All You Cannot Live Without 02.20.06: Exposing You To Musical Toxins
Posted by Ben Czajkowski on 02.20.2006
Sounds of the Underground Tour details unfold. Oh, Good God, Metallica news. The American Head Charge War rages on. Scott Stapp, Big Bubba and a sex tape with Kid Rock. Atreyu featured in this week’s “Listeners’ Lounge”. [Chinese Democracy] partially leaked. Have [you] heard it illegally? If not, you’re missing out.
Prelude to the Media.
Welcome to the best music news column on the web, All You Cannot Live Without. Okay, maybe not the best, but you know you can't live without it, and that's why you love reading it. It's like heroin or crack, only you don't have to inject it; you just have to read. I know it's hard for you, but this week, I definitely think there's some stuff you just need to know.
Normally, whatever I write for this is about 10-12 pages in Microsoft Word but everytime I read over it, it feels so...short. Still, though, it's an important column that narrows down SO MUCH music news for the metal/rock/alternative fan.
I also probably should cover the Canadian Juno Awards, but I am just all Grammy-ed out for now. It's mainly all Nickelback, and they're a bunch of commercial douches. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll write a blurb, since the ceremony isn't until the beginning of April.
My Sweet Little Bitches
Looks like it was kind of a slow week…
Brandon Ratliff, the ever-sexy editor, has not left the music section despite passing things off to me, unlike some people…coughjeffcough.
Michael Horvath gives us some new tunes to dig, including new Audioslave…why?!
Michael Nalbach brings the first in a series of what we're titling "Now That's What 411 Calls Music". This is a sexy new segment. Read it or perish!
Ian Wright has his ever-awesome "Dancing about Architecture. I always feel bad because by the time I pimp his column, it's an entirely new week.
Brian Berry talks more about the Pumpkins at Lolly-poolooza.
Tollah does some rockin' of his own. Read it to get the alternative perspective to what I concoct for you.
Man, I really miss Rhett this week.
It's All Too Much to Look Up Yourself, So I've Done the Work for You **Bold denotes a new listing/updated release date**
In Flames – Come Clarity (out now)
Machine Head – Burn My Eyes Special Edition (out now)
Whitesnake – The Definitive Collection (out now)
Kittie - Never Again EP (out now)
Collective Soul – Home (DVD) (out now)
Stroke 9 – Cafe Cuts: A Collection of Acoustic Favorites (out now)
The Juliana Theory – A Small Noise (out now)
Sleepless In Seattle: The Birth of Grunge - Various Artists (out now)
Metal's Dark Side – Hard and the Furious Volume 1 (DVD) (2/21)
Evans Blue – The Melody And The Energetic Nature of Volume (2/21)
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am That's What I Am Not (2/21)
Various Artists - Black Days: Midwest Movement Tribute to Soundgarden (2/21)
Wicked Wisdom – Wicked Wisdom (2/21)
Trivium – Ascendancy (Re-release) (CD/DVD) (2/27 Europe only)
Hawthorne Heights – If Only You Were Lonely (2/28)
Kid Rock – Live Trucker (2/28)
Liv Kristine – Enter My Religion (3/3)
Mogwai - Mr. Beast (3/6)
Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders - Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders (3/7)
Boysetsfire – The Misery Index; Notes from the Plague Years (3/7)
Mindless Self Indulgence – Straight to Video: The Remixes (3/7)
Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance (3/13)
Type O Negative – Symphony For the Devil (DVD) (3/14 US, 3/20 Europe)
Run-DMC – Checks, Thugs and Rock'n'Roll (3/14) Blue October – Foiled (3/14)
Faktion – Faktion (3/21)
Hurt - Vol. 1 (3/21)
My Chemical Romance - Life on the Murder Scene (3/21)
Norma Jean – O' God the Aftermath (Re-release) (3/21)
From First to Last – Heroine (3/21)
Live - Songs from Black Mountain (3/21)
Soil – True Self (3/27 Europe)
Atreyu – A Deathgrip on Yesterday (3/28)
Rob Zombie - Educated Horses (3/28)
Queensryche – Operation: Mindcrime II (3/31 Europe, 4/4 US)
Lacuna Coil – Karmacode (3/31 Europe, 4/3 UK, 4/4 US)
Goo Goo Dolls - Let Love In (4/4)
NearLY – Reminder (4/11)
MTV Headbangers Ball – The Revenge (4/11)
Eagles of Death Metal – Death By Sexy (4/11)
Silent Civilian - Rebirth of the Temple (4/18)
Jane's Addiction - The Best of Jane's Addiction (4/18)
Hoobastank – Every Man For Himself (4/18)
The Dresden Dolls – Yes, Virginia (4/18)
Godsmack – IV (4/25)
Tool – Elephtheria (4/25)
Soil – True Self (5/2 US)
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium (5/8 UK, 5/9 US)
Loser – Just Like You (5/9)
Mushroomhead – Untitled, So Far (6/6)
Zao – The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here (6/13)
Seemless – Untitled, So Far (6/27)
Walls Of Jericho – Untitled, So Far (7/25)
The Low Down on the Underground
In a Jesus-fucking-christ-it's-about-time move, Demon Hunter announced plans for their tour in support of their third effort The Triptych. I saw this coming, and they'll be touring with Zao. I was kind of hoping that they'd go out with Dead Poetic, since they'll be finishing up their record, as well. Instead, you get the awesome fucking bands Spoken, August Burns Red and Becoming the Archetype. If you have not listened to these bands yet, you need to fucking do it. Now. Go! Do it or God will smite you! I'll wait for you to come back. Oh, there you are! Alright, time to continue. I bet you didn't go check them out. Assholes.
Oh yeah, no dates have been announced, yet. They'll be heading out on June 14. Places already lined up: Cornerstone in Illinois and Lifefest in Michigan. Crossing my fingers for Pittsburgh, but since it's lost all but one venue…I'm willing to bet they're not stopping there. Check out the video for "Undying" if you haven't yet.
The name of the new Dead Poetic album is going to be Vices.
Tracklisting for Hurt's debut album, "Vol. 1", which will be hitting shelves through Capitol Records on March 21 has been confirmed. The finalized track listing is as follows:
Former Evanescence guitarist, and now solo artist, Ben Moody, has decided to take a break from recording his first album to produce the band 3Faced. The band is comprised of Jade Russell (vocals), Patrick Kennison (ex-Union Underground) (guitars), Marty O'Brien (ex-Tommy Lee, Methods Of Mayhem) (bass), and Duncan Black (ex-Wildgift, Floor 13) (drums). You can check out several pre-Moody tracks at this location.
The Sounds of the Underground is set to return this summer with an even heavier lineup than in the past years. This year, the tour is set to be led by headliners As I Lay Dying. The 2006 edition of the North American festival will also feature such metal acts as In Flames, Gwar, Trivium, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Through the Eyes of the Dead, just to name a few. MTV reports that "the Sounds of the Underground organizers are taking a different approach to this summer's festival by keeping the number of bands on the bill down and extending the length of set times. Last year most bands got no more than 30 minutes to play." A bold, powerful statement. Dates for this tour are still in the works.
Trivium should be celebrating their re-release of the acclaimed Ascendancy. Roadrunner recently announced the tracklisting for the CD/DVD that will be this package. This limited-edition release comes in an embossed slipcase featuring new artwork and includes a previously unreleased studio track plus a bonus DVD. The DVD features four promo videos, including the previously unseen "Rain", plus five live tracks recorded in September 2005.
CD:
01. The End Of Everything
02. Rain
03. Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr
04. Drowned And Torn Asunder
05. Ascendancy
06. A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation
07. Like Light To The Flies
08. Dying In Your Arms
09. The Decieved
10. Suffocating Sight
11. Departure
12. Declaration
13. Washing Away Me In The Tides (bonus track)
DVD:
Promo videos:
01. Like Light To The Flies
02. Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr
03. A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation
04. Rain
Live At The Astoria:
01. Rain
02. Dying in your Arms
03. Like Light to the Flies
04. A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation
05. Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr
One special note that I really should point out…This is a U.K. release only. Sorry, if you don't live in the U.K. or like to order things online, this really doesn't pertain to you.
Indulging deeper into my metal side, If Hope Dies has confirmed the tracklisting for their next album Life In Ruin, which is due out in a few weeks (3/7) on Ironclad Recordings/Metal Blade Records. The track listing for Life in Ruin, which was produced by Jason Suecof, is as follows:
01. Burned Out
02. Anthem for the Unemployable
03. Dead Reckoning
04. Time is Not on Our Side
05. Fear Will Keep Them in Line
06. Water into Wine Cooler
07. The Ultimate Nullifier
08. Marked for Death
09. Some Skynyrd
10. Nuked from Orbit
11. Life in Ruin
If Hope Dies recently shot a video for "Anthem for the Unemployable" in Brooklyn, NY with Frankie Nasso at Ragingnation Films. The track is available for download. Right click/save as. It's actually a very good, heavy, powerful track. GET IT!
Are They Still Out There or Did They Finally Overdose?
Music's favorite retard is at it again. A sex tape showing former Creed front-man Scott Stapp and dirty Detroit's Kid Rock engaging in explicit sexual activity with four female fans on a tour bus has been acquired by California company Red Light District (who released the 2004 Paris Hilton sex tape). The company has posted a forty second clip (no nudity) of the forty-five minute tape online. I'm not posting the link; you want it, you find it. The company says it plans to release the entire video at some point this year. This luscious piece of sex news came after Stapp was arrested Saturday, the day after he married Miss New York 2004 Jaclyn Nesheiwat, at LAX and charged with being drunk in a public place. Stapp reportedly was "antagonistic, boisterous and pissed off" after airline personnel would not let him board the plane. Stapp's blood-alcohol test resulted in a .18, twice the legal limit in California. He is scheduled to appear in court on March 8th. Stapp's first solo tour with Breaking Point is scheduled to begin on February 23rd in Orlando.
Aww, come on. Someone out there has to be sad that Bear Vs. Shark broke up. I always wondered who would win in a fight…Guess the world may never know.
If you were an astute music fan, earlier last week, you caught a glimpse at Guns ‘N Roses new music, which was leaked to the web and then plugged brutally by their management. That didn't stop some radio stations from playing the song. Eight radio outlets have played "I.R.S." and/or "Better" according to fan reports on the popular GNR site 'Here Today… Gone to Hell.' The King of All Media even got in on it; Howard Stern reportedly played part of "I.R.S." on his show Thursday.
Sometimes, music has mysteries that even general rationale can't solve. I think this might be one of them. Let's take Smile Empty Soul for example. I think they've been fucked a little bit. Okay, hardcore. Let's observe: The band has received the boot by Atlantic Records after their parent label, Lava Records, was eliminated and its roster merged. They were only a few weeks away from releasing their second album, Anxiety in September, which then got shoved back through until January of this year. (I have a bootleg copy of Anxiety. Wasn't impressed with it at all.) And now, that disc sits in a back room somewhere indefinitely. SES has, however, added a second guitarist to their ranks, and they're completing a new album and a live CD. The band and their own imprint/management, Thro-Back Records, will also be signing with a new label soon.
Audioslave are hoping for a June release for their next disc. They're moving a long quickly and smoothly. They just released Out of Exile in 2005, which will be right around the year mark for this yet-untitled album. There's nothing else to say about this, and I'm glad there's not. As I've said before, Out of Exile was, is, and always will be terrible.
After leaving Fuel, Brett Scallions supports his decision with a blog post from his myspace. He says, "The decision I have come to at this point in my life is to retire from Fuel. This is not a decision I just came up with at the drop of a hat. I have been thinking about this since the end of the Something Like Human tour… Some of you might say that I've made this decision because of my new project, The X's, or that it's because I can't sing anymore. Well, neither of these reasons are the case. I can still sing and I love what I am doing with the X's. But, the truth is, I feel like I need to push myself more as a musician and a writer and this is the best thing for me right now. Fuel, however, was never much of a collaboration. Collaborating is what I love to do and writing with others has re-sparked my passion for music." The X's are currently touring.
Stone Sour has experienced some difficulties with their sophomore effort. Guitarist Josh Rand recently updated the populous forums on the progress of the Slipknot side project. He writes, "Starting off with a week of pre-production as our producer Nick pushed us to the brink and back, we fine-tuned the songs for the record. Now with eighteen tracks slated to be recorded we were ready to begin the drum tracks…However, two weeks into the recording of the drums Joel would have to leave the project and return home to his family. His nine-year-old son is very sick. He was diagnosed with Brain Stem Glioma (brain cancer) last fall. With the fate of the record now up in the air a decision had to be made: postpone the record or bring in someone to finish the drum tracks. So with Joel's blessing, Roy Mayorga will finish the drum tracks as we move forward." Let's just hope Corey Taylor and the boys avoid the sophomore jinx and enjoy more of the same success as Slipknot recently has (they just won a Grammy). Rand says of those 18 tracks recorded that 12-13 will be released, realistically. The rest will come out, some day, as B-sides.
Rick Rubin will be a busy man in the upcoming months. Recently, he was reported to be producing the new Linkin Park album, which is due out, hopefully, this spring. Now, reports confirm that Rubin will be producing Metallica's follow-up to St. Anger. Metallica had this to say about what's going on with them: "We just wanted to let our friends know that we have been jamming, writing, just plain messing around and having fun in the studio for the last few weeks." Expect something from them later this year. If you're smart, you don't care, you will just listen to Load or Re-load, and come to terms with the fact that Metallica is dead. All that is left is Lars.
Finishing this action-packed week with a follow-up to the previous piece of news, as I mentioned only a few lines ago, Rick Rubin is also producing the new Linkin Park album. What's up with that, you ask? Good question! They're currently writing and demoing material for its new effort, the band's first full-length studio project since 2003's Meteora. Mike Shinoda is currently on the road with his side hip-hop project, Fort Minor. For those of you who took my advice and checked out the Underworld: Evolution soundtrack, you know there was a track on there by Linkin Park's vocalist. Although Chester Bennington had announced plans earlier this year to work on his first solo album, the vocalist said that he has delayed that project until 2007 or later to work on the new LP disc.
411Mania Music Presents: Making the Band
In another new segment of my column, I continue to look at the band, Monument the Ghost, who recently (in the last few months) decided that they didn't like most of the music that they saw in Pittsburgh, PA. So, they decided to put together their own metal band, the likes of which the sleepy, slowly-digressing town has never seen.
I like underground, not-big-name-bands the most. Here's a good example of one that I found from smnNews. The group called 9mm Solution has recently posted new demo stuff on their myspace. The band, from Milwaukee, just did extensive touring and will be hiding and writing some new stuff. Give them a listen. You will like. The song "Visualize to Terrorize" sounds like some beefed-up Nothingface. So, if you're into that, you'll be into them.
Looking for something else to fit your taste? Here's some new rock that's due out. The band Loser is set to release their album in early may; it's entitled Just Like You. I've talked about them before, if you've been reading along, and, recently, the band posted their first track online. It's called "Disposable Sunshine" and can be streamed WMA-style. It's very, very catchy with powerful basslines, awesome vocals, and all the repetitious choruses you can hope for. I've been looping the song for about a half hour now…Goodbye, lucid blue sky…la la la.
Atreyu was recently featured on the OST for Underworld: Evolution. The powerful, kick-ass track, "Her Portrait in Black" has met some seriously positive feedback amongst music critics. This past week, a clip for the band's first real single from their upcoming album A Deathgrip on Yesterday (3/28) was released to the interweb. The track "Ex's and Oh's" can be streamed, via Real-gay-player. Even though the clip is only 1:15 long, it's definitely an indication and support that the band is moving in the direction of good-and-not-sucking.
A Deathgrip on Yesterday projected track listing:
01. Creature
02. Shameful
03. Our Sick Story
04. The Theft
05. We Stand Up
06. Ex's And Oh's
07. Your Private War
08. My Fork In The Road
09. Untitled Finale
What is it with bands and only releasing 9 tracks?
Are They At Odds?
This week's head-to-head section looks at the (de)evolution of American Head Charge. The band has been falling apart since the release of their last effort, the solid album The Feeding. They lost one of their members prior to the release, another one died, they had A LOT of money worth of high-end amps thieved. And now, recently, their drummer, Chris Emery, quit. Or wait, was he fired??
Last week, I reported this little tidbit of joy:
…Chris Emery has announced his departure from the band in the following online emo-esque post on why he decided to part ways with AHC: "I choose to. I'm tired of watching drugs and alcohol destroy everyone around me including myself. I choose to live with more options. The party is over for me. See you on the other side. If you want to come with, I'll be cheering you on. This is my final post. Good bye and God SPEED.... "
And now, on the band's official website (http://www.headcharge.com), the band is reporting that Emery did not quit; he was fired. Reasons cited include "major irresponsibility", "decreased drumming ability" and "an inflated sense of entitlement". Where have we heard things like this before?
Bassist/co-founder H. C. Banks III and singer/co-founder Martin Cock had this to say:
"It turns out Chris was thinking of leaving anyway, although we only just found out by his posting on our website. Before the show, I pulled our guitar tech into the hallway and said 'Mark my words. If he quits, he'll blame it on the bands drug use and his inability to deal with his own drug use.' Everyone knows our addiction history. Hell, it's part of our bio. And it's common knowledge we're no angels. But Chris was one of those guys that felt like he had to go to rehab every 9 months. We're no worse than when we met him. Drugs aren't the problem. The problem is that his brain and heart were no longer in it, his responsibility level became non-existent, and his playing became so drastically inconsistent that I had to fire him onstage at our last show of The Feeding touring cycle. I had made a sign in advance that said "I'M FIRED" and held it up to him halfway through the set when I got sick of how god-awful his playing and professionalism were that night. It was embarrassing and our fans didn't deserve it. He was a major factor in our pulling the last seven songs out of our set. It made me furious, and I'm glad we won't have to deal with it anymore."
American Head Charge is set to begin writing the follow-up to their sophomore release The Feeding in Minneapolis, in the coming weeks.
This Week's Benjamin Czajkowski Stamp of Approval (BCSA) Goes To…
Very deservingly, this week's newest, coveted award goes to the awesome band 32 Leaves. This is a group that isn't going to get much radio play because they don't have a huge contract to promote them that way, but they deserve it more than a lot of groups that do. I cannot even begin to stress how awesome their album Welcome to the Fall really is. In fact, in my rock top 10 for 2005, they ranked at number 2. 32 Leaves has posted the video for their track "All is Numb" in both QuickTime and Windows Media formats. The bands debut album Welcome to the Fall is in stores now and has been since early fall. Audio and tour dates are available on MySpace.
The Stuff I Can't Put Down (Like Scott Weiland and His Heroin)
5. Panic! At the Disco – A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
4. Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance
3. Fuel – Greatest Hits (in memory of)
2. 10 Years – The Autumn Effect
1. 32 Leaves – Welcome to the Fall
It's A Problem to Just Quit, So I'll End With This
As a side note, I definitely think that you're all going to like the new 10 Years single. More on that next week. Maybe Horvath will give it a review.
As always, I'm on Myspace, not yours. Check it out. Until next time: peace, love, and a little pessimism.
I just want to remind you of one last point: support the Fine Arts: Shoot a Rapper.–BC
