“We’re captive on the carousel of time.” Jonathan Davis said that, and I believe it. The seasons, they go ’round and ’round, like Ratt, and people change, things change, and so sometimes bands we like have shifts in their line-up. For example:

• Melechesh have split ways with their bass player, Rahm Emanuel, who apparently wants to run for Mayor of Chicago. But I’m operating under the impression that guitarist/vocalist Ashmedi is the driving creative force behind this band, so I suspect that this will have roughly as much of an effect on the quality of their music as someone sneezing in Jakarta might.
• A Life Once Lost has hired Jordan Crouse to replace their recently departed (as in he left the band — he’s not dead) drummer, Justin Graves. In an interview with Metal Insider, ALOL guitarist Doug Sabolick says, “It’s good because with Justin, with the gap between where we live, it was hard to rehearse as much as we wanted to. Now with Jordan, we all live in the same town and we can practice as much as we want to.” So that’s an enthuastic endorsement.

-AR

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

Melechesh‘s excellent new album, The Epigenesis, is mere weeks away from its October 26 release in the States (those lucky Europeans already have it), and while it’s been more than three years since the band’s last release, Emissaries, I’m happy to report that the wait was totally worth it. The Epigenesis feels like Melechesh’s most diverse and complete album yet, and a firm reminder of why this band manages to stay consistently interesting while so many other black metal bands fall into redundancies and self-parody.

I recently had the chance to e-mail some questions to Ashmedi, Melechesh’s founder and creative mastermind. After the jump, read his thoughts on the themes and meanings of The Epigenesis, how recording in Istanbul influenced the album, why we had to wait so darn long for new a new Melechesh offering, and more.

Click to read more…

So I’m really, really, really excited for Melechesh’s new album, The Epigenesis, which comes out October 26, and which has album art now. I don’t feel like I really “understand” that album art, though, and then I realized that I don’t even really know what “epigenesis” means, so I decided to Google that shit and see if I could make heads or tails of this cover.

So as it turns out, there are actually multiple definitions of “epigenesis” –

Click to read more…

Holy crap, has it really been three years (almost to the day!) since Melechesh released their last album, Emissaries? That’s too long, man. Way too long.

Hopefully, it looks like the band is finally working on something new: Blabbermouth posted the below footage of them performing a new song, cleverly titled “New Song” (make sure Metallica doesn’t sue you, Ashmedi!), in Rotterdam this past weekend. I’m assuming Ashmedi is going to put lyrics and vocals over it at a later date, but maybe it’s an instrumental? In any case, it sounds pretty awesome. I really, really hope this band gets a new album out this year.

-AR

Israeli (but not Jewish!) outfit Melechesh might be one of the most underrated bands in metal today – I feel like I rarely hear people talking about them, but their last album, Emissaries, was a fucking beast.

So I’m kind of surprised that someone has made a documentary about main man Ashmedi (who has also been doing some guest blogs for The Deciblog). It just seems like the band’s lack of fame would make this a hard sell, when I imagine making back any money invested in metal documentaries that don’t star Metallica is already an uphill battle.

But I’m now officially really, really curious to see this thing – and if it gets some of you to listen to Melechesh, all the better.

Visit Melechesh on MySpace.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]