News

Stills from Rob Zombie's upcoming animated flick, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, recently got an online preview at sherimoonzombie.net (as usual when dealing with Sheri Moon Zombie, some of these pics are NSFW). Blabbermouth.net quoted Rob Zombie as saying "Well, the Ozzy tour is over, and now it is Superbeasto time. Starting on Monday, I am back and ready to kick ass on Beasto. Stay tuned; this thing is coming your way soon! Finally!" Sheri Moon and actor Paul Giamatti have contributed voices for Superbeasto.

A Polish religious-activist group has filed a complaint against extreme-metal band Behemoth in their homeland for tearing up a Bible onstage. When the band performed in Gdynia, Poland, in September 2007, vocalist-guitarist Nergal allegedly called the Catholic church "the most murderous cult on the planet" before defiling the holy text. The activist group, known as the All-Polish Committee for Defense Against Sects, headed by Ryszard Nowak, who filed the complaint, have a history of going after rock bands, having previously assembled a list of artists who "promote Satanism," according to Blabbermouth.net. At this time, it's not clear if further actions will be taken against the band.

I just got back a few weeks ago from four months of backpacking through (mostly) Asia

with my wife Maya. I'll be periodically posting some of my more metal adventures from the journey here.The trip started back in early September in Japan, where we stayed for two weeks, before moving onto China, which is where this episode takes place.

Tuesday Maya and I returned to the 13 club for the final night of the "Metal Music Festival" with my old college-friend Eveline (who's been living in Beijing for over a year) and our new friend from Seattle, Audrey, (who we met on an overnight train back from Pingyao) in tow. Eveline, it turns out, has been going to an impressive number of metal shows since moving to China, so this was nothing new for her; as for Audrey, though at first she seemed to have no interest in metal or in joining us at the show, she ended up being very easily persuaded to tag along ("So you wanna go?" asked Maya; "Sure," said Audrey).

The club was pretty much the same smokey, scuzzy scene as the day before, except slightly more decked out, care of the enormous Dimebag Darrell (R.I.P.) banner hanging over pretty much of the whole left side of the venue. Pantera may just be the biggest metal band in China, judging from the number of T-shirts, caps, etc. brandishing their name that we saw on both fans and band members at the Fest, and cheesy as it might sound, it was kind of heartwarming to see the late, great Dimebag's face smiling over the night's proceedings.

As we stepped into the club, a band either called Oxygen Can or Maul Heavily (I'm not sure) was bashing out some hilariously derivative but totally (albeit somewhat ironically) enjoyable nu-metal. Think a mashup of Korn, Slipknot, and Linkin Park, plus a couple ska breakdowns. The band even looked the part - from the two dudes with dreadlocks (the lead singer and one of the guitarists) to the drummer and percussionist, the latter banged away at a bunch of oil drums and a keg or two.

Later in their set, they even broke out a radio-ready power ballad, which Maya swayed and emoted along to.

As the next band started to set up, Eveline got a very excited look on her face. "I think this is my band," she said, her eyes wide with hope. See, about 6 months ago she had sent me via YouTube some video footage she'd shot of a performance of this band she thought was called 01. They incorporated Mongolian influences (throat-singing, and an instrument called the horse-head fiddle) into their music, and they dressed like Chinese demons of a sort (the bassist, like a mummy, wrapped in guaze; the guitarist, like a blood-spattered ghost). The clips she'd sent me were grainy and lo-fi, but the band looked and sounded awesome.

Thing was, the band in this spot on the schedule was called Voodoo Kungfu, not 01, and in fact, Eveline was under the impression that 01 had broken up. But as soon as the bassist took the stage - in blood-sprayed mummy garb - Eveline knew that rumors of the band's demise had been greatly exaggerated. "I love the mummy!" she said (the first of many times that she would repeat this mantra through the night). The band started in atmospherically, with the drummer throat-singing while the horse-head fiddle-player pulled a haunting melody from his instrument's two strings. After building the tension to a fever pitch, the rest of the band crashed in with some ferocious doom riffage and feral roars, courtesy of their burly singer, who wore a long, ornate Mongolian robe. Eveline, Maya, and I, and even Audrey - as well as the rest of the crowd - were completely enthralled.

