New Orleans isn’t just known for it’s metal and sludge music — it’s also a hot bed for good eats! If you’re planning on traveling here, give these dishes a whirl, and wash ‘em down with a daiquiri!
(YES, the picture is real. You can actually go to a DRIVE THROUGH and buy booze here in Louisiana!)
These are just record covers I thought were great. I like when a CD cover provokes thought and makes me want to interpret what message or messages the artist or band are trying to purvey.
#5 – Behemoth, Evangelion
Done by Polish artist Tomasz Danilowicz, who has worked on Behemoth’s previous albums. This is just bad ass.
Before we hand the MetalSucks reigns over to Kirk and Jamey for the day of their album release, we’ve got one hour left of June 7th… and I choose to use it to tell you that there’s a new Iron Maiden track available for free download via their official website! The site’s a bit overloaded with traffic at the moment and takes a little while to load, but it’s Iron fucking Maiden… and with a free track, a 30 second wait isn’t such a bad deal.
The free track, “El Dorado,” comes from the band’s forthcoming album The Final Frontier, set to be released on August 17th in the U.S. and the 16th in the rest of the world. Of the re-Bruce era of Maiden I loved loved loved Brave New World but couldn’t really get into either of the two albums released since then. I’m digging “El Dorado” — it’s got all the makings of a classic Maiden track, and at 7+ minutes it’s definitely an epic… but I can’t say I’m enthralled with it. The song’s not terribly catchy, and something weird is happening with the way the vocals are mixed. Still, it’s solid, and what’ve you got to lose by giving it a shot?
If you pre-order The Final Frontier in “high-quality mp3 format” (320kbps, I’d hope?) before June 21st you can get it for only $7.99. Kudos to Maiden for recognizing the fruitful potential of the Internet and embracing it, though I’d gather Maiden’s fanbase is primarily of the age that would prefer a physical copy. If I were Iron Maiden I’d be attempting to rake it in with super-duper-uper special deluxe vinyl limited edition hand-engraved gold-foiled Dave Murray’s shit-stained box sets… ’cause I know my fans would eat that shit up. But that’s just me.
Maiden will be on tour with Dream Theater this Summer. We’ll be there, dorking out to the max.
-VN
Tomorrow will see the release of Kingdom of Sorrow‘s sophomore album, Behind the Blackest Tears, on Relapse. And because we know how much you all have enjoyed the artist site takeovers we’ve done in the past, we thought it would be fun to let the legendary Misters Jasta and Windstein run MetalSucks for the day – so that’s exactly what we’re doing!
So come back tomorrow to read Jamey and Kirk’s thoughts on, well, pretty much whatever the hell they please. It should be a blast. And don’t forget that Behind The Blackest Tears is currently streaming on Kingdom of Sorrow’s MySpace page!
-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks
Event – “Under My Skin” (mp3)
Event – “Make Your Way” (mp3)
The great purge of 2010 has begun — of my CD collection, that is. I’m preparing to move once again, and although I’ve still got three months to think about it, the experience of having to pack up my entire CD collection into boxes, carry them down a flight of stairs, load them into a truck, drive said truck across town, then carry everything up two and half more flights of stairs (in addition to all of my other furniture)… the experience still sticks with me from two years ago when I last moved. I have a lot of CDs. It was fucking brutal, and it made me re-think why the fuck I still hold onto this archaic form of music storage device.
If Italy is the mecca of modern Epic Metal then Germany is the epicenter of OG power metal… which I guess by today’s standards is more like power hard rock. Edguy and all of Tobias Sammet’s projects would be enough on their own to give Germany the power metal crown, but it really all goes back to Accept, doesn’t it? I’m sure some Accept die-hards would fight me on it, but I’m just gonna say it: Accept spawned the German power metal scene. Now you’ve got Helloween, the aforementioned Edguy, and good old Gamma Ray (and others, of course), who are back with their new self-actualizing album To the Metal. Here’s the video for the title clip, which miraculously has over 60,000 views. God bless Germany and their power metal fanaticism.
-VN
If 2006 Vince Neilstein could glimpse into the future to see 2010 Vince Neilstein’s playlist, he’d be shocked and mortified at the amount of black metal therein. But what can I say? There’s so much great black metal making the rounds right now, and so much of it is unsigned. Here are three recent reader submissions deserving of your attention.
-VN
My post about Canadian progressive metallers Divinity a few months back certainly turned some heads. We got emails from several readers thanking us for introducing them to the band — including from some prominent metal musicians — and a number of folks even told me in person they’d found out about Divinity through MS and were really digging their record The Singularity. If you haven’t picked up that record or even listened to Divinity yet, please do — you’re missing out. And though at the time of the post the band had been dropped by Nuclear Blast, I’m happy to report that The Singularity was picked up by Candlelight and will be re-released worldwide! I hope it garners the band the exposure they deserve.
But Divinity guitarist Sacha Laskow is a busy man, and the re-release of The Singularity hasn’t stopped him from writing new music… for another band. Sacha’s solo project is called Enditol, and though it’s not out of line from what you’d expect it’s definitely not just Divinity Part 2. Many of the same elements are in place — stellar guitar work, brutal grooves, non-traditional song structures, tons of time signature changes — but I’d say that Enditol is on the whole a bit darker and a tad more industrial-influenced. Part SikTh, part Meshuggah, part Dream Theater, part NIN, part lots of other stuff. And, from what I can tell, Sacha does everything himself.
If you liked Divinity you’ll definitely like Enditol, and if you never checked out Divinity, well, you still might like Enditol. So give ‘em a shot.
-VN
Vince is traveling again today and I have a family emergency I have to go take care of immediately.
I’ve auto-programmed some posts Vince wrote prior to his trip to run throughout the rest of the day in an effort to make sure any of you stuck in a cubicle still have some amusement for the rest of the of the afternoon, but we won’t be able to address any breaking news until tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll find some way to survive.
-AR
First things first: screamo is literally worse than the Holocaust in my book. With a few notable exceptions, I absolutely cannot stand this shit. That said, with bands like The Devil Wears Prada and Underoath selling out huge venues, putting out platinum-selling albums, and selling truckloads of cookie-cutter merch to every angsty suburban teen within driving distance of a Hot Topic, it’s hard not to pay attention to the genre. I might not like it, but Kids These Days certainly do. My biggest question: Where the fuck did this shit come from??
As someone who saw the birth of metalcore and “true screamo”/skramz firsthand in the 90s, I am highly confused when I listen to these bands. On the one hand, they are not so different from anything that could have been on Victory or Indecision in the 90s (Earth Crisis, All Out War, Bloodlet). Obviously there are some things that have changed over time, but the fundamentals of metalcore are still there (see my post “The 5 Kinds Of Music Teens Are Into” for more details). On the other hand, the kids in Alesana, August Burns Red, and possibly even As I Lay Dying have no fucking idea who those pioneering metalcore bands are, much less that screamy vocals were born in the tiny basement shows and vegan bakesales of the 90s DIY hardcore scene.
Tracii Guns is working on his autobiography. This is easily the best news you’re going to hear all day and possibly all week or even all month, for the following reasons:
Even though “wormwood” just sounds like the name of a death metal band, it’s actually a type of plant that they used to put into absinthe; it’s what gave that drink (which, if you’ve never had any, will fuck you up right proper even if it doesn’t have wormwood in it, because it has a RIDICULOUS amount of alcohol by volume) its hallucinatory properties and made it an alleged creative enabler of everyone from Toulouse-Lautrec to Hemingway to Marilyn Manson (who claims to grow his own wormwood for just that purpose). It’s also a star (or possibly an angel – there seems to be some debate) referenced in the New Testament.
Why am I telling you this? Because, in the below video, The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett announces Wormwood as the title of the band’s new album, but declines to give any further explanation. So is the band making reference to a fallen star, or to a plant that will make you see Underwear Gnomes n’ shit? Until we get to hear Mr. Bennett’s lyrics for the new album, we probably won’t know – and even then, the subject may be open to debate. Still, this is MetalSucks, so everyone should feel free to speculate.
Bennett also unveils the album’s cover art in this video. Check it out:
Wormwood comes out July 20 on Prosthetic.
-AR
Chalk it up to geographic isolation, but Icelandic bands really haven’t represented in the worldwide metal scene… until now.
