Photo by Chris Fulcher

The Inaugural Metal Suckfest is almost here!!!! Twenty bands will DESTROY The Gramercy Theatre on November 4 and 5, PLUS there’s an awesome, five-band pre-party at the venue the night before, making this THE can’t-miss hang of the year.

Tickets are on sale now right here, and you can hit up the fest’s official website for more info on the shows, including the complete line-up. In the meantime, we’re counting down to this weekend of chaos and debauchery by speaking to one member from each band on the bill. We continue today with guitarist Mike “Gunface” McKenzie of The Red Chord, whose most recent release, Fed Through the Teeth Machine, came out in 2009 via Metal Blade.

Read our chat after the jump. And don’t forget to check back in the coming days and weeks for interviews with more of the musicians participating in this awesome event!!!

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On Saturday night I said to a friend who shall herein remain un-named, “I don’t like dubstep, but I love dub,” and they looked at me like I was crazy. “You know… dub… the reggae kind.” Completely blank stare. So it must be for thousands of dubstep bandwagon hoppers who believe the sub-genre just appeared out of thin air without, you know, like 30 some-odd years of reggae and dub preceding it. It’s the same old story of white suburban teens co-opting black music while ignoring the past, and yeah, now I’m officially old.

On the other-hand, if the current dubstep explosion gains Brooklyn-based Dub Trio even just a little more exposure that is most certainly a good thing. Dub Trio have been cranking out proggy versions of Helmet/Quicksand/Unsane-inspired riffs with vintage dub breaks for seven years already and are about to release their fourth album, the appropriately titled IV, tomorrow via Mike Patton’s Ipecac label ROIR. When I say “vintage dub,” I mean it — in place of today’s computer-generated WOMP WOMP WOMPs Dub Trio drummer / groove machine Joe Tomino just uses a delay-soaked microphone that he holds up to the kit while he plays live for that echo’ed-out dub goodness. Tomino and his two Dub Trio companions are stupidly tight live; their records are great, too, but you’ve gotta see it to believe it.

Tune into the Village Voice to hear “Control Issues Controlling Your Mind” from the new album, or stream it below. Dub pedal activate at approximately 2:10!

Dub Trio – “Control Issues Controlling Your Mind”

-VN

And if you think I’m insulting Jett, you should know that I am not. He quite literally goes around smelling women’s asses in the below video, which has been given the wonderful title “Booty Smells Good Doe.” He even got some friends to help him out, I guess because there were just too many butts for one man to sniff all by himself.

The video is kinda NSFW since it begins with a naked tush and then features many more rear ends in thongs/boy shorts/etc. But even without the nudity and revealing underwear, you probably don’t what your boss/mom/librarian/whatever seeing you watching a video with lots of dudes smelling lots of dudess’ brown eyes, because, well, let’s be real, that is not socially acceptable behavior unless you’re a dog.

Now seems like a good time to remind you that Terror are currently on the God Damn tour The Acacia Strain, Stray from the Path, Harm’s Way. Get remaining dates so you can let Nick Jett smell your booty here.

-AR

[via Stuff You Will Hate]

While I’m considering including the Swedish Shining’s latest on my 2011 year-end list, I haven’t quite gotten over the magnificently crazy album by the Norwegian Shining that made last year’s year-end list. At least this exercise in Shinings has left me finally  able to remember which Shining is which without having to consult Wikipedia every time; I wish I could offer you a helpful device for remembering, but it’s kind of like learning which hand is your right one and which is your left when you’re a kid… at a certain point you just have to memorize it.

Back to Norwegian (aka the industrial-tech-saxophone-Blackjazz version) Shining: they’ve got a Blackjazz live DVD on the way, and the below clip [from TNOTB] offers our first taste of what’s in store. Shining’s live show looks completely bonkers, just like their music, which those of you lucky enough to have seen the band in Europe already know. Those of us in the U.S. will have to wait until January 17th to see this thing in full, but this clip is doing a pretty great job of getting me excited:

-VN

As you hopefully know by now, we teamed up with our very good friend, Mr. Rodney Githens of Vertebrae 33 and Metal Band Art, to host a booth at New York Comic Con last weekend. And we had a blast! We can’t wait to do it again next year.

And now we have a video run-down of the event from our other very good friends over at Metal Injection, which you can and should check out below. They interviewed the great Richard Christy, metal artist extraordinaire Chuck BB, and, oh yeah, they got me offering to give James Hetfield a rusty trombone. Check it out:

-AR

Man oh man, do we have an awesomely weird one for you today. To our delight, Jucifer asked us to premiere their new video, for the song “Hiroshima,” and we can pretty guarantee you that you haven’t seen a metal video like this before. It might be fun (or horrifying, we’re not really sure) to drop some acid before watching this clip. But if you don’t have acid, well, no worries — the images in this video will more than convey the feeling that you are tripping balls. Seriously, this is a strange, strange video, and we mean that as a very high (!) compliment.

