I cannot see the name “Zoroaster” and not think about coffee. I know that’s not even how you pronounce it, but, seriously. I see “Zoroaster” and mind just goes, “Milk and two sugars, please.”
If the dudes from Zoroaster are reading this, well, I hope they don’t take offense, since I actually think they’re peachy. (I saw them open for Gojira and Burst last year, and they were really fun to watch live.) And this video (of admittedly dubious quality) of them doing a new song, “Ancient Ones,” at Hoek’s Death Metal Pizza during SXSW suggests to me that the band’s new album, Matador, is gonna rock. Even if it makes me wanna get all caffeinated n’ shit.
If we wanna get really technical and ridiculous about micro-genres here I guess you could classify DGM as progressive epic metal. If you’ve made it this far into the article you know damn well what that means so I’m not going to bother explaining. You’re either gonna dig it or ya ain’t… no in-betweens.
DGM have a new record called FrAme (oy, enough with the cApiTaLiZatiOn gimmick… what is this, 1995?) that’s in stores now, though your local Best Buy isn’t very likely to have it. Check out the new video for “Hereafter” from that album below, then check out a few more tracks on their MySpace page (where you can purchase the album as well).
Some day I’m going to visit Italy and do nothing but eat olives and sopresata, drink red wine and listen to tons of epic fucking metal.
I saw this band, Texas Hippo CoaltionTexas Hippie Coalition, on Bring Back Glam. And not to deride the tastes of the lovely Allyson B. Crawford, but wow, does this band ever suck.
Watch the below video, for a song called “Leaving,” and ponder why this disgusting, slutty, but nonetheless probably appealing to the Tigers and Jessies of the world woman would ever let Jabba the Hutt flop around around top of her. Here was my general thought process regarding that conundrum:
Is she a hooker? She definitely seems to either be a stripper or to be harboring fantasies of being a stripper, but if there’s one thing The City of New York has taught me, it’s that strippers and hookers are not always the same thing.
Is he rich? His home and wardrobe do not suggest that this is the case.
Is he really funny? This video is hilarious, but not intentionally so.
So either she hates herself, or he has the best personality ever. He must just have the best personality ever, right?
Would the guy with the best personality ever write the lyric “When she is bathing/She thinks about me/When she’s masturbating/She thinks about me?”
She must really, really hate herself.
If you go to Bring Back Glam, you can also watch a video for a song called “Pissed Off and Mad About It,” which is apparently competing for The Hellyeah “Alcohaulin’ Ass” Stupidest-Song-Title-Ever-Even-By-Dumb-Redneck-Standards Award. The song is just as amusing as “Leaving,” although the video is not.
In February I expressed cautious excitement for Out of Our Minds, the second solo album from former Hole/Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. Now the album is actually out and I have it… and I haven’t had time to listen to it yet. Bummer.
But AOL is now streaming the record, so even if you don’t have an unopened copy resting within arm’s reach of where you’re sitting right now, you can check it out. In fact, check it out and let me know if I need to move it further up on my list of priorities. I did check out “Father’s Grave,” the duet with one Mr. Glenn Danzig, and it’s pretty cool…
Do people really compare Reb Beach’s guitar playing to that of Kirk Hammett a lot? I’ve never heard that fucking comparison in my life. I think you know how many hours of my life I’ve wasted sitting around stoned and contemplating metal to a ridiculous degree, and never in any of the many, many conversations I’ve had with friends about the guitar playing of Kirk Hammett or Reb Beach has the other musician’s name come up. I’m not even sure what the comparison would be, other than they’re both shredders. They play completely different styles of metal, and I don’t recall Beach ever being as fond of the wah pedal as Hammett.
My point being, I have no idea why Classic Rock Revisited asked Reb Beach to compare his playing to Hammett’s, but they did. And Reb Beach, as it turns out, is no Kirk Hammett fan. A transcript of Beach’s answer, courtesy the fine folks at Blabbermouth, follows:
One of the best parts of the Tool Lateralus tour cycle was drummer extraordinaire Danny Carey’s drum-off with various guest drummers. Vince and I saw him do it a couple of years ago with a drummer whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, and it was awesome; then, last summer, we saw him do it again with Frank Ferrer from Guns N’ Roses, and it was even awesomer. (And that was when we heard the always-brilliant Maynard James Keenan use the phrase “drumsterbation.”)
But this pro-shot video of Carey drumsterbating with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor is awesomest. I mean, these two fuckers can play, y’know. Now if only they could’ve made it a three-way with Mike Portnoy…
FUCK. YES. MetalSucks is very proud to be teaming up with our friends at SMN to bring you the legendary Eyehategod’s June 2010 tour. If you’ve seen Eyehategod before, you know they’re a force of nature live; if you’ve never gotten to experience them in concert until now, well, prepare to get turned right the fuck inside out. Add Nachtmystium playing support from June 4 – 15 and Brutal Truth playing support from June 10 – 13, and these are pretty much guaranteed to be some of sickest shows of the summer.
Dates are on the nifty poster above. And, of course, stay tuned to MetalSucks for more coverage…
So Axl Rose slipped and fell while performing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in Bogota last week. And far be it from me to miss an opportunity to point at someone and laugh when they make a mistake. Problem is, I just could not think of a headline for this article that took the word “fall” or “puddle” or whatever and inserted it into the title of or lyrics from a Guns N’ Roses song. Blabbermouth, who posted this originally, used “Falling On Heaven’s Door,” which is pretty good; a commenter on that story made a not-very-clever “It’s So Easy” joke by typing “See me hit puddle… I fall down!”
So fuck it, here’s the video. Axl falls right around 1:18. At least he appears to have a sense of humor about it, which I imagine is considered “progress” in Axl’s world; Vince and I saw him slip just a little at Download in 2006, and he freaked out and threw a fit.
Please suggest your Axl-fall-down GN’R puns in the comments section below.
Two minutes of As I Lay Dying’s new song, “Beyond Our Suffering,” are now streaming, and I gotta say: it sounds like the heaviest thing AILD have done in some time. Not that these dudes haven’t always been heavy, but the beginning is straight-up death metal, man (and anyone who says otherwise is just being a prejudiced ass wipe). The breakdown at the 1:29 mark is more in the metalcore vein, but then Nick Hipa takes a quick guitar solo which is pure shred. I wanna hear the rest of this song! It’s a frickin’ scorcher, man.
“Beyond Our Suffering” comes off of As I Lay Dying’s new album, The Powerless Rise, which Metal Blade will release on May 11. You can both listen to the song and pre-order the album here.
There’s something to be said for knowing what you’ve got and flaunting it unashamedly. A “bravo!” is in order, then, for Huntress drummer Sean Ford, who sent us an email with this article’s headline as the subject and the above image attached.
Huntress consists of the existing L.A. band Professor plus, in Sean’s words, a girl who’s “a mega hottie, Julliard [sic] grad, has opera pipes, and whips her huge titties out wherever we go. shes a Playboy playmate, who LOVES metal.” Well, three cheers to that, Sean! I’m really digging the Professor songs posted at the MySpace page linked above; think the thrash/stoner combo offered up by bands like Priestess, Iron Age, Early Man and maybe even a little 3 Inches of Blood. The Huntress tracks are pretty much in the same vein, just with a mega hottie, Juilliard grad, operatic, huge titty-whipping, Playboy Playmate metalhead on vocals. Fancy that.
Huntress are without a record label at the moment but they just finished recording an EP and would like you have it for free. See? Not all good things in this world cost money.
