Everywhere ya look, there’s an announcement of a new and unexpected pairing: Mastodon/hip hop producer, Metallica/Lou Reed, Mike Portnoy/butt-rock, and Rob Zombie/garment care. Well, Strange Bedfellows Month continues with news that Warbringer’s just-completed third album, Worlds Torn Asunder, was produced by Steve Evetts. His name is on good punk records (Saves The Day, Lifetime), veiny hardcore (Snapcase, Earth Crisis), and Symphony X; and, natch, he’s the Flemming Rasmussen to Dillinger Escape Plan’s Metallica. So dude has some stats.
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 2:00pm by D.X. Ferris
Anacrusis have posted “The Killer in My House,” their first new song since 1993′s Screams and Whispers LP. The band will play a reunion show at St. Louis’ Firebird on Saturday, Feb. 26. Listen below, or click here for a no-hassle free download .
The players came together in the mid-’80s, and formally launched as Anacrusis in 1986. Readers of UK mag Metal Forces voted 1987′s Annihilation Complete Demo of the Year. The band ultimately signed to Metal Blade. Over the years, they toured with Death, D.R.I. and Overkill, playing a melodic, downtuned thrash-prog hybrid that was way ahead of its time. Slayer/Trouble producer Bill Metoyer executive-produced their final album, Screams and Whispers. They split in 1993 and reunited last year to re-record their first two LPs. Two shows followed, in their hometown of St. Louis and Germany’s Keep It True Festival. The band return to Germany in June for the Rock Hard Festival.
[New video, old song: The re-recorded version of "Imprisoned" from 2010's Hindsight: Suffering Hour and Reason Revisited, originally from 1988's Suffering. Live footage from 2010 reunion shows in St. Louis and Germany's Keep It True festival. ]
The new track was born during last year’s sessions. Frontman Kenn Nardi told MetalSucks about what will come next.
Friday, October 1st, 2010 at 4:00pm by D.X. Ferris
It’s October, and Halloween season is officially here. This week, on the TV front, there’s been talk of rebooting The Munsters series. Again. It seems redundant for any of number reasons, including but not limited to: It’s been done before, and in this era of Hot Topic, you don’t need the Munsters to get a look at some video footage of a goth girl. But anyhow…
The talk of the Munsters relaunch reminded me of the Marshall Act. Passed by a Democrat-dominated Congress in 1987, it required all metal and crossover bands to cover composer Jack Marshall’s Grammy-nominated Munsters theme. Approximately three of every ten working metal crews recorded a cover of it over the next six years.
To commemorate the season of the witch, each week between now and the end of the Samhain, MetalSucks will spotlight one metal version of the Munsters theme. Our inaugural version is by Anacrusis.
The St. Louis also-rans were way ahead of their time. They blended thrash-, melodic-, tech-, and prog metal into a mix that holds up surprisingly well. Bill Metoyer (Slayer, the Accused, DRI) produced the band’s last LP, and Death’s Chuck Schuldiner personally invited the group to support his band. Anacrusis singer-guitarist Kenn Nardi recalled recording their version of the most riffolicious TV tune:
Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 1:20pm by D.X. Ferris
From left to right: Weatherman, Mullin, and Dean. Pic courtesy C.O.C.
C.O.C. is not only one of the best bands to come out of the old-school 1980s hardcore movement; technically, it’s at least five of the best groups to emerge from the scene. Over 28 years, every release – and later, every other album – has found the veterans with a new lineup and an all-new sound.
The band launched in North Carolina in 1982 as Corrosion of Conformity. In its first incarnation, the band played crusty, heavy, speedy hardcore. In 1984, the Eye for an Eye LP introduced the punk world to the group’s spiky skull mascot, one of the great extreme-music icons.
The lineup and sound reshuffled by 1985’s Animosity LP. The crossover disc was released on Metal Blade imprint Death Records, where they held their own against labelmates D.R.I. and the Ugly Americans. (The latter band featured singer Simon “Simon Bob Sinister” Bob, who would step as vocalist for C.O.C.’s 1987 Technocracy EP.)
At least half of the bands playing metal today owe huge debts to D.R.I. — also known as Dirty Rotten Imbeciles — even if the band was an indirect influence. Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman was an early fan, and Kerry King had written off punk as just some noisy bullshit before he discovered the group. Prior to the Massive Aggressive LP, Municipal Waste records were essentially D.R.I. albums. If you dig the Waste and don’t know D.R.I., shame on you. Proceed directly to iTunes or eMusic to catch up on the catalog. It’s a hardcore history lesson.
For a metal audience, D.R.I.’s Crossover is a good place to start. Beer City Records will release an expanded, remastered Millennium Edition of the album on April 13. (It’s already available on iTunes.) A lot of people with credible taste consider it the band’s signature record. I won’t say it’s their worst, but it’s definitely my least favorite — and trust me, I like D.R.I. more than the next guy. They’re gods and should be treated as such. The bonus material makes the reissue a must-have, even if you think the proper LP blows dog.
Crossover is D.R.I.’s Black Album. It was the band’s breakthrough release. But all D.R.I.’s signature elements were M.I.A. Song lengths changed drastically. Rumbling, raw production was replaced with a big-rock sound. Frontman Kurt Brecht’s lyrics were on a downswing. D.R.I. had a new direction. Some fans love the record. Some fans hate it.
One of the Millennium Edition’s eleven bonus tracks is a wicked live version of “Five Year Plan” that starts with an intro which identifies the group as “one of the hardest metalcore bands ever to come out of the Bay Area.” Now that’s old, old footage, and “metalcore” meant something very different then. Everybody was still figuring it out, and if you wanted to know where heavy music was going, D.R.I. was one of the bands to watch.
Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 1:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
Brooklyn Vegan has a review of D.R.I.’s show at the Gramercy a couple of months back, and photographer Chloe Rice snapped some shots that made our hearts skip a beat. Check ‘em out:
