Alright. So if you’ve watched the excellent, Todd Bell-directed “Making Of” DVD that accompanies the deluxe edition of Chimaira’s latest, The Infection – or, for that matter, if you’ve just listened closely to the lyrics – you know that Danny Boyle’s sci-fi opus Sunshine was an influence on the lyrics for the song “The Disappearing Sun.”

The band’s new video – also directed by Bell – is (obviously) not for that particular song, but it would appear as though imagery from that film was still a big, big influence on the clip. Sunshine deals with some pretty complex issues (don’t let its appearance as a by-the-numbers space opera fool you), so I’ll leave it to you to try and make the thematic connections between the movie and “Destroy and Dominate.”

This is easily the best video the band has ever made. Bell, a friend of the group’s, has directed many of their clips in the past, but he’s really outdone himself here – the imagery is just awesome. I’ll have to watch it a few more times to try and discern if there’s a method to the madness of the all the crazy pictures or it’s just supposed to look cool, but either way, I’m really digging it.

Ironically, there’s an ad for anti-drug campaign before the video, but I think we can all ignore that in the name of enjoying this video the way it was meant to be enjoyed (e.g., with lots and lots of weed).

-AR

Metal Injection‘s Rob Pasbani sent me a link to the below trailer for Edge, a documentary about the straight edge movement (apparently, it’s not a lifestyle) that is not to be confused with The Edge, that David Mamet movie with Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, the dude from Lost, and a giant fucking bear.

Look: I don’t give a fuck if you “party” or not. I do give a fuck that you feel some need to announce it to the world – in fact, I’d argue that as soon as you do announce it to the world, it is a lifestyle. Just go to the party and don’t drink and don’t do drugs – there’s really no fucking reason whatsoever to tell everybody within shouting distance that you’re clean. That “X” on your hand looks suspiciously like a cross, fucko. You’re basically part of a cult, which is how you deal with your personal shit. I and my friends deal with it with drugs and booze. It’s the same thing, really, except we have way more fun, and sometimes go home with someone ugly and have to figure out a way to sneak out in the morning.

-AR

Tonight, Gavin Rossdale will be playing New York’s Gramercy Theatre as part of a May/June U.S. tour supporting his 2008 solo effort Wanderlust. Those of you familiar with this record or its corresponding singles know that the former Bush frontman has departed significantly from the raucous yet melodic post-grunge of his old band, opting for a softer, essentially adult contemporary sound not entirely dissimilar to Chris Cornell’s post-Audioslave offering Carry On. While this description likely wont appeal to you metal maniacs (I sure as hell didn’t buy it), here are a few reasons why you should load up on alcohol and catch one of the upcoming dates.
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Today’s release finds Omar, Cedric, and Juan from The Mars Volta teaming up with Zach Hill and Jonathan Hischke from Hella; I haven’t heard the album yet, but I suspect most fans of TMV will appreciate……here’s the first YouTube ‘trailer’ for Cryptomnesia:

The Mars Volta will also release their 5th studio album, entitled Octahedron, in North America on June 23rd and the rest of the world the day before — get psyched!!

You can catch the prog-rock posse extraordinaire at Bonneroo in Tennessee on June 13th, San Fran’s Outside Lands Festival on August 29th, and at various dates in Europe in between — check out the band’s MySpace page for dates and locations.

And not that we really care about the Grammies (read my recent round-up send-up here), but after the jump I’m including the Volta’s acceptance speech from this year’s ceremony (when they beat out Judas Priest, Rob Zombie, Disturbed, and Motley Crue, who they referenced backstage).

-KW

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When I went to the record release party for Karl Sanders’ new solo album, Saurian Exorcisms (read David Bee Roth’s review here), I was fairly nervous. For one thing, he’s KARL FUCKING SANDERS; as the mastermind behind Nile, he’s been making some of the heaviest, most revered death metal in the world for more than a decade. And for another thing, when I got there, the dude was holding court at the bar, and I didn’t wanna be the one to interrupt his good time so he could so some press (So I made The End Records’ publicist interrupt his good time. Thanks, Geoff!).

But Sanders turned out to be an incredibly nice guy, and, as you’ll read below, our interview really took the shape of an informal chat. After the jump, read Karl’s thoughts on the differences between a Sanders solo outing and Nile records, his relationship with the fan base, being the heaviest act ever to play Ozzfest, what fans can expect from the new Nile album, and more.

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Can Prosthetic Records do any wrong? The record label that brought us top-notch records from Gojira, Byzantine and Beneath the Massacre in ’08 is off to a fucking stellar start in ’09, having already delivered with records from Scale the Summit, Animals as Leaders and Kylesa. It’s only May, but you can add another record to that hit list, Unholy’s New Life Behind Closed Eyes, which is currently streaming in its entirety over at Lambgoat.

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The Red Chord guitarist Mike “Gunface” McKenzie is shooting and editing an in-studio diary for our friends at Metal Injection chronicling the making of the band’s new album, which will hopefully drop later this year.

When we interviewed Red Chord bassist Greg Weeks last year, he described the band’s writing and recording process thusly:

“We all get in a room and yell at each other about stupid shit and then painstakingly put riffs together even though it kills us a little bit each time… We argue, we each want it done our way, we smell, we curse, we bleed all over the place, I kicked someone, let’s eat, we yell, we hate the way other people breathe, cannon ball, kitchen craft, we ignore suggestions, we’re ugly and Santa was there, too.”

Hopefully we’ll get to see some of this insanity in upcoming episodes of Gunface’s diary. In the meantime, here’s his first entry, which documents some drum tracking:

-AR

I don’t like Nightwish. I don’t really dislike Nightwish, either; I guess I mostly just don’t see what the big deal is.

That being said, I know a lot of people do like Nightwish, and for those people, Ian Christe’s Bazillion Points Books has just released Once Upon a Nightwish: The Official Biography 1996-2006 by Mape Ollila. Christe is the author of the excellent history of metal, Sound of the Beast, as well as the equally excellent Van Halen biography, Everybody Wants Some, and Bazillion Point’s was the publisher that released last year’s mind-blowing Swedish Death Metal, which is pretty much the definitive book on… well… y’know. My point being that even as someone who doesn’t appreciate Nightwish, I’m willing to bet this book is quality.

And just to prove it, Bazillion Points has released a free chapter from the book, which you can download here. A press release describes the chapter:

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We’re giving away so much awesome free shit at the MS Mansion right now that I can’t even keep track of all of it, so there’s a good chance you can’t either. To wit, here’s a list of all the current contests we’re running:

• Two pairs of tickets to see Mastodon play Crack the Skye in its entirety in New York City.
• A pair of 3 Inches of Blood Nike Encore High sneakers!
• One pair of tickets to each stop of the Relapse Contamination Tour, featuring Obscura, Graves of Valor and Abysmal Dawn.
• Brutal Truth and Agoraphobic Nosebleed CDs in our (almost)-weekly Photo Caption Contest.
• Two copies of the super-extra-special edition of Machine Head’s The Blackening CD for deciphering a completely unreadable band logo.

Don’t say we never did nothin’ for ya.

-VN

A couple of weeks ago, Vince told you about some Hasidim in the Music as a Weapon IV mosh pit on that tour’s NJ stop. I was actually at that show (and by “at that show,” I mean “I watched Chimaira be awesome and then spent the rest of the night getting drunk/high with friends before driving home very, very, very slowly”), and even though these dudes were what everyone was talking about, I was totally bummed that I never actually got to see any of them.

Well well well… one of them, Josh Kidd, just e-mailed me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that other Jews who like metal enjoy a site run by guys with names like “Rosenberg” and “Neilstein,” but, somehow, I was still floored when I got the e-mail. So much so that I’m willing to post this video of our fellow Chosen Person, David Draiman, giving them a shout-out from the stage, even though MetalSucks’  distaste for Disturbed is pretty well documented at this point:

Hilarious, right?

These cats even have their own Facebook group, if you’d like to keep in touch. They even utilize the Anton OyVey logo!!!

-AR

On April 11, I interviewed Napalm Death front man Barney Greenway when the grind god rolled through NYC on the second date of their tour with Kataklysm, Toxic Holocaust, Trap Them and Coliseum; on April 13, I interviewed Nile’s Karl Sanders. If that wasn’t fucking life affirming, I don’t know what is.

