This week sees new shit from HIM, Melvins, The Ocean, Cathedral, Howl, and more hitting stores. Check out the list of releases below and let us know which ones you’re snagging a copy of and which record should be the Album of the Week. Pick your favorite and feel free to vote as many times as you want. Voting ends on Monday, May 6, at noon, when the results will be announced.
Noisy hard rockers the Melvins have been busy lately. Not only are they releasing a new album as a three-piece (under the name Melvins Lite) titled Freak Puke in June, but their standard quartet lineup is putting out an EP, Scion A/V Presents: The Bulls & the Bees, which will be downloadable for free on March 13 on ScionAV.com. You can get a taste of that release below with the premiere of the song, “We Are Doomed.”
Of the song, vocalist-guitarist Buzz Osborne says, “The title of the song “We are Doomed” pretty much says it all… Cool and classy!”
Check it out and let us know what you think of it in the comments.
Photo by Jessi Rose
]]>This past weekend saw the 20th anniversary of Guns N’ Roses landmark Use Your Illusion albums. But 1991 was also the year that many other landmark releases in hard rock and metal came out, including Metallica’s “Black Album,” Nirvana’s Nevermind, Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears, and many, many more. Below, we want you to weigh in and tell us what the best heavy release of 1991 was. Horns up!
April 5, 2011, marks the 17th anniversary of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s death. In remembrance of him, Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne (pictured left) gave a personal and emotional account of him in Revolver’s January/February “Fallen Heroes” issue (available here). He had so many great stories about Cobain, we couldn’t fit them in the magazine. So, in reverence, enjoy some of Osborne’s funnier memories of Cobain below.
REVOLVER What sorts of things did you and Kurt find funny?
BUZZ OSBORNE We laughed about a lot of stupid stuff. One thing he did
We would make all these fake magazines, like, pretend we’re going to make this magazine that has porno, biker, and gore in it. That’s our target audience, and we’re going to call it Sluts and Gore. So we’d spend all this time making these stupid collages out of cutting up all these other porno mags, and he would draw all these crazy pictures. I wish I still had those; they were hilarious. Fat women getting cut up, , really sick, black humor type stuff that was really funny.
Didn’t Kurt draw a Kiss mural on a car?
We were always doing stupid stuff, like any junker car any of us had, we would put a sign on the back of it that would say “in tow.” And the Kiss mural, he did it with a felt-tip pin. I mean, it looked like Kiss, and we thought it was funny. He also drew a big picture of a big fat Viking wearing a diaper with Molly Hatchet written over it, like a Boris Vallejo cover. Not that we were big Molly Hatchet fans. Then we started playing music and stuff like that. He drew a bunch of stuff for the Melvins that we used. Stickers and logos and all sorts of crap. We sill have that stuff.
Like what?
We used a flower T-shirt design that he did that was really cool. I don’t know where he stole it from; we wanted it to look like a kid drew it. He was really exceptionally good at all that stuff. And interestingly enough we played a show with Green River a year and a half ago. And the bass player from Green River worked at a place that made stickers way back then, and we gave him that original art and he turned it into a sticker, and he gave me one of those original ones. And we played a show with him, and he’s had it this whole time. It’s pretty funny. Like, Wow, cool!
I wish I had more of that stuff. But it wasn’t like we were cataloging this for the future. We didn’t know what we were going to do next week. We had bullshit jobs. It would’ve been nice if I had fond memories to look back on. A lot of it’s not good, you know. It’s too bad. Where we grew up affected who we became. And only because I meticulously fought my way out of that, I survived. I changed my whole life. Everything. Not because of him, I changed it before that. I started moving in a different direction.
I don’t think I could stand the situation they were in; the people they were involved with, managers, to booking agents, to road crews, all of those kinds of things. I think in order for me to have not fired them or to have pulled myself out if completely, I would’ve had to have been on drugs. I can’t stand arena-level rock type of thinking. I’m far too much of a Groucho Marxist for any of that kind of thing. I don’t want to do it the way Mötley Crüe does it, you know. I intentionally don’t want to. I want to be the other way, and they always understood that about us.
Melvins and Nirvana toured together a lot. Do you have a favorite memory of Kurt from the road?
