It's Big It's Heavy It's Wood

So vocalist Randy Blythe let it be known that Lamb Of God will be entering the studio to record their follow up to The Heavy Duty's Breast Of 2006 release Sacrament, and turned down a fall tour with Metallica in the process. ZOMG!

Well, that could mean two things: They don't like Metallica, or they can't wait to get back in the studio 'cause they stuff they're sittin' on is gold. Probably a little of both. We'd rather see a headlining tour in the Spring with a new material anyway. This is all surprising to the Duty, we were a little worried after LOG said they'd take all of '08 off after touring the world for the last record. Guess you can't keep the metal beast dormant for long.

As a side note, we just learned about Randy's SuperJoint-esque side project Halo Of Locusts. More of the same "Sabbath with a pissed of dude" metal, but we like Randy so we'll give it a shot. Here a clip of the not so subtle song "Weed Helmet."

Carcass Steers Us Right

Holy shit! We forgot to write a Band For Yo' Weekend. How 'bout a Band For Yo' Week instead? Sounds good, no? That's, like, five extra days of good.

So anyway, we're waaay hyped on Carcass. Waay digging it right now. Wikipedia says these guys invented death metal and grindcore, but that ain't the kind of thing that matters to us. The only thing the Duty cares about is Carcass's 1993 release Heartwork, death metal's answer to the Black Album. It's so chock full o' beefy riffs and loaded with so much of the scary that's it's a heavy metal top 10, easy. This record's fucking great. We checked it out just to better metal fanboys and, hot damn, we were hooked from note one. We got into the tunes so much we were pretty ashamed 'bout how we didn't know anything about Carcass until it was way too late. Twelve years after they break up -- that's when Heavy Duty gets on the ball? Guess ya can't win 'em all.

Wait, of course you can! Carcass just announced their US reunion tour!

So check out Heartwork's title track and we'll see ya in the pit. And this time we mean it. We won't wuss out like we did with that At the Gates tour.

Ride With Us On De Bus

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?



10. "Rotten Apple" - Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies is our favorite LP of these guys, we like the moody acoustic the stuff best.

9. "Electric Eye" - Judas Priest - Still on a high from seein' 'em live. We're makin' a metal fist just typin' this.

8. "Circle Of The Tyrants" - Celtic Frost - They broke up (again) right after we got in to them. Lame.

7. "Blues Leave Me Alone" - Eric Clapton - Our dad bought this for us so we could learn how to play the blues. Umm. Still getting around to that.

6. "End Over End" - Foo Fighters - No thanks.

5. "Isolation" - Kyuss - Hard drivin' track from Wretch. If you get get over the flubby bass, this record is chunked and loaded for your entertainment.

4. "Wailing Wintry Wind" - Baroness - Early contender for "album it took us six months to get into but now we fuckin' love it" award.

3. "Strato-Streak" - Fu Manchu - Our favorite cut from In Search Of. Beefy riffs!

2. "Right On Time" - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Umm, pretend you didn't see this.

1. "Lover's Rock" - The Clash - Strummer's gettin' a lot of love on the Shuffle. Ha! Pun-tastic!

We're Bummed There's No Song Called "Pussy Coffin"

Since we've been knee-deep in our Priest man-love the last month we haven't been sharin' our thoughts on all the updates Metallica has given on their 9th studio effort, Death Magnetic. We pretty much know everything now except when it comes out and if it sucks or not. So let's run down the major developments and our Heavy Duty take on them.

First, the album title is Death Magnetic. We guessing that it has something to do with an "attraction to death." We have to guess 'cause we're not sure even the band knows what it means. We like it enough, it's unique and sounds cool. All you need for an solid album title.

Next up, the album cover:



Sweet. We could beat around the bush and tell you a million different things this cover looks like, but we'd be lying if we didn't just say what everyone thinks. Pussy Coffin. And considering how we feel about the wimmins right now, we looove this cover.

And finally, the track listing:

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End Of The Line
3. Broken, Beat & Scarred
4. The Day That Never Comes
5. All Nightmare Long
6. Cyanide
7. The Unforgiven III!!!!!!
8. The Judas Kiss
9. Suicide & Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Holy Toledo! The Unforgiven III? We thinks this is going to be an instrumental, at least we hope it is. Even we can't defend it if James sings, "And you're unforgiven three, whoooooaa hooooo ohhhhh." Other than that, these title sound pretty bad-ass, especially "Broken, Beat & Scarred." Sure, great titles don't mean great tunes, but all we can do now is speculate.

Well, folks, that's all we gots for know. Hopefully we'll get the first single soon so we can satisfy our Metallic thirst. 'Till then, if you haven't checked it out yet, he's the boys brand new cover of the Maiden classic "Remember Tomorrow."

Breakin' The What?

We have a saying 'round these parts that goes "The Only Way To Know For Sure," and it refers to the idea that a band is only as good as it's live show. Well, with much anticipation, your Heavy Duty crew took in the rock 'n roll spectacle known as Judas Priest for the first time on Tuesday, and we can with out hesitation say that we now know for sure that Priest is the Dutiest band of them all. Not that wasn't obvious from all the Priest posting propaganda that your Heavy Duty has become, but we felt it need to be said anyway. Let's get down to bizzness:

01. Intro: Dawn of Creation
02. Prophecy
03. Metal Gods
04. Eat Me Alive
05. Between the Hammer and the Anvil
06. Devil's Child
07. Breaking the Law
08. Hell Patrol
09. Death
10. Dissident Aggressor
11. Angel
12. The Hellion / Electric Eye
13. Rock Hard, Ride Free
14. Sinner
15. Painkiller
---------------
16. Hell Bent for Leather
17. The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)
18. You've Got Another Thing Coming

Fuck yeah! What a setlist! A lot of surprises in there, with three sweet cuts off Painkiller, a slammin' version of "Rock Hard, Ride Free," and the rare "Dissident Aggressor." The only uber-classic they left out was "Livin' After Midnight," and we're okay with that. We were bummed we didn't get "Nostradamus," considering it's the first single off the new record and this is the album tour. Oh well, to be honest, as long as they played "Devil's Child," we were cool with anything else. With such a deep catalog, the boys could have played Point Of Entry in it's entirety and we'd have been ok with it. Well, maybe not.

Since we've watched that goddamn DVD so many times, we knew this show backwards 'n forwards, so besides what songs the band played there were few surprises. But there where some classic highlights, like Ian Hill's bass move, Tipton's wild gyrations before "Hell Bent For Leather," and Scott Travis doing a bad-ass stick spin the entire time during "Prophecy."

There were a couple of new touches. Halford opens the show in wearing a diamond cloak and sits on a throne during the new track "Death." Besides that, we could have "predicted" every move. Ha! Get it?

So the Heavy Duty can scratch another off this list, and we are glad to do so. We are officially hardcore legit Priest fans, and we will consider anyone who read all these Metal Meltdown posts one as well.

So what's our next obsession? We think we might have heard Metallica has a new album coming out. We'll check on that.

There'll Be No Compromise

So remember when we did that Kreator post a while ago? What we were trying to get at with that one was that Kreator was cool 'cause they were fucking metal. Just straight-up "heavy metal" with no extra tags or qualifiers or hyphens. Middle-aged guys who liked palm muting, singalong apocalyptic choruses, and at least three dive-bomby solos in every tune. As soon as we heard Kreator's Violent Revolution we felt like we were hearing Holy Diver or Ace of Spades -- music so confidently balls-out that it didn't give a damn whether you liked it or not.


And now that we've spent a month with nothing but Judas Priest on the dial, we gotta say we feel the exact same way about Angel of Retribution. It's taken us a few years to come to our senses, but we're finally ready to claim Priest's reunion record as one for the time-capsule. One of those few records where if some poor soul asks ya "What is this heavy metal you speak of?" you could pluck this one out and have that dude understandin' it all before the first chorus came in.

Angel of Retribution is glass-shattering screams and dueling solos. Pounding floor toms and single note basslines. Finely scooped distortion and overwrought demonology. In short, signature metal. Oh, and there's a an album-closing ten minute ode to the Loch Ness Monster. Fuck. Yeah.

So here's "Hellrider," taken from the greatest, Dutiest, and most metallist DVD of them all: Rising in the East. Judas Priest, we love you....and, yes, we know we've said this before.

Heavy Not Duty

Now we sure don't hate Tim "Ripper" Owens, Rob Halford's golden-throated '96 to '03 stand-in, but we don't have much to say about any of the Priest records with him on the mic. We've spent a tiny bit of time with those tunes, but now that we think about it we're not even sure we still have those copies of Jugulator or Live Meltdown anywhere 'round here. And since we probably don't, we don't think the loss even matters.