So: Barney Greenway and Napalm Death. Napalm practically invented grindcore (in fact, their former drummer Mick Harris literally coined the term) twenty-two years ago with their seminal debut, Scum; Greenway joined the band two years later and, save for a bried hiatus in the 90s, has been there ever since. The man is a fucking legend, and necessarily so: on stage, he’s just as ferocious as he ever was, and with the release of Napalm’s latest, the mind-fucking great Times Waits for No Slave (read my review here), the band has laid to rest any doubts that they’ll be slowing down any time soon. The fact that he turned out to be an incredibly nice, soft-spoken British chap only just barely calmed my nerves enough to actually remember all of my questions.

After the jump, get all of Greenway’s thoughts on why Napalm Death continues to be a relevant force in metal, the ins and outs of the band’s live show, the state of modern grindcore, and more.

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Here’s an interview our friends at Metal Injection conducted with our friends in IWRESTLEDABEARONCE at New England Metal & Hardcore Festival a couple of weeks back. It’s a spirited romp, as are most conversations led by MI’s Rob Pasbani (or, as many of you call him when he’s spotted out at shows, “Metal Injection Guy!”).

But in the interest of being completely honest, I should let you know that I’m really posting it as an excuse to remind you that IWABO are out on the road RIGHT NOW as part of a MetalSucks co-sponsored trek being headlined by The Human Abstract and also featuring Oh, Sleeper, Vanna, A Tragic Victory and To Speak of Wolves. All the cool kids are going. And if you don’t go, they’ll know you’re not cool and no one will ever want to make out with you or touch you where your bathing suit covers again. Seriously, I know a kid who missed the tour when it came through his town last week, and then he was instantly made a social outcast and hung himself. Peer pressure peer pressure peer pressure.

So watch this interview, then get tour dates after the jump, so that mommy and daddy will still love you and God won’t send you to hell.

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Though recently convicted of murder, Phil Spector is regarded as one of the greatest music impresarios of the 20th century. His “Wall Of Sound” production style made him stand out from the pack, though the final results were not always met with appreciation by the artists with which he worked–perhaps the most noteworthy of these dissatisfied parties being The Beatles. Paul McCartney in particular loathed Spector’s approach on Let It Be, and a very different version of the album appeared in 2003. Whether or not such a revision will occur with Chris Cornell’s Timbaland-produced Scream remains to be seen, but an undeniably rock-centric version of his latest single certainly raises the question.

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I don’t know very much about the band “party grind” outfit Dr. Acula, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t like them. And here’s why: even though “Dr. Acula” was initially a character in an Ed Wood movie and the nickname of sci-fi writer Forrest J. Ackerman, I’d suspect that the band actually took their name from this…

…and if you took your name from a joke on Scrubs, you and I now the very definition of “got off on the wrong foot.”

I guess the fellas in Cattle Decapitation agree with me, because after Dr. Acula apparently cancelled an NYC appearance with the vegan death metallers, vocalist Travis Ryan decided to voice his displeasure publicly. Full video after the jump.

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Several of you (ok… three) have emailed MetalSucks urging us to check out Seventh Void — the new band featuring Johnny Kelly and Kenny Hickey of Type-O Negative — whose debut record Heaven is Gone just dropped last month on Vinnie Paul’s Big Vin Records. Seventh Void sound nothing like the goth-laden, morose metal played by half of the band in their day jobs; instead we get southern-tinged, bluesy hard rock with little pretense that sounds more like Down, Corrosion of Conformity or early Soundgarden than anything Type-O have done to date. Check out their new video for the Heaven is Gone’s title track below, then have a listen to more on Seventh Void’s MySpace page. Look out for MS interviews later this month with both Johnny Kelly and Vinnie Paul!

-VN

Well, not really… but that’s what the band’s new video, for “Across the Shields,” reminded me of. And apparently I’m not alone.

The video also reminds me of  the time that Vince and I shared a bag full of ‘shrooms in Central Park. But that’s a whole other story…

-AR

MetalSucks liking Zao is something akin to getting a blowjob from a hooker and not getting an STD — possible, but certainly not likely. And so the realization that both Axl and myself enjoyed Zao’s new song “What Will You Find?,” — released last month — was nothing short of shocking. Until I clicked a linky-dink in a press release sent this weekend directing me to Zao’s MySpace to hear their entire new album. And then it all suddenly made sense; there, at the top of their MySpace page, was a glistening new promo photo of the band with singer Daniel Weyandt sporting a wicked, classy, distinguished and bad-ass handlebar mustache.

Clearly the power of the ‘stache is behind Zao’s newfound rise to the realms of good music; do not underestimate the power of the stache, people! And this mustache is no joke; Weyandt looks like the kind of man who wouldn’t sport lip-hair as an ironic hipster fashion statement. No, instead he is the dinguished metal gentlemen, a mustachioed man amongst ironic bearded boys, a shephard amongst artsy-fartsy, poser sheep.

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Swine flu got you down? Don’t get too scared, it was always part of the plan. Here’s a headline you should be much more concerned about: “ROB HALFORD UNVEILS NEW LINE OF SUPER CRAPPY T-SHIRTS“. WTF?? As if that isn’t horrifying enough in and of itself, the shirts look like they were designed by people with down syndrome that just couldn’t quite make the cut over at Affliction (as though Affliction Clothing isn’t bad enough). Jesus. If you want to get massively bummed out, head over to Halford’s new t-shirt line website, “Metal God Apparel” and grab yourself a sweet tee for a cool $54.99. Cheap!!

I see tons of douchebags trolling around Los Angeles in shitty shirts that look dangerously similar to these. It’s pretty sad. It’s a pandemic for sure. And there’s not really much we can do at this point. It seems even the Boston Red Sox have been struck with this “affliction” (pictured right). I hate all of you.

-MC

[Read more from Mike Conte at http://www.whiplashwhiplashwhiplash.com/]

Holy moly, those sexy Swedes still dun got it! And they clearly proved so last night at smelly New Jersey’s Starland Ballroom, where they vaguely represented almost every album they’ve ever released — obviously last year’s Watershed, album-before Ghost Reveries, and juggernauts Still Life and Blackwater Park, but also early records Orchid and My Arms, Your Hearse.

This guy was bored a leel by the meandering tunes from those yesteryear albums, and in my not-so-humble-opinion drummer Martin “Axe” Axenrot don’t hold no candle to Opeth-heyday skinsman Martin Lopez, but man o man, did the band rrrrock von rockinstein!

And after a 10-song, 1.7 hour long set that included zero songs from Deliverance, Opeth closed the encore with the title track from said ‘heavy’ album.

Now go smoke a Swede.

OPETH — “Deliverance”, from Deliverance (2002)

-KW

Some of you seem to find it shocking that we actually read your comments (and often reply to e-mails, for that matter). To which I say: why the fuck else would we even have a comments section? We love to read the comments. To wit:

• Daisy May Tinklepants accused us not once but twice of giving positive reviews to artists who granted us interviews. I guess poor David Bee Roth didn’t get the memo when he interviewed and then reviewed Believer. In any case, both of those interviews were actually offered, not granted, but we appreciate the conspiracy theories.
• disappointed called us “dickless jew faggots” because I apologized for a swine flu joke (but not really). We don’t mind being called “Jew faggots,” but to suggest that we have no penises is just uncalled for. Also, the word “Jew” is generally capitalized, you wide-set vagina’d Goy retard.
• teaches of peaches says that no one cares about Dallas Coyle’s column “The Hard R” now that he’s not in God Forbid. Comments left by 114 other people would suggest otherwise, but just to be safe, Dallas is joining the latest touring incarnation of Sha Na Na so that he can continue to write for us.
• Revealing themselves to be the anti-Matt McChesneys, the dudes from YEAH! Destroyer spent more time writing for the site this week than anyone on the MetalSucks staff did. Whatever keeps them from playing music…
• Cahiers du Cinema contributor CrapMcPoopin announced that he’s leaving us for our friends at Metal Insider. Then he left 13 more comments over the course of the week.
• Conduit is having a hard time reconciling the fact that we like “commercial crap” and “random bands from Europe/elsewhere.” Sorry, Conduit. But, yeah, we liked the most recent Slipknot album. Shrug.
• Ricky doesn’t like the fact that Dope are basically paying us to talk shit about them. Ricky, have you spoken with Daisy May? ‘Cause in reality, we only hate Dope because they won’t grant us an interview.

And next week we’re gonna try to really piss you cats off.

-AR