Even in the diverse universe of U.S. black metal, New York City is an anomaly. On top of being the least black metal place around by kvltist standards (what with it not being a heavily wooded area in Europe), it would seem to be rife with musicians who approach the music in a condescending fashion and with a deep sense of detachment, viewing it as a novelty or outsider art. And yet, NYC has produced a brilliant, bouillabaisse-style approach to the genre, with proggy, post-Weakling bands (Krallice), hardcore veterans cherry-picking from black metal to maximum effect (Tombs), and a well-meaning but generally snore-inducing variety (Liturgy). The common thread between the best Metro Area-based BM enthusiasts is their unironic approach to the genre, a deep understanding of its history and DNA instead of finding Transylvanian Hunger in a used record store and declaring, “Oh yeah, I ‘love’ black metal.” And this trend is ably continued by Profound Lore signees The Howling Wind, a band that has a burly, mid-paced take on proceedings without sacrificing heart or history (especially on Into the Cryosphere, their latest). But like recent releases by Valkyrja and Ov Hell, it also has a lot to offer metalheads less sympathetic to the genre’s grim and frostbitten charms, with tons of muscle alongside atmospherics. Despite being associated with the U.S.’ most vibrant metropolis, they can still trade blows with their most grim and isolated peers.

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Tributes to Dimebag have become a bit passe in 2010 (or really sometime in 2008), but the lads in British thrashers Evile get a pass. For one, their cover of Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” is awesome — vocalist/guitarist Matt Drake handles Phil Anselmo’s vocals with surprising ease, and the band does the Pantera classic justice in every other way. But then there’s the sad tragedy of bassist Mike Alexander’s sudden death last Fall, and the poetic coda that the last song he ever recorded with the band was a cover of “Cemetery Gates.” If that doesn’t give Evile a license to play this song and devote it to Dime whenever they damn please, nothing does.

Suckalo Jeremy Ruemenapp was on hand at Trees in Dallas a few nights ago to catch Evile covering “Cemetery Gates” during their support slot for Overkill. Check out his video of the performance (with really good video and sound quality!) below.

If you live in the Dallas area you can catch Deftones performing a surprise set on that very same stage tonight at 7pm! Ustream will have a live broadcast of the event, so be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT / 5pm PDT tonight to watch if you can’t attend.

-VN

Thanks mainly to their inclusion on a number of live hardcore shows I’ve been excited about, Cruel Hand are a band that I catch myself mentioning in this column without actually talking about them. That ends now, because after seeing their aggressive, brisk live performance at this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival I’m officially a fan. How could I not be? Their undeniably Madball-influenced metallic hardcore sound is just the kind of heavy shit I’m loving lately. Even if you’re the type of metalhead that’s apprehensive towards hardcore due to “Hatebreed fatigue,” rest assured that Cruel Hand have a distinct sound.

Their label, Bridge Nine, just announced that Lock & Key, the follow-up to 2008′s Prying Eyes, will drop July 27th. In the lead up to that, Cruel Hand have a number of shows lined up, including an appearance at the hardcore event of the year: the 2010 Black N Blue Bowl. After that, the band head over to Japan for a series of dates with Bane and labelmates Ceremony (who premiered their stunning new song “Sick” last week at the Bridge Nine MySpace page). Later this summer, Cruel Hand will support Lock & Key on a European excursion with The Carrier and Miles Away. All dates below.

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Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman published a story this morning with some interesting statistics about the decline of the music industry as a whole from 2008 to 2009. The results extend beyond the decline in sales of recorded music that we all know about:

• sales of recorded music (all formats) dropped 7.2% in 2009, to $17 billion
• radio advertising dropped 12% to $28.7 billion.
• sales of musical instruments dropped 15.4% to $14.8 billion
• sales of music-related video games dropped 47% to $43.5 billion
• The worldwide concert business gained 4% last year, to $19.8 billion
• publishing and performance rights edged up “slightly” (exact figure not given, but we can assume less than 5%)

Whether the steep declines in some categories are a function of changing trends or of a weak economy is up for debate, but I think it’s a safe bet to take the easy road and say “both.” Sales of recorded music were on the way down long before the recession hit, but while the drop in musical instrument sales is surprising I bet it’s pretty standard for lean times.

What I’d really like to know: 1) Stats for sales of digital music (both as a percentage change and gross $ amount), 2) The concert business improved, but as we know the tour markets are completely saturated… a defining statistic could be to look at average earnings per artist, or average concert attendance figures. I’ll bet those two are both down. Bram, get on it!

-VN

The Funeral Pyre damn near blew my 3 Inches of Blood Nike Hi-Tops off at the MetalSucks-sponsored Prosthetic Records SXSW showcase in March. Just the right combo of black, crust and metal mixed with just the right combo of Lone Star and weed made for a performance that felt unforgettable in the moment but inevitably grew kinda hazy as the night wore on due to said combo of Lone Star and weed. My level of blackout-edness during The Funeral Pyre’s set wasn’t close to what it would be when I took the stage to MC a guitar giveaway; at least I remember seeing The Funeral Pyre. And I’ll tell you this: these guys put on an incredibly powerful performance, and it was definitely one of the best of the evening.

The Funeral Pyre will release their new record Vultures At Dawn on June 8th via the always dependable Prosthetic Records. Stream the fifth track from that record, “Personal Exile,” below. Stay tuned to their MySpace page for pre-order info and tour dates as they become available.

-VN

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Evan Seinfeld and Tera Patrick split up less than a year ago, but the cause of the split was Seinfeld’s refusal to quit porn, so he handled the pain of the divorce like a real mensch and just started banging some other porn star immediately. Her name is Lupe Fuentes and she’s allegedly 23 years old, but she looks at least ten years younger than that and her videos have names like Little Lupe the Innocent: Dont Be Fooled By Her Baby Face, so it’s not as though everyone involved in the Lupe Fuentes business isn’t aware that the pedophile crowd is her bread n’ butter.

So some American rocket scientist named Carlos Simon-Timmerman bought a copy of that very movie in Venezuela and tried to take it with him to Puerto Rico – which implies he was on vacation and really needed to jack-off, which is fair enough, but who the fuck buys porn on a vacation? Just use your imagination, idiot. You probably passed a hundred hot Venezuelan chicks just on your way to the porno shop… you mean to tell me you didn’t store any of them in your spank bank?

ANYWAY, Puerto Rican customs officials thought the video was kiddie porn and were gonna lock Simon-Timmerman in jail and toss away the key, but luckily Fuentes and Seinfeld – who is also her manager – showed up with proof of her age and saved Simon-Timmerman.

Seinfeld and Fuentes were on television recently to discuss the incident, and the first thing I noticed – besides the fact that his little girl has the most irritating voice in the history of irritating voices – is that she’s sitting on Seinfeld’s lap the whole time, and that up until the 4:07 mark, when one is speaking, the other is silent. So for roughly the first four minutes of this interview, I was 99.9% sure that Fuentes was actually a puppet that Seinfeld was operating. And I’m still only half-convinced that she’s not.

Watch the interview after the jump.

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Billy Corgan’s contribution to the Dimebag Darrell Art Tribute “Six-String Masterpieces”

Well, well, well. As it turns out, when Billy Corgan isn’t engaged in a royal rumble of douchiness, he actually has pretty good taste in metal.

At least, that’s what his list of the “10 greatest heavy metal albums of all time” he compiled for Musicradar.com would lead me to believe.

Sure, The Stooges’ Funhouse really isn’t a metal album at all (which isn’t to say it’s not great, it’s just to say, y’know, c’mon), and, yes, I imagine a lot of people will scream bloody murder when they see which Slayer album he chose. (Hint: Billy says that “I thought Slayer could never top Reign In Blood. I was wrong. Dead wrong.”) But what is the internet for, if not insulting one another’s taste and needlessly criticizing celebrities we don’t know.

Read Corgan’s entire list here, then come back and argue about it in our comments section.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

The Metal Sucks staff may have more “-stein” and “-berg” surnames than the trading floor of a Wall Street investment bank, but I know Axl and Vince are open to exploring the entire spectrum of global faiths. I am sure we can also agree that music is the one common thread that unites all of us, so what better way to learn about Jesus Christ than through my favorite thing: BREAKDOWNS!

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It’s here! It’s here! Backsliders & Apostates Will Burn, the new EP from The Austerity Program, is here! It comes out today on Hydra Head. Gary Suarez gave it a perfect score and TAP’s Justin Foley constantly keeps you amused with his guest blogs for MetalSucks, so y’know you wanna check it out. So check it out. Just go here and press “play.” Do it. Do it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it.

And don’t forget that The Austerity Program are still running an awesome contest, in which you can win a number of prizes, including the chance to torture them by making them cover any song you want. So you should enter that shit, too!

-AR

Moby is one of those guys, like Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, who has never made it a secret that he has a proclivity for metal. But up ’til now, he’s never really gotten involved in the game; I mean, he almost produced Chinese Democracy, but that doesn’t really count for any number of reasons, not least of which is that everyone almost produced Chinese Democracy. MetalSucks intern Dave Mustein almost produced Chinese Democracy and I think he was still in diapers when they started recording it.

