Grayceon
All We Destroy
Label – Profound Lore
Release Date – March 1, 2011

To quote a Coalesce album title, there is nothing new under the sun. Wait, shit – that was actually a passage from Ecclesiastes. See what I mean? Forty-odd years since metal’s birth, it’s tough to innovate beyond folding in a genre or influence that you wouldn’t think would work in metal. While I don’t believe that “originality” always trumps craftsmanship and verve in importance, I do miss the early days of my metal listenership, when everything sounded new to my virgin ears (as opposed to my current whore ears).

That’s why I was so stoked to have my face first fucked off by San Francisco’s Grayceon, around the time their self-titled debut came out on Vendlus a few years back. Here was a band that was unique through and through. You don’t find many metal bands with a female lead singer that refuses to play the siren role in some dork’s maiden-rescuing fantasy LARP. You’ll find even fewer bands with a cello as a lead instrument, and even fewer than that which utilize finger-picked electric guitar. Grayceon feature all three. More important than those eyebrow-raising bullet points, Grayceon make a wholly new music, one that grafts medieval cadences and the pastoral textures of early British prog onto a bedrock of supremely headbangable, ornate riffing. And there are no seams. Grayceon make metal, yes (and amazingly heavy metal at that), but they draw equally on …And Justice for All as they do Guillaume de Machaut.

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Much like 2006′s Monochrome, last year’s Helmet album Seeing Eye Dog didn’t do much for this longtime fan. In fact, it sent me back to the band’s older glorious records like Strap It On and Betty, reminiscing on the days when the pioneering quartet reigned in that golden age of American noise rock. So it gave me great pleasure to learn that they too intend to look back on those days, by playing all of 1992′s seminal Meantime LP live on tour.

A full list of dates have yet to be released, but according to BrooklynVegan’s Black Bubblegum the tour will run from March 17th through April 5th. What’s even cooler is that the openers are Saint Vitus and Crowbar. That’s right, folks: this is a PROPER nostalgia tour for headbangers of a certain age.

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The Vince Division of the MS Mansion lost power at around 11pm last night. It was cold, I didn’t sleep much. I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn today for a doctor’s appointment only to sit in the waiting room for an hour and fifteen minutes. I had a giant needle inserted into my spine to inject a corticosteroid, which, for the time being, seems only to be causing more pain. I’m light-headed and woozy from the anesthesia. The bagel I got on the way home blew goats and the coffee is even worse; my mouth is dry and I can’t swallow anything. My back hurts. Power is partially back online but the heat isn’t working yet… did I mention it’s 20 fucking degrees outside, there’s still crazy amounts of snow all over the place and another foot is expected starting tomorrow night? My back hurts. FUCK THE WORLD.

Thankfully there is a new new version of a Devin Townsend song to help rescue this most miserable of days. It’s called “Terminal,” it’s from Ghost (the fourth album in the Devin Townsend Project suite) [Err... oops! It's from Ki. Those drugs must not have worn off yet. See above. -Ed.], and it also happens to be acoustic and very soothing, perfect for my current mental state. Devin’s songwriting and guitar skills are often played up, but his amazing voice goes way underappreciated; if Devin sang me lullabies before beddy-bye time every night I’d be such a happy camper.

Thanks to Chris at Gun Shy Assassin for tipping us off to the existence of this track and helping to jumpstart what will hopefully end up being a turnaround in my day. Listen to Devin rehearsing “Terminal” for his upcoming performance at the NAMM show in Anaheim after the jump:

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See what I did there?

ANYWAY, I’m sitting here listening to said new DevilDriver song (which is available for download here for the low low cost of giving up your e-mail address’ cherry) for the second time now, my thought is basically this: it’s a good song, and I wonder if anyone besides the DevilDriver faithful will care.

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MS photographic whiz Jacqueline Cheng’s latest conquest was Biohazard’s year-ending headline show at New York City’s Best Buy Theater (formerly Nokia) on December 16th with Life of Agony. Jackie specifically requested this one way in advance, and as always she did a bang-up job with her photos. Check ‘em out after the jump.

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DEICIDE. The very mention of the name strikes fear into the hearts of parents, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, and total fucking pussies everywhere. They are one of the most legendary death metal bands of all time — nay, just one of the most legendary metal bands of all time, period. And on February 15, Century Media will unleash Deicide’s latest catastropiece, To Hell With God, upon the world.

MetalSucks is beyond proud to be debuting a brand new track from that album, the eloquently titled “Hang in Agony Until You’re Dead.” No joke, this is one of those days when we have to pinch ourselves — holy shit, we started this website as a joke, and now we’re debuting a Deicide track. And an AWESOME Deicide track, at that — one that’s just as fucked up and wicked as you’ve come to expect from the band fronted by a dude who burned an inverted cross into his forehead, but that displays the band’s ever-evolving skills as songwriters and musicians, too. And Mark Lewis’ production and mixing gives Deicide a crisp, clear sound they’ve never quite achieved before, without sacrificing any of the nut-crushing heaviness we’ve come to expect from this most venerated of bands.

Check out “Hang in Agony Until You’re Dead” below, and then pre-order To Hell With God here. Believe us when we tell you that the entire album is this good. And don’t forget that Deicide kick off a headlining tour in support of Hell the day of its release, with support coming from Belphegor, Neuraxis, Blackguard, and Pathology; you can get dates after the jump.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

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So The Hymn of a Broken Man, the debut album from Times of Grace, doesn’t come out until January 18, but it’s already leaked online. Now, obviously, an album leaking is nothing new in this day and age, but I had no idea about the leak — until vocalist Jesse Leach decided to vent about the leak on Facebook, at which point I read about it on Blabbermouth and Metal Underground. Over at Gun Shy Assassin, where Leach regularly contributes a column, Chris Harris has even posted a story imploring readers not to download the leak. And if you hadn’t already read about the leak from one of these, or any number of other, media sources, well, now you’re reading about it here on MetalSucks.

My point is simply this: I understand that Leach is frustrated that the album leaked. I don’t begrudge him his frustration. But all he’s done now is called attention to the leak, and made who knows how many more people aware of it.

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Electric Wizard’s Black Mass came out in Europe last year — in fact, MetalSucks’ own King of Reviewers, Sammy O’Hagar, has already reviewed the album and included it on his 2010 year end list — but most North Americans won’t have access (or, at least, legal access) to it ’til January 18, when Metal Blade releases the album here.

So depending on your scruples, you may or may not have already heard the title track, which the band has now officially released as a single (below). But if you haven’t heard it yet, well, by all means, you should listen now, ’cause it rocks. (But don’t forget to get stoned first. I mean, you could listen to Electric Wizard sober, but, really, why would you?) And if you have already heard it, well, you might as well listen again, ’cause it rocks. (But don’t forget to get stoned first. I mean, you could listen to Electric Wizard sober, but, really, why would you?)

-AR

I am really, really excited for The Human Romance, the new Darkest Hour album. These dudes are still at the top of their game, it’s their first release for a new label, Peter Wichers produced it, and, well, they’re Darkest Hour! How can you not get excited?

The band described their new album art to Metal Injection back in November, but now they’ve finally released it for all the world to see:

So that’s pretty fuckin’ metal, right?

The Human Romance comes out via eOne on February 22.

Meanwhile, over at Darkest Hour’s old label, Victory, they’re preparing to release a new Emmure album. The record is called Speaker of the Dead and the Emmure guys are nothing if not clever, so the cover, of course, is literally a photo of speakers:

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Well, this is terrible.

Jef Whitehead — perhaps better known in the metal world as “Wrest,” the moniker he’s used while working with bands such as Leviathan (his own project), Lurker of Chalice (also his own project), Sunn O))), Twilight, and Nachtmystium — has been “charged with criminal sexual assault and aggravated domestic battery… allegedly attacking his girlfriend,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

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The Social Network has been winning pretty much every critics’ award available to it, and seems poised to score big at the Oscars, too; and the score has made composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Golden Glob Nominees, and we may yet find them thanking the Academy on February 27.

So it should shock no one to learn that, in a recent interview with The New York Times, Reznor revealed that he and Ross will re-team with The Social Network director David Fincher to score Fincher’s next movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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Horned Almighty
Necro Spirituals
Label – Candlelight
Release date – January 25

Are there times when you just want to strip away the niceties of everyday life, flush away any remote sense of decorum, and turn off your brain? How often do you wish you had time to throw back a multitude of pints, curse out your God-fearing neighbors, and cause undeterred rampant chaos? Sometimes it’s best to revert back to your cavemanic id, and if you need a soundtrack to accompany your civil disobedience, listen no further than veteran Norwegian black thrashers Horned Almighty’s newest collection of instigation, Necro Spirituals.

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Yep yep — it’s time for our 2011 album preview! As we did last year, we won’t be spotlighting all the great releases coming out this year, and we won’t be spotlighting any releases by better-known bands; the way we see it, you already know that groups like Anthrax, Pig Destroyer, and Trivium have new albums coming out this year, and there’s nothing we can really tell you about those releases that either a) we haven’t already told you or b) you couldn’t read in any other number of places.

So instead, various inhabitants of the MetalSucks Mansion will post short write-ups spotlighting albums by bands that, even if they aren’t exactly new or unknown, haven’t yet had their break-out release. We believe these albums could be those break-outs.

Look for these posts throughout the week. We hope you enjoy ‘em!

-Axl, Vince, and and Everyone at MetalSucks

In April of last year we gave the site a pretty big visual overhaul. We (and you, for the most part) were pretty satisfied with it, but there were a few pieces of functionality that didn’t quite work as we intended. So we’ve listened to your feedback and made a few small changes:

• changing from the Featured Stories slider to a smaller but more visible sub-navbar with five “Featured” stories showing at once so the most recent music and video premieres and breaking stories are always up top. the site header has been made significantly smaller in height to accommodate this change.
• converting the two vertical rails in our sidebar to a single, wider column
• highlighting post Authors (and giving them avatars) so you don’t send hate mail to Axl when Sergeant D writes about some emo band
• calling more prominence to our most recent Reviews, Interviews and Blogroll
• bringing back the popular “Subscribe to Comments” feature (this should be up by Monday)
• installing AJAX commenting (finally!) so pages don’t refresh when you post a comment
• making it easier to Tweet or Like a story with inline buttons below each article headline

We know there is an issue with commenting while logged into Facebook; the comments do go through, but you’ll receive an error message. This will be fixed shortly.

As always, we really value your feedback, so tell us what you think of the new design in the comments. Yes, we are corporate whores.

- Vince and Axl

We survived the first week of 2011! WHOO-HOO! Only another forty-nine left ’til our next vacation.

Here’s how we rang in the new year:

• The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks tried to earn his contractually-due incentives.
• We spoke to The Funeral Pyre’s John Strachan.
• We showed mortiferous scorn towards the latest release from Mortiferous Scorn.
• We contemplated the not-so-gentle art of the elephants marching riff.
• We celebrated the soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
• We kvelertranslated Kvelertak’s lyrics.
• We couldn’t believe that Kevin Stewart-Panko is defending Cryptopsy’s The Unspoken King now.
• We watched an Asian girl in her bra and panties rub her vagina against a guitar.
• We learned to stop worrying about SARS and start loving horse meat.
• We did not jizz all over Painted in Exile.

The site will be down for a few hours tonight while we make a few upgrades… yep, MetalSucks just keeps getting better and betterer!

Then next week brings an excellent full-album stream and not one, not two, but THREE song debuts, including a brand new track from one of the most legendary death metal bands of all time. Get excited.

-AR

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

We didn’t solicit a “Question of the Week” from our writers this week, since everyone is still getting back and settled after the holidays. So, since we’ve only had one reader-suggested QOTW ever, this seemed like an ideal time to ask you, the MetalSucks Maniacs:

WHAT SHOULD THE QUESTION OF THE WEEK BE?

Let’s consider this an official thread to suggest questions for now. Axl and Vince will then look through all the suggestions, and assuming anyone asks something better than “What does Eyal Levi’s dick taste like?”, perhaps the MetalSucks Media Mavens will address it in a future column.

And the real Question of the Week will return one week from today… we promise.

Yesterday I attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase “elephants marching riff” by pointing out some reader suggestions that, even if they were cool riffs, did not meet the definition for this particular trope. Today, I am going to highlight some of the reader-suggested riffs that I actually think do meet that definition.

Now, these aren’t ALL the riffs that you guys suggested… I’ve cherry picked some in the interest of time. (For example, a lot of you suggested various riffs by Chimaira and Gojira. Since I already pointed out that both of those bands are really good at writing elephants marching riffs, I’m not going to include any additional examples from those bands here.) So don’t have a conniption if your riff didn’t make the list.

And so…

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Napalm Death have revealed that they’re about to record a “mystery song” which has “nothing to do with the new album” and is “not a cover song.”

Now, calling it a “mystery song” is clearly meant to get people all hot n’ bothered. And while I’m certainly always excited to hear something new from the Godfathers of Grind, since there are really only two kinds of songs in the world — covers and originals — and we know that this won’t be cover, it has to be an original song. Thus, we can pretty much narrow the possibilities of what the band is going to record to the following:

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I predict that 2011 will be even better for unsigned bands than 2010. As technology gets better and cheaper and it becomes easier and easier to get your wares out there, sure, we’ll be flooded with more crap bands than ever before. But the law of percentages should hold firm and we’ll get more great bands too, each no less worthy of success than their signed brethren. And as the power and scope of the Internet grows those bands will have an even greater chance of success without the help of a label.

Here are a few of my favorite picks from bands that have contacted us during the first week of 2011 and the last couple of weeks of 2010.

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Cavalera Conspiracy have released the cover art for their new album, Blunt Force Trauma, and all I can say is: What the fuck is this shit?

And don’t say “Oh, it’s a continuation of the visual style from Inflikted.” Yes, I know it’s a continuation of the visual style from Inflikted, but guess what? That album cover sucked, too.

I know it’s ultimately the music that matters most, and I’m optimistic that the music on Blunt Force Trauma will be cool… but I likes me some cool album art, too.

-AR