In case your fall wasn’t already action-packed with awesome tours, The Chariot have announced a U.S. headlining run, which will start in November. Support will come from Vanna, The Crimson Armada, Former Thieves, and Listener, four bands I can’t really say anything about. But I can reiterate the message in my headline: Go see The Chariot, go see The Chariot, go see The Chariot, please please please do yourself a favor and go see The Chariot.

Here are tour dates, courtesy of Lambgoat:

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I’ve read enough “Cry Now, Cry Later” columns in Decibel to know that if J. Bennett and I ever met we’d be instant besties, or more likely I’d wanna be instant besties and he’d be all “psshhh… get off my nuts, lowly blogger.” Dude’s writing makes me jealous on a regular basis, and he’s got great taste in metal too. His latest pièce de résistance is an entry in The Deciblog‘s “Justify Your Shitty Taste” series, in which DB writers are challenged to defend formerly indefensible and widely loathed albums: today’s mission, Cave In’s only major label child, Antenna.

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Some will say that it’s hypocritical of me to make fun of Bret Michaels for launching Pets Rock, a line of “rock and roll pet gear” that will be sold exclusively at Pet Smart stores starting next summer, even though I love Ben Weinman’s Garmutt apparel for dogs. But I assert that there are three key differences between the two companies, besides the fact that, y’know, Weinman is brilliant and Michaels is not so much brilliant. And those differences are as follows:

1. Like I said, Michaels’ products will be sold exclusively at Pet Smart; Garmutt only sells to “independent brick-and-mortar retailers… [not] big-box pet chains.” Point: Garmutt.
2. The name “Garmutt” is witty. The name “Pets Rock” clearly took all of two seconds for some schmoe to think up. I haven’t seen the Pets Rock products yet, but I’d wager we’ll be able to say the same about those items, too; Garmutt is famous for their “Master of Puppies” dog hoodies, but I bet the best thing Michaels’ team will come up will be something about cats and pussies. Point: Garmutt.
3. Weinman is a known animal lover who has done work for PETA. Michaels, meanwhile, has been mercilessly slaughtering golden retriever puppies for years in order to continue manufacturing his wigs. Dude wasn’t even nice to the dogs he slept with on Rock of Love. Point: Garmutt.

I defy you to argue against my logic. It simply cannot be done.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

I’m gonna put about as much effort into this introduction as Dark New Day put into promoting the release of their new album.

We begin today with Thrash or Die’s video for “Wake Up and Smell the Thrash.” I’m not really familiar with this band, and musically they seem like a pretty standard re-thrash outfit… but this video is friggin’ fantastic. Not only is it done entirely with puppets, but it re-creates a bunch of classic metal album covers, including ones by Anthrax, Dio, Kreator,Autopsy, and Vio-Lence. It’s also totally violent and demented. It is truly a must-watch.

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Of course, the Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject will actually go to something about, like, crippled third world crack babies suffering from both HIV and terminal cancer, but that’s a crock — director Sean Dunne should totally get it for his twenty-minute American Juggalo (below), a very straightforward, non-judgmental series of interviews with ICP fans at The Gathering of the Juggalos. I’m not sure it made me any more sympathetic to their plight (for example, there’s a girl who calls herself “Maniac” and claims to be high only “on life,” but even if that’s true, she should start telling people that she’s high on crystal meth, because the other option suggests that she was dropped on her head as a baby),  but it did give me some new understanding of them as people. For example, there’s a girl early on who claims she became a Juggalo because another Juggalo took her in when her family had abandoned her, and while that’s very sweet in theory, it’s also how cults recruit new members, so… yeah.

ANYWAY, you need to watch this because it’s highly entertaining (and beautifully photographed). Be forewarned: it’s NSFW due to nudity.

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this!

Last time we spoke with a member of Mastodon was when we interviewed Troy Sanders in person on the Rockstar Mayhem Tour in 2008. It was our biggest interview to date, and we were a bit starstruck. MetalSucks has grown leaps and bounds since then, and Mastodon have too; they’ve toured the world several times over and become without a doubt one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. This Mastodon interview session’s subject was guitarist Bill Kelliher; having now interviewed a number of my heros I wasn’t nervous like I was back in ’08, but it’s always a pleasure to speak with someone whose art you respect so much.

When I’m connected with Bill he’s cruising around Atlanta in his ’64 Pontiac Catalina “because it’s a beautiful day.” Doing nothing seems to be Bill’s preferred activity when he’s not on the road, which doesn’t happen much these days with Mastodon’s busy schedule. After his cruise and our interview, Bill was planning on a quiet night at home with the family: “I’ve got 2 little boys and usually it’s a birthday party or something that we’ve got planned – dinner parties or whatever. It’s always something. My wife and I are just like ‘let’s have a night to do nothing tonight.’ Sit on the couch maybe and watch a movie with the boys.” With Mastodon’s new album The Hunter coming out on September 27th and a headline tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang following shortly thereafter, Bill better squeeze in these nights while he still can.

