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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If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.

No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).

Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.

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I know it’s arrogant for us to pat ourselves on the back, but holy shit, did we kill it this week or what?

Here’s what we did:

• We brought you the first interview with Behemoth frontman Nergal since he was diagnosed with leukemia in August.
• We got the exclusive scoop on Melissa Auf der Maur’s collaboration with Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby.
• We debuted new music by Between the Buried and Me, Last Chance to Reason, and Havok.
• We debuted new videos by Protest the Hero and Becoming the Archetype.
• We also spoke to the legendary David Coverdale from Whitesnake.
• We checked out the latest release from Anthrax and Until Your Heart Stops.
• We told you what your favorite metal band says about you… and then we told you again!
• We got excited about the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2011.
• We wondered if Winds of Plague are the new Limp Bizkit.
• We protested shitty metal vocalists.

We aspire to make next week even biggerer and betterer! Check back then to see if we succeeded or not… ’til then, have a great weekend!

-AR

Biggest and best metal release day of 2011 so far? It certainly seems that way. New records from Amon Amarth, Becoming the Archetype, Blackguard, Cavalera Conspiracy — are you kidding me? there’s still more? — Goes Cube, Havok, Mercenary, Obscura and a Between the Buried and Me best-of comp (with a brand new release coming next week!) all officially come out today. If you’re a devoted metalhead with varied tastes you better have saved up, else you’ll be very, very poor come tomorrow.

Vic Vaughn takes a look at all those release — and yes, EVEN MORE — after the break.

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Raise your hand if you’re over the age of 25 and don’t remember doing EXACTLY what this kid does in the beginning of the new Becoming The Archetype video below.

<crickets>

Exactly. If anything, this video is flawed in that there’s no WAY any NES set would simply work on the first try. A good friend once told me that Nintendos are like penises — everyone knows how to use their own the best. On my set (WHICH I STILL HAVE, BITCHES!) you’ve got to put the cartridge in, slide it firmly to the left or right, and hold down the restart button while you push “power.” If that doesn’t work, slide the cartridge to the other side and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. We must conclude, then, that this video takes place in 1986 like the game title screen suggests and that the set is brand new. Rad.

This video rules in all sorts of ways, not the least of which is the awesome song “Magnetic Sky” to which it’s set. We’ve been writing about Becoming the Archetype a bunch lately, and with good reason… they rule. So does this video; it’s like real-life Final Fantasy (the first one, you assholes, not Final Fantasy 7,567 or whatever they’re up to now). The best is the look on the kid’s face as he leads his party into the swamp; swamps were always the worst in that game!

Raise your hand if you didn’t ever imagine yourself in a real-life version of this game as you played it.

<crickets>

Carry on. Celestial Completion is out now, and available for order here.

At least, that’s what vocalist Jason Wisdom tells Noisecreep the band’s new song, “Path of the Beam,” is about. That sounds like a phrase a stoned Us would use to describe music we thought was awesome, so I can totally get totally get behind the idea. I mean, I think it would be a more appropriate description for a power metal song or a bands whose music is just consistently epic epicness (e.g., Insomnium), but I like Becoming the Archetype, so I’m willing to go along with it.

So: if you’ve ever wanted to hear what it sounds like to ride a motorcycle in space (yesIknowtheresnosoundinspacejustshutitsmartassthisismetalnotthefuckingHarvardclub), go to the aforementioned Noisecreep, who are streaming the track. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on here, although, perhaps somewhat sadly, the elephants marching riff that kicks off the song is my favorite part (natch).

“Path of the Beam” will be on BtA’s new album, Celestial Completion, which comes out March 29 on Solid State.

-AR

Rather than devoting a whole post to each of the many new tracks released by metal bands today, how ’bout bringing them all together the way Axl does with his cinemetal round-ups? A good idea, you say? Alright, let’s get to it.

Our besties at the Deciblog are streaming a brand new Liturgy track called “High Gold.” I’ve never been able to get into Liturgy; though I appreciate that mainman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is well-educated in music and is trying to do something outside the box (so to speak), I’ve always felt it was way too far outside the box to be considered metal, or even listenable. Their first album was so full of ambient noise I could barely find the actual songs. But if the new track is any indication, it seems as if they’re taking cues from their Brooklyn brethren in Krallice and focusing more on the black metal side of their sound this time around… and on making actual songs. “High Gold” is catchy, in a good way, and tighter than I remember the band being too; check it out here.

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Yesterday I attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase “elephants marching riff” by pointing out some reader suggestions that, even if they were cool riffs, did not meet the definition for this particular trope. Today, I am going to highlight some of the reader-suggested riffs that I actually think do meet that definition.

Now, these aren’t ALL the riffs that you guys suggested… I’ve cherry picked some in the interest of time. (For example, a lot of you suggested various riffs by Chimaira and Gojira. Since I already pointed out that both of those bands are really good at writing elephants marching riffs, I’m not going to include any additional examples from those bands here.) So don’t have a conniption if your riff didn’t make the list.

And so…

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Becoming the Archetype’s latest album, Dichotomy, is pretty rockin’. It’s kinda like Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh, only, y’know, not a complete masterpiece. But it’s melodic death metal willing to think much further outside the box than most melodic death metal these days and is, if nothing else, a very enjoyable listen.

SO. In an effort to do some research on Becoming the Archetype, I headed over to their MySpace page, where I found they have… a prayer team.

Seriously.

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