This comes from Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, in reference to the band’s recent show in St. Louis:

“So sorry St. Louis. We had to bail, pigeons shitting in [bassist] Jared [Followill]’s mouth. Too unsanitary to continue….Don’t take it out on Jared, it’s the fucking venue’s fault. You may enjoy being shit on but we don’t. Sorry for all who traveled many miles.”

Yummy!

That really sucks for both the band and the fans.  It’s too bad there weren’t any umbrella hats on hand that the guys could have strapped on to protect them from the fecal showers.  I wonder if, in the future, the venue will consider doing what the Cincinnati Bengals considered when they had a similar problem a few years back.

-Sam

Whatever your thoughts are about Lady Gaga, I can’t see any rational human being siding against her in this particular instance.

You see, according to Rolling Stone, this past weekend Gaga had a show in St. Louis which was protested by the Westboro Baptist Church.  If you don’t know who the WBC is, they are the people who picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard (with signs that said things like “AIDS Cures Fags”) along with multiple funerals of soldiers killed in action.  They’ve picketed the funerals of Michael Jackson and Dio.  They’ve protested outside the Holocaust Museum, calling the Holocaust “minuscule” and saying “Jews are the real Nazis.”  A few years ago, after the Sichuan earthquake in China, they released a press release praying “for many more earthquakes to kill many more thousands of impudent and ungrateful Chinese Communists.”  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Anti-Defamation League has classified this “church” as a hate group.  And it’s sad to say that this group actually is a church because in reality it’s nothing more than the giant inbred family of Pastor Fred Phelps.  And yet it still receives the tax exemption from our government.

Anyways, according to these worthless abominations, everything tragic that happens in the world is directly attributable to homosexuality.  And Lady Gaga is well known for  having a devout following of LGBT fans.  So naturally, as the attention-starved whores that they are, the WBC showed up to her concert to call Gaga a “false prophetess” and warn that she and her “gender-confused, self loathing, tone deaf” fans are headed to hell.

Gaga handled the situation brilliantly, in my opinion.  If attention is what these people want, then you simply have to deny them it, no matter how hard it may be to turn the other cheek.

Preempting the group’s protest, Lady Gaga tweeted a lengthy multi-part message to fans to warn them of potential clashes with the “hateful organization.” She urged concert-goers to ignore the protestors writing, “Do not interact with them, or try to fight. Do not respond to any of their provocation. Don’t waste your words or feelings, no matter what you hear or see.” She encouraged her fans to “Be inspired to ignore their ignorant message, and feel gratitude in your heart that you are not burdened or addicted to hate, as they are.”

Thankfully, the show went off without incident.  Curiously enough, however, this was not the WBC’s first attempt at undermining Gaga.  They’ve actually made a couple “parody” songs of their own hate messages set to Gaga’s hits (warning: these songs are terrible):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Sam

I recommend you give them a listen if you’re into Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Nightwish etc

But wait, there is hope once again!

The New York Post is reporting that the seminal MTV show Beavis and Butt-head will be returning to the airwaves with all new episodes!  The new episodes will still feature the boys as high-schoolers, but instead of flinging their cynical and moronic critiques at music videos from the 80s and 90s, their old cracked television will now feature current videos.

Some people might say that Beavis and Butt-head was the first step in MTV’s movement away from featuring music videos.  That’s fair and it may be true.  But couldn’t it also then be the first step in reversing that trend and leading the station closer to its origins?  MTV is never going to be a 24/7 music video station again – the economics just don’t support it.  But I’m sure they can get away with showing some, and if so, the return of Beavis and Butt-head is a sneakily awesome move in that direction.

And can you imagine what kind of comments those two will have while watching the “Alejandro” video?

-Sam

Linkin Park isn’t quite on the Tool-schedule of releasing albums, but they are close enough – taking three to four years in between each album release.

We knew that LP was hard at work on a new album, but prognostications had its release date pegged sometime around the end of the year or early next year.  Thankfully, we won’t have to wait that long.

According to the band’s official site (which hopefully will be getting a make-over ASAP as it’s still stuck in their iPhone game phase), the group’s fourth album will be released on September 14th and has the title A Thousand Suns.  The first single will be a track called “The Catalyst” and that will be released on August 2nd.

They also announced a pretty cool contest in connection with the album:

From their site:

Beginning tomorrow, July 9th, we’re teaming up with MySpace for “Linkin Park, Featuring You,” a contest which gives you the one-of-a-kind opportunity to be on our new album. We’ll be giving you some audio from “The Catalyst,” and you get to take it from there; you can remix the parts, write something over them, or mute stuff and write something totally new. We may choose a remix of the song, and put it on the album…or, we may choose an amazing keyboardist, string quartet, guitarist, percussion group, or other musician, and invite them into the studio to play on one of our songs.

If only I could play a damn instrument!

