It’s been a while since I actively paid attention about Atreyu. A few years ago it was easy to slag them for venturing headfirst into the pop metal world; not that their sugar-sweet metalcore of yore was breaking boundaries or slaying faces to shreds beforehand, but The Curse and A Deathgrip on Yesterday were solid metalcore albums that were sufficiently heavy and sufficiently catchy, and, I’d venture, pretty good. So when Atreyu left Victory for the major label world and subsequently adapted their music to go for the mainstream gold, they were everyone’s favorite metalcore punching bags for a good hot hour there. But now? They’ve kind of just slipped into “oh yeah, that band” territory every time I see or hear their name somewhere. As Lambgoat commenters might say, “No care ever.”

So, a check-in. They’ve got a new video for a song called “Gallows,” from their latest album. Despite having the trimmings of metal (double bass, twin guitar leads, screaming [sometimes]), it’s pretty clear that Atreyu have continued on with the poppy stuff via a short, concise song structure and cliched catchy chorus. Vocalist Alex Varkatzas is singing [via the help of auto-tune] more than ever, and apparently drummer / backup vocalist Brandon “Ziggy” Saller has shaved his head. Otherwise it’s pretty much business as usual for Atreyu, which, these days, I’m honestly not sure how it is. Do kids still go out to shows to see this band or has their fanbase moved on?

-VN

The kind of mind-fuckery that Knut traffic in used to be called math-core, but when was the last time you even saw that expression bandied about? For now, let’s just call them awesome.

Knut’s latest album Wonder is a dazzling display of technical post-hardcore that will make fans of Dillinger Escape Plan and Keelhaul bow at the altar of their angular riffs, spastic rhythms and seemingly constant time-signature shifts. That they’re able to instill all the madness with a real sense of groove uncommon in this type of metal makes these five Swiss lads stand out from the pack. I can only imagine the pit at a Knut show; a bunch of grizzly metal dudes erupt into mayhem as the band starts, then sinks into their groove, only to be thrown off time and time again by Knut’s crazy musical shenanigans.

Check out Knut on MySpace, and listen to / download their track “Damned Extroverts” below. Wonder is out now on Hydra Head.

Knut – “Damned Extroverts” (mp3)

-VN

Despite having like 10,000 releases over the past 20 years I’m not sure if I’ve ever listened to an Angra song. But their new track “Arising Thunder” seemed as good an excuse as any to check these Brazilians out, and wouldn’t you know, they’re the kind of epic metal I hate to love.

Despite modern production, Angra seem to live  in the cheesy, up-beat corner of the power metal universe as opposed to the big, bombastic epic metal crossroads which has been dominating the sphere of late. In other words, they’re more Rhapsody of Fire, less Mercenary. But that’s ok; they still bring plenty of delicious guitar harmonies, soaring vocals, a scorching solo, a big, climactic chorus, and presumably silly lyrics… ya know, the reasons we listen to this music in the first place. And of course it’s all well done; you don’t exactly get to be in an epic metal band if you’re a slouch.

Check out “Arising Thunder” on Angra’s MySpace from the new album Aqua, out September 29th via SPV/Steamhammer.

-VN

Last week, Dave Mustaine said that Anthrax might play some dates on the upcoming American Carnage tour with Megadeth and Slayer, and I got all excited because the idea of a Slayer/Megadeth/Anthrax/Testament line-up seemed even more appealing to me than the idea of a Metallica/Slayer/Megadeth/Anthrax line-up (y’know, ’cause Metallica sucks now). What I never even considered, though, was that there might be an entire second leg of the tour, and that Testament might not even be on said leg.

Which seems to be exactly what has happened – a whole bunch of dates with Slegadethrax have been announced, but the press release we received makes no mention of Testament. Which means that either a) someone fucked up or b) Testament aren’t on this leg of the tour (more likely). Which kinda sucks. I mean, Megadeth/Slayer/Anthrax is swell and all, but not as cool as tossing Testament in there, too.

Of course, I’m really complaining about an embarrassment of riches, so fuck me, I guess. Slayer will continue to play all of Seasons in the Abyss on this leg of the tour, and Megadeth will continue to play all of Rust in Peace, so if seeing Anthrax appeals to you more than seeing Testament, well… I suppose that, theoretically, you won’t be missing anything. Except Chuck Billy’s beautiful, beautiful punam.

Dates after the jump.

