The name Dave Verellen should mean something to anyone who laments the 2002 breakup of Botch, the esteemed hardcore act whose legacy has made it more popular now than when it was an active unit. As the voice of that group, Verellen deserves partial credit – and perhaps a little blame – for the glut of roaring metalcore vocalists that came in his wake. From a publicity perspective, this influence strengthens the already impressive pedigree of Narrows, his latest band featuring members of noteworthy heavy ensembles such as Unbroken and These Arms Are Snakes. As evidenced by its full-length debut New Distances, the group refuses to rest on its proverbial laurels and instead goes above and beyond its participants’ discographies, yielding something truly exceptional.

Click to read more…

Hype can kill a record, or at least wound it at first. I had been told of the supposed greatness of Coalesce’s first record in a decade several times before Axl Rosenberg forwarded it to me last week for review: on the day it leaked back in April, a friend sent me a link to it and feverishly insisted I download it. I did not and forgot about it. Another friend, after hearing it, described it as “really weird, with a lot of stoner sorta parts,” pausing, before adding, “You’ll probably like it a lot.” Then Decibel gave it a 10 out of 10, a grade I’ve personally seen attributed only to Cannibal Corpse’s DVD retrospective last year. By the time I was ready to hear it, there was no way it could meet the expectation set for it unless it came with a solid gold statue of Betty White wrestling a hyrda with a sound similar to that. I was seemingly set up for disappointment – a legacy record that hit the desks and hard drives of folks with a weak spot for the band due to the part they played in their youth? – and it wouldn’t be as good as, say, Cynic’s Traced in Air or another of metal’s precious few decent comebacks. After a decade of bands ripping off Coalesce, how could anything they do sound fresh, let alone pull off anything that could stand up to their mythic catalog?

To be honest, I don’t know how, but they did. Rest assured, Ox is every bit the solid record you’ve heard it to be.

Click to read more…

I don’t want to say too much about Ox because Sammy O’Hagar is working on the review even as I type this, but the album rules. Hard. I won’t even argue about it; people that don’t like it are no friend of mine.

Lambgoat is currently streaming the entire album. Check it out before it’s released on Relape on July 9.

-AR

One of the bands I’m most bummed about not getting to see at Scion is Coalesce; I have no friggin’ idea which rocket scientist decided to stick one of the day’s most anticipated bands on the shitty Purgatory stage, but at the end of the day it didn’t seem worth it to listen to the band whilst staring at the backs of heads. C’est la vie.

I imagine I’ll get my chance to see them live soon enough, though, as Relapse will release their new album, Ox, June 9 in the U.S. and June 15 everywhere else. Swell news, and here’s news that’s even more swollen: two tracks from the album, “Wild Ox Moan” and “Questions To Root Out Fools,” are now streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

Click to read more…

That I’m sitting here in the MetalSucks Mansion this snowy Monday morning has gotta be some kinda heavy metal miracle; as I type this, Anton OyVey, Rob Pasbani from Metal Injection, our friends from BITPOM.com, and a lot of other fine friends are still stranded in Atlanta due to the weather.

And honestly, there are worse towns in which to be stranded. To my shock, not only is the booze in Atlanta shockingly cheap, not only is the purp somehow completely fucking magical, but the city is about as chill as you could hope for. I kinda miss it already.

But enough wistful reminiscing. After the jump, get my thoughts on some of the best bands of Saturday’s totally excellent Scion Rock Fest!

Click to read more…

Back at the end of May, Vince and Kip stormed into The Ocean’s show at New York’s Knitting Factory with an arsenal of questions for the band’s mastermind/guitarist Robin Staps (above, far right). So many questions, in fact, that combined with Staps’ incredibly verbose and articulate answers, we ended up with a fucking book instead of the normally terse interview pieces we do, which is the reason it’s taken us so long to transcribe (well, part of the reason anyway!). But for fans of The Ocean — and I know there’s a lot of you who read MS — the wait will be well worth it when you read what Staps had to say about his band, his thoughts on touring in the U.S., the writing and recording of the band’s incredible album Precambrian, and a whole assload of other shit. Enjoy!

Click to read more…

I’ve never met Matt Fox in person, but reading his answers to this all-too-brief interview I recently conducted with him via e-mail, I really, really want to. Fox comes across as intelligent, funny, and, as his band’s name would suggest, a knowledgeable and opinionated sci-fi geek; in other words, he comes across as exactly the kind of dude I’d wanna be friends with.

Shai Hulud’s latest cock punch of metallicized hardcore, the excellently titled Misanthropy Pure, hits stores today via Metal Blade, and if you haven’t heard it yet, well, you need to: it’s a vicious, wholly unique entry into a genre that seems to be growing more tired by the day, an album that genuinely doesn’t sound like anything else on the market right now. Above, watch Shai Hulud’s David Brodsky-directed video for the title track; after the jump, check out Matt’s thoughts on the writing process, the metalcore genre, and, of course, all things sci-fi.

Click to read more…