Samson, Xbox and Revolver were backstage May 2 at the 5th annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards to host all the artist interviews, which aired live exclusively on Xbox Smartglass. Now Samson and Revolver are releasing all the interviews for you to watch!
Here’s the third clip from the 5th annual awards show. This video features our host David Ellefson interviewing Rex Brown backstage at Club Nokia in Downtown Los Angeles after Brown performed with Anthrax and Phil Anselmo. For more information on Samson, visit samsontech.com.
To watch all the performances and awards from this special night, click here or go to GoldenGodsAwards.com.
Samson, Xbox and Revolver were backstage May 2 at the 5th annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards to host all the artist interviews, which aired live exclusively on Xbox Smartglass. Now Samson and Revolver are releasing all the interviews for you to watch!
Here’s the first of many clips from the 5th annual awards show. This video features our hosts David Ellefson and Zakk Wylde interviewing Philip Anselmo backstage at Club Nokia in Downtown Los Angeles after he performed with Anthrax and Rex Brown. For more information on Samson, visit samsontech.com. To watch all the performances and awards from this special night, click here or go to www.GoldenGodsAwards.com.
]]>
Philip Anselmo, legendary frontman of Pantera and Down, will release his career-first solo album, Walk Through Exits Only, on July 16 via his own Housecore Records (MRI/Megaforce). Walk Through Exits Only will be available digitally, on CD and on vinyl.
Produced by Philip Anselmo and Michael Thompson, and recorded over the past couple of years at his New Orleans studio, Nodferatu’s Lair, with his band The Illegals–guitarist Marzi Montazeri and drummer Jose Manuel “Blue” Gonzales–Walk Through Exits Only features eight songs, including “Battalion of Zero” to “Usurper’s Bastard Rant” to the album’s title track.
“It wasn’t about doing a paint-by-numbers thrash or heavy-metal record,” Anselmo explained about the project. “It’s an angry album that only I could do. I don’t see anybody else out there screaming about the same shit I’m screaming about. On this album, there isn’t any wordplay, there isn’t any hidden message, it’s all right there in front of you.”
Anselmo and the Illegals will support the new album with a major North American tour planned for this summer. Anselmo, who is up for Best Vocalist at this year’s Revolver Golden Gods awards, will make a special appearance at that event.
]]>
Besides being a fan of heavy music, comedian Craig Gass has close ties to the hard-rock and metal comunities–he’s opened for Metallica, lived in Eddie Van Halen’s back house, and is buddies with everyone from Pearl Jam to KISS. He recently helped skewer Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider at Revolver‘s and Guitar World‘s second annual Rock & Roll Roast. And on his new live comedy album and DVD, The Worst Comedy Show Ever, which hit stores today, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, makes a hilarious cameo on the DVD, while Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney lend their fractured personalities to several news blackouts on the CD. In keeping with all this, Gass compiled his list of the Top Five (Unintentionally) Funniest Hard-Rock Concert Moments he has ever witnessed. Check it out below, and at the bottom of this post, watch a teaser clip for the DVD.
“I’ve been a huge hard-rock/heavy-metal fan for most of my life and never get tired of going to see my favorite bands over and over again,” Gass says. “Over the years, I think it becomes obvious to a lot of us that part of the fun of going to see certain bands is the entertainment that you’ll get out of it in between songs when the singer of the band starts to talk. Whether it’s David Lee Roth’s insane arrogance or Dave Mustaine’s bizarre politics, there are some shows you can’t wait to see for the real moments in between.
“I love sharing these stories with my comedian buddies and hearing the stories they like to add, but here are my Top Five Funniest Hard-Rock Concert Moments. Keep in mind, most of these were unintentionally funny…”
5) PANTERA
“I’ve seen Pantera easily about 20 times. They’re one of the most powerful bands of all time, but Phil Anselmo adds a tone of comedy to every show. He’s always angry about something, and he always says it with limited words.
