Cavalera Conspiracy are giving away a new song, “Killing Inside,” for free download here (you gotta give up your e-mail address to get it, natch). It’s the first song we’ve heard from the Cavalera brothers’ eagerly anticipated new album, Blunt Force Trauma, and… I think it’s kind of a bummer.

Correction: half a bummer. Everything from Marc “Why the fuck is he wearing that backpack?” Rizzo’s guitar solo onwards is exactly what I want from CC — which is to say, it sounds appropriately like old school Sepultura, with plenty of thrash elements and lots of awesome shredding. (I may not like that Rizzo was once in Ill Nino, but I can’t fault his skills as a musician.) But the first half of the song is incredibly meh. I hate to sound like the typical lugheaded metal fan, but the shit needs to be faster and more vicious — even the superior second half doesn’t hold a candle to anything on the band’s debut, Inflikted. The riff that powers “Killing Inside” is slow and redundant and kinda reminds me of the riff from the Murderolls’ “Dead in Hollywood.” Which I doubt is what Max and Igor were going for.

Download the song here, and then let us know what you think in the comments section. Blunt Force Trauma comes out March 29 on Roadrunner; I’m holding out hope that this song isn’t representative of the quality of the remainder of the record.

-AR

Cavalera Conspiracy have released the cover art for their new album, Blunt Force Trauma, and all I can say is: What the fuck is this shit?

And don’t say “Oh, it’s a continuation of the visual style from Inflikted.” Yes, I know it’s a continuation of the visual style from Inflikted, but guess what? That album cover sucked, too.

I know it’s ultimately the music that matters most, and I’m optimistic that the music on Blunt Force Trauma will be cool… but I likes me some cool album art, too.

-AR

So Max Cavalera has been running around saying he wants to do the Sepultura reunion, but it ain’t gonna happen because Andreas Kisser is a dick, or, no, wait, Paulo is a dick, or, really, your mom is a dick and it’s all her fault that the reunion isn’t happening. And up ’til now, to the best of my knowledge at least, the remaining Sepulturians have kept their mouths shut about all of Max’s smack-talking.

Well, no more:

Now, of course, you should never say never, but that seems to be pretty definitive, at least for the moment. Maybe if Max points the finger at Igor next, though, he can really make this happen.

-AR

So back in May, Max Cavalera blamed Andreas Kisser for our current lack of a Sepultura reunion. And while I took Max’s side at the time, Anso schooled me right proper just a couple of days later, proposing that Max might be, um, less than honorable. And now that Max is changing his story just seventh months later, it’s getting really, really hard not to think that Anso nailed it right on the head.

See, all of a sudden, Max is on an anti-Paulo Jr. campaign. Last week he told Revolver that Paulo was “the only musician that didn’t improve much” during the classic Sepult-era, even going so far as to allege that Paulo didn’t record any of the bass tracks on any Sep releases prior to Roots. I didn’t think much of it at the time; for one thing, I don’t think that Paulo is anyone’s favorite member of Sepultura, and for another thing, even though it might seem weird that Max is asserting that for roughly a decade the band has a bass player so untalented that he couldn’t record his album tracks and no one ever thought to replace him, I’m sad to say that I’ve heard stories like that before, so it actually seemed entirely plausible.

But now Metal Insider has brought it to my attention that Max is once again talking smack on his former bandmate, this time saying it’s all Paulo’s fault, and not Andreas’ fault, that there hasn’t been a Sep reunion. He tells Sonic Excess:

Click to read more…

So last night’s question was tricky — so tricky, in fact, that only one person got it right! Necro’s real name is Ron Braunstein, and, yep, he’s Jewish. And despite his name, Darkest Hour’s Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan is, indeed, half-Jewish. I was caught off-guard when I saw Igor Cavalera included in this article at The Gauntlet (where a picture of From Exile’s Eric Guenther, who is not Jewish, is used for the entry on Daath’s Eyal Levi, who is… but I digress), but some research unearthed that fact that the former Sepultura drummer apparently converted when he got married. His brother Max also married a Jew, although I don’t think he converted. In any case, that just leaves Poison’s C.C. DeVille.

I understand why people would think that C.C. DeVille (né Bruce Johannesson) is Jewish, given that he’s loud, from Brooklyn, and has a big schnozz — hell, I used to assume that he was Jewish — but, alas, he’s not. So mazel tov to reader Joe Caperon, the only entrant who correctly answered the question. Joe wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. Go Joe!

Here’s the question for night three:

• What is the name of infamous metal-themed music retailer in Tel Aviv?

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 2″ 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 (Saturday, December 4) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 4’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. We need to conserve moolah to get all the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys their Hanukkah gifts!!!

-AR

Mazel tov to reader Noah Mezsick, who correctly identified the first night of Hanukkah’s trivia question — yes, Orphaned Land’s Kobi Farhi is the poor musician that I accidentally introduced to frum porn earlier this year. I hear he’s had nightmares ever since. I apologize, Kobi! In any case, Noah wins a mystery prize courtesy of Century Media, and a dreidel, courtesy of us. L’chaim!

Now… ONTO NIGHT SHTAYIM!  (I think that’s Hebrew for “two.” If I fucked up, well, oops.) Here’s the trivia question:

• Which of the following metal-affiliated musicians is NOT Jewish: C.C. DeVille, Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, Igor Cavalera, Necro

E-mail your answer to axl [at] metalsucks.net with the phrase “HEAVY METAL HANNUKKAH – NIGHT 2″ 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 (Friday, December 3) evening. Shortly thereafter we’ll announce the winner and post night 3’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. What, you want we should go broke on shipping charges?

-AR

As always, I have to preface any judgment made based on a bootleg by pointing that any unofficial (and in this case probably illegal) release is not the best work by which to judge an artist.

But this audio recording of Cavalera Conspiracy performing a new song, “Warlord,” is not hitting my g-spot.

What I — and I think most people — liked about Inflikted was that it sounded an awful lot like pre-Roots Sepultura. And awesome pre-Roots Sepultura at that. If the Cavaleras had actually reunited with Sepultura, we really couldn’t hope for anything better. Not only did it blow every post-Max Sepultura release out of the water, it blew every Soulfly release out of the water, too.

And this song sounds a lot more like Soulfly than it does anything on Beneath the Remains.

Listen to it and tell me I’m wrong. I actually WANT to be wrong about this. I want the new Cavalera Conspiracy album to come out and make me eat my hat. I actually don’t own a hat right now (weird, right?), but I would happily purchase one specifically for the purposes of Cavalera-inflikted consumption.

-AR

[via]

To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

Click to read more…

I don’t like to talk too much smack on Andreas Kisser, because he’s a terrific guitar player and I have no real evidence that he’s a jerk or whatever; I’ve never really seen or heard about him doing anything super-douchey, unless you consider his part in the dissolution of the classic Sepultura line-up super-douchey, which you might. It does seem awfully funny that Max Cavalera left and the band basically never made anything good again, but that really just suggests that Max was the driving creative force behind the Sepulturawesomeness, not necessarily that Andreas Kisser should suck it.

But awhile back there was a rumor that there was gonna be a Sepultureunion, and now Max has told AltSounds that it almost happened – except a certain guitar player ended up mucking up the works:

Click to read more…

Like a lot of projects that are the project after the project that made someone famous (got all that?), Soulfly seems to inspire a lot of heated debates. (Then again, this is metal, where the question “What’s for lunch?” seems to inspire a lot of heated debates.) I never liked Soulfly as much as a certain trio of Sepultura albums, but I never thought they were bad, either; Max Cavalera clearly wanted to follow the same creative path he started out on with Roots, and being one of three people in the world who doesn’t think that Roots was a brilliant game-changer, Soulfly just hasn’t been the super-awesome experience I’d like it to be.

But I did like 2005′s Dark Ages quite a bit; when I saw Soulfly play at Download in ’06, they put on a really fun show; and I think that their latest, Omen – which is now streaming in full – is the best album they’ve ever made. It is, by and large, far less nu-metally and considerably more old-Sepultura-ish than Soulfly has been in the past. Hell, a lot of the songs on the release are Sepulturic enough that they could be Cavalera Conspiracy songs. (Because let’s be real – the Sepultura we grew up with and love is alive in well, they just ain’t called “Sepultura” anymore.)  And since the new CC album ain’t comin’ out ’til 2011, well, Omen is not at all a bad way to tide yourself over.

Stream Omen here, then rage on in the comments section.

-AR

Max Cavalera is still the fucking man. He’s been going strong with Soulfly for over a decade, continuing to carve his place in metal history and show the kiddies how it’s done. In fact, Soulfly’s seventh album, Omen, comes out May 25 on Roadrunner, and shows that Max is just as relevant to metal today as he was when Sepultura released Morbid Visions nearly twenty-five years ago.

MetalSucks is proud to bring you the exclusive worldwide debut of “Rise of the Fallen,” the new video for the first single off of Omen. It intercuts awesome performance footage with a you-are-there representation of Soulfly’s brutal pits and, of course, even features an appearance by The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, who contributes guest vocals to the track. Check out the clip below – and don’t forget to pre-order a copy of Omen!

[This exclusive has now ended.]

For a limited time only, Soulfly are giving away a free mp3 of a new song, “Rise of the Fallen.” I found out via a tweet from Roadrunner, so I didn’t have any of the usual details of the track that come with a press release. And so when it started playing, I was all, “Gee, that’s not Max Cavalera singing. But the voice is so familiar. Is that Greg Puciato? It is Greg Puciato!” I’d like to think I would have recognized his voice even if I hadn’t been cranking Option Paralysis all week.

ANYWAY, “Rise” sounds pretty much like Puciato singing over a Soulfly song, which is to say that it sounds very much like Puciato singing over a Roots-era Sepultura song.  And while it’s kinda bizarre to Puciato singing on such a nu-metalish tune, his vocal performance really is top notch; I especially like the section that begins at the 2:41 mark. That’s some epic mosh-pit shit, dude.

Download the song here. It comes off of the new Soulfly album, Omen, which will be released May 25 on Roadrunner.

-AR

The artwork for Soulfly’s forthcoming Omen has been released, and… it’s not at ALL what I was expecting, but I’m really digging it. Soulfly artwork has been, in the past, more rooted in traditionalist metal imagery (skulls, weird creatures, etc.) and pseudo-ancient iconography; but this is some Dune-looking shit right here. I dig it.

Here’s the regular edition…

…and the special edition is after the jump!

Click to read more…

Is there really not already a metal song called “Lethal Injection?” I know there’s an Ice Cube album by that title, but I can’t think of any metal tunes by that name. That seems weird, ’cause it’s such an obvious title. Am I forgetting something really obvious?

While I search through my CD collection (’cause I still have a CD collection) to try and figure out if I’m missing something, here’s a bootleg video of “Lethal Injection,” a new Soulfly song, being performed live. Max Cavalera even got Prong’s Tommy Victor to come out and do guest vox, as he apparently does on Soulfly’s new album, Omen. It sounds pretty much like a Soulfly song to me. But props to Cavalera for being the metal d00d who finally laid claim to the song title.

Metal Injection also has a bunch of exclusive studio reports on the making of Omen. You can check those out here. The album comes out May 25 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Phew! There’s been a lot of news about some great bands’ new releases these past few days. Here’s a quick round-up:

Click to read more…

Not that this really has anything to do with anything, but Blabbermouth reported over the weekend that Max Cavalera and his wife/manager Gloria are selling their Phoenix home (above) – which is 2,794-square-feet and has five bedrooms and three and half baths – for a list price of $1.475 million.

Now, Max’s musical output over the past ten years has been really solid, so he’s obviously not one of these rich dudes who has fallen out of touch and now makes art that is wholly irrelevant. And I know that taxes n’ shit will take a large chunk of whatever he and his wife end up making from the sale. Still, I no longer feel guilty about the fact that I never bought any Cavalera Conspiracy merch.

Also, the value of this home is still only, like, 1/100th of that of the MetalSucks Mansion. I actually tracked Vince down in Egypt and suggested we buy this home under the condition that Max be at the closing so we could meet him, but Vince, ever frugal, told me I should place an interview request through his publicist instead. What a party pooper.

If you’re wealthy and want to capitalize on Vince’s mistake, you can get more info on buying this luscious pad here.

-AR

I think I’ve made my feelings about remixes pretty clear in the past, but just to reiterate – I find them boring, pointless, and usually pretty awful. I mean, good for the band for getting their hardcore fans to pony up for a terrible version of a song they already owned, but I’m gonna pass.

So I was pretty pissed when I read this statement from Iggor Cavalera on Noisecreep:

“We have some ideas of maybe doing a remix album of ['Inflikted'] and have people like Justice or Soulwax — even some dub artists that my brother likes — remix the whole album.”

Mercifully, Iggor goes on to say that the remix record is “just an idea. It’s nothing confirmed,” and promises that he and brother Max “are talking about doing a new album in the future.” But I just want to be on record right now as saying that they just wait to do said new album. ‘Cause a collection of remixes won’t do much besides lower the cool quotient of Cavalera Conspiracy stock. I mean, “Sanctuary” needs a lot of bleeps and bloops and dee-dee-dees and do-doh-dos like Gene Hoglan needs a sandwich, y’know? Let’s just leave good enough alone fellas. Thanks.

-AR

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