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The passing of Apple visionary Steve Jobs is not nearly as maddening as the Casey Anthony verdict (let’s get cereal for a moment: it’s actually incredibly sad), but the responses of the metal community via Twitter are just as lulzy! So, in the spirit of our own Anso DF’s Casey Anthony verdict vs. the metal people Twitter roast I present to you…
… THE METAL PEOPLE REMEMBER STEVE JOBS:
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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
This week ‘s question was suggested to us by the reader known as “Cougar Party”:
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE RIFF OF 2011 THUS FAR?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
This past may, MetalSucks’ own Alyssa Lorenzon grew out her leg and pit hair, slapped on a Viking helmet, chugged some mead, and braved the smelly crowds of Philadelphia to capture Amon Amarth live in action during the first leg of their “An Evening with Amon Amarth” tour, in which they played both their entire new (awesome awesome awesome) album,Surtur Rising, and a set of classics. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we weren’t actually able to retrieve the photos until now! But here they are, in all their bearded glory. Check ‘em out after the jump.
And don’t forget: Amon Amarth are doing the second leg of this incredible tour right now! Get dates here.
Let’s give Axl Rosenberg a hearty golf clap for capably handling Neilstein Soundscam while I was away, shall we? But the party is over, so it’s back to the grind of boring albums selling soon-to-be insignificant pieces of plastic (and soon-to-be insignificant digital files once Spotify launches).
You should all be elated to learn that Limp Bizkit claimed the #1 spot on the Hard Music charts last week (#15 overall), so let’s all take a great big sigh of relief in knowing that good music reigns supreme.
I keed. Queensryche had a solid debut, while In Flames, Symphony X and The Black Dahlia Murder had decent second weeks despite large percentage drops. Check out the numbers for those and several others after the jump.
Holy shit, two good music videos in one day? What the crap is going on around here? Where is the shit that normally gets released? Someone send me a new Straight Line Stitch video, ASAP.
ANYWAY…
All aspiring music video directors should take note of Amon Amarth’s latest clip, the David Brodsky-helmed “Destroyer of the Universe” — because this is how you do a fucking performance video. The tight, angular close-ups with enough movement to convey the power of the music but not so much that the viewer feels nauseous, the gut-punch editing style that is absolutely in sync with the music and not just completely and idiotically random, the shots from inside the crowd that make you feel like you’re right in the middle of the pit instead of watching it from afar… this thing is bursting with so much goddamn energy, it makes me wanna see Amon Amarth right now. Seriously, right this second. I don’t give a fuck that it’s ten o’clock in the morning, get those dudes some coffee and tell them to blast my ear drums out right the fuck now.
While I obviously can’t actually just snap my fingers and make Amon Amarth play for me right now, I will have a chance to see them soon, on the second leg of their “An Evening with Amon Amarth” North American headlining tour. Get dates here.
-AR
Seether are still around? Apparently they are, and apparently they still sell buttloads of records. While Seether nabbed the top spot on the Top Hard Music chart, Scar Symmetry also had a good debut, as did, um, Vampires Everywhere. Foo Fighters, Hollywood Undead, Black Label Society and others are still selling lots of records too. Numbers after the jump.
We had tons of fun sorting through all the entries for our Amon Amarth Viking Beard Contest. A lot of you did quite an impressive job growing your beards, leg and pit hair, while a lot of you… well, uh, let’s just say we’ll still give you an “A” for effort. After much deliberation, Johan Hegg himself has chosen the winners!
The grand prize (one male, one female):
- a lock from Johan Hegg’s beard!
- the “super duper fan edition” box set of Surtur Rising, of which only a very small limited number were made.
- a drumhead signed by the whole band
- a Metal Blade Records t-shirt and lanyard
- a MetalSucks t-shirt in the design and size of your choosing
Runner up prize (one male, one female):
- the “super duper fan edition” box of Surtur Rising
- Metal Blade Records t-shirt and lanyard
AND THE WINNERS ARE…. (with commentary from Johan)
Leyla got to go the recent “An Evening with Amon Amarth” North American headlining tour, in which the band played two sets — their entire new (awesome awesome awesome) album, Surtur Rising, and a set of classics — and it sounds like she had a great time. But due to a scheduling conflict, Vince and I missed it. And we were really, really sad about that. I’m not being facetious in the slightest — we were totally bummed out.
Lucky for us, and any other poor bastards who didn’t get to go, the band is coming back for a second round in August! So… thank Odin for second chances. I’m so happy we’ll get to see one of these shows after all.
(And on a semi-related note, I know some people have been asking when we’re gonna announce winners for the beard growing contest. Well, believe it or not, some of the winners don’t seem to be responding to their e-mails! So check your inboxes and spam folders, people! And hopefully we can finally announce the winners really, really soon.)
Here are dates… I’m gonna start growing my beard now in preparation. I think I can have a pretty gnarly one goin’ by August…
Sonic Syndicate’s Karin Axelsson. Apparently there are other people in this band, too.
I was recently made aware of this post over at That’s Not Metal, and holy God, did I laugh. In short, it’s all about a show Sonic Syndicate played in Worcester in 2007, and how horribly the audience reacted to them. They were opening for Amon Amarth as a replacement for Decapitated (it was just a few weeks after Vitek passed away), and they were booed right off the stage. It was hilarious. And you know how I know it was hilarious? I was there.
I was a little skeptical when I first heard about the Amon Amarth two-set tour. Sure, I was excited because, yay, double the Viking fun. Hearing their new album in its entirety, though? I thought that might be a little boring. Not that I have anything against Surtur Rising — no, the opposite in fact. Amon Amarth are the AC/DC of death metal. All their songs are sort of similar, but they’re always fun and always a rollicking good time. It just seemed like overkill.
I quite enjoyed their latest release and I looked forward to an evening with them. Ha– “An Evening with Amon Amarth.” Because of that title and the rather small venue, I was half expecting a stage of luxurious leather couches and the band coming out in smoking jackets. But that would just defeat the purpose.
In the absence of any big metal debuts, this week I decided to run with a question posed last week: how does Amon Amarth’s current chart-buster Surtur Rising stack up against their past releases? After the jump, a look at those numbers.
Foo Fighters were #1 and Hollywood Undead were #2 for the third week in a row on the Top Hard Music charts; elsewhere, Otep Shamaya had a nice debut and shitstains on the ass of the universe like Winds of Plague and Asking Alexandria also had solid weeks. Whoopie.
The Foo Fighters are #1 for the 2nd week in a row; I have yet to hear Wasting Light but everything Dave Grohl puts out is quality and the two songs I’ve heard so far are both slam dunks. Conversely, Hollywood Undead are #2 for the second week in a row; can’t win ‘em all, I guess, but at least they’re not #1.
Elsewhere Winds of Plague, Periphery and Loaded had solid debuts, while pretty much any band that was on Revolver’s Golden Gods Awards show experienced a nice little sales bump. Numbers after the fold.
Thanks for waiting patiently for us to announce the winners of our Amon Amarth Viking Beard Contest (as if you had a choice); it’s not easy to find time to look at piddly beards when you’re busy raping and pillaging all day, but Johan has finally selected the winners. But wait! Our booty was so bountiful that we ended up with a few extra prizes to give away. Here’s how it’ll break down:
Grand prize winners: (2 total)
1 dude & 1 chick (get all the goods we listed for the contest here)
2nd Place Winners: (2 total)
1 dude and 1 chick (deluxe edition, Metal Blade lanyard/tee) *no Johan beard hair (sorry! he needs some for himself) and no signed drumhead.
5 runners up:
Amon Amarth European poster (photo) and Metal Blade lanyard
Everyone else that entered properly:
MB lanyard
Don’t say Metal Blade never did nothin’ for ya; we’ll have the winners announced very shortly. Meanwhile Amon Amarth kicked off their two-set “Evening With” U.S. headlining tour last week and all reports indicate that asses are being kicked with startling regularity. Check out a clip posted at No Clean Singing from the 4/17 Denver, CO show above and another, along with remaining tour dates, after the jump.
Two days late but not two dollars short, I figure ya’ll might like to know how all the albums that came out last Tuesday (April 12th) fared sales-wise, even though I think we can all agree that album sales aren’t the be-all-end-all measure of a band’s success. So without further ado, here’s how the new Between the Buried and Me, Foo Fighters and Red Fang albums sold last week.
Also, Dave Grohl is a very rich man; in addition to the ginormous debut of his new Foo Fighters album, seemingly every Foo catalog album made a return back onto the charts this past week.
Right, the numbers:
I’m at the point where I pretty much prefer animated movies to live-action ones. I passed up some big deal, hotshot movie that came out recently, whose name I don’t even remember, to see Rango. I’m usually a pretty good judge, too, because I knew Rango was going to be awesome ,and it was. It looks absolutely amazing, and if you’re a nerd for animation detail, the gross, crusty animals will thrill you. Not to mention the classic movie references from Chinatown to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s also damn violent for a “kids movie.” And well, I’m a movie nerd with a deep love for filmic violence. My dad didn’t have any sons, ok? He raised me to love his Fab Four; Arnold, Bruce, Sylvester, and Jean-Claude. And Dolph, on days he felt generous.
This might be odd, but I always liked to think about what various characters’ personalities would be like. Down to their music and movie taste. I especially try to pick out the metalheads, because I want to find my animated brothers and sisters in arms. It was while musing on the subject on Twitter that I found out the talented Ms. Elise over at Reign in Blonde kind of does the same thing. Apparently, all my acquaintances are online these days. She actually compiled a list of the most metal Disney characters, and with her help, I’ve expanded the list. Here are the Ten Most Likely Metalheads in Animated Movies (excluding anime and other international releases, as the author has not done enough research on the subject.)
If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.
No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).
Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.
Stacking things on idle cats isn’t animal cruelty… it’s fun! If they don’t like it alls they gotta do it get up. In that spirit we teamed up with Catstackers.com for a contest; stack your kitty in the most metal way possible, win a copy of Amon Amarth’s new album Surtur Rising and a MetalSucks t-shirt. After carefully sifting through the entries — and there were a bunch of really good ones — we’ve chosen “Sambuca,” sent in by Christy of Newhall, CA.
“But wait! Where’s the metal??” Look no further than that can of Aqua Net behind the brush. Game, set, match. This one definitely stood out amongst the good but ultimately predictable pics of cats stacked with animal horns, bullet belts and St. Vitus CDs (and even a few MetalSucks stickers… A+ for effort). Assed out in the sink with a beer cup on his head, no less… that’s metal. Kitty can haz hangover?
Today is the day! The day Amon Amarth’s excellent new album Surtur Rising comes out (order here) and the final day of our Amon Amarth Viking Beard Contest which launched nearly three months ago. Which means today is the day that either 1) you send in pictures of the results of your [attempted] beard growth, or 2) you do not, because you wimped out and decided to shave.
So, if you recall, these are the rules:
Biggest and best metal release day of 2011 so far? It certainly seems that way. New records from Amon Amarth, Becoming the Archetype, Blackguard, Cavalera Conspiracy — are you kidding me? there’s still more? — Goes Cube, Havok, Mercenary, Obscura and a Between the Buried and Me best-of comp (with a brand new release coming next week!) all officially come out today. If you’re a devoted metalhead with varied tastes you better have saved up, else you’ll be very, very poor come tomorrow.
Vic Vaughn takes a look at all those release — and yes, EVEN MORE — after the break.
So as it turns out, Periphery have a rather sizable online following. Hm. Who knew?
ANYWAY, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:
Alright, have a good frakin’ weekend everyone! See ya Monday.
-AR
