MetalSucks

Max Cavalera and Soulfly are back in the studio, working on their seventh (shit, time flies!) album, tentatively titled Omen, and those cool motherfuckers at Metal Injection got Mr. Cavalera himself to do an in-studio video update. Check it out:

Not to be disrespectful to Max Cavalera or nothing, but while you happen to be in a studio with Logan Mader, do you think you could give your brother a call and get crackin’ on a new Cavalera Conspiracy album, too? I’d be much obliged if ya did.

-AR

Wow. You guys suck. I really didn’t think that last week’s logo, for the band Blood Legion, was all that hard – but a whopping one of you, Steve Mariscal, got the right answer (We got a lot of entries for “Blood Witch” and “Witch Legion.” I don’t really see the word “witch” in there, but c’est la vie.).

So. Steve wins a copy of Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted, courtesy of the fine folks at Roadrunner Records. But that means I still have FOUR copies of this awesome album to give away! All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select four winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their names next Monday.

I deliberately selected a fairly easy logo this week, ’cause I wanna unload these puppies. Seriously, you’re making Max Cavalera so sad he just told me he’s gonna collaborate with Jonathan Davis again. Not cool, guys! NOT COOL!

-AR

I guess that last week’s logo, for the band Inhuman Sacrifice, was too easy, ’cause like 98% of everyone who wrote it got it right. Alas, there can be only two winners, and the luck of the draw tells me it’s Malcolm Monds and Ashley Culp. Congrats, kiddies, ya each won a free copy of Black Stone Cherry’s new album, Folklore and Superstition. Hope ya’ll enjoy it.

This week’s logo, which was submitted by an anonymous reader, is a bit tougher, but we have a cool prize: our last five copies of Cavalera Conspiracy’s excellent debut, Inflikted, courtesy the party animals at Roadrunner Records.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their names next Monday.

Ready… set… go!

-AR

Just in case Max Cavalera’s reunion with his brother Igor in The Cavalera Consipiracy wasn’t enough to provoke a few curious listens, Brazil’s favorite metal son has come around again this year with a new release for his long running brainchild, Soulfly. Now while the skepticism of whether the world really needed two new Cavalera outputs in a single year (and not one of them involving a reunion with you-know-who) is probably well deserved, let’s all us keep an open mind to try and see what unique snowflakes we can find in this avalanche of new material.

Click to read more…

Well, well, well.. at least one person thought Apocalypto was a good movie, and his name is Max Cavalera.

The below, Gibson-esque video is for “Unleash,” the new single from Cavalera’s Soulfly, which will be the former Sepultura main man’s second release this year, after Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted. It features guest vocals by Pantera’s Phil Anselmo Throwdown’s Dave Peters, and while I think it’s an okay song, it lacks that Sepultura-ness that made Inflikted such a nice surprise.

Check out the video and then weigh in in our comments section. Soulfly’s new album, Conquer, drops July 29 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Blabbermouth posted the following live vids of a reunited At the Gates playing “Suicide Nation” at the Electric Weekend Festival in Madrid and Cavalera Conspiracy (a.k.a. the semi-reunited Sepultura) performing “Sanctuary” at the Netherlands’ Pinkpop festival this past week. And even though the Cavalera Conspiracy footage is pro-shot and the At the Gates footage is from some dude’s cell phone, I gotta say, I think ATG sound like they have their shit together, while the Cavaleras could use some more practice. I’m all for a punk rock down n’ dirty ethos in metal, but they sound looser than Courtney Love’s vagina.

I guess I’ll know for sure how these bands are live when Vince and I check ‘em out later this summer. In the meantime, feel to free to argue amongst yourselves.

AT THE GATES – “SUICIDE NATION”

CAVALERA CONSPIRACY – “SANCTUARY”

-AR

Is the world ready for a new Soulfly album? It seems like Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted just dropped, and it turned out to be so killer, I don’t see any reason Max Cavalera couldn’t just chill for a beat before giving the world its next dose of Cavalera Lovin’.

Max isn’t just gonna chill for a beat, though; he’s the kinda guy who thinks metal is like Chinese food, so he’ll release Conquer, Soulfly’s latest, on July 29 via Roadrunner. I’ve heard at least one insider say that it’s superior to Inflikted – but that person also thinks that Cavalera Conspiracy sounds too much like old Sepultura, which is exactly why I like it so much. So take that for what you will.