By the end of their set (which ruled), their frontman had stripped topless, had been splattered with (presumably stage) blood, spit on him by the mummy/bassist, and was ranting like a rabid howler monkey. Fucking awesome.

Now, the one thing that Maya and I had been bummed about the night before was that none of the bands seemed to be selling merch, and I really wanted some Chinese-metal-band shwag to bring home with me. So when Maya spotted 01/Voodoo Kungfu's guitarist, "the bloody ghost" (though very much out of costume by now), sitting outside the club all by himself, she dragged Eveline along and made her ask him if his band had any CDs for sale. I was standing a bit aways with Audrey so I didn't see this myself, but according to Maya, the guitarist gave them a look like they were crazy (Eveline would later explain that there's so much piracy in China, that a lot of Chinese bands don't really bother putting out official CDs). But he and Eveline struck up a conversation (he didn't speak any English), and the next thing we knew the two of them were exchanging cellphone numbers!

Later in the cab back to our respective homes, Eveline explained that the guitarist/bloody ghost had said that the band didn't have CDs but did have a DVD and that he would be willing to sell one to us, so they had exchanged numbers. Eveline said she thought he'd said something about maybe he could even come by himself and drop the DVD off, but since Eveline only really understands 30 to 40% of any conversation she has in Chinese, who really knows. We immediately decided that he must be hitting on her, or that maybe he'd misinterpreted "Do you have any CDs for sale?" as a weird sideways come-on - since everyone knows Chinese bands don't have CDs (see previous explanation). I said, "Too bad you're only going to use him to get to the mummy," and we all joked that she was going to end up being 01/Voodoo Kungfu's Yoko Ono and break up the band.

Then a few days later, I get a text from Eveline: "The bloody ghost just texted me! I cant understand it but hes basically like whats up. It ended w a smiley face. Bwahahahahaha!!!"

Basically they've been texting ever since, and tonight he might even join us for drinks. We'll see. Maya and I have plotted out the 01/Voodoo Kungfu VH1: Behind the Music storyline - Eveline starts dating the bloody ghost, I come back to the States and rave about how awesome his band is to my metal label contacts, the band gets signed and puts out a critically acclaimed debut album. Then on the eve of the band's highly anticipated first U.S. tour, Eveline breaks the news that she actually has had feeling for the mummy all along, the band breaks up. Years later Eveline writes a tell-all memoir called I Loved the Mummy.

Reunited grindcore old-schoolers Brutal Truth have nearly 15 new songs composed for a forthcoming as-yet-untitled album. The group's last collection of original material, Sounds of the Animal Kingdom, came out over a decade ago and was recently reissued by Relapse. "…We've jumped right into the deep end of the pool," bassist Danny Lilker said on Blabbermouth. "Stylistically it seems to pick up where Sounds of the Animal Kingdom left off with the main difference being we're also incorporating some of the old-school type riffing from Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses but at a much faster tempo."

Legendary Swiss proto-black metallers Celtic Frost are compiling a release tentatively titled Monotheist Companion, according to MTV. The release will contain unreleased cuts from their critically acclaimed 2006 comeback disc, Monotheist. In other Frost news, February 18 will see the release of Demon Entrails, a collection of the demos pre-Frost group Hellhammer recorded in 1983. Tom G. Warrior, frontman of both bands, is reportedly working on a book about Hellhammer, for which a release date has yet to be announced.

Utah-based screamo troupe the Used will release Shallow Believer on iTunes and Amazon February 19. The release contains 10 outtakes and B-sides, and the band is calling it an "extended EP" on their website which, despite its redundancy ("EP" is an acronym for "extended play"), just means they really love their fans.

Tracklist For Shallow Believer:
01. Dark Days
02. Slit Your Own Throat
03. Devil Beside You
04. Into My Web
05. My Pesticide
06. Choke Me
07. Sun Comes Up
08. Sick Hearts
09. Back Of Your Mouth
10. Tunnel

Iron Maiden kicked off their Somewhere Back in Time tour on Friday in Mumbai, India. Performing for over 100,000 fans, the group performed on a stage patterned after their 1984-1985 Powerslave tour, and focused on classics (in sharp contrast to 2006's tour for A Matter of Life and Death, wherein they performed that album from front to back.)

