The musical fate of former Oceano guitarist Andrew Mikhail has at last been revealed! After parting ways with the Chicago-area deathcore noisemakers earlier this year, he’s gone on to sunnier climes with Miami’s metalcore maniacs Thick As Blood. He replaces second guitarist Leonardo “Lenny” Lombardo mere weeks before the band gear up for the North American “Wrath Of Sanity” tour opening for hardcore heavies Earth Crisis and First Blood. It’s a plum job for Mikhail, to say the least, and on behalf of our site I wish him all the best with the group.

If you’re unfamiliar with Thick As Blood, check out the video for “Raising Hell” from their 2009 Eulogy Recordings album Embrace below. Tour dates (including one at the New England Metal/Hardcore Festival) are down there too.

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It might only be the beginning of 2010, but artist and Monstrosity vocalist Mike Hrubovcak is already stoked to know that the metal-minded artwork he’s done for the likes of Decrepit Birth, Braindrill, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Aurora Borealis, and Azure Emote (another criminally underrated, Hrubovcak-fronted band) will be featured in an upcoming Hollywood production with plenty of star power to go around.

Dream House, a Universal/Morgan Creek film helmed by Jim Sheridan and starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts, will hit theaters in 2011 and has a plot that’s fitting enough for Hrubovcak’s artwork: a family (Weisz and Craig) move into a new home to find out about a brutal slaying there earlier in its history, while the neighbor (Watts) is the only person able to lend any hint that the husband who allegedly killed his wife and children there may not be dead. Not only is it great exposure for Hrubovcak — who works as a graphic designer for an “adult novelty” company by day, as an artist using oil, airbrush, and photo manipulation for some of metal’s most brutal bands (with cover art to match) by night, and still finds time to participate in Monstrosity, Vile, and a host of other projects — but it’s great for metal. Where else can metalheads hope to see artwork from gruesome metal bands at the movies?

Hrubovcak’s VisualDarkness website has a ton of samples of his past works in his portfolio to check out, but for the uninitiated, the man’s done artwork for bands like Chainsaw Dissection, Fecal God, and XXX Maniak – so you should pretty much know what to expect.

Hrubovcak took some time to talk with MetalSucks about an upcoming showcasing of some of his works, how he deals with having so much on his plate, and zombies. Oh, come on, you knew that was coming.

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OH, Bloodbath. How your sweet, melodious death metal titillates my eardrums so. Your fantastic album The Fathomless Mastery ranked #10 on Axl’s 2008 year-end list. When will you return to grace us with more old-school style death metal beatdowns? Soon, please; soon.

Thank you, MS reader Stephen Rafferty, for reminding me of this great band and their brutally low-budget and brutally death metal video for “Hades Rising,” (which yes, I know, we’ve posted before). Says Stephen, “I’m guessing the budget for this was about $100 and most of that was for beer. I mean, the band footage looks like it was shot by a cable access show in Idaho.”

-VN

It’s a little known fact that MetalSucks co-jefe Vince Neilstein (pictured here with partner Axl Rosenberg) is a power-mad tyrant who controls the MS writer corps with manipulation and implicit threats of violence. Yeah, he seems like a cool guy, really, but would you believe that he can intercept my brainwaves via mobile phone? Or that I’m certain he is responsible for the invisible helicopter that’s been following me since St. Patty’s? Oh, you think I’m crazy? And paranoid? So, okay, I see you’d have me believe it’s just coincidence that my favorite toothpaste went on sale the day after I bought a tube. Wake the fuck up, dude. It’s all Neilstein. He’s everywhere and nowhere, an evil puppet master always wanting more, more, MORE from the once-mighty writers whom he has enslaved. Cross him and pay the price.

Well, mind control must be draining Neilstein’s lifeforce lately because the usual neighborhood dogs haven’t accosted me and barked his commands since last month, when an unleashed great dane warned me to “rop riting arout rAerosmith ror relse.” No, now he’s keeping it simple, all casually mentioning The Apex Theory in MetalSucks last week as though he had no knowledge of my secret, shameful plans to revive print discussion of that very band on this very site. Sure, an unsuspecting reader will see his Apex piece as an innocent bit of pithy writing, oblivious to the coded messages within that order us MS underlings to forgo rest and hygiene to write endlessly about stuff like the impact of Steve Vai-era Whitesnake and The Top 10 Worst Metal Bands Whose Cumulative Age is 95. How can you all be so blind?

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Reader Isaac Schwarz sent in the below video for the band Milking the Goatmachine, who Schwarz says “reportedly mixes brutal death metal, grindcore and surf rock, although I can’t see too much of the inclusion of the latter (unfortunately).” The band employs the single stupidest gimmick I’ve encountered this year, and the music is fairly generic… but since Mr. Schwarz has basically been doing “Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week” for me this past month, I figured I owe him a solid, and thus ought to post this. So check it out and tell Isaac what you think in the comments section below…

-AR

… it might look something like this, posted by “theonlyone” on Flickr and brought to our attention by Metal Injection. Some of the line designations seems a bit arbitrary, but the intersections / main stations are accurate enough to make you go “fuck yes!” Click the image above to enlarge.

-VN

I saw The Runaways this weekend. (Yes, I’m aware they weren’t a metal band, but whatever.) For roughly half the movie, director Floria Sigismondi manages to steer clear of all the typical rock biopic clichés and make a movie that’s insightful and fun and interesting; then it devolves into a pretty typical anti-drug PSA and I kinda checked-out. Still, it’s probably one of the better movies playing this crap-filled season.

One thing that did kinda rub me the wrong way, though, was that to watch the film, you’d think that Cherie Currie and Joan Jett (respectively played by Twatlight alum Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart) were really the only members of The Runaways.

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The Rolling Stone review of Thursday night’s Stone Temple Pilots performance at SXSW hit the nail on the head: “When STP emerged onstage at the Austin Music Hall for a special performance at South By Southwest on Thursday, they delivered like journeyman rock stars with their shit together — tight and focused, and unburdened with the bitterness or bad memories from the recent past.” Unlike their reunion performance in New Jersey two summers ago when Weiland was embarrassingly off-key and so fucked up it took him an entire song to take off his coat, Weiland appeared sober and was on top his game, gyrating about and doing that rock n’ roll frontman thing he does so well. For Rob from Metal Injection and I, who had trudged out to a somewhat off-the-beaten-path venue with doubts of even being able to get into the show, it was a trip down memory lane; the band played hits from all five of their prior records and even tested out 4 new songs from their new self-titled album, set to come out on May 25th. The Core-heavy set finished with an encore of The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” which special guest Robbie Krieger on guitar, and an impassioned rendition of “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” from STP’s oft-overlooked third effort Tiny Music: Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop.

None of the four new songs the band played were that impressive, but we both agreed that the third, entitled “Bagman,” was the best of the bunch. Still, the band (or someone at their label) has decided that “Between the Lines” is going to be the first single. That song is available for streaming in full here (must be using Internet Explorer or Safari). It’s a stock DeLeo brothers rock song, distinctly STP but sounding like it could’ve been on 2001′s Shangri La Dee Da. For STP that’s not a good thing because that album was sub-par. It sounds like the DeLeos are trying to write songs “in the style of” STP rather than writing from the gut, which is unfortunate because they’re such insanely talented songwriters.

Check out the new song and tell us what you think of it.

-VN

Photo credit: Billboard

UPDATE: Reader Ben Alden tells me that Jesse joined the band once again at Northern Lights in Clifton Park, NY. If anyone catches him at any future shows, please let us know…

I saw this video on The PRP this morning, and it’s supposed to be from Leach’s first night performing with the band. If that’s true, then not only did everyone in the band, including Leach, wear the same exact clothes two nights in a row, but Adam D. used the same exact stage banter two nights in a row. Hmm…

First of all, thanks to everyone who let me know that Killswitch Engage were going on at 10 pm. I successfully managed to avoid The Devil Wears Prada. (Who, it’s worth mentioning, had a sign at their merch booth that read “Hoody.” They can’t even be bothered to correctly spell the name of that most basic of metal merch. Sheesh.) Yes, it meant also missing Dark Tranquillity, but that’s the fucked-up world in which we live.

ANYWAY, here are the two lessons to be gleaned from the evening’s KSE set:

1. If the speculation that Howard Jones may never return to the band is true, the group absolutely cannot hire Phil LaBonte as their new front man.
2. If the speculation that Howard Jones may never return to the band is true, the group absolutely must bring Jesse Leach back into the fold.

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I will always remember the first time I heard Killswitch Engage. I was fifteen years old watching MTV after school when I saw the music video for “The End of Heartache.” [Our intern is a baby!!! - Ed.] Hearing that combination of melodic singing and big thick riffs just hooked me to the sound. All I wanted was to hear more of it, and Killswitch was happy to oblige. Since its inception in 1999, the band has been one of the best in the business at writing top notch metalcore songs.

When you have the man-sized balls, like the ones that allow Jesse Leach and Howard Jones to sing and not sound like pussies, and mix that with some catchy Swedish-style riffs, you have a metal recipe for success. Alive or Just Breathing and The End of Heartache are landmark records that set the tone for metalcore.

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I’ve never really wondered this about myself, but I guess it’s a good question:why the fuck am I still involved with metal?

Honestly, I don’t have an answer besides to say that no matter what I do, I’m always drawn to it. It’s almost akin to a sexual preference. You don’t choose it. It is what it is. People choose their sexual preference as much as they choose their fetishes, which is not at all. Well, I think tastes in music and art follow suit. Sure, you get college lesbians as much as you get people who take on the musical tastes of their significant others or social circle, but at the end of the day, I don’t think you can really choose what your tastes are. I think there’s some sort of brain wiring involved which dictates our taste preferences, and I’m just not privy to the actual process.

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Reader Tom Kelly recommended Tokyo’s Versailles to us, and while they’re obviously not actually the heroes from The Dark Crystal, they do seem to be basing their look on this things – if those things dressed less like characters from a fantasy story and more like porcelain Victorian dolls. Seriously, look at these androgynous crack heads:

Of course, I’d be willing to ignore the whole Henry James-character-yet-somehow-even-less-butch look if the music were good, but the music is pretty ridiculous. Actually, it’s pretty “meh” so long as there are no vocals. But then it becomes completely ridiculous.

After the jump, check out a ten a half minute epic karaoke song gone awry. Then stand up in Tom’s defense or call him names in the comments section.

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Though a known entity in Europe, industrial metal act OOMPH! haven’t had much recognition here in the U.S., largely because their lyrics to date have pretty much been in German. After all, Americans can only tolerate one such group at a time, and that group (for some stupid reason) happens to be Rammstein. Still, the forthcoming OOMPH! album Truth Or Dare is intended “for more international success” apparently, as it features re-recorded English language versions of their songs. Good luck with that, fellas.

Though the ridiculous, cliche-riddled video above for “Ready Or Not (I’m Coming)” wont likely win the group many new fans, it will however teach you how to count to ten in German! Right before the chorus comes up, follow the creepy child’s voice and you’ll be on your way to having a toddler’s capacity to recite numbers to disinterested strangers during your next trip to Deutschland.

Who says we don’t teach you stuff around here?!

-GS

As managing editor of Decibel, Andrew Bonazelli makes your life better each and every month by helping to give you an outlet to discover awesome new music, learn what your favorite bands are up to, sound more intelligent to your friends by plagiarizing opinions that aren’t your own, and have something to read in the bathroom.

Now, with the release of his second short novel, A Regular – the first literary endeavor from Vitriol Records, the label founded by Justin Smith of Graf Orlock/Ghostlimb/Dangers fame — Bonazelli has enriched your life even further, giving you something smaller and more portable to read in the bathroom. Bonus: the book also happens to be really, really good. Here’s a description from the publisher:

“A morose barfly drowns his misguided affection for barely legal trollops in crossword puzzles and wells whiskey. But Murray Baron isn’t just a regular at Seattle dive haven the Kapital — he exists in the bar in perpetuity, days and weeks bleeding formlessly into one another, punctuated only by cock-crushingly banal conversation. When he finally literally unseats himself to save a friend’s life, the decision ignites a series of overlapping absurdist confrontations straight from the id of a 12-year-old. Murray’s fate seems to have been halved into either suffocating barstool inertia or outlandish hyperactive lunacy, and only a highly dubious psychic can help him revisit the pivotal adolescent event that put him in this very literal state of arrested development.”

And if that doesn’t entice you, please be aware that the story also features a robot called “The Eraditroid.”

Awesome. Simply awesome.

