The Sundance Film Festival, probably the most famous film festival in the United States and arguably all of North America (sorry, Toronto!), is now underway, which means there’s a lot of Hollywood wheelin’ and dealin’ going on right now. And one such wheel n’ deal comes in the form of Anchor Bay Films acquiring distribution rights to Nothing to Fear, the debut from Slash’s Slasher Films imprint. The horror flick stars Oscar nominee Thomas Hayden Church as “a charismatic but unbalanced man of the cloth.”

Details of the deal haven’t been publicly released yet, but based on my knowledge of Anchor Bay’s usual work, I’d say the fact that this is goin’ down tells us two things about Nothing to Fear:

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The musician John O’Brien, who passed away in August, was best friends with Dave “Slash Couldn’t Even Spell My Damn Name Correctly in his Autobiography” Kushner. And so the guitarist — unsurprisingly, the only member of Velvet Revolver to drop off the face of the planet when the band went on hiatus four years ago — organized a reunion of his most famous project for a memorial concert in O’Brien’s honor, which will take place on January 12 at the House of Blues in Los Angeles.

Yes, that means that Scott Weiland is going to be performing with Velvet Revolver again.

And while the gig is currently scheduled to be a one-off affair, now Kushner tells Rolling Stone that Weiland could ultimately end up coming back to the fold for good:

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In October, Axl Rose told That Metal Show that Duff McKagan’s Loaded featuring Duff McKagan was going to open some shows on GN’R current North American headlining tour. But then we didn’t hear anything else about it for over a month, so I think most people either assumed it wasn’t happening, or forgot about it all together.

But now it’s actually happening, and is happening this week, no less, in Seattle and Vancouver.

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So the young ‘uns might not remember this, but back in 1995, following the release of Ozzmosis, Zakk Wylde actually had to bow out of Ozzy Osbourne’s touring group. The reason? ‘Cause Mr. Wylde was busy waiting to see if he got the second guitarist spot in the then-biggest band in the world, Guns N’ Roses. GN’R's original rhythm guitarist, Izzy Stradlin, had quit in ’91, and his replacement, Gilby Clarke, was fired in ’94; the band was having a hard time filling the slot (an issue which apparently ended up being a major factor in Slash’s eventual decision to leave the group), and Axl Rose got it into his head that having a second lead guitarist would be a great idea, and would “push” the two axe slingers to challenge themselves in new and interesting ways (a theory Rose continues to test in his current version of Guns). In hindsight, this was probably a terrible idea, but at the time, when word got out that Wylde was jamming with GN’R, everyone was all excited by the possibility.

I’m not quite sure why it didn’t work out between Wylde and GN’R (Rose says that Slash refused to share the spotlight with a second lead guitarist, Slash says that Wylde was too impatient to wait for Rose to get his shit together), but last week fans got a kinda-sorta glimpse of a what a Wylde GN’R might have sounded like when the guitarist, whose Black Label Society was opening for Rose and company, hopped up on stage with the band to perform a cover of AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” Metal Insider has found multiple fan-filmed videos of the event, one of which I’ve re-posted below; it’s actually pretty amazing, ’cause Wylde doesn’t use a single guitar squeal the entire time. I wonder if that was one of Rose’s conditions when allowing him to perform with GN’R?

And since we’re on the topic of Zakk Wylde almost joining Guns N’ Roses in the mid-90s, here’s a video of Wylde and Slash jamming on Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” from roughly that same time period. Hearing the way these two trade licks and interact with one another might actually give you a better sense of how GN’R could have sounded had Wylde actually ended up in the band. Enjoy:

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I woke up this morning to a seemingly endless number of headlines announcing that Guns N’ Roses have, indeed, been voted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, and I’m as baffled by all the excitement now as I was when the band first became eligible for induction.

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Someone sent us the above via Twitter, but I already forget the guy’s handle. Sorry, dude!

In October, Axl Rose added “Estranged” back into Guns N’ Roses’ regular setlist for the first time since 1993. Even though everyone makes fun of that song’s ridiculous music video, it was a smart move — at the GN’R show in New Jersey I attended last month, the song got a roar of approval from the crowd the moment the band played it. Axl’s Nu-GN’R has mostly ignored the Use Your Illusion era for the past decade, which is foolish, because while the critics may not love those albums, they sold seven million copies each. People wanna hear those songs.

And Rose must get it; that same night I saw him Jersey, he also performed “Don’t Cry,” which he hasn’t done in awhile, and now, this past weekend, he suddenly broke out “Civil War,” too. You can check out video below; the band actually sounds pretty good, even if, Jesus H. Christ, something really does need to be done about Dj Slashba (note the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips).

Interestingly enough, Slash has been doing “Civil War” with his solo band (Myles Kennedy + a bunch of random dudes) since last year. By way of comparison, you can check out his Gun Without Rose version after the jump.

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Here’s a fun quote from a recent Sammy Hagar interview with Attention Deficit Delirium. Discussing the possibility of a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses, Hagar says:

“They’ve proved it again and again and again that it ain’t [about] the money. They just don’t get along because Axl goes out for a lot less money with his version of Guns N’ Roses, and Slash goes out for a lot less money with Velvet Revolver or by himself. The amount of money they could make if they got it all back together, made a great record and toured the world would probably be as much as the Rolling Stones [get], and for them not to do it, it obviously ain’t about the money. Because they could do it. I would manage them. I’d be their manager and make sure they got the right deal from all the promoters. They could be the biggest band in the world if they wanted to.”

There’s three things I find funny about this statement:

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by the ongoing disaster that is Lou Reed & Metallica’s Lulu, this week we asked our writers:

BESIDES METALLICA AND LOU REED, WHAT IS THE WORST COLLABORATION BETWEEN A METAL BAND/ARTIST AND A NON-METAL BAND/ARTIST? AND WHAT IS THE WORST ONE YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE IN YOUR WILDEST NIGHTMARES?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump!

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Here’s a great tip if you wanna get laid: follow around your alcoholic friend who girls actually like , and then, when said friend passes out, pick up his not-quite-sloppy-seconds! That’s what Axl Rose recently told some Paraguayan fans he used to, at least (video below), admitting that Slash (the drunk in question) was good for something besides accidentally writing the riff to “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” And let me be the first to congratulate Axl on proving, once again, that he is not at all creepy or weird or kinda sad. After all, it’s a well known fact that you catch more bees with someone else’s honey! LEGITIMATE SOCIAL SKILLS ARE FOR LOSERS!!!

I guess the good news is, he didn’t yell at anybody this time.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Despite not being the kind of grim n’ gritty tune Guns N’ Roses were most famous for, and despite having a ridiculous video in which Axl Rose swims with dolphins for no apparent reason and reminds everyone that he has more money than they do, “Estranged” is my favorite GN’R song. And I always thought it would be cool to see Axl’s Nu-GN’R do the track with Buckethead, ’cause I bet that dude could totally rip it.

So, of course, now that Buckethead has already been out of the band for seven years, Axl did the song at last night’s Rock in Rio performance.

Not a shock that it’s a little anticlimactic, ’cause for every one thing the band got right, there’s something else they got wrong: Axl can still sing the low parts pretty well, but not the high parts, and at one point his voice cracks like he was me at my bar mitzvah; Bumblefoot sounds great, but for some reason looks like Robin Finck now; Dj Ashba sounds so-so, but continues to do a ridiculous Slash impersonation, and there’s a much better guitar player who isn’t just aping someone else, Richard Fortus, standing right there on stage, but for some reason Axl won’t let him play the leads; Matt Sorum wasn’t invited, so the drums actually sound right for a change. So I guess ya take the good ya take the bad ya take them both and you still don’t have Slash in the band.

GN’R apparently really are going to a U.S. tour starting at the end of this month; we’ll see if they break out any other oldies but goodies.

-AR

[via Bumblefoot's Twitter]

So long as Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Duff McKagan are all involved, no one would be more excited about a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses than me. Yeah, I’d prefer if Steven Adler were the drummer instead of Matt Sorum, but that seems unlikely, and I’d be willing to settle. I’d be severely depressed about it, but I’d probably even be willing to settle for Gilby Clarke instead of Izzy if it came down to it. And I know there’s really no chance that the reunion would be great; Axl has turned into Yosemite Sam and Slash has a pacemaker and can’t run around the way he used to, so, at best, it would be a total nostalgia trip. But it would be a lot of fun, and given that Rose has completely failed to maintain a stable line-up of G&R (a.k.a. “Guns N’ Roses 2.0,” a.k.a. “Nu-GN’R”) anyway, might as well, right?

