music with total music guys. You could bump into him before a show and end up blowing off the headliner just to continue a breathless discussion of Van Halen at the bar next door. I can also imagine the results if I stopped at the guitar shop on my lunch hour to find John 5 lounging against an amp: We’d innocently start comparing Rob Zombie’s band to Ozzy’s and before you know it, it’d be sundown and I would be sneaking back into the office through a window. A bus ride to the beach would be disastrous ‘cause we’d undoubtedly miss our stop by miles while merrily disputing the merits of KISS. And so on.

Sadly for me but mercifully our transcribers, my talk with John 5 last week lasted but twenty minutes. He used the word “love” a lot to genially discuss his past and present collaborators, his fifth solo album The Art of Malice (get it May 11), this year’s Mayhem tour, and the Ozzy situation last summer. After that, we just talked about Van Halen a bunch – and might’ve gone on all day. But apparently he has things to do. About a million things.

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So Joey Jordison has begun his stint as Rob Zombie’s temporary drummer at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards this past Thursday evening, and, of course, someone captured footage on the momentous occasion on their cellphone. I don’t have much to say about it, but I do wonder why Joey Jordison is bothering to wear his mask for these gigs; for one thing, it’s not like we haven’t all seen him without his mask at this point, and for another thing, even though Rob Zombie is a “shock rocker” (albeit not a very shocking one), it’s not like Joey doesn’t look plenty weird even without his mask. I mean, just look at that dude. Ladies, would you bring him home to meet mom? Probably not, right?

Here’s the video footage in question:

-AR

Poor Joey Jordison must get bored when he’s not busy with Slipknot; besides Corey Taylor and Clown, he’s easily the most visible member of the band, even when they’re on hiatus (as they are right now). This is extra-amazing when you consider the fact that, unlike Taylor or Clown, he doesn’t really have a side-project: the one he started, Murderdolls, released one album in 2002, did a whole bunch of touring behind it, and then promptly broke-up. (MD vocalist Wednesday 13 recently hinted at a possible Murderdolls reunion, but that doesn’t actually seem to be happening.) But Jordison constantly manages to stay in the spotlight, be it through producing gigs (3 Inches of Blood’s Fire Up the Blades) or, more often, guest spots with other well-known bands: he recorded some drums for Otep’s House of Secrets (as though Otep didn’t sound enough like Slipknot already), toured with Ministry, and did a few tour dates with Satyricon before a couple of their members got arrested on a kiddie-sex charge and that trek was canceled.

And now it’s been announced that Jordison will spend the spring and summer playing for Rob Zombie.

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Apparently Sade has a new hit record and scored the #1 record last week. Who knew? Good for her… Sade’s pretty rad. I know at least one death metal dude who will be REALLY psyched to hear this news.

But I’m guessing you all care more about the new High on Fire record. Let’s find out how that and other metal and hard rock releases charted last week after the jump.

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Of all the track debuts that floated into my inbox yesterday I was definitely NOT expecting the one by Rob Zombie / ex-Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 to impress in any way, shape or form. But leave it up to MS Master Josh Kidd to insist we listen to John 5′s new track “The Nightmare Unravels,” from his forthcoming solo album The Art of Malice, which you can stream below [thanks: Bmouth].

Turns out the dude can absolutely rip on the guitar — I literally had no idea. I assumed that because he’s spent the better part of his career playing simple riffs in goth and sleaze rock bands that that’s all he was capable of; shame on me. “The Nightmare Unravels” is a shred-sterpiece that’s something I’d expect to hear on the new Levi / Werstler album or anything else on the Magna Carta roster. I feel like an even bigger douche because apparently John 5 played with David Lee Roth, so dude’s obviously got chops.

I guess now would be a good time for me to go and catch up on John 5′s FOUR previous solo albums before the new one comes out this Spring.

-VN

Like watch the Rob Zombie-directed episode of CSI: Miami so that I could make fun of it today. But I got distracted by the pile of new shit that arrived at the Mansion steps yesterday, and spent my evening listening to new music – in other words, I actually did something worthwhile.

Luckily CBS is streaming the episode, so I can watch it at my convenience and make fun of it later! Three cheers for technology! And Kubrick thought we’d have commercial space travel by now. What a dope!

The episode isn’t embeddable but you can get to it by clicking on the below screen shot of John 5 in a comedia dell’arte mask. Yep, Zombie’s band is apparently in the episode, playing one of his new songs. And you thought he was directing a CSI episode for the artistic challenge.

Meanwhile, Metal Insider tells me that last night’s episode of Law & Order was a ripped-from-the-headlines story a Juggalo killing his family; the real-life Juggalos apparently have their panties in a twist about it. You can read more about the episode at MI… there doesn’t seem to be a full stream available at NBC as of yet.

-AR

The idea of Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie touring together is such a “Well, duh” kinda thing that I can’t believe it’s taken so long for it to become a reality. (In a press release Zombie says that “Me and The Coop have been talking about touring together for the last 15 years” – so at least it’s not like the idea just occurred to them or anything.) There wouldn’t even be a Rob Zombie if not for Cooper, the original dude to put on make-up to sing anthemic hard rock and pop metal based around the kinds of themes usually reserved for horror movies (The Universal Monster kind, not the Slasher-flick kind – that’s more Cannibal Corpse’s territory.). Cooper has likened this tour to Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, and that’s a dead-on assessment of the bill; the only thing that could make the line-up even more obvious is if they got The Misfits (or, at the very least, Wednesday 13) to open for them.

Unfortunately, the tour is only going to last all of seven dates. Hopefully this ends up being like that original run of Megadeth/Slayer Canadian shows, where it seems like everyone was just testing the waters before moving forward with a more extensive tour. And Zombie’s commitment to this summer’s Mayhem Festival may have something to do with why there are so few stops on this trek – he may be contractually obligated to stay away from certain markets for X period of time on either side of those shows. But this sounds like it will actually be a really fun tour. Hopefully the fall will bring round two… just in time for Halloween, perhaps?

Dates after the jump.

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So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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Not that the video for “Sick Bubblegum,” the new Rob Zombie song, is startlingly original or great or anything. Y’know, Sherri Moon Zombie is in it. So that’s a real plot twist.

But I actually kinda like the song. It’s a Rob Zombie song. Write a catchy riff that doesn’t sound that different from your other catchy riffs, stick in an anthemic chorus, and repeat for four to five minutes. It’s not rocket science. But I’ll take this over most of the young pop metal bands making waves right now. And if doing this affords John 5 the opportunity to make another solo album, well, all the better.

“Sick Bubblegum” will be on the very poorly titled Hellbilly Deluxe 2, which is out February 2 on Roadrunner’s Redneck Division Loud & Proud imprint.

-AR

The line-up for the 2010 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (Jesus I hate typing all that shit) has been announced. See who’ll be playing one of the summer’s biggest metal tours after the jump, along with my snarky commentary, of course…

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So apparently Rob Zombie’s next directing gig isn’t going to be the long-gestating Tyrannosaurus Rex or previously-announced remake of The Blob, but rather… an episode of CSI: Miami. For those of who aren’t familiar with the program, it’s basically a forensic science-centric police procedural. It is also one of many shows on CBS that I do not understand why people watch.

I’d love to make fun of Zombie and say that this must mean he can’t get a feature off the ground… but there’s no evidence that this is the case. Quentin Tarantino directed an episode of the original CSI back in 2005, and whatever you wanna say about QT, you can’t say his career is hurting. And, if we’re being honest, I’d rather see Zombie do this than fuck-up The Blob.

Meanwhile, I hear that his animated film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, is actually good. It went straight to DVD last year… anybody catch it?

-AR

New MetalSucks photographer Jacqueline Cheng attended Rob Zombie’s headline show at The Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on December 1st and captured some killer shots of the Zombie and his band in action. Check out those photos, as well as some of opening act Nekromantix, after the jump.

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