In all the discussion of thrash metal’s first big bands, too little airtime is given to the great Suicidal Tendencies. Launched by a teenaged Mike Muir in Los Angeles, Suicidal took root in punk and hardcore, landed an early MTV hit in the manic, careening “Institutionalized,” and attracted the ire of authorities via rumored gang ties and concert violence. And that was before ST solidified a line-up, one anchored by Muir’s bandmate in No Mercy, riff-god guitarist Mike Clark. The two Mikes rebooted Suicidal with the defiantly thrashy How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today, a major label-powered crossover hit which drew an even bigger target on the band for censorship crusaders and unwittingly helped to fertilize the coming crop of nu-metal self-pity peddlers.

But in the hands of Muir, personal woes weren’t excuses but motivation, and confrontation more often than wallowing; see 1989′s mini-album Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit … Deja Vu, on which Muir continues to document disassociation for a society slow to acknowledge mental health realties. Suicidal’s peak came in 1990 with Lights … Camera … Revolution, an album-length indictment of society’s complicity in its own demise, all cowed by power-mongers, con men, and the self-righteous. This was a different era for metal; no commercial band had yet approached the blunt rage, contrarianism, and pervasive guitar solos of Suicidal Tendencies.

On the phone to MetalSucks last week from California, a typically expansive Muir downplayed his regard for the history of Suicidal, but even he looks back to past days on The Mad Mad Muir Musical Tour (Part 1), his forthcoming collection of new and vault tracks by re-punk era ST, his solo Cyco Miko project, and Infectious Grooves, the funk-metal clan Muir formed with ST bassist Robert Trujillo (now of Metallica). So I had all the license needed to drag Muir down memory lane to tour the land of Suicidal. Join us!

Click to read more…

When I was a kid, Monopoly was always known as “That game we’ll never have time to finish.” Like, if we needed something to do, we might see what board games we had (Do kids even still play board games? I know that’s a ridiculous question, but, seriously… do they?), and someone would be like “Monopoly?”, and everyone else would be all “It takes too long, we’ll never finish it!” The result is that the game actually almost never got played. Everyone owned it, but it only got broken out like once in a blue moon. What a colossal waste of money.

And now it will be a waste of money that is even more colossalier: Metallica have announced on Facebook that they’re going to be releasing their own edition of the game next week on their webstore. Because nothing is more metal than buying and selling real estate. (Except for maybe zoning issues.)

Click to read more…

Whenever I was home sick as a kid I’d entertain myself in two ways (this was before I discovered masturbation): 1) The Joy of Painting with the most metal of painters, Bob Ross, 2) USA re-runs of ’70s and ’80s game shows Family Feud, The $25,000 Pyramid, The Price is Right and Press Your Luck. Much later on when cable networks greatly expanded their channel roster and niche channels like The Gameshow Network were born I always loved watching re-runs of The Match Game and Hollywood Squares. There’s something about game shows that simultaneously seems really dated yet not dated at all; the style and manner of the hosts and contestants are all easily identifiable to a certain era, yet the way people react — namely like complete idiots — to being on national television with the chance to win a ton of money hasn’t changed at all. All these years later, those Richard Dawson-hosted Family Feud episodes, with all of Dawson’s drunken buffoonery and the contestants’ rampant excitement, still hold so much entertainment value.

Leave it up to Faith No More (then Ozzy) drummer Mike Bordin to completely shatter the stereotype of person-on-a-game-show freak outs. Dude was cool as a cucumber on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, not playing into the faux-dramatic atmosphere at all by immediately following each answer with “final” in a calm, cock-sure way. Unfortunately his knowledge of U.S. history betrayed him, and I’m not sure his buddy (and then bandmate, pre-Metallica) Robert Trujillo in the audience could’ve helped him either.

I imagine some day kids who were born in the ’90s and the ’00s will look back on re-runs of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Deal or No Deal in the same fond light as I did the aforementioned shows. Hopefully at least a couple of ‘em will be inspired to check out Faith No More when they come upon this gem. See also: the Mike Patton-loving character on All My Children.

-VN

Thanks: NewFaithNoMore.com via Reign in Blonde.

Yesterday I praised whomever came up with the moniker for The Acacia Strain’s upcoming “To Catch a Predatour” trek with The Red Chord and The Contortionist as a genius; today I know that it was Mr. Vincent Bennett, vocalist for TAS. For the band’s new, David Brodsky-directed video for “The Hills Have Eyes” is a parody of the infamous “news program” that outs kiddie fuckers (or, at least, would-be kiddie fuckers) on camera. And so, Mr. Bennett, I say again: YOU ARE A FRIGGIN’ GENIUS.

