via Badass Digest

Dj Slashba — noun – 1. A temp. 2.  A fill-in, placeholder. 3. A pretender to the throne. 4. Someone who keeps an unlit cigarette dangling from lips. 5. A retard.

Props to our friend Nick for teaching us a new term.

Here’s some shit we did this week:

• We got a tour of the live rig used by Obscura’s Christian Muenzner.
• We debuted new music by Czar, and, thanks to our pals at Decibel, Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
• We spoke to Nader Sadek.
• We checked out the latest releases from Locrian, The Wounded Kings, and Astomatous.
• We examined Slayer’s tour rider.
• We wondered if this commercial will really help sell lingerie or not.
• We over-thought the latest ramblings of Courtney Love.
• We contemplated the most over-used words in extreme metal writing.
• We considered the music of Fallujah.
• By special request, Sergeant D. reviewed Carnifex’s Until I Feel Nothing.

Next week we have some very cool interviews, some very cool music premieres, and, oh yeah, we gorge ourselves on Turkey and celebrate ridding ourselves of that pesky little Native American nuisance. See ya then.

-AR

It’s no secret that a number of people on this site have a sizeable admiration for Deftones and a handful of other bands that aren’t quite metal by the standard definition.

I’m a fearless advocator of this clique of bands, and I’m always interested in left-of-center heavy rock bands that aren’t Tool or Deftones but share their inexplicable appeal. It just so happens that one these most delightful discoveries lives only a few hours away from my native Connecticut and has a killer debut album in serious need of some attention.

Click to read more…

…Devin Townsend recently performed an acoustic version of the song — the first time he’s dipped into the SYL catalog since that group disbanded in 2007 — and hol-ee shee-ite, does the song just sound that much sexier with Devy whispering sweet nothings in your ear. See what’s all the fuss about below:

In semi-related news, Townsend just announce The Retinal Circus, a ridiculously-awesome sounding concert set to take place in London on October 27, 2012. There are a LOT of cool goings-on involved with this show — so many that I probably should have just written a whole post about it, but oh well — so just go here to read the press release, get all the details, and find out how you can buy tickets. This sounds like the kind of thing that might actually get me on plane to London.

-AR

[via Heavy Blog is Heavy]

It’s almost the weekend, so it’s time to get tr00ly, tr00ly evil with this shit — like, black metal tr00ly evil. And who’s more tr00 — or evil — than Mayhem?

The band is currently in the midst of a North American headlining run with Keep of Kalessin, Hate, and Abigail Williams (tour dates here). MetalSucks’ own Alyssa Lorenzon attended the tour’s recent stop at the Trocadero, and, HAIL SATAN!, she captured some truly shadowy, scary shit. See all of her awesome photos after the jump!

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You may remember the name Bob Lefsetz from when “Run MetalSucks For a Day” contest winner Justin Gosnell interviewed him on MetalSucks in September. I’ve also linked and quoted him many times before because I respect his opinions so greatly. For those unaware, Lefsetz is an independent industry pundit who writes pseudo-daily email newsletters to thousands of subscribers including industry big-wigs (I’ll bet this guy reads Lefsetz) and regular dudes in bands; he’s not beholden to any industry interests so you always know his commentary is sincere. He makes a lot of folks uncomfortable, but that’s how it goes when you’re addressing the elephant in the room and spouting a truth that no one wants to hear. Unsurprisingly, he’s a big proponent of streaming services like Spotify.

Yesterday’s Lefsetz Letter totally hit the nail on the head with regards to today’s supposed evaporating CD revenues. Rather than summarize, I just want to let you read this section and come to your own conclusions:

… everybody forgot what came before. The aforementioned overpriced CD and unreasonably high ticket prices. It was as if the rights holders and acts believed they were entitled to inflated incomes. Instead of seeing MTV and CDs as an evanescent bonus, they became an entitlement. And try taking away an entitlement, isn’t that what the debate is all about in Washington?

