In the first installment of “OLD BANDS U MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT“, I shared a bunch of old bands that I like. Instead of coming up with a new description, I will just reuse the old one:

When I am not trolling simple-minded, entry-level elitists, I enjoy the soothing, dulcet tones of some classic thrash or death metal. I am definitely not any kind of metal encyclopedia or authority on the subject, but I have realized that (sadly) I’m old enough to have heard a few bands that many younger metal fans have not, just because I have been exposed to a lot of bands over the years — sort of like an ancient desert tortoise who is not a historian, but has seen history unfold before his eyes simply because he is old as fuck. Because I enjoy giving back to my community, I will share some of my favorite older bands in case any of you might like them. If you want to hate on me, that’s OK, too, so feel free to tell me I’m a poser, that everybody already knows about these bands, that I got some trivial detail wrong, or whatever else you think makes you “sound like u rly know what ur talking about.”

With that out of the way, here’s volume 2!

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In brief: Relapse is offering a free sampler for download to anyone who goes to their Facebook page and hits that little ol’ “like” button. As you can see from the track list below, there’s a ton of good shit on it, including new songs from Abysmal Dawn, Red Fang, and Noisear, plus some remastered Death, plus great stuff from Baroness, Revocation, Cephalic Carnage, Dying Fetus, Misery Index, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Brutal Truth, Murder Construct… the list goes on and on. This could very easily be the soundtrack for your New Year’s Eve partying.

Go here to download the sampler. Happy fucking new year.

-AR

Allan Horrocks and Andee Connors run Aquarius Records in San Francisco, CA. It’s the best record store in the country, especially if you don’t live right next to a record store and especially if you like metal. I interviewed them a few months back for the ongoing Taco Riff series, and figured they’d have a good take on all of your holiday shopping. I called them up to get their wrap up on their favorite metal of the year. Although they took notes on what they were going to say, they ignored them entirely almost as soon as we began.

Before we begin, you should sign up for their bi-weekly (now becoming weekly) mailing list of favorite new releases. It’s mindblowing.

We started with me trying to type what they said, but they were going way too fast.

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF KYLESA, DARKTHRONE, BRUTAL TRUTH, KATAKLYSM, 3 INCHES OF BLOOD, TEXTURES, SWASHBUCKLE, THIS OR THE APOCALYPSE, DISFIGURING THE GODDESS, BURNING THE MASSES, CHRISTIAN MISTRESS, MISERY, AND GRIFTEGARD

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to twelve musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the seventh group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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Three cheers for reader SeanN, who correctly answered last night’s trivia question — yep, Dan Lilker is Jewish. Several of you pointed out that he’s not a practicing Jew, but, alas, that’s not what I asked! So SeanN wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. Hoo-ray for SeanN!

And now, onto tonight’s question:

• True or false: Periphery have at least one member who is Jewish.

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 5″ in the subject line. All entries should include your name and mailing address in addition to your answer, and are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Monday, December 6) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 6’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S., ’cause unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a shipping mitsieh.

-AR

First of all, my apologies to Michael Beem and Doug Gross, who also correctly answered night 2′s trivia question. Your e-mails got stuck in my junk mail folder, fellas. I’ll obviously be checking that before choosing a winner from here on out. But three people actually got night 2′s trivia question, so you all did ever-so-slightly better than I initially thought.

But onward and upward: yarmulkes off to reader Jeff Bilello, who correctly identified The Metal Shop as Tel Aviv’s premiere retailer of metal music. I’ve only gotten to visit that place once, but it was like I died and went to heaven. So awesome. ANYWAY, Jeff wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. Mazel tov, Jeff!

Here’s the question for night four:

• Dan Lilker: Jewish or not?

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 4″ in the subject line. All entries should include your name and mailing address in addition to your answer, and are due by 5 pm tomorrow (Sunday, December 5) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 5’s trivia question. And while you don’t have to be Jewish to enter the contest, you do have to live in the U.S. Dreidels are surprisingly costly to ship.

-AR

For some reason, internet metal nerds love to talk about drummers, even if they themselves do not play drums. Whether it’s “Who has the fastest double bass/blastbeats?”, “Should I use one bass drum or two?” or “What does Pete Sandoval’s drum throne smell like?”, there are few things more tiresome than the topic of metal drumming. What that in mind, in this post I will put the discussion of this topic to rest forever by conclusively saying all that there is to say about metal drumming. After this post has been published, anyone who still debates these points is as foolish, ignorant and stubborn as people who believe the Earth is flat or that God exists. So if you have anything to say, say it now, because this is it — this is your chance to become part of the moment in which we closed the door on dorky, redundant debates about metal drumming.

This is THE FINAL WORD on metal drumming!!!!

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Earlier today, I downloaded Earache’s new, completely free Extreme Stage Diving app, a video game in which “you take control of a burly bouncer and throw the pesky stage invader as far into the crowd as possible.” And I’m happy to report that it’s going to make an excellent time waster (that’s a compliment), and may soon usurp Slayer Pinball (or whatever the fuck it’s called) as my favorite metal-themed smartphone procrastination tool. It’s simple yet challenging, it appeals to my 8-bit sensibilities, there’s plenty of blood, and, oh yeah, the soundtrack is killer.

Yes, of course, this is meant to help Earache promote their shit. But the game features a bare minimum of songs by Earache bands I don’t like (cough, Oceano, cough cough), and those songs are more than offset by the inclusion of groups like At the Gates, Deicide, Brutal Truth, Decapitated, and Wormrot. And whomever designed the game was smart/cool enough to make it so that you can skip to whichever of the ten featured songs you like — in other words, if Bonded by Blood comes up and you don’t like Bonded by Blood, you can easily move along to The Haunted or whatever your particular cup of tea might be. (And apparently there’s a bonus track that you can unlock, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping it’s a Godflesh song, even though that would make no mothertruckin’ sense whatsoever.)

Check out a sample video below…

If you go here and give Earache your e-mail address, you can also potentially win the helmet the charcter in the game wears, although I think the game itself is a much cooler prize, and you don’t need to enter no contest to get it.

You can download the game here. Like I said, it’s totally free, so you really have nothing to lose by trying it out (other than the time you’re going to spend playing this instead of doing something productive). And you can get the full track list after the jump.

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This weekly column from our brethren at Decibel — the only metal magazine still worth caring about — was supposed to run earlier today. But Axl fucked up and forgot to run it! A million apologies. Now here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli to school your ass.

You’re probably already on your way to spend six hours in your bedroom listening to Xasthur while your dad and uncle fart their way through the Lions and Cowboys games, so I’ll keep it brief. Top 40 time. Gobble gobble. No, I’m not reprinting the list, which has probably leaked already. Take it easy — or hard —on us. Just leave the wife-beater and half-sleeve at home.

Reminder/plug for something that can’t be fucked with: the January issue marks the premiere of our limited-edition monthly flexi series. Brutal Truth detonate two never-before-released tracks (lyrics appropriated from Sharp’s Grinding It Out column — just kidding). As with all future editions of the series, once these things are sold out, they’ll never be repressed. Not to mention, sweet Christ, that cover.

If that’s not enough to keep you occupied over the long weekend, you can make some “loved one”’s Friday much, much blacker with our exclusive Hall of Fame edition of Onward to Golgotha. To celebrate Incantation’s sick Chicago/NYC/Cleveland run, we’ve hooked up with Relapse to press 1,000 copies of the classic. The 180-gram special edition comes with an exclusive woven patch and album cover sticker. Boom, your shopping’s done. Little sis is pumped.

Have a stellar Thanksgiving, commenteriat. See you at Love and Other Drugs, or at least in the Parking Lot for Real Drugs.

-AB

You can order the January issue of Decibel here, but the only way to ensure that you never miss the mag’s sexcellent new monthly flexi disc series to get a full subscription. You’ll be thankful you did!!!

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means we’re taking off early today and won’t be back ’til Monday. We’re sorry to leave non-American readers high n’ dry, but PLUS ONE FOR FREEDOM, MOTHERFUCKERS.

ANYWAY, in honor of the holiday, we decided to do a special Turkey Day-themed QOTW designed to make you feel all warm and cuddly inside:

WHAT (IN METAL) ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Allow me to shill for a beat before the weekend: If you haven’t already bought one of our new, limited edition shirts, go get yours now!!! They’re selling fast, and soon they will be the title of a God Forbid album. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Here’s some other fun stuff we did this week:

• Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself gave us the rundown on Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks found the CFL fun and confusing, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable talked about the best and worst drives in the U.S., and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley is the latest to weigh in on free metal from Scion.
• We debuted new music from Murder Construct.
• We spoke to Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling and Christopher Drew from Nevershotnever and Eatmewhileimhot.
• We checked out the latest releases from Riotgod, Electric Wizard, Rimfrost, and First Blood and Killing the Dream.
• We asked you about old school bands you wanted to like but couldn’t.
• We joined Gene Simmons, Slash, and Dave Navarro in having NOH8 for gays.
• We laughed at both Kirk Hammett and the little girl he kicked.
• We also laughed at Sebastian Bach’s frail ego.
• We got really excited about the new single from The Human Abstract.
• We also got really excited about Decibel‘s new flexi disc series.

Have a nice, relaxing weekend gang. We’ll miss you muchly, but we’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.

Axl was rad enough to mention it on Tuesday, and many of you have probably seen our newsletter already, so we’ll just reiterate the basics super fast:

• The Decibel Flexi Series will commence unlubricated face-decimation with the January 2011 issue (out in early December).
• Flexis are clear vinyl incorporated into the actual magazine.
• Every month a new band will drop never-before-heard awesomeness on said flexi.
• “Never-before-heard” means unreleased tracks, covers, liveage, demos, alternate takes or re-recordings. Who knows, maybe even a skit like the kind Type O used to open albums with. I’m sure, like, Pig Destroyer have been dying to cover “Skip It.”
• Brutal Truth are doing the first one. Enslaved are doing the second.
• Only subscribers get to handle these super collectible, extremely limited, most brutal of truths.

That much you probably already know. As for the future, trust us, there’s no shortage of bands being considered for this series. But right now that’s mostly just in-house fantasy draft stuff. Now would be a good time to hear from you guys: Who would you like to see in this thing? Got any dream covers? Know of anything crazy-rare that would blow minds if it just finally fucking got out there? Please tell us, in the spirit of Ludacris and weak-ass gamer puns, what’s your vinyl fantasy?

P.S. A particularly badass one might be Incantation smashing through Golgotha live, which you can check out for yourself on their Decibel Hall of Fame mini-tour , which kicks off tomorrow at Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago.

-AB

Like the man said, the only way to get these awesome flexi discs is to subscribe to Decibel, so get off your tuchus and do that. You can also buy the flexi-less-but-still-killer December 2010 issue here.

As if the news that Decibel are kicking off their new flexi disc series with some previously-unreleased music from Brutal Truth wasn’t enough, The Deciblog has now debuted the legendary grindsters’ new video, “Semi-Automatic Carnation,” too. Stop hogging all the Brutal Truth, Decidudes! There’s enough to go around!

Actually, I guess there isn’t. Even though the running time of the track on the album is 2:55, the running time of the video is only 2:05. Only a grind band would look at a three-minute track and go, “Yeah, that song is too long, let’s cut a third of it out for the video.” The only explanation I can come up is that since “Semi-Automatic Carnation” isn’t really a song so much it’s an interlude (making it kind of a bizarre choice for video treatment in the first place), maybe BT just didn’t think anyone would wanna watch this for additional fifty seconds?

“Semi-Automatic Carnation” come off of Brutal’s Truth’s latest, Evolution Through Revolution, which is out now on Relapse.

-AR

Is it still shilling if you genuinely believe in the product? Whatever. I don’t care. This is incredibly cool, and you’ll recognize it as being incredibly cool, or otherwise you’re probably a Vampires Everywhere fan.

So. If you don’t already have a subscription to Decibel, now would be a good time to get off your lazy ass and get one. Starting with the January 2011 issue, the only metal magazine worth a damn anymore is going to include a flexi disc — that’s a super-thin vinyl record to you, numb nuts — each and every month. No joke: Decibel is going to include a free vinyl every fucking month. Holy shit, that’s awesome.

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One of the fun things about being a cool blogger d00d is that sometimes bands and labels send you little promotional goodies along with your advance copies of albums. For example, this is the package that my advance copy of Slayer’s World Painted Blood came in:

So. Yesterday afternoon, Earache sent over my promo copy of Oceano’s latest, Contagion, and look what it came with:

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

There weren’t any real hot button topics this week, so we decided to just play a fun game that used to keep Vince and Axl occupied for many a lunch period when they were kids:

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Brutal Truth have released a new video, for the song “Get a Therapist… Spare the World,” which has to be one of the best song titles ever. It’s not a great video or anything, but it’s Brutal Truth, so they pretty much could have filmed Richard Hoak and Dan Lilker making out and I would have posted it.

Actually, note to Brutal Truth: For your next video, please just film Hoak making out with Lilker. That shit would get you a lot of attention, I can tell you that much.

“Get a Therapist… Spare the World” comes off of Brutal Truth’s latest awesome offering, Evolution Through Revolution, which is out now on Relapse.

-AR

The MetalSucks co-sponsored Eyehategod headlining trek with Nachtmystium, Brutal Truth, and Black Anvil starts tomorrow in Orlando, and as if EHG alone weren’t enough to lure you to a gig, well, this oughta do the trick. Zena Metal – somehow scooping us on news about a tour we’re sponsoring!!! - reports that for $40, you can purchase what is pretty much the best VIP package ever: “a BBQ, soundcheck access, a meet & greet and a limited-edition poster.”

Again, that’s for forty bucks. So for literally hundreds of dollars less than you’d pay for a VIP package to Ozzfest or whatever other big-name tour you’re planning on going to this summer, you can eat (hopefully?) good food, hang out at soundcheck, meet the band, go home with a souvenir, and not be married by some guy you’ve never heard of. Holy shit, that is awesome.

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We’re just days away from Maryland Deathfest 2010, which will take place from May 28-30 in Baltimore, Maryland. This year’s edition of the annual fest promises to be the best one yet, with a line-up that includes Gorguts, Autopsy, Obituary, Entombed, Sodom, Repulsion, D.R.I., and a ton of other kick-ass bands. In anticipation of the event, we thought it would be fun to get some recollections of past MDFs from artists who were there. So we’re teaming up with Relapse Records to do just that! Read the raucous inaugural entry by Matt from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, memories of a jam-packed day from Tomas Lindberg of Disfear (and At the Gates), how Pete Benumb of Agenda of Swine got swindled, John from Weekend Nachos’ memories of the Bolt Thrower show, and today’s final entries, a double-shot from Dan Lilker of Autopsy, Brutal Truth and Nuclear Assault fame, and Marc from Fuck the Facts. Have fun at MDF!

I am definitely looking forward to this year’s MDF for a very good reason – I will be playing bass for Autopsy there.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing MDF a couple of times with Brutal Truth and once each with Nuclear Assault and Venomous Concept, but even with all that in mind this will be a special one for me due to the honor bestowed on me by Chris and the guys by asking me to fill in on bass. As most people know, Autopsy has not performed live since the early 90s, so this will be the first show in a very long time for a band that was “kult” before that word was intentionally misspelled by a bunch of message board members.

I hope all you motherfuckers come down to witness a little death metal history!!

- Dan Lilker / Autopsy, Brutal Truth, Nuclear Assault

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A couple of weeks ago we got word that Scott Hull was putting together a second edition of This Comp Kills Fascists; that news alone was enough to make us excited, because a) we loved Comp volume one, and b) we’ll spend money on pretty much anything that has the words “Scott Hull” on it. (Pretty much anything. There are obviously exceptions.)

Now a complete list of bands that Hull has selected to appear on the comp has been released – although not a track list. I just think that’s worth mentioning because with bands like these, the songs tend to be pretty short, and on the last comp, all the bands got multiple songs – so if you look at this list and think “Gee, that’s it?”, well, it’s safe to assume that there will still be plenty of music to be had here.

Maybe even more importantly – since I don’t think this line-up is as overtly impressive as the one for Comp. 1 (which had Brutal Truth and Insect Warfare and some other “flashier” bands, at least inasmuch as there’s such a thing as a flashy grind band) – there’s now a preview page for the album, which is currently streaming tracks by Despise You, Apartment 213, Owen Hart, and Idiot’s Parade. So if you look at this list and you’re all, “Fuck are these dudes?,” well, head over there to hear some awesome awesomeness.

List of the included bands after the jump. And because I’m a swell fella, I’ve included MySpace links for all of them, so you can check ‘em out now if you’re not already familiar with them.

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