My other not-so-deep thought about this video is that it’s a million times better than that one The Malloys made, where Metallica are performing a very poorly written and produced song about a clogged toilet for the inmates of San Quentin. Maybe it’s “cooler” to go film at a real maximum security correctional institution where the inmates might get loose and rape Kirk Hammett at any moment, but Kirk has been getting raped by Hetfield and Ulrich for three decades anyway, so who really gives a shit? I’ll take Matt Pike (not that one, this one) as a reporter over Robert Trujillo droppin’ a deuce any day.

“The Hills Have Eyes” comes offa The Acacia Strain’s latest and greatest, Wormwood, which is out now on Prosthetic.

-AR

Here’s something interesting I just read on Blabbermouth. This is Ozzy Osbourne talking about the decision to remove Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake’s tracks from the 2002  reissues of Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman and have them replaced with new recordings by Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin:

Ozzy told The Pulse of Radio he was against the idea of replacing the original tracks when he found out about it. “Believe me, it wasn’t my doing,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t know that was being done, ’cause Sharon was fighting all the legal things that were going down at the time. I said, ‘What did you do that for?’ And she said, ‘The only way I could stop everything was if it went to that level.’ And I said, ‘You know what, whatever the circumstances were, I want the original thing back.’ I mean, I wouldn’t have done that.”

It’s pretty funny to see Ozzy place all the blame on his wife, although it isn’t hard to imagine that he’s telling the truth. Still, this is why you have to pay attention to what your handlers are doing. If he was against it, how did it ever get so far as to have the re-recordings done without his knowledge? Why not just cancel the reissues? Maybe if your brain was functioning properly, dude, it never would have gone down that way.

In any case, the original, proper recordings of those classic albums are getting another reissue sometime this year. I can already tell you that they will be both be better than Scream.

-AR

Hey Suckfaces, the Big Four live in Sofia, Bulgaria concert/movie thingy has encore showings tomorrow in select markets and you should totally go! It’s the most fun ever. Even if you’re lukewarm on a band/the bands, the theater-going experience is novel and pretty easy to like. It’s communal (like a concert) and comfortable (good for old people who listen to the Big Four). Plus, the little things: set breaks are excised; the audio is that Live Aid quality which disguises not even the smallest flub or shortcut, almost sickeningly real; close-ups of guitar shredding abound; and mosh pits are way more fun in a movie theater.

But if you just can’t make it to this exciting cinema-concert event cuz you’re in jail still from the Lakers celebration parade or you’re a piteously ugly John Bush fan or whatever, here’s what you’ll miss:

Click to read more…

Remember in 2002, when Ozzy Osbourne reissued Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman with Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake’s original bass and drum tracks deleted and replaced by new performances from Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin? That was a crock of shit, wasn’t it? I’ve never even heard the re-recordings, and I really don’t care to; Bordin and Trujillo are talented dudes, but come ON. I don’t care if Daisley and Kerslake were suing Ozzy or Chinese-fingercuffing Kelly or what; I am not a fan of re-writing history. (I was just as disappoined that Bordin and Trujillo even agreed to participate in the re-recordings, but that’s another rant for another blog.)

Well, it looks like the re-writing of history may be re-written: Blabbermouth says that Rolling Stone says that 30th-anniversary editions (well, one 30-anniversary edition and one 29-anniversary edition, really) of those albums will be released later this year, with Daisley and Kerslake’s recordings re-instated.

Presumably this is because the two men have long since lost their lawsuit against the Ozzman, in which they asserted that they were owed a larger chunk of the royalties for those recordings. I don’t know enough about the case to really know if Daisley and Kerslake were actually getting screwed, or if they were just trolling for more moolah; in any case, I’m glad that any kids who will only just now be familiarizing themselves with these legendary albums will get to hear them the right way.

Here’s “No Bone Movies” from Blizzard; Daisley and Kerslake co-wrote this song, and the version below features their drum and bass tracks intact.

-AR

Is it possible that Lars Ulrich is such a douche chill that he won’t even put on his own socks? I mean, we know that the midget is a drummer with absolutely no relationship to his own feet (rimshot!), but I assumed he would, at the very least, have some desire to give the appearance of being above the age of three. But not so, says Contact Music:

The US heavy metal drummer is so demanding, he even likes to have a member of road crew put his socks on for him, according to the band’s singer, James Hetfield.

Speaking no Norwegian TV, James – who is joined in the band by Lars, bassist Rob Trujilo and guitarist Kirk Hamett – said: “For high maintenance and demanding it’s a tie for first place between Lars and Kirk.

“They need what they need, ‘Oh – my shoelaces are the wrong colour’, or, you know. It’s different, we all operate differently.