As far as the album title goes, it would appear to  be a portion of a line from the Bhagavad Gita, later quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer in reference to the atomic bomb: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”  LP’s last album, Minutes To Midnight, similarly featured an atom-bomb-related title.  It would make sense that the “minutes to midnight” nuclear countdown clock would lead to the explosion of “a thousand suns.”  But while the two albums may be thematically linked in some small way, I don’t think they’ll be considered a pair.  In fact, early word is that the new record will only continue the band’s distancing from their earliest nu-metal days.

Whatever it sounds like, I’m excited to hear it.

-Sam

Yeah, that was pretty low.

But if anyone could top (drop?) that, it’s Courtney Love.

I’m just going to step aside and let Rolling Stone explain what went down during a recent Hole concert in Washington D.C.:

“Do you really like rock music?” Love asked one young woman earnestly during the show. “Because you’re African American. That would be like me being into Lil Wayne.”

“Hole performed roughly 30 songs…but the songs were mainly just fragments and only a handful were actually completed.”

“She also stumbled through several other songs, admitting that she had forgotten how to play them — yet still played them regardless.”

“Later, one of her handlers announced that in order to coax Love back for an encore, the crowd would have to cheer loudly because, the Post reports, “there was someone who was waiting to have sex with Love and it would take lots of applause to get her to delay that appointment.”"

And from the Washington Post:

“Three-quarters-filled at the start, the club was no more than a quarter packed by the excruciating end.”

“She also introduced an assistant, Lisa, who was onstage for the entire show filming Love on an iPhone. Not on the side of the stage. Not filming a few songs. The entire show, onstage, often directly in front of Love.”

“She played a new song, “Pretty Your Whole Life.” It was bad. Half an hour later, she played it again. It was worse.”

Oh yeah, and during the set’s closer, she decided it would be a good idea to go topless.  Here’s the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here’s a smattering of the fans’ opinions of the show afterwards:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think the girl sitting against the wall says it best: “Courtney Love needs to stop taking fucking opiates.”

Ho-lee-shit, that was a train wreck.

-Sam

According to the report, “Fentanyl is a synthetic form of morphine that may be hundreds of times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. . .Its effects are indistinguishable from the effects of heroin.”

You’ll remember that at the time of his death, he was found in his hotel room surrounded by needles and pills, so this finding isn’t exactly a surprise.  It’s just another sad case of a someone letting their addiction get the best of them.

* Kings of Leon are in the studio working on their fifth album.  Their last album shot them into the stratosphere as far as fame and popularity are concerned, so it will be interesting to see how they follow that up.  Initial word is that the guys are “exploring their progressive side” on the new disc.

* M.I.A.’s new album has received a title but had its release date pushed back.  It will be called / \ / \ / \ Y / \ (aka “Maya”) and will be released on July 13 rather than the original June 29 date.

* Brendon Small, the guy behind Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse show and the Dethklok band, has announced plans for a side project of sorts with Gene Hoglan on drums.  Small is calling it a solo project, but he also admitted it will essentially “be the same thing” as Dethklok, although possibly without all the comedy aspects.  He hopes to release it in the fall.

*Disturbed’s new album, which will be released late this summer, has been titled Asylum.

* Death Cab for Cutie will be entering the studio in June to begin work on their follow-up to the amazing Narrow Stairs.  They are shooting for a spring 2011 release.

* The Sword have recently completed work on their latest album, Warp Riders.  The sci-fi concept album will be released on August 24.

* Black Label Society will be releasing Order of the Black on August 10.

* Zoroaster have completed work on Matador and will release it on July 13.  Check out the cover art.

*Finally, The Red Hot Chili Peppers will enter the studio in July to record their next album with producer Rick Rubin.  It will be the band’s first release post-John Frusciante.

Which of these albums are you looking forward to the most?  Which ones did I leave off that you are excited for?

-Sam

Ronnie James Dio passed away this morning from stomach cancer.  He had been diagnosed with the disease just six months ago.  His wife Wendy posted the following message on Dio’s website:

Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.

- Wendy Dio

He was 67 years old.

For anyone unfamiliar with Dio’s work, he was the singer in Black Sabbath from 1979-1982 (and several stints thereafter).  He then embarked on a solo career that lasted until his death.  To me, he’ll always be known for imbuing a special majesty in metal vocals, and, of course, with popularizing the devil’s horns symbol.

Catch some great footage of him after the jump:

Here he is singing, in my opinion, his greatest song (and one of the best metal songs of all time) “Holy Diver”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And Tenacious D has made it well known how much inspiration they drew from Dio’s music, even giving him an awesome cameo in their movie:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And no one can forget the D’s tribute to Dio:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So today everyone should throw up some devil horns, blast “Holy Diver,” and remember one of music’s legends.

-Sam

The band will also make pro-mixed recordings from its current tour available starting in mid-May as part of its 2010 Bootleg Programme. That means MP3, FLAC and CD formats, starting at $9.99 for the former.  FLAC?  I just went from six to midnight (thank you, Jonah Hill, for that epic quote from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (cannot believe I just said epic)).