Yep, we talked a lot of smack on Joey Belladonna this week, much to the chagrin of, well, an awful lot of you. I think we’re done for a little while… but I can’t make any promises. Our job at MetalSucks is to amuse ourselves first and foremost, and, well, we thought it was pretty damned funny. So ppppfffftttt.

Here’s what else went down this week:

• We debuted the title track from Nachtmystium’s new album, Addicts.
• Genetic’s Dallas Coyle called us “influential,” Disfear’s Tomas Lindberg shared some Maryland Deathfest memories, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley unveiled his top four Taco Riffs, Cynic’s Paul Masvidal got burglarized, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa made some new revelations about L O S T, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle worried about turning into an old geezer, Daath’s Eyal Levi gave us a lesson in stage etiquette, and Batillus’ Geoff Summers gave us a new studio update.
• We spoke to The Melvins’ Buzz Osborne, Periphery’s Misha “Bulb” Mansoor, Testament’s Chuck Billy, and Sick of it All’s Lou Koller.
• We checked out new releases by Korn and Ufomammut and Year of No Light.
• Is Mastodon’s Brent Hinds a Mastodick?
• Sergeant D sez Cunthunt777 are your new favorite band.
• Don’t worry, baby, Dr. Danzig gonna cure what ails you.
• Hot chick loves Nergal, hates the Bible.
• Boy oh boy, do we love the new Limp Bizkit cover art!
• If you’re looking for new band members, don’t do this.

Alright. We’re gonna go get drunk and crank We’ve Come For You All in John Bush’s honor. Have a great weekend, everyone.

-AR

I know I’m a bit late here, but I just couldn’t come up with the words to express the disappointment that fusion/prog metal supergroup Exivious have decided to call it quits. When a group featuring members of Cynic and Textures decides to break up after releasing just one masterful album… what is their really to say other than “bummer”?

Guitarist Tymon cited “we’re busy with our other projects” as the reason for the breakup in a publicly released statement, but what I don’t understand is why being busy with other projects necessitates calling it quits forever. Couldn’t these guys come together to make music whenever their schedules all align again — whether it be a month from now or 5 years from now — the way, say, Bloodbath do? I don’t think anyone would complain if he’d simply said “We’re way too busy to make new music right now, but maybe in a few years we’ll be able to get back to it.” I just don’t get the finality of it.

Oh well. Here’s the song “Waves of Thought” from their self-titled debut, released last year.

-VN

“Violence is unconscious rage fueled by deep sorrow.”

—L.C.

Someone broke into my home last week and left it looking like an FBI raid with nothing left unturned, including my cat’s ash box that was left open, along with every other small box, case, and container in the house. They even scoured the attic, most likely looking for cash and maybe some jewelry. As soon as I stepped through the front door, I had an intuition that there was some kind of phantom thought-form energy that had found its way into the house. Immediately, I grabbed the sage and began smudging all the rooms. (Smudging is a ritualized way of clearing energy, which can be electromagnetic, emotional, ionic and so on.) When I dialed 911, the operator told me there was another case that took precedence—a homicide on the west side of town, close to where I live—and that my burglary was “put into the queue.” After hearing those words, my problem became miniscule. What are material objects compared to the loss of a loved one? Someone else had just lost a friend or family member. It was in this instant that I was reminded of how much violence pervades us as a species.

Click to read more…

A few hours ago authorities evacuated Times Square for the second time in a week after someone found a “suspicious cooler” on the street. Of course, everyone was just being overly cautious, but as long as it doesn’t infringe on my civil rights, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. I think Vince was in Michigan when 9/11 went down, but I was here, and if I never see another tank rolling down my street again or run all over the city because there’s no cell service and I need to make sure that all of my friends and family are still alive, well, I’ll be good.

While I nurse my PTSD, here are some happier, metalier things that happened this week:

• We’re streaming Keep of Kalessin’s new album, Reptilian. We also debuted new music by Lamb of God and The Funeral Pyre.
• We also also also debuted new videos by Soulfly and Cancer Bats.
• We also also also also debuted our new cooking show, Cooking Contaminated.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal discussed the shape of silence, Periphery’s Bulb taught you how to get that “big” studio tone, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa had some questions about L O S T, Matt from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder fondly recalled Maryland Deathfest, and Batillus bassist Willi Stabenau gave us a studio update.
• We talked to Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum, Reign Supreme’s Jay Pepito,  Jackyl’s Jesse James Dupree, and unveiled part one of our massive two-part interview with Buzz Osborne.
• We checked out the latest release by The Howling Wind.
• Does the fact that Mike Portnoy is touring with Avenged Sevenfold make you wanna see ‘em?
• We don’t want Joey Belladonna to return to Anthrax. Seriously.
• Sergeant D. wants to know if u mosh 4 Christ???
• Damnocracy’s Evan Seinfeld and his porno Howdy Doody also do bar mitzvahs.
• We wish there was really such a thing as a Slayer burrito.

Next week brings even more betterer br00tal goodness – interviews, debuts, guest blogs, all that shit. It’s gonna get real up in this bitch. See ya then.

-AR

…the paramecium senses no more of the flute’s sweet warble than we do of the radio waves that pass through our bodies. It spends its life in silence, or more correctly, in soundlessness, for silence is the delicious muffle of an auditory system in repose, and an animal lacking an auditory system can no more know silence than one born blind can know darkness.

—from Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain

I’m back at it with a particular tune, noticing how the space of silence is critical to the ebb and flow of a song’s evolution and ultimately, the shape of its birth.

Silence is not just about absence, subtraction, or less than. In any arrangement, silence can be performed in the service of contraction or expansion, very much like inhales and exhales. Silence also has a resonant quality because only in the vibrational space of silence can we better feel the parts composed of sound.

I was thinking about this spatial-songwriting concept on the way to rehearsal today and realized that, at present, I’m inside this particular tune as its shape evolves subtly and I’m hurling myself into a modus operandi that I have little control over. My only job here is to maintain a slow, nurturing cultivation….way more detached than smothering. A disciplined patience that sits, waiting for nothing to happen. Calmly active and nowhere to go. Just radiating simple “IS-ness” through the creative process.

Click to read more…

EVERYBODY SING WITH ME NOW: “I FEEL PRETTY, OH SO PRETTY, I FEEL PRETTY, AND WITTY, AND BRIIIIIIIGHT!”

No West Side Story fans in the house? No one? Okay, fuck it. Here’s what happened in the world of FUCKING METAL this week:

• We’re streaming Mantric’s The Descent in its entirety.
• We’re giving away new tracks by Nevermore and Heaven Shall Burn.
• We debuted a new video by Karma to Burn.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal meditated on unexplained healings, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa gave us a refresher on L O S T, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley thinks it’s okay to enjoy music by scumbags, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wants your help naming his new band, and Eyal from Daath and Levi/Werstler wants you to start ordering CDs online.
• We spoke to Mike Patton and Brian Posehn.
• Slayer and Megadeth are both doing full album performances on their American Carnage tour; Testament, not so much.
• Rose Funoral just can’t live down their past.

Next week brings so many interviews and exclusives it’ll make your head explode. See ya then!

-AR

Don’t think I haven’t noticed how that rotten Paul Masvidal (armed with his lousy awesome columns about happiness) has raised the intellectual level of MetalSucks to at least high school. And I must protest. Yes, Masvidal is wonderful, but c’mon dude! We’re trying to bicker about Mustaine and boobs here, man.

It’s like his guileless insights, so eloquently stated, render sub-retards like me too self-conscious to, say, publish 6,800 words about the hand-hug from Ronnie James Dio a fortnight ago that has changed my life. And suddenly, after I complete a second extended harangue about Stephen Pearcy, my finger hovers over the button that reads SUBMIT FOR REVIEW ‘cuz I’m thinking, “Will Paul think this is bullshit? Wait a minute. This is bullshit!’ It’s like I have another editor. A silent, invisible editor by remote suggestion!

MASVIDAL!!!!!!!

Click to read more…

Moms, Magic, and a Little Legwork

I started writing lyrics for a new song this week. For me, each song has its own story or feeling that it’s trying to share, and my job is to discover the song’s truth, or, get as close to articulating what it’s trying to say. The vibe of this new tune is reflective and assertive at the same time, kind of like being gently nudged into a river, knowing that we won’t drown, but that we’ll have to learn how to swim ourselves. After finishing a first draft of the lyrics, I realized the story of this song would also lend itself well to the next column, so here we are:

Between the ages of seven and ten, we lived in a house that had a big trampoline in the backyard. My friend Anna was over one day and we did our usual jumping routine. One of our favorite games was double-jumping each other to see who could go higher. It’s a trick where one jumps a split second before the other and it causes the second jumper to multiply the strength of their bounce by fifty percent or more. During one of these double jumps, I found myself soaring higher than I’d ever been, but on my way down, something didn’t look right. As gravity had its way, and with the trampoline no longer beneath me, I watched my legs hurtle toward the metal rails that framed the trampoline’s edge. My left leg slid perfectly into the narrow space between the two rails, but too narrow for my knee. I heard a loud “Crunch!”

Click to read more…

Yesterday Anso wrote a piece about how Cynic are good to combat “mega-highness,” and reader Kasper Maigaard left the following comment below the column:

Will you guys please shut up about Cynic now? You’ve given one of their members his own SEGMENT for fucks sake, so will you at least try (TRY) to go a whole day without ONE mention mention of them? Or you could just marry them straight away and skip all the meddling around.

Well, Kasper, we totally WOULD marry Cynic if they’d have us, but it’s still pretty early in the relationship and we’re afraid that if we tell them we love them now, we’ll come across as needy and scare them away. So while the courtship continues to play itself out, I’d advise you to just not read any posts about Cynic (or any other band we write about that you don’t like).

For the rest of you, I would now like to talk about Cynic’s upcoming EP, Re-Traced, a little bit.

Click to read more…

I think we’ve all had a night or two out partying when that step was taken over the line between “appropriately intoxicated” and “scary fucked-up.” You’re not barfing, passed-out, or otherwise blissfully unaware — that’d be preferable to the creeping terror that descends on you when some switch is thrown in your brain and suddenly, blam-o, fun is a distant memory and life is totally incomprehensible and overwhelming.

The room you’re in is moving but it’s not, and you’ve been listening to your friend describe Reagan’s atrocities in Central America but actually the speaker is some bearded pervert who took your friend’s seat ages ago. You scramble to your feet, blurting, “I have no friends with beards!” but freeze when you see that this room has no door! You coolly plead for help from Jimi Hendrix, who’s kneeling inanimate at waist height, but then he swings out of sight and is replaced by your long-lost friend, who is demanding to know why you were arguing with the door. You try to explain that the Jimi Hendrix door poster is being a wise-ass, but it comes out in all vowels and, Jesus tap-dancing Christ, the place is turning into a real carnival of horrors now. In the kitchen, somebody’s fucking a horse to “New Sensation” by INXS and all you want to do is get out the door, lay down somewhere quiet, and pinpoint which of all the things you’ve blindly smoked has turned you into Ozzy for the night.

And that’s how you end up asleep between two dumpsters.

Click to read more…

Remember, friends, as you pass by
as you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be.
Prepare yourself to follow me.

—From a headstone at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California

In the early nineties, Sean and I made a record called Human with the Florida band Death. In the month prior to our recording date, Chuck Schuldiner and Steve DiGiorgio made their way down to Cynic’s rehearsal studio in Miami to tighten up the songs with us. One night, I was driving the four of us back from the Coconut Grove area, where we had stopped for dinner after rehearsal. Just as we reached the fork in the road where Ingraham Highway splits with Matheson Avenue, I saw something strange. I noticed some tiny lights blinking off in the distance through green foliage and trees. I slowed down, saying, “Those lights look weird. Do you mind if we turn around and check it out?”

I pulled a U-turn and we made our way back to the edge of the lot. We parked and walked up to find two bodies, along with motorcycle parts strewn across the grass and shrubs. We saw one helmet on the ground and were able to piece together that they must have swerved off the road and bounced off the giant oak tree that grew in the center of the enclosure. I approached the first body and saw that it was a girl with long red hair. She was lying there, twitching and unconscious, her body twisted in an awkward and unnatural way. The man, who appeared to be severely injured, started moving slightly and was trying to say something.

Steve approached him and asked, “Are you OK?”

In a hushed and pained voice, we heard the man say, “Give me my gun.”

Click to read more…

I’ve always hated top-whatever lists. Best guitarist, best band, best blowjob, best double anal with a horse, whatever. I think that those lists are pretty much all slanted by politics, or bought and paid for. I first got that idea in my head when Titanic won as many Oscars as it did. There were so many movies that year that were far more deserving of the title that my faith in the award system died.

Jump forward about ten years. I just got back in town from the Revolver Golden God Awards. I’ll just say that I’m stoked they exist. Metal needs that in the U.S. I have no issue with their nominees and obviously you can’t pick everyone so this is definitely not directed at them. Again, THIS IS NOT DIRECTED AT REVOLVER MAGAZINE, but the concept of picking “best shredder” or “shredder of the year “is just one of those things you can’t accurately do with the amount of talent that’s out there. You want to nominate Zack Wylde or Dave Mustaine? Okay. That’s cool. Those guys have earned it. But when you leave the circle of greats and legends, how exactly do you pick a BEST shredder? I mean am I alone in thinking that when so many amazing guitarists are overlooked that the award itself loses its meaning? What guitarists am I talking about? Okay… I’ll name a few. In my opinion these guys should be winning all the awards. If I left someone out, it’s because either I haven’t heard of them, I’ve heard them and I don’t think they’re among the very best, I forgot to mention them, or I’ve heard them and I know for a fact that what you think is shredding is just studio trickery.

So here it is. My personal list of whom I think should be winning all the metal guitar awards. Am I biased? Maybe. But I’d like to also think that considering what I do for a living that I’m a good judge of competency in the field. This is in no particular order. These guys all rule for different reasons. (DISCLAIMER: Sorry that there aren’t videos for every dude I mention, but sometimes finding quality footage is tough.)

Click to read more…

I often get asked by fans, students and interviewers, “Do you have any advice for an up and coming musician who’s starting out?”  In lieu of my normal response of “Well, you need to practice, practice, practice and of course be prepared to sacrifice a normal social life because you’ll always have to put your music first if you really and truly want or expect to succeed!”, I’m going to examine and explore one of the most overlooked and yet vitally important aspects of being a professional musician – the business side of things. After all, it is called the “music business” right?

I mean, don’t get me wrong – there is something almost transcendental to performing live, and there is almost nothing I would rather do. The same thing with writing and creating: we slave over the process for hours and hours to achieve the best possible result because we love the process and have something completely unique and personal to share. But, we must allocate a certain number of hours to our business needs. I mean let’s not kid ourselves here – we do need to make money in order to keep making our music. We need to buy new drumheads and drumsticks.  We have to replace that cracked crash cymbal that broke last rehearsal. We need to pay for rehearsal studio rent and gas to get there. The list goes on and on, and if you’re in a band… forget it!!! You’ll need to finance PA gear, staging gear, lighting rigs, monitor rigs… it never really ends. So how do we fund our ever-hungry music habit?  Better yet, how do we get our MUSIC to fund our music habit? (The musical equivalent of nuclear fission.) Well, the best way to maximize your income and opportunities is to get educated in how the music business works.

Click to read more…

Tomorrow, Levi/Werstler’s debut album, Avalanche of Worms - which we’re currently streaming right here – will finally be released! To celebrate, Axl and Vince and the rest of the MetalSucks staff are taking the day off to enjoy 4/20 properly – by getting really high and playing the album on repeat at eardrum-destroying volumes.

But lest we leave you in the lurch, we called up Eyal Levi and Emil Werstler and told them that since it’s their fault we can’t work on 4/20 because they made such a kick-ass record, they would have to take over MetalSucks for the day. Luckily, they agreed! And so tomorrow it’s gonna be all Levi/Werstler, all the time.

In addition to doing a whole bunch of blogging themselves, Eyal and Emil have also enlisted the help of the rest of the Avalanche of Worms posse – including Cynic drummer Sean Reinert, From Exile keyboardist Eric Guenther, bassist Kevin Scott, and AOW mixer Mark Lewis – to come up with some really, really entertaining stuff. So come back tomorrow to see what they have in store for you, oh beloved readers. It’s gonna be killer.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Not to be outdone by silly bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Testament and Motley Crue, [relatively] recently reunited prog metal pioneers Cynic want their moment in the “playing our classic album in its entirety” sun too.

According to an email from the band’s label Season of Mist, Cynic will hit the road this July and August for “The Decibel Fall of Fame Tour” on which they’ll play their classic 1993 record Focus in full. We know that Cynic will headline, but we don’t know which other bands will be on the tour. Seeing as a criterion for Decibel Hall of Fame inclusion is that all band members must be alive to talk about the album, we haven’t got much to help us whittle down the list of the 50-some-odd Decibel Hall of Fame bands listed here. But we’re MetalSucks so we’re gonna speculate anyway!

It’s safe to assume that if Cynic are headlining then bigger bands like Slayer and Anthrax won’t be on the tour, and that, for example, the classic Sepultura lineup isn’t about to reunite. It’s also reasonable, but by no means fool-proof, to make assumptions based on style… like, I doubt they’re gonna throw Converge on tour with Cynic (but ya never know). With that in mind, here’s my short-list for possible other bands:

• Carcass
• Atheist
• Morbid Angel
• Obituary
• Suffocation
• Nile
• Enslaved

This is fun; and this tour will undoubtedly be fun too. We’ll keep you apprised of any developments.

