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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
This week, in honor of “Unnecessary Roughness,” The Red Chord bassist Greg Weeks’ new NFL-themed MetalSucks column, we asked our writers:
WHICH SPORT IS THE MOST METAL AND WHY?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
Because we like our coffee with a little bit of milk in it (but no sugar!).
-VN
Relapse won’t release Sweetest Dreams, the new offering from Brooklyn’s epic rock jam band, Titan, ’til October 12, but this is MetalSucks and we aim to please — so we’re debut a new track, “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander,” right now. Check it out below.
Sweetest Dreams was recorded with current Made Out of Babies/former Red Sparrowes guitarist Brendan Tobin, and in case that wasn’t enough to make ya excited, it’s the first Titan album to feature Zombi’s Steve Moore on bass and synths!
You can pre-order Sweetest Dreams on CD here or on vinyl here. And if you live in the area, you should be aware that the band will be playing at Kung Fu Necktie in Philly on October 22 with Royal Thunder, Serpent Throne, and Snake Sustaine; then they’ll be doing a record release show on October 24 at Union Pool with Royal Thunder and Dark Vibes. The latter is a 21 and over show that will start at 9 pm, and ticketing info will be posted here shortly.
And now, without further ado, we present “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander” by Titan. Enjoy!
So Wormrot, who are currently tearing new assholes across America, are doing a tour diary for Invisible Oranges. And you should read it, ’cause you should do anything and everything you can to support this great band. But also, because we get a shout out in the inaugural edition. Check it:
Let’s start with the show in The Bowery Electric, New York. It was a last minute gig for us. Wormrot is actually not in the lineup but Earache managed to squeeze us in. The promoter was cool to let us play last minute. It was our very first show in the US and it was fucking awesome. We also get to meet the Earache US team in the club and Mike from Sunyata Atanamar blog was there too! We didn’t know MetalSucks staff was there until we read their blog. Great people, great place, great gig! It was a great start of the tour after the 21 hours flight from Singapore!!
Well, thanks, fellas! We’ll try to introduce ourselves at your gig in Brooklyn in October.
Read the rest of the tour diary here, and get Wormrot tour dates here. Really, blow me if you don’t go see these guys; they crush.
-AR
We got an e-mail this morning from a reader named Rachel Raines. The e-mail read as follows…
“This is a picture colored by the girlfriend of one of your users ‘as a dinosaur’ rockin out. The tshirt was originally going to be Metallica but it didn’t fit and promoting MetalSucks seemed like the obvious next choice.”
…and contained the below, totally bitchin’ illustration:
Even though we usually like to reserve “Show Us Your MetalSucks” for MS merch (’cause we’re egotistical like that), this is so rad that we’re gonna send Rachel — or her boyfriend, ’cause we’re assuming that she’s the girlfriend in question — a box of goodies. Nice work, Rachel! We’re only too happy to be a second choice to Metallica.
-AR
Back in July, my main man Vince told you about Chile’s Mar de Grises, and compared them to Insomnium and Swallow the Sun; I’ve been listening to their latest album, Streams Inwards, a fair amount recently, and I’m basically just here to tell you that he’s right. (And I’d probably add Daylight Dies to that list, too.) If you dig the aforementioned bands and you aren’t listening to Mar de Grises, you are depriving yourself of some music that I can pretty much guarantee you’ll flip for.
Because like the music made by those other bands, Stream Inwards is epic, cinematic, melodic, and haunting. I don’t know that if it brings anything new to the melodoom table, but I also kinda think this is an instance of lack-of-innovation not really mattering; it feels good to listen to Stream Inwards, and sometimes, feeling good is good enough. Don’t forget that Insomnium have basically been making the same album over and over and over again, and at the end of the day, their fans (including me) don’t really seem to care because it’s all so capital-”A” Awesome. Ditto Streams Inwards.
Streams Inwards is out now on Season of Mist. You can check out the track “Shining Human Skin” here.