The songs posted at the Bandcamp link that the Icelandic band Momentum sent us are so good that I’ve had them open in a browser tab for a week now… and there’s only two of them! Imagine the intricate, slow, doomy goodness of Cult of Luna or a more focused version of Isis mixed with elephants marching-like Gojira battle stomps of death metal and a progressive bent in the band’s songwriting approach… hard to do, I know, so just go ahead and listen to the two songs Momentum have posted at Bandcamp.
This is the kind doom that I wish was more plentiful in the world; well-produced, sonically rich and intricate, as opposed to raw-for-the-sake-of-raw and slow-for-the-sake-of-slow doom that ends up just being boring instead of powerful. This is powerful… just the right amount of raw and just the right amount of slow, mixed in with plenty of other stuff to keep it interesting.
Momentum’s new album Fixation, At Rest was released on May 14th.
-VN
Okay, everyone is familiar with The Rose Funeral “Uno Incident,” right? It’s still one of the most-discussed stories of the year, and probably the most press the band has ever gotten. But in case you need to play catch-up, you can do so here, here, and here.
Well, we haven’t really heard RF’s side of the story… until now. Those geniuses at Metal Injection got Johnny Orlando, Jr. to interview them about it at the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, and that video has now been posted. And… personally, I have mixed feelings about their explanation. So go watch the interview (the entire thing is good, but the really juicy part starts roughly at the “-5:22″ mark), then come back here and get my thoughts.
But he, like, totally had it coming. He was the singer for some band called Beneath the Sky.
I’m kidding. I don’t endorse violence against untalented people. Just front row games of Uno.
ANYWAY, here’s some other shit we happened this week:
Next week we get to debut that video we were supposed to debut this week, and we have another stream, and some other stuff I’m probably forgetting. ‘Til then, enjoy your weekend!
-AR
MS die-hard Lord Assenfroth is the latest entrant of our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest, in which you, our loyal readers, take photos of yourselves in your MetalSucks t-shirts or hoodies at amusing locales (some examples sent in so far: inside a temple in India, with pink crocs at the beach, in front of a “Metal Only” dumpster) and in return we send you a box full o’ metal goodies that’ll easily catapult you to “coolest kid on the block” status.
Lord Assenfroth isn’t donning any MS gear in the photos he submitted (cheap fuckin’ bastard that he is), but he did happen to come across an uber-rare / hard to find / out-of-print / limited edition / colored vinyl MetalSucks sticker and made great use of it by affixing it to that most holy of places: his weedbox. We approve.
The picture’s a bit fuzzy, but we forgive him: he was stoned, and those camera self-timers can be a bitch even to the clear-headed.
After the jump, take a look inside Lord Assenfroth’s box o’ fun:
Welcome to a new feature here at MetalSucks, “Question of the Week.” Each week (duh) we’ll ask our staff a question (double duh) based around a recent hot button issue.
Unfortunately, this week there really were no hot button issues, so inspired by the Ozzfest “Unholy Matrimony” VIP package, we decided to ask our writers a silly question instead:
If you were going to be married at a metal concert, which show would it be and why?
Their answers after the jump.
The power and creative freedom bestowed upon today’s youth by the low cost and ease of use of recording technology has had a profound impact on the way bands form, record, and show their wares to the world. Sure, this means that we end up with 19,000 more <insert trend here> bands than we ever wanted, but it also means that truly talented kids are given a voice to speak to the world, which even only 10 years ago would’ve been impossible. I spent countless high school hours holed up in my bedroom with my digital Roland 8-track recorder, which at the time was the absolute shizz, but I never had a way to get that music out to the world (not that it necessarily would’ve been worth hearing by the world’s ears, but ya know, just sayin’); all I could do was bounce it down to a cassette tape and pass it around to friends and family.
In any case, MS reader Tristan Zemtseff is one such dude who, had he been born a decade earlier, surely wouldn’t have been able to have his talent recognized, at least such a young age. Tristan is only 17, and recorded most of the music for his Dead on Both Shoulders solo project when he was just 16 — sixteen, folks — and his record is better and more creative than at least 95% (if not more) of the stuff readers send us on a daily basis.