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Well, here’s an excellent way to kick-off your week: a free download of a new studio track The Sword! There’s been some live footage of “Trej Brujas” (that’s “Three Witches” to us non-Spanish speakers) floating around the interwebs, but this is your first chance to hear the studio version of the song. All you have to do is enter your e-mail address into the widget below, and a link for your free download will be sent to you immediately. We hope you dig it!

“Tres Brujas” will appear on The Sword’s latest offering, Warp Riders, which comes out August 24 on Kemado Records.

What dos Indians eats for brunchs? Is guess Is gonnas finds outs the hards way. I hopes theys haves steaks ands eggs, buts Axl says probablys nots. Damns its.

What dos Indians black metals sounds likes? Is guess yous gonnas finds outs the hards way, too…

-NC

Holy crap, was that awesome Faith No More show really a week ago already? I think I may be suffering from post-FNM depression. We’re seeing Maiden on Monday night, and I’m more excited to hang out with my friends than to see Bruce, Steve and the gang. I just wanna go see FNM again… is that so wrong???

Luckily, there’s plenty of stuff going on in the metal world to keep me distracted from dreams of Mike, Mike, Billy, Roddy and Jon. For instance:

• Bulb from Periphery got his groove back, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley consulted with the dudes from Aquarius Records as he continued his search for the perfect Taco Riff.
• We debuted new music from Asher.
• Sergeant D spoke to Miss May I’s Ryan Neff and Sammy O’Hagar chatted with Rasyid from Wormrot.
• We checked out new releases from Soilwork, Allegaeon, and Sister Sin.
• The possibility of new Beavis and Butt-Head episodes gave us a collective boner.
• The hippies in Phish got aggressive and covered Rage Against the Machine.
• We looked at a plethora of terrifically terrible music videos, and Vince wondered if the medium was even a relevant tool for promotion anymore.
• Vince also took time out of his busy schedule to find me a new woman. Yowza!

Next week we’ll have a song debut from our fellow stoner nerds, an interview with a power violence band, and some other shit. Plus, Question of the Week will finally return. ‘Til then… enjoy your weekend!

-AR

Will MySpace Music users soon be asked to pay for the tunes they stream? Could be.

Metal Insider‘s Melinda Dolezal tell us that the floundering social network’s music division is considering a subscription model to help offset their plunging traffic numbers and their soon-to-expire ad deal with Google. This is stupid, stupid, stupid thinking!

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So Dimmu Borgir have been slowly unveiling the cover art for their new album — which we now know will be titled Abrahadabra - and the full thing is finally available for your viewing pleasure. It was created by Joachim Luetke, who also did Kreator’s Enemy of God and Arch Enemy’s Nemesis (amongst other things), so… I guess he really likes making art around the concept of a fucked-up looking head/skull/noggin whatever. But, hey, everyone’s gotta have a trademark! And this still looks pretty freakin’ metal.

Nuclear Blast will release Abrahadabra Germany on September 24th, in the rest of Europe on September 27th, and in North America on October 12th. The rumor is that Snowy Shaw (no, that’s not his real name), who recently quit Therion, is taking ICS Vortex’s place; I never thought Dimmu Borgir would have a member named “Snowy,” but he’s a way stronger choice than the douche I heard had the offer, so, y’know. Swell!

-AR

I’d never heard of Turdus Musicus before reader Paulo Velasquez sent in a link to their new video for “Riot at the Velvet Jones,” but I’m quickly realizing my egregious oversight, as their Wiki page claims they “have played in China and USA many times.” Alrighty then. These Norwegians take their main musical cues from Refused, which is alright by me since I happen to love Refused, Refused aren’t making any new music right now, and not very many bands ape Refused. They’re pretty good! Their silly-sounding name, by the way, is actually the former scientific designation for the bird we call the Redwing.

Here’s their latest video. The “band playing in the snow” theme is something that hasn’t been done a whole lot (it’s certainly been done, but I can’t recall any specific instances), but the whole snowball fight thing hasn’t ever been done in a music video (that I can remember). So, bonus points for that on top of a killer tune.

-VN

Yes, YES, YES!!! Talk about an awesome way to kick off the weekend. Cephalic Carnage have given the world its first taste of their new album, Misled by Certainty, in the form of “Abraxas of Filth,” which you can stream here. It’s awesome. From its opening notes I knew it was awesome, but then it just got more and more awesome, and then it exploded in a mushroom cloud of awesomeness. Well, awesomeness and weed smoke. I mean, you don’t listen to Cephalic Carnage sober, do you? I don’t think they’d want you to do that.

