One of Victory Records’ latest signs, Design the Skyline, are from Corpus Christi, Texas, and Roadrunner’s newly-announced acquisition, At the Skylines, are from Huntington Beach, CA. So I have no idea if the bands’ paths ever crossed before, or people routinely got them confused as they ascended from their local scenes… but I imagine people will start to get them confused quite a bit now that they’re both on large, well-known labels.

And to be fair, there are some differences in the two bands’ respective sounds, but to be even fairer, those differences are pretty negligible. And to be fairest of all, I haven’t yet made up my mind about which band I hate more. I imagine it will be whichever one ends up getting more popular. ‘Cause they’re both, y’know, totally awful, and it will be hard for me to accept a reality where one or both of them have a career, while plenty of other, far more talented bands struggle to survive.

Here are music videos from each group, in case you’d like to start forgetting which one is which now.

-AR

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR WIFING GOALS IN 2011

I guess the 16 year-old bro who got kicked out of Design The Skyline didn’t get his fill of public self-clowning when he cried about it on his Tumblr the other day… He’s back, this time gushing about how he wants to marry his little girlfriend! Some pretty epic white knighting here. Highlights:

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It’s true! The summer is over. Sad. We’re closing down early today to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend. That also means we won’t be here Monday. We hope everyone has a great, Axel Rudi Pell-free weekend!

While you await our return, here’s some fun stuff we did this week:

• We wrapped up our interview with Amos Williams from TesseracT, and spoke to Tom Niemeyer from The Accüsed, too.
• We checked out the latest releases from Diamond Plate and Odyssey.
• We concluded our celebration of 31 Days of Faith No More.
• We debated which band was worse, Skip the Foreplay or Design the Skyline.
• We were sad to learn that Metal Blade has also pulled out of Spotify.
• We wondered if Latinos are born to mosh.
• We declared djent to be pop.
• We watched Jack White lick the Insane Clown Posse’s ass.
• We learned to write a breakdown from a deck of cards.
• We continued to be baffled by the popularity of The Devil Wears Prada.

Okay, time to go get fucked up. See ya Tuesday!

-AR

I had no fucking clue who Design the Skyline were before Sergeant D. started writing about them (here and here), and knowing what I knew, I should have known better than to hit “play” on their new video, “Break Free From Your Life.” But I’m a fucking idiot, so I did hit “play,” and I think I hate this even more than I do Skip the Foreplay. It’s so bad that the only logical reaction I could come up with was to lay my head down on my laptop’s keyboard while a MetalSucks Mansion Monkey slammed the monitor down on my head again and again and again, WCW-style. If you had told me twelve years ago that some day there would be bands that made Limp Bizkit seem like the most sophisticated songwriters ever, I probably would have just killed myself then and there.

Side note: There are members of this band who aren’t sixteen?

Side side note: NO MORE VERB THE NOUN BAND NAMES ALLOWED. SERIOUSLY. CUT IT OUT WITH THAT SHIT. THERE MUST BE ANY NUMBER OF OTHER AVAILABLE BAND NAMES. COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE ALREADY.

-AR

[via Revolver]

via Badass

Reading the comments under our announcement of The Metal Suckfest has been a lot of fun — mostly because the predictions regarding which other bands will be on the bill have been so very, very wrong. Hopefully we’ll get to announce a few more bands next week, but in the meantime, you cats need to try harder and be a little more imaginative when speculating.

And while you do that, here’s how we kept ourselves amused this week:

• We debuted new music by Today is the Day, Monstro, and, thanks to our friends at Decibel, Skeletonwitch.
• We also debuted a new video by Venia.
• Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable and Borknagar’s Jens Ryland both weighed in on the Century Media/Spotify drama.
• We spoke to Chimaira’s Mark Hunter, Dead Letter Circus’ Kim Benzie, Trapped Under Ice’s Justice Tripp, and three of the dudes from Fleshgod Apocalypse.
• We checked out the latest release from Wizard Smoke.
• We examined the evolution of deathcore.
• We felt bad for the sixteen year old who just got fired from Design the Skyline.
• We got excited about the Black Sabbath reunion, until we found out that it’s not confirmed yet.
• We carefully examined the first promo photo of Metallica with Lou Reed.
• We continued to count down  31 Days of Faith No More.

