And Hell Will Follow Me is a sad, sad, sad album. One can only speculate on the source of the album’s lyrical themes of death, despair, drug use and depression given A Pale Horse Named Death mastermind Sal Abruscato’s (also of Life of Agony) affiliation with Type O Negative… but again, one can only speculate. The music is certainly reminiscent of Type O — dark and moody — although it’s decidedly less gothy and more rocky. In more ways than one I’d liken it to Type O meets Alice in Chains; the music has that same sort of depressing, yet churning AIC plod, and Abruscato’s voice certainly calls Staley’s to mind at times.

Sal’s partner in crime on And Hell Will Follow Me is Matt Brown, sound engineer extraordinaire and guitarist of fellow NY band Seventh Void. Matt knocked it out of the park here; this album sounds excellent. Type O drummer / Seventh Void bandmate Johnny Kelly plays drums.

Listen to album track “Serial Killer” below; it’s about as upbeat and rocky a track as this album has to offer. Stream “Heroin Train” over at SkullsNBones for another taste of the album.

Alright so we’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news.

The good new is, at long last, Decapitated are getting ready to release a new album. And Vince and I were fortunate enough to hear a couple of songs from this album a few weeks back, and we really, really liked what we heard. We think this band could be coming back in a really, really big way.

The bad news is that the album has a not-terrific title, Carnival is Forever, and some even-less-terrific album art. I know some people thought that the cover for Devin Townsend’s Deconstruction looked too nu-metally; I actually think this looks way nu-metallier (this immediately comes to mind). It’s not, like, the worst album art ever, it’s just… you’d envision something way more epic and classically DM for Decapitated’s big return to the scene, right?

But it really doesn’t matter what the album is called, or if they stick a picture of Gene Hoglan naked on the cover, so long as the music rocks. And, again, we have to reserve final judgment until we’ve heard the entire disc, but the two songs we did get to hear were very, very, very promising. So hopefully in a few years we’ll look back at this as “That incredible Decapitated album with the forgettable album art.”

Carnival is Forever comes out July 12 on Nuclear Blast.

-AR

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Empty Crawlspace by Godstopper.

Go ahead and scoff at the suffocated production on Empty Crawlspace by Toronto band Godstopper. You’re losing out if you can’t get past the EP’s strangulated sonics. They’re partly the point, I’m guessing – those absent highs and lows smoosh everything into a compressed center, like we’re peering through a fisheye lens at the terrible things happening in the interior of this music.

And there’s a lot on the interior of this music. Godstopper’s Tumblr page shows reams of images of boarded up houses and masked or obscured figures. This music seeks to obscure, too. Dissonant sludge riffs cohabitate uncomfortably with Mike Simpson’s bell-clear vocal harmonies, spewing up sparks. Chiming major key guitars grind against gurgling bass lines. Nothing is quite right. Check out this video clip for “Clean House” for evidence.

Click to read more…

I feel like veganism somehow goes against everything black metal stands for. I just can’t imagine dudes in corpse paint burning down churches and murdering band mates and then turning around and eating tofu.

And yet, it would not be difficult for me to imagine that there are a lot vegans in the current Brooklyn-peeps-who-wish-they-were-from-Norway scene. Maybe that’s why their brand of black metal is so often incredibly boring? It would be kind of amazing if all it took was a steak for Marshall Marshall Marshallgood III (or whatever the fuck that guy’s name is) to start making music that sounds like, y’know. Music.

In any case, this shit is pretty funny, and clearly a lot of effort went into it, so bravo! to its creator. It’s labeled “episode 1″ and the dude has started his own YouTube channel, so presumably there are going to be more of these in the future.

So look out, MetalSucks! “Cooking Contaminated” now has competition for people who like softened cardboard posing as meat!

-AR

Thanks to our old pal Anton OyVey for the link!

I’ve listened to In Flames’ new album, Sounds of a Playground Fading, three times now, and I can’t remember a single thing about it. In fact, I’m listening to it even as I type this, and all the songs still feel kinda like I’m just hearing them for the first time.

What I’m saying is, while it’s not a bad album, but it’s an incredibly mediocre one that is not at all memorable. I like it better than A Sense of Purpose. At least, I think I do. Come to think of it, that record made pretty much zero impression on me, too.

So. In Flames’ new single, “Deliver Us,” was released digitally yesterday. You can download it for a buck here, or, if you wanna preview it before you buy it, you can just stream it here. And I think it’s pretty representative of the new album as a whole — not terrible, but surely not the level of quality that all us In Flames fans were hoping for. However you personally feel about it is probably how you’re going to feel about the rest of the record.

I know it wasn’t realistic of me to expect another Clayman from IF, but I was really pulling for at least another Come Clarity. Oh, well.

Sounds of My Interest Fading comes out on Century on June 21.

-AR

Like everybody, I got a good laugh from CBS L.A. news correspondent Serene Branson’s gibberish-packed meltdown/report from the Grammys in February (watch it here). But unlike most, I understood exactly what she meant by “heavy burtation.” It may have been seizure-induced mouth mutiny, but it’s a term that I wish existed back in 1998 when I interviewed Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell about their then-new, very burtatious record Obsolete. Over twenty minutes, I lauded his icy clean singing, his dystopian themes, and his big-balls performances on side B’s smashing (and alliterative) openers, “Hi-Tech Hate” and “Freedom Or Fire” (best FF jam ever, here). I pointed out that his vocals bound and accented the album’s ripping single-note riffs, mushrooming chords, and uber-violent snare drum. I blabbed at length about Obsolete’s intra-album dynamics, i.e. the way its snappy, pressurized first half sets up the crush and dispersal of its second half. But what a waste of breath, cuz here in 2011, we have a term to express all of those things: Heavy fuckin’ Burtation.

-ADF

Get heavily Burt-ated with Burton C. Bell & Fear Factory on tour starting June 1 in Tempe.

New releases from Hate Eternal, The Gates of Slumber and Zombi highlight this week’s new metal. MS new release kingpin Vic Vaughn breaks those and more new albums down after the break.

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MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Living Colour’s Vernon Reid…

If ever I was told that a certain guitar icon has been living a secret life as a crazed face-eating killer, my first guess at that guitarist’s identity: Vernon Reid. Don’t take that wrong. I know that, in reality, he’s wonderful, an ambassador, an explorer, and a cross-genre samplee (on Public Enemy’s “Sophisticated Bitch”). He’s a higher-consciousness dude, a high-concept artiste (what’s a Marcel Duchamp?), and a high-impact collaborator with outer-ring weirdos John Zorn, Bernie Worrell, DJ Spooky, and Mariah Carey. And he’s handsome, in good shape, nice hats, all that.

So, no, Vernon Reid is not a bad person. That’s not what I mean by these 100% hypothetical accusations of purely imagined murderous nose-chewings. All I’m saying is that if we consider his quiet exterior vs. the “Cult of Personality” solo — a three-act brow-singer that announced Reid as a major talent back in 1988 — we’d all be like, “Ah, that makes sense,” once confronted with evidence of his human face collection.

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So, uh, no one got correctly identified last week’s logo. A couple of you got close, but no one stuck the landing. That makes me perversely happy, since I do get quite a kick out of stumping you cats. And I’d tell you the band’s name now, but I’m not that nice a person. Instead, I’m gonna tuck it in my back pocket and re-use that logo at a later date. Get ready for the re-match.

In the meantime… this week we’re giving away two special prize packs from Century Media! Honestly, even we don’t know what’s in them! But that label has a stupidly impressive roster, so there’s bound to be some cool shit!

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 two winner and announce their names a week from today.

I will be curious to see how many of you actually get it right this week.

-AR

Another week, another round of fantastic unsigned talent. Let’s take a look at new music by Paul Wardingham, Cloudyhead and Trillion Red after the jump.

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IMO the most important part of being a true metal fan is knowing your roots. There is nothing worse than a newjack poser who doesn’t know or care about the older bands who paved the way for the generations after them. For example, IMO you can’t consider yourself a real fan of Avenged Sevenfold without also being a fan of Pantera and 18 Visions/Velvet Revolver. I mean I love A7X but obviously they are pretty much just taking what those two bands did, only doing it a lot better. On the other hand, it also sucks when someone gets older and they stop liking stuff. I mean if you like Suffocation then you should also like Devourment, right?? But contrary to what you would expect, older metal fans do nothing but hate on newer bands.

Which one is right?? The younger fans, full of energy and enthusiasm, but unaware of the shitty bands that people used to like?? Or the jaded, bitter has-beens, with seemingly endless knowledge of irrelevant, music that nobody really cares about anymore??????

In this post I will do my best to tackle this topic and answer the question of which is better, NEW MUSIC or OLD MUSIC. I know it’s hard to compare things from different eras, but I think it will help all of us grow as metal fans!!

Click to read more…

-AR

[via The Chive]

The challenge for tireless bullshitters like Nikki Sixx, Max Cavalera, Dave Mustaine, Steven Tyler, and Sammy Hagar is overcoming audience immunity. Know what I mean? With every distorted remembrance and self-aggrandizing observation, the shit-talker’s would-be customers (i.e. us) build a resistance to his line of artlessly cloaked sales-speak and attention-mongering. So the leg-puller succumbs to the tugging urge to ramp up the bullshit, to swing bigger and more wildly, in his quest for exposure for a crappy book, charmless side project, or half-assed clothing line. The result? Boldly false accusations, misremembered details, poorly-veiled disses, and … well, and everything Mustaine ever says. Bullshit.

Which is fine. Cuz we don’t admire musicians for their devotion to perspective and modesty (except Devin Townsend lovvvve youuuuuu). But in the case of Sixx, grand champion of public self-worship, it might be necessary to stage an intervention; the Motley Crue bassist, who spent a few years using heroin and a few decades telling the world about it, might lose a jaw bone for all his recent ShamWow-style jabbering about Crue albums that no one will buy (Saints of Los Angeles limped to gold sales status), his new photography book (lulz meet me in the quad later, stud), and the next tour to be ruined by fat-ass Vince Neil this summer with Poison. All that blabbing! His tongue must be raw with abrasions, his lips nearly flapped right off his face. He can’t stop and he needs help!

But I might be wrong. Shit, just maybe Sixx is speaking the truth and I can’t handle it. So when impartiality is key, when neutrality is a necessity, when there are cold, hard facts to be parsed from dumb, dishonest bullshit, we wheel in the always reliable MetalSucks Translate-Bot 3000. Time is of the essence if Sixx is to be saved from himself and, eventually, from gaffer-tape wielding music journalists. Go, Translate-Bot 3000, go! Click to read more…

I was a little skeptical when I first heard about the Amon Amarth two-set tour. Sure, I was excited because, yay, double the Viking fun. Hearing their new album in its entirety, though? I thought that might be a little boring. Not that I have anything against Surtur Rising — no, the opposite in fact. Amon Amarth are the AC/DC of death metal. All their songs are sort of similar, but they’re always fun and always a rollicking good time. It just seemed like overkill.

I quite enjoyed their latest release and I looked forward to an evening with them. Ha–  “An Evening with Amon Amarth.” Because of that title and the rather small venue, I was half expecting a stage of luxurious leather couches and the band coming out in smoking jackets. But that would just defeat the purpose.

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Here’s industry pundit Bob Leftsetz on brick and mortar retail stores:

They sell souvenirs.  It’s about the packaging more than the music. … Vinyl does sound better, but the future is better digital files, not an antiquated system.

BAM, nailed it.

With that in mind, let’s shift the attention once again to all-you-can-eat streaming services. Google took a step in that direction today, following Amazon’s lead, by announcing their own cloud service, Google Music Beta. Google Music Beta will allow users to upload music to a “personal storage locker” and to stream it from any PC or Android device. Like the Amazon Cloud, there’s a limit — users are limited to uploading 20,000 songs – and like Amazon Cloud, Google has not asked for rights from content copyright holders (record labels and publishers), arguing (rightly so, IMO) that playing one’s personal music collection for oneself does not require licensing rights like terrestrial or online radio services do.

Click to read more…

Ridiculously cool cover art by Jorden Haley

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Axl Rosenberg checks out From Exile’s latest release…

Any band considering making a covers album, let alone a tribute album to one particular band, should be made to listen to From Exile’s new, 100% free Nine Inch Nails cover EP, Just Like You Imagined. These aren’t just rote retreads that make you think “Oh yeah, I love this song!” before shutting it off and digging out the originals. Nor are they ill-conceived drek which utilizes the originals’ lyrics and little else. They’re bona fide reimaginings of the original material, wholly recognizable as the Nine Inch Nails classics we love, but From Exile have never failed to put their own stamp on the tunes.

Click to read more…

Remember the adorable video for Pantera’s “Cowbells Is My Name,” where they had those kids pretending to be the band? Well, “So Far Away,” the new video from Avenged Sevenfold (featuring the twenty-third best modern metal guitarist, Synyster Gates) is kinda like that, except it takes itself way, way, way seriously.

It also does not adhere to the rules of logic. Let’s see if we can try to figure this out:

• There are five kids, who presumably grow-up to be Avenged Sevenfold.
• In their garage while they rehearse, there are only four kids, apparently because M. Shadows wasn’t jamming with his friends at that point, or was excused from rehearsals since he’s the singer, or whatever.
• At both the :22 second mark and the 2:06 mark, four of the kids dissolve into the band today, including the kid who is clearly supposed to be The Rev. So, in other words, according to the world of this video, Kid The Rev  morphed into another band member prior to Adult The Rev passing away. Either that, or another member of the band used to play drums and then switched instruments, although that’s really not clear from this clip.
• Then, when the band is playing the song in the present in their rehearsal space or whatever the hell that room is supposed to be, there is no one playing drums, despite the fact that the song features drums. This is either meant to be a tribute to The Rev, or a message to current drummer Arin Ilejay that he’s not yet worthy of being in an Avenged Sevenfold music video.

I get that the band is trying to honor their fallen brother, but, really, this is just silly. And there was an easier-than-easy fix, too, which would have been to just have five kids, and when they dissolve into their adult versions, remove one of them. That would have made sense, and it would have added an extra sense of melancholy to the proceedings. But I guess that would have taken too much thought on director Wayne Isham’s part.

Good song, though.

In 2001 I went to the now-defunct NYC venue Brownie’s to catch Cave In, who I’d recently discovered, and ended up catching Old Man Gloom and Scissorfight in the process. The way I viewed heavy music was forever altered, the show a railroad switch that sent my descent into the gnarlier side of metal over the edge.

All three bands took lengthy hiatuses shortly after peaking mid-decade. Cave In, as we know, got back together in 2009 to record Planets of Old and have a new album White Silence due on May 24th. Old Man Gloom — whose members include Aaron Turner of Isis, Nate Newton of Converge, Caleb Scofield of Cave In and Jay Randall of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, among others — are jumping on the reunion bandwagon too (did they ever officially break up? whatever); according to Gun Shy Assassin, producer (and Converge guitarist) Kurt Ballou posted a Facebook message that his next project is a new Old Man Gloom record. Good news indeed.

So where are Scissorfight in all of this? Word on the street is that frontman Ironlung is totally over it. We beg him with all our granite hearts to reconsider. Axl and I jammed Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare no less than 30 times (seriously) whilst driving around in L.A. a few weeks back, in part because it was the only CD we had and in part because sick fucking riffs dude! C’mon, Scissorfight… do it, do it, do it!

-VN

Judas Priest are moving forward with their farewell tour (they’re calling it the “Epitaph Tour,” strongly suggesting they don’t know what an epitaph is) despite the fact that guitarist K.K. Downing is calling it quits. And now they’ve released a photo of the new line-up. By which I mean they got the new guy to pose for a photo and stuck it on the poster with a bunch of other photos of the rest of the band, because no one could even be bothered to get into one room together for two minutes to say “Cheese.”

See if you can spot the new guy:

If you guessed “It’s the dude who’s half the age of everyone else in the band and is dressed like a Beatle!”, you’re right!

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It’s damn hard to fault Scion for investing in the metal community unless you’re some kind of anti-corporate-AT-ALL-COSTS punk with a major chip on your shoulder and “DIY” tattooed inside your asshole. I mean, it’d be one thing if they were ramming shlock like Godsmack or Disturbed down our throats, but at least the folks have good taste; local shows and full-on festivals with amazing lineups (all band travel expenses paid for), new releases by Magrudergrind, Cannibal Corpse, and now Enslaved… at least the people have good taste. All that for the price of having to read the word “Scion” every now and again; sweet deal. (I happily drive a Honda, btw)

The latest car company-funded record, of course, is Enslaved’s The Sleeping Gods EP, which is available starting today for free download (you’ll have to d/l each of the EP’s four tracks separately instead of in one .zip; alas, they can’t always get everything right.) Yesterday Axl told you about the new song “Heimvegen,” streaming over at Metal Injection, and today Decibel’s got “Alu Misyrki,” a decidedly more old-school feeling track. Download the full Sleeping Gods EP here, entirely for free.

While you’re busy trolling our comments section over the legitimacy of a car company releasing a Norwegian black metal record, consider doing the same for our #22 Top Modern Metal Guitarist, Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson. We’d be most grateful.

-VN