Ladies and Gentlemen, the world’s most popular sport on the world’s largest stage is finally upon us. Today marks the start of the 2010 South African World Cup.

I like stereotyping so I’m going to assume that most you live in your parents’ basement and do nothing but smoke weed and listen to metal all day. Since a lot of the World Cup games take place in the afternoon you all have ample time, and no reason, not to sit on your ass and watch. You haven’t seen things like this done to a ball since that time in fifth grade when you and your best friend were sexually curious and thought it would be cool to see how it felt. However, if I were to make a bet I would wager that most of you a) have never played soccer b) think soccer is the actual name of the sport (only America would name a sport [ahem football] after an appendage it rarely uses) or are c) still thinking about that time in fifth grade with your best friend.

To help you all through this month long journey I have put together a little dossier on some of the teams competing in the World Cup. In order for you to better comprehend the nuances of the teams I have compared them each to one aspect of metaldom. After all, this is a metal site.

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I will always remember the first time I heard Killswitch Engage. I was fifteen years old watching MTV after school when I saw the music video for “The End of Heartache.” [Our intern is a baby!!! - Ed.] Hearing that combination of melodic singing and big thick riffs just hooked me to the sound. All I wanted was to hear more of it, and Killswitch was happy to oblige. Since its inception in 1999, the band has been one of the best in the business at writing top notch metalcore songs.

When you have the man-sized balls, like the ones that allow Jesse Leach and Howard Jones to sing and not sound like pussies, and mix that with some catchy Swedish-style riffs, you have a metal recipe for success. Alive or Just Breathing and The End of Heartache are landmark records that set the tone for metalcore.

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Last weekend I was lucky enough to be back in NYC for my spring break (even though the first week of March is clearly not spring), and was able to catch the Kreator, Voivod, Nachmystium, Evile, and Lazarus A.D. show. Considering that it had been a little while since I have been pushed up against someone bigger and sweatier than I am, I was pretty geeked.

While I was at the show it dawned on me that, unlike in most sports, there aren’t statistics that tell you how well a band performed. Soccer has the a similar problem, which they solve by giving each player a 1 – 10 ranking based on their overall performance. So in honor of the upcoming world cup and my brother, who both despises metal and introduced me to soccer, I give you the band ratings for the Kreator show in soccer style.

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MetalSucks intern Matt Heafowitz is making his editorial debut with his own Best of ’09 Br00tal-list! What can we say? The guy’s got great taste. We taught him well.

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