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The record release season is now in full swing. New albums by Motorhead, Crowbar and Belphegor stand out today in a week that’s got some other relatively high-profile metal releases coming out as well. After the jump, Vic Vaughn slices and dices them all.
Ayreon mastermind Arjen Anthony Lucassen is always keeping busy, and 2010 is no exception: Next week InsideOut will release Victims of the Modern Age, the second album from his Star One project. Featuring vocals by Russell Allen (Symphony X), Damian Wilson (Headspace, Threshold), Floor Jansen (ReVamp, ex-After Forever), and Dan Swanö (ex-Bloodbath, Nightingale, Edge of Sanity) and lyrics based on a series of classic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi films and television series — including A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, and Firefly — Victims of the Modern Age is a must-have for fans of edgy-yet-melodic metal. MetalSucks is proud to debut the track “24 Hours,” which you can stream below. Once you hear how awesome it is, pre-order Victims of the Modern Age here.
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And after the jump, read my exclusive chat with Lucassen about the differences between Star One and all his other various projects, how he goes about collaborating with these legendary singers, Star One’s lyrical content, and what he has in store for fans after Star One…
Will Vince murder me if I compare Star One, the new project from multi-instrumentalist and Ayreon mastermind Arjen Lucassen, to Dream Theater? ‘Cause I can’t really think of a more apt comparison. Classically infectious main riff? Check. Vocals sure to elicit homophobic epithets? Check. Super proggy guitar solo interspersed with an equally proggy synth solo played in a keyboard tone that is awesome even as it somehow conveys years of chronic masturbation in the face of a complete inability to lose one’s virginity? Check. Dorkiness out the wazoo? My fellow Firefly nerds (I still have just enough dignity left not to refer to myself as a “browncoat”) will recognize the title of Star One’s new song, “Earth That Was,” as a reference to Joss Whedon’s cult show. So, yeah, big 10-4 on that last one.
But as is the case with Dream Theater, I kid because I love. I mean, this shit really is as geeky as geeky gets, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s also really fun. In other words: Maybe a more apt comparison than Dream Theater would just be Ayreon.
“Earth That Was” is streaming at Noisecreep. It features vocals by Russell Allen (Symphony X), Damian Wilson (Headspace, Threshold), Floor Jansen (ReVamp, ex-After Forever), and Dan Swano (duh), in case my witticisms didn’t already have you foaming at the mouth. And it comes off of Star One’s new album, Victims of the Modern Age, which is out October 26th via InsideOut Music.
-AR
Don’t know These Are They? Well, unless you wanna end up in the back of a trunk like the dude above, you should learn who they are right quick. The side project of Novembers Doom’s Paul Kuhr, These Are They channel crushing old-school death metal acts like Morbid Angel and Devastation — in fact, they cover Devastation’s “Cranial Hemorrhage” with Devastation guitarist Erv Brautigam and vocalist Duane Rasmussen on their new, mafia-themed album, Disposing of Betrayers, which is out today on The End. And in case that didn’t provide enough metal cred for you, the album was produced by Chris Wisco (Michael Angelo Batio, Dirge Within) and mixed and mastered by the legendary Dan Swanö (if you need Swanö’s credits, you shouldn’t be reading this website).
To help celebrate the release of Disposing of Betrayers, MetalSucks is proud to be giving away a free download of the track “La Mano Nera,” which means “The Black Hand,” which means the mob — like we said, these are some tough Chicago motherfuckers, and they’re not to be fucked with. So download the track below, and crank that shit. Then, once you’ve felt the song’s awesome power, order yourself a copy of Betrayers here. If you don’t do it, we might send Paul Kuhr to pay a little visit to your family… capiche?
THESE ARE THEY, “LA MANO NERA”
Swedish death metal supergroup Bloodbath have returned with a four song EP, and it should surprise exactly no one to learn that Opeth vocalist Mikael Akerfedlt, returning to the band after his absence from 2004′s Nightmares Made Flesh, makes a fitting replacement for his own, um, replacement, Hypocrisy’s Peter Tagtgren.
But I have to wonder how much input Akerfeldt had as a songwriter this time out; there really isn’t a lot of ingenuity here, and the presence of former guitarist/drummer Dan Swano, who was generally acknowledged as the driving creative force behind Bloodbath, is sorely missed.
That’s not to say that the tracks on Unblessing the Purity are bad; that’s not true by any stretch of the imagination. They’re just unspectacular: the sense of groove that Swano brought to the proceedings is sorely missing here. (Think of the lumbering yet limber riffs of fan favorite “Eaten” or “Cancer of the Soul” and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) The band has replaced said sense of groove with speed and brutality, and while there’s not a damn thing wrong with that per se – this is Swedish death metal, after all – it ultimately never seems as, well, special as what Swano was able to achieve on Nightmares.
So, yeah, it’s good to have Akerfeldt back. But not so good that I don’t miss Swano.
(three and a half out of five horns)
-AR