Iron Maiden setlist:

01. Intro – "Churchill's Speech"
02. "Aces High"
03. "2 Minutes to Midnight"
04. "Revelations"
05. "The Trooper"
06. "Wasted Years"
07. "The Number of the Beast"
08. "Run to the Hills"
09. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
10. "Powerslave"
11. "Heaven Can Wait"
12. "Can I Play With Madness?"
13. "Fear of the Dark"
14. "Iron Maiden"

ENCORE
15. "Moonchild"
16. "The Clairvoyant"
17. "Hallowed Be Thy Name"

I just got back a few weeks ago from four months of backpacking through (mostly) Asia

with my wife Maya. I'll be periodically posting some of my more metal adventures from the journey here.The trip started back in early September in Japan, where we stayed for two weeks, before moving onto China, which is where this episode takes place.

Since returning to Beijing after a mini-trip to the Northern cities of Xi'an and Pingyao, Maya and I have laid pretty low this week. That's the beauty of being in China for a month - we don't have drive ourselves nuts, running around all the time, trying to jam every sight into a few days. Plus, this is the week of China's national holiday and just about the whole population of the country is on vacation and traveling, which means that pretty much every sightseeing location is absolutely deluged. We'd rather wait it out than deal with the crazed masses of Chinese tourists.

What we have done this week is discover Beijing's metal underground - and it's pretty fucking cool. On Monday and Tuesday we went to the final 2 nights of the 3-day "Metal Music Festival" held at 13 Club in the Haidian district. I had found out about the venue and the fest via the website metaltravelguide.com, which lists metal clubs, bars, and record stores around the world and is an invaluable resource for any globetrotting headbanger.

The club ended up being a suitably scuzzy place tucked into an alley between a couple of noodle shops. Our cab driver had gone far beyond the call of duty trying to deliver us right to the door of the place, and we greatly appreciated his efforts considering the general rudeness that we've encountered so far in China. As we walked up to the venue entrace, we passed the bathrooms, which were located outside and reeked - but this hadn't prevented a crowd of black-clad, spikey-haired Chinese teenagers from congregating right by them. Maya and I recognized a few Pantera T-shirts, a Metallica tee, an Emperor shirt, among others, in the mix, and we immediately felt at home. The woman at the door turned out to speak English and as we paid our 40 yuan each (a little more than $5) to get in, she asked if we knew any of the bands playing, and if so, who we were there to see. I had read about one of the groups on the bill, Ritual Day, supposedly a Chinese black-metal band, but never actually heard them, so I dropped their name; the woman seemed to know that I didn't really have any idea who they were.

Inside we found a small-ish but comfortable space - maybe around the size of Southpaw in Brooklyn - filled with cigarette smoke, covered in graffiti, and jampacked with young Chinese metalheads, little Asian gothgirls, some college kids not wearing anything resembling the metal uniform, and even a few whities besides ourselves. The first band of the night - Hg, I think they were called - was just hitting the stage, and they kind of sucked, but not for lack of effort. Their sound was mixed very poorly (you could barely heard the guitar), but they played some not-terrible nu-metal-tinged metalcore and were most notable for their very skinny, very young-looking bassplayer who provided endearingly impassioned clean backing vocals. The next band, Sleep Deeply, were kind of a My Dying Bride-ish gothic-metal band with both a dude singer and a chick singer (stuffed into a nice corset). The guy singer had plenty of stage presence and a resonant death-metal roar, but the rest of the band sounded thin and rather amateurish. As for the crowd, they kind of bobbed along to the music but didn't do much in terms of moshing or rocking out. Maya and I, while entertained by the ernestness of both bands and, of course, the novelty of witnessing metal played in China(!), were beginning to wonder if, when it came down to it, Beijing's heavy music scene just kind of sucked.

Then, after we stepped outside for a breath of bathroom-smelling air (which seemed fresh compared to the haze of cigarette smoke inside the 13), we heard the third band, Avulsion, start up their set. It sounded like totally decent metalcore so we ducked back into the club to check the group out and were shocked to find a little Chinese girl (she looked all of 15) providing the totally brutal growling vocals! In between songs, she would grin embarassedly and brush her hair from her eyes, then, without hesitation, suddenly channel some demonic force, let out serious banshee screams, and headbang like a maniac. The crowd went nuts, and one kid even launched himself up into a bit of crowdsurfing. Maybe Beijing did have some idea of what was up after all...

Next up came this group called Suffocated, and they kind of ruled, cranking out super-groovy thrashy death metal. They had plenty of personality, too, care of their short, chubby, affable vocalist-bassist, whirlwind drummer, and a sweet contrast in dual guitar players - the stoic prettyboy on stage left, and on the right, a dude with a face like a Chinese ghost mask and a full range of pained expressions to match his intricate shredding (Maya commented more than a few times about how awesome he was). The crowd clearly knew and loved them, and by the end of their set, so did we.

Maybe even more entertaining than the band, however, was the crowd's display of a moshing technique that Maya and I have never seen before (which is saying a lot considering the insane number of metal shows we've been to in our time). Midway through the band's set, Suffocated's frontman said something in Chinese, clearly exhorting the fans to action the way a vocalist in the U.S. might call for a "circle pit" or for the "wall of death." In response, about half of the audience members suddenly put their arms around the shoulders of the person next to them, then everyone bent slightly at the waist, and proceeded to synchronized headbang together in a completely bizarre rocking-out group-hug of sorts. Maya's and my jaws instantly hit the floor.

We would see this "move" repeated a few more times over the course of the night, and the next day, when we told Eveline about it, she said that she's seen a variation on it, which is for audience members to put their arms around each other's shoulders, form a circle, and then skip counterclockwise, "Ring Around the Rosie"-style!

After Suffocated, Ritual Day took the stage and ripped out some completely respectable buzzing black metal with horror-movie keyboards. They lacked a little in the charisma department, though, and after a while the songs started sounding very same-y, so Maya and I decided to leave while we - and Beijing metal - were ahead. The experience had been an exhilarating one, really the most fun I've had at a show in a long time. We both agreed that it reminded us of the thrill of some of our first concerts, before everything became too familiar and before we - and it seemed everyone else in the audience - became too jaded. In contrast, this show had been almost innocent in its total passion and utter lack of self-consciouseness. Little did we know that the next day, the "Metal Music Festival" would prove to be even cooler... (to be continued)

Vocalist Chris Barnes has announced his departure from Finnish deathsters Torture Killer. Best known as the erstwhile vocalist for Cannibal Corpse and as the current voice of Six Feet Under, Barnes joined the band in late 2005. The group took its name from the song "Torture Killer" on Six Feet Under's Maximum Violence album and was originally a tribute band to both 6FU and Cannibal Corpse. Torture Killer have since drafted vocalist Juri Sallinen, who previously appeared on a 2005 7" and has played with them live; they are not an all-Finnish band. "I am no longer involved with, or a member of, the band Torture Killer," Blabbermouth reports Barnes as saying. "The split is mutual; it was just time for me to move forward. I wish the band well in all future plans and musical endeavors."

I just got back a few weeks ago from four months of backpacking through (mostly) Asia

with my wife Maya. I'll be periodically posting some of my more metal adventures from the journey here.The trip started back in early September in Japan, where we stayed for two weeks; this is the story of our last day there.

We fly out of Tokyo tomorrow at 9 a.m. or so - our next stop, China - and needless to say, there were many loose ends to wrap up, souvenirs to buy and mail (dealing with the Japanese post office literally gave Maya and I both fucking headaches), our ridiculously huge and yet somehow not-quite-big-enough backpacks to pack, and, oh, tons of shit I'm probably forgetting to mention and maybe we're forgetting to do.

But this afternoon, instead of dealing with all the above, we 1) learned that the story oft-repeated in the States - or at least in the Revolver office - that in Japan you can buy girls' used panties from vending machines - is partly urban legend (you can't buy them from vending machines) and partly true (you can buy them from the many sex shops scattered around Tokyo). In the back of the sex shop Maya and I decided to peruse while souvenir shopping, we found a back corner covered in little Ziploc baggies, each stuffed with a pair of nicely folded panties along with small Polaroids of a Japanese girl wearing said undergarment. Unfortunately, shit was expensive - like, 3,500 yen (approx. $35) each - or else I would have bought a pair for every member of the Revolver staff. Then again, as Maya pointed out, if you're the kind of person who has to go to a store to pay money for a female's dirty undies, 35 bucks probably sounds like a bargain. Disturbing thing is that the shop seemed to be full of just those sort of people - all sweaty middle-aged salaryman-types shuffling nervously down the narrow aisles and visibly flinching as soon as they saw that there was an actual live woman (Maya) in the store with them.

