[To chronicle their current tour -- the U.S. portion of which features 3 Inches of Blood, Holy Grail and System Divide in support -- Swiss folk metallers Eluveitie will be writing an exclusive tour blog for MetalSucks. Week one of the tour took them through Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba, Brazil; read about the Brazilian tour in the Week 1 Tour Blog. Week 2 follows, in which we learn that Eluveitie hate touring with other folk/pagan metal bands but absolutely love Walmart. -Ed.]

Sleep for 10 hours straight on the plane and wake up in the freezing cold. Awesome. Temperature shock FTW part II! BUT there’s a Starbucks at the airport which gets us all excited and stuff.

First stop, Philly! Apart from the bad news of people not making it to the show because roads are blocked and shit like that we’re stoked to see our good friends from Holy Grail. 3 Inches of Blood unfortunately can’t make it to the show because their van broke down… System Divide sound really good, great to be on a tour with bands that are worth listening to. Side note: We fucking hate touring with folk/pagan metal bands (apart from Finntroll). Isn’t it ironic ;-)

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[To chronicle their current tour -- the U.S. portion of which features 3 Inches of Blood, Holy Grail and System Divide in support -- Swiss folk metallers Eluveitie will be writing an exclusive tour blog for MetalSucks. Week one of the tour took them through Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba, Brazil before departing to New York to begin the U.S. portion. -Ed.]

“Well this is a great start.” One week before our departure to Brazil we find out our monitor technician and dear friend Gump’s visa has been denied… Why do we stay calm during the outbreak of a small catastrophe? Because if nothing would ever happen and things would go swimmingly we wouldn’t be Eluveitie. One day before our departure we find a replacement, Roland “Rolli” Heuberger. Thanks, man!

Usually our travel days are made up of events that really are worth mentioning to the world, but this time we’re truly disappointed. Chrigel doesn’t even stumble through security in a completely intoxicated condition with a bread knife or drill in his hand luggage. All he does is fall off a chair in Starbucks after struggling not to pass out for 30 minutes. Last time he performed a stunt like this, that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland (yeah I’m not just gonna copy/paste whatever that thing is called and pretend I knew that) erupted. We’re dead serious.

So after 12 hours on a plane we’re finally in Brazil! Sao Paulo. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s summer. We just came from fucking snow-covered frostbitten winter wonderland and we can’t even cure our heat-shocks in the hotel because we’ve got a tight schedule filled with interviews and an acoustic set on national TV. But at least we don’t make fools of ourselves for once. Or maybe just a tiny bit.

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Tomorrow sees the release of Crowbar’s new album, Sever the Wicked Hand, on eOne (you can pre-order a physical copy here or a digital copy here, and watch an EPK for the album here). To celebrate, Crowbar main man Kirk Windstein offered to tell MetalSucks readers fifteen things they did not already know about him. And far be it from us to say “no” to Kirk Windstein! And so, enjoy a rare intimate look into the mind of Kirk Windstein, directly from the man himself…

15) I’m addicted to diet soda and sparkling water! I’m always drinking one or the other.

14) I like to wake up no later than 7:00 a.m.

13) I love Journey.

12) My first arena concert was Van Halen, “The 80′s Invasion,” on the Women and Children First tour.

11) Ace Frehley is the reason I play guitar.

Ten more things you didn’t know about Kirk after the jump!

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[Valient Thorr's eccentric mainman Valient Himself back atcha with another MetalSucks guest blog! In case you missed it, check his prior guest column, a wrap-up of his experience as a fan at the annual Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.]

Alahoyus!

Hope everyone is having great holidays.  We are relaxing a bit after a loooong year, but we wanted to drop a little early present in your lap so you didn’t feel left out this season.  Back in October “we dropped the video for Double Crossed” a month after Stranger was released.  We were looking through all the footage and laughing at the great time we had making it.  We decided to show you a little bit of the “behind the scenes” that goes into making a video like that, and we put this together.  Truth be told, it came out every bit as entertaining as the video itself.

Here’s a few tidbits of info:

1- When the outtakes vid starts, you can see me freaking out after kicking a hole through the wall.  I had been waiting to do that for fucking HOURS.  And I only had one shot, so the pressure was on, if I fucked it up, everyone was going to be pissed.  And, whatever, it worked, so I was psyched.  Plus, we had been there drinking beers since 8am, and this was like 10pm.

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As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour (get a full list of tour dates here). Our first entry featured Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo taking us on a run-through of his entire live rig, and the second entry was an update from Revocation’s Dave Davidson, and in the third Periphery’s Misha Mansoor talked about his new direct-to-PA live amp setup. For the fourth and final entry, here’s Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum resuscitating his “The Underrated” MetalSucks column:

LETS GET THIS BAND BACK TOGETHER: CURSED

Greetings from a rat infested parking lot in Lubbock, TX, AKA the road! While I could write about the military strategy Lonestar and Ryan used to get the Whiskey A Go Go dancers on the bus this week in LA or how the 5150 (3′s) made by Fender/EVH might just be the ultimate high gain amp, I’m not. Rather I have decided to litter the internet with yet another opinion-related piece.

Since I have written in the past of unsung heros or overlooked records, I thought I might do that once more. Living on tour every day keeps us surrounded by music and fresh sounds (good or bad) assaulting our ears every day. Still, it’s important not to forget great bands and records that for whatever reason have their little notch in time. So I’ll just plug our new record, The Human Romance, out Feb 22, 2011 on E1 and then I’ll use this space right here to tell you about a band that should not be forgotten: Canada’s Cursed.

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As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour, featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour (get a full list of tour dates here). Our first entry featured Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo taking us on a run-through of his entire live rig, and the second entry was an update from Revocation’s Dave Davidson. Here’s Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on his new live rig setup (the idea for which he first mentioned in a prior column) and how that’s working out for him:

So a little while back I posted a column about going direct with the guitars on a future tour, and that tour just so happens to be this tour we are on now with Revocation, Veil Of Maya and Darkest Hour. The idea behind going direct is that instead of having an amp/rig that goes through a cabinet then gets mic’ed up, you just take an audio signal direct to the board and skip the whole cab and mic. This allows for a simpler and cleaner signal chain, as removing the cab, mic and mic-placement variables makes the signal extremely consistent every night. Now we are going direct with our Fractal AxeFX Ultras which is an absolutely phenomenal unit for direct tones.

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As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour, featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour (get a full list of tour dates here). Our first entry featured Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo taking us on a run-through of his entire live rig. Now here’s Revocation’s Dave Davidson with an update from the road:

Hey guys, Dave from Revocation here, checking in from the Darkest Hour Legacy tour.

It’s been a little over a week since we’ve been out and we’re currently in Cleveland getting ready to play at Peabody’s. So far the tour has been going great, all the bands are killing it every night and all the dudes are cool as fuck. Everyone’s been getting along really well right off the bat so we’re stoked that we still have three more weeks left to rage.

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We couldn’t attend this year’s annual Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX. But “The Most Fun Live Band In The World” Valient Thorr had an appearance at the 3-day event, so frontman Valient Himself decided to make a vacation of it by hanging out at the entire 3-day festival as a regular old fan and soaking in the fun (fun fun). Burgertime at the arcade, a Queen cover band, Weird Al, The Dwarves, a Sarah Palin decapitation by Gwar, High on Fire, getting in the pit for Suicidal Tendencies, tons and tons of beer… all in a weekend’s worth of fun (fun fun) for Valient Himself. Check out his recap of the weekend below.

by Valient Himself

Alahoyus, everyone.  This is Valient Himself.  I just got back from Texas, and I had such a blast, I thought I’d share my experience with you.  I’m writing to you on my brand new computer.  This is the first thing I’m typing on it, so I’m very excited.  So, finally our US tour in support of our new record has come to an end.  Last weekend we flew to Austin for the final show, and it was an honor to be asked to play amidst so many awesome bands at this year’s FUN FUN FUN FEST.  Ever since we were asked, we’ve had a collective boner about the lineup.  To our dismay the week before last, my favorite band of all time, DEVO, unfortunately had to cancel because Bob Mothersbaugh almost cut his thumb off or something like that.  Apparently it was pretty bad.  HOWEVER, we were not gonna let that deter us from having an awesome time, anyway there were a hundred other bands that were gonna rock as well.  And then, bang a few hours later, word comes through that the O.G. lineup of the Descendants were going to fill in for DEVO, playing their first show together in 8 years.  We’ll take it!  Awesome!

