“But Daniel,” you say. “I’m a super-hip omnivorous music fan who doesn’t want to miss some of my favorite non-metal bands! What am I to do?”

Fear not, brave soul. I cannot, in good conscience, give everyone on this list my wholehearted recommendation simply on the basis of their being a metal band in hippie land. I know that all these bands have some small degree of crossover appeal, and I have no problem with that. You’ve gotta start somewhere, after all. Instead, my intention here is simply to help avoid any, let’s say, embarrassing misrepresentations, of our beloved metal kingdom. Read on to find out who’s worth giving up your precious hippie drug dancing time.

Agalloch

Thursday, March 17, 11:45 p.m., Barbarella Patio

This show may be indoors, but if you can, find a tree to sit under and let these dark folk metaller’s brooding, shimmering epics worm through your body like the roots of Yggdrasil itself. Bring your gal and get your smooch on.

Animals as Leaders

Wednesday, March 16, 10 p.m., Habana Bar Backyard

If you have a child/sibling/loved one who once mastered “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and is now hellbent on pursuing a dead end musical career, here is the antidote. After five minutes watching Tobin Abasi shred the Christ out of his guitar, their spirit will break and they’ll finally get a haircut and take that mail sorting job down at the cracker factory.

Grayceon

Saturday, March 19, 11 p.m., Valhalla

Jackie Perez Gratz, the cello-toting journey-woman who has lent her talents to such diverse projects as Asunder, Neurosis and Cattle Decapitation, brings us Grayceon. Not exactly skull-pounding, but intricately composed classic metal that swaps out the bass guitar for the deeper, swooning tones of Gratz’s cello. Bring wine.

Iron Age

Friday, March 18, 1 a.m., Headhunters

Is there any better way to end a mellow day of DJ sets and indie rock than getting raucously drunk at an Iron Age show? Anyone? Didn’t think so. These Texas natives’ mix of thrash, hardcore and doom is practically tailor made for blackout binging and punching hippie onlookers in the back of the head.

Naam

Saturday, March 19, 11 p.m., Scoot Inn

Representing the fine (by which I mean merely acceptable) city of New York, Naam bring SXSW-goers a helping of slow doom spiked with some very potent kool-aid. If you have any drugs, this might be the best time to take them. Just don’t act surprised if you wake up a week later, butt naked, in the desert.

Slough Feg

Saturday, March 19, 1 a.m., Valhalla

First of all, why they shortened their name from The Lord Weird Slough Feg is beyond me. You might hear these traditional metal warriors referred to with the “celtic” tag, but I assure you, their old fashioned duel-guitar attack is nowhere near as annoying as Dropkick Murphy’s. Do yourself a favor and travel back to metal’s halcyon days, back before this somehow qualified as well.

Weedeater

Friday, March 18, 8:55 p.m., Dirty Dog Bar

What would a music festival be without a set of southern-fried stoner metal (Answer: not a music festival. Duh.) Would it help if I told you that Dave “Dixie” Collins once blew off his own toe with a shotgun? He might do it again.

Wormrot

Friday, March 18, 2 p.m., Headhunters

Probably the best grind trio ever to come out of Singapore. Maybe it’s the constant cultural oppression (When writing angry music, it helps to have something to actually be angry about), or the simple lack of competition, but these guys shred by any global standard. Bring your moshing shoes.

YOB

Thursday, March 17, 1 a.m., Barbarella Patio

If you have any drugs left. This would be a good time to take them. YOB will suffocate you with the weight of a thousand oceans and make you love every minute of it. It is the adventurous spirit who dares absorb their ten minute-plus epics of molten, cosmic doom without total soul implosion. Highly recommended.

That’s it for the “GO SEE THESE” portion of the guidebook. Got that? Good, as for this next batch. Do the opposite. If one of your buddies gets too hammered and somehow bumbles the words, “Hey, dudes…maybe we should go see Chelsea Grin…” Don’t hesitate. Punch their goddamn lights out. In fact, I’m going to go the extra mile here and NOT post their show times and venues. Avoid like the plague.

Chelsea Grin: If you iron your bangs and are looking to pick up some jail bait, this is the show for you.

Dagoba: Do you like Star Wars? Go watch that instead. There is no Yoda here.

Emmure: We either take a stand here and now… or we admit that Fred Durst was right.

The Faceless: I feel a little bad putting The Faceless on this list. I’m sure they practiced really hard to be able to play as fast as they do. You can take ‘em or leave ‘em on record, but live, you’ll have more fun watching a rendition of Punch and Judy.

Hull: How is it possible that these guys are as boring as they are, even with THREE GUITARISTS?!? They’re breaking some immutable law of physics here. Someone answer me!!!!

Mose Giganticus: Why they didn’t just book The Melvins instead of this shit cover band is lost on me.

Whitechapel: If you think lip-discing is the fashion trend of the future, head on over here to meet your new friends.

That’s about all the help I can give you. Now get out there and get your metal!

Jethro Tull: "Flute you, Metallica!"

*Yaaaaawn*…Another year, another flurry of outrage across all of Metaldom over the Grammy Award’s total mismanagement of their metal quotient. Metal heads have had it in for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences since they gave the first Grammy for Best Metal Performance to flutin’ tootin’ Jethro Tull over Metallica in 1988. It’s all been downhill since then.

This year, on top nominating the much-reviled Korn and then giving the award to Iron Maiden for what is quite possibly their worst song ever, the Academy decided to put the final nail in their coffin by omitting both Peter Steele of Type O Negative and Paul Gray of Slipknot from the “In Memoriam” segment of the ceremony. Grammy President Neil Portnow gave a half-hearted excuse, citing an excess of dead performers from this past year (over 300!) and the difficulty of representing all genres (God forbid they trim one of the 11 pop or jazz spots) . Obviously, this did nothing to abate the fury. Score another for the Grammy’s.

Personally, I don’t think this should bother any of us one bit. The deaths  of Dio, Steele and Gray already all spurred great outpourings of grief and sentiment from the people that mattered most, the metal heads. Why should we, who place so much value (misguided or not) on musical integrity, care about recognition from a laughably out-of-touch institution famous for giving awards based on industry politics. Real metal isn’t acknowledged in that setting because, quite frankly, it’s barely a part of that industry, and honestly, I hope it stays that way.

I wouldn’t want The Grammy’s to ever start “getting” metal. How horrifying would it be for metal heads to see Abbath or Varg Vikernes on stage accepting the award for Best Second Wave Black Metal Performance? Hating “The Man” is a metal tradition, established at the core of our mighty kingdom’s founding. Slights, offenses and misinterpretations like this year’s only help to keep us pissed, alienated and obscure. Just the way we like it.

The good boys over at NY-based metal blog Metal Sucks, are out to change that perception with NYC Sucks, Volume 1, a (FREE!) detailed and varied sampling of New York City’s underground metal scene. Do they succeed? Read on and see:

1. East of the Wall- “The Ladder”: Proggy (anti-communist?) hardcore with a cool rubber-band bass tone that never quite takes cuts all the way loose. The clean vocals belong on the cutting room floor. Fans of old Dillinger Escape Plan be advised. (B-)

2. Made Out of Babies- “Invisible Ink”: Major points for the band name. Less points for ripping off Giant Squid (“Neonate” specifically), who can pull this off this style of heavied-up indie rock much better. Let’s pick up the pace here New York. Boston is laughing at us. (C)

3. Tiger Flowers- “Cuts”: Almost a minute in here…Nothing happening…Getting pretty bored of that riff…Aha! Here we go. More hardcore set to skronky odd-time riffs. Nice to hear a little more melody injected into this style. Slow start but a strong finish. Now let’s get some frickin’ METAL going up in this ‘comp! (B)

4. Black Anvil- “The Evil of All Roots”: Not sure why these guys need to be on here since they just released a full-length on Relapse freakin’ Records, but finally, some straight up METAL! Not sure I would’ve picked Black Anvil as the flag bearer for NYC’s populous black metal movement (If I was going to pick a local act that everyone else already knew I would have gone with Krallice… Maybe the licensing was free). The production is a little clean for my taste but this is undeniably heavy. (B+)

5. Naam- “Frosted Tread”: Wow. Suddenly I’m tripping acid in the desert and lo! There sits a wizard atop the mesa and he is calling for me to join him on the plain of enlightenment. Brutal this is not, but darn if it isn’t the spaced and wandering love child of Robert E. Howard and Jimmy Hendrix. This compilation has it’s first gold catch. (A-)

