Reader Sawan Raykar sent us the below video for the song “The Unrelenting Surge of Vengeance” by the band Demonic Resurrection, a melodic death metal band from India. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever heard but it’s pretty good, and I honestly can’t think of another Indian metal band (and I mean a band FROM India, not with an Indian American member). And that makes them interesting in and of itself, because, holy shit, India might be one of the last major countries that don’t seem to have gotten a chance to make their contribution to the metal world.

Anyone else know any other good Indian metal bands? Is there a whole thriving scene we don’t know about? Seriously. I’m curious.

-AR

I’ve never really been a Pelican fan – but I guess I should be. I saw this clip, for the song “Final Breath,” on Metal Underground, and… wow. Consider my mind blown.

I want to compare it to Journey to the Center of the Earth (We do seem to be traveling through the center of the planet, no?), Fantastic Voyage (some of it kinda looks like we’re inside a human body), or a slowed-down version of the opening credits of David Fincher’s Fight Club (see previous parenthesis), or maybe even the Star Child sequence from 2001… but I don’t think that there’s any denying that the whole thing is vaginal. Is there an equation being made between birth and death? Am I just reading too much into this?

Whatever. It’s pretty cool regardless of what it means or doesn’t mean. And the fact that the song is gorgeous doesn’t hurt, either.

-AR

If I asked some dude what his favorite song of all time was and he said “Bang Your Head,” I would assume he meant this song:

Even if you hate this song – and if you hate this song, please go take a long walk off a short bridge – but even if you hate this song, there’s no denying its infamy. Everyone knows “Bang Your Head.”

And yet here come Dream Evil, with a new song called “Bang Your Head” – and, no, it’s not a cover.

The fucking nerve.

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So “MS Maniac Kriss” sent us an e-mail with a link to the below video of Denmark’s Kellermensch performing a song called “Moribund Town.” And at first I was like “Is this even metal?” and then I was like “What’s with the outfits, douches?” and then I looked up the meaning of “keller” and I was like “Oh, seriously? Fuck this band.”

But the song actually does have a metal influence, and by its conclusion, I had fallen in love with it. And I’m digging the stuff on their MySpace page, particularly a song called “The Day You Walked.” Even their cover of Neil Young’s “Don’t Let it Bring You Down” is pretty good – in fact, I’d argue it’s exactly what a cover should be: it didn’t make the original song so unrecognizable so as to rob it of its original appeal, but they also clearly put their own spin on it. So, yes, I think these dudes dress silly, but so does Immortal, and we like them, too.

This might be the best reader recommendation I’ve gotten in awhile. Now I have to go listen to the rest of the band’s album.

-AR

So our year-end lists and the holidaze took over (as they often do), and I’ve been snoozing on writing something about this show….but a few things ought be said bout these two bands.

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I know what you’re thinking… that playing drums on the keyboard is elementary. And you’d be right in that playing a simple 4/4 beat of drum samples is pretty easy on a keyboard. But once you watch this video by Chimp Spanner your perception of playing beats on the blacks and whites will be forever changed… this guy’s got some kind of insane, special skill. The dexterity it must take to nail some of those drum fills is really, really fucking impressive. How much do you think he had to practice this piece before nailing it all in one take?

-VN

I logged a heroic number of TV hours this holiday break and wow I mined the depths of watchable fare on the Showtime networks. And when I say Showtime networks, we’re all aware that we’re talking about America’s 24-hour source for early-’90s softcore porn. Now granted, Insatiable Cravings was okay, but I had trouble following the labyrinthine plot of Swingers Sex Party and Call Girl Wives required so much exposition that all the vaguely suggestive pubis-grinding felt tacked-on. That last epic earned the coveted 4:45 am time slot, so I dozed through its third act* but I snapped awake an hour later and To Die For was on. Starring veiny Nicole Kidman and directed by Hollywood’s least profound director this side of Tony Scott, that’s right Mr. Psycho remake himself, Gus Van Sant.

The good news was that I was joining 2D4 already in progress; in fact, what woke me up was Nailbomb’s “Wasting Away,” which soundtracks the film’s introduction of the cretinous Joaquin Phoenix character. As usual, awesome metal music is used as crude cinema shorthand for “Loser’s Song” or alternately “Theme for the Sub-Moron’s Short Journey To Death Row.”  Seriously, Phoenix’s Jimmy would struggle in a debate against a doorstop, so in Super Obvious Gus Van Sant Land, of course his music of choice is metal. Never mind that it’s proven that 94% of all serial killers are lovers of Eric Clapton. Really it’s true I read it in a book.

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Last year Vince wrote about this cockamamie rumor floating around that Andrew W.K. is not a real person, but, as Mr. Neilstein so eloquently put it, “a carefully constructed record label concoction played by several different actors.” Mr. W.K. (or possibly “Steev Mike,” the absolutely fucktarded “real name” of the actor allegedly playing AWK) even basically admitted that the rumor was true last month, although, if you ask me, he’s just taking the piss.

ANYWAY, although we wouldn’t put it past some scumbag record exec to try such a move — Sure, why not just simplify the Menudo model, right? — the entire concept just struck us as the imaginative fiction of an overzealous conspiracy nut.

But then our friend Dan Rodriguez – now a contributor to Metal Insider - told us this amazing story about when he was the program director of college radio station WSOU, a.k.a. the only listenable non-satellite radio station we can actually pick-up here at the Mansion. Apparently Dan helped organize a 2004 WSOU-sponsored concert in New Jersey, and Andrew W.K. was supposed to play the show; fans were outraged, however, when someone they claimed to be an impostor did the gig instead.

We couldn’t write anything about the incident at the time because Dan wanted to maintain some professional courtesy (or whatever), but now he’s come forward to tell his side of the story. Here’s an excerpt:

I booked the show through Andrew’s then-manager, Trevor Silmser. I personally picked up the backing band from the airport and drove them to the venue. Everything seemed on the up-and-up. Andrew was planned to spend the afternoon at the venue, hanging out with the grateful WSOU staff. At some point right before doors, I was told that he would not arrive until shortly before the set. That certainly seemed unusual from someone famous for his go-out-of-his-way ethic. A car pulled up just minutes before the band was to take the stage, and Andrew (or “Andrew”, depending on your level of crazy) quickly shuffled into the building and to the stage, face covered under a hoodie. After the show, he threw himself back in the hoodie and ran back to the car, a la Michael Jackson’s babies.

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One of the best things about seeing all the MS contributors’ year-end lists is getting tips about which 2009 albums I wasn’t listening to that I should have been. In Satan Rosenbloom’s case, those albums included Dreaming Dead’s Within One, an excellent release I basically allowed to sit on my desk for most of the year ’cause I’m dumb like that, and, especially, Amesoeurs’ self-titled album, which is barely metal but I listened to constantly over the break.

I’m saying that Mr. Rosenbloom has good taste, and now he’d like to share some of it with you: over at his own blog, Cerebral Metalhead, he’s compiled a 2009 year-end mix – aptly titled Cerebral Metalhead’s Adios to 2009 Metal Mix – which I highly recommend you download. There’s a lot of awesome shit on it, at least some of which I’d wager you either didn’t listen to or didn’t even know about last year. And, y’know, I’ll give my usual spiel and remind you that it’s free and the worst case scenario is you delete it from your computer/iPod/whatever.

Get the mix here. Totally worth it.

-AR

Full disclosure: I am not a classically trained musician, and though I’ve taken years of lessons on various instruments over the years I have never studied jazz. So when I say something sounds “jazzy” I’m merely referring to a certain aesthetic as my ears perceive it. I make no claims that I’m some kind of jazz expert, so please, all you music elitists who just LOVE to call us out given any opportunity, shut the fuck up.

Anyhoo, Poland’s Samo. To these ears they sound pretty jazzy at times much like Carnal Rapture, an unsigned band from Italy I discovered last year who were my unequivocal favorites. Unlike Carnal Rapture, Samo seem to take a lot more influence from modern metal, incorporating Meshhuggah-esque grooves (but NOT Sumeriancore in the slightest) and Dillinger spazz-outs into their avant-garde attack. Suckalo Mike Dix sent us a link to Samo’s MySpace page over the holiday, and I’m pretty much blown away by everything therein. You should be too.

-VN

Photographer Jacqueline Cheng (who also took awesome shots of Rob Zombie for us last month) was on hand at Gwar’s show with The Red Chord and Job For A Cowboy on December 13th at New York’s Irving Plaza (we refuse to call it “Fillmore”!). Gwar were their usual, interesting-looking selves while apparently Guy and Greg Weeks from the Red Chord now think they’re in Iron Maiden and are wearing their own band t-shirts on-stage. JFAC had lots of tattoos and stretched earlobes and metal faces. Pics after the jump!

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When they’re not wishing ill upon musicians whose work they dislike, nerds in basements are doing things like, say, syncing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Throwdown, or Spongebob Sploogepants and syncing it up with JFAC. Now Raining Blondes has found the below video, which imagines a world in which Miley Cyrus were a little more like Demi Lovato. (Actual music courtesy Suicide Silence.)

-AR

I’ve spent plenty of time in this space discussing the myriad connections between classical music and heavy metal, a topic I always love falling back on when skeptics peg metal as a low-class art form (i.e. my relatives: “You do what for a living??”). Now the New York Times has given me some more cannon fodder by arguing that jazz and metal are artistic cousins, and since my family takes the New York Times as the bible and listens to NPR jazz broadcasts like they were State of the Union addresses I’ll be well-armed next time Aunt Sadie scoffs at why I’m not a lawyer or banker like all the other nice Jewish boys.

Jazz stages and metal stages are places where a certain kind of experimentation happens: brainy and cabalistic, with a hint of a smile. Both increasingly depend on educated virtuosos. In both genres you can develop curious harmonic worlds, warp the tempos, brush against folkloric or conservatory music, play many notes very speedily and engage sturdy American grooves or a more studied system of fitting odd-number beats into even-number meters. Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist, meet Paul Masvidal of Cynic; Jeff (Tain) Watts, jazz drummer, meet Tomas Haake of Meshuggah. Both forms seem to have a neatly divided audience: maybe two-thirds respectfully fixated on the music’s past, one-third concerned about building paradigms for the future.

And so on and so forth. Read the article at the fit-to-print website of the New York Times, and thank Suckalo Mark Moritz-Rabson for sending this one in.

-VN

If you’re a fan of metallic hardcore like Terror or Madball then you’re probably already into Maximum Penalty, an underrated but still respected NYHC group that has been around for over two decades. The music video above comes off last year’s Life & Times (not to be confused with former Husker Du frontman Bob Mould’s 2009 solo album of the same name). What the promotional clip lacks in originality, it makes up for in familiarity, with New York street scenes complementing frontman Jim Williams’s back-in-the-day reminiscing.

Like many long-running acts, Maximum Penalty has not retained much of its original lineup, though I had hoped to catch the current incarnation (which includes former Terror bassist Jonathan Buske) perform live this past weekend at a show at some sort of “humanist” community center out on Long Island, one of the dates on a tour with Reaper Records’ labelmates Trapped Under Ice and Forfeit. Unfortunately the band had to cancel as Williams tore his hamstring a few days ago during their set at a New Years Day hardcore matinee in Syracuse. Hopefully he’ll be all healed by their scheduled show opening for Killing Time at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory on February 27.

-GS

[Gary Suarez helps manage Shadows FAIL. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

The cover art for Sigh’s forthcoming Scenes from Hell is as kick-ass as the music on that album (read my review here). In case you haven’t seen it before…

This should be – and in my opinion, still is – the clear front runner for “Best Cover Art of 2010,” even at this early juncture. Look at that thing, man! Eliran Kantor did a helluva job. Someone is gonna hafta to come up with something pretty cool to top it.

Well, High on Fire haven’t quite topped it, but they’ve still come up with something awesome for their new album, Snakes for the Divine. Check it out:

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We’re back! Why fuck around? Let’s give away some shit.

Specifically, let’s give away a copy of Dark Tranquillity’s Where Death is Most Alive DVD. Spanning the band’s entire career, this two disc set includes an entire DT concert filmed in Milan in 2008, a 47 minute documentary about the band, a plethora of music videos, and a “live archive” featuring footage reaching back as far as 1991! This is a perfect refresher course on Dark Tranquillity up ’til now, before their new album, We Are the Void, is released on March 9 on Century Media.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. We’ll randomly select a winner from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her name next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us by MetalSucks uber-Maniac Mark Moritz-Rabson…

-AR

I guess that by now it’s old news that the drummer from AX7 is taking the celestial dirt nap for undisclosed “natural causes,” but I just realized that something is bugging me about this whole situation.

First of all, let’s establish something. I am NOT a fan of AX7. Never was, most likely never will be. I think that they’re killer musicians, especially their lead guitarist with the silly stage name, but that doesn’t make me a fan.

I’m not going to specualte as to why a 28 year old suddenly died because I know full well it was probably drugs, but I also know full well that not everyone actually lives out their image in real life. He could have had an un-diagnosed heart condition, or any other number of things that suddenly kill people of any age. So I’m not going to really sit around and guess what did him in, and honestly, I don’t really care.

Here’s what I do care about for some reason: the metal community once again showed me that with some exception, it’s just a lonely, dorky, socially inadequate boy’s club. I know that I’m going to get some hate for this, but whatever. Hear me out.

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Syracuse-based act Forfeit kicked off 2010 in their hometown as part of a New Years Day hardcore matinee, which included their Reaper Records‘ peers Death Threat alongside other notable bands such as Down To Nothing. And from the looks of it, they wont be slowing down for the next two months. The band have played every single day since, supporting their somewhat thrashy new full-length The Lower Depths, and their current schedule only shows a brief two-day reprieve between legs.

At the moment, Forfeit is in the midst of playing a series of mostly East Coast venues with Trapped Under Ice, Cruel Hand, and Naysayer. Then, later this month, the band will commence a more extensive North American tour with Trustkill/Think Fast! artists Outbreak, who late last year released a self-titled follow-up to their Bridge Nine debut Failure. If you’re at all interested in what’s going on in today’s American hardcore scene, make sure you check out one of these shows and support these guys on this arduous run. All dates below:

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When Trent Reznor waved good-bye to touring last year, he never said he was waving good-bye to Nine Inch Nails, too; he was basically just going the “studio only” route. So I’m not surprised that Reznor is working on a new Nine Inch Nails album for 2010.

The second part of this statement from the NIN website, in which he announces new music from NNIN (Not Nine Inch Nails), does kinda surprise me, though:

Sorry I haven’t been around much lately, I’ve been working on not working for a couple of months, which for me is hard work. 2010 has a number of things planned including new material from nine inch nails and something else that isn’t nine inch nails.

“Something else that isn’t Nine Inch Nails.” What could it be? I’d love for that Tapeworm album to finally see the light of day, but that can’t be it. And I imagine talk of that collaboration with Dr. Dre probably died right around the time Eminem got famous.

Wait, I know what it is, I KNOW WHAT IT IS!!! Trent Reznor is the new singer for Velvet Revolver!!!

No, wait, that can’t be right.

Hopefully we’ll get more details soon…

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

If we’re being completely honest, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t be, I was a little underwhelmed by Kalmah’s last album, For the Revolution. It just didn’t have that certain oomph that made The Black Waltz and Swampsong so goddamn good.

But I’m willing to give Kalmah another chance. I mean, they wrote the best song ever about fish vengeance, so they deserve a pass on this one, right?

So. The band has announced a new album, 12 Gauge, to be released on March 3 via Spinefarm. There’s no cover art or new streaming music yet, which seems kinda odd given that we’re just two months out from the album’s release, but maybe that just speaks to how quickly bands can turn around a record in the digital age. I can’t help but be excited for this one.

And speaking of the best song ever about fish vengeance…

-AR