ISIS’ AARON TURNER VS. REVOLVER MAGAZINE

Oh, how I do love a good flame war.

Our pal Dan Rodriguez over at Metal Insider has cooked up an interesting story. Seems that Isis’ Aaron Turner was none too pleased with the way this spring’s Revolver Golden Gods Awards went down:

I mean it’s great that we’re exposed, perhaps, to more people because of something like that, but at the same time, it’s like, the award itself felt kind of meaningless… Like, for instance, the ‘Hottest Chick in Metal’ award. Like, that has no fucking relevance and, to me, is actually kind of insulting. It has nothing to do with the music… it was kind of demeaning to the woman as well.

Ouch. Well, Revolver editor-in-chief Tom Beaujour has subsequently responded to Turner’s comments:

I’m sorry that Aaron was so disappointed by our awards show. Because of the rapidity with which he and his band accepted our invitation to attend, we fully expected that he would have enjoyed himself more than he did.

Revolver never represented that the winners were selected by a voting process. This may change in the future as we recognize that it has caused some frustration with the readers and fans. No decision has yet been made.

Given the degree of hostility that our detractors in the blogosphere harbor for us, I honestly can’t imagine that changing the winner selection process would do much to satisfy them.

Well, speaking from the hostile blogosphere, I find some fault with Beaujour’s logic.

See, I didn’t hear anyone complain about who won what. Turner isn’t bitching because he thinks there’s some hotter chick in metal who should have won – his beef is with the entire category. Furthermore, most of the griping I’ve heard about the event has dealt with the way it was organized, and with what was apparently sub-par coverage by MTV2 (I didn’t see it myself, so I can’t speak about it first-hand, but saying that something on MTV sucked is like saying fish need water to live, so…). So Beaujour is right and wrong: no, the blogosphere wouldn’t stop moaning and groaning if the voting process was changed. They’d stop moaning and groaning if the event was better.

Still, as Rodriguez points out in his article, Revolver deserves props just for putting together the United States’ first big metal awards show. And there plenty of time to iron on the kinks for next year.

So, in conclusion: Isis will never get coverage in Revolver again.

-AR