For fans of prog, tech metal, and all things awesome, the idea Obscura covering a classic Cynic track from 1993′s Focus probably sounds too boneriffic to be true. But it’s a really real thing: as part of their upcoming release, Illegimitation – a collection of the band’s earliest recordings from 2003, unreleased songs from 2006′s Cosmogenesis sessions, and covers recorded by their current line-up — Obscura do, indeed, tackle Cynic’s “How Could I?” And they hit the ball out of the park, too, putting their own spin on the material while staying loyal to the spirit of the original.

MetalSucks is thrilled to debut Obscura’s cover of Cynic’s “How Could I?”, which you can stream below. Once you’re head-over-ass in love with it, you can buy Illegimitation here. And check out Obscura on Facebook to stay up-to-date on all of these tech gods’ latest activities!

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Primitive Weapons really bowled me over with “Quitters Anthem,” the first track they released from their forthcoming album The Shadow Gallery, and now that I’ve had a chance to listen to the whole record I can report that there are plenty more crushing, grinding, churning anthems where it came from. I dug Primitive Weapons’ 2011 EP well enough, but I admit I really did not see a record as solid and unique as The Shadow Gallery coming; 2012 is only 1/6th done with, but it’s easily among my favorite albums of the year so far.

Stream album-opener “Good Hunting” below. The Shadow Gallery comes out March 13th and can be pre-ordered here.

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Director/editor Tyson Archimedes Montrucchio has already made a number of appropriately schizophrenic videos for grind legends Brutal Truth, but his latest collaboration with the band, for the tracks “Malice” and “Fuck Cancer” from last year’s End Times, may top them all. It’s as druggy, frenzied, political, and disturbing as you’d want a Brutal Truth video to be… which is why we’re only too happy to be debuting it right here on MetalSucks!

Check out the clip below. If for some reason you don’t already own End Times, you can order it here.

Graf Orlock are surely one of the most invigorating grind bands on the scene today; not only is their music as mercilessly murderous as you’d want it to be, but their incorporation of elements from action films is brilliant, often completely recontextualizing the band’s music, rather than just allowing listeners to indulge in “Oh I get that reference”-style lulz. Takes their new EP, Los Angeles, for example: it’s available with three different versions of the cover art, all by the band’s own drummer, Alan Hunter, and all referencing Michael Mann’s classic 1995 L.A. crime saga, Heat. The movie isn’t just about cops n’ robbers — it’s about men who are incapable of putting human relationships before their professional commitments. Knowing that, it’s hard to listen to this new EP, which is named after AN ENTIRE CITY and features songs with titles like “No Attachments,” and think that Graf Orlock may be getting at concepts about modern society that are a little bigger than “It’s funny when Al Pacino screams for no discernible reason.”

MetalSucks is proud to bring you three awesome debuts from Graf Orlock today: the track “Couple Seeking Comfort/No Point” from Los Angeles, all three covers that will be available for the EP, and dates for the band’s upcoming Asian and European tours. Vitriol Records will release Los Angeles on April 10; pre-orders don’t go live until March 10, but we recommend that you set a reminder for yourself bookmark the pre-order page right now. Because only six-hundred copies of Los Angeles will be pressed, each one featuring ACTUAL BULLET HOLES shot into the cover by Graf Orlock frontman Jason Schmidt. (What else did you expect from the bands whose previous releases turned into a boombox and came wrapped in a Facehugger from Alien?) You can check out the first of the three covers at the top of this post; the new track, tour dates, and other covers are all after the jump.You can click on any the covers to see ‘em full-sized, in all their glory.

Now, enjoy ”Couple Seeking Comfort/No Point”:

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We’ve been following Bereft withextreme excitement since they first announced their formation, under the name “Bewilderbiest,” back in May of last year.  Really, how could we NOT be stoked on the mere idea the group? The members’ resumés read like a list of “Bands MetalSucks Thinks are Friggin’ Sweet”: any project featuring Sacha Dunable  (Intronaut/Graviton/MetalSucks columnist),  Charles Elliott (Abysmal Dawn), Derek Rydquist (ex-The Faceless), and Derek Donley (National Sunday Law/Graviton) was obviously going to get us all hot under the collar.

Now the band’s debut,  Leichenhaus (“Mortuary” in German) is finally ready for release, and we’re happy to report that it lives up to expectations and then some. A  conceptual album thematically revolving around a waiting mortuary, Leichenhaus is as doomy and miserable as its subject matter would suggest. And given that it sounds like absolutely nothing that any of its members have worked on before, our admiration for these dudes has now, somehow, grown even larger. Check out the new track “The Coldest Orchestra” below, and then pre-order Leichenhaus in advance of its April 24 release via The End Records right here.

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But wait, there’s more! Sacha Dunable himself has also provided us with a cool story about how Leichenhaus came together, PLUS a list (with commentary, natch) of his five favorite doom metal records of all time. Take it away, Sacha…

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Hey! It’s MetalSucks’ collective favorite party band Valient Thorr, back with a brand new dose of infectious, headbang-worthy intergalactic rockage! “Beast With a Billion Eyes” comes from Valient Thorr’s split 7″ with High On Fire, which is being released TODAY through Volcom’s Vinyl Club! The 500 limited edition clear vinyl copies are only available via a Vinyl Club subscription and those subscriptions are all sold out, but lucky for you we’ve got Valient Thorr’s side of the split streaming for MetalSucks readers right here. Check it out below.

Valient Thorr embark on a U.S. tour with Torche, Corrosion of Conformity and A Storm of Light later this week; get dates here. Occasional MS contributor Valient Himself will surely ask you if you know what he’s talking about.

Valient Thorr – Beast With A Billion Eyes by VolcomEnt

I think we’re gonna have to fire Dummy Nosenothing, ’cause that fartknocker knows not of what he speaks.

France’s Outcast are, in fact, a curious beast. It’d be easy to pin them down as the latest in a neverending string of Meshuggah worshippers, and while these guys surely do love Meshuggah (as they should!) there’s a whole lot more happening on their new album Awaken the Reason than immediately meets the eye. There’s Lamb of Godian gallop, SiKthian tech-skronk, Gojiran elephants marching, Gorodian artfulness, Byzantinian melody, Morbid Angelian brutality, and most importantly Outcastian Outcastness. The more I listen to Awaken the Reason the more into it I get — there’s a LOT going on here, and it’s an incredibly engaging and captivating listen.

Stream “Elements” below, the opening track from Awaken the Reason (out April 4th via Listenable Records).

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Throes of Absolution, the debut album from Seattle’s 7 Horns 7 Eyes, was my personal choice for THE Album That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012, and now you’re about to find out why. 7 Horns 7 Eyes are cinematic, dramatic, intense, dark and moody — characteristics that aren’t necessarily that hard to find in metal — but the way these guys put all the pieces together is wholly unique and fresh. And good God, they’re heavy; not the kind of heavy that bludgeons you in the head with an axe but the kind that slowly but steadily eats away at your soul from the inside out until your body is nothing but a rotting, fetid corpse… from nothing but depressed, sad thoughts.

There’s not a single sub-genre 7 Horns 7 Eyes can be lumped in with, not a single band to whom their sonic lineage is directly connected. The best I’ve been able to come up with is “Nevermore for the new generation” with JJ “Shiv” Polachek IV’s stomach-churning death metal growl in place of Warrel Dane’s croon. But even that description doesn’t fully encapsulate the magnitude of their talent and just how original and captivating their music is.

“Divine Amnesty” is the opening track from Throes of Absolution, out April 24th via Century Media (April 23rd on Basick Records in Europe). This track embodies what the band is all about as much as any on the album. I hope you like it.

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Having lived and loved in Boston several years ago, I have a certain affinity to that great American city and its frequently overlooked musical heritage. While cities like Los Angeles and New York get much of the credit for early essential contributions to hardcore, DYS represented New England proudly, alongside other fine seminal groups from the region like SSD and Gang Green. With only two full-length releases to their name–1983′s Brotherhood and the metallic 1984 self-titled follow-up–the band did what many of its peers and followers did: got in and got out. Of course, its members didn’t completely abandon the scene: Dave Smalley went on to front All, Dag Nasty, and Down By Law, while bassist Jonathan Anastas co-founded the legendary Slapshot.

Yet in the 21st century, with so many hardcore groups reuniting, it was only a matter of time before the group got back together. In a recent interview, the band–which now includes Anastas and Smalley along with new recruits like Franz Stahl of Scream–insisted to me that getting back together after more than two decades was an “organic” decision. As Anastas explains:

“We were approached by people who we’ve known for a really long time, including Drew Stone, the singer of Antidote. They were putting together a Boston hardcore documentary and they realized that there was so little video footage of bands back in the day. They didn’t just want to make a movie of talking heads, grown-up talking about ‘back in the day’ with still photos. So they came up with this idea of putting this reunion show together if for no other reason than to provide live footage shot in current HD fashion. For us, it was the idea of supporting them and that DYS had never been filmed properly to participate in that.”

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Here’s all you should really need to convince you that 3 Inches of Blood’s new album Long Live Heavy Metal is worthy of your oh-so-precious time:

Exhibit A: It’s a new 3 Inches of Blood album.
Exhibit B: It’s called Long Live Heavy Metal.
Exhibit C: Album opener “Dark Messenger,” streaming below exclusively on MetalSucks.

One listen is all it’ll take to prove that these high-flyin’, high-powered, high-fallutin’ British Columbian heavy metal warriors haven’t lost a step. And we assure you, Long Live Heavy Metal is action-packed with fist-pumping anthems just as catchy, fun and embodying of heavy metal as this one. Stream another new track called “Leather Lords” right here — that name alone should be enough to make you click!

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Long Live Heavy Metal comes out on March 27th.

Seas Will Rise have a strong connection to Landmine Marathon — the band features founding Marathoner Eric Saylor, and their debut album, Disease is Our Refrain, was recorded and mixed by current Landmine Marathon guitarist Ryan Butler. And if you’re sitting there wondering “Gee, does that mean that Seas Will Rise play brutal, filthy, hardcore-flavored death grind?”, then you will be happy to know that the answer is, “Yes. Yes they do. And they are AWESOME AT IT.”

And should you doubt us, well, we’ll prove it, fuckers — we’re debuting the track “A Sleeper’s Cell” below. It is some epic curb-stomping shit.

Here’s what Saylor had to tell us about “A Sleeper’s Cell” –

“Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has been a really big influence on this band. When I started thinking about what I wanted to do for this record, I really wanted to work on a cohesive theme of this post-apocalyptic world. Since we’re from Arizona, I wanted everything to be set in the desert. This is the first song on the record, so I wanted to set up everything that follows and capture that sort of desperate, exasperation that would come with literally being on a run for your life 24/7.”

Mission accomplished, Mr. Saylor. Mission accomplished big time.

Check out “A Sleeper’s Cell Below.” Disease is Our Refrain comes out March 6 via Man in Decline and Anxiety Machine Records. It’s gonna be limited to 500 LPs, 100 of which are bone colored, so if you want one, you should buy it up quick. You can do so here.

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Hordes of Zombies is Terrorizer’s first release since the tragic passing of guitarist Jesse Pintado — but despite the loss, the band hasn’t missed a beat. Hordes of Zombies is an unrelenting, no-bullshit, no gimmicks, ugly, ugly, UGLY tumor of a death-grind album, the kind of release that reminds you why you ever got into the genre in the first place. If the music contained on Hordes of Zombies actually DOES wake the dead and induce them into a mad feeding frenzy, no one should be surprised. Pintado would be proud.

MetalSucks is thrilled to debut the title track from Hordes of Zombies, which you can stream below. We’re confident you’ll agree that it’s easily one of the most merciless releases of 2012 so far. The full album comes out on February 28 via Season of Mist; you can, and should, pre-order it here.

Scale the Summit’s breathtaking album The Collective is a sonic masterpiece, the kind of aural adventure that would be perfectly befitting of the sweet grooves of a good old-fashioned vinyl. Lucky for us, Prosthetic Records has decided to produce exactly such a product, a 180-gram vinyl reissue of The Collective limited to just 250 copies. If you haven’t already pre-ordered one of these, what the hell are you waiting (and at only $15, too, a bargain)? They’re gonna sell out any second, and they’ll start shipping tomorrow.

If a big old vinyl disc isn’t enough for you, how about the allure of a previously unreleased bonus track called “Redwoods”? The band’s already been playing it live on their current tour, as of today “Redwoods” is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon as a single, and we’ve got the exclusive stream for you below:

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I’ll defer to metalcore historian Sgt D. for an inevitable full blown “where-are-they-now” series on Victory Records acts, though I hope he might file this blog post away now for research later. One such band, Bloodlet dropped four albums for the label from the mid-90s through 2002, before going on “informal hiatus” the following year. So what has vocalist Scott Angelacos been up to lately? Attendees of this year’s A389 Anniversary Bash got the chance to find out during a set from his current project, the Death Race 2000-referencing Junior Bruce.

And now, so can you! Imminently due on A389 Recordings, The Headless King is the band’s debut 12″, packed with sludgy stonerrific vibes and streaming in full exclusively below. The record is offered on green or red/black vinyl for you wax fetishists out there.

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If the name “Exotic Animal Petting Zoo” doesn’t exactly strike you as being traditionally metal (which is to say, it’s, like, Fucking the Eye Sockets of Decapitated Heads Impaled on Spikes or whatever), well, that’s okay — Exotic Animal Petting Zoo aren’t exactly a traditional metal band. In the Mr. Bungle-esque tradition of bands that don’t conform to conventional genre rules and pretty much do whatever the fuck they want. Take, for example, “Apis Bull,” from the band’s forthcoming Tree of Tongues: the track shifts between movements that owe equal debts to Dillinger Escape Plan-inspired mathcore, the most melodious parts of expansive Between the Buried and Me-style prog, and Vangelis. No shit.

MetalSucks is proud to debut the insanity that is “Apis Bull.” Stream the song below — we think you’ll dig it.

Tree of Tongues comes out April 12 via Mediaskare.

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If the Germans are the kings of power metal then Primal Fear are gods amongst kings; has any band cranked out the sheer POWER– always solid, catchy and unabashedly self-referential — as consistently as Primal Fear? Unbreakable, their ninth album since their 1998 debut, proves without a doubt that the answer is “no;” Primal Fear are the best. Twin guitarmonies, galloping rhythms, high-pitched screams, scorching solos — it’s all here, as you’d expect. Listen to Unbreakable — out today via Frontiers Records — below, and try, just TRY not to raise your fist to the air in triumph any less than once per minute. Order Unbreakable via iTunes here.

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Psycroptic are far and away one of the best technical death metal bands in the world, so much so that MetalSucks specifically requested the privilege of being allowed to premiere to the world one of the tracks from their new album The Inherited Repression. “The Throne of Kings” is one of the rippingest tracks on an album full to the brim of ripperific rippers, sure to rip up all parts of your body and corners of your mind. And because Psycroptic would be just another tech-death band if not for their due diligence in songwriting, “Kings” is guaranteed to get stuck in your head, too.

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The Inherited Repression comes out on February 7th in the U.S. and February 10th in Europe via Nuclear Blast; pre-order it here. Stream another track from Inherited, “Carriers of the Plague,” over at Psycroptic’s Facebook page.

Here’s an awesome way for you jumpstart your weekend: with the debut of “I Am Spartacus,” a brand new track from Liberteer. A new one-man project from Matthew Widener of Cretin and Citizen fame, Liberteer is a new, unique spin on the grind game: sure, it’s fast n’ furious, but Widener also injects the music with classic-sounding grooves, allowing the tunes to enjoy more breathing room than grind fans might be used to. We think it’s pretty sweet, and we hope that you do, too.

Check out “I Am Spartacus” below. It will appear on Liberteer’s new album, Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees, which comes out January 31 via Relapse. You can pre-order it here, and get more info on Liberteer here.

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Death/doom crew Novembers Doom released their new record Aphotic via The End Records earlier this year, and the album finds the Chicago-based metal vets doing more of what they do best, the sound they helped pioneer over 20 years ago: artful yet punishing death grooves laden with doomy, morose undertones. “Harvest Scythe” is one of the album’s stand-out tracks so we’re pleased to be able to exclusively premiere the song’s official music video.

Vocalist and sole remaining founding member Paul Kuhr had this to say about the song and video: “The song is about internal conflict in one’s mind, somewhat multiple personalities. The video shows her going through different personalties, and not being able to escape from them. The different clothes she wears, the chalk outlines on the floor… The house represents her mind where she’s “trapped” and it’s supposed to play like a loop, where if you watch the video a second time, it almost seems like it’s supposed to start over.”

Vancouver’s Nylithia have become one of my favorite unsigned metal acts since I first discovered them a little over two years ago. Beyond their raw talent and their ability to take a thrash base and make it sound completely fresh and new (qualities they share with Revocation), over the two years and two albums I’ve been following them Nylithia have displayed that they know exactly what it is they want to be. In other words, Nylithia sounds like Nylithia and no one else; their sound is instantly recognizable and assignable to them, and they’re incredibly consistent.

So it’s with great pleasure that MetalSucks is premiering “Vein of Creation,” the third song to be released from Nylithia’s new album Hyperthrash. Nylithia are releasing one song at a time from the album for free download, and they’ll be releasing the full album in physical formats once they’ve cycled through all the tracks. They’re promising a music video with each song too — check out the first two vids here and here, both incredibly entertaining — so presumably we’ve got a video for “Vein of Creation” to look forward to in the near future.

More info at Nylithia’s official website.

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