Start shopping for a new bandanna (or hit the easy button and buy this), because Suicidal Tendencies kick off a proper five-week U.S. tour this week! Last month, the latest version of the band released No Mercy Fool!/The Suicidal Family, a collection of re-recorded cuts from Join The Army and the No Mercy project–and that’s as good a reason as any to play some fucking shows. Opening acts vary depending on the city, but include Cro-Mags, Death Before Dishonor, D.R.I., (Hed) P.E., High on Fire, Kylesa, and Underdog.

Immediately following the tour, Muir returns to California to play an exclusive Infectious Grooves live gig at the House Of Blues in Hollywood–the side-project’s first U.S. show in over a fucking decade. If all of this doesn’t make up for Muir’s 2008 collaboration with P.O.D. (*shudder*), I don’t know what is. All dates are below.

Click to read more…

Produced by Alex Newport of Fudge Tunnel and Nailbomb, Pissed Jeans’ King Of Jeans landed the #4 spot on my Best Albums of 2009 list. Citing a series of things Pissed Jeans vocalist could–but wont bother to–do in order to better his life, opening track “False Jesii Pt 2″ is a jagged punky noise rock anthem that promotes sloth as a form of rebellion. Fittingly, its bizarre, sometimes creepy video was only just released last month. Featuring the band barely performing in some sort of auditorium or gymnasium with young women dancing around them to what seems to be entirely different music, it’s not exactly the sort of promotional clip to garner the Allentown, Pennsylvania band any new fans. Not that they care.

Pissed Jeans’ upcoming 7″ single Sam Kinison Woman / The L Word will be out on October 26 and you can preorder it from Sub Pop.

-GS

Sacramento, CA-based hooligans Hoods have been making seriously heavy toughguy hardcore since the 1990s, though their records for Victory Records and subsequently Eulogy Recordings garnered them the most attention. Their latest album, Pit Beast, was released in the summer of 2009 on I Scream, though I only started listening to it this year. With crushing breakdowns and Mike Hood’s fearsome roar, the record has rapidly become a favorite when I’m doing cardio work at the gym or beating the shit out of strangers who don’t show me proper respect.

Hoods released a whole mess of videos for the album, though the title track — which you can watch above — is one of the highlights. It’s what you’d expect being bludgeoned to sound like.

-GS

So many great frontmen either rest on their laurels or otherwise spiral downwards, and to a certain extent we excuse this state of affairs and even come to accept it. None of us ever really expect Ozzy Osbourne to truly impress us ever again. We might be entertained by his latest record, or even catch a fleeting glimpse of what endeared us to him, but we aren’t expecting a Johnny Cash styled career reboot from the guy. Not only are his best days behind him, but his second-best are as well.

On that same point, Keith Morris doesn’t need to make good music anymore. His hallowed name has already been recorded in the hardcore history books thanks to his founding roles in Black Flag and Circle Jerks. Yet his latest project, the simply and provocatively monikered OFF!, is causing quite a stir as a remarkably authentic continuation of the work Morris began roughly three decades ago. Bolstered by veterans of Redd Kross and Rocket From The Crypt/Hot Snakes axis, OFF! slip the punk back in hardcore, bridging a divide that has exponentially widened since the 1980s. The above clip is for “Darkness”, a spittle-flecked, fast-n-furious track off the SST-referencing 1st EP 7″ — featuring sleeve art from Raymond “I-Designed-Every-Fucking-Black-Flag-Record” Pettibon — out as of today on Vice Records. I get chills hearing Morris bark with the same dead-on intensity he had back in the Nervous Breakdown days.

Take a minute — well, 59 seconds, to be exact — and watch the video if you have any love for classic hardcore. U.S. tourdates are below.

Click to read more…

Some people turn into bellicose, impetuous boneheads at the very mention of deathcore on this site. Case in point, many wont even get past that first sentence before scrolling down to the Comments box and firing off a few foulmouthed, grammatically incorrect lines about how much it sucks and how awful I am for even bringing it up. Yet those who can restrain this impulse may very well find this interview with Winds Of Plague frontman Johnny Plague eye-opening.

Unlike the boastful meatheads that litter this scene, the man I spoke to was very down-to-earth and brutally honest when speaking about the unexpected reaction the fans had to last year’s The Great Stone War, a labyrinthine concept album crammed into a thirty-seven minute time frame. It was a bold move for the band’s second record for Century Media, and a departure that he acknowledges did not go over well. Below, Mister — not Doctor, as you’ll see — Plague, discusses how that factored into their touring behind the release, as well as his love of East Coast Hardcore and Halloween.

Click to read more…

On October 12, 2009, this website fearlessly — or, depending on who you ask, naively – -published my lengthy five-out-of-five-horns review of Depths, the debut album from Chicago’s deathcore beefbringers Oceano. Who could have anticipated the response from the MetalSucks readership –or from the staff for that matter? Retrospectively, Axl and Vince deemed the review one of their favorite posts in the site’s history, and in recognition of this anniversary, the guys have handed over the reins to yours truly.

Long story short: I’M TAKING OVER METALSUCKS FOR THE DAY!

Click to read more…

I’d like to begin this week by congratulating the Lions on their crushing 44-6 win against the Rams. Look out Chicago, Detroit is coming for you!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen state vs. state action. This week is no different. In an upset that took seven years the Oakland Raiders defeated the San Diego Chargers. Their win brings the division to a three way tie.

Here in New England the Pats say goodbye to wide receiver Randy Moss. After reportedly telling QB Tom Brady he “looks like a girl” and not getting the attention on the field he thinks he needs, Randy went back to the Vikings. New England received a third round pick in the 2011 draft. As much of a pain as Moss may or may not have been, trading him in the early season for a third round pick has some of us raising our eyebrows. Who’s going to keep the secondary busy while Brady throws to everyone else? It seems to me that Moss wanted to break records and leave behind a name rather than be a part of a team. At least now he gets a second shot at the Jets.

Click to read more…

Jeremy Creamer is a crazy motherfucker, and I mean that in the best possible way. He’s often the quietest guy in the room, but his mind is always working, working, working. When he speaks up, everybody listens. I’ve mentioned this before, but, at least during my time vising Daath in the studio this past June, his ideas were the ones most quickly and consistently adopted into the music. It’s the old cliché: The man who speaks the least is actually the most worth listening to.

And Creamer is worth listening to. After the jump, get his thoughts his particular place in the scheme of the band, the ills of modern metal production, why he doesn’t like to plan things out too far in advance, and a remix/reimagining of Daath that will hopefully be released for free in the not-too-distant future.

Click to read more…

I haven’t personally really dug a Norma Jean album since 2005′s O God, The Aftermath, and even that release, I thought, was inferior to the band’s prior offering, Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child. But just because I’m not the biggest Norma Jean fan in the world doesn’t mean I think the artists involved aren’t entitled to have some say in how and when their work is released.

And they’re apparently pissed about Birds and Microscopes and Bottles of Elixirs and Raw Steak and a Bunch of Songs, a multi-CD collection that will combine Norma Jean’s first three releases (that would be the aforementioned Bless the Martyr and O God as well as 2006′s Redeemer) into one set. Solid State have set a November 23 release date for the compilation, but I guess Norma Jean have nothing to do with it, ’cause vocalist Cory Brandan tweeted the following message late last night:

I’d be curious to know what it is Brandan (and, presumably, the rest of the band) doesn’t like about Birds – I mean, it’s still their work, the packaging is just gonna be different — but it’s kind of a moot point. If Norma Jean don’t approve of the release, chances are they had nothing to do with its creation, which means anyone who purchases it will be getting artwork and a really bizarre album title that I’m assuming they never signed off on. And while I’m sure Solid State has a legal right to put out whatever they want… the whole thing just makes me feel icky.

Weigh in with your thoughts below.

-AR

[via The PRP]

This is far and away the best entry we’ve ever received in our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest series, in which you send in pics of yourselves wearing MetalSucks merch (preferably while doing something funny/awesome) and in exchange we send you a buncha free shit from the Mansion. Our latest entry comes courtesy of MS Maniac Ken Szidar and a fellow friend and Suckalo who didn’t provide his name. We’ll let Ken take it from here:

Lets cut the shit, you like metal and you like video games. Why not combine them? WE DID, BITCH! We just built a fully working arcade machine that plays any NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, N64, Ps1, and arcade game that you can think of. With metal references from BTBAM (Man Land ftw!), Cannibal Corpse and Motorhead, and being run off a computer with a MetalSucks sticker on it, you cannot deny the fact that this thing is metal as FUCK!!!! Did your head explode yet? No? Well how about if I were to tell you we play 8-bit metal remixes (Shape Shifters/Coldly Calculated Design is the best by far) while playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Once you get your head reassembled tell Zilty it can play Gameboy too so Pokemon blue/red is a viable option; but fuck Pokemon, it’s all about Digimon. Please send us free shit.

Free shit you shall receive, brotemus.

Check out more pics from Ken’s homemade arcade machine after the jump:

Click to read more…

Madball‘s latest slice of hardcore heaven, Empire, comes out tomorrow on Good Fight! Since it’s THE LEGENDARY MAD-FUCKING-BALL, we’re gonna assume that you’re already stoked for it. As you should be. So here’s an early taste to slow your jonesin’ for another twenty-four hours: the new track “Invigorate.” WARNING: Listening to this song may cause you to want to punch someone in the face. So don’t play it around loved ones, okay?

[this streaming promotion has ended]

And as if that wasn’t enough, today Freddy Madball is wrapping up his list of his favorite non-hardcore (but still heavy!) bands. Who are his number one and two picks? Skip to after the jump to find out…

Click to read more…

I haven’t needlessly lumped self newly-released videos together in awhile, and these three clips were all released pretty much at once, so I figured, “Hey, why not?” After the jump, check out the latest audio-visual offerings from Torche, Helloween, Linkin Park, and Your Demise… plus my usual bullshit commentary, of course.

Click to read more…

I’ve been waiting for Terminal, the debut full-length from Salome, pretty much since I heard the band’s self-titled EP back in 2007. And I’m happy report that it was worth the wait.

What sets Salome apart from the doom metal crowd is that they never do quite what one would expect from their genre. Doom’s most satisfying aspect might be, as the brilliant Justin Foley would put it, that the genre allows you really feel the weight and physical exertion of the music — but it’s biggest pratfall is that it can become redundant and boring in a hurry. For too many doom bands, drone isn’t the appetizer — it’s the main course. It’s like they’re testing the listener: “Oh, yeah? You think you’re hard? Well, how long can you listen to this shit? IT’S LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

And so by the standards of their peers, Salome might be considered progressive — downright schizophrenic, even. I will freely admit that I will most likely never listen to the seventeen minute experiment in feedback known as “An Accident of History” again, but unless you have really, really bad ADHD and literally can’t sit still under any circumstances, it’s the only cut on the album that will test your patience. For the most part, Salome songs are in a constant state of flux, seguing from one section of pure, unadulterated sonic evil to the next in a manner seemingly designed to repeatedly remind you, “Oh, hey, this band is awesome.”

Click to read more…

In a recent issue of Decibel Magazine, some writer who thought it’d be clever to base his writing alias on the name of our own esteemed Satan Rosenbloom summed up East of the Wall’s highly excellent 2010 release Ressentiment thusly: “Put simply, East of the Wall have written a minor prog-metal masterpiece without being assholes about it.” The same could be said for Intronaut’s Valley of Smoke; we cannot reiterate enough how good this album is.

Alright, maybe Intronaut are being assholes just a little bit… all three members are leaps and bounds better than you at their respective instruments — and at putting together prog metal masterpieces — and they want you to know it, but for the most part they don’t do so without losing track of what matters most, the song. Valley of Smoke is just challenging enough; four or five listens in and I still haven’t completely wrapped my head around this album, but like your morning brain state after each successive cup of coffee things are slowly coming into focus. And what’s in focus is absolutely phenomenal. That’s just the way music should be; challenging. You’re not always supposed to “get it” the first time through; what’s the point? If that’s what you want you may as well just crank Linkin Park to 11, dudebro. Each time I listen to Valley of Smoke things come just a little bit more into focus, facilitated by Josh Newell’s positively crushing, lush, and strikingly clear production. And it’s all worth it, because holy smokes is there a lot of great shit to listen to on this album.

Or, to put it more succinctly: “A++++ would do business with again great seller fast shipping! highly recommend”

Stream Valley of Smoke in its entirety below. Pre-order it here before it comes out tomorrow, along with some killer t-shirt designs.

[this promotion has ended]

I would accept an argument that Faith No More are the greatest band of all time. And if I wasn’t lucky enough to see them on their reunion tour (twice!), and then I read that the band had “announced the final date” of said reunion tour, I would probably cry. Like, a lot. It really seems kind of unbelievable that they didn’t end up doing a proper full U.S. tour, doesn’t it? As it stands, there are who even knows how many Faith No More fans who didn’t get to experience that magic that is FNM live in the 21st century.

But if you’re one of the poor bastards who didn’t get to see this most recent trek, fret not! Whereas some bands, like At the Gates, really do just reunite for one last hurrah, bassist Billy Gould has now said in an interview with Consequence of Sound that he believes Faith No More will ride again:

Click to read more…

We’ve gotten a lot of e-mails these past few days regarding this interview, in which the members of Insane Clown Posse reveal that they’re actually evangelical Christians. Apparently, this is shocking news, even to the Juggalos — I guess ’cause ICP, with their open love of weed, booze, women, and violence against women, don’t exactly come across as Christ-like.

Personally? I’m not shocked at all. Not in the slightest! Here’s why:

Click to read more…

MetalGF and I just booked a trip to Paris during the upcoming holiday season, and we’re pretty excited. On the way there we’ll be hanging in Amsterdam for four nights and indulging in all the fine delights that city has to offer; we’ll most certainly be ringing in Christmas the green way, ifyaknowhatimean, like any good Jews would. I shit you not, there is actually a flight from JFK to Amsterdam that leaves at exactly 4:20pm and you better believe we’re on it; some stoned paper pusher at Delta airlines who’s in charge of flight scheduling surely had a good laugh when he slipped that one into the books. In any case, we’ll be in Paris for a whole 5 nights (including New Year’s Eve) and I’m really hoping MetalGF agrees to go to one metal show with me, be it a famous touring band or some local bands at a hole in the wall. There’s nothing quite like experiencing metal in other countries, ya know? In that spirit, here are some of the best reader-submitted French bands to hit my inbox lately:

• Memories of a Dead Man: Video for “Single Thought and Emptiness Wishes” posted above. Kinda sounds like whatever’s halfway between Swallow the Sun and Mastodon, if you can imagine such a thing; big, epic, airy passages mixed with furious riffs of stone. [Thanks: Benoit Debrun]
• Clampdown: These guys are closer to the Gojira sound, especially rhythmically and vocally… I also hear elements of Textures. The first track on their MySpace, “Visions of Splendor,” is phenomenal. [Thanks: Mohamed.O]
• Outcast: Death metal with a healthy dose of technicality and a keen sense of power groove. [Thanks: brandonmetal]
• Them Martyrs: These guys are actually Irish, but they seem to spend a good deal of time in France and even recorded their new album French Extremity there. They sound like a less awesome and less technical version of East of the Wall that wears their post-hardcore influence right out on their collective sleeve.

Now I just need to learn to speak French. At least a few words of it. Like, quick.

-VN

Last week Noisecreep debuted the track “A Public Execution” from Madness in Manila, a new DVD/CD set Shadows Fall are releasing on October 26 that chronicles their performance last year to 15,000 manic Filipinos. “I can just see Brian Fair’s windmilling dreads in my mind’s eye,” commented Señor Rosenberg upon hearing the live rendition of the track for the first time. Imaginary dread-windmills are no longer necessary, ’cause today we got our hands on the video for the track and we’re able to share it with you.

You gotta wonder, those dreads probably weigh a pretty good amount… does it hurt his scalp to windmill? Who would win in a neck muscle endurance contest, Brian Fair or Corpsegrinder? These questions may or may not be answered when Madness in Manila comes out on October 26th; pre-order it here. In the meantime, enjoy the performance below of one of our favorite tracks from last year’s album Retribution.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Video by popas7

After Celtic Frost disbanded and Tom G. Warrior announced the formation of Triptykon, he assured fans that his new project  ”will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible.” That wasn’t just self-serving hype: Triptykon is not Celtic Frost in name only.

Seeing Triptykon live highlights this fact: Their set last Thursday evening here in Manhattan (with co-headliners 1349, who, unfortunately, I missed) was dominated by songs spanning the entire spectrum of Celtic Frost’s catalog, including Morbid Tales (“Circle of Tyrants,” “Dethroned Emperor”), Into the Pandemonium (“Babylon Fell”), and Monotheist (“Synagoga Satanae”). Triptykon might have new members, but they’re not a new band; they’re Celtic Frost with a very intense-looking woman, Vanja Slajh, playing bass instead of a very intense-looking man, Martin Eric Ain.

And will due respect to Ain, you probably won’t miss him.

Click to read more…

We haven’t had any real Anthrax drama in a few months, so I guess we were due. This might be the most ridiculous round yet, though, ’cause it’s really all just about Scott Ian having a lousy memory.

So here’s what happened. As you should be aware, after Anthrax re-fired Joey Belladonna and found themselves unable to re-hire John Bush, they brought on an entirely new singer, Dan Nelson. They even recorded an album with the guy, called Worship Music. One of the songs on Worship Music was called “Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t.” Here’s Anthrax with Dan Nelson performing the song in Chicago in May of 2008:

Then for whatever reason Dan Nelson was either fired from or quit Anthrax, and Worship Music sat on the shelf. And then John Bush was back in the band, and then he wasn’t, at least in part, it seems, because he didn’t just wanna re-record Nelson’s parts from Worship Music.

And so Anthrax re-re-hired Joey Belladonna, who made it clear that he was amenable to re-recording Nelson’s Worship Music performance. And while we’re still waiting for Worship Music (or whatever the hell it ends up being called) to be released, this latest incarnation of Anthrax is currently touring with Slayer and Megadeth, and have even started playing “Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t” with Belladonna on vocals. Here’s a video of that happening  in Uniondale this past Friday night:

Click to read more…