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.

Here’s part two; you can still check out part one here.

-AR

So, Mastodon have been touring small venues in the U.S. playing Crack the Skye (recent recipient of 5-out-of-5 horns on MetalSucks!) in its entirety. The fact that they’re playing a full album is awesome in and of itself (who else does that nowadays??), but thankfully the execution lived up to the billing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn last Sunday night. The band had a full HD screen with psychedelic video clips that roughly synched up to the storyline of the music; the band was tight as hell, the sound was crystalline, the audience beyond stoked. It was a fucking fantastic night, and if I hadn’t seen this show earlier that same week, it probably would’ve been my choice for #1 live show of ’09 thus far.

Metal Injection (who were also in attendance… as fans, I might add) have posted a clip from CultureBully of the beginning of the show from the tour’s stop in Minneapolis. The clip captures everything perfectly, from what it looked and sounded like to what it felt like to be there, even though we saw the show in a completely different city on a completely different night. That’s just where Mastodon are in their game these days — completely on top of it, killing it every single night. Ten or twenty years from now you’ll be able to say “I saw them when…” the way people now speak fondly about seeing Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd in their prime. Mastodon are just that good.

Shout-out to our boys in Intronaut who sounded fantastic live in the opening slot.

-VN

Is this a news site?

No.

Are you journalists?

No. We’re bloggers.

Why do you report the news in such a biased way?

Because we don’t report the news. We’re bloggers, not journalists. If you’re getting your world news from The Daily Show, you’re an idiot. If you’re getting your metal news from us, you’re an idiot.

Click to read more…

I mean, there’s no way this is actually Glenn Danzig, but good God, whoever is running @DANZIG deserves a major fucking pat on the back for coming up with gems like these:

I’ve never liked the word “spunky”
1:14 PM Apr 4th from web

my patience has worn thinner than my hairline lately.
10:43 PM Mar 23rd from web

No I am not going to be on a VH1 dating show, so stop asking.
1:14 AM Mar 7th from web

heading to the nail salon to get my pinky nail sharpened, brb
8:25 AM Feb 28th from web

standing in a clearing at the edge of the woods shaking a baby in my mouth
12:08 AM Feb 27th from web

Pure. Comic. Gold. Thanks to loooongtime MS Maniac (and Twitter-phobe) hibernum for sending this one in.

-VN

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as SSSSLLLLLAAAAAYYYYYERRRRRR!!!!!, does it?

In case you doubted the connection between classical music and modern metal: in 1999, Dave Lombardo teamed up with Italian music critic Lorenzo Arruga and some other people you don’t care about for Vivaldi: The Meeting, which basically takes some classic Vivaldi pieces and futzes around with them.

Is it brilliant, garbage, or just a failed experiment.? Invisible Oranges has some mp3s of the whole affair – head over there to check it out.

-AR

I guess the fellas in Born of Osiris are feeling saucy this week, because they done gone ahead and posted another new song – this one titled “Exist” – on on their MySpace page.

It’s a little techier than “Now Arise,” the song they posted on Wednesday, and, better yet, it features absolutely no rapping.

Born of Osiris’ new album, A Higher Place, comes out July 7 on Sumerian.

-AR

Thanks to Cooper Stapleton for the heads up.

… is the metal show going down at Trash Bar in Brooklyn. The two absolute best young NYC-area metal bands — progressive death metal masters The Binary Code and neo-classical death shredders Hung, both of whom you’ve read about on these here Interwebs pages many times — will be performing, which in itself is worthy of the super-low ticket price of $7. If that’s not enough, you also get to see the latest Roadrunner Records’ signees Mutiny Within in a small venue before they blow the fuck up; last we saw these dudes they completely tore shit up live. AND, if you get there at 8pm there’s an hour-long open bar of PBR and well drinks. Yours truly and Axl will both be there too if you wanna come down and get silly with us. Hey, beer’s cheap in Williamsburg, all the more reason to come to this show so you don’t have to buy us expensive drinks in the swanky confines of Manhattan!

The show starts at 8pm SHARP with Jesus Knevil opening and Turrigenous closing the bill. The Binary Code are on at 8:45pm, and trust me… you do NOT want to miss these modern-day virtuosos.

See you there.

-VN

NME.com just debuted the new Marilyn Manson video, “Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin’-Geddon,” or, as it seems to be called for the purposes of this lame ass video, “Arma-arma-arma-arma-armageddon.”

So, yeah, the song has grown on me slightly since I first heard it, but it’s still not great, and the video sucks – it’s like a parody of a cliché of Manson videos. Also, funny that Twiggy is the only other band member in the video. Also, funny that he’s playing guitar.

Manson’s new album, The High End of the Low, comes out May 26. Everything we’ve heard/seen from it so far suggests that it’s going to blow goats.

-AR

Protest the Hero (recipients of one of only two 5-out-of-5-horns ratings on MetalSucks ever) are currently out on the MetalSucks-sponsored “Heads Will Roll” Tour with Misery Signals and The Number 12 Looks Like You, and yours truly had the privilege of seeing them headline for the first time this past Saturday night in NYC — and good lord, the band delivers the goods live to be sure. PtH have all the chops live they do on record; no ProTools chicanery there, folks. This is a tour you absolutely need to see when it hits your city, but it may already be too late; the tour wraps up with a show tonight in Chicago and another tomorrow in St. Paul, Minnesota. If you missed the tour when it came through your town or you live in Chicago or St. Paul but spent all your money on weed, check out the exclusive tour diary the Protest dudes did for us, below. It’s a great look into the zany behind-the-scenes antics of what goes down in the Protest camp on tour. And you get the impression this is only a fraction of the crazy shit that actually goes on.

-VN

Thanks to Decibel for their tweet alert that today is the 47th birthday (!) of “Brooklyn homeboy” C.C. DeVille (né Bruce Anthony Cecil Johannesson). Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that C.C. is one of the most entertaining cartoon characters ever to escape from Cool World.

Here’s some ridiculous video that tries to make it seem like C.C. is Jimi fucking Hendrix or some shit.

-AR

I’m not really that familiar with The Agonist, which is kinda sad, because I’m fairly certain we sponsored their recent tour with The Haunted (although, in all fairness to me, they weren’t a part of the tour when we signed up). But a lof of you have e-mailed us about them as of late, and I think the split between those of you love ‘em and those of you who loathe ‘em is pretty equal.

So here’s the band’s David Brodsky-directed video for “…And Their Eulogies Sang Me to Sleep.” Check it out, and then let us know what you think of The Agonist below.

-AR

What I like about White Wizzard, Earache Records’ latest signees, is that there’s no bullshit involved in their music. These are dudes who lived and died by their Maiden, Priest and Dio records back in the day and without a doubt still jam these records all the time. Perhaps best of all, there is not an ounce of irony here; though the dudes certainly have a sense of humor and, methinks, would categorize their music as “fun,” don’t expect them to try to out-shred anyone like a certain band or to pull any ironic “we have 15 singers” crap like another certain band. White Wizzard just like their “classic, traditional metal” (their own self-categorization), therefore that is what the play. Quite well, I might add.

Take their video for “High Speed GTO,” posted below. It’s got wizards and witches, sorcerers, general bad-assery and a storyline you’d expect from a classic Dio video, not a metal video in 2009. But the video doesn’t have these things because they think “ha ha, the ’80s were funny, let’s make fun of them!” like most of the poser rehash bands of today. No, these dudes actually think (and rightly so!) “wouldn’t it be fucking awesome if we had a video with wizards and witches and sorcerers??! that’d be fucking bad-ass!!!” It’s a fine line, kiddies.

After the jump, check out a recent EPK video featuring interviews and live footage of the band, including ex-Overloaded guitarist Erik Kluiber who recently joined White Wizzard as their second guitarist. Erik’s a talented axeman that longtime MetalSucks Maniacs will remember as commenter “ERiK.” Expect a “mini-album” (whatever that is) called High Speed GTO from White Wizzard on July 13th in the entire world. hello, Earache, it’s called “the Internet!” in Europe, and a full-length later in the year.

Click to read more…

My Dying Bride’s tenth studio album For Lies I Sire begins with “My Body, A Funeral” and ends with “Death Triumphant” and otherwise seems to be completely preoccupied with the subject of dying. The morbid album artwork shows not only a tomb but also covered, pale corpse and even the band’s morose name seems more appropriate than ever. Though the music has always felt like utter tragedy, few of their releases have felt so overwhelmingly final. The irony is that For Lies I Sire represents the pinnacle of the band’s rebirth that started with Songs of Light, Words of Darkness. For all the talk of death this is the sound of a band that has been given new life.

Click to read more…

After I wrote about Waking the Cadaver’s war with Metal Inquisition yesterday, a friend of ours who books shows sometimes e-mailed me to tell me that he once upon a time attempted to book Waking the Cadaver for a local NJ show – and the band asked for a sum of money so outrageous you’d think he was trying to book Slayer or something. Which is amazing, because before yesterday, I’d never fucking heard of Waking the Cadaver.

But I’ve heard of them now, and guess what? They’re my new favorite band! Thanks to Pick-Axe Bobby for passing this video along.

-AR