When vocalist James Michael calls Revolver from Boston while on the road with Crüe Fest, he explains how much he loves touring and hanging out with the guys of Mötley Crüe, Buckcherry, Papa Roach, Trapt, and his own band, Sixx:A.M. From the way Michael is raving, no one would guess that the band, which was formed in 2007 with guitarist DJ Ashba and bassist/main songwriter Nikki Sixx of Crüe fame, had no intentions of doing anything more than recording a soundtrack to Sixx’s published journal, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, now a similarly named mega-hit platinum album. In fact, the band didn’t agree to hit the road until they held a nationwide vote, the results of which proved that fans were aching for a summer tour. As the band’s bonds and fan base grow, it’s clear that Sixx:A.M. have become more than a mere side project for Sixx. Michael even hinted that after the band’s success over the last year, a follow-up to The Heroin Diaries is a very real possibility.

REVOLVER How did you meet Nikki Sixx?
JAMES MICHAEL I had a record deal on the same label that he had Mötley on back in ’98 or ’99. So we were at the same label. And we’d pass each other in the hall at the label every once in a while and we’d say hello to each other and stuff. I’d just made a solo record called Hail, and he called me one day and was like, “Listen, I just got a copy of your record and really loved your songs. I was just wondering if you wanted to do some writing with me for Mötley Crüe?” I was flattered, and of course I said yes. We got together and wrote five or six songs, all of which ended up on the New Tattoo record. At the time, we really hit it off both as friends and as colleagues and just realized how much fun we had writing songs together. So we went on to write songs for a lot of other artists like Meat Loaf and Saliva. We just always enjoyed writing music together. That’s how we originally met, and it’s just continued on since then.

You’ve done a lot of writing with Nikki, but what made you decide to switch roles and step in as singer?
That was something that I had…I had put the singing days long behind me. I’ve been a producer, writer, and mixer for the last several years and really enjoy that. I’m very comfortable in that domain. When we started doing the Heroin Diaries soundtrack, a few of those songs I had written and recorded several years before, and we decided they were gonna be a good fit for the record. At that point, there was just something going on there with the vibe that was working with my voice. We had actually talked about auditioning singers and finding somebody to fit that role. We just decided, You know what? Let’s just make this easy on ourselves. Let’s just go ahead and have me sing the stuff and we’ll take it from there. It was pretty organic.

When you first read Nikki’s diaries, what were your reactions?
You know, it was a really neat experience to read his diaries, because I knew him as a friend more than I knew him as a rock star. So it was kind of interesting for me and kind of tough to read the journal entries. We’re all aware of Nikki’s past and Mötley Crüe’s history, but after getting to know him as a friend I had stopped seeing him that way. So to be reminded of the debauchery and the insanity that went on in his life was awfully startling. There were times when I was sitting there reading about him in his darkest places and I was like, Wow, this is my friend that was going through this. I wish I could have been there to help or maybe support him or to keep him from going down that path. So it was a very personal experience to read it, for me.

How did DJ join the mix after you and Nikki teamed up to start writing songs?
I always say that DJ was the missing link in actually making this thing happen. About five or six years ago, maybe seven years ago, Nikki and I were originally talking about doing a soundtrack to the Heroin Diaries. Of course, Nikki was out on the road with Mötley Crüe, and I was busy producing other bands and writing songs for other artists. There was a period of time where we didn’t do much together. Then I got a call out of the blue from Nikki saying, “Hey, I hooked up with this guy DJ Ashba. He’s this great guitar player, and we’re talking about actually seeing this thing through.” As soon as DJ joined the picture we started to say, “OK, let’s make a record. We have all of the elements that we need now.” So it really moved fast once DJ came into the picture, and we got this record made in a very short period of time.

When you and Nikki were writing the songs, how did you approach them? Did it follow a general process?
It’s always different when the three of us write songs together. For the writing of this record we had the book to inspire us. So we would pick a specific entry or a time in his life or an emotion he was feeling and we would either very generally or very specifically write about that moment. It would either start from a lyrical idea or something that was said in the journal entries, or a musical idea. It was really about capturing the spirit or the feel of what was going on in his life first. And then the challenge became to make these songs universal so that people who had not been through like anything like what Nikki had been through would be able to relate these songs to their lives. For example, the song “Life Is Beautiful”—clearly it’s reached so many people and it means something different to every person that’s listened to it. So its original concept has been reinterpreted millions of times by our fans so that it means something different to everyone. We wanted to make sure that we wrote songs that had a lot of hope in them, that weren’t just kind of dark and dreary and about this very serious subject matter. We wanted them to have a lot of hope. We wanted to focus more on the recovery and the life after the darkness.

Your latest single, “Tomorrow,” definitely sends out that message of hope. The video has hit the Internet (watch it below); why did you guys decide to shoot a live video for that song?
Especially with subject matter like this, there’s the obvious choice to go into a really heavy story with the video. What we wanted to do was to leave that interpretation up to the listener. We didn’t want to spoon-feed them something that would possibly limit the meaning of the song. Also, we’re still establishing ourselves as a band. Sixx:A.M. is a very new band. We thought it was important to share a bit of life on the road and to share the images of a group of guys becoming a band out there in front of thousands of people, because that’s really what we’ve had to do. Where a lot of bands come together and struggle through the club scene and bust their asses for many years trying to make it, we end up with a hit song and we’re playing in front of thousands of people a night. It’s a different way of perceiving a band, and we just wanted to share that with fans.

Were there other songs that were written for the Heroin Diaries that didn’t make the album?
Yeah. In fact, we wrote a lot of songs. I think that we’ve been quoted saying we actually originally wrote a double album, which is pretty close to the truth. We’re all very prolific writers, so it’s not unusual for us to get together and pound out a song. We certainly had a lot of themes to choose from. The difficult part was weeding it down to a set of songs that told the story that was universal and broad but also specific at the same time. There’s a lot of songs that are leftovers from the first Sixx:A.M. record, and who knows? They may find their way onto another Sixx:A.M. record at some point.

Interview by VALERIE McQUEEN


Our Thrash and Burn tour 2008 saga continues…

Day 14: New York City
The last day on the RV. Yeah, it’s true, tonight our knight in shining armor, Darrel from Baltimore, showed up with the sickest tour bus we have ever been on. A welcome change from the RV. Let’s just say we were stoked. Oh, but it didn’t go off without a hitch. Turns out when Darrel was pulling into New York City he got a flat on the trailer! In true DH style, we don’t have a spare! Our good friends in Misery Signals saved the day and donated a tire so we could make it to the next show. And the show in NYC, it was sick. The Thrash and Burn tour killed, great sets from all the bands including killer sets from Stick to Your Guns, Winds of Plague, and the mighty Parkway Drive. Emmure was the night’s special guest—only they weren’t on the show; they just showed up to party, and party they did! Let’s just say NYC did it up with style.

Day 15: Huntington, West Virginia
OK, so I admit it: I saw shady dudes doing meth in the alley behind the club, and there were signs that said, “Only girls allowed on the dancing poles.” So you know the sketchy vibe is in effect in Huntington, West Virginia. Brother Von Doom showed up as the special guest and tore kids’ faces off (it was pretty sick, we had to get mops and shit to clean all the blood). Oh, and if you want to face some rough justice in the morning, make sure to grab a burger from the Rally’s across the street. It goes down smooth but the burgers fight back hard.

Day 16: Long Island, New York
Long Island saw yet another party/hang sesh with Emmure and boy, did we take the Thrash and Burn tour down with style tonight! The show was killer, the kids were down to hang, and dude, you’re not going to believe this, but we had an amazing time at the Crazy Donkey! Yep, Long Island was a blast. Of course Emmure brought all their friends and tons of that kill (if you know what I mean). We turned the parking lot into a backstage and everyone got down. Special props to our boy Anthony for doing the show up right!

Day 17: Worcester, Massachusetts
All I can say is one word: Motörhead! That’s right, tonight’s concert in Worcester was headlined by the almighty Motörhead! OK, so we didn’t get to meet Lemmy, but their tech did give me a tour of all the Marshalls they have onstage. Oh, and if you’re wondering whether the quote, “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” is just a gimmick, trust us, it’s not. Let me just state for the record, this shit was fucking loud! It really puts things in perspective to see a band as good and relevant as Motörhead still rocking. Watching them is the truest form of inspiration. It was a good mix of young and old fans, and the good people at the Palladium made sure DH had all the extra Jack Daniels we (and our sound man, Johnny) needed. The tour was split into two stages and both got rocked hard by the Thrash and Burn bands. Stick to Your Guns, Winds of Plague, Arsis, Arsonists Get All the Girls, Misery Signals, Abigail Williams, and Parkway Drive all crushed it hard! Just one question…how do you forget an 8x10 bass cab at a venue? Ask the dude that one.

Day 18: Baltimore, Maryland
Not only are we partial to Baltimore because it feels like our DC away from DC, but let’s just say that we always can count on Baltimore to bring it DH style! The show was amazing. It’s always nice to play shows close to home and see familiar faces and friends, especially when you’re on tour for so long. So it was a little mini hometown party and needless to say the Baltimore dudes blew it up! I got to dip out and eat at my favorite spot in Baltimore (the Taqueria in Fells point) and as if that wasn’t enough, Outer Loop Management, TKO, and the organizers of the tour threw a sick-ass party (OPEN BAR, BABY)! Dudes got so drunk, fights happened, nakedness, Stu from Misery Signals wore fried rice, there was a circle pit to Queen, dudes were carried out, and we’re not naming names but at least one band member went home. What can we say: That’s a sick-ass party for sure! So special thanks to the good dudes at Outer Loop, TKO, and Thrash and Burn for setting Baltimore on Fire!

Day 19: Norfolk, Virginia
A lot of people don’t know this, but the headliners’ dressing room at the Norva has a hot tub, a sauna, and the nicest game room (complete with an impossible version of Donkey Kong Jr.) that I have ever partied in. All these factors make the Norva the place to play. Yep, it felt like vacation. We were all lucky enough to get a brief visit from the Captain (a.k.a. Paul’s little dude) so we knew that, with one VIP sitting at sound check already, the day would be a success. Surf’s up at the beach, and I’m not talking about the ocean, I’m talking about the mosh’n! Parkway Drive showed everyone at Norva that if a “best body on the beach” contest broke out, they would win hands-down.

Day 20: Raleigh, North Carolina
Local promoter Mitch is the man, and every time we play in NC he puts the show on right. Tonight was no exception. The show was killer, kids were stoked, and in true NC style we had a circle pit in the name of Dale Earnhardt! It’s nice to finally be entering the South. Now, don’t get me wrong, a few of us are Yankees all the way, but there is just something to be said for how mofos in the South party. It’s like the difference between sippin’ on a Manhattan or chugging some Wild Turkey 101.

Day 21: Atlanta, Georgia
Hotlanta! Man, we love the ATL. We have been coming here for years and it always gets better. Some of the best concerts DH had when we first began touring were in Atlanta. The ATL has always had a rich and very supportive scene. It’s just a cool place to play, man. The vibe is always spot-on. No appearances by Mastodon or Norma Jean I am sad to say, but when all your friends are rockers you got to “see ’em when you see ’em and miss ’em all the rest of the time.” Had our favorite meal in Atlanta, burritos from Elmyr and an ice-cold Corona to wash it down!

Day 22: St. Petersburg & Pensacola, Florida
An “act of God” is what they call it, but all it means to us is that our St. Petersburg show just got canceled. Seems like this whole global-warming disaster means that now, every time we try to play a show in Florida, we have to deal with a hurricane! Since we had already fought one tornado in Chicago and everyone in St. Petersburg doing the show was really freaked out, we decided to move it, with two days’ notice, to the Red Door in Pensacola. Let me say the weather was perfect (albeit a little hot at times) and we felt no repercussions whatsoever from the dreaded hurricane. The show went well. Surprisingly, the turnout was pretty good for one day’s worth of promotion, and all the kids seemed stoked we had managed to make itto their town. I can honestly say we hadn’t played Pensacola in 8 years or so, but it seems like they got a killer scene a-brewin’ down there!

Day 23: San Antonio, Texas
Goddamn! Texas! Hell yeah! When I write about Texas for some reason I always seem to want to put an exclamation point at the end of every sentence! It’s just that much of a party down there! The White Rabbit might not be much, but it’s always a good time! Our good friends from Pit Bull Daycare always party down at the Rabbit, and let’s not forget the after-party that always spills over to club Lit after the show! The good dudes in As Blood Runs Black joined the tour today as Parkway Drive had to fly to Europe to play Leper Fest in Belgium! For the record, Leper Fest rules, and so does San Antonio! ABRB killed it Texas-style, and in case you’re wondering, the BBQ place next to White Rabbit is to die for! Make sure to get the brisket!

Day 24: Houston, Texas
So, remember when I said I had the best food of the tour in Connecticut? Well, that was before I got to H-Town and had some of mama and papa Picon’s homemade comida (that’s “food,” for all you non-Spanish types)! Tour manager Tito Picon’s family hooked it up buffet-style with some of the best beans, rice, plantains, and brisket you will ever have! It’s worth going to H-Town just for that meal. Oh, but don’t get me wrong: The show was sick as fuck. Outdoors Java Jazz, well, the power generators couldn’t handle the rock, that’s for sure, and many a guitar amp was blown up this day. We managed to make it through the technical problems and hot, hot, heat together and by nighttime we had ourselves a full-on Texas rager. We had a special appearance by Goatwhore, who made sure to show up after rocking hard with Priest, Heaven and Hell, and Motörhead. I mean, those bands are so good we forgive ’em for their late arrival!

Day 25: Dallas, Texas
Ahhh, our vocalist John Henry’s birthday. What can we say? He’s the king of the tour. And as lead singer of the headlining band he gets to: Not do shit, get anything he wants, freak out whenever he wants to, and celebrate his birthday in style. So what did we get him? Well, not much, but if you consider how much it would have cost to pay all the members of the tour to get onstage at once to sing “Happy Birthday,” then I guess you could say John owes us money! Great sets by After the Burial and As Blood Runs Black. They may have had Gospel Brunch in the morning at the House of Blues, but that night they had a Metal Mass!

As the Revolver Photo Director and proud owner of a vagina, I feel more than qualified to offer up honest, raw, and unadulterated advice regarding all things related to sex, the female body, and relationships. So, all you metalhead freaks out there, please email me your most dire, dirty, sick, and twisted questions about women and the way we work, from our emotional hearts to our even more complicated parts. Girls are also welcome to fire off some questions; I’m sure the guys reading my blog would love to hear what’s on your mind as well. Email me at RevolvHer@gmail.com.

Hey RevolvHer,
I am a 25-year-old male virgin. The reasons why I'm still a virgin aren't terribly important, but it's a mix of bad circumstances, bad luck, and, on occasion, personal choice.

If you were 25 years old and a potential boyfriend told you he was a virgin, would that change your outlook on the relationship? My options are either tell her the truth, don't say anything, or tell a little white lie and say that I've had minimal experience but not in the past few years. That way it takes away some of the stigma of being a virgin. I know that honesty is the best policy, but I'm trying to do what would be best for the success of the relationship. Sometimes it's best not knowing certain information right? What do you think?

Thanks,
Old Virgin

Dear Old Virgin,
Sorta like Ol’ Dirty Bastard, only you ain’t dirty and you sure as hell aren’t banging like ODB back in the day. But I digress massively. You are the original OV, so I am going to give you some good advice here.


I would love to know what your not “terribly important” reasons are for clinging to your virginity for so long. You think those reasons aren’t important to your current “condition,” but they might be the key to the answer. The reasons could be why you are scared to discuss virginity with your current girlfriend. Maybe you get up to the plate and the shame you feel about being new to the pussy stops you from batting. Maybe you sabotage your relationships in order to avoid the issue of sex because of your fear. Who knows? I don’t—because you didn’t tell me. I do know that if I was 25 years old and met a virgin, I’d be totally stoked and up to the challenge, not freaked out in the least. But then again, when I was 25, I was busy boning 40-year-old dirtbags.


So here we are with your problem: I believe that you need to be completely honest about your “condition” if you want to have a rewarding sexual relationship with your horndog girlfriend. When it comes to good lovin’, communication is the key. If she judges you because you didn’t want to fuck someone you didn’t care about, or because situations haven’t been optimal for getting it on, then she might just suck, and not in the good way. If you decide to lie about your virginity, you might be an anxious wreck at the point of entry, and that is no fun for either party. If you are nervous about how to tell her, and when, keep in mind that you don’t need to broadcast your status right away. You can wrap her around your finger first. Have a few hot make-out sessions where you please her with your hands and mouth. Getting a girl off without trying to stick it in is a surefire way to make her fall for you. At that point, telling her that you are a virgin isn’t going to make or break anything and will feel safe because you will have the power. Also, give her the benefit of the doubt; she might be really into the idea of taking your virginity. I know I would be!


And remember, it isn’t that bad to be the 25-year-old virgin. It could be way worse, dude: You could be the 40-year-old virgin.
xxx
RevolvHer

Our guitarist Ryan’s birthday was Saturday and we all got him a big-ass birthday cake, filled with hookers and sandwiches. Mike got a tattoo on his left butt cheek of Ryan’s face with a Gene Simmons tongue that said “It’s my birthday!” written across it. We tricked bassist Matt and guitarist Jeff (who are both vegan and have been for longer than vegan has been vegan) into eating sexy hooker flesh. Matt threw up a bunch of beer and hair and fingernails while Jeff went back for seconds. Some of the other guys started making out, which was a trip, and I heard something about a super-secret swordfight to the death. I left when a bunch of hot cops showed up.

It was the best B-day ever.

This next part is for real…

Outside of the show with Dead Child (a few weeks ago), I sat for a few hours and stared at two homeless men holding each other while talking passionately about who knows what. I imagined them just then realizing that they were homeless, had lost everything, and had only one another’s man-love. Maybe they would share a can of steel reserve and wonder where they all went wrong while cupping each other’s butts. If only every old homeless man had another old homeless man to hold, maybe this country would be in a better place. Just a dream of mine…

That night Dead Child stayed at my place. They were all sick with herpes and chlamydia and gonorrhea and syphilis and plague and also were passing around a pretty nasty little cold. They’re really great guys. Like, super great. C’mon.

The next night they had another show in Phoenix, came home drunk, and molested my roommate’s cat. We haven’t seen her since. That cat was a slut anyway. Slut cat.

Can’t wait to play with Graf Orlock on September 7. They bang out with their thang out.

Love, Grace

When I got the word from design director Josh about needing an image for Revolver’s reviews section, the first thing I did was to think of a good composition, so I sat down and began to very roughly sketch out some thumbnails for the piece.

STEP 1 : THUMBNAILS
One thing I had to keep in mind while working out what went where was what Josh wanted, which was the band (Slipknot) disemboweling somebody in an environment that resonated with the movie Hostel. You know, gore, gore, gore, something I had no qualms about doing. The purpose of the thumbnail sketches were to be able to get a feel for the space given and what I could do with it, so as I said before, they’re so crude that a majority of the time they’re not legible. I showed the sketches to Josh, since I had two (I always feel it to be a wise idea to come up with an alternative idea for the image, just in case the first idea doesn’t fly), the other (see below, bottom) being Slipknot doing a sacrifice ritual in the circular logo that they have. He decided to go with the Hostel-type design. Once that was out of the way, I could get started on the piece itself.

STEP 2: RESEARCH
Since I don’t really follow Slipknot, I had to do more research than usual to be able to invoke the concepts that drive the band to the best of my ability. Along with getting the pictures of the band in their new threads and masks from Josh, I also looked up the circle that they have for one of their logos. It was one of the main aspects of the thumbnail sketch that wasn’t accepted, so I still wanted to have it in the final art. I then found some photos from the first Hostel film, as well as renting the second one, to get an idea of the type of atmosphere in the movie. Along with visual reference I was also able to listen to Slipknot’s single, “All Hope Is Gone,” off the new album of the same name. In the chorus, one of the lines goes, “We have seen the fall of the elite,” so I figured it would be an interesting idea to have the person that the band is disemboweling actually be a member of the elite class of this society. Since that is a topic that piques my curiosity anyways, I figured that the best candidate for slaughter would be David Rockefeller, so I found some photos of him as well. As Revolver artist “Ghoulish” Gary said in the last blog, Google really is your friend.

STEP 3: PENCILS
Once I was finished with researching, I got straight into putting pencil to paper. What I usually do is replicate the composition of the thumbnail on Bristol board with pencil. I start out by making sure the shapes of the figures, as well as the shapes of the setting, fit coherently in the dimensions of the picture. This step was especially important for this piece, since there are nine guys in the band, as well as Rockefeller on the table. Once that was finished, I fleshed out the figures by drawing in the shapes that make up the human body (head, chest, shoulders, etc.). I also always make sure to get the perspective points in the picture (i.e. the way the bricks are drawn and how the table is viewed at eye level). Once those aspects of the drawing are finished, I go in and draw the masks and the clothing and gore, tightening the line work so that the inking process won’t take as much time. I added the circle logo that the band has in the background to give it more of a ritualistic feel, to make it look like they were sacrificing the elite for the sake of hope. I also carefully placed where the blacks of the shadows are going to be, since the use/lack of black in a piece more often then not has an effect on the atmosphere of the art.

STEP 4: INKS
Inking the art is one of my favorite parts of making illustrations. I almost always ink with a small watercolor brush, usually a No. 2 brush. I keep two brushes handy, one for the inks and one for the pro-white. Pro-white is like white-out but for India Ink, a very useful tool for mess-ups. Although there isn’t as much constructing in the inking process, I usually have to put a lot of focus and concentration into it to make sure that the weight and contour of the lines is exactly what I want it to be. With inks, I finalize the textures of parts of the piece, whether it is the wood on the table or the leather on Clown’s mask.

STEP 5: COLORS
Like Gary, I use a Wacom Intuos Tablet to color most of my illustrations. It truly is an amazing piece of technology and I highly recommend it to any artist who works on the computer. What I do is scan the inks, open the file in Photoshop, and use a tool called Levels in Photoshop to make the black and white of the image starker and get rid of all the excess pencil marks. Once that’s done, I lay down large blocks of color so I can get an idea of what colors will go where and what colors will bounce off each other well or work well together. After I have a flat color on everything in the piece of art, I go in and start adding detail. For this piece specifically I experimented with a lot of color textures for the masks, the bricks on the wall, the wood in the table, and the gore, to give it a grimy feel. I spent a lot of time on the gore, since I felt the best way to show all the gore was in vivid color. I wanted to make the wall look really grimy, too, so I put a lot of stains and rocky texture in it, to give it the feel of being in a sacrificial dungeon. Once the colors were done, I saved it and sent it on its way to Josh, and we all lived happily ever after.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this. See you in the Twilight Zone!
Sean

With System of a Down on indefinite hiatus and frontman Serj Tankian gone solo, Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan hope to make their mark with Scars on Broadway

By Mikael Wood

Ask Daron Malakian why he walked away from one of the most important bands in heavy metal and he’ll respond with a question of his own, one worthy of the great philosophers of our time: “What’s pussy to a porn star?”

It’s a sunny June afternoon in Los Angeles, and Malakian’s smoking pot in the lounge of a dimly lit recording studio while he takes a break from sequencing the self-titled debut by Scars on Broadway, the group Malakian formed with drummer John Dolmayan when the two musicians’ other band, System of a Down, went on hiatus following their headlining slot on Ozzfest 2006. Malakian brings up the porn star example to illustrate a point about a kind of “innocence” that he says System lost as a result of their success.

“We grew to expect certain things,” the singer-guitarist explains. “When we put out Mezmerize and Hypnotize [in 2005], we knew we were gonna get a lot of attention. Playing shows night after night in front of 15,000 roaring people—the first, second, third times it’s amazing. But after a while it starts to rub off, and then you need something else to take you there.” In the colorful language of Malakian’s metaphor, pussy no longer held any special meaning. So instead of pushing things further, he decided to take a step back—not all the way to square one, of course, but to a place where an audience’s adoration isn’t a sure thing.

“When people cheer after we play a song—and right now, no one at a Scars on Broadway show has even heard these songs—it’s like, Wow, they cheered!” he says. The first time he heard his new group on the radio, “I was like someone whose song has never been played on the radio before. I mean, I’ve won a Grammy! But this feels new again. That feeling that had been lost in System is back.”

Scars on Broadway (Interscope) does not sound like the work of a baby band. What it does sound like is one of the best albums of the year: Less metal and more rock and roll than System’s stuff, as Dolmayan puts it, the disc finds Malakian channeling the world’s current end-times vibe in 15 lean-and-mean jams that nod to the his disparate influences, which stretch from the Damned to the Kinks to Roxy Music. It’s an uncommonly assured debut, and though its hard-hitting riffs are certain to satisfy System of a Down devotees, its streamlined tunefulness should attract new listeners who couldn’t quite hang with schizophrenic System tracks like “Chop Suey!” and “B.Y.O.B.”

“The songs are amazing,” says Lisa Worden, music director at L.A.’s taste-making modern-rock station KROQ, which in May invited Scars on Broadway to play its annual Weenie Roast concert alongside Metallica and Bad Religion. “Daron sang in System along with [frontman] Serj [Tankian], so it’s got that familiar voice. It’s different, but not too different to where it would turn off System fans.”

Malakian says his goal for the album was not to pull a creative about-face but to “evolve from what I did” with Dolmayan, bassist Shavo Odadjian, and Tankian (who last year released a well regarded solo debut, Elect the Dead). “I’m a less-is-best person,” he insists. “People always focused on the complex parts of System, but as the writer of the band I always focused on the simplicity—on making those complex parts simple to listen to.” He points to a handful of tunes from Mezmerize and Hypnotize—“Lost in Hollywood,” “Lonely Day,” and “Soldier Side” among them—as examples of that effort. “I wanted to take that further with Scars.”

As on all of System of a Down’s records, there’s a pronounced political consciousness to the music on Scars on Broadway. Malakian references the president and war and religion and the environment, but he’s much more oblique than Tankian is on Elect the Dead. “Serj and I both do politics—we just have a different way of doing it,” he says. “I don’t write about issues. I’m not for or against anything. I’m like an announcer at a ballgame: He’s not picking teams; he’s not cheering for anybody. He’s just telling you what’s going on.”

Tankian’s absence looms large in Scars’ music. “Knowing Serj wasn’t gonna be there made a big difference in my writing,” Malakian says. For the first time in years, “I didn’t sit there and say, What would Serj do here?” He figures if System hadn’t decided to take a break, the band’s next album would have been less about the interplay between his and Tankian’s vocals and instead would have “turned into me singing my songs and Serj singing his songs. And that wasn’t where we wanted to be.”

Hanging out in his room at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood the day before Scars shoot the video for “They Say,” Dolmayan says that Malakian hasn’t ever really gotten the credit he deserves for steering System’s sound. “People unfortunately misunderstand the role of a frontman,” the drummer explains. “Serj is our singer, but it’s not a singer-songwriter situation. That created a problem.” (Tankian declined to comment for this article.) Scars on Broadway, Dolmayan says, “sets the record straight. It gives Daron the opportunity to do the producing and the writing and the singing, and makes it so that there’s no question about his vision.”

Malakian is hesitant to calls Scars his chance to prove himself. “It’s not like I had to show the world what I can do,” he says. “I’ve always looked up to the Jimmy Pages and the Pete Townshend—people who were a big part of their band but not necessarily the center guy. But I think the more I mature, I’m just feeling like I’m writing songs I need to sing myself.”

As for Dolmayan, the drummer wasn’t looking for a new drumming gig when System went on hiatus. Having moved from L.A. to Las Vegas a few years ago, he was looking forward to dedicating his time to Torpedo Comics, his growing comics-and-collectibles retail operation. “I needed a break to rediscover who I was,” Dolmayan says. “For so long I was John from System of a Down, and I just wanted to be John again. I needed some time to escape.”

Toward the end of 2006, Malakian called Dolmayan and told him he’d like him to play drums for a new band he was putting together called Scars on Broadway. “He sent me the music and it was so good that I said I’d be happy to play on a couple of songs on the album,” the drummer says. (Dolmayan also contributed to three tracks on Elect the Dead.) “But Daron said, ‘No, I’d rather you were just in the band.’”

By the time Malakian offered the job to Dolmayan, the guitarist had already gone through several drummers, none of whom brought to the band precisely what he was after. “Eventually I was like, Why don’t I just do this with John?” the frontman says. “That gave it an even cozier vibe. I like a sort of gang unity, so when John joined, the other people we got to be in the band knew they were joining a family.” (At the moment, the Scars on Broadway live band includes three additional musicians: guitarist Franky Perez, bassist Dominic Cifarelli, and keyboardist Danny Shamoun.)

In spite of the fact that they’ve played together for over a decade, Malakian and Dolmayan cut pretty contrasting figures. The former is small and shy; the latter is beefy and gregarious. Discussing the upcoming presidential election, Dolmayan outlines in comprehensive detail his problems with both the Electoral College and direct democracy, while Malakian is given to dreamier musings on what aliens would think if they landed on Earth and saw a man walking behind a dog on a leash.

Both men are dedicated to touring behind Scars on Broadway for the next year or so, but each reacts to the prospect of life on the road in his own way. “I love touring,” says Dolmayan, who enthusiastically describes hitting comic shops when in the United States and museums when abroad. “Daron hates to go to Europe—the food, the time difference. He stays in the hotel room.” “I’m not a big fan of leaving home,” Malakian confirms. “My favorite part of touring, aside from being onstage—or maybe equal to being onstage sometimes—is riding on the bus late at night. That’s calming to me when we’re on the road.”

Still, the two are in total agreement on at least one point: that Scars on Broadway are here for the long haul. “We don’t look at Scars as a side project, we look at it as a band,” Dolmayan says. “Maybe Scars and System will always piggyback—they’re great outlets for different emotions. I really like what we’re doing with Scars, and I wouldn’t want that to go away if System came back touring or did an album. I would wanna do both.”
Malakian is firmer. “You got a lot of kids out there that are bummed out that System isn’t doing anything,” he says. “I know System meant a lot to a lot of kids, and I appreciate that. But this is just the time in my life for me to move forward and move on. Maybe someday in the future we’ll get together and play live, but I really don’t have any urge or itch to write a record with System right now. I’m really happy with this band that I have right here. This feels right to me.”

Inspired by ex-lovers and the Jesus, Christian metallers Norma Jean are about to lay the “Mother” of all on the hard rock world.

By Tim Grierson

Los Angeles’s Venice Beach is a favorite haunt for retirees, surfers and other laid-back types. It’s usually a calm, soothing place, with its views of the tranquil Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon. But all is not peaceful here tonight, as deafening heavy metal blares from one of the homes right on the beachfront. Their reveries interrupted, passing beachcombers glare at the clattering sounds, unaware that they’re hearing the raw tracks that will become The Anti Mother, the fourth album from Georgia Christian metal band Norma Jean.

On a tight deadline to complete the record, Norma Jean’s five members—singer Cory Brandan, guitarists Chris Day and Scottie Henry, bassist Jake Schultz, and new drummer Chris Raines (who recently replaced founding drummer Daniel Davison)—sit with producer Ross Robinson and engineer Ryan Boesch in Robinson’s home studio, sampling a few tracks for Revolver. The three previewed songs aren’t finished, but “Death of the Anti Mother,” “Self-Employed Chemist,” and “Vipers, Snakes and Actors” have a swinging, furious urgency, although Brandan cringes on a couch in the corner, not completely happy with his vocals.

Later, sitting in Robinson’s living room with Schultz, staring out the window at the gorgeous ocean view, Brandan struggles to get a handle on an album that’s still a mystery to him and his bandmates. “There were songs on this record that were influenced by a feeling that I had, rather than just grabbing a guitar and picking at it,” he says. “This record definitely goes in so many directions. But I don’t even know what it sounds like—I haven’t really heard it yet.” Norma Jean are at a critical juncture in the record’s progress, with many creative decisions still to be made. With that looming pressure on their shoulders, Brandan and Schultz took some time out to discuss their new album’s themes, the difficulties of writing personal songs, and why they don’t like most of their fellow Christians.

REVOLVER You’ve been here two months working on the album. Is it hard being so away from your families this long?
CORY BRANDAN It’s definitely stressful at times. But my family understands what I do. And my kids don’t know any different. Like, this is all I’ve ever done—Dad’s in a band. My kids are 13 and nine. That’s actually a thing I think a lot of people don’t know…
JAKE SCHULTZ That you’ve got kids?
BRANDAN Not only do I have kids, but I have a teenager! [Laughs] She’s 14 next month.

Before we sat down, you mentioned that you wanted this album to be less noisy. What did you mean?
BRANDAN This album is just us playing like we play. We have a tendency to go in the studio and go nuts on instruments—more nuts than we would live. Literally, on Redeemer, we were tackling each other while we were playing. And then that stuff made it on the record. [Laughs] On this record, we took it a little bit more seriously. We just wanted this record to be sonically more powerful than anything we’ve ever done.
SCHULTZ With every record that we’ve done, we take something from that record and try and build on top of it. The record before Redeemer [2005’s Oh God, the Aftermath] was really, really mechanical sounding. Everything was on point. It made us better musicians, but we didn’t want to do that same thing again. We wanted something that had a little more life in it. And so with Redeemer, we just went all-out—every single note and even every wrong note went on the record. So, having taken both of those approaches, we’re putting both of those records into action now.
BRANDAN We’re supposed to be done with this record already.
SCHULTZ It was supposed to be mixed and mastered and handed in to the label in two days.

What caused the delay?
BRANDAN I don’t know. [Laughs] I don’t know anymore. We just put a ton into it. When we got here, we did 16 days of preproduction with Ross—all five of us and him. And we worked on every part, even like every little drum part. So much has changed. We really put the record under a microscope.
SCHULTZ This record has been such a struggle to make. Let’s say you’re at the bottom of the ocean and you’re swimming, trying to get to the top. And then you finally get there, and it’s like air never felt so good your entire life. It’s been a different experience recording, but the end is gonna be amazing.

The band has had some personnel changes in the past, and recently, founding drummer Daniel Davison left. What happened?
BRANDAN It was definitely something that was just building up over time. That’s something he felt he had to do.
SCHULTZ He’s happier doing what he’s doing now.
BRANDAN That dude is one of our best friends in the world, and he’s a great drummer. But he had gotten married—I think that was a big part of it. He just wanted to be home.

That’s always a tough thing: balancing the demands of being in a band and dealing with adult responsibilities.
BRANDAN Yeah. That’s funny, ’cause I didn’t join this band until I was 27 or 26. [Laughs]
SCHULTZ You were just settling in to responsibility. And then we screwed it all up.
BRANDAN [Laughs] Yeah. I really had made a decision to stop pursuing music. The week that Daniel called me and asked me to come see the band, I was living in my mom’s basement. Had no car, single parent, two kids, walking to work every day and hating it. And then…I got to love it. I was walking one day and I was like, “You know what, God? I’ll just take care of my family and I’ll get married.” I was so excited! Then Daniel calls me up: “We need a singer in three weeks.”

Tell me about the Anti Mother: What does it represent?
BRANDAN It’s a character that’s a sub-personality that everybody has. It’s kind of developed into a lot of things, and the record is themed around it. It comes from personal issues, things I’ve been through. There was a time when I made a decision to make a change in my life. And when I did that, it kind of felt like a part of me died. There was this path that I was on, and when I broke off from that, I was just in shock. So that’s what the Anti Mother’s about—killing that sort of personality.

This period you’re talking about—was this when you converted to Christianity?
BRANDAN No, this was after that. I never feel like I have things figured out. And I never feel like I know what’s best for anybody else. Sometimes you mess up. I feel like it’s all a learning experience. I’ve broken my life into three stages. There’s a learning stage, and then there was definitely a stage—maybe when I was a teenager—when, like, you think you’ve got it figured out, you know what you’re gonna do. That’s about the time that I became a Christian. And then there’s a definite falling-down and realizing I never advanced past the first stage, which is the learning stage.

