Billboard: Comedian Brian Posehn Goofs on Scott Ian of Anthrax in ‘Grandpa Metal’: Premiere

February 6, 2020

Members of Slipknot, Dokken, Testament and more guest on the comedy-metal album of the same name.

Brian Posehn figures that his new album, Grandpa Metal, took about six years to become reality. And it was the title track, premiering exclusively today on Billboard.com, that helped the actor-comedian-writer bring the project into focus.

“We had the title,” explains Posehn, who wrote the song with longtime friend and collaborator Scott Ian of Anthrax. “The idea is that all guys my age [53] are kind of grandpa metal, stuck in the ’80s or whenever they liked heavy metal. Their opinions have not changed since then.”

At first, the idea didn’t seem that funny to him. But then, “I came on the idea of just making fun of Scott, ’cause he literally hasn’t liked a new band since Refused, and I find that funny,” says Posehn. “Once I decided it would just be me busting his balls, I started filling the song with as many old-guy jokes as I could.” After that happened, Posehn “got onto this thread commenting on all the different things I love about heavy metal and having a sense of humor about all these different genres of music and commenting on them.”

Once he found that path, he saw that Grandpa Metal (arriving Feb. 14 on Megaforce Records) could be more than just the “funny metal record” he initially envisioned. “I started to realize how cool it could be,” says Posehn, whose credits include TV series Mission Hill and The Big Bang Theory, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects,Deadpool comics and voices for the animated films Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. “I really wanted to make a record where people could sit down and listen to the whole thing from front to back — and if you don’t, that’s fine, too. The songs can work by themselves. But they’re even better together, back to back, I think.”

The comic had plenty of help in the endeavor besides Ian. The 14-track set features appearances by members of Soundgarden, Slayer, Dethklok, Amon Amarth, Machine Head, Dokken and more. The album was introduced in November 2019 with a cover of a-ha’s synth-pop classic “Take On Me” that includes performances by Death Angel’s Rob Cavestany and his son, Aiden; Testament’s Chuck Billy; Exodus’ Steve “Zetro” Souza; and the late Jill Janus of Huntress. Steel Panther’s Michael Starr and Slipknot’s/Stone Sour’s Corey Taylor lend a hand on another cover, Ylvis’ “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?).” The rest of the material is original, including the surreal conversation Posehn has with “Weird Al” Yankovic on “My Phone Call With Weird Al.”

“Working with those people really elevated it,” says Posehn. “I always wanted to fill it with guests — that was always my intention. I was always going to fill the songs with my favorite guitar players, and the singers … well, there’s a reason I tell jokes and haven’t been a singer my whole life, and some of these songs needed real singers. Now that it’s all done and I’m sitting back and looking at it, that all these people said yes is mind-blowing. And the fact that it took as long as it did makes sense because it had so many moving parts.”

Grandpa Metal  also contains barbs about artists and genres Posehn doesn’t like — with Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman and Patrick Stump gleefully playing along with the diss. However, Posehn does feel bad about taking shots at Huey Lewis in the track “Scary Nightmare” after learning about the Meniere’s disease that has forced Lewis to cease performing live. “I had no idea,” he says. “I’m not that guy; I’m the comic who’s accidentally mean. I don’t enjoy some of his music from back in the ’80s, but I’ve worked with the man. He’s a Bay Area man and so am I. That makes me sad. That’ll be my one regret — ‘Why did I have to go so hard on Huey?’”

Posehn is planning to make videos for the title song and the track “New Music Sucks,” and he’ll take Grandpa Metal on the road via joint spoken-word and music shows with Ian. “The idea of me singing more than one or two songs terrifies me,” says Posehn, who recently sold the pilot for an animated series to Nickelodeon and has “some comic books in the pipe” as well. “[Singing] is really not my wheelhouse. So Scott and I plan on doing these limited tours where we do spoken word and standup, and at the end of the show, I bring him back out and we do ‘Grandpa Metal’ and one or two other songs, striped-down versions of ’em. That’s about the most you’ll get out of me. I didn’t do this record to get out there for two years of touring.”

 

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KERRANG! : “BRIAN POSEHN HAS WRITTEN THE MONA LISA OF COMEDY METAL ALBUMS”

February 5, 2020


Featuring Corey Taylor, Johan Hegg, and even the late Jill Janus, Brian Posehn’s Grandpa Metal is a gut-busting magnum opus.

Given his pedigree, it’s unsurprising that Brian Posehn is both hilarious to interview and the kind of guy with whom you can talk about metal for hours. The actor and comedian — whose credits include Mr. Show, Reno 911, and Rob Zombie’s infamous The Devil’s Rejects — has been known as one of Hollywood’s true metalhead ever since he joked that it wasn’t gay for men to give each other blowjobs as long as one of them was screaming ‘SLAYER!’ While discussing the massive guest stars included on his new album — among them Corey Taylor, Scott Ian, Dethklok’s Brendon Small and Exodus’ Steve — one can hear the awkward metalhead teenager in Posehn’s voice, wondering how he got any of these musicians to work with him.

