I don’t know how this hasn’t made more headlines, given all the hype around Slash’s forthcoming solo album, but: Letters of Note, a website that collects “correspondence deserving of a wider audience,” has unearthed a letter that a fourteen year old Saul Hudson – that’s Slash to you – wrote to Michelle Young, a girl who had recently dumped him for talking about his guitar too much (!), and who would go on to be the subject of Guns N’ Roses’ classic, “My Michelle.”

The letter, written in 1979, features the (not too shabby!) doodles you see above, plus heartfelt Slashian poetry as this:

Click to read more…

Slipknot always take extended breaks in-between albums; that downtime is usually used for Corey Taylor to go do something with Stone Sour, Joey Jordison and Shawn “Clown” Crahan to go play with/produce whomever the hell they’re playing with/producing at the moment, and the rest of the band to pretty much fall off the face of the planet. Not to be rude or anything, I mean, maybe the other six dudes in the band all have very their own musical side-projects, but I’ve never heard about any of them, which isn’t a great sign.

But Slipknot percussionist Chris Fehn (a.k.a. “The one whose mask has a Pinocchio schnozz“) is getting in on the action now: Lambgoat reports that he is now the new bassist for Will Haven. So, hey, lookit that! He can do more than hit a garbage can with a baseball bat and jerk-off his nose. Killer.

Click to read more…

Dude, I wouldn’t fuck with Otep Shamaya. Would you fuck with Otep Shamaya? She reminds me of the cool rebel kid from one of those 80s movies, like Rudy in The Monster Squad or whatever. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shamaya smile. Have you ever seen her smile? I really don’t think I ever have.

So. All of that being said, yelling “Take it off!” at Otep during a performance is probably a really, really dumb idea. In fact, I’m sure that whatever wise ass did it at a show in San Francisco earlier this week knew it was a really dumb idea, and was doing it to get attention. Which he got. Not only did she bitch him out from the stage, but – and I’m making an inference here based on what Otep says and who she says it to – I think that some chick near the front must have actually then flashed her tits, and she gets some of Otep’s rage, too.

Still, it’s nice of Otep to end the tirade by playing match maker.

Video of the incident in question is below. It’s at the start, so if, like me, you like Otep the lady more than you like Otep the band, you don’t actually have to listen to any Otep music to enjoy this.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

On Wednesday we posted a video of a dude proposing to his girlfriend on-stage at a recent Fear Factory concert. I really thought that that was the first and last time the subject would ever come up, but, lo and behold, yesterday afternoon I actually got an e-mail from the guy – his name is Charley Ray, as it turns out, and his fiancée’s name is Alexis – saying “I never thought I’d get ‘coverage’ on the proposal…. We had a good time and it was unbelievably cool that Fear Factory let me do that.”

Of course, such a marriage proposal is, um, unusual, to put it mildly, so I needed to know more. And Charles was cool enough to grant me a quick e-mail interview. After the jump, learn all the ins and outs of this most bizarre story.

Click to read more…

Baseball season starts on Monday!!

Ah, April, when every team is entitled to optimism, unencumbered by haplessness, injuries or a blown save faster than you can say “Armando Benitez.” In the case of our Mets, we can be a little optimistic… right? We’ve basically got the same team as last year; the same team that hung around towards the top of the standings until fucking everybody got injured by June. Sure, our starting pitching beyond Johan Santana is suspect, and it’ll definitely hurt to not have Beltran with us until mid-May earliest. But we’ve definitely got a shot of staying in it. Jason Bay will be a great addition. Wright will surely improve his production numbers. Hopefully Reyes can stay healthy. Maybe we’ll even get to see some action from prospects like Ike Davis, Jenry Mejia and Fernando Martinez, who very well may represent the future of the franchise.

It’s only April. Things aren’t all bad… yet.

-VN

Oh, never mind, it’s not an ad for Target. It’s a Cypress Hill video. Huh. Go figure.

I don’t know whether or not Morello co-wrote this song, “Rise Up,” but it sounds more like Rage Against the Machine than anything I’ve heard anyone do in years. And that includes the legions of RATM imitators. And, one way or the other, this is wwwwaaayyyy better than the cover of “Paradise City” the Cypress Hill dudes did with Slash.

