Early Rollins Interview

The Red in the Sky is Ours

This is the view of the skyline in my neighborhood this morning. The fire in Fallbrook is about 25 miles away. I have to say I was quite concerned earlier this week, but the talk is that the winds and weather will chill back a little bit tomorrow. And of course, ole' W. is going to come in for a visit. He likes to give natural disasters and declared states of emergency about a week before he drops in to check on the people, even in states with Republican governors. At least we have The Terminator on our side!

FEARnet: Spike TV Scream Awards Red Carpet

You can watch my coverage of the Spike TV Scream Awards red carpet for FEARNET right HERE if you'd like.

MxPx Video Shoot

Last Thursday MxPx was in Los Angeles to shoot a video for the song "Shut it Down" with director Chris Sims, who shot their last video, "Secret Weapon," as well. Here are some pictures from the set.

FEARnet: Sam Raimi Interview

You can watch my interview with Sam Raimi HERE.

FEARnet: "30 Days of Night" Premiere Coverage

I covered the "30 Days Of Night" premiere in Hollywood for Fearnet the other night. You can watch the coverage RIGHT HERE. I spoke with Sam Raimi earlier in the day at the Four Seasons about a lot of projects, not sure when they are posting that. I had a chance to hang out with one of my oldest friends over the last few days, Jeremy, who is in town for various things. He rules.



Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Top 10 Dwight Pranks from "The Office"

Decibel Hall of Fame: Celtic Frost, Morbid Tales

Ah, the death grunts. The makeup. The HP Lovecraft fascination. The self-obssessed and overly detailed but somehow captivating autobiography by Tom G. Warrior, Are You Morbid?.

What's not to love about Celtic Frost?

Much like Decibel inducting Until Your Heart Stops over Jupiter, I have to say that Into the Pandemonium is my favorite Frost album. That's the one from which you can draw a distinct line to My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, two of my favorite bands. It's moody, dark, experimental (a cover of "Mexican Radio"?!) and brilliant.

How many other bands can lay claim to starting as many different movements within the genre? And who would have thought the primal raw stupidity of Hellhammer would evolve into something so fantastic? Morbid Tales rules, obviously.

I remember walking to a record store in Beech Grove, Indiana with my friend Byron Holton to purchase the followup to Pandemonium. We were SO excited. And of course... That album turned out to be Cold Lake, a record so stupefyingly horrid that it would go on to define career-about-face/sellout in the metal community for years to come. Vanity/ Nemesis would redeem them, but for many fans, it was too little too late at that point.

And here's another funny little tidbit about my history with Celtic Frost. In middle school, there was this gigantic kid (like 300 plus lbs.) who had flunked the 6th grade three times. He had long hair, wore a denim jacket, listened to metal, and smelled like hot sauce. When I got into metal in 7th grade I started talking to him as he was the only other "true" metal kid at my school. It turned out he had two friends who were in 8th grade who were also "true" metal guys. They talked to me about Celtic Frost and I bought the Emperor's Return EP on cassette shortly thereafter (the EP was later packaged with Morbid Tales when the catalog was reissued).

They all thought it was so funny that a "little kid" was into thrash, even though they were all barely any older than me. Here's what's funny about them... The three of them considered themselves a "gang" called The Bashers. Their modus operendi? Breaking into vacant apartments in their apartment complexes and "bashing" them to bits.

In later years (i.e. high school), the big fat kid (I'm leaving names out of this blog!) became a NAZI SKINHEAD. Fast forward to 1992, the year I graduated high school. I was walking to the drug store near my house early one morning and I saw this kid and the leader of the local Nazi skins sitting in a car in the parking lot. They called over to me. I was scared but I went over.

They were like "do you know ____ who lives across the street?" They were stalking an anti-racist skinhead that I knew in my neighborhood. (This was a guy whose dad was supposed to have his leg amputated in Vietnam, refused, but somehow it went into his medical records that he had, and therefore he collected government checks for it; I remember going over there once and the house was dark in the afternoon, beer cans everywhere, and my friend Keith Steele said, "How's it going?" to our skinhead friend's dad and he said, "IT'S GONE." I still remember that... I met the kid after he put up flyers for his group, "F.I.S.T." - which stood for something about skinheads being against racism - which was actually him and two random guys).

Anyway, back to the parking lot.

This turned into a conversation about white power/ Norse mythology versus the vegan revolution I was fond of espousing at that point. I said something about having similar politics as Public Enemy. I remember them saying if I went to a Public Enemy concert "they" (i.e. the audience) would do this to me, and "they" would do that. So I asked them how a Public Enemy fan would be treated at a Skrewdriver concert. They just grinned. Then they started on about Norse mythology. I told them I loved Marvel Comics but I never really read Thor. Angrily, they told me that Thor "isn't some faggot in a cape, he's a warrior with fur on his boots" (I still remember that exact quote). They also told me if they got out and stood on my arms, they'd break, because I wasn't getting enough calcium. It's crazy because I talked mad shit to them and somehow they didn't kill me. They were promising me that the white revolution was going to happen shortly. I was promising them the vegan/ HL revolution was going to happen at some point soon, instead (I had just come back from the second "HL Gathering" in Memphis, TN).

Last time I checked, neither has popped off just yet.

Celtic Frost. "OOOH!"

Welcome to the Third Floor

Decibel Hall of Fame: Cave In, Until Your Heart Stops

There are a few goals with this blog project: 1. to revisit classic albums that moved me over the years, 2. to remember the times, places and circumstances I came across them, and 3. to discover classic albums that I have never really spent time with. And this Cave In record definitely falls into 3. with some shades of 2. as well.

In 1999 my old band was given the opportunity to support Cave In and Isis on a handful of shows in the Northeast. These shows were given to us by Matt Pike, who I work with on a daily basis now (he books Bleeding Through, whom I manage) and who would later go on to become Burn It Down's official agent, helping to secure tours with In Flames and Shadows Fall.

Both Isis and my band, Burn It Down, were touring in support of EPs on the newly formed Escape Artist Records. Neither band had released a full-length album yet. Cave In, on the other hand, were pretty established, but I wasn't familiar with them. And it turned out to be a point in time in their career shortly before they abandoned metal in favor of prog-rock and clean vocals. They seemed antangonistic toward the kids who came to their shows. And while Isis was distinctly a metal band (arty or not), they had a bond with them through the whole Hydra Head/ Boston thing. In other words, I don't remember anyone from Cave In being particuarly warm toward us at all. And I recall seeing subsequent interviews where they complained about constantly being stuck onto tours with "metal" and "hardcore" and "metalcore" bands and I've always assumed that included us.

With that being said, I gave their next record, 2000's Jupiter, a chance. And it became my favorite album of that year. I don't think the RCA record that followed was as good, though it's listenable. And I heard they returned to "metalcore" after that record flopped commercially, though I've never heard the later stuff. Anyway, I guess my point is that I LOVED the Jupiter album and I still do. It's creative, engaging, emotional and it really takes you places. "Big Riff"? I mean, c'mon!

As for the older stuff, I remember hearing a Metallica medley they did in our bass player's van and I thought that was cool. I mean, they pulled it off. But not until this week had I sat down and listened to Until Your Heart Stops.

And yes, I was missing out! And I can freely admit it! This album shreds! I mean, "no wonder," right? I know it's acclaimed. I know people love it. And I totally get it. The vocals are a bit monotonous, but there are hints of what the band would become on Jupiter (and of their Metallica fandom) both of which elevates this beyond the dreck of the average hardcore-kid-playing-metal. And I have to say in fairness to the recollection above that Caleb, the bass player, went out of his way to be friendly whenever I would run across Cave In after we had toured with them. I remember talking to Adam (guitar) a few times as well, but Caleb being a swell fellow still stands out in my mind.

Decibel Hall of Fame: Cathedral, Forest of Equilibrium

DOOMTASTIC.

Lee Dorian's voice rules. The sludgey, powerful, near-death metal like stoner dirges rule. I'm a bigger fan of the album that came out two years later, The Ethereal Mirror, but this album is a benchmark for the genre and a true classic. I'd put it close to seminal works by My Dying Pride and Paradise Lost (two of my favorite metal bands) in my book. It's incredible how many branches grew from the Napalm Death tree. Lee Dorian was in Napalm Death! Craziness. He's still dooming on with his Rise Above Records imprint (which is putting out a split EP with The Gates Of Slumber, I'm told). Amazing record.

Decibel Hall of Fame: Carcass, Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious

Say that album title ten times fast.

Carcass is a legendary band, no question. The medical textbook song titles (these guys should write for Law & Order). The rumors that they were all vegans (partially true) and/or doctors (not true) and/or medical students. The links to Napalm Death and later, Arch Enemy. And this album is part and parcel of that legend.

With that being said, it doesn't particularly "move" me the way a later (and controversial album amongst fans) like Heartwork or even Swan Song (with the notable exception of "Generation Hexed" and "Keep on Rotting in the Free World"). But what can I say? I like every Metallica record but the last one, so what do I know.

(Points for pioneering a vocal style utilized by Dan Weyandt-era ZAO and subsequent ZAO clones like Haste the Day and The Agony Scene).

Ever Wonder What Religion...

Your favorite superheroes are? Well just click this link and become informed. And then pray that whomever made it gets a girlfriend, and soon.

In other news, my boy GUAV just wrote about me (sort of) on his blog, as he is prone to do, and I love him for it. And it includes this cute pic (that's Toby H20's kid Max with us). Guav still rules. And Wham!'s "Edge of Heaven" just came on my iTunes "Party Shuffle" which is oddly appropriate considering the content of both my blog post (the one you are reading) and Guav's. You'll see.