Now, I’ve done you all a big favor, and replaced the audio with something a lot more pleasant, but I won’t be offended if you watch it on mute. The point here is that they shamelessly copied the most famous video by the greatest hardcore band of all time, Refused.

We know there’s not a single stupid fucking sellout crabcore band these days on Victory Records and/or the cover of Alternative Press that wouldn’t drop everything to line up to suck Dennis Lyxzén’s dick like it came with an iPhone 5 and a pair of vans. We know that every single “creative” expression from the first moment they pick up a guitar begins with the fantasy that if they could be half as cool as Refused, they wouldn’t even need chicks, because they could just blow themselves all day long. Yet still, somehow I expect more than this from them. It’s downright pathetic to see a group of people that dare call themselves a band move no further than the first idea that pops into every single one of their tiny fucking mallrat brains.

It’s fucking disgusting. Fuck these fucking losers and anyone who thinks they’re remotely cool.

When asked how the band would accomplish this, Matt said: “I’m thinking of approaching Richard Brenson to see if we could do it on his spacecraft he’s got happening,” referring to Virgin Galactic, a company within Virgin that plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to the wealthy paying public. However, the frontman also added that there would be obvious difficulties to this, since “we do have a lot of equipment, so I guess we’d have to use pods to carry our stuff and we’d scale back the shows a lot.”

While the Virgin Galactic project is 100% real, and this wouldn’t be the first time a celebrity tried to go to space, Mr. Bellamy’s quotes are usually better taken with a grain of salt. In this recent interview with an Australian TV show, around the 4 minutes mark, the possibility of a space gig is mentioned. While Matt says that it “would be possible in our lifetime,” he can be seen giggling afterwards, so it’s hard to tell whether he’s serious about this, or just pulling a prank on journalists unfamiliar with his sense of humor.

Either way, we probably can’t afford to be there: the cheapest ticket on Richard Brenson’s spaceship is at $200,000.

To be totally fair, it actually may be one of the least unlistenable songs the band has ever recorded, out of what I’ve subjected myself to listening to anyway.

It still totally sucks, of course. In our opinion anyway. If you disagree, please, by all means, make your case in our comments section, and we dare you to spell more than 60% of the words you use correctly.

Limp Bizkit’s fifth album Gold Cobra has been delayed for awhile, but will unfortunately eventually be released sometime relatively soon.

No awards show, not even a second-rate British wannabe, would be complete without its shocking YouTube moment, and this year, the Brits tapped none other than Liam Gallagher of Oasis to drop the jaws like a white Kanye West.

Oasis’ classic 1995 album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory took an award for the best “Album of 30 Years,” beating out Coldplay’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head, Dido’s No Angel, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms (worthy contender #1), Duffy’s (completely worthless) Rockferry (vomit), Keane’s Hopes And Fears (overrated), Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required (worthy contender #2), Sade’s Diamond Life (worthy contender #3), and The Verve’s Urban Hymns (of course).

Liam Gallagher, representing the band alone and clearly coked out of his head, in the most efficient display of assholism we’ve seen in quite some time, swiftly did the following in lieu of an acceptance speech: 1) Thanked bandmates Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, Paul McGuigan, and Alan White, excluding his partner and brother Noel (the album’s producer and primary songwriter), 2) Thanked “the best fucking fans in the world,” which was completely bleeped, and 3) Threw both the microphone and Brit award into the crowd before walking off. His parting words: “Live forever.”

Liam’s performance was surely every bit as expected as Kanye’s most recent stage-crash, yet exponentially more entertaining, and basically badass. Oasis hasn’t released a good album since 1997, but since their implosion, we have been mourning the diminished presence of Rock’s last good old fashioned insufferable prick stars.

Anecdote time: I once found myself sharing a train platform in Wilmington, Delaware with MTV VJ John Norris. I’m typically not the type to harass random pseudo-celebrities. However, I was feeling particularly snarky that August afternoon. So I walked up to him, and said something to the effect of “Hey. So I was wondering… What does the M stand for?”

He laughed, and said “good question.”

That was ten years ago.

A lot of music crosses my path. People send me links every day, I click around a bunch of blogs, I do my own hunting, and I go through the Antiquiet mailbox whenever I’ve got the time and optimism to waste. I used to believe that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover, but as the music business gets more and more formulaic and derivative, as the expectations bands have for their target audience’s attention spans get lower and lower, well… These days, you can. And here are some examples:

Talk about picking on the little guys- Switchblade Kitty has 390 friends on MySpace. They’re nowhere. Which means that writing about them here is serious exposure for them. So I suppose I should expect a thanks.

I forget how I came across this band. I think it was during the course of writing my Idle Warship review, because Lady Tigra has a song called Switchblade Kitty and sometimes you step in shit while Googling.

First of all, they’re from Los Angeles. Strike one. There are a lot of great bands here, but most of them do everything they can to avoid the fact if they actually live here. Nothing screams pathetic sellout poseur like a band that prowls the Sunset Strip with pride like it’s 1989. It’s pretty fair to automatically give any self-identifying Los Angeles band one strike while judging. Just trust me.

Now… OK, look. I like girls. Boobs are great, trashy naked sluts and rock and roll and all, I totally dig it. But strippers are strippers and musicians are musicians and never the twain shall meet be one and the same. If you’ve got to take your clothes off to get attention, you suck, you’re lazy, you should be put down by the ASPCA. And if you’re a chick in a band, and you like taking your clothes off, please for the love of god, make sure the goods are ripe. Don’t commit the crime against humanity if you’re as ugly as any of these disgusting hobags.

Besides, the only one with bigger tits than Dakota Fanning is the blonde one who bought some. Obviously she’s either a trust fund kid with no business in a band like this, or she fucked & sucked her way to six grand.

I haven’t listened to a single note of their music, because it obviously sucks.

Next up is Gladhander. I’ve seen their advertisements here on Antiquiet. I may have actually listened to a few seconds of their music at some point, but I forget. Actually, you know what… These dudes at least seem like nice guys. I mean obviously their music is bland, their live show must be dreadfully boring (they all look asleep in that photo), and their entire career is most likely a completely self-indulgent exercise in futility, but… I mean, whatever, they’re not really asking for trouble and they could all probably kick my ass pretty good. So nevermind. Let me go into the submissions inbox and see what’s stinking there…

Ahh, here we go. Fuck. Krumb Snatcha! Jesus. Took me a second to make sure that I was Googling the right Krumb Snatcha, as there seems to be a few of them. All of his photos seem to have been taken with an iPhone, they’re so grainy and low-res. But this is a case of being able to judge an artist by the state of the official website:

As soon as I landed on krumbsnatchamusic.com, I was assaulted by shitty hip-hop I couldn’t control the volume of. There was no ‘mute’ or ‘off’ button. If I hovered over the player it seemed to break, but if I went to do anything else on the site the audio resumed. I just had to shut my speakers off altogether. Strike one.

I can’t even count the shitty hip-hop clichés. Now understand that hip-hop is the hardest genre to judge at a quick glance, because even some of the finest artists in the business are putting their own album covers together with MS Paint while high on wet endo. But if you see all of these symptoms together, you can still assume somewhat safely that the product is defective at the core.

Strike two: Flash site with all text in the 5 Cent graffiti font. Fuck man, what self-respecting wannabe thug still identifies her/himself with graffiti writing? This is the equivalent of the rock band with long teased hair in tight women’s clothes, not called Steel Panther, working the Strip with Switchblade Kitty over there. It was played out by 1990, and yet still won’t be even ironically cool again for another year at least.

Strike three: City skyline in the background! This dude is from fucking Massachusetts, and the skyline isn’t even Boston’s. It isn’t even any particular city’s actually, it’s just some generic clip-art bullshit. You can’t tell me that a truly imaginative, original hip-hop artist of any kind would be satisfied by a design that looks like it came out of the mind of a twelve year old suburban white kid.

By the way, Krumb Snatcha’s official website is best viewed with IE, Firefox, or FUCKING NETSCAPE.

Finally… in the mainstream: The new U2 song. I haven’t heard it yet. But I can already tell that it sucks as it drops to #34 or whatever on the perpetually U2-ass-kissing iTunes Store. I’ve even had friends whose opinions I generally respect recommend that I check it out, but I know better. The new promotional art is sucking Trent Reznor’s dick harder than all of the parts of Chinese Democracy that were recorded before 1998. Even the new logo is a thinly veiled NIN rip-off.

U2 had three and only three truly great records (War, Unforgettable Fire, and Joshua Tree), and ever since, the downward slope in quality has been in direct ratio to the ever-increasing levels of douchery in Bono’s getup. Notice the peace sign and the superhero glasses. Fuck’s sake man.

Now you go listen, and tell me if I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, a select few have managed yet again to fool people with the same song and dance, while barely selling enough to touch the charts, much less earn a respectable position. They’re bullshit hype riders, most of them suck badly, and they deserve to be called out. With any luck, our collective disdain can outshine the billboards, bus benches, tabloids and trendy haircuts, and we can forget these losers once and for all.

10. The Verve

Most of us only know the Verve from Bitter Sweet Symphony, off 1997’s Urban Hymns. You remember it- the video was pretty much just a long shot of singer Richard Ashcroft walking down the street singing, looking like his face is melting (not a special effect- he just looks that way). They broke up all kinds of times over the usual drugs, ego and legal problems, and nobody really cared that much (hell, Ok Computer came out the same year, what did you expect?). The Verve got back together 10 years later to pluck our nostalgia strings, but the tune is an outdated and uninspired one. Nobody cares. Again.

9. Gym Class Heroes

Seriously though, who thought emo-rap was a good idea? The built-in douche factor, the collabs with Fall Out Boy, the… Daryl Hall cameo? Everything about this group is wrong- all the way down to pierced & plugged frontman Travis McCoy’s sappy lyric quotes in his blog re: his breakup from Katy Perry, who clearly got bored of the manboy and moved onto something less… lame.

8. Ashlee Simpson

Thanks to her pseudo-bisexual, overgrown attention-whore emo manboy husband, a nosejob and a retardedly-named son (Bronx Mowgli? Come the fuck on) she’s more famous than her “superstar” hick idiot sister, despite a highly-pimped album that barely cracked 100,000 in sales. Naturally, she’ll remain a part of the tabloid fabric for some time to come, until another useless, no-talent sister of a pop star prodigy gets her shit together enough to step up (where are you, Jamie Lynn?)

7. Plain White Ts

You likely remember that stupid Hey There Delilah song from about a year and a half ago, but chances are, you’re having a hard time remembering the band who played it. That’s because the album tanked, and they couldn’t follow up in ‘08 with another Delilah. Just add these guys to the Ridiculous Band Names list- it’s just under the One-Hit Wonders.

6. Keane

One Coldplay is more than enough, thank you. Their synth-pop douche-fest, Perfect Symmetry, righteously fell off the US album charts after just six weeks, selling a paltry 74,000 copies- about a third of what their previous album moved. Unremarkable, utterly bland and entirely useless, it’s about time Keane moved on to other things.

5. Madonna

Let’s forget about the nasty recent pictures of her onstage, looking like a velociraptor dressed as a tranny circus ringleader with full-blown AIDS, and focus on her ridiculous Hard Candy record, which thanks to a 20 year trend gap in developing countries has sold nearly three million copies worldwide. It hasn’t fared well at all here in the States, because we see her for the ridiculous, washed up, menopausal megalomaniac hag that she is. Note to Miley- when you start looking like the Bride of Skeletor on steroids, it’s time to get off stage, eat a fuckin sandwich and go adopt some more African kids.

Since (and possibly before) Ray Of Light, her ambition and greed have far outreached her talent. The rest of the world can have her. Sure, it’s a stretch, but with any luck, we can forget about Madonna in 2009.

4. Jessica Simpson

Wow, right? Both the Simpson sisters made the list. The shelf life of each has long since expired, but particularly for Jessica, who should’ve dropped permanently from view with the demise of her reality show, however the fuck long ago that was. But she stuck around, due in part to a maniacally opportunistic manager-father and her ability to actually hold a note (unlike a certain Ms. Spears, who despite having the voice of a 9 year-old girl trying to sound like an oversexed grownup, has pushed her pendulum back into gullible hearts once again- stay tuned for breakdown 9.0). But her ill-fated crossover into country music fared worse than the same career choice for Darius Rucker. Yeah, the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish. How much worse? Less than half- she pushed 135,000 copies before it dropped into complete obscurity.

3. Panic! At The Disco

Dropping the exclamation point, wiping off the makeup and getting rid of the geometric hairstyles appears too be too little, too late for the wave of reformed emo kids looking for something real to believe in. Their attempt at redefinition through pop psychedelics, Pretty. Odd. sold just over 300,000 units, which is about a fifth of what their last record did. And that one was pretty goddamned bad to begin with.

2. Buckcherry

I suffered through an interview with frontman Josh Todd to get in good with their publicist, which left me feeling like I’d been on the receiving end of an unrequested full-body massage by a greased up, horny La Pequeña.

Tattoos, strippers and brand-new STDs are the name of this game, but nobody seems to want to play anymore; Black Butterfly has moved just over 150,000 copies since its release, despite a huge marketing campaign all but hailing them as the next Mötley Crüe. Or wait, maybe that was Hinder. Who fucking cares- they both suck with soulless abandon.

Despite whatever Axl may try to tell you, just ’cause your songs are played in strip clubs doesn’t mean your album’s gonna sell. Maybe all those Crazy Bitches on Sunset aren’t so crazy after all. Count that as one for rock n’ roll integrity.

1. Hinder

Jesus, where to begin? With one god-awful power ballad these sleaze-rocking idiots somehow became entirely too famous, going double platinum with their shiteous, uninspired debut thanks to devil-deal promotion schemes and an undoubtable gift for industry blowjobs.

Thankfully, the purveyors of greasy trash are shifting their sights elsewhere these days, as their most recent offering barely cracked 200,000 in sales. That’s what happens when mediocrity is a fantasy and you’re struggling, like an obese paraplegic who’s fallen in a pool full of ugly strippers, just to stand out from the pack of useless derivatives that you come from.

And yes, that’s really the cover of their album. Sometimes a picture’s worth a thousand shitty songs.

Honorable Mention:
Amy “Will You Fucking Die Already?!” Winehouse

I can’t decide whether it would be better to get a collection going to send her enough crack to finish the job, or actually put her in a cage, nurse her back to health and get some more of that amazing shit she spits when she’s got her head on straight. We’ve got some tough choices to make this year.

When people who talk a lot say things I don’t understand, such as “see you at the Buddyhead thing,” I tend to just kinda filter it out, reasoning that if it’s really that important or interesting, I’ll hear it again and again until I’m finally motivated to Google it or whatever. Social Darwinism. And this was the case with the Buddyhead thing. After hearing about it over and over again, one day when I got a text from a really nice dude I see at almost every single show I go to- no matter where in the country it is- telling me that tickets to the Buddyhead thing were on sale online for ten bucks, I finally gave in. I asked what the fuck this Buddyhead thing was. I was led eventually to a flyer promoting “The Umpteenth Buddyhead Holiday Ho Ho Hodeo” featuring Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age, The Entrance Band, Dean Fertita of the Raconteurs, Xu Xu Fang, Aaron North and Alessandro Cortini of Nine Inch Nails, Jeordie ‘Twiggy’ White of Marilyn Manson, Sweethead, Tony Bevilacqua of Spinnerette, Nick Jago of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and a bunch of other really interesting sounding artists. I was sold. With doors to the very chill Hotel Café opening at seven, it seemed like a fine way to spend an evening.

We got there before seven, and the doors didn’t open until eight or so. Everyone in Hollywood smokes, and we must have gotten two packs’ worth of secondhand standing around with the hipsters, trying not to hear the stupid Hollywood shit they were talking about- which friend of which friend is in which band now and what scene royalty they were most recently mingling with.

When we finally got in, we were treated to poetry readings by a dude named Ryan Ritchie. They were mostly holiday related from what I recall, autobiographical. It was cute stuff, ranging from disgruntled to mean-spirited. It set a good tone.

Next up was a dude named Brandon Intelligator and his band, the Sheriffs. I couldn’t tell if Brandon was Mexican or Jewish… But he was channeling Elvis. Lots of reverb. Lots and lots of reverb. But it wasn’t bad at all. If you head to his MySpace, the songs posted there sound pretty much exactly like what we heard last night.

Then it was Tsk Tsk, followed by Sid Brown, and a dude named Todd Congelliere. Tsk Tsk confused the shit out of me. It was fronted by some hippie chick with dreadlocks sitting down with a guitar, backed by a couple sceney looking girls, one on violin, the other… just trying to sing like Mazzy Star. Only with less energy, if you can imagine that. Dreadlock girl announced that their music came from “many inspirations,” but that tonight, its inspiration would be “dreams.” They proceeded to do a two song set- two cover songs. I don’t get why you’d say something like that before playing other people’s songs, but whatever. It was the worst (and possibly longest) version of Wild Horses I’ve ever heard, followed by a what was either a really bad cover of a good song, or a faithful cover of a really bad song.

Sid Brown was even worse- possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. Three huge red flags were thrown onto the field- #1) Their setup time was longer than the entirety of their set as they fiddled with lights they had brought in a duffel bag, #2) Their rhythm section was an iPod, and #3) They had a dancer onstage- a trashy, ugly, LA stripper that looked like a tranny. All she did was dance, badly. They played two songs- both were less than two chords- just two notes each, back and forth. It was the most annoying shit ever. A girl behind me overheard me bitching to a photographer about how bad they were, and informed me that “usually, they’re way better.” I told the girl that I would be fair and look them up- and I did- and yes, the songs on the band’s MySpace sound much much better than anything they played last night. Still, while they usually bring two ugly dancers onstage, the lack of talent is so obvious, it’d take more than two sleazy whores with no tits to distract me from it.

Todd Congelliere, on the other hand, was much better than Tsk Tsk and Sid Brown combined.

The next band was one of very few distinct highlights. They were called- they are called- Dios Malos. I had never heard of them before, but they’ve got it. Real talent, and a great attitude. The second song they did was entitled (I believe) Steel & Glass, and it was not only the most entrancing performance of the otherwise hellish show last night, but of the most recent handful of shows I’ve made it to. I wish it was on their MySpace page. Regardless, we’ll be hunting them down for an in-depth piece here on Antiquiet sometime soon.

Some great excerpts from their bio:

We understand that being from LA has its stigmas to certain folks… Well, fuck you. I, personally, am an LA aficionado, and I resent the fact that true Angelinos have to put up with fucked up labels and misconceptions because of people who move here from other shitholes to act, start shitty bands, and/or get in “the business.” LA is more than just rats’ nests like Hollywood, Silverlake, and the Westside. It has a tremendous amount of culture and history that is simultaneously ignored, exploited, and trashed by these fuckheads. Luckily, we’re from a different part of LA.

We like things that are genuine, soulful, and dirty. It isn’t always beneficial for a band to defy categorization, which is why we are generally disregarded in LA, and at war with douchebag promoters that really don’t know shit anyways. Despite all that there are kind folks out there that support us and come up to us at shows, or on our website, and really make us feel good about our efforts. We’ve definitely had many good years being in this band and we’re gonna be doing it for many more.

I buy it. Also, this, directed to their 7,776 MySpace “friends:”

Either most of our “friends” are fake or most of you are retarded, for better or worse we’re stuck with each other, let’s make the most of it and build a rainbow made out of all the ugly colors while french children run up and down the sandy beach cursing at god for making everything backwards.

After Dios Malos, an odd girl named Claire got up onstage and sang some very mediocre singer/songwriter type songs. I spaced out and said hi to some friends. The house videographer was absolutely in love with her for some reason, but I didn’t get it.

Then Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks got up onstage, with some possibly homeless former or functioning junkie with a microphone that I almost mistook for Mark Lanegan. He’s probably someone I should have recognized, but here I am all Googled out from the heap of unheard-of local acts. I’ll let the fans sort it out in the comments section. Zander has gained a lot of weight, and appears to the untrained eye to be a blues legend from the swamp rather than the LA punk legend that he is. But their set was another one of the highlights- the singer’s voice matched Lanegan’s as much as his appearance- and they closed with a soulful cover of Josh Haden’s Spiritual.

After a short story by Ryan Ritchie, Nick Jago, formerly of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, took the stage with a backing band. BRMC is one of my absolute favorite bands of all time, but I swear to God, Nick Jago was one of the most annoying “artists” ever to take a stage in front of me. He was so in love with himself- yet he was so bad. Granted, it was his first solo show ever, but his singing voice is pathetic- I’ve seen high school bands with more compelling frontmen. Jago acted like he was Paul fucking McCartney up there- stopping mid-song to whine about people talking in the back, blaming the crowd for its lack of interest rather than his own horrible music- which he repeatedly fucked up, giving up entirely on one particular song a quarter-way through. He made some speech about the event being one with “integrity,” with “really great musicians,” and in the same breath explained that he only owned 30% of the royalties on the next song, after giving the rest to “someone who didn’t deserve it,” but it was “his way of saying thanks” blah blah blah fucking blah. Speaking of integrity, let me bitch about the shitty royalty rate I have on this song that I’ve never played before. I didn’t know how Jago had come to part ways with BRMC, but after last night, I was set on the theory that he was kicked out for being a douchebag. Evidently, I’m right. The band avoided using the word ‘fired,’ but the story involves a consistently drugged and/or drunken, grandstanding Jago, and the phrase “internal conflict.”

Thankfully, Alain Johannes of Eleven took the stage next, a man with real talent. He only played two songs, both of which were just him and a twelve string acoustic guitar, but they were impassioned, and helped to rejuvenate the evening.

After Alain was Jason Simon of Dead Meadow, accompanied by Marcus of Lower Heaven on an instrument I believe was a harmonium. Simon’s guitar work was really, really great. However, like many of the night’s performances, his vocals were weak, quiet, and lost in a mess of reverb. Overall, the set seemed to drone on past its welcome.

The other big highlight was to follow- Sweethead’s second performance ever, featuring Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens Of The Stone Age (formerly of A Perfect Circle), with the lovely Serrina Sims on vocals. At this point it was like 1 AM, and I don’t know how Serrina had survived the night in her fucking eight inch heels. Her voice- though under-amplified of course- was surprisingly soulful, and Troy’s guitar work was an interesting deviation away from the QOTSA stoner rock as well as APC’s dark alt-metal. We’ll be featuring them here on Antiquiet sometime soon.

The final act of the night was the worst thing I’ve suffered through since… well, Sid Brown’s set. You’d think Aaron North of The Icarus Line / Nine Inch Nails would be capable of bringing a house or two down, especially when helped by Tony Bevilacqua of Spinnerette. I don’t know if he was on fucking heroin or what, but his voice was… Not even a voice. It was a puny mumble, with absolutely no intonation, helped very little by droney guitars. The songs were supposedly covers, but I didn’t recognize them.