“Dude, [I feel that way about] so many of them!” says Brian. “Weird Al, Gary Holt, Phil Demmel — and Jill Janus! I mean, the fact that I get to share the last music Jill Janus did with the world… I don’t think she had anything else this close to being done. I know she was working on a new record with her band, and had some other concepts, but I don’t think they recorded. The fact that I wrote this Goblin Love thing for her, as a silly take on Muskrat Love, which was this terrible song I grew up with, I’m really proud and really stoked that I got to that.”

Listening to Brian’s new album Grandpa Metal, one imagines Brian’s musical guests will be equally proud to work with him. Co-written by Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman, the record is a barrage of old-school metal that’ll make you snicker like the teenage creep you secretly are inside. Whether it’s the extreme metal-ribbing Satan Is Kind Of A Dick, the Nordic head-shaking of One Quarter Viking, Three Quarter’s Pussy, or his unstoppable penis anthem Big Fat Rock (“A long boulder with two smaller boulders!” shouts Posehn among lyrics that’ll make Jesus weep), the songs on Grandpa Metal manage to poke fun at every aspect of heavy metal culture. Even the covers — of A-ha’s Take On Me and Ylvis’ What Does The Fox Say — display that to Brian, not even his own record should be taken seriously.

“It came together organically that both songs are European pop songs that we made European metal,” says Brian. “I wanted to do covers — I didn’t want to do parodies, so I didn’t want to change the songs. I wanted them to sound like a Swedish or Norwegian cover of these songs. I’ve always thought that any song you hear would be better if it was heavy metal. Think of any song you grew up with, and it’s not metal — if you make it metal, it’s going to be better.”

Grandpa Metal was six years in the making — when’d you first start getting these guest stars recorded?

Some of the songs started around that time. The first guests I got were for What Does The Fox Say? I got Corey Taylor. He recorded that stuff at least five years ago. Scott and I always wanted to do something like this, so we brought it around to other labels, and Megaforce, when they made the offer, made total sense. For me, as a metal nerd, just to be on that label was insane.

I wish we would’ve whipped it out in two years, but I don’t think it would be as fun as it is. Some of the stuff came together organically, because last year, I was short on a couple of songs when the label wanted it, so that fired me up to get finished, and it came together really well.

Were there any songs that only came together at the very last minute?

For one, the title-track, Grandpa Metal, was one of the last songs that we worked on. We had the name and were originally calling it something else. We were calling it Grandpa Metal but as a general thing — like, guys my age who still listen to metal, but are crusty about it, who only listen to stuff from 1984 through 1991, that kinda guy — which I’m definitely guilty of doing sometimes. But once I decided to go after Scott, because I call Scott that all the time, that song kind of just wrote itself. Then me and Joe Trohman who wrote that wrote Monster Mosh and Big Fat Rock in a matter of days — which I think is how you’re supposed to write records!

Is Scott Ian really as salty and dismissive of new metal bands as you make him out to be?

No, man — well, yes, for music that’s true. But he’s not salty. We’re pals! He’s a funny dude. He lets me make fun of him for four minutes, and he loves performing that — we performed it live on the Megacruise, though we added more jokes to it. We’re funny together, we’re a funny team. Partly it’s our size difference, like when I worked with Patton [Oswalt] — any time you put me with a small person, it’s funny. But it’s true, he hasn’t heard any new music since 1992, and that’s around when the Refused came out. I think that’s the last band he liked.

As someone who’s been writing songs about metal for over a decade now, have there been any developments in the metal scene that you find absolutely hilarious?

The fact that I made fun of metal by numbers — and it stuck around! I didn’t think that song was going to make that music go away, but the fact that I made fun of some of those bands and they’re now doing their 20-year anniversary tours, the fact that that kind of style I don’t love are still here. There are some metalcore bands I do love, but the fact that this thing that I’d hoped would go away with my help didn’t.

You might’ve even given it a second wind.

Maybe. Yeah, blame me!

You’re 53 now — are there any metal songs that make you feel old to listen to? Like, you’re raging to a track, and then think, ‘Jesus, I’m old as balls’?

There’s a lot of it. It’s funny — I know what you mean exactly, but listening to Black Sabbath, I don’t feel like that, because it doesn’t feel dated. Black Sabbath was already old when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, Ozzy was out solo. But anything that came out that I found, like it was me finding a new band, NOW I feel old listening to that, because those guys are old now. Ratt’s Out Of The Cellar would make me feel old. Dokken would make me feel old.

I don’t know why, but the cooler stuff like Metallica, I don’t feel ancient when I listen to it — maybe it’s the stuff that just feels more dated. The hair metal stuff — I hate using that phrase, but the Sunset Strip stuff. I didn’t too much into those bands after that whose bands had two names, Danger Danger or whatever, but that first wave. Twisted Sister would make me feel old, but Armored Saint and Anthrax and the cool stuff doesn’t!

