Of course not every band can be a Pantera or Down, but I’d argue that out of any member of Pantera, one Mr. Rex Brown has the best track record for non-Panteric projects. He wasn’t in Damageplan, a mediocre band we all pretend didn’t exist in the name of not doing any harm to Dime’s legacy; he’s obviously not in Hellyeah, who I still can’t quite believe are a real band and not some elaborate prank; Pantera and Down are only ones of Phil Anselmo’s 1,384 bands that Brown was in. Yeah, Rebel Meets Rebel was way too redneck for this Noo Yawk Jew, but at least they didn’t have a song called “Alcohaulin’ Ass.” So three cheers of Rex.

Of course, now Rex has another new band, Arms of the Sun, so I guess it’s possible he’s about to fuck-up his batting average. The three songs on AOTS’ MySpace page really generic bar-band stuff that sounds like it might have been cat nip for the guy who signed Candlebox fifteen years ago, but again. “Alcohaulin’ fucking Ass.” So Rex gets to keep his title belt… for now.

Check out Arms of the Sun here, then tell me why I’m being too hard on Damageplan/RMR/Hellyeah/Superjoint Ritual/whatever in the comments section.

-AR

Seeing as at MetalSucks we’re totally game to report on completely unsubstantiated rumors and speculate about them (eat that, journalism!) we feel that this certain little tidbit of Internet chatter to percolate over the weekend is absolutely worth reporting on: it seems that some folks think a Refused reunion is on the horizon.

I first heard about this titillating nugget of tantalizing news via actual-journalist / Revolver Magazine head honcho Brandon Geist’s Tweet:

Could it be?… http://www.officialrefused.com/
7:20 AM Mar 27th via web

The link yielded the screenshot you see above. While many including yours truly were quick to retweet with jubilant cries of joy, @lessbrighteyes was quick to poop at our party by pointing out that the above message could very well just be about a reissue of The Shape of Punk to Come that Epitaph Records is releasing. While this certainly sounds plausible I’m not giving up on a reunion just yet; Metal Injection is reporting that “anonymous sources close to the band have been talking of a European Festival return” (though no source is linked), and, ya know, isn’t reuniting all the rage these days? Seeing as playing classic albums start to finish live is also all the rage these days it’d be pretty damn cool if Refused support the re-release of one of the most important hardcore albums ever with a reunion tour in which they played it in full. Just sayin’.

-VN

I’ve given Jesse Leach some shit in the past, mostly because I’m an asshole who just likes to bust balls. But he killed it while playing with KSE a couple of weeks back, and I actually dig his latest band, The Empire Shall Fall. So, y’know. Hugs all around.

TESF just debuted their new video, “Lords of War,” on Noisecreep, and… well, if you’re a Leach fan, check it out. It’s simultaneously heavier and catchier than Seemless was, which is to say, it should appeal more to those of who hold Alive or Just Breathing in such high regard.

And I should have an interview with Jesse up later this week.

-AR

I got an e-mail from reader Will Kriss over the weekend, very politely asking me to check out a Swedish death metal band, Godhate. “I did a search on MetalSucks,” Will told me, “and you guys have NO articles related to them.” He also included a link to the band’s MySpace page.

And since so few of you actually take the time to do a search before e-mailing us (We’ve recently received e-mails asking why we’ve never written about Gojira or The Gathering of the Juggalos. Seriously.), or bother to include links, well, I was only too-happy to take Will’s advice and check out Godhate. And while I wasn’t exactly blown away, they’re not a bad band by any stretch of the imagination. Just super-generic. But if you like groups such as Vader and Dew-Scented, I imagine you’ll at least kinda-sorta dig this.

Listen to Godhate here, then let Will know what you think in the comments section below.

-AR

Remember Demiricous? They were (are?) this band from Indianapolis who sounded just like Slayer (and not the way every band sounds just like Slayer – I mean holy shit, did these dudes sound like Slayer)  if Slayer had a death metal vocalist instead of Tom Araya. They made two really good albums for Metal Blade, split with that label, announced that they were going to soldier on, and then promptly dropped off the face of the planet. Someone seems to have logged into their MySpace page as recently as this past Saturday, but there hasn’t been an update to the blog there since 2007, so I have no idea if this band is still active or not.

That’s a very long-winded way of telling you that I liked Demiricous, and when I saw Black Bubblegum from Brooklyn Vegan at the Flourishing show last Thursday night he told me that at least one former member of that outfit was now playing in a band called Coffinworm. “They’re serious,” BBG told me. And when BBG tells you a band is “serious,” you best pay attention.

