I’m going to put about as much effort into this intro as the thief who was sent to prison by the jury I served on last week did into not leaving his cell phone at the scene of the crime.

We begin this week with “Follow the Signs,” the new video from Born of Osiris. On the whole this clip is pretty cool, and I applaud all parties involved for trying to make something way more epic than most modern metal vids. But sticking the band in front of a green screen for their performance footage was a mistake, ’cause it looks silly and cheap, and the editing is completely random, which long time readers know is a pet peeve of mine — and is especially bothersome when dealing with a band like BOO, whose music provides such obvious rhythmic cutting points I can’t believe anyone would just ignore them like this. Bummer.

Click to read more…

I wasn’t alive back in the 1980s to see it firsthand, but from what I understand it was considered cool back then to play guitar solos. And I can see why: if you are home sick from school and you watch VH1 Classic, whenever the guy in the video plays a solo, the crowd goes crazy. All the dudes are like “OMG he is so talented!!!” and all the chicks are like “GET IN MY PUSSY!!” It must have been awesome to be a guitarist back then!!

But that was a long time ago, and things have changed a lot. These days, only fat guys with ponytails and glasses care about guitar solos. Nobody thinks it’s cool to be like “CHECK ME OUT, I’M SHREDDING THE FRETBOARD *WEEDLY WEEDLY WEEDLY*” There’s only one thing that makes dudes lose their shit and chicks get wet in 2011: BREAKDOWNS!

Unlike a lot of you, I’ve been listening to metal since late 2004/early 2005, so I think I know what I am talking about. With that said, I’m not a musician, but I know a lot of you are, so I am asking you, the readers: ARE BREAKDOWNS THE NEW GUITAR SOLO???

Click to read more…

Teenagers are always doing stupid, embarrassing shit in public, especially the ones who listen to metal. One of the most popular (and potentially humiliating) things a kid can do is enter their high school’s talent show, in particular if they make the mistake of playing a metal song in hopes of impressing their peers. For example, when I was in 9th or 10th grade, I was in a horrible band that played a Black Flag song in front of our school. Nobody thought it was cool, they just laughed at us. Thank god Youtube didn’t exist then, like it does for these dumb kids who embarrassed themselves by trying to be cool in front of their peers.

Click to read more…

Typical Tumblr user: airheaded teenage girl who listens to metalcore bands that have cute singers.

When it comes to music, teenage girls make the world go ’round. It’s a fact: they are the ones who obsessively fawn over every word out of a band’s mouth, go to every show within a 200 mile radius of their parents’ house, and most importantly, they actually buy stuff (whether CDs or merch). Before you rage, I’m not trolling– this is how it’s worked for as long as pop music has been around (and explains why D.R.U.G.S. sold three times more records than Darkest Hour last week). Basically, any band who ignores the social currency and purchasing power of teenage girls is a bunch of dumb-dumbs.

While Facebook and Bandcamp are great tools for streaming your music and communicating with your fans, I think Tumblr is the most interesting social media platform right now. It’s the closest thing we have to a magical window into the minds of the consumers who drive the music industry (teenage girls), but I haven’t really seen many bands/labels take full advantage of it.

In this post, I will discuss the dynamics of Tumblr culture, share some examples of typical content and draw a few conclusions about what it means for bands and labels who want to market their product to not only Tumblr users, but the lucrative market of teenage girls in general. Also, please follow my Tumblr to keep your finger on the pulse of contemporary youth culture!

Click to read more…

So my aunt does stuff for Victory Recordings where she tries to get magazines and websites to write about their bands or whatever and she sent me and email about an upcoming acoustic show from basically my favorite band A DAY TO REMEMBER:

The boys from Ocala, A DAY TO REMEMBER, will be streaming live from the XFINITY Performance Theatre in Philadelphia on March 10th. The acoustic session for WRFF Radio 1045 marks the kick off of the highly anticipated Gamechangers Tour featuring support from Bring Me The Horizon, We Came As Romans, and Pierce the Veil.

So can we talk about how acoustic songs are like THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER, because they are like you are actually there watching the band?!! IDK I mean I like listening to bands on my Zune and stuff, and if I REALLLLLY like them I will buy there vinyls, but the most awesome thing is going to one of they’re concerts- like when you are moshing, singing along to all the words with a bunch of strangers and you look like an idiot but totally having the time of ur life haha. But sometimes you can’t see your favorite band because it’s on a school night or after your curfew or whatever, and your like “WTFFFFF MOM I AM 15 NOT 12 QUIT TREATING ME LIKE A BABY.”

Click to read more…

So let’s say you need to make a music video but you don’t have a very big budget — how can you spice your clip up so it’s not just another performance vid?

A Day To Remember came up with a pretty clever solution: they got all their friends to be in the video, taking turns looking right into the camera and lip synching along for a few moments. Oddly enough, a lot of those friends are metal royalty — including The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk, Trivium’s Matt Heafy, As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis, The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett, and whomever is playing Andrew WK this week — despite the fact that A Day to Remember aren’t metal at all.

This was a smart move if you ask me, ’cause otherwise a misanthropic metal d00d such as myself probably never would have watched the video, let alone actually kinda-almost smiled. It looks like everyone is having fun, and fun begets more fun, y’know?

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

While most new releases have trailed off into Christmas Music oblivion, there were still a few notable new metal albums trickling in last week. After the jump, a look at the meaningless sales numbers generated by new ones from After the Burial, Metallica, The Chariot and Yngwie Malmsteen with a look at a few other charting releases as well (take a look at the tags below if you wanna know who). Snarky commentary included, natch.

Click to read more…

It used to be that if you wanted to know what you should buy, you would see what famous people liked, and buy whatever they said was cool — like how I originally got into Suicide Silence after I heard Demi Lovato talking about them. But now there is another way to find out what you should buy: shopping haul videos. A haul video is where someone goes shopping, then makes a YouTube video where they tell you about all the stuff that they bought. Usually they are really long, and made by young girls who like to talk about themselves. I don’t have a video camera, so I can’t make a video, but I thought it might be cool for you to see some of the stuff I bought at Hot Topic the other day in case you are thinking about doing any shopping and and wondering what is cool right now.

Click to read more…

It’s no secret that the music industry is in a shambles, with both profits and revenues at an all time low. With Napster, eDonkey and Audiogalaxy more popular than ever, anybody with a DSL connection can download an album in a matter of hours, often at CD-quality 96 khz. While the unprecedented access that we the fans have to new music is amazing, it comes at a price: the ability for artists to eke out a meager living by making music.

Sure, on the one hand it’s pretty funny to think about, say, the bassist for The Autumn Offering working at his dad’s ravioli factory when they’re not on tour. Admittedly, the contrast between some D-level metalcore band’s onstage persona (“U MIRIN OUR STAGE PRESENCE BRAH?!”) and the sad reality of seeing them try four times to get their 1998 Saturn to turn over in the parking lot after the show is pretty amusing, but this isn’t high school. Music isn’t about who’s making money and who’s 27 years old and still thinks it’s cool to be in a band, it’s about COMMUNITY. To me, the scene is one big family, and I look out for my family members. Whether you are the “fuckup-idiot-with-a-heart-of-gold cousin that everybody feels sorry for” (Eyehategod) or “ridiculously good-looking older brother we r all jealz of” (Oli Sykes/Bring Me The Horizon), if you are family I will always have your back — and family members do not steal from each other!!

Click to read more…

So this normally where we write some fairly meaningless bullshit as an intro to our weekly recap, but reader Sean Williams sent us a link to the below video update from one Mr. Devin Townsend, and we really can’t think of a better way to kick-off the weekend. As Sean put it, “Deconstruction AND Ghost as a double record? Holy fucking shit!” And it gets “Holy shittier” when we get to hear a little bit of new music…

Here are some other fun things that happened at MetalSucks this week:

• We debuted Joe Satriani’s first Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards webisode and new music by Sweet Cobra.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered more of your idiotic questions, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks got unnecessarily rough, Daath’s Eyal Levi pondered the meaning of sacrifice, and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s Shawn Riley taught us how to make delicious hot wings.
• We spoke to producer/engineer/mixer extraordinaire Mark Lewis, The Contortionist’s Jon Carpenter, and Shred Sean from Blessed by a Broken Heart.
• We checked out new releases from Dawnbringer and Merkaba.
• We helped A Day to Remember struggle with young adulthood.
• We gave Jason Newsted a shoulder to cry on.
• We got excited that Byzantine are making a new record.
• The kid of the dude from the E-Street Band is out of Madball.
• We’ve decided that when we die, we want our ashes to be pressed into vinyl.
• Can you please help us find Elote 5?

Until Monday… don’t get alcohol poisoning…

-AR

A Day To Remember’s Homesick was hands-down my favorite album of 2009, and a big success for leading independent label VICTORY RECORDS. Combining the soaring melodies, giant hooks, and accessibility of pop-punk with the cock-smashing brutality and downtuned breakdowns of deathcore, their brand of easycore has shot them to the top of charts everywhere from Seattle to San Antonio!

In their latest video, the third single from Homesick, the members of ADTR take a more serious turn, departing from the carefree anthems and odes to suburban post-teenager fun that defines their previous singles. It depicts an alternative couple dealing with the struggles of a young relationship, doing their best to find themselves as individuals while maintaining their identity as a couple. Now that they are all 21 or 22 years old, you can see that they are about more than just having fun and moshing it up. I feel like they are showing everybody that they’re not just a one-trick pony, that they have some serious depth as both musicians and human beings — kind of like when Blink-192 came out with “Adam’s Song” and tackled the issue of teen suicide.

Pick up Homesick on iTunes, and stay tuned for their next album, What Separates Me from You, coming November 16 on leading independent label VICTORY RECORDS! Check out the cover art here.

-Sergeant D.

The Metal Sucks staff may have more “-stein” and “-berg” surnames than the trading floor of a Wall Street investment bank, but I know Axl and Vince are open to exploring the entire spectrum of global faiths. I am sure we can also agree that music is the one common thread that unites all of us, so what better way to learn about Jesus Christ than through my favorite thing: BREAKDOWNS!

Click to read more…

I am going to assume that a decent portion of the followers of this site are themselves musicians with bands of their own. That is generally how it goes with metal. There are seamless lines blurred between the “fans” and the “bands” because, like myself, many metal patrons represent both categories. Without this large sector of musician fans, technically proficient bands that cater directly to this base (like Dream Theater, Meshuggah, and Necrophagiast) would be much less successful. So to those musicians, I would like to use this blog to shine a light on one of the harsh truths in all music and entertainment that many musicians choose to ignore -

Image matters a lot in this industry. In fact, it’s probably just as important as the music.
Click to read more…

We’ve worked pretty hard to achieve our title of the “Most Negative Site in Metal.” And we’re proud of that title. We’ve earned it, damn it.

So we’re jealous that those fuckers at The Deciblog, and not us, thought of this brilliant idea:

THE DECIBLOG SCREAMO COVER ELIMINATION BRACKET.

Luckily, they invited us to participate.

Here’s the description of how it’s gonna work:

Click to read more…