After making our rather momentous discovery, we 2) hung out with vocalist-keyboardist-songwriter Mirai and vocalist-saxophonist Mika (a.k.a. Mikannibal) of the awesome Japanese metal band Sigh. I met Mirai briefly in the States a little while ago - he came into the Revolver office to write and record an original short song on the spot for the magazine's now-defunct "Unit" page (click here to hear the creepy little ditty), and when I knew I was going to Tokyo, I got in touch. As for Mika, see below what she looks like onstage - needless to say, I would never have worked up the balls to get in touch with her. And that's before Maya talked to her and discovered that she's a 3rd-year PhD student in physics!

Mirai and I had arranged to meet outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Oeno station - because that seemed like really the cheesiest place we could possibly meet - and from there, Maya and I followed Mirai and Mika on the subway and along a maze of streets on a personal tour of Tokyo's metal record stores. Most were Disk Union shops, while one (located in the Shinjuku district) was excellently named No Remorse Tokyo and it had an amazing variety of metal T-shirts, including a Gallhammer tee that I almost bought, except that it was gray-on-gray and I had seen a kid wearing a black-on-black one of the same design at the Mono/Envy show that Maya and I went to in Tokyo a week before, and that looked so much cooler that I just couldn't shell out the 2,100 yen (approx. $21) for the lesser gray version. (I did, however, buy a CD by Gallhammer frontwoman Vivian Slaughter's far-beyond-kvlt other band, Congenital Hell.)

I had actually been working on a Gallhammer story for Revolver before I left for this trip, and had even sent email questions to frontgrrl Vivian Slaughter almost a month before Maya and my date of departure, but she had never responded with answers and I'd had to kill the piece. Mika, who is friends with Vivian, explained that Vivian really barely knows any English at all, and that she has had to resort to using Yahoo! translator when trying to answer English-language interview questions. Plus, according to both Mika and Mirai, Vivian is really crazy, like she-should-be-taking-her-meds- but-isn't-and-she-gets-benefits-from-the-government crazy. Which only makes her cooler in my book.

In between record stores, Mirai and Mika took Maya and I to this insane noodle shop down some alleys by this almost dried-up canal. It was basically just a bar with space for about 20 people around it, and two greasy-looking cooks/servers scrambling over huge steaming vats of broth and ramen in the center. Mika ordered for all of us with a very mischievous look on her face, and when Maya's and my late lunches/early dinners arrived, we knew why. The meal consisted of a normal-sized bowl of broth with strips of pork and bamboo shoots and pieces of scallion - and then an absolutely ginormous, I mean, Godzilla-sized bowl of noodles that would easily feed a family of 5 in any of the other countries we are about to visit. While Maya and I looked at each other nervously, Mirai proceeded to noisily slurp up his entire portion (in Japan you're supposed to consume your noodles while producing maximum slurping noise - it's only polite) in about, oh, 5 or 6 gulps. Mika wasn't far behind (though she had ordered a smaller bowl of noodle for herself - because, even though she's already enviably slender, she claims to be dieting). Ultimately, Mirai and Mika left the premises and waited outside for us - in order to make room at the bar for the steady stream of customers coming in - while Maya and I tried not to humiliate ourselves completely with our meager noodle-eating skills. Eventually we gave up and staggered out, bellies engorged. "You have to eat fast before your stomach knows that you're already full," Mirai explained his power-noodle-pounding technique later.

But while Maya and I feel like we've had to consume Japan very quickly over the last 2 weeks, I can definitely say that we have not had our fill. And when we bid Mirai and Mika farewell later that evening (they were off to see this spazztastic Japanese jazz-punk band Midori; we were off to pack) - knowing that we would have to bid Japan itself arigato gozaimas (no one actually says sayonara) soon the next morning - we did so with full intention of returning sometime not too far away.