MetalSucks

Generally, I consider myself a pretty avid fan of South Park – the mixture of completely sophomoric humor and social satires gets me every damn time. But this season has been kinda weak – short of Indiana Jones getting raped by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, I don’t think I’ve laughed out loud once.

So now I’d like to remember a better time, when a weekly episode of South Park was something to really look forward to. This clip comes from an episode entitled “Die, Hippies, Die.” If you’re not familiar with the episode, well, I’m sure you can see where this clip is headed…

-AR

Well, no, not really.

The above photo of alleged “song titles,” all references to MetalSucks’ favorite construction paper-animated satirical sitcom, comes from a studio blog the band has just launched to keep fans in the loop with regards to progress on their new album, which will be produced by Jason Suecof and released in ‘09. The band explains the silly song titles thusly…

Click to read more…

If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

Click to read more…

Well, so much for Fear and the Nervous System.

There’s a rumor floating around that Korn’s original line-up – including Jesus Freak Head and David “I Was Always the Only Decent Thing About this Band” Silvera – may be reuniting.

Of course, we always knew that this would happen someday – there’s too much money to be made for it not to happen – but I thought it was still a ways off. I envisioned some kind of package shed tour where Korn co-headlined with Limp Bizkit, kind of like the nu metal equivalent of those Poison/Cinderalla-type tours that happen every summer, but, y’know, without all that 80s nostalgia baggage. But I guess Head prayed on it and God told him it was okay (either that, or he saw Dan Spitz do that Anthrax reunion and figured “To Hell with it”) and Silvera realized that sitting on your ass doing nothing doesn’t pay that well.

All we can do now is hope the band isn’t on some package tour with bands we actually want to see. I’ve been forced to sit through a Korn set or two in my day and I can tell you, it ain’t pleasant.

ANYWAY, here’s a clip of Korn guesting on an episode of South Park however many years ago, which is pretty much the only context I’d ever actually want to watch this band.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/TS-ITsdE2_A" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

As Axl reported yesterday, South Park aired a hilarious parody of Guitar Hero on Wednesday night. Thanks to MetalSucks commenter TedTedPoleyPoley, here is one of the scenes from Wednesday’s episode. As usual, the South Park writers totally nail it.

-VN

I think it’s now safe to say that Guitar Hero is a genuine cultural phenomenon. Last night’s brilliant South Park episode, “Guitar Queer-o,” was exemplary of the show’s usual satirical intelligence: it took the structure of your clichéd rise-and-fall rock stardom story, which served to illustrate how dumb the game actually is (which is not to say I don’t really enjoy the game – I love it – but it’s not a real “skill” per se, now is it?). Plus, it had enough hair metal in it to make you think you were hanging on the Strip in ‘85.

Now International Society of Supervillains has posted an article entitled “Real-World Scenearios in Which Guitar Hero Skills Could be Useful.” An example of one such scenario:

“Terrorists have overtaken the local Best Buy and have threatened to shoot all the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ DVDs out of a gun fashioned out of parts from several Plasma TVs and a refrigerator at the people at the Target across the street. The terrorists are bested, however, when a brave young player gets every note in the Expert version of ‘Killing in the Name’ at the store’s demo kiosk, which makes the terrorists realize that, fuck you, they shouldn’t do what you tell them. As a result, they give up on terrorism, buy some Rage CDs and go smoke in front of Forever 21.”

I highly recommend you read the rest of the piece and seek out that South Park episode (it’s not on YouTube – fuckin’ Viacom!). Hi-larious.

-AR