After the jump, get the author’s thoughts on why metalheads should care about his book, how Linkin Park and Dennis Cooper have inspired his writing, releasing a novel through a record label, and willfully farting in public. (It’ll make sense if you read the book.) Plus, get a free excerpt from A Regular, so you can have a little taste of how great it is…

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Nowadays, classic metal seems all the rage — some cool kid told me this while walking to the market — and with MetalSucks doing the whole “Ten Great Bands That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Heavy Metal” thing, I got to thinking: how did metal become metal? We all know the Sabbath/Priest/Zeppelin “who started heavy metal” debate, but what about the in-betweeners that were probably “heavy metal” to my dad’s mom when Pops was just growing that ridiculous mustache and finding out that drinking beer was pretty cool once you got past that taste?

(Okay, full disclosure: I was drinking a beer and cranking UFO while reading the Van Halen story, so there.)

We’ve all known 3 Inches Of Blood for more than a few years at this point, but with the rise of bands like White Wizzard, Holy Grail, the criminally underrated Wolf, Gypsyhawk, RAM, and Cauldron waving the flag for the classic metal sound, I got to thinking about the bands that inspired them. These are groups where you could look back at them and say that they aren’t even definable as “metal” anymore.

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Loooong before affixing “-core” to a genre became an insult, ’90s SoCal punk rockers Strung Out were shredding it up on top of D-beats played faster than most tr00 drummers could blast if Dino Cazares was threatening to sit on them. Strung Out combined guitar acrobatics with Bad Religion-style anthemic punk before metalcore was even a word… shit, they did it before the Swedish bands that influenced metalcore even existed. Make no mistake about it, this band is punk rock, but they always found a way to let you know they were good at their instruments without bashing you over the head with it.

I was never a huge Strung Out fan so much as an appreciative admirer from afar. The only album of theirs I own is 2002′s An American Paradox, which I guess is one of their more “commercial” affairs. But MS reader Dustinwind reminded me of them by sending a cover of Ozzy’s “Bark at the Moon” from a b-sides and rarities collection released in 2009. The cover is distinctly punk in flavor and execution; it’s fast as fuck and really rough around the edges (in a good way). But it’s got a scorching guitar solo in the middle, and the fact that a punk band would cover a song like this at all demonstrates their obvious heavy metal influence.

-VN

Last week, Ozzy & Judas Priest were on trial for spreading suicide-inducing messages in their music.  How then were they able to escape liability for their actions? For simplicity, I’ll only refer to Ozzy’s trial. (For those of you interested in reading the full opinion, it can be found at McCollum v. CBS, Inc., 202 Cal. App. 3d 989. )

The court in Ozzy’s case rejected the McCollums’ claim on two different grounds.  First, the First Amendment provided an absolute bar to the claim.  Second, even if the McCollums could have gotten past the First Amendment bar, they could not have proven the foreseeability element of their negligence claim.

The First Amendment is a pretty amazing thing.  In case you forgot what it says, here it is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or  prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Rather than trying to have the government control what could and could not be said, they washed their hands of the whole mess by granting free speech to all.  Until that time, England had only protected freedom of speech for Parliamentary debates, and France had recently enacted legislation similar to our First Amendment.  I don’t know all of the history here, so if you do, please edify the rest of us in the comments.

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Music dork alert.

The headline just about sums it all up, no? The flamenco guitar player’s name is Benjamin Woods and you can read more about him and his band at Flametal.com. Dude can play.

Thanks to loyal Suckalo Alex S. for the link.

-VN

Reader Nathan Shaw has brought it to our attention that After the Burial – whose new, still-to-be-titled album Vince suspects is gonna fuck your face off later this year – have posted a second webisode about the making of their latest release. The most exciting parts of these videos is always the too-brief snippets of new music we get to hear, and this one is no different. We’ve still only heard a bootleg of one new song, “My Frailty,” so every little note counts, y’know?

You can watch the first behind-the-scenes webisode here. ATB’s new album will be out sometime in 2010 on Sumerian.

-AR

The fates have aligned in such a way that I’ve repeatedly missed opportunities to see Landmine Marathon live. That’s a bummer, because I really dug their last two albums, 2008′s Rusted Eyes Awake and the just recently released Sovereign Descent. I’m sure I’ll get to finally check ‘em out sooner or later, though.

While I wait for that glorious event, a YouTube user known as “dstanfie23″ has uploaded an entire concert that the band recently did in Scottsdale, AZ. The quality of the footage is just okay, but, hey, better than nuthin’!

More after the jump…

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