Hatebreed frontman has hardcore values

"My voice is always raspy, and there are times that I get burned out," says Jasta. "But we set out to be the biggest hardcore band in the world, and that's still our goal."

Jasta lives and breathes hardcore metal music. Not only is he the lungs behind Hatebreed, whose latest album, "The Rise of Brutality," entered the Billboard 200 at No. 30, he's also host of the revived "Headbanger's Ball" on MTV2.

"Jamey is the hardest-working man in metal," says Justin Prager, director of music and programming for MTV and MTV2. "He has a band, a TV show, and runs a record label. He's Mr. Multimedia. . . . He's only in his [mid-20s], but it seems like he's had a lifetime of touring. Slayer took him out on their last tour. Jamey has credibility with everybody, and he knows everybody. His brain is a who's who of metal."

Jasta has parlayed that metal knowledge into something special. "I was kicked out of high school," he says (he grew up in New Haven),"and I lived in a two-room apartment with my father. . . . Now I've got the TV show and have my own office and a website. Hatebreed has been the inspiration to make it all happen."

Named for the Misfits song "Hatebreeders," the band headlines its annual Stillborn Festival at the Worcester Palladium tomorrow. The show includes fellow heavyweights Sick of It All, Agnostic Front, Chimaira, and Madball, along with a second stage filled with acts such as Subzero, Ringworm, and the Autumn Offering.

"This seems to be the biggest year yet for this festival," says Jasta. "It's the first time in the US that you'll see us with Agnostic Front, Sick of It All, and Madball. It's almost like a European festival. It's been hard to pull this show together, but the feedback has been fantastic."

Despite its provocative name and extremely heavy, aggressive sound, Hatebreed is not a nihilistic group. The new album defends the homeless in the song "Another Day, Another Vendetta" and laces into leaders obsessed with greed.

"We've always made sure our negativity wasn't aimless," says Jasta. "We want to offer positive solutions for negative situations. . . . We always have some hope."

Jasta has certainly brought some hope to the new "Headbanger's Ball."

His hard-working style, offset by an easygoing personality, has enabled him to interview the likes of Korn, Ozzy Osbourne, and other metal notables since the show was revived this past spring after eight years. "We brought it back because there was a demand for it," says MTV's Prager, who hails originally from Framingham. "Metal has always been here, but there seems to be a resurgence of it. The following continues to grow. Metal is the most exciting music out there right now. It seems like a faceless period for mainstream rock, but the headbangers follow every move of every band they like."

"I tape the shows on Fridays," says Jasta, who beat out a reported 300 people for the job. "It's been great. I get to play my favorite bands' videos, and I get to wear the shirts of small bands on the way up, as a way of plugging them. I want to help those people, too. And I get to play Hatebreed videos. I love it."

New Year's Eve sampler: If you're going out on New Year's Eve, here are a few possibilites -- Josh Ritter and the Pernice Brothers at the Orpheum Theatre (part of First Night festivities), Peter Wolf at the Hard Rock Cafe, the Lyres at ZuZu!, Babaloo at Johnny D's, Waltham at the Middle East Downstairs, and Sticky at Toad. Also, the Dresden Dolls are at Axis; Gang Green at the Linwood; Beefy DC, the Downbeat 5, and the Other Girls at the Abbey Lounge; Flynn and Fooled by April at the Lizard Lounge; and Addison Groove Project and RAQ at the Paradise.

Caught in the clubs: The Scissormen at Toad: Ted Drozdowski, who also plays in the Devil Gods, anchors this slide-guitar blues band. The Scissormen cooked up a boisterous storm, with ace local drummer Jerome DuPree providing the backbeat and the underrated Monique Ortiz (of Bourbon Princess) working hard on bass. Some of it felt like boys-night-out blues (a few women seemed to be chased out by the volume of Drozdowski's hard-driving slide licks), but it was a joyous night for connoisseurs, with the peak coming on a romp through Eddie Boyd's "Five Long Years," boasting the classic line, "She had the nerve to throw me out." The Scissormen are at the Milky Way tonight with James O'Brien & the Church of the Kitchen Sink and the Karaugh Brown Band.Bits and pieces: Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green is at Arlington's Regent Theatre on Jan. 22. Boston guitarist Ronnie Earl will perform in his band. . . . The British group Starsailor, which plays the Paradise on Jan. 20, releases a new album on Jan. 27 titled "Silence Is Easy," featuring the first production work by Phil Spector in more than 20 years. It was just released in England and entered the charts there at No. 2. . . . Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records, is profiled by the Discovery Channel Sunday at 8 p.m. in a special called "The Lives They Lived." . . . Protest rocker Steve Earle continues to step up his theater career. He stars in the award-winning off-Broadway play "The Exonerated" next week. It is based on interviews with death row prisoners. . . . Ray Greene and Innervisions, a soulful act worth pursuing, perform at the Barking Crab on Sunday. . . . Spectrum, an eclectic dance night that has run every Tuesday at the Phoenix Landing in Central Square for the past two years, will end its Tuesday run on Jan. 5. (The club wants to try something different that night, we're told.) Spectrum has hosted DJs from around the world, including the Twilight Circus Dub Sound System from the Netherlands and the Brooklyn Beats crew from New York.