Thanks to HunterMC for the LULZy pic.

Three years ago we celebrated acknowledged  the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic by re-christening MetalSucks as “MetallicaSucks” for the day, and asking the entire MS staff (and some our guest bloggers) to review the album. We did not wanna do that for Lulu, the new collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, because, well, a) it’s not a proper Metallica album, and b) seriously are you fucking kidding us with this shit?

That being said, we do love to represent multiple points of view here at MetalSucks, and we wanted to make sure that every one of our writers had a fair shot at expressing his or her thoughts on Lulu. And so, after the jump, read reviews by the seven sad bastards who all volunteered for the assignment. At the very least, you should enjoy these musings more than you did Lulu itself…

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Eyal Levi from Dååth, Levi/Werstler, and Audiohammer Studios has obviously been in this business for some time now, and he’s learned a thing or two about a thing or two. This week, he imparts ten lessons about the music biz — and life in general — to you, our beloved readers, once a day, two installments at a time. Enjoy the week’s first two lessons below!

#1: (C+P = R) BEING SUCCESSFUL TAKES TALENT, JUST NOT AT WHAT YOU THOUGHT 

Someone just told me that Thomas Edison didn’t actually invent the light bulb. I was told that he just registered the patent to it. True or not, he definitely got the credit for it. And with that credit he certainly got the rewards as though it were true. It’s also well known that Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America first. However, what we’re taught in the early years of American education doesn’t exactly support that fact. Even though he wasn’t the first, he was the one that got the credit for being first. Just remember the following equation: C+P = R. That stands for Credit + Perception = Rewards.

In an ideal world, success in any field (I know music) would be based on skill, talent, and hard work. We don’t live in an ideal world. If we lived in an ideal world, lots of things we’re used to would be different.

In the world we live in, creative talent is second to marketing talent.  When you have a product that is going to take money out of people’s pockets, that product, whatever it is, has to be worth them parting ways with their cash. And everybody has different reasons for being willing to part with that cash. If you can tap into people’s reason for spending their money, then you will sell more product. Being able to access that part of people’s hearts and minds is a completely different process than the creative one. Yes, marketing and promotion can be creative, but it’s a completely DIFFERENT type of skill set than the creativity required to actually create something out of thin air. And it’s arguably a more important skill set.

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You read the headline correctly! This Wednesday, November 2, for 24 hours and only 24 hours, all tickets to The Metal Suckfest are dropping from $30 to $25 — even if you order tickets online, they’re still just $25, regardless of service fees!!!

So, like, what else do you need to know? Twenty bands in two days for just twenty-five bucks a day?!?! That’s just $2.50 a band. That’s re-goddamn-diculous.

You can order tickets right here, or just walk up to the box office at the Gramercy Theatre. And don’t forget that if you purchase tickets your tickets before the show, you’ll be entered a win a contest where one winner each day (Friday and Saturday only; Thursday’s “Pre Game” is not included) will be able to arrive at the show before doors open to meet with the bands backstage before the concert, listen to soundcheck, and hang out and watch as everything gets set up. Each winner will also receive a bag full of metal swag put together by MetalSucks! Folks who purchase tickets online are automatically entered into the raffle, while those who purchase tickets at the Gramercy Theatre box office can drop a ballot in the “enter to win” box located in the box office window.

Metalgf and I are almost done watching the entire series of The Wire. As much as we’d like to believe that what goes on in the show’s version of Baltimore is fictional and embellished for drama’s sake, startling events like this one serve as reminders that where there’s fiction it’s usually based on truth: last week, Sons of Azrael guitarist Tony Lorenzo was shot and robbed in Buffalo, NY, a city as notorious for crime and poverty as Baltimore. As of now, the 25 year old guitarist is paralyzed from the waist down, with a bullet lodged in his spinal column. Doctors have to wait for the swelling to go down before they can remove the bullet.

You can watch WIVB-TV’s full report on the incident in the video below. While New York state has a crime victim relief fund that helps reimburse for medical-only expenses, a PayPal account (helpingtony@gmail.com) has also been set up to help pay for Tony and his family’s personal expenses (renovating the home to accomodate a wheelchair, transportation, clothing, personal care etc.).

Best wishes to Tony — we wish him a speedy recovery — and, of course, his family.

-VN

Man shot in robbery may never walk again: wivb.com

In case you somehow still don’t know, Skeletonwitch and Kvelertak co-headlined the totally awesome CMJ showcase we did with and a couple of weeks back with Metal Injection and 1000 Knives. Metal Injection has already provided you with footage of the three support bands — Barn Burner, Turbid North, and Battlecross — fucking shit up; now they have footage of Skeletonwitch making mince meat out of the crowd, too. Check out some clips below, and then head over to Metal Injection for even more!!!

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[UPDATE, 4:19pm EDT]: There is a show TONIGHT at The Shredder in Boise, ID! Also, November 11th at Broadway Joe’s in Buffalo is confirmed.

Original post:

When we last updated you on The Ocean’s U.S. tour conundrum last Thursday the band had cobbled together four dates that would allow them to play metal / kill time / earn some money after their support tour with Devin Townsend instead of sitting on their hands before their flights back to Germany. What a difference a weekend makes; thanks to the incredible power of the Internet, the band’s now put together nearly two weeks’ worth of dates! Here’s the updated itinerary:

10/31/2011 Boise, ID @ The Shredder
11/01/2011 Ogden, UT @ Mojo’s (+ White Arms of Athena)
11/02/2011 Denver, CO @ Casselman’s
11/03/2011 Omaha, NE @ 5810 Grover St (house show!)
11/04/2011 Saint Paul, MN @ Station 4
11/05/2011 Indianapolis, IN @ Indy’s Jukebox (note: venue upgrade!!!)
11/06/2011 Lansing, MI @ Mac’s Bar
11/07/2011 Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Roboto Project
11/08/2011 Brooklyn, NYC @ Saint Vitus Bar (w/ Family)
11/09/2011 tba
11/10/2011 CAN – Toronto, ONT @ Wreckroom (w/ Cynic, 3, Scale The Summit)
11/11/2011 Buffalo, NY @ Broadway Joe’s [updated]
11/12/2011 Worcester, MA @ Club Oasis

This is not only great news for The Ocean but great news for you: we caught The Ocean headline a small show in Brooklyn this past Spring prior to their run with Between the Buried and Me and they were absolutely mesmerizing. Montrealers, do a good deed today: if you’d like to see The Ocean open for Cynic, 3 and Scale the Summit on November 9th, call or email Les Foufounes Electriques and beg them to make it happen!

Meanwhile, check out this 2-minute trailer from The Ocean’s recent tour in China, a full documentary of which is coming in 2012:

-VN

In honor of the Samhain season, MetalSucks is taking a fresh look at Danzig’s 11 most dubious distinctions. And we’re rendering judgment. And it all ends today. Click here for Part One: Misfortune. Click here for Part Two: Music. Click here for Part Three: Misfits.)

The problem with being an iconic musician: People start to pay attention to what you do outside the recording studio, beyond the stage. And if you’re popular long enough, next thing you know, people are hanging on your every word, and you can’t make it to the store and back without creating some kind of controversy.

Since he transitioned from a charting major-label act to heritage artist, some of Danzig’s most infamous incidents haven’t had anything to do with his music.

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IT’S ALMOST HERE!!! After months and months of hard work and planning, The Metal Suckfest is this Friday + Saturday!!! We are obviously beyond excited. And we’re gonna have a ton of more news for you about the fest throughout this week, so you can get the maximum amount of fun out of your MSF experience.

For example: the legendary Cynic, who are headlining The Metal Suckfest on Saturday, November 5, will also be doing a special release party for their new EP, Carbon-Based Anatomy (our review here)!!! That event will take place on Wednesday, November 2 at Idle Hands Bar starting at 8 pm. The band will be signing copies of the EP, which doesn’t even come out ’til November 15, so if you come to this event, you can get yours two weeks in advance. And, as if that wasn’t cool enough, they’ll also be doing a special acoustic performance!

But wait! It gets even better!!! Idle Hands will be offering drink specials, including their signature $10 Tasting with Sierra Nevada. So you have a chance to see Cynic twice in one week, in totally different environments, doing totally different kinds of gigs, and you can get totally sloshed doing it. Not too shabby, eh?

You can get more details from Idle Hands’ official website. And we’ll have even MORE news on Idle Hands and a post-Suckfest party for you sometime this week. Stay tuned…

We don’t ordinarily post a whole lotta YouTube covers on MetalSucks (other than the occasional it’s-so-bad-it’s-good laughingstock material) because, well, you can visit YouTube for that. But the story of Ordinance’s cover of Soilwork’s “Stabbing the Drama,” featuring drummer Alex Rudinger (also of Threat Signal), tugged at my heart strings, so I thought I’d share.

A few months back Threat Signal had some gigs in Ontario, Canada. Bjorn Strid happened to be in the area, so they decided to do a live cover of the song with Strid on vocals. Since Alex had already gone through the trouble of learning the song he figured he may as well record it, and instead of playing over Soilwork’s original recording he just asked his buddies in his other band Ordinance to contribute on their instruments as well:

I really enjoy watching Rudinger’s performance; it does such a great job of highlighting just how nuanced a drummer Soilwork’s Dirk Verbeuren is. Loving all the cymbal inflections. Dirk’s got great hands (that’s what she said), and so does Alex.

After the jump, some live footage of Threat Signal and Speed Strid performing “Stabbing the Drama”:

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I am definitely one of those media people who Vince complains show Iced Earth no love. In all fairness to me, though, I can’t help how disinterested I am in that band; my brain literally will not allow them to make any impression on me. Case in point: I completely left their new video, “Dystopia,” out of this morning’s “Cinemetal Round-Up,” for no better reason than I just completely forgot to include them, despite having previously made a note to do so. It’s like I’m Peter Griffin and Iced Earth are Meg Griffin or something.

ANYWAY, I will now make it up to both Iced Earth and Vince by not only posting the video (and the song is actually good so sheesh I don’t know why I don’t love this band), but by posting news of an upcoming North American tour on which they’ll be co-headlining with Symphony X. I bet that bill will make a lot of people happy, even if I’ll probably completely forget about it ten seconds after completing this post.

I can’t post dates because the band has only included them on their website in a manner which makes cutting and pasting impossible, and I’m far too lazy to type them all out one-by-one. So just go here and look for yourself. Support will come from Warbringer, so, in all seriousness, this is a pretty solid line-up, no?

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

In 2006, with a little help from Sebastian Bach, Eddie Trunk actually got Axl Rose to come on his radio show for, like, hours, which is obviously a pretty major coup, given that Rose usually only grants incomprehensible e-mail interviews. And the chat was incredibly entertaining, even if Trunk didn’t ask any of the burning questions Rose refuses to answer (e.g., “So, like, what the fuck, dude?” ), ’cause he did get Rose to lighten up and tell some great stories about David Lee Roth, Jimmy Iovine, and the classic days of Guns N’ Roses. (That’s just one part of the interview above; the rest is easy to find on YouTube.)

And I guess Rose was happy with the way things went, too, ’cause over the weekend he apparently granted Trunk another really long interview, this time for Trunk’s television program, That Metal Show. And while the full episode hasn’t been released yet, Trunk did reveal over Twitter that Rose said that Duff McKagan’s Loaded featuring Duff McKagan will be opening some future GN’R shows. (Actually, Trunk just said “Loaded will open shows,” but presumably he meant GN’R shows. Either that, or he has no sense of how context works.)

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I’m not super into Mnemic, but they’ve definitely got my respect for a) writing a few really killer songs, and b) aping Meshuggah’s guitar and polyrhythm styles way before it was cool and trendy to do so (mixed with other styles instead of straight aping, no less). So it’s with something between an eyebrow raise and a shrug that I report that the band’s replaced three members; bassist Tomas ”Obeast” Koefoed left the band back in April, while drummer Brian Rasmussen and guitarist Rune Stigart — both original members — left more recently, as announced over the weekend.

Everyone is indeed replaceable. Guitarist guitarist Mircea Gabriel Eftemie is now the lone remaining original member of Mnemic. Is he the heart and soul of Mnemic, the Dave Mustaine of Megadeth or the Trent Reznor of NIN? Or will the recent lineup shifts have a larger impact on the band’s sound? I’m not well-versed enough in the band’s discography and history to know, but that’s what comment sections are for; tell us what you think of these lineup changes and whether you think they’ll have any effect on the band’s sound.

-VN

UPDATE, 11:47 am EDT: Now there’s a teaser of a new song and a release date, too. So the release of this info definitely could have been better organzied, eh? Anyways, check it out below, it sounds pretty good! The album will be out January 24. Thanks to Metal Injection for the latest round of information…

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I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as Clown from Slipknot puts into making sense in interviews.

We begin today with Barn Burner’s new NSFW video, for the song “Scum of the Earth.” Barn Burner played at our CMJ showcase a couple of weeks ago and they absolutely SLAYED — in fact, it was my first time seeing them live, and they were so good that I am now a 100% bigger Barn Burner fan than I already was. And I think this is video is pretty good… not, like, the greatest thing ever made or whatever, but it’s fun and it conveys the energy of the song. Unfortunately, some people are really offended by it, apparently because they are strongly opposed to the way that condiments were haphazardly utilized in order to film the video. I mean, there are  starving children in Africa who, like, don’t even have any maple syrup or ketchup or mustard, and guitarist/vocalist K. Keaglesmith just let some girl pour it all over him? What a wasteful dick!

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We hope that you all get really drunk tonight, that your costume is the hit of the party, and that you find a small child whose mother is too dumb to have taught him not to accept candy from strangers. If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to conceal the razor inside the candy apple, remember that you should dip the apple in candy AFTER you slide the razor in, so that the sauce covers up the gap.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Thanks to Jay from All Hallow’s Evil for making and sending in the above video!

UPDATE: If ya didn’t get to listen-in live, you can now download the episode right here!

In case ya hadn’t heard, the Metal Injection Livecast is on Sunday nights now! And I’ll be on tomorrow as a guest to participate in the madness, and, naturally, shameless plug next weekend’s Metal Suckfest. But in case you hate me or I’m just not enough for you or whatever, Steel Panther vocalist Michael Starr will also be calling in! It’s gonna be an awesome time.

So tune in, this Sunday starting at 7pm Eastern (4PM Pacific Time, 12AM Mon. In London) and going until 9PM eastern time for an all new edition of the Livecast. The show will stream live right here. You can be even chime in by calling us at 646-929-1357. Don’t miss it!

-AR

When I was fifteen years old, I had to sneak out of my parents’ house on a Friday night to go see GWAR and the Misfits play a Halloween show. Then I had to conceal my clothing from my parents, seeing as it was, y’know, soaked in blood, urine, and semen.

Here we are all these years later, pretty much right at the anniversary of that show, and GWAR are on a popular, mainstream late-night talk show. And yet, somehow, they seem no less rebellious than they ever were.

Which is all my way of saying, “GWAR rules.” And they do. They rule. Hard.

ANYWAY, here are some things we did this week:

• Speaking of GWAR, Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie himself provided us with more insights into the NFL. Meanwhile, several members of the Relapse Records family gave us the skinny on the new NHL season, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley pondered the pros and cons of new technology in music.
• We debuted Jucifer’s new video, for the song “Hiroshima.”
• We got exclusive specs on Contain Us, the new box set from The Devin Townsend Project.
• We spoke to Steel Panther and Niilo Sevänen from Insomnium.
• We checked out the latest release from Carnifex.
• We continued the Countdown to the Metal Suckfest and defended Danzig.
• We counted down the eleven cardinal rules of attending a concert.
• We wondered if nu-dethcore is the next big thing.
• We cried because even ex-members of Metallica make bad music now.
• We argued about the best debut albums of the past twenty-five years.

And that’s it! Have a delightful weekend, gang. We’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

(This photo is on hand-ripped photo paper that was included under the tray card of the Roughs CD, which I still have! Credit: Jon Copeland.)

I am proud of my status as the world’s foremost Six Clips expert! Saying you’re an expert on the career of an unsigned, mostly unknown band from a decade ago is about as useless an exercise of self-aggrandizing as being the mayor of your city block, but IDGAF; Six Clips ruled! Yup, I was one of the dudes who stood up front at their shows and actually nailed the fist-pumps in the chorus of “Phoebe” on the off-beats, a distinction that only fellow hardcore Six Clips fans and the band members themselves will appreciate.

As a newly minted Ann Arbor college transplant in the early ’00s on a mission to infiltrate the city’s heavy music scene, I idolized Six Clips as soon as I discovered them, opening for Guster (lol) at a University-sanctioned event. From that moment on I ate up everything they did; as an impressionable yungin’ with hard rock aspirations of my own, Six Clips seemed larger than life to me. Later on, of course, I learned they were just normal dudez struggling to making it. I have no idea what I’d think of them if I was just discovering them now, but going back and listening to their catalogue — and I’m pretty sure I have everything the band ever recorded — this shit still holds up. Six Clips are the best band you’ve never heard of, the best band that could’ve and should’ve become huge.

Let’s explore Six Clips’ full discography, with audio, naturally.

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Just the other day I was thinking to myself, “Gee, what ever happened to Peter Dolving’s MySpace blogs? Obviously MySpace isn’t a thing anymore, but I can’t imagine that means Dolving has any less to say.” I always enjoyed reading The Haunted frontman’s rants; they were funny, honest, well-articulated, and best of all got the entirety of the metal Interhole in a fucking rage. Well, today I have my answer to my question; he’s baaaaack! On Facebook, natch. And the beef is most certainly still simmering on the open fire.

The latest Dolving controversy involves Watain, specifically that he isn’t too fond of his fellow Swedes. Here’s the FB status update that got it all going:

So, um Waitan from Schmockholm… They’re a an overrated band, and probably need their asses kicked, you know like generally speaking. Agree? Disagree?

And things pretty much exploded from there! A follow-up comment after several readers responded:

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Longtime MetalSucks readers already know that we are absolutely OBSESSED with Lake Bukkake, the NYC underground pornogrind outfit who emerged with a bang* in the mid-90s and disappeared just as suddenly in 2001 because, we quote, “Of 9/11, and also the lack of really good pussy in this town.” There have been rumors for years that the band was working on a new album — their first since 1999′s I Left My Heart in Lake Bukkake — entitled Chinese Bukkakacy. And we’ve been trying to track them down FOREVER to beg them for an interview, a preview of the new record, whatever. But to no avail.

Well, all that has changed. After months and months and months of negotiations — and by “negotiations,” we mean “us pestering and begging them constantly” — the group has FINALLY agreed to emerge from their shell to play the opening set on Day 1 of The Metal Suckfest, one week from today, Friday, November 4. The band will play both I Left My Heart… and 1996′s Shut Up it’s Good for Your Complexion in their entirety. (The combined running time of both albums is less than fifteen minutes.) They also PROMISED us to debut at LEAST two songs from Chinese Bukkakacy, which they have, indeed, been working on for awhile (although apparently it may not be called that anymore — “The idea seemed pretty funny in 2006, not so much anymore,” the band told us by e-mail).

This performance alone suddenly makes The Metal Suckfest just that much more exciting, and we will be there, right up front, moshing our brains out for it. We hope you join us. Buy tickets for this very special event here.

-Axl & Vince

*Almost literally — their now-legendary first show at the now-defunct Wetlands was abruptly shut down when then-bassist, a shemale known only as “Jizzis Joplin” (who, alas, died of an O.D. a year later), rubbed one out on-stage, blowing his/her load in the direction of the audience.