Every now and then, a metalhead’s loyalty is tested. Whether it be a shitty year of music, an inability to purchase new product due to a thinner wallet, or simply too many real-world responsibilities that beckon for attention. Rarely, do all of these factors come into play simultaneously, but that is exactly what happened to the Old Fart in 2009.

Major commitments this year such as finishing up a new book (SAVAGE SON, out June 2010), house renovations, and, oh yeah, a new baby, lessened my time listening to my favorite genre of music. And what I did hear, I was not too impressed with. Of course, some of that has to do with the fact that I had to let my subscriptions to Decibel and Terrorizer magazines lapse for budgetary reasons.

Ahh, the joys of a dismal economy…

But enough of my panty-ass whinery. I’m sure all you care about is what bands tickled my privates.

As a result of the previous excuses listed above, my list is very short. Plus, in a year where the heaviest moment on disc came from The Beatles [listen to the re-mastered outro of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”], 2009 found me ready to write this year off.

Thankfully, there were two standouts – one which many of you will agree with; another which probably only 5% of you will even bother to investigate. Oh well, you other 95%, it’s your loss.

Albums that I dug this past year:

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1. Megadeth – Endgame (Roadrunner)

Two-and-a-half minutes of guitar shredding (a throwback to 1988′s So Far, So Good… So What!?) is a goddamn great way to start a record. Follow it up with a slew of shredding songs and you’ve got a recipe for the year’s most spun record. Full disclosure: I’m a Megadeth fanboy that still owns Risk. And even listens to it from time to time. But this is easily Deth’s best record since Countdown or Rust In Peace.

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Holy shit, has it really been another year already? And MetalSucks is still around? Who the fuck is reading this site? Don’t they know about None Louder?

Oh, well. If anyone is still paying attention to what these pussy boogers have to say, they surely won’t after today. For today, this most glorious of winter Thursdays, all the inhabitants of the MetalSucks Mansion present their lists of twenty – or sometimes twenty-one or, like, way less than ten – favorite metal albums of the year.

Bands you will read about today include Divine Heresy, Lacuna Coil, Dredg, and Anaal Nathrakh.

LET THE NEEDLESS BLOODSHED COMMENCE!!!

-The MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys

Alright, technical snafus have passed and we are back, baby!

So mazel tov to Brandon Wagner, who correctly answered last night’s trivia question: yes, it was Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy who turned Vince down for our inaugural “Jew on Jew” interview. No, we’re not bitter about it. But fuck you, Mike. But, no, really, we don’t care. You schmuck.

ANYWAY, we still have three nights to go! Here’s tonight’s trivia question. Winner gets a mystery prize from Century Media and a dreidel from MetalSucks. Here we are:

• Which MetalSucks writer took a day off in observance of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur?

E-mail your answer along with your name and address to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 6″ in the subject line. All entries are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Thursday, December 17) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 5’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 October I published a piece about Carnal Rapture, an Italian band that had recently sent me their 2008 demo. That 5-song disc still stands as the best demo I’ve heard all year from any independent metal band, anywhere in the world. It’s great; it’s fresh, it’s technical, it’s jazzy, it’s soulful… and most of all, it’s original. Carnal Rapture’s music doesn’t fit into any easily-definable micro-genre of metal.

Guitarist and vocalist Emilio Trilló recently answered some questions for Spine Language, and unsurprisingly his answers are just as intricate and detailed as Carnal Rapture’s music. Trilló talks about the history of his band and drops some serious metal knowledge in the process of the 10 question interview; it’s a great read. Here’s an excerpt on the history of blast beats and the lack thereof in Carnal Rapture’s music:

In the beginning, death metal wasn’t as strongly associated with blast beats as it is today.  The prime movers of the Floridian death metal scene weren’t even using this trick to begin with.  Obituary, Nasty Savage, Death, and Atheist had some of that classic Slayer-esque fast, straight beats but they all soon went their own ways creating their own beat trademarks.  At some point that up-tempo beat thing, which death metal inherited straight from Slayer and Dark Angel, is taken to the next level in terms of speed by artists like Morbid Angel, Carcass, and Deicide, and then you had the first blast beats prototype.

According to its development through almost 20 years of abuse, the blast beat lick has established itself as nothing but a single stroke roll practiced with one hand on snare and the other on a cymbal, with the latter doubled by the bass drum.

More death metal history and a Carnal Rapture download after the jump:

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Before we had pubes or had discovered metal, we thought that Billy Joel was the shit. As I got older, I seriously thought that someone could turn Joel’s song “pressure” into a pretty awesome metal cover. I always dreamed it would be Stratovarius or someone kind of Stratovarius-esque, but I’ll settle for For Whom the Bell Joels, the latest discovery from those geniuses at Metal Insider.

Of course, a metal band exclusively playing Billy Joel covers is a gimmick, and not even an especially clever one – but the band isn’t terrible, and I’m being sincere when I say I think they nailed “Pressure.” I can think of a handful of other BJ songs I’d be curious to hear these dudes try out.

If you have ever enjoyed boring middle-of-the-road soft rock made my an alcoholic from Long Island, check out For Whom the Bell Joels here.

-AR

Speaking of Invisible Oranges: Anthony Abboreno wrote a piece today on a band I’ve never heard of, called Slugathor. Based soley on the band’s name, I decided to check them out, and guess what? They rule. I could tell you why, but Abboreno did a pretty good job and I’m lazy, so I’m just going to quote him here:

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So says Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges in a piece about the (admittedly pretty sucky) band Carach Angren. But I take serious issue with this declaration.

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So I’m still finalizing my year-end list for 2009, and now those bastards at The End Records have gone and sent me an album that it definitely going to be a competitor for my year-end list for 2010: Scenes from Hell, an album so delightfully bat shit crazy it could only have come from the mad scientists in Sigh.

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Last week, during one of my daily perusals of this very blog, I came across a rather scathing recounting of Killswitch Engage’s self-titled album, which came out earlier this year. This caught me a bit off guard, as I considered it to be one of my favorite albums of the year and a step in the right direction from Daylights Dies, which was at first very disappointing but grew on me after some time. I was even more surprised when I saw that most user comments tended to agree with the blog entry.

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Now that I’ve passed off my Best of 2009 list to Axl and Vince, I can now thankfully move on to thinking about what’s to come in 2010. After many agonizing years of legal wrangling, Close Calls With Brick Walls, Andrew W.K.’s follow up to The Wolf, will at last see a proper stateside release via the artist’s Skyscraper Music Maker imprint. Due out February 23rd, 2010, the album was originally limited to a Japanese edition in 2006, followed up by a limited vinyl run the subsequent year. Promising track titles include “I Want To See You Go Wild”, “Slam John Against A Brick Wall”, and “Not Going To Bed”. Now, once and for all, everyone will finally have a chance to hear what Andrew W.K. has long wanted to share with us…

BUT WAIT! There’s more…

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The concept of another Rammstein strikes me as kinda silly, because, well, we’ve already got Rammstein. As far as industrial metal songs sung in German go, Rammstein fill that niche rather nicely. But here we’ve got Hanzel Und Gretyl — a band from New York City, no less, singing in faux German accents — doing the exact same thing. Only their songs aren’t as catchy, outrageous or hilarious.

It’s a head-scratcher indeed, but apparently the band has toured the world (with many bigger acts, Rammstein among them, natch), and they’ve got a hometown show coming up on December 19th at Crash Mansion. Maybe there’s a joke I’m just not in on… I don’t get it. Would someone care to inform me why this band exists?

-VN

Devin Townsend is releasing one “Deep Thoughts” video per week on his own Addicted e-card site, as Axl reported last week (and yes, that’s Jack Handy, not “George”). In this week’s installment, Devin shares his thoughts on the nature of infinity and… well, just watch.

The MetalSucks staffers will all be publishing their year-end Top 20 lists TOMORROW! Who will choose Ki or Addicted? Who will choose both or neither? If both, which will rank higher? Get ready for some inconsequential heated arguing all day long.

-VN

So those covers for the Metal Hammer Dimebag tribute album are starting to surface I guess. First one up is Unearth’s version of “Sandblasted Skin,” which they’re now streaming on their MySpace page.

And it’s pretty good. I mean, Unearth are a good band, they’re certainly heavily influenced by Pantera, and they didn’t really that many changes to the track. So, y’know. Hopefully this will help make some new Pantera fans – ’cause really, what else are covers good for?

Nuthin’ but nuthin’ will ever beat the original, though… God, this song is brutal.

-AR

We’ve chosen a winner for our massive Between the Buried and Me Great Misdirect contest! That winner is Tim Meyer of Newfane, New York (which is way up above Buffalo, for anyone wondering), and he’ll receive the Spector bass, bass gear, and all of the awesome BTBAM stuff you see listed above. After the jump, read Tim’s winning entry, an answer to the open-ended contest question “Which BTBAM album is your favorite, and why?”

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After a brutal and packed weekend of Municipal Waste, Brutal Truth, Gwar, and partying, I headed to the Trocadero in Philadelphia a little late to catch half of the Vader show, unfortunately missing the first three bands [Vince caught openers The Amenta and Augury earlier on the tour. -Ed.].

Deathcore kids Rose Funeral played to a small but excited crowd. Decrepit Birth totally ripped through an amazing set, pulling classic moves like singer Bill Robinson jumping completely over the crowd right into our favorite metal head, Grim Kim Kelly. As Vader took the stage, the sea of long hairs started moving and continued to headbang through Vader’s last show in America until the Spring, when they’ll return to Philadelphia to kick off another nationwide tour. There were many thanks given out from the Vader men and as the night ended, I was thankful that I could finally go and get some sleep for the first time in days.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Dj (not DJ) Ashba got paid more money to play this solo in front of thousands of screaming fans than you or I will ever make in our entire lives:

Someone please cut off his fingers so he never does that again. Please.

-AR

First thing’s first: I hate to spoil everyone’s holiday fun, but when I ask you to include a certain something in the subject line for a contest and/or your name and address, and you DON’T do those things, what do you think that does for your chances of winning? Hm?

Okay! Now that we got that outta the way, yarmulkes off to Matt Poulter, who not only knows how to read and follow directions, but correctly answered last night’s trivia question: yes, Vince once wondered whether or not Sevendust’s Morgan Rose is part of the tribe or not, using a chart not unlike on you may have seen at a Nazi rally. Still funny, though. Matt wins a mystery prize from Century Media, and a dreidel from MetalSucks. Yay, Matt!

Don’t kvetch if you didn’t win, though. We’re only half done with the Festival of Lights! Here’s tonight’s trivia question:

• Which musician declined to be interviewed for Vince’s “Jew on Jew” interview series?

E-mail your answer along with your name and address to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 5″ in the subject line. All entries are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Wednesday, December 16) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 5’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. What? You want we should go broke?

Now… who has the Manischewitz???

-AR

Not much to say. Exhorder have reunited, and we finally have some moving images to prove it. Enjoy.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

I’m continually amazed at what folks come up with to litter along the information superhighway……this gem, hotchickspickingupdogshit.com, is apparently part of a misogeniustic collection of websites involving females doing silly crass shiz, such as sticking their fists in their mouths, plunging their toilets, hanging out with boner’d dogs, smiling at Ground Zero, and sticking hot dogs in their mouths.

I hope I never have a daughter.

-KW