Slipknot is annoying as all fuck, and worse, the Iowan nonet makes me look like a shitty prognosticator. Or at least a victory-drunk prognosticator, ‘cuz after correctly predicting in 1999 that Slipknot’s debut would net Roadrunner a first platinum sales award, I then guessed that the band would bring extreme metal to mainstream media. Which hasn’t happened, unless you grant a technical allowance for a metal band whose intrusions into radio and TV are, by extreme standards, too pussy even for my little cousins. I blame Corey Taylor, who has vaulted sanity and perspective straight into Anselmoian delusion.

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So it was just yesterday that I was commenting on how Joey Jordison keeps going around saying there’s gonna be a new Slipknot album despite the death of Paul Gray, and how Corey Taylor keeps basically saying he’s not sure yet, and how maybe these two should call one another and, y’know, discuss it before making any more comments in public — especially now that  Jordison is promising that plans for a new Slipknot offering are “already in motion,” and that all the other members of the band are “really involved in the process.” In fact, I even predicted that Taylor would say the exact opposite very, very soon:

“That sounds pretty definitive, and saying that ‘everyone’s really involved’ in the creation of a new record more than implies that Taylor is now fully onboard. But I wouldn’t be at all shocked if next week Taylor says he knows nothing about continuing on with Slipknot. I hope that doesn’t happen, ’cause it blows to keep yo-yoing the fans’ excitement like this… I’m just saying that, as always, past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.”

Well, hey, guess what? I must be psychic or something, ’cause mere hours after my post went up, Taylor tweeted the following messages:

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Back in July, our Number One Homie, Rob Pasbani, wrote a typically droll piece for Metal Injection. Entitled “Slipknot Vocalist Says It’s Too Early To Talk About Band’s Future; Drummer Talks About Band’s Future,” it pointed out that while ‘Knot vocalist Corey Taylor was running around saying he was unsure about the group’s future in the wake of bassist Paul Gray’s untimely passing, drummer Joey Jordison was running around assuring everyone that the band would live on.

And even though you would think that  in the intervening time, someone would notice the contradiction in statements and politely tell Taylor and Jordison to either a) figure out if the band is really going to continue or not so they don’t keep contradicting one another in public, or b) start telling everyone who asks about it “no comment” so that they don’t look foolish, this continued throughout August, when Jordison told a reporter that “There will be another Slipknot record, of course,”and into September, when Taylor told a different reporter, “I’m very conflicted about whether or not I want to do anything with Slipknot, because to me, Paul was such an integral part of the band… it just doesn’t make sense [to continue without him].”

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I guess Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan is easily bored, because he keeps starting new bands. During downtime from the ‘Knot, he’s already had To My Surprise and Dirty Little Rabbits as side-projects; now he’s apparently started another new outfit, this one called The Black Dots of Death. According to The PRP, the band will release their first single, “Let’s Get Fucked Up,” on November 29, with the video to follow a day later; their debut album, Ever Since We Were Children, will come out on January 11.

There’s already a teaser for “Let’s Get Fucked Up,” though (screen cap above), and it sounds, like, ridiculously, terribly, laughably, horrendously, embarrassingly, painfully awful. It’s basically some electronic beats that I think probably anyone could whip up in five minutes with the aid of Garage Band and cough syrup, with somebody [sobbing sounds] rapping  about “liquid lunch” over it. I haven’t even heard anybody use the phrase “liquid lunch” since the 90s.

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I’d never heard of Blue Felix before a couple of days ago; I’d wager almost no one had heard of ‘em. But Slipknot’s Sid Wilson appears in their new video, for the song “Middle Finger Up,” so suddenly they were on every metal site in the webernetosphere.

When the song started, I was like, “Oh, okay. So they make Misfits-tinged hard rock and wear ridiculous outfits. They’re the Murderdolls. Got it. That’s not the end of the world.”

And then the dude started singing.

And then the dude started rapping.

And then I closed my laptop and used it to beat ten MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys to death. And, no, I don’t care what Vince says, I will not clean up the carrions.

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I’d wager that Joey Jordison and his Murderdolls will never, ever perform the above song live again.

From Slipknot’s official website:

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There’s nothing I love more than the cock-smashing brutality of a good death metal song, but variety is the spice of life. Sometimes you are not looking for slamming pitt riffment, you just want to get in your Ford F-150, roll down the windows, and blast some tunes that you can sing along to on the way to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch UFC with your bros — you just want some HARD ROCK! I’m not talking about the bluesy “dad’s barbecue soundtrack” of Aerosmith, Deep Purple, or Blue Cheer, but the kind of stuff you’d hear playing on the battered boombox towards the back of a basement print shop, coming from the radio of the truck that delivers some gravel for your new driveway, or pumping in the background of a National Guard recruitment ad.

