…then check out this quote from a recent interview with vocalist Tommy Rogers:

“We have a really exciting set list for everyone this tour. We are going to do the entire new record [The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues] plus a set of old songs.”

Well, I think that’s great fucking news, and based on your reactions from when we debuted the EP last month, you’ll all find it happy-making, too. Plus the album is only thirty minutes, BTBAM are the headliners, and Tommy promised “old” (lulz) songs as well, so it’s not like you won’t get to hear favorites from the rest of the band’s discography.

In other words: this really exciting tour just got that much more exciting.

The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues is out today on Metal Blade, and the tour kicks off Friday! Get dates after the jump — BTBAM alone are enough of a draw, but Job for a Cowboy, The Ocean, and (on select dates) Cephalic Carnage are all on the trek, too, so you’re really gonna feel like a dummy if you don’t go. And also don’t forget to check out our recent “Rigged” column, in which BTBAM axe slingers Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring take you through their live setups piece by piece. We’ll have another entry from BTBAM drummer Blake Richardson soon!

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Tommy Bolin was one of the great ‘70s guitar gods, a charismatic, stylish, one-of-a-kind young talent on the rise. He played in the James Gang after Joe Walsh bolted, then stepped into Deep Purple when Ritchie Blackmore left. Bolin also recorded two solo albums that bounced back and forth from classic rock to ballsy, Zappa-esque jazz fusion. He died young, leaving behind a small-but-dazzling body of work.

When Bolin was in hard rock mode, the singer-guitarist sounded like your favorite songs from the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. The title track to Bolin’s 1975 Teaser LP is practically a blueprint for ’80s Sunset Strip hair metal like Mötley Crüe. For some reason, it’s not a nudie bar anthem, but it oughtta be. (An exhausted Crüe covered the song on 1991’s Decade of Decadence compilation, but their version is a fart.)

Bolin’s “Teaser,” album version

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I’m at the point where I pretty much prefer animated movies to live-action ones. I passed up some big deal, hotshot movie that came out recently, whose name I don’t even remember, to see Rango. I’m usually a pretty good judge, too, because I knew Rango was going to be awesome ,and it was. It looks absolutely amazing, and if you’re a nerd for animation detail, the gross, crusty animals will thrill you. Not to mention the classic movie references from Chinatown to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s also damn violent for a “kids movie.” And well, I’m a movie nerd with a deep love for filmic violence. My dad didn’t have any sons, ok? He raised me to love his Fab Four; Arnold, Bruce, Sylvester, and Jean-Claude. And Dolph, on days he felt generous.

This might be odd, but I always liked to think about what various characters’ personalities would be like. Down to their music and movie taste. I especially try to pick out the metalheads, because I want to find my animated brothers and sisters in arms. It was while musing on the subject on Twitter that I found out the talented Ms. Elise over at Reign in Blonde kind of does the same thing. Apparently, all my acquaintances are online these days. She actually compiled a list of the most metal Disney characters, and with her help, I’ve expanded the list. Here are the Ten Most Likely Metalheads in Animated Movies (excluding anime and other international releases, as the author has not done enough research on the subject.)

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The Ukrainians have always been SUPER nice to the Jews, so I thought I’d return the favor by posting this video from the band Make Me Famous. Yes, that is the most obnoxious moniker in the history of ever, but only half as obnoxious as the terrible music the band makes.

Highlights of this video include:

• The most awkward spin-kick ever (1:11).
• The entire band and the cameraman doing choreographed bobbing-up-and-down (1:57).
• Both the lyric that the one guitarist shouts out (I won’t spoil it for you) and the guitar flip that the other guitarist does at around 3:40.

The accompanying YouTube description of the video is also pretty great. For example: “This is Make Me Famous that you’re going to see and hear on tour :)” I’m glad that people will have a chance to see and hear them, ’cause sometimes bands just get on stage and wave to the audience but don’t play any actual music, and that’s a real bummer. But I can assure Make Me Famous that I personally am neither going to see nor hear them on tour, because 1) I don’t live in the Ukraine, and 2) wild horses could not drag me to see this band live. Seriously, they could be on tour with At the Gates, Pig Destroyer, Gojira, and a Cliff Burton-era Metallica transported to 2011 via time machine, and I still wouldn’t go.

-AR

Thanks to Samuel A. Favata for bringing this wonderful addition to the art world to our attention.

UPDATE: It’s official. Nevermore are off this tour. WHAT A BUMMER.

Well, here’s a potentially sucky situation.

We just got the following e-mail from reader Glenn Pillsbury:

“Just got a canned email from the promoter of the May 8 Symphony X concert in San Francisco that does not mention anything about Nevermore appearing on the dates, even though Nevermore was on the dates when I purchased my ticket a few weeks ago.  I sent a reply asking about it and got a statement from the promoter guy himself that Nevermore has indeed dropped off.  Haven’t seen anything from Nevermore itself though (their MySpace still has all the dates listed).”

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My DVR has been busted the past few weeks, but I finally got a new cable box on Saturday morning and, thus, was able to record Saturday Night Live for the first time in awhile — which is to say, I was able to resume the whole “Why the crap do I record this” internal debate. ‘Cause these days, SNL is funny approximately five times every season.

Not especially funny: the sketch institution’s latest parody of the Gathering of the Juggalos, this one, Easter-themed. Everyone knows we love making fun of Juggalos here at MetalSucks, so my objection to this sketch isn’t the topic is played-out; it’s that they’re telling the exact same jokes every time they do one of these things. They need to find something new to add to the formula, or cut it the fuck out.

I also saw an off-Broadway play this weekend, Peter and the Starcatcher, which, despite being a prequel to Peter Pan, featured a much, much funnier parody of Juggalos. I’m not sure how many people in the crowd understood the reference, but, uh, yeah, if you live in New York and you can spare the time/money, go see that shit before it closes in two weeks. It’s pretty amazing.

-AR

I guess it’s Axl-has-to-write-about-new-shit-that-neither-especially-excites-nor-bores-him-’cause-other-MetalSuckers-got-shit-to-do day, ’cause as with Amorphis, my feelings on Primordial on pretty indifferent, and as with Amorphis, I still feel obligated to tell you that the band has a new song even though there are other writers here at MS who are much more qualified than I to discuss the band’s work. But I’m a fucking professional, so I’ll power through.

So. The new Primordial track. It’s called “No Grave Deep Enough,” and it’s streaming here. And, um, yeah. I feel no hatred for this band so I don’t wanna slam ‘em, but I feel no love for them, either, so I can’t really sit here and get all super-bonery about it. It exists, and I hope it makes you happy, or, at least, inspires more passion in you than it does in me.

The track will appear on the new Primordial album, Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand, which comes out April 26 on Metal Blade.

-AR

Last year our own Sammy O’Hagar called Allegaeon “melodic death metal you’re not sick of,” and I’m inclined to agree with his assessment. And if you’re still not hip to these dudes, their new video, for “Biomech,” is a good opportunity to become hip. It’s not a good video by any stretch of the imagination — I’d be really curious to know what the hell the director was thinking when he was planning his coverage [UPDATE: Yeah apparently the band shot/edited themselves. Oh well.] — but the song is good, so it has that going for it.

The clip isn’t embeddable right now, but click the below screen cap to head over to Bloody Disgusting and check it out.

“Biomech” comes off of Allegaeon’s Fragments of Form And Function, which is out now on Metal Blade.

-AR



Photos by Robert Bejil

It’s weird. Mention Periphery to any person on the street and they’ll think nothing of it. But speak their name to those who know, and it’s like you just dropped “Jeezy” at an As I Lay Dying concert. Periphery have become a huge band in the warped little snow globe of the metal landscape.

As a person who’s listened as the sextet has grown and evolved, and go through singers like cheez balls, seeing them live was an experience that I was far overdue to have. I had my chance about a week ago when the group ventured over to Hartford Connecticut’s Webster Theater supporting Fair to Midland along with Scale the Summit [Alas, they have since dropped off the tour. -Ed.]. The evening turned out to be a proggy feast I won’t soon forget.

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If Ash Avildsen is looking for some muscle in his corner for his ongoing anti-piracy battle, he should look no further than Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato, an artistic heavyweight with plenty of literal brawn to back it up. I can just see it… Avildsen and Puciato tag-teaming against a duo of bespectacled, basement-dwelling computer nerds… a fight for the ages! Dynamite moves! Steel chairs!

Tag-team member Puciato wrote a long blog entry on his own website over the weekend tackling the topic of music piracy, and his viewpoint, though nuanced and well-thought out, isn’t what you might expect from the ordinarily very liberal frontman. He makes a lot of really good points, and a few arguments that have glaring holes in them, but the entire blog entry is worth a read. Here’s the opening snippet:

I don’t see file sharing as an evil…it’s silly to say that it has any intrinsic properties of good and evil at all anyway. It’s just a new form of technology that evolved outside of what the record industry and intellectual property law structure was prepared for at the time. That having been said…I think it’s necessary to swim with the tide and not against it. I think it’s time to accept and acknowledge that the CD is a dead format. Maybe not dead in the way of the 8 track but dead in the way vinyl is. A CD now, should be thought of as a collector’s item, or a preferred way of listening if that is the individual’s preference, in which case he is already in the minority as most music is listened to via the MP3 format. A CD certainly sounds better than an MP3, just as a vinyl does, but it just lacks the infinitely superior convenience of the digital format.

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I dunno what’s going on with Amorphis and titles right now. Their new album is called The Beginning of Times, plural, not the The Beginning of Time, singular, and, no, I don’t know what that means. Also, their new single is called “You I Need,” which doesn’t quite sound like something Yoda would say but almost sounds like something Yoda would say. So yeah all that is happening.

While I try to figure out what the what, you can actually listen to that new Amorphis track on Facebook, and you don’t even have to click the “like” button to do it. I don’t really have anything to say about it. Maybe Celtic flutes n’ shit just isn’t what I’m in the mood for right now? The song is really not doing a damn thing for me. Sorry, Amorphis.

The Beginning of Times comes out May 27 on Nuclear Blast. Hopefully you are more excited for it than I am.

-AR

Look, I really could not care any less about August Burns Red. But it’s come to my attention that they have a massive following, which means that, in all likelihood, some of you dig them. So I’m posting this performance footage of a new song for your benefit. Because I care about you. No, really, I do. I know I don’t always show it, but it’s only because I’m dead inside. So consider this video like a big hug from your Uncle Axl, okay?

The guy in the video says the new August Burns Red album is coming out June 21, and I’m inclined to believe he knows what he’s talking about. Wikipedia tells me it’s called Leveler. See how much I love you guys? I, like, totally Wikipedia’d something for you.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

So apparently Warrant have a new album coming out (the band now consists of all the original members save for alcoholic/morbidly obese vocalist Jani Lane), and it’s called Rockaholic, and as you can see below, the cover art expresses the theme of the title in a manner both subtle and metaphoric. I can’t quite make out what the prescription attached to the file says*, but I bet it’s a really erudite and nuanced joke. Y’know, like the kind you’d see in a New Yorker cartoon or something.

Rockaholic comes out May 17 on Frontiers Records.

-AR

*Why the crap would any doctor attach a copy of a patients’ prescription to the outside of the file, as opposed to, y’know, filing it in the file? This not only seems like a potential violation of doctor/patient confidentiality, but it increases the chances that the prescription will actually be lost exponentially.

Someday I hope to be invited to trade shows in Germany to rant about blogging and/or metal, but until then I’ll have to live vicariously through Devin Townsend who seems to have achieved go-to status when it comes to International Metal Man of Mystery. During a recent performance at Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany, a trade show described as “the world’s most international fair for musical instruments, sheet music, music production and marketing… for over 25 years,” [I thought that distinction belonged to NAMM, but ok] Devin decided to play 5 minutes of the title track of Deconstruction, the 4th album in the 4-part Devin Townsend Project album suite that’s being released simultaneously with the 3rd part, Ghost, on June 24th.

Thanks to some hot-shot amateur videographer, we too can enjoy  5 minutes of brand new Devin. Not a bad way to start your week:

I especially enjoy Devin’s explanation prior to the track… seems like Deconstruction‘s lyrical content will embody some of the silly Devin of old. Not a bad way to start your week.

-VN

Thanks: Dean Thomson

Thank the dickens for MS reader Nick Thomas who not only beat us to the punch by sleuthing out a whole batch of Cave In news, but also beat out both the band and their label Hydra Head. If you’re either one of the latter you’re probably sticking needles in an Amazon.com voodoo doll for ruining your marketing plan, but so it goes these days.

The new Cave In album White Silence, which the band announced they were recording last August, will receive a Hydra Head release on May 24th, according to the usually-but-not-always-reliable Amazon.com release page. Reliable release date or not, that’s definitely the cover above and this is definitely the track listing below:

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No, I’m not endorsing this American indie flick that just opened last week:

Nor am I hyping this Chilean movie from a couple years ago:

I do think if y’all haven’t seen Super Size Me (starring Burley O), you should check it out:

But c’mon people, this is a MUSIC blog………..

And thus I would like to invite you to join me right past the jump for a little tribute to the SUPERGROUP.

Shall we?

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Quebecois epic metallers Blackguard just wrapped up a tour with Decide, Neuraxis and Pathlogy. Having a snowball fight with Glen Benton wasn’t the only highlight of the tour; the shows were pretty sweet too, according to frontman Paul Zinay. Paul shares his thoughts on Benton, haters, his band’s new deal with Victory Records and the band’s conscious move away from the folk metal scene in this exclusive MetalSucks interview.

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“Urban-inspired hand movements” on Idol

American Idol week 12

Wed The final nine perform hits by Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame artists

Thur Live results + a shirtless, sweaty 64-year old man

Misery Index Egomania! Delusion! Heartbreak! Finger-wagging! Kill me!

Tyler-o-meter “You’re all winners!”

*

It’s poetic justice that the shrill, strained, self-congratulatory American Idol took on the equally stupid Rock And Roll Hall of Fame this week. It meant that Idol hopefuls would attack time-tested, unimpeachable classic jamz; it meant that Idol repertoire — restricted of late to Motown, Elton John, and hits from the singers‘ birth years — would remain firmly in the comfortable past; it meant that Idol could lap at the nuts of the clueless R&RHoF and stretch the institution’s entry criteria to include the goofiest Idol contestants; it meant swollen heads for the woefully unjustified egomaniacs among the Idol suck pool; and, in true R&RHoF style, it culminated in exclusion of the most deserving and validation of middling, secondary talent. See: Rush, Steve Marriott vs. The Doors, Rod Stewart.

But Idol surpassed even the Hall of Shlame when judges Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson — in played-up shock over this week’s unexpected elimination — actually gathered the nerve to scold voters at this week’s conclusion. The implication was that there exists a silent legion of fans who neglected to vote, thereby recklessly cheating an Idol hopeful of her rightful place in the next rounds. Um, did it ever occur to judges that the lowest vote-getter may have the smallest number of fans?

Nope. Instead, judges chastised America, reminding lazy viewers to vote for their favorite. Well, maybe the judges need to take a look in the mirror. They’re the ones who endorsed all these sucks! They brought in consultants of dubious acclaim (like a batty Will I. Am, below). They varnish turd performances from no-singing lames like the country dork and the whiny hunk and the squeaky wimp and the Blues Hammer reject. So, fuck us? Fuck you. Ugh. Now, your Idol Remains recap from the very edge of sanity.

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Ready for something a little different?

Thot describe themselves as Vegetal Noise Music. I’d describe them as a more atmospheric Austerity Program with keyboards and more melodic singing. Their new album Obscured by the Wind is out now and it’s available completely for free or “pay what you want” via Bandcamp, or via the stream below. So what’ve you got to lose? Listen:

Thot – Obscured by the Wind (Out 22th March 2011) by thotmusic

Thoughts?

-VN

As some of you know, I cut my teeth in the 90s hardcore scene. If you lived through it like I did, you know what 90s hardcore was all about: XXL basketball jerseys, cargo pants, AOL hardcore chat, bleach-blonde dreadlocks, and kicking it with your bros after moshing it up at the show. Oh, and fucking VOD!! Were they hardcore? Were they nu-metal?? Hard rock?? Who knows!

When it comes to 90s hardcore bands who were years (if not a decade) ahead of the curve, predating a whole generation of bands who took their style and ran with it, and never got the credit they deserved for it, VOD is right up there with 18 Visions, and it’s a damn shame. Blurring the lines between hardcore, nu-metal and hard rock, there are few bands from that era whose work still holds up today.

In this post, I will do my best to cover VOD’s career and give you my two cents on why they were so fucking sweet. I know there’s been a VOD comeback in the works for a while (see UGO’s coverage here), although I’m not sure what’s going on with that. Hopefully someone can shed some light in the comments– either way, here’s a trip down memory lane for old fans, and an introduction for anyone new!

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