If you’re anything like me (And, really, who isn’t a Jewish Thalidomide baby up in this piece?), you’re sick of wading through the mud puddle of rehash thrash that’s collected below the metal drainage pipe over the last few years. Not only is most of it redundant, but it also overshadows the older bands that are still double-kicking ass. Take Kreator, granddaddies of German thrash. You want a thrash revival? After a pretty lackluster stretch in the 90s, these tusslin’ Teutons began a second golden age with the glorious Violent Revolution (2001). THAT was a thrash revival, and it predated the debuts by newbies Fueled By Fire, Warbringer and Avenger of Blood by years.

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Pure awesome. There is so much to say here but I’ll just let the video do the talking…

-VN

We’re all critics in our own right. The age old adage of “Everyone’s got an opinion” has never been more true… Maybe the internet has something to do with it? *wink, wink* I don’t have a problem with critics at all. I love seeing records get shit-canned, especially when they are good records. What I don’t love seeing is critics analyze a record and act like they know exactly where a band is coming from. That shit annoys me. Whether it’s a good record or bad record, just review the songs. Don’t review the overarching idea of the album. I want to know about your thoughts about the record, not your thoughts about your presumptions about the record.

This has become a problem nowadays with the “cool” magazines and the “cool” bands. There don’t need to be reviews where people are looking up words in the thesaurus to “paint” the picture for the reader. Or fans on a message board talking about why they won’t listen to new stuff from a band because they think the band is “over the hill.” A lot of you may be wondering if I’m talking about us; yes and no. We’ve always been lucky enough for the critics to shoot God Forbid a lot of love. I guess there is media bias for GF. hehe. But, at the same time you don’t really need to look into the shit that deep. And we’re well regarded for the most part so, no, I’m not talking about us. But, yes, I am.
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Thanks to MetalSucks Maniac George M. for the best belated holiday gift ever.

It’s only January 7th but already three ridiculously awesome North American tours are planned for the early part of the year:

Soilwork + Darkane + Swallow the Sun + Daylight Dies (in some markets)

Meshuggah + Cynic + The Faceless

The Haunted + Nachtmystium + Kylesa + Intronaut

Like, woah.

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[In which Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum waxes ecstatic about the most underrated metal albums of all time, in his humble opinion.]

So you love Swedish Metal. You have all the sick records by In Flames, At the Gates, Entombed, Soilwork, The Haunted, Hypocrisy, Opeth, shit, you even have Darkane and Dismember in your collection. Sooooo  then you love The Crown right? Yeah ok, there’s probably a few dudes thinking, “Shit, I know who The Crown are. Is he crazy?” I’ll get into it later, but I know for a fact that even at the height of their popularity in the USA we as metal heads in the states did a shitty job of showing the love. (And that was four or five years ago!) It’s with this in mind that I fear this great band (in particular this specific great record) may pass unnoticed and in the spirit of all things rock I offer up to you The Crown and their slaughtering Deathrace King record! Take it from a dude who has spent all of his adult life searching for inspiration in metal: this band, this record, are inspiring.
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The buckets of internet venom spewed at Arizona death metal titans Job for a Cowboy have seemingly made them stronger: the noticeable shift in sound and focus between their debut EP, Doom, and their debut full length, Genesis, is the sound of a band evolving nicely. While Doom is mired in the genre-shifting madness that was the style at the time, Genesis is serious fucking death metal, a nod to their scraggly-haired forefathers while looking to move onward to new terrain. With another full length due this year, the band show no signs of stopping.

Jonny Davy stands at the front of Job for a Cowboy as their manic, gutter-throated vocalist, firing up the devoted hordes that flock to the band’s countless shows. In an interview conducted in the pizza place next to Club Hell in Providence, where his band would later take the stage that rainy Sunday night to one of the most ridiculously adoring crowds I’ve seen, Jonny espouses about the band’s music, his interesting lineage, and thoughts on the band’s passionate – both positively and negatively so – reaction from the metal community.

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I must have been a ”submissive” in a previous life filled with dungeons and whips and chains. That’s the only way I can explain my irrational belief that someone, somewhere can actually make a decent fucking television show about heavy metal. The good ones, like Talking Metal or Uranium get yanked, while the cool hosts, such as Jamey Jasta and Juliya, get deep-sixed as soon as they start getting popular.

Regardless, I held out hope for this fall’s newest unwanted bastard red-headed stepchild AKA That Metal Show. Not surprisingly, my hopes were ill-founded and short-lived. That Metal Show blows.

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Pave the Way, what the press notes tell me is the fourth album from Los Angeles’ Flatline, has the most misleading, bullshit album title of anything that isn’t Lake Bukkake’s This Album Comes with a Blowjob Sandwich from Tawny Kitaen and Lita Ford.

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THERE’S AN NSFW IMAGE AFTER THE JUMP. YOU’RE WARNED.

Too Pure to Die’s Confess has got to be the first contender for worst album of 2009.

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Congrats to MetalSucks Maniacs Michael Greenberg and Andrew Neil, who correctly identified the final unreadable band logo of 2008 as belonging to the band Natan. They each win a poster signed by Within Temptation. Those should look pretty bad assed on your walls, fellas!

We’re kickin’ the new year off right with this week’s unreadable band logo: the upstanding young men and women at Roadrunner Records have supplied us with a copy of Dream Theater’s Chaos in Motion 2007 – 2008 DVD/CD collection to give away. This is a five – count ‘em, five! – disc super deluxe collector’s edition that features two DVDs with over three hours of live performances, plus behind-the-scenes documentaries, music videos, and live screen projection films, PLUS three live audio CDs. In short: this is a must own for Dream Theater fans.

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 a winner from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her name next week.

Because the prize is so awesome, I tried to find the hardest logo available for this week. Just remember: the answer will never, ever, under any circumstances, be Slipknot, Korn, or Atreyu. Never ever never.

-AR

Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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All Shall Perish just released a montage of various live footage taken from their recent MetalSucks co-sponsored tour with Job For a Cowboy, Hate Eternal (until they dropped off), Animosity and Annotations of An Autopsy. Check out JFAC’s Jonny Davy’s exclusive MetalSucks tour blogs, then watch the live All Shall Perish br00tality unfold below.

-VN

That’s what a reader calling him or herself “bondedbybud” asked after we encouraged you to download the new God Forbid song, “War of Attrition.” But what I really like about the comment – aside from the expert grammar, of course – is the suggestion that the members of God Forbid all share one, (presumably) giant asshole. I bet a lot of poop comes out of that thing, five stinky metal dudes all having to utilize it n’ everything.

ANYWAY, the simple answer to bondedbybud’s question is: God Forbid rock, rule, pwn, or however the fuck else you wanna say it. Metal Injection just posted part 3 of their behind-the-scenes look at the making of the band’s upcoming, ass-rippingly good record, Earthsblood, which Century will release on February 24. Check out the video below, and then watch part 1 and part 2, if ya haven’t already.

-AR

Have you guys seen Ace Frehley’s website? Shit is fo’ real. 1996 called, and it wants its website back. Words like “geocities,” “angelfire” and “AOL hometown” come to mind, fresh on the cutting edge of the Information Superhighway. It’s all here, folks: stock astronomy imagery, cheesy photoshop text effects, animated .gif icons, mystery navigation… the mind boggles.

We know this because we got an email announcing that he’s released the artwork for his forthcoming album Anomaly, his first since 1989′s Trouble Walkin’. We left a message with 1989 seeking comment, but it has yet to return our call.

-VN

Ron Asheton, founding guitarist of The Stooges, has been found dead in his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 60 years old.

Cause of death has not yet been determined, although the police say they do not suspect foul play.

I know The Stooges aren’t really metal, but they do (did?) rock about as hard as any band ever has, and I’m sure they’ve influenced literally hundreds (if not thousands) of metal acts. Friends of mine who saw some of their reunion gigs over the past few years told me they were still kickin’ as much ass as men half their age; I am now sorrier than ever that I never made it to one of those shows.

It’s hard to choose just one song as my favorite by this legendary band… but here they are performing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in ’04.

-AR