6. Batillus- “The Children of the Night Make Their Music”: Ahhhh…Slow molten doom. The soundtrack to being melted alive or being drugged and kidnapped in the trunk of a car (pretty sure I can hear someone calling for help around the 5:20 mark). Either way, I like what these guys are doing. (A-)

7. Meek is Murder- “Sundowners”: Sometimes I think our whole generation is ADD-afflicted. Then I listen to stuff like this that confirms it; spazzoid-grind build ups that build and collapse into see-saw post-hardcore riffs. I’d tell the band to pick a song and stick with it if they weren’t so good at playing them all at once . (B+)

8. The Binary Code- “Encircled”: Brace yourself for this concept. Imagine an alternate world where tech-death bands DIDN’T play sweep arpeggios, where they remembered to write some neck-wrecking riffs instead of just mashing their fingers on the fretboard, where they didn’t set up the drum kit inside my freakin’ ear. The Binary Code have somehow torn a hole through space-time to bring us the sounds of this Utopian dimension. (A)

9. Castevet- “Stones”: Black metal and shoegaze have been flirting for years now. Castevet have finally got the two of them drunk and horny enough to make love. The result is one pissed and ugly, if still  incomplete, fetus. (B+)

10. Hung- “Desert of Sad”: Someone had to break the winning streak. How can a band that endorses an energy drink sound so limp? Maybe it’s the violin gimmick (note: not a replacement for actual riffs) or the weak vocals, but nothing about this song feels aggressive, dangerous or evil (in other words, metal) Pass. (D+)

11. Wizardry- “Falconer”: Proto-metal with sludge-bellow-beardo vocal; the product of the culturally omnivorous bedroom stoner. Take equal parts Manilla Road, sour diesel and Mastodon. Shake, serve to taste. It’s nothing if not heavy. (B+)

12. Pyrrhon- “King of All Tears”: You’re killing me MetalSucks! Honestly, it just seems cruel to put these similarly tech-y, but ultimately faceless dudes after The Binary Code. Also, someone should tell the vocalist that trying to match the riffs phrase for phrase gets old pretty fast. (C+)

13. Mutant Supremacy- “Epitaph”: Ah, New York’s entry into the ongoing old-school death metal revival. I can’t fault them on their execution, which both surgically competent and heartfelt, but as far as need-to-hear bands go, this stuff is still far from the front of the line. Best experienced live. (B)

14. Incendiary- “Victory in Defeat”: Quite a rockin’ curve ball here at the clean-up spot. If the Beastie Boys had kept hanging out with Kerry King advice after Licenced to Ill, their next album would have sounded like this. The vocalist sounds like Mike D on 6 days of meth and no sleep. (A+)

Final Grade: With some legitimately stellar finds, there’s more than enough on here to keep the title of this compilation from being an unintentionally bad joke, but here’s to hoping that Vince and Axl can raise the bar just a little higher for Volume 2. Look for it here on February 22^nd. I know I will. (B+)

Hot Columbian black metal: Greater evil, shorter sleeves.

It’s been over a year since Immortal, Norway’s frostbitten pioneers of epic black metal, released their reunion album, All Shall Fall, and you know what? It still kinda sucks.

I was as pumped as anyone when I heard Abbath was reuniting the grim trio for a series of live dates in 2006 and nearly had a stroke when they announced the recording of new material. The metal legions had good reason to be optimistic: First there was the majesty of their 2002 swansong, Sons of Northern Darkness, the album with which they gracefully expired to the sound of their long ship sinking beneath the timeless ice flows. Then there was Abbath’s deadly experimentations with his post-Immortal outfit, I.

But All Shall Fall failed to produce for me the same level ecstasy and mountain top elation, as did Sons and At the Heart of Winter. Why? Because a lot of All Shall Fall sounded like shitty versions of old songs. There is no reason to listen to “Unearthly Kingdom” or “Norden on Fire” when you have, respectively, “”Beyond the North Waves” and “At the Heart of Winter.” I’m just glad I didn’t shell out for the special edition digi-pack, complete with a (useless/illogical) double-sided poster and the, ahem, “Special black Immortal plastic bag.” It’s hard to argue that you’re not just cashing in on black metal’s popularity when your new album does absolutely nothing to advance or develop your sound. What unfinished business was there in Blashyrk? Clogged gutter?

If All Shall Fall broke your heart like it did mine, then I have someone you need to meet. Inquisition hail from Columbia, and on their latest blackened opus, Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm (whew!), they’ve cemented my belief that along with Hacavitz and The Chasm, we’re going to be hearing a lot more awesome metal from below the border in years to come.

The first thing that struck me on Ominous Doctrines… was the vocals. Mastermind Dagon’s impression of Abbath’s (Immortal) unearthly croakdom is dead on. Likewise his seemingly endless supply of riffs achieve that same balance of blasting brutality and ringing cold melody that made At the Heart of Winter so epic. Inquisition are also adept at those heaving, glacial breakdowns (the good kind) reminiscent of Immortal classics like “Solarfall.” Yeah, you can cry foul all you want, but their dedication to the sound is sincere (they’ve been kicking around since ’88) and while Immortal have been stuck in first gear since their resurrection, Inquisition aren’t afraid to push the sound into passages of cosmic dementia like on “Desolate Funeral Chant.” Until Immortal get their shit together, I’ll be turning to Inquisition for my fix of frosty epic blackness and dramatic metal poses.

Anyway, I ended up regretting that brief infatuation when I discovered that they were playing more or less the same album every time, just successively faster. This wasn’t necessarily a problem in itself, most metalheads prefer consistency over experimentation, it’s just that their one album didn’t click with me all that much.

It’s funny then that I should be so shamelessly won over by something that, at it’s essence, is a high-concept cover band. Cannabis Corpse (note the difference there) do play original songs, but they are as much in the key of the source material as is legally allowable. Their song titles are also marijuana-inflected twists on the originals like “Disposal of the Baggy,” “Blunted at Birth,” or “Force Fed Shitty Grass.” There is a debate to be had on how much merit should be awarded here, and I say there is much. Yes, it is obviously derivative, but it’s also honestly derivative.

We have an inflated sense of what constitutes originality, calling something genius when it is really just a more clever use of influence. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all steal greedily from everything around us. It’s what makes up the lens through which you will filter your own creation, innate as your mother tongue. Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch famously said that simply embracing this true nature and process of creation would lead to more authentic, and presumably more engaging, art. After my zillionth spin of Cannabis Corpse’s Tube of the Resinated (like Tomb of the Mutilated), I’m inclined to agree with him.

The band is forthcoming about their admittedly simplistic lineage, but yield surprisingly potent results. Like their name and song titles, so too is the music infected with sticky green. Guitarist Nick Poulous and bassist Philip Hall take parts of Cannibal Corpse I liked the most, the pockets of groove dotting the hyper-speed, diminished riffing, and expand on them, widening those pockets into fully realized passages of otherworldly groove, like the riff that hammers down at the 1:43 mark in “Mummified in Bong Water.” Some songs, like “Fucked with Northern Lights,” also bliss out in long segments of eerie distortion. It’s where I always wanted Cannibal Corpse to go but never did.

So is Cannabis Corpse better than Cannibal Corpse? Impossible to say. All I can tell you is that I ‘ll  pick Cannabis any day of the week. These boys clearly love Cannibal Corpse and have taken the sound further, if only by a small fraction. They’re not hiding trying to hide their influences, rather they embrace them, and that’s more than I can say for most.

Besides that, the exploration of metal isn’t, and shouldn’t be, linear. There’s infinite branches and pathways to follow that don’t always take you forward. Maybe you take a three month detour through early Finnish death metal, a summer in Australia’s nascent bestial war metal scene. The ways to each are endless and the means by which you arrive, and the library you’ve faithfully constructed in your mind, is the lens through with you absorb new music. Idolizing certain releases in such a ceremonial fashion draws everyone onto the same path and keeps them there. Thus everyone is led, ultimately, to the same destination. Given that many of this year’s Top Ten lists had a great deal deal of overlap (Agalloch, Enslaved, Dawnbringer, Woe, Ludicra, Slough Feg, Nachtmystium, Deathspell Omega, to name a few), that leaves a lot of unexplored territory.

With that in mind, I’m opening up my year-end list to any and all in metal’s history that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this year, if only to introduce a little more bio-diversity to the system:

Suidakra- Emprise to Avalon (2002)                                                                                                                                                                                     “REVENGE!!!!!!”

