The black metal battle of the year so far has been waged, not at the altar but in the court room. Gorgoroth Last year, vocalist Gaahl and bassist King ov Hell tried to boot guitarist and band founder, Infernus, out of the group. While the two misanthropes carried on as Gorgoroth, Infernus filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates for the rights to the name. On March 10, the final verdict was handed down and Infernus emerged victorious. Now, Infernus speaks to Norway's IMHOTEP about the court case, his feelings about his ex-band mates and the future of Gorgoroth. Click "more" for the complete interview. Read more...

Underground hardcore metal band Madball may never be as popular as, say, Hatebreed, but they're steeped even deeper in history and street cred. Frontman Freddy Cricien's brother is Agnostic Front vocalist Roger Miret and he's been an active part of the scene since he was 12. As a Teenager, Cricien started Madball with some of his brother's bandmates and while there have been lineup changes over the years, the group exploded like a pipe bomb from the very start with their 1989 EP Ball of Destruction, and they've never looked back. Even when they went on hiatus for two years after 2000's Hold it Down, they were destined to return, and in 2005 they got back together to created the incendiary Legacy. Infiltrate the System followed in 2007.

Norway's "Headbangers Ball" recently hooked up with the guys at New York Hardcore Tattoos, a shop in New York's Lower East Side that's owned by Murphy's Law vocalist Jimmy Gestapo and Vinnie Stigma, who plays guitar for Agnostic Front (and used to play with Madball as well). During the day, MTV Norway talked to Cricien about New York Tattoos, the roots of the hardcore scene, the history of Madball, their latest album Infiltrate the System and the video for the title track. The Madball video was produced by Ann Christin "Anki" Rihm for MTV Norway and Denmark and edited by Elisabeth Sjöberg. Click "more" to watch the clip. Read more...

Black metal celebrity Gaahl, frontman for Norway's nefarious Gorgoroth, has always been good for a laugh. Stories about him beating a man and drinking his blood from a chalice, and leading his band through shows in which severed animal heads were strewn across the stage and naked people bathed in fake blood were hung from crucifixes were the stuff of maxi-metal mythology. And that was all before the most intimidating living frontman in black metal admitted to the press he was gay.

Since then, outlets that used to be concerned with speed and brutality have been asking questions about fashion lines and being a generational spokesman for the entire gay underground black metal community -- if such a thing actually exists. On December 30, Dutch web site Faceculture posted nine three to five minute interview segments with Gaahl, and as of 7 p.m. today, the most views any of the clips about non-gay issues had received was 60. The one titled [ex-boyfriend] "Dan Deviro's clothing, attraction to men, the media," however, has received over 28,000 sets of eyeballs so far, which is way more revealing than a Jennifer Aniston sex tape.

During the interview snippet, Gaahl reveals that 2008 was the year he kissed a boy and he liked it. "Last year was the first time that someone's insanity grabbed hold of me," he said, then admitted he's not really a touchy, feely kinda guy. "I'm not too much into the physical thing, I've been more into the aesthetics."

Click "more" to watch the full gay segment and the other eight interview clips with Gaahl. Read more...

photo by kruk.hier, courtesy of www.flickr.com

It would be pretty frickin' cool to hear a song that goes, "Hi-ho, hi-ho/ it's off to work we go/Cuz if you like to gamble/I tell you I'm your man." Of course, that'll never happen, but recently there was a strange pop culture collision, an unlikely meeting of the minds if you will, and Lemmy got some of his chocolate in Walt Disney's peanut butter.

And now, on November 21, Motörhead's song "Dog-Face Boy" will appear in the Walt Disney film "Bolt," which stars John Travolta and Miley Cyrus. The track, which appeared on Motorhead's 1995 album Sacrifice, plays during a scene in a mailroom blasting over the headphones of a young worker who accidentally wraps the American white Shepherd, Bolt, in a box that gets shipped off to New York City.

"It's never too early to get the kids started on our music," says Lemmy. Read more...

Look for Lamb of God's 2009 album, Wrath, to mark a return to the political firestorms of 2004's Ashes of the Wake. While the band strayed from such subject matter on 2006's deeply personal Sacrament, the worsening economic crisis, never-ending war in Iraq and continual controversies from the Bush administration are things the band can ignore no longer. Still, there will be differences between the tones of Ashes and Wrath.

"It's not as soapbox-y, and not as rant-y about the government — it's more about personal experiences," guitarist Mark Morton told Chris Harris of MTVnews.com. "We've met a lot of people and fans who've served in these wars that are going on around the world, so it's a little more personal, tying the worldview into how it affects individuals. And then there's stuff that has nothing to do with CNN at all. There are songs on this record that talk about our experiences, and are aimed at certain people we've met along the way, who, through jealousy or whatever, found some reason to betray us or turn their back on us or try to stab us in the back. As you have success, people kind of turn against you sometimes, so there are a couple of songs directed at those people. Hopefully, they'll know who they are." Read more...

There's no stopping the nine-headed killing machine, Slipknot. The band recently landed its first number one album with All Hope is Gone, was the star attraction of the first annual Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour, is about to release a psychological, rain-soaked video for “Dead Memories” (co-directed by percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan) and will return from overseas at the end of the year to launch a new U.S. headline run in early 2009.

At the moment, vocalist Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root aren’t even thinking about ramping up their highly successful side project, Stone Sour, again because they’re too tangled up in the Knot. Yet for percussionist and visual artist Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown), all things Slipknot aren’t quite enough. Oh, he’s thoroughly enjoying the tremendous ride they’re on, and he’s got no plans to bail on The Nine. But at the same time, he’s got a few other irons in the fire, and one of them is his new band Dirty Little Rabbits, which released a three-song EP Breeding in 2007 and just signed to The End Records for their upcoming material. The day before Slipknot boarded a plane to head to Japan, HeadbangersBlog.com phoned up Crahan to talk about his new baby.

Tell us about Dirty Little Rabbits.
Shawn Crahan: Dirty Little Rabbits is my new Slipknot. I’m playin’ drums, and I’m a songwriter and this is the band I’ve been waiting to be in my whole life. And it’s more of an alternative band than a metal band. It’s everything I’ve ever been into. And it’s a thought process, it’s a mindset. And this will be the band I end my life with. A lot of people don’t know I’m more or less an alternative person in art and music. I didn’t grow up obsessed with metal. But that’s most of the beauty behind Skipknot. You’ve got guys that are completely dedicated to the metal, and then you’ve got guys who never even listen to it, like me. And you come together and make this thing called Slipknot that happens to be a metal band, and that’s awesome because I always believed when I got together with my brothers that they were writing music that I never heard or felt and that’s why I went with it. And I brought the art to this music, and throughout time I developed all my musical skills and – boom -- here I am with Dirty Little Rabbits and it’s finally everything I’ve ever wanted in a band. Read more...

The new look of Finnish monster rock band Lordi

Horrific, cinematic and endlessly entertaining, Lordi are still very much a club band in the U.S., yet in their native land of Finland they've been superstars for a while. Maybe that's how they cranked out the cash for elaborate costumes, deluxe art work and pristine production. And it certainly explains how put together such a stark, gloomy and expensive looking video for "Bite it Like a Bulldog," the first single from their new album, Deadache, which comes out October 28, just in time for Halloween.

Here's what frontman Mr. Lordi told HeadbangersBlog.com about the clip, which was directed by Limppu Lindberg. "We wanted to achieve something that breaks the tradition of Lordi videos. The director has been my graphic 'right hand' for years, and we felt that it was time to let him have a try on this side, too. His previous work includes videos for Children Of Bodom, Norther and many other Finnish metal bands."

For the video, the band wanted to get away from the straightforward work they've done in the past and try something more cryptic and dark. "The idea was to have a video with a not-so-simple and easily understandable storyline," Lordi said. "We wanted the clip to focus on the feeling of the song and the new, more grotesque look of the band. The modern horror film classics such as 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' remake and 'Hostel' were the starting points and the influence for the visual look."

"Bite it Like a Bulldog" was shot over two straight days in Rovaniemi, a town in the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland. But despite the remote location and macabre atmosphere and party-vibe of the song, nothing of note happened at the shoot -- nothing but hard work and excellent performances. "Usually at video shoots, there really isn't any funny incidents happening to us," shrugs Lordi. "I don't know why that is. It's always about trying to beat the clock, so maybe there's no time for anything but work to happen."

Click "more" to watch the video for "Bite it Like a Bulldog," then see it on TV on Saturday night's "Headbangers Ball." Read more...

In an age when so many people are getting their music online, artists are having to come up with inventive ways to convince fans to buy their CDs. One method is the tried and true "bonus CD." The idea here is that DVDs take much longer to copy online and require much computer space than CDs, and that, if the visual accompaniment is enticing enough, fans will decide the complete product is worth their hard earned cash.

Then there's the "free t-shirt with CD purchase" promotion used by acts including In This Moment, which, let's face it, is really more like "free CD with t-shirt." During the Metal Masters tour, Judas Priest actually offered offered a free lawn seat ticket to fans who bought physical copies of their epic double album Nostradamus. And finally, there are acts like Metallica, who feel cutting edge packaging and art work are enough to lure consumers to buy their CD. Read more...

Sigh at B.B. Kings in New York, photos by Jon Wiederhorn

Mirai Kawashima, the frontman for Japanese experimental black-metal band Sigh, is pissed. He's not mad that the band's first New York date in years is on a Tuesday night and the venue is only half full. He's not upset that he's got a catalog of original material to draw from and certain members of the crowd keep yelling for songs by Venom, whose material Sigh cover on their new EP A Tribute to Venom. He's not even angry that Sigh's last full album, Hangman's Hymn: Musikalische Exequien, was one of the scariest, most inventive offerings of 2007, yet was but a flicker on the radar compared to a waterfall of uninspiring metalcore releases. No, Kawashima's rage has more to do with his generalized disgust for the values and beliefs of modern man.

"I hate 99 percent of the people on this earth," he says in a soft voice. "I hate weak people who have to cling to fairy tales like religion, and I hate greedy people that have nothing more than making money in their head. I just want all of them to die." Read more...

Headbangers Ball can exclusively reveal that Japanese experimental metal band Dir En Grey will release their seventh full-length album, Uroboros, on November 11 on The End Records in the U.S. The disc will come out the next day in Japan on Firewall and November 14 in Europe thorugh Gan-Shin.

Domestically, the album will be available in four format: digital album; CD jewel case; deluxe limited-edition CD digipak with bonus track and DVD; and 12" LP with a digital download card included.

Click "more" to see the tracklist and read our new email interview with guitarist Kaoru. Read more...