RoCkStArBaSs100 introduces himself to the internet. He loves metal — anything from Rob Zombie to Children of Bodom to Dio. Also, he plays bass — at first he thought that he couldn’t actually play it for you in this video because it’s too loud and his parents will scold him, although he eventually gets bold enough to bust out “Holy Diver” for you.

A lot of metal fans take themselves really seriously, so I think it’s cool that RoCkStArBaSs100 does some silly, tongue-in-cheek videos like this one where he announces that he is a “Professor In Metalology.” In the banter segment, he mentions that he rearranged his room and warns against reading The Dirt because it “talks about a lot of bad stuff.”

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Congrats to reader Ross Hodo, who correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Arboris Mortuus. Ross wins five CDs from the MetalSucks Mansion Archives! GO, ROSS, GO!!!

This week we have another super-duper-awesome-fun-time prize for you, courtesy the fine folks at Relapse Records: two, count ‘em two, copies of Red Fang’s latest scorcher, Murder the Mountains. It comes out one week from today, on April 12, and you can pre-order it here, or, of course, just enter this contest. And if you’re too stupid to know how badly you want a copy, you can now stream the entire record here and get educated.

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 two winners and announce their names next week.

This week’s logo was sent in by reader Amelia Rupp, and it’s a doozy…

-AR

Burzum’s second post-prison release tops the list of records coming out today. New ones from Vintersorg, Power Quest, Glen Drover, Artillery and others finally see the light of day as well. MS New Release Czar Vic Vaughn gets on it after the break.

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Another Krallice album, another Sammy O’Hagar review.

I considered this when Axl offered up the band’s latest for me to give my thoughts on; I briefly considered turning it down and going with, I don’t know, Emmure or some shit. But my gut told me that, even only three albums (in as many years) in, Krallice were due for a major upgrade, and I could still approach Diotima (their newest, out April 25) with a fresh perspective. Even as an atypical black metal band, they seemed to be evolving exponentially and fascinatingly. And, as almost always, I was absolutely right: Diotima is a major advancement, expounding on their already-ample potential. While not such a drastic leap as to be able to dismiss their first two records, their latest shows a sense of solidifying. The elements are still there, but there’s tinkering. While this album certainly won’t win them a lot of new fans — almost half the album is comprised of songs over ten minutes and their trademark tapestry of interlocking guitar parts is as complex as ever — it does display a confidence and swagger indicative of a band finding comfort in what they do. They sound content in being a high profile band instead of a third-string side project. However, they by no means sound complacent.

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I can’t be the only metalhead who was ever super-into [pre-Morning View] Incubus. Make Yourself dropped in 1999 during my extended break from metal, but “Pardon Me” and “Stellar” had to be two of the only heavy songs making the rounds on modern rock radio at the time that I could actually get into. Incubus had that “wow, these guys are actually really good at their instruments”-factor that very few heavy mainstream bands of the day had and they were easily a cut above of the rest, even if they did have a DJ whose job it was to stand there and passively sell records.

So, Incubus have a new song.

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In Wisconsin, it’s in ink on everybody’s schedule to hit the local polling place today and vote against the hateful, friendless jerks who became politicians in order to hoard all basic ingredients of good living (like this little turd did). While some rage against harmful idiocy, everybody else can engage in harmless idiocy but just heading to a local computer machine to vote in Steel Panther’s Shocker Contest. To win, one lucky fanther will have landed the most likes (here on the band’s book of facing) for the best Shocker-themed fan pic (like above).

In other Steel Panther news, a wobbly, waddling Vince Neil joined the band onstage Saturday in Las Vegas to um perform Motley Crue hits “Live Wire” and “Kickstart My Heart” (video here). The only thing funnier than Neil’s wheezy warbling in the former is Panther guitarist Satchel’s three-point inspection of Neil’s sexy companions during the latter. Nah, check that. Vince Neil’s scramble to not suck is way funnier.

-ADF

Steel Panther is currently in the studio at work on a follow-up to 2009 year’s best metal album, Feel The Steel.

A few years ago, Vince and I were at a Mastodon/Converge show at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey (where, if memory serves, we met Kip for the first time!), when the In-Between Sets Dude on the PA announced that Hanson would be playing the venue on such and such a date in the near future. Needless to say, the crowd started booing, and then Dude on the PA was all, “I know, they suck, but they sell out every time they play here!”

I’m not really sure that I have a point, but I couldn’t think of any other way to connect Hanson to metal in order to introduce this video of Hanson playing Slipknot’s “Wait and Bleed.”

Apparently this was part of an elaborate April Fool’s joke, in which the band announced on Shockhound that they were recording a Slipknot covers album. I still don’t think Hanson are any good, but I’ll give them credit for taking the gag as far as they did.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Our pal Juggalo Bob — the only juggalo who will be saved from the coming clownocaust — wins MVR for the day. He sent us a link to this entry in the blog of Daniel O’Sullivan, which includes photos of O’Sullivan hanging out with his Ulver bandmate, vocalist Kristoffer Rygg… who is wearing one of the awesome MetalSucks shirts that our own Sergeant D. designed. And what makes this doubly awesome is that we didn’t give Rygg the shirt! He just bought one himself. How flattering!!!

Check out the pics below. And don’t forget that if you wanna be as awesome as Rygg, you can order one of these bad boys right here.

More pics after the jump…

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This is gonna hurt.

Face fucker-offers Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire are teaming up with Nesseria to release a new split via France’s Throatruiner Records (a label recently profiled by MetalSucks’ own Satan Rosenbloom) and Wooaaargh Records, and while the split doesn’t have a title, album art, or even a release date quite yet (it’s supposed to be out before the summer, with a CD version coming out on Trendkill Recordings), we’ve already got a track for you to stream — CttToaFF’s “Lower than Life, High as the Sky.”

And this shit is painful. It’s the aural equivalent of having a cheese grader run along your most sensitive parts. You’re gonna love it.

Stream the track below, and stay tuned to Throatruiner’s official website for more details on the split. And while you wait, the label is now making Nesseria’s first, self-titled album available for free download; check that shit out here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Reader Sam Britch wrote us a very nice e-mail asking us to give some exposure to some Alaskan bands. I only know two Alaskan metal bands off the top of my very pot-filled head, Turbid North and 36 Crazyfists, but those bands are both okay by me, so… yeah, let’s do this thing.

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[UPDATE: The entire album is streaming at Stereogum! Enjoy! -Ed.]

A friend recently described a band-to-remain-nameless to me thusly: “Relapsian-style beardo metal.” I instantly knew what he meant.

Indian, however, signed to Relapse as they may be, do not fit that description. More like “gnarly, filthy, hardcore-infused, proggy post-doom metal.” That’s a mouthful, but it’s the best I can do to describe Indian’s aardvark baby impaling brand of heavy. My description matters not, though, ’cause you can easily find out for yourself by streaming the new Indian track “Guilty” over at The Obelisk and “The End of Truth” right here on MetalSucks.

Both tracks come from the album Guiltless, out April 12th and available for pre-order here. Do it for the sake of those poor aardvark babies on the impaling block.

-VN

Photo credit: Anastasios Ketsios

Vince and I both have framed posters from the Neurosis/Mastodon shows in Brooklyn a few years back, which means we both have the words “A Storm of Light” on our respective walls. But that’s really incidental, ’cause they were one of the support acts for those shows. I’d be lying if I said I was an active fan of A Storm of Light; honestly, I don’t have very many feelings about them one way or the other.

But I guess Kim Thayil, a.k.a. The Coolest Member of Soundgarden, digs ‘em. ‘Cause he plays on a new track by the band, “Missing,” which is now streaming here.

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The first thing you’ll notice about the new Vanisher song “Reaction” (other than the typically sick riffs) is that where there once would’ve been screamed vocals, there are no more. That’s because ex-Glass Casket vocalist Adam Cody, who is currently out on the road fronting Wretched, has officially left the band and the remaining members (plus a new bassist and drummer) have decided to continue on… (drumroll)… as a clean singing-only outfit.

Where most metalheads would throw their hand up in the air and wave this new direction away with a resounding “phooey,” I raise my fist and say “bravo.” The decision to go all-clean is the final step in a natural evolution that’s been coming ever since a couple of ex-Bloodjinn members decided to form Zero System a couple of years ago. Zero System were kinda like Bloodjinn Jr. (in a good way) in that their sound closely resembled the former but made an obvious attempt at something more catchy — and dare I say more mainstream — with clean-sung choruses. As the band’s sound morphed and continued in that direction, they changed their name to Vanisher. So it feels right that the band finally made the decision to ditch cliched growls altogether because it’s where they’ve been headed this whole time. Since Vanisher are excellent songwriters, I don’t really see this is as a problem… they’ve got the goods to back it up. And I’ve always been a fan of Justin Reich’s entirely unique clean-sung voice.

Check out the new song “Reaction” at the band’s official website. It is 110% guaranteed to get stuck in your head instantly.

-VN

SUH-WEEEEEEETTTTT!

The Binary Code have posted two new demos, “Unexist” and “Trees 100 Feet Underwater,” to their Facebook page (the latter title, humorously enough, is a reference to recent ads encouraging tourism in Mexico); like I said, they’re just demos, so they’re rough, and they don’t have any vocals. But they’re also AWESOME. This band’s artistic growth has been occurring at a rapid, rapid pace these past few years, and these two songs suggest to me that they’re not gonna slow down anytime soon.

Headbang here, then come back and let us know what you think. Hopefully this means we’ll be getting a new album or EP from the band soon.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Below is fan-filmed footage of “The Next Visible Delicious,” a new song from the most critically-lauded band of their generation, Iwrestledabearonce. The A/V quality of the video is right in the pooper, but it sounds like something everyone but me will hate, despite the fact that if I told them it was new Genghis Tron, they’d get so excited as to break their necks trying to suck their own cocks.

IWABO’s new album should be out sometime this year on Century.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Back in July, Axl and I visited The Human Abstract at the Machine Shop in New Jersey, where they were recording their new album, Digital Veil, with producer Will Putney. Between the (then) six members of the band and the two of us, there were way too many people to do one interview, so we ended up splitting up into groups and conducting three interviews. The first, with guitarist A.J. Minette (before he was a MetalSucks columnist) and vocalist Travis Richter, was published a couple of weeks back; the second, with since-departed guitarist Andrew Tapley and drummer Brett Powell, follows below. We’ll run the final interview with guitarist Dean Herrera and bassist Henry Selva in the coming weeks.

Even though these interviews were conducted before the album was even completed, in a lot of ways they’re far more interesting now that Digital Veil is done and released. Powell and Tapley share some interesting thoughts on selecting and consequently working with producer Will Putney, how they chose Travis Richter and Henry Selva to fill the vacant vocalist and bassist spots and how A.J. came back to the band (and what his two-year stint as a classical guitar major at University of Southern California brought to the new record). These many months later, it’s especially interesting to read Tapley’s (and to a lesser extent Powell’s) take on how the band planned to procede with three guitarists. They also mouth off on “scene” bands and how as a young band they were coerced into doing things they didn’t necessarily want to do.

Fun-time with Brett and Tapley after the break.

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It has come to my attention that some people are still confused about the difference between SLAM METAL and DEATHCORE. While they may seem similar to the novice observer, the truth is that they couldn’t be more different — in fact, they really have nothing at all to do with each other (srs). Think of it like Islam and Christianity: they some common roots, but at the end of the day they really have nothing to do with each other and will never see eye-to-eye.

In a nutshell, deathcore is what happens when some pretty boys want to be rockstars, and think that it’s super cool and scene to be in a “sick metal band.” The end result is basically generic death metal with some equally generic breakdowns, but since the guys in the band are cute and have a lot of tattoos, kids eat it up and they sell lots of t-shirts at their Warped Tour booth when they’re not busy banging their jailbait groupies.

On the other hand, slam metal is grimy, blue-collar death metal that is pretty much the most extreme, inaccessible and brutal metal subgenre on the planet. Slam is pure brutality: none of the pagentry or larger-than-life personas of black metal, gimmicky costumes of neo-thrash or artsy nonsense of drone, stoner rock and all that, just CRUSHING FUCKING SLAMS. Even diehard metal fans (like the readers of this site) hate slam, so if you are in a slam band it’s because slam is in your blood, because you are never going to make a dime or get famous from it.

While deathcore and slam are almost completely heterogeneous, let’s acknowledge that there is a small amount of common ground (at least at a superficial level. In both camps, you’ll find lots of mesh shorts, sweatpants, weed references, and merch that prominently features controversial slogans in Impact font — but that’s about where it ends. To me, the differences could not be more obvious, but apparently some people still have trouble making the distinction between the two. Because I enjoy giving back to my community, in this post, I will go over a few easy ways that you can tell the two apart!

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This video of Asking Alexandria vocalist Danny Worsnop totally fershnickered on-stage at a recent Seattle gig has been making the rounds these past few days, and I honestly don’t know quite what to say about it. I think this band is terrible, and there’s some schadenfreude to be had in watching this dude basically fuck-over a room packed full of paying fans; on the other hand, Worsnop apparently now recognizes he has a problem and is quitting drinkin’ n’ druggin’ (Asking Alexandria’s initials are “AA”… coincidence?!?), so I can’t give the guy too much shit, I guess.

Besides, the part of this video that really fascinates me — besides the fact that the fans don’t lynch Worsnop — is how mensch-y his bandmates are. They’re so calm and understand and fucking British! Bands break-up or almost break-up because of shit like this all the time, but these dudes are just so chill! If it were my band and the singer acted like this I’d probably beat him to death with my guitar. But I guess that’s why these dudes are rock stars and I’m just a blogger. Well, that and my refusal to get a ridiculous hair cut.

-AR

Gotta love this Ben Robson dude. First, he won our totally amazing Nevermore “Create Your Own Conspiracy” contest last year. Then he proved he was no fluke by sharing some of his original music with us. And now he’s really topped himself with this video for for “Megapoop,” a new song he’s co-written with two European guitar players – Luka Žnideršič from Slovenia and Matthijs van den Hoven from the Netherlands.

This thing is ten times more entertaining than 98% of the so-called “real” music videos people send us — and the song rocks, too. Ben can sing his ass off, and he’s got some killer dance moves. It’s amazing that the internet has allowed him to collaborate with other musicians from around the world, but I really hope some decent American band swoops Robson up soon, ’cause I’m dying to see what he can do live.

And if you’re interested, here’s another video, of Žnideršič and van den Hoven playing an instrumental version of the song. It’s not quite as entertaining as Robson’s video, although it is definitely the first-ever metal act to have a choreographed stop n’ smile.

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In March we announced our SignMeTo Roadrunner Records contest, in which we’re offering one unsigned band per month the opportunity to have a featured article on MetalSucks in conjunction with Roadrunner’s SignMeTo platform. Check out March’s featured band Spun in Darkness. Now it’s April… it’s nice out, it’s baseball season, and hey! time for another SignMeTo Pick of the Month.

The name Meadows End might ring a bell because I featured them in an Unsigned and Unholy column back in February. My assessment at that time was that they were “epicly dark like Insomnium, Omnium Gatherum, Mar De Grises, Swallow the Sun, Daylight Dies, etc” but that they veered a little close to those bands’ patented styles to warrant too much attention. But then a funny thing happened; whilst perusing SignMeTo for this month’s pick, I clicked on Meadows End’s profile without realizing I’d already heard their music… and I instantly recognized the first song. I’ve checked out bands multiple times without knowing it until someone points it out; this even happens with signed bands. But great songs have a way of transcending all else, and the Swedes in Meadows End are most certainly great songwriters. I’ll stick to my guns that these guys aren’t reinventing the melo-doom wheel, but they’ve got hooks for days, and those hooks don’t compromise the band’s heaviness. And I still really dig the way these guys utilize keyboard parts. Check out three songs here.

Want to enter your band for next month’s competition? It’s easy; just sign your band up for a profile at SignMeTo and tag the profile with “metalsucks.” Read the instructions here.