Rants - The Pre Introduction to the Future: 1 comments

I am still waiting for Mr.Mantheravathee, the lead guitarist and the riff master of the mighty shadow lords, Hayagriva to come back to me with some details about his band for my next feature entry. In the mean time, I will be structuring and assembling a lengthy and extensive opinion based entry about the future of Malaysian Metal and the challenges that it will be facing in keeping abreast with the rapid development of the Heavy Metal scene world wide. Sounds impressive huh? It shall not be intended as a proper study of cultural anthropology for Malaysian Heavy Metal, but I do hope that it will shed some lights for those who are interested to be acquainted with various realistic guiding principles that they can apply as a diagram to shape Heavy Metal music with their own identity, personality and distinctiveness. In advance, I would like to thank those Metal enthusiasts who have agreed to accept my invitation to participate. Thank you.

I have already received a few answer sheets and the opinions were intellectually dominating, mind bombarding and served the point more better than better. I cant fucking wait!

The entry will mainly be dealing with the issue of originality and passion in Heavy Metal in the context of Malaysia; the issue of having the right driving force that will be needed and acknowledged as a striving foundation for Malaysian bands on their quest to build reputations for their respective bands on a wider and larger scale; and the last but not least, the challenges that needs to be noted and overcome. I am trying to promote this blog internationally and hopefully the forum shall be an eye opener for the worldwide audience of Heavy Metal, of the intensity and innovativeness of Malaysian Heavy Metal. Fingers crossed.

Rants - The Malaysian Black Metal: 2 comments

When I first started The Bullet Belt a few weeks ago, it was only for one sole motivation and that sole motivation was my dire need to contribute and promote local underrated heavy metal bands from all across Malaysia regardless of genre and origin. I know that it will not be much of a contribution for the time being since I am still quite in the dark as to what would be the best and most effectual ways to promote the bands featured in this blog. Myspace would be a good place to start. In any case, I will try and see it through.

I have been checking out a number of exotic metal bands on the Astral Lore Production’s roster and currently crossing my fingers in the hope that all the bands featured on the roster are still amply alive and active. I know some of them are. It is quite blissful to witness the actuality that there are still some perseverance, enthusiasm and devotions from the good people in Astral Lore to promote exotic bands from the local black metal scene. A few years ago, I often wondered what in the name of damnation have happened to all these greater than great Malaysian black metal bands? What happened to all those bullet belts, pentagrams, spikes, inverted crosses, corpse paints and those nerve wrecking high-pitched haunting wails? Long gone were the glorious reigning days of Klang Valley Black Metal elites in the likes Nebiras, Aradia, Sauts Alastor, Ravenlord and War 666.

The black metal rhetoric toyed around by the local media had really made a huge caustic and destructive impact on the local metal scene especially the local black metal scene in particular. All of a sudden, the bands seemed to have died down. It was a very dark and gloomy year for the metal industry during those challenging days back then and the result showed.

I hope with the current development smearing rapidly in the local black metal scene, the hell hordes, with high hopes, shall once again reign supreme. With the reformations of some of the older bands like Aradia, Mistik and Imperial, the release of albums from bands like War 666, Hayagriva and Insultor and newer bands started to emerge these recent years, there might be a possible bright future after all for the local black metal scene. Or should I say, a dark and black future? We shall see.

Book Review: The Heroin Diaries - A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar: 2 comments

The Heroin Diaries - A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar, Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins, Pocket Books, 2008.

I am currently waiting to write something about one of the most hardworking and dedicated metal band from Malaysia which goes by the name of Hayagriva and I am currently doing some proper research about the band and until I completed this mini investigation, I shall write about something else so that The Bullet Belt would not end up being a lost work like most of my other one hit wonder blogs.

This is not actually a book, but more of a collection of entries from Nikki Sixx’s 1987 diary with additional commentaries by various people who were mentioned in his entries. This is like an additional text book for the hard hitting New York Times bestseller The Dirt, the complete autobiography of his world famous hard rock band, Motley Crue, straight from the horse’s mouth. I will be reviewing The Dirt later. Now, let us focus on The Heroin Diaries – A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rockstar by Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins.

Nikki Sixx was and still is the bassist and principle songwriter of Motley Crue, one of the most influential and prominent hard rock bands in the history of American rock and roll, if the world would be an overstatement. Their insubordinate and wild attitude both in life and music, on and off the stage, was the elementary constituent that shaped the whole music industry in the 1980’s. Cock Rock, Glam Metal, Hair Metal, Rock Kangkang, Rock Paras, call it what ever you want but it all undeniably started and revolved around bands like Crue when Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were too busy knocking each other off the stage.

Through this diary we can dive deep into Nikki Sixx’s life of rock n roll, booze, drugs and sex. Most of the entries contained either about Sixx doing drugs, trying to be sober, preparing to go on stage and a bit about his fellow band members here and there. Each entries comes with additional commentaries from his band members, former managers, ex-girlfriends and Sixx himself, trying to put in little bits of details about what really happened on various events mentioned in each of the entries. That very much helped the readers to understand what in the name of hell is he talking about.

The lay out of this book is all over the place so you really need to focus on what you read. Ghoulish arts and drawings here and there and most of the contents were either black, white or red in color. It was a bit of a turn off for me because more than once that these horrendous lay outs distracted my eyes from reading the texts. Like I said, this book is just a supplemental read for The Dirt. For those who wanted to know more about Motley Crue, I would suggest that reading The Dirt would be more than enough. For collectors, this is a must.

I bought this book for RM57.50 from Kinokuniya, KLCC on 13th February 2009.