Slayer return to the stage

Despite every obstacle being thrown in Slayer‘s direction recently (well, old age mostly I’d guess), with Araya being admitted to hospital and Hanneman undergoing surgery,  the band finally returned to the stage last night (Friday 4th).

Tom is back pelting those vocals out and smashing the Bass, but Gary Holt of Exodus is still filling in for Jeff, who will be back as soon as he’s fully recovered. Video footage of their live performance at Australia’s Soundwave festival can be found after the jump.

These kids know how to rock

When we were in primary school, we all played a lot of fun games. My all-time personal favourite would probably be Duck Duck Goose. How can anyone not love this game back in the day? Good times. But I recently found an activity for kids that’s actually more fun than Duck Duck Goose. It’s called singing a song from the great Iron Maiden.

It’s a good video. It’s nice seeing little kids having fun and it’s awesome seeing them headbanging and rocking out to metal in a classroom.

Which song did they sing? Watch the video above to find out and click here to read why they decided to do this.

Dusty Peterson at ECCC

Our dear friend Dusty Peterson was the first artist to be interviewed by Dose of Metal, back in September of last year, just a couple of weeks after we started kicking everyone’s ass. Dusty also helped us in late January, when he helped us write two Friday Top 10’s, one about our best news posts and one about our best articles of 2010.

The Emerald City Comicon, in Seattle, WA, started today and Dusty Peterson will be there so go to his table, where he is showcasing his artworks and tell him DoseOfMetal.com told you to say hi.

And while you’re at it, visit his homepage and check out his bad ass art. And then come back and read more Dose of Metal articles. And then go to Facebook and post about how awesome we and our articles are. And so on. You know the deal.

Friday Top 10: Metal breakdowns

Nowadays it’s fairly difficult to view breakdowns in a good light. As Metal has developed in the 21st century, the divergence of Hardcore influences into Metal has grown, and with it, has brought a whole heap of clichés that have disgusted a major section of the Metal community. One of those overused clichés is the breakdown. How many Metal bands these days rely purely on breakdowns in order to create “heavy” music? Way too many. Some bands are so shit, they don’t even bother writing songs. They just write 3 minutes of breakdowns and then call that a song *cough* Emmure *cough*

It wasn’t always like that though. There was once a time when Metal had some awesome breakdowns, and in fact, some bands still write some brilliant breakdowns. Whether they be epic instrumental passages, or those awesome thrashy breakdowns, some of the best Breakdowns can be found in this week’s Top 10 Friday. So forget those shitty Deathcore/Metalcore bands, and instead why not check out my list after the jump. Does the above image mean Megadeth may get a mention? There’s only one way to find out…

Ride the Master of Justice

Say what you will about 90s Metallica and especially early 2000s Metallica, but you have to admit 80s Metallica kicked ass. And I don’t think anyone can deny the impact “Master of Puppets” had on rock music in general, not just metal, so regardless of your feelings for the band nowadays, you have to respect who they were a few decades ago.

I guess whenever I hear an influential album, I always ask myself… “Did these guys know they were making history when they were recording it, or were they just doing their job without thinking too much of the future?”

Well, someone sort of asked the same question to Flemming Rasmussen, the record producer behind Metallica‘s best albums.

Phoenix New Times: “Master of Puppets” is widely regarded as one of the best heavy metal albums of all time. Did you know you were onto something special when you were working on it 25 years ago?

Flemming Rasmussen: Oh, yes. Right from the demos, we pretty much knew this was gonna be a killer album. I think we all felt that this was gonna be the best Metallica album yet, as we had a bunch of really strong songs. Even the instrumentals were awesome.

PNT: You produced three consecutive Metallica albums — “Ride The Lightning”, “Puppets” and “Justice” — but they have three distinctly different sounds. Was that a conscious decision by you and the band?

Flemming: Yes. The difference between “Ride” and “Master” is evolution, as “Master” is a perfection of the sound we started to evolve on “Ride”. And in my opinion, we did really master it on “Master”. That album sounds so good. When I got onto the “Justice” album, they were a month into the session, and it was a new studio, etc., so we decided on a more up-front and dry sound. As for the mix, they had already hired someone else to do this, so I had no say in that. But it’s still a classic metal album, and the sound has inspired a whole new generation of metal bands.

Read full interview here.

Must be empowering being able to say “I was there!” when talking about the recording of such classic albums. Can you imagine the shame of the people behind “St. Anger” though?

Source: Blabbermouth