Here’s Human Waste Project, one of better nu metal casualties/ Ozzfest second stage acts of the ’90s, performing “Dog” during a surprise reunion at Aimee Echo’s birthday party last month. Anyone who cared about nu metal ten years ago was not paying attention to Human Waste Project, but the group’s 1997 full-length e-lux has aged reasonably well. The less said about the group’s terrible duet with Jonathan Davis on a cover of the Go-Go’s “This Town,” the better. But e-lux sports solid Ross Robinson production, Echo’s weirdly-expressive vocals and the kind of spacey sound experiements that get the Deftones a “Get Out of Jail Free” card when the topic of nu metal comes up. Judging by the hoots and howls, there’s a few people who wouldn’t mind a full-blown comeback — your typical Warped Tour band is way more toothsome than the New Wave-y pap Echo has been churning out with theSTART. The timing’s much better now, too, even if the most “punk rock” thing any of these guys have been associated with lately has nothing to do with Human Waste Project:

Teddybears f/ Aimee Echo, “Punkrocker” [live in NYC, 9/27/07]

The skaters that I hung out with all had a perverse and overdeveloped sense of irony. These kids listened to all kinds of cool stuff, though. I probably never would have heard DRI if my friend hadn’t made me the ultimate crossover mixtape to appologize for the time his mom (a nurse) accidentally hit a vein while changing an IV and made me almost bleed to death. These dudes also had a huge hard-on for goofy shit like Mojo Nixon and Skatemaster Tate, too — and that’s pretty much how I approached Old Skull when I got my hands on Get Outta School. The idea of a bunch of prepubescent punks seemed like such a joke then, even to my prepubesecent self. Now that I’m an old fart who thinks that Stuff on My Cat is the epitome of funny, it seems like a really cute and earnest joke. Except for the part about the Toulon brothers’ father (the band’s svengali) going homeless and more-or-less dying on the streets of Madison. The kids seem like they’ve done ok for themselves: Jamie is currently playing legitimate crust punk in Doomsday Cauldron, while J.P. does vocals for a really weird IDM/ quasi-black metal project called Planned Collapse. But when I look into their eyes, I still see sadness:

Old Skull, “Homeless”

Here’s Peter Kitts (aka Rivers Cuomo of Weezer) and One AM Radio’s Kevin Ridel, performing with their hair-metal band Avant Garde. Cuomo has already been “outed” by Metal Sludge, but he’s a good sport about his hair-metal past. It also doesn’t hurt that the Weezer fan community is made up of the type of obsessive-compulsives who’d create an Avant Garde tribute page, and digitize and upload a bunch of tracks from the group’s multiple ‘87-’90 demos. Listen to “Tongue of Fire” and “Never Forget” (which may as well be a Grim Reaper demo) for a reminder of what life was like in the mid ’80s and everyone wanted to sound like Iron Maiden. Judging by the original clip for “We Are All on Drugs” from Make Believe (a rearranged and dubbed version of Grim Reaper’s 1985 video for “Fear No Evil”), Cuomo still wants to sound like Maiden. There’s a new Weezer album and a collection of Cuomo’s demos on the horizon in 2008, but the world doesn’t really need either. Meanwhile, Kevin Ridel occassionally performs with a heavy metal cover band called The Masque of Red Death — bring on the Avant Garde reunion!

There’s a great moment in VH1’s History of Heavy Metal series where Dave Mustaine quips, “I always thought glam stood for ‘Gay L.A. Metal.’” If that’s true, Sleeze Beez never really got the message, but maybe the worst aspects of the genre never crossed the Atlantic — what you’ve got with the Dutch quintet is sort of a lost-in-translation approximation of hair metal’s pomp and bombast. None of the group’s records has had the sort of lasting impact of, say, Skid Row, but I’m still surprised they haven’t received an invite to reform for Rocklahoma or at least a little lip service from Andrew Aversion or Bring Black Glam. I get the sense that these guys actually had really good taste – former vocalist Andrew Elt now plays in an AC/DC tribute band and the group’s early 90s output hewed a little closer to the Def Leppard/ Mötley Crüe side of things. Check out “Heroes Die Young” below; sure, it’s as dumb as the band’s name, but it’s suitably big and anthemic and — if you don’t already have a foul taste in your mouth — you can go buy the group’s 1990 record Screwed Blued & Tattooed, one of the lost second-tier classics of hair metal.

