HELP TESTAMENT BLOW THE SURPRISE

Testament's tour promo where fans in each city vote on the setlist  is well-intentioned and kinda cool in theory but simply put, It sucks ass to know the fucking setlist before the show, that's HooM! policy once and for all. Buuuuuuuut if pressed, my vote is on option three. "True Believer" stomps, "Raging Waters" is a underappreciated gem, and 2008's "The Persecuted Won't Forget" makes a ripping opener. Toss "Disciples" and "Demonic" for "Blessed In Contempt" and "One Man's Fate" (below) for near-perfection. And holy shit those first two albums are classic but not classicer than the four classicly classic classics that followed. Anyway:

There are three setlists fans can vote on:

* The Legacy + "Best Of"

* The New Order + "Best Of"

* Set C:

01. The Persecuted Won't Forget

02. Practice What You Preach

03. Into the Pit

04. Dog Faced Gods

05. Raging Waters

06. More Than Meets The Eye

07. Demonic

08. True Believer

09. The Legacy

10. Over the Wall

11. The New Order

12. Souls of Black

13. First Strike Is Deadly

14. Disciples of the Watch

15. D.N.R.

16. Three Days in Darkness

17. The Formation of Damnation

Each city's setlist will be open for voting.

I'd beg everybody to keep from me the results of this vote, but it's too late to matter; as soon as they start playing, it'll be obvious which saetlist won in my city as will be the rest of the show. Just play every song, Testament. My old boss used to say everybody hesitates to deal with Testament cuz their manager only has two acts and the other is Ike Turner (who isn't that active professionally these days being dead and all) but I've been promoting around the office my idea of Testament residency in L.A. (Thursdays for three months somewhere cheap) and surprisingly I haven't been laughed out of the building. Suck it, fuckpeck!

PROVE ME WRONG, CHILDREN

MTV Shows

So April 7's Revolver Golden Gods Awards show premiered on MTV2 Saturday night. It's pretty much unethical to review something twice, but I get an exemption since this event exists in two forms, the live event vs. the broadcast. Semantics rule. And the broadcast was 300% retardeder than its source material. Watching it sucked me right back to all those queasy moments, like when Suicide Silence thanked me so fucking much (p.s. team headbanging is gay). Or when the WWE guy asked if everybody was ready to rock. Wrong idiom, dude. 

The MTV2 broadcast leaned heavily on the live performances, an unfortunate move since they all sucked ass. Whenever they bleeped somebody, the sound went all cuckoo. So it was sucky footage of sucky performances. That's a dick thing to say but hey the evidence is there. Up there. 

FOUND IN THE AIR

It was a sudden and severe leap from above-average metalcore band to riveting and melodic space-rock could-be's for Cave In. Only a few years earlier, Steven Brodsky and crew were virtually unknowns but by 2003, both the loose, unhurried Jupiter and the hyper-taut big-budget Antenna vaulted to classic status for everybody I know. Factor in a cluster of great shows -- semi-annually in that three-year stretch -- plus the Tides of Tomorrow and Epicenter EPs (the latter features the superior, non-mangled version of Antenna's "Lost In The Air"), and one could conclude that there now was a whole lotta Cave In where only recently there was none. I told Brodsky as much one night, after he materialized on foot before me just as I was abandoning hope of actually locating the venue to later be rocked by his then-rising band. And that was before Antenna was getting in-store play at Target.

So when the quartet announced a hiatus, marked by the quietly released and sadly uneven Perfect Pitch Black, it's not like we couldn't all have used a break. So Cave In and my ears spent some time apart, meeting new people and getting to know ourselves, until the band were ready to make the true follow-up to their big budget debut, a record that would match Jupiter's ambition to Antenna's ruthless efficiency. I never even heard what trauma blasted the band off the rails but as of last week, they're back!

After 3 1/2 long years, Cave In has decided to end its hiatus. Please join us for an EP release show at Great Scott’s (Allston, MA) on Sunday, July 19th @ 9PM. The “Planets Of Old” limited 12″ from Hydra Head Records will be available that night.

We hope to see your lovely selves.

Steve, Adam, J.R., Caleb

CAVE IN

JUST DO PORN ALREADY

Don't get me wrong I'm all for Heidi Montag doing Playboy. Her bod is awesome, except for that her head's attached to it. Look at her retarded logic: She gives it away for free all the time, pointing her junk at pap cameras in poses that suggest her own private porno with an invisible dude. But now she wants to remove that last strip of fabric between herself and bald desperation (sorry) and expects a half-million dollar payday? She's asking for a raise of 500,000% if I'm doing my math right. Be reasonable, Spencer, you tragic nobody. Tell ya what penisface, I'll do $100 for a pic of her with my name suntanned onto her knocks. how's that. I'll throw in $20 to punch your front teeth out. 

DALLAS COYLE IS LIKE THE SUN/CHASING ALL OF THE RAIN AWAY

There's precious little gossip going around about the God Forbid situation, which finds founding guitarist Dallas Coyle precipitously departing the very band he formed in 1996 with his brother Doc. So it's been chewing me up inside; the shit is so damn Shakespearean. The other day, Dallas (sorry for first-naming) broke his silence in his MetalSucks column, but merely parroted a statement given earlier by Doc (sorry again). But there's a elephant in the closet or whatever that expression is. And that, friends, is the idea of his departure came right the fuck after God Forbid put out their well-hyped record, Earthsblood. The record that would not only be better than the bonerparty Constitution of Treason but successful as shit too. That's what the mood was; those who followed this album since it was titled TBA could sense that GF was gonna go all Lakers on Earthsblood, gunning for triumph in the shadow of a defeat last time around. Ok that last sentence mixed a few metaphors. 

You can see where this is going. What I'm all angling at like a chickenshit is that Earthsblood isn't very good. I confess I'm extremely not proud nor spiteful to be pointing that out. I've been really patient with this record. Or something cuz I again listened to it all day and came away even more certain that Earthsblood does not represent a progression from CoT. Don't email me to call me a dick cuz I'm calling myself one but it's a Shadows Fall record to me: a record that is vaguely, unnamably nowhere. But boxers get knocked out in the first round sometimes. Shit Chicago's Ben Gordon was like 6 for 84 against the Celtics on Tuesday. My garbage can headbutted me in the sack this very morning. We all brick. These things happen. 

Back to the Dallas thing. Focusing on the timing of events, do we not find it possible -- nay probable -- that Dallas' decision is intimately connected to the album, in one way or another? And if we make that ass(hole)umption, it's not a leap to the idea that he doesn't like the album. ????? I don't know though. He sounded pretty pumped about it. And the sales weren't bad bad. Not enough to justify his robbing us of hope for a rebound masterpiece. Just come back Dallas. We can change. It'll be different this time. Dalllaaaaasssssssss.