After Tesseract bassist Amos Williams and I finished chatting about the band’s new singer Elliot Coleman, I couldn’t resist: I asked him about Spotify and his record label’s decision to leave the service. From there the conversation evolved into a friendly debate about the future of the music industry: do streaming services play a role? how do they alter the landscape? how can record companies adapt? Amos is obviously a lot more than just the bass player of a metal band; he’s a smart businessman with a good head on his shoulders, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything. And he’s incredibly thoughtful and polite to boot.

The remainder of our chat after the jump.

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You know him and you love him; Gus G., mastermind and guitarist of Greek metallers Firewind, who also happens to be the newest addition to the band of some guy named Ozzy. We’ve got a Gus G. ESP Gus-200 Signature Series guitar to give away to one lucky MetalSucks reader who comments with our favorite answer to the following question:

What’s your favorite Ozzy guitar solo of all time, and why?

Firewind will be on tour in North America with Arsis, White Wizzard and Nightrage this October. Get a full list of tour dates here.

Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicated every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we proved that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revelled in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dipped into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we surveyed the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. So we did it. Thanks for reading!

Song ”Midnight Cowboy”

Written by John Barry (M).

Released 1992

Appears on Angel Dust album

Produced by Matt Wallace

Guitars by Jim Martin

Key lyric ””Weee-deee-dooo-doooo/Wahhh-dehhh-deyyy-deyyyy”

Single? No.

Click to read more…

I’ve given Ryan Adams some shit in the past, but he seems to have a knack for doing good covers of metal songs. His version of Alice of Chains’ “Down in a Hole” is pretty good(although nothing beats the original, save for maybe AIC’s own Unplugged version of the song), and yesterday he performed an acoustic cover of Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years” on BBC Radio 2, which is also not too shabby.

My first thought was that “Wasted Years” is probably one of the only Maiden song which kinda lends itself to an acoustic rendition, but then I remembered that Billy Corgan’s generally-unlistenable Zwan (calling themselves Djali Zwan for some reason) did an acoustic version of “Number of the Beast” for the generally-unwatchable movie Crank, and that was pretty tolerable, too. So maybe Maiden songs are just that good.

-AR

[Adams' recording via Metal Insider]

Partway through the first song of the Motley Crue concert Vince and I attended last month, I turned to another friend who was with us and asked, “What the fucking fuck is Vince Neil saying?” To which he replied in the only logical way — with a shrug.

That Neil can’t sing so good anymore (if he could ever sing so good) isn’t news; he’s notorious for being fat and easily winded, and for dealing with that lack of breath by just slurring lyrics together so it kinda-sorta-but-not-really sounds like the song he’s performing. (For example, if they lyrics are “He’s the one they call Dr. Feelgood/He’s the one that makes ya feel alright,” Neil might mumble “HesthecallFeelgood/Hesthealrye.”) Still, it’s depressing to think that Anna Graceman, and eleven year old girl who happens to look like Neil if Neil were 800 pounds lighter and three feet taller, did a better job singing “Home Sweet Home” on last night’s episode of America’s Got Talent than Neil has done since, I dunno, probably 1986 or so. Metal Insider points out that Graceman “was born the year the Crue’s New Tattoo came out,” which means that she, like the general public, does not remember when New Tattoo came out, or probably even what New Tattoo is.

-AR

I hail Roadrunner Records for their success at landing major label-weened acts like Megadeth, Ratt, Dream Theater, and as of today, fuckin’ RUSH. These are high-performance, self-steering acts with little need for career guidance or image interference, and who shouldn’t allow their profits’ to be diverted to cover losses incurred by ten shitty signings this year by Belinda the 22-year old A&R prodigy whose aged bf got her the job or Dan the radio personality’s son who spent $19 million on promotions for an Amerie collection.

Anyway, how about some exciting details of Rush and Roadrunner’s deal?! First, know that a RR press release states that a live album will come out ahead of new set Clockwork Angels; also, it calls this deal a “partnership,” which I’ve seen translated to “distro services and profit share.” But in an email today, RR A&R super-stud Monte Conner told me that Rush will be worked like any other RR band (i.e. publicity, promo, the whole whack). I also asked if RR bought out “Caravan” and “BU2B,” the jamz that Atlantic released as a single last summer; Conner said that the songs will appear on the album as planned. Next I’ll ask him how he plans to repair the rip in the fabric of time caused by having Rush, Dream Theater, and Opeth on the same roster. Stay tuned.

-ADF

Rush’s freaking 19th studio album Clockwork Angels is slated for 2012 release. Get “Caravan” b/w “BU2B” here. 

And the Hollywood/sorta metal news keeps on keepin’ on…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt started out as the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun (PAUL MASVIDAL UP IN DIS BEE-YATCH!), but he’s grown into a fine actor, and he’s appeared in some of my favorite movies of the past I dunno however many years. (If you haven’t seen Inception and Brick, get thine ass to Netflix pronto.) He’s also one of the founders of hitRECord, a pretty awesome website in which people from all the net collaborate on various kinds of art projects. So, really, I have nothing bad to say about the dude.

Still, there’s something kinda funny about the fact that he chose to perform Nirvana’s “Lithium” at a recent event for the aforementioned hitRECord, especially given that he seems so upbeat in interviews. Bu he’s not bad at all, and his speech partway through about how the fact that Cobain killed himself shouldn’t deter anyone from enjoying Cobain’s music is a good if kinda obvious point.

And then I found twenty bucks.

-AR

Thanks to KL for the tip.

We heard awhile ago that Shia LaBeouf was directing a documentary about the making of Marilyn Manson’s new album, and that news certainly seemed both strange and cringe-worthy. But not as strange as cringe-worthy as the realization that this dynamic duo have already completed the collaboration, and that it not only covers the recording of Manson’s new opus, but also… L.A. street art. In case you saw Exit Through the Gift Shop and thought, “What this really needs is the perspective of a washed-up rock star and the kid from Battle of Shaker Heights.”

ANYWAY, the project — which is both a book and a movie — is called Born Villain, and I guess the good news is that there’s only 150 copies being made available to the public. You can pre-order one of those copies here; purchase also gets you and a guest admission to a signing/screening in Los Angeles tomorrow night. Here’s a typically low-key, unpretentious statement from Manson regarding the affair:

“Shia is in some ways an art rapist. He doesn’t take no for an answer. He has a vision that develops rapidly like a virus, and overwhelms you. Not since Hitler has there been such propaganda for something. This time it was my face…”

I haven’t done any DMT this morning, so I have no fucking idea what Manson is talking about, although I am suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to watch him have a conversation with Clown from Slipknot while people engage in competitive translation.

And yet, I haven’t told you the worst part yet. The worst part is the below, NSFW photo of Manson, the performance artist Narcissister, and LaBeouf, apparently preparing for his role as the guitarist from Linkin Park in We’re Not Limp Bizkit: The Linkin Park Story.

Click to read more…

Recent InsideOut / Century Media signees The Safety Fire released a new song yesterday. Various blogs picked up this news and posted the song, which tells me that there’s at least some widespread interest in this band.

The Safety Fire are of the proggy / technical ilk, although they’ve actually got more in common musically speaking with SiKth than Periphery or TesseracT (from what I can tell from this one song, anyway). They are not instrumental, and they do not beat you over the head with the fact that they can play their instruments. Conversely, this song is not as catchy as anything by Periphery or even Textures, although it does have a hook.

The verdict is still out on The Safety Fire. I’m not that overly impressed, but there’s definitely nothing to hate about them. Let’s see what their full album is like.

Sooo… what do you guys think?

-VN

The Atlas Moth’s new album, An Ache For The Distance, fucking rules, and it fucking rules hard. Hopefully you already suspected this indisputable fact, based on material from the album that the band has already released; if not, kindly redirect your browser to Brooklyn Vegan right now and check out the newly-unveiled title track form the album.

Bonus: Brooklyn Vegan included an new interview with the band, which is pretty interesting (they cite Deftones as a big influence, which is kinda surprising, but kinda not I guess), so you get some knowledge with your awesome new metal.

Check that shit out right here. The band is also starting a tour with KEN Mode at the end of September; get dates after the jump.

