Metallica Tribute: Four guitars, one person

Michael Angelo Batio is a very special guitarist, mostly because he can play both left-handed and right-handed guitars. Born a southpaw, he simply learned guitar ‘the right way,’ and then tried learning it with his dominant hand, also.

Regular guitarists may not be aware of this, but as a lefty guitarist myself, trust me, it’s very frustrating having to deal with it. You may think that it’s the fretting hand which needs the dexterity, but it’s not quite like that, as you have your rhythm in your dominant hand, so the strumming motion comes naturally with it. Which is why I’d encourage all the lefties to get lefty guitars, doing it reversed just adds more frustration to the already daunting task of learning the basics.

Being a lefty guitarist, however, is pretty annoying. There are guitars you simply can’t buy, they just don’t make them for your kind, and any time you see a guitar, well, you can’t show off your skills:

– Don’t you play guitar?
– I do, yeah
– Here, play it.
– I can’t, I am left-handed
– So?
– So I need a left-handed guitar
– LOLWUT?
– Are you stupid?
– Fuck you, dumbass…

So yeah, that’s what I had to deal with when I talked to my mom about guitar playing.

Anyway, I appreciate Batio‘s dedication to the instrument. Not only did he fight through all the trouble of being a lefty, he learned to play both types of guitars, and he got very fast on both. My jaw is always dropping when I see him playing something.

However, that Metallica tribute is pretty boring. I got the clip from MetalSucks, and as they said, nothing in that clip needed more than one neck.

I have seen Batio doing lead guitar on one neck, and rhythm guitar on the other one. Why didn’t he do the bassline on ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ with one hand, and the rhythm with the other one? Surely that would have been impressive. Maybe he’s just getting old.

Make the jump for a video where he is absolutely amazing. Granted, it’s guitar wankery at its finest, and it has the melody of an 8bit Atari game, but it’s still impressive, just because of how much this dude practiced his instrument to get to that level.

What the fuck am I watching?

No, seriously, what is this?

According to Blabbermouth, the video stars Jedrzej Wijas, a candidate for parliament in Poland who is with the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), with several local death metal musicians (including members of Mortal God), as the group’s lead vocalist. The Death Metal video is a 46-second take on his views on secularity of the state and freedom of beliefs. Yeah, sorry, they’re going to have to translate that for ignorant meatheads metalheads like me.

Oh good, they have:

“End of the useless talking,
Enough of the stupid wars,
Secular government,
Dignified life,
Freedom,
Is my goal,
Vote wisely”

Hmm isn’t this political suicide, no?

Wake me up when December ends

In an alternate universe, millions and millions of Korn fans are crying over the latest news that Korn‘s new album The Path To Totality has been pushed back to a December release date. For the rest of us stuck in reality, we can all exhale and rejoice that we have an extra month before we have to succumb to crappy new experimental nu-metal. Yuck!

The Path To Totality sees Korn experimenting with their so called music and adding producers from dubstep to the mix, for a collaboration album. Big names such as Skrillex, Datsik, and Excision will be some of the producers Korn has nabbed for their upcoming release, although I’m sure the millions and millions would agree that the music would sound better without Korn disgracing it with their 1990’s nu-metal nonsense.

Weekly Dose of Metal: The Agonist

This week’s dose of Metal is The Agonist. I don’t think they’re particularly amazing or groundbreaking, but they have a few catchy tunes and the chick is hot (wahey).

Normally, I post a picture above and then embed a streamed sample of a song below, but this time you get the entire official video above. Why? Well, I guess a video of a hot chick is hotter than a picture of a hot chick, right? Actually, to be honest, it’s mostly just because I’m lazy, but pretend I didn’t just say that.

You can watch the video for ‘business suits and combat boots’, taken from the band’s 2007 debut, Once Only Imagined, above.

10 years of Iowa, cue re-release

Ten years ago, and hey – jokes aside, when Slipknot released Iowa, they really did acheive something fairly big. Without the promotion of Britney Spears, and nearly without a single clean melody in earshot, the band still catapulted a heavy fucking Metal album to the top of the charts. They may have been (and perhaps unfairly) associated with the Nu-Metal movement of the time, but Slipknot have always been way more ‘Metal’ than they have ‘Nu’.

Still, that doesn’t mean the band can’t milk even more cash out of the fans, right?

It has been announced that, “in celebration” (in other words -$$£££) of the tenth anniversary since the release of Iowa, the album will be re-released as part of a special pack.

According to Blabbermouth, the pack will include the original Iowa album, a remix of ‘My Plague’ as an added bonus track, the full live audio from the Disasterpieces DVD, and the DVD of “Goat”, a new film directed by M. Shawn Crahan featuring never-before-seen interviews and footage showing the madness that surrounded the Iowa era, plus four music videos. In other words, another shitty pretentious video from the Clown that you’ll never watch. Great.

I’ll personally be buying the new 10th anniversary re-release, as my copy of Iowa has disc rot as a result of too much masturbation.