So. I haven’t yet heard When All Became None, the new Coffinworm album that’s just been released on Profound Lore. But Kevin Stewart-Panko gives it a good review in the May issue of Decibel, BBG gives the band the thumbs-up, they’ve got a connection to Demiricous, and, oh yeah, “Start Saving for Your Funeral,” the song streaming on their MySpace page, is really good. (But it’s worth noting that it sounds nothing like Demiricous, in case that turns you on or off.) Which is a long-winded way of saying, I plan to listen to None sooner rather than later.

Here’s video Brooklyn Vegan got of the band playing SXSW earlier this month:

Coffinworm @ Hoeks Death Metal Pizza 3/18/10
Uploaded by brooklynvegan. – Explore more music videos.

-AR

Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman has found the latest masterpiece by Andy Rehfeldt, the same brilliant man who previously gave the world a smoove jazz version of Lamb of God’s “In Your Words” and a video of Louis Armstrong doing a death metal version of “What a Wonderful World.” As Bram notes, it not just the music, but the way Rehfeldt syncs that music with the video that makes these so entertaining.

Metal Insider says they’ll have an exclusive interview with Andy soon…

-AR

Because it’s going to be Scream. Which isn’t exactly the best album title I’ve ever heard, but it certainly beats the ever-lovin’ shit outta Soul Sucka.

Ozzy will apparently debut the semi-title track, “Let Me Hear You Scream,” on an upcoming episode of CBS’ CSI:NY, officially making CSI the most metal procedurals on a channel watched only by old people. Still, we’ll all clamor to hear it, because we’re all schmucks who think Gus G. may be able to save Ozzy from continuing to churn out mediocre records in the name of keeping Ozzfest alive.

No word on how pissed the Weinsteins are that Ozzy couldn’t wait a year to release his album so he could do a tie-in with their own attempts to revive a  way-past-its-due-date franchise.

On a final note, I’d just like to say that if they were going to use Ozzy stage banter as the basis for the title of the record/single – which I think is a brilliant idea – I wish they’d used the phrase “Let Me See Your Fucking Cigarette Lighters” instead, and then called the album Fucking Cigarette Lighters. Now THERE’S an Ozzy album title that would get my dick hard. They could even re-record “Zombie Stomp” as “Froggy Stomp!”

-AR

Past behavior is always the best indicator of future behavior. Which isn’t to say that people can’t change; they just usually don’t change, because, well, changing means taking a good, hard look in the mirror, admitting your faults to yourself, and then working on those faults. And most people just don’t wanna do that, ’cause, y’know. Even if the end result is good, the process kinda sucks.

Which is why I will never, ever again pay to see Stone Temple Pilots or any band featuring Scott Weiland, and why, even if I was offered a free ticket, I’d have to think long and hard about whether or not it was worth the schlep. Because watching that strung-out, off-key motherfucker try to take his coat off for five minutes is all the “performance art” I’ll never need this lifetime, thank you very much.

But Vince is a much bigger STP fan than I ever was, and I believe him that the band put on a killer show at SXSW a couple of weeks ago, and that Weiland “appeared sober.”

But I’m not convinced that Weiland actually is sober.

See, Blabbermouth had two interesting stories about Mr. Weiland over the weekend. In the first, he fell off the stage in Sioux City, Iowa:

Click to read more…

It might be tempting for some people to argue that if Black Sabbath hadn’t created metal, someone else would have; or, worse still, that Black Sabbath didn’t create metal, but just the natural end of a lineage that started with artists like Led Zep, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and their ilk. But that’s nonsense. There can be little doubt that Sabbath was certainly influenced by those predecessors, but the situation surrounding a key component of what Sabbath did – namely, tune their instruments way the fuck down to get that deep, evil sound we all know and love – was came about due to such a specific set of circumstances, it is entirely fair to argue that if Tony Iommi had never lost pieces of a few fingers in a factory accident, if he hadn’t had to tune his guitar way down just so he could bend the strings, well, metal as we know might not exist at all. Of course, there are other elements to Sabbath and metal that go beyond Iommi’s guitar sound, but would Ozzy Osbourne’s bleak lyrical world view or the band’s foreboding imagery really have fit with the world’s umpteenth Led Zep rip-off? Black Sabbath were ostensibly a happy accident – a mixture of right time/right place luck and a strong artistic vision. Without Sabbath, I might very well never have started writing for a site called MetalSucks under the name “Axl Rosenberg,” but, rather, for a site called Hip-HopisWhack under the name “Ice Berg.” To some extent or another, Black Sabbath is the reason we are all here.

Which is exactly why they have the top spot on this list.

Click to read more…

I’ll admit it: I still do check Blabbermouth from time to time. Hard not to. It’s kind of a metal institution at this point. Here and there, when they publish first week numbers, I’ll read those if they concern a band I like, or am curious about for whatever reason.

I’m not a Demon Hunter fan, but I was down at Audiohammer when Jason Suecof was mixing their record, and so I’m familiar with their new record by twist of circumstance. (Believe me, I would have never gone looking on my own.) Anyways, when their first week numbers were published, I decided to check on that, and goddamn guys. 14k approximately. That’s what Suicide Silence does. That’s what DevilDriver does. That’s what bands that tour all the time and are always in the media do. Good for them. Congrats dudes.

Here’s why I find this interesting. Demon Hunter has never really been a touring act. They’ve never really been in the media too much before the present.  So what explains them selling records on par with bands that are always out there hustling? To answer this, I thought about what some bands in the past have pulled off without too much touring.

Click to read more…

First of all, we owe White Wizzard t-shirts to two runners-up for our funny photo caption contest from two weeks ago. HolyShitBalls and KB are the lucky recipients; nice work, dudes. As for last week’s contest, here are the three winners of Revolver Magazine’s Tattoo issue:

• TallNerdGuy: “The only bike he’ll ride is one that features Dimmu Bor-”gears.”"
• WowWee!: “May the Pentagram give me God’s Speed at the Devil’s Blunders.”
• Lordassenfroth: “this gives new meaning to the phrase “hell on wheels”"

This week we’ve got one copy of the God of War III video game to give away. No, not the kick-ass soundtrack which features brand new tracks from Opeth, Dream Theater, Killswitch Engage, Trivium and others… (though you can order that here) but the actual game for PS3. Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, courtesy of Rob V., and remember to comment with (or include in your comment) a real email address so we can contact the winner.

Part of being on the road is the constant struggle to find a suitable place to take a dump. Even when you’re in a bus with a bathroom, as we were, there’s a strict no-pooping policy. Trust me, you do NOT want to be on a bus where a smelly dude who’s been on the road for days or weeks ingesting nothing but fast food and booze has let it all out of their system… X6. You respect your fellow travelers even in dire situations and they respect you — NO pooping on the bus, no exceptions. So what does that leave, then? Well, there are always gas station and fast food joint bathrooms which vary in degrees of cleanliness and comfort. If you’re lucky you can pinch a loaf when you’re stopping at a friend’s house somewhere (pity that poor fool, though). But when it comes to comfortable places to poop nothing beats a Walmart — they’re open 24/7, the stalls are big and no one cares. Plus, you can usually park a bus in the back of a Walmart parking lot and sleep there over night meaning you can poop when you arrive at night AND in the morning before you leave. Gold mine!

One goal of this road trip was to take advantage of all the quintessential experiences each city had to offer. What more quintessential experience is there than getting BBQ in Memphis? That one’s a no-brainer… but what exactly has Little Rock, AR got to offer? Walmart. Lots of ‘em. The company is based there. The only way our experience in Little Rock could’ve been any more quintessential was if we’d gotten blowjobs from Bill Clinton.

But first, Memphis…

Click to read more…

One of the most prolific artists in the metal scene is Mark Riddick. He has created a tremendous amount of art for such bands as Beneath the Massacre, The Black Dahlia Murder, Gravehill, Internal Bleeding, and hundreds of others. He could quite possibly be the Norman Rockwell of zombie art. His lavish black and white illustrations take the viewer to a twisted land of corpses, demons and intestines. But what his work does not tell you is that he is a really nice guy, who is very supportive of other artists and a devoted family man. This interview was conducted via email, and I am astounded that he got back to me so fast, especially after hearing the rundown of an average day for Riddick.

Click to read more…

While we’ve been slowly unveiling a list of “Ten Great Bands that Inadvertently Ruined Metal,” Roadrunner has been counting down a little list of their own: the “Ten Greatest Album Covers” in the label’s history. As is the always the case with these silly lists, some of the choices seem dubious/random – apparently photographing lesbians and tinting that photo green is the greatest possible artistic statement a cover designer could possibly make. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not still kinda fun to argue over.

But the best part might actually be that the list put it into the head of that wild and crazy guy, Bram Teitelman, to do his own list of “RoadRunner’s Five Worst Covers of All Time” for Metal Insider – in this case, “cover” being a cover song, not an album cover. I don’t wanna give too much away because Bram’s writing is always jaunty and entertaining, but I will say this:

Awful. Simply awful.

Read the rest of the list at Metal Insider.

-AR

I’m really digging this Australian band Ne Obliviscaris today. They combine Pacific Northwest-style black metal with what I can best describe as classical (not classic) metal. If you don’t immediately know what I mean by classical metal then this music probably isn’t for you, but if you’re a music nerd like I am and you enjoy complex arrangements and orchestrations that evoke the work of some of the best composers Classical period composers to grace the earth, I highly recommend you give Ne Obliviscaris a shot. I especially like the bass and violin work in the second half of the 12-minute long epic “Tapestry;” that section really reminds me of the excellent NYC band Hung…. and if you don’t know about those guys you’re doing yourself a severe disservice.

-VN

Thanks: Mike Petrasek

I can’t quite believe this is real; it looks like the kind of crappy promo vid unsigned and never-will-be-signed bands send us on a near-daily basis, but this video is actually for Order of Ennead, which features Deicide drummer Steve Asheim, and will be releasing their second album, An Examination of Being, in the spring via Earache.

And the real bitch of it is that the song, “The Concept of Our Extinction,” is actually pretty rockin’…

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

I saw the video “Revelation 666,” from Necrophobic’s Death to All, on Invisible Oranges yesterday. Cosmo Lee loves this band, and the album ranked very high on our own Satan Rosenbloom’s 2009 year-end list, so I’m not calling into question the quality of the music. (At all. You just hafta listen to a few seconds to know that the song is a scorcher.) And even Cosmo admits that the clips is “a fairly standard performance video.”

But Cosmo makes a really bold claim, too, one that I imagine will cause the sort of flame-war we live for here at MetalSucks. He says that the song has “one of the sweetest outros ever.” (I assume he’s talking about the section that starts at roughly the 4:17 mark.) And it’s certainly epic  – like, David Lean directing an Insomnium music video in 70mm epic – but one of the sweetest outros ever? Hm… I’m not sure.

So check out the video, and then agree/disagree with Cosmo in our comments section (or his). And, of course, we’d love to your suggestions for “the sweetest outros ever.” Include YouTube links or whatever whenever possible, please!

-AR

Silent Civilian have released a new video, for the song “The Last One Standing,” and, uh, wow. That not-so-subtle mix of jingoism and terrible special effects just really hits the spot for me, y’know? Like, I always thought “Gee, those recruitment ads for the marines would be sooooo much hotter if they had generic metalcore instead of Three Doors Down,” and now the band has granted my wish! Hoo-rah! I’m off to enlist.

Oh well. While Vince categorized the song as “a little bit meh” when we first heard it last year, I’d argue that it is, at least,  better than “Atonement,” the new song the band released earlier this month. The guitar solos are pretty epic, anyways.

Silent Civilian’s new album, Ghost Stories, comes out May 18 on Mediaskare/Century, and I’ve now officially lost all interest.

-AR

Photo by Alyssa Scheinson

Last night I got to check out NYC death-grind trio Flourishing when they played a record release show for their new EP, A Momentary Sense of the Immediate World. A sort-of-but-not-really new project from Wetnurse project guitarist Garett Bussanick (who also handles vocals here), Flourishing went on pretty early and the crowd in the always-sweaty basement of Cakeshop was much smaller than a band this good deserves, but they still ripped.

Flourishing’s music is like the aural equivalent of being repeatedly penetrated with quick, short stabs from a dull, rusty, knife. There’s a constant contrast between that which is sharply in-focus and that which is painfully out-of-focus, like a series of fast camera-racks. One minute the band comes on like a dull, throbbing headache, and then suddenly they’re a mad scientist with an eyedropper full of acid. In other words, Flourishing are evil, but so is every other band like them; it’s the bi-polar manner in which they’re evil that makes them interesting. Tracks like “Fixture” and “Watching Sparrows” are dirty and polished at the same time. It’s a tricky balancing act, but these guys make it seem effortless. No wonder their MySpace page lists bands as disparate as Immolation, Godflesh and Deadguy as influences.

And, on a much simpler level, they’ve just managed to write some great fucking songs. A Momentary Sense of the Immediate World is only five tracks totaling less than seventeen minutes of music, but the strength of the song craft will instill within you a temptation to just leave it on repeat for multiple spins.

You really should check this band out. A Momentary Sense of the Immediate World comes out this Tuesday, March 30 on The Path Less Traveled Records. Crustcake has an interview with Bussanick, and a FREE mp3 download of “Watching Sparrows.” And for the third time in this one article, here’s a link to Flourishing’s MySpace page.

-AR

For a limited time only, Soulfly are giving away a free mp3 of a new song, “Rise of the Fallen.” I found out via a tweet from Roadrunner, so I didn’t have any of the usual details of the track that come with a press release. And so when it started playing, I was all, “Gee, that’s not Max Cavalera singing. But the voice is so familiar. Is that Greg Puciato? It is Greg Puciato!” I’d like to think I would have recognized his voice even if I hadn’t been cranking Option Paralysis all week.

ANYWAY, “Rise” sounds pretty much like Puciato singing over a Soulfly song, which is to say that it sounds very much like Puciato singing over a Roots-era Sepultura song.  And while it’s kinda bizarre to Puciato singing on such a nu-metalish tune, his vocal performance really is top notch; I especially like the section that begins at the 2:41 mark. That’s some epic mosh-pit shit, dude.

Download the song here. It comes off of the new Soulfly album, Omen, which will be released May 25 on Roadrunner.

-AR