When MetalSucks Maniac Jon Dolente e-mailed us to tell us about a song that “starts off as a breakdown, then [has] a breakdown on that breakdown, then [adds] another breakdown on that breakdown,” I assumed he was sending us a song by Bury Your Dead.
As it turns out, it was whatever this piece of crap is. Nice vagina in the artwork, though.
Okay, all I really wanna know is: is this wigger slam?
-AR
Darkest Hour’s new album, The Eternal Return, is currently streaming in its entirety at the band’s MySpace page. Not only do Vince and I both think it kicks ass in a major way, but Vince has already proclaimed it his favorite Darkest Hour record.
Check it out here, then come back and let us know what you think. You can buy an actual copy when Victory releases the album tomorrow.
And, lest ye forget, Darkest Hour are on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour. Get tour dates here.
-AR
Everyone from Vince’s former home state of Michigan: MetalSucks is proud to now be co-sponsoring Dirt Fest 13, which will take place Saturday, July 11 at the Birch Run Expo Center in Birch Run, MI. The show will feature Necrophagist, Darkest Hour, Winds of Plague, Born of Osiris, Origin, and a whole bunch of awesome bands – PLUS 30 – 40 local bands, at least some of whom are bound to be finds. In other words: it promises to be a pretty kick-ass day.
And to sweeten the deal, the fest is teaming with Sick Drummer magazine for a “Sickest Dirt Fest Drummer” contest. Press release after the jump!
Last week, fat drunk fuck/on-again-off-again Warrant “vocalist” Jani Lane was arrested on a DUI charge; now The Detroit News is reporting that he owes $121,024 (geez that’s a precise number) in federal income taxes.
(The article’s author, Robert Snell, even makes a joke about Warrant’s debut album was called Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich. Oh, Robert, you scamp!)
All I can really say to this is: seriously, dude? I know that times are tough all around and Warrant ain’t the megastars they used to be, but come ON. You live on a liquid diet. Where is all the money going? And don’t try to tell me that this didn’t help pay the bills at all:
Even if all Arby’s paid you for the use of your masterpiece was a lifetime supply of Bacon Cheddar RoastBurgers – which, by all appearances, may very well be the case – then you’d still be saving cash.
Man. Some people just don’t know when they have it good.
-AR
[via Blabbermouth]
Sometimes we don’t want to face the truth about a certain situation. But sooner or later, you always have to be honest with yourself, or face a big ol’ ass whoopin’.
The reunited-but-not-really Fear Factory, which features original members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell but NOT Christian Olde Wolbers or Raymond Herrera, has apparently had to cancel not only what was to be their debut performance in Spain last night, but an entire German tour due to the ongoing legal battle over the band’s name.
Really, you have to wonder how the fuck it got this far that the group booked an entire tour without anyone checking if they had the legal rights to the name. Here’s my best guess about how the conversation between Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell must’ve went:
Let’s cut the bullshit: there’s gonna be a new Living Colour album, The Chair in the Doorway, released September 15 on Megaforce Records.
A new Living Colour album is always good news, and this is now officially one of both mine and Vince’s most heavily anticipated albums of the year. Get very, very excited.
Here the band doing “Desperate People” off their debut album, Vivid.
Have I mentioned how much I FUCKING LOVE THIS BAND?!?!
-AR
…..cause this shit never gets tired.
LED ZEPPELIN — “In My Time of Dying (live)”, from 3/11/75 show at Long Beach
(full concert here)
-KW
We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #12 album, coming in with a total of 139 points…
Tool, Lateralus (Volcano Records, 2001)
Maynard James Keenan – Vocals
Adam Jones – Guitars
Justin Chancellor – Bass
Danny Carey – Drums
Produced by David Bottrill and Tool
I’m sitting in my living room with my B&W speakers cranked through my Krell stereo, listening attentively in complete darkness. I’m STONED. Half a song in and Tool’s Lateralus is every bit as great as I remember it being; dark, rich, lush, creepy, challenging, accessible; Adam Jones’ buttery smooth yet razor-sharp crunchy guitar of “The Grudge” cuts through my chest. Justin Chancellor’s groovy bass-slapping locks in with Dan Carey’s rhythmic, guttural pounding… they all come together in a furious sonic whirlwhind, and then there’s Maynard’s voice letting out a gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, 15-second long scream. Chaos unfolds by the second, yet it’s completely calculated and organized chaos, wrapping together into a neat, pounding, CRUSHING riff that twists your soul and body with every unexpected turn of the music, then it locks into one final chaotic coda and it ends. Is there one more turnaround? Nope. But there’s more madness around the corner. TOOL, motherfuckers, TOOL!
As an interviewer, you quickly learn that you have very little control how an interview goes. Of course, you can show up well prepared and ready to chat all day long, but if the person you’re interviewing turns out to be a diva/an imbecile/hungover/whatever, there’s really nothing you can do but try to get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible and hope it translates in way that is at least semi-interesting way for the eventual reader.
Of course, in the case of
In case ya’ll don’t know, we’re down with all the cool kids. Join us on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter if you haven’t already. OK, maybe not MySpace.
The killer metal news site SMNnews.com has just re-launched with a brand new design and interface; we highly recommend you use SMN as your metal news source rather than that other site.
Also be sure to check out the intrepid industry reporting the lads at MetalInsider.net are doing — smart, timely and sadonic, just the way we like it.
That is all. You may now return to your regular daily business.
So in metal it seems like one of the highest honors your band can get is to score some high rankings on the brutalometer. If you hear “THAT WAS FUCKNG BRUTAL MAN” and the dude is covered in sweat and looking at you like you have led him through war victoriously, you have won him over via metal.
It’s really amazing to me that music can be described as brutal. What an emotion to try and communicate. I can’t think of anything more cathartic than playing a brutal show where the band and audience are 100% on their game (It’s a two-way street, dudes.). But the other part of the brutal coin isn’t as much fun or psychologically rewarding. I wonder before every tour about which injuries I’m going to come home with. What new permanent marks will I have to add to the collection?
Well this past time it was a whole amazing array of bruises all over my body and random cuts on my hands and wrists and last but not least, a broken rib. Yes, a broken rib.
You know what? I owe Fred Durst an apology. No, seriously. I just read his latest interview with Rolling Stone, and now I know the truth: Freddy isn’t a total douche chill. His music has just been misinterpreted all these years, co-opted by “bullies and assholes.” All he ever wanted was to make sensitive, romantic music for sensitive, romantic people. Like his heroes in The Cure.
How did it ever come to this? Let’s investigate. After the jump, check out some choice quotes from the interview, contrasted with some of Mr. Durst’s lyrics in bold.
There’s already enough long winded discussion going on about this list we’re still in the process of revealing, so let this review be one from the Corey Mitchell school of telling it like it is. No hustle.
Blood Oath is the best death metal record released this year and barring something out-left-field and totally unexpected, it’s going to rank up there among the years best.
As you’ll find out in the interview I did with Devin Townsend that I’ll publish eventually, the follow-up to Devin Towsend’s excellent Ki – which we’ll also publish a review of eventually — is going to be a heavier affair called Addicted. While the second record in the four-part suite won’t be the heaviest — that distinction belongs to the third, according to Devin — judging by the rehearsal footage posted by Metal Hammer it’s definitely a heavier affair than Ki (not that there’s anything wrong with not being heavy — this writer loooooves Ki). Take a look at the rehearsal footage below. Telecaster = \m/
-VN
But at least now you all get to see how pretty I am.
-AR
We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #13 album, coming in with a total of 138 points…
Mastodon, Blood Mountain (Warner Bros., 2006)
Troy Sanders — Bass, Vocals
Brent Hinds — Guitars, Vocals
Bill Kelliher — Guitars
Brann Dailor — Drums
Produced by Matt Bayles and Mastodon
I guess dudes were nervous about Mastodon’s third album, Blood Mountain, ‘cuz it was the quartet’s first for Warner Bros Records. Which is kinda goofy since all the greatest, most epic-est concept albums are major label affairs. And beardy production aside, Blood Mountain fits right in among those records, and not a moment too soon. It sounds to me like two Sepultura cover bands on opposite sides of a basement, one (inexplicably) playing Voivod’s Nothingface and the other Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (for some reason). It has the former’s freakishly dynamic riffs and exoticism, the latter’s epic arc and devastating instrumental passages. All three albums share a pervasive and baldly cinematic sense of time passing; Blood Mountain shoots from a canon (“The Wolf Is Loose”) and ends 50 minutes/several days later with a mournful closing credits sequence (“Pendulous Skin”). By that point, our hero (whom we all visualize as guitarist/singer Brent Hinds, right?) has been swallowed by the mountain or encased in ice or raped by a tree. The listener has been through only slightly less.
Axl’s gotten his panties all up in a bunch (and justifiably so) several times in the past about bands re-recording, re-mixing and re-releasing their classic albums (see: Exodus, Arch Enemy, etc) as a gluttonous cash-grab. But After the Burial, one of my favoritest Sumeriancore bands, might be the one rare case in which I fully support their decision to re-record, re-release and re-master one of their prior albums.
MetalSucks is thrilled to premier the brand new music video for Metal Blade Records artists Woe of Tyrants. The track, “Golgotha,” comes from the record Kingdom of Might, released in January of this year. The music video was directed by Jake Beemer of Siege Media.
Says vocalist Chris Catanzaro, “We have worked with Jake and Siege Media twice now, and it’s very exciting for us to see a young company develop between two videos shot in such a close proximity. We feel Jake and the crew captured the mood and excitement that we’d envisioned for this song and we’re excited to premier it with our friends at Metalsucks and Metal Injection for all of you to enjoy as well. Big thanks as always to our friends at Siege Media for tireless efforts and quick turnarounds and also the warehouse in Detroit, MI where the video was shot!”
Check it out below.
[This exclusive has now ended.]
“bear wizard,” who definitely wins tipster of the day, has alerted us to the fact that Magrudergrind’s entier Willowtip debut is currently streaming on their MySpace page.
I haven’t had a chance to listen yet ’cause I’m up to my eyeballs in bullshit right now, but if I were a bettin’ man, I’d wager that the album slays moms.
Check it out here.
-AR
Before you criticize Norwegian prog-metal prodigies (prog-igies?) Leprous for bestowing a lame flower-themed title on their second album, Tall Poppy Syndrome, consider its meaning: a societal phenomenon in which distinguished or successful individuals are resented for achievements that separate them from the average person. Just the kind of thinking that would be the downfall of a group as freakishly talented as Leprous. ‘Twas their preternatural chops that led Emperor frontman Ihsahn to hand-pick Leprous as the backing band for his first and only solo concert. Ihsahn also drafted the group’s lead vocalist/keyboardist Einar Solberg (his brother-in-law) to play live with Emperor for a string of reunion gigs. That’s like God giving you a high-five.