Check out the David Hall-directed clip below! “Hiroshima” appears on Jucifer’s latest, Throned in Blood, which is out now on Nomadic Fortress/Relapse. The duo has a new album and a European tour planned, both slated for April.  In the meantime, they’ll celebrate their nineteenth year as a band and twelfth year of nonstop touring with dates across the midwest and east coast. You can get all their upcoming tour dates here. The band’s early four track EP Nadir has recently been mastered for reissue by Scott Hull, and will see its first digital release via Grindcore Karaoke soon.

But wait! There’s more! Director David Hall — who also made the Maryland Deathfest movies, as well as videos for Today is the Day, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Sigh, Fuck the Facts, Hail of Bullets,and Woods of Ypres — is getting out of the of the music video business, and into… the VHS business??? Read more after the jump.

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The German version of Metal Hammer has debuted Darkest Hour’s new video, “Your Everyday Disaster,” which you can check out below. The editing is so fast and most of the shots so close-up I can barely tell what I’m looking at, but just hearing the song is enough to make me wanna chug a bottle of something powerful and kill things, so, basically, mission accomplished!!!

“Your Everyday Disaster” appears on Darkest Hour’s most recent release, The Human Romance, which is out now on eOne. I think I’m allowed to tell you that we tried to get them for The Metal Suckfest because they put on an AWESOME live show, but they were unavailable ’cause they’ll be touring Europe with Machine Head at that time. And that will probably be fun, too. If you’re one of European readers, get dates here and go support them — they rule.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Katatonia are not on Spotify because their label, Century Media, doesn’t want them there. This is unfortunate. After I saw the band play a phenomenal opening set for Opeth a few weeks back I wanted nothing more the next morning than to dive into their back catalogue (of which my knowledge is limited), immerse myself in it, get to know the band better. I looked them up on Spotify, couldn’t find anything but one of their oldest albums, remembered they were on Century Media… and then gave up. I could’ve gotten really into their stuff, become a fan, bought t-shirts, gone to shows in the future… multiply that by the 800 or so folks at the show, multiply that by 20+ tour stops. But nope, Century Media apparently doesn’t want people to discover their bands and forge long-term fanships, only to buy CD so they can make money now.

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This past July I asked you all which of the four Devin Townsend Project albums was your favorite, now that all is said and done. Addicted came out on top, followed closely by Deconstruction. I ran the poll almost exactly one month after the release of Deconstruction, but I’m wondering if maybe that was still too soon and if the results would be different if I ran the poll now. Either way, I know what MY favorite is… and it’s Addicted, followed closely by Ki. For some reason I just can’t get into Deconstruction the way some folks can; it hasn’t got the songs.

Over the weekend Devin posted a new song comprised of “some shrapnel from the past few months,” and it reminds me of a song that could have been on Addicted. The accompanying video reel of tour highlights is entertaining too. Devin said via Twitter that “The song on that video is a rough demo of some ideas I’m working on… no title yet.” I wonder if it’s something for Ziltoid 2? Come for the new song but stay for the “silent” jam at Dirk Verbeuren’s house that’s at the end of the video. I won’t ruin it for you, so just watch.

-VN

MetalSucks faves Son of Aurelius have released a pre-production demo, “Strange Aeons,” which will appear in its finished form on their new album. And as No Clean Singing points out, “it’s a strange choice as a musical tease for the next album” because there’s “no technical ‘wow’ factor.” (NCS also points out that there are no vocals, but that surprises me less.) You would think that SoA would tease fans with something a little more, um, upbeat I guess is the word?, but I don’t really think it matters; the track may just be an interlude or something, but it sounds pretty cool, and we’re all gonna check out the band’s new release anyway.

Son of Aurelius’ new album should be out sometime in 2012 on Good Fight.

-AR

Anthrax were playing at the Club Nokia in Los Angeles this past weekend when a fan jumped up on-stage, and a security guard who is also a major, major John Bush supporter decided to use said fan-on-stage as an excuse to tackle Joey Belladonna. Check out the video below; the incident in question happens at roughly the 1:36 mark.

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Metallica are working on a 3D feature film, and with Charlotte Huggins, a veteran producer of totally unwatchable crap, no less. This should not surprise you, for two reasons:

• Metallica were great once, but now they are terrible. This is why everything they touch turns to shit. The Metallica we all adored as kids are not coming back. It’s over.
• 3D is not the future of filmmaking; it is a trend, and a very stupid trend. Some filmmakers are championing it as a “more immersive” filmgoing experience; this filmmakers are hucksters, and they don’t give a shit about giving you a more immersive experience, they give a shit about separating you from your money by charging you more a ticket than they are already.

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If you’re reading this now and you live in/around NYC, it’s not too late to come drink FREE BEER (from 6-7pm) and party with us as Skeletonwitch, Kvelertak, Barn Burner, Turbid North and Battlecross melt faces at the 2011 MetalSucks / Metal Injection / 1000 Knives CMJ Showcase! And two weeks from this very moment, Day 1 of The Metal Suckfest will be underway — holy shit! For the rest of you who don’t live anywhere near here… either get your asses over right quick or be jealous. Very jealous.

