As any metal fan with functioning ears and discerning taste knows, Slayer are one of the most overrated bands of all time. Sure, they have some great songs, but the vast majority of their catalog is boring, generic filler. For example, I am not sure why Reign in Blood is considered such a classic when there are only two good songs on it. I mean, if “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood” were released as the two sides of a 7″, it would probably be the best record ever released, but they decided to sandwich a bunch of crappy, lifeless songs between them for some unfortunate reason. And don’t even get me started on how tepid and uninteresting their next few records are… In fact, looking back over the past 25 years or so, it is clear to me that Slayer’s best album is a tossup between two of their mid/late 90s releases that go largely unnoticed: Divine Intervention and Undisputed Attitude.

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Meet Journal, a progressive mathgrind band from Sacramento.

Over the course of the past several months we’ve gotten more emails from multiple sources about this band than perhaps any other, a sure sign that a band is at least worth checking out and a probable sign that a band will jive with our tastes. Thankfully in this case it’s both; Journal sound like what Dillinger Escape Plan might’ve ended up sounding like if Weinman and co. had taken a few more bong tokes and listened to a few more Dream Theater albums. They play spastic grind like the best of ‘em, but they punctuate it with slices of keyboard and progressive passages that’ll sooth your inner nerd.

Listen to five full tracks from Journal’s second full-length, the anagram-tasticly titled Unjorla Unlorja at their Bandcamp page. While the aforementioned mix of metal genres might be the aural equivalent to some metalheads of piss in their Cheerios, I encourage those who like to think of themselves as foreward-thinking to open their minds a bit. Yeah, like that’ll happen.

-VN

Thanks: Suraj Patra, Dave Tremblay, Ryan Benjamin (x2) and anyone else who sent us links to this band.

Video from the show by Bmoviesandmetal

I’d like to think I’m an okay girlfriend. I don’t do the whole creepy baby talk thing, I’m not a “woo girl” (I’m watching How I Met Your Mother while writing this and Christ. This episode is making me so happy I went to art school, because now I can handle pretentious douches so much better than drunk sorority girls who hoot at Every. Goddamn. Thing), and I don’t yell at the boy if he’d rather play a Star Wars role playing game than hang out with me. Hey, sometimes you gotta go kill an errant Jawa.

So it’s with some smug pride that I believe I lived up to the title of good girlfriend this past weekend. You see, my boy has loved Devin Townsend since high school. What better birthday gift than tickets to his show as well as entrance to the special VIP meet and greet? To top it off, we would laugh at, rather than be one of, the “metal couples.” You know who they are. Standing in a tight clinch and glaring at anyone who dares breathe their air. Haha, jerks. Whoops, just jostled you.

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Besides Times Square, this may be the single greatest use of resources in America. It’s a good thing we’re not in the middle of an energy crisis or anything.

So I wanna keep doing these regionally themed “Reader’s Choice” installments. And I know that last week I said I would do Vancouver and Peoria, but guess what? It’s our website, and we reserve the right to break our promises. I will try to get to Vancouver and Peoria (and by “get to” I mean “get writing about them,” not “get to going there”), but today I’m gonna do Vegas. ‘Cause I had one of the best nights of my life in Vegas, and ’cause longtime MetalSucks Maniac Samuel A. Favata sent me ten bands from the area to check out. That’s as complicated as my logic gets sometimes.

So… Vegas, baby, Vegas! Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

For reals, let’s do this:

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About a month ago I asked what you all thought of Conducting From the Grave. The comments predictably descended into mongoloid Internet troll territory instantaneously, with some folks instantly brushing the band aside as part of a certain genre, others defending them, the former accusing the latter of being members of the band posting anonymously, and a whole lot of childish name-calling from all sides. Sheesh, people, can’t we keep some level of civility around here? [at least for posts not written by Sergeant D??]

Now it’s my turn. I hate to be “that guy,” but I liked their old album a lot more than what I’ve heard from the new one. Where When Legends Become Dust had a quirky sense of melody and technicality that was uniquely identifiable to Conducting From the Grave, new album Revenants sounds like any number of unsigned bands that send us material on a daily basis. The melodies are less unique, the song structures predictable, and the band seems to be bowing to the pressure of the Sumeriancore / deathcore / melodic tech-death genre tropes that their peers are following. It’s too bad because this was a band with a unique voice that I really thought could take it to the next level. Of course, I’ve only heard the two Revenants songs posted on the band’s MySpace page; maybe they’re most mainstream-y sounding songs on the album and I’m being too quick to pass judgment.

Tell me why I’m right / wrong / close-minded / condescending for expecting our readers to use the site’s “search” function in the comments below.

-VN

The cover of 19 A.D.D.’s Dead River.

Another day, more unsigned bands. We found a real gem this time around! Let’s see what the monkeys have picked out of the MS inbox for us to review today:

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And to answer your frist question: Nnnnooooo, it’s not Bobbi Starr.

Heavy Street‘s Sat tipped us off to the below video, of a porn star named Neesa doing the world’s worst possible vocal cover of Megadeth’s “Holy Wars.” Yep! Terrible YouTube vocal covers: They’re not just for dumb scene kids anymore. I guess she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention doing porn. It is such a niche market, after all.

In her defense, a bio on her blog — yes, she has a blog, and no, it’s not safe for work — tells me that she’s bipolar, and has spent a good deal of time in mental institutions. That means I probably shouldn’t be teasing her for making a video of herself butchering Megadeth and posting it on the internet. It also means that people probably shouldn’t be hiring her to have sex on camera, but that’s the thing about ethics — they’re slippery.

ANYWAY, I bet her boyfriend really appreciates her wearing that shirt in public.

-AR

Katatonia, Machine Head, and Periphery all get their pricey gear stolen within a month or so of each other and hey, wouldn’t you know it, some guy named Chris Goulet releases a product called The Rock Lock that’s supposed to protect your gear from being stolen. Coincidence??? Conspiracy!

Of course I’m kidding, but I’d be much more likely to accuse Goulet and MS tipster Rory Fuhrer of conspiring to make a buck if I thought The Rock Lock actually would’ve helped any of the above bands. The Rock Lock works kind of like a bike lock, or those locks they bolt to computers in libraries and schools to prevent them from being stolen; it chains your guitar down to a fixed object. Which will do absolutely no good when some thief decides to jack your band’s entire trailer, or lift a guitar that’s inside a case from backstage.

What someone really needs to invent is a trackable GPS microchip that goes inside the back plate or under the strap button or something, like those ones they put into your pet’s neck to track if Fido ever runs away. Of course the likelihood of grungy metal musicians being able to afford something like that is pretty low, but think of it as an insurance policy… come to think of it, you’d probably be better off with an actual insurance policy.

-VN

I always forget just how awesome Louisville’s Coliseum are. Just this past June I published a piece saying how good these guys are (and so did Axl), and here I am doing it again. Shame on me. May this be a lesson both to me and to you… Coliseum fucking rip. I hereby vow to be a more devoted Coliseum fan.

MS reader Roger Johnson sent in a link to We Have Signal, a live music series filmed at the Bottle Tree Cafe in Birmingham, AL. We Have Signal filmed some live footage of Coliseum’s get-yer-blood-pumpin’ hardcore n’ roll set when they rolled through Birmingham recently, and got some face-time with the band members as well. This footage makes me wish I caught them on their most recent tour; they melted my face off at the New England Metal & Hardcore Fest in 2008, and it’s high time I saw them again.

-VN

The first official photo of Kyuss Lives.

I know that everyone and their mother would love to see a Kyuss reunion, but they’re one of those bands where you kinda hafta stop and consider: What would constitute a Kyuss reunion?

Take, for example, Kyuss Lives, a not-really-new band that will reunite 75% of Kyuss’ original Wretch and Blues for the Red Sun line-up. The missing member, in case you couldn’t figure it out right quick, will be Josh Homme, who will be replaced by some dude I’ve never heard of, Bruno Fevery.

But is this exciting news? I mean, it sort of is, right?

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Lost in the fracas that surrounded the new Agalloch song released on Friday was the fact that there were actually two new Agalloch songs released! The second, “Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires,” is streaming at Viva Hate Records’ website, and like “The Watcher’s Monolith” it’s epic. Epic epic epic. We know Agalloch are epic… maybe it’s time for another descriptor?

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Photo by Josh Sisk

I’m kinda running out of nice things to say about Salome’s Terminal (read my review here). Luckily, I don’t really hafta sweat it anymore — NPR is now streaming the entire album, so you can check it out for yourself, and then come back and tell me how brilliant I am for recommending this album to you. There’s a lot of you and only one of me, so I’ll just say “You’re welcome” in advance. You’re welcome. There. I said it.

Seriously, though, check out Terminal in its complete doomy glory right now. Profound Lore will release the album one week from today — that’s November 9, in case you’re bad with arithmetic.

-AR

I am currently in Pittsburgh at the Altar Bar at our merch table, and turning in this blog super late. Sorry, MetalSucks.

It smells like poop and onions right now. The city is in mourning after yesterday’s defeat by the Saints. Super turnover SNF! We played Providence on Halloween, where I was lucky enough to watch the Packers-Jets game and Pats-Vikings game with the Lupos employees outside in the bitter cold. They set up a mini-stage with a prison TV, one that is clear so the inmates can’t hide anything in it, which was hooked up to a speaker. I also got to see a ton of chicks dressed as slutty cats, slutty nurses, and slutty everything else. I love Halloween.

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You guys sure have been sending in a lot of your own band links lately. Which is cool, because we enjoyed listening to them, and since it’s the Internet we can afford to post about them. Wait, what’s that…? You wanted me to praise your band unconditionally instead of giving my honest opinion? Whoops…

• Everfailed: Halfway between Children of Bodom and Dying Fetus, with the sense of melody and guitar wizardry of the former and the groovy slams of the latter; an odd pairing indeed but a decent one. Everfailed might fail at naming bands, but they don’t fail at making pretty catchy metal songs even if they aren’t the most unique around.
• 100 Knives Inside: Serviceable but unremarkable technical death metal from Denmark. This genre is starting to lose its appeal to me as more and more bands that are mostly indistinguishable from each other jump into the fold. I can’t find anything that sets 100 Knives Inside apart from other bands that sound like them.
• Dawn of the Hero: Serviceable but unremarkable good cop / bad cop metalcore from Albany. This genre lost its appeal to me at some point in 2006.
• The Last Ten Seconds of Life: An exception to my usual “too many words” band-name rule, these guys sound as brutal as the subject matter of their name mighty imply. If this doomy, dark and morbid music were playing during the last ten seconds of anyone’s life, that person would surely be going straight to fucking hell. A few too many tri-tone breakdowns for their own good, but if these guys ditched those they’d get a resounding pass.

-VN

As you should well know by now Darkest Hour are headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored Legacy Tour, on which they’ll be playing a “best of” set highlighting their 15-year career and bringing Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation along for the ride. That tour kicks off next week, and you can grab dates here.

To celebrate the Legacy Tour, we’re giving a prize package of four t-shirts — that’s one t-shirt from every band on the tour! — to one lucky MetalSucks reader. Simply comment below — remember to fill-in a valid email address in the appropriate field, or include it in your comment if you’re using FB Connect – telling us which Darkest Hour song is your favorite of all-time, and why you like it so much. Axl and Vince will pick their favorite answer at the end of the tour and the winner will be contacted by email.

I still haven’t heard Filter’s latest album, The Trouble with Angels; based on Vince’s review, I haven’t felt like I was missing much. Vince did say that “No Love” was one of his personal favorite songs on the record, though, and having now heard it for the first time, I can understand why! It’s got a good beat and it’s catchy. And I’ve always been a really big fan of Richard Patrick’s voice.

Unfortunately, I don’t find the video all that interesting, despite choreographed dancing, lesbians making out, and the presence of some scantily-clad extras who seem to have wandered in the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut. But, y’know, there are way worse things to have in your video.

This clip debuted at Noisecreep, who also have video of the band performing an acoustic version of the track. Actually, I might like the acoustic version even better, and the quality of Patrick’s pipes live is a nice contrast from so many other modern singers who try to dupe their audience.  Go check it out.

-AR

There are a lot of places I want to see in the world, and quite a few cities I want to visit in the States. I want to go to Austin, Seattle, and up until last week, Chicago was on that list, too. As luck would have it, a dear friend of mine recently moved to Chicago, so my best friend and I took it upon ourselves to descend on her and her boyfriend for the week.

I loved it. I love Chicago. I love being in any town that has coffee shops rather than nine Starbucks on every street corner, and Chicago gave me a glorious coffee shop with an ‘80s theme; there was a DeLorean parked in the shop, along with posters of Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and various other kitschy things like a wall of old lunchboxes. But there was no Ninja Turtles one, and that was my choice of lunch transport in first grade. But I let it slide.

Beyond all that though, Chicago is home to a very special place. A place with unmatched burgers. A place that celebrates heavy metal. A place known as Kuma’s Corner.

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You may remember that exactly one month ago, the above photo of Glenn Danzig shopping for kitty litter surfaced, and the internet wet its collective pants laughing. I didn’t really see the humor in the situation, though, and I still don’t. The dude owns a cat. That cat needs to shit. Danzig isn’t a member of Metallica; it’s not likely he has a horde of minions to run out and do his bidding all the time. And even if he does, we know for a fact that sometimes the Metallicats enjoy behaving like regular people, too, so it’s entirely feasible that Danzig gave his assistant or whatever the day off and just went to the store himself.

So. Glenn Danzig goes shopping for pet supplies. Hahahaha. Whatever.

But I’m clearly in the minority. So now Buzzgrinder has asked Danzig about the photo, and to his credit, Danzig’s response is perfectly reasonable:

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The song that goes with it, “Overlord,” not so much. I mean, it sounds exactly like every other BLS song.

But I’m always game to watch Zakk goof off, and this video is nothing but pure Zakk goofiness. (Whatever else you wanna say about the dude, you can’t accuse him of taking himself too seriously.) Zakk is probably the favorite father of all of his kids’ friends; even though none of his jokes are really funny (“Dick Assman?” Really, dude?), when you consider how much energy he’s putting into it and who his audience is, you have to just smile.

“Overlord” comes off of BLS’ latest, Order of the Black, which is out now on E1.

-AR