Nevermore’s last record came out in 2005, but since then singer Warrel Dane has been privy to some fantastical pairings: On a guest turn late in Behemoth’s The Apostasy, Dane’s anguished wail was like pineapple slices added to Nergal & crew’s deep-dish pizza. Then, for production duties on his solo outing, Dane drafted Soilwork guitarist Peter Wichers. And while solo albums are usually met with apprehension or outright denial — is anyone onboard to buy the mythical Steven Tyler record? — Praises To The War Machine was somewhat of an unheralded gem. At very least, it gave us a glimpse of the parallel dimension where Dane fronts a brooding, pessimistic Soilwork. Next up, Dane and Nevermore are set to release The Obsidian Conspiracy, which teams Wichers (producing) with one of the architects of the modern metal sound, Andy Sneap (mixing). If that doesn’t set your bottom all a-tingle, let me know and I’ll come jolt you with the Metal Sucks staff taser. Obviously, you need it.

But anyway, on the approach of The Obsidian Conspiracy‘s release and undoubtedly a long round of touring, Dane has announced his first-ever solo show. It appears to be a one-off thing and since Dane promises a set comprised of songs from his entire canon, this show will match him with his most formidable foil yet: songs by his former band, Sanctuary! Sure, Sanctuary is basically proto-Nevermore, but oddly no Nevermore record resonates as deeply as the pure thrash of the Dave Mustaine-produced Refuge Denied.

– ADF

WinAmp just released a new version of their software.

Lawlz!

It’s not even 2010 yet and I’m already nostalgic for 2001.

-VN

Naaaaaahhhhh, I’m just joshin’ ya! It sounds more or less EXACTLY like EVERYTHING they’ve EVER recorded before! But that’s not a bad thing. They’re Dark Tranquillity. They practically invented the Gothenburg sound.

The track is called “Dream Oblivion,” and you can hear it here. It comes off of the band’s new album, We are the Void, which comes out March 2 on Century. I think that bass player who looked like a Martian isn’t in the band anymore, but I’m sure it will rock anyway.

-AR

Ozzy Osbourne has announced Soul Sucka as the name of his new album, according to Classic Rock.

Now, unless this is a very, very poorly timed April Fool’s prank, I’d just like to say that from this moment forward, I am going to pretend that Ozzy Osbourne died in a horrible accident shortly following the release of No More Tears.

I know it’s wrong to judge an album just based on the name, but seriously, fuck your mother in the nostril.

-AR

Veil of Maya, Animals as Leaders, Circle of Contempt and Periphery will embark on a U.S. tour this winter from January 29th through February 20th, according to an official press release we received last night from the band’s booking agency. Veil of Maya aren’t my favoritest Sumeriancore band, but I find them interesting enough to check ‘em out live… especially with Animals as fucking Leaders supporting (my #12 pick for Best of ’09!) and Periphery opening. I haven’t seen the light about Circle of Contempt yet; a few of you have emailed us about them, but they don’t sound all that interesting/different to me.

Check out live footage of Veil of Maya performing a new song a couple of weeks ago and live footage of Periphery performing here in NYC last month to get a taste for what’s in store.

After the jump, check out a list of dates that have been released so far. More are promised to be announced after the holiday, but you can pretty much fill in the blanks based on the existing dates… which means no NYC. Sad face.

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Writing headlines for Rage Against the Machine is too easy, because those dudes just rage against everything (except a couple of shitty Audioslave albums… oh snap! But I did enjoy the first one). Rage, rage, rage.

The latest raging is happening in the U.K., where the band are jumping on board with a fan-led initiative to land “Killing in the Name” on Top of the U.K. Christmas Singles chart. MS Maniac Charlie F. sent in this clip of Zack and Tom doing an interview with the BBC, followed by a full-band live electric performance of the track. The performance is passionate and fierce, and the song is still as vital as ever all these years later. Make sure you listen to the entire performance (which starts around 4:10); there’s a special surprise at the end that would make Howard Stern proud.

Man, when this album came out I could not get enough of the “Fuck you! I won’t do what you tell me!” part. My ten year old ass was running around screaming that shit EVERYWHERE! It still gives me shivers.

After you listen to the performance below, click through the jump for a special surprise that’s a new take on an old joke but still really fucking funny [thanks: Morizz].

-VN

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Hey, lookit that! Our pals at Metal Injection posted some fan filmed footage of another new DEP song, Option Paralysis, which comes out next year.

So now we’ve heard two new songs, neither of which sounds like the poppier material on Ire Works. And while the mathcore shit is great, I really, really hope the band didn’t ditch that whole Faith No More thing they had going on on that album – ’cause that shit was a great, too, and I’d argue that there’s room for both the melodic and the chaotic in DEP’s music.

-AR

Honestly, I find Lady GaGa’s pop-based performance art a lot more interesting than anything that came out of that pretentious conference which Axl posted about the other day.

Say. didn’t Marduk playing a show at Gramercy Theater the other night? Maybe the Times will review that too…

-GS

[Gary Suarez is kvlt. He helps manage Shadows Fail and the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Yaaaaaayyyyy for Martin Gutfeldt, who correctly answered last night’s trivia question: yes, twas I who took off for Yom Kippur. Martin gets a mystery prize from Century Media, and a dreidel from us. Hey, those are both things you can spin!

There’s still two more chances to win a little sumpin’ sumpin’ if you lost, though. So here’s tonight’s trivia question:

• At what show did the MetalSucks crew first spot Heavy Metal Hasid Josh Kidd? (Sorry, Josh, you’re ineligible for this one!)

E-mail your answer along with your name and address to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 7″ in the subject line. All entries are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Friday, December 18) evening. 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

In the weeks prior to –  and even during — the assemblage of this Top 20 list, I went back and listened to every album I’d selected as a candidate, sometimes more than once. Some weren’t quite as impressive as I’d remembered now that the sheen had worn off, some were equally as good, and some were even better.

But what I think speaks most to the high caliber of metal released in 2009 is the great variety of types of metal albums that dot my list. There’s the usual suspects that you’re seeing on the lists of other fellow MS writers and the entire World Wide Interwebs, but there are some curveballs too — there’s a tech-death brand from France, a couple of retro(ish) thrashers, two bands that were previously left for dead and three, count them, THREE instrumental metal albums… plus a whole bunch of others. It wasn’t just a great year for metal but a varied one too, and a fitting end to a decade which saw a huge explosion of sub-genres.

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Anyone who says 2009 wasn’t an amazing year for metal is just being cynical for the sake of being cynical. And me telling you you’re too cynical is like Chris Holmes telling you you have a drinking problem.

Wanna know how good 2009 was? Every writer in metal is bitching and moaning about how hard it was to make a year-end list – but no one can seem to agree on which record was the best of the year. There weren’t two MetalSucks writers who agreed, and Decibel chose a different album from Revolver who chose a different album from Noisecreep who chose a different album from The Onion who chose a different album from your mom, and so on and so forth. There is no consensus. Chaos reigns.

But no one felt particularly wrong to me. I’ve been crying over making this list for months now. There’s so many good records I’m just not gonna get to pay tribute to, and even the final order in which I’m listing these albums is semi-arbitrary; I’m not convinced that one is really better than any of the others. But fuck it, shit happens. And so:

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Despite Axl’s & Vince’s (& the monkeys’) insistence that there were just way too many amazing albums released this year to possibly narrow a best-of list down to ten, I was (initially) only personally blown away by a scant few. Sure, there were plenty of solid offerings, but flailing within the maelstrom of more year/decade-end lists than ever, there oft comes an inevitable formality of having to fill up slots on a list even if such accolades aren’t always ultra-warranted (i.e., if it wasn’t the end of the year, would we be calling all of these albums the “best” of anything? Perhaps, but the pressure of naming names induces a bit of gun-jumping, methinks).

However, the more I listened and re-listened to several of this year’s releases I came to realize just how many great albums surfaced — twas kwite a year indeed. And thus the list of recordings from two-double-ohhhh-niner that did and continue to do something super-special for me grew to a diverse & fiery cannon of seven unique and incredible albums, as well as a few high-praising honorable mentions and one I overlooked last year. I’ve left some of my all-time favorite bands off the list because the records they released this year just weren’t enough of a leap forward enough to justify calling this particular round of work the “best”. However, I strongly believe in the powerful nature of vacillating trajectories of artistic careers, and I expect great things in the future from all of my former boys, even if things no look so good.

Aight — let’s do this shizznikkle.

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Axl and Vince really kept us busy this year with all the great stuff coming out, but it was worth it; those guys really feed us THE best bananas money can buy. We’re not kidding… Grade A stuff, perfectly ripe, and full of flavor.

It was tough, but we’ve narrowed down the year’s metal releases to only twenty. Here they are:

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MetalSucks intern Matt Heafowitz is making his editorial debut with his own Best of ’09 Br00tal-list! What can we say? The guy’s got great taste. We taught him well.

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In no particular order, here are a bunch of tours that made our collective nipples hard in 2009:

Meshuggah + Cynic +The Faceless: The original incarnation of the prog metal boner / wet dream tour, but the 2010 incarnation (BTBAM, Townsend, Cynic, Scale the Summit) is gonna give it a run for its money.

Opeth + Enslaved: There really isn’t much to say about this… a perfect pairing! Opeth were at the top of their game and Enslaved were coming off the success of Vertebrae.

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To those of you that haven’t been paying attention (which I imagine is only, like, five or six of you), this is only my second year-end list for Metal Sucks. And while 2008 was a pretty good year for metal, this year made it look like a Nachtmystium record and some other stuff. From great early offerings right out of the gate via Tombs and Blut Aus Nord through the September-through-Thanksgiving deluge of awesome – where a year-end contender (if not straight-up classic) was seemingly being released weekly – 2009 was a banner year for metal, pleasing all ends of the spectrum (great new records from Brutal Truth, Coalesce, Funeral Mist, and Suffocation? What God did we please?). It may have even been the decade’s best, capping off the ten years where metal simultaneously redeemed itself from the sins of nu-metal and reveled in the ever-expanding and ever-fruitful underground that became easy to access and impossible to ignore in the age of the internet (the tape trading of the future, it seems). But perhaps I’m playing up the symbolism of a year ending in “9” too much: this year had so many great records that Axl and Vince’s decision to expand to twenty great albums instead of the standard ten STILL felt too constricting; I could have easily gone to thirty and done no padding whatsoever. This was the kind of year metal journalists/elitist douchebags like me look forward to for writing year-end lists. You’ll find it below.

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20. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Agorapocalypse (Relapse)

On the strength of history’s greatest band name, Scott Hull’s Agoraphobic Nosebleed doesn’t even have to be good. But ANb is awesome anyway and Agorapocalypse is an eerily accurate soundtrack to my brain’s default setting. I mean if you ever see me, say, testily waiting in line at the movies, I’m actually imagining punky grindcore about drugs and porno-violence played at ludicrous speed and packed with squealing guitar solos. But I think that’s only common sense.

The track that will hook you (click to listen): “First National Stem Cell and Clone”

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In no particular order…

Mastodon, “Oblivion” and “Divinations” – directed by Roboshobo

This is why music videos exist, kids.

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…and what a year it’s been! I wont bore you with a long intro, since we all know nobody reads intros. Hell, most of you wont even bother reading the descriptions of the albums I’ve chosen below, so I see little reason to preface my thoughts with anything meaningful.

So, without further ado, here’s my list!

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1. Dreaming Dead – Within One (Ibex Moon)

These guys have a leg up on the competition because they’re L.A. natives like me, but this terrific death metal album swept me away like no other this year. Chock-full of haunting riffs, expressive guitar shredding and real songs, it’s as close to a Death album as we’re gonna get in this post-Schuldiner world. Elizabeth Elliott takes her place as one of the great female guitarists in metal; Mike Caffell ain’t far behind with drums.

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