The always-brilliant Sergeant D. found the below video of some dude giving a one-man black metal performance… on the patio. Of his trailer. In case there was any doubt was kinda person this kid is.

It would appear that the audience for the show is somewhere between small and non-existent, but clearly that’s just because this dude’s manager sucks and didn’t know better than to make sure it was in his contract that he is never to take the stage any earlier than 9 p.m. Mayhem would never go on 6:37, for fuck’s sake.

Anyways, I’d accuse this guy of just trying to one-up Steven Tyler for idiotic places to do a show, but this was a good thirteen-plus years before Tyler’s already legendary set at Home Depot. So many this kid is just some kind of visionary.

-AR

In case there’s any doubt that he’s a frickin’ loon, let’s review how Steven Tyler has spent the past week, shall we?

1. He left rehab and went straight to a bar.
2. He randomly grabbed a microphone at a Home Depot in Rancho Mirage, CA and sang pieces of “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” over the store’s PA system.

Click to read more…

Next up on the heavy metal, hard rock, and punk rock book treadmill is Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer’s 2009 autobiography Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top.

The little-known drummer of one of the most successful bands in music history brings to the table a story rife with the things that make rock star books appealing to so many readers: sex, drugs, backstage hoo-ha, band squabbles, a troubled youth, and more. Only, it all seems to fall flat when it comes to rock star debauchery, as well as its other seemingly intended goal of providing a cautionary tale of drugs and schadenfreude.

Click to read more…

Next week will bring the release of two excellent new metal albums – Through the Eyes of the Dead’s Skepsis (Prosthetic) and Charred Walls of the Damned’s self-titled debut (Metal Blade). But AOL is now streaming both albums in full! Hoo-ray!

In case you don’t know, Charred Walls of the Damned is the new supergroup from legendary drummer/professional prank caller Richard Christy. As you’d expect for any project featuring “Ripper” Owens on vocals, it’s a pretty classic-sounding project. But with these players involved, well… let’s just say they actually pulled it off.

TTEOTD meanwhile, fall sqaurely into The Black Dahlia Murder’s camp: they’re not at all reinventing the wheel, just trying to be the best possible death metal band they can be. Skepsis is the natural next step from 2007′s Malice, and it’s great to see that all the line-up changes haven’t had any noticeably negative effect on the band.

Listen to Skepsis here and Charred Walls… here. They’re both definitely worth check out.

-AR

Well, ya gotta hand it to Dave Mustaine. He’s trying real hard to give the people what they want.

Following the postponement of the American Carnage tour with Slayer and Testament, Megadeth have announced a Rust in Peace twentieth anniversary tour of North America, to kick off in March. Not only will the band play Rust in Peace in its entirety, but they’ll have Testament (still playing The Legacy in its entirety) and Exodus playing support. In other words: whomever put this thing together is tugging on the same nostalgia strings that the Slaygadeth tour was supposed to pull on. Maybe Exodus don’t sell as many records as Slayer, but they’re still a hugely important part of the American thrash metal movement, and anyone who isn’t excited about this tour just because Slayer aren’t on it is probably pretty dopey.

Why, I just saw Exodus play the other night! And they killed! No less so than Megadeth and Testament (and Slayer), Exodus are experiencing a second golden age of their career.

Of course, there is something kinda funny about getting excited to see Megadeth do the entire Rust in Peace album when Dave Mustaine is the only remaining member of the Rust in Peace-era line-up. It’s like if someone were excited to hear Axl Rose and whatever other dudes he’s currently calling Guns N’ Roses play all of Appetite for Destruction, an album with which they have no actual association. That being said, this Mega-line-up is great, and Rust might be my favorite Megadeth album of all time… so I’m not gonna bitch too much. Maybe just a little. Okay I’ll keep quiet.

Get tour dates after the jump. And just as an FYI – the press release announcing this tour also promised that next week would bring new information on the rescheduling of those American Carnage dates, so if you’re such a sissy cry baby face that Exodus and the complete Rust and Legacy performances doesn’t substitute for Slayer, well, just sit tight. Click to read more…

“Went to NAMM, fucked a bunch of bitches, did a ton of blow. Life is good…”
–Anonymous Somebody, NAMM Convention – Anaheim 2010

The above statement may or may not be entirely true, but it pretty much summed up the vibe over at the NAMM show last weekend. You could simplify things and call it a five day long blackout, but I do remember a few things, and did come away with a few thoughts.

Click to read more…

I’ve never heard of Orianthi Panagaris, which I suppose is my shortcoming as a human being who actually loves himself. Even though the fifteen seconds of research I just did on Google tells me I hate her, reader Greg Hendler just sent us this video of her shredding with Steve Vai, and I have to admit, the girl has chops. It’s just too bad she seems to use them for evil and not good.

This isn’t the first time Steve Vai has gone sniffing around young children – in the early 90s he was the mastermind behind Bad 4 Good, a not-very-memorable band that was really all just an excuse for Vai to take naked pictures of little boys.

