Sleeping Giant, metallic hardcore, uh, giants, will release their latest and greatest album, Kingdom Days In An Evil Age, on July 12, and by that time, the band will already have begun the latest installment of the Scream the Prayer tour, alongside Norma Jean, The Chariot, War of Ages, Close Your Eyes, Texas In July, I The Breather, The Great Commission, Sovereign Strength and As Hell Retreats. In anticipation of Sleeping Giant’s summer of excitement, MetalSucks is pleased to be debuting the band’s new video, “Dead Men Walking,” right here, right now. Check it out below!

Like we said, Sleeping Giant’s new album, Kingdom Days In An Evil Age, comes out July 12 on Ain’t No Grave Records; you can pre-order it here. And get dates for the Scream the Prayer tour right here.

SUP BROS! When I’m not writing for Metal Sucks, I keep busy with updating my “regular” blog Stuff You Will Hate. It’s not much, but I am stoked to announce that SYWH t-shirts are now available!!

Printed in super-soft discharge inks on a grey ringspun tee, these shirts are an all-star collaboration: art is by Michael Shantz of GRIMJOB and IT’S ALIVE, who you may also know as the former designer behind Drop Dead (the clothing branded owned by Bring Me The Horizon singer Oli Sykes), and they’re printed by our bro Sean Ingram of 90s hardcore legends COALESCE at his shop, Blue Collar Press.

CLICK HERE to order a shirt, and if you’re in a band or work for a label, make sure you hit up Shantz for art and Blue Collar Press for merch!

-Sergeant D.

After months and months of seemingly endless searching, modern metal titans Five Finger Death Punch have finally found a new bassist: Chris Kael.

Kael won the job after meeting all of FFDP’s requirements for the position, including having a hard rock/alternative metal look that is compatible with the band, being under six feet tall, and not being fat, and not being forty.

The band has yet to release a photo of themselves with Kael, but here’s an old promo shot of the bassist we managed to scrounge up:

Click to read more…

Last week the once-mighty, now-getting-to-be-pretty-sad Mike Portnoy announced the formation of a new band, Adrenaline Mob, with Symphony X singer Russell Allen, Stuck Mojo guitarist (and first ever MetalSucks interview subject) Rich Ward, and some dudes I’ve never heard of before. Our own Anso DF called the project “iffy,” cringing at Allen’s description of the band as “almost like Rob Zombie meets Black Label Society meets Disturbed, with Dio singing.” And Anso so eloquently put it, “When old guys aim for ‘edgy’ and ‘modern,’ it sets off alarm bells, right?”

Well, as it turns out, Anso had good reason to be concerned. The band released some samples of the music they’re working on, and, yeah, I officially don’t care, and eagerly await Vince returning so I never have to pretend to care about this group again.

I also think someone should sit down and play some Rob Zombie, Black Label Society, and Disturbed for Russell Allen. Not because those artists are great or anything, but because he has to running around and telling people that that’s what Adrenaline Mob sounds like. It’s basically the equivalent of me luring in potential readers by telling them that MetalSucks is a folk music blog. It just has no basis in reality whatsoever.

Here are the samples, so you can make up your mind:

P.S. That play on The Godfather logo was silly back when Lacuna Coil did it, but at least they’re Italian, so it kinda made sense. It seems like it’s just being used here because the band has the word “mob” in their moniker.

-AR

Remember that television commercial that Brent Hinds did for Atlanta dive bar Elmyr last month? It was a lotta fun, right?

Well, it ain’t got shit on the outtakes from the ad, which have just been released online. As is so often the case with something funny, the less I tell you about this in advance, the more you’ll enjoy it… so just watch.

It’s amazing that Hinds didn’t get an Oscar nomination for his performance in Jonah Hex, isn’t it?

-AR

Thanks to Newmerica for the tip!

Reader John Schwarz alerted us to the existence of the Epicenter Festival, and if you told me that the show’s bookers designed it specifically to make sure that no one from MetalSucks attended, well, I’d believe it. Look at this shitfest:

There are a handful of insanely popular, maddeningly terrible modern rock acts not on the bill — Nickelback, Korn, Linkin Park, Godsmack, Creed, and Hinder all come to mind — which is too bad, because if they were playing this fest, we’d be like one major earthquake away from being done with some of the worst bands in the history of sound. The only good news about this thing’s existence is that it has made me aware of several awful bands I didn’t previously know, so that now if anyone is ever like “Hey, wanna check out Skillet?”, I can respond, “Couldn’t you just hammer a rusty nail into my penis instead?”

-AR

I’ve been curious to hear Evan Brewer’s Alone ever since I heard the bassist discussing his intentions for the album — how “every sound you hear on the album came from a bass guitar,” because the bass is still a “young” instrument, and he wants to explore its potential, and so on and so forth. That sounds really interesting, right?

Well, now, finally, less than a week before the release of the record, there’s a track from Alone called “Vertigo” streaming online, and… yep, that’s what a bass all by itself sounds like.

Click to read more…

(Photo from Old_Skool_Metal_Head’s Flickr)

Welcome back to Rigged, in which your favorite metal musicians take you on a step-by-step rundown of their entire live rig. Revocation are currently touring North American with Forbidden, White Wizzard and Havok — brought to you by MetalSucks (dates here) — so we asked both Revocation axemen Dave Davidson and Dan Gargiulo to take us on a tour of their gear setups. Check out Dave’s gear here, and Forbidden guitarist Steve Smyth’s here. Here’s Mr. Gargiulo himself:

*Ahem* Now if I may bring everyone’s attention on me for a moment, I’ll tell you guys a little something about my super sweet setup.

I recently began using a Jackson KE2 live, strung up with D’addario 10-52′s. Those thick low strings add some punch and definition to all the power chords we’re strummin’, and like Dave said, they feel great to tremolo pick on. Not only does this guitar look and sound killer, but I feel safe knowing that it’s pointy enough to use as a deadly weapon in case my life is threatened.

Click to read more…

Congrats to reader Camille Schwabe! She correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Gortuary. For her troubles, she gets five CDs from the MetalSucks Mansion Archives. Enjoy ‘em, Camille!

This week, we have another killer prize for you fine folks: four copies of Turbid North’s excellent album, Orogeny, which comes out today on Ironclad. Reviewing the record when it was still a self-released affair last year, I said that Turbid North “play muscular yet melodic modern death metal… [that] kicks all kinds of ass.” And the album has only grown on me since then — it’s a really, really good fuckin’ record. You can order Orogney here, or, of course, just enter this contest for a chance to win your copy!

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 four winners and announce their names a week from today.

This week’s logo was sent in by read MikeForbid. Thanks for the help, Mike!

-AR

The men of Coroner, with Kreator (shirtless and far left) around 1985

Coroner made a few of metal’s great records and that is impressive in light of our genre’s high failure rate. So when Coroner members talk, I listen. ‘Cuz hey I’d like to know what kind of people can conjure six sides worth of significant, singular, distinctive metal. That amounts to roughly thirty awesome jamz (and other great and good ones uh onez); compare that to zero and counting from fundamentally sound but horrible bands like the one whose name rhymes with lithium.

Anyway, fuck I’m wearing out your eyes with blather when you should already be rushing over to ASCAP’s official site to find the fucking awesome Q&A with Coroner drummer Marky Edelmann and bassist-rasper Ron Broder. Click to read more…

S.O.S. are a bonafide hardcore supergroup featuring current and former members of Agnostic Front, Hatebreed, Madball, Terror, and Trapped Under Ice. And, for once, a supergroup has lived up to expectations, and is more than just the sum of its parts. S.O.S.’s forthcoming EP, I Owe You Nothing, seems like a love letter to hardcore, a respect-laden tribute to the bands that inspired and creatively challenged its membership. Or, put more simply: this shit rips.

MetalSucks is proud to debut “Never a Brother,” one of the tracks from I Owe You Nothing, which you can stream below. The album comes out today via Goodfight Entertainment (as we exclusively reported it would back in March). You can order it from Good Fight in a variety of editions here, or get a vinyl version from Reaper Records here. And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out our interview with S.O.S. guitarist Matt Henderson (also of Agnostic Front, Blind Approach, and Madball fame) here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Norwegian black metal is a genre whose history is fraught with controversy and full of murder and church burnings and all other manner of awfulness.  So, naturally, Norway has now given twenty of its diplomats “a black metal crash course,” according to this report:

“The objective is to show Norwegian culture in all its diversity. In the musical field, it goes from (Romantic music composer) Edvard Grieg to black metal,” its deputy head Steinar Lindberg said, adding he hoped to repeat the experience.

“In Italy, Japan or France, young people are learning Norwegian to decrypt the lyrics. Black metal is an export product and it’s important that future diplomats are interested in it,” he added.

Of course, I’m only kidding about the looming shadow of some assholes from twenty years ago being a good reason not to teach this stuff to Norwegian diplomats. Really, I guess Norway deserves a pat on the back for being so chill. So, y’know, three cheers for Norway.

On a semi-related note, my favorite part about the article where we found this story is that they opted not to use a photo of a member of Emperor or Mayhem or Enslaved, but, rather, a picture of Ronnie James Dio, who was neither Norwegian nor a black metal musician. Oh, the mainstream media. So lulzy when they try to cover metal!

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this.

A song can be like the Kennedy assassination: Your first knowledge of it is an event, so you can’t help but forever remember the moment when it came barging into your once-perfectly sane life. The song changes you a little and takes on an aura (or whatever) that stirs you physically for years. It’s a personal thing, but as a confident professional, I’ll limb out and share one: Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.” That song was the end of innocence for me; music was no longer purely magical, a series of neat sounds emitting from a crappy clock radio. To my young ears, music had grown horns, all malevolent, capable of harm and cynicism, darkly powerful, and unwilling to compromise. As such, I can instantly recall the view as I stared down at the now-menacing clock radio as I would a dog that had mauled my face unantagonized. This song, I thought, makes life fucking horrible. I eagerly await the day that radio programmers extract the dagger from my nards by cutting it from rotation. Permanently.

Sigh. It was a lonely feeling facing off with the awful choir reprises and pug-faced pseudo-silk of middle-aged Foreigner. But I would rebound years later, when local college radio unleashed upon me Death’s “Suicide Machine,” from their Human album.

Click to read more…

Art by Andrei Bouzikov

If there is a God, then, surely, Cannabis Corpse must be the strongest proof of his existence. Why did it take so long for some dudes to finally get together to combine the two greatest things ever — weed and brutal fucking death metal? We don’t know. But we’re glad they’re here! And we’re beyond stoked for their new album, Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise, out July 12 on Tankcrimes.

But you won’t hafta wait ’til then to hear some of the album, ’cause we’re debuting a new track, “Where the Kind Lives,” right now! Check it out below. While it’s title is (duh) a play on Morbid Angel’s classic “Where the Slime Live,” it’s not actually a parody of that song — no “Weird Al” bullshit here — but, rather, it’s own awesome, awesome DM beast. It’s also like a gajillion times better than anything on the new Morbid Angel record.

So get right, and check out “Where the Kind Lives.” Then you can pre-order Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise, which was produced by Cannabis Corpse bassist/MetalSucks columnist Landphil and mixed by the mighty Erik Rutan, here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Is it possible to judge Carnival is Forever, the new Decapitated album, solely on its own merits, and not by the events leading up to its inception? Yes and no. Yes, in that it’s a killer metal album with nothing but top-shelf, groovy tech-death riffs one after another (seriously, it gets a little absurd after a while). But no, in that one can’t help but wonder in the album’s more ruminative moments if guitarist Vogg is reaching tendrils out to his audience, expressing a deep sadness in losing two-thirds of the permanent lineup of the band he founded in his teens, including the death of his brother, beloved and influential drummer Vitek. Whether or not a black veil is lowered over the album is beside the point; it’s there from our point of view.

But this isn’t a funereal affair in the slightest, and the band doesn’t get lost in angsty navel-gazing. A new Decapitated release that didn’t have the verve and balls of Carnival would be an insult, and Vogg knows that. Even if the record (through no fault of its own, really) runs the risk of being known as the Resurrection Album, he certainly didn’t reform Decapitated with all new guys just to cash in on a traumatized fan base: Carnival is Forever is overflowing with intent and purpose, getting an eyeful of the sun in the shadow of the legacy of the band that made it. Phoenixes and ashes aren’t exclusive to Hate Eternal, after all.

Click to read more…

Last summer, D.X. Ferris interviewed Corrosion of Conformity’s guitarist Woodroe “Woody” Weatherman for us about the band’s Animosity-era line-up reunion, and, of course, the issue of whether or not Pepper Keenan would ever return to the fold was one of the topics of conversation. Here’s what Weatherman had to say about the subject:

“It’s kind of a weird way it came about. It was Pepper that stirred everybody’s bones back into motion. He had brought us up, doing some things in Europe this summer. Then with Mullin coming back in, being the original guy or whatever, that kind of fell through. Our cages had been rattled.

“Mullin came out of the shadows, so we kept on going with it. When the time is right, when Pepper is willing and everybody else is willing, we’ll probably do more four-piece stuff later on.”

Well, hey, guess what? Keenan recently joined the band onstage during a gig in Bilbao, Spain. Here’s some fan-filmed video:

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Keenan is back in the band for good — he seems to be pretty busy with Down at the moment — but it is one step closer to getting that four-piece reunion going. So I’ll take it, and happily.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

So, technically, this is a picture of Gene Hoglan with Testament…

I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news is, Paul Bostaph, who’s a great drummer, is injured, and therefore won’t be able to appear on the new Testament record. That’s a bummer. Hopefully Bostaph’s ailment won’t keep him away from the kid for long, ’cause like I said, dude can plan.

The good news is, Testament have recruited Gene Hoglan and Chris Adler to take his place, and those dudes can certainly play, too.

Click to read more…

In Annotations of an Autopsy’s new video, for the song “Stage Breaker,” the band plays on a rooftop for a crowd of about thirty fans. Vince and his girlfriend threw a rooftop BBQ last summer and more people showed up, so maybe if Annotations of an Autopsy had given their extras free food and promised not to play awful deathcore, they would have attracted a larger crowd.

Then again, if they attracted a larger crowd, we wouldn’t have the benefit of getting to pick various extras and watch them with great specificity. A few of my favorites:

Click to read more…

Holy shit, this is the biggest release day of the summer so far. Tons of good stuff from Devin Townsend, The Black Dahlia Murder, Helms Alee, Sourvein, Jungle Rot , and more.

Also, some stuff that just sucks.

Click to read more…

I’m not a huge fan of the new Trivium single and title track for their upcoming album, “In Waves,” and based on the comments I’ve seen around the site, it seems like you guys aren’t that into it, either. But if you like me, you dig Trivium, and you’re hoping there’s gonna be some material on In Waves that does get your blood pumpin’.

And maybe it will be one of these songs! The band performed four new tunes at a recent show in Birmingham, three of which — “Capsizing The Sea,” “Dusk Dismantled,” and ”Black” — we haven’t actually heard before. And and because Apple hasn’t implemented a way to stop people from filming concerts on their cellphones just yet, footage of those songs is now on the internet, for your premature judgment.

So here’s “Dusk Dismantled”…

…and here’s “Black”…

Click to read more…