I don’t hate Soulfly as much as some people — in fact, I quite enjoyed 2005′s Dark Ages, and that Greg Puciato sections of that one song from the last album — but I can’t find a nice thing to say about the album art for the band’s upcoming eighth full-length, Enslaved. It looks lo-fi, but not in a cool way, like the cover Terrorizer’s Hordes of Zombies. And why are the edges blacked out? And why are the edges on the left side more blacked out than the edges on the right side? It just doesn’t seem like that much thought went into this thing.

Enslaved comes out March 13 on Roadrunner. It has some pretty cool guests on it, like Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan and Dez Fafara from DevilDriver (and, uh, Coal Chamber), so it should really go without saying, but if the music on the album is good, then it really won’t matter what the cover looks like. Although the band’s new bass player is the dude who used to be in Static-X, so that doesn’t bode well, does it?

-AR

This is a really long post and I apologize in advance. I’ve tried to edit it down and this is as short as I can make it without sacrificing any of the points I’m trying to drive home. Sorry.

I got home last night around 11:30 pm, and to my surprise and delight, Chimaira’s Mark Hunter was STILL GOING on his tweeting tear (new topics of discussion include the very depressing realities of touring in a van versus paying for a bus, and how a band’s road crew can sometimes make more money than the band itself does), continuing to answer HUNDREDS of fans’ questions on all facets of the music business, and pulling yet even more industry insiders, like DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara, into the mix. In fact, Hunter was still going as of about 3 a.m. EST this morning, hours after I’d finally hit the sack, and literally just as I started typing this, I noticed that he is now awake and at it again. And I would like to re-emphasize the amazingness of this conversation. Not only should you be following Mark on Twitter, but you should also read this really, really incredible interview that Metal Insider published earlier today on the whole topic — not only is it another nice summation of much of what Hunter has been discussing, but it goes into even greater depth on many of these topics.

ANYWAY, my contribution to this ongoing discussion was to express surprise that no one had brought up the topic of publicists yet; Mark promptly did address the topic (and discusses it a little more in the aforementioned Metal Insider interview), and I’m going to publish his thoughts after the jump. But I also want to take some time and express my own thoughts on the important role publicists play in this industry. ‘Cause, as I said on Twitter last night, your band does not need to be signed to have a publicist, and, yes, if you can afford one, a good PR rep is totally worth having.

Click to read more…

While we continue to wait for that Killcorpse Murder project with Adam D., Corpsegrinder, and Shannon Lucas to get off the ground, here’s another newly-teased supergroup to get you all hot under the collar.

Noisecreep noticed on Friday afternoon that DevilDriver vocalist Dez Fafara and Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton announced — via their respective Twitter accounts, natch — that they were collaborating on “a bunch of KILLER tunes,” with Circus of Power, Soundgarden, and Trouble being cited as influences. And, uh, I really have no idea what that would sound like. I hear the aural relationship between Trouble and Soundgarden, but Circus of Power is where I get thrown for a loop.

ANYWAY, on Saturday The PRP strung together a bunch more of Fafara’s tweets, which seek to clarify/update the news:

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It’s barely been more than a month since DevilDriver released their fifth studio album, Beast, but bassist Jon Miller has now announced his departure from the band.

His statement doesn’t really tell us anything and makes the split sound perfectly amiable (it’s so vanilla I’m not even gonna print it here, but you can read it at Metal Underground if you’re really curious), but Miller had entered rehab in January of this year, so it’s hard not to speculate that his new-found sobriety had something to do with his decision to leave the group. In case it isn’t obvious, being in a band out on tour isn’t necessarily the environment most conducive to just saying “no” — you will constantly be surrounded by people who are partying, and sitting on the bus by yourself is not a lot of fun.

The band hasn’t announced an official replacement, but apparently some dude named Bubbles, who used to be Bury Your Dead and is now DevilDriver’s tour manager, has been filling in for Miller these past few months, so that should pretty much take care of that.

Yep, DevilDriver now has members named “Dez” and “Bubbles.” Not since the “Izzy/Dizzy” era of Guns N’ Roses has anything been so silly.

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

I’m one of those dipshits who has shamefully mumbled, “I kind of liked the first two Korn albums…” in casual conversation. The karmic penalty has been paid frequently over the last 15 years, from the time a 5’1” girl punched me in the dick during “Faget” at the Cleveland Odeon to every time I have to endure someone trumpeting that they were raised on Morrisound death and never listened to that “poser shit.” The latter of which being just so fucking annoying — the first band (or “band”) everyone got into was either a) something nightmarish your folks played every day, like the Eagles, b) some variation of a boy band, or c) GN’R, which is the most realistic best-case scenario.

Anyway, Korn and Limp Bizkit are the focus of an exceptionally well-written ongoing Onion AV Club series called “Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation,” and just seeing that pic of Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst under their umbrella triggers many still-unreconciled memories for perhaps a few of you guys, and quite a few Decibel staffers. Shane Mehling is among the latter — if “All in the Family” were actually available in a karaoke book, I have no doubt that we could perform it without looking at the screen once. He doesn’t just own up to this on the Deciblog, but even serves up a super classy yearbook photo cementing the sickness. Luckily, this paean to idiocy was preceded by Adrien Begrand’s typically sharp/mercifully not novel-length Justify Your Shitty Taste on Iron Maiden’s The X Factor!, a lifetime contender for most disquieting, yet not even close to cool album cover. Shit, it must be 1995 week on our blog, because evidently Chris Dick just let Dez Fafara write 550 words about, uh, redheads.

We’ll end on a much radder note. If you snap up a dB subscription by Monday at 5pm, we’ll throw you a Valentine’s Day boner — an exclusive, downloadable printable Valentine’s Day by the great extreme cover artist Paul Romano (Mastodon, Hate Eternal, Withered, other highly shitty bands, although a plenty of bands are highly shitty compared to those three).

-AB

You can buy the March 2011 issue of Decibel here, or get a full subscription to get down with the sickness each and every month.

DevilDriver’s new album, Beast, comes out in three weeks, and has twelve tracks on it — and as of today, with the debut of “Bring The Fight (To The Floor)” on Revolver‘s website, we’ve heard three of ‘em. All within the past twenty-one days. The last one, “Coldblooded,” was released to the public just last Friday.

Holy shit. I actually like DevilDriver, and I have never, ever spent this much time thinking about them. I am in every way, shape, and form out of things to say about this record, and I haven’t even heard the whole thing yet. I assume I will have by Thursday, though, after Roadrunner releases another nine tracks, plus every b-side the band has ever recorded, as well as bonus audio of Dez Fafara looking for a toilet when he has the runs.

How will they fill the remaining time to promote the record before its release? If they debut one more song, we’ll have heard a third of the record already. I guess they could release a video…?

At least this song debut comes with a fascinating, insightful, in-depth interview. Check out this excerpt:

Click to read more…

See what I did there?

ANYWAY, I’m sitting here listening to said new DevilDriver song (which is available for download here for the low low cost of giving up your e-mail address’ cherry) for the second time now, my thought is basically this: it’s a good song, and I wonder if anyone besides the DevilDriver faithful will care.

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Unless you count current metalcore bands with a wiggerish slant (Emmure, Winds of Plague, Acacia Strain, etc.), the genre of nu-metal is all but dead. Once a nearly-unstoppable juggernaut of Kikwear pants, eyebrow piercings, and chinstrap beards, today it is but a dessicated husk, barely clinging to life. At its peak, nu-metal filled the airwaves coast-to-coast, but these days you’re most likely to hear it on a beat up boombox in the corner of a windowless basement printshop or third-rate auto parts store on the outskirts of town.

While the tastes of fickle music consumers may have changed, nu-metal has never sounded better. Many kids these days are too young to have experienced this unique genre the first time around, so I figured I would share some of nu-metal’s best artists that fly a little under the radar of current tastemakers — I’ll skip the big names that we all know (Korn, Kid Rock, Bizkit) and focus on the unsung heroes. And mark my words, you’ll see indie rockers ironically listening to hed(pe) within the next few years!

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I love videos like this, because they illustrate that being successful in the music business and being a good person don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

So. MS Suckalo Santi sent us the below vid of DevilDriver front man Dez Fafara bitching out a security guard at a show in Vancouver on January 13. You can’t see how the whole thing started, but it seems pretty clear that a kid near the front was hurt, and the security guard wasn’t helping him. So Dez takes matters into his own hands…

And, hey, while we’re on the topic of Dez, have you read my interview with him yet?

-AR

Alright, so Vince is back Tuesday, which means the balance between light and dark should be restored here at the MetalSucks Mansion. What Vince doesn’t know is that I had Higgins make some… adjustments to Vince’s wing. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be sitting on the shitter when ya flush it, Vinnie. BWA-HA-HA!!!

Here’s what we did while Vince has been away:

• We spoke to the legendary Jello Biafra and DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara.
• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle broke down the breakdown, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley ruminated some more on the format wars, andVertebrae33′s Rod Githens analyzed the best album covers of 2009.
• We checked out new releases by Six Feet Under, Valkyrja, Brainstorm, Trapped Under Ice and Sons of Azrael.
• Our staff chose some albums that will fuck your face off in 2010.
• The line-up for Mayhem Fest 2010 got the kids all riled up.
• Dave Mustaine and Kerry King <3 T.G.I.Friday’s.

Have a good weekend, everybody!!!

-AR

When DevilDriver front man Dez Fafara called me this past Friday following a tumultuous, multi-day bus ride between stops on the band’s current tour with Suffocation, Goatwhore and Thy Will Be Done, I was expecting him to be an exhausted mess. But a decade and half of the touring life has made him a hardened veteran, and he clearly hasn’t lost any of his passion for playing live – clearly still riding high on the success of 2009′s Pray for Villains, Dez sounded like he was ready to jump on stage at any second. DevilDriver shows are a full-contact sport with Fafara presiding as the main instigator, and it’s clear that the man loves his job.

After the jump, get Dez’s thoughts on this tour, being away from his family while he’s on the road, a preview of the band’s current set list, and some news on the next DevilDriver album,which he hopes to have out by this time next year at latest. Phew!

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Those groovy folks at Roadrunner are giving away the title track from the new DevilDriver album, Pray for Villains, right here.

And I dig it. It sounds like DevilDriver, but a little faster than most DevilDriver, and a little more melodic (and no, that’s not code for “clean vocals” – Dez still sounds like he’s trying to hock a massive blood-tinged loogie). I also really like that herky jerky start-stop thing that happens in the last minute or so of the track.

So go download it and then come back here and let us know what you think. And don’t forget that DevilDriver are headlining this summer’s Thrash and Burn tour, which we’re co-sponsoring! You can get complete tour dates here.

-AR