“Pantera was on Ozzfest 2000, and I saw a couple of those shows, including one at the venue outside of Boston that was then known as The Tweeter Center. In between songs, AND I’M QUOTING, Phil Anselmo actually said, very slowly, ‘HEY…. Motherfuckers…. Check it out…. You go home tonight…. And you tell your friends who fuckin’ missed out on Ozzfest….. You tell them… HEY…… ….. …. You fuckin’… You missed out….. (At this point, you could see that Phil realized that he had repeated himself, and added)….. And you’re stupid.’ And then he hocked up some saliva and spit on the ground.
“Keep in mind, I was in the 18teenth row for this show, and I saw SEVENTEEN ROWS of people in front of me turning to each other and smiling, as if to say, ‘That was fucking HILARIOUS.’
4) MÖTLEY CRÜE
“Vince Neil is a mess. Even when I saw Mötley opening the Bark at the Moon tour for Ozzy back in 1984, I noticed that Vince didn’t seem to remember all the lyrics to Mötley’s songs. Add to that, the occasional show where he’s completely hammered, and you’ve got a funnier show than ANYTHING going on at The Comedy Store that night.
“This was at The Key Club in 2005, I wanna say, and Vince was HAMMERED. A show that was highlighted with Vince falling off the stage (here’s the fucked up thing… We weren’t even looking at the stage during the incident, and we HEARD Vince fall) and this amazing on stage moment:
“Vince had taken a long time in between songs to grab another drink, came back out and said, ‘OK, everybody, how about we do a little bit of LIVEWIRE FOR YOU RIGHT N–WHAT (his guitar player was whispering in his ear)? Oh, we already played that? OK…. What else have we got?’
“I love that guy.”
3) DOKKEN
“In 2002, there was a tour of ’80s bands featuring Dokken, Warrant, Ratt, and a few others. I know that it’s a cooler move to dismiss these bands than it is to give them any credit, and if you’re one of those people, you really are an idiot, because you miss out on moments like the one I witnessed at The Celebrity Theater in Phoenix.
“Warrant was onstage performing, and in the middle of their set, a dude came climbing on to the stage and walked right into the middle of the band while they were playing. Was it a drunk audience member? No. It was Don Dokkem, who grabbed one of the microphones and started yelling at the band for going over their allotted time! He actually lectured Warrant onstage, and demanded that they ‘Play some “Cherry Pie” and get the fuck off the stage,’ threw the microphone in the air, and stormed off the stage.
“Mike Fasano, the drummer for Warrant at the time, grabbed the microphone when it landed and said, ‘How about a hand for the amazing Don Dokken, everybody’ to the boos of the audience.
“You always hear about bands not getting along on tour, but how often to you get to buy a ticket to watch it happen live?”
2) KISS
“OK, this one I have to admit is intentionally funny by the band, and me makes me immediately respect Paul Stanley.
“The band was on a really long tour with Ted Nugent and Skid Row, and the guys in Skid Row did a thing every night that the audience was never aware of, where they would dare Paul Stanley to incorporate some really silly word or stupid phrase into his onstage banter.
“In Raleigh, North Carolina, they tell Paul, ‘You need to somehow incorporate the words, “Diaper Fight” into your onstage banter tonight.’
“Nobody in the crowd in Raleigh was aware of this, obviously. All I know is that I’m watching KISS perform, and about three or four songs in, the crowd is going nuts, and I’m not sure that I’m hearing it right, but I think I just heard Paul Stanley say, ‘All right people, settle down, settle down…. Let’s not get all worked up here and turn this into a Diaper Fight…’
“WTF?
“I found out the story behind it later, and thought, That’s just cool.”
1) Without question: LOUDNESS
“Opening the Theater of Pain tour for Mötley, I saw this show at The TCC in Tucson and at The Compton Terrace outside of Phoenix. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard the singer of a Japanese heavy-metal band yell out, ‘ARE YOU LEDDY TO LOCK N LOLL, MUDDA FUCKAS?’ followed by waves and waves of laughter from drunk teenagers.”
Chris Krovatin is the author of three young adult novels, Heavy Metal & You, Venomous, and Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones. He is currently working on multiple new writing projects, as well as new material with his local New York metal band Flaming Tusk. He is a contributing writer for Revolver and generally comes off as a good-natured pain in everyone’s collective ass. This column represents his opinions–and probably only his opinions.
With death metal and hardcore leading the mall-promoted face of metal (or whatever the fuck people under 20 care about these days, God, I need a drink), breakdowns have become a staple point within the genre. Every dude who likes swinging a ham-sized fist around for no reason spends much of any metal concert waiting for that moment when things slow down and he can stomp around like a violent turtle. There’s even an entire genre now, “deathcore” that seems to be composed entirely of breakdowns. Chug-chug, slam-slam, we all love a good breakdown.
What aren’t always given their due, however, are speed-up parts, the moment where a mid-paced song bursts into a thrash section and some dude in the pit is given the go-ahead to hold up his index finger and spin it around, signaling the much-loved circle pit. I’ve always adored these moments, when a normal song explodes into a barrage of speed and aggression, as I’m much more of an old-school mosher, the running and slamming and freewheeling type, than the modern karate-kicking dance majors who so often populate the pit during a breakdown. So, to honor both the quick and the deadly (and to piss off scene bros and kvltists alike), here is my list of the Six Best Breakdowns and Speed-Ups.
The Six Best Breakdowns:
1. Pantera, “Domination” Aw, man, the original. Dimebag’s guitar breaks off of that pained wail and rolls right into that steady chug, eventually topped with insane weedling unlike any heard before. Tough as nails, catchy as Hell—the breakdown all others aspire to.
2. Slayer, “Raining Blood” The end of this classic Slayer track is a perfect example of a breakdown that makes a song. With its melodic variation on the opening riff coupled by the neck-snapping rhythm it stomps into, this manages to be both brawny and deeply evil at once.
3. Hatebreed, “Before Dishonor” If there was ever a breakdown to beat on one’s chest to, it’s that of “Before Dishonor.” Jamey Jasta bellowing, “WHAT I HAVE IN MY HEART, I’LL TAKE TO MY GRAVE” helps. Easily the most macho of the breakdowns on this list.
4. Lamb of God, “Now You’ve Got Something To Die For” Just beating that of “Black Label,” the breakdown closing “Now You’ve Got…” is the bottom line for metal kids who want to absolutely lose their shit in the pit. Randy Blythe’s roar over its opening is truly breathtaking.
5. Sepultura, “Propaganda” To be a stand-out breakdown on a record this chuggy and mid-paced takes some stones, but Sepultura pull it off without issue. It’s especially notable given how well it closes one of the faster songs on the record, and does so in a solid swoop, not a fade-out.
6. Anthrax, “Indians” Two words: WAR DANCE!
Band of note: Dying Fetus I really wanted to include a Dying Fetus track on this list, but every attempt at finding the right song made me think, Is this an actual breakdown, or just a Dying Fetus part? Let me take this moment to say that Dying Fetus are kings of the death-metal breakdown, and much of the modern obsession with breakdowns is their doing.
The Six Best Speed-Ups:
1. Lamb of God, “Ruin” Ye-hess. The moment where this song breaks into an off-kilter thrash part is absolutely obliterating and totally satisfying. If you listen to this song and your fist doesn’t begin pumping at this speed-up moment, you’re not doing it right. The sound of someone’s breaking point.
2. Cannibal Corpse, “Stripped, Raped, and Strangled” This Cannibal classic begins with a plodding, heavy-handed riff, but then breaks into a panicked whirlwind of guitar leads and drums that perfectly expresses the insanity of its protagonist. This is how a speed-up can be used as a consistent part, and subsequently craft a song into something better than it once was.
