Monday Morning Metal 01.23.06: The Curtain Call

Posted by Jeff Modzelewski on 01.23.2006

F*** Pittsburgh!

Yeah, this is gonna be it for me folks. I've got my politics column ready to get started, so you should see me over there sometime in the next two weeks. I do want to say how much I've enjoyed doing this music column. It's been a lot of fun, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it. Well, of course you have, otherwise you wouldn't be reading it now. So, yeah, I rule. Hehehe. After doing this for over 3 years, it's really time to go on to something else. Hopefully leaving the weekly column will leave me some time to do a few concert/CD reviews for the site along with my political column. I really haven't had the desire to do any reviews just because I spend so much of my time already writing about music, I don't really want to spend another 4 or 5 hours doing a review.

Anyways, I am confident that I'm leaving you all in good hands. Hopefully Ben pans out here, since 411 should always have a Polish Ohio Metalhead. Plus Rhett is still awesome, even if we tend to focus on different aspects of hard rock. On top of that, Brandon and MM are in charge around here, meaning that metal will always be well represented. Ok, on to the bulk of my column, starting with the

Pimps

Not much going on at 411 Music this week. Steve Morgan lists Jimi Hendrix as one of the Untouchables. Well, no shit. He's freakin' Jimi Hendrix. Good column, great guitarist.

As usual we get a great column from Mr. Rhett Walker. Rhett enjoys ripping on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Now, I don't disagree with Rhett that Kurt was an overrated guitarist. He was. But the fact is that Nirvana wrote music that wasn't about the "image" like a lot of the late 80's, early 90's rock was. That's what spoke to the fans. Now, I will agree that almost every other band that came out of Seattle at that time was more talented. Alice in Chains is spectacular. Pearl Jam may not have had as much critical success after Vitalogy, but that doesn't mean the albums weren't good. Soundgarden had some very talented musicians (what the hell ever happened to Kim Thayill?), even if they weren't my thing. I don't know what Nirvana would've done if Kurt hadn't killed himself, but the band did have some really good songs in the time period that they were around.

And, finally, we have the guy that I was considering the man to carry on my legacy, Ben the Polack. However, I have to take that back. Why, you may ask? Because Ben is a no good, dirty, disgusting Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Since his shitty team with the The Amazing Chin as their coach is going to the Super Bowl, Browns fans like myself want nothing more than to slit our wrists and sleep until August. Unfortunately, he also comes out with a good column this week, forcing me to not hate him completely. Well, shit. I hope Rothlisberger gets run over by a semi before the Super Bowl. I actually was lobbying for the Browns to draft him, but, no, we get Kellen Kinivel instead. Blah. Fuck Pittsburgh. Anyways, Ben, I know you hate covering stuff like GnR, but you better make sure to keep up on any Vinnie/Dimebag stuff, any BLS stuff, and pretty much anything from the bands I like. That is your task, if you should choose to accept it.

News

So Axl is insisting that the public will get new Guns and Roses material this year. I am so beyond caring anymore that it doesn't even matter. Axl said that the band is working on 32 songs, but only 13 will be on the album. He, Axl, what about the other 19? Why waste all this time recording more than twice the music necessary for the album that you want to release? Guns and Roses has become completely irrelevant in the time it's taken Axl to release this thing. They've gone from arguably the most important band in the world to a joke that will be lucky to sell 100,000 copies of this album. Their fans, myself included, are completely different people now, who have moved on to other things in the absence of GnR. I was a huge Guns and Roses fan back when the Illusion albums came out. Guess what? Without those guys around, I moved on to other things. So did most of their fans. I'm just glad that I won't have to waste any more time covering this sad, pathetic band.

There's a new interview up with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian. In it Scott confirms that the band is writing new stuff, but doesn't go as far as to say that there will be a new album with this lineup. He's also hoping that the band gets a slot on this summer's Ozzfest. Yeah, Scott, you've been hoping for that since Ozzfest started. Nothing really new on this front, as it looks like the "classic" lineup is sticking around for a while longer.

It also turns out that the lineup for the end of the latest Anthrax tour wasn't really be all that "classic." Drummer Charlie Benante had to leave the tour when his wife went in to labor a little earlier than expected. Shadows Fall drummer Jason Bittner filled in for Charlie. Congrats to Charlie and his wife on the kid.

So, isn't everyone wondering what's up with former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack De La Rocha? No? Well, I'll tell you anyways. Turns out that he's got so much going on that he turned down the opportunity to join Bad Brains. Umm, Zack, you're becoming less relevant with each passing day. Do something to get your name back in the public ear. Hell, if you don't want to sing, at least make a sex tape or something. I'm sure you can at least bang some former Playboy Playmate or a B-list actress. Yeah, I'm not a huge Audioslave fan, but at least we now know where the talent in that band really was.

An early, early, early video of Dimebag Darrell has surfaced online here. Just Dime being Dime, before he got fat. Seriously, 7 minute Dime solo, just him ripping shit up on stage when he was a kid. You get some drums in there for part of the solo, and I can only assume that that's Vinnie. Yeah, Dime always kicked ass. That's no surprise.

Voivod has finished recording the vocals for their upcoming album. The only real reason that this is important is because it's the first album that the band will be doing without guitarist Piggy, who died last year from cancer. However, the band is using the guitar parts that Piggy recorded using ProTools, so it's not really an album without Piggy. It's just an album written around what Piggy had already done. Good luck to these guys. I'm guessing the album will do well, if only because the band got a lot of publicity both when Jason Newstead joined and when Piggy passed away.

So Tommy Lee is dating a porn star. I hate that asshole.

Sepeltura has officially announced that drummer Igor Cavalera will not be going out on tour with the band to Europe. They'll be joined instead by former Soulfly drummer Roy Mayorga. However, the official Sepeltura website insists that Igor isn't leaving the band, and that, frankly, Igor deserves to take the time off to be with his family and his new kid. Sepeltura will truly become relevant again when Max comes back.

California metal band The Abominable Iron Sloth will be releasing their debut album in April. I mention this only because that is a completely awesome band name, and they deserve the mention solely because of that. Other than that, the band sucks.

Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor recently spoke about what he's up to these days. Stone Sour has headed into the studio to begin recording the follow up to their 2002 debut. He also said that Slipknot turned down the chance to headline the 2006 Ozzfest, saying that he was worried that the fans would get "burned out" on the band touring on an album that was over 2 years old. However, he also said that he's open to bringing Stone Sour out on Ozzfest. I think that they'd be a great fit for an early main stage band. This is without a doubt one of the top albums that I'm looking forward to this year.

This is the other album I'm looking forward to. You can hear clips of Rebel Meets Rebel online at their website. What is Rebel Meets Rebel, you ask? You dumbass. Rebel Meets Rebel is a collaboration 4 years in the making, featuring Pantera members Rex Brown, Vinnie Paul, the amazing Dimebag Darrell and the legendary David Allen Coe. This will be one thing that I'll be back at 411 Music to review. So, don't worry, you haven't seen the last of me. The clips that are online sound awesome. The album comes out April 4th.

The new Devildriver video for "End of the Line" has been posted online here. Typical performance/touring video, but it is a damn good song. I'm wondering why they didn't do a video for "Before The Hangman's Noose," which I've been hearing all over Sirius. But, whatever, Devildriver is a hell of a band that needs to do a headlining tour of their own.

Rumor has it that a Smashing Pumpkins reunion is imminent. That's right, your favorite whiney bald depressed guy is back with his original band. The rumor right now is that the band will be playing Coachella this April. Well, good luck to these guys, I guess. Hopefully they'll do something less crappy than their last album together.

Black Label Society has already begun recording their next album, according to bassist John Deservio. There isn't any talk of release dates or song titles or anything like that yet, but, knowing how BLS works, the album will probably be out by the end of the year. Of course, that also depends on what Ozzy's up to, since Zakk will without a doubt be working with Ozzy. But it's good to see that the band's still hard at work, since "Mafia" was a pretty good album.

The (real) Last Word

I just want to give a big "Thank You" to everyone here at 411. Ashish for basically letting me do whatever I want, be it music or politics. MM for giving me a shot here without any sort of audition or anything, even though I spent almost a year away from the site. Brandon and Rhett for covering all the metal that I didn't. Ben for making me fell less crappy about leaving, since there's still 2 metal guys doing the news. And pretty much all of the other writers here that have been cool. This is a good site with a lot of intelligent music opinions. Yeah, even the ones that I don't agree with are still usually respectable. So, yeah, thanks to all the 411 guys (and some of the guys on that "other site") for kicking ass.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for providing most of my news. They give me the news, I give my opinions.

And, of course, thanks to all of the readers. Hopefully some of you will check out my column over in Politics. I've worked really hard on finding something that I wanted to do, and I think that this'll work out well. And, no, you haven't seen the last of me here at 411 Music. I'll be back doing some reviews, and maybe even jumping in and adding something to Rhett's column every now and then. As always, emails are welcome. Oh, and this of course also means that there's an opening for the Monday news slot, so be sure to harass MM or Brandon if you want that. Anyways, have a good one.