You know I’ve always been really grateful to Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Neilstein for taking me under their wing and letting me write about the music I live for while never making a big deal about my disability. That’s right, everyone, I’m Canadian. Now I know a lot you free and brave folks might not understand my condition but let me just say that I’m not that different from you. Sure, I might talk a bit funny and worship a giant red leaf (oh and that green one, too), but MetalSucks has always been a tolerant organization that understands that Metal is for everybody. Whether you’re chugging Bud Lights (yuck) or Molsons, they both look the same on the way out in the alleyway after the show.

However, counteracting this side of me is my Norwegian heritage, which undoubtedly sourced my genetic predisposition to abrasive guitar noise played by pasty white dudes. Ahhh, it all makes sense now.

Click to read more…

I don’t think this needs much of an intro. Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh topped Vince’s and Kip’s and my own top ten of ’08 lists and appeared on almost every other MetalSucks contributor’s list as well. And the band’s new, animated, Jossie Malis directed video, for the “All the Tears,” is just awesome. Check it out below…

-AR

I wonder if this guy had toked a leel on my baby blue bubbler and listened to this song, would he still have gone buck wild and done what he done?

[link courtesy of the one-and-only Hurricane Doneski (from thefamousish.com), my favorite non-Mexican Mexican and Vince and mine's host into hell in March for SXSW 2009 -- whoop whoop/apologies in advance to my poor liver...]

THE SWORD – “Lament for the Aurochs”, from Age of Winters (2006)

-KW

It may be a new year on the calendar, but we’re still talking about the same stupid shit here at MetalSucks. Here’s where we focused our energies this week:

• Most awesomest metal festival EVARRR! Not to be confused with the most awesomest tours of early 2009.
  
• New music from Cannibal Corpse!!!
• Mastodon counted down to a new website while Trent Reznor counted down to giving away approximately 400 Gigs of HD concert footage for fans to tinker with.
• We questioned Drew Barrymore’s interest in metal and demanded she take off her shirt.
• We spoke with members of All Shall Perish and Job For a Cowboy.
• Mike Schleibaum declared The Crown’s Deathrace King underrated while Dallas claimed music critics are overrated.
• Can’t anyone make a decent heavy metal TV show?
• One Roadrunner Records staffer named MetalSucks.net the #10 best album of 2008.

Later, gators…

The New England Metal and Hardcore Festival finally has a rival. MS Maniac Toxteth O’Grady and about a bazillion others have tipped us off to one of the most exciting new U.S. festival to hit the scene in years, The Scion Rock Fest, to be held at The Masquerade in Atlanta on February 28th. Before you balk at the corporate name, consider a) that the tickets are fucking FREE, and b) this lineup:

Mastodon, Neurosis, High on Fire, Boris, 1349, Cryptopsy, Torche, Nachtmystium, Wolves in the Throne Room, Baroness, Harvey Milk, Kylesa, Zoroaster, Withered, Krallice, Toxic Holocaust, Skeletonwitch, Rwake, A Storm of Light, Warbringer, Salome, Suidakra, Tyr, Alestorm and more…

And it’s fucking free. Is this for real??

Yes, friends, it is. We aren’t sure how tickets will be made publicly available yet, but we do know this: we will have 20 pairs of tickets to give away on MetalSucks.

Have a fucking great weekend everyone!

-VN

[via Metal Injection]

-AR

Last month my man Vince posted a video of Rusty Cooley shredding like no one has ever shredded before; then, yesterday, the dudes in All Shall Perish said in their interview with Sammy that Rusty “is, hands down, one of the best guitarists on earth.”

Well, I didn’t really know that much about Cooley, so I decided to do some homework and check out his band, Outworld, to see what he was like in a band situation where he’d have to play an actual song rather than just scales (at an admittedly super human speed). As it turns out, Outworld are pretty good – although I’m not over the moon about their vocalist, who I think borders on a parody of a good power metal glass-breaker. Still, I leave it to our beloved peanut gallery to have the last word…

Here’s Outworld’s “Warcry.”

-AR

[Thanks: David]

The title track from Cannibal Corpse’s forthcoming Evisceration Plague is now streaming here, where you can also pre-order an autographed copy of the album.

Not that much to say about it, other than it’s slower than I thought it would be – it’s kinda like the riff from Kill‘s “Death Walking Terror,” but with more of an elephants marching beat (which, if you know us but at all, you know we fucking love).

The Erik Rutan (ERIK FUCKING RUTAN!!!) produced Evisceration Plague drops on Metal Blade on February 3. We’ve now heard the latest from Lamb of God, God Forbid and Napalm Death, but still haven’t heard this. But I’m really fucking excited to give it a spin.

-AR

I’ve been waiting forever to check out the documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil but can’t afford to fly cross country for a film festival. The good news is that the movie will have an official DVD release sometime in the spring, probably March.

Needless to say, wood will be sported.

Check out the trailer:

Click to read more…

I heard this cover of the Great Panty Dropper of ’87 in, of all places, the trailer for the remake of Last House on the Left (Yes. Another fucking remake.). Some Googlin’ brought me to the full mp3 at irritatingly named BiBaBiDi (Quick, someone donate to them that “MetalSucks is run by cunts” mp3!).

And I thought it was worth discussing.

Taken by Trees, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

Discuss.

-AR

Shrinebuilder, the project that features in equal measure Wino (St, Vitus, Hidden Hand), Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep), and Dale Crover (Melvins), will be in the studio with Toshi Kasai (Melvins, Big Business) from January 9th through January 11th, according to a press release sent exclusively to MetalSucks by the band’s publicist. Shrinebuilder’s debut full-length is set for a summer 2009 release on Neurot Recordings.

Scott Kelly has announced that he will report live from the studio via http://www.weburnthroughthenight.blogspot.com beginning no later than Saturday, January 10th.  Look for guest blogs by other members of Shrinebuilder as well as possible in-studio photos from the band.

-VN

Congrats to Steve, the winner of our most recent Funny Photo Caption Contest (which seems like it was forever ago). Steve wins a Knucklebonz 9-inch desktop statue of Dimebag Darrell (pictured here), thanks to our friends at TonesofDeath.com. You know we usually try to take the high road above cheap Gaahl jokes around here… but man, this was just too funny:

“KISS had their army, Gorgoroth has the Gaahl Scouts. They sell the blackest of thin mints.”

A+++++, Steve!

This week we’re giving away a CD copy of Psycroptic’s excellent late-2008 technical death metal masterpiece Ob(Servant). Just comment with a funny caption to the below photo and it shall be yours.

Long time readers of this site should be fully aware that I was addicted to the initial season of Rock of Love, VH1′s completely fucktarded reality show in which Poison singer/wig wearer Bret Michaels basically moved into a mansion with a large amount of not especially attractive (or smart or personable or nice or any other quality one generally looks for in other human beings) sluts and makes them all do ridiculous things to determine which one is his one true love (And by “one true love,” I mean… I don’t know what I mean. It seems like Michaels fucks all the girls anyway, so what’s the fucking point?).

But I basically lost interest two episodes into season two. Like pretty much every reality show I’ve ever tried to watch (which, admittedly, is only three – hello Project Greenlight and The Apprentice), the gimmick go old quickly. Maybe watching a different washed up hair metal star make some groupies of Gumpian intellect jump through hoops for the chance to suck his cock would have kept me interested; as it stood, I’d had enough.

I’m not sure which season Rock of Love is on now – I think it might be the third, and I think it’s on a bus now, or some shit – but it looks like Deicide mainman/generally all around scary dude Glen Benton caught a few episodes, and, it should surprise no one to learn, he was not amused.

Click to read more…

Psych! The countdown glitch must’ve just been a timezone issue. Mastodon done gone and launched a whole darn new website! Check it out. The new site offers a short sample of the new track “Oblivion” and the design presumably gives us a peak into the album artwork for Crack the Skye.

Unfortunately for would-be Mastodon video-watchers, none of the YouTube embeds in their Video section work due to Warner Music Group’s recent back-asswards anti-You Tube decision.

-VN

From nin.com [via MetalSucks Maniac Sukey Scorer], we have an update to Trent Reznor’s mysterious weekend countdown message:

The internet is full of surprises these days.
I was contacted by a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives who SOMEHOW managed to film a substantial amount (over 400 GB!) of raw, unedited HD footage from three separate complete shows of our Lights in the Sky tour. Security must have been lacking at these shows because the quality of the footage is excellent.

If any of you could find a LINK to that footage I’ll bet some enterprising fans could assemble something pretty cool.

Oh yeah, you didn’t hear this from me.

Just the latest in a long, long string of ultimate “bro” moves by Trent Reznor over the past year.

But wait; it doesn’t stop there.

Click to read more…

Standing out in metal is difficult, considering that even the subgenres that splinter off from metal’s whole don’t take long to feel overcrowded. So in an era where bands increasingly have to earn their keep, All Shall Perish worked hard to definitively (and rightfully) make their mark in 2008 amidst the deluge of death metal. The band’s mesh of breakdowns and technical death metal forcefulness wowed many on their latest full length (Awaken the Dreamers) and during their copious touring (including one sponsored by us).

It was before their Providence show on that tour that vocalist Hernan “Eddie” Hermida and bassist Mike Tiner were kind enough to grant us an interview. They seemed to be guys with a good sense of humor about everything, not taking themselves (or anything, really) too seriously during the whole interview. With a dry, absurd wit later blown to bits by their fierce set that evening, the band didn’t seem to typify in person what their music may imply. They’re seemingly just dudes, albeit dudes that play in one of the chief death metal/ hardcore (but certainly not deathcore) bands out there. Eddie and Mike discussed their thoughts on deathcore and their insights into how they compose breakdowns, among other things.

Click to read more…

RevolverMag.com tells us that movie babe, ET star and childhood drug-fiend Drew Barrymore has recently been photographed wearing Iron Maiden and Judas Priest t-shirts. True metalhead or trend-following fashionista? You be the judge.

-VN

And the big Mastodon announcement that warranted a days-long countdown on their official website is…

Click to read more…

The time is nigh, my friends. VH1 declared ’90s nostalgia relevant way before its time, but now it’s almost 2010… and ’90s nu-metal nostalgia is starting to creep into mainstream culture on a more organic level. Aside from shitstains like Hollywood Undead seemingly arriving via time-warp and stalwarts like (hed)p.e. completely neglecting the passage of an entire decade (punk, dude!), the generally on-point Sergeant D of Metal Inquisition posted a retroview of Crazytown’s entire discography over the holidays. This is the man who consistently pays non-ironic tributes to Nitro, and anyone who loves Nitro non-ironically is A-ok in our book.

But yo son, for realz: Crazytown?

Click to read more…