Then go listen to Aliases [NEED SINGER], the new band featuring SikTh guitarist Pin. If, like us, you were incredibly distraught when SikTh announced they’d be breaking up a couple of years back, be distraught no more — Aliases [NEED SINGER] sound more or less exactly like SikTh, musically speaking, but without a singer as their band name indicates. The appropriately titled “Riff Sampler” track posted on their MySpace page should be more than enough to get you all erect/wet.

Oh and apparently they want a singer so badly they named their band after this pressing need. Whatupwitdat, dudes?

-VN

Thanks: Long long long time Suckalo Alex Davis

March was Metal Month and that was dandy, but this Saturday, April 17th is Record Store Day, so guess what that means? More prizes for you! And a bunch of sweet in-store performances!

Record Store Day is actually an industry-wide missive including more than just metal, but luckily we’ve got a special metal prize pack just for you:

Relapse Records Merch (includes t-shirts, CD’s, and autographed Baroness Blue Record print)
Southern Lord Merch (includes t-shirts and a Boris 7”)
Metal CDs from Good Fight, Victory, Megaforce, Ibex Moon and Prosthetic
Autographed CD inserts
Chelsea Grin Dog Tags

To win, send in a photo of yourself doing something metal in a record store. Throwing the horns in the Slayer section, wearing corpsepaint while holding an Immortal record, etc. Post links in the comments or email photos to news [at] metalsucks [dot] net with “RECORD STORE DAY” in the subject line. We did this last year for Record Store Day and got some great entries, so let’s see what you’ve got this time around.

Confirmed Metal Record Store Day in-store performances after the jump.

Click to read more…

So Joey Jordison has begun his stint as Rob Zombie’s temporary drummer at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards this past Thursday evening, and, of course, someone captured footage on the momentous occasion on their cellphone. I don’t have much to say about it, but I do wonder why Joey Jordison is bothering to wear his mask for these gigs; for one thing, it’s not like we haven’t all seen him without his mask at this point, and for another thing, even though Rob Zombie is a “shock rocker” (albeit not a very shocking one), it’s not like Joey doesn’t look plenty weird even without his mask. I mean, just look at that dude. Ladies, would you bring him home to meet mom? Probably not, right?

Here’s the video footage in question:

-AR

The Monkeys severely botched the server migration last night. Kip’s giving Higgins a real spanking right now… shit ain’t pretty.

We’ll try again on Wednesday. The goal is for as little downtime as possible.

See our post this past Friday on the matter.

Hang tight. We’ll be back in a jiffy.

Two new song title puns in one headline?!?! SCORE!!!

So. Periphery’s self-titled Sumerian debut comes out one week from tomorrow. The band has been pretty generous about letting people hear material from that record, and now they’re streaming what I imagine will be the last song we get to hear before they inevitably stream the album in-full. The track is called “Imsomnia,” and you can hear it in all of its djenty glory here.

A little less exciting is the new Whitechapel song, “The Darkest Day of Man.” I wanna like this band. The kids who go apeshit for them look like they’re having so much fun. It just doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t know what makes these guys any different from the eight-hundred other bands all playing the same style of metal. I tried. I did. Swear it.

Metal Blade wil release Whitechapel’s new album, A New Era of Corruption, on June 8.

-AR

Super Joe is at it again, this time not only by making punishing and head-spinning metal but by doing so for a good cause. According to a French video report, below, Gojira will return to the studio this Summer to record a 5-song EP from which the proceeds will benefit anti-whaling organization Sea Shepherd, about whom Joe Duplantier has spoken in the past. The EP will feature “guests from the international metal community” and will only be available on the Internet through Gojira’s website.

Readers of this blog know all about my undying love for Gojira and my angry eco rants. So while I’m obviously super-excited that we’ll be getting new Gojira music this summer, I’m even more excited that it’s for a good cause. My summer already got that much better.

Meanwhile, Gojira are currently without a U.S. label for their next proper release. Someone oughtta get on that.

-VN

Thanks: Lewis Hart, Shinaain, Ben Turbitt

I haven’t listened to the promo Relapse sent us of Heirs to Thievery, the new Misery Index album, because it has beeps over the music every thirty seconds or so, and, well, brutal death grind, lacking in melody though it may be, was not meant to be constantly interrupted by beeping. I’m really excited to hear this album, but when I do finally hear it, I want it to hear it properly.

So “Carrion Call,” the new studio recording the band has posted on their MySpace page, is our first real taste of Heirs (We’ve also heard a bootleg live recording of the title track). But it’s a good taste! Tastes like Misery Index. Mmm… Misery Indexxxxxxxx [slobbers].

Heirs to Thievery comes out, beep-free, on May 11. And don’t forget that the band are on the MetalSucks-sponsored Facemelter Tour with Dying Fetus, Arsis, Annotations of an Autopsy and Conducting from the Grave. Get dates here.

-AR

French tech-metallers Gorod have been teasing the Interwebs for months now with promises of a new EP in 2010 that will include a cover of Cynic’s “Textures”, a 14-minute long new song, an acoustic track and two re-recorded songs from the band’s first two albums. Gorod are that rare band who, as Axl put it, “can combine tech-y goodness with such melodious songwriting hooks,” and we’re huge fans of ‘em here at the Mansion. Process of a New Decline ranked high on the 2009 year-end lists of both myself and Bob Cock. So we’re, like, really really excited for this EP. That we get new Gorod music only a year after they released a full album is a-ok with us.

Over the weekend we got yet another tease, this time in the form of a studio video that shows drummer Sam Santiago playing along with what we can only assume is the new 14-minute track. And yeah, it sounds incredible! Can’t wait.

-VN

The best reason to watch Saturday Night Live this past weekend was Tina Fey’s cleavage. Even my favorite sitcom star couldn’t save the show from its terrible writing, but her recent attempts to sexify herself in order to sell her latest, Date Night, made it all worth it.

Slightly less worth it: finally getting to see what this Justin Bieber chick is all about. I’ve been hearing so much about her, but didn’t actually know any of her music before now. Shock of shocks, it’s not for me. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that one of the guitar players in her back-up band was using a Gibson Custom Shop Zakk Wylde Bullseye Les Paul. I even heard a slight guitar squeal at the 1:27 mark! Poor bastard, probably has dreams of getting the call from Sharon’s lawyers telling him he’s secretly stealing Zakk’s job. Then Gus G. had to go and take that dream away from him, and now he’s playing guitar for Linda Hunt. Oy vey!

Here’s a clip from the show. For some reason the image has been flipped (e.g., the guitar players were most certainly not left-handed), but at least I don’t hafta link to Hulu this time.

-AR

A little more than one-quarter of the way through 2010, Ihsahn’s After still ranks at or near the top of my list for the year. It’s just so dynamic, so well-thought out, musically astonishing and full of subtleties… and it’s just as good with every repeated listen. Picking my favorites is not getting any easier as the year rolls on, though — new entries from Nachtmystium, The Ocean, Unleashed, Levi/Werstler, Nevermore, Son of Aurelius, Tryptikon and yeah of course Ratt are gonna make 2010 another stellar year for metal.

Of course Ihsahn’s live shows are just as awesome judging by the video below, my first glimpse at the ex-Emperor playing live. If Ihsahn ever decides to take his show to the roads of the U.S. there’s no way the production will match this, filmed at Oslo’s Inferno festival a week ago — like there’s no way we’d get all those lights or saxophone player Munkeby [of Norway's Shining, who also happen to have put out one of my fave albums of 2010]… but I’ll bet it’d still be pretty intense. Come on Vegard, do it.

-VN

Bleeding Through’s new, self-titled album comes out tomorrow on Rise Records; after that, I don’t think I’ll have cause to write about these dudes and dudette for awhile (at least until they do a tour I actually care about), so it seemed like I better get a Marta picture in now. The band is streaming the entire album here; I actually managed to make it through eight of the twelve songs on the album, which is way further than I thought I’d get. But every song sounds exactly the same to me. Did these guys always play generic deathcore, or is that a new development?

-AR

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Gene Simmons has finally gotten into the insurance business. Chaim Witz has been exploring new and exciting ways to slap the KISS logo on any and all products for the last three decades, and at this point, his marketing and merchandising efforts have long since jumped the shark. I could come up with something witty, but that would just be a waste of time. Honestly, I’m curious why it took him so long to finally get involved in this market.

Mr. Simmons’s new group, Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy, was launched last month to tap into a lucrative demographic: entertainers, sports stars and other people with a net worth of $20 million or more who need a life-insurance policy of $10 million or greater. The firm’s founders, who include David R. Carpenter, formerly of insurance powerhouse Transamerica, believe there is big opportunity to sell jumbo insurance policies to rich people.

Yes, undoubtedly there is.

Click to read more…

I was really, really excited to hear Kingdom of Sorrow’s self-titled debut in 2008; unfortunately, the finished product didn’t do all that much for me. But I know Gary Suarez loved it, and I’m still curious to hear their sophomore effort, Behind the Blackest Tears, because, well, it’s Kirk Windstein and Jamey Jasta – they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

And if nothing else, the cover art is certainly capital-”M”-Metal.  The color scheme is similar to the cover art for the band’s first album, and the skull certainly seems to be sporting the same mask as the knight on that earlier cover – so I guess whatever task he set out on, he completely failed to achieve. Ah well.

Behind the Blackest Tears will be released on June 8 via Relapse.

-AR

Oh, Family Guy. You so crazy. You already made a Tommy Lee-has-hepatitis joke some time back, but that didn’t stop you from making another one last night! And while we might be tempted to scold you picking on an easy target, well… we like to pick on Tommy Lee, too. And, besides. What a tool. He, like, totally deserves it.

Hulu fucking sucks and will never seem to let us embed despite the inclusion of an embed code, but click on the screen cap below to watch last night’s episode. The joke in question appears at roughly the 2:34 mark.

-AR

Ims goings tos puts hallucinogenics ins thes eggs this mornings. Shhhhhs. Don’t tells Axl ands Vince! I wants thems tos bes surprised. I wants thems tos say, “Whoas! Whats wrongs with mys eggs?!?” Ands thens I ams goings to gets thems tos dos somethings embarrassing, ands I ams goings tos takes a picture! Ands we wills laughs. Has has has!!!

-NC

This manaical Mextremist metal band (originally co-formed by Dino from Fear Factory) of marauding drug traffickers on the run from the FBI, forced to conceal their identities (as legend goes), scares me!!

But you’re a tough guy, right?

So then why haven’t you purchased tickets yet to catch a rare opportunity of these guys playing live?? Oh, you don’t live in a city they are planning on decimating?

Get in your car, on a train, plane, spaceship……just make sure you bring yr blade, holmes.

Thug out to Brujeria on TheirSpace

-KW

In my review of The Farthest Reaches, the debut offering from Son of Aurelius, I called the album “one of the strongest releases of the spring, and possibly the year.” This Roman mythology-themed record is just a BEAST – the songs are sharply written, the musicianship is top notch, the production epic, and even the cover art is insanely cool. Fuck that stupid 3D movie; this shit here is the real clash of the titans.

Good Fight Entertainment will release The Farthest Reaches this Tuesday, April 13, but you can listen to the whole thing right here, right now. Once you realize the sheer power of this thing, go ahead and order a copy here, and enter in our contest to win an autographed copy here. And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you read my interview with guitarist Cary Geare?

Now here’s the album…

[this promotion has ended]

-AR

As much as the server problems we’ve experienced over the past few weeks have sucked for you guys, I assure you that they’ve sucked even more for us. Shit’s brutal, and not the good kind of brutal we usually traffic in.

The good news is that we’re moving servers (again) on Monday. This might result in down time for some of you, depending on your location. For the most part you shouldn’t notice anything other than the site running faster, but you might see a “Maintenance” splash page for a little while. Hopefully we won’t be down for too long.

And then, later in the week… a big surprise.

Hugs and kittens,
VN, AR & the rest of the MetalSucks staff

The future Mrs. Skullia just sent this to me. The description of the video reads:

Algonquin park… the music is coming from a headset close to us but the camera hasnt picked it up. for natural preservation of the vid we didnt edit it to put the song on it, but for ppl interested it was “Decade of Therion” from Behemoth.

Just dumb enough to be hilarious.

-AS