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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.
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:
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
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!
It was a fuckin’ busy week, no? Either shit was crazy this week or I’ve really got to get outside of the MS Mansion more often. Here’s what went down:
Ax and I are going to see 3 Inches of Blood in Brooklyn tonight, so hopefully that’ll provide just the head-clearing I need. See you guys Monday.
-VN
On Tuesday we told you that we’re sponsoring an AWESOME tour this winter with a four band bill, and while we can’t tell you all the bands on the bill just yet, we can tease that info out for you. So every day for the rest of this week, we’ll be posting an interview with a member of each band on the bill, featuring questions designed to help you guess who they are without spoiling the surprise. Then, this Monday, October 12, we’ll reveal the complete line-up for the tour!
The first bands announced were Mutiny Within and Arsis. Yesterday, many of you correctly guessed that the third band is none other than the legendary Exodus! The band just announced a January 15 release date for their sure-to-be killer new DVD/CD set, Shovel Headed Tour Machine (Live At Wacken And Other Assorted Atrocities), and with a little luck, 2010 will also bring us the release of The Atrocity Exhibition – Exhibit B. These guys are true pioneers, a band that pretty much every metal band since has owed some debt to, and they absolutely SLAY live.
After the jump, check out the interview with a member of the headlining band. See if you can guess who it is just based on his or her answers!!!
On Tuesday we told you that we’re sponsoring an AWESOME tour this winter with a four band bill, and while we can’t tell you all the bands on the bill just yet, we can tease that info out for you. So every day for the rest of this week, we’ll be posting an interview with a member of each band on the bill, featuring questions designed to help you guess who they are without spoiling the surprise. Then, this Monday, October 12, we’ll reveal the complete line-up for the tour!
As many of you guessed yesterday, Arsis will join Mutiny Within to be the second band on the bill. Their new album, Starve for the Devil, comes out January 15 on Nuclear Blast, and if the band’s last four albums are any indication, it’s gonna be the new year’s first contender for Best Album of 2010.
After the jump, check out the interview with a member of the third band on the bill. See if you can guess who it is just based on his or her answers!!!
Wanna know what’s worse than cops that have decided to ruin your day? Customs officials that have decided to make an example out of you.
Well, you can’t say that Jim Malone doesn’t have a sense of humor.
After admitting earlier this year that he’s struggled with anorexia, Malone and his band, Arsis, have announced the title of their new album to be Starve for the Devil.
John Kempainen’s awesome guitar solos were major part of the appeal of The Black Dahlia Murder, at least for me. That being said, his replacement, former Arsis axeman Ryan Knight, is no slouch, so I’m definitely down to hear whatever the band comes up with next.
Our pals at Metal Injection captured some lo-fi footage of BDM doing a new song, “Necropolis,” and although it’s hard to hear much besides Trevor Strnad’s vocals, the track sounds heavy as a hippo (And I’ll even forgive the fact that The Absence, as well about as a gajillion other bands, already have a song called “Necropolis.”). Check it out:
Meanwhile, Blabbermouth posted footage of Vader doing a new song, “Rise of the Undead,” which will appear on their new album, entitled… Necropolis. Jesus H. Christ death metal bands, get some new fucking ideas already.
Check out the Vader video after the jump. Their Necropolis drops September 22.
Back in March we reported that French tech-metallers Gorod had released a new song from their forthcoming Listenable Records album Process Of A New Decline, and that said song was ridiculously awesome. Gorod have just posted another new song on their MySpace page entitled “Programmers Of Decline,” an equally orgasm-inducing nugget of progressive tech-death that makes my dick hard in anticipation of the new record (for which no official release date has been announced). The new song is five solid minutes of techy, deathy, shreddy goodness; while I listen, I’m fantasizing about a utopian U.S. tour dream lineup featuring Obscura, Psycroptic, Arsis, The Faceless and Gorod. Never gonna happen, right?
-VN
Well, MetalSucks Maniac/fellow writer Carlos Ramirez as now confirmed as much in an interview he conducted for Noise Creep. Here’s an excerpt:
MS Maniac Tiagon sent us a link to a new track by the French “mighty shredketeers” (his words) Gorod. I’d never listened to Gorod before, but the “shredketeer” classification certainly seems apt and I highly approve. Gorod play the kind of progressive / technical death metal peddled by bands like Arsis, Obscura and Psycroptic; aka they’re fucking awesome. Do yourself a favor and go listen to their new song “Disavow Your God” on their MySpace page right now. The band expects to have an album out this summer on Willowtip.
-VN
I’ve met Jim Malone twice, for an amount of time totalling maybe 120 seconds, maybe. The guy would not be able to pick me out of a line-up, I’m sure. But the last time I saw him, I didn’t even recognize him at first – he’d lost an incredible amount of weight. To tell the truth, I didn’t think he looked unhealthy – he wasn’t, like, Calista Flockhart thin or anything – in fact, I thought he looked pretty damn good.
But Arsis has cancelled a whole shit load of tour dates recently, and combined with the fact that they’ve gone through more line-up changes than Guns N’ Roses and Megadeth combined, it was getting to the point where our pals at Metal Injection were even worried that Arsis might be dunzo.
Luckily for fans of melodic tech death everywhere, this isn’t the case, and Malone has now explained all the Arsis drama in a statement:
So many of you have e-mailed us this week to instruct us to post news about the fact that Opeth and Enslaved are touring together that I’m fairly certain posting news about the fact that Opeth and Enslaved are touring together is a complete waste of time; I mean, clearly, everyone and their mother is already aware of this tour.
I’m not saying this isn’t an awesome package – clearly, it is – I’m just saying, you’ve all sent us the news and the tour dates, so what can we tell you that you don’t already know? How about this: we will be at the show at the Starland Ballroom in NJ, and we will be high. Actually, you probably knew that already, too.
I’m putting tour dates after the jump, although I don’t for the life of me know why.
One of the many stories we didn’t actually get to discuss this week is the news that The Faceless are the latest metal act to be banned from The Disney-owned House Of Blues in Anaheim, California. Oddly enough, their tour mates in Meshuggah and Cynic were not banned; what makes The Faceless any more (or less) offensive than Meshuggah or Cynic is kinda beyond me (Also beyond me: why people keep booking metal shows at this club that has repeatedly acknowledged it wants nothing to do with metal. But I digress.).
But the dudes in The Faceless can take consolation in these two facts:
When The Black Dahlia Murder announced earlier this week that former Arsis guitarist Ryan Knight had been tapped to fill the role vacated by John Kempainen just three weeks ago, a simmering side-story went mostly ignored: apparently at some point Ryan Knight decided to leave Arsis. WTF? Totally missed that announcement, unless the Black Dahlia announcement was meant to kill two birds with one stone.
The news officially elevates Arsis to new levels of the “ex-members of” department, rivaling only L.A. Guns and Guns N’ Roses in that vaunted arena; a game of “six degrees of Arsis” would make for some mighty fine death metal campfire chatter. The departure of Knight also marks the departure of Arsis’ 597th member, so we figured we’d reach Ryan via phone* to comment on the situation**:
2008 has been a fucking great year for metal, and in due time — Monday, Dec. 15, to be exact — Axl, myself and the rest of the writers of MetalSucks will all release our Top 10 year-end lists so you can incessantly argue over which great album was left off or tell us we’re assholes for ranking a certain album higher than it should’ve been.
But for now, ya’ll can argue about something else: here’s my personal short/working list for said year-end list containing all of my favorite metal releases from this year as well as a few that aren’t likely to make my own list but will surely be appearing on others’. Feel free to pipe in with your thoughts or to notify us of any egregious omissions before we put together our final, ordered lists. Regardless, it is going to be really fucking hard to pick just 10 of these and put them in order of awesomeness.
And, my favorite metal records of 2008 in no particular order are…
Mostly this week I just watched the Puppy Cam. But when I could pry myself away for a few moments, this is what I focused on:
Party it up, it’s the weekend. See you next Tuesday Monday.
Some good bands have lost members in the past few days. We could devote a post to each of them or be insensitive dicks about it and just do one big post.
Guess which one we chose?
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