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Hull are one of our favoritest Brooklyn metal bands. We’ve been covering them since WAY back when, we included a song of theirs on Volume 2 of our free NYC Sucks compilation, and if we’ve rocked out to their suspense-filled, wall-of-sound live sets so many times that Hull and Hull alone are probably responsible for giving me and Axl noticeable hearing loss. So today let’s allow the Village Voice’s Christopher Weingarten to sing the praises of their new album Beyond the Lightless Sky:

Its 11-minute suites and placid interludes detail a Mayan-themed epic that mixes the savage chug of Southern doom with Brooklyn-hewn misanthropy—although it is occasionally inspired by what Palmirotto says is “The struggle and hope that is life.” The roiling, nine-minute “Fire Vein” is the album’s most punishing track, mixing a skin-scraping Eyehategod groove, some disjointed Harvey Milk life-sludge, serene breaks of Mogwai gargling acid moonshine and a coda that marches right into the sun.

Have a listen to the “roiling, nine-minute ‘Fire Vein’” over at Village Voice’s website. Like most Hull songs, it constantly sounds like it’s about to end but just. keeps. going. which only serves to up the epic factor and increase the suspense. Check out the album’s title track, previously released, here.

Beyond the Lightless Sky comes out on October 11th via The End Records. Pre-order it here, including a number of sweet bundles.

-VN

I suspect that Skip the Foreplay intended their name to have positive connotations, but, really, all it does it illustrate the fact that its members probably have no idea how to please a woman.

They certainly have no idea how to please anyone with eardrums and a brain. I’ve never encountered them before, but this morning, a reader (who I’m relatively certain has some association with the band, although I can’t tell for sure) sent us a barely-literate e-mail encouraging us to check out their video for “The City (We’re Taking Over),” and it’s the kind of thing which makes me perfectly okay with the idea of the world ending. It’s like somebody took the most generic core music available and mashed it up with the most generic electronica available and mashed that up with a crying baby on an airplane. It’s that level of irritating.

What’s worse is that it features guest appearances not only from some musicians I could give a shit about (members of Sucked by a Sucking Suck and Blind Witness), but also by former Despised Icon co-frontman Alexandre Erian, I guess because he thought I enjoyed and defended The Ills of Modern Man too much.

Today is gonna fucking choke on giant elephant cocks, I can tell.

-AR

MetalSucks readers love to complain that the tours we sponsor don’t come through their town, especially if said town is in Florida. While the fact of the matter is that we don’t have control over the cities that the tours we sponsor stop in, one of the many places our sponsored tours have never been to is Europe, anywhere at all in the diverse continent. To that end we’re one of many fine sponsors on this year’s Euroblast festival — their 7th year — a two-day event set to take place in Cologne, Germany on October 21st and 22nd.

Mnemic and Textures will headline, with support from TesseracT, Vildhjarta, Sybreed, Monuments, Chimp Spanner and a number of other awesome bands. If you’re a fan of progressive metal and you live anywhere within striking distance of Cologne (which is pretty much anywhere in Europe, since Europe’s train systems and regional airlines put those in the U.S. to shame in terms of affordability and convenience), there’s no reason whatsoever you shouldn’t be at this festival.

Find more info about the event, the bands, ticketing and more at the official Euroblast site.

If you’re like most musicians these days, there are two big questions you struggle with. First, what are we trying to say with our brand/image: pretty boy party animals ala Asking Alexandria, srs brooding artists like Converge, ponytailed betas (Animals As Leaders), or what? And second, but more importantly, how are we going to come up with sick breakdowns that will end up on every YouTube “TOP 10 METALCORE BREAKDOWNS THAT GO HARD” video?

I’ll save the first question for another post, but if you’re stumped for breakdown ideas, look no further than this video by a band called ARBITER. It turns out that all you need is a deck of cards! While it’s clearly tongue-in-cheek, what makes this video so awesome is that it’s pure truth. The “advanced breakdown” at 4:30? Oh fuck yes!! You’re moshing!!!!

Will you use THE ARBITER METHOD next time you need to come up with an advanced-level breakdown?? Did they take the easy way out when they removed the 7s, 8s, and 9s from the deck? Which card represents “gang vocals shouting a controversial slogan before you break that shit down”???

-Sergeant D.

Sergeant D. writes advanced blog posts every day at Stuff You Will Hate.

Horns up for readers John Steib and Jake Jones. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Rote Roué. Here’s what they get for their troubles: John, our grand-prize winner, will receive a copy of Shadowside’s new album, Inner Monster Out (out now SHP Records — order  here), PLUS a sweet Shadowside shirt, while Jake, our runner-up, gets the CD. Enjoy those, fellas!

This week, we have another awesome prize, again courtesy of the nice folks at Roadrunner Records:  a copy of the CD booklet for Stone Sour’s Audio Secrecy that has been signed by both the band. Pretty sweet, right? And we’ve got TWO of ‘em to give away!

All you gotta 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 two winners and announce their names one week from today.

This week’s logo wasn’t suggested by a reader — but regular visitors of MetalSucks oughta find it familiar…

-AR

Spurred by a lazy crossword clue in The Onion (36 down, four letters: “Faith No More’s only hit”), MetalSucks contributor Anso DF dedicates every single day in August to celebration and exploration of the San Francisco alt-metal greats. Here we prove that history’s greatest band landed more than one commercial hit (crossword answer: “Epic” natch), we revel in FNM’s embarrassing wealth of winning album tracks (themselves often fit for chart topping), and we dip into the staggering best of the b-sides (ditto). Along the way, we survey the context of FNM’s big break (amid similarly seminal acts Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Ween) to the post-Nevermind, panic-based music commerce in which the brilliantly versatile, fearless powerhouse band operated until their 1998 demise. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Song ”Just A Man”

Written by Gould, Spruance, Patton (L); Gould, Bottum (M)

Released 1995

Appears on King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime album

Produced by Andy Wallace

Guitars by Trey Spruance (Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle)

Key lyric ”And every night I shut my eyes/So I don’t have to see the light/Shining so bright/I dream about a cloudy sky.”

Single? No.

Click to read more…

Despite some rock-solid contributions to the genre, instrumental metal is an oft-overlooked idiom. Odyssey’s new record An Abstract Existence stands as a triumph in the genre, blending a love of thrash, death metal, fusion jazz and prog rock. Forget neoclassical metal and mathcore. Odyssey are what happens when a tech death band ingests too much classic Yes and fires their vocalist. In case you’re wondering that’s a very, very good thing.

Click to read more…

The Accüsed turned thirty this year. What did they do to commemorate the milestone? Did they reissue one of their early crossover classics in a five-CD box set format with four hours of throwaway demo tracks? Nope. Did they play The Return of Martha Splatterhead in its entirety on a lifeless reunion tour? Not a chance. Did they switch up their sound in a bid for relevance? Hell no. Ever the black sheep of the Pacific Northwest extreme music scene, The Accüsed celebrated by playing the smallest, least-traveled markets they could find in the region, as part of their “Backwoods Bloodbath Tour 2011.”

You could see that approach as either a humble “thank you” to the small towns that supported The Accüsed while they cut their teeth back in the ‘80s, or a “fuck you” to the notion of a self-congratulatory victory lap. Maybe it’s both. Legacies are for dead men anyway. And if the affability of the band’s guitarist Tom Niemeyer is any indication, The Accüsed have a whole lot of life left in ‘em. Nevermind that Niemeyer is the lone remaining original member of the band. The Accüsed will keep on going as long as their murderous mascot Martha Splatterhead has more work to do. And she always has more work to do.

We talked to Niemeyer about the evolution of the band, his horror obsession, and how he stays motivated after so many years.

Click to read more…

Heavy Blog is Heavy recently completed a multi-part series called “Five Reasons Why Metalcore Isn’t Total Shit,” in which they concentrated on some classic (or in at least one case I guess “near-classic”) releases which a) are actually metalcore — which is to say, music that combines metal with hardcore, not just, like, Lamb of God, or whatever idiots often refer to as “metalcore” — and b) were not, y’know. Total shit.

Well, if they do a series on five up and coming bands that make actual metalcore and aren’t total shit, I vote for them to include Cork’s Fat Actress, whose self-recorded debut EP, Hot Rubbish (ridiculously great album art above), is now streaming here.

Click to read more…

That’s MS reader, Heavy Blog is Heavy contributor and self-described “fat english guy” Damien Leech. Behind him, at the London Science Museum, that’s the preserved brain of the father of computing, Charles Babbage (!). And, of course, that’s a “Sergeant D” model MetalSucks t-shirt Damien is wearing. For his fine sense in fashion, Damien will receive a box o’ metal goodies courtesy ol’ Uncles Vince and Axl. You can receive the same by donning your MS merch and sending in a fun picture of yourself to news[at]metalsucks[dot]net 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). So get on it.

More pics of the Babbage brain after the jump:

Click to read more…