We’re a fan of a good, brain-melting paradox, especially that one about the famous lying puppet Pinoccio: What would happen if he said “My nose will grow”? It’s just impossible to figure out! That’s probably why we’re so intrigued by the track “Paradox” from Serbian metal band Forever Storm. Although it’s far from as playful as the Pinocchio paradox, it’s also quite the brain teaser, exploring both deeply personal and universal themes ranging from vanity to the destruction of the world. Epic stuff, and a lot to cover in a track that clocks in at just under five minutes, but Forever Storm weave it all together beautifully with a soaring chorus and screaming guitars.

If you find yourself thinking that a lyrically-driven metal song is a paradox in itself, Forever Storm bassist and songwriter Vladimir Nestorovic has a few things to say. “The lyrics should be the center point of any metal song, as they should always tell a story about a certain emotion, event or a thought,” he says. Of course, he adds that artists have the right to do whatever they want with their songs. “It is only my opinion that the music and the lyrics should, in most cases, have a hormonal bondage with some kind of subject and with each other as well.”

“Paradox” does meld music and lyrics in a seamless fashion, although as is fitting for a song with that title, its vocals tend to be ambiguous. The track opens with the line, “The night falls around my heart/The dark engraves another scar.” Nestorovic says that was inspired after he thought he was betrayed by someone he loved, but he later found out that he was the one to blame. Hence the chorus: “I’m losing you, losing myself to this demon called vanity/Every day more I die/Killing what keeps me alive.” According to Nestorovic, that’s the central figure of the song, as it “describes the moral paradox that I was in resulting in vanity.”

The paradoxes aren’t limited to emotions. Perhaps the most thought-provoking conundrum is the one frontman Stefan Kovacevic belts out during the song’s final stanza. “Amazingly you see the future while you’re destroying it,” he wails. It’s both true and depressing; in order to obtain the future we desire, we find ourselves destroying it with pollution and destruction. But the very pollution that will destroy us is a necessary byproduct of having the things we want. Whoa. Paradoxical indeed. But if you find yourself gleaning a different message from this metal mindgame, Nestorovic says you needn’t worry. “I think that it is for the listener to decide what he wants from the song, which is the beauty of art; you experience the lyrics in a way that suits your thoughts.”

If you’re ready for a song that makes you mosh as it makes you think, check out “Paradox” below— it’s heavy in more ways than one.

Have an interesting story behind your lyrics? Let us know at pr@ourstage.com!

When Battles frontman Tyondai Braxton quit the band about a year and a half ago to concentrate on his solo career, leaving behind an and-then-there-were-three scenario, it was certainly reasonable to assume that the move might have been a death knell for the group. The three remaining Battlers announced their intentions to continue, but without the wildly inventive Braxton on board, their future looked like an uphill climb at best. While Battles certainly seemed like a collective effort, it was impossible to deny the notion that Braxton—who seemingly inherited some of his iconoclastic spark from his father, avant-jazz legend Anthony Braxton—had a fair bit to do with the sound that earned so much attention on the foursome’s 2007 debut album, Mirrored.

Nevertheless, Dave Konopka, Ian Williams and John Stanier have beaten the odds on their first album as a trio, Gloss Drop. Battles 2011 may be a smaller band, but they make as big a noise as ever. To be honest, they don’t sound hugely different from the Braxton-era lineup. That’s not to suggest that the second Battles album is in any way a rehash of its predecessor, simply to praise the current incarnation of the band for picking up the hefty amount of slack left in the wake of Braxton’s departure.

Of course, the most immediate and obvious difference is that Braxton was, among other things, Battles’ mouthpiece. Granted, much of their sound was focused on instrumental interaction, but the question of what to do about vocals must surely have been an elephant in the band’s rehearsal room. Go all-instrumental? Let one of the remaining members try their hand at singing? Bring in a new member for the job? On Gloss Drop, Battles bypasses all of these options by partnering up with various guest vocalists for a third of the tracks and leaving the rest wordless. And quite a wide-ranging lineup of guests it is at that: Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead, Yamantaka Eye of The Boredoms, South American DJ/singer Matias Aguayo and…wait for it…Gary Numan.

Before we go any further in describing Gloss Drop, though, this would be an excellent time to point out a chronic fallacy about Battles. Despite popular misconceptions (or myth conceptions), they are not a math-rock band. Never have been, probably never will be. Admittedly, both Williams and Konopka have done time in legit math-rock outfits (Don Caballero, Storm and Stress, Lynx), and yes, the Battles sound does include challenging instrumental passages and tricky time signatures, but that’s pretty much where the connections end. If anything, Battles are second-generation post-rockers (even we’re not ready for the term post-post-rockers), taking up the torch of inventive, unpredictable, boundary-crashing music from ’90s indie-rock heroes like Tortoise, Isotope 217, et al, and using it to light the path to a new direction.

This was true of the band that made Mirrored, and it’s true today on Gloss Drop. Battles’ inclusionary approach on their second album applies not only to the aforementioned guest list, but also to a kaleidoscopic sound that freely draws on prog, hip hop, minimalism, metal, fusion, pop, electronica, Caribbean flavors, African and Brazilian grooves, and on and on until you’re forced to stop logging the influences and simply experience the band’s approach as a whole. Still, for all their quirkiness and eclecticism, the vocal cuts on Gloss Drop ought to be able to curry favor with anyone enamored of, say, Deerhoof, and in an indie-rock landscape where the likes of Dirty Projectors and Tune-Yards are deemed accessible, even the album’s most off-kilter instrumental tracks shouldn’t seem too far beyond the pale.

But ultimately, it’s not really important whether Battles can build on the Next Big Thing status they earned with their debut record four years ago. Such distinctions are fleeting at best. In the long run, what matters the most is that instead of falling apart when an important puzzle piece was removed from their midst, they found a new way to fit together, and Gloss Drop is the sound of the next step in the journey they refuse to abandon.

There are plenty of ways to commemorate a successful career: compilation albums, tribute concerts, limited-edition merch…and if you aren’t a musician, probably an office party with ice cream cake. But the Bouncing Souls are one-upping everyone this summer, playing through their entire collection of studio albums in a slew of four-night punk extravaganzas in cities around the world. We sat down with Souls frontman Greg Attonito to talk about why the time was right for this eight-city tour, the ability to stay relevant for more than twenty years and how even in the digital age, the Jersey-based four piece is still repping the DIY lifestyle.

OS: While a lot of bands who have been together as long as the Souls would choose to commemorate their career with a retrospective album, you guys decided to do a tour where you played through all of your albums. What was the inspiration behind that?

GA: We have been talking about playing all our records live for years so it was just a matter of time. This year at our Home for the Holidays shows in Asbury Park, we decided it was time. It was a lot of memory work re-learning a lot of songs we haven’t played in years, but it really paid off. It ended up going over really well for us and for the audience I think. So…Why not take it on the road! So that’s what we decided to do.

OS: You’re playing in just eight cities, but the tour is taking you all over the world. What determined the lucky eight tour destinations— were they places that held some significance to the band?

GA: We chose cities that we have had consistently good shows in over the years. We also wanted to work with promoters that were enthusiastic about the idea. So… those are the Lucky eight cities!

OS: The Souls and Chunksaah have always had a very DIY attitude—you had to be resourceful and creative about touring in the pre-Internet age. What does that DIY attitude translate to in 2011?

GA: In more difficult economic times I think we are forced to become more DIY in all parts of our lives from the food we eat to the music we make. Most of us are working more and earning less so we really have to be more practical than ever…but I think its good for all of us because most of us have been living pretty wasteful lifestyles. So I’m glad we as the BS family have learned how to be as DIY as we can. We need that knowledge and attitude now more than ever.

OS: How do you feel about the industry now? Did you prefer the days when you got the word out about shows through flyers in record store windows, or are you a fan of doing that online through social networking?

GA: It feels like industry is in labor right now about to give birth to a new way of doing things, so it’s a trying time. I don’t want to repeat the past but I do sometimes miss how simple things were when we first started. The challenge is to carry that spirit on! I’m not a fan of social networking but I do have a Facebook page and I appreciate how convenient it is to inform people about new music/live shows etc. I’m not into it enough to Twitter and I’m also not interested in posting my every life movement. Overall though the Internet is a great thing for all of us to communicate quickly and for free!

OS: What about your fan base? It seems like you’ve stayed relevant to fans who span several generations. Why do you think your music is as popular with forty-somethings as it is with pre-teens?

GA: It’s a cliche, but we “strike a chord” that goes beyond age I think. Our music is for the heart, and it helps us all remember we are not alone and we are here in life to enjoy ourselves and live for each other. Why wouldn’t people come back for that? That’s why all of us band members keep coming back.

OS: You guys don’t reinvent yourselves as often as some musicians do, but there have been some significant changes in The Souls’ music over your career. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve gone through over the last two decades?

GA: We have intentionally tinkered with our writing styles over the years by including producers in the process. It has been great in some ways and not so great in some ways but we have learned a lot throughout. All that we have learned we are putting into the new songs we have been writing. The main focus is to enjoy ourselves every step of the way.

Since you mentioned re-inventing ourselves it might be a good time to let you know about my new solo record! Its called Natural Disaster and will be coming out on Chunksaah records this summer. It was fun for me to get completely out of the Bouncing Souls writing dynamic, get a fresh perspective and see what happens. The record sounds great and I have a renewed attitude toward creating new BS music. It will be fun to see how people respond to it because its not like BS music.

OS: Now that you’ve been together more than twenty years, do you have any advice you wish you could give your teenage selves? Anything you wish you did differently?

GA: No. I wouldn’t do anything differently. I would probably tell me teenage self not to be so stressed out, be honest with yourself and take the time to learn how to be comfortable with just being myself…Thats probably it. But my teenage self probably wouldn’t have listened to my forty-year-old self! [Laughs]

Interested in catching the Souls as they play through all their albums this summer? Check out the band’s Web site for a list of the upcoming tour dates.

Ten years ago, a bed-stricken Joey Ramone, secretly suffering from complications from the lymphoma he had been battling since 1996, decided to plan a huge blowout for his 50th birthday. Sadly, Joey died a little over a month before the celebration could go down, but his mother Charlotte and brother Mickey knew that the show must go on. The party, which would benefit Lymphoma research, was held at the Hammerstein Ballroom on May 19, 2001. Debbie Harry, Richard Hell and Legs McNeil attended what would become an annual downtown ritual ever since.  This year’s birthday bash, scheduled on what would’ve been Joey’s 60th birthday, will be held at Irving Plaza this week.

In retrospect, the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash proved to be a turning point in a larger punk rock community increasingly gravitating towards cancer as a cause. Certainly, the trend is affecting the culture as a whole as the response generated by Stand Up to Cancer, LiveStrong and The Truth can attest. But the punk spirit, long wary of causes, seems especially up for this one as cancer benefits are popping up all over the punk landscape: On June 7, Main Man Records will be donating a portion of the proceeds from Take It or Leave It, a two-disc tribute to The Runaways in honor of band member Sandy West, who lost her fight to cancer in 2006 and on July 15 and 16, Music 4 Cancer, originally a music compilation of punk and ska artists, will  participate in the Vans Warped Tour. And when an iconic punk musician like Ari Up! of the Slits succumbs to cancer, it’s almost expected that a tribute concert benefiting cancer research is soon to follow.

If punk and cancer are increasingly finding themselves colliding against one another in the mosh pit, more often than not it’s in order to raise money for a local, insurance-less personality afflicted with the disease. The Fuck Cancer Benefit at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC was held in honor of beloved band manager Jackie Farry who found herself insurance-less when she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. In Florence, SC it was for scenester E. Allen Johnson. And in Chattanooga, TN it was in behalf of musician John Johnson, who had been recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

To be sure, cancer is being embraced throughout the musical world: from pop to country, but something has clicked with punk, it’s rebellious posture (or “conversation of negation,” as Greil Marcus might put it) has long been looking for purpose in a post-industrial America in which all of its signifiers have been co-opted by the mainstream (American Idiot, anyone?)…. Inherently unglamorous, intractable and utterly raw and real, cancer and punk fit like deranged puzzle pieces.  It’s as if the punk universe is saying to the larger culture: “Try turning this into a commodity!”

Times, they are changing. Luckily for us, Hate Eternal are keeping up with their tried and true death metal ways on their new album Phoenix Amongst The Ashes. For all those who believe that pure death metal is dead and gone, Hate Eternal is serving another reminder that naysayers are  just plain wrong. Whether you like it technical, brutal, thrashy or raw and ungarnished—Hate Eternal will bring it.

Death metal isn’t exactly known as a “singles” market, but that doesn’t mean bands avoid songs that are as strong as any single should be. In Hate Eternal’s case, they’ve compiled ten songs that are all pretty worthy of being called a “single” and put them end to end. No filler material, no interludes—only a short intro to the album which means listeners get about forty minutes of great death metal without a single break. If that doesn’t appeal to you, you probably don’t like metal as much as you thought you did.

What really separates Phoenix Amongst The Ashes from its colleagues and predecessors, however, is the mixture between the backup and main vocals. They’ve evolved from being the traditional main/backup roles into being more about a different vocal sound and a change of pace. Rather than have vocalist Erik Rutan constantly supplying guttural growls, bassist JJ Hrubovcak is supplying a powerful bark on many of the tracks, often times during the chorus, to emphasize the change of pace.

Not that you would expect anything else, but the technicality of Hate Eternal’s performance on this record is exquisite. Every single guitar note, drum hit, etc. are about as clean as you can get without sounding completely robotic or inhuman (though I’m still not convinced the members of the band aren’t some sort of androids). With machine-like precision guiding them, the vocals and guitar solos provide the band with raw emotion and nuance.

Phoenix Amongst The Ashes is almost certainly Hate Eternal’s most solid and dense work to date, and is so without sacrificing quality of content. Surpassing each of their previous four works, Phoenix Amongst The Ashes is another strong contender for metal album of the year, or at the very least, death metal album of the year. You can snag this great album from places like iTunes or Amazon.

Overall score: 9/10

For fans of: Origin, Krisiun, Necrophagist, The Faceless, Nile, Suffocation and other really great death metal acts.

Enjoy this promo video by Metal Blade Records for the album, which includes the song “Haunting Abound”

After a long journey, the second round of OurStage’s “Artist Access” Competition is over and a decision has been made. The Dallas-based rock group All Found Out secured a trip to NYC to learn firsthand from one of the titans of the music industry: Bruce Tyler.

The extent of Tyler’s experience is boundless and its value incalculable. Tyler climbed to the position of CEO at Active Industry Research in the 80s, which was the industry frontrunner in music and radio promotion for twenty years, but he didn’t stop there. He earned the title of EVP at Sony Music and Columbia Records, worked alongside the US’s most powerful labels, and worked with and played a major role in the continuing success of artist like Beyonce, John Mayer, John Legend, The Fray, and many others. Now he offers his invaluable expertise as a consultant to players in every facet of the music business.

There’s no need to be jealous, though, because we’re hosting our “Artist Access” Competition again this month. If you haven’t entered yet, sign up for a Premium Account and submit your songs by May 23rd. Take a minute to get inspired by the five top ranked songs from our April “Artist Access” competition below:

Oh, Internet. You just have no shortage of sass. Like the comment “I think All Time Low has this covered,” left by one snarky OurStage user on Stranger In Arms‘ song “It’s Been A Mess Since New Years.” Hey, we like All Time Low! If Stranger in Arms wanted to jack their sound, we wouldn’t be too upset. But the thing is, while this New York five-piece’s rowdy pop-punk is occasionally reminiscent of artists like ATL or Cartel, they set themselves apart with tight hooks and smart lyricism. So here’s a little breakdown of what you can expect from “It’s Been A Mess Since New Years.” You can decide for yourselves if it’s already been covered.

From the outset, it’s made clear that this song is one of betrayal. “Hey, what lies you telling now/And as they spill from your mouth/Do you feel it all the same?” The band further sets the scene with the lines, “Tonight is cold, and I’m a ghost/This lack of love inside won’t go/Oh, no.” Uh oh. Sounds like frontman Jarett Mittroni is about to tell us a sad story, and that becomes clearer in the song’s second stanza. “Time waits, impatient lovers stray/Lacking all the strength to break down barriers alike.” Ahh, so there it is. This is a song of straying lovers. But it sounds to us like “It’s Been A Mess Since New Years” isn’t about being betrayed by a girl. Instead, Mittroni sings “Now I compromise my morals for my goals.” Hold on there—is this a confession? It sure starts to sound like it, as he wraps up each chorus with a desperate, “It takes a lot to leave/and in my heart it does this evil/Honesty, forgive me.” We’re not sure, but despite the earlier accusations of lies it sounds like our narrator could be the cheater in this scenario.

