MetalSucks

So the Australian branch of iTunes has apparently uploaded thirty-second clips of all the songs from Slash’s forthcoming, self-titled solo album, and, of course, someone has uploaded all of those clips to YouTube. Gotta love the internet! So I thought we’d play one of our favorite games here at MetalSucks. It’s called “Let’s make premature judgments based on not very much actual music at all.” Listen to the clips in the video below, and then get my thoughts after the jump.

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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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Between his suicide-inducingly awful rape of “Paradise City,” his unveiling of the best cover art of 1988, and his general campaign to embarrass himself in public, I’d pretty much assumed that Slash’s new, self-titled solo album was going to be about as enjoyable as life as one of Axl Rose’s shirts. But on Friday Slash released not one, but two songs – one the first single for said solo album, the other a benefit track for Haiti – both of which, to my complete and total amazement, are really quite good.

We’ve actually heard a kinda lackluster live version of the album single, “By the Sword,” which features vocals by Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale. I tend to come from the Mike Patton school of thinking with regards to Wolfmother, but for whatever reason, Stockdale’s Robert Plant impersonation doesn’t bother me one bit here – in fact, I really like his performance, even if the lyrics are pretty dumb (Sample: “With the horses that you ride/And the feelings left inside/Comes a time you need leave all that behind.” Leave what behind? The horses? The feelings? The horses and the feelings? ‘Cause I think a man could reasonably part with one or the other, but BOTH? P’shaw!). But the riff is so catchy that it’s been stuck in my head for most of the weekend, and the guitar solo is epic, bluesy, classic Slash, the kind of thing that reminds me why I had this dude’s poster on my wall when I was an adolescent:

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At the very end of his recent vitriolic, expletive-laced rant on a Guns N’ Roses message board, Axl Rose added the words “For the rest of you… Surprise gigs comin’!!” almost unnecessarily. However, it seems he wasn’t just blowing smoke. As it turns out, in the wee hours last night, the band played an extremely intimate surprise concert at John Varvatos’ clothing store on the Bowery in New York City.

You see, Fashion Week just kicked off here in the Big Apple, and it seems Axl, eager to follow in the footsteps of Velvet Revolver, aligned with the man who turned a punk rock landmark into a high-end boutique. The good folks at BrooklynVegan report that attendees waited for hours for Guns N’ Roses to perform (shocker!). Yet we have to give credit to Axl for putting on a full 90-minute show instead of a truncated mini-set for an audience that included Sebastian Bach and Kevin Bacon. Though I have mixed feelings about the whole Varvatos/CBGB’s thing (as someone who spent quite a bit of time in that venue in his teens), I’m pretty fucking bummed that I wasn’t there for this.

Below you’ll find some (very) amateur video footage of the performance, as well as the full setlist.

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With his virtually-guaranteed-to-suck new solo album coming out this spring, Slash now has to start thinking about putting a band together for a support tour. Since each song on the album features guest vocals by a different all-star singer, and Slash was never gonna be able to get ‘em all to do a whole tour with him, the logical solution was to hire a singer for his touring band.

And that singer is Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy.

This comes as a disappointment to me only because I hate Alter Bridge. As far as I can tell, Kennedy is actually a very talented singer. And he does vox on one of Slash’s solo tracks, “Starlight,” so I guess his presence makes sense; Lord knows Alter Bridge ain’t doin’ squat right now, so he might as well get paid.

Is Kennedy an electrifying live presence? I dunno, I ain’t done never seen him live. But I can tell you that this cover he does of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” isn’t as awful as I would have guessed it would be. It’s definitely a little touchy feely, but like I said, the dude can sing.

Slash promises to “announce the other band members shortly.”

-AR

My never-ending pursuit of rock star book excellence continues. This week it’s Saul Hudson of Guns N’ Roses fame with his 2007 autobiography Slash, co-authored by Anthony Bozza, and it is the epitome of a killer rock star autobiography.

I had serious doubts about whether or not I was going to like this book. First off, I have no love for Guns N’ Roses beyond Appetite for Destruction. I was one of the band’s biggest fans behind the strength of their Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide EP and AFD. Once Lies came out though, I was done. Couldn’t stand it (the non-Suicide tracks, that is) or them. So that was strike one.

Strike two came in the form of co-author Anthony Bozza, who also performed the same chores on Tommy Lee’s horrendous autobiography Tommyland (read my review here). What a terrible book that was; I lay much of the blame on Bozza’s shoulders.

Obviously, I was skeptical about reading Slash.

I’m happy to report that my skepticism was unfounded. Slash kicks ass!

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I’m sorry to write about what a giant disappointment Slash has become twice in one day, but come the fuck on.

Anyone remember CMC, that label that tried to re-launch hair metal in the mid-90s? The quality of their album art was generally on par with the quality of Slash’s new solo album cover. When Vince heard the guitarist’s awful remake of “Paradise City,” he said “It’s not just that Slash is chasing trends – it sounds like he’s chasing trends from a decade ago.” Ditto here. This album cover should have great appeal to anyone who’s ever wanted to be a contestant on Rock of Love.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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I didn’t watch the Grammys last night, and judging by Metal Injection’s report on the event, it doesn’t sound like I missed anything. For one thing, the award Best Metal Performance wasn’t even televised, because, well, metal heads know better than to watch this stupid show and the t.v. people want ratings, not goodwill. (Judas Priest won, in case you care; AC/DC won Best Hard Rock Performance.)

Worse, though, was a butchering of the legendary solo from “November Rain” by Slash (real name: Saul Hudson), Jaime Foxx (real name: Eric Marlon Bishop), T-Pain (real name: Faheem Rasheed Najm) and Doug E. Fresh (real name: Douglas E. Davis). Not just because the song needs hip-hop shenanigans like I need nut cancer; not just because some thought they had better put Slash’s name in big letters on the screen behind him when he came on stage, in case anyone was confused by the top hat, Les Paul, curly hair, and people yelling “SLASH!”; but really because Slash only sounds marginally better than Dj Ashba.

The funniest part? If Axl Rose is to be believed, getting Slash to even agree to record “November Rain” was like pulling teeth. I can’t wait to see what kind of shit I’ll do someday in the name of making my mortgage payments.

-AR

Well here’s a nice juicy rumor to end the week. From Blabbermouth:

“According to The Pulse of Radio, the JANE’S ADDICTION fan web site Xiola.org has reported that VELVET REVOLVER and ex-GUNS N’ ROSES bass player Duff McKagan is writing and recording with the band, following the departure of original member Eric Avery for the second time in the group’s troubled history. After JANE’S reunited for a third time in late 2008 — with Avery on board for the first time since the band originally broke up in 1991 — and toured last spring with NINE INCH NAILS, the band began feuding once again as it tried to record new music, with recent rumors suggesting that Avery was headed out the door…

“…There has been no official announcement about McKagan from JANE’S ADDICTION themselves, except a brief post by frontman Perry Farrell saying that the band was working with a new ‘writing partner.’”

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…and that omen said it will come out May 4 on Roadrunner. And that it will feature guest appearances from The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, Prong’s Tommy Victor, and (on b-side covers) Igor Cavalera and Zyon Cavalera. And, oh yeah, that it will be called Omen.

I’ve never liked Soulfly as much as I love Sepultura, but I did really enjoy Dark Ages, and the one time I caught the band live, they slayed. So while I’d much rather have a new Cavalera Conspiracy record, color me curious to hear this.

I’m less curious to hear the cover of “Refuse/Resist,” featuring the aforementioned Zyon Cavalera. Why does anyone ever cover their own song? The results are almost always disasterous – just ask Chuck Mosley or Slash…

-AR

When Trent Reznor waved good-bye to touring last year, he never said he was waving good-bye to Nine Inch Nails, too; he was basically just going the “studio only” route. So I’m not surprised that Reznor is working on a new Nine Inch Nails album for 2010.

