MetalSucks

Sebastian Bach, who is perpetually the most entertaining former rock star in all of hair metaldom, is going to be on yet another fucking reality show – this time VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, where former “stars” purportedly go to shed some weight, but actually go because their parents didn’t love them enough, causing them to have no sense of self-worth whatsoever if they’re not constantly in the spotlight. Although a VH1 reality show strikes me as a pretty dim spotlight. But whatever.

Bach will be joined by that dude who knocked up Britney Spears, that chick from Charles in Charge I always used to think about while jerking off, crackhead Bobby Brown, and a bunch of people I’ve never heard of.

I guess the last time I actually saw Bach up close was in 2006 when he was hanging from Axl Rose’s nuts all over the world, but in all honesty, the guy looked like he was in pretty good shape. I mean, I’m sure his liver is failing and his septum has been burned-through with coke, but he wasn’t fat or anything. If anyone has seen him more recently and can tell me I’m wrong, please do so. Nothing would make me happier than to learn that Baz had pulled a Brando.

Celebrity Fit Club will start airing in February 2010, by which time I will most certainly have forgotten about it.

-AR

In a post about country singer Carrie Underwood’s cover of Skid Row’s “I Remember You,” Noisecreep’s Karen Bliss inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) stumbled upon a dead-on lookalike when she juxtaposed Taylor Swift’s photo (Swift has also covered classic metal songs as of late) with that of Sebastian Bach. Check out the above picture, taken directly from Noisecreep. WTF?

Reminds me of the classic blog Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Except Swift’s not old… and not a lesbian. Whatever.

-VN

Here’s an interesting little piece that Noisecreep ran last week:

“For some reason, Skid Row fans or my fans are so hung up on these three or four tunes that I did a billion years ago,” says Bach, on the phone from the airport, while on his way to a gig tonight (Aug. 25) in front of 20,000 people at Telus Field in Edmonton, Alberta — where he will join country music duo Big and Rich onstage.

“I don’t get it. I completely don’t understand it because when I made it in rock, I said, ‘This is f—ing great. Now I can make music the rest of my life.’ Some people just wanna make the same record over and over again for the rest of their life, and that’s just not me. That’s totally not me.”

And here’s the performance Bach gave with Big and Rich that very night:

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I imagine that when the members of, say, Daath get together for rehearsal, no one expects to be paid for said rehearsal. They’re all dudes who are friends – some of them even grew up together, if I’m not mistaken – and it’s not like they’re making squillions of dollars playing metal. Rehearsal, then, has to be viewed as an investment – get better as a band, put on a good show for the crowd, and, knock on wood, your band will get bigger and the money will come.

I also imagine it’s different being in someone’s solo band. If your boss is Ozzy Osbourne or Axl Rose or Dave Mustaine or Trent Reznor, there’s going to be a lot of money involved, and your creative input is going to be somewhat limited (I imagine). I know for a fact that the members of nu-GN’R are paid an annual retainer, just in case they’re needed; I assume members of certain other solo bands are given a similar (if perhaps less lucrative) deal. And actors definitely get paid to rehearse; granted, the rehearsal rate is less than the performance rate, but the unions insist that if you want an actor there for rehearsals, he or she must be compensated.

Now. Sebastian Bach’s record sales obviously are not what they used to be. But the guy still opens for arena bands, routinely plays large festivals, and, by his own admission, gets paid very large sums of money to appear on crappy reality shows. Doing something like, say, paying for his band’s member’s gas so they can get to rehearsal seems reasonable, especially when you’re talking about dudes like Metal Mike Chlasciak, who, even if he’s not exactly Zakk Wylde, has played with dudes like Halford, and is definitely a “known entity.”

Well, Baz disagrees. He’s looking for a new guitarist and a new bassist, and, more specifically, he’s looking for someone to do it for bubcus. Check out this statement from the Old Dude Gone Wild:

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Baz tweets:

meeting one of my favorite authors of all time today to discuss collaborating on my memoirs ! #fb12 minutes ago from txt

So, like, who do we think Baz’s favorite authors of all time are? Dr. Seuss is dead, Shel Silverstein is dead, and unless The Dirt was done as a book on tape and I’m not aware of it, I doubt The Second Most Famous Person Ever to be Named “Sebastian Bach” knows who Neil Strauss is. So any guesses?

Whomever takes the (hopefully lucrative) gig of basically writing The Old Man Gone Wild’s book for him, it should be, in some capactiy at least, an entertaining read.

-AR

Our friend Allyson at Bring Back Glam has been reporting from Rocklahoma all week. She’s obviously a big fan of the event, given that a) she runs a site all about glam and b) she wrote the text for the Rocklahoma coffee table book that came out last year.

But she’s been making (perfectly valid) complaints about this year’s fest for the past ten months, taking issue in particular with this year’s line-up. And as it turns out, she was totally correct: attendance at this summer’s edition of the event was apparently abysmal.

Check out this photo Allyson took of the crowd. This was at dusk; if it was Ozzfest, everyone who skipped the second stage would be starting to pile in right about this time. No such luck for Great White, even though there was absolutely no chance of being burned alive at the outdoor venue:

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Sebastian Bach sent out this tweet a little earlier today:

working on full demo cd to send to @john5guitarist 2 c where we’re @, then write more tunes till we r ready to enter studio 4 new CD! #fb21 minutes ago from txt

Alright, so Baz’s new record will have John 5 playing songs written by Jamey Jasta? Is it possible Sebastian is working on the single fucking weirdest metal record ever made?

-AR

Steve Stamopoulos sent us this video of Rob Halford performing the Judas Priest classic “Delivering the Goods” with Skid Row on MTV. I remember watching this when it first aired, on whatever MTV’s equivalent of TRL was back in the day. The show was hosted by future ex-The Panic Channel vocalist, Steve Isaacs, who was maybe the last (only) cool VJ in the channel’s history.

There’s a studio version of this on the Skids’ most forgettable covers EP, B-Side Ourselves. It’s fun to watch this video, though, ’cause a) the song rocks and b) Halford is dressed like trailer trash.

-AR

Vince is in Kentucky scouting land for a SECOND MetalSucks Mansion and against the advice of Gary Suarez and my own instincts, I’m off to see Terminator Salvation. We shan’t be posting Monday ’cause it’s Memorial Day, but we’ll be back Tuesday. In the meantime, here’s some shit that happened this week:

• We did a video interview with IWRESTLEDABEARONCE! We also spoke with The Haunted’s Peter Dolving, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle, and Unholy.
• We stole Daath’s Eyal Levi away from Headbanger’s Blog.
• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima graced us with another totally excellent studio blog.
• Corey Mitchell says this is the best album of the year so far.
• Fuckface Durst finally went too far.

As Baz would say, “I’ll be Bach.”

-AR

Alright, in case ya didn’t know: prior to the borderline-unlistenable Angel Down, all of Sebastian Bach’s solo albums had titles based on terrible puns using his name – e.g. Bring ‘Em Bach Alive, Bach to Basics, etc. I don’t even have to tell you what a retarded conceit that was, but given that a) Sebastian Bach actually is retarded and b) Sebastian Bach’s remaining fan base is also retarded (hello, Karen James), this wasn’t surprising.

But we’ve been following Baz on Twitter these past weeks, and as it turns out, he actually feels the need to replace the word “back” with his name whenever possible. To wit, these tweets which I culled only from the last seven days:

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Those rumors that have been floating around are apparently true: Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta is working with Sebastian Bach on the latter’s new album. Blabbermouth reports that Jasta has said the following about the collaboration:

All the Skid Row/Bach fans need not worry; I am not trying to infuse a Hatebreed/Kingdom of Sorrow sound or style. I’m just hoping to write and produce a bunch of GREAT anthemic metal/rock songs for him. Think Painkiller-era Priest meets Vulgar Display of Power meets Slave To The Grind.

I think that Jasta has the right idea about what kind of album Baz should make – lest we forget, Skid Row and Pantera were tour mates once upon a time, and certainly the Priest/Skid direction doesn’t seem far-fetched – but I am not confident that Jasta is the man to make this happen (and I say that as someone who actually likes Hatebreed). As our pal Anso at Hipsters Out of Metal! notes, “if Jasta were able to pen material on par with Paaain!Killah!, Vulgar, [and] Slave (greatest hard rock album of all time?), I gotta ask: Why has he been holding this material back for a Sebastian Bach solo album that no one will hear?”

-AR

A couple of weeks ago I cried myself to sleep after Scar Symmetry announced they’d parted ways with their versatile, talented vocalist Christian Älvestam (pictured, front). Would the Swedish “Death Jovi” masters go the way of luminaries Van Halen* and AC/DC, continuing to bring the hits for years to come with a new frontman on board, or would they crash and burn as an echo of their former selves ala Skid Row? The answer remains to be seen, but today’s announcement that two vocalists have been tapped to fill the shoes of just one is a testament to how skilled Älvestam is:

“We’ve used both growls and clean vocals in our music since day one, and with each album we’ve pushed the envelope of what you can do vocally in a metal band to the point where a lot of the songs on ‘Holographic Universe’ would be hard if not impossible to sing live. So the question is: Is it really possible to push the vocals even further and manage to perform everything live?

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This one pretty much explains itself. Someone we enjoy making fun of had an embarrassing moment and while we could be nice guys about it, we’re not nice guys. So skip to 1:48 to see Baz fall flat on his ass and start your week with a good laugh.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

[Welcome to our new column Hair Metal Happy Hour, which will be manned by the fine writer Michael S. Robinson. Things have been admittedly less hairy around here lately, but we hope to rectify that situation with this semi-regular column. Huh huh, he said "rectum-fry." - Ed.]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost twenty years since glorious hair metal ruled the charts and MTV. Once the crispy, crunchity sounds of the Pacific northwest took over, many of our cock-rocking heroes from the 80s faded into oblivion, while others continued to record sporadically, enjoying varying degrees of success, or lack thereof.

Now it’s 2008, almost 20 years to the day since Stryper released In God We Trust, and we find ourselves in the midst of unarguably the greatest year for hair metal releases since the 1980s. I’m not sure what any of us have done to bring about this incredible turn of good fortune, but it’s worth pausing to analyze, and give thanks for the bounty of hair metal we have been given, and are about to receive, in 2008.

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In a move that is sure to rip bare any remaining thread of cred that Baz had remaining, Sebastian Bach took the stage with Long Island-based screamo/emo band The Sleeping at their performance this Saturday at Bamboozle, the massive annual 2-day social club for 15 year-olds emo festival at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

The Syndicate Blog is reporting (with photo!) that Baz played two songs from his recent flop release Angel Down before closing with the Skid Row classic “Youth Gone Wild.”

Oh, the irony! I hope the “Fall Out Boy” t-shirt of the kid ninja-kick karate moshing in the front got ripped to shreds by someone’s braces.

-VN

I seriously cannot get over this guy. It’s the gum chewing. And the serious facial expressions. And the clenched fists. And the gum chewing… not to mention that the dude has some seriously great pipes. Oh, lordy lord. Too funny.

(Check out Becker’s “Tribute to Skid Row Part 1″ here)

-VN

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Over the weekend Blabbermouth reported that Poison will be doing another edition of their summer package tour, which isn’t surprising – for glam fans $30 to see three old hair metal acts complete with big light shows, pyro, and all the fixings is a pretty good deal.

What is kind of surprising is that Sebastian Bach has been announced as one of the openers; he’ll rotate with the other one, a George Lynch-less Dokken.

You read that correctly, folks. Dokken.

Now, Baz hasn’t exactly been the most dignified of sorts, but there’s a pretty huge difference between opening for Axl Rose at Madison Square Garden and opening for Poison at pretty much fuckin’ anywhere.

Funnier still is this quote from a 1999 interview with Baz: “We [Skid Row] were definitely separate from Poison and Warrant… Skid Row fans are not Poison fans.”

Oh, well. It’s easy to talk big when you don’t have bills to pay, I guess.

-AR

Remember that YouTube clip we posted of aspiring singer / pro gum-chewer / YouTube star Jon Becker singing the high notes of “Cemetery Gates” a few weeks ago [via Metal Inquisition]? Here’s a clip of him singing some random insanely high notes, then another one of him singing Skid Row’s “The Threat” a cappella. The gum chewing gets me every single time. Even more than the fist-clenching and uber-serious facial expressions. But the gum-chewing… man oh man!

-VN

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[Welcome to the fifth installment of our exclusive blog series from the new thrash supergroup Iron Steel, featuring Morgan Rose (Sevendust) on drums; Jim LaMarca (Chimaira), Dave Ellefson (ex-Megadeth) and Rachel Bolan (Skid Row) all on bass; along with vocalist and guitarist Fran Strine and guitarist Tommy Redd. Each week a different member will be posting a blog entry at MetalSucks. This week Sevendust skinsman Morgan Rose talks about the trials and tribulations of being the band's de-facto tour manager. (Check out Fran Strine’s, Jim LaMarca’s, Tommy Redd’s and Dave Ellefson's previous entries.]

If you asked me a year ago if I would be the only island of sanity in an otherwise raucous, insane metal super-group, I would tell you that you were NUTS. The fact is, they need SOMEONE around here who is realistic, grounded and sensible, so here I am!

At NAMM Ellefson and Fran were having flashbacks, LaMarca got out of control at our release party and Tommy… well, Tommy is just a dangerous dude on the whole. Rachel Bolan only speaks to us via morse code transmissions and I recently heard that we were bringing even more people into this psychotic mess of a band – scary!

I’ve become the de-facto tour manager for the band lately because all our tour managers wind up either quitting, getting killed in one of Tommy’s ill-planned maneuvers or disappearing on their way to take the groupies home. The last one went to bring Tommy one of his bags and brought the wrong one up from under the bus – it was his stash of grenades – and it exploded as the tour manager swung it over his shoulder. We found the poor guy, headless, hanging from a tree on the outskirts of the parking lot we were in.

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[Welcome to the fourth entry of our exclusive blog series from the new thrash supergroup Iron Steel, featuring Morgan Rose (Sevendust) on drums; Jim LaMarca (Chimaira), Dave Ellefson (ex-Megadeth) and Rachel Bolan (Skid Row) all on bass; along with vocalist and guitarist Fran Strine and guitarist Tommy Redd. Each week a different member will be posting a blog entry at MetalSucks. This week ex-Megadeth low-end king Dave Ellefson talks about the band's upcoming tour plans. (Check out Fran Strine’s, Jim LaMarca’s and Tommy Redd's previous entries.]

Someone told me that we have to go on tour soon. The thought of leaving the Iron Steel compound with its many amenities was less than pleasant, but I understand that mere mortals need to see us play from time to time to be reminded of what Metal is.

The people we pay to deal with these things let us know about the offers – headlining of the main and second stages on the Rockstar Mayhem Tour, Ozzfest, The Warped Tour and Sounds of the Underground (they said they would do it this year if we would headline it) and a few other little tours that I don’t recall right now.

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