But now Moby is looking to enter the metal world at least semi-for reals, teaming up with two dudes I’ve never heard of (including some fruit who calls himself Tomato) and Dave “King of Metal” Hill, who has done some hilarious work for Metal Injection, to form Diamondsnake, a new band that seeks to combine “such disparate influences as rock, hard rock, metal, and heavy metal.”

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Child Abuse are nothing if not different. Like, seriously different, as in I’ve never heard anything like them before, ever. Their crazy blend of metal, grind, prog and electronica will likely send a lot of our close-minded metal community readers running but, well, too bad. It’s not often that you find bands of any genre who truly think outside the box musically, and though it’s sometimes grating (heyo Psyopus) when those rare bands do come along that are truly doing something to push their genre(s) forward in any way you just can’t ignore them, even if it’s a challenging listen. Child Abuse’s three-dimensional polyrhythmic grind freakouts beneath keyboard blips and boops and tortured psychiatric experiment vocals are definitely challenging… but ultimately worth it.

Elise at Reign in Blonde wrote a fun piece this morning about her first encounter with Child Abuse a few years back and her subsequent love affair with these New York gentlemen. I won’t steal her thunder because Elise is a good writer and you ought to check out her story, but let’s just say it involves a small Brooklyn club, ninjas and a giant orgy. Or maybe just one of those things, but it’s still a great read.

Check out Child Abuse on MySpace and their new album Cut And Run, which is out now.

-VN

Today we’ve got a previously unreleased Lamb Of God track for you coupled with a big announcement: to celebrate their 15th anniversary as a band, Lamb of God will release the Hourglass collections on June 1, a series of seven (!) configurations chronicling the band’s career. Hourglass will be released in CD, vinyl and digital configurations, and there will be 2 deluxe packages also available including extra goodies and special packaging.

Stream the previously unreleased demo of the Wrath track “In Your Words” below.

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This demo version of “In Your Words” comes from Hourglass: The 3 CD Anthology, just one of a whopping 7 different configurations of Hourglass that Lamb of God will be releasing on June 1st. Get the details on all seven after the jump.

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I hadn’t eaten at a Taco Bell for a long, long time, until somehow Metal Injection‘s Rob “Tall, Dark and Handsome” Pasbani, Justina “I’m at Every NYC Metal Show” Villaneuva, and myself ended up there after the DEP show in March. And, uh, eating there more or less confirmed why I don’t do it anymore. If I wanted to put something insanely unhealthy into my system and then shit out my intestines, I’d just inject myself with ebola.

But I could be lured back to Taco Bell if there was really such a thing as the Slayer Burrito.

Unfortunately, it’s clear that this is just a case of someone being too lazy to properly space out the letters and number for a 5-Layer Burrito. Oh well. A man can dream, can’t he?

-AR

Thanks to Brian Farneth for the pic!

I’ve never been to Bamboozle, but every year there’s a day where artists do an entire set covering one other artist. So if you’ve ever wanted to see, for example, Manure Emmure covering Rage Against the Machine for a solid thirty minutes, well, you’ve now missed your chance.

Rage Against the Machine made number nine on our list of “Ten Bands Great That Inadvertently Ruined Metal,” and even if the below footage of said Emmure homage to RATM doesn’t actually justify the rap-metal pioneers’ spot on that line-up, the fact that the Emmure dudes and I like some of the same music makes me feel like I need to take a shower. (Yep, bloggers shower, too! Sometimes.) Making it worse is that the band does nothing to put their own spin on the music (I think – I admit that even if they did I’d probably just make fun of them for being terrible), and that vocalist Frankie Palmeri seems to have mustered about as much enthusiasm for this performance as Rob Halford would if Christina Scabbia offered to jump his bones. I can’t believe this dude can get excited about Raptor Jesus, but not playing “Killing in the Name.”

Oh, well. Whatever keeps them from ripping-off The Acacia Strain I guess.