The second part of this statement from the NIN website, in which he announces new music from NNIN (Not Nine Inch Nails), does kinda surprise me, though:

Sorry I haven’t been around much lately, I’ve been working on not working for a couple of months, which for me is hard work. 2010 has a number of things planned including new material from nine inch nails and something else that isn’t nine inch nails.

“Something else that isn’t Nine Inch Nails.” What could it be? I’d love for that Tapeworm album to finally see the light of day, but that can’t be it. And I imagine talk of that collaboration with Dr. Dre probably died right around the time Eminem got famous.

Wait, I know what it is, I KNOW WHAT IT IS!!! Trent Reznor is the new singer for Velvet Revolver!!!

No, wait, that can’t be right.

Hopefully we’ll get more details soon…

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

So Slash performed a new song, “By the Sword,” at some benefit over the weekend, and of course there’s bootleg footage now on the net. It sounds better than the crap we’ve heard before, but the sound of Slash taking an actual crap would sound better than the crap we’ve heard before, so whatever.

The vocals are being performed here by Carrot Top. I don’t remember anyone saying that Carrot Top was on the actual album, so either he is and we just didn’t know it ’til now, or someone else sings the studio version. Let’s hope it’s the former.

Filling out the band for this performance is Dave Navarro, another dude from Jane’s Addiction who isn’t Navarro or Perry Farrell, and Blink-182’s Travis Barker, who tragically survived a plane crash earlier this year.

Slash’s solo album should ruin your 2010 sometime in the spring.

-AR

All this talk about Slash’s upcoming solo album has got me playing “Fantasy Velvet Revolver” in my head once again. Though I still hold out hope that Axl’s idea of having Perry Farrell front the band comes to fruition, I know in my heart that there’s probably a better chance of Scott Weiland rejoining the band, which is admittedly a pretty remote possibility. Remote like Siberia.

So looking through the list of vocalists purportedly gracing the axeman’s new record, I see a number of qualified albeit unlikely candidates to fill Weiland’s still-vacant spot. Yeah, it would be a heavy music lover’s dream to have Ozzy Osbourne sing for the band, considering the craptastic nature of his last few solo albums. Realistically, that would be an unholy managerial nightmare with the potential capacity to yield a catastrophic clusterfuck to put the legal woes of Black Sabbath and Guns N’ Roses to shame. Dave Grohl’s too busy counting his money and playing geriatric rock with his idols to commit to yet another band. These days, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister have the commercial drawing power of, well, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister, and maybe would shift a few more units than a Velvet Revolver fronted by an unknown (anyone remember Eric Dover or Rod Jackson?) or that dude from Spacehog. Don’t even get me started on Fergie.

One other name on that list, however, actually makes sense…

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“Make love not war sounds so absurd to me.” But not as absurd as the idea of Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt touring with Rihanna, and trying to pass it off as “a high-energy experience” that really fits “‘my’ style.” Because “Umbrella-ella-ella” really requires someone who can shred. I’d almost have more respect for him if he just said “The Extreme reunion tour didn’t pay as well as I hoped and I got rent to pay.”

The announcement follows Bettencourt’s cameo on How I Met Your Mother, which is being called “the best show on television” by people who can’t find their remote and are too lazy to change the channel manually.

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Today was Friday the 13th, but absolutely nothing bad happened to me. I mean, the night is young so shit could still go horribly awry I suppose, but all in all, I had a pretty good day – nay, I had a pretty good week. If only the same could be said for the world of metal. Here’s some disasters the plagued various musicians this week:

• Slash completed his decade-long indoctrination into the Metallica “Fuck Our Fans” Club.
• We’re not sure if Steven Tyler is still in Aerosmith or not, but we are sure that we don’t give a fuck either way.
• There was a lot of controversy over a really, really ugly painting.
• No can explain to me why I should care about Alter Bridge.
• Fear Faction ate s’more babies, released a new song.
• R.I.P. Jerry Fuchs.

And, oh yeah, some good news: MetalSucks is going to do a digital release of The Binary Code’s Suspension of Disbelief on December 15 for just five bucks! Get stoked.

