As much as I love Max Cavalera, Soulfly basically started as a nu-metal band (and Roots is a nu-metal album… sorry, kids), and it’s sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Cavalera had Fred Durst do a guest rap on SF’s 1998 self-titled debut. I tend to ignore it because a) the friend of my enemy is not necessarily my enemy, and b) Max has worked with plenty of dudes I  don’t like (Jonathan Davis) and plenty of dudes I do like (Greg Puciato, Chino Moreno), so, y’know, shit happens.

But the topic of working with Durst came up in a recent interview with PyroMusic.net, and… well, Cavalera basically places the blame for Durst’s appearance on producer Ross Robinson’s shoulders:

Click to read more…

Every Time I Die have been releasing these 5-minute tour diary shorts in weekly installments to promote their current stint on Warped Tour, and since the dudes in ETID are about as funny as they come I’m hoping we get to see some true comedy. The first episode was mainly an introduction, but the second episode, released yesterday, is where things really start to heat up… literally.

Among other things — a van breakdown fixed by velcro, another fixed via jump-start, and yet another one fixed by… I’m not sure how they fixed that — in the latest episode we get to see what happens when one band member and another random partier stick a hot sauce-soaked piece of paper up their ass and urethra, respectively. Curious? There’s no embed code, so go watch it here.

Look forward to many more poop and fart jokes, the bread and butter of life in a metal band on the road, every week with Shit Happens.

-VN

In case you somehow don’t remember, Iron Maiden were one of the mainstage headliners at Ozzfest in 2005 (which I think was pretty much the last really good year for Ozzfest), and while I’ve never quite understood how it all started, there was some kind of beef between the Maiden/Ozzy camps — more specifically, between Maiden and Sharon Osbourne. And on Maiden’s last night of the tour, someone fucked with their power and some people pelted them with eggs and engaged in all other manner of pranks, and Sharon actually called Bruce Dickinson “a prick” on-stage in front of thousands of metal fans. (You can read all about that little incident here, or enjoy video of Sharon’s speech above.)

And that was really the last we heard about it… until now. I don’t recall Ozzy himself ever commenting on the incident before, he recently did during an interview with The Quietus:

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photo by Travis Shinn (www.travisshinn.com)

When he’s not stirring up passionate debate across the blogosphere, MetalSucks’ own Blogronaut, Sacha Dunable, is fronting one of our favorite modern metal acts, Intronaut. The band has a new album, appropriately titled Valley of Smoke, tentatively due for release October 12 via Century Media; now they’ve debuted a final, unmastered mix of a  track from that album, “Elegy,” over at Cosmo Lee’s Invisible Oranges.

As usual, I can’t think of anything to say that’s as elegant as what Cosmo wrote about the song, so I’m just gonna steal from him:

It plays to Intronaut’s strengths: a ridiculously limber rhythm section, expansive guitars, and did I mention a ridiculously limber rhythm section? Like his position onstage, Joe Lester’s bass is front and center. Danny Walker pushes and pulls against it with crisp, colorful percussion.

The new element is singing. This also happened to a band Intronaut is often compared to, Mastodon. Unlike Mastodon’s, however, Intronaut’s singing is firm but understated, and reminds me of Fugazi.

Cosmo also spent a night in the studio with the band, and has a comprehensive write-up of what he saw. Head over to Invisible Oranges to hear the track and read Cosmo’s report!

-AR

A little while back I wrote that I’d begun the process of thinning out my CD collection to the bare essentials; a month+ later that process is complete, and my collection is suddenly a couple hundred CDs (at least) lighter. I’ve still got a ton of CDs to my name, but at least when I move the Vince Divison of the Mansion next month I’ll have a couple less boxes to haul.

So what I’ve decided to do is to give these CDs away to one of you, our loyal readers, in perhaps the biggest single giveaway ever on MetalSucks.

But wait, there’s more! To sweeten the pot I’m also including all the promo CDs I’ve received this year from labels and publicists! There is some really good stuff in here, folks… in addition to a great collection of metal (and some non-metal) CDs spanning the past 2+ decades, there’s great CDs from 2010, DVDs, little tchotchkes, special editions, and so on and so forth. The photo you see above is the actual entire prize package!

