MetalSucks

The second-to-last night of Summer Slaughter — the first of two nights at NYC’s Irving Plaza — was a fucking party. Axl and Vince arrived before doors opened to interview Darkest Hour mastermind Mike Schleibaum and were summarily handed beers. “New York City . . . oh god. Suffocation, and also sharing your dressing room [with Suffocation]. . . there’s going to be a lot of drinking. Beer is going to be hard to get. We should really start right after this interview!” mused Schleibaum before handing us a couple of Bud Lights to get things started off right. “It’s just a Bud Light, my friends,” he responded after we thanked him for the hospitality; true, but somehow “just a Bud Light” turned into “just a bottle of Jack Daniels” being completely polished off in the DH / Suffocation dressing room shortly thereafter. “The thing is – it’s going to get all drank by the time Blackguard’s finished,” prophecized Schleibaum. And so it went. The men of DH like their Jack (and their weed) and the endless stream of Suffocation ladies — 40-something Lawngisland bleach blondes with giant, fake tits — that paraded through the room all night provided much amusement for our chemically altered brains.

But before all of the shenanigans went down we sat with Mr. Schleibaum and chatted about the Summer Slaughter tour, the band’s new album The Eternal Return, the end of Darkest Hour’s deal with Victory Records and what that means for the band, the departure of guitarist Kris Norris and subsequent replacement with ex-At All Cost axeman Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, working with producer Devin Townsend in the past, and a slew of other topics. Our chat, after the jump.

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I’m extremely amped about the new Between the Buried and Me album The Great Misdirect. Anyone else?

The Great Misdirect also happens to be the last album BTBAM owes Victory Records under their current contract, meaning the only two bands on that label that we give a shit about (the other being Darkest Hour) are both about to be free agents. Without the pressure of having to placate label boss / mafioso Tony Brummel for an advance on the next record, hopefully BTBAM will go all the way and make 100% of the album they want to make; not that they’ve really appeared to hold back in the past anyways.

Here’s their second studio update.

-VN

Where the hell does the time go? The year is more than half over already! Sheesh.

ANYWAY, here are, in alphabetical order, albums that have really knocked my socks off so far this year…

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I’m all for break-up sex. Yeah, the relationship is over, and yeah, it might be kinda bittersweet, but you were into each once, so why not enjoy one last fuck, right?

To that end: I really appreciate it when a band announces that they are going to break-up, and plays a few last shows to give the fans a chance to say good-bye. Burst have done it, and now another long-standing MetalSucks favorite are doing it: At All Cost.

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Ahh, Michigan. We have lakes. Big fucking lakes. We used to have a booming car industry, but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you need not an explanation of why I won’t be speaking of that in this article. Besides, we harbor a little music festival every summer called Dirt Fest, a metal get together a few hours outside of Detroit, founded by two dudes looking to showcase their own band. Dirt Fest quickly became the summer festival for local bands looking for recognition and inspiration. It wound up becoming comparable to the one hot chick at the party which turned out to be a sausage fest – she ends up having such a good time that she lets everyone have a turn.

Anyhoo, thirteen lucky summers later and Dirt Fest is rocking a roster that has, in the past, included bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Dahlia Murder. Obviously something is working if these bands are rolling through, so I decided to finally go check it out this year. Armed with nothing but a delicious bottle of Jagermeister and a set of tits everyone at the MetalSucks Mansion is dying to get a look at, I embarked on what turned out to be a very interesting day. My mouth already tasted like booze before noon…

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…Matt Wicklund, formerly of the now-defunct Himsa. He also played on Praises to the War Machine, the excellent solo album Nevermore’s Warrel Dane released last year.

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Last week was a ginormous week for new metal releases, and with new ones from Killswitch and Suicide Silence this week promises to be the same. Topping last week’s crop was Dream Theater’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings which debuted at #6 on the Soundscan Charts. Wait a minute… Dream Theater debuted at #6?? Holy fuckity-fuck. Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Goatwhore also had strong debuts. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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Darkest Hour are currently out on the road doing the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, and they’re doing a video tour diary for our gay lovers at Metal Injection. Check it out below.

It’s good to see that Lonestar is growing his mega-beard back. It’s also good to see his package.

ANYWAY, I’ve seen enough of the touring lifestyle to know that I don’t ever want to go on tour. But then again, it looks like these dudes are having so much fun…

Look for more Darkest Hour tour diaries at Metal Injection throughout the rest of the summer. And you can Summer Slaughter tour dates here. In addition to Darkest Hour you get Suffocation, Necrophagist, Ensiferum, Dying Fetus, Origin, Born of Osiris, Winds of Plague, and a bunch of other cool bands, so definitely check it out!!!

-AR

Darkest Hour’s new album, The Eternal Return, is currently streaming in its entirety at the band’s MySpace page. Not only do Vince and I both think it kicks ass in a major way, but Vince has already proclaimed it his favorite Darkest Hour record.

Check it out here, then come back and let us know what you think. You can buy an actual copy when Victory releases the album tomorrow.

And, lest ye forget, Darkest Hour are on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour. Get tour dates here.

-AR

Everyone from Vince’s former home state of Michigan: MetalSucks is proud to now be co-sponsoring Dirt Fest 13, which will take place Saturday, July 11 at the Birch Run Expo Center in Birch Run, MI. The show will feature Necrophagist, Darkest Hour, Winds of Plague, Born of Osiris, Origin, and a whole bunch of awesome bands – PLUS 30 – 40 local bands, at least some of whom are bound to be finds. In other words: it promises to be a pretty kick-ass day.

And to sweeten the deal, the fest is teaming with Sick Drummer magazine for a “Sickest Dirt Fest Drummer” contest. Press release after the jump!

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So, we’ve heard the new Darkest Hour album, The Eternal Return, and while I’ll leave a full review to someone else, I can tell you that the album shreds. With all due respect to Kris Norris, his departure from the band had no discernible effect on the quality of their music, and ex-At All Cost axe master Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan is a more than able replacement. Plus, saying his name makes me think of Spaceballs. Good times.

You won’t get to hear The Eternal Return in its entirety until Victory releases it on June 23, but in the mean time, the band has posted another new song, “Devolution of the Flesh,” on their MySpace page. Check it out; you’ll only hate it if you don’t like to rock.

-AR

It was a short week, but despite Axl being under the weather and Vince gettin lucky in Kentucky, we still managed to get shit done around the ol’ Mansion, even without the help of our favoritest MS Mansion Monkey, Higgins:

• We’re making a list: we give you a hint, another hint and yet another hint. No, it’s got nothing to do with Jacob.
• Ozzy Sharon filed another ridiculous lawsuit, while Dillinger Escape Plan left Relapse Records sans-lawsuit.
• IWABO and Bloodbath released new videos.
• Killswitch Engage gave you a new song for free, we gave you a new Hull song for free, and Job For A Cowboy and Darkest Hour let you hear new songs for free. Crikey!
• We spoke with Nick Hipa of As I Lay Dying and J. Costa of Thy Will Be Done, the former about music and the latter about beards.
• Dallas, The Blogronaut and Eyal all wrote blogs.
• Best Band Ever announces festival appearance atop worst lineup ever.

I had a wisdom tooth pulled this morning so I feel like a giant sack of assholes at the moment, but hey, Percocet! See you tomorrow.

-VN

If, like me, you’re too lazy to download the new Victory Records sampler so you can get the new Darkest Hour song, “No God,” you’ll be happy to know that it is now streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

What can I say about this track? It’s Darkest Hour. It rocks. And, as Vince noted last week, there’s a killer solo by new lead guitarist Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, formerly of At All Cost, a.k.a. MetalSucks’ favorite band that fell apart under unfortunate circumstances.

Darkest Hour’s new album – their first with Carrigan and without Kris Norris – is called The Eternal Return, and drops June 23 on Victory.

-AR

Sounds pretty good despite the shitty audio quality, no? It’ll be interesting to see how the loss of Kris Norris and the addition of Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan affects the Darkest Hour sound. So far I’m liking what I’m hearing. LOVE the Lonestar solo around the 3:00 mark!

-VN

[Thanks: Zackage]

Here’s a statement from Doc Coyle:

“There have been a barrage of rumors and questions on whether or not Dallas has left God Forbid. It’s true that Dallas has left the band. It’s taken us a few days to confirm this definitely, and figure out what we were going to do considering the fact that we are starting a very important tour with Lamb of God this week.

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So the line-up for Summer Slaughter – a.k.a. the big summer package tour that isn’t Ozzfest, Mayhem, Warped, or Sounds of the Underground (R.I.P.) – has been announced, and, pretty much as expected, it’s totally solid. Yes, there are a few bands on the bill I don’t care for (I’m looking at you, Winds of Plague), but the presence of co-headliners Suffocation and Necrophagist, plus Darkest Hour, Origin, Born of Osiris, Dying Fetus and Blackguard pretty much guarantees this will be a day (well, late afternoon at least) worth your time and money. Especially since, unlike the aforementioned summer fests, this one plays smaller venues and comes at a cheaper price.

Also kind of advantageous: you’re basically just dealing with death metal on this tour. So… you pretty much know if you’re the audience or not for this tour.

No dates yet… stay tuned for more details.

-AR

As you are (hopefully) already aware, God Forbid’s latest opus, Earthsblood, hits stores today. Guitarists Doc and Dallas Coyle was cool enough to give us a track-by-track breakdown of each song on what is inarguably the band’s best record to date. Enjoy!

1.”The Discovery” – The intro for Earthsblood came about in a peculiar way. The original piece started with the doomy guitars that kick in around 40 seconds into it. We wrote it as part of our black metal side project called Hell Nigger. It was the outro for a song that we wrote in one day. Without the keys and stuff, it sounded more like Morbid Angel, but with the new album having a much darker tone, we thought it would make a cool intro to the album. The piano piece was actually played and composed (with some direction from Dallas and I) by my Dad, Kevin Coyle. We showed him the chords that the guitars were playing, and he started doing this arpeggiated Danny Elfman thing that just killed. Our Dad is a piano teacher and has been playing for like 40 years. He also played on our last album. The orchestration was performed by Michael Romeo from Symphony X. We met each other through our producer, Eric Rachel. He has his own home studio where Symphony X records their albums and this orchestration program that costs some ungodly amount of money, and takes 4 computers to run. Apparently, they use that program to do film scores. Mike is incredible, and I can’t thank him enough for adding some much virtuosity to the record.
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[In which Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum waxes ecstatic about the most underrated metal albums of all time, in his humble opinion.]

So you love Swedish Metal. You have all the sick records by In Flames, At the Gates, Entombed, Soilwork, The Haunted, Hypocrisy, Opeth, shit, you even have Darkane and Dismember in your collection. Sooooo  then you love The Crown right? Yeah ok, there’s probably a few dudes thinking, “Shit, I know who The Crown are. Is he crazy?” I’ll get into it later, but I know for a fact that even at the height of their popularity in the USA we as metal heads in the states did a shitty job of showing the love. (And that was four or five years ago!) It’s with this in mind that I fear this great band (in particular this specific great record) may pass unnoticed and in the spirit of all things rock I offer up to you The Crown and their slaughtering Deathrace King record! Take it from a dude who has spent all of his adult life searching for inspiration in metal: this band, this record, are inspiring.
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Blabbermouth tells me that the below video of Darkest Hour preparing for their recent Washington, D.C. homecoming gig was created by a blog called DCist. But to be completely honest, my interest lies in seeing former At All Cost guitarist/new edition to Darkest Hour, Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, become integrated into the band. Mike is a) one of the nicest dudes on the face of the planet, b) an awesome guitar player, and c) half-Jewish, so it’s basically awesome to see him rocking out with founding member/MetalSucks guest blogger Mike Schleibaum – I mean, look at Carrigan shred! Ridiculous.

Also ridiculous: what happens to Mike at the 1:06 mark.

Yuk-yuk.

-AR

This coming Monday the entire MetalSucks staff will each release Top 10 lists for the entire year in metal of 2008. Get psyched! Things have been slowing down here at the MS Mansion as the holidays approach, but we still found ways to keep it fun this week:

• Axl Rose finally did some press to support Chinese Democracy… but as usual, there’s an asterisk.
• We debuted a new, exclusive Daath track — a medley of Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Dying Fetus covers.
• We interviewed members of Clutch, Bison B.C., Dir En Grey, and Fear Factory / Arkaea.
• Job For a Cowboy’s Jonny Davy blogged about urination and hotel trashing, while Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum’s guest blog claimed that Entombed’s Uprising and Morning Star are two of the most underrated albums of all time. Oh, and The Haunted’s Peter Dolving blogged about sleep.
• Gojira’s Joe Duplantier orders you to stop the killing of baby seals but apparently has no problem with ripping New York City a new arsehole.
• Meshuggah + Cynic + The Faceless = The Erection Tour of 2009.
• The metal industry lost a kindred soul. R.I.P. Adrian Bromley.