This weekend, Behemoth will return to the stage for the first time since Nergal was diagnosed with leukemia (if you live in Poland, you can dates here). And, as if to announce their return with the absolute maximum amount of impact and creepiness, the band has now released a totally awesome, totally unsettling video for “Lucifer,” the concluding track from their most recent studio album, Evangelion. I can’t tell you what the hell is going on in the video, but I can tell that as soon as I hit “play,” birds started falling from the sky right outside my window, and all my crops died. Whatever, could just be coincidence.

Check out the video below, although you shouldn’t do it at work, ’cause your co-workers probably will not appreciate the sight of a naked woman drenching herself in blood. Unless you work at Filene’s Basement… that’s place is EVIL!

Metal Blade will reissue Behemoth’s 2006 compilation of the band’s earliest recordings, Demonica, on November 22, complete with two new booklets that will collect rare photos and lyrics for the first time. You can get an mp3 of the track “Summoning of the Ancient Gods” and pre-order the reissue here.

-AR

Week four in the NFL saw some of the most amazing play from a QB ever recorded, and some of the most inept officiating I have ever seen. There were amazing comebacks and burly beat-downs. All in all, as we closed out Week 4 the NFL was the same chaotic, colorful, and crazed place it always has been, as some teams began to separate themselves from the pack and others continued to wallow in mediocrity… and I was once again left with the task of somehow writing about it. Not the easiest thing to when you really don’t care about most of the teams and are bound to offend many by your caustic observations concerning why their teams suck. But I beg forgiveness in advance! I’m no sportswriter; I’m the guy behind Oderus and I sing for GWAR. My personal agenda is strongly linked to my professional persona, so if you are looking for a fair and objective viewpoint, where I reward good performances with positive ink, read no further! That will happen, but I am WAY more into making crass remarks, laying-down weed-addled observations, and making my way through this entire season without missing a deadline. In fact, that’s probably the hardest thing about writing this thing. On Sunday I am drinking beer and watching football ALL DAY (and I am already using this column as an excuse to subtract myself from reality any time ANYTHING to do with the NFL is happening), so I am not about to get any writing done. Dragging my hungover ass out of bed early enough to make my Monday at noon deadline is by far the toughest challenge I face, and for that I am happy! I used to shovel shit for a living. Hmmmm… I guess things haven’t changed that much.

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The fine folks over at Noisecreep had not one but two big track debuts today. And so, although it is unfair to the bands, I am lumping them into one post. Sorry.

And so –

• As I Lay Dying have debuted their cover of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” which is actually one of two Priest covers which will appear on their upcoming tenth anniversary release, Decas. (The other JP tune is “Hellion,” in case you’re curious.) The structure and music of the original haven’t been changed much for this cover, but the band definitely changed the whole vibe and style of it, making it appropriate AILD-esque. Check it out here. Decas comes out November 8 on Metal Blade, and then then the band heads out for a headlining tour. You can get dates here.
• Spineshank have unveiled a new tune called “Murder Suicide” here. I was never really a Spineshank fan, but there were certainly far worse bands to emerge from that scene/era, and that’s basically how I feel about this song — it’s no masterpiece, but it didn’t make me wanna tear my eardrums out with a pair of tweezers, so there’s that. And in their defense, they haven’t changed their sound much since the last time I heard them, so at least they’re not chasing trends. The band has apparently completed a new album, entitled Anger Denial Acceptance, and searching for a label to release it sometime next year. So, uh, if you, like, own a label or something, maybe give these dudes a ring?

There are no words for how much I love this. Apparently these Russian kids call themselves “The Bremen Town Musicians,” but I think we should just call them “FUCKING SWEET.”

-AR

Major thanks to Ryan Badami for brightening my day. 

I don’t know the name of the lead singer from Attila, and I’m too lazy to look it up. But I am reasonably certain that his dad must be Rikki Rockett from Poison, because they look so alike it’s eerie.

ANYWAY, I mention it because longtime reader Samuel Favata sent us a video (below) in which Attila give a track by track by breakdown of their new album, Outlawed. And as you’d expect from a band with this level of talent, the explanations provided are never anything less than intelligent and droll. Seriously, if the purpose of this video is to win over new fans, well, I don’t see how it could possibly fail — I mean, who doesn’t wanna be told that “You need to come to the fucking show and buy me another round, and if you don’t, then just stay home and jerk off and don’t talk to me.” It’s like this guy studied advertising with Don Draper!

If you don’t value the next three-and-a-half minutes of your life, feel free to watch the video after the jump.

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“Today kinda sucked,” Bob Wilson laments as the sun begins to set over Philadelphia. His band, Mother Of Mercy, had wrapped their far-too-early set at This Is Hardcore 2011 a couple of hours before, and a self-effacing form of Monday Morning Quarterbacking had been set in motion. “Nails and Ringworm were after us, so we probably sounded like fucking New Found Glory compared to that shit.”

Hardly. One of the few groups actually building on the crossover tradition rather than simply re-thrashing it, Mother Of Mercy sound distinctly unlike melodic pop-punk. While not as nihilistic as Nails or balls-to-the-wall as Ringworm, the band draws noticeable influence from artists like Danzig (note the album numbering system), Megadeth and Obituary, bucking the tough-guy machismo trend without much regard for categorization. Were their latest record IV: Symptoms Of Existence released on, say, Relapse or Metal Blade, as opposed to hardcore haven Bridge Nine, metalheads would already be embracing Mother Of Mercy. Such is the problem when straddling that line.

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It’s hard out there for a son of Northern darkness. The internet has only made black metal’s rigid (and downright silly) ethos only more cagey, and the older the greats get, the less interested people are in hearing your fairly pointless retread of it. We’re close to twenty years away from black metal’s infamous peak, and there are still people insisting it shouldn’t evolve. So if one wants to get more than seven people interested (which you’re not supposed to, but slathering on pancake makeup clearly isn’t solely for your benefit), what is there to do?

The answer, of course, is plant one foot firmly in the past and jam the other into the future. Getting the balance right is imperative (well, in terms of remaining a black metal band, not so much in terms of making good music… see: Nachtmystium, Enslaved, Alcest, and all the other bands for which guys like me perpetually have cartoon hearts swirling over our heads) to properly avoid sounding like your making a cloying play for relevance or simply falling flat on your face. For two great examples of that balance, take the new albums from Craft and Taake (out now Stateside on Southern Lord and available on Candlelight in North America on November 1, respectively). Perhaps too otherworldly for black metal diehards in parts and too orthodox for the “IT’S SILLY LOL” crowd, they exist in the excellent middle for the rest of us.

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Opeth’s new album Heritage is as controversial a metal album as has been released in all of 2011 (save for Morbid Angel’s new one… but that wasn’t exactly controversial seeing as no one liked it). That is if you can even call it “metal” — some certainly wouldn’t. Of people I’ve spoken with on the matter, opinions seem to be split fairly evenly; some say it’s Opeth at their finest and the music is still top-notch, while others can’t fathom listening to anything that doesn’t have any growled vocals. So, what do YOU think, oh MetalSucks reader? Vote below, and tell us more in the comments. If you were never a fan of Opeth at all, kindly refrain from voting… that’s not what this poll is about.

But I’m not positive. The drummer’s recent comments regarding Illud Divinum Insanus, the first Morbid Angel album he didn’t play on, are kind of hard to interpret. At first he’s all “I don’t play on that album!”, which is really just a clear cut statement of fact, but then they ask him if he’d have done anything different with the record, and here’s why it gets kinda ambiguous:

“More extreme deathgrind metal and less DJ, boring awful typical I care less industrial experimental same as everybody boring bull! This is not what Morbid has been all about!”

So, yeah, geez, I dunno. In some cultures, like the La Tierra de los Opuestos province of Mexico and the town of Mən Demək Deyil Demək in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the words “boring” and “awful” are meant as high compliments. So there’s really a few different ways his comments could be interpreted.

What do you guys think?

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

I don’t know why anyone would trust anything Metallica has to say these days. Every time they have a new album coming out, they start talking smack on their last album, which is doubly offensive. “St. Anger is gonna blow Load out of the water!” “Okay we know St. Anger sucked, but seriously, Death Magnetic is gonna be amazing!!!” All they’re really doing is just continuously spitting in the faces of fans who actually take them at their word.

But in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Lars Ulrich really does go one step too far: He says that Lulu, the band’s upcoming collaboration with Lou Reed, “makes… And Justice for All sound like the first Ramones album.”

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Let’s rant about the Revolver’s Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock list some more. God knows they deserve the attention.

The biggest issue at hand seems to be whether or not it’s sexist. It is. As a female and as a metal fan, I do, in fact, find it sexist. Look at the name. Referring to women as “chicks” on a nationally recognized and widely read magazine is sexist. It demeans women. I might be overreacting, I might be overly politically correct, but if you’re going to insist that it’s a celebration of talent, then why is it portraying women as objects right off the bat? I do give you points on being honest, though, Revolver. You could’ve gone with full denial and named it “The Most Talented Chicks in Hard Rock.”

My biggest problem with this issue is that it really has nothing to do with the music. Yes, the women who pose do it by choice, and hope that after all the gawking some reader might actually listen to their music, but ultimately, those readers probably won’t. Why? Because the magazine features bands and musicians who already have a fan base and a clear, set audience. People who know them will still buy their records, but I highly doubt some guy will be like, “Hey, that Amy Lee is quite the looker. I should probably check out her stuff.”

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The Transcendence EP Gorod released earlier this year is really fucking good, you guys. I haven’t seen a ton of praise for it either here or elsewhere on the Interhole, which is probably because it contains only one completely new track (along with some reimagined songs from the band’s catalogue). But that one track, from which the EP takes its name, is an absolute doozy! It highlights everything that put Gorod firmly atop the crowded tech-death pack, right up there along with Obscura as masters of both technicality and songcraft.

All this a somewhat roundabout way of saying I was incredibly stoked this morning to see a press release directly from the band announcing that they’ve Gojira aren’t the only French metal band working on new music; Gorod began recording their new album TODAY with producer “Elmobo” and guitarist Mat Pascal. It’ll be the first full-length since 2009′s Process of a New Decline, which ranked among my year-end favorites. Get excitebike. Get very, very excitebike.

-VN

Ten days now from now will mark the third anniversary of the release of Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh, and in December of that same year, Joe Duplantier said that the band would be recording an exclusive track to benefit Sea Shepherd. But by April of 2010, that song still had yet to materialize, and the band announced that they were, instead, doing an entire EP on behalf of that environmental organization, complete with special guests. Which was great news, of course! Especially so when the band declared that they were finally entering a studio to record that EP last October. And then, when an awesome new Gojira song featuring Devin Townsend and Fredrik Thordendal emerged this past May, well, it seemed as though, SURELY, the EP was finally ready for release.

And yeah so here we are and it’s October again and we don’t gots no Gojira EP.

Well, hey, news but no not really at all! The band has now posted an update on their Facebook page which provides almost no actual information!!! Check it out:

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Despite not being the kind of grim n’ gritty tune Guns N’ Roses were most famous for, and despite having a ridiculous video in which Axl Rose swims with dolphins for no apparent reason and reminds everyone that he has more money than they do, “Estranged” is my favorite GN’R song. And I always thought it would be cool to see Axl’s Nu-GN’R do the track with Buckethead, ’cause I bet that dude could totally rip it.

So, of course, now that Buckethead has already been out of the band for seven years, Axl did the song at last night’s Rock in Rio performance.

Not a shock that it’s a little anticlimactic, ’cause for every one thing the band got right, there’s something else they got wrong: Axl can still sing the low parts pretty well, but not the high parts, and at one point his voice cracks like he was me at my bar mitzvah; Bumblefoot sounds great, but for some reason looks like Robin Finck now; Dj Ashba sounds so-so, but continues to do a ridiculous Slash impersonation, and there’s a much better guitar player who isn’t just aping someone else, Richard Fortus, standing right there on stage, but for some reason Axl won’t let him play the leads; Matt Sorum wasn’t invited, so the drums actually sound right for a change. So I guess ya take the good ya take the bad ya take them both and you still don’t have Slash in the band.

GN’R apparently really are going to a U.S. tour starting at the end of this month; we’ll see if they break out any other oldies but goodies.

-AR

[via Bumblefoot's Twitter]

And we continue our double shot of shittily filmed fan videos of new material from great bands with metalcore stalwarts breaking out a new track called “Underwater Bimbos from Outer Space” at a recent performance in Australia. Again, the quality is not such that I feel comfortable saying anything about this song other than, yeah, it sure does sound like Every Time I Die. It’s been an album or two since that band has really knocked my underwear off, but I’m always game to give ‘em a chance, so…

Every Time I Die’s new release should also be out at some point next year via Epitaph.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Hiya. Did everyone have a nice weekend? I mean, I don’t especially care. I just know that’s what normal, polite people ask one another on Monday mornings.

ANYWAY, we begin this week with a double dose of shittily filmed fan videos of new material from great bands. First up we have Goatwhore performing a new tune called “Beyond the Spell of Discontent.” The quality of this video is not very strong at all, but the song sure does seem Goatwhorish enough! And not that it really has anything to do with anything, I continue to love that Sammy Duet plays his guitar almost like an upright bass. I also continue to love that the band named themselves “Goatwhore.”

Goatwhore’s new album should be out next year via Metal Blade.

-AR

[via No Clean Singing]

Whether you’re a pesto shrimp kinda gal or a spicy sausage man, hopefully one thing the two sexes can agree upon is that Justin Broadrick’s Jesu project is fucking beautiful. It rocks, it’s haunting, super earnest…..the perfect soundtrack for a late-night getting-to-know-you lovefest.

-KW