And now Guns N’ Roses are one of the fifteen finalist nominees for induction into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. And it seems like they have a pretty decent chance of being one of the five artists who will actually get in, despite the fact that they only made four albums of original material in four years and only toured for an additional two, because, well, those albums sold a gajillion copies, and inducting them would, frankly, be good for business. And so, of course, people are starting to get really excited, because if they get inducted, maybe that reunion we’ve all been dreaming about for almost twenty freakin’ years will finally happen, right?

Only here’s the thing: There is absolutely no chance in hell that the original band will reunite, even if they are inducted into a meaningless museum.

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Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of Guns N’ Roses’ double-disc opus, Use Your Illuision. It seems like public perception has soured on these albums over the years — even Axl Rose and Slash have accused them of being bloated and over-produced — but I still love ‘em to death. For one thing, seeing as they ended up being the last proper studio albums of original material from the actual Guns N’ Roses (not Axl Rose’s solo group or whatever),  I’m glad that the band basically included every song they had written up ’til that point here. And for another thing, I love the diversity of the records — that they didn’t just end up being Appetite for More Destruction. Maybe the Illusion albums ended up being a failed experiment, but I still, to this day, find them to be a pretty exciting experiment*.

So. Since we didn’t do a “Question of the Week” this week, and I wanted to do something to commemorate this anniversary, I thought we’d play a fun game that Vince and I (and a lot of our other friends) used to play in the past: whittling these two mammoth albums down to one collection. Geffen Records actually did that themselves in 1998, releasing a twelve-song single volume version of UYI that, if you ask me, had a pretty strange selection of songs on it… but it’s an entertaining time waster to see if you can do better.

There are no rules to the game, other than a) all the songs on your track list have to come from the Illusions albums (duh), and b) it all has to fit on one CD (roughly 80 minutes), despite the fact that CDs are now obsolete. I’ve included my own personal version after the jump… I’ll be more than a little excited to see all of yours as well.

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To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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Slash’s latest “They paid me so I showed up” gig is apparently going to be an appearance on Comedy Central’s Roast of Charlie Sheen, which filmed last week. I was kinda hoping that the Slashter might try his hand and making a few jokes at Sheen’s expense — I mean, it’s not like he’d have to write his own bits or anything, he’d just have to get up and deliver what was written for him — but the below clip suggests that he’s just gonna play guitar. Not the worst thing in the world but not the most exciting, either.

Metal Insider notes that Comedy Central has been using Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” in promos for the roast, and, indeed, Sheen and Slash do appear on a train… although Slash doesn’t play the song, I guess either ’cause he didn’t want to, or ’cause the execs at Comedy Central didn’t wanna hafta pay any further licensing fees.

ANYWAY, these roasts are often pretty funny, so Slash or not, this thing might be worth watching. It airs this coming Monday, September 19.

-AR

I’ve been following the progress of Slash’s Slasher Films — whose goal is to “produce edgy contemporary horror fare with a nod to the thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s” — since its inception last October, because, well, I think the idea of Slash as a movie producer is amusing, even if he may really only be a producer in name only, (my educated guess is that his partners at the company, Michael Williams and Rob Eric, do all the actual work, using Slash basically just as a mascot/public face of the shingle), and because if he actually ends up being successful at it, I suspect that suddenly we’ll see lots of aging rock stars starting up their own film enterprises (you just know that Lars Ulrich and Nikki Sixx are chomping at that bit). And in January, you may recall, Slasher announced that their first project would be Nothing to Fear, which the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist described as being “about a God-fearing Christian family who gets relocated to a small town in Kansas called Stull, which unbenownst to them happens to be one of the seven gateways to hell, and they’ve been lured there for an annual sacrifice [the townfolk] do for the demon that appears every year to satiate his bloodlust — otherwise he goes on a rampage.”

Now Deadline reports that Nothing to Fear has a greenlight, and will begin shooting this October in Louisiana. Furthermore, Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church — he was nominated for the dramedy Sideways, but you should at least know for playing the villain “Sandman” in Spider-Man 3 — is apparently in negotiations to star as “a charismatic but unbalanced man of the cloth.”

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

We haven’t done one one of these all summer, but we came up with a fun one for this week:

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PLAY ANY METAL BAND/MUSICIAN SOME OF THEIR MUSIC AND/OR SHOW THEM PHOTOS/VIDEOS OF THEMSELVES FROM THEIR FUTURE (OUR PRESENT), WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Even if I haven’t exactly been thrilled with Slash’s post-Guns N’ Roses output, I never thought his guitar playing got bad; listening to No More Tears over the weekend, I was struck (again) by the fact that Zakk Wylde’s playing has become a parody of itself, but Slash still seems to have an endless arsenal of killer guitar solos left in him. If the dude could just get Izzy Stradlin to write him some decent songs, I have little doubt that the man would be able to turn me back into a fanboy faster than you can say “Saul Hudson.”

Case in point: “Kick it Up a Notch,” a new song Slash has recorded with a couple of cartoon characters. And, no, I don’t mean Axl Rose and Scott Weiland.

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Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash tells a funny story about his first listens to Aerosmith’s Rocks album. That day, he’d planned some afternoon doobage/canoodling with a comely young lady only to have his attention devoured by that then-new and always awesome Aerosmith record. I imagine him on her bed, shushing her and batting away her caresses — all because Rocks was totally rocking his world for the first of a billion times. I get that. Horny hotties come and go; an instant connection to timeless music is bigger.

And the very same thing happened to me Saturday night! Just replace Slash with hunky me (mental image note: I play lefty), his sexy chick with this chatty mess from my neighborhood, and Aerosmith’s Rocks with The Time Of No Time Evermore by Dutch occult rockers The Devil’s Blood.

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It’s not hard to come up with theories as to why Slash has gotten so lame over the years — aging, sobriety, marriage, fatherhood, pacemaker, Fergie, etc. — but has anyone ever considered that Slash just might not be real? I mean, I know a truly silly number of people who have been Slash for Halloween over the years (both Vince and myself have done, in case you’re curious), and the reason is, he’s both recognizable and incredibly easy to imitate. Get a dark, curly wig, a top hat, and a cigarette, wobble around drunkenly, and, every now and then, remove a piece of paper that says “MY LEGACY” on it, place it on the ground, drop trou, and poo. Presto, you’re Slash.

But has anyone ever considered that the reason Slash has gotten so lame, and is so easy to impersonate, is because he’s not real? Y’know, like Santa. Like, maybe Slash seemed a million times cooler when I was a kid because my mom was Slash and my mom did an awesome job because she wanted her little gift from God to be happy, but now every time I see Slash it’s just some out of work record executive trying to bring back the good old days, or, worse still, Dj Ashba?

This is the theory that South Park posited on Wednesday night (about Slash not being real, not Slash being Dj Ashba in a disguise), with rather amusing results. (Two words: “Vunter Slaush.”) I can’t for the life of me figure out what spurned on Trey Parker and Matt Stone to include this storyline, although, yes, it does seem like Slash is always in too many places at once. I also feel like these guys lampooned Slash once before — I distinctly remember him being in some All-Star Charity Concert on a past episode — although I can’t seem to find that episode now, so maybe I’m imagining it.

ANYWAY, here are the clips from the episode relevant to Slash, courtesy reader Hetal Bhatt… you can watch the full thing here. In case you need some context for these clips, basically, the boys are trying to get Slash to play the half-time show for their new sports league, the Crack Baby Athletic Association. Yep yep.

-AR

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Star Wars and Guns N’ Roses both have a special spot reserved in my geekiest of geeky heart, and probably for similar reasons: Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in theaters (and I was obsessed with/sympathetic to Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, it will shock exactly no one one to learn), and GN’R were my gateway into metal. In other words, seeing Jedi and hearing “It’s So Easy” were both major contributing factors to ruining my mother’s dreams of me ever going to medical school.

So. Now our friends over at Metal Insider have discovered the below video, filmed at Disney’s Hollywood studios’ “Star Wars Weekends” show, in which Chewbacca… and then an ewok… well, just watch. It is fucking strange, and I have no idea what the crap it has to do with Star Wars, although the audience does seem to be pretty into it.

Yep. ‘Cause I always thought that was “Welcome to the Jungle” was missing was a Jawa shouting “Wootini!” at just the right moment.

But wait, there’s more! They also had Lord Vader gettin’ jiggy wit… Metallica?

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