We’d like to welcome Metal turned Glam-Rock All Stars Mötley Crüe to the ranks of such Metal Storm Awards Drama Luminaries as Stratovarius, Gorgoroth, Immortal, Negură Bunget, and Fear Factory with the band members turning on each other. (Holy shit, there’s been enough of these to launch a decent festival line up… or TWO festivals. Get it? C wut I did there?!). So yeah, Mick Mars is suing his former band mates in a squabble over who contributed what dating from this current millennium back to the same time they were relevant, which is before most of you reading this were born. As if anyone can remember anything given all the booze, heroin and opiates this band consumed. Apparently, though Mick Mars should continue to get paid for his work given he came up with “Motley Crue” and without that they’d just be two floating umlauts, Sixx’s contribution to the name… and The Floating Umlauts probably wouldn’t have sold nearly as many records and I wouldn't have gotten to slow dance with (name redacted) in my Jr. High Fall Dance to “Home, Sweet Home”, let alone her giving my backside a squeeze... /swoon sweet swoon.

In any case, band suing band… only the spin on this one is thanks to the reunion tour following their 2019 “The Joe Dirt” movie. What makes this most amusing is that tour alone brought in $173,500,000, which is serious fucking cheddar and likely $173,000,000 more than the combined career revenues of every other band I’ve listed in this entry. I don’t know about Sixx, Mick, Tommy Tripod and Vince, but you can bet lawyers is gonna get paid.

(BitterCYoung, circa the mid-80s interrupts this post to … “SHOUT AT THE DEVIL!”)

Erstwhile Stratovisionary Timo Tolkki, co-recipient of Metal Storm's very first Drama of the Year award in 2004, is angling for a special 20th-anniversary edition of his questionable showrunning tactics. After years of watching all the Gorgoroths, the Immortals, the Queensrÿches, the Rhapsodies of Fire, and the Batushkas, Tolkki has decided to reclaim his throne by launching the same band that he launched over three decades ago. Timo Tolkki's Strato reunites the Dreamspace lineup of Stratovarius (plus founding bassist John Vihervä) for new adventures that will undoubtedly cause fans, journalists, and promoters the world over to wonder whether the text at the bottom of the business card just got cut off or this really is a new band. This protestant reformation once again raises the ol' Stratovarius of Theseus debate: if every member is replaced and then you make a new band with all the replaced members, which one is really Stratovarius? We may not have time to answer that question, in the end: Tolkki's latest endeavor comes after a string of poorly received projects, including an abortive crowd-funding campaign for Infinite Visions (also legally distinct from Stratovarius), Timo Tolkki's Avalon (legally distinct from Tobias Sammet's Avantasia), and defrauding the Finnish government (which is illegal). As a result of complications arising from that final entry, Strato's debut album release has been rescheduled from October 2023 to April 2024. It is apparently well underway, but the future is always unknown, so let's reconvene at the 2024 Metal Storm Awards to see whether we meet them again in Drama or one of the real categories.

The music industry is a vicious and contentious environment generally considered uninhabitable by humans and animals. As with any art form, playing music requires you to mortify your soul before a global audience of strangers, which makes it a rather difficult passion to tango with, especially given that there is an entirely different career path dedicated to critiquing the results of that passion. Tension has always existed between people who choose to pursue art and people who choose to criticize them for it (recall David Lee Roth’s famous quip that music critics like Elvis Costello more than Van Halen because music critics look like Elvis Costello). Taking negative feedback can be painful. Still, there are classy ways to address your observers, and then there’s what these guys did. Let’s wheel out the trashy late-night talk show set to see what Metal Storm was subjected to last year.

One of musclassia’s first reviews of 2023 covered Battle For Emancipation, an almost 70-minute beast of black metal so raw it was still mooing when it hit the plate. In a dense but inchoate mish-mash of unfiltered extremity, one-man band Najand tripped over a lot of stumbling blocks that musclassia enumerated in a detailed 3.5 write-up – a rather dreadful score, but one supported by articulate and constructive feedback from our reviewer, whose assessment cannot be said to be antagonistic or demeaning to its subject in spite of its negativity. Unfortunately, all the fair-minded phrasing in the world couldn’t appease Najand himself, who registered on Metal Storm to provide his own review of our review. You can read the counter-review in the same thread there and decide for yourself whether that low rating ought to be applied anywhere else.

A similar fate befell Hercules, another single-maestro project whose many works exhibit a dire need for self-editing. Musclassia once again assumed the task of evaluating the band’s then-latest release, Waiting For The King: a magnificently hyperbolic, self-indulgent, and shred-happy chunk of power-style heavy metal done very much in the vein of Manowar, both musically and emotionally. In another measured and fair review, this one with a 4.0 attached, musclassia addressed the numerous shortcomings of the album’s approach, which was met with disapproval from Chris “Hercules” Andreadakis himself, as well as a few folks who appear to be either his cohorts or his doubles. This conflagration also produced a counter-review, and while it isn’t likely to convince us to bow to the King Hercules, it’s definitely worth a read.

Our final documented slight was nothing so involved as a review – just a passing comment from another writer of ours, AndyMetalFreak, who was unimpressed with the poor showing of Raven’s late-career downslide and expressed as much beneath All Hell’s Breaking Loose in a manner that can be described only as disappointed but inoffensive. Frontman John Gallagher, who turned 65 last year and is an adult, joined the site for the sole reason of telling Andy to fuck off. So we told him to fuck off instead. That was pretty mean, you know, John.

Anyway, folks, there are good and bad ways to take criticism. And sure, not all criticism is delivered elegantly or intelligently, but we’re willing to stand by our writers here. Don’t be a dick.

What better way to welcome back Drama of the Year than with Wintersun, who in 2023 produced enough bullshit to fill a double-gatefold deluxe hand-carved wooden box set? Back in March, the band announced on its Facebook page that it would be releasing its first new music in six years: a two-minute, Bandcamp-exclusive instrumental that was available for less than two months before being expunged. Needless to say, fans were ecstatic (or apoplectic? was that the word?) that after years and years of incessant crowdfunding campaigns, Patreon funding, touring, putative recording, and even getting the WinterSauna designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in order to receive UN funding, Wintersun had proven itself slightly less efficient than the Juice Loosener. Fans were further mollified (or was it aggravated?) when Jari announced that this one song was actually seven: yes, if you managed to fork over your De Niros in time, you were entitled to the original song, two alternate versions, and four isolated tracks, plus the master files, plus a 4K booklet, plus the deed to Jari's house, plus all-you-can-eat chicken tacos from the band's new fast-casual chain restaurant, McJari's. This incredible value (all yours for only 10 easy payments of all the dignity and patience you had left in the world) also spun off into a series of guitar advertisements and no further music. Less music than before, in fact, given that the song's existence expired at the beginning of May 2023; if you were still feeling disillusioned about the fact that Wintersun haven't done any new music in a while... it's even worse than that, because they're actually attempting to orchestrate a net loss of music.

But wait, there's obviously more. As part of a conceited concerted effort to rehabilitate his image, Jari offered his irate fans some good news: he has multiple new albums in the works! Not a single one of which is Time II! (This is the part where you scratch your head). Yes, in response to a particular barrage of complaints, Jari claimed that he stopped working on Time II in 2014 and he already said this and everybody knows it so quit complaining and subscribe to his Patreon, you ungrateful little bastards. Of course, this did contradict the updates on the album that Jari has given since 2014, including a Facebook post from October 2022 stating that Time II was 90% done, and a post from August 2020 explicitly confirming that Time II was being worked on, but we won't sweat the small things... like Jari suddenly announcing at the beginning of this year that actually Time II is done (to the surprise of the rest of Wintersun as much as the rest of the world), so he was clearly lying through his teeth or thinks that he is a lot funnier than he really is. Now, don't hold your breath, because it's not out yet. There's still time for him to fuck this up if you don't continue to give him money. Regardless of what happens, we can already be certain that Time II is going to take Drama of the Year 2024, but didn't that news just brighten up your day as you were deep in frustration over being lied to for so many years? Let's all take a moment to remember that Time was first announced in 2005.

X-Treme Festival Follies I: The Download Festival Menace – The 20th Anniversary of Download Festival was supposed to be attended by over 130,000 people, featuring bands like Metallica, Slipknot, Clutch and more (What? Wait? Am I reading the 20th anny line up or the OG one?) … The demand was so high that the entirety of the English Midlands, Leicester to Liverpool to London, were reduced to a parking lot that would see would-be concertgoers spend as much as seven hours to drive the two miles to the festival. (?! Really? Los Angelinos and Sao Paulo natives are green with envy at this vehicular efficiency). The standstill chaos wreaked havoc on the poor people local to the area, just barristers, chimney sweeps and bicycle repairmen trying to go about their normal workday. It’s been reported 600 locals who got stuck in traffic missed their flights to GTFO of town. Apparently this kerfuffle is now being “investigated” as the BBC reports.

X-Treme Festival Follies II: Wallet Attack of the Old Ones – Power Trip featured just six bands, allowing festival goers who ponied up to see all six acts without having to go through Roadburn Roddy’s annual “Sophie’s Choice” dilemma on which band he’d have to miss to see someone else. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, Tool, AC/DC, and Judas Priest. “That’s an amazing line-up!” I’d say… if this was 30 years ago. There was some mild backlash once the prices were announced and premium seating in front of the stage or in the grandstand was announced from $799 to $3,899. Even General Admission passes were $599. Seats remained unsold. Not sure why the whinging, though, it’s California. $600 will barely be enough to fill up the tank, score some Big Mac value meals (not even Super Sized!) and drive out to the event… before factoring in the cost of the rental car and shelling out $10 each for barley sodas to watch the bands playing on some giant screen because you can’t see the stage after accidentally leaving your opera glasses in your other leather pants or camouflage cargo shorts.

X-Treme Festival Follies III: Regen of the Sith – The Wacken Washout – The World’s Largest Metal Festival, which costs 299€ per person and sells out faster than you did the Barbenheimer this summer met with absolutely Biblical rain. The grounds were turned into a sprawling massive mud pit that apparently made Woodstock ‘94 look like the Mojave Desert by comparison. Barely more than half of the 85,000 ticket holders were present when admission was closed. Fans were turned away and promised refunds. Some bands canceled. How Biblical was the rain? Rumor has it that MegadavE was seen tearing down the stage in a late attempt to begin construction of an ark all while snarling at his band mates and roadies to collect two of each animal.