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As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour, featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour. The tour kicks off this Friday, November 12th in Worcester, MA and runs through the U.S. and Canada for a full month before wrapping on December 12th in Richmond, VA. Get a full list of dates here. Our first entry comes from Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo:

What’s going on guys!? My name is Marc Okubo with Veil of Maya, and today I’m going to give you guys a run down of my live gear list, and let you know what’s “under my hood” if you will. I’m pretty picky about the gear I use simply because it’s part of my job to make sure VOM sounds 100% on stage and to make sure every single note cuts though live… being the only guitar player I must re-create live all the sounds that I used on the record. The gear that I’m currently using has been my personal selection of choice for quite a while now.

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For my opening salvo, I suppose I should mention that it has been a long break between blogs. I’ve been meaning to get back to it, but this summer has been a very busy one filled with the musical composition of the new God Forbid album as well as a new project I’ve been working on, in addition to the daily pursuit of living life and getting by. I hope to contribute more frequently in the near future.

If you’ve followed my articles in the past, you may notice that I often address music history, and pertaining to this site, heavy music specifically. I have a great respect for artistic pioneers and the roots of where the most admirable and brilliant music stems from. I was the type of kid who would read liner notes and interviews by my favorite bands to find out who influenced them. I would always want to climb that musical family tree to see where it lead.

In my process of discovery, there was a common thread that jumped out at me that has been consistent through metal and rock history.  There seemed to be an intercontinental ping-pong match between the USA and Europe in terms of trailblazing the cutting edge of whatever musical genre was the dominant force of the time. This goes way back before metal existed — and yet, it has helped shape the musical landscape that exists today. The torch keeps being symbolically passed from one shore to the other.

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The “djent” / bedroom producer-musician scene has gone from a tiny niche community on the Internet to a worldwide phenomenon in just a few years; in 2010, it’s a serious presence in the scene that any metal fan can feel. But how did it all get started? No one would know better than TesseracT guitarist Acle who’s been there since the very beginning. To that end, here’s Acle with a quick little history lesson:

It was probably back in 2002 / 2003 when the online community of producer-musicians who spawned the bands of this new wave of progressive metal, or “djent”, began to come together. A key unique factor that set this community / scene / then-to-be-genre apart from others is that it had no geographical base; people from all over the world were (and still are) sharing ideas, recording parts for each other and even jamming via the internet. Like punk came from the bars, clubs and rehearsal rooms of New York, this scene started in chat rooms, forums and home studios. This made it easy for many like minded people to find each other, something which would have been impossible without the internet.

Before I really had any recording experience I’d occasionally check the Meshuggah, Toontrack and Harmony Central forums. I’m sure there must still be some ancient posts on there! They were good places to pick up guitar technique tips, achieving certain tones and basic recording things. I learnt Meshuggah’s famous “djent” chord on their forum which is basically a normal power chord with an added 5th which gives that iconic “djenty” Meshuggah sound. The term “djent” just meant the sound of this “meshuggah chord,” not a scene.

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Look! It’s another awesome MetalSucks guest column! When he’s not busy working as the vocalist for Thy Will Be Done or being metal’s foremost Christopher Walken impersonator, J. Costa will be writing about whatever the heck he wants for us. Please join us in welcoming him to the Mansion.

Hope everyone is well. We’re back out on the road again and, as usual, I’m always painfully reminded that I’m “not trusted” to pump my own fuel in two of our nation’s states: New Jersey and Oregon. But, since the event that sparked this particular blog has its roots in Oregon, I’m choosing to single that state out for making me suffer the backhanded compliment and discourtesy of being treated like an absolute ignoramus every time I need to fuel up the van there.

For those of you who don’t know, it is illegal to pump your own fuel in Oregon. Their “no self-serve” law was passed in 1951, and should have been repealed long ago. While there are “reasons” as to why this law is still in force, anyone with some common sense understands that it is a “make-work” law forcing gas station owners to hire the barely-employable and/or those who are just starting out in the work force. These “qualified attendants,” as far as Oregon’s lawmakers are concerned, keep us imbecile-citizens from harming ourselves, others, and our planet.

Some quick background: in 1951, when the Oregon legislature made it illegal to pump gasoline into one’s own automobile, it was believed that foolish individuals would mishandle gasoline and cause severe accidents – at least that’s the story Oregon legislators fed to the public back then. I’m sure in 2010, it has become clear that this fear was misplaced, as people the world over have managed to fuel up their own vehicles without incinerating themselves or their autos. In spite of overwhelming evidence to a one-in-a-billion accident occurring, Oregon’s state officials continue to back the self-serve ban for baseless reasons (below) that reveal their intellectual prowess:

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