All of this change was brought about by the public.

Click to read more…

Hey, remember a couple of weeks ago, when Vildhjarata released that sweet video for “Benblåst?” Well, now they’ve released another video, this one for the song “Dagger,” and it’s just like the “Benblåst” video, only the imagery isn’t trippy and cool, and it’s basically just the band on a set made to look like the woods from a Tim Burton movie. So, yeah.

“Dagger” will appear on on Måsstaden, which comes out November 29 via Century Media. Thall.

-AR

[via Metal Hammer]

Hey check it out Van Halen news!!

• According to rumor, the band is divided into two camps: one exclusive to guys named Van Halen and the other populated by a sole Roth. And cooperation between the sides has been not awesome. Expected? Sure. Exaggerated? Prob. I only heard third-hand from the guys in Chickenfoot. You can set your watch to Sammy’s shit-talking I swear! Remember 1986?
• They have announced that the Grammy noms announcement press conference thingy will be the setting of a Van Halen performance, presumably of a new jam. If there is a more fitting venue for new music from gods like Van Halen, I don’t know of it. I do hope that charming Drake will be there. P.S. Release date please.
• The longtime Warner Bros act recently squashed an imminent deal with Columbia. Reports credit David Lee Roth with nixing the deal, alleging his preference is that VH signs with a closer-to-home label. So they just announced a new deal with Interscope (above), headed by Jimmy Iovine (above, in the hat) aka the mentor-type guy from last season’s American Idol. Huh I wonder if Diamond Dave wants Iovine to swipe him a certain somebody’s lucrative Idol gig? Wow, that’d be wild. Better watch your ass, Ryan Seacrest!

-ADF

Hipsters Out Of Metal! is the adventures of a smily ’80s metalhead all high in the srs internet world. 

Rhapsody of Fire might be the new L.A. Guns with two touring versions of the same group, but apparently that’s not ridiculous enough for Luca Turill: he wants to be Steven Spielberg too. For those not paying attention (aka most people), Turill’s version will go under the name Rhapsody and include some dudes who… ah, who really cares? I mean, look at this shit! “A truly cinematic experience! Bombastic!” The After Effects, the voiceovers! LOL @ this guy. Just get on with it already and give me some shred, epic choruses, and lyrics about dragons and demons.

-VN

Thanks: Morizz

Locrian’s André Foisy pitched his band’s new album The Clearing to me as “probably the most accessible thing we’ve done yet.” I can hear what he means, in that this album contains some of the most obviously human moments in the Chicago drone trio’s canon. The mere existence of the somnolent piano arpeggios in “Chalk Point” get Foisy and his bandmates Terence Hannum and Steven Hess as close to “pretty” as they’ve gone thus far; the fact that you may identify shards of the feeling that that “song” evokes while listening to Grails, or Bohren & der Club of Gore, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, suggests that this combo is expanding its range of intended effects beyond queasiness.

Click to read more…

Guitar dorks: check out this JamPlay.com interview with MetalSucks-deemed #1 Modern Metal Guitarist Dave Davidson. There’s lotsa great stuff in here; Dave’s musical education, his influences from jazz (Pat Martino, Wayne Krantz) to metal (Marty Friedman, Jeff Waters) to contemporaries like Emil Werstler, the history of Revocation, the new record Chaos of Forms and more. There’s lots of sage advice for guitarists, and we even learn how Dave got his rockstar name (hint: he wasn’t born with it!).

As a reminder, we’re offering MetalSucks readers free one-week trials at JamPlay.com, where you can take online lessons with Davidson, Tosin Abasi, Emil Werstler and more. Click here to sign up.

-VN

MS reader “Tu-stoned” is the latest Show Us Your MetalSucks contest entrant, an ongoing contest in which we offer a free box of metal merch to any reader who so chooses to send in pics of themselves having fun in their MetalSucks t-shirts or hoodies. Tu-stoned did quite a fine job writing up a little post about his MetalSucks-clad European adventure, so we’re just gonna turn the reigns over to him:

So I recently took a whirlwind trip around Europe with my Old Lady, and I thought I’d share a few photos with you.

First up is me outside of Crobar in SoHo London. This is a real deal, no bullshit straight up metal bar. It was full of what must have been the entire editorial staff of Metal Hammer Mag, musicians, roadies, wannabe musicians, and metal fans from all over. Everyone I met there was super awesome and a few recognized my t-shirt and were quite enthusiastic about the site.

Click to read more…

Two new Cloudkickers albums were supposed to be released this coming Tuesday, November 22nd, but Cloudkicker maestro Ben Sharp has decided to release them early because of “certain shipments making their way to my door ahead of schedule, [and] I just don’t see any point in waiting until the 22nd.” So awesome — Ben Sharp is just that kinda guy who doesn’t GAF about no stinkin’ release dates!

I haven’t listened to either Let Yourself Be Huge or Loop yet in my haste to get this post up, but according to Heavy Blog is Heavy‘s Alkahest who has, “Both Let Yourself Be Huge and Loop emphasize the more mellow side of Cloudkicker, with most of the music taking an acoustic style, melding together Cloudkicker and main man Ben Sharp’s once separate BM Sharp project.” Sounds pretty rad to me… acoustic Cloudkicker is still Cloudkicker, and I’m pretty excited to hear what this other side of Sharp’s mind sounds like.

Stream Let Yourself Be Huge here and stream Loop here via Cloudkicker’s Bandcamp, where you can also purchase the albums digitally for any price of your choosing and order them on CD, along with a poster or t-shirt if you so desire.

-VN

Thanks: Jonathan Delarosa

If you’re somehow still not convinced that Steel Panther are fucking brilliant, might I direct you to their new Michael Alperowitz-directed video, for the song “If You Really Really Love Me?” Please note the following when viewing:

1. It’s a really catchy, really sincere sounding heavy metal semi-ballad that would totally work even if they lyrics weren’t hilarious.
2. The lyrics are hilarious. I dunno if the band was specifically targeting Extreme’s “More than Words” — the prettiest song ever about trying to get your girl to put out more — or if it’s just a general parody and my brain just happened to go to that 1990 megahit, but whatever, it works either way.
3. The video, like the song, is perfectly executed: the setting, the way it’s filmed, the way it’s edited, etc., all make it look just like a million other cheesy videos… the band just happens to be doing ridiculous shit.

In other words: this is satire at its finest.

“If You Really Really Love Me?” comes (cums?) offa Steel Panther’s latest, Balls Out, which is available now wherever fine music is sold.

-AR

It’s easy to scoff at heavy metal’s love of fantasy, like Dio’s swordsman tales, Iron Maiden’s poetry readings, and Korn’s battles against merciless ogre stepmoms. But to each their own reality, right? That is, none of us would want those bands to get “real” like Suicidal Tendencies or Body Count; it’d end up like the lyrics of Queensryche’s “Empire”: Uncomfortable!

And for us listeners, all lyrics are handy in our quest for sex and stuff. Like the other night at a viewing of 3-D gay erotica movie Immortals, I kinda wowed this hot nursing student via my one tiny familiarity with lead character Theseus — i.e., that it was he who slayed the mythic Minotaur. She didn’t need to know that I’d learned that from the song by prog-metal greats Realm called ahem “Theseus And The Minotaur” (above).

Can you really convert nerdy beta metal knowledge into ballz-to-boobz contact? Shit yeah, dude! Look, she’d only barely agreed to party with me in the first place, but with my comment I’d nudged her perception of me from “heavy metal airhead boner machine” over to “semi-brainy hunk with awareness of antiquities.” It got her feeling clever, too, like she’d discovered an overlooked treasure (like Theseus’ recovery of the Epirus bow BAM!), while squashing her private guilt about getting gamed/felt on by a guy who writes about Dave Mustaine and BulletBoys on the internet. And from there, it’s bonerz!

-ADF

Hipsters Out Of Metal! is the adventures of a smily ’80s metalhead all high in the serious internet world. 

For last week’s Photo Caption Contest we offered up a signed Rush lithograph, commemorating their brand new triple-boxset Sectors. And the winner is:

• fugsspot: “Um, Ethyl? You know how Death follows us all, getting closer every day? Don’t look now, but hurry the hell up please!”

This week we’re giving away a copy of Butch Walker’s new autobiography Drinking with Strangers. I’m reading the book right now and it’s everything you’d expect from a man as traveled and witty as Walker. The stories from SouthGang’s Chinese tour? Worth the price of admission alone. To win, leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below (sent in by MS reader Matias Demeke). Remember to use a real email address (or post it along with your comment if you’re using FB Connect / Twitter etc).

The worlds of music and visual art often meet and intertwine in ways that allow us to appreciate each work, each medium, on an entirely new level. Thankfully, these marriages are plentiful in the world of extreme metal, and one stand out propagator of this union is Nader Sadek. Cairo-born and NYC based, Sadek has been a visual icon on the scene for years most noted for creating visually striking settings and costumes for bands such as Mayhem and Sun O))). With the help of a pretty heavy-hitting core band featuring Steve Tucker (vocals – ex-Morbid Angel), Flo Mounier (drums – Cryptopsy), and Rune Eriksen (guitars – Aura Noir, ex-Mayhem), as well as appearances by other notable musicians, Sadek’s album In the Flesh is nothing to shake a stick at, either. Quite the contrary, actually – the meticulous composition of each song coupled with the intensity lent by each artist involved in the making of the release could easily set it up as a contender for a spot on an “Album of the Year” list.

Still, Nader does not quite consider himself a musician; rather, an artist exploring various mediums to best portray a concept or an idea that’s been ruminating in that fascinating brain of his. A commendable stance, I think, and tell-tale of the level of talent and drive he truly possesses. Speaking with him, it’s very clear as well; his visions will not, under any circumstances, be quelled. While the theme of In the Flesh is humanities detrimental dependency on petroleum – an undeniably political issue that’s been (rightly so) argued over for ages — in speaking with him about the subject, it’s turned into an eerily poetic, as well as desperate, concept: the living in a seemingly never-ending fight over a substance derived from death and decay. Our daily lives fueled by the rotten remnants of civilizations past.

It would be interesting, to say the least, to see what kind of live show this ensemble would come up with. For those of you in New York City, imaginations can be put to rest in that respect. On Sunday, November 20 at Santos Party House, Nader Sadek will bring to life In the Flesh in a (free!) performance surely not to be missed. Please be advised that in a perfect world, one wherein I’m not a cubicle rat working 9 to 5 in an office hours away from the Big Apple, I would hop a bus to see just what he’s come up with for the event. Sadly, this world is far from perfect, and I’d like to be able to pay my rent this month. Thankfully, though, I got to talk with the artist about everything from his music, his art, his upbringing, video shoots, and man-made machines that consume food and produce, well… see for yourself.

Click to read more…

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

I was impressed when Wormrot crammed three songs onto our eighth Decibel flexi disc back in August. One of those also happened to run away with the coveted Best Flexi Song Title award (“Fuck… I’m Sober”). Until now. I don’t know if Wormrot’s short sharp shock treatment inspired Agoraphobic Nosebleed to one-up their international brothers in grind, but shit just got real. No matter what you think of ANb’s pathological need to provoke, you can’t say they half-assed their flexi, appearing this January in conjunction with our annual year-end festivities.

Scott Hull’s staff of elves has painstakingly assembled our first ever holiday-themed flexi, Make a Joyful Noise. If you thought Mariah and Kenny G had the market cornered on Christmas sounds the whole family can enjoy, check out this 11-song, four-minute stocking stuffer, featuring future caroling classics like “Hung Like a Stocking by the Chimney With Care,” “Santa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” and (…) “Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Holiday Cheer.” A limited number of copies of the issue with the flexi are now available in the Decibel webstore , so order now. In the mean time, the lyrics to this masterpiece, reprinted after the jump, should whet the shit out of your appetite.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed “Make a Joyful Noise” (dB013) by Decibel Magazine

Click to read more…

The first time I ever heard the term “panterdactyl” was in this interview that Metal Injection conducted with The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk back in 2008. Kozowyk was referring to that kind of wiggerish hand movement that some bands/fan indulge in… I dunno really know how to describe it, but it’s that thing where people kinda raise their arm in the air, bend the arm, and move their hand up and down in time with the music, if that makes sense. Think about Koko B. Ware and you’ll get the idea. You’ve definitely seen frontmen do it before.

ANYWAY, as I learned via our friend Mark Vieira on Twitter today, there actually is a band in Los Angeles called Panteradactyl. On their Facebook page, they describe themselves in this simple manner: “We dress up like dinosaurs and play Pantera songs.” And they’re not kidding. Look:

Click to read more…

I know there are people who got excited about James Durbin on account of him being “the metal dude” on whatever season of American Idol, but the fact that he was on that show is the very reason I never investigated his music. I hate American Idol so much that if Herman Cain or Rick Perry ran on a platform of promising to end the show forever, I would have to give serious consideration to voting for him.

And then Durbin went and stole some members from In This Moment (but not Maria Brink or the white dude with dreads, so fret not, In This Moment fans), and that was strike two against the dude as far as I was concerned.

Now his new video, “Love Me Bad,” has debuted on Noisecreep, and oh dear, is this guy ever terrible. He’s just a thinner version of the skunk that won Rock Star Supernova, isn’t he? I mean, I totally get how someone could like this if their mother and their sister are one and the same, but for those of who were bred in a wider gene pool, this shit ain’t gonna cut it.

Now let’s never speak of this douche again.

-AR

Monday’s post on Misery Signals’ pending new album led me into YouTubeLand where I proceded to spend too much time listening to old Misery Signals tracks. But it also led me to discover something I wasn’t expecting at all. I was aware of the free metal soundtrack to the Homefront video game released earlier this year, but I honestly didn’t pay it much attention because it was a covers album. Shame on me, because I just discovered Misery Signals’ cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon classic cut “Us and Them” and my socks have been knocked all the way into New Jersey. Like all truly great covers, Misery Signals have made this song their own while still managing to stay true to the original spirit of the song; it starts off similar to the original but all that goes out the window when the chorus kicks in just before the 2-minute mark. Holy fuck, I’ve never heard Pink Floyd sound so heavy and epic! Misery Signals also introduce some rhythmic and harmonic variations throughout, presented a marked contrast to the original that somehow just works.

I’ve always wanted to put together a comp of famous metal bands covering Floyd. Shadows Fall did that cover of “Welcome to the Machine” a while back (that was actually my introduction to SF!), Nachtmystium’s past two albums have basically been giant tributes to Floyd, Foo Fighters and Brian May did “Have a Cigar” and tons of other bands have covered Floyd throughout the years… but to my knowledge there’s never been one cohesive Metal Pink Floyd comp. “Us and Them” wouldn’t've been on my short list of songs ripe for metal covers, but I absolutely love this version. I always thought “Fearless” would be perfect (Junius would tear that song a new arsehole!), maybe “Hey You” (Queensryche!), something from The Final Cut by Opeth, any of the middle three tracks from Animals (heyo BTBAM!)… we could skip “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Money” (too obvious and Korn already butchered the former). Any other ideas?

-VN

Post-script: A forum thread from 2006 on Ultimate Metal turned up this version of “Run Like Hell” by Kittie! Best thing they’ve ever recorded. Go figure.