DevilDriver’s new album, Beast, comes out in three weeks, and has twelve tracks on it — and as of today, with the debut of “Bring The Fight (To The Floor)” on Revolver‘s website, we’ve heard three of ‘em. All within the past twenty-one days. The last one, “Coldblooded,” was released to the public just last Friday.

Holy shit. I actually like DevilDriver, and I have never, ever spent this much time thinking about them. I am in every way, shape, and form out of things to say about this record, and I haven’t even heard the whole thing yet. I assume I will have by Thursday, though, after Roadrunner releases another nine tracks, plus every b-side the band has ever recorded, as well as bonus audio of Dez Fafara looking for a toilet when he has the runs.

How will they fill the remaining time to promote the record before its release? If they debut one more song, we’ll have heard a third of the record already. I guess they could release a video…?

At least this song debut comes with a fascinating, insightful, in-depth interview. Check out this excerpt:

Click to read more…

We love Tommy Rogers, we love Owen Hart, and, of course, we love Pantera — so combining all three makes for one awesome metal sandwich.

Rogers recently hopped on-stage with Owen Hart to join them for some Pantera covers, and, of course, someone caught it all on video. The quality’s not 100%, but it’s good enough to know that the bright ray of sunshine you felt on your face today was Dime smiling in approval.

Here’s “Domination…”

…and if you head over to Metal Injection, you can check out “Mouth for the War,” too.

Tommy Rogers will release his new solo album (under the name Thomas Giles), Pulse, tomorrow  on Metal Blade; Owen Hart’s latest, Earth Control, is out now on Vitriol. You can read my review here.

-AR

So 70,000 Tons of Metal, the most metal cruise EV-AR, has now ended — but that doesn’t mean the fun is over. We’re gonna have a couple more Tons of Fun for you during the week, starting with the below video, taken during the cruise, of Testament’s Alex Skolnick, Exodus’ Tom Hunting, and Death Angel’s Rob Cavestany doing a karaoke version of The Eagles’ “Lying Eyes” onboard the ship.

Yep. We’re being totally serious.

We first saw this amazing video over at Metal Insider; they also have clips of karaoke performances from members of Fear Factory, Sodom, Ensiferum, Tyr, and Swashbuckle. So head on over to Metal Insider if you wanna see some of your heroes embarrassing themselves in the name of fun.

Also, our bro-bros at Metal Injection were actually on the cruise, giving constant live updates. Go here if you wanna read all about their adventures, or if you just wanna look at pictures of MI’s resident female, Noa Avior, in a bikini.

-AR

In a lot of ways, Francis Ford Coppola is to cinema as Metallica are to metal. He directed four incredible movies (the first two Godfather films, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now), all of which still hold up as examples of the craft at its finest, and then he devolved into self-parody. (The Godfather: Part III is pretty much his version of “The Unforgiven IV,” and if you don’t remember Jack, consider yourself lucky.) He basically sired one of Hollywood’s royal families (His children, Sofia and Roman, are also film directors, and his nephew is Nicolas Cage, who changed his last name in an effort to achieve success based on his own merits), and these days, Coppola makes his money via his winery (I’ve had some of his wines, they’re actually quite good!), and then self-funds small, personal art films, like 2007′s Youth Without Youth and 2009′s Tetro. These movies generally open to middling reviews and are seen by an audience of about ten people, but it doesn’t really matter, because Coppola is doing what he wants and he seems happy.

Why am I rambling on about this dude? Because he recently gave an interview to The 99 Percent in which he basically advocates illegal downloading, and the concept of the artist as an unpaid worker:

Click to read more…

Why anyone would get fired up over the title of an album that isn’t even out yet is beyond me — let alone a harmless title like Scurrilous… if it was called “All Niggers, Faggots, Kikes and Arabs Must Die” that’d be another issue — but MS reader Christian Kelley seems to be pretty bothered by the title of Protest the Hero’s forthcoming album nonetheless. Says Christian, “I absolutely LOVE Protest and all, but I really hate this album title.  So I had to make something to joke with it.” His version is above. While I appreciate his effort, I still think the amazing and intricate actual album art is 10,000x cooler.

Regarding the real album art, by the way, it turns out that my efforts to dissect the meaning of the crazy painting and its relation to the album itself were all for naught. A link at Aux.tv posted by reader Ton sheds some light on the situation: “If you’re still looking for an explanation behind both the title and the cover, we’ve learned that the cover is actually 60-year-old painting by bassist Arif Mirabdolbaghi’s grandfather Jafar Petgar.The painting’s title? Scurrilous.” D’oh! Still looking forward to this album in all sorts of ways.

-VN

Corey Taylor performing “It’s So Easy” with Slash in 2009. Could this be what Velvet Revolver sounds like in the not-too-distant future?

Corey Taylor must really, really hate having free time on his hands. He’s already the vocalist for Slipknot and Stone Sour, and he nearly joined Anthrax in 2007. Then, in 2009, he revealed that he’d “had a meeting” with Velvet Revolver about taking Scott Weiland’s spot in the band, but that it “it just didn’t work — for whatever reason.”

Now VR’s search for a new singer has been heating up, with drummer Matt Sorum going so far as to tell an interviewer that “The guy we’re liking now is a young guy” who is “known” (e.g., not a noob they picked up on Hollywood Boulevard) and whose background is in “a little bit heavier rock ‘n’ roll than we are.” Naturally, this led to lots and lots of speculation as to this mystery singer’s identity, and the combination of clues — that the vocalist was not unknown, that he was younger than Slash and company, and that he traditionally sang for a band or bands that were heavier than VR — caused some spectators, like our friends at Metal Insider, to ponder the possibility that Taylor might the man for the job after all.

Now the story has taken another interesting turn. Billboard has done a new profile on Taylor, which begins thusly:

Click to read more…

(click to enlarge)

Remember that “Map of Djent” published by Got-Djent.com in December? With more fan data now in the site’s database, Got-Djent.com has published an updated version of the map showing a better representation of the tastes of the site’s visitors. The new version still shows that four bands, Meshuggah, Periphery, TesseracT and Animals as Leaders — the “Big Four” of djent, if you will — dominate the scene, but it also shows a much tighter and bigger cluster of bands immediately surrounding them. Make sure you click the above image to enlarge it and view it in full.

This “map” has the same minor flaws as the previous version: 1) The site is based in the U.K. and as such best represents that country’s musical taste (which in a few cases lean towards native bands such as TesseracT, Fellsilent and Monuments), not necessarily those of the entire world, 2) Some of these bands definitely aren’t djent, 3) The results certainly weren’t collected scientifically. But that doesn’t mean the data should be discounted, just that it should not be viewed as definitive; this is an AWESOME visual representation of the musical tastes of a certain subset of metal fans. At some point I’d love to see a chart, graphic or animation that takes the data used to compile this map and uses it to show a growth (or demise) in a band’s popularity over time.

-VN

When  the line-up for this year’s Mayhem Fest was announced last week, we were told that more bands would eventually be announced. Not to sound like gloating pricks or anything, but we here at MetalSucks already knew that Trivium were gonna be on the bill, even if their involvement hadn’t been made public yet.

Well, now it’s public. Trivium are on the bill. They’ll be on the main stage along with Disturbed, Godsmack, Megadeth, Machine Head, and In Flames; the line-up is rounded out by second stage acts Unearth, Suicide Silence, Kingdom of Sorrow, All Shall Perish, Red Fang, and Straight Line Snooze.

When we saw the band at Mayhem in 2009, they were one of the dominant acts on the second stage; I will never forget wondering “Where the fuck is Paolo Gregoletto?” before realizing that he had jumped into the crowd and was playing amongst the thousands of rabid fans. And Trivium’s live show has increased in quality by 100% since they traded drummer Travis Smith for Nick Augusto last year. (Read Vince’s article on the matter here.) In other words: Trivium’s addition to the bill is a good thing.

Trivium are at Audiohammer Studios in Florida working on a new album with producer Colin Richardson even as I type this; I’ve heard that the goal is to get that record out in time for Mayhem. While we wait for more news of that release, here are Mayhem dates:

Click to read more…

In this post-Crack The Skye world, a band like American Heritage is like sweet relief to lovers of angular, raging, uber-macho post-metal: Throughout their forthcoming sophomore album Sedentary, the Chicago quartet show little trepidation as would-be inheritors to Mastodon’s now-vacant throne. And one could say Ameri-Heri makes good economic and practical sense, too, as Sedentary employs a full whack of guest bassists (including members of Murder Construct, Black Cobra, Exhumed, Nachtmystium, and Buried At Sea) and provides a venue for Mastodon axeman Bill Kelliher to do a fucking guitar solo for once.

Sedentary is out March 1 on Translation Loss (pre-order here) but because we at MetalSucks believe in awesomeness, we present to you this exclusive advanced listen to its opening jam “City of God” (below). It’s a first taste of what MS scribe Satan Rosenbloom calls his favorite album of the year so far. He won’t be the only one.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

–ADF

This post originally appeared on Stuff You Will Hate, but Metal Sucks bossman/18V fan Vince Neilstein pointed out that I didn’t quite cover everything there is to say about 18 VISIONS. It is my mission as a human being to sing the praises of this legendary band, so it appears again here with an Anal Cunt joke in the title, a few small changes on my part, and some additions from Vince — we leave no stone uncovered when it comes to 18 VISIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE! — Sergeant D

In my opinion, one of the greatest tragedies of the late 20th/early 21st century is the demise and corresponding underrappreciation of Orange County metalcore pioneers 18 VISIONS. All jokes aside, I honestly love everything 18V did. I love every album, each for a different reason. And if they didn’t live up to their potential in terms of mainstream popularity, I seriously think it was because they were years ahead of their time — if you can find anyone who played deathcore, did the fashioncore thing, or integrated electronics before they did, it’s news to me. If 18V were ten years younger, they would be bigger than The Devil Wears Prada, Escape The Fate, and every other bands who’s essentially doing stuff they did as a DIY band a decade earlier.

Either way, the band broke up in 2006 after releasing what was, in my opinion, their best album. I got a chance to see them a couple of times on their final tour, supporting Hinder the first time and later at some fest in Christcore-capitol Dayton, Ohio with Damone and Staind. It was fucking sweet, just like every other time I saw them over the previous ten years or so. From day one until the end, 18V never faltered, never listened to the legions of haters that they attracted, and never stopped innovating in ways that still have yet to be completely appreciated or documented.

When I think of 18V, their career can be divided into three phases: 1) Chainreactioncore/Deathcore, 2) Fashioncore, and 3) Mansoncore – and we couldn’t cover 18V without covering phase four, the post-18V bands. In this post, I will share my thoughts on each phase, hopefully inspiring you to love 18V as much as I do!

Click to read more…

Sometimes bands that are signed to tiny labels approach us about coverage on MS. While it might be an insult to these bands and their labels to include them in our “Unsigned & Unholy” column, it’d also seem odd to include them in Readers’ Choice since most of the time it’s band members themselves, or occasionally publicists, that have reached out to us. So without further ado, here are a couple of excellent mostly unknown metal bands on even more unknown labels that recently sent word to the MS Mansion of their crushing wares:

• Cease of Breeding: Deliciously tasty deathgrind that’s incredibly fast and brutal in all the right ways and executed with seeming ease. This is the sound of women and children being mercilessly mutilated en masse; it’s ugly as fuck. Cease of Breeding are signed to Amputated Vein Records, a label that wants you to get into their website so badly that they insist on blocking immediate entrance with not one, not two, but FOUR splash pages you have to click through. Annoying, yes, but fortunately you can listen to Cease of Breeding at their own MySpace page.
• Rorcal: Blackened, epicly slow doom metal from Geneva, Switzerland, signed to the French label Calofror. Stream the 70-minute (!) title track and only track of their new album Heliogabalus on the band’s official website for a taste of the sloooowww, crushing doom. Rorcal so badly want you to know they play their metal slow that the track starts out with what feels like nearly a minute of glacially-paced closed hi-hat hits. But it’s worth the wait because the dissonant doom madness that unfolds afterwards will take you to another plane.

-VN

So, hey, remember how Ozzy Osbourne just made that Best Buy commercial with Justin Bieber, which will be airing on the Super Bowl this coming Sunday?

Well, here’s an interview the Ozz Man gave in December… in other words, just weeks before he filmed the commercial.

Now, once the offer came in for him to be given (presumably) millions of dollars to appear in a commercial with Bieber, do you think he did any research? Or do you think he just took the money and smiled pretty for the cameras?

-AR

Thanks: Etienne Alexandre

Last year (and the year before), I got way too busy with this thing called life and ignored this other thing called metal. As a result, I missed out on a lot of quality music.

I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month. Hopefully.

Here are the January 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

JANUARY ’11 BLEEDERS

These are the keepers. I expect to spin these throughout the year and longer.

Click to read more…

So a new Amon Amarth song, “War of the Gods,” debuted on on Full Metal Jackie’s radio show over the weekend, and, of course, is now on the net. The quality isn’t top-notch ’cause it’s a radio rip, but it is good enough for you to hear that Amon Amarth didn’t fuck up and make some boring pussy shit — as though there were any possibility that they might.

“War of the Gods” will appear on Amon Amarth’s new album, Surtur Rising, which comes out March 29 on Metal Blade.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I got home at about 1 a.m. on Sunday morning and my stomach started to hurt. I thought it was just indigestion, so I took a pill and went to sleep.

Then at 3 a.m., I woke up suddenly with that awful feeling. You know the one – GET TO A MOTHERFUCKING SINK OR TOILET RIGHT NOW.

I ran to my bathroom and I puked.

And then I didn’t stop puking until sometime around noon.

Click to read more…

I don’t think anybody ever really reads these little intros Vince or myself write every week, so I’m gonna dispense with one today, and if that makes you sad, uh, you’re weird.

Here’s how we got our pull this week:

• We debuted new music by Abysmal Dawn, Full Blown Chaos, and Årabrot.
• We spoke to Jeff Paulick from Lazarus A.D. and Ginger from The Wildhearts.
• We checked out new releases from Xasthur, haarp, and Hesper Payne.
• We watched a nerd’s video about seeing Sunn O))).
• We tried to understand why The Big Four are only doing one show in America.
• We debated the merits and demerits of this year’s Mayhem Fest line-up.
• We celebrated the way that metal makes everything better.
• We enjoyed some new All Shall Perish music (kinda).
• We prepared for Zakk Wylde to boldly go where no guitarist has gone before.
• We got even MORE excited for Meek is Murder’s Algorithms.

Next week we’re gonna, like, totally talk about metal n’ stuff. You should come back and read it, it will be fun.

-AR

Banner Designed by Cysquatch

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

Presumably inspired by this week’s announcement of a Big 4 show in the U.S., this week’s question was posed by MetalSucks contributor/author of the Reign in Blood entry into the 33 1/3 book series, D.X. Ferris. Mr. Ferris was even good enough to join us for this edition of QOTW! And his query was:

IF THE BIG FOUR WERE THE BIG EIGHT, WHICH BANDS WOULD BE THE NEXT FOUR IN THE GROUP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing local turks Castevet at perfectly scuzzy diy venue The Acheron in sunny Bushwick, USA, and they did not disappoint.

Fierce, unique, angular, thunderous…..much like my ex-wife, the band tore me a new one and left me wanting much, much more.

Thankfully I have the opportunity for further gluttonous punishment, since Castevet is back at the same venue TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT with Xaddax, Defeatist, and Beantown bruisers Phantom Glue — as far as I know Vince will be joining me in my region of Brooktown for a debaucherous night of fury, frenzy, and homemade fires (pre-game at my place?)…….rumor has it the Tin Man AND the Scarecrow will be at this one too, so you’re pretty much guaranteed a ridiculous time.  Lock up your daughters’ daughters!!

Visit Castevet on EveryoneButYourSpace

Purchase (not illegally download) their debut album Mounds of Ash

-KW

Castevet are on Volume 1 of our digital compilation NYC Sucks. Download it for free here!

Auditions week two
Cities: Milwaukee (Wed), Nashville (Thurs)
Misery index: 9/10
Tyler-o-meter: 7/10

Before Bradley Cooper played hunky douchelords in Wedding Crashers and The Hangover, he stole scenes as Ben, a drama queenly camp counselor in Wet Hot American Summer. In one of the hilarious movie’s hilariousest scenes, Ben warns would-be auditioners for Camp Firewood’s production of Godspell that, and I quote,

I’m only speaking from personal experience, but if you can’t carry a tune, don’t come into the audition environment and waste our time. For serious, okay?

…and let’s just agree that these words should be broadcast on a loop at face-scorching volume to all American Idol hopefuls/delusionals. It’s for their own good. They need to hear it.

Click to read more…

This post will be very concise and to the point: The other day I realized that nearly all metalcore/screamo/post-hardcore videos take place in a grassy field, and I will use this space to list several examples. I don’t know if you have ever tried to make a Wikipedia entry, but it’s really hard because some pedantic nerd/ass hole/etc. will delete it in like two minutes (like when I tried to make a Wiki for wigger slam back in the day), so I feel like MetalSucks is the best venue to document this phenomenon.

[Thanks to tween expert/post-teenager Elise from Reign In Blonde for a couple of these examples]

Click to read more…