I like doing MetalSucks, in part, because I really do learn something new each and every week. You know what I learned this week, for example?

FUCK VAMPIRES.

Here are some other things we learned this week:

• The dudes in Lazarus A.D. like MetalSucks.
• Swamp Thing and Indian have awesome new music coming out.
• The Human Abstract’s A.J. Minette and Travis Richter know a lot about music theory, Mr. Big’s Eric Martin knows a lot about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Vicious Rumors’ Geoff Thorpe knows a lot about line-up changes.
• The new Rotten Sound album is choice.
• Earache Records is a good label.
• Kittie are bad at making music videos.
• TesseracT are tardy to the djent party.
• Joey Belladonna still can’t sing.
• Rites of Darkness III is gonna be a great festival for bands no one has ever heard of.
• Losing someone you admire still sucks.

I’ll be flying solo for much of next week as Vince and Kip head down to Austin for SXSW and I stay behind to ensure you are as irritated as possible. Won’t you come back and learn some more with me?

-AR

When I look back at the last twenty years, there is perhaps no more important musical entity in my life than England’s EARACHE RECORDS (srs). Back when I was a little kid on a quest to find the fastest, most cock-smashingly brutal music I could get my hands on, I stumbled across a copy of the legendary Grindcrusher compilation, and I’ve been hooked on death metal ever since. As my gateway to metal, Earache will always have a special place in my heart– and when you care for someone as I do for Earache, it hurts to see them lose their way, stumble, and fall as Earache did in the 90s and 00s. I had written them off as yet another band/label/artist who has a brief moment of brilliance, burns brightly, then fizzles out before dying in undignified circumstances [via Vincent Van Gogh]. But I am happy to report that I couldn’t be more wrong! Earach is back on the horse, stronger than ever, and signing more relevant, exciting bands than ever (srs).

In this post, I will briefly recap the label’s history in three sections to bring newer readers up to speed on Nottingham’s finest export. I will then share my thoughts on their current signings and solicit suggestions on which bands the label should sign next– hopefully Dig is reading!

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Earache Records continues to bewilder. While becoming a pioneering and leading label in the digital space over the past year+, the 25+ year-old label’s band roster continues to be firmly rooted in the past.

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Earlier today, I downloaded Earache’s new, completely free Extreme Stage Diving app, a video game in which “you take control of a burly bouncer and throw the pesky stage invader as far into the crowd as possible.” And I’m happy to report that it’s going to make an excellent time waster (that’s a compliment), and may soon usurp Slayer Pinball (or whatever the fuck it’s called) as my favorite metal-themed smartphone procrastination tool. It’s simple yet challenging, it appeals to my 8-bit sensibilities, there’s plenty of blood, and, oh yeah, the soundtrack is killer.

Yes, of course, this is meant to help Earache promote their shit. But the game features a bare minimum of songs by Earache bands I don’t like (cough, Oceano, cough cough), and those songs are more than offset by the inclusion of groups like At the Gates, Deicide, Brutal Truth, Decapitated, and Wormrot. And whomever designed the game was smart/cool enough to make it so that you can skip to whichever of the ten featured songs you like — in other words, if Bonded by Blood comes up and you don’t like Bonded by Blood, you can easily move along to The Haunted or whatever your particular cup of tea might be. (And apparently there’s a bonus track that you can unlock, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping it’s a Godflesh song, even though that would make no mothertruckin’ sense whatsoever.)

Check out a sample video below…

If you go here and give Earache your e-mail address, you can also potentially win the helmet the charcter in the game wears, although I think the game itself is a much cooler prize, and you don’t need to enter no contest to get it.

You can download the game here. Like I said, it’s totally free, so you really have nothing to lose by trying it out (other than the time you’re going to spend playing this instead of doing something productive). And you can get the full track list after the jump.

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One of the fun things about being a cool blogger d00d is that sometimes bands and labels send you little promotional goodies along with your advance copies of albums. For example, this is the package that my advance copy of Slayer’s World Painted Blood came in:

So. Yesterday afternoon, Earache sent over my promo copy of Oceano’s latest, Contagion, and look what it came with:

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In other news the sky is blue, the grass is always greener on the other side, men like sticking their dicks in things and Axl is in a grumpy mood.

The band is called Diamond Plate, they’re from Chicago, look to be all of about 18 years old and are managed by a good dude that I used to book shows with back in my agency days. Axl actually previewed these guys back in January of this year (he should be an A&R man!); he noted being especially impressed with the song “Relativity” on their MySpace page but had a hard time getting used to Jon Macak’s vocals, and on both points I concur.

Look, I hate to be a pre-emptive hater, but enough with the re-thrash already. It’s peaked; no one in the U.S. cares, and there’s so much music out there that’s new and way more interesting that I don’t understand why labels are wasting their time on bands like this, especially when none of them sell any records. That said, these guys certainly do seem to have plenty of musical talent so I hope they can harness it and transmogrify their thrash into something fresh the way, say, Revocation have. For now, I’ll wait to hear their Earache debut to pass final judgment. Bring it on, dudes!

-VN

Photo credit: Stephen Jensen

I haven’t been able to shake this cold, and so I’ve actually been playing a lot of on-line Scrabble with a friend this week (because I’m just that cool). It would be really hard to play Scrabble at a metal show, though, not least of all because so many metal d00dz can’t spell.

When we weren’t beating this whole Uno debacle to death like it had just heckled us, here’s what was happening in the world of metal:

• We streamed Mutiny Within’s self-titled debut album, and premiered a track by Dallas Coyle’s new project, Genetic.
• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle defended mainstream metal, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa discussed the cliffside cave list on L O S T, and, yeah, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable and Daath’s Eyal Levi each weighed-in on a certain incident involving a certain card game.
• Each of the MetalSucks writers endorsed a finalist for the Scion No Label Needed Contest.
• We checked out new albums by The Breathing Process, Hayaino Daisuki, and Bane and Rhinoceros.
• We debated the morality of a label head posting a link to an album leak.
• We are woman, hear us roar.
• We looked at Mike Patton’s penis, and are now increasingly happy our shrink is coming back from vacation next week.
• Our homeboy Corey Mitchell is co-authoring Phil Anselmo’s autobiography!

Okay. Back to Scrabble! See ya Monday. Stay warm.

-AR

At The Gates were a great band and undeniably influenced hordes upon hordes of melodic death metal and metalcore followers. The band’s legacy has been celebrated at length in recent years culminating with their 2008 reunion tour. But at what point does celebrating this band just get to be too much?

In what Earache promises to be *the definitive* At the Gates collection, a press release from the label (also posted by Blabbermouth) tells us that the band will be releasing a 3-disc DVD set called The Flames of the End on February 22nd. The Flames of the End will feature:

Disc 1 ‘Under A Serpent Sun – The Story of At The Gates’ – a brand new documentary with a running time of over 2 hours, detailing the band’s entire career with exclusive interviews and footage, filmed and directed by guitarist Anders Bjorler.

Disc 2 ‘Purgatory Unleashed – Live at Wacken’ – a 75-minute live set from the band’s reunion set at the Wacken festival in 2008 in front of 100,000 people.

Disc 3 ‘Only the Dead Are Smiling’ – 26 rare and archive live performances of the band playing in locations around the globe from 1991 – 2008.

So while this DVD set will have very limited appeal to anyone other than At the Gates die-hards, at least it’s not just another remaster, “special edition” or compilation… in other words, there’s actually a whole lot of new stuff here that should be quite interesting, even if it isn’t new music.

-VN

In a move that’s seen relatively little press, Earache announced on Monday that they’ll be giving away the entirety of Gama Bomb’s new album Tales From The Grave In Space for free via Rapidshare.

Woah, what? For free?!?!? “But there’s money to be made on music sales!!” cry the industry curmudgeons. That sound I just heard was a certain old-school metal publicist screaming in disgust when she wasn’t even asked to.

This is the most forward-thinking business decision I’ve seen any metal label make to date. It’s absolutely groundbreaking, and Earache should be applauded. Now I’m going to tell you why in exactly 1,123 words.

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