Buddyhead is some kind of big deal in some circles around here, and Aaron North is one of the two masterminds behind it- the other being photographer Travis Keller, who was named one of the most creative people in entertainment, by NME, and one of the “top 100 most powerful people in rock” by Kerrang. So I’m probably like, committing some sort of scene blasphemy here, talking shit. Overall, Buddyhead seems like a pretty sharp site… They’ve got Meathead writing for them, and he’s always funny. But last night came off like a vanity show- where most of the acts cared more about being onstage than the masses would care to hear them. Buddyhead seems to be known for not pulling punches, so I’m let down by the sore lack of discrimination.

But in the end, I suppose it wasn’t any better or worse than the usual family or office holiday gathering- a long, long, excruciating day (or night) with a bunch of people you try and pretend not to hate over the course of several hours that you will never, ever get back. Looking back after some time, you can kinda pick out the highlights and good parts and smile and feel all holiday spirit-y, but going through it, a gun to put in your mouth would be a welcome hors d’oeuvre.

Sadly, Twiggy Ramirez, Entrance, Dean Fertita, Xu Xu Fang, Alessandro Cortini, and Josh Homme all bailed.

For many more photos of all the Buddyhead acts, head over to Antiquiet’s Facebook page.

The new album leaked, and Lars “King Douche” enemy of downloading Ulrich himself came out and said hey, that’s the way it goes, it’s 2008, we’re not tripping. Apparently having learned the hard way how stupid it is to fight your fans, they then started streaming the album, in its entirety, on their website, prior to the physical release.

Finally, someone in the Metallica camp grew a brain. The backlash from their battle with Napster has put a big shit-smear on their image for years- and has surely caused many an on-the-fence critic to go south- but I have to hand it to them; despite still being on a major label, they’re connecting. They’ve climbed down off of their pedestal. They’re giving us daily updates from the studio. They’re acting like we deserve it. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, but you get the impression that they appreciate their fans. It’s a complete 180° from walking into court with a list of names of people who downloaded some MP3s, and it’s exactly what you need to do to win in this new music game.

On one side of the field, you have the fans. They only care about one thing: the Music. They have no bottom line to mind, they just want to hear good music, and it’s impossible to distract them from that hunt. As individuals, they generally understand that the artists deserve creative control, that they deserve compensation for their efforts, and that they have no real obligation to the fans. But as a whole, they don’t really care. If it’s out there, they’ll find it. They’ll pay for it if they can, but they’ll steal it if they can’t. And if it isn’t there, it doesn’t matter how big the billboard is, they’re going to move on as quickly as they came.

Are the fans busting into record label headquarters and stealing CDs? No. They’re not criminals for fuck’s sake. But when one Google search leads them to a ‘play’ button, you can’t expect them not to click it. When the prey is in their sights, when the tools are at their fingertips, you can’t expect them not to take advantage.

On the other end of the field, you have the record labels. They say they care about the music, and as individuals, maybe they do. But as a whole, they don’t give a shit about the music. As a whole, they only care about the money. The money they’re getting, the money they’re not getting, the money they could be getting. There are some exceptions in the indie world, but they’re few and far between.

And right smack dab in the middle, you have the artists. Without them, there is no game. The fans know this, and even the labels know this. The thing about artists though, is they’re much harder to pin down. Some understand the game they’re in. Some don’t. Some don’t give a shit about the fans, some do. Some don’t give a shit about the labels, some do. The artists always have the least to lose though. They can make music without the fans, and they can make money without the labels.

There are three (and only three) simple truths, beyond which things get complicated: Fans consume art ruthlessly. Corporations make money ruthlessly. Artists make art ruthlessly.

Everything beyond these three truths can be picked apart and debated as the game evolves. But anyone who forgets any of these three truths is a fool, and anyone who fights them is asking for a Darwinian lightning bolt to wipe their useless genes off the planet. Today’s Metallica news brought one such waste of DNA to my attention: Per Sundin, President of Universal Music Sweden.

Here’s the story: A Metallica fan named Hench liked the new Metallica album, but thought he could make it better by cutting out, and I quote, “some lame lyrics” here and there, and some “ploddy riffs that go nowhere for three minutes before turning into something cool.” His motivation, as a fan, of course, was just to have some better music. As he stated, he just wanted a new Metallica album that he “could listen to without getting irritated.” If you ask me, I say no harm, no foul. That’s better for Metallica than Hench not listening at all. But don’t ask me for my opinion. Just take this activity for granted, guaranteed by the first truth.

This alternate mix of Hench’s found a fan in Jonn Jeppsson, writing for Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan, who downloaded the mix, and talked about it- and apparently where it could be found- in a three-star review of Death Magnetic. He praised the leaner versions of the songs, calling them more than “glaringly precise and intense.” If the story ended right here, there’d be no story. Have you ever rearranged the track order of an artist’s album to make it more listenable? Remove tracks or parts of tracks altogether from mixtapes? Shit, have you ever downloaded an album?

Of course you have. If you’re a music fan, you’ve done all of those things. As surely as you’ve supported the same artists and countless others with an unfathomable number of financial investments. Technically, what you’ve done is illegal, and disrespectful to the artists’ right to creative control. But you don’t feel bad, do you? Maybe you’re just hardcore; a remorseless music addict, and you can’t control yourself. Or maybe it’s because you still feel the sting of that concert ticket, and you’d need at least two hands to count the number of friends and internet buddies you turned onto that artist- many of which forked over hard earned cash for product, all of which at least told all of their friends. You know you’ve done a lot more good than harm.

A savvy artist understands this. A genius artist embraces this and uses it to their advantage. Trent Reznor provides the multi-track source files for his songs and encourages fans to hack them apart. He sees the album purchase as the beginning of the relationship with the fan, rather than the end. He sees a fan remixing his album as the most ultimate show of devotion.

Only a fool wouldn’t.

When Universal Music Sweden caught wind of Jeppsson’s controversial review, supporting an illegal, fan-made perversion of their artist’s product, they canceled an interview the band had scheduled with Sydsvenskan. Throwing customer relations out the window, Per Sundin blasted everyone within screaming range:

“The reviewer is referring to a torrent where someone has altered the original songs. The reviewer explains exactly where one should go in order to download the file that is totally infringing copyright. It’s not only an illegal file, but an altered file. The reviewer also writes that this is how the album should have sounded… File-sharing of music is illegal. Period. There’s nothing to discuss. That fact that Sydsvenskan has a writer that has downloaded this music illegally and then makes mention of an illegal site in his review is totally unacceptable to us.”

What’s totally unacceptable to us, is any notion that would even vaguely suggest that how a fan listens to music could or should be controlled by anyone other than that fan. It’d be no less absurd than telling the record labels they don’t need the money, and no less absurd than telling artists how or when to make their music.

And what each artist needs to do is decide which team they’re playing for.

Hey Metallica, why hold a listening party for your new album if you don’t want people talking about the music? We all know you guys are all about embracing the internet now and stuff, but this latest listening-party fiasco adds a final, gleaming sheen of hypocrisy to your douchebag crowns.

See, Metallica held a listening session in London on Wednesday to preview all but four tracks from their hysterically anticipated, yet-unnamed ninth studio album (you know, the one where they’re supposed to get all shreddy and raw again, like they were twenty years ago). There weren’t any non-disclosure agreements guests had to sign beforehand, and no reference was made to keeping album details under wraps. 

Nevertheless, journalists who were in attendance and have since written about the event have been contacted by a third party on behalf of Metallica, demanding the removal of any commentary related to the new music. Fearful of falling from good graces with the world’s biggest rock band, nearly all reviews have vanished. Except the glowing ones, that is. 

Bloggers over at The Quietus posted their review of the listening experience after the event, a fair, even-keeled piece that centered largely on the comical hardships of being an old-school Metallica fan, longing for a return to the days of …And Justice For All. The review stayed up longer than the others we’ve seen, and before it was removed we managed to get our copy action on.

Opinions are like assholes, but far as I can tell I’ve never had my asshole censored. Whether or not that’s for the best is another matter entirely, but the fact remains that The Quietus’ Bob Mulhouse gave a fair, well-written and balanced account of his experience. There’s no reason he should be silenced. 

So, with that in mind, here’s what Bob had to say:

METALLICA: New Album Preview
by Bob Mulhouse

Being a fan of the Danish-Californian heavy metal quartet Metallica is hard work. They’re the quintessential band of two halves, pulling in millions of fans from 1983 to 1995 with five mostly excellent albums, which ranged in approach from youthful violence to radio-friendly hummability. In 1996, however, Metallica released the first of a shockingly poor string of alternative-rock, covers and live records, finishing up with 2003’s terrible St. Anger, the most disappointing metal CD ever released. Staying loyal to them after this many years isn’t easy, frankly.

So what, you might be thinking– all bands have their creative peaks and troughs, surely? Well, you’re not getting it. Metallica aren’t just a metal act: they are the Led Zeppelin of their generation, a band which your kids will revere 30 years from now to the same degree as we do the Beatles and the Stones today. To love them is to really love them. Their work ethic (which other band spends three years on the road at stadium level?) and their damnable songwriting ability (leading to songs of visceral power which you can still sing in the bath) has made them bigger, heavier and more essentially here than anyone else. That’s why we still pay attention to them after more than a decade of recorded dross. That’s why even their drummer Lars Ulrich’s petulant sparring with Napster in 2001 and the painful-to-watch Some Kind Of Monster documentary (made during their group-therapy sessions) don’t outweigh the hope we all felt when it was announced in 2007 that none other than Rick Rubin would be helming their new studio album, the first in five years.

Rick Rubin, as any fule kno, is responsible for launching the careers of many a fine band (including Slayer, Metallica’s sometime contemporaries), but– more relevantly in this case– has also revived the fortunes of creatively ossified artists whose moment in the sun has passed, such as Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Could The Beastie Beard breathe life into Metallica? God, we hoped so, simultaneously aware that Ulrich et al have raised and dashed our hopes before.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I attended the playback of Metallica’s new album at the HQ of Universal, their UK record company, on 3 June. We were permitted to hear six of the 10 tracks which will ultimately appear on the album– which, a rep from the Q-Prime management company informed us, is referred to colloquially by Metallica as ‘Nine epics and one song’. The sense of occasion was reinforced by the presence of almost the entire editorial teams of the UK’s two biggest metal magazines, glaring at each other over the tea urn. [What? Metal Hammer and Terrorizer? -Antiquiet.]

Right from the off, it’s a relief to hear that the utterly awful production of St. Anger is no more. Ulrich has replaced the old dustbin lid from that album with an actual snare drum, and the sound is fresh, clean and resonant (even though the songs are still only rough mixes at this stage). The first song, like the rest of the ‘epics’, is between six and eight minutes long and begins with a bass intro from low-ender extraordinaire Robert Trujillo. Moving rapidly from riff to riff, the song bursts with energy and ideas: singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield barks “Luck runs out!” repeatedly and throws in some twisty, semi-progressive riffs which could have been lifted directly from, their last truly good album, 1988’s …And Justice For All. Guitarist Kirk Hammett, who was banned from soloing on St. Anguish for no adequately explored reason, is on fire, whipping out the melodic, rapid-fire shreds for which he is famous over an extended solo section – almost as if he’s making up for lost time. This is Metallica’s best song in ages, perhaps since the 1980s.

The next cut has a working title of Flamingo and is going to be the first single. Now, Metallica’s lead singles have been breathtakingly crap since 1995, so it was a relief to hear that Flamingo (as it almost definitely will not be called) is a modernised take on their amazing 1988 song One, all balladry at its front end before a speeded-up metalstorm at the back. Hetfield delivers a clean-picked intro which reminded me of the Beach Boys (I know… but I only got to hear it once, all right?) before the body of the song, which is basically like The Unforgiven from 1991’s Black Album. If you’re familiar with the chord progression behind the solo in Am I Evil?, the ancient Diamond Head song which Metallica made their own, you’ll be able to picture the under-solo riffage in this song– all simple, effective major-interval jumps.

However, let us not forget that this is modern Metallica– and the next two songs are much less fun. The first, which may be called We Die Hard judging by the frequency with which Hetfield barks the phrase, starts boringly but accelerates halfway through and enters slightly proggy territory, all stop-start riff stabs and a clever time signature. The next song is very …And Justice, a lengthy, unhurried workout which revolves around the line “Bow down / Sell your soul to me / I will set you free”, itself a 1988 line if I ever heard one. Apart from dexterous soloing from Hammett, it’s not great.

So far, we’ve had two good songs and two dull ones– not a bad track record for new ’Tallica, believe me. However, track five is tedious, a combination of the aimless riffery of St. Anger and the pointless rock chorusing of Load, the album which almost finished Metallica in 1996. “Crying, weeping, shedding strife!” sings Hetfield in that slick Enter Sandman manner, over an unthreatening clean midsection which would (and no doubt will) suit VH1 down to the ground.

At this point the Q-Prime geezer asks us if we want to hear more, and fortunately we say yes– because the final song (and indeed, it is ‘The Song’, the little guy among the nine epics) is great, a genuine slice of thrash metal that starts fast and stays that way. Like a slower, less precise Battery (the opening track of 1986’s flawless Master Of Puppets album), the song nips in and out, not outstaying its welcome and proving that on some level, Metallica still have the necessary vitriol to impress their older fans. OK, it reminded me a bit of Dyer’s Eve, the last song on Justice, which had a kind of “I suppose we’d better do a fast one for the fans” feel about it– but in 2008, Hetfield and Ulrich delivering any form of thrash metal is not to be sneered at.

We file out of the listening room, not saying much. This album could be good, or it could be mediocre– too much depends on the other four songs to make a call at this point. I try not to agonise about it, but this matters, damn it. It really does.

I said it wasn’t easy being a Metallica fan in 2008, didn’t I?

UPDATE, 6/12/2008:
Yesterday, Metallica posted a statement on their official site, saying: “…once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was “WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record… that makes no sense to us!” So after a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at Q Prime to 20 push-ups each, we figured why not take matters into our own hands and just post the links here on our site.”