Everyone was looking forward to performances from A Day To Remember, Guns N Roses, and even Zakk Wylde’s, but nobody saw this coming at the 2014 Revolver Golden God Awards which was Slayer opening the show as the surprise performer. One of the things people expect at this particular awards show is to see who the surprise guest performer will be, but Slayer didn’t need it as the bulldozed their way through classics South Of Heaven, War Ensemble, and the premiere of a brand new track Implode. It was especially cool to see Marilyn Manson intro the band in. Right after Slayer was done with their set, it was time to meet this year’s hosts of the show since Chris Jericho wasn’t doing it this year. Eddie Trunk, Don Jamieson, and Jim Florentine of VH1 Classics That Metal Show were the hosts and their intro was horrible. Then it was off to the first presenters of the show as Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park came out to present The Best Vocalist Award (see below for complete list of winners), then that was followed by Dave Navarro and Jill Janus of Huntress presenting the Best Live Band Award.
Frankie Palmeri of Emmure came out next to present the next live band of the night which was A Day To Remember who brought something completely different than Slayer, but they pleased the crowd as the band performed hit songs such as Right Back At It Again, End Of Me, and their closer All I Want. They were the second band to perform and still no surprise guest on stage with which is unusual at this point in the show. Then there was some technical difficulties as we waited for the cameras to show us Tony Hawk and Carmen Electra who were presenting the best live band award which was won by Avenged Sevenfold. They weren’t at The Nokia Theater, but they were brought in via satellite from a gig in Minneapolis where they gave the award away to a fan from the crowd. Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach and a couple of members from Memphis May Fire came out next to present the best new band award.
Then the legendary Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein along with the sexy brand new lead singer of Arch Enemy Alissa White-Gluz to intro The Pretty Reckless who were the next band to perform that night. Taylor Momsen is beautiful and very sexual on stage as most of you may know, but she has an amazing band that backs her up as they had one heck of a performance. The band performed their tracks Fucked Up World, Heaven Knows, and Going To Hell. Zakk Wylde would eventually come out to do a special Piano performance of In This River to pay tribute to all that have fallen over the years, but who was working the special video screwed up saying that Jani Lane was the singer for Motorhead. Then more technical difficulties plagued the show as we waited for Suicide Silence to take the stage to perform for the first time with their brand new singer Eddie Hermida. The band would play the tracks You Only Live Once and No Pity For A Coward, but it was their last song that was amazing. The band brought out Max Cavalera of Soulfly/Sepultura fame and they performed Roots on stage together that had me saying thank God someone finally had a guest on stage.
Alice Cooper presented The Golden God Award to Joan Jett who mentioned The Runaways. After her speech, she wanted to perform, but they nixed it so that Alice could introduce the performance. She opened up her performance with a rocking version of Bad Reputation which was tearing up the house. The next track she performed was a track that she had written with Dave Grohl called Any Weather which captured the spirit of the Blackhearts. Then Joan Jett & The Blackhearts were on fire with the next song I Hate Myself For Loving You for which she was joined onstage by Taylor Momsen. What I didn’t understand is that after the performance was done they performed it again to which Billy Gibbons would join them on stage to be the cheerleader. It was one heck of a performance anyways, but I believe they may have been shooting a version for television.
Andrew Dice Clay came out to present the video montage for Axl Rose while Nicolas Cage presented Axl Rose of Guns N Rose with the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award. Of course from that point on, we were wondering how long it was going to take for the band to actual perform. The crowd was definitely anxiously awaiting the band to hit the stage as we also knew that Duff McKagan would be performing with the band. The band eventually came out and started rocking right away with It’s So Easy. The band would blaze through one of my all time favorite tracks Welcome To The Jungle with a killer intro by DJ Ashba. One thing I will admit is that Axl’s vocals were a little off tonight when it came to his high notes. Then for the third track of the night they would dig into their latest album Chinese Democracy with the Better. The band would then perform This I Love from Chinese Democracy. Then the band kicked into the kickass Use Your Illusion II track You Could Be Mine. The band would continue with Sweet Child Of Mine and a Babe I’m Gonna Leave You/November Rain medley after Axl introduced the whole band to the crowd. My final thoughts on the show is that I thought it could have been executed a little bit better than it had been in the past. I certainly miss having Chris Jericho hosting the show, but after a while the boys from That Metal Show did fine.
Awards:
Best Vocalist- Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age
Best Live Band- Rob Zombie
Most Dedicated Fans- Avenged Sevenfold
Best New Talent- Twelve Foot Ninja
Paul Gray Best Bassist- Chris Kael
Best Drummer- Arin Ilejay
Comeback Of The Year- Deep Purple
Best Film & Video- This Is A Wasteland by Pierce The Veil
Song Of The Year- Lift Me Up by Five Finger Death Punch
Most Metal Athlete- Josh Barnett
Golden God Award- Joan Jett
Dimebag Darrell Best Guitarist- Zacky Vengeance & Synyster Gates
Album Of The Year- 13 by Black Sabbath
Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award- Axl Rose of Guns N Roses
For a very long time, there is nothing any fan of 80’s metal has wanted more than a classic Dokken line up reunion. In 2010, fans of the band thought that they were going to get the reunion when Don Dokken and George Lynch appeared on an episode of VH1’s That Metal Show, but of course it never happened. Hell, Guns N Roses reunited with Slash and Duff before they ever did a reunion. Then it came true very briefly at the end of September and October of 2016 when the band reunited for shows in Japan. In that process, the band managed to record some tracks. In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, George Lynch talked about the track It’s Just Another Day saying, “Don came in and sang it in a very quick session — it was a couple of hours. He had most of the lyrics in his head and he didn’t even write them down. Most of the melodies were kind of prepared, but it just kind of flowed, and we just bounced off of one another and it happened very quickly. I threw the harmonies on and we were done. It was that quick.”
The track was recorded and would be included in an upcoming live album release entitled Return To The East Live which will be released on April 20TH. The band made a video for the track that they shot this past January and it’s fun to see. The video starts off right away at a photo shoot where Mick Brown can be heard joking about the fact that Dokken was making a music video. It then launches right into the video which is primarily a performance based video with some flashback scenes into the band’s past. The track has everything you would want from a Dokken song with some kick ass guitar playing from Lynch and the harmonies from Dokken and Co. Jeff Pilson who also served as producer of the live album and the recording had this to say, “I wanted to end up with the best raw energy that we could. When you take a band that hasn’t played together in 20 years, you’re not going to get one of those tight performances that a band has been on the road for a while has. I mean, when I do Foreigner projects, we’ve been playing together a long time and it’s really tight and every little detail is pretty much worked out. There’s a lot of spontaneity in Foreigner as well, but because the basic skeleton of it is so tight, it falls together very easily.” To pre-order the album, you can do so by clicking here for CD, Vinyl, and Digital options. Check out the video below:
Moshpits And Movies 