No, seriously — COREY AND ANSO FUCKING KILLED IT THIS WEEK while we were at the Golden Gods, didn’t they? I’m still catching up, but I’ve been getting a serious boner from reading all the shit I didn’t write this week. Some of my favorite pieces that neither Vince nor myself had anything to do with:

• Phil Anselmo’s thoughts on weed, and, oh yeah, Corey’s update on the progress of Mr. Anselmo’s book.
• This awesome interview with Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan. (Okay this one I actually had a little to do with, but Anso did the heavy lifting.)
• Mike IX Williams from EyeHateGod/Arson Anthem/Drip/Crawlspace/Outlaw Order’s thoughts on being underground and unsigned.
• Anso’s mourning for the loss of Nevermore.
• Corey’s analysis of the Columbine massacre on its twelfth anniversary.
• Anso’s assertion that Nicko McBrain wants to fuck Lady Gaga.
• Corey’s wrangling of about a million cool metal folk to give their thoughts on weed, too.
• Anso’s decisions to let his hatred for Kiss flow.
• Corey’s coverage of K.K. Downing’s retirement from Judas Priest.
• Anso’s coverage of Dream Theater’s ongoing search for a new drummer.

Unfortunately for all of you, Vince and I are now back full-time, and you’ll be stuck with us all next week. See ya then.

-AR

Weed is an awesome so-called “drug”, but it’s NOT for everyone. And throughout certain periods of my life, it’s been that way for me too. Growing up it was fun and my friends and i smoked a whole lot (!) whilst jamming…but somewhere in my mid-twenties, it would/could make me paranoid and uncomfortable in my own skin, so I didn’t/wouldn’t partake as often.

I met Mike IX Williams, the legendary vocalist for EyeHateGod/Arson Anthem/Drip/Crawlspace/Outlaw Order and author, last year at Philip Anselmo’s hidden home somewhere deep in the woods of Louisiana. I’ve gotten to know the man more this year as we have spent some time together in Fort Worth and Austin while on the road with Arson Anthem. I asked Mike if he would like to share his thoughts with the MetalSucks readers. He eagerly and graciously complied. – CM

Okay, so you’ve been slaving away in the piss hot steaming garage, or alternately, an ice cold freezing cement basement tomb, writing and playing extreme music with various people of dubious degree, quality and background. The torn carpeted walls smell of stale booze, melted wax and illegal left handed cigarettes and the old bass player vomited behind his Peavy cabinet two months before you kicked him out and its still not cleaned up. The new bassist is a fat stinking bastard who probably has head lice but definitely has bad breath and an alcohol problem but comes in handy because he plays like a cross between Tom Araya and Geezer Butler.

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As some of you guys may or may not know, I am currently working with Philip H. Anselmo on his autobiography. In fact, the questions I get asked most often these days are, “How’s that book with Phil coming along?” or “When’s Phil’s book coming out?” or “What’s it like working with Phil?”

I can happily inform you that, though it is a slow process, Philip’s book is going to kick major fuckin’ ass!

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Kip W. and I arrived in Austin, TX the night of Tuesday, March 15th. We’ve never flown in before Wednesday, the official start of the music portion of the festival, but that we felt compelled to be there for all of Wednesday’s day-time activities speaks to the volume of metal at this year’s festival. It was amazing and even overwhelming at times, but too much metal is never a bad problem to have. After a tasty burger at the Jackalope and some delicious but incredibly spicy chicken-wings that would leave our arseholes tingling the following morning, we headed to bed to rest up for the madness to follow. Sleeping is metal. Kip’s righteous snore is definitely not metal, but thank Odin for earplugs.

There was a lot of action on the first day of SXSW: face-punching hardcore via the Brooklyn Vegan day party, a ripping set by recent Ironclad signees Turbid North, and of course the MetalSucks-sponsored Sumerian Records showcase featuring Animals as Leaders, Veil of Maya, The Faceless and more. There was even the somewhat odd but nonetheless fun sight of watching Phil Anselmo play a guitar in his old-school hardcore project Arson Anthem. Deetz and videos after the jump.

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Trying to keep up with the changes at a music festival is like trying to herd a pack of rabid cats. The South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival is the biggest musical kitty corral of them all. That’s why you have me here to help you make heads or tails of all your SXSW metallic/hard rock/punk rock/experimental/etc. needs.

There have been plenty of line-up changes since my last SXSW music post over a week ago. First on the list is the welcome news that NOLA-sludgekings eyehategod will team up with doom metal pioneers Pentagram to close out the conference on Saturday, March 19 (both bands will be going on after midnight, so, technically, they are playing on March 20) at the Scoot Inn. They’ll be joined by a stellar group of bands including Cough and Naam.

Other notable additions include YOB, Slough Feg, and Zoroaster.

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I have been to practically every South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) since the second one way back in the ’80s. I love the atmosphere of the conference, from its much smaller and humbler days back then, to its over-blown monstrous corporate whoredom current-filled state. But as I have noted here in the past, SXSW has almost always been severely lacking in official heavy metal-friendly sanctioned showcases. If you ever wanted to get your real metal fix at SXSW, you usually had to depend on the non-sanctioned day parties that are thrown around town concurrently with the festival.

Not this year!

I can honestly say that the organizers of SXSW have finally woken up to the beast that is heavy metal and have gone out of their way to cater to our needs. Kudos! Huzzahs! and Hurrahs! to them.

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Oops! I recently popped a Woodroe when I was informed that Corrosion of Conformity, the COC that I knew and loved, will be playing the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival this March.

Now, you may ask, why is this year of COC any different? Because they are stripped back down to the original three-piece of Woodroe “Woody” Weatherman, Reed Mullin, and Mike Dean, the same crusty trio I remember seeing up close and personal at the former Ritz Theater in Austin, Texas (which is now home to the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz movie theater) on tour in support of their hardcore-classic Animosity. That was the COC that used to be fucking dangerous. It was a show where you weren’t quite sure if you’d make it out alive. Seriously. It was back when Mike Dean looked more like a Dragworm who just stumbled in from nearby Guadalupe Street (“Dragworms” are Austin’s equivalent to homeless people) looking even more crazed and demented than Charles Manson in front of a television camera. This is the Animosity/Technocracy COC that I worshipped (minus Simon Bob Sinister on the latter EP). Nothing against Pepper Keenan, but I don’t even consider anything beyond this era to be COC.

This COC, along with D.R.I., The Offenders, M.D.C., The Fearless Iranians From Hell, and the Cro-Mags — that was the shit. Now get off my lawn!!

Anyway, time to relive my youth and to, hopefully, find more new metallic talent at this year’s SXSW. Here are some of the already announced metallish bands appearing at the world’s greatest music conference in addition to COC:

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[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some "under-appreciated gems" that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal "Best of 2010" lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that -- and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]

Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell – coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.

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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.

While the free world breathlessly awaits the results of Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s NLCS bet with Exhumed frontman Matt Harvey — and even down 3-1, it’s way too early to start taunting the boss with “black black black black number ooooooone” — the rest of team dB has moved on to give you a Very Special December issue.

Yes, that’s one of extreme music’s most polarizing mugs on the cover. (You know what, let’s say “polarizing figure”; there’s nothing polarizing about Phil’s facial expressions, which all clearly fucking rule.) As usual, the man has a billion things going on. Sadly, one of them is not the fourth Down record (yet), although a new Arson Anthem slab and the 20^th anniversary of Cowboys From Hell are pretty sick placeholders. For a dude that’s been somewhat, um, contentious in interviews, Anselmo is crazy gregarious with our man J. Bennett. Like Mustaine or Lars, whether you love or hate the guy, he gives great copy. And I promise that the anecdotes about early Pantera — especially pertaining to Seagal-caliber bar pummelings — will do you right.

As for the rest of the issue, there’s plenty more radness that you can see for yourself on the cover, but one thing you can’t that I’ll spoil right now is Rod Smith’s review of the Amphetamine Reptile 25^th anniversary show. Shannon Selberg of the Cows is wearing mousetraps as earrings. ‘Nuff said. This fucker will be on newsstands next week, but we wouldn’t mind picking up our Secret Santa anal beads before Black Friday, so help us out by grabbing it early here.

Oh yeah, if you’re getting pumped about the Incantation Onward to Golgotha Hall of Fame shows that I’ve been babbling about the last month or so, the New York one just moved. It’s no longer at Rebel on November 20, but Club Europa, which evidently is here:

Europa Night Club
98 Meserole Ave. (corner of Manhattan Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Shit will rule. Snap ’em up.

-AB

Like the man said, you can buy yourself a copy of the December 2010 issue of Decibel here. But we’ll love you better if you just go ahead and buy yourself a full subscription. Trust us, it’s totally worth it!!!

Seriously, if you haven’t read Vince’s epic story about how MetalSucks Maniac “whiskey” won last week’s last week’s photo caption contest, you need to go read it now. It’s pretty amazing. Whiskey’s mom even left a comment! We like to think of MetalSucks as something the whole fucking family can enjoy together, so that warmed the cockles of our collective heart.

Here’s some other fun stuff that happened this week:

• We debuted a performance clip from the new Shadows Fall live DVD, the new Intronaut album, and a new Madball song. PHEW!
• We spoke to Jeremy Creamer from Daath, Johnny Plague from Winds of Plague, Adam Warren from Oceano, and Ashmedi from Melechesh. Oh, and Anso unveiled part one of his massive two-part interview with Atheist’s Kelly Shaefer.
• We checked out new releases by Salome, Madball, Woe, and Arson Anthem and Ender. And a DWARR reissue!
• Greg Weeks from The Red Chord said good-bye to Randy Moss and hello to men wearing pink tights, Sacha Dunable from Intronaut contemplated the legalization of recreational marijuana use in California, and Eyal Levi from Daath discovered DestinAsian.
• Sergeant D. celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell. Wait, what?
• We couldn’t figure out why everyone was so surprised that ICP are evangelical Christians.
• We found out the hard way that Attack Attack!’s music could be even worse than it already is.
• We took a slow ride on Metallica’s Lightning.
• We laughed at one shit stain calling another shit stain “a shit stain.”
• And, oh yeah! Gary Suarez took over the site for a day.

Next week is CMJ here in New York! If you’re in the area and looking for some awesome metal, check out our handy guide to all the festivities — including not one but TWO showcases sponsored by MetalSucks. We’re not gonna lie — we are going to be very hungover and tired next week. But that just means we’ll be crankier than usual. We’ll still be here with lots of debuts, interviews, and other assorted nonsense. Bring your mom! It’ll be fun.

-AR

Arson Anthem, “Insecurity Notoriety”
I tried, man. Believe me. Given its membership, Arson Anthem should be one of my favorite bands. Yet the combined forces of Eyehategod’s Mike Williams, Hank III, Colin Yeo and Phil Anselmo can’t seem to salvage this intended tribute to crusty hardcore punk that plays more like a D-list D-beat disaster. Discharge and their Swedish ilk put out some awesome lo-fi, nasty records in their day, yet Insecurity Notoriety is a one-trick pony that has seen better days, paling in comparison to contemporary shitkickers like Disfear. By American hardcore standards, this is pretty dreadful. Specifically, this is the worst thing Anselmo has done — save for Christ Inversion. Arson Anthem should acknowledge the mediocrity of this vanity project and leave hardcore to the hardcore.

(1.5 out of 5 horns)

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It’s a good day to be a Phil Anselmo fan — not one but two of the prolific vocalist’s bands are currently streaming their latest releases. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to check out either of these yet, but I’m certainly curious about both of ‘em. So now we can all listen together and make up our minds as a community. Won’t that be fun? Shouldn’t cause any in-fighting whatsoever.

• The CD portion of Down’s new live CD/DVD set, Diary of a Mad Band, is streaming here. Down have never let me, uh, down before, and I don’t know why they’d start now, ‘specially since this is a live collection and they always kick ass and take names live. So I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that this fucking rules. Also… yep. I’m listening to “Lifer” right now and it sounds pretty killer. I’m thinking this one’s a keeper.
• Arson Anthem’s full-length debut, Insecurity Notoriety, is supposedly streaming here prior to its October 12 release date on Anselmo’s own Housecore Records. I say “supposedly,” ’cause, at least at the time of this writing, the page ain’t working. Which is a real bummer, since I really dug Arson Anthem’s EP in 2008. But hopefully by the time you read this it’ll be working again so we can all flame on.

Once you’ve listened, politely or not-so-politely share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-AR

I know I’ve written this phrase a few times in the past, but rarely is it so true: Phil Anselmo needs no introduction. You know who he is. You wanna read this interview. Period.

I will give you a little taste of the topics Mr. Anselmo and myself recently discussed via phone: his label, Housecore Records, and his upcoming autobiography, which will be co-authored by MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell. I did not utter the words “Pantera”or “Dimebag” even once, even after Phil did, because, well, what’s the point? The guy gets asked about Pantera literally all the time. It’s not like I was gonna be the interview where he suddenly slipped-up and revealed some new piece of information.

Luckily for you guys, Anselmo still has a lot to say even when he’s not talking about one of the most famous metal bands of ever. And so without any further bullshit…

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Boasting a resume that features members of Pantera more prominently than any Nashville session players, multi-instrumentalist Hank Williams III has defiantly cultivated a career and an image in stark contrast to the country roots evoked by his iconic namesake. Though hardly abandoning his heritage, the grandson of the honky tonk pioneer continues to mystify and enthrall with this, the first “official” release from this band.

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Some time back we got an angry email from a MetalSucks Maniac accusing us of giving nary a mention to Louisiana legends Eyehategod. And it’s true; there just hasn’t been very much to say about the band in the past couple of years. But this weekend a press release arrived at our doorstep via stork announcing the formation of Outlaw Order, a band whose makeup consists of all Eyehategod or ex-Eyehategod members:

Michael D. Williams (Eyehategod, Arson Anthem) – vocals
Brian Patton (Eyehategod, Soilent Green) – guitar
Gary Mader (Eyehategod, Hawgjaw) – guitar
Joey LaCaze (Eyehategod) – drums
Justin Grisoli (ex-Eyehategod) – bass

The band sounds precisely like what you’d expect; sludgy, swampy, raw aggression fueled by metal, punk rock, beer, and hurricanes. Check out four tracks on Outlaw Order’s MySpace page. The group plans to release their debut Dragging Down the Enforcer before the end of the year on Season of Mist Records with a tour to follow.

-VN

Phil Anselmo isn’t even the vocalist for his latest project – he’s the guitarist. He left the front man duties to Eyehategod’s fresh-from-prison Mike Williams, and it was a smart move: Arson Anthem – the band and the album – is a knuckle-scraping punch of aggression and hostility, and outside the warmth of Anselmo’s spotlight, I suspect it will only find its way into the hands of those that will really appreciate it.

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According to a press release, Phil Anselmo (ex-Pantera, Superjoint Ritual, Down) is set to release the first record from his latest side-project Arson Anthem on Feb 19 through his own Housecore Records label. Arson Anthem also features Mike IX Williams (EyeHateGod, Outlaw Order), “III” (Assjack, Superjoint Ritual) and Collin Yeo (?).

Down fans fear not — it doesn’t appear as if Arson Anthem will threaten Down the way Down threatened Pantera all those years ago. The project was actually born and completed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when Williams moved in with Anselmo and they spent hours listening to Anselmo’s collection of early hardcore bands. So will this be a hardcore band? Says the press release. “Their mission is to re-introduce the roots of painful amplification, raw production, and a TRUE ‘fuck all’ attitude to a movement within a new generation that’s lost the meaning of less complicated ventures. The byway is to be similar to the original brutality of bands like Negative Approach, Poison Idea, Hellhammer, Discharge and Void, amongst others.” We’re cautiously curious about this release.

-VN

[Visit Arson Anthem on MySpace -- though no music has been posted yet]