MetalSucks

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the current Fear Factory drama because, well, it got boring re-hashing the same old shit over and over again just to get you guys all hot and bothered in the comments (whoops, did I just say that?). To summarize, in case you didn’t read this site missed out over the summer: Dino re-friends Burton Bell and the two start working on new music under the “Fear Factory” name, while Christian and Raymond — currently working on their Arkaea project — rightly object because Fear Factory is supposedly a four-way partnership. Lawsuits and public shit-talking ensue.

Last I checked a resolution between the two warring Fear Factions hadn’t been reached. So either the four men have settled, or Dino and Burton — let’s just call them the baby-eating Fear Faction — just don’t give a fuck. The baby-eating Fear Faction, along with latter-day FF cohorts Byron Stroud [Strapping Young Lad] and Gene Hoglan [Strapping Young Lad, Dethklok, every fucking band ever] — just announced that they have a new album called Mechanized coming out on February 9th via Candlelight Records (!?!).

The new song “Powershifter” has been making the Internet rounds all weekend; stream it below. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like Fear Factory. I imagine some of you will love it and some of you will hate it; place me firmly in the “meh” camp. I loves me some Demanufcature and Obsolete, but 10 years later there are tons of metal bands out there that are way better, more interesting, and more worthy of my listening time.

-VN

I’m not just speaking in the general sense. I mean, in this video, he announces “I’ve got something for all you,” then lets one rip.

What do you think that smelled like? I’d guess half-digested babies.

-AR

Thanks to Manfred Nuggets for the link.

Burton C. Bell has remained pretty quiet on the whole Fear Factory situation up until now, but the good folks at  Rock My Monkey have finally gotten him to open up and do some shit-talkin’ of his own. It’s an audio interview, but Mr. Blabbermouth has transcribed some key portions…

…which I’m not even going to re-print here. Because it’s mostly anti-climatic. But I’ll give you the short version: Bell’s side of the story is that during the mixing of the Dino-less FF offering Transgression, Christian Olde Wolbers started having an affair with the band’s manager, Christy Priske. And I guess things got pretty serious, ’cause the two are married now. Bell found Wolbers and Priske’s shitting where they eat as “completely unacceptable,” and things got worse when Priske, Wolbers and Raymond Herrera allegedly brought Bell some new business arrangement which he also disliked. And then things really fell to shit: Bell says he refused to work with Priske, Wolbers and Herrera refused to let her go and refused to reunite with Dino, and now we have all this fun mud slinging in a public forum.

But here’s the part of the interview I actually found really interesting, and this part I will re-print verbatim:

Click to read more…

I don’t know if Willie Gardner is officially associated with a band known as The Douche Lords or not, but he has their name in his e-mail address and sent me a link to the band’s MySpace page this morning.

Why is this band of interest? As it turns out, they were Dino Cazares’ first band (In case ya haven’t figured it out by now, that’s Dino above).

Click to read more…

I’ve gotten a few e-mails today from people asking me where Vince is. Well, the truth is, Vince can’t write because he’s ill. And he’s quitting the site. No, really, he quit. We didn’t fire him. Swear it. We stand by that statement.

Here’s some other shit that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We’ve heard the new Alice in Chains album, and it is good.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered some of your questions, and will answer more in the future.
• John Bush is coming back to Anthrax because Dan Nelson quit. Oh, wait, no he didn’t. Yes he did. He probably didn’t, though.
• We spoke with Poison the Well’s Ryan Primack and Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson.
• We checked out the latest releases from He Is Legend, Magrudergrind, Novembers Doom, and Clutch.
• Unfortunately, the 10th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos really is a real thing.
• Baby-eater Dino Cazares must be stopped!!!

Alright. Time to go buy a vaporizer of my very own. See ya Monday.

-AR

Anthrax may have stolen this week’s metal gossip thunder, but we’re always happy to re-hash old feuds for entertainment’s sake here at MetalSucks. The latest news had Dino Cazares taking a shot at drummer Raymond Herrera’s playing abilities, while Burton Bell has for the most part taken the high road and remained mum. Herrera and Christian Olde Wolbers both fired back this week, and here’s Wolbers’ latest:

Click to read more…

Oddly enough, the baby sandwich is not the poorly Photoshopped part of this picture.

This is Ray Herrera from a recent interview*:

Click to read more…

Divine Heresy get a lot of somewhat undeserved hate: calling the band out for not being very good would be like calling this writer out for not hitting .458 for the Dodgers. This isn’t to say that the band necessarily deserve defense; in fact, I can’t imagine a solid argument for their existence. But their brand of technical nu-deathcore works surprisingly well, in that it’s not so much awful as it is awfully bland. And while perhaps it’s not fair to commend a band for not being as terrible as they could be, it’s not fair to decry them for not being amazing. If you were expecting them to be a slightly edgier Fear Factory, Bringer of Plagues, their latest album, delivers exactly what you’d think: 42 minutes (strangely enough, to the second) of surgically precise mechanical riffs, big yet terribly obvious grooves, pretty bad nu-metalcore vocals, and nothing particularly memorable.

Click to read more…

“Will someone please tell Dino that his lunch has arrived?”

Holy shit. This is officially my favorite feud of the year.

Click to read more…

Sometimes we don’t want to face the truth about a certain situation. But sooner or later, you always have to be honest with yourself, or face a big ol’ ass whoopin’.

The reunited-but-not-really Fear Factory, which features original members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell but NOT Christian Olde Wolbers or Raymond Herrera, has apparently had to cancel not only what was to be their debut performance in Spain last night, but an entire German tour due to the ongoing legal battle over the band’s name.

Really, you have to wonder how the fuck it got this far that the group booked an entire tour without anyone checking if they had the legal rights to the name. Here’s my best guess about how the conversation between Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell must’ve went:

Click to read more…

Quick re-cap: first original Fear Factory members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell announced they were teaming up with non-original Fear Factory member Byron Stroud and never-a-Fear Factory member Gene Hoglan to start a band that would not be called Fear Factory.

Several weeks later the band announced that they would be called Fear Factory.

Now our pal Anso DF at Hipsters Out of Metal! is reporting that original Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera told some radio show that nu-Fear Factory can’t be called Fear Factory no’ mo’:

Click to read more…

Twenty days ago it was announced that Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares would be joining forces for a new project with Gene Hoglan and Byron Stroud; at the time, I wondered why the hell what is basically a Fear Factory reunion wasn’t going to be called Fear Factory.

Well, turns out it will be called Fear Factory.

Click to read more…

I was never a big Fear Factory person so someone please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but did anyone ever really care about any of the members of that band who weren’t Burton C. Bell or Dino Cazares?

I ask because after about a year of speculation that the original Factory would be reuniting, it’s been announced that, yes, Bell and Cazares will now be working together again – but as a new band with a different, still to be determined name.

Click to read more…

You may have noticed that one of the Google ads that keeps popping up around here recently is for some group called Hollywood Undead (In case you’re retarded, you should know that we actually have no control over what Google ads pop up on our site.). After seeing the same picture of this band day after day, I finally decided to check them out for myself.

Well, I would have been better off being the meat in a fuck sandwich with Billy Milano and Dino Cazares. Do people really still make, listen to, or in any way associate themselves with crap like this? Or did someone stick me in a time machine and whisk me away to 1998? I’m fairly certain that Hollywood Undead are just the members of Crazy Town with masks on so they don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of being recognized as the members of Crazy Town.

Anyway, I can’t even get through this entire piece of squirrel feces (For the record, I got as far as the gross chick with the mohawk taking her top off; then I barfed on my computer and turned it off.). Good luck to anyone else who cares to try.

-AR

P.S. Yes, I’m aware that simply by posting this article I’ve probably ensured hundreds of more Google ads for these dudes. Oh well.

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Ponder the Freudian nature of Metallica’s new album artwork as you grill hot dogs this weekend. I know I will. Here are the key headlines from the week:

• Very old Italian friar fronts a metal band, makes most of today’s scene kids look like pussies.
• Metallica released the album artwork for Death Magnetic, which in fact does look just like a hairy old vagina.
• Whitechapel’s new record scanned over 5,000 units in its first week of release… zuh??
• We launched a new mini site-redesign. (BIG ups to our pals at Metal Injection for their help!)
• Tommy Vext and Dino Cazares scuffle backstage at a show; Dino’s wife gets caught in the crossfire and receives some wicked bruises.
• The Haunted’s Peter Dolving blogs for MetalSucks.
• Jucifer gets booted from the stage at a Brooklyn show.
• Snot get back together, hiring Tommy Vext to fill the shoes of the late Lynn Strait. No word about who will fill the shoes of Lynn Strait’s dog.

I know we’re a bit late on this, but this is just the kind of low-brow, tabloid shit we thrive on and I just can’t resist! Adding fuel to the fire that has been the ongoing feud between Dino Cazares (ex-Fear Factory) and now ex-Divine Heresy singer Tommy “Vext” Cummings (now in the recently reunited Snot), Cummings apparently attacked Dino and has wife backstage at the Rockstar Mayhem Fest this past weekend. According to the MySpace blog of Mrs. Cazares: [sent in to us by Noah Skape, among other readers]:

Last night @ The Metal Mayhem Festival, Having a great time with awesome friends backstage. Out of no where comes a beer and fist straight to my face (so horrifying and painful) that…..somebody (Tommy Vext). He has my husband by the hair (it all was so sudden) next thing you know the live nation guards pushed us all over stopping everything and it took several guards to take Tommy down, they took him down and he hit his head on the ground cutting his head open, and even then he was still pulling my husband’s hair, and not letting go.

Click to read more…

Back in April, I bemoaned the inevitably of a Snot reunion, and a whole bunch of you came to the group’s defense. So while I weep, you can all rejoice: guitarists Mikey Doling and Sonny Mayo (who is in need of some cash after getting his Sevendust pink slip), drummer Jamie Miller and bassist John “Tumor” Fahnestock (worst nickname this side of “Shit Stain”) are reuniting under the Snot moniker for two shows later this year, presumably with more to follow. I’d tell you about those two announced shows, but I don’t want you to go. I’m petty like that. Click to read more…

According to the “status” post on Fear Factory’s MySpace, the band will have a “New Album and World Tour in 2009!”

I guess this was inevitable, despite Burton C. Bell’s claims when we interviewed him a few months back that he doesn’t even like metal. Whatwith the Divine Heresy soap opera, the relative failure (commercially) of Bell’s Ascension of the Watchers, the rest of the dudes doing God knows what, and reports of Burton and Dino kissing and making nice at a show in LA a few weeks ago (I can’t find the source, but I remember reading that they chatted), the time seems ripe for an FF reunion.* I’d think there will be plenty of interest too, judging by the fervency of Fear Factory fans who comment on our site.

-VN

*After I published this article, Axl pointed out to me that this news does not necessarily mean that Dino is back in the band. Good point.

Iann Robinson at None Louder is reporting that Divine Heresy broke-up on stage at this past weekend’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival:

“From what was being spread around the monitors were out and vocalist Tommy Vext couldn’t hear himself. After eight songs and fearing his voice might blow Vext requested the band cut the set short. Ex-Fear Factory member Dino Cazares shoved Vext and a physical altercation ensued. As far as we know the band is no more but that could change.”

There’s been no official statement from the band or their label, and everything looks hunky dory on the band’s MySpace page; still, we consider Robinson a very reliable source, so I’m inclined to believe that this is real.

I’m sure that Fear Factory fans will celebrate this news as evidence that a full-on FF reunion is in the works (especially after Dino was spotted hanging out with Burton C. Bell a few weeks ago). Still, even if Divine Heresy were to break up, I’d hope it would be in a somewhat more amicable manner than this; when we interviewed the band back in November, they seemed like genuinely nice dudes who were really enjoying working together, and for former bouncer/security guard Vext, getting to front Dino’s new band must have seemed like winning the lottery.

Divine Heresy are suppposed to kick off their next U.S. tour May 9 in Philly; presumably we’ll get some kind of official word before then.

-AR

At some point, I would really love it if someone could explain to me what makes the Japanese so fucking special that they always get extra tracks with their album releases. Since I was a kid, I was perpetually aware that Japanese albums are superior to American ones, because they always have extra music on them. What’s the fucking deal?

ANYWAY, Divine Heresy are one of the many, many, many bands that have a bonus track on the Japanese version of their release, Bleed the Fifth, that was not released here in the States. Luckily for all the Dino Cazares fans out there, the band is now streaming the track, the typically upbeat monikered “Purity Defiled,” which means it’s only a matter of time until someone rips it into mp3 format, thus allowing all the group’s non-Japanese fans to have it on their iPods, too.

And while we’re on the topic: don’t forget to check out our interview with Divine Heresy. ‘Cause we did an awesome job, if I do so say so myself.

-AR