The Theme Song Will Not Be Written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Key

The Theme Song Will Not Be Written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Key 

1. Metallica, "Blackened"
2. System Of A Down, "B.Y.O.B."
3. Faith No More, "We Care A Lot"
4. Black Sabbath, "War Pigs"
5. Anthrax, "Bring the Noise"
6. Gojira, "Ocean Planet"
7. Testament, "Practice What You Preach"
8.  Living Colour, "Cult of Personality"
9. Suicidal Tendencies, "Send Me Your Money"
10. Lamb of God, "Now You've Got Something to Die For"
11. Revocation, "Pestilence Reigns"
12. Megadeth, "Peace Sells"
13. Ministry, "Thieves"
14. Sepultura, "Refuse/Resist"
15. Rage Against the Machine, "Killing in the Name"
16. Slayer and Ice-T, "Disorder"
17. Misery Index, "Traitors"

A post-elections gift for some of my fellow campaigners, culled from a few of my past political metal mixes.

Hårdrockens Historia

For Malik Bendjelloul.

Black Sabbath, "The Mob Rules"

Ronnie James Dio was as great of a singer as Black Sabbath could have found after firing Ozzy Osbourne in 1979. While never as widely beloved as the Ozzman, Dio was irrefutably more musically talented than his predecessor, not to mention charismatic enough to be  a rock star in his own right, rather than just a technically gifted but bland singer trying to live up to a brilliant loose cannon (Sammy Hagar, Myles Kennedy).

Still, most Dio-era Sabbath doesn't hold up to the Ozzy years. It's good, and often great, but not All Time Top Five Metal Bands great. No headbanger could argue with "Neon Knights," but only a fool would rank it above "War Pigs" or "Iron Man." With Ozzy, I wonder how often the band felt like they were dealing with a savant--Dio was professional, musically versed, agreeable and maybe even better, but they could never sell as many records or sell out as many arenas as they did with hazardous old Ozzy.

Dio's best moment with Sabbath, and arguably the only one that stands on par with the Ozzy-era classics, is "The Mob Rules." First heard in the midnight movie classic Heavy Metal, it's one of the only Dio songs that swings instead of marches. Set to a Motörhead-worthy gallop and sung with an exuberance that would open up an entire career for Jack Black years later, "The Mob Rules" proves that Dio could live up to Sabbath's reputation while taking them in a dramatic new direction.

Queen, "The Invisible Man"

Somehow I missed the Ralph Ellison birth centennial at the start of this month, now being celebrated in New York with an exhibit of his personal record collection at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Ellison's jazz affinity runs deep enough to fill at least one book (Living with Music) and more scholarly essays than anyone can count, but the only song I could think of when my 11th grade English teacher assigned him was by Queen.



Queen's 80s work is underrated. Sure, the albums were spotty, but they always were (listen to A Night at the Opera lately?), and Queen's Broadway-rock singles adapted to those heinous 80s rock production trends better than, say, Black Sabbath or KISS. While the music video is hopelessly stuck in the 80s, complete with the band cast as video game characters, the song itself sounds surprisingly industrial for a group of middle-aged guys in 1989, dreaming up EDM while Avicii was still in a womb. If the Freddie Mercury's verses and Brian May's main progression sound familiar, it's because they're ripped from "Ghostbusters" and "Undercover of the Night," respectively. But the kids can't tell. He's the Invisible Man.

AC/DC, "Jailbreak"

I can't believe AC/DC is turning 40 this year. They still seem like the youngest classic rock band, eternal teenagers to grizzled old Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, every new hard rock band's cooler older brother. Never going to make an album with Allison Krauss, never going to be on reality TV, never even going to release a Greatest Hits album. If the past four decades are any indication, the upcoming studio album will sound much like the last 15, and the proposed 2014 tour will be as mind-blowing as anything you can experience in an arena.



It started back in1974, when a band called the Velvet Underground (Malcolm and Angus Young already knew there was another band called the Velvet Underground--they just didn't care) met professional miscreant Bon Scott and renamed themselves AC/DC. Their earliest recordings would take years to get released in America (probably because, like the first Motörhead albums, someone thought the music was too much for us to handle,) and by the time we got "Jailbreak" in 1984, AC/DC had already surpassed it with albums like Highway to Hell and Back in Black. But I still love hearing it today as one of the best ever rock bands on the long way to the top.

Bob Dylan once said of Elvis Presley, "Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail." It's a sentiment that AC/DC cembodies on "Jailbreak," and one they still carry today.

Halloween '13

No one has influenced my mix-making more than Ellen, who gave me first ever mix CD. For years, she made one mix every Halloween season, each of which soundtracked much of my high school and college years. Ellen's mixes were the first place that I heard Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Nina Simone, Joanna Newsom and others.

It's been a few years since she's made a Halloween mix, but I'm hoping to get her back into the habit this year.



Halloween '13

1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry"
2. Daikaiju, "Attack of the Crab Women"
3. Fantômas, "Night of the Hunter"
4. Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, "Lil' Red Riding Hood"
5. Johnny Cash, "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky"
6. My Bloody Valentine, "Feed Me With Your Kiss"
7. Link Wray, "Jack the Ripper"
8. Danzig, "Mother"
9. Guns N' Roses, "You're Crazy"
10. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Frenzy"
11. Black Sabbath, "Supernaut"
12. Jarvis Cocker & Beth Ditto, "Temptation"
13. The Specials, "Ghost Town"
14. Public Image Ltd., "Flowers of Romance"
15. The Edgar Winter Group, "Frankenstein"
16. The Five Blobs, "The Blob"
17. Thom Yorke, "Black Swan"
18. Fiona Apple, "Dull Tool"
19. Bauhaus, "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
20. Pixies, "In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)"

Rather than compete with Ellen's mixes, which came with the aura of pumpkin-carving and costume-donning, mine are meant to sound a little more sinister. Black Sabbath's most underrated song gets a spot, as do the reliably creepy Hawkins and Sam the Sham. I'm also to playing Ellen's love for movies with Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead," Fantômas' tribute to Night of the Hunter, the Pixies' take on Eraserhead's "In Heaven" and the original Blob theme, which, amazingly, was written by Burt Bacharach.

Ellen is also a big Fiona Apple and Jarvis Cocker fan, so I've included non-album tracks from both of them. I'm hoping she'll appreciate the cabin fever horror of "You're Crazy" and the beautifully bleak "Black Swan," and I'm pretty sure she'll find Danzig hilarious. But if she doesn't, she can always rock out to "Frankenstein."

Ozzy Osbourne, No More Tears

Zakk Wylde is metal's greatest one album wonder. He's written a few good songs with Ozzy in the past 20 years, as well as many bad ones with Black Label Society, a band that's apparently only enjoyed by Guitar World readers. But give him his due, in all the endorsements, record sales and touring slots that he deserves, never forgetting that he co-wrote and played lead on the best solo album by heavy metal's Elvis.


Nearly everyone points to Blizzard of Ozz or Diary of a Madman, the two albums that Ozzy wrote with Randy Rhoads, as the towering achievements of his solo career. They're not far off. But for songwriting, Ozzy peaked with 1991's No More Tears. Like a few of his metal legend contemporaries, mainly Judas Priest, Ozzy was both distancing himself from glam metal and competing with the rising thrashers of the early '90s. That sense of urgency, plus the enlistment of Motörhead's Lemmy and budding guitar god Wylde, ending up giving Ozzy an album that held up not only with his Randy Rhoads records but his indelible work on the first six Black Sabbath records.

It was "I Don't Want to Change the World," not "Crazy Train" or "Bark at the Moon," that made me a dedicated Ozzy fan. That stadium-sized chorus dishes out one of metal's most badass messages. While bands as varied as Mötley Crüe and Slayer were trying to scare the pants off of parents, preachers and politicians, Ozzy did so without even trying, or so he claimed. "Don't you try to teach me no original sin/I don't need your pity for the shape I'm in," goes one defiant couplet. "I don't want to change the world/I don't want the world to change me."



No More Tears also is the last genuinely creepy Ozzy album. Long before he was metal's (and eventually, with The Osbournes, America's) goofy dad, Ozzy could chill you with a child abuse narrative, from the gleefully irksome "Mr. Tinkertrain" to the equally haunting and infectious title track. "Hellraiser," an ode to Clive Barker's Pinhead, thrashed hard enough for Motörhead to record their own version for March or Die.




Ozzy has always had an excellent team, but never any with more chemistry than the one he has here, from powerhouse drummer Castillo to longtime bassist Bob Daisley, playing on his last ever Ozzy record. But the first mate, of course, is Wylde, whose playing spills out into mountains of riffage and solos that always seem to hit the sky and somehow end at the right time. Other than Slash, no hard rocker was making his axe sound this simultaneously professional and spontaneous.

But Ozzy also came into his own as a balladeer on No More Tears. "Mama, I'm Coming Home" put the last ten years of power ballads in their place, deservedly becoming the album's biggest hit and reportedly earning co-writer Lemmy more than he had earned in his previous 20 years as a musician. A perfect pop song played on metal instruments, it's only matched by the equally lovely "Time After Time," making No More Tears home to the two best ballads that Ozzy ever recorded. Giving any weight to songs played at this pace is no easy task, as shown by Ozzy's attempts to recreate their success, but here he put himself at the top of the game. Think of Ozzy's only peers among hard rock frontmen--David Lee Roth, Brian Johnson, maybe Steven Tyler or Paul Stanley--and imagine any of them trying to carry either of these songs.






One of the many things that has set Ozzy apart from his peers is his ability to end an album well--remind yourself that "Steal Away (The Night)", "Diary of a Madman" and "Shot in the Dark" are all closers. No More Tears tops itself off with one of Ozzy's best notes, the wistful "Road to Nowhere," wherein the Ozzzman muses, "The wreckage of my past is haunting me/It just won't leave me alone." As he told us nine songs ago, Ozzy doesn't want to change the world. He didn't set out to be the Christian Right's worst nightmare, but he became it just by being being born with an inimitable voice and a knack for taking risks. The rest of us wouldn't have him any other way.



Reflecting on No More Tears today, it sounds even more special when considering how short the magic lasted. The production and songwriting both got soggy, Wylde got caught up in the Guitarist Wars and started overplaying. Ozzy's voice and body can no longer keep up with his mind. But no reality TV shows, tabloid appearances, pinch harmonics exhaustion or inebriated performances can make No More Tears any less awesome.

Pantera, "Hellbound"

"Hell ain't a bad place to be," the polemicist Bon Scott tells us in his Let There Be Rock dissertation. As usual, he was being understated. Hell is the most metal place in the universe, as emphasized by Slayer's waiting, Venom's welcome and Stryper inviting the Devil there. Ozzy and Lemmy both went a-raising, right on the same song. Some of metal's finest documents start in the underworld, or at least right next door, including AC/DC's two best albums, Megadeth's most violent junkie dream and Guns N' Roses two-CD loose cannon. But no one ever made it sound louder or angrier than Pantera.

Pantera dominated the '90s as the world's best and biggest metal band, just as Black Sabbath ran the '70s and Metallica owned the '80s. They kicked off the decade by introducing themselves as the Cowboys From Hell, but bookended it by dragging us back home with them on their final album.



Even when Dimebag was still alive, there was much uncertainty as to whether we'd ever see another Pantera album. Every Pantera fan who read about them in metal mags (and if you were a Pantera fan, you absolutely read metal mags) knew that there was infighting between Phil Anselmo and the Brothers Abbott. It had been four years since The Great Southern Trendkill, years in which mainstream metal had been reoccupied by Korn and Limp Bizkit. But on the wonderfully preposterously-titled Reinventing the Steel, Pantera outsavaged not only the nu-metal legions, but more importantly their own storied career.

"Hellbound" is a band at their most ruthless, throwing all of their brutality into their last testament while still hanging on the the grooves. Phil Anselmo's banshee scream in the chorus is the stuff of immortals. He couldn't keep it much longer, as his voice settled into its present-day baritone, and the band couldn't even stay together after the Reinventing the Steel tour, with Phil Anselmo famously telling Metal Hammer "Dimebag Darrell deserves to be beaten severely." That quote was run on the magazine's cover one week before Darrell was killed by a gunman.

Pantera may have no longer been friends on Reinventing the Steel, but by Satan's graces they were still a band. If Hell really is other people, than I'm glad Pantera chose to leave the tape rolling.

Metalie

Natalie asked me for a metal mix. I know that she enjoys Loretta Lynn, the White Stripes and Marilyn Manson, so I took it from there.



Metalie

1. Metallica, "Battery"
2. Nine Inch Nails, "Wish"
3. Goatwhore, "Apocalyptic Havoc"
4. Torche, "Healer"
5. Motörhead, "Ace of Spades"
6. Judas Priest, "Breaking the Law"
7. Lamb of God, "Now You've Got Something to Die For"
8. Living Colour, "Cult of Personality"
9. Anthrax, "Got the Time"
10. Black Sabbath, "The Mob Rules"
11. Monster Magnet, "Power Trip"
12. Iron Maiden, "The Number of the Beast"
13. High on Fire, "Rumors of War"
14. Deftones, "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)"
15. Ministry, "Jesus Built My Hotrod
16. Suicidal Tendencies, "You Can't Bring Me Down"
17. Rage Against the Machine, "Guerilla Radio"
18. Gojira, "Vacuity"
19. Slayer, "Angel of Death"
20. Converge, "Last Light"

I tried to sequence Metalie around an ideal jukebox night at the Lucky 13 Saloon. You come for your hits--your "Ace of Spades," "Breaking the Law" and "The Number of the Beast." But you stick around to find out that there's an American death metal band that rocks like Goatwhore, or to remember that the best Dio-era Black Sabbath song was on the Heavy Metal soundtrack.

I also took a few cues from Natalie's sister, whom I've known to teach Suicidal Tendencies in her classroom and throw horns to Monster Magnet outside of it. I've even included a few songs from a mix I made for Natalie's sister, most notably the Metallica/Nine Inch Nails combo that kicks things off. I wanted to try something new, but couldn't resist the way that the two sound together, or think of many bands that stand up next to either of them. They didn't become the great crossover metal and industrial artists by accident. In any case, consider Metalie a Sister Mix to her sister's mix.

But Natalie is her own lass, and she gets her own songs. I'm hoping that the Torche, Gojira and High on Fire tracks are all winning endorsements for modern metal. Maybe Natalie will hear Jeff Hanneman's immortality in "Angel of Death" and a Lamb of God song that wouldn't exist without him. Maybe this mix will provide endless headbanging delights, or maybe she'll forehand it into the garbage by the time she gets to "Guerilla Radio." But if that isn't metal, I'll eat my Motörhead box set.

KISS, "Detroit Rock City"

The Motor City's influence on rock n' roll is unquestionable. The last 60 years of popular music are unthinkable without Motown, and with The Stooges, MC5, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent and even Grand Funk Railroad, Michigan's largest city almost had a monopoly on early '70s hard rock and proto-punk. But when I think of Detroit, the first thing that comes to mind is a group of headbanging New Yorkers singing its praises.



For a band that gets mocked for being so unabashedly commercial, "Detroit Rock City" is a pretty weird song. The album version starts with a prolonged intro of background noise, which is still the only part on Destroyer that I skip over, and it ends with a car crash sounds that is terrorizing for anyone who listens while driving. The song's title, one of the best things about it, gets left out of most of the choruses. "Detroit Rock City" doesn't even get KISS' standard structure (the verse-chorus-verse is twice disrupted by that awesome bridge) or subject matter (quick: name another KISS song that isn't about girls or being in a rock band.) For once, Gene Simmons sounds like he cares about playing bass. Ace Frehley, sometimes thought of as the band's only musician, plays it pretty safe during the solo.

Yet it sounds utterly great all together. KISS hadn't learned to stay in their comfort zone yet, and that innocence rewarded them with a stone cold classic, putting them in a league with Black Sabbath and Queen. But this is still KISS, and of course "Detroit Rock City" is best heard from the stage. I love this performance here, captured at the end of the film of the same name.



Listening to "Detroit Rock City" today, I'm reminded of a Bruce Campbell anecdote from a horror convention. During a Q & A, one attendee asked the lantern-jawed Evil Dead star if he had any advice for an aspiring B movie actor. "You don't aspire to be a B movie actor," said Campbell. "You aspire to be an A movie actor, and if you're lucky you end up in Z movies."

It's no secret that KISS wanted to the biggest band in the world, in particular the Beatles--four distinct rock star personalities, run by the guitarist and bassist, with occasional songwriting from the lead guitarist and a few songs written for the drummer to sing. Like everybody else, they didn't quite get there, and "Detroit Rock City" isn't the Beatles. KISS were trying to be an A band, and maybe they'll never be The Fab Four or The World's Greatest Rock N' Roll Band. But in "Detroit Rock City," they're The Hottest Band in the World, a truly incredible B band.

Why I'm Glad That Kim Deal Left the Pixies

The release of "Bagboy," the Pixies' first new song in nine years and their first startlingly good one in 22, will probably kick off a new set of gripes and sighs from fans still recovering from Kim Deal's announcement that she had left the band last month. It's always sad to see an excellent team split up, but in the curious case of the Pixies, it's also a relief.



It's hard to remember how mind-blowing it was when the Pixies reunited in 2004. Their influence and popularity had grown exponentially since their break-up, and most of us thought we'd never get a chance to see them. No former indie rock band sparked more of a will-they-or-won't-they debate--it seemed obvious that Pavement and Guided by Voices were coming back, while Hüsker Dü and the Smiths were always a lost cause. And as anyone who caught that first comeback tour can tell you, it was glorious. All the songs and insanity that a superfan could hope for.

But if the Pixies' legacy had grown in their absence, it seemed to diminish with every year that they spent touring without a new album. Here they are again, the Pixies, on another summer tour playing the old hits. A lot of people were fine with this, judging how how lucrative those tours have been. But I want to know that my favorite bands are pushing themselves artistically, and not just resting on their classics. Anything to show that they were an actual band again, not just a nostalgia act like the Eagles.

It's quite possible that a new Pixies album would not have been good. But it would have been better than nothing, which is what they were doing. The fact that they've finally released a new song now that Kim's left, and have promised to play new songs on their upcoming tour, makes me wonder if Kim was holding them back. Of course she was a crucial part of the band, but as "Bagboy" proves, Black Francis, David Lovering and Joey Santiago can be exciting without her. They even sound good enough to fool Rolling Stone and Pitchfork into mistakenly reporting that Deal appeared on "Bagboy" in their initial news stories. The Pixies are going to be fine.

Greg Kot once wrote of My Bloody Valentine (I can't find the exact quote) that when a band reunites, they get one comeback tour, a victory lap before they need to start releasing new material. The new stuff doesn't have to be great. The mediocre new Stooges album does nothing to diminish Raw Power or Fun House, much less their always-phenomenal live shows. If you're going to tour once and then stop, like At the Gates, then we're lucky that we got to see you again. If you're going to come back for good and release new albums, like Black Sabbath, then we're lucky that you're still a band. But don't just tour year after year without anything to show for it.

I hope that Kim's departure is the kick in the ass that the Pixies need right now, and "Bagboy" indicates that it is. Maybe Frank Black will release a great solo album, or maybe he'll record something new with his bandmates. He's made great records without Deal before, and anything that he writes is still worth a listen. Maybe Kim will do something cool with the Breeders. Maybe Kim Shattuck from the Muffs, Deal's replacement, will bring out something new in the Pixies. Maybe they'll all get back together again in ten years, and it'll be amazing again. But whatever they do, it has to be better than the past nine years of studio silence.

Ten Metal Bands to See Before You Die: Iron Maiden

If heavy metal had a CV, Iron Maiden shows would go at the very top. Nothing comes closer to packing everything that's great about metal into one sitting than a stage with Eddie and his human counterparts. It's humorous, political and fantastical. Sometimes it feels raw and grandiose at the same time. Iron Maiden are likeable enough to sell out arenas all over the world, yet metal enough to do it with barely any mainstream press or radio. Iron Maiden may never make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and if they don't, it'll be another feather in their caps.



Iron Maiden doesn't have to be your favorite band, or even your 30th favorite band for one to see that what they do with an audience is breathtaking. None of the musicians, the youngest of whom turns 55 this summer, seem to have been affected by aging, narcotics or world-weariness at all. If anything, they've improved, hitting higher notes and faster rhythms than the ones reached on their classic '80s output. Even on their "hits" tours (the best way to see them, between "new album" tours), they never come across as a nostalgia band, but rather a band that's still getting better at playing their best songs. It's entirely possible that they've spent their entire musical careers preparing for the performance you're about to see on any given night.

In the must-see Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage, Neal Peart tells an interviewer that he will never get tired of playing "Tom Sawyer," because it's always difficult to play, and therefore he always feels good whenever he pulls it off. One can imagine everyone in Iron Maiden relating. They never stop having a blast treating their international audience to workouts like "2 Minutes to Midnight" or "The Number of the Beast," or grinning enthusiastically while running and/or swinging their guitars. On Maiden's newer albums, sometimes they seem to be writing longer and more complicated songs just to rise to the challenge, but onstage they find that challenge in their greatest music, conquering it like the heroes of "Aces High." Songs that you skipped over on Fear of the Dark sound like they should have gone on Best of the Beast. I could sooner imagine Iron Maiden releasing a rap album than phoning in a show.

For a purely metal arena show, it doesn't get any better than Maiden. More metal than AC/DC, less mainstream than Metallica, more musical than KISS, more theatrical than Judas Priest, funnier than Black Sabbath and more agile than anyone this side of Shakira, Iron Maiden are consistently the greatest live metal band in the world. Heard and viewed from any seat in any arena, Bruce Dickinson is an electrifying frontman, punctuating each power metal riff and burst of flame and with vocals that always seem to defy the larynx without forgetting to carry the tunes. If he leaves the stage for a moment, it's for an elaborate set or costume change--you're not getting any extended solos or banter tonight. Even their encore breaks don't last long enough for a bathroom stop. Just hit after hit, with a few engaging quips and explosions in between.

With another band, Maiden's stage, props, pyro and zombie mascot might seem excessive. But part of Iron Maiden's magic is their ability to blend their bells and whistles into the show itself. Their stage sets seem simple, humble even, when fused with the exhilarating hooks of "The Trooper," "Wasted Years" or "Heaven Can Wait." The brutality, steadfastness and musicianship that drive Iron Maiden's best songs deserve the sphinxes, sarcophagi and Union Jacks.

Iron Maiden with a stage is as natural and necessary as Babe Ruth with a bat or Fred Astaire with a dance floor. When people talk about metal that takes rock n' roll to extremities, metal that confronts the worst of life and celebrates the best of it, metal as high art and something to bang your head and flash your horns to, this is what they're talking about.

Ten Metal Bands to See Before You Die: AC/DC

If AC/DC just sat there onstage while a tape played "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," "T.N.T.," "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Back in Black" and "Highway to Hell," they'd still earn consideration for this list. But as anyone who has seen The Who this century can tell you, playing great songs does not make you a great live band.



40 years into one of the most incredible careers in audio history, AC/DC are still claiming metal's greatest dancer, swinging from the clappers of Hell's Bells, giving us a Whole Lotta Rosie and leaving everything in their wake Thunderstruck. Getting had, getting took and telling folks it's harder than it looks.

By working their way into the 200 Million Sold club without ever deviating from the harder-than-hard rock formula that made them famous, AC/DC makes success look as easy as "The Jack." Then again, nobody has ever played those three chords with the kind of gleeful punch that Angus gives them, not to mention the wildman blues-metal freakout solo that often takes over "Let There Be Rock." The most famous Keith Richards quote about his guitars ("Give me five minutes and I'll make 'em all sound the same") can be applied to Angus Young. But give his admirers four decades, and none of them will sound like him.

No great guitarist this side of Prince has made his instrument such an enthralling part of his performance, without taking away from the playing. Watching Angus Young with a Gibson is akin to watching James Brown with a microphone stand. "I'm a rotten guitar player if I'm standing still," Angus has said, and while I don't believe it, you can tell that he does.

AC/DC does not have many of peers, but even the ones who come closest are put to shame by AC/DC's show. They're not pretending to like each other (Aerosmith, Van Halen,) physically ravaged by their decades of drug abuse (Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe) or dressing up their guitarist to look like the guy they kicked out (KISS, Guns N' Roses). AC/DC prefer to keep their drama beneath them, where it belongs. They continue to set examples for all younger artists, meaning nearly everyone, and meaning nobody who puts on a show like these guys do.

Five Great Videos of Fans Meeting Musicians

1. Crazy Russian Guy flips out over Dave Mustaine

Be sure to watch this one with subtitles. My favorite part is when he re-enacts one of Mustaine's legendary alleged fistfights. How often is Dave Mustaine the second-craziest guy in the room? Maybe not even here.



2. Black Sabbath Super Fan

This video of a Chris Farley-type meeting Dio-era Sabbath went viral a few years ago, to the point where if you yell out "THE GODS ARE HERE!" at a metal show, at least half the attendees will know what you're talking about.



3. Acrassicauda meets James Hetfield

All of you need to watch Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the tense and touching doc about four Iraqi headbangers fighting the Hussein dictatorship's ban on heavy metal in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Thankfully, the boys were granted refugee status in the United States, where they met James Hetfield and made some of the greatest faces that I've ever seen.



4. Crashing with Andrew W.K.

This could be an entire list of Andrew W.K. encounters, who even hosted his own MTV2 show specifically about meeting and helping fans, Your Friend, Andrew W.K. That concept, however, may have stemmed from Crashing with Andrew W.K., a special where our host spent a few days in a girls' dorm at North Carolina Central University. This idea deserves a full-length movie.





5. The Red Hot Chili Peppers on FANatic

Nobody talks about FANatic anymore, but in the late '90s it was one of the last watchable programs on MTV. Every episode gave a few megafans a chance to meet their heroes, and of course the craziest fanatic was there for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Keep an eye on that clipboard, and be sure to stick around for the ending. If any of you can track this guy down, please tell me what he's up to.

Metal Injection's Top 10 Influential Heavy Metal Albums

"Most influential album" lists are always futile, seeing how there's generally only a few supremely influential artists that would fill up the most accurate lists. All "influential albums" lists aim for diversity, but if we're being realistic, the ten most influential metal albums of all time are the first five Black Sabbath releases and the first five Metallica albums.

Even with that in mind, Metal Injection's list of the most influential metal albums is bewildering. Venom's fun but dated Black Metal over Slayer's nonpareil Reign in Blood? Dream Theater in the top ten metal anything? Nothing from Motörhead, Judas Priest or Megadeth? Scream Bloody Gore may have been Death's debut, but did it really grab more ears and shape the direction of metal more than Human or Individual Thought Patterns?

All that being said, I love this list. For the past two weeks, I've been checking the latest updates at 5pm and rushing home from work to see what the Metal Injection and Metal Sucks staff (and other headbanging experts) have to say about albums by At the Gates, Iron Maiden and Pantera. This is metal in the strictest sense, which means no Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Van Halen, but also metal in that the MI list sticks it to conventions. This isn't your average Rolling Stone list with Paranoid and Master of Puppets, neither of which appear here, but a fresh look at classic metal records from some fans with the kind of Wayne and Garth enthusiasm that your average Pitchforkers are missing. After this, maybe even Slaughter of the Soul will turn up in Rolling Stone someday.

Enjoy the full list here.

Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Ozz

Who would've thought that Ozzy would be the most successful member of Black Sabbath? Ozzy, with the biggest drug problem and the fewest songwriting contributions? Bat-chomping, ant-snorting Ozzy and not riff architect Tony Iommi? It'd be like having Art Garfunkel sell more records and write better music than Paul Simon. But on Blizzard of Ozz, backed up by a prodigious American guitarist and a patient but hard-headed manager whom we know today as Sharon, Ozzy recorded one of the all-time great metal debuts, a gateway metal album for generations.



For starters it's got "Crazy Train," Ozzy's signature song and a piece that seems to end up in more movies and football games every year. But it's also got the lawsuit-inspiring "Suicide Solution," the Socratic "I Don't Know" and the environmentalist "Revelation (Mother Earth)," which beat "Blackened" by nearly ten years. "Mr. Crowley" bashed all the subtlety out of Led Zeppelin's occultist leanings. There's even a classical guitar instrumental that hinted at the promise of Randy Rhoads. Ozzy rushed out two albums in the first two years of his career, perhaps because his handlers didn't think he'd live much longer, but Rhoads' neo-classical stylings never run dry on Blizzard.

Contrarians have argued that Ozzy is only as good as his guitarists, and he's certainly worked with some of the best. But like Elvis, Ozzy's mannerisms are so ingrained in popular culture that it's easy to forget what a visionary musician he was. Listen to those wacky harmonies on "Steal Away (The Night)" or the way he shifts the lunatic intro of "Crazy Train" into a cheerful singalong. Without Rhoads, he may not have had the melody, but without Ozzy, Rhoads would have been another Steve Vai, a guitartist's guitarist whose influence would never transcend music theory students. Outside of Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, there has never been a better musician/rock star team-up in metal history.

Three Ways to Improve Your Album

Five minutes from Sylosis' Monolith. 67 more to go.

Every year, my admiration for artists who pour themselves into creating and sequencing a full-length work of art swells. In the face of YouTube, iTunes, American attention spans and singles acts, a select few still care about making a great album. Imagine if most popular books only had two good chapters, or if most movies had a couple of good scenes. That's the state of albums today. Dependably creative artists like Converge are both rare and crucial to modern music, just as someone like Jonathan Franzen is to literature.

However, if we are going to keep putting great artists on a pedestal, we still need to hold them to high standards. There are many reasons why music isn't selling as well as it did in decades past. I'll argue that one reason is that in general, most new albums and artists, metal included, aren't as great as their predecessors. With music sales bringing in less revenue than ever for record labels, artists have enough creative control to indulge their best impulses more than ever, but also their worst. Bands as varied as Rush, Gojira and Baroness released good, even great albums this year, but with minimal effort they could have been much better. Here's how.

1. Keep it short.

This seems like the biggest problem for many of today's metal bands. A CD can contain up to 80 minutes of music, but that's no reason for your band to use all 80. If you're lucky enough to find an audience, you should leave them wanting more, not less. To paraphrase Lou Reed, 30 minutes is fine, 40 is pushing it, 50 and you're into jazz.

This isn't a recent phenomenon. Some of the world's finest metal bands have run out of steam over hour-plus long players. Guns N' Roses were the best band in the world when they recorded Use Your Illusion I and II, and even they couldn't get through two-and-a-half hours without "So Fine." But let's look at the good. Slayer's Reign in Blood, one of metal's only indisputable classics, doesn't make it to the half-hour mark. At the Gates reshaped death metal in 34 minutes on Slaughter of the Soul. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, all legendary for their epic compositions, found ways to end their best albums in under 45 minutes. Don't point out that you love all 65 minutes of Metallica's ...And Justice for All until you remind yourself that your band isn't Metallica.

2. Cut the interludes.

Hip-hop is the worst at this. Intro skits, outro skits, intermission skits, phone call skits--these are among the reasons why anyone with a considerable hip-hop collection dreads the shuffle option on their preferred listening device. Metal is also culpable, but instead of skits, they use musical interludes. This year, Veil of Maya, Between the Buried and Me and the Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza littered their records with tossed-off, minute-long pieces that went from being entertaining to skipable over a few listens. Elmore Leonard once said of writing, "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." The best musicians record albums the same way.

3. Save some of the best for last.

Nearly every metal album I've heard in the past several years, even the great ones, are unarguably front-loaded. You don't play all your best songs in the first half of the show, and you also shouldn't play all your best songs in the first half of your album. Slayer ended records with "Raining Blood" and "Seasons in the Abyss." The Number of the Beast closes out with "Hallowed Be Thy Name." How many people who buy Lamb of God records can name a song on the second half of Sacrament or Ashes of the Wake? Those are both great records, but will anyone ever put either of them on a countdown near Rust in Peace? "Tornado of Souls" and "Lucretia" are on side two.

With most listeners sequencing their own playlists these days, some will contend that these gripes don't matter. But maybe listeners would be less inclined mess around with bands' intended tracklists if more artists proved that they knew how to make an album.

Song of the Day: Dio, "Rainbow in the Dark"

When Das Racist, who just announced their break-up, first grabbed my attention, one thing that impressed me was their tribute to Dio's "Rainbow in the Dark". It's not a well-known song among non-metalheads, and with many music fans still dismissing Ronnie James Dio as being Black Sabbath's Sammy Hagar, I was thrilled to hear the alternarap trio give the man his overdue props (this was before Dio's passing in summer 2010).



Almost 30 years later, that synth riff still grates. It sounds a little like Journey, and you can hear why Dio didn't want to include "Rainbow on the Dark" on Holy Diver, or why he delegated more attention to the guitars when he played "Rainbow in the Dark" live. But you can also hear exactly why he's Jack Black's favorite singer. That impassioned, slightly goofy fury is a line that few singers ever walked so well, and the combination of Dio's usual fantastical lyrics with his then-discouragement over leaving Black Sabbath treated the world to one of metal's best performances.

Rush at the Barclays Center

Maybe being a Rush fan in 2012 isn't the international dorkdom give away that it once was, but you never could have told that from their show last Monday at the Barclays Center, the new arena's first rock show.


Rush played nine songs from their steam-punk themed new album, Clockwork Angels. Props and videos told a vague story about the band living together as gnomes, with punchlines that wouldn't have made it past Bazooka Joe. Unlike fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, whose tours rescue his '80s songs from the abyss of '80s rock production, Geddy Lee still plays bass and synthesizer at the same time on songs like "The Big Money" and "Red Sector A." Neal Peart got two drums solos, and deserved a third one. Oh yeah, for the first time ever in Rush history, they're bringing a string section on tour with them.

Mainstream respect has been a long time coming for Rush, capped with this year's Rock Hall nomination, and critics are now either grudgingly or genuinely admiring the band's 40 year history of playing arenas with no support from media or pop radio. On their current tour, the band seems to have moved on from that history, choosing to revive cuts from Signals and Power Windows and leave out classics like "Freewill," "Limelight" and "Closer to the Heart." But at this point, Rush can play whatever they want. Nearly every fan will sing along to every song, and even more of them will contribute air guitar and air drums. More importantly, the band are the kind of showbiz pros that one could hope for--professional without being self-serious, high-production and still spontaneous. Throwing "Manhattan Project" into the set? Tossing a synthpop gauntlet with "Force Ten?" Alex Lifeson's improvised hoedown when his Gibson went out? Just as indispensable as "YYZ."

Not to leave casual fans unsatisfied, the band closed with "The Spirit of Radio" and encored with a still-raging "Tom Sawyer" and the game-changing "2112." The band's exuberance carried through the finish--I was reminded of the scene in the must-see Beyond the Lighted Stage, where Lee explains that he never gets tired of playing the hits, since they're always hard to play. My accomplice grabbed my shoulder and reminded me that the show was "fucking awesome." His date, the rock music equivalent of the one girl in a comic book store, was practically giddy. It would be cooler to write about Black Sabbath or AC/DC, but I left the Barclays Center wishing that more of my favorite bands were like Rush.

Iron Maiden at the Prudential Center

Mayhem Fest? Forget it. Summer Slaughter? Nice try. You will not see a better show--club, park, arena, stadium or basement, than the one that Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper took to the Prudential Center last Monday.



Long lauded as one of the finest live acts in metal, Maiden only seem to get better as Nicko McBrain turns 60. Someone should hire the whole band as anti-drug spokesmen. Each of the bandmates turned in athletic performances that shamed anything Aerosmith, Van Halen, Black Sabbath or Judas Priest can pull off, to say nothing of nearly all artists young enough to be Steve Harris' children. Maiden's chops are nonpareil, and their stage set, a refinement of their 1989 Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tour spectacle, speaks volumes for the artistry of high-budget rock shows.

Of course there was also risk, which arrived in the form of one of rock music's most legendarily charismatic frontmen opening the show. The irreplaceable Cooper took the first set, packing all the best elements from the show he's spent his life perfecting into one ideal hour-long set. Little has changed about Alice since you last saw him, including the fact that no one plays theatrical shock-rock as well as he does. The swordplay, chambers, guillotine and Frankenstein's monster were all there, along with some staged routines with the road crew and a reliably hit-heavy setlist. His band, all of whom looked younger than Welcome to My Nightmare, indulged in the fun.

As a showman, Alice is refreshingly old school. More than a harbinger to Rob Zombie, he's a throwback to Screamin' Jay Hawkins, dead set on delivering the best show that music and Halloween props can give you. Closing with "School's Out," Cooper added the chorus to "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" to the finale. It clarified both his influence on Pink Floyd and the fact that he articulated school life better than Roger Waters.



Following Alice Cooper's act would be devastating anything less than the very best artists, but Maiden passed with flying Union Jacks. Entering to "Moonchild," the band embarked on a two-hour set of their best songs. "The Number of the Beast," "Wasted Years" and "2 Minutes to Midnight" are all pillars of metal, yet underappreciated by anyone who's never seen them performed by their sculptors.

Bruce Dickinson, arguably metal's greatest frontman to this day, egged the crowd on like a showbiz pro, taking a friendly jabs at our upcoming holiday (the one where we declared independecne from his country) between acing every note of his larynx-pushing vocals. Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers perpetually slung their guitars around their shoulders, racing up and down the stage set while joined by Eddie's likeness on a Sphinx, monumental statues and a zombie soldier. It was the kind of show that only a few bands can compete with, none of whom come close to Maiden's songcraft.

Iron Maiden tours seem to rotate between "classics" and "new songs" setlists, and with all respect to The Final Frontier, the band is best seen playing their best songs. In their compositional prime, Maiden's were as un-wanky as power metal gets, with relatively relaxed solos and only a few songs hitting the eight-minute mark. By re-enacting their Seventh Son tour with better proficiency and production values, Maiden blessed us with rarely-played tracks from the 1988 release alongside stompers like "Run to the Hills" and "The Trooper." Rules were bended to include '90s glories like "Fear of the Dark" and "Afraid to Shoot Strangers," lest you believe it was a nostalgia show.

After an encore that break wasn't long enough to find a bathroom, Maiden returned with "Aces High." Ending by appeasing Paul Di'Anno fans with "Running Free," the band bowed and left the dazed audience to find our way out while "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" played on the arena PA. If you only see one metal band, try Iron Maiden, and if you only see them once, now is the time.