The Alternative Nation News Report 02.08.09: Down With the Sickness

Posted by Taylor Martin on 02.08.2009

New details on Guitar Hero: Metallica, Pearl Jam’s new album, Joe Satriani pulls a publicity stunt, Blink-182 reunite (sort of), Deftones return to the stage, DLC of the Week and the Best Albums of 1993. OH WA AH AH AH!



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I hate being sick.

Fuck the flu.

It's news time.

News N' Stuff

This is kind of old news, but I'll post it anyway since there has been new information released about it. As you may or may not know, Activision will be releasing a new Guitar Hero spinoff featuring the music of Metallica. Similar to last year's Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the game will feature music from Kill ‘Em All to Death Magentic as well as "personal favorites and influences over the years". The gameplay will be similar to Guitar Hero World Tour and will incorporate guitar, drums, bass, and vocals. There will also be a double bass pedal option if you have an extra pedal and a splitter.

Here's the track list. The game releases on March 29th:

Metallica:
"All Nightmare Long"
"Battery"
"Creeping Death"
"Disposable Heroes"
"Dyers Eve"
"Enter Sandman"
"Fade to Black"
"Fight Fire With Fire"
"For Whom the Bell Tolls"
"Frantic"
"Fuel"
"Hit the Lights"
"King Nothing"
"Master of Puppets"
"Merciful Fate (Medley)"
"No Leaf Clover"
"Nothing Else Matters"
"One"
"Orion"
"Sad but True"
"Seek & Destroy"
"The Memory Remains"
"The Shortest Straw"
"The Thing That Should Not Be"
"The Unforgiven"
"Welcome Home (Sanitarium)"
"Wherever I May Roam"
"Whiplash"

Alice In Chains - "No Excuses"
Bob Seger - "Turn the Page (Live)"
Corrosion of Conformity - "Albatross"
Diamond Head - "Am I Evil?"
Foo Fighters - "Stacked Actors"
Judas Priest - "Hell Bent for Leather"
Kyuss - "Demon Cleaner"
Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Tuesday's Gone"
Machine Head - "Beautiful Mourning"
Mastodon - "Blood and Thunder"
Merciful Fate - "Evil"
Michael Schenker Group - "Armed and Ready"
Motörhead - "Ace of Spades"
Queen - "Stone Cold Crazy"
Samhain - "Mother of Mercy"
Slayer - "War Ensemble"
Social Distortion - "Mommy's Little Monster (Live)"
Suicidal Tendencies - "War Inside My Head"
The Sword - "The Black River"
System of a Down - "Toxicity"
Thin Lizzy - "The Boys Are Back In Town"

The tracklist looks pretty awesome to say the least. I could probably do without "King Nothing" but that's the only song from Load on the list. They even picked the best song from St. Anger. I'll definitely be picking this up on March 29th.


Pearl Jam is planning to get back in the studio soon to record their ninth studio album. The band will release the album without a label and are planning to have it done by the summer. Brendan O'Brien will handle production duties, his first time with the band since 1998's Yield. In other Pearl Jam news, the band will be reissuing their debut album, Ten, in March. The album will be released in four editions and will feature extras such as a remastered and remixed (by Brendan O'Brien) edition, a DVD of the band's appearance at MTV Unplugged in 1992, and a live album from a September 1992 performance in Seattle. This will mark the first in a series of reissues leading up to the band's 20th anniversary in 2011. Twenty years is a lifetime in the music industry, especially when most of your contemporaries are either dead or have broken up. Here's to another 20 more for Pearl Jam.


You may remember that guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani filed a lawsuit against Coldplay because he thought that the band's smash hit "Viva La Vida" sounded a little too much like a song he wrote in 2004 called "If I Could Fly". Well, Satriani has assembled a group of lawyers to try and serve the band legal papers during Grammy weekend. A camera crew will be present to record the attempt. This sounds like a publicity stunt if I've ever heard of one.

Quickies!

- In bittersweet news, Deftones will be returning to the stage in April at Bamboozle Left in California. However, bassist Chi Cheng is still in a coma stemming from a car accident last November. The band has recruited former Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega to fill in for Cheng.

- Blink-182 will present an award at the Grammys tonight, marking the first time that all three members have been on the same stage in over 4 years. Who knows where it will lead from there, but I'm hoping for a proper reunion with a new album.

DLC of the Week

Rock Band:

Hmmm…

The Fratellis
"Creeping Up the Back Stairs"
"Flathead"
"Henrietta"

I had heard of The Fratellis, but I had never heard their music, so I went to MySpace and gave them a listen and I don't really know if I like them or not.

Guitar Hero:

This three-pack of songs is called the Acoustic Track Pack:

Incubus
"Drive"

This marks Incubus' second appearance in a Guitar Hero game, the first being "Stellar" way back in the very first Guitar Hero. I'm a big Incubus fan, so this is recommended.

The Shins
"New Slang"

I'm not a big Shins fan. I'm also not a big Shins fans fan. Not recommended.

Ryan Adams
"Wonderwall"

Why they couldn't put the original Oasis version is beyond me. That version is already on Rock Band and it's not very fun to play, so I wouldn't recommend this.

The Greatest Albums of My Life

The Best Albums of 1993

Honorable Mentions: Nirvana - In Utero, Radiohead - Pablo Honey, Fugazi - In On the Kill Taker, The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From the Satellite Heart

3. Tool - Undertow: Undertow came at a time when metal was in a sort of dormancy. Grunge was at its peak in popularity and the punk revival was slowly gathering momentum. Undertow was seen as proof that metal could still be a popular, mainstream music style. It is, by no means, the best metal album, nor is it even the best Tool album. But every band has to have a beginning and this is as good a debut album as I've ever heard. Musically, it's more straightforward than later Tool albums. Lyrically, however, it is still complex and cryptic. One of the things that I've always liked about Tool is Maynard James Keenan's ability to write lyrics that are mysterious, yet they aren't being written for the sake of being mysterious. Danny Carey, as always, is great on the drums and Adam Jones plays some of his most memorable stuff on this album. Tool would go on to make better music than this, but if you're looking for some metal that's not only good, but intelligent, you would be hard pressed to find anything better than Undertow

Recommended tracks: "Sober", "Prison Sex", "Intolerance", "Crawl Away"




2. Pearl Jam - Vs.: Like I said, in 1993 grunge was pretty popular and the most popular of them all was Pearl Jam. After the enormous success of Ten, the band went back into the studio. This time, however, things were not well with the group. They were faced with the pressure of creating a worthy follow-up to their debut and the newfound fame didn't come easy to the band. The controversy surrounding "Jeremy" turned the band off of making music videos. All of these things could have ruined any other band (and they did), but Pearl Jam recorded Vs., an aptly titled album that reflected how they felt at the time. The record was less polished than Ten, and more aggressive as well. Songs like "Animal" and "Go" are raw while others like "Daughter" and "Elderly Woman…" are softer in tone. Eddie's growl (which is often imitated, never duplicated) is in full force here. Mike McCready and Stone Gossard play some of their best work on this album and newcomer (at the time) Dave Abbruzzese pounds away at the drums with ferocity. Vs. would go on to be a huge commercial success, even setting the record most copies sold in a week (which wouldn't be broken for another six years). Vs. is a great album and it was a worthy follow-up to Ten after all.

Recommended tracks: "Dissident", "Daughter", "Go", "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"




1. The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream: The Smashing Pumpkins have always been a band known for internal conflict, but 1993 was a pretty low point for the band. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was developing a pretty serious addiction to heroin, bassist D'Arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha had just ended their relationship and Billy Corgan was suffering from severe depression and writer's block. Much like Pearl Jam, the band was feeling pressured to make a great album. The album was recorded in Georgia, mainly to cut off Chamberlin's drug connections. This didn't work, however, and he would disappear for days at a time causing everyone to fear for his life. Corgan has a reputation for being a little bit of a control freak and so he overdubbed Wretzky's bass tracks and Iha's guitar tracks to his liking. Chamberlin performed all of his parts and legend has it that after he returned from a three-day drug binge, Corgan made him perform the drum track for "Cherub Rock" until his hands bled. Even after all of this, the album was finished in four months and $250,000 over budget. It would, however, prove to be a success, selling over six million copies worldwide. This album is not the best album of 1993 because it was the best album that year. Don't get me wrong, it is a great album. But this album never had a chance to succeed and it did. Everything was going against it and it was still a massive success that would only be matched by their next album. Siamese Dream is great album for that reason and that is why it is the best album of 1993.

Recommended tracks: "Cherub Rock", "Today", "Disarm", "Mayonaise"




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Be back next week.

Bye forever.