Last week’s most amusing news item came from Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato (above, center), who made public his thanks and apologies to local emergency responders who helped him out during a half-day drug freakout. (Reviewing Puciato’s account of the unnamed substance’s effects, one could settle on mushrooms as the likely culprit.) As party people, we at MetalSucks giggled knowingly at his beginner’s mistakes and cheered his quick rebound to good humor and sanity. Party loud, dude!

But Puciato’s boss, DEP founding guitarist Ben Weinman (above, left), isn’t as cool with his misadventure or his urge to chronicle it for the public. Nor with the potential he created for something other than Weinman to get credit for DEP’s genius. Our awesome buds at Metal Insider got the exclusive story from Weinman:

Click to read more…

At my first paid gig as a music journalimalist, my editor wasn’t really hands-on with workshopping or edits or assignments. Let’s call him the Rick Rubin of print editors, as he was grotesquely overpaid, forever claiming unearned credit, and often seen shoveling bizarre food up his blabhole.

But I did get his attention once when I blew a weekend assignment: After a day spent on my front lawn all screwy on mushrooms and stuff, I’d turned up to an exciting concert I was to review. Smiling, I gave venue security my name, waited to be waved in, but was then told rudely that the show had already ended, dumbshit!

Ended!? Wha?! The show had gone off as scheduled, I was repeatedly assured, so what the fuck time was it? I had definitely left home on time — had it taken me three hours to get there? How long had I been staring at that graffiti mural? And what was I hearing that sounded like the band playing just across the entrance? What was Prince doing there holding hands with Madeline Albright? Where was that scent of garlic bread coming from? What the shit? Glirgh!

Well, it turns out Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato lost a similar battle with mind-bottling substances this weekend! Only he freaked out his gf and required the assistance of a small army of emergency staff! Puciato explained on his website:

Click to read more…

Internet Metal Nerds and real-life metal fans alike have been pretty bonered about Argonauts, the new band featuring vocalist Dimitri Minakakis (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan), guitarist John Adubato (Burnt by the Sun), bassist Brett Bamberger (East of the Wall, The Binary Code’s old touring line-up), and drummer Dave Witte (Municipal Waste + every band ever). Axl saw them live in October and was still raving about it weeks after. Matter of fact, Axl’s sitting on the MS Mansion Porcelain Throne right now and keeps yelling out “Argonauts!” at random intervals.

But it looks as if Minakakis is an Argonaut no longer, according to a post earlier today on Argonauts Facebook page:

Click to read more…

In case my myriad rants on Spotify and Bob Lefsetz’ all-in-one criticism rebuttal still don’t have you convinced that Spotify is worth the $10 monthly fee to stream EVERY PIECE OF MUSIC EVER RECORDED FROM ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME, how about a first-hand account from metal luminary and Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato? Puciato hasn’t been shy about expressing his feelings on the music biz in the past, so I don’t see why he’d pull any punches now. Here’s Greg on his own Facebook page, according to a comment by MS reader “blah:”

Geniunely excited and blown away by Spotify. Good to see a huge positive step for the music industry. This is gonna be a critical piece of the big picture of shifting out of the “old” industry to the “new”. Makes so much sense for casual listening….my IPOD suddenly feels like a giant book of CDs.

This is for real sick. Who gives a shit about royalties….that stuff’ll figure itself out in time. More important to just get the new infrastructure in place first so that the royalty situation can then be dealt with. In my opinion, this in a few years time turns CDs and Vinyls into complete collectors items that should both be numbered and limted. There will still be people that download so they can have the music in case there is no 3G….but Spotify actually has an “offline” mode too so you can temporarily save the music you’re streaming in case you’ll be away from 3G/4G/Wifi…which in a few years time you’ll NEVER be away from anyway.

Click to read more…

No disrespect to our pal Anso DF — I mean the guy’s a ridiculously studly writer and has darn near impeccable music taste, amirite? — but a new Van Halen album is hardly worth getting excited about. I mean, ok, maybe I’ll pop a little semi-stiffy, but if the facts that Fatty Ding Dongs Van Halen is friends with a member of Creed and David Lee Roth hasn’t even stepped foot in the studio doesn’t have “trouble” written all over it, then EVH also isn’t completely delusional and oh yeah, that tongue cancer was definitely caused by that metal guitar pick you use and had nothing whatsoever to do with smoking more cigarettes in an hour than a casino full of raggedy old ladies at slot machines smokes in a day. Still, ya know, I’m curiously optimistic; maybe there’ll be some sick solos.

Even if Van Halen’s 2k11 record does blow donkey balls, thankfully we’ve got Dann Halen to rock us into 2k12. The Texas-based VH cover band features Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan (Darkest Hour) on guitar, James Love (ex-Dillinger Escape Plan) on drums, Dann Miller (The Jonbenet) on screeches and leg kids, “and a couple other buddies doin it hard,” according to Sir Lonestar himself, who sent us the above video. What I love about this video — aside from the EVH-model guitar, Jack Daniels bass and HOLY SHIT NICE STARS AND STRIPES LEOTARD, DUDE! — is that Lonestar clearly did not have to learn much, if any of the guitar parts specifically for this gig; it’s clear he grew up on the stuff and knows it front to back. Because fuckin’ EDDIE VAN HALEN, mannnnnn! He’s the best metal guitar player of all time that no one ever talks about anymore.

-VN

Everywhere ya look, there’s an announcement of a new and unexpected pairing: Mastodon/hip hop producer, Metallica/Lou Reed, Mike Portnoy/butt-rock, and Rob Zombie/garment care. Well, Strange Bedfellows Month continues with news that Warbringer’s just-completed third album, Worlds Torn Asunder, was produced by Steve Evetts. His name is on good punk records (Saves The Day, Lifetime), veiny hardcore (Snapcase, Earth Crisis), and Symphony X; and, natch, he’s the Flemming Rasmussen to Dillinger Escape Plan’s Metallica. So dude has some stats.

Click to read more…

Devin Townsend has so much explaining to do. As a tireless songwriter and producer, he’s set to release two albums on June 21, Ghost and Deconstruction, to complete the Devin Townsend Project cycle that he started with 2009′s Ki and Addicted. That’s four full-length records, 43 songs, and 260 minutes of music unleashed over about two years. But for Townsend, discussion goes beyond song ideas and his exhaustive studio work required to bring them to life; he could talk all day and yet only touch on the subjects of touring, sales, and modern music industry calamity; and, shit, his back catalogue is too huge and varied to even approach in a Q&A of any reasonable length.

You see, being a modern musician and being Devin Townsend are not the same thing. Sure, he grinds out records and then tours like everybody. However, our latest MetalSucks interview with Townsend reveals an artist unbound by the limits of imagination, but pretty aware of averse reactions to his art; his self-expression is total and unapologetic — until fans and media misinterpret him or disapprove of his humor. He’s confident as a person, but shakeable as a virtuosic guitar player, a theater and puppet enthusiast, and a production wiz. He lets no truth about his world go unexpressed, beit via the hair-raising cacophony of Deconstruction (think Strapping Young Lad’s Alien: The Ride) or Ghost‘s murmuring calm. He puts himself out there all the way; now, let him explain why.

Click to read more…

Photo by Emily Di Frances

A few days before I crossed paths with the big Deftones and Dillinger Escape Plan tour last week, Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham told me that the band has only now emerged from years of intra-band discord and label battles. It kinda blew me away to hear that “it absolutely sucked” to be involved in the making of Saturday Night Wrist, a classic record which seems like the product of a thousand men’s pooled awesomeness, not of five embittered, isolated former friends (plus Bob Ezrin). The live shows from those fractious years gave no clue to their travails, either; they played awesomely killer always. Weird.

Cunningham’s words got me pumped to assess the newly happy, friendy, post-wake up call Deftones. The question: With no one to battle, would their blades grow dull? Does this band thrive on friction like fellow all-time raddest American bands Faith No More and Talking Heads? Are they poker-faced like other ego-rich Yank greats Slayer and Van Halen? Now that they are tight again, would their on-stage fury be sapped of its fuel?

Click to read more…

If Ash Avildsen is looking for some muscle in his corner for his ongoing anti-piracy battle, he should look no further than Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato, an artistic heavyweight with plenty of literal brawn to back it up. I can just see it… Avildsen and Puciato tag-teaming against a duo of bespectacled, basement-dwelling computer nerds… a fight for the ages! Dynamite moves! Steel chairs!

Tag-team member Puciato wrote a long blog entry on his own website over the weekend tackling the topic of music piracy, and his viewpoint, though nuanced and well-thought out, isn’t what you might expect from the ordinarily very liberal frontman. He makes a lot of really good points, and a few arguments that have glaring holes in them, but the entire blog entry is worth a read. Here’s the opening snippet:

I don’t see file sharing as an evil…it’s silly to say that it has any intrinsic properties of good and evil at all anyway. It’s just a new form of technology that evolved outside of what the record industry and intellectual property law structure was prepared for at the time. That having been said…I think it’s necessary to swim with the tide and not against it. I think it’s time to accept and acknowledge that the CD is a dead format. Maybe not dead in the way of the 8 track but dead in the way vinyl is. A CD now, should be thought of as a collector’s item, or a preferred way of listening if that is the individual’s preference, in which case he is already in the minority as most music is listened to via the MP3 format. A CD certainly sounds better than an MP3, just as a vinyl does, but it just lacks the infinitely superior convenience of the digital format.

