The “Godfather of Heavy Metal” has filed suit with the US Patent and Trademark Office, claiming that Black Sabbath guitarist and former bandmate Tony Iommi illegally seized ownership of the landmark band’s name.

According to a report in the NY Post [via The Daily Swarm], Osbourne is suing Iommi for a 50 percent interest in the Sabbath trademark as well as a cut of any profits Iommi’s enjoyed thereby, going so far as to claim that his “signature vocals” are responsible for the band’s “extraordinary success,” which the suit suggests plummeted after his departure.

He kinda has a point.

You may not know Red Fang by name, but if you’ve been near the internets recently, you’ve probably seen the video for their debut single “Prehistoric Dog”. It’s ‘gone viral’ as the kids say, and rightfully so: it’s easily one of the best videos of the last five years. Incorporating host of visual delights, including excessive beer consumption, live action role playing, creative recycling and Monty Python-esque gore, you owe it to yourself to seek it out immediately. In fact, the video is so good that you might be distracted from the fact that Red Fang are much more than an awesome video. That would be doing the four Portland natives a great disservice, as a trip through the self-titled Red Fang debut will assert quite definitively that they are nothing less than a full-on four-piece Metal onslaught.

It’s a good time to be in a metal band. Mastodon and The Sword are nabbing Grammy nominations while classic acts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest draw the same huge numbers they did in their 80s heydays. Even more notably, the crowds are comprised of increasingly larger numbers of young fans with their parents. Who says metal doesn’t promote good family values?

Like The Sword, Red Fang owe more to the Black Sabbath or Motorhead end of the spectrum. There’s some heavy cowbell and ride action going on here, and it’s not even close to being ironic. Red Fang aren’t a one trick pony, either. On tracks like “Sharks”, they change tempos at will, and before you know it, you’re pretty much helpless to avoid flailing around like you’re a dozen beers in at a Melvins show. It’s not normally in my nature, but by the middle of said song, I was very glad that I live alone. By the end, I was pretty sure there were good reasons for that status. In my defense, the song is named “Sharks” and metal rules of conduct mandate a certain level on enthusiasm.

For a four-piece, Red Fang make a hell of a lot of a racket. There are times when they get almost Nirvana with it, due in no small part to drummer John Sherman’s non-stop pummeling. This guy hits hard, whether it’s on the swaggering “Good To Die” or in slower, sludgy parts like the ones on “Humans Remain Human Remains” that come close to the Melvins side of the Nirvana sound. Perhaps maybe a bit too much: the chorus hook and its similarity to “Heart Shaped Box” may very well precipitate a call from Ms. Love, especially given her recent squandering of her ill-gotten gains. Musical similarities aside, the vocals are hardly warmed over Creed-ified Kurdt Vedderisms. Props also have to be given to singer/guitarist David Sullivan. Here is a man with some pipes on him. He’s equally comfortable with a gritty rasp or a grungy yowl and adds the final piece to the headbanging awesomeness that is Red Fang. There’s a pronounced animal theme here, but lest you think they are a one trick pony, rest assured that the themes of fire, destruction, thunder and human remains are also addressed. Such things are comfortable in their familiarity.

All of the metal planets have aligned on Red Fang. If you consider yourself a fan of heavy music, it would be impossible for you to not like this record. Each track has a barbarian swagger that doesn’t ignore the fact that while we are basically evolved apes, we’re not dumb apes. Check the average Red Fang crowd maybe four beers into their set and tell me you don’t see evidence of Darwinism. Red Fang the band will definitely appeal to your primal side, but Red Fang the record shows that you can bang your head and still think with it.

There for a blessed moment we had bands that didn’t seem to care about image:  Black Flag, Husker Du, The Descendents, Beat Happening, Nirvana.  Yes, they all had an image but it didn’t seem as contrived as say, Vampire Weekend, The Shins or any number of “indie” bands playing the festival circuit this summer.
 
That is why it was so refreshing when I received a CD from the Wichita, Kansas-based band Black Gasoline.  No, they weren’t extremely original but the influences that ring through on their album, She Gave Us Magic, all mix well to create a 1970s heavy music lover’s equivalent of a giant hash brownie. This is indeed stoner rock. And what is wrong with that?
 
