I’m tired of hearing about this System of a Down “reunion.” Not because I don’t like the band; I’m quite happy they’ll be playing shows again, in fact. But because it’s not a reunion. System never broke up. Therefore they cannot get back together.

It’s been 5 years since System of a Down released new music. Here are some other bands that often take a very long time to release new albums:

• Metallica (5 years between St. Anger and Death Magnetic)
• Tool (Always take at least 5 years)
• Nevermore (5 years between This Godless Endeavor and The Obsidian Conspiracy)
• Machine Head (4 years between Through the Ashes and Blackening, will be at least 4 years before a new album)
• Iron Maiden (4 years between A Matter of Life and Death and The Final Frontier)
• Ozzy Osbourne (6 years between Ozzmosis and Down to Earth, another 6 years between Down to Earth and Black Rain)

In all those cases not a single person cried “Eureka!! They’re getting back together!!” when they decided to make new music, nor will anyone do so when they write and release new music in the future.

Click to read more…

The Grammy nominations have been announced, and, as per usual, they’ve got nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. This isn’t a shock; the Grammys have been a meaningless award, and will remain a meaningless award. But if you’re morbidly curious, as I am, as to who old white dudes think are the créme de la créme of our music of choice, the nominees, and some more snarky commentary from yours truly, are after the jump.

Click to read more…

When I walked into the Metal Injection Livecast last night about twenty minutes before we went on the air, Vince had already arrived. Almost immediately, I noticed the four cans of Four Loko on the table, and just as quickly, I knew that Vince had purchased them. I had seen Four Loko sold at stores before, but it has never even crossed my mind to try the shit. But that’s Vince for ya — where as some people might think, “Oh, that shit is about to be banned, I probably shouldn’t try it,” Vince thinks, “Oh, that shit is about to be be banned, I should try it!” And so try it we did.

And even though we all agreed that the crap tastes like a hippopotamus’ asshole, for whatever reason, we just. Kept. Drinking it. And the feeling it induced just kept getting worse and worse. It was like you were drunk AND had had twelve cups of coffee. Throw weed into the equation, and… ugh!

All of this nonsense was captured on air, along with plenty of other ridiculousness, during the Metal Injection Livecast. If you were too busy with your Hanukkah party to listen, you can now download it here, and live out your Four Loko nightmares vicariously through us.

-AR

Holy crap, have we really been doing this for four years now? Wow. Time flies when you’re spinnin’ dreidels and trying to figure out the best possible recipe for weed latkes.

ANYWAY, yes, it is, indeed, Hanukkah, and we are, indeed, once again teaming up with our friends at Century Media to give away some cool shit!

In case this is your first year broing down with MS for the Festival of Lights, here’s how it’s gonna work: Every night for the next eight nights, we’re gonna ask a trivia question that relates to both metal and Judaism. Of everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select one winner to receive an awesome mystery prize from Century, as well as – what else? – a dreidel. Make sense? Good. Here’s the question for the first night:

• Which Jewish musician did I accidentally introduce to frum porn earlier this year? Here’s a hint — the answer can be found right here on MetalSucks.

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 1″ in the subject line. All entries should include your name and mailing address in addition to your answer, and are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Thursday, December 2) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 2’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S. Money for shipping doesn’t grow on trees, ya know.

And don’t forget that both Vince and myself will be celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on the Metal Injection Livecast tonight at 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Listen in here… it’s gonna be great!

-AR

[Welcome to the first installment of Abstract Theory with The Human Abstract guitarist A.J. Minette. Through this column A.J. hopes to enlighten and enliven the metal readership on some of the finer points of the theory behind music and music composition in a way that's not overbearing or elitist. We hope you enjoy. -Ed.]

A lot of people like to claim that they love music, or that their life IS music, but how many of us actually give our undivided attention to listening on a regular basis?  One of the best lessons I learned while studying classical music in school was, “The greatest composers throughout history were an incredible balance of passion and intellect.” As listeners, we often take notice of how a piece of music moves us on an emotional level but it’s important to point out that we can also be moved on an intellectual level as well.

Understanding music on a deeper level leads us to a greater appreciation. Let’s take a Bach fugue for example. While the subject of a fugue (opening theme/melody) may be pleasant to listen to, we are intellectually stimulated by its use of counterpoint, harmony, rhythm, and formal architecture.

