MetalSucks

Like Dream Theater’s latest effort Black Clouds & Silver Linings, the band’s new video for “Wither” — one of the meh-est tracks on an album full of meh — is completely stock and totally underwhelming. Footage of the band on the road / in their bus / back stage / signing shit / etc etc blah blah blah intercut with out-of-sync live footage of them performing the song… great.

But I still love this band to death and always will. Next time around I really hope they take the necessary time to write and record an album the proper way, like Scenes From a Memory and Six Degrees. And I’ll go see them live pretty much any time they come around.

-VN

Whenever people talk about modern metal production, the conversation inevitably turns to drum triggering. People always tell me that they think it’s bullshit and that they hate drum triggering, that they think it’s cheating. They’re wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.

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Progressive power metal fans, have we got a band for you. Redemption was hand picked by Dream Theater to play support for Summer ‘07 tour and features vocalist Ray Alder of the legendary Fates Warning. Those two facts alone should tip you off that you’re about to hear something cool.

Redemption’s fourth studio album, Snowfall on Judgment Day, comes out September 28 on Inside Out Music. You can get a free taste – damn right, we said free!!! – of a new track, “Leviathan Rising,” below. Give it a listen. There’s a damn good reason these fellas have the DT seal of approval.

And don’t forget to visit Redemption on MySpace for more music and the latest news on the band.

Redemption, “Leviathan Rising”

Full confession: I missed my pre-show interview slot with Bigelf’s eccentric frontman Damon Fox because I fucked up with directions on the subway. I’ve lived in this city for 22 of my 27 years on this planet and it still happens from time to time… oops. Doesn’t help that the Beacon Theater, the host of this year’s Progressive Nation tour (Dream Theater, Zappa Plays Zappa and Scale the Summit in addition to the aforementioned), is in butt-fuck nowhere compared to our usual stomping grounds.

But it ended up for the better — missing the pre-show slot allowed me to see the phenomenally talented Scale the Summit, and seeing Bigelf for the first time immediately thereafter gave me a lot more material for my interview. After waiting patiently post-show whilst Fox signed autographs at the band’s merch booth for half a fucking hour, I was finally able to snag him for an interview. Fox is a smart guy who has a lot of strong, well-thought out opinions about metal, music, genre-labeling and the industry in general. We also chatted a bit about the band’s history and their recent surge in popularity.

Our interview started as many do with subjects who aren’t familiar with our website. “So, why DOES metal suck?” jabbed Fox, who clearly “gets it.”

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It’s not that I think that the members of Napalm Death and Dream Theater have a limited musical palette. Quite the contrary; I’d imagine the musicians that make up these particular bands probably have very diverse tastes.

Still. If I found out that Alex Webster listened to a lot of Roni Spektor, I wouldn’t expect a collaboration between the Russian chanteuse and the death metal legend, y’know?

So. Tom Fassnidge sent us this video of Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway teaming up with some of the dudes from Dream Theater to cover Metallica’s “Damage Inc.” It’s an old video – lookit Barney’s hair!!! – but neither Vince nor myself had ever seen it before. And it’s pretty awesome – look at how much fun Petrucci and Portnoy are having! And, yes, I know that DT have covered entire Metallica albums live in concert before. But it’s the “WHAT THE FUCK IS A MEMBER OF NAPALM DEATH DOING UP THERE?” of it all that makes this video truly worthwhile, in my opinion at least.

Extra bonus: for those of us who find James LaBrie to be a big gaping vagina, we now get to see what DT might be like with singer who isn’t a eunuch.

-AR

Behemoth vs. Winds of Plague; Poland vs. America; Corpsepaint vs. wigger hats; ugly men vs. hot chick; real metal vs. deathcore; substance vs. gimmick. Who won????

The answer, as well as more of this past week’s metal Soundscan chart positions and sales figures, after the jump.

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Last week was somewhat of a slow one for metal record sales. There weren’t a whole lot of new releases, but a few records that have been out for a while hung onto their spots in the Top 200 and Hank III’s Assjack project had a solid debut. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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The second annual Progressive Nation Tour — featuring a re-jiggered and suddenly worth seeing lineup of Scale the Summit, Bigelf and Zappa Plays Zappa supporting Dream Theater — hit New York’s historic Beacon Theater on Sunday night. This year’s proggier leaning lineup (last year’s had Opeth, BTBAM and 3 in the support slots) brought out an older-skewed audience, but as is always remarkably the case with Dream Theater there were plenty of youngins in attendance. In fact, the most frequently spotted band t-shirt I saw all night was for The Faceless; stew on that one for a second.

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Dan Rodriguez at Metal Insider reports that Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess has released a $9.99 iPhone app with his sequencer, the JR Hexatone Pro. I’m gonna re-print the press release verbatim after the jump, ’cause to paraphrase Tracey Morgan on 30 Rock, I don’t understand about half the words they just said.

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Most Dream Theater fans consider the band’s peak to have spanned the era starting with 1994’s Awake and extending through 2002’s double-disc opus Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (excepting 1997’s bland and boring Falling Into Infinity). I’d actually argue that the band’s “golden” era extended one album further through Train of Thought, unquestionably the band’s heaviest offering ever, if not just because of the good songwriting but for the fact that this was the last album on which the band pushed themselves forward. Since then (Octavarium, Systematic Chaos) Dream Theater have settled into cruise control, pumping out decent but ultimately unspectacular prog metal albums that don’t so much tread new ground as walk confidently atop terrain already explored. The band’s latest, Black Clouds and Silver Linings, continues in this vein; it’s the third album in a row to show little to no musical progression (isn’t this supposed to be “progressive” metal?) and as such ends up feeling mostly same-sounding and… meh. Still, it’s hard to knock anything Dream Theater do too heavily; the band already indelibly changed the metal landscape once, and anything they do warrants at the very least a rating of “pretty good.”

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Last week was a ginormous week for new metal releases, and with new ones from Killswitch and Suicide Silence this week promises to be the same. Topping last week’s crop was Dream Theater’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings which debuted at #6 on the Soundscan Charts. Wait a minute… Dream Theater debuted at #6?? Holy fuckity-fuck. Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Goatwhore also had strong debuts. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

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Back in March I bitched that this year’s Progressive Nation lineup — featuring Pain of Salvation, Beardfish, and Zappa Plays Zappa supporting Dream Theater — was decidedly less metal than last year’s lineup (which featured 3, BTBAM, and Opeth supporting DT — killer show) and wasn’t worth the price of admission to anyone under 50. A press release delivered good news to the MS Mansion earlier this week, announcing that Bigelf and Scale the Summit have replaced Pain of Salvation and Beardfish. Suh-weet!

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I mean, James LaBrie is still a complete ham but there’s no denying he’s talented as fuck, and John Petrucci’s chin-whiskers are looking quite manly these days (trying to nail him down for a “Beard on Beard” interview… stay tuned). Myung’s a beast, Rudess is a fucking virtuoso and Mike Portnoy is like the best drummer EVVVARRR. Stop fronting, people! Anyone who claims Dream Theater are pussies / aren’t metal clearly has some kind of fear of being emasculated. Get over it and rock out, dicks! Show me a man that doesn’t get an erection during that heavy riff part of “Pull Me Under” (DAH-DAH dun dun dun dun dun dun dun) and I’ll show you a fucking liar.

Here they are performing that boner-worthy riff at Download Festival in the UK this past weekend (read our own Anton Oyvey’s full festival report here). And after the jump, the new song “A Rite of Passage” which comes from the new album Black Clouds & Silver Linings, out June 23rd on Roadrunner. Get manly; listen to Dream Theater.

-VN

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Heyo! Dream Theater have a new video for “A Rite of Passage,” the very song they gave away for free last week. A new DT video wouldn’t be too much of a novelty if not for the fact that for a good ten years there before Systematic Chaos we didn’t get any Dream Theater music videos at all aside from live videos/DVDs the band put out for sale. I’m so used to only seeing live footage of Dream Theater that it just looks downright odd to see the band lit up all nice amongst spacey CG effects and to see Mike Portnoy dressed in anything other than his trademark custom Knicks jerseys. And the funny thing is, as cool as this video looks, I’m not sure that at this point in their career Dream Theater really even need official videos like this — I mean, let’s be honest, the only things Dream Theater fans care about seeing are close-ups of John Petrucci’s hands and Portnoy’s sick drum chops. But hey, there’s plenty of that in this video too, and any time a band like Dream Theater gets done up with the works the world can’t be all that bad of a place after all.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings will be officially released on June 23rd.

-VN

It’s Friday, and it’s nice out. I’ma go have a whiskey. Booze and drugs make you look cool and get lots of pussy… it’s true.

Here’s what happened this week that made us batty enough to turn to the dark side:

• We got sick of metal bands doing ironic pop cover songs just in time for a metal band to do another terrible pop cover song.
• We spoke with Barney Greenway of Napalm Death, Chris Arp of Psyopus and Karl Sanders of Nile.
• We were Gay for Gojira and Crazy for The Chariot.
• The Devil Wears Prada: way too popular.
• We looked at new records from Black Math Horseman, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, as well as a new track from Suicide Silence and a new track from Dream Theater.
• xAxlRosenbergx got all anti-straight edge on your asses.

See you next week. Don’t get too stoned tomorrow with yer Uncle Kip.

-VN

The good folks at Roadrunner Records are giving away a free track from Dream Theater’s new album Black Clouds and Silver Linings, which doesn’t come out until June 23rd. The new track, “A Rite of Passage,” is available for one day only, which means you’ve got until midnight tonight (EDT, presumably) to grab it. So go and download it for free right now!

One-listen verdict: It sounds like Dream Theater. As a completely out-of-the-closet Dream Theater fanboy, I have to say I think the production sounds a bit weak. But I like James LaBrie’s vocals (he gets better with age, like a fine, fine Canadian wine) and the rest of the band sounds top-notch as always. John Myung’s bass is curiously high in the mix (and this is a good thing). There’s some stellar Petrucci shred starting around 5:20, followed by — what else — a ripping Jordan Rudess keyboard solo. The song is over 8 minutes long and it’s got plenty of twists and turns. So, ya know… it sounds like Dream Theater. Big shocker.

In summary: new Dream Theater! Yay!

-VN

When I started watching this live video of Dream Theater performing “Metropolis” ten (maybe more?) years ago, I was thinking that the complete fucking ape-shitness of the audience pegged it to Japan. I was wrong; around the 2:40 mark James LaBrie yells “Korea!” I’ve just never seen this kind of fervor at a Dream Theater concert in the states; there’s practically a fucking moshpit. At a Dream Theater concert. Usually it’s a bunch of dudes (and it’s always just dudes) nodding their heads to the beat with their jaws on the floor and their dicks in their hands (yup, I’m guilty as charged!). James LaBrie sounds like complete crap here, so the LaBrie-hating contingent will have their field day here (and I know there are a lot of you), but the rest of the band is at full strength with a furious wind whipping their hair around for maximum rockness.

-VN

When Mike Portnoy announced that there would be a 2009 edition of last year’s bonerrific Progressive Nation Tour — which featured Opeth, Between the Buried and Me and Three in support of Dream Theater (read our show review) — one would naturally assume the lineup would be pretty fuckin’ killer just like its predecessor, no? While our heads swirled with the possibilities of what might be in the cards (Protest the Hero? Muse? Porcupine Tree? Gojira??), today our expectations hit the floor with a mighty thud. Zappa Plays Zappa. Pain of Salvation. Beardfish. Um… who?

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Congrats to MetalSucks Maniacs Michael Greenberg and Andrew Neil, who correctly identified the final unreadable band logo of 2008 as belonging to the band Natan. They each win a poster signed by Within Temptation. Those should look pretty bad assed on your walls, fellas!

We’re kickin’ the new year off right with this week’s unreadable band logo: the upstanding young men and women at Roadrunner Records have supplied us with a copy of Dream Theater’s Chaos in Motion 2007 – 2008 DVD/CD collection to give away. This is a five – count ‘em, five! – disc super deluxe collector’s edition that features two DVDs with over three hours of live performances, plus behind-the-scenes documentaries, music videos, and live screen projection films, PLUS three live audio CDs. In short: this is a must own for Dream Theater fans.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select a winner from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her name next week.

Because the prize is so awesome, I tried to find the hardest logo available for this week. Just remember: the answer will never, ever, under any circumstances, be Slipknot, Korn, or Atreyu. Never ever never.

-AR

Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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