-AR
Having not heard a peep outta the Black Tide camp since they played Mayhem in 2008 — where vocalist/guitarist Gabriel Garcia gave us pretty much the worst interview in the history of MetalSucks — I kind of assumed that band was dunzo. And I don’t think it would have surprised anyone if they were — for one thing, the group did not turn out to be the grand-slam record sellers some industry peeps had hoped they’d be, and for another, they were like all of eight years old, so if they grew up and decided they liked hip-hop or country better than metal, or that they didn’t wanna be musicians at all, well, that would have been perfectly understandable.
But no! Black Tide are apparently alive and well. They have a new song, “Bury Me,” and, thanks to the hum-drum pace of this slow news day, I have listened to and am now going to write about said new song.
So you know I love Alice in Chains. You know I’m proud of them for making it work without Layne. You know I love Black Gives Way to Blue, and you should therefore be able to assume to that I love the song “Acid Bubble.”
But I don’t love the interactive video for the song, which allows the viewer to roam freely around the environment of the clip. ‘Cause being able to spin around 360 degrees, Google maps-style, sounds awesome, but the bottom line is this: There’s really nothing that interesting to see. You can move around all you want, but you’ll probably get bored after a minute or so, when you realize your options are still limited to one kinda meh image versus another kinda meh image.
That makes the gimmick roughly equivalent to the recent 3D trend in feature films; even when the 3D looks better than other 3D has looked in the past — as with Avatard — it kinda doesn’t matter, ’cause if the story sucks, all you’re left with is a bunch of pretty pictures.
But this video doesn’t even really have any pretty pictures. So the gimmick is even more shrug-worthy than 3D.
Check out the interactive version of the video here. The non-interactive version is below. Both were directed by Nick Goso.
-AR
So there’s another new Dimmu Borgir song, “Born Treacherous,” now streaming here; it doesn’t do much more for me than the last new Dimmu song to debut, “Gateways,” ‘cept that it doesn’t feature female vocals that sound as though they were specifically designed to ensure that no one would ever actually want to listen to the song. So, y’know. It’s got that going for it.
At this point, I’m pretty much ready to accept that I’m probably just not going to dig Dimmu’s new album, Abrahadabra, which is a bummer, ’cause I have definitely enjoyed some of this band’s past output. But these songs… they’re really generic, and just don’t do anything for me.
Check out “Born Treacherous” and then let us know what you think in the comments section below. Abrahdabra is out October 12 in the U.S., and September 24 and 27 in Germany and the rest of Europe.
-AR
Deadline Hollywood has broken the story that Sacha Baron Cohen — a.k.a. “Ali G,” “Borat,” “Bruno,” etc. — is going to play Freddie Mercury in a movie about Queen. Peter Morgan, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing another Queen movie, and is also responsible for the scripts for Frost/Nixon and The Last King of Scotland (among others), is penning the screenplay.
So while no director is yet attached, this all strikes me as good news. I don’t think Peter Morgan is the cat’s pajamas the way some people do, but he’s certainly a talented writer. And I can’t think of better casting for Freddy Mercury than Cohen — sure, the roles he’s played up ’til now have been primarily comedic, but you can’t say that the fella doesn’t give an immersive performance. I think he could really hit the ball out of the park playing the legendary Queen vocalist.
Slightly more troubling, if understandable, is the fact that the surviving members of Queen are involved as producers on the project. This kind of thing bothers me because while I’m sure it’s great to have a first-hand eyewitness to the events in question working on your film, and it most certainly makes securing the music rights a breeze, it can lead to sugar coating some of the facts. ‘Cause let’s be real, no one really wants to come off on film as a total dick.
But I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I really think this movie could end up being good, which would be a nice change of pace for rock biopics.
-AR
Will someone please sign this guy? Of all the one-man bedroom metal bands out there today (and good lord are there a lot of them), the number of emails we get about Ben Sharp — aka Cloudkicker — far outnumber the rest. And with good reason; Sharp puts out consistently good material that’s not derivative in the landscape of a micro-genre that thrives on derivation.
Not that Cloudkicker really needs a label, because he seems to be doing just fine on his own and gives all his music away for free anyway. His new album Beacons — his second already in 2010 — appeared on the Interwebs this week, and surprise, it’s free, but with a twist: for the first time ever he’s taking donations for a digital download of the album in the form of a “name your price” box. Of course “$0.00″ is a perfectly acceptable price to name, and you can essentially do that anyway by just steaming the whole thing on his Bandcamp page, but those fans wanting something more tangible can purchase a CD for $10 — or more if they so choose. Check it out right here.
