Headbangers’ Brawl is a weekly column where Metal Insider’s Bram and Zach take a moment to debate and analyze two opposing sides of a topical issue occurring in the world of metal and/or the music industry.

When the sunburn and aroma of beer and sweat start to fade away, it can mean only one thing: the Summer has come to an end. And while concert attendance saw a big dip this past year, the Summer of 2010 brought us some great metal tours, including Ozzfest, Mayhem Fest and the American Carnage Tour just to name a few. So with the season coming to an end, Bram and Zach take a moment in this week’s Headbangers’ Brawl to debate over which Summer festival/tour was the best of them all.

Zach: Not to sound like a hippy cheeseball who loves everyone, but there really wasn’t an “awful” tour this past Summer. Despite hesitations about certain shows (cough-Ozzfest-cough), I really had a great time at each show I attended. However, if I had to choose my favorite out of them all, this year’s Mayhem Fest would win it for me. Not only did each band on the line up perform their asses off when I attended the stop in Camden, NJ, but the atmosphere itself was simply awesome. Mayhem Fest has been able to capture the energy and excitement of metal every year, the same metal communal feel that I use to experience at Ozzfest. Plus, the two side stages’ back and forth set lists allowed the fan to experience non-stop metal (avoiding the annoying set change waits). This year continued to leave me satisfied.

Bram: I wouldn’t say there was an “awful” tour either, but to be honest with you, there weren’t too many super exciting ones either. I might be jaded because everything comes to New York, but with a few exceptions, all the summer tours/festivals that came around featured bands I’d already seen previously. If you’ve already seen a band twice on the album cycle, you’re not going to be won over by another festival appearance, and if you’re promoting an album that’s over a year old, I don’t really understand what your band is doing on tour. There are a number of things that make a tour or festival into a can’t-miss experience, whether it’s an older band coming out of retirement, an underground band graduating to a big stage, or a musician filling in for another, all of which happened to an extent this year. With that in mind, was Mayhem still your favorite?

Z: True, Bram. There weren’t “oh-my-god I must attend” tours this summer (maybe with the exception of Slayer/Megadeth), but I’d still say that each tour had its stand outs in their lineups. With that in mind, yes I would still stick with Mayhem. I agree that all of your points go into a “cant-miss” experience, but one thing I always consider is the actual lineup itself. One of the great beauties of touring festivals is how they bring bands together on the same stage, bands who otherwise probably wouldn’t even be in the same city as each other. While I’ve pretty much seen all the band’s I liked on Mayhem before, seeing them all together in the same day is worth the ticket price (which was pretty reasonable in itself). Even Lamb Of God’s Chris Adler revealed recently in an interview with Bloody-Disgusting.com how it was awesome and unusual to get the chance to perform infront of Korn and Rob Zombie’s audiences. With that in mind, Bram, which tour did you feel gave you the most bang for your buck?

B: I think in terms of bang for your buck, the American Carnage tour was pretty awesome. Granted, it’s a little nostalgia-based, but it was still great to hear two bands play two of their best albums, as well as have Testament opening things up. In terms of a well put together festival, I think that the Uproar tour is pretty good. Not that I’m a gigantic fan of any of the bands, but to introduce bro-dude Disturbed fans to bands they might not have heard before, like Halestorm and Airbourne, it’ll probably cultivate some fans of the newer bands. In terms of energy and bands I actually really like, I dug the Eyehategod/Nachtmystium tour earlier this Summer. But the most unique concertgoing experience? For sure, I’d say going to a movie theater to see the Big Four Tour. It was an amazing shared experience for metal fans around the world that really hadn’t been done before.

No, that’s not  a typo. According to Pandora founder Tim Westergren, the company is currently activating 100,000 new users every day on mobile devices. Music Ally reports that Westergren made the comments at a press launch for Samsung’s new TVs. The television maker will be spending $70 million on its next-generation TVs, so Pandora will undoubtedly have a hand in those. But 1 million new users every ten days? That’s amazing, considering that the company was struggling with bankruptcy as recently as last year. Considering that there are so many streaming music sites out there, it looks like Pandora is the iPod to everyone else’s Zune, to mix a metaphor or two.

In case you’ve been living under a rock or really like Microsoft, Apple had a press conference today unveiling new iPods. The iPod touch got an upgrade, but the big makeovers were reserved for the iPod shuffle and the iPod nano. Check here for a full report on that.

Also announced was iTunes 10, with a feature called Ping. Ping is basically their version of a social network, where, as Engadget says, you’ll be able to “follow people (including artists), establish a “circle of friends,” post comments, check out custom song and album charts, and even find over 17,000 concert listings (which you can of course let folks know you’re attending).” Visitors to Apple’s Web site seeking info find Lady Gaga as an example on Ping’s home page.  We already knew she liked to quote Saxon lyrics and go to KISS shows, but amid the Michael and Janet Jackson albums listed under “Music Lady Gaga Likes” are two decidedly metal albums: Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast and Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All.

Whether these are really her picks or those of a bored graphic design dude at Apple is up for debate, but you really can’t argue with either of those albums. The Maiden album is them at their finest, and the Kill ‘Em All is probably the least commercially successful of Metallica’s albums. If one pre-teen or sexually confused club kid decides to pick up these albums and gets turned on to metal as a result, then that’s a victory for everyone! And on a larger scale, it’ll be interesting to find out moving forward what kind of music your friends are really listening to on their iPods and iPhones.

Metal By Numbers is a weekly column in which we look at the top metal sellers and debuts of the week.

This week saw a lot of metal bands rank either higher than their previous release or for the first time ever. But the highest rock debut comes from Christian metalcore group The Devil Wears Prada’s new EP Zombie. This marks the band’s highest ranking release, though not by much. Though 2009’s With Roots Above Branches Below only ranked at #11, it did sell 31,000 copies, compared to Zombie’s 24,600. Whether or not this is a sign of weaker album sales, this is still a great first week for The Devil Wears Prada and all an all a good one for metal as well.

Notable Debuts:
The Devil Wears Prada, Zombie EP (Ferret) #10, 24,600
The EP’s theme surrounds a zombie apocalypse due to singer Mike Hranica’s interest in the subject. Well that wasn’t obvious. If you wanna get technical, Jesus was the original zombie. O.Z.!

Apocalyptica, 7th Symphony (Jive) #31, 12,900 sold
Their new record marks their highest chart appearance to date (2007’s Worlds Collide debuted at #59). The song with Gojira’s Joseph Duplantier is monstrous.

The Sword, Warp Riders (Kemado) #47, 9,000 sold
Their last album, 2008’s Gods Of The Earth only reached #102 on the charts (selling a little more than 7,400). So in other words, this truly is a great week for The Sword.

Blind Guardian, At the Edge of Time (Nuclear Blast) #105, 4,400 sold
The German power metallers sell over 1,000 copies more than their previous album, 2006’s A Twist In The Myth. A very good first week for them indeed.
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Big Jay Oakerson has made a name for himself in the past year or so. In addition to appearing on the IFC show Z-Rock and having an album come out on Comedy Central (last year’s An American Storyteller), Jay spent his Spring and Summer on the road serving as the MC for the Jagermeister Music Tour and the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest. Now he’s returning to where he’s most comfortable: comedy clubs. While you might have seen him in between metal bands for the past few months, he’ll be able to stretch out and do a full set at Caroline’s, one of the most renowned comedy clubs in the country. He’ll be hosting “Big Jay Oakerson’s Dirty Minds” tour featuring Kurt Metzger and Mike Vecchione, and Metal Insider has got your tickets to see the tour when it hits Caroline’s in New York City next week! He’ll be doing four shows starting next Thursday.Here are the dates and times.

Thursday, 9/9 @ 10:00 PM

Friday 9/10, @ Midnight

Saturday 9/11 @ Midnight

Sunday 9/12 10:00 PM

Metal Insider has two pairs of tickets for each show. To get tickets, simply leave a comment in the section below stating which show you’d like to go to. We’ll be giving them out on a first come, first serve basis, and in the event of multiple entries for each show, winners will be chosen at random. In addition, you can also enter at our sister site The Laugh Button.