As a staunch proponent of physical product even 2-3 years ago I would covet CDs for their tangibility, album artwork, and superior sound quality. Now I just view them as a nuisance, items that take up space when there is a more efficient and convenient option available.

But I really don’t wish this to be a debate about the merits of physical product. The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley already covered that. What I’m specifically concerned with here is how modern metal fans value album artwork, a subject which is inextricably tied to the aforementioned debate but can stand somewhat on its own.

When it comes to album artwork I’m kind of over it too. I definitely enjoy cool album covers and associating visuals with bands, but I feel like these days those visual needs are better served by carefully curating an artist’s appearance via their website, MySpace page, merch, posters and their general aesthetic. These mediums are WAY more expressive than a single image on a sleeve anyway, and in the context of digital music the meaning of the word “cover” — something which serves as the face of and protects from damage what’s inside — is rendered meaningless. The concept of an album cover seems kind of quaint in the Internet age; a cover used to serve as something cool to grab your eye on the record shelves in the store, but it definitely doesn’t serve that purpose anymore. Today we have more efficient recommendation tools that hone in on what a band sounds like much more accurately and efficiently than a drawing or photo, and we easily and instantly look up lyrics, album credits and other information online — more than we ever could’ve crammed into an album sleeve.

Again, I want to stress that I’m not anti-visual or anti-art… I’m just saying that the idea of  an album cover and album artwork is outdated.

What do you guys think? And because this argument is surely (at least to some degree) tied to the way in which you were brought up, please also tell us your age.

An impassioned email from a reader reacting to my post about Shadows Fall covering “Bark at the Moon” the other day got me thinking that this would be a fun poll to conduct. The reader, David H., vehemently believes that Jake E. Lee was Ozzy’s best guitarist and thinks everything Zakk Wylde has done has been mediocre at best. If you’re a regular reader of this site you should know how we feel on the matter, but we want to know what YOU feel! So tell us.

For the sake of this poll, only guitarists who actually appeared on Ozzy recordings count. So no Joe Holmes, and sorry, no Gus G. (yet) either.

n

A lot has been made of the “big four” shows happening this Summer in Europe, and with good reason: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax were some of the biggest and most influential metal bands of their era. Somewhat miraculously they’re all still around touring and making new music today.

While seeing old favorites live is a no-brainer, new music from legacy acts isn’t necessarily. Anthrax haven’t released new music since 2003, so for the sake of this poll we’re going to include Testament as an honorary “big four” member (and really, shouldn’t they be part of a “big five”?). So, of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Testament, consider which band is still putting out the best music today.

Of the aforementioned bands’ most recent releases, which is the best?

After posting our own year-end lists for 2009, we asked you, oh ye MetalSucks faithful, to tell us what you thought the best metal album of the year was. And you have answered, overwhelmingly voting for the latest from Atlanta’s psychedlic prog-metal masters:

Interestingly enough, the album that got the second most number of votes (although it still lagged wwwwaaayyy behind Skye) was Anaal Nathrakh’s In the Constellation of the Black Widow – we’ll let you guys decide if that’s because people stopped voting when they saw Mastodon were the clear front-runners, or just because Anaal Nathrakh’s fans are particularly loyal.

And now we can all start arguing about 2010!!!

-Axl & Vince

We published our lists. Now it’s your turn.

Here’s how it’s going to work. Rather than post a regular poll with hundreds of options, we’re going to conduct this poll via the comments. Here are the instructions:

Step 1) Decide what your favorite metal album of 2009 is. You only get to pick one.

Step 2) Search the comments of this post for your choice (Apple-F on a Mac, Control-F on a PC).

Step 3) If it’s already listed, hit the “reply” button underneath and simply post “+1″ as your comment. If it’s not listed yet, add it, making sure you include the band name and album title and double-checking that you’ve spelled both correctly.

That’s it! When we re-open the MS Mansion Gates for 2010 we’ll tally up the “+1″s and declare a winner. Nothing is preventing you from adding multiple +1s, but don’t be that douche. Have fun… go!

I love playing ths game. The famed Metallica + GN’R + Faith No More run would have to be close to the top of my list. Soundgarden supporting Spoonman. Motley Crue supporting Too Fast For Love. King’s X on the Dogman tour, for sure… check out this performance [sent in by Shane Gillis] of the title track from that incredible record, filmed on the short-lived Jon Stewart show no less.

If you had a time machine that could take you back to any one specific tour (but ONLY one), who would you go see?

-VN

These days a lot of metal record labels seem to be releasing “widgets” — those embeddable flash jobbies with streaming music, photos, tour dates, etc — to promote new albums. Three years ago when MySpace was all the rage this made sense since, hypothetically, fans would embed these widgets on their pages thus spreading the word at the low price of whatever it cost the label to develop the widget. But it’s 2009 now; MySpace is still plenty vibrant as a music delivery tool but virtually dead in terms of social networking; Facebook and Twitter don’t support embedding; and, as a blog proprietor, I can say I’d much rather link out to another site than embed a widget that takes time to load. Yet labels still seem to be pumping out widgets like Gene Simmons pumps out verbal diarrhea.

So, my questions to you, MetalSucks Minions: do you embed widget on your pages? If you see a widget on someone else’s page, do you bother to click/listen/explore it? Are widgets cool or are they lame? As usual, feel free to elaborate in the comments.

Record labels, you can thank me for the free market research later. I’ll accept payment in the form of beer at CMJ. Lots of it.

n

At some point in the middle of this decade, beards on metal dudes became fashionable. Not goatees, not chin-strips, not ‘staches (the latter will never be fashionable in the highly homophobic metal community), but big, bushy, manly beards. But not all was hunky-dory in beard-ville; cries of “hipster!” and “beardo!” resonated through the land, with purists claiming beards are not metal. So…

n

It was fun while it lasted… having places to buy music in NYC, that is. With Circuit City gone, Best Buy cutting shelf-space and many independent stores gone the way of Tower, the final nail was pounded into the coffin of physical music retail in New York City this weekend as the Virgin Megastore in Union Square closed its doors for the last time. Virgin was the only place left you knew you could get just about anything — albeit sometimes for a high price — and was always a fun diversion or time-killer that would inevitably end in some totally unnecessary but killer CD purchases. With MySpace and file-sharing now the prevalent way of finding out about new music it seems quaint that I’d often go into Virgin (or Tower) and buy CDs solely from sampling them on listening stations, but I can’t tell you how many good CDs I found that way.

With physical music stores an increasing rarity and a modicum of online music options (both legal and illegal), how do you get your music these?

n

[Thanks to Nona T. for the Virgin Megastore pic.]

Metal trends come and metal trends go. In these Webernet-enriched times it happens faster than ever before. Whereas we used to have two or three loose sub-genres of metal cooking at any given time, now we’ve got tons of ‘em — some good, some not so good. So, in the current metal landscape, what micro-genre most needs to be obliterated from the world’s collective hard drives? Vote below then mouth off in the comments.

A few years ago Slayer performed Reign in Blood in its entirety, a year later Metallica did Master of Puppets, and now Exodus are gonna do Bonded by Blood, Judas Priest are doing British Steel, Motley Crue are doing Dr. Feelgood, Ratt are doing Out of the Cellar, Aerosmith are doing Toys in the Attic, Melvins are doing Houdini, etc. What does the MetalSucks Haterade Mafia think; is this trend lame, or is it cool?

n

Mastodon are without a doubt one of the most important metal bands to come out of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement, if not one of the most important metal bands of this decade. Last week’s career-best debut of their new record Crack the Skye proves just that. While there will be always be some who don’t get or just don’t like Mastodon, we’re willing to bet most of you do. So which is their best album to date? It’s a tough call. Vote below then tell us why; and, of course, if you hate the band altogether, don’t be shy.

n

It’s a simple, yet controversial question. Vote below, then tell us why in the comments.

First person to say “Gary Cherone” gets banned.

n

The question is simple enough but the answer sure ain’t easy. Who was or is the most important member of Metallica, past and present? Take all things into consideration — musical ability, songwriting, charisma, performance, motivation, and intangibles, aka the “X” factor. For the sake of keeping things realistic, I’ve left out original bass player Ron McGovney, but I can’t imagine any of you would’ve voted for him anyway; and if you’re that one dude who would have, congratulations, you’re a douchebag.

Vote below and tell us why in the comments!

Lots of you have been emailing us to tell us that Wrath has leaked. Thanks for the memo, but we’ve had it for weeks, you sillies! In any case, by now those with enough motivation and brianpower to seek out the leaked album have had a chance to listen to and digest the latest from Lamb of God, undoubtedly one of the biggest (and best, IMO) modern metal bands of the ’00s. So what do you think? How does it stack against prior LoG releases? Vote below, and tell us why in the comments. Then check out the very awesome “Escape the Plague” contest Lamb of God is running in conjunction with the new album release.

n

The results are in from our last poll, in which you voted by a landslide that Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy was the best new album from a legacy act in 2008. 2009 is right around the corner, and it’s already shaping up to be a pretty big year in metal if for no other reason than the fact that 5 of the original “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” bands are all releasing new records within two months of each other. Which “big”* release are you looking forward to most?

n

*Yes, we know this is a small sampling of new records slated for ’09. For the sake of this poll I’m just concerned with the bigger releases.

2008 was a pretty big year for so-called “legacy” rock and metal releases. Metallica, AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses — arguably three of the biggest rock/metal acts of all time — all released new albums to varying fanfare. So now that you’ve had some time to brew on how these records stack up against the bands’ older material and against each other… which is your favorite? Vote, then weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.

n

Concert etiquette — Helping a fallen bro in the pit to his feet. Not standing too close to the person in front of you. Letting chicks stand in front of you so they can see. Not being that dickhead who pushes his way to the front. And that eternal question of the concert-going experience, reminded to us by MetalSucks reader Keith G… to wear the band’s t-shirt you’re going to see live or not? And the closely-related issue of bands wearing their own t-shirts on stage; cool or egotistical? As usual, we bring it to you, the people. Tell us.

n

n

We are beyond spoiled; every day tons of packages arrive at the gates of the MetalSucks Mansion full of CDs from superstar and local bands alike. On top of that, net-savvy publicists regularly send us links to download full albums well before their release date. Needless to say we don’t ever pay for music. I can’t speak for Axl, but I feel pretty out of touch with how people actually acquire music — physical or digital? buy or steal? what medium/method? So I figured we’d just ask ya’ll. Given, this is a website, so the results will probably be somewhat skewed — but you never know. Presumably some people actually still go to the store and buy CDs, ’cause record labels still make ‘em. So you tell us: how do you get your new music?