Click to read more…

After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

Click to read more…

I am not cool, but it occasionally appears that way cuz my incidental awareness of cutting-edge music. There’s a simple reason for that, one which I share with tons of other fortunates out there: I have an older sibling. She’s cool. She dated cool guys. Those cool punk and alternative and goth guys stopped at nothing to get within sniffing distance of her bod; as such, most found it worthwhile to cultivate the kid-brother endorsement.

The astute dudes recognized that the way to my heart is through my headphones and funneled a lot of free tapes (!) and CDs my way. (One particularly smitten Doc Martens aficionado worked at local college radio and hooked me up with my own evening time slot when I was 15.) My sister and I hardly got along, so my input on her suitors was never solicited, much less heeded; I thank her for neglecting to mention this fact to all those hornballs whose awareness of interesting music exploded my horizons.

Click to read more…

[UPDATE: Full tour routing has been posted here. - Ed.]

My good friend Eduardo, a non-metalhead (or “normie” as Juggalo Bob calls them), is a lifelong Deftones fan despite his status as a die-hard hip hip fan. As a youth growing up in Sacramento, CA Eduardo was ensconced in Deftones culture, kinda like you’d be hard pressed to find anyone born and raised in the NYC area who doesn’t like the Beastie Boys regardless of their other musical tastes. But the poor chap has never seen the Deftones play live. Since he moved to New York in 2005 and our friendship began we’ve been angling to see the Deftones live and for Eduardo to crowd-surf for the first time, but it’s just never happened. Deftones haven’t come to the East Coast much during that period, and when they have it’s been as support like on the recent BlackDiamondSkye tour. But we may finally get our opportunity.

The PRP is reporting [via Gun Shy Assassin] that Deftones will be touring this Spring with the Dillinger Escape Plan in tow. Three dates have already been leaked, so presumably more are on the way, and two of them are on the East Coast which bodes well for Eduardo and I. STOKED. That is going to be a moshfest of massive proportions. I hope Eduardo is prepared for the insanity! It’s always fun to see someone react to their first ever metal concert.

The three dates confirmed so far are posted after the jump.

Click to read more…

Back in October, I took the time to chat via Skype with Robin Staps, founder and main songwriter of the Ocean Collective. We talked about the band’s new album Anthropocentric, discussed the unfortunate theft the band experienced while on tour, the band’s plans for U.S. touring in 2011, and more.

Click to read more…

Exclusive beard+shlong nature noodz pic brought to you exclusively for this interview by Jessica Curreri!

Last week I conducted a very special interview I’d been looking forward to for some time: Andy Williams and Liam Wilson, two of metal’s best beards, together on one conference call with me, self proclaimed Best Beard of metal writers. With the express purpose of talking about beards exclusively.

Pure hilarity ensued. Beard stories, beard grooming tips, the love adorned upon beards by loving fans (including a blood-soaked grab by a drunk, beaten-up homeless man), all-time beard heroes, and all sorts of other assorted beard talk. Since both Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan are currently out on Warped Tour, the guys also shared their thoughts on the “punk rock daycare” nature of Warped and talked just enough trash about purple-pant wearing “boy bands.” Plus their unexpected newfound love for The All American Rejects.

Read our beardtastic talk after the jump!

Click to read more…

It’d be easy to categorize the rant Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley wrote for Alternative Press as “old guy sour about kids these days” if everything he’s saying about the current young crop of bands on the Warped Tour wasn’t so damn on-point. At a relatively ripe 30-ish years old (I think) compared to the haircutcore multitudes, the lads in Every Time I Die, Dillinger Escape Plan and a small handful of other bands on Warped have earned the right to be crotchety old men; their music has stood the test of time in this crazy, ever-changing scene and has proven itself to be more than just a passing fad. And while Buckley lays it straight in his vitriolic rant and it’d be easy to say “he just doesn’t get it” with regards to today’s youth’s music choices, it’d be hard for any self-respecting music fan to argue with his points. Sample:

The problem is that kids here at the Warped Tour don’t know that half of these “bands” play to an iPod track or that most “artists” don’t even write their own songs. They don’t realize that the singer of Never Shout Never is just a poor man’s Justin Bieber or that most of these “moshcore” bands that use 808’s to really BEEF UP their bass tone are the most recent manifestation of nu metal. Really guys? The dude from Milli Vanilli KILLED HIMSELF because he was so ashamed at being outed as a phony and yet on a daily basis I walk out into the crowd and hear autotuned vocals in a live setting. What the fuck has happened to us? Don’t we want more than this? Music once made me want to play music. Now there are days that it makes me want to never listen to it again.

Buckley’s rant is really something you’ve got to read; it’s the kind of article that’ll have you pumping your fist and yelling “yes!” to yourself constantly. The final blow:

Put your ear to the ground, take off your stupid fucking neon shirt and get a haircut. Oh, and what happened to throwing tomatoes at people onstage that just plain sucked? I say we bring that back. As a matter of fact, I think Breathe Carolina are playing soon…

Zing! We wait for Never Shout Never and Breathe Carolina’s responses with baited breath. It’s been a while since we had a good feud ’round these parts…

-VN

Thanks: Brent Hicks

To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

Click to read more…

If any of you guys know me, you know that I have a permanent hard-on for my Fractal AxeFx Ultra, and although some of you may hate my tone, you would be silly to think that you couldn’t dial in a tone that your weird ears like, and then some. This one is for the gear nerds out there.

This is more than a Fractal plug, I swear. Let’s call this more of an open test/experiment in progress because I am in the midst of quite an awesome dilemma at the moment. I am stuck between deciding on how best to use my AxeFx in a live situation, because both options it affords are amazing.

We just did a little tour in Australia with Dillinger and Maylene, and on that tour we were getting amps from backline companies (read: different amps every day). So we figured the best way to get some consistency would be to plug our AxeFxs into the effects loop return of the amps and use them for their tube power sections. This worked out pretty damn well for the most part; you could hear how each different poweramp had its own distinct sound, but when it was awesome, it was AWESOME. Only at one show did I actually get the amp I had asked for, and that was an Engl Invader (150 to be more precise) and that EL34 poweramp sounded so godly that I thought perhaps that was the way to go. Or at least something similar: a good tube poweramp (may make more sense for a rack unit ala Fryette 2/50/2 or Mesa 2:90) through a 4×12 cabinet. Good old Preamp->Tube Poweramp->Cab->Mic->PA in a live context, which is what 99% of bands do nowadays. And with this setup you get that amazing feel of a tube amp and that response they are known for.

However there is another option with the AxeFx, and that is going direct.

Click to read more…

Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier is no longer the only prominent metal musician who advocates taking to the seas to help protect our underwater animal friends. The lads in Dillinger Escape Plan got all cuddly with their Angels for Animals campaign in 2008 and now they’ve joined up with PETA2 once again, this time to protest the clubbing of baby seals in Canada.

Yes, clubbing baby seals is not only a euphamism for praying on someone who’s helpless but also apparently a thriving industry in Canada, where last year alone the government allowed 75,000 baby seals to be clubbed to death by seal hunters. The below video is pretty gruesome, and it makes me wonder what excuse the Canadian government could possibly come up with to defend this arcane practice, the spoils of which have been banned in the U.S. and U.K.; “it’s an important part of the economy”? “it’s a long-standing tradition”? “baby seals are evil and deserve to die”? I haven’t the foggiest.

Though you’d be right to question what this has got to do with metal, it doesn’t really matter; Dillinger Escape Plan are trying to spread the word and they’re using their fame and place in the metal scene to do so. I’m all for that. Read more about how you can get involved here.

-VN

Canada’s Shame

Photo credit: EmpyreLounge.com

My interview with Coheed & Cambria guitarist Travis Stever got off to a bit of a slow start. I believe I was his first interview of the morning in a long line of many, and he was audibly a bit groggy after a rough night of sleep on the bus. But after a few questions Stever got into the flow of things, and started talking at length about his band’s new record Year of the Black Rainbow, their current tour with Circa Survive and Torche, working with ex-Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie, the Neverender series of shows and the thrill of playing Madison Square Garden.

We only had fifteen minutes to talk before Stever was whisked away to his next interview, but we got plenty accomplished in that time. Our chat, after the jump.

Click to read more…

As I already said, I’m completely over following the Coheed & Cambria saga; I’m just in it for the tunes, man. So while I’m sure that “Year of the Black Rainbow” means something, like, ya know, totally profound to die-hard Coheed fans I don’t really care to dive back down that rabbit hole. On its own, though, a black rainbow would be pretty fucking cool… and metal.

Coheed are presently streaming their entire new album Year of the Black Rainbow on their MySpace page. I’m digging it about as much as I dug their last album, which is to say it’s pretty decent but nothing that’s blowing me away (yet). Coheed are one of those bands who put a lot of effort into giving their music added dimension for increased repeat-listening value, though, so I look forward to really sinking my teeth into this one and getting to know its ins and outs. I’m especially digging the song “Guns of Summer,” which is really different for the band. I wonder how much influence, if any, former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie had in writing this album and in particular songs like “Guns of Summer”?

Check out Year of the Black Rainbow on Coheed & Cambria’s MySpace. The album comes out officially next Tuesday, April 13th.

-VN