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So apparently the source of the split between Evan Seinfeld (Biohazard/Damnocracy) and Tera Patrick (porn) was Patrick’s request that Seinfeld leave the adult film business. Says an evil tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch:
I’m all for heavy metal artists licensing their songs out to commercials and movies. With diminished record sales and an over-flooded touring market, every little bit counts… and these types of commercial spots pay extremely well. “Way to go, Lamb of God,” I say. I guess they’ve finally reached that level of ubiquity.
-VN
[Thanks: Mike Winston]
There are two kinds of people who watch cartoons:
And I don’t think either one would be interested in a Def Leppard cartoon series that depicts “the five members of the group in a fictional, adventurous setting.” But that’s not going to stop the band from pitching one to the networks.
Let’s break down why this is a terrible idea.
Remember that time in 2009 we went on and on about how amazing Gojira were when we saw them in New York City? Oh yeah, that’s right… that happened twice because we got two Gojira headline shows this year. Both were something slightly more than orgasmic, and our heads (along with our testicles) nearly exploded in sheer elation.
At the first Gojira headline show way back in May (read Axl’s review), we had photographer Chetan Patel on hand snapping pics up front. He did a great job capturing Gojira’s epic performance and got some good shots of openers The Chariot as well. His pics, after the jump.
Death metal butchers Aborted have launched the title-track of their forthcoming EP, Coronary Reconstruction, at the band’s redesigned MySpace page.
Aborted have recently announced a new line-up, featuring Sven de Caluwe (also of System Divide) on vocals, Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork) on drums, Eran Segal (ex-They Swarm/Whorecore) and Ken Sorceron (Abigail Williams) on guitar and Cole Martinez (System Divide) on bass…
Wait wait wait wait wait wait. The dude from Abigail Williams is in Aborted now? How the fuck did I miss that?
Just a couple of weeks ago I was wondering if Triptykon, Thomas Gabriel Fischer’s post-Celtic Frost project, were ever gonna announce a release date for their debut album. I should have been more media savvy, though; the band didn’t release two new tracks just ’cause Tommy Boy wanted to share his art with you. There was an announcement in the works.
And that announcement has arrived, by way of e-mail press release! Hoo-ray! Here’s what that e-mail press release says:
After I posted footage of Dj Ashba butchering Robin Finck’s solo from “This I Love” last week, I invoked the wrath of certain Ashba supporters, who claimed that Ashba is a better guitarist than I’m giving him credit for. And that’s probably true. That first Beautiful Creatures album was fun, and evidence suggests that Ashba was just having an off-night.
So here’s a video of him doing a much better job as the new guitar player for Axl Rose’s Guns N’ Roses. But before you watch it, know that I still can’t get behind Ashba, for the following reasons:
Ashba is exactly what Guns N’ Roses doesn’t need, and exactly what Robin Finck and Buckethead were not – a Slash clone. If Axl really wants to make some claim that this new band is a legitimate band, having a member with no discernible personality of his own is a mistake.
And here are Finck and Buckethead, in happier times. Hard to believe this was nine years ago already…
We published our lists. Now it’s your turn.
Here’s how it’s going to work. Rather than post a regular poll with hundreds of options, we’re going to conduct this poll via the comments. Here are the instructions:
Step 1) Decide what your favorite metal album of 2009 is. You only get to pick one.
Step 2) Search the comments of this post for your choice (Apple-F on a Mac, Control-F on a PC).
Step 3) If it’s already listed, hit the “reply” button underneath and simply post “+1″ as your comment. If it’s not listed yet, add it, making sure you include the band name and album title and double-checking that you’ve spelled both correctly.
That’s it! When we re-open the MS Mansion Gates for 2010 we’ll tally up the “+1″s and declare a winner. Nothing is preventing you from adding multiple +1s, but don’t be that douche. Have fun… go!
Hey you cats and kittens. MetalSucks’ final contest of the year will launch a little later today. In the meantime, here are people who won some other crap:
Unreadable logo will return the week of January 4 with more super-awesome-fun-time prizes; Heavy Metal Hannukkah will return on December 1, 2010.
-AR
Somewhat unexpectedly but undoubtedly awesomely, the bid to propel Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” to the top of the U.K. Christmas Singles chart has actually been successful. The initial download sales figures showed Rage ahead, but X Factor winner Joe McElderry was expected to overtake them when his track was released on CD. Snow, ice and a general boredom with X Factor prevented that from happening as Rage held onto the coveted top spot, ending a four-year run of #1 tracks by winners of Simon Cowell’s X Factor (the U.K.’s version of American Idol).
News like this is ultimately pretty inconsequential, but it always feels like a victory when an artist of merit overtakes generic pop tripe. Check out a live, expletive-ridden performance of “Killing in the Name” that Rage did on the BBC last week.
-VN
Now ten years since originally forming, The Hope Conspiracy is still killing it. The band’s latest release was this year’s True Nihilist, a killer three-song EP showcasing the savage yet smart hardcore that we’ve come to expect from the band. No official word yet on when we’ll see a proper (and overdue) full-length follow-up to 2006′s Death Knows Your Name, but you can ask the guys yourself during their upcoming flurry of European and American tour dates this coming January. Opening acts for these shows vary, but include Nails (the latest project from Todd Jones, formerly of Terror and Carry On) and fellow Deathwish acts (and my Best Albums of 2009 picks) Blacklisted, Lewd Acts, and Rise And Fall. The New York date (flyer above) boasts an especially awesome lineup of hardcore supergroup United Nations, black metal locals Black Anvil, and Pennsylvania’s Mother Of Mercy, as well as the aforementioned Blacklisted. All dates below, with ticketing info when available.
If you follow this website you know that YouTube vocal cover videos endlessly amuse us. Whether it’s making fun of would-be bedroom / Dr. Pepper bottle growlers or realizing that some Internet rando is actually a pretty skilled vocalist, vocal covers both great and terrible are always fun. To that end we’ve teamed up with Polish metal kings Behemoth (whose recent release Evangelion made three of our writers’ Best of ’09 lists!), ESP Guitars, Metal Blade Records and Metal Injection to bring you our very own vocal cover contest.
In honor of Behemoth’s upcoming Evangelia Amerika Tour, film a video of yourself singing along with Nergal to the track “Ov Fire and the Void” and upload it to Metal Injection. The best / most interesting video will win vocalist/guitarist Nergal’s signature series HEX-7 guitar from ESP, a limited edition Affliction Behemoth T-Shirt and a Metal Blade Records “Pillage” T-Shirt.
Have some fun with it! Last day to enter is January 20th, 2010. All entries must be made via the Metal Injection Evangelia Amerika contest page. The winner will be chosen completely subjectively by Behemoth and the staffs of Metal Injection, MetalSucks and Metal Blade in the week following January 20th. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY! (sorry; shipping is expensive). Good luck, everyone.
If I had the world’s worst case of ADHD and one day accidentally swaped out my prescription meds for something much more highly hallucinogenic and considerably less legal, the ensuing fever dream might play out a little like Iwrestledabearonce’s first full-length, It’s All Happening.
And I mean that as a compliment.
The MetalSucks co-sponsored Metal As Art Tour 2010, featuring Revocation (Relapse Records), Hypno5e, and The Binary Code, kicks off in just a couple of weeks. You should all be familiar with Revocation by now; SEVEN of our writers named their 2009 album Existence is Futile in their end-of-year lists for 2009. I had the chance to see the band in NYC a couple of months back and they’re every bit as good live as they are on record, and then some. Of course you’re all also with familiar with The Binary Code, whose Suspension of Disbelief was our first foray into the world of releasing music just last week; seeing the band’s astonishing live show was actually what drew us to them in the first place. And while France’s Hypno5e haven’t hit America’s shores in some time, I’m greatly looking forward to meeting their prog metal meets art rock onslaught.
During a winter that’s already got a couple of higher-profile tours, this is a smaller tour that I’m the most excited about. The 31-date run kicks off January 6th in Brooklyn, winds its way through the Midwest and South, runs up the whole West Coast and then cuts through the center of the country all the way back, wrapping February 6th in New Jersey.
Full list of tour dates after the jump (**please note a venue change for Los Angeles**):
If the MetalSucks Universe had been born one year earlier, we would have had many amazing albums to hype on our 2006 best-of lists, and one that would have most definitely ranked mighty high on my cannon was Intronaut’s first full-length, Void.
At the time (and to this day) Void — and its baby sister, preceding EP Null — sounded like nothing else. Merging a jazzy jamband sensibility with bone-crushing riffage, all under a progressive rock lens, Intronaut came out of nowhere and in many ways owned my ears for the better part of 2006.
Oh yeah, wait a second — Mastodon’s Blood Mountain and LoG’s Sacrament came out that year too, right?
Jeez, metal really sucks.
INTRONAUT — “Fault Lines”, from Void (2006)
-KW
Deven Simmons! You mensch. You correctly identified last night’s trivia question: it was the Music as a Weapon IV tour with Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil and Chimaira where we first spotted Josh Kidd, the Heavy Metal Hasid. Deven wins a mystery prize from Century Media, and a dreidel from us.
IT’S THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS, AND YOUR LAST CHANCE TO WIN!!! Here’s tonight’s trivia question:
E-mail your answer along with your name and address to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 8″ in the subject line. All entries are due by 9 am EST on Monday, December 21. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 8’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S. Good luck…
-AR
When picturing The Crown in my mind, I don’t see a hard-working death metal band quietly grinding out classic albums. Nah, it’s more like a sequence from The Wonder Years set to “You’re All I Need To Get By” where everything goes blurry except for five frowning Swedish dudes. Sometimes it’s closer to Beatlemania as the quintet presides over a rabid press corps at JFK. I also like to think that when eventually I am imprisoned by drug lords in the jungle, the guys in The Crown will grenade their way through the gates in a daring pre-dawn raid. One could say that they are the house band in the dive bar of my heart. Ahem. So you could see how the announcement of their reformation — plus singer Jonas Stålhammar and minus Johan Lindstrand (One Man Army & The Undead Quartet) — would cause me to do the journalist equivalent of lunging for their bra strap. I begged for an interview.
And so in a Metal Sucks Universe Exclusive after the jump, guitarist Marko Tervonen explains how most of the Crown became Dobermann, how Dobermann became The Crown, the making of their “stunning” seventh album, and of course, the past, present, and future of The Crown.
Shelby Cobras at Illogical Contraption may be throwing in the towel on making fun of Juggalos… but we’re above such nonsense. It’s way too much fun!
Today I have two Juggalo-related linky-dinks for some end-of-the-week lawlz. Shelby has alerted us to the existence of JuggaloFaith.com, a one-stop shop for all of your Christian Juggalo needs. The site’s creator Rev. B-Lotus seeks to justify the cause with lyrical proof of ICP’s Christianity. Some ICP lyrical examples:
“Truth is we follow God, we’ve always been behind him, the Carnival is God, may all the juggalos find him.”
“Fuck the devil, fuck that shit, we believe in life legit, ain’t you gettin’ what we say, why you throw your soul away??”
I suppose ICP could be a Christian band… which would strike me as somewhat hilarious given all the violence and idiocy they propagate. But then again, hasn’t violence and idiocy been the M.O. of religion, well… for the entire history of religion?
Lastly, I’ll leave you with a link from the excellent Juggalo-bashing blog The Juggalog. Check this out (NSFW!!). No further explanation is necessary.
-VN
Puscifer, Maynard James Keenan’s bizarro electro lounge music side-project, just announced a string of East Coast and Midwest dates for Spring 2010… and while I was initially very excited, upon further reflection I’m not so sure.
I feel like I’m in a cartoon, when a character has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both strongly making the case for their cause. Here’s what mine are saying:
Angel: It’s Maynard! He’s a genius! While Puscifer might not really be your bag, Maynard’s one of the most creative guys in all of music and will surely put on a show that’s at the very least entertaining. Go to the show! Come on! Do it! You know it’s the right thing and you won’t regret it.
Devil: Don’t bother with this tripe. The music’s not that interesting, and the show won’t be what you’re hoping for. Ultimately you want this to be Tool, and it isn’t Tool at all. Don’t waste your money or your time… no reason to go to this!
I’m divided. I really don’t know what to do. Halp!
Full list of tour dates after the jump.
-VN
I still don’t really know who This is Hell are, but they’re one of the bands that did a Pantera cover for that Metal Hammer thing, and now said Pantera cover, “Rise,” is up on their MySpace page.
And if all their music sounds like this, then, well, I’m not too sad I’ve been unfamiliar with This is Hell up ’til now. This sounds more like the worst Every Time I Die wannabes ever than it does Pantera.
Check out the song here, if you must.
-AR
