To understand Downset, you really need to understand the context in which they came up. Back in the 90s, the graffiti scene was no fucking joke. There was a huge influx of what we called tagbangers — crazy kids who were basically gangsters who also tagged, and they scared the shit out of everybody, graffiti writers and citizens alike. Even the legit, non-tagbanger graffiti crews were pretty rough — I grew up with the guys who started the infamous BTM and 3A, who still scare the fuck out of anybody who crosses their path and are currently crushing NYC. The whole West Coast was pretty wild, but Southern California was by far the sketchiest when it came to graffiti. If you lived there in the early to mid-90s, you know what I mean: all the freeways were absolutely covered in graffiti, and people like CHAKA and OILER were pretty close to household names.

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Earlier this week I had a dream that I was working with Atreyu. I don’t know in what capacity I could possibly find myself “working with” Atreyu, since I’m not a manager, nor a publicist, nor a label rep, and they’re about as likely to end up doing a guest column here as I am to give the new In This Moment album a perfect 5-horn review, but, hey, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. Why did I have Atreyu on the brain? Was my mind trying to tell me “The glass is half-full?” Do I have  a hankering to re-watch The Neverending Story? Did I just ingest too many different substances that night? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

Here’s other shit that happened this week, some of which, believe it or not, is even more terrifying than the thought of working with Atreyu:

• Freddy Madball is counting down his favorite hard and heavy non-hardcore bands of all time, TesseracT’s Acle walked us through the history of djent, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley spoke to Converge’s Kurt Ballou about Taco Riffs, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks made some suggestions for losing NFL teams, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable contemplated the ways in which technology has changed touring, Daath’s Eyal Levi wondered, “Is this it?”, and a wide array of metal stars previewed the just-begun NHL season.
• We spoke to Kirk Windstein from Crowbar/Down/Kingdom of Sorrow, Sean Z. from Daath, Daddy X and Dirtball from Kottonmouth Kings, and Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.
• We checked out the latest releases from Abysse and Deafheaven.
• We contemplated trancecore.
• As the headline says, we heard the worst thing ever.
• We reviewed the history of terrible Limp Bizkit cover songs.
• We had fun with misheard song lyrics.
• We bemoaned the signing of another re-thrash band.
• We applauded Slayer fans’ desire to help the physically disabled.
• We had yet another laugh at Winds of Plague’s expense.

We have a special surprise for you next week. I can’t promise you’re going to like it, but I can promise you’re going to have a strong reaction to it. See ya then.

-AR

I know that suicide happens in all walks of life. I realize that when celebrities do themselves in, it’s enlarged to disrespectful proportions compared to when non-celebrities choose death. That said… Have you ever wondered why some rockstars kill themselves? Why do we hear about that CEO that threw himself off a seven-story building? Why do people who survive plane crashes kill themselves a year later with drugs? Why is it almost cliché for someone to die by their own doing after achieving their dreams in life? How is it that people who have won at life so hard can feel so miserable that living is no longer an option?

I’m positive that someone trained in the art of mental health would tell me that each case is unique. I realize that I’m not an expert on mental health, but I think there’s got to be some common denominator there. One thing I’ve noticed around a lot of people who have in fact achieved what would be most people’s dreams is that a lot of them will never be satisfied with that alone. That’s because a dream can only feel like a dream when it’s in your mind. It’s easy to be in love with a simple idea, or goal. In reality we have many more complex needs and pressures affecting us than those we create in idealized lottery winner-like scenarios.

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So right now you’re probably thinking 1) “Hey, assholes, the NHL season actually started last night so this can’t really be a ‘preview’ in the traditional sense of the word,” and 2) “Hey, assholes, at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records.” And, yes, we know we’re a little late, but this is metal, so who the fuck is ever on time? And, yes, we know that at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records, but most of them are, and the fine people at Relapse really did all the work in putting this together, so ppppfffffttttt.

