This is just me, but I attend Darkest Hour shows mostly to make goo-goo eyes at guitarist Mike Schleibaum, fellow devotée of my boner band The Crown (and The Cars). That’s my M.O. no judgements please. Still I was bummed when sweet drummer Ryan Parrish announced his departure from DH late last year. But dude is already in A Cancerous Affair, the project started by his former DH bandmate and guitar freak Kris Norris. And which now welcomes its newest member, keyboardist Knockerz Randall.

Click to read more…

After my recent post about Swallow the Sun’s new music video went up, Mr. Angry Keyboard Player himself — some people call him Aleksi Munter, but that name’s for losers — saw the piece, found it funny (phew!), and re-posted it on his own Facebook wall. Here’s what he had to say:

Hahahah! Dear MetalSucks.net, I can assure you that I’m as angry as ever, if not even more so for not having any hair.

-AKP

So much win! Now AKP and I are Facebook friends and we’re total besties! At some point in the near future, whenever Swallow the Sun gets back to the U.S., I hope to bro down with AKP and share some vodka, weed, tea or any beverage/food of his preference (’cause I wouldn’t wanna make him too irate) whilst AKP serenades me with his angry philosophies on life. I can’t wait!

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying listening to the new Swallow the Sun album Emerald Forest and the Blackbird, now streaming in full over at the Finnish site Inferno (out officially February 1st). Each song is accompanied by one quote from David Lynch’s freako bizarre TV series Twin Peaks — so fitting, right??? — selected by guitarist Juha Raivio. I’m just one song in right now, and already I’m absolutely in love — I can’t WAIT to crank this thing at full blast tonight.

-VN

[via No Clean Singing]

“Scheduling has been a nightmare for a long time,” says guitarist Rob Caggiano about Temple Of The Black Moon. That seems like hyperbole, but gosh maybe not: TotBM drummer John Tempesta has been dashing between The Cult and Testament tours; singer Dani Filth’s full time job is Cradle Of Filth; Caggiano is bound to Anthrax’s rigorous itinerary, and his TotBM writing partner, Tom Cato Visnes, has been involved with Sahg, I, Gorgoroth, and Ov Hell outings in just the last five years.

Click to read more…

Onward and upward for Brooklyn’s Primitive Weapons! Last we checked in with the band we were premiering a song from their debut 7″ on Shinebox Recordings. That was only a year ago, but since then they’ve signed with fancy-pants new label Prosthetic Records and announced a new full-length album, The Shadow Gallery, out March 13th.

Pitchfork premiered our first taste of new music from The Shadow Gallery yesterday in the form of a crushing track called “Quitters Anthem,” and — WHOA. I already thought Primitive Weapons were a good band — we did agree to premiere a track of theirs, after all — but if “Quitters Anthem” is any indication, The Shadow Gallery is going to completely knock the 7″ out of the park. The song is powerful, big, instantly headbangable and, yes, even anthemic; Primitive Weapons have somehow found their own singular voice in a post-Mastodonian minefield littered with carcasses of bands that have tried and failed to capture the energy of the latter’s early recordings. I say this having just listened to one song, of course, but I just listened to it three times in a row and could easily go another three times without tiring.

In other words: it’s sweet. Listen here.

-VN

[UPDATE, 5:10pm: MS reader Mick Stingley informs us that "Blood and Fire" is based on the unreleased VH song "Ripley" from the 1984 sessions. Listen to the "Ripley" demo here.]

[UPDATE #2, 9:32am: OK, "Ripley" was apparently not from the 1984 sessions, although it did appear in the score of the 1984 film The Wild Life.]

Original post:

I might not be the best judge of quality when it comes to new Van Halen. Whenever I press play I hear the unmistakable sounds of Eddie’s fingers gently caressing a guitar fretboard and DLR’s screechy croon and that’s it, it’s all over, I’m a schoolgirl in love and I give no fucks at all about the outside world.

So naturally I’m pretty amped on this 90-second sample of “Blood and Fire” even though I guess it’s pretty tame-sounding. Some people will probably say the gang vocals sound weak without Michael Anthony, but whatevs, I’m into them. And the always underrated rhythm playing of EVH — everyone always just talks about his leads — is on full display here if you listen for it; the nuanced fretboard dancing in both the verse and underneath the chorus is just so, so… EDDIE!

I’m still kinda lukewarm on VH’s decision to mine old riff tapes for the new record instead of starting new songs from scratch — and I’m not sure if “Blood and Fire” is one of the new songs using recycled b-side riffs — but I’m still pretty optimistic about A Different Kind of Truth. February 7th, but you already knew that.

-VN

Soulfly fans of the world: there’s a new track called “World Scum” from the band’s forthcoming album Enslaved available for free download right now and for the next 48 hours! I just downloaded it and you can too! But first you’ll need to present your passport and social security number, be subjected to a thorough strip-search, made to walk through one of those new fancy-pants airport X-ray scanners, forced to bend over so Soulfly, Roadrunner and FanBridge can perform a full cavity search, and then, THEN, if you click “Like” on Soulfly’s Facebook page you’ll be able to click a few more buttons which will finally allow you to download the track (after which you’ll need to open it in iTunes or your player of choice).

All this, of course, assumes you’re interested in a new Soulfly track. I’m neither here nor there about the band, but, ya know, maybe you’re both here AND there.

Enslaved comes out on March 13th via Roadrunner Records.

-VN

Goatwhore’s Blood for the Master has quickly become one of the favorite jams to play around the MetalSucks Mansion these days; I love it, Vince loves it, Sammy O’Hagar just turned in his review and hey, guess what?, he fucking loved it. And that’s because it’s awesome, and only total losers would argue otherwise.

Now our pals at Decibel are streaming the title track, which means you have a chance to listen to three minutes and thirteen seconds of great new Goatwhore music. So go listen to it immediately, or risk being the subject of ridicule by everyone you know and love.

Metal Blade will release Goatwhore’s Blood for the Master on February 14, presumably because, yes, it is indeed the most romantic fucking album of the year. And don’t forget that Goatwhore will be part of an awesome MetalSucks-sponsored tour with The Faceless, Dying Fetus, Volumes, and Last Chance to Reason in March; you can get dates here.

-AR

Well, this is it! The first really major release of the new year, and certainly one of the most heavily anticipated albums of 2012, Lamb of God’s Resolution comes out tomorrow on Epic.

But it’s streaming right now, in its entirety, right here.

So give it a listen, and then engage in the oh-so-fun debating in our comments section below. How do you think it stacks up against other Lamb of God releases? Is it everything you hoped for? More? Less? What elements of it, if any, caught you off guard? Did it sway you with regards to Randy Blythe’s current presidential bid? We’re excited to hear what you have to say…

-AR

The reader known as “gr Sam” tipped us off that Dodecahedron, the new experimental black metal project featuring Exivious guitarist Michel Nienhuis, is now streaming their new, self-titled album, in full — and, duh, I’m posting it because you need to check this shit out. You may recall that Vince praised the band last month, calling the band’s music “a doozy, real forward-thinking, un-traditional black metal, kinda like black metal gone Gorguts.” Well put, Vince! I’ve been rocking this shit all morning, and it is absolutely kicking my ass.

Check out the full album stream below; the release is out now on Season of Mist.

DODECAHEDRON – ‘Dodecahedron’ Debut Album by ddchdrn

-AR

Bleeding Through have released a new song, “Goodbye to Death,” which you can stream below. It doesn’t do any more for me than any other Bleeding Through song I’ve ever heard, although, I gotta say, I don’t find this band quite as irritating as I did even just a few years ago. I think because since they’ve broken through, so many other far more offensive bands have emerged. Like, at least I recognize what Bleeding Through are doing as music, whereas a band like Emmure just sounds like someone was suffering from Montezuma’s Revenge in a recording studio.

“Goodbye to Death” will appear on Bleeding Through’s new album, The Great Fire, which comes January 31 via Rise.

-AR

Earlier this week, we got our first taste of new Veil of Maya in the form of the song “Vicious Circles;” now the groups has performed another new tune, “Punisher,” live, which means, of course, that it’s on the internet. The quality is obviously not top-notch, but it does sound a lot more traditionally Sumeriancore-ish than “Circles” did, so… maybe my speculation that the band was trying to move away from that sound was premature. I guess we’ll find out when the band’s latest offering, Eclipse, is released on February 28.

While we wait, check out “Punisher” below:

-AR

[via The PRP]

It’s no secret that I was way into Despised Icon before they broke up at the end of 2010. So I was excited to get an e-mail this morning from that band’s now-former frontman (or I guess I should say “one of their frontmen”), Alex Erian, announcing the formation of Obey the Brave, a new project which also features ex-Blind Witness guitarist Jon Campbell (no not that dude, they spell their first names differently).

Alas, we don’t actually know much about the band right now, as thus far they have only released the below video, in which they a) sit around a table and eat breakfast, b) introduce themselves to the camera and say nothing especially exciting in English for awhile, c) introduce themselves to the camera and say nothing especially exciting in French for awhile, and then d) around the 1:20 mark, finally let us hear a sample of their first single, “Live and Learn.” That being said, “Live and Learn” sounds like metallic hardcore done right — there’s a nice epic section towards the end of the sample that I really like — so fingers crossed, the band may turn out to be cool. Hopefully we’ll get to hear the full song soon enough.

While we wait for more music from the band, they’ve announced their first string of shows. Dates are after the jump; if anyone goes to see them, please drop us a line and let us know how they were.

Click to read more…

Enfold Darkness have sure changed a lot since we last featured them in May of 2009 (side note: what I wrote about Sumerian Records’ business model nearly three years ago is still so true). When listening to their new track “Lairs of the Ascended Masters” currently streaming at Decibel I thought to myself, “Gee, I don’t remember the band sounding this blackened,” so just to be sure I wasn’t going crazy I went over to their MySpace page (’cause you know whatever’s there is gonna be old) and listened to some older stuff. While the older material has more elements of black metal than I remembered, it’s also got a lot more tech-death, and it’s the “death” influence that’s almost completely gone on the new song.

Here’s founder/guitarist Matt Brown on the band’s ever-evolving sound:

Click to read more…

I guess Lacuna Coil really are a big deal mainstream band now, ’cause frickin’ Spin, of all outlets, is streaming the band’s new album, Dark Adrenaline (see cover art, above, for illustrated depiction of dark adrenaline). You can rock out Italian style here.

It’s a Lacuna Coil album, which means it’s really, really, REALLY catchy. Personally, I’ve been enjoying “I Don’t Believe in Tomorrow,” and — get ready — I have done a complete one-eighty on the song “Kill the Light,” and now think it’s the best tune on the album. For serious, no jokesies. It might be the first pop metal song in history that actually benefitted from repeat listens.

Plus, there’s a really weird but pretty interesting cover of REM’s “Losing My Religion” on the record. Just pointing that out.

Eat your salad after your main course but before your dessert here, then call me a wuss for caring about this band in the comments section below. Dark Adrenaline comes out January 24 on Century.

-AR

This winter is shaping up to be a great one for fans of technical death metal of the highest order. We ain’t talkin’ the weedily-weedily brain-scrambling nonsense that tons of bands are pumping out these days like so many turds in a toilet, but the stuff with riffs you can follow and structures you can readily discern — you know, actual songs that just so happen to be very technical and brutal. All signs point to another absolute face melter from the Tasmanians in Psycroptic, and now that songs from Spawn of Possession’s new one Incurso are starting to trickle out, there’s every indication that these tech-death vets are gonna deliver another ripper as well.

Here’s Spawn of Possession’s new track “Where Angels Go Demons Follow,” the first to be released publicly from Incurso. Can I get an A-FUCKING-MEN??

Pre-orders for Incurso are available here; the record comes out on March 13th.

-VN

Oh, Into Eternity, what did I ever do to you besides make the mistake of falling in love with you? Why do you punish me so? First, you finally released a new single, “Sandstorm,” last July, and now you’ve posted a clip of another new song, “Fukushima,” on the web — and yet you still offer no concrete information about when we might expect a new album. Sure, you’ve told us that “five songs have been recorded,” but five songs in three-and-a-quarter years is, like, an Axl Rose work pace. At this rate, your next full-length may finally be ready for release in 2015, by which time some site called Metal: Over It! will be the biggest blog on the scene, Vince will be the new host of Headbanger’s Ball on MTV 8 (“The Ocho”), and I will be dead.

And the saddest part is, this material sounds really promising. Really, my only complaint about it is that at no point does Stu Block get to hit any notes that only dogs can hear.

Enough with this foreplay. Give us a new album or else… or else… or else we’ll cry and call you a poopy face!!! AND THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY!!!!!!

-AR

Thanks to Carlos B. for the tip!

Perhaps inspired by last week’s stream of Deftones frontman Chino Moreno’s collaboration with Circa Survive’s Anthony Green, last week I finally got around to listening to the debut EP by another of Moreno’s projects, ††† (“Crosses”), his electronic collaboration with Far’s Shaun Lopez. I found the EP not just listenable but really, really good — after finishing it once, I started it over and listened to the whole thing again. Unlike our usual steady diet of metal, it was easy to let Crosses exist in the background while I worked, easy to enjoy the smooth electronic beats, blips, bloops and Chino’s distinct voice without devoting the music my full attention. Who ever said side-projects couldn’t be interesting?

Less than a year after the release of †, Crosses are back with their second EP… wait for it… ††. Rolling Stone is streaming the track “Prurien†” from the EP now, which you can and should listen to and download here.

Oh, and in case anyone is planning on reposting this and is wondering how you make the † symbol, it’s Option-T on a Mac (PC: I couldn’t tell ya). Copy-and-paste is sweet, too.

-VN

Photo credit: Tyler William Parker for Rolling Stone

Iron Reagan is a new band featuring two current members of Municipal Waste (Tony Foresta and Landphil) and one current and one former member of Darkest Hour (Paul Burnette and Ryan Parish), and that information alone should pretty much be enough to get you asking “Where I can hear this band?!?” And the answer is, right here, where the group is giving away their new demo for the low low cost of free.

I’m not clear who’s handling guitar duties — Burnette and Landphil are both bassists by trade, but presumably one of them is now rockin’ six strings instead of four — but that’s beside the point, I guess. ‘Cause the real point is this: the songs, which lean much more towards the Municipal Waste/neo-thrash side of things than the Darkest Hour/melodeath side of things, are more fun than wondering how Alzheimer’s-stricken Reagan was while he was running the United States. And I mean that as a high compliment, because I LOVE wondering how Alzheimer’s-stricken Reagan was while he was running the United States.

Iron Reagan will be playing their first show this Sunday, January 22, in Richmond, VA at Strange Matter; Weekend Nachos and Full of Hell are also on the bill, so if you live in the area you should definitely check that shit out. I do wonder how long the band’s set will be, ’cause this demo features four songs in five minutes. But presumably they have other tunes ready to roll, too, so they can stretch that shit to ten minutes, or maybe even fifteen, if they’re feeling ambitious.

Download the demo here, then weigh in with your opinions in the comments section below.

-AR

Veil of Maya have released “Vicious Circles,” the first single from their new album, Eclipse.The Born of Osiris-esque keyboard bits and the massive chugga-chug section at the end aside, the song actually steers clear of Sumeriancore tropes in favor of playing up a more classical, At the Gates/melodeath influence. I wonder if this is the beginning of the band trying to distance themselves from that sound, the way, for example, Job for a Cowboy eventually distanced themselves from the deathcore sound?

Check out “Vicious Circles” below and see whatcha think:

Eclipse is out February 28 on Sumerian.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Gus G.’s Firewind, one of the like three power metal(ish) bands that I actually like, are gonna release a new album later this year, Few Against Many. Which means they’ve now performed some new tracks live. Which means the performances of those tracks have been filmed on someone’s cell phone. Which means you can check them out right now.

I’ve heard some good early buzz about the currently-being-completed Few Against Many, and these songs certainly pique my interest. Check ‘em out and see what you think:

“Wall of Sound”

Click to read more…