[The seven-inch record is a cornerstone for hardcore music. Unlike metal that has diminished vinyl while perversely fetishizing it, hardcore continues to depend on the format 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 this column is to identify and offer short critiques of some new and recent releases in the 7" format.]

If you attended this year’s CMJ and didn’t catch at least one of Trash Talk‘s five sets, it’s your own damn fault. The brisk material on Awake (True Panther Sounds) surpasses last year’s Eyes & Nines as well as earlier singles. The title track is an absolute banger, like Circle Jerks on PCP–furious, yet still so catchy. Their photo adorning the Arts section of the New York Times, Trash Talk are perhaps the right band at the right time, and dizzying cuts like “Blind Evolution” prove they deserve what acclaim they seem so poised to get.

Santa Barbara, CA’s Minus may have only just released their debut 7″ Hard Feelings (Triple-B), but there’s nothing in the content that suggests that. What we get are five downtuned tracks of bummed out metallic hardcore. The vocals are intelligible, revealing lyrics stuffed with doubt, depression, and self-hate. “Weight” just devastates with a severe negative outlook and heavy riffage. Minus aren’t about overcoming the odds; they way they see it, we’ve already lost.

Matt Henderson must have been storing these riffs for a decade. How else could the former Madball guitarist sonically recreate that group’s 90s salad days with his latest project? A veritable hardcore supergroup, S.O.S. windmills all imitators on I Owe You Nothing (Reaper). Throughout, Terror frontman Scott Vogel lives out his Hardcore Fantasy League dreams as Freddy Cricien’s surrogate, no more apparent than on the title track, a pitch-perfect sequel to “Look My Way.” The sound of reinvigoration on wax…

-GS

You’ve gotta feel for melodic death metal bands in 2011. They’re like the birdhouse builders of metal: sure, building a birdhouse isn’t an easy thing, and takes time to master your craft. But then after years of making quality birdhouses, suddenly Home Goods and Wal-Mart are shitting them out by the thousands, and people just go there to get them instead of to you, because they‘re cheaper and get the job done (the job here being housing birds). Then one day, here you are, a decent-enough birdhouse maker in a world that doesn’t care enough to spend money on handcrafted birdhouses, and you theoretically have to start over at 53, when all you were really good at was building birdhouses. So your options are make a half-assed attempt at another career, or continue being fairly good at making birdhouses in an ever-increasingly limited market. If you’re lucky, the economy will improve and people will arbitrarily decide that birdhouses are a thing at which to throw their money. But can you afford to bet on that kind of luck?

Crafting competent melodic death metal isn’t easy, either– let alone good melodeath — and if you’ve put enough time into your band, you have to stick with what you know. So, basically, Nightrage’s Insidious is an album that would have taken 2003 by storm that sounds perfectly fine now, just a little lifeless after years of its genre of choice being pounded into the ground. How many more times can we hear straight-up melodic death metal riffs with a lacquer of big-ass studio production and still be interested? Nightrage are fine at what they do, but before the inevitable melodic death metal revival of 2016, they need to be doing more to justify their existence.

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Trapped Under Ice, Big Kiss Goodnight (Reaper)
Baltimore isn’t the first city that comes to mind when talking about hardcore. Yet the brisk, fulminant rise of Trapped Under Ice compels us to take notice of Charm City. You don’t listen to Big Kiss Goodnight; you benchpress it, each of the thirteen cuts a document of Justice Tripp’s eyes-wide-open rage. More to do with NYHC than that of nearby D.C., Trapped Under Ice appear to be the long-awaited spiritual successors to Madball’s empire. The issues Tripp covers certainly aren’t the exclusive domain of his hometown; they’re the same problems countless young Americans are struggling with today, where politicians’ inability to govern leaves an entire generation saddled with no foreseeable future. On “Victimized”, when Tripp shouts “The American Dream is a lie / That’s why I say ‘I was born to die’” you know he believes it. So do the band’s followers.

(4 out of 5 horns)

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Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Sorry for the delay. Been extra busy writing books, covering film festivals for Bloody Disgusting, and watching zee American football (Go Steelers!). Also, my listening tally (165 releases for September alone!!) practically quadrupled with the introduction of Spotify into my home.

I won’t have another Bleeders’ list until December as I am fast approaching a deadline on my next true crime book, Teach Me To Kill. I will, however, be contributing my Top 15 picks of the year before I resume the Bleeders’ lists.

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Thanks to HunterMC for the LULZy pic.

Three years ago we celebrated acknowledged  the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic by re-christening MetalSucks as “MetallicaSucks” for the day, and asking the entire MS staff (and some our guest bloggers) to review the album. We did not wanna do that for Lulu, the new collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, because, well, a) it’s not a proper Metallica album, and b) seriously are you fucking kidding us with this shit?

That being said, we do love to represent multiple points of view here at MetalSucks, and we wanted to make sure that every one of our writers had a fair shot at expressing his or her thoughts on Lulu. And so, after the jump, read reviews by the seven sad bastards who all volunteered for the assignment. At the very least, you should enjoy these musings more than you did Lulu itself…

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Far be it from me to hate on anyone’s taste in music – to each their own. I’m sure if one were to wrassle my iPod from my (cold, dead) hands they’d find a number of artists and/or songs suitably mock-worthy. I earnestly try to give all (eh… most) genres a try, especially in the metal and hardcore realms. You never know, something could surprise you! In a way, Carnifex’s newest, Until I Feel Nothing, did just that – I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would.

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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 the latest from grind bands Nemesis Complex and Honduran.

Almost without exception, grindcore is best appreciated live, where the everything-all-at-once extremity of the style can most directly wage war on the senses. But if I’m going to sit down at home and let a grindcore record punish my ears with drums, bass and guitars all playing too fast to be doing anything all that interesting, I ask just one thing: it should sound as devastating as if I were watching it live.

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If Carbon-Based Anatomy, the new EP from Cynic, is any indication, then the band’s 2008 reunion released, Traced in Air, was just the tip of the sword in terms of what we can expect from their future. While distinctly Cynical, Anatomy doesn’t really feel like anything the group has ever previously released; guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert sound somehow looser and more free than ever before, like a now-wholly autonomous artistic unit with no one to please but themselves. The results are mind bending and achingly gorgeous, if perhaps too brief to satiate the desires of Cynic devotees clamoring for new material.

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Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Sorry for the delay. Been extra busy writing books, covering film festivals for Bloody Disgusting, and watching zee American football. Also, my listening tally practically doubled with the introduction of Spotify in my home.

Here are the August 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

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The moment that best defines Årabrot’s latest comes about 30 seconds into the album’s title track and opener, “Solaranus” (the album is technically called Solar Anus, but close enough). The song starts out with a sole Kylesa-esque riff with occasional drum accents, all fuzzed out and reliably solid. But then the band kicks in, and they follow along, with one noticeable exception: the focal point of the riff has gone from a nice, reliable stoner foundation to an offputting brown note, dipping slightly lower than what the song had set you up to expect. And at that moment, you’re torn: is the riff showing too much of its hand in trying to be revolting, or is it a brilliant subversion of expectations? It depends on your head space when you approach it at first, but then it coalesces. Like all good noise rock, it’s full of a sense of danger that things are going to go full-on off the rails and be impossible to listen to. It’s a struggle between what’s palatable and what’s offensive, and what percentage of one can coexist with the other. In the case of “Solaranus,” it leans harder toward the latter as the song goes on. But the track is the longest on the album, more than twice as long as most of the others. It sets a killer tone for the rest of the record, which seems catchy from there. Solar Anus will be an endurance test for some, but for lovers of abrasion, it’s a personalized Valentine. Granted, that Valentine probably has a picture of a woman shitting on some amputee’s chest, but affection’s affection.

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If anyone needs any proof that the “New Wave of Thrash Metal” party is over, they should listen to Worlds Torn Asunder. It’s not that the record is offensively bad. Not by a damn sight. It’s just that there’s nothing here we haven’t heard before, at least twenty times, since Reign in Blood dropped in 1986.

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October is upon us, and with it, the lot of us are bombarded with kitschy, brass-hinged, cardboard jack-o’-lanterns and rubber bats spewing over-dyed corn syrup via time-release mechanisms settled in their plastic innards. It’s a time of haunted hayrides, zombie-infested corn mazes, and other equally tepid Halloween-esque activities likely only to scare those under the age of six.

Now, imagine if you will, a world so ghastly, so horrifically twisted and hellish, even the most sadistic of creatures would break down in violent sobs at the very notion. A town so riddled with death and dire desperation that the streets overflow with tribes of gargantuan maggots and the most thriving business is that of the local coffin shop. Halloween isn’t just an overly-saccharin-ized holiday in this realm, and maybe this is why the anthems derived from this environment continue to bombard us with vigorous, horror-fueled thrash.  That’s right; drenched in the bloodied sewage from the bowels of Creepsylvania, Ghoul has come back with Transmission Zero, and they’ve kept their riffs (and blades) sharp.

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It’s hard out there for a son of Northern darkness. The internet has only made black metal’s rigid (and downright silly) ethos only more cagey, and the older the greats get, the less interested people are in hearing your fairly pointless retread of it. We’re close to twenty years away from black metal’s infamous peak, and there are still people insisting it shouldn’t evolve. So if one wants to get more than seven people interested (which you’re not supposed to, but slathering on pancake makeup clearly isn’t solely for your benefit), what is there to do?

The answer, of course, is plant one foot firmly in the past and jam the other into the future. Getting the balance right is imperative (well, in terms of remaining a black metal band, not so much in terms of making good music… see: Nachtmystium, Enslaved, Alcest, and all the other bands for which guys like me perpetually have cartoon hearts swirling over our heads) to properly avoid sounding like your making a cloying play for relevance or simply falling flat on your face. For two great examples of that balance, take the new albums from Craft and Taake (out now Stateside on Southern Lord and available on Candlelight in North America on November 1, respectively). Perhaps too otherworldly for black metal diehards in parts and too orthodox for the “IT’S SILLY LOL” crowd, they exist in the excellent middle for the rest of us.

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Rotting Out, Street Prowl (6131)
The deafening buzz surrounding this Los Angeles quintet’s latest full-length felt not at all forced. After all, it’s hard not to get excited for an album as solid as it is true to hardcore’s past and present as this. A sort of playfulness and upfront appreciation for bass and, yes, groove differentiate Rotting Out from many of its joyless, ever-posturing peers. The opening title track sets this speedy fever dream of a record in motion, and no force can stop the forward momentum of slashing punk guitars, relentless rhythms, and rapid-fire vocals. Boasting one of the catchier gang vocal choruses of 2011, “Laugh Now, Die Later” challenges listeners to accept them for what they are, black eyes and scars, warts and all. Deserving of a wider audience than it will likely receive, Street Prowl boasts honest lyrics delivered over some of the finest hardcore I’ve heard all year. Cop this glorious shit.

(4.5 out of 5 horns)

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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 Komondor’s A Giant Is Coming and the Giant Is Going to Kill You.

Ever wondered what the fuck that thing is jumping over a hurdle on the cover of Beck’s Odelay? Wonder no more: it’s a komondor, a kind of dog first bred in Hungary to guard livestock. Why a sheep or goat would respond to a barking mop with anything but mocking laughter is beyond me, but give credit where it’s due: that dreadlocked mutt has been featured on two great albums now, the aforementioned Odelay back in 1996, and now A Giant Is Coming and the Giant Is Going to Kill You by Kingston, NY-based noise-rockers Komondor.

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Was I foolish to expect more than this? After all, the last two Bush albums were such dizzying letdowns, with 2001′s Golden State all but unlistenable. Still, alt. rock pinup Gavin Rossdale’s post-Bush career contained the delightfully brutish, Page Hamilton-produced Institute project featuring Chris Traynor of Orange 9mm. After his subsequent safe-for-soon-canceled-FOX-shows WANDERlust (again featuring Traynor), a new Bush record seemed like an opportunity to return to his roots and cement the band’s rock legacy.

Here’s the rub, though: The Sea Of Memories isn’t so much a reunion album as another Rossdale solo effort, simply and strategically renamed. For starters, lead guitarist Nigel Pulsford and bassist Dave Parsons–half of the band’s original membership–opted not to sign up for another go-round, thus supplanted by Rossdale solo players Traynor and Corey Britz, respectively. Clearly someone’s been talking to Hamilton, who has made swift work flushing Helmet’s credibility down the toilet in recent years. And yes, drummer Robin Goodridge has returned, giving it more credibility than, say, Hole’s 2010 “reunion” album. However, like cash, majority rules, and this is Rossdale’s parliament, now more than ever.

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Not that art is a competition or anything, but just you so know where I stand as a Machine Head fan and how your own tastes may or may not match up with my own, here are my three favorite pre-Unto the Locust MH releases, in descending order of preference:

• The Blackening
• Burn My Eyes
• Through the Ashes of Empires

So.

Machine Head’s The Blackening was some kind of goddamn masterpiece, an album that rightfully met with near-universal acclaim. And that acclaim wasn’t just hype, or critics and fans being swept up in the moment; the four-and-a-half years since its release haven’t diminished The Blackening‘s power any. There are few, if any, bands on earth that could make something that friggin’ good, and then follow it up with a record of equal, or even greater, quality.

And the bad news is, that Machine Head have not achieved this near-impossible task. Unto the Locust is not as good as The Blackening. But it is as good as Through the Ashes of Empires, and totally worth the nearly half-decade fans have had to wait for it — and that ain’t nuthin’ to sneeze at.

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Cynicism is a dangerous thing to give in to. That being said, it’s hard not to give in, and in the waning days of humanity (or, you know, just the shitty stretch of time we’re living in right now), the status quo machismo of metal doesn’t always hold water, so it’s hard not to blanket oneself in misery and despair. And not the self-loathing/shoegazing kind, but the writhing in agony variety. And sludge/doom collective Beneath Oblivion excel in this, providing a charred landscape of molten riffs on their appropriately histrionically-titled latest album, From Man to Dust. It’s a hard-to-digest bruiser, but despite its uninviting abrasiveness, it’s never superfluously obtuse or dull. It takes some easing into, but once there, it’s fascinating.

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The thing driving traditionalists crazy is the fact that there’s never been a better time to be a forward-thinking metal fan. I mean, Aborym, Rolo Tomassi, Iwrestledabearonce, OvO, Sigh — what is that shit?

It’s the outlier ethos finally hitting metal. It’s what follows after bands have already pulled at the fabric of metal genres and, no surprise, find them to be made of frayed old material that rips real easily.

To keep this metaphor going way past its due date, what’s happening now is part inexplicable, and part a groovy generation stitching swatches of all kinds of shit to all kinds of other shit while the metal-god version of Tim Gunn yells, “Make it work!”

Incredibly, with incredible regularity, it does.

Do you feel it, ladies, gentlemen, gentlemen who wish they were ladies, and so on? The incredible holy-shit-we’re-in-a-golden-age-ness of it all?

Because we totally are.

And we need to feel proud. Proud that, despite all the hard work and best efforts of the musty traditionalist ‘tards and constant efforts to suffocate metal in neo-thrash dead ends, Big Four circle jerks, only-troo-allowed ideological purity tests, and the first gurgles of the coming neo-nu metal kraze, The Armies of Awesomeness have beat out the Fuddies of Duddy.

So the three discs I’ve chosen are almost random in the sense that almost every week something blisteringly terrific shows up which leaves us with only one real problem — what the fuck do we call the issue of this new era of sui generis excellence?

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Summer is slowly but surely slipping away, and with that comes the eventual end of BBQs, pool parties, and muggy basement shows. While autumn is a pretty rad season, most of us are trying in vain to hold onto the last remnants of summer in any way we can. For some, that’s freezing the fuck out of one’s self at the beach. For others, it’s using up the dregs of BBQs past from the back of the fridge in an effort to pull together some sort of  “last hurrah!” smorgasbord. For me, it’s blasting crust and grind as loud as my car stereo will allow, windows down, scaring the bejezzus out of the townsfolk as I zip by. For some reason, grind just calls to mind summer for me, and I find myself in this situation year after year as the leaves start to turn. Currently on heavy rotation is Defeatist’s new album Tyranny of Decay and yes, my friends — it’s been hitting the proverbial spot.

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