Heavy Metal Superfan Blog

Every metal fan feels his or her pulse quicken a little at this time of year, because right between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when the most important event in all of music happens - the Grammy award nominations are released. Yes, it's Grammy time, and metalheads across the nation (because like the World Series or the Super Bowl, nobody outside the U.S. gives a crap) gather to watch the televised nomination special, whispering excitedly, "Whaddya think - will this be Arch Goat Of Sodomy's year? Oh, I guarantee you Körgull The Exterminator will be nominated for something!"

Yeah, right. Well, the nominations came out last night, and in between all the trophies they promised to award Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, they nominated some actual metal bands for the Metal and Hard Rock trophies. Here's the rundown.

Metal:

Judas Priest, "Dissident Aggressor" from A Touch of Evil Live
Lamb of God, "Set To Fail" from Wrath
Megadeth, "Head Crusher" from Endgame
Ministry, "Señor Peligro" from Adios ...
Slayer, "Hate Worldwide" from World Painted Blood


That's not a terrible list, honestly. Granted, "Dissident Aggressor" is a 30-year-old song, and the Ministry nomination is bizarre - I have no idea who on the nominating committee has such a hard-on for Al Jourgensen, but it seems like he's been nominated a bunch of times in recent years. If I had to pick a winner, I'd like to see it go to Lamb Of God, if only because Slayer have already won.

Hard Rock:

AC/DC, "War Machine" from Black Ice
Alice in Chains, "Check My Brain" from Black Gives Way to Blue
Linkin Park, "What I've Done" from Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keyes
Metallica, "The Unforgiven III" from Death Magnetic
Nickelback, "Burn It To The Ground" from Dark Horse


This is a much worse list - as any list with Linkin Park and Nickelback on it would be. I'm also not all that excited about Alice In Chains getting a nomination, but that song bores me comatose. Frankly, my pick to win would be AC/DC - "War Machine" is a great song off a really strong album. But do I care? No, I do not. Wake me up when Brutal Truth gets a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.

The previously scheduled Canadian dates were canceled for medical reasons, but now it's official: there will be a North American tour featuring Slayer, Megadeth and Testament in 2010, and every stop will feature a certain number of $10 tickets.

Really, I don't know what else I need to tell you. Testament's 2008 album The Formation of Damnation was really solid, Slayer's and Megadeth's new albums kick football fields' worth of ass...there's no reason in the world you shouldn't go see this tour. So here are the dates.

January
18 WaMu Theatre, Seattle, WA
19 Memorial Coliseum, Portland, OR
21 Cow Palace, San Francisco, CA
22 Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, CA
23 Dodge Theatre, Phoenix, AZ
25 Magness Arena, Denver, CO
26 Tingley Coliseum, Albuquerque, NM
27 El Paso Coliseum, El Paso, TX
29 Verizon Wireless, Houston, TX
31 Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, TN

February
1 Gwinnett Arena, Duluth, GA
2 Broadbent Arena, Louisville, KY
4 Roy Wilkins Auditorium, Minneapolis, MN
5 UIC Pavilion, Chicago, IL
6 Cobo Arena, Detroit, MI
9 Chevrolet Theatre, Wallingford, CT
11 Izod Center, East Rutherford, NJ
13 Susquehanna Center, Camden, NJ
14 Tsongas Arena, Lowell, MA
16 Pavillon de la Jeunesse, Quebec City, QC
18 John Labatt Centre, London, ON
19 Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON
20 Bell Centre, Montreal, QC
22 Moncton Coliseum, Moncton, NB
23 Metro Centre, Halifax, NS

Never forget those who serve.

Black Sabbath, "War Pigs"



Metallica, "One"



Slayer, "Ghosts Of War"



Amon Amarth, "Runes To My Memory"



Flipper, "Sacrifice"

I listen to a lot of metal, obviously. But there are a relatively few bands whose entire discography are in my iPod, who it will take some kind of natural disaster to keep me from going to see when they're in my area. That list includes Amon Amarth, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Napalm Death, and it damn sure includes Slayer. That said, here's a brief rundown of what's in record stores this week.

Nile, Those Whom The Gods Detest (Nuclear Blast): Sure, the whole ancient-Egyptian schtick is a little goofy, but Nile come up with their share of decent riffs, and bandleader Karl Sanders is a hell of a guitarist; his solos are fleet and relatively non-masturbatory – that is, they seem to have something to do with the song that spawned them. Nile albums tend to have one or two totally non-metal tracks, and this time out, “Yezd Desert Ghul Ritual in the Abandoned Towers of Silence” features tribal percussion, creepy sound effects and voices, all intended to create an atmospheric lead in to the next round of blast beats and furious riffing. The title track and “4th Arra of Dagon” are probably the most successful at unifying the various elements of Nile’s style, as they combine traditional instrumentation (or specially tuned guitars, at any rate) with the band’s death metal roar. Overall, this is probably Nile’s best album. It's certainly the first one I've ever made it all the way through.

Slayer, World Painted Blood (Sony): I have already had a lot to say on the subject of this terrific album, including a track-by-track rundown when I heard it back in August. So I'll just reprint my conclusion from that review here: A lot of people say Slayer hasn't really been great since Seasons in the Abyss. Those people are wrong. The Paul Bostaph years had a lot to recommend them (Diabolus in Musica is a seriously underrated album), and Christ Illusion showed that Slayer could experiment with dissonance and melody, and kick their own playing and songwriting up a notch when they wanted to. The bandmembers have given a lot of interviews talking about how a lot of this album was written in the studio. Listening to it, you can't tell. That's really impressive. Much the way Metallica's Death Magnetic combined the thrash of their early years with the hard-rock grooves of their 1990s work, World Painted Blood builds on the success of every Slayer album before it. It's not a legacy-polishing effort; it's the next step in a still-ongoing journey. Highly recommended.

Various Artists, Swedish Death Metal (Prophecy Productions): A short while ago, a thick paperback book called Swedish Death Metal was published by New York-based Bazillion Points Books. It was an exhaustive look back at author Daniel Ekeroth's homeland scene of the '80s and early '90s, recounting the history of demo tapes, sparsely attended live gigs, binge drinking, intraband conflicts, the sudden underground success of groups like Entombed, Grave, and others...if you're a fan of the thick, distorted guitars and punky drumming of the Swedish sound, you need this book. And you definitely need this three-disc compilation, which includes an entire first disc of nothing but demo recordings, never before released commercially. For every relatively well-known act on here, there are two or three more obscure groups that never made it beyond the borders of their homeland. Just like the book, Swedish Death Metal the album is an important document of underground metal history. Get yourself one and crank it up loud.

In a recent interview with The Metal Forge, Slayer guitarist Kerry King discussed the reason the band's forthcoming album World Painted Blood will have four different covers, which fit together into a single image:

"I know fans are crazy and they'll go out and buy them all, but I'd be like, 'Oh, I got one, it's got all the songs on it, it's all I need.' But a lot of the retailers in America wanted exclusives on songs. Instead of wasting songs in my eyes, Dave [Lombardo, drummer] came up with this idea of why don't we take [the artwork] and split it into four. I mean, what have we got in America; [alternative/underground store] Hot Topic wants their own version, [electronics retailer] Best Buy wants their own version; you know, I'm not going to waste songs like that. I mean, if people are buying songs they should be able to buy the collection. I mean there are two left over though and I'm sure they'll end up on a deluxe edition or a video game or a movie soundtrack somewhere along the line. It was a way of not wasting songs and keeping the retailers happy."

Meanwhile, two other bands are kinda pissed that their new albums have been leaked online prior to release - and they know who's to blame.

Egypt-obsessed death metallers Nile claim their label, Nuclear Blast, is contemplating legal action against an unnamed journalist whose watermarked advance MP3s of their new album Those Whom The Gods Detest were found online.

"Amongst your brethren, there is a betrayer," guitarist Karl Sanders told Noisecreep. "In fact, Nuclear Blast knows exactly who it was. It was the same guy who leaked the Hypocrisy record. So, yeah, it was a journalist, a music journalist that leaked the record. Now, come on man ... don't we all have the struggle in this day and age, trying to eke out a living, playing music or writing about music?

"So, the idea that one of our own ... one our own brethren is the guy that stuck a knife in our heart ... I have trouble believing it, man. A couple days after I found that out, I had a little trouble doing interviews, because, in the back of my mind, it was like, 'Is this the guy? Should I be killing this guy instead of talking nice to him?' It took a while to put it all into perspective.

"I believe [the label] is planning legal action, and I think that's what's going to have to happen. You can't penalize someone for downloading it. You don't hate on the fans because of it. I think it's going to take recourse on the responsible people ... if we're not going to police our own, and hold our comrades and colleagues up to high moral standards, then what can we expect? It's up to us to not only try and behave ethically, but to call out others when they engage in unethical behavior."


Converge has been even more explicit about the October 5 leak of their (terrific) new album Axe To Fall, posting the following on their Twitter feed:

BTW: Special thanks to SHAUN HAND at Metal Sucks for leaking our album...

MetalSucks addressed the issue in a post, saying in part:

"We would like to formally apologize on behalf of everyone at MetalSucks for the leak. We take full responsibility.

"It might be small solace, but the album was absolutely NOT leaked intentionally. Prior to this incident, neither MetalSucks nor any member of the MetalSucks staff has EVER leaked, or even been accused of leaking, an album in the entirety our nearly three-year history as a website. We are honestly baffled as to how this one slipped out.

"We are also deeply embarrassed and regretful. We would never knowingly betray the trust of any band or label. And if you’ve been following this site, you know that we’re huge fans of Converge and Axe to Fall. That this happened with a band and record we hold in such high regard makes the whole thing especially upsetting to us."


As a journalist who receives advances of just about every forthcoming metal album, I gotta say a few things about this.

1) I genuinely believe that it's accidental when something like this happens. Music critics make about as much money from their writing as unsigned metal bands do on tour, especially now that metal magazines are going out of business, leaving only websites (which mostly don't pay) to fill the void. So they're clearly in it for the love.

2) In some ways, the labels are making it easier, not more difficult, for this to happen. Both Epitaph (Converge's label) and Nuclear Blast (Nile's label) have ceased to send out promo CDs - like Metal Blade, Earache, Century Media and Candlelight, among others, they have promo websites from which journalists download high-quality MP3s of upcoming releases. (Other labels, like Relapse, Trustkill and Victory, don't permit downloading of advance releases - they stream them on pages you need a username and password to access. That helps somewhat, but Baroness's Blue Record, a Relapse release, still leaked.) If a journalist is receiving MP3s from you, they're almost certainly gonna stay on his or her laptop, and if that journalist is enough of a dumbass to enable file sharing on his or her iTunes or other music playing software, somebody is gonna spot those MP3s and grab 'em.

So fellow journalists, turn off file sharing on your computer's music playing system. Stuff your advance MP3s directly into your iPod, where no one can get at 'em. This way, your favorite bands won't wind up hating your guts - at least, not until you give their albums bad reviews.

Slayer have posted the title track from their forthcoming album World Painted Blood on their MySpace page. Back when I reviewed the album a month or so ago, I said this about the song:

"World Painted Blood" - the album starts with a martial drum roll and some creepy, hard-to-make-out spoken vocals, before a Sabbathy opening riff comes in. At the one-minute mark, things speed up, with the rhythm guitar sounding more like James Hetfield on Death Magnetic than Slayer's usual sound. (More about this later.) Tom Araya's vocals are hoarse and breathless, which adds a dramatic urgency to his usual lyrical litany of horrors. This song is spiritually kin to "South of Heaven," but faster and more aggressive, with an absolutely killer main riff and a noisy, dive-bombing, reverbed-to-hell-and-back solo backed by unexpectedly prominent bass from Araya. Best line: "Walk among the dead/Pick your grave." If this song has a flaw, it's that it's a little too long (nearly six minutes) and has a few too many ideas, but overall it's a really good start to the album.

So go check it out.

Slayer's new album, World Painted Blood, won't be out until October, but some folks have already heard it - and I'm one of 'em. So here is my very early, complete track-by-track rundown of what you can expect when the disc drops this fall.

"World Painted Blood" - the album starts with a martial drum roll and some creepy, hard-to-make-out spoken vocals, before a Sabbathy opening riff comes in. At the one-minute mark, things speed up, with the rhythm guitar sounding more like James Hetfield on Death Magnetic than Slayer's usual sound. (More about this later.) Tom Araya's vocals are hoarse and breathless, which adds a dramatic urgency to his usual lyrical litany of horrors. This song is spiritually kin to "South of Heaven," but faster and more aggressive, with an absolutely killer main riff and a noisy, dive-bombing, reverbed-to-hell-and-back solo backed by unexpectedly prominent bass from Araya. Best line: "Walk among the dead/Pick your grave." If this song has a flaw, it's that it's a little too long (nearly six minutes) and has a few too many ideas, but overall it's a really good start to the album.

"Unit 731" - a super-fast murder anthem of the type Slayer have written a dozen times before and will write until they hang up their guitars for good. Lombardo's still the master of the thrash drum fill, though, and his kit has a punk-rock looseness on this album that makes it fresh. The mix on World Painted Blood is really surprising - not just the drums, but the space given to Araya's bass and the weight of the guitars. Producer Greg Fidelman has given the album a very similar sound to Death Magnetic (which he also produced), but without the blown-out mastering job after the fact; consequently, it works even better for them than it did for Metallica.

"Snuff" - this song begins with two guitar solos. That's new. The title gives it away; it's about snuff filmmaking, and follows a fairly typical Slayer path, fast then slightly slower then back to headlong charging again. Araya's verses are fairly plain, just a rhythmic chant, but he's still in good voice, sounding genuinely enraged and dangerous. There's a second set of guitar solos in the middle, and a really intricate, technical unison guitar line taking the song out. This is one of the most musically challenging Slayer tracks in a long while.

"Beauty Through Order" - moody and doomy, with a riff and structure very (I mean very) similar to "Eyes of the Insane," from Christ Illusion. That song won them a Grammy, so it's not surprising to see them return to the well, but this is practically a re-recording. At around the two and a half minute mark, they change it up, though, and start playing riffs and a solo that sound inspired by Reign in Blood and Seasons in the Abyss in equal measure, as Araya screams "God did not do this" over and over. Obviously, they're Slayer and they're always gonna be, but this song feels like they're plagiarizing themselves a little too much.

"Hate Worldwide" - the second of two songs they've released to teas fans (click the title to hear it). It's one of the most punk-rock and stripped-down tracks on the album, hitting hard for under three minutes with a noisy solo from each guitarist and a witty chorus ("Let's spread a little hate worldwide"). Archetypal Slayer, in other words, but without sounding like a rehash.

"Public Display of Dismemberment" - holy hell, Dave Lombardo plays fast on this song. This might be his fastest beat since "Silent Scream," from South of Heaven. The lyrics are somewhat political, which you might not get from the title. When it's time for the first solo, pre-bridge, things slow down to an ultra-heavy chugga-chugga. The second solo is taken at lightning speed, though. This is another short one - two and a half minutes - and it'll leave fans breathless if/when it's played live.

"Human Strain" - if this was a Cannibal Corpse song, it would be about feeding people into a strainer, but the strain they're talking about is a virus. It's not a rewrite of "Epidemic" from Reign in Blood, though; it's another relatively slow song, taken at an almost martial tempo with parade-ground drumming from Lombardo. There's a really nice break in the middle, with spoken recitation from Araya over dissonant guitar, and some of his cleanest singing in years - if not ever. This, along with "Snuff" and "World Painted Blood," shows that Slayer still has plenty of room for original tweaks to its core sound.

"Americon" - another political song, this one based on a riff that sounds like they've been saving it since the Diabolus in Musica sessions. The guitars go through a pedal that makes them sound like Slipknot, and Lombardo strips his playing down to a crude pummel. It's a good enough song, but it sounds less like what you might typically expect from Slayer than anything since "Dead Skin Mask" from Seasons in the Abyss (my least favorite Slayer song ever). I'm not making a direct comparison between the two songs - "Americon" doesn't have a terrible singalong chorus - but this track sticks out from the rest of the album quite a bit.

"Psychopathy Red" - fortunately, they come right back with this punk-rock (there's even a bass break) blast of pure 1000 mph Slayer hate. This song could have fit right in on Reign in Blood, and producer Fidelman captures that vibe of blind headlong rage perfectly. Araya's screaming sounds positively unhinged. It's no wonder this song's been a sensation since hitting the Internet last year (click the title to hear it, if you haven't).

"Playing with Dolls" - another song that recalls Christ Illusion, but this one reminds me of that album's most striking track (musically and lyrically), "Jihad," so it's a very good thing. The first minute-plus are slow and creepy, but when the drums come in for real and the rhythm guitars begin to grind, it's a whole different story. There are subtle industrial-influenced sound effects in the background that actually add to the hostile, alienating vibe (when I say subtle, I mean subtle; this isn't some Fear Factory b.s.). And the guitar solo actually seems to arise organically out of the main song, a rarity for Slayer.

"Not of This God" - the album's final track combines the speed, power and head-down assaultiveness of "Unit 731" with a bridge that explores groove in the Slipknot-esque manner of "Americon," only better. It's very much a modern Slayer track, combining their perennial strengths with a willingness to try new things, and it takes you out of the album breathless and jacked up on the cocktail of pure aggression that these guys have patented.

Final verdict: A lot of people say Slayer hasn't really been great since Seasons in the Abyss. Those people are wrong. The Paul Bostaph years had a lot to recommend them (Diabolus in Musica is a seriously underrated album), and Christ Illusion showed that Slayer could experiment with dissonance and melody, and kick their own playing and songwriting up a notch when they wanted to. The bandmembers have given a lot of interviews talking about how a lot of this album was written in the studio. Listening to it, you can't tell. That's really impressive. Much the way Metallica's Death Magnetic combined the thrash of their early years with the hard-rock grooves of their 1990s work, World Painted Blood builds on the success of every Slayer album before it. It's not a legacy-polishing effort; it's the next step in a still-ongoing journey. Highly recommended.

The Slayer song "Psychopathy Red," which leaked online in October, has been streamed more than a half-million times. Now, the band is making available another song from their upcoming album, World Painted Blood, due out later this year. The limited-edition single, "Hate Worldwide," will be sold exclusively as a CD-single at Hot Topic stores beginning Tuesday, July 28. (See below for cover art.)

You can preview the track NOW at Shockhound.com.

"It's a really cool track, and Tom [Araya]'s voice sounds incredible on it," said Slayer guitarist Kerry King. "The last line in the song's chorus is '..spread a little hate worldwide,' and that's what we've been doing for 25 years."

Slayer is currently co-headlining the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival with Marilyn Manson, Killswitch Engage, and Bullet For My Valentine, among others.

You can't have metal without screaming, overdriven electric guitars. And while some of the best metal bands around have just one guitarist, a lot of the true greats have two axes up front, ripping through the speakers in tandem. So for this weekend's poll, you decide which band has the greatest dual-guitar team in all of metal. Voting closes at 10 AM Monday, so vote early and often!

Wanna watch the members of Slayer yak about their forthcoming tenth studio album (the press release says ninth, but no matter how fervently they might wish we'd forget about Undisputed Attitude, we haven't, and we never will), World Painted Blood? Of course you do! Here's a YouTube clip. Enjoy!