While we have no intention of going to see Kittie play with a bunch of clowns and The Insane Clown Posse, I suspect we will find our way to Soilwork’s next U.S. tour, which will be with Death Angel and feature support from Augury, Mutiny Within, and Swashbuckle. We haven’t gotten to check out the band since Peter Wichers re-joined, and, truth be told, it didn’t feel quite right without The Wichmeister.

And I promise never to refer to him as “The Wichmeister” again.

Dates after the jump!

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I’m not much of a fan of Municipal Waste, though I respect what they do and totally understand why so many people dig their scuzzy brand of revival thrash metal. It’s sometimes easy to overlook that hardcore punk and thrash have intertwined histories, with many of the former genre’s pioneers subsequently becoming thrash metallers. D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, and even the Cro-Mags have made a mark on both styles. So when I learned that Municipal Waste frontman Tony Foresta was also in a hardcore band, I just had to learn more.

They’re called No Friends, and if your love of hardcore begins and ends in the 1980s, then this one’s for you. Foresta handles lead vocals for the group, which also features dudes from New Mexican Disaster Squad. The four songs streaming at their MySpace page recall Circle Jerks, Dag Nasty, Government Issue, and a less dorky Descendents. You can download a free MP3 of “Never Ending Fight” if that sounds like something up your alley. While you’re at it, pick up a copy of their self-titled debut through their record label here. It’s just $7 for the CD version and $8 for the vinyl LP (which comes with a digital download card). Oh, and next month they’re hitting the road for some East Coast shows. Check out those dates below.

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Here’s some fan-filmed footage of Whitechapel’s latest exercise in having three guitarists all play the same part. It’s called “The Darkest Day of Man,” and presumably will be on the band’s new album, which should be out sometime this summer on Metal Blade.

In all seriousness: I don’t really dislike this band as much as Vince does, but their appeal is a little lost on me – especially after I saw them live earlier this year. But there were a lot of people in the crowd and those people seemed to frickin’ LOVE this band, so…

-AR

[via The PRP]

Let’s just get right to it: Kittie are going to be doing support for Insane Clown Posse on that group’s upcoming U.S. tour. Other artists on the bill will include Kottonmouth Kings, Coolio, and Necro, who you may remember as the “death rapper” (Still not sure what the fuck that means – in the pre-bling days all rappers talked about death a lot, so…) who dropped off of Sounds of the Underground in 2007 after getting heckled on a daily basis. (When we saw the tour, he tried to lead the crowd in a chant of “FUCK YOU FAT FAGGOT” against one such heckler. So Necro is intelligent and charming.)

This is the company Kittie will keep: a bunch of lame white-boy rappers, and Coolio.

Jesus H. Christ. Has it really come to this, ladies? I mean, I don’t really have anything against Coolio besides his own ridiculousness (there’s no joke I could write about him that would be funnier than just looking at the dude), but Necro strikes me as a true cretin (that “fat faggot” chant really rubbed me the wrong way, in case you can’t tell), and I gotta say, I have a retarded cousin, and calling ICP or Kottonmouth Kings “retarded” is a true insult to my mentally challenged kin. I may not like Kittie’s music, but they’re better than this.

-AR

As we first discussed more than a month ago, there’s been a rumor floating around that original Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach was going to perform with the band for the NY shows of their current tour; and, lo and behold, last night Leach did indeed show up to do five Alive or Just Breathing-era tracks (“My Last Serenade,” “Numbered Days,” “Self Revolution,” “Vida Infra,” “Temple from the Within) with the group. And, as if that wasn’t enough, three more (“Prelude,” “Life to Lifeless” and “Fixation on the Darkness”) for the encore – this time while the band reverted to its original line-up, with Adam D. playing drums and everything. Oh boy oh boy. Will Hawkins Photography has photos from the show; meanwhile, The PRP posted the de rigeur cell cam footage, which you can check out below:

SMN has now wondered aloud, “Does this mean that the former frontman will be staking his claim for a return to the fold?” And while I continue to hear people bandy that rumor about, especially in light of the mysterious and potentially scandalous circumstances under which Howard Jones seems to sitting out this tour. I don’t think it’s time to get too excited about that possibility just yet (if the idea of Leach re-joining the band even excites you in the first place), but I guess we’ll see what happens.

KSE play another show here in NY tonight, which I’m supposed to attend. So I may or may not have a first-hand report for you on Monday. If anyone went to last night’s gig, please let me know what time KSE took the stage. I need to sit through a set by The Devil Wears Prada like I need my left nut to fall off.

-AR

There are a handful of bands that I can say changed my fucking life. Nine Inch Nails are one such band. As a prematurely jaded adolescent, I’d been introduced to the violent industrial metal of the Broken EP and was intrigued. I bought the CD-single for “March Of The Pigs” the week it came out, and played it on repeat on my all-in-one stereo as well as in my Discman. The Downward Spiral hit stores the following month, and I eagerly snatched it up. Then fascinated with serial killers and true crime legends like Charles Manson, reports that the album was recorded in Sharon Tate’s house immediately grabbed me. But the music was more than mere gimmickry. I heard sounds I’d never encountered before, abrasive metal that didn’t come across as chauvinistic or boneheaded. Poring over Trent Reznor’s lyrics with the type of passionate attention only a teenager can, I connected with his rage, depression, and lust. Moreso than any other band before, I felt that I had found in Nine Inch Nails a band that I could get behind in a big way. Little did I know that their imminent success would spawn some of the most pathetic imitators, wannabes, and clowns ever to “grace” hard rock and metal with their presence.

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Congrats to kickoutthejamsman and The Overmatt, winners of the super awesome White Wizzard jeanjacket prize pack! The winning entries:

• kickoutthejamsman: “And the party for MetalSucks bloggers went pretty much as expected.”
• The Overmatt: “The Cazares family reunion always features the annual jam session.”

This week we’re giving away three copies of Revolver Magazine’s latest Tattoo Issue which features stories on the inked skin of Slayer, Ozzy, Henry Rollins, Slipknot, Guns N’ Roses and more in addition to Revolver’s usual music coverage. Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo [sent in by Voltron Futura]. Make sure to include your email address in the email field, or write it into the comment if you’re using Facebook Connect to access our site.

Vince comes home Sunday! Next week he should be blogging regularly again. (Anything you’ve read from his this week was written in advance of his trip.) Hoo-ray!

While you continue to pine for his return, The Number of the Blog has now posted part two of their interview with the man, the legend, the beard, Vince Neilstein. And by the way, the interview was conducted by deseee, and not, as I mistakenly said earlier this week, by groverXIII. Sorry, Number of the Bloggers.

While you’re there, you can suggest a question to ask moi for a future interview with the same site. I’m sure you can guys can think of some absolutely fucktarded shit to ask me, can’tcha?

-AR

“Bark at the Moon” is to Shadows Fall as “Holy Diver” is to Killswitch Engage. They’re both covers of classic solo tracks by former Sabbath vocalists, and both songs were released in their original incarnation in 1983. (The connection between the two songs gets even weirder if you consider that Vinny Appice played drums on “Diver,” while his brother, Carmine, appears in the original “Moon” video even though he didn’t play on the recording.) And just as I imagine that it’ll be some time before KSE ever play another set without doing “Diver,” so it seems that “Moon” is now a staple of the Shads’ live show.

The band recently played the song in Toronto, with a special guest appearance from Alex Skolnick on guitars. The influence of Testament on Shadows Fall has always seemed pretty clear, so it’s cool to watch them get to jam with one of their heroes. Bonus: you can imagine an alternate world where Skolnick left Testament in 1992 and became Ozzy’s guitar player. It would have been post-No More Tears, the last truly worthwhile Ozzy album; Skolnick might have saved us from another seventeen years of sub-par material and guitar squeals!

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

You would think that being the singer for Poison would embarrassing enough. Not for Bret Michaels. He wants people to remember him when he dies, damn it. He is going to be the single most embarrassing human being in the history of rock music if it kills him. That’s why he’s piled a sex tape, multiple I.Q.-reducing reality shows, a major embarrassment at a televised award show, and a song admitting his pedophilic tendencies to his resumé. We’ve seen what the cat dragged in, and it’s name is Bret Michaels.

Now Blabbermouth just posted this interview Bret did with… The Weather Channel. THE FUCKING WEATHER CHANNEL. Bret admits to being “a weather geek” because he tours a lot and – here’s some real insight for ya – “each city brings its own set of different weather.” (You mean the weather in Miami and the weather in Detroit aren’t exactly the same at all times?!? EGADS!!!) Then the interviewer asks him some real searing questions, like “What is the craziest weather you’ve come across?” Seriously, this shit is boring it makes our interview with the kid from Black Tide look like Frost/Nixon. Bret Michaels is such a massive loser that if heavy metal were a high school, there can be little doubt that he’d spend a lot of time in his locker.

By the way: am I imagining it, or at the very beginning of this video does Bret glance at the nice ladies’ boobs? Not that we haven’t all done that from time to time to time to time to time to time, but not while we’re being on television. Sheesh. You almost think he’s gonna say “Awhasa goin’ on?” and then offer her a backstage pass.

-AR

Are inter-continental bands the new thing?

Last month I wrote about RXYZYXR, a Swedish band using the power of the Internet to search for a vocalist regardless of location. Just the other day reader Owen W. emailed us to tell us about Slice the Cake, a really talented progressive death metal band whose members span three two continents and three countries. To my knowledge the band hasn’t ever played together in the same room, and even if they wanted to they couldn’t; Jonas Johansson (Sweden) handles guitars, bass and drums on the admittedly awesome-sounding recordings that he produced, so the band hasn’t even got a full lineup in place. But this “band” is undoubtedly quite good, at least on record. Slice the Cake are absolutely worth paying attention to; please check them out.

With stories like this and myriad one-man bedroom projects releasing quality material these days, it begs the question… when is a band actually a band? If a group of guys (or girls) calling themselves a band have never actually played together in the same room are they accurate in calling themselves a band? Should a band who’s never played a note in front of an audience be taken seriously?

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After Celtic Frost’s Collapse, Tom Gabriel Fischer Hopes for a Drama-Free Third Act

As the visionary and front man of Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and now Triptykon, Thomas Gabriel Fischer – the artist formerly known as Tom G. Warrior – has had his ups and downs. But the hipsters never got their dirty hands on him.

Emo kids do not wear ironic Celtic Frost shirts. Rivers Cuomo hasn’t name-checked the band in a smash single. After 23 years, the avant-garde metal band was an still an underground phenomenon – even though it was on a serious upswing — when they imploded after 2006’s Monotheist. That critically hailed album continued Fischer’s long tradition of mixing blacker-than-midnight extreme metal with unpredictable, sophisticated elements, like the all-strings instrumental “Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale).”

Celtic Frost went out on top, no doubt. It might be the most respected iconic metal band from the ‘80s. It’s definitely not the most popular act — but unlike Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth, the group doesn’t have a countless contingent of full-time haters.

Granted, Frost made some missteps, real and perceived. 1988’s Cold Lake, the band’s major-label debut, is the heaviest hair-metal album ever recorded. Some fans flinched at experiments from the tail end of the decade, like a French spoken-word piece (“Tristesses de la Lune”), a rap interlude (“Human II”), and a techno track (“One in Our Pride”). But the seminal band helped make corpse paint and symphonic metal part of the extreme-music playbook. They ripped shit up, too, but it drove Fischer nuts when writers tried to classify Frost as part of the thrash movement.

Celtic Frost has few critics more frank than Fischer himself. The singer-guitarist wrote most of the lyrics and music, and was the only member of the band to appear on every release. He spent over three years making sure Monotheist was a worthy continuation of the Celtic Frost legacy. The tour should have been a victory lap, but it turned into a death march. Simmering tensions between Fischer and cofounder-bassist Martin Eric Ain came to a head on the road, and Warrior quit his own band in April 2008.

“I once made the mistake to continue Celtic Frost without Martin,” Fischer recently explained on the Triptykon forum. “It wasn’t Celtic Frost, in spite of the name, and the results were stunningly pitiful (to put it nicely). I will not repeat that mistake…. In 2005, Martin and I also signed an agreement which prohibits either one of us to continue as Celtic Frost without the other one.”

In short order, Fischer announced the formation of Triptykon, which he promised would “sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible.” Tracks from the band’s debut have been emerging over the last few month, and Eparistera Daimones will arrive in the States this Tuesday, March 23. Fischer and company make good on his promise.

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Last weekend I was lucky enough to be back in NYC for my spring break (even though the first week of March is clearly not spring), and was able to catch the Kreator, Voivod, Nachmystium, Evile, and Lazarus A.D. show. Considering that it had been a little while since I have been pushed up against someone bigger and sweatier than I am, I was pretty geeked.

While I was at the show it dawned on me that, unlike in most sports, there aren’t statistics that tell you how well a band performed. Soccer has the a similar problem, which they solve by giving each player a 1 – 10 ranking based on their overall performance. So in honor of the upcoming world cup and my brother, who both despises metal and introduced me to soccer, I give you the band ratings for the Kreator show in soccer style.

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MetalSucks Maniac Dan Wolfson e-mailed us earlier this week to recommend the Canadian tech-death band Abriosis, and after I checked them out to see if they were any good – and they are, indeed, pretty good – I realized that I had no idea what the hell “abriosis” means, and decided to look it up. Guess what? The word is not in my Merriam Webster. Googling the word just brings up endless pages about the band, and there’s no explanation of its meaning on their MySpace page, either. So I’m assuming it’s a nonsense word. But it certainly sounds cool.

And, like I said, so does the band. If you like Origin, Cephalic Carnage, etc., it’s hard for me to imagine you won’t dig these guys. Check ‘em out here.

-AR

That Ryan Adams likes metal isn’t news. As you can see/hear in the above video, dude even recorded a cover of my favorite Alice in Chains song once (which, admittedly, is not AIC’s most metal song, but still, I don’t see The Arcade Fire doing it). Still, I was pretty surprised to read on Metal Injection that he’s released the following statement via his official website:

“We’re going to begin pressing ORION — my most legit METAL record — on vinyl next week… P.S. Not a single B.C. Rich was hurt in the making of this record.”

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Thank you, Pick-Axe Bobby!

Warning: there are some brief boob shots… so NSFW.

-VN

I’d never heard of Suicide War before this morning, when MS tipster supreme Saul Hudson alerted me to a posting on their MySpace page announcing that Kirk Windstein has joined the band:

“Yes!! It is true…. Kirk will be doing vocal duties along side Ben in SUICIDE WAR. He will also be filling the bass duties, if and when SUICIDE WAR plans to do some shows. I know some people are expecting his signature Crowbar style vocals, but he has approached this project from a completely different angle.”

Kirk Windstein’s involvement with any project is a big deal – but in case you’re wondering, the “Ben” they’re referring to in the above statement is Ben Falgoust. As in, “The dude from Goatwhore and Soilent Green.” As in, “AWESOME!” Black Label Society drummer Craig Nunenmacher (who also used to play with Windstein’s Crowbar) is also in the band, which I find a little less exciting, but whatever. The group also sports two members of Valume Nob (that’s a not a typo, by the way), an outfit I’m not really familiar with.

But who cares? Any band that has Falgoust and Windstein is, at the very least, going to be worth paying attention to. More news as we get it. In the meantime, you can check out some instrumental demos here.

-AR

Actually, there is no doubt that a preview of another new Levi/Werstler track has been posted. I just wanted to see how many times in a row we could phrase a headline as a question. Sorry.

ANYWAY, as I said, Levi/Werstler HAVE posted another preview of another new track, this one called “Casting The Molten Sea.” An like the other previews we’ve heard, it sounds pretty sweet – but it’s too short a taste! WE WANT MORE, GOD DAMN YOU!

Oh well. More we shall have on 4/20, when Levi/Werstler’s debut album, Avalanche of Worms, comes out on Magna Carta. In case you’re the one person who doesn’t know, the album also features drums by Cynic’s Sean Reinert, which is just that much more of a reason to get excited for the release. Pre-order that shit here.

-AR

As this blog’s unofficial grunge rock correspondent, I have Internet filters in place to catch for news related to the dinosaurs of that otherwise dormant subgenre. So when my tricked-out Commodore 64 started billowing black smoke, I knew that something big was happening in the world of flannel metal–well, big to the sense of old, weepy, nostalgic farts like me. So what caused this mechanical meltdown of FAIL-like proportions? Was it news that Butch Vig (producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind) would be producing the new Foo Fighters record? Hardly. As it turns out, Dave Grohl’s accompanying boast that this would be the Foos’ “heaviest album yet” overloaded my computer’s custom-made Bullshit Detector. I mean, c’mon!

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Here’s the head-scratcher of the day: Ill Nino have signed with Victory Records. Not just for the release of their next album, either – but for merchandising and publishing, too.

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