Mark LeVine is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has spent the better part of his life trying to understand and teach about the Middle East and Muslim world.  Part of this has been fueled by his interest in music – Mark is both a performer and fan of heavy metal (and other, lesser genres).  This interest led Mark to write Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, a book that upends the simple “us vs. them” ideas about the Islamic world that tend to lead to things like war and death.  The book’s stories and message have proven so compelling that a CD of the music covered – Flowers in the Desert – and an upcoming documentary continue to tell the story, as does Mark’s website.

I was able to grab an hour of Mark’s time over the phone on Friday.  I peppered him with some questions around a topic that has plagued Americans for over a century – “What the hell is going on over in the Middle East?”

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My bros from the popular easycore/pop band Fight Fair

Spend a few minutes observing the crowd at a metal show, flipping through the pages of Decibel, or reading MetalSucks, and jot down the first words that come to your mind. If you’re like me, your list will contain many of the following phrases: “low self-esteem,” “poor social skills,” “inferiority complex,” “outcasts,” “doughy physique,” “repellent personality” and “virgin.” It’s not just that I’m an ignorant, elitist dick, I also have the support of the world’s leading scientists:

Social animals in a hierarchic community have a certain rank. Three of these ranks have attracted special attention in ethology and been given special names: alpha, beta and omega.

A beta animal is an animal that will act as a new alpha animal if the old alpha dies. In some species of birds, the males pair up in twos when courting, the beta male aiding the alpha male. The beta male does not generally get to mate with the female birds, but if the alpha dies, he takes over the alpha’s females, becoming the new alpha. Omega (usually rendered ω-male) is an antonym used to refer to the lowest caste of the hierarchical society. An omega is subordinated to all others in the community. The omega is commonly the last allowed to eat.

Lettuce be reality, brahs: listening to metal is beta as fuck. But it begs the question: is there a way to be alpha, yet still listen to metal??? In short, the answer is YES, as long as you play your cards right. Because I find it so rewarding to give back to the community, in this post I will give you all the tools you need — details after the break!!

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You might recognize the name Abacinate from the tragic passing of 25-year old vocalist Jason “Plunger” Sica this past September. Please know that this isn’t one of those times when the media hops on a band’s dick following the death of a member, or worse, when the band themselves tries to exploit a death for their gain.

I am writing this article because Abacinate are seriously worthy of the attention of death metal fans worldwide. Proof lies in the form of their excellent new album Genesis, recorded before Sica’s death, which you can now stream in full over at Apochs.net.

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Dr. Acula’s new video, for the song “Who You Gonna Call?”, is notable for one reason. There is a very special moment that occurs at the 1:34 mark:

Yep. Keyboard flip.

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On October 25th of last year, my pal Axl wrote an article panning the band Destrage. Things at the Mansion were busy that day and since Ax and I generally agree on music I took his word for it. Now, three months later, I’m sitting here listening to Destrage‘s The King is Fat and Old and I’m thinking, “Man, Axl really missed the boat on this one.”

I can see why a quick listen might result in Axl’s label of “Re-Swede;” there certainly are a few genre tropes from the Swedish melodeath scene of yore. But the similarities end there. Where Axl pejoratively used the above term, I’d positively refer to Destrage as “Post-Swede.” Seemingly everything on The King is Fat and Old takes what was done before and ups it to the next level; this record is faster, denser, rawer, more ambitious, weirder, even heavier than your father’s Swedish melodeath band.

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I see a pattern developing in 2011; the only albums selling are old ones. It’s quite startling, in fact; it’s already mid-February and the new release machine is kicking into high gear, but the charts are still dominated by best-of compilations and classic albums from the likes of Metallica, Van Halen, Ozzy, Aerosmith (Idol Effect), and Guns N’ Roses and perennially charting butt-rock bands like Godsmack, Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, Kid Rock, Linkin Park, Nickelsuck, etc etc etc. AKA bands that appeal to people mostly over the age of 30. Will 2011 be the year that folks stop purchasing music en masse? It’s too early to tell, but things are not looking good.

In any case, last week saw a variety of solid new releases in the metal world from Full Blown Chaos, Lazarus A.D., Thomas Giles (of BTBAM) and Abysmal Dawn. Not bands you’d expect chart-busting numbers from, but still, heavy hitters in our world. Sadly, only one of those bands was able to crack the Top 100 in the Top Hard Music Charts. We know better than to claim these numbers as a definitive measure of those bands’ popularity, but as long as record labels are the source of funding to launch these bands’ careers — and until there’s a better ranking system that incorporates record sales, merch sales and touring revenue into one chart — sales numbers will matter to some degree.

