There is a new video game coming out called Batman: Arkham City. This is probably old hat to most of the basement-dwelling betas who lurk our comments section, but it’s news to me. More to the point, that video game has a soundtrack that’s being released separately — remember soundtracks? I guess video games are the new movies — and that soundtrack has a brand new Coheed & Cambria song, “Deranged,” which you can now stream over at IGN. I like it. It reminds me of something that might’ve been on Good Apollo; melancholic and bittersweet, but still rockin’. The lyrical theme also has nothing to do with the whole Coheed fantasy saga I could never be bothered to follow, which is a nice relief. Stream it below.

We have successfully arrived at Yankee Stadium and are sitting in the press box. We feel so professional!

We’re gonna put the live blog after the jump so it doesn’t eat up the entire page. You’ll hafta refresh to get updates. Sorry.

And now, enjoy the snark…

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Photo by Clay Patrick McBride

Sebastian Bach’s new record is surprising and unsurprising. That is, no one who has witnessed the former Skid Row singer’s recent playdates with members of Asking Alexandria and Black Veil Brides could be shocked by Kicking And Screaming‘s slick, modern vibe. Plus, a clue was provided by each of Bach’s personnel moves, be it a 21-year old guitar prodigy, or a producer of tight radio rockers (Shinedown, Saliva) and lovable old guys (Iommi, David Lee Roth). And duh it’s 2011: For mainstream rock, the choice is big production or small potential. And there is nothing small about Sebastian Bach.

Anyway, those were my thoughts during the opening notes of Kicking And Screaming. But the album’s surprise element mounted with each song: He pulled it off! Yes, Bach is great at bright, pop-punkish hard rock throughout the totally lovable Kicking. Eventually it dawned on me that Bach might’ve been supplementing — not discarding — his OG fans via cavorting with scenebros, dissing of today’s Skid Row, and tabloid-friendly barroom antics. Via producer, boy wonder axeman, and his own snarling edge, his aim was a collection of jamz for both sensibilities and their overlap. Via classic Bach thrust and charm, Kicking is a Skid Row fan’s newest friend.

Last week, I spoke with Baz about Kicking And Screaming‘s creative team, singing high, being high, Steven Adler, John 5, Phil Varone, and tons more in an epic MetalSucks interview that crescendos from chill (excited new album chatter) to silly (an impromptu stoner giggle party) to rampage (invective against the Skid Row he never bargained for). Read and laugh!

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It’s a Saturday night in Greenpoint, a still-Polish neighborhood smothered by hipsters and transplants orphaned by and priced-out of neighboring Williamsburg. My favorite part of Brooklyn is not actually living there, and this neighborhood is blessed with the city’s worst train line: the G. Somehow, I make my way to Europa, a nightclub that not-infrequently hosts rock concerts that end early, via three different subway transfers just in time to catch the last two songs of Bison B.C.‘s set. This frustrates me since they’re one of the few metal bands that consistently impresses me. Their last two melodious albums have both made my year-end lists, and in the live setting you can tell that they’re simply a bunch of unpretentious guys who just wanna rock.

But Bison aren’t really why I came. Oxbow is why I came.

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Look, let’s not kid ourselves. There is good pop music being made, and a new totally generic, soundalike metal band seems to form every hour. So we can’t really sit atop our high horse and scream “METAL IS SUPERIOR TO POP MUSIC!” because while we may ultimately enjoy metal more than pop, there is an undeniable amount of garbage being produced by both genres.

That being said…

This video, by The Axis of Awesome, is, indeed, awesome. It explains, in a very plain and easy to understand way,why so much pop music seems generic. And even though, as I was saying, the same rule applies to plenty of metal, well… you can still probably use it as a retort the next time your idiot friend/parent/teacher/whatever smack talks metal while extolling the virtues of total crap.

-AR

Thanks: Jonathan Votypka

I think it’d be interesting to see Opeth perform their new album Heritage in full. That’s the first thing I thought of while watching this live performance of “Pyre,” a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Heritage, on a Swedish morning television show. All those big amp and cabinet stacks, racks of keyboards, giant-sized drum kits and even Mikael Akerfeldt’s trademark PRS guitar are nowhere to be seen, simply because they’re not needed. Instead we get a bare-bones set-up with a 4-piece drum kit, one keyboard synthesizing a Hammond B3 (it’d be sweet if they had the real thing, but alas) and Akerfeldt playing a semi-hollow body; a most un-metal configuration. I’d love to see Opeth perform an entire set in this orchestration because the emphasis would be squarely on the music itself — what is being played, the notes — without any distortion or blast beats to cover things up or headbanging to distract attention away from the music. It’d be delightful; an “evening with” event, wear your fanciest shoes, enjoy a nice glass of red wine along with a plate of charcuterie and fine cheeses! How sophisticated.

The likelihood of that happening is pretty low, but you should still watch this video. Come for the music, stay for the program hosts saying “death metal” in English amidst a flurry of Swedish.

-VN

I don’t wanna say too much about Machine Head’s new album, Unto the Locust, because I’m planning to write a review. But if the suspense is killing you, I will happily give you the short version: It’s really good.

Now our bestest buds over at Metal Injection have debuted the lyric video for the track “Locust,” which you can check out below. You may recall that an advanced mix of the song was released over the summer, but this final version has way more oomph! to it.

Unto the Locust comes out September 27 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Man — MetalSucks photographer Miikka Skaffari has really outdone himself this time! His photos always kick ass, but these latest shots, of Down performing in San Francisco last week, are a whole other kind of epic, epic, awesome, epic. See that shot above? That’s just a small taste of the killerness (killerocity?) of this batch of pics. Jump ahead to see the rest — they are really, ridiculously great!

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In each scene — and I’d wager that this is the case spanning from Boston to Bejing and beyond — there are at least a small handful of bands you’ve heard of time after time, but, for whatever reaso,n never really gave a listen to. Maybe you kept meaning to but never got around to it. Or maybe you missed one of their shows and subsequently/subconsciously dismissed their existence. The Proselyte has been one such band for me up until recently, I’m sorry to say, and, no, there is no viable excuse I can give. There is, however, a lesson to be learned here: get the fuck out there and engross yourself in all that your local metal scene has to offer, because you could be missing out on a potential new favorite.

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Remember a couple of years back, when we saw that video of Machine Head’s Robb Flynn rocking out at a Metallica concert while watching from the floor and not the VIP section or the side of the stage or wherever? Well, if the below footage of Dave Grohl doing likewise at a Soundgarden reunion show in Los Angeles this past July isn’t quite as cool, it’s really only because at no point does Grohl grab the camera and sing into it the way Flynn did.

It’s still pretty freakin’ awesome, though. Not only does Grohl clearly have legit love for the band, but it’s not even like he’s standing in the back — he’s right up front, getting crushed by all the other Soundgarden nerds. Seriously, I don’t know how you could not love this dude.

-AR

Thanks: Stefan Smiljanoski 

I’m going to put about as much effort into writing this introduction as Jon Leon does to keeping band members in White Wizzard.

First up today we have “Cult” from Evile. I think Evile are one of the better re-thrash bands out there, and I like that they now seem to be moving through the evolution of thrash; this tune is way more in the vein of what the original thrash bands where doing in the early 90s, when Metallica released The Black Album, Megadeth released Countdown to Extinction, and Anthrax released The Sound of White Noise, all of which began a shift in emphasis from speed to crunch. (Maybe Evile’s next album will sound like Load or Risk?) And even if the gimmick in this video wears out its welcome a little fast, it’s still much cooler than most metal clips.

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Textures have done it again with another visually stunning music video. You might remember the water-themed video they made for “Awake” three years ago; it turns out their obsession with this planet’s waterways wasn’t short-lived, as the video for “Reaching Home” finds the band again aching for the water — this time the ocean. “Reaching Home” isn’t even the only water-themed song on their new album, Dualism; water is deeply entrenched in their being.

The video for “Reaching Home,” shot on Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, is so satisfying to watch; the colors, the ocean, the CG, the landscapes, the cinemetal debut of new vocalist Daniel de Jongh. Best of all it was produced in-house by the band’s bassist Remko Tielemans (with help from Kunststoff Media), who also created the album artwork for Dualism and handles the band’s merch designs.

Dualism will be released on September 27th in North America (September 23rd in other territories), and is available for pre-order together with a number of merch bundles. The band is giving away a Textures Signature Series Mayones guitar to one randomly chosen winner who pre-orders a bundle. Catch them on tour in the U.S. now with Periphery, The Human Abstract and Contortionist (get dates here). And lastly, our friends at Heavy Blog is Heavy are hosting an “Ask Textures Anything” Q&A; get on it!

-VN

In 2001, screamer Johan Lindstrand departed Swedish death-thrashers The Crown, and the band went on with then-former At The Gates screamer Tomas Lindberg. But after one awesome album, The Crown reverted to its line-up with Lindstrand for Possessed 13, one of metal’s twenty best albums. Then, after a re-make of that Lindberg album, The Crown folded and so I spent about a year crying while lifting weights. Just as I fully rebounded, The Crown reformed in 2009 but without Lindstrand (whose One Man Army & The Undead Quartet has a line-up odyssey of its own). With God Macabre screamer Jonas Stålhammar, they released Doomsday King, an album titularly similar to their first classic but really the only Crown album to be less rad than its predecessor.

But here comes the best case of déjà vu ever! After one album completed with a different dude, The Crown welcomes back Johan Lindstrand. Fucking yeahhhh! Lindstrand said in a Friday announcement (via The PRP): Click to read more…

To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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I have now listened to the new Pathology album, Awaken to the Suffering, several times, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this band, like many others, have a formula for writing their songs. That sounds like a total slam (pun intended), but it’s not necessarily a terrible thing — I think of lot times artists are probably not even conscious of the ways in which they repeat themselves — and in this case, it makes it way easier for me to know at exactly what point I am going to start enjoying the track. See, I almost never get into the first half of a Pathology tune; but then the riff changes, a fun guitar solo kicks in, and from there on out, it’s smooth sailing. I literally enjoy every song on this album from the guitar solo onwards; that seems to be when the riffs go from muddy mosh noise to epic epicness. It’s kinda funny when you think about it. If I just edited all the songs down, the album would be about fifteen minutes long instead of thirty minutes long, and I would probably love it from start to finish.

The “things get good starting with the solo” principle is in full effect on the track “Media Consumption,” which now has a Re-Animator-esque tongue-in-cheek gore video for you to enjoy while taking my little theory for a spin. Like the other excellent video released today, it’s NSFW — in the case ’cause some poor dude’s head gets ripped off.

Awaken to the Suffering is out now on leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS.

-AR

Horns up for readers Alan Jefferson and Julia Burton! They each correctly identified last week’s logoas belonging to the band Obtained Enslavement, and for their troubles, they each win a copy of the CD booklet for Soulfly’s Omen that has been signed by Max Cavalera and company. Yay for Alan and Julia!!!

This week we have another killer prize to give away, courtesy the nice folks at Relapse Records: two copies of the new reissue of Cephalic Carnage’s 2002 release, Lucid Interval. This new edition of the landmark album from the masters of hydrogrind came out today with new repackaging and a bonus track, which means that whether or not you already have it, you pretty much need a new copy — ’cause Cephalic Carnage really are just THAT cool. You can stay up to date with all of Cephalic’s activity by checking out their Facebook page, and then tou can order a copy of the Lucid reissue from Relapse here. Or, of course, just enter this contest.

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 was sent in by a reader named Joeri… thanks, Joeri!!! ‘Preciate it.

-AR

Junius are one of those bands whose albums I feel kinda lukewarm on, but who I think are totally fantastic live. And so while I’m still pretty bummed that Ghost had to drop off of Enslaved’s upcoming North American headlining tour with Alcest, I am really happy that Junius are now taking their spot. Like I said yesterday, even Enslaved/Alcest alone would be pretty much unmissable — hell, I’d happily go see either one of those bands just on their own — but now with Junius… well, just think of it as yet another awesome, awesome bonus.

Tour dates remain the same, and you can get those here. Our friends at Brooklyn Vegan are also streaming a new Junius track, “All Shall Float,” and you should give that a listen to, ’cause I may be crazy about that whole “Junius are great live and not great in the studio” thing and I’m curious to hear your opinions. The tune will appear on the band’s new offering, Reports From the Threshold of Death, which comes out October 25 on Prosthetic.

-AR

That’s right! The wait is finally just about over; tomorrow, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax will play Yankee Stadium in the Boogie Down Bronx. If you can’t make, fret not — thanks to a last minute invitation to hang out in the press room, we’ll be there, and Rob from Metal Injection and myself are going to live blog the whole event right here on MetalSucks! Come for the descriptions of all the fun and excitement that you’re missing, and stay for what is sure to be witty commentary completely lacking in sarcasm and/or sophomoric humor.

Anthrax are scheduled to take the stage at 4 pm; I imagine we’ll get started shortly beforehand, and, internet connectivity and sobriety level allowing, continue to give you the blow-by-blow throughout the afternoon and evening. Join us, won’t you?

-AR

MS photographer Mariel “Tormentia” Pietrykoski attended the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival on July 31st right across the river from Philadelphia in Camden, NJ and did a spectacular job capturing the show’s bands as always. After the jump, check out her photos of All Shall Perish, Kingdom of Sorrow, Trivium, Suicide Silence, Unearth, Megadeth and Machine Head.

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Slash’s latest “They paid me so I showed up” gig is apparently going to be an appearance on Comedy Central’s Roast of Charlie Sheen, which filmed last week. I was kinda hoping that the Slashter might try his hand and making a few jokes at Sheen’s expense — I mean, it’s not like he’d have to write his own bits or anything, he’d just have to get up and deliver what was written for him — but the below clip suggests that he’s just gonna play guitar. Not the worst thing in the world but not the most exciting, either.

Metal Insider notes that Comedy Central has been using Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” in promos for the roast, and, indeed, Sheen and Slash do appear on a train… although Slash doesn’t play the song, I guess either ’cause he didn’t want to, or ’cause the execs at Comedy Central didn’t wanna hafta pay any further licensing fees.

ANYWAY, these roasts are often pretty funny, so Slash or not, this thing might be worth watching. It airs this coming Monday, September 19.

-AR