WHAT THE HELL HAS BECOME OF METAL SLUDGE?
Once upon a time, there was a website called Metal Sludge, and ’twas the most glorious website in all the land. Operated and written by anonymous, second tier (really third tier) hair metal musicians who had enough connections on the inside to get good dirt on all the self-important has beens and never wases, the site was not only informative but also extremely funny. The highlight was, undoubtedly, the interviews – usually conducted via e-mail, to maintain the secret identities of those running the site – which featured honest, often uproarious questions designed to take the piss out of the interviewee, who was usually a metal star past his or her prime (sample question, directed at Kip Winger: “Do you ever wish Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis & Butthead, would die a painful death for basically ruining your career?”); those who dodged doing interviews or couldn’t roll with the site’s wicked sense of humor usually got called out, too (when Winger basically refused to answer the question “Isn’t posing for Playgirl… well, gay?”, the editors wrote “If [Winger] were interested in making a favorable impression with the 300,000 some Sludgeaholics who visit every week, you would have put some effort into this and not come off like a crab apple.”). The site also featured a message board for groupies to talk shit about which rock gods were well hung and which ones were lousy in bed, and a section called “Exposed” where pictures were posted of allegedly bad-ass motherfuckers looking glamier than Bret Michaels, Tom Kiefer, and Mark Slaughter combined.
It was, in short, pretty much the greatest website in the history of this thing we call the ‘net.
And now it’s completely fucked.
As of this writing, the site hasn’t been updated in over a month; alas, that’s actually not so unusual for them these days. But the result is that the site is starting to seem as old and faded as the rock stars it covers. I used to check the site on a daily basis to find who Nikki Sixx was cheating on his wife with now, how recently Steven Adler had gone down on some dude to score some smack, who was winning in the competition between Vince Neil and Jani Lane to become a fatter, drunker fuck, and look at pictures of Fred Durst looking like the dude from Flock of Seagulls; now, there’s almost never anything to check.
As for the interviews? Forget it. What passes for the site’s patented “20 Questions” are now re-prints of interviews from other websites. Sheesh. It’s like ever since the site’s moderators went public with their true identities, no will talk to them anymore – which is understandable, if disappointing.
Maybe this is just the way it is; maybe metal sites are a young person’s game, the same way metal music seems to be a young person’s game – maybe the same way the awesomeness of Lamb of God negates the suckiness of modern Metallica, the awesomeness of MetalSucks.net negates the total crapiness of Metal Sludge.
Actually, that’s okay with us.
-AR
