Holy shit, where was this chick when Halford left Priest? I’m pretty certain that if the band had heard her, they would have been all, “‘Ripper’ who?”

Now, I know that if you’re an aspiring vocalist, you probably just heard this and went, “Oh, shit, I will never be as good as this girl. I’m just gonna quit.” But, really, you should look to her as an inspiration, not a deterrent. Because she didn’t get where she is today on raw talent alone; the video above is the result of lots and lots of practice and hard work. To wit:

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So I know it’s unusual for us to post at 1 a.m., but I just got done watching the long-overdue return of Metalocalypse, and presumably a lot of you just got done watching it, too, so we might as well get talkin’ about it while our thoughts are still fresh.

Personally… I loved it. The show hasn’t lost any of its satirical punch (the Facebones sexual harassment video should be shown in every office in the world), the writers continue to prove that they can sustain a story for the extended format, there was an abundance of quotable lines (My personal favorite: “Don’t forget, keep the fifteenth open so you can deposit your sperm into my vagina with your penis.”), and, oh yeah, Kirk Hammett utilizing decades of personal research to cameo as a dong.

Awesome. Totally awesome.

And the teaser for next week promises a skewering of rap metal bands. I can’t even tell you how excited I am for that.

Alright. Weigh in with your thoughts on the episode below. Hopefully you were all as satisfied as I was.

-AR

After tonight’s Mastodwho/Defwhats/AIC show at MSG, I’m feeling inspired to dust off an oldie-but-goodie…

Back when I was a 16 year-old pothead growing up in New York Fucking City, I used to put on this song, lean out my bedroom window, puff the fattest of bowls, and wonder what heroin felt like. I guess it had a lot to do with Layne Staley’s infamous addiction to the drug, and a little to do with my own self-destructive leanings, but more than all that, the song itself reeked of smack. And not just snorting or smoking heroin, but some serious needle-jabbin’ hijinx.

Now I ain’t never shot nothin’ into my veins, but after revisiting this song for the first time in over a decade, I would still put it on my perfect heroin mixtape (along with “Venus In Furs” by The Velvet Underground, “Riders On The Storm” by The Doors, and “My Favorite Things” by Coltrane). Y’know — if it ever comes to that.

Keep yr fingers crossed for me!

…and while I’m hyping this album, I find it very hard not to post its fiery opening track:

Okay, fine — let’s just go for the hat trick with Dirt closer “Would?” (although th’old-school among us may better remember this one from the Singles soundtrack…)

-KW

So this normally where we write some fairly meaningless bullshit as an intro to our weekly recap, but reader Sean Williams sent us a link to the below video update from one Mr. Devin Townsend, and we really can’t think of a better way to kick-off the weekend. As Sean put it, “Deconstruction AND Ghost as a double record? Holy fucking shit!” And it gets “Holy shittier” when we get to hear a little bit of new music…

Here are some other fun things that happened at MetalSucks this week:

• We debuted Joe Satriani’s first Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards webisode and new music by Sweet Cobra.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered more of your idiotic questions, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks got unnecessarily rough, Daath’s Eyal Levi pondered the meaning of sacrifice, and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s Shawn Riley taught us how to make delicious hot wings.
• We spoke to producer/engineer/mixer extraordinaire Mark Lewis, The Contortionist’s Jon Carpenter, and Shred Sean from Blessed by a Broken Heart.
• We checked out new releases from Dawnbringer and Merkaba.
• We helped A Day to Remember struggle with young adulthood.
• We gave Jason Newsted a shoulder to cry on.
• We got excited that Byzantine are making a new record.
• The kid of the dude from the E-Street Band is out of Madball.
• We’ve decided that when we die, we want our ashes to be pressed into vinyl.
• Can you please help us find Elote 5?

Until Monday… don’t get alcohol poisoning…

-AR

I’m on a kick these days. My current kick involves trying to figure out exactly what the fuck people mean when they say certain things. Last “Jumping Darkness Parade,” I mentioned that I have no idea what anybody means by the word “great.” Well, here’s another one I just don’t get: “Sacrifice.” I know what the dictionary says it means. And there are a few different connotations for it. Sacrifice one thing in order to gain another. Or you could simply just be selling something at a loss.

So what does it really mean? I mean, clearly it has something to do with loss, but to what degree and under what conditions? When people say they’ve “sacrificed a lot,” what do they mean? Did they sacrifice their legs in combat for your freedom, or did they sacrifice going to Starbucks for a month so that they could buy a new iPhone? It’s another one of those words that gets thrown around with such frequency and with so much intent behind it, but is so subjective that I think it’s more of an accelerant for someone’s story than a word that carries much meaning… at least in most cases.

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Rumpelstiltskin Grinder made my #5 most favoritest record of 2009 which also happened to be the #1 most funnest, so it’s no surprise that bassist/vocalist Shawn Riley makes for a good cooking show co-host. In this, the fifth episode of MetalSucks’ cooking show Cooking Contaminated, Riley brings his dad’s blue cheese dressing recipe into host Eli Shaika’s kitchen where the two team up to serve it with Eli’s own famous hot wings. Watch and learn, and as always, find the ingredients after the jump so you can follow along at home.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

With seemingly every band in the world now less-than-hesitant to replace a departed member, no matter how seemingly important that member was to the band’s success, this week we asked our writers:

IS THERE ANY STILL-ACTIVE METAL BAND THAT COULD NOT AFFORD TO LOSE A SINGLE MEMBER OF ITS LINE-UP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Have you ever wondered what MetalSucks readers are like?? Are they really the socially awkward shut-ins and losers that I (jokingly) make them out to be, or do I have it all wrong? Could it be that the joke is on me, and in reality you’re a unique cohort of fabulously wealthy, ridiculously good looking geniuses who barely manage to find time to read MS between banging your supermodel girlfriends and playing in your incredibly successful, groundbreaking metal bands?? That could be the case, but based on what I know about one butthurt commenter on my recent post on A Day To Remember (the darlings of leading independent label VICTORY RECORDS), I’m pretty sure it’s not. Ladies and gentlemen (who am I kidding, there are no ladies on MetalSucks), I give you VALEDICTION!

He asked me to shamelessly promote his band– here you go, broski!

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Holy shit, I have no idea how I’m just finding out about this, but apparently the new season of Metalocalypse begins this Sunday, September 26, at 12:30 a.m. on Adult Swim. It feels like it’s been forever since we got new episodes, doesn’t it?

We don’t have much info in the way of guest appearances or whatever, but here’s a quick plot summary of the episode:

“Toki swears off rock and roll sluts to find a REAL relationship.  Meanwhile, Murderface bets everything that he can sleep with more women than Skwisgaar, consequently landing himself in a sexual harassment seminar. Can Toki beat his new lady mate’s biological clock?”

Sounds good to me! To get you in the mood, here’s an Ode to Murderface:

And Monday morning we can all hover around the proverbial water cooler and discuss.

-AR

No one is better at keeping track of album release anniversaries than Cosmo Lee. So we need to thank him for pointing out that Megadeth’s Rust in Peace — still their best album, if you ask me — came out twenty years ago today.

Cosmo has an extensive essay up at Invisible Oranges, and I’m not even gonna try and compete with his insights. I am, however, going to steal the below video of Marty Friedman auditioning for Megadeth — ’cause I ain’t never seen it before, and it’s a part of metal history. With all due respect to Chrises Poland and Broderick and all the other talented dudes who have been in Dave Mustaine’s glorified solo band over the years, Friedman has been, is, and will continue to be the definitive Megadeth lead guitarist in my mind. Too bad he left the band to turn Japanese.

Head over to Invisible Oranges to read all of Cosmo’s thoughts on RiP‘s big day.

-AR

No, there really isn’t anything about this band to hit the Webernets that I won’t post. But I can’t help it… they’re so good!

The latest that my Animals as Leaders obsession has turned up is some stellar live footage shot at the Summer Slaughter stop in Baltimore. The Metal Injection crew was on-hand with four cameras and a sound-board feed, and the results are phenomenal. This is exactly what any Animals as Leaders fan wants to see; lots of close-ups, tons of shred, great sound. Sound-board recordings are infamous in their raw glory for underscoring even the smallest mistakes that usually can’t be heard in the room, but there are absolutely no mistakes to highlight here. These guys are just so spot on, all three of them, sickeningly top-notch musicians.

Side note: I love that Tosin Abasi gets away with wearing white short-shorts. So br00tal!

Check out “Tempting Time” above, “Wave of Babies” after the jump and an exclusive interview at Metal Injection.

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We had a lot of fun with this The Red Chord/Summer Slaughter photo contest, and were kind of amazed at how many of you found yourselves in photos the band took from the stage. Alas, there can be only winner, and that winner is Dale Horn, who, in his own words, is the one “to the left of the deadbeat you circled at that hot as fuck show in Houston.” We’re sorry it was so hot, but, y’know… you live in Texas, Dale! Fuck did you think it was gonna be like?

Hopefully the awesome contest prize Dale is winning will make up for his heat stroke: The Red Chord are sending him an autographed bowling pin, an autographed copy of their latest masterpiece, Fed Through the Teeth Machine (out now on Metal Blade), and a pack of autographed Red Chord tour posters. Pretty frickin’ sweet, no?

Thanks again to all the entrants! And don’t forget that The Red Chord are about to head out on tour again, with The Acacia Strain, Terror, The Contortionist, and Gaza. Get dates here.

-AR

I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in Darwin, and natural selection is clearly trying to send Bret Michaels a message: “You are not supposed to be here.” He’s diabetic, he’s the only person in the history of ever to almost eat it at the frickin’ Tony Awards, he’s spent half his life touring with C.C. DeVille (there’s a death sentence if ever there was one), and this year alone, he’s suffered  a massive subarachnoid brain hemorrhage AND discovered that he has a hole in his heart. Is this dude a character from a Final Destination movie or what?

Speaking of that gap in his ticker, and nature wanting him dead: In January, he’ll undergo surgery to try and fill in that sucker, ’cause unlike Extreme, the hole in his heart most certainly cannot be filled by only you. He’s gonna need, like, doctors and medicine and stuff.

I know it’s wrong to joke about a man having heart surgery, but, somehow, I feel like Bret is gonna pull through. Nature might want him dead, but just you watch — this dude is going to outlive us all. There could be a nuclear war, and all that would survive would be cockroaches and Bret Michaels.

And then he’d try to fuck the cockroaches.

-AR

Super-Internet phenoms Periphery came under intense fire by fans earlier this year when, as their debut album release was finally drawing near, they booted popular vocalist Chris Barretto in favor of Spencer Sotelo who many fans perceived to be too soft and emo-y. When the album came out with Sotelo’s re-recorded vocals, many longtime followers rebelled against Sotelo and claimed that the album was the aural equivalent of a butterface — great band, bad vocals. Then, in a somewhat surprising move that was something of a slap in the face to Sotelo, Misha and co. decided to release an entirely instrumental version of the album giving said fans their wish.

Now Sotelo is fighting back. Got-Djent.com is reporting that Sotelo has posted a re-worked version of the song “The Walk” on his personal MySpace page featuring harsher vocals.

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I’m hungover and struggling to put together coherent sentences, so instead of telling you what I think I wanna know what you all think. How do you feel about Sacramento, CA’s Conducting From the Grave?

My quick thoughts: I happen to think they’re pretty good. They’re on Sumerian but they aren’t really Sumeriancore; they have their own brand of flashy/technical metalcore-meets-death-metal — plenty of shred, no breakdowns — that I find pretty interesting. I rather enjoyed their 2009 debut album When Legends Become Dust, and here we are at only the end of 2010 and already they’ve got a new record coming on October 26th.

The new record is called Revenants, and a track from it called “And Our War Will Dawn” is currently up on their MySpace. Check that out and let us know what you think.

-VN

And now Revolver has debuted a new video from the Japanese hardcore band, for “Worn Heels and the Hands We Hold.” It’s kind of like one of those Levi’s commercials you see sometimes, in that the poetic imagery is actually kinda clichéd, but it looks purdy, and placed against the backdrop of the right soundtrack, suddenly feels profound, as long as you don’t think about it for too long (Why is this poor chick wandering in the woods?). But at least it’s not the same-old-same-old we see in every other metal video, right? And the “right soundtrack,” in this case, happens to be awesome, awesome music, so that’s nice.

The clip isn’t embeddable, but you can watch it here.

“Worn Heels and the Hands We Hold” comes off of Envy’s latest, Recitation, which comes out via Temporary Residence on October 12. Envy kick off a U.S. headlining tour this Saturday; get dates here.

-AR

Even some douche bag stealing their shit can’t stop Katatonia’s MetalSucks-sponsored “New Night Over North America 2010″ tour, which is roughly at the halfway point. That means that if you live in California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, or Virginia, you have not yet blown your chance to see one of Sweden’s finest exports do their thing live (AND Swallow the Sun AND Orphaned Land, both of whom also rule).

Frank from Metal Injection recently sat down with Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse. He asked him lotsa interesting questions, but did not tell him how he’d like to spend a day together, which is too bad, ’cause now Frank can’t win a signed a guitar. Still, we love Frank, and this is a great interview, so check it out.

Remaining Katatonia tour dates after the jump!

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I had no intention of writing about this, but so many of you have e-mailed us about it, and we aim to please… or some shit like that.

So in case you never saw it, there’s this famous outtake from A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica in which James Hetfield talks a lot of smack about Axl Rose — or, as Hetfield calls him, “Axl Pose.” Check it out:

And now this Australian radio station, Triple M, has interviewed Hetfield, and, even though he claims to “respect” Axl, he clearly does not:

Look: whatever else you wanna say about Hetfield, he does seem to basically show up and do his job, and I’ve never heard about him dicking the fans over (unless you consider Metallica’s post-Justice output “dicking the fans over”). So it’s hard to say that Hetfield is wrong. On the other hand, y’know… just ’cause someone sucks harder than you doesn’t mean you don’t suck, y’know?

-AR

Last week we offered up four limited edition colored vinyls of 36 Crazyfists’ latest Collisions & Castaways. I gotta say, the entries were pretty weak, both in number and quality, but we had to chose four winners anyway so here they are:

• chainchomp: “No really dude, you have a neon caterpillar on your junk! No homo.”
• Robb: “Harold and Kumar go to White Chapel.”
• Sacajawea: “As they stumbled out of the venue going on and on about how great the concert was, the opening band prepared to do their first song of the night.”
• Fish: “Just a little further Frodo.  You must destroy the ring.”

This week we’re offering one lucky winner a vinyl copy of Valient Thorr’s latest banger Stranger (reviewed by our own Urbandale Grimes) along with a VT t-shirt. Be sure to read my fascinating interview with Valient Himself and check them out on tour in the U.S. right this very moment. To win, just come up with the funniest caption to the below photo, and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect)!

Gwar‘s new album, Gwar’s Bloody Pit of Horror, is scheduled to be released later this year on Metal Blade. While you wait patiently like the stinking dog that you are, here’s Oderus Urungus, the greatest singer in the history of what this putrid, worthless planet calls “metal,” to answer all your ridiculous questions…

Why are you my mom? – EJ666

I thought everybody had heard the story at least 40,000 times, but then again it is a good one…When we arrived on Earth, we were forced to fuck apes — well, more like we forced them to fuck us. Yes, we raped the apes, it was motherfucking ape-rape. The human race sprang from that filthy union and so on and so forth. Really, I was pretty disappointed when I saw what the union had created, I was hoping for some kind of GWAR SUPER-APE, instead we got you tail-less freaks…that’s why I’m your mom, because I am your mom! Or at least your dad, your mom and dad at the same time. And I will be expecting at least a card on my birthday!

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