The release of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Option Paralysis, their first album in more than two years, is just weeks away. If that’s not cause for rejoicing amongst metalheads everywhere, than nothing is. Few bands have pushed the envelope or influenced the scene this past decade as much as DEP, and Option Paralysis continues that proud tradition; it’s both a logical extension of and necessary evolution from Ire Works. Or, put more simply: it rules.

MetalSucks is proud to present the online debut of “Chinese Whispers,” one our most favoritest tracks from Option Paralysis. It’s melodic, aggressive, catchy, and off-the-wall fucknuts in a way that only Dillinger can be. (Tip: listen with a good pair of headphones.) We hope you dig it as much as we do.

Option Paralysis comes out March 23 on the band’s own Party Smasher Inc. in conjunction with Season of Mist.

[this promotion has ended]

The Bled are streaming their entire new album Heat Fetish on their MySpace page and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. Most importantly it’s fucking heavy, by far the heaviest thing this band has ever done. It’s a lot of other things as well, but you’ll have to check it out for yourself to find out.

This record’s got equal heaping of early Thrice and modern Dillinger Escape Plan, and because The Bled are above just ripping off their heroes there’s plenty of their own flavor on The Heat too. I’m especially digging the tracks that we’re just now hearing for the first time. “Need New Conspirators” and “Shouting Fire in a Crowded Room” are rocking my speakers at the moment, but nearly every song so far’s got something to offer. I can’t wait to get my hands on this record and really learn it. Definitely one of my favorite records so far released in this young year of 2010.

-VN

I long ago gave up trying to keep track of the crazy batshit saga that the lyrics of Coheed & Cambria’s songs tell. I just like the music, mmmkay?

Speaking of the music, Coheed have a new song called “The Broken” currently streaming on their website (take that, MySpace!). The song comes from Coheed’s forthcoming album Year of the Black Rainbow which comes out April 13th and is the first Coheed release to feature ex-Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie.

I like the song. It’s got some pretty nifty fretwork and it’s catchy in a way that’s typical of Coheed & Cambria. I couldn’t get into 2007′s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow as much as I did 2005′s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (what a fuckig mouthful) but the former did have a few really solid tracks.

Don’t ask me what this new album is about and how it relates to the overall story because I don’t know and I don’t care.

-VN

Thanks: The 1 billion of you who emailed us with this news.

Back in August I lamented the fact that The Bled signed with haircut-core label Rise Records, home to such “artists” as Attack Attack!, Breathe Carolina, Dance Gavin Dance a whole slew of other bands sure to make you cringe. The move didn’t make sense for a band like The Bled with hardcore roots and actual real, live aggression… a band that’s actually, ya know, good.

But now the band has released the first two songs from their forthcoming record Heat Fetish (out March 2nd) and they’ve completely made me eat my words. The two new songs, “Smoke Breaks” and “Moutheater” — both now streaming on The Bled’s MySpace page — are easily the two heaviest songs the band has ever written. And we’re not just talking in relative terms here… these two songs are heavy as fuck compared to anything by any band. We’re talking Converge and Dillinger territory here. Seriously. If you’ve never listened to The Bled because you thought they were part of a certain scene, now is the time to throw all of your preconceptions out the window and give them a shot.

Heat Fetish is suddenly one of my most anticipated record of 2010. With two tracks like these new ones, how can it not be?

-VN

Ohmylordee, have you heard of Bay Area noise-prog-metallers Name? Most likely you have, as they’ve been around for a few years and are signed to Lifeforce Records. Whether you have or haven’t isn’t the issue… it’s that they’ve got a new album coming out in about a month and you ought to pay attention.

The cover art and track listing for Name’s new album Internet Killed The Audio Star have surfaced, along with a tracklisting and two brand new songs on Name’s MySpace. Name are cut from the same sonic cloth as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan but I’d say they verge a bit closer to traditional metal and more wholly endorse Prog with a capital “P.” There’s plenty of raw motherfucking aggression but no tough-guy hardcore posing and no spazz-outs that are basically un-followable. I’d wager that a whole lot more folks would know about this excellent band if not for their awkward and un-Google-able band name moniker.

Internet Killed the Audio Star will be released on February 16th in the US and April 19th in Europe. Listen to two tracks from that album pronto, then come back here and let us know what you think.

-VN

In the second tragedy to befall a Brooklyn drummer this Autumn (the other being the freak death of Maserati’s Jerry Fuchs), Spylacopa drummer Troy Young was shot and killed in his own apartment, according to the NY Daily News [via Metal Insider]. Spylacopa was (is?) an experimental project that featured members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Candiria, Isis and Made Out of Babies. Young had also logged time in bands The Spines and State of Emergency.

“Drummer Troy Young, played on the Spylacopa EP, was shot to death in his apartment. Sad day. Talented drummer and nice person, 29yrs old,” read an update on Dillinger Escape Plan / Spylacopa frontman Greg Puciato’s Twitter page.

The Post reports that Young was shot once in the shoulder, and that the bullet pierced his heart. No suspects or motives are known at this time.

I can’t speak to Young’s talent the way I could to Fuchs’, as I’m really not too familiar with his work outside of Spylacopa… but any guy who can hang with the rest of those dudes has got to be quite talented. And any time the metal community loses a member is always a sad day. Please share your memories of Troy Young in our comments section.

-VN

A+ update Benjamin, A fucking plus.

For those of you goyim (that’s yiddish for “non Jews”) who aren’t familiar with the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur (which was this past Monday, hence Axl’s lack of posts that day), this video update from the Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman should serve as an excellent primer.

We also get an interview with producer Steve Evetts about new drummer Billy Rymer, and we get some footage of Weinman tracking guitars with the rest of the band’s tracks blaring behind him. Sounds like vintage Dillinger to me.

-VN

We’ve covered industry pundit Bob Lefsetz in this space before (most famously his public debate with Ki$$ scumbag Gene Simmons); Lefsetz’s rants against the music industry are sometimes pure genius while his take on modern music is more often than not woefully out-of-touch, but he’s nothing if not endearing in his conviction and passion for the art form of music. His latest notable quotable (as deemed so by Bram Teitelman of Metal Insider) heaps praise upon Nine Inch Nails opening act Dillinger Escape Plan, whose noise/math metal we’ve of course been following for years but who’ve just reached the level where they’re on the radar of walled-up industry higher-ups like Lefsetz:

Encore two was performed with the Dillinger Escape Plan. An act I’d never heard of, but I’ll never forget. A complete band, a NIN doppelganger, who took the stage with such energy that you could feel it blasting in your face. The drummer pounded, then they kicked around his big bass drum, threw it in the air. The guitarist twirled his guitar around his body, again and again. And the lead singer jumped into the audience. Rick Mueller said it was the most exciting act he’d seen all year, Jim said he wanted to see them again. All I’ll say is they got my attention!

Click to read more…

When Oxbow first released its debut album Fuckfest back in 1990, most of you were listening to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer (Lord knows I sure was!). So it’s almost forgivable nearly 20 years later if you still haven’t heard this cathartic, manic, and, yes, bluesy noise rock record. Thankfully, the dudes at Hydra Head Records will give us all a chance to redeem ourselves when they rerelease this filthy beast on September 15. I got my first crack at Fuckfest this morning, and it’s even better than I had expected, from the twisted classic rock of “30 Miles” to the sprawling cacophonous discord of “Hunger”.

Oxbow doesn’t seem to like updating its official website very much, but fortunately the band has a more active Twitter account packed with rumors (what’s this about a tour with Shrinebuiler and Dillinger Escape Plan?), new album updates, and UK dates for November. West Coasters may want to get themselves over to San Francisco this month, where the band will play two shows (August 20 at The Eagle; August 31 at The Victoria Theater).

-GS

[Gary Suarez sings songs for the French. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Coheed & Cambria skinsman Chris Pennie has taken some time out of his day to record a quick video segment with us in which he shares the metal albums he’s currently spinning. Without spilling the beans so you don’t have to click that play button, we’ll just say this: he’s got awesome taste in metal! No surprise, given the guy played drums for The Dillinger Escape Plan for an entire decade.

Catch Coheed & Cambria on the peanut-butter-and-jelly-like combination tour with Heaven & Hell starting this Friday. Full list of dates after the jump.

[This exclusive has now ended.]

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Yesterday, at 10 a.m., our friends at Metal Insider reported that Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz has recorded guest vocals for the new Every Time I Die album.

This morning at 1 a.m., they reported that ETID drummer Mike Novak has split from the band due to “personal conflicts.”

Coincidence?

While you ponder that, enjoy the new ETID song below, entitled “The Marvelous Slut.” Metal Injection discovered it floating around on YouTube. It originally appeared on a recent Hurley-Epitaph Records compilation, which you can download here.

And, yes, that is Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato doing guest vox.

-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

This interesting bit of news trickled down the Interwebs grapevine yesterday. Seems DEP’s contract with Relapse has ended, and the band will release their next record on Season of Mist in collaboration with their own Phonogetic Records.

Zuh?

Click to read more…

Last month, The Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato lashed out at President Barack Obama in a lengthy blog post, taking the sitting prez to task for the bailout and calling him “George W. Bush lite, wearing a young black man costume.”

Well, you’d assume that Obama a) has never heard of The Dillinger Escape Plan and b) therefore would not have heard about/cared about what Puciato had to say.

Apparently, this is not the case.

Read President Obama’s response to Puciato after the jump… it’s a doozy.

Click to read more…

Actually, we don’t have to pirate our own articles. Plenty of other websites do that for us, often without giving us credit or linking back to us. Once upon a time someone even accidentally included one of our bylines in their cut and paste job. Said “writer” apologized but then went on to shamelessly rip us off many more times, which was nice, because it shows his apology was sincere. You know who else tried to pass off someone else’s work as their own? The guy who went on to shoot Dimebag. So good company you keep, fellas.

Here are other ethically questionable decisions people made in the metal world this week:

• Hasidim moshed, we made punny jokes.
• Matt Heafy and Paolo Gregoletto of Trivium asked fans to illegally burn and share the band’s music.
• We’re streaming God Dethroned’s entire new album until Tuesday; listen now! We also debuted new tracks from Animals as Leaders and Burning Human.
• Arch Enemy choose to re-record old material; we choose to stop talking about this project from hereon out (starting… now!).
• Tyson vs. Holyfield 3 Underoath vs. Avenged Sevenfold! We love this kind of shit.
• Some Russian high school black metallers headbanged for show and tell, and we pondered how to improve our corpsepaint skillz.
• The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato sounded off against President Barack Obama. You sounded off against each other.
• We looked at new releases from Chimaira, God Dethroned and Goes Cube.

Next week brings more contests, more interviews, more new music streams you won’t be able to hear anywhere else, and at least one confrontation with a singer Axl once gave a terrible review. Come back and read more. You know you want to.

-Vince and Axl

Wowza. Greg Puciato posted this Sunday on his MySpace blog (and I think it’s important to note that it’s his MySpace blog – I don’t know if we can assume this represents the feelings of the entire band). It’s fucking War and Peace length, so wait ’til your boss isn’t around to start reading.

Click to read more…

Twitter is the new Facebook is the new MySpace is the new black. At least in this nascent state of the Twitter explosion, we can be fairly certain the actual band members are behind their Twitter walls, happily tweeting away as they see fit and ignoring the rest. Take The Dillinger Escape Plan’s (@dillingerescpln) latest update:

Collins Pub in Morris plains, every Monday night Lobster for $11.95. Be there if you want to eat giant sea creatures with me and Billy.

Sounds fun. Gotta be Ben Weinman, right? Every good Jew loves lobster. If I lived in Jersey I’d totally hit that shit up! Mmmm, lobster. Interesting fact: the lobster pictured at left is 50 pounds and was named “Lemmy” by the man who caught it.

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Is Twitter the new Facebook (if Facebook was, in fact, the new MySpace)? MetalSucks isn’t gonna wait to find out, and has now officially joined 2008 by signing up for Twitter (follow us!). In case you’re over the age of 20 and not yet hip to Twitter, Twitter is a social networking site that’s basically just the “status update” section of Facebook with everything else stripped away. Users can update their profiles with short messages and links with quick updates about what they’re currently doing (140 characters or less), from a web interface or from their mobile phone. Musicians have begun dabbling in the world of Twitter, and, naturally, this provides loads of entertainment for us.

Aside from the obvious humor inherent in a bunch of br00tal metal dudes doing something that’s called a “Tweet,” some notable metal musicians are already ensconced in the world of Twitter. And what’s cool about it is that you know, at least until marketing department heads become hip to it, that you’re getting a direct link to the actual person. When Vernon Reid Tweets about the guy that designed his custom pedalboard, you know it’s him. When Fred Durst Tweets about a tattoo of Frankenstein he’s getting… uh, you know it’s him, for better or worse. Let’s look at what some notable quotables in the metal world are saying on Twitter:

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Not just because they plan to continue bringing you dissonant goodness by recording a new album in mid-2009 but because they’d like to hear your opinions on your favorite DEP songs and just about everything else:

Oh, yeah, just out of curiosity…what’s everyone’s favorite Dillinger song? Is there a song you wish we would play live that we don’t ever seem to? I’m curious…we’ve got a lot of different shit out now and it’s interesting to hear what you have to say about it all. You guys hear a lot of our opinions about everything under the sun but we don’t get to hear yours too much….

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In the spirit of our infamous Cripple on Cripple and Beard on Beard interviews (with Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman and Killswitch Engage’s Justin Foley, respectively), we here at the MetalSucks School of Rabbinical Studies would like to introduce a new feature we hope will be ongoing but fear won’t, due to the, err… somewhat limited pool of jews in metal. Our first target was Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy, a Long Island jew if ever there was one; dude flat out denied the interview request. Feh. Thankfully Eyal Levi from Daath was there to save the day like Moses parting the Red Sea. Eyal, ever the mensch, was even so kind as to bless us with an mp3 of Daath’s brand new song “Sharpen the Blades” from their new album The Concealers, which should hit stores some time in ’09. After the jump, read my [Jewish] exchange with Eyal and download the new track for the price of a mouse click.

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