CORRECTION: Ghost is the fourth album in the series and Deconstruction the third. Thanks to commenter metallicbrain for pointing out my mistake.

Devin Townsend is an eternally busy man. Amidst all the talk of Heavy Devy’s pending U.S. headline tour with Tesseract, his performance of Ziltoid in Finland and his run with BTBAM and Cynic earlier this year it’s been easy to lose track of the fact that he’s still got two albums left to release in his promised suite of four (not to mention Ziltoid Part Two). And somehow, some way, he’s found time to write Ghost, the third album in the series, and hinted via his Twitter account today that we’ll get to hear a sample next week. If you read this site at all you know that this news makes our balls tingle in a very special way.

But don’t get too excited; as Axl reported in July, we’re supposedly gonna have to wait until March 2011 to get the full record. Actually, do get excited: Devin says we’ll also be getting the fourth and final Devin Townsend Project album, Deconstruction — which promises to be the heaviest of them all — in March as well.

Props to MS protege Alkahest of Heavy Blog is Heavy for picking up on this latest tidbit.

-VN

That’s right… he’s back! Oderus Urungus, the greatest singer in the history of what this putrid, worthless planet calls “metal,” has been busy recording Gwar’s new album, Gwar’s Bloody Pit of Horror, which comes out later this year on Metal Blade. But now the man whose shit is worth more than your entire life is back, and ready to answer your questions! So leave your query for Lord Urungus in the comments section below. Oderus will pick his favorites and answer them right here on MetalSucks in the not-too-distant future. No question is too big or too small, too gross or too taboo, too serious or too silly, so ask away!

I’ve always had a soft spot for melodic metal bands with girl singers: 13, Lacuna Coil, Confessor, and so forth. I also have a major weakness for cute Mexican girls (what’s up Demi Lovato, you’re 18 now, holler at your boy), so Break Silence Recordings standouts Eyes Set to Kill might as well be tailor-made for me. While they’re obviously different from the usual MetalSucks bands in that they are fronted by a couple of hotties, rather than flabby beardos who had to take two weeks of unpaid vacation from their job at a windowless basement print shop to go on tour, the most interesting thing to me about ESTK is how much they embody the humble, DIY work ethic that I always appreciated about the bands I grew up on and so rarely find in today’s crop of big-headed, flat-ironed, metalcore faux-rockstars.

These kids would have been right at home back in the days of phone dialers, VFW shows, and tape trading, which is pretty cool in my book. Even if you don’t like their music, they’ve got a lot to say about the economic realities of being in a touring band that are worth reading for any aspiring musician– I really appreciate their openness, so check out their new album on iTunes, and remember: don’t hate, congratulate!

Click to read more…

The MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys are going completely apeshit (ha!) over this one. Poo is being flung all about, they’re touching each others’ privates, and they’re screeching up a storm back there. Higgins told Axl and I through his Stephen Hawkings-like computerized voice machine that they’re not gonna stop unless we post about this band Enos that just came in through the MS inbox. So… this post.

Enos are a Brighton, UK-based metal band who take their name from the last chimpanzee the Americans sent into orbit during the space race. When he returned to earth from the journey — two orbits around Earth for a total of 50,892 miles over just 3 hours, 20 minutes and 59 seconds – people commented that he was ‘like a different chimp’. Taking this idea, Enos the band have produced an album based on the journey Enos the chimpanzee undertook, also collaborating with artists to create a comic book of the same story. In the band’s fictionalized account, while Enos was in space he discovered a worm hole which not only sent him back in time but also made him more intelligent.

Woah!! Easy to see why the MS Mansion Monkeys are all up in a tizzy — metal, a comic book, and an intelligent, space/time-traveling chimp? It’s like they discovered a stockpile of grade-A bananas back there.

Lucky for you, Enos have made their entire album AND comic available completely for free download. The tracks are also available in FLAC format on Enos’ Bandcamp page and are streaming there as well.

-VN

Before me, Kowloon Walled City were a bunch of nothing nobodies turning tricks in Tenderloin tenements. I discovered them, presented them to the MetalSucks masses, interviewed them, ranked them highly (#10) on my Best Albums of 2009 list… and what do I get? Email after email from frontman Scott Evans bitching and moaning that I don’t cover them enough!

“Waaah, we have a new split vinyl release with Fight Amp and Ladder Devils. Why haven’t you written about it?”

“Waaah, we’re touring the East Coast with Batillus for two weeks. Why won’t you post the tour dates?”

“Waaaaaaaah…”

Click to read more…

I started dreading middle age a little early, and not only for the universal reasons. Of course, I fret that my staggering good looks will fade, my wang will begin to betray me (more often), and the psychic fatigue of drug abuse will finally mangle my sunny disposition. Those are typical concerns; I can deal with that shit. What I couldn’t handle, however, is the likely transformation into a mean old jerk who constantly complains that new music sucks and fuck everybody who listens to it. You know people like this. I’ve spent my life among them. They are the worst!

I don’t want to be an oldist, ever. It means missing out on too much good new shit in exchange for the comfort of the familiar. And it makes you sound like an out-of-touch douchelord. So I’m constantly checking myself, like a prostate self-exam. And for the last few years, the outlook was kinda alarming: In my honest moments, I was longing for more singing and less screaming; I keep waiting for some real singers to step forward and become the Tate, Dickinson, and Halford of this new era. Also, my phobias came to include breakdowns, the Krank guitar sound, random riffs, hyper-precise drums mixed to resemble farts in the bath, and macho diary-style lyrics — each a touchstone of post-Pantera commercial metal. So, yeah. Fuck, I thought, I might as well start pricing dentures.

Click to read more…

It’s unusual when a supergroup equals more than just the sum of its parts, but Insidious Disease — a band featuring members of Napalm Death, Dimmu Borgir, Old Man’s Child, and Morgoth — is anything but usual. Full of groove-oriented blackened death grind that’s just as ugly and provocative as what you’d hope for a group consisting of members for those particular bands, the band’s debut album, Shadowcast, is an absolute monster. And in addition to being the video for a killer song, this clip for “Boundless” is sure to shock and offend… which is why we’re thrilled to be debuting it here on MetalSucks! Check it out below.

Shadowcast is out now on Century Media… order yourself a copy here.

[This exclusive has now ended.]

The cover for Intronaut’s upcoming Valley of Smoke has to be one of my favorites of the year. It’s hard to make something look metal and stonerish and yet somehow like a classy tapestry my Italian-Catholic-Buddhist shrink might have hanging in his waiting room, but that’s exactly what artist David D’Andrea has done. Mr. D’Andrea, I do tip my hat to you, good sir.

Valley of Smoke comes out October 12 on Century, but I’ll be listening to it for the first time around 4:20 this afternoon. While the rest of you wait with baited breath (cough, cough), here’s a video teaser for the album:

Click to read more…

Longtime reader Ryan Wineman sent be the below e-mail in the wee hours of this morning. Ryan has been pretty dependable in the past, so I’m inclined to believe that if he says this happened, it happened. That being said, YOU SHOULD OBVIOUSLY TREAT THIS AS RUMOR UNTIL THE BANDS SAY SOMETHING OFFICIAL, because while it’s very exciting news, Dave Mustaine shouting it out on-stage does not mean it’s a sure thing.

Here’s Ryan’s e-mail:

Click to read more…

I didn’t read the comments under our story “Nergal Has Leukemia” until yesterday. I naively assumed that they would all be along the lines of “That’s terrible, we hope Nergal gets better,” etc. I forgot that this is the internet, where people have the capacity to turn anything into an argument. I could write “I like chicken salad,” and somehow the comments beneath the post would turn into a flame war about the pros and cons of raising animals free range, or being vegan, how turkey is better than chicken, or whatever.

What we should all take away from Nergal’s affliction is the knowledge that there is a need for bone marrow donors, not just for Nergal but for ANYONE AND EVERYONE who is stricken with this terrible disease.

There is no need for a religious debate. And it makes me incredibly sad that there was/is one surrounding Nergal’s illness. Whatever you believe, that’s your business, and I don’t begrudge you your faith. But using a man’s sickness as any kind of platform for that discussion is, frankly, exploitative and low. This isn’t a political narrative; this is a man’s life.

So while one cliché goes “There are no atheists in the fox holes,” another instructs us that “Your ideals don’t mean anything unless you stick to them even during times when it may not be convenient to do so.” And so, thus spake Nergal:

Click to read more…