To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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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.

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Avenged Sevenfold and Vinnie Paul, “Mouth For War”

Matt Cerone over at MetsBlog.com does these daily “the least you should know” wrap-ups after every game, which this season have essentially all boiled down to “they sucked.” In that spirit, here’s an abbreviated report from the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in L.A., which Axl and I had the privilege of attending and which, unlike the Mets, most definitely did not suck. We had a rip-roaring good time and got rip-roaringly drunk before realizing that oh yeah, this is L.A. and you have to fucking drive home. What a nightly buzzkill, literally! Thanks, Axl, for driving my drunk ass home.

The least you should know about the 2011 Revolver Golden Gods Awards before we have time to properly recap the event:

• Avenged Sevenfold were easily the most popular band there; most kids at the show were wearing their shirts. Their performance was fantastic and even converted a few industry non-believers I spoke with; in addition to a “hit and run” set of the band’s most popular songs, they played “It’s So Easy” with Duff McKagan and “Mouth For War” with Vinnie Paul (video above).
• Alice Cooper played very early in the night but rocked nonetheless. (video after the jump)
• Vince Neil: not sober.
• Asking Alexandria frontman: definitely not sober yet. Lost his mic under the drum riser 10 seconds into “Youth Gone Wild” with Sebastian Bach (video after the jump).
• Sebastian Bach: still awesome.
• Sebatian Bach to Dave Grohl, upon running into him backstage: “Hey! Dave Grohl!” [hugs]
• Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann was hilariously hitting on every woman in sight, including L.A. metal sorta-celeb Metal Sanaz.
• Other backstage celeb sightings: Dino Cazares (who Tweeted “where’s the baby?” at us), Dave Navarro (who still looks 20 years old), Rob Zombie, Alan Robert of Life of Agony (mega-cool dude), Taylor Momsen, Pat Smear, Taylor Hawkins, Sasha Grey, Jenna Haze, Steven Adler, dude from Puddle of Mudd, William fucking Shatner, the ghost of Dime.
• Black Veil Brides winning “Best New Band.” Lulz!

Fun videos after the jump! More extensive coverage coming soon.

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If you don’t know who Bobzilla is, here’s the quick version of his resumé: he was the bassist in Damageplan with Dimebag and Vinnie Paul, and now he’s the bassist in Hellyeah. In other words, he has a history of working with members of Pantera in bands that aren’t nearly as good as Pantera was.

So. Yesterday, we got the following e-mail from an anonymous reader:

“BOB ZILLA’S NEW BAND ORPHANED TO HATRED HAS GOTTEN THE THUMBS UP FROM VINNIE PAUL HIMSELF! THEY JUST RELEASED A SONG OFF OF THE UPCOMING ALBUM MASTERED BY VULGAR’S HOWIE WEINBERG AND MIXED BY LONG TIME PANTERA ENGINEER STERLING WINFIELD!”

So first of all… Yeah, no shit “Vinnie Paul himself” gave Orphaned to Hatred the thumbs up. What’s he gonna do, say his own bandmate’s side project sucks? So that endorsement means about as much as one from Bobzilla’s mommy.

Second of all… I was immediately weary of Orphaned to Hatred’s apparent desire to exploit their Pantera connection, especially because that connection really isn’t all that strong — I mean, I had about as much to do with Pantera as Bobzilla did. Seriously. Maybe he knew those dudes and I didn’t, but neither of us were in the band, and we both probably purchased approximately the same amount of CDs, merch, etc.

But then I went to check out the band on their Facebook page, and I saw the below image, and that’s when I got really, really cranky:

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I mean, talk about a snub, right?!?

ANYWAY, tomorrow afternoon, Vince and I will attend the wedding of one of our oldest friends. A guy I have known since I was two years old. The very dude who was by my side the first time I heard Guns N’ Roses. I don’t think he had any idea at the time that I had just headed down a path from which I would never return. He works for a classy magazine now, and wears a suit and tie to work. I do this, and usually do it in boxers and a stinky shirt with some metal band on it.

I don’t have a point or anything. I’m just feeling reflective right now.

And now that I got that out of my system, here’s the rundown of things we did this week:

• We got a tour update from Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself.
• We spoke to Tommy Rogers from Between the Buried and Me, Oppu Laine and Mikko Kotomäki from Barren Earth, Kenn Nardi from Anacrusis, and Mike Riley and Dom Romeo from Pulling Teeth.
• We checked out new releases from As Blood Runs Black, Capsule, and Crucified Mortals and Nunslaughter.
• We checked out the newest lucky band to sign to leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS.
• We made the mistake of following Vinnie Paul onto his tour bus.
• We helped our friends at the Deciblog defend Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.
• We listened to the worst dubstep metal bastardization yet.
• We got excited about the new Scar Symmetry album.
• We sent out well wishes to Vince Neil while he’s in prison.
• We read some fan mail.

Okay now I’m gonna go pick up my new suit for tomorrow! WHOO-HOO TO BEIN’ A BIG KID! See you peeps Monday.

-AR

So as part of the promotional efforts for the current Jagermeister Music Tour with Buckcherry, All That Remains, Hellyeah, and The Damned Things, a video has been posted in which Vinnie Paul gives a… uh… well, a tour of his tour bus. Sorry, I couldn’t think of a more elegant way to say that.

ANYWAY, Paul says he believes the bus should be “a nightclub on wheels,” and depending on how you feel about that statement, you will either find his bus to be incredibly awesome or incredibly tacky. Personally, I think it’s a little bit of both; it must be nice to be able to afford such a monstrosity, and I’d probably be a little disappointed if Paul’s vehicle of choice wasn’t somewhat outlandish… but on the other hand… uhhhh, really, dude?

By the way, I know that Gary Suarez already took this tour to task for its incredible amount of product placement, but if you do a shot every time Vinnie says “Jagermeister,” you will be very, very drunk by the end of this video. Did the makers of this video seriously think we’d forget the product they’re pushing, even with their logo in the corner the entire time?

-AR

[via The PRP]

[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

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We didn’t cover Dimebash 2010, a simultaneous tribute to Dimebag and benefit for the Ronnie James Dio Stand up and Shout Cancer Fund. Why, you ask? I don’t have a good answer. It was on literally every other metal site in the world, we don’t flatter ourselves that you read MetalSucks exclusively, and while I can’t speak for Vince or any of my other peers here at MS, I personally didn’t have anything even remotely interesting to say about it. A bunch of really cool people got up and jammed on some classics. It was for a great cause. It looks like it was a lot of fun. Go to Metal Insider if you still haven’t seen any footage from the event.

One thing which really might have pushed the event over the top from really cool to HOLY SHIT AWESOME, though, would have been an appearance by Phil Anselmo. Of course, Anselmo and Dime were on bad terms when Dime was murdered, and Dime’s family — specifically, Vinnie Paul and Rita Haney — have not made amends with Anselmo since, and have even speculated that some violent statements Anselmo made in the press prior to Dime’s shooting may have inspired the murderer. So when rumors started circulating that Anselmo was actually gonna be at Dimebash, well, that was a pretty big deal.

Anselmo didn’t appear at the event, though — but he was, Haney has now revealed, supposed to. You can watch the below video interview to get the full scoop, but the gist of it is that she no longer feels that Anselmo bears any responsibility for Dime’s murder, and while the situation is still sensitive, she seems to have finally come to peace with Anselmo. Perhaps more interesting — and sadder — still: Vinnie Paul still hasn’t.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

The Bloody Tour of Horror rocks on! City after city fall in flaming ruin as GWAR marches on, our zombie horde growing in power and fury with each passing day. But even as we slay on a global scale I, Oderus Urungus, make the time to answer your idiotic questions, whether they be of cosmic import or complete crap-ola, and always with the typically evasive and insulting aplomb you have come to expect from me. Remember, Bloody Pit of Horror is out Nov. 9, and every album sold is another hit off the old glass dick for Uncle Odie… yes, that’s right, it actually states in my contract that I get paid in crack. And speaking of crack, we will be doing another Crack-a-Thon next year! Check gwar.tv for all kinds of shit. Now — on to your entreaties, human filth!

If you choke a smurf what color does it turn? I would find out myself but for the life of me I can’t find one of the little blue bastards. — Big P

Well, that depends on what kind of Smurf you are talking about. If you are talking about those little dwarf-like animated shit-fucks, I am sorry to tell you that they are indeed just that — animated. They don’t exist, so you can’t strangle them. You’d have more success strangling your own penis, if you possess one, or can get someone to lend you theirs.

If, however, indeed, you are talking about that peculiar species of human that serves as the collector for blister packs of cough medicine that the local “Papa Smurf” uses to cook into crystal meth, I can assure you, from personal experience, that they go just as blue as any other human.

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Especially if you used it to pick up hot chicks hitchhiking in bikini tops. I mean, eventually you’d get arrested and/or shot, but up until then, I think it would be a lot of a fun! It looks like they’re having fun at that cook-out, too. We had a cook-out last week. It was fun! We didn’t steal any cops cars, but it’s New York City — unattended cop cars are not a common thing, y’know?

Vinnie Paul was in Pantera!!!

-AR

Earlier this week we got to hang out with Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis at Duff’s bar in Brooklyn; that same night, Hellyeah were throwing their post-show party at that very bar. Reader “GoingDeaf?” said in the comments section, “I hope it’s not too awkward tonight considering you guys shit on Hell Yeah in a posting the other day…. :)” Which is fair enough.

But like I said, Hellyeah were gonna be there for a post-show after-party, and so by the time I’d left the bar – which, admittedly, was a little on the earlier side, as I was fighting a cold – Hellyeah still hadn’t shown up. What would I have done if they had? I have no idea. I have no reason to believe that any of the band’s members read this site – in fact, I’m always surprised when I find out that a well-known musician reads MetalSucks, whether it’s someone I admire (Devin Townsend) or, um, do not especially admire (hey, Dino). We’ve always said that no one should feel offended by anything we write on MetalSucks except for Fred Durst, because we’re really just having fun, what we say shouldn’t actually have any effect on how a musician handles his or her art, and you should have more important things on your mind anyway. But if it had turned out that Vinnie Paul does read MetalSucks, knows who I am, and hates me, well, I guess I couldn’t really blame him.

Which brings me to my next point: Vince and I had a conversation that very evening in which he posited that the members of Hellyeah are not insincere in their love of redneck rock. (He wasn’t defending their music, by the way – he was just making a point. As far as I can tell, Vince doesn’t like Hellyeah any more than I do.) And if you read my criticisms of the band, I never actually questioned their musical sincerity; I just think they suck. Obviously a lot of people really enjoy songs like “Alcohaulin’ Ass,” but I’m not one of them, and I want nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s ’cause I never slept with my daddy’s sister in the back of a pick-up truck, I dunno.

And on that note, here’s the cover art for Hellyeah’s new album, Stampede, which comes out July 13. If you enjoy this band more than I do, well, good for you!

-AR

Hey MetalSucks Maniacs,

We know this is crazy last-minute, but guess who just arrived in NYC? None other than Nevermore guitar god JEFF FUCKING LOOMIS! And because Vince and I have a ridiculously surreal life, we’ve been tasked with taking him out and showing him a good time.

So we’re hitting up New York’s last great metal bar, Duff’s, tonight around 9 pm. The address is 168 Marcy Avenue; here’s a map, and the J/M/Z trains stop right nearby. If you’re around and you have nothing better to do (and fuck work/studying/etc.; IT’S JEFF FUCKING LOOMIS, people), come out and get drunk with us! As it turns out the dudes from Hellyeah are in town and are gonna be partying there, too. How often do you get a chance to stand in a room with JEFF FUCKING LOOMIS and VINNIE FUCKING PAUL?!?! Not very often.

See ya there…

-AR

That’s how long it was before I heard a reference to the Black Tooth Grin, a drink which – in case ya somehow don’t know – was favored (and I believe created) by Dimebag.

I’m (obviously) all for commemorating Dimebag and celebrating his legacy when it’s appropriate. But why does it feel like Vinnie Paul constantly needs to remind us who his brother was? Does anyone in Hellyeah really think we’d forgotten? Maybe I’m not being fair, but this feels exploitative to me. It’s as though the band were aware that no one would care about them if they weren’t Vinnie’s first serious post-Dime project.

Also, the song, entitled “Cowboy Way” sucks as bad as the movie of the same title. That’s not surprising, but just in case you thought this band had maybe gotten better since their first album… the answer is apparently “Nope, they still make shitty music.”

You can listen to the song, below or, if you’re really so inclined, download it for free here.

-AR

Of course not every band can be a Pantera or Down, but I’d argue that out of any member of Pantera, one Mr. Rex Brown has the best track record for non-Panteric projects. He wasn’t in Damageplan, a mediocre band we all pretend didn’t exist in the name of not doing any harm to Dime’s legacy; he’s obviously not in Hellyeah, who I still can’t quite believe are a real band and not some elaborate prank; Pantera and Down are only ones of Phil Anselmo’s 1,384 bands that Brown was in. Yeah, Rebel Meets Rebel was way too redneck for this Noo Yawk Jew, but at least they didn’t have a song called “Alcohaulin’ Ass.” So three cheers of Rex.

Of course, now Rex has another new band, Arms of the Sun, so I guess it’s possible he’s about to fuck-up his batting average. The three songs on AOTS’ MySpace page really generic bar-band stuff that sounds like it might have been cat nip for the guy who signed Candlebox fifteen years ago, but again. “Alcohaulin’ fucking Ass.” So Rex gets to keep his title belt… for now.

Check out Arms of the Sun here, then tell me why I’m being too hard on Damageplan/RMR/Hellyeah/Superjoint Ritual/whatever in the comments section.

