With all due respect to Mark Hunter — a talented vocalist, extraordinary Tweeter, and Chimaira’s lone original member — this footage of three new[ish] members of Chimaira rehearsing together is about as exciting as this story’s headline makes it sound. While some would say this is “rehearsal” footage, it’d probably be a lot more accurate to call it “learning” footage. It looks like Daath’s Emil Werstler — Chimaira’s senior-most member with a 10-month silver coin – is running the show here and teaching the two new guys how to play Chimaira songs. These guys are all talented musicians and I’m sure the finished product will sound great, but at what point in the mass exodus of members does a band stop being that band? Watching a bunch of men in different bands learn songs so they can go up on stage and pretend to be some other band is just weird! On the other hand, if some kid who knows nothing of all the member swaps goes to a show and loves it, does it even matter? Does life even matter?? Aren’t we all gonna die eventually anyway?!?!?

Maybe Hunter is trying to go the Chris Barnes route; shit, Barnes has been doing it for years and Six Feet Under are still going strong… so I guess fans really don’t care. Speaking of Six Feet Under, former members of Chimaira just wrapped up their Six Feet Under cover band recording sessions and are currently in the mixing process! Now the former members of Six Feet Under just need to join up with Eyal Levi in a reconsituted version of Daath and this three-band circle jerk will be complete.

-VN

So yesterday, now-former Chimaira guitarist and current Six Feet Under six stringer Rob Arnold tweeted that “Work has begun on the new project with” Andols Herrick — the twice-departed Chimaira drummer whose most recent split with the band came about over a year ago and was announced this past April — and posted the above photo, I guess in case there was any doubt that, yes, work has indeed begun on a new project with Herrick. (Although this picture, which was posted a little while later with the caption “Metal is timeless,” is much more fun.)

And, hey, it’s no secret that I’m a massive Chimaira fan — so it’s not like I bummed that these dudes are working on something new together. I am, however, a little surprised. ‘Cause remember what Herrick said following his second departure from that band? Here, I’ll remind you:

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Over the weekend, Chimaira’s Mark Hunter posted four demos from the band’s most recent release (and one of my favorite albums of 2011), The Age of Hell. Two of those demos are for songs which appeared on the finished product, “Clockwork” and the bonus track “Scum of the Earth,” and those are kinda interesting to listen to for the same reason all demos are kinda interesting to listen to — because it’s fun to compare and contrast with the finished product.

More exciting, though, are two demos for untitled tracks which, for whatever reason, did not actually make it onto Hell. And they’re both pretty good, but one of them is REALLY fucking good, hitting that sweet groove G spot the way only this band can. I’d love hear Chimaira finish this one up someday, although if now-departed guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries had a hand in writing it, that may not be possible…

Unreleased Age Of Hell Demo by MarkHunter108

Pretty sweet, no?

Check out the other demos after the jump.

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So it looks like Chimaira kept pretty busy while we were away.

First: as announced in November, last week’s twelfth annual Chimaira Christmas marked the band’s final performance with guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries. And, unfortunately, DeVries’ parting gift to vocalist Mark Hunter – who is now the band’s sole remaining original member — was to knock him over in the middle of “The Age of Hell,” resulting in Hunter taking a nasty spill and spraining his ankle. You can watch video of the incident below courtesy of The PRP (the fall comes just after the 1:18 mark), and see a photo of Hunter’s swollen ankle here.

Potentially better news is that while Hunter had thus far remained mum on his plans for Chimaira’s future, the band has since announced replacements for Arnold and DeVries.

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Truth is, Matt DeVries doesn’t get enough credit for his contributions to Chimaira; I’m as a guilty of fixating on his bandmates over him as anyone, to be sure. But the dude wrote the riff from “The Dehumanizing Process,” and for that alone, all Chimaira fans owe him free drinks for as long as he lives. Fella deserves some props, y’know?

So. DeVries has now released a statement to The PRP regarding his decision to leave Chimaira after the band’s twelfth annual Chimaira Christmas show at the end of this month. He doesn’t really say anything that you wouldn’t expect him to say, but I know my fellow Chimaira fanatics will wanna read it. And so:

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Maybe we shoulda called it MetaSucks?

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley responded to Dr. Katrina McFerran’s study on teens, depression, and music. Then Dr. McFerran responded to Justin’s response. Then Justin responded to McFerran’s response to his response. Then I went permanently cross-eyed.
• We debuted new music by Keith Merrow’s Demisery.
• We spoke to Corey Lowery from Dark New Day and Eye Empire.
• We checked out the latest release from Astomatous and H20, Ringworm, Mindsnare, and Soul Search.
• We showed you some nice photos from both Day 1 and Day 2 of The Metal Suckfest.
• We counted down The Seven Most Metal Video Games Ever Made.
• We were bummed to learn that guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries are leaving Chimaira at the end of the year.
• We were even more bummed to see Chris Barnes shilling for used cars.
• We argued about the best metal albums of the 90s.
• We found something even worse than Lulu: LIVE Lulu.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t gotten blackout drunk in a week.

-AR

First, read vocalist — and now sole remaining original member — Mark Hunter’s statement on the matter. My own thoughts follow.

I would like to start off by thanking our fans for a great tour. This last run was a blast, and truly the most fun we’ve had in a long while. The energy from the audience was exactly what we needed, and a welcoming return. Thank you guys!

Unfortunately, as much fun as we were having, behind the scenes we were aware of some unfortunate realities that prevented us from “living the dream” and having the time of our lives. We had another bomb to drop on the fans.

Early in July we were informed that Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries would be leaving Chimaira at the end of 2011. Of course this was a huge blow, but there were no hard feelings. We understand that life invades art, everything runs its course, and we have to take different paths.

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Last week, I saw some kid outside of a Chimaira show compliment keyboardist Sean Z. on his vocal performance. “I had no idea you could scream like that!” the lil’ dude proclaimed. Presumably, the young fan was somehow unaware that Z. is also the vocalist for Dååth, meaning that, yes, he is a helluva front man who can scream his guts out with the best of ‘em.

I have no idea if incidents like that one were the inspiration for what Sean Z. has done now or not, but it’s easy to imagine the epicly bearded musician going “Hey, I’m getting all this new attention because of Chimaira, might as well put it to extra-good use!”

And so, whatever his motivation may be, Sean Z. has posted on his Facebook page links to download — for free, natch — not only the two Dååth albums on which he appears, but also b-sides and demos from those albums.

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In news that will shock no one who follows him on Twitter (or enjoyed the slow-but-brutal grooves on The Infection, for that matter), Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter likes to smoke weed. And, like so many of us who enjoy herbal refreshments, Hunter has now had a run-in with 5-0. Last night he was arrested in San Antonio for possession; as a result, he missed last night’s Chimaira show, and keyboardist/fellow marijuana afficionado Sean Z. filled-in on lead vocals again.

Hunter seems to be in surprisingly good spirits about the incident, though, if the tweets he’s been sending out since his release are any indication:

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Well, here’s some shit luck: Chimaira’s U.S. tour in support of their excellent new album, The Age of Hell, LITERALLY just started, and vocalist/Tweeter Laureate Mark Hunter has already fallen ill. That means that, unfortunately, he was forced to bow out of last night’s show at the Sonar in Baltimore, Maryland.

The silver lining, though, is that Chimaira now counts Dååth’s Sean Z. amongst its ranks — technically, he’s the band’s new keyboard player/sampler/electronic noise dude, but, of course, that motherfucker can scream his guts out with the best of ‘em. And so, as part of a noble effort to see to that the fans at least kinda-sorta got what they paid for, Chimaira took the stage with Mr. Z handling lead vocal duties, and, as The PRP affectionately puts it, “became more ‘Chimairååth’ than ever.”

Here’s video from the show:

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So, clearly, Mark Hunter wins V.I.P. of the week, and probably the month, and possibly the year for his exploits on Twitter this week. So for the third and final time, I encourage you to follow him and if you have a question, ask it. ‘Cause, holy shit, I dunno if you guys realize how amazing this opportunity is. Do you know how I would have felt if I could have asked Chris Barnes a question back in the day and gotten an honest response pretty much in real time? My fucking head would have exploded. These are truly amazing times in which we live, and I hope more industry folk follow Hunter’s lead and start using social networking platforms for a useful, intelligent dialogue like this one.

Also, while I’m on the topic, check out Chimaira’s new album, The Age of Hell. It’s possibly in Best Buy, definitely on iTunes and Amazon, and certainly on Spotify. And it’s fucking good.

