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:

Click to read more…

Red Fang and director Whitey McConnaughy make pretty much the best music videos in the history of the medium. Okay, so that might be a slight exaggeration, but no joke, the videos these dudes make together completely fucking rule. If you doubt me, you need to check out their previous clips here and here.

So it is all-around great news that the Fang and McConnaughy have teamed up to make another video, this time for the song “Hank is Dead,” from RF’s current Relapse release, Murder the Mountains. And while I can’t quite tell what the concept of the video is based on the behind the scenes pics the band posted to their Facebook page, based on the below photo alone, I would wager that it’s going to be another unforgettable slice of cinemetal:

So get stoked for this. You can check out more photos from the video shoot here.

Meanwhile, the band is also offering a free download of the tune “Number Thirteen,” from the same album, right here. If you don’t already have the song or somehow aren’t hip to how great this band is, you need to get on that shit ASAP.

-AR

As a few of you seem to have noticed, yesterday MetalSucks was very, very proud — like pinch us is this really happening??? proud — to debut “Ghost Walking,” the new single from Lamb of God; now the band has released a lyric video for that song, which you can check out below. I find it real helpful, ’cause I can’t always understand what Randy Blythe is saying. For example, I was walking around all weekend thinking the first line in the song is “Do you remember when work was fun?”, which is not at all what Blythe is screaming. (Freud would say my misinterpretation means something, but Freud is dead and I love my job, so whatever.) So “Ghost Walking” is not a song about how bad it sucks to have a regular nine-to-five job. Fascinating.

“Ghost Walking” is available as a digital single now; it will appear on Lamb of God’s forthcoming release Resolution, which comes out on January 24. You can pre-order it now in one of several different combo packages through Lamb of God’s official webstore.

-AR

… Brandon Ellis. You might recognize the 18-year old (!) Ellis’s name from his run as a touring guitarist with Arsis on their most recent Jim Malone-less tour, or perhaps from his brief stint with North Carolina-based MS-faves Vanisher. Filling in for Jim Fucking Malone in Arsis is pretty dern impressive on its own, but learning a band’s entire live set — let alone a band as technical and precise as Sylosis — in TWO DAYS, then going out on tour with them to open for As I Lay Dying in 1,000+ capacity venues? Mind boggling. This kid’s got my respect.

But the news of Brandon Ellis replacing Alex Bailey — who broke his wrist mere days into Sylosis’ U.S. tour — isn’t new in and of itself, as Ellis started playing with the band late last week and several other sites picked up the news around that time. Mainly I just wanted a reason to post this new live music video of Sylosis playing “A Serpent’s Tongue,” ’cause Sylosis are fan-fucking-tastic and you really ought to pay them attention. I named their 2011 release Edge of the Earth as one of my Top 15 of 2011, so use this as an excuse to catch up on what you missed.

-VN

[via No Clean Singing]

After it was announced that director visionary director Darren Aronofsky would be helming a music video for Loutallica’s completely unlistenable piece of shit “The View,” I was optimistic that Aronofsky would come up with something that would be superior to the song itself. I don’t think I was alone in harboring this hope. I haven’t loved all of Aronofsky’s films — The Fountain and Black Swan were both pretty lousy, and, no, I don’t give two fucks how many awards the latter film won — but the guy’s work is usually, at the very least, thought-provoking. He has a unique point of view, and, really, what more can you ask for from an artist? Some people will inevitably love or hate the creator’s work, so, really, the creator’s responsibility is to be, for lack of a better term, interesting. It is, ultimately, the bare minimum we should require of artists, and the single thing so many of them completely fail to do. But whatever you want to say about Aronofsky, you can’t deny that the guy has a vision; he’s got heart, he’s got soul.

That’s why his video for “The View” is such a goddamn bummer. ‘Cause it’s really just a performance video. Is it slightly prettier than most performance videos? Sure. Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer, Matthew Libatique — who has been one of the director’s regular collaborators way back since π — is no slouch. But most of the imagery isn’t really that original or stimulating. Really, the “homemade,” handheld nature of it — that kind of “indie” quality — isn’t that far off from, say, a commercial for Levi’s jeans. Y’know, like this one:

Click to read more…

Actually, you probably won’t — ’cause, as our beloved Sergeant D. notes on Stuff You Will Hate, “the execution isn’t as good as the concept.” It’s just total scenecore shit like we already hear too-many-times a day, and the video is… well, it’s retarded. The Sarge laughs at the part “where he dumps his beer on some 6.5″ (at the 3:35 mark), but… ehhh, I dunno. It takes a LOT for me to feel bad for a groupie, but getting her to agree to get doused with beer for a stupid video for a band no one has ever heard of before (and who we will hopefully never hear from again) might just do the trick.

ANYWAY, check out the vid below and see what you think…

-AR

I’m gonna put about much effort into this intro as Twilight fans put into critical analysis of their favorite piece of literature/cinema/horse shit.

We begin today with Demon Hunter’s video for “LifeWar.” I don’t really like Demon Hunter and I don’t really like this song, but I do admire Ryan Clark’s beard, and I appreciate the fact that the rest of the band put their egos aside and opted not to be in the video in order to ensure that said beard got the proper amount of screen time. Also, gee, there sure are a lot of crosses in this video, eh?

Click to read more…

My life has been woefully devoid of terribly acted music videos for terrible metal songs as of late. So three cheers for Alternate Reality, whose clip of “The Dignity King That Never Was” perfectly meets that description. The special effects are certainly horrendous, and to call the tune “music” is an insult to sound, but what really makes it so awesomely awful is the fact that everyone seems to have chugged NyQuil right before the cameras started rolling. I’ve seen more enthusiasm from the body at a wake.

I guess, in all fairness, the vocalist and Tits McGee both seem pretty into it. But they also seem to have graduated from The Tobias Funke Institute of Acting, so that’s really no help at all.

“Is it myth, or is reality?” Tits asks the viewer. But, really, it’s neither — because it’s clearly not reality (duh), and a myth, I think, has to be at least semi-famous (i.e., known by people besides the cast and crew of this really bad video) to qualify as such. So the answer is, “It’s fantasy, you nitwit.”

-AR

I was pretty bummed a few weeks ago when Dreaming Dead’s new album, Midnightmares, wasn’t actually released on November 1 like it was s’posed to be. And there was no immediate statement from the band explaining where the heck the album was, so, y’know. Double bummer.

Now the band’s website says that Dreaming Dead “have postponed the street date to sometime in 2012.” No further information regarding the cause of the delay, or a more specific new release date for the album, has been given. So, uh, that’s kinda yucky.

The good news, though, is the band has released a video for a new song from Midnightmares, “Lapse.” And it’s not the best video ever made or anything, but it does allow us to hear some new Dreaming Dead, which can’t be a bad thing, right?

Check out the clip below and see what you think…

-AR

For every Vince there’s a Nikki, for every Steven Tyler there’s a Joe Perry, for every Axl there’s a Slash (or Izzy, as it were); rarely is the frontman of a band the driving creative force and chief songwriter, even when he’s the outsize personality. I love Stephen Pearcy to death and what he brings to the table in Ratt as a frontman and voice, but his new solo stuff just ain’t doing it. Without Warren DeMartini’s sweet n’ tasty riffs, “Don’t Wanna Think About,” Pearcy’s new solo single, could be any old group of dudes in an aging bar band. I’m sure the dudes in his band are all great guys, but the way they’re dolled up in this video they look like the waiting room of a Five Finger Death Punch audition session:

Ratt’s last album was so good (#1 of 2010 good!) that I wanted to like Pearcy’s upcoming solo record Sucker Punch at all costs, but if this is the best song that just ain’t gonna happen. Hopefully those guys get to kissing and making nice instead of talking smack in the press sooner rather than later

-VN

You’d think that something like forty years worth of PSAs in front of Saturday morning cartoons would enough to teach kids not to drink and drive, but I guess knowing isn’t half the battle after all. THANK GAWD, then, for Havok, whose new video, for the song “D.O.A.”, illustrates the point in the most metal way imaginable.

The clip originally debuted on Metal Injection; you can check it out below.

“D.O.A.” appears on Havok’s Time is Up, which is out now on Candlelight.

-AR

I’m gonna put about as much effort into this intro as McNulty does into not drinking.

Today’s first video comes from Anubis Gate, whose self-titled album released earlier this year rocks my world like my world hasn’t been rocked Queensryche started sucking. This video doesn’t so much rock my world, though; the off-center shots of the band members playing their instruments are kinda cool (it’s a novel idea), but I could do entirely without the shots of the singer scribbling the lyrics down on a piece of paper. It’s kinda like a lyric video, but not… and the whole angsty writing-the-lyrics-down-on-a-pad thing has been done almost as much as the band-in-a-warehouse thing. And all of a sudden there’s a party in the basement towards the end? Zuh? Narrative much? “Golden Days” is kind of an obvious choice for a single too, which I’ve got a problem with, because it doesn’t represent the generally heavier album well at all. Oh well; their loss.

Click to read more…

As I Lay Dying have released a new,  P.R. Brown-directed video for their cover of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” and while the special effects are undeniably cheesy, I still enjoyed the clip quite a bit. Why? ‘Cause it takes place in a world where, following the breakdown of their van, a road-crew-free AILD opt to carry their equipment through the desert, where they are attacked by a giant scorpion, at which point Jordan Mancino begins to play drums on the monster’s exoskeleton. My point being that the shoddy effects work adds to the charm of the thing — y’know, like the giant ants in Them!, or Sarah Jessica Parker passing for a human and not a horse in anything.

The video isn’t embeddable right now, so click here to see it. ”Electric Eye” appears on Decas, As I Lay Dying’s tenth anniversary celebration, which is out now via Metal Blade.

-AR

Hey, remember a couple of weeks ago, when Vildhjarata released that sweet video for “Benblåst?” Well, now they’ve released another video, this one for the song “Dagger,” and it’s just like the “Benblåst” video, only the imagery isn’t trippy and cool, and it’s basically just the band on a set made to look like the woods from a Tim Burton movie. So, yeah.

“Dagger” will appear on on Måsstaden, which comes out November 29 via Century Media. Thall.

-AR

[via Metal Hammer]

If you’re somehow still not convinced that Steel Panther are fucking brilliant, might I direct you to their new Michael Alperowitz-directed video, for the song “If You Really Really Love Me?” Please note the following when viewing:

1. It’s a really catchy, really sincere sounding heavy metal semi-ballad that would totally work even if they lyrics weren’t hilarious.
2. The lyrics are hilarious. I dunno if the band was specifically targeting Extreme’s “More than Words” — the prettiest song ever about trying to get your girl to put out more — or if it’s just a general parody and my brain just happened to go to that 1990 megahit, but whatever, it works either way.
3. The video, like the song, is perfectly executed: the setting, the way it’s filmed, the way it’s edited, etc., all make it look just like a million other cheesy videos… the band just happens to be doing ridiculous shit.

In other words: this is satire at its finest.

“If You Really Really Love Me?” comes (cums?) offa Steel Panther’s latest, Balls Out, which is available now wherever fine music is sold.

-AR

I know there are people who got excited about James Durbin on account of him being “the metal dude” on whatever season of American Idol, but the fact that he was on that show is the very reason I never investigated his music. I hate American Idol so much that if Herman Cain or Rick Perry ran on a platform of promising to end the show forever, I would have to give serious consideration to voting for him.

And then Durbin went and stole some members from In This Moment (but not Maria Brink or the white dude with dreads, so fret not, In This Moment fans), and that was strike two against the dude as far as I was concerned.

Now his new video, “Love Me Bad,” has debuted on Noisecreep, and oh dear, is this guy ever terrible. He’s just a thinner version of the skunk that won Rock Star Supernova, isn’t he? I mean, I totally get how someone could like this if their mother and their sister are one and the same, but for those of who were bred in a wider gene pool, this shit ain’t gonna cut it.

Now let’s never speak of this douche again.

-AR

How do a dude dressed like a clown, the slow motion vomiting of Jägermeister run backwards and forwards, the inside of the human body, and the inside of a motor relate to each other from a thematic standpoint? And, for that matter, how do they relate to “A Coward’s Existence,” one of the songs from Fuck the Facts’ killer new album, Die Miserable?

I honestly don’t really know right now, and a cursory examination of the song’s lyrics isn’t really clarifying things for me. But that combination of elements certainly makes the band’s just-released, Michael Panduro-directed video for the song an unusual viewing experience, and a very, very welcome change of pace from the unimaginative metal videos we see so frequently. You can check out the clip, which debuted earlier today on Metal Injection, below. I don’t think it’s technically NSFW, but there is some kinda gross and fucked-up imagery in here, so use your best judgement.

Fuck the Facts’ Die Miserable is out now on Relapse.

-AR

I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as Courtney Love puts into being coherent.

We begin our cinemetallic journey today with Arch/Matheos’ new, David Brodsky-directed video, for the song “Midnight Serenade.” It’s a pretty straight-forward dudes-performing-in-a-room-to-an-audience-of-who? video, but, like I said, it was directed by David Brodsky, so it looks fucking gorgeous. And the song ain’t bad, either. The video debuted at ultimate-guitar.tv; it’s not currently embeddable, but please enjoy the screen cap below, and click here to actually watch the thing.

Click to read more…