More than twenty years ago I was interviewed by The Daily Texan, the University of Texas school newspaper, for my role (along with my still best friend, Ray Seggern) as co-host of “The Metal Show” for KTSB (now KVRX), the student-run radio station. One of the quotes I made then that still holds true to this day was that 85% of heavy metal was “crap,” and that the joy in being a metal DJ was finding the other 15% of diamonds in the rough and sharing it with others.

If anything, the crap quotient is probably a bit higher these days, what with so many people of less than stellar skills having cheap access to means of production and simple ways of distribution. Unfortunately, the level of song-writing skill hovers around the same mark, as least on a per capita basis. In other words, more bands simply means more crap to sift through.

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Today is the day we finally get to hear new music from Norway’s Mantric, the band formed from the ashes of Extol (who called it quits in 2007). Like much of the Prosthetic Records roster, Mantric offer a proggy take on something a touch more accessible; in this case a captivating hybrid of Isis / Cult of Luna style heavy done up more intricately and ornately and with a touch of post-hardcore riffery and vocals. If Opeth ever decided to dabble in the Neurisis axis of metal and recorded with Kurt Ballou helming the boards it’d probably sound something like Mantric.

I’ve actually only heard the two songs posted on Mantric’s MySpace page, but today marks the U.S. release of their debut album The Descent (it came out yesterday in Europe). I‘ve been waiting for this one for a while, and I can’t to smoke a bowl and dig in.

Pre-order The Descent here for only $10, or $20 with a t-shirt.

-VN

Although the editors of MetalSucks get a vote in the Scion No Label Needed Contest, the staff of MetalSucks, alas, does not. Thus, over the course of the next few days, each MetalSucks writer will post an endorsement for his favorite finalist for the contest. You can check out all the finalists, and vote for your personal favorite, here.

When I received my latest homework assignment from the mansion (thanks, Gary), I knew there was only one way to go about it — completely blind. I was determined to only listen to the twenty tunes up for grabs. I had no interest in looking at band photos, music videos, or websites that gave me any background information on the bands involved. I wanted this to strictly be about the music.

As a result, only three bands actually caught my ear: Reciprocal, Scorched-Earth Policy, and Iron Thrones.

It’s been far too long since I’ve gotten a solid dose of a new Godspeed! You Cult of NeurIsis fix. I can safely say that Iron Thrones’ 12-minute post-apocalyptic acid-drenched gutter sludge track, “Cover of Smoke,” has sated my jones.

Amidst the swirling chaos of crunching guitars and throat-shredding vocals hovers a hint of melodic beauty that can’t quite disguise the band’s apparent love of cinematic soundscapes ala Explosions in the Sky.

It’s brutal. It’s beautiful. Brutiful.

Hands down, Iron Thrones “smokes” the competition.

Be sure to vote for Iron Thrones here.

Download their entire album at the Iron Thrones website.

-CM

Corey Mitchell is a best-selling author of true crime books and founder of In Cold Blog. Join him on Facebook and Twitter. His next book, SAVAGE SON, can be pre-ordered now.

First of all, for our non-Chosen readers: groyse metsie is Yiddish for a bargain. Don’t say I never taught ya nuthin’.

So. For the month of October (or “Rocktober,” as some clever marketing types are dubbing it), Earache is offering a whole bunch of truly righteous albums from their catalog for download on iTunes at a retardedly low price: $5.99 in the U.S., £4.49 in the U.K., and 4,99EUR in Europe. (The press release tells me that “prices may vary in other regions.” Ha-ha.) Now, I know that most of us music snobs don’t like iTunes because the audio quality isn’t as high as it could be, and there’s a better-than-average chance that a lot of you own most of these albums anyway. But if you can get past the whole “IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS FLAC! Snort snort” thing and/or for some reason DO NOT already own most of these albums, it’s a really, really killer deal.

A complete list of available albums after the jump. At least six or seven of these are classics, and nine or so are still awesome and could be classics, so they’re totally worth the six bucks or whatever.

And then one of them is by Oceano.

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It’s hard to apply the word “beautiful” to metal without drifting into “Silent Lucidity” territory. And perhaps it’s not fair to expect to, either; the reason many of us love the extreme side of metal is to admire its ugliness and/or revel in it’s harsh edges and moldy undercarriages, using it to soften the frustrations of a shitty job, miserable relationship/lack of one, a deficiency of money or respect, or all of the above, if not more. Its jagged darkness can perhaps be justified as a way to make the beauty of life more veritable, projecting your frustrations on a fury of blastbeats and screaming in order to have them tucked away for when things are good. But the juxtaposition between light and dark, murderous and philanthropic, savage and serene makes the edges sharper. Though in the last few years this ugly/pretty thing has become too gimmicky (Decibel’s coining of the term “Good Cop/Bad Cop vocals” is still too ingenious for words), it’s still capable of being done right. And even amidst the now-approaching-overkill flood of post-metal/metalgaze/what-have-you bands, there are still gruff-throated dudes with the ability to subtly marry melody, melancholy, and brutality in ways previously thought impossible. Cult of Luna’s latest, Eternal Kingdom, is an excellent example of the expansive and emotional potential of metal that manages to stay tasteful and sidestep histrionics.

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Cult of Luna are perhaps the last remaining Swedish metal band we haven’t ever written about on MetalSucks. Why, I’m not exactly sure, because they’re pretty fucking great, but thankfully they have a new album Eternal Kingdom coming out soon so there’s an excuse to talk about ‘em. A press release we just received tells us about the intriguing concept behind their latest album, as told by founder and guitarist Johannes Persson:

“There’s a strange story behind the album and how we came up with the title. For the last couple of years we’ve been rehearsing in what is actually an old mental institution about 45 mins outside town – it was a mental institution in the 1920′s – and when we cleaned out our rehearsal room we found all these boxes with junk in, that seemed like they had been forgotten for a long time. Everything from medical journals to paintings by patients and things the patients had done. And we also found a journal entitled “Tales from the Eternal Kingdom”, complete with pictures and poems and words, that a patient named Holger Nilsson had written at the time. Holger Nilsson, we since found out was a guy that was sentenced for his wife’s murder and was incarcerated for life. The notebook shows that it was a really interesting world he was living in – we’re not claiming to be psychiatrists or anything like that and able to make a good diagnosis of his mental state, but it’s clear to us that he was not living in our world. So basically the whole album ETERNAL KINGDOM takes us through his disturbed world from his perspective and mind, as recounted in the journal.”

Woah. Lucky for you, the title track is now available for streaming on Cult of Luna’s MySpace page.

Eternal Kingdom drops July 8th via Earache Records (June 16th in Europe).

-VN