Holy shit. Listening to the song for a third time now, and it just keeps getting better and better. Go check it out already.

Misled by Certainty is out August 31 on Relapse, and is now avail for pre-order. And don’t forget that the band will be on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, along with Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Decrepit Birth, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains, and Carnifex. The trek kicks off next week! Dates here.

-AR

I admit I had some qualms about listening to a female-fronted metal band. No offense to my gender, but we don’t exactly have the best track record. (Ever tried listening to a Sinergy album all the way through?) Though they’ve been around since 2003, I never really paid attention to Sister Sin, but the fact that they’ve toured with Motorhead impressed me enough to go into this with an open mind. Okay I’ll be honest — a partially open mind.

And, joy of joys, they’re good! There’s an actual talented female in metal! Liv Sin’s vocals won’t be confused with an opera singer’s any time soon; they’re hard, brash and have quite the respectable screech, there’s plenty of rapid-fire harmonizing going on, and overall, it’s catchy, fast-paced, old–school metal with maybe a touch of sleaze thrown in there. Best of all, there are no slow songs. On the entire album. Yeah, how great is that?

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Whenever I see a stop-motion animation video which tells the story of some weird little dude doing bizarre and semi-surrealistic things, my mind immediately goes to Tool. Of course, Tool didn’t invent creepy stop-motion animation, but they certainly popularized its use in music videos. (And by “popularized,” I mean, “Are responsible for the one, maybe two videos a year that do this.”) And it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would watch Porcupine Tree’s new video, for “Bonnie the Cat,” without thinking of “Sober” — even if the color scheme and overall tone is very different.

The video’s not currently embeddable, but you can check it out here. It’s pretty cool and — bonus! — has a robot going down on another robot. So hopefully that’ll be enough to restore your faith in music videos.

The song comes off of Porcupine Tree’s latest, The Incident, which is out now on Roadrunner.

-AR

Damn you, Byzantine. You broke up 4 days after releasing the masterwork that is Oblivion Beckons without touring in support of it at all, then you re-united two years later and have since only played a series of 3 shows (live footage!) in your home state of West Virginia. And now you’re playing yet another one I can’t and won’t go to, X-Fest, in West Virginia once again. Damn you, Byzantine, DAMN YOU!

-VN

No thanks: Matthew Sparks

Yep. Exactly what the headline says.

Metal Injection, who discovered this clip, say the dude in the video is goes by the moniker Mister Tim, and if you go to his site, you can download an mp3 of this — if for some reason you want an mp3 of this.

At first I was like, “Wait, why is the dude in the bottom left corner not doing anything? This song isn’t from …And Justice for All.” And then he started making noises like a little kid playing Star Wars.

-AR

It’s entirely possible that I stayed up way past my bedtime last night playing Crackdown 2. (I also had a Predator marathon in anticipation of Predators. Ladies, try to control yourselves.) I still find it kinda funny how video games can very much take control of my life, given that just a few years ago, I’d stopped playing them altogether. Then I had some extra money burning a hole in my pocket, and rather than do something useful with it, I bought a used Xbox, and then for some reason my writing career kinda stalled for a year. Hm. Curious.

ANYWAY, I’m telling you entirely more information than you care to know as a way of explaining that I wasn’t playing video games in 2000 — and I certainly was no longer paying attention to Kiss or anything Psycho Circus-related. So I had no idea that there was ever a PC-themed video game, entitled Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child. (I hear the working title was Colon: The Video Game: For PC and Dreamcast.) Then I saw this old commercial for the game on one of my favorite nerd sites, Topless Robot, who observe that “Even the announcer in the trailer can’t fake any enthusiasm about this piece of crap.”

Wow. That looks pretty lame. What I can’t figure out is, why the hell did it come out two years after the album? I’ve been operating under the impression that Psycho Circus ultimately only sold about a half a million copies — a great number if you’re Killswitch Engage, but pretty lackluster by Kiss standards (even in 1998, which I think was right around the time the record industry was rightfully starting to get nervous). I know hardcore Kiss fans are like hardcore fans of any arena-headling band — they’ll buy anything with the group’s logo on it — but I’d still be curious to know if this game was ultimately profitable. (Especially because most Kiss fans are pretty old. Do they even know how to play video games, or do all the colored buttons on the controller confuse them?) Given the complete overabundance of crap Kiss is will to put their name on, I’d think that occasionally at least some of it has to shit the bed.

