This Week In Kerrang! History: Issue 956, May 2003

Oh looky what we have here. If it isn't another edition of maybe-oneday-popular internet craze, This Week In Kerrang! History, returning once more for your eyes and brains and loins to enjoy. This week we're throwing it all the way back to 2003, when the world was very different, obviously. We might have mentioned this before.

Professional baddie Saddam Hussein was captured that year. Apple launched iTunes. There was a huge global SARS outbreak, which sounds like something your character might contract in Resident Evil, but it was actually a really quite serious viral problem that ravaged 32 countries, so we probably shouldn't joke about that. And in other sad news, Keiko the Orca from the Free Willy movies died. Oh, and bodybuilder-turned-action-hero-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California. 2003 was a crazy year, all told.

One look at this cover of K! from May 2003 will tell you that things were equally as wild in the world of the rocking and rolling, too. Yes, you could have won an MP3 player. 'What's an MP3?' some actual young people might be wondering right about now, which is just far too depressing a reality to deal if we're being honest. Anyway, to the business at hand…

Why not start with a big one (oooh-er etc) right? In this issue of K! we had renowned intercourse fan, Ville Valo from the band HIM, offering up some advice and insight into his preferred slap and tickle antics. There may have been reasons for this, we're not sure and looking back it's hard to tell. But just look at the brilliant image we've used to illustrate this frankly cracking feature. Action Man and his missus, sans clothing, caught in a compromising position.

Sample quote from the piece:

"When you smoke, it doesn't go so well with one's erection"

Absolutely noted af, Ville. Cheers for letting us know mate.

Moving nowhere-near-swiftly-enough on, check out this lil gem from our news round-up. On this very website right here (well, technically not this exact one, but c'mon, you get the point), we were preparing to feature an exclusive track from the then-upcoming St Anger bonus DVD. Little did we know what Metallica had in store for us, but the innocence of our excitement at the time is pretty adorable. This preview reminder piece was accompanied with a photo of American comedian 'Weird' Al Yankovic dressed as Prince, seemingly. No idea. Not a single clue, dudes.

In our new bands feature, RISING, we were backing these three bands for big things. Anyone know what ever happened to Kings Of Leon? We Googled Fake Ideal and found a MySpace page for the Doncaster lot, but the player wouldn't work (sort it out, Tom!) and we're gonna be honest, that made us give up trying to figure out if they were any good or not. And Googling Void was just pointless. Sorry everyone. Hopefully both bands had a long and prosperous career, however. And if not, sorry again.

In news, we grabbed a quick word with Florida metalcore masters Poison The Well, who were keen to downplay the "hype" that was swirling around them in the wake of their recent signing to Atlantic Records. Later that summer they'd release their seminal You Come Before You record, however, so any hype they were subject to was very much justified.

More top notch music KONTENT here now for your enjoyment, in the form of Josh Homme's favourite album, the subject of this issue's My Favourite Album franchise feature. The Queens Of The Stone Age man chose Subhumans' Worlds Apart and said it was a record with "lots of great hooks" and liked that it wasn't just a punk rock affair. Cool.

As always around this time of the year, we were getting suitably amped, stoked and hyped for the imminent Download Festival. The difference this year was that it was actually the very first Download Festival! So that bit at the start where we said we always got excited about it was a kind of lie when you think about it. But we promise everything else you read here is the absolute gospel truth.

Tickets for the first Download cost a measly £70, amazingly. Which is basically the price of a round of drinks in our local boozer these days. What a year it was for artists playing too. We were really quite spoiled and we didn't even realise it at the time.

Speaking of hella good [Yo - Hella Good actually came out in 2001 - consider revising lest everyone reading realises how uncool you are] line-ups that summer, check out this advert for Reading and Leeds Festival. Linkin Park, blink-182, Metallica et al seems like prettttty sweet bang for your 95 bucks. Imagine Jay-Z basically supporting Placebo nowadays? Like we said up there a bit, crazy.

In features, we went round to Scott from Reel Big Fish's house in Fullerton, California and, not sure if you can tell or not, but he looked absolutely chuffed to have us. Could have tidied up a bit, Scotty. The big take away here is that if you play your trumpets right, then maybe you too could live in a house with a swimming pool out the back and a fully-equipped recording studio. Isn't life wonderful?

In other features action, we had a catch-up with our old pal Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame. The nu-metal superstar invited us round to his office at Interscope (and by the looks of things, he did actually tidy up in advance - take note Scott from Reel Big Fish) to answer some of the speculation about the future of his band, or their apparent lack of one.

We found it less of an office and more of a Kurt Cobain shrine, and Fred in fighting form, still not being generous with the fucks he was willing to give as is/was his wont. "I accept the fact that billions of people give us the finger" he told us with typical defiance.

He also told us the band's forthcoming fourth album was going to be called Panty Sniffer, which we now know to be untrue. What a rascal.

Elsewhere, we got to know future great mates, Funeral For A Friend a lot better. The Welsh post-hardcore gang's bassist Gareth Davies said "things have been insane over the last few months", presumably reflecting on the SARS outbreak and the death of Willy from Free Willy.

Being serious for a minute (it is actually possible), we had a great chat with Mike Patton in this issue too, with the former (then) Faith No More man going all in on everything from Mr Bungle, Fantômas and Tomahawk. "I've realised the importance of not being afraid to look like an idiot," he revealed, "just kind of… having big balls"

Dammit Mike, we were trying to be serious.

Getting back on track, we of course had the honour of the mighty Deftones adorning our cover this issue, as the band had just freshly unleashed their unfairly maligned self-titled album. So we joined them on the road in Chicago and found out all kinds of things. Examples? Okay, so, things we learned from this piece include but are not limited to: the song Elite was originally, delightfully called Cum On Your Face, Chino's full name is actually Camillo Wong Moreno, though he insisted on being called The Fonz as a kid, and most eye-waveringly of all, the band spent $2.5 million making their fourth album. "It was money well spent," the frontman shrugged when quizzed about that astronomical figure, "We don't give a fuck". Fair dos.

On a lighter note, check out this lovely little feature we called Webhead, where we highlighted our favourite thing from the internet at the time. Which in this issue was a website that sadly seems to have given up the ghost www.dogsincars.co.uk

We don't really need to say any more about that. Other than, if you do take your dog out in your car, please do not leave it there in hot weather, because like www.dogsincars.co.uk they too could expire.

On a possibly even lighter and thoroughly charming note, we also had this other digital-focused feature called Web Chat, which rather unwisely collated the best bits from kerrang.com's once infamous message board chatter. This week, user Mr Andy asked a question that we're not even sure how to respond to, when he pondered, "The Royal family masturbate…?"

Enjoy the Royal wedding this weekend, folks. We'll be back with more of this kind of nonsense far sooner than you probably want.