MetalSucks

Am I the only one here that thinks that American bands shouldn’t be allowed to wear corpse paint? There should be a law in the metal books that states it. There’s some rules that us American metalheads must follow, like the famous “Don’t Wear Your Own Band’s Shirt Law,” for instance. It doesn’t apply to Europeans and that’s okay, they’ve got their own set of laws. It applies to us, though, and when you break it, people get to talking.

Well, I think that corpse paint should fall under the “Must Never Be Applied To The Face Of An American” law. I think it should be punishable by excommunication from the community. I’ve got my reasons.

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So playing underground metal is interesting for various reasons. There’s a real hierarchy to it. It has its own set of stars. Its own celebs. Legends. Etc. But in the grand scheme of the music industry, it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket.

Forget Metallica and the huge bands. I’m talking about everything else. Maybe these days, when records don’t sell like they used to and metal sells like it always has, it’s a bigger drop in the bucket. But check this out. A metal band sells 100,000 units. I’ts something to open up champagne and do coke off of strippers asses over. Tour buses, flat screen TVs, WOW WE’RE ROCKSTARS. Do you guys realize that on a major label in the mainstream world, 100,000 units is an abject failure?

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Who here likes going to Guitar Center? The Kmart of music supplies. Going there always pisses me off because I get some dude in a button up silk shirt with embroidered flames shooting up it trying to convince me how the latest Crate amp is gonna blow the roof off the house. I JUST NEED SOME STRINGS AND SOME PICKS. Why does everything there take so goddamn long? I swear, it takes me an average of forty-five minutes to just buy a pack of picks.

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MEGADETH, RUST IN PEACE

Ok, I was like, what, eleven when this shit came out? More like thirteen when I discovered it. Back then, Dave Mustaine was almost like a political figure as far as metal goes. Who knows how I’d look at his role now, but back then, he was a hero.

And then there was the songwriting. Nobody was writing music as creative as them. Listen to the guitar breaks in songs like “Five Magics” or the entire masterpiece, “Rust in Peace.” Nobody was writing stuff like that, and for the time, I felt like the lyrics actually meant something. And the solos – try playing a Marty Friedman solo when you’re thirteen. Try playing one now. The dude is/was/ and will forever be untouchable.

This band meant the world to me back then. I’m not crazy about the new directions the band has gone in, but that doesn’t diminish that they changed my life back when I was younger. I always felt like their rival bands were playing it safe, and that Megadeth was taking all the musical risks. I definitely think that this would be the musician’s choice for those of us who are and were still into real metal with real songs. Not just shred wankery.

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We all love metal. That goes without saying. That’s why we all read this site and keep up with what our favorite, and not so favorite, bands are doing. From people in bands to fans, we all pretty much live, breathe, sleep, and bleed metal.

So I guess what I’m wondering is: does it ever get old to any of you?

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I haven’t smoked weed in about three weeks now. I haven’t wanted to. Getting sick kind of took that wind out of my sails and then I had no choice but to abstain in the hospital. Two nights ago I was at my girl’s place watching her and her roommate spark joint after joint after joint, and the craving came back. I didn’t partake. And I’m not going to for awhile, but I wanted to. And I still kinda do.

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Every show we play, any city in the world, any time of day, any season of the year, ANYWHERE, we get demos. Some of these demos come in really nice press packets with blown up photos and a bio telling us about the stagnation of the local scene and how Cryptic Disembowelment is breathing new life unto said scene. Some of these are just burned CDs with sharpie on them. Some come hot off a laser printer. We get shit tons. And by and large they are all garbage.

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Laying in a bed in Atlanta, Georgia has never felt so sweet. One week ago tonight I was laying in a hospital bed in Hartford, not sure if I was going to live out the week. One week before that, I was breaking fevers in the van once every three hours, not able to breath, and breaking down from the exhaustion of getting really fucking sick on the road.

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Any of you who left comments last week telling me about fucked up things you’ve seen at show rule. I’ve always felt that metal shows need to have an element of danger to them or there’s something wrong.

Let me rephrase. Not that there’s something wrong, but there’s something missing. People who talk about how metalheads are well behaved and community oriented are misguided in my opinion. When I was growing up, metal shows were scary. The metal scene from my formative years was one where you needed to always watch your back because of all the different things that could happen to you. It could have been skins jumping you for not being a skin, it could have been sharps jumping you for having long hair, it could have been wall to wall pits where motherfuckers with razor blades were running around cutting motherfuckers. It could have been any number of fucked up things. These weren’t your sanitized for the kids deathcore concerts of today. If you want to know why I say that, I’ll bring up an example from a deathcore tour DAATH had the pleaure of being a part of in 2007.

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Hello everyone! I’m on tour now. DAATH is traveling the United States and Canada this summer on the Conquer and Curse tour which features Goatwhore, Abigail Williams, Abysmal Dawn, Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky, and us. My blog isn’t going to become a tour blog, but I do feel that its my duty to discuss amazing and fucked up things when they happen. And they do happen when you’re on the road.

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Here’s some advice for those of you aspiring musicians out there who keep asking me questions like: How do I get my band signed? How can we get the attention of people at labels? Etc., etc., etc. And I’ll give you some advice for sure.

But I’m going to start at the beginning. I think that most of you are putting the cart before the horse. You’ve got to get your package up to snuff before you can even begin thinking about labels. This is to take place months or even years before you ever encounter a label person.

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So in metal it seems like one of the highest honors your band can get is to score some high rankings on the brutalometer. If you hear “THAT WAS FUCKNG BRUTAL MAN” and the dude is covered in sweat and looking at you like you have led him through war victoriously, you have won him over via metal.

It’s really amazing to me that music can be described as brutal. What an emotion to try and communicate. I can’t think of anything more cathartic than playing a brutal show where the band and audience are 100% on their game (It’s a two-way street, dudes.). But the other part of the brutal coin isn’t as much fun or psychologically rewarding. I wonder before every tour about which injuries I’m going to come home with. What new permanent marks will I have to add to the collection?

Well this past time it was a whole amazing array of bruises all over my body and random cuts on my hands and wrists and last but not least, a broken rib. Yes, a broken rib.

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At least twice per tour we end up at a strip club. You can’t avoid it. Sometimes you play places like Pop’s in St. Louis where the club is literally in a strip mall full of strip clubs, and everything else in a fifteen mile radius looks like its out of a Mad Max movie. If you want to get a bite to eat, you better go to that damn strip club or you are shit out of luck. Other times, there’s one nearby and dudes just wanna go party.

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Daath just completed our first tour for The Concealers album cycle. The tour was with Dragonforce and our personal heroes, Cynic. It was a US Secondary Markets tour. For those of you who sent us angry messages about why we didn’t play your city…. We appreciate that you care and we promise we’ll be there are soon as we can.

Anyways, after our portion of the tour was over Dragonforce was scheduled to play some South American dates on their own before returning to France. Their last dates were in Brazil I believe and they would have been flying the same, if not similar route as Air France flight 447 which peaced out mid flight over the Atlantic Ocean last week.

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The cycle begins. I used to not think that I could play and drink onstage. I never ever ever touched drinks or smoked weed before a show. I came from the school of thought that you needed to have your brain fully functional for the show.

Well, pre-show jitters would occur. I just would notice that parts of my body were trembling. Then the adrenaline rush would start. And I noticed that it became very, very difficult to get my brain and my hands to get onto the same page. There’s something about being in fight or flight mode which makes it hard to focus on very precise picking and things of that nature. In the midst of an adrenaline high mixed with nervousness, interesting things happen. Parts of songs can be completely forgotten. What fret that solo starts on can become a challenging thing to remember. Basic song structures can seem suddenly hard to remember. Etc., etc., etc. Sounds like the behavior of a stoned person, but it’s really just the behavior of a really hyped-up nervous person. I started thinking to myself that maybe this isn’t my brain functioning at its fullest potential. This is my brain redlining itself and hindering my ability to play.

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So here I am flying across the Atlantic Ocean again. A few months back I wrote a blog about how much I hate flying and yet here I am doing it again. Press / vacation trip to Paris. I know, I know, such a hard life. But you know what? You guys can eat a dick if you’ve got a problem with it.

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MetalSucks is proud to announce that we’ve stolen Daath’s Eyal Levi away from our friends at Headbanger’s Blog. We did this because we love Eyal, and also to spite Viacom. Eyal will check in with his column, “Jumping Darkness Parade,” when he can. We hope you enjoy!

Be safe. Travel safe. Drive safe. On and on and on. Everyone says that to me when I’m on tour. Family, friends, people at the clubs, people in other bands, etc. I’m always hearing about how safe I should be. In all reality, if I cared about my safety I wouldn’t tour. Not a chance.

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