[UPDATE, 4:30pm EDT, Oct 27: Cephalic Carnage have unfortunately dropped off this tour. -Ed]

MetalSucks is proud to be teaming up with our pals at Metal Injection and Hails & Horns to bring you what we think is gonna be one of the most brutal tours of the year: the incredibly fucking awesome Exhumed are headlining, and support is coming from Goatwhore, Cephalic Carnage, and Havok. This is one of those rare package tours where there isn’t a bad band on the bill — it’s gonna be the kind of show where you’ll wanna get there early to make sure you don’t miss a minute. There’s just absolutely no way that these shows will be anything less than insane.

Seriously, do NOT miss this tour — you’re gonna feel like a damn fool if you do. Dates are after the jump!

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Facedown and Mediaskare are all over the new releases this week, and we have new records from Unearth, Intensus, Exhumed and Harm’s Way as well. Let’s check it out.

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Yay, Vince is back! And guess what? Now it’s my turn to take a vacation! I haven’t had once since the summer of 2006, about six months before we started the site. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to getting away. Try not to miss me too much, m’kay?

And, oh yeah, it’s July 4 weekend, so we’re leaving early today and won’t be here Monday. That might be worth mentioning for non-American readers.

ANYWAY, here’s what we did this week:

• We debuted new music by Exhumed.
• Landphil from Municipal Waste and Cannabis Corpse pondered the CM Punk WWE Raw “shoot.”
• Our pals at Decibel spoke to the members of Cradle of Filth about about their album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.
• We wondered why teenagers are still butthurt about Hot Topic in 2011.
• We celebrated the Stephen Colbert/Ted Nugent showdown.
• We checked out the first Portnoy-free Dream Theater song.
• We enjoyed some lulz at the expense of Staind and their record label.
• We bemoaned the fact that Behemoth’s Nergal is back on trial for tearin’ up a Bible.
• We celebrated the gloriousness that is the new Mastodon video.
• Best. “Show Us Your MetalSucks.” EVER.

And now it’s time to start partying. Lates.

-AR

It’s been eight long years since the release of Exhumed’s last studio album, but the wait is finally over: All Guts, No Glory, the band’s new album, is absolutely MONSTROUS, and will more than rewards fans’ patience. Razor-sharp guitars, brain-busting drums, demon from the bowels of hell vocals, songs that prove that technicality, brutality, and hooks can all peacefully co-exist… in short, All Guts, No Glory is everything you want from an Exhumed record.

Relapse will unleash Guts upon the world on July 5, but you don’t hafta wait ’til then to hear it in all its death metal glory, ’cause we’re streaming it below right this very second. And once you’ve heard just how killer it is, you can pre-order a copy here.

And don’t forget that Exhumed will be touring with the also-excellent Cephalic Carnage starting July 17; you can get dates here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Congratulations to Isaac Schwarz, the winner of our MDF MVP contest! We had a bunch of great entries, but Isaac’s was chosen above all others by an illustrious panel of Maryland Death Fest veterans, including Andres Erickson (General Surgery/Sayyadina), Matt Harvey (Exhumed/Depakitator), Rich Hoak (Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction), Mike Hrubovcak (Monstosity), Mike Majewski (Devourment), Matt Moore (Absu/ Rumpelstiltskin Grinder),  and Proscriptor (Absu). Isaac any 2 shirts, 1 LP, 2 CDs , and a  mystery prize from the Relapse booth at this year’s MDF (Relapse titles only). Not bad, eh, Isaac?

And don’t forget that Maryland Death Fest starts tonight, and rages all weekend! Four day passes are now sold out, but three passes and tickets to individual days are still available here. This year’s line-up is incredible, and includes Neurosis, Coroner, Voivod, Nuclear Assault, (the soon to be departed) Cathedral, Corrosion of Conformity, Exhorder, Exhumed, Kylesa, Ghost, Skinless’ farewell gig, and tons more. If you have the chance to go and you don’t, you’re a damn fool.

And on that note, here’s Isaac’s contest-winning essay…

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The Sonar in Baltimore, Maryland has been shut down due to an expired liquor license and a subsequent dispute amongst several of the people who run the venue.

“So?” you may be thinking. “Venues get shut down all the time. Such is life. Why should I care?”

Well, this particular venue was supposed to host Maryland Deathfest (plus two sold-out Deftones/Dillinger Escape Plan shows) at the end of this month. Which means the MDF, one of, if not the, most revered extreme music festivals in North America, only has a few weeks to find a new venue.

But don’t fret! According to Metal Underground, “The festival organizers claim to have a backup plan that should involve little to no inconvenience to ticket holders (even those coming from out of town) and will be releasng more details soon.” So it looks like the festival is going forward as planned, which is obviously a major relief. It would be a serious tragedy if the festival had been derailed because somebody couldn’t keep track of an important date.

The final line-up for the fest, as well as set times for each band, is after the jump, although please note that it’s all subject to change once the new venue is announced.

In the meantime, don’t forget that you still have ’til Monday, May 16 at midnight EST to enter the awesome MDF MVP contest we’re doing with Relapse. You could win any 2 shirts, 1 LP, 2 CDs , and a  mystery prize from the Relapse booth at this year’s MDF (Relapse titles only), and the contest is being judged by a who’s who of MDF luminaries: Andres Erickson (General Surgery/Sayyadina), Matt Harvey (Exhumed/Depakitator), Rich Hoak (Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction), Mike Hrubovcak (Monstosity), Mike Majewski (Devourment), Matt Moore (Absu/ Rumpelstiltskin Grinder),  and Proscriptor (Absu)! Go here for all details on how to enter.

And now those set times…

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IN CASE Y’ALL SOMEHOW FORGOT!!!

The ninth annual installement of Maryland Deathfest, arguably America’s best extreme music festival, will take place from May 26 – 29, and will feature performances from Neurosis, Coroner, Voivod, Nuclear Assault, Corrosion of Conformity, Cathedral, Exhorder, Ghost, Kylesa, Exhumed, and tons more! You can get more details and tickets here.

To celebrate this stupendous occasion, MetalSucks is teaming up with Relapse Records for an incredibly cool contest: THE MDF MVP. Here’s how it’s gonna work:

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Am I the only one who thinks that Exhumed really missed an opportunity by not naming their new album No Guts, No Gory? I mean it’s SUCH AN AMAZING PUN and no death metal band has ever used it for some reason, right? They totally should have gotten on top of that shit, don’t you agree?

[crickets]

ANYWAY, the band is now streaming a new track from their forthcoming release. It’s called “As Hammer to Anvil,” and you can check it out here. It fucking rocks. This is the band’s first album in eight years, and this track certainly suggests that the wait will have been worth it. I’m stoked to hear the rest of this beast now.

No Guts, No Gory All Guts, No Glory comes out July 5 on Relapse. Seems like a good way to celebrate Independence Day to me! It’s already available for pre-order (CD, deluxe CD, digital), and the band is touring Europe with Atheist right now, and then they tour the States this summer with some other killer groups, like Cephalic Carnage, Withered, and Macabre. Here are dates for those shows:

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The ninth annual installement of Maryland Deathfet, arguably America’s best extreme music festival, is just around the corner! This year’s fest will take place from May 26 – 29, and, as usual, has a ridiculously strong line-up: Neurosis, Coroner, Voivod, Nuclear Assault, Corrosion of Conformity, Cathedral, Exhorder, Ghost, Kylesa, Exhumed, and tons more will all be playing during the course of the weekend. You can get more details and tickets here.

To celebrate this stupendous occasion, MetalSucks is teaming up with Relapse Records for an incredibly cool contest: THE MDF MVP. Here’s how it’s gonna work:

• Anytime between now and Monday, May 16 at midnight EST, send an e-mail to news AT metalsucks DOT net with the subject line “MDF MVP.”
• The contents of the e-mail should include anything and everything you think proves that you should be this year’s MDF MVP. How many other installments of the fest have you attended? Have any great stories? Pictures? Memorabilia? Memories of great or terrible bands? It’s up to you to convince the panel of judges that you deserve to win.
• Speaking of the panel of judges, look at the MDF MVPs we ‘ve rounded up to reign over this contest! Andres Erickson (General Surgery/Sayyadina), Matt Harvey (Exhumed/Depakitator), Rich Hoak (Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction), Mike Hrubovcak (Monstosity), Mike Majewski (Devourment), Matt Moore (Absu/ Rumpelstiltskin Grinder),  and Proscriptor (Absu) will look over the entries and choose the MDF MVP!!!
• The winner gets  any 2 shirts, 1 LP, 2 CDs , and a  mystery prize from the Relapse booth at this year’s MDF (Relapse titles only).
• The winner will be announced the week of May 23.

And that’s it! This should be a really fun contest that separates the real fans from the chumps… so get crackin’ on those entries!!!

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Let’s keep this one short n’ sweet, ’cause the poster tells you everything you need to know anyway. The might Exhumed are doing their first North American headlining tour in six years this summer, and they’re taking some killer bands out on the road with them — namely Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered. The shows on this tour will clearly reek of terrible, horrible, almost unbearable nerd body odor, but they will also reek of awesomeness. I wanna go. You wanna go. Everyone should want to go. So let’s all go.

Here are the dates:

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In this post-Crack The Skye world, a band like American Heritage is like sweet relief to lovers of angular, raging, uber-macho post-metal: Throughout their forthcoming sophomore album Sedentary, the Chicago quartet show little trepidation as would-be inheritors to Mastodon’s now-vacant throne. And one could say Ameri-Heri makes good economic and practical sense, too, as Sedentary employs a full whack of guest bassists (including members of Murder Construct, Black Cobra, Exhumed, Nachtmystium, and Buried At Sea) and provides a venue for Mastodon axeman Bill Kelliher to do a fucking guitar solo for once.

Sedentary is out March 1 on Translation Loss (pre-order here) but because we at MetalSucks believe in awesomeness, we present to you this exclusive advanced listen to its opening jam “City of God” (below). It’s a first taste of what MS scribe Satan Rosenbloom calls his favorite album of the year so far. He won’t be the only one.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

–ADF

FEATURING MEMBERS OF ARCH ENEMY, SUNN O))), MADBALL, FUCK THE FACTS, DOMMIN, DARK CASTLE, IMBROGLIO, EXHUMED, AND THAT METAL SHOW

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the first group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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It’s a rare that a supergroup ends up being more than the sum of its parts — and yet, miraculously, such is the case with Murder Construct, a new deathgrind outfit featuring Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan on vocals, Exhumed/Phobia/Impaled’s Leon del Muerte on guitar and vocals, Intronaut/Uphill Battle’s Danny Walker on drums, Bad Acid Trip’s Caleb Schneider on bass, and Fetus Eaters/Watch Me Burn’s Kevin Fetus also on guitar. With a pedigree like that, your expectations for the band are pretty high. And guess what? Murder Construct do not disappoint.

But don’t take our word for it — give the group’s debut album a listen in its entirety below. Once you’ve felt its awesome power, you’ll wanna pre-order it here. Relapse will release the album next Tuesday, November 23. Enjoy it, fuckers!

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.

While the free world breathlessly awaits the results of Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s NLCS bet with Exhumed frontman Matt Harvey — and even down 3-1, it’s way too early to start taunting the boss with “black black black black number ooooooone” — the rest of team dB has moved on to give you a Very Special December issue.

Yes, that’s one of extreme music’s most polarizing mugs on the cover. (You know what, let’s say “polarizing figure”; there’s nothing polarizing about Phil’s facial expressions, which all clearly fucking rule.) As usual, the man has a billion things going on. Sadly, one of them is not the fourth Down record (yet), although a new Arson Anthem slab and the 20^th anniversary of Cowboys From Hell are pretty sick placeholders. For a dude that’s been somewhat, um, contentious in interviews, Anselmo is crazy gregarious with our man J. Bennett. Like Mustaine or Lars, whether you love or hate the guy, he gives great copy. And I promise that the anecdotes about early Pantera — especially pertaining to Seagal-caliber bar pummelings — will do you right.

As for the rest of the issue, there’s plenty more radness that you can see for yourself on the cover, but one thing you can’t that I’ll spoil right now is Rod Smith’s review of the Amphetamine Reptile 25^th anniversary show. Shannon Selberg of the Cows is wearing mousetraps as earrings. ‘Nuff said. This fucker will be on newsstands next week, but we wouldn’t mind picking up our Secret Santa anal beads before Black Friday, so help us out by grabbing it early here.

Oh yeah, if you’re getting pumped about the Incantation Onward to Golgotha Hall of Fame shows that I’ve been babbling about the last month or so, the New York one just moved. It’s no longer at Rebel on November 20, but Club Europa, which evidently is here:

Europa Night Club
98 Meserole Ave. (corner of Manhattan Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Shit will rule. Snap ’em up.

-AB

Like the man said, you can buy yourself a copy of the December 2010 issue of Decibel here. But we’ll love you better if you just go ahead and buy yourself a full subscription. Trust us, it’s totally worth it!!!

Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh: “A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’ Think about that for a while.”

For Mets fans like Vince Neilstein and yours truly, the preceding Bull Durham gem is probably the most charitable way to assess the last four seasons of Shea/Citi Field underachieving. For Phillies fans like Decibel asshole-in-chief Albert Mudrian and Giants fans like Exhumed splatter-master Matt Harvey, their go-to baseball flick quote du jour has to be the great Roger Dorn of Major League: “I got one thing to say to you, Vaughn: Strike this motherfucker out!”

Yes, the National League Championship Series is set for launch on Saturday, with San Fran squaring off against Philly. While Vince and I would strongly recommend going to a show — any show; like, Ke$ha would suffice — instead of supporting MLB’s dwindling playoff ratings, you might think otherwise now that the dignity of not only an extreme metal magazine publisher but vaunted musician is on the line. It turns out that Harvey is feeling awfully good about the Giants’ chances in the best-of-seven, and challenged Mudrian to an appropriately retarded wager. Anybody who has seen SF closer Brian Wilson lately can attest that Harvey’s challenge is solid fucking gold. Catch up right here for the terms, and join us in brainstorming something even more humiliating.

Or just post “Yanks in 4” or some such fucktardery in the comments. Either way.

-AB

In case you’re curious, Axl Rosenberg doesn’t give two shits about sports. But he wants you to buy yourself a copy of the November 2010 issue of Decibel or, better yet, buy yourself a full subscription. If you don’t, expect lots more coverage of Skunk Anansie in the near future.

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

So right now you’re probably thinking 1) “Hey, assholes, the NHL season actually started last night so this can’t really be a ‘preview’ in the traditional sense of the word,” and 2) “Hey, assholes, at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records.” And, yes, we know we’re a little late, but this is metal, so who the fuck is ever on time? And, yes, we know that at least one of these artists isn’t actually signed to Relapse Records, but most of them are, and the fine people at Relapse really did