ANYWAY, here’s Soulfly performing a new song, “I and I,” “Blood Fire War Hate,” [My bust - AR] at the XIII Festival Arte-Nativo Viña Rock 2008 festival earlier this month in Spain. It sounds pretty fuckin’ heavy… but I’ll reserve final judgement for when I hear the proper studio version.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

So while it was rumored for awhile that this year’s edition of Ozzfest would be a two day event – but it has now been announced that it’ll be just one single day, on Saturday, August 9, at at Pizza Hut Park* in Dallas, Texas. The line-up will be as follows:

Main Stage
OZZY OSBOURNE
METALLICA
SERJ TANKIAN
HELLYEAH
JONATHAN DAVIS
CAVALERA CONSPIRACY
SHADOWS FALL
APOCALYPTICA
IN THIS MOMENT
All-Star Tribute To “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott

Second Stage
SEVENDUST
DEVILDRIVER
KINGDOM OF SORROW
SOILENT GREEN
WITCHCRAFT
GOATWHORE

Texas (Third) Stage
THE SWORD
DROWNING POOL
RIGOR MORTIS

Actually, that is, by no means, a terrible line-up; if the stages are staggered at all (and I imagine they will be), it would be plenty easy to keep oneself occupied during sets from In This Moment, Jonathan Davis, and HellNo. And I guess it’s honorable of Metallica to let Ozzy play last, even though, at this point, a) they’re much bigger than Ozzy and b) Ozzy has to be in bed by 8 pm. I mean, if I was Ozzy, and I’d spent recent Ozzfests getting blown off the stage by the likes of Maiden and Priest, I certainly wouldn’t wanna follow Metallica. But, y’know, nice of Ulrich and Hetfield to step aside for one night and let the Ozzman cometh.

Click to read more…

Whoa. So I guess last week’s logo was pretty hard, because very, very few of you got it correct. The band it belongs to is called Abort Mastication, by the way, and five of the lucky MetalSucks winners who did get it right – Andrew Robbins, Sydney Kekoler, Bertie Michaels, Josh Dechter and Earl Eames – will each one a copy of Cavalera Conspiracy’s awesome new album, Infliked. Congrats, kiddies.

This week, the fine men and women at Roadrunner Records have graciously supplied us with two copies of The Best of Suffocation to give away. Whether you’re a hardcore Suffocation completist or a new fan looking for a quick introduction to these death metal legends, this is a pretty sweet compilation.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name one week from today.

Good luck, everyone. Have a br00tal weekend!

-AR

That’s right, bitches. Completely Unreadable Bang Logo just got a whole lot snazzier – like, Roadrunner Records snazzy. We’re moving up in the world.

So before we get to this week’s logo, a shout out to NYC’s own Alex Diaz, who correctly identified April 18’s logo as belonging to Cephalotripsy. Alex wins a copy of Droid’s self-titled CD. I hope you enjoy it more than I did, Alex. (On a side note, I’d like to thank the dozen or so of you who e-mailed me to point out I’d already used this logo once. I am, obviously, a total pothead moron, and I will try to be more careful in the future… but c’mon, all these friggin’ things look the same!).

So, here are we are this week. Like the headline says, the very cool people at Roadrunner have donated not one, not two, but FIVE copies of Cavalera Conspiracy’s excellent debut, Inflikted (read my review here). People: this album is the shit, and if for some reason you haven’t already bought a copy, you want one. Trust me. It’s the stuff of all your Sepultura-related wet dreams.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name one week from today.

Good luck, everyone. Have a br00tal weekend!

-AR

It’s a good day to be a metalhead. Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted, the long-awaited reunion of Max and Iggor Cavalera of Sepultura, finally comes out today, though it’s been on the Internet for months receiving critical acclaim (read Axl’s review). Firewind and Mercenary release a dual-shot of epic, European power-prog in the form of their new albums The Premonition (read Vince’s review) and Architect of Lies, respectively. Jucifer’s L-Autrichienne combines metal of, well, pretty much every sort for this excellent release (read Axl’s preview and Iann Robinson’s rave). Korpklaani’s folk-metal explosion Korven Kuningas also hits the shelves, which we can best describe as Tetris-metal.

Not a bad day to be a metalhead, best next week promises to be even better with new releases from In Flames, Joe Satriani, Sevendust, Nadja and The Sword.

-VN

Infliked, the new album by Cavalera Conspiracy, may have turned out to be a pleasantly awesome surprise (read our review here), but the band’s video for first single “Sanctuary” is, alas, not nearly as cool.

The concept isn’t bad: at a photo shoot for the band, a 28 Days Later-style monster goes on the rampage and kills pretty much everyone in the room (save for the band, who, I suppose, are saved by the sheer power of their rocking). The clip is even filmed in lo-fi video to give it some sense of “realism.”

Unfortunately, it’s also shot in first-person shakey cam, a la The Blair Witch Project and the more recent Cloverfield, a.k.a. The Blair Monster Project. The result is that you can’t really see anything, and I don’t mean in a Jaws being-suggestive-is-more-scary-than-being-gory kind way; I mean, really, you can’t see very much.

So, y’know, that blows.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/uu9EgfOjBvk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

Is this some kind of hoax to promote the new Cavalera Conspiracy album? We seriously can’t decide whether this shatters Igor Cavalera’s metal cred or ups it to the Nth power.

-VN

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

2006 was a landmark year for metal whatwith future-classic records from Lamb of God and Mastodon (among others) and the breaking of everyone’s favorite underground French metal band, Gojira, onto the international metal scene. When Axl and I were in England for Download Festival that summer, we read a spot in Kerrang that listed Gojira as a must-see for the event. Figuring we had nothing to lose we checked them out, and we were not disappointed. We saw them again opening for Children of Bodom and Amon Amarth here in the States at the very same show that spawned the idea for this website, and FUCK, do these Frenchmen know how to bring it live.

Their 2006 record From Mars to Sirius was one of the most strikingly brutal and original albums to come out that year, and boy are we psyched to hear what they come up with next. Blabbermouth reports that Gojira are finishing up writing for their next record we type, and are planning to enter the studio in April for a projected Fall release. It’s sure to be a little while since Joe Duplantier has to fulfill touring obligations for Cavalera Conspiracy, but still: time to get excited yet?

Check out Kip’s “Saturday Song to Get Stoned To” column last month featuring Gojira, and check out the band’s MySpace page too while you’re at. It will improve your day that much.

-VN

I’m really, really impressed with Inflikted, the debut (if you don’t count Sepultura) album from Cavalera Conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the new cover art for the album sucks even worse than the old cover art:

Okay, remember when Sepultura used to have freaky, scary, horrific, bad ass metal cover art? So why the fuck does this album have some modern-art Devo shit? It’s a good thing the album is actually good…

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Morizz for the tip!

-AR

Since so many of you see to be as pleasantly surprised as we are that those two Cavalera Conspiracy songs that surfaced earlier this week are actually good, we’re pleased to announce that the entire album has now leaked online. And, believe it or not, those songs were just foreshadowing; in other words, the entire album is really, really good. Head over to Kill the Musica to get the album. Enjoy it, and have a good weekend…

-AR

I’m feeling ready to be not so cynical about the Cavalera Conspiracy, the new Sepultura semi-reunion between brothers Max and Igor Cavalera (Soulfly’s Marc Rizzo and Gojira’s Joe Duplantier round out the line-up on guitar and bass, respectively). And why, pray tell, am I feeling so generous towards the band these days? Well, it’s cause these just released tracks, “Sanctuary” and “Inflikted” actually sound more or less exactly the way I wanted them to, which is to say: they sound an awful lot like good ol’ school Sepultura. Yes, it seems that the shitty band name, cheap album art, deliberate “hip” misspellings and other general shenanigans were bad omens not to be taken seriously… although I suppose the complete album could still totally suck.

Download the tracks below and let us know what you think.

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Sanctuary”

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Inflikted”

-AR

As you probably well know by now, the brothers Cavalera of the legendary Sepultura have a new album coming out under the Cavalera Conspiracy moniker, featuring Max and Igor alongside Marc Rizzo (who played with Max in Soulfly) and Joe Duplantier (Gojira).

The album, called Inflikted, comes out on March 25 — but Mr. Arf has a lo-fi but listenable leak of the new song “Sanctuary.”

As you enjoy this track, channel the spirit of Martin Luther King on this fine holiday.

-VN

[Thanks to MetalSucks reader "UT2010" for the tip]

Okay okay, that’s the last time I make that lame joke.

Seriously, though, this is the shitty lack of effort of an artist who realizes that the days of anyone looking at album art are coming to an end. Could they have put any less thought into this?

This album better be fucking good.

-AR

I suppose I have no real reason to feel so cynical about the music that the reunited Cavalera brothers will make together; in 2005, Max Cavalera released Dark Ages, arguably the best Soulfly album to date, while Igor Cavalera and his band mates put out what is arguably the best Max-less Sepultura album, Dante XXI, just a year later. And they both made albums of such quality by introducing elements of older Sep back into music that become far too diluted with the “legacy” of the over-rated Roots, even if they’ve never abandoned that album’s musical “advances” altogether. In other words, it would seem that both Max and Igor have their heads in the right place, creatively speaking, and if ever a Sepultura semi-reunion was going to (needlessly?) produce new music, now would be the time.

Still, I was hoping that the band would come up with a better name than Cavalera Conspiracy, and a better album title than Inflikted. Not so, says Blabbermouth, who exclusively announced the album’s track list yesterday.

Click to read more…