EVERYBODY SING WITH ME NOW: “I FEEL PRETTY, OH SO PRETTY, I FEEL PRETTY, AND WITTY, AND BRIIIIIIIGHT!”

No West Side Story fans in the house? No one? Okay, fuck it. Here’s what happened in the world of FUCKING METAL this week:

• We’re streaming Mantric’s The Descent in its entirety.
• We’re giving away new tracks by Nevermore and Heaven Shall Burn.
• We debuted a new video by Karma to Burn.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal meditated on unexplained healings, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa gave us a refresher on L O S T, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley thinks it’s okay to enjoy music by scumbags, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wants your help naming his new band, and Eyal from Daath and Levi/Werstler wants you to start ordering CDs online.
• We spoke to Mike Patton and Brian Posehn.
• Slayer and Megadeth are both doing full album performances on their American Carnage tour; Testament, not so much.
• Rose Funoral just can’t live down their past.

Next week brings so many interviews and exclusives it’ll make your head explode. See ya then!

-AR

Have you guys noticed how hard it is to find your favorite new metal releases in Best Buy, FYE, or any of the other big chains that are still remaining? Have you noticed that with few exceptions, bands that are used to posting respectable sales numbers are now selling fractions of what they used to? They still do great at shows. They still sell tons of merch. Everyone has their albums. Their fanbases don’t seem to be diminished. What the fuck is going on?

It’s a combination of things. Everyone knows that the market for purchasing CDs is way down. I don’t remember the exact figure, but believe me, it’s WAY down. This has caused many larger chains, like Tower, to become strictly online operations. I remember the days when going to Tower Records in any given city was always great, because they were huge and had amazing selection. Gone. Virgin is on the way out as well. The one in Paris is still kicking, but didn’t the mega store in New York City close down? [Both of the ones in NYC closed down last year. -Ed.]

With larger chains biting the dust, you can only imagine what this has done to mom and pop record stores. They’re dropping like flies. The ones that are still in business are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Right now, we’ve got a marketplace that has somewhere in the range of 40 – 50 % of the retail outlets it had only three years ago. So there’s a very limited amount of options for a CD to even be stocked. That’s one thing. Here’s the other thing. Big retailers are not interested in stocking metal releases unless there’s a guarantee of X amount of sales. For instance, if Best Buy can’t move 2,000 units of a given release in the first week they won’t stock it. This doesn’t affect the more successful bands, but what does this mean for bands that are still coming up? If Best Buy wont carry it, and most stores are R.I.P., then where do you go to get music by bands you love who aren’t necessarily huge?

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Tonight, some friends and I are getting really, really, really, really, really, insanely, stupidly, inappropriately high and going to see the re-make of A Nightmare on Elm Street at a theater that pretty much guarantees no one in the audience will give a shit about things like, say, being quiet during the movie. Of course, these days, it seems like very few people care about being quiet during the movie (or turning off their cell phone, or not texting, or leaving their baby at home, or whatever) – but slasher flicks are that rarest of genre, precisely because you want a noisy audience. The stories are always ridiculous and the kids are so annoying you’re pretty much rooting for the villain, so they work best as concert experiences – you want people shouting at the screen, screaming at moments appropriate or otherwise, and generally causing mayhem and chaos throughout the audience. I still can’t figure out what the fuck is going on in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, but I’ll never forget seeing it in theaters and the dude behind yelling out, in response to a couple’s decision not to use a condom, “MIGHT AS WELL, YOU’RE GONNA DIE ANYWAY!!!” And he was right, of course – the couple gets killed like ten seconds later.

Even with a raucous crowd, the movie might suck – and the soundtrack most certainly won’t feature anything as awesome as Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” which was the theme song for 1987′s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That’s still the best movie in the franchise, besides the 1984 original. And when I was a kid I always really liked this video, because instead of just intercutting random footage of the band with clips from the movie which had no relation to one another, they tried to cut the band into the movie to make one continuous story. Of course, the results are still cheesy as fuck, but c’mon… this song ROCKS.

And just for shits n’ giggles, after the jump is the video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was directed by Samuel Bayer, the man who helmed the Nightmare remake.

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On the one hand, this commercial for a company that makes swords doesn’t actually have anything to do with metal; on the other hand, I can’t think of anything much more metal than some fat middle-aged dudes fucking shit up with a sword while generic rock and nu-metal blasts in the background. Enjoy.

-AR

[via C.H.U.D.]

I mean, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, but still… I think the director did a nice job with it, no? It seems appropriately spooky, and it’s cut together with a better sense of rhythm than, say, Metallica’s “All Nightmare Long” clip.

Also, please note the continued awesomeness of videos that don’t actually feature the band.

“Ruination” is the title track JFAC’s latest release; it’s out now on Metal Blade.

-AR

Apparently taking their revenge for that smooth-jazz version of “In Your Words,” Lamb of God “have recorded a cover of the iconic Pearl & Dean theme, familiar to cinema-goers across the UK since the 1970s,” for Iron Man 2, according to the Roadrunner UK site. Since I’ve never been a cinema-goer across the UK (I actually did see a movie in London once, but I barely remember the experience), I’m not at all familiar with this theme, but when I sought it out on YouTube, well… I was surprised, to say the least.

I wonder what the heck a LOG version of this little ditty sounds like? And how it fits into Iron Man 2? And if it’s part of the movie at all, or only plays before the movie in UK cinemas (which is Limey for “theaters”)? Do you think US audiences will get a Lamb of God version of the old Loews theme song or something? I would KILL to hear Randy Blythe howl “THANK YOU FOR COMING TO LOEWS, SIT BACK AND RELAX, ENJOY THE SHOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!”

Iron Man 2 opens in the UK today, but we don’t get it here in the States for another week. So if any of our beloved readers from across the pond check it out, please drop us a line and let us know how the LOG cover plays into the film. Also, don’t forget that Lamb of God have a new song, “Hit the Wall,” in the Iron Man 2 video game, which hits stores this Tuesday, May 4.

-AR

[via The PRP]

The cover art for Heaven Shall Burn‘s brutal new album, Invictus, looks like that for a reason: shit’ll rip your heart out faster than Mola Ram. Century Media won’t release the latest offering from Germany’s heaviest export for another three weeks (possibly longer, depending on where you live), but they’re letting us give you a special sneak-peak right now in the form of a free mp3 of the song “Buried in Forgotten Grounds.” If you’re a Heaven Shall Burn fan, you already know what to expect – a jagged, rusty knife jab right to the fucking jugular. And if you’ve never experienced this band before, well, here’s your chance…

DOWNLOAD: Heaven Shall Burn, “Buried in Forgotten Grounds” – from the album Invictus

The European limited edition of Invictus will be available as a luxurious box-set, including a digipak that comes with alternative album art, a special cover of Therapy?’s “Nowhere,”  and a bonus-DVD of a special show that was filmed at the small and intimate club Szene in Vienna. Check out the opening live-clip from the DVD, “Forlorn Skies,” here.

And here are all the various release dates for Invictus:

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: Friday, May 21
Spain, Italy : Tuesday, May 25
Sweden, Finland, Hungary: Wednesday, May 26
Rest Of Europe: Monday, May 24
North America: Tuesday, June 8

Bram Teitelman at Metal Insider wrote a really interesting piece this morning, in which he wonders if Ozzfest is “burying the lead.” In case you’re not familiar with that journalism term, it’s basically when a company or publicist or whomever releases bad news at a time when they hope the fewest possible number of people will see it – e.g., sending out a press release announcing lower-than-expected quarterly earnings on a Friday night, when folks tend to be enjoying their weekends and not watching the news.

So with rumors abounding that the 2010 “comeback” edition of Ozzfest will have a less-than-stellar line-up, and practically every band Ozzfest could possibly want already booked on one of the many competing big summer package tour (Mayhem, American Carnage, Carnival of Madness, Summer Slaughter, The Cool Tour, etc.), Bram wonders if Ozzy, Sharon and company aren’t using that very trick for this evening’s tour announcement:

Click to read more…

Just the other day I lamented the fact that legendary stoner rockers Karma to Burn have a new album on the way and we hadn’t even mentioned it, and those of you who commented seemed genuinely excited to hear the news. Today we’ve got more reason to rejoice as you can watch the official video for “Waiting on the Western World” exclusively on MetalSucks, below. You can also listen to two more tracks from the new album on K2B’s MySpace page.

Appalachian Incantation comes out today in Europe and May 11th in the U.S. They’ll be supporting the album by touring with Year Long Disaster in May.

-VN

[This exclusive has now ended.]

Despite guitarist Bill Kelliher’s hospitalization, the show must go on: the band made their scheduled tour stop in Grand Rapids, MI last night, but Bill Kelliher did not perform. MS readers Matt Gaipa and Jared Lucas reported that both Peter Adams and John Baizley from Baroness each performed two songs with the band — “Oblivion” and “Divinations,” then “Quintessence” and “The Czar,” respectively — after which Mastodon finished out Crack the Skye without the assistance of a second guitar player. I’d forgotten that Mastodon are essentially a five-piece these days with a touring keyboard player in tow, so while I’m sure the keys helped fill some of the cracks I’m also sure that Kelliher’s presence was missed (especially during “Sleeping Giant,” if they played it… his delayed guitar intro is essential!). Regardless, both Matt and Jared said that Mastodon absolutely killed it.

Big ups to the boys in Baroness for learning those songs on such short notice and filling in. I wonder if, as the tour goes on and if Kelliher still isn’t able to rejoin the band, the members of Between the Buried and me and Valient Thorr will also chip in towards a full set? That’d be a pretty special thing to see, albeit coming at the cost of someone’s health (which makes it a lot less cool).

No word yet from the Mastodon camp or anyone connected to Bill. Get well soon, dude.

-VN

ADDENDUM from our own Antonin Skullia, Esq.:

There are only a little less than 12 hours left to win your chance to perform live with Nevermore by recording your own lyrics and vocal performance of “The Obsidian Conspiracy,” the title track of Nevermore’s forthcoming album. You’ve got until midnight EDT tonight to submit a video response to the above video on YouTube, so make these last hours count. Be sure to read the official rules, too.

As a little last minute bonus, today we’re making available the official album version of the song with the one and only Warrel Dane on vocals. Perhaps it’ll provide some of you suffering from a little case of writer’s block with some last minute inspiration. Confession: I’ve listened to so many of your entries already that the official version now sounds weird to me. Don’t worry: the entries will not be judged on how similar they are to — or how different from — the original. May the best Internet Dork win.

DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL VERSION HERE

OH MY FUCKING GOD, THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD BANDS PUTTING OUT NEW MUSIC IN THE COMING MONTHS. This is beyond an “embarrassment of riches;” we’re really just about at the saturation point of “an annoying over-abundance of good music.” How the fucking fuck is one person ever supposed to listen to all this shit and actually have time to digest it properly? If I cut eating, bathing, sleeping, grooming, reading, writing, watching TV, going to the movies, acknowledging my family and friends, feeding or in any way taking care of my dog, or doing anything that involves walking away from my stereo out of my schedule, I might have enough time to listen to everything. The amount of “you might dig this” e-mails from Vince alone are overwhelming, and that’s not counting all the shit labels, bands, and you guys send me. Hol-ee crap.

So, the latest advance album I have had absolutely no time to actually listen to is House with a Curse, the latest from Coliseum. But Stereogum is giving away a download of a new song off the album, “Blind in One Eye.” So maybe you guys can listen to it and tell me what I’m missing. In the meantime, I’m gonna go whine some more and then stab myself in the ears.

Download “Blind in One Eye” here. House with a Curse comes out June 22 on Temporary Residence.

-AR

Earlier this week we got to hang out with Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis at Duff’s bar in Brooklyn; that same night, Hellyeah were throwing their post-show party at that very bar. Reader “GoingDeaf?” said in the comments section, “I hope it’s not too awkward tonight considering you guys shit on Hell Yeah in a posting the other day…. :)” Which is fair enough.

But like I said, Hellyeah were gonna be there for a post-show after-party, and so by the time I’d left the bar – which, admittedly, was a little on the earlier side, as I was fighting a cold – Hellyeah still hadn’t shown up. What would I have done if they had? I have no idea. I have no reason to believe that any of the band’s members read this site – in fact, I’m always surprised when I find out that a well-known musician reads MetalSucks, whether it’s someone I admire (Devin Townsend) or, um, do not especially admire (hey, Dino). We’ve always said that no one should feel offended by anything we write on MetalSucks except for Fred Durst, because we’re really just having fun, what we say shouldn’t actually have any effect on how a musician handles his or her art, and you should have more important things on your mind anyway. But if it had turned out that Vinnie Paul does read MetalSucks, knows who I am, and hates me, well, I guess I couldn’t really blame him.

Which brings me to my next point: Vince and I had a conversation that very evening in which he posited that the members of Hellyeah are not insincere in their love of redneck rock. (He wasn’t defending their music, by the way – he was just making a point. As far as I can tell, Vince doesn’t like Hellyeah any more than I do.) And if you read my criticisms of the band, I never actually questioned their musical sincerity; I just think they suck. Obviously a lot of people really enjoy songs like “Alcohaulin’ Ass,” but I’m not one of them, and I want nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s ’cause I never slept with my daddy’s sister in the back of a pick-up truck, I dunno.

And on that note, here’s the cover art for Hellyeah’s new album, Stampede, which comes out July 13. If you enjoy this band more than I do, well, good for you!

-AR

Last week I discovered Sludge. Life has not been the same since.

Though a lot of their newer material doesn’t seem to be the in the same “Gojira played half-time” vein as the video I posted last week and the one above, it’s still damn good; sorta like a less Southern version of Goatwhore. I’m shocked so few people in the U.S. know about this amazing band.

If you like what you’re hearing above, check out the band’s Reverb Nation page; they’ve got their whole 2008 album Lava streaming.

-VN

A couple of weeks ago the newly-reunited Soundgarden played their first show in almost thirteen years in Seattle under the name “Nudedragons” (which, in case reading and thinking aren’t your kind of thing, is all the letters from “Soundgarden” re-arranged). Needless to say, a lot of bootleg footage from the gig surfaced within hours of its completion, but we never posted any ’cause… well, I really don’t know why. I can’t even think of a bullshit excuse. We just didn’t, okay?

But last night reader Keith Brown e-mailed me the below link to pro-shot footage of the concert with the simple message that you see in the headline (Keith advises that you imagine those words being said “in a fanboy squeak”). And he’s not wrong. Hey, I’d love to catch a Soundgarden reunion show, even if I question Cornell’s reasons for getting involved…

-AR

Last night Vince and I went to check out Alcest’s first ever NYC show at The Studio at Webster Hall. For a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with, neither of us had been able to smoke prior to the gig; nor did we have any weed on us, which is just as well, as this isn’t really the kind of venue where you could get away with smoking anyway – the staff would surely spot you and have you ejected in about five seconds flat. And so were confined to PBRs to, uh, expand our minds for the show.

And so we were maybe halfway through the first song when Vince turned to me and said, “I really wish we were high.”

“I was just thinking that,” I said to Vince. “Also, I kinda wish we were at a Gojira show.”

“I was just thinking that!” Vince laughed. “Why is that?”

I shrugged and suggested: “Because both Alcest and Gojira are French?”

Vince nodded knowingly. That made sense.

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Some of you seemed to think that the photo for last week’s contest was lame; methinks you probably didn’t notice that the dude in the front was wearing a PxDx shirt! There were a lot of funny entries though, including two gems from Sacajawea and d.o.g.o.b.g.y.n., the grizzled Caption Contest veterans that they are:

• Sacajawea: “It appears that Dino Cazares has been consuming his food without chewing, as we now see that all of the children he has consumed throughout his life are surviving and finally going to make their escape on a giant Dino dookie.”
• d.o.g.o.b.g.y.n.: “Even baseball fans in Anaheim are laughing at the Pittsburgh Pirates right now.”
• JW Gacy: “Pig Destroyer has covered Splash Mountain with seamen.”
• major: “Cover for new oceano album, avast matey – breakdowns ahead.”
• Loni: “The ’70,000 Tons of Metal’ cruise wasn’t all it promised to be.”

This week we’re giving away two copies of Howl‘s latest blasterpiece Full of Hell, courtesy of Relapse Records! The gents and lady in Howl are really coming into their own and are one of the bands to watch in 2010, as far as I’m concerned. Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo sent in by MS reader Kyle Barrington. Remember to use a real email address or include it in the comment if you’re using FB Connect.

Last week came word that Jonah Hex, the new action flick that’s supposed to come with a score featuring Mastodon, would finally have a trailer attached to Friday’s release of the re-make of A Nightmare on Elm Street; well, Friday ain’t ’til tomorrow (duh), but the trailer has hit the interwebs already. The movie looks just as bad as the buzz says it is, and features no Mastodonian-sounding music – in fact, I have no idea what music they used, but it sounds more akin to awful nu-metal than Mastodon. And that’s not really so bothersome – trailers rarely use the music from the actual movie, since the score is often still being worked on even as the film is being advertised – but if you pause the screen and look at the film’s credits at the end, you’ll notice a music credit for composer Marco Beltrami, but not for Mastodon or any of its members:

Now, maybe Mastodon just aren’t contractually owed a credit in the main title block. But given that Brent Hinds sounded pretty iffy about the whole experience of working with Beltrami (who replaced John Powell, the film’s original composer who was collaborating with Mastodon), I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the band’s work had been completely wiped from the film. I guess we’ll find out closer to the film’s June 18 release date.

In the meantime, you can watch the actual trailer after the jump.

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Sometimes you’re just in that place where you wanna zone out and just let the metal wash over you instead of beckoning you to bang your head. Perhaps it’s raining and you want something slower and more fitting for the mood, or perhaps you’re stoned and just want to relax. Maybe you even (gasp!) prefer your metal to be awash in atmospherics and soundscapes instead of subjecting your eardrums to constant pummeling, blast beats and over-compression. If you fall into any of those categories, I highly recommend:

• Alkahest: Self-described “doom/stoner/psych/post/metal” goodness from Brooklyn, Alkahest take the best parts of all of the aforementioned sub-genres and blend them together into a cohesive whole. Unlike so many other bands, Alkahest are able to strike the perfect balance of recording quality / production and raw grit on their “Demo EP,” which, although it’s only 3 songs, is nearly half an hour of music that would stand quite strongly on its own as an EP without the word “Demo” attached to it. Can’t wait to see these guys live around town. Download their Demo EP for free!
• Rosetta: Not that Rosetta will be new to most of you, but they’re worth mentioning now because these atmospheric metallers have a new album called A Determinism of Morality coming out on May 25th. As is so often the case with records on Translation Loss this release seems woefully under-promoted, but fortunately a press release recently landed in the MS inbox announcing its pending arrival. Rosetta have their own unique flavor but they’re cut from the same cloth as Alkahest, and the excellent new song “Resolve” — up for streaming on Rosetta’s MySpace page – shows the band at their best, from dreamy and light to dark and heavy all in the span of a 7-minute journey.

-VN

It’s true. I interviewed Mike Patton. Do I even need to do an introductory paragraph for this? You either know who Mike Patton is or you have no fucking business reading this website. Disagree? Suck it.

I will say this, though. Mr. Patton’s latest album, Mondo Cane, is a collection of Italian language cover songs, recorded with a forty-piece orchestra. And it’s fucking great. While that might not sound very metal, it makes sense to anyone who’s followed his career of making exciting, challenging, and even befuddling music with groups like Faith No More, Fantomas, and Mr. Bungle. Check out what he has to say about Mondo Cane – and much more — below.

Click to read more…