In what is interesting news to some, Ozzfest, which was once a lucrative touring festival, and later a “free”, half- assed touring festival, has now been downsized to a one day metalfest of sorts. My guess is bands finally realized that paying upwards of $80,000 to play for free on a nationwide tour is not worth it anymore. On the positive side, the lineup for one day show (held in Dallas, Texas at Pizza Hut Park) will feature performances from some pretty impressive bands; Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Serj Tankian, Hellyeah, Jonathan Davis and others. Kids that love outdated music and washed up, used-to-be-in-a-big-band-but-have-to-play-less-important-solo-music are stoked.

A trailer for Metallica’s new Mission:Metallica website features a sneak preview of some of the new songs on the band’s forthcoming Rick Rubin produced album. Metallica are of course one of most bad ass bands of all time, and even if they fucked off on the last couple of records, any true Metallica head still has hope that James Hetfield will pull a few Puppets-era riffs out of his ass and make this new record hard as f. Plus the band finally canned Bob Rock, which is definitely a start. Now if they could just start slamming Jaegermeister and writing “EET FUK” on their guitars again they’d really be getting somewhere!

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich hints that the band could follow Radiohead for an eventual digital release. With only one more album to go on their Warner Brothers Records deal Metallica looks like they’ll be leaving the major label game.

From Cnet:

“We want to be as free (as) players as possible,” Ulrich told Rolling Stone during the band’s Northern California appearance for Record Store Day. “We’ve been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in 27 years or however long it takes for the next record, we’ll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet.”

No, he’s not endorsing peer-to-peer sites, but there’s no mistaking what Ulrich meant. The group is considering whether to follow the lead of Radiohead and Reznor, leader of the band Nine Inch Nails. Those acts sent shock waves throughout the music industry over the past six months by distributing albums over the Web without the aid of a record company. They also offered digital versions of the albums for free.

Gods of the Earth is turning out to be a prophetic title for The Sword’s latest album. First off, congrats goes to the band for topping the Billboard Heatseeker chart this week and also showing up at 102 on the top 200. Not bad for an indie metal band from Texas. I don’t know if that means their rich yet, but I’m sure they’ll have extra cash for medieval weapon replicas and sweet bongs.

They also premiered a new video for my favorite song on the new album “Maiden, Mother and Crone,” which you can view on the MTV’s Headbangers Blog. It’s got beards, eerie backgrounds and a hot, witch-y chick, so pretty much everything you could ever want from a metal video.

If that weren’t enough, the band will now tour with fuckin’ Metallica in Europe. No shit. The Sword/Metallica tour starts in June in the most metal place on Earth, Norway. With any luck, the boys from Austin will remind Metallica that they used to be a metal band.

I’d like to think that some of this success has to do with me blogging about them everyday. Just saying.

Here are The Sword’s dates with Metallica:

06/16: Bergen, Norway @ City of Bergen Festival*

06/18: St. Petersburg, Russia @ SKK Hall*

06/20: Riga, Latvia @ Skonto Stadium*

06/22: Bologna, Italy @ Parco Nord*

06/23: Bucharest, Romania @ Cotroceni Football Stadium*

06/25: Sofia, Bulgaria @ Levski Stadium*

06/27: Istanbul, Turkey @ Inonu Stadium*

It’s been a big day in Tennessee, what with the devastating tornadoes and the announcement of Bonnaroo’s 08 lineup. And you thought Bonnaroo was supposed to be some sort of hippie fest…. Pearl Jam and Metallica headline.

Rumor: Led Zeppelin will play Bonnaroo

The Truth: Kinda sorta not really. Aging Rock God Robert Plant will be playing with Allison Krause, and the all female Zep tribute band Lez Zeppelin will be performing as well.

Rumor: Bonnaroo is now a metal festival.
The Truth: Kinda sorta not really. Metallica IS one of the headlining acts, and The Sword and Mastodon are also on board, but the whole lineup is spread pretty evenly across genre lines, from hip-hop to reggae to jam to indie rock to electroclash dance…whatever with Coachella, Bonnaroo is gonna be where it’s at.

Rumor: This Festival Will Change Your Life.
The Truth: That’s not a real rumor. Although Iron & Wine and Death Cab are on board.

June 12-15, 2008 in Manchester, Tennessee. You can look at their pretty poster here, but I thought it would be handy to type out all the confirmed performers so far, and I did so after the jump. (more…)

1. Outdated Memes

2. Shameless Linkz

3. YouTube

4. Late Breaking News