Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 1:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
That’s the question that reader Nathan Werp asked us this morning via e-mail. And, no, Nathan, I do not remember this band. And based on the video of them that you sent us, I think that’s probably a good thing. Because that’s a terrible name for a band, and I think this is a terrible song. It’s just a rehashed grunge riff with irritatingly nasal vocals. Sorry, bro.
But apparently one of their members went on to be in Rwake. So if this band helped give us Rwake, then all is forgiven.
If anyone wants to defend this group… go nuts. I made it about halfway through the video and gave up.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
So this is actually pretty interesting. This kid’s dad documented him learning to play the drums starting at age two, then made this little five minute video following his progress up to age eleven. By age five he’s already getting pretty good.
Kinda makes me wish someone had shoved a guitar in my hands at a much younger age. Did any of you, oh our dear readers, start playing an instrument at a really young age? Do tell.
So… who do we think would win a drum-off: this kid or Jonah Rocks?
MS reader Ajax sent us a link to a video filmed in 2007 of the band In Truth Be Valor, showcasing what might be the first recorded instance of the crab-crouch.
This video is hysterical for a million reasons, BUT…
It’s hilarious when the camera zooms out around the 0:50 mark and there’s all of 6 kids (I counted) standing there watching, motionless!
“Everybody get your hands up!”
Crab-crouch around 1:10.
The “singing.”
Everything.
etc.
So there you have it. The unsung heroes of a generation. Blame them for Attack Attack!.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Sammy O'Hagar
Axe to Fall, Converge’s once-again excellent new album, is yet another stylistic shift: the majority of it is devoted to the band playing harder and more technically than they have in their post-Jane Doe era, while the closing two songs finding them venturing further away from their comfort zone than they ever have before. But even though guitarist Kurt Ballou darts all over the fretboard more than usual, vocalist Jacob Bannon changes nothing about his performance, from the breathless rambling on opener “Dark Horse” to his trademark pterodactyl-like shriek over the course of the album. But this isn’t to say that he’s in a state of creative stasis while the rest of the band moves outwards: Bannon’s hellacious scream is just as much a part of Converge’s uniqueness as is Ballou’s nimble riffing. Bannon’s work on Axe to Fall is as savage as it’s ever been, and once again adds weight and disturbing depth to the album’s metallic hardcore-fueled chaos.
Jacob Bannon’s place in metal, hardcore, and—for better or worse—metalcore is massive, with his trademark vocals incalculably influential and lyrics favoring the abstract over the melodramatic. Even outside of Converge, Bannon manages to be prominent, with a successful visual art career and running hardcore label Deathwish Inc. A surprisingly normal sounding (at least in terms of how he sounds on record), introspective guy, Bannon comes off as both wise about the metal and hardcore world while still impressed by and interested in it. In a lengthy interview with MetalSucks, he discussed the musical and lyrical intricacies of Axe to Fall, his approach to artwork in comparison to his vocal work, and people’s changing attitudes toward heavy music as they age.
I’ve had this YouTube vid up in my browser for days because it’s simply awesome. This kid who goes by the name “Krimh” plays drums, bass and guitar himself on this track, filmed himself playing each part and cut it all together in this nifty video. The playing is top-notch and the composition is excellent — reminds me of an instrumental Textures. It’s kind of got a Sumeriancore feel to it but there’s also an element of black/grimness that pops up here and there. I also really dig the organic drum tones as opposed to the heavily sound-replaced tones that usually dominate this kind of music.
This guy is pretty much what I strived to be when I was in high school, a multi-instrumentalist composer — only I didn’t have a drumkit (or the space for one) and my crappy little Roland 8-track (which did service me quite well) wouldn’t have been capable of properly recording it even if I did. Today’s kids are lucky to have excellent recording software available at their fingertips so cheaply, I tells ya.
When Sigh mainman Mirai Kawashima offered to do a series of blogs from the studio where the band is recording their new album, Scenes from Hell, it was an opportunity too cool for us to pass up. Below find Mirai’s latest report; here are links to his previous entries:
Hello everybody. This is not a studio report actually.
Finally, here we reveal the cover artwork for our eighth studio album, Scenes from Hell. It was designed by Eliran Kantor (Testament, Mekong Delta, Gwar, etc). We’re truly proud of the artwork. This is the perfect descrition of what the album is about – namely War, Hell and Death!
The End Records has set January 19, 2010 release date for this album.
It’s really fucking good. I just thought I should go on record as saying that since we haven’t covered this album at all to date.
For what it’s worth, the album sold 3,300 copies in the U.S. in its first week of release, good enough to net a #162 ranking on the Soundscan charts. Kind of amazing for guys that look as ridiculous as these guys do.
Stream the title track from All Shall Fall on Immortal’s MySpace and revel in its grimness and frostbitten-ness.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
I first wrote about Crystal Viper back in March, and they’re still one of the most amazing discoveries I’ve made this year. Now they have a new video and… I mean… Have you ever seen a video more metal than this?!?!? I mean, more metal and also made for two dollars U.S. and the band’s best ass. ‘Cause I think that’s what they traded for the pyro.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 5:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
The Red Chord’s new album, Fed Through the Teeth Machine, is every bit as brutal and baffling as its title would suggest. And I mean “baffling” as a compliment, by the way. This band has zero interest in doing anything besides whatever the fuck they want to do, and they’ve yet to run out of steam. Fed Through the Teeth Machine will continue to cement their reputation as innovators – leaders, not followers, of the genre. If they even fit into one genre. Which, really, they do not. This is very much still the band that made Fused Together in Revolving Doors, even if the line-up is different.
Our Broman Polanskis* at Metal Injection are now streaming a brand new track off the album, “One Robot to Another.” It’s actually one of my favorite songs on the record. So please stop reading this now and go listen to it.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 4:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Please allow me to digress from our regular subject matter to discuss another one of my great loves – namely, horror movies.
I saw Hatchet at the Tribeca Film Festival a few years ago. I was more than a little surprised to see Dee Snider sitting in the audience. As it turns out, Adam Green, the writer/director of Hatchet, is a huge Twisted Sister fan. He gave a whole speech before the screening, recounting a story of meeting Dee at a signing when he was a kid, and telling Dee how his music changed his life and inspired him to follow his dreams. Years later, when he finally got to make his first movie, he reached out to Dee and invited him to the screening – and Dee showed up! How cool is that? And BONUS: Hatchet is an awesome movie. It’s a funny as fuck, gory as hell homage to the golden age of slasher flicks – namely, the 80s. Awesome movie.
Now Adam Green has directed the below “infomercial” with his friend, Paul Solet, who directed Grace – which is easily one of the most unsettling films I’ve seen in years. It’s increasingly rare to see original horror these days, let alone original horror that is genuinely disturbing – but Grace is that gem of a movie. No wonder it got a very limited theatrical run and is now on DVD. Maybe if it had been Saw XXI or whatever, the suits would have given a fuck.
ANYWAY, I love these dudes’ work, and I love this video. And knowing that many of you share my love of all things gore, I thought it was worth sharing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
When I last spoke with Gojira’s Joe Duplantier about a year ago, the tone of the conversation was overwhelmingly positive; The Way of All Flesh had just been released to critical acclaim, the band had just come over to the U.S. for their biggest tour here to date (supporting In Flames) and everything was hunky-dory in Gojiraland. Fast forward a year, and the conversation is markedly different. Things are still fantastic for the band; The Way of All Flesh continues to sell and to be loved and they’ve toured non-stop all over the world with the likes of Metallica, Slayer and Lamb of God — but all this work has left the band exhausted.
In my recent chat with Joe before their headline show in Brooklyn last month, he explained the double-edged sword of the band’s newfound success — seeing the world, playing to sold-out audiences and opening for childhood heroes Metallica, while at the same time facing the realities of the constant grind of the road, living without a home and the hardships that come with being in a bus with the same 3 other dudes year-round.
Read my full chat with Joe after the jump, and also be sure to check out Axl’s show writeup (summary: they were FUCKING AWESOME!)
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 3:10pm by Axl Rosenberg
Why oh why are By Any Means Necessary still unsigned? Their three-song demo/EP or whatever rocked. I know they’re young, but so are half the bands out there right now. And most of them aren’t as good as BAMN (there’s an awesome abbreviation if ever there was one).
Hopefully this news will lead to good things, though: the band will be playing support for Divine Heresy and Gigan (featuring former members of Hate Eternal) on six tour dates next month. I’ve still never seen this band live, but if their shows are as good as their songs, I’d wager it’ll be a lot of fun – way more fun that, say, Divine Heresy.
By Any Means Necessary recently completed tracking for their new EP and are currently mixing those songs. Hopefully we’ll more updates on that soon; in the meantime, get tour dates after the jump, and please check these guys out if you can.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 2:47pm by Axl Rosenberg
When Vince and I saw Alice in Chains last month, there was a lot of hub-bub in the crowd ’cause Scott Ian and his wife, Pearl “Meatloaf’s Daughter” Aday, were very visibly sitting in the VIP section of the balcony. But seeing Scott Ian at a New York metal show isn’t really that unusual, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.
As it turns out, though, Ian and AIC’s Jerry Cantrell are, indeed, friends – and now business partners. So says a press release:
Or at least we hope. As Axl pointed out to me one time, it’s not that Sevendust have managed to outlast their nu-metal peers and persevere through hard times; even terrible bands like Static X and Dope have done that. It’s that Sevendust have somehow managed to avoid the critical backlash that was bestowed upon nearly everyone else from their era of metal. Maybe it’s because they’re a cut above most of those bands, because they’re so fucking great live, or because they never reached the level of popularity and/or ridiculousness of many of those bands; I think it’s all of the above. Even after a string of 3 very mediocre and rushed albums written without musical mastermind Clint Lowery in the band, Sevendust have somehow managed to retain their integrity through it all.
But now Clint is back in the band, and they’re recording their first album since early 2007′s Chapter VII: Hope & Sorrow, with producer Johnny K behind the boards. There’s a lot of anticipation, but there’s also a ton of pressure.
It’s called “Hang Him High” and it’s currently streaming on Hypocrisy’s MySpace page. It comes off of Hypocrisy’s forthcoming album A Taste of Extreme Divinity, out November 3rd in the U.S. and October 23rd in Europe, an album I’m now even more excited for than I already was.
Is it me, or do the first :40 or so sound a helluva lot like Cannibal Corpse’s “Evisceration Plague”? Especially that guitar doodly-doodly thing. But no matter, the chorus is all its own and the song kills anyway. Totally digging this.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 12:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Ever wish there was music that could duplicate the feeling of a throbbing migraine?
I hate The Reel, the new album from Vampire Mooose, so much that I actually went back and re-listened to their last album, Serenade the Samurai, just to make sure it holds up. That’s not a great album by any means, but it is a good one – thirty-five minutes of really ugly melodic death metal fueled by elephants-marching metalcore riffs at their finest. You might forget about it a couple of days after you get it, but Samurai is a totally solid album. I could see that version of Vampire Mooose playing a show with Gojira. They might get blown off the stage, but they’d be there and they wouldn’t get booed.
The Reel is just a boring as fuck, paint-by-numbers deathcore album. It’s “heavier” than Samurai, I guess, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it sucks. Every song here could be by any number of the forgettable unsigned bands that we so crudely make fun of on this very website.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
At some point during the recording of Earthsblood, God Forbid announced that they had covered Muse’s “Stockholm Syndrome.” Since then, we’ve actually gotten a stupid amount of e-mails from people asking us when it was going to be released. And we really didn’t know. (I know we’re tight with some of the dudes from God Forbid, but it’s important to remember that we’re not actually in God Forbid, even if we sometimes air guitar to “The End of the World” and fantasize that we are.)
Well, the song is finally available as a single on iTunes. An it’s good! Muse are already one of the most metal non-metal bands out there, and GF completely succeed in turning the track into something metal as fuck. The guitars rip and Byron Davis screams in jjjuuuussssttt the right amounts. If you’re a God Forbid fan, it’s totally worth the buck it’ll cost you. And as a bonus, remember that it might be the last official God Forbid recording to feature Dallas Coyle (who handles most of the vocals, in addition to his usual guitar duties) ever.
For obvious reasons I can’t/don’t want to post the cover here, but below you can check out the video for Muse’s original, in case you’re unfamiliar with it.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:30am by Axl Rosenberg
I’d love it if some kind of behind-the-scenes DVD came with Slayer’s forthcoming World Painted Blood, but I guess I’ll have to settle for this.
The legendary thrashers’ attempt to get people to buy physical copies of their album – in case the four album covers wasn’t enough – is going to be a twenty minute DVD entitled Playing with Dolls, “a 12-episode video-graphic novel” from Metalocalypse director Mark Brooks. Inspired by the Jeff Hanneman-penned track of the same name, a press release tells us that “the film blends elements of animation and still-photography into a visual style similar to that of a graphic novel.”
Based on that description and the below trailer, that makes me think this is going to be akin to that lame Watchmen “motion comic” that came out earlier this year, which is to say, I have very little interest in watching this, huge Slayer fan though I may be. Luckily all signs point to the actual record being awesome, so I don’t feel too concerned about some bonus DVD.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:00am by Axl Rosenberg
But it might make for a better video if it was.
Instead, Decadence’s “Silent Weapon” video gives us pretty typical people running through the woods imagery, and some shots of a swinging light bulb that we all saw in a hundred other metal videos about fifteen years ago.
Still, the song isn’t terrible. But I can think of another, much better female-fronted band from Sweden, who are about to embark on this totally awesome tour that we’re sponsoring. Just sayin’.
