Rejected by even the lowest also-ran nu-metal mooks, (hed)p.e. have sunken so far down to the lowest dregs of society that they’ve been drawn into the only scene left that will actually accept them; Juggalos. They’ve been touring with Psycopathic artists for years now, but somehow I missed the fact that they’ve now even resorted to wearing clown makeup. Wow.
I’m surprised this band is still even making music. This is awful. Thanks, SMNnews.com, for inflicting this pain upon me today.
Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 1:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
So you may have heard this story that Axl Rose allegedly got in a fight with some paparazzi at LAX the other day while on his way to board a flight to Taipei, Taiwan, where Guns N’ Roses are about to finally begin touring in support of Chinese Democracy more than a year after its release. I didn’t write anything about it when it was first reported because I thought it might just be a rumor; the police were apparently unable to confirm that this huge rock star had hit somebody in the middle of a crowded airport, and that struck me as, well, odd.
I have should known better. TMZ now has video of the fight – hoo-ray for the information age, when everyone has a camera!!! – and, yep, Axl hit the dude.
Now, I can’t see exactly what transpired just before the fight, but Axl does seem to yell “He hit my mother!” or something like that towards the end of the video. Since Axl’s mother has been dead for about thirteen years or so, I can only imagine he’s referring to his assistant, Beta Lebeis, who he has often said is the closest thing to a “real” mother he’s ever had.
Also noteworthy: when Axl yells for “Sebastian,” he doesn’t mean Bach – he means Lebeis’ son, who is also in his employ.
This guy is just such a fucking drama magnet I can’t believe it. I’m not saying he’s not to blame – I think he very much is to blame. No one is at the center of so much shit for no reason. I just can’t believe he hasn’t calmed down after all these years.
P.S.: Does it look to anyone else like he finally got rid of those corn-rows? Just wonderin’.
-AR
Thanks to all fifteen people who e-mailed me about this within seconds of it going up. Good to know someone besides me still gets off on Axl-related drama!
Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Remember the video for Danzig’s “Mother?” With the requisite blond metal chick? In case you don’t, here’s the clip:
Ever wonder what became of that lady? Well Lucho at Metal Inquisition did, and he followed-up with some good old fashioned investigative journalism. And as it turns out, that nice blond girl got old, busted, and completely fucking fuck nuts. Check out this video post-card she did for Mr. Danzig:
Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 12:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Reader Joseph Daniel Salas suggested we check out Locracy from Vienna. I was in Vienna for about four days once, and it’s a beautiful city, even with the rampant skinhead population. I went to some giant-ass club/party thing that ran all along the river and had a hell of a time.
Unfortunately, Locracy – whose name is, as far as I can tell, a complete nonsense word – sound almost exactly like Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn, except not nearly as good. I mean, this band isn’t incompetent or anything – in fact, the riff from their song “From Cave to Grave” is thoroughly headbangable – but I wish they at least put some effort into giving originality a shot, y’know?
Check out Locracy here and then let Joe D-S know whatcha think in the comments section below.
Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Shame on me for just recently discovering Ludicra. But three cheers for the fact that running a metal site exposes me to awesome new music on a fairly consistent basis. As a wise lyricist once wrote, ya take the good, ya take the bad, ya take ‘em both and there ya have the fact of life.
So. Ludicra. Their new album, The Tenant, comes out March 3 on Profound Lore, and, no shocks here, it’s pretty awesome. And the band must know it, because they’re giving away a free mp3 of a new song, “A Larger Silence.” Take that, MySpace streams!!!
This shit is epic. And balances the heavy with the melodic without sounding like another bullshit metalcore re-hash. I’m stoked to hear the rest of the album.
As all of you goyim may or may not be aware, tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights! In celebration we’ll have a very special contest for you that we’ll announce later today, but for now we’d like you to enjoy Gods of Fire’s “Hanukkah Gone Metal.” The track comes from the record of the same name, an 8 track affair (available on Amazon) that ends with a 9-minute epic about the Maccabean War. For any of you Jews who happen to be in NYC (which, let’s face it, is at least half this city), Gods of Fire are performing tomorrow at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn as part of the Major League Dreidel event (yup, you read that correctly).
Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:03am by Axl Rosenberg
MetalSucks’ own year-end lists (each writer is doing his own) will go up next Thursday, December 17. But while you’re waiting, why not keep the debate over others writers and publications’ lists goin’?
The latest comes from Adrien Begrand, one our favoritest Decibel contributors. Adrien also writes for PopMatters, where he’s now posted his top 20 of ’09.
Honestly, it’s hard for me to argue with his selections (except for one, which I somehow haven’t heard). Adrien is a smart dude and a great writer, so definitely check his list out. And then let the fisticuffs continue!!!
Tool are another example of a band that aren’t being included in as many decade-end lists as they should be simply because they don’t have a new album out and aren’t fresh on writers’ minds. I have seen Lateralus pop up on a fair number of lists (deservedly so), but I feel like if Tool had a new record out and were ever-present in the media this year, people would be all “OMG TOOL ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST UNIQUE BANDS EVER OF THE DECADE.” Alas. Save your e-breath on the “not metal” argument because you’re an idiot and I don’t wanna hear it.
Back in August I posted an epic piano cover of the title track from Lateralus, and last night MS reader Jeremy S sent in a video by the same dude covering “Vicarious.” The guy’s incredibly talented; writing the piano arrangement, mastering the movement of both hands, keeping track of all the crazy time signatures and singing at the same time is quite an undertaking. My hat’s off to you, dude… well done.
The two winners of last week’s funny photo caption contest each win a hand-dandy CD of Nirvana 2002′s ’89-’91 Recordings provided by Relapse Records. The winning entries are:
Chet Stedman: “The only known photo to surface from the Rick Ross/Chris Barnes collabo entitled “The Blinging”"
meat mincing machine: “Yo dawg, pass me some of that blunt force castration.”
This week we’ve got something different for you. The folks at Music Skins have provided us with custom decals for Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars, each with Coheed & Cambria printed branding and actual signatures of every band member. We’ve got 3 models; 2 of them are for the Rock Band Guitar (Stratocaster) and one is for the Guitar Hero guitar for Wii (Les Paul model). Even if you don’t have a practical use for these decals you should still enter the contest, because they’re pretty fucking cool as a piece of rock memorabilia on their own.
Just come up with a funny caption to the photo below (sent in by Nikkü), and remember to use a real email address (not a Facebook Connect login).
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 4:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
It’s been well over a year since Thomas Gabriel Fischer announced he was leaving Celtic Frost and starting a new band, Triptykon, and there’s still no friggin’ album. And I fucking hated the first song the band released, “Crucifixus,” which was basically several minutes of droning seemingly designed to punish anyone hoping Triptykon might make actual music.
But now Mr. Fischer has bounced back with not one but two, count ‘em two, new Triptykon songs – “Abyss Within My Soul” and “A Thousand Lies.” And they totally redeem Tom G. Warrior for the awfulness that was “Crucifixus.”
These songs – which score right off the bat by being actual, y’know, songs – make good on Fischer’s promise that “Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible” and “will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to [Celtic Frost's] Monotheist.” These tracks strikes me as very Monotheistical, and that can only be a good thing. Unless you’re a dick. Or deaf. In which case I apologize for calling you a dick. And wonder what you’re doing reading this site.
But I digress! Still no word on a release date for Triptykon’s debut, but hopefully we’ll get it sometime in 2010. In the meantime, check out the new shit here.
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 4:00pm by Gary Suarez
When it comes to metal and hardcore, 2009 has been an exceptional year for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legendary Cave In officially reunited, played some shows, and released the four-song Planets of Old 12″. Converge dropped the highly-anticipated Axe To Fall, considered by some to be as good as or even better than their benchmark album Jane Doe. Hell, that band’s bassist Nate Newton even managed to secure substantial attention and overwhelming praise for Darkness Come Alive, the latest from his Doomriders side-project. In this somewhat incestuous collection of talented New England musicians exists yet another amazing group called Disappearer, who have given us possibly the best album of the year.
Last year Baroness played a truly stellar set that left me weak in the knees; this year, despite having had actual knee surgery back in April, I felt pretty damn sturdy after dem “stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle” Georgians finished their consistent yet largely humdrum set a couple weeks ago.
As many of y’all have commented recently, this year’s Blue Record is somewhat of a step down from 2007′s mostly strong Red Album (which in itself was a dilution in certain ways from the band’s prior EPs First and Second), and as can be expected, the live set has slightly suffered as a result. [Axl strongly disagrees. - Ed.]
Thankfully my assessment has more to do with the waning quality of songs/songwriting on the new album record — the band’s execution of said songs was pretty impeccable, and the energy was ferocious. But is that enough to sustain a whole set? Well, not for me — about halfway through I started getting bored by the even-keeled-ness of the sound — but I also feel compelled to recognize that the majority of the crowd seemed to by-and-large eat up every moment.
So who’s right? Well, as we hopefully learned last week, music criticism is not about right and wrong (despite some folks’ insistence on deeming others *wrong* for expressing their opinions, pedantic as they may be). I will continue to wish Baroness the best, and I truly hope that the next offering blows all previous efforts away. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not somewhat skeptical. Oh well — they can’t possibly fuck up a winning streak nearly as much as these watered-down dudes.
ANYWAY — the real question is, what be’d my favorite live set of the year?
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 2:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Oh boy oh boy. We’re less than a week away from the MetalSucks exclusive digital release of Suspension of Disbelief, the new release from progressive technical death metallers The Binary Code. And now you have another chance to get a sneak peak of the album – Metal Underground is streaming a new song, “The Story,” right now. GO LISTEN NOW.
We’re charging a measly five bucks for the download of the album, or fifteen if you wanna order it with one of several awesome The Binary Code shirts. Pre-orders are being accepted now for the December 15 release date at this location. And if you live in the U.S. and order a shirt, shipping is free!
And don’t forget that The Binary Code will be playing as part of the “Metal as Art” tour with Hypno5e and Revocation this January and February. Get a complete list of dates after the jump!
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 2:00pm by Justin Foley
I was visiting friends and family in Chicago around Thanksgiving and I went to see the Jesus Lizard. It was a fine show, the lead singer had a really hurt rib, the set list was solid. Afterwards, we were all happy and sweaty and some friends and I went for pancakes. A good night out. And I am now wishing more and more that I had never gone – there’s a part of my brain is really stuck on something and I just can’t let it go.
After the fracas that ensued following my post about the supposed non-metal future of Roadrunner Records, it would appear that Roadrunner Records hasn’t given up on metal after all. In the past week they’ve announced two brand new metal signings, which would seemingly indicate that Roadrunner is going to try and forge ahead with metal while also building up their non-metal roster.
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Reader Jared Piers e-mailed us about this unsigned band from Toronto called Speak of the Devil. Now, I’m not going to talk about Speak of the Devil’s music, because whatever. It’s incredibly generic and not for me but to each their own. Rather, I’d like to talk about the below promo photo of the band, which is the first thing you see when you go to their MySpace page.
Now, why the hell did this band take a picture of themselves looking like they just got done with a fight? Presumably it’s so they come across as a bunch of bad-asses. But they don’t like like bad-asses. They look like some kids who have make-up on intended to make them look like bad-asses, which, consequently, makes them seem incredibly not tough. It’s the exact opposite of the desired effect of the make-up.
I really, really hope this doesn’t become a trend amongst young bands. Because it’s incredibly dumb.
UK heavy-techno band Pendulum — who really fucking impressed me the one time I saw them live — have posted a remix of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” Pendulum have always tried to fit into the metal / hard rock spheres with mixed reactions… their techno does definitely incorporate elements of both as does their live show, but I can definitely see how they’d grate on die-hard metal fans. Seriously though, if you just open your mind a little any metalhead should enjoy the spectacle this is Pendulum’s live show. If you happen to be at a festival where they’re playing and they’re not on at the same same as, say, Opeth, go out of your way to check them out… it’ll be well worth it for you.
Here’s their remix of “Master of Puppets,” which I originally found posted at UK Metal Underground.
Iron Thrones, an awesome band who Ziltoid first brought to our attention on The Great Ziltoid Day ’09, are currently in the studio working on the follow-up to their debut release Visions of Light. MS uber-maniac \m/Eluveitie\m/ brought to our attention the fact that the band are releasing videos from their writing and recording sessions… and for once, the videos are actually interesting.
Check out this short jam of a potential new song. Sure, the performance is a bit rough, but does it not sound fucking great anyway?
You can follow Iron Thrones’ YouTube updates here. Also be sure to check out Visions of Light, which is available as a free stream or pay-what-you-like download here. Iron Thrones are looking for a second guitarist… so if any of you shredders out there are from Minneapolis, get on that!
After the jump, another bad-ass studio jam session.
Last year Baroness played a truly stellar set that left me weak in the knees; this year, despite having had actual knee surgery back in April, I felt pretty damn sturdy after dem “stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle” Georgians finished their consistent yet largely humdrum set a couple weeks ago.
