MetalSucks

Whoa. So I guess last week’s logo was pretty hard, because very, very few of you got it correct. The band it belongs to is called Abort Mastication, by the way, and five of the lucky MetalSucks winners who did get it right - Andrew Robbins, Sydney Kekoler, Bertie Michaels, Josh Dechter and Earl Eames - will each one a copy of Cavalera Conspiracy’s awesome new album, Infliked. Congrats, kiddies.

This week, the fine men and women at Roadrunner Records have graciously supplied us with two copies of The Best of Suffocation to give away. Whether you’re a hardcore Suffocation completist or a new fan looking for a quick introduction to these death metal legends, this is a pretty sweet compilation.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name one week from today.

Good luck, everyone. Have a br00tal weekend!

-AR

Growth: Inside and Out

Being an artist is a rough deal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best thing in the world to be a creator of things, but the hardest part about being an artist is the lack of having a manual or playbook. It’s not like sports where you have a play you run or working at Borders or McDonalds where there is a set turn-key program of how the business works. Whether you’re a musician, writer or painter you make your own playbook as you create over the years and start to recognize what your voice is. Once you have your guidelines of how your art works it becomes easier to a certain extent but it also becomes more difficult to stick to those guidelines.

Take Hatebreed or Motorhead for example. They have a way they do things for years on end while establishing a hardcore fan base because they respect their general guideline for what they do. Our band is a little different. This has been our first band for the most part, so through out the years we’ve been honing our sound and changing with each album. Our newest unreleased album is the most refined record we’ve done to date because we’ve been able to establish our own set of guidelines for ourselves. Throughout doing this I’ve noticed something that this is sometimes hurtful to personal growth. When you attach yourself to your ‘idea’ of who you are as an artist it can become anchored in the art you’re doing at the time and you sometimes forget that your talent spans all types of art.

Click to read more…

Cult of Luna are perhaps the last remaining Swedish metal band we haven’t ever written about on MetalSucks. Why, I’m not exactly sure, because they’re pretty fucking great, but thankfully they have a new album Eternal Kingdom coming out soon so there’s an excuse to talk about ‘em. A press release we just received tells us about the intriguing concept behind their latest album, as told by founder and guitarist Johannes Persson:

“There’s a strange story behind the album and how we came up with the title. For the last couple of years we’ve been rehearsing in what is actually an old mental institution about 45 mins outside town - it was a mental institution in the 1920’s - and when we cleaned out our rehearsal room we found all these boxes with junk in, that seemed like they had been forgotten for a long time. Everything from medical journals to paintings by patients and things the patients had done. And we also found a journal entitled “Tales from the Eternal Kingdom”, complete with pictures and poems and words, that a patient named Holger Nilsson had written at the time. Holger Nilsson, we since found out was a guy that was sentenced for his wife’s murder and was incarcerated for life. The notebook shows that it was a really interesting world he was living in – we’re not claiming to be psychiatrists or anything like that and able to make a good diagnosis of his mental state, but it’s clear to us that he was not living in our world. So basically the whole album ETERNAL KINGDOM takes us through his disturbed world from his perspective and mind, as recounted in the journal.”

Woah. Lucky for you, the title track is now available for streaming on Cult of Luna’s MySpace page.

Eternal Kingdom drops July 8th via Earache Records (June 16th in Europe).

-VN

So from what I hear, Paganfest has been a colossal success thus far. I think more of you should be writing in and telling us how awesome this tour is, ’cause a) we’re co-sponsors of the tour and we like to think everything we touch turns to metal and b) we won’t get to go until the last night of the tour here in NYC, so we need to live vicariously through you cats.

Below is some more awesome live footage of Turisas, this time playing Paganfest’s stop at The Boardwalk in Orangevale, California on May 7, 2008. And below that is the itinerary for all remaining dates on the tour, because for many of you, it’s not too late to go. And tell ‘em Axl, Vince and Kip sent ya.

9 May 2008 Fat City San Francisco, California
10 May 2008 The Vault Long Beach, California
11 May 2008 The Cell Block Phoenix, Arizona
12 May 2008 Chics El Paso, Texas
13 May 2008 The Launchpad Alburquerque, New Mexico
14 May 2008 Crush Lounge Tulsa, Oklahoma
15 May 2008 Ridglea Theater Fort Worth, Texas
16 May 2008 The White Rabbit San Antonio, Texas
17 May 2008 Java Jazz Houston, Texas
19 May 2008 The Masquerade Atlanta, Georgia
20 May 2008 Volume 11 Raleigh, North Carolina
21 May 2008 Crocodile Rock Allentown, Pennsylvania
22 May 2008 BB Kings Blues Club New York, New York

-AR

YouTube overdubs are quickly becoming passe, but every now and then one comes along that you can’t help but pass on. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Bert and Ernie, even if Count von Count is by far the most br00tal/kvlt resident of Sesame Street.

-VN

[Thanks: Randall Diaz]

Here I was, along with the rest of the metal literati, heaping praise upon Gojira for their sheer brutality and awesome originality. If ever there was a band in today’s metal scene that was completely different, this was it. Or so I thought until I took the advice of longtime MetalSucks maniac Hibernum and listened to the UK death metal band Mithras.

News flash: Gojira isn’t that original.

Don’t get me wrong; From Mars to Sirius was a fucking excellent album worthy of (nearly) all the praise that it got, the band destroys live and there are certainly plenty of things Gojira does that are original. But let’s give credit where it’s due.

Many of the things that are Gojira’s trademarks were ripped straight from the Mithras handbook. Their overall sense of tonality and riff structure, the full-chord pick scrapes, use of pinched harmonics in a very specific manner, vocal approach…

Listen for yourself. (I recommend “Wrath of God” to illustrate my point.).

-VN

- Lemmy. Check.
- Melvins. Check.
- Venom, King Diamond, Max Cavalera. Check.
- led Zeppelin (sort of). Check.

Next up - Metallica.

In an open letter to Metallica [Blabbermouth via Idolator], Foo Fighters / ex-Nirvana skinsman Dave Grohl did a little hint-hint, nudge-nudge at the godfathers of thrash:

Dear METALLICA,

Hey, it’s Dave! Remember me? Yeah, I’m the guy that’s been listening to your band faithfully since 1983. I bought your first album ‘Kill ‘Em All’ from a mailorder catalogue called Under The Rainbow, I think. Actually I can’t remember. It was 1983 for Christsakes! But that album changed my life and I’ve been listening to your albums ever since (even ‘St Anger’!).

I can’t wait to hear the new shit, and no matter what you guys do I’ll always be first one at the shop waiting to hear it. I’m sure you’ll come out and blow everybody’s fuckin’ minds, because you’re fuckin’ METALLICA!

Good luck. And don’t release it until it’s kick-ass.

Yours, Dave Grohl.

P.S. Are you finished recording the drums yet?

At this point why wouldn’t Metallica hire on Dave for a guest spot at some point? He’s definitely reached that elder-statesman / overall bad-ass status in rock culture that allows him to do this type of thing, and lord knows they could use the cred. I mean, who doesn’t like Dave Grohl?

Plus, the dude is sickly talented behind the kit, in stark contrast to what some of you had to say about Metallica’s current drummer.

-VN

I was pretty excited that Exhorder’s albums are getting reissued, since I thought it meant a lot of kids who have never heard of Exhorder might now check ‘em out.

And yet, somehow, the news that Exhorder have reunited and are working on new material bums me out. I can’t even really figure out why; part of me thinks it’s that “new material” part. Almost every reunited band puts out a new album at some point, because, well, it’s a good way to make money; but these albums, even if they’re any good, can never, and do never, live up to band’s output from their heyday. At the Gates, at least, admitted as much in Decibel (though they didn’t rule out the possibility of recording under a different name, which, truth be told, is just as shitty an idea as recording under their original name, because anyone with an IQ bigger than his shoe size will still know that it’s At the Gates). So while I’m stoked to be able to catch Exhorder at a not particularly large concert venue in the NYC area sometime real soon, I really wish that would please just not make any new music.

Then again, a couple of new songs might provide the perfect bathroom break during the show.

Anyway, below enjoy a photo of Phil Anselmo in an Exhorder shirt. The photo of a member of Pantera in Exhorder merch should help convince 15 year olds that Exhorder really are important to the history of metal, in case actually listening to the band’s music and realizing that they pre-date Pantera somehow fails to convey this fact.

-AR

Sometimes when I’m angry I just want to crank Adrenaline up to 11 and beat the living shit out of something, like that time in college when a spontaneous moshpit erupted in my bedroom and I sent a TV out the window. I’m not particularly angry today, but this song still gets my blood going every time I hear it.

-VN

Here’s the thing about Ray Mazzola, vocalist for New York’s own Full Blown Chaos: the guy has a natural born gift for storytelling. I learned this back in February, when I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner with the members of Soilent Green, music video auteur extraordinaire David Brodsky, and Allie Woest, Brodsky’s partner/producer/sometimes editor/general right hand. Full Blown Chaos were on a temporary hiatus from touring at the time (a hiatus which, their fans will be pleased to know, is now over), and so Ray joined us, and within seconds of sitting at the table, he was trading war stories from the road with Soilent Green/Crowbar drummer Tommy Buckley. And, as nice a guy as Buckley is and as many good stories as he had to tell, he just couldn’t keep up with Ray; I won’t repeat any of Ray’s stories second hand ’cause I could never do them justice, so I’ll just say that I can never again hear Napalm Death’s “The Code is Red” without bursting into hysterical laughter.

So after dinner I interviewed Soilent Green guitarist Brian Patton (and some of the dudes from Car Bomb, who also showed up at some point), and then Ray was cool enough to sit down and let me pick his brain for a little while - and to share one of his special stories with our readers. To say that the story is a doozy would be to put it mildly. Little wonder this dude is such a charismatic front man.

Above, watch the David Brodsky-directed video for Full Blown Chaos’ “Halos for Heroes,” from their album Heavy Lies the Crown; after the jump, read the full transcript of my conversation with Ray.

Click to read more…

Boy are you guys lucky today. The fine people at Vagrant Records sent me TWO copies of a special limited edition colored vinyl of Protest the Hero’s amazing Fortress, and guess what that means — you all get one. Though you’ll have to fight over it. And we get to watch.

All you have to do to win is post a comment with a funny caption for the below photo. Axl and I will choose our favorite and notify the winner by email. Have fun!

So, 36 Crazyfists released a new video for “We Gave it Hell,” from their forthcoming May 27th release The Tide and Its Takers (Ferret). I’m neither here nor there about this band — they’re not really all that good, but they certainly aren’t bad either, and I can’t quite fathom the hype that seems to exist around them. Is there actually hype, or is it just publicist-created goulash?

Whatever the case, as I’ve written about before, every single press release or article I read about 36 Crazyfists seems to harp on the fact that they’re from Alaska (even though they live in Portland, OR now) and this video is no different. “SNOWMOBILES!! WE’RE FROM ALASKA!! THAT GIVES US CRED, RIGHT?? SNOWMOBILES ARE METAL!!”

Sigh.

Watch the video below.

-VN

[Apologies to our International readers who will not be able to view the above MTV-ized video.]

In the eBay bad-assery department, we have this fine Warrant t-shirt which the auction assures us is “a real vintage tee from 1987.”

SPREAD ‘EM!

So who wants to buy this for me? Seriously folks, if this thing shows up at the MetalSucks Mansion (address is here) I promise you an emormous box full of CDs, records, and whatever other shit we have! Someone… anyone?

-VN

Amon Amarth have a new album presumably coming later this year (they’re currently in the studio) via Metal Blade Records. But in the meantime, Metal Blade and Amon Amarth have launched a website that coincides with a comic book the band will be rolling out over the next several weeks. The story is about “Ragnarök, Norse mythology and the end of the world.”

Just take a look at the website. In no other genre of music would something so outrageous, and yes, slightly ridiculous, be acceptable in any way, shape or form. But us metalheads — at least those of us smart enough to check our serious tough-guy faces at the door — revel in this kind of kitsch. Brilliance indeed. Amon Amarth has really got the market cornered as far as this kind of stuff goes.

And of course we can’t wait for the new Amon Amarth record! After all, it was an Amon Amarth show that sparked Axl and I to start this website. That and a little of your finest greenery.

-VN

Vince and I had occasion to hang out with some of the dudes from With Dead Hands Rising once, and they seemed like very nice young men. So I’m not too happy to report that their latest offering, Expect Hell, is totally generic modern death metal.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, there are two type of generic: competent generic and boring generic. And, unfortunately, WDHR fall into the latter category. ‘Cause there’s nothing especially wrong with Expect Hell, but there isn’t a single memorable or even vaguely catchy riff or hook on the whole damn thing. In fact, WDHR would seem to be one of those bands that are much more interested in being as br00tal as possible without, y’know, actually putting much work in the songs.

