(Un)Official Metal Thread

[New Damage]

Regarding Sonisphere, Slipknot are headlining/closing Sunday. Biffy Clyro headling on Saturday. And now they've added Metallica AND THE OTHER 3 of the Big Four for Friday.

This is the same as last year, except all of the Big Four will be at the UK show this year.

This just looks like a completely random line-up. Well, just Biffy really. I can't buy them as a headliner at Sonisphere. Granted I'm not a fan of them in the first place, but them being on the bill somewhere, even main stage, would be fine, but a sandwiched headliner between Metallica and Slipknot? Saturday looks like a let down for Sonisphere fans.

From Metallica's Facebook page: LINK

[Timmoru Suzuki]

Sonisphere just announced Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeath and Metallica.

It just became a VERY expensive time...

[DFF]

Bloodstock just announced At The Gates as a UK exclusive for 2011.

Might as well collate all the info we've got so far:

Bloodstock

Headliners: Immortal

Others: Rhapsy of Fire, Coroner, Morbid Angel, Tryptikon, Grave Digger, Therion, At The Gates, Lawnmower Deth, Angel Witch

Download

Headliners: Linkin Park, System of a Down

Others: Rob Zombie, Avenged Sevenfold

High Voltage

Headliners: Judas Priest, Dream Theater

Sonisphere UK

Headliners: Biffy Clyro, Slipknot

Special performances by: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax

Bloodstock and Download are definites for me. High Voltage a probable, should I be able to afford it.

[SRN]

Bloodstock only has appeal to me. Immortal and perhaps maybe Therion. Otherwise, meh, I'll take drinking beers and thrashing around at Tuska every time over THOSE line-ups.

[Skummy]

Hellfest is blowing most of the metal festivals out of the water right now. The Download line-up is embarrassingly bad, Bloodstock is pretty good, Sonisphere would have been good if any of "The Big Four" had actually put out anything decent in the last twenty years.

Hellfest has some dross, as all metal festivals inevitably do, but Ozzy, Judas Priest, Kreator, Mayhem, fucking BOLT THROWER, 1349, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Hawkwind, Korpiklaani, Skeletonwitch, Vader, Angel Witch, Bad Brains, Church Of Misery, The Exploited, The Haunted and The Melvins, and still probably a fuckton more to be announced? I can't imagine a better metal line-up next year.

[SRN]

Mayhem, Bolt Thrower, 1349, Electric Wizard, Kopirklaani, fucking Vader and The Melvins on the same festival? Christ. Still Tuska has six months to announce more bands. Lets hope they bring the big guns (that was not an AC/DC reference).

[DoubleX]

Sonisphere would have been good if any of "The Big Four" had actually put out anything decent in the last twenty years.

So I take it you didn't like Death Magnetic?

[tristy]

Go easy on 'em, Skummy.

[DFF]

Death Magnetic was a perfectly decent album.

[DFF]

More importantly - new Turisas!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9aHeTO3niE

[Skummy]

I don't think it was "perfectly decent", but even if it was, I look for more than "alright, actually" in my music.

Metallica are stuck in a Catch-22 situation - they clearly don't want to make music that sounds like The Black Album any more, but when they followed their own path - Load, Re-Load, etc., they got roundly criticised for recording stuff that didn't sound like everything else they've done, so they go back to the drawing board and promise to do something fast and heavy, they come out with St. Anger, and get criticised for it - because most metal fans don't want to hear new music, they want to hear The Black Album and ...And Justice For All and Master Of Puppets over and over again, so they recycle it into an entirely dull and forgettable new album. They either record what they want and get slated for it, or record what "the fans" want and release something completely uninspired.

I won't even go into how they've completely wasted the talent of two of the greatest bassists in heavy metal (Newsted and Trujillo) due to them being petulant overgrown children.

Mostly, though, Metallica just aren't that good any more. That's the important part. Nor are Slayer or Anthrax, and Megadeth are just silly.

[Liam]

But surely the back catalogue, in a festival setting, is more important? They may not have done anything really interesting over the last 20 odd years, but you know they'll be leaning heavily on the usual stuff, like Master Of Puppets, Enter Sandman, et al.

Probably the same with Slayer and Anthrax for that matter.

[DFF]

I don't think it was "perfectly decent", but even if it was, I look for more than "alright, actually" in my music.

Metallica are stuck in a Catch-22 situation - they clearly don't want to make music that sounds like The Black Album any more, but when they followed their own path - Load, Re-Load, etc., they got roundly criticised for recording stuff that didn't sound like everything else they've done, so they go back to the drawing board and promise to do something fast and heavy, they come out with St. Anger, and get criticised for it - because most metal fans don't want to hear new music, they want to hear The Black Album and ...And Justice For All and Master Of Puppets over and over again, so they recycle it into an entirely dull and forgettable new album. They either record what they want and get slated for it, or record what "the fans" want and release something completely uninspired.

I won't even go into how they've completely wasted the talent of two of the greatest bassists in heavy metal (Newsted and Trujillo) due to them being petulant overgrown children.

Mostly, though, Metallica just aren't that good any more. That's the important part. Nor are Slayer or Anthrax, and Megadeth are just silly.

It's all about the live experience with Metallica. I saw them last time around, on the Death Magnetic tour, and they were nothing short of phenomenal live. They had a nice mix of songs, and the stuff they did play from DM fit perfectly into the set. Hell, Cyanide got one of the best responses of the entire set/evening.

In fact, here's the setlist:

The Ecstasy of Gold

(Ennio Morricone cover)

That Was Just Your Life

The End of the Line

Ride the Lightning

The Memory Remains

One

Broken, Beat & Scarred

Cyanide

Sad But True

The Unforgiven

All Nightmare Long

The Day That Never Comes

Master of Puppets

Battery

Nothing Else Matters

Enter Sandman

Encore:

Am I Evil?

(Diamond Head cover)

The Wait

(Killing Joke cover)

Seek & Destroy

And how are Megadeth 'silly'?

[Skummy]

Megadeth have just never appealed to me - I hate Mustaine's voice, I think it just sounds ridiculous, his lyrics are dreadful, and the music is just dripping in metal cliché. There's very little there that actually appeals to me.

As for 'Tallica live...the old stuff just isn't good enough for me to care either way. I'd go and see them if they were playing a festival I was attending, but they're far from a selling point for me. I hate Master Of Puppets (the song, not the album), and all the hype it gets as an "epic" song, when really it's just several disparate parts really badly botched together, and with one of the most tedious guitar solos this side of "Am I Evil" (which is, admittedly, a fucking awesome song, but that solo is cringeworthy as all hell).

Honestly, the only songs that would appeal to me on that whole setlist are "One", "Sad But True" and maybe "Battery"...maybe the encore, I suppose. But, yeah, they're just not the huge selling point to me that they probably are to other people, and the fact that they've not put anything good out in a long, long time only cements that, really.

As for the other two - I couldn't care less about Anthrax any more, for the most part, though seeing them with Joey back in the band would be kinda cool. And my sister, brother-in-law and plenty of my friends have seen Slayer a fair few times at different places, and all but the die-hard fans have said that, actually, they were kinda boring.

Hellfest just has a much better, much more varied line-up, that is much more in line with my own tastes in metal, and doesn't rely solely on bands that have nothing left to offer - yes, I know Ozzy et al are playing, but at least Ozzy put out a good album recently, which is more than can be said for The Big Four.

[DFF]

In other news, Alestorm have announced their third album.

Greetings my fellow bawbags, pirates, and gobshites!

It is my very great pleasure to announce that on January 10th, Alestorm will be heading to the studio to record our 3rd album, which we're gonna call "Back Through Time". It's gonna be an epic adventure through piratical badassery in 11 tracks, with more drunken singalong anthems than you can shake a stick at. There will be songs about midgets. There will be songs about Wisconsin. There will be songs about travelling through time to kill Vikings. And of course, loads of songs about pirates doing what they do best; kicking your ass and stealing your wenches!

Lasse Lammert will once again be at the helm of the production, at his LSD Studios in Lubeck, Germany. We'll be there for about a month (1 week of recording, 3 weeks of alcohol abuse), and we're hopefully looking at a release in early summer, in time for us to kick your asses with these songs at all the festivals.

In no particular order, here's the songtitles that we've got penned for the album:

The Sunk'n Norwegian

Shipwrecked (Pure Dead Banjaxed)

Buckfast Powersmash

Rum

Back Through Time

Swashbuckled

Death Throes of the Terrorsquid

Midget Saw

Scraping the Barrel

Rumpelkombo

Barrett's Privateers

Of course these are all possibly subject to change, if we go crazy in the studio. There will inevitably also be a silly digipak version with a bunch of daft covers as bonus tracks as well, the exact details of which we'll announce at a later date.

Cheers everyone, and Merry Christmas!

Chris

Death Throes of the Terrorsquid has cult classic written all over it. Also, they played Rum on the Trenches & Mead tour and it's exactly what you think it'll be. And yes, the chorus revolves around them shouting 'rum' and 'yarrr'.

[Liam]

Yeah, to be honest, Megadeth are silly.

[Skummy]

HELLO ME

MEET THE REAL ME

[New Damage]

Hey guys, did you know that Dave Mustaine used to be in Metallica? Not that he mentions it.

[SRN]

I like Megadeth. But more for the music than the lyrics. But I do totally agree that Megadeth are silly. They need to just stop; god damn, I saw them live at Tuska, Mustaine seemed so old and so tired and so urgh. I couldn't care less for Metallica though, never really have. Slayer hasn't been good for years upon years, I only ever really liked the stuff did around the Reign In Blood-period. I've never been into Anthrax so yeah.

Fuck all of those, I'll take Meshuggah and Kvelertak live over The Big Four any time.

[Jayzon]

I need your help.

A local band I know, Bloodred Hourglass, are in a contest where the winner gets a worldwide record deal. There's 12 bands in the semifinal voting stage, and the four top vote getters go in the finals, where they will be judged by a panel of experts. BRHG need all the votes they can get, as they're not in the top 4 right now. The voting ends on Dec 31st, so there's still time.

You can only vote once per day, and you have to confirm the vote from an email they send to the address you need to enter. There's no spam, and you can unsubscribe the newsletter they send right away. I just wish to get as many votes as possible from you to Bloodred Hourglass.

The voting happens here. Remember to vote for Bloodred Hourglass, and remember to confirm your vote by clicking on the link in the email you get from Century Media.

Thanks!