There was one instance where we were on tour, I think it was in Slovenia. He was in our dressing room, and our dressing room had these smoked-glass windows. You could kind of see through it and you kind of couldn’t, and he was in our dressing room talking to us through a trophy case in our dressing room. It was filled with all of these old urn-looking trophies, but it was all in a foreign language, so we couldn’t understand it. It was wooden trophies and plaques and all kinds of things like that. And the line for the concert went right past our dressing room. You could see there were people in there, but you couldn’t see it was us in our room. We realized the trophy case was open, so we opened the trophy case, and then he pulls open the window. It was high enough where nobody could get in, but you could see him in there. So he starts looking down at the ground, and he’s like, “Hey!” And everybody just fucking surges over there. There’s a surge over there, “Ahh,” you know. And so he says, “Give me one of those trophies, hand me one of those things.” So he starts handing them outside, and it was like he was throwing them into a wood chipper. It was hilarious. It was really funny, shit like that. Passing out notes. “How old’s your mom?” type stuff. Stupid shit. We always thought shit like that was really funny. I always loved stuff like that.
Nirvana photo by Chris Cuffaro
]]>Melvins, Boss Hog, Today Is the Day, and more will perform at Amphetamine Reptile's 25th Anniversary bash in Minneapolis on August 28. The venerable noise-rock label, known for extravagant vinyl releases (like Melvins' 7-inch series and TITD's first 7-inch), released its first 7-inch in 1985. To celebrate, they will also include an AmRep art retrospective, featuring a Danial Corrigan photo exhibit and a Guit Art show showcasing 35 artists. The label has also announced that several event-only vinyl releases are in the works. Other bands performing include Hammerhead, the Thrown Ups, God Bullies, Gay Witch Abortion, Vaz, and White Drugs. For more details, click here.
]]>Crusty thrashers Bison B.C.’s latest album, Dark Ages (Metal Blade), is so chock-full of memorable guitar work, we figured these guys must be authorities on great riffs. Turns out we were right. Below is vocalist-guitarist Dan And’s picks for the Five Best Riffs of All-Time and his thoughts about each one.
1. BLACK SABBATH, “Hole in the Sky,” from Sabotage, 1975
Trying to pick just one Sabbath riff as a favorite is tough because they wrote every good riff ever…even “Zero The Hero” has a killer riff. There are the obvious choices of “Paranoi,” “Iron Man,” “Children of the Grave” or the song “Black Sabbath,” which started it all, but this one opens my fav Sabbath record so it’s always stuck out for me. It might be the fact that it doesn’t start right away and you can actually hear Iommi turn up the volume on his guitar, put his hand over the strings to mute them then…BLAAADOWWWW! Get yer “G-word” on!
2. THIN LIZZY, “Chinatown,” Chinatown, 1980
The perfect song…I don’t know how else to describe it. Thin Lizzy were masters of the riff like no other. Each song a perfect tactical aural assault of endless guitarmonies and good times but this one captures the flag for me. Scott Gorham was the perfect Colonel for General Lynott's riff army. Whether he was battling beside Gary Moore, Snowy White, or Brian Robertson you can tell that he was the one leading the charge.
3. BLACK FLAG, “Loose Nut,” Loose Nut, 1985
A riff that manages to not only sound as sleazy and sloppy as the lyrics to the song but also manages to completely segregate the band from their raging punk output. That polarization started with the sludge fest that is the second half of ’84’s My War and of course ’85’s Slip It In is pretty much as sleazy as you can get, but it’s still filled with classic Black Flag sounding punk riffs. Loose Nut just changed it all. The whole album’s a mid-tempo face fuck to whatever poor kid would happen to be standing in the front row. It sounds like Nikki Sixx writing a Black Sabbath record. Grow yer hair and grind the air!
4. BUDGIE, “Napoleon Bona-Part 2,” Bandolier, 1975
It takes exactly 2:38 minutes to get through the whimsical, dream-like “Napoleon Bona-Part 1,” but once “Part 2” kicks in, look the fuck out! Yer welcome, Iron Maiden. Take this hammer to the back of the head, Metallica, and don’t fuck it up. Whoops, shit the bed there, buds! Budgie galloped like no other ever has or will…they did it best, hands down. There would be no N.W.O.B.H.M. or Bay Area thrash without Budgie, period. Unfortunately that also means we have them to thank for Dave Mustaine and the current influx of horrible, barely post-teen thrash-revival bands. Good job, Welshers!
5. (tie) MELVINS, “Revolve,” Stoner Witch, 1994 / HIS HERO IS GONE, “Like Weeds,” Monuments to Thieves, 1997
There are millions of awesome classic rock and blues riffs I would throw on this list, but in terms of influence on my playing, these two are huge. It’s hard to even break them down into “riffs” because they are both an endless barrage of awesome riff after awesome riff. I never thought I would ever talk about a crust song even having a “riff” but this His Hero Is Gone one has been stuck in my head for 15 years. Basically every single song I have ever written in one form or another at first was an attempt to create the perfect mix of these two songs. Sleazy/sludgey pop metal mixed with doom and gloom crust punk. Give me 10 more years and I bet you anything I’ll even be a 275-pound dude with an afro wearing a scotchguarded mudflap covered in spikes. UGH!
Honorable Mentions (because six riffs are never enough):
Van Halen, “I’m the One”
Rush – “Spirit of Radio”/“Limelight”
Captain Beyond, everything
Eagles, “Life in the Fast Lane”
Phil Collins, “Easy Lover”
Heart, everything
Kansas, “Carry On My Wayward Son”
April Wine, “Weeping Willow”
Replacements, “Bastards of Young”
Soundgarden, everything
Bison B.C. pic by Alex Divincenzo
]]>Check under Revolver: “Yeah, we get it. You’re not on here.”
Number of editors contacted: Two.
]]>Chris Krovatin is the author of the young-adult novels Heavy Metal & You and Venomous, as well as Revolvermag.com's “Final Six” blog. The latter book was the inspiration for Deadlocke, a one-shot published by Dark Horse Comics. He thinks drinking Scotch followed by Duvel is a good idea.
On Thursday, I went to a night of underground metal headlined by Shrinebuilder (left) with support from Wolves in the Throne Room. Here’s what happened:
Price of 375 mL of McColl’s Scotch: $8.15 
Price of my dignity: $8.15.
Price of a ticket for this NYU show: $2.00 for NYU students; $5.00 for us regular plebs.
Place is mobbed: A million and one metal hipsters are out tonight. It’s funny to be part of this crowd. There’s so much flannel.
Words to get used to if you want to be a metal journalist: “You’re not on the list.”
Check under Revolver: “Yeah, we get it. You’re not on here.”
Number of editors contacted: Two.
Number of fans who shook their heads in shame while this journalist tried to negotiate getting into this show: Three.
Look assholes: I just really want to see Wolves in the Throne Room. Eat a dick.
And so: I go to the Vol Du Nuit bar.
Beer of choice: Duvel.
Number consumed: Three.
Result: Holy shit.
Final summation: Guess we’re not getting in.
Kory, my Revolver editor, is calling: “Call Dave. He’ll get you in.”
Dave comes through: We’re into the show.
Oh, Jesus: Dealing with NYU security while drunk is not fun.
First band up when we get in: Wolves in the Throne Room.
Hurrah: They’re the only reason I’m here.
Sounds: Long-form ambient black metal.
Wolves in the Throne Room fun fact: The group contains two farmers from Seattle who make music that’s supposed to sound like being in the woods.
Immediate emotion: Holy shit, it’s like being in the woods.
Lame Wolves in the Throne Room announcement: “We see…we see a mosh pit here. It’s only happened twice before…if we could just close that.”
Hilarious concept: Moshing to Wolves In The Throne Room.
Favorite crowd banter: “PLAY SLOWER!!”
Merch discovery: No Wolves in the Throne Room patches.
Really, guys: Some of us with denim vests go to these shows.
Next up: Shrinebuilder.
Shrinebuilder fun fact: Shrinebuilder are a supergroup featuring members of Neurosis, Melvins, Sleep, Om, and, of course, Wino of the Obsessed and Saint Vitus fame.
You still got that McColl’s, man: Yo, pass it around. It is gross as Hell.
Sound: Huge, looming stoner metal with a baroque twist.
General state of audience: Headbanging.
General state of band: Head-wiggling.
Favorite thing about Wino: There’s this weird, über-confident way of stepping up to the mic that Wino has. It’s fierce and beautiful.
Jesus, listen to you: Welcome to Homoville. You are the King here.
Overall opinion of this show: Word. This was cool, NYU hosting this metal show. At least we know things like this can happen. I had an okay time.
Too bad you didn’t see Salome: These things happen.
Toppings on my post-show Crif Dog: Coleslaw, jalapeños, a bacon laticce, and chili (known as “The Spicy Redneck”).
Oh, Jesus: Farting like a machine.
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