-AR

These days a lot of bands seem to like releasing a really heavy track as the first single — or even just preview — of their upcoming album. Makes a good first impression whilst calming the old-school fans who have inevitably been crying “sellouts!” about the band’s supposed new direction. This is definitely true of “After Everything’s That Happened, What Did You Expect?,” the first song to be released from Ion Dissonance’s forthcoming crusher Cursed. Shit is fucking heeeeaaaaavvvy, and its frenetic nature harkens back to the band’s more angular / spastic / dissonant (no pun intended, for once) sound of yore. So for all you original Ion D fans out there, this one’s for you.

But here’s the thing: Ion Dissonance started shifting away from this sound with their last album Minus the Herd into a more rhythmic, groovy territory, and while they’ve by no means abandoned their roots, Cursed seems to be focused more on those crushing rhythms and deep grooves as well. And that’s why I like Cursed so much; sometimes less is more, and though far less is technically being done by the musicians those grooves just fucking CRUSH, Gojira / Morbid Angel / Red Chord-style. My point here: while “After Everything’s That Happened, What Did You Expect?” is a pretty sweet song, it’s not really representative of Cursed as a whole. Check it out above.

Cursed drops August 24st on Century Media.

-VN

Buried in a press release about Whitfield Crane doing a guest gig/Dio/Peter Steele/Paul Gray multi-dead-musican tribute show with Costa Rica’s Sight of Emptiness* was this awesome news from Mr. Crane:

“It’s ON — UGLY KID JOE is back. We are talking about doing shows next year, in addition to studio time. I’m stoked.”

I don’t know what’s up with burying reunion news in press releases about other shit, but all I can say about this particular reconciliation is: YES!!! (Note: Apparently this news has been on the band’s MySpace page since May. I’d like to thank every one of you fuckers who e-mails me every day to tell me about your friend’s awful unsigned band, to tell us to post about something we’ve already posted about, or to express anger over my hatred towards Parkway Drive for not making any mention of this news. Sheesh.)

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And thar she is in all her full-bodied glory!

The cover was done by Les Toil, whose trademark “big girl” style kinda reminds me of Coop. Comments Toil on the cover, “Passive and subtle were never qualities that attracted me to rock & roll. Apparently the same can be said for my appreciation of the opposite sex. I want a fat bottomed girl. A whole lotta Rosie. A big-legged woman who does (or doesn’t) have soul. In other words, I want a whole lotta love!”

As previously reported, Whole Lotta Love: An All-Star Tribute to Fat Chicks is an homage to the fine bigger-bottomed ladies of rock n’ roll, and will feature covers of like-minded tunes such as Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls,” AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie,” Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom,” Poison’s “Unskinny Bop” and more, played by an all-star cast of musicians.

Can we get an “amen” for the lovers of full-bodied chicks in the e-room? Amen! As many commenters pointed out the last time I ran a story about this compilation, there’s definitely a difference between “fat” and “full-bodied.” It’s unfortunate that this comp’s creators have chosen to use the former when they really mean the latter, but I guess the word “fat” catches your attention. Whole Lotta Love will come out August 31st, and is sure to spark the ire of skinny girl-lovers worldwide!

-VN

Hoo-ray for SMN, who brought HEADBANGroulette to our attention. In case you somehow managed to miss the whole Chatroulette trend and therefore don’t immediately understand the joke, basically it’s a site where you can go and watch a randomly selected video of someone headbanging, and then, if you get bored of that, click a button marked “Next” and watch a different randomly selected video of someone headbanging.

I just lost a good five minutes of my life futzing with the site, and while I guess it does get kinda old after a while, I gotta say, I never got the same video twice, and all the videos were entertaining in some regard or another — so bravo to whomever is wasting his or her life compiling these clips. Of course, the ones of amateur YouTube ‘bangers are way more entertaining than the ones just culled from music videos and concert footage, but, still.

One complaint: it would be great to have a live component (which would actually be more in the vein of Chatroulette, where all the chat takes place in real time), where maybe you could just cycle through people headbanging for their computer cameras. Of course, that might also lead to just an abundance of dudes jerking off for the cam, as is the case with Chatroulette — but I guess then, at least, there’d be a little sumpin’ sumpin’ for the ladies.

-AR