It’s a busy season for new metal, but we all need to make sure that Lair of the Minotaur’s Evil Power doesn’t get lost amid the plethora of excellent new releases this month. It’s an apt title – the record really does sound like it’s running on Durahell batteries.

I’ve yet to hear a Lair of the Minotaur song I don’t like, but “Let’s Kill These Motherfuckers,” the second cut from Evil Power, is a metallic masterpiece. It’s so fucking simple it’s almost punk rock, a vibe enforced by the vague-but-political lyrics (“All our lives we lived in shit, fighting for our king,” “We did what we were told by the master’s whip,” etc. ). But it makes me wanna break a beer bottle over someone’s head every time I listen to it. For me, it conjures images of LOTM mainman Steven Rathbone leading an angry, screaming, and very violent mob as through Washington, D.C., killing all members of both parties. But that’s just me. Maybe the song will just make you wanna smack your boss, piss in your dad’s mouth, or grab your significant other and drag him or her into the middle of oncoming traffic. Whatever tickles your pickle, y’know?

Lair of the Minotaur’s Evil Power is out now. You can watch a totally bitchin’ NSFW video for the title track here. Our own Etan “Satan” Rosenbloom also did an interview with Mr. Rathbone for an upcoming Decibel feature, but you can read the full transcript right now at Etan’s own blog, Cerebral Metalhead.

-AR

Photo by Adam Haussman

One day I needed revenge on my sister so I stole her Misfits t-shirt and wore it to school, thereby making it impossible for her to ever be seen in it again. Sure I’d won control of the shirt (which was ugly as butthole), but I then saw the first signs that she was harboring a secret, evil command of the supernatural. Nothing else explains how that same day my Misfits tapes appeared unchanged but had somehow become Depeche Mode tapes. Wow, right? She’s practically Merlin.

Years later, her witchery also must have caused me to spend an entire summer afternoon on the pavement outside Club Quattro only to get The Mars Volta guys to sign a cd booklet to Emily. Who does that?! It was like 97 degrees out there! And in her latest feat of astral projection, she took possession of my senses at the exact moment that Deftones singer Chino Moreno said his goodbyes following our chat at the Golden Gods on Thursday. She’s mental for that guy and mega-gay for his band. That’s why, totally against my will, I yelped that I’ve knit him a snuggly sweater and that I find his skin sexy. Don’t worry, he already had turned away and didn’t hear me. But from then on Jerry Cantrell was winking at me all night. My Q&A with Moreno after the jump:

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I know I just said I was tired of writing about ICP, but I stumbled across this last night and I just had to share it…

-AR

The MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 is currently winding its way across North America, having stopped at New York City’s Gramercy Theater last Thursday on the third night of the tour. You pretty much know what you’re gonna get with bands like Finntroll, Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun — epic fucking metal. And epic it was.

My chronological but otherwise disorganized thoughts on the concert:

• Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player is so serious. That guy rules.
• How do Swallow the Sun afford to tour the States so often?
• Holy shit… Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player rules so hard. Most metal stage faces I’ve ever seen.
• Is that dude in the audience wearing a loincloth? Yes… yes, he is.
• This is the best I’ve heard Swallow the Sun sound in the three times I’ve seen them.
• So when can we meet and hang out with Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player? I wanna shoot heroin and talk about the meaninglessness of life with this dude.
• Moonsorrow sound pretty good, but they were better at Paganfest II last year (where they blew every other band away).

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Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges wrote an editorial a few weeks back about the 20th anniversary of Scatterbrain’s Here Comes Trouble, noting that there’s a certain element of fun and audaciousness that’s not only been missing from metal for two decades but that would be considered downright ridiculous these days:

Listening to Scatterbrain now is a trip because its sound is so dated. It comes from a time of “fun metal”, in which D.R.I., M.O.D., Anthrax, Suicidal Tendencies, Fishbone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, and Ugly Kid Joe were all likely cohabitants in CD collection.

