Earache Records continues to bewilder. While becoming a pioneering and leading label in the digital space over the past year+, the 25+ year-old label’s band roster continues to be firmly rooted in the past.
Maybe you appreciate Scion for offering up free, top-notch grindcore and curating mouthwatering festivals at no cost. Or maybe, like The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley and Wolves in the Throne Room’s Aaron Weaver, you think Scion is an instrument of the devil. Whichever side you butter your bread, you gotta admit that somebody at Scion has magnificent taste.
Exhibit Q: This weekend, Scion is hosting shows with Trap Them, Black Breath and Mammoth Grinder in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Trap Them have an insanely combustible live show, and even the formerly unimpressed Vince digs the song they just posted for free free download. Black Breath made a ton of people’s Top 10 lists last year with their Southern Lord debut Heavy Breathing, and Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges touted a spontaneous L.A. gig by the band as the best metal show he saw in 2010. No clue what Mammoth Grinder are like live, but their 2009 Relapse debut Extinction of Humanity is a whole mess of crusty, uncomplicated deathy fun.
You can RSVP for the Chicago show (January 8th) or Los Angeles show (January 9th) right here. Do it NOW, as this shit tends to fill up quick and pack in tight.
-SR
From Classic Rock:
“Metallica still have the biggest selling album of the Soundscan era in America.
“Since 1991, when the Soundscan system was introduced to provide more accurate information on record sales, The Black Album has sold 15,620,000 copies.”
Gaza played the Cake Shop here in NYC back in November (as part of a show put on by our homies at 1000 Knives and Brooklyn Vegan), and the typically reliable Metal Injection was there to capture all the madness on video. And, what a stroke of luck!, the band unveiled a new, still-untitled song at the gig. Check it out below:
Presumably, this means we’re getting a new Gaza album this year, and presumably, that album will come out Black Market Activities like their last one did. But don’t quote me on any of that.
Metal Injection also has a bunch more live footage of Gaza from this same gig; you can check that shit out here.
-AR
Reader Hetal Bhatt sent us a link amash-up of System of a Down’s “Toxicity” and Coldplay’s “Fix You,” asserting that “It sounds like a catastrophe on paper, but the shit really works!” And, hey, Hetal is right! This is actually pretty cool. Even SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian digs it. Kind of amazing, ’cause I would have assumed that this would just suck whale cocks.
The dude who made the track (who appears to be all of eleven years old) isn’t currently allowing embeds, but you can check it out here… pretty rad stuff.
-AR
In between the gruesome, heartless whale slaughterers of the world and the earth’s largest mammals stands one thing: Gojira.
The boat.
In November we told you that Sea Shepherd had named one of their vessels after our favorite metallica Frenchmen, but with a new season of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars around the corner we’ll soon get to see her in action. Check out the trailer for Season 4 sent in by longtime MS supporter Shinaain:
Soon enough we’ll have a brand new EP by Gojira — the band — the proceeds of which will be donated to Sea Shepherd. Cannot wait.
Now get to arguing in the comments section about how we’re all crazy environmentalist hippie pinko lefties just like you always do.
-VN
Axl was hangin’ out in the Vince Division of the Mansion yesterday afternoon, working alongside me like the butt buddies that we are. The soundtrack included Dawnbringer, which I was definitely late to the game on but Axl named as his #5 favorite album of 2011, and the new Keith Merrow joint Awaken the Stone King. Axl was suitably impressed by Merrow’s latest offering which should bode well for those of you who take any praise I heap upon talented instrumentalists with a grain of salt.
In any case, reader Neil Nalley sent us this version of an older Merrow track called “The Arrival” with vocals by the singer of Nancial, a band from Moscow. This guy is a pretty ok vocalist and this version’s aight, but why the need to ruin a perfectly good instrumental song by dumbing it down with lame metal vox?? Vocals in metal are the equivalent of putting heaps of sugar in a quality cup of coffee, there for the sole enjoyment of the lowest common denominator. Who the fuck needs them anymore? Haven’t we outgrown this crap? To hell with vocals, I say.
Whoops! Wrong video. Try this:
Hoo-ray! It’s the first cinemetal round-up of 2011! Let’s see who made me pissy today.
First up we have “Hammer of the North,” from Grand Magus. It’s just a performance clip, but as far as performance clips (or “perflips,” as they’re known in the biz) go, it’s not bad — I mean, the song is catchy, which helps, and the footage is basically well shot, and clearly at least a little bit of thought went into the editing (all the cuts are on drum beats), so that’s good. In fact, I almost wish they’d taken out all the shit with the forest and the wolf at the beginning, because I kept thinking it was gonna come back and be important, but it doesn’t come back ’til the end, by which point its placement seems as arbitrary as at the start. So as it stands, it almost seems like the video was supposed to be something else, or maybe they didn’t have confidence in the video — “Oh, this sucks, we’d better throw a random shot of a wolf in there somewhere.”
Former White Zombie bassist/feminist pioneer Sean Yseult on the current status of her relationship with Rob Zombie:
“As soon as you’re not in his world, you’re out of his world.”
Yep, Sean, that’s pretty much how it works! As soon as you’re not in something, you’re out of it. That’s why the words “in” and “out” are considered to be antonyms. Welcome to the English language. You’re gonna love it!
-AR
[via]
Seems like a while since we’ve posted a photo and rewarded your asinine, immature comments with sweet metal bounty, no? Our last photo caption contest was all the way back on December 17th, in which we offered a signed copy of Atheist’s tech-metal comeback album Jupiter. But we have no intention of stopping the fun, and we’ve got even biggerer and even badasserer prizes in store for 2011. Here’s the winning caption for our last contest of ’10:
Nicely done. The funniest caption actually came courtesy of Sean Goff, but Sean didn’t follow directions by including his email address since he was logged in via Facebook. Tough titties for you, Sean, and nice titties for metallicbrian.
These week we’re giving away two copies of The Ocean’s Heliocentric, which comes in a silver foil-stamped digipak with full-color tarot cards for each song on the album and is generally one of the prettiest packages I saw in all of 2010. Alls ya gotta do is come up with the funniest caption to the below photo (sent in by reader Anthony Showalter) and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect)!
Here at MetalSucks we like to throw a bone to unsigned bands as often as possible, since we know it’s a continual struggle to get the word out there. Our Unsigned and Unholy and Readers’ Choice columns hopefully go towards proving that we care about the little guys too.
The Blast Beat Network — the agency that sells banner ads on behalf of MetalSucks, Metal Injection, Decibel, MetalUnderground.com, MetalInsider.net and a bunch of other awesome metal sites — would like to extend that offer to include banner ads as well. For a limited time, they’re offering unsigned bands the opportunity to have ads on all the sites in The Blast Beat Network at a special unsigned band discount that’s less than what the record labels pay!
For $100, your 728×90 leaderboard ad (up top of the site) will be shown 50,000 times across the network.
To take advantage of this special deal, follow these instructions: Step 1) Send a payment of $100 to paypal [at] blastbeatnetwork [dot] com. Step 2) Email your banner — 728×90 pixels, jpg or gif only, maximum of 70k file size — to info [at] blastbeatnetwork [dot] com, along with the URL you’d like the banner to point to (your band’s MySpace page, Bandcamp, store, etc). That’s it! You’ll receive a confirmation email once the campaign is live.
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…
If you could pick one band that should have action figures, it’s gotta be Watain, right? And I don’t mean those creepy roided-out Todd McFarlane things that are at, like, Spencer’s and Suncoast for fat suburban virgins. Original Star Wars-size is sufficient… although that makes me think #1 should be Immortal, since a Blashyrkh playset would be cooler than the Death Star and Unicron combined. (The actual Death Star playset being total bullshit, of course.)
I never considered Electric Wizard for this dubious, infantilizing honor, but after reading Bennett’s cover story on them, they absolutely qualify as a fuck yeah. Not when they were a trio, but today, seeing as how they’re comprised of a married couple, another dude who the better half of said couple “can’t imagine… in my wildest dreams doing an interview anywhere, let alone on the phone,” and another dude with a full facial tat, which recalls either, well, you know or Fuckface Enigma from the Jim Rose Circus (who my friend and I randomly saw in a downtown Cleveland mall 15 years ago, which prompted him to turn to his dad and remark, completely nonplussed, “Hey… Fuckface Enigma.”) Anyway, whether you’re a Dopethrone head or just catching up/dropping out via Witchcult Today and Black Masses — and come on, it’s all the same (amazing) song — you’ll see these delightful degenerates as collectible plastic after reading the piece, too.
Further incentive: the second-ever Decibel Flexi Series entry — this time a live version of 2008’s “The Watcher” from the mighty Enslaved — as well as the worst cover typo we’ve ever let slip by (other than “Queens of the Stone Age: The Coolest Band of the Year Every Year”). That said, Josh Homme would definitely make a sweet-ass action figure. He pretty much dresses like Han Solo already. Any other suggestions?
-AB
The February 2011 issue of Decibel comes with a fully movable kung fu grip, but the only way to ensure you get one of them there flexi discs every month is to get a full subscription!
So Baz was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night (Fallon is a known hair metal enthusiast), providing vocals for a bit about having a power ballad for the Oregon Ducks. (In case you’re sportarded like I am, that’s a college football team.) And while it’s immediately better than that song Sevendust did for the Atlanta Falcons ’cause it’s intentionally funny, and is probably better than anything else Bach has done in some time for the same reason, I still think the gag gets old fast. But whatever keeps Sebitchin from biting people, I guess.
-AR
Thanks: metalgf
So let’s say you need to make a music video but you don’t have a very big budget — how can you spice your clip up so it’s not just another performance vid?
A Day To Remember came up with a pretty clever solution: they got all their friends to be in the video, taking turns looking right into the camera and lip synching along for a few moments. Oddly enough, a lot of those friends are metal royalty — including The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk, Trivium’s Matt Heafy, As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis, The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett, and whomever is playing Andrew WK this week — despite the fact that A Day to Remember aren’t metal at all.
This was a smart move if you ask me, ’cause otherwise a misanthropic metal d00d such as myself probably never would have watched the video, let alone actually kinda-almost smiled. It looks like everyone is having fun, and fun begets more fun, y’know?
-AR
[via Metal Injection]
Just because Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s J. Randall and I don’t see eye to eye on certain issues doesn’t lessen my respect for the man as an artist — and his latest endeavor is definitely worth checking out. He’s launched his own label, Grindcore Karaoke, and is giving away the imprint’s inaugural release, Wadge’s Grindcore Lu’au, away for free download.
Whenever possible, I deflect from any discussion of the huge number of Steel Panther gigs I’ve attended. But today I bring this disturbing, sexual panic-inducing point to the fore because it’s important that, until December, none of those shows took place outside of West Hollywood. At the Sunset Strip weekly, the set is blockbuster covers, a few Steel Panther originals, marathons of ribald stage banter, and band-on-fan ridicule. Awesome, right? Well, I attended my first non-L.A. show in December, and totally had my mind freaked! The whole experience was backwards.
The Crud Wizard has quickly become of my favorite blogs to read, not just because it’s fun to read a 9 year-old’s opinions of metal but also because of the candor, simplicity and purity with which it’s done. Sure, the kid is the son of Agalloch / Ludicra drummer Aesop Dekker, but Dekker assured the MS readership in a comment here that The Crud Wizard’s (his mommy and daddy call him Ezra) musical interests and blog posts about them are entirely his own. And having followed the blog for several months now, I totally believe it.
So let’s see what Crud Wizard has to say about Metallica’s Master of Puppets:
This is no album for wimps. This is a great album. My favorite part of this is the lyrics ” the weak are ripped and torn away…” That’s awesome. What makes it awesome is how James Hetfield sings it. It is also about batteries. Interesting… The subject of drug corruption runs deep in ” Master of Puppets.” It is an interesting topic as well as batteries.
Amen. Crud Wizard also gets deep with an H.P. Lovecraft reference and ponders whether Metallica are or are not death metal. Sheesh… when I was 9 I doubt I even knew what death metal was, and I definitely didn’t know who H.P. Lovecraft was. Read the full post here.
-VN
Download Master Of Puppets
Reader Dan Wolfson maxin’ and relaxin’ at home
Early this week I kinda ripped on reader Dan Wolfson for making me listen to Painted in Exile; I may have been a little rude, but in my defense, Dan called me us “idiots” and “fools,” and I’m pretty grumpy even when someone is nice to me.
But Dan e-mailed me later that very same day to make nice and “redeem” (his word, not mine) himself. So I thought we might all check out these bands together, and see if there’s not anything that washes the taste of Painted in Yucky out of my mouth.
Colin Marston of Behold… The Arctopus, Krallice, Gorguts and Dysrhythmia is one of those incredibly talented dudes who does it all and makes my jealousy bones fill with tension. Aside from being an incredibly accomplished guitarist and bassist and a member of FOUR (!) sweet bands that are all active, he runs his own studio in Queens, NY where he and his Newsted have recorded, produced and mixed countless metal albums. Whatever assclown is on the cover of your favorite guitar magazine this month, he probably isn’t half as talented and versatile as Marston.
The Deciblog has premiered a video of Marston taking Scion A/V on a tour through his studio, and since we delight in this kind of nerdery and know you will too we figure it’s highly worthy of a re-post. Colin talks about his guitars (look at that Warr!), his amp setup, how his studio is set up and his thoughts on the digital vs. analog recording debate. I recommend full-screening this video for maximum dorkery.
-VN
I was elated to see all the recommendations for good elephants marching riffs following my love letter to that conceit earlier this week. I was a little less elated to discover that there’s almost as much confusion over what qualifies as an elephants marching riff as is there over what qualifies as a taco riff.
For example, here are some excellent riffs by some excellent bands that some of you excellently suggested but which are, rather unexcellently, not elephants marching riffs:
