Brief History of Mayhem

Mayhem is an entity in the realm of extreme metal that needs little introduction, yet was such an abrupt turning point in the history and evolution of extreme metal. Having started out as a group of youth in Oslo channeling their inspiration and influences from the first wave greats, the band was formed by bassist Jørn Stubberud (Necrobutcher), drummer Kjetil Manheim and last but far from least Øystein Aarseth (better known as Euronymous) on guitars in 1984 and named itself after the Venom song 'Mayhem with Mercy'. The band, after two demos went onto release the incredibly belligerent 'Deathcrush' EP in 1987, which was merely a sign of the inevitable ascension of the black metal genre in the years to come, a legacy they would come to herald. Apart from the more than well known violent past involving church burnings and internal conflicts. The band also has the unique position in the history of black metal as being the primary founders of its signature sound, with the guitar wizardry of Euronymous having been the stylistic base of most second wave black metal bands, with his usage of high-speed poly-rhythms alongside the ambient riffing. Despite having had a controversial history and rocky tenure as a band, with the deaths and departures of key members to add to the situation, the band (today comprising of Attila Csihar, Necrobutcher, Hellhammer and Teloch) is still going strong, expanding upon the foundations laid down by its early work in a sensible and progressive manner.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKE9Tj1LME4

GWAR frontman David Brockie dies of drug overdoes

According to WWBT, the NBC-affiliated television station for Richmond, Virginia, investigators looking into whether the death of Gwar lead singer Dave Brockie may have been drug-related.


Law enforcement sources told the station the investigation is leading them to believe Brockie's death Sunday is drug-related, but the Medical Examiner will determine the exact cause. The investigation will include a toxicology report, which could take six weeks or more. Foul play is not expected, according to police.


Brockie was found dead in his home in Richmond on Sunday night (March 2). Brockie was 50 years old.


Gwar manager Jack Flanagan released a statement saying, "It is with a saddened heart that I confirm my dear friend Dave Brockie, artist, musician, and lead singer of Gwar, passed away at approximately 6:50 p.m. EST Sunday, March 23, 2014 . . . A full autopsy will be performed. He was 50 years old, born August 30, 1963. My main focus right now is to look after my bandmates and his family."


Brockie is the second member of Gwar to die within the past three years. Guitarist Cory Smoot, who played the character Flattus Maximus, died of a heart attack on the band's tour bus in November 2011 at the age of 34.


Brockie said at the time, "I think Cory's death is a big wake-up call for all of us. We all breathed a big sigh of relief when we found out it wasn't a drug overdose, to speak quite frankly. But then to think that he was 34 and died of a heart attack — it's really scary."


According to The Pulse Of Radio, Brockie was the last remaining original member of Gwar, which was founded 30 years ago. The future of the band at this stage is uncertain.

The Elder Scrolls Online voice cast announced

Bethesda today announced an all-star voice cast for its upcoming MMO The Elder Scrolls Online featuring actors like John Cleese of Monty Python fame and Michael Gambon, who played professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series.

The Elder Scrolls Online voice cast:
John Cleese (Monty Python) - Caldwell
Bill Nighy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Love Actually) - High King Emeric
Kate Beckinsale (Aviator, Pearl Harbor) - Queen Ayrenn
Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2) - Abnur Tharn
Michael Gambon (Harry Potter series) - The Prophet
Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) - Molag Bal
Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) - Azura
Peter Stormare (Fargo) - Jorunn the Skald King
Jim Ward (WALL-E) - Mannimarco
Jennifer Hale (Mass Effect) - Lyris Tianborn
Kevin Michael Richardson (The Cleveland Show) - Sai Sahan

Deicide- In the Minds of Evil review

There’s little to say that isn’t already known about the death metal legends that are Deicide. The band perfected the blasphemous and anti-Christian thematic leanings that were already employed by the likes of the first wave forefathers or even their marginally earlier contemporaries such as Morbid Angel. Was this provocative running theme in any way original? No, but the band presented similarly impious musings with a new found crudeness, ferocity and aggression that did not need to lean back upon indirect expressions of sacrilege such as references to the occult and alternative path topics, and instead were more blatantly profane. This November sees the release of Deicide’s latest studio endeavor, ‘In the Minds of Evil’, an album with admittedly high expectations among the fan’s long-term fans (a pretty large one, considering they are the second most commercially successful death metal band of all time), in addition to the fact that the post-‘Serpents of the Light’ output has been of varying degrees of quality, although not of a purely hit or miss nature.


Thematically, Deicide hasn’t really expanded beyond their audacious iconoclasm, as the title of the songs and albums reveal, but really, Deicide is one of the few bands who can stick to this mode of action and not be deemed monotonous and derivative. The same can be said for their music – it’s essentially an exaltation to their already well known signature sound, but reinvented in a sense by adding subtle tweaks to their otherwise formulaic approach that continues to the metal world enraptured. The first half of the album is laden with simple rhythmic ideas that are structurally rather simple, ranging from the syncopation-driven riffing on tracks such as ‘Beyond Salvation’, to roving riffs that give way to the establishment of a repetitive groove that serves to increase the memorability of compositions such as ‘In the Minds of Evil’ and ‘Godkill’. While the guitars here are seemingly sterile, they help to illuminate the more subtle melodies that Jack Owen and Kevin Quirion embed within simplistically structured and cyclic songs.

Ghost (Ghost B.C) Announce info on new album

Swedish occult rockers Ghost are planning to enter the studio in the fall to begin recording their third album for a 2015 release. Asked by Andrew Haug of AndrewHaug.com, Australia's first-ever dedicated 24/7 rock and metal online radio station, if the next CD will — as has been suggested in recent interviews — be "more metallic" than the previous efforts, one of Ghost's Nameless Ghouls said (hear audio below): "What I've been trying to sort of make clear was that [2013's] 'Infestissumam' turned out to be quite a vocal record, which goes very well with the level of theatrics of our live show right now. Whereas in the future, when we plan to go even more elaborate when it comes to theatrics and live performances, we cannot really have Papa singing all the time, because a) that's not very good for dynamics; b) it's not very healthy to have a singer that sings all the time; and c) from an instrumentalist's point of view, as much as I like the current record, I think we wanna do a record that might be more instrumental and thus, with that saying that it might be more riff-based. But these are just general thoughts about this from our point of view. If it makes the record come out as more of a metal record or not, it's very hard to tell right now."


Ghost was honored with the P3 Guld award (for their criticially acclaimed "Infestissumam" release) from Swedish radio station P3 in the "Best Rock/Metal Album Of The Year" category. The winners were announced this past Saturday night (January 18) during a live awards ceremony broadcast from the Scandinavium in Gothenburg, Sweden.


Ghost was forced to modify its name in the U.S. to Ghost B.C. for "legal reasons."

Slipknot making new album

The new SLIPKNOT album will be its first since 2008's "All Hope Is Gone" and the first since the 2010 death of bassist Paul Gray and the recent dismissal of drummer Joey Jordison.

Root told The Pulse Of Radio late last year — before the news about Jordison broke — that he was feeling the urgency to make a new SLIPKNOT album. "You know, we haven't done a record since Paul's been gone and it's been pushing six years. And there's a lot of people in SLIPKNOT and a lot of fans and me myself kind of feel like it's time for that hurdle to be overcome. And for me, that's really like my number one priority and the most important thing for me right now."

SLIPKNOT has not disclosed the reasons for Jordison's exit, although the drummer issued a statement recently saying that he did not quit the band. A replacement has yet to be named.

Metallica to start recording new album

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett tells Billboard.com that the band will start working on the follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic" "in a couple of weeks. When we start, that's going to be our main priority, and we're pretty excited about it because we've been saying we need to start working on this album, but we've been procrastinating greatly with it," he says. "We've pretty much come up with every sort of excuse we can not to start work on the album, but we've run out of excuses, so we pretty much have to start work on it now."


According to Hammett, there is no shortage of ideas for METALLICA's next CD, with the guys reportedly having met up twice in the last few months to cook up some tasty riffs in the studio.


"We're a band that never has a shortage of ideas," Hammett says. "You hear about these bands that are sitting in the studio and they don't have any songs, what are they gonna do? That's not METALLICA. METALLICA's problem is the total opposite. We have too many ideas.James [Hetfield, guitar/vocals] has, like, 800 ideas. I have 400. Those number alone are just crazy. That's formidable."


METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich acknowledged in an interview with U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine that the band's next studio album is unlikely to arrive before 2015 at the earliest. The drummer explained: "Obviously, there are a lot of people asking where the next record is. We're going to make another record, but like I said before, we don't really feel this kind of… what's the word? I guess 'responsibility' is probably the right word. We don't feel this inherent responsibility to just churn out records whenever people want them. [Adopts a sarcastic voice] 'I'm sorry! Let me slap myself on the wrists and go make a record for you!' We'll get 'round to it again."


Asked about a possible release date for METALLICA's next CD, Ulrich replied: "Actually, we know the date… no, we don't! If I was betting on this, I would say 2015 — that's where my money is. So if you think of the actual age of this planet, if it's been 75 billion years since dinosaurs walked the Earth or whatever, then one year is basically a blink of an eye, right?"


Ulrich also spoke about METALLICA's mindset going into the songwriting phase for the band's next album. He explained: "The only thing I can tell you is that there seems to be a consensus in the band that [2008's] 'Death Magnetic' was a really good record that we're proud of, that had good legs on it — meaning that it still sounds really rocking five years later. And I can tell you that with most of the previous METALLICA records, I found any faults, I had any issues with them way, way sooner than five years. So the stuff that we've been jamming on is certainly not a million miles removed from where we left off from 'Death Magnetic'. But two years from now, when I sit and talk to you about the new record, it'll probably be a different story from the six-year-old looking for the ice cream shop."