It’s a pretty neat way to release an album. MS reader poll: if you’ve purchased Beacons, how much did you pay for it? BE HONEST.
-VN
Thanks: Josh S., Matan J.
In other news, Trent Reznor continues to be an awesome dude.
Back in July, Mr. Self-Destruct himself announced that he and his longtime collaborator, Atticus Ross, would be scoring David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network; now they’re taking pre-orders for that score (in a variety of formats, natch), and, at the same site, giving away five songs for free if you’re willing to hand over your e-mail address.
A statement from Reznor regarding the subject reads as follows:
It’s rare when I hear a black metal band these days that really makes me sit up straight and listen intently; so many recent bands in the genre are repetitive and boring. I’m not even a particularly big of a fan of black metal. However, Sear Bliss‘ performance on The Arcane Odyssey certainly has rekindled my hope and love of black metal. It combines symphonic, melodic, and raw elements to create a truly epic album – in terms of both songwriting and expert instrumentation.
You asked, and he answered! Here’s Gwar‘s Oderus Urungus, the greatest singer in the history of what this putrid, worthless planet calls “metal,” to answer all your ridiculous questions…
If your name wasn’t Oderus what would it be? – Rob
That’s a good question, moron. It’s pretty hard to imagine me being named LOLA or FUNKY WINKERBEAN. Is this typical of the types of questions I am gonna get? Completely fucking retarded ones? It never ceases to amaze me that here you have an opportunity to have all the mysteries of life revealed, but you want to ask asinine questions like this one (YOURS). Get fucked! Oh yeah, I almost forgot — it would be GENGHIS HITLER VON DOG-LOLLY! Oh no, I shit myself (again).
Cephalic Carnage’s new ripper Misled by Certainty is now the rightful property of the two lucky winners of last week’s Photo Caption Contest. The two lucky winners are:
Good work, guys. This week we’re giving away limited edition, colored vinyl copies of 36 Crazyfists’ latest album Collisions & Castaways (read my thoughts on the album here) courtesy Ferret Records. These special vinyl editions don’t come out until October 5th so this is the only place you can get ‘em. We have two copies of the orange vinyl and two copies of the clear blue vinyl, so that means there will be four winners total (math!). 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)! Check 36CF’s MySpace page for their current tour dates.
Oh, and in case you guys didn’t get the memo yet, “Fuckin ____, how do they work?” jokes are not funny anymore.
Don’t you dare call Decibel an “analog blog,” cocksucker — it’s a FUCKING MAGAZINE. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.
Haven’t seen much coverage of future Greatest Album of All-Time short-lister A Thousand Suns around these parts, aside from Axl’s assessment last month: that “The good news is that Linkin Park’s new single, ‘The Catalyst,’ doesn’t sound exactly like every other song the band has ever recorded; the bad news is, it might actually be worse.” [Also, this thing today, although that was written after Andrew handed this in. Oh, well. - AR] While Diddy respectfully disagrees with your fearless co-leader, everyone else on earth with an IQ on the right side of the bell curve is firmly ensconced in the “sweet Jesus, this is some goofy bullshit” corner.
A select few, however, have a great deal of fun acknowledging the goofy bullshittery. One such stalwart is our fully automated nü-metal reviews generator, Decibot, which just earned its first-ever bit of unauthorized-in-every-way-imaginable merch. We caught up with the honoree after a mismatched burrito-eating contest with Dino Cazares’ Boss CH-1 Super Chorus [not pictured here:], and the response was anything but mechanical:
“100,000+ custom edits to the Microsoft Word spell checker and Decibot is still at a loss for words. Show your support for the robot uprising with this handsome cotton T-shirt depicting yours truly, Decibot. Does Decibot look fat in this picture? Yes, but Vince Neilstein applies the kung-fu grip to Edsel Dope’s ding-dong every three months or so during a slow news day at the MetalSucks mansion. See? We all have things we’re ashamed of. Plus, how else will Decibot hustle up the cash for the new Linkin Park album when Andrew Bonazelli is checking the couch cushions for coins every night and the Decibel editorial board has applied a ‘No Vinnie Paul’ rule in regards to auctioning home appliances on eBay? All your fashion sense are belong to us. Be the envy of the Hot Topic nerd down the block. Decibot generally prefers to be a ‘bottom,’ but here’s the one instance where it feels good to be a top.”