Also, to answer your question, Cypress Hill, I can get pretty high. You?

-AR

Kids love dinosaurs. As a kid I was mildly interested in Dinosaurs, but I definitely didn’t have the compulsive obsession with them that many children do. Is it that they’re really fucking big, dangerous, and bad-ass looking? Is it the mystique created by the fact that they’re no longer around? The truth is that even to this jaded old man Dinosaurs are pretty fucking cool.

You know what’s also pretty cool? Metal. So some legit metal dudes who have played with the likes of Dio, Yngwie, Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius thought it’d be a great idea to combine the two and market the result to children as Hevisaurus, the Dinosaur heavy metal band (no we ain’t talkin’ about Ozzy, hardee har). Apparently Hevisaurus are a big hit in their native Finland. There’s some Internet speculation as to whether or not the dudes in the Dinosaur suits are actually the dudes who recorded the music (some folks adamantly insist that they are), but it kinda doesn’t matter — for all we know there were tons of different actors underneath those Ninja Turtle suits over the years but that wouldn’t make us love them any less. They’re The Turtles, dude, come on!

-VN

Thanks: “V,” via World Oddities

It’s worth questioning how much influence ex-Pantera/Down bassist Rex Brown has in his new band Arms of the Sun; to my knowledge he wasn’t a big songwriting contributor to either of his other main squeezes, and not for nothin’ Arms of the Sun sound like neither of them. But it really doesn’t matter because Arms of the Sun sound fucking sweet and are perfectly worthy of being judged independently of their very famous bassist.

The mid-paced, bluesy, guitar-driven rock that Arms of the Sun play kind of reminds me of latter day King’s X combined with the songwriting sensibility of the DeLeo brothers. Either you’ll like it or you won’t, and anyone expecting something even close to as heavy as Down (let alone Pantera) probably won’t. It’s rock, not metal. But Rex probably doesn’t care whether you like it or not. You don’t make music like this during your downtime from your main band unless it’s something you’re really into. It’s always cool to see what musicians do with their downtime when their main bands are still together — dudes from broken-up bands are a whole different story — because commercial success isn’t a concern meaning it’s all from the heart. And for the other dudes in this band it represents a chance to get a whole lot more exposure from sites like this one.

If any of this sounds interesting to you check out the songs that Arms of the Sun have posted on their MySpace page. Every single one of them is really good, but the first song “Falling to Pieces” which is also the heaviest is actually my least favorite one. If you live in Dallas you can catch Arms of the Sun live at the Lakewood Theater on April 17th.

-VN

And no, we ain’t talkin’ ’bout no stinkin’ bourgeois bullshit fancy fucking cupcake place that I wouldn’t piss on if it were on fire… no, just plain old ordinary cupcakes. They’re pretty rad. No Budget TV agrees.

-VN

Thanks: CJ

Son of Aurelius‘ The Farthest Reaches is an album that gets crazier as it goes along. It’s as though the music had rabies, and was getting progressively more and more dangerous by the minute. The first three songs (“Mercy for Today,” “Let Them Hate and Fear,” and the title track) are all catchy, epic, and executed to their most devastating effect. They wouldn’t seem out of place on a Black Dahlia Murder record, which is great, ’cause if more bands wrote songs as good as BDM’s, I’d be a much happier snarky blogger.

But then the fourth track, “Olympus is Forgotten,” comes along. There’s a gentle, soothing guitar and synths-as-strings intro. You might think that it’s just a brief respite from the killer-but-familiar melodeath songs you’ve been enjoying, but, really, it’s the overture for a whole new album. Because once the band kicks in on “Olympus is Forgotten,” The Farthest Reaches flies right off the fucking rails and shows its true colors as an album that is completely fucking fucknuts. And its fucknuttiness is what ensures its place as one of the strongest releases of the spring, and possibly the year.

Click to read more…

Speaking of judging a book by its cover, check out THEM apples. I mean… wow…. right? Feel free to make any judgments you want about Kivimetsan Druidi; they’re probably all correct.

Still with me?

Ok, then. Our sisters from another mistress over at Reign in Blonde posted the above cover this morning with a one word album review: “SRSLY.” Fair enough… I’m pretty sure Kivimetsan Druidi are dead fucking serious. Swept up by Century Media in The Great Pagan/Folk Metal Signing Fad of 2008 — and subsequently passed over by metal fans in The Great Whoops-This-Trend-Isn’t-As-Popular-As-Labels-Thought purge of 2009 — Kivimetsan’s twist on Pagan/Folk is that they’re a bit thrashier at times than many of their peers and they have a female singer. ‘Cause ya know, every Pagan/Folk outfit’s gotta have some twist. Not that these guys aren’t decent; they’re perfectly aight, but the metal world needs this band about as much as Lacuna Coil needs their male vocalist.

Anyhoo, Kivimetsan Druidi have a new album coming out on April 23rd, the genre-fitting title of which is Betrayal, Justice, Revenge. Check that out if the above cover intrigues you.

-VN

Suckalo Alex_P sent us an email a few days ago whilst procrastinating on a “massive fucking French project” that supposedly will determine whether or not he graduates. Thank you, Alex, for reading our site instead of hitting those books hard and ensuring you complete your education. We know you’ll really appreciate those extra student loans you’ll need to take out when you have to go back to school for another semester.

But Alex was emailing us with good reason, to “remedy an injustice,” namely that we’d never posted about the “phenomenal German funeral doom band Ahab.” And he’s right; we haven’t. For some reason I thought that Ahab were more beardy/crusty Remission/Leviathan-era Mastodon imitators. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but I think we can all agree there’s a whole lot of those bands flooding the market right now, nahmean? It’s not hard to see why I thought this, though; the Mastodon song “I am Ahab” (duh).

But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m sitting here listening to Ahab and realizing that Alex’s description of Ahab as “phenomenal German funeral doom” is right on the money. This is giant, thunderous guitar music for dark, depressed, gloomy times. If Gojira are “elephants marching,” as Axl always likes to say, then that would make Ahab giant fucking Brontosauruses marching… or something.

Of course, if the rain was photoshopped into the above promo picture then I take back everything I just said.

-VN

Dew-Scented’s Invocation comes out in North America on May 25 via Prosthetic; Europe gets it a day earlier via Metal Blade. Despite my gentle ribbing of the clichés all metal heads continue to indulge, I’m excited to hear it.

-AR

You guys sure wanted that copy of God of War III prize for last week’s funny photo caption contest badly. But only Brock Stearns wins. This gem is a bit different than the ones we usually choose:

• “Although it has the appearance of an evergreen tree, the Eastern Red Cedar has a limited lifespan and a variety of fall colors. Also, a fat goth is cutting himself.”

This week we’re giving away two t-shirts designed by Vertebrae 33 mastermind Rodney Githens, who also designed our super-sweet Skulls & Star of David MetalSucks t-shirt. We’ll give away one shirt each of the “Reaper” and “Crossbones” designs, pictured 2nd and 3rd on this page, in the size of your choice. To win just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, and be sure to comment with or include a real email address.

In which we ate epic BBQ and saw an epic headline set by Muse…

Every year at SXSW I make time for a trip down to the Salt Lick. It’s never easy; at 45 minutes outside the city limits it turns into a 3+ hour adventure, and the tricky part is getting a ride. Thankfully this year the dudes in East of the Wall and Goes Cube hooked it up big time and by noon me, Kip, and Rob from Metal Injection were on our way to Driftwood.

I know there are other great BBQ places, even inside Austin itself, but the Salt Lick is so fucking good I just can’t NOT go there. By the time we rolled up to the Salt Lick parking lot with Goes Cube, East of the Wall were ready and waiting with a case of beer (Salt Lick is BYOB). We quickly sucked down the two joints we’d rolled that morning and put our names on the list, and within 20 minutes we were sitting at a table ready to gorge ourselves on meat.

Salt Lick offers “all you can eat” meat platters for $15 per person. They include brisket, ribs and sausage, and they’ll just keep bringing you more platters until you say stop. Stoned, drunk and jubilated we tore into the meat as soon as our waiter set it down on the table. For some reason the question “Another round of meat, guys?” elicited constant laughs… there’s something about the concept of being able to order rounds of meat that tickled us silly.

Click to read more…

I resisted checking out The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza for the longest time, a decision which was based purely on their name. This was poor judgment on my part – this band is just swell! Which just goes to prove, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Unless that cover belongs to Kamelot.

ANYWAY, I mention this ’cause TTDTDE (holy shit, even typing their initials takes a fucking hour) are streaming a new song, “The Union,” on their MySpace page. It’s a discordant mind-melter, which should come as no great shock. But, seriously, if I ever listened to it drunk, I think I might puke. This is the aural equivalent of one of those times when you’ve had a few (or way) too many, and even when you close your eyes, the darkness spins.

“The Union” will be on TTDTDE’s latest, Danza III: The Series Of Unfortunate Events, which comes out July 6 on Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label. You can also stream the band’s cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” right here at MetalSucks! And don’t forget that they’ll be on the MS-sponsored Road to MetalFest Tour with Through the Eyes of the Dead, Impending Doom, Arsonists Get All the Girls, and Chelsea Grin. Get dates here.

-AR

Bob Cock loves Wolf and we love Bob Cock, but coming on the heels of Lair of the Minotaur’s latest cinemetallic opus, Wolf‘s video for “Hail Cesar” gets a massive “meh.” The concept isn’t really clear – performance footage is intercut with behind-the-scenes footage which is intercut with clips from old gladiator movies, for no particular reason. Clearly what happened is that the band didn’t have the budget to make a video that was appropriate to the lyrics of “Hail Cesar” in the most literal way, but they didn’t just wanna make a “band life” video that didn’t acknowledge the title of the song, so they just kinda did a little bit of both concepts. And both concepts suffer as a result.

Bummer, ’cause it’s a pretty epic song. Even if the style is as recycled as the movie clips.

-AR

• Slash has been unveiling a song a day from his new, self-titled solo album, so at this point, if you’ve wanted to hear the entire record, you pretty much have. But if you’re like me, and you were too lazy to keep checking back all the various websites where the shit has been streaming these past week, AOL now has the entire album in one place. I’ll try to write a full review in time for Slash‘s release on Tuesday, but the short version is: “Hey! It’s not the total face-raping I was expecting!” Which I guess would make it Slash’s Death Magnetic. So, April Fool’s on me, I guess.
• I don’t think it will come as a galloping shock to anyone to learn that the rumors are true: Duff McKagan is the new bass player for Jane’s Addiction. Slash basically spilled the beans in an interview a couple of weeks back, and then some photos of Duff working with the band popped up online, and now he’s actually gigged with the group – that grainy video up top is footage of Duff’s Addiction covering Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love.” I’m excited that Duff will now once again be in a band that plays for more than fifty people a night, although I’m sure the dudes in Loaded are pretty bummed. Of course, between this and Slash’s solo album, I’d wager we won’t get any new developments on the Velvet Revolver front until 2012, if ever.
• Finally: the drums on Slash’s solo album were recorded by Josh Freese, who also played drums on the nu-GN’R song “Oh My God,” which featured a guitar solo by… Dave Navarro. Small world. But I find it funny that Slash and Duff are now both working with dudes who have played with Axl Rose more recently than they have.

-AR

From the Daily What, via MS Mansion Vince Division inhabitant ELC:

God bless Henry Rollins.

-VN

Lair of the Minotaur must be a bunch of really fucked up dudes; they seem to be obsessed with brutal videos depicting gruesome violence against women. Either that or they just know that sensationalist blogs like this one will always link to a video involving metal, violence, gore and boobies. Probably the latter.

And at that, Lair of the Minotaur win again. Their new extremely NSFW video for “Evil Power” — from the album of the same name coming out on April 13th via their own record label — is currently being premiered by the fine folks of The Deciblog.

I actually don’t think this video is quite as brutal as the video they made for “War Metal Battle Master,” but it’s still plenty gory and fucked up. Check it out below, then head over to The Deciblog to read some interesting behind-the-scenes facts about the video provided by vocalist/guitarist Steven Rathbone.

Lair of the Minotaur are doing a quick Midwest and Northeast tour from April 16th to 21st. New Yorkers can catch ‘em April 21st is the dungeonous Charleston in Brooklyn. Dates here.

-VN