via WWTDD

So much of this week ended up being devoted to the Big Four that I honestly don’t wanna think about any of those bands again for at least the remainder of the year. So to wrap this shit up, here’s everything Big Four-related we did this week:

• We live snarked the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium.
• We went to an Anthrax press conference.
• We went to the Metal Masters clinic and saw Phil Anselmo jam some Pantera with various Big Fourers.
• We debated the merits and demerits of Anthrax’s Worship Music.
• We listened to Lars Ulrich on Howard Stern.
• We had fun at the expense of Dave Mustaine’s faith.
• We had a Big Four edition of Show Us Your Metalsucks.
• We helped Metal Injection with their Big Four-themed Livecast.
• I also made an appearance in Metal Injection’s Big Four video recap, which you MUST watch because a) it’s awesome and b) I’m so handsome!

Photo by Clay Patrick McBride

Sebastian Bach’s new record is surprising and unsurprising. That is, no one who has witnessed the former Skid Row singer’s recent playdates with members of Asking Alexandria and Black Veil Brides could be shocked by Kicking And Screaming‘s slick, modern vibe. Plus, a clue was provided by each of Bach’s personnel moves, be it a 21-year old guitar prodigy, or a producer of tight radio rockers (Shinedown, Saliva) and lovable old guys (Iommi, David Lee Roth). And duh it’s 2011: For mainstream rock, the choice is big production or small potential. And there is nothing small about Sebastian Bach.

Anyway, those were my thoughts during the opening notes of Kicking And Screaming. But the album’s surprise element mounted with each song: He pulled it off! Yes, Bach is great at bright, pop-punkish hard rock throughout the totally lovable Kicking. Eventually it dawned on me that Bach might’ve been supplementing — not discarding — his OG fans via cavorting with scenebros, dissing of today’s Skid Row, and tabloid-friendly barroom antics. Via producer, boy wonder axeman, and his own snarling edge, his aim was a collection of jamz for both sensibilities and their overlap. Via classic Bach thrust and charm, Kicking is a Skid Row fan’s newest friend.

Last week, I spoke with Baz about Kicking And Screaming‘s creative team, singing high, being high, Steven Adler, John 5, Phil Varone, and tons more in an epic MetalSucks interview that crescendos from chill (excited new album chatter) to silly (an impromptu stoner giggle party) to rampage (invective against the Skid Row he never bargained for). Read and laugh!

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We make fun of Sebastian Bach a lot here on the site, and we’re not about to stop doing that. But it ultimately comes from a place of love (read this) and we certainly never wish anyone physical harm or damage of any kind. So it’s with heavy hearts that we say we sympathize for Baz, who lost his New Jersey home of 21 years and a whole ton of personal belongings to flooding caused by Hurricane Irene this past weekend. Comments Bach, part of a full statement you can read here:

Skid Row master tapes, video and audio, concerts, master tapes from ’Oh Say Can You Scream’, etc. Boxes and boxes of one-of-a-kind Skid Row memorabilia, from the first tour to our last, all stuff I collected on the road that no one else had. I had a library in the basement with every single magazine that had Skid Row on the cover. This library took up a big part of the basement. All of this is lost now.

We will salvage what we can, of course. But how I wish there was a reason to do a box set or something before Hurricane Irene hit. Nobody cared. Now it’s too late.

Oof. Not to mention the damage to the house and other personal property. Our thoughts are with you, duderino, even though Black Veil Brides and Asking Alexandria are your new bands of choice.

More photos of the damage after the jump:

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The only member of the original Skid Row that Sebastian Bach is still on speaking terms with is drummer Rob Affuso, probably because he, like Baz, was sacked from the band at some point in-between Subhuman Race and Whatever the Album After Subhuman Race Was Called. But whatever the reason, Affuso hopped up on stage with Bach last night during the singer’s solo show in Poughkeepsie. And while they had the good sense not to perform “Youth Gone Wild,” they did not have the good sense to have Rachel Bolan, Scotti Hill, and Dave Sabo on stage, too.

-AR

[via Classic Rock]

Photos by Brian Schroeter

Though hard rock has arrived at retirement age, its senior classmen are flourishing on tour. Really, these years are the first in which old metal musicians exist, and 2011′s foundation will be built on someday by geriatric Gojira, decrepit Devin Townsend, crotchety Cave In, et al. Right around 2025, those bands might look to Ronnie James Dio, who played all aces til his final days; to Metallica, who in middle age flagged fast; to Judass Priest’s withdrawal from major touring (or whatever) and to the renaissance of Whitesnake, whose recent face-blasting gig with L.A. Guns and Skid Row was like a survival guide for bands seeking to enjoy fruitful third and fourth decades! I was there and learned a lot! Check it out:  Click to read more…

I hated Angel Down so much that I kind of naturally assumed that Sebastian Bach’s new solo album, Kicking & Screaming, would also be a shitfest. (The cover art wasn’t especially reassuring, either.) But now Revolver has debuted the music video for the title track, and the song is really not that terrible.

I mean, it’s not great, either — it’s basically a generic hard rock song — but I can’t really give Baz any shit for it. Watching the clip, I mostly kept wondering a) if the thirteen year old who’s playing guitar for Bach now was reimbursed for the gas money he spent to get to the shoot or if he was expected to pay for it himself because “playing music is his life,” and b) if Baz ever actually gets in a room with his band, or just stands up against a random wall someplace at all times.

Kicking & Screaming is out September 23 on Frontiers. Click on the screen cap of the hot lady who is in the video for no apparent reason other than hot ladies sometimes help sell records to see the clip.

-AR

1) Be nicer to Sebastian Bach
2) Compare penis sizes with Tommy Lee
3) Hire Phil LaBonte as a vocal coach
4) Hire Billy Milano as a personal trainer
5) Hire Tripp Eisen as a baby sitter
6) Sleep with present-day Tawny Kitaen
7) Help Danzig clean up his motherfucking bricks, bitch
8) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about politics
9) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about romance
10) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about Ted Nugent

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I LOLd for an hour straight on Tuesday cuz my Twitter was blowing up with metal people’s reactions to the Casey Anthony verdict (announced around 4PM EDT). It’s a serious situation, so dudes are mad and lending their two cents. That’s natural. But man, some people think dumb. Actually, know what? I’m just gonna c+p some metal celebrity tweets below. Remember, most of the following mini-declarations are wrought in awful logic, but not everybody on the internet is ignorant and high-horsing this shit to death. Um yeah just go ahead and keep reading and oooh the suspense…

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The thing about Sebastian Bach is, he’s a pathetic loser and a total idiot, but he’s also really talented. His voice is still in amazing shape, and his performances haven’t lost any of their verve. That’s way more than I can say for more dudes his age, who have been in the business for more than two decades. If Bach ever gets some decent collaborators for one of his solo albums, or joins a good band, he’d be a force to be reckoned with again.

Case in point: Baz recently hopped on stage with Children of Bodom during the West Hollywood stop on their now-in-progress tour with Devin Townsend, Obscura, and Septicflesh (remaining dates here). Needless to say, it was much, much cooler than Baz performing with Asking Alexandria.

Here’s some fan-filmed footage of the blessed union:

You can check out some video over at The PRP.

-AR

Am I high or is it weird that in 2011 nobody touts the first two Skid Row records as mega-masterpieces? What has undermined lasting renown? Is it that those jams are too heavy for radio listeners and not aggro enough for metal fans? Did major line-up changes doom them to be written off (except for the three enduring singles)? Is it Sebastian Bach’s fault? Is the rest of the band too stubborn and unambitious? Really, has there been a more compelling, awesome, and fearless heavy rock record since? Help me figure this out?

To me, it’s not a problem per se that one-time Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bach is a huge jackass. One, his all-time top ten singing chops justify extreme arrogance and render decency unnecessary; two, reality TV and morning radio has immunized us all to dunderheads of Bach’s type. So fans are over it, right? Yet it’s still possible that Bach’s exhausting bimbo-ism has quieted the global and unanimous mega-acclaim that Skid Row deserves. How?

Think about it: Is it not Bach-related acrimony among the members of Skid Row that hamstrings their legacy-building? No reunion tours, no massive retrospectives, no anniversary celebrations. No documentaries, no tribute albums, no peer buzz. It’s probably Bach’s spaztardation that makes these things impossible. Click to read more…

Sebastian Bach has announced a September 27 release date for his new album, Kicking & Screaming. The press release makes no mention of any collaborations with Jamey Jasta or John 5, which would have been the reasons to at least be curious about this record, especially after the awfulness that Bach’s last outing, Angel Down. So… oh well.

But the press release did include a link to the below promo photo, by Gabriel Goldberg, and it might be the most inadvertently hilarious promo photo ever for a professional musician of whom you’ve actually heard. I can’t believe that anyone, let alone what was probably a team of people, thought it was a good idea to release a photo where Baz looks like he’s just about to start weeping. Because nothing screams “ROCK!” like a depressed blonde man with too much make-up on.