Snobs turn up their collective nose at this highly-maligned genre, but it’s their loss. In my opinion, these bands have some of the best songwriting you’ll find, and the shows are always a blast. Sure, most of the fans are ignorant white trash, but they come to party and I can’t hate on that. The truth is that radio-friendly hard rock is ‘effing sweet,’ and I can’t get enough of it. In this post, I will share some of my favorite songs of the last decade or so– please post yours in the comments!

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I guess it’s a big day for our friends over at Metal Injection: In addition to debuting a new Halford track, they’ve also got the exclusive premiere of a clip from the new Slipknot DVD, (sic)ness. Check it out here.

The clip doesn’t come from the concert portion of the DVD — or, at least, not the performance portion of the concert portion — but, rather, shows the band back-stage, right before they go on, have a ritualistic pre-game huddle. These are often my favorite parts of these DVDs, because they show me something I’d probably never see otherwise; I obviously go to concerts all the time, but it’s these behind-the-scenes affairs that really allow me to vicariously live the life of a successful metal musician.

Check out the clip here. Roadrunner will release (sic)ness tomorrow. There are special screenings of Clown’s Director’s Cut tonight in NYC and Chicago and tomorrow in LA, and Clown will be in attendance at the one here in New York. Get more details here.

-AR

Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe 2 just came out in February, but daddy needs a new cowboy hat, so Roadrunner is doing a super-duper-special edition re-release of the album on September 28. It’s not even an eight month turnaround; I don’t know if that’s a record or it just feels even faster than usual.

As is pretty much standard with these re-releases, there will be new songs included; not standard, though, is that those new songs will be interspersed throughout the old ones — as opposed to just putting them all after whatever the last song used to be, or on their own disc, or whatever — which makes HB2 George Lucas Style almost a new album, creatively if not actually. By which I mean, I’ve met bands that are ridiculously perfectionistic when it comes to figuring out their sequencing — sequencing means something, and a lot of thought goes into the flow of the record. Adding new material will, presumably, alter that flow in some regard.

Either that, or I just spent more time thinking about the sequencing of Hellbilly Deluxe 2 than Rob Zombie did.

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So I guess that Big Four at the Movies thinger made some bank, ’cause now Slipknot are getting in on the act — their new DVD, (sic)nesses, will screen at select U.S. theaters on September 22, as well as one theater in London on September 26. It’s a concert film of their headlining set at the 2009 Download festival, and while I still find the idea of watching a metal show in a movie theater to be kind of an iffy proposition, Slipknot are nothing if not expert showman, so maybe this will be fun. If the Maggots show up in full ‘Knot regalia, I think the people watching alone might be worth the price of admission.

Here’s a trailer for the event…

…and you can get theater locations/tickets here. The actual DVD comes out September 28, and includes some nifty bonus features that I imagine won’t be screened at this thing, including a 45 minute, Clown-directed documentary… which hopefully is more intelligible than the one on Voliminal.

-AR

I’m seriously asking, ’cause now I can’t remember. I seem to recall “Get Inside” being like a more radio-friendly version of Slipknot (that was before Slipknot were actually fairly radio friendly), but you would definitely call it metal — I mean, you’d never hear that song and think “Gee, this band should tour with Nickelback.” Which is what their latest single, “Say You’ll Haunt Me,” makes me think.

Stone Sour’s latest, Audio Secrecy, comes out September 7 on Roadrunner.

-AR

The mysterious Bird Lady of Redondo Beach relished the opportunity to show off her new BOO tattoo.

I always feel weird saying a really heavy band sounds a little less heavy to me than they used to, because, y’know, normal fucking people who don’t listen to this degenerate neanderthal music would never be able to tell the difference. People throw up their hands and are like, “Remember when In Flames were heavy?” or “Remember when Slipknot were heavy?” or whatever, and most of the population can’t tell the difference between Iowa and Vol. 3 or Whoracle and Come Clarity – it all sounds really fucking loud and angry to them. And the thing is, they’re not wrong; when metalheads complain that a still-heavy band isn’t heavy enough, they’re really just being macho assholes. I know, because I’m guilty of this myself sometimes — complaining about clean vocals or a lack of blast beats or whatever — and Vince makes fun of me for it on a regular basis.

So. Born of Osiris have posted a teaser for their new album on their MySpace page — it’s basically about sixty seconds each of three new songs — and while it’s almost impossible to make any intelligent judgments based on roughly three minutes of music, it does sound to me like the band is moving in a somewhat less heavy direction — but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna release a fucking Carly Simon album or whatever. Sure, save for the third song (which feels pretty The New Reign-ish to these ears) the music sounds less br00tal, with riffs that are aren’t as schizophrenic in nature and the keyboards taking a more central role. But it’s less br00tal the way All Shall Perish’s Awaken the Dreamers was less br00tal than The Price of Existence. Which is to say, the authority figures of my youth would still want to lock me in a room and hire an exorcist to check me out if they heard me listening to this.

Check out the teaser for yourself here. Presumably this album is coming out later this year via Sumerian.

-AR

Thanks to Ian Wilmot for the tip.

Buried in a press release about Whitfield Crane doing a guest gig/Dio/Peter Steele/Paul Gray multi-dead-musican tribute show with Costa Rica’s Sight of Emptiness* was this awesome news from Mr. Crane:

“It’s ON — UGLY KID JOE is back. We are talking about doing shows next year, in addition to studio time. I’m stoked.”

I don’t know what’s up with burying reunion news in press releases about other shit, but all I can say about this particular reconciliation is: YES!!! (Note: Apparently this news has been on the band’s MySpace page since May. I’d like to thank every one of you fuckers who e-mails me every day to tell me about your friend’s awful unsigned band, to tell us to post about something we’ve already posted about, or to express anger over my hatred towards Parkway Drive for not making any mention of this news. Sheesh.)

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Did you know that Slipknot/Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor has a Facebook page? And that he’ll accept virtually anyone as his friend? And that he’s really, really bummed about the recent line-up change in Mutiny Within?

So, uh, like, Corey’s on tour in Europe right now with Stone Sour, and his bandmate and very good friend recently passed away, but he’s concerned about who’s playing drums for Mutiny Within? Why? ‘Cause he’s never seen bands change members before? ‘Cause they’re his labelmates? Or is he just a really big MW fan?

Or could it be because there is no fucking way that this is actually Corey Taylor?

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Well… it does.

Audio Secrecy comes out September 7 on Roadrunner. Despite the gentle ribbing I give this band, I really, sincerely hope that Corey Taylor becomes the next singer for Anthrax.

-AR

The big question since Paul Gray died last month has been, “Will Slipknot go on without him?” On the one hand a member passing away is obviously a huge emotional trauma for a band to have to cope with, and Gray was, at least as I’ve always heard it, a key songwriter for the group; on the other hand, bands persevere in the face of tragedy all the time, and there’s already another potential bass player in the band (and I suspect they could make do without a second percussionist/third drummer/whatever) if they didn’t want to bring someone new into the fold.

But – no shocks here – Jim Root, guitarist and guy who gets to sleep with Cristina Scabbia, says the band hasn’t even discussed it yet. From an interview posted on the official Sonisphere site:

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I’ve said before that Muderdolls were a guilty pleasure of mine. My entire interest in the band lay in the fact that they were basically a modern hair metal band who actually wrote catchy tunes that were mostly ridiculous instead of entirely ridiculous.

But now the band – which is really just Joey Jordison and Wednesday 13 – has released a new song, “My Dark Place Alone,” and it sounds nothing like old Murderdolls. Which might be good news, if you hated old Murderdolls and love generic Godsmackian rawk, but I do not fit into that particular demographic. I mean, I appreciate the over-use of the cowbell, but that’s about all I appreciate about this crap.

Mick Mars is supposed to be on this album in some form another; hopefully the tracks he plays on will be more vintage Motley Crue-ish.

-AR

[via Bloody Disgusting]

To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

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Under normal circumstances I might be inclined to make fun of “Mission Statement,” the first new song we’ve heard from Stone Sour’s upcoming Audio Secrecy; but coming after the putrid waste of everything that is the new Methods of Mayhem song, it sounds like it was written by a super-group consisting of Saint-Saëns, John Lennon, and a young James Hetfield.

Actually, I keep thinking that it sounds like some 90′s alt-arena-rock band trying to do a Sepultura song. Which makes since, I guess, since Stone Sour really wanna be a 90′s alt-arena-rock band, the members of which probably all grew up on Sepultura.

You can download the song here if you want. It’s really nothing special (again, it’s Stone Sour, so no shocks there), but it’s free, so, uh, why not?

-AR

I feel icky just writing about this.

When a young guy like Paul Gray passes away so suddenly, and he’s a rockstar, and he’s a rockstar who has been arrested for crashing his Porsche while in possession of needles, cocaine and weed, your mind, unfortunately, goes pretty much right to one place: “He overdosed.” And after Drowning Pool’s Dave Williams and Evile’s Mike Alexander both died young, and everyone said “overdose,” and then it turns out they didn’t overdose, well – you don’t wanna jump to any conclusions. You wanna wait for the doctors to do their thing and tell you why the guy passed away.

Which is all well and good. But now TMZ (there’s that icky feeling again) has obtained the 911 call an Urbandale hotel employee placed on Monday after finding Gray’s body, and the employee reports seeing a hypodermic needle and a bottle of pills in Gray’s room, and even speculates that Gray died from an OD.

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