via The Chive, in case the logo didn’t make that clear

Can someone please try the above but with metal? I don’t really care if it’s death metal or power metal or whatever, just make sure you film it and send it to me. Also, don’t get arrested. Thanks.

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We debuted new music by Scale the Summit and Junior Bruce.
• We learned about the NBA from God Forbid’s Doc Coyle.
• We spoke to Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse and Kris Norris from A Cancerous Affair.
• We checked out the latest album from Goatwhore, hardcore 7″s from Losin’ It, Appalachian Terror Unit, and Overlooked, and free releases from Autolatry, Yellow Eyes, Agartha, and Uvikra.
• We were surprised to learn that bands like this still exist.
• We were reminded that Juggalos are hilarious.
• We learned that Greg Puciato is dating the porn star Jenna Haze.
• We also learned that Bill Ward isn’t participating in the Black Sabbath reunion.

Okay, five o’clock! Time to punch out! Who’s got a joint?

-AR

Cannibal Corpse have been the face of death metal for almost twenty-five years. Since their debut full-length Eaten Back to Life was released in 1990, they’ve dominated the scene with their brand of in-your-face brutal lyrics and slamming death metal. They’ve also managed to make a name for themselves as one of the most commercially successful death metal bands on the planet. Metal Blade will release their latest offering, Torture, on March 12 — you can pre-order it here.

I  recently spoke with bassist/founding memeber Alex Webster about the new album and the band’s upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary, as well as tons of other Cannibal-related activities. Read our full chat after the jump!

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF CANNIBAL CORPSE, OBSCURA, FORBIDDEN, LAZARUS A.D., GIANT SQUID, PYRAMIDS, WOLVHAMMER, BENEATH OBLIVION, HALCYON WAY, AND GADGET

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!

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Ron Jarzombek is a name that’s too seldom heard outside of progressive metal circles, despite his extensive metal legacy. Sure, a handful of people may be familiar with Blotted Science — the so-called “supergroup” of which he is a part — but by and large, even those who know Blotted Science are unfamiliar with the man himself.

Jarzombek began his musical work with the underrated-yet-incredibly-influential prog band Watchtower in the 80s, then delved into the realm of technical instrumental music with Spastic Ink in the 90s and 2000s. Blotted Science’s debut, The Machinations of Dementia, was released in 2007, and  also featured Cannibal Corpse’s Alex Webster (who is still in the band) and Behold… The Arctopus’ Charlie Zeleny (who is not).

That band is now back after four years (with a new drummer, Obscura’s Hannes Grossman, to boot!) to release The Animation of Entomology, an EP centered around bugs and horror — so much that the songs were actually written to already-existing videos as kind of horror movie scores. You can see the video for the first one, “Cretaceous Chasm,” here; the second one, “Vermicular Asphixiation,” is here.

I Skyped with Ron last week to discuss the new EP and ended up learning a lot about Jarzombek’s musical history, Blotted Science, Jarzombek’s views on the current metal scene, and ESPN exercise videos.

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As I type this, I have just finished editing Dave Mustein’s interview with Ron Jarzombek regarding the new Blotted Science EP, The Animation of Entimology. And Mr. Mustein deserves a pat on the back or a lollipop or something, ’cause it’s a great interview and I learned a lot from it, and I hope you all read it when we run it (possibly even later today).

Please allow me to entice you with one of the cool things I learned: Jarzombek wasn’t a death metal fan until he saw Cannibal Corpse’s in-studio video for “Frantic Disembowelment,” the instrumental [Yeah, there are vox on the album. This is why you shouldn't write blogs at 2 am, kids! -AR] track from Cannibal Corpse’s 2004 release, The Wretched Spawn. That video, he says, demonstrated for him that it takes real skill to play death metal.

And it’s easy to see why this video impressed him so much that he ran out and hooked up with Alex Webster. I’m sure plenty of you have already seen this clip, which is obviously not at all new, but it’s so awesome that it’s always worth watching again. Seriously, Webster, drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, and guitarist Pat O’Brien all deserve major props for this shit right here.

Kiler, killer, KILLER.

-AR

At long last, Blotted Science are getting ready to make their return! The band’s new EP, The Animation of Entomology, is coming out in less than a month, and now they’ve unveiled the album art (above), and two minutes of a new song, “Omitting Eyes” (below). And while I suspect the EP cover will cause some debate — I think it looks pretty cool, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some fans may find it too cartoony — I can’t imagine what anyone’s complaint about the song could be. It’s too awesome, maybe? I dunno I dunno. Check it out and see if you can find something bad to say about it that doesn’t make you sound like an irrational tool. I don’t think it’s possible.

BLOTTED SCIENCE – Omitting Eyes (edit) by EclecticElectric

The Animation of Entomology comes out October 4 via EclecticElectric.

-AR

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.

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It’s been three years since Blotted Science released their one and only album, the erection-inducing The Machinations of Dementia, and one could be forgiven for fearing that we might never again hear from this actually-as-cool-as-it-sounds supergroup. But fear not, my fellow lovers of extreme music! Metal Injection tells me that Ron Jarzombek has revealed that the band is working on a new, four-song, twenty-two minute EP! And while a full-length would obviously be preferable, at this point I think I speak for all Blotted Science fans when I say, “We’ll take what we can get.”

But wait! There’s more! The group has a new drummer! Says Jarzombek:

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

With seemingly every band in the world now less-than-hesitant to replace a departed member, no matter how seemingly important that member was to the band’s success, this week we asked our writers:

IS THERE ANY STILL-ACTIVE METAL BAND THAT COULD NOT AFFORD TO LOSE A SINGLE MEMBER OF ITS LINE-UP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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As a writer for MetalSucks, I find it pretty shocking that there are pretty much no mentions at all of Ron Jarzombek. Many of you probably don’t even know who he is. So I feel that it’s my duty to enlighten those who don’t. You may have heard of Blotted Science, the supergroup composed of Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse on bass, Chris Adler from Lamb of God on drums (who was later replaced by Charlie Zeleny of Behold…the Arctopus), and Ron Jarzombek on guitar. They’ve only released one album, The Machinations of Dementia, but it received a lot of praise and the band has said that they’re in the process of writing another album. But even though Blotted Science is the least prolific of Jarzombek’s projects, it’s the most well-known and the most recent.

Jarzombek has been making insane shred-tastic metal albums as a solo artist as well as in the bands Spastic Ink and Watchtower (among others) since 1987. He’s guested on albums by Obscura, Jeff Loomis, and Gordian Knot. Yet still, people don’t know about him. This has to change. Just watch some of the videos below if you don’t believe me – I’ve provided a few from his various projects.

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The old cliché goes that genius is the very simple idea that, for whatever reason, no one has ever had before. Assuming that’s true, then Cannibal Corpse are the Albert Einsteins of metal. For these dudes were not, at the beginning, great musicians. They were just some kids from Buffalo who basically listened to thrash and said “We wanna do that, but make it even heavier and more evil-sounding.” And so they did. And simple though it seems (Tomb of the Mutilated might be considered quaint if it were released today) Cannibal Corpse – particularly the original line-up of vocalist Chris Barnes, bassist Alex Webster, drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, and guitarists Jack Owen and Bob Rusay – are undeniably one of the most influential bands in all of metal history. They are one of the key creators of death metal as we know it. As though he felt the words to Slayer’s “Angel of Death” just weren’t violent enough, Barnes practically invented pure gore as lyrical fodder; he also reinvented his craft (if you can call making it sound like your lungs are having violent diarrhea a “craft”). Producer Scott Burns, who was basically the sixth member of the band for years, obviously deserves his share of the credit for their accomplishments, too. Basically, if you’ve ever enjoyed to pretty much any death metal song ever, you probably owe Cannibal Corpse a handjob.

And that, of course, is precisely the problem.

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Here’s Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster talking about his band in the January 2009 issue of Decibel:

“We’ve gotten a little more musical though the years and I think it’s a gradual and natural progression. We’ve always been trying to improve ourselves as players and songwriters. If you compare out first record and this one, the difference is enormous; but fromalbum one to album to 11, it’s been a slow progression.”

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that maybe Mr. Webster was talking some bullshit hype, as musicians are prone to do when promoting a new release. But not only does Webster speak the truth – he could just as easily be talking about his peers in Napalm Death.

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Cannibal Corpse have announced Evisceration Plague as the title of their new album. Metal Blade will release the latest from death metal’s elder statesmen on February 3.

Yes, it’s a silly album title, but c’mon – it’s Cannibal Corpse. Everything about them is kinda silly. That doesn’t mean it’s not also awesome.

In a statement, bassist Alex Webster commented, “Br00tal br00tal br00tal, hype hype hype, heaviest album ever, br00tal br00tal br00tal.”

Find out what other silly metal phrases the band has selected as song titles after the jump.

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It’s a cold winter night (technically morning) in January. Somewhere in a warehouse in the bowels of Brooklyn, Axl and Vince have infiltrated director David Brodsky’s set for the new Hate Eternal video, “Bringer of Storms,” in order to nab an interview with the death metal God known as Erik Rutan. Hate Eternal are having one hell of a day – after a personal loss and a vehicular mishap, they just barely made it to their gig in Manhattan that night to play a killer, if abbreviated, set, and now they’re doing this video shoot until six or seven a.m. before they have to squeeze back into their van and start the long haul to Baltimore (which is geographically closer to where they started their day than it is to where they’ve ended it!) for another show tonight.

Surely, the dudes in Hate Eternal would have every right to be in terrible moods, and trying to grab the dude for a ten minute interview in between set-ups should be cause enough for the monstrous demon Rutan to reign death down upon our intrepid reporters. But Rutan and company actually turn out to be a group of down-to-earth, soft-spoken, incredibly nice guys, and their fearless leader – he who was part of arguably the best line-up Morbid Angel ever had, he who has produced already legendary albums for the likes of Cannibal Corpse, Vital Remains, Goatwhore, Six Feet Under, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Demiricous, The Absence, and Pain Principle, he who has persevered with his labor of love, Hate Eternal, in spite of every seemingly insurmountable obstacle thrown in his path – is only all too happy to indulge these puny fanboys with their precious interview.

Above, check out the clip for “Bringer of Storms,” directed by David Brodsky. It comes off of Hate Eternal’s new album, Fury and Flames, which hits stores February 19 on Metal Blade.

After the jump, check out the complete transcript of Axl and Vince’s interview with the mighty Erik Rutan.

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