When it comes to guttural slamming brutality, crushing slamz, and unrelenting pitt riffment, nobody does it better than San Diego’s CEPHALOTRIPSY. Their album still stands as far and away the best slam metal recording ever released, but they’ve been pretty quiet since then, only releasing two new demo songs. I kind of thought they were a one-and-done band, but I’m happy to say I was wrong. That’s right culeros, CEPHALOTRIPSY IS BACK!!!

New studio song — every bit as brutal and unforgiving as I could have hoped for, but just a tiny bit more progressive than their old stuff (in a non-pussy way, though). Oh and DAT SNARE!!

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Look, I know everyone is excited about the stream of the new Mastodon album, and of course you should be excited. But you should also take fifty-three minutes out of your day to go right here and stream Rwake’s new album, Rest, in its entirety. Because it’s really, really friggin’ great.

In fact, I’ve been writing about how great is for some time now, so hopefully I don’t have to do anything else to sell you on its greatness. It’s dirty and it’s evil and it’s epic and it’s challenging, which, I personally at least, enjoy; it doesn’t just reward multiple listens, it requires them. And you can get started right now.

Claw your face off very and painfully here, then come back and celebrate in our comments section. Rest comes out September 27 via Relapse.

-AR

Firewind’s headlining tour of North America with Arsis, White Wizzard, and Nightrage begins in just a couple of weeks, and that’s a great line-up and I’m excited to go…

…only we just got a press release saying that Jim Malone won’t be touring with Arsis. Here’s a statement from the man himself:

“Due to professional and personal commitments I am unable to tour with Arsis at this time. For the upcoming tour with Firewind, rather than drop off the tour entirely, we’ve decided to hire live musicians, some of whom have long been associated with my band.  I have given Nick [Cordle, guitarist] and Noah [Martin, bassist] my blessing and am certain the lineup will be great. My sincerest apologies to anyone who is annoyed or disappointed by my absence. Please go and support Arsis and check out some of our new songs, which they will be playing every night!”

With all due respect to the other members of Arsis, that idea seems, well, totally bizarre to me — like, if Megadeth were to announce a tour without Dave Mustaine bizarre. Jim Malone isn’t just the key creative element in Arsis — he’s been the only constant in the band since its inception. In short, Jim Malone IS Arsis. And we don’t even know who these “live musicians” are! Is it someone awesome? Just some random dudes standing on stage? WHAT THE CRAP IS HAPPENING HERE?!?!

I’ll be kinda curious to see this Malone-free Arsis, but, mostly, I’m pretty bummed out by this news.

You can get tour dates here. Below, watch a video of Cordle discussing the tour, which, as kind of a way to appease us fans I s’pose, includes pre-production demos of some new material… which, in all fairness, sounds pretty frickin’ sweet.

-AR

The highlight of last week’s Big Four show at Yankee Stadium was Slayer, and with all due respect to Kerry King, Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, and, in this instance, guest guitarist Gary Holt, the highlight of any Slayer show is Dave Lombardo. Never mind that, at the age of 46, he hasn’t slowed down a bit, and is still ten time better than most drummers half his age — he’s so good he has the ability to make Slayer songs on which he did not originally play, like “Disciple,” sound better. And I say that being a fan of Paul Bostaph, who recorded “Disciple” originally.

So, while I’m as sick as discussing of the Big Four as anybody, I just HAD to post these drum cam videos of Lombardo at the concert, ’cause you can’t celebrate that dude’s excellence too much. Also, because they offer the best perspective of just how many people (41,451!) were at this damn show.

Here’s “Disciple”…

…and you can check out “Post Mortem,” “Hate Worldwide,” and “War Ensemble” after the jump.

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The thing driving traditionalists crazy is the fact that there’s never been a better time to be a forward-thinking metal fan. I mean, Aborym, Rolo Tomassi, Iwrestledabearonce, OvO, Sigh — what is that shit?

It’s the outlier ethos finally hitting metal. It’s what follows after bands have already pulled at the fabric of metal genres and, no surprise, find them to be made of frayed old material that rips real easily.

To keep this metaphor going way past its due date, what’s happening now is part inexplicable, and part a groovy generation stitching swatches of all kinds of shit to all kinds of other shit while the metal-god version of Tim Gunn yells, “Make it work!”

Incredibly, with incredible regularity, it does.

Do you feel it, ladies, gentlemen, gentlemen who wish they were ladies, and so on? The incredible holy-shit-we’re-in-a-golden-age-ness of it all?

Because we totally are.

And we need to feel proud. Proud that, despite all the hard work and best efforts of the musty traditionalist ‘tards and constant efforts to suffocate metal in neo-thrash dead ends, Big Four circle jerks, only-troo-allowed ideological purity tests, and the first gurgles of the coming neo-nu metal kraze, The Armies of Awesomeness have beat out the Fuddies of Duddy.

So the three discs I’ve chosen are almost random in the sense that almost every week something blisteringly terrific shows up which leaves us with only one real problem — what the fuck do we call the issue of this new era of sui generis excellence?

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You might remember Pyrrhon from Volume 1 of the free NYC Sucks compilation we released earlier this year. You might also remember them from the Fever Kingdoms EP, released last year via The Path Less Traveled Records (chosen by our own Satan Rosenbloom as one of his 2010 year-end favorites) and from An Excellent Servant But a Terrible Master, which the band released on their own earlier this year (which Mr. Rosenbloom also liked). If you live in New York you’ve surely caught one of their powerful live performances.

Selfmadegod Records has picked up An Excellent Servant But a Terrible Master for re-release — it’s always great to see excellent self-released records given extra exposure by labels — and the entire thing is streaming over at Invisible Oranges Here’s IO’s Cosmo Lee, who, as usual, sums things up way more gracefully and concisely than I ever can:

… the music is both mental and physical in a way only death metal can deliver. I’m thinking of beautiful grotesqueries like later Gorguts – a huge influence here – Morbid Angel ‘93 -’98, early Willowtip catalogue, and Nader Sadek’s record from this year. I’m thinking of words like “gelatinous” and “viscera”. And I’m thinking of New York.

Stream the record and read the rest of Cosmo’s take, including a look at the albums New York City-themed lyrics, at Invisible Oranges. At least for today, NYC doesn’t Suck.

-VN

Just a few releases this week including phenomenal new records from Opeth and The Atlas Moth, as well as some less phenomenal releases from Thrice and more. All the details after the jump.

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The first thing I thought of when I saw the cover of Jane’s Addiction’s new album, The Great Escape Artist, was the cover of Jane’s Addiction’s old album, Ritual de lo Habitual. Of course, there are some very obvious differences between the two; in fact, all they really have in common is that they’re both still photographs of sculptures. (The Ritual art is by vocalist Perry Farrell; I’m not sure if he’s also responsible for the Escape art or not.)

But the mere fact that the band went back to that well twenty-odd years later strikes me as being fishy, kinda like when Metallica suddenly reverted to their old logo on the cover of Death Magnetic after fifteen years of not using it for the Load or St. Anger releases (to say nothing of various compilations and live recordings, VHS and DVD releases, and merchandise). It seems like a ploy to invoke nostalgia in fans and reassure them that, “Hey, we know we fucked up, but look! We’re back to being the band you knew and loved!”

Check out both album covers below, and then tell me if I’m being too cynical or not in the comments section. The Great Escape Artist comes out October 18 on Capitol.

The Great Escape Artist:

Ritual de lo Habitual:

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(photo credit: Brooklyn Vegan)

The outside stage of the famous Emo’s club in Austin, Texas has rocked for the last time. After a 19-year run, the venue is shutting its doors and moving to a new location on East Riverside Drive, too far from downtown to walk. The indoor stage of Emo’s will remain open for the time being (and through SXSW 2012), but the writing is most certainly on the wall.

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I guess Ben Weinman likes to keep busy. He The Dillinger Escape Plan’s guitairst, primary songwriter, and manager, and he’s got this new supergroup with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, The Mars Volta’s Thomas Pridgen, and former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery brewing, and now, according to the above video interview, he’s also working on something with Mike Patton.

That particular nugget of info comes at the 2:14 mark, but in case you’re technologically challenged and can’t figure out how to get to said 2:14 mark, here’s a transcript of what Weinman says when asked if he’ll ever work with Patton again:

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Thrice aren’t metal or really even close anymore, yadda yadda, we’ve already been down that road. Last time I posted about Thrice a number of you commented that you were fans, and a few even mentioned discovering the band when we extensively covered their Alchemy Index album suite back in 2007/2008. And so:

Thrice’s new album Major/Minor is streaming in full at AOL Music (still a thing). It continues along the same fork in the road Thrice suddenly swerved onto starting with 2005′s Vheissu, which is to say it’s more like edgy / heavy indie rock than it is the post-punk / screamo the band built their foundation on. This is certainly nota bad thing; I’ve enjoyed some modern-day Thrice even though Artist in the Ambulance is still “it” for me. And I’m enjoying Major/Minor. Some of these songs are super-catchy; I’m on my second full listen and I’m already humming along with the melodies.

Major/Minor comes out today and is available for purchase on CD, Vinyl and Mp3 at Amazon. Thrice will kick off a headlining tour with Moving Mountains and others on September 30th. Dates follow:

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UPDATE, 1pm EDT: Now Dream Theater’s attorney says that there is ”no pending litigation” between the band and Portnoy… although he did file a “Notice With Summons.” Stay tuned for more details…

Original post:

I didn’t see this coming, but I can’t say I’m that surprised: Mike Portnoy is suing Dream Theater.

The summons was sent all the way back on April 19th so I’m shocked it’s taken this long to find its way online, but here it is in all its glory. The suit, which is leveled at John Petrucci, John Myung, Jordan Rudess and James LaBrie personally — as well as the operating Dream Theater-related companies Ytse Jams, Inc., and Infinity Touring, Inc. — charges that the above defendants:

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Yep. Here it is:

As of this writing, I’ve only had a chance to listen The Hunter all the way through once, but here are my initial impressions (and it’s worth noting that, as always, I am speaking for myself and only myself, and not anyone else at MetalSucks):

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Speaking of supergroups that might actually be super…

Back in June, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds revealed that he was working on a new project with Ben Weinman (The Dillinger Escape Plan), Eric Avery (ex-Jane’s Addiction), and Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta) — which certainly sounds like a line-up worth getting all hot n’ bothered over. Of course, that’s four very successful dudes who all have their own stuff going on, and so, as Hinds put it, “it’s been hard to get together.”

But now it looks like there may be some progress being made! Writing on DEP’s official website over the weekend, Weinman dished the following info:

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The thing about Ministry is, sure, they were innovative, and sure, their live show has a lot of cool lights and effects and shit, but I think their music gets real boring real fast. It falls under the category of “too much of the same too quickly.” To give a recent example: Remember that single “Lies, Lies, Lies” from 2006′s Rio Grande Blood? Catchy fucking song, but I was shocked to learn that it’s just barely over five minutes long — ’cause it’s just the same thing, over and over and over again, and consequently feels like it’s an hour. And their whole catalog is basically like that. I remember when Al Jourgensen insulted Trent Reznor as just some Ministrwannabe back in the day, thinking, “Well, if you ever write a song as good as ‘Head Like a Hole’ or ‘Hurt,’ you might sell that many records, too.”

That being said, you do have to give Jourgensen and company their spot in history… and director Douglas Freel’s new documentary about the band,  Fix: The Ministry Movie, does look like a lot of fun. Besides covering the project’s entire history, it features interviews with Reznor (!) and Maynard James Keenan, who, in the trailer below, is, I think, but I’m not positive, is making a reference to the abandoned Tapeworm project he had with Reznor.

ANYWAY, here’s the trailer. The movie is gonna be doing four screenings (at least so far) this month and next month across the U.S.; get the screening schedule after the jump.

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Axl and I have both been raving about The Atlas Moth’s new record for a couple of months now (here, here and here), and Grim Kim even named it as of one of her favorites of the first half of 2011, which should tell you just how broad the appeal of An Ache For the Distance is (Having said that, at least one if not several MS commenters are now sure to come out of the woodwork to tell us that our beta taste in metal blows). If you’re not yet hip to what The Atlas Moth are doing, I highly encourage a listen of the three songs from the new record that are posted over at Brooklyn Vegan along with an interview. Each of them is strong their own way, yet they’re all clearly of the same album; dark, powerful, expansive, atmospheric and brutal all at once. There really isn’t any other band in metal right now I can compare them to that would paint an apt description of what they sound like; just go listen.

An Ache For the Distance comes out tomorrow.The Atlas Moth will be touring with Ken Mode in its support; dates after the jump.

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Let’s just get this out of the way: Textures’ ridiculously good new album, Dualism, is now streaming in full right here.

If you’re still reading this… I don’t know why you’re still reading it. I just told you that THE NEW TEXTURES ALBUM IS STREAMING. Who gives a fuck what some dumb blogger has to say? JUST GO LISTEN TO IT.

If you are still reading this, well, I hope it’s AFTER you’ve listened to the album, and now you just wanna discuss your favorite song in the comments section. I’m particularly fond of “Sanguine Draws the Oath” myself — the riff is awesome, and that whole echoey guitar thing going on just underneath the riff is also awesome. Of course, there’s no wrong answer — the whole album is pure rulage.

Dualism comes out September 27 on Nuclear Blast, and can pre-ordered here. The band is touring with Periphery, The Human Abstract, and The Contortionist right now; get dates here.

-AR

(I am well aware that that is a shit title, but I’ve been hanging out with my grandma all day and she’s really excited about the Emmys, so it’s the best I could dredge up with visions of Mad Men buzzing through my skull. Also, I’m still wicked jet-lagged, so suck it).

RVA’s weed-obsessed death metallers Cannabis Corpse have just returned home from a triumphant month-long tour that took the four of them, our intrepid driver Michal, and yours truly on a whiskey-soaked, high-spirited adventure through Europe, the UK, and Russia. I started writing a full-on tour diary early on (check out the first installment here) but quickly realized that it was going to be nearly impossible to find the time or appropriate technological accoutrements to continue; the WiFi situation got pretty dire, and honestly, it gets boring after awhile to read a laundry list of “Italy ruled! France ruled! Austria ruled!” etc. I believe we did 28 dates total (give or take a few – I may still be hungover from London) and every show was a good one; some were amazing, others were more low-key, but it was a fantastic experience overall. There were tons of highlights – swimming in the Mediterranean, finding an old Russian tank and walking through a lit-up Red Square at night, drinking craft beer on a mountaintop in Austria, watching Mayhem from the side of the stage at a French festival, the mind-blowing food in Italy, absinthe lemonade in the Czech Republic, seeing old friends and reuniting with old ones, and partying in about four different time zones, to say the least. Essentially, this tour RULED, and there are now a few hundred heshers stalking the streets of Vienna, London, Moscow, Helsinki, and tons of other places sporting Cannabis Corpse shirts, so mission accomplished there!

One of the coolest things about this trip was being able to meet and hang out with metalheads from all over Europe and bond over a mutual love of brutality, blastbeats, and bongs. Of the many bands that shared the stage with the ‘Corpse, there were a certain handful that really stood out and made an impression on me, either through sheer musical might or by virtue of the awesomeness of the members themselves. There were plenty of utterly crap bands too, of course, but the odds were weighed heavily in the favor of high-calibre heavy metal. My perch behind the merch table generally afforded me the best seat in the house, and the following five bands were the ones that made me appreciate it most!

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Dunno how we missed this one but our favorite prog metal band from the city of lost angles has had a previously unreleased in ‘merica song up online for maaaany months now.

We suck.

But the Song, “Vernon”, which was included on the European release of Valley of Smoke, is pretty awesome and you should check it out over at the blogronaut…

-KW

It dawned on me as I was watching the games yesterday that I was doing it as a professional journalist. I mean, I was last week as well, but I don’t think it had dawned on me that I was finally doing something that I been following avidly my whole life. Reading about football isn’t as fun as watching or playing it, but it’s not bad! It fact the biggest reason I got a Kindle was so I could get a hometown newspaper everyday and follow my team from mini-camp to immolation! And to be given a chance to write about it is a responsibility I happily embrace, and am honored to be given a chance to excel at. Now let’s get to the action!

Week Two in the NFL was a surprising flurry of stupid yet brutal circumstances. New England QB Tom Brady told the fans to get “lubed up” before the game, then had management decide he was talking about water. That’s just brutally stupid! Thankfully the games started before he could say anything else.

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