Last week was a slow one for new releases, but don’t worry, this week’s slate is a bit more impressive so next week’s Soundscam column should be a bit more exciting. This week Suckanescence and Five Finger Death Suck grabbed the respective #1 and #2 spots on the Current Hard Music charts once again by a long shot, even with 69% and 68% Week 2 declines; it’s gonna be a while before those go anywhere, and this week’s #3 isn’t exactly going to please headbangers either. But Iced Earth’s first album with new vocalist Stu Block grabbed the #4 spot, while Cradle of Filth, Insomnium and Evile all made it into the top 100.
If you’re reading this now and you live in/around NYC, it’s not too late to come drink FREE BEER (from 6-7pm) and party with us as Skeletonwitch, Kvelertak, Barn Burner, Turbid North and Battlecross melt faces at the 2011 MetalSucks / Metal Injection / 1000 Knives CMJ Showcase! And two weeks from this very moment, Day 1 of The Metal Suckfest will be underway — holy shit! For the rest of you who don’t live anywhere near here… either get your asses over right quick or be jealous. Very jealous.
Meanwhile, it was another week o’ fun at the MS Mansion in which the Monkeys had to work overtime to fling poo at all who dared attempt to infiltrate our walls:
We continued Counting Down to the Metal Suckfest with All Pigs Must Die’s Adam Wentworth, Today is the Day’s Curran Reynolds, 3′s Billy Riker, Fight Amp’s Mike McGinnis and Howl’s Timmy St. Amour.
Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 2:00pm by Nicholas Pell
Hailing from the United Kingdom, Evile are sure standouts in the field of thrash, leaning more toward a gritty, Bay Area sound and aesthetic than cartoonish crossover revival. Their most recent Earache release, Five Serpent’s Teeth, continues along these lines, proving that the thrash revival may just be more than a passing trend. The album is especially impressive, given that the band suffered a tragic blow prior to its creation: Original bassist Mike Alexander succumbed to a blood clot in the lungs in October of 2009. Fittingly, Five Serpent’s Teeth includes a tribute to Alexander in the form of a riff he used when warming up before a show.
We recently spoke to lead guitarist Ol Drake about Alexander’s passing, Rock Band, touring with his idols, and the future of the Evile, as well as thrash at large. Read our full chat after the jump!
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011 at 11:30am by Axl Rosenberg
I’m going to put about as much effort into writing this introduction as Jon Leon does to keeping band members in White Wizzard.
First up today we have “Cult” from Evile. I think Evile are one of the better re-thrash bands out there, and I like that they now seem to be moving through the evolution of thrash; this tune is way more in the vein of what the original thrash bands where doing in the early 90s, when Metallica released The Black Album, Megadeth released Countdown to Extinction, and Anthrax released The Sound of White Noise, all of which began a shift in emphasis from speed to crunch. (Maybe Evile’s next album will sound like Load or Risk?) And even if the gimmick in this video wears out its welcome a little fast, it’s still much cooler than most metal clips.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
“Hey guys, I’m just wondering why you haven’t covered the new Evile song yet? They released it yesterday on the Earache website, it’s called “Eternal Empire” and it’s pretty damn good. I’m honestly a bit surprised that you haven’t posted anything on MetalSucks yet, I’ve seen a few other new tracks posted but no Evile.”
-Reader Tyler Halcomb
Hey, did you guys know that there’s a new Evile song? They released it Monday on the Earache website (but only if you’re willing to give up your sweet, sweet-ass e-mail address), it’s called “Eternal Empire,” and it’s pretty damn good. By which I mean, if you like other Evile songs, I imagine you’ll like this, because it’s even more retro than their other material, I think, and if you don’t like other Evile songs, I doubt that this one will convert you. I mean in the scheme of rethrash bands, I don’t think Evile are nearly as good as Havok, but they’re way, way better than, say, Bonded by Blood. “Eternal Empire” is a catchy song, and I won’t fault anyone for enjoying it.
ANYWAY, headbang here, then come back and let us (and Tyler!) know what you think in the comments section. Evile’s new album, Five Serpent’s Teeth, comes out September 26 on Earache.
It’s a big week for metal releases. Children of Bodom, Destruction, The Human Abstract, Turisas, and Rival Schools are this week’s heavy hitters, while new ones from Agnostic Front, Maruta, Jag Panzer, Swamp Thing and more give hardcore a surprisingly robust showing. After the jump, all the goods:
Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 3:30pm by Axl Rosenberg
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.
Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 2:30pm by MetalSucks
A little over a week ago, the MetalSucks Photo Pool’s Alyssa Lorenzon braved the sights, smells, and people of New Jersey to go to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ to capture some awesome mothertruckin’ photos of legendary thrash acts Overkill and Forbidden, along with thrash upstarts Evile and Gama Bomb. As you can see from the above, instant-classic portrait of Bobby Blitz, she captured some killer shit! Check ‘em out the rest of her killer photos after the jump.
Friday, October 8th, 2010 at 10:30am by Axl Rosenberg
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.
Or, as Kip would say, “The Drums Are Cool, especially when you’re Sebastian Lanser of Panzerballet.”
Digby, how can you constantly rep re-thrash with a straight face when there’s great shit out there like this that pushes the limits of music? If you’re talking the ability to sell a product, well then of course stuff like Evile and Bonded by Blood stands a much better shot at commercial success than this jazz-metal wankery… but if sellability is what you’re talking about, well then just come straight out and say it instead of arguing that Enforcer “pushes the metallica envelope.” I mean, come ON!
Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 10:00am by Axl Rosenberg
I feel icky just writing about this.
When a young guy like Paul Gray passes away so suddenly, and he’s a rockstar, and he’s a rockstar who has been arrested for crashing his Porsche while in possession of needles, cocaine and weed, your mind, unfortunately, goes pretty much right to one place: “He overdosed.” And after Drowning Pool’s Dave Williams and Evile’s Mike Alexander both died young, and everyone said “overdose,” and then it turns out they didn’t overdose, well – you don’t wanna jump to any conclusions. You wanna wait for the doctors to do their thing and tell you why the guy passed away.
Which is all well and good. But now TMZ (there’s that icky feeling again) has obtained the 911 call an Urbandale hotel employee placed on Monday after finding Gray’s body, and the employee reports seeing a hypodermic needle and a bottle of pills in Gray’s room, and even speculates that Gray died from an OD.
Tributes to Dimebag have become a bit passe in 2010 (or really sometime in 2008), but the lads in British thrashers Evile get a pass. For one, their cover of Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” is awesome — vocalist/guitarist Matt Drake handles Phil Anselmo’s vocals with surprising ease, and the band does the Pantera classic justice in every other way. But then there’s the sad tragedy of bassist Mike Alexander’s sudden death last Fall, and the poetic coda that the last song he ever recorded with the band was a cover of “Cemetery Gates.” If that doesn’t give Evile a license to play this song and devote it to Dime whenever they damn please, nothing does.
Suckalo Jeremy Ruemenapp was on hand at Trees in Dallas a few nights ago to catch Evile covering “Cemetery Gates” during their support slot for Overkill. Check out his video of the performance (with really good video and sound quality!) below.
If you live in the Dallas area you can catch Deftones performing a surprise set on that very same stage tonight at 7pm! Ustream will have a live broadcast of the event, so be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT / 5pm PDT tonight to watch if you can’t attend.
Last weekend I was lucky enough to be back in NYC for my spring break (even though the first week of March is clearly not spring), and was able to catch the Kreator, Voivod, Nachmystium, Evile, and Lazarus A.D. show. Considering that it had been a little while since I have been pushed up against someone bigger and sweatier than I am, I was pretty geeked.
While I was at the show it dawned on me that, unlike in most sports, there aren’t statistics that tell you how well a band performed. Soccer has the a similar problem, which they solve by giving each player a 1 – 10 ranking based on their overall performance. So in honor of the upcoming world cup and my brother, who both despises metal and introduced me to soccer, I give you the band ratings for the Kreator show in soccer style.
Although at first glance at this photo makes it appear as though Ol Drake is stroking a massive hard-on, that’s actually a garbage bin just behind him. Alas, he was not that excited to be speaking with Axl Rosenberg.
Whatever the hell it is we’re calling Evile’s particular metallica subgenre these days – retro thrash, rethrash, nu thrash, or just plain old motherfucking thrash – they’re one of the better bands playing it right now. Like only a handful of their peers, they really seem to “get” the music – and so while their roots as a Metallica cover band might show, it doesn’t really matter ’cause, well, who can think about that shit while headbanging so damn hard?
It’s been a tumultuous time for the band as of late – founding bassist Mike Alexander passed away in October of last year – but they’ve managed to persevere, and now find themselves doing pretty much the best first North American tour any non-American (in this case, British) band could hope for: playing support for Kreator along with Voivod, Nachtmystium, and Lazarus A.D. And as if that wasn’t enough, almost immediately thereafter they hit the road with Overkill. Sheesh.
Following the band’s gig here in New York last weekend, I got to speak with guitarist Ol Drake, who, despite his almost Heavy Metal Muppet-ish appearance, is a very cordial, soft-spoken gentleman. After the jump, get Ol’s thoughts on playing the States for the first time, why it’s taken them so damn long to get here, new bassist Joel Graham, the status of the next Evile record, and more.
Kreator’s twenty-fifth anniversary tour, which features the very strong supporting line-up of Voivod, Nachtmystium, Evile, and Lazarus A.D., rolled through NYC on Saturday night, and, yeppers, I was there. I don’t have tons to say about it, but I did wanna give you a quick run-down, in the event that you are somehow on the fence about whether or not to buy a ticket when the tour comes to your town… so here are some quick thoughts about all the bands, in the order in which they appeared:
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Following my post yesterday about Metal Hammer’s Dimebag tribute album, Earache Records has sent out a press release confirming that Evile’s cover of the Pantera classic “Cemetery Gates” was, indeed, late bassist Mike Alexander’s final recording with the band before he passed away. That means the track has obviously taken on new meaning for the band – both because of the lyrical content (a study in death and grief) and because what was intended to be a tribute to one fallen brother will now also serve as a tribute to another.
You can watch video of the band recording the track above; after the jump, read a quote from Evile’s lead guitarist, Ol Drake:
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 1:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
It’s hard to believe that Dime has been gone for five years, but December 8 will be the anniversary of one of metal’s bleakest moments. To cash-in on commemorate the event, Metal Hammer have enlisted a bunch of well-known acts to record Pantera covers (but not Damageplan covers, because, y’know, let’s get real here) for a CD that will come with the magazine. Metal Hammer has done this a few times in the past – I remember they had they entire Master of Puppets album re-recorded by various bands, including Mastodon, Machine Head, Chimaira and Trivium when that album reached its twentieth anniversary, and some of it was pretty good.
Get the complete track list for Metal Hammer’s Dime tribute disc after the jump, along with my thoughts in bold.
It was a fuckin’ busy week, no? Either shit was crazy this week or I’ve really got to get outside of the MS Mansion more often. Here’s what went down:
We announced a Winter U.S. tour featuring four bands TBA, and we revealed them day by day via anonymous interviews. So far we’ve revealed Mutiny Within, Arsis and Exodus (click the band name for the interview). Who will the headliner be? Read the interview here and try to guess.
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 2:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
First of all, for our non-Chosen readers: groyse metsie is Yiddish for a bargain. Don’t say I never taught ya nuthin’.
So. For the month of October (or “Rocktober,” as some clever marketing types are dubbing it), Earache is offering a whole bunch of truly righteous albums from their catalog for download on iTunes at a retardedly low price: $5.99 in the U.S., £4.49 in the U.K., and 4,99EUR in Europe. (The press release tells me that “prices may vary in other regions.” Ha-ha.) Now, I know that most of us music snobs don’t like iTunes because the audio quality isn’t as high as it could be, and there’s a better-than-average chance that a lot of you own most of these albums anyway. But if you can get past the whole “IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS FLAC! Snort snort” thing and/or for some reason DO NOT already own most of these albums, it’s a really, really killer deal.
A complete list of available albums after the jump. At least six or seven of these are classics, and nine or so are still awesome and could be classics, so they’re totally worth the six bucks or whatever.
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 11:06am by Axl Rosenberg
I’ve just received an e-mail from Earache Records alerting me that Mike Alexander, bassist for U.K. thrashers Evile, has passed away. He was thirty-two years old.
Evile members Matt Drake, Ol Drake and Ben Carter have released the following statement:
