By all accounts, the Deftones’ two consecutive headline performances at New York City’s Best Buy Theater on May 13th and 14th were absolutely fucking awesome. For many, it was a chance to see a rare headline show by a band who doesn’t often makes it out to this coast. For my friend Eduardo, the May 14th show was a night of firsts: first metal show, first Deftones show, first moshpit, first (and second!) crowd-surf. For me it was a chance to get up front and get sweaty in the pit, something my old bones hadn’t done in quite some time. And for MS photographer Jacqueline Cheng, Friday’s May 13th show was an opportunity to snap some excellent pics of the Deftones and the two opening bands, The Dillinger Escape Plan and Funeral Party. Those pics after the mosh.

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Ed Gein’s Bad Luck really knocked me flat on my ass. This is one of those grind albums that manages to be both vicious and incredibly fun, and I implore you to check it out when it’s released next week.

But if for some reason you need convincing, here’s my argument: “The Wraith,” a new track currently streaming at Noisecreep. (The Ed Gein song we ourselves debuted, “Wasted Life,” also kicks major ass. You can check that song out here.) The premiere also arrives with an interview with bassist Aaron Jenkins, who says that the song is named after a 1986 horror movie that stars two actors who would go on to be batshit crazy, Charlie Sheen and Randy Quaid, plus plus Nick Cassavetes, the son of the legendary John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands who eventually direct The Notebook (yucky), and Clint Howard, mutant brother of Ron Howard. So, as if the excellent music wasn’t enough reason to love this band, they are also apparently connoisseurs of crappy cinema, a hobby which is always commendable.

Headbang here, then come back and celebrate this song’s rockitude in our comments section. Bad Luck comes out June 21 on Black Market Activities.

-AR

Note to Catholic readers: I am not very well educated regarding all the headwear your church officials don. I apologize if the man on the cover below is actually supposed to be a Cardinal or something.

Note to non-Catholic Christian readers: I am not very well educated regarding all the headwear church officials of all the various denominations besides Catholicism don. I apologize if the man on the cover below is actually supposed to be Greek Orthodox or something.

Note to readers of all other religions and belief systems: What the fuck?

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By which I actually mean: Let’s rock this new Toxic Holocaust jam, “Bitch.”

Toxic Holocaust are one of the few modern (or not-so-modern, such as the case may be) thrash bands whose music actually justifies the genre’s ongoing existence. Never mind that most other re-thrash bands don’t write riffs this good; most bands from the actual Golden Age of Thrash don’t write riffs this good anymore. Toxic Holocaust are, simply put, the shit.

So, like as I previously commanded: GET THEE TO THE DECIBLOG, TURN UP THY SPEAKERS, AND UNLEASH THE HOLOCAUST.

“Bitch” comes off of Toxic Holocaust’s latest, Conjure and Conquer (totally rad cover art above), which comes out July 19 on Relapse.

-AR

No stranger to controversy, hardcore punk icon Jello Biafra seems to have once again caused a bit of a stir, though not in a way that he’d otherwise like. His band The Guantanamo School of Medicine recently announced a short tour which includes a July 2nd gig in Israel at Tel Aviv’s Barby Club. Shortly thereafter, an organization called the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign contacted Biafra, urging him not to play the show and to support the academic/cultural boycott of that country. Last week, he published his response letter to the organization, commenting that “the decision to play in Tel Aviv was not taken lightly” and expressing his interest in using the trip to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fans as well as those with opinions on the cultural boycott took the debate to the band’s Facebook page, leading Biafra to release a statement:

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Intensus’ self-titled debut may be the very definition of “forward-thinking rock music.” The one man project from Knife the Glitter/Burden/Normal Love drummer Eli Litwin thinks way, way, way outside the box, creating an experience that is simultaneously cerebral and unrestrained. No wonder it’s been a constant source of conversation around the MetalSucks Mansion as of late. Which is why we’re proud to be debuting the track “Outlast Robinsum,” which features guest vocals from Between the Buried Me’s Tommy Rogers!

Here’s what Mr. Litwin had to say about the song, and collaborating with Rogers:

“This is one of the two tracks on the album featuring Tommy from BTBAM.  He’s the only singer on the album that wasn’t in the studio recording his vocals with me right there so I had no idea what he had done when I got the completed track in my e-mail.  Needless to say, he exceeded any expectations I may have had.  His mix of creative vocal effects and brutal screaming fits the track perfectly.  I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”

Stream the track below, and then pre-order Intensus here. Other totally excellent guests who appear on the release include Robert Meadows (A Life Once Lost), Jesse Korman (The Number Twelve Looks Like You), Chris Alfano (East of the Wall / Postman Syndrome), Jerry Jones (Trophy Scars), Travis Weinand (Burden/Tetsuo), Evan Moore (Gypsy Wig/Birth Screams), Ruston Grosse, Alex Nagle (Satanized/ex-Normal Love) and Jason Herrmann (Burden/Tetsuo).

[this streaming promotion has ended]

This month of mega-releases continues with the latest offerings from Alestorm, Isis, A Pale Horse Named Death, and more. Get the deets on each and everyone of ‘em from our man Vic Vaughn after the jump!

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Every time I think industrial metal is tolling its death knells, new and exciting bands like Norway’s Shining (the Blackjazz one, not the Swedish one) come along and prove that mixing electronica with metal can still be done in new and interesting ways. In that spirit, here are two bands that impressed the hell outta me on first listen.

Two mostly naked French dudes in WHOURKR who make it their business to annihilate:

(Thanks: Andrés Jeff Barrejón. More here.)

The crushing industro-grind of Norwegian one-man outfit Next Life:

Next Life – Re-Animated by TigerFysiskFormat

-VN

So how’s this for a new supergroup? Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman, The Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, and and  former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery are apparently joining forces to create a new project. And while I’m always a little bit suspicious of mega-all-star-team-ups like this — for every Murder Construct, it seems like there are ten The Damned Things — it’s hard not to get excited by that line-up.

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So, hey, remember last week when Machine Head announced that they were releasing an advance mix of a new song, “Locust,” today? Well, guess what? It’s today, so the song is out! Funny how time works that way. You can stream the track below.

I’ll be curious to see how the metal community reacts to the tune. Machine Head are coming off of two AWESOME records (Through the Ashes of Empires and The Blackening, duh), and, clearly, they’d like to pull off a hat trick of excellence. And even though it’s a not-final-mix of one single song, “Locust” will go a long way towards building hype that, OMG, they’ve pulled it off!, or, FML, they have not.

Personally, I was actually not that into the song the first time I heard it… but now I’ve listened to it five or six times, and it’s grown on me with each successive spin. Is it up to snuff with the material from The Blackening, an album I thought was pretty much a goddamned masterpiece? I don’t quite think so… but I’m also not sure right now if I’m reacting to the song, or my incredibly high expectations for the new MH offering. I’ll have to listen a bunch more (and, of course, hear the song in the context of the entire album) before really being able to make up my mind. But I will say that even if it’s not quite as good as that Blackening material, it’s still really rockin’, and certainly in no way qualifies as a letdown.

You can download “Locust” here for all of ninety-nine cents. Machine Head will be part of this year’s Mayhem Fest, along with Megadeth, In Flames, Trivium, Unearth, Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish, Kingdom of Sorrow, and Red Fang. You can get dates here.

-AR

More terrible news this week. The following message was posted on the Facebook page of Mario Comesanas, a DJ on Sirius XM’s Liquid Metal, alum of legendary radio station WSOU and Revolver magazine, and vocalist for New Jersey hardcore outfits Low Road and December Aeternalis:

“It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our very close friend & fellow Liquid Metal host Mario Comesanas who passed away earlier this evening at 8:39pm ET in Jersey City, NJ… I got the chance to say goodbye, hold his hand, kiss his head & tell him thank you for being a Metal soldier with me all these years & to say hi to Dime for me…Our thoughts & prayers are w his fiance Liz, Mario’s family, friends & fans worldwide… for respect for the family any other info will have to wait. For now, please leave your comments here for all to see. We love you Mario & thanks for coming into our lives swinging & kicking! Rest in Peace…”

Mario was just thirty years old, and obviously had many good years left to a vital member of our community. There are really no words to express the scope of a tragedy such as this. Our thoughts are with Mario’s family and friends.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Thanks: Chainsword

We at MetalSucks got first crack at a Q&A with leukemia survivor Adam “Nergal” Darski in late March, at which point the Behemoth frontman sounded pumped for a return to action but still in the early stages of recovery; that is to say, the spirit was willing but the flesh weak, like in that Sting song. Since then, we tireless reporters/nosy jerks have been keeping two eyes on Nergal’s progress on the path to his band’s upcoming shows in October and, natch, to a lasting recovery.

And so we thank Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta for sharing a pic (above) of himself and Nergal (probably) at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in London on Monday, at which Behemoth took home the Metal As Fuck award over Slipknot, Slayer, Deftones (?), and Zakk Wylde. For that big win, for his birthday on Friday, and mostly for his good and improving health, we say cheers brah! Win!

-ADF

Go here for info on how to help the battle against Leukemia. Here you can order Behemoth’s Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, a collection of out-of-print EPs Conjuration (2003) and Slaves Shall Serve (2005), live bonus tracks, lyrics, and new artwork.

Hey, here’s a neat idea : show people a bunch of difficult-to-decipher metal band logos and see if they can identify the band who use that logo. Someone should really take that idea and turn it into some kind of contest… hmm…

While I ponder that notion, check out the below video, in which employees from Waterloo Records in Austin, Texas attempt to decipher various metal band logos. They start out super-easy (Slayer… as if anyone couldn’t read their logo!) and then become increasingly illegible, although I don’t think they’re ever as challenging as some of the ones we’ve used in the past. But we’ve definitely used the last two in contests before.

Come back tomorrow when we’ll have an actual new edition of Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week, with some chance for you to win some cool shit, natch.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I continue to be baffled by the ongoing popularity of August Burns Red. The band has a new album called Leveler coming out later this summer, and I keep getting press releases about new songs, and I keep trying to listen to those new songs, and I keep having to turn those news songs off after a little bit because if I wanted to be that annoyed I’d just just give myself a paper cut.

And I actually kind of enjoyed roughly the first twenty-five seconds of the latest of these new songs, “Poor Millionaire” (streaming below). That’s a little bit because I dig the riff and a lotta bit because this section is dominated by drummer Matt Greiner, who is a beast, and pretty much the only good thing about ABR. But then the tune devolves into the same generic metalcore schlock this band always churns out, and my interest goes the way of Crazy Town’s career.

Am I missing something? Is there some aspect of this music that’s totally fucking great? Please, someone who likes this band, explain it to me. I just can’t for the life of me figure out what’s appealing about this drek.

Leveler comes out June 21 on Solid State. It was produced by Jason Suecof, so at least it will sound great.

-AR

Okay, so my headline probably makes this story sound a little weirder than it actually is. But only a little bit.

Everyone remember Brian Haner, a.k.a. “Guitar Guy” or “Papa Gates?” He plays guitar for Jeff Dunham (yes, that Jeff Dunham), occasionally releases his own not-very-funny comedy videos, and, perhaps most interesting to metal fans, sired Brian Haner, Jr., a.k.a. Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates, a.k.a. the twenty-third top modern metal guitarist.

So now, perhaps enjoying the extra time in the spotlight his son’s fame has afforded him, or perhaps just looking for an excuse to spend some quality time with the fruit of his loins, Haner the Elder has recruited Haner the Younger to appear in his latest music video. Which is for a song called “Blow-Up Doll.” And is about a man and his blow-up doll. And the two Haners pass one another with their respective blow-up dolls on their way to their respective seedy motel rooms, in which they will fuck those blow-up dolls. And those rooms are right next to each so other.

So, yeah, there’s no weird subtext there or anything.

What a great bonding moment this must have been for the Haner family. “Son, I wrote a song about making love to an inanimate object, and I’d really like for you to be in the music video!” “Okay, pop! That sounds great! Count me in!”

-AR

[via The PRP]

• Nylithia: Last we heard from Nylithia these young Canucks were breaking tons of shit in a junkyard as their death-infused thrash made us headbang at our collective keyboards. The opening track from their new album Trainsaw sees them mature beyond the destruction fetish of their youth into a scintillatingly unclassifiable metal band with razor-sharp riffs, ass-tight chops and a developed sense of song, all while maintaining their sense of unrestrained energy and unabashed fun. Watch the video for the title track above. Nylithia will be releasing one song from the album per month along with a new video, all completely free, through their official website.
• Blunderbuss: You’ve no doubt heard metal with elements of electronica before (See: Genghis Tron), but not quite in this way, somehow simultaneously proggy and grindy. Horse the Band would be the closest comparison, but Blunderbuss strike me as way more “out there.” For some really I just really dig what these guys are doing.
• Blood Edition: Death metal that isn’t groovy, isn’t techy, isn’t Meshuggah-y, isn’t grindy, isn’t cheesy in the slightest… isn’t anything you’ve heard before, really. It is really heavy, it is fun, and most importantly it is quality and unique.

-VN

Last month, to celebrate Ihsahn’s  live U.S. debut at ProgPower USA on Friday, September 16, we launched what has to be one of our most exciting contests ever — the chance for one lucky MetalSucks reader and a guest not just to meet the former Emperor mainman, but actually hang out with him, share a few beers, pick up free swag, and watch his set from in front of the stage barrier, too.

Well, all the entries are in, and a winner has been selected: MetalSucks reader Jenn Lee. Congrats, Jenn! It’s not often that we’re actually jealous of the winner of one of our own contests, but we’re jealous of you!

And if you didn’t win, you can still attend ProPower USA and have a great time — beside Ihsahn, there’s lots of other cool artists playing the fest, including Sanctuary, Therion, and Dream Evil — so you know this is gonna be a good time! Get tickets here.

Apparently iTunes is now posting one-and-a-half minute samples of all songs in their iTunes store, up from the previous mere thirty-second samples. For a band like Agoraphobic Nosebleed this could result in an entire album being “previewed” before street date, but even for Revocation — whose songs are usually on the fairly long side — 1:30 is plenty of time to get a damn fine sense of what a song holds.

Thankfully for us at MetalSucks, where we’ve been salivating for the new Revocation album Chaos of Forms all year, we don’t even have to suffer through the chore of clicking play on all 12 of the album’s tracks through the iTunes interface; some young whipper-snapper has ripped them all from iTunes and pieced them together into one (well, two) convenient YouTube clips, two full months before the album’s August 12th release via Relapse Records. [UPDATE, 4:13pm: And now Relapse has too.] Yummy:

Part 1:

Part 2, along with the album tracklisting, after the jump.

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I can’t believe I’m about to stick up for Korn. I mean, I guess I’m not technically sticking up for them, but… the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, y’know?

So. In case you don’t know, Silent Hill is a long-running horror video game franchise that has even been turned into a terrible a movie. And the latest installment in the series, Silent Hill: Downpour, is coming out later this year, and now Korn have been commissioned to write a theme song for the game. And apparently there’s a faction of hardcore Silent Hill fans who don’t want any Korn music in their game, because, well, Korn are a fucking awful band and an embarrassment to all that the human race is capable of achieving.

And normally I would be all for some good old fashioned nerd rage over such an issue, because, like I said, Korn blow entire herds of goats in a single sitting. Unfortunately, though, it turns out that these Silent Hill fans are idiots, too.

Below is the petition they wrote up protesting Korn’s involvement with their beloved franchise. Not only is it incredibly self-serious and written by people who apparently think that the Silent Hill games are a bastion of artistic integrity, but it’s use of grammar is, um, creative, to put it mildly.

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I don’t think he leaves comments around here all that often anymore, probably because you guys are so charming, but the MetalSucks Maniac known simply as “Sammy” might actually be our longest-running reader who isn’t related to us. Dude was leaving comments here back when when we like all of ten people we didn’t know were actually visiting the site.

So when Sammy sends me an e-mail asking me to check out a band, I check out that band. Motherfucker has earned the right to the go to the front of the line.

Alas, Sammy’s most recent recommendation, His Name Was Iron, is, in my opinion at least, kinda stinky.

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