The Hunter takes Mastodon in a different direction than their past two magnus opuses (opii?). None of the record’s songs are over 5 minutes long. According to Kelliher, the band just “dumped out [their] bag of riffs” and assembled them into songs that worked without worrying about a grandiose concept. “Can we just write a record and have fun and not have to have all these crazy stories and imagery? Can we do without that on this record?” Indeed they can and indeed they have. Kelliher’s thoughts on that and more after the jump.

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Okay, so first of all, I effed up. Last week’s logo belonged to the band Triste, a group I’ve used for a previous edition of CUBLOTW. My apologies. We’ve been doing this contest for going on five years now, and it’s hard to keep track. Sorries!!!

That being said, I’m still going to use the honor system and trust that reader Ken Osborn didn’t realize that when he correctly guessed the band. So he wins the five CDs from the MetalSucks Mansion Archives. Congrats, Ken!

Don’t be sad if you didn’t win, ’cause we’re doing it again this week — winner gets five surprise CDs. But there’s bound to be something in there that tickles yer pickle!

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

This week’s logo was suggested by reader Aldon Miller, and, yes, this time I’m sure I’ve never used it before. Please keep submitting logos, guys… I can’t tell you how much easier it makes my job.

-AR

One of Victory Records’ latest signs, Design the Skyline, are from Corpus Christi, Texas, and Roadrunner’s newly-announced acquisition, At the Skylines, are from Huntington Beach, CA. So I have no idea if the bands’ paths ever crossed before, or people routinely got them confused as they ascended from their local scenes… but I imagine people will start to get them confused quite a bit now that they’re both on large, well-known labels.

And to be fair, there are some differences in the two bands’ respective sounds, but to be even fairer, those differences are pretty negligible. And to be fairest of all, I haven’t yet made up my mind about which band I hate more. I imagine it will be whichever one ends up getting more popular. ‘Cause they’re both, y’know, totally awful, and it will be hard for me to accept a reality where one or both of them have a career, while plenty of other, far more talented bands struggle to survive.

Here are music videos from each group, in case you’d like to start forgetting which one is which now.

-AR

My brother-in-blog Axl Whoazenberg occasionally posts about things he finds hilarious that have nothing to do with metal, so I figured why not extend that notion into the realm of hottness?

My brother from the same mother introduced this video to me over the Summer during our annual visit to the Wingerschmidt west clan, and it continues to haunt me……enjoy.

Daisy Lowe for UK esquire HD from Greg Williams on Vimeo.

-KW

One of the highlights of yesterday evening’s aforementioned Foo Fighters show was a guest appearance by Dave Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate, Krist Novoselic*, on the tune “These Days” from the Foos’ most recent offering, Wasting Light. Novoselic’s cameo was meant to help celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the release of Nevermind, which took place this past Saturday, and even though Novoselic actually played accordian (!), not bass, on the song, it was still a fun way to commemorate the event.

Also a fun way to commemorate the event: The Dillinger Escape Plan’s cover of “Territorial Pissings” from that seminal release. It’s part of a Kerrang!‘s Nevermind tribute, which, like that magazine’s Master of Puppets anniversary album in ’06 or Metal Hammer’s more recent ode to the Black Album, recreates the entire record, with a different band covering each song. Only in the case of the Nevermind thinger, DEP is the only group that I both a) am familiar with and b) am a fan of. So you can basically listen to this and ignore the rest.

The cover doesn’t take many liberties with the original, but such a ferocious, punk-y song is still extremely well-suited for Dillinger’s particular talents. Also, they took out that wobbly Buffalo Springfield bit at the beginning, which always irritated me on the original recording for some reason.

-AR

*It should go without saying that the name following the phrase “a guest appearance by Dave Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate” would be Krist Novoselic. I mean, it’s not like they were gonna bring out the remains of Kurt Cobain and parade him around for our amusement, y’know?

[via The PRP]

So long as Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Duff McKagan are all involved, no one would be more excited about a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses than me. Yeah, I’d prefer if Steven Adler were the drummer instead of Matt Sorum, but that seems unlikely, and I’d be willing to settle. I’d be severely depressed about it, but I’d probably even be willing to settle for Gilby Clarke instead of Izzy if it came down to it. And I know there’s really no chance that the reunion would be great; Axl has turned into Yosemite Sam and Slash has a pacemaker and can’t run around the way he used to, so, at best, it would be a total nostalgia trip. But it would be a lot of fun, and given that Rose has completely failed to maintain a stable line-up of G&R (a.k.a. “Guns N’ Roses 2.0,” a.k.a. “Nu-GN’R”) anyway, might as well, right?

