Major props to reader Derek H., who noticed the following on the Wikipedia page for Deicide’s new album, To Hell with God (click to enlarge):
I really like To Hell with God, but I have to admit, this shit is hilarious.
Go look at it now before the Wiki Police take it down.
To Hell with God is out now on Century Media. While it doesn’t come with a jack-in-the-box penis, you can download it for less than ten bucks on Amazon.
-AR
Our pals at Decibel and Metal Injection are sponsoring a co-headlining Hate Eternal/Origin tour this summer, with Vital Remains and Abysmal Dawn doing support. And you don’t really need to know anything else other than the answer to “Where can I buy my ticket?” I mean I’m sure some of you in the comments section will be like “This tour is no biggie,” and I just wanna let you know right now that I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW WE’RE BOTH MEMBERS OF THE SAME SPECIES. That’s how excited I am for this tour.
This like last year’s Super Orgasm Tour, only for br00tal death metal bands instead of nerdy prog metal dorks. And I feel like I haven’t had the chance to see Hate Eternal or Origin live in a long, long time — like, a couple of years — so I’m even harder than I’d probably be under normal circumstances. But you’re eyes don’t deceive you, that is definitely a bulge in my jeans.
I am going to stop showering now in anticipation of fitting in with the rest of the crowd. While I go throw away all my soap, you can get dates after the jump.
Mike Starr, the original bass player for Alice in Chains, has been found dead, TMZ reports. He was just a month away from his 45th birthday.
Starr left Alice in Chains in 1993 after appearing on the albums Facelift and Dirt, as well as the Sap EP. Like the other members of the band, his struggles with drug addiction have been legendary — he even appeared on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew in 2009 (a show his former AIC bandmates Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney have called “disgusting”). Apparently his efforts to kick his habit were to no avail, however, as in February he was arrested for possession. So while the cause of Starr’s death has yet to be announced, one could reasonably assume that this is another tragic loss of a talented artist to drugs.
Assuming that’s correct, Starr would, of course, be the second founding member of Alice in Chains to fall to substance abuse, after vocalist Layne Staley. Lamentable though is, there is something undeniable about the fact that the band’s actual addictions are part of what gave them their power during their heyday — the textures and lyrics of those albums feel authentic because they are authentic. Unfortunately, it seems as though Starr and Staley were never able to get away from all that.
Our thoughts are with Starr’s family and friends. Here’s “Rain When I Die” — a song he co-wrote, and which features one of his most famous bass lines — in his honor. I wish it didn’t suddenly seem eerily fitting.
-AR
When I was very young, I remember having an intensely heated argument with my mom over who sang, “Wild World.” I insisted it was Mr. Big while she tried in vain to tell me it was a cover of a Cat Stevens song. Of course, she was right. But she should’ve known better than trying to reason with a smart-ass eight-year-old.
My mom has never spoken to Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, and probably never will due to his lifestyle and beliefs. I, however, did get to speak to Eric Martin lead singer of Mr. Big. So I still win.
Congrats to reader Eliza Vlasova, who correctly identified last week’s logo as beloning to the band Distorted Impalement. Eliza wins any three CDs or DVDs of her choice from the MetalSucks Mansion Archives. Hoo-ray for Eliza!
But don’t be too sad if you didn’t win, ’cause we’re doin’ it again this week: 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 reader Dillon Lyons. Keep sending me those logos, guys, it makes my life way easier!
-AR
Here’s some good news to wash the taste of Trent Reznor’s questionable choice for his next movie project out of your mouth: From Exile’s long-awaited Nine Inch Nails cover EP (preview here) is finally nearing completion, and will see its release in May. I still don’t have all the details just yet, but I do know that Emil Werstler, of Daath and Levi/Werstler fame, recently tracked some guitars for FE’s version of the achingly gorgeous NIN classic “A Warm Place,” and that From Exile have announced a record release show on May 14 at The Earl in Atlanta. Everyone who attends the gig will get a free copy of the CD, so if you live in the area, you should, y’know, go to that.
And, hey, here’s some even better news — video of From Exile performing a new, still-untitled track at a recent concert! And, no shocks here, it sounds pretty promising. Hopefully once the band finally wraps this NIN project up, they can get crackin’ on a new full-length. In the meantime, enjoy the vid below.
-AR
Like every wise metal listener, I heeded Axl’s advice on Monday to get over to AOL for a free spin of The Human Abs Tract’s forthcoming collection of mega-jamz. A bit later, once I returned my thoroughly fucked face to its position atop my neck and cleansed it of A.J. Minette and crew’s milky load, a click or two led me down the queue to a free stream of Jag Panzer’s first record since 2004, The Scourge of the Light (you listen here now). I’ve only admired the Colorado quintet from afar for their contribution of studly guitarist Chris Broderick to Megadeth in 2008, for 2000’s nerdy Macbeth-based concept album Thane To The Throne, and also for their possession of the teeming confidence necessary to have such an easily mockable band name. (Srsly so easy.) Now I admire them from about two inches away from their ballz cuz Scourge is epic American power metal made exceptional by eminently sing-able choruses, themes of frustrated humanism, and impactful, genre-busting restraint. Click here and U R JAMMING!
-ADF
Jag Panzer’s first post-Chris Broderick record, The Scourge of the Light, is out today on Steamhammer/SPV. Order your CD, digital copy, and 2xLP here.
It’s a big week for metal releases. Children of Bodom, Destruction, The Human Abstract, Turisas, and Rival Schools are this week’s heavy hitters, while new ones from Agnostic Front, Maruta, Jag Panzer, Swamp Thing and more give hardcore a surprisingly robust showing. After the jump, all the goods:
We were just talking with some industry insiders about how music videos still matter, despite the current attitude to the contrary of too many big wigs. An awesome video can still capture the fans’ imaginations and do wonders for a band’s image, and the music video is most certainly not dead — I know because I get like a gajillion e-mails about music videos each and every week.
But if peeps seem more apathetic about music videos these days, it’s because so many of them suck an egg. It’s not even about the fact that budgets are ever-shrinking as the labels strive to stay alive in the modern market — I’ve seen film school students take a few hundred bucks and make something awesome, so never forget that ingenuity and creativity > money.
But when the most thought you could possibly be bothered to put into your video amounted to, “Let’s have The Cavalera Brothers and their bandmates, Not The Cavalera Brothers, grimace into the camera, and intercut that with some pretty typical live footage,” well, you might as well as showered multiple Third World Countries with pamphlets that read FUCK YOUR HUNGER AND YOUR MOTHER, TOO. Because feeding just one starving child would have been a better use of the money it took to make this crappy video.
Cavalera Conspiracy’s new album, Blunt Force Trauma, comes out March 29 on Roadrunner. If the music sucks, I’m gonna fucking riot.
-AR
[via Noisecreep]
Drummer Mike Justian is out of The Red Chord… again. I guess in all fairness, it was never really clear if this founding member was re-joining the band on a permanent basis, or if he was just filling-in after Brad Fickeisen split with the group last year. Then again, Justian’s been back in TRC for over a year, which seems like a long-ass time to just be filling-in. And even as a massive fan of the band, it’s certainly funnier to think of Red Chord skinsmen in Spinal Tap terms, spontaneously combusting at random intervals.
But fuck do I know? A statement from the band certainly makes the split sound amicable:
In keeping with my commitment to make you, gentle reader, aware of the awesome goings-on in the world of hardcore, I’m pleased to present you with this exclusive stream from an excellent band. Straight outta Richmond, Swamp Thing make nasty, thrashy hardcore that will stick to your ribs (that’s how fucking good it is). Those of you who dug the Mother Of Mercy stream from January need to hear this. This bad boy comes out today on 6131 Records, so be sure to order it via Hellfish here.
[this streaming promotion has ended]
-GS
So recently word got out that Trent Reznor is not only going to be scoring, but will apparently also be acting in, a retarded-sounding new movie called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, from the same idiot who brought you Wanted. (And please allow me to take a moment to give credit where credit is due, something too many of our fellow bloggers/web journalists/whatever fail to do — Badass Digest, and no one else, originally broke this story. It’s a huge scoop, and they deserve a pat on the back.) And a lot of fans — like me! — were, well, concerned about that project, to say the least.
But Trent, ever the diplomat and not dipshit, has taken a moment out of his busy schedule to confirm the story on the Nine Inch Nails forums — and clear up a few things. I’ll post his full statement at bottom of this post, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version:
(metal needs more smiles)
Ghostlimb‘s 2008′s smasher of an album Bearing and Distance knocked my socks off. Like literally blew them right off my feet and sent them flying across the room at some poor MS Mansion Monkey’s head, not surprising seeing as the album was penned by Graf Orlock guitarist/vocalist Justin Smith aka “Jason Schmidt.” But you know what? It was worth it. Worth it because the only other alternative would have been to spontaneously start a fierce fucking moshpit and to throw my computer through the window and who cares about that damn monkey anyway two-day sock-stench be damned, get me some more coffee damnit.
But seriously, how can you fuck with these riffs? Only acceptable answer: you can’t. As the years pass I only seem to be getting more and more into this kind of metallic hardcore, the kind that’s fast, furious, raw, chunky and full of mothatruckin’ bluesy RAWK riffs. Think a significantly faster and decidedly angrier Doomriders and you’re close. Peep Ghostlimb’s brand new song “Construction” from the new album Infrastructure below, courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan. The album drops on April 4th via Vitriol Records and will be available for pre-order starting on March 19th (why the wait for the pre-order? I’m scratching my head too.).
-VN
Yep, you read that right — Sumerian has signed T.R.A.M., a new supergroup consisting of Animals as Leaders guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, Suicidal Tendencies drummer Eric Moore, and Adrian Terrazas (who used to go by “Adrian Terrazas-González” but whatever), who played flute/sax/bass clarinet/percussions on three albums by The Mars Volta (Frances the Mute, Amputechture, and The Bedlam in Goliath). The band’s moniker, in case you haven’t put it together, is an amalgamation of the last initial of each musicians’ name (For the cheap seats: Terrazas, Reyes, Abasi, Moore).
I was never into Believer; I was too young to appreciate or even know about them during their late ’80s / early ’90s prime. While I was aware of their 2007 reunion and subsequent 2008 album Gabriel ’cause I write for a metal site duh, I only gave it a couple of listens and couldn’t really get into it. I subsequently kinda forgot about it, writing it off as a one-off reunion album that wouldn’t amount to much in the longrun. But this here new Believer song “G.U.T.” is the absolute bee’s knees:
My gut (rimshot!) was that older Believer, including Gabriel, was way thrashier than the above new song — and a quick listen to the latter confirms I am not wrong — but Gabriel is definitely a unique snowflake that extends far beyond thrash, and is way more interesting than I remember it being. Maybe it’s time to revisit that one. New album Transhuman comes out April 13th via Metal Blade, and based on the above I’m definitely stoked to hear it. Maybe I should revisit that entire back-catalogue too.
-VN
So, uh, I reviewed the new As Blood Runs Black album, Instinct, a couple of weeks ago, and I was more than a little surprised to see that most of the reader comments concerned the cover art. I mean, I love dissecting album art as much as the next nerd, but C’MON, guys. Let’s at least give the world the appearance of not being a bunch of shallow assholes.
So. ABRB are streaming a new song, “Angel City Gamble,” over at Noisecreep. Go listen, and then come back, and have a discussion about, y’know, the music. I don’t especially care if you like it or hate it — I’m not a huge fan of the band/album/song myself — but at least now we can talk about this like semi-intelligent post-adolescents.
Headbang here. Instinct comes out March 15 on Mediaskare.
-AR
So… what do you guys think of TesseracT?
I ask because I’m conflicted about what I think. TesseracT have been a band for many years, and were sporadically releasing songs on the Internet to widespread acclaim in underground circles way before the multitudes of so-called “djent” bands they inspired even existed. But it’s taken all this time — until March 22nd of this year — for them to release a proper full-length album, One (the Concealing Fate EP containing six songs from One was released last year). This puts them in sort of a weird spot; it feels like they’re late to the game, and to the unknowledgeable observer it would certainly appear that way, even though they helped to create that game to begin with.
[UPDATE: The chat is NEXT Wednesday, March 16th! Oops. -Ed.]
Let us all rejoice that Textures are making a new record this year, a follow-up to 2008′s stunning, expansive masterpice Silhouettes. But what will the record sound like? How’s recording going so far? How are things working out with new vocalist Daniel de Jongh? Will the band finally come to the States; will they return to India?? Vanilla ice cream or chocolate?? Top or bottom???
You can find out the answers to these burning questions and more this Wednesday (that’s tomorrow!) when Textures take to the Interhole for a live chat session on Got-Djent.com. Drummer Stef Broks, guitarist Bart Hennephof and bassist Remko Tielemans will be fielding your questions starting at 2pm EST (19:00 GMT, 20:00 CET, 11AM PST).
You can join the web chat directly from the Web chat link in the navigation bar at got-djent.com, or you can use an IRC client like mIRC, ChatZilla or XChat to connect to irc.umbranet.org and join the channel #djent. Holy shit, IRC still exists? I think the last time I used IRC was literally in 1996 or so and I completely forgot that the # symbol ever referred to its channels… but alas… I guess hosting a chat via IRC is kinda like releasing your album on vinyl or something. Just watch, before we know it all the tr00 kids are gonna be doing it.
-VN
I gotta hand it to Scar Symmetry… goofy two-vocalist attack or not, these Swedes know how to write ridiculously catchy songs that aren’t cliche or predictable in the slightest. Jonas Kjellgren has hooks (both guitar and vocal!) for days and days and days and is never an asshole about it. While I may cringe slightly when I read back one of the first articles I ever wrote for MetalSucks, I stand by my four year-old assertion that this band is as good as it gets for Swedish melodeath, even if the time for that genre has long since faded into the sunset.
Anywho, last month we learned that Scar Symmetry have a new album called The Unseen Empire coming out on April 15th worldwide (April 16th in the U.S. if I were a betting man?), and today we learn via reader Chris Dávila that they’ve released a new song from said album via the increasingly popular Soundcloud platform. Stream it across the Baltic Sea:
I am almost out of hyperbolic poeticisms to declare how much I fucking love Digital Veil, the new offering from The Human Abstract. Luckily for me, I really don’t have to say anything else about the record, ’cause it’s now streaming in full right here. Listen to it. Learn it. Love it. Get excited about purchasing it tomorrow when it comes out on eOne. Get excited about the band’s current tour with Darkest Hour and some other bands (remaining dates after the jump).
And, oh yeah, if you haven’t already, check out THA guitarist A.J. Minette’s ongoing MetalSucks music theory column, “Abstract Theory.” That shit is seriously, ridiculously informative – he’s only done three so far, but I get excited each and every time he sends one in.
Okay, I’m gonna go crank this sucker. Discuss its aardvark-baby-impalingness in the comments section below. And here are those tour dates:
