This is probably old news to you if you spent the time between Christmas and New Year’s parked in front of your computer like we most certainly did not, but for the rest of you; Cloudkicker — aka Ben Sharp, recipient of many MetalSucks’ writers Best of 2010 lists — has released a new song called “You and Yours.”

As usual, the song is available for free on Cloudkicker’s Bandcamp page. I’m continually impressed by just how prolific Sharp is; an EP, full-length and bonus song all in one year is pretty damn impressive. Of course, his status as an unsigned home-recording musician and self-professed hobbyist in the Internet age makes this all possible, but while it’d be just as easy to turn out piece of crap after piece of crap “You and Yours” is up to the high standards that Cloudkicker fans have come to expect.

Check out “You and Yours” here; if history is any indication, there will be more Cloudkicker music on the way soon. Oh hey, and there’s a sweet new Cloudkicker t-shirt available too.

-VN

“I used to be the singer for Iron Maiden!”

I’ll keep this brief, because it’s the very definition of “self-explanatory.” I mean, it might be one of those “I’m  [insert minority here] so I’m allowed to use the word ‘[insert slanderous term here]‘” things, but my gut tells me it’s really just one of those “I’m not very smart things.”

So. Paul Di’Anno, 2009:

“But you need to take drugs when you’re with Iron Maiden because they’re so fucking boring.”

And Paul Di’Anno, 2010:

“Anyone who slags off on Maiden, I’ll punch them out.”

In conclusion, I very much look forward to watching Paul Di’Anno punch himself out.

-AR

Son of Aurelius, another band that rose to prominence last year, had a busy 2010 — not only did they release the excellent The Farthest Reaches (which came thiiiiissss close to making my year end list and actually did make Dave Mustein’s list), but then they released a BONUS edition of that same album with an EP’s worth of new tracks AND did their first real tour, doing support for no less a band than Cattle Decapitation.

So you might think that these dudes have earned some vacation time — but I guess there’s no rest for the wicked, ’cause the band has a released a too-brief teaser video for the new material they’re working on. Check it out below.

Presumably, this means there will be a new SOA album this year, which would be pretty sweet. Obviously, we’ll post more news as we get it…

-AR

Better late than never… MS photographic whiz Jacqueline Cheng was back at it November 8th at NYC’s Terminal 5 to catch Dimmu Borgir with opening act Enslaved. Check out her epic-as-usual photos after the jump.

Click to read more…

While we were having a life instead of watching terrible metal videos, a clip was released for ”Dimmu Borgir,” which is, of course, a song by Cradle of Filth. I kid, I kid — although it would be just so fantastic if metal bands started naming tunes after one another. ‘Cause not even Living Colour were able to make naming a song after themselves cool, and they’re a way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY better band than Dimmu Borgir.

Luckily, DB made a riveting video for the song, including images of random chicks in Halloween make-up and still shots of t-shirts D&D kids wore in the 90s. So, y’know, we will all totally remember this track in a month.

Oh, wait. That’s not right. Here, try this:

Click to read more…

Solo instrumentalist / one-man band mastermind Keith Merrow — whose praises we’ve sung on MetalSucks many a time — has come out with what by my calculation is the very first metal release of 2011, his new record Awaken the Stone King. Heavy Blog is Heavy was the first site to report on the release, which seemingly came out of nowhere, with a non-time-stamped post on December 31st… but we’re just gonna call a mulligan here and proclaim Stone King the first metal release of 2011.

“Merrow,” the moniker that the album cover would seem to indicate Sir Keith is now going by (a smart move, IMO) — has made Awaken the Stone King available as a $9.99 download on his website, where you can also listen to song samples from the whole record. If you can remember all the way back to December (hard, I know), you’d recall that Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis guest solos on a track; I definitely can’t wait to hear that one (which I believe is “Heart of the Sea Nymph”, track 2), but just from listening to these songs samples I’m already sold on this album… so far, so great, no hot-shot cameo necessary. Keith is a phenomenal musician whose composition and performance skills I can’t give enough praise. I’m sold; downloading now.

All of Merrow’s prior releases are available for free if you wanna catch yourself up his catalogue, which I highly recommend. Donations are welcomed.

-VN

Someone who claims to have heard the new A Life Once Lost album in some form or another assures me it’s awesome, and vocalist Bob Meadows certainly seems confident in it. And based on the three or four new songs I’ve seen the band perform live twice now (once at the MetalSucks/Metal Injection CMJ Showcase, once while opening for Crowbar), I would wager that neither Mr. Meadows nor Mr. Tipster are lying.

Of course, some of you are bound to disagree — and thanks to the magic of the internet, we don’t have to wait for the actual album to come out to start calling each other names and questioning the mental capacity of anyone who disagrees with us. A fan-filmed video of a new song shot at the Syracuse stop of last month’s Stillborn Fest is online now, so everyone can enjoy his or her (Hi, three girls that read this website!) chance to make a premature judgment.

A Life Once Lost’s new album, which as far as I know still has no title, will be out later this year.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

If, like me, you’ve been listening to Kvelertak’s Kvelertak all these many months since its release with abso-fuckin’-lutely no clue what vocalist Erlend Hjelvik was screaming, you may find this interesting: a YouTube (l)user has translated the Norwegian lyrics for the single “Mjød” into English. I double checked the translation with Google Translate, and, at least according to that site, the translation is more or less correct.

So what, pray tell, does Hjelvik have on his mind? Apparently partying and Norse mythology. Which is more or less what you’d expect, I guess.

Here’s the translation, according to whomever the hell this guy is… I’m leaving all the typos and shitty formatting in tact because I’m not about to make editing the writing of YouTubers my job:

Click to read more…

I’m back from my holiday trip to smokey Amsterdam and gay Paris and Axl has dug himself out from the heaps of snow to befall the Mansion and the entire Northeastern U.S. while I was away (suckerz!). While we were taking a break and contemplating our Best of 2010 year-end lists, Sergeant D submitted a bunch of drafts sure to get your blood pumpin’, we received 250+ press releases about new metal in the coming year (fuckin A, people, take a rest!) and we brainstormed new ways to get you to accuse us of knowing nothing about metal… yup, 2011 is gonna be a good year.

Except for this bit of news: Rose Funoral are recording a new album in January. We’d thought these Uno-hating deathcore wankers had kicked the bucket but it turns out that announcement was the result of a MySpace page hack, possibly by a fellow Uno-lover. This is most unfortunate for our ears but likely quite good for you, as we’re now guaranteed of at least one more band to make fun of in 2011. Hooray for bad music!

In the meantime, enjoy this 2011-appropriate Spinal Tap clip posted on Metal Injection. Are Rose Funoral the Spinal Tap of deathcore??

After posting our own year-end lists for 2010, we asked you, oh ye MetalSucks faithful, to tell us what you thought the best metal album of the year was. And while Ihsahn’s After didn’t win by a landslide the way Mastodon’s Crack the Skye did last year, it did, ultimately, get the greatest number of “yays,” beating Kvelertak’s self-titled album by a mere three votes.

We’d like to congratulate MetalSucks readers for once again demonstrating excellent taste. Now we can all stop arguing about what sucked so bad about 2010, and start arguing about what’s going to suck so bad in 2011!

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks