Kenneth Thomas, in a tunnel.

If you care about heavy music and still believe that art should trump commerce every time, you owe it to yourself to check out Blood, Sweat & Vinyl: DIY in the 21st Century. I’ve written about Kenneth Thomas’s music documentary in these e-pages before. After watching the film a second time, I’m even more convinced of its importance as both a document of bands that you rarely (if ever) got to hear from outside of the concert hall, and argument for the importance of underground music makers, making music underground. Thomas chose to keep the focus tight, centering on the musicians, artists and label heads associated with three independent labels that are doing things their own way: Hydra Head, Neurot Recordings and Constellation. While there are certain characters that emerge as the spiritual ballast for the film – Aaron Turner of Isis & Hydra Head, Steve von Till of Neurosis & Neurot, and Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, in particular – the overwhelming sense is of a giant inter-connected family of passionate people, united by nothing other than a desire to pursue truth and clarity through music.

Aside from a couple off-camera giggles during an adorable scene with Justin Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh), Thomas himself doesn’t show up in his film. So we figured we’d find out what the director had to say about his opus.

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I’ve read enough “Cry Now, Cry Later” columns in Decibel to know that if J. Bennett and I ever met we’d be instant besties, or more likely I’d wanna be instant besties and he’d be all “psshhh… get off my nuts, lowly blogger.” Dude’s writing makes me jealous on a regular basis, and he’s got great taste in metal too. His latest pièce de résistance is an entry in The Deciblog‘s “Justify Your Shitty Taste” series, in which DB writers are challenged to defend formerly indefensible and widely loathed albums: today’s mission, Cave In’s only major label child, Antenna.

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If the three bands name-checked in our headline aren’t enough to pique your interest, that’s not all: The Phoenix Born of Fire, Volume 1 compilation — put together by weekly New England arts mag The Boston Phoenix — also features free downloadable tracks from Ramming Speed (appearing at The Metal Suckfest!), Motherboar, Razormaze, Acaro, and a number of other Boston-area metal bands. Stream or download the whole thing for free on Bandcamp. Who knows, you may even discover a new band.

-VN

Thanks: Zack Wells

One of the things that I love most about underground metal is that so many diehard fans fulfill so many roles within the metal community. A lot of the kids that you see at the grind show are also in bands. The dude rockin’ out at the front might own a distro. That girl might run the screenprinting service where all the locals get their band shirts made. Another guy might be taking photographs for his blog, or promoting the show, or running a small label on the side. Extreme music requires extreme commitment.

Filmmaker Kenneth Thomas is one of those extremely committed folks. He’s a filmmaker with 15 years of experience, mostly in documentary work but also in producing music videos and EPK footage for Isis, Neurosis, Queens of the Stone Age and tons more. Back when he was living in Los Angeles, I would see Thomas at most every show I went to. Sometimes he had a film camera with him; sometimes he was just rockin’ out with everyone else. After five years of work, he’s just about to release his latest project, Blood Sweat and Vinyl: DIY in the 21^st Century.

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At first, you may feel hostility to heavy rock bands like Lacuna Coil, but fuck that. You don’t settle for the easiest, most immediate appraisal of stuff — especially stuff as nebulous as rock music. So after two more seconds of thought, you see that it’s allegiance that we owe to Lacuna Coil and their skilled ilk. Without them and their complicated shirts, our only sources for pure, habit-forming pop hooks would be Billboard’s top 100, that one Cave In album, and Faith No More. Surely don’t go to Lacuna Coil for metal, but rather when you desire ace pop delivered in metal vernacular. In this capacity, their jamz save us from mainstream radio, where every song is about doin’ ya/refusing to do ya/doin’ your friend/choking a stripper. Shudder.

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Butt rock reigns yet again, with Seether nabbing the top spot for the second week in a row. Boris and Cave In cracked the Top Hard Music charts with their new albums (hooray!), while Hollywood Undead and Asking Alexandria actually experienced sales gains for the first time since their new records debuted a few weeks back (boo!). Click on through to see what else charted and how much it all sold.

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The most recent album by Jane’s Addiction, 2003′s Strays, was a big-budget, big-production heavy rock record that kinda flopped despite its awesomeness. Since those distant days, Jane’s members have flirted with a full reunion (momentarily counting longtime hold-out Eric Avery as a returned member), with ex-Guns N’ Roses/current Velvet Revolver bassist Duff McKagen (he came and went within weeks), and with total futility (via singer Perry Farrell’s lame project The Satellite Party, featuring his wife and Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt).

So, along with my fandom, Jane’s has my curiosity about their new stuff — not just for the abovementioned travails, but also ’cause the album is a Rich Costey production (Mastodon, Muse, Cave In) and is the beneficiary of creative goosings by TV On The Radio dude Dave Sitek. I don’t care about TVOTR, but I’ve surmised that a dose of noisy post-rock might be good medicine for trio of moribund freak-rockers whose attempted return to glory was a safe, anthemic rock radio record. And now I see that my diagnosis is accurate, so far: Just listen to their thunderous, cacophonous new jam “End To The Lies” and its nipply new video (above, NSFW; audio only here). The jam is on fire! Turn it up!

-ADF

Jane’s Addiction’s fourth album The Great Escape Artist is out August 23 on Capitol Records.

Cave In’s White Silence is definitely the most anticipated release of the week, but new albums from Book of Black Earth, In Solitude, Inevitable End and two new ones from Boris make this a week to look forward to. Vic Vaughn goes at each one after the jump.

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In 2001 I went to the now-defunct NYC venue Brownie’s to catch Cave In, who I’d recently discovered, and ended up catching Old Man Gloom and Scissorfight in the process. The way I viewed heavy music was forever altered, the show a railroad switch that sent my descent into the gnarlier side of metal over the edge.

All three bands took lengthy hiatuses shortly after peaking mid-decade. Cave In, as we know, got back together in 2009 to record Planets of Old and have a new album White Silence due on May 24th. Old Man Gloom — whose members include Aaron Turner of Isis, Nate Newton of Converge, Caleb Scofield of Cave In and Jay Randall of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, among others — are jumping on the reunion bandwagon too (did they ever officially break up? whatever); according to Gun Shy Assassin, producer (and Converge guitarist) Kurt Ballou posted a Facebook message that his next project is a new Old Man Gloom record. Good news indeed.

So where are Scissorfight in all of this? Word on the street is that frontman Ironlung is totally over it. We beg him with all our granite hearts to reconsider. Axl and I jammed Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare no less than 30 times (seriously) whilst driving around in L.A. a few weeks back, in part because it was the only CD we had and in part because sick fucking riffs dude! C’mon, Scissorfight… do it, do it, do it!

-VN

Cave In has built a rich legacy on sprawling, spacey epics, from the dark and tingly “The End Of Our Rope Is A Noose” (from Until Your Heart Stops, 1997) and “Requiem” (Jupiter, 1999) to GJOATs “Seafrost” (Antenna, 2003) and “Paranormal” (Perfect Pitch Black, 2005). It’s their supreme bragging right, a show of unflinching skill, and the extra-special chestnut that awaits each horny Cave In listener at new album time. As it pertains to now, new album time is May 24 but for today, from White Silence comes “Sing My Loves,” the latest and maybe the most wetly anticipated Cave In epic yet. I won’t oversell it but let me say that it’s better than every other song on Earth put together. Oh hey there it is right down there. Click play and hold onto your nutz/nipz!

Cave In’s White Silence is out May 24 on Hydra Head. Pre-order the shit out of it here.

If you can’t figure out why you awoke this morning with a persistent boner (like me) or a tingly bottom (uh also like me), let me tell you it probably is related to Hydra Head’s announcement that tomorrow brings the premiere of a new Cave In jam! Welcome to Horny City. Population: you.

But there’s big fun today too! So that we have a use for our various states of arousal, MetalSucks is proud to unveil Hydra Head’s killer new free sampler of recent, unreleased, and upcoming jamz by the likes of Oxbow, Neurosis, Discordance Axis, and Clouds. This is rare and tasty stuff, like the hard-to-find Cave In cover of “N.I.B.” and an exclusive Austerity Program remix of a Pyramids jam. Get it here.

–ADF

Thank the dickens for MS reader Nick Thomas who not only beat us to the punch by sleuthing out a whole batch of Cave In news, but also beat out both the band and their label Hydra Head. If you’re either one of the latter you’re probably sticking needles in an Amazon.com voodoo doll for ruining your marketing plan, but so it goes these days.

The new Cave In album White Silence, which the band announced they were recording last August, will receive a Hydra Head release on May 24th, according to the usually-but-not-always-reliable Amazon.com release page. Reliable release date or not, that’s definitely the cover above and this is definitely the track listing below:

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I kind of assumed that Tommy Rogers (a.k.a. “Thomas Giles”) wouldn’t be doing any touring behind his awesome new solo album, Pulse; for one thing, he plays all the instruments on the record himself, so he’d need to go recruit a band, and for another thing I thought he’d be too busy with his other project, some group called Between the Buried and Me.

But, hey, guess what? I was wrong! And happy to be. Rogers has announced a mini-tour (only five dates, sadly). Which would already be good news, but he’s also gonna have Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky doing support. So these shows should be fun.

Additional support comes from a band called Braveyoung, with whom I am not familiar (Vince tells me they used to be called Giants). But Rogers is obviously a big fan — he named their album We Are The Lonely Animals one of his favorites of 2010. So I’m gonna assume they’re good.

Here are dates:

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As excited as I inevitably get every time a headline involving any member of Cave In rolls through my RSS reader, if I’m being honest I haven’t been able to get that into any of the many non-Cave In projects released by members of Cave In. Everyone seems to love Doomriders, and I certainly like ‘em just fine… but the truth is they seem to fall just a little short of what they could and should be in theory. Ditto for Zozobra, who are probably my favorite associated non-Cave In band.

This holds especially true for all of Stephen Brodsky’s many side projects, bands and solo releases. Just can’t feel ‘em. I’d all but stopped paying attention until a headline on Heavy Blog is Heavy about new Stephen Brodsky solo material caught my eye, and I let curiosity get the best of me. And you know what? I’m glad I did, because this is pretty solid stuff (posted after the jump, natch).

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I, like so many Cave In fans the world over, was elated when Cave In announced they’d be reuniting last year. And similarly, like so many Cave In fans the world over (I think?), I was lukewarm on their reunion EP Planets of Old. It was ok… it was certainly a little different for them while still sounding distinctly Cave In… but it didn’t quite scratch my itch the way I’d wanted it to. Maybe I’m alone in feeling this way… perhaps Planets of Old was met with widespread acclaim. I’m really not sure.

Whatever the case, I’ll get another chance to scratch that itch later this year when Cave In release their new 9-song full-length White Silence. Lambgoat is reporting that the album will be released “in the coming weeks” with mixing taking place later this month. The one curious line in the Lambgoat story (which suspiciously doesn’t cite a source) is this: “will consist primarily of new material.” Does that mean the album will also have some re-recorded or re-released songs (from Planets of Old perhaps?), remixes, or older b-sides? I guess we’ll see. I sure hope it’s an all-new full album as opposed to a few new songs with a bunch of re-heated leftovers.

Look for the album on Hydra Head later this year. More news, of course, as soon as we have it.

-VN

Vince is still traveling back to the Mansion from his big Fourth of Jew-ly celebration at our Kentucky Division, but if he were here, I bet he’d be really, really excited about this audio of Cave In performing a new song, “Centered,” in Maine last month. After all, my man Vince is a huge fan of Cave In (most of the time at least). I’m not gonna try and do that thing that that Vince did a couple of weeks ago where he pretty much impersonated me with scary accuracy, because, well, Vince is not a pretentious prick the way I am, and is therefore harder to impersonate. I mean, I could write some latently homoerotic stuff about ejaculation and blah blah blah, but we both do that, so it wouldn’t really count. If this were a studio recording or a live review he’d probably make references to mixing and midrange and all this other shit I only know a little about, so it’s just a bootleg so Cave In get a free pass.

But whatever! A new Cave In song! Whoo-hoo!

Weigh in with your thoughts below. If anyone CAN do a good Vince impersonation, now’s your time to shine.

-AR

We’ve all been there. Tensions are high in some packed, sweaty venue, sparked by feverish excitement and the potential for violence. These people paid good money to enjoy some type of cathartic release. The frontman for whatever hard-nu-death-crab-metal-core outfit is brazen and demanding. Can you believe this shit? You PAID to be entertained, and this guy is telling YOU what to do! The speech goes something like this: “I want everybody in this room moving! Front to back, side to side, NO ONE STANDS STILL! When this part kicks in, I want total [Insert destructive word here like "chaos," "mayhem," or "bedlam" if you're witty]. If the person next to you isn’t moving, MAKE THEM MOVE!” Than, if the action is not adequate, this screamer/pep rally organizer calls YOU some variation of “pussy” or “faggot” or really anything to make you feel like a soft, womanly bitch of a man in order to get in that pit and kick another grown man in the face, all in the spirit of making this band look like they are awesome. But then something happens, as if the air is sucked out of the room at the moment of impact – when those glorious staccato chugs kick in, the crowd is almost always powerless to its charms regardless of the obvious lack of substance. Like junk food and reality TV, we have a love affair with breakdowns.

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Last week, during one of my daily perusals of this very blog, I came across a rather scathing recounting of Killswitch Engage’s self-titled album, which came out earlier this year. This caught me a bit off guard, as I considered it to be one of my favorite albums of the year and a step in the right direction from Daylights Dies, which was at first very disappointing but grew on me after some time. I was even more surprised when I saw that most user comments tended to agree with the blog entry.

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When it comes to metal and hardcore, 2009 has been an exceptional year for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legendary Cave In officially reunited, played some shows, and released the four-song Planets of Old 12″. Converge dropped the highly-anticipated Axe To Fall, considered by some to be as good as or even better than their benchmark album Jane Doe. Hell, that band’s bassist Nate Newton even managed to secure substantial attention and overwhelming praise for Darkness Come Alive, the latest from his Doomriders side-project. In this somewhat incestuous collection of talented New England musicians exists yet another amazing group called Disappearer, who have given us possibly the best album of the year.

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“Luminance” — from the Creative Eclipses EP — was the very first Cave In song I ever heard, sandwiched incongruously between I-don’t-even-remember-what on a mix-tape my friend XandrewX made me in… 1999, I guess. From thereon in I jumped headlong into the world of Cave In, and Jupiter pretty much blew my mind when I heard it. Though it didn’t make the MetalSucks 21 Best Albums of the 21st Century… So Far clusterfuck list, it was damn close to the top of my own list for that poll.

Needless to say I was pretty fucking stoked when super-drummer J.R. Connors launched into the drum-roll intro of “Luminance” at last night’s Cave In show in Brooklyn. I was equally stoked when the band began playing “Big Riff” with, ya know, that big riff; I got goosebumps multiple times during that song. But on the whole I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little disappointed by last night’s show, just like our own Anso DF when he saw Cave In play Los Angeles last month. The sound in the venue left something to be desired, but that wasn’t it. The band was tight. They sounded good. They were energetic. They played good songs.

But I left the show feeling… un-satisfied?

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