Internets, you have failed me. But you have greatly pleased Sergeant D.
Of course, being the most popular band on MySpace is kind of like being the smartest kid on the short bus.
After the jump, the Top 10 bands on MySpace for 2010 based on fan votes, song plays, video plays and page views:
Photo by Jeremy Saffer
The latest sign for Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label is New Jersey’s Fit for an Autopsy. The band is notable for several reasons (besides the fact that they’re good, I mean), namely:
I saw the below video on The Deciblog earlier this week. I have less than no idea what the fuck is going on in said video, but I’ve masturbated to it three times already, and it just keeps getting hotter every time I watch it.
I guess this is NSFW, on account of the vaginal blood. Man, everyone is SO UPTIGHT these days!
On a semi-related note, I also really enjoyed this video, cleverly entitled “Wonder Woman has sex with a gorilla for 5 minutes.”
I’d like to think that our internet-savvy readers are already familiar with The Internet Movie Database, more commonly referred to as IMDB. On the off-chance you’re somehow not, though — it’s just a site where you can enter the title of any movie or television show ever, and it will give you pretty much all the information available on the movie, from the entire cast and crew (right to the third key grip) to box office history to trivia and quotes to the movie’s quality rating, as determined by the readers of IMDB. And, generally speaking, this rating is based on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest. For example, note the rating for the 1996 classic, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America:
So that rating is obviously total bullshit, but you get the idea.
Well — and I think by now you see where this is going, but still — guess what the rating is for This is Spinal Tap?
Because it’s Friday! Party! Power metal!
-VN
The Internet united in one gigantic boner this morning when they turned on their Commodore 64s for the morning and read this, a news bit proclaiming that Opeth will enter the studio in January 2011 to record the follow-up to 2008′s Watershed. Any Opeth news is, of course, good news. But then there was this mystifying detail that caught my intrigue:
Jens Bogren will engineer the effort while mixing duties will be handled by Steven Wilson.
Zuh????
Slipknot is annoying as all fuck, and worse, the Iowan nonet makes me look like a shitty prognosticator. Or at least a victory-drunk prognosticator, ‘cuz after correctly predicting in 1999 that Slipknot’s debut would net Roadrunner a first platinum sales award, I then guessed that the band would bring extreme metal to mainstream media. Which hasn’t happened, unless you grant a technical allowance for a metal band whose intrusions into radio and TV are, by extreme standards, too pussy even for my little cousins. I blame Corey Taylor, who has vaulted sanity and perspective straight into Anselmoian delusion.
Mazel tov to reader Noah Mezsick, who correctly identified the first night of Hanukkah’s trivia question — yes, Orphaned Land’s Kobi Farhi is the poor musician that I accidentally introduced to frum porn earlier this year. I hear he’s had nightmares ever since. I apologize, Kobi! In any case, Noah wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. L’chaim!
Now… ONTO NIGHT SHTAYIM! (I think that’s Hebrew for “two.” If I fucked up, well, oops.) Here’s the trivia question:
E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 2″ 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 (Friday, December 3) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 3’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. What, you want we should go broke on shipping charges?
-AR
It takes cojones to put two drastically different albums together at once, even more cojones to organize the contributions of two-dozen collaborators. In the case of R. Loren, whose two new projects Sailors with Wax Wings and White Moth were both released in October on Angel Oven Records, we’re not talking 24 random kids from the local high school brass band. The sonic mastermind, best known for his blurry experi-metal outfit Pyramids, contracted folks from Swans, Godflesh Slowdive, Unwound, My Dying Bride, Katatonia, Current 93, Frodus and Atari Teenage Riot and more. Many of them he was e-mailing out of the blue. That’s, like, post-cojones. No wonder the lengthy process of completing the two albums nearly drove Loren insane (more on that later).
But the iconic guest spots spread across these two albums are only a small part of what makes them special – indeed, the many contributions are naturally subsumed into each album’s whole, and that’s necessary for their absorbing power. Listen to the rapturous immersion of Sailors With Wax Wings, and the detailed digital anarchy of White Moth, and you’ll detect something greater than an assembly of musicians at work in the studio. Read on for Loren’s thoughts on the creation of, and concepts behind, the two albums.
Last week’s photo was funny in and of itself, but leave it to MetalSucks readers to alternately ruin the fun and make me laugh even harder. There were some choice entries — the obvious “sweep picking” reference was a giant meatball lobbed up into the air — but in the end I had to go with the following as the winning entry for the entire Rammstein catalog (even though that large body of water in the background is clearly a lake, if not the ocean):
A++++ would do business with again! Great job, Steven.
This week we’re giving away a prize package from German technical metallers War From A Harlots Mouth, who you might remember as the band I dubbed “the wonton soup of tech-deathcore.” The prize package includes a limited edition CD of their new album MMX, a vinyl of the same, and a t-shirt. The rules as per usual: just come up with the funniest caption to the below photo, and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect)!
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.
Hey everyone. It’s that time of the month where you unleash a torrent of viscous bloody discharge guessing our new Hall of Fame and we plug up the hole with a six-month subscription to Decibel. I’ve noticed some dude in the comments regularly positing Linkin Park Hybrid Theory. You know That One Guy at the bar who hits on every chick that passes because eventually somebody’s statistically inclined to say yes? Well, there’s a moral to that story: persistence pays! Someday, my friend… someday.
Anyway, this sound clip/hint may be a little tough to decipher, as the subject lacks the graceful elocution of Chester Bennington, so a helpful transcription follows:
“I think everybody was kind of into certain metal. Maybe not the aesthetic behind it, or any of the ideologies or lack thereof. But certainly the musical style. I think we’d all grown up with Black Sabbath since childhood, basically. I remember being in preschool and I had older brothers, so they had Paranoid by Black Sabbath. And I remember of all the songs on there, the one I was most fascinated by was ‘Electric Funeral’ because of the wah-wah. And I remember sitting there in first grade and opening and closing the opening to my ear with my finger and making the teacher’s voice sound like a wah-wah. Kind of like on the Charlie Brown Christmas special, you know, when the teacher talks and it’s like wah-wah-wah. So, we kind of had an affinity for that going literally way back to our early consciousness.”
Yeah, I can see how that special would be influential. Anyway, you know the drill: artist and title FTW.
DECIBEL HALL OF FAME FEBRUARY 2011
DECIBEL HALL OF FAME FEBRUARY 2011
-AB
You can order the January issue of Decibel here, but the only way to ensure that you never miss the mag’s sexcellent new monthly flexi disc series to get a full subscription. And tell ‘em Charlie Brown sent you.
While this is technically “safe for work”… it’s probably not safe if you’ve got a weak stomach and don’t want to vomit all over your employer’s keyboard. This is bloody and gross. Extremely bloody. So procede with caution.
Still with us? Great! ‘Cause blood is metal, and Revocation guitarist Dave Davidson would surely tell you so too. Ya see, Dave was good and drunk at the Cleveland stop of the MetalSucks-sponsored Legacy Tour with Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, and he decided it’d be a great idea to stage dive during Darkest Hour’s set… only it didn’t go as planned. Here’s Dave on the matter:
Shortly after our set at Peabody’s I proceeded to get annihilated and during Darkest Hour’s set I decided to go stage diving. My first dive into the crowd went without incident but on my second attempt I slightly over shot my jump, and luckily my head broke my fall. After a quick trip to the ER and 8 staples later I was back in business. Good times!”
Without further ado, the video, and then some “aftermath” pics of his stapled up head after the jump:
Feeling sick to your stomach yet? Great, now let’s look at Dave’s stitched-up dome:
There’s no such thing as a free lunch… except when there is.
So take advantage of the incredible good fortune bestowed upon metalheads of the world by Hulu this week and indulge in an entirely free showing of Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the documentary filmed in 2006 about Iraq’s only heavy metal band at the time, the now well-known Acrassicauda.
Nothing’s free forever and we’re not sure for how long Hulu will leave the full film up, so catch it while you can on Hulu or embedded below. You’ll have to sit through a few 30-second commercial breaks, a minor annoyance to watch this acclaimed film for free.
-VN
Thanks: redneckMetal
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
First up “Rules for Fools,” from Tankard. This band is German, so, of course, they made a video about disciplinary action that attempts to be funny but is actually anything but. Was this filmed and edited entirely on an iPhone? Why is a beer loving metal band in a class with little kids? And why is that class being taught by Ramona Flowers? What the fuck is wrong with German people???
I don’t really know what to say about the new Deicide album art. It’s pretty epic, even if it’s more or less exactly what you’d expect from these dudes. The now-announced song titles, like “Hang in Agony Until You’re Dead” and “Empowered by Blasphemy,” are also more or less exactly what you’d expect. So I guess this is a Deicide album for fans of Deicide. It’s good to know that some things in life are still dependable.
To Hell with God comes out February 15 on Century, and was produced by Mark Lewis. The band is hitting the road for a headlining trek the day of the record’s release, but they apparently didn’t wanna soil their beautiful web page with tour dates, so I’ve gone ahead and printed them for you after the jump.
Keith Merrow is one of those super-talented dudes who writes and records full-fledged, pro-sounding instrumental metal records all by his lonesome in his home studio. After I featured him in Readers Choice exactly a year ago he reached out to me and sent me two of his records, The Arrival and Lonestar Transcend (in 320kbps no less! what a mensch), both of which quite literally knocked my socks off. Literally… my socks were promptly jettisoned from my feet upon pressing “play.”
But you know who’s better than Keith Merrow? Jeff Fucking Loomis. No disrespect meant to Mr. Merrow of course, but Loomis is pretty much a God amongst men when it comes to technique. I know what you beardo crusties are thinking… all chops, no soul… but you couldn’t be more wrong. Loomis has it all, motherfuckers!
So you know what’s even better than Keith Merrow and even better than Jeff Loomis? I think you know where I’m going with this… Keith Merrow and Jeff Loomis together on the same recording!! Holy fuckticles. Watch these outtakes Keith sent us of Loomis tracking a solo on Merrow’s forthcoming solo album.