All told, all of this stuff is probably worth well over $1,000. But, get this… I don’t want any money for it! I’m giving it all away!

Here’s what you have to do to win this massive collection: make me a creative offer – not involving money — that you think would tickle my fancy. It can literally be anything; a piece of artwork, an instrument, a service you think I’d find useful (i.e. “I’ll do your laundry for a year”), a lifetime supply of burger meat, a pound of weed… anything at all! No offer is too ridiculous! Let me hear it, and I just might go for it.

If you have something you think I’d like, email your offer to vince [at] metalsucks [dot] net with the subject line CD GIVEAWAY. In a couple of weeks I’ll choose my favorite, and we’ll get to talkin’ about how to do the exchange. Here’s to hoping you guys have some cool shit for me.

-VN

After completely selling out of almost every size, our Completely Unreadable MetalSucks Hoodies are now back in stock! We’ve also re-stocked all sizes of all of our t-shirts too, so be sure to order yours today.

Of course, once you’ve gotten yours in the mail, send in a fun/funny photo of yourself donning your new MS gear and we’ll post it up on the site and send you a bunch of cool shit in the mail for free. It’s all part of our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest. Good deal!

I just listened to The Chair in the Doorway again for the first time in awhile, and, hey, guess what? It’s still better than almost anything else released last year, or this year, for that matter. I think I’ve seen Living Colour live seven or eight times now, but the album gave me an itch to go see ‘em again — these dudes really put on a good, old-fashioned performance, y’know? Like, with an ever-changing set list, and jamming and improvisations and showing the world they can play — y’know, like bands used to do. I don’t know why so many bands stopped doing that kind of thing, but I’m glad LC still do; at the risk of sounding like Yogi Berra, they never play the same gig twice.

The band has now made one of their shows from last year available for download on Livedownloads.com — you can get the mp3s for ten bucks, or the FLAC  files for thirteen. According to the show notes, “This was one of the only two Living Colour performances when two separate sets were performed with a brief intermission” — they first half of the set was old school stuff, and then the second half was the entirety of Chair (this was just before the album was released), plus some more classics for the encore. Download it here.

And while a good live recording of Living Colour is sweet, it’s not as sweet as the real thing, so here are LC’s upcoming tour dates, both in North America and abroad. If you have the chance to go see them and don’t, you are really robbing yourself of an awesome evening of music.

Click to read more…

I think we’ve gotten a bunch of reader e-mails about Britain’s Rolo Tomassi over the past few months, including one last week from Pazuzu. And then this morning Hairyman mentioned them in the comments section. I’d been avoiding Rolo Tomassi because, well, I just assumed they sucked — because a) they all dress like they’re in The Arcade Fire and I’m shallow like that, and b) their name is a reference to L.A. Confidential, and bands that pull their monikers from pop culture often turn out to be really, really bad, and not as funny/clever as they think they are. But then I remembered how long it took me to give The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza a serious listen for that same reason, and thought about how much I like TTDTDE, and decied to get over myself and check out Rolo Tomassi’s MySpace page. And…

…they’re good! Not great, but good. I’d be curious to hear some more. But not right now. Y’know what I mean? I’ve got other things to do, and this doesn’t make me jump outta my skin or anything. They’re apparently opening for The Dillinger Escape Plan on that band’s UK tour this autumn, and that makes sense. If that tour came to America, I’d get there early to check out Rolo Tomassi live. Sure, why not?

In case you’re not one of the readers who e-mailed us, here’s the band’s video for “Party Wound.” Weigh in with your thoughts below.

-AR

This is how you make a music video for the year 2010! Clear close-ups of all the dudes playing their instruments in a studio — I love it. No warehouse, no stupid CGI, no plot, no choreography — just shred! This does everything it needs to do — namely promote the band to its potential audience — and probably cost literally nothing to make, assuming one of the dudes already had a video camera and some kind of editing suite.

The band is RXYZYXR, a Swedish band about whom we’ve written before; they’re still looking for a vocalist too and are willing to talk with any would-be singer/screamers no matter where in the world they reside. So for all you aspiring metal vocalists out there, this is your big chance… unless you’re the vocal equivalent of this guy.

-VN

We already knew that Glenn Danzig was nutty, ’cause he used to sing for The Misfits and he doesn’t believe in doctors or medicine. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s a conspiracy theorist, too. From a recent interview with MSN:

What are you reading lately?

Let’s see… something I started getting interested in a long time ago, that’s just an extension of a course on America being founded on Masonic principles and things like that. Back in the ’90s I looked at it and it was a no-no to talk about, but… the whole organization that runs the world, which is multi-country, and people know it as either the Committee of 300 or the Bilderbergs. Some people call it the Illuminati. That’s interesting to me.

The Illuminati? Like, the bad guys from that movie Opie made? Yeah, I’m not that worried about those dudes. Or the Bilderbergs. Or any of those other groups people like to say secretly run things. I mean, my grandfather was a Freemason, and if that guy was running the world, then I’m secretly Joey Belladonna, and I just make fun of myself for free publicity. Oh, wait. Shit. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Now I have to kill you.

Anyways, here’s hoping Danzig now covers this:

-AR

With dollar signs in my eyes, I have seen the next great supergroup: Heaven & Hell with Phil Anselmo as their new singer. I mean, I don’t think that’s actually gonna happen, but I think it would sell a lotta tickets.

Anselmo did, however, join the band on-stage at the Dio tribute performance at the High Voltage Festival in London this past weekend. According to Metal Insider, even guest vocalist Glenn Hughes “was surprised by the Superjoint Ritual mastermind’s unscheduled appearance” during “Neon Knights.” I hope this very not-good fan-filmed footage isn’t the only record that exists of the performance — hopefully something pro-shot, or at least some photos, will appear online soon.

-AR

I didn’t watch VH1′s recent Behind the Music on Courtney Love, because I didn’t know that it had been made, because who the fuck knows what’s on VH1 these days? I don’t even know what channel VH1 is on my cable system. Fuck.

ANYWAY, Elise at Reign in Blonde posted the below clip from the show, in which Roddy Bottum and a woman who claims to be Courtney Love even though she looks almost nothing like the Courtney Love I remember discuss her days as the vocalist for Faith No More. And, oh yeah, the fact that they slept together. Elise put it best: “If I’m to believe that those two banged uglies, then him being gay now makes perfect sense.” It also makes sense that he doesn’t find this annoying — he’s clearly some kind of Zen master, with infinite patience for stupidity and lack of an indoor voice.

Jump to 3:10 to see the bit about Faith No More. If you told me that the blonde lady isn’t really Courtney but the real Courtney has now had enough plastic surgery that she can successfully pull an Andrew W.K., well, I wouldn’t be surprised.

-AR

If you’re a death metal freak then you’re probably already aware of Fleshwrought… but if you’re not, then you should be. The project is helmed by Navene Koperweis who handles all instruments on Dementia/Dyslexia, Fleshwrought’s Metal Blade debut; you might recognize Navene from his drum duties with the late Animosity and with Tosin Abasi’s Animals as Leaders. Navene recruited Job For A Cowboy’s Johnny Davy to handle vocal duties, but the results are unlike any project either man has been involved with before; this is fast, technical, intricate, proggy as fuck death metal that’s musically catchy the way bands like Psycroptic and Gorod are. In short, it rules, but don’t take my word for it; listen to the full album below.

Order Dementia/Dyslexia here before it comes out on August 3rd.

[this promotion has ended]

So that rumored North American tour with Triptykon, 1349 and Yakuza is no longer a rumor — it’s a really real thing with confirmed dates. Which is sweet! It’s a great line-up. And they’re all touring behind strong albums. Also, hopefully I’ll now get to live out my fantasy of screaming “DDDDDDDDIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!” along with a few hundred other metal fans when Triptykon play “A Thousand Lies.”

Here are dates:

Click to read more…

Back in April Gojira announced they’d be recording a new 5-song EP this summer featuring “guests from the international metal community,” the proceeds of which would benefit anti-whaling organization Sea Shepherd. What ever became of that project? I ask because though summer’s not yet close to over the clock is definitely ticking, and I haven’t heard any updates or progress reports at all — and their August is calendar is chock full of festival dates in Europe. Furthermore, and not that this necessarily means anything, their former U.S. label Prosthetic Records denies any knowledge of news relating to the EP. So… what up? We sincerely hope our favorite Frenchmen haven’t gotten too busy to make this EP a reality.

Meanwhile, you can get your Gojira fix with 72 minutes of pro-shot, HD footage of their show at au Festival Les Vieilles Charrues in France. It’s good to see the guys are just as tight as ever, and it’s pretty cool to see them playing a bunch of older material from Terra Incognita and The Link. I’ve been attempting to watch this in the background all morning as I go about my other work (“what? there’s work besides writing and bong-toking that goes on at the MS Mansion? whodathunkit.”) but my eyes keep coming back because, ya know, Gojira! Thanks to Gideon McAdams for the link.

-VN

Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie used to be friends and occasional tour mates, united by shared history of starting successful solo careers after first fronting successful bands, a tenuous connection to horror movies and all things Evil, and their mainstream appeal to meatheads everywhere.

But now 50% of Ozzy’s band consists of ex-members of Zombie’s band — that would be bassist Blasko and drummer Tommy Clufetos — and because Rob wanted to make my day, he got catty about Ozzy poaching his members in a recent interview. The video is above (the smack talk starts around the 54 second mark), but here’s a transcription of what he said:

Click to read more…

The Crown’s ex-final record Possessed 13 is insanely awesome/awesomely insane for like 13,000 reasons (see what I did there?), but there’s at least one reason that I never hear discussed: how a couple of its songs so affectionately pay tribute to early thrash metal. Exhibit A is “Kill ‘Em All” (here), the maniacal closer to P13‘s second act that sounds like an outtake from, yeah, obviously, Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All. But the song’s appeal goes beyond its historical significance, cuz it’s way catchy and just rips (I said here!). Actually, the percentage of my waking hours that the song is screaming through my head is a number that I’ll admit only to my attorneys; that shit is incriminating.  

And The Crown get additional super-props for P13‘s thrashiness in light of the thrash genre’s renaissance a few years later. So songs like “Kill ‘Em All” and “Natashead Overdrive” not only place The Crown in discussions beside the almighty Metallica, but they also quietly predate the lucrative ReThrash explosion. I fucking love this band.

Here in 2010, The Crown is reformed with a new singer, a serious record company, and a new record, Doomsday King (above) — and its first new song for our ears, “Blood O.D.” over at their MySpace page.

-ADF

While not exactly a sex tape per se, this video footage of an interview with Emmure frontman Frankie Palmeri (courtesy of Metal With Reason) completely trumps the one I recently conducted with him. Opting to answer questions while preparing for and taking a shower, Palmeri took full advantage of this interviewer’s patience and put him into a brilliantly awkward position. Props to the man for his humility and willingness to engage in some good-natured fun. Andy Kaufman would be proud.

Watch it now before it gets removed from YouTube on account of buttcrackage. HAPPY HUMP DAY!

-GS

Webernets, meet Spyke. Spyke, meet Webernets. Play nice. Actually, don’t.

-VN

Thanks: Lewis Walmsley, Andy

We love The Dillinger Escape Plan… and how could we not? Their live shows are among the wildest, most energetic and memorable today. Their discography both defines and defies mathy hardcore, throwing us for a loop yet again with their tight, ferocious new record Option Paralysis. So even though Axl had a chance to talk to some of the members right when the album dropped in March, I couldn’t pass up the chance to interview someone who wasn’t part of that chat: guitarist Jeff Tuttle. During the band’s Long Island, NY stop on this summer’s Warped Tour, I sat down with on a bench in a shaded area on the grounds of Nassau Coliseum to ask Jeff the Million Dollar Question: why the hell are The Dillinger Escape Plan playing Warped Tour???

Click to read more…