On the other side of that, are there any bands you consider new who have been around for over a decade?

Lamb of God and Mastodon I still think of is new. But the newer bands I’m listening to aren’t even that hip or cool. Havok, Power Trip, and He Is Legend — they’re not that new, but they’re new to me. They’ve all been putting it in, but I still think of them as the new kids. With He Is Legend, I loved [that new record], and I really got behind it, and I put it on the Internet saying, ‘I love this band!’ And people were like, ‘Yeah, nice job, Grampa! Late to the table!’

Brian Posehn’s Grandpa Metal comes out February 14 on Megaforce Records, and is available for pre-order.

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Brian Posehn & Scott Ian (Anthrax) Amoeba Records In Store Feb 2020

January 30, 2020

BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE AND ALL AGES!

SF EVENT FEB 13th DETAILS:
Comedian Brian Posehn has recruited an all-star list of musicians for his first metal album, Grandpa Metal (out February 14th on Megaforce). Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Posehn will play songs and discuss their collaboration on Grandpa Metal at Amoeba SF on Thursday, February 13th at 5:30pm. Buy the new album that day at Amoeba SF (a day before release date!) to get into the signing line after their performance.

The towering comic teamed up with Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman, and Dethklok’s Brendon Small to create the album, which was produced by Jay Rustin. The 14-song tracklist features 12 original compositions, plus a brutal cover of the A-ha hit “Take on Me” and a rendition of the novelty dance song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis.

HOLLYWOOD EVENT FEB 19th DETAILS:

Comedian Brian Posehn has recruited an all-star list of musicians for his first metal album, Grandpa Metal (out February 14th on Megaforce). Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Posehn will play songs and discuss their collaboration on Grandpa Metal at Amoeba Hollywood on Wednesday, February 19th at 5:30pm.

Free/all-ages show. To meet Brian & Scott and attend the signing after the performance, purchase Grandpa Metalin-store only at Amoeba Hollywood starting February 14th.

The towering comic teamed up with Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman, and Dethklok’s Brendon Small to create the album, which was produced by Jay Rustin. The 14-song tracklist features 12 original compositions, plus a brutal cover of the A-ha hit “Take on Me” and a rendition of the novelty dance song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis.

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Billboard Magazine: Comedian Brian Posehn’s ‘Grandpa Metal’ Album Features Members of Anthrax, Slipknot, Fall Out Boy & More

December 6, 2019

Comedian Brian Posehn has friends in metal places. The Uncle Nick star has corralled a murderer’s row of metal and rock help for his upcoming metal album Grandpa Metal, due out on Feb. 13 on Megaforce Records.

The album produced by Jay Ruston (Anthrax), will feature a massive list of guest collaborators, including Fall Out Boy members Patrick Stump and Joe Trohman, Dokken‘s Jeff Pilson, “Weird” Al Yankovic, Dethklok‘s Brendon Small, Anthrax‘s Scott Ian and Jonathan Donais and Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor.

The album’s first single is a thundering death metal take on A-ha‘s iconic “Take on Me,” featuring Rob Cavestany (Death Angel), Jill Janus (Huntress), Chuck Billy and Alex Skolnick (Testament) and Steve Souza (Exodus). Also appearing on the album: Gary Holt (Slayer), Pearl Aday and Johan Hegg (Amon Amarth), Michael Starr (Steel Panther), Jacob Bunton (Mars Electric) and Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil.

The album will also feature a cover of the novelty Ylvis tune “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” with vocals from Taylor and Starr. “I honestly feel that every good song would be better if it were heavy metal,” Posehn said in a press release. “And I think I proved my case with ‘Take on Me’. It’s such a catchy song, it’s so cool, but I always thought if it had three guitars instead of a keyboard, it would be even cooler.” Pre-order the album here.

The track list for Grandpa Metal:

1) “Intro to Satan”
2) “Satan’s Kind of a Dick”
3) “Scary Nightmare”
4) “One Quarter Viking, Three Quarter’s Pussy”
5) “Big Fat Rock”
6) “My Phone Call with Weird Al”
7) “Take on Me”
8) “Grandpa Metal”
9) “New Music Sucks”
10) “New Music Sucks Reprise”
11) “Goblin Love”
12) “Monster Mosh”
13) “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say)”
14) “Super Secret Track”

 

 

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COS: Comedian Brian Posehn announces guest-heavy Grandpa Metal album, covers A-ha’s “Take on Me”: Stream

December 5, 2019

Featuring members of Slipknot, Anthrax, Slayer, Fall Out Boy, Soundgarden, and more

Comedian Brian Posehn has recruited an all-star list of musicians for his first metal album, Grandpa Metal. The funny man has previewed the LP with a brutal cover of the A-ha hit “Take on Me”.

The towering comic teamed up with Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman, and Dethklok’s Brendon Small to create the album, which was produced by Jay Rustin. The 14-song tracklist features 12 original compositions, plus the A-ha cover and a rendition of the novelty dance song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis.

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