Fresh off of unveiling their list of the “Ten Greatest Album Covers” in Roadrunner Records’ history, the label has now started to count down their “Ten Greatest Music Videos” – and, as is pretty much always the case with these sorts of lists, the results are pretty much guaranteed to cause a stir.

Case in point: Sepultura’s clip for “Ratamahatta” has come in at number ten. Now, I seem to be pretty much the only Sepultura fan in history who doesn’t absolutely adore Roots, but I still think this video, which is like a Brazilian version of something Tool might do, is awesome – certainly more so than any other video on the list so far (they’ve already unveiled the bottom five).

You can check out the rest of the list so far here.

Meanwhile, Cradle of Filth have ankled the label and signed with Peaceville. So that’s another metal band that’s no longer on Roadrunner. I wonder if any of their videos will end up making the list anyway?

-AR

More than any other band, Cradle of Filth seem to attract the attention of YouTube vocal covers done by bedroom-dwelling, suburban goth teens (see also: this cover of “Nymphetamine” starring hot twins). Since we’re obsessed with YouTube vocal covers and Cradle of Filth are inherently kinda funny, this provides us and the MS Mansion Monkeys with great amusement.

This cover of “Her Ghost in the Fog” is pretty brilliant if you ask us. The best part: “I know I look like shit right now but in an HOUR OR TWO I’ll look perfect and I will use the power of dark side that has been given to me to scream my ass off for you guys so rock on.” Notes MS Maniac BondedByBlood, who sent this clip in: “I saw him at a show last night and he wore the same hilarious makeup.” Sometimes I wished we lived in the suburbs so we’d see hilarious shit like this. NYC kids are too cool or something. This kid’s high-pitched screams are absolutely ace.

-VN

BondedByBlood

Vocal covers on YouTube are inherently funny… here you have literally hundreds of thousands of the world’s teenagers baring their voice for all the world to see, and for what? To be the next Tay Zonday? Or do people think they’ll actually be “discovered” and propelled to superstardom? As my good friend Axl said, “Why do people put this shit on the Internet? I sing poorly in my apartment all the time, but I don’t feel the need to share it with the world.”

An anonymous industry MS Maniac sent in this ace vocal cover of Cradle of Filth’s “Nemphetamine.” Pure gold. And then, after the jump, a pair of foxy, brunette twins we found in the “related videos” tab that actually do a decent job (but are no less hilarious).

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Now the nausea’s
In my guts
And I’m wrestling with doubt
The kind you get when your heroes
Sell you out
And as I watch the drawbridge come down
There’s mass extinction
On my mind
Human cruelty stains my thoughts jet black
I’ve got this feeling
Like things have gone too far and now we can’t get back

Here’s more fun shit that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We debuted new videos from Cradle of Filth and Arsonists Get All the Girls.
• We got exclusive tour blogs from Bison B.C.’s Dan And and Woe of Tyrants’ Chris Catanzaro.
• We spoke to members of Winds of Plague, Decrepit Birth and Born of Osiris.
• I counted down 50 things I love about Pig Destroyer, and then added a 51st.
• Ulrich Vs. Mustaine Vs. Ian and Zakk Vs. Ozzy made us laugh with glee.
• Kerry King Vs. Killswitch Engage was pretty funny, too.
• Dallas Coyle answered more of your questions.

Vince gets back from vacation tonight right around the time Repulsion take the stage, and then tomorrow, hopefully, Craig’s List will lead us to some Tool tickets. See ya Monday!

-AR

Metal and horror just kinda naturally go hand-in-hand. They’re both forms are art that exist on the fringes of “normal” society, they both often deal with violence and extreme situations/emotions, they’re both usually bleak as fuck. There’s a reason I discovered horror movies and metal music the same youthful summer, and a reason I started reading Fangoria and Metal Edge right around the same time.

