In a post about country singer Carrie Underwood’s cover of Skid Row’s “I Remember You,” Noisecreep‘s Karen Bliss inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) stumbled upon a dead-on lookalike when she juxtaposed Taylor Swift’s photo (Swift has also covered classic metal songs as of late) with that of Sebastian Bach. Check out the above picture, taken directly from Noisecreep. WTF?

Reminds me of the classic blog Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Except Swift’s not old… and not a lesbian. Whatever.

-VN

Prior to having my mind blown by Krallice at this past February’s Scion Rock Fest in Atlanta, I’d written off the NYC-based black metal quartet as Hipster Metal. Boy was I wrong. Anton OyVey and I stood in absolute astonishment as a band whose set we’d happened upon out of curiosity completely blew us away and stole the show of the entire day. That their brand new song has premiered on Stereogum doesn’t do much to dispel the “hipster” tag from much of their fanbase, but it doesn’t mean you should pay any less attention to them; Krallice are the real deal and they’re fucking fantastic. Besides which, I’m starting to doubt the very notion of “hipster metal” anyway; what about a band that writes music and lives together in the woods of the Pacific Northwest makes them any more genuine and qualified to write black metal than a band whose members grew up in the rough and tumble concrete jungle of 1980s New York? Both seem like perfectly genuine and inspiring influences to me.

Case in point: the 11-minute title track of their new record Dimensional Bleedthrough, out November 10th on Profound Lore. As Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy says, “Such fucking riffs!”, and that’s exactly it. For those new to Krallice, the band features Colin Marston of Behold…the Arctopus and Dysrhythmia, Mick Barr of Orthrelm, Bloody Panda’s Lev Weinstein, and now full-time bassist/co-vocalist Nick McMaster. Stream the new track at Stereogum, then come on back here and tell us what you think.

-VN

Please allow me to get all Jonathan Schwartz-y for a moment.

Do people who were only just learning to go poopy in the potty in the early 90s even get Beavis & Butt-Head? I don’t mean that the humor is too sophisticated for some kids (although that could be the case) – I mean, I think it could be entirely possible that they just write it off as stupid low-brow humor that dudes like Vince and myself only enjoy for the sake of nostalgia. And there might be a little bit of truth in that.

But not much.

Besides the excellent commentary on the media and society that Beavis & Butt-Head provided, I think that the show resonated for this reason: every great male friendship (first person to say “bro-mance” gets a kick in the nards), and possibly even some female friendships, has a Beavis & Butt-Head dynamic to it. Vince and I discussed it once, and I think we agreed fairly quickly that he was the Beavis. And I am very comfortable being a Butt-Head.

So. Mike Judge, the brilliant man who created Beavis & Butt-Head, King of the Hill, Office Space and Idiocracy has a new (live-action) movie coming out this week, called Extract. (I’ve heard some people really dig it and some people really dislike it. I want to like it but it has Gene Simmons in it, so that’s one strike against it.) And he created this video of Beavis & Butt-Head introducing some clips.

A cheap promotional ploy? Sure. But as soon as Butt-Head said “Bateman is pissed off ’cause his wife has been doing it with the pool cleaner” and Beavis agreed, “Uh-huh,” it was 1993 for me all over again.

So maybe the Megadeth/Slayer tour won’t be coming to the States after all.

After successfully completing a very short Canadian run together, it looked like the two thrash giants had finally kissed and made-up. (The long-standing King/Mustaine feud is infamous.) Then Mustaine had to go and be a dick.

Well, now it seems that Kerry King has responded, albeit indirectly. Blabbermouth, transcribing from a video from a site called Metal Sickness, reports that King said the following at a press conference in Paris on Monday:

Click to read more…

Horns up to Eric Crescimano and MS Maniac TrapThem, who both correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Blasphetized. They each win a copy of Black Stone Cherry’s Folklore and Superstition. Enjoy those, dudes!

Don’t get in a tizzy if you didn’t win this week; the fine folks at Roadrunner Records have bestowed upon two (2) more copies to give away this week!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl AT metalsucks DOT net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by reader Joshua Jacobs. Thanks, brutha!

-AR

So I’m sure you’re all aware of this major lineup change for Dimmu Borgir. I’ve been a fan of that band since ’98, and I’ve liked every single one of their records except For All Tid. My favorite lineup of theirs was the Puritanical and Deathcult lineup. For me as a fan, the music those dudes made together is what really sealed the deal for me with that band. I still enjoyed some later stuff, but for me those two records are where it’s at.

I’m sure they’ll find some amazing people and continue to put out great records, but the band that I became a fan of is now altered. And that got me thinking. How many times has this happened, and when does it really matter?

Click to read more…

The defining moment of the first day of this year’s New England Deathfest – in its second year and already a promising presence on the US metal festival circuit – was the late in the evening set by Wisconsin brutal death outfit Putrid Pile. Or, rather, by Shaun LaCanne, the one man behind the band. Dressed in baggy shorts, a completely unreadable death metal logo shirt, a Devourment hat, and cheapest-frames-they-had-at-Lenscrafters glasses, the man proceeded to play an unrelenting array of blistering death grind with ridiculous slam riffs, croaking gutturally on top of it. While he didn’t headbang or thrash around – his hat remained on his head throughout the whole set – the crowd adored it. As he slammed, the crowd moved with him: a quick survey of the audience during his/the band’s performance revealed a few flailing bodies in a sea of sweaty heads all nodding to the beat in eerie unison. It was a strangely beautiful sight: a relatively sizable crowd of people, half warmed by a glut of $2.50 Presidentes from the bar and half overjoyed by the presence of a pretty obscure death metal band (thought there was obviously a considerable overlap), all incredibly fixated on one average-as-fuck looking guy playing brutal death riffs to a drum machine, with nothing else accompanying him onstage. It should have been boring and unwatchable – the other two one-man acts on Deathfest that day certainly tried one’s patience over the course of their thirty-five minute sets – but instead, it demanded your attention, and rewarded it upon its receipt.

This was the beauty of Deathfest personified: in an age where death meta — a genre initially extreme and violently uncommercial by nature – has become triggered, watered down child’s play fit for the consumption of hardcore kids sick of breakdowns and barking, New England Deathfest exists for those who view it as an invaluable commodity and not a layover between trends. The festival’s downsides – an overwhelmingly disproportionate ratio of men to women and the risk of homogeneity among them – were overshadowed by the purity of the event, the idea that the metal underground isn’t a waiting room for the Lambs of God and Mastodons of tomorrow, but a place where people who like this one thing – this one abrasive, horrific, indigestible-to-99%-of-the-populous thing – can adore and revere it communally, fostering a beautifully dogged loyalty. There were no pretensions of Hot Topic-elevated fame or pseudo-stardom, but instead the idea that the man up on stage could be you or me – hell, I’m pretty sure he may be my IT guy – but happens to play a seven string really fucking fast and have a good sense of how to slow things down as menacingly as possible. In a world as splintered as metal, it’s fascinating to see that there’s this corner of it with dozens of bands you’ve never heard of, complete with fans that will sit through eight hours of blasting and slams to see them onstage, even if it’s just one guy. Deathfest was as much Star Trek convention as it was metal festival: for two days, people mingled with other people to whom extremer-than-extreme death metal was the greatest thing in the world, an alternate universe where people took death metal seriously and treated it not as an occasion to put their fingers in their ears.

Click to read more…

Also first seen on the excellent Metal Injection: this video, originally posted on College Humor, of stand-up Adam Newman schooling the attendees of a show at UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade – which MI correctly dubs “the mecca of alternative comedy in NYC”) on the ins and outs of Mayhem.

Some tr00 kvltists might not find this funny, and accuse Newman of mocking metal. They should go burn down a church so we can have them arrested already.

-AR

Oh, Cosmo Lee. Every day your Invisible Oranges has something new I want to link to. Stop being so good, fucker.

Today Cosmo has had one of those ideas so simple you wonder why no one ever thought of it before: he’s collected a bunch of videos of stage dives gone awry for our viewing pleasure, and put them all in one spot. Brilliant, I say. BRILLIANT!

Here’s one such video:

Go over to Invisible Oranges to see more guffaw-worthy mishaps. I didn’t post the best one ’cause I want you all to visit Cosmo and tell him “hi.”

-AR

No, not really, of course. But our hetero life mates at Metal Injection found this 8-bit interpretation of the band’s “Grand Conjuration,” and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make me wanna break out the classic Nintendo and kill some vampires with Simon for awhile. Check it out:

-AR

One of the most buzzed about new releases of the fall (along with Between the Buried and Me, Baroness, Converge and others) is Doomriders’ Darkness Comes Alive, out September 29th on Deathwish. For the uninitiated, the blues-tinged punk metal/rawk of Doomriders is played by Converge’s Nate Newton, Cave In’s John-Robert Conners, alongside Jebb Riley and Chris Pupecki. Bluesy breaks abound underneath furious hardcore vocals… think heavier Thin Lizzy riffs updated for the modern age.

Lucky for you the band has two brand new songs from Darkness Comes Alive streaming on their MySpace page, so you don’t have to take my word for it. You can also pre-order the record now in all sorts of nifty vinyl/CD/t-shirt configurations.

-VN

Not just the vocals; the guitars, the drums, the bass, everything. It’s like that time I thought I had to fart but when I let it out a little poop actually slipped out. We used to call that “sharting.” That’s what Neoandertals sound like. A giant shart. And I mean that in the best way possible.

What’s more, there’s a chick in the band! Fascinating. I wonder what her farts sound like?

-VN

[Thanks: Aaron M.]

Salome, who just might be our favorite modern doom metal band on the planet, are about to hit the road with Hull and Batillus as part of the Beard Destroyer Tour 2009 (Best tour moniker ever? We think so!). The band also recently completed a split with Thou (cover art above), which is being mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD, Sunn O))), Isis, etc.) and should be out on Vendetta Records in the next couple of months.

But why wait a couple of months when you can hear some new shit right this very second? The band has been cool enough to graciously allow us to debut a brand new track, “With Hell for a Mouth,” as a free download. Like all Salome, the song is slow like honey and crushing like an anvil, with Kat’s inimitable vocals from the bowels of hell bolstering the performance of guitarist Rob Moore and drummer Aaron Deal. It also marks the next evolutionary step for Salome, as it features slightly brighter production than their EP and even has – gasp! – some sections that are kinda bouncy. It is, in a word, awesome.

Download the song, absolutely free, below. Then, after the jump, get dates for the Beard Destroyer Tour 2009. You need to see Salome live; they are truly otherworldly.

Salome, “With Hell for a Mouth”

Click to read more…

I suspect that, save for the weirdos and closeted avant-jazz heads lurking among our readership, many of you are unaware of or oblivious to the work of Trevor Dunn. Of course, any Mr. Bungle fan will instantly recognize the name of that seminal band’s bassist. Produced by the influential and infamous John Zorn, its 1991 self-titled debut might be one of most bizarre albums in my collection of bizarre albums, blending bombastic hard rock, demented circus music, and freak jazz with thematic wit, irreverence, and depravity. In subsequent years, the Mike Patton-fronted group took a proverbial backseat to the vocalist’s work in the comparatively more successful Faith No More, leaving Dunn and his cohorts to pursue other musical ventures including Secret Chiefs 3. Though Mr. Bungle ultimately and mysteriously disbanded after the release of its third album California, Patton and Dunn would continue their musical partnership in the experimental metal supergroup Fantomas–a still technically active quartet that also includes Melvins’ esteemed axeman Buzz Osbourne and Slayer’s revered drummer Dave Lombardo–as well as the related Fantomas-Melvins Big Band and Zorn’s “Moonchild”. Separately, Dunn has spent much of this decade as a major player in New York’s avant-jazz community, featuring in countless groups and albums including his own Trio-Convulsant. MadLove, however, might be the most extraordinary (and frustrating) release of Dunn’s career given its curious straightforwardness and accessibility.

Click to read more…

Between their music videos, goofy photo shoots, and Majesty DVD, one gets the impression that even if the members of The Black Dahlia Murder take their music seriously, they don’t take themselves too seriously. The portrait that’s been painted of this band over the years is not that of a brooding death metal band, but that of a group of dudes who want to have fun (remember fun?) while making the most brutal death metal possible.

So we weren’t surprised to find that vocalist Trevor Strnad is a pretty chill fella. Speaking to Axl and Vince backstage at the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival, Strand was only too happy to openly and honestly discuss the band’s new album, Deflorate (out September 15 on Metal Blade), the differences between new guitarist Ryan Knight and old guitarist John Kempainen, the joys of big band music, and the worst puke he’s ever smelled. Check out our full conversation after the jump.

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Here at the MS Mansion we make no apologies about being staunch John Bush supporters. Way before the current Dan Nelson fracas, way back in the prebuscent MetalSucks days of March 2007, we wrote an open letter to John Bush encouraging him to come back into the fold. We even accidentally started a rumor that ex-Ugly Kid Joe frontman Whitfield Crane would be a suitable Bush replacement, and nearly shit our pants when it was rumored that Corey Taylor was up for the job (remember that?)… but there’s no Bush like the real Bush. Needless to say we were beyond stoked when Bush rejoined the band for a few European gigs last month.

Friend O’ MetalSucks and fellow John Bush-supporter Carlos Ramirez has compiled a list for Noisecreep of the Top 10 John Bush-era songs, and the free streaming mp3s contained therein (!!!) provided the soundtrack for my afternoon smoke-a-thon yesterday. The list is top notch and reminds us just why we love John Bush so much. The one oversight is the omission of “Inside Out” from Volume 8: The Threat Is Real, which might be the single heaviest Anthrax song ever and should be a staple in any “best of” conversation regarding Bush.

Head on over to Noisecreep to read and listen. Make sure you click those streaming links multiple times so John Bush gets a few extra pennies in his pockets just in case that Burger King voiceover gig ever kicks the bucket.

-VN

I’m not 100% decided that Baroness’ Blue Record is my favorite album of the year, and there are still some sure-to-be-awesome releases coming (The Red Chord, etc.). But I listened to Blue Record again last night so I could start writing my review, and even if it doesn’t end up at the very top of my year-end list, it’s going to get close. The album is simply awesome.

The band is now streaming “A Horse Called Golgotha” from the album on their MySpace page. It’s a great song on an record full of great songs; you just need check it out. Like, drop what you’re doing and go listen right now. It’s really that good.

Blue Record comes out October 13 on Relapse. I can’t fucking wait for you all to hear it.

-AR

Today I’m starting a new column, Readers’ Choice. As the title suggests, in this column I and the other writers of MetalSucks will, from time to time, discuss bands that you, our readers, suggested. Sometimes we will say happy things about these bands and sometimes we will say sad or angry things about these bands, and sometimes we might not say anything at all. It’s just going to be an attempt to throw a greater spotlight on you, the reader. Because we care what you think.

Sort of.

ANYWAY, the inaugural edition is going to focus on Chylde, a band recommended by bear wizard. I think bear wizard has been reading the site for sometime. Thanks for your support, bear wizard!

Click to read more…

Yes. Yes, I do feel guilty for enjoying this.

But still.

Anyone remember when Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre were talking about doing an album together? Think that this is what it would have sounded like, or am I not giving Dre enough credit? This is how out of the loop I am on modern hip-hop. I haven’t bought a rap CD since Ice Cube’s The Predator. And I just wrote “rap CD.”

Who my caucasian?

-AR

Thanks to Voltron Futura for the tip.

The band is Arckanum and the song is “Gava Fran Trulen.” Thanks to MS Maniac “SYL Townsend” for the tip.

-VN