Revolver Golden God Awards 2010: Event Report

By guest writer Julia Neuman

April 8th 2010, Club Nokia, Los Angeles CA: It was the night before the 2nd annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards. I sat at my computer attempting to get some work done, but was instead distracted by the constant twitter feed updates from some of my favorite rockstars. "Treadmill, shower, studio, then cut out early for Golden Gods in LA," wrote Dez Fafara of DevilDriver. An update from Slash read, "Jamming w/Andrew Stockdale, Myles Kennedy, Lemmy & Dave Grohl tonight at the Golden God Awards, life is good...." Yet another from Anthrax's Scott Ian: "Posehn rehearsal was great. What a band! John Tempesta, Joey Vera, Brendon Small, Brian and yours truly. More Metal Than YOU!!!" Not to mention all the excited tweets from some of my favorite metal journalists, bloggers and radio personalities. It seemed like everyone from the rock and metal community was descending upon Los Angeles for this awards show; so, while I was technically all alone in my apartment on Golden Gods Eve, I felt like I was in the presence of tons of others who shared my passion for metal music.

After getting a full night's sleep (something that seems to be a rarity for me these days), I woke up the day of the show feeling more than ready for the evening ahead. My friend and newest addition to the Metal Assault photography team, Amanda G Hernandez, showed up at my apartment at around 2:30, and after about a half hour of chitchat, we decided that we should get on our way to Club Nokia in case traffic was bad. I'm not originally from LA, so I still find myself being overly optimistic about the traffic conditions here. "Oh, maybe it won't be that bad. It'll probably take us a half hour to get across the city if we take the 10." Ha. Even Texas native Amanda called me out on my ridiculousness. So, we started out on our journey to Club Nokia at around 3:00 - a full two hours before the black carpet media check-in.

Of course, it took us the full two hours to get there. By the time we got past traffic, parking fee woes and ticket/will call logistics, it was 5 PM and we were standing in the check-in line. I ran into another one of our photographers, Ed Hannigan, and also had the pleasure of meeting Jamie, AKA Hard Rock Chick, whose blog I've been reading for several months now. The media check-in people made us sign a form and then told us we were all set to go. When I asked if we needed a wristband, or a pass, or some form of press identification, they said no. I'm not entirely sure what the point of checking in really was, because we weren't asked to show any identification when we were walking into the press section of the black carpet. Amanda and I lucked out on that one, because we only had one real photo "pass" between the both of us.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from the black carpet. All I knew is that I was surprisingly calm, considering the likes of Ozzy, Rob Halford, Lemmy, Slash and MegaDave were soon to be arriving. Amanda and I were standing on the photo risers taking pictures of ourselves - probably to the annoyance of the corporate, get-in-get-out-quickly photographers who were standing around us. While having those types of photographers at an event like this is to be expected, it was still funny to witness their cluelessness about the event in general. I guess I just don't ever associate metal with giant media outlets because they so often overlook the genre completely. That's why the Golden Gods Awards is so interesting to me; there aren't many other highly publicized events during which you'll get to witness someone like Testament's Chuck Billy or Slayer's Kerry King speaking up at a presenter's podium.

At around 5:45, a woman made an announcement saying that the arrivals were going to begin trickling in. Over the next hour and a half, I apparently never took my finger off the shutter button of my camera - I ended up taking over 650 photos of rock music's royalty. There was definitely no shortage of memorable moments to capture on film. Just to list a few: Rob Halford's rockstar poses, the fuss made about Dave Lombardo's rose print shirt, Andrew W.K.'s crazy jumping and ridiculous facial expressions, Zakk Wylde's behind-the-scenes beer swigging and Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper's chokehold. Seeing a few of my all-time favorite men in metal - including Jerry Cantrell, Dave Mustaine and Chuck Billy - was also very cool. But even after seeing all these amazing people, a piece of my heart was still missing since Metallica wasn't there. It's a little bit disheartening that I still haven't been in the offstage presence of my all-time favorite metal man, James Hetfield.

After the black carpet was over, Amanda and I headed into the venue. We got out onto the floor just in time to catch Zakk Wylde's dramatic rendition of the National Anthem, and the crowd going crazy over it. Immediately after Zakk was done playing, the stage backdrop slowly spun around, revealing the two hosts of the evening - Andrew W.K. and Chris Jericho - as well as 2010 Golden God winner Rob Halford, sitting on top of Harleys and waving to the audience. I think Andrew W.K. added a little bit of humor to the spectacle, which could have easily been way over-the-top cheesy. The trio headed over to the presenter's podium to bust out some generic lines from the teleprompter before introducing the performance by Slash and his band. Slash and crew were really impressive, especially when Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy was on vocals (Wolfmother's Andrew Stockdale sang the first part of the set). During a very short break in the music action after the performance, Amanda and I began traversing the bottom floor of the venue in hopes of finding the perfect viewing spot. I was glad when we were able to find a little bit of a window behind some drunk old women who weren't really standing up straight. We settled there just in time to see the Slash-Lemmy-Grohl supergroup performance of "Ace of Spades", which was the first song of the night that got me really pumped.