So: once you’re done watching the awesome new Cradle of Filth clip we debuted earlier today, “The Death of Love,” head over to the aforementioned (and still awesome!) Fangoria, where they’re hosting a behind-the-scenes video, including an interview with Dani Filth himself. Dani has one of the only speaking voices in the world I enjoy listening to as much as my own. It’s the saucy British accent, I think.

Check out the video here.

-AR

MetalSucks is proud to present the exclusive premiere of “The Death of Love,” the epic new video from Cradle of Filth! It’s got war, blood, beautiful women, and a lesson in medieval French history. What else would you expect from symphonic black metal’s most infamous band?

The track comes off of COF’s latest, Godspeed On the Devil’s Thunder, which is out now on Roadrunner Records. We hope you dig the video as much as we do!

[This exclusive has now ended.]

Vince has gone into some detail in the past about the travails of dating a girl who isn’t into metal; I’ve kept my own struggles to educate the future ex-Mrs. Axl Rosenberg more private, but I do feel Vince’s pain.

Lucky for us, then, that Thrash Hits has pointed us towards this article at self-titledmag.com, which outlines a plan to get your non-metal gf to give into the dark side. Here’s an excerpt:

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As a man, I’m painfully aware that at any metal show the chances of me being squeezed between two sweaty fat dudes in the front row for 90 minutes is infinitely higher than me being near anything that remotely resembles a female. I say “resembles” because I still remember the time my buddy wrestled a “dude” to the floor of the Commodore Ballroom after they both caught either end of Jimmy Bower’s drumstick. The look on his face when he heard obscenities yelled at him in a screeched, soprano voice ranks pretty highly among my favorite concert memories.

This time the venue was familiar, the metal crowd certainly was not. Oh sure, I already expected the Cradle of Filth fans who can count more zippers, buckles and chains on their outfits than times they’ve heard their parents say they’re proud of them, but beyond platform soles and midnight blue dreadlocks there were many perfectly normal and some perfectly curvy women in attendance. Now, I’ve never really believed that Dani Filth could be a sex symbol for anyone old enough to buy beer, but I guess being the front man of a popular metal band can make even a hideous midget significantly more fuckable. Then again, the gals probably just came out to hear the music.

Oh yeah, you probably want to hear about the music.

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Congrats to Derek Allen, Brian Csogi, Mike Greenberg, Tony Cordone and Sarah Dot, all of whom correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Morgue Whore. They each win a copy of Cradle of Filth’s pederastastic new album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder. Enjoy that shit, boys and ghouls.

If you didn’t win last week, don’t slit your wrists just yet: the filthy (get it?) men and women of Roadrunner Records have donated another five copies of COF’s latest opus to give away this week. All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

Here’s a hint: the answer isn’t Korn, nor Slipknot, nor Atreyu, nor any other band that has ever played Ozzfest before. Good luck!

-AR

All is not lost in the world of metal; in fact, this past week brought some nice surprises, along with the usual mish-mash of shitty radio rock bands. Last week’s sales numbers, with our usual sardonic commentary, after the jump. (Hint: look at the tags below, and click “read more” if any of those bands interest you!).

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The lesson of last week’s contest: you guys aren’t the least bit interested in competing for non-metal albums. I’m embarrassed to say that the Biffy Clyro giveaway was our least successful ever, which sucks, ’cause Biffy Clyro are awesome. Luckily, exactly two of you – McCaleb Burnett and Cutter Horne – correctly identified the logo as belonging to Consumed Regurgative. Enjoy those copies of BC’s Puzzle, dudes, ’cause it’s really, really friggin’ good.

(Side note: someone entered the contest and not only got the answer wrong, but sent me a link to the CORRECT MySpace page to try and prove they were right. How someone gets the cojones to try and argue about a band’s name whilst looking at the band’s own MySpace page is totally beyond me.)

This week, the cats n’ kittens at Roadrunner have supplied with five copies of Cradle of Filth’s new album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder, to give away. The album is, in Dani Filth’s words, a “dark fairytale” about a peer of Joan of Arc’s who sexually molested and murdered an unfathomable number of little boys and girls (but mostly boys)… HOWEVER, since it’s a fairytale, it’s fun for the whole family. Your kids will love it. Enter the contest.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week. For reasons beyond my control, I had to use this band’s entire poster – obviously, you shouldn’t be making any attempts to read the illustration below the band name.

Good luck, and good night.

-AR

David Bee Roth’s not-so-stellar review of Cradle of Filth’s new album Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder — which comes out tomorrow on Roadrunner Records — sure pissed a lot of you off. Seems that Dani Filth’s claim in our interview with him over the summer was dead on; you either love the band or you hate ‘em. Same goes for old Cradle vs. new Cradle; as is the case with pretty much any band that’s been around for as long as CoF have, there seems to be a deep divide amongst the band’s fans over which of the band’s eras is the best.

Regardless of what you think of Cradle of Filth or their new album (personally I haven’t listened to it yet), there’s no denying that this band has carved out a legacy for themselves that will live on well past the band’s expiration date, due in no small part to their controversial subject matter and striking imagery. Their new video for “Honey & Sulphur” is no different (at least with regards to the latter — I didn’t listen to the lyrics), playing out like a short film. If I were a CoF fan I’m sure I’d have a giant boner for this video, and even though I’m not I still think it’s pretty cool-looking.

-VN

Things are heating up in the U.S. presidential race, and everyone from Vince to Axl to Dallas to the Blogronaut expressed their opinions; naturally you all got fired up too. But even politics as usual couldn’t stop the flow of happenings this week in the world of metal:

• Dallas apologized. Woah.
• Best Buy claims Chinese Democracy is finally coming out, but we’re skeptical. No word yet from Axl Rose.
• We debuted a new Early Man track and spoke with singer/guitarist Mike Conte, while Nathan Ells of the Human Abstract spilled the beans on just about everything.
• Testament was deemed one of the Top 40 greatest thrash bands of all time.
• We loved new albums from Gojira and Psycroptic. You loved arguing about them even more, especially the former. Meanwhile, new releases from Unearth and Cradle of Filth proved controversial.
• Protest the Hero’s van broke down; they danced.
• AC/DC’s Brian Johnson proved himself old and out of touch, but that didn’t stop us from asking for freebies to see his band live.

We out. See you Monday.

Two years have passed and just like clockwork another Cradle of Filth album has been shat out of hell into our apprehensive laps. Fuck! I just got these pants dry-cleaned from Thornography.

Thankfully breaking the cycle of less-than-clever album title puns, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder is Dani Filth and the gang’s attempt at making yet another concept album about a medieval noble serial killer a decade after the release of their Elizabeth Bathory story, Cruelty and the Beast. With the subtitle The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais (guess I spoke to soon about the punning), the band crudely attempts to provide the biography for a nobleman turned sexual deviant turned Satanist turned blah blah blah. While de Rais sounds like he was a real piece of work, this album is pretty scary, too: Godspeed is a frighteningly long album that sounds disturbingly outdated with a shocking absence of dynamics in the concept.

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The economy’s in the shitter and the sun is setting earlier and earlier every day. Still, there was reason to rejoice this week in the world of metal:

• The members of Twisted Sister are apparently now willing to “take it.”
• We interviewed Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth, Ronny Munroe of Metal Church, and Brian Fair of Overcast / Shadows Fall.
• Dallas raged against the McCain machine (as did the Foo Fighters). You raged against Dallas.
• Crikey! Scar Symmetry hire two new vocalists to take the place of one.
• Scars on Broadway call off their tour; we call bullshit.
• FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. And Fuck.
• Gojira got heavy in every sense of the word.
• Bam Bam Bigelow + Marty Jannetty = ’80s Vinnie Paul.

Sayonara suckers. See you next week.

-VN

Over the past decade and a half, few bands have attracted as much controversy, inside and out of the metal community, as Cradle of Filth. With the release of each album, the popularity of these British black metallers just grows and grows, and their increased success is always followed by a cloud of angry school marms and tr00 kvltists who think COF have betrayed the cause.

The band’s forthcoming new album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder (Oct. 28, Roadrunner) isn’t likely to change any of that. A symphonic concept album about Gilles de Rais, the peer of Joan of Arc who went on to do unimaginably terrible things to literally hundreds of children, is easily the fastest, heaviest album the band has released in years, and seems destined to stir the pot once again.

We recently got the chance to sit down with COF vocalist, namesake and general mastermind Dani Filth to chat about a wide range of topics. Jet lagged though he was, we found Dani to be a smart, funny, articulate, and a very passionate guy. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Cradle of Filth aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and their work demands your attention. Read Dani’s thoughts on the new album, the controversy surrounding the band, and his forthcoming book, The Gospel of Filth, after the jump.

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Cradle of Filth have posted a new song, “Tragic Kingdom,” for free download here. The track comes off the band’s new Andy Sneap-produced album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder, which Roadrunner will release on October 28, just in time for Halloween (ooooooooh… spooky). It’s a concept album about Gilles De Rais, a peer of Joan of Arc’s who later did a lot of horrible stuff to a lot of little boys (and some little girls, but, like everyone here at the MetalSucks Mansion, he preferred little boys). We got to chat with Dani Filth about the album last week, and he told us it was “a dark fairytale.” I’m not sure how a French nobleman going all Hostel on a bunch of kids can be a fairytale, but, hey, I’m willing to give Dani the benefit of the doubt.

ANYWAY, the song seems a little more traditionally black metal than anything from the last couple of COF albums, although at this point I don’t know if there’s anything Dani and the boys could do to satisfy the tr00 kvltists. I’m also fairly certain they don’t care.

-AR

[Thanks to Ryan Durinick for the tip].

An insider in the Cradle of Filth camp recently pointed out to me what I already knew – it’s been a long time since COF seemed even remotely dangerous. If the goal of the band’s new album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder – out October 28 on Roadrunner – is to restore some edge to the band, then I’m all for it.

The subject matter is certainly appropriate: it’s a concept album about Gilles de Rais, a contemporary of Joan of Arc who went on to rape and murder hundreds – hundreds! – of children. Whether Dani Filth still has it in him to make the album more Se7en than Suspect Zero, only time will tell.

In the meantime, here’s the band’s video for “Nymphetamine.” The only thing dangerous about it… is how catchy the song is! BWA-HA-HA!

-AR

So. Last week’s logo was correctly identified by many of you as belonging to the band Averse Safira, but there can be only five winners, and the luck of the draw says this week it’s Bobby Leath, Ben Keegan, Jeremy Bergerson, Ethan Cummings and Samantha Widner. Each of these charming, sexy MetalSucks Maniacs wins a free copy of Sanctity’s Road to Bloodshed. Congrats, you devils, you.

This week we have an extra-special prize, courtesy the good folks over at Roadrunner Records: three Cradle of Filth exclusive Hot Topic EP colored picture-disc vinyls featuring three tracks from the album Thornography and a rare cover of the Misfits classic “Halloween 2.” That’s easily one of the coolest prizes we’ve ever given away here on MetalSucks, so you’ll definitely wanna get in on this action.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name next Monday.

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Mathew Holzinger for submitting this week’s logo…

-AR

From the always astute pop-culture critics at Idolator:

Weiland, the estranged singer of Velvet Revolver, has teamed up with members of Army Of Anyone and Bomb Shelter Studios owner Eric Kretz for a tour that will hit more than 50 amphitheaters this summer and fall.

Brilliant. In other news, members of The Haunted, Disfear and Cradle of Filth will be teaming up for a massive world tour this summer. Let’s just pray and hope that film director Fred Durst doesn’t decide to collaborate with Fear and the Nervous System‘s Wes Borland for anything… ever.

-VN