3. Slayer, “Postmortem” Not only is the sudden change in tempo of this song impressive, but the sudden speed applied to the sudden barrage of wordy lyrics—“My sinful glare at nothing holds thoughts of death behind it”—showcases Tom Araya’s vocal versatility. Look, just tell me this: DO YOU WANT TO DIE?
4. Guns N’ Roses, “Paradise City” Oh yeah—even the glamor boys got in on the speed. The sudden supercharged ending of this track takes the main riff and throws it on its head with a big dose of Lemmy. Didn’t think you could mosh to GN’R? Think again.
5. The Crown, “Devil Gate Rider” This Swedish death-metal classic, guest starring Tomas Lindberg of At the Gates, is the best song about drag-racing in Hell that has ever existed. And when it speeds up, you can basically see a checkered flag dropping and smell rubber burning. BORN! TO! RACE!
6. Mercyful Fate, “A Dangerous Meeting” Though not as much a thrash part as the speed-ups above it, the acceleration of “A Dangerous Meeting” ups this chug-along Satanic metal song’s cred, and probably inspired every black-metal band, ever.
]]>
Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star, a company that creates “beautiful lullaby versions of your favorite artists,” sends us new CDs all the time, but we at Revolver are particularly intrigued by the newest one, Lullaby Versions Of Pantera (released via Roma Music Group).
“Metal continues to be one of our most popular and requested genres,” says Paul Modiano of Roma Music Group. “More than any other genre, it’s music that little ears aren’t quite ready for, so parents seem to appreciate this option.
“When you look at the metal landscape, Pantera ranks among the giants. We are proud to add this to our metal offering alongside Slayer, Iron Maiden, Avenged Sevenfold, Metallica and Dream Theater.”
Lullaby Versions Of Pantera track listing:
01. Hollow
02. Planet Caravan
03. Cemetery Gates
04. Cowboys From Hell
05. This Love
06. Domination
07. Revolution Is My Name
08. 5 Minutes Alone
09. A New Level
10. Mouth For War
11. I’m Broken
12. Walk
Check out the sample video below and find more audio samples at Amazon.com. For more information, visit ttlrs.com.
For more information, visit ttlrs.com.
In what can only be described as a match made in hell, the worlds of heavy metal and horror collide this fall as the first-ever Housecore Horror Film Festival (HHFF) erupts in Austin, Texas. World-famous heavy metal musician Philip H. Anselmo (Pantera, Down, Superjoint Ritual) and internationally renowned, best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell (Hollywood Death Scenes, Dead and Buried) have teamed up to create the ultimate underground, three-day horror and heavy metal fan event that will combine live concerts from some of the biggest bands in metal and hard rock with more than 70 screenings of horror, true crime, and heavy metal films, music videos, and more—and special guest appearances from three of the world’s most revered underground directors of horror.
The Housecore Horror Film Festival will take over the entire Emo’s complex in the newly revitalized area of East Austin for three days of shock and roll. HHFF will feature seven screens, which will display more than 70 horror, true crime, and heavy metal film screenings, including feature-length films, short films, documentaries, classic horror films, world premieres, music videos, vintage and faux movie trailers, and more. As darkness descends each night, a dozen heavy metal and hard rock acts, handpicked by Anselmo himself, will hit the stage.
The nefarious brainchild of Anselmo and Mitchell, the Housecore Horror Film Festival spawned from a mutual love for all things horror that was discovered while the two were collaborating on Anselmo’s upcoming autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 2014). Wanting to bring their passion for—and knowledge of—extreme music and horror films to legions of fans, HHFF was born, with the goal of showcasing the best in a wide range of horror films—from the obscure to the extreme, from quality mainstream to the most unrepentant gore—and the heavy music that goes hand-in-hand with it.
