Sully Erna, the singer for mainstream metal band Godsmack, is being sued by a Chelmsford, Massachusetts women and her parents because of injuries the woman sustained when Erna crashed into the back of her car in April 2007 in Methuen Massachusetts, reported the North Andover Eagle Tribune.

The auto negligence lawsuit claims Erna's careless driving caused him to plow into the back of a car, resulting in "a severe traumatic brain injury" to 26-year-old Lindsay Taylor, who was riding in the back seat of a car driven by Eric Sargent. Read more...

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, Louisiana, the festival organizers have posted a batch of professionally shot vintage videos on their Web site, some of which are very metal, indeed.

This year, the event will go down October 24, 25 and 26 and will feature a diverse range of acts, including Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Mars Volta, Butthole Surfers and loads of jazz, funk, blues, soul, emo, hip-hop and electronic acts.

Click "more" to watch killer clips of Down, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Godsmack, P.O.D. and others from past Voodoo festivals. Read more...

The excellent thrash metal documentary/sociology study, "Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal," comes out on DVD on Tuesday, September 16. For our final promotional clip for the movie, director Rick Ernst has supplied us with a batch of outtakes of bands from various subgenres of metal talking about how they discovered thrash and the importance of the genre. We'll get to the video soon, but first here's Ernst talking about this week's clip.

With over 100 hours of footage filmed for "Get Thrashed," we couldn't possibly squeeze it all on one DVD - although we tried! Thankfullyk, we have the Internet and HeadbangersBlog.com, which allow us to share clips that are not on the DVD. That's right, you can only see this footage right here and this exclusive clip covers a lot of ground.

For starters, Slipknot's Corey Taylor talks about being a thrash fan in Des Moines, Iowa where apparently you really had to work to find thrash albums in the '80s. Contrast that with my experience growing up in New York at the time, and I could almost always find the thrash classics.
Several artists talk about the initial run of "Headbangers Ball." While the show didn't feature a ton of thrash videos, the ones they did play forever changed the lives of many artists watching back in the day. Personally, when I was growing up I didn't have cable, so each and every thrash video I saw on "Headbangers Ball" at a friend's house was a treasure. It was pre-Internet and a music video was as close to going to a show as you could get without physically being there. Yes, thrash fans would begrudgingly sit through non-thrash videos just to see Exodus' "Toxic Waltz" or my personal favorite, Vio-lence's "World in a World." We bitched about it then, but it is a badge of honor now.

Thankfully, today's new breed of thrash influenced bands and fans don't have to work as hard or wait as long to get their thrash metal fix. It's at the tip of their fingers -- on call 24/7 -- and they don't have to wait. It's instant gratification and its awesome -- for the most part. As Lemmy so eloquently sang, "Sometimes the chase is better than the catch".
Now click "more" to watch our final "Get Thrashed" clip: Read more...

Yeah, we know a bunch of you are thinking the answer to the above question is none of the above, but there's gotta be a reason why Disturbed and Godsmack are two of the only metal bands that can still go platinum, right? And don't go claiming it's because both are commercial sell-outs because neither have changed their direction that dramatically since they started. So, maybe they both started out as posers, but if that's the case, why has Disturbed managed to secure a slot co-headlining the Mayhem fest with Slipknot and how did Godsmack get to open for Metallica? Read more...

Orange County, California hardcore metal band, Throwdown, are in the studio with producer Mudrock (Godsmack, Avenged Sevenfold) working on their new album Venom and Tears, which is due in late spring.

"His friends call him ‘Mud,' but let's be honest. A dude with a name like that doesn't have a ton of friends," jokes the band on its Website. "We, however, love the guy and are excited to 'cut a record,' as they say.'

Demonstrating they'd be equally good at straight edge comedy, Throwdown adds, "I dunno if ‘they' really say that anymore or who ‘they' even are, really. [But] we're pretty sure he's excited too, so we don't have to worry about him playing Nintendo in the middle of tracking."

Throwdown first worked with Mudrock on covers of Misfits and Crowbar songs they recorded after their 2005 disc, Vendetta, and enjoyed the process so much, they asked him if he wanted to work on the new album.

"He showed the most interest out of all the people we had conversations with," singer Dave Peters tells headbangersblog.mtv.com. " He was really excited, which kind of surprised us because he doesn't work with bands that are as heavy as us."

The new Throwdown album will be as vicious as the band's past slabs, says Peters, but will offer new elements as well. "A lot of the songs bring out a different feeling than just anger," he says. "We tried to explain that dichotomy with the album title, Venom and Tears."

While some old-school fans may scream, ‘foul,' and look for someone to pick a fight with, Peters says the development was necessary to keep Throwdown inspired. "We've been a band going on a decade, and we wanted to try some new things, so that's what we did," he says. "We know what our fans appreciate, but we never want to put the same record out twice. So, there will definitely be some surprises for kids. Like, ‘Whoa, I didn't know their guitar player' could do that. But at the end of the day, it's still a Throwdown record."

Check out the video for "Burn" :

Here are the answers to yesterday's round of trivia. If you got all five questions right, you're either a true metal guru or you've mastered the art of Googling.

1. Primus guitarist Larry LaLonde got his start playing with which thrash metal band?
b) Possessed
One of the most vicious and sinister Bay Area bands, Possessed released two albums (1985's incendiary Seven Churches and 1986's ripping Behind the Gates) and an EP (1987's Eyes of Horror) before breaking up. In 1987, LaLonde joined Les Claypool and Tim Alexander in the quirky metal jam band, Primus. Two years later, Possessed bassist and singer Jeff Becerra was shot in a mugging and paralyzed from the waist down.

2. Actor Johnny Strong plays in which band?
c) Operator
Strong played everything and sang on his 2003 album Can You Hear Me Now. He had a little more help for his major label debut, Soulcrusher, which comes out later this year. His current touring band includes ex-Puddle of Mudd guitarist Paul James Phillips, but don't hold that against him. 3. Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi married which female metal performer in 2000?
d) Maria Sjoholm
Swedish-born Sjoholm was the frontwoman for the Alice in Chains-influenced girl band Drain S.T.H. The group put out two impressive albums, 1996's Horror Wrestling, and 1999's Freaks of Nature, before breaking up in 2000.4. What influential band was Josh Homme in before Queens of the Stone Age?
c) Kyuss
One of the founders of a music form that would be coined stoner metal, Kyuss played dense, dizzying metal that simultaneously grooved and ripped. Between 1991 and 1995, the band released four albums. Their best was arguably 1994's Welcome to Sky Valley. After breaking up in 1995, Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri formed Queens of the Stone Age with ex-Kyuss drummer Alfredo Hernandez and guitarist/keyboardist Dave Catching. Oliveri was booted in 2004, but Queens continues to rule the land.

5. Godsmack frontman Sully Erna used to drum for what Boston outfit?
a) Meliah Rage
The underground Boston group formed in 1985 and went through various drummers before Erna briefly joined them in the early '90s. While he didn't appear on any of the band's full studio discs, he played on the 2003 album Unfinished Business, which was recorded in 1992 but shelved for 11 years.