Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

I’m digging the Skeletonwitch cover this month, but Chance Garnette looks like a younger version of this guy. THERE IS NO FUCKIN’ PUMPKIN ICE CREAM IN YOUR FUCKIN’ FUTURE.

Luckily, House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects never come up in J. Bennett’s comprehensive and revealing cover story on Athens, Ohio’s premier metal outfit (although Appalachian Death Ride sound promising—thanks, Wikipedia!). The blackened thrash quintet has been refining their (witch)craft over the last half-decade while dealing with annoying member turnover. Now Forever Abomination is poised to be their breakthrough; we’re obviously in their corner either way, seeing as how SW made their stamp on the Flexi Series just a month earlier.

The ’Witch headline a Halloween rogues’ gallery in November, including a Call & Response with Alice Cooper, an amusingly acrimonious HOF on Ministry’s The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, features on Goreaphobia and Exhumed, and a new Flexi with Anaal Nathrakh dressing up to deconstruct the Specials’ “Man at C&A.” And as always there’s plenty more razor blades embedded within. Subscribers will have the issue within the next three weeks, the rest of you can order it here now.

-AB

Yeah, you could just order Decibel’s November 2011 issue, which also features Machine Head, Chimaira, and Brutal Truth — but why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?

via WWTDD

So much of this week ended up being devoted to the Big Four that I honestly don’t wanna think about any of those bands again for at least the remainder of the year. So to wrap this shit up, here’s everything Big Four-related we did this week:

• We live snarked the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium.
• We went to an Anthrax press conference.
• We went to the Metal Masters clinic and saw Phil Anselmo jam some Pantera with various Big Fourers.
• We debated the merits and demerits of Anthrax’s Worship Music.
• We listened to Lars Ulrich on Howard Stern.
• We had fun at the expense of Dave Mustaine’s faith.
• We had a Big Four edition of Show Us Your Metalsucks.
• We helped Metal Injection with their Big Four-themed Livecast.
• I also made an appearance in Metal Injection’s Big Four video recap, which you MUST watch because a) it’s awesome and b) I’m so handsome!

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

Today’s “Fear, Emptiness, Decibel” is basically a bulletin informing you about our Anaal Nathrakh Flexi Series stream. Or, as the editor-in-chief just referred to it via IM, our “anaal stream.” Being a five-year-old boy (in a 12-year-old girl’s body), I promptly hit Google for more “anal/anaal” puns to annoy you with, but forgot that their autocomplete is totally PG-13; their two options for anal (“anal cancer treatment” and “anal cancer staging”) aren’t exactly knee-slappers.

So, in lieu of buttplay humor, let’s just acknowledge the many blackened-grind merits of AN. Which are precisely what allow Irrumator and V.I.T.R.I.O.L. to do totally back-of-the-left-field-bleachers shit, like cover the Specials for the Flexi Series. Their interpretation of the checkered icons’ “Man at C&A” is just the right blend of WTF and gnarly that we were hoping for when this series launched. It’s streaming right here:

Anaal Nathrakh “Man at C&A” (dB011) by Decibel Magazine

It appears in silver on yellow glory in the November Decibel—for subscribers only—but there are a limited number of copies available in the webstore, so get there pronto.

-AB

Decibel’s November 2011 issue also features Skeletonwitch, Alice Cooper, Brutal Truth, Machine Head, Chimaira,  and a Ministry Hall of Fame. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?

“Ooh no!”

“Macho Man” Randy Savage has perished. My father and I were actually at his first wedding, which is to say, we were at Summer Slam ’91. Vince and I are so bummed right now… I don’t think I can even go outside. I need to curl up with YouTube and remember a time when the “Macho Man” really did seem invincible.

We’ll never forget you, Mr. Savage.

Maybe this will cheer you up?

• We lied and said that Iwrestledabearonce were becoming a black metal band. Then, depending on your perspective, we either made it better or made it worse by debuting a new track from the band.
• We also debuted a stretched-out version of Hammerfall’s “Hearts on Fire.”
• Our list of the The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists continued.
• We spoke to Max Cavalera from Cavalera Conspiracy and Soulfly, Dean Herrera and Henry Selva from The Human Abstract, and the dudes from Noisear.
• We enjoyed a series of exclusive tour blogs from both The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley and Woods of Ypres’ Shane Madden.
• We gushed over Anaal Nathrakh’s Passion.
• We wondered why elitists find some deathcore bands acceptable and others unacceptable.
• We declared metal the winner in the war on grunge.
• We expressed our enthusiasm for Victory Records’ latest sign, Design the Skyline.
• We gave you a detailed analysis of the lyrics for the new Limp Bizkit single.
• We declared drinking to be for pussies.

Next week crack the top ten of our ongoing guitarists list, and, at least to the best of my knowledge, do not aid any bands in playing a prank on the public. And hopefully no one else we liked better than Fred Durst dies.

-AR

Anaal Nathrakh’s seemingly permanent problem — that it will never top it’s brilliant debut, the filthy The Codex Necro – isn’t unique to them, nor even unique to metal. Like Nas — who arrived with Illmatic, one of the hip-hop’s most influential albums, and has subsequently tried to top it for almost two decades, at best coming somewhat close and at worst falling embarrassingly short — their first official effort set an impossibly high watermark. But unlike Nas, the band have never given the impression that they’re trying to recapture lightening in a bottle, which could be why The Codex Necro feels less like a fluke and more like a sturdy foundation for the band’s career. After introducing clean singing on their next album (Domine Non Es Dignus), it was clear if they couldn’t shoot past their debut’s excellence, they could fire to the left of it. So while Anaal Nathrakh have never been as good as they were on Codex Necro – and arguably never will be — their catalog has been remarkably consistent in its wake. Nas positioned himself to have to compete with hip-hop’s brightest stars while his was on the wane; Anaal Nathrakh have only had to compete with themselves. Even in a relatively diminished capacity, there are few that are more fierce and eviscerating as them.

So while the band have been wobbling back and forth between great albums (Eschanton, The Constellation of the Black Widow) and spotty ones (Dignus, Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here), they haven’t come as close to the viciousness of their debut as they do on Passion (oddly enough, their most subdued album title yet). Though it lacks Codex’s red-eyed anger and grime-caked production, it tweaks the band’s post-Necro additions — big choruses and tempos below that of “ridiculously fast” — to seeming perfection. Perhaps it’s unfair to hold them to an impossible standard, but if one must, Passion is as good as the band can get. “All killer, no filler” feels literal in its context.

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New releases from A Storm of Light, Anaal Nathrakh, Arsonsists Get All the Girls, Nader Sadek, Scar Symmetry and more; a good day for metal! Check out Vic Vaughn’s thoughts on today’s new albums after the break.

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The Deciblog are streaming a new Anaal Nathrakh ditty, “Paragon Pariah,” and in an accompanying interview, vocalist Dave Hunt instructs listeners to “set volume to ‘kill’ and press ‘blast.’” That’s sound advice — this song gets the combination of filthy fucking dirty and epically awesomely operatic just right, and played at a volume sure to scare your neighbors, it sounds especially beastly. Killer stuff.

Headbang here, then come back and let us know what you think. Anaal Nathrakh’s latest, Passion, will be released May 23 on Candlelight.

-AR

Why, it was just Monday that we stumbled across news of a new Anaal Nathrakh album, Passion, and lookee what we have here! It’s cover art! And, better still, A NEW SONG! I knew I got out bed this morning for a reason.

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I know I’m not the lone inhabitant of the MS Mansion greatly anticipating the next Anaal Nathrakh album; 2009′s In the Constellation of the Black Widow was a firey storm of intense, raging, non-corpsepaint black metal that topped several MS writers’ year-end lists and ended up as #2 in our Readers’ Poll. Despite having been around for over a decade and having released six prior albums, Anaal Nathrakh saw their profile greatly elevated by Black Widow, morphing them from underground faves to trumpeted victorious underdogs. The album even saw them garner a ton of visibility in the mainstream metal press.

So I was surprised to learn via a tip from MS reader Drew G. that Anaal Nathrakh have a new album coming out very soon… yet no one is talking about it.

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Have you ever seen some smokin’ hot chick with a dude who’s not only like one-tenth as good looking as she is, but isn’t particularly smart or funny or interesting or even rich? And you sit there and you go, “What the crap happened there?” That’s usually around the time a friend leans over and whispers “She used to be fat, before they met.” And you go “Ooooohhhhh.” Self-esteem issues: she used to be a behema, and even with all the weight she’s lost, she has no idea how fine she is now. As a friend likes to say, “We all had a shot.” Just shows to go ya that it pays to be an arrogant fart nugget who hits on anything with a hole and a pulse, ’cause sometimes it’s a former fatty who has totally devalued herself.

I don’t really know much about Mick Kenney from Anaal Nathrakh, but I guess he used to have a weight problem, because he’s started a new band, Sorrows, with Bleeding Through’s Brandan Schieppati. When you think of all the people in the world Kenney could have collaborated with… why choose the dude from a not especially good metalcore band? Somewhere the guys from Bury Your Dead are thinking “Shit! We all had a shot.”

Sadder still is that Sorrows just aren’t very interesting. Anaal Nathrakh are one of those bands that challenge our perception of what metal could be, in the best possible way; if you didn’t know that Kenney was involved in Sorrows, you’d probably never even give them the courtesy of sitting through an entire song before shutting it off and going about your day. But if you’re curious, you can listen to some of their stuff here.

And because this is kinda-sorta a Bleeding Through post, I’ve included the customary photo of Marta after the jump. Be forewarned, however, that the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys made a time machine and snapped this pic in 2020, after BT have broken up and she’s settled into life as a mommy and homemaker. So she doesn’t look quite as hot as we’re all accustomed to:

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After posting our own year-end lists for 2009, we asked you, oh ye MetalSucks faithful, to tell us what you thought the best metal album of the year was. And you have answered, overwhelmingly voting for the latest from Atlanta’s psychedlic prog-metal masters:

Interestingly enough, the album that got the second most number of votes (although it still lagged wwwwaaayyy behind Skye) was Anaal Nathrakh’s In the Constellation of the Black Widow – we’ll let you guys decide if that’s because people stopped voting when they saw Mastodon were the clear front-runners, or just because Anaal Nathrakh’s fans are particularly loyal.

And now we can all start arguing about 2010!!!

-Axl & Vince

Nachtmystium’s Black Meddle, Pt. 1 was one of the best albums of 2008, ending up at the top or near the top of most MS staffers’ top ten lists that year. So, naturally, Nachtmystium fans everywhere have been asking the question, “Hey, where the fuck is Black Meddle, Pt. II?”

Well, hey, guess what? The band has issued an update to that very query on their MySpace page:

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I’ve never gotten to see Anaal Nathrakh live, but we fucking love their albums, and this footage makes me think they put on my kinda show: no one is trying to kill one another, but no one is just standing there with their arms crossed, either. All it’s really missing is a crowd big enough for me to be able to sneak some pulls off a one-hitter or a J and we’ll be all good.

More after the jump.

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It’s been a doozy of a year for metal releases already, hasn’t it?

After the jump, the records I’ve been jamming the most so far that might or might not end up on my year-end Top 10.

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“Uncompromising” is usually used for black metal when applied to lanky, corpsepaint-addled misanthropes biting Transylvanian Hunger for the umpteen thousandth time, eschewing production value or playing ability for the purpose of “rawness.” This is a grave irony, in that amidst black metal holding individuality as one of its defining features, the vast majority of its lesser bands (and, unfortunately, the ones people usually associate with the genre) are essentially copies of its forefathers, and dismiss those nudging the genre’s boundaries outward as sellouts and/or traitors. Anaal Nathrakh have made some of the most uncompromising black metal you’ll ever hear (you know how heavy they are? They used to share a live rhythm section with Napalm fucking Death), both out-necro-ing their moody basement counterparts and blasting the faces off of metal’s heavyweights (let alone black metal’s) all without keyboards or corpsepaint. And after the unfortunate misstep of 2007’s Hell is Empty and the Devils are Here, Anaal Nathtrakh’s latest is a return to bestial form, full of impossibly fast blast beats, black/death-grind hybrid riffs, and ridiculously tortured vocals. Though not the band’s best, In the Constellation of the Black Widow is a stern reminder of why Anaal Nathrakh are often mentioned in the same breath as today’s most notable black metallers.

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Today is the kind of day that makes me wanna go up to the roof of the MetalSucks Mansion with a gun and just start picking people off. Luckily for everyone, then, that a) I don’t actually own a gun, and b) there’s new music from the UK’s extreme industrial blackened death grind act, Anaal Nathrakh, currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

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