Meanwhile, it was another week o’ fun at the MS Mansion in which the Monkeys had to work overtime to fling poo at all who dared attempt to infiltrate our walls:

• We interviewed Topon and Mel from Fuck the Facts, Threat Signal’s Jon Howard and Evile’s Ol Drake.
• We continued Counting Down to the Metal Suckfest with All Pigs Must Die’s Adam Wentworth, Today is the Day’s Curran Reynolds, 3′s Billy Riker, Fight Amp’s Mike McGinnis and Howl’s Timmy St. Amour.
• We listened to Metallica and Lou Reed’s LuLu and enjoyed a few parodies.
• We reviewed Cynic’s new EP, Satan Rosenbloom Freeloaded new ones from Nemesis Complex and Honduran, and Corey belatedly rated his August Bleeders and Blowers.
• We showed you guys all the fun we had nerding out at Comic Con.
• The re-booted Beavis & Butt-Head will have metal music videos after all; rejoice!

See ya’ll next week.

-VN

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by the ongoing disaster that is Lou Reed & Metallica’s Lulu, this week we asked our writers:

BESIDES METALLICA AND LOU REED, WHAT IS THE WORST COLLABORATION BETWEEN A METAL BAND/ARTIST AND A NON-METAL BAND/ARTIST? AND WHAT IS THE WORST ONE YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE IN YOUR WILDEST NIGHTMARES?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump!

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…I would have ordered the deluxe edition of The Hunter.

-AR

[via Metal Injection; comic by Garrett of Peanut Butter on The Brain]

 photo by Greg Anderson

The Inaugural Metal Suckfest is almost here!!!! Twenty bands will DESTROY The Gramercy Theatre on November 4 and 5, PLUS there’s an awesome, five-band pre-party at the venue the night before, making this THE can’t-miss hang of the year.

Tickets are on sale now right here, and you can hit up the fest’s official website for more info on the shows, including the complete line-up. In the meantime, we’re counting down to this weekend of chaos and debauchery by speaking to one member from each band on the bill. We continue today with guitarist Adam Wentworth of All Pigs Must Die, whose new album, God is War, was released earlier this year on Southern Lord.

Read our chat after the jump. And don’t forget to check back in the coming days and weeks for interviews with more of the musicians participating in this awesome event!!!

Click to read more…

On October 5, Gothenburg’s power-prog masters, Evergrey, arrived in San Francisco to decimate The Regency Center — and on the off-chance they couldn’t do it alone, they brought along the mighty Sabaton and Blackguard for the ride. Once again, intrepid MetalSucks photographer Miikka Skaffari was there to capture the action for you, our beloved readers — and, and once, he captured that action in style. Check out his awesomer-than-thou pics after the jump!

And while we’re on the topic, our pals over at The Deciblog have an awesome new interview with Evergrey vocalist/guitarist Tom S. Englund. Check that out here!

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Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out the latest from grind bands Nemesis Complex and Honduran.

Almost without exception, grindcore is best appreciated live, where the everything-all-at-once extremity of the style can most directly wage war on the senses. But if I’m going to sit down at home and let a grindcore record punish my ears with drums, bass and guitars all playing too fast to be doing anything all that interesting, I ask just one thing: it should sound as devastating as if I were watching it live.

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Hailing from the United Kingdom, Evile are sure standouts in the field of thrash, leaning more toward a gritty, Bay Area sound and aesthetic than cartoonish crossover revival. Their most recent Earache release, Five Serpent’s Teeth, continues along these lines, proving that the thrash revival may just be more than a passing trend. The album is especially impressive, given that the band suffered a tragic blow prior to its creation: Original bassist Mike Alexander succumbed to a blood clot in the lungs in October of 2009. Fittingly, Five Serpent’s Teeth includes a tribute to Alexander in the form of a riff he used when warming up before a show.

We recently spoke to lead guitarist Ol Drake about Alexander’s passing, Rock Band, touring with his idols, and the future of the Evile, as well as thrash at large. Read our full chat after the jump!

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Don’t fool yourselves by the constant he-said she-said back and forth between various Black Sabbath members: they will eventually get back together and tour, if not now then in the not-too-distant future. The latest fire-stoker involves Tony Iommi saying the band got together to rehearse… to which I say, big fucking deal.

I do not care about the umpteenth Black Sabbath reunion. They were extremely tired and old when I last saw them on Ozzfest ’05, meaning they’ll just be 7 years tireder and 7 years olderer if I choose to see them during their pending 2012 tour. No disrespect to their legacy; much, MUCH respect to this band’s profound influence upon all of metal. It’s just that enough is enough already. Stop beating the dead horse. I can think of a million ways I’d rather spend $80 (or more) + service fees than watching Ozzy hop around like a frog whilst spraying the audience with a water hose because it’s a gimmick that requires little to no movement.

Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments below.

-VN