One of my favorite albums is Sepultura’s revered 1991 opus, Arise. At the time of its release, it was the perfect blend of the thrash metal sound that had pushed heavy metal music into the extreme, and the newly emerging death metal sound that bands like Possessed and Death had worked so hard to champion… a perfect middle-ground. Today, it is a metalhead’s classic and is still considered one of the greatest death / thrash records of all time.

My first encounter with the texan metal outfit As Eden Burns was met with both hope and skepticism. Far too many bands have set out to achieve this coveted middle-ground but never managed to sound natural (at least to these ears) in their musical endeavors.

Jesse Hughes may be the less-famous co-pilot of the pirate ship known as the Eagles Of Death Metal, but anyone who’s seen a show will tell you that he’s the personality centerpiece of this band. Cocksure and radiantly eager for the kill, the tattooed, muscle-shirted, aviator-wearing Hollywood history buff makes no bones about what he’s here to do. An EODM concert is nothing short of a foot-stomping, ass-shaking, tits-flashing grand old time with Jesse at the wheel, always ready with a wink and a devilish grin beneath his 70’s cop mustache.

And goddamnit, that’s exactly how a rock star should be.

We tracked down Hughes to discuss, among other things, the pitfalls and perils of LA, his new solo album (tentatively titled Fabulous Weapons) and the perils of being sodomized by P. Diddy. That’s right.

Nine Inch Nails just announced that drummer Ilan Rubin of Lostprophets will replace Josh Freese behind the kit in 2009. Freese recently announced his plans to leave the group.

The guy’s 20 years old. Jesus. I shudder, thinking of the bullshit I was up to at 20.

Is it a good idea to use a band’s Greatest Hits record as an introduction to their body of work? It’s an arguable point, but the b-side and deep-tracks fetishist in me says no. For every Man In The Box, there’s a Right Turn. For every Welcome To The Jungle there’s a Rocket Queen. Where Even Flow and Jeremy ended, Given To Fly and W.M.A. began. And so on. The hits are rarely my favorites.

If there were ever a possible exception to the rule, however, I’d say Stereophonics fit the bill. Pulling from 5 number one albums and 25 top 40 singles, Decade In The Sun is a surprisingly potent sampling of the band’s 12-year history, collectively shining bright enough to finally get the attention of musical ADD sufferers like myself.

We here at Antiquiet have had our fair share of trouble and then some, but there’s one thing I’m fucking certain of. The new Hilary Duff video is hands-down, without a doubt, seriously infringing the shit out of some copyrights:

I think what pisses me off the most about this is that Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic claimed a co-writing credit on the track, for the music- which is nothing more than Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus; verse for verse, chorus for chorus. Even Hilary’s hook only changes one word from the original.