New Wave Of British Heavy Metal pioneers Iron Maiden took home the “Inspiration Award” at the recentKerrang! Awards. Anthrax’s Scott Ian, who co-hosted the event and introduced Maiden’s award, wrote out this tribute (too long to read at the awards in its entirety) that he later posted online:
“When I was a kid, I used to go to the record store every day. I’d hang out there after school and go through the rock and metal sections looking for something new, something that I could blow my friends away with at lunch the next day on the shitty little tape player we used to listen to music on. I was always on the lookout for heavier, harder, faster, louder and usually you could tell if an album was going to live up to those criteria just by its cover.
I remember buying Motorhead’s Ace of Spades just because I thought the three dudes on the cover looked cool. I got the record home, put on the first song, ‘Ace Of Spades’, and holy crap, the first thing I thought was, ‘Who the hell are these three Mexicans and how do they play so fast?’ They looked like banditos. Years later I toldLemmy that and they used that quote on their Everything Louder Than Everything Else record.
I can remember being in the record store the week Judas Priest’s British Steel came out. I was already a Priest fan and was f***ing stoked to have a new Priest record to tear my head off. I had British Steel safely tucked under my arm and I was flipping through the record bins, and I saw an album cover that I had never seen before. An album cover to my then 16-year-old eyes that was the coolest f***ing thing I had ever seen. The name of the band and the logo were so cool I would’ve bought the record just because of that. That logo, in just a few years, would define heavy metal. The artwork, a zombie with Johnny Rotten’s hair maniacally staring at me from the cover, telling me that this record HAD to be great. This was the only copy they had of this record so I grabbed it and when I got home I couldn’t wait to listen to it. The monster on the cover was compelling me, my hands violently ripping the plastic from the cover, sliding the vinyl out of its sleeve, I was sweating with anticipation as I dropped the needle on to track one and the first chords of ‘Prowler’ assaulted my ears and in that instant, my whole life changed.”
You can read Ian’s post in its entirety here.
Motorhead was forced to cancel two concert stops in Europe this week after frontman Lemmy Kilmister suffered a hematoma (according to a post by an Italian promoter). No official word from the band, other than the cancellation of dates. No further explanation of where the hematoma (a collection of blood outside of a blood vessel) was located. Lemmy was recently fitted with an internal defibrillator to keep his heart rhythm stable after experiencing whatClassic Rock magazine termed “heart problems.”
Last month, legendary actor Christopher Lee (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Man With The Golden Gun and many, many more) released his second (!) heavy metal album, Charlemagne: The Omens Of Death. When asked bySkullbanger Media about his foray into metal and his influences, Lee said, “Going back to the early stages of my career, my work, my acting has always been influenced by the German composer Wagner. Now that I have been able to listen to many metal albums, I realize that the genre is a direct evolution of the world and the sounds that Wagner imagined. I am, of course, very pleased and honored to have been able to carry these themes through.”
About the possibility of future collaborations with other metal artists, he said, “It’s fair to say that since the early 1970s, I had been asked to do collaborations with metal bands and even now I receive offers from various bands. I guess that the difference between then and now is that I have more time to explore projects that are different and new to me. I take the same approach as when a movie offer comes through: I look at the story and the character that I am asked to portray and if it appeals to me, I will do it. As things stand now, I am already committed into participating in several projects, one of which will be announced fairly soon.”
Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbellhas shed his trademark locks as he undergoes chemo treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma (he’s pictured at a recent gig in France).
“For me, I did kind of want to not go public with it at first, because it is a weird kind of thing,” said Viv in a recent radio interview about his diagnosis. “You’ve got to kind of learn to deal with it on your own terms before you can address the rest of the world about it. For the first couple months, I even tried to keep it from my children, because they were still in school and doing exams and stuff and I didn’t want to add to their concerns.
But after a while, it’s inevitable that you, you know, something’s going on and you have to kind of come out with it and kind of explain what the situation is. But I’m very comfortable with it. I’m very comfortable with the treatment. I’m very comfortable with how my body is reacting to it. Obviously, it’s done a number on my hair, so I’m a bit more Joe Satriani these days. I’m hoping that means I’m going to play even more notes like Joe.”
Sixth graders Malcolm Brickhouse and Jarad Dawkins are a couple of metalheads from Flatbush, Brooklyn, who are on a mission to rock your socks off!
Unlocking The Truth – Malcolm Brickhouse & Jarad Dawkins from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.
Kriss Kross this isn’t. Lock up your daughters, America: these sixth-grade metalheads from Flatbush, Brooklyn are on a mission to rock your socks off. More on www.theavantgardediaries.com
Directed by Luke Meyer / Produced by Julia Wilczok & Tom Davis / Director of Photography: Hillary Spera / Camera Assistant: Matt Burke /Additional Filming by Luke Meyer / Location Sound Recordist: Guillermo Hernan Peña-Tapia / Edited by Harry Nelson / Music by Unlocking The Truth / Sound mix by Eben Bull / Special Thanks to Annette Jackson & Tracey Brickhouse
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Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbournesays he’s never gotten behind the term “heavy metal.” “I have never ever ever been able to attach myself to the word ‘heavy metal’ — it has no musical connotations,” he recently told CNN.
“If it was heavy rock, I could get that, but the ’70s was kind of like a bluesy thing, the ’80s was kind of bubblegum-frosted hair, multicolored clothes and the ’90s was kind of grungy. People come up to me and say, ‘Your Sabbath work was a big influence on me.’ I could go, ‘Oh, yeah, I can see that,’ but other bands…what part of that is inspired by us? Some of it is just angry people screaming down a microphone!”
In another interview (this time with NME), Ozzy says he hopes Sabbath will do a follow-up album to their recently released 13…this time with original drummer Bill Ward. “It’s a strong possibility,” he said.
“We would have loved to have Bill on this album. Maybe we can work things out by the next one. But it won’t take another 35 years. I’m 65 now. There’s no f***ing recording studios in the afterlife. We’re all even closer for all this shit so there’s one positive, one f***ing silver lining.” By the way, 13 went to #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart this week. It may have taken 45 years, but they finally did it!
The Cult will be releasing Electric Peaceon July 30. The two-disc set will combine the albums Electric and the abandoned Peacealbum.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has announced plans to record his first solo album. “Joe [Perry, Aerosmith guitarist] has done, like, four solo albums,” Steven told RollingStone.com.
“I never have, though with lyrics and arrangements and so forth a lot of Aerosmith albums are just fine for me. It’s cathartic…I’ve got this itch in me to do a solo record, and that’s what I’m gonna do next. I’ve got some great people that want to get involved in it….I got that itch to do something that’s a lot different than Aerosmith. Aerosmith’s never been better, but we did that album. This last album was an Aerosmith all-for-one and one-for-all. But my heart is in stuff like that weirder, off-the-cuff stuff that I’m not sure Aerosmith would like.”
He added, “I’m into electronica — I was when I used to listen to Stockhausen in ’65. So there’s just a lot of stuff — good, weird f***ing music that I want to get off my chest.” Who might he work with? Steven says, “There’s so much good stuff out there. I am a huge Skrillex fan. I went to lunch with Deadmau5 at Mel’s Diner…I want to go out and explore things . . . I really want to take a little risk here and do something solo.”
William “Brian” McBride was chosen as the winner of the Deadline Music/Cleopatra Records contest for the best video rant on “how much you hate” Frequency Unknown, the newly released album from the Geoff Tate-fronted version of Queensryche. McBride scored a VIP trip to a Queensryche show in Seattle this weekend, as well as merchandise and a meet and greet with the band after.Check out his winning two-minute submission (which is pretty mild as rants go).
HOH listener and BuzzCut reader Megan follows the HOH on Facebook…you should, too!
Listener Photo O’ The Week
Thanks to world traveler, headbanger, and HOH listener Bob Kelly for this (shhhh…don’t tell Jay Jay French!).
“Just visited Ireland and saw this, took a pic and had to send. This is in Kinsale, Ireland.”
