We love some Kingdom of Sorrow here at Metal Insider. So that’s why we were psyched to see them take over for our bro-bros over at Metal Sucks yesterday. But while you can’t deny the musical heritage of Jamey Jasta and Kirk Windstein, their takeover was, um, a little list-heavy. It was like they were given the year-end issue of Entertainment Weekly or some shit. With that in mind here’s our top five list of Kingdom of Sorrow’s lists. Now go buy their album or enter below to win a Kingdom of Sorrow prize pack from us and the fine folks at Relapse Records.
1) Kirk Windstein Beats-Off To These Classic Porno Stars
Props for being both random and disturbing.
2) Kirk Windstein’s Five Best Foods To Try In New Orleans
Lot’s of seafood and alcohol, great list although it’s sad that BP may be ruining half of it.
3) Jamey Jasta’s Picks for Five Great Album Covers
Behemoth #5? Not a bad cover, but #5 of every album cover in history?
4) Jamey Jasta: Seine Funf Beliebste Deutsche Metal-Bands
No love for Blind Guardian? Doro? Axxis?
5) Kirk Windstein’s Favorite Musical Artists of All Time (For Right Now)
Safest list they have, and fine choices at that.
There may have been enough random lists to make VH1 jealous, but all of them were interesting in their own way and are worth checking out for yourself. And if you haven’t already entered for your chance to win a Relapse prize pack that includes the deluxe edition of the new album Behind the Blackest Tears, as well as a T-shirt and a copy of the band’s self-titled debut click you can still do so here.
Periphery guitarist/mastermind Misha “Bulb” Mansoor recently spoke to MetalSucks about the release of their self-titled (and recorded) debut album. What started as an interview to get to know the promising experimental band quickly became an analysis of the music industry. Recording Periphery’s debut in his basement, Mansoor owns the bands’ masters and licenses them to five different labels Periphery is on worldwide (the album is out on Sumerian in the States). While it took over four years for them to record their debut album, the only cost they had to lay out was a computer and the equipment it took them to record the album. Mansoor says that technology and the Internet are pretty much the great equalizer:
That’s sort of one of the revolutions that half the people would say is destroying the recording industry, and half the people would say is reviving it. Because you can do what I do, which is bypass the need for advances on records because we recorded our album for free. It cost us nothing. I just did it in my apartment. Hey, anyone can do that if they put the time into it. 20 years ago that would have been impossible. If you wanted a pro-sounding recording, you had to turn out some real cash. We’re talking like $100-200 grand, and you have to use your album as collateral so owning your masters was out of the question as well. It’s just that all of this is affecting the industry in ways that we can’t even predict because of the ripples that it causes. It really opened up new kinds of deals that you can do. It allowed us to sign the kind of deal that we signed. We’re signed to 5 labels.
Forward-thinking musicians like Mansoor are the types of people that keep music quality good while the industry is struggling to stay a float. As solid as Periphery’s music is, their business model is even better. There’s an old model and a new model, and Mansoor, like the No Label Needed contest, are proving that there are ways to get things done outside of the big label system.
Our buddies MetalSucks.net are on the Andrew W.K. conspiracy beat as well, and they’ve posted a lengthy interview with Obituary and former Andrew W.K. drummer Donald Tardy.
Tardy’s take? He’s pretty sure/adamant there is only one Andrew W.K., though the conspiracy “proof” throws him off, too.
We’re hoping to be at Andrew’s February 23 public Q&A, live-blogging what’s sure to might be a strange conclusion development to this story.
Our friends at Metal Sucks let us know that there’s going to be a black metal theory symposium at Public Assembly in Brooklyn on December 12. Some of the papers being presented include:
“The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances”
“Black Confessions and Absu-lution”
“The light that illuminates itself, the dark that soils itself: blackened notes from Schelling’s underground”
“BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum”
There also be a showing of two artists.
This makes sense to a degree. Black metal is by its very nature, full of intelligent elitists. And it’s kind of clever the way two of the above papers have band names in the titles. On the other hand, really? We’re not anti-intellectualists at Metal Insider, not by a long shot. But hearing six hours of smug discourse on why an artist uses darkness as a metaphor and how their country’s nationalistic politics informs their work sounds like the opposite of how I’d want to spend an afternoon. It might be fun to show up in a Disturbed t-shirt and keep interrupting the presentations to ask when the bands start, though. If you’re interested, you can find out more information here.
This interview is a week old, but I need to make sure everyone has seen it.
Our buddies at MetalSucks interviewed Born Of Osiris, an upcoming bunch of young whippersnappers who apparently have no idea who Fear Factory, Glenn Danzig, Gorgoroth, Susan Boyle or Barbara Bush are.
Oh, to be young.
[Via MetalSucks]
It’s been one hell of a summer for band feuds, and between Fear Factory, Anthrax/Dan Nelson and Ozzy/Zakk, you can imagine my exhaustion.
I’m just too worn out from all this to process some press-driven drama about Scott Ian spreading rumors to Dave Mustaine about Lars Ulrich possibly nearly being kicked out of Metallica over 20 years ago. But I’d be remiss not to report on it, so here’s a link to Axl Rosenberg’s extensive coverage at Metal Sucks.
This is one of the best random genre mashups we’ve heard. Thanks Metal Sucks!
The above caption, taken from a New York Times profile of the crab-core, screamo-crunk-autotune-infested 2009 Warped Tour, is great on so many levels. Who is this Jon Caramanica, and why is a credible establishment like the New York Times hiring someone who takes this shit seriously?
I’ve been trying to write about this growing phenomenon little as possible (except for this, which I just didn’t have the conscience to let slide), as I think it only gives credence to this silly trend. Plus there’s enough hate out there as it is, and the Insider is all about rainbows and sunshine. I’ll just let Axl at Metal Sucks take this one:
The above photo of Attack! Attack!, from the NY Times review of this past weekend’s Vans Warped Tour, has one of the funniest captions I’ve ever read.
Unfortunately, the author, Jon Caramanica, praises Attack! Attack! for having “one of the day’s best sets.” But he does include this tidbit, which made me giggle:
The gentleman with “Kill All Posers” scrawled across his upper back in black marker let 3OH!3 know exactly how he felt during its midday set on Saturday at the Vans Warped Tour. Sidling through the crowd bopping feverishly to the band’s dopey, energetic blend of electro, hip-hop and punk, he kept two middle fingers raised and his face squarely on his destination, somewhere far away.
I’d love to buy that dude a beer. I’d also love to know what the fuck he was doing at Vans Warped with a “Kill All Posers” shirt on in the first place.
Props to Axl at Metal Sucks for finding this gem: high school yearbook photos of Dave Mustaine, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett (pictured). Click through for more, including Eddie Van Halen, Axl Rose, Slash, Tommy Lee, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and Jon Bon Jovi.
Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my senior year, terrible, overly-gelled mane. And I’m pretty sure that I once stuffed Kirk Hammet into a locker and made him do my algebra homework.
All this Fear Factory brou-haha got me dusting off my old copies of Demanufacture and Obsolete, and apparently I was not alone as MetalSucks’ Vince Neilstein started pulling up old videos and debating whether or not the band was/is nu-metal.
I always thought they were unfairly lumped in with the rest of those late 90′s bands, but the video he found sure does make a good case. I also thought they never got enough credit (if you think someone should get credit for this) for starting the whole screamy verse/catchy chorus thing that would eventually define metalcore. What do you think?
Posted by Melinda Dolezal on Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Lists, MetalSucks.net