When we first started to discuss doing the release for Meek is Murder’s upcoming Algorithms with the band, we suggested they get creative and come up with some kind of cool limited edition compact disc to do in conjunction with the mostly-digital offering.

Well, we had no idea how much creativity and work they’d put into it.

The cover art for each CD is handmade. Instead of signing each disc, each member of the band is putting his actual fingerprint on it. And, oh yeah, drummer Frank Godla is spraying them all with his own personal cologne. Nope, I’m not kidding. Here, check out this video about the making of the CDs:

There’s only 50 of these bad boys being made, so if you want one, get on that ASAP. You can pre-order the CDs, a digital download, or some combination thereof with one of two awesome t-shirt designs, right here. We’re releasing Algorithms on March 22; if you order the CD or a t-shirt, please be aware that it will take 7-14 days after the release date to arrive.

But wait, there’s more! You already know that Meek is Murder (along with Kvelertak, Havok, Red Fang, and Wormrot!!!) are playing South by South Death, the 100% free SXSW day party we’re doing with NARM and Roxwel in association with Metal Insider, right? Well did you know that they’re actually doing a full tour in the days leading up to that show? It’s true! Check out a tour poster and complete itinerary, after the jump. You really, really do not wanna miss these dudes live.

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(Thumbs up for proficient mediocrity!)

Are you a fan of Insomnium, Protest the Hero, Devin Townsend or Cradle of Filth? Well then, read on! We’ve found a few unsigned bands we think you’ll like.
Click to read more…

[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. Read about the Brazilian tour in the Week 1 Tour Blog, and arriving in America and Canada in Week 2. Week 3 follows, in which Eluveitie learn to enjoy the old American West and encounter zombies in Vancouver. -Ed.]

Chicago. We had more than enough rest and we can’t wait to actually DO something again. Offdays are useless crap. After the traditional morning excursion to Starbucks we can face the day!

Nice location, good sound, great restaurant and a reasonable amount of fans making it to the show, so nothing to complain about at all. Jenna is the lucky contest winner (over a couple of weeks fans could record videos of them covering “Thousandfold” and we chose the winners), so she will be on stage with us tonight to play her “Flying V” violin (with fuckin frets, how weird is that?!).

And FINALLY we get our after-show party!

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In case you don’t know, ex-Warrant vocalist is a horrible, horrible lush — there have been stories going around for literally YEARS now about him stumbling off-stage mid-performance to make his way to the bar, because he literally can’t wait for the show to be over and/or someone to bring him a drink on stage to get inebriated, and one time I even heard about him vomiting in the crowd. And a couple of days ago, Metal Sludge reported that the dude was about to cancel all his solo tour dates due to his drinking problems, and now it looks like they called that one correctly. I mean, no official reason for the tour being called off, but his website administrator did say in a statement that “I do not wish to elaborate [on the reasons for the cancellation], but I do ask for your prayers and thoughts to be with Jani and his family at this time.” Might as well have just said “Jani’s too drunk too tour,” y’know?

Luckily, Jani won’t go dry just because he’s too fucked-up to do his job: Bring Back Glam alerted us to existence of the below television ad for Gain laundry detergent, which features the Warrant hit “Heaven.” Presumably licensing that tune cost a pretty penny. So if you were worried about Jani finally having to sober up, due to lack of funds if not any actual desire to stop being a total mess, well, fret not!

The commercial gets bonus points for using the word “gooder.” And for not being the most embarrassing T.V. ad with which Warrant has been associated.

-AR

You’ll probably never convince me that marching bands are cool, but I guess if you gotta be in one, you might as well play something awesome (as opposed to, like, Sousa or whatever). So I found this video of The George Mason University band, The Green Machine, rehearsing Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” to be pretty entertaining — not least of all because of how into it all the musicians seem to be. I mean, just keep watching that chick in the red shirt near the front — she is rocking out, yo!

I do have to wonder at what event the band is gonna play this though; would the rest of the student body be pissed if they sang “Those who died are justified/ For wearing the badge” at, like, homecoming or whatever?

-AR

[via Badass Digest]

A member of a famous metal band who probably wishes to remain anonymous has said to me on more than one occasion that he believes Soilwork are a good live band, but not a great live band, and that they were only ever great [in the U.S.] one time: Ozzfest 2005. I was really surprised to hear him put it in these terms, because I’d had the exact same thoughts with regards to Ozzfest 2005… they were so, so, so tight. Not sure if it was the lineup at the time, the sound engineer, having practiced a lot beforehand, being psyched about the tour, playing outdoors or what… but they just sounded absolutely phenomenal, at least on the date I saw them in New Jersey. Since then, seeing Soilwork live has always been slightly anti-climactic mainly because the guitars seem muddy / lack definition, but it’s always fun nonetheless because I’m a total fanboy of their albums.

Anyway, all that doesn’t have much to do with anything other than that I thought of it because the new video for Soilwork’s “Let This River Flow” is a live clip. Honestly, despite how much we hyped it up pre-release, I’d kinda forgotten that Soilwork put out a new record last year, and that said record -- The Panic Broadcast – was pretty darn good. This was not one of my favorite songs from that record, though; no, I have nothing against Soilwork ballads (“Song of the Damned” anyone???), I just don’t happen to really like this song. Anyway, here it go:

-VN

A quick catch-up sesh for anyone who’s not a DT fanboy like me: YtseJam Records is Dream Theater’s own label imprint they’ve been using for years to release official bootlegs of live recordings. “YtseJam” is “Majesty” backwards; again, for the non-fanboys, Majesty was their original band name.

OK, now onto the drama! A fan recently asked via Mike Portnoy’s official message board what would become of YtseJam now that Mike’s out of the DT picture. Fair question, right? Portnoy handled most of the business for pretty much every aspect of DT, so it would stand to reason that YtseJam would be effected by his departure. Portnoy — who has an astonishing 1394 posts on his own message board (!!) — took to answering the question himself. It’s the 7th post down at this link. Quote:

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“Somebody get me a goddman second band!!!”

Paul Romanko is now the only member of Shadows Fall who doesn’t have a side project — or, if he does, he hasn’t gone public with it yet. What’s that about? I’m sure he has no recollection of this whatsoever, but back in my lowly fanboy days, before I was a super-cool blahger d00d, I had beers with Romanko, and he was a totally cool guy! And he had no B.O. problems that I noticed. So how come no one wants to play with him? Let him in the sandbox, damn it!

While you ponder that completely meaningless question (I mean for all I know the dude is just enjoying his time off and has no desire to be in a second band), feel free to head over to Noisecreep and check out the song “Shades of Grey,” the new song from Dead of Night — a.k.a. the side project of Shads’ guitarists Matt Bachand and Jon Donais (ex-Unearth skinsman Derek Kerswill plays drums, making this somewhat of a NWOAHM supergroup).

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Did you know that Car Bomb vocalist Michael Dafferner’s day job is working as a satellite engineer? No, no I did not. Well, did you know that he also directed a documentary, [why_you_do_this], about how difficult and shitty it is to be a touring metal musician? No, no I did not know that, either. Yeah, well, neither did I, but apparently both facts are true.

[why_you_do_this] (it’s a statement, not a question asked by an immigrant) is going to make its premiere next week at the Queens World Film Festival (as in a world film festival which takes place in Queens, not a film festival which takes place on a world full of royal women), and even though I didn’t know about it until like ten seconds ago, it look pretty interesting — Dafferner interviewed all kinds of cool people, like Richard Christy, Randy Blythe, Joe Duplantier, and Ben Falgoust, all about the very simple question posed by the title. Or, perhaps a little less succinctly, this move could be called Holy Shit There is No Money to be Made in Metal and Touring Fucking Sucks, Why the Fucking Fuck Do You Keep Subjecting Yourself to this Crap? Which is a question every aspiring metal musician should ask him or herself, since the chances of making a living at playing music are only slightly better than the chances that you’ll be struck by lightning while receiving a wristie from Marilyn Monroe.

ANYWAY, the movie premieres at the aforementioned film festival on Friday, March 4, at 7:00pm EST at The Renaissance Auditorium (81^st Street & 37^th Ave) in Jackson Heights, NY. You can get more details, as well as tickets, here; you can also watch the trailer here and a clip here (they’re not embeddable… I guess they’re trying to keep the film a secret). I don’t think I can make it ’cause I’ll be on an airplane just hours prior, but if anyone goes, please let me know how it is. Hopefully this thing will get a DVD release or something soon so the rest of us can check it out.

Also, the press release says that Car Bomb are working on new music. That’s what they told me in 2008, too, but maybe we’ll actually get a new album before I turn eighty.

-AR

Last month Vince rightly sang Moonsorrow’s praises and told y’all to get excited about their new album, Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa, which the always-reliable scholars at Wikipedia tell me means “As shadows we walk in the land of the dead.” Maybe it loses something in translation.

ANYWAY, the album is now streaming in full right here. A team of MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys are doing some very loud construction in the Rosenberg Wing this morning, which means I can’t listen to it, but based on what we’ve already heard, I’m gonna go out on a limb and tell you it’s good. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments section… as though any of you ever needed permission to tell me I’m wrong about something.