While it’s hard to imagine anything as silly as “Mr. Johnson and the Juice Crew” (MP3 posted at Invisible Oranges), not all metal is frowny-faced gloom and doom these days. There’s bands like Municipal Waste and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder who take their thrash with a sense of humor. There’s the pagan metal set, which is completely serious but is also all about having a good time and getting jolly wasted. And there’s Reading, PA’s The Gloominous Doom, whose unlikely combination of ska and metal harkens back to some of the bands that Cosmo name-checked.

Take The Gloominous Doom’s new video for “Portal Potty” as proof; it’s about a special porta-potty with Bill & Ted-style time-traveling qualities. This is a band that has plenty of chops and songwriting ability but doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Their new record The Feature will come out on May 4th via DRP Records. They’ll be on a Northeast mini-tour with The Binary Code in May, and their CD release show on May 1st also features none other than fellow fun-lovers Rumpelstiltskin Grinder.

-VN

Hang tight.

Congrats to Unreadable Logo Winners’ Circle album Ryan Wineman and Sean Murdock, who both correctly named From Beyond Death as the band from last week’s logo. Ryan and Sean each win a copy of Of Death and Ritual, the new EP from Culted. Niiiice.

This week the fine folks at Century Media have bestowed upon us one copy of Suicide Silence’s “Disengage” 7″ blue vinyl.   This single, to  be released only on vinyl and digital formats on April 20, contains both the album version of the song as well as a special remix courtesy of Big Chocolate (né Cameron Argon, of Disfiguring the Goddess and Burning the Masses). You can check out a sample of Big Chocolate’s crazy-ass remix here. The single also features some really sweet artwork by Joshua Belanger (who also did the killer cover Son of Aurelius’ The Farthest Reaches). In other words, this is vinyl is super-sweet – and we’re gonna give one away! (You can also order one for just five bucks here.)

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select one winner and announce his or her name next week.

And here comes VIP Isaac Schwarz to do my job for me yet again…

-AR

Greetings dudes!

It’s wonderful to be back in the United States of America. Australia is a wonderful country and all, but there is no beating the comforts of home… specifically raging wifi and network television! Given that we are beyond the halfway point in the final season of L O S T, each remaining episode has been getting significantly more in depth and heavy. The consequence of watching more than one of these episodes at a time (in my case three in a row) and trying to process it all at once is very much like having this happen to you. So in order to make all of our lives easier, I’m going to take the episode-by-episode approach on this one…

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I know I’m gonna get shit for the review I’m about to give Levi/Werstler‘s Avalanche of Worms. Eyal Levi writes for this site! Sure, I could remind you that I’ve been pretty openly a non fan of Daath’s first album, The Hinderers, or tell you that we never even met Eyal until after we’d already heard (and were blown away by) Daath’s second album, The Concealers. But what’s the use? You either believe I’m unbiased or you don’t. So fuck me and don’t listen to it, if that’s how you feel. Your loss.

So, with that out of the way…

I have to admit that it’s only recently that I really sat down and examined Jorden Haley‘s cover art for AOW as anything more than a collection of abstract shapes. It’s really psychedelic, dude: either black clouds are raining hot pink goo (It is snot? Blood? It’s definitely too thick to be water.) on a trio of semi-skinned faces (the noses and giant, Pac-Man pupiled eye balls are perfectly intact), or the faces (One each for guitarists Emil Werstler and Eyal Levi and one for drummer Sean Reinert, perhaps?) are snotting/bleeding/whatever onto the black clouds. I almost wish there was no text on the cover, so you wouldn’t know which way is up, ’cause the piece looks just as cool no matter which direction it’s facing.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a perfect marriage of cover art and music. Avalanche of Worms is a trippy, freaky, cinematic, vivid narrative that unfolds in multiple dimensions at once.

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Full disclosure: I’m a giant fucking Ratt nerd. In fact, it’s fair to say that if it weren’t for hearing their seminal hit “Round and Round” for the first time as a preteen, I probably wouldn’t have grown up to be a giant fucking metal nerd.

Something about Stephen Pearcy’s acidic voice and Warren DeMartini’s wailing guitar riffs compelled me to keep chasing the louder, faster, heavier dragon for all these years. But you never forget that first time, do you?

So when Vince offered me a chance to talk to Pearcy — who rejoined the band last year after a seven-year hiatus — about Ratt’s new album Infestation, I jumped at the chance. That excitement increased exponentially when I actually heard the record—a true throwback to melodic, ballsy hard rock with plenty of attitude and sexual innuendo.

Check out Infestation when it’s released on April 20 through Roadrunner Records. And be sure to worship every Ratturday.

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People who become “a fan” of some bullshit on Facebook really grind my gears, and as such I’ve avoided joining such asinine groups as “Dear ghetto moms, no one is going to hire your kid named Shanaqualeesha” on principle. Yet one of the few I’ve followed is the one for Amphetamine Reptile fan page, which is actually maintained by the otherwise mostly dormant label.

Today, my noise rock geek-o-meter went directly into the red when I saw the following status update:

25 years ago AmRep released it’s first 7″. Aug. 28th 2010 is going to be a huge live birthday party in Minneapolis. Melvins, Boss Hog, God Bullies, Today Is The Day, and more!!!! Stay tuned – - – more updates – - – exclusive show only releases!!! Invite any and all to sign up here to get updates – and please help spread the word.

Holy crap!

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“Beauty Through Order” might not have been my first choice for the next single off of Slayer’s World Painted Blood, but I am really digging this video. I don’t know that I understand what the concept is in relation to the song, but it’s still a memorable clip – it’s like a really fucked-up version of one of those James Bond title sequences with all the silhouettes of naked ladies. And while I’m sure that Tom Araya’s recent back surgery had something to do with the band not appearing in the clip, it’s worth noting that it’s the second time Slayer have sat out their own video, and that both this and “Eyes of the Insane” further my thesis that a video without the group can still be a really cool video.

-AR

YES! It’s finally here! Dr. Acula have FINALLY debuted a new song, “Show Stopper,” on Noisecreep, and vocalist Tyler Guida has given that site an interview to go along with the song stream. I’M SO FUCKING EXCITED I JUST CAME A LITTLE! Here’s a fun little excerpt from said interview:

“For years now, Dr. Acula have been on a mission to supply what is a generally darker genre of music with a fun, more home-based outlook,” Guida told Noisecreep. “Using the things they deal with on a daily basis as fuel to their chaotic sound has established them as a renowned ‘party’ band, good times, hard times, drunk times, high times and so on. They cover it all on their upcoming album ‘The Social Event of the Century.’”

Also (emphasis mine):

Guida continued, “With the release of the new album fans and haters alike will see a new finely tuned version of the Dr. Acula they know, hitting harder than ever before, while still keeping the heavy rock ‘n’ roll influence. They will be hitting the road hard for the coming months after the release.”

A few quick thoughts:

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You should all well know by now that Nevermore are releasing their first album in a long, long while on June 8th, The Obsidian Conspiracy. The band just released a teaser video of clips from the album, and there’s reportedly an instrumental version of the title track floating around the Webernets.

There’s also this, a video of guitarist Jeff Loomis playing along to that very same title track at a guitar clinic in Frankfurt, Germany. I love videos like this because it’s always just the dude on a tiny stage surrounded by tons of gape-jawed fanboys on all sides; pure guitar geekdom. Loomis still seems totally psyched to be there and he’s really into the performance, though. The album is sweet, too; trust us.

-VN

Thanks: Sam the Brutal

If you’re hitting up this year’s New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, you’ll be happy to know that the set times have been announced for all the bands playing the two day event (April 23 – 24) in Worcester, Masschusetts. As the official MetalSucks correspondent for this year’s fest, I found this list invaluable in knowing when and where I’m going to want to be, given that so many great bands are performing.

Of course, this also forces me to have to make some pretty tough decisions. Earth Crisis or Doomriders? Disembodied or Skeletonwitch? Malefice or Rose Funeral?

Check out the schedule below.

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Back in January I got to see the mighty mighty Magrudergrind play a killer (but all too short) set at Cakeshop here in NYC; and by “see,” I mean “hear and occasionally get a glance of the tops of their heads.” See, if you’ve never been there, Cakeshop is basically a basement venue, and this show was pretty crowded, and while I don’t think I qualify as “short,” I’m definitely not tall.

But the band sounded pretty good.

Luckily, my man Sean “Spleen Latifa” Gresens from Metal Injection managed to capture the performance on video, and has now posted footage of the song “Pulverizing Hate Mongers,” so now I can see what I previously only got to hear.

You can check out more clips from this gig here, and the rest of Sean’s live shit here. The man is tireless in his quest to get footage of every good underground band that comes through NYC, so it’s definitely worth keeping up with him…

-AR

I’m actually kinda tired of writing about ICP, ’cause at this point it’s not even like shooting fish in a barrel – it’s like reaching into the barrel, taking the fish out, nailing it to the barrel so it doesn’t flop away, and then shooting it point blank. I mean, we’re basically picking on the short bus kids, and although that can be very funny, it’s not exactly a challenge.

But the inimitable Sergeant D. has done a hilarious write-up for the video at Stuff You Will Hate, and it’s just too good not to read. Here’s an excerpt:

The lulz in previous ICP-related memes were essentially based on the obvious: They’re fat, they dress up like evil clowns, and play terrible rap for subhumanly stupid white trash who do little more than eat and reproduce [via cockroaches]. “Miracles,” on the other hand, is lolworthy because there are few things funnier than when trashy people try to be “deep and/or insightful/profound.” As far as I can tell, this video is their hamfisted, Faygo-drenched attempt at articulating the popular notion “God must be real, look at all the beauty and magic around us!”

Here’s the video in question:

You can read the rest of the Sarge’s insightful analysis at Stuff You Will Hate.

And here’s the only song with the word “miracles” in the title that I ever wanna hear:

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In case my review, the interview I did with guitarist Cary Geare, and the contest we’re running to give away autographed copies of the CD somehow weren’t enough to brand it into your brain that Son of Aurelius‘ The Farthest Reaches comes out today via Good Fight Entertainment, well, let this post serve as a reminder. We really love this album, and hope you’ll check it out. If you haven’t already, go ahead a listen to the entire thing before you buy it – we’re streaming it right here.

Once you’ve decided you love it so much you wanna take it out back behind the middle school and get it pregnant, you can order a physical copy here or download it from iTunes or Amazon.

And hopefully these dudes will announce touring plans soon so I can finally check ‘em out live…

-AR

Wormrot’s story is the stuff of Horatio Alger. The band hail from Singapore (about which, I admit, all I really knew was that it’s in Asia and there’s a Tom Waits song named after it) and released a grind album apparently so good that when Earache head honcho Digby Pearson heard it, he signed them to a Stateside distribution deal, despite coming upon the album the way many of us had at that point– via file-hosting website/illegal album downloading hub Mediafire. While it may be easy to think Wormrot could be reduced to bullet point in a discussion on the positive aspects of file-sharing or considered more tale than band, this is couldn’t be further from the truth: the band’s first full length, Abuse (the most hilariously understated album title since Cannibal Corpse’s Kill) is good enough to jump across oceans and put a smile on the face of even the most jaded metalhead. Many referred to Abuse as 2009’s best grind album, an arguably true statement even in a year where Napalm Death and Brutal Truth released their best (and first, in the latter’s case) in years. If one counts the Earache reissue as a 2010 release, they’re still the dudes to beat, and may even give Pig Destroyer a run for their money. Abuse is that good, and solidifies Wormrot as a band to enjoy in the present tense as well as one with whom to grow.

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I haven’t listened to the new Deftones album Diamond Eyes very much yet, but I’ve listened to it enough to know that I need to listen to it more. So far so good, in other words. When it comes to making sweeping statements and overgenalizations about how this Deftones album represents blah blah blah in their career and how it’s a step forward and blah blah blah, I’m gonna leave that kind of stuff to my pal and MS Deftones expert Anso DF. So for now I’ll just say this: I likee.

Things are moving pretty fast in the Deftones camp right now: the release date of Diamond Eyes was moved up two weeks to May 4th from May 18th following the album leak, and while we’re still about a month away from release we’ve already got the album’s second music video. Visually the video for the album’s title track isn’t the coolest thing ever, but like most videos these days it’s interesting enough and just serves as an opportunity to get the music in front of a few extra people. I guess Warner Bros. / Reprise are really going for broke with this one and are trying to get as big a first week number as possible.

-VN