Click to read more…

Back in July, our Number One Homie, Rob Pasbani, wrote a typically droll piece for Metal Injection. Entitled “Slipknot Vocalist Says It’s Too Early To Talk About Band’s Future; Drummer Talks About Band’s Future,” it pointed out that while ‘Knot vocalist Corey Taylor was running around saying he was unsure about the group’s future in the wake of bassist Paul Gray’s untimely passing, drummer Joey Jordison was running around assuring everyone that the band would live on.

And even though you would think that  in the intervening time, someone would notice the contradiction in statements and politely tell Taylor and Jordison to either a) figure out if the band is really going to continue or not so they don’t keep contradicting one another in public, or b) start telling everyone who asks about it “no comment” so that they don’t look foolish, this continued throughout August, when Jordison told a reporter that “There will be another Slipknot record, of course,”and into September, when Taylor told a different reporter, “I’m very conflicted about whether or not I want to do anything with Slipknot, because to me, Paul was such an integral part of the band… it just doesn’t make sense [to continue without him].”

Click to read more…

‘Cause earlier this week, Billy Howerdel sent out the below tweet:

Click to read more…

Remember when Vince and Kip heart-throbs Textures got a new vocalist earlier this year? That vocalist is the very talented Daniël De Jongh of Dutch metallers CiLiCe, great for Textures and De Jongh but not so great for CiLiCe, an excellent band in their own right who were suddenly singer-less. But singer-less they are no more; a press release sent earlier this week tells us that CiLiCe have found a new singer in Bryan Ramage, and today Got-Djent is reporting that CiLiCe have posted a new version of the song “Left / Right Hemisphere” with Ramage on vocals on the band’s MySpace page.

Click to read more…

On November 23 Metal Blade Records released Job For A Cowboy’s Ruination as a limited edition 3×10” colored vinyl / CD box set; the collection houses the album as well as both rare and live material. The box set is only available through the indie record stores listed at http://www.mymetalclub.com/ and online through Vintage Vinyl. And hey, guess what? We’ve got an autographed copy of this sweet jobby [for a cowboy] to give away to one of you lucky chaps.

To win: leave a comment telling us why you dig the cover artwork for Ruination. Remember, this is MetalSucks, not an SAT essay, so make your entry funny and interesting. Axl and Vince will hand-pick their favorite entry and announce the winner the week of January 3rd.

Details of what exactly is included on each disc of the box set are posted after the jump. Be sure to catch Job For A Cowboy on tour in December with Skeletonwitch, Misery Index & Trap Them!

Click to read more…

In October, after I asserted that Motorhead should not have re-recored “Ace of Spades” for a beer commercial, a friend and I had a rousing philosophical debate about the contents of that very post. I said that Lemmy is a wealthy man, and didn’t need the extra money from doing the ad; my friend asked if I’d seen Lemmy, the new documentary about the legendary front man. I hadn’t (and still haven’t), and I told him so, to which he replied, “Dude, he drinks and snorts all his money away! Wait ’til you see his apartment!!!”

Now Rolling Stone has unveiled the very clip where we do get see the Chateau Kilmister, and, uh, my friend wasn’t dicking around. I gotta say, I really appreciate Lemmy keepin’ it humble and not getting all Lars Ulrich on us, but maybe he can use some of that brew money to get a storage space? I think cramming thirty-five years of Motorhead memorabilia into such a small space is, uh, ill-advised. (Rob at Metal Injection worries that Lemmy may be a hoarder.) I’m not exactly the tidiest person myself so I sympathize, but… ah, fuck it, it’s not like I have any gold records to hang on my wall.

If you live in a large metropolitan area, you should be able to see Lemmy during its limited U.S. theatrical engagement in January. If not, don’t bum too hard, ’cause it comes out on DVD on February 15.

-AR

It’s been over four years since Nekrogoblikon‘s Goblin Island came out. That album was produced by just two of the band’s current members, and it was essentially no more than a big preproduction release. So Stench, the group’s latest offering, represents an entirely new Nekrogoblikon, and along with the change in members comes a remarkable change in every other aspect of the band’s music and image: the melodies, the technicality, and, of course, the art.

Click to read more…

So in case you don’t know, the lovely ladies of Reign in Blonde have this “Panty Raid” thing where every month they anoint a dude “Mr. [Insert Month Here],” and that dude gets to be the sole creature with a penis to contribute to RiB for that month.

Well, this month’s Panty Raider, Mr. December, is none other than our own Gary Suarez! As is so often the case with Gary, we had no idea that he was doing this. But we love his initial contribution, a holiday shopping guide for metalheads. #Srsly.

Check that shit out here. I’m no one’s younger brother, but I am digging that Pitchfork New York hat.

-AR

While most new releases have trailed off into Christmas Music oblivion, there were still a few notable new metal albums trickling in last week. After the jump, a look at the meaningless sales numbers generated by new ones from After the Burial, Metallica, The Chariot and Yngwie Malmsteen with a look at a few other charting releases as well (take a look at the tags below if you wanna know who). Snarky commentary included, natch.

Click to read more…

I somehow missed that Jon Chang’s Gridlink were even working on new material. Luckily, Crustcake schooled me today when they posted news of not one, but two new (unmastered) Gridlink songs currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page: a “karaoke version” (read: currently without vocals) of “Orphan,” which apparently also be the name of the new album, and a track called “Hearts.”

Click to read more…

It’s the end of an era for Victory Records; the only two credible metal acts they had on their roster have finished their contracts and are free to sign elsewhere. Darkest Hour ended up on E1, a good fit for a label who has signed a number of already-established metal acts over the past few years (High on Fire, Hatebreed, Black Label Society, Overkill and In Flames, just to name a few). Where will Between the Buried and Me end up? It’s gettin’ to be about that time for them to release an album, whatwith those EP rumors and all.

If I were a betting man I’d put a few fat ones down on the table on BTBAM ending up with Metal Blade. The reason why has nothing to do with the actual music but with the folks behind the scenes. In fact, there’s a good chance the deal is already done, the t’s crossed, the i’s dotted, the ink dried.

Click to read more…

I had an awesome dream last night, in which I woke up (Waking up in a dream! Trippy!!!) to find the new Pig Destroyer album in my inbox. So when I woke up for real, of course, I knew it had only been a dream, but, perhaps hopeful that I had developed psychic abilities, I ran to my computer and checked my e-mail. There was no Pig Destroyer album waiting for me, but there was a new video from Bullet for My Valentine, “Bittersweet Memories.” Which is just as good as a new Pig Destroyer album… NOT!!! (Oh yeah. I went all early-90s on your ass.)

ANYWAY, let’s actually watch this thing and see how bad it is.

[tries to watch video]

Alright. I made it about forty seconds in. Anyone make it longer? Is there any reason I need to watch the rest of this? I guess I shouldn’t be so judgmental. I mean, every generation needs their Winger, right? This Winger just wears Slayer shirts to try and pretend they’re not Winger. No biggie.

(Yes, BMFV fans. I just compared the band to Winger. That would make you the Stewart Stevenson of any given social situation amongst other metalheads. Congratulations.)

Click to read more…

One of the best parts of any Gwar show is seeing which celebrities/public figures the band is going to “kill” on-stage. And I don’t know if they were offing Alaska’s most infamous maverick on a nightly basis on their most recent tour, or if this is something they did special for the people of Detroit — but needless to say, I approve.

“After tonight you will never about Sarah Palin being your president ever again,” the mighty Oderus Urungus tells the crowd. Oh, if only it weren’t all just for fun.

Gwar’s Bloody Pit of Horror, the band’s latest, is out now on Metal Blade, and they’ll continue to slaughter people they don’t like out on tour for the foreseeable future. Get dates here.

-AR

Thanks to Jason McDaniel for making my morning.

So Architects (UK) have a new video, for their song “Day In Day Out.” I don’t really have anything to say about the visuals. If the director’s goal was to prove that he can shoot a commercial for Levi’s, well, mission accomplished.

I do wanna talk about the music, though. And everything I wanna say about the music can be summed up in this e-mail exchange we had with reader Keith Brown this past October:

Click to read more…

Not much else to say; this rules!

Goatwhore are on tour with Watain, Skeletonwitch and Black Anvil right now. Don’t miss ‘em. Dates here.

-VN

Thanks: John W.