Longtime MS reader Steve Berquist chimed in recently with an email about Japanese band Maximum The Hormone, whose name alone is enough to elicit a “what the fuck?” from every corner of any room. But Steve was right on the money with this one. Here’s his description of the band:

Maximum the Hormone are a Japanese hard rock/metal band that have been around since the late 90’s. Their music is mainly nu-metal with J-pop choruses, and some skate punk and Andrew W.K. party-rock thrown in. All those elements seem like they should be fucking terrible, particularly when mixed together. However, I can’t stop listening to the stuff. It really, genuinely rocks hard. The riffs are great, all three vocalists are sweet, and the compositions are impeccable.

I was quite skeptical at first, but the video for “Bikini Sports Ponchin” (???), above, totally sold me. The visuals are, uh, interesting, and now the damn song is stuck in my head. It sure isn’t ground-breaking or tr00 or br00tal or whathaveyou, but it is well-played and especially damn catchy, and that I can respect.

More crazy Maximum the Hormone music recommended by Steve after the jump:

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So demandeth MS band-suggester Dan Wolfson, who first alerted us to Wormed back in August of last year. Back then I was inclined to agree with Dan that Wormed are “the most brutal and fucked up band ever,” and listening to Wormed now for the first time since then, I’m once again on board the Wormed train. Dan sent in the above track, “Tunnel of Ions.” Brutal and fucked up indeed.

-VN

Probably not the same guy.

Reader Brian Twombly e-mailed us about “three bands you seriously need to hear,” and said it “pains me” that we’ve never talked about said bands before.

Okay, Brian. Your wish is our command. Bring it, sucka.

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Thrilled to see Last Chance to Reason getting some recognition, reader Kyle Bragg has now sent us some other metal bands from Maine, in hopes that the state “will start to be recognized for things other than lobsters, blueberries, and being confused as part of Canada.” I dunno, Kyle — your lobsters are fucking delicious! I could eat five right now, no problem.

But okay, okay, we’ll give this a shot. Let’s see if any of the bands Kyle suggested can, indeed, make me forget about lobster.

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Reader Sam Britch wrote us a very nice e-mail asking us to give some exposure to some Alaskan bands. I only know two Alaskan metal bands off the top of my very pot-filled head, Turbid North and 36 Crazyfists, but those bands are both okay by me, so… yeah, let’s do this thing.

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(from TheChive.com)

Like it or hate it, dubstep has made its presence felt in the metal scene and it is not going anywhere any time soon. Ever since I first posted about “djentstep” it seems like we’ve been getting just about one reader “this is so aewsome you gotta check it out their the best!!!” email per day with another link to a metal/dubstep mash-up. And as Axl reported yesterday, even Korn are getting in on the dubstep party to the displeasure of ears everywhere.

One of the better dubstep jamz to come our way is this interpretation of one of my favorite Darkest Hour songs, “Convalescence,” done by Arkturus. Reader Isaac Lunsford sent this in, and apparently the DH dudes were so tickled by it they posted it on their own Facebook page:

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Samuel A. Favata recommended Russian outfit My Autumn to us, and what they have going for them is that they wrote a song with some really catchy parts, so they actually do kinda stand out from the mehtalcore pack.

But what they have going against them is pretty much everything else. On the most superficial level, those shorts and that jacket should be considered a crime against vision, and the singer’s haircut went out of style with the Nazis. As is almost always the case, choreographed stage moves and clean vocals turn out to be a major faux pas. That breakdown is as about as unique as breathing. And I have no clue what the what is going on with the blinking/winking thing at 1:02, but holy shit don’t ever do that you creepy Commie pederast.

But just to be clear, I do think they’re way better than Emmure.

-AR

Reader Jonathan Williams brought it to our attention some time ago that we rarely devote coverage to funeral doom. And the man is correct. I’d venture to say it’s because there aren’t that many funeral doom bands making waves these days, but Jonathan would clearly beg to differ based on the list of funeral doom bands he emailed us. In case you haven’t figured it out yet… let’s take a listen to those bands after the wake.

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I know I’m not speaking singularly when I say that MetalSucks loves Karnivool. Those aussies just got it goin’ on, no doubt about it, and while we like their records Karnivool are really best experienced in the live sphere. Total pros, tight as a virgin, and they always sound spectacular.

So when reader Tom Rae recommended fellow Aussies Chaos Divine since “your site seems to be in love with karnivool,” I obviously felt compelled to give his suggestion an immediate listen. And then I proceeded to give “One Door” three more listens in a row, because that’s just how awesome the song is. Chaos Divine are a touch more traditionally metal than Karnivool, like how Karnivool might’ve turned out if those dudes had listened to a couple of Opeth records growing up. If it seems like the song starts of slow/soft, well, just give it some time…

Thoughts? Discuss.

-VN

So we get a sent a lot of technically and progressively-minded metal, and, honestly, most of it is the very definition of “riff salad.” Except that I’m tempted to call it “note soup,” ’cause, really, the music is just that flaccid. It seems like everyone and their mother can play these days, but no one knows how to actually structure a damn song. So all of these not-very-good-anyway bands ending up sounding more or less exactly the same.

Enter Amog Symphony, who were suggested to us by reader Jared Lucas.

This is a two-person band; Vishal J. Singh, who does the guitar/bass/synths/programming/sound effects, is from Mumbai, while Jim Richman, who plays the actual drums and does “metal percussion SFX,” is from Richmond. You would probably not guess that a dude from India and a dude from Virginia would make the best creative bedfellows, and I can’t tell from looking at Amog Symphony’s Bandcamp, Facebook, Soundcloud, or MySpace pages if they’re ever actually even in the same room or if they’re working together from half a world apart. But whatever they’re doing, it’s working.

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Is anyone still sober? No? Not a one of you?

GREAT! That makes this the perfect time to listen to something loud and obnoxious.

So. This morning I asked for some good suggestions for Irish metal bands, and suggestions you have been a-leavin’. I obviously can’t listen to every single band on this list because come on (and also a vast amount of you didn’t provide links, which is stinky), but I am now going to attempt to listen a whole bunch of ‘em. Man, I hope that these bands so not suck.

OH! And before we go any further, Go raibh maith agat to for pointing out there is new Altar of Plagues music available right now. Headbang here. It’ll put hair on your ass.

And tá brón orm to Brendan McGregor, who pointed out that I wrote “Patty’s,” not “Paddy’s.” I apologize for this most heinous error… but I’m Jewish, so bear with me, okay? I’m trying here.

Okay! Here we go with the suggestions…

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Reader Dan Wolfson is so passionate about Anomalous and their new album, Ohmnivalent, that he e-mailed us about the below song multiple times. Now, I hate to reward that kind of behavior, because GUYS I PROMISE WE GOT YOUR E-MAILS BUT PLEASE UNDERSTAND WE GET A LOT OF E-MAILS AND WE CAN’T DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE SO JUST CHILL THE FUCK OUT, but I made an exception this time, because I was in a giving mood.

So, yeah, this band sounds like they can play. You know who else sounds like they can play? EVERY TECH DEATH BAND ON THE PLANET. I know it’s a cliché, but just being good is no longer good enough. The technology has made it too easy to create and spread art; perhaps now more than ever, you need to do something to distinguish yourself from the pack.

Writing good songs would be a step in the right direction. I’ve listened to the below three times now, and I still can’t remember any of it. But pretty much any riff from any song off of Origin’s Antithesis will get stuck in my head pretty much right away — and those dudes can play.

I feel like I’ve been writing the words “this band is by no means terrible” an awful lot lately, but it applies here. They’re good. But they need to be better than that.

-AR

We didn’t mention recent events in Japan this past Friday because, well, they weren’t metal-related. Sure, some touring bands, like Iron Maiden and Murderdolls, suddenly had to cancel their show plans, and High on Fire, miraculously, survived their second major natural disaster in as many months (the first being the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand), but that hardly seemed worth discussing in the midst of this major tragedy.

Then this morning we got the following e-mail from reader  Daisuke Kamiya:

“Hello, I am current university student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an avid reader of Metalsucks. And if you read the email subject, I am assure not here to beg you guys to donate for Japan. All I’m here to ask is if you guys can post an awareness of what happening in my home country Japan and if you guys can just post a yahoo website to make metal heads around the world be aware that they too can help out.

“As we all know on March 11th 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 8.9 occurred 80 miles off the coast of Sendai, Japan, 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. This devastating earthquake is the worst in the history of Japan, causing disastrous floods that obliterated tens of thousands of buildings, devouring almost anything in its path. The government of Japan has estimated an over 10,000 death toll from this catastrophic event.

“And in return, here are some recommended pure Japanese metal bands that people should check out.”

Of course, we’re only too happy to oblige Daisuke. So here’s that website with a list of organizations you donate to if you want to help out.

And after the jump, check out the bands Daisuke recommended… with my own snarky commentary, of course. Because, unfortunately, your country undergoing a horrific ordeal does not necessarily make you talented.

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It turns out that some of our readers have pretty good taste. Ssome of them even have VARIED taste, which is always a shocker; more often than not we get emails full of tech-death bands, or full of black metal bands, or whathaveyou. But not Ron Deuce. Dude is right on, and like us, his taste within metal are pretty all over the place but they’re consistently good. Let’s take a look at his picks: Yog, Severed Savior, Loom and Celestine.

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Best recommendation of the week, so far at least, comes from reader Kyle Van Kampen, who suggested Australia’s Sleepmakeswaves. Like This Will Destroy You, I don’t think you could really describe their music as “metal” — but you could definitely still describe it as “extreme.” As in, “THIS MUSIC IS EXTREMELY GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL AND SAD.”

If you go over to their Bandcamp page, Sleepmakeswaves have a bunch of stuff for pay-what-you-like. As far as I can tell, this song ain’t no fluke.

-AR

Reader Mat Cross sent us a link to Vancouver’s Unleash the Archers with a message insisting that “YOU HAVE TO CHECK OUT THIS BAND THEY RULE SO HARD!!” Well, I appreciate Mat’s enthusiasm, and I’m all for bands that rule so hard, so I decided to check the band out ASAP.

And, uh, I honestly am not quite sure what I think.

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Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems like there was a week or two there where we weren’t being sent a lot of reader recommendations… and then over the past four or five days, I feel like we’ve just been bombarded with “YOU HAVE TO CHECK OUT THIS BAND THEY RULE SO HARD!!!” e-mails. Since it seems to be a slow news morning, I thought I’d go through a bunch of ‘em, picking out bands completely at random.

I haven’t listened to any of these bands in advance of writing this, so the following column will be one of those “Let’s discover the music together!”-type deals. Inevitably, some/most of these groups are gonna blow, but hopefully we’ll find a gem or two in the pile as well.

And so…

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I’d never heard of Motherboar before readers Sage Francis and Phil Ward both e-mailed us about their new video, “Croctosquatch,” just two hours apart; Vince watched the clip first and recommended I check it out, and I’m glad he did! I’m lukewarm on the music, which strikes me as being able-but-typical beardo stuff… but the video itself, which is an homage to the kinds of 80′s slasher schlock and creature features I just can’t get enough of, is so much better than 99% of all other metal videos we’ve seen so far this year (or last year, for that matter). If you ever enjoyed a Friday the 13th movie or something like “The Raft” portion of Creepshow 2, definitely check this shit out… fair warning, it’s got lots of boobies and blood, so don’t watch it at work, okay?

“Croctosquatch” comes of off Motherboar’s The Beast Becomes The Servant, which was just released on Born of Fire Records. You can stream the entire album here.

-AR

Once again the MetalSucks readership has proven that it knows what’s up with another great band recommendation. The latest reader-suggested band to impress the hell outta me is Italy’s Amia Venera Landscape. Since the two MS readers that suggested this band did such a fine job describing their sound (and I’m feeling lazy at the moment), I’m gonna let them try and sell you on this band just like they sold me. First, reader Filip Johannesson:

I suppose you at Metalsucks all approve of bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Cult of Luna and The Ocean? Well, how about a mixture of those three?

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Yesterday I attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase “elephants marching riff” by pointing out some reader suggestions that, even if they were cool riffs, did not meet the definition for this particular trope. Today, I am going to highlight some of the reader-suggested riffs that I actually think do meet that definition.

Now, these aren’t ALL the riffs that you guys suggested… I’ve cherry picked some in the interest of time. (For example, a lot of you suggested various riffs by Chimaira and Gojira. Since I already pointed out that both of those bands are really good at writing elephants marching riffs, I’m not going to include any additional examples from those bands here.) So don’t have a conniption if your riff didn’t make the list.

And so…

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