Until next week… eat your vegetables, stay in school, don’t drink and drive.

-AR

BREAKING NEWS: Victory Records sensations DESIGN THE SKYLINE have parted ways with their bassist, Ethan. Information is sketchy thusfar, but here’s what we know via his Tumblr (lulzy parts highlighted in bold):

So my asshole band members just kicked me out because im 16. Ive worked so hard in this band ive done alot i drove all the way to chicago with them to get signed i made 2 music videos with them i do nothing wrong. And were going on our first tour in about 2 weeks. And there just dropping me like that. Nothing ever goes well for me in my life not school not relationships and finially i get in a band ive loved music my whole life and we finially get signed a dream come true and now ive lost that. I feel like that once in a life time chance had finally come and now its just gone like that cause my band members are fucking heartless. They know what shit ive been through but there just selfish. Now i feel like my life isnt worth living im just a normal ass person like ive always been and that sucks, i was so excited to see what tour is like and get to go to europe and see beautiful places on this earth. I cant even type right right now im shaking im so scared and mad and idk its an intense feeling i just broke a mirror with my hand and im bleeding i feel stupid. wtf is wrong with me. nothing goes well for me and this is just like assuring me nothing else ever will.. omg im freaking out. a;sdkjf;f FUCK man. i hope NONE of you guys have problems like this in yalls lives i hope you all live amazing wonderful happy lives no one deserves this but apparently i do for some fucked up reason..

AFTER THE BREAK, the tl;dr version…

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“Ooh no!”

“Macho Man” Randy Savage has perished. My father and I were actually at his first wedding, which is to say, we were at Summer Slam ’91. Vince and I are so bummed right now… I don’t think I can even go outside. I need to curl up with YouTube and remember a time when the “Macho Man” really did seem invincible.

We’ll never forget you, Mr. Savage.

Maybe this will cheer you up?

• We lied and said that Iwrestledabearonce were becoming a black metal band. Then, depending on your perspective, we either made it better or made it worse by debuting a new track from the band.
• We also debuted a stretched-out version of Hammerfall’s “Hearts on Fire.”
• Our list of the The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists continued.
• We spoke to Max Cavalera from Cavalera Conspiracy and Soulfly, Dean Herrera and Henry Selva from The Human Abstract, and the dudes from Noisear.
• We enjoyed a series of exclusive tour blogs from both The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley and Woods of Ypres’ Shane Madden.
• We gushed over Anaal Nathrakh’s Passion.
• We wondered why elitists find some deathcore bands acceptable and others unacceptable.
• We declared metal the winner in the war on grunge.
• We expressed our enthusiasm for Victory Records’ latest sign, Design the Skyline.
• We gave you a detailed analysis of the lyrics for the new Limp Bizkit single.
• We declared drinking to be for pussies.

Next week crack the top ten of our ongoing guitarists list, and, at least to the best of my knowledge, do not aid any bands in playing a prank on the public. And hopefully no one else we liked better than Fred Durst dies.

-AR

It’s more than a little bit baffling that the same record label that just signed this band:

… also just signed this band:

But indeed, it is so. I’ve already expressed my excitement/bewilderment about the Jungle Rot signing, so for today I’ll just stick to letting you know that Jungle Rot have a brand new track called “Rise Up and Revolt” available for streaming (it’s that tiny blue circular “play” button to the left of the band photo). I guess it’s a pretty sweet slab of groovy old-school DM or something… it’s just hard to take seriously when, well, see above. Kill on Command drops June 21st and is available for pre-order here.

-VN

I am a big fan of leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS. Back in the 90s, they gave us unfuckwithable classics of hardcore from bands like Earth Crisis, Bloodlet and One Life Crew, but they didn’t stop there! These days, they conduct themselves pretty much exactly like if someone gave me unlimited funds and told me to start a record label with the express purpose of trolling the fuck out of hardcore/metal fans.

For example, their latest signing makes Emmure and These Hearts look like heroes of the underground by comparison: Corpus Christi’s own DESIGN THE SKYLINE, who are partying like it’s 2008! As someone who misses the days when MySpace was still relevant, you couldn’t wear enough neon, and it was all about being scene as fuck, I am stoked to see this band join the Victory family, although I have to admit that it’s more than a little lulzy.

Cliffs:

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