Congrats to RobotScythe, the winner of last week’s funny photo caption contest. RobotScythe wins a super-sweet prize package from The Answer for coming up with the following caption to the photo at right:

“Promo shot for the new Down cover band Down Syndrome.”

Completely un-PC but completely hilarious!

This week we’re giving away 3 prizes courtesy of the fine folks at Relapse Records:

1. Grand Prize: Longbox CD edition of Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s latest Agorapocalypse + CD of Brutal Truth’s latest Evolution Through Revolution and posters of both bands!
2. Two runners-up: Regular CD editions of both of the above.

Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, and they shall be yours.

If anyone watched the Oscars this year – and I don’t know why anyone would have, but I did – you might remember that the most inadvertently hilarious moment was when Hugh Jackman, at the end of a huge song n’ dance number, shouted “THE MUSICAL IS BACK!” My friends and I spent the rest of the telecast shouting that very phrase at random, usually inappropriate moments – e.g., the video montage of dead people, Kate Winslet crying because she still has to go home and fuck Sam Mendes, etc. – and if my girlfriend really drags me to see this piece of garbage movie this weekend, as she’s been threatening to, I plan to shout “THE MUSICAL IS BACK!” every time I get bored. Rude? Yes. Funny? To me it is, and I’m a a narcissist, so fuck the rest of the audience. Also, the movie is not going to be good anyway, so fuck anyone who cares.

One thing that could have made this drek at least mildly watchable would have been an egregious use of Entombed’s “Wolverine Blues.” Not that this is my favorite Entombed song by any stretch of the imagination – in fact, the tie-in with the Marvel mutant seemed random at best back in the day – but, y’know, I’m grasping at straws for anything that would make this movie feel less like a mouth raping. Think about it: every time Wolverine gets angry, every time something explodes, every time something dramatic happens – this song starts to play:

THE MUSICAL IS BACK!!!

-AR

This provocative and entirely untrue headline was my way of:

1) capitalizing on the goodwill fostered by our previous swine flu posts,

2) letting you know that the recently reunited Boss Hog has joined the ATP NY weekender lineup, which also includes The Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Boredoms, and Black Dice.

Echoing my earlier sentiments about this overpriced music fest, even this new addition isn’t enough to convince me to shell out over $250 for tickets and a couple hundred more for accommodations. I mean, come on.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is still gonna call it swine flu. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Most of you who (rightly so) loved Mastodon’s latest masterpiece Crack the Skye probably already know that the band is currently doing a very special tour of small venues with Kylesa and Intronaut, and that they’re playing Crack the Skye in its entirety on said tour (full list of tour dates available at Shockhound. Most of you are also bitching that you haven’t been able to get tickets to this very special event because of the limited amount of tickets available. Bitch no more: MetalSucks is giving away TWO pairs of tickets to see Mastodon perform in New York on either May 9th (Irving Plaza) or May 10th (Williamsburg Music Hall, Brooklyn), your choice which.

TO WIN, LEAVE A COMMENT WITH A SWINE-FLU INSPIRED PUN ON ANYTHING RELATED TO MASTODON. MAKE SURE YOU TYPE IN A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS, AS WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL BY MAY 6TH AND WILL BE GUESTLISTED ON THE SHOW OF THEIR CHOICE.

Examples:
“Brent Swineds”
“Colony of Pigmen”
“The Last Bacon”

Good luck!

Now it seems to me that Believer have done it all wrong. We’ll get to the actual content of the album later, but for now let’s just talk about band reunions for a minute. What we’ve seen over that last couple of years especially is that metal bands usually reunite for the purpose of touring only; the bands do a couple of tours state-side, play top slots at European festivals where they get to rock the biggest crowds of their careers, prove that they’re not too old and that their music is still relevant even to a new generation, and then they slip off the face of the earth again after being handsomely rewarded in cold hard cash. Touring is hard work for old farts, you didn’t think they’d do it without some financial compensation, did you?

Click to read more…

Here’s the best tweet I’ve seen all week, from Norma Jean:

just had a brief conversation about the direction for the next record which we will soon write. A little “back to our roots” is in order.7 minutes ago from web

If that turns out to be true, I will be one happy motherfucker. I know that MetalSucks’ own Gary Suarez disagrees with me that the most recent Norma Jean record sucked, but how anyone could think that “Robots 3, Humans 0″ is better than this is beyond me:

-AR

There are a few phrases that tweak the highly attuned sensors of professional music journalists. The one that frequently sets off the bullshit detectors is “highly anticipated debut.” Debuts, by their very nature, are seldom anticipated by anyone not in a band, working for a band or related to or fucking a member of the band. (And in the case of the latter, the anticipation is mainly along the lines of “Now maybe they’ll please just shut up about how the record’s coming out soon.”) The entire rest of the world is unlikely to be anticipating a debut because they don’t know anything about the band in the first place… because, after all, this is their debut we’re talking about.

In the case of Burning Human, however, a considerable amount of slack should be given to their describing their own studio debut album as “highly anticipated.” Why? Because after nearly a decade and a half of forming the band, these guys finally got around to releasing a full-length studio album. Burning Human was founded in upstate New York way back in 1995 and, based on the strength of a pretty rad demo tape (Death is Mercy), looked to be ready to take on the death metal world. As you may have realized, they did not (although drummer Jason Bittner hasn’t done too poorly for himself in Shadows Fall) and they split up in 1997, coming back together for the inevitable Reunion Nobody Asked For in 2007.

Click to read more…

This is pure comedy gold. The best is the part where the one dude says he’s been playing bass for “about a year and a half.” Priceless.

-VN

[Thanks to the anonymous MS Maniac who sent this in.]

“So that’s how you get swine flu!”

Dear Everyone,

• This post was a joke.
• If you’d clicked the included links, you would have seen it was a joke. Thanks to all three of you who did click said links.
• Mark Moritz-Rabson did not seriously write me a scolding e-mail. He provided me with the (in my opinion, hilarious) link included in the post. I tried to incorporate him into the joke. Clearly, that didn’t go so well.
• No joke is ever off-limits here at MetalSucks. For example, here’s a good one: What do you do after eating out the cleanest pussy in the world? Put the diaper back on. See? Pedophilia is funny. Ha ha ha.
• Get swine flu and die.

Kisses and bunnies and rainbows,

AR