Thoughts that went through my mind while watching “Cathedral Walls,” the first video from Swallow the Sun’s new album:

• Where’s their Angry Keyboard Player?
• Swallow the Sun are one of very few metal bands that can use a semi-hollow body and pull it off.
• Vocalist Mikko Kotamäki has been wearing that black skull cap in literally every single photo, video or live performance I’ve ever seen.
• Wouldn’t it be kinda neat if they shot this video in the middle of the summer but bundled up in winter coats for effect?
• Still no shots of Angry Keyboard Player.
• This song is slow and melancholy. Perfect first single for this band.
• What’s synchronized flag-waving got to do with anything? And what’s in that white urn?
• Oh! Female vocals! I like. The Interwebs tells me it’s Anette Olzon of Nightwish.
• 2:44: There he is! Angry Keyboard Player! YES!
• What the… angry keyboard player cut his hair! No! Noooooooooo!!!! This can’t… this can’t be… noooo!
• 3:40: YES! The heavy part.
• 3:44: Did the drummer really just hit his cymbals UPWARDS from the bottom?
• 4:05: Angry Keyboard Player’s windmill doesn’t quite have the same effect without the long hair :( Man, this sucks. He may as well just start taking Prozac and stop being so angry all the time.
• OK, I totally get it now. This video is about AKP cutting his hair, and his shorn locks are obviously what’s in that white urn. The synchronized dancers are doing some kind of ritual to mourn this very sad loss.

Swallow the Sun’s slightly less angry and less hairy Emerald Forest And The Blackbird comes out on February 1st via Spinefarm Records.

-VN

So, hey, remember when that rumor started back in October that Metallica were gonna make some kind of 3D movie? Well, it’s not a rumor anymore. From the band’s official website:

“We’re here to tell you that, yes, there is indeed a 3D project in the very early stages of production! We wish we could tell you more right now, but we don’t have all the finer points nailed down just yet. What we can tell you is that we are planning on being in a theatre near you sometime in 2013.”

So we still don’t know if this is a concert film or what — personally, I am still hoping that this is like Metallica’s version of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, with the Metallicats participating in some sort of ultra-corny hijinks — but we do know that producer Charlotte Huggins is involved. Personally, I don’t find the words “From the Producer of Fly Me to the Moon 3D” to be any more encouraging than I do the phrase “From the band that brought you St. Anger,” but you can make your own assumptions.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

The participants of the latest edition of Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice have been announced, and in case you’re for some reason reading this but haven’t glanced at the headline, the cast will include Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider. I’m guessing he was included because the show apparently had a lot of success with Poison’s Bret Michaels — a fact I completely missed until I walked into my local corner store one day and saw a Michaels/Apprentice-themed Snapple flavor — and someone thought getting another famous 80s vocalist who used to dress like an ugly woman would be a good idea. Whether or not Snider’s is famous enough for anyone outside the geriatric metal community remains to be seen, though — despite having a reality show of his own, I don’t feel like Snider has been in the mainstream media as much as Michaels these past few years.

Snider’s competitors will include Arsenio Hall, Clay Aiken, George Takei, Lisa Lampanelli, Debbie Gibson, and, most excitingly of all, Lou Ferrigno. So if I was Snider, I’d be shitting my drawers. No fucking way he can beat The Incredible Hulk, right?

-AR

[via Deadline]

We’ve heard Every Time I Die perform this new song, “Underwater Bimbos from Outer Space,” live before — but now the official studio version of the song has a video, which you can check out below.

If you were hoping for something fitting of the ditty’s Russ Meyer-esque title, you are going to be disappointed. That being said, I think it’s a cool video — the performance footage looks great, and the disturbing found footage interspersed throughout makes me think… well, that ETID have something a little headier in mind that mermaids with big tits.

The clip is probably NSFW and definitely has some unsettling imagery in it. Consider yourself warned.

“Underwater Bimbos from Outer Space” will appear on Every Time I Die’s new album, Ex Lives, which comes out March 6 via Epitaph.

-AR

And so does Eddie Murphy:

Thanks to Billy from Demilitia for this one!

-KW

Thanks to Metal Mykee for this one….

-Santa

Yesterday, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for their contribution to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo*; it’s their second nomination in as many years and would seem to suggest that the duo will probably get a second Oscar nod, too, although it’s not clear yet if they’ll be able to repeat the success of last year’s The Social Network. Still, pretty crazy to see the guy who once sang “I wanna fuck you like an animal” being all respectable n’ shit.

And since he is Mr. Respectable now, Reznor has granted a long interview to The Hollywood Reporter, a trade mag which I can’t imagine would have been interested in him even just a few years ago. But it’s a fun read, and they got some pretty good dish out of the dude — like the fact that he has no idea where his Grammy statuettes are:

Click to read more…

ROSVO – Seasick from Rosvo on Vimeo.

If I saw this crazy-looking dude running through the streets with headphones on, dancing and making weird faces, I’d probably call the cops. Or at least the insane asylum. But relax! It’s just the lovable, huggable Haunted frontman Peter Dolving having fun at the expense of the unsuspecting Japanese public. Because Japanese people are intrinsically funny!

The video is for the song “Seasick” by Dolving’s side-project Rosvo. Says Dolving, “We shot this video in 45 minutes. Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Anders Björler and Peter Dolving, one iPhone and a bunch of people on their way somewhere wondering what the hell the guy wit the beard was going on about. Anders edited it in a couple of hours when we got home and here we have it.”

Anders Björler for music video director of the year?

-VN

After the West Memphis Three were finally freed this summer, it was announced that filmmaker Atom Egoyan was making The Devil’s Knot, a non-documentary feature-length biopic about the trio. Now the movie has added its first star to the cast: Reese Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for playing June Carter in Walk the Line.

Deadline reports that ”Witherspoon will play Pam Hobbs, the mother of one of the murder victims, who initially believes the trio murdered her son, but is eventually persuaded the three suspects are innocent and wrongly accused.”

Click to read more…

Actually I really couldn’t give you a summary of Flourishing’s new video, which, hey, just so happens to be called “Summary.” ‘Cause it’s really fucking bizarre — like a death metal version of the movie π or something. But that’s not a bad thing — it’s certainly intriguing — and besides, Flourishing are fucking awesome. One of my great regrets this year is that I didn’t spend more time singing the praises of the band’s latest release, The Sum of All Fossils.

So please watch this video and then check out The Sum of All Fossils (it’s on Spotify, or you can just legally download a copy for all of eight bucks) to assuage my guilt. ‘Cause, like I was saying, Flourishing rule.

Here’s the clip, which debuted today on Metal Injection:

-AR

UPDATED:

Volture have released a new video for their song “Rulebreaker,” and holy shit, is it ever awesome. Clearly it didn’t cost much — if it looks like it was filmed on that massive video camera your dad used to make home movies in the 80s, that’s because it was, indeed, shot on VHS… and FUCKING BETA, which holy shit I don’t even know what to say about that. But that’s all part of its charm. And I don’t know how anyone could hate anything this unabashedly and metallically cheesy. If West Side Story was a metal musical, it would be this video.

“Rulebreaker” is available as part of a digital EP via Tankcrimes, which you can download here. A 7″ vinyl edition will be out early next year.

ORIGINAL POST:

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UPDATED:

I <3 Steel Panther! As much as I love their albums, I feel like they’re even funnier when they’re on-stage just yukking it up. Yeah, these dudes are phenomenal musicians, they write great songs and play some great covers, but half the fun of a Steel Panther show is all the between-song banter and comedy skits they do.

SP aren’t too good for a little unplugged action either. Today I give you two clips: 1) an acoustic performance of “17 Girls In A Row” they did for Kerrang! Radio last week, 2) a special X-rated rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” a cappella. Enjoy.

ORIGINAL POST:

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UPDATED:

The first trailer for Rock of Ages, the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical that uses a bunch of 80s arena rawk and hair metal tunes, has been released, and, never before has a story about rebellious youth been sold via the utilization of so many old people. (Y’know, in case there was any doubt that the only people who would ever wanna see these are middle-aged folks nostalgic for their youths.) I mean, I love Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamatti as much of the next guy, but I need to see Catherine Zeta-Jones belt out “We’re Not Gonna Take It” like I need prostate cancer. I’m not even sure I understand why the uptight conservatives would be singing the Twisted Sister song and not the loosey-goosey rock n’ rollers… maybe it’s meant to be ironic? Whatever.

Rock of Ages comes out on June 1, 2012.

ORIGINAL POST:

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Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s third, and presumably final, documentary about the West Memphis Three, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, will air on HBO next year, and the trailer has now been made available. I obviously haven’t had a chance to see this one yet, but word of mouth from the festival circuit has been positive, and Berlinger and Sinofsky’s first two documentaries on the subject are stellar, so I’m very excited for this. Check out the trailer below:

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory airs January 12 on HBO. We’ll remind you closer to the date.

-AR

As part of an ongoing to effort to prove they’re not just a pop metal band that only teenge girls and mall goths (and teenage girl mall goths) like, Lacuna Coil have debuted their new video, “Trip the Darkness,” via Hot Topic. So that oughta settle that.

Anyways, it’s not like a great video or anything, but the song is as catchy as the flu to be sure, and for at least a portion of the video, Cristina Scabbia does not look like a beardless Gandalf, which is nice.

“Trip the Darkness” will be on Lacuna Coil’s new album, Dark Adrenaline, which comes out January 24 via Century Media.

-AR

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo score was released this past Friday, and I spent a good chunk of my weekend listening to it; I’m glad to report that, yes, it’s pretty fuckin’ great. But if, for some reason, you’re still not sold, here are two more things which will hopefully entice you:

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Metal Injection has premiered “Sleeping God,” a new video by a German band with whom I was previously unfamiliar, The Intersphere. And while I don’t think the video itself is especially noteworthy (unless you have a fetish for scared-looking Asians), the song is really, really catchy. It has kind of a proggy quality, but I dunno if it’s fair to call it prog; it kind of reminds of Dredg for some reason, although it’s a little more metal than that. And it gets bonus points for featuring clean vocals that don’t sound over-produced or autoLabonted. Check it out below…

“Sleeping God” will appear on The Intersphere’s Hold On, Liberty, which comes out January 31 via Long Branch/SPV.

-AR

I completely missed the boat on Ancient VVisdom’s A Godlike Inferno before The Deciblog premiered the band’s new video, “The Opposition” (above), this morning. The song is SO DAMNED CATCHY that I immediately went to check it out on Spotify (listen here), and, yep, the entire record is this good.

The Deciblog describes Inferno as “an incredibly earnest and catchy album that celebrates Satan’s glory obsessively,” which answers my first question, which was “Are these dudes for real?” But the more I listen to Inferno, the less I care whether or not the whole thing is kinda goofy. Really, this is the kind of album which will almost surely get stuck in my head for days and days and days, and might have even knocked something off of my 2011 year-end list if I’d heard it earlier.

A Godlike Inferno is out now on Shinebox. Ancient VVisdom, along with Blood Ceremony, will play support on Ghost’s upcoming U.S. headlining tour, which kicks off in January, and which I am now twice as excited for as I already was. Get dates here.

-AR

Textures are masters of the slow build. If you’d never heard Textures before and “Consonant Hemispheres” was your first exposure to the band, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking these dudes are a bunch of softees based on the first minute of the song. But then things pick up a little… and then a little more… and then a lot more… and when you’re furiously headbanging by the time this song finishes you’re left wondering how the fuck they got from Point A to Point B so seamlessly. That’s the beauty of Textures, that’s what makes them so different and that’s why their American fans were so ridiculously excited when they came to the States for the first time ever this fall; they’re positively captivating and they construct songs in unexpected ways.

Check out this pro-shot performance of “Consonant Hemispheres” — one of my favorite tracks from Dualism — recently shot live on Dutch TV show. In case you haven’t heard Dualism yet, well, four MetalSucks writers liked it enough to place it on their Top 15 of 2011 lists so that should certainly tell ya something; check out a few tunes here. U.S. and Canadian fans can get 10% off in the Textures merch store through the holidays by using discount code “TEXTDECFTN.”

-VN

My heavy metal DVD shelf was once pretty bare, displaying only The Decline Of Western Civilization and a load of one-view concert films. But just since 2005, it’s been sagging under the weight of classy, addictively watchable feature-length documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad, Get Thrashed, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and the Iron Maiden and Rush movies. The latter four come courtesy of industrious heavy metal anthropologists Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, both responsible for the launch of metal’s overdue efforts to canonize itself and shout down mainstream media’s 40-year campaign to paint metal as dumb, violent ape music. Pssht. Everybody knows it’s awesome, fun ape music.

Cough anyway Dunn and McFadyen are back with an 11-part mini-series airing Saturdays on VH1 Classic titled Metal Evolution. Think about it for a sec: That’s a total running time of about 440 minutes. If you’re not bonered about that, then … gosh, get your boner checked, okay? To date, three episodes have aired, each detailing the roots of metal in blues, jazz, and classical music; Saturday’s episode (above) traveled to England to gab with/about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (who, according to Dunn, declined to be interviewed due to an aversion to being associated with metal), and concluded with Judass Priest circa Sad Wings Of Destiny. Spoiler: Bruce Dickinson calls Eric Clapton “tame” compared to Ritchie Blackmore. SWISH! Episode schedule after the jump:

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