It’s been a while since we heard anything from Early Man, the Brooklyn-turned-L.A. outfit who were one of the very first bands to usher in the current thrash revival. What have they been up to since the release of Death Potion, which came out last year? Why no extensive touring?

Turns out band mastermind Mike Conte has been up to something else entirely: writing the score for a brand new cartoon series on Cartoon Network called Secret Mountain Fort Awesome. Conte tells MetalSucks that “The score is very metal, lots of riffage, and the cartoon is also very metal, lots of classic toilet humor.” Sounds fun! He adds:

The creator of the show is a huge Garbage Pail Kids and Don Martin/MAD Magazine fan and the influences are clearly there but the show is definitely it’s own thing. There’s some killer guest voice appearances (Dee Snider plays a tooth fairy in one episode). There is a character called “The Fart” who steals the show in every episode. It’s technically a kids show but metalheads of all ages should be on the lookout, they’ll dig it.

Secret Mountain Fort Awesome premieres tonight on the Cartoon Network at 8:30pm. Check out a preview of the series premiere featuring Conte’s riffage here and the very metal end-credit music here.

-VN

On Wednesday, we broke the news that drummer Adam Bennati and bassist Tim Rampage have departed Early Man due to an unspecified “incident.” Now vocalist/guitarist Mike Conte has released his own statement on the matter, and while it also doesn’t specify the details of the split with 50% of the band, it doesn’t basically emphasize what we said earlier this week — that as long as Conte is at the helm, there will be an Early Man.

Here’s Conte’s statement in full:

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We just received an e-mail from drummer Adam Bennati announcing his departure from perennial MetalSucks faves Early Man “due to an incident that happened 2 weeks ago;” he says that bassist Tim Rampage “left the band a couple of days later.” While Bennati didn’t give us any further details regarding the cause of the split, he did give us this official statement:

Hey there everyone,

As you may or may not know, I am not accompanying the band on the US tour with Bonded by Blood and Evile in support of our new release, Death Potion. I had every intention of going on our headlining tour to support the record, but due to recent circumstances, this has become impossible. I’ve dedicated living my life as a member of Early Man for the last 7 years but I won’t be a part of the group’s future. Despite the sadness in that, I feel very optimistic and am looking forward to moving on to new endeavors. Though the group had to take an uphill road (in many senses) to make our second album materialize, I feel that Death Potion was worth the wait. I’m very proud of this record. From the experience, I take with me a lot of good memories of writing music, traveling, drinking beer and hanging out with Mike [Conte, guitars/vocals], Pete [Macy, guitars] and Tim, and other members in the past. I wish the guys the best in the future. I hope they find success and happiness. Thank you to all the cool people I’ve met along the way, all the friends I’ve made, all the people who have worked hard for the band, and all of the great musicians we’ve performed with. Thanks to anyone and everyone who supports or appreciates the group’s efforts.

Adam Bennati

We love Early Man, and Death Potion, so there’s no doubt that this a bummer; Bennati has been in the band longer than any other member, save for Mike Conte.

The flipside is that we also love Conte (full disclosure: he’s written for us in the past), and we feel confident that as long as he’s around, Early Man will continue to kick ass. And it’s good to see Adam being a mensch about the split, despite whatever “incident” caused him to leave. Hopefully Bennati’s “new endeavors” are as exciting as his old ones.

Get Early Man tour dates here.

-AR

Remember when re-thrash wasn’t yet a fad? Remember when Early Man were pretty much the first new band to bring the retro thrash sound back and they did so for genuine reasons instead of a desire to sport their eBay-bought Exodus shirts and hi-tops? Remember when somehow all the kids fell hook, like and sinker for re-thrash bands like Warbringer while seemingly leaving Early Man in the dust?

That’s always how it seems to go down, isn’t it? A genre’s true pioneers are the ones who get overlooked. In the case of Early Man I think it also might’ve had something to do with them being a three-piece / having no live bassist, but hey, if Jucifer can do it as a two-piece anything is possible.

Early Man are finally back with a new album, Death Potion, FIVE years after their last full-length Closing In hit the streets (the 2008 EP Beware the Circling Fin not withstanding). Death Potion comes out July 20th via The End Records, but it’s currently available as a digital download for the very metal and very affordable price of $6.66 at Think Indie. The track “Someone Else’s Nightmare” is available for free and the title track is up on EM’s MySpace, so give those a listen and see what you think.

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Early Man front dude and friend of MetalSucks Mike Conte posted the below on his site, Whiplash, and it’s just too good not to post. The specifics, of course, need no explanation.

For more fun with Sesame Street and metal, check this out.

-AR

Did any of my fellow New Yorkers see the headline on the NY Post this morning? “SUPREMA.” Seriously. I mean, come ON. I understand that Sotomayor is Hispanic (in case you somehow missed it), but she’s a fucking nominee to be a Supreme Court Justice, not the latest meal from fucking Taco Bell. Douche bags.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, here’s something awesome: a fan-made video for Early Man that mashes the band’s “Beware the Circling Fin” with footage from Masters of the Universe. After the announcement last week that they’re going to turn my beloved (if totally retarded) children’s cartoon into a dark, grim n’ gritty live-action movie (’cause everyone thinks they’re Chris fucking Nolan these days), it’s good to see that someone can still have fun with this shit.

The video was sent to us by Early Man/MetalSucks blogger Mike Conte, and originally appeared on Conte’s own blog. Thanks, Mike!

-AR

Swine flu got you down? Don’t get too scared, it was always part of the plan. Here’s a headline you should be much more concerned about: “ROB HALFORD UNVEILS NEW LINE OF SUPER CRAPPY T-SHIRTS“. WTF?? As if that isn’t horrifying enough in and of itself, the shirts look like they were designed by people with down syndrome that just couldn’t quite make the cut over at Affliction (as though Affliction Clothing isn’t bad enough). Jesus. If you want to get massively bummed out, head over to Halford’s new t-shirt line website, “Metal God Apparel” and grab yourself a sweet tee for a cool $54.99. Cheap!!

I see tons of douchebags trolling around Los Angeles in shitty shirts that look dangerously similar to these. It’s pretty sad. It’s a pandemic for sure. And there’s not really much we can do at this point. It seems even the Boston Red Sox have been struck with this “affliction” (pictured right). I hate all of you.

-MC

[Read more from Mike Conte at http://www.whiplashwhiplashwhiplash.com/]

After the antics of the first day of the festival, I felt more than ready to get into day two with a healthy dose of music from the beginning. Unfortunately, that was not to be so for me, as at the time I thought I would be continuing on after SXSW into further ridonkulousness, all the way to a family vacation during Spring Break in Mexico….and today was the day that my renewed passport was meant to be FedExed to the flophouse where Vince and I were crashing.

When I had returned to said flophouse the night prior and to my surprise found an open couch in the living room right by the front door (where I was told FedEx homeboy would appear bright and early), I figured it prolly made the most sense to sleep right there on the ground floor as opposed to the stank upstairs sweat lodge where I would be sure to miss any sounds of door knocking.

Sadly, no FedEx arrived in the morning as promised — I was actually awoken by a phone call from Vince around noon wondering where the hell I had ended up last night. After a couple more hours my passport finally arrived, at which point I had to wait at least another hour for a cab to take me down to the action.

HOLY SHIT.

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After yesterday morning’s scare, thankfully Kip turned up. On the couch downstairs at the flophouse we’re crashing at. Phew!

It was another fine day in Texas; 80 degrees, sunny, lots of metal. First up was Full Metal Texas, at which I saw Black Math Horsemen, Kylesa, Skeletonwitch and Fact. The End Records / MetalSucks showcase followed, at which Junius, Hull, These are They, Goes Cube, Tub Ring and Early Man rocked the confines of a tightly packed room that looked like an old European castle. My quick summary after the jump.

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You bitched and moaned about daylight savings time, even though you were asleep when the clocks changed and you get an extra hour of daylight every day until November. You are all retards.

Here’s what else happened this week:

• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima gave us another studio report (no naked Dr. Mikannibal pics, sorry), Early Man’s Mike Conte got his cheesesteak on, and Neuraxis’ Alexandre Leblanc gave us his final tour blog.
• We spoke with Darkane’s Christofer Malmstrom, Meshuggah’s Marten Hagstrom, Soilwork’s Peter Wichers and Ross the Boss (ex-Manowar)
• Our man-crush on Trent Reznor grew ever greater.
• You argued over who was the most important member of Metallica, past and present.
• We looked at new releases by Razor of Occam and Karl Sanders.
• It was a big week in the Norwegian courts… the Gorgoroth case was settled, and Varg was granted parole.
• Crazytown and Skunk Anansie are getting back together.

Next week Kip and I take off for Austin, TX on Wednesday. We’ll be live-blogging whenever possible. To everyone else, have fun not being there, suckazzz!!

-VN

MetalSucks is proud to present, along with our friends at The End Records, an actual Official South by Southwest 2009 Showcase! Kip and I will be rockin’ with our cocks out in Austin, TX non-stop from Wednesday through Saturday while Axl and a particularly clever MS Mansion Monkey named “Higgins” hold down the fort here in NY. You’re likely to catch us at many of the awesome metal-flavored SXSW events going down this year (including but not limited to Full Metal Texas), but you will absolutely catch us at the kick-ass MetalSucks / The End Records showcase at The Ale House Pub on the eve of Thursday, March 19th. The killer lineup includes Junius, Hull, These are They, Goes Cube, Tub Ring and Early Man — holy fuckin’ shit!!

Set times and location after the jump. See you there.

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Hello from the road, Metalsuckers! We’re one week into our tour with Portland rockers Red Fang. I am coming to you from a coffee shop called ‘Coffee Works’ in a strip mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. I gotta be quick because we’re about to take off for our load-in and sound check at The Milestone, one of my favorite venues in America. After starting the tour in New Jersey under about a foot of snow last week, we headed to Philly and partied like it was Tuesday night (because it was). I got to hit my favorite spot, Jim’s on South Street!

If you can’t get into one of these you are no friend of mine. I also drink the peppers like a shot. No joke:

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Hello Metalsuckers. WHIPLASH! round 2. It’s 5am Thursday, I’m in L.A. about to head to Burbank airport to catch a flight to NYC for the start of our U.S. tour next week. I’ve got a couple minutes before I go so I thought I’d pop in real quick and give you an update. We’ve spent the past week practicing some new songs off of our upcoming full length that we will be playing on this tour. I got into the habit a couple of years ago of filming practice sessions, as in just turning a little camera on and setting it in the corner during practices. It’s an easy way to record jam sessions plus it adds the visual element which can be an interesting little extra layer when listening back. Anyway, I had a camera running this week during one of our practices and have uploaded a little clip of one of our new songs called “By the Serpent’s Breath You Seethe” for your viewing pleasure:

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[In which the Early Man guitarist/vocalist shares his thoughts on the world, music, and the usual assortment of drunken adventures/misadventures. Enjoy. -Ed.]

Hello everyone, welcome to WHIPLASH! With this column I plan to give you weekly updates and a behind the scenes look into everything that is going on in the world of Early Man, whether it be drinking, touring, recording, drinking, shredding, drinking, etc., if it’s happening I’ll be writing about it. What I won’t be doing with this column is writing 9 page essays about the “current state of the metal scene” or “my take on the new Metallica record” or any other boring crap like that. Don’t you get enough of that horseshit already? WHO FUCKING CARES! If you want to see what’s actually going on out here in the real world with a working touring metal band, well…it’s your lucky day. And just to make this all that much more interesting I’m going to take your questions and answer them right here on a regular basis via video response. Ain’t technology grand? Just remember, no question is a stupid question, I’ll take them all. Any topic, any subject, fire away. You can send them to: whiplash@metalsucks.net.

Before I take off I’ll use this opportunity to bring you up to speed with what’s been going on over the past 6 months with the band.

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One of the very first “sign this awesome local band” posts I wrote for this site way back on June 20th of 2007 was a show review of the crushingly heavy New York stoner/doom metal band Hull. They opened for Big Business that night and literally blew them away; several months later I saw them open up for Early Man at the same venue, and once again they stole the show. Hull’s live shows are just that powerful. So it is with extreme pleasure and excitement that The End Records has given me the opportunity to announce to the world that they have signed Hull to the label.

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Just because it’s been a minute since the last Funny Photo Caption Contest doesn’t mean uncles Axl and Vince forgot about ya; we’ve just been listening to the new Gojira record so much we simply haven’t had the time to peruse through your mostly un-funny captions. But fear not, we’re back this week bigger and badder than ever. But first, last week’s winner:

Ike Clanton: “Axl Rose exposed! The first promo picture with the rumored release of Chinese Democracy next month. Axl says he is fine and can’t wait for Steve Adler to come out of celebrity rehab to join the tour.”

The funniest entry was actually posted by MS contributor Corey Mitchell, but, ya know, as a resident of the MS Mansion he’s kind of ineligible to win: “Farquar O’Reilly bemoans his recent firing from Sunn O)))) for having ‘too much bottom end.’” Anyway, Ike Clanton wins new CDs from One Way Mirror, Overcast, Austrian Death Machine and Falconer. Corey, we’ll make it up to you later buddy; sorry!