Vince is away on vacation, so there won’t be any of his patented photo caption contests for awhile. But if anyone can come up with a caption for this that actually makes me laugh, I will send them a goody bag of assorted whatever-the-fuck we have lying around.

So have at it…

-AR

Phil Varone was the original drummer in Saigon Kick and the not-original drummer in Skid Row, and he was on VH1′s Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew. But either the treatment wasn’t very effective, or I don’t understand what the show is actually about, because now Varone has a launched a porn site, Phil Varone’s Secret Sex Stash (it should go without saying that the site is NSFW).

The gimmick of this particular porn site — because all porn sites must have a gimmick, lest men be forced to jerk off to a plot-free video of people fucking — is that all the women are allegedly groupies that Varone has shutpped during his tenure as a C-list celebrity. (Varone claims to have slept with 3,000 women, which I guess explains why he hasn’t recorded a decent album in twenty years — dude has been busy with other projects!) So if you’ve ever had a fantasy about being with a girl who wanted to bang you for the sole reason that you are a replacement member in a band that was famous in 1992, this is the site for you! Kerri Kelli is jealous he didn’t think of it first.

Of course, Varone isn’t the first metal d00d to get into the world of porn — there’s Evan Seinfeld, of course, and Dead to Fall’s Chad Fjerstad, to say nothing of leaked sex tapes starring Tommy Lee, Bret Michaels, and Fred Durst (although not all three of them together… now that would sell a bajillion copies). And, clearly, it’s a smart career move. The music industry is dying because of people illegally downloading music on the net, but, as we all know, getting free pornography online is damn near impossible. So finding people willing to pay $240 a year to watch a guy who SWEARS ON HIS MOTHER’S LIFE that he’s a rockstar nail “groupies” should be no problem.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

In 2006, Axl Rose’s Nu-GN’R played what was then their first show in almost four years at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. Rose had recently made a surprise appearance on The Eddie Trunk Show*, dropping in after a texting session with Bach, whom he had not seen in many years. So at this first Hammerstein show, Rose brought out Bach, and they did a duet of “My Michelle,” and, of course, the crowd went totally apeshit.

Then they did it again for the next three nights the band played at the same venue. And then they did it again at almost every single Guns N’ Roses show since. And then Axl Rose made a guest appearance on Bach’s album, and then Bach made a guest appearance on Chinese Democracy. I mean, these guys sure did beat that gimmick until it was dead, and then they continued to beat it, just so its mother wouldn’t be able to give it an open casket funeral.

Click to read more…

Because Vince and I are lazy asses, we did not do any interviews on the Black Carpet at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards last week. In fact, I think we were both already kinda drunk by the time the whole thing started. So, yeah, Joan Rivers we ain’t.

But don’t be sad, ’cause our bro-bros at Metal Injection did rock the Black Carpet — in fact, on-camera personality Rob Pasbani even wore a shiny silver coat, which, I shit you not, was the hit of the party. (The amount of compliments he got on the thing was absurd.) And, as usual, the video report they’ve filed from the event is super-lulzy. Highlights include learning the hard way that Volbeat are good at sarcasm (Rob: “What kind of performance can we expect from you guys?” Volbeat: “A musical performance.”), Sebastian Bach practicing his future routine for stand-up in the Catskills (Baz, upon being asked to do a bumper for MI: “I don’t do bumps anymore.”), and Vince Neil proving that he is still the greatest interview subject in all of metaldom (Rob: “I feel like you guys are the definitive L.A. band.” Vince Neil: “Well, we’re from L.A.”).

Continuing in the tradition of last year’s awkward Metal Injection-Black Carpet screen cap, you can click the below still of Sasha Grey checking out Rob’s delicious ass to watch the entire report.

-AR

I was mindlessly channel surfing, as you do at the end of a long day, when I saw a flash of blond hair that could only be Sebastian Bach. Naturally, I had to go back to see if it was true. Lo and behold, I was right. Now, I don’t know what’s sadder; that I recognized him in a split second or that he was on… GILMORE GIRLS. Yep, old Sebastian was part of some cool indie band on the show, and he was singing, uh, “Holla Back Girl.” My reaction was threefold; 1) Why did no one tell me this existed? 2) What the fuck is he doing?! 3) Man, how good was old Skid Row?

Though I do enjoy Slave to the Grind as the heavier follow-up, 1989’s Skid Row is, in my humble opinion, the best Skid Row release. For a first album, just look at all the amazing songs that came out of it.

