MetalSucks

Down, Melvins, and Weedeater are playing a show in New York City tonight. Holy crap in my pants, I cannot recall the last time I was this excited about a metal show. Three of my favorite stoner metal artists on one bill! The tour continues throughout September, wrapping up in Louisville, KY on the 28th. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this incredible tour is that none of these bands have new albums out. So basically, this one is for the fans. And the money. WIN-WIN!

In related news, those darned Melvins will be releasing a remix album called Chicken Switch via Mike Patton’s Ipecac imprint the day after the Down tour ends. Of course, ever the contrarians, the band has opted to provide entire albums as source material, as opposed to single songs. Participants include a whole mess of freaks, including Merzbow, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, and David Scott Stone, the latter of these boasting an impressive resume recording and playing with Big Business, Fantomas, and The Locust (as well as the Melvins). Drummer Dale Crover is also a member of the doom colossus known as Shrinebuilder, which finally revealed its FUCKING AMAZING first song to the public and is playing a handful of live gigs.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is erecting a pillamyd. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

This is Phil Anselmo performing Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell” in Tel Aviv.

And… that’s all I have to say about this.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

Thanks to Kit Hart for sending us this of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds jamming on “Bury Me in Smoke” with Down at Greece’s Rockwave Festival a couple of weeks back. The quality’s only so-so, but still, it’s one of the awesome team-ups I dig so much, and this may be the only documentation of its existence. Enjoy.

-AR

Andrew W.K., I Get Wet (Island, 2002)
Andrew W.K. – vocals
Jimmy Coup – Guitar
Erik Payne – Guitar
Frank Werner – Guitar
Gregg Roberts – Bass
Donald Tardy – Drums
Produced by Andrew W.K., John Fields, Scott Humphrey, TSD, Frank Vierti

It has been suggested by some of our commenters that I don’t belong here. Be it my distaste for deathgrind, my inability to appreciate the tr00 kvlt nature of Norwegian black metal, or the fact that I don’t give a flying fuck about Protest The Hero, I’ve always felt like an outsider around you people. Yet at no point did I feel so out of place than during the countdown of the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far. Sure, I participated. I submitted a list. I presumed many of my picks would never make the cut (Unsane’s Visqueen; Zozobra’s Harmonic Tremors), but also acknowledged less esoteric favorites of mine from the past nine-and-a-half-years (Boris Pink; Down’s III: Over The Under) that I thought had a shot. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer disappointment these past few weeks when none of my favorite albums made the goddamn list.

Rather than be mature about this sad state of affairs, I am now going to explain why everyone who voted in this poll is a fucking butthole for not selecting Andrew W.K.’s 2002 masterpiece, I Get Wet.
Click to read more…

A couple of months back I complained about the expensive All Tomorrow’s Parties weekender in the Catskills region of New York. Though noise rock royals The Jesus Lizard and The Melvins are both scheduled to appear at the September festival, I just haven’t been able to justify the hundreds of dollars I’d have to shell out for tickets and to stay at some bullshit resort swarming with trustafarians. Thankfully, it turns out that we can all save our hard-earned dough (and avoid contracting swine flu), as both of these bands are planning other U.S. performances that wont break the bank.

Click to read more…

Several of you (ok… three) have emailed MetalSucks urging us to check out Seventh Void — the new band featuring Johnny Kelly and Kenny Hickey of Type-O Negative — whose debut record Heaven is Gone just dropped last month on Vinnie Paul’s Big Vin Records. Seventh Void sound nothing like the goth-laden, morose metal played by half of the band in their day jobs; instead we get southern-tinged, bluesy hard rock with little pretense that sounds more like Down, Corrosion of Conformity or early Soundgarden than anything Type-O have done to date. Check out their new video for the Heaven is Gone’s title track below, then have a listen to more on Seventh Void’s MySpace page. Look out for MS interviews later this month with both Johnny Kelly and Vinnie Paul!

-VN

…than with a clip of Down playing “Hail the Leaf” in 1995?

Look at that crowd, dude! That doesn’t seem very chill at all.

And, hey, why not? After the jump check out the band doing “Bury Me in Smoke” at the Download Festival in 2006. Vince and I were there, about as close to the front as you can get. Ah, the memories.

Click to read more…

Happy Fat Tuesday, metal fans! May your evening be full of beads, booze, and bodily harm! In celebration, I tried to find some New-Orleans-Mardi-Gras-type music on my iPod today that would be appropriate for this day, and the closest I came was Down’s III: Over The Under. I love this fucking record.

While we’re still waiting for word on a full list of tour dates for that NOLA supergroup, news that southern sludgesmiths Outlaw Order (essentially Eyehategod minus one guy) are planning a few weeks of U.S. gigs to support 2008’s Dragging Down The Enforcer on the Season of Mist label. Support on all dates comes from Ivan Drago fanatics If He Dies He Dies. To say that these concerts will slay is a huge understatement.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is going to win Mega Millions tonight. He also writes for Brainwashed and sporadically manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No.]

Mostly this week I just watched the Puppy Cam. But when I could pry myself away for a few moments, this is what I focused on:

• Proto-jazz-metallers Intronaut released an artsy new video, as did Protest the Hero and Dir En Grey.
• We interviewed Brother Von Doom.
• Ozzy may be pretty good at shilling for Samsung phones these days, but we still like him better the old way.
• Arsis did some member-swapping. Yes, again.
• We reviewed new releases from The Faceless, The Bronx, and a bunch of awesome bands on Prosthetic Records.
• We contemplated the prospect of new releases by Carcass, Napalm Death and Down.

Party it up, it’s the weekend. See you next Tuesday Monday.

Billboard reports that Down aren’t even close to being done with their current touring cycle on last year’s Down III: Over the Under. The band is currently on the road in Europe supporting Metallica and headlining off-dates, from where bassist Rex Brown reports that Down “is all our priorities now,” and that the band has plans for a full spate of touring in 2009 as well as a new record shortly thereafter.

Though more Down is never bad, I’m not entirely convinced this news is such a good thing.

Click to read more…

Just because I wasn’t that into Kingdom of Sorrow’s eponymous debut doesn’t really mean anything; I know plenty of respectable people who think it was just swell.

So I thought it was worth posting the band’s new, Kevin Custer-directed video for “Lead Into Demise.” I don’t think it’s a very good video, but it’s gonna be a slow news day… I can feel it in my bones.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=31929101;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

Tired at the end your work day? Fire up the bluesy, sludge-doom of Weedeater, fire up a J, and you’ll be well on your way to a better place.

Vocalist/bassist Dave “Dixie” Collins has done time in heavyweights Buzzoven, Bongzilla, and Sourvein. Thus, Weedeater unsurprisingly brings more downtuned filth, this time in the NOLA sludge/doom style of Eyehategod, Down, and so on.

In my own words, I’d call them a slower, Crowbarified version of New Hampshire’s Scissorfight.

Invisible Oranges has three mp3s for your enjoyment today, so eat it up. Their latest album God Luck and Good Speed is out now on Southern Lord.

Oh man, I really need this today.

-VN

Well well well. Kingdom of Sorrow, the self-titled, forever-in-gestation project from Kirk Windstein and Jamey Jasta, has leaked a full month before it’s due to hit stores, and can currently be found at Kill the Music. I haven’t had a chance to give it a listen yet, but it should make a nice way to kick off the weekend…

Kingdom of Sorrow will be released February 19 through Relapse.

-AR

Between Windstein and Jasta’s commitments to Down, Crowbar, Hatebreed, Icepick, and writing a friggin’ coffee table book, I had kind of assumed that Kingdom of Sorrow would be one of those supergroups that never actually played live. But, lo and behold, the band has begun to announce some tour dates:

Feb. 27 – Palladium – Worcester, Massachusetts
Feb. 28 – Ottobar – Baltimore, Maryland
Mar. 01 – Valentines – Albany, New York
Mar. 02 – Knitting Factory – New York, New York
Mar. 04 – El Macombo – Toronto, Ontario
Mar. 06 – Reggie’s Rock Club – Chicago, Illinois
Mar. 07 – Magic Stick – Detroit, Michigan

No word on whether or not the band will be traveling on that scary looking horse from their cover art.

Kingdom of Sorrow’s self-titled debut comes out February 19, a.k.a. the same day as half the other exciting winter metal releases (Genghis Tron, Hate Eternal, etc.). Relapse’s small and probably overworked PR department is about as dependable as a rumored release date for Chinese Democracy, so I guess I’ll have to wait for the frickin’ thing to leak just like the rest of you before I can judge the final product. In the meantime, I know where I’ll be on March 2.

-AR

UPDATE: Hey, look at that! The band just posted a new track, “Lead into Demise,” on their MySpace page. Suh-weet. 

Corporate Punishment Records — the LA-based record label specializing in C-level nu-metal bottom feeders, never-wases, and flavor of the moment metalcore — is set to release a record that doesn’t completely suck. On A Pale Horse, a five-piece metal outfit from that bastion of Obama-caucusing and Slipknot-hating-masked-bands, is set to release their new record A Generation of Vipers in March on Corporate Punishment Records; and it doesn’t completely blow.

On A Pale Horse play some amalgam of Black Sabbath, Down and Corrosion of Conformity-inspired groove metal; it ain’t gonna reinvent the wheel, but there’s some pretty decent rockers on their MySpace page, including the incredibly groovy and riff-heavy “Sound the Alarm.” Mic-bearer Aaron Peltz doesn’t always hit the mark, but then again neither does modern day Phil Anselmo. But hey, at least it doesn’t totally blow, and that’s saying something!

-VN

In a recent list of musicians’ favorite albums of 2007 published at SMNnews.com, Down’s Phil Anselmo (ex-Pantera, Superjoint Ritual) rated his own release — Down’s Down III: Over the Under — in his Top 5 releases of 2007 list.

Really? I mean Down’s album was in my Top 10 list of 2007 too, but — His own fucking album? Is Anselmo that far gone that he doesn’t realize that Top 5 lists are for, ya know, OTHER bands’ albums? Is he actually that much of an egotist? Or is it possible he only listened to 4 other albums in 2007?

Anselmo’s other four picks, FYI, were Bad Brains’ Build a Nation, The Sursiks’ I Didn’t Know I Was Singing, Terra Diablo’s Deluge Songs, and Darkthrone’s F.O.A.D.

-VN

I feel like I’ve been waiting for the debut album from Kingdom of Sorrow, the collaboration between Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed) and Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, Down) for-fucking-ever already. So I was very glad to hear that the band’s self-titled debut will finally drop on Relapse on February 19. That’s the same day as the new Genghis Tron album, so, God willing, it will be a day which will live in infamy.

Check out Kingdom of Sorrow’s MySpace page if you haven’t heard any of their music yet. It pretty sounds exactly like a cross between Hatebreed and Crowbar, which, at least if you’re me, is a good thing. And if nothing else, that cover art is pretty cool.

-AR

According to a press release, Phil Anselmo (ex-Pantera, Superjoint Ritual, Down) is set to release the first record from his latest side-project Arson Anthem on Feb 19 through his own Housecore Records label. Arson Anthem also features Mike IX Williams (EyeHateGod, Outlaw Order), “III” (Assjack, Superjoint Ritual) and Collin Yeo (?).

Down fans fear not — it doesn’t appear as if Arson Anthem will threaten Down the way Down threatened Pantera all those years ago. The project was actually born and completed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when Williams moved in with Anselmo and they spent hours listening to Anselmo’s collection of early hardcore bands. So will this be a hardcore band? Says the press release. “Their mission is to re-introduce the roots of painful amplification, raw production, and a TRUE ‘fuck all’ attitude to a movement within a new generation that’s lost the meaning of less complicated ventures. The byway is to be similar to the original brutality of bands like Negative Approach, Poison Idea, Hellhammer, Discharge and Void, amongst others.” We’re cautiously curious about this release.

-VN

[Visit Arson Anthem on MySpace -- though no music has been posted yet]

This video has actually been in the queue for a while, but since someone requested it today, why not? Down’s latest, “On March the Saints.” Summon your inner Beavis as you watch Phil Anselmo be angry…

-VN

Ever see that episode of Beavis and Butthead where a Pantera video comes on and Beavis ruminates on “Pantera’s” (Phil Anselmo’s) childhood? “Damnit, Pantera! This beer is warm, get me another one!” Beavis supposes his father must have told him. “Oh what’s this, is that a tear, Pantera? Is Daddy’s little girl upset?”
At a Down show in Corpus Christi, TX this past Thursday night, Anslemo offered a real-life reenactment after getting pelted twice with beers thrown from the crowd. Anselmo stopped the show and told the crowd to send him the “coward” that threw something at him, and the crowd did indeed cough up a kid who allegedly had thrown one. “Stand up to me! You think you’re so fuckin’ great? Get on your knees, boy!” says Anselmo, channeling the spirit of Beavis. “You show me some fuckin’ respect!” Watch a fan-filmed video, below.

-VN

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/fkPg-5RWz8U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]