The rumor was that this year’s edition of Mayhem Fest would feature Slipknot, Slayer, Motorhead, Anthrax, The Devil Wears Prada, As I Lay Dying and Whitechapel; yesterday, we got confirmation that Slipknot are indeed headlining the outing, and now all the other bands have been confirmed, too. In fact, the only band on the bill that WASN’T rumored to be in the line-up is Asking Alexandria. I’m assuming the festival’s organizers kept that one top-secret on purpose; I mean, I wouldn’t want people to know I was working with Asking Alexandria, either.

All kidding aside, the only bands here I’d consider a total miss are The Devil Wears Prada and the aforementioned Asking Alexandria, and I’m aware that, yes, while I personally may loathe those bands, they will put butts in seats. The rest of the line-up is great; this is obviously Slipknot’s big U.S. comeback tour, and the combination of them and Slayer alone should pretty much guarantee that every metal fan in the country shows up for this thing.

Dates are after the jump, courtesy of Metal Inejection.

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When your drum set consists of two bottles of motor oil, some kind of old shelving component, a couple of blankets and a wicker hat as a drum throne and you STILL manage to kill it, that’s the very definition of metal. And when you’re all of maybe 8 years old and you’re playing as well as this kid, in a rural area of the Meghalaya state in India no less, I’d say you’ve got a pretty bright future ahead of you if you choose to pursue it. This kid is seriously impressive – I guess those bass pedals are real, but those double-bass chops and “snare” rolls are impressive nonetheless.

As one YouTube commenter astutely noted, this kid’s kit sounds better on a cell phone camera than Lars’ kit on St. Anger did on millions of dollars worth of recording gear. And as another commenter noted, that does indeed appear to be As I Lay Dying’s “Confined” he’s playing starting around 1:30.

Someone get this guy into a band, pronto.

-VN

Thanks: Sahil

Earlier this week, rumors began to circulate about the line-up for the 2012 edition of Summer Slaughter, and if they’re even kinda-sorta true, the package tour may have put together its best bill ever. Now, The PRP is reporting unconfirmed rumors about the line-up for the 2012 edition of Mayhem Fest, and it sounds like the organizers of that tour ain’t slouching, either: Slipknot, Slayer, Motorhead, Anthrax, The Devil Wears Prada, As I Lay Dying and Whitechapel are all said to be possibilites for this year’s installment of the festival.

Like I said, these are currently unconfirmed rumors, and even The PRP says that “a grain (or more) of salt should be taken” with ‘em. But can you imagine if that line-up is real? I actually think the bill has been on the weaker side for Mayhem for the past couple of years, but even with The Devil Wears Prada (who are horrendous) and Whitechapel (who aren’t horrendous but just really are not my thing) on the tour, having Slipknot, Slayer, Motorhead, Anthrax, and As I Lay Dying all on one show would make it unmissable. And I have to imagine that those would all be mainstage acts, which means there would still be X number of potentially awesome slots available on the secondary stages.

The actual, official line-up will be announced on January 25, so this time next week, we’ll know whether or not these rumors were not really rumors at all. Fingers crossed…

-AR

How’s this for shitty timing? Just as Sylosis were poised to begin their first-ever U.S. tour, supporting As I Lay Dying, guitarist Alex Bailey breaks his wrist and will be forced to sit the whole tour out. We haven’t been able to determine how, exactly, Bailey broke his wrist — we’re being told he fell — but apparently he broke it in three places, so it’s a pretty serious injury.

Axl and I went to see a Sylosis headline show the other night in NYC — one of a small handful of dates leading up to the AILD support run — and while we thought the band looked a little funny up there with only three dudes and sounded a little funny with only one guitarist, we weren’t too sure because we’d never seen them before. Things became a little more clear when vocalist/guitarist Josh Middleton announced from the stage that Bailey had broken his wrist, and yesterday we were able to confirm the situation with the band’s publicist. Bailey made it to the U.S., played the first couple of shows, then broke his wrist. So the poor sap is here, in a foreign land for the first time, and he can’t even play to what are presumably some of the biggest audiences Sylosis has ever seen. I can only imagine how pissed and upset he is right now.

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As I Lay Dying have released a new,  P.R. Brown-directed video for their cover of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” and while the special effects are undeniably cheesy, I still enjoyed the clip quite a bit. Why? ‘Cause it takes place in a world where, following the breakdown of their van, a road-crew-free AILD opt to carry their equipment through the desert, where they are attacked by a giant scorpion, at which point Jordan Mancino begins to play drums on the monster’s exoskeleton. My point being that the shoddy effects work adds to the charm of the thing — y’know, like the giant ants in Them!, or Sarah Jessica Parker passing for a human and not a horse in anything.

The video isn’t embeddable right now, so click here to see it. ”Electric Eye” appears on Decas, As I Lay Dying’s tenth anniversary celebration, which is out now via Metal Blade.

-AR

Today, two very disperate Christian metal acts announced Christmas releases: Austrian Death Machine, the Arnold Schwarzenegger-themed side project of As I Lay Dying vocalist Tim Lambesis, will release Jingle All the Way, an ode to the Ahnuld flick of the same title, while Becoming the Archetype will release a cover of “O Holy Night” as a single. Both releases become available digitally on the same day — December 6, via Metal Blade (ADM) and Solid State (BTA) respectively — but just one look at the cover art, and you can tell that there’s a MASSIVE tonal difference between the two.

First, here’s the album art for Austrian Death Machine’s Jingle All the Way (which I’m actually listening to even as I type this). Obviously, Lambesis is going for the lulz here — I mean, there’s a skull and crossbones made from Schwarzenegger’s face and a pair of candy canes. In fact, it’s worth noting that there isn’t even a cover of “Jingle Bells” on this EP. Not that “Jingle Bells” is an especially serious song or anything, but the tracks contained on Jingle all emphasize the comedic nature of ADM; they have titles like “I’m Not a Pervert” and “Who Told You You Could Eat My Cookies?”, titles which, I assume, would be even funnier if I could remember anything about that one time I watched the movie Jingle All the Way on cable. The tongue-in-cheek nature of the material makes this something that even Scrooges (like me) and non-Christians (also like me) can enjoy. And it doesn’t hurt that the music on the EP brings the mosh in a serious way.

Now, contrast this with the cover for Becoming the Archetype’s “O Holy Night” single:

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It was a week of polar opposites: on one hand, butt rock ruled as Disturbed nabbed the #1 spot on the Current Hard Music charts with Five Finger Death Punch and Evanescence firmly entrenched in second and third place. On the other hand Animals as Leaders scored a big debut, a big victory in the name of all that is right in the music world. As I Lay Dying and Rush also sold well. Let’s take a look at those and more after the jump.

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New releases from Animals as Leaders, As I Lay Dying, Beneath Oblivion, Leviathan, Whitechapel and My Dying Bride highlight this week’s packed slate of new releases. Let’s take a look at what’s in store for listeners after the jump.

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In January of this year I selected Sylosis’ Edge of the Earth as my choice for the album that would fuck your collective faces off in 2011. And I was right! In case you somehow missed all the ranting and raving I’ve already done about Sylosis this year, I present you with Edge of the Earth stand-out track “Awakening:”

Traveling overseas to tour is hella expensive, and as such the Brits in Sylosis haven’t yet made it to the States… until now. The good news is that they’re finally coming over here in November and December in support of As I Lay Dying, but the bad news is that the tour is relatively short and they’re the first of four support bands, meaning they won’t be playing a very long set. But fear not, fellow Sylosis fans: according to a post on Sylosis’ Facebook page [via MS reader Lewis Hart], the band will be flying to the U.S. early to play five special headline shows before embarking on the AILD tour. Consider me there!

Those dates, as well as their dates supporting As I Lay Dying, after the jump.

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The fine folks over at Noisecreep had not one but two big track debuts today. And so, although it is unfair to the bands, I am lumping them into one post. Sorry.

And so –

• As I Lay Dying have debuted their cover of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” which is actually one of two Priest covers which will appear on their upcoming tenth anniversary release, Decas. (The other JP tune is “Hellion,” in case you’re curious.) The structure and music of the original haven’t been changed much for this cover, but the band definitely changed the whole vibe and style of it, making it appropriate AILD-esque. Check it out here. Decas comes out November 8 on Metal Blade, and then then the band heads out for a headlining tour. You can get dates here.
• Spineshank have unveiled a new tune called “Murder Suicide” here. I was never really a Spineshank fan, but there were certainly far worse bands to emerge from that scene/era, and that’s basically how I feel about this song — it’s no masterpiece, but it didn’t make me wanna tear my eardrums out with a pair of tweezers, so there’s that. And in their defense, they haven’t changed their sound much since the last time I heard them, so at least they’re not chasing trends. The band has apparently completed a new album, entitled Anger Denial Acceptance, and searching for a label to release it sometime next year. So, uh, if you, like, own a label or something, maybe give these dudes a ring?

My own fragile sense of mortality means that I’m still adjusting to the fact that the original bands from the New Wave of American Heavy Metal — commonly mislabeled as “metalcore” — are now hovering somewhere around their tenth year of existence. As I Lay Dying are the latest band to hit the one decade mark, and while I can’t say I was one of the cool kids who has known about them since the release of Beneath the Encasing of Ashes, I do remember when I first heard Frail Words Collapse, and it really seems like it was just last week.

But enough about my own neurosis. The story here is As I Lay Dying’s tenth anniversary, which they’ll celebrate by releasing an album entitled Decas. Mercifully, it’s not just a lame greatest hits collection — instead, it will feature three new songs, covers of classics by Slayer, Judas Priest, and Descendents, and remixes of old AILD tunes by the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman, Big Chocolate, and Kelly “Carnage” Cairns. You can check out the first new tune, “Paralyzed,” below. It’s equal parts heavy and catchy, which is to say, it’s an As I Lay Dying song, and a good reminder of why the band grew to be so popular in the first place.

Decas will come out November 8 on Metal Blade, and you can already pre-order it here. And if that isn’t enough to give you your As I Lay Dying fix, the band will continue the celebration of their birthday with the ”A Decade of Destruction,” which starts at the end of November and will feature support from Of Mice & Men, The Ghost Inside, Iwrestledabearonce, and, maybe best of all, Sylosis, who I personally am absolutely dying (no pun intended) to see. Here are dates, courtesy of AP:

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Last week I wrote a little bit about how a lot of modern production techniques I loathe may actually be aesthetic choices; and I tried to keep that in mind as I attempted to listen to Dead Throne, the latest offering from The Devil Wears Prada. If, for example, the band didn’t favor such excessive use of autotune and vocoder, would the songs at least be solid?

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A 100% accurate portrayal of the research discussed in this article.

In college, I once took a course on literary representations of New York City, and one the texts utilized was Frank Miller’s graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

My point being simply that it was only a matter of time until academia turned its eye towards extreme music.

From an official press release:

“A research group of a faculty member and graduate students in the University of North Carolina system and in the university of Oulu, Finland, are conducting a multi-year international study of the meaning of metal music. The research project was started in summer 2008 and its main data consists of questionnaires and interviews on the meaning of metal to the different participants of the global metal scene. So far, the researchers have received 370 survey responses, representing a diverse community of Metal fans—men and women between the ages of 13 and 70 from 25 different countries have participated in the research project thus far. Some of the artists interviewed in the project include members from Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Disturbed, Nonpoint, Swallow the Sun, Katatonia, The Black Dahlia Murder, Kreator, Epica, Scar Symmetry, As I Lay Dying, Barren Earth, Rotten Sound, and Cannibal Corpse.”

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So this is pretty cool… in theory at least. Last week, the videogame Homefront was released (I haven’t played it so I have no idea how it is, although I read some decent reviews), and yesterday, the makers of the game started giving away a FREE compilation of metal bands doing covers of war-appropriate songs, sometimes by other metal bands, sometimes by non-metal artists. You can download it here, and should get on that ASAP, as they’re only giving away 25,000 of the free downloads. As of this writing, DLs are still avail, though. Also, I’m sure this thing will remain all over the internet forever and ever, so don’t freak too hard if they’re all gone by the time you get there.

Another reason no to freak out too hard if you don’t get to download this puppy? Even though this is 100% free, like most cover albums, it’s not actually all that amazing. Let’s take a look at what the album has to offer, shall we?

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This post will be very concise and to the point: The other day I realized that nearly all metalcore/screamo/post-hardcore videos take place in a grassy field, and I will use this space to list several examples. I don’t know if you have ever tried to make a Wikipedia entry, but it’s really hard because some pedantic nerd/ass hole/etc. will delete it in like two minutes (like when I tried to make a Wiki for wigger slam back in the day), so I feel like MetalSucks is the best venue to document this phenomenon.

[Thanks to tween expert/post-teenager Elise from Reign In Blonde for a couple of these examples]

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As I Lay Dying have premiered their new video, for the song “Anodyne Sea,” on CraveOnline, and between this and their “Parallels” video, I’d say the band is two-for-two on clips to promote their latest and greatest, The Powerless Rise. Interestingly, each video was helmed by a different director — David Brodsky did “Parallels,” while the mysteriously-monikered McFarland and Pecci of Killswitch Productions did “Anodyne” — so I guess either the band or their handlers just have good taste in filmmakers/pitches.

This video takes place entirely in the first person — it actually took me a beat to realize that we’re watching from the P.O.V. of drummer Jordan Mancino — which has obviously been done before (most recently in Gaspar Noe’s trippy Enter the Void), but, uh, not in any recent metal videos that I can recall. And it’s done with a lot of panache here.

Also working in the video’s favor: the fact that the narrative is actually relevant to the lyrical content of the song. “In my convictions, I’ve found my own grave,” the chorus proclaims, and in case you’re feeling ripped-off that we never learn what, exactly, the band said to get them in such deep doo-doo, well, you weren’t paying attention to the very first line of the song: “None of this matters, none of these words.”

By the way, some of the content of this video is kinda violent/intense, so I think it’s probably fine to watch at work, but you might not wanna risk it…

The Powerless Rise is out now on Metal Blade.

-AR

So let’s say you need to make a music video but you don’t have a very big budget — how can you spice your clip up so it’s not just another performance vid?

A Day To Remember came up with a pretty clever solution: they got all their friends to be in the video, taking turns looking right into the camera and lip synching along for a few moments. Oddly enough, a lot of those friends are metal royalty — including The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk, Trivium’s Matt Heafy, As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis, The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett, and whomever is playing Andrew WK this week — despite the fact that A Day to Remember aren’t metal at all.

This was a smart move if you ask me, ’cause otherwise a misanthropic metal d00d such as myself probably never would have watched the video, let alone actually kinda-almost smiled. It looks like everyone is having fun, and fun begets more fun, y’know?

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I thought that both Assassin’s Creed games were gorgeous to look at, and had awesome concepts, but featured gameplay that became incredibly redundant after awhile; truth be told, for that reason, I didn’t fully complete either one.

But I did enjoy this video that Metal Injection found, wherein someone has taken footage from one (Or both? I really can’t tell, sorry.) of the Creeds and set it to As I Lay Dying’s “Comfort Betrays,” creating the appearance of hardcore dancing within the game. But, really, that’s not fair; the victims stumbling around in Assassin’s Creed are doing so with wwwwaaaayyyy more poise and grace than most hardcore dancers I’ve encountered.

-AR

Photo of a real live female in a real live pit courtesy Justina Villanueva. Hey, Justina is a woman, too!

One of the most enjoyable parts of being a metalhead, in my opinion at least, is being able to catch my favorite bands live. The concert experience – whether it’s taking place at an arena, a bar, or a basement – is an integral part of our culture, and that fact alone is one of the few things keeping this industry alive (financially, at least; metal itself is forever. Duh). Now, as many of you may have noticed (and lamented), there is a distinct lack of estrogen floating around amidst those churning seas of testosterone we call metal shows. I’ve been to many, many, MANY metal shows, and am always invariably one of the few (if not the only) women there. It depends on the genre, of course; you’re probably not going to find nearly as much eye candy down front at Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult or Cannabis Corpse as you’ll stumble across at a stoner rock show or see at, I don’t know… Lacuna Coil or As I Lay Dying. The safer (and lamer) the band, the more chicks you’ll find lining up to buy a ticket. Why? I wish I could share the secret with you dudes, but honestly, I don’t get it either. Why a fly-ass honey wouldn’t want to squeeze into a dark room packed with sweaty, hairy men and blow out her eardrums in the name of Satan is beyond me, but I’m not going to delve into the why-don’t-girls-like-metal debate today – it’s been done. Instead, let’s just be stoked that girls are coming to shows at all, in ever-increasing numbers no less.

I’ve come up with a handy little survival guide of sorts for both my sisters-in-arms, as well as ladies who’ve never been to a metal show before, but are curious about what goes on and might be interested in popping their concertgoing cherries. A lot of this stuff is pure common sense, but I’ve also picked up a trick or two over the years that just might make your night a helluva lot better, and may get you to bring some girlfriends out to the next one!

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All these bands decided to release new videos within the past twenty-four hours. So I’m just lumping them all together in one post, the same way my mom lumps any music with loud guitars together under the heading, “Things I assume my degenerate son must like.”

First up we have this pretty amazing video for “Tres Brujas” from The Sword. I’m not even, like, the biggest The Sword fan in the world, but I gotta hand it to them, they have definitely made the nerdiest stoner metal video I’ve ever seen by a band that isn’t Mastodon. The thirteen year-old zit faced virgin in me thinks that this video is incredible, and the eight year-old autistic kid who’s never heard of Sabbath in me thinks the music is pretty great, too.

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