Until their new song, “Time and Time Again,” premiered online today (stream it here), I had not heard any music from Kill Devil Hill, the new band featuring Rex Brown and Vinny Appice. (I was about to type those dudes’ previous credits when I realized that if you don’t know who Brown and Appice are, I don’t especially care about you anyway.) I know there have been some live bootlegs floating around — the band has been gigging for awhile now — but I somehow managed to avoid them and wait for the real thing.

And now that I’ve heard it… it’s good. Not great. But not bad at all.

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I recently posted this message on my Facebook page, but most of my followers there are of the true crime persuasion. I’d love to hear from you Metal Suckahs as y’all are the ones any books about metalheads are going to be geared towards.

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Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I said I’d be in my cave finishing up my newest true crime book, TEACH ME TO KILL, but I already need a brain break.

As many of you know, I am branching out of true crime (don’t worry, I will always write TC books!) and into music autobiographies. My first book I will be helping out with is the autobiography of former Pantera lead singer/current DOWN singer Philip H. Anselmo and his incredible story.

I’m looking at the long-term picture here and hope to continue writing books about (and hopefully with) some of my favorite musical artists in the worlds of rock, rap, and heavy metal.

Please feel free to vote for one or more of the following artists whom you’d like to see me write a book alongside. Also, please add any artists I might have missed that you think I could do a good job with his or her book.

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…Max Cavalera recently revealed during a radio interview (video above) that he’s working on his autobiography with British journalist Joel McIver, who has previously penned such metal-themed tomes as The Bloody Reign of Slayer and Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica. The forward will apparently be written by Dave Grohl, who collaborated with Cavalera as part of his Probot project back in ’04.

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Friendly reminder: as of RIGHT THIS SECOND, the legendary Richard Christy from Death, Iced Earth, Control Denied, and, oh yeah, The Howard Stern Show, is at the MetalSucks/Vertebrae 33  booth at New York Comic Con signing copies of Charred Walls of the Damned‘s ridiculously rocking new album, Cold Winds on Timeless Days, which is out NOW on Metal Blade Records. He’ll be there ’til 7 pm, so there’s still time for you to hop on a bus, subway, or in a cab and get your ass down there — we’re booth #2625. Myself and/or Vince are also there now, and will be there tomorrow and Sunday, too, and we may have some other special guests in store for you yet. So come on by, pick up some free swag courtesy of Indie Merch and Metal Blade, hang out, whatever. It’ll be a blast! Get all the details here.

And now, some other fun shit we did this week:

• We premiered a new live recording of Death’s “Leprosy” and new music from Trapped Under Ice.
• We spoke to Grutle Kjellson from Enslaved, Rex Brown from Kill Devil Hill/Pantera/Down, producer Shane Frisby, and Skateboard Marketing’s Munsey Ricci.
• Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself occupied Wall Street, GWAR’s Dave Brockie gave us the blow-by-blow on the NFL, and Eyal Levi from Dååth and Levi/Werstler and Audiohammer Studios got all Pacino-in-Heat on us.
• We checked out the latest releases from Warbringer and Årabrot.
• We continued The Countdown to The Metal Suckfest and launched a contest in which you can win some sweet swag and a meet and greet session at the show.
• We watched some inter-Emmure drama unfold.
• We begged Sasha Frere-Jones from The New Yorker to stop writing about metal forever.
• We enjoyed the use of Nine Inch Nails in the new trailer for The Avengers.
• We got excited about Cynic’s new line-up + song.
• We celebrated the best Dragonforce cover ever.

Have a terrific, relaxing weekend everyone. See ya Monday, if we don’t see ya at NYCC!

-AR

I’m gonna tell you right now – I don’t usually get all “fan-girl” and nervous talking to people, even those I greatly admire on an artistic level. When I was told I was going to be interviewing Rex Brown, the fact that I was going to be talking to someone who helped mold my musical tastes as a kid didn’t hit me until probably an hour or so beforehand, and that’s when, admittedly, I started to get a bit weak in the knees. I started to remember so vividly hearing Pantera’s “Floods” for the first time on a family road trip to the Midwest, how it chilled me like nothing else ever had, and those days speeding down 95 in my first car blasting Cowboys from Hell. As one of the founding members of Pantera – up until their unfortunate end – he helped open the gates for a great deal of us to the world of metal. With his involvement in Down, as well as Crowbar, that love for many of us was kept alive.

Of course, with his recent departure from Down, some may have been wondering what else, if anything, Rex had next up his sleeves. Thankfully, there’s plenty.

As soon as I answered the phone, one of the first things Rex said to me (with a laugh) was that he’d been “giving interviews all day.” That in itself I thought was a true testament to someone who, even after over two decades working at it, is not looking to give up anytime soon – a fact that’s emphasized by his enthusiastic involvement with his new band Kill Devil Hill. The new project, featuring Vinny Appice (Heaven and Hell, Dio, Black Sabbath) on drums, Mark Zavon (Ratt, 40 Cycle Hum) on guitar and Jason “Dewey” Bragg (Pissing Razors) on vocals, is currently on tour and looking forward to releasing their yet-to-be-named debut album early next year on SPV/Steamhammer Records.

Talking with Rex was not only an experience in that he’s someone I have long admired; it was something getting to speak with someone so excited and hopeful about his current conquest. After over two decades playing music – through the triumphs as well as the hardships – to be as enthusiastic and passionate is not an incredibly common thing. I think that’s something that all of us can not only appreciate, but hopefully aspire to.

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2007′s Down III: Over the Under was pretty sweet, right? I can’t speak for the masses, but I thought the album found Down sounding as good and as energized as ever after a five-year hiatus following the release of Down II. Five years will be the magic number once again, as according to guitarist Kirk Windstein via Twitter the band is recording a new album (Down IV?) this month:

Kirk followed that up with another tweet three days later saying that recording had already commenced, so it seems like things are moving pretty quickly. New Down record in Spring 2012?

Bassist Rex Brown, however, will not be participating. Following months of speculation and a statement by drummer Jimmy Bower, Rex finally broke his own silence on the situation. From an interview with Metal Maiden:

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Clearly, MetalSucks is the best media outlet of any kind in the entire universe, but a close second would have to be High Times. The fantasy I have in my head is that the magazine’s offices are constantly shrouded in a cloud of weed smoke so thick everyone has to call out to one another and walk slowly with their hands extended to ensure they don’t crash into anything — kinda the human equivalent of gondolas turning through the canals of Venice — and then once a month someone is like, “Oh, shit, dude, we have a magazine to print!” But I’m sure it’s actually much more professional than that.

ANYWAY, the reason I mention High Times now is because they’ve done two things this week which are extremely metal. First, they debuted a new track by 3, which is called — wait for it — “High Times.” So that worked out pretty well. You know we got nuthin’ but love for 3 here at MS — in fact, we recently debuted a new 3 track ourselves, “React” — so we highly recommend that you head over to the High Times website and check that shit out. 3′s new album, The Ghost You Gave to Me, comes out October 11 via Metal Blade.

The second awesomely metalicious thing High Times did this week is get Phil Anselmo really stoned and do an epic four-part interview with him, in which he discusses, amongst other things, how he smoked herb for the first time when he was six years old. That is fucking YOUNG, dude. At least now I know what to do when I wanna ensure that my son is the next great heavy metal front man. You can check out part one of the interview below, then go here to watch the rest.

-AR

[Anselmo interview news via Metal Injection]

via WWTDD

So much of this week ended up being devoted to the Big Four that I honestly don’t wanna think about any of those bands again for at least the remainder of the year. So to wrap this shit up, here’s everything Big Four-related we did this week:

• We live snarked the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium.
• We went to an Anthrax press conference.
• We went to the Metal Masters clinic and saw Phil Anselmo jam some Pantera with various Big Fourers.
• We debated the merits and demerits of Anthrax’s Worship Music.
• We listened to Lars Ulrich on Howard Stern.
• We had fun at the expense of Dave Mustaine’s faith.
• We had a Big Four edition of Show Us Your Metalsucks.
• We helped Metal Injection with their Big Four-themed Livecast.
• I also made an appearance in Metal Injection’s Big Four video recap, which you MUST watch because a) it’s awesome and b) I’m so handsome!

Man — MetalSucks photographer Miikka Skaffari has really outdone himself this time! His photos always kick ass, but these latest shots, of Down performing in San Francisco last week, are a whole other kind of epic, epic, awesome, epic. See that shot above? That’s just a small taste of the killerness (killerocity?) of this batch of pics. Jump ahead to see the rest — they are really, ridiculously great!

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Interview with Jimmy Bower about Down… by HecticCase

I don’t think this news is gonna come as a galloping shock to anyone, but at least now it’s official after nearly two months of speculation: Rex Brown will not be returning to Down. Drummer Jimmy Bower, also of the great Eyehategod (among other bands), confirmed it in a recent video interview with Metalchroniques.fr (above). Here’s his quote:

“We just wish him to find peace within himself and be healthy, and we weren’t seeing that for Down. We have Pat [Bruders] now. Pat’s playing bass. Pat’s from New Orleans. Makes sense. He plays with Crowbar as well.

“We love Rex to death, man, and wish him the best. He has a new project as well — Kill Devil Hill with Vinny Appice— and I know he’s having fun doing that. He gave Pat his blessing, so it was on a good term. But he will not be back.”

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Last summer, D.X. Ferris interviewed Corrosion of Conformity’s guitarist Woodroe “Woody” Weatherman for us about the band’s Animosity-era line-up reunion, and, of course, the issue of whether or not Pepper Keenan would ever return to the fold was one of the topics of conversation. Here’s what Weatherman had to say about the subject:

“It’s kind of a weird way it came about. It was Pepper that stirred everybody’s bones back into motion. He had brought us up, doing some things in Europe this summer. Then with Mullin coming back in, being the original guy or whatever, that kind of fell through. Our cages had been rattled.

“Mullin came out of the shadows, so we kept on going with it. When the time is right, when Pepper is willing and everybody else is willing, we’ll probably do more four-piece stuff later on.”

Well, hey, guess what? Keenan recently joined the band onstage during a gig in Bilbao, Spain. Here’s some fan-filmed video:

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Keenan is back in the band for good — he seems to be pretty busy with Down at the moment — but it is one step closer to getting that four-piece reunion going. So I’ll take it, and happily.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Rex Brown is not participating in Down’s current tour, and this interview seems to suggest that he’s never coming back to the band. And so, in an effort to get some clarification, The Delaware County Daily Times, your leading source for rock and metal news, decided to ask Down’s Pepper Keenan outright whether or not Brown is still Down. His answer?

“I don’t know what to really say on that; he’s not out of the band, but he’s not playing with us live.”

Well, that’s reassuring!

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The current run of Down live dates — bloody Phil Anselmo and all — do not include bassist Rex Brown, who has quietly been replaced by Crowbar bassist Patrick Bruders. I’ve searched the Interwebs far and wide (read: one page of Google results) and cannot find any official announcement from Down, Rex or Bruders on the matter, only simple mention of the fact that Bruders is filling Rex’s spot for the forseeable future.

In light of the fact that Brown recently announced the Kill Devil Hill supergroup with Vinnie Appice and Mark Zavon (Ratt,  W.A.S.P., 40 Cycle Hum) and the fact that he recently quit southern alterna-rockers Arms of the Sun, nosy bloggers are left wondering… why isn’t Brown playing with Down right now? Is trouble afoot? MetalAssault.com [via Metal Insider] got right to the point with Rexy Rex at Kill Devil Hill’s live debut this past Friday. If you haven’t the patience for the above 9-minute interview, here’s the money quote:

This is it. I’m not doing any Down. This is my devotion right here. There’s no side gigs, or anything else that’s going on. So this is what it’s going to be for the future.

To me that sounds like Rex Brown is no longer a member of Down… although I’ve been wrong before and certainly will be again. We, citizens of the rumor-mongering metal-verse, demand clarification on the matter! How about it, Down?

-VN

A couple of weeks ago I was flipping through the new issue of Decibel when I got a paper cut. In between bouts of crying, I was able to communicate to a MetalSucks Mansion Monkey to tell Vince that I had taken ill — gravely ill, in fact — and that he might need to try and carry on MetalSucks without me forever, or, at the very least, for the next few weeks.

My point being — I am not a very tough dude.

But Phil Anselmo is.

It seems that while doing a show with Down here in NYC last night (Note to selves: How were we not there?!?), Mr. Anselmo got whacked in the noggin with guitarist Pepper Keenan’s instrument (during the song “Lifer,” which, according to this tweet from Sirius XM’s Jose Mangin, Anselmo had dedicated to Dime), and consequently started bleeding from the head.

And he just kept performing anyway.

Bad. Ass.

Here’s some fan-filmed video footage… you can get a good look at Phil’s injury starting around the 2:03 mark:

You can check out more videos at Metal Insider, who first alerted us to this story.

This obviously isn’t the first instance of a vocalist not being a sissy-cry-baby-face — in just the past year, I’ve seen Made Out of Babies’ Julie Christmas and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney suffer similar injuries (although I think those were accidentally-self-inflicted) — but it is the most Anselmoey.

-AR

No, seriously — COREY AND ANSO FUCKING KILLED IT THIS WEEK while we were at the Golden Gods, didn’t they? I’m still catching up, but I’ve been getting a serious boner from reading all the shit I didn’t write this week. Some of my favorite pieces that neither Vince nor myself had anything to do with:

• Phil Anselmo’s thoughts on weed, and, oh yeah, Corey’s update on the progress of Mr. Anselmo’s book.
• This awesome interview with Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan. (Okay this one I actually had a little to do with, but Anso did the heavy lifting.)
• Mike IX Williams from EyeHateGod/Arson Anthem/Drip/Crawlspace/Outlaw Order’s thoughts on being underground and unsigned.
• Anso’s mourning for the loss of Nevermore.
• Corey’s analysis of the Columbine massacre on its twelfth anniversary.
• Anso’s assertion that Nicko McBrain wants to fuck Lady Gaga.
• Corey’s wrangling of about a million cool metal folk to give their thoughts on weed, too.
• Anso’s decisions to let his hatred for Kiss flow.
• Corey’s coverage of K.K. Downing’s retirement from Judas Priest.
• Anso’s coverage of Dream Theater’s ongoing search for a new drummer.

Unfortunately for all of you, Vince and I are now back full-time, and you’ll be stuck with us all next week. See ya then.

-AR

Weed is an awesome so-called “drug”, but it’s NOT for everyone. And throughout certain periods of my life, it’s been that way for me too. Growing up it was fun and my friends and i smoked a whole lot (!) whilst jamming…but somewhere in my mid-twenties, it would/could make me paranoid and uncomfortable in my own skin, so I didn’t/wouldn’t partake as often.

As some of you guys may or may not know, I am currently working with Philip H. Anselmo on his autobiography. In fact, the questions I get asked most often these days are, “How’s that book with Phil coming along?” or “When’s Phil’s book coming out?” or “What’s it like working with Phil?”

I can happily inform you that, though it is a slow process, Philip’s book is going to kick major fuckin’ ass!

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Trying to keep up with the changes at a music festival is like trying to herd a pack of rabid cats. The South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival is the biggest musical kitty corral of them all. That’s why you have me here to help you make heads or tails of all your SXSW metallic/hard rock/punk rock/experimental/etc. needs.

There have been plenty of line-up changes since my last SXSW music post over a week ago. First on the list is the welcome news that NOLA-sludgekings eyehategod will team up with doom metal pioneers Pentagram to close out the conference on Saturday, March 19 (both bands will be going on after midnight, so, technically, they are playing on March 20) at the Scoot Inn. They’ll be joined by a stellar group of bands including Cough and Naam.

Other notable additions include YOB, Slough Feg, and Zoroaster.

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How come Miss Piggy can’t count to 70? ‘Cause every time she gets to 69, she gets a frog in her throat.

ANYWAY, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:

• We debuted new videos from DevilDriver and Intronaut.
• We also debuted new music from Battilus and VYGR.
• We started a cool new series of tour blogs from Eluveitie and learned fifteen new things about Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein.
• We spoke to Josh Scogin from The Chariot and Mark LeVine, author of Heavy Metal Islam.
• We checked out the latest releases from Regicide, Dragged Into Sunlight, Macabre, and Abraham.
• We helped Burzum launch a new clothing line.
• We learned a sexy new stage move from Dr. Acula.
• We continued to feel embarrassed for Slash.
• We pleaded with record labels to start using Bandcamp and stop using MySpace.
• We mourned the loss of Guitar Hero.

Speaking of 69ing: Monday is Valentine’s Day. I’m just reminding you in case you’re a burnout and you forgot to get something for your woman. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya.

-AR

The record release season is now in full swing. New albums by Motorhead, Crowbar and Belphegor stand out today in a week that’s got some other relatively high-profile metal releases coming out as well. After the jump, Vic Vaughn slices and dices them all.

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