And on that note, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We debuted a new live track by the mighty Terror.
• Dream Theater’s Mike Mangini, Arch Enemy’s Sharlee D’Angelo, and DevilDriver’s Mike Spreitzer all took us through their live rigs.
• GWAR’s Dave Brockie kept us up-to-date on all things NFL, and Eyal Levi from Dååth talked about the value of not wasting time.
• We spoke to Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher, Warbringer’s John Kevill, The Crown’s Marko Tervonen, and the legendary Michael Monroe.
• We checked out the latest releases from Machine Head, Bush, Komondor, and Rotting Out and Homicidal.
• We celebrated the life of the late, great Cliff Burton and bemoaned the horribleness of Loutallica.
• We watched an amazing short documentary about Juggalos.
• We also watched Tom Morello on Real Time with Bill Maher.
• We took Tori Amos out back and beat the shit out of her.
• We applauded Korn’s ongoing innovations in being terrible.

-AR

This is a really long post and I apologize in advance. I’ve tried to edit it down and this is as short as I can make it without sacrificing any of the points I’m trying to drive home. Sorry.

I got home last night around 11:30 pm, and to my surprise and delight, Chimaira’s Mark Hunter was STILL GOING on his tweeting tear (new topics of discussion include the very depressing realities of touring in a van versus paying for a bus, and how a band’s road crew can sometimes make more money than the band itself does), continuing to answer HUNDREDS of fans’ questions on all facets of the music business, and pulling yet even more industry insiders, like DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara, into the mix. In fact, Hunter was still going as of about 3 a.m. EST this morning, hours after I’d finally hit the sack, and literally just as I started typing this, I noticed that he is now awake and at it again. And I would like to re-emphasize the amazingness of this conversation. Not only should you be following Mark on Twitter, but you should also read this really, really incredible interview that Metal Insider published earlier today on the whole topic — not only is it another nice summation of much of what Hunter has been discussing, but it goes into even greater depth on many of these topics.

ANYWAY, my contribution to this ongoing discussion was to express surprise that no one had brought up the topic of publicists yet; Mark promptly did address the topic (and discusses it a little more in the aforementioned Metal Insider interview), and I’m going to publish his thoughts after the jump. But I also want to take some time and express my own thoughts on the important role publicists play in this industry. ‘Cause, as I said on Twitter last night, your band does not need to be signed to have a publicist, and, yes, if you can afford one, a good PR rep is totally worth having.

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Photo by Todd Bell

I was updating MetalSucks’ Twitter account yesterday when I noticed that Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter was in the middle of an absolute Tweet-a-Thon, answering literally hundreds of fans’ questions about the music business. (He also got some other musicians and industry insiders, including including Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, GWAR front man/MetalSucks columnist Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie, and Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel involved.) And this wasn’t just non-specific generalizations, either — Hunter was being incredibly forthcoming on his thoughts about record labels, streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, how much Chimaira makes from physical CD sales, physical DVD sales, and touring, and much, much more. In fact, Hunter went on for so long that he actually EXCEEDED the limit of tweets that Twitter would allow him to send for a day, at which point he moved the conversation over to his Facebook account. I followed the back-and-forth for as long as I could, but had to bow out at a certain point to attend to other things, and made a mental note to write about it all today. And, hey, guess what? As of at least five hours ago, Hunter was still going. Wowza.

So now I’d like to go over a few of the highlights. Even if you’re not a Chimaira fan, this is worth checking out, ’cause, again, it pertains to the music industry, and is not all Chimaira-specific. And so:

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A week and a half ago, I totally fucked up and said that Unearth would be one of the support bands on the second leg of Chimaira’s upcoming “The Age of Hell” tour. I repeated this mistake last week, too, ’cause I’m a big dummy. In fact, while Chimaira will, obviously, still be touring in support of The Age of Hell, Unearth are NOT support — they’re co-headliners. Which makes total sense.

My apologies to Unearth, a band I love and respect, for my most grievous error.

Get the full set of dates for this awesome, awesome tour after the jump. Actual support will come from Skeletonwitch and Molotov Solution.

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My fellow Chimairicans: I’ve got good news and really good news. So let’s start with the good news.

EMG Pickups is apparently holding a contest wherein contestants upload videos of themselves covering a Metallica tune (on EMG-equipped instruments, natch) to YouTube for the chance to win a shitload of stuff. And I don’t really care about that, but I do care that one of the contestants is Rob Arnold, who does a version of “To Live is to Die” that absolutely rips. Seriously, Kirk Hammett hasn’t sounded this good since before he went through menopause. Check out Arnold’s cover below:

Pretty cool, no?

