Remember a couple of years back, when we saw that video of Machine Head’s Robb Flynn rocking out at a Metallica concert while watching from the floor and not the VIP section or the side of the stage or wherever? Well, if the below footage of Dave Grohl doing likewise at a Soundgarden reunion show in Los Angeles this past July isn’t quite as cool, it’s really only because at no point does Grohl grab the camera and sing into it the way Flynn did.

It’s still pretty freakin’ awesome, though. Not only does Grohl clearly have legit love for the band, but it’s not even like he’s standing in the back — he’s right up front, getting crushed by all the other Soundgarden nerds. Seriously, I don’t know how you could not love this dude.

-AR

Thanks: Stefan Smiljanoski 

While we continue to wait for that Killcorpse Murder project with Adam D., Corpsegrinder, and Shannon Lucas to get off the ground, here’s another newly-teased supergroup to get you all hot under the collar.

Noisecreep noticed on Friday afternoon that DevilDriver vocalist Dez Fafara and Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton announced — via their respective Twitter accounts, natch — that they were collaborating on “a bunch of KILLER tunes,” with Circus of Power, Soundgarden, and Trouble being cited as influences. And, uh, I really have no idea what that would sound like. I hear the aural relationship between Trouble and Soundgarden, but Circus of Power is where I get thrown for a loop.

ANYWAY, on Saturday The PRP strung together a bunch more of Fafara’s tweets, which seek to clarify/update the news:

Click to read more…

Banner Designed by Cysquatch

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.

Click to read more…

Written into the leftfield metal legend is the Faith No More/Soundgarden/Voivod tour of 1989-90. The tits-rad US trek captured three daring bands at different career points: FNM had gone supernova with “Epic” and then-new single “Falling To Pieces”; Cornell and crew’s Louder Than Love was underground hot and schoolyard cool for the Bruce Dickinson-endorsed “Big Dumb Sex”; Voivod stood at their creative apex with the inimitable Nothingface.

Click to read more…

Last month Soundgarden announced the first set of dates for their forthcoming North American reunion tour; now they’ve released their full itinerary, and, in case my headline somehow failed to convey this, support acts, too.

Of course, cynical bastard that I am, my immediate concern is that if Chris Cornell’s voice is in poopy shape, these support acts could pretty much end up overshadowing what’s supposed to be one of the biggest reunions in years. Then again, Mastodon’s vocals don’t always sound so good live, either, so maybe it won’t matter. In any case, having this caliber of bands as the opening acts is a smart move on Soundgarden’s part — it could definitely bring in younger fans who are too young to remember SG from the their heyday, and it will definitely incentivize skeptical pricks like me into getting their ass to a tour stop.

Here’s the full tour schedule, including info on which bands are playing which sections of the tour, courtesy Metal Underground:

Click to read more…

Two days late but not two dollars short, I figure ya’ll might like to know how all the albums that came out last Tuesday (April 12th) fared sales-wise, even though I think we can all agree that album sales aren’t the be-all-end-all measure of a band’s success. So without further ado, here’s how the new Between the Buried and Me, Foo Fighters and Red Fang albums sold last week.

Also, Dave Grohl is a very rich man; in addition to the ginormous debut of his new Foo Fighters album, seemingly every Foo catalog album made a return back onto the charts this past week.

Right, the numbers:

Click to read more…

Cool things about this live footage of Voivod trying out a new song called “Kaleidos” — (Thanks to MS reader Leslie for the correct song title) — at the Roadburn Festival this past Friday, April 15, in Tillburg, Holland:

• Snake reads from his lyric tablet;
• Dan Mongrain sounds so much like Piggy it’s almost supernatural;
• Away makes more sounds come out of his tiny drumkit than most so-called technical drummers these days can conjure up out of their 57-piece monstrosities;
• Snake prowls the stage like a starving feral dog;
• Blacky is back!;
• It reminds me of Dimension Hatröss-era Voivod;
• These guys pour out more energy than most bands half their age;
• The crowd seems rather complacent — until they unleash a collective roar of approval at the end;
• The awesome Away-illustrated hellscape backdrop;
• I’m flashing back to 1990 when I caught Voivod headline over Soundgarden and Faith No More (and blew them both away — no pun intended) at The Backroom in Austin, Texas.

Click to read more…

I’m cynical about the Soundgarden reunion for the reason I’m cynical about most reunions, which is to say, I’m not sure the band has it in them to make a new record that will live up to all the expectations. But usually that concern doesn’t/shouldn’t apply to a reunited act’s live show — I mean, all they have to do is show up and play their classics and everything should be hunky dory, right?

Thing is, I’m not sure Chris Cornell’s voice is what it used to be. I had the (dis)pleasure of seeing Audioslave twice, and once his voice sounded fine, and once it sounded like shit, and while that was eight years ago already and maybe he was just having an off night or whatever, I’ve heard tell that these days he sounds not-great more often than he does great. And that could, obviously, be a serious detriment to the band’s concerts. I mean, I don’t doubt that Kim Thayil and company can still play their asses off, but if Cornell can’t do songs like “Outshined” justice, well, then, really, what’s the point?

(I’m not saying the singer is the most important member of the band, by the way. I’m just saying it would be weird to be sitting there, wishing that “Fell On Black Days” was an instrumental number.)

But I guess we’ll find out, ’cause the band is doing their first North American tour in almost a decade-and-a-half this summer. There are only four dates right now, but more should be announced soon.

Get the dates after the jump, and then let us know whether or not you’re stoked for these shows in our comments section.

Click to read more…

If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.

No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).

Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.

Click to read more…

Vince and I both have framed posters from the Neurosis/Mastodon shows in Brooklyn a few years back, which means we both have the words “A Storm of Light” on our respective walls. But that’s really incidental, ’cause they were one of the support acts for those shows. I’d be lying if I said I was an active fan of A Storm of Light; honestly, I don’t have very many feelings about them one way or the other.

But I guess Kim Thayil, a.k.a. The Coolest Member of Soundgarden, digs ‘em. ‘Cause he plays on a new track by the band, “Missing,” which is now streaming here.

Click to read more…

That headline doesn’t even make sense. So what? Seven of the Top 10 Hard Music albums on this week’s Soundscam charts are actually new(ish) releases! And only one is a greatest hits! Hallelujah!

Rise Against continued to dominate, while new releases by Soundgarden (sorta), Protest the Hero, Born of Osiris and Tesseract sold well. A bunch of other records came out, too (uhhh… Saliva, uhh…. CKY, uhhh… Straight Line Stitch) and some solid sellers from weeks past remained on the charts. Numbers after the break.

Click to read more…

Live on I-5, the new Soundgarden release of old live recordings, and My Life My Way, the new Agnostic Front album, are now both streaming on Facebook. I haven’t had a chance to listen to either one yet, although I’m sure they both provide their own unique pleasures.

Of course, you have to hit the “like” button and tell all your friends that the band is you-approved in order to hear the music. And I find this trend very interesting. I’m thrilled that bands are finally ditching MySpace, but I am curious if the “like” button really helps music to spread virally, or if it discourages casual fans or maybe even potential fans — a.k.a. “the most important market, since they’re not guaranteed to get the album/go to the concerts/buy the merch/etc. anyway” — from checking out the music.

I know there’s something wholly illogical about the concept of people not wanting to click the “like” button. It’s not like it takes a whole bunch of effort, or subscribes you to countless spam e-mails, or anything like that. But I do think it’s possible that there are people whose neuroses are such that they just don’t want that thing on their page that says “Johnny likes Lake Bukkake” or whatever, for any one of the following reasons:

Click to read more…

Soundgarden continues to be one of those legendary bands that defies pure pigeonholing.  Sure, they rose to the top against the early 90s grunge backdrop, but could you really call them “grunge”? Lest we forget that way back when, they were often touted as the forerunners of “alternative metal” (whatever that means), in addition to grungesters.

SIDEBAR: Remember when “alternative” was a genre? Nowadays when people say they are into “alternative” music (and yes, it does happen every once in a while), I feel compelled to inquire “alternative to WHAT???”  Back then the genre label actually meant something, but today everything just seems to be the alternative to everything else.

From the beginning, the band’s songs were sludgy enough, but always had at least a tinge (usually a boatload) of melody, largely thanks to wailer Chris Cornell but also to the inventive guitar stylings of Kim Thayil.  Add the proto-rumblings of bassist Ben Shepard and thumping pocket-chop grooves of drummer Matt Cameron, and we had a truly unique rock n’ roll band that created their own sound. Five albums strong, Soundgarden broke up in 1997.

After some recent unfortunate solo Cornell material and plenty of rumors of reunion, the reformed Soundgarden finally played a couple of shows last Spring & Summer (the first of which under the anagram pseudonym Nudedragons), and it was recently announced that they will release a live album entitled Live on I5 on March 22nd (tracklist here).

Furthermore, just this past week it was mentioned on their website that the band has written some new material and hopes to release a new album later this year (!) ….

“OUR GOAL FOR 2011 – LET’S MAKE A RECORD.

Over the past few months, we’ve been busy jamming, writing and hanging out together – exploring the creative aspect of being Soundgarden. It feels great. We have some cool new songs that we are going to record very soon. Thank you for all of the support!

Loudest of Love, Ben, Chris, Kim and Matt”

We shall see.

-KW

…the fuck?

So the Times of Grace tour is now underway, and I don’t think I was alone in wondering if the band would playing any vintage Killswitch Engage material out on the road. I mean, it would make sense — 3/5ths of the KsE Alive or Just Breathing line-up is Times of Grace, and, clearly, this is the big selling point for the group. I mean, you don’t just start out headlining on your first tour unless you’re a supergroup or, in this case, an unofficial reunion.

But now reader Tyler Lesniewski has e-mailed us a link to the setlist from the band’s first live performance, and guess what? There’s not a single KsE song on it.

Click to read more…

Announced with fanfare in the opening minutes of New Years Day 2010, the return of Soundgarden was supposed to redeem Chris Cornell’s tarnished legacy in the aftermath of the Timbaland-produced bomb Scream. Unfortunately, the grunge superstars have to-date spent their so-called reunion trying to sell repackaged collections of previously released music sprinkled sparsely with studio outtakes and ultimately playing fewer concerts than I can count on one hand.

We’ve yet to get a clear answer as to why this has been the case (theories: Matt Cameron’s Pearl Jam obligations, Kim Thayil’s obsessive compulsive beard maintenance), and the latest announcement that an old live concert is being put on CD only makes matters worse. As a longtime devotee, I pretty much feel cheated.

Seemingly, Cornell recognizes that the fans want to see the guys on tour, which is perhaps why he’s decided to offer up the next best thing and go out on the road by himself for a cross-country series of acoustic “Songbook” dates. It makes sense, and he can probably sell some of those live Soundgarden CDs along the way. Some press release blather and the list of dates are below the cut.
Click to read more…

Fieldy ain’t no Scotty Griffin.

There’s no actual connection between these two stories, besides the fact that they both made me laugh. And so:

Click to read more…

One of these men will not be on the new Kyuss album. Guess which one?

Kyuss Lives!, the ridiculously monikered Kyuss non-reunion which replaces Josh Homme with some dude no one has ever heard of, are apparently “thinking of doing another record,” according to this interview with vocalist John Garcia. I object to the use of the word “another” because in case these dudes haven’t noticed, they’ve never made a record before, but I’d like to think that the phrase “thinking of”* means “it’s not written in stone yet,” “there’s still time to stop the madness,” and “we said this to gauge the reaction of fans, possibly as represented by an incredibly smart, exceedingly handsome Jewish blogger from New York.”

So, assuming that Garcia was, indeed, trying to get a message to me to see what my thoughts were, I’d like to now respond by saying: I don’t think this is a good idea.

Click to read more…

The Grammy nominations have been announced, and, as per usual, they’ve got nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. This isn’t a shock; the Grammys have been a meaningless award, and will remain a meaningless award. But if you’re morbidly curious, as I am, as to who old white dudes think are the créme de la créme of our music of choice, the nominees, and some more snarky commentary from yours truly, are after the jump.

Click to read more…

For whatever reason, I just haven’t gotten that excited about the Soundgarden reunion yet. Maybe it’s not “real” enough for me at this point; maybe when the band finally does a proper tour and I’m holding the ticket in my hand, I’ll suddenly be really, really stoked. Or maybe Chris Cornell has just pissed away all my good will towards him, and I’ll never care.

Whatever. Point being, I had no intention of checking out the band’s performance on Conan earlier this week, until I read Shane Mehling’s assertion on The Deciblog that guitarist Kim Thayil is so “fucking old” that “looks like Kim Thayil’s dad.” Say no more, Mr. Mehling. I love a good laugh at other people’s expense. Curiosity piqued!

Click to read more…

The interwebs are all aflutter today because Dave Grohl has announced that his former Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic, is going to make a guest appearance on the new Foo Fighters album — which is also being produced by Garbage’s Butch Vig, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Produced Nevermind.” This will mark the first time Grohl and Novoselic have recorded with one another since Kurt Cobain injected himself with enough heroin to kill an elephant, and then stuck a shotgun in his mouth, just to make sure that medical science didn’t get any bright ideas.

Look: I know Nirvana were cool, and I know that Cobain’s premature passing means they get to stay cool forever and ever and ever because the dude didn’t get to grow up to be lame like Billy Corgan and Chris Cornell, but I really don’t see any reason to get excited about this. Novoselic was never a songwriter; he was never even a particularly distinctive bass player. Cobain was Cobain and Grohl certainly beat the ever-lovin’ shit outta his drums, but Nirvana pretty much could have swapped out Novoselic for another bassist at any point and not missed a beat. This song isn’t gonna sound like Nirvana — you’d need to re-animate Cobain to make that happen — it’s just gonna sound like Foo Fighters. I’d wager that the bass lines won’t even be that special, since, like I said, Novoselic’s playing never had much discernible personality. So you’re not even gonna get the “What might that sound like?” curiosity factor that you might get from, say, Dave Lombardo filling in for Lars Ulrich at a Metallica show, or Duff McKagan joining Jane’s Addiction. Creatively speaking, this reunion doesn’t amount to much more than a gimmick.

All of that being said… I’ll take any excuse to post the below video of Novoselic hitting himself in the head with his bass at the 1992 MTV VMAs while Grohl taunts Axl Rose from the stage. This has to be one of the five proudest moments in MTV’s history, right?

-AR