MetalSucks

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a week. But I can already tell it’s gonna be a slow news day, so now seems like a good time to bring it up.

The lovely ladies at Reign in Blonde discovered that McSweeney’s has has a list of Heavy Metal Board Games. They have also added a few suggestions of their own. Here are a few that tickled me:

• Whitesnakes and Ladders
• Motley Clue
• Twister Sister
• Black Scrabbleth
• Crytopoly
• Dio’s and Dragons

Check out the rest of the list here. And, of course, I’m dying to see if y’all can come with s’more.

And if you really are bored, don’t forget that actually is a Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book.

-AR

First Kermit the Frog does NIN’s “Hurt,” now the Muppets are covering Cryptopsy. What is the world coming to?

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

[via Metal Injection]

-AR

We’ve now heard All Shall Perish’s latest, Awaken the Dreamers, in its entirety, and all we can say is – it’s different. The band has introduced a lot more melodic elements and made an album that, while still heavy, is a far cry from the unbridled brutality of Hate.Malice.Revenge and The Price of Existence. The resulting material took a few spins to grow on me, but at least one of you has already e-mailed us to express severe disappointment in the record.

The album doesn’t officially drop ’til September, so whether the band’s fans ultimately embrace the new aural flavors or declare All Shall Perish the new Cryptopsy remains to be seen. So while you’re waiting, head over to the band’s MySpace page to hear two more new tracks from the album, “When Life Meant More…” and “Stabbing to Purge Dissimulation.”

Click to read more…

Our brethren over at Metal Injection found the below video, in which a fan re-did the subtitles from the German film Downfall (about Adolf Hitler’s, um, downfall) to respond to Cryptopsy’s recent lashing out against internet bloggers and commentators who have accused them of selling out. And even though I’m not convinced that any member of Cryptopsy deserved to be compared to one of the most evil men of all time (or even that the band has “sold out”), I have to admit… this is way wittier than Cryptopsy’s “It’s Dinner Time” schtick.

-AR

Is this whole debate about whether or not Cryptopsy are sell-outs still going on? If so, that’s retarded. I still haven’t heard their new album, The Unspoken King, but I have watched David Brodsky’s mindfuck of a video (the only word for that camera work is “dizzying,” and I mean that as a good thing) for their new song “Worship Your Demons” (below), and even if there’s no Lord Worm and the music isn’t super-duper technical, it’s still heavier than being caught beneath a fuck sandwich made of Dom DeLuise, Sally Struthers, and Charles Durning. So I have to think that anyone who who claims these dudes are doin’ it for the cha-ching (as opposed to a genuine desire to explore new sounds) either has cum in their ears or shit in their brains.

The Unspoken King drops on June 24 on Century.

-AR

Last week, several of you e-mailed us links to what were unconfirmed leaks of new tracks by Cryptopsy; the e-mails were usually accompanied by messages along the lines of “Cryptopsy are the biggest sellouts ever” or “Metalheads everywhere hang their heads in shame.” I didn’t want to write anything about the tracks at the time, though, because there was no way to confirm that they were actual Cryptopsy songs, and, well, after the whole Metallica debacle a few months back I wanted to be sure.

Well, I guess those tracks were real, because we just got a press release from the band’s label, Century, in which it’s announced that a new song, entitled “Worship Your Demons,” has been posted on the band’s MySpace page. In the same release, drummer Flo Mounier addresses, somewhat indirectly, the band’s shift in musical direction:

“We as a band have, since the beginning, been experimenting and trying to come up with music that is fresh and new. This album is no different… It was time for CRYPTOPSY to acquire new blood that would play out a vision we’ve seen for years. We took an approach that gives our music a huge dynamic range and brings out its power.”

Click to read more…

Dude, I’m not ragging on Cryptopsy because really I have no strong feelings about this band one way or the other, but what is up with their video for “The Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness (Psalm 91:5-8)?” I get that it’s about a psalm – I mean, it does say it right there in the title, after all – but why the fuck is this dude standing in the middle of a swamp reading the fucking Bible?

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=5823006;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

Also, can we have a moratorium of people rolling their eyes into the backs of their heads in a metal video? I don’t think that shit has been scary since The Exorcist.

Okay. So maybe I’m ragging on Cryptopsy a little.

-AR