Let’s look at how last week’s new releases, and a few others, performed on the Soundscan charts.

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Progressive metal sextet Last Chance to Reason – who we’ve been extremely excited about ever since they opened our 2010 CMJ showcase — have finally set a release date of April 12th for their upcoming Prosthetic Records debut album, Level 2. Heavy Blog is Heavy shares in our excitement, and with good reason. If the above album cover and the fact that Level 2 will be packaged with a video game don’t get you excited, you are not nearly nerdy enough to be reading this site, so kindly go back to lifting weights, hanging out at the Peach Pit or whatever the cool kids do these days.

Yes, the album will come with a video game. Heavy Blog describes it as “Metroid-esque,” which I assume means it’s some kind of adventure game with a large world in which you can roam freely and you’ve got to pull off a series of achievements in the right order, each granting you some kind of special access or item required for the next. I’m sure this news will thrill Sergeant D too, though I doubt he’ll get down with Last Chance to Reason’s serious case of progitis.

Two songs from Level 2 are already posted on LCTR’s MySpace page; watch a boner-inducing trailer for the video game after the jump. Apparently a big part of the game involves shooting through walls! [Update: Apparently it's footage from Portal. Do'h! -Ed.]

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Remember Greber, the guitarless grind project that features Fuck the Facts’ Marc Bourgon? Well, the other half of that awesome outfit is drummer Steve Vargas. Prior to hearing Greber, I honestly wasn’t familiar with Vargas or his other band, The Great Sabatini. But I have since checked out said Sabatini, and guess what? They’re great! (I mean, that shouldn’t be a shock, giving the quality of Greber’s work, but it’s not like I’ll ever bitch ’cause I learned about another excellent band.) They’ve got kind of a hardcore vibe to them, but they’re not quite like any other popular band in that genre right now; for example, their song “The Widow’s Son” features gang shouts and harmonized backing vocals (which, at least as far as I can tell, are not synthetic). It’s raw, catchy shit, and you should definitely check it out.

And then, once you’re officially a fan, you can get stoked that the band is about to embark upon a North American tour. I’d be super stoked to check ‘em out live, but, alas, they’re not coming anywhere near us. So you guys should all go and then e-mail us and tell us how it was. Seriously. Someone who goes to one of these shows, please let me know how it was.

The band is also prepping the release of their new 7′, Napoleon Sodomite, which will come out on their own Sludge Hummer imprint. (Great fuckin’ name for a label, by the way.) You can get more info here.

And here are tour dates for ya:

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DevilDriver’s grinfuckingly good new album, Beast, comes out February 22 on Roadrunner — and now we here at MetalSucks are proud to be debuting the band’s first video in support of that effort, for the song “Dead to Rights.” This song somehow gets both heavier and catchier every time we listen to it, as the video is totally appropriate for the music — dark, terrifying, and epic as a motherfucker. Check it out below!

Like was said, the Mark Lewis-produced Beast comes out February 22. You can pre-order it here, or the special edition, which includes two bonus tracks and a live recording of the band’s classic anthem “Grinfucked,” here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

It’s a testament to the dedication (and depravity) of all those involved that a band like Macabre can live through a quarter century of fads, fashions and flat-out shitty bands, yet still manage to continually outdo themselves at their own game. Much like those who brought us all those wonderfully campy and gory slasher flicks in the 80’s, Macabre have built their career on the backs of serial killers, knife wielding maniacs and blood-thirsty bastards from all walks of life. They don’t call it ‘murder metal’ for nothing, after all.

The band’s newest opus, and first proper full-length since 2003’s Murder Metal, is as off-the-wall as anything they’ve produced to date. Every bit the raucous, gore-grind slab of still-quivering meat fans have come to expect from the band, Grim Scary Tales is another one in the win column for this now legendary trio. Thankfully, we live in a society that provides no shortage of lyrical fodder for a band that specialized in penning odes to history’s most beloved killers and this particular tome is chock-full of favorites. Like a kick-ass pack of serial killer trading cards (featuring arsenic-laced bubblegum!), Grim Scary Tales digs deep into the annals of true crime history for inspiration. Illustrious characters like Lizzy Borden, Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, to name a few, are brought to life like never before on this album.

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That’s right… he’s back! Oderus Urungus, the greatest singer in the history of what this putrid, worthless planet calls “metal,” is back and ready to answer your questions for another round of “Ask Oderus!!!” So leave your query for Lord Urungus in the comments section below. Oderus will pick his favorites and answer them right here on MetalSucks in the not-too-distant future. No question is too big or too small, too gross or too taboo, too serious or too silly, so ask away!

And don’t forget that Gwar’s new album, Gwar’s Bloody Pit of Horror, is out now on Metal Blade. You can get Gwar tour dates n’ more news n’ shit right here.

Do you guys know Electric Six? I guess they fall into the category of ironic hipster indie douche band, but they made at least one album, 2003′s Fire, that I thought was pretty good — and, certainly, the videos they made in support of that album are excellent.

Don’t turn this off before the 1:22 mark

Well, Electric Six’s new album is called Zodiac, and as you may have heard, the signs of the Zodiac recently changed — in other words, your sign may not be what you thought it was. (This is assuming you care about any of this shit. I don’t pay it much mind, although it can be fun to think about when trying to self-induce a coma.) And so Electric Six, those merry pranksters, have decided to have a little fun with their fans. From their official website:

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I have been to practically every South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) since the second one way back in the ’80s. I love the atmosphere of the conference, from its much smaller and humbler days back then, to its over-blown monstrous corporate whoredom current-filled state. But as I have noted here in the past, SXSW has almost always been severely lacking in official heavy metal-friendly sanctioned showcases. If you ever wanted to get your real metal fix at SXSW, you usually had to depend on the non-sanctioned day parties that are thrown around town concurrently with the festival.

Not this year!

I can honestly say that the organizers of SXSW have finally woken up to the beast that is heavy metal and have gone out of their way to cater to our needs. Kudos! Huzzahs! and Hurrahs! to them.

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I have no idea how to pronounce “Ypres,” so for the time being I’m just going to refer to Canadian dark metallers Woods of Ypres as Woods of Awesome, ’cause duh, I think they’re pretty great. Woods of Awesome combine dark, plodding doom with a sense of melancholy — yow, piano! Peter Steele-esque ball-dropping vocals! — that pulls at your heart-strings in all the right ways without sacrificing a shred of heaviness. The Type O Negative influence is definitely undeniable, although by no means are Woods of Awesome derivative; think Type O at their darkiest, doomiest, slowest and saddest. They’re without a doubt one of the most interesting bands Earache has signed in… in… quite some time, that’s for sure.

Earache will reissue Woods IV: The Green Album on March 22nd to let the broader metal world know what Woods of Awesome are all about. The album is full of great tunes, although at nearly 80 minutes it will surely test your patience as it did mine. I’m most excited, though, to hear what the band does with its follow-up Woods V, supposedly already in the can and slated for release later in the year.

Check out the video for “I Was Buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetary” exclusively at The Deciblog. It’s my favorite track from the album and the video is appropriately creepy.

-VN

Shining’s V-Halmstad is over the top, even for black metal. But there’s a point where going over the top transcends tone-deaf cheesiness and ridiculousness and becomes admirable — and even enjoyable — for its complete and total lack of self-awareness and self-consciousness; it goes past the train wreck factor and manages to loop back around to become pleasing and exciting. Like Con Air — a movie so absurd in its construct and execution that its fetish for doing everything to the max makes it impossible not to enjoy — V-Halmstad takes a particularly histrionic subgenre — suicidal black metal — and plays every element to its most hyperbolic extreme. In theory, it’s a package that should be hilariously pathetic. In fact, it’s so brazenly ridiculous that it’s better than most albums of its kind. The feel-good suicidal black metal album.

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Apologies for the blatant self-promotion, but I think this is something MS readers will actually be stoked on: I am starting a BURZUM clothing line! It’s been a crazy six months or so of negotiating with Varg’s people, designing the product, coordinating with all our vendors in Asia (did you know they take Chinese New Year off for like two entire weeks?!), but we are only a few months away from launch! The clothing line will be available this spring at Hot Topic, Spencer’s Gifts, and Journeys, but we wanted to give you a sneak preview of some of the most exciting SKUs.

Think of it as somewhat of a re-imagining of the BURZUM brand — a fresh update that makes the brand relevant to the new generation of consumers. With metal more popular than ever, and bands like Suiside Silence and Bring Me The Horizon moving massive quantities of merch, we figured that it was time to for BURZUM to get the recognition they deserve for all the amazing music (and ideas) they’ve produced over the years. We’d like to think that these items breathe new life into the brand, while never losing sight of the brand’s heritage. But enough about us — check out this exclusive sneak preview and let us know what you think!

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Congrats to readers Doug Klein Jr., Aldon Miller, Jacob Archuleta, Rob Holt, and Josh Link! They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Rogers Met an Iranian. For their troubles, they each win a bottle of Metalliance Hot Sauce, the new sauce from GiddyUp! Sauces created to celebrate the Metalliance Tour Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, and The Atlast Moth. Enjoy the hot sauce, fellas, I just know it’s gonna rip you a new one. And don’t forget that you can buy tickets to the Metalliance Tour, including special VIP packages, here.

This week I am once again giving away some extra goodies we have laying around the Mansion, because holy shit do we have a lot of awesome stuff just laying around collecting dust, and I’d rather one of you cats be enjoy than it just sit on our shelf. So, once again, I’ll e-mail the winner and give him or her a list of whatever CDs and/or DVDs we happen to have here at the Mansion, and said winner can take his or her pick of any THREE items.

All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select one winner and announce his or her name next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by Richard Liew, and it is re-goddamn-diculous. So at least we know whoever wins next week will have earned that shit.

-AR

Total Fucking Destruction — a.k.a. Rich Hoak from Brutal Truth’s other band — have a new album, Hater, coming out next month (that’s the cover art above, which I think is making reference to at least two different Kubrick films, in addition to world events), and Noisecreep is streaming a new track. It’s called “Dudehammer.” I’d never heard the phrase “dudehammer” before, but the Urban Dictionary tells me its a euphemism for “cock.”

Wow. That might be the best euphemism for a penis I’ve ever heard. And it makes the song’s chorus — “DUDE! HAMMER! IN YOUR FACE!” — 110% MORE awesome. This is a brutal grind song about waving your schlong in someone’s grill. How totally sexcellent. As Vince would say, A++++ WDBWA.

Listen to the track here. Translation Loss will release Hater on February 15.

-AR

[To chronicle their current tour -- the U.S. portion of which features 3 Inches of Blood, Holy Grail and System Divide in support -- Swiss folk metallers Eluveitie will be writing an exclusive tour blog for MetalSucks. Week one of the tour took them through Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba, Brazil before departing to New York to begin the U.S. portion. -Ed.]

“Well this is a great start.” One week before our departure to Brazil we find out our monitor technician and dear friend Gump’s visa has been denied… Why do we stay calm during the outbreak of a small catastrophe? Because if nothing would ever happen and things would go swimmingly we wouldn’t be Eluveitie. One day before our departure we find a replacement, Roland “Rolli” Heuberger. Thanks, man!

Usually our travel days are made up of events that really are worth mentioning to the world, but this time we’re truly disappointed. Chrigel doesn’t even stumble through security in a completely intoxicated condition with a bread knife or drill in his hand luggage. All he does is fall off a chair in Starbucks after struggling not to pass out for 30 minutes. Last time he performed a stunt like this, that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland (yeah I’m not just gonna copy/paste whatever that thing is called and pretend I knew that) erupted. We’re dead serious.

So after 12 hours on a plane we’re finally in Brazil! Sao Paulo. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s summer. We just came from fucking snow-covered frostbitten winter wonderland and we can’t even cure our heat-shocks in the hotel because we’ve got a tight schedule filled with interviews and an acoustic set on national TV. But at least we don’t make fools of ourselves for once. Or maybe just a tiny bit.

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If you were one of the lucky bastards that got into last year’s This Is Hardcore fest in Philly, you may have caught a set from Homicidal, a New York/New Jersey based act. I recently learned that Eulogy Recordings snapped them up and, given that the indie label is home to such aggressive acts as Donnybrook and Ender, it appears they’ll fit right in.

The above video is for “Tear You Apart,” a cut from their forthcoming Eulogy debut State of Mind. The lyrics reference the album’s title, with the vocalist shouting about a “homicidal state of mind” over metallic hardcore riffage. This is my kinda NYHC, furious and threatening. No word on a release date yet, but this is a perfect example of an album that promises to fuck some faces off in 2011.

-GS