Perhaps the nerdiest melodic death metal albums of all time, my iTunes play counter shows Emprise a mile ahead of the competition in terms of sheer listens. On their fifth full-length, Suidakra let Arthurian legend set the stage for an hour of fist-pumping, celtic dual guitar harmonies and faerie-winged acoustic interludes. Something about the shameless passionate embrace of the subject matter that shines through in every riff and sorcery-related lyric appeals to my inner geek.

DoomSword- Let Battle Commence (2003)                                                                                                                                                                                           “Burn England to the ground!!!!”

Traditional epic doom metal for the theater crowd, Deathmaster’s massive baritone begs you to follow him, tongue far from cheek, on the Viking raids of Britannia. If this kind of marching, old-school doom had been as popular in 2003 as it is now, these Italians would have shot straight to the top of the heap. As of now, they have yet to pay a much needed visit to the States.

Witness the destructive power of the DoomSword!!

Fist in Fetus- s/t (2007)                                                                                                                                                                                                      “UUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!!!” (sorry, they never published the lyrics)

Whenever weary metal writers dive into the critical ell that is th bargain bin of self-produced local demos, this is what they’re looking for; a bat-shit-insane, schizophrenic mess that infuriates as much as it shows promise. Fist in Fetus’ (good luck getting signed with that one) lone 2007 EP is the metal equivalent of mash-up, bleeding together deathgrind, tribal groove, cheesy-bright European power metal and intricate classical orchestration, mostly against their will, and it’s beautiful. The pairings can be jarring to the orthodox metal spirit, but this kind of skillful and effective experimentation is exactly what we need in a scene dominated by constant revivals of “old school” sounds. Best of all, the band put the whole darn thing up for FREE right here. (Not that you can’t get anything you want for free these days, but, y’know, in case you were starting to feel guilty).

Sargeist- Let the Devil In (2010)                                                                                                                                                                                                                            “Let the Devil in! Let the Devil in!”

This evil, shrieking platter of Satanic black metal isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was a surprise slap in the face and a reminder of just how much black metal’s abrasiveness, both in sound and spirit, has been lost in 2010. I’m not knocking the value of the genre’s artistic progression, I just mean that a lot of the elements that drew me to black metal, that undeterred devotion to the image and ideals, are long gone and replaced with a more self-conscious entity. The fact hat this relatively listenable and accessible record can slide in moments before 2010′s curtain call and win over the hearts of black metal purists everywhere speaks a lot to this current state of affairs.

Type O Negative- World Coming Down (1999)                                                                                                                                                                                         “The kiss of death, lips of a thief.”

True, I’ll admit (like a few others should too) that my interest in Brooklyn’s gothic doom n’ gloom crew, Type O Negative, had waned until the death of front man Pete Steele (real name: Petrus T. Ratajczyk) in April pushed me to revisit their catalog. Therein I discovered World Coming Down. It’s irresistible pop, woven with dark, truly romantic doom metal has become a haven for me in some dark moments and a welcome respite from the endless brutality of extreme metal. Even the most evil riffs, overlaid by Steel’s silky Sinatra-meets-Lurch vocals, (remember pic) feel sensual in a way that most metal could never hope to emulate.

So that’s my list. That’s what I’ve enjoyed in 2010. Go forth! Explore! And see where these take you.

One issue, though, that she’s always begged me to address, is women in metal. The way she sees it, metal is a boys club. Women are actively excluded and when they do make an appearance, it’s as token eye candy or fodder for some twisted lyrical concepts (Cannibal Corpse’s “Fucked With a Knife” comes to mind). My first instinct is to dismiss her observations as the out-of-touch ramblings of a middle-aged parent, but the truth is that from a statistical standpoint, she’s absolutely correct.

Very few bands feature female members and when they do, they’re often relegated to keyboards or worse, bass guitar. The same goes for the thematic treatment. Bands like XXX Maniak, who make extreme, violent misogyny (their last album was called Harvesting the Cunt Nectar) the focal point of their art, far outweigh feminine successes like Arch Enemy and Ludicra, both fronted by extremely aggressive female vocalists, or Gorod’s former drummer, Sandrine, whose work on their 2006 LP, Leading Vision, I consider to be the pinnacle of tasteful, memorable drum work (just listen to “Blackout”).

At face value, these practices are objectionable, but in truth, I believe that many men have good reason to feel anger towards women, either from a painful past relationship or experiencing a life of rejection due to appearance, and there are far more harmful ways for men to deal with this anger than posting a “No Girls Allowed” sign on their club house. I think we’d all prefer that they just sit down and write a song about it than inhale a bottle of whiskey drive over to a girl’s apartment at 4 a.m. It’s like painting therapy in a mental hospital, just a release of emotion onto a unfeeling canvas. So what if the picture they paint is disturbing? It can’t hurt you if you don’t look at it.

That said, some bands do manage to break away from the lady-bashing, either with some talented female members, or in the case of Insomnium, a worshipful melodic death metal ballad. For four albums, these Finnish metallers have been pumping out some of the most mournful, tear-jerking doom-death this side of the afterlife. The perfect soundtrack to a lonely Autumn walk in the woods, their melodies could squeeze tears out of a stone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpmXR6Sn0Wc

Their second LP, Since the Day it All Came Down, featured the track “Daughter of the Moon,” a post-apocalyptic lament for woman-kind. The song tells the story of some unseen future where our beloved better halves have been lost forever and the remaining men hopelessly wander in search of their treasures. “Vanished is the light we had/Hidden deep in rimy soil/Bereft of us the one we cherished/Lost for ever our love,” growls Niilo Sevänen. “For what mirth there is left in life/For a motherless son/What solace in this world/For a widower to find”.” It may be delivered in a gruff death metal grunt, but the lyrics are refreshingly touching in their vulnerability.

The climax comes when Sevänen’s character believes he has found his love. The song comes to a standstill, carried by a twinkling acoustic interlude as her ghostly visage comes into view. “Slender the shape in night/Unbearable the beauty/Shining in the silvery light.”  Then comes the tragic realization: “Unattainable this illusion/But an image in my troubled dreams/Hewn out of yearning.” The track finishes with a mournful doom riff, overlayed with a delicate, feminine melody that perfectly expresses perfectly the character’s sense of desperate longing.

Examples like this one may be few and far between, but they’re proof that at least some of us have grown up to be perfect gentlemen.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoDsbSOE_j8

For all it’s classic quality, the 4/4 toe-tapper requires next to no effort on the part of the drummer, but Moore colors every empty space with acrobatic feats of the stick—twirls and flips and catches. A few times he breaks into a hysterical routine that looks like an angry child tearing down a sand castle, all while keeping the beat like an atomic clock. It’s one of those rare occasions when flare and musicianship balance out.

But more than just a good laugh, Steve Moore reminds us that despite it’s reputation as a source of dark emotions, metal can be an empowering and positive force in the life of a metal head. In an interview in City Pages, Moore admits to metal’s role in his musical growth (as if the Abbath-like grimace at the 1:10 mark wasn’t enough of a tip). Moore got his start in a desolate West Virginia music scene, where he gravitated towards heavier music groups. Moore is actually credited on the metal Web-encyclopedia, the Metal Archives, having spent time in numerous 80′s thrash and power metal bands like Dofka, Triple X and Brick Mistress.  “Some of it was pretty similar to stuff like Metallica, Slayer, Pantera,” he says. “Most of the stuff would’ve been in the vein of like, Joe Satriani, Dream Theater, Rush—just your typical progressive metal.”

Moore was apprehensive when it came to playing the in the far-less-metal Rick K. cover band. “A first I was a bit skittish of it, not that it was bad, it was just very … different,” he remembers. But Moore soon discovered that the reduced complexity of the music gave him the freedom to flex his metal muscles, peppering the more simplistic beats with his now infamous acrobatics.

It’s this attitude that I find especially inspiring and a great example of how to apply the metal ethos to everything and anything in  your life. Being metal means more than just wearing a band T-shirt and going to shows. It’s about marching to your own (blast) beat and remaining committed to your beliefs, even in the face of the derision which metal so often attracts.  By ignoring convention and applying a metal attitude to another field, he has achieved a distinct artistic profile and personality. It will bring him more fame than 95% of  America’s musicians will ever know and his victory belongs to metal heads everywhere.

Iron Maiden have returned. On August 17th they will release their new album, The Final Frontier, their 15th release in a 30 year (!) career. As a herald for the impeding record, Maiden has released the single, “El Dorado,” as a free download to get the blood pumping. Does it succeed? Well…..no. If “El Dorado” is one of the better cuts, the metal titans might be getting a little rusty in the joints.

“El Dorado” isn’t a bad song. It’s really just lazy. All the standard Maiden-isms are in place, Steve Harris’ galloping bass lines, the buoyant guitars and ample shred factor, but we’ve heard all these things done before in better songs and with more enthusiasm. There’s a noticeable drop in tempo this time around and Bruce Dickinson never reaches for the rafters with his trademark falsetto, sticking instead to a strained mid-range yelp. It’s certainly not going to replace “Run to the Hills” any time soon and my guess is the whole song was written in about 45 minutes.

As admirable as it is that Iron Maiden have remained faithful to their style for so long, one has to wonder what their intentions are for making music in 2010. After 30 years they’re not about to release an experimental 5-hour blackened-sludge concept album about time travel (my idea, patent pending), which leaves them churning out lesser versions of older, better songs.

Do they need a new album as an excuse to tour? Fuck no. Maiden fans are legion and highly devoted. They’d come see them shred in wheelchairs if that was the only option. Are they afraid of irrelevance? Obscurity? Everyone has a copy of Number of the Beast! Fuckin’, EVERYBODY. They have enough rock solid material for a 10-hour set list, so what’s, I beg of you, is the point!?

You also have to wonder what classic track is going to get axed from the live set so they can hammer our this hot new single. Apparently, it’s a lot of them. MetalSucks reported last week that Maiden, currently on tour with Dream Theater, has skewed their set-list heavily towards their last two lukewarm albums, Dance of Death and A Matter of Life and Death (real original fellas), much to the chagrin of devoted fans who, y’know, wanted to have fun at the show or something. At this rate, they’re not going to have either their recorded output or their live experience to stand on.

Fuck. Let’s pray these things don’t come in threes.

It breaks my heart having to write about real death two columns in a row, but while I felt compelled to write about Dio almost for the sake of just having said something, but this week’s case is far more personal.

Paul Gray, the bassist and co-founding member of Slipknot, was found dead in a Mariott hotel room of apparent drug overdose. He was 38, married with a son on the way.

If you have any interest in heavy music in general, you have to have known about Slipknot. If not, you must live in a weird alternate dimension. Their 1999 eponymous debut was one of the crater-making cannon shots that heralded the swarm of nu-metal bands that flirted vigorously with mainstream success at the turn of the millennium. The album sold more than two million copies and put the band up with heavyweights like Disturbed, Korn and System of A Down. They toured non-stop, criss-crossing America and converting swarms of angst-y pre-adolescents (and a helping of grown adults) in their wake, leaving great scars of black-nail polish and spiked dog-collars across the face of the nation.

As a 15-year-old getting into dark music, Slipknot was an unavoidable collision. I got hooked in a big way, lured by a 2001 Rolling Stone cover story that made the band out to be the anti-christs(s), referencing severe drug abuse and sexual perversions. I arrived on the scene (by which I mean I studied them from the safety of the internet) in time to catch the release of their second album, Iowa. That album was about the scariest thing I ever laid my hands on until that point. They the horrific masks, the lamb fetus on the inner-jacket, the f-bombs dropped as casually as spare change. I was wearing black nail polish and JNCOs in no time. I did at one point also own and occasionally wear a spiked dog collar. It feels so good to finally be able to admit that.

Maybe it’s because I quickly realized how ridiculous I looked, but I outgrew Slipknot pretty quick as I ventured into the realms of Scandinavian death metal and the like, trading in my nail-polish for a Hammer of Thor necklace. Derided by most serious metal heads one of those “jump-da-fuck-up” bands that catered to the mainstream with hip-hop influences and chunkier, groovier rhythms, you couldn’t really admit to liking them or having ever been a fan, affectionately referred to by the band as “Maggots.” I denied much influence from them for the longest time, but as I’ve matured in my appreciation of music in recent years I’ve begun to look on them in a fonder light.

In truth Slipknot was an essential step in training my ears for the brutal of metal’s darker furnaces. They introduced me to tortured vocals, bellowed, gurgled and screeched, insane levels of distortion, even blast beats. It’s true they featured rap segments and tribal drumming, but Iowa’s epic opener, “People=Shit,” is almost pure death metal for the first minute. They are nothing if not eclectic musicians.  Without Slipknot, I may have missed the boat on metal entirely.

If there was one theme that was repeated throughout the band’s tearful press conference, it was how essential Gray had always been to the band from the moment of its creation. If what they say is true, then for his part in shepherding me toward what I am today, I owe the man a spiritual debt that I can never repay.