I’m not nearly as big a Death Jovi Scar Symmetry fan as the right honorable Mr. Neilstein, but I do really like them (especially 2006′s Pitch Black Progress), and I was curious to see how this new vocalists situation played itself out.

So I’m a little sad to say that while I haven’t heard the band’s new album, Dark Matter Dimensions, as of yet, this song, “Noumenon & Phenomenon,” doesn’t do much for me. And neither does the video. In fact, the most interesting thing about this whole experience, for me personally at least, has been learning what “noumenon” means. I feel much smarter now. Thank you, metal, for once again broadening my mind.

Dark Matter Dimensions is out now on Nuclear Blast. Vince says it’s good so feel free to call me an asshole for not loving this song. Maybe hearing the whole album will change my mind.

-AR

Alright, you brats, this is it. Baroness’ Blue Record comes out next Tuesday, October 13 on Relapse, but the band is now streaming the entire album right here.

The album is fucking great. I know I’ve said that a bunch of times, but really, it’s just an awesome rock n’ roll record. If it’s not at the tippy top of my year end list, it’s gonna be very, very close.

Now go listen.

-AR

Okay, so here’s the deal: MetalSucks is sponsoring an AWESOME tour this winter. And when we say “AWESOME,” we mean AWESOME. We’re so stoked. We can’t wait to tell you which bands are playing.

The thing is, we can’t. Not yet.

We can tell you that a) there are four bands on the bill, and b) they are all, as we said, friggin’ AWESOME.

The full tour announcement is coming this Monday, October 12. In the meantime, to get you all hot n’ bothered, we’ve conducted a interview with a member of each band, providing them with questions designed to help you guess who they are without spoiling the surprise. Today we present the first interview, with the first band on the bill, natch. After the jump, read his or her interview, then try to guess which band he’s from! Tomorrow we’ll present the interview with second band on the bill, Thursday the third band, and Friday the headliners, before making the official announcement on Monday.

Enjoy, kiddies…

Click to read more…

With a new album, From Afar, in stores now, and a U.S. tour just about a month away, now seemed like a perfect time for a chat with bassist/lyricist Sami Hinka. New MetalSucks correspondent Joseph Strombladder got on the phone with the pagan metaller to discuss the process of writing the band’s music and lyrics, the differences between metal fans in the U.S. and abroad, making music videos, and more. Full transcript after the jump.

Click to read more…

It seems that Gwar’s Oderus Urungus is super-stoked on his MetalSucks column “Ask Oderus”; not only has the dude been keeping up with his duties as Professor of Intergalactic Metal Advice, but he responded to our last call for questions by leaving comment answers to all of your questions; every single one of them!! For the sake of getting his answers out to the masses, we’ve compiled some of the best Q&As from last week’s online therapy session here.

Chase asks: What happened to the blood bombs yall would throw at the show? those were ridiculous. Why haven’t yall killed amahidnnedjad?

If they do their job, they hopefully explode into your eyes, blinding you and giving you numerous incurable diseases.

As far as that crafty, kooky, A-Jad is concerned, I am in no hurry to kill him. I think he is quite amusing. I wish him all the best in his construction of a nuclear warhead and delivery system for said weapon. Hopefully Many people admire him for his defiant attitude, and I am enjoying his stand-up comedy, particularly the jokes he made about the Holocaust. Hilarious! Way funnier than Schindler’s List. Everyone said what a great movie that was but when I saw it I only laughed like two, three times!

Click to read more…

In case you can’t tell, we love this fucking band and almost wish we had uteruses (uteri?) so we could have their babies. We hope you enjoy this. Or don’t. Fuck you either way.

And in case you’re playing catch-up, you can watch the first webisode here and the second webisode here.

Skeletonwitch’s metal-as-fuck new album, Breathing the Fire, comes out October 13 on Prosthetic.

-AR

Thanks to Michael Bergin Jr. for the link!

Rejoice! After that sample medley he released last week, Devin Townsend has now unveiled a complete new song to the world! The title track from The Devin Townsend Project’s forthcoming Addicted is streaming right this second on Noiscreep. And, no real shock here, it’s a killer.

Like the rest of the album, the song features vocals by Anneke van Giersbergen, formerly of The Gathering. Her presence helps give Addicted a slightly poppier feeling that some listeners might have been hoping for; as Devin himself puts in an interview that accompanies the stream, some fans will probably hear the music and “be like, ‘The gay-o-meter is in the red, bro.’” It’s very political of Devin not to add, “Those fans are morons.” But, really, those fans are morons.

Stream the track here, then come back and let us know what you think. Addicted comes out November 17 on InsideOut Music.

-AR

Read all about the merging of Onward To Olympas and Facedown at the label’s news page.

In other news, Buy-Four-Get-One-Free sale on gray t-shirts at Old Navy!

-GS

[Gary Suarez wept. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Speaking of Decibel: their, um, let’s call it an “electronic division,” The Deciblog, has gotten Children of Bodom main man Alexi Laiho to supply his top five metal riffs of all time. (Thus the headline. Ah-duh.) If somebody asked me to do that, I’d probably blow my brains out, so props to Alexi for giving it a shot.

As we know first hand here at MS, posting any list like this is an open invitation for a shitstorm to rain down upon your head, but I suspect that Alexi’s list especially will cause arguments. I believe this will be the case for two reasons:

1. He’s Alexi fuckin’ Laiho, not some blogger.
2. He put a Black Label Society riff on the list.

Read the entire list here, then come back and get embroiled in some good old fashioned name-calling.

And don’t forget that we’re currently running a contest where you can impersonate Alexi for a chance to win an ESP Alexi Laiho Signature Series LTD AL-600 Scythe guitar! Enter that shit now!

-AR

I actually think that Metallica’s Live Metallica website is a cool idea. Even if James’ voice sounds like shit and I’m pretty sure Lars is literally confused about what those sticks some roadie just shoved into his hand are for, a high-quality recording of a show you recently attended is both a cooler and cheaper souvenir than, say, and $400,000 t-shirt (or whatever arena rawk bands charge for merch these days). And I fully support their recent decision to allow single-song downloads. Yes, it’s kind of ironic given the Napster mishegoss, but, y’know, whatever. Metallica aren’t the titans of metal that they once were, but every now and then they do something right.

Now Metal Insider tells us that they’ve launched an iPhone app version of the site, called – duh – Live Metallica:

Click to read more…

Watch the new webisode by L.A. cockrockers Steel Panther, and sure, they seem like a bunch of jokers. But the authors of this century’s first classic hair rock album are also the bravest, most honest musicians ever. See, Michael Starr and crew sing about doin’ ya and doin’ your drugs, but don’t bother with fancy symbolic language, like the ribald single-entendres of AC/DC (“Fire Your Guns”) or total lack of imagination of Bulletboys (“Smooth Up In Ya”). Their raw candor isn’t just refreshing, it’s a public service, as though they respect us too much to veil nasty intentions or insult our intelligence with shitty poetry; expressed artlessly, guitarist Satchel’s sincere thanks to “the guy who invented cocaine” really reminds you that the guy who invented cocaine probably at least deserves a postage stamp; Satchel’s other pet cause is universal vagina maintenance standards, and again, a less confident band may not dare to instruct our sisters, mothers, and girlfriends on matters of good greens-keeping; and lastly but not leastly, bless Steel Panther for speaking out against those awful Goo Goo Dolls. They can suck my balls, too.

Feel The Steel is (finally) out now. Order it here.

[This exclusive has now ended.]

Aaaaannnnddd my heart is broken.

Blabbermouth reports that Independiente and the Domino Recording Company are suing Guns N’ Roses for ripping off two songs by Ulrich Schnauss for the song “Riad N’ the Bedouins,” which appears on the band’s forever-in-the-making flop of epic of proportions, Chinese Democracy. Now, a new law suits against Axl Rose and GN’R is filed approximately once an hour – Rose has even blamed said law suits in the past for being part of the reason for CD‘s delay (as if) – so, normally, this would not be news.

Except that I’m 99.9% positive that Schnauss is correct, and he was ripped-off.

Click to read more…

This summer’s ridiculously hot but still awesome Blackened Music Series show with Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer and Repulsion was, technically speaking, a book release party for Precious Metal, a book collected Decibel’s awesome Hall of Fame series in one classy edition. That fact got kind of overlooked as the world celebrated such an incredible grind show taking place, but there ya have it. It’s a really cool book and you should buy it.

So. Our friends from Metal Injection were on hand, and not only did they interview the dudes gods from Pig Destroyer, but they also snagged an interview with Albert Mudrian. In addition to being the editor-of-chief of the Decibel, Albert wrote Choosing Death, which is pretty much the definitive history of death and grind. In other words: the guy knows his shit.

Here’s MI’s interview with Albert. As a metal-writing nerd, I found it fascinating. And don’t forget to head over to Metal Injection to watch the Pig Destroyer interview, too (they also have plenty of ass-rippingly good live footage from the show). ‘Cause, y’know. It’s fucking PIG DESTROYER.

-AR

I’ve just received an e-mail from Earache Records alerting me that Mike Alexander, bassist for U.K. thrashers Evile, has passed away. He was thirty-two years old.

Evile members Matt Drake, Ol Drake and Ben Carter have released the following statement:

Click to read more…

These days a lot of metal record labels seem to be releasing “widgets” — those embeddable flash jobbies with streaming music, photos, tour dates, etc — to promote new albums. Three years ago when MySpace was all the rage this made sense since, hypothetically, fans would embed these widgets on their pages thus spreading the word at the low price of whatever it cost the label to develop the widget. But it’s 2009 now; MySpace is still plenty vibrant as a music delivery tool but virtually dead in terms of social networking; Facebook and Twitter don’t support embedding; and, as a blog proprietor, I can say I’d much rather link out to another site than embed a widget that takes time to load. Yet labels still seem to be pumping out widgets like Gene Simmons pumps out verbal diarrhea.

So, my questions to you, MetalSucks Minions: do you embed widget on your pages? If you see a widget on someone else’s page, do you bother to click/listen/explore it? Are widgets cool or are they lame? As usual, feel free to elaborate in the comments.

Record labels, you can thank me for the free market research later. I’ll accept payment in the form of beer at CMJ. Lots of it.

n

I suppose you’d call Canadian metal act Starring Janet Leigh “math metal” or “tech metal” or something of the like; I prefer to call them “this stuff makes my fucking head spin” metal because that’s what it does… shit’s insane, like that time I walked in on Kip W. fellating one of the MS Mansion Monkeys in the downstairs bathroom. But insane good, not insane bad like in the aforementioned awkward encounter.

So Starring Janet Leigh have a new video for their song “Ex You.” I really like the visual for its stark simplicity; it’s super clear, crisp, and I really like the colors. Perhaps one of you film geeks out there will be able to tell me that it was shot with such-and-such film or treated in such-and-such way, and that’s fine and dandy whatever it may be… I just like it, and the aesthetic fits the band perfectly. Here it go:

-VN

As you may have heard by now, yesterday Converge’s new album, Axe to Fall, leaked. The watermarked files demonstrate that the leak originated with a MetalSucks staff writer, Shaun Hand.

We would like to formally apologize on behalf of everyone at MetalSucks for the leak. We  take full responsibility.

Click to read more…

We’re big fans of late ’80s / early ’90s WWF wrestling at the Mansion. When we were kids, Axl and I used to have annual Wrestlemania parties where we got our friends together and got really high on Coke and Doritos and beat the shit out of each other with pillows. Fun times!

So naturally I’m elated to hear that there’s an iPhone app that’s an Iron Sheik soundboard featuring many of his great one-liners. SMNnews.com posted this clip of someone prank-calling Roadrunner Records with said soundboard. The poor girl on the other end of the line (who I’m pretty sure has buzzed us into Roadrunner’s offices on more than one occasion) is actually a pretty good sport about it.

-VN

Reader CB Mather e-mailed me over the weekend to assert that Alice in Chains’ new song, “Your Decision,” is “an obvious rip-off” of Nirvana’s “Polly.” Now, since I absolutely loved AIC’s new album, Black Gives Way to Blue, and really, really dig the song “Your Decision,” I immediately decided to investigate…

…and there are some undeniable similarities between the songs. The vocal lines are different and the choruses are not really similar at all, but the chord progression during the verse is… well… it’s not identical, but I can see a relationship there. I don’t know if I’d call it “an obvious rip-off,” but only the most die-hard AIC fan who can’t live with the thought of anyone saying anything even mildly insulting to the band would deny the similitude of the two songs.

Here they are side-by-side. I tend to think this is just one of those times when a song kinda-sorta sounds like another song, but the fact that they’re both Seattle bands from the same era makes the connection that much more relevant.

NIRVANA PERFORMING “POLLY” ON UNPLUGGED

ALICE IN CHAINS PERFORMING “YOUR DECISION” ON JIMMY KIMMEL

Click to read more…

The reader known only as “Derrick” sent us a link to Dying 2 Meet You, a website that offers the “cheap gag gift” of selling customers a meeting with the dead celebrity of their choice (they even only have certain celebrities, so as to better sell the illusion that these are official meetings, I guess). Of course, there’s an entire package devoted to “Metal Legends,” including Chuck Schuldiner, Cliff Burton, and, naturally, Dimebag.

I get that this is a “gag gift” so I’m not too offended by the whole stupid idea – it’s not like you’re actually getting ripped off by, say, being so dumb you think you’re having a star named after a loved one – but taking five bucks and putting it towards a “meeting” with Layne Staley or Bon Scott or Randy Rhodes or whomever strikes me as… well… a complete and utter waste of five bucks. No, it’s not really a lot of money in the scheme of things, but it is money.

So purchasing one of these “gag gifts” is literally like wiping your ass with that Abe Lincoln. Somewhere, there’s a starving homeless person who would kill for a slice of pizza or two, but, no, that money would be better spent on a fake meeting with a dead person.

Swell.

-AR