The band’s love of classic rock is entirely in your face.  They create a sound that is as thick as sludge and meddles into a sound that is reminiscent of Van Halen, The Who, and recent champions of the sound, Queens of The Stone Age.  Taking their name from a 1940s barely refined type of homemade fuel, the band (Bryan Seely on vocals, Paul DeCeglie on guitar, Larry Donaldson on keyboards, Kendall Newby on drums and Scott Mackey on bass) seem ready to make their namesake proud; using driving guitars, pounding drums and bowel loosing bass lines as accelerants, they’ll set the Midwest on fire.

I “spoke” with the band via MySpace.
 
When did Black gasoline come together?
 It’s been about four years now.
 
What music has had the biggest impact on you as a group? She Gave Us Magic sounds very rooted in 1970s rock to me…
I think we have stylistically gravitated to the feel of 70s hard rock, but I don’t think you could call that a genre or even say that that would make us any easier to explain if you did. I do think it would be correct in that during the 70s you saw bands like Deep Purple or Black Sabbath make increasingly diverse, ambitious and dynamic albums, so I hope that’s what you mean. But as we’ve continued developing and finding our artistic voice, we’ve moved towards a genre that really didn’t exist, in that most of your 70s era bands only made one or two heavy psych albums, a piece which was usually peppered with a lot of R&B and blues, whereas we’ve been attempting to make a career out of that era’s accidents instead of the easy “heavy metal” outs.

As far as what’s been getting our goat lately, and I hate to answer this for everyone else, but the last few years worth of Swedish hard rock like The Hellacopters, Graveyard, Baby Woodrose, Dungen, and Witchcraft are absolutely awesome. Black Mountain, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, High on Fire, The Flaming Lips, Midlake, and Dead Meadow are some American bands we’ve been into. Not surprisingly, a lot of oldies are in rotation: The Pretty Things, Grand Funk Railroad, Hawkwind, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, E.L.O, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, The Who, Queen, The Byrds, The Beatles. In the Ipod era, it’s almost more difficult to convey the logic of musical influence because after a point, and this is more likely for a musician, it gets almost more scholastic than it should be on the surface, because it is, after all, just pop music.
 
Is She Gave Us Magic your first full-length record?
 Yes it is, but we are more than half-way into a new record that will either make us or break us. I’m always appreciative of any interest in us, but it’s hard not to have more interest in the future than the past. So keep an eye on us; we’re hoping for summer or fall.
 
Is the process of songwriting a group effort or does one member take the reins more often?
I think one of our greatest strengths is our creative process. By the time a riff or a melody is filtered through the band as a whole, the original idea is, in many cases, unrecognizable. Without the collective input of all five of us, it just wouldn’t be the same.
 
Is there much of a rock scene around Wichita?
It ebbs and flows. I don’t want to be unfair to a core group of people that really do work hard to ensure that there’s always some sort of scene, but sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s more like really loud fashioned. Like most American cities there’s a faction that is birthed from corporate radio and guitar stores which will always be shit, but there’s an underground that has no set sound but has been very interesting, for instance Wichita spawned Manilla Road, Split Lip Rayfield, so wrap your head around that!
 

What do you think of the current trend of bands becoming famous and getting signed to deals strictly from internet buzz?
It’s great if you don’t mind being famous and working a day job.
 
Do you think that it takes away from a band if they don’t have to tour the country and build their own fan base?
They certainly won’t be that cohesive. Making an ambitious record is not that hard in this day and age. Having taste is another matter, but neither will matter if you can’t pull it off live. You might have to play after us, and we won’t make it easy for you.
 
I saw your band play a club in Lawrence, Kansas, a few years ago and your energy was explosive. How do you stoke that fire every night?
Blood, sweat, practice, need for attention, energy drinks… Mostly practice, and all that energy that a good crowd reflects back to you.
 
With “indie rock” being the big thing as of this moment, do you think heavier bands like Black Gasoline suffer?
Do you mean any worse than it already has? Personally I think it’s great for a band like us; it makes us even more different. If we’re back to back with a really trendy indie band, we look like Viking plunderers when the reality is that, compared to modern metal bands, we’re not really that heavy, just louder. With music the way it is now we’re a mystery, and, personally, I think it works in our favor. Styles change, a few years ago it was that rap rock thing. How smart does that Limp Bizkit guy look now?
 
How is the tour in support of Magic going?
We’re still promoting it and selling it, but at this point, we’re really revving up to the next record.
 
What’s been the biggest crowd you’ve play for to date?
Probably The Riverfest in Wichita with fellow local luminaries Split Lip Rayfield. I think that was two or three thousand people.
 
What is your inspiration for songs like say, “Lady Iron Wing” and “The Boy That Destroyed The World”?
 
“Lady Iron Wing” starts off sounding like it’s another “dangerous chick” song, like Motley Crue’s “Looks that Kill or Deep Purple’s “Lady Double Dealer”,etc. but as the song moves along the listener hopefully” discovers that “The Lady” is actually a world war II bomber and as for “boy” your guess is as good as mine.
 
Do you think a band having an “image” is important at all?
That’s an interesting question in that we’re aware that our image is an absolute lack of image, which has its own hipster appeal. It’s interesting in that we are aware BG has this burnout image, but it’s not something that we think about because we would rather shop at thrift stores and have bad ass equipment then waste too much time really dwelling on it. If there’s any method to our image, it’s that so long as nothing dates you, your on the right track.

Metallica, the bay-area giants that legitimized “thrash metal” with albums like Kill ‘Em All, Master of Puppets, …And Justice For All and “The Black Album” were welcomed into the hallowed confines of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4, 2009.

Their inclusion, though absolutely deserving in every conceivable way, poses a wider question to my ever curious mind: Will the inclusion of now two “metal” acts, (Black Sabbath being the other. Let’s face it, Led Zeppelin and The Who don’t count as metal.) clear the way for other metal and proto-metal acts?

The governing body of “The Hall” is still skittish when inductions are concerned. The Hall has inducted piano music lightweight Floyd Cramer, but has passed up The Stooges. They’ve welcomed jazz “rockers” Steely Dan and the doo-wop group The Moonglows, but took forever to induct The Ramones and The Talking Heads. So, what would make you think The Hall will get heavier anytime soon?

There are several bands that fall into the metal, punk, thrash and hardcore categories that are entirely deserving of the honor of induction. Here is a list of bands that are eligible and in my mind, should be included. Bare with me, it’s a short list.

Motorhead: Without Lemmy Kilmister and the boys, the genre of thrash (and Metallica) probably would never have existed. Their album, Ace of Spades, is a benchmark of lawn killing volume and speed.

Megadeth: Dave Mustaine, former member of Metallica, focused all his aggression and hatred into classic ear splitting albums such as Rust in Peace, Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, Countdown to Extinction and Killing is My Business and Business is Good. And as an added bonus, the band takes it’s name for the loss of lives from a nuclear detonation. Now that’s Metal.

MC5: The Detroit based house band for the Black panther Party was the first to “Kick Out The Jams”. Their explosive shows, incendiary guitar work of Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer and controversial political stances helped set the stage for both punk and metal.

The Stooges: Again, another band that helped in the invention of metal and punk. For god sake, listen to Raw Power and tell me Iggy Pop and his Ann Arbor, Michigan brethren don’t belong.

Black Flag: No they aren’t metal, but hardcore punk arose from the “forbidden beat” created by metal and more precisely, Motorhead. Black Flag gave birth to thousands of punk and thrash bands either by groups attempting to copy their sound or by guitarist Greg Ginn’s indie record label SST.

The Melvins: Masters of sludge and drone, no Melvins equals no Nirvana. No Nirvana equals none of the good bands and some of the bad (I’m talking to you, Bush and Candlebox) that appeared in the 1990’s wake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Judas Priest: Rob Halford is the King of the 1980’s wave of British Metal. British Steel is an album for the ages.

And there is just a taste of the metal, thrash, hardcore and punk bands that have shaped the musical landscape over the past 30+ years that are up for induction. They have all, either directly or indirectly, changed the public’s perception of what is great, what is groundbreaking, what is acceptable and what is not. And in the process have warped my brain for the better.

I must extend my congratulations to Metallica. They truly are one of the greats of this or any other time. Who knows, maybe next year someone from my list will be asked into The Hall, but my bet is that the voters will probably go with The Carpenters instead. Man, could they wail!