And now Guns N’ Roses are one of the fifteen finalist nominees for induction into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. And it seems like they have a pretty decent chance of being one of the five artists who will actually get in, despite the fact that they only made four albums of original material in four years and only toured for an additional two, because, well, those albums sold a gajillion copies, and inducting them would, frankly, be good for business. And so, of course, people are starting to get really excited, because if they get inducted, maybe that reunion we’ve all been dreaming about for almost twenty freakin’ years will finally happen, right?

Only here’s the thing: There is absolutely no chance in hell that the original band will reunite, even if they are inducted into a meaningless museum.

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The long-awaited second Dark New Day record is finally out! Not only that, but the band has decided to reward fans — the few of us that remain, I suppose — for their long wait by releasing a second full album of B-sides along with it.

Both albums were released digitally via Amazon in late August with little or no to-do. We didn’t get any press releases or correspondence of any kind from anyone related to the band; one day it just appeared on Amazon, and that was that. Supposedly Clint Lowery tweeted about it; talk about a PR push! I’m gunning for a band interview to find out more about the situation that led to these albums being released — Warner Brothers stopped caring and gave the band back their masters? band bought them back? someone else bought the rights? none of the above? — but until then let’s all just be happy this music is FINALLY seeing the light of day.

I absolutely loved Dark New Day’s one and only album, 2005′s Twelve Year Silence, so I’ve been anticipating a second album for quite some time. I’ve been listening to both Hail Mary, the proper second album, and the B-sides release non-stop since I downloaded them. And if you’re like me, Hail Mary and B-sides are a bit of a mixed bag. There’s good, and there’s not-so-good:

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Last week Dave Mustaine let it slip that Megadeth would be touring with Motörhead, Volbeat, and Lacuna Coil “this year coming up,” and now Noisecreep has confirmed that that tour is, indeed, a go, and is, as we suspected, the newest incarnation of Gigantour. Of course, in a day and age where there are routinely massive multi-band package tours like Mayhem and Summer Slaughter, there’s really nothing gigantic about it, but, hey, the line-up is good enough that there’s no point nitpickin’ the name.

And the really good news is, the tour will apparently take place from January through March, so our concerns that this was gonna be yet another big summer tour are now eased, and we have something to look forward to in the cold winter months. Also, it’s a safe bet that Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia, who voice is good enough that she’s still in the band despite looking like the kid from Mask, will probably be doing “A Tout Le Monde” with Megadeth every night, and I’m all in favor of anything that will mean Dave Mustaine has to do less singing.

There are no dates yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as there are, natch.

-AR

No modern hardcore band defines the genre better than Terror; these guys bring the extreme mosh each and every time, and they bring that shit hard n’ heavy. And whether or not you’ve already heard their unsurprisingly monstrous 2010 release, Keepers of the Faith, you should be excited for the upcoming reissue — ’cause it will include a DVD, Defining the Faith, that not only includes a full live set that is composed of three different, all totally insane Terror shows (a small club gig at Cafe Central in Weinheim on June 28, a big hall concert at Essigfabrik in Köln on June 29, and a massive European festival performance at the Mach1 festival in Montabaur on June 24), but also features a European tour documentary with band interviews and backstage footage, all four music videos from Keepers Of The Faith (“Stick Tight,” “Keepers Of The Faith,” “Return To Strength,” and “You’re Caught”), and a making-of for the “You’re Caught” vid. Pretty sweet, right?

And you can get a little taste of the madness right now: MetalSucks is proud to be debuting the audio for the live performance of “Keepers of the Faith,” which you can stream below. Turn that shit way, way the fuck up, and clear some space, ’cause it’s pretty much impossible to listen to it without starting a pit. Then, once you’ve scared the neighbors and possibly broken a few bones, go here to pre-order the Keepers of the Faith reissue with the Defining the Faith DVD in advance of its November 1 release via Century Media.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

And don’t forget that Terror will be co-headling the God Damn tour with The Acacia Strain starting in October! Support will come from Stray from the Path and Harm’s Way. Get dates after the jump!

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HUGE drop of new releases this week including much-anticipated new records from Mastodon and Machine Head, as well as a ton of excellent other stuff from Craft, Dead In The Dirt, Landmine Marathon and more. My release reviews are a bit shorter than usual just due to the sheer volume of material coming out this week, but I think I covered most points of interest. Check it out after the jump.  On a side note, Metalsucks wants to send a birthday shout-out to Rodney Githens, member of Vertebrae 33 and the artist behind the awesome Metal Suckfest poster.  Have a good one, dude.

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We’ve already gotten some good entries for our Charred Walls of the Damned/Photoshop Richard Christy contest, but I’m still waiting for one that makes me laugh so hard I wet myself. There’s still time for you to enter — the deadline is October 11 — so I’m hoping that there are plenty of you just taking your time to make sure you come up with something totally fantastic and hilarious.

And while you do not, why not check out “Admire the Heroes,” another new CWOTD track, which just premiered over at Metal Underground? As we’ve been saying for the past few weeks, the new album on which the track appears, Cold Wind On Timeless Days, will kick your ass so hard yo’ mama gonna feel it. Besides Christy’s always-stellar drumming, the record features guitars, production, and mixing by Jason Suecof [Actually Mark Lewis mixed the album, and tracked drums with Richard, and got all of the guitar tones. I'm a big dummy who can't properly read a press release. A million apologies.], who is a genius if there ever was one, bass by the great Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Control Denied, Iced Earth, Testament, a million other awesome bands), and glass-shattering vocals by the one and only Tim “Ripper” Owens. Seriously, I can’t even believe you’re still reading this and not listing to the song right.

Headbang here, then come back and exchange bro-fives in our comments section. Cold Wind On Timeless Days comes out October 11 on Metal Blade.

-AR

We invited Rumpelstiltskin Grinder to play our first annual Metal Suckfest in NYC in November but unfortunately the PA criminal thrash kings had to decline because bassist/vocalist Shawn Riley had other touring commitments. Turns out those “other touring commitments” are with most excellent black metallers Woe — who are playing our official Suckfest “Pre-Game” with Mayhem on Thursday, November 3rd — so the news that RsG couldn’t make it was bittersweet. But man, Rumpelfuckingstiltskin Grinder! ‘Twould’ve been an honor to have them at our fest.

I’m cranking 2009′s Living For Death, Destroying the Rest as I write this, and this album without a doubt thrases just as furiously as it did when it came out and I named it one of my favorite records of the year. Riffs for miles and miles and miles! So it is with great excitement that I tell you this, via a press release: Rumpelstiltskin Grinder are working on a new record that will tentatively come out in Spring 2012. Comments guitarist Matt Moore (also of Absu fame):

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It will probably not surprise you to learn that I’m a big fan of politically-themed talk shows that are hosted by sarcastic pricks and feature panels of people arguing and often insulting one another. And one of my favorite such shows is HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, which I watch religiously.

And I found this past Friday night’s episode especially fun, because one of the guests was none other than Tom Morello, who was ostensibly on the show to help promote his new solo outing as The Nightwatchman, World Wide Rebel Songs. Now, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Morello’s post-Rage Against the Machine output, but hearing him talk about the inspiration for this album (I won’t spoil it for you here) did make me wanna give it a second, and more attentive, listen. I know that anyone with political views like Morello’s will be a divisive figure, and I’m sure there are plenty of you who violently disagree with him; sometimes I think he may even be too left for me. But there’s no arguing that he’s not a smart dude with plenty of interesting things to say.

For some reason the episode doesn’t seem to be streaming on the show’s official website, but someone made a shitty rip for YouTube, so you can check out Morello’s part of the show in three sections below. And then praise him/tear into him in our comments section below.

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This according to Lambgoat, who report that the band had to pull the plug on their previously announced trek with The Greenery “due to circumstances beyond their control.” That’s a bummer for Ringworm fans, but, of course, when you hear something like that, mostly you just hope that everyone in the band is okay and that nothing terrible is going on behind the scenes.

So, yeah, it sucks that the band had to cancel the tour… hopefully they’ll get to reschedule it at a later date. In the meantime, please do check out their latest album, Scars, which is out now on on leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS. You should also read this totally hilarious interview that MetalSucks’ own Sergeant D. conducted with the band back in July, because it has lots and lots of good tips for partying… even if you will now hafta do that partying without the Ringworm dudes.

-AR

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Cliff Burton, who remains one of the most influential and innovative bassists in the history of metal. And while we’re aware that normally you’d have a moment of silence to commemorate a loved one’s passing, well, we don’t think Cliff would want a moment of silence at all. The dude devoted his life to METAL — clearly, he’d want us all to make as much noise in his honor as possible.

So here’s all of Cliff’s bass solos from the Cliff ‘Em All DVD. This might truly be the most glorious racket we can imagine. R.I.P., Cliff.