UPDATE, 12:08 P.M.: The band’s new single, “Carbon-Based Anatomy,” is now avail for free download here!!! Thanks to The PRP for gettin’ the scoop!!!

Ever since we announced Cynic would headline Night 2 of The Metal Suckfest we’ve been seing a bunch of emails and comments wondering just who exactly would be playing bass and second guitar in the band’s live lineup since bassist Robin Zielhorst and guitarist Tymon Kruidenier (both of Dutch fusion metal outfit Exivious) parted ways with Cynic in December 2010. Truth is we didn’t even know ourselves, but we figured Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert would find suitable replacements in time; and, of course, they have.

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Remember back in September, when Vince reported that Cynic –  who are scheduled to headline our inaugural 2-day festival The Metal Suckfest – will be releasing a new EP, Carbon-Based Anatomy, in November?

Well, now there’s a preview of said EP. And, yes, it sounds totally epic and totally awesome. Check it out:

Carbon-Based Anatomy comes out November 11 in Europe and November 15 in North America. Meanwhile, like I was sayin’, Cynic headline The Metal Suckfest on Saturday, November 5. Get tickets here.

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this.

That’s right! Tickets for The Metal Suckfest — the two day festival with a line-up so ridiculously awesome we can’t believe we actually put this thing together — are ON SALE RIGHT NOW.

You can buy tickets to Day 1 (November 4) or Day 2 (November 5) individually for thirty bucks a pop — that’s just three dollars per band!!! — or, for your best value, buy a THREE DAY PASS! for seventy-five bucks.

“Wait, there’s a THIRD day?” you ask. That’s right! On November 3, the night before the fest officially kicks off, we’re hosting The Metal Suckfest Pre-Game, which will be headlined by legendary black metallers Mayhem and will also feature Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Woe. Individual tickets to that show cost twenty-five dollars, but with your Metal Suckfest 3 Day Pass, you get a ten dollar discount. Pretty sweet, eh?

So GO BUY TICKETS NOW. The full line-up is after the jump, in case you forgot… do not forget that four more bands are still yet to be announced!!!

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Click to enlarge the ridiculously sweet poster art by Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33 and Metal Band Art

When we first announced The Metal Suckfest, we promised you that it was NOT just a bunch of tours already-in-progress, routed so that they all converge for one event. That it was NOT just bands that all sound alike and one would normally expect to find on the same bill. That it would be a wholly unique concert in which some truly incredible artists are coming together JUST to play THIS ONE SINGLE EVENT.

And now you know — we weren’t lying.

We are SO PROUD to announce the line-up for the inaugural Metal Suckfest, which will take place November 4 and November 5 at The Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. As you can see, the bands range from thrash to death to grind to prog to noise rock to NWOAHM to stoner to we don’t even know what you call it, but they all have one thing in common — they are all fucking awesome, and they are all 110% MetalSucks approved. This fest is gonna be so great, we keep having to pinch ourselves to make sure it’s real.

Tickets go on sale Friday at LiveNation.com at 10 am. 12 noon. We’ll be announcing the final four bands on the bill shortly, but trust us — you don’t wanna wait to get your ticket.

Here’s the rest of the line-up:

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Municipal Waste
God Forbid
Today is the Day
This is Hell
Howl
Black Tusk
Magrudergrind
All Pigs Must Die
Ramming Speed
Prime Evil

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Cynic
Obscura
The Red Chord
3
A Life Once Lost
Scale the Summit
Last Chance to Reason
Fight Amp
Rosetta
Ultrageist

-Vince, Axl, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Talk about great timing — Cynic, who are scheduled to headline our inaugural 2-day festival The Metal Suckfest – will be releasing a new EP just one week later! According to a post on their label Season of Mist’s official website:

Forefathers of Progressive Metal CYNIC have recorded a new EP entitled “Carbon-Based Anatomy”, to be released on November 11th in Europe (November 15th in North America). Contrary to last year’s “Re-Traced”, this new EP exclusively consists of brand new material.

Here are the tracklisting and cover artwork of “Carbon-Based Anatomy”:

1. Amidst The Coals
2. Carbon-Based Anatomy
3. Bija!
4. Box Up My Bones
5. Elves Beam Out
6. Hieroglyph

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The week before last, we hinted it at. Today, we are elated to tell you that the dream is real.

The Metal Suckfest.

Twenty incredible bands in two mosh-filled, headbang-fueled days.

NOT just a bunch of tours already-in-progress, routed so that they all converge for one event.

NOT just bands that all sound alike and one would normally expect to find on the same bill.

A wholly unique concert in which some truly incredible artists are coming together JUST to play THIS ONE SINGLE EVENT.

This is gonna be the best hang of the year.

It’s happening November 4 and November 5 at The Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. We are ELATED to announce that Municipal Waste are headlining the first night, while Cynic will close the festival the following evening.

The other eighteen bands that fill out the lineup will be announced in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!!!

-Vince, Axl, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Have you ever noticed that the bands who metal nerds fawn over today were universally-despised rage magnets just a few short years ago? For example, trashing Pantera in 2011 is asking to get chased with torches and pitchforks — the polar opposite of 1993, when you would be hard-pressed to find a band that metal nerds hated more. Or how everybody jizzes over Suffocation now, but in the mid-90s you couldn’t read two pages of Metal Maniacs without someone pissing and moaning about “Suffoclones.” Are metal nerds crazy, or is there some rhyme and reason to their seemingly-contradictory behavior?? I believe that there is indeed a way to understand metal nerds, but it’s not what you might think!

Psychologists have long compared metal nerds to women. The similarities are certainly undeniable: like the fairer sex, they are fickle, emotional, and irrational. They even have long hair! However, my research suggests that, unlike women, they actually operate by a primitive form of logic and are highly predictable. After the break: my SCIENTIFIC MODEL OF METAL NERD PSYCHOLOGY, the FOUR KINDS OF METAL BANDS, and an exclusive METAL NERD CHEAT SHEET that reveals a foolproof formula for whether you should like a band or not!

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A song can be like the Kennedy assassination: Your first knowledge of it is an event, so you can’t help but forever remember the moment when it came barging into your once-perfectly sane life. The song changes you a little and takes on an aura (or whatever) that stirs you physically for years. It’s a personal thing, but as a confident professional, I’ll limb out and share one: Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.” That song was the end of innocence for me; music was no longer purely magical, a series of neat sounds emitting from a crappy clock radio. To my young ears, music had grown horns, all malevolent, capable of harm and cynicism, darkly powerful, and unwilling to compromise. As such, I can instantly recall the view as I stared down at the now-menacing clock radio as I would a dog that had mauled my face unantagonized. This song, I thought, makes life fucking horrible. I eagerly await the day that radio programmers extract the dagger from my nards by cutting it from rotation. Permanently.

Sigh. It was a lonely feeling facing off with the awful choir reprises and pug-faced pseudo-silk of middle-aged Foreigner. But I would rebound years later, when local college radio unleashed upon me Death’s “Suicide Machine,” from their Human album.

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Cynic’s Paul Masvidal has been on something of a hiatus from the world. Aside from a brief announcement about some Cynic lineup changes this past December, we’ve heard precious little about a supposed new Cynic album despite the fact that we presume it’s being worked on. The “summer 2011″ release hinted at in the last update is all but impossible at this point, but thanks to a Facebook update from Masvidal we’ve finally got some solid news to go on:

Ok friends, You got my attention…here’s an official update. I’ve been working away in the home studio writing lots of new songs and keeping off the grid to stay creatively focused. Apologies for having been a bit reclusive in our digital age of informational abundance! It’s safe to say that Cynic already has plenty of material for a new record, but something keeps the inspiration going to write more. I feel like I’m on for the ride and just seeing what manifests as a result of sitting on the train and looking out the window.

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Remember that EP that Gorod announced they were working on over 16 months ago that was supposed to include a 14-minute long epic and a Cynic cover? Yeah, I’d forgotten too. But according to an email from Gorod guitarist Mathieu Pascal that the MS Mansion Monkeys just printed out, couriered over to the Vince Division and are jumping up and down “ahhh ahhhh ahhhhh!”-ing whilst waving it in my face, Gorod are finally releasing that EP, called Transcendence… on their own.

What is wrong with the world that Gorod can’t get a record deal? Do previous labels Willowtip and Listenable not realize that this band’s popularity has exploded since their last release, 2009′s mind-melting Process of a New Decline? Whatevs… we get new Gorod music, so who gives an eff? Here’s Pascal:

“Transcendence” will only be available at the band shows and on the forthcoming Gorod online shop (june 2011)… the EP will hit iTunes later on this year…

Gorod ultimate fans will be pleased to know that the EP will be available from may 23 at the Paris show (Glazart) on this European Invasion Tour !!

This new sound, that shows 45′ of Gorod’s universe [I think this means "45 minutes." -Ed.] and new way of musical approach, marks the end of the SciFi story started with “Neurotripsicks” and that led “Leading Vision” and “Process Of A New Decline”…. End of an era…

After the jump, check the tracklisting (including the Cynic cover):

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We all remember that lost era of yesteryear.  Stolen glances.  Hushed whispers.  Fleeting touches that left us longing for more.  Makes you just wanna reach out and lolz where the sun don’t shine.  Alas, let’s have a moment of silence for that one super-special ex in our lives…

I’m speaking, of course, about the prog metal supergroup Exivious (featuring members of Textures and Cynic), who supposedly threw in the towel last May.

I say supposedly because when our very own Axl Shmosenshmerg reported this past December that Cynic’s guitarist and bassist were leaving the band, he mentioned a tasty morsel of info about said players now talking about working on another Exivious release.

This is good news for those proggateers among us who have been patiently awaiting some new jamz from the almighty Textures; bad news for your ex’s new beau.

Bring it on…

Let Exivious warm your earholes on TheirSpace and go see them LIVE on April 30th in Switzerland!!!!!

-KW

My bros from the popular easycore/pop band Fight Fair

Spend a few minutes observing the crowd at a metal show, flipping through the pages of Decibel, or reading MetalSucks, and jot down the first words that come to your mind. If you’re like me, your list will contain many of the following phrases: “low self-esteem,” “poor social skills,” “inferiority complex,” “outcasts,” “doughy physique,” “repellent personality” and “virgin.” It’s not just that I’m an ignorant, elitist dick, I also have the support of the world’s leading scientists:

Social animals in a hierarchic community have a certain rank. Three of these ranks have attracted special attention in ethology and been given special names: alpha, beta and omega.

A beta animal is an animal that will act as a new alpha animal if the old alpha dies. In some species of birds, the males pair up in twos when courting, the beta male aiding the alpha male. The beta male does not generally get to mate with the female birds, but if the alpha dies, he takes over the alpha’s females, becoming the new alpha. Omega (usually rendered ω-male) is an antonym used to refer to the lowest caste of the hierarchical society. An omega is subordinated to all others in the community. The omega is commonly the last allowed to eat.

Lettuce be reality, brahs: listening to metal is beta as fuck. But it begs the question: is there a way to be alpha, yet still listen to metal??? In short, the answer is YES, as long as you play your cards right. Because I find it so rewarding to give back to the community, in this post I will give you all the tools you need — details after the break!!

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In any band, there’s usually one member who’s the driving force behind the group, and carries the other guys: Greg Ginn, Les Claypool, Justin Timberlake… you get the idea. Such is the case with death metal legends Morbid Angel — the whole band essentially stands on the shoulders of one member, but it’s not the one most of you dorks are thinking of. Lettuce be reality, brahs: Pete Sandoval’s drumming is the definition of mediocre (and before you start arguing, remember that trusted, mainstream news outlets such as NPR have recognized me as an authority on metal drumming).

File this under “sacred cow barbecue” if you want, but I’ve finally come to terms with the truth about Morbid Angel: they have their moments, but are held back by Pete Sandoval’s dull, unimaginative playing (and consistently bad drum sounds). I’m not saying Pete is a bad drummer, because he certainly isn’t, but I am saying that his playing is several orders of magnitude behind Trey Azagthoth’s, and that the bad would be approximately 1 zillion times better if they had someone else on drums.

U MAD?? See if you don’t change your mind after the break…

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So yesterday, Cynic posted a message on their Facebook page in which they announced the departure of bassist Robin Zielhorst and guitarist Tymon Kruidenier from the band. The reasons are not typical, which is to say, there were no so-called “creative differences” or “disagreements about the direction of the band,” no one is suing anyone or fucked someone’s girlfriend or anything like that. The reason is simple and logistical: Zielhort and Kruidenier live in The Netherlands, while Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert live in California. So there’s no drama here whatsoever.

And not only is there no drama here, but this isn’t even really bad news. Here’s why:

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week’s question was once again suggested by “Hipsters Out of Metal!” columnist Anso DF, and even though the Grammy nominations were actually announced last week, it still seemed like a fun debate to have. So:

WHAT ARE YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR BEST METAL GRAMMY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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We’ve talked a fair amount as of late about the side projects/comings & goings of the riconkulonk Dutch band Textures and its offshoots.

First we got sexually excited about the proggalicious side project Exivious featuring members of Textures and Cynic…..then we lamented the demise of said side project.

Said side project.

Said side project.

Said side project.

Then we got saddy-poos about Textures’ stellar vocalist Eric Kalsbeek leaving the band…..then we rejoiced in the news of a new vocal stylist entering the fold.

Then we empathized over the trials & tribulations of CiliCe, whose vocalist Daniël De Jongh left the band to join Textures.  Some time passed, and then they found a new frontman.

But where does all of our love for this extended musical family come from, you ask?

Right here:

-KW

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means we’re taking off early today and won’t be back ’til Monday. We’re sorry to leave non-American readers high n’ dry, but PLUS ONE FOR FREEDOM, MOTHERFUCKERS.

ANYWAY, in honor of the holiday, we decided to do a special Turkey Day-themed QOTW designed to make you feel all warm and cuddly inside:

WHAT (IN METAL) ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Sean Reinert is quite the accomplished drummer; aside from his job as the skinsman in Cynic, Reinert’s talents have long been appreciated and worshipped by drummers the world over. If you can remember all the way back to Spring of this year (long time ago, I know) you’d also remember that he played drums on Avalanche of Worms, the instrumental record composed by Daath’s Eyal Levi and Emil Werstler.

Of all of Reinert’s many accomplishments “instructional DVD” hasn’t been one of them until now. And you can be a part of it; the cleverly named It’s About Time, which is being presented by Sick Drummer Magazine, will cover topics requested by you, the fans. All you need to do is record a video of yourself asking Sean a question about his playing and upload it to YouTube as a response to this video on the SickDrummer YouTube Channel, and if you are selected your video will appear on the DVD.

I can’t imagine how my life might’ve been different if the now-standard technology that makes this possible were available to me as a kid. Asking Zakk Wylde a question to be included on one of his instructional videos?? Ohmigod, I would’ve freaked.

-VN

While these days metal fandom is basically just a contest to see who can fap harder and faster to obscure technical death metal, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, many of the bands that internet metal nerds regard as legendary icons today were either hated or ignored when they were at their peak — fellow oldz will know exactly what I’m talking about. In this post, I will remind us all what fickle, trendy conformists metal fans can be by taking a stroll down memory lane and recalling vintage popular opinion of a few of your pet bands (hint: it wasn’t good!).

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In the early moments of our conversation, I confirmed with busy Atheist frontman Kelly Shaefer that we would limit our interview time to the industry-standard 15 minutes. Shaefer responded amiably, “As much time as you need, man.” To this, I replied jokingly, “Gosh, how much time have you got?” And though we shared a chuckle at this, neither of us could’ve expected our little phone chat to stretch to 2.5 hours over two days. (Of course, it eventually became clear that nothing less should’ve been expected from two lefty pothead metal guitarists who drink a shitload of Mountain Dew and love talking metal.)

Last week, part one found Shaefer and I delving into big, brainy, conceptual stuff, like his approaches to songwriting and singing, the birth of his genre, and the right-on-time return to awesomeness by his classic band (the new record is called Jupiter, but duh you know that).

Today, MetalSucks unsheathes partie deux, in which the tirelessly gracious, funny, and plainspoken Shaeffer (above, right) indulges my questions about more tangible Atheist business, like record label politics, the importance of good packaging, former Atheist guitarist Rand Burkey, current Atheist guitarist Kelly Shaefer (he and his “guitar still are very best friends”), the squashing of inter-band beefs, America’s shameful marijuana policies (I started it, sorry), and so very, very much more. (Spoiler: We do eventually stop talking on the phone.)

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