Have you ever watched a show or seen a band and wondered just how the fuck they got that job? That’s what I think EVERY FUCKING TIME I watch That Metal Show on VH1 Classics. So first off, as a metalhead, I think it’s great that a show like this can exist in general. There was a time in my life (and the lives of countless other metalheads) where I could only wish for this kind of metal on TV. Metal Mania is this generations Headbanger’s Ball and That Metal Show is like a metal magazine crammed into 30 minutes of air time.
So what’s my problem with this show? Well, first off, Eddie Trunk is my first problem. He’s annoying and he really doesn’t know his shit. He’s one of these guys to me that acts like he’s the be all and end all of metal knowledge, a real Encyclopedia Metallica. It’s almost as if because he’s a DJ and he can get interviews with all the big names that it makes him an authority on metal. He reminds me of the guy that hangs out with the metalheads and just re-iterates everything he hears never really knowing anything REALLY interesting on his own.
So not only do you have THIS guy, but you get his sidekicks which actually know even less than him. Actually, I take it back, Don Jamieson seems to be a cool guy and seems to know his shit but that idiot Jim Florentine seems to have taken a few too many potshots to the dome. That guy is about as dumb as a bag of bricks and just hearing him makes me want to go and kick my television. I really think that these guys give Metal and metal fans in general a bad name.
Trunk, in my opinion, just comes across as a pretentious know-it-all and the most hilarious thing for me is watch this guy’s “Stump The Trunk” segment. Basically, in this segment, audience members get to ask him Metal Trivia questions to try and stump him. The questions that this guy gets wrong to me are completely laughable. I loved watching him think he was big shit because he knew that Dave Spitz played bass for Black Sabbath yet he couldn’t name the last Dio album to feature Vivian Campbell on guitar. Matter of fact, the album he guessed was an album that was released while Vivian was in Def Leppard and had been for some time. And it gets better, Ronnie James Dio was his special guest that night. FAIL!
And finally, I have a huge issue with the format of the show. So they have 30 minutes per episode. They have these amazing guests like Dio and Geezer from Heaven Hell, Geoff Tate from Queensryche and Geddy and Alex from Rush. They spend the first 5 minutes of the show bickering about some retarded question like whether it’s cool that bands sign on to sell their albums at Walmart and Target. They they bring out the guest, ask 2-3 of the most retarded questions you can ask with that braindead Florentine usually asking “So did you do lots of blow and groupies back in the day? What do you do now”. Really? Is that what you really have to ask someone like Dio or the guys from Rush? And then finally, while their guests sit there twiddling their thumbs, the 3 Dorkateers then proceed to do a “Head To Head Challenge” of things as asinine as “Who’s the hottest video girl: Tawny Kittean or Bobbi Brown” or my personal favorite, “What’s the best guitar solo? Eruption by Eddie Van Halen or Crazy Train by Randy Rhoads. All this while people like Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson just look on thinking to themselves “I’m going to kill my fucking publicist AND management for making me go through this”.
Anyways, but will I continue to watch this show? You bet. It’s like watching a train wreck or watching a girl kick her boyfriends ass in the parking lot of the mall. You know you probably shouldn’t be watching it but it’s just too much fun to watch a disaster. My friend Jammin’ Jaymz and I used to host a Heavy Metal pod cast called The Heavy Metal Lunch which I have to say was WAY better than this show. They should just put us on TV and show these clowns how it’s done!
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