There’s always those sleeper year-end picks, often early-year or last-minute releases that just fly underneath your radar for whatever reason. For me that 2009 release is Divinity’s The Singularity, which I first highlighted in October with the simple headline “Fucking Wow.” The more I listen to The Singularity, the better it gets… I am incredibly impressed with this band and I can’t fathom why Nuclear Blast dropped them.

The Divinity are an insanely talented band who’ve just released an amazing album that just isn’t getting the attention it deserves. I was listening to the full album yesterday on my iPod… and “fucking wow” is still about all I can come up with. It’s it’s complex, it’s progressive, it’s deep, it’s brutal, it’s shreddy, it’s hooky, it’s artsy… it’s everything you (I) want a metal record to be. Every musician in the band is top-notch, including vocalist Sean Jenkins with whom I’m especially impressed (this from a guy who ordinarily doesn’t focus on vocals). My one gripe with the record is the somewhat flat production; it’s clear and well-mixed to be sure, but it just sounds a little flat and lifeless to me. Minor gripe.

This is a great record highly worthy of your attention right this instant; stream the entire thing on Divinity’s MySpace. Not in a few minutes, not later, not tomorrow… NOW. Just do it.

-VN

[I would once again like to thank MS reader Raymond Lee for turning me onto this band in the first place.]

In early 2008, around the time of the original Paganfest USA tour, Pagan and Folk metal were all the rage. Bands from all over Europe were suddenly gaining attention in America with their blend of traditional European folk and modern metal, and by the end of that year and early 2009 there were Pagan/Folk tours aplenty. Revolver Magazine even ran a special feature highlighting the sub-genre. When the first Paganfest USA tour rolled through America there was a palpable excitement… nothing like that had ever transpired before.

Fast forward only a few months to the end of 2009 and it would seem as if the metal-loving public has had enough of Pagan Metal. As labels rushed to sign and promote Pagan and Folk Metal bands we ended up with a surplus of them, much like we did with the re-thrash trend of 2006-2008. In an effort to cash in, the metal record labels unwittingly did themselves in. The result has been that there are too many pagan metal bands, too many pagan metal records, and too many pagan metal tours. Oversaturation. I can’t even keep track of it all.

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Like a lot of people I imagine, I’d never heard of Switzerland’s Kruger before it was announced that GOD HIMSELF Gojira’s Joe Duplantier would be contributing vocals to one song, “Muscle,” on their forthcoming album, For Death, Glory and the End of the World.  But I did spend a delightful evening in Switzerland once and found the people to be incredibly friendly, so I wandered over to Kruger’s MySpace page and, hey, no shocks here, Monsieur Duplantier has good taste in guest appearances. I don’t know if this band is gonna change my life the way Gojira seem to have done, but they know how to write a killer metal song. Plus, Converge’s Kurt Ballou is mixing the album, so there’s that.

For Death… is scheduled to come out sometime in mid-February on Listenable. Until there’s most music to listen to, you can check out the cover art below. A press release tells me it was inspired by Jérôme Bosch’ “Jardin des délices,” and it’s a good thing they mentioned it, because I never would have picked up on the (kinda vague) connection on my own.

-AR

Remember our 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far countdown back in June? That was fun, wasn’t it? We pre-empted by 6 whole months all these bandwagon-hopping bimbo publications and websites who are just now getting on the “Best of the Decade” train… and our list covered the WHOLE CENTURY, not just this wimpy decade! Eat it, everyone else who isn’t us.

Now Metal Insider has seemingly one-upped all of us by compiling a list of metal lists, which pits all of the decade-end lists released so far against each other. How meta-metal of them. Yesterday they released the #5 through #2 best metal lists, saving #1 for today — and lookee at that, our 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far list netted the #2 spot! We’re honored. We agree that it’s too bad our list didn’t take into account records released in the second half of ’09, but we doubt this would’ve changed things much. It’s too bad that a few bands dominated so many spots on our list, but that’s how the voting ended up… oh well.

While we’re waxing nostalgic about the past decade, I highly recommend Buzzfeed’s list of “40 things that were popular at the beginning of the decade that aren’t anymore.” some personal favorites of mine: Anthrax (the disease), bandanas (guilty as charged), hanging a flag outside your house, rubber bracelets, etc.

At least I can sleep soundly knowing that the cheesy graphic we made to promote our countdown (reposted above) would completely slay the competition in the “Bad Photoshop” department. So there.

-VN

The latest MetalSucks intern found that suggesting Five Finger Death Punch for “best album of ’09″ didn’t go so well.

And the hits keep on coming.

Chad Bowar of About.com is the latest to post his year-end list. Some of the usual suspects are there (Mastodon, Baroness, Coalesce) but some of the albums that seem to be ending up on pretty much everyone’s list are conspicuously absent (O Converge, where art thou?), and there are some real surprises, too. But there’s nothing that makes me wanna smack myself in the forehead and shout “What the what?!?”

Check out the list here, then continue the arguing about the best metal albums of ’09 in our comments section.

-AR

Australia, for those of us in the US, is pretty much literally on the other side of the world, and, like good Americans, we pick and choose what we want to know about it. The continent conjures up images of free range marsupials, shrimps and barbies with some throwing somewhere in there, Paul Hogan, and how, despite speaking English like us, “Fosters” is Australian for “beer” (and also terrible). If you’re a metal fan, AC/DC will come to mind, maybe blackened thrashers Destroyer 666, MAYBE moody basement black metal one-man project Striborg, and perhaps technical death upstarts Psycroptic (which would be inaccurate, as they’re from New Zealand). With an exception of AC/DC, though, they’re mostly bands that are proficient playing a Western/Northwestern hemisphere style, sometimes with slight tweaks to its DNA. A sound uniquely theirs, though, comes to mind when talking about “ambient death metal” titans Portal and their (relatively) straightforward side project Impetuous Ritual.

When it comes to death metal’s hallmarks – technical prowess, shocking gore-themed content, brutal riffs aplenty – they seem to be unraveling them and playing with the stuffing inside, reconstructing the genre into a truly unnerving and horrifying new beast altogether. Listening to Tomb of the Mutilated or Altars of Madness, then listening to Impetuous Ritual’s debut, Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence, and, especially, Portal’s new album, Swarth, leaves one thinking they couldn’t be any more foreign to what we know as death metal, just as their homeland couldn’t be any further south without being Antarctica. Suicide Silence and Oceano are a world away from this, and when modern death metal and deathcore are running the risk of becoming completely sterile and interchangeable, there couldn’t be a better circumstance.

Click to read more…

If you’ve ever wanted to see Randy Blythe in facepaint and tight black leggings covered in Jello and wrestling with a chick, now’s your chance. The YouTube user who posted this video surmises the event took place on January 5th, 1997, but he/she isn’t sure.

I love that once upon a time Randy Blythe participated in local Jello wrestling matches in Richmond, VA… so metal! Watch as he slips and slides about the tub, and stick with it until the end when we get up close and personal with Randy for a hot second.

Maybe this is the reason Lamb of God weren’t included in Decibel’s Top 100 of the decade list. Jello wrestling ≠ tr00.

-VN

[Thanks: Micah Larson]

I’m a fan, but it’s not tough to overdose on melodrama when listening to Dir En Grey. Then again, hey so what if their singer lives in a constant state of shrieking despair and favors the bare chest/tight jeans look? The total product is awesome mostly thanks to two inventive guitarists. But, again, can so much moaning be endured by anyone older than nineteen or so, guitars or not? At what point does the schtick break down, causing reasonable listeners to wonder when, in this Jonathan Davis world of soul-searing pain and emotional crises, do the DEG guys find the energy to record and tour every year? (Same for uber-pimps and giga-gangsters who split time between running hoes/drugs from atop their criminal empire and TRL.) The DEG guys probably think Mike Muir seems reasonable and are unable to detect the irony in Devin Townsend’s moments of panic. I bet they play Korn at the beach. They’re that freaked out.

All the same, it’s easy to respect Dir En Grey for their work ethic and easy to like them for their balls. Okay, that sounds bad, but goddammit you get me if you heard 2008′s Uroboros – abrasive, post-tonal intra-metal mindfuck that it is. Some of its songs still refuse to make sense to me – and that’s after thirty listens – but not in the same way that a prog-clusterfuck can bewilder. Uroboros is more like an opera of suffering performed out of order. So far, DEG’s records are each better and wilder than the previous, so it’s easy to get excited about their untitled 2010 outing. However, it’s not easy to remember the snappy title of the new song: “Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami.” I’ll just call it “Awesome Spaz Attack Song #76.”

- ADF

A month ago we saw Periphery headline a small club show in NYC with The Binary Code and Empyreon, prompting my brother from another mother Axl to write: “… these guys are the shit, and are gonna be huge. They had the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands, and, unlike some bands (I’m not naming names, but think Jack the Ripper), they actually have three guitar players for a reason.”

No longer do you have to take Axl’s (and my) word; Metal Injection has posted 4-camera live footage from that night’s performance of two songs, “Light” and “Icarus Lives.” Whether or not you like this kind of metal, there’s no denying that the band is tight, professional, and engaging, and that frontman Chris Barretto is a truly talented singer and an electrifying frontman.

Periphery’s Sumerian Records debut will drop some time in early 2010… it’s certainly on this writer’s “most anticipated” list for next year. In the meantime watch “Light” below and “Icarus Lives” after the jump, and don’t forget to check out a full recorded version of “Light” and more on Periphery’s MySpace.

-VN

Click to read more…

Since Kiss have already released, like, eighty-seven “live” (we know they tinkered with them in the studio after the fact so they’re not really live) albums entitled Alive, you’d think that no other band would ever want to give that name to their own live set ever again. I mean, being even vaguely associated with Kiss is like being even vaguely associated with herpes: you just don’t want that kind of stigma.

But Meshuggah aren’t just any band. If they turned out to be actual Gods, no one should be surprised. So their previously announced DVD now has a title – Alive (duh) – and a release date: February 5 in Europe and February 9 in the U.S. And it’s not just  a live DVD, but there’s a live CD that comes with it. And I’d wager that Meshuggah did not tinker with it after the fact. Just a guess.

Bonus: the cover art is a play on the poster for the original Alien, one of my favorite movies of all time.

Watch a trailer and get the tracklist for the CD/DVD set after the jump.

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Any site that lovingly mocks metal is automatically a friend of MetalSucks. Music satire paper The Umpteenth Times, which I just discovered last night — billing itself as “Music News That’s Fit to Fake” — apparently has a bunch of metalhead writers in their midst. Recent satire pieces have Anthrax being vaccinated for H1N1, Dave Mustaine winning the Mega Millions, and this gem about Metallica sell-out denial:

Burlington, VT—According the results of a study conducted at the University of Vermont at Burlington, 1 out of every 10 Metallica fans still refuses to admit the band sold out and no longer have the musical vitality they once possessed. 23,000 fans overall were surveyed and findings showed that 230 of them were still under the impressions that the band had the “musical goods,” as the researchers stated.

Click to read more…

There’s not much to say, other than we miss ya, dude. We’ll do a shot for you.

-AR

Did you know that if you eat before you start slamming shots, you’ll get a little less drunk, but you’ll also have something to vomit up later? It’s true. Also, sometimes when you smoke weed, you get the munchies. These are just two great reasons why you should care about Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook by Annick “Morbid Chef” Giroux. Showcasing “a varied menu of over a hundred recipes from thirty countries,” Hellbent for Cooking features recipes by members of Accept, Anthrax, Anvil, Armored Saint, Brutal Truth, Death, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Gwar, Judas Priest, Kreator, Mayhem, Melechesh, Nuclear Assault, Obituary, Repulsion, Saint Vitus, Sepultura, Sigh, S.O.D., Slough Feg, Thin Lizzy, Toxic Holocaust, and about a trillion others (you can get a complete list of contributing bands here).

MetalSucks is teaming up with Bazillion Points Publishing to give away three (3) copies of Hellbent for Cooking. All you have to do to win is create a picture that somehow connects metal to food and post a link to someplace we can view said picture in the comments section below. Use Photoshop to create an image of Lemmy eating a hot dog, use MS Paint to do a portrait of Metallica as the pepperonis on a pizza, whatever you want – it just has to be both food and metal related, and it has to amuse us. Vince and I will choose the three pics that make us laugh the hardest and those pics’ creators win the book.

This contest will end at midnight EST on Monday, December 14. Please note that this contest is open to U.S. residents only, as shipping costs are a bitch. And if you’re too lazy to participate, you can always just order a copy of the book here.

Good luck, and good eats…

-AR

Over at Invisible Oranges, Cosmo Lee recently revealed his own #1 pick for Decibel’s 100 Greatest Metal Albums of the Decade: Hate Eternal’s 2005 release, I, Monarch. I don’t have that magazine in front of me, but if memory serves, it didn’t make the list. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen it – or any other Hate Eternal albums – on any decade-end lists.

I, Monarch isn’t my favorite Hate Eternal album – I’d argue that Erik Rutan far surpassed it with 2008′s Fury and Flames – but it is an awesome, awesome album. Few, if any, bands make more brutal music than Hate Eternal, and Rutan is constantly pushing the envelope of what death metal can be.

So here’s “I, Monarch” – the song – in Cosmo and Rutan’s honor.

Find out my own personal favorite Hate Eternal song after the jump.

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Photo: Michael Singman-Aste, www.PostdiluvianPhoto.com

2009 is an awesome year to be Robb Flynn or anyone in Machine Head. Your band’s been touring non-stop for two and a half years on the well-deserved critical and commercial success of The Blackening, all without doing a single U.S. headline run. You’ve opened arenas for Metallica, huge theaters for Megadeth and Slayer, played on one of the biggest U.S. touring festivals, and quite literally traversed the world several times over. Not bad… not bad at all.

At the start of their U.S. tour with Megadeth, Machine Head’s publicist contacted us about interviewing Robb. The guy’s a character, The Blackening was fantastic, and it’d been almost a year and a half since we last spoke with anyone in the band (guitarist Phil Demmel on the 2008 Rockstar Mayhem Tour), so we figured we may as well. Crazy as it is that the Machine Head machine is still heading on an album released in 2007… it’s true, and they’re not even slowing down.

After the jump, read my full chat with Robb. We spent a whole lot of time talking about things other than Machine Head; the business-like nature of touring with Megadeth (as of interview time, he hadn’t once seen Mustaine in person on the entire tour!), the down-to-earth nature of hanging out with his heroes in Metallica, mentoring the young lads of Suicide Silence, and the always entertaining subject of the constant feuding between Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth. We also chatted about Machine Head’s constant touring — a dream come true for Robb — and about what the future might hold for the band, including their next album (writing has begun). And wouldn’t you know it, Robb reads MetalSucks!

Click to read more…

Devin Townsend has released the latest video from Addicted, the second of two albums he’s released in 2009 and the second of four promised records under the Devin Townsend Project moniker.

The video is for “Bend it Like Bender,” and it’s done in a really unique animation style I can best describe as Aeon Flux meets Waking Life. It’s neat, it’s unsurprisingly up to the high standards of Devin, and it mysteriously has subtitles in what I can only guess is either Japanese or Korean (we’d love it if a reader could let us know what language the subtitles are in and what they say). The video is streaming exclusively at RevolverMag.com. Check it out there, then come back and tell us what you think.

As a side note, here’s another conversation starter: which do you like better, Ki or Addicted? My vote’s in for Ki.

-VN

[A series of absolutely dreadful demos to grace the doorstep of the MS Mansion of late has inspired me to resurrect The Dreadful Demo Files, in which we take a look at some of the face-palm inducingly bad packages we receive. For the sake of these poor bands' egos we've disguised their identities. I'll be highlighting 3 bands this week... the last of which is so absolutely righteous I'm not sure it can ever possibly be topped. -.Ed.]

So many things wrong with this! Where to start?

1. This was the entirety of the letter! Just this and a burned CD.
2. Fantastic grasp of the English language, sentence structure, capitalization and punctuation. Yes, this was sent in by an American band. You took the time to assemble a package, burn a CD and print out a letter… but you couldn’t take 30 seconds to make it cohesive? Come on, dude.
3. Why would I care what unknown bands your drummer has played in?
4. I most certainly would LOVE to do an interview with you. Our readers are going to really enjoy reading an interview with a guy they’ve never heard of who’s in a band they’ve never heard of. That’ll bring in tons of traffic to our website and will surely keep everyone entertained.
5. Thanks for including your phone number! I’ll definitely call you, buddy.
6. Nice use of “eatmyfukk” in your email address. Way to appear professional!

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for the next edition of the Dreadful Demo Files, coming at you this Wednesday.

-VN

Over at his other blog, Stuff You Will Hate, Sergeant D. has started to really break his primary area of expertise – namely slam metal, which I only just recently feel like I’ve started to understand* – down to its core elements (no pun intended), I’m assuming so as to better explicate why we should all care. First up is the “bass drop,” which the Sarge describes thusly:

Most commonly associated with slam metal and deathcore, bass drops are a giant explosion of bass inserted into a song at key moments. For example, check out the sick fucking drop in this Vomit The Soul song [Bass drops starts around the 1:00 mark. - Ed.]:

I agree that bass drops are pretty awesome, although I wish they were discussed in conjunction with a style of metal for which I had a greater appreciation. For example, the bass drop around the 3:05 mark (and then repeated several times thereafter) in Pantera’s “Revolution is My Name” is less exaggerated than the in the above track, but I still think it’s pretty kick-ass:

Click to read more…

Los Angeles’ Hotel Cafe is a 165-person capacity venue, a seemingly unlikely place to find a world famous rocker with millions of record sales under his belt. And yet last Thursday it hosted noneother than Chris Cornell for an “intimate” sold out performance. As expected, YouTube has amateur footage of songs from the setlist, which included “Euphoria Morning” and Audioslave’s “Doesn’t Remind Me”, as well as covers of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Of course, the track that stands out the most for me was “Call Me A Dog”, a song from the Temple Of The Dog album. The project, a tribute to the late Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood, reformed somewhat during a recent Pearl Jam concert in L.A. The solo acoustic performance above (audio quality trumps video quality) is naturally much more subdued and somber, which helps to remind us all that Cornell is a gifted songwriter, even despite his misguided dalliance with Timbaland. With a reworked rock version of Scream in the planning, the former Soundgarden frontman might just earn back the respect of fans who balked at his attempt to mimic Justin Timberlake.

In other news, Timbaland’s upcoming Shock Value 2 album features vocal contributions from Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and Chris Daughtry. Yeah, you read right…

-GS

[Gary Suarez is going hungry. He usually manages WHOLLY DIVER (a Dio tribute site) and the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

I seem to recall an interview with Howard Jones from a few years back where, when discussing the importance of a good hook, he said something along of the lines of “You could play most Slayer songs on an acoustic guitar and they’d still sound great.”

While I doubt we’ll be seeing a Slayer edition of Unplugged anytime soon, reader Jon Dolente did send us the below video of someone calling himself “ALUxoxo” doing a cover of Mastodon’s “Oblivion” on the piano. So maybe if you can get that certain person in your life who hates metal to admit that this is very pretty, then you can play them the real thing (which isn’t really metal anyway but whatever), and then smoothly segue them into some Obituary and then… what? Too much too soon?

-AR