-AR

Yesterday we discussed all the upcoming Pantera reissues, as well as the fact that the band’s second greatest hits collection, 1990-2000: A Decade Of Domination, is coming out on March 30. I said that it’s hard not to see this compilation as a cash-in, and now that track list has been revealed and details of how the album will be sold, it’s even harder.

For one thing, the band’s original greatest hits album, Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits, not only had six more songs than this new one will, but came with a bonus DVD showcasing twelve (!) music videos.

Here’s the track list for the new collection, A Decade of Domination…

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This July will mark the twentieth anniversary of the release of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell, and while I know that some of our readers who either a) weren’t born yet when the record came out or b) were in diapers when the record came out don’t “get” what the big deal is about Pantera, I’m hoping that their youthful arrogance will give way to some appreciation of history – which is to say that just because you’ve heard ten thousand bands that sound like Pantera doesn’t mean that Pantera didn’t do it first, and do it best. Remember that dude who told the Alternative Press “fuck Black Sabbath” and claimed they had no influence on his band? Remember what band that dude was in? Atreyu. You don’t wanna grow up to be a member of Atreyu, do you?

So. Pantera have an assload of reissues coming out. Details are still kinda scarce, but here’s what we know right now:

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As a part of goth metal OGs Type O Negative, drummer Johnny Kelley’s talents are often overshadowed by the low end sultriness and antics of bassist/frontman/nude model Peter Steele. But his graceful stickwork has been holding the band together since 1995′s October Rust, and the string of Type O albums that have come out since have stood shoulder to shoulder with the band’s prior material. Along with being Danzig’s drummer, Kelly plays in Seventh Void, a stoner/trad metal outfit with Type O Negative guitarist Kenny Hickey. The latter band released their debut on Vinnie Paul’s Big Vin Records in April. In an interview with MetalSucks, Kelly discusses Type O Negative’s future, working with Glenn Danzig, and his thoughts on modern drummers.

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It’s raining in New York today. AGAIN. At least it’s warm; it’s been fucking rainy and cold for all of June (seriously… hoodie weather in June??). I feel like I’ve been cheated out of an entire month of summer. Fuck the world.

Here’s what happened this week:

• More arguing ensued over our 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far list. You bitched and moaned to the tune of 444 comments (and counting) about the #11 pick of Deftones’ White Pony — just as you did last week with the debatably metal Tool (#12) and System of a Down (#14) picks — and then when we finally announced more trve/cvlt/br00tal albums you approved of (#10 Opeth, #9 Gojira, and #8 In Flames), comments were few and far between by comparison. You people are fucking morons. Especially Ziltoid.
• Rumors flew about the resuscitation of Headbanger’s Ball in 2010 with Jose Mangin as the host.
• More shit-talking between the two sparring Fear Factory camps provided us with endless amusement. We wondered aloud whether or not FF should be considered nu-metal.
• Shinedown’s Brent Smith claimed to have insider knowledge of a Soundgarden reunion, to which Axl — and possibly but not definitely Soundgarden’s own Ben Shepherd — took offense.
• We spoke with Scott Kelly of Neurosis and Vinnie Fucking Paul.

We out. Stay tuned in a couple of hours for our #7 Best Metal Album of the 21st Century… So Far. I’ll be at tomorrow night’s Black Anvil show at the new Duff’s location in Brooklyn if anyone wants to come out and hang. See you next week for more shenanigans!

After the horrific murder of his brother, no one would have faulted Pantera/Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul for dropping off the face of the Earth. But instead, the man chose to soldier on, starting his own record company, Big Vin Records, and resuming his drumming duties for boozy groove metallers Hellyeah. The former has signed Type O Negative side project Seventh Void and released the successful Dimebag Darrell tribute DVD Dimevision; the latter’s toured the globe in support of their debut album, with plans to record and tour again in the near future. A relentlessly positive guy who sounds a little like the metal version of King of the Hill’s Boomhauer, Vinnie seems content with the past and satisfied with the present (upon hearing that I was conducting the interview from Massachusetts after I shut my tape recorder off, he gave his thoughts on the Boston Bruins’ then-upcoming playoff game with Montreal Canadiens and stated that his dream Superbowl would be between the Cowboys and the Patriots, if it were possible). In his inteview with MetalSucks, he gives his thoughts on the upcoming 20th anniversary of Cowboys from Hell, running a record label, and the future of Hellyeah.

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I can’t believe that there’s going to be a new Hellyeah album. I honestly thought we’d be rid of this insipid band after one phoned-in cash-in. I guess I don’t have any real reason to be too upset though, as not only will I never ever never listen to this record, but I honestly don’t know anyone else who ever will either.

In any case, here are some things I’d rather hear than new “music” from Hellyeah:

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