Autumn is upon us. The days are a little shorter and the shadows a little longer, the light a little dimmer and the breeze a bit cooler. It happens every year (and I write about it every year), but it gets no less easy for me to swallow each time… Winter is coming. Soon enough Daylight Saving Time will end and a month after that New York will be enveloped in darkness every night by 5pm. And it’ll be fucking cold.

Still, I think that those of you who live in climates where it’s roughly the same year-round are missing out on an quintessential human experience. There’s something intangible that comes along with the change of seasons — beyond it just meaning that Football season is starting — that is difficult to describe or put to words. It’s an ebb and flow to life, a coming and going, a give and take, a cyclical nature to the events of your life that I can’t imagine is experienced in the same way when it’s warm out all the time. As much as I fucking hate the winter — and I fucking hate it — I’m not sure I’d give it up for a uniform, level sameness year after year after year. Where’s the fun and the hope in that? Where’s the joy in that first day when the cold breaks, when you go outside, it’s a bit brighter, and you see the tiniest green bud on a tree? The pure elation and child-like excitement that so many fun things are around the corner? How can you fully appreciate the good without first experiencing the bad?

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This mornings we wakes up to a texts from our friends Eyal from Daath. He’s on tours in Europe, and Lord Ahriman from Dark Funeral tooks him to brunch at a four stars hotels! BLACK METAL BRUNCH LIVES!!!

-NC

Eatsa! Last night Axl and I let our Worst Week Ever duties fall to the wayside in favor of drinking ourselves silly and gorging ourselves at the annual San Gennaro festival in Little Italy. The menu for me: Mozzarepa, a giant rice ball (with meat and peas), part of a Brociola, a hot Italian sausage and half a dozen raw clams. Most metal moment: the old Neapolitan guido who sold me the sausage making fun of me for eating a Sicilian rice ball, and then calling all Sicilian men gay. Only in New York.

Oh, what’s that, this is a metal website? Events of the past week:

• We spoke with Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Protest the Hero’s Tim Millar, and Thrice drummer Riley Breckenridge.
• The Great Katt was the completely fucknuts Courtney Love of her generation.
• We pontificated on the “differences” between Wigger Slam and Deathcore.
• Between the Buried and Me released a new track for free streaming, and another one leaked.
• The Super Mario Bros. got metal.
• Poison the Well had all of their earthly possessions stolen.
• Rammstein got completely pornographic with their new video, cum shot and all.
• The Big Four Tour might actually happen.
• We streamed exclusive new tracks by The Destro and Revocation.
• Emmure and The Acacia Strain got to blows.

Have a good one… see ya Monday.

-VN

This is my third Children of Bodom post in as many days. And while I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about Bodom’s new covers disc, Skeletons in the Closet, this commercial is pretty funny. It was directed by Doug Spangenberg, who you might know as the director of videos for artists such as Lamb of God and Job for a Cowboy. Definitely give this a look-see:

-AR

I’ve never gotten to see Anaal Nathrakh live, but we fucking love their albums, and this footage makes me think they put on my kinda show: no one is trying to kill one another, but no one is just standing there with their arms crossed, either. All it’s really missing is a crowd big enough for me to be able to sneak some pulls off a one-hitter or a J and we’ll be all good.

More after the jump.

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Full credit goes to Reign in Blonde for finding this video. It justifies my getting out of bed this morning. Seriously.

-AR

Ddddddaaaaaammmmmnnnnn!!!!

-AR

Thanks to UN_0P_P0_SED for the tip!

For some reason Paradise Lost don’t seem to be getting much press around their new album — not just on this website, but in the entire U.S, both print and web. And it’s a shame, because this band has been making excellent albums for 20 years now and their latest, Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us, is no exception. Stream the new album in full on the band’s MySpace page right now, and if you like it then make sure you buy it when it comes out on September 28th (that’s a Monday; it’s a European release, but really, in 2009 aren’t all releases basically worldwide by default?).

Seriously, folks; really good album here, and ya’ll are missing out on some dark, gothy, doomy metal. Pay attention.

-VN

At this point, I don’t know what to expect from Hatebreed’s upcoming, self-titled album. The first song the band released, “In the Ashes They Shall Reap,” really did nothing for me – but I actually quite liked the second song the band put out, “Merciless Tide.” So much so that I’ve been listening to it off and on for the past week.

Now the band has posted yet another track on their MySpace page, entitled “Everyone Bleeds Now.” And in terms of the quality scale, I’d place it somewhere in-between “Ashes” and “Tide.” I mean, it’s pretty heavy, but it’s also just another variation on the same song the band has been putting out over and over and over again since Perseverance. Whereas “Tide” suggested there might be some fight left in the old boys yet, this song just makes me feel…  meh.

Still, the album has fifteen songs on it, so there’s still twelve more tracks to win me over. I guess I’ll find out when Hatebreed drops September 29 on E1.

-AR

Brian Sisserson just sent us a link to this video. Is it metal? Of course not. But it’s awesome, and this woman, Valentina Lisitsa, is apparently doing some work on Desperate Living, the new album from Horse the Band. Check it out:

Speaking of Horse the Band: Lambgoat is now streaming “Rape Escape,” a new song from the band. I’m really digging it… not least of all that whole Wendy Carlos/A Clockwork Orange intro. Check it out here.

Desperate Living comes out October 6 on Vagrant Records.

-AR

So as it turns out, Courtney Love is – no shock here – a fucking liar. Despite her protests to the contrary, not only did only did Love sign off on the use of a Kurt Cobain avatar in Guitar Hero 5, but she cashed the nice, fat check she was given for the use of said avatar. Nice.

The Great Kat was/is (does anyone still care about her?) more coherent than Ms. Love, but no less aggressively nuts. I was never a fan, but for those of you who were/are, I have but one question: why?

-AR

Thanks to Shane Gillis for the video.

This brilliant display of mathematics was sent in and created by MS Maniac AJ Zink (whose band Ovid’s Withering has a new track posted). Nice work, dude.

-VN

I became a fan of The Smashing Pumpkins the minute I heard “Drown” (or was it, “Cherub Rock?”), and as such I have followed the work of Billy Corgan throughout the lifespan of that band, not to mention his endeavors both with Zwan and on his own. Though I scoffed at the irrational backlash that accompanied the 2005 reunion sans James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky, I still have to concede that 2007′s Zeitgeist was the weakest Pumpkins release ever, and perhaps the worst album of Corgan’s career to date. The commercial failure of that record and the recent departure of longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin raised questions regarding the band’s future, though Corgan seems to have pulled a Page Hamilton (or perhaps an Axl Rose), carrying on with hired guns and invited guests. For you see, he now intends to release 44 new Smashing Pumpkins songs online for free. In the words of my beloved Internets: DO NOT WANT.

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If you read this site regularly, then you’re probably aware that we are constantly confused by the difference between wigger slam and deathcore. Even after our own Satan Rosenbloom explained it to me and I spent time listening to bands that Metal Inquistion‘s Sergeant D and Decibel agree are slam bands, I still can’t really tell the difference. At the risk of sounding like my old man, I really just can’t hear much difference between Devourment and Oceano. Sorry.

Luckily, the aforementioned Sergeant D – pretty much metal’s leading authority on wigger slam – has discovered a joke slam band band, Slamburglars, and in a Metal Inquisition interview, we get both name dropped and educated in the differences between the two genres:

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This video of Rhett Butler covering Joe Satriani is pretty f’n mindblowing. The guy is so dextrous and precise that he can tap out leads with both hands at the same time… how does he do that? In some respect I guess it’s not all that different than what a piano player does, but it’s still really fucking cool.

-VN

[Apologies for not crediting whoever sent this in... it's not personal, I just can't find the email.]

For a horribly misguided, washed-up hair-metal star who compared Barack Obama to Hitler, it turns out that Blackie Lawless can still kick out the jams. Not only is Blackie Lawless still alive but apparently W.A.S.P have a new album called Babylon coming out on October 12th. Here’s the new single, “Crazy,” sent in by longtime MS Maniac Steve Stamopoulos. And you know what? It ain’t bad.

-VN

Thanks to longtime MS Freak Mark Moritz-Rabson for this one. We aren’t sure of the origin, but it appears to be a leak. Enjoy, and also be sure to check out “Obfuscation,” which Victory Records is streaming for free.

-VN

The entries for last week’s funny photo caption contest — for which the prizes were a copy of Every Time I Die’s new CD New Junk Aesthetic and a matching t-shirt — were spectacularly unfunny, for the most part. Here are a couple of the best entries. Despite the horribly un-PC nature of one of them… damn, that shit is gold!

\m/Eluveitie\m/ [for the second week in a row! congrats, dude]: “The boys’ pictures were spoiled as a sudden blackout rendered their dates – Lafonda, Laqueefa, Tonisha, and Lil Diamonique – invisible to the prom photographer’s lens.”

ohshitson: “the evolution of the metalsucks monkeys.”

This week we’ve got one killer package of three CDs from Metal Blade Records: Goatwhore’s Carving out the Eyes of God (MS review here), Behemoth’s Evangelion (endless MS praise bestowed here) and Valkyrja’s The Invocation of Demise (no MS review, but you can listen to the band here). Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, and they shall all be yours.

I’ve just been bombarded with e-mails that Alabama-based label Acerbic Noise Development is in serious danger of going under. I’m not familiar with all the bands on this label, but the ones I am familiar with – like Dysrhythmia – are pretty awesome. And I’m sitting here now checking out some of the other groups on A.N.D. and they seem to have good taste. I am really, really enjoying Verse and Radiation right now, for example.

I hate to see a small label like this fall apart, especially when it seems like the people running it (and it appears as though a whopping two people are A.N.D.’s entire staff) are putting good music into the world. So while I don’t know if anything can actually be done to save the label at this point, I strongly encourage you all to check out their website, and/or the sites of some of their bands. If you can throw a little support their way, super.

A list of Acerbic Noise bands, with links to their web pages, after the jump.

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Okay, so this video, which I first saw on Chronic Youth, isn’t really metal. I don’t even think it’s a very good cover of Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me,” which is still a guilty pleasure song for me. But the association of Lord Ezec, a.k.a. Danny Diablo (né Singer… a Jew!) with NYHC projects like Crown of Thornz and Skarhead, plus the fact that I found this video so entertaining, is enough to post it.

Bonus: a cameo from Peter Greene, who, for some reason, I thought died years ago of an overdose. Hm.

-AR