The ambiguity of the song is almost a plus, because regardless of who cheated on whom, the important thing is that the themes of betrayal and forgiveness are delivered by Mittroni’s soaring, pitch-perfect voice and sandwiched between meaty guitars relentless cymbal crashes. You can check it out below, because  it’s good for a listen even if you aren’t too thrilled with its characters’ questionable morals.

Over the last three decades, Mick Harvey has midwifed some of the most singular, striking works of the initial UK post-punk explosion and its subsequent aftershock waves. The Australian rocker is one of those bothersome bastards who seem to be able to play anything they lay their hands on, and his multi-instrumental abilities have been crucial to the output of  The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Crime & The City Solution and currently, PJ Harvey (no relation). Harvey has also maintained a sideline in solo albums since 1995, and his latest, Sketches From the Book of the Dead, is the first to appear since he hung up his Bad Seeds uniform in ’09.

The man responsible for assaultive, confrontational explosions of sound on records like The Birthday Party’s Prayers on Fire and Nick Cave’s From Her To Eternity has found that there’s still rocking to be done in his post-Bad Seeds phase, as demonstrated on PJ Harvey’s new album Let England Shake, but his latest solo outing is mostly a moody, melancholy batch of hushed, spooky ballads. That wasn’t necessarily the plan from the start, though. “I think there was probably more variation in the songs I wrote for the project,” Harvey told RR&R, “than there is in the end selection. I was aware of this as it happened, so I guess you could say that when I came to choose the songs, it worked for me to have a similar mood or atmosphere throughout, but it wasn’t the way it was envisioned or written.”

Much of Book of the Dead is occupied by tales and remembrances of deceased figures who loom large in Harvey’s past, some apparently going all the way back to his boyhood, like his father’s friend in “Ballad of Jay Givens,” as well as people like onetime Bad Seeds/Crime & The City Solution bandmate Rowland S. Howard on “October Boy.” But for the most part, evoking specific characters wasn’t part of Harvey’s agenda. “The songs are as much about memory and it’s fallibility as they are about anything else,” he explains. “It has become well established that ‘October Boy’ is about Rowland S. Howard and I quite deliberately made it easy to work that out… With most of the other characters I feel it is probably better that they are unidentified for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to give the songs some kind of universality…In essence the songs are an attempt to delve into memory and the relationships we continue to have with people who are no longer with us, so to reveal identities and make things more specific would undermine a large part of the potential communicability of the ideas themselves.”

Having definitely emerged from the long shadow of Nick Cave after so many years, Harvey reveals that even his position as Cave’s longtime right-hand man was at least partially a function of circumstance. “To be perfectly honest it was quite unexpected that I became the principal  collaborator for those early to mid years in The Bad Seeds,” he says. “In The Birthday Party I had simply been part of the band, playing guitar and occasionally writing some of the music for the songs. I guess my position in the band became more powerful towards the end in ‘82/’83, and after the band broke up I was the one who Nick asked to continue working with in his new project. In a way my preeminence in that project [The Bad Seeds] came from a power vacuum and a lack of general reliability on the part of other members—it fell to me to be the responsible one, especially when it came to instrumental arrangements and the album production.” About his exit from the band, Harvey explains, “More recently the level of my artistic involvement, my business responsibilities toward the band and my personal requirements simply went a bit out of balance where The Bad Seeds were concerned. After such a long and successful union it was better to move on than to struggle with it.”

Of his time with ’80s post-punk art rockers Crime & The City Solution, part of the extended Bad Seeds family, Harvey says, “I was especially happy with the second line-up, or fourth depending on how you look at the history of the band, which was based in Berlin. Sadly I had probably over-committed myself being in both Crime and The Bad Seeds at the same time. In hindsight I wouldn’t do that again—it probably would have been better had I just done The Bad Seeds and given myself more space for my own projects. Apparently Simon Bonney is planning to relaunch Crime & the City Solution soon. Good luck to him is all I can say.”

