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. Now here’s Revocation’s Dave Davidson with an update from the road:

Hey guys, Dave from Revocation here, checking in from the Darkest Hour Legacy tour.

It’s been a little over a week since we’ve been out and we’re currently in Cleveland getting ready to play at Peabody’s. So far the tour has been going great, all the bands are killing it every night and all the dudes are cool as fuck. Everyone’s been getting along really well right off the bat so we’re stoked that we still have three more weeks left to rage.

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Will Smith’s 9-year old daughter Willow Smith swept the metal world by storm last month when her head-banging hit “Whip My Hair” topped the charts, inspiring a legion of metal video remixes and begging the question of whether Willow is more metal than her mom Jada of the forever-ridiculed Wicked Wisdom.

Jimmy Fallon took things in the opposite direction on his show last week, performing a Neil Young-style version of the song with the episode’s guest, Bruce Springsteen.

THAT is metal.

-VN

Thanks: metalgf via Gawker

I was fortunate to grow up in the Seattle area during a time in which there were some seriously fucking great metal and punk bands: Forced Entry, Dumt, Last Gasp, Daterape, and Bitter End were all sick, but none of them were as groundbreaking, insane, and generally fucking awesome as THE ACCUSED.

Probably my overall favorite Accused song, “Pounding Nails (Into the Lid of Your Coffin)”

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I saw this on Metal Injection today, and clearly, the guy who did this has way, way, way, way, way too much free time on his hands.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s not totally awesome.

Now someone figure out a way to do this with a menorah!

-AR

Last week I criticized the cover art for the new Onslaught album, Sounds of Violence, because of its utilization of Nazi-inspired imagery. I specifically wrote that “I don’t think Onslaught are Nazis, or anti-semites, or bigots of any kind,” and basically said that I just curious what the point of using such imagery could possibly be. But some MetalSucks readers, clearly being of the rocket scientist or brain surgeon professions, still somehow thought I was accusing the band of being anti-semites. So just to be clear once and for all: I do not now, nor did I ever, think that Onslaught were Nazis. I am aware that many bands have used Nazi imagery over the years. I just think it’s worth considering the meaning of these images.

And, hey-o!, lookit that: I found an e-mail from Onslaught’s manager, Tommy Morriello, in my inbox on Saturday. Unlike some of the people who left comments under my original article, Morriello actually seems to understand what I was getting at, and presented a pretty clear explanation for the album’s cover. Read his full e-mail to me after the jump.

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As part of our sponsorship of the No Mercy Metal showcases here in NYC — the most recent of which was held the night before Halloween, October 30th (hence the above photo) — we’ll be highlighting one band from each show here on MetalSucks in an effort to bring the best of the piping hot NYC metal scene to the rest of the world.

This edition’s featured band is Slam One Down, whose deathy-thrash attack reminds me at times of Revocation by way of Machine Head. Though Slam One Down aren’t quite as refined as either, they sound like what I might imagine Revocation’s very earliest demos sounding like; there’s plenty of promise here and skill equally divided amongst all the band members. Peep the track “To Live Forever” on their MySpace page, my personal favorite.

-VN

Satan Rosenbloom sent us the below video, from German grindcore outfit Vaulting, in the wee hours of this morning, and recommended it as “it’s pretty ripping stuff.” So of course I checked it out immediately, and, shock of shocks, Mr. Rosenbloom has excellent taste. Pretty ripping stuff indeed, old chap!

There’s some more cool material on the band’s MySpace page, and they’re giving away their 2007 demo for free right here. They’ve got two other releases, for which they’re asking all of four bucks a pop; you can get those here and here.

-AR

In a wise move, VH1′s fossil-rock chat program That Metal Show has expanded to sixty minutes for its sixth season. As a result, there’s a huge improvement to the ratio of guest interview content to idiot host blathering. Too much of the half-hour TMS format depended on rushed segments which pitted one host’s poorly-explained preferences against another’s; now, even a seemingly negligible amount of additional interviews/gabbing gives TMS an actual shot at resonant entertainment. Impossible before now were particularly inspired production moves like the booking of Tesla’s Jeff Keith (so smiley!) and Frank Hannon on the same episode as Testament’s Chuck Billy (above). If VH1 brass has any brains, they’ll holiday bonus the shit outta whomever was responsible for pairing these superficially different but geographically and alphabetically neighborly acts. It’s TV gold! Watch here and you’ll see that the two camps endorse the same sports team, play the same clubs, and share members (!). Best of all, Billy expounds on the fun CD-shopping quirk that sorta cosmically partners similarly-named bands, i.e. you have to go through the Tesla section to reach Testament. (And through The Cult to get to Curve, and, by design, through Megadeth to Metallica.) This stuff might seem like filler or minutiae, but priceless spontaneity and shared giggle sessions are the key to entertaining talk programming. Now all they have to do is replace host/Howard Stern wannabe Jim Florentine with an at-large correspondent who focuses weekly remotes on, oh, bands formed after 1983 maybe? I know just the dude!

-ADF

That Metal Show premieres new episodes Saturdays on VH1 Classic. View full episodes here.

It’s been a while since we had anything to grind through the Mike Portnoy / Dream Theater rumor mill, unless you count all those “I’m not the permanent drummer of Avenged Sevenfold” interview responses, which I don’t. Thankfully this glorious week of giving thanks here in the U.S. brings us two Portnoy / DT news tidbits to be thankful for, one dorky and one gossipy.

First, the dorkitude. In perhaps some of the best DT drum covers to be posted to YouTube in the history of that site, Behold… the Arctopus and Blotted Science drummer Charlie Zeleny recently uploaded a bunch of “audition” videos of himself playing along to various Dream Theater songs. “Audition” is in quotes because apparently Zeleny wasn’t actually asked in for an audition, but somehow got wind of which songs DT were asking auditioning drummers to learn and recorded and uploaded them of his own accord. It sorta worked, too; apparently the members of DT have now seen these videos. I’m actually kinda surprised more young drummers that grew up under Portnoy’s influence haven’t done the same thing the way, say, Dave Grohl publicly groveled for Led Zeppelin’s drum throne when they reunited in 2007 to pay tribute to Ahmet Artegun. Here’s Zeleny covering the middle/end section of “Metropolis Pt. 1″:

Note the Portnoy stick-flip at 1:10! Way to score those extra points, Chuck.

Now onto the gossip!!

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I really love this. But for the record, even though I know Vince is a big Daath fan, too, if you bothered to read any of the bylines on the various articles we’ve been doing about Daath, you’d realize that I’m really the faggot who has been too busy shoving Daath’s dicks into my ears to actually listen to the music. In my defense, I can’t help it, as the Daathers just seem to have the perfect sized cocks for my ear holes, and it tickles so good.

And as a big of a fan as I am of Daath, I don’t think they’re better than Tool. I don’t think the dudes in Daath think they’re better than Tool.

Also, Depeche Mode rules.

As you were.

-AR

Thanks: Aaron N.

I spend a large portion of my free time murdering brains cells like I caught them fucking my wife, so I apologize if I’m incorrect, but I think it was actually Mark Lewis who first mentioned the one-armed bassist to me. Whomever it was, I’ve definitely heard about this guy before. Why did I never look him up? I dunno, I dunno. Probably the aforementioned abuse of brain cells. In any case, major props to Bassquatch for sending this to us, as it’s pretty incredible, and definitely inspiring in a major, major, MAJOR way.

This dude’s name is apparently Mike, and you can watch more of his videos here. And, oh, hey, coincidentally, weren’t we just talking about a band that needs a new bass player?

-AR

I definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, most likely because I fucking hate Thanksgiving and just want it to be over with already. So I could have used some good news, like maybe Pig Destroyer surprising everyone with a new song, or a leaked Cristina Scabbia/Marta lesbian sex tape, or someone raising Chuck Schuldiner from the dead in order to have him wipe deathcore from the face of the planet.

Instead, I see this statement from Chimaira on The PRP:

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My man Jeff Mueller has had three seminal bands that were/are all vastly unappreciated: Rodan, June of 44, and the still-active Shipping News.  Each of these groups had their own individual sound, but in a way one can trace the evolution of common member Mueller from one to the next.

Save Everything, Shipping News’ excellent 1998 debut album, seemed to culminate and refine the angular indie-aggressive sound the two bands before had begun in various rawer forms.  You can almost hear Mueller growing up from one outfit to the next.  How quaint.

Shipping News’ latest album One Less Heartless to Fear was released a couple of weeks ago; here’s the press description:

This is the band s first new full-length album since Flies
The Fields, and a helluva lot has happened in the last
five years two weddings, fatherhood, serious illness,
a presidential election, multiple wars, city moves, two
Batman films, and lots of time with friends playing songs.
These things seem to have inspired the band to make their
most aggressive and adolescent album to date. Shipping
News has jettisoned the long songs (and glacial tempos)
of the past to concentrate on energetic blasts of noisy
rock with a little gallows humor thrown in. While slipping
into a slightly more sympathetic mood once or twice, the
new songs are stripped down and pretty much nasty.

Woof.

-KW

Allow me to shill for a beat before the weekend: If you haven’t already bought one of our new, limited edition shirts, go get yours now!!! They’re selling fast, and soon they will be the title of a God Forbid album. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Here’s some other fun stuff we did this week:

• Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself gave us the rundown on Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks found the CFL fun and confusing, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable talked about the best and worst drives in the U.S., and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley is the latest to weigh in on free metal from Scion.
• We debuted new music from Murder Construct.
• We spoke to Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling and Christopher Drew from Nevershotnever and Eatmewhileimhot.
• We checked out the latest releases from Riotgod, Electric Wizard, Rimfrost, and First Blood and Killing the Dream.
• We asked you about old school bands you wanted to like but couldn’t.
• We joined Gene Simmons, Slash, and Dave Navarro in having NOH8 for gays.
• We laughed at both Kirk Hammett and the little girl he kicked.
• We also laughed at Sebastian Bach’s frail ego.
• We got really excited about the new single from The Human Abstract.
• We also got really excited about Decibel‘s new flexi disc series.

Have a nice, relaxing weekend gang. We’ll miss you muchly, but we’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

I looked at BBG this morning and saw that they had some free music available by Magrudergrind. I’m not too familiar with the band, but was a bit surprised to see that they have released the record through Scion, the car company. And when I say “a bit surprised,” I mean the kind of surprised that reminds you of what you had for breakfast because it’s figuring on making a repeat appearance.

Before I begin, please let me note a few things. First, these are people with whom I am generally simpatico – they play abrasive, heavy music, they take the time to think about what they’re doing, and they’re not doing stuff that, on the face of it, is simply wrong (like lobbying for the weapons industry or hiring scabs or kicking puppies). They seem like nice guys. And really: this is small, small potatoes in a world that includes starvation, disease and the cultural cancer of Dancing with the Stars. I also recognize that this stuff is interesting to talk about because it cannot be reasonably argued by appealing to absolutes; this topic is a world of various shades of gray (which, by the way, doesn’t mean that things can’t be right or wrong). So let’s all take this with a grain of salt, right? Perfect.

That said, this Scion record stuff is gross and I think Magrudergrind is dead wrong for doing it.

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I’m not inherently suspicious of the drug-free, sober, and straight-edge. True, I regard them as I would a Beta-max, a pager, or a non-fan of Devin Townsend: an anachronistic curiosity whose continued existence defies progress. All the same, when I’m told by, say, the lovely Allyson from BBG! that constant intoxication is not her priority, it seems believable.

Now, Ted Nugent on the other hand, kinda seems like a goddamn liar in his endorsements of a drug-free lifestyle. Now, sure, a lot about Ted screams “repressed homosexuality,” beit his wingnut socio-political beliefs, his mega-masculine urge to kill all that has no ability to counter-attack, and his participation in aesthetically dubious projects like Damn Yankees. Not to mention his entire early canon which casts Ted as history’s most annoying pussy-hound. Talk about over-compensating. But that’s a side issue.

See, some people crow about their finely-calibrated gay-dar, and likewise I’m boastful about my unbeatable high-dar. (Make no mistake, it’s in self-interest that I hasten to determine if anybody anywhere is indulging; with that knowledge, I can then launch mooching operations.) And despite his public opposition to drug-gobbling, Ted regularly sets my Spidey senses a-raging, and especially throughout the above Damn Yankees jam: the darting eyes, the working mouth, the extreme agreeability, the shot-hogging, the intrusive/cruddy guitar soloing. Plus, he came up in hard rock in the ’70s, a time when contracts were signed in nose-blood and tour buses were made of quaaludes. So is Ted‘s he-man act a smokescreen for his real secret shame? Is Ted an Elvis Presley to our Richard Nixon? Is it really plausible that any sober man would agree to spend five years as third fiddle in Damn Yankees? Is there any other explanation for that zebra-striped duster in the “High Enough” video? Have you heard that song “Little Miss Dangerous?”

-ADF

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

This week, we have our first ever reader-suggested QOTW, coming from MetalSucks Maniac Cougar Party:

WHAT BANDS DO YOU HATE THAT YOU HAVE SEEN LIVE MULTIPLE TIMES BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS OPENING FOR SOMEONE YOU LIKE?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Between-song stage banter reminds me of confronting a dentist’s drill, and I prepare for each similarly: When I know it’s coming, I wince, recoil, and repress a series of violent shudders. Cuz suffering either is just so goddamn painful. Some cats are all intense and bro-brah, just heaping on overly-earnest thanks and generally acting like they’re buttering you up for a loan. Then you have the drill sergeant types, who demand that paying ticketholders jump or say ho or make “a crazy fuckin’ circle pit” or some sort of audience participation that would happen organically for, y’know, a good act. Shut it.

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The issue with Electric Wizard’s 2000 classic Dopethrone was that it seemed to require smoking a Herculean amount of marijuana to properly enjoy it. And though saying one needs weed to enjoy something is usually a slight against the something in question — oh, how many post-rock and post-metal bands have become significantly less interesting to me once I’ve sobered up? — in Dopethrone’s case, it just seemed like a natural fit. Aside from having “dope” in the title, the album’s hazy sludginess — especially on the iconic closing title track — made one itchy to be high if they weren’t already. And although the band has matured, that sense is still there on their latest, the excellent Black Masses. Still sounding like Sabbath stoned to the point of being red-eyed and practically asleep, the band are more than a bunch of stoners in love with the sound of their (admittedly awesome) amps. Beneath the smoky veil draped over the album, there’s a bunch of excellent songs that bloom upon return. Like always, you don’t NEED to be high to enjoy it, but good Lord, it wouldn’t hurt.

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The Daily Show had this great bit the other day about that NOH8 campaign commercial Vince posted earlier this week, and how certain politicians who have taken a certain stance on certain issues are almost certainly going to be looked back upon as dickwads. I’m not gonna embed it, but you can watch it here if you’re so inclined.

And I’m actually not trying to make a political point. I’m trying to make a point about history. The cliché about “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is a cliché for a reason. There are no new stories. Just new versions of old stories.

So I’m sorry to harp on this Blue Felix nonsense, but it just occurred to me — I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends.

Anyone remember these bands?

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