As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour, featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour (get a full list of tour dates here). Our first entry featured Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo taking us on a run-through of his entire live rig, and the second entry was an update from Revocation’s Dave Davidson. Here’s Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on his new live rig setup (the idea for which he first mentioned in a prior column) and how that’s working out for him:

So a little while back I posted a column about going direct with the guitars on a future tour, and that tour just so happens to be this tour we are on now with Revocation, Veil Of Maya and Darkest Hour. The idea behind going direct is that instead of having an amp/rig that goes through a cabinet then gets mic’ed up, you just take an audio signal direct to the board and skip the whole cab and mic. This allows for a simpler and cleaner signal chain, as removing the cab, mic and mic-placement variables makes the signal extremely consistent every night. Now we are going direct with our Fractal AxeFX Ultras which is an absolutely phenomenal unit for direct tones.

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Loyal MS reader “vasteburai” went to the Renaissance Fair this past weekend, but he didn’t dress up like no wamsy pansy fantasy nerd (not that there’s anything wrong with that); nope, instead he wore his brand spankin’ new “Appetite for Deconstruction” Metal F’n Sucks t-shirt along with his Axl Rose-red bandana and aviators for full effect. And for that good deed he’s become the latest entrant of our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest series, in which we’ll trade you a whole buncha free goodies from The Mansion in exchange for a fun photo of yourself wearing MetalSucks merch. Sick deal, wouldn’t ya say?

These “Appetite for Deconstruction” MetalSucks shirts — featuring the mugs of the six senior-most MS writers — are limited to just 84 prints and they’re going fast, so make sure you get yours before they’re all gone. For all you women out there wondering what to get your metal man this Christmakwanzukkah, these would make a great gift! They’re only $14! Oh, who am I kidding… no chicks are reading this… dudes, treat yourself right and get one pronto.

Two more pics of vasteburai at the Ren Fair after the jump.

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Congrats to reader Christian H. McClain, who correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to Ishitrobots. Christian wins an awesome prize pack from Eagle Rock Entertainment, including new DVDs from Heaven and Hell, Velvet Revolver, Black Sabbath, and Rush. Congrats, Christian!!!

This week we have another super-sweet offering for you lucky cats — two grind prize packs from Relapse Records, containing the following albums:

• The self-titled debut from death-grind all-stars Murder Construct (which we’re currently streaming here!)
• Kill the Client‘s Set for Extinction
• Phobia‘s Unrelenting

All three of these releases are guaranteed to flatten your brain like a kitty under a steamroller. You can order ‘em directly from Relapse here, or, of course, just enter this contest!

All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED! From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select two winners and announce their names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us by reader John Lindmeier. Thanks, J-Lin!

-AR

A reader calling himself “sojdsaoj pkpkpas” — which I believe, coincidentally, is also the name of a band currently featured on the “Cats on the Keyboard” tour along with Jumalhämärä, Malhkebre, and Knwøgfpieπbgejsfna[f9 — sent us the below photos of The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Jeff Tuttle standing on-stage during Forever the Sickest Kid’s set at the Soundwave Festival in Australia earlier this year. I don’t know if these have been floating around for awhile or what, but it’s the first time we’re seeing ‘em.

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Metallica’s transition from the genre-solidifying Master Of Puppets to the arena-ready hard rock of Load and Re-Load was a jarring experience for longtime fans still clutching their denim vests. The problem wasn’t that they put out those (ultimately multi-platinum) records, but that they had the audacity to call them Metallica albums. Between you and me, if Load had been the debut of any other band, it’d have been hailed and praised. That’s sort of how I’ve come to view Red Giant: an alternate reality version of what Lars and the boys might’ve done if unburdened of their obligations to thrash. The twelve tracks on Dysfunctional Majesty, the Cleveland, Ohio band’s second album for Small Stone Recordings, sound like James Hetfield fronting Monster Magnet, which I assure you is as balls-to-the-wall awesome as that analogy suggests. It’s another headbanging good time from the same label that brought you Gozu and House Of Broken Promises.

Check out the stream for “Chopper” below and snag a copy of the record here.

-GS

Pizza pizza.

The best description of Domino’s pizza I’ve ever heard came from our friend Jason, who said, “It doesn’t taste like pizza, it tastes like an English muffin with tomato sauce.” And I’ve only eaten at a Little Caesar’s once that I can recall, but my impression of it was more or less the same as my impression of Domino’s (or Pizza Hut, for that matter). Maybe I’m spoiled because we have a lot of good pizza here in New York, but I’ve never been able to understand why anyone would prefer to have McPizza over any number of other Italian dining options.

But I gather (he said with his nose held high in the air) that these places are very popular within the white trash populace — a.k.a., Kid Rock’s bread n’ butter. So when I read the following on MediaPost.com (by way of Metal Insider), I thought, “Gee, that is a brilliant fucking idea.”

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I had no idea Ne Obliviscaris were so well-known when I posted about them back in March; I just thought their music was pretty cool and worth letting you all know about. Naturally Ziltoid chimed in with a few comments about how he’d known about them forever and only their first album was good (or whatever), but nearly everyone else who commented had nothing but fantastic things to say about these Australians. Except for DemonicLemming who said it was “too disjointed;” then again, this is a guy who supports the likes of Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent and therefore can’t be trusted, the same way it’s hard for me to take seriously anyone who believes that the earth was created in 7 days roughly 6,000 years ago and humans didn’t exist here a day sooner. I mean, really?

Anyway, Ne Obliviscaris; they’re from Australia, they play Classical-influenced black metal, and they’re really good… but they’re in a bit of a bind. Four MetalSucks readers emailed us within 15 minutes of each other yesterday to tell us that lead guitarist Benjamin Baret, who hails from France but moved all the way to Australia to play with NeO, has been denied re-entry to Australia after a grueling 14-month wait for visa approval. This after a series of other very unfortunate events that befell the band members in recent times such as family member deaths, illnesses, injuries, etc., and before the release of an album they’ve been working hard on for almost three years. Without Baret, the band cannot go on.

Why was Baret’s visa rejected? Check this cacamamie response from Australia’s Department of Immigration:

• “A metal guitarist with internationally recognized records could be expected to have collaborated with renowned metal bands such as Metallica, Iron Maiden or Disturbed. There is no evidence in the application that it is the case.”
• “There is also no evidence that Benjamin Baret has won any international awards by being a guitarist or a musician in general.”

Is that half-assed or what?

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In case last week’s ridiculous Slayer Christmas light show wasn’t enough to get you in the mood for the holiday season, maybe this will do the trick: the Ninkaski Brewing Company, a purveyor of fine boozes with whom I was previously unfamiliar, is making a seasonal brew called “Sleigh’r Dark Doüble Alt Ale.” I (obviously) haven’t had a chance to sample any yet, so I can’t speak to the ale’s quality, but it’s 7.2% ABV so it can’t be all bad.

Other specs for the beer nerds in the audience:

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It’s been a while since the MS staff was collectively jizzing over U.K. spazz-progsters SikTh, but that doesn’t mean the now defunct band is any less dear to our hearts. Quite the opposite; any time we hear about the involvement of any ex-SikTh member in a new project we get pretty darn excited, like when we first heard about guitarist Pin’s new band Aliases.

And this week we’ve got news about not one, not two, but THREE ex-members of the now-legendary U.K. sextet.

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The below advertisement is for software I’ve never heard of, Guitar Rig 2 (although I don’t claim to be an expert in music software). I stumbled across it quite by accident while YouTube surfing, and apparently it’s at least four years old, which makes the fact that I’ve never seen it before all the more surprising. In any case, it’s best that I don’t tell you much about it, lest I spoil the fun — so just watch.

This is so much better than that cell phone ad with Rob Halford, or that beer ad with Motorhead, or pretty much any metal-themed ad I’ve seen this year that isn’t this one. As my man Vince likes to say, A+++++++, would do business with again.

-AR

I think we’ve made this point either explicitly or implicitly on MetalSucks many times before, but the following e-mail from reader Barry Cavanaugh inspired me to re-iterate the concept: If you can’t do it live, don’t it. Period.

Here’s Barry’s e-mail:

“While you guys are a mainly metal website you guys do cover rock once and a while, and I think you should do something on the new my chemical romance. People can call them emo or whatever they want but the black parade was a straight up rock album, and an amazing rock album at that, probably one of the best rock albums in the last 10 years I would say, I would even go so far as to list it as one of the greatest rock albums of all time, don’t get me wrong I listen to mostly metal, but I know a great rock album when I hear it and the new one by mcr could be awesome. With that, please cover it or do a review on the album, trash it, do whatever you gotta do.”

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I feel bad for Frankie Banali, or for that matter for any aging rockstar who only ever had one or two big hits and whose heyday is long since gone. When you’re 59 years old (!) and you’ve only ever done one thing in life… what other options to do you have but to play shitty clubs and attempt to relive your glory days? It was only too fitting that “Metal Health” was the theme song for Mickey Rourke’s character Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler, matching eras aside.

Poor Banali’s been forced to hire a mulleted former Van Hagar cover band singer to fill late Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin Dubrow’s shoes since his death in 2007, maybe because he wants to but certainly because he has to in order to survive. As my compadre Axl commented in September when this sad news was announced:

Not a Van Halen cover band. A Van Hagar cover band. A group of men who went out of their way to learn and perform Van Halen’s catalog without David Lee Roth.

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Hanukkah starts tomorrow!!! I can’t believe it’s time for dreidels and latkes again already. I got Vince a present. It’s socks. Shhh, don’t spoil the surprise.

To celebrate the Festival of Lights, we’re gonna be on the Metal Injection Livecast! Both of us! At once! Again! You’ll be able to listen to us talk about, like, metal n’ stuff. And I hear we may be lighting a menorah live on the air, despite the fact that it will be roughly three hours after sundown. You can even call in! We like the callers. Especially the heavy breathers. Purrrrrrrr.

So listen here. The show starts at 8pm Eastern Standard Time.

And as if that weren’t exciting enough, Justin Broadrick is going to be doing a THREE HOUR INTERVIEW with WFMU today from noon to 3pm EST. Holy shit, that’s awesome. If you live in the New York metropolitan area and wanna listen on your radio, the station is 91.1 FM. But don’t be sad if you don’t live in the New York metropolitan area and/or only listen to the radio on the interwebs nowadays, ’cause the interview will be live on those very same interwebs, too. Go here to listen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go gargle with honey and then go on vocal rest to be properly prepared for our Metal Injection Livecast tomorrow evening.

-AR

Maybe President Obama should just send Gojira to Iran on a diplomatic mission; the French metallers wouldn’t likely be able to stop the country’s nuclear buildup, but they’re certainly heavier than the enriched uranium the country’s government so covets. Maybe they’d even be able to unite the oft-troubled Middle East region in synchronized headbanging… or a collective “elephants marching” session to “Vacuity.”

Getting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to headbang might be wishful thinking, but there’s at least one Gojira fan in Iran who thought it’d be cool to interview frontman/guitarist Joe Duplantier for a new series called “Scream For Me Tehran” on the website Manoto1 TV. Unfortunately Google Translate can’t handle what’s being said inside YouTube videos (yet!) but Joe’s answers are in English, and as always they provide an insightful (if brief) look into the motivations behind his music, in this case the quite topical issue of why he chooses to sing in English. Thanks to loyal MS reader and fellow Gojira supernerd Shinaain for sending this in:

Of course we all know that Gojira are currently recording (or perhaps have already finished recording?) a new EP, the benefits of which will be going to the Sea Shepherd organization. But did you know that Sea Shepherd’s got a boat named Gojira? Footage of that uber-sweet sea-faring vessel, which has apparently circumnavigated the entire world, after the jump:

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Alright, let’s Pauline Kael these bitches.

First up today is “Nowhere,” by Muderdolls. As in, “We ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cause we had to cancel our tour .”

ANYWAY, when this video started, I was like, “Oh, a chick in bed. I can get behind this concept.” But then I realized it wasn’t a chick, it was a Murderdoll. And so then Joey and Wednesday 13 are on the phone and Wednesday 13 is bummed for some reason and Joey is all, “You wanna go somewhere?” and Wednesday 13 is all “Yeah.” And then Joey gets in his cool car in slow motion, and then Axl gets bored and turns the video off.

When did this band start taking themselves so seriously? Remember when all their songs had names like “197666″ and “Love at First Fright” and lyrics like “I don’t wanna meet your mom and dad/Unless you let me fuck your mom and dress your dad in drag?” All this angst is so sleeeeeeeeepy.

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I love T-giving!!! Tons of food, great family discourse fueled by alcohol, and classic throwback jersey football! With the Surgeon General promoting a vegetarian diet for the nation, I enjoyed as much ham and turkey as I could before Tofurkey becomes a national pastime.

Fights! Besides the scuffles between the Pats and Lions, this week saw a rare beast in the NFL known as a bench clearer. During the Tennessee-Houston game, Texans’ receiver Andre Johnson and Titans’ cornerback Cortland Finnegan decided to exchange pleasantries in the fourth quarter. The Texans were on their way to their first shut out in six years, which led to some heated exchanges on the line culminating in a helmet tossing punch fest. The two were ejected, and we’ll see how much money the fisticuffs will cost them.

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Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit: Apparently not a candidate for best album of the year.

Yep yep yep: the right honorable Mr. Phil Freeman of MSN’s “Headbang” blog has revealed the 135 finalists which will soon be whittled down for his “Twenty Best Metal Albums of 2010″ list, which will presumably be published sometime in the coming weeks. You can go here to read it, and then leave Phil angry comments about how your favorite album isn’t even on this list of 135 records.

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Actually, I don’t know if you could call this a “cover” — it samples the guitar riff and title phrase from Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” but beyond that, it’s a new creation. According to this right wing tabloid disguised as a legitimate newspaper, the track appears in Xtina’s new film, Burlesque, which I have not seen, but appears to have been sent here by Satan to announce The Dark Lord’s imminent arrival, and the subsequent end of days. (One question for Cher: What’s wrong with your faaaace?!?!)

And this song ain’t no better. Normally I’d say something about how it goes against everything Manson original stood for, but since he’s not exactly a bastion of creative integrity, and I think Aguilera thinks her lyrics are facetious in much the same way Manson’s lyrics were facetious, I guess I can’t cry philosophical rape.

So why am I posting this? Because I mothertruckin’ hate you, and I want you to die.

This isn’t Aguilera’s first dalliance with a hard rock/pop metal star of the 90′s — Dave Navarro plays guitar on her song “Fighter.” Nor is it Manson’s first run-in with a diva I wish would take an acid bath already: he raped our ears last year when he leant his vocals to a remix of a Lady GaGa’s “Love Game.”

Now let’s never speak of this again.

-AR

Fuck Exect for sending this to us.

Earlier today, I downloaded Earache’s new, completely free Extreme Stage Diving app, a video game in which “you take control of a burly bouncer and throw the pesky stage invader as far into the crowd as possible.” And I’m happy to report that it’s going to make an excellent time waster (that’s a compliment), and may soon usurp Slayer Pinball (or whatever the fuck it’s called) as my favorite metal-themed smartphone procrastination tool. It’s simple yet challenging, it appeals to my 8-bit sensibilities, there’s plenty of blood, and, oh yeah, the soundtrack is killer.

Yes, of course, this is meant to help Earache promote their shit. But the game features a bare minimum of songs by Earache bands I don’t like (cough, Oceano, cough cough), and those songs are more than offset by the inclusion of groups like At the Gates, Deicide, Brutal Truth, Decapitated, and Wormrot. And whomever designed the game was smart/cool enough to make it so that you can skip to whichever of the ten featured songs you like — in other words, if Bonded by Blood comes up and you don’t like Bonded by Blood, you can easily move along to The Haunted or whatever your particular cup of tea might be. (And apparently there’s a bonus track that you can unlock, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping it’s a Godflesh song, even though that would make no mothertruckin’ sense whatsoever.)

Check out a sample video below…

If you go here and give Earache your e-mail address, you can also potentially win the helmet the charcter in the game wears, although I think the game itself is a much cooler prize, and you don’t need to enter no contest to get it.

You can download the game here. Like I said, it’s totally free, so you really have nothing to lose by trying it out (other than the time you’re going to spend playing this instead of doing something productive). And you can get the full track list after the jump.

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A little over a week ago, the MetalSucks Photo Pool’s Alyssa Lorenzon braved the sights, smells, and people of New Jersey to go to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ to capture some awesome mothertruckin’ photos of legendary thrash acts Overkill and Forbidden, along with thrash upstarts Evile and Gama Bomb. As you can see from the above, instant-classic portrait of Bobby Blitz, she captured some killer shit! Check ‘em out the rest of her killer photos after the jump.

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