But even if we're indifferent to Judas Priest's foray into post-Dio Sabbath Land we know there's some guy out there who just loooooves it. Some guy in cyberspace racking up the posts on the metal-rules forums about how Demolition pwns Nostradamus and Turbo and "Rocka Rolla." And, y'know what? We'd really like to meet this guy just to try and see if the least Duty guy is somehow kinda Heavy Duty in his own right.

Also 'cause we don't know enough 'bout New England's power-prog scene.

And 'cause we need some sweet sweet comments.

Mostly that last one.

Okay, so here's the Owens-"fronted" Priest tearing through "Blood Stained," Jugulator's hit single! Hurry up and watch it so you can get back to Painkiller clips!

Wanna See A Magic Trick?

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Some Swords Reprise" - The Fucking Champs - Ooooh, a keyboard interlude to get us in the mood.

9. "Good Rockin' Tonight"- Montrose - Why is that everything Sammy did outside of Van Halen is way cooler?

8. "Chi" - Korn - At one point we fuckin' loved Korn. But we also wore wife-beaters and drank Coors Light.

7. "Contract" - Gang Of Four - Haven't got into these guys. Rather listen to Television.

6. "Flight 505" - The Rolling Stones - Deep album cut!

5. "Who Will Be The Next In Line" - Queens Of The Stone Age - Queens needs to drop a proper covers album. Nobody besides Metallica can take a song and make it there own like these cats.

4. "Poor Side Of Town" - Johnny A. - Givin' us some Pops haunts.

3. "Loverman" - Metallica - Metallica covering Nick Cave? Fuck you Bob Rock!

2. "Ride The Lightning" - Metallica - EYEEEEEEE DON'T WANT TO DIEEEEEYAAAA!.

1. "Long Whip/Big America" - Corrosion Of Conformity - We fuckin' love the guitar tones on this record. Rawk!

Gonna Cut To The Bone As You Groan

Scott Travis is god. God knows what long time Priest fans thought hearing his opening drum blitzkrieg on Painkiller. We would have shit our pants. Wait. We just did.

We're gonna go ahead and give Travis all the credit for Painkiller being a speed metal masterpiece, and maybe the most underrated heavy metal release by a major band. It's too bad Halford left the band and we didn't get a proper follow up until Angel Of Retribution. Oh well, check out the title track attack and note how fuckin' hard it is for Halford to sing this shit. Yikes.

You'll Make Me Deaf You Know

The Heavy Duty would have liked to bring two awesome hard hitting reviews of the next two Priest albums on our list, Turbo and Ram It Down. But we ran into some technical difficulties, as in our local independent record stores didn't have either album in stock. Apparently Seattle isn't buying the mid-to late eighties shitty Priest records, so they aren't carried around here. And us being model music fans, we only buy the compact discs, no fancy pants torrents for us.


So you are out of luck if you want the Heavy Duty's seal of approval for these two albums. The fact we haven't even bought 'em yet might tell you everything you need to know. Whatever, here's some Priest take on "Johnny B. Goode" from Ram It Down.



Holy shit. There is a special place in hell for whoever thought that was a good idea.

TaTaTaTaTake!

Look at these fuckin' kids! They have no idea they are witnessing heavy metal greatness. Sepultura covering Sabbath! With Igor wearing a Faith No More shirt!




Oh by the way, this was our 400th post on the Duty. Yeah for us!

I'm Gonna Force You At Gun Point To Eat Me Alive

Wow! How come nobody talks about this record! It's the fuckin' dawn of speed Priest! 52 minutes of burnin' twistin' metal. Every song here sounds like a souped up version of British Steel's "Rapid Fire", with twin guitar blazin' and thunder drums pounding the way. But what is the true calling card of Defenders Of The Faith you say? It's the lyrics you dummy!

And them lyics are insane. Halford just gave up trying to be cheeky about inserting homosexual reference in the songs, he just goes for broke on this one. Awesome enough to get Priest on the Filthy Fifteen list. Dude, Venom and Mercyful Fate are on that list! Metal!

Whatever, he could be singin' 'bout cups and cakes for all we care. As long as the music's loud. And this one, whoooa nellie is it loud. Just crank up some "Freewheel Burning," and ride with Priest, it the only way to rock.

No More Cornell

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?


10. "Redemption Song" - Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros - Hard to fuck up a great song. Impossible when you're Joe fuckin' Strummer.

9. "In Limbo" - Radiohead - We still don't think we're smrt enough to get this record.

8. "Laugh The World Away" - Mission Of Burma - Why do all the indie rock bass players get all the cool lines?

7. "Access Babylon" - Probot - Nice try Dave, but this record should be even heavier. Nice COC love, though.

6. "Sleeping On The Roof" - The Flaming Lips - A nice keyboard drenched instrumental from a killer record that we bought on Y2K!

5. "Where Eagles Have Been" - Wolfmother - We liked this album for about a day.

4. "Follow My Way" - Chris Cornell - The album is pretty good, but we're not sure about the next direction for Chris. Timbaland? Eh?

3. "All Your Lies" - Soundgarden - Seriously, fuck Cornell. He used to be the man.

2. "Suprise! You're Dead! - Faith No More - The world needs more Jimmy Martin.

1. "Jupiter's Eye" - Pig Destroyer - Great, now we need to kick somebody in the face.

It's Good to Be the King

Come for the burgers, stay for the sacrifice.

You Give Us Pleasure and You Give Us Pain

Wow, what a great record. Just look at this track listing: "Hellion"/"Electric Eye," "You Got Another Thing Coming," "Bloodstone," and motherfucking "Devil's Child." "Devil's Child" ya hear!!!! Screaming for Vengeance started our Priest fanaticism back in '98, and, really, can ya blame it? It's got sweet radio hits, deep album cuts, and lots of goofy flangey drums. But by far our favorite part of this one is...no, not the leather bar subtext...but the the total ass guitar tone! Somehow we just can't get enough of KK and Glenn's unbelievably tinny axe sound even though we'll never understand how British Steel producer Tom Allom could let the boys get away with something so horrible soundin' this time around. We've narrowed it down to drunk, hypnotized by riffs, or terrorized by riding crops. If you find out, let us know. In the meantime we'll be cranking this record up and turning the solos down. Our ears just can't take those knitting-needle dive-bombs and our neighbor's dogs won't shut up when Tipton unleashes his "Riding on the Wind" solo.

Here's "Devil's Child." We don't what to say about this one other than it's the greatest song ever written. And we ain't prone to exaggeration.

Too Bad Mayhem Wasn't On The Bill

So we attended the first show of the brand new RockStar Mayhem Festival on Wednesday, a sort of hybrid OzzFest/Sounds Of The Underground, without the Sharon bullshit and emo kids. Three stages, tons 'o bands, and an eight fuckin' dollar 16 oz Bud. Yeah!

So we had a few goals in mind for this event. Make sure and see Mastodon, Machine Head, and Slipknot, and avoid Disturbed and their scary bald man that barks with all costs. And we were somewhat successful at all these things, except we weren't quite satisfied with each performance.

For one, this was our first time seeing Machine Head, and we've been diggin' on The Blackening, so we were pumped. Problem was they headlined the second stage, yet only got 35 minutes to melt our faces. The were awesome, but we had some serious metal blue balls by the time they were done. Headlining tour please!


Next up were mainstagers Mastodon and Slipknot, and the Heavy Duty braved the unwashed masses on the lawn for these performances. As always, lawn seats kinda suck when you actually want to hear/see the bands, but we did enjoy having an impromptu metal picnic of RockStar Energy drinks, kettle corn, and wet asses from the grass.

On thing that did catch our attention was how much people really like the Slipknot. We've been kinda reppin' the underground metal/old classics a lot more than today's more mainstream rock acts, so we forgot how much love this band gets. They easily won the festival "most t-shirts contest", and there were plenty of weirdos rockin' their homemade masks.

All in all we had a great time, and The Heavy Duty always likes to fly our metal flag high and check out every show we can. So for all you readers who haven't heard of half the bands we rant 'bout, why don't you make Slipknot the Band Fo Yo Weekend!

I Wanna Go, I Wanna Go, I Wanna Go

Point Of Entry is shit sandwiched between to unreal albums. We have no idea why they thought it sounded good. Ugh. We've reviewed this album before, and we'd probably give it a 5 now.

But it did give us this:

Engulfed In Molten Breath

So even though everyone is entitled to choose what their favorite Priest record is, no one can argue that British Steel is the definitive album by the band. That hard hitting cover, the band's perfected S&M look, the hit songs, and the top notch production all add up to a heavy metal milestone. If someone who doesn't "get it" asks what the fuck metal is all about, this is the album you put on. It's all fucking here.

We know some of you are saying, "What about Puppets or Master Of Reality?" Sure, there are great thrash/doom/black/death/math/prog/viking/power/oprah metal albums out there, but the best of straight up fuckin' heavy metal will always be Judas Priest, and thy album of record is British Steel. Mark it!

What?

So we've been rockin' out with our cockin' out to Metallica's Black Album for 16 years now, and today was the first fuckin' time we heard the goddamn cowbell on "My Friend Of Misery." We are ashamed. It was always right there! We're pretty sure it's these fancy-pants headphones we've been using did the trick. What else have we been missing, eh? Xylophone solo on "Denim Demon?" Harp trills spicing up "Party On Your Pussy?" The possibilities are endless, and our world shall never be the same.

Fall To Your Knees And Repent If You Please

Just look at this cover. Holy shit. Look at how much fun Glenn Tipton is havin'! We're willing to forgive the fact that this album doesn't even remotely sound live because that cover is so bad-ass. Since this record is pretty much just the tunes reworked with crowd noise pumped in, this is a probably on uber-fan purchase only. But then you can look at that cover whenever you want!



Karate Rob!

Have You Seen Me?

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?




10. "Death Pod" - Gwar - Kinda of a throwaway track from an incredible record. Still solid stuff.

9. "My Wave" - Soundgarden - Does anybody know where Kim Thayil is?

8. "How Will I Laugh Tomorrow" - Suicidal Tendencies - Some classic thrash from a band no one remembers as classic thrash.

7. "Untitled" - Pig Destroyer - We think our brains just 'sploded.

6. "From The Sky" - Gojira - Dude plays the double bass for fuckin' six minutes straight! French death metal rules!

5. "I Turn My Camera On" - Spoon - Some nice groovin' southwest indie funk. Good timing, after the last three songs we were ready to kill some puppies.

4. "Enlightened By The Cold" - Shadows Fall - Never really got into these duders.

3. "Crawl Away" - Tool - Man we haven't listen to this shit in forever. The part where it speeds up near the end was pretty cool.

2. "Things Done And Undone" - Kalas - An overlooked record. Matt Pike kills it on this one. Buy it.

1. "Blue Veins" - The Raconteurs - A nice slow bluesy jam to end the Cool Down, with some fucked up backwards vocal shit thrown in. Can we go to bed now?

Happy 4th From the Duty

To all you Real Americans out there.

A Glint of Steel and a Flash of Light

So who knows what makes heavy metal better than all them other musics? Who can name what really puts it in that upper echelon? Nobody? Why, it's the meta-, of course! Yup, life's all about references, y'know and we say the hands-down greatest thing about the metal is the song that's about heavy metal itself.

And that's why we love Hell Bent for Leather so darn much. We're pressed to say it's the best Priest record around. Sure, there's lots of stuff to recommend it -- shit like Halford trying to out-soul James Brown on them nastier Priest numbers, Ian Hill and his record setting four-note "Evening Star" bassline, and the heavy duty perfection of the title track's guitar soloin' -- but the thing that really, truly, and honestly gets us going is the greatest/most meta-song in all of musicdom.

"Rock Forever."

See, most of these referential "rawk" songs are all about superstar shit: being onstage, rebelling onstage, or snortin' blow off a hooker's lady lumps right after ya get off stage. But "Rock Forever" is all about something close to our hearts, something every last one of ya can relate to -- gettin' home, cracking a Carlsberg, and crankin' the stereo one louder than everyone else. See, you're already excited! Now we're talking! "Rock Forever" serves up the Heavy Duty lifestyle in all its glory, dammit. Twin guitar riffs, meaty leads, howlin' -- they're all there! It's a great fucking song about great fucking songs that make ya wanna talk about more great fucking songs. In fact, this song's so fucking great we're not even linking it just so you'll buy this great fucking record for your great fucking self.

Here's "The Green Manalishi." Also great!

Fuck!

We Always Thought It Was "Glass"

So ya know what the worst part about that absurd subliminal message trial Priest had to endure in 1990? No, not the fact the bands good name was dragged through the mud. No, not the fact that the stereotype that heavy metal is a destructive art form was furthered.

The worst part is that the song in question was actually a cover originally done by a band called Spooky Tooth. Spooky fuckin' Tooth? Did they pick that name because Count Chocula was unavailable?! Shocking that those guys didn't have bigger success. Even with the awesomeness of having "Tooth" in the band name doesn't help these assholes.

Oh well. Let's all calm down a bit, all this Spooky nonsense doesn't take away from the fact that Stained Class is a bad-ass record. So lets take the edge of a little. How about some "Beyond The Realms Of Death?" That should to the trick.




Ahhhhh.