Earlier this week I had a dream that I was working with Atreyu. I don’t know in what capacity I could possibly find myself “working with” Atreyu, since I’m not a manager, nor a publicist, nor a label rep, and they’re about as likely to end up doing a guest column here as I am to give the new In This Moment album a perfect 5-horn review, but, hey, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. Why did I have Atreyu on the brain? Was my mind trying to tell me “The glass is half-full?” Do I have  a hankering to re-watch The Neverending Story? Did I just ingest too many different substances that night? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

Here’s other shit that happened this week, some of which, believe it or not, is even more terrifying than the thought of working with Atreyu:

• Freddy Madball is counting down his favorite hard and heavy non-hardcore bands of all time, TesseracT’s Acle walked us through the history of djent, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley spoke to Converge’s Kurt Ballou about Taco Riffs, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks made some suggestions for losing NFL teams, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable contemplated the ways in which technology has changed touring, Daath’s Eyal Levi wondered, “Is this it?”, and a wide array of metal stars previewed the just-begun NHL season.
• We spoke to Kirk Windstein from Crowbar/Down/Kingdom of Sorrow, Sean Z. from Daath, Daddy X and Dirtball from Kottonmouth Kings, and Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.
• We checked out the latest releases from Abysse and Deafheaven.
• We contemplated trancecore.
• As the headline says, we heard the worst thing ever.
• We reviewed the history of terrible Limp Bizkit cover songs.
• We had fun with misheard song lyrics.
• We bemoaned the signing of another re-thrash band.
• We applauded Slayer fans’ desire to help the physically disabled.
• We had yet another laugh at Winds of Plague’s expense.

We have a special surprise for you next week. I can’t promise you’re going to like it, but I can promise you’re going to have a strong reaction to it. See ya then.

-AR

So right now you’re probably thinking 1) “Hey, assholes, the NHL season actually started last night so this can’t really be a ‘preview’ in the traditional sense of the word,” and 2) “Hey, assholes, at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records.” And, yes, we know we’re a little late, but this is metal, so who the fuck is ever on time? And, yes, we know that at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records, but most of them are, and the fine people at Relapse really did all the work in putting this together, so ppppfffffttttt.

So. After the jump, you can find previews of how the freshly-begun NHL season is looking for the favorite teams of members of 3 Inches of Blood, -(16)-, Buried Inside, Cephalic Carnage, Cretin, Dekapitator, Exhumed, Fuck the Facts, Gravehill, Hero Destroyed, Indian, Misery Index, Mortuous, Repulsion, and Toxic Holocaust. Enjoy!!!

Click to read more…

In case you can’t tell by all the posting I’ve been doing about the soundtrack, I really wanna see The Social Network. It’s just like the story of how MetalSucks was created, only we didn’t go to ivy league schools, we’re not billionaires, and we haven’t sued each other (yet). How dare David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin steal our life story!

Speaking of our life story, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:

• We debuted new music by The Fucking Wrath.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wondered if America really has any talent, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks discussed the NFL with Job for a Cowboy’s Charn, and Daath’s Eyal Levi taught us about proper etiquette for being a houseguest.
• We spoke to Eric Guenther from From Exile and the new Daath album.
• We checked out new releases by The Serpent & The Siren as well as Mutant Supremacy, Pyrrhon and Parasitic Extirpation.
• We found out that way more of you like nu-metal than we thought.
• We learned how to look like a hot metal chick.
• We bemoaned the latest batch of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.
• We watched the new Cephalic Carnage video and now we’re afraid we’ll never get a boner again.
• We got excited about the first awesome tour of 2011.
• We declared Cradle of Filth to be a glam band now.

Have a good weekend, folks. See ya Monday!

-AR

Bloody Disgusting has debuted Cephalic Carnage’s new,Michael Panduro-directed video, “Ohrwurm.” And holy shit, is it terrific. I mean, it’s incredibly disgusting, but in the best possible way. I don’t even really wanna say too much about it, because as it went on and on, I was just, like, “Holy shit what the fucking fuck is going on here?”, and then it kept getting increasingly gross, and then I hurled, and then I watched it again. And I don’t wanna deny you that very same experience.

So you just watch this. But not if you’re at work, or a library, or near your parents, or whatever. ‘Cause, like I said, this is some disturbing shit right here, and it’s definitely way too graphic for public consumption.

“Ohrwurm” comes off of Cephalic Carnage’s latest, Misled by Certainty, which is out now on Relapse.

-AR

So reader Adam Riley sent me an e-mail with some band recommendations, and prefaced those recommendations by asserting that “You seem to like bands from Denver and the surrounding areas.” And the e-mail was just to me — not both/all of us here at MetalSucks. I have no clue what that statement is based on; off the top of my head, the only metal band from Denver that I can even think of is Cephalic Carnage. And I certainly do loves me some Cephalic Carnage, but not enough to say “I really like bands from the  Denver and the surrounding areas.” I’ve never even been to Denver!

Still, Adam is obviously from there, and takes some pride in his hometown, and I did used to date a girl from Denver, which says nothing about their music scene but whatever. So I figure I’ll give his bands a shot. Here we go:

Click to read more…

If you’re a Cephalic Carnage fan, you already know who Zac Joe is — the guitarist was also, at least as I understand it, a huge part of that band’s songwriting process up until his departure earlier this year.

Luckily, he has a new band, Collapse, and he’s brought the same what-the-fuck?ness to it that he did CC. But don’t take my word for it; our broskis over at Metal Injection have debuted a new track by the band, entitled “Destroy Industry.” Joe calls the song “an ode to early 90′s New Jersey tech / death greatness,” and cites bands like Ripping Corpse, Deadguy, Human Remains, Lethargy, Pestilence, and Atheist (yes, I’m sure he knows that some of those bands are not from NJ) as an influence. But, really, if you dig Cephalic Carnage, there’s no way you won’t go apeshit for this song.

Head over to Metal Injection to hear the track. There’s still no word on when Collapse might release a debut album, but consider me stoked to hear it when they do.

-AR

The backstage area of the NYC stop of the Summer Slaughter tour this year was so thoroughly hot-boxed that you could get a contact high just from touching the door knob. Every time someone walked in or out, enormous plumes of smoke would immediately snake right up your nostrils and into your brain. The security guard stationed at the door must have had the best night of his professional life; his job required him to do nothing but glance at the passes of potential entrants and enjoy all the second-hand smoke. I think by the end of the night, I even saw him rocking out to Decapitated.

It will surprise no one to learn that a large portion of the evening’s debauchery was due to the Cephalic Carnage dudes. And it was sometime during the umpteenth pass of the whatever-the-fuck-we-were-smoking-out-of-at-that-moment that Vince and I decided that one of us should do a Metalcal Marijuana interview with Cephalic front man Len Leal. But our number one homies at Metal Injection actually one-upped us, and got Mr. Leal to make an instructional video for vaporizer noobs, demonstrating on the Cephalic Carnage vaporizer that Silver Surfer manufactures. If you’re a vape virgin, well, you can’t find a much cooler teacher than Mr. Leal. Motherfucker is like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of weed.

Metal Injection has lots more awesome coverage of Summer Slaughter, including interviews and live footage. Go here to check it out.

Cephalic Carnage’s latest, Misled by Certainty, is out now on Relapse. Vince is currently giving away a couple of copies here!

-AR

The winner of last week’s Labor Day-themed Photo Caption Contest is the appropriately named “Metalmeathammer666,” no doubt inspired by Sergeant D’s controversial interview the day prior. I’m insanely jealous of Mr. Meathammer because he gets this awesome Iron Maiden picture-disc vinyl and I don’t… but as MS Haterade King “Biff Tannen” pointed out I could just go buy one. Guess I’ll hafta do that. Meathammer’s winning entry:

• “New all douche band: Guys Set to Grill.”

This week we’re giving away two CD copies of Cephalic Carnage’s weedtastic new album Misled by Certainty which is out now on Relapse and can be streamed in full here. If you’re a Cephalic Carnage fan and you haven’t read Axl’s interview with frontman Len Leal yet, well, you better do so right quick. To win a copy just come up with the funniest caption to the below photo, sent in by reader David Foust, and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect)!

Anyone wanna hear something awesome? I mean, no pressure. Maybe you don’t like awesome things. Maybe you just e-mailed us to tell say that we should give the new EP by The Devil Wears Prada “an honest listen” because it’s “something real different for them.” Maybe you think the Bring Me the Horizon album is “a real let-down,” ’cause, y’know, that band is usually so overwhelmingly brilliant. Maybe you’re deaf, and you enjoy just picking bands at random and sending links to bloggers, ’cause that amuses you, even if you can’t hear your own laughter as you hit “send.”

But if you do like awesome things, Cephalic Carnage are now streaming their latest, Misled by Certainty, right here. I’m not gonna tell you to “give it an honest listen,” because I don’t even know what the fuck that means. Just listen with your ears, the way you normally would. The music will scream gutturally for itself.

