Well, I didn’t see this coming: Times of Grace, a.k.a. the Alive or Just Breathing-era Killswitch almost-reunion, are gonna do a tour. And I’m not being facetious when I say I didn’t see it coming — I sincerely didn’t think they’d tour, ’cause both Adam D. and Jesse Leach have, like, a gabillion other commitments. But I guess they’ve each cleared the month of February to hit the road. Support will come from Straight Line Stitch and War of Ages.

This announcement, of course, raises a few questions, like:

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Here we had this entire week devoted to hair metal, and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Let’s do this again real soon, okay?

Here’s some of the fun we had this week, be it hair-metal related or not:

• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal taught us to be mind-less, Antagonist’s Carlos Garcia taught us about the song “Sasha Grey,” and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney taught us more about corporate-sponsored live shows.
• Anso and Allyson from Bring Back Glam! counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums.
• We counted down the Top Ten Bands Most Often Miscategorized as Hair Metal.
• Vince spoke with Serj Tankian, Gary spoke with Frankie from Emmure, and Sergeant D. spoke with Samantha Maloney from Brother Clyde/Shift/Hole/Motley Crue/every band ever.
• We debuted a new track by The Binary Code!
• Leyla Ford counted down the ten worst and best hair metal band names.
• Sammy checked out the new release by Eibon.
• Dave Mustein checked out The Cool Tour.
• Someday, this little girl is going to make Sergeant D. very, very unhappy.
• I can’t tell the difference between all the members of Mushroomhead, can you?

I wanna especially thank Allyson from Bring Back Glam! for all her help this week — we love you, Allyson! Come back anytime.

Monday we return, but we’ll have a little less Aqua Net in our hair, a little less eyeliner on our lids, and a lot less skip in our step. See ya then.

-AR

I was pretty skeptical when I first saw the Cool Tour lineup. Actually, I was more than skeptical: I was pretty much positive that I wasn’t going to attend. It seemed to break down as 50% Christian screamo, 25% hardcore, and 25% good bands, which meant that there would be a lot of obnoxious hardcore, scene, and straightedge kids. But when the opportunity arose to go to the tour, I just decided to do it despite the high scene-kid-to-normal-metalhead ratio, because I had never seen either BTBAM or As I Lay Dying live.

As it turned out, I made the right decision. Although I did skip the first four bands (War of Ages, Cancer Bats, Architects, and The Acacia Strain) because I’m not a fan of any of them besides Architects, I hear that all of them save for War of Ages put on a pretty solid showing. The Acacia Strain apparently managed to work the crowd into more of a frenzy than any other band, probably because it was a hometown show for them.

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I know that it’s always a struggle for music video directors to come up with ways of keeping these clips from like the same ol’ same ol’, especially in this day and age, when the budgets for these videos are continually dwindling. In the case of Drew Russ, who helmed the new video for War of Ages’ “Collapse,” the solution was to douse the band with flour so that when they move, white dust floats all over the place; as Amy Sciarretto put it on Noisecreeep (who debuted the clip), “it’s as though there are apparitions in the video.”

I can’t understand most of what vocalist Leroy Hamp is singing during the song, so I can’t tell if this somehow plays into the themes of “Collapse,” or if it’s just meant to look cool. I also can’t imagine the logistics of using so much flour; never mind the clean-up for the set, the band, and their clothes, but I’d guess it was a serious bitch to get all that crap off of their instruments, too. (Question for someone more knowledgeable than I in the ways of instrument maintenance: what are the chances that shit did long-term damage to the guitars and bass?)

In any case, it will certainly be remembered as “that video where War of Ages are covered in flour.”

-AR

When we announced the Summer Slaughter 2010 line-up last week, Vince wrote the following:

“Summer Slaughter is by far the best metal tour of Summer 2010. Rockstar Mayhem is lame, Ozzsharonfest is surely gonna be lame, and ‘The Cool Tour’ is, uh, not cool at all save a couple of bands.”

At least one reader asked, “What the heck is the Cool Tour?” While rumors of the package trek have been floating around the net for weeks, it was only officially announced at midnight: The Cool Tour seems to be the next of what could reasonably be called “The Ozzfest Second Stage Tours” – basically mid-sized package tours that take the best part of Ozzfest (the second stage – duh) and do away with the rest. And while any tour with that many bands on it is bound to have at least a few you don’t like (this year’s Summer Slaughter being a pretty remarkable exception to that rule), I have to agree with Vince: The Cool Tour does not really seem all that cool.

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When news of the new band Zero System surfaced — featuring two members of North Carolina’s Bloodjinn — I was naturally curious, as Bloodjinn’s This Machine Runs on Empty was one of my favorite records of 2007. So I went straight to the source, emailing their singer Joel Collins to get the scoop, and he agreed to answer some questions about the new band, the old one, and what its various members are up to on all fronts. The interview, after the jump.

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Often when a band loses some of its core members for replacements the remaining outfit is a lumbering, bland replication of itself. Not so for Sweden’s Soilwork, whom, despite losing both key guitarists within the span of the past year and a half who wrote and played on the bulk of their recorded output, are still the well-oiled killing machine they’ve always been in the live setting. Last Tuesday’s show (March 18) with Throwdown and War of Ages at the Gramercy Theater in New York City proved that even without some of their key members Soilwork are still relevant and still great, the reigning Kings (well… Princes, maybe) of Swedish metal.

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All That Remains will tour next year with Chimaira (pictured above left in winter coats). That’s a pretty good bill – I’d say you should never, ever, under any circumstances miss a chance to see Chimaira live, and I’m told that All That Remains are good live, too, except that I’ve seen them twice and they haven’t been that great either time. But I guess I’d give them a third chance.

Alas, Five Finger Death Suck will be the openers. I guess we can at least be grateful that since they’re going on first, it will be easy to miss them.

Meanwhile, Throwdown (pictured above right, also in winter coats – be proud of me for choosing a theme and sticking with it) are doing a tour with Soilwork and Through the Eyes of the Dead. War of Ages will be the openers; for anyone unfamiliar with them, they’re an above average metalcore band and probably the best Christian metal band this side of post-Luti-Kriss, pre-Ross Robinson Norma Jean.

ANYWAY, I’m sure you can find tour dates through the usual channels, as I’m way too lazy to post them here.

-AR