We’re back! January 24th marked the first big release date of 2012, and now the numbers are in for the final first-week tallies. As expected, Lamb of God took the top spot in the Current Hard Music Chart (and #3 overall behind Adele [115,972] and Tim McGraw [67,530]), while Lacuna Coil landed at #2. New records by Blessed by a Broken Heart, Aborted, Primal Fear and Abigail Williams also ended up in the Top 100. Check out the numbers after the break.

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I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as Randy Blythe is putting into his presidential campaign. That’s actually probably not fair to Blythe, who skateboarded and had someone film him for that ad; I’m really just going to sit here on my ass and not care very much.

ANYWAY, we begin today with ”Arguing With Thermometers,” the latest clip from Enter Shikari. Now, normally, I do not think very highly of this band, and feel that entirely too many of you e-mailed us about it when they recently streamed their new album (or something… I did not read the e-mails very carefully once I saw the words “Enter Shikari”). The band has fun with it and actually seem to have some comedic chops, and the shots and editing demonstrate that the director actually put some thought into it, which, hey, really pays off sometime. I was hooked pretty much from the triple-camera-turn at the :24 second mark. Nice work, Enter Shikari.

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Earlier this week I had a dream that I was working with Atreyu. I don’t know in what capacity I could possibly find myself “working with” Atreyu, since I’m not a manager, nor a publicist, nor a label rep, and they’re about as likely to end up doing a guest column here as I am to give the new In This Moment album a perfect 5-horn review, but, hey, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. Why did I have Atreyu on the brain? Was my mind trying to tell me “The glass is half-full?” Do I have  a hankering to re-watch The Neverending Story? Did I just ingest too many different substances that night? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

Here’s other shit that happened this week, some of which, believe it or not, is even more terrifying than the thought of working with Atreyu:

• Freddy Madball is counting down his favorite hard and heavy non-hardcore bands of all time, TesseracT’s Acle walked us through the history of djent, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley spoke to Converge’s Kurt Ballou about Taco Riffs, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks made some suggestions for losing NFL teams, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable contemplated the ways in which technology has changed touring, Daath’s Eyal Levi wondered, “Is this it?”, and a wide array of metal stars previewed the just-begun NHL season.
• We spoke to Kirk Windstein from Crowbar/Down/Kingdom of Sorrow, Sean Z. from Daath, Daddy X and Dirtball from Kottonmouth Kings, and Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.
• We checked out the latest releases from Abysse and Deafheaven.
• We contemplated trancecore.
• As the headline says, we heard the worst thing ever.
• We reviewed the history of terrible Limp Bizkit cover songs.
• We had fun with misheard song lyrics.
• We bemoaned the signing of another re-thrash band.
• We applauded Slayer fans’ desire to help the physically disabled.
• We had yet another laugh at Winds of Plague’s expense.

We have a special surprise for you next week. I can’t promise you’re going to like it, but I can promise you’re going to have a strong reaction to it. See ya then.

-AR

A tried-and-true route to musical innovation is to combine two genres which had never previously come into contact. While we’ve yet to find anybody with the balls to create sub-genres like rapabilly or industrial funeral ska, there’s a burgeoning crop of bands playing something almost as funny and great: TRANCECORE. Put simply, trancecore is Rise Records-style metalcore (e.g., The Devil Wears Prada) with the addition of trancey synth elements (like you’d hear on a Cascada record).

Enter Shikari “Mothership”– this is the first example of trancecore that I’ve been able to find. It’s not bad, but newer bands have done a better job with the genre IMO

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The below video is a collection of the “Best Keyboard/Synthesizer Breakdowns of All Time.” I saw it today on Sergeant D’s Stuff You Will Hate, which is certainly living up to its name. Because, y’know, I always thought “Gee, totally generic breakdowns could really use some irritating keyboards.”

A couple of good groups, like Horse the Band and Veil of Maya, seem to have snuck their way onto the list, but by and large, this stuff is just as terrible as you’d think. And let’s all thank the guy who made this for not even being able to come up with ten different bands to include – Born of Osiris and HTB are both on here twice.

Also, does The Devil Wears Prada really have a song called “Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over?” ‘Cause that would be an adorable sentiment coming from a three year old. A Christian metalcore band, not so much.

-AR