After the jump, check out one of Orianthi’s solo songs, so you know that even though she plays guitar really well, you still wish she would just go away.

Click to read more…

Earlier today, reader Dominic Coppola sent us an e-mail with the following subject line:

DEP Option Paralysis Bits

Unfortunately, there was no message in the body of the e-mail, so we had no idea what the fuck Dominic was talking about.

Luckily, our friends over at Metal Injection speak bizarrely uninformative e-mail:

Thanks to the power of Amazon.com pre-orders and one over-obsessed Youtube user, we now have a clip that compiles all the 30 second snippets of each song that will appear on DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN‘s upcoming Option Paralysis cd.

AH-HA! It all makes sense now.

Here are the snippets in question. It all sounds pretty great to me. Some mathcoreish stuff, some melodic stuff… everybody should be satisfied! I’m ready to hear the full album now.

Option Paralysis is out March 23 on Party Smasher/Season of Mist.

-AR

Mike Shitnoda, the ugly Backstreet Boy wannabe who raps for Suckin Suck, recently gave an interview to MTV discussing the band’s follow-up to their last album, Farting Right in Iron Maiden’s Eye Socket. Here are two statements Shitnoda made during that interview that I find fascinating. And by “fascinating,” I mean “delusional.”

“It’s been going great, I feel like it’s an entirely different process and an entirely different style of music than anything we’ve done before. It’s hard to place. People keep asking me, ‘What does it sound like?’ and it’s hard to describe.”

No, it’s not hard to describe, Mikey. It’s going to sound exactly like every other Suckin Suck song ever written. Because all your songs sound exactly the same as that initial shitty song which made you famous. This isn’t my opinion. This is a fact. People have scientifically proven that all that your songs are the same. One dude even made a video about it. Look:

Click to read more…

Earlier this month, System of a Down bassist Shavo Odajian caused quite a stir when he seemed to suggest, via tweet, that everyone’s favorite band whose lyrics make no sense but are apparently political was ready to reunite after more than three years away. Then, the next day, he basically sent out another tweet taking it back, which just made things more, y’know, confusing. Was he really just taking an informal poll over Twitter as to whether or not people wanted a SOAD reunion? Did he let the cat out of the bag too early? Is the poor guy just sad and bored and waiting to be in the spotlight again?

We don’t really know what the Odajian was thinking when he sent out that first tweet – but now System vocalist Serj Tankian has explicitly said that there’s no reunion planned… for now, at least. He tells Billboard:

Click to read more…

Hello. My name is Antonin Skullia, Esq., and I’m the newest contributor to MetalSucks. I am fully licensed by one of jurisdictions of the United States as an Attorney and Counsellor at Law. I’ve been listening to metal since Metallica’s Black Album came out when I was in middle school. During law school, I spent two years as a member of the street team for one of the metal labels. I spend most of my time practicing tax and probate law, but I have worked in copyright and entertainment law as well.

In my posts I am going to be talking about how the law interacts with the world of music. While this mainly means copyright law, that there are a host of other issues that both fans and bands face every day. It may also occur to you that bands occasionally find themselves in trouble with the law. How did they get there? I will be talking about the laws involved in bringing those to the courtroom.

Also , I love Metalocalypse, and occasionally, they touch upon legal issues. I’ll spend some time delving into how the law has dealt with similar situations and whether or not Dethklok can get away with what they did on the show.

Click to read more…

-KW

Brooklyn Vegan has a review of D.R.I.’s show at the Gramercy a couple of months back, and photographer Chloe Rice snapped some shots that made our hearts skip a beat. Check ‘em out:

Click to read more…

It’s true! They’re in the studio right now! This can only mean good things, as everything about Enslaved is awesome, save for the fact that I’m not watching them play live right this very second. But that’s not really their fault, I guess, and if they were playing live for me, they might not be working on a new album. So I guess all is forgiven.

Anyways, Enslaved are one of those black metal bands that I’m not entirely sure you can call black metal anymore, which must be why I like them so much. Their sound reaches so far beyond the parameters of the same old same old that I don’t even think they know what the same old same old is. What kind of psychedelia could they have in store for us this time? I don’t know, but me and my shrooms can’t wait to find out!

Here’s the band’s video for “Isa.” If you don’t know what album it’s from, then you must not own it, and if you don’t own it, then I’m sorry, but I can’t be friends with you until you do.

-AR

Whenever hair rock is ridiculed, discounted, and slighted by metal’s sandy vaginas/haircut jockeys, it’s conveniently forgotten that the reviled oh-faced crotchboys only represent the most visually memorable/thematically asinine segment of the genre. I can’t FUCKING STAND this blind slagging, especially from dudes who weren’t there/out of diapers at the time. I was only a pre-teen (who looted a relative’s purse to buy the first Badlands tape  – sorry, Aunt Rita), yet even I knew about the movement of bands opposed to the fluffy, boob-crazy antics of Warrant, Poison, et al. Most were bluesier and dark, and therefore aimed at listeners whose incentive to purchase music lay beyond the promise of nipple-packed videos. And though it’s a microscopic distinction, I point out that the harder-edged hair rock acts put emphasis not on partying so much as on getting fucking fucked up. Also: No synths, but the occasional organ. Tight leather and denim, but no spandex. You get it. Sleaze Rock, not Splits-Off-Drum Riser Rock.

So why did these non-pretty, non-eyeliner bands get signed to major labels? I guess it’s thanks to the danger of Appetite For Destruction, but one could imagine the logic of targeting horny dudes who buy shitloads of CDs, though none offered by guys with names like Kip Winger or Mark Slaughter. (Except Florentine – total bulge-petter.) Okay, so none really went beyond Gold sales, but each landed a (probably awful) major deal: Atlantic signed Badlands, Geffen had Junkyard. Warners and BulletBoys. Columbia added to their Dokken-tainted roster both Love/Hate and arguably the most lovable and least loved, Dangerous Toys.

Click to read more…

This song ain’t about no fish.

Reader Randy Gatto sent us a link to the below stream of “Bullets Are Blind,” a new song off of Kalmah’s forthcoming album, 12 Gauge. It seems it’s been up on YouTube since December, so I’m assuming this isn’t a completely illegal leak, but who knows. If you wanna hear it, maybe you should listen now in case it gets taken down.

In any case, it’s a Kalmah song, which is to say, it will induce whiplash. And I’m being serious when I say I find the title unsettling. What a not-so-gentle reminder that guns don’t kill people, morons with guns kill people.

12 Gauge comes out March 3 on Spinefarm.

-AR

Last month, Ozzy Osbourne continued his campaign against the hearts and minds of his longtime fans by announcing Soul Sucka as the title of his new album, which is tentatively scheduled for a July release. Kind of amazingly, though, it seems as though the Ozzman hasn’t completely lost touch with his supporters, has heard all of our bitching and moaning, and has decided to do something about it. Metal Underground reports that Ozzy’s bassist, Blasko, has released a statement which reads in part:

“Until yesterday, the disc was going to be called Soul Sucka. However, Ozzy realized that “None of my fan base liked the title. They were like, ‘I can’t imagine me walking around the fucking house with the words ‘Soul Sucka’ on my T-shirt.’ So I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’ve got to come up with something else!’”

Click to read more…

So many of you e-mailed us about this over the weekend I’m not even sure why I’m bothering to write about it, but in case you somehow didn’t hear: Scorpions are breaking up. Here’s the gist of the reason given:

“While we were working on our album these past few months, we could literally feel how powerful and creative our work was — and how much fun we were still having in the process. But there was also something else: we want to end the Scorpions’ extraordinary career on a high note.”

The album in question is Sting in the Tail, which, it was conveniently announced today, will come out March 23 on Universal.

And… yeah. I’m not sure I’m buying it.

Click to read more…

What’s the non-metal crowd’s take on Sigur Ros? Our friend Tommy Wee is a HUGE fan, and based on his strong recommendation, I went with him to see them play live last year. Their music is beautiful and they put on quite a show, but I found Jónsi Birgisson’s high-pitched vocals to be kinda irritating. After the show, I made my complaint known, and Tommy called me a hypocrite, seeing as I enjoy the work of such apparent-eunuchs as King Diamond, Bruce Dickinson, and Rob Halford. But I dismissed his accusations as those of a fan so enamored with the band that he couldn’t handle any critique of their music whatsoever. “What Dickinson does and what Birgisson does aren’t the same at all,” I told Tommy.

And as it turns out, Tommy may have been right and I may have been wrong.

Birgission has a new solo album, Go, coming out in March, and was on WNYC last week to promote the release. Tommy happened to be listening when the interviewer asked Birgisson about his vocal style. Here’s a transcript of that exchange:

Click to read more…

Marquee at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square, January 22, 2010. Photo courtesy Ken Pierce of Piercing Metal.

Although I’m not entirely sure how old the dudes in Mutiny Within are, if you told me that they weren’t even born yet when Exodus released Bonded by Blood, I wouldn’t be surprised. But that’s cool, ’cause I also wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that they were cranking Arsis in high school, the way James Malone was almost certainly cranking Amott’s recordings with Carcass when he was in high school and early A.E. a little later, and Amott was almost certainly cranking vintage Exodus when he was in high school.

My point is this: this Tyrants of Evil tour has four generations of bands. It’s like a living, breathing codification of the history and ideals of this particular sect of the metal world. None of the two bands sound the same, exactly, but there’s a clear through-line to be drawn from the oldest to the youngest. There’s something incredibly cool about that.

Which must be why the Nokia in Times Square was packed with a wide spectrum of fans when the tour rolled into Times Square this past Friday night, and why those fans seemed to arrive early and stay late.

Click to read more…