When Filter mainman Richard Patrick went into rehab in 2002, it marked the end of the industrial-rock band’s rad second line-up. That means it’s been about a decade since the Filter that made Title Of Record (super classic!) and The Amalgamut (epic!), and since then jeez I haven’t caught sight of Patrick’s old team like at all. Which is surprising, cuz drummer Steve Gillis is a stud (here) and guitarist Geno Lenardo co-wrote this phase of Filter’s biggest (here) and biggest-selling jamz (here).

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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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(Photo Credit: Jennifer Pottheiser for iHeartRadio)

I admit, I was skeptical about Scott Weiland’s decision to release an album of Christmas songs. I fucking hate Christmas songs. But you know what? He pulls it off.

Last night I had the opportunity to see Scott Weiland perform a private show in an intimate, 100-person setting with an 8-piece jazz band backing him up. Weiland came out wearing a white tux, his hair-slicked back all Bing Crosby-like, sobriety level dubious at best. The first three songs were all Christmas classics from his new album and he delivered them with startling sincerity and flair, his smooth baritone fitting the part perfectly. Then things got weird: an obscure STP song (“Wonderful” from 2001′s Shangri-La Dee Da) and a cringe-worthy cover of Velvet Revolver’s “Do It For the Kids,” followed by a convincing version of “Vaseline” that brought things back to reality and an impromptu jam to close the set. But you know what? He really seemed most at home, most comfortable, singing those Christmas songs.

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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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May 18, 2011 – The amount of emotional damage in the Gramercy Theatre last night could fill an orphanage, with large bespectacled women and bleached blonde cardboard cutouts hardly co-mingling with stumbling drug casualties, rock n roll wannabees with overzealous intoxicated girlfriends, and Brads-from-Accounting, along with a morose minority of pitiable sad sacks. Evidently, Scott Weiland’s fanbase is a lot less glamorous and enviable than rock and fashion magazines let on.

In town for a Howard Stern Show inteview and a Barnes & Noble book signing on the release date of his “as told to” memoir “Not Dead And Not For Sale,” the Stone Temple Pilots frontman had also scheduled a solo gig at this small-ish venue. Only the truly naive or ignorant came expecting a show packed with STP and Velvet Revolver jams, though given the aforementioned motley assortment of attendees that might have been a sizable demographic. What even the most sensible of us didn’t expect was the meandering shitshow that we were to wait more than two hours for.

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It’s easy to forget that the winner of American Idol is not a good singer, a sustainable product, or an interesting personality. The crowned Idol is nothing more than a flavorless, featureless zombie who most spurs votes from sofa-bound ‘Mericans and squealing little kids — each group a stronghold of high artistic standards.

So Idol is definitely not music. It’s not even good entertainment. It’s like Scooby-Doo or Mission: Impossible, in which any plot hole can be covered by a character’s sudden removal of a life-like mask; it’s ugly theater played by young adults in sweaty pursuit of suicide-averting popularity, for which they’ll mindlessly comply with any tossed-off suggestion from the Idol judges table; it seeks credibility by osmosis via guest spots for legendary musicians (and Beyoncé) who aim to plug a tour/record/book.

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Here’s an interesting excerpt from a recent interview with Sammy Hagar that was conducted by Forbes, your leading source for rock and metal news:

“I was asked at one time to be in Mötley Crüe. I was asked at one time to be in Pantera by their mangers. I was asked to be in Velvet Revolver when Scott Weiland quit and went back to the Stone Temple Pilots. I was waiting to be asked to be in Led Zeppelin to say no, since they were the greatest band on earth and no could replace Robert Plant. I was asked to be in Aerosmith and I said no. Certain bands and certain front man singers are more difficult to replace than others. Steven Tyler and that band have stayed together for forty years and you don’t to walk into something like that. They had one moment years ago, when they replaced Joe Smith, but it’s still always been Steven at the front of Aerosmith. You don’t replace that. When I came into Van Halen, it was easy because Dave wasn’t a great singer, but he was a good front man. In those times, I was selling out the same arena’s they were so it was like the combination of two forces and it worked but it’s a rare thing. We were all lucky that the fans accepted it and it got bigger. I would avoid bands that are going to break up pretty soon.”

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Andy McCoy, one of the founding members of Hanoi Rocks, wrote a book. In 2008. [Our own Corey Mitchell reviewed it in 2010. - Ed.] I read it pretty recently as it came to me with a bunch of Christmas/Hannukah/New Year’s loot. My family doesn’t celebrate anything, so we basically give each other presents because the year is over. Yeah, I don’t know. We put up a tree, too.

Anyway, I kind of dropped the ball on Andy, and that’s kind of a recurring thing these days, because every once in a while I get caught up on that “having a life thing.” I did finally read it, though, and I quite enjoyed it. To an extent. Now, I love books. Reading = fun times for me. I usually have three or four books I’m juggling and one of them is almost always a music biography. But Sherriff McCoy; Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks goes on the pile of band books that really could’ve used a good edit.

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Corey Taylor performing “It’s So Easy” with Slash in 2009. Could this be what Velvet Revolver sounds like in the not-too-distant future?

Corey Taylor must really, really hate having free time on his hands. He’s already the vocalist for Slipknot and Stone Sour, and he nearly joined Anthrax in 2007. Then, in 2009, he revealed that he’d “had a meeting” with Velvet Revolver about taking Scott Weiland’s spot in the band, but that it “it just didn’t work — for whatever reason.”

Now VR’s search for a new singer has been heating up, with drummer Matt Sorum going so far as to tell an interviewer that “The guy we’re liking now is a young guy” who is “known” (e.g., not a noob they picked up on Hollywood Boulevard) and whose background is in “a little bit heavier rock ‘n’ roll than we are.” Naturally, this led to lots and lots of speculation as to this mystery singer’s identity, and the combination of clues — that the vocalist was not unknown, that he was younger than Slash and company, and that he traditionally sang for a band or bands that were heavier than VR — caused some spectators, like our friends at Metal Insider, to ponder the possibility that Taylor might the man for the job after all.

Now the story has taken another interesting turn. Billboard has done a new profile on Taylor, which begins thusly:

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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.

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Axl Rose celebrated the two-year anniversary of Chinese Democracy‘s release by doing what he does best — no, not make music, silly. He sued somebody! Hey, dude’s gotta eat, and Democracy sales ain’t exactly paying for his next rental car, y’know?

According to 1up.com:

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And so is anyone who thinks this dipshit is really sober.

Mr. Weiland’s latest stunt is a recent radio interview in which he is clearly so fucked up that I’m amazed he was even able to hold a phone. (Maybe his assistant was holding it for him, or affixed one of those nifty headsets to Weiland’s noggin.) At one point, the DJ asks Weiland why he missed a particular show; here’s a transcript of the exchange that follows:

WEILAND: Um… [long pause]… Let’s see… I think that was the show where, um… there was a, um…

DJ: [encouraging, as if to a small child] You can do it.

WEILAND: …a foot, um… long… um… uhh… like, it’s like… normally, a stage is just, like, a flat stage…

DJ: [irritated] Riiiight.

WEILAND:…and this was a really high stage…

DJ: Okay…

WEILAND: …and I spun around, did a little James Brown move, and I slipped and fell into it about eight feet.

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Remember when Scott Weiland’s drug use forced the ever-talented DeLeo brothers out of the spotlight during their prime years and they hired a guy that sounded just like Weiland to record under the moniker Talk Show? Me too. That was almost 14 (!!) years ago, and whilst going through my CD collection I took a little stroll down memory lane.

The whole Talk Show fiasco — which also included STP drummer Eric Kretz — happened a year after STP released Tiny Music… Song From the Vatican Gift Shop. If that album isn’t a favorite of yours (as it is mine, but, ya know, I get why if it’s not) it’s certainly the weirdest album of their catalogue… we can only speculate as to what would’ve happened if the DeLeos had been able to follow Tiny Music with another STP album right away instead of taking a break.

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Well here’s some good news.

You know Chris Goss whether or not you know you know Chris Goss — he’s “The Godfather of Stoner Rock,” and has produced/engineered/otherwise worked with everyone from Queens of the Stone Age to Screaming Trees to Kyuss to Stone Temple Pilots to Auf der Maur to Kik Tracee (!!!). He’s also the singer/guitarist for Masters of Reality, a band which, although they’ve been releasing albums pretty consistently since the late 80′s, have been woefully underrepresented in America since 1992, the last time one of their new albums was actually released here. (At least in a timely fashion… I think Spitfire maybe got around to finally putting some of their stuff out here, like, years after the fact.)

Which is all about to change: MetalSucks can now exclusively reveal to you that Masters of Reality will release a new album, Pine/Cross Dover, via Cool Green Recordings on September 14.

So while the album was released in Europe last year, now you’ll be able to get it without breaking any laws, or taking out another mortgage on your home so you can purchase the import. John Leamy (Surgery, Dr. Mars) plays drums on the record, which also features contributions from Queens of the Stone Age’s Brendon McNichol, Eagles of Death Metal’s Brian O’Connor and Dave Catching, and Merle Jagger’s Mark Christian. And, oh yeah, actresses Missi Pyle and Shawnee Smith (who I had the most unbelievable crush on in her Who’s Harry Crumb?/Summer School/The Blob days) are doing some backing vocals. Sweeeeet.

There’s already a video for one song, “Always,” which Leamy made, apparently using an iPhone app, “PhotoSpeak.” Do you hear that, Slayer? John Leamy made a better video than you using a goddamn iPhone app!!!

-AR

Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.

But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.

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Although your editors-in-chief couldn’t make it happen for themselves, MS photographic genius Jacqueline Cheng somehow weiseled her way into a very intimate Stone Temple Pilots performance on May 18th at the 600-capacity Gramercy Theater. And though she wasn’t able to bring her usual camera accoutrement, she was able to sneak in a regular ol’ point and shoot and to work her way up to the front to capture some stunning photographs of this most photogenic of bands. Some serious kudos are in order for Jackie!

Her photos, after the jump.

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I don’t think anybody with half a brain really ever believed that Scott Weiland was still sober. Sober people can take their coats off like a big boy, and Scott Weiland cannot. And sober people generally don’t fall off the stage and forget the words to, ironically, a song called “Dead and Bloated,” as their band mates exit the show “in apparent embarrassment and disgust.”

But that hasn’t stopped Scott Weiland from swearing up and down that he’s clean, and even writing a song about it.

So he probably feels at least a little embarrassed that STP bassist Robert DeLeo has now publicly admitted that Weiland is now “popping pills.”

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The Rolling Stone review of Thursday night’s Stone Temple Pilots performance at SXSW hit the nail on the head: “When STP emerged onstage at the Austin Music Hall for a special performance at South By Southwest on Thursday, they delivered like journeyman rock stars with their shit together — tight and focused, and unburdened with the bitterness or bad memories from the recent past.” Unlike their reunion performance in New Jersey two summers ago when Weiland was embarrassingly off-key and so fucked up it took him an entire song to take off his coat, Weiland appeared sober and was on top his game, gyrating about and doing that rock n’ roll frontman thing he does so well. For Rob from Metal Injection and I, who had trudged out to a somewhat off-the-beaten-path venue with doubts of even being able to get into the show, it was a trip down memory lane; the band played hits from all five of their prior records and even tested out 4 new songs from their new self-titled album, set to come out on May 25th. The Core-heavy set finished with an encore of The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” which special guest Robbie Krieger on guitar, and an impassioned rendition of “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” from STP’s oft-overlooked third effort Tiny Music: Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop.

None of the four new songs the band played were that impressive, but we both agreed that the third, entitled “Bagman,” was the best of the bunch. Still, the band (or someone at their label) has decided that “Between the Lines” is going to be the first single. That song is available for streaming in full here (must be using Internet Explorer or Safari). It’s a stock DeLeo brothers rock song, distinctly STP but sounding like it could’ve been on 2001′s Shangri La Dee Da. For STP that’s not a good thing because that album was sub-par. It sounds like the DeLeos are trying to write songs “in the style of” STP rather than writing from the gut, which is unfortunate because they’re such insanely talented songwriters.

Check out the new song and tell us what you think of it.

-VN

Photo credit: Billboard

It’s good to see that the Stone Temple Pilot tooks of all ten seconds to come up with this:

STP’s new, self-titled release comes out May 25 on Atlantic.

-AR

Some Stone Temple Pilots fansite has eighteen seconds of that band’s new single, “Between the Lines,” and what immediately jumped out at me about the clip – besides the fact that I can already tell Vince and I are not agree on whether or not this song blows – is that Scott Weiland sings the line “…when we used to take drugs.” That made me wonder if the titular lines aren’t just subtext (as is usually the case with the expression “read between the lines”) but lines of cocaine, but mostly it made me wonder why the hell Scott Weiland is still trying to convince people that he doesn’t take drugs anymore.

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