We invited Rumpelstiltskin Grinder to play our first annual Metal Suckfest in NYC in November but unfortunately the PA criminal thrash kings had to decline because bassist/vocalist Shawn Riley had other touring commitments. Turns out those “other touring commitments” are with most excellent black metallers Woe — who are playing our official Suckfest “Pre-Game” with Mayhem on Thursday, November 3rd — so the news that RsG couldn’t make it was bittersweet. But man, Rumpelfuckingstiltskin Grinder! ‘Twould’ve been an honor to have them at our fest.

I’m cranking 2009′s Living For Death, Destroying the Rest as I write this, and this album without a doubt thrases just as furiously as it did when it came out and I named it one of my favorite records of the year. Riffs for miles and miles and miles! So it is with great excitement that I tell you this, via a press release: Rumpelstiltskin Grinder are working on a new record that will tentatively come out in Spring 2012. Comments guitarist Matt Moore (also of Absu fame):

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If there’s anything we love here at MetalSucks (in addition to weed, of course) it’s saying “I told you so.” So it’s with pure joy that our latest opportunity to gloat comes in the form of Dallas, TX prog metal outfit White Arms of Athena, who we first featured in June of 2009 (and have featured many times since): congrats to the fine dudes in White Arms of Athena for their new deal with Prosthetic Records!

The band’s first release on Prosthetic will be a re-issue of Astrodama, which the band self-released last year. MS readers who were around when we premiered one of the album’s tracks will have to wait a little longer to hear new material, but we’re guessing that for the majority of the world this will be metalheads’ first exposure to the band. Expect to hear a lot more about these guys in the coming months, first with the re-release of Astrodrama on August 16th and then in the form of the endless round of touring that is sure to follow.

Take a listen to a couple of Astrodrama’s tracks here, then let us know what you think of the proggy, spaced-out goodness below in the comments. You can pre-order Astrodrama here for only ten10 bones.

-VN

We featured Swedish djent outfit Vildhjarta in an “Unsigned and Unholy” column just this past January, but guess what? The term don’t apply to them no’ mo’, ’cause they just signed a deal with Century Media. There’s no word on when the label will release an album or anything like that, but here’s an excerpt from the press release that I found pretty amusing:

The band had this to say in regards to the singing:

“THALL”

So I guess we should all start getting ready for at least a year of jokes based around the word “THALL,” ‘ever the fuck that means.

If you’re not familiar with the band you should get familiar with them, ’cause they’re really good. You can check out the above YouTube clip, of course, or just go here and download some shit for free. (Don’t worry, it’s legal.)

-AR

I am a big fan of leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS. Back in the 90s, they gave us unfuckwithable classics of hardcore from bands like Earth Crisis, Bloodlet and One Life Crew, but they didn’t stop there! These days, they conduct themselves pretty much exactly like if someone gave me unlimited funds and told me to start a record label with the express purpose of trolling the fuck out of hardcore/metal fans.

For example, their latest signing makes Emmure and These Hearts look like heroes of the underground by comparison: Corpus Christi’s own DESIGN THE SKYLINE, who are partying like it’s 2008! As someone who misses the days when MySpace was still relevant, you couldn’t wear enough neon, and it was all about being scene as fuck, I am stoked to see this band join the Victory family, although I have to admit that it’s more than a little lulzy.

Cliffs:

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Something I need to keep reminding myself: every generic shit band that sells a fuckton of records enables their record label to take risks on way more creative, fulfilling, interesting and inevitably far less commercially successful artists. It’s a sad fact, but thems the breaks: shitty commercially successful metal bands for teeny boppers generate tons of money, and without that money we’d see a lot less of the good stuff coming down the pike. For every Vampires Everywhere there’s a Nachtmystium, for every System Divide there’s The Ocean, for every Nickelback there’s an Opeth, for every <insert Victory band here> there’s a Jungle Rot… and for every Asking Alexandria there’s a Francesco Artusato and Evan Brewer.

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Despite what Sergeant D thinks, I like Jungle Rot. Standard, groove-laden old-school DM, plenty of bounce, plenty of riffs… wallowing on the verge of obscurity and in the shadow of Cannibal Corpse since their inception in 1994.

So how does a death metal band that’s been around nearly two decades, released 7 studio albums, 5 EPs and 1 DVD go from a bunch of relatively small labels — the biggest of which was Napalm Records — to signing with leading independent record label VICTORY RECORDS in 2011? I have no fucking idea.

The only explanation I can think of is that Victory is doing really well with new-death bands like Wretched and Within the Ruins and thinks they can stuff more of the same down pizza-vomit-shirt-wearing DM kids’ throats. Will they buy it? Hard to say considering Jungle Rot are a bunch of olds that have nothing to do with “scene,” but it certainly could fly. If you’re Jungle Rot, I’d hope that at the very least you’re collecting a sweet advance and that Victory paid 100% of it up front, ’cause good luck collecting on that shit if this record doesn’t recoup.

Jungle Rot’s new album Kill On Command will come out in June… on Victory. After the jump, the music video for “Worst Case Scenario” which premiered on MS in April of 2010.

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So Lambgoat tells me that Prosthetic Records’ latest sign is a band from Chicago, Black September. And trying to be a dutiful blogger, I’m listening this band for the first time now, and while their brand of black metal is nothing you haven’t heard before, it’s also pretty good stuff — nice riffage, appropriately vitriolic vocals, some songwriting chops… I could imagine this band being really fun live, too.

All of that being said, I really, really wish this band didn’t have the same moniker as the Palestinian terrorist group that kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes in addition to a West German police officer at the ’72 Munich Summer Olympics.

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Metal Blade’s latest sign is a band called Intensus, and by “band” I mean “one man project” — the man being  Eli Litwin, drummer of Knife the Glitter, Burden, Normal Love, and some other bands with whom I’m not really familiar (although I know that Gary Suarez is a KTG fan). The only piece of Intensus music I’ve been able to locate thus far is the above track, “Time Killer Shitter,” which features vocals by Jesse Korman from The Number Twelve Looks Like You — and it doesn’t really do that much for me. I mean, it’s fine, but if not for the pedigree, I don’t know that I’d ever have given it a second listen. (There are some other tracks that are allegedly available on Intensus’ MySpace page, but I can’t get the player to work!)

But I still think this album is, at the very least, going to be worth your attention, for the following reasons: a) Litwin has recruited some awesome guest vocalists, including Between the Buried and Me’s Tommy Rogers, A Life Once Lost’s Robbert Meadows, and East of the Wall’s Chris Alfano, to appear on the album, and b) even though process shouldn’t really be considered when evaluating a piece of art, the process for the creation of this particular record, as explained in the press release announcing the signing, sounds pretty cool:

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So remember last year, when I reviewed this really good album called Orogeny that this really good band from Alaska called Turbid North had released all by themselves? Well, that band won’t hafta self-release their shit no more: Unearth front man Trevor Phipps has signed the band to his Ironclad Recordings label, and Orogeny is getting a re-release “in mid to late June,” according to a press release.

Here’s Phipps on how this all came to pass:

“We got their self released disc a few months ago and it is in constant rotation here at Ironclad. With only a few copies released we wanted to broaden the exposure of the band and this phenomenal album.”

So if you had a hard time finding Orogeny before, hopefully, that’s about to change. This is a really, really aardvark-impaling record, so I’m glad these dudes will now be exposed to a wider audience.

Here’s the band’s video for the song “Between the Glacier and the Sea.” It’s not the greatest video ever made, but it will give you a sense of how hard these dudes impale aardvarks.

-AR

Yep, you read that right — Sumerian has signed T.R.A.M., a new supergroup consisting of Animals as Leaders guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, Suicidal Tendencies drummer Eric Moore, and Adrian Terrazas (who used to go by “Adrian Terrazas-González” but whatever), who played flute/sax/bass clarinet/percussions on three albums by The Mars Volta (Frances the Mute, Amputechture, and The Bedlam in Goliath). The band’s moniker, in case you haven’t put it together, is an amalgamation of the last initial of each musicians’ name (For the cheap seats: Terrazas, Reyes, Abasi, Moore).

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If you stretch your pot-addled brain, you may recall that, back in June, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wrote about his new band, Graviton, as part of his Blogronaut series here on MetalSucks — in fact, it was a MetalSucks reader who named Graviton.

Well, now Graviton have signed with Translation Loss! Which is great news. And while there’s still no official release date for Graviton’s debut, there is now a title (Massless), cover art (above), and the promise that we’ll get to hear it before the year is through. In fact, there are already several tracks streaming on Graviton’s Facebook page. And they’re excellent — they have all the proggy goodness of Intronaut, but they are, generally speaking, a little on the mellower side… in fact, the title Massless strikes me as being really, really appropriate. Go listen here.

While we wait for Massless to get a release date, here’s what Sacha wrote about the project when he first solicited names from MS readers during April of last year:

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For months and months and months and months we’ve speculated endlessly, tossed and turned at night and pulled our hair out in frustration, wondering what label Between the Buried and Me would end up on now that their contract with Victory is over. OK, not really… we’ve known it was Metal Blade all along. But now it’s official: Metal Blade has posted the below trailer announcing not only their signing of Between the Buried and Me, but the release date for The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP the band has been working on for some time:

April 12th. Get ready.

-VN

Seems like there’s been a spate of significant band signings over the last week in the world of metal. Despite all the industry’s woes, it’s good to know that labels are still investing in bands. But that begs the question… what kind of deals are these bands getting? Do their deals have advances? Do they include merch? Do they include mandatory monthly ass-fuckings? Inquiring minds would like to know.

After the jump let’s take a look at the new label homes of Chimaira, A Life Once Lost, Demolisher, Funeral for a Friend and Mercenary, and how those new relationships might work out.

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Photo by Jeremy Saffer

The latest sign for Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label is New Jersey’s Fit for an Autopsy. The band is notable for several reasons (besides the fact that they’re good, I mean), namely:

• They are that rarest of breeds — a good deathcore band. After seeing them live last year, our own Sammy O’Hagar said that “the band’s brutal, glowering take on [deathcore] reminded one of the squandered potential of the genre,” noting that “hardcore grooves and swagger, when incorporated correctly, blend quite well with death metal.” Sammy also complimented front man Nate Johnson, asserting that Johnson’s “serrated vocals provided the oomph needed to put the band over the top.” Oceano: take note.

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It’s the end of an era for Victory Records; the only two credible metal acts they had on their roster have finished their contracts and are free to sign elsewhere. Darkest Hour ended up on E1, a good fit for a label who has signed a number of already-established metal acts over the past few years (High on Fire, Hatebreed, Black Label Society, Overkill and In Flames, just to name a few). Where will Between the Buried and Me end up? It’s gettin’ to be about that time for them to release an album, whatwith those EP rumors and all.

If I were a betting man I’d put a few fat ones down on the table on BTBAM ending up with Metal Blade. The reason why has nothing to do with the actual music but with the folks behind the scenes. In fact, there’s a good chance the deal is already done, the t’s crossed, the i’s dotted, the ink dried.

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It’s been a while since the MS staff was collectively jizzing over U.K. spazz-progsters SikTh, but that doesn’t mean the now defunct band is any less dear to our hearts. Quite the opposite; any time we hear about the involvement of any ex-SikTh member in a new project we get pretty darn excited, like when we first heard about guitarist Pin’s new band Aliases.

And this week we’ve got news about not one, not two, but THREE ex-members of the now-legendary U.K. sextet.

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According to Lambgoat, Emmure’s Frankie Palmeri is starting his own record label. I was hoping it would be called “Raptor Jesus Records,” but it’s actually gonna be called “False Prophet Records,” which is close enough, I guess.

Palmeri’s fist sign is a band called Monsters (There really wasn’t already a metal band called Monsters?), their moniker apparently referring to the way they terrorize good taste. Look at this photo of the band:

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photo by Tommy Kearns

I think I can safely speak for both Vince and myself when I say that Batillus have to be one of our favorite doom metal bands on the planet right now, AND one of our favorite local bands. Vince just sang their praises a few weeks ago, and then the band abso-fuckin’-lutely CRUSHED at one of our two CMJ showcases. They opened the show, actually, and believe you me when I say that they set the bar real, real high for every act that followed.

Now Batillus have announced that they’ve signed with Seventh Rule Records, who will release their new, Sanford Parker-produced debut full-length, Furnace, sometime in the spring of 2011. You may recall that the band wrote some exclusive studio blogs for us when they were recording the album earlier this year; if you don’t recall that, well, read ‘em now. Get to know this band. They kill, kill, kill, and then kill some more.

Batillus are also doing a handful of live shows this month. Like I said, they’re a force to be reckoned with live, so definitely go check ‘em out if you can. Here are dates, courtesy SMN:

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Photo by Jessica Harvey

We’ve been hearing rumors about this for awhile now, but MetalSucks can now exclusively confirm that experimental prog-metal sextet Last Chance to Reason have signed with Prosthetic Records. Expect their debut for the label next year.

We’re always stoked when an awesome unsigned band finds a good home. We first saw Last Chance to Reason this summer, and their brand of techy, spacey, brutal-yet-melodic metal reminded us of a young Between the Buried and Me; we knew right away that they were something special. The dudes from Metal Injection and 1000Knives agreed, and we were all thrilled when we were able to add them to our joint CMJ Music Marathon showcase.

So this band obviously has a bright, bright future ahead of them. If you’ve never checked them out before, you can hear some of their stuff on their MySpace page. And if you live in the New York area, definitely come check them out at the aforementioned MetalSucks/Metal Injection/1000Knives CMJ Music Marathon showcase this Wednesday, October 20 at Club Europa in Brooklyn. The bill also features Car Bomb, This or the Apocalypse, Baptized in Blood, and, in their first New York appearance in eighteen months, A Life Once Lost. It’s gonna be killer. Get tickets here.

In other news the sky is blue, the grass is always greener on the other side, men like sticking their dicks in things and Axl is in a grumpy mood.

The band is called Diamond Plate, they’re from Chicago, look to be all of about 18 years old and are managed by a good dude that I used to book shows with back in my agency days. Axl actually previewed these guys back in January of this year (he should be an A&R man!); he noted being especially impressed with the song “Relativity” on their MySpace page but had a hard time getting used to Jon Macak’s vocals, and on both points I concur.

Look, I hate to be a pre-emptive hater, but enough with the re-thrash already. It’s peaked; no one in the U.S. cares, and there’s so much music out there that’s new and way more interesting that I don’t understand why labels are wasting their time on bands like this, especially when none of them sell any records. That said, these guys certainly do seem to have plenty of musical talent so I hope they can harness it and transmogrify their thrash into something fresh the way, say, Revocation have. For now, I’ll wait to hear their Earache debut to pass final judgment. Bring it on, dudes!

-VN

Photo credit: Stephen Jensen