Why, it was just yesterday that we got wind of Origin releasing samples of every song on their new album, Entity, and now the band is already streaming another one of those songs, “Saligia,” in its entirety over at Guitar World. And I am only too happy to write about the band two days in a row, because, well, Origin rule.

So headbang here… actually, it’s kinda hard to headbang to Origin without getting whiplash, so be careful! The post also includes an interview with Paul Ryan (the twenty-fifth top modern metal guitarist today, say we) in which he not only discussed Entity, but talks about his gear, too, which I know is always a popular topic amongst metalheads.

Entity comes out this Tuesday, June 7, on Nuclear Blast. Then, a week later, the the band begins a co-headlining tour with Hate Eternal and support acts Abysmal Dawn and Vital Remains, which is a bill that makes me hard just typing about it. Here are dates for that tour…

Click to read more…

The new Origin album, Entity, comes out this Tuesday, which you already knew, because you know how awesome Origin (and their guitarist, Paul Ryan) are and you’re super excited for the record. But I’m telling you anyway on the off chance it slipped your mind.

I don’t know if the band plans to do a full album stream in advance of Entity‘s release or not, but it doesn’t really matter, because the below video, which features clips from every song on the album, should really be enough to sell you (although you didn’t need to be sold because, again, you already know that Origin rule). It even features my favorite section from my favorite song on the release, “Choosing Death.” That part of the tune has a real sense of, like, derring-do, y’know?

Entity comes out June 7 on Nuclear Blast. Possibly even more exciting is that a week later, the band begins a co-headlining tour with Hate Eternal and support acts Abysmal Dawn and Vital Remains, which is a really, really, REALLY good line-up. Dates after el jumperooni…

Click to read more…

With every bit of bad news come a little bit of good. Last week we suspected and then confirmed that Derek Rydquist had left The Faceless, who are quickly becoming the White Wizzard of progressive death metal, but that he had joined a new project called Bewilderbiest alongside Sacha Dunable of Intronaut/Graviton, Abysmal Dawn’s Charles Elliot, and National Sunday Law’s Derek Donley, who is also Dunable’s bandmate in Graviton. Since Dunable also happens to be a MetalSucks columnist, we emailed him and asked for the skinny on the band. Here’s what we got back:

Derek Donley is mixing it right now and we should be ready to post something in a week or two.  This shit is sounding heavy as fuck, but I’m sure it won’t be for everyone, especially the tech death guys.  It’s basically 45 minutes of crushing doom metal in the vein of old My Dying Bride, Anathema, etc, but maybe a little more “sludgy” sounding and probably with more of a melodic/psychadelic emphasis.  We’re all really stoked on it though.  I basically have had a few of these songs demoed out for an imaginary band for a few years now, and Derek D and I started working on them back in January.  Derek Rydquist was moving down to LA around that time and wanted to jam on something like this, and Charles has been on deck to do guitar/vocals ever since I first demoed the songs back in ’08 or so.

Click to read more…

I was stumbling around YouTube last night when I came across some new fan-filmed videos of The Faceless on their current European tour with Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Gorod. And I’m sitting there watching some shitty cell phone footage of the band performing their new song, “The Eidelon Reality” (listen to a pre-production demo of the track here), and I have this realization –

Hey, that ain’t Derek Rydquist doin’ the vocals.

And so I scrolled down to look at the comments where, indeed, some other dude has asserted “that doesnt look like the vocalist,” and the dude who filmed the above video responded, “I think they got a new one and he´s much better than the old vocalist.”

So, trying to be a good detective, I went over to the band’s Facebook page to see if Rydquist had been removed from their listed line-up. And as of this writing, he hasn’t.

But there is this comment on their wall from some fan who saw them in Plymouth last night:

“incredible tonight, tight as fuck but wheres derek? had no idea he was no longer in the band, never the less the new guy did a stellar job”

Click to read more…

I couldn’t care less about MMA and couldn’t pick “superstar” Josh Barnett out of a lineup of a dozen other Affliction-wearing muscle-bound goons, but I can tell you this: the lineup of Mr. Barnett’s Japanese Benefit Fit show is completely unfuckwithable, it’s for a great cause (all proceeds will go to the Red Cross), and for that I feel compelled to stand up and offer the man a hearty clap. If I lived in the L.A. area I’d definitely be going.

The show will take place on Thursday, May 26th at the House of Blues in Hollywood and will feature All Shall Perish, Animals as Leaders, Cattle Decapitation and Abysmal Dawn, as well as local acts Internal Corrosion and Thrown Into Exile. Like I said, unfuckwithable. Even better, the show is ONLY $15; tickets are on sale now at www.hob.com and www.ticketmaster.com.

Click to read more…

OH SO MUCH YES RIGHT NOW.

There’s a new Origin song in the world right now. I don’t really know what else I need to tell you. If you have even 25% of a functioning brain, you’re no longer reading this but listening to it. So it shouldn’t even matter what I type here. Sometimes Lars Ulrich like to spike his Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee Coolatta and masturbate to pictures of panda bears he has photoshopped to look like fuzzy versions of Randy Rhoads. Karyn Crisis secretly aspires to be more like Cyndi Lauper. Blue bed bugs beg for blumpkins. See, these things I’m typing don’t even make any sense, but it doesn’t matter because no one is reading this right now.

On the off chance you are still reading this for some reason, OMG IT’S SO GOOD STOP READING THIS AND GO LISTEN RIGHT NOW.

Origin’s new album, Entity, comes out June 7 via Nuclear Blast. The band is also doing an incredible summer co-headlining tour with Hate Eternal, and support will come from Abysmal Dawn and Vital Remains. Get dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

Photo by Alison Webster

This month, brutal death metal trio Hate Eternal, led by producer/guitarist Erik Rutan, has been at the center of a pitched battle between MS co-lord Axl Rosenberg and MS writer-at-large Anso DF. The conflict? Is Hate Eternal’s forthcoming Phoenix Amongst The Ashes record awesomely killer (per Axl) or is it insanely ripping (per Anso)? Does it fuck the face and slam the nutz (Anso) or does it render each listener “so fucking happy to be alive” (Axl)? Can its production and performances better be described as a high watermark of contemporary metal (Axl) or as a gift from another realm to every living music listener (Anso)? Is Phoenix a shoo-in for metal album of the year (Axl) or does it crush every other record on earth (Anso)?

Welcome to our love war.

When the time came to phone up Rutan for a discussion of Phoenix and other Hate Eternal affairs, we at MetalSucks opted to settle this battle of agreement with an interview conducted by both Axl Rosenberg and Anso DF. Unsurprisingly, Rutan took on the task with good humor and ease, only succumbing to confusion at times when Axl and Anso simultaneously rushed to hail Phoenix and its predecessor Fury & Flames. In its unexpurgated glory, we present our very special double-team interview of the great Erik Rutan.

Click to read more…

You are reading this on Wednesday morning (or maybe some other time, depending on various circumstances), but I am writing it on Tuesday night. And as I write it, I am about halfway through listening to Hate Eternal’s new album, Phoenix Amongst the Ashes, for the first time.

And it is glorious.

Click to read more…

“How do you feel about joining Origin, Jason?”

Well, hey now!, it was just last month that we were wondering, “Whatever happened to Skinless?” We weren’t really able to get a satisfactory answer, other than that the band was hoping to finally make a follow-up to 2006′s Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead this year.

Well, I’m thinking it might be another hot minute before that actually happens, because Skinless front man Jason Keyser has just been announced as the new vocalist for Origin.

Click to read more…

Our pals at Decibel and Metal Injection are sponsoring a co-headlining Hate Eternal/Origin tour this summer, with Vital Remains and Abysmal Dawn doing support. And you don’t really need to know anything else other than the answer to “Where can I buy my ticket?” I mean I’m sure some of you in the comments section will be like “This tour is no biggie,” and I just wanna let you know right now that I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW WE’RE BOTH MEMBERS OF THE SAME SPECIES. That’s how excited I am for this tour.

This like last year’s Super Orgasm Tour, only for br00tal death metal bands instead of nerdy prog metal dorks. And I feel like I haven’t had the chance to see Hate Eternal or Origin live in a long, long time — like, a couple of years — so I’m even harder than I’d probably be under normal circumstances. But you’re eyes don’t deceive you, that is definitely a bulge in my jeans.

I am going to stop showering now in anticipation of fitting in with the rest of the crowd. While I go throw away all my soap, you can get dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

Today sees the release of Abysmal Dawn’s first new album in more than two years, and Full Blown Chaos’ first new album in more than three; that alone would be cause for celebration, but there’s plenty of other good shit coming out today, too! Our previews of this week’s new releases after the jump.

Click to read more…

Today sees the release of Abysmal Dawn’s first new album in more than two years, and Full Blown Chaos’ first new album in more than three; that alone would be cause for celebration, but there’s plenty of other good shit coming out today, too! Our previews of this week’s new releases after the jump.

Click to read more…

I don’t think anybody ever really reads these little intros Vince or myself write every week, so I’m gonna dispense with one today, and if that makes you sad, uh, you’re weird.

Here’s how we got our pull this week:

• We debuted new music by Abysmal Dawn, Full Blown Chaos, and Årabrot.
• We spoke to Jeff Paulick from Lazarus A.D. and Ginger from The Wildhearts.
• We checked out new releases from Xasthur, haarp, and Hesper Payne.
• We watched a nerd’s video about seeing Sunn O))).
• We tried to understand why The Big Four are only doing one show in America.
• We debated the merits and demerits of this year’s Mayhem Fest line-up.
• We celebrated the way that metal makes everything better.
• We enjoyed some new All Shall Perish music (kinda).
• We prepared for Zakk Wylde to boldly go where no guitarist has gone before.
• We got even MORE excited for Meek is Murder’s Algorithms.

Next week we’re gonna, like, totally talk about metal n’ stuff. You should come back and read it, it will be fun.

-AR

Just yesterday we debuted the full album stream of Abysmal Dawn’s aardvark-baby-impaling new album, Leveling the Plane of Existence; now our bro-bros over at The Deciblog have an awesome guest column from Pär Olofsson, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Made the Awesome Cover for Plane.” Olofsson has done art for bands ranging from Immortal to Immolation to The Faceless, so he really knows his stuff, and this a very in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at one of his creations. Here’s a sample:

“When Charles [Elliott; vocals/guitar] contacted me the only lyrics that was written was “Leveling the Plane of Existence.” It makes reference to us crawling out from the primordial ooze and is basically about wiping us from the planet so that everything starts from zero again. It had great potential as a cover piece since the concept included fossils and things crawling out from ooze. So I made a quick sketch of a fossilized human hand with never before seen bugs crawling around it, a lake of ooze and some city ruins in the background.”

Now, obviously, what you see above is not the finished cover… but I won’t give away how this sketch evolved into the final product. To learn that info, you’ll have to read the post at The Deciblog. It’s well worth it; visual are is such a huge part of metal, and the men and women who make said art are so often overlooked, that it’s great to peek into the process like this.

And if you haven’t already checked it out, listen to Leveling the Plane of Existence in full right here, and pre-order it here. It comes out on February 1 on Relapse.

-AR

We’re not entirely sure what the precise definition of impaling aardvark babies is — or that there even is a concrete definition, as is the case with the infamous Taco Riff and the soon-to-be infamous Elephants Marching riff — but we’re 100% certain that Abysmal Dawn are masters of it. Their new album Leveling the Plane of Existence, out February 1st on Relapse, is the latest example of their dense and expansive brand of crushing modern death metal. It most certainly crushes aardvark babies in the most brutal of fashions with giant-sized DM riffs, scorching solos, intricate drumming and searing vocals, with a sense of technicality that serves the greater good rather than being all “hey, look at me!” If you listen closely you might even decipher a few elephants marching riffs here… the sound of elephants stomping all over aardvark babies, perhaps.

Quite simply, this is modern death metal at its absolute best. Stream the entirety of Leveling the Plane of Existence below and pre-order it before it comes out on February 1st. Tell us what you think in the comments.

[this streaming promotion has now ended]

Abysmal Dawn released the sick cover art for their new album, Leveling the Plane of Existence, back in November, but up ’til now, we haven’t heard any music from the disc — well, actually, I have, ’cause I’m part of the cool, Scionist controlled media elite, and I have an advance copy of the album. (And we’ll be streaming it in full starting January 25. Tell your friends.) But you plebes have been sitting around holding your junk.

But no more junk holding for you! For Abysmal Dawn are now streaming a new strack, “In Service of Time,” here. (The song is also available for free download as part of the new Relapse Records digital sampler here.) I really like it, but in the interest of the spice of life, I’m gonna try very hard not to use the same old hyperbolic phrases in 2011 that I/most people usually use (e.g., “It kicks ass,” “It crushes,” etc.), and instead develop all-new hyperbolic phrases. So I’m just gonna say that the song impales aardvark babies. Why is that a compliment? I dunno. It’s metal. Terrible, violent phrases are considered complimentary for some reason.

ANYWAY, check out the song here, then celebrate its arrival in our comments section. Leveling the Plane of Existence comes out February 1 on Relapse. Like I said, we’ll be streaming the album in full right here at MetalSucks starting January 25, so put that shit in your calendar.

-AR

In brief: Relapse is offering a free sampler for download to anyone who goes to their Facebook page and hits that little ol’ “like” button. As you can see from the track list below, there’s a ton of good shit on it, including new songs from Abysmal Dawn, Red Fang, and Noisear, plus some remastered Death, plus great stuff from Baroness, Revocation, Cephalic Carnage, Dying Fetus, Misery Index, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Brutal Truth, Murder Construct… the list goes on and on. This could very easily be the soundtrack for your New Year’s Eve partying.

Go here to download the sampler. Happy fucking new year.

-AR

Banner Designed by Cysquatch

Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week, we have our first ever reader-suggested QOTW, coming from MetalSucks Maniac Cougar Party:

WHAT BANDS DO YOU HATE THAT YOU HAVE SEEN LIVE MULTIPLE TIMES BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS OPENING FOR SOMEONE YOU LIKE?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

Abysmal Dawn always have friggin’ sweet album art, and it looks like their forthcoming release, Leveling the Plane of Existence, is no exception. But then, it was done by Pär Olofsson (The Faceless’ Planetary Duality, Immolation’s Majesty and Decay, etc.), so this should come as a surprise to no one. Check out this epic epicness:

Leveling the Plane of Existence will be rockin’ balls off when Relapse releases it on February 1 here in North America, and slightly later in other parts of the world.

-AR

To the MetalSucks Maniac known as “Sacajewea,” we would like to say the following: YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD. It’s incredible how retarded you are, you stupid fucking idiot mongoloid half-wit retard.

We send this message because in October of ’09, Sacajewea left a comment on the very first post we ever wrote, saying he was “Just here to dig up the past;” then he left another comment, just this past June, which read:

“I did it twice. Fuck I’m retarded. If anyone sees this please find me in a recent post and tell me how retarded I am.”

On December 26, 2006 — a date that will live in infamy — we did what professionals call a “soft launch” but we just call “the day we first posted on this blog.” Our slogan was “Smart About Metal,” a play on the slogan for Film Comment magazine.

We had these two stupid South Park caricatures that Axl made at his then-job when he was bored. (Axl forgot until just now that he had a really long goatee in ’06; Vince still had phantom Jew ‘fro, where some days he can feel it, man!) We only posted once or twice a day, throughout the week, pretty much when we had time/interest. We didn’t use tags. We often didn’t post graphics or videos. Our headlines weren’t capitalized. We interviewed members of Stuck Mojo and Twisted Sister, because that’s who we could get interviews with. Believe it or not, we tried to get an interview with God Forbid… and we failed.

Basically, we had no fucking idea what we were doing.

We can’t believe that this is our 10,000th post. We can’t believe we’re still doing this almost four years after we started. We can’t believe that so many of you are reading it. Seriously: WE WERE ONLY FUCKING KIDDING.

So…

Thanks to Kip (who has been here longer than anyone besides Vince and Axl!), Sammy, Gary, Anso, Satan (the MetalSucks contributor and the deity), Sergeant D., Bob, Leyla, Corey, Urbandale, Dave, Matt, Ferris, Dallas, Eyal, Sacha, Paul, Bulb, Arthur, Anton OyVey, Rich Hallford, David Bee Roth, Van Arseface, Mike Pattongill, Angela Gossowski, Joey V., and everyone else who has ever written for us… MetalSucks would not be where it is if not for all of you.

Thanks to everyone in the music industry who has helped us over the years, even as they must have been secretly hoping we would van flip.

And of course, thanks to all the MetalSucks Maniacs, Suckalos, annoying people who can’t use the “search” function, and dudes that have sent us death threats. We can’t tell you how grateful we are that you read our site. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now, with a complete lack of humility, Axl and Vince present their ten favorite MetalSucks posts of all time. Enjoy.

Click to read more…