Ranting against morons

Are people being serious? Are people actually bitching and moaning about the Download 2012 lineup? Are people fucking retarded?

I'm sure you've heard all this before so please feel free to change the channel but I'm tired, hungry, and subsequently a grumpy bastard.

Download is one of the biggest music festivals in the UK - I think I might be right in saying it's second only to Glastonbury - which means that bands have to appeal to a large audience or they won't sell tickets. And if they don't sell tickets, the festival can't go ahead. Music is a business, hence the phrase 'music business', and businesses have to make money or they close. Money pays for bands too, by the way. Believe it or not, musicians don't just do it for the love, hence AC/DC's multi-million pound headline set at Download 2010.

Like it or not, having Anaal Nathrakh headlining the opening night won't get 80,000 people dipping into their pockets for £150. And if you have any working brain cells you will be aware that regardless of how mainstream you think they are, most people outside of the metal community don't actually know who Lamb of God or Trivium are.

'I thought Download was supposed to be a rock festival?' quips some six-fingered mong on Facebook. He has a point, as Devildriver, Machine Head, Black Sabbath, Anthrax and Devin Townsend are all pop acts. Soundgarden definitely aren't a rock act either.

Yes, Chase and Status are playing, and they're currently enjoying massive airplay on Radio 1 and other mainstream platforms but fuck me, give them a chance to do their thing before start crying about it. How many people though Pendulum were a shit dance act before seeing them tear up Download every time they play?

Every single festival I've been to has included bands I like, hate, and am completely ambivalent towards. It's time to come to terms with the fact that not every festival lineup can be put together based on what you - yes you - listen to.

However, I for one am boycotting all music festivals until I get the following:

Headliners: Slipknot, Leatherface, The Police
Support: Helsingland Underground, Terror, Evergreen Terrace, Iron Maiden, Dr. Dre, Lagwgon, Gaslight Anthem, Carnifex, Motley Crue, Frank Sinatra, Cradle of Filth, Nirvana, Limp Bizkit and 90's boy band Point Break.

So there.

M
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At this time of year...

And so it begins. The ball is well and truly rolling for Festival Season 2012 with yesterdays announcement that Metallica are one of the headliners for Download 2012. A decade after The Black Album and a decade since the inception of the Download festival, the thrash behemoth will be playing the album in it's entirety which to be honest, will be pretty epic.

But what other big names can we expect? Judging from Download booker Andy Copping's promise of another announcement today, plus the fact that Black Sabbath have a 'major announcement' today - you do the math, as they say. Machine Head is the other big rumour; if Download gets all three that's a huge lineup. Yes, Ozzy is a batshit crazy dodery old mentalist but it's Sabbath, for fuck's sake.

There's been whispers of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for Sonisphere which will cause some eyebrows to be raised. They're much bigger than last year's day two headliner Biffy Clyro but I'd have them pegged as more a Reading/Leeds top-biller.

The trollmill has already kicked into overdrive with the elbow pad-wearing pavement lickers proclaiming that Metallica are shit, Maiden should do it, and so on, which will continue for roughly the next 500 years. With this in mind, I've decided that every week I'm going to wander the Interweb to try and find the most ridiculous comment pertaining to the suitability/metal credentials of particular bands.

This week's Not Metulz Award for Bellendery comes from Facebook and is in a thread discussing Megadeth's new album Th1rt3en:

"megashit! more metal in a fucken cricket bat."

What a fucken idiot.

So keep your eyes peeled and send me a link via Twitter to any hilariously backwards comments.
Until next time gangsters.
M
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Soundtracks: discuss

I was having a good hearty shuffle the other day, and following on from one of Vomitory's latest ballads my non-Apple MP4 media player selected James Brown's Living in America. This got me thinking about film soundtracks (for reasons most men will immediately recognise) and I wondered what else I'd put in my Top 5 Film Soundtracks Wot Might Not Be Perfect Start To Finish But have Some Proper Belters On list, 2011.

5. Waynes World (1992)

Before Mike Myers created that fucking Austin Powers twat, he was funny. Dudes in a basement make a TV show, they play music, protagonist pulls an impossibly hot girl - it's the things teenage dreams are made of. And thanks to Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and "that" Queen song, a soundtrack that commands headbanging like a total tit.

4. Singles (1992)

This film about challenged bands, tumultuous relationships and lumberjack shirts wouldn't have made the top five were it not for the inclusion of Pearl Jam's State of Love and Trust in the soundtrack - in my opinion, their finest ever work. Add in some Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Mudhoney and you've got yourself the grungiest thing since Kurt Cobain woke up, donned a cardigan and decided against the hairbrush.

3. Forrest Gump (1994)

Tom Hanks plays a mong with a weighty beardline who's good at running to an absolutely extraordinary soundtrack that spans a good few decades. Creedance Clearwater Revival, Lynryd Skynyrd, The Doobie Brothers; what more could you need? Oh, The Doors? Fleetwood Mac? Done. Fantastic.

2. The Crow (1994)

A film that played on repeat in my household during my early teens, and which subsequently inspired my sister's dress code, The Crow sees the late Brandon Lee off on a mission to avenge the murder of himself and his fiance. Dark, eh? A soundtrack of angst and pain, provided by the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Stone Temple Pilots and Pantera, mean this is possibly one of the most gothically metal films of all time.

1. Rocky IV (1985)

Quite simply the best soundtrack in history. A man with a melty face runs through the snow carrying logs, sweats a lot and punches five shades of shit out of Dolph Lundgren. Robert Tepper's No Easy Way Out is without exception, the most awesome song you could ever work out to. And of course, Survivor not only had Eye of the Tiger on the soundtrack, they had the monstrously powerful Burning Heart included too. That's some serious rock right there.

Now press play on this video and do some sit ups.

M
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Being heavy

No, not as in "being a fatty".

I was having a chat with my mate Si-KO this week about heaviness. Not personal heaviness, as that would be odd. I am of course referring to musical heaviness.

In my not-even-slightly-humble opinion, 'heavy' isn't just about insane speed and indecipherable lyrics. If someone asked me to define heavy music I'd probably play them Slayer's Raining Blood and Sabbath's Iron Man. Neil Young's Hey Hey My My is another tune that, despite being thoroughly un-metal, is made indisputably heavy by a distorted, chugging guitar riff and dark as balls vocals.

This isn't to say that deathcore, the very much maligned and misunderstood bastard child of death metal and metalcore, isn't ridiculously heavy; it's just a different sort of heavy. I'm very aware I'm straying dangerously close to the "it's not metulz" line here...

The thing is, it ain't just metal that's heavy. Without sounding like a pretentious arsemonkey, O Fortuna from the opera Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (you all know it) is one of the heaviest, darkest pieces of music I've ever come across. I'd even suggest that The Prodigy's No Good and Voodoo People are pretty fucking heavy tunes, especially bearing in mind the odd videos. Drum and bass also has it's heavy moments outside of Slipknot's Eyeless; the 1999 self-titled album from D&B chappy Aphrodite contains some pretty weighty music.

In a nutshell, heaviness is all around us; it must be embraced.

M

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Metal Gods

For many years I've been working in Soho which, for those of you who don't know, is the area of London populated by transvestites, predatory homosexuals, prostitutes, tramps, drug dealers, drug addicts, suit wankers (like me) and famous folk. I'm not generally a man who gets excited by celebrities (although I did bump into Lisa Snowdon once which caused a special type of excitement). But yesterday, after a number of fermented apple-based alcoholic beverages, I had a moment of major starstruckism.

There, wandering past the boozer, was the one and only Tony Iommi, accompanied by an attractive lady and a burly minder. I didn't want to be annoying fanboy and run over like a tit; after all, everyone deserves their privacy. However, in my defence I was a bit pissed, so over I went.

In my mind, I was planning to say:

"Tony! Great to meet you. I've been a huge fan for years and truly

consider you to be a pioneer of the genre. Thank you for the Iron Man

riff!"

What I said was:

"Tony! Huvumanashuffaphotoplease??!"

He kindly obliged. As you can see I'm doing a very poor job of playing it

cool:

What a legend.

The funniest part of this whole process was returning to my group of workmates, holding aloft my picture, smiling like a mentalist, and declaring:

"Look! It's Tony Iommi!". This was greeted by a wall of silence and blankexpressions.

"You know, the legendary axe man?"

*Tumbleweed*

"From Black Sabbath?"

A bit of disinterested eyebrow-raising.

This surprised me a wee bit. Even if you're not into metal, surely you know who Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath are? Am I being daft? One of the most important bands in the history of rock and metal? No? Fair enough.

I suppose it's all relative. To me, and I would imagine most people reading this, Iommi is a frickin' deity but to others, he's just an unusually tanned, ageing chap. But quite hilariously I've been with people who've been hugely excited about seeing balding lothario Callum Best, speech impaired controversy monkey Jonathan Ross and hot-but-bland-as-fuck girl band The Saturdays. No, honestly.

It takes all sorts I suppose.

M

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