MetalSucks

As I Lay Dying have a new DVD, This is Who We Are, coming out April 14 on Metal Blade. I’m extremely curious to see it because, for whatever reason, I don’t feel like I know very much about these dudes as people. And that’s why I love these documentaries that are getting release so frequently these days; as much as I love, say, Chimaira’s music, watching their DVD The Dehumanizing Process made me feel like I really understood each member as a unique personality. And I think that’s invaluble – and a definite advantage that this generation of bands has over their elders, who didn’t come up in a time when making these sorts of things was easy and cost effective as it is today.

But back to that As I Lay Dying DVD: here’s a clip, where the band discusses one of their first big tours, as support for the aforementioned Chimaira (remember when Mark Hunter had dreads?). Consider me enticed…

-AR

Few children’s authors are more metal than Roald Dahl. Think about it: besides perhaps The Brothers Grimm, what other writer of stories for young ‘uns are as full of violent death? More fucked up things happen in The Witches than every work by Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss combined.

(Roald Dahl was also a raging anti-semite. Which puts a whole other spin on things. But I digress.)

I mention it because of this nifty give away that Chimaira are doing as part of the release of their new album, The Infection:

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“Secrets of the Dead” is so fucking good that it’s just made us that much hungrier for Chimaira’s for new album, The Infection. So hungry, in fact, that last week we posted crappy-quality fan filmed footage of another new song, “Destroy and Dominate” – footage so weak that you could barely hear the actual music.

Well, no need to stick your ear up to the computer speaker anymore: after teasing fans earlier today with the cryptic message “3 pm EST,” the band just posted a link to a free download of the mp3 for the actual studio version of “Destroy and Dominate” on Twitter. You can download the song right now, right here. [UPDATE: Looks like the song is down now. I'm sure clever Chimaira fans will be able to seek it out from their peers - Ed.]

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Holy crap, people are getting The Infection tats already? That’s fucking devotion.

ANYWAY, here’s some cool Chimaira shit you should know about:

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Last week I did three posts about Chimaira in a single day, which I don’t think we’ve ever done here before at MetalSucks. So you know that I’m sincerely stoked about the band’s new album, The Infection.

So stoked that I just spent five minutes watching this awful-quality footage of the band performing a new song, “Destroy and Dominate,” at this past Thursday’s Dubai Desert Rock Festival in – duh – Dubai.

Seriously, though: the quality of this footage is so poor that making any judgement about the song would be beyond fucktarded. This is just for the people who, like myself, really, really need a Chimaira fix.

The band shot a video for this song in their home town of Cleveland a week or two back, so hopefully we’ll get to hear the real thing soon. And, in any case, The Infection will be released on April 21.

After the jump, you can check out 52 seconds of ever-so-slightly higher quality footage of the band playing their new single, “Secrets of the Dead,” at the same performance. I think I’ve listened to this song about one hundred times already since it’s release last Tuesday.

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It snowed 8 inches in NYC on Monday, but we got back from the Scion Rock Fest in Atlanta just in time to deliver you our usual drudge report. Can you imagine if we’d been stranded? No MetalSucks for two days. What would you have done? Contemplate these noteworthy events of the week as you get ready to enjoy your weekend (65 degrees Sunday in NYC!):

• Mastodon release early contender for best metal video of ‘09.
• Watchmen got metal… or not.
• We spoke with NEMHF founder Scott Lee.
• Lamb of God and God Forbid make strong Soundscan debuts.
• We looked at new releases from Hatesphere, Wolves in the Throne Room, Abacabb, Centaurus-A and General Surgery.
• Chimaira released a new single and a super-duper-deluxe pre-order.
• We waxed ecstatic about the weed in Atlanta… oh yeah, and some bands played at the Scion Rock Fest too.
• Doc Coyle struck back at the Internet.
• MetalSucks got nominated for a Metal Hammer “Web of Death” Award!

…that the album is available for pre-order! Hoo-ray!

Yes, it may seem slightly anti-climatic after the release of some actual new music a little earlier today, but the album will be available in a variety of editions, including this bad-ass mofo:

After the jump, get details on what comes in the super duper deluxe awesome happy good time edition.

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A big big BIG thanks to MetalSucks Maniacs Cincitucky and Shep, who just brought to my attention that Chimaira have jumped the gun and released a new single, “Secrets of the Dead,” hours before its scheduled release of 3 pm EST today (unless there’s something ELSE cool coming at 3 pm… but I assume this was the big surprise vocalist Mark Hunter promised us).

And hey, guess what? Chimaira didn’t disappoint. Mark Hunter told me when I interviewed him that this album is a little slower than we’re used to from the Cleveland sextet, and he wasn’t lying; this is some pure elephants marching to war shit.

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Looks like I’m gonna hafta post two Chimaira stories today. The band is supposed to have some big cool thing at 3pm EST today – we’re assuming it’s the release of a new single from their forthcoming new album, The Infection. While we wait to find out for sure, the below video was posted on the band’s website over the weekend – I’m assuming as part of their spread-the-infection viral campaign. It’s a little long, but… God DAMN, somebody put a solid amount of work into this clip.

The Infection will be released on April 21 via Ferret here in the States and Nuclear Blast everywhere else. Fingers crossed that we get to hear some new music a little later today…

-AR

P.S. I command you to read my interview with Chimaira’s Mark Hunter!

Talk about truth in advertising – I wanna hear Chimaira’s The Infection so badly it makes my skin itch. Seriously.

Patience is a virtue, though, and it looks like I won’t have to wait much longer to at least hear a lil’ sumpin’ sumpin’: yesterday afternoon, vocalist Mark Hunter left the following sorta but not really cryptic on Chimaira’s official website:

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So Axl and I are shuttering up the gates to the MS Mansion when we get wind that there’s a new Lamb of God video for “Set to Fail” available. Fucking BAD ASS!!!

Before this event of over-arching importance occurred, here’s what we would’ve said was important this week:

• We spoke with Salome’s Aaron Deal and Chimaira’s Mark Hunter.
• No Ozzfest this year. We don’t buy the excuse that it’s because Ozzman’s working on a new album, but at least the Osbournes will be making asses of themselves on national TV again… oh wait.
• We watched Mastodon in the recording studio while we falsely assumed a new track of theirs appeared in a videogame trailer. No matter; Crack the Skye is coming March 24th and there’s a super-special limited edition package available for pre-order.
• Limp Bizkit announced their inevitable reunion. With Wes Borland. No surprise.
• We joined Twitter. Webernets, watch out!
• We looked at new releases by Scale the Summit, Obscura and the new DVD by Dir En Grey. The world previewed the new God Forbid record… and overwhelmingly liked it, by golly! In the Coyle Commune annex of the MS Mansion, Dallas slyly grinned while tapping his fingers slowly together and saying, “Exxxxxxcellent.”
• We pontificated the seemingly complete irrelevance of the Grammies and then immediately forgot about them.

Enjoy cuddling up with your shnookums (metal!) on Valentine’s Day tomorrow and celebrating a day called “Presidents Day” — even though no U.S. presidents were actually born on said day — by not going to work on Monday. Seeya Tuesday.

-VN

Few bands in modern metal are as exciting as Chimaira. That’s because few bands constantly undergo such a dramatic and undeniable evolutions from album to album – and do so with a bare minimum of line-up changes. From their 2000 self-released debut, This Present Darkness, right up to 2007’s Resurrection, Chimaira have never made the same album twice. Elements of thrash, death, groove, black, and even prog metal and punk abound, and, ultimately, the only thing you ever know for sure about a new Chimaira album is this: it’s gonna be heavy as a motherfucker, and just as catchy.

As the band – which includes guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries, bassist Jim LaMarca, drummer Andols Herrick, and keyboardist/sampler Chris Spicuzza – anticipates the April 21 release of their sixth album, The Infection, we were lucky enough to snag an exclusive e-mail interview with vocalist Mark Hunter. After the jump, read Mark’s thoughts on the group’s latest offering, the ongoing metamorphosis of their sound, reuniting with longtime producer Ben Schigel, the internet as a marketing tool, the state of his pure hatred, and more.

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I don’t know why, but every time I hear a new Chimaira song, I’m consistently surprised by how heavy it is. I mean, the band has said they don’t wanna make radio-friendly drivel, the band has no history of making radio-friendly drivel, and their shit is consistently heavy as fuck. Yet, somehow, it’s as though my subconscious just won’t let me accept the fact that these dudes aren’t full of shit, and when they say they don’t wanna make auto-tuned good cop/bad cop crap they mean it.

So: I don’t know how I missed it, but Chimaira have started a new viral website, spread-the-infection.com, to promote their forthcoming new album, entitled – duh – The Infection. And the site has at least one readily available thirty second clip of new music right now. And, oh yeah – it’s fucking Brutal with a capital “B.”

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It was fun to speculate last about with whom Slayer might spend the summer touring, but now we have an official answer: as rumored, they’ll be co-headlining the Rockstar Energey Mayhem Festival with their ‘07 tourmates, Marilyn Manson.

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While we had just planned on catching Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil and Chimaira on this Spring’s Music As A Weapon Tour and leaving before Disturbed hit the stage, it may be that we won’t have to. The latest round of announced tour dates includes an April 15th date in Lowell, Mass, a Boston exurb on the New Hampshire border that’s only 40 miles (and 2 days) away from the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival in Worcester, Mass. Could we be in for some more additions to the Friday night lineup?

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Next week the U.S. gets a new President, thank fucking God, and Relapse Records is celebrating by issuing a 7″ box set of their This Comp Kills Fascists compilation. How fucking awesome is that? Until then, here’s what we’ll mull over during the long weekend (MLK day in the U.S.):

• Would you like to suck my cock, Berzerker? Or would you just like to look at some bloody titties, Berzerker?
• Lamb of God announce most awesomest tour ever with As I Lay Dying (meh), Children of Bodom, God Forbid and Municipal Waste, while Killswitch Engage, Chimaira and Lacuna Coil will be worth the ticket price as long as we leave before Disturbed goes on.
• Best soundboard ever. (Hint: fun with David Lee Roth sound bites)
• Bring Me The Hair Irons Horizon continued being boring.
• We spoke with Gojira’s Joe Duplantier and Animosity’s Leo Miller.
• Behemoth’s Nergal showed his face, while this dude just buried his in a bunch of watermelons.

When it was announced last month that Killswitch Engage would be on Disturbed’s fourth Music as a Weapon tour, we were flooded with so many irate e-mails from readers you’d have thought that Howard Jones had just been caught raping hundreds of metal fans’ mothers; KSE fans just couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of the American New Wavers acting as support for one of the most love ‘em or loathe ‘em nu metal acts on the planet. We didn’t report on the development at the time, though. Frankly, I figured it was just one of those things; sometimes awesome bands tour with crappy ones. You can’t please all the people all the time.

But now that Chimaira and Lacuna Coil have joined the tour, I gotta ask: what the frick?

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The results are in from our last poll, in which you voted by a landslide that Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy was the best new album from a legacy act in 2008. 2009 is right around the corner, and it’s already shaping up to be a pretty big year in metal if for no other reason than the fact that 5 of the original “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” bands are all releasing new records within two months of each other. Which “big”* release are you looking forward to most?

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*Yes, we know this is a small sampling of new records slated for ‘09. For the sake of this poll I’m just concerned with the bigger releases.

While in the studio recording their new album, The Concealers, the members of Daath decided to record a medley of classic death metal songs by Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Dying Fetus (see behind-the-scenes video above). Charmingly dubbed “Fecal Finger,” the track won’t actually appear on the band’s new album, so they decided to let us pass it on to you… for free!

Daath drummer Kevin Talley explained the genesis of the track to us via e-mail:

“Fecal Finger”… a beautiful name for a beautiful piece of music. One day we jammed some death metal songs and we jokingly said we should play them at a show… so we did. We chose the DYING FETUS song because I wrote and recorded it with them and many people never saw me play it live. Matt DeVries [Chimaira] and I used to jam that MORBID ANGEL riff a couple years ago so we brought that in since it is crushingly brutal. And you can’t jam a jam without Jim Carrey’s favorite death metal band CANNIBAL CORPSE. We recorded this freakin shit because kids these days need to recognize who influenced the newer bands they listen to. After hearing the originals for so many years, it’s weird hearing these songs with a newer style recording. But Sean Z’s vocals are fucking sick and Jonny Davy’s (Job for a Cowboy) guest vocals on the MORBID ANGEL part are amazing. This recording is finally growing on me and it’s actually my favorite thing to listen to right now.

-Kevin Talley

And so, without further adieu…

Daath, “Fecal Finger”

The Concealers will hit stores sometime in early 2009.

-MetalSucks

Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter recently revealed that “Todd ‘dead-eye’ Bell has returned to do some more filming… for a dvd to come with the new record.” And while I’m sure I don’t have to tell Chimaira fans, I still want to tell everyone else: this is great fucking news.

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