-VN

In case you didn’t read Axl’s four-and-a-half out of five horns rave review of Avalanche of Worms, the debut album from Levi/Werstler, we’ll sum it up for you: “Avalanche of Worms is a trippy, freaky, cinematic, vivid narrative that unfolds in multiple dimensions at once.” Axl also said that the album “is really is best enjoyed in a single sitting, as one large piece of work.”

Which you can do right now! We’re streaming the entire thing below before its release tomorrow on Magna Carta. And it’s already 4/20 in some parts of the world! So sit back, light up, and enjoy Avalanche of Worms…

[this promotion has ended]

In 1985 the Texas quartet WatchTower released Energetic Disassembly and in 1989 they released Control and Resistance, inspiring hundreds of bands to follow their blueprint for technical metal. Twenty one years after the release of the latter, WatchTower have returned with new music and they sound just as vital as ever.

I was too young to appreciate or even know about WatchTower during their first go-round, but listening to new track “The Size of Matter” as well as some of the band’s older material on their MySpace page it’s immediately obvious how directly influential this band was on so many of the great prog metal bands of the last two decades. I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say that without WatchTower bands like Cynic, Atheist, Dream Theater and Meshuggah would be very different from the bands they are today. They might not even exist.

“The Size of Matter” comes from Mathematics, an in-progress album still without a label or release date.

-VN

Thanks: Christopher P.

Journal entry, twelve years ago:

“Today I am sad. It hurts to be human. The walls are closing in on my peace and I go deeper into a sadness all too familiar. The tears from my formative years when I would cry incessantly because of psychic pain have arisen again. A resurgence of that old pain is in my body like a parasite I can’t control. I’m a suffering child. The human experience can be very trying and today I am tested. Today I am broken. All hope is lost. I am exhausted. Where does my fervor for life come from?”

…after that journal entry, I wrote this poem:

Cactus
Black bones in me
Corroding everything
They’re floating free in my eyes
You say I’m losing my sight
Don’t rescue me
I don’t plan on getting out
I’ve lost the key
Hug me I’m a cactus

I was on the edge that day.

Click to read more…

I know I’m gonna get shit for the review I’m about to give Levi/Werstler‘s Avalanche of Worms. Eyal Levi writes for this site! Sure, I could remind you that I’ve been pretty openly a non fan of Daath’s first album, The Hinderers, or tell you that we never even met Eyal until after we’d already heard (and were blown away by) Daath’s second album, The Concealers. But what’s the use? You either believe I’m unbiased or you don’t. So fuck me and don’t listen to it, if that’s how you feel. Your loss.

So, with that out of the way…

I have to admit that it’s only recently that I really sat down and examined Jorden Haley‘s cover art for AOW as anything more than a collection of abstract shapes. It’s really psychedelic, dude: either black clouds are raining hot pink goo (It is snot? Blood? It’s definitely too thick to be water.) on a trio of semi-skinned faces (the noses and giant, Pac-Man pupiled eye balls are perfectly intact), or the faces (One each for guitarists Emil Werstler and Eyal Levi and one for drummer Sean Reinert, perhaps?) are snotting/bleeding/whatever onto the black clouds. I almost wish there was no text on the cover, so you wouldn’t know which way is up, ’cause the piece looks just as cool no matter which direction it’s facing.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a perfect marriage of cover art and music. Avalanche of Worms is a trippy, freaky, cinematic, vivid narrative that unfolds in multiple dimensions at once.

Click to read more…

French tech-metallers Gorod have been teasing the Interwebs for months now with promises of a new EP in 2010 that will include a cover of Cynic’s “Textures”, a 14-minute long new song, an acoustic track and two re-recorded songs from the band’s first two albums. Gorod are that rare band who, as Axl put it, “can combine tech-y goodness with such melodious songwriting hooks,” and we’re huge fans of ‘em here at the Mansion. Process of a New Decline ranked high on the 2009 year-end lists of both myself and Bob Cock. So we’re, like, really really excited for this EP. That we get new Gorod music only a year after they released a full album is a-ok with us.

Over the weekend we got yet another tease, this time in the form of a studio video that shows drummer Sam Santiago playing along with what we can only assume is the new 14-minute track. And yeah, it sounds incredible! Can’t wait.

-VN