As promised, this week’s special Halloween edition of the photo caption contest: this week the photo is YOU, and it’s your job to Photoshop in the baddest, most ridiculous looking corpsepaint imaginable. No real corpsepaint allowed, as we’ll know the difference — after all, we regularly peruse ratemycorpsepaint.com too. Email your entries to news [at] metalsucks.net and we’ll pick our favorites. Winner gets an Early Man package featuring a limited edition gatefold picture-disc Beware the Circling Fin vinyl, CD and t-shirt (aka this). Go!

Things are heating up in the U.S. presidential race, and everyone from Vince to Axl to Dallas to the Blogronaut expressed their opinions; naturally you all got fired up too. But even politics as usual couldn’t stop the flow of happenings this week in the world of metal:

• Dallas apologized. Woah.
• Best Buy claims Chinese Democracy is finally coming out, but we’re skeptical. No word yet from Axl Rose.
• We debuted a new Early Man track and spoke with singer/guitarist Mike Conte, while Nathan Ells of the Human Abstract spilled the beans on just about everything.
• Testament was deemed one of the Top 40 greatest thrash bands of all time.
• We loved new albums from Gojira and Psycroptic. You loved arguing about them even more, especially the former. Meanwhile, new releases from Unearth and Cradle of Filth proved controversial.
• Protest the Hero’s van broke down; they danced.
• AC/DC’s Brian Johnson proved himself old and out of touch, but that didn’t stop us from asking for freebies to see his band live.

We out. See you Monday.

MetalSucks contributor Christopher Roddy recently had the chance to email a batch of questions to Early Man guitarist/vocalist Mike Conte. Conte answered the questions at length about his band’s new record Beware the Circling Fin (out TOMORROW on The End Records! Read Roddy’s full review here), the current re-thrash revival, his uber-religious upbringing, following your own muse, and more. Check out Conte’s answers after the jump, and be sure to stream and download the exclusive new Early Man track “Sinking the Blade” below!

Early Man – “Sinking The Blade”

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I don’t know what all the people who weren’t around for Thrash’s first run in the Eighties think about the sudden resurgence of the style but I’ve had mixed feelings about it. I really missed traditional Thrash throughout the Nineties and…Oughts (is that what we’re supposed to call them?). Sure, Thrash never really died and there have always been elements of classic Thrash in many of the acts that play Metal today regardless of the sub-or-microgenre with which they are associated; but having come of age in the early to mid Eighties and having been there for the dominant rise of this kind of music I never wanted it to diminish in popularity. Yet it did and there were new styles to take its place. The old acts that established the framework have kept going only to prove, for the most part, that Thrash Metal is a game best utilized through youth. And maybe my mixed feelings regarding all these young acts revolves around the fact that I’m not getting any younger either. It’s neither fresh or exciting to me nor does it further the Metal cause so much as derivatively reflect the glory years. Even so, I’ll be the first to stand up and trumpet that charging “lack of originality” against an act is disingenuous considering that every band carries its influences with them regardless of whether they make it obvious or not. If you think a band is “original” that just means you’re ignorant of their influences. As such I always feel conflicted when faced with a “new” Thrash Metal act.

I really dig Early Man, though. More than most any other neo-Thrash band out there they’ve managed to capture the essence of ’80s Metal for me, personally. From their Monitor Records Fuck You If You’re Talking To Me EP to their Matador Records Closing In album – both from 2005 – there’s been a raw, low budget feel to the music that carries through to their current output even though they now have the backing of The End Records. Their upcoming Beware the Circling Fin EP (out October 14th) was produced by Jack Endino (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Dwarves, High On Fire) and it retains a basement authenticity which makes the effort that much more endearing.

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The ongoing revival of revivalist musical genres is often twofold for me — on one hand, I’m like, oh snap, this sounds like 1982 so much and that’s awesome (in the case of thrash metal), and on the other I can’t help but simultaneously recognize that’s it’s the freakin 21st Century and enough musicians/bands/genres have already made their mark stupendously so why are some folks hell-bent on recreating something that was done so well originally? (also in the case of thrash) Perhaps it’s one’s affinity with yesteryear itself (i.e. pure nostalgia for an era faded), maybe it’s the personal recollections of when said folks were all pimply and impressionable kids (as opposed to jaded grownup kids), or could it be that when certain people fell in love with music and/or a particular band/genre and they felt compelled to pick up an instrument and learn it well, their then-current context became the only style they felt/feel comfortable playing in?

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