Onion Zeppelin Article
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 by Metal Pig
Primördial Dwarf - Metal Blög
A blog for all things heavy and/or metal from pdwarf.com
Buddhist death metalers! Won’t somebody please think of the children!?!
Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by Metal Pig
In case you missed it, this is from the AP…
Heavy metal band says Athol discriminated against them
ATHOL - Six men have complained to a state agency that Athol officials banned their “death metal” group from events because of their religious leanings.
The men, members of a local band called Necronomichrist, each filed complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination last month.
They say Athol leaders prohibited them from playing at fundraisers for a local skate park because some band members are Satanists, agnostics, Buddhist and atheist.
Town selectmen approved a written rebuttal Tuesday and will send it to the agency this week.
The town’s attorney says the concerns had nothing to do with religion. He says the event organizers did not invite the band because they worried its hardcore music could be inappropriate for children.
Currently Listening To…
Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by Metal Pig
My buddy left Countdown to Extinction in my truck and I put it in the other day. I didn’t realize how good this album is.
Megadeth: Countdown to Extinction (1992)
I thought it was great when it came out but haven’t listened to it for years, assuming I only liked it back then because 1) I was in college and “Sweating Bullets” was a good partying song and 2) this was the anti-Black Album which stuck to the bands thrash roots while Metallica dropped the ball. I’ve heard “Sweating Bullets” and “Symphony of Destruction” on the radio from time to time and both those are great songs. I missed Megadeth when they opened for Heaven and Hell (a.k.a. Sabbath) because my buddy and I both forgot where Lowell was and I had to buy a ticket from a scalper, so I probably missed out on some of the other songs from this disc. I forgot how good “High Speed Dirt” is. I liked the concept of a song about a guy skydiving without a parachute, but the music is great too, even the little acoustic noodling in the middle. “Foreclosure of a Dream” is a good mellow-thrash song with G.W. Bush samples that made me have to look up when this was recorded (holy shit - 1992!!!!). “Skin of My Teath” has some great drums. “Architecture of Aggression”, “This Was My Life” and “Psychotron” are good tunes as well. The environmentally friendly title track is pretty good for a slowed down metal song as well. The last two songs, “Captive Honour” and “Ashes in Your Mouth” aren’t really much more than afterthoughts, they keep the album from being top to bottom excellent, luckily they are both at the end. After this album Megadeth was kinda hit or miss. Definitely brings back some good (albeit blurry) memories. Thanks for leaving that in my truck Ben.
another thing that pisses me off
Posted on March 29th, 2008 by Metal Pig
non METAL singers giving the Dio horns.
That’s OUR thing, its not for pop-punk (oxymoron) wanna be divas. Stop that crap right now!
IRON ‘effin MAIDEN
Posted on March 25th, 2008 by horrorbiz
IRON MAIDEN - Izod Center in New Jersey on 3/14/2008
So, the concert has come and gone. I’m still in recovery. I’ve pretty much listened to nothing but Maiden since.
As for the show, all I really remember is that for 2 hours or so, I was in a Red Bull/Vodka/misc. haze, with my head thrown back, singing along to every song. It was kind of a weird experience. I’ve loved this band since I was a kid (Seventh Son was my first Maiden record and made me a fan for life), so you’d think that I’d study every movement and part, but I didn’t. It was more like a total experience, greater than the sum of its parts.
I was surprised at how agile Bruce was. He was jumping around through every song. It was also cool to see how they incorporated stuff from the Live After Death video (like that crazy mask Bruce wears during one song).
The setlist was great too, with heavy emphasis on the Powerslave era. The rest of the material was primarily made up of Piece Of Mind, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. They also threw in Iron Maiden (how could they not), Run To The Hills, Number Of The Beast and Fear Of The Dark for good measure. WOW!
The good: appearance of cyborg Eddie walking around the stage, the announcement of additional US dates for this tour (I’ll either be heading back to Jersey or seeing them in Mass.), Bruce promising that the additional dates would be an even BIGGER production.
The bad: not enough Eddie, I was hoping that they would have used the backdrop from the Powerslave tour, with a HUGE mummified Eddie, with long, springy arms hanging over the stage, maybe they’ll make up for this on the second US run
But, really, it was Iron Maiden after all, so it was pretty much perfection, no matter what….
Currently Listening To…
Posted on March 5th, 2008 by horrorbiz
I wanted to start a regular post to talk about my current favorite album. This is a place to discuss what’s new or those
re-discovered old classics or just records that have caught my attention recently. Basically, here’s a view into the album
that I just can’t put down right now. What about you guys? Any music that’s got you excited these days? This is a great way to discover new shit…
Manowar: Battle Hymns (1982)
I recently re-discovered this old classic. If you like your metal in the more traditional sense, then you can’t go wrong
with this one. This is ManOwaR’s debut album and there isn’t a bad song to be found. The vocals are delivered with melody and lots of high-pitched screams. This was a time before every vocalist turned into the Cookie Monster. Distortion plays a big role in the guitar work, without ever sounding over-saturted or over-processed, just a very natural sound. The bass is prominent as well and there’s even a track comprised of a bass solo (William’s Tale), which would become a common theme on future ManOwaR albums. The drums are made up of straight ahead, 4/4, in the pocket pounding. Song highlights include Metal Daze (”If I don’t hear the sound of metal, I go into shock”), ManOwaR and the title track (Battle Hymns), which is the ultimate old-school fight song. And, when I say “old-school”, I don’t mean Bennie and the Jets. I’m talking about swords, shields, loin cloth and galloping horses. Very epic. Check it out for a dose of pure heavy metal.
Influences include Sabbath and Priest. This was big record in setting the tone for the soon-to-be emerging Power Metal scene.
Four things that piss me off
Posted on March 2nd, 2008 by Metal Pig
1. These radio stations that claim to be rock stations or “real” rock stations that don’t play any music in the morning. Instead they have some lame knock off of the Howard Stern show. When I am driving to work I don’t give a rats ass about how the producer can’t get a date, I don’t want to hear about the bachelor party that the host went to and stop playing those sophomoric sound effects and audio clips. These are the same people who complain that MTV doesn’t play any videos, PLAY SOME GODDAMNED SABBATH GODDANMIT. I can get the following stations on the way to work: WAAF, WBCN, WZLX, WFNX, WHEB, WGIR, only TWO of those stations play even a modicum of music. WTF!
2. When journalist write about a musician and feel that they have to mention his/her real name. If Flea wants to be called Flea call him fucking Flea for fucksake. I don’t care that his real name is Michael Balzary. If I met him I wouldn’t say, “how’s it going Mike?”, if I wrote him a letter it wouldn’t start off “Dear Michael”. How come this only happens with musicians? If there is a story about an actor no one puts his or her birth name in parenthesis. Its Jamie Foxx not Eric Marlon Bishop, its Winona Ryder not Winona Horowitz. I suspect this is because music “journalists” are all failed musicians and it makes them feel big to out the real names of those who actually made something of themselves in the music business. If someone calls himself Ozzy, or Alice, or Ace or D’Baggg or Geezer then call them that and get over your own lack of talent, loser.
3. D.J.s who think its clever to play songs about rain when its raining out. It never fails, as soon as it starts raining flip through the channels and you hear Riders on the Storm, Here Comes the Rain Again, Who’ll Stop the Rain, The Levee Song, Red Rain… Thats clever if your 10 years old. Leave the weather to the weather man.
4. When they play We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions always, ALWAYS follows it. I HATE We Are the Champions. This isn’t bad when you have control of the radio because you can turn the station once We Will Rock You is over, but when you don’t then its an excruciatingly painful experience to know that as the last notes We Will Rock You you sound you are about to get an earful of a dreadful lame ass arena rock crapfest. That brief moment of silence between the songs hangs there for an eternity as you pray that this is the one time they play Stone Cold Crazy or Tie Your Mother Down. They never do. Its like those old time firing squads. You’re tied to a post and blind folded with that last cigarette dangling from your mouth and you hear the captain say “Ready… Aim…” and you desperately hope, but know that the next thing out of his mouth is not “Just Kidding”. I mean if you think about it there should be another song in the middle. First they tell you “we will rock you” then suddenly “we are the champions” shouldn’t there be another song in there to tell you how we became the champions, what exactly it was that we did to rock you? I don’t get it.
They do the same thing with Led Zeppelin’s Heartbreaker and Living Loving Maid but I am never in one place long enough to hear the both songs.
(Mis)Treatment of Metalheads in Film, part III
Posted on February 29th, 2008 by Metal Pig
These are films or shows that focus more on the Hesher himself rather than Metal musicians with a couple of exceptions which I’ll start off with.
Rock Star (2001) is based on the Ripper Owens story with Judas Priest. Zakk Wylde, Jeff Pilson, Blas Elias, Nick Cataneseand Jason Bonham are in the movie while Jeff Scott Soto and Michael Matijevic provide the vocals that Mark Wahlberg lip synch to. This didn’t really do a disservice to Metalheads, maybe it painted the industry as phony and heartless, no shock there. It did more of a disservice to movies, because as a film as it pretty much blows.
Airheads (1994) is a comedy about a goofy metal/grunge band (I bet it was supposed to be metal but they decided to make everyone look grungy since it was the early 90’s) that takes over a radio station to get their song played, hilarity ensues. This movie sucks too, but it does have Lemmy in it, so for 30 seconds it is quite watchable. This one just makes fun of the Metalhead but not in a good way. Adam Sandler is one of the main characters so what would you expect.
Keanu Reeves gets his own sub category
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991). Watchable but insulting to the proud Hesher at the same time. Actually they get less watchable the more you see them. They mention Iron Maiden but never play any - lame. On the plus side Jim Martin from Faith No More is in the sequel and Bill and Ted’s Wyld Stallyons (actually the more I type the less I like this movie) is in a battle of the bands that features Primus.
Rivers Edge (1986) is a great movie that most people probably haven’t seen. It stars Keanu Reeves… no seriously keep reading… and Crispin Glover (the only familiar faces besides Dennis Hopper) as a couple of northwest hesher slackers whose friend kills his girlfriend. Metal Blade Records did the sound track. Metal isn’t a focus of the movie but the younger characters are a pack of nihilistic burnouts of the Metal variety. I don’t think it paints a very flattering picture of metalheads, at least not this group, but it seems honest and the story could be right out of a news headline. I want to say the movie claims to be based on a true event, but can’t remember exactly and am too lazy and nihilistic to look it up. Definitely a good movie about Metalheads gone bad.
Remembering That First Axe
Posted on February 26th, 2008 by Metal Pig
“Bought a beat up six string in a secondhand store” - Jukebox Hero
Ok, it was a bass so it was only a beat up four string, and I bought it from a fat kid, not in a secondhand store, but Foreigner is the closest lyric I could get to Metal.
I am pretty sure I was 17. The crew I was hanging out with was all into guitars and I was going to get one but my buddy said that everyone already played guitar and I should get a bass. I ended up buying a bass off another guy for cool $15. I am pretty sure it was a Mako although it might have been a Memphis. The body and neck were the same size as a guitar but it did have four strings. It was white and I took a black Sharpie and drew a picture of Eddie on the body. The neck was so short I had to cut the strings down when I restrung it. I referred to it as a ‘piccolo’ bass but the actually term is P.O.S. bass. It has a “humbucker” in it. In this case humbucker refers to the fact that you could hum into the pick up and hear it through the amp - not really the sign of a quality pickup, more like a shitty microphone. The amp b.t.w. was a 15watt Peavy guitar amp - I forgot where I got that thing.
It basically sounded like a low strung guitar - no bottom end what so ever. The guy who told me I should by a bass then told me I couldn’t play that one and should get a real bass. That real bass was a Memphis (all cheap guitars back then started with “M”) which I bought off another buddy (fool me twice…) and had for a few months before I set it on fire and smashed it during a bass solo in my back yard.
So what happened to that little white Mako? My friend, Bill the Drummer, loved it for some reason. In true Metal fashion I traded that bass to Bill the Drummer for half of a fifth (a 10th?) of Smirnoff Red. I think Bill the Drummer still has that bass somewhere. I wonder if the picture of Eddie has faded away.
\m/