-AB
Do what the robot says and buy a t-shirt, or be condemned to spend the rest of your putrid, miserable existence listening exclusively to (hed) p.e. While you’re at it, you might as well buy yourself a copy of the October 2010 issue of Decibel, or just go ahead and buy yourself a full subscription. Andrew Bonazelli could really use the money for upkeep on his collection of rare action movie novelizations… we hear that The Expendables first edition hardcovers are gonna cost an arm and a leg.
Here’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, a.k.a. “the father of the atomic bomb,” quoting the Bhagavad Gita. This is a famous television broadcast and there’s a very good chance you’ve either seen it before or are at least aware of it, but in case you haven’t…
So. Reader James M. e-mailed us earlier this week, advising us that Linkin Suck’s new album, A Thousand Sucks, was streaming, and requesting that we review it.
And I tried to listen to it for review purposes. I really did. I think I even made it like halfway through the third or fourth song before I turned it off. I just… things have been really busy around here lately and I don’t have time for this shit right now, okay? I’m sorry, James. I really gave it my best shot. Let’s just logically conclude that I would have not have given it a good review and leave it at that.
BUT. Before I turned off the album, I heard this one song — actually I think it’s less than a minute long, so maybe we should just call it an “interlude” — that utilized a sample from Oppenheimer’s broadcast. And as I’m listening, I’m thinking, “Wait, I know there’s another, better band that uses this same sample.” And because I’ve fried an awful lot of brain cells, it took me a minute to figure it out — and then, wham!, it hit me.
Origin use the same sample at the start of their song “Antithesis,” the abso-fucking-lutely EPIC title track from their 2008 album.
If you’re a Cephalic Carnage fan, you already know who Zac Joe is — the guitarist was also, at least as I understand it, a huge part of that band’s songwriting process up until his departure earlier this year.
Luckily, he has a new band, Collapse, and he’s brought the same what-the-fuck?ness to it that he did CC. But don’t take my word for it; our broskis over at Metal Injection have debuted a new track by the band, entitled “Destroy Industry.” Joe calls the song “an ode to early 90′s New Jersey tech / death greatness,” and cites bands like Ripping Corpse, Deadguy, Human Remains, Lethargy, Pestilence, and Atheist (yes, I’m sure he knows that some of those bands are not from NJ) as an influence. But, really, if you dig Cephalic Carnage, there’s no way you won’t go apeshit for this song.
Head over to Metal Injection to hear the track. There’s still no word on when Collapse might release a debut album, but consider me stoked to hear it when they do.
-AR
If you missed Nile earlier this year on the MetalSucks-sponsored Those Whom the Gods Detest Tour, this fall is your chance to get your fix of Egyptian-themed death metal. MetalSucks is proud to once again bring you a Nile tour, but this time around Karl Sanders and co. will be hitting cities they didn’t visit on their first go-round. And it’s a sweet deal too, ’cause in addition to Nile you’ll also get to see Maurizio Iocono’s Roman-themed Ex Deo, a rare U.S. appearance by Tasmanian tech-deathsters Psycroptic, Norwegian epic black metal maestros Keep of Kalessin and Sergeant D-approved slam deathsters Pathology.
Dates after the jump.
So earlier this week, there was a posting on Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s MySpace page in which they seemed to announce that they were changing their name to “The Devil.” They even debuted some new music and set up a new MySpace page under that moniker. And at the time, I said, “I’m honestly hoping that this is just a joke I don’t get,” ’cause I think that Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is an awesome name, and The Devil is pretty meh.
Well, hey, guess what? I guess it was a joke I don’t get! Or the band’s MySpace page was hacked — but that seems less likely, given the other, new MySpace page and whatnot. (Although that MySpace page is now gone.) In any case, here’s an official statement from the band:
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is not changing it’s name even though ‘the internet’ said we were. We will have a new album in 2011.
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is elusive and it’s true motives are unknown. Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is bigger than ‘The Devil’