Misled by Certainty comes out August 31 — that’s this coming Tuesday!!! — on Relapse. And if you haven’t done so already, please read my droll “Metalcal Marijuana” interview with vocalist Len Leal here.

-AR

We are less than two weeks away from the release of Misled by Certainty, Cephalic Carnage’s lastest assertion that potheads do not have to make hippy-dippy Phish food. And now they’ve released another track off the album, “When I Arrive,” which you can stream below. Vocalist Len Leal told me that he categorizes this music as “progressive disco,” so make sure you turn this shit up and get your back catch on, okay?

Misled by Certainty comes out August 31 on Relapse. If you live in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, you can still catch Cephalic Carnage on one of the last four dates of the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour; get more details here.

-AR

We’ve been meaning to do some “Metalcal Marijuana” interviews forever, but being potheads, we naturally came to execution of said interviews rather slowly. But once we finally got our asses off the couch to begin the new series, we had to answer a key question: “With whom shall we start?”

Knowing that Denver, Colorado’s Cephalic Carnage are also big smokers (they’ve described their music as “hydrogrind”), and knowing that they have an awesome new album, Misled by Certainty, coming out August 31 on Relapse (pre-order it here), CC front dude Len Leal seemed like an ideal place to begin.

I called Mr. Leal last week, just as Cephalic were pulling into Cincinatti for the latest date on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter Tour; it should go without saying that he was incredibly, uh, affable. After the jump, get his thoughts all things weed, the use of weed in Cephalic Carnage, and, oh yeah, the band’s new album.

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By the time you read this I will either have just-completed or be wrapping-up an interview with Cephalic Carnage vocalist Len Leal; more specifically, I will have just-completed or be wrapping-up an interview with Cephalic Carnage vocalist Lenzig Leal on the topic of weed, and its usage in creating awesome, awesome death grind (“hydrogrind,” as the band calls it). It should go without saying that I’m really, really stoked to discuss two of my favorite topics with a man who I know is pretty much a Jedi master in both metal and marijuana — at Summer Slaughter last weekend, Leal was wearing a shirt that read “Party Organically,” with the letter “i” dotted with a weed life. Nice.

And look! How appropriate! Cephalic Carnage have now debuted a new track on Metal Injection, entitled… wait for it… “The Incorrigible Flame!” Does this have anything to do with weed? Who knows, I can never really understand what Leal is saying without a lyric sheet. But the song is awesome, and I’m inclined to believe that weed had something to do with its creation.

“The Incorrigible Flame” comes off of Cephalic Carnage’s latest, Misled by Certainty, which will be released by Relapse on August 31. The visuals in the above video come from its cover art.

-AR

We don’t like Carnifex — in fact, we think they’re the only blemish on the otherwise pristine Summer Slaughter line-up — but we know at lot of you do really like Carnifex. Because you e-mail us about them. Constantly.

So here’s the band’s new video, for “Sorrowspell,” which sounds like the name of a pagan metal band but whatever. I think it’s a pretty standard performance clip, but, again, I’m really only posting it to remind you about Summer Slaughter, which is currently underway, also includes Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Decrepit Birth, Animals as Leaders, and Vital Remains, and is, oh yeah, partially sponsored by us. Get dates here.

-AR

Yes, YES, YES!!! Talk about an awesome way to kick off the weekend. Cephalic Carnage have given the world its first taste of their new album, Misled by Certainty, in the form of “Abraxas of Filth,” which you can stream here. It’s awesome. From its opening notes I knew it was awesome, but then it just got more and more awesome, and then it exploded in a mushroom cloud of awesomeness. Well, awesomeness and weed smoke. I mean, you don’t listen to Cephalic Carnage sober, do you? I don’t think they’d want you to do that.

Holy shit. Listening to the song for a third time now, and it just keeps getting better and better. Go check it out already.

Misled by Certainty is out August 31 on Relapse, and is now avail for pre-order. And don’t forget that the band will be on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, along with Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Decrepit Birth, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains, and Carnifex. The trek kicks off next week! Dates here.

-AR

I usually get kinda depressed around Labor Day weekend, ’cause it means that summer is pretty much over, and soon it will be colder than a witch’s tit again. But the dudes in Cephalic Carnage have pretty much guaranteed that this summer is gonna end with a bang — Relapse has announced an August 31 release date for Cephalic’s first album in more than three years, Misled by Certainty. Check out the metal-as-a-motherfucker cover art:

Presumably, the band will start debuting new material live when they start the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, which begins in less than three weeks! Get dates here.

Meanwhile, Murderdolls have also released the cover art for their album, Women and Children Last, which comes out the very same day on Roadrunner:

Click to read more…

It was just Monday that I was saying how stoked I am to hear Decrepit Birth’s new album, Polarity, and now the band are streaming a track from that forthcoming release, “(A Departure Of The Sun) Ignite The Tesla Coil.”

And it’s sssssssiiiicccckkk. Technical and proggy and just as shove-a-fist-up-your-enemy’s-ass-and-rip-out-his-intestines brutal as you’d expect from, well, any band that would call itself “Decrepit Birth.” And none of what I’ve just written is news to DB fans, but, y’know. Now there’s more of it! And it seems a lot “er,” too. As in, “proggier,” “heavier,” “betterer,” etc. So check that shit out and let us know what you think.

Polarity comes out July 27 on Nuclear Blast. Cutting and pasting from myself on Monday: Decrepit Birth will be part of the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, along with Decapitated, The Red Chord, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains, and Carnifex. Get dates and details here.

-AR

The Deciblog unveiled the cover art for the new Decrepit Birth album, Polarity, this past Friday evening, and, y’know… it’s Dan Seagrave. He has a very distinct style, which you either dig or do not dig. Personally, I think it’s pretty cool, and it makes me that much more excited to hear the record.

Polarity comes out July 27 on Nuclear Blast. And don’t forget that Decrepit Birth will be part of the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour – a.k.a. “The only can’t-miss summer festival this year” – along with Decapitated, The Red Chord, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains, and Carnifex. Get dates and details here.

-AR

[UPDATE: Some dates have been changes since the above poster was released. Updated cities and venues after the jump.]

A lot of you thought that the “big surprise” we hinted at last week was the announcement of Summer Slaughter 2010 dates. By now it’s obvious that that wasn’t the big surprise, but lucky for you we’ve got Summer Slaughter dates today anyway!

In case you somehow missed the news, the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour is without a doubt THE metal package tour to be at this summer with a lineup that’s sexier than Sammy O’Hagar and Kip W. having an orgy with the MS Mansion Monkeys. Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Decrepit Birth, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains… and, uh, Carnifex… will be taking the U.S. by storm this July and August. We’re beyond stoked for this lineup, and you should be too.

Dates are after the jump.

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Summer Slaughter is without a doubt the best metal tour hitting the U.S. pavement this Summer. The 100% confirmed, official lineup, which MetalSucks exclusively can reveal to you now, is…

DECAPITATED
THE FACELESS
ALL SHALL PERISH
THE RED CHORD
VEIL OF MAYA
CEPHALIC CARNAGE
DECREPIT BIRTH
CARNIFEX
ANIMALS AS LEADERS
VITAL REMAINS

I mean… wow. That lineup is unbelievably sexy and unfuckwithable. There isn’t a single band I could skip seeing other than Carnifex, and we gather many of you will feel the exact same way. There’s no doubt about it: Summer Slaughter is by far the best metal tour of Summer 2010. Rockstar Mayhem is lame, Ozzsharonfest is surely gonna be lame, and “The Cool Tour” is uh, not cool at all save a couple of bands. Comments tour founder and booking agent Ash Avildsen on how Summer Slaughter fits in (or doesn’t) with this Summer’s other metal tours: “I don’t think those tours really compete for many of the same fans as Summer Slaughter. This is focused on underground extreme metal rather than mainstream metal. All of our shows also have air conditioning.” Hooray for air conditioning!

The lineup is a shade younger than in years past, but young bands like The Faceless, Veil of Maya and Animals as Leaders are ones that are more likely to appeal to an older crowd than, say, Born of Osiris would. Avildsen knows exactly what he’s doing: “It’s a much younger line up this year, rather than a lot of older bands in the headlining positions. Tickets will be much cheaper for this same reason, coming in at under $20 in advance almost everywhere with the exception of LA and NYC. Most will be $18.” And it’s cheap, too… extra bonus.

Click to read more…

I don’t mind telling you I’m not in a great mood this morning. Luckily for everyone who comes into contact with me, Blabbermouth posted footage last night of Cephalic Carnage doing an instrumental version of a new song, so I might actually make it until at least lunch before I arbitrarily execute a MetalSucks Mansion Monkey to burn off some steam.

But the song. Well, it sounds pretty sweet, even if I never would have guessed it was Cephalic Carnage – the beginning section, especially, sounds kinda different to these weary ears. I’ll be stoked to see how it sounds with vocals.

Fingers crossed, we’re getting a new Cephalic Carnage album later this year…

-AR