As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour (get a full list of tour dates here). Our first entry featured Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo taking us on a run-through of his entire live rig, and the second entry was an update from Revocation’s Dave Davidson, and in the third Periphery’s Misha Mansoor talked about his new direct-to-PA live amp setup. For the fourth and final entry, here’s Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum resuscitating his “The Underrated” MetalSucks column:

LETS GET THIS BAND BACK TOGETHER: CURSED

Greetings from a rat infested parking lot in Lubbock, TX, AKA the road! While I could write about the military strategy Lonestar and Ryan used to get the Whiskey A Go Go dancers on the bus this week in LA or how the 5150 (3′s) made by Fender/EVH might just be the ultimate high gain amp, I’m not. Rather I have decided to litter the internet with yet another opinion-related piece.

Since I have written in the past of unsung heros or overlooked records, I thought I might do that once more. Living on tour every day keeps us surrounded by music and fresh sounds (good or bad) assaulting our ears every day. Still, it’s important not to forget great bands and records that for whatever reason have their little notch in time. So I’ll just plug our new record, The Human Romance, out Feb 22, 2011 on E1 and then I’ll use this space right here to tell you about a band that should not be forgotten: Canada’s Cursed.

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[In which Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum waxes ecstatic about the most underrated metal albums of all time, in his humble opinion.]

So you love Swedish Metal. You have all the sick records by In Flames, At the Gates, Entombed, Soilwork, The Haunted, Hypocrisy, Opeth, shit, you even have Darkane and Dismember in your collection. Sooooo  then you love The Crown right? Yeah ok, there’s probably a few dudes thinking, “Shit, I know who The Crown are. Is he crazy?” I’ll get into it later, but I know for a fact that even at the height of their popularity in the USA we as metal heads in the states did a shitty job of showing the love. (And that was four or five years ago!) It’s with this in mind that I fear this great band (in particular this specific great record) may pass unnoticed and in the spirit of all things rock I offer up to you The Crown and their slaughtering Deathrace King record! Take it from a dude who has spent all of his adult life searching for inspiration in metal: this band, this record, are inspiring.
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[In addition to writing and performing in New Wave of American Heavy Metal pioneers Darkest Hour, guitarist (and BS degree in Social Work!) Mike Schleibaum also writes for his own informative and funny website Ask The Dude. The dude himself contacted us about writing a guest blog for MetalSucks, and somehow in between his various other activities that actually, ya know, pay the bills, he somehow found time to do it. We hope he'll be a regular contributor whenever time allows. Let us know what you think. -Ed.]

The Underrated: Entombed

Like many fellow dudes who have dedicated their lives to moshing hard and jamming heavy metal I find myself continuously on the hunt for new records that can make me feel the way I did the first time I heard Metallica’s Master of Puppets, At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul, or Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power. As age and experience wear away at me I find that sadly this feeling is harder and harder to obtain. I mean let’s face it, a good seventy percent of modern metal is total bullshit (and I think that’s me being nice since I know a few people are going to read this). Not only has the genre been raped by the mainstream and watered down by the internet, its safe to say that every Tuesday more and more “death metal” or “heavy metal” records hit the street here in the USA that have less and less to offer the genre and us listeners than ever before. I believe that metal actually doesn’t suck, and there are great metal bands out there who for whatever reason didn’t get the attention they truly deserve. The following is one dude’s opinion. I do not claim any of it as absolute truth but, if I can use this printed space for nothing more then to turn at least one more dude out there onto a record that has touched my life, then it was time well spent.

With that in mind let me turn the focus to one of my all time favorite metal bands, Entombed. Now there are some of you out there who just read this and are thinking, “Fuck this guy, Entombed is not underrated, they are known as one of the pioneers of Swedish Death Metal.” And to you dudes I say, “I know, but just hear me out.”

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