Behold Plant Vochestra, the best metal side-project since Ladder Up An Ass!

Like Ladder Up An Ass, Plant Vochestra also happens to feature two of the lovable goons in The Red Chord, along with Between the Buried and Me vocalist Tommy Rogers. The Red Chord played a hometown one-off at the opening date of the Saints and Sinners tour featuring BTBAM this past weekend, setting up the glorious return of this legendary yet reclusive band. Performing live for the first time in several years, Plant Vochestra treated the audience to a wonderful set of the dazzling musicianship and vocal acrobatics you’d expect from a trio consisting of Rogers, Greg Weeks and Mike “Gunface” McKenzie. Courtesy of Metal Injection, here’s their big hit “Surf’s Up Dude.”

-VN

I am very excited to take over the controls of the mighty MetalSucks Mansion today and Wednesday from my Texas-based satellite office!

Up first, an incredible, ass-kicking new video from the mighty Canadian metal purists 3 Inches of Blood that’s full of…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!

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Metal fans have been buzzing for months about Until The Light Takes Us, but official screenings have been few and far between. Consequently, 99% of the film’s core audience hasn’t seen the saga of the Norwegian black metal scene as told by filmmakers Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. That’s all going to change on September 28th, when Until The Light Takes Us finally gets DVD treatment. Luckily for me, my hookup Terrill, whose inventory is usually comprised of amateur porn, videocam bootlegs of current blockbusters and unreleased Tyler Perry films, somehow got his grubbies on an advance screener.

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The bands I love most tend to be a love or hate prospect, ones that garner only a strong reaction from a person. Neurosis are either a band you get or a band that bores you. Darkthrone either shook something deep in you or they’re way too kvlt for your tastes. And Clutch, well… Clutch don’t seem to fit into that category. I find it hard to believe that if you like music, you can truly dislike Clutch. There’s so much there to dig and nothing really that offensive about them (unless you have a problem with beards, in which case… what the fuck is wrong with you?). So, in theory, they’re almost too accessible, and perhaps not necessarily a band to love. But even a cursory glance below the surface reveals complexities to lose yourself in: clever and occasionally out-there lyrics, stellar musicianship, and a decade and a half’s worth of remarkably-solid-to-staggeringly-excellent material. In a way, Clutch’s tendency to make you want to grab a beer and start bellowing your best Neil Fallon impression with nine of your closest friends works to their disadvantage. They’re too good to be true, but are, in fact, true.

Clutch’s new double DVD set, Live at the 9:30, ably (and occasionally exhaustively) documents this. With one disc of a spectacular show and another of an hour and a half’s worth of rare footage, fan interviews, and history from the band themselves, it’s enough for a Clutch fan to sport — at the very least — a semi under their gargantuan belt buckle. Though occasionally veering a little too much into just-for-obsessives territory, Live at the 9:30 is illustrative of how people really, really love Clutch, and, more importantly, why people really, really love Clutch.

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A lot has happened since Chimaira released their first full-length DVD, The Dehumanizing Process, in 2004; as captured by director Todd Bell, the band portrayed in that DVD is struggling to make the album they want to make, struggling to stay signed, struggling to get good tours, struggling just to stay together. The Chimaira of Coming Alive — the band’s third excellent collaboration with Bell — are opening for Disturbed, playing arenas, and taking bets on how many copies The Infection will sell in its first week. We’re obviously not in Metallica territory or anything here, and we do see that the band’s members are still working their collective ass off (a scene in which bassist Jim LaMarca personally hands out band stickers and canvasses fans is particularly striking) — but Coming Alive has less conflict and drama than its predecessor. And while no one should begrudge a band this talented and hard-working, unfortunately, conflict and drama are the things great stories are made of.

It’s the biggest — and, really, the only — strike against Coming Alive. Luckily, Bell is such a talented guy that it also really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.

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So, did you love the Rush movie premiere on Saturday? You bet you did! That shit was awesome! I mean, even peppered with commercial breaks of grueling duration on VH1 Classic, Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage made an unmistakable statement: Rush is better than everybody.

Now, we all know about their engaging, evolving sound (over the course of 24 records) and that their concert experience is quite similar to an eye-rolling orgasm; plus, there are the little consequential benefits to Rush fandom, such as a near-total absence of casual fans (whose fleeting enthusiasm endangers a good concert vibe), and of course the fact that only at Rush shows am I the best-looking guy in my section (I pull Rush honeys like whoa!); and finally, we agree that Rush is only beginning to enjoy a critical thaw that is due them for 30+ years, and that Rush-hating mainstream music press is staffed by jelly-spined girl-worshippers who don’t like music so much as fall in proxy self-love with musicians.

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About a month ago, Antonin Skullia, Esq. and myself got to attend an advance screening of Hot Tub Time Machine. If you don’t know what Hot Tub Time Machine is about, congratulations, you’re retarded. It’s right there in the title, shit for brains.

Anyway, Antonin and I were pretty sure going int that the movie was gonna suck, ’cause a) we were by far the oldest people at the screening and we’re not that old, and b) the movie is called Hot Tub Time Machine. But it was actually really funny, and I’ve been meaning to write about all its various hair metal references since we saw it. But I kept forgetting until I read this article on Metal Insider about this article on Collider, which proves that the dudes from Collider are either babies or were never cool enough to know about Poison. (‘Cause knowing about Poison is cool… right?) So I’ll write about it now.

My ramblings after the jump. There are some minor spoilers, so if you’re really concerned with the plot intricacies of a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine, don’t read this and instead go the bathroom and see how far you can shove your own fist up your ass.

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I saw The Runaways this weekend. (Yes, I’m aware they weren’t a metal band, but whatever.) For roughly half the movie, director Floria Sigismondi manages to steer clear of all the typical rock biopic clichés and make a movie that’s insightful and fun and interesting; then it devolves into a pretty typical anti-drug PSA and I kinda checked-out. Still, it’s probably one of the better movies playing this crap-filled season.

One thing that did kinda rub me the wrong way, though, was that to watch the film, you’d think that Cherie Currie and Joan Jett (respectively played by Twatlight alum Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart) were really the only members of The Runaways.

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I recently contacted Bazillion Points book publisher and heavy metal author Ian Christe about reviewing his books for MetalSucks. Bazillion Points is best known as the home of Daniel Ekeroth’s excellent tome, Swedish Death Metal.

Ian was kind enough to send me a hardcover of Hanoi Rocks guitarist Andy McCoy’s autobiography Sheriff McCoy. I was not able to start on that book as I was neck-deep into Slash’s autobiography. Luckily for me, Ian also enclosed a DVD of a feature-length documentary, Mellodrama.

During one of my reading breaks I decided to pop in this film and am I glad I did. Mellodrama is easily one of the most entertaining, informative, and educational music documentaries I have seen in ages. It even has a little something for you metalheads, prog rock types, and horror film score fans in MetalSuckistan.

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The Ghostbusters video game is just meh, and the dudes who are writing Ghostbusters 3 also wrote Year One, which means – no shock here – Ghostbusters 3 will probably suck.

But at least we have ridiculous mash-ups like this to keep our love of Dr. Peter Venkman and company alive!

-AR

[via Topless Robot]

Actually I doubt that Scott Smith’s book or the ensuing cinematic adaptation really had much influence on the makers of The Haunted’s new video, “Trenches.” But, I’m sleepy and simple minded today and they’re both about killer plants, so, there ya have it. Deal with it, bitches.

The Haunted are doing an awesome tour later this year with Nachtmystium, Kylesa and Intronaut. While you’re waiting for it to come to your town, don’t forget to check out Haunted frontman Peter Dolving’s guest blogs for MetalSucks here and here.

-AR

Here’s an interesting factoid Neuraxis fans might now know: vocalist Alex LeBlanc has actually worked a few matches as a pro wrestler on the Canadian indie circuit! So we asked him to review Darren Aronofsky’s new, Oscar nominated film, The Wrestler. Here are Alex’s thoughts on the film and its portrayl of pro-wrestling. Enjoy!

Being into wrestling for eight years now, I went to see The Wrestler with an opened mind. I knew it was going to be good since I’m a fan of Mickey Rourke and [director] Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. The thing I was particulary interested in is the portrayal of the wrestling world. Let me tell you: it is so accurate.

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Of the dozen or so Japan-based acts that have attempted to crack the English-speaking market, Dir En Grey is fortunate to have an edge in their singularity; no band sounds like them in America or elsewhere. Sure, we can trace the roots of their spare, low-register guitar parts to Korn; the rabid, multi-voiced, and diminutive singer to Cradle of Filth; the addictive melodies to uh Duran Duran; and the caustic imagery to Marilyn Manson and Japanese visual hyper-rock. But like a Hayao Miyazaki or Pretz, Dir En Grey is exotic but not exclusionary, foreign but not impenetrable. Different but the same. And awesome!

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So apparently Fuse has a new show called Excellent Adventure (sans Bill and Ted, sadly) in which the hosts explore different music around the world. While last week’s exploration of Germany’s famous Wacken Open Air Festival certainly wasn’t the first time this gargantuan metal fest has been covered in the mainstream media, such choice nuggets as these from “Nate’s Travelogue,” a recap of the episode on Fuse’s website, are worth the time out of your day for a good laugh:

“They told me how to party like a METAL HEAD (the name used to refer to people who listen to Metal music).”

“Then I watched a METAL band called “Three Inches of Blood”. They were so good that I felt the desire to jump in the middle of a HUGE mosh pit. For those of you who DON’T know what a mosh pit is; it is a circle of guys and girls crashing into each other, while jamming to the music! I had the greatest time. Big guys, small guys, small girls, AND BIG girls were all in the pit crashing and laughing.”

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When you think about it, being French Canadian must be the worst of both possible worlds. You’re not really French but you are, you’re not really Canadian but you are, and if you’re like most people, you probably don’t really wanna be Canadian anyway (All due respect to Sebastian Bach, William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, and MetalSucks’ own resident canuck David Bee Roth).

So maybe that’s why Despised Icon make such furious music. It can be hard to understand what they’re actually saying amidst all the br00tality and pig squeals, but I think it’s something along the lines of “FUCK! WE’RE FRENCH CANADIANS! GRRRRRR!!!”

ANYWAY, Century will release a decidedly intense, decidedly French Canadian Despised Icon DVD, entitled Montreal Assault, on January 27, 2009. I haven’t seen it yet, but it already has a few things going for it:

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How much do you love heavy metal? Are you willing to die for it?

Two new excellent documentaries will make you feel like a complete pussy when you realize what some people will do for the love of metal and punk rock.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Heavy Load, while very different in feel and execution, portray two groups of metalheads with wildly differing sets of challenges that make their lives’ missions to bang thy head that doesn’t bang.

Baghdad tells the story of Acrassicauda (Black Scorpion), the only heavy metal band in Iraq, who must deal with a lack of venues to play in, laws against headbanging, more laws that require musicians to perform one pro-Saddam Hussein song per set, and, oh yeah, getting their practice pad literally bombed to pieces.

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Holy crap. After what seems like forever, God Forbid finally released their first DVD, Beneath the Scars of Glory and Progression, earlier this week (trailer and clip above).

And you know what?

It was totally worth the wait. Click to read more…