As much as I bitch about summer and hot weather, I have my yearly tradition to hail in the dread season. I get myself a cold drink, usually a nice wheat beer, and blast Brave New World and the air-conditioner. I’m not a complete sociopath; I’ll have the shades up so my apartment is light and sunny. It’s like the most comfortable igloo with the best ambiance.

But I decided to switch it up a bit this year. Summer is also the time for kitschy, joke meta,l and while Lordi’s last release, Babez for Breakfast, was unbearably mediocre, I have my arsenal of equally campy bands to make up for it. Some might protest to my inclusion of Witchery under this banner, but, come on now. The album is called Dead, Hot, and Ready, for God’s sake.

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Sorry to post at such an odd hour, but this is such a bizarre story, and the number of e-mails that are flooding my inbox are so great, that I just had to get this story up now.

Remember back in February, when Kirk Hammett said that Metallica were working on a “secret recording project?” Well, in case the headline didn’t give it away, that secret recording project is an album with Lou Reed.

Yes, that Lou Reed.

No, I am not making this up. Here’s a photo from the band’s official website:

After the jump, read the band’s full statement on the matter. Following that are all my thoughts on this project.

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Earlier today, Invisible Oranges’ Cosmo Lee noted that we’re now halfway through 2011 (Already? Sheesh!) and listed his ten favorite metal albums of the year thus far.

So I thought it would be fun to do the same. It will give me a chance to get the ball rollin’ so I’m not scrambling to meet a deadline come December, and it will give you cats a) the chance to argue, which we know you love to do, and b) recommend shit to me that maybe I haven’t even heard of, or haven’t had a chance to check out yet, etc.

These are just in alphabetical order for now, because no way am I ready to start agonizing over the precise order of my own personal preferences just yet.

Also, there are some albums on here which obviously haven’t been released yet, but I’m not gonna pretend that I haven’t heard them and/or like something else better, so you’ll have to take my word when I assure you that they are friggin’ SWEET.

And so, here’s my top ten of 2011 up ’til now…

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Between the inclusion of Paul Ryan on our Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists list, the release of their latest album, Entity, and their co-headlining tour with Hate Eternal, which begins tonight, Origin have been crowding the metal spotlight of late. I took some time to talk with Ryan about the new album, the current metal scene, the band’s progress, and the tour. Read our complete conversation after the jump!

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Because two young upstart blogs have put together a few for your listening pleasure. I haven’t had a chance to check any of these out myself yet, but, like the headline says, they’re free, so it seems worth mentioning, because what have you got to lose, right?

Here are the deets:

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A couple of months ago, as we’re wont to do once a week, we posted a funny metal-themed picture we found somewhere on the interhole as part of our weekly Photo Caption Contest. And wouldn’t ya know it, reader Alejandro Martinez emailed us to let us know that the grim looking motherfucker in the photo was actually him, taken on Halloween some ten years ago. ‘Cause we’re cool like that we decided to send Alejandro a MetalSucks t-shirt of his choice, and he rewarded us once again by sending in a photo of himself wearing it in the office, where his co-workers got a good laugh out of his teenage Abbath costume. We think he looked tougher in corpsepaint, but we admit he’s looking damn sexy these days too, especially in that Rodney Githens / Vertebrae 33-designed “Skull” MetalSucks t-shirt.

You too can be just as sexy as Alejandro; just send in a fun picture of yourself donning your MS merch (to news[at]metalsucks[dot]net) and you’ll automatically be entitled to a box o’ free metal swag as part of our ongoing Show Us Your MetalSucks contest.

In addition to our standard line of MetalSucks shirts (and hoodie!) we’ve still got a few left of our limited edition “Appetite for Deconstruction” shirts featuring animated versions of our own faces (we’re modest). Get on it.

…and now that album, Welcome to the Morbid Reich, has cover art (below) and a release date of August 12 via Nuclear Blast. The album art is by Zbigniew Bielak, who has also done work for the wicked Watain (among other bands), and I think it’s pretty cool… very lo-tech feeling, which is certainly appropriate for a band like Vader. Check it out, then weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.

-AR

As I was looking over the Top Hard Music charts this week, I found it very hard not to notice how many greatest hits collections appeared; besides the latest one from Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, and Journey all still have their own on these charts,  Bon Jovi have TWO on there, and Aerosmith have THREE. Not only that, but the only other charting release from any of these bands is GN’R's Appetite for Destruction, which is almost twenty-five years old. Def Leppard charted for a live album, which is really just a greatest hits album with people cheering in the background.

In fact, the only bands who play what could reasonably be considered “hard rock” and actually appeared on these charts are outfits like Foo Fighters and Seether, who, let’s be real, really play alt rock that owes as much to the Cobain 90s as it does the Led Zep 70s.

So is traditionalist hard rock a dying artform?

Not if Kyng have anything to say about it.

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I don’t really know much about I See Stars, but based on their name and the music in the below video, I’d wager that their contribution to the arts is roughly on par with that of the Nazis who burned books.

But this vocal cover — which I first saw on Sergeant D.’s Stuff You Will Hate — is FUCKING HILARIOUS, so I’m posting it despite (or maybe even because of?) the utter shittiness of the band and song.

What really makes this video worth your time isn’t just that the kid is a total loser who thinks I See Stars are good. It’s that the kid is a total loser who thinks that I See Stars are good, and he went out of his way to make his bedroom (or wherever the fuck he filmed this) look like a recording studio, and he failed miserably at this goal. I can’t tell if he was actually standing in front of a green screen (probably more like a green sheet) or what, but that is most certainly not a real black wall behind him. I have never seen a mic set up that way in a studio, either, or, for that matter, a professional vocalist use such a cheap, shitty mic in the first place. And, as Sergeant D. himself points out, he is “wearing some $15 headphones (over his beanie, which is covering his ears).” In other words, this poor future forty year-old virgin just… does not… get it.

If you enjoy some good schadenfreude as much as I do, head on over to the original post at Stuff You Will Hate, where The Sarge has collected some other real vocal cover gems, too, including a kid doing one in his empty living room for no apparent reason whatsoever, and two fat kids crooning Attack Attack!

-AR

Vince isn’t here, so I guess it falls to me to take over his regular “Neilstein SoundScam” column… BWA-HA-HA!!!

Some of the more noteworthy sales stats from the latest Top Hard Music charts after the jump!

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vs

YOU BE THE JUDGE!

[via Mad Magazine legend Sergio Aragones]

-Sergeant D.

Sergeant D. invents funny faces all the time over at Stuff You Will Hate.

Maybe it’s hardened cynicism, but I’m always wary of stuff that seems to be too much of a good thing. Several great elements in the same place doesn’t necessarily denote something great: if you put Nietzsche, Stravinsky, Monet, and Ingmar Bergman in a room together, you wouldn’t get a challenging, dense, beautiful piece of genre-defying art, but most likely some awkward conversation, a lot of black clothing, and probably some pockets stuffed with hors d’oeurves before heading back to wherever they came from (probably using a time machine in some cases). Same thing goes for bands: whenever a band combines two or more things you like, it’s usually just those two or more things independent of eachother in the same place, never really working off each other to produce some substantive.

That substantive quality is what makes me REALLY wary of bands like progressive deathgrinders Gigan, especially considering the glut of (extreme metal genre) + (psychedelic noise) = QUALITY METAL, RIGHT??? acts from the last few years. But though proggy inclinations aren’t anything particularly fresh right now, Gigan utilize them well, breaking up vicious deathgrind with a spirited jaunt on the outskirts of metal before running back in. The difference between them and the throng of Cynic-fellating bands that have been kicking around as of late is that Gigan have personality beneath their guitar wanking and trippy asides, particularly evident on their sophomore effort, Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes. It all goes together because it has to, not because they want it to. Though that may be a subtle distinction, a little goes a long way in this case.

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Sebastian Bach has announced a September 27 release date for his new album, Kicking & Screaming. The press release makes no mention of any collaborations with Jamey Jasta or John 5, which would have been the reasons to at least be curious about this record, especially after the awfulness that Bach’s last outing, Angel Down. So… oh well.

But the press release did include a link to the below promo photo, by Gabriel Goldberg, and it might be the most inadvertently hilarious promo photo ever for a professional musician of whom you’ve actually heard. I can’t believe that anyone, let alone what was probably a team of people, thought it was a good idea to release a photo where Baz looks like he’s just about to start weeping. Because nothing screams “ROCK!” like a depressed blonde man with too much make-up on.

Vince is away on vacation, so there won’t be any of his patented photo caption contests for awhile. But if anyone can come up with a caption for this that actually makes me laugh, I will send them a goody bag of assorted whatever-the-fuck we have lying around.

So have at it…

-AR

Kids grow up so fast these days! I remember a time not that long ago when Black Tide vocalist/guitarist Gabriel Garcia was just some downtrodden, monosyllabic kid trying to rebel by wearing a t-shirt that said “VAGINA” on it. And now here we are, three years later, and suddenly he looks like Matt Heafy, Jr., with huge plugs in his earlobes and a giant sleeve tat.

Alas, while Garcia may look more metal than ever, his band is still not good, if last year’s “Bury Me,” and now their new video, “Walking Dead Man,” are any indication. But if you’ve been searching for the most popular mainstream metal album of 2003, then Black Tide’s latest, Post Mortem (Shouldn’t it be called Pre-Mortem? Os it that too prophetic?), should be right up your alley.

The “Walking Dead Man” video isn’t embeddable, but you can check out it by clicking on Mr. Garcia’s face below. Be forewarned: You’ll have to sit through an unbearable thirty-second preview of some movie where Jim Carrey adopts CGI penguins in order to watch it. So it’s like eating an appetizer of shit just to get a main course of diarrhea.

Post Mortem comes out August 23.

-AR

When I’m in the right mood, I loves me some Vader. Still, 2009′s Necropolis didn’t do much for me for some reason. I mean I can’t even really remember any of it, which is not great.

Will the band’s new album, Welcome to the Morbid Reich, do more for me? Hard to say, based on the so-so quality of the below video, in which the Polish death metal masters debut a new song, “Come and See My Sacrifice,” live.  But, man, I’d love it if the new Vader album just slayed.

Check out the new song below, then make some premature judgments in the comments section. Welcome to the Morbid Reich should be out later this year on Nuclear Blast.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

After debuting the song “Karate Nipples” right here on MetalSucks last month, Iwrestledabearonce — possibly the most popular allegedly unpopular band in metal today — have unveiled another new song on their Facebook page. This one is called “Next Visible Delicious,” and it’s actually the opening track from the band’s forthcoming release, Ruining it for Everybody.

And… I don’t know what else to say. Sorry. Don’t mean to be lazy. But it seems like most of you have made up your mind about IWABO already. So some of us will be over on one side of the room, rockin’ out to this song and having fun, and the rest of you will be on the other side room, quietly and almost imperceptibly bobbing your heads along with Yog Sogolgoth or some band like that. And a percentage of the Yog Sogolgoth crowd will probably be secretly wishing they could be on the IWABO side of the room, but they’re too scared to walk over for fear of what their pal in the Necrobluhdist shirt will say about them. So it’s really just a sad situation over on the Yog Sogolgoth side of the room.

Shrug. Your loss.

Ruining it for Everybody comes out July 26 on Century Media. The band hasn’t even released the best material from the album yet.

-AR

We’ve been hyping The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual for awhile now, telling you it’s one of the best death metal albums of the year, and probably just one of the best metal albums of the year, period. Well, now you can hear it for yourself — it’s streaming right here. It’s kind of a pain in the ass to get the player going — you need to use Windows Media, or, if you’re a Mac user like myself, Metal Injection tells me you can use Flip4Mac for Quicktime — but it’s totally worth it. There isn’t a bad song on the album. It’s heavy, it’s catchy, it’s epic the vocals are evil and the solos rippin’… it’s basically everything you want from a metal album.

Headbang here, then come back and celebrate BDM’s goodness in our comments section. Ritual comes out June 21 on Metal Blade.

And don’t forget that The Black Dahlia Murder are headlining this year’s MetalSucks-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, which also features Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Dying Fetus, Six Feet Under, Oceano, Fleshgod Apocalypse, As Blood Runs Black, Powerglove, and Within the Ruins. Dates are after the jump!

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That’s right! As many of you have correctly guessed by now, the headliner of the Magical Mystery Tour 2011 we’re co-presenting with Full Metal Jackie is none other than the great Arch Enemy. Yep. We basically pulled the same trick on you that we did the last time we sponsored an Arch Enemy trek. Hey, we did say that this tour has a different line-up, and, technically, we weren’t lying!

And what a line-up it is! As you now know, Arch Enemy will be joined by DevilDriver, Skeletonwitch, and Chthonic. Arch Enemy’s latest, Khaos Legions, might be their strongest album in years, which is saying something, since they’ve never made a bad record; DevilDriver’s recent Beast is, well, a beast; and while we haven’t gotten to hear any new Skeletonwitch or Chthonic material yet, people in the know assure us that it’s awesome — certainly all their old stuff is!

In other words: These shows are going to be ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE, so make sure you get your ass to a gig!

Get tour dates after the jump! And don’t forget that Khaos Legions is out now on Century Media.

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Big ups to readers Matthew Brignola and Travis Bellmare. They both correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Orisha Shakpana. For their troubles, they each win a copy of The Oculus, the new album from Sweden’s Inevitable End. Crank that shit, you lucky bastards!

This week we’re back to emptying our coffers, so to speak. The winner will get five CDs from the MetalSucks Mansion Archives. The winner will be happy.

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

This week’s logo was very helpfully suggested by the reader known as Black Shuck… thanks, dude!

-AR

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. In case you missed it here’s Forbidden guitarist Steve Smyth’s rig. Next week we’ll feature the newest member of the Revocation clan Dan Gargiulo, but in the meantime here’s the MS crack panel #1 ranked Modern Metal Guitarist Dave Davidson:

Hello, fellow guitar nerds and gear snobs! Dave from Revocation here, giving you a quick rundown on my live rig.

I use Jackson WR1 Warriors with Dimarzio pick ups (D Activators in the bridge and a Super 2 in the neck position on my white one, and a Liquifire in the neck position on my red one). To me the Jackson Warrior is one of the most badass looking guitars on the market and as an added bonus they also play great and sound killer! I just got my new custom a few weeks ago and I haven’t been able to put it down since.

Both guitars are strung with D’Addario strings with a light top and heavy bottom, .10-.52. I had been using .10-.46 but I find that for me the heavier gauge on the bottom has a much better resistance, so when I’m tremolo picking the string stays nice and tight.

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