Metal By Numbers is a weekly column in which we look at the top metal sellers and debuts of the week.
It’s an indie rock kinda week on Billboard’s charts, as Black Keys, Band of Horses, and LCD Soundsystem debut inside the top ten. As far as metal, you’ve got to go all the way down to #112 to find a debut. Exodus hit that spot, selling an impressive 4,500 copies of Exhibit B: The Human Condition. Cynic, A New Revolution, and To Speak of Wolves rounded out the debuts this week.
Notable Debuts:
Exodus, Exhibit B: The Human Condition (Nuclear Blast) #112, 4,500 copies
Take a second. Look up at that album cover. Pure genius.
Cynic, Re-Traced (Season of Mist) 750 copies
This remixed, stripped down EP featuring songs mostly from 2008′s Traced In Air contains one new song.
To Speak of Wolves, Myself > Letting Go (Tooth & Nail) 600 copies
This band is from North Carolina. I don’t know what else to say about them than that.
Anew Revolution, Imerica (E1) 450 copies
Remember Unloco and Slaves on Dope? These guys would probably rather you didn’t now. The band, which features alumni of both of those bands, just released their second album. Read more »
The 2010 Thrash and Burn tour line-up has been announced and will feature Asking Alexandria, Born of Osiris, Kittie, Stick to Your Guns, and others. Further information can be found here.
In conjunction with their tour together, Hydra Head Records is releasing a split 12″ with Isis and the Melvins. One of the Isis songs is a new one, while the Melvins songs are completely redone versions of songs from The Bride Screamed Murder. Details here.
Exodus has been confirmed for the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise. They the 18th of 40 confirmed bands including Amon Amarth, Obituary, Death Angel, Saxon, and probably most fitting, Swashbuckle.
One of the prizes for the No Label Contest & Series winner (Iron Thrones) to receive was a photo shoot with a professional photographer. Metal Insider chose Jeremy Saffer because of his history shooting bands like Every Time I Die, All That Remains and more. You can see an example of the photo’s on the bands MySpace.
This is one of the shorter videos for the No Label Needed Series. Click the picture and enjoy the day and photo shoot with Jeremy and Iron Thrones.
Kathryn Rhoads D’Argenzio, sister of late Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads, will be honoring her brother’s legacy be releasing a commemorative-edition Randy Rhoads wine.
Kathryn says: “In tribute to my brother Randy Rhoads, I would like to dedicate this special limited release Cabernet Sauvignon in honor of his legacy memory and my devoted love.”
The Randy Rhoads special edition 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon will be available on August 15, 2010. It is limited to two bottles per customer. For more information, go to this location.
The then-lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, Rhoads and two others were killed in 1982 when their small plane struck Osbourne’s tour bus and crashed.
If this was just another winery looking to cash in on a rock icon, we’d be a little put off by it. But since D’argenzio a) runs the winery and b) was related to Rhoads, it’s a nice tribute. It’d be kinda cool to have a wine-off to see which is the better wine, the Rhoads or Maynard James Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards. Anyone wanna send us a bottle of each?
Bleeding Through have debuted the video for their song “Anti-Hero” off of their self-titled album.
Yesterday in Des Moines, the eight members of Slipknot, appearing unmasked, held an emotional press conference expressing their sadness over the loss of bassist Paul Gray. They were also joined by Gray’s wife, Brenna, and his brother, Tony.
“The only way I can sum up Paul Gray is ‘love,’” frontman Corey Taylor said in the press conference. “Everything he did, he did for everyone around him whether he knew you or not … and that’s what he’s left behind for us: absolute love. I will miss him with every fiber of my heart, as will everybody at this table and everyone who knew him. He was the best of us.”
For a band that’s based a lot of their image on nihilism and anger, it’s touching to see them drop the facade and show themselves as a human beings who are clearly still shocked over the loss of their bandmate, husband and brother.
In other Gray-related news, Hail!, the all-star cover band that he’d announced he’d be touring with, announced that Black Label Society/Megadeth/White Lion bassist James Lomenzo will replace him on tour.
On Monday we were dealt a devastating blow with Paul‘s passing two days before our departure. We discussed the situation and unanimously thought that in the face of this tragedy we needed to remain strong and push forward because Paul would have vehemently insisted that the show must go on. In a desperate situation we made an emergency call to James Lomenzo and James responded with a Herculean effort, on only one day’s notice, to fly to Portugal and rescue the Rock In Rio festival. His immediate and unselfish call to arms single-handedly saved this entire tour.
The band also features Tim “Ripper” Owens and Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser, and has featured Megadeth’s David Ellefson.
The Des Moines Register reports that an autopsy of Slipknot bassist Paul Gray revealed no cause of death. Urbandale IA police stated that the cause of death is still under investigation, and the Polk County Medical Examiner is awaiting the cause of toxicology tests. It could be four to six weeks before the tests come back. The autopsy did confirm earlier reports that there were no signs of any foul play or trauma. He had been dead for several hours when found yesterday around 10:50am.
While some media reports have jumped the gun by stating that he died of a drug overdose, it’s up to the tests to reveal that. At the end of the day, this is a sad ending for a man whose band was still at the top of their game. I mean, like Slipknot or hate them, they were as popular as ever, and still able to play arenas over a decade into their career. And with Gray as a founding member of the band, it’s not like he’s going to be an easy person to replace, even if there are nine members. We’ll bring you more news on Gray’s untimely death as we hear it.
While he’s only been dead for a little over a week, Ronnie James Dio has been a national treasure for decades. His hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire has honored him by… well, not doing anything. Decibel writer and former Portsmouth resident Shawn Macomber is demanding that Ronald James Padanova be immortalized in the town where he was born in an editorial that ran last week on Portsmouth news portal seacoastonline.com:
I live in Philadelphia where the Betsy Ross House — in which Ross, who probably didn’t sew the first American flag, may not have actually lived — is considered a national landmark, yet my former home of Portsmouth boasts not so much as a plaque trumpeting it as the irrefutable birthplace of Ronnie James Dio, the Black Sabbath/Rainbow/Dio frontman who not only penned such timeless anthems as “Rainbow in the Dark” and “Neon Knights,” but also popularized the iconic “devil’s horns” as heavy metaldom’s official salute.
Macomber brings up an extremely valid point in his editorial. Dio went to high school in Cortland, NY, where they christened Dio Way all the way back in 1988. The least Portsmouth could do is give him a plaque or name a street after him. What he really deserves is a statue in the center of town. At the very least, it should look like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s in Austin, but if they’re actually going to make one, it makes the most sense to have him immortalized killing a dragon, like the title of his album, and the cover of the Intermission EP, picture above. So what do you say, Portsmouth?
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Metal By Numbers, Metal on Metal