Two confirmed special guest film directors include the notoriously controversial Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik, Nekromantik 2, Schramm) and revered do-it-yourself guerilla filmmaker Jim VanBebber (The Manson Family, Deadbeat at Dawn). Additional guest film directors will be announced as the festival nears.
Several top-tier metal and hard rock bands have signed on to perform at the inaugural event, and HHFF today announces the first round of confirmed artists: Anselmo’s own Southern metal supergroup Down, New Orleans masters of metallic doom Crowbar, and the Texas premiere of Philip H. Anselmo & the Illegals, Anselmo’s greatly anticipated extreme-metal solo project.
With films screening inside Emo’s East, and smaller screening rooms throughout the Emo’s complex, and nightly concerts inside the 2,000-capacity Emo’s East, organizers are planning for an immersive, three-day, horror and heavy metal fan mecca. HHFF will also host several “Side Show” attractions—from “gore-lesque” routines to suspension exhibitions to rare horror memorabilia displays. In addition, there will be dozens of horror- and metal-centric vendors dispersed throughout the complex plying their scare wares for the public to check out.
Filmmakers, screenwriters, producers, and actors in attendance will introduce their works and hold question-and-answer sessions after their screenings and will be available to the public at an outdoor celebrity signing and chat booth. Several notable authors of horror, mystery, true crime, and heavy metal will be also be signing books throughout the weekend.
And since no horror fest would be complete without creating some terror of its own, festival-goers can take a walk through the Haunted Corridor and allow festival-goers the opportunity to be scared all weekend long. The Haunted Corridor will be constructed by a Texas haunted house team with creative design help from Anselmo, who is one of the original co-founders of the internationally beloved House of Shock haunted house experience from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Whether it’s a classic horror film, a big budget blockbuster, an underground gore-fest, an experimental flick, or a quiet chiller, it will be screening at HHFF. Filmmaker submissions open today, with an early submission deadline of March 20. Feature-length or short films, big budget or shot on a cell phone—if it’s well made, compelling, and chilling, Anselmo and Mitchell are ready to select it. HHFF is an IMDb-qualifying festival, which means that all films in consideration will receive an invitation to create a title page on the Internet Movie Database web site.
Films can be submitted here.
The official website launches today, where interested filmmakers can find more information on how to submit their work. The web site will also contain continuous updates, including new band and special guest announcements, film screening schedules, vendor and sponsorship opportunities, contact information for HHFF staff, and occasional musings from Anselmo and Mitchell.
]]>Check out “Family, ‘Friends,’ and Associates” off War of the Gargantuas below:
]]>
Jammit has announced a new Pantera video contest, Jammit Play Off with Pantera.
Musicians from around the world are invited to make a video of themselves playing along with Pantera’s “Drag the Waters” to be eligible to win thousands of dollars in prizes.
Prizes include a Dean Dimebag “Wanted” ML Guitar, a Sabian 22-inch HH Power Bell Ride Cymbal, Vinnie Paul’s Vic Firth signature sticks, Dimebag Signature DR Strings, Logitech UE Headphones/boom boxes and Jammit tracks.
For more details and complete instructions, head to jammit.com.
]]>
Today marks eight years since Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell was killed onstage. Here, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford talks candidly about meeting Dimebag, working with him, and how he took the news when he heard about the shooting. A portion of the interview ran in Revolver’s “Fallen Heroes” issue, which is available for purchase right here.
REVOLVER When did you first meet Dimebag Darrell?
ROB HALFORD Priest was in Canada rehearsing for the Painkiller tour. I was doing an interview from the hotel room and I turned the telly on to
And I told Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing specifically after that, “I’ve seen this band. They’re absolutely fucking amazing and they are going to be huge. They are going to be huge!” And I said, “We should try to get him on the tour.” So, to cut a long story short, we brought them with us on the Priest Painkiller tour of Europe and nobody had a clue who they were. They had no distribution as far as I understood in Europe. So they went out blind, in front of Germans and French and whatever. I used to watch every show, and the first reaction fans gave them was, Who the hell is this? And it was like, Oh my fucking God, what’s going on in front of my eyes? They would just win an audience over in 30, 40 minutes. From playing fresh, new music that nobody had heard before. The communication was instant with that band. So there it was. So by the time we’d done the European tour, and they went back to the States, Cowboys was shooting up the charts. And that was it, they were off and running. They were just launched into the stratosphere on that first release.
You mentioned his British Steel shirt. He used to wear a razorblade necklace in honor of your album. Did he ever tell you about that?
Yeah, and he had it tattooed on his leg as well. He loved that record. It meant everything to him. It was one that he said was very inspiring to him as a guitar player and as a musician in general. That’s great, isn’t it?
Shortly after you toured with them, you worked with him on the song “Light Comes Out of Black,” for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack. How did that come together?
I was away from Priest. Sony were working on the soundtrack. They wanted Sony artists and asked me to write a song. I hadn’t written as a solo writer for years and years and years. But it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you can do until you put your nose to the grindstone. So I wrote “Light Comes Out of Black,” and I was stuck. And I got Dime’s number, and I called him up and I said, “Here’s the deal.” And he goes, “Let’s do it. Just get in the plane and come down to Dallas.” So that’s what I did the next day, went to the studio, laid the track down in a very short space of time. Phil wandered by, said “Oh, how’s it going, ‘metal god’?” So I told him and he said, “You got a spot for me?” I said, “Pfft, here’s the mic.” So Phil joins me on the back end of the song. And it turned out really god. It’s amazing to think that that’s a Pantera song really. It is Pantera with me on lead vocals, and Phil obviously doing the outro sections. But it’s a Pantera song really.
Did you play guitar on a demo and send it to him originally?
Yeah, I put my very primitive…I just don’t have the mental capacity to do what guitar players do.
What was exceptional about working with Dime?
His interpretation of the song. His phrasing, the feel was unique. Let’s face it. You look at rock and roll. You’ve got Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, you’ve got Eddie Van Halen. I’m just going through a list off the top of my head, you obviously got Dimebag. Obviously, Glenn , Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, all of these significant lead heavy-metal, hard-rock guitar players. And Dimebag…I’m mentioning them now because they’re very influential. All of those guitar players have been very influential to not only music but specifically to other guitar players around the world. And there’s no doubt that Dimebag’s impression was just monumental. If you took Dimebag out of the equation, metal would sound totally different right now, without a doubt it would, definitely.
What was the last time you talked to Dime?
I’m pretty certain it was Aladdin in Las Vegas on the Halford Resurrection tour with Iron Maiden. It might have happened maybe once, twice after that.
Where were you when you heard Dime had died?
I was in my house in Phoenix. I think somebody texted me or somebody called me, and my legs went from underneath me. I just hit the deck. This can’t be real. I put the TV on, and it was actually on CNN. I just sat there in disbelief. And then I balled like a baby, like you should do. I just cried my eyes out. And you just don’t know what to do. You’re full of confusion, you’re full of anger, you want to fucking smash things to pieces. You want to play the music; you want to call Phil. All of these things are going on in your head. And obviously, Pat was singing for Damageplan at the time. I wanted to call Pat. Do you call, do you not call? What the fuck’s going on? Just a bazillion things are going around your head at the same time. But it was just terrible. It’s just seems inconceivable. I don’t think, now, that’s never happened to anybody else, has it? I mean, we lost people through self-induced things, like booze and drugs. We’ve lost people like Ronnie with the kinds of illnesses. But to be fucking brutally murdered is just insane. Absolutely insane. John Lennon is the only other person, isn’t it? They’re both in good company, as far as what they mean and how they’ve lived on in our lives. How Dimebag will always live on. That’s the only bit of solace you’ve got. It’s that the work that they made will live forever. That’s the blessing.
Dimebag photos by Lorinda Sullivan
]]>