Rock Music Report. The place for Rock and roll news.

Say you’ve got dreams of heavy metal stardom but you’re stuck in Singapore, floating in limbo like Scarlett Johansson’s character Charlotte from the Sofia Coppola film “Lost in Translation.” Okay, she was in Japan, but you get the idea. You wanna break through and be heard by millions, but there seems to be no way to burst out of the local, insular scene — or is there?

Michael Kalember, a multi-instrumentalist and metal head with a degree from the Berklee School of Music, moved to Singapore in 1991 with a woman who’s now his ex-wife, and has jammed with numerous musicians, taught music and written jingles for TV and radio commercials. And now, thanks to pop star Rihanna and the power of the Internet, hundreds of thousands of people — if not more — are hearing him play.

Kalember’s heavy metal cover of Rihanna’s insidious “Umbrella,” which he calls “Umbahhrella” to spoof the way Rihanna sings, was recorded with the virtually unknown band Midnyte. The song begins with a torrential thunderstorm and quickly blasts into a chugging metal riff that sounds like a cross between Judas Priest and Dokken. The vocals throughout resonate with the vibrato of Rob Halford and the grunts and growls of Metallica’s James Hetfield and the chorus is appropriately poppy in the vein of, say, In This Moment. Then there’s a blazing guitar solo, which demonstrates that there’s more to Kalember than a sense of humor.

In addition to his work with Midnyte, Kalember recently produced an album by Absence of the Sacred and played bass on all of the tracks. Under the name Mixal (DaMix) he has also written the pop metal parody “Anxiety Sucking Out my Brain,” a song about psychotic road rage that mixes a poppy Priest verse with a chorus that could have come from a Broadway show tune.

Umbrella (metal cover) - Michael Kalember Feat midnyte

Here’s a link to Kalember’s other work.

And if you’ve been living in a cave like Gaahl or just harbor a secret love for poppy, hip-hop check out Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

The new Iron Maiden documentary “Iron Maiden: Flight 666″ will surely be available on DVD later this year, but if you wanna be one of the first to see it, you’ll have to head over to your local cinema when it debuts on April 21.

The movie, which was created by Banger Films, EMI Records, UMe and Arts Alliance Media, follows Maiden from February to March, 2008 on the first leg of their “Somewhere Back in Time World Tour.” For the tour, the band flew in a specially customized Boeing 757 airliner piloted for much of the time by vocalist Bruce Dickinson. The plane also contained Maiden’s crew and 12 tons of music and stage equipment. Puddle-jumping from one location to another, Iron Maiden played 23 sold out stadium and arena shows in Asia, Australia and North, Central and South America in just 45 days. Maiden performed in 13 countries, also landing in Azerbaijan and Papua New Guinea en route for fuel stops, travelling 70,000km and performing to almost half a million fans.

The band were accompanied everywhere by award-winning documentarians from Toronto’s Banger Films, which also created the movies “Metal: A Headbangers Journey” and “Global Metal.”
Shot in High Definition, the movie will be screened in 2K digital cinema, with 5.1 surround sound, mixed by the bands producer Kevin ‘Caveman’ Shirley. Participating cinemas will be announced shortly.

Tech-death metal wunderkinds, The Faceless, are the latest act to be banned by the Anaheim House of Blues, a Disney-owned venue that in the past has also rejected Machine Head and Belphegor. Why The Faceless didn’t meet the approval of Mickey and Minnie for the February 1 show is unknown — especially since the other bands on the bill, Meshuggah and Cynic, both made the cut. Maybe it had something to do with discovery that if you descramble the letters in the song titles of their second album, Planetary Duality, it spells “Pluto pimps Daisy Duck for cheap wine and Goofy has anal wards and scabies.”

In any case, The Faceless will take the night off, then rejoin the tour on February 2 at the San Diego House of Blues. Dates are scheduled through February 20 in Towson, Maryland. The Faceless’ second album, Planetary Duality, features an impressive range of progressive arrangements, caustic vocals and speed-of-light guitar work, and was one of the highlights of last year. The disc was produced by axeman Michael Keene, who recently made an appearance at the National Association of Music Mercants (NAMM( convention in Anaheim). Click “more” to watch Keene shred like Satriani on crack.

Nothing spells doom like English misery junkies My Dying Bride. The gothic gloom metal band are currently working on their tenth studio album For Lies I Sire, and from what we’ve heard, the morose melodies, spare guitar chords, weeping violin and baleful vocals suggest a return to the suicidal despair of 1996’s Angel and the Dark River.

For Lies I Sire will be the band’s first album to feature bassist Lena Abé and session drummer Dan Mullins, who replaced Adrian Jackson and John Bennett respectively.

The track list of the new record features: “Fall With Me,” “My Body, A Funeral,” “The Lies I Sire,” “Bring Me Victory,” “Echoes From a Hollow Soul,” “ShadowHaunt,” “Santuario Di Sangue,” “A Chapter in Loathing,” and “Death Triumphant.” Last night, Norway radio show Tinitus aired over two-and-a-half minutes of “My Body, A Funeral” on the show Tinitus. Click “more” listen. <script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript” src=”http://www.rocktube.us/embed/16006280″></script><script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript”>play_16006280(450,390);</script>

<p>

Preachers may hate him, but we always knew Dee Snider was a Holey Dude

In 1998, Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider injected “Captain Howdy,” a character from their 1984 three-part song “Horror-Teria,” into a horror movie called “Strangeland,” which received mixed reviews, but has since turned into a bit of a cult item. Snider starred in and wrote the movie, which is about a pierced, sadistic, Internet chat room predator who lures teenagers into his house and tortures them with unusual body piercings.

At the time, Internet-based horror stories weren’t so ubiquitous, so the plot was pretty compelling, even if the execution was far from perfect. “I came up with the idea of Internet crime before anybody had ever committed Internet crime,” Snider gloats. “And if I am the father of torture films, I’ve got to come back like a sledgehammer to reclaim my crown!”

To that effect, Snider has decided to resurrect Captain Howdy in “Strangeland: Disciple,” which goes into production later this year. And while the movie may, indeed, revolutionalize the genre, it’ll take a lot of creativity and originality. Today, with the coming and going of flix like “Pulse,” “the Card Player,” “Untraceable,” “fear dot com,” “.com For Murder” and “Stay Alive,” Internet stalker movies are as common porn Web sites.

Returning for revenge in the sequel will be Robert Englund (Freddie Krueger in “Nightmare On Elm Street”), who called “Strangeland” a “bona-fide cult hit.” In the original, he played Jackson Roth, one of Captain Howdy’s victims.

A long time horror film fan, Snider says he was looking to put a new spin on the genre when he wrote “Strangeland.” “At the time, I really wanted to re-invent the wheel. Horror, traditionally, plays on people’s fears of being chased and dying. That’s totally played out. When you’re being chased, there’s the chance of escape. When you die, there’s peace. What’s much worse than being chased and dying is being helpless and suffering.”

For the “Strangeland” soundtrack, Snider handpicked a variety of metal bands, including Twisted Sister, System Of A Down, Sevendust, Soulfly, Slipknot, Coal Chamber, Megadeth, Marilyn Manson and Pantera. The success of the soundtrack led to a “Strangeland” tour, which Snider hopes to resurrect once again for “Strangeland: Disciple.” “Music was intrinsic to me in the first one,” he says. “We really tried to create the ultimate heavy soundtrack. Music will be important to me again for the sequel.”