We’re back! January 24th marked the first big release date of 2012, and now the numbers are in for the final first-week tallies. As expected, Lamb of God took the top spot in the Current Hard Music Chart (and #3 overall behind Adele [115,972] and Tim McGraw [67,530]), while Lacuna Coil landed at #2. New records by Blessed by a Broken Heart, Aborted, Primal Fear and Abigail Williams also ended up in the Top 100. Check out the numbers after the break.

Click to read more…

Just because this week isn’t as awesome as last week doesn’t mean we don’t have some cool new shit coming out. New releases from Lamb Of God, Lacuna Coil, Dodecahedron, Aborted, Primal Fear and more in this week’s wrap-up after the jump.

Click to read more…

Hey there, didja know MetalSucks is on Facebook and Twitter? Follow us on both to have updates beamed into your brain. And don’t forgot about our merch blow-out sale: $10 t-shirts and $20 hoodies for a limited time.

Meanwhile, the news never stops! Here are a few thing of note that’ve happened over the past 24 hours outside of David Gold’s tragic passing and the announcement of Ryan Parrish’s departure from Darkest Hour:

• Norma Jean’s Cory Brandan says you owe him money if you illegally downloaded Norma Jean’s music, and he’s PISSED. The frontman took to his Twitter account yesterday to post the following, after which he engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth on the topic with fans: ”Anyone that has ever downloaded a Norma Jean record. You owe me money. I hope you had enough money today to buy your family groceries…I mean ‘for free’ of course. Ya know… illegally. Stolen. Theft. Don’t get your feeling hurt. It’s ok if you steal from me. Anything else I can do for free for you? Spoiled brats! It’s about time someone got pissed about this! I hope you guys know what it feels like to have thousands of dollars stolen from you only to be told you have a an attitude about it. BTW! I appreciate and LOVE all of you that have supported us over the years. I hope you are all blessed!”
• He Is Legend are indeed recording a new album, as was previously rumored. Anso DF is gonna be super-duper-uper excited about this news! Check out an interview he did with the band’s manager back in March, then stream He Is Legend’s entire catalog on Spotify.
• Aborted have a brand new song called “The Origin of Disease” streaming over at Gun Shy Assassin. Their new album Global Flatline comes out on January 24th on some label whose name I forget.
• Not news, per se, but: Symphony X’s new album The Iconoclast is fucking fantastic and I’m ashamed I haven’t mentioned it on MS yet. It’s basically the album I wish Dream Theater would’ve written instead of… their last three albums. Stream it in its entirety on MOG.

FEATURING MEMBERS OF KYLESA, INSOMNIUM, ABORTED, MNEMIC, MARUTA, EAST OF THE WALL, BLOODIEST, BROKEN HOPE, AND IN DE GOOT ENTERTAINMENT

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

Click to read more…

The year may be winding down but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a few new releases coming our way. With new releases come streams, and today we’ve got three excellent ones for you: Vektor, Dirk Verbeuren’s Bent Sea, and The Fallen Divine.

Click to read more…

For a hot minute Overkill were supposed to be on the currently-in-progress Anthrax/Testament/Death Angel tour, which would have made it the can’t-miss thrash tour of the year, instead of just being a can’t-miss thrash tour (’cause let’s be real, that line-up is still pretty sweet). Unfortunately, they dropped off that tour, and fortunately, it was to record a new album, which, of course, meant it was only a matter of time until they toured again.

Well, hey, guess what? They’re touring again! They’ll hit the road this spring with a bunch of bands of varying degrees of coolness — namely Belphegor, Aborted, Blackguard, System Divide, and Diamond Plate – acting as support. Maybe not quite as cool as seeing them with some other classic thrash bands, but certainly not at all shabby a line-up, either. And, like many of their old school thrash peers, Overkill have been experiencing a renaissance as of late — their last two albums, Immortalis and Ironbound, were both particularly swell. Hopefully the new release will be, too, and the tour will become that much cooler.

Here are dates, courtesy of Metal Injection:

Click to read more…

Last week we posted a really cool, and really, really gross trailer for Aborted’s new album, Global Flatline; now the title track from the album has been released as the first single. I think it’s pretty good, although I’m not in love with it or anything. But judging by the comments section on our last post, a lot of you are way more into this band than me, and I’m certainly not about to give them an undeserved hard time or anything.

Check out “Global Flatline” below. And if you love it, it’s available on iTunes for just a buck, so you can rock that shit all day and night.

The entire Global Flatline album comes out January 24 via Century Media.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Aborted are one of those bands I honestly have never listened to enough to have an opinion about their music, but the fact that their upcoming release, Global Flatline, features guest appearances from the likes of The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad, Misery Index’s Jason Netherton, and Rotten Sound’s Keiijo Niinima means that my interest is now piqued. And the new, totally disgusting and NSFW trailer for the album ain’t hurtin’ any.

No joke — if you ever wished that the killer in the Saw movies was a pretty lady instead of an old dude, you are going to love this.

Aborted’s Global Flatline comes out January 24 via Century Media; the title track will be released as a single next week.

-AR

I’m so fucking hungover right now that I wanna put in a gun in my mouth and blow my brains all over the wall just to make the headache stop. So you watch this latest video updated from Devin Townsend while I go try to get my shit together and write snarky metal blog posts for the rest of the day. It’s not like there’s anything I could write to really convey Devin’s Deviness anyway.

And here’s a message from Devin which goes with the video:

Click to read more…

Of all the bands I ever expected to cover a Faith No More song, Aborted certainly never would’ve been on my list. But lo and behold, courtesy MetalSucks reader Josh, we’ve got an Aborted cover of “Surprise! You’re Dead!” on our hands. It’s a pretty straight-forward cover in that Aborted haven’t tinkered with the arrangement much, but naturally their version is totally, completely, brutally death metal-ified. It’s awesome. I never could’ve envisioned the song done this way, but somehow it works really well — the main riff that comprises the chorus almost seems like it was made to be a death metal riff. Bravo for Aborted for putting this together!

-VN

Death metal butchers Aborted have launched the title-track of their forthcoming EP, Coronary Reconstruction, at the band’s redesigned MySpace page.

Aborted have recently announced a new line-up, featuring Sven de Caluwe (also of System Divide) on vocals, Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork) on drums, Eran Segal (ex-They Swarm/Whorecore) and Ken Sorceron (Abigail Williams) on guitar and Cole Martinez (System Divide) on bass…

Wait wait wait wait wait wait. The dude from Abigail Williams is in Aborted now? How the fuck did I miss that?

Click to read more…

The great MetalSucks Mansion purge of ’08 has commenced, and the people have spoken: you really, really, really want all of our extra shit even if you don’t know what it is. Anyhoo, five lucky winners each get an assload of CDs and random shit lying around here that we need to get rid of, so congratulations to you. Here are the winners to last week’s Funny Photo Caption Contest (right):

• PD: “You guys seen my distortion pedal? This accordion’s going to sound horrible without it.”
• Ambience23: “Vadim Pruzhanov’s Kvlt Mariachi band (pre-Dargonforce).”
• Damotello: “Everybody loved it when Varg Vikernes did his Rolf Harris covers.”
• Name Not Applicable: “Squeezebox Gutsfuck.”
• Leprosy: “I was reincarnated to prove that people would rather listen to this technical, air-driven music than listen to death magnetic.”

This week we have an awesome prize: 2 grand prize winners will get Aborted ‘Evidence’ bags, containing an autographed copy of Strychnine.213, an autographed poster and an Aborted t-shirt! Aborted is currently on tour with the reunited Carcass (we all went this past Saturday in NYC, and holy shit, it was awesome), so take a look at the tour dates (posted after the jump) and hit that tour up when it comes to your city. Come up with a funny caption to the below photo and the Aborted prize pack is all yours!

[Thanks: Ryan D.]

Click to read more…

There’s some interesting releases coming out today, and I’ve been meaning to write about a few of them; unfortunately, life got in the way. So without further adieu, I just wanna toss in my two cents…

THE GOOD: MADE OUT OF BABIES, THE RUINER

I’ve had this album for at least a month, and I’ve spent that entire time trying to write a review that would do it justice. But I just can’t find the words; there’s nothing I can write that’s as elegant as what Made Out of Babies have accomplished with this disc.

So let’s simply say this: I love this fucking album. And if you like good music, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Click to read more…