MetalSucks

An e-mail I received from long time reader Seveword earlier today:

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It was a short week, but despite Axl being under the weather and Vince gettin lucky in Kentucky, we still managed to get shit done around the ol’ Mansion, even without the help of our favoritest MS Mansion Monkey, Higgins:

• We’re making a list: we give you a hint, another hint and yet another hint. No, it’s got nothing to do with Jacob.
• Ozzy Sharon filed another ridiculous lawsuit, while Dillinger Escape Plan left Relapse Records sans-lawsuit.
• IWABO and Bloodbath released new videos.
• Killswitch Engage gave you a new song for free, we gave you a new Hull song for free, and Job For A Cowboy and Darkest Hour let you hear new songs for free. Crikey!
• We spoke with Nick Hipa of As I Lay Dying and J. Costa of Thy Will Be Done, the former about music and the latter about beards.
• Dallas, The Blogronaut and Eyal all wrote blogs.
• Best Band Ever announces festival appearance atop worst lineup ever.

I had a wisdom tooth pulled this morning so I feel like a giant sack of assholes at the moment, but hey, Percocet! See you tomorrow.

-VN

Bloodbath’s The Fathomless Mastery was one of my favorite albums of 2008, so I’m beyond excited that the band has finally made a video, for the track “Hades Rising.” Check it out, suckas.

Thanks to longtime reader Nikki Moody for the tip!

-AR

So this Burning Human record ended up being really fucking cool. Any time early press about a band loudly touts the fact that the band features a member of another more famous band (in this case drum-guru Jason Bittner of Shadows Fall) I’m naturally skeptical; but about 5 seconds of the new song “Tormented Mind” was really all I needed to convince me that Burning Human is completely capable of standing on their own as a brutal, crushing death metal band. Honestly, this is some of the finest straight up death metal I’ve heard since Bloodbath’s The Fathomless Mastery decimated my brain last year. “Tormented Mind” comes from their new album Ressurection Through Fire, produced by the legendary James Murphy (Death) and out on Koch/E1 tomorrow. Download it for no charge, guilt-free, below! Check out Burning Human’s MySpace page for an extra streaming track. Enjoy. [Click the below link to stream and download]

Burning Human – “Tormented Mind”

-VN

Thanks to all who entered our “Most Metal Face” Bloodbath Guitar Contest. Even to those of you who were too stupid to attach any picture at all, thanks for proving once again why metalheads are at the very top of the genepool hierarchy. We had a great laugh sifting through your attempts at metal faces; special shoutouts go out to Carl Gasbarro, Steven Albano and Adam Bailey for their top-tier metal mugs. But the lucky winner of the Bloodbath signature model Mayones guitar is Kaylin Cariens of Avondale, Arizona, pictured below in all her metal-faced glory. Thanks Kaylin, and keep an eye out for your new guitar in the mail!

2008 was a huge year for Sweden’s legendary Bloodbath, with their tremendous album The Fathomless Mastery receiving universal critical acclaim (including a #10 nod on our own Axl Rosenberg’s “Best of ‘08″ list).

To celebrate, MetalSucks is teaming up Bloodbath to give away a really fucking sweet Per “Sodomizer” Eriksson signature model Mayones guitar. To win, all you have to do is:

1. Take a picture of yourself making your most metal face (if you don’t know what a “metal face” is, congratulations, you’re disqualified from the contest and probably should not even be reading this website)
2. Send in that picture using the form below, and fill out the rest of the required information.
3. Live in the U.S. Sorry international folks, but shipping a guitar across the world is muy costoso.

The winner will be selected on Monday, January 19th. This oughtta be fun; last time we did a “Metal Face” contest we got some hilarious entries. The signup form is after the jump, and only those who fill out the entire form will be considered. Have fun, and good luck.

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Alright. These three albums have little in common besides the fact that a) they’re all death-y and b) I’ve been meaning to tell you all to check them out. So here we go…

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Swedish death metal supergroup Bloodbath have returned with a four song EP, and it should surprise exactly no one to learn that Opeth vocalist Mikael Akerfedlt, returning to the band after his absence from 2004’s Nightmares Made Flesh, makes a fitting replacement for his own, um, replacement, Hypocrisy’s Peter Tagtgren.

But I have to wonder how much input Akerfeldt had as a songwriter this time out; there really isn’t a lot of ingenuity here, and the presence of former guitarist/drummer Dan Swano, who was generally acknowledged as the driving creative force behind Bloodbath, is sorely missed.

That’s not to say that the tracks on Unblessing the Purity are bad; that’s not true by any stretch of the imagination. They’re just unspectacular: the sense of groove that Swano brought to the proceedings is sorely missing here. (Think of the lumbering yet limber riffs of fan favorite “Eaten” or “Cancer of the Soul” and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) The band has replaced said sense of groove with speed and brutality, and while there’s not a damn thing wrong with that per se – this is Swedish death metal, after all – it ultimately never seems as, well, special as what Swano was able to achieve on Nightmares.

So, yeah, it’s good to have Akerfeldt back. But not so good that I don’t miss Swano.

(three and a half out of five horns)

-AR

How much more metal can you get than writing a song about cannibalism from the point of view of someone who gets off on the idea of being devoured? None. None more metal.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/eatlwRXpvo8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR