You may know Emil and I from our band DAATH, my blogs on this site, Emil’s online guitar lessons, or just stumbling around Atlanta like the drunken bastards that we are. Axl and Vince were kind enough to let us hijack their site in honor of the release of our instrumental record, Avalanche of Worms. Even though the name of the project is Levi/Werstler, we feel that everyone involved was an integral contributor to what we feel is our truest artistic statement to date. That’s why today you’re not only going to get a glimpse into our world view, but you’ll also be able to read what’s on the mind of the entire team via their guest blogs. So that said, welcome to the 4/20/2010 Levi/Werstler Metalsucks Takeover!

-Eyal and Emil

Tomorrow, Levi/Werstler’s debut album, Avalanche of Worms - which we’re currently streaming right here – will finally be released! To celebrate, Axl and Vince and the rest of the MetalSucks staff are taking the day off to enjoy 4/20 properly – by getting really high and playing the album on repeat at eardrum-destroying volumes.

But lest we leave you in the lurch, we called up Eyal Levi and Emil Werstler and told them that since it’s their fault we can’t work on 4/20 because they made such a kick-ass record, they would have to take over MetalSucks for the day. Luckily, they agreed! And so tomorrow it’s gonna be all Levi/Werstler, all the time.

In addition to doing a whole bunch of blogging themselves, Eyal and Emil have also enlisted the help of the rest of the Avalanche of Worms posse – including Cynic drummer Sean Reinert, From Exile keyboardist Eric Guenther, bassist Kevin Scott, and AOW mixer Mark Lewis – to come up with some really, really entertaining stuff. So come back tomorrow to see what they have in store for you, oh beloved readers. It’s gonna be killer.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Not to be outdone by silly bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Testament and Motley Crue, [relatively] recently reunited prog metal pioneers Cynic want their moment in the “playing our classic album in its entirety” sun too.

According to an email from the band’s label Season of Mist, Cynic will hit the road this July and August for “The Decibel Fall of Fame Tour” on which they’ll play their classic 1993 record Focus in full. We know that Cynic will headline, but we don’t know which other bands will be on the tour. Seeing as a criterion for Decibel Hall of Fame inclusion is that all band members must be alive to talk about the album, we haven’t got much to help us whittle down the list of the 50-some-odd Decibel Hall of Fame bands listed here. But we’re MetalSucks so we’re gonna speculate anyway!

It’s safe to assume that if Cynic are headlining then bigger bands like Slayer and Anthrax won’t be on the tour, and that, for example, the classic Sepultura lineup isn’t about to reunite. It’s also reasonable, but by no means fool-proof, to make assumptions based on style… like, I doubt they’re gonna throw Converge on tour with Cynic (but ya never know). With that in mind, here’s my short-list for possible other bands:

• Carcass
• Atheist
• Morbid Angel
• Obituary
• Suffocation
• Nile
• Enslaved

This is fun; and this tour will undoubtedly be fun too. We’ll keep you apprised of any developments.

-VN

Valient Thorr are one of those bands you’ve got to see live to truly understand. Sure, their breed of trad metal and fiery blues rock is appealing enough on its own, but it’s not until you see these guys perform that really get what they’re all about. And it’s not their fault; it’s just really hard to convey the combination of humor and ferocity that makes Valient Thorr be Valient Thorr in any studio recording.

All this is relevant because Valient Thorr just released the new track “Doublecrossed” for free download on their official website. The track is classic Thorr with all the aforementioned qualities, but I’m sure it’d be that much more kick-ass to see the band play it live. Lucky for you, VT are about to head out on a bonerific tour with Mastodon, Between the Buried and Me and Baroness. Will they play this track? Who knows, but whether they do or they don’t Valient Thorr are always a fun time. You’d be a sucker if you didn’t arrive early to see them play.

“Doublecrossed” comes from an untitled record the band just finished recording with producer Jack Endino, due for release this Fall. Download it here. Tour dates after the jump.

-VN

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What can I tell you about Dew-Scented’s new song, “Arise from Decay,” that you won’t already know? It is as undeniably metal and completely lacking in subtlety as the cover art for the band’s new album, Invocation.

It also rocks like a motherfucker.

Click to read more…

Vince gave his thoughts about the MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 last week, and I agree with every word he said, even if my own man crush on the keyboard player from Swallow the Sun is somewhat less than his own. Still, this is the third time we’ve seen Swallow the Sun, and I did wanna throw in one random observation…

Every time we see this band, five of its six members are lined up in a perfectly even row at the lip of the stage. They’re not staggered, as is the case with most bands, where the lead singer is out front  and the lead guitarist is out front but maybe the bassist and/or rhythm guitarist and/or keyboardist is a little further back; nope, they’re all standing together in a straight line, as though waiting for a firing squad. It’s a very powerful image – just a fucking WALL of metal dudes – that I think really helps set the band’s live show apart from that of their peers. It also helps give Vince a better view of their keyboard player… but that’s beside the point.

Anyways, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this video of them at a tour stop in Montreal last Sunday:

And here’s another video of them, this time playing the show we attended here in New York… it has some excellent close-ups of Vince’s new boyfriend:

Are there any other bands that do this? It seems so unique to me…

The Finnish Metal Tour 2010, featuring Swallow the Sun and their own personal wall of death, is still underway! Remaining dates after the jump.

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At the Gates’ new, triple-disc DVD, The Flames of the End, was released in Europe earlier this year, but we finally get it here in North America tomorrow. And I can tell you, it’s a must-own: the first disc consists of an incredible feature-length documentary, Under a Serpent Sun: The Story of At the Gates, which was directed by guitarist Anders Bjorler ; the second disc is the band’s complete reunion performance from Wacken ’08 (clip above); and the final disc is a whole heap of other live footage, some of it dating as far back as 1991. It’s an amazingly comprehensive package that no At the Gates fan can afford to miss.

Back in February, Bjorler actually flew to New York for a special screening of the Serpent Sun documentary, and a few hours prior to said screening, I got to meet Bjorler at his hotel for an interview. As I said, I hadn’t actually seen the film yet at this point, so I was only able to get so specific with the questions. Still, Bjorler turned out to be an honest, interesting, and deeply sarcastic (and deadpan) interview subject. Read the full transcript of our chat after the jump…

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We generally try to keep the local content we post to a minimum so everything we write about can be enjoyed by all (except the suckers in Florida who never get to see the tours we sponsor), but from time to time we participate in special events in NYC. Tomorrow, on 4/20 (!), we’ll be at the Smell the Glove party at St. Jerome’s on the Lower East Side — you know we love to party, you know we love metal, and you know we love celebrating weed. Come on down and hang with us!

Here’s what you need to know:

• Starts at 9pm
• Free PBR until it runs out
• This is also a listening party for Ratt’s new album Infestation!
• St. Jerome’s is at 155 Rivingson St. between Suffolk and Clinton.
• The event is hosted by Nicks & Dimes and Brooklyn Ski Club, while Noisecreep, MetalSucks (duh), Earache Records, Kill Shop Dance and Eight of Swords Tattoo are also involved.
• Plenty of giveaways by the aforementioned sponsors.

In short: this is going to be quite the party. Come hang.

- VN & AR

In case you didn’t read Axl’s four-and-a-half out of five horns rave review of Avalanche of Worms, the debut album from Levi/Werstler, we’ll sum it up for you: “Avalanche of Worms is a trippy, freaky, cinematic, vivid narrative that unfolds in multiple dimensions at once.” Axl also said that the album “is really is best enjoyed in a single sitting, as one large piece of work.”

Which you can do right now! We’re streaming the entire thing below before its release tomorrow on Magna Carta. And it’s already 4/20 in some parts of the world! So sit back, light up, and enjoy Avalanche of Worms…

[this promotion has ended]

Reader Austin O’Meara recommended Russia’s Karen Grigoryan to us, suggesting that Grigoryan could be “possibly the future of the ‘djent’ genre.” I was all excited to see some hot Ruski broad getting all djenty, but as it turns out, Russians named “Karen” aren’t necessarily girls the same way Frenchies named “Michelle” aren’t necessarily girls.That’s fucking Europe for you.

Luckily, this Karen dude seems pretty talented anyway. Check out this instrumental demo:

Not too shabby, eh? The other stuff on Grigoryan’s MySpace page is pretty neat, too. Unfortunately, the poor bastard lives in Russia, which I’m guessing means he won’t be signing with Sumerian anytime soon. Fortunately, this is the 21st century, when we don’t need to rely on tape-trading to keep abreast of what musicians who live thousands of miles from us are up to. So hopefully this Karen dude has a bright future ahead of him…

-AR

Thanks to longtime MetalSucks devotee Metal Mykee for being the latest reader to enter our Show Us Your MetalSucks contest, in which you send us pictures of yourselves in your MS t-shirts and/or hoodies and then a package of CDs and other goodies magically appears in your mailbox.

Metal Mykee recently visited the 51st United State of Puerto Rico for a wedding and took some time out of his busy schedule of tanning and margaritas for a photo shoot featuring the beach, invisible coconuts, pink crocs and one sweet MS “Jew Skull” t-shirt. The pink crocs are a fucking fantastic touch, but that shot of Mykee facing the sunset over the ocean with “Reign in Blog” on the back of his shirt and “Pig Destroyer” on the back of his cap is all sorts of epic.

Check out a few of his photos after the jump. Send in pics of yourself in your MS gear and you could be e-famous (and a few CDs richer) just like Mykee.

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In a relatively short time, Trapped Under Ice have established themselves as MVPs of modern American hardcore, with a rapidly growing fanbase and a seemingly constant touring schedule. Though the Baltimore-based band only dropped their full-length debut Secrets Of The World this past Fall, this video for “Believe” is the first off of that fine record (which I reviewed some months ago). The clip splices candid, grim coverage of the band’s hometown with footage from their typically rambunctious live shows. Fans of Madball, Terror, and Hatebreed are sure to dig the Trapped Under Ice sound.

I’ve seen the band twice already this year, but in case you haven’t, they’re playing a few U.S.-based fests next month, including New York’s Black N Blue Bowl with Cro Mags, Skarhead, and loads more. Dates are below.

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Metal Injection posted an interesting chart from Mashable that shows how many copies of records or tracks sold through various outlets a solo artist needs to sell in order to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage. Before looking at this chart, please understand a couple of things:

• These numbers don’t take into account fixed costs like recording, gear, mixing, mastering, etc. They assume you’re starting at $1 and profiting from the very first record sold. Of course, most bands who do this all independently will already be in the hole from the above costs, and most bands signed to labels will have to pay back money to the label (“recoup”) before ever seeing a cent.
• This chart shows what it would take for a SOLO artist to earn said amount of money. Since most metal musicians are in bands of 4 or 5 hairy, sweaty dudes… they’d really need to make 4x or 5x this amount of money just to be earning minimum wage.

OK. Now let’s take a look (click to enlarge):

Pretty dire if you’re looking to make a living just on selling recorded music, eh? In short: better hit the road and sell a bunch of t-shirts.

-VN

With all due respect to Dark Tranquillity, the main contributor to the 401k (or its Swedish equivalent) of guitarist Niklas Sundin, they’re not the kind of band you listen to when you’ve got hammersmashing on the brain. Their melodies are a little too pleasant, their brutality too compromised by keyboards for an obstacle-free headbang session. The fact that the second record by Sundin’s side project Laethora is perfect for those times when you’ve got hammersmashing on the brain is but one reason among many why the band reigns supreme.

The Light In Which We All Burn removes all but the faintest traces of Dark Tranquillity’s melo-death and completely annuls all previous work by Laethora’s rhythm guitarist, bassist and drummer, who used to play in the defunct Swedish rock band The Provenance. What’s left is a document of unrelenting death metal savagery, inscribed by what’s essentially a five-member death metal rhythm section. Laethora don’t have to write great riffs with such a thick, chunky sound and fiendishly tight performances. But they do anyway. That mid-paced chugger at the 1:30 mark of “Uproar” could bring goose-stepping back in style.

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The influence that Clint Lowery’s return to Sevendust has had on the band is evident just a few seconds into Cold Day Memory opening track “Splinter”; are those guitar harmonies? Yup. But it’s not just the added frills like guitar harmonies, vocal harmonies, and — egads — guitar solos that Lowery brings back to the Sevendust fold; it’s his extremely developed sense of songwriting, and his presence is felt from the very beginning to the very end of Cold Day Memory. Sevendust are just different — and better — with Clint back in the band. Even a song like “Forever” which garnered luke-warm reaction from both me and Axl upon its MySpace release a month or so ago fits well into the whole, which you can now stream in its entirety at TuneLab. His input as a producer is evident not just in the improved songwriting but in the re-introduction of ambient samples and the fact that Lajon Witherspoon has found his singing voice once again. Explains drummer Morgan Rose:

We were going, ‘Let’s bring back those other elements Clint brought in that made us what we were. So we sort of made a silent agreement that we were going to let Clint run wild. We said we’ll jump in when it’s time, but if you’ve got an idea let’s go with it.

I’m only a couple of listens in, but already it’s obvious that Cold Day Memory is a better, balanced, more complete and well-thought out album than any of the three albums Sevendust released while Lowery was away. Stream Cold Day Memory in full at TuneLab. It comes out tomorrow.

-VN

We got all excited back in September when word first got out that Mastodon are contributing to the score for Jonah Hex, one of the next big graphic novel movie adaptations/franchise hopefuls, which Warner Bros. currently has scheduled for a June 18 release. But we haven’t really heard much about it since then, and, to be honest, I’d kind of forgotten all about Jonah Hex – the only big mega-budget movie opening this summer that I’m really excited to see is Christopher Nolan’s Inception, so I guess thoughts of Megan Fox in a corset lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio’s (apparently literally) dreamy face.

But now New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog has an update on the movie and Mastodon’s score, and they paint a picture which strongly suggests the flick is in deep doo-doo. Apparently it’s been the victim of quite a bit of re-shoots, and Mastodon’s music has undergone some major changes in the process, as the movie’s re-shuffled schedule meant original composer John Powell (the Bourne franchise, the recent How to Train Your Dragon, etc.) had to leave the project and was consequently replaced by Marco Beltrami (who scored the Scream franchise, the last Die Hard movie, and worked on Chinese Democracy). Beltrami, of course, made major changes to the soundtrack, which were hard for Mastodon to keep up with, given their busy tour schedule:

Click to read more…

Our Faith Bro Mores at Metal Injection weren’t the only ones doing hilarious black carpet interviews at the Golden Gods Awards last weekend; Dave Mustaine and Ozzy Osbourne provided some pretty hilarious material of their own accord during Revolver TV interviews with host (and SiriusXM metal DJ) Jose Mangin.

After winning an award for Best Guitarist, Zakk Wylde comes off stage to do an interview with Jose. Before it can even get started, Ozzy, who happened to be nearby, bombs Zakk’s interview and stands in the way of the camera while Zakk jokes about being dismissed from Ozzy’s band:

Zakk, for a change — perhaps inspired by his recent medical problems — was the sober one. Dave Mustaine, on the other hand, was visibly drunk, stoned (we know he’s a fan of the leaf) or both:

Check out a few more entertaining post-award Golden Gods moments at Metal Injection, including clips with Dave Grohl, Lemmy, Dio and Corey Taylor.

-VN

I don’t usually like to post these “album teasers” ’cause nine times outta ten they’re totally friggin’ lame, but I’m gonna make an exception in the case of this video promoting Nachtmystium’s upcoming Addicts: Black Meddle Pt II. For one thing, in case you didn’t get memo, we think that this album is tops; and given the range of reactions other blogs have already had to less than a minute and a half of actual music, I was right when I asserted that this thing is gonna be a conversation starter. “Meh” is not a response you’re going to hear people give Addicts; you will, however, see endless flame wars and drunken/stoned arguments.

So. The song actually being used here is album-closer “Every Last Drop,” which I predicted “might be the new high watermark for Nachtmystium.” The entire song is eight and half minutes long, so this is just a free taste, as my heroin dealer might say…

In case you’re slow and those numbers at the end of the video are totally baffling to you, Addicts comes out June 8 on Century.

-AR

For a long time, outside of some dazzling old-school stuff, I became pretty resistant to the “art” of speed shredding…..obvs it’s impressive when a musician can wail and zip around the fretboard, but that rarely exemplifies SOUL, which is crucial for speaking to this guy’s musical heart.

Having said thaaat, I’ve recently re-opened up a bit to maniac shredders, even love me some young tigers to death. DEATH!!!!!!!!!!

But the below guys border on rishdickulous…..unless if you’re just entertaining the fam at jome — what’s the point?

Tiago Della Vega shreds on MySpace…..eh

-KW

I just wanna throw my two cents in…

True story: when I was a kid, I thought the lyrics to “Black No. 1″ were “You can’t go out ’cause your boobs are showing.” I was confused about what the song’s title meant, but otherwise, the words made perfect sense to me. Oh, misheard lyrics. You never cease to amuse.

Even if you weren’t a Type O Negative fan or a Carnivore fan, you have to admit that Peter Steele had one of the most distinctive voices in the history of metal. You never heard the guy and thought, “Gee, who is that?” And because my mother used to work with Josh Silver’s (now sadly also departed) dad, Type O Negative always felt, somehow, more tangible to me; Steele was iconic and often seemed larger than life, but I knew he wasn’t superhuman.That he passed away so young was a very unfortunate reminder that he wasn’t The Man of Steele. But he made his mark and left something to appreciated behind, and in the end, that’s all any of us can really ask for.

Here are some happier things that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We unveiled the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2010.
• We debuted a new video by Jungle Rot.
• We spoke to Kerry King and Dave Lombardo from Slayer, Chino Moreno from Deftones, and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal contemplated depression, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa contemplated L O S T, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley contemplated the perfect Taco Riff.
• We checked out new releases by Levi/Werstler, Wormrot, and Bison B.C. and Sweet Apple.
• Ever dreamed of singing with Nevermore? We’re running pretty much the coolest contest in the history of ever.

Next week brings at least one and possibly two big surprises, plus, knock on a wood, the debut of a new column by a writer you will hate. See ya then.

-AR