A curious update posted on Keith Merrow’s website in October notes that he’s doing songwriting work for an undisclosed Century Media artist in the “pretty straight-forward metal” vein. I hope it’s not Vampires Everywhere or someone equally shitty. I mean, what metal bands needs songs written for them in 2010? Take that money and run, Keith!
-VN
Boundaries weren’t made for bands like Deathspell Omega. That may sound like a phrase well-worn by cliché — theoretically as fresh and descriptive as “extreme peanut butter” — but it’s true for them. While I wouldn’t shy away from calling them black metal, I certainly understand why people would be wary to: only fragments of the Norwegian model remain. Though slapping “avant-garde” in front of metal can apply to anyone from Ulver to Mr. Bungle to motherfuckery experts Crotchduster, Deathspell Omega seem to embody it fully, harnessing the bizarre and esoteric in a way that’s unique, even in today’s Anything Goes environment. What stands out the most is the band’s reined chaos, simultaneously sounding mechanically precise and barely held together. Sure, they’re black metal. But can anything be black metal beyond them?
Much like Portal is to death metal, it’s been interesting to see Deathspell Omega riding on the genre’s event horizon. Starting off as a fairly typical frozen-meat-and-potatoes black metal collective, the band went off the deep end for 2004’s Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, introducing their trademark whirlwind of splintered guitars and relentless drums, as well as scorched earth moments of sickly calm and even Gregorian chant, all effectively howled over by vocalist Mikka Aspa. From there, they’ve never failed to impress, bringing their unconventional prowess to a few splits and EPS as well as an immensely challenging follow-up album (2007′s Fas – Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum). And Paracletus, their latest, shows they have no intention of letting up. It’s relatively (VERY relatively) stripped down and straightforward while also as daring and unpredictable as anything they’ve done post-Circumspice. Though intensely bizarre and remarkably dense, it still produces palatable tendrils that stand to attract and hold one’s attention. It’s as engrossing as it is revolting.
That’s how our friend Jeremy put it when he e-mailed us the link for the Map of Metal, and I’m inclined to agree with his assessment. It isn’t a map in any traditional sense, which is to say, there’s nothing geographic about. Instead, it just breaks metal down into all its respective genres and sub-genres (they’re classified here as “primary genre,” “metal genre,” “fusion genre,” and “related genre,” which each category getting its legend for easy use) and allows you to explore. And, oh yeah, includes an explanation of each of those genres, as well as prime examples that you can listen to as you move around. And as if all that weren’t enough, it just happens to look gorgeous.
I don’t know who made this thing, but whomever it is, he (or she — but let’s be serious for a moment, it was a dude) deserves a wristie. Check out the Map of Metal here. You will lose hours of your life playing with this thing.
-AR
Times of Grace, the new project for former Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach and ongoing Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, have debuted the video for their first single, “Strength in Numbers,” at Alt Press. We first heard this song back in October, and it still sounds more or less like Alive or Just Breathing or Maybe Just Enjoying a Quick Power Nap to me, but that’s really neither here nor there right now, as I think we need to hear more of the album before we can start making jokes about how Adam D. has apparently tapped out his massive encyclopedia of riffs.
No, instead I wanna talk about the video. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I used to do volunteer work with schizophrenic homeless people, but I didn’t never get to go all Braveheart with ‘em or anything. Mostly, we just played Uno and other simple games in an environment specifically designed to keep them calm and away from makeshift weapons. (Although I do recall a particularly vicious spork fight one Thanksgiving.) But in hindsight, teaching them to have a crew to catch their back in case they ever need to fuck shit up would have been a much more effective lesson. If that nice Russian lady who loved to play dominoes just so she could yell “DOMINOES!” over and over again regardless of who won or if anyone at the table actually scored a point happens to be reading this, I’d just like to say: I’m sorry I failed you.
Times of Grace’s debut, The Hymn of a Broken Man, comes out January 18 on Roadrunner, and despite my snark, I am sincerely hoping that it beats my ass like I stole its locket.
-AR
So it was just yesterday that I was commenting on how Joey Jordison keeps going around saying there’s gonna be a new Slipknot album despite the death of Paul Gray, and how Corey Taylor keeps basically saying he’s not sure yet, and how maybe these two should call one another and, y’know, discuss it before making any more comments in public — especially now that Jordison is promising that plans for a new Slipknot offering are “already in motion,” and that all the other members of the band are “really involved in the process.” In fact, I even predicted that Taylor would say the exact opposite very, very soon:
“That sounds pretty definitive, and saying that ‘everyone’s really involved’ in the creation of a new record more than implies that Taylor is now fully onboard. But I wouldn’t be at all shocked if next week Taylor says he knows nothing about continuing on with Slipknot. I hope that doesn’t happen, ’cause it blows to keep yo-yoing the fans’ excitement like this… I’m just saying that, as always, past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.”
Well, hey, guess what? I must be psychic or something, ’cause mere hours after my post went up, Taylor tweeted the following messages:
