In my heart is a cherished memory of this two-day metal festival I attended in like 2001. The big headliners were predictably exciting, but I arrived before lunch to take in sets from then-fledgling acts Dillinger Escape Plan, Shadows Fall, and that band whose van crashed real bad and who mixed hardcore with jazz and rap and shit. Candiria. That’s it.

But as sometimes happens, an unknown band totally stole the show: Caliban from Chermany. Before the metalcore quintet took the stage, I’d been kinda distracted by drugz and some band guys douchily flaunting their nasty gfs/escorts, but with each Caliban jam, I went from sitting with chin in palm, to standing, to stumbling toward the front to jam, to rocking wildly with dudes. Somehow Caliban owned the fest until the next night when Pantera closed the shit down. Awesome! I was pumped for them! But the next week, I heard their then-new record, Vent.

Click to read more…

Deftones singer Chino Moreno has been busy doing a few shows with his ††† (Crosses) project, whose rad second EP came out in January, as well as working up a new Deftones album. But into his tight schedule Moreno squeezed another project on March 7: marriage to his girlfriend Risa Mora awww.

It’s awesome news for fans of his music, who lo these many years have benefited from the pants-dropping/skirt-raising qualities of sexily violent Deftones jamz by Moreno the lover (more to come we hope), but it’s also potentially awesome since the turbulence of his previous marriages resulted in some harrowing, concussive Deftones classics (we don’t hope for more to come, but um you get what I’m saying).

Alas, the victims here are the heavily-tatted/-pierced, amply-bosomed girls who deafen me at every Deftones gig with their screamed pleas for entry into Moreno’s trousers; broken-hearted they must be at the end of another doomed romanic quest. O, who will love them? Wait a sec, I’ll totally love them. Here girls smoke this while I just click play here …

Click to read more…

It’s logical for professional sack of shit/radio ranter Rush Limbaugh to think that sex is gross and shameful: Each of his four sexual experiences must’ve been a real horror show, what with all the flab and feces and corpsestink. So yeah, we can see why he’d slam law student/activist Sandra Fluke, who argued before a House oversight committee in favor of measures that ensure universal access to contraceptives. Limbaugh, reacting to Fluke’s figures that set her birth control costs over three years at $3,000, publicly branded her a “slut” and “prostitute” on his political blab show for assholes.

See, if Fluke had her way, federal law would require insurance providers — businesses, taxpayer-funded organizations, churches, Limbaugh himself!! — to cover rubbers, the pill, and that foam stuff for each of its employees. Holy shit! This would decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and cost high-earners like Limbaugh dozens of hamburgers each year.

Limbaugh went on to use his Oxy-reasoning to conclude that users of publicly-funded contraception should be required to post video of their hot sexual congress on the internet for all to see. In short, if his insurance costs go up, he wants some amateur porn in return.

But fairness doesn’t apply to Limbaugh, cuz the fuck-knob illegally used music by Peter Gabriel and the band Rush to soundtrack his dickhead rant. And Rush isn’t having it.

Click to read more…

The important thing about Extreme’s breakthrough 1990 smash “More Than Words” is that the deft, deceptively complex ballad for pussies helped propel its album, Pornograffitti, to double-platinum sales. That’s cash money for an act not exactly primed for major financial windfall: Sure, guitarist Nuno Bettencourt (Rihanna) is hotter than half of my gfs, so that’s a start, but Extreme was a poor fit in the reigning hair metal genre. Kinda like Enuff Z’nuff and Saigon Kick, they played sophisticated Beatles metal for songists, not entry-level riff-jamz to pop ludes to. (And how high are chart hopes for an album with porno in the title?)

Click to read more…

Refused’s music is awesome, but I eye-roll so hard I can see my spine at their vibe. I mean, fuck I nearly threw out my neck just reading their reunion statement. It’s all, “Once we were a band. We played music. Music for you. We are intense. Our intense intensity broke up the band. We were over it. Now we play music again. For you. Now I shall list our exceptional achievements since breaking up: Kristoffer earned a doctorate in assal-horizontology, Dennis led a peasant’s revolt in the Bajina region of Uruguay, Hans invented an advanced turd destinker, and Fðsterlitz lived a full year in the center of the sun. See you in the pit.”

But I can calm my ballz cuz that’s just talk. Really, a band is a band cuz they jam wildly together, and must be appraised not on personality but on these jamz — tough though that might be. So, fuck it let’s take a totally non-petty look at footage of mega-jam “New Noise” from Refused’s first show in 14 years on Wednesday:

Click to read more…

MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Drummers, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play drums (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Hate Eternal’s Jade Simonetto…

Name Jade Simonetto
Age 27
Motto “Steroids = Success” (not srs)
Bands Hate Eternal, Camille Rhodes
Kit size Reasonable
Too many cymbals and shit? Maybe.
Hotness 8

“It’s not rare to see Jade practicing his double bass or on pads after playing a headlining set. Who the fuck does that?” asked Hate Eternal frontman Erik Rutan in a MetalSucks interview back in April. Good question! The answer: The drummer who replaces mega-stud Derek Roddy. The drummer whose boss is Rutan, an extreme metal titan and unrelenting excellentist. The drummer charged with propelling two monster Hate Eternal albums. That’s who hits the practice room in every spare moment.

Click to read more…

Per my worship of Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, I hung high and hard with my TV for each progressively dehumanizing episode of last season’s American Idol. It was a soul-crushing experience, but fate met me halfway by bringing a little metal to Idol via ’80s rock underdog James Durbin. Sure, that’s only a bit of metal, but amid the other Idol tragedies, Durbin’s work on “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” and “Heavy Metal” felt like a pair of supple boobz at a scrotum convention: Welcomed and appreciated. Warmly felt, even.

This year, I’m not going near Idol but check it out, there’s a second heavy metal presence on the show: Click to read more…

I’m an unlikely fan of Dunderbeist’s Black Hearts & Crooked Tails for two reasons: Bands whose members dress up exactly alike can be great, but the whole thing embarrasses me lol. It just feels weird. Of course, it makes sense for a crappy band to go strong on the visuals, but Dunderbeist’s jamz don’t need help. They rage hard.

Okay but the other thing that Dunderbeist must overcome: Click to read more…

I’ll kinda stick to facts here: It was Tuesday that I first heard the full Look Right Penny debut album, Sugar Lane. On Wednesday, I wrote here on MetalSucks that I was totally loving the poppy, proggy LRP vibe (I want a tour with Atheist and Paramore now!) and that I super-love when great players pump up pop music with artful, forceful chops. But that praise started to seem way faint on Thursday when I really got into the album: the super hooks, the huge bombast, the ace riffage, the bass drops, the skillz of singer Mariel Diaz-Carrion. Instant classic. Awesome.

So I spent about 12% of the next three days cranking Sugar Lane #truefact. At some point, I emailed Sergeant D. about it. I resisted it all Sunday just to see if I could. And I remained Sugar Lane-free on Monday until word reached me that MS had nabbed this very exclusive stream of the complete album (below). Now I’m ballz-excited to unveil this gem to beloved MS readers. Good times! And to celebrate, I think I’ll treat myself to a few consecutive listens to, say, Sugar Lane by Look Right Penny (out today). We click play now!

[this streaming promotion has now ended]

-ADF

Florida’s Look Right Penny releases Sugar Lane today via Bieler Bros. Order it here and here. Internet me @AnsoDF to gab about it!

Kittie (L-R Trish Doan. Not pictured: Mercedes Lander, Morgan Lander, Tara McLeod)

Kittie is a hard-working metal band, so they seem omnipresent in support slots on a million tours. I’ve seen them 670 times, a meaningful number for a dude whose life of drugz + rollerskates means low concert attendance. But I’ve always applauded Kittie for their solid-ish chops and for the aesthetic vacation they provide to concertgoers tasked with staring at heinous, sweaty metal bros for three hours. Thanks Kittie!

And as of today, the next 63-band package tour stop in your hometown just got hotter ‘cuz… Click to read more…

The most brilliant aspect of the movie Revenge Of The Nerds is the name of the enemy frat house: Alpha Beta. What better term to describe those nerd-persecuting sports tryhards lol! Sure, Stan Gable’s football posse seems studly — what with all the weight-lifting, stunning looks, and privilege – but only a team of mega-betas would feel impelled to terrorize the totally groovy nerds (the movie’s true alphas). And such they are.

If Gable really wished to stay atop the Adams College hierarchy, he would’ve correctly identified the Nerds as winners — an easy conclusion once they found and restored that house — and then marched right over, extended a warm welcome, and initiated a gab session to identify how the Nerds’ many powers could enhance his stranglehold on local pussy and beer. In Gable’s shoes, I’d be like, “Come over and bang cheerleaders at our house tomorrow, dudes! Then build me a robot that writes Astronomy term papers! Ha ha! No but srs.”

But instead, the Alpha Beta team locks horns with the Nerds and gets dismantled: Gable’s gf with the luscious titties dumps him for the top nerd, her rapist; Gable and cronies are swept out of their legislative positions; and finally, his buds must trudge back to live in the school gym presumably after a boner-breaking beatdown from like a dozen mean ex-linebacker types (delicious irony alert). Oh and then a lifetime of resentful servitude to a world of Nerd overlords and of lamenting the phonetic misfortune of the name Gable (“gay bull”)!! What a waste!!!

It’s in this spirit that I offer my hand to Kunvuk, a quartet of metal nerds from Australia (above). Let’s join powers, you guys! You all can help me decipher the Outback Steakhouse menu and stalk reconnect with this juicy girl I know who moved to Sydney; I can offer a helpful breakdown of your vibe:

Click to read more…

An extremely welcome surprise in 2011 was Reports From The Threshold Of Death, a throbbing, gauzy dream-rock record from Boston’s Junius (read here). One shitty major magazine described Reports as the intersection of Neurosis and The Smiths, but a sharper listen reveals Deftones-sized hooks and melancholic majesty more akin to Loveless by My Bloody Valentine and Cave-In epics like “Seafrost” and “Paranormal.” I love! U love!

Junius embarks on a busy US tour next month (with O’Brother, dates below), and then heads to Europe in April, so fans have not long to wait for a consciousness-muddying headline set. But in the meantime, Click to read more…

On Tuesday I caught the movie Titanic‘s big-money scene on TV. As the liner upends and descends into frigid waters, people are shown plummeting as from a skyscraper, doinking off the ship’s protrusions and cartwheeling into the abyss. In their place, I’d be like, “Aw man. Why ever did I board on this boner-biting boat? What a rip-off! All it took was one wrong turn and now I’m floating in my pajamas with a frozen toddler under each arm. Fuck! Room service!!”

That’s a raw deal, right? But that was 1912. Here in 2012, I could be lured onto a raft made of egg shells and spaghetti by awesome Swiss thrashers Coroner. Check out their wrap video of the recent 70,000 Tons Of Metal cruise (above); what a blast! And if disaster befell us, I’d be contentedly banging with the band til we were all gurgling and doggy-paddling for shore. For sure!

–ADF

Party with Coroner on dry land at April’s Roadburn Festival in Holland among Voivod, Killing Joke, and Hammers Of Misfortune (info here) and in August at Germany’s Wacken Open Air with Warbringer, Testament, and Sanctuary (info here).

To me, nothing is as fully sweet like pop music played heavy and with controlled virtuosity. It’s like a famous master chef whipping up simple, delicious hot dogs for my face; it seems foolish to abandon such classic fare to high-volume/low-margin assembly lines, right? Hence my devotion to the jamz of Rush, Bay Area thrash, Iron Maiden, Deftones, Devin Townsend, Love/Hate, Blessed By A Broken Heart, and tons more snappy songwriters with big boner crunch.

So I warmly welcome Look Right Penny, whose debut album Sugar Lane (out Tuesday) is a slam dunk of pop-djent metal. Click to read more…

What was once inconceivable is now a reality: A David Lee Roth-fronted Van Halen is set to release a new album! It took 28 years, a soul-crushing false start with Roth in 1996, the dumping of bassist/backing vocalist Michael Anthony, and a new label home, but A Different Kind Of Truth finally arrives today. However, a fair appraisal of Truth could be dicey: Fans might get swept up in the grand return of a pined-after loved one, while the indifferent can effortlessly cry foul at Truth‘s mining of 35 year-old material and at suspiciously deft Wolfgang Van Halen bass lines. And yet early reviews state that Truth is a remarkably authentic classic Van Halen experience.

Here’s what steps VH took to recapture that old magic:

Click to read more…

He Is Legend made two of the past decade’s awesomest, most infectious records, so I went straight to Bonersville upon their December announcement of an end to their two-year hiatus and a new album for 2012. Their first shows back were last week in North Carolina, a place I can’t locate on a map let alone visit (it’s over by Tennessee and Arizona right?), so I’m just happy as shit to enjoy some shaky, unflattering fan film of the jam (above). The clip reveals a rustless He Is Legend before a very happy crowd ripping happily — except for inscrutable guitarist/stud Adam Tanbouz, though his frownypants may relate to the usual technical wrangling during a gig’s first song. Fully mirin his Dark Funeral shirt.

-ADF

Read about He Is Legend here and here then get their stuff here.

When Filter mainman Richard Patrick went into rehab in 2002, it marked the end of the industrial-rock band’s rad second line-up. That means it’s been about a decade since the Filter that made Title Of Record (super classic!) and The Amalgamut (epic!), and since then jeez I haven’t caught sight of Patrick’s old team like at all. Which is surprising, cuz drummer Steve Gillis is a stud (here) and guitarist Geno Lenardo co-wrote this phase of Filter’s biggest (here) and biggest-selling jamz (here).

Click to read more…

When ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy announced an unlikely collaboration with John Sykes (above left, the guy who wrote Whitesnake’s huge album), it was easy to be of two minds: On the one hand, Portnoy had reactivated the long-dormant Sykes, which is awesome; but, jeez, the Portnoy-Sykes affair also set a roadblock before any potential reunion of Blue Murder, Sykes’ awesomely awesome supergroup with drummer Carmine Appice and farty Tony Franklin. That’s a bummer.

Click to read more…

This is just me, but I attend Darkest Hour shows mostly to make goo-goo eyes at guitarist Mike Schleibaum, fellow devotée of my boner band The Crown (and The Cars). That’s my M.O. no judgements please. Still I was bummed when sweet drummer Ryan Parrish announced his departure from DH late last year. But dude is already in A Cancerous Affair, the project started by his former DH bandmate and guitar freak Kris Norris. And which now welcomes its newest member, keyboardist Knockerz Randall.

Click to read more…

It’s occasionally hard to tell whether we should cheer superstar wrestler Hulk Hogan as an unhinged eccentric or jeer him as a sideways freak who paws his own daughter on TV when not sweatily humping other half-nude guys on TV. Okay, shit, it’s not that tough to call actually — especially when the Hulkster pops round The Sun (UK) offices to cull the latest relationship gossip on Heidi Klum (silly!) and Cameron Diaz (really?).

Truly, the gentleman prefers blondes. Anyway, after casually implying his fandom of The Stone Roses — a major news item in England for their recent reunion — Hogan dropped these bombshells on The Sun:

Click to read more…