Everyone’s favorite French Canadian deathcore band, Despised Icon, have a new song, “MVP,” currently streaming on their MySpace page. The track comes off their new album, Day of Mourning, which drops September 22 on Century.

Preliminary thoughts: it’s a somewhat less core-y song than we’re used to from DI, but, frankly, I don’t find it as distinctive as anything from 2007′s excellent The Ills of Modern Man. Still, I’m anxious to hear the whole album and see what these fellas have cooked up.

Despised Icon are crushing skulls this summer on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Thrash & Burn tour. Get dates here.

-AR

As Axl already told you, last night was a rager. Like, I probably didn’t need those last 5 Jamesons I was handed; maybe then I wouldn’t still be drunk right now. No worries, though — nothing a bacon, egg & cheese can’t fix!

Thankfully black metal is great for hangovers. Here are a couple of links that floated into the MS Mansion inbox lately that I’ve been digging:

CARACH ANGREN: http://www.myspace.com/carachangren

PANTHEON I: http://www.myspace.com/pantheoni [AJ Zink]

No descriptions necessary… just listen. Check ‘em out if you’re having a particularly grim morning.

I was dancing? FML.

-VN

-AR

When I left the bar on the relatively early side last night to get back to the Mansion and walk Sacha the Death Metal Puppy (one task the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys can’t seem to master no matter how I berate them: picking up dog poop without flinging it at someone), Anton OyVey was proving that Jews really do love bacon by keeping one of the shiksas from Reign in Blonde pinned down in the corner (I think it was the, uh, blonde one), Frank Godla from Metal Injection was tolerating a conversation with some dude whose entire argument for why The Devil Wears Prada are a good band was based on how many records they’ve sold (by which standard I guess Transformers: Everyone Done Know Sambots Don’t Do Much Readin’ is the greatest achievement in the history of cinema), and I think Vince was actually dancing. Dancing.

Then at about 5 am this morning I had a serious John Hughes moment when I was dreaming that a cute girl was licking my ear, only to awaken and discover that it was, in fact, Sacha, trying to entice me into a game of fetch with his favorite stuffed animal, or, at least, the limb of his favorite stuffed animal (said toy was torn apart recently during a particularly rowdy listening session in which Sacha took the band name “Dissection” to heart). ‘Cause, y’know, fuck sleep.

What was my point? Oh yeah. This:

-AR

Last week’s Funny Photo Caption Contest was a doozy ’cause we had a very special photo, and this week we’ve got another from the same top secret source! But first, the winners to last week’s contest, all of whom will receive a copy of The Agonist’s new CD Lullabies For the Dormant Mind and an autographed poster of the band:

balls: “The average Metalsucks “Top 21 Metal Albums of the 21st Century” panelist just moments before sending in his entry for the list.”

Mutt Weiler: “Fuck! I’m going to have to buy a better camera. Even at 10x digital zoom I can’t see my dick!”

raiseyerfists: “WARNING: Listening to music from Victory Records may cause harm to your health. Monthly exams are advised to make sure your testicles have not disintegrated.”

canea: “Searching for his dignity, a young emo comes up empty-handed.”

Fufkin: “I’m looking for the man in the mirror”

This week we’re giving away one very special vinyl copy of Wino’s Punctuated Equilibrium. It’s on 180-gram vinyl with a bonus 10″ featuring 4 vinyl-only exclusive tracks. Bam. Come up with a funny caption to the below photo and it’s yours.

Thanks to Kit Hart for sending us this of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds jamming on “Bury Me in Smoke” with Down at Greece’s Rockwave Festival a couple of weeks back. The quality’s only so-so, but still, it’s one of the awesome team-ups I dig so much, and this may be the only documentation of its existence. Enjoy.

-AR

While Anthrax, Testament, Heaven and Hell and motherfucking Motorhead are among the most anticipated bands that metal pilgrims are converging on western Germany to see, it would appear that my favored people, those crafty Norwegians, also have a few things planned for the mayhem. While Enslaved will be appearing (and hopefully represented on a good stage, because you know they fucking deserve it) some others are teaming up with foreigners in combinations that are hard to ignore.

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Honkey Grandma be trippin’.

I’m sorry. This is awful. This is objectively awful. There is nothing good about it. I can’t think of one goddamn nice thing to say. Fuck this. Fuck it in the ear.

-AR

Divine Heresy get a lot of somewhat undeserved hate: calling the band out for not being very good would be like calling this writer out for not hitting .458 for the Dodgers. This isn’t to say that the band necessarily deserve defense; in fact, I can’t imagine a solid argument for their existence. But their brand of technical nu-deathcore works surprisingly well, in that it’s not so much awful as it is awfully bland. And while perhaps it’s not fair to commend a band for not being as terrible as they could be, it’s not fair to decry them for not being amazing. If you were expecting them to be a slightly edgier Fear Factory, Bringer of Plagues, their latest album, delivers exactly what you’d think: 42 minutes (strangely enough, to the second) of surgically precise mechanical riffs, big yet terribly obvious grooves, pretty bad nu-metalcore vocals, and nothing particularly memorable.

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At last month’s Download Festival in Donington Park, UK, our friends over at Thrash Hits were kind enough to corner Trigger the Bloodshed and interview them on our behalf – at the toilets. The quick interview centered around the surroundings, as Thrash Hits grilled them about festival toilets, their best toilet experiences, shitting in general, and potential toilet horror stories. Check it out below.

[This exclusive has now ended.]

Legendary interplanetary metal band Gwar are back August 18th with their new record Lust in Space, the first track of which “Let Us Slay” is currently streaming on their MySpace page.

While you eagerly await the new record and next blood and semen-spewing Gwar concert to come through your town (which, according to Moby, is the best show ever), we’ve gotten frontman / Fox News correspondent Oderus Urungus to agree to answer fan questions from you MS Maniacs. So post your questions in the comments section below, and Oderus himself will cherry-pick a bunch of his favorites to answer back here on MetalSucks in a couple of weeks. If you’d like to ask Oderus about where all that semen comes from, to share a favorite space lust story, or anything else you can think of… now’s the time!

We’ll be closing entries next Thursday at 5pm EDT. Have fun.

Gentleman and lady, I give you Robots Go Beep!.

I’m not even going to say anything about this band because I know you all will take care of it… go!

-VN

[Thanks: Laura and AJ]

As you all know, the interwebs have empowered indie and unsigned bands with opportunities that once seemed unthinkable. For example, back in the early-to-mid-nineties, a band could let one of its buddies make a music video for one of its totally awesome songs – but then there would be essentially nowhere to watch it! YouTube leveled that playing field, which I am grateful for since I am now able to watch low-budget and no-budget videos from bands I like instead of just what MTV tells me I should like.

So savor this freedom from corporate rock and check out the video above from Canadian noise rock meanies KEN mode. The song is called “Extending Common Courtesy Throughout The Evening” and comes from last year’s self-released Mennonite album, which you can and should buy here. They’re working on a new album titled Venerable, and the select demos available on their MySpace page are just super duper.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is so very happy that a bunch of people changing the color of their avatars on Twitter to green instantaneously transformed Iran into a democratic utopia. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Here’s a neat little widget with the cover art and some new music from Dying Fetus’ forthcoming Descend into Depravity. The album comes out September 15 on Relapse. I can’t guarantee it will be better than Max Payne the video game, but I can guarantee it will be much better than Max Payne the movie.

-AR

Baz tweets:

meeting one of my favorite authors of all time today to discuss collaborating on my memoirs ! #fb12 minutes ago from txt

So, like, who do we think Baz’s favorite authors of all time are? Dr. Seuss is dead, Shel Silverstein is dead, and unless The Dirt was done as a book on tape and I’m not aware of it, I doubt The Second Most Famous Person Ever to be Named “Sebastian Bach” knows who Neil Strauss is. So any guesses?

Whomever takes the (hopefully lucrative) gig of basically writing The Old Man Gone Wild’s book for him, it should be, in some capactiy at least, an entertaining read.

-AR

-AR

[via Reign in Blonde]

I’m not really a regular comics reader anymore so I have no idea if they still do this, but DC use to have this thing called Elseworlds where they basically reimagined the lives of various heroes – e.g., What if Superman had been Russian?, What if Batman was a vampire?, What if Wonder Woman had a dick?, etc. And I always really enjoyed those.

That same interest in the “what if?” questions must be why I’m also so fascinated when a band has to do a one-off gig without a key member and replaces said member with some other all-star musician – e.g., Metallica with Dave Lombardo and Joey Jordison, Trivium with Doc Coyle, and now Lamb of God with Unearth’s Buz “Banned from Wal-Mart” McGrath.

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At the beginning of the year I wrote a piece highlighting the sudden abundance of awesome metal festivals in the U.S.. Though our friends across the pond still retain an advantage in metal festivals in both number and size, 2009 saw a whole host of upstarts in the U.S.: Scion Rock Fest, L.A. Murderfest (in its 5th year), California MetalFest, Texas Metal Up Your Ass, Dudefest and of course long-established destinations such as Maryland Deathfest, New England Metal and Hardcore Festival and Dirtfest. SXSW and CMJ both made surprisingly strong showings for metal this year, too.

The party keeps on rolling into the fall with another brand new festival, Planet Caravan, to take place September 18th and 19th at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina. The lineup is headlined by Clutch and Pentagram, with Orange Goblin, Kylesa, Burst (!), Yob, Wino, Astra, and Revolution Mother rounding out the bill. I haven’t heard of Taddy Porter, Orchid, or Pick Up the Snake, but even if all 3 bands are terrible (highly unlikely) that’s still a fucking killer lineup!

MetalSucks is co-sponsoring the event so we’ll have more news as it’s available. Check out the press release and festival details after the jump.

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Ahh, Michigan. We have lakes. Big fucking lakes. We used to have a booming car industry, but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you need not an explanation of why I won’t be speaking of that in this article. Besides, we harbor a little music festival every summer called Dirt Fest, a metal get together a few hours outside of Detroit, founded by two dudes looking to showcase their own band. Dirt Fest quickly became the summer festival for local bands looking for recognition and inspiration. It wound up becoming comparable to the one hot chick at the party which turned out to be a sausage fest – she ends up having such a good time that she lets everyone have a turn.

Anyhoo, thirteen lucky summers later and Dirt Fest is rocking a roster that has, in the past, included bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Dahlia Murder. Obviously something is working if these bands are rolling through, so I decided to finally go check it out this year. Armed with nothing but a delicious bottle of Jagermeister and a set of tits everyone at the MetalSucks Mansion is dying to get a look at, I embarked on what turned out to be a very interesting day. My mouth already tasted like booze before noon…

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When I first heard that Courtney Love was going to release her long-delayed solo record under the Hole name, I considered it “a huge fuck you to co-founder Eric Erlandson.” Though the argument has been made that the influence and involvement of Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan may have had more to do with the band’s successes than the work of its official membership, I wondered how it was even permissible for her to utilize the name. Surely there had to be legal hurdles to be dealt with that couldn’t be dismissed without consent from former members. (I mean, Axl Rose effectively destroyed Guns N’ Roses by compelling his bandmates to relinquish all rights to the name.) So I’ve been waiting for Erlandson or someone from Hole’s management to comment on Love’s unilateral decision to shamelessly cash-in on the Hole brand. Well, at last, he has:

Furthermore, guitarist Erlandson insists a contract Love signed with him in 2002 bans her from using the name Hole for any future ventures, unless he’s involved. He tells Spin magazine, “We have a contract. She signed a contract with me when we decided to break up the band, which was like 2002 or something, so I really don’t have comment on it except that I know my part in that band. The way I look at it, there is no Hole without me. To put it blunt. Just on a business level… Somebody told me (about Love’s plans) and it just sounds like something… it just sounds like the usual. I love her a lot and I wish her the best, and I’m open to discussions regarding the real Hole, and if she has a solo album together, I think that’s great. I think she should finish it and put it out and do that.”

Of course, Love has responded to this seemingly sound logic with her usual grace, tact, and impeccable grammar… via Twitter.
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