Whenever it strikes me as humorous that Mike Muir, the frontman of Suicidal Tendencies, suffers from a bad back like some oldie, I hear the hurt, defensive words of John Candy in Planes, Trains, And Automobiles: “Do you have a bad back? Well I do. And it hurts like a bugger.” Sounds painful, actually; the back is connected to like all parts of your body. If I realize that, it ceases to be funny that the guy who represents ST’s pre-Korn non-silly fuck-you power probably groans “Ahh tsssssssssssss ugh my shit hoitz!” every morning. And it’s totally unfunny that his condition has affected ST tours, but Muir and some random ST dudes just wrapped a tour of Australia, during which he no doubt tested his back on stage and I presume in tight tourbus bunks.

So at this point, Muir, his band, and his fans do not need some silly slag to mount him like there were a Danish taped to his neck Saturday in Sydney (above, at :25). I guess the Australian high-five is a headlock. Srsly, I take out my contacts and the clip looks like a cover version of the parking lot fight scene in The Big Lebowski.

-ADF

So in case you haven’t been following all the drama with The Faceless this week, here’s a quick run-down of recent events:

• I noticed that recent tour videos of The Faceless in Europe featured the band performing with a vocalist who is not Derek Rydquist.
• Rob Pasbani from Metal Injection hit up Rydquist for a comment, and Ryquist basically didn’t deny that he’s out of the band.

And now Rydquist has released a statement to Lambgoat officially announcing his departure… which isn’t shocking news following the other events, but I guess it’s good to have some closure.

Rydquist’s statement, and what little we know about the band’s new vocalist, after the jump.

Click to read more…

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 The Faceless’ Michael Keene…

If Michael Keene ends up being the defining metal guitarist of his generation, no one should be surprised. His work is certainly far beyond a label as simple as “Sumeriancore,” even if The Faceless are are at the top of the Sumerian heap. Fact is, Keene is a metal dork’s wet dream — he’s a ridiculously good guitar player, a ridiculously good producer, and a ridiculously good songwriter, and his output is always proggy and challenging but fun, heavy as an orgy whose participants are all suffering from gigantism, and shreddy in just right the measure.

In other words: if Michael Keene’s only goal in life is induce envy and orgasms in metal fans and musicians everywhere, well, he has thus far succeeded and then some.

Click to read more…

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

One would think that, since our meaningless existence is coming to a gory end in two days, we’re merely cementing our shanties in Hell with a new installment of “Guess Next Month’s Decibel Hall of Fame and Win a Six-Month Subscription.” But if you read the fine print of Harold Camping’s totally rational/logical apocalypse theory, you’ll find that May 21 is only the Rapture, leaving—you guessed it—six full months (of horrible earthquakes and vague unspeakable agony) before the universe explodes or some shit. So, provided our editorial staff, printer, distributors and the USPS at large can sidestep Mr. Stay-Puft, this contest will actually be fulfilled! (Plus, we can make my lifelong dream a reality and put Mr. Stay-Puft on the October cover. Or Gozer. Or Rick Moranis.)

Onto the sample. Interestingly, a parallel can be drawn between the album title and this whole endtimes fiasco—well, at least the Ghostbusters version alluded to above. Which had better actually happen. Too much of a hint? Doubt it. Guess away for the very last time. Artist and title FTW.

DECIBEL HALL OF FAME JULY 2011

DECIBEL HALL OF FAME JULY 2011

-AB

Decibel’s June 2011 issue, which features Ghost, Killing Joke, Mastodon, Hate Eternal, Gorguts, Protest the Hero, Born of Osiris, and Scale The Summit is available here — but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss a HOF?

We had tons of fun sorting through all the entries for our Amon Amarth Viking Beard Contest. A lot of you did quite an impressive job growing your beards, leg and pit hair, while a lot of you… well, uh, let’s just say we’ll still give you an “A” for effort. After much deliberation, Johan Hegg himself has chosen the winners!

The grand prize (one male, one female):

- a lock from Johan Hegg’s beard!
- the “super duper fan edition” box set of Surtur Rising, of which only a very small limited number were made.
- a drumhead signed by the whole band
- a Metal Blade Records t-shirt and lanyard
- a MetalSucks t-shirt in the design and size of your choosing

Runner up prize (one male, one female):

- the “super duper fan edition” box of Surtur Rising
- Metal Blade Records t-shirt and lanyard

AND THE WINNERS ARE…. (with commentary from Johan)

Click to read more…

THE KEN MODE TOUR EDITION – PART 1

The overlords here at MetalSucks have on at least a couple of occasions referred to me as the Bravest Man in Metal. Not because I sit around in a fur-lined loincloth in a metal-themed man-cave (pictured above) chewing the legs off Cornish game hens while pining for the days Manowar wrote cheesy metal and not cheesy symphonic metal. Nah. Here, for your memory refreshment and finger pointing fun are exhibits #1 and #2.

My head would have to be buried in the sand and a good halfway to China for me to say that I don’t get why Neilstein and Rosenberg refer to me as ‘brave.’ At the same time, I don’t get what the big deal is. Okay, it’s not a surprise that the metal scene en masse is conservative, about as conservative as a Sarah Palin rally in the town of Stepford, Connecticut (and believe me, she’s probably asked her campaign manager more than once about the possibility of giving a speech there), and there are moments more independent thought came crawling out of 1933-1945 Germany than from your typical gathering of the denim and leather set. So, when some ass hat comes along who’s doing shit that falls outside of metal’s heavily prescribed box, the proverbial shit of steel hits the fan. I just happen to be one of those people – or so I’ve been told – with the added bonus being that my position as He Who Writes About Metal means that my goofy opinions have the (un)fortunate luxury of being in print and on display lo these many years.

So, it was thrown on the table: let’s see just how brave I can be. Let’s take this ‘bravest man’ thing and run with it like Usain Bolt chasing down a dude he just caught fucking his girlfriend. I have no qualms in letting anyone know how un-metal I am in my metal-ness. Why not let in the expanse of the interhole on my poser-ific ways? Basically, MetalSucks has agreed to give me the space to talk about other maligned albums I enjoy, not having long hair, why drinking sucks, skipping out on shows to stay home with my wife and kid, how I’ve never been near a moshpit despite being a regular attendee of shows since the mid-80s, and all the other un-kvlt behaviours I routinely engage in while still managing to love the music I’ve loved since the cover of Iron Maiden’s debut freaked out my punk-ass nine year-old self.

Click to read more…

We featured Swedish djent outfit Vildhjarta in an “Unsigned and Unholy” column just this past January, but guess what? The term don’t apply to them no’ mo’, ’cause they just signed a deal with Century Media. There’s no word on when the label will release an album or anything like that, but here’s an excerpt from the press release that I found pretty amusing:

The band had this to say in regards to the singing:

“THALL”

So I guess we should all start getting ready for at least a year of jokes based around the word “THALL,” ‘ever the fuck that means.

If you’re not familiar with the band you should get familiar with them, ’cause they’re really good. You can check out the above YouTube clip, of course, or just go here and download some shit for free. (Don’t worry, it’s legal.)

-AR

Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing 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; the third day is below… enjoy!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011
New York

Philadelphia, PA last night, aka Quaker City.  We arrived in town with hunger in the belly and a bit of time to kill.  This second thing nearly killed us.  Thad and I never have time to kill; work, family, odd projects, people who need setting straight on the Internet – all of these things consume more time than we have and so things like leisure and friendships are usually left unattended.  And so, an hour or two after getting ‘the best vegetarian cheesesteak in Philly’ (it wasn’t bad – the bread’s the key thing) we had a few hours to burn.

We got a couple of beers (in daylight!  I mean, that’s straight up “Theatre of Pain” decadence right there) we ambled over to catch an early showing of Takashi Mike’s 13 Assassins.  Coliseum had seen it recently and said it was like ½ as good as Thor which means they thought it was awesome.  (The band is completely bonkers about Thor.)

Thad and I settled in to a theatre sparsely populated by seniors and the unemployed and were soon completely assaulted by the film.  I’m not going to spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it, but it was pretty obvious that the whole thing was written backwards.  Basically the cinematic equivalent of a good Helmet song: here’s the gigantic riff that we’ll kill them with at the end, so what else do we need to put in the song to get to that riff and make it destroy?  Props to the movie also for giving us our theme for the trip: TOTAL MASSACRE. (Sometimes “massacre” isn’t enough.)

Click to read more…

Since Dead Letter Circus have been in the news lately — they just signed to Sumerian Records and they’ll be touring with Intronaut and Animals as Leaders this Summer — I thought I’d take a moment to get ya’ll familiar with their maximum rockage. They’re Australian, which is why you likely haven’t heard of them despite one EP and one album release since their inception in 2005, and to be honest they’re not really metal at all. So if the lack of growled vocals, chugga-chug or sweep-picking bothers you, probably best to stop reading right now.

For the rest of you fans of good music, let’s listen to some of the bands choice cuts. Dead Letter Circus remind me a lot of Karnivool, and not just because the two bands share a home country; their rock-based sound is steeped in hard-driving rhythms, delay-soaked atmospheric guitars and soaring vocals. I’d also throw Dredg and A Perfect Circle into the influences pile, so if those bands mean anything to you then Dead Letter Circus will likely resonate.

Here’s “Big” from their 2010 full-length This Is the Warning:

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Earlier this week, we revealed that Iwrestledabearonce are changing genres to black metal, and promised that we’d unveil their debut as a BM band this week. Well, here it is — and it’s good to see that the band’s new, grim image hasn’t dampened their sense of humor too much. The track is called “Karate Nipples,” and it’s the first song off their all-new, all-black metal release, Ruining it for Everybody, out Tuesday, July 26 on Century Media.

Well I mean come ON, you didn’t really think they were turning into a black metal band, did you?

No no no. This was just IWABO and MetalSucks being the merry pranksters we are! Ruining it for Everybody features no actual black metal. Sorry, Emperor fans.

What it does contain is eleven new schizophrenic, experimental, ADHD tracks that are sure to piss off the humorless, elitist tight asses of the world — in other words, just the kind of shit we’ve come to expect and love from IWABO. In fact, this album is like It’s All Happening on angel dust — everything about it is more “ier.” The grindy sections are even nastier than they were before, and the not-so-grindy sections (for lack of a better phrase) are even more danceable, super-catchy, and further steeped in electronica. In this regard, “Karate Nipples” is exemplary of the whole album — contrast the section starting around the :41 second mark, which I could seriously picture all the girls who hold Sarah Jessica Parker as their idol bopping up and down, with the section that immediately follows it, which is pretty much just a piece of broken glass jabbed right up your fucking urethra. The approach isn’t that different from Happening, but the extremity of the extremism sure is.

Like we said, Ruining it for Everybody — which is a great fucking title, given the band’s relationship with the haters – comes out July 26 on Century Media. Get stoked. The band will also be the reason to go to this summer’s All Stars Tour — get dates here.

-AR

Does anyone like Threat Signal? I mean, someone must, right? Because they’re around. I assume they’re around because people are, like, paying to go see them and stuff.

And yet I have honestly never heard anyone say these words: “Hey, did you hear the new Threat Signal album?” Never. I just said them out loud, just so when I die I can say that one time, ONE time, I actually heard someone say those words. But now I’ve never heard anyone else say them.

ANYWAY, operating under the assumption that some people like this band, and that we have now amassed a significant enough readership that at least some of those some people probably read this website, I am posting this footage of the band performing a new song, “Fallen Disciples,” live. The footage shows people at the concert, further reinforcing my theory that there are people who like this band, even if I have somehow managed to go my entire life without ever meeting one.

Enjoy, some of you some people!

-AR

[via Metal Undergound]

The demos for Metallica’s …And Justice for All have found their way online. I can’t imagine they have done so legally, so you best go download them right quick, before the Metallawyers have them yanked down.

I first discovered these demos via Invisible Oranges, where, as is so often the case, Cosmo Lee has made some pretty interesting observations. For example:

“What fascinates me the most about these demos is Hetfield’s incomplete lyrics. We get a peek at his work process: he comes up with vocal patterns before lyrics…. ‘Harvester of Sorrow’ has basically just its title words. But even though Hetfield hasn’t found ‘Harvester’’s words yet, he sings their placeholders with utter conviction. His language is literally infantile – ‘Wa-na-na-na-na-na’ – which, in a way, sounds even more enraged.”

Click to read more…

But that’s the name of the band’s new song — “The Conqueror.” It’s now streaming on Fit for an Autopsy’s Facebook page, assuming you’re willing to click the “like” button, which you should be, ’cause this band is br00tal, and you like br00tal things.

In case you didn’t read about Fit for an Autopsy the last time I wrote about them, they’re a new band that features former Through the Eyes of the Dead vocalist Nate Johnson, as well as guitarist Will Putney, who has already produced such killer records as The Human Abstract’s Digital Veil. Their debut album, The Process of Human Extermination (cover art above) is coming out June 21 on Black Market Activities, and features guest appearances from The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk, Tim Williams of Vision of Disorder/Bloodsimple fame, Full Blown Chaos’ Ray Mazzola, and The Human Abstract’s Travis Richter.

In other words, this is a record to which attention must be paid.

So headbang here, then come back and let us know what you think. My guess is that about half of you will accuse the band of playing generic deathcore, and the other half of you have ears.

-AR

The #1 Rule of Touring: bus/van breakdowns will occur.

The #2 Rule of Touring: duct-tape fixes everything. I know bands that bring rolls and rolls of  the stuff every time they go on the road, just in case.

Both rules held true for The Ocean on their recent MS-sponsored trek with Between the Buried and Me, on which pretty much every thing that could’ve gone wrong did go wrong, sometimes comically so. In the first video blog hosted by our bro-ceans at The Deciblog, Rule #2 — along with some critical thinking and problem solving — proves a great fix for Rule #1, but I have a feeling shit’s about to hit the fan in the next episode (knowing what we do about the events of the rest of the tour).

The Ocean Tour Vlog, Part I from Chris dB on Vimeo.

The #3 Rule of Touring, from the looks of things, didn’t apply to The Ocean in this case: no pooping on the bus. Probably a good thing; had someone been unable to hold in a dookie that old rickety wagon might’ve exploded.

-VN

I’m going to put approximately as much work into this introduction as Morbid Angel did the synthesizer work on their new album.

(That joke will seem hilarious in a few weeks, I swear.)

We begin today with the new In Flames video, for the song “Deliver Us.” It’s really just a performance video, except instead of sticking the band in a warehouse (or something that strongly resembles a warehouse), the director put each band member in a separate compartment on a ferris wheel. (Why a ferris wheel? I’d say it has something to do with the title of In Flames’ new album, Sounds of a Playground Fading, except most playgrounds I’ve seen/played in/been ordered by a judge to keep at least a five-hundred foot distance from do not contain giant ferris wheels.) And I can see how that probably seemed like a cool idea when they came up with it, but it actually gets pretty boring after awhile. So while The Third Man‘s place as “most riveting cinematic depiction of a ferris wheel” remains unchallenged, everyone involved in this video gets an “A” for effort!

Except for the people who wrote the song. ‘Cause fuck that noise.

Click to read more…

Mornin’! Everyone sleep okay? Yeah I don’t actually care.

ANYWAY, I recently did an interview for Noisecreep, and you can read it now. It contains lots of fascinating information, like how/why we started MetalSucks, who our influences are, and why we write under aliases. (Oh, yeah — for the cheap seats — our reals names are not actually “Axl Rosenberg” and “Vince Neilstein.” Sorry to burst your bubble.) It even comes with a very handsome portrait of Vince and myself enjoying Thanksgiving last year. (We were a little wasted, so please pardon our appearance.)

So check it out, and then come back and tell me how witty I am. You can also tell me how handsome I am. I won’t mind.

I have no idea how to end this post, so here’s an adorable video of two otters holding hands while they sleep. The best part is the reactions of the people watching them hold hands while they sleep.

-AR

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 The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman…

When I was a kid, one of the reasons I loved metal, hard rock, and punk was because it felt legitimately dangerous. By and large, I do not get that feeling very much anymore. Maybe that was just youthful naivety, but somehow, I don’t think so, and the reason I don’t think so is this: The Dillinger Escape Plan still sound like an incredibly dangerous band to me, both as a performance act and as a creative force. Every time I hear a new DEP album, I think, “Boy, people are going to be pissed.” And every time I go see the band live, I think, “Holy shit, one of these dudes is going to die right here in front of this audience.” And I know it sounds weird, but those are both invigorating feelings to experience. They make me feel like I’m ten years old again.

And Ben Weinman, as the most consistent and driving creative force behind the band throughout their entire career, obviously has a lot to do with the band’s seemingly limitless ability to induce these feelings.

Click to read more…

As we revealed yesterday, the answer to last week’s logo was Iwrestledabearonce, or IWABO (both answers were considered acceptable). A surprising amount of you got the wrong answer, but a lot of you got it right, too. Alas, there can be only two randomly-selected winners, and in this case, those winners are Andrew Hamblin and Jillian McClure. They each get a special prize pack from Century Media. Three cheers for Andy and Jill! (You guys don’t mind if I call you “Andy” and “Jill,” do ya?)

This week we have another awesome prize to give away: a package from Black Market Activities, featuring vinyl test presses (pic here) of three of the label’s most highly anticipated forthcoming releases — Engineer’s Crooked Voices (out June 7), Khann’s Erode (also out June 7), and Ed Gein’s Bad Luck (out June 21). If you already know these bands that you already know that these albums are worth getting excited about, and if you don’t, well… you should educate yourself. These albums are going to rule, and these are vinyl test presses, so they’re definitely gonna be collector’s items!

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 a winner and announce his or her name a week from today.

This week’s logo was suggested by reader Jason Apoch Weiss. Thanks, brother!

-AR

Back in July of 2010, 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 in March; we posted the second interview, with since-departed guitarist Andrew Tapley and drummer Brett Powell, in April. Finally, today we present the final interview with guitarist Dean Herrera and bassist Henry Selva.

Herrera and Selva shared with us their thoughts on working with producer Will Putney, new vocalist Travis Richter, reuniting with guitarist A.J. Minette, their feelings on the band’s second record Midheaven, and some new music they’ve been digging.

Our chit-chat, across the digital veil.

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Axl’s somewhat recent post on kiddie-pop starlet Miley Cyrus’ screwface-inducing version of Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” brought well deserved grumbles from the so-reliable-you-can-set-your-watch-to-them commenters. Yet much of that ire was directed not at the spawn of the man who brought us “Achy Breaky Heart”, but rather at the Seattle grunge band she chose to cover. It seems anytime that the name Kurt Cobain is even alluded to on this site and others, metalheads rush to bash the man and the music he left behind, usually with the same sneering refrain: grunge killed mainstream metal. Well I’m here to say one thing to those people:
GET OVER IT.

Click to read more…