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We have successfully arrived at Yankee Stadium and are sitting in the press box. We feel so professional!
We’re gonna put the live blog after the jump so it doesn’t eat up the entire page. You’ll hafta refresh to get updates. Sorry.
And now, enjoy the snark…
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.
That’s right! The wait is finally just about over; tomorrow, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax will play Yankee Stadium in the Boogie Down Bronx. If you can’t make, fret not — thanks to a last minute invitation to hang out in the press room, we’ll be there, and Rob from Metal Injection and myself are going to live blog the whole event right here on MetalSucks! Come for the descriptions of all the fun and excitement that you’re missing, and stay for what is sure to be witty commentary completely lacking in sarcasm and/or sophomoric humor.
Anthrax are scheduled to take the stage at 4 pm; I imagine we’ll get started shortly beforehand, and, internet connectivity and sobriety level allowing, continue to give you the blow-by-blow throughout the afternoon and evening. Join us, won’t you?
-AR
Whether you’re going to the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium tomorrow and wanna start pre-gaming early or you’re just in the NYC area and looking for something fun to do this evening, do not forget: we’re teaming up with Metal Injection, Metal Insider, and Metal Army to throw a massive Big 4 pre-party at our favorite bar, Idle Hands. John Jospeh from Cro-Mags is DJing, and there are gonna be some other metal celebs in attendance, although if you wanna know who… we’ll, you’ll just have to be there, won’t you?
$4 drafts starting at 7 pm; you can get even more details from Idle Hands’ website. See ya there!!!
-Axl & Vince
My own fragile sense of mortality means that I’m still adjusting to the fact that the original bands from the New Wave of American Heavy Metal — commonly mislabeled as “metalcore” — are now hovering somewhere around their tenth year of existence. As I Lay Dying are the latest band to hit the one decade mark, and while I can’t say I was one of the cool kids who has known about them since the release of Beneath the Encasing of Ashes, I do remember when I first heard Frail Words Collapse, and it really seems like it was just last week.
But enough about my own neurosis. The story here is As I Lay Dying’s tenth anniversary, which they’ll celebrate by releasing an album entitled Decas. Mercifully, it’s not just a lame greatest hits collection — instead, it will feature three new songs, covers of classics by Slayer, Judas Priest, and Descendents, and remixes of old AILD tunes by the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman, Big Chocolate, and Kelly “Carnage” Cairns. You can check out the first new tune, “Paralyzed,” below. It’s equal parts heavy and catchy, which is to say, it’s an As I Lay Dying song, and a good reminder of why the band grew to be so popular in the first place.
Decas will come out November 8 on Metal Blade, and you can already pre-order it here. And if that isn’t enough to give you your As I Lay Dying fix, the band will continue the celebration of their birthday with the ”A Decade of Destruction,” which starts at the end of November and will feature support from Of Mice & Men, The Ghost Inside, Iwrestledabearonce, and, maybe best of all, Sylosis, who I personally am absolutely dying (no pun intended) to see. Here are dates, courtesy of AP:
That’s right, kids: On Tuesday, September 13 — the evening before The Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium — MetalSucks is teaming up with our pals at Metal Injection, Metal Insider, and Metal Army to throw a massive Big 4 pre-party at our favorite bar, Idle Hands. As you can see from the poster above, there’s gonna be $4 drafts starting at 7 pm, and you should really and try and get so drunk so as to be still drunk at the show the next day, ’cause four bucks is approximately 1/1,000th the cost of a beer at Yankee Stadium.
And to make the whole affair that much more fun, John Jospeh from Cro-Mags is DJing! And a little birdie told me there may some other very special guests may be on hand. So whether you’re coming to NYC specifically for the event, or you’re just looking for an awesome hang to get the party started a little early, Idle Hands is the place to be the night before the show.
Get more details from Idle Hands’ website. See ya there!!!
-Axl & Vince
Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicated every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we proved that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revelled in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dipped into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we surveyed the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. So we did it. Thanks for reading!
Song ”Midnight Cowboy”
Written by John Barry (M).
Released 1992
Appears on Angel Dust album
Produced by Matt Wallace
Guitars by Jim Martin
Key lyric ””Weee-deee-dooo-doooo/Wahhh-dehhh-deyyy-deyyyy”
Single? No.
¿¡Q-VO, CULEROS?! Te gustan EL MOSH?! Pienso que sí! Escuchame si te quiero EL MOSH tambien!!!
