A very bad 10 days for metal

The last 10 days have been a very bad 10 days for metal, and a very mixed bag for me personally. I will mention the personal stuff briefly, but want to dwell on the bigger issues as it were.

Last Saturday I fulfilled a long standing ambition to meet Chris Jericho from the WWE and frontman of Fozzy. I actually got to interview him, never mind meet him, which was a real thrill, and spent around 25 minutes on his tour bus talking to him about everything from Judas Priest and Metallica to the volcanic ash cloud. I also got to see an awesome performance from Fozzy at their show at the Relentless Garage in Highbury on the same day.

Today after a very frustrating and painful experience, myself and Jayne have finally found a house to move to in Cambridge for when we relocate from Kent at the end of next month, something which should be an adventure and we are both really looking forward to it now we have somewhere to live.

Enough about me, I want to address four things that have happened in the last 10 days.

Ronnie James Dio: Whilst I am a bit young to have been influenced by Dio at the height of his powers, I like virtually every other metal fan have been influenced by Dio, either directly or indirectly. I have also greatly appreciated his works as I have filled in my metal history over the years (and I am a huge fan of The Devil You Know by Heaven and Hell, arguably one of 2009's finest metal albums). I am also very glad now that I managed to catch some of Heaven and Hell's set at Sonisphere 2009, having ducked out of the torrential storm to go and watch the last half hour or so of their set, so at least I got to see Ronnie live once. There have been literally hundreds of tributes written to him and I would not be able to do him justice by writing another one, so I would instead direct everyone to read Dom Lawson (from Metal Hammer and Classic Rock mags, amongst others)'s tribute to Ronnie on the Metal Hammer website (read Dom's tribute here). If anything more eloquent has been written in tribute to Dio, 1) I haven't seen it and 2) I'll be gobsmacked if it exists. Rest in Peace Ronnie.

Paul Gray: As I was sat in Starbucks in Cambridge this afternoon, the guy who served me reckoned from my t-shirt I was a bassist (correct assumption) and asked me if I had heard the Slipknot bassist had died (as well as mentioning Pete Steele, R.I.P Pete). I hadn't heard anything of the sort, but managed to get online to read the news on rocksins (as well as on the front page of Yahoo) of the news that Paul (#2 to give him his Slipknot number) had been found dead in a hotel room. Being very much part of the Nu Metal generation Slipknot were initially a band I didn't care for, finding them a bit too extreme, but grew to appreciate them as my tastes darkened and grew heavier.

Anyone who has ever experienced a Slipknot live show (especially THAT live show at Download 2009) knows what an incredible experience it is to see Slipknot live, something which Paul was a great part of, and now that is something no-one may see again. This of course pails in significance to what it means to Pauls family (or indeed Ronnies) who have lost something far more than a performer, and especially in Pauls case, such a tragically young age. I discovered after writing the bulk of this that Paul's wife is currently pregnant with their first child, which made me 100x more upset about the whole thing knowing that another child has to grow up without his dad, especially one who has helped to bring happiness to so many people. R.I.P Paul Gray.

I would just like to update this now I have seen the Slipknot press conference regarding Paul. I think the Slipknot guys were great, they kept themselves together very well despite the obvious pain they are all feeling and it just makes your heart go out to them and even more so to Pauls wife Brenna, life is truly fucked sometimes.

ISIS: One of the leaders (if not the single most important band) in the post metal/ambient scene for the last 15 years, ISIS announced last week after finishing their current tour and recording a final E.P. they will be calling it a day. Whilst certain friends of mine are much bigger fans of ISIS than I, I have always appreciated their work, particularly in more recent times as their sound has mellowed a tad from their earlier material. I can only hope whatever creative efforts the band members put their energies into (particularly Red Sparowes) can be half as successful for them as ISIS has been.

Jamie Graham leaves Sylosis: This one may not bother too many people (or many of you may not know who Sylosis are) but in my opinion they are the best metal band who have surfaced in the UK in the last 2 years, at the top of a very good bunch of bands like Malefice, Exit Ten, Tesseract, Forever Never and many others. Conclusion of an Age (their debut album) is a complex thrashtastic metal album, and I was very much looking forward to album number 2. The news that Jamie, their resident singer has left the band really disappointed me, as he has a fantastic voice and it will be very strange to hear Sylosis with a different singer. On the plus side of this, his record label, Siege of Amida Records is doing very well (and mainly responsible for the split from what I have heard/can tell) so hopefully he will be bringing us lots of quality metal, even if he isn't the one singing it.

Thats my latest 2p's worth, I only hope that the near future is full of much better news than some of the stuff discussed above, and that we certainly do not lose any more good people, be they metal legends, rock superstars or ordinary people.