By which I don’t mean they’re broke.

No, former Dillinger Escape Plan/current Return to Earth drummer has now parted ways with Coheed & Cambria after four years in the band. An official statement from Pennie chalks the split up to “creative differences” and says that Pennie will now concentrate on Return to Earth and another band I wasn’t even aware of, Fight Mannequins. (I wonder if that moniker refers to mannequins that fight, or is a directive to take down some dummies? The name works on so many levels!)

Here’s some more stuff Pennie said:

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How awesome is Chris Pennie? If the answer is not “very, very awesome,” then the question’s rhetorical. His spazzy, ADD drumming constructed the perfect backbone to one of the best heavy music albums ever made (Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity), as well as his subsequent work with DEP up until he joined Coheed and Cambria (some would say confusingly, others would point out that the dude, like most of us, has rent to pay, and Coheed certainly aren’t the worst band in the world). He shines at the sort of all-over-the-kit fills Mastodon’s Brann Dailor is also known for, but is keen as to when to dial it back. His talent, like performance-enhancing drugs, hypothetically has the ability to vault a good band into being a great band. However, it doesn’t necessarily do the same in making a mediocre band into a good one. The latter is best illustrated on Automata, the new album by his rock/industrial/metal/whatever collective, Return to Earth. The band’s biggest issue — the fact that it isn’t necessarily sure what it wants to be — is ultimately what keeps it from being anything great. Which is a shame, considering that there are moments when they appear to really be on to something.

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Photo credit: EmpyreLounge.com

My interview with Coheed & Cambria guitarist Travis Stever got off to a bit of a slow start. I believe I was his first interview of the morning in a long line of many, and he was audibly a bit groggy after a rough night of sleep on the bus. But after a few questions Stever got into the flow of things, and started talking at length about his band’s new record Year of the Black Rainbow, their current tour with Circa Survive and Torche, working with ex-Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie, the Neverender series of shows and the thrill of playing Madison Square Garden.

We only had fifteen minutes to talk before Stever was whisked away to his next interview, but we got plenty accomplished in that time. Our chat, after the jump.

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As I already said, I’m completely over following the Coheed & Cambria saga; I’m just in it for the tunes, man. So while I’m sure that “Year of the Black Rainbow” means something, like, ya know, totally profound to die-hard Coheed fans I don’t really care to dive back down that rabbit hole. On its own, though, a black rainbow would be pretty fucking cool… and metal.

Coheed are presently streaming their entire new album Year of the Black Rainbow on their MySpace page. I’m digging it about as much as I dug their last album, which is to say it’s pretty decent but nothing that’s blowing me away (yet). Coheed are one of those bands who put a lot of effort into giving their music added dimension for increased repeat-listening value, though, so I look forward to really sinking my teeth into this one and getting to know its ins and outs. I’m especially digging the song “Guns of Summer,” which is really different for the band. I wonder how much influence, if any, former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie had in writing this album and in particular songs like “Guns of Summer”?

Check out Year of the Black Rainbow on Coheed & Cambria’s MySpace. The album comes out officially next Tuesday, April 13th.

-VN

Coheed and Cambria have released a video for the song “The Broken,” and all I can say is, WOW. It’s awesome! Bram Teitelman at Metal Insider really hits the nail on the head when he says that the video “looks like Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Matrix had a baby with a video game.” Yes, Bram. A video game I want to play very, very badly.

“The Broken” comes off of C&C’s new album, Year of the Black Rainbow, which is out April 13 on Columbia.

-AR

Yesterday I interviewed Greg Puciato, Liam Wilson, and Billy Rymer from The Dillinger Escape Plan (transcript coming soon); because Rymer is the band’s new drummer and this is his first album with DEP, it should go without saying that a portion of the conversation was devoted to how he joined the band, his experience as “the new guy,” and his predecessors – namely Gil Sharone and, of course, Chris Pennie. Unless you live under a Dino Cazares, you already know that Pennie is now the drummer for Coheed and Cambria; since I’m a wwwwaaaaayyyyy bigger fan of DEP than I am of C&C, I don’t spend much time thinking about Pennie these days. Which isn’t to take away from his incredible talent; I’m just saying, it’s unusual for me to have Pennie on the brain at this particular moment in time.

But now here we are, I was just thinking about him yesterday, and he’s already back in the headlines! It turns out that Pennie is in the whole other band I didn’t even know about, Return to Earth, who released an album called Captains of Industry in 2007; now they’ve signed with Metal Blade, who will release their sophomore effort, Automata, sometime this summer.

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I long ago gave up trying to keep track of the crazy batshit saga that the lyrics of Coheed & Cambria’s songs tell. I just like the music, mmmkay?

Speaking of the music, Coheed have a new song called “The Broken” currently streaming on their website (take that, MySpace!). The song comes from Coheed’s forthcoming album Year of the Black Rainbow which comes out April 13th and is the first Coheed release to feature ex-Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie.

I like the song. It’s got some pretty nifty fretwork and it’s catchy in a way that’s typical of Coheed & Cambria. I couldn’t get into 2007′s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow as much as I did 2005′s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (what a fuckig mouthful) but the former did have a few really solid tracks.

Don’t ask me what this new album is about and how it relates to the overall story because I don’t know and I don’t care.

-VN

Thanks: The 1 billion of you who emailed us with this news.

As of today DEP and their producer, Steve Evetts, have been in the studio working on the band’s new album, Option Paralysis, for ten days. And besides getting a new DEP record in ’10, y’know what that means? We get the new de rigeur in-the-studio video updates of DEP in the studio! Hoo-ray!

Here’s the first entry. You don’t really get to hear any new music, but you do get to see that new drummer Bill Rymer can hold shit down (probably) just as well as Chris Pennie or Gil Sharone.

-AR

It’s 4 pm, and right about now we’re either interviewing someone or other or watching Job for a Cowboy. Either way, I hope we’re having a fun time.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• We’re streaming Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye in its entirety!
• Current Coheed & Cambria/former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie discussed metal with us.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi is home for tour and very busy blogging for us.
• Our girl Grim Kim visited Birmingham, England, the birthplace of metal.
• We checked out the latest releases from Assjack and Dysrhythmia.
• It looks Ozzy has hired Firewind’s Gus G. to replace Zakk Wylde. And that got us thinking about the legacies of former Ozzy axe slingers Jake E. Lee and Joe Holmes.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I know I will.

-AR

Coheed & Cambria skinsman Chris Pennie has taken some time out of his day to record a quick video segment with us in which he shares the metal albums he’s currently spinning. Without spilling the beans so you don’t have to click that play button, we’ll just say this: he’s got awesome taste in metal! No surprise, given the guy played drums for The Dillinger Escape Plan for an entire decade.

Catch Coheed & Cambria on the peanut-butter-and-jelly-like combination tour with Heaven & Hell starting this Friday. Full list of dates after the jump.

[This exclusive has now ended.]

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Well… happy friggin’ new year, everyone. We gots some catchin’ up to do.

As Dillinger Escape Plan fans may have heard by now, the band has hired some dude no one has ever heard of, Billy Rymer from The Rivalry, to replace Gil Sharone, who, in turn, replaced founding drummer Chris Pennie for 2007′s orgasm-inducing Ire Works and all subsequent touring for that album. Now, I know that Sharone’s departure may worry the DEP faithful – the dude was not only an awesome drummer, but watching how chill he always was live, even while playing some retardedly complex drum parts, would seem to suggest that he may very well be a god amongst men (or at least drummers). Hell, even DEP front dude Greg Puciato told us that Sharone is like “the kid in school who always gets good grades just because he’s naturally fucking super gifted.”

But here’s the thing.

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