MetalSucks

Leaves’ Eyes vocalist Liv Kristine has written another ridiculous top five list for The Deciblog – this one about the best “vegetarian eats” – but it’s not really offensive, and it would just be petty of me to respond with a top five “meat eats” or whatever (although there’s some obvious humor to be had there).

No, instead I’d like to concentrate on this morning’s Invisible Oranges post by Cosmo Lee regarding  “the new breed of female metallers,” which seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by Kristine’s initial list about why women in metal rule, and my (admittedly sophomoric) response.

As is usually the case, Mr. Lee makes some excellent recommendations, my favorite of which is a Russian band, Tantal. Here’s their video for a song called “Suicide.” I suggest you stick with it through the entire six minutes, even if you don’t dig the beginning – as Cosmo writes, “It starts off cheesy but gets better and better, with an amazing Between the Buried and Me-style outro.”

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So far, this is in line to be the second most metal cover art of 2010 (here’s the first)…

Starve for the Devil drops February 9 on Nuclear Blast. Arsis will also be on the MetalSucks sponsored Tyrants of Evil North American Tour 2010, alongside Exodus, Mutiny Within, and headliners Arch Enemy. Get dates after the jump.

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Hey, lookit! We just debuted a new Arch Enemy video, “Beast of Man,” earlier this month, and the band already has another one. Sweeeeet.

So here’s “Dark Insanity.” The track comes off the band’s recent Century Media release The Root of All Evil, and the footage is taken from their killer DVD, Tyrants Of The Rising Sun – Live In Japan.

Also: a friendly reminder (as though you’d forgotten!) that Arch Enemy will headline the MetalSucks sponsored Tyrants of Evil North American Tour 2010 with Exodus, Arsis and Mutiny Within starting in January. Get dates here.

-AR

Pretty big week here at the MetalSucks Mansion. We laughed, we cried, we fired someone, we rocked out with our cocks out. Here’s a rundown of the highlights:

• We debuted a new song by The Devin Townsend Project, a new video by Skeletonwitch, a new song by Javelina, and the cover art for Sigh’s new album.
• Horse the Band’s Lord Gold blogged about Nawlins and cocaine, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle gave us an exclusive statement about that whole cup throwing incident, Dallas Coyle is giving away music for free, and Daath’s Eyal Levi talked about a run-in with the Polacks and drum triggers.
• We spoke to Dethklok’s Brendon Small, Converge’s Jacob Bannon, Gojira’s Joe Duplantier, and Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix.
• We checked out new releases from Baroness, The Red Chord, Skeletonwitch, Immortal, Vains of Jenna, Vampire Mooose, and Javelina. Also, some asshole really likes Oceano.
• We’re sponsoring the incredibly awesome Tyrants of Evil North American Tour 2010 with Arch Enemy, Exodus, Arsis, and Mutiny Within!

Alright. I’m going to see Where the Wild Things Are now. I’m fairly certain that it is going to make me weep like Gary Suarez. See ya Monday.

-AR

But it might make for a better video if it was.

Instead, Decadence’s “Silent Weapon” video gives us pretty typical people running through the woods imagery, and some shots of a swinging light bulb that we all saw in a hundred other metal videos about fifteen years ago.

Still, the song isn’t terrible. But I can think of another, much better female-fronted band from Sweden, who are about to embark on this totally awesome tour that we’re sponsoring. Just sayin’.

-AR

As many of you successfully guessed on Friday, the headliner to the MetalSucks-sponsored mystery tour is none other than Arch Enemy. They join the already super sweet bill of Exodus, Arsis and Mutiny Within for the Tyrants of Evil North American Tour.

Arch Enemy just released The Root of All Evil, a recording of some of their best songs from the pre-Angela Gossow era, with Gossow now handling vocals. We have seen AE lay to waste many a venue full of unsuspecting metal heads, and having an extra dose of their classics in the arsenal ain’t gonna save any lives. Add the aforementioned three generations of awesome metal bands, and you’ve got the kick-ass tour of the winter. You will not wanna miss this.

Get tour dates after the jump!

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The Root of All Evil is the eighth studio album by Swedish melodic death metal legends Arch Enemy, featuring re-recorded songs from the band’s first three albums with Johan Liiva as vocalist — Black Earth, Stigmata, and Burning Bridges. The re-recordings have Angela Gossow, who’s now been in the band for nearly 10 years, on vocals, and they were mixed and mastered by the masterful Andy Sneap (but produced by the band themselves).

Regardless of how you feel about bands re-recording their old material with a new lineup, Arch Enemy’s new video for “Beast of Man” — originally from 1998’s Stigmata — is a cool live clip that accurately captures what it’s like to see (and hear) the band in 2009. The Amott brothers back together again, and Gossow belting it out in front.

The Root of All Evil came out this week. Buy it at ArchEnemy.net.

Actually, we don’t have to pirate our own articles. Plenty of other websites do that for us, often without giving us credit or linking back to us. Once upon a time someone even accidentally included one of our bylines in their cut and paste job. Said “writer” apologized but then went on to shamelessly rip us off many more times, which was nice, because it shows his apology was sincere. You know who else tried to pass off someone else’s work as their own? The guy who went on to shoot Dimebag. So good company you keep, fellas.

Here are other ethically questionable decisions people made in the metal world this week:

• Hasidim moshed, we made punny jokes.
• Matt Heafy and Paolo Gregoletto of Trivium asked fans to illegally burn and share the band’s music.
• We’re streaming God Dethroned’s entire new album until Tuesday; listen now! We also debuted new tracks from Animals as Leaders and Burning Human.
• Arch Enemy choose to re-record old material; we choose to stop talking about this project from hereon out (starting… now!).
• Tyson vs. Holyfield 3 Underoath vs. Avenged Sevenfold! We love this kind of shit.
• Some Russian high school black metallers headbanged for show and tell, and we pondered how to improve our corpsepaint skillz.
• The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato sounded off against President Barack Obama. You sounded off against each other.
• We looked at new releases from Chimaira, God Dethroned and Goes Cube.

Next week brings more contests, more interviews, more new music streams you won’t be able to hear anywhere else, and at least one confrontation with a singer Axl once gave a terrible review. Come back and read more. You know you want to.

-Vince and Axl

Ohio Deathrashers Brother Von Doom are one of our favorite new metal bands on 2008. They have an awesome new album, Relentless, out now on Deathcote (read David Bee Roth’s review here), and an insanely sweet, metal as fuck new David Brodsky-directed video – with knights!!! – for their merciless single, “Eater of Days” (above). So when the opportunity to e-mail the band some questions arose, of course, I jumped at the chance.

After the jump, find out where the name “Brother Von Doom” comes from and get the band’s thoughts on their songwriting process, working with David Brodsky and producer Andreas Magnusson, the worst trends in metal today, and a whole lot more…

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As album and touring hype cycles go, so do we, and as such we definitely haven’t mentioned Arch Enemy in a beat. But seriously, this band is fucking awesome, tons of effects on Angela Gossow’s voice be damned (she’s still hella talented. Yeah, I just said “hella.” Fuck off.). Enjoy this live footage from their Live Apocalypse DVD.

-VN

Gotta love these cool package tours. As you may have heard by now, Arch Enemy will be doing a North American headlining run in the spring, and if the chance to see these cats live isn’t enough to get you excited, well, they’ve thrown in melodic death metal heavyweights Dark Tranquillity, Dino Cazares’ Divine Heresy (read our interview with the band here), and one of our favorite power metal acts, Firewind. In other words, this is going to be an awesome show.Check out a complete tour itinerary after the jump.

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Opeth, one of our all-time collective favorite progressive metal bands, have been causing quite a stir in the metal media lately with news about their forthcoming album which now has a name and a release date. Like their Swedish metal-brethren in Meshuggah, fans go nuts pretty much anytime a member of Opeth so much as takes a dump.

The new album will be called Watershed and will be released on June 3 in the U.S. (June 4th internationally) on Roadrunner Records. The album will have seven songs, all written by Mikael Akerfeldt except one which was co-written with new guitarist Fredrik Åkesson (ex–Arch Enemy). Three cover songs that will not appear on the regular release of the album were also recorded: “Bridge of Sighs” from Robin Trower’s 1974 LP of the same title, “Den Ständiga Resan” (sung in Swedish) by Marie Fredriksson, and the Alice in Chains song “Would?”

Is it time to get excited about new Opeth yet? Will the band be the same without Peter Lindgren? What kind of toilet paper does Mikael Akerfeldt use?

-VN

PS: While searching Google Images for the above logo, I came across this bizarre post in which the author attempts to use metal sub-genres and Opeth as an analogy to explain document management. What the fuck?

Most of the big debuts in hard rock and metal came last week with the Foo Fighters, Dethklok, Down and Arch Enemy — but all of these held respectable positions, while Nightwish and The Cult made Top 100 debuts. Chart positions and sales numbers after the jump.

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