Sometimes for people who convert to Christianity, there’s a period where everything seems to be perfect and then they realize it’s—
BRANDAN Not all roses.

Exactly. How have you dealt with that?
BRANDAN Um, very, very badly at times. It’s not all roses, and the storms still come. You can’t make a change like that in your life and expect everything else to change with it. But for me, I just kind of go with it. You know, I live my life on a day-to-day basis. I raise my kids that way, too.

In terms of thematic elements for an album, does that come from you, Cory?
BRANDAN We all write lyrics together. We collaborate on everything. We’ll sit here with our laptops and talk about lyrics—it’s like putting a puzzle together. We just stare at the screens until someone yells, “Got it!” Songs are the same way, artwork’s the same way. Everything we do, it’s all a collaborative effort, the five of us. One thing we do before we track a song is we talk about what the song’s about. We just get a feeling for it. And I think it’s really awesome, because then everybody in the band knows what the song is about. And you play it differently if you do that. You play it like you mean it.

OK, so with “Self-Employed Chemist,” what is that song about?
BRANDAN Well, what do you think when you hear “Self-Employed Chemist”?

Drugs.
BRANDAN Yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. The song’s kind of…I don’t know how far I should go into what that song’s about. [Pauses] It just basically deals with a person that I was with for a long time…one of the mothers of my kids. She struggled with addiction for eight years. And I saw her go through that. I was very much in love with her, so it comes from that. She’s just recently gotten over it, and she’s doing really well. I’m super-proud of her, and she’s been doing so amazing. I can really see a change in her. One of the lines in the song is “We’re coming back to collect that killer.” And that’s inspired by a thing she said to me when she cleaned up.

This song comes from such a personal place. Did that contribute to making the album more of a struggle to complete than your previous albums?
BRANDAN That’s why we like coming here—Ross finds that button and pushes it. Before I sing, he comes in and we talk about what the song’s about. And we’ll sit there and talk for an hour until we get that feeling. But it definitely makes it stressful because you’re thinking about those things. But Ross will tell you, “You lived the song. If you don’t want to deal with what it’s about, then don’t record it.” But it’s also very cathartic as well.

OK, so what is “Vipers, Snakes and Actors” about?
BRANDAN It’s a very pissed-off song. We’re Christians, so we’re kind of tied to every Christian. And I don’t like most Christians. [Laughs] The lyrics are “Carry your flag/March into that fictional battle, or fictional cause/Show off your medals.” It’s kind of like saying, “Dude, if you’re gonna do all those things, if you’re gonna wave your flag around, you know what? Go ahead.” But then the next lyric is, “Just don’t reach for that gun.” Which is basically saying like, “Don’t point it at me.” Everybody’s going through something different—religion aside, as humans we should know that about each other. I believe in Jesus, and Jesus didn’t shun anybody. He went to bars and hung out with the most hated people. And people would ask him, “Why are you even hanging out with these people?” And he had one of the most awesome answers ever, which was “A healed person doesn’t need a doctor.” That’s so cool. Nobody’s healed, you know?

Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Mötorhead, and Testament have joined forces for this summer’s Metal Masters tour, and here, in a world exclusive, the frontmen of all four bands reveal what it takes to be a real defender of the faith

By Jon Wiederhorn
Photo by Travis Shinn

Trust us: It’s not easy to coordinate the schedules of four heavy metal icons. Fortunately, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, Heaven and Hell singer Ronnie James Dio, Motörhead mastermind Lemmy Kilmister, and Testament belter Chuck Billy are excited enough about their upcoming Metal Masters tour that they’re willing to juggle their plans and convene in Los Angeles for a cover shoot and roundtable interview. Unfortunately, the only time they can all make themselves available is the decidedly un-metal hour of 11 A.M. on a Sunday morning.

Even then, time is short. Halford has to split by 1:30 to catch a flight to New York, and to make matters even more stressful, it’s now 11:30 and Kilmister is still MIA. As the seconds tick by, this writer waits with a knotted stomach, trying to fight back mental images of Lemmy snoring away in bed, empty liquor bottles strewn across the floor, a pair of biker chicks curled tightly around him.

Then, Motörhead’s finest abruptly staggers through the front door and heads straight to the beverage table, where he pours a couple of ounces of Coke into a plastic cup. He then unscrews a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, fills his vessel to the brim with the Tennessee whiskey, and takes an audible gulp.

“This is probably the first time Lemmy has ever been anywhere before noon,” marvels Halford, clearly unconcerned that Kilmister’s absence might have put the kibosh on our cover story. Dio and Billy, who have been standing in a corner of the room talking about Dio’s recent excursion to Skywalker Ranch to be filmed by George Lucas’ special effects team for an upcoming video game, are similarly unperturbed.

In retrospect, it’s obvious why Kilmister’s tardiness was about as troubling to these guys as finding an improperly folded towel in a hotel bathroom. The Metal Masters have already experienced all the highs, lows and interpersonal blowouts that the often-cruel music industry can dish out. During Halford’s first 19 years with Judas Priest (starting in 1973), the band established the razor-edged sound and leather-clad look of the new wave of British heavy metal, but he later split acrimoniously with the group in 1992 (allegedly because his bandmates wouldn’t let him pursue a side project), not returning until 2003. Ronnie James Dio’s work in Black Sabbath put the band back on the map after the 1979 ousting of Ozzy Osbourne, but internal friction was such that the singer would quit the group not once, but twice. Motörhead’s dizzying and furious songs predated ’70s punk and lay the foundation for speed metal and thrash, while in the late ‘80s, Testament were an integral component of the second wave of thrash metal, alongside bands like Exodus and Overkill. Yet both bands lost key members and had to endure seemingly endless lineup changes. And all four groups struggled through the grunge, alternative, and nu-metal eras, during which time most lost their major-label deals and could secure contracts only with independent record companies of limited resources. But regardless of the obstacles, the metal masters fought on, playing clubs, amusement parks, and anyplace else that would book them, convinced that their time would come again.

And now it has. Back in 1992, when metal mags were putting Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden on their covers, even Nostradamus, the clairvoyant subject of Judas Priest’s sprawling new heavy-metal opera of the same name, would have been hard-pressed to predict the eventual resurrection of old-school metal, but over the past few years, fans have developed new appreciation for classic sounds. Whether it’s the strong use of vintage metal in videogames and soundtracks, the rise of bands like Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold, who wear their ’80s metal influences on their guitar straps, or something else entirely, one thing’s clear: New metal fans are exploring the history of their favorite genre and discovering the jewels of the past.

With Halford, Dio, Kilmister, and Billy all dressed in black, looking every bit the legends they are and laughing more than we might have expected, Revolver snaps a bunch of photos. Then everyone gathers around a table to discuss the rebirth of their chosen genre, the lack of star power in many modern bands, the hazards of the Internet, and, most important, why it’s essential to keep metal evil.

REVOLVER What triggered the recent surge in popularity of old-school metal and thrash?
RONNIE JAMES DIO You’ve got all these people that are in positions of power now at radio stations and advertising firms, and these are people that were fans of ours years ago. And now they’re in a position to do something significant for this genre that they love. They can get us the attention that we stopped getting before.
CHUCK BILLY Also, now you’ve got all these games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band so there’s a whole new generation getting introduced to the music. So, you’ve got 6-year-old kids listening to metal.
LEMMY KILMISTER You can’t do Guitar Hero with indie music, can you?
BILLY No, and now when they hear it, they seek out more and get to understand what we’ve done and the history of it all.

Metal Masters is the kind of package tour that could do well in every market in North America and across the world, but you’ve limited the tour to 14 dates. Why?
HALFORD Of course, all the festivals in Europe, Japan, South America, they would love this, but it’s just not practical. You have to do what you gotta do to make it a viable, umm…
KILMISTER Financial proposition.
HALFORD You gotta do that. You gotta pay the bills, and hopefully there’ll be a bit to take home at the end of the day. So Live Nation, who are putting together this tour, have been very selective to make sure that we go into the markets where we will do well. And I’m sure now from the advance ticket sales, they’d like to stick a few more dates in, but it’s a bit late now.

How have you all weathered the storm when so many of your peers have come and gone?
KILMISTER We’re not qualified to do anything else, so what choice do we have?
BILLY I think it’s just a matter of staying true to what you started and seeing it out to the end and not changing with the musical climate. Like, when the grunge scene came in, it seemed like metal fell off the planet. But we just kept forging on.
KILMISTER Yeah, but grunge didn’t actually change anything. Metal music was always just as popular; the media just decided to stop covering it, that’s all. We could sell tickets and fill venues, it’s just that nobody was writing about us. They were trying to kill us, but they didn’t, so tough luck.
HALFORD The other thing is, there is only one Motörhead, there is only one Judas Priest, there is only one Heaven and Hell and Testament. We’re not like any other bands. We created what we did all those years back and we just constantly represent ourselves. I’m sure it’s intriguing to look in and try to find out what the secret formula is, but there isn’t one. It’s just the chemistry of certain guys coming together, making the kind of songs they love. And a lot of our longevity comes down to the fans that have supported us.
KILMISTER They’re the ones who are always there to tell us if we’re screwing up. I talk to them after the show and they tell me the truth, man. And I really rely on them because sometimes you get above your station a little bit or sometimes you just get tired and you don’t bother. These kids tell me about it right on the nail.
HALFORD That’s really important—not inflating yourself to this unreachable godlike pinnacle. None of us here have done that. We’re tuned into reality and people know what we’re about.
KILMISTER That’s why kids who work in the machine shop like us. They come and see us and it sounds like a machine shop—at least we do. Anybody who does a bloody job they hate in a factory wants to escape on the weekend and go and see a rock show. And any of us here are as good an escape from that shit world that they are stuck in, and thank god we are, so they can feel 10 feet tall for 90 minutes.
DIO Ten feet tall? I’d settle for six feet tall.

Why are metal fans so much more devoted than fans of other genres?
KILMISTER Because we’re here for them and we carried on when everybody else gave up, so they stick with us.
DIO It’s a kind of music style that’s always having things thrown at it by other people.
KILMISTER The eternal underdog.
DIO Exactly. It’s a really underdog form of music because of the way you dress, how you act, what you listen to. So you’re always being put down and marginalized. The fans can really equate with us. It’s kind of this fringe thing and it pigeonholes the bands and the fans together so we feel strength with each other.
KILMISTER You get a larger pigeon.

It seems like a lot of new bands lack that larger-than-life presence that the old-school groups brought to the stage.
KILMISTER I know. It looks like you just met them on the street. That’s no fun, see? What you want is somebody that comes down from another planet that you will never possibly visit. That’s what a real good rock show is like—aliens from another world come and kick you in the teeth and fuck off quick, you know?
HALFORD I think that’s an important point. We were all around before the Internet. We were there before fax machines. When any of us would come to your town it was like this big mystery. You were like, Oh, my God, they’re coming here. I don’t know what the set list will be like, I don’t know what they’ll do onstage, I don’t know what the stage will look like. And all of that built up to the moment when the lights went down and there was the band. And now, it’s very, very difficult to recreate that. Fans know the set list in advance. They know what you’re going to look like. It’s like that pre-moment has happened before the scene takes place. Having said that, I think we’re lucky because we still do have this mystique that’s been created by the fans.

Are there just too many bands now?
KILMISTER Yeah, that’s one thing. There are bands now that would never have gotten a recording contract in the ’60s or ’70s. They would have thrown rocks at them.
DIO No, come on. I don’t think there’s any such thing as too many bands. Are they wasting their time? Of course not. First of all, they get some joy doing it. That’s the most important thing. And then if you can share that joyfulness with your fans, that’s a bonus. There’s not too many bands, there’s not too many people trying, and it’s not a dead end. Any kind of music is something that we, as musicians, whether we like it or not, should embrace, because we should be able to remember when people said to us, “No, you can’t play here. We don’t allow that kind of crap here.”
KILMISTER I remember that. I think it was last week. [Laughs]

You mentioned the Internet, which, of course, is changing the entire dynamic of the industry, from the way music is promoted to the way it’s distributed—both legally and illegally.
KILMISTER It’s too much information, man. Most people who get all this information don’t deserve that much.
BILLY I think it damages record companies as far as sales go, but for the bands, it’s almost like free promo to let the fans know we’re coming and we’ve got something going on.

But if record labels don’t sell your albums, you don’t make royalties or get tour support.
BILLY It’s true, but I’m relying on myself and my live performance. I’m out there selling tickets, putting people in the seats.
DIO If someone can give you something of value, some hacker will find a way to get it for free on the Internet. That’s just the way it is. But there’s nothing better than the amount of information you can get from the Internet. But you know, keep your fucking nose out of my business because it has nothing to do with you. You can use the Internet for all you want to, but stay out of my life. That’s the unfair part of all this. And that’s why so many musicians get to the point where they go, I don’t want to do this anymore. Everyone knows where I live, my social security number, how much I make. It’s awful the way they impose upon your privacy.
KILMISTER It’s going to get worse, too. It’s the greatest information machine ever invented, and what does the human race use it for? Child porn. You can rely on the human race, man, every time.
HALFORD Whether we like it or not, it’s too late to change it. So we’ve had to adapt. And luckily we’ve got so much tradition and history and knowledge and experience around us. It’s got to be a lot tougher for new bands. When we all started making music, your label was on your side. They’d say, “OK, lads, it might take two, three, or four albums before you get to where you want to go, but we’re with you.” Now, with a lot of young bands, the labels go, “Well, you didn’t sell 50,000 copies of your first record. You’re gone.”
DIO But I don’t think in any way, shape, or form we are or should be telling anyone, Don’t do this.
HALFORD It’s the greatest thing in the world to be in a metal band and to get on the road and be on a tour bus and travel like we do.
BILLY We get to do what we love, and there’s nothing better than that.
LEMMY Yeah, I love it, man. It’s a traveling circus.
DIO I think the important thing about all of us being here is that we are examples of what you can accomplish if you believe in what you do, and we are here to tell you not to give up.

Many metal icons have been through major lineup shifts. When you come back to a band you haven’t been with for years, or a member returns who hasn’t played with you in a decade, does that engender a new sense of discovery?
HALFORD Yeah, it’s like being back where you belong. If you end up going back to where you started, the elements of what made it all begin are still intact. So, if you’ve changed players or you’ve moved away and come back, going back to that moment is when it works best.
BILLY The chemistry is what’s great for us now. We got our original guys back after 14 years. And once we had that first rehearsal, it was like putting on an old shoe again. We were playing with confidence, everybody belongs together, and the songs you created 20 some odd years ago are much stronger and better performed now with those original guys back.

What is it about dark historical figures like Nostradamus, Aleister Crowley, and the Marquis de Sade that make such great subject matter for metal bands?
HALFORD You can’t deal with a safe character. You want a figure that has a story and provoked some kind of strong reaction.
KILMISTER Basically, you want dangerous people, don’t you? If you read history, you don’t read about the fucking Medieval agrarian reforms. You hear about Attila the bloody Hun and the Norman conquest of Britain—pretty much anything with swords and bloodshed. That’s what’s interesting.

What about bands that write about characters who are genuinely evil, be they mass murderers or corrupt politicians?
HALFORD Evil is a very, very real thing. There are evil things going on right now outside of this room.
KILMISTER Most of them in Washington, D.C.
HALFORD I don’t think evil is something that we created with metal. It was always there. We just aren’t afraid to address the issues, and we’ll give you our feelings and feedback in the message of the lyrics.
LEMMY The subject of evil is obvious for anyone with a brain. Look at the news every night. That’s evil.
HALFORD What’s really interesting is that this style of music is the only one that will address those really difficult life-crisis issues, and that puts us in a pretty exclusive department.
DIO Well, because it’s the force of the music. Jazz, country, and pop don’t have the force of metal, so they can’t address those same kinds of powerful subjects.
KILMISTER And it has to be loud. You can’t have conversations over this kind of music. At other shows, you see people in the audience standing there talking while the fucking band plays. That ain’t gonna happen at a Motörhead concert.

I’ve decided take a break each month from the love and sex advice to start objectifying men in metal. Due to popular demand, I’ll do a breakdown of the hottest dudes in each new issue of Revolver. It seems that I didn’t satisfy some of my readers with my initial list of the Hottest Men In Metal from a few months ago.

Before I launch into my breakdown of the October issue’s man meat, I want to qualify what I deem as hot when it comes to rock stars. Some may say my taste leans towards the older, dirtbag variety of rocker. Well, that may be true. I was raised in a generation when dudes in bands enjoyed working their image to the hilt, wearing dirty leather pants, fucking girls, overdosing on buses, and trashing hotel rooms. Lately the rock scene is a bit more watered down and men wear flip-flops onstage. So, that said, I like my men a bit more rough ’n’ tumble; I will never include a man on this list who owns or uses a flat iron. That will be the only steadfast qualification for omission from my list (though Nikki Sixx gets a pass—see below); I will not discriminate on age, race, or footwear. And now, onward with the objectification.


Robert Trujillo, Metallica (in the cover story)
When I was a teenager, I used to drool over Robert as he pounded his bass in Suicidal Tendencies. He is still bringing it as a player in Metallica. This man has big, strong, bass-player hands and seems to know how to use them. He also came off as very humble in Some Kind of Monster. He tops my list as the hottest dude in the October ’08 issue because when I thought real hard about making this list, he is pretty much the only one I can still sexually fantasize about.





Nikki Sixx, Mötley Crüe, Sixx:AM (Going Postal, page 48)
I have had a long love affair in my head with Nikki, going back about 20 years now. I remember reading in RIP magazine about his heroin overdose and revival and being completely crushed out on him from that point on; nothing I love more than a rock-and-roll rebel junkie with attitude and messy black eyeliner. Mark Weiss, the longtime Mötley Crüe tour photographer, invited me to meet Nikki a few years ago on the Brides of Destruction tour. Nikki granted me the extreme honor of seeing him whirl around backstage as he put on his makeup and cut up his stage garb, all while he was completely pantless, his li’l Nikki swinging in the breeze. It was a night I will never forget. Also, everyone should read The Heroin Diaries; it’s a great book about the effect that addiction has on loved ones of drug addicts, in addition to being a killer rock-and-roll autobiography.





Corey Taylor, Slipknot, Stone Sour (In the Works, page 25)
It seems that most of my female blog readers get moist in the pants for this guy, and his masked mug is all over just about every issue of Revolver these days. I can see where the gals are coming from; Corey is way easy on the eyes sans his new ultra-creepy mask. A few years ago, on the set of a Revolver cover shoot, as Clown was yelling at me, Corey was the one dude who came to my rescue. He was and is very polite and charming. He is a powerful frontman with an amazing voice. There is also something totally kinky about the mask thing. I am not going there in this blog just yet…but think about it, ladies.





Tomas Lindberg, At the Gates (Live and In Concert!, page 98)
Not much needs to be said about this man. He is Swedish (all things Swedish are sexy). His band and music defined most of melodic death metal and metalcore as you all know it today. Basically, he can slaughter my hole any day.


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Brendan Tobin, Made Out of Babies (Profiles, page 42)
The new Made Out of Babies album is fucking havin’ it. Go buy it, listen to it, and worship at the MOOB alter with the rest of the Revolver staff. Usually Julie Christmas is the one getting all the props for being gorgeous and having pipes of gold. On this day, I would like to shine a light on her bandmate Brendan Tobin. He is tall, dark, and handsome and plays a mean guitar. He is also very fucking cool and an incredibly talented photographer.





Brandon Geist, Executive Editor, Revolver Magazine (Editors Letter, page 20)
Brandon is so hot that even Trujillo couldn’t keep his hands off him. Also, as far as the strong silent type go, this dude has that shit on lock. I will leave it at that so as to not ruin my great relationship with Brandon’s awesome wife.





The thigh on the cover of the Accept album (“Graphic Violence,” page 60)
I’m just tossing a bone to all the leather daddies!

SERIOUSLY, WE'RE NOT JOKING ABOUT THE WARNING. This is some seriously sick shit, so don't even think about clicking through/scrolling down if you are weak of heart and/or stomach—or if you are easily, or even not-so-easily, offended. We don’t condone this stuff—we’re just showing it like it is: sick, really, really sick. For less disgusting but no less memorable album covers, check out the "Graphic Violence" story starting on page 58 of the current issue of Revolver.

BRUJERIA
Matando Güeros
(Roadrunner, 1993)

CANNIBAL CORPSE
Tomb of the Mutilated
(Metal Blade, 1992)

CESSPOOL OF VERMIN
Beastial Necrophilia
(Sevared, 2008)

PUNGENT STENCH
Been Caught Buttering
(Nuclear Blast, 1991)

PREDATOR
Easy Prey
(Metal Blade, 1985)

PROSTITUTE DISFIGUREMENT
Embalmed Madness
(Unmatched Brutality, 2004)

TYPE O NEGATIVE
Origin of the Feces
(Roadrunner, 1992)

MEATKNIFE/DEPRESSION
Big Maso Mom
(Noise Variations, 2003)

PARACOCCIDIOIDOMICOSISPROCTITISSARCOMUCOSIS
Satyriasis and Nymphomania
(American Line, 2003)

SCORPIONS
Virgin Killer
(Polydor, 1976)

XXX MANIAK/COFFINS
Crack of Doom
(Creeping Vine, 2008)

ROTTENNESS
Blasphemous Gore Enjoyment
(Emerald City, 2000)