What do Rwake…

…and Deadbird…

…have in common besides Arkansas, guitarist Chuck Schaaf (who was in Rwake before forming Deadbird) and a love for psychedelic sludge?

Mutha’s Day Out! As seen on Beavis and Butthead, and with an improbably still-functioning Geocities fan page! Both Schaaf and Rwake drummer Jeff Morgan (bass in MDO) were founding members of Mutha’s Day Out back in ‘91.

At least Morgan kept it real in the company of such luminaries as Mark McGrath, Candlebox and Korn. Nice shirt!

In a weird way, Winterhearts Guild, a video game based on characters from Sonata Arctica songs, owes its lifesblood to Journey. Do you remember the Journey video game? These days, it’s a shoo-in for any list that compiles the worst video games of all time, but the original concept was fascinating. The developers envisioned a hybrid of Frogger/Centipede with a human character navigating a vertically-scrolling maze of obstacles. Back in 1982-3, an early prototype featured a digital camera installed in the arcade cabinet, designed to take pictures of the gamers and superimpose their heads on top of the game character’s torso. Remember, this was decades before Sony tried to market the Eye Toy for the PS2. But the developers scrapped this plan after collecting a little market data that suggested that gamers were having too much fun dropping trou and taking pictures of their naughty bits.

Enter Journey’s legal and management team. Steve Perry and Neil Schon’s heads were superimposed where the dicks and asses used to be. A new “storyline” was grafted on to the game, which now featured all five members of the band fleeing from greedy promoters, crazed groupies and other concert obstacles to collect musical instruments. In essence: you were helping one of the most heavily-endorsed and corporate interest-corrupted bands of all time hold on to their money. Sucker! The home console version (Journey Escape), which was developed simultaneously for the Atari 2600, sucked just as bad — just check out this classic TV promo with a voice-over by Casey Kasem. Don’t stop believin’!

The full episode “My Dinner with Anthrax” follows below. In lieu of director’s commentary, here’s a quick rundown of “goofs” from the eerily compulsive site Bundyology:

*An Anthrax band member knocks down a black trophy with his guitar as he swings it around. A scene later, that very trophy is back on the stand.

*Peggy complains about the anniversary gift she just got and recalls that she got motor oil for their 15th anniversary. But it was in fact the 16th anniversary as seen in episode 103 (”Sixteen Years and what Do You Get”).

*When you first see Anthrax in the Bundys’ living room, you can see snow through the glass door almost as high as that door. When Al and Peggy return from Florida, almost all the snow is gone in just two or three days. It must have been a hell of a heatwave to melt that fast, causing flooding!

*When Anthrax are featuring their song you can see Scott Ian playing his Jackson guitar (maybe a Dinky) and Dan Spitz playing his Jackson Randy Rhoads model guitar. But when Al comes back to the house, he’s looking at a guitar that seems to be a Fender Stratocaster (or a Stratocaster knock off).

*When the band is playing, they aren’t playing in sync to the actual music. It’s especially notable when Charlie Benante is wrecking his drum kit and you hear the drums playing perfectly regardless.

I’d rag on the BulletBoys for this homerotic Glamor Shots photo, but least two of these chicks are hotter than my senior prom date. Also, everyone on MTV dressed like this in the mid-’80s to early ’90s — even Faith No More rocked the Information Society look for awhile. Pets, too. Have you ever tied a bandana around a dog’s neck? It goes really well with sleeveless vests and Zubaz! Think about it. In the meantime, think about reconsidering the complete works of the Bullet Boys, if only for today. Sure, their cover of TomWaits on “Hang On St. Cristopher” sucked, but “Smooth Up In Ya” is Top 20 Hair Metal Jams material once you get past the obvious choices (RATT, Skid Row, etc etc) and the Darkness totally ripped off bits of “THC Groove” on their first record. Anyway, there’s a new version of BulletBoys making the festival/ rib cook-off circuit this summer. Frontman Marq Torien (the dude in the picture who looks like Diamond Dave circa 1982) is the only original member in the line-up now, but that’s really all it takes these days. Marq is currently taking friend requests on MySpace to help offset the disproportiate number of porn stars in his buddy list. You can find him here and here. And you can find him to be surprisingly humble in this classic Metal Sludge 20 Questions interview.