Alright. I’m off to go hear Vince spin. Have a nice weekend everyone. Next week we have another extra, super-duper special surprise for you…

-AR

The Starbucks Incident

Yes, I am going to continue to bitch about Slash. I understand that Slash is not Jimi Hendrix but this might be the single biggest betrayal to my formative years since Metallica released everything they’ve released from Load on, and I need to mourn.

So. Some lady says that the following singers are all on Slash’s new solo album, How Could Taking My Cues from Carlos Santana Possibly Go Wrong? I have added my own thoughts because that’s what we do around here. Click to read more…

I know that opinions about Slash are decidedly mixed. Some people never liked Guns N’ Roses, or hate Slash’s Snakepit, or hate Velvet Revolver, or whatever – I bet that of the five people who remember what the fuck Slash’s Blues Ball was, at least two or three of them hate that, too.

But nothing – and I mean absolutely, unarguably NOTHING – that Slash has ever done has been as bad as this re-recording of “Paradise City” with Cypress Hill and Fergie Methfacerson:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, DID ANYONE REALLY THINK IT WAS OKAY TO BEGIN ANY VERSION OF “PARADISE CITY” WITH A RAPPER SAYING “YES YES Y’ALL?” IS THIS ONE OF THE BEST HARD ROCK ANTHEMS EVER, OR A FUCKING LIMP BIZKIT SONG?!?! HOW THE FUCK DID FERGIE END UP NOT BEING THE WORST PART OF THIS?!?!

If I was Duff McKagan – who actually wrote the main riff for “Paradise City” – I would kick Slash in the nuts. And then, when he was doing on the ground clutching his bruised testicles, I’d kick him again, and demand that this recording can only be released if done so under the title “Paradise Shitty.”

This re-recording, which makes me wish I was a fan of Disturbed or Drowning Pool so that I’d feel a little more dignified than I do for supporting Slash, comes from a two-song CD single that was released in Japan this week. After the jump is the other song from the single, “Sahara,” which features some Japanese vocalist I’ve never heard it. It’s also a terrible song, but at least it a) doesn’t rape any of my childhood memories and leave them weeping on the cold tile floor and b) has a guitar solo that sounds like every other Slash guitar solo, which is okay because I love Slash guitar solos.

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Scott Weiland’s been out of Velvet Revolver for quite some time now, and there’s still no word on their search for a new singer. I had assumed that they hadn’t announced anyone because they just couldn’t find someone famous enough. I mean, let’s be real – they’re not gonna hire some unknown. If they did, they’d fail to be a supergroup – they’s just be Slash’s Snakepit III. As it stands, Slash doesn’t know Dave Kushner’s name (he repeatedly identifies his co-guitarist as “Dave Kirshner” in his autobiography), and he’s known Kushner since they were kids; what the fuck would he do with an unknown singer?

I guess there must be some other issue, though – ’cause Corey Taylor, front man for Slipknot and Stone Sour, recently revealed that he tried out for the spot:

“I had a meeting with those guys, we did some demos together, and it just didn’t work — for whatever reason… It was just really cool. It was one of those things where it’s like I could have got to jam with legends, man, in my opinion. But, you know, it was cool, and I still know those guys, I still hang out with them, and I still have nothing but respect.”

So I gotta wonder why this didn’t work out. Taylor’s voice is comparable to Weiland’s, he’s well-known, he’d probably bring in some young kids who might otherwise not give a shit about Guns Without Rose, and he’s a very charismatic and entertaining band leader. So did his personality just not gel with that of the dudes in VR? Were they worried that with two other bands, he was already over-committed? Did Roadrunner (the label that distributes both Slipknot and Stone Sour) put the kibosh on the whole thing, as they allegedly did when Taylor almost replaced John Bush in Anthrax? We might never know, but I find the whole thing pretty curious.

Weigh in with your thoughts on Taylor as the new Axl Weiland below. And while you’re pontificating, enjoy this bootleg video of Taylor performing “It’s So Easy” with Slash. It might be the closest we ever get to seeing  a Taylor-fronted VR.

-AR

Now skip to the 3:54 mark to get Mr. Weiland’s thoughts:

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