In short: Expect Hell is by no means the worst album ever recorded. But with so much great death metal already released this year (Hate Eternal, Origin, etc.) and so much more just over the horizon (Deicide, All Shall Perish, etc.), I can’t imagine anyone - not even the most severe death metal junkie - really needing to give this one a spin.

(one and half out of five horns)

-AR

I don’t usually don’t go for this kind of tuff-guy br00tal breakdowncore — at all — but for some reason I’ve found myself liking Emmure’s latest, The Respect Issue (May 13th, Victory Records). Maybe it’s because Emmure sprinkle subtle guitar atmospherics, pinched harmonics and short spurts of shred throughout this 28.9 minute, ten track breakdown assault. Varied vocal techniques, Vinnie Paul-style drum production, and constant rhythm and tempo shifts from Agnostic Front-style gallops to near-Crowbar levels of sludge keep things interesting throughout this quick burst of hardcore bruisers. Emmure reeeeally loooove chugging on that one open low note and the one other note that’s a half-step higher, but damn, they’re pretty fucking good at playing those two notes in a whole bunch of different patterns. Even “Chicago’s Finest,” the band’s stab at a commercial, radio-friendly track, literally uses two notes as the basis for the entire song. I don’t know whether to lambast or applaud that decision… but I think I’m going to go with “applaud” since that takes some real balls. “Rough Justice” veers a bit too close to by-the-numbers metalcore for my taste, but makes up for it with some tasty, jarring dissonance later on. Best of all about The Respect Issue; with such a short album there really isn’t enough time to get bored.

-VN

(three and a half out of five horns)

[Emmure on MySpace]
[Emmure Official Website]

Old Fart CD Reviews:
Testament – The Formation of Damnation

So I got an e-mail from Vince asking me if I wanted to review the new Testament CD, The Formation of Damnation. Great, I figured. Let the old fart listen to music by other old farts and rail on about how “metal kicked more ass in my day.” Well, in this case, it’s true.

Testament’s first full-length original CD since 1999’s The Gathering brings back 4/5 of the classic line-up of Chuck Billy (vox), Eric Peterson (guitar), Alex Skolnick (guitar), Greg Christian (bass), and new recruit, drummer Paul Bostaph (ex-Forbidden, ex-Slayer). The rejuvenated quintet brings the best of 80’s Bay Area thrash back to the forefront and teaches the new kids on the block — i.e. Evile, Warbringer, Hatchet, Trivium, Merciless Death – hell, even Lamb of God — exactly how it’s done.

Click to read more…

Am I the only one whose favorite Kataklysm songs are the slow ones? I mean, don’t get me wrong, these Canadian deathrashers can do the speed metal thing as well as anyone, but there’s just something about those chunky, churning, elephants-marching rhythms on songs like “Slither,” “Crippled and Broken,” and “The Road to Devastation” that’s so… brutal. Like, the band doesn’t wanna pummel you to death; they want to skin you alive. Slowly.

“Taking the World by Storm,” the first single off the band’s forthcoming Prevail, is one of those songs, and I loved it the second I heard that colossal riff. The video was helmed by MetalSucks fave David Brodsky, who does his usual top notch work here (the colors, dude, the colors!), and I don’t care what those “Videos are Dead” naysayers think - the clip is as effective a marketing tool as any metal band could wish for.

Prevail drops May 23 in Europe and May 27 here in the States on Nuclear Blast.

Kataklysm - Taking The World By Storm

-AR

That’s what The Deciblog called JoshofDarkness, the YouTuber you can watch below pleading for some sort of understanding amongst metalheads everywhere. And while I think anyone who has ever read this site is probably pretty aware that we enjoy bands from the entire metallic spectrum, at the end of the day, I have to agree with The Deciblog on this one: “his position is indefensible.”

-AR

Naysayers take note: God Forbid’s long-in-the-works DVD, Beneath the Scars of Glory and Progression, really is going to be released on June 10. In addition to a David Brodsky-directed concert film of last February’s headlining performance at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey (read our review of that show here), the DVD will also feature a documentary about the band that was directed by Denise Korycki.

Check out the badassed cover art for the DVD below. And if you enjoy “The Hard R,” God Forbid guitarist Dallas Coyle’s weekly column here at MetalSucks - and I know you do - head over to the band’s MySpace page and check out live recordings of the songs “Broken Promise” and “End of the World” from the DVD. They slay.

-AR