Besides his own solo endeavors, Harvey has currently committed a substantial chunk of his time and energy to working with PJ Harvey, co-producing and playing on Let England Shake and accompanying her on the road in support of the album. “He defines his working relationship with Polly Jean as “Evolving. I think Polly has asked me to play on every album she has made since I met her [starting with 1995's To Bring You My Love] but I haven’t always been available and sometimes the circumstances would not have been ideal for what I can bring to such a project. So sometimes I had to decide against being involved. The recent album, Let England Shake, was certainly a rewarding and challenging experience and called on some of my particular abilities, so it was especially enjoyable. The concerts have been stunning, too, and equally challenging, so I’m having a lot of fun with it and also feel the artistic bonds with Polly are growing as a result.”

On Book of the Dead being the first album to be dominated by his own compositions, Harvey reckons, “It’s because I don’t normally write songs. In the past I have occasionally written lyrics but for the most part where I have co-writing credits it’s for the music. When I wrote a couple of songs around what would become the basic theme of this album it gave me a starting point to even consider writing more songs for such a project. But I still don’t consider myself a songwriter,” confesses Harvey, “not in the manner of people who do it all the time…if anything, this self-penned album is a bonus.”

Chances are, it’s been a few years since Sum 41 popped up on your radar. The four piece haven’t released a full-length since 2007, and few albums since 2001′s runaway success All Killer No Filler have managed to spawn catchy, radio-friendly rock hits like “In Too Deep” and “Fat Lip.” Or maybe you have been hearing Sum 41 and you just didn’t realize it—the once bratty pop punks have consistently developed a heavier and more mature sound that doesn’t sound much like their earlier work.

Either way, the Canadian rockers are back in action this spring. They have a new album, Screaming Bloody Murder, and a new outlook on what’s important to them. OurStage caught up with bassist Jason “Cone” McCaslin to talk about the evolution of the band, the struggles of putting together the new album and how Sum 41 doesn’t count on radio for their success.

OS: First, to clear up a mystery: why does everyone call you “Cone”?

CM: Umm, I mean it’s just one of those nicknames that I got in high school when I was fifteen or sixteen, something like that. It’s actually kind of a really stupid story, but I used to eat a lot of ice cream all the time. And so Deryck and all those guys—before I was even in Sum 41— they just started calling me Cone. And so when I joined Sum 41, they just kept on calling me Cone. Just one of those stupid high school things, really.

OS: Screaming Bloody Murder was originally supposed to be released in 2009, and you were only planning to release a few songs on an EP. What happened to change that?

CM: I guess the original idea was, Deryck had four or five songs written so I’d fly down to LA and we’d just kind of do these four or five songs that he had. We started talking about, “You know, maybe we should release an EP.” And then once they were recorded—and we kind of almost did fully record the EP except for mixing, really—we just decided that we liked the songs a lot. We started thinking about how EPs don’t really… they kind of go unnoticed. It’s just kind of a waste of time to do as an EP. So we decided that we really liked the songs and we didn’t want the songs to go unnoticed, and Deryck was writing a lot. It was like, “You know what? Let’s just wait and as you write some songs we’ll all fly down to LA and just record them as you have them.” That’s basically it.

OS: You guys had to pay for some of the cost of this album out of pocket—how did it get to that point?

CM: I guess we went over budget. I’m not really sure. We recorded the album, and then once it was kind of done we listened to it and we all decided we didn’t feel like it was complete. There was something missing about it. And Deryck was still writing songs, he was kind of writing songs all through the process of recording. He had these two songs, which are “Time for You to Go” and “Maybe You Don’t Want to Know,” and he said, “Yeah, I’ve got these two new songs. I think this could be the piece of the album that we’re missing.” So we went to the label and said, “We’ve got two more songs we want to record.” And to them, we were kind of done. They gave us all the money to record, and to them the album was done. So when we said there was two more songs we wanted to record, they said, “No. We’re not gonna pay for this.” And we just liked the two songs a lot, and we wanted them on the album, so we just said, “Okay fuck it. We’ll just pay for it then.”

OS: Deryck has given a few interviews regarding the new album where he seems to have a very “fuck what everyone thinks” attitude about whether or not people like the material. Do you feel the same way?

CM: No, I don’t know if it’s… we’ve talked about this many times, and when we talk about it as a band it’s not like we’re all, “Fuck everyone, we hate everyone.” We’re not bitter and jaded, we just feel like we have a real connection with our fans and we have a really strong fan base. So basically by saying that, we’re not really saying “Fuck you, fuck you.” We’re just saying if radio doesn’t play it, or if video channels don’t pick up our video, then it’s not the end of the world to us. Where ten years ago it was like, we were always told we had to be on the radio. Now it’s like yeah, it would be cool. We’d love to be on the radio. If our song gets played on the radio, we’re happy. We’re excited. But if it doesn’t happen we’re not pissed off and bummed out. We’re just like, “Okay, well fuck it.” We have a strong fan base, and people are still coming to our shows. We have a lot of fans around the world, and we still tour around the world playing really good shows…

Continue reading ‘Q&A With Sum 41′

Women in metal–a subject that often starts heated arguments filled with strong opinions and misconceptions. Many stigmas exist about female metal musicians, especially metal vocalists: they’re inferior and can’t bring it as hard as the men can. This article will debunk that ideology. Just because the genre’s more famous leading ladies include Amy Lee of Evanescence and Christina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil doesn’t mean that every other female follows in their footsteps. This ideology has existed for quite some time now, even classic bands like Girlschool saw a strong amount of prejudice throughout their career. In an interview with Lemmy of Mötorhead from Metal: A Headbanger’s Ball he recounted someone who said, after a Girlschool performance “She was pretty good, for a girl” and he responded “Well, f*** you, she’s better than you are!”

Women are infiltrating the metal world. They’re not all singers who only have angelic voices and fit into the “pretty girl” role. More and more, they’re taking on the “badass” persona, and are even playing other instruments in bands, as opposed to just being vocalists. Jeanne Sagan of All That Remains, Marta Peterson or Bleeding Through and Karin Axelsson of Sonic Syndicate have all been holding it down on bass for their bands for years now. Liz Buckingham has been rocking the guitar in Electric Wizard since 2003 and Laura Christine has been playing guitar in a bunch of metal bands lately though she’s best known for her work with Warface. You even have some bands that are primarily women, like Zeenon, who are known for playing really great death metal insted of being “hot metal chicks”.

Candace Kucsulain from Walls of Jericho

Now comes the problem of image. As routinely acknowledged by women metal musicians, being good isn’t always enough—you’ve also got to be really good looking (strongly expressed by the band Kittie in an interview for Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey). For a while the expected role of any woman in metal was to either be a groupie or be attractive and little else (not to say there weren’t people who broke free of that, Doro Pesch being a famous example). As more women entered the metal scene, many that were on par with their male peers, the stigma of women being less talented than men slowly and surely phased out almost completely. Though it’s still a pretty lopsided ration of men to women, it’s certainly not as skewed as it once was, and the public eye looks at women a bit differently than it used to. Unfortunately, certain metal publications still focus heavily on women’s looks, such as Revolver‘s annual “Hottest Chicks In Metal” feature.

Today, there are more bands fronted by women who put on the tough guise and bring it just as hard as any man around, and this is likely due to the influx of women into metal and the shifting of mindsets. In Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy talks about adopting a tougher style and persona in order to feel powerful on stage. She also speaks about how young girls come up to her after shows  to talk about how her performance inspire them. Most metalheads know Angela, who happens to have one of the best guttural screams live in the whole metal genre, but there are a lot of other bands out there that don’t get quite the same press. OurStage’s own Abnormality (whose song “Visions” was featured in a Rock Band game) is one of these bands. While listening to Mallika’s vocals, it’s nearly impossible to tell she’s a woman, and it’s refreshing to hear a female fronting a brutal death metal band. Other women who rock the guttural vocals and the tough guise include (and is certainly not limited to): Otep Shamaya of Otep, Krysta Cameron of Iwrestledabearonce, Candace Kucsulain of Walls of Jericho, Mel Mongeon of Fuck The Facts and Alissa White-Gluz of The Agonist.

Still think that all bands with women are like Evanescence, Lacuna Coil, Epica, Nightwish, In This Moment and the like? I can’t really see how you could. If you still need convincing, check out this video of Angela Gossow and Arch Enemy commanding a crowd in Japan to the tune of their song “Tyrants of the Rising Sun”