Last week we offered up two DVD copies of the very metal horror film The After Party Massacre to give away, plus a gift certificate to HorrorMerch.com for one grand prize winner.

• space scoundrel (grand prize): “This Is Anal Tap.”
• Will Clay: “Unlike many of their peers, the band would survive the end of the 1980s by rebranding themselves as tough-guy outlaws with 1990′s Cowboys from Hell.”

This week we have two copies of the new 5-CD UFO collection The Chrysalis Years (1973-1979), a career-spanning box set that includes Phenomenon (1974), Force It (1975), No Heavy Petting (1976), Lights Out (1977), and Obsession (1978), as well as some obscure tracks, rare remixes and a previously unreleased 45-minute concert recording from UFO’s first U.S. tour. This is a cool opportunity for you younger metalheads to learn about a band that was very influential and important to modern heavy music. You know the drill: leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below, submitted by MS reader Polina Polishchuk. Remember to use a real email address (or post it along with your comment if you’re using FB Connect / Twitter etc).

Nowadays, classic metal seems all the rage — some cool kid told me this while walking to the market — and with MetalSucks doing the whole “Ten Great Bands That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Heavy Metal” thing, I got to thinking: how did metal become metal? We all know the Sabbath/Priest/Zeppelin “who started heavy metal” debate, but what about the in-betweeners that were probably “heavy metal” to my dad’s mom when Pops was just growing that ridiculous mustache and finding out that drinking beer was pretty cool once you got past that taste?

(Okay, full disclosure: I was drinking a beer and cranking UFO while reading the Van Halen story, so there.)

We’ve all known 3 Inches Of Blood for more than a few years at this point, but with the rise of bands like White Wizzard, Holy Grail, the criminally underrated Wolf, Gypsyhawk, RAM, and Cauldron waving the flag for the classic metal sound, I got to thinking about the bands that inspired them. These are groups where you could look back at them and say that they aren’t even definable as “metal” anymore.

Click to read more…