This is probably surprising to most folks out there, but amazingly enough, "headbangers ball" is still around.
Yeah, I know. Why bother at this point.
But what the hell... they were doing their "top ten metal videos of the year" and I figured, "why not".
Complete waste of time.
Some emo crap from Slipknot, a little Sevendust... not bad, but nothing spectacular. Ozzies latest without Zakk Wylde? utter shite, though John G can certainly play. The Deftones newest, ok, not great but ok...
Disturbed with "Another way to die" pushing the AGW fraud... Yeah, Disturbed is one of those bands where I just have to shut their politics out so I can listen. In the case of "Another way to die" the politics are the entire song... and it's not even a good song. Actually it's a pretty good video (made up of news footage), but a bad song.
The biggest disappointment to me is actually Fear Factories reunion. I was expecting more out of them. "Fear Campaign" is just another anti-american screed, with poor vocals and a muddy undefined sound.
Their number one video was Avenged Sevenfold, with "nightmare"... Frankly, it was just another Avenged Sevenfold song. Same riffs, same sound, same vocal sound... Ok video, but not particularly original or interesting. Not a bad song, not a bad video, but certainly not best of the year.
As far as I'm concerned, the best metal video of the year has to be Black Label Society with the directors cut of "Overlord".
There were a total of two decent songs in the countdown:
Alice in Chains "Your Decision", which isn't really metal so much, but they do kick ass and it's a good song and a decent video:
On the one hand, I have a problem with calling it Alice in Chains without Layne Staley; but I appreciate that rather than try to find a replacement singer, Jerry does the singing, and he does a pretty good job with it, making great music still so... OK.
The other song was 'Bullet for my Valentine' with "Your Betrayal", which was a mediocre video, but is a pretty good song:
BFMV aren't exactly a 'new" band, having been formed in 1998; but they only released their second full length album "Fever" in the U.S. this year (they're a Welsh band); and they've really been doing well all year. They're a great band, heavily influenced by classic metal, speed metal, thrash metal, and power metal (all my favorite genres); and both aggressive and melodic. I recommend checking them out.