So. After the jump, you can find previews of how the freshly-begun NHL season is looking for the favorite teams of members of 3 Inches of Blood, -(16)-, Buried Inside, Cephalic Carnage, Cretin, Dekapitator, Exhumed, Fuck the Facts, Gravehill, Hero Destroyed, Indian, Misery Index, Mortuous, Repulsion, and Toxic Holocaust. Enjoy!!!

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

For no particular reason whatsoever other than we thought it would be fun, this week we asked our writers:

IF YOU COULD HAVE BEEN PRESENT FOR THE CREATION OF ANY SINGLE METAL ALBUM, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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To celebrate the release of Madball’s latest aggro masterpiece, Empire (two new songs streaming here!), we asked vocalist Freddy “Madball” Cricien to compile a list of his favorite non-hardcore (but still heavy!) bands. Luckily for us and all of you, he agreed! So we’ll be running two entries a day from Freddy’s list every day for the next five days, leading up toEmpire‘s October 12 release. You can read Freddy’s initial installment here, his second entry here, and his third here; to follow, enjoy day three of the countdown…

4) SEPULTURA

Heavy as hell, groovy, and from South America… What more do you want? I got into their earlier records and that stuff can still “hang” today. Unique and hard… Not a bad combo. The new line up are doing their thing as well. Props to those guys!

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Next to the Soundgarden reunion, the most highly-anticipated show at Lollapalooza 2010 may have been the American debut of X Japan. Mega-stars in Asia (moving 30 million records and selling out the 50,000 seat Toyko Dome 18 times), the band remains largely an unknown quantity in the United States. With their debut U.S. release scheduled for early 2011, and on the eve of their first American tour, the band’s incredibly humble founding member and drummer, Yoshiki Hayashi, was good enough to take five and shoot the shit with MetalSucks.

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We already do “Heavy Metal Hannukkah” and “Antichrist Christmas” every year, and Halloween is way more metal than either of those holidays, so this year we figured, hey, why not? We’re teaming up with SPV to give away a prize pack full of awesome surprise goodies. Here’s how to win:

• TAKE A PICTURE OF YOURSELF IN YOUR HALLOWEEN COSTUME. Make sure you’re either holding a sign that says “MetalSucks,” or standing near some MetalSucks merch, or in some way proving that it’s actually you in the photo, and you didn’t just steal someone else’s pic off the web or whatever.
• E-MAIL THAT PHOTO TO NEWS [AT] METALSUCKS [DOT] NET with the phrase “Heavy Metal Halloween” in the subject line by no later than midnight EST on Sunday, October 31.
• Axl and Vince will choose their favorite costume, and the winner gets the SPV prize pack.
• Don’t send us a photo if you’re not prepared to have it published on the site.
• Unfortunately, this contest is open to U.S. residents only.

And that’s it! We’re stoked to see what shit you guys come up with. Good luck, and try not to kill any children with poison candy this Halloween.

-AR & VN

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out the latest from Deafheaven.

Black metal is a music of destruction, but not as an end in itself. Just as devastating fires are necessary to maintain the evolution of a forest, the outsized musical gestures and inflammatory rhetoric of black metal are aimed at razing the world so that we may begin anew. Strange, then, that it’s only been in the last five years or so that we’ve seen black metal sprouting so many new branches. It’s a sad irony that a music so opposed to orthodoxy should be so concerned with notions of purity.

San Francisco’s Deafheaven are one of a growing legion of young American black metal bands (also including Krallice, Velnias and Liturgy) whose music captures that duality perfectly. There’s plenty of violence in the outpouring of blastbeats and guitars on their self-titled demo (briefly introduced by Vince here), but the violence feels transformative, baptismal, even comforting. Deafheaven’s arcing guitar harmonies lead to conventionally beautiful places; they even fly directly into the sun for the major key flashes of “Daedalus.” It says a lot that the acoustic instrumental “Bedrooms” feels totally at home among the beautiful carnage that surrounds it. It’s just as emotionally complete as the louder tracks.

While Deafheaven’s music shares surface characteristics with the classic black metal sound, this demo is so distanced from Mayhem and Immortal as to be another kind of music entirely. It engulfs rather than tramples, shimmers where so much black metal rattles. These descriptions alone do not make Deafheaven good or bad. But they do amount to an important shift in aesthetic values, one that makes black metal more listenable without taming its spiritual thrust. It’s a shift that has clear predecessors in Weakling, Wolves In the Throne Room and Agalloch. Do Deafheaven offer a take on this strain of black metal that the others don’t? Not really, though they do streamline the sound a bit. Do they offer that same feeling of cleansing that I get when I listen to the aforementioned? Oh, yeah.

(3.5 Horns Up)

-SR

Download Deafheaven’s demo over yonder.

I’m a big fan of top 40 rap, especially the skinny jeans, neon t-shirt and ice-cream-colorway-Nikes variety that started showing up on the shelves at Hot Topic a few years ago. It’s how I keep my finger on the pulse of youth culture: I usually figure that anything a famous person likes is worth checking out, because how else are you supposed to know what to like? For example, you can’t watch one of these scene rap videos without seeing a conspicuously-placed shirt featuring the logo of the popular screamo/post-hardcore band PIERCE THE VEIL.

What happened to Pierce the Veil endorsers New Boyz?? Did they all disappear into the same void that swallowed Cool Kids and The Pack?

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Earlier this week Vince discussed the Inspector Gadget theme, his most beloved cover from the new Powerglove album, Saturday Morning Apocalypse; now I’d like to discuss my own personal favorite track from that record.

Tim Burton’s 1989 version of Batman was a seminal moment in my moviegoing life. We waited on a line down the block to see the movie; the audience started cheering as soon as the lights went down even though absolutely nothing had happened yet; and then Danny Elfman’s now-classic march kicked in, and as soon as the main title came up, the crowd applauded with such force that I thought there might be a riot. At that point in my life, I’d never had that movie-as-a-rock-concert experience before. So even though the flick hasn’t aged very well, I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart.

And Danny Elfman’s score is still the best part of the whole thing. That music gets me pumped every time I hear it.

So Powerglove’s metallicized version of the song is something of nerd heaven for me. I might need to make it my ringtone, even.

Saturday Morning Apocalypse is out now on E1. As Vince mentioned, Powerglove are headlining the second of two MetalSucks CMJ Music Marathon showcases; this one will take place during the afternoon of Saturday, October 23rd at Fontana’s in NYC, and will also feature Wetnurse, The Binary Code, Pack of Wolves, Meek is Murder and Batillus. Sailor Jerry Rum will be providing rum mixed drinks for free from 4-5pm and for only $3 after that. That means that we’re all gonna be really, really, really drunk before nightfall, and then watch six totally kick-ass metal bands tear a small room to shreds. Holy shit I am so excited. Is it October 23 yet?

-AR

And so is anyone who thinks this dipshit is really sober.

Mr. Weiland’s latest stunt is a recent radio interview in which he is clearly so fucked up that I’m amazed he was even able to hold a phone. (Maybe his assistant was holding it for him, or affixed one of those nifty headsets to Weiland’s noggin.) At one point, the DJ asks Weiland why he missed a particular show; here’s a transcript of the exchange that follows:

WEILAND: Um… [long pause]… Let’s see… I think that was the show where, um… there was a, um…

DJ: [encouraging, as if to a small child] You can do it.

WEILAND: …a foot, um… long… um… uhh… like, it’s like… normally, a stage is just, like, a flat stage…

DJ: [irritated] Riiiight.

WEILAND:…and this was a really high stage…

DJ: Okay…

WEILAND: …and I spun around, did a little James Brown move, and I slipped and fell into it about eight feet.

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Intronaut’s Valley of Smoke comes out this Tuesday, October 12! Are you excited??? You should be. It’s awesome.

And here’s another chance to get yourself psyched for it: Stereogum are streaming the track “Core Relations.” While there’s plenty of heavy heavy heavy on this record, “Core Relations” showcases Intronaut’s more introspective side. And when your band is called “Intronaut,” of course there’s going to be room to get introspective. I personally would love to see a version of the classic film Innerspace scored completely by Intronaut.

But I digress.

Once you’ve listened to this song and heard its glory, go here to pre-order Valley of Smoke in a variety of attractive formats and packages. And if you haven’t done so already, read the latest “Blogronaut” from Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable.

-AR

I lurrrvvved Damone‘s Out Here All Night when it was released in 2006. I discovered it from a listening booth — remember those? — at Tower Records — remember those? — and was instantly hooked to their blend of glammy hard rock and crunchy power-pop. I thought that Island Records had given the band the boot and I subsequently lost track of them, but apparently they released a new album called Roll the Dice in 2008 which I’m downloading from Amazon as we speak.

I’m not sure of the present day status of Damone, but lead singer / guitarist Noelle Leblanc is fronting a new Boston band called Lipbite. Their music is in the same vein as Damone’s, which is to say that most tr00/kvlt/br00talz metalheads probably won’t care about it all, but Unearth’s Ken Susi makes a guest appearance in their new video… which I suppose also means that most tr00/kvlt/br00talz metalheads probably won’t care about it all. But I do, ’cause 1) The song rocks, 2) Ken Susi is always hilarious. I’m not sure if Susi has any role in producing/managing/boning Lipbite or if he’s just friends with these fellow Bostonians, but at the very least his presence in the video got me to pay attention to it. Here it be:

Lipbite have a MySpace page with a mockingly hilarious bio (yeah, I read all of it) but not much else, if anyone cares.

-VN

On Wednesday, we broke the news that drummer Adam Bennati and bassist Tim Rampage have departed Early Man due to an unspecified “incident.” Now vocalist/guitarist Mike Conte has released his own statement on the matter, and while it also doesn’t specify the details of the split with 50% of the band, it doesn’t basically emphasize what we said earlier this week — that as long as Conte is at the helm, there will be an Early Man.

Here’s Conte’s statement in full:

Click to read more…

I’m not old enough to have seen Black Flag in any incarnation, including the tenure of the tormented Henry Rollins. Yet like many angst-ridden teens in the 90s, I eagerly digested whatever “buzzworthy” videos MTV had in their bin, and that of course included Rollins Band’s breakthrough clip for “Liar”. A brilliant fusion of his spoken word diatribes with the band’s unabashedly bluesy and grim hard rock, the track captured the attention through its harsh, cynical narrative and sinister imagery.

Fortunately, Weight followed that formula quite closely and sonically the record was as cohesive as they come. Throughout, though most present on cuts like “Fool” and “Shine”, new addition Melvin Gibbs added a heretofore missing funk bass element to the howling, seething miasma present on prior records like Life Time and The End Of Silence. Highlights of this stellar record include “Alien Blueprint” and the chillingly isolationist “Disconnect”.

So if it’s been awhile, pull your copy Weight out of its jewelcase and pop it into the nearest bit of music-playing hardware you can find.

-GS

Kurt Ballou is the guitarist for Converge and runs/is Godcity Recording Studio. In both of these capacities he has been a big part of making some of my favorite music ever. Screw the commonly used term “arguably” – Converge’s last record is their best/hardest record yet. And Kurt’s recording style presents live-sounding documents of aggressive bands that includes a ferocious midrange bite (see Young Widows, Disappearer, or Ghengis Tron, for example). It’s a compelling antidote to the heavily-edited/eq’d ProTools default deployed by most heavy music. He’s also an unabashed music fan who’s given some thought to what he likes.

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Last week’s contest was especially fun because the prize for coming up with a witty caption for a picture of a nerdy kid in a Burzum shirt was… a Soundgarden CD set. Oh, the irony! Here’s the chosen winner:

• Ian: “Burzerker1 to Burzerker2, I am approaching the church. Over.”

This week one lucky winner will receive The Vinyl Conflict, pictured above, a set that for the first time collects all 10 original Slayer albums from American Recordings and puts them together in this limited edition box. Each album has been re-mastered from the original flat master tapes and is pressed on the highest quality 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Also included are reproductions of the original LP artwork, including inner sleeve art, all in heavyweight, litho-wrapped chip jackets. The box set comes out officially on October 12th, so if you don’t win one here you can purchase one at Slayer.net.

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)!

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.

So, you’re already well aware by now that Decibel’s November Hall of Fame inductee is Angel Witch’s self-titled 1980 debut. The NWOBHM touchstone turned 30 this year, which is a perfect occasion for yet another reissue — the long history of which is pretty fun, if sorta exhausting, to follow on Wiki. The 10-year anniversary (Roadrunner) offered a healthy three bonus tracks (including “Dr. Phibes,” a reference to a 1971 Vincent Price horror flick with the poignant tagline: “Love means never having to say you’re ugly”); the 20-year installment (Castle) layered three more extras on top of that, including “Baphomet” from the infamous Metal for Muthas comp; the 25-year jam (also Castle) added four BBC live cuts (we’re up to 10 bonuses, if you’re keeping score); and now, finally (maybe), the 30-year Sanctuary double-disc goes all-fucking-out with two discs, including seven demos, and expanded 12- and 7-inch b-sides. Maybe the 35-year anniversary can have a third disc with an all-grindcore cover cavalcade, because Scott Hull, Scott Carlson and Matt Harvey have all said they’re beyond pumped that staffer Adem Tepedelen managed to put this fucker together.

Too bad sophomore effort Screamin’ n’ Bleedin’ wasn’t the stone-cold classic, because I don’t think anyone would mind seeing variations of this cover every five or so years. But I digress. Where do you guys stand on Angel Witch? Kevin Riddles and Dave Hogg are certainly not fans of the mix—the former even remembers in the piece that he’d “have to upset the neighbors two blocks away to get it up loud enough to make it sound heavy.” Weird syntax aside, do you agree? Does it matter?

-AB

Wanna read the full “Hall of Fame” article on Angel Witch? Buy yourself a copy of the November 2010 issue of Decibel or, better yet, buy yourself a full subscription. You’ll be glad ya did!

Preface: I love Dream Theater and anything DT-related with all my heart. But this is just too easy!

A media war of words between the remaining members of Dream Theater and the recently departed Mike Portnoy was bound to erupt sooner or later, right? Here’s where things get really nasty, so that once the inevitable occurs and Portnoy re-joins the band he helped form, at least there’ll be some good sound bites for Behind the Music or whatever the Metal Injection equivalent of it is in the year 2014, right?

But before the media sensationalized JUICY GOSSIP, a quick update from the Portnoy front. Metal Insider is reporting that in a recent interview Portnoy claimed he’d remain with Avenged Sevenfold for the remainder of the Nightmare touring cycle. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone as it wouldn’t make sense for A7X to switch drummers mid-tour, but it does call into question Portnoy’s motives for leaving Dream Theater. Didn’t he want a break so he could pursue other musical projects? Obviously A7X qualify as a musical project (now’s your chance for a snarky comment about A7X… hyuck, hyuck!), but I got the impression he wanted to spend more time on side projects and didn’t want to be on the road constantly. The touring cycle for an album by a band of A7X’s stature usually lasts 1.5 to 2 years… so expect Portnoy to be out on the road with them until this time next year, or later. That’s not gonna leave much time for anything else.

But you want the JUICY GOSSIP, right?? Well, click on through to see what James LaBrie had to say about Portnoy, and what Portnoy said back:

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