But here’s the better news — more dates for the second leg of Chimaira’s headlining tour in support of their awesome new album, The Age of Hell, have gotten out, and they include a stop at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey for WSOU’s 25th Anniversary concert. WSOU is pretty much the best metal radio station on the East Coast and possibly the entire United States, so I’m thrilled that such a killer band is gonna help them celebrate their birthday. And since support on that tour is coming from Unearth, Skeletonwitch, and Molotov Solution, they’ll all be playing, too, which is in no way bad news. You can get more details on that show, including ticket info, from Metal Insider.

Here are all the dates for the first leg of the tour, which features Revocation, Impending Doom, and Rise to Remain; dates for the second leg of the tour are after the jump!

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In case Chimaira’s upcoming headlining tour with Revocation, Impending Doom, and Rise to Remain isn’t enough for you, The PRP is now reporting that the band will also headline a second leg of that trek almost immediately after the first leg concludes — and this time support will come from Unearth, Skeletonwitch and Molotov Solution. As much as I love Chimaira and Revocation, that’s actually a way, way stronger line-up; I’m not really a Molotov Solution fan, but Unearth and Skeletonwitch are both great, and greater than great in a live setting. So I feel pretty confident that these shows will just be absolutely annihilative.

You can get dates for the first leg of the tour (with Revocation, etc.) here; only two dates for the second leg are available right now, more will be announced soon. In the meantime, those dates are…

11/17 Poughkeepsie, NY – The Chance
11/25 Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Revolution Live

-AR

Last week I wondered aloud how Trivium’s first-week showing for In Waves compared to the first weeks of their past albums, and my secret Soundscam correspondent came through once again. Here’s how their past three albums performed in their first weeks of release:

The Crusade (released October 8, 2006): 31,156
Shogun (released September 28, 2008): 23,577
In Waves: 20,635

A downward trajectory to be sure, but 20,000 is still quite an impressive number in this day and age. I wonder how Roadrunner Records views it?

Onto other matters: Chimaira, Attila and Revocation all had big debuts last week. Let’s take a look.

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via Badass

Reading the comments under our announcement of The Metal Suckfest has been a lot of fun — mostly because the predictions regarding which other bands will be on the bill have been so very, very wrong. Hopefully we’ll get to announce a few more bands next week, but in the meantime, you cats need to try harder and be a little more imaginative when speculating.

And while you do that, here’s how we kept ourselves amused this week:

• We debuted new music by Today is the Day, Monstro, and, thanks to our friends at Decibel, Skeletonwitch.
• We also debuted a new video by Venia.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable and Borknagar’s Jens Ryland both weighed in on the Century Media/Spotify drama.
• We spoke to Chimaira’s Mark Hunter, Dead Letter Circus’ Kim Benzie, Trapped Under Ice’s Justice Tripp, and three of the dudes from Fleshgod Apocalypse.
• We checked out the latest release from Wizard Smoke.
• We examined the evolution of deathcore.
• We felt bad for the sixteen year old who just got fired from Design the Skyline.
• We got excited about the Black Sabbath reunion, until we found out that it’s not confirmed yet.
• We carefully examined the first promo photo of Metallica with Lou Reed.
• We continued to count down  31 Days of Faith No More.

Until next week… eat your vegetables, stay in school, don’t drink and drive.

-AR

Remember when we told you last week that Chimaira were gonna do a U.S. headlining tour in the fall with Impending Doom, Revocation, and Rise to Remain? Well, dates have been announced! And I don’t really know what else to say, other than that you should look at those dates after the jump, figure out which one is closest to you, and go. Because Chimaira + Revocation = massive amounts of fun. You should also read this interview I just did with Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter. And if you haven’t bought Chimaira and Revocation’s respective new albums, The Age of Hell (out now on eOne) and Chaos of Forms (out now on Relapse), you should do that, too.

And now, the tour dates:

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If I’m not mistaken, Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter has now been interviewed for MetalSucks more times than any other musician — which is fine by me. Not only is he one of my favorite front men all of modern metal, but I always come away from these interviews feeling like I actually learned something about a band I love. In a world where it increasingly feels like too many folks are giving what I’d call “paint by numbers” answers to interview questions, Hunter’s willingness to be so sincere is always refreshing.

And, besides, Chimaira’s new album, The Age of Hell (out today on eOne — stream it here, buy physical copies here, or download it from iTunes here), is not only totally awesome, but it arrives admist a flurry of drama and controversy, as the band changed fifty percent of the line-up in the intervening years since 2009′s The Infection. So there was certainly plenty to discuss this go-’round!

After the jump, read the full transcript of my most recent chat with Hunter, in which he discusses those line-up changes, Hell‘s creation, the band’s upcoming tour plans, and much, much more.

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