Last weekend Thomas Giles (aka BTBAM’s Tommy Rogers) came through town on a little mini-tour to promote his latest solo release Pulse, with Cave In’s Steven Brodsky in tow. I couldn’t go because, ya know, life happens, and watching this video from SMN News of Giles perform “Sleep Shake” makes me all that much more sour about it.

As opposed to the full-out bombast of a BTBAM show, the Thomas Giles performance is intimate and bare-bones. It’s the kind of show I could see playing a coffee shop or small performance space with tables scattered throughout; I’d get hella stoned beforehand, sit, order a cocktail, and enjoy. The complete opposite of the usual metal experience, much like the album itself.

-VN

A couple of weeks ago, Vince broke your heart with the news that bassist Jared Lander had quit The Faceless. But time heals all wounds and when one door closes another one opens and always look on the bright side of life. So the band has now announced that “The sickest bass player in the game, Evan Brewer (Animosity/Reflux) has officially joined The Faceless.”

And the band isn’t dicking around. Brewer knows his shit.

So if you were, for any reason, worried that The Faceless would have a hard time filling Lander’s shoes, well, don’t be.

The Faceless will hopefully have a new album out on Sumerian later this year. Brewer is apparently releasing a solo album through that label as well.

-AR

Cheese for breakfast, anyone? Great! Come join the party. The Power Metal Party!

Poland’s UnSun probably wouldn’t call themselves power metal — probably more like gothic melodeath or something equally lame sounding — but there’s something so sugary sweet and unabashedly catchy about their music that I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch. Replace Aya’s soaring vocals with a male croon and you could easily pass this off as new Mercenary or Raintime, no questions asked. And hey, the band was founded by ex-Vader guitarist Maurycy “Mauser” Stefanowicz; instant cred!

The band’s new album Clinic For Dolls is decent if not terribly distinguishable from a lot of other bands playing metal like this (save for Aya’s vocals), but the first track “The Lost Way” is SO fucking catchy. From Aya’s Polack-inflected “What cahhn I deuuuu” on I’m hooked, every time, can’t stop listening. A true pop metal gem.

-VN

Motherland is a new Arsonists Get all the Girls album, which is to say it’s pretty wacky… and yet somehow, I wish it were wackier. On their Century debut, The Game of Life, this band sounded like they could, and might, do anything at any given moment; this album feels decidedly more straight-forward. I don’t think it’s a bad record — I’ll take any AGATG over most of their peers any day of the week — it just doesn’t quite kick me in then nuts the way that Life or even 2009′s Portals did.

You’re free to tell me to go fuck a horse, though. The band is now streaming another new song, “Dr. Teeth,” on their Facebook page, so you check that out and then let me know what you think in our comments section. I’m always open to being convinced that I’m wrong when a band I really like puts out an album I only sorta like.

Motherland comes out May 17 on Century.

-AR

We first gave you the heads up about Hesher, a new movie in which The Kid from Third Rock from the Sun plays a metalhead named — wait for it — Hesher, who helps a young kid get over the death of his mother (or something like that), back in January 2010. Obviously that was some time ago, but the flick played at SXSW last month, and now it’s finally getting a release, which means it finally has a trailer.

And the first half of that trailer is cut to Metallica’s “Battery.”

Click to read more…

We were thrilled when we recently got to meet Tina Fey for the first time, and absolutely flattered, and completely blown away, when she told us she had seen our site and was a fan. We asked her if she’d consider doing a guest column for us, and not only did she agree — but she volunteered to review Winds of Plague’s latest, Against the World, in podcast form. Download her review below:

Download Tina’s podcast review of Winds of Plague’s Against the World here

We’d like to thank Tina for taking time out of her busy day to do that review for us. Against the World comes out April 19 on Century.

Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Here are the March 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

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Thrilled to see Last Chance to Reason getting some recognition, reader Kyle Bragg has now sent us some other metal bands from Maine, in hopes that the state “will start to be recognized for things other than lobsters, blueberries, and being confused as part of Canada.” I dunno, Kyle — your lobsters are fucking delicious! I could eat five right now, no problem.

But okay, okay, we’ll give this a shot. Let’s see if any of the bands Kyle suggested can, indeed, make me forget about lobster.

Click to read more…

A reader calling herself simply “Emily” (Sometimes girls read this site! Whoo-hoo!) sent us a link to the below Norwegian television commercial for… well, I don’t know exactly what it’s for because I don’t speak Norwegian, but I’m assuming it’s a phone company or some kind of dial-in help service. Or maybe it’s just for literacy. In any case, it’s funny and you should watch it.

And that’s why I’ll never get a tattoo on a part of my body I can’t see — I need to know if the dude is fucking shit up.

-AR

I’m not Sammy O’Hagar or Satan Rosenbloom or Grim Kim, which is to say, I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of European one-man black metal bands. I’ve heard of Dodsferd, the single-person project from Greece’s Wrath (real name: Wrathias Papadopoulos), but if I’ve ever actually listened to any Dodsferd, I don’t recall doing so.

Hip-hip-hooray, then, for The Deciblog, who are streaming a new Dodsferd Track, “Your Kingdom Was Built in a Lie” (why “in a lie” and not “on a lie” I do not know),  which is good enough to at least kinda-sorta make me wanna check out the new Dodsferd album, Spitting with Hatred the Insignificance of Life. Okay so this guy’s English is not so great, but apparently he can write a cool riff, so I’ll let it slide.

Headbang here and let us know what you think in our comments section. Spitting with Hatred… is out now on Moribund, the same label that is home to The Care Bears and My Little Pony.

-AR

If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.

No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).

Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.

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I’m going to put approximately as much work into this introduction as Zakk Wylde did the writing of the last BLS album.

I’m actually going to begin today with a video that I think is legitimately good, because I need to wash the taste of so much cinemetallic poo out of my mouth. The band is called Montezuma’s Revenge (you’d expect them to be of Aztec descent, but they’re actually Russian), the song is called “Dead Frost,” Vince suggested I watch it, and I’m glad he did. The animation isn’t amazing, but it still puts this clip way ahead of the pack.

Click to read more…

In a press release, The Recording Academy — a.k.a. “The Dicks Behind the Grammy Awards” — announced that they are streamlining their meaningless awards, reducing the number of categories in 2012 from 109 to 78. One of the casualties of this change is the Best Metal Performance Grammy, which will now be folded into the Best Hard Rock Performance category, which will heretofore be known as — you guessed it — the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance.

This doesn’t really mean jack shit in the larger scheme of things, but it is just one more way in which The Recording Academy has disrespected metal. It also means it will now be even harder for the oh-so-few metal bands who did get recognized by the Academy to do so; said Academy is run by old white dudes who don’t know Metallica from Jethro Tull, and they consequently tend to gravitate towards higher-selling “name” acts. So if you think that, say, Lamb of God or Machine Head have any chance of competing with Alice in Chains and Them Crooked Vultures, well, you’re in for a sad surprise.

But, like I said, the good news is that these awards are about as relevant as Pretty Boy Floyd’s music, so this is not really that big a deal. Still, feel free to vent in our comments section.

-AR

Thanks: Matt Mommaerts

Septicflesh (SepticFlesh? Septic Flesh? Can someone please clear this shit up once and for all?) have released the album art for their forthcoming release, The Great Mass, and I have very little to say about it, other than “Me want t-shirt now pleeze.” Seriously. Passover is just a couple of weeks away and I don’t have a thing to wear to my sedar.

No Clean Singing tells me that the band’s own Seth Siro Anton made this art. So, bravo, Mr. Anton!

The Great Mass will be out April 19 on Season of Mist.

-AR

You know what’s awesome? Unsigned bands. Unsigned bands are more interesting than signed ones to me these days because oftentimes they’re just as good or better and they’re simply victims of “wrong place wrong time.” Here are a few choice bands to hit the MS inbox of late:

Click to read more…

I still get chills watching this.

Alice In Chains announced this morning that they’d be making a “special concert announcement” on Monday, April 11th. What could this special concert be? Allow me to recklessly speculate, ’cause that’s what we do here at MS:

• The first place my mind went was “Unplugged Redux.” Alice In Chains Unplugged is a definite Desert Island 5 album for me, and the accompanying video is absolutely chilling… to say it was a legendary performance would be an understatement. A second unplugged show would be a fitting tribute to Layne Staley, who died 9 years ago yesterday.
• Some other kind of tribute to Layne Staley and/or recently deceased original bassist Mike Starr. Good god, 50% of the original AIC lineup is dead. WTF?
• A premiere or announcement of the release of the 3D concert they filmed last October in Seattle.
• They’re headlining Lollapalooza 2011.

That’s all I got… any other ideas?

Share your memories of Layne in the comments.

-VN

Yep: Per Wiberg now joins Chris Spicuzza in the Keyboardists No Longer in Bands Club. In a statement, Mikael Åkerfeldt says that he and the other members of the band “came to the decision that we should find a replacement for Per right after the recordings of the new album,” which sounds like they let him do a bunch of work and then fired him. But then Åkerfeldt goes on to say that the sacking “this came as no surprise to Per” who “been thinking about leaving” anyway. Which sounds like a “You can’t fire me, I quit” scenariom but nice of Åkerfeldt to not rage on Wiberg.

I’m sure this will make many of you sad, as Wiberg is clearly a talented dude. Just try not to forget that Åkerfeldt is the band; he might as well just change his name to “Opeth.” Wiberg wasn’t even in the band for many of their most famous albums. I’m sure Åkerfeldt will be able to find a suitable replacement.

The good news is, this means the new Opeth album is finished, and we should get to hear it sometime this year.

-AR

Alright alright alright, so this Venom cover band, Skinny Pasty White Kid in Gym Shorts and His Older Cousins, isn’t quite as good as that Guns N’ Roses cover band we discovered earlier this week, but they’re still really bitchin’. I wish I had been this outgoing back before I had chest pubes. Whomever decided to take away his ADD meds right before he hit the stage made a good choice.

No joke, that kid is awesome.

-AR

Thanks to Sergeant D. for bringing this lil’ whippersnapper to our attention!

Shining (the Swedish one, not the Norwegian one) have switched record labels, which you don’t really care about because fuck is it to you as a fan?, but they’ve also announced a new album and released a new song from that album, which you do care care about, because fuck is it to you as fan.

So. The album is called VII: Född Förlorare (translation: “Forlorn Frog”), and that’s the cover art above, and the song is called ”Förtvivlan, Min Arvedel” (translation: “Farewell, My Stinky Cheese”), and you can stream it below. It’s pretty cool. You will like it a lot. That’s not speculation.

VII: Ford Fairlane will be out May 25 on Shining’s new label, Spinefarm.

-AR

UPDATE: Vocalist Mark Hunter has addressed fans’ concerns that this means the end of electronic elements to Chimaira’s music: “there are definitely samples, keys, electronics, and all sorts of other wizardry on this record. we’ve spent the past 12 years creating the atmospheric side of chimaira, and we can’t imagine listening to us without those cool bits either.” Read his full statement here.

I always say that no two Chimaira albums are alike, and while we’ve only heard just the teensiest lil’ bit of the band’s forthcoming release, we already know one huge difference their new album and 2009′s The Infection: not only will bassist Jim LaMarca no longer be in the band, but neither will keyboardist/programmer Chris Spicuzza.

Here are some excerpts from a statement Spicuzza released to The PRP:

Click to read more…