So, hey, remember a couple of weeks ago how I interviewed Joe and Mario Duplantier from Gojira about their new album? And I told you that when I arrived at the studio for my interview, Mario was drumming on the door?

Well, some footage of that has found its way into the band’s second studio webisode, which you can check out below. The video fails to convey how incredibly LOUD Mario’s drumming was, but it’s still pretty cool to see.

Cooler still: we actually get to hear some very, very small snippets of new Gojira music. It’s not nearly enough to tell us anything concrete about the new album, but at this point, I’m such a Gojira fiend I’ll take a hit however tiny, y’know?

Gojira’s Roadrunner debut will be out sometime next year.

-AR

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was supposed to come out today… but I guess it’s been delayed for some reason, and now won’t come out until next Friday, December 9. That’s the poopy news. The good news is not only that the cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” that the duo recorded with Karen O. from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and which appeared in the film’s first teaser trailer back in May) is now available on iTunes, but Reznor and Ross are giving away six tracks from the score for free download right now. Here are all the details, via a statement Reznor has posted on Nine Inch Nails’ official website:

Click to read more…

Who is Tool’s webmaster? The guy’s been writing for the band’s official site with verbose, oddball rants for years, part Tool updates and part literary masterpieces designed to send us Toolheads down a million rabbit holes simultaneously. If I ever meet the guy I’m gonna give him a big hug for doing such great work, then I’ll slap him in the balls for being such a conniving jerk!

Speaking of which: some sites reported yesterday that Tool are working on their new record with 10,000 Days engineer/mixer Joe Barresi, citing a post on Tool’s website that referenced using a Studer A827 “Gold Edition” analog tape recorder (pictured above). Here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure said webmaster is actually talking about the Volto! recording sessions. That’s Danny Carey’s side project. D’oh!

Actual Tool information that can be gleaned from said webmaster’s cryptic ramblings: 1) writing sessions are progressing nicely and a new music video for one of the new tunes is already in the works. 2) a tour this winter/spring is a possibility, with Texas (SXSW?), Los Angeles and Australia being name-checked specifically.

So, yeah… that happened.

-VN

We published our lists. Now it’s your turn.

We’re going to do this the same way we did last year: rather than post a regular poll with hundreds of options, we’re going to conduct this poll via the comments. Here are the instructions:

Step 1) Decide what your favorite metal album of 2011 is. You only get to pick one.

Step 2) Search the comments of this post for your choice (Apple-F on a Mac, Control-F on a PC).

Step 3) If it’s already listed, hit the “reply” button underneath and simply post “+1″ as your comment. If it’s not listed yet, add it, making sure you include the band name and album title and double-checking that you’ve spelled both correctly.

That’s it! We’ll tally up the “+1″s and declare a winner on December 16, our last day of regular posting for the year. Nothing is preventing you from adding multiple +1s, but don’t be that douche. Have fun… go!

2011 was a year. Metal was released. Some of it was great, some was good, some was mediocre, some was bad. No one reads these intros or each album’s description anyway, right? You just scroll down to see we name #1 then fire off a stangry comment.

I do want to say one thing before you all start trolling: for the time ever this year I used iTunes play counts as a metric for determining the relative order of these choices. I didn’t use it as an absolute metric — so it’s possible that my #1 or #2 got less overall plays than something farther down the list — but when sussing out hard decisions about which of two candidates should be #2 and which should be #3, for example, it was a helpful tool that aided my decision. I listened to #2 more times than #3, so I must’ve enjoyed doing so more. And what are these lists if not really “favorite albums of 2011″? They’re completely subjective anyway; such a thing as objective music ranking is an impossibility and a fallacy.

Almost all of these albums are streaming in their entirety completely for free on Spotify! I’ve compiled a playlist; check it out here and listen along while you read.

So, the list:

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“Blogging isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”
-Contaigon

Looking over my list once I had completed it, what I came to realize was that Pig Destroyer once again did not release an album this year, those bastards. But the other thing I noticed is that pretty much every album which appears on this list has two things in common: 1) great songwriting, and 2) one twist on genre conventions, however slight, that allows the music to stand out from literally thousands of competing records. I know I’ve emphasized the importance of these elements many times on this site before, but I really just wanna hammer it home. The ongoing democratization of art — i.e., the fact that it’s getting cheaper to make professional-grade albums and self-distribute those albums, and that the gatekeepers’ powers are consequently decreasing — means that now, more than ever, there is a LOT of music out there. A lot of it is awful. A lot of it is pretty great. You need to give people a better reason to remember you than “We’re so competent!” Sorry. It’s not good enough anymore.

Every year that we do these lists, I become increasingly aware that they’re fairly meaningless. I don’t mean that to belittle the accomplishments of the artists who end up on the lists, because they are all worthy of your recognition and support. I really mean it as an apology to all the artists whose accomplishments we can’t recognize because we organize these things with some arbitrary number, and because we use the words “best” and “top” instead just “great.”

But whatever. We’re not writers — we’re just graffiti artists. And who cares what a graffiti artist has to say, right?

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Maybe you’ve had this experience: A recent acquaintance hears that you listen to tons of metal and reacts with surprise. Usually a work friend, this person kinda blinks in disbelief that a cuddly, sweet cupcake like you loves what appears to be violent, negative music. But you explain that though its popular face dons a mask of self-pity and boner panic, tons of metal’s listeners are sunny dudes.

It’s truer than ever in 2011, as metal’s most heeded voices charge toward enlightened contentment: Mastodon urges us to “pursue happiness with diligence.” Devin Townsend and Junius send a toilet snake down our emotional drain to root out harmful gunk. Anal Cunt, Steel Panther, and Whitesnake help us to party with abandon, to bang and be banged. And, yes, even the doom-and-destruction jamz from Warbringer and Hate Eternal feed our perspective, encourage healthy skepticism, and massage kinks from our rage muscles. The destroyers of our society are not followers of metal. Maybe its saviors are :)

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Junior & I are presiding over an orgy of opinions, and you’re all invited to lube up and slide in….

Just when it seems like life can’t get any crazier, inevitably it does and another layer of the shell gets peeled away to reveal a whole new set of criteria for perspective. This year clean became the new heavy and introspective vulnerability came back in style (but did it ever really leave though?). So many great albums came out — old masters taking new forms, young turks carving new terrain, plenty of new sounds coming out of nowhere….frankly it’s been near-impossible to fashion this list in a distinguishable order. But I wasn’t about to give up, no way José!

So let’s get crackin.

You – love – IT.
And it loves you :) 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 to get in on today’s needless-listing fun…

HIPSTERS

“Well, someone didn’t like Wolves in the Throne Room.”

REASONABLE NERDS

“Somewhat surprised that neither Batillus nor Hull cracked the top 40, while Junius—a meh-ish post-something-or-other band w/ a Coldplay vocal influence—did.”

UNDERGROUND ELITIST DOUCHEBAGS

“well im glad to see decible is still totally clueless and of total shit taste as they should be. stay out of the trve vndergrovnd!”

PEOPLE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT LULU

“Over the half the bands on that list won’t even be around in 5 years. Horrible.”

PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BUY RECORDS 

“Glad to see Yob, 40 Watt Sun, Tombs, Subrosa, and Graveyard among a few others getting some love.”

-AB

If you wanna read the Top 40 list to which everyone is so reasonably reacting, you’ll need to buy the January 2012 issue of Decibel here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?

I’ll just come out and say it: what a shit year, huh? Natural disasters galore (up in my little corner of New England, we had a tornado, earthquake, and late-October Nor’easter that left everyone without power for a week, all in the span of a few months) following a brutal summer that included a “heat dome”; continued economic misery compounded with heretofore unseen governmental ineptitude due to partisan gridlock/higher-than-normal choad ratio in elected office; the death of The Last Great American Entrepreneur, Steve Jobs or the canonization of child labor enthusiast/capitalist sociopath Steve Jobs, depending on your perspective; new blockbuster Nickelback and Evanescence albums; and the continued existence of Dancing With the Stars, Fox News/MSNBC, Kardashian-related programming where none of them are naked, and of course, the Twilight franchise, which has made the GDP of a small country where emotionally vapid teenagers don‘t fuck each other. If you didn’t wake up a few mornings hurling your alarm at the fresh sunlight sneaking into your room, you had it lucky and were most likely in the minority.

Or perhaps I’m being dramatic. Or it’s certain I’m being dramatic. But even metal, at least on the surface, had less than a banner year. Morbid Angel violently shit the bed with their new album, as did Metallica. Limp Bizkit returned and Korn not only continued to exist but, with Skrillex’s assistance, provided dubstep with a pretty sweet shark-jumping moment. Even Jeff Hanneman got a FLESH-EATING VIRUS from a SPIDER BITE, which was bad enough without mainstream media outlets condescendingly pointing out how “metal” that was. But there were bright spots, as there always are. Hell, Autopsy, Exhumed, and Brutal Truth all put out excellent, peerless albums despite the noticeable handicap of being in the soccer dad demographic now. Perhaps we — and by “we,” I mean “I” — focus too much on the negative. But while theoretically the night is darkest before dawn, perhaps there will never be another dawn, and we have an eternity of endless night with a moon as black as sack cloth and boiling seas and lambs opening seventh seals and so on awaiting us. Here’s this year’s soundtrack to that possibility.

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No long-winded descriptions. No waxing poetic over 2011. I know you don’t read these things. Potato potato potato.

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Phew! Hopefully, you’ve been reading my Bleeders’ Digests this year to get an idea of what I consider to be the best releases in what has truly been a stellar year for metal. I started this insane venture back in January and have listened to, front to back, 723 metal releases this year!

Since we had an earlier than usual deadline this year to submit our final Top 15 (and because I have a book deadline in December), I’ve only made it through half of the month of October. I did sneak in a few key November releases as well such as the new Animals As Leaders, Megadeth, Vektor, and Cynic. For those of you that read the Bleeders, don’t worry, I’ll catch up on the October, November, and December releases in the new year.

What an amazing year for heavy metal. While I somehow managed to whittle my list down to a Top 15, do yourself a favor and check out my previous Bleeders Digests (links at bottom) for a year’s worth of killer tunes. This is but the top 10% of what I found to be excellent. Most of the reviews here are from my earlier Bleeders columns and the updated notes are from my mid-year top albums list. There are a couple of new reviews in the mix as well.

My Top 15 contains a little bit of everything: thrash, crust, instrumetal, black metal, stoner, doom, punk, grindcore, death metal, hardcore, blackened this and that, and more.

Yes, there is a noticeable lack of Djent, wank, and Ghost. Deal with it.

For the rest of you, enjoy!

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When I was first making this list, I had a hard time thinking of that many new albums I’d actually listened to in 2011. But once I actually got home and went through my iTunes/most recent pile of vinyl scores/the mid-year list I wrote, I realized that it’s actually been a damn good year. A few early favorites were supplanted by more recent discoveries and sneaky year-end releases (sorry, Aksumite; hello, Wrathprayer!). Two of my enduring picks came courtesy of the always-excellent Gilead Media, who could use a hand right now and richly deserve your support.

Most of the albums I really loved fall beneath the “black metal” umbrella (11/15), but there are a couple monuments of death and a few doomed souls thrown in there as well. Hell, I would have just written down Beherit’s Live at the Devil’s Studio 1990 fifteen times if I thought I could get away with it.

So, here’s my list! I decided to leave the descriptions a bit vague this year to pique curiosity and inspire further exploration. Spoiler alert: Opeth’s not on it, and I still think that Burzum re-recording was a terrible idea. No, I’m still not sold on the Sonne Adam record (Armed with Hammers was better, and  the production on Transformation was far too clean), and if you’re going to leave pouty comments saying that “I’ve never heard of any of these bands, jeez!”, I recommend you direct your browser to Metal Archives and start typing.

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This was an incredible year for metal, with major players and up-and-comers alike releasing stellar material in almost every subgenre. There were some clear winners for me, but a number of spots on Top 15 could easily have gone to any of the albums on my “honorable mention” list, so I partially picked this based on which of my favorite albums I invested more time into. Please check out any of the bands you haven’t heard here – they need and deserve your support.

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The first thing I think of when trying to sum up the year, musically speaking, is that I really just wanted people to shut up. I’m sure I’m not the only one, because I can think of at least three albums that had an alternate, instrumental version released. (Sorry, Darkest Hour.) I also apparently really liked music that generally falls into the “guitar wankery” category. That’s new. Tastes change, bands change, and another year comes to a close. Here are my top fifteen choices for 2011.

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It was the best of times, it was the most epically lame of times. 2011 saw my first speeding ticket ever, my car totaled, me spend a month in a sling due to surgery necessary after an injury at a Deströyer 666 show five years ago, and start writing for this fine online publication right here. So yeah, this year “suck”ed — but it’s just about over, and there have been some pretty awesome bands come out with new shit to listen to day in and day out. Awwww, there’s that silver lining :)

When I was first asked to submit my year-end list, I have to say, I was a bit intimidated. Not because I’ve never comprised one for public consumption before, but because this year has been, in my mind, a phenomenal year for metal. I can’t tell you how many times I rearranged, added to, subtracted from, and stressed over this list so that it reflected exactly what got me stoked this year. I was lucky enough to see a large chunk of these bands live in 2011, which certainly didn’t hurt in helping me with my painstaking decisions. One band, and I’ll point this out when we get to them, actually swayed me almost entirely after seeing them live, allowing me to listen to the album in a new light and appreciate it on a new level. Don’t you love it when that happens?

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No doubt about it; 2011 has been a pretty swingin’ year for music —the year I had kind of expected 2010 to be (probably because about half of the albums I was anticipating came out so late anyway…). New Limp Bizkit, KoRn, Nickelback, and Soulja Boy? Am I in heaven?

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2011 wasn’t exactly a banner year for metal. I see a world of metal caught in transition. The aughts are behind us, and what the new decade will hold is anyone’s guess, really. Of course, none of this is to say that there aren’t nuggets of face-melting joy. Here are fifteen records that stand out from the pack among this year’s crop of metal records, conveniently ranked from least most awesome to most most awesome.

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Making this list in 2011 seemed like a much bigger…. thing, I guess, than making this list in 2010 was. Maybe it’s because one specific album didn’t really stick out to me the same way things like Ihsahn’s After or Anaal Nathrakh’s In the Constellation of the Black Widow did in previous years. But the thing I really did notice this year was the hideous amount of catchiness in the music I enjoyed. So much of what I listened to felt samey and generic, but the things that really made an impression primarily capitalized on hooks, memorable riffs, and headbanging choruses. Technicality stopped being as impressive to me as it used to be.

Which is probably why the albums on my list are generally a bit weird, and also why the majority of readers are going to hate the albums I put on my “disappointments” list. Please feel free to express your overly self-righteous rage in the comments. Hooray for the evolution and adaptation of musical tastes.

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2011: A pretty good year for the old school. And, no, with all due respect to the band, Worship Music is not the best Anthrax album.

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