Metal Injection posted this video of The Black Dahlia Murder’s lead guitarist, Ryan Knight, gettin’ jiggy wit it (or whatever the white kids who wish they were black are saying these days) at the wedding of the band’s former tour manager. And let me please be clear: I am laughing with Knight, not at Knight. I wish I lacked the self-consciousness to have this good a time on a dance floor. I mean, I’m sure ten or twenty drinks helps, but still.

If BDM don’t somehow incorporate this into their next video, they’re fools.

-AR

Axl Rose celebrated the two-year anniversary of Chinese Democracy‘s release by doing what he does best — no, not make music, silly. He sued somebody! Hey, dude’s gotta eat, and Democracy sales ain’t exactly paying for his next rental car, y’know?

According to 1up.com:

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Philadelphia’s Woe are one of our favorite bands in the American black metal uprising of the last five years or so; A Spell For the Death of Man was positively mesmerizing, and this year’s Quietly, Undramatically follows in its path (we even premiered one of its tracks).

In this, the sixth episode of MetalSucks’ own cooking show Cooking Contaminated, Woe mastermind and Krieg drummer Chris Grigg — a man who confesses his diet consists mostly of ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese — steps into host Eli Shaika’s kitchen where the two team up to serve a Contaminated edition of one of those very dishes, a 3-cheese baked mac and cheese, along with some vegetarian/vegan collard greens. Watch and learn, and as always, find the ingredients after the jump so you can follow along at home.

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Congrats to readers Sierra Brady, Chris Lincoln, and Will Goss. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Filii Nigrantium Infernalium, and for their troubles, they each win a copy of Metalocalypse Season Three — Sierra on Blu-Ray, Chris and Will on DVD. Enjoy ‘em, guys and girl!

This week we have another awesome prize, this time courtesy the good folks at Eagle Rock Entertainment. One winner will get the following four DVDs:

• Heaven & Hell, Neon Nights — 30 Years of Heaven & Hell — Live in Wacken
• Velvet Revolver, Live in Houston
• Black Sabbath, Classic Albums: Paranoid
• Rush, Classic Albums: 2112 & Moving Pictures

Pretty sweet, right? Of course, you can purchase any of the cinemetal masterpieces by visiting Eagle Rock Entertainment’s website, or just clicking the above links — but this is your only chance to win all four DVDs in one fell swoop!

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. (I really can’t stress this last bit enough, as week after week I get entries with no address, and I don’t understand what the fucking problem is.) From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select a winner announce his or her name next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by a reader known only as “Martin”…

-AR

After a late night and a groggy start across two time zones, Slough Feg frontman/mastermind Mike Scalzi took a more than entertaining half hour out of his morning to speak with MetalSucks. Fun? Yes. Hilarious? Also yes. Informative? You have no idea. Boring? Fork no. Expect Slough Feg’s latest Profound Lore release, The Animal Spirits, to appear on this writer’s year end list. And if you haven’t listened yet: you’re missing out.

The man, the mystery, and the shredator at large up after the jump.

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There are few things internet metal fans love more than rage-fueled pissing contests and/or petty flame wars about incredibly trivial, inconsequential topics. Which is the best Saxon album? Are Waking The Cadaver deathcore or slam?? How big is Danny Spitz’ watch collection?! They’ve settled just about every argument there is to have regarding metal, but not one of the most crucial: WHO INVENTED THE BLAST BEAT? Few know that the answer to this question isn’t some obscure English grindcore band, but the popular college rap band THE BEASTIE BOYS.

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Another week, another batch of killer bands that are really indistinguishable from their signed brethren but for one fact: they’re not signed. Of the great injustices in the world, it’s a shame that bands like these aren’t signed while commercially calculated garbage acts like Vampires Everywhere are. Oh well, I ‘spose money talks.

• Satevis: I like bands that don’t feel trapped by genre lines. Straight-up black metal, progressive metal and standard melodeath of course all have their places, but they get boring after a time. It’s way more interesting when bands take their favorite elements from a smattering of sub-genres and combine them in their own way, and that’s what New City, NY’s Satevis do with the aforementioned. It helps that they’re really talented musicians and writers and that they have a decent recording to showcase both of those things. I’d definitely peep these guys if they come down to the big city for a show.

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YEP! The new Crowbar album — the band’s first for E1 — has a name now, Sever the Wicked Hand. It also has a release date — February 8. And, most importantly, there’s a new song, “Cemetery Angels,” now streaming at Noisecreep.

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Yep! This was filmed in Monastiraki Square in Athens. If these fellas get this excited about a brass band, imagine how apeshit they must go at a Septic Flesh show.

-AR

Thanks: Russell Salerno

Despite the fact that I thought that Them Crooked Vultures was the most boringest thing in the history of ever, my man-crush on Dave Grohl continues unabated. I’m not even that big of a Foo Fighters fan, truth be told. I think they’re fine, but I don’t love them or anything. Mostly, I just think that Grohl is an awesome drummer who elevates nine out of ten projects he hits skins for (see: Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), and he seems like a cool dude. Which is, of course, key.

Also, once a year I break out that Probot record, and each listen makes me appreciate it more than the last. Remember how Zakk Wylde was really pissed that Grohl was supposed to write some tracks for Ozzy? But Grohl wrote better metal songs than Wylde has in for-ever. Sheesh.

Why am I talking about all this?

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Last week our friend Justin Foley from The Austerity Program made a very impassioned and well-reasoned argument as to why Magrudergrind shouldn’t have agreed to work with Scion. I really enjoyed reading Justin’s piece, and I agreed with almost none of it. For me, this really comes down to two issues:

• Yes, metal shows would happen whether or not Scion paid for them, but free day-long metal shows headlined by bands like Neurosis and Cannibal Corpse probably would not. To the kid who just walked in for the cost of nothing (as opposed to whatever they have to pay for, say, Ozzfest), the question “Who’s footing the bill for this?” is moot. Not hurting is that, in my experience, the actual advertising for Scion at Scion shows is incredibly non-invasive, especially when compared to the corporate sponsorship for most festivals.
• Yes, metal albums would get made whether or not Scion paid for them, but the more time talented and creative people get to spend being talented and creative instead of doing whatever they do at their day job, the more we all benefit. I’ll never complain that someone made it possible for an excellent band to make music instead of taking my order unless they ask that band to compromise their art in order to do so, which, clearly, was not the case in this instance.

And on top of all that, there’s the simple fact that Magrudergrind’s resulting EP, Crusher, is awesome. Awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome. I’m so happy to have it, and I really don’t give a fuck who paid for it. I can promise you that at no point during my initial listens of the album did I think about cars. All I thought about what how fucking much I love this band.

And on that note, you can now stream Crusher below. I thought that Brooklyn Vegan was gonna stop giving away the album for free download after the weekend, but it looks like it’s still up, so go grab it if you haven’t already. You can also get it in CD or vinyl form here.

-AR

[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

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I guess Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan is easily bored, because he keeps starting new bands. During downtime from the ‘Knot, he’s already had To My Surprise and Dirty Little Rabbits as side-projects; now he’s apparently started another new outfit, this one called The Black Dots of Death. According to The PRP, the band will release their first single, “Let’s Get Fucked Up,” on November 29, with the video to follow a day later; their debut album, Ever Since We Were Children, will come out on January 11.

There’s already a teaser for “Let’s Get Fucked Up,” though (screen cap above), and it sounds, like, ridiculously, terribly, laughably, horrendously, embarrassingly, painfully awful. It’s basically some electronic beats that I think probably anyone could whip up in five minutes with the aid of Garage Band and cough syrup, with somebody [sobbing sounds] rapping  about “liquid lunch” over it. I haven’t even heard anybody use the phrase “liquid lunch” since the 90s.

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The University of Michigan has made the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach available for free download. The works were recorded by Dr. James Kibbie on original baroque organs in Germany. So, while it’s not quite the full discography this article’s headline advertises it’s certainly a significant portion of it.

What, you were expecting a post about Black Sabbath or Blue Cheer? Pshhhhhh. Mere child’s play when compared to the masterful works of Bach.

I’ve said it many, many times on this blog before: the roots of many elements of modern-day heavy metal, especially the more technical varieties, can be traced back to classical music. Just listen to that new Human Abstract song Axl was [rightly] raving about last week; the way those rhythm guitars move underneath the leads and the way the whole song is put together, it’s basically a fucking classical piece as arranged for a metal band’s instrumentation.

I find the organ to be a particularly dark and haunting making this post even more pertinent to a metal blog. But by now you’re either sold or ya ain’t; go and download Bach’s entire organ discography for free in 256kbps AAC format. I just download the entire Preludes and Fugues collection… can’t wait to dig in. Big thanks to longtime MS supporter Hibernum for the link.

-VN

And that’s saying something.

I didn’t realize that Skating with the Stars was starting already, or I might have actually tuned in to watch Vince Neil make an ass out of himself. Luckily, we live in an era where everything is on the internet, and so Blabbahmouf has video of Neil, who apparently came in dead last in the competition after “falling more times during training than the rest of [the 'stars' on the show] combined.”

Watching the clip, it’s hard to believe that’s true. He skates with such panache! It’s not at all like someone put ice skates on a pig and told it to throw horns at the appropriate moment. No no no no no. This is bee-you-tee-full. In fact, someone call the rest of the band and tell them Vince has stumbled upon the next big touring idea: Cruefest on Ice.

-AR

Yesterday’s news that Haste the Day have kicked the bucket seemed perfectly times with a post that those fine madams at Reign in Blonde dropped over the weekend: “Songs I Like By Bands I Don’t.” I share my fellow Mansion inhabitant Axl’s viewpoint that Haste the Day’s demise isn’t worth shedding any tears over, but they did have this one song — one song — that I really dig. It’s the self-titled opening track from 2007′s Pressure the Hinges:

More than anything it’s that opening guitar riff that gets me — the swagger, the groove — while the rest of the song, kinda like the band, is interchangeable with any average or slightly-above-average metalcore released in 2007. But man, that riff! That riff.

I could go on about songs I like by bands that I don’t, but I’ll leave that to you guys; is there a band you can’t stand except for one slammin’ song that gets ya in that special spot?

-VN

Hard to believe, but Chinese Democracy officially came out two years ago today. (You can read my original review here. I still stand by every word, and I still prefer CD to Death Magnetic.) Promotion for the album has still been anemic. Yes, the band (such as it were) has finally toured certain territories, but it doesn’t amount to much when you consider how much time has passed. And there have still been no music videos, I still haven’t gotten my motherfucking Dr. Pepper, and Axl Rose has only communicated with the press sparsely and electronically.

But that doesn’t really matter, because I don’t even think that my namesake would have the most interesting story to tell regarding the creation of Chinese Democracy.

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Bam! Home from tour and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to shower, shit, and sleep in my own place. Oh, the little things we take for granted everyday.

So, with all division leaders being tied for first or only one game ahead, it’s still anybody’s game. P. Manning is kicking himself after literally throwing away Sunday’s game to N.E. The Colts remain tied in the win-loss categories in the AFC South. And speaking of games that should’ve been won, the Texans had the Jets on the ropes but were overcome in the fourth. It seems the Jets like to make their fans hold their breath these last couple of games.

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Everyone knows that a band’s first album is always their best and everything thereafter sucks. It is not possible for a band to get better with time, especially if they’ve signed with a record label. Just ask Ziltoid, everyone’s favorite Interhole metal troll.

Ziltoid was all over the nuts of Cormorant just last year and first brought them to our attention when he interviewed Arthur Von Nagel on the day he took over MS. Now, I’m not spiteful (ok sometimes) and I’ll give credit where it’s due; Cormorant are a good band, and Ziltoid definitely made us aware of them. Metazoa was a rockin’ album, fer sure, and I’m quite impressed that it was completely self-funded and entirely DIY.

So now it’s a whole year and three months later — which in Troll Time is like an eternity — and Cormorant have announced that they’ll be entering the studio in early 2011 to record a new album.

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Haste the Day are calling it a, uh, day. I was never a fan of the band, who I think were a slightly-above-average “verb the noun” metalcore group. (In fact, the last time I even mentioned them, it was when another “verb the noun” band, Destroy the Runner, broke up.) But I know this news will make someone sad. I don’t know who that someone is, and given the number of e-mails we’ve gotten about the split (one), I don’t think that that someone even reads our site, but he or she is out there somewhere.

From the “buh-bye” post on HTD’s official website:

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