MetalSucks pseudo-celeb Ben Robson — he who won our Nevermore “Create Your Own Conspiracy” Contest back when Nevermore was actually still Nevermore — has released the second music video by his new “band” The Indigestion Collaboration. Robson, Slovenian guitarist Luka Žnideršič and Dutchman Matthijs van den Hoven all live thousands of miles apart from one another, but that hasn’t stopped them from creating killer music and an entertaining music video to match, which I picked up from The Number of the Blog:

Check out The Indigestion Collaboration’s first video for the song “Megapoop” here. It’s not so much a proper music video as it is basically a YouTube vocal cover featuring Ben Robson singing his own song, but it’s worth watching for the price of seeing Robson’s hilarious metal mannerisms we came to know and love through the Nevermore contest.

-VN

Having some kind of string section cover Guns N’ Roses isn’t exactly a new idea, but I don’t believe it’s ever been done with this much geek love before. The group 2Cellos — which, in case the name somehow didn’t make it obvious, consists of two cellists, Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser — have not only did created their own interpretation of GN’R's classic anthem, “Welcome to the Jungle,” but they’ve made a video for that interpretation as well. And that video not only features headbanging, and not only features a section where one of the musicians uses his cello as a percussion instrument, but it also features what I believe is the first-ever mid-song cello swap. Of course, it’s totally fake, but, hey, I appreciate a little theatricality sometimes.

If This or the Apocalypse could figure out a way to have their two guitar players throw one another their instruments mid-song and then immediately continue to playing, I would never make fun of their choreographed stage moves ever again.

-AR

Additional reporting by Corey Mitchell

1. Fire your entire sales staff, if you still have any. They’re quickly becoming obsolete, a floppy disk in an Internet world.

2. Accept that the CD is a dead format and plan now for a future without them. At best, CDs will end up as souvenirs for the hardest of the hardcore fans, much like vinyls are now.

3. Ditch your out-dated distribution deal with the major. Handle all physical item sales in-house through your webstore. Distro deals still have value, but it’s limited value, and that value won’t last long. Sign a new non-exclusive distribution deal for physical retail only to reap the remaining cash stream from that channel while it lasts (2-3 years max).

Click to read more…

Written into the leftfield metal legend is the Faith No More/Soundgarden/Voivod tour of 1989-90. The tits-rad US trek captured three daring bands at different career points: FNM had gone supernova with “Epic” and then-new single “Falling To Pieces”; Cornell and crew’s Louder Than Love was underground hot and schoolyard cool for the Bruce Dickinson-endorsed “Big Dumb Sex”; Voivod stood at their creative apex with the inimitable Nothingface.

Click to read more…

Mayhem are one of black metal’s most infamous and legendary bands, but it’s been a hot minute since they toured North America — in fact, I believe the last time they were here, they even had a different line-up.

In any case, they’re returning this fall to fuck your shit up, and they’re bringing Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Woe with ‘em. Regular readers of this site know I’m not so sweet on Abby Will, but otherwise, this is a solid line-up — I’m especially excited about the inclusion of Keep of Kalessin, who I haven’t yet had the opportunity to check out live, but I hear are awesome.

Here are dates, courtesy Lambgoat:

Click to read more…

It’s your choice: you can either bemoan the state of Morbid Angel in 2011 or you can do yourself a solid and listen to Mithras, which is a helluva lot better. Mithras don’t have any new material out — yet — but they (drummer/guitarist Leon Macey) did just announce the return of vocalist Rayner Coss, who left in 2008. I’m assuming it’s this news that prompted The Number of the Blog’s deseee to post a track from their second album, 2003′s Worlds Beyond the Veil. Not that anyone should need an excuse to post the awesome death metalness that is Mithras, but any reason is a good reason.

Eagerly anticipating new Mithras, hopefully before the end of the year.

-VN

Seth Putnam, best known as the driving creative force behind grind provocateurs Anal Cunt, passed away over the weekend from a heart attack. He was only 43 years old.

No matter what you thought of Anal Cunt, or any of Putnam’s other numerous projects, there’s no denying that the man was a singular personality; most people probably remember the exact first time they heard Anal Cunt, an honor not many artists can claim.

But as MetalSucks’ own Grim Kim reminds us, “no matter how outrageous and controversial his musical career has been, Seth was still a human being with friends and family that loved him.” Our thoughts are with those friends and family now.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Maybe next week we’ll finally stop making fun of Morbid Angel for thinking that Illud Divinum Insanus was a good idea, but then again, probably not. As long as videos like this one exist, the lulz shall continue!

Speaking of lulz, here’s what else we did this week:

• We completed our list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists!
• We debuted the new Children of Bodom video.
• We also debuted new music by Sepultura and Isis.
• We introduced a new column by Landphil from Municipal Waste and Cannabis Corpse, and had a special edition of “Rigged” by Forbidden’s Steve Smyth.
• We spoke to Matt Henderson from S.O.S.
• We checked out the latest releases from the aforementioned Morbid Angel as well as Nitro and Wildestarr, and Kuldvas, Adam Emanon, Surachai, and Undying.
• We enjoyed seeing you not enjoy this Lady Gaga/Judas Priest mash-up.
• We assured our parents that metal isn’t getting too mainstream.
• We had our annual laugh at the most recent Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial.
• We got ready for the monotony of Metallica Monopoly.

And hopefully next week no legendary bands will release anything that’s completely unlistenable. ‘Til then, dear friends…

-AR

Ghost are a band with a gimmick, and it’s a very,  very effective gimmick: they write incredibly catchy hard rock songs, the kind of Second Coming of Sabbath-type shit that lots and lots of bands are trying, and failing miserably, to produce even as I type this. Listen to “Elizabeth” and try not to move your body; crank “Con Clavi Con Dio” and do everything you can not to get it stuck in your head for days after. These tasks are near-impossible.

And I’m only too happy to report that, in a live setting, the aforementioned side-effects of those songs (complete inability to stop rocking, singing to oneself at all hours of the day and night, whatever the opposite of erectile dysfunction is, etc.) are only amplified; music this infectious is meant to be experienced in a communal setting, and the band’s perfect recreation of pretty much the entirety of their eponymous opus, Opus Eponymous, ensures that only one with the most rigid of sticks up his ass won’t be singing along from start to finish. Boiled down to its simplest element, Ghost’s success is based upon a really, really simple fact: they are excellent songwriters.

Click to read more…

[Blackened doom metallers Woods of Ypres are currently touring North America on the so-called "Pain & Piss Tour." Bassist Shane Madden will be taking us along with him on his journey of pain and piss, to be delivered in four parts throughout the tour. Read Part I, Part II and Part III from weeks past. The fourth and final entry follows.]

Part IV: The Process

The venue was an auditorium that looked like it could be part of any high school in North America. It had those white, speckled, linoleum tile floors and wooden steps leading to the stage and brown, unattractive folding tables along the sides of the room presumably for merch, but there was none there. The gravel parking lot outside was crowded with teenagers coming to the show on a Tuesday night now that school was out for the summer. They stood clustered in their various circles in gym shorts, neon deathcore tees, and ironic tanktops, unmoved by the lightning storm going on overhead. These were not the styles I remember from my day. It was sticky outside as the heat had come on just as we neared Texas, like the state border was the entrance to the first circle of hell.

Click to read more…

Phil Varone was the original drummer in Saigon Kick and the not-original drummer in Skid Row, and he was on VH1′s Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew. But either the treatment wasn’t very effective, or I don’t understand what the show is actually about, because now Varone has a launched a porn site, Phil Varone’s Secret Sex Stash (it should go without saying that the site is NSFW).

The gimmick of this particular porn site — because all porn sites must have a gimmick, lest men be forced to jerk off to a plot-free video of people fucking — is that all the women are allegedly groupies that Varone has shutpped during his tenure as a C-list celebrity. (Varone claims to have slept with 3,000 women, which I guess explains why he hasn’t recorded a decent album in twenty years — dude has been busy with other projects!) So if you’ve ever had a fantasy about being with a girl who wanted to bang you for the sole reason that you are a replacement member in a band that was famous in 1992, this is the site for you! Kerri Kelli is jealous he didn’t think of it first.

Of course, Varone isn’t the first metal d00d to get into the world of porn — there’s Evan Seinfeld, of course, and Dead to Fall’s Chad Fjerstad, to say nothing of leaked sex tapes starring Tommy Lee, Bret Michaels, and Fred Durst (although not all three of them together… now that would sell a bajillion copies). And, clearly, it’s a smart career move. The music industry is dying because of people illegally downloading music on the net, but, as we all know, getting free pornography online is damn near impossible. So finding people willing to pay $240 a year to watch a guy who SWEARS ON HIS MOTHER’S LIFE that he’s a rockstar nail “groupies” should be no problem.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

If you haven’t entered our super-awesome Obscura vape contest yet, well, there’s still time — but only just barely!!! We’ve gotten some ridiculously good entries, including an entire YouTube video that someone made in order to best demonstrate their own outer-space smoking device. The competition is fierce, but you can still throw your hat in the ring!!!

Get all the details on how to enter (and more about what you can win!) here. Entries are due one week from today — that’s June 17, numbskull — so make sure you don’t let the clock run out on you!

And DO NOT FORGET that Obscura are heading out on their awesome tour with Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend, and Septicflesh starting June 24. Get dates here.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Major, major, MAJOR props to Chris D. over at The Deciblog for finding the below video review of Morbid Angel’s much maligned new album, Illud Divinum Insanus, by a dude calling himself “Cover Killer.” It’s nearly ten minutes long, but it’s SO WORTH WATCHING all the way through. This dude is really missing his calling as professional wrestler; I kept waiting for him to take off his glasses, stare right into the camera, and challenge David Vincent to a cage match. I would be really curious to know if he wrote some kind of script beforehand, or if he was just winging it for the duration of the rant. I would also be curious to know if anyone else in the world pronounces it “Emmuré.”

Our own Sammy O’Hagar wrote a much more articulate evisceration of the album; you can read that here.  Illud Divinum Insanus is out now on Season of Mist.

-AR

The great Isis may have called it quits, but they’re leaving fans with pretty much the best parting gifts anyone could ask for — namely, not one, not two, but FIVE killer, digital-only live albums, documenting performances from 2001 to 2006, which will be released every two-weeks through the end of July. May 31 saw the release of the first album; this Tuesday, June 14, the band will unveil its follow-up, ISIS Live II 03.19.03, which was captured (and “captured” is really the only appropriate word) in 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden.

But you don’t have to wait ’til Tuesday to hear the album — ’cause we’re streaming it below right now, this very second! Play it loud, play it proud, and then go here to pre-order it (and all the other Isis live releases) in one of a variety of attractive packages. And in case that isn’t enough of an Isis fix for you, we’ll have a new interview with the band in the very near future!

And now, without further ado, enjoy ISIS Live II 03.19.03…

[this streaming promotion has ended]

At this year’s Black N Blue Bowl, performers gave shout-outs to Trapped Under Ice so consistently that it became absurd that the Baltimore hardcore act wasn’t even playing the event. (They did play a rather memorable set at last year’s fest.) The band’s rise can only be described as meteoric these past couple years, but apparently that’s not enough for these guys. Drummer Brendan Yates fronts the SGT D APPROVED Turnstile, which recently released the Pressure To Succeed 7″ on Reaper, while guitarist Sam Trapkin is part of S.O.S., the supergroup we can’t stop talking about featuring dudes from Hatebreed, Madball, and Terror.

Now, TUI frontman Justice Tripp has gotten into the act with SAI NAM, a new project featuring two notable names in the world of NYHC: guitarist Mike Dijan (Breakdown, Crown Of Thornz, Skarhead) and drummer Lou Medina (Breakdown, All Out War, District 9). Justice first hinted about this project some months back via Twitter, but this week the band unveiled one of their tracks via Soundcloud and Facebook. “Comeback” is a barbed-wire wrapped brick of a track, and if this is what SAI NAM is all about, then I’m game for the pit beast of an LP these guys have in them. Check it out below.

Comeback by SAI NAM Band

-GS

I love tooting my own horn. I also love creating new terms, abusing my status as popular hack metal writer and watching said terms be adopted by the metal community at large. So far to our credit here at MetalSucks, Axl, myself and our talented staffers have brought the following terms to prominence: Sumeriancore, WDBWA (with regards to music), elephants marching riffs, impaling aardvark babies, taco riffs and wigger slam (popularized by Sergeant D). We rule!

Now we can add “Death Jovi” to that list. The term was coined by Metal Injection’s Frank Godla to describe Scar Symmetry’s adept mix of death metal and sugary sweet hooks, and the minute I heard him say it I instantly knew what he meant. Working in tandem, MI and MS have pounded the term out on e-paper so many times that the band got wind of it and rightfully took it as a compliment. In a recent piece for Noisecreep:

Click to read more…

• Aliases, the new band featuring SikTh’s sickly talented guitarist Pin, have a new album called Safer Than Reality coming August 15th via Basick Records. Check the new song “What’s Left For Us?” above, courtesy MS reader Luke Friebel (of Picture It In Ruins).
• Obscura guitarist Christian Muenzer — who many of you thought should’ve been included in our Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists list — has a new solo shred record called Timewarp. Stream it in full at Christian Muenzer’s Bandcamp, then come back here and tell us how much we suck for not including him on our list. (Thanks: Tim Meyer)
• A Pale Horse Named Death are streaming their entire new album And Hell Will Follow Me at Metal Insider. We premiered a track from the album a couple of weeks back, and I gotta say, this record is really, really good. It’s a grower, for sure. It’s the best of Type O Negative’s moodiness and Alice In Chains’ alt-doom all rolled into one extremely depressing package.

-VN

Believe it or not, Axl and I don’t spend all day and night in front of our computers. So thankfully for us we have readers like Joe Caperon to fill us in on things we miss, like this German MTV interview with Mastodon at this past weekend’s Rock am Ring festival, in which drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher reveal that the name of Mastodon’s new album is The Hunter. Dailor revealed that the band had just finished tracking the record with producer Mike Elizondo before leaving for their current European festival tour.

Click to read more…

Gosh, it was April 2009 when I started pestering members of Testament about completion of a follow-up to 2008′s The Formation Of Damnation. True, Formation had come out only twelve months earlier, but it’s my duty as a Testament superfan/powerful journalist/pushy jerk to keep the pressure on; I just will not withstand another interminable gap between killer Testament records, as with Formation and 1999′s masterful The Gathering. I can’t put myself through that again.

Click to read more…

Last week we offered a signed Cradle of Filth picture disc vinyl as the prize for our weekly photo caption contest. And the winner is:

• Zach Dolan: “The Human Scenetipede.”

Nicely done, Zach. This week’s we’re giving away a gatefold vinyl test press version of the new Dark Castle album Surrender to All Life Beyond Form, which is being released by Brutal Panda Records and is available for pre-orders now. Just leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below (sent in by reader Kyle Palmer). Remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect).