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I don’t think we’ve ever talked about Mini Kiss on the site before, but at this point, I strongly prefer them to the actual Kiss (or whatever is left of the actual Kiss). They play awesome old Kiss songs, the fact that they’re a straight-up cover band means that their wearing of the classic make-up is inoffensive, and, oh yeah, they’re midgets, which is still God’s best joke. I mean, besides tsunamis.
-AR
Last night I finally got to see Periphery live. Vince has been raving about them since this past summer’s Thrash and Burn tour, and, as is so often the case, my de facto brother is right – these guys are the shit, and are gonna be huge. They had the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands, and, unlike some bands (I’m not naming names, but think Jack the Ripper), they actually have three guitar players for a reason.
Periphery will have an album out on Sumerian next year; in the meantime, enjoy this video tour blog they did for our friends at Metal Injection. And don’t forget to check out Periphery’s MySpace, too.
-AR
The above piece of art, titled “Fucking Shit Balls,” was sent in by MS Maniac Christopher Silverio who also happened to win our Austrian Death Machine MS Paint contest. Dude’s got skills! I love our readers.
-VN
Back in August, I wrote about Misanthrope(s), the latest offering from France’s Celeste; three months later, I’m even more in love with this album. And while I could waste your time with superlatives – epic, raw, beautiful, etc. – there’s no reason to, because THE ALBUM IS AVAILABLE AS A FREE, LEGAL DOWNLOAD and so there’s absolutely no reason for you not to give it a listen.
I can’t say enough nice things about this album, and it will very likely find its way onto my year-end list next month. Please please please please please do yourself a favor and check it out.
Also worth mentioning: if you dig after you’ve downloaded it, the art work that comes with the physical copy is beautiful, and totally worth the cost. Just sayin’.
-AR
We’re a mere week away from the release of Addicted, the awesome new album by The Devin Townsend Project, and I imagine that all those pre-orders are gonna start shipping any second now.
So here’s video of Devin signing 2,000 of those pre-orders, plus adding his own special little touches to the booklets. I’m sure that this was a) boring as fuck for Devin and b) put a real strain on his hand, so I think it’s pretty awesome to see how much work he put into making these physical copies something really special for his fans.
You can still pre-order Addicted here, although I think (I could be wrong) that the super-deluxe awesome editions with Devin’s personally hand-drawn O cards are all gone. But even still, this record kicks major ass, and you should buy a copy.
Also, don’t forget that Devin will be part of the Incredibly Unbelievably Orgasm Inducing Tour 2010 with Between the Buried and Me, Cynic, and Scale the Summit. You can get tour dates here.
Addicted comes out November 17 on InsideOut. And if you’re really, really well-behaved for the rest of the week, we’ll have a special surprise that day to coincide with the release.
-AR
Last night Vince and I hit up the Trivium/Chimaira/Whitechapel/Dirge Within show at Irving Plaza here in NYC. I will never ever get sick of watching Chimaira live. They have a forty-five minute set on this tour, and they really make the most of it by basically segueing directly from one song to the next with a minimum of on-stage banter, presumably in order to allow a maximum of brutality. To top it off, the set-list was pretty much perfect – they played at least one or two songs from each of their albums (This Present Darkness excluded), and not always they song(s) you’d expect, either. Definitely go check ‘em out!
Here they are doing “Severed” at the Download Festival in 2007. They played this song last night and the pit just went insane – I think this has to be the heaviest track on Pass Out of Existence, no?
-AR
I know what you’re thinking: Two juggalo posts in one day? What did we do to deserve such treats?!?!
Well, I definitely didn’t wake up this morning and say “Let’s do two ICP articles in one day,” but then Dan And from Bison B.C. e-mailed me these AWESOME photos of the band playing a Halloween gig while dressed as Juggalos, and I just had to share…
More after the jump…
Leaves’ Eyes vocalist Liv Kristine has written another ridiculous top five list for The Deciblog – this one about the best “vegetarian eats” – but it’s not really offensive, and it would just be petty of me to respond with a top five “meat eats” or whatever (although there’s some obvious humor to be had there).
No, instead I’d like to concentrate on this morning’s Invisible Oranges post by Cosmo Lee regarding “the new breed of female metallers,” which seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by Kristine’s initial list about why women in metal rule, and my (admittedly sophomoric) response.
As is usually the case, Mr. Lee makes some excellent recommendations, my favorite of which is a Russian band, Tantal. Here’s their video for a song called “Suicide.” I suggest you stick with it through the entire six minutes, even if you don’t dig the beginning – as Cosmo writes, “It starts off cheesy but gets better and better, with an amazing Between the Buried and Me-style outro.”
It’s election day here in the States, and like many election days, I basically wasted a vote on a candidate who has no chance of winning whatsoever because his opponent had more money and therefore was able to buy more television ads. Gotta love democracy.
So. Here are some old “Rock the Vote” spots with Dave Mustaine and Megadeth. (Young ones who don’t recognize anyone in Megadeth besides Mustaine: that the old, definitive line-up of the band. Do not be frightened.) I seem to recall that Mustaine was also a correspondent for MTV at one of the conventions – Democratic or Republican, I can’t recall – but I can’t find any clips of that.
Here’s a funny story: earlier this year Daath’s Emil Werstler made one of those “Betcha Can’t Play This” instructional videos for Guitar World. Said video showed him playing so fast that some of the staff of that publication actually accused him of speeding up the video. Once he did another video, showing him at PRS clinic proving he could actually play that fast, was released, all was forgiven, and he’s now made a second “Betcha” vid.
It’s good to Werstler getting the credit he deserves. When Daath’s first album, The Hinderers, was released, none of the press concentrated on the dude’s prowess as a guitar player; now that all that shit about the band allegedly being Kabbalah obsessed mystics or whatever has subsided, it seems like people are more willing to focus on the things that actually make Daath worth listening to: great musicianship and excellent song writing skills.
Here’s the more recent “Betcha” segment; after the jump, check out the older one that got Emil accused of cheating, as well the PRS clip that proves that he is, in fact, just a supreme bad-ass.
I’m posting this video interview our friends at Noisecreep conducted with Baroness’ John Baizley for two reasons:
Enjoy.
-AR
Well, the headline pretty much says it all. It was pretty brave (or stupid, I guess, depending on your point of view) for this dude to do this, but you gotta love that everyone goes nuts as soon as he starts headbanging. I assume most of them are applauding the act of doing something so outrageous (at least by high school standards) for a talent show and not the actual music, but, hey, support is support.
-AR
Thanks to our friend Bob for the video!
Shame on me for having never heard of Australia’s Portal before. I just got their new album, Swarth (which apparently means “land covered with grassy turf”… metal teaches me a new word again!), last week, and it’s blowing my mind. I don’t even know how to describe it; it’s death metal, I guess, but it’s really pushing the limits of what “music” as a concept is. It almost reminds me of Hate Eternal, but that’s not really fair to Portal or Erik Rutan. They are just a really, really unique monster.
And I do mean “monster.” Like I said, this is really pushing the boundaries between music and noise. It’s just fucking evil, man. I’ll try to write a review one of these days, but in the meantime, I implore you to check out Portal on MySpace and buy Swarth for yourself – it just came out this week on Profound Lore.
And, oh yeah, apparently they wear costumes. Here they are doing the song “Glumurphonel” from their 2003 debut, Seepia.
For the time being it seems that Portal live shows are restricted to their native land, but they have been added to the already amazing Maryland Deathfest 2010 line-up, which will also include Converge, Eyehategod, Melechesh, Obituary, and grind gods Gridlink.
-AR
Oh Anso, you so silly with your band acronyms. You also so dead-on with your praise of One Man Army and the Undead Quartet. Like Stratovarius, 1MA+U4 are one of those bands whose name constantly graces Blabbermouth headlines but to whom I’ve never actually listened. How could that be given they’re fronted by ex-The Crown singer Johan Lindstrom? I do not know.
On a complete unrelated note in the same article, Anso (who’s also an MS contributor, you ninnies) chimes in with this truth about French tech-deathsters Gorod (whose 2009 album Process of a New Decline we’ve praised endlessly here on MS):
I learned that in Gorod, technical metal is being wrested away from clever East Coast hipsters and back into the domain of heshers thank you Europe. Like any good pursuit, it is improving itself and less and less frequently being comprised of five guys wanking in unison.
I <3 Anso.
Hugz,
VN
I haven’t gotten to write a review of Brutal Legend yet because, well, I just haven’t had time to play all the way through the game, and it seems like writing a review of half a game or whatever isn’t fair. But I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played so far.
And it seems like the game owes a debt to Metalocalypse. Besides some similarities in general tone, style of humor, and a love of violence, there’s the fact that Legend takes place in a magical, faraway land where everything is related to metal and everything looks more or less like it belongs in Mordhaus. Obviously Metalocalypse already owes a debt to metal imagery as old as Sabbath itself, but… there’s definitely a connection between Dethklok and Brutal Legend.
So kudos to the fan who made the below video. At some point it might get yanked for copyright infringement, so enjoy it while you can… I have to say, it seems pretty impressive for something fan-made. And wouldn’t be awesome if there really WAS a Dethklok/Eddie Riggs crossover?
Major props to Christopher Silverio for sending this in… thanks, dude!
-AR
We haven’t done much writing about Rodrigo y Gabriella, the acoustic guitarist duo sweeping the metal world. But Metal Insider just posted this video of them jamming with Metallica’s Rob Trujillo, so, y’know. That seems maybe worth posting. I dunno. It’s kind of a slow news day.
So here they are doing “Orion”…
…and you can watch more video at Metal Insider.
-AR
3, one of the best not-really-a-metal-band to ever be signed to a metal label (Metal Blade) and tour with metal bands (Opeth, etc.), are going to make a video for the song “Rabid Animals” from their new album, Revisions. And that’s all well good, but here’s the really groovy part – they’re giving their fans a chance to be in the video. And you don’t have to spend any money, or win a contest, or anything like that.
Here’s a statement from the band:
I first wrote about Crystal Viper back in March, and they’re still one of the most amazing discoveries I’ve made this year. Now they have a new video and… I mean… Have you ever seen a video more metal than this?!?!? I mean, more metal and also made for two dollars U.S. and the band’s best ass. ‘Cause I think that’s what they traded for the pyro.
-AR
MetalSucks Maniac The Ghost of D. Boon e-mailed us in response to that video we posted yesterday of Steel Panther guitarist Satchel playing drums while taking a guitar solo to make sure we knew about Gull… and we didn’t. So thanks, Ghost!
Gull is a one-man project from Richmond, VA who not only plays guitar and drums simultaneously (and wwwaaayyy better than Satchel), but also sings! Ghost says that mask he’s wearing has a mic in it, which is hooked up to reverb pedal. Check it out:
You can get more info on Gull here.
And while we’re talking about one man bands… this suddenly got me thinking about Corn Mo, this dude I used to see play local clubs and bars here in New York from time to time. He’s not really metal, but he used to host gigs for metal cover bands and obviously has some knowledge of metal, so it seemed worth posting. Plus, if you’re drunk enough, he can be fun to watch live. Check out the drum stick coming out of his pants!
Here’s Corn Mo, both doing his solo thing and playing with Gary Suarez’s hero, Andrew WK:
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