While numerous metal luminaries were walking the black carpet at the first annual Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards, XFM Radio DJ Jose Mangin was hanging out backstage with metal god and goddess Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, talking to them about the awards show, the next Ozzfest and Mangin's interesting rendition of "La Bamba," which he performed in Los Angeles with Steel Panther the night before the awards ceremony. Click "more" for all the dirt, and catch a 60-minute presentation of the Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards Saturday night at 11 p.m. on MTV2, followed by a one-hour post-show wrap-up featuring performance outtakes and more interviews. Read more...

Starting this weekend, "Headbangers Ball" will begin eight days of special programming leading up to the exclusive premiere of the Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which airs Saturday, May 22 at 11 p.m.

On Saturday, April 25 we've got a Golden Gods Awards preview special on "Headbangers Ball" that'll air at 2 a.m. on MTV2. The show will feature music videos from all of the Golden Gods performers -- Megadeth, Killswitch Engage, Hatebreed, All That Remains and Suicide Silence -- as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the event itself, the first ever metal awards show on U.S. soil, which took place on April 7 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles, California.

Click "more" for the full schedule of next week's special Golden Gods programming and our review of the show. Read more...

Slayer guitarist Kerry King with Anthrax axeman Scott Ian backstage at Golden Gods
photo by Jon Wiederhorn

"Holy f-ck, I've never seen a circle pit at an awards ceremony before" joked metal-bred comic Brian Posehn ("The Sarah Silverman Show"), who hosted the First Annual Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which was held Tuesday night at Club Nokia in Los Angeles.

The reason Posehn has never seen it is because it hasn't happened -- at least not in the U.S. The Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods marked the first large scale metal awards show ever in the States, and all corners of the metal community united to pay tribute to the music that has fired up hearts, stirred souls and changed lives. The highlight of the night was headliner Megadeth, whose crushing, polished three-song set of "Peace Sells," "Sweating Bullets" and "Holy Wars" was virtuosic, kinetic and undeniably sincere -- the perfect cap to an evening of heavy metal celebration. Read more...

MTV2 will be teaming up with Revolver magazine to present the premiere hard rock and heavy metal awards show, the first annual Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which will storm through Los Angeles' Club Nokia on Tuesday, April 7. The event will feature Ozzy Osbourne, Killswitch Engage, Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan and more, and will be aired on MTV2 as a one-hour special on Saturday, May 2.

"We're working really hard to make this an event worthy of the music it celebrates," Revolver editor in chief Tom Beaujour tells HeadbangersBlog.com. "Metal deserves this and deserves to have it done f---ing right." Read more...

Ozzy Osbourne may have been the Prince of Darkness since 1979 (as he asserts in that "World of Warcraft" commercial), but we all know Sharon's the true Duchess of Devastation.

Mum Osbourne struck again on Saturday on the set of the reunion special of VH1's "Rock of Love: Charm School." TMZ reported that mom Osbourne allegedly got angry with contestant Megan Hauserman for talking s--t about her husband, Ozzy; she ran across the stage, grabbed Hauserman by the hair and pulled her hair and scratched at her until security separated the two. Read more...

Cartoon image by Balázs Gróf

The esteemed leader of a popular metal band sent us this amazing animated music video that pays homage to the 1985 Tobe Hooper sci-fi/horror movie "Lifeforce" and features cartoon depictions of Slipknot, Metallica, Ozzy and Michael Jackson. The video is for the Budapest, Hungary metalcore band Blind Myself and was created by 32-year-old Hungarian cartoonist Balázs Gróf. Click more to watch the awesome clip, which took Gróf over a year to complete. Read more...

You might think that's a typo in our headline -- it's not.

Yeah, this is, indeed, a flashback to an old Zakk Wylde interview and solo performance session, but Zakk wouldn't be Zakk if he couldn't party like Caligula -- hence, "Flaskback."

Anyway, in the following clips, Zakk talks about family responsibility, playing with Ozzy, his friendship with the late Dimebag Darrell and his band Black Label Society's notion that life's a mountain (of beer cans). There are also a couple of cool acoustic performances. Click "more" to check it all out: Read more...

Ozzfest has done it again.

For a while it looked like Ozzy Osbourne would be the only marquee act to tour with the first free Ozzfest, but today event organizers revealed that the bill will also feature Lamb of God, Hatebreed and Lordi, and more major acts will be announced soon, some of which will likely play select dates.

Lordi will open the main stage this year and Lamb of God will be on before Ozzy. Hatebreed will headline the second stage, which will also feature Nile, Mondo Generator, Ankla, Circus Diablo and The Showdown.

"When we left Ozzfest three years ago, that was a mantra that burned itself into our collective subconscious, one that we repeat to this day in an almost autistic manner," says Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe. "To know once the power, the glory, the sheer brutality of the parking lot circus stupidity that is Ozzfest is to be destined to repeat it. The fangs are out- our souls (and livers) needed three years to recover from the last run, but we are back and couldn't be more excited."

"For us, the idea of playing Ozzfest is still hard to believe," adds Lordi frontman, Mr. Lordi. "I'll believe it when we're there. It's going to be a great opportunity for us to show people in the U.S. what we can do."

For Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta, returning to Ozzfest is especially exciting because he feels more at home on the second stage than he does on the main one.

"We had a great time on the main stage last year but it was obvious that our fans wanted to see us in the setting that they know and love," he says. "Having co-headlined the second stage twice in the past -- once with Down in 2002 and again with Slipknot in 2004 -- it's a great achievement for us to now be able to close the show on the second stage and truly make Ozzfest history with our fifth appearance on the world's best tour."

Ozzfest launches July 12 in Seattle. The event was originally scheduled to start July 7 in Southern California, but the extension of Ozzy's European tour caused the run to be bumped five days.

To get passes for this year's free Ozzfest, fans will log onto www.ozzfest.com or www.livenation.com to find links that will direct them to special sponsor sites where tickets can be secured. Tickets will be available for download on June 12. Stay tuned to www.ozzfest.com and www.livenation.com in the coming weeks for more ticketing information.

To see the complete Ozzfest press release click here.

Ozzfest organizers have just announced all 25 dates for their first-ever free festival. The tour will launch on July 12 in Seattle and run through August 30 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Once again, Ozzy will headline the event, which would be reason enough to show up even if the tickets cost the usual $2,500. However, since the tour is now free and funded entirely by event sponsors like Monster Energy Drink and Jagemeister — which will endorse the second stage — bands will no longer be paid for performing.

And capitalism being what it is, that means no other marquee acts will play the entire festival. "We know major headling acts [won't] tour all summer for nothing," Sharon Osbourne said in a statement. "But we're confident we can turn some of the genre's biggest bands on to what we're doing and have them come out to play a date or two."

No artists have been announced, but Osbourne said she already had "bands committed," and further emphasized the unprecedented nature and fee-good spirit of this year's event. "It's the first time that actually a summer festival tour has gone out free," she said. "There's been millions of free one-off shows, but this is gonna be a 25-city tour. And we're having our second stage, as usual, and everything goes as normal, except it's free."

Sadly, the bottled water, gyros, pizza, burritos and Tylenol will not be free.

The lineup for this summer's Ozzfest, according to a press release:

7/12 - Seattle, WA
7/14 - George, WA
7/17 - Sacramento, CA
7/19 - Mountain View, CA
7/21 - Devore, CA
7/24 - Phoenix, AZ
7/26 - Albuquerque, NM
7/28 - Denver, CO
7/30 - Kansas City, MO
8/2 - San Antonio, TX
8/4 - Dallas, TX
8/6 - St. Louis, MO
8/8 - Columbus, OH
8/10 - Tinley Park, IL
8/12 - East Troy, WI
8/14 - Indianapolis, IN
8/16 - Holmdel, NJ
8/18 - Hartford, CT
8/20 - Boston, MA
8/22 - Philadelphia, PA
8/24 - Pittsburgh, PA
8/26 - Detroit, MI
8/28 - Charlotte, NC
8/30 - West Palm Beach, FL

And now, here's something you won't see at Ozzfest — a six year old playing "Crazy Train."

Dakota Pictures and director Peter Margolis will start filming a documentary of late guitar hero Randy Rhoads on March 19 at the Mountain View Cemetery in San Bernardino, California where Rhoads was buried 25 years ago. Margolis will interview fans at the cemetery about the former Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot guitarist, who died in 1982 at Flying Baron Estates near Leesburg, Florida when the small plane he was in struck Ozzy's tour bus and crashed into a mansion.

In tribute to Randy, here's Randy on "Suicide Solution."