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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Following the not-necessarily-logical-but-certainly-MetalSucksian conclusion that we need to counteract our recent Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012 series, in which we preview some albums coming out this year about which we are totally stoked, this week we asked our writers:

WHAT ALBUM WILL HIT YOU IN THE FACE WITH A LIMP DICK IN 2012?

Which is just a silly way of asking:

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST ANTICIPATED ALBUM OF 2012?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump!

Click to read more…

Although there are definitely way worse gateway bands than Dragonforce, we haven’t written about the band since March, when they announced Marc Hudson as their new vocalist. And I didn’t even realize they were on tour right now. So I guess that tells you how much I care.

ANYWAY, they’re performing some new songs, “Cry Thunder” and “Last Fallen World,” on said tour, and now of course there are shitty fan-filmed videos of those songs, which you are free to check out below. Only one of them is cocaine-fast and neither clip features the band jumping around on trampolines, which means that they have by and large abandoned the elements which made them memorable in the first place.

“Last Fallen Word” is after the jump, in case you’re too dumb to figure that out yourself.

Click to read more…

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

Mornin’! Anyone else have trouble sleeping last night? I sure did for some reason. And then I had that horrible thing happen where I finally did fall asleep, and then my alarm went off, and it was like, “FUCK!” I just wanted to roll over and go back to bed, y’know?

Luckily, the below video of a couple of dudes doing the best Dragonforce cover I could ever possibly imagine for their high school talent show (or some shit) was in my inbox, and that shit put the perk back in me right quick. Do yourself a favor and watch this ASAP… it’ll put hair on your chest.

Yep yep! You’re awake and ready to face the day now, aintcha?

-AR

Thanks: Saul Hudson

Hey studs and foxes, Anso here. Please accept my most gracious hugz in return for partying with me these last two days. Running this site in the absence of Axl and Vince has been so superfun thanks to you, our cherished MetalSucks readership. I learned a lot of stuff too, for example that I should hereby refrain from “ass fucking [my] boyfriends cock” [sic]. K I’ll work on that while you all re-live some hilarious, informative, and sexy moments from this week:

• We debuted new music by Maruta.
• We spoke to Rob Arnold from Chimaira/Six Feet Under/The Elite, Jack Strong from The Acacia Strain, Varg Vikernes of Burzum, and Takis Kinis from prog-thrash legends Realm.
• We checked out the latest releases from DevilDriver and Wino. Plus, hot hardcore 7″s and all the stuff that Corey Mitchell rocked in February.
• We reveled in official confirmation of the System of a Down tour story we broke ahead of everybody.
• We proffered scientific evidence that to be in a band is a poor life decision.
• We were wowed by Evan Brewer, player of two basses!
• We peeped Devin Townsend’s nod to Sinatra and incredible new jams from Scale The Summit, Between The Buried And Me, Graviton, and All Shall Perish.
• We cheered Taylor Momsen and her desire to “fuck for Satan.”
• We met the new Dragonforce singer. It’s not Corey Taylor.
• We took a stand against D.R.U.G.S.

You’ll have a couple days to de-Anso yourselves, but please do rush right back to MetalSucks on Monday for more hot action when the bosses return from muling heroin in from Ecuador their business trip and we resume our regularly-scheduled action. You may now put your pants back on!

-ADF

Guys, Vince and I have to get on a plane in a couple of hours, which means we have to leave for the airport now, which means I don’t really have time to write anything about this. (Everything you read today will have been pre-programmed; Anso is running the site while we’re away Thursday and Friday.) But I know if we don’t post the news there will be a thousand cranky reader e-mails when we land. So today I’m going to pretend that I work for Blabbermouth, and just cut and paste the press release announcing Marc Hudson as the new singer of Dragonforce. Please accept my most sincere apologies for my total lack of creativity.

But in case you don’t wanna read the press release, the short version is: Marc Hudson is not famous from some other band. He’s a 23 year-old who Dragonforce plucked from obscurity. So, there ya have it.

And now that press release:

Click to read more…

From Beastmaster:

“Over the last week I’ve noticed on the PRP that both Chelsea Grin and Within The Ruins have been denied entry into to Canada for their separate respective tours. Now granted, I don’t necessarily love these two bands, but I’m wondering if they are possibly related in some way…. Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN.”

Yes. They are both related in that I don’t like either of them. Unfortunately, I don’t control the Canadian government, so my guess is that they actually both just have merch dudes with records for possession or something idiotic like that. In any case, yes, I agree it’s ridiculous that Canada gets to be spared Chelsea Grin while Americans have to continue to endure them.

Click to read more…

I don’t think anyone’s ever proclaimed that Dragonforce are a bastion of creativity, but this 10-second ditty posted on Heavy Blog is Heavy drives the point home. Still, I can get down with The Force from time to time in the name of fun. What are you, some kind of fun hater??

Here’s to hoping ZP Theart’s replacement is a bit more creative in the lyrics department.

-VN

Download Dragonforce albums on Amazon for cheap!
for cheap!

FEATURING MEMBERS OF DRAGONFORCE, A LIFE ONCE LOST, ALL SHALL PERISH, CANCER BATS, THE ACCUSED, AIRBOURNE, ABSU, WOE, WHILE SHE SLEEPS, DIAMOND PLATE, MALEFICE, MUTANT SUPREMACY, GENGHIS TRON, AND TRENDKILL BOOKING AND RECORDINGS

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ve be running them in groups of ten to twelve musicians at a time twice a day all week.

After the jump, check out the eighth and final group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

Click to read more…

You really just can’t say no to the over-the-top theatrics of DragonForce, so when Roadrunner Records offered us the opportunity to premiere to the world “My Spirit Will Go On” from DragonForce’s forthcoming live album Twilight Dementia we just couldn’t resist.

The track originally comes from the band’s pre-Roadrunner 2004 release Sonic Firestorm, but of course the new live album, which comes out on September 14th, features tracks from the band’s entire career. It’ll also be the last DragonForce release to feature recently dismissed vocalist ZP Theart, not that we can really say we think DragonForce are any better or worse for it — ’cause it’s all about the other dudes in the band, right?

Check out the live version of “My Spirit Will Go On” from Twilight Dementia below, and pre-order the album here with some nifty extras while supplies last.

[this promotion has ended]

I was totally skeptical about Mose Giganticus — until I saw them live. They put on a really, really fun show. And in that regard, their new video, for “The Left Path,” is a smashing success: It portrays the band gradually winning over a room of jaded hipsters, which is exactly what I saw them do in Brooklyn earlier this summer.

But a big part of what won me over about Mose Giganticus was the use of the keytar by MG mastermind Matt Garfield (who is actually the only “real” member of the band — he writes and records everything, and guitarist Joe Smiley and drummer Dan Eppihimer are just live/touring members). ‘Cause the keytar rules, and more bands that aren’t Dream Theater or DragonForce (e.g., more bands that probably didn’t spend much of high school in a locker) need to use them. And, yes, Garfield does use a regular keyboard as well as the keytar, and maybe he even uses a regular keyboard for this song (I honestly can’t remember), which would make the use the keytar in the clip “dishonest.” But whatever… sometimes you gotta take dramatic license for the sake of awesomeness, dude!!!

In any case, I still dig this song a whole bunch.

Mose Giganticus’ Relapse debut, Gift Horse, is out now. The band is touring right now, and you should totally check ‘em out, and throw your panties at the stage when Garfield whips out his mighty keytar. Get tour dates here.

-AR

[via Popmatters.com]

I’ve always hated top-whatever lists. Best guitarist, best band, best blowjob, best double anal with a horse, whatever. I think that those lists are pretty much all slanted by politics, or bought and paid for. I first got that idea in my head when Titanic won as many Oscars as it did. There were so many movies that year that were far more deserving of the title that my faith in the award system died.

Jump forward about ten years. I just got back in town from the Revolver Golden God Awards. I’ll just say that I’m stoked they exist. Metal needs that in the U.S. I have no issue with their nominees and obviously you can’t pick everyone so this is definitely not directed at them. Again, THIS IS NOT DIRECTED AT REVOLVER MAGAZINE, but the concept of picking “best shredder” or “shredder of the year “is just one of those things you can’t accurately do with the amount of talent that’s out there. You want to nominate Zack Wylde or Dave Mustaine? Okay. That’s cool. Those guys have earned it. But when you leave the circle of greats and legends, how exactly do you pick a BEST shredder? I mean am I alone in thinking that when so many amazing guitarists are overlooked that the award itself loses its meaning? What guitarists am I talking about? Okay… I’ll name a few. In my opinion these guys should be winning all the awards. If I left someone out, it’s because either I haven’t heard of them, I’ve heard them and I don’t think they’re among the very best, I forgot to mention them, or I’ve heard them and I know for a fact that what you think is shredding is just studio trickery.

So here it is. My personal list of whom I think should be winning all the metal guitar awards. Am I biased? Maybe. But I’d like to also think that considering what I do for a living that I’m a good judge of competency in the field. This is in no particular order. These guys all rule for different reasons. (DISCLAIMER: Sorry that there aren’t videos for every dude I mention, but sometimes finding quality footage is tough.)

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I am going to assume that a decent portion of the followers of this site are themselves musicians with bands of their own. That is generally how it goes with metal. There are seamless lines blurred between the “fans” and the “bands” because, like myself, many metal patrons represent both categories. Without this large sector of musician fans, technically proficient bands that cater directly to this base (like Dream Theater, Meshuggah, and Necrophagiast) would be much less successful. So to those musicians, I would like to use this blog to shine a light on one of the harsh truths in all music and entertainment that many musicians choose to ignore -

Image matters a lot in this industry. In fact, it’s probably just as important as the music.
Click to read more…

So Vince is now out of town. Again. Luckily, we really do take after our namesakes; he loves to be out there among the people, partying like he might die tomorrow, and I am a grumpy, mean-spirited recluse. So expect lots of Axl crankiness next week.

In the meantime, here are some things that happened this week:

• Genetic’s Dallas Coyle discussed the importance of positive thinking, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa pondered the various timelines on L O S T, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable listed the five raddest sets of teeth in metal, Eyal Levi from Daath and Levi/Werstler wondered if anyone cares about guitar solos, and adult film actress Bobbi Starr told us the ten metal bands she wishes would gangbang her.
• We debuted new music by The Dillinger Escape Plan, Landmine Marathon, and Jucifer.
• MetalSucks readers interviewed Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne and Vince interviewed Sevendust’s Clint Lowery.
• Sammy O’Hagar reviewed Ov Hell’s The Underworld Regime.
• Is Nergal from Behemoth going to jail for destroying a Bible?
• The singer from DragonForce is available for a White Lion reunion.
• We raged against “Rage.”

And that’s it! Next week will see the debut of our irritating new list, as well as some other fun shit. Have a nice weekend…

-AR

DragnForce have parted ways with vocalist ZP Theart “due to insurmountable differences of musical opinion.” I’m not sure what qualifies as “insurmountable differences of musical opinion” in DragonForceland; did Theart want the music to get even faster? Slower? More keyboards? Fewer guitar solos? A horn section?

Who knows, and, more to the point, who cares? Metalheads seem to fall into one of two categories: people who hate DragonForce with every ounce of their very being, and people who don’t give a shit about ZP Theart. The singer in DF could not be a less important element of their music if his name were “James LaBrie.” Any eunuch can sing about wizards and video games and dying a virgin; what matters in this band is the ridiculousness of their musicianship, not the transvestite standing near the front of the stage.

In other words: I think DragonForce are gonna make it through this, kids.

-AR

‘Cause Phil Freeman, who was the editor-in-chief of Metal Edge until that mag shuttered earlier this year, is doing his Top 100 albums of the 2000s, unveiling twenty albums a day over throughout this week.

I’m just gonna say one word to get the debate rolling:

DragonForce.

Go.

Day 1.

Day 2.

-AR

I’m not actually anti-Guitar Hero/rhythm games the way some people are, and this is only sorta kinda related to metal, but this satirical look into the making of Guitar Hero: The Beatles (not a real game, obviously) is too funny not to share.

-AR

[via CHUD]

I haven’t smoked weed in about three weeks now. I haven’t wanted to. Getting sick kind of took that wind out of my sails and then I had no choice but to abstain in the hospital. Two nights ago I was at my girl’s place watching her and her roommate spark joint after joint after joint, and the craving came back. I didn’t partake. And I’m not going to for awhile, but I wanted to. And I still kinda do.

Click to read more…

Daath just completed our first tour for The Concealers album cycle. The tour was with Dragonforce and our personal heroes, Cynic. It was a US Secondary Markets tour. For those of you who sent us angry messages about why we didn’t play your city…. We appreciate that you care and we promise we’ll be there are soon as we can.

Anyways, after our portion of the tour was over Dragonforce was scheduled to play some South American dates on their own before returning to France. Their last dates were in Brazil I believe and they would have been flying the same, if not similar route as Air France flight 447 which peaced out mid flight over the Atlantic Ocean last week.

Click to read more…

If you don’t know who Amy Sciarretto is, well, ya should. She’s Roadrunner Records in-house PR goddess (and often writes the very funny “Ask Amy” column for the Roadrunner website) and also writes for NoiseCreep. She’s also written for Revolver, Kerrang!, Guitar World, and a butt load of other publications and websites. In other words, she knows her shit.

Now Amy has teamed up with Rick Florino – founder or Ruined magazine and a contributor to Inked, Revolver, Hit Parader, etc. – to write Do the Devil’s Work for Him: How to Make it in the Music Industry (and Stay in It!). Featuring interviews and music biz advice from members of System of a Down, DevilDriver, Dragonforce, Matt Sorum (current Velvet Revolver/ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer) and Roadrunner A&R guru/blade runner Mike Gitter, this promises to be much, much cooler than your average “how to” guide.

The book hits shelves on June 26. In the meantime, you can get more info here.

-AR