Spinefarm will release Title Too Long and Foreign to Keep Typing on February 21 in Finland, and a month later in the UK, with no planned North American release as of yet… because apparently these people didn’t read Vince’s article on the importance of worldwide day-and-date releases in 2011.

-AR

So Revolver are doing their Golden Gods awards for the third year in a row on April 20 in L.A. (read our coverage from previous years here, here, here, and here) and the nominees have been announced.

Now, the first thing you will notice is that the nominees are more or less fairly ridiculous. For example, if these awards are to be believed, than Disturbed’s Dan Donegan is a better guitarist than Misha Mansoor, and Times of Grace (which is really just Killswitch Engage), We Are the Fallen (which is really just Evanescence), and The Damned Things (which is a supergroup) are all new bands.

That being said… I do not get particularly offended by these nominations the way I do with the Grammys. I think that’s because I know there are people who take the Grammys seriously, and think those awards actually mean something, whereas the only people who pay attention to the Golden Gods are already metal fans who either a) know that this is really just an excuse to throw an awesome party and have a big event promoting metal as a genre, or b) are eleven years old.

So check out the noms after the jump, and try not to get your panties in a twist. You should also be aware that Alice Cooper, Duff McKagan, DevilDriver, Asking Alexadria, Volbeat, and Fozzy are all performing, and that Motley Crue are getting the Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award. (Their lifetime achievement: still being alive.)

So, about those nominees…

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Our most recent childish contest saw us offering two prize packs, each containing Fleshwrought’s Dementia Dyslexia and Allegaeon’s Fragments of Form and Function on CD, courtesy of Metal Blade Records. And the winners for this week’s “Most Completely Immature Caption to an Equally Immature Photo” contest are:

• M’Kay: “It always costs extra for mustard, always.”
• Etzell: “The first annual Gwarbecue was a catastrophic failure.”

Nice work kids. This week we’re giving away two copies of Rotten Sound‘s new one Cursed, which isn’t even out yet but you can pre-order here. Like you even need instructions… come up with the funniest captions to the below photo (sent in by reader Ahmet Saracoglu… and yes, that’s his cat!) and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect).

Veteran touring musicians are able to tune all sorts of things out, from tinnitus-inducing treble to terrible opening bands to snoring bandmates. Still, it must have been quite the endurance test for Barren Earth’s Oppu Laine and Mikko Kotomäki to talk to MetalSucks from the balcony of L.A.’s Key Club, right in the middle of sound check for their first ever tour. They were there as part of the Finnish Metal Tour Part II package, in support of last year’s excellent debut Curse of the Red River. As snare drums thwacked repeatedly and guitars sprayed ear-splitting distortion at regular intervals, the Finnish band’s bassist/founder and lead vocalist (respectively) opined about their musical pasts and presents, why Finland seems to produce folk and funeral doom bands almost exclusively, and what excites them about being on the road.

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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…

So, yesterday on the Deciblog we posted a long-ass Justify Your Shitty Taste on “Guns N’ Roses”’ Chinese Democracy, which your fearless co-leader Axl Rosenberg boldly cosigned, followed by, frankly, a surprising amount of you guys (which is to say, more than one). I’m not trying to be a dick here. I mean, I can get behind about 25 percent of this mess (the ballads), but I have fairly shitty taste in rock music. As in, I still think Eight Arms to Hold You kicks ass. Whatever. It was just interesting surveying our entire staff of about 20 writers in an effort to get Chinese Democracy written up, and the only person that responded with a modicum of enthusiasm was Shawn Macomber. Fair enough. But then, cue a minor avalanche of vehement, assured hell yeahs. That’s probably the most satisfying thing about this series — watching that groundswell of minority voices band together for a day or two with a shared “fuck you, I told you it was good!”

Anyway, scrolling through the new issue’s reviews section, I don’t really see any future JYSTs. (Just wait ’til May’s The Haunted review, though.) April is more about giving credit to things that don’t hopelessly suck. Hence, we gave Jonah Hegg his second solo cover (order here). I don’t think the other four Amon Amarth dudes are sweating it; they get their chance to Vike out (ahem) in the table of contents and the actual story. Elsewhere, if you’re a J. Bennett fan, this is your issue — he goes head to head with Glen Benton (I’ll leave the obvious jokes to him), bros down in Alaska with Every Time I Die and files a long-overdue Hall of Fame on Mercyful Fate’s Melissa. If you’re a fan of any other writer on staff, well, they do stuff, too: features on Trap Them, Drugs of Faith, Primordial, Rotten Sound and Subrosa — the latter of which being almost as good as Veruca Salt in their prime.

-AB

You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibel here, or just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss a review of a future “Justify Your Shitty Taste” entry.

Did you know that there are people who don’t like Obscura?!?! I KNOW!!! So fucking crazy, right? I actually know one of these people. And I love him like a brother, but, uh… LIKE OBSCURA, DAMN IT! They’re fucking great.

And if you’re still feeling any doubt that I speak the truth, well, then please head over to Metal Injection, where they’ve just debuted a new song by the band, ”Vortex Omnivium.” It’s from the band’s forthcoming album, Omnivium, which I have heard, and which, I promise you, is killer. It comes out March 29 on Relapse.

Headbang here, and then let’s all meet back in the comments section for a mid-air group high-five, okay?

-AR

(Click to enlarge/download. Artwork by Rodney Githens of Vertebrae 33.)

MetalSucks, NARM and Roxwel.com are thrilled to announce our first annual South by South Death event at this year’s SXSW music festival in Austin, TX on Friday, March 18th! Kvelertak, Havok, Red Fang, Wormot and Meek is Murder will be gracing us with their presence on this fine, fine day for heavy music at a festival that’s already surprisingly well-represented by metal. Full Blown Chaos’ Ray Mazzola will also be in the house MCing this jim jam.

In conjunction with Metal Insider, we’ll have control of the patio stage at Headhunters, at 720 Red River, from 2-6pm on Friday, March 18th. Admission will be FREE FREE FREE, and anyone 18 and over is welcome to enter. Get there early ’cause Headhunters is small, and this thing is gonna become packed and sweaty in no time at all.

PARTY.

Earlier this month I caught Eluveitie, Holy Grail and System Divide at NYC’s Gramercy Theater at the beginning of their month-long North American trek [check Eluveitie's tour blogs]. Unfortunately 3 Inches of Blood were trapped in Cleveland (the horror!) due to van problems, so I was bummed to learn I wouldn’t be catching them on this day… but no matter, I’ve seen their rockage before and I’m sure they’ll be back again. Eluveitie reminded me of what folk metal is like when it’s done exceedingly well, Holy Grail lived up to my expectations of having lots of shred and lots of hair, and System Divide… well, uh, they were there too.

After the jump, further thoughts on all three bands, and plenty of photos from the show.

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Best recommendation of the week, so far at least, comes from reader Kyle Van Kampen, who suggested Australia’s Sleepmakeswaves. Like This Will Destroy You, I don’t think you could really describe their music as “metal” — but you could definitely still describe it as “extreme.” As in, “THIS MUSIC IS EXTREMELY GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL AND SAD.”

If you go over to their Bandcamp page, Sleepmakeswaves have a bunch of stuff for pay-what-you-like. As far as I can tell, this song ain’t no fluke.

-AR

Well, here was a fun e-mail to get from the reader known as Strapping Young Lad:

I grew up on Long Island on a horse breeding farm called Fast Break Farms. We’re pretty small; we usually only have enough room for about 10 horses. My parents were looking for a name for their new racing horse, and I suggested Cloudkicker. My parents loved it, and thought it was cute (?!). We’ve also had one horse named In Flames (who, much like the band, started off promising but sucks now) and another named Shagrath (Shaggy for short). I’m trying to get my parents to name all of our new horses after metal bands… I think it would be pretty sweet!”

We agree! So we asked SYL to send us some pics of the horses in question, and, yay for us, he obliged!

Cloudkicker

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So as part of the promotional efforts for the current Jagermeister Music Tour with Buckcherry, All That Remains, Hellyeah, and The Damned Things, a video has been posted in which Vinnie Paul gives a… uh… well, a tour of his tour bus. Sorry, I couldn’t think of a more elegant way to say that.

ANYWAY, Paul says he believes the bus should be “a nightclub on wheels,” and depending on how you feel about that statement, you will either find his bus to be incredibly awesome or incredibly tacky. Personally, I think it’s a little bit of both; it must be nice to be able to afford such a monstrosity, and I’d probably be a little disappointed if Paul’s vehicle of choice wasn’t somewhat outlandish… but on the other hand… uhhhh, really, dude?

By the way, I know that Gary Suarez already took this tour to task for its incredible amount of product placement, but if you do a shot every time Vinnie says “Jagermeister,” you will be very, very drunk by the end of this video. Did the makers of this video seriously think we’d forget the product they’re pushing, even with their logo in the corner the entire time?

-AR

[via The PRP]