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The MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys work furiously to meet Lord Rosenberg’s demand that all snow in front of the Axl Annex be cleared immediately.
It’s fucking snowing out. Didja hear?
Here’s some cold, angry Despised Icon to kick-off what promises to be another cold, angry weekend.
And just to piss you off more:
U.S. IMMIGRATION COULDN’T STOP THEM! Hypocrisy are finally coming to North America to wreak havoc like it’s never been wreaked before! And they’ve got Scar Symmetry, Hate, Blackguard and Swashbuckle with them! EVERYBODY FUCKING RUN! AHHHHHHH!!!!!
In all seriousness: we’re very happy to be teaming up with our hetero life-mates at Metal Injection to be bringing you guys and gals this tour. It’s gonna be an incredible time. Get dates after the jump!!!
Come on, guys… the myriad Dino Cazares captions for last week’s funny photo caption contest were way too obvious. We don’t need to make fun of Dino that way anyway because he does a pretty good of that himself. Here’s the entry that made me laugh the most:
ImMattMan will be receiving his choice of MetalSucks t-shirts in the mail soon enough. His email address has “Anchorage” after the @ sign, so I sure hope we don’t have to pay to ship this thing to Alaska… but shit, Alaskans need to show their love of MetalSucks too, so more power to ya, Matt.
This week we’ve got something for the hardcore kids: we’re giving away 5 sets of vinyl from the folks at A389 Records, each set containing a 7-inch by Seraphim and a 7-inch by Gluttons (more info about these releases is available at the A389 Records MySpace page). This week’s photo comes courtesy of Suckalo Andy. We have no idea whether Andy is in this photo or not, but we sure hope that isn’t the case. Enter your caption below using a real email address (or if you use Facebook Connect, include your email address in the comment itself) for your chance to win.
Although the editors of MetalSucks get a vote in the Scion No Label Needed Contest, the staff of MetalSucks, alas, does not. Thus, over the course of the next few days, each MetalSucks writer will post an endorsement for his favorite finalist for the contest. You can check out all the finalists, and vote for your personal favorite, here.
When I received my latest homework assignment from the mansion (thanks, Gary), I knew there was only one way to go about it — completely blind. I was determined to only listen to the twenty tunes up for grabs. I had no interest in looking at band photos, music videos, or websites that gave me any background information on the bands involved. I wanted this to strictly be about the music.
As a result, only three bands actually caught my ear: Reciprocal, Scorched-Earth Policy, and Iron Thrones.
It’s been far too long since I’ve gotten a solid dose of a new Godspeed! You Cult of NeurIsis fix. I can safely say that Iron Thrones’ 12-minute post-apocalyptic acid-drenched gutter sludge track, “Cover of Smoke,” has sated my jones.
Amidst the swirling chaos of crunching guitars and throat-shredding vocals hovers a hint of melodic beauty that can’t quite disguise the band’s apparent love of cinematic soundscapes ala Explosions in the Sky.
It’s brutal. It’s beautiful. Brutiful.
Hands down, Iron Thrones “smokes” the competition.
Be sure to vote for Iron Thrones here.
Download their entire album at the Iron Thrones website.
-CM
Corey Mitchell is a best-selling author of true crime books and founder of In Cold Blog. Join him on Facebook and Twitter. His next book, SAVAGE SON, can be pre-ordered now.
Gene Simmons is the lowest of the low when it comes to putting his name on a product for a buck. The dude’s attached his likeness to everything from Mr. Potato Head dolls to coffee to toothbrushes, and he even attempted to sell his own kidney stone (no word on how that turned out). Mr. Witz proves the stereotype that Jews are money-grubbing scoundrels true and gives us a bad name (ok, so I’m cheap too… so what) even he does unequivocally like to rock n’ roll all night and party every day.
But nothing tops the sheer absurdity of this Yngwie Malmsteen humidor. Look at the fucking thing! Who would buy that? At least it’s useful though, unlike a fucking KISS Mr. Potato Head. I’m not really the cigar-smoking type except for once in a blue moon, but if someone <ahem> were to send me one of these <ahem> I could think of a certain sticky green substance that’d be perfectly suited for storage in such a case.
-VN
Although the editors of MetalSucks get a vote in he Scion No Label Needed Contest, the staff of MetalSucks, alas, does not. Thus, over the course of the next few days, each MetalSucks writer will post an endorsement for his favorite finalist for the contest. You can check out all the finalists, and vote for your personal favorite, here.
If the twenty bands in the running for Scion’s No Label Needed contest represent the future of metal, then we may as well jump ship now and start listening exclusively to Renaissance madrigals (Have you heard William Byrd? He’s the polyphonic-est! ). It’s not that these bands are all talentless, more that there’s nary an original sound in the bunch. Choosing amongst them amounts to picking whether you like Suffocation, In Flames, Black Dahlia Murder, Neurosis or Tool best.
That’s why I’m throwing my considerable weight behind Electric Horsemen, who at least have the good sense to crib from Eyehategod and Crowbar — well-cribbed Southern sludge generally retains the genre’s sloppy soul and untouchable heaviness even when they can’t touch their forebears’ songs. And a pleasantly seamy job Electric Horsemen do of conjuring up unwholesome bayou voodoom, even though they hail from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, seat of the state’s peaceable Amish community. The track they uploaded to the Scion contest page, “Milk Coma,” has that lazy Louisiana boogie DOWN (pun intended). The other tracks on their MySpace page are even better, showcasing bits of melody and through the groaning muck. Vote for these guys, if only because they sound nothing like their competitors.
-SR
Listen to and vote for Electric Horsemen here. You can also visit them on MySpace.
Major props to the anonymous reader who just sent us a link to the below preview of Cynic’s new EP, Re-Traced, which comes out May 17 on Season of Mist. It includes a snippet of the studio version of “Wheels Within Wheels,” a new song that the band debuted live last month.
More, please.
-AR
Dallas Coyle left God Forbid over a year ago, but the guy’s certainly not been short on musical output during his time away from the scene. From time to time Dallas sends us songs in various stages of completion ranging from demos to full-on productions to gauge our thoughts; of those, his latest project, dubbed Genetic, is by far our favorite. Check out the exclusive premier of the Genetic track “The Master Key” below, then listen to a few more on the Genetic MySpace page.
[this promotion has ended]
Well, the headline says it all. According to The PRP, Mike whipped out his Patton during a recent Faith No More performance in Australia. And since we’re equal-opportunity offenders here at MetalSucks, fair’s fair…
So, after the jump, have a look at Mr. Patton’s penis. Needless to say, it’s NSFW.
Have you ever seen some smokin’ hot chick with a dude who’s not only like one-tenth as good looking as she is, but isn’t particularly smart or funny or interesting or even rich? And you sit there and you go, “What the crap happened there?” That’s usually around the time a friend leans over and whispers “She used to be fat, before they met.” And you go “Ooooohhhhh.” Self-esteem issues: she used to be a behema, and even with all the weight she’s lost, she has no idea how fine she is now. As a friend likes to say, “We all had a shot.” Just shows to go ya that it pays to be an arrogant fart nugget who hits on anything with a hole and a pulse, ’cause sometimes it’s a former fatty who has totally devalued herself.
I don’t really know much about Mick Kenney from Anaal Nathrakh, but I guess he used to have a weight problem, because he’s started a new band, Sorrows, with Bleeding Through’s Brandan Schieppati. When you think of all the people in the world Kenney could have collaborated with… why choose the dude from a not especially good metalcore band? Somewhere the guys from Bury Your Dead are thinking “Shit! We all had a shot.”
Sadder still is that Sorrows just aren’t very interesting. Anaal Nathrakh are one of those bands that challenge our perception of what metal could be, in the best possible way; if you didn’t know that Kenney was involved in Sorrows, you’d probably never even give them the courtesy of sitting through an entire song before shutting it off and going about your day. But if you’re curious, you can listen to some of their stuff here.
And because this is kinda-sorta a Bleeding Through post, I’ve included the customary photo of Marta after the jump. Be forewarned, however, that the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys made a time machine and snapped this pic in 2020, after BT have broken up and she’s settled into life as a mommy and homemaker. So she doesn’t look quite as hot as we’re all accustomed to:
Although the editors of MetalSucks get a vote in he Scion No Label Needed Contest, the staff of MetalSucks, alas, does not. Thus, over the course of the next few days, each MetalSucks writer will post an endorsement for his favorite finalist for the contest. You can check out all the finalists, and vote for your personal favorite, here.
It goes without saying that there’s a reason most of the bands in the No Label Needed Contest are unsigned at the moment. Now, that’s not to say that they’re all bad; several bands caught my attention immediately. However, the one band that I found most interesting and worthy of a record contract was Lorus. I first noticed them because they’re clearly the oddball in this contest. While every other band plays (mostly boring) fairly standard styles of metal ranging from hardcore to death, Lorus plays experimental progressive rock reminiscent of a heavier version of Maserati, a band I fell in love with the instant MetalSucks presented them. But they’ve also got their own distinctive metal flavor. Lorus is by far the worthiest band of a record contract on the list, so go vote!
-DM
Listen to and vote for Lorus here. You can also visit them on MySpace.
If you’re like me and you love watching great guitarists play because you yourself are a terrible guitarist but you just love the grace it takes to be a good guitarist, than you will enjoy this clip of Emil Werstler playing some of “Dura Mater.” The song is the first taste of Avalanche of Worms, the debut solo/side/not-really-sure-what-to-call-it project from Daath’s guitarists (with Cynic’s Sean Reinert on drums!):
If for some reason you still haven’t listened to the complete stream of “Dura Mater,” well, you’re depriving yourself of awesomeness, and you should go listen to it now.
Avalanche of Worms comes out 4/20 on Magna Carta. And while we’re on the topic, you should also head over to Noisecreep for a pretty cool interview with Emil and Eyal – they talk about Avalanche and also explain a little bit more why Kevin Talley (who I can assure you is still very much the drummer for Daath) sat out a chunk of the band’s 2009 tour.
-AR
I’m gonna keep this short, because that’s what Hayaino Daisuki do. Especially considering lead esophagus scraper Jon Chang’s pedigree as leader of defunct concept-grinders Discordance Axis, the four tracks on Hayaino Daisuki’s second EP, The Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell, or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki?, keep it pretty simple — Iron Maiden-style thrash, performed at illegal speeds and subject to the pterodactyl shriek of Chang or (on “Kirei”) new harpy Michelle Bowlin. And yet by dint of its ludicrous tempo, The Invincible Gate Mind forces us to re-consider our understanding of how our brains process sound over time. At what point is a riff or bass drum roll played so fast that it becomes a constant stream of sound? How can an album just over twelve minutes long be so tiring? And what happens when you cram an eight-minute epic into just 2:20?
There’s no small amount of cognitive dissonance in hearing an album this catchy nearly swallowed by its extreme obsession with speed. It doesn’t quite get to that point though, because this band is entirely in control for all twelve of those minutes. Takafumi Matsubara’s leads rule too hard, Eric Schnee’s drumming feels a little too controlled for this The Invincible Gate Mind to sublimate completely. It’s damn near close though. Consider this EP a violently abbreviated micro-dispatch from your friends in Hayaino Daisuki, the musical equivalent of a tweet in all caps.
(3 outta 5 horns)
-SR
MS reader Christopher Jacques once emailed us to share a revelation he had while at the front row of a Goatwhore show: Ben Falgoust’s got a beautiful set of chompers. “I am not even kidding – he must be in the no cavity club for life. Perfectly straight. Brilliantly white.” And while the photographic evidence Jacques submitted didn’t do much to support the “perfectly straight” claim, it’s certainly true that Falgoust could be a poster boy for Crest White Strips. More than one metal lady has confessed to me their crush on Mr. Falgoust, and as a straight man confident in his sexuality I gotta say… dude’s got it goin’ on! If I were a chick or gay I’d definitely bang him.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the ripping live Goatwhore footage posted by HardTimes.ca, an excellent metal website easily worth its weight in fine, British Columbia green. You can’t really see Ben’s pearly whites but since you’re reading this website you’re a dude and you don’t really care about that anyway. What you do care about is the kicking of asses, which you’ll get in spades. The footage was shot in Montreal on their current tour with Devildriver.
-VN
Those Reigning Blondes sure are on a roll: first they found video of The Dillinger Escape Plan covering Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” and now they’ve found video of Faith No More covering another one of my favorite cheesy 80s songs, Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” Nnnnniiicccce.
So, this seems like the perfect opportunity to play a fun game: if you could have any metal band cover any 80s pop song, who/what would you choose and why?
-AR
Yesterday we discussed all the upcoming Pantera reissues, as well as the fact that the band’s second greatest hits collection, 1990-2000: A Decade Of Domination, is coming out on March 30. I said that it’s hard not to see this compilation as a cash-in, and now that track list has been revealed and details of how the album will be sold, it’s even harder.
For one thing, the band’s original greatest hits album, Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits, not only had six more songs than this new one will, but came with a bonus DVD showcasing twelve (!) music videos.
Here’s the track list for the new collection, A Decade of Domination…
One of the dozens of things to dislike about Milwaukee is that it’s home to Hal Leonard, the publishers of history’s worst guitar tab book, Metallica’s …And Justice For All. I hate that goddamn book of lies. The authors of the alleged “note-for-note transcriptions” apparently are crotchety old uncles whose wedding band just celebrated their 10,000th gig. I mean c’mon! In my neighborhood, “Blackened” and “One” at minimum were mandatory learning, so even we knew something was rotten on the day we grabbed the tab book to compare notes: It turns out that the transcribers settled on ball-park estimation of metal’s greatest fucking guitar songs while also displaying a dazzling ignorance of distortion.
And the nutfucked thing is how Hal Leonard continues to sell this faulty piece of shit since fucking 1988. I pointed out its crappiness to HL in several curtly-phrased and progressively vulgar emails. Those went unanswered. One night, I helpfully grabbed a red sharpie to correct it with frowny faces and clusters of distraught question marks. That got me banned from Guitar Center. Then the worst happened: I began to doubt my own ear. After all, I reasoned, a lot of weed gets smoked in here; these “mistakes” in the tabs might’ve been the product of my imagination. But nay, the essence of Metallica riffs is embedded in my spine. I am right; these Justice tabs suck.
Dirk Verbeuren is a fucking MONSTER behind the kit. Dude could just be playing 1/8th notes on the hi-hat and nothing else, and he’s have more finesse and style than 99% of drummers in metal today who can out-blast each other into oblivion. Just sayin’.
Check out Verbeuren in this video (first posted on Blabbermouth) of the recording sessions for The Panic Broadcast, Soilwork’s forthcoming album. As if watching this guy pound away at the kit weren’t enough, we get the added bonus of (sort of) getting to hear the rest of the music, sans-vocals, of a new Soilwork track. We even get a guitar solo, presumably played by Peter Wichers. This video gives great reason to be hopeful that the new Soilwork record will be as good as we hope it will be.
-VN
I’m not generally one to say negative things about other bands and the choices they make (publicly, at least), but I feel that this really deserves some attention. I can only hope that young metal musicians who read this site can learn from someone else’s mistakes and hopefully one day make the metal world a little less embarrassing to be a part of.
A harsh reality of being in a band, or making music, is that some people won’t like it. ESPECIALLY in the heavy metal world, where people are almost unreasonably opinionated. What other type of music has the kind of audience who heckle a band they don’t like at a show, or argue for days in the comments section of an internet blog about why a certain band sucks? Once you put your music out there to be heard, you are, without a doubt, going to get some negative feedback. The way you handle it, however, is going to determine what kind of longevity your band will ultimately have.
I’m not a fighter at all, so I can’t really speak from experience on when violence is justified, but I know that a relatively meaningless heckling incident is not it. If you consider yourself a professional, you should act like one and think about how your actions affect the outside world’s perception of you and your band. I can think of one particular show as a perfect example of how to and how not to handle yourself in a situation like this.
Finland is the new Sweden. Or the new black. Or something.
The Finnish Metal Tour, featuring Finntroll, Moonsorrow, Swallow the Sun and Survivors Zero was announced this past December, at which point our nipples instantly became hard. But now we’ve been asked on as an official sponsor and hey, lookee at that, our logo’s at the top of this here tour poster all fancy-lookin’ and shit!
We’ve yet to see Finntroll live but MS Uber-Suckalo groverXIII loooooooves this band and the dude generally has good taste, so we’ll have to trust him. Moonsorrow completely annihilated New York when they came through as part of the second Paganfest tour last year, and even though they weren’t the headliners they were easily the stand-out band on that bill. Swallow the Sun are Swallow the motherfucking Sun, always epic, always awesome. And we haven’t heard of Survivors Zero yet, but I’m listening to their MySpace page now and I really like what I’m hearing. This is definitely one of the most exciting tour lineups of Spring 2010.
Stream the new Finntroll track at Metal Insider then check out the full list of tour dates after the jump.