-AR

[via The PRP]

• Razormaze: It’s pretty hard to be a new thrash band in 2010 without being lumped in with all the re-thrash bands of the past 3 years. Those that have been successful at avoiding the generic genre tag either a) have a sense of humor about their music (i.e. Municipal Waste, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder) or b) incorporate other influences into their style (i.e. Revocation, Lazarus A.D.) or both. Boston thrash outfit Razormaze definitely fall into category (b) by blending thrash with a slew of other influences, and at least musically they seem to fall into category (a) as well [though I haven't spent any time with their lyrics]. The bottom of line is that Razormaze are really good and worth your listening time; download their 3 song EP Miseries for free at their Bandcamp page. [Thanks: Jordan Munson]
• Witchery: Not a new band by any means, Witchery have amongst their ranks an all-star cast of metal musicians: Jensen (guitars) of The Haunted, Rickard Rimfält (guitars) of Séance, Sharlee D’Angelo (bass) from Arch Enemy and Spiritual Beggars, and Martin Axenrot (drums) of Opeth and Bloodbath. Though their lineup is filled with a bunch of Swede melodeth and death metal vets, their sound is decidedly thrashy; think faster Slayer-style with hints of death metal influence, as opposed to the slightly more lighthearted brand offered by Razormaze. The upcoming album Witchkrieg, set for a June 29th North American release, features the debut of new vocalist Legion (ex-Marduk, ex-Devian), another fellow Swede.

-VN

Max Cavalera is still the fucking man. He’s been going strong with Soulfly for over a decade, continuing to carve his place in metal history and show the kiddies how it’s done. In fact, Soulfly’s seventh album, Omen, comes out May 25 on Roadrunner, and shows that Max is just as relevant to metal today as he was when Sepultura released Morbid Visions nearly twenty-five years ago.

MetalSucks is proud to bring you the exclusive worldwide debut of “Rise of the Fallen,” the new video for the first single off of Omen. It intercuts awesome performance footage with a you-are-there representation of Soulfly’s brutal pits and, of course, even features an appearance by The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, who contributes guest vocals to the track. Check out the clip below – and don’t forget to pre-order a copy of Omen!

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It’s like this band doesn’t even WANT anyone but their most die-hard fans to find out about their releases.

This time the item in question is a 7xLP set that comes in an engraved wooden box, limited to 350 copies; given, the only people that are gonna shell out $200 (€130) on something for any band are the die-hards anyway, but you’d think they could benefit from oh, I don’t know, an announcement on their website or MySpace page? But that apparently is too much to ask for, as was the case with their last release. Is an announcement too un-tr00 for this kultest of kult band? Call me crazy, but I’d think the band (and the label issuing this release) would actually want to sell these.

Then again, MS reader James Keglor emailed us about this set and we, in turn, are posting about it. So I guess Agalloch are doing something right (aside from making awesome music, of course).

-VN

I’m going to be completely honest with you: I wanted to interview Jackyl vocalist Jesse James Dupree because I wanted to meet the man whose obituary will lead with the phrase “Was well-known for his chainsaw solos.” Dupree is a really good singer and Jackyl have some totally kick-ass songs, but, really, I just wanted to know what this dude who one day said “Fuck guitar solos, I can do that shit with my motherfuckin’ chainsaw” was like.

Really, really nice, and incredibly funny, as it turns out. He and I could not be from more different worlds, but even when he said a couple of things that I thought were questionable – I’m also wary of anyone who uses the phrase “the real America” – he was just such a incredibly cool dude that I didn’t care. I like to concentrate on what people similar, not different, y’know? And Jesse James Dupree and I are very similar, in that we both think that the idea of a chainsaw solo is completely fucking awesome.

Jackyl have a new album out tomorrow, aptly titled When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide. It includes a single called “My Moonshine Kicks Your Cocaine’s Ass.” If you don’t love that, you need to pull the stick out of your ass. On the eve of the album’s release, I sat down with Dupree to discuss all things Jackyl. Read the full transcript of our chat after the jump.

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Just a friendly reminder that you can still enter the Levi/Werstler 4/20 Jager water pipe contest! The most impressive entry wins the wonderful instrument of smoke that you see Mr. Levi holding in the photo above (for novelty use only… we’d never encourage actual smoking here at MetalSucks). Here are the rules, in case ya forgot:

And that’s it! So if you haven’t entered yet, well… get crackin’!

Not too much to say here. The following message has been posted on The Absence’s MySpace page:

In unfortunate news, Justin Reynolds, drummer for THE ABSENCE was involved in a bad automobile accident last week in Sarasota, Florida. Justin sustained injuries to his neck and back and totaled his car. At this point the full extent of his injuries are unclear, as well as when he will be able to continue with THE ABSENCE.

We wish our friend best of luck and a speedy recovery and hope he’s back doing what he does best soon.

For the time being the position has been temporarily filled by local Tampa drummer Matt Solka.

If you read MetalSucks regularly, you know we’re big, big fans of The Absence. Justin’s a very talented guy and we hope he gets well soon.

More details as they emerge…

-AR

[via Metal Underground]