Metal Monday: 2011 Metal Christmas List

posted in: Features • Rock

Christmas: a time in which little boys and girls ask ol’ Saint Nick to fulfill their wildest desires. Thankfully for Santa Claus, kids don’t really wish for that many outlandish things. Metalheads, however, have some pretty crazy wants. Even though Santa might not be real, we’re going to make ourselves a metal Christmas wish-list, just in case. Better safe than sorry, right?  Here’s what we want:

1. We want Wintersun to finally finish Time. Even if you’re not completely stoked about Wintersun, won’t it be nice to finally get rid of the “Wintersun never releasing Time” joke? We think so. Even if it turns out to be another Chinese Democracy, at least we’ll be done with it.

2. We want Metallica to just stop. We love the band and all, but they just aren’t what they used to be. St. Anger was an atrocity, Death Magnetic was better but not great, and Lulu was just painful (even if we sort of gave our thumbs up to them recording with Lou Reed). Just recently they released a B-sides EP from the Death Magnetic material, and it provides almost no hope.

3. We want Axl Rose to continue being a hilarious wreck. It’s sort of a cruel thing to wish for, but it’s just too entertaining seeing more and more clips of Axl Rose totally blowing it on stage. He’s probably still making bank, so what does he care?

4. We want Black Sabbath’s reunion to not suck. In the wake of Dio’s unfortunate passing (RIP), Ozzy and Sabbath have made plans to get back together and play some shows as well as record a new album. I know a lot of people are very cautiously optimistic about this. It’s no secret that Ozzy is a former shell of himself and the entire Sabbath crew is starting to really get up there in age… but it’s the original lineup! Count us in, since this is likely the last shot to see these legends play together. We just don’t want it to be really bad.

5. We want the Hard Rock/Metal Performance GRAMMY Award to stop being such a joke. It’s pretty clear that the GRAMMY award committee just doesn’t understand metal. Why can’t they just bring a couple of people on board to help these poor, misguided souls get the nominations right for once? I mean, Sum 41? Really? Let’s get it together, people.

6. Once Wintersun actually finishes Time, we want the band to actually release it. Yes, we’re going to continue bringing this topic up. Last time Wintersun had Time “finished” they had some horrible catastrophe involving a battle with a dragon and their recording studio and melted hard drives. We’re not sure about the legitimacy of those details, but we do know that they lost a pretty incredible amount of work due to computer troubles, and that was the most legitimate cause we could think of.

7. We want Jeff Loomis to release another solo album now that he’s cut ties with Nevermore. Zero Order Phase was absolutely awesome, and we just want Jeff Loomis to continue shredding our faces off for the rest of eternity. Without vocal support from Warrel Dane that means more shred per minute, and we’re in favor of that if we’re talking about Loomis.

8. We want TesseracT to put out more great music, despite replacing their vocalist. One of the best parts about TesseracT’s 2011 album One was how unique and interesting the vocals were in the context of the band’s djent-heavy sound. They’ve since parted ways with that vocalist (Abisola Obasanya) and recruited the former Sky Eats Airplane vocalist (Elliot Coleman) to fill his shoes. He hits the vocal parts live, but can they replicate their recorded success with him? Our fingers are crossed.

9. Finally, we want 2012 to be just as filled top to bottom with awesome metal happenings as 2011 was, whether it was good news, great albums, fantastic tours or other metal nonsense.

So Santa, help us out, will you?