I had heard from several people that last year's show, being the first one ever, had been a little bit awkward at some points. This year was no different. There were a lot of moments that made the crowd antsy - most of which were due to the fact that the show is set to air on VH1 Classic next month, and the sound and video had to be re-recorded several times in order to be good enough for TV. One of these moments was when Andrew W.K. had to repeat a joke several times to introduce the guys from Slayer. At least the punchline was funny - something about having a confrontation with the guys from Slayer while walking down a dark alley.

As I Lay Dying and The Devil Wears Prada were the next couple acts to perform. As I Lay Dying's first song was really entertaining, and they were really confident onstage for being such a young band surrounded by heavy metal giants. A little later, after the best vocalist award was presented to a vibrant Ronnie James Dio, The Devil Wears Prada took the stage. This was the second time I've been roped into seeing this band live, and not so shockingly, their performance felt a little out of place on the Golden Gods stage. This might seem overly dramatic, but the fact that Chuck Billy introduced TDWP made me a little bit sad. First of all, I'm just not a fan of TDWP - but I'm a huge fan of Testament and Chuck Billy. I know that the situation was supposed to be representative of the older metal legends "handing over" the stage to the younger ones, but it only just highlighted how a lot of modern metal talent is extremely mediocre compared to the talent that came out of the 80s and early 90s. I'm just thankful that there ARE some great new, modern metal bands that are carrying the torch for heavy music into the new generation. TDWP just aren't one of them for me.

Moving on with the show. A couple of my favorite bands ended up walking away with awards. I was really happy to see the best live band award go to Metallica. There were a few boos from crowdgoers who didn't know Metallica wasn't in the house to accept, and were surprised when a video acceptance speech showed up on the monitors. It was nice to see the familiar faces of Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo for a couple minutes, even if they were on a tiny little screen. Another one of my favorites, Alice in Chains, also won awards for both Come back of the Year and, later in the show, for Album of the Year.

The next performance was the one that Scott Ian was referring to in his tweet. Apparently he had been practicing for his supergroup performance - a song called "More Metal Than You" - specifically for this show with Brian Posehn, John Tempesta of The Cult, Brendan Small of Dethklok and Joey Vera of Armored Saint. It was more of a comedy skit than anything else. Brian Posehn was talk-singing some hilarious lyrics at the mic while the rest of the band members played along. It was definitely funny, but wasn't my favorite performance of the night. They also had to do it twice because apparently something didn't record correctly the first time.

After a couple more award presentations, Fear Factory took the stage for the next performance. I've never gotten into them, but I enjoyed the few songs they played. Vocalist Burton Bell needs to work on his clean vocals though, because they were alllll out of whack. Otherwise, the performance was pretty impressive for a band that is just coming off a hiatus. It was refreshing to see Dave Grohl come out on stage a few minutes later. I can't really put my finger on what it is exactly, but there's something about Dave that is really likeable and comforting. I'm glad he's back to playing drums; like someone said while he was onstage, Dave Grohl just "belongs" behind the kit.

For some reason I had completely forgotten that Rob Zombie was going to be performing as the headliner. When Amanda reminded me of this lovely little fact, we became determined to push ourselves up toward the rail. We were pretty successful (second row), but ended up standing next to these two women with boobs the size of giant watermelons. We were talking/joking about it for awhile, and luckily it provided a diversion for us because Zombie and crew were having some technical issues. Finally, Rob Zombie, John 5, Piggy D and new addition drummer Joey Jordison came out in full make-up and costume to play a five song set. The first two songs were "More Human Than Human" and "Dragula", definite Zombie fan favorites. The band then played a new song off Hellbilly Delux: 2,"Mars Needs Women," which I thought was way too repetitive as a live song and got boring very quickly. After that, I turned to Amanda and gushed about how cool it would be if they played "Thunderkiss '65," if only just so I could hear that simplistic but super heavy opening riff. When Rob Zombie took the mic and started talking about how it seemed like forever since the White Zombie days, I knew we were going to hear it. Zombie cued for John 5 to start chugging the Thunderkiss riff, and I was a happy girl. The band closed with "Superbeast." It felt strange for me to hear that as a closer because I remember that song vividly as the opener at Zombie's killer Halloween show in Hollywood last year. Hearing it live again brought back memories of how amazed I was when Zombie first took the stage at that show.

The feelings I had about Zombie sort of paralleled my feelings about the Golden Gods show in general. While the show was amazing to experience, it was a little bit outshined by the memories that I have of the more intimate, down-to-earth, "normal" metal shows that I go to frequently. The Golden Gods seemed to gloss over a bunch of really cool things, but never really got into the nitty gritty, and so never really tugged at my emotions or blew my mind in ways that, say, a headliner show from Zombie could. Nonetheless, I feel incredibly lucky to have been in the presence of so many rock and metal legends that night. I'm also really excited that the United States finally has its own awards show dedicated to the kind of music we live and breathe for every day. It's about fucking time!

Revolver Golden God Award - Rob Halford (JUDAS PRIEST)
Revolver Golden Gods Lifetime Achievement Award - Lemmy Kilmister
Album Of The Year - ALICE IN CHAINS - Black Gives Way To Blue
Best Vocalist - Ronnie James Dio (HEAVEN & HELL)
Best Guitarist - Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY)
Best Drummer - Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan (AVENGED SEVENFOLD)
Best Live Band - METALLICA
Comeback Of The Year - ALICE IN CHAINS
Best Underground Band - THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN
Hottest Chick In Metal - Maria Brink (IN THIS MOMENT)

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