My Year in Lists 2008: The Worst of 2008

Welcome to My Year in Lists!

Regular music reviews will resume after the holidays, but now it’s time to indulge in that not-so-secret passion that every music critic (and many a casual music fan) falls asleep thinking about, usually after an intense wank (and if we’re being honest with ourselves, we must admit that wanking is a large part of what music critics do during their waking hours). I’m speaking, of course, of the completely arbitrary compilation of year-end lists. What was the best song? The best album? The best whatever?

So over the next few weeks, Bollocks! will be bringing you my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly for 2008 (watches as site traffic statistics plummet). To get the bad shit outta the way first, I wanna talk about The Absolute Worst Music of 2008.

It goes without saying that Metallica sucks, but to bestow upon them the dubious honor of Worst Album of the Year would still be to grant them some form of accomplishment, however negative. They’re at least near the top of the Worst Song of 2008 pile, but I’m not good at making long lists of songs that are terrible because, as a rule, I try to avoid terrible music. Here are the three worst songs I heard this year, in no particular order:

“Unforgiven 3,” by Metallica – There was a time when Metallica didn’t make music videos because they didn’t see the need to make commericals for their songs. Then they decided two things: 1) They want money. Lots and lots of money and 2) They hate their fans. These two decisions pitched Metallica headlong into a race to out-whore their past achievements in Whoredom. Taking a page from the Hollywood playbook, they wrote a sequel to a massive hit (“The Unforgiven”). The sequel sucked, but that didn’t stop them from making a third, which really fucking blows. It gets extra “Fuck you” points for ripping off the keyboard part from “Comfortably Numb.”

“Welcome to the Third World,” by The Dandy Warhols – I could’ve picked a lot of songs from the Dandy Warhols utterly shitty Earth to the Dandy Warhols but I really chose to focus on this one for one simple reason. It steals the bass-line from The Clash’s “Magnificent Seven.” For a shitty Dandy Warhols song. That doesn’t say shit… about… shit. The Clash is an iconic band – they’re at least 85% of the reason I’m in a band (and probably a large reason why most people I know who are in bands are in bands) , they made really great music and they meant every note of it. I get that Courtney Taylor thinks he’s Lou Reed and every once in a great while, his Velvet Underground tribute band thing kinda works. But for The Dandy Warhols to rip off the Clash is to spit on everything the Clash stood for. If Joe Strummer were alive today, I’d like to think he would beat the living shit out of Courtney Taylor (and if Lou Reed were alive today, he’d do the same). “Welcome to the Third World” is a horrible song by a horrible band that appears on a horrible album – to call it a shit sandwich would be to offend shit sandwiches everywhere.

But probably The Worst Song of 2008 is “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. I’ve heard this in passing and I guess it’s a big hit for her, but it’s got some serious strikes against it. Chiefly, Katy Perry cannot sing. The verses on this song are merely unbearable but when the chorus rolls around, I want to stuff my ears full of nougat and run around the malls of Los Angeles slashing blindly with a machete, hopefully severely wounding anyone who would even so much as nod their head or tap their foot to the beat of something so insipid. This song is probably shocking to Katy’s parents, who might remember her better as the girl who started out singing Christian music before deciding that she could make a shitload of money writing schlocky turds like “I Kissed A Girl.” Perry’s debut pop album, One of the Boys, features other great song titles like “Ur So Gay” which annoys me not just for its utterly stupid spelling but also for the fact that this girl is so obviously trying to create shocking mall pop. It’s risque if you were home-schooled and still think girls shouldn’t show their ankles or if you think Jars of Clay is super hardcore, but if you want shockingly graphic lesbian music, pick up an Alix Olson album. Katy Perry is about as shocking and surprising as a post-it note, but I’ve got some song titles for her next album that will really help her kick it up a notch:

“I Finger-Banged Lynn Cheney During Sunday School”

“Dear Mom and Dad, My Boyfriend’s a Black Atheist”

(and last but not least:)

“Who Does A Girl Have to Blow to Get an Enema Around Here?”

So there you go, Katy Perry. You can use any of those you want. I promise not to pull a Joe Satriani and sue you.

So what’s the Worst Album of 2008? Well, for my money, it’s My Bloody Underground by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. This is another band from which Katy Perry can learn a lesson in the “Transparent Attempt to Shock Soccer Moms” department. See, Anton Newcombe has cleverly titled two of the songs on this musical Gorgon “We are the Niggers of the World” and “Automatic Faggot for the People,” and because they have naughty words, hoo-boy, they must be really shocking! Except that they suck. The whole album sucks. It’s Newcombe masturbating in the studio and then asking you to pay for it so he can go buy more heroin. Fuck this guy and fuck his band. The only good thing I can say about them is that, in all their fuckery, they’ve never ripped off The Clash. But you know what? I’m drawing a line here, folks. If the Brian Jonestown Massacre records a Clash rip-off I solemnly swear to find Anton Newcombe and kick his opiate-addled ass. For the good of all mankind. Earlier this year, I wrote that My Bloody Underground is the album I would make if I hated music and wanted to convince other people to hate music as well. In retrospect, I may have been understating things a bit. My Bloody Underground is the album I would make in an experiment where I was trying to create a black hole of shittiness that would suck all of the fun, joy, and creativity out of life.

Earth to The Dandy Warhols: Please Stop

There was a time, what seems like eons ago, when The Dandy Warhols’ blatant bush-league Lou Reedisms were (mildly) amusing. Around that time, they released 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia, an album that I still enjoy listening to. Since then, the Dandy Warhols have managed to squander every last bit of good will that I had toward them.

First, they named a shitty album after a Kurt Vonnegut book (that would be Welcome to the Monkey House) and then they followed it up with a monumentally shitty album (Odditorium or: Why The Fuck Are We Still A Band?), the only redeemable tracks on which sound exactly like tracks from 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia.

Now the Dandy Warhol’s are back with Earth to the Dandy Warhols, another pseudo-psychedelic platter of pig poo, the kind of bullshit album that should come with a warning sticker that says, “Warning: This Band Got Really High and Jerked Off In A Studio. Listener Discretion is Advised.” You know how you get when you’re stoned; no one should have to pay to listen to that over music you’ve ripped off from musical icons (usually The Velvet Undergound, but sometimes other great bands; but we’ll get to that in a second).

Courtney Taylor’s vocals are buried under a ton of annoying effects on Earth to the Dandy Dipshits, but it’s not like the music is compelling enough to make that forgivable. In fact, on “Welcome to the Third World,” The Dandies, apparently feeling they’ve mined The Velvet Underground for all they were worth, decide to brazenly rip off Paul Fucking Simonon’s bass line from “The Magnificent Seven.” Yes, that Paul Fucking Simonon, the bass player from The Clash. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? In the Overdrawn at the Memory Bank episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow T. Robot says, upon seeing a character watching Casablanca, “Hey, don’t put good movies in the middle of your crappy movie.” I would like to extend this warning to the Dandy Whorehols: don’t put Clash songs, some of the best songs ever, in your shitty little songs about… whatever the fuck your songs are about.

Which is another issue, among many to take with Earth to You Shameless Bastards: What the fuck are any of these songs about? It seems like most of them are somewhat about doing drugs and (maybe) fucking. I guess this is supposed to be psychedelic, but it’s mostly really annoying.  All the songs feel an hour long, slow, gauzy droning songs that must seem really awesome when you do as much drugs as the Dandy Warhols.

If you watched the documentary Dig!, about the on-again/off-again feud between the Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, you may have come to this conclusion: both bands are just chock full of dickheads. Regardless of how good their music sometimes (rarely) is, these are Grade-A assbags who seem to have an endless line of credit with their dealers. And part of what makes them so awful is that they seem to genuniely not give a single shit about anything. This is the music they want to make, and the fact that Anton Newcombe talks about either band starting a revolution is laughable. Both bands are stuck in the basement in a cloud of pot smoke, praying to Lou Reed to appear and pronounce them Officially Cool. Well, guess what, assholes: Lou Reed may be kicking it with the Killers these days, but he’s gonna need a whole boatload of senility to hit him before he dignifies your shit with a response. (I hope; for all I know, Mr. Reed may be planning to work with The Dandies for their next album, at which point I will just pretend he has died.)

If you’re interested in keeping score, Earth to the Dandy Assholes is slightly less shitty than the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 2008 offering My Bloody Underground which I’ve already cut to ribbons on this site. These two bands are capable of making music that doesn’t completely infuriate me, but they’ve elected to go the self-indulgent, insultingly derivative route, and have therefore earned all the scorn that can be heaped upon them. Hearing the bassline from “The Magnificent Seven” in a song as bad as “Welcome to the Third World” only reminds me that Joe Strummer (a man who once said that the most punk-rock thing you could do was to treat everyone with dignity and respect) will never again beat all six strings of his Telecaster and shout “Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust” but Courtney Taylor is still alive and making awful music. For which I can only say this: fuck Courtney Taylor, fuck The Dandy Warhols, and fuck fuck fuck this album.

Douche Bagnetic

It’s Rocktober 1st. Rocktoberfest is coming up on the 18th (if you don’t know what that it is, consider it a pity you’re not invited). I’ve bided my time. I’ve read Tad’s “words” if you can call ‘em that and I’m ready to weigh in.

So what do I think of Metallica’s Death Magnetic?

Though the internet is frequently derided as the home of indie/hipster types (I’ve been called a hipster for voicing my opinion – also an objective fact – that Journey sucks; I include this just so you have some sort of criteria upon which to judge me), it is full of people who will gladly call you a fag in a tirade replete with misspelled words if you happen to suggest either of the following: 1) Metallica sucks or 2) Guns ‘n’ Roses sucks, and Chinese Democracy is more likely to end the world than the Large Hadron Collider (how, you ask? Why, it will create a massive black hole of Utter Suckitude that will pull the entirety of the universe into it; I think Stephen Hawking has published articles on this). Stop by any given music thread on Fark if you don’t believe me.

So I might be incurring the wrath of these internet Metallica-lovers by saying so, but the fact is, Death Magnetic is not only awful, it’s frequently unintentionally hilarious. These are grown men singing about “death,” “darkness,” “blackness,” and things shouting things like “We! Die! Hard!” (clearly a reference to the fact that you get a stiffy when Rigor Mortis sets in). It’s like watching a Wes Craven movie. No one with half a brain is frightened by Wes Craven movies, just as no one with half a brain believes the spolied millionaires in Metallica are really the tortured souls they’re trying to portray on Douche Bagnetic. This shit should be dark and broody, and all that, but the fact is, Metallica is less compelling as a metal band than Dethklok. When you’re getting your ass kicked by a joke cartoon band, it’s time to hang it up.

James Hetfield, as ever, is a histrionic mess on Death Magnetic. I’m guessing that’s supposed to be cathartic for metalheads or whatever, but it sounds ridiculous. When he shrieks “This I swear!” on “The Day That Never Comes”, I feel like he should be a villain in one of the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Hetfield’s villain  name could be The Nightmare and he could make puns about death and blackness while singing about hunting Batman down “All Nightmare Long.” Sounds more than a little plausible, doesn’t it? Fortunately, the Batman movie franchise is now in the much safer hands of Christopher Nolan.

Unfortunately, Metallica is still a band. There’s a place for brooding on mortality in song, don’t get me wrong. I See a Darkness is one of the finest (and most cripplingly depressing) meditations on love and death (mostly death) I’ve ever heard. But the difference between Will Oldham and Metallica is that I See a Darkness convinces the listener that this is what was on Oldham’s mind at the time, that he’d actually sat down and thought about this shit. Death Magnetic convinces me that Metallica had a meeting where they pulled metal tropes out of hat and said, “Ooh… that would be cool in a song. Like, what if we badly paraphrase Nietzsche and then scream ‘We! Die! Hard! at the end? That would tight, dog.” You see the difference? It’s not merely the subject matter that’s the problem here – it’s the assholes delivering it.

Death Magnetic runs rampant with examples of Metallica’s painful suck – on “Cyanide,” Hetfield drops this turd nugget: “Suicide/ I’ve already died” See what he did there? He rhymed “Suicide” and “died.” And then says “Cynaide/ dead inside.” Point being, this fucker cannot write. There is not one song on Death Magnetic equal in awesomeness or quality to Lordi’s “Devil’s a Loser.” Not one. There is also not one song shorter than five minutes on this album; Metallica has to allow for Kirk Hammett’s noodly, wah-drenched solos (I was hanging out w/ Radio America after their gig at the Viper Room a couple of weeks ago and Tom Stuart brougth up a salient point. When it comes to using a wah-wah pedal, you have to ask yourself one question: “Are you Jimi Hendrix? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you can use a wah-wah pedal.”). At a certain point, you have to admit Hammett is an accomplished musician, technically speaking. At a cetain other point, you realize that pretty much makes him the Kenny G of the guitar. Knowing a lot of notes and being awesome at playing notes are two drastically different things.

Of course, the elephant in the room here (the bloated, corporate elephant of cock-rock excess) is “The Unforgiven 3.” On paper, this is just fucking stupid. On record, it’s shameless. Especially when Douche-tallica eases you into the song by ripping off Richard Wright’s (rest in peace) awesome keyboard lick from “Comfortably Numb.” Yes, Metallica has resorted to putting bits from great songs in their shitty songs. The result is an aneurysm-inducing failure of epic proportions. We find out in “The Unforgiven 3″ that, according to Hetfield “It’s me I can’t forgive.” I can’t forgive you either, James. Go fuck yourself.

At the end of the day, if you’re like Tad the K-ROQ intern (who was recently found dead, by the way, stabbed repeatly by a shiv made from what appears to have been a broken and/or twisted Red Bull can; contrary to popular belief, I was not at the scene of the crime but in my office listening to the new TV on the Radio album), you’re gonna love Death Magnetic and hate my guts for pointing out that it sucks so hard that it makes me laugh. If you’re like me (a devilishly handsome person with dignity and taste), you probably haven’t even trifled with Death Magnetic. In that case, you might be wondering why I even subjected myself to such torture; I can only answer that my best friend is paying me twenty bucks to sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua next weekend, so it might have something to do with a masochistic streak buried none-too-deeply under the surface.  Whatever. Go look up “Devil’s a Loser” on YouTube.

A Guest Review of Death Magnetic

Editor’s note: Given the previous animosity shown by Bollocks! towards Metallica, Chorpenning realized that he could not possibly give an objective review of Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic. So Chorpenning went to a strip club in North Hollywood and found Tad, the K-ROQ intern, to review the album for this site. Chorpenning will post a response to Tad’s review later; for now, Chorpenning is drunk and sitting in the corner, listening to London Calling at top volume and mumbling something about barbarian hordes taking over his website. We now turn Bollocks! over to Tad, the K-ROQ intern, to present his review of Metallica’s Death Magentic.

What up, bitches? My name is T-to-tha-A-to-tha-D, and I’m totally fucked up on vodka and Red Bull! I’d like to give a shout out to LA’s real rock alternative, 106.7 K-R0Q. And I’d like to shout a big “fuck you!” to Indie 103.1 – fuck you guys and your morning jackets! So check it out – I was totally eyeing up some tig ol’ bitties (editor’s note – Tad has asked that we not correct any of his spelling; he maintains that this would be “censorship.” Since Chorpenning is too drunk to mediate this dispute, we have reluctantly agreed not to correct Tad’s manifold spelling and grammatical errors) when this pointy-haired asshole in a Hold Steady t-shirt came up to me (did you know Hold Steady is a band? I never heard of ‘em either. they probably suck) and mumbled something about how he has this blog where he talks about music and did I like Metallica? Well, I downed a Jager-blaster, tossed a few bucks at teh hottie on stage, and said, “Fuck yes! I fucking love Metallica. What’s it to ya, skinny fucker?”  Well, the asshole was all like, “Could you review their new album for my blog?” And I was all, “Yeah, I could do that.” I offered to throw in a review of the new Kid Rock album, but he vomited on my shoes. Indie fags can’t hold their booze, I guess.

So here I am. And let me tell ya, dudes ‘n’ bitches, Death Magnetic is the most metal of all metal albums. Ever. It’s a total return to form for Metallica. They got some guy to produce it, I don’t know who, but he’s a different guy. So the album sounds more like …And Justice for All than St. Anger. It starts off with this ass-pounding tune, “That Was Just Your Life,” which has, like, this heartbeat that starts it off (see, it symbolizes life – this is a totally deep album) and there’s some totally pussy guitar stuff before the loud guitars and Lars Ulrich (fuck John Bonham, fuck Keith Moon – Lars is the best drummer in human fucking history). James Hetfield is totally on point on this song, yelling something about “curse the day is long” or something. It got me thinking, though: the day is long. Man. Heavy.

After “That Was Just Your Life,” there’s “The End of the Line” which isn’t the end of the line – it’s only the second song on the album!!!1! But it’s totally heavy, it’s got this “Sad But True” vibe to it (Metallica was the best album ever and if you don’t think so, your a total pussy) and Kirk Hammett shreds the fuck out of those guitar licks. You know who I don’t miss at all? Jason Newsted. He wasn’t that good of a bassist (he’s probably doing something totally pussy right now) and this Robert Trujillo guy is so much better. He mostly stays out of the way of Kirk and Lars doing what they do best, which is rocking my fucking ass.

So the third song on here is “Broken, Beat & Scarred” which is my most favorite song on this album ’cause it’s all about how “what don’t kill ya/make ya more strong,” which is totally how I feel about life. That’s why I’m not afraid to do a little pre-funking before I hit the 24-Hour Fitness. Working out sober is for pussies and indie-fags. The song has this totally killer hook where James shouts, “We! Die! Hard!” It’s totally awesome and makes me want to watch Live Free or Die Hard again. That movie was tha shit.

Then there’s this soft intro (kinda pussy) before “The Day that Never Comes” (haha, “comes”), which isn’t as wimpy as it sounds at the beginning. The song’s totally about domestic violence, I think. So fuck you haters, Metallica cares about this shit. Don’t hit your chicks. It’s not cool, even in the mosh pit. “The Day that Never Comes” shows that Metallica not only totally gets domestic abuse, but they also still know how to write a kickass power ballad (a big “fuck you,” by the way, to all you haters who think that power ballads aren’t cool).

The album gets back to rocking with “All Nightmare Long,” which is like a sequel to “Enter Sandman” and that’s fucking awesome.  It’s followed by “Cyanide” which is about dyin’. You know, ’cause the album is “Death Magnetic,” so some of the songs have to be about dying. Whatever.

Next up is the highly anticipated “The Unforgiven 3.” Before the haters get to hating, I have it on good authority that “The Unforgiven” was always supposed to be a fucking trilogy (hello? like the Matrix?). So suck it. Irregardless of what the haters say, “The Unforgiven 3″ is a totally kickass song on it’s own and really completes the story told in the first two songs. I know I was wondering what would happen after the end of  “The Unforgiven 2″.  Okay, total spoiler alert, though, for real: In “The Unforgiven 3″, it’s revealed that “it’s me I can’t forgive” – so the “Unforgiven” was him all along. I haven’t seen such a mindfucking twist since I rented The Village!

The next song is called “The Judas Kiss,” which is about how Judas kissed guys or something. I thought there weren’t any fags in The Bible, but I guess I could be wrong. It’s a pretty awesome song, though, even though it’s about a queer. Moving on. “The Judas Kiss” is followed by “Suicide & Redemption” which starts real quiet and then gets real loud, which is something Metallica has perfected. Its a total ten-minute metal instrumental that shows just how rad Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich are. Kirk is like the second coming of Joe Satriani and if you don’t know who Satriani is, I’m gonna find you and beat your ass.

Death Magnetic ends with “My Apocalypse,” which talks about… well, I don’t know. It’s too loud and awesome for me to make out too many words. But I think James says something about “death magnetic” in this one, so I think its like the title track or something. There’s a totally gnarly guitar solo in there and Lars is beating the shit out of his drums and then James screams something about “spit it out” (ha! maybe the song’s about blowjobs. I like blowjobs). And then there’s some more skullfucking music and James says stuff about seeing “the end.” And then the album ends. To say the least, Death Magnetic is the totally triumphant return of true metal gods. It might be their best album ever and I know it’s gonna top everyone’s year-end best album list, along with Chinese Democracy, which is coming out… uh… I don’t know when, but Axl should hurry up and put it out so that he can tour with Metallica. It’d be just like the old days, but ten times better. Tad out!

Chinese Demo-crazy

So…

The FBI cannot seem to catch an ailing rich kid (and accomplished terrorist) who lives in a cave somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but they can sure as hell catch Skwerl (real name: I don’t know and I don’t care). What did Skwerl do, you ask? Well, he found himself in the possession of 9 leaked tracks that are supposedly from the perennially forth-coming Guns ‘n’ Roses release, Chinese Democracy. (You’d think Axl Rose, a whore if ever there was one, would’ve tried to get the album out in time to coincide with the Olympics. But he’s too busy blowing record label money on hookers and… well, blow, probably.). Skwerl streamed those nine tracks on his blog and Axl Rose pulled a Metallica (any wonder he used to tour with those assholes?) and decided to bring the hammer down on poor, hapless Skwerl (who was also wanted by the Spelling Police for his epic failure of a handle).

Skwerl was arrested (at fucking gunpoint!) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and freed on $10,000 bail. Apparently, Skwerl is a black belt in cop-killing-karate or something (okay, yes, I know it’s techincially a federal case, but seriously: at gun point!) because the FBI (who could, you know, be out solving important federal crimes) was apparently not taking any chances when they booked him.

Predictably, the reaction from the GNR (is that how they abbreviate it? I have never cared less about anything) camp (and non-camp) was basically that Skwerl should get the chair. Slash, who is not even in GNR anymore (he’s moved on to the even more corporate and awful Velvet Revolver), said that Skwerl should “rot in jail.” Slash also said that Skwerl’s leakage (ahem: if you are any kind of decent punk band and wish to use the name Skwerl’s Leakage for your band, you hereby have my permission to do so, completely free of charge. I, unlike certain Guns and certain Roses, am not a whore) would cause Axl to “lose a lot of money on that record.”

Um… Slash? Can I call you Slash? How ’bout I just call you Fucko the Clown, ‘kay? Good. Listen up, Fucko the Clown – you’re making two major assumptions of the most deeply spurious variety. First, you’re assuming that every morbidly curious schmuck that stopped by the Skwerl blog would actually have purchased the album if they couldn’t get it for free. Incidentally, this is a common argument that the record industry makes to inflate the impact of downloading (all I’m gonna say on the subject is this: if you really like a band, support them, whatever that means. There are bands that deserve my money and I make damn sure they get it; conversely, there are bands that deserve no one’s money and I do my part to make sure they don’t get it) and make it seem like artists are directly suffering from the epidemic of downloading. The problem is this, though  – I only ever hear major labels bitching about this when some tepid turd of a record by one of their most commercially viable acts is leaked to the 14 year-olds who are slobbering uncontrollably over it. A few years back, when a fan emailed Jeff Tweedy to say he’d downloaded A Ghost is Born (no matter how you feel about piracy, you gotta admit, it takes balls to email a musician and be like, “Yeah, I just stole your record and I was wondering…”) and he wanted to verify the track listing, did Tweedy go all Axl on him and call in the feds? Nope. In an act of increasingly uncommon graciousness, Wilco put a tab on their website where you could donate to alleviate your guilt over downloading their album. Dontate to whom, you ask? To the band? No. To Doctors Without Borders. And they raised a shitload of money, too. Wilco issued a statement that said (paraphrasing here, but not by much) that they don’t exist to make and sell CD’s; they exist to play music for people who like to hear them do so (this is one of a zillion reasons I fucking love Wilco, by the way.). Are the major labels going to shit a brick if you download Neutral Milk Hotel, Jonathan Coulton, or Okkervil River albums? No. Because they don’t know who those people are.

Your second (way off) assumption, Fucko the Clown, is this: that Axl can somehow lose money on an album he hasn’t actually released. In fact, Axl can only lose money on Chinese Democracy if he ever releases the sure-to-suck album for public consumption (because stores have to order the thing, receive it into stock, and move a lot of units without having to return it to the vendor – meaning a physical fucking product has to exist. For the record,  I hope, should Axl ever release this steaming load of dogballs, he loses everything he has and is forced to work at Taco Bell for the rest of his life). So far, only the various labels dumb enough to coddle Axl have lost money on it (dude has blown hella advances on this thing). Seems only fair to me that Axl should feel a financial pinch for locking himself up in a studio to masturbate and then cry foul when one of his two remaining fans gets excited to hear the new tunes.

Which brings me to the thing I really don’t understand in all of this – if you read an article online that has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with Axl Rose or Chinese Democracy (Fark has one or two a week on their music page) and you’re brave (or drunk) enough to flip down to the comments section, you will still find rabidly devoted fans who will literally try to preempt your dislike of an album whose existence is only slightly more proveable than God’s. I’ve seen comments from people who don’t want me to hate the album before I’ve heard it! Well, I’m a busy man. I’ve hated every other GNR release (Slash was a pretty good guitarist back in the day, but now I have Tad Kubler so Slash can – and should – go fuck himself) and there is no evidence I’ve seen that would convince me that Chinese Democracy will be anything other than an overproduced, underwritten, drug-addled, jackoff of an album foisted on the public by a man whose ego long ago outgrew his talent. So, for the sake of efficiency, I’m gonna go ahead and hate Chinese Democracy with about half the level of rage I reserve for pretentious twats like Axl Rose (note: that’s still an ungodly amount of rage). The fact that Axl, a man who is impossible to take seriously as a person, let alone a musician, still has zealous defenders would be astounding if it weren’t such a clear signifier that either 1) the apocalypse is upon us or 2) we’re careening wildly and quickly toward the society envisioned in Idiocracy, which means that one day, Axl Rose will be President. He’ll arrive for his inauguration late, high, and cranky. And Chinese Democracy, the worst album no one’s ever heard, will still only be a rumor.

Skwerl is now making appeals on his blog at antiquiet.com to get people to chip in for his legal defense. You can if you wanna, just pop over there and do it. I leave it up to you. It will be interesting to see if Axl’s label has to prove in court that those songs were definitely going to be on the final release of the record or not. That fat fuck Rose has been at this album for more than a decade – he’s probably got stacks of demos lying around; probably leaks them all the time to guage the public interest. The point here is not that people won’t buy Chinese Democracy because some dude posted songs from it on his blog; people won’t buy it because it will be, without doubt, the biggest disappointment in the history of music. Chinese Democracy has given the handful of GNR fans that remain on this crazy planet the biggest case of musical blueballs ever. There’s no known cure, and it’s just as well; Axl Rose doesn’t deserve fans.  What he does deserve, his fans won’t give him.

But I will:

Axl Rose is (and always was) a fuck-awful singer, a corporate whore, a bigot (‘member that song about “faggots” and how they “spread some fucking disease?”), a beyond-terrible (bordering on infantile) lyricist, and now he’s fat. Have at you, Axl!

Metallica: Still A Hat Full of Assholes

Look, I’m not gonna review a Metallica album on this site because Metallica… well, they fucking suck. Do you hear me, Metallica? You guys cannot even play. You suck so bad that future generations will think you’re a joke band like Spinal Tap. Seriously, fuck you guys.

Apparently, Metallica, whose disdain for any fans they have left is palpable, invited bloggers to a listening party and then got their metallic panties all in a bunch when a blogger (gasp!) blogged about the album. Apparently, said blogger was high because they said something about the album being a “return to form.” I’m guessing the blogger (from a Brit blog called Quietus) was not thinking of the form of a “steaming monkey turd,” but we may never know because Douche-tallica raised a stink and got the dude’s blog taken down.

That’s right, kids. Metallica is the George W. Bush of music. So let’s put democracy in action. If you read this blog between now and July 4th, hit me with a comment to this post and pledge your undying hatred of all things Metallica. It’s called the Bollocks! Fuck Metallica Pledge. Let’s take a stand for fans of good music and the internet. Your comment can be as chock full of Metallica-hate as you want (I won’t censor you), but at the very least, your comment should read “Fuck Metallica.” Tell your friends! If enough people sign the pledge, I’ll post it on Metallica’s message board on their website.