Jose Mangin, Sirius XM Liquid Metal/Octane Program Director and DJ and an all-around good dude, has released a new music video, for the song “One Reason.” You should check it out. Jose plays a guy who stares very intensely at this lady, and he does an extremely convincing job of it.
You can find out more about Liquid Metal on Sirius XM by going here. It’s also fun to follow Jose on Twitter, which is how I found out about this video in the first place.
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 Shadows by Embers.
Immediacy is probably my favorite part about being a music consumer in the digital age. One moment I don’t know that the Oakland black metal band Embers exists. The next, the band’s seven years of woodshedding and recording efforts have turned into 250 megabytes on my hard drive. That’s a great thing for a listener (and especially a critic), because it loosens the need to hear albums as discrete elements, rather than parts of a continuum.
The continuum is key for a band like Embers. Since their 2007 debut Memoria In Aeterna (available for free download on their Bandcamp page), Embers have written unabashedly romantic black metal epics that breathe and grow and gleam black over shifting landscapes. Their first record was perhaps over-ambitious; those persistent viola lines added little, and while there were plenty of hair-raising moments, the songs seemed alternately labored and rudderless. But like Opeth’s Orchid, Embers’ early material was admirable for its free-flowing approach to songwriting, if not for the songs themselves.
Devin Townsend is giving away two new songs for free download — the first from his new album Ghost, the second from his other new album, Deconstruction — here. All you have to do it tell your Facebook buddies how much you like Devin, which they probably already know but hey fine okay whatevs.
I’m not even sure which songs he’s giving away, ’cause it don’t say on the page and I already have the albums (Who wants to fucking touch me?!?) so re-downloading these songs seems silly. But it doesn’t matter. Whichever two songs it is, it’s totally worth it, and you need to go download them right now.
Both of Heavy Devy’s new albums will be out June 21 via InsideOut.
Conducting From the Grave will headline, which for me is neither a great thing or a bad one; I liked their first album and enjoyed their set at NEMHF 2009, but felt that their follow-up album saw them regressing towards the genericness of their peers. I feel roughly the same way about The Contortionist; I could take them or leave them. Regular readers of MetalSucks know we LOVE Scale the Summit, so there’s that. Volumes play generic 2nd-gen djent, Structures play generic 3rd-gen Sumeriancore (but have sick choreographed stage moves, brah!!!), and Rings of Saturn have some kind of tech-deathcore / Psyopus-meets-Oceano thing going on that isn’t wowing me on first listen.
So that’s your tour, ladies and gents. One great band, a couple of OK bands, and a couple of shitty bands. In other words, this will be a great opportunity to catch Scale the Summit! Dates after the jump.
Unearth have never let their fans down before, and their new album, Darkness in the Light, is no exception. All the elements of a great Unearth record are here — hardcore-tinged metal with lotsa harmonized guitar wizardry, breakneck breakdowns, cannon-sized drums (courtesy of Killswitch Engage/Blood Has Been Shed’s Justin Foley!), and hooks that manage to get stuck in your head without being reliant on weak-ass good cop/bad cop vocals. Like all of these Massholes’ best work, this album absolutely demands that you get caught in a fuckin’ mosh, and if you refuse, it will grab you by the throat and toss you into the pit to be devoured by those braver than yourself.
MetalSucks is proud to be debuting a new track from the album, “Ruination of the Lost,” which you can stream below. We hand picked this track from the album because we think it rocks so goddamn motherfucking hard, and we have no doubt that you’ll agree!
Darkness in the Light comes out July 5 on Metal Blade. You can pre-order it here in a variety of attractive packages… we’re particularly partial to the one that comes with a beer bong.
And don’t forget that Unearth will spend the summer kicking ass on the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival along with Megadeth, Machine Head, In Flames, Trivium, Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish, Kingdom of Sorrow, Red Fang, and more. If you’ve never seen Unearth live before, holy shit do you need to go do that, and if you have, well, you know you’re in for a treat. Get dates here.
Anyone who knows anything knows that Vinnie Vincent is the best guitar player Kiss ever had; more than that, he’s pretty much the best guitar player in the history of ever. Unfortunately, he hasn’t recorded anything since the 90s, so he’s ineligible for our current list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, but if we ever do a list of the The Top 25 Metal Guitarists Ever, I have little doubt he would appear very, very close to the top, if not at the tippy top itself.
Which is why it’s so heartbreaking that he has apparently turned into a crazy old lady who looks slightly less masculine than Joan Jett (see mugshot below) and who, according to TMZ, was recently arrested not only for beating his wife, but for keeping “four sealed containers containing deceased dogs.”
Every once in a while, I listen to, and enjoy, non-metal music. Currently, I’m being treated to the dulcet tones of The Best of Earth, Wind, and Fire, as my gentleman friend is attending their show soon and rubbing it in my face that I won’t be able to go. Bah, they got nothing on The Ohio Players. Hands up: who also thought “Love Rollercoaster” was an original RHCP song? Yeesh, I know. In my defense, the original came out a decade before I was even conceived.
Anyways, I also enjoy a lot of dance-y, electronic pop. Yes, I am a Lady Gaga fan. And I’m not the only metalhead with thinks so, either. She falls in that category of “Things metal folk like that you never would’ve guessed.” Like cute pictures of kitties, and Disney movies.
I was awake when Gaga’s new album came out at midnight (har har, my sister sent me a message when it was two minutes ‘til), so I bought it. I knew there was a song on it called “Heavy Metal Lover,” and I know that Gaga’s boyfriend is actually a metal fan. But reading the lyrics sealed the deal: not only did Lady Gaga write an ode to us metalheads, but she is one of us metalheads (one of us, one of us).
Check out some of the song’s lyrics if you don’t believe me:
Cheers to those crack investigative reporters over at Heavy Blog is Heavy. They noticed that Josh Travis, guitarist for The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, has been posting some new demos to his Soundcloud page, and that while there’s absolutely no confirmation of this, those demos sound an awful lot like they could be TTDTE material. Now, maybe that’s just Travis’ writing… but as HBIH notes, “It’s not exactly a secret that the band… have been writing,” so it seems entirely feasible that, yes, this is a preview of things to come.
You can check some of the demos here, and the others in the below YouTube clip. Whatever project they’re actually for, they sound extremely promising. Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events was like one beard hair away from ending up on my 2010 “Best Of” list, so I am definitely watering at the mouth for whatever the band puts out next.
Cave In’s White Silence is definitely the most anticipated release of the week, but new albums from Book of Black Earth, In Solitude, Inevitable End and two new ones from Boris make this a week to look forward to. Vic Vaughn goes at each one after the jump.
Mastodon have announced the titles of two songs which will appear on their new album, and based on both the number of e-mails we’ve received about this announcement and the amount of reporting I’ve seen elsewhere on the internet regarding the announcement, I guess this is news. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love Mastodon. But there’s really no information to be had from song titles, so I don’t see what the big frickin’ deal is.
But if you care and you haven’t heard, the titles are “Blasteroids” and “All the Heavy Lifting.” So there. Let yourself get carried away by your imagination of how those tunes may sound.
More newsworthy, methinks, is that the band has recorded a cover of Z.Z. Top’s “Just Got Paid,” which will appear on the soundtrack for this summer’s sure-to-be-terrible and sure-to-be-a-massive-hit, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. I’d rather hear some original music from the band than a cover, but you’ll never hear me complain too much about any new Mastodon, even if it is on the soundtrack for a movie that has even less chance of being good than the last movie with which Mastodon were associated.
Also news that I don’t think we knew before (but please excuse me if we did and I somehow missed it): the band’s new album is being produced by Mike Elizondo, who has previously worked with everyone from Dr. Dre (he apparently played bass on Eminem’s Dre-produced “The Real Slim Shady”) to Jay-Z to Fiona Apple to Pink to Maroon 5. And this is interesting because if you were hoping Mastodon’s next offering would be a return to their heavier sound of yore, it’s safe to say that you can now go cry into your pillow.
Here’s the original “Just Got Paid” by Z.Z. Top, in case you’ve somehow never heard it before Here’s Mastodon’s Z.Z. Top cover, which is apparently old… oh well, now you have even less reason to care about Transformers.
(I have no idea what the current lineup of Arsis looks like, so here’s a picture of Jim Malone)
Arsis are nothing if not consistent; since 2004′s debut A Celebration of Guilt they’ve released an album once every two years, dotted by the occasional EP. But if the new demo for “Since the Shadows” posted on their Facebook page is any indication, they may actually beat their self-prescribed schedule. Here’s the message the band posted along with the track:
We are indeed writing a new ARSIS album and we want to offer everybody a glimpse into the music that we’ve been building for the last few months. This is a demo of a new one called ‘Since the Shadows’ and it’s from the first batch of songs for the album. It’s still early but a musical direction has emerged from the work so far and we think it speaks for itself without any grand pronouncements, so enjoy it and we will see you on the FIREWIND tour this fall!
Songs like “Since the Shadows” give us good reason to be optimistic. It’s instantly recognizable as Arsis; there’s something about the chord voicings and guitar melodies Jim Malone writes that are instantly recognizable and un-mistakingly distinguishable as being Arsis. This song has tons of Arsis-ness, if you will. There’s a word for that, ____-ness in the general sense, the qualities that make any individual thing unique… but I can’t for the life of me remember it. Any English majors out there?
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 Suffocation’s Terrance Hobbs…
When I first saw Suffocation live, I pretty much just stood there and stared at Terrance Hobbs the whole time. He’s almost delicate in the way he handles the guitar, and yet the sound that comes out of his instrument is anything but. At the time, I didn’t even know the names for half the stuff he was doing, so I was more than a little bit in awe. Luckily (or not, depending on your definition of “lucky”), I hang around pretentious music types a lot and now I can actually talk about it without sounding like a complete tool. Ish.
Suffocation is known for seamlessly blending the technical with the brutal; creating a sound that’s both heavy and sophisticated. The complex time changes and rapid-fire picking places them in a realm beyond just death metal, and Hobbs’ influence is what separates them from the herd. He integrates the rhythms of speed metal and even introduces an aspect of hardcore that marks their distinct structural sound.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with vocalist Neil Fallon of the legendary Clutch. Fresh off some oddly-matched but nevertheless successful tours, first with Children of Bodom and Black Label Society then with Motorhead, Clutch were gearing up for a U.S. headlining run and the re-release of their classic album Blast Tyrant. We talked touring, said reissue, and the band’s success with and thoughts on running their own record label, Weathermaker Music. Our chat, across Beale Street.
“You I Need,” the new video for an Amorphis song which was apparently titled by Yoda, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which it would seem lots and lots of bombs have dropped, destroying buildings and wiping out the population, but perfectly preserving shopping carts and umbrellas. Oh, what a cruel fate, to be outlived by a one dollar product made in a sweat shop in Korea and sold for ten dollars to poor schmucks who weren’t smart enough to carry some rain protection with them when they left the house!
Also a survivor of the apocalypse: a mermaid, which the singer finds in a car trunk. How the crap did a mermaid wind up in a car trunk? Shhh. Don’t worry your pretty head little head with insignificant issues like logic, baby. It’ll give you wrinkles.
Amorphis’ new album, The Beginning of Times, comes out May 27 on Nuclear Blast.
Because I’m not. Well, I guess that’s not fair. I’m not not a fan, I’ve just somehow never seen it. Hey, look, like I’ve said before, there are only so many hours in the day, and snarky metal blogs don’t just write themselves. I’m sure it’s great, though. Everyone says it is, anyway. I had never seen It’s Always Sunny in Phildelphia for THE LONGEST TIME , and then someone finally showed me an episode, and I was like, “Oh, this is fucking amazing!”, and then I watched the entire series-up-to-that-point in a weekend. I’m sure someday I’ll feel just as dumb for not having seen Tim and Eric sooner.
Why am I babbling on about my television watching habits? Because MetalSucks Maniac/super-talented dude Ben Robson sent us the below video, which is “a medley of songs from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, redone into rock/metal styles” that he himself made. Again, having never seen the show, my appreciation for this is limited mostly to admiring Robson’s skills as a musician, but I imagine some of you will find it much lulzier.
You can check out more of Ben’s work here or here.
Sick stage pose, brah! That’s MS reader Pablo Borrella of the Madrid, Spain (!) band Wolfarium sporting his “Sergeant D”-model MetalSucks t-shirt. For his excellent choice in stage apparel Pablo will be receiving a box full o’ metal goodies courtesy the MS Mansion. You too can receive a buncha free shit by sending in pics of yourself in your MS garb and thereby entering our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest; it’s that easy! And if you’re in a band you get the added exposure of having your band plugged on MetalSucks. Think on that.
Am I crazy or does World Painted Blood suck? Is Slayer moving forward or caving to the post-Slipknot shitty production trend? Am I a fossil who can’t deal with a classic band’s evolution? I love serial killers and hate religion, so what’s the deal? Why did critics splooge all over this record, and do fans agree?
During a recent plane trip, I played about four hours of Slayer pinball on my mobile tablet device — to the dismay of my westerly neighbor, who frowned from behind her religious-themed novel presumably at the game’s huge glowing pentagram — and it got me thinking about World Painted Blood. Like 2006′s mehtastic Christ Illusion, the 2009 record arrived amid a rush of acclaim — as though a spiteful metal media corps had a chance to bestow retroactive cheers upon a critically spurned but iconic band. Or maybe the album is awesome, and therefore deserving of warm reception even from fancy music writers at The Onion and All Music Guide. But I don’t think so.
Our number one homie Justin Foley is just completed a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here, day three here and day four here; the fifth and final day is below… enjoy!
Saturday, May 21, 2011 New York City
Back at home after the whole thing is over. Here’s one of the many things that no one ever tells you about when you think that you want to be in a band: some time not too long after going out on some sort of tour, you should set aside a few hours with a bucket and a bunch of rags and then just wipe all of your equipment down. I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon doing just that and boy, the water in that bucket gets nasty quick. What lives on the floors of these clubs that we go see bands in? What calls those puddles of stale beer its home? What foul creature sneaks into venues late at night and hides stage monitors deep in its own crevices, so that they are bathed in the funk of the undead? Well, the amps are clean anyway. Sitting back in the practice space, ready to make more music.
I figured I’d take the last of these entries to talk about the best case scenario for playing a show. Thursday night is a good enough example of that. We were third out of four.
Marilyn Manson is working on a new album, and has now posted a twenty-six second teaser of a new song, for the five of us who still care. (And the last eight seconds are just screechy white noise, and there’s frequent static interruptions throughout the track, so it’s not even really a full twenty-six seconds of music.) My premature judgment of this teeny weensy lil’ clip is that Manson is trying to find some compromise between his Antichrist Superstar sound and his The High End of the Low sound, which is fine except for the The High End of the Low sound part. I’m one of the last self-admitted Manson fans in the world, and I thought that shit was unlistenable garbage.
Manson has also posted a statement about the clip and the song it contains over at his newly re-designed official website, and, as is so often the case with The Artist Formerly Known as Popular, it is a coherent, illuminating, and unpretentious.
No, I’m totally kidding you guys, it’s a fucking mess.
