IS 'KAMIKAZE' REALLY THE WORD YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?

Japan kinda comes off as Metal's Special Olympics but good shit happens there. Let's see. Everybody's depressed sister likes Dir en grey; Taiho, Hellchild, and S.O.B all made at least one classic; shit even the hyper-emo Envy rocks pretty hard. The not unintentionally hilarious J-metal band exists somewhere in time and space. Not this space, though. Nor this time. From a press release with flashes of unfortunate word choice (via Blabbermouth):

Grief Of War's kamikaze brand of thrash first made an international splash with their 2005 debut, A Mounting Crisis ... As Their Fury Got Released (reissued by Prosthetic in 2008). July 7's Worship features Korn lead guitarist Shane Gibson, who performs a blistering solo on the song "Into The Void." 

Vocalist/bassist/lyricist Manabu Hirose explains: "Since Ken (Sato, lead guitarist) likes shredding guitarists, and he knew Shane would come to Japan while we were recording, he made contact with Shane and asked him to play on the album. We sent him the demo of 'Into The Void', he liked the song and we welcomed him to the studio when he visited Japan."

OK wow. First of all, that's a whole paragraph detailing what amounts to GOW's buying a solo off the sometime replacement guy in Korn. The negotiations must have been hilarious. 'Yo man, some Japanese guy is on the phone, saying he manages Gob Of Flour or Queef O'Wad or something and they offer ten thousand yen for a quick guest spot! 10 Gs duuude!' 

And points go to GOW's succinct singer-bassist Hirose, who, in a scintillating quote after claiming like seven credits on the album (edited the fuck out), explains how they got hooked up with the guy who plays behind a curtain or in the basement while Korn is onstage. It's a timeless story with a universal moral: guy likes shredding, label wants guest, band sends demo to guy with Jonathan Davis stamped on his paychecks, guy who travels in a bus smaller than Fieldy's goes to Japan, plays guitar, spends his earnings on a watermelon. Did the band know they weren't getting Munky or even the Jesus freak one? Clint Lowery?

That's the big stuff anyway. A few songs stream here, where you'll discover both that they don't need any fucking guest solos and that their name is written grief of WAR. I'm gonna say it that way. Like all whispery then holler WAR!!  

IT'S A MID-DEATH CRISIS

If I were a stand-up comic I'd do a bit about those Bread Bowl Pastas. Ever seen this commercial? This is what Domino's is rolling their hot sandwich money onto? Look, friends, I'm here for the pasta; the bowl can be made of bowl. I might have a piece of bread on the side. But it needn't be load-bearing bread. Has anyone considered how much fucking bread that is? If I wanted my butt packed, I'd twitter the Daisy Of Love funboys. Does this wet loaf come with a side of rice? For dessert, graham crackers. 

Ok then again, comedy is best left to professionals. Like Spinal Tap, whose forthcoming record (oh god yes) for some reason finds the hilarious and awesome rockers re-recording smashes first heard in their movie This Is Spinal Tap (above). Well fuck this Billboard will do the work for me hooray:

"Basically," says bassist Derek Smalls, "it was possible to put out a record that was louder than any we've ever had before, and that was a selling point right there. We could have the loudest Spinal Tap record there's ever been, and we thought, 'Well, yeah, why not?'"

Back From the Dead's 19 songs include new versions of "Hell Hole" and "Big Bottom," a three-part version of "Jazz Odyssey," a "reggae stylee" rendition of "(Listen to the) Flower People" and more recent songs such as "Warmer Than Hell," "Celtic Blues" and "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare." Guests include Def Leppard's Phil Collen, John Mayer, Steve Vai playing on the guitar opus "Short and Sweet," and keyboardist Keith Emerson.

Uh I like everything in that excerpt right up until the John Mayer/Phyllis Collen thing. Those guys are chodes. Especially Mayer; unlike Collen, he's never had a good tune. But enough about jealousy, Spinal Tap is doing a new record, led by the smashing "Back From The Dead" (listen here). Back From The Dead the album comes out a week after Steel Panther's Feel The Steel. June '09 is gonna go down as a month of hair rock and giggling. I will have been there, man!

THE DEVIL IN THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Read into this what you will but when I first heard of Dayton Ohio's The Devil Wears Prada, the image that formed in my mind was of a band of gay fags singing about handbags and shit. My beloved ex-hair cutter, a sultry and flaming gay, even mentioned them, asking if they were any good. Wait first he asked me if I could get him tickets to the show, but by that time I had found out they were gay in the bad sense (metalcore) and not aimed at fabulous hair salon owners as their fruity name implies. I don't remember where this was going but TDWP's new whatever is landing in the top 20 in its debut week. The guy from Brainiac must be turning over in his grave. I'd like to apologize for that last crack. Not the band Last Crack. Those guys ripped (above).

JUNE IS TELL A FRIEND ABOUT DREDG MONTH

Art-rock quartet Dredg doesn't exactly do themselves any favors. Their name is tragically similar to powerfully inferior bands like Staind and Trapt. Get past that, and you'll find their sound is flittery and intellectual; I bet Neil Peart heard them and was like Goddamn these lyrics are pretentious. And worst of all, they signed to a major label that didn't have the stones to promote them. Which isn't to say Atlantic (correction: Interscope; thanks Vince) did nothing with 2004's brilliant Terry Date-produced set Catch Without Arms, nor that Dredg is not a difficult act. But while the Discovery Price concept is a strong inducement to purchase, it doesn't work if the album is invisible to purchasers. Every fucking body who is aware of Dredg LOVES them. That there will be more of us in the coming weeks is indicated by their yawning, quaking new single "Information" (above). And we're not closeted Coldplay fans like all those Thrice-humpers.  

I'M A HONKY SELLOUT

One point of pride for me always was my emotional and developmental stasis, which allowed me to stay childlike/-ish and rarely deal with the heartbreak of 'growing out' of certain bands. Dudes always grouse to me like Oh I used to be into Megadeth but now I'm not. Like your car got broken into at the gig in Rockford and the villains made off with your good taste in Metal. I don't get it. To me, So Far, So Good ... So What? sounds better everyday. Not boastful; thankful. I truly would be unable to cope if this song ever ceased to blast my ballbag.

But my secret shame is this vexing, growing, and extremely honky love for blues-based hard fucking rock. Super-hard rock, like BulletBoys and Dangerous Toys and Badlands, all tapes I financed as a pre-teen by borrowing liberally from casually stowed purses. So I have changed after all. Damn. My already embarrassing fondness for these acts has expanded beyond reasonable limits, and even worse goddammit somehow major no-no's like Lynch Mob and Kix are cemented firmly in my rotation. That iPod play count doesn't lie. The other day I busted myself humming along to fucking Jackyl! Are you hearing this? The chainsaw guy??? 

And Dangerous Toys excepted, each of these bands to some extent undermines my firm anti-cracker blues stance with their wailing, contorted singers, all doing ahem 'the blues' about rough dames and bad drink. More than anything, they're ripping off Robert Plant. But that doesn't really make me feel any less uncomfortable. And the fact that I even relate at all to monster stomps like Lynch Mob's "She's Evil But She's Mine" (above) indicates that a) my life force has been sucked out by some reckless, indecisive tramp; and b) I'm only one step away from growing a ponytail in time for the next picnic table bluesfest out in the suburbs.