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This video of Asking Alexandria vocalist Danny Worsnop totally fershnickered on-stage at a recent Seattle gig has been making the rounds these past few days, and I honestly don’t know quite what to say about it. I think this band is terrible, and there’s some schadenfreude to be had in watching this dude basically fuck-over a room packed full of paying fans; on the other hand, Worsnop apparently now recognizes he has a problem and is quitting drinkin’ n’ druggin’ (Asking Alexandria’s initials are “AA”… coincidence?!?), so I can’t give the guy too much shit, I guess.

Besides, the part of this video that really fascinates me — besides the fact that the fans don’t lynch Worsnop — is how mensch-y his bandmates are. They’re so calm and understand and fucking British! Bands break-up or almost break-up because of shit like this all the time, but these dudes are just so chill! If it were my band and the singer acted like this I’d probably beat him to death with my guitar. But I guess that’s why these dudes are rock stars and I’m just a blogger. Well, that and my refusal to get a ridiculous hair cut.

-AR

The possibly-not-final cover art for Anthrax’s Worship Music

So I have a friend who works closely with Camp Anthrax. I obviously can’t tell you the friend’s name, but I can tell you that he once told me that the Dan Nelson version of Worship Music was awesome, and that I’ve been begging him to let me hear it ever since. Thing is, he doesn’t actually own a copy, and has never been able to get his hands on one. Security around the album was tight before the Nelson debacle, but after, he told me, “It was like Scott and Charlie were going door-to-door personally checking people’s hard drives to make sure everyone had deleted it.”

And so last night I got a text from this friend, I guess trying to make amends for the fact that he never did come through with that Dan Nelson record: “Just got the Belladonna version of Worship Music. U wanna hear it?”

I responded simply, “Be there in 20.” And I got my ass on the subway and I went over to his place.

And I gotta tell you, guys… it’s a weird record, and there are two MASSIVE, and massively tragic, missteps… but it’s pretty great overrall. It’s not really like any metal record I’ve ever heard before. Whatever else you wanna say about Anthrax, you can’t accuse them of refusing to experiment — this album is a huge, huge risk, often welding together vastly different styles and textures of not just metal but often other genres of music, too. I don’t know if people will go for this record or not, but I think it’s kinda brilliant.

(By the way, the above album cover is a carry-over from the Dan Nelson version of the record; apparently it may be scrapped in favor of something that “feels more like the album cover of one of the old Belladonna albums.” Which would be a weird decision, because, a few songs aside, this record doesn’t sound anything like any other Anthrax album.)

And so here it is — my track-by-track breakdown of what I heard.

You guys aren’t gonna believe this shit.

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I somehow completely missed this until I read about it on Metal Injection, but it seems that Sebastian Bach will be performing “Youth Gone Wild” with Asking Alexandria as his backing band at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards next month. (DevilDriver and Jamey Jasta will also be doing a tribute to Black Flag, but I have nothing funny to say about that.)

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“Somebody get me a goddman second band!!!”

Paul Romanko is now the only member of Shadows Fall who doesn’t have a side project — or, if he does, he hasn’t gone public with it yet. What’s that about? I’m sure he has no recollection of this whatsoever, but back in my lowly fanboy days, before I was a super-cool blahger d00d, I had beers with Romanko, and he was a totally cool guy! And he had no B.O. problems that I noticed. So how come no one wants to play with him? Let him in the sandbox, damn it!

While you ponder that completely meaningless question (I mean for all I know the dude is just enjoying his time off and has no desire to be in a second band), feel free to head over to Noisecreep and check out the song “Shades of Grey,” the new song from Dead of Night — a.k.a. the side project of Shads’ guitarists Matt Bachand and Jon Donais (ex-Unearth skinsman Derek Kerswill plays drums, making this somewhat of a NWOAHM supergroup).

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Andy McCoy, one of the founding members of Hanoi Rocks, wrote a book. In 2008. [Our own Corey Mitchell reviewed it in 2010. - Ed.] I read it pretty recently as it came to me with a bunch of Christmas/Hannukah/New Year’s loot. My family doesn’t celebrate anything, so we basically give each other presents because the year is over. Yeah, I don’t know. We put up a tree, too.

Anyway, I kind of dropped the ball on Andy, and that’s kind of a recurring thing these days, because every once in a while I get caught up on that “having a life thing.” I did finally read it, though, and I quite enjoyed it. To an extent. Now, I love books. Reading = fun times for me. I usually have three or four books I’m juggling and one of them is almost always a music biography. But Sherriff McCoy; Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks goes on the pile of band books that really could’ve used a good edit.

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