January 8, 2010 – It turns out that Christopher Lee, who played the evil -- and totally rad -- wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies is making a "symphonic metal" album based on the life of the first Holy Roman Emperor, King Charlemagne. Yes, 2010 is shaping up nicely. The 87-year-old Brit actor recently announced his plans in a series of new videos, available to watch right here. So, the fact that a man who played such an obviously metal character is making a metal album got us wondering: who are moviedom's most metal dudes, the ones whose sheer being compels you to bang your head and throw the devil horns? Below are our top five picks. Think you can do better?

December 22, 2009 – With the recent release of the fan club-only rarities compilation LPU9: Demos and a Grammy nomination for best Hard Rock Performance for "What I've Done," from their live album, Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, the decade is drawing to a close nicely for Linkin Park. Which is to say the '00s are ending as positively as they began for the California sextet, whose 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, ranked as the seventh-best selling album of the decade. "It's been an absolutely unbelievable ten years," says Mike Shinoda, the band's resident rapper and sonic mastermind. "But I'm even more excited to find out what the future has to offer." The near-future will see the release of an as-yet-untitled new Linkin Park album and, hopefully, some other guerilla-style goodies.

December 8, 2009 – Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is "sitting up, talking clearly, reading books, and checking the internet" after sustaining serious injuries when his tour bus careened off the New York State Thruway early Sunday morning. The black ice-related bus crash left Cuomo with three cracked ribs, a slightly punctured lung, and an injury to his lower leg, and caused the band to cancel the remainder of their Raditude tour dates. "Rivers has had a much better day than yesterday," webmaster Karl Koch writes in a blog post on the band's website. "He went from being barely able to talk and open his eyes yesterday to partially sitting up, talking clearly, reading books, and checking the internet, plus his color and energy seemed much brighter . . . Tomorrow the doctor says it will be time to see if Rivers can stand up again.

November 24, 2009 – Fall Out Boy is on indefinite hiatus, but Pete Wentz, the emo quartet's bassist, lyricist, and most media-savvy member, isn't about to go into hiding. With the recent release of the band's Believers Never Die: Greatest Hits, his Clandestine clothing line, Decaydance record label, and ubiquitous tabloid presence, the break from the band shouldn't mean a publicity dip for Mr. Ashlee Simpson -- a notion he's not necessarily happy about. The day before Believer's release, we spoke on the phone with Wentz about what has to happen for him to go back to Fall Out Boy, why the band went on a break, and the weirdness of greatest hits albums. With the band going on hiatus, does it feel like the right time for a greatest hits compilation to come out?I think that anytime a band like us puts out a greatest hits there are a lot of questions: Does this band have enough hits?

November 20, 2009 – Discussing literature isn't something bands are known for doing in their down time -- and that's fine with Fanfarlo. "There's not a lot of beer-can smashing with us," says Simon Balthazar, 27, lead singer and main songwriter for the London chamber-poppers. "Our favorite activity is to read a novel and talk about it. We're intellectuals. That's an unpopular thing for bands to say, but we're not interested in doing things just because that's what other people do." Standing out is a familiar theme for the quintet, which takes its name from a Baudelaire novella.

November 17, 2009 – It's been three years since fire-breathing quartet Priestess released their last album, 2006's Hello Master. Now they're back, and if new track "Ladykiller" is any indication, the Montrealers want blood. Taken from the upcoming Prior to the Fire, due in February, "Ladykiller" is a thrashy tale of revenge against a serial killer, highlighted by some seriously slicing guitar solos and precise riffing. "We set out to write a theme song for Jack the Ripper," explains Priestess frontman Mikey Heppner. "We knew there was plenty of competition in the songs-about-serial- killers field -- Judas Priest did 'The Ripper' and Iron Maiden did 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' -- but I think we took things into our own realm." Decide for yourself. The download is below. LISTEN:Priestess, "Ladykiller"(DOWNLOAD MP3)

November 16, 2009 – Savannah, Georgia's Baroness melted a great many minds last month when the quartet released its second full-length, the beautiful and savage Blue Record. The stunning, deeply psychedelic record was the band's first effort to chart on the Billboard Top 200 and has drawn praise as one of the year's best metal albums. All of which is to say that it's a good bet these dudes will be playing big places sometime in the not-too-distant future. So now's the chance to catch them somewhere human-scaled.

November 11, 2009 – Steve Bays of Vancouver indie-dance act Hot Hot Heat is sorry and wants to make it up to you. "I would like to offer our most sincere apologies for taking so long to finish our most recent recording," he recently wrote on the band's website. So to thank fans for their patience in awaiting arrival of the upcoming Future Breeds, Bays and the boys have posted two new tracks for download: The tense title track and zany, noisy "JFK's LSD." Neither track will sound like a shock to anyone familiar with the band's aggressively exuberant funk-punk, but there's a wirier, terser vibe to the music that suits the brittle guitars and skittering cymbals better than the high gloss sonics of 2007's Elevator. Give a listen and tell us what you think. LISTEN: Hot Hot Heat, "Future Breeds"(DOWNLOAD MP3) "JFK's LSD"(DOWNLOAD MP3)

November 10, 2009 – REALITY: Maybe we should let him explain... Manson goes on the record: "Some people think I'm one of the rock stars who had surgery so I could suck my own dick. Quite honestly, I WOULD NOT WANT TO SUCK MY DICK. It's been in a lot of dirty places. The Christian Coalition said I was throwing puppies and cocaine into the audience and demanding they kill the dogs and do the drugs, when, in fact, I'VE NEVER HURT AN ANIMAL AND I DON'T GIVE AWAY DRUGS FOR FREE. "There's also that thing about me being from Mr. Belvedere. I never even saw that show. I hope the real actor is using that rumor to get laid [see below]. I've heard I'm a Nazi and that I was grown in a petri dish. THE TRUTH IS BIGGER: I've snorted sea monkeys. I've snorted mud. I could tell you sexual misadventures that would have you reaching for the lotion.

November 9, 2009 – Slayer guitarist Kerry King is a badass. For one thing, he, co-guitarist Jeff Hanneman, bassist-singer Tom Araya, and drummer Dave Lombardo (who rejoined the band in 2005 after a lengthy absence) helped invent thrash metal, a speedy, bludgeoning style heard to pulverizing effect on the new World Painted Blood. For another, he wears leather pants, spiked wristbands, scowls a lot, and has a tattooed skull. Not a tattoo of a skull, but a tattoo on his skull.