Sure, the vocals will be instantly recognizable, but other than that, the debut solo album by System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian, Elect the Dead, will be a different sort of beast. Not that it's a simple pop record anything. Tankian has already recorded layers of pianos, strings and bizarre synth noises as well as a multitude of rock sounds.

"There are a lot of instruments," he told MTVnews.com. "There's a lot of guitars and lots of different affected guitars, heavy guitars — way too many guitar tracks. It's just a different vibe. There's maybe a song or two that may be reminiscent of some of the System stuff, but I think [this material] takes a lot of new directions."

The disc will feature 11 tracks, including the likely first single "Empty Walls," "Honking Antelope," "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," "Lie, Lie, Lie," and "The Unthinking Majority." If the titles sound political it's because they are. Tankian's got some things to say about the current administration and the state of the nation, however, Elect the Dead isn't merely a left-wing diatribe.

"It deals with everything in my daily life, whether it's my daily ritual or interactions with people, politics, economics — anything in the world that touches me is an influence and comes through in the music, whether I know it or not," he told MTVnews.com. "There's humor, political stuff, ecological stuff, personal pain, transcending personal pain, transcending the material and physical — there's a lot of things, whatever I felt at the moment and whatever came through."

Even before System of a Down went on indefinite hiatus, Tankian was writing his own music. Then, when he no longer had to tour or write with the band, he started penning tracks for films, including William Friedkin's "Bug," and videogames. He also spent time working on his label Serjical Strike, home of Fair to Midland, Buckethead, Bad Acid Trip and others. While all of that was satisfying, Tankian felt the itch to start working on a solo album.

"I had never written full songs for me to sing, where I play all the instruments and produce it myself," he said. "So I had all these songs that I felt really strong about, that I thought that I should be performing myself and not have them as songs for other people or for film or anything else. And that's [how] Elect the Dead came about. It's been a fun, liberating process."

For the complete interview with Tankian, check out MTVnews.com.

For the System of a Down video for "B.Y.O.B." look no further:

The correct answer is c) Goat Semen

Goat Semen is a Peru-based black band that formed in 2000 when guitarist Levifer singer Neyra met and dedicated their lives to pure heretical chaos. Their goal from the start was to "create the most bastard and blasphemous noise that any South American band have created since forefathers Sarcófago," and they dubbed their sound "total trendkiller South American terrorist death black destruction."

Influenced by Blasphemy, Beherit, Sarcófago, Necrófago, Chakal, Bestial War, Hellhammer, Bathory, and early Mayhem,  Goat Semen secured their lineup with drummer Satyricon and started writing such songs as "Goat Semen" and "Sodom Graves."  In late 2000 they recorded their first demo called, strangely enough, Southamerican Terrorist Black Death Destruction.

Goat Semen's self-titled demo came two year's later, and between then and 2006 the band was featured on five split seven-inches. Earlier this year, the band released the full live album En Vivo En Lima Hell.

According to their Web site, the band is now ready to enter the studio to record its self-titled full-length, which will include "Sodom Graves," "Goat Semen," "Madre Muerte," "Warfare Noise" and "At Luzbel Behest."

Over the last seven years, New Jersey's Nora have been an influential force in the metalcore community. Their music helped pave the wave for bands like Underoath and Norma Jean, and frontman Carl Severson has used his business acumen to launch Ferret records, one of the biggest labels of the genre. So, why have Nora been unable to win over the new generation of metalcore fans?; since its June 19 release, the band's new record Save Yourself has sold just 1,225 copies.

"Some of these songs are really slow and cool, which is something we've never really done before," Severson told MTVnews.com's Metal File. "We didn't go out to try to emulate any of the newer, younger bands, to stay relative. We went out and did what we did. We didn't write to try to keep up with the new bands. We just tried to make it a little more aggressive than the last time, to fit our mood a little more. This has quickly become my favorite record, and I think the songs are just really interesting."

Maybe one reason Save Yourself hasn't taken flight is because it's Nora's first album since 2003's Dreamers & Deadmen and many metal fans have kinda forgotten who they are. The delay was caused in part because of the band members' commitments to family and Severson's involvement with Ferret, but there was one other major factor that temporarily derailed Nora. In 2004, drummer Criss Ross' infant daughter Jordana Rose Ross tragically drowned.

"After that, for all of us, Nora just kind of took a huge back seat to life in general," Severson told Metal File. "For the next year or so, there wasn't much movement on the Nora front; we actually started writing the new record at one point back in early 2004 and ended up scrapping five songs we'd gotten through. When we did start putting it back together a year and a half later, we sat back down and just hated those songs. So, we just holed ourselves up in the basement, and we spent a lot of time writing."

While Severson admits it took a while for Nora to get back on track, he said that once they hit stride again, they started writing some of their most powerful material to date, both musically and lyrically. "The inspiration for these songs came from what we had done personally, with our lives and our surroundings — our reaction to watching life and what it turned out like after what our drummer and his family went through, and how it all affected us," Severson said. "There was a four-year lapse between records, and a lot had happened to all of us since then, and it was just kind of getting a lot of that out."

As therapeutic as that was, financially, it's a good thing Severson's got Ferret, which has played a major role in organizing the Sounds of the Underground festival and recently signed some big bands, including Chimaira, 36 Crazyfists and Full Blown Chaos. In addition, Ferret wil release Viva la Bands: Volume 2, a collection of tracks from some of Bam Margera's favorite acts

"It's awesome, because it's kind of on a totally different, more kind of semi-commercial level than most of the stuff we've done," Severson told Metal File. "We will have a brand-new track from Clutch on there, from In Flames, Children of Bodom, Placebo — we're getting to work with all these bands we haven't had a chance to work with, and they're all great bands. It's also a way to introduce Ferret to a bunch of kids who've never heard of us before."

The album is scheduled for release on September 4, and will also include CKY, GWAR, Priestess, Dimmu Borgir, A Life Once Lost and Malevolent Creation.

For the rest of the interview with Severson, and more metal news than you can fit in a gutted corpse, check out this week's Metal File.

Here it is, the third video from Mastodon's Blood Mountain, "Sleeping Giant." Once you've seen it, the comments from director Roboshobo make more sense -- sort of.

We asked The Number Twelve Looks Like You singer Jesse Korman to fill us in on some of the weird and wonderful misadventures of life on the road, and the dude got back to us with a guest blog about watching DVDs. Not porn DVDs, not bootleg street fight DVDs, but DVDs of his favorite TV shows. And then he went on to explain how he fantasizes about TV commercials and tuning in tomorrow for the next exciting adventure. Dude, whatever happened to groupies and drinking games? Well, here he is, the wild and crazy Jesse Korman:

Being on the road sure can take a toll on your “daily-back-at-home-social life.”

What I feel like I've completely lost out on are the new TV shows. You go back home and you hear your friends talking about the new "Lost" episode or "how funny last nights 'Family Guy' was". So, one of my favorite things to do on tour is to catch up on all of these.

I’ll get full season DVDs of whatever I've missed -- like "Family Guy," "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Lost" -- and make like I’m watching them on TV in real-time. For example, I just started watching the show “Lost” (my first time checking out the show). During down time on tour, I’ll go back to the van, get some snacks and watch one episode of a series as if it was on TV normally. I even stop at the little breaks as if it were a commercial to grab a drink, and then start it again.

At the end of the show, of course I can play the next episode, but that's what makes me look forward to tomorrow! It also makes me go nuts and wonder for the next 24 hours, "What are polar bears are doing on a deserted paradise island?"

Polish death/black metal band Behemoth, took a moment of downtime from Ozzfest July 18 to shoot the video for "Prometherion," the third track frovm their astounding new album The Apostasy, which came out on July 17.

The band worked on the clip with Soren (All That Remains, Unearth) in Los Angeles and the director had this to say about the brutal vid: "Somewhere between the ideal of heaven and reality of hell falls the new Behemoth video -- an expression of the fallenness of man and the will to crawl through our own painful condition towards hope. This is a painful video to make and watch."

Prometherion should air on Headbangers Ball in early August. For now, here's the band's video for "Conquer All":

These guys don't have a full-length album out yet, but they've sure mastered the art of the evil looking logo. There's a pentagram and an upside-down cross in the image and the whole thing seems to be engulfed in flames. And that's not to mention the cool jagged letters that would probably slice through your finger more effectively than a sharpened scythe.

Here are your choices:

a) Boat Demon b) Faster Pussycat c) Goat Semen d) Uoal Demon

They don't make concerts like this anymore.

Ozzfest and Sounds of the Underground are fine and all, but back in 1991 the Monsters of Rock festival in Moscow featured Pantera, Metallica and AC/DC on the same bill. The Black Crowes also played, as did local Moscow band E.S.T., who sound almost as much like AC/DC as AC/DC, but it as clear by the end of the night which two bands were the real Monsters and would keep the heavy metal torch burning during the alternative revolution that was to come.

In addition to being a great concert, the show had real historical impact. It was the first mega-metal festivals to follow the collapse of the Soviet Union and it was a sign of the changes and hardships to come. The beginning of the 112 minute-long video capturing the event features the caption, "In August of 1991 in the U.S.S.R., the young challenged the old. Those who questioned authority triumphed."

They did, indeed, but not without some casualties. While the bands rocked up a peaceful storm, the officers handling security kicked and punched numerous members of the crowd and smacked down others with batons. Almost as unsettling as watching fans getting beaten up Altamont-style is seeing the Black Crowes playing right before Metallica. Still, there was no way a little southern blues crap could ruin the day.

The video below features: Pantera playing "Cowboys From Hell," "Primal Concrete Sledge" and "Psycho Holiday"; Metallica opening with "Enter Sandman," and continuing the assault with "Creeping Death" and "Fade to Black"; And AC/DC capping off the night with "Back in Black," "Highway to Hell," "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)." By the time the roar of the canons ceased, it wasn't clear if the band had just finished their set or if martial law had been declared.

About four months ago, a dude who used to play in the Phenix City, Alabama punk band Gamera the Invincible who goes by the name Gadget WK, created a killer mash-up video that blended footage of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Radio City Music Hall with the Throwdown song "Never Back Down."

To date, the "Teenage Mutant Hardcore Turtles" has been viewed well over 500,000 times:

The best -- and perhaps only -- Taiwanese black metal band, CthoniC have good reason to sound pissed. Their country continues to be oppressed by China and excluded from the United Nations, and as a result, does not receive benefits given to members of the World Health Organization.

The UN does not recognize Taiwan as an independent nation because China, which occupied he region and usurped ancient Taiwanese tradition some 300 years ago, has a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and continues to block Taiwan's efforts to join. Advocates for Taiwan's inclusion argue that Taiwan meets all the requirements of a nation-state. They have a defined territory, a population of 23 million and their own, independent government.

"When we play black metal, that's because we are angry about some outside culture that invades our country," ChthoniC frontman Freddy told MTVnews.com's Metal File."

ChthoniC are currently touring on the second stage of Ozzfest and each date they're playing a new song, "UNlimited TAIWAN," about the oppression by the Chinese. The band worked with motion picture director Cheng Wen-Tang ("The Passage," Somewhere Over the Dreamland") to create the following short film, which shows historical footage of Taiwan's fight for democratization backed by the storming track:
Check out this video: UNlimited TAIWAN Short Film (Not Music Video)

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