Okay, so, like, I heard this rumor that when some evil A&R dude conjured forth Lady Gaga, Bison B.C.’s Dark Ages was what the music he used in his satanic ritual. Don’t ask me how he got a copy of Dark Ages several years prior to its being written and recorded – practitioners of the dark arts have their ways, y’know – but just in keep in mind: Dark Ages is thatfuckingevilthat it can unleash a creature that makes the Kraken look about as scary as that midget that used to be Kid Rock’s hype man before he died. Lil’ Kid Rock, or whatever his name was.
In case “Stressed Elephant,” the new song Bison released last month, didn’t convince you of Dark Ages‘ magical powers, “Two-Day Booze,” the new new song they’re now streaming at Stereogum, oughta do the trick. The first time I heard the section that starts at the 1:36 mark, I started moshing around my room so hard I acidentally stomped an unassuming MetalSucks Mansion Monkey from the MS Hair Metal Division to death. Sorry, Mikki Monki. Your death was not in vein, for we rock on.
Check out “Two-Day Booze” here. Dark Ages comes out next Tuesday, April 13 on Metal Blade.
2009 was a pretty awesome year to be a Devin Townsend fan. First, he released two new albums, Ki and Addicted, neither of which sounded at all like the other and both of which were incredible. Then, he embarked on his first tour in a half a decade and pretty much slayed everyone in his path. Townsendy goodness rained down like mana from the heavens.
Well, break out your umbrellas, kids, ’cause Heavy Devy released a statement on Friday afternoon which pretty much lays out all his plans for 2010 – and it sounds like it’s gonna make 2009 feel like a little hiccup on the Townsend Scale. The complete statement is after the jump, but here are the highlights:
He’s going to perform Ziltoid in its entirety, “complete with a really awesome performance,” at the Tuska Festival in Finland this July.
He plans to do a North American headlining run in October, which means we finally get “more than 30 minutes!”
He’s still working on the next two albums in The Devin Townsend Project’s four-album cycle, Deconstruction and Ghost. He calls Deconstruction “a triumph for me” and promises that it will be heavy, but not the way you’re thinking: Devy predicts that “it will surprise quite a few foliks that expect my current vision of ‘heavy’ to be like me in my mid 20′s or early 30′s. Deconstruction sounds like someone’s angry dad.”
I actually think Devin’s being too modest in that last part. I’ve made my dad angry quite a few times in my life, and I promise that these moments never resulted in Old Man Rosenberg making anything as awesome as a Devin Townsend album.
Of all the 654 singers L.A. Guns has had over the years, Jizzy Pearl is definitely the best one whose name is a euphemism for cum. He only recorded one album with the band, 1999′s Shrinking Violet, but it was such a huge success that within months of its release, the band got rid of Pearl and reunited with Phil Lewis. This was a historic happening, not because anyone was really waiting Lewis to return to the group, but because it was the first step in the process that would lead to there being two separate bands called “L.A. Guns.” Looking back at that moment now, Tracii Guns must feel like a post-Revenge of the Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi: if only he had killed that annoying kid on Tatooine all those years ago, so much tragedy could have been averted!
I assume its Guns’ 20/20 hindsight that led him to re-hire Pearl after L.A. Guns vocalist #678, David Spade, left the band. And while in February Vince reported that the latest re-incarnation of La Guns (as they’re known in France) would be recording a new album for Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label, they’re actually just going to re-release Shrinking Violet with the perfunctory new artwork/bonus tracks. I’m guessing this is because a) Violet was never really properly promoted when it was initially released, b) it’s cheaper than recording a new album, and c) the band has somehow fallen under the impression that they need a record to tour behind, when, in fact, they are the very definition of a “legacy act.” (Actually, Tracii might have some self-awareness about being a legacy act: the bonus tracks on this reissue will be include live recordings of Pearl fronting old Guns hits like “Ballad of Jayne.”)
Here’s some live footage of the Shrinking Violet track “Dreamtime.” The re-release will occur on May 25. Shrinking Violet was produced by Gilby Clarke, a.k.a. The Guitar Player Who Tour with Guns N’ Roses for Longer than Tracii Guns Ever Did but Never Got to Write or Record Any Original Material with Them.
It’s been over a decade and a half since Pestilence last toured the U.S., but their MetalSucks co-sponsored tour with Warbringer, Vital Remains, Enfold Darkness and Sacrificial Slaughter is right around the corner! I’m fairly certain we have a lot of readers who either weren’t even born yet or were suckin’ at their momma’s teat the last time these dudes came to the States, so this is gonna be a big one.
As if you weren’t already pumped enough for this tour, Pestilence have now posted rehearsal audio of a new song, “amgoD,” on their MySpace page. It’s instrumental right now, but it sounds pretty sick. It also features new drummer Yuma Van Eekelen, in what I guess technically marks his recording debut with the band.
Check out “amgoD” here. And while you’re there, find out when Pestilence are coming to destroy your town. ‘Cause only losers will miss this trek. You’re not a loser… are you?
I’ve been advocating videos that don’t actually feature the band – particularly animated ones – for some time now. It’s come to my attention that there are a number of reasons why we don’t see these more often. Still, from a creative stand point at least, I’m convinced that they’re often the way to go.
Case in point: Finntroll’s new video for the song “Under Bergets Rot,” which debuted on Bloody Disgusting this morning. Sure, the animation isn’t the best in the world, but it looks cool, it has the right vibe for the song, and it makes you feel like you’re not watching something you’ve seen ten trillion times before.
The song comes off the band’s latest album, Nifelvind, which is out now on Century. And don’t forget that Finntroll are headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 with special guests Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun – it kicks off tomorrow!!! Get dates here.
And that’s not just because they are a bunch of raging h-moes who love sausage; this undeniably impressive outfit from smelly NJ have so much happening on their musical plate that they simply cannot be sated by one serving.
Fanciful guitars dancing fluidly together, nimble basswork that isn’t afraid to get high, sharp anchored drumming that glues the whole thing together…..this band was somehow not on my radar until the recent South by South Drunk debacle, but rest assured from this point forward I’m extremely eager to see where these uber-creative folk take their powerful sound.
Plenty more tracks from these meat-hungry maniacs on their MySpace page…
And don’t forget to check out their prior group The Postman Syndrome (which is about to release a previously unavailable album, whoahhhhhh)
The weather is beautiful out, it’s the weekend, and I have a ton of new albums to listen to. I’m gonna put some shit on my iPod, get stoned, go eat some ice cream, and crank some shit. It’s a rough life, but someone’s gotta lead it.
Before I do that, here’s a wrap-up of crap that happened this week:
The headline pretty much says it all. I don’t really have any way to elaborate, other than to say that it just goes to show ya, you can always turn metal into something my mom might listen to if you just get a little creative.
French shoegazing metalheads Alcest began in earnest with Le Secret, an EP of raw black metal played in a major key, thus incorporating hope into music where there’s usually none. It was an odd juxtaposition, but an effective one: you would think black metal would collapse if you removed its grouchy demeanor, but the band proved that it was still viable, if not revelatory. Souvenirs d’un autre monde, its follow-up, really wasn’t metal at all, save the heavy guitars and one instance of what would have to be the kindest blastbeat in metal history (on “Printemps Emeraude”). Écailles de Lune, the band’s latest, is the valley between the two, combining rich Cure- and My Bloody Valentine-like melodies and frothy waves of guitar with harsh black metal screams and rapid-fire blastbeats. But though it may sound gimmicky, main instrumentalist and songwriter Neige manages to sew the two together in the most natural manner possible, providing not one moment of stylistic whiplash throughout the album’s forty-two minutes. Once a member of scummy French raw black metallers Peste Noire, he’s clearly a man who knows his grimness. But Écailles de Lune proves that that’s not where his heart is, and Neige simply uses of whatever music he likes — metal or not — to best replicate for us the portrait on the inside of his skull.