As you can tell from my terrible Spanish, I’m just a dumb güero who can barely tell a tamale from a taqueria. I might not be the master of foreign languages, but I do know that Latinos always been a big part of metal/punk/hardcore (even though nobody ever talks about it). Not only that, but Latinos might be a driving force in the future of the genre — in fact, I think the next big thing will be middle-class white kids jocking Mexicans!
In this post, I will discuss the past, present and future of Latinos in metal/hardcore/etc. Whether you’re a pinche white person like me or a Latino, tell me if you see things the same as I do. Feel free to tell me I’m an idiot/racist/troll if you want, but I would prefer legitimate discussion since I am genuinely interested in this topic.
Slayer now sell condoms in their webstore — “For when you’re going South of Heaven.” Seriously.
They come in packs of three or six; a three pack of Durex condoms with no Slayer logo on it will run you about two bucks, so, of course, a three pack of Durex condoms with a Slayer logo will cost you about thirteen bucks. Makes sense. Like charging twice as much for Monopoly because Metallica’s logo is on it.
And it’s worth noting that, unlike Kiss Kondoms, the band’s logo/likeness/whatever isn’t on the condom itself — so you’re literally paying more than six times what the things usually go for just to have the band’s emblem on the package you’re going to open (very likely in the dark, where you can’t see it too well anyway) and then discard.
So. Fucking. Lame.
-AR
[Via Metal Insider, who came up with a pretty joke about menstruation, too!]
Last week, a shitty translation of a news story from a French website told us that Gojira told them that Rick Rubin was producing the band’s new album. We’ve been trying to get confirmation to no avail, but now another shitty translation of another news story from another French website tells us that Gojira told them that Rubin isn’t the producer — Greg Fidelman is.
If memory serves, the Spawn movie which came out in 1997 was pretty terrible, but we did get one great thing out of it: the soundtrack. It was pretty much like the Judgment Night soundtrack, only instead of combining metal bands with rap acts, it teamed up metal bands with electronica acts. And every song on it was innovative and amazing.
No, I’m totally kidding. The soundtrack sucked almost as bad as the movie.
I remember reading an interview with Howard Jones around the time The End of Heartache came out in which he said something to the effect of, “You could play Slayer songs on acoustic guitars and they would still sound good.” His point being, of course, that a good song will always sound like a good song, period.
And the below video, of a couple of dudes doing an instrumental acoustic cover of Kvelertak’s “Blodtorst,” certainly bolsters Jones’ assertion. It would probably never even occur to me to want to hear an acoustic version of Kvelertak, because I think of them as a loud, obnoxious party band (I mean that as a compliment, by the way). But this works pretty well! And apparently, the band digs it, too.
-AR
[via Metal Insider]
We can argue ’round the campfire ’til the sun comes up about this burning question, or we can just consult the scientific study sent in by MS reader Liam [via Ian Christe's Twitter]: which Slayer album is the most evil???
By looking at the lyrics of each Slayer album and counting occurrences of the words “blood,” “evil,” death,” “hell,” “kill,” “satan” and “war” relative to the number of lines in each song (so longer songs don’t have an advantage), the folks at Hirschkraft.com have done their study and the results are in: Hell Awaits is the most evil! Unsurprisingly, the band’s evil quotient trends downward as their career progresses (although World Painted Blood makes a nice showing). I remember seeing a similar study done for Metallica lyrics a couple of years back but I can’t find it; post it in the comments if you have it.
The Hirschkraft study also looks at evilness as measured by who wrote the music and who wrote the lyrics. What I’d really like to see is some sort of measure of evilness based on the music itself: numbers of tri-tones, chromatic riffs, some function of evilness as speed, etc. I have faith in you, Internutz, it can be done!
Now I ask you, oh faithful MS reader: which Slayer album is the most evil?? Tell us in the comments, natch.
-VN
Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian went to northeast France for Wednesday’s Big Four show, but at other July dates the new father’s guitar duties are covered by Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser (as reported here). It’s weird to see Anthrax on stage without Ian — a first — but clips from Kisser’s second gig as temp on Saturday in Sweden are jamming (above)! Kisser is energy for the other Anthrax dudes who, having tirelessly performed for three decades, probably don’t retain measurable enthusiasm for favorites like “Indians,” “Madhouse,” and “Anti-SoCal.” Not to mention, those jamz date back to their writers’ mid-20s. Those guys are relaxed adults now, not lulzy youths. Shit, I bet they no longer even mind being caught in a mosh.
We at MetalSucks got first crack at a Q&A with leukemia survivor Adam “Nergal” Darski in late March, at which point the Behemoth frontman sounded pumped for a return to action but still in the early stages of recovery; that is to say, the spirit was willing but the flesh weak, like in that Sting song. Since then, we tireless reporters/nosy jerks have been keeping two eyes on Nergal’s progress on the path to his band’s upcoming shows in October and, natch, to a lasting recovery.
And so we thank Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta for sharing a pic (above) of himself and Nergal (probably) at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in London on Monday, at which Behemoth took home the Metal As Fuck award over Slipknot, Slayer, Deftones (?), and Zakk Wylde. For that big win, for his birthday on Friday, and mostly for his good and improving health, we say cheers brah! Win!
-ADF
Go here for info on how to help the battle against Leukemia. Here you can order Behemoth’s Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, a collection of out-of-print EPs Conjuration (2003) and Slaves Shall Serve (2005), live bonus tracks, lyrics, and new artwork.
At age five, Tom Araya left Chile with his family to come to America. Fifteen years after that, he joined the then-fledgling band Slayer. Thirty years after that (i.e., now), Slayer enjoys acclaim only shared by Iron Maiden in consistency and intensity. And as Maiden is fronted by the greatest metal singer of all time, Slayer has Araya, metal’s most compelling, visceral screamer. Two notes are all he needs. I’d attend NASCAR if he were the announcer; if he were a salesman, I’d buy used toilets from the dude.
Word of Araya’s skillz (and cuddly-bear disposition) seems to have reached authorities in Chile, as Friday he was granted the key to the city of Viña del Mar, his birthplace. Araya said:
SHAME ON ME! I almost forgot that today is June 6, a.k.a. “The Internatinal Day of Slayer,” until our friend Zena Metal reminded me (and by “me,” I mean “anyone who reads her website”). In any case, if you’re looking for a good excuse to drink Jäger until you puke and/or get right up in the face of some random person on the street and shout “SSSSLLLLAAAYYYYEEERRR!!!!“, well, now you have one. Just tell your boss you’re going home early because it’s a religious holiday. It’s cool, I’m sure he’ll understand.
To help you celebrate, here’s some video of the band in 1991, when Tom Araya could still headbang and Kerry King still had hair. WEIRD!!!
-AR
If you’re American, you already know it’s Memorial Day weekend, and, in fact, you’re probably either already on your way to the beach/a BBQ/a terrible summer movie/whatever, and are reading this after it was published. If you’re not American, all you really need to know is that we’re breaking out right now, and won’t be here on Monday. Usual tomfoolery will resume on Tuesday, May 31.
In the meantime, here’s how we kept busy this week:
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to put these tips for using the toilet to good use before I head out for the weekend. See ya Tuesday!
-AR
Am I crazy or does World Painted Blood suck? Is Slayer moving forward or caving to the post-Slipknot shitty production trend? Am I a fossil who can’t deal with a classic band’s evolution? I love serial killers and hate religion, so what’s the deal? Why did critics splooge all over this record, and do fans agree?
During a recent plane trip, I played about four hours of Slayer pinball on my mobile tablet device — to the dismay of my westerly neighbor, who frowned from behind her religious-themed novel presumably at the game’s huge glowing pentagram — and it got me thinking about World Painted Blood. Like 2006′s mehtastic Christ Illusion, the 2009 record arrived amid a rush of acclaim — as though a spiteful metal media corps had a chance to bestow retroactive cheers upon a critically spurned but iconic band. Or maybe the album is awesome, and therefore deserving of warm reception even from fancy music writers at The Onion and All Music Guide. But I don’t think so.
Max Cavalera is a name you’ve probably heard recently. His band, Cavalera Conspiracy, has been making waves in the metal world with their latest release, Blunt Force Trauma, and are currently on tour in the U.S. But here’s something you might not have known: he’s been at this for decades.
Max, along with his esteemed colleague and brother, Igor, made some of the most beastly and innovative thrash in the mid 80’s and 90’s in the highly influential, underground metal outlet, Sepultura (Portuguese for “grave”). Unfortunately personal differences in ’96 drew him away from the band. Upon relocating to the States, he focused his talents on a new project, the still-running Soulfly (English for “Mighty-Spirit-Mosquito”).
For years Max worked tirelessly with the group, releasing seven studio album’s and gradually building a cult following in the process. Now with a new band and his brother back at his side, the world is finally taking notice.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with the bearded bellower to get the skinny on the new album and see what he makes of his recent success.
