M. Drew's blog

Guns N Roses just seems to be one of those bands that won’t go away. Not counting “Chinese Democracy,” the band hasn’t had any relevance in fifteen years, and yet the name just seems to keep popping up. Lately, the cast of this wayward soap opera has been prominently featured throwing mud to and at each other in an incessant cycle of “he said, he said.”

Bit of a slowdown for metal in the past couple weeks, as the whole community sort of paused to watch Metallica's Hall of Fame induction. Good on them to have both Newsted and Trujillo playing on stage. In the meantime...

One of the enduring stereotypes of heavy metal that persists into the new millennium is that metal is famous for its over the top cover art.

I didn't want to do this. I wanted to let it go by and never speak of it again.

I just couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to review Chris Cornell's new album "Scream."

Now I'm the last guy who should be charged with the reviewing of an RnB album. My knowledge of R n B begins and ends with Motown, and that's about it. It's not something I get, not something I pretend to understand, not something that captivates my attention.

Sometimes you can't fight anymore, and you just have to give up the battle. I didn't want to, but I admitted defeat. After years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I've finally thrown in the towel. I've given up trying to like Bolt Thrower. I just don't. I like the attitude, I like the legacy, I like the cover art, I respect their catalogue of work and their accomplishments. But I just don't like the music. I tried. I really did. Add Bolt Thrower to the list of bands I finally just gave up on, including Soulfly, Voivod, Mastodon, Pro-Pain, and a host of others.

Only two words can describe the Busta Rhymes concert in my hometown on Friday. “Colossal disappointment.”

For starters, while perhaps what I expected it to be, the crowd was full of fake people. A lot of rakishly tilted hats with the stickers still on them. A lot of cologne. A lot of Yankees emblems on everything. A lot of suburban kids trying to reflect a lifestyle they’ve only read about. I kept getting looked at like no one had ever seen a guy in an Overkill shirt with a bullet belt before.

I can’t wrap my head around this.

Static-X’s new album, “Cult of Static.” It confuses me, makes me listen to it two and three times, then sit and consider. Once I hit a mental roadblock, I go back and listen to “Machine” or “Wisconsin Death Trip,” and try to draw parallels, figure out how the new album came to evolve.

And I still can’t wrap my head around this.

We've talked about this once or twice in passing, but I figured I'd put something more official here. "Anvil: the Story of Anvil," has a new trailer released that actually raises my expectation for the documentary just a little. My overarching concern remains that there simply isn't much there. Ninety-five percent of metal fans respond with a confused look when the name Anvil is mentioned, so the documentary is going to have to excel on its merit.

So I’m starting something new. Every now and again, I’ll reach back into the CD rack and pull out a favorite that I haven’t heard in a while. The objective of “classics” series will be to have us all relive those fond memories together. Or make new ones. Or argue. Whatever. So here we go.

The first “classic” will likely be a controversial pick to many here, but my feelings for this album haven’t changed.

The Union Underground, “…An Education in Rebellion” released in 2000 on Columbia.

So, it's been a quarter century since the rise of the original New Wave of American Heavy Metal. No, I don't mean the "current" one that attempts to boast bands such as God Forbid, Down, or Hatebreed. I'm talking about the original American heavy metal movement, one that left its indelible mark on both metal and music history.