Joe's Big Toe

Paul Gray, Slipknot’s bassist who died recently, died of an acci­dental morphine over­dose accord­ing to his autopsy report.
A large num­ber of artists, led by Korn’s Jonathan Dav­ies, have decided to boy­cott BP products as a res­ult of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­ico. The artists, includ­ing Dis­turbed, Rise Against, Lady Gaga, Gods­mack, Back­street Boys, Slightly Stoopid, Rob Zom­bie, Mega­deth, Anthrax, Creed, and Flog­ging Molly, are hop­ing to encour­age pet­ro­leum com­pan­ies to put in stricter safe­guards, and observe them in the future.
Reel Big Fish will be releas­ing their own …

Apo­lo­gies for last week’s lack of news, I was in Hun­gary.
Emo’s Annex have banned Fat Mike from the venue after his now infam­ous Cokie the Clown gig as part of SXSW. You can read more about the gig here.
Vik­ing Funeral is a new label, star­ted by Fletcher Dragge (Penny­wise) and Ken Seaton of Hard­line Enter­tain­ment and Sub­urban Noize Records. Their first sign­ing is Author­ity Zero, who will release their fourth album through the label on May 25, 2010.
You can check out Cash Cash’s cover of Forever Young on their MySpace.
According …

Stray­light Run have announced that they are now on an “indef­in­ite hiatus”. How­ever, Shaun has quit the band for good.
Zoli Teglas (Ignite) is Pennywise’s new vocal­ist. Allegedly, it happened as a res­ult of a mis­di­alled tele­phone num­ber.
As part of the Olympic cel­eb­ra­tions in Van­couver, a pro­ject called “Live­City” was con­ceived, to bring live music to Van­couver for free. Alex­is­on­fire were play­ing one of these free con­certs, and unfor­tu­nately the crowd rushed the stage, and sev­eral people were hurt.
The first batch of bands con­firmed to play Down­load this year are: Rage Against The …

Kurt Cobain’s mother has been awar­ded tem­por­ary guard­i­an­ship of his daugh­ter, Frances Bean. Court­ney Love is not men­tioned in the court papers, and no reason is given for the decision. This is the second time Love has lost cus­tody of her daugh­ter.
AFI, Sick of it all, and The Dear and Depar­ted have announced some UK dates in April, 2010:
April 5 at Rock City, Not­ting­ham
April 6 at Brix­ton Academy, Lon­don
April 8 at ABC, Glas­gow
April 9 at the Academy, Manchester
April 11 at the Academy, New­castle
April 12 at the Academy, Birm­ing­ham
John Frus­ci­ante has …

As you may recall, I thought that Crisis was a ter­rible album com­pared to Alexisonfire’s pre­vi­ous stuff. Old Crows, Young Car­din­als seems to be a step back in the right dir­ec­tion for the band. Lyr­ic­ally, Alex­is­on­fire have always been a touch on the com­ical side — and this album is no excep­tion. Music­ally, though, Watch Out! was incred­ible, with peaks and troughs in all the right places, and sear­ing gui­tar work. They’re not back there yet, the raw energy of .44 Cal­ibre Love Let­ter and the vocal intric­a­cies of Hey, …

Alexisonfire’s latest offer­ing to the world of hard­core was some­what dis­ap­point­ing com­pared to pre­vi­ous albums. Watch Out! is def­in­itely among the genre lead­ers as an album, but sadly, Crisis falls some­what short of the extremely high stand­ard the band have pre­vi­ously set them­selves. That’s not to say that this album isn’t good – it is. The music just doesn’t improve on pre­vi­ous efforts, and the vocals are frus­trat­ing. Even the track names aren’t as ori­ginal as they have been in the past. It’s a shame, because I was look­ing forward …