2016 Pedal To The Metal Tournament: Dio Division: First Round

Here is the first round match ups for the Dio Division (formerly known as the heavy metal division) in the 2016 Pedal To The Metal tournament which is our March Madness style tourney. We have some interesting matchups in the first round with the big one being Iron Maiden taking on King Diamond in the mega matchup. We also have tourney newcomers Primal Fear taking on Helloween and Sonata Arctica taking on tourney heavyweights Accept. The other matchup of the tourney for this division is former two time tourney champs Judas Priest taking on tourney newcomer Armored Saint. What upsets will the first round bring, you’ll have to vote and find out. As usual, there is a time limit to vote and you have until Sunday April 20TH to vote.

2016 Pedal To The Metal Tournament: Selection Sunday

Here it is metal fans, the moment you have been waiting for since we announced the 2016 Pedal To The Metal Tournament. For those of you that do not know what it is, it’s our very own March Madness style tournament where bands will duel it out for ultimate supremacy and bragging rights for a year. The way the winner is decided is by you the fans. That’s right, just like all the previous tournaments, you will ultimately decide the winner of each match in each round by voting. Before we carry on with selection Sunday, some things have changed with the tournament and you may have noticed. The first thing is that we had a lot of complaints last year regarding the voting process. Last year, we kept it open so that you (the fan) could vote as many times as you wanted. Well, apparently some fans of certain bands were pissed off over that because there band lost. We rectified that issue in the later rounds and we are going to continue it this year. The thing with this year’s tournament is that you are going to have to wait an hour before you can vote again. We also changed the name of the divisions and who gets to enter the tournament. In order t participate in this years tournament, you have to be an active band which means you actively tour and/or record music.

The names of he divisions have also changed as the extreme metal division became the Chuck Schuldiner division, the rock division became the Lemmy Kilmister Divsion, the heavy metal division became the Ronnie James Dio division, and the thrash division became the Jeff Hanneman division. To see who made it in what division, click here. As far as selection Sunday is concerned, we put each division into a hat and we picked the names out of a hat. Each name that we picked would face the next name until the division was complete. We have some surprise match ups for each division and then we have some doozies like Megadeth vs Metallica to open the Hanneman divsion. Newcomer Bobaflex has the heavy task of facing Alice Cooper while Kiss faces Guns N Roses in a mega match up. In the Schuldiner division, I am looking forward to seeing how defending Pedal To The Metal Tournament champs Kreator are going to do as they face Carcass in the first round. Each division has some newbies to it, but due to the new rule as far as active bands is concerned, the Kilmister division took the most hits with seven new bands (only Ozzy has participated in past tourneys). Check out all the matches below with the bracket:

Pedal To The Metal Tournament 2016 Qualifier Results

For this years edition of the Pedal To The Metal Tournament, we had announced that we were making some changes to the names of the divisions as well as who can participate. You can find all of that information and the division names here. For a couple of the divisions, we held a qualifier to decide who would take the last spots in each of those two divisions and we have the results. In the Ronnie James Dio division, we had a match between Lizzy Borden (looking to qualify for the first time) taking on tournament veterans Helloween. This was by far the closest race of the two, but Helloween won by taking 62.5% of the votes. Int he Lemmy Kilmister Division, we had a match between Sixx: A.M. and Bobaflex with both bands looking to qualify for the first time as well. As always we leave this competition to the fans to decide who goes through and they spoke as Bobaflex takes the win by taking 70% of the votes. Now here are the divisions and all the teams who are in (Note: I’ll be posting the actual brackets and match ups soon):

Jeff Hanneman Division

Slayer

Megadeth

Metallica

Testament

Death Angel

Flotsam And Jetsam

Annihilator

Anthrax

Chuck Schuldiner Division

Entombed A.D.

Cradle Of Filth

Kreator

Venom

Obituary

Carcass

Cannibal Corpse

Destruction

Lemmy Kilmister Division

Alice Cooper

Bobaflex

Avenged Sevenfold

Guns N Roses

Ghost

Kiss

Black Label Society

Ozzy Osbourne

Ronnie James Dio Division

Judas Priest

Iron Maiden

Accept

Armored Saint

Primal Fear

King Diamond

Sonata Arctica

Helloween

Music Video Of The Week: A Hole by Motor Sister

You may be asking just who is Motor Sister and I don’t blame you, but if you watched VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show a couple of weeks ago you would know. The band formed as a birthday wish from Scott Ian of Anthrax where Jim Wilson of the band Mother Superior performed songs from his with Ian along with Joey Vera (Armored Saint/Fates Warning), Pearl Aday (Scott’s wife), and John Tempesta (The Cult/White Zombie). I believe that the show went so well that they decided to form the band as a supergroup and they named it after the Mother Superior song Little Motor Sister. The band also recorded an album called Ride that is all Mother Superior tracks and they have just unveiled a music video for the song A Hole. The video itself is a performance based video, but the music is pretty bad ass. It’s blues based metal with a singer who is as amazing at vocals as he is on the guitar. Jim Wilson has some rhythm and blues with some soul sprinkled in there for a voice. You can pick up the album Ride now via Metal Blade Records and who knows if they’ll tour. Check out the video below and rock out.

Eddie’s 31 Days Of Halloween 2013: Day 14: Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Everyone thought it might be safe for the world and that maybe Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his Cenobites were gone for good. The last we saw in Hellraiser II is that Pinhead was on a pillar known as the Pillar of Souls. In this film called Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth, the pillar is back and this time it ends up in the hands of a club owner named JP (Kevin Bernhardt), but JP doesn’t realize exactly what he bought. Someone disturbed the pillar of souls and the puzzle box unleashing Pinhead once again. When Pinhead consumes a girl that JP sleeps with, JP is on a mission to help feed souls to Pinhead. In the meantime, a investigative reporter named Joey (Terry Farrell) witnesses the man bound by chains and starts to investigate the puzzle box and it’s origins. The film also stars Ken Carpenter (Phantom Of The Paradise), Paula Marshall (Cheaper By The Dozen), Brent Bolthouse (Warlock: The Armageddon), Peter Atkins (Wishmaster), and a special appearance by Ashley Laurence (Hellraiser 1 and 2).

This was supposed to be the film that was big time in the series because the producers had sunk more money into the project. They had Armored Saint performing in the club in a couple of scenes as well as a legit soundtrack featuring House Of Lords, Triumph, and more. This was always personally one of my favorite films in the series and I always felt it was the last of the good ones. Like many other horror series, it has so many sequels and Pinhead has been in space which should usually mean it’s over. I know the latest Hellraiser doesn’t even feature the man that made the role of Pinhead in Doug Bradley. WTF? I could understand if they were doing a remake of Hellraiser, but their just continuing the story. Anyways, the film has everything a Hellraiser fan would want and that is plenty of S&M imagery to go along with the dark scenery and tones as well as the horror. I do have to say that the acting was pretty top notch and I enjoyed this one for all the new cenobites that were in the film.  It’s available right now on Netflix as we speak so I am going to give this one a B+.