“I feel better when people are away from me and I can get into my own space; then Lars – he likes people plugging in his earphones, putting his socks on, all of this stuff.”

Click to read more…

We haven’t done much writing about Rodrigo y Gabriella, the acoustic guitarist duo sweeping the metal world. But Metal Insider just posted this video of them jamming with Metallica’s Rob Trujillo, so, y’know. That seems maybe worth posting. I dunno. It’s kind of a slow news day.

So here they are doing “Orion”…

…and you can watch more video at Metal Insider.

-AR

I’m not convinced that any live DVD filmed after about 1992-ish will be particularly flattering to Metallica, but maybe I’m wrong. I haven’t seen them on the Death Magnetic tour – I haven’t seen them since 2006, actually – so maybe they’re killing it out there. Maybe James’ voice is 100% and Lars Ulrich took drum lessons. I dunno.

I guess I’ll find out November 23, when the band releases Francais Pour Une Nuit, a DVD documenting a French concert from this past July. But here’s the kicker: the DVD will only be available in retail stores in… France. Everyone else will have to order it from the band’s website. So, uh, yeah. Not sure what the benefits of doing that are – more profit into the band’s pocket, less shared with retailers, I guess – but there you have it.

You can watch a trailer for the DVD here (it’s not embeddable because Metallica don’t love their fans anymore). After the jump, get details of the various editions of the DVD, plus the complete track list.

Click to read more…

Why, it was just yesterday that Rob Trujillo was saying if the Big Four tour goes down, “there’d be a lot of egos” to deal with, but that all the beef would be between Megadeth and Slayer, not, say, Megadeth and Metallica.

And then this morning we got a link to this clip from MS Maniac Manfred Nuggets:

Not that Hetfield’s voice sounds so good these days, but holy shit, is that fucking funny. And proof that there’s no love lost between Hetfield and Mustaine.

Sorry, Rob.

-AR

On Sunday night Vince and myself, through circumstances too depressing to go into here, ended up having dinner with my folks. And the thing about Mr. & Mrs. Rosenberg is this: they’re old and they’re bat shit crazy. I’m sure some of you can relate: you get a call saying “Oh, we saw this wonderful movie last night,” but then they can’t remember the name of the movie, what it was about, or who was in it. It’s quite thrilling, really.

ANYWAY, so there we were, attempting to enjoy our meals, when my parents began to insist that that they’d see a movie on television the night before that starred klepto-hottie/former Page Hamilton shtupper Winona Ryder and Shakespeare in Oh MY God is This Shit Almost Over?‘s Joseph Fiennes… and featured a cameo from Metallica.

So, naturally, I assumed they were out of their fucking minds.

Click to read more…

For seven glorious minutes and eight fantastic seconds, I thought that Death Magnetic might be the record that Metallica should have released after the Black Album – a record that melds the pop-metal sensibilities the band adopted in the 90s with the thrashier, proggier Metallica of the 80s. That’s exactly the length of time it takes the opening track of the album, “That Was Just Your Life,” to play out, full of enough monstrous riffage, catchy hooks, and blistering solos to make up even for Lars Ulrich’s distractingly mechanical drumming. And if the nine songs that follow were as good, Death Magnetic might actually have been the album that restored Metallica to something at least resembling their former glory.

Instead, the nine songs that follow are a mixed bag – not even from song to song so much as within each song.
Click to read more…

To me, Metallica ceased to be relevant ages ago — so much so that I have barely heard any of their last few albums, save the studio recording footage featured in the 2004 documentary Some Kind Of Monster (which I found to be reasonably entertaining), and surprisingly I actually liked the music I heard enough to go acquire said tracks (didn’t say I paid for em tho, wink wink nudge nudge/suck it).

But upon repeated listens of that material, it was apparent even back then that the Metallica of yesteryear, an old school conceptual thrashy metal band that actually pushed new boundaries at one point both sonically and stylistically, was D-E-mf-D. And really…who cared? Shouldn’t the shelf life of once-classic bands that are now repeatedly outputting watered-down versions of their formerly original sound be minimal at best?!? I’m all for old fogies rockin it directly into the grave (hope to myself) but shit man, they best ought perpetually evolve as artists in their middle/old age somehow throughout, doncha think?

Click to read more…

I don’t know about all of you, but Metallica has been and will always be my favorite band in the whole world. I put down the trumpet and picked up the guitar for one reason: Metallica. When I used to draw comic books for 8 hours a day I never did it better while I was listening to …And Justice for All. The first two rock bands I discovered were Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. Why do I say rock? I got into Metallica on The Black Album. Before The Black Album I used to listen to R&B and Hip Hop. It was so bad, I would never say the word “awesome.” I thought it was too white. I called Metallica rock because for a kid like me, metal was too heavy. For a kid like me ,Metallica was the only band to get me in touch with my angry side without being too angry.

Click to read more…

MUSIC: Tastes Great
LYRICS: Less Filling

(3 out of 5 shofars)

-AO

It’s bad. The new Metallica album is bad. Let me explain why this shouldn’t be surprising.

This is the album that Metallica thought you wanted. This is the throwback to that classic era of the late eighties and early nineties that everyone was begging them to create. This is the album that everyone in that battered-wife fan base was hoping would come out even as the band was raking in millions while the music kept getting worse. We all sat and watched as they stumbled from failure to failure, transforming into a mainstream rock act before our eyes, holding expensive and tasteless concerts with an orchestra backing, and releasing a largely useless collection of covers before finally delivering the audio coup de grace that was St. Anger. It was the final line they had to cross. It was an output without a single redeeming factor that was only defended by the most unreasonable apologists; the sort of people who lack the ability to criticize their heroes no matter what their transgressions – and l doubt any of them have listened all the way through St. Anger in the year 2008.

So here we are at the eve of a new Metallica release and everyone’s talking about it. I bet everyone knows at least a few people who are really excited, and maybe it’s even you. It’s a false alarm though, I assure you, as this only furthers the mountain of evidence that Metallica no longer deserve an instant of our attention, appreciation or excitement outside of a live venue. Death Magnetic is more embarrassing even than their previous documentary that revealed to the world how detached and conceited they’d grown from their own creative process as well as each other. In fact, Death Magnetic is the affirmation of just that. Correction, it is the second affirmation, after St. Anger.

Click to read more…

[Thanks to MetalSucks Maniac David Jafri for sending this one in!]

-AR

When considering their latest album, it’s important to bear in mind the lasting power of Metallica’s legacy, especially when taking into consideration the weak efforts of the past couple decades. This is a band that had had a hand in building up the traditional Thrash framework throughout the 80s into an impenetrable fortress. But the castle has crumbled and they’re left with just a name. In the early 90s, they entreated us to take their hand and we would be off to the Never Neverland of mainstream success. But then Metal lost its foothold on radio and MTV, falling victim to the Grunge/Alternative phenomenon. Metallica forged onward but many were forced to ask: were they following their instinct, not a trend? Deep down inside fans felt the need to scream. The band seemed to be putting dignity to shame, with dishonor.

The Metallica of that decade was leaner, more open to pop constructs and, to their credit, this did translate into commercial success, along with a flurry of less-than-flattering press. Yet to longtime fans, when the circus rolled into town, they were playing the lead clown. Welcome to where time stands still. No one rocks and no one will. Hell, they even went country (for only one song, but still!). The band eventually lashed out at the fans and the fans revolted. Hey, honesty was our only excuse. They can try to rob us of it but it’s no use. Load, Re-Load and St. Anger each grew progressively worse. We were left to face the thing that should not be: a flaccid hard rock outfit of aging, emotionally unavailable sociopaths that had long ago lost their hunger and, subsequently, their edge. But please excuse them while they tend to how they feel. They went to therapy, filmed it and foisted it on a bewildered public. Fuck it all and fucking no regrets. Would there be a happy ending in this dark set? Did Metallica drift on numbered days?

Click to read more…

With Death Magnetic, Metallica’s latest attempt at getting back into the good graces/wallets of their fan base, the band officially descends into the realm of the Rolling Stones of metal. The Stones, of course, have the stronger legacy and the better/more extensive catalog of songs. But both bands have four unimpeachable albums to their credit (the Stones have Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile on Main Street, and Some Girls; Metallica obviously sport their first four) and, in essence, have only been recording albums as an excuse to tour since the end of their heyday.

The biggest difference, though, is that the Stones are aware of this; though they keep trying, the songs off of anything post-Tattoo You disappear from their setlist after their first supporting tour. They recognize that they’re essentially creatively bankrupt as a band, and just happen to have one of, if not arguably the, best back catalogs of songs in popular music history, so playing live until one of/all of the band members die is both a financial and populous-satisfying maneuver. Metallica, on the other hand, have yet to notice that their best years are now 18-20 years behind them, and that they’ve been making increasingly lazy and uninspired hard rock for more than a decade. Though their fan faithful (this writer included), the ones that were initially saved by their quartet of timeless metal albums, have been waiting for a rousing return to form even after the spectacular misfire that was St Anger, this album isn’t it. In fact, Death Magnetic boils down to one thing: new Metallica playing old Metallica. They’re not unlike a pack of middle aged dudes playing their favorite Motorhead songs at the corner bar, not paying attention to how sloppy they’re performing or that their attempts at recapturing youthful abandon are just really, really sad.

Click to read more…