On the momentous occasion of Code Orange Kids‘ recent signing to Deathwish, I became aware of their recently released Cycles (Mayfly). For a bunch of Pittsburgh teenagers, this is some weird shit, man. Running counter to their youth crew contemporaries, these Kids have more of a Botch/Converge thing going on, as evidenced by despair-laden cuts like “Walls (We Lose Each Other).” It’s swell to see the young people turn their palpable vexation into something far from formulaic.

Click to read more…

No regrets? A better title for Ace Frehley’s memoir might be No Consequences. Parts of Frehley’s life play out like an episode of COPS, except that the fuzz show up at a multimillion dollar mansion rather than a tenement. Cars are wrecked. Bottles of booze are chugged. Drugs are snorted. World class tools like Gene Simmons are annoyed. And in the middle of this, Space Ace manages to convince every kid with heavy metal dreams to pick up a guitar.

Click to read more…

Despite what their name might suggest, The Safety Fire are not an indie rock band. The group, having toured with the likes of Periphery and Monuments, are a progressive metalcore band from the UK and their first proper album, Grind the Ocean (hooray for still verbing the noun!), is a rock solid prog metal production that is far better than its fretboard over-caffeination gives it any right to be. The Safety Fire sound right at home within the scene that bred such bands as Sikth, Architects, and The Arusha Accord and, much like those noise specialists, they’re spastic, crazy technical, and quite melodic at the same time. But unlike most of these names (save for Sikth who will always hold a warm and fuzzy place in my heart), The Safety Fire are actually pretty listenable over an extended period of time.

Click to read more…

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out four free records by bands that probably have several Emperor albums in their collection.

Autolatry – The Hill (self-released)

Tired of viking lore? Bored of Satanic paeans and anti-Christian odes? Had all the rehashed Lovecraft you can take? Then get thee to the Bandcamp page of Autolatry, a Connecticut black metal band that write about the stirring history of…New England. While the region may not have the mythological attraction of Scandinavia, it’s rich with wars and witches and beheadings, all of which get aired in Autolatry’s debut The Hill. The music is totally pro, a mix of early Satyricon’s ever-shifting harmonies and some sinewy, Keep of Kalessin-esque muscle, clearly recorded by guitarist/bassist Dave Kaminsky without losing any of its crackling energy. In fact, The Hill is good enough that you’ll be tempted to overlook the band’s silly spoken word segments and unfortunate name (“Did he say ‘Aaah, toiletry’?”).

(3.5 horns up outta 5)

Name your price for The Hill here.

Click to read more…

Not enough can be said about the miraculous change Goatwhore made on 2009’s Carving Out the Eyes of God. A relatively small tweak — the inclusion of the occasional hummable thrash riff — suddenly opened the band up: instead of a cold, perfect-to-a-fault killing machine, they became a well-functioning doomsday device. From there, they just spat out a series of surprisingly well-crafted songs. Not much has changed on their latest, Blood for the Master, but not much needed to: Goatwhore’s latter-day appeal rests in perfecting a model then wringing as much as they can out of it. After seeing dozens of once-mighty bands stumble over tone-deaf prog or ill-used pop songwriting, staying the course could be the best decision they’ve made. If it ain’t broke, just keep reappropriating Exhorder riffs to maximum effect.

Click to read more…

I approached Losin’ It‘s Danger Zone (Life To Live) immediately after an interminable spreadsheet slog that left me numb and potentially volatile. From the eponymous intro track, this debut was chicken soup for my hardcore soul, though delivered via waterboarding. “Fuck Off” chokeslammed my negativity’s fat face, cracking my skull open to receive what seemed like motivational messages (“Check Your Head”). Don’t let the weirdo cover art turn you off.

Click to read more…

I haven’t really been on board with Lamb of God actively since As the Palaces Burn. I’ve kept up with them, but after a few spins (especially with their last two albums), I’ve been disinterested. The familiar Lamb of God sound is there, but the appeal isn’t. It’s not bad music, just sort of… existent. And for a band often hailed as one of the torchbearers of modern metal, that’s not enough. True, they aren’t the same scrappy bunch of Southern longhairs that made the weird, dark groove metal of New American Gospel – nor should they be — but for me, that didn’t excuse reasonably inoffensive metal on cruise control. But after a while, I recognized that it could simply be me and my relationship with LoG fandom, and chocked it up to a “no offense, but this isn’t for me anymore” frame of mind.

Regularly, here is where I would say, “But Lamb of God’s latest, Resolution, restores my faith in their ability to slay motherfuckers like a hybrid of Ted Bundy and Genghis Kahn,” or something less caffeinated and hackneyed. But I’m stopping short of that, because there’s still that slickness Lamb of God added around the time of Ashes of the Wake that doesn’t sit well with me. That being said, this is the first album where I feel like they’re comfortable in their role as a well-funded major label act. Sure, the production is slick, and there are a few bizarro-radio singles here, but more importantly, the music sticks while still being thoroughly Lamb of God. The songwriting may be a little more streamlined, but there’s also more underneath it than there had been as of late. Perhaps Resolution is not the bridge upon which old and new LoG fans can high-five eachother — if such a thing is even in the cards — but a little more of a warm welcome than I’ve come to expect from them.

Click to read more…

A389 Recordings‘ opening salvo of 2012 includes the self-titled debut 7″ from Unholy Majesty, a 90s-nodding, sample-happy Clevo-core act–from the United Kingdom. Lest geography concern you, these three cuts never lack in authenticity. Unabashedly metallic, with flecks of thrashy bravado in places, “The Owl & The Serpent” spits and grinds like all good Integrity-referencing shit should. If this even remotely sounds like your thing then trust me: this is your thing.

Click to read more…

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out a bunch of stuff by bands what don’t speak ‘Merican proper.

One of the very few shitty things about English being the world’s lingua franca is that native English speakers have little incentive to learn another language. What I wouldn’t give to travel freely in France or Mexico, weaseling my way into strange underground absinthe bars and illegal cockfighting rings because I understood all the absinthe and cockfighting-related idioms flung about… but no, the best I can do after six years of high school Spanish is order mulitas with the proper accent at the taco truck down the street (the lady that takes my order usually smiles obligingly but answers me in English).

On the other hand, plenty of foreign metal bands have every incentive to write and sing in English, even if they suck at it. Here are four free releases by bands whose mother tongue is probably not the same as yours.

Click to read more…

On this attention-grabbing co-released split with savage core-mongers Nails, Skin Like Iron further embrace the quasi-blackened rock n roll tinkered with on last year’s Arrival (review), which shook me harder than a teen mom. Hooky and sinister, “Disappear” should at last endear them to the metal audience. Nails, conversely, do what Nails do, which is starting to get a bit too predictable, and seems naked when positioned so close to a far more dynamic band’s sound. Groovy art, too.

Click to read more…

[The seven-inch record is a cornerstone for hardcore and the format continues to serves as an essential platform for disseminating music. Characteristically shorter song lengths make it possible for a band in this scene to make a statement over the course of multiple tracks and provide it in a way that is affordable. The purpose of the Inch Scraper column is to identify and offer short critiques of some new and recent releases in the 7" format.]

The latest installment in Give‘s informal multi-label singles series, Flower Head (Youngblood) further exploits aspects of that mid-90s post-hardcore sound that so few contemporary artists care to anymore. That’s what makes this DC act so special, at least to this greying alt rock aficionado. The titular A-side does the angular thing with an almost sleazy swagger, while the flip “Kiss The Flame” goes full Quicksand on our collective asses.

Click to read more…

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out When the Revolution Comes, Everything Will Be Beautiful by The United Sons of Toil.

I can still remember the profound impact that Propagandhi had on my teenage psyche. Despite many gentle lessons from my Marxist-leaning father about the historical roots of class warfare, I bristled at the lyric “’Publicly subsidized! Privately profitable!’ / The anthem of the upper-tier, puppeteer untouchable / Focus a moment, nod in approval / Bury our heads in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials” from the song “…And We Thought That Nation-States Were a Bad Idea,” off 1996’s Less Talk, More Rock. That lyric, overwritten as it is, conveyed an intellectual rigor and desire for confrontation that seemed completely foreign to my 14-year-old self. I loved that record, and still do. But I recognize now that I was responding to its end-of-the-rope energy more than Propagandhi’s ideas.

In plenty of forms of extreme music, where confrontation is de rigueur and soapboxing is a national pastime, the music’s sonic force can overwhelm the message. In fact, musical extremity often is the message. For a band with an agenda more nuanced than “fuck the universe,” that’s just not good enough. It’s got to strike a balance between pedagogy and catharsis.

That’s one of many reasons why I appreciate what Wisconsin’s The United Sons of Toil have done on their third album, When the Revolution Comes, Everything Will Be Beautiful.

Click to read more…

[The seven-inch record is a cornerstone for hardcore and the format continues to serves as an essential platform for disseminating music. Characteristically shorter song lengths make it possible for a band in this scene to make a statement over the course of multiple tracks and provide it in a way that is affordable. The purpose of the Inch Scraper column is to identify and offer short critiques of some new and recent releases in the 7" format.]

What a raucous way to start the New Year! No Sir boasts members from a handful of California acts — including personal faves All Teeth — and leaves a vitriolic impression on Holy Land (Family Drugs). Mostly uptempo, filthy metallic hardcore with a D.I.Y. streak, the band apply a subtle sneer here-and-there to make caustic cuts like “The Kingston Beat” even more acerbic. “WRSHP” and “Pharmacy City” are short, though anything but sweet, while lengthier bookend “Rat Boots” snarls to a close.

Click to read more…

You can’t blame me for being wary of a solo project by Kevin Hufnagel, the guitarist for Dysrhythmia and the revived Gorguts. To kneejerk cynics like yours truly, it spells disaster: a clusterfuck of riffs and solos too noodly for either of those bands would be saying something. And the other end of the spectrum could be worse: an acoustic project that’s 40 minutes of empty, gnarled arpeggios reverberating off of nothing but the listener’s dwindling patience. Good guitarists left to their own devices run a higher risk of getting lost so far up their own asses that their spines snap like popsicle sticks. So thank our goddamn lucky stars that Hufnagel (a man who’s name seems to be destined to be shouted by Jerry Lewis) chose to instead make a beautiful album filled with lush, amorphous textures in Transparancies. A far, far cry from the dissonant prog/avant-metal of his most well-known bands, it’s just shy of forty-five minutes of densely textured abstractions that wander back and forth through emotional residencies, but never definitively landing in one. But it’s the ambiguousness that drives Transparencies, often reaching for a point that may or may not be there.

Click to read more…

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader,” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out a bunch of stuff from Australia.

It’s been fucking FREEZING in Los Angeles this past week. And as usually happens when it gets lower than sixty degrees, I put on me long johns, drink some cocoa and turn my ears towards warmer climes. Like Australia, for whom it’s the dead of summer right now. Except it’s been raining dingos and wallabies there recently. Oh well. Here’s some free shit from Australia.

Click to read more…

Few bands with longevity remain with one record label for very long. Grievances, sales underperformance, lineup shakeups, and myriad other issues make stability a lazy, laughable ideal. Chances are, bands who’ve been around for decades will see albums go out of print for one reason or another. The most obvious and welcome remedy is for the rights holder to put out a proper reissue, perhaps tied to an anniversary of some sort. That’s not always as simple as it sounds, and in some cases bands opt to do something far more radical: re-recording.

So then, considerable baggage in tow, comes the arrival of Sick Of It All’s Nonstop. Culling from two-and-a-half decades of material, the NYHC heroes rejigger twenty of their tracks in their current metal-tinged sound, abetted by producer Tue Madsen. The sticker slapped on the cover of the “deluxe” import edition boasts: “MAXIMIZED AND IMPROVED NEW RECORDINGS OF SOIA CLASSICS.” This sort of revisionism can provide disastrous in many cases. There are ethical and even existential questions in play. In a hardcore scene obsessed with multi-colored first pressings, the threat intensifies. Is it right for some kid to hear the 2011 version of “It’s Clobbering Time” before or instead of the original?

Click to read more…

It feels a little odd reviewing stuff like the Pyramids/Horseback split and the new House of Low Culture release for a site with “metal” right there in the goddamn name. They aren’t “not metal” in the “they’re almost more of a shoegaze band” sense, but are aggressively unconventional in terms of even basic popular music construct. In fact, the only thing even slightly metal about either of these releases is less than two-and-a-half minutes at the beginning of Horseback’s only solo song on the aforementioned split. And theoretically, that’s fine: there’s no rule on the books that says being involved in heavy bands — as members of House of Low Culture have been and are — means you can’t take part in projects that are the antithesis of metal altogether. Or at least there shouldn’t be.

But these two releases pose a very interesting question: does a project’s mere existence in contrast to its creators’ most well-received work make it worthwhile? Or, in this case, does it make it even listenable?

Click to read more…

We generally use the Reviews category at MetalSucks to highlight lesser known bands that we feel could use the exposure instead of slapping an “official” but ultimately subjective and arbitrary rating on albums and bands we already cover on the site ad nauseam. But sometimes once a big album comes out we kind of forget about it; once the press releases, new track premieres, music videos and random tidbits stop coming at a breakneck pace and the record label is less focused on producing that big first week sales number, suddenly there’s a lot less to post about and certain records get lost in the fray of whatever’s new that’s come along since. Today I want to briefly reviews two of those albums, Animals as Leaders’ Weightless and Mastodon’s The Hunter.

Click to read more…

One thing’s for damn sure: Coliseum know what they’re doing. They’ve been around long enough and they’ve seen parts of the world some of us (myself included) still dream of visiting; needles to say, the notoriety they’ve built up has been well earned. That worldliness, minus the pretentious undertones you might expect from a band as well traveled, is articulated quite well on their latest EP, Parasites.

 

Click to read more…

Locrian’s André Foisy pitched his band’s new album The Clearing to me as “probably the most accessible thing we’ve done yet.” I can hear what he means, in that this album contains some of the most obviously human moments in the Chicago drone trio’s canon. The mere existence of the somnolent piano arpeggios in “Chalk Point” get Foisy and his bandmates Terence Hannum and Steven Hess as close to “pretty” as they’ve gone thus far; the fact that you may identify shards of the feeling that that “song” evokes while listening to Grails, or Bohren & der Club of Gore, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, suggests that this combo is expanding its range of intended effects beyond queasiness.

Click to read more…