MetalSucks

When the biggest breaking story of the day is the revival of Skold, you know it’s a slow news day. So why not turn to YouTube for some vocal cover lulz? Let’s dive head-first into the bedrooms of America’s teenagers via YouTube to see the funniest vocal covers of the mighty Korn (see also: The Limp Bizkit Collection).

First up we have this guy. He claims to have been drunk when he recorded it. And?

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I was never super into patches; I had a Guns N’ Roses patch on my backpack in high school, but that was it. But the proprietor of Endless Blockade — also of metal blog No Gods, No Vegetables — must’ve been really into patches. Endless Blockade is devoted entirely to patches; backpatches, regular patches, patches on pants… metal patches, punk patches, nature patches, nazi patches… patches, patches, patches… thousands of them. Worth a few minutes of perusal, as much for the history lesson as the lulz.

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[Thanks: Double D]

I don’t know whether this is actually the case, but before I met Clint Lowery (we interviewed him right after he rejoined Sevendust in early 2008) he always struck me a super-serious dude. He always just looked so fucking serious up there on stage, counter to 7D bassist Vinnie Hornsby’s class-clown stage antics. But he was super chill and affable in person. And he always responds to my emails, no matter how annoying they may be (”Hey dude, wanna send me that unreleased Dark New Day album?” “Sorry man, I wish, but I can’t.”) Maybe it’s that whole newfound sobriety thing (congrats on two years, dude!).

Anyway I’ve really been enjoying these Sevendust video diaries from the studio. They’re updated several times daily and show a whole other side of the band, especially Mr. Lowery, who’s been handling the lion’s share of the camera work. Every time the camera clicks off he makes a silly face. It’s cute. Here we see him goofing off while Lajon tracks vocals. Wonder what song it is that they’re working on?

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File this under “YouTube Vocal Covers” actually gone right [thanks: MS reader Zoker]. Sure, the guy doesn’t hit every high note, but he does a damn fine job overall with both the growls and the clean singing parts. The guy’s clearly got ability and I’m presuming he’s available for the half the price of the current two SS vocalists. Ya win some, ya lose some.

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This guy’s actually not terrible. I mean, he’s not great, and his choice of songs to cover is extremely questionable, but the guy’s low growls are pretty good.

For all the shit we give people who post vocal covers on YouTube — and some them of them are downright awful jokes obviously posted in self-parody while some of them just plain blow — the majority of them are just kids honest-to-goodness trying to express themselves. And the coolest part is that [some] people actually offer legit criticism in the YouTube comments. Like in this video and another one by the same dude, people tend to agree that his low growls are good but his high growls need work. It’s neat to see some positive reinforcement on the Internet from time to time. I’ll bet this kid goes and practices his high growls and improves them greatly in the coming months… and who knows, some day he might front a great metal band. Even if he never goes any farther than covering August Burns Red and The Devil Wears Prada, it stands to reason that some percentage of kids doing these YouTube covers will go on to be members of popular metal bands. It’s scary, but true.

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[Thanks: Patrick Greene]

Sent in by MetalGF by way of the always poignant Onion.

The bottom should read “INSIDE Your Band: We Finally Checked It Out. It’s Not Very Good.”

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Lots of you have been emailing us about the new Jack Black-led video game Brutal Legend. Unless you’ve been living in a cave like the MetalSucks Mansion the past couple of weeks, the game’s release has been pretty difficult to ignore because there are ads frickin EVERYWHERE for that shit (except MetalSucks, AHEM EA!). Personally I have zero interest in this game because the last gaming system I bought was the SNES, but presumably many of you rock your XBOX 360s and Playstation 3s as hard as you rock your Internet porn every night. So, here’s Jack Black in a “viral” video spot plugging the game, including some footage from the game itself. I guess the game comes out like pretty soon or something.

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Just because Metal Inquisition’s Sergeant D failed at having his own self-coined micro-genre of metal added to Wikipedia doesn’t mean we’re not gonna give it a shot; where Wigger Slam was struck down by the Wikipedia fascists, Sumeriancore shall succeed because it’s decidedly more PC.

Folks, Sumeriancore isn’t just some mistake the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys stumbled upon whilst banging away at their typewriters; it’s a real movement, and it’s making itself felt in the scene in a serious way. Phil Freeman of the quite-reputable Allmusic.com (ex-Metal Edge) referenced the term in his review of Born of Osiris’ A Higher Place, a review which is now being syndicated by hundreds of sites including iTunes, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble. Kids are debating the meaning of the term on MusicianForums.com, while over at the SMNnews.com forums a member of MetalSucks-faves The Binary Code poses this question to the masses: “Is my band ‘Sumeriancore’?” Even on Sumerian Records’ own Last.fm page, kids are e-yelling “SUMERIANCORE!” in the comments.

So let’s get this shit going. Despite what MS Maniac Caspar Colderson commented on yesterday’s Tesseract post, “Sumeriancore” isn’t yet in Wikipedia. Can someone who’s bored at work take a stab at entering it in? ‘Cause we can’t do it ourselves, lest we make the Wikipedia Gods angry. I like Freeman’s definition: “a blend of tech-death and hardcore played by preternaturally talented youngsters,” as well as “Any band that sounds like they are/could be signed to Sumerian Records (the Faceless, After the Burial, Veil of Maya)” from the aforementioned Binary Code post.

We’ll send anyone who helps out a copy of A Higher Place signed by Glen Danzig.

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More than any other band, Cradle of Filth seem to attract the attention of YouTube vocal covers done by bedroom-dwelling, suburban goth teens (see also: this cover of “Nymphetamine” starring hot twins). Since we’re obsessed with YouTube vocal covers and Cradle of Filth are inherently kinda funny, this provides us and the MS Mansion Monkeys with great amusement.

This cover of “Her Ghost in the Fog” is pretty brilliant if you ask us. The best part: “I know I look like shit right now but in an HOUR OR TWO I’ll look perfect and I will use the power of dark side that has been given to me to scream my ass off for you guys so rock on.” Notes MS Maniac BondedByBlood, who sent this clip in: “I saw him at a show last night and he wore the same hilarious makeup.” Sometimes I wished we lived in the suburbs so we’d see hilarious shit like this. NYC kids are too cool or something. This kid’s high-pitched screams are absolutely ace.

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BondedByBlood

Look how angry Brian Fair is in that photo. Grrrrr. That’s his metal face. Not to be fucked with.

In reality, though, Brian is actually a pretty chill dude. Seriously. Would an angry monster give away free shit over Twitter? Of course not. But Brian is. Says the Shadows Fall front man himself:

Click to read more…

But they were all better screamers.

-AR

Thanks to Josh Kidd for the tip.

I love YouTube vocal covers. LOVE THEM! There’s something about teenagers bearing their souls (awfully) for all the world to see that just hits me in that special place.

So today we take a look at the very best YouTube has to offer of Limp Bizkit vocal covers. Let’s go!

The best part of this one is definitely this dude’s atrocious facial hair styling, but almost as astounding is how accurately he imitates Fred Durst’s whiny interpretation of this George Michael classic:

After the jump… more Limp Bizkit vocal covers. Click! You know you wanna. The best is yet to come.

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The fine metal journalism institution Metal Inquisition has done it again with an in-depth look at the union of our two favorite pastimes: metal and weed. We like to think that these two pleasures go together like two nuts in a sack, but Metal Inquisition proves otherwise; Six Feet Under, Black Label Society, Dope and others illustrate that when bands mix weed into their metal, the results aren’t always as desired. Read the two posts here and here.

We’ll still be the two dudes getting high at the back of the metal show.

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The always-brilliant Rob Pasbani of Metal Injection was going through his usual daily routine – wake up late, wander over to computer, get high, play on computer, remain in boxers, fail to bathe… y’know, the life of your average blogger – when he made an amazing discovery: Google’s suggestions for popular searches related to metal are actually pretty dead-on. To wit, this non-altered, completely, 100% real screenshot:

AMAZING, right? Now if only iTunes and Netflix could actually make some decent recommendations based on my previous purchases and rentals.

Head over to Metal Injection for more incredible screenshots of metal-related Google search suggestions.

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Is this website real? If so, it rules. If not, it still rules.

Join the fight. Even if you’re not a mother.

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Scar Symmetry have created their own online version of the arcade classic Asteroids, and it’s pretty fuckin’ entertaining. Unlike a lot of stupid online games designed to promote new albums, this one is super-simple, works well, is addicting as fuck and is a great time-waster.

A brand new song from Scar Symmetry’s upcoming release Dark Matter Dimension serves as the soundtrack to the game, and I have no idea what the song is called but it’s not the one they posted on their MySpace page a few weeks back (which has since been removed). The new track is damn good and it’s vintage Death Jovi — would we expect anything less? I think I like it more than the previously released new track, though right now I’m not too hot on the new not-Christian Alvestam clean vocalist, though I guess the verdict is really still out until we hear the full new album / see the band live. Dark Matter Dimensions drops October 2nd on Nuclear Blast.

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In July we reported that the shuttered Metal Maniacs magazine would soon to be relaunching as a web-only publication, and today we’re pleased to announce that the brand new MetalManiacs.com is now live.

Resurrected by the owner of Metalhit.com, the new Metal Maniacs features regularly updated content and features from the latest in underground metal. The site boasts an exhaustive Mp3 store featuring more than 13,000 songs available for preview and purchase as well as a new forum, monthly contests, a weekly “deadly discovery” showcasing up and coming bands and a monthly free digital music compilation. The debut launch features a 24 song compilation with free downloads from bands like Asphyx, Augury, Black Anvil, Daath, Hands, Impending Doom, Leaves’ Eyes, Merauder, Séance, Skeletonwitch, Suicide Silence, Vader and more!

Head on over to MetalManiacs.com and let us know what you think.

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Noisecreep kindly invited me to be a guest on their weekly podcast last week, so I trekked into Manhattan on my bike in the 90° heat to take part at the AOL Music headquarters. The panel consisted of Noisecreep Editor-In-Chief Seth Werkheiser, writers Chris Harris, Amy Sciarretto and Jon Weiderhorn, John and Oliver from UK thrashers Evile, and myself. That’s me on the far right in the white (metal!) shirt, sporting a douchie mustache. So now you can tackle me at shows just like you do Rob from Metal Injection.

We discussed a whole lot of topics ranging from the then-latest in metal news (Dani Filth being chucked with a bottle, news of a new Austrian Death Machine album, etc), the latest records to come out (Burnt by the Sun, Emmure, Otep) and Jon did an interview with Evile. Laughs were had and many bands were shat upon (mostly by me, with nervous laughs from everyone else). Watch it below. Thanks again to Noisecreep for the invite; I hope to do it again soon.

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Even for myself, Axl and the highly skilled MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys, keeping up with what’s going on in the metal world of Twitter can be difficult. That’s why some friends of ours have launched CircleTwitt.com, a Twitter aggregator for everything metal; bands to record labels to metal celebrities to websites and more. If you’re Twitter-holics like us (follow @metalsucks!) a site like this is a great place to find out about those of us in the metal world who are needlessly wasting our time trying to summarize our lives to an indifferent public in bits of 140 characters or less. Hooray!

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Who knew that a delicious kernel-laden, summer treat was also the name of an up and coming new-metal band? Sergeant D of Metal Inquisition has posted another journalistic masterpiece that sheds light upon a band of unique, take-no-prisoners upstarts from California. Excerpt:

But they also seem like they like metal, because a lot of the songs are really dissonant and heavy. I feel like they are probably big noisecore fans because on the record there isn’t even a bass player. In the parts where most bands would have the bass, they just have these weird sounds that remind me of pieces of metal clanking together. It seems like something 7 Minutes of Nausea would do. They have a guy who plays with them live and does “noise/effects” and sometimes uses a bass to make the clanking sounds, I don’t know how he does it. He’s probably into circuitbending or whatever and rewired the whole bass.

If you didn’t enjoy Sergeant D’s piece on Brooklyn genre-benders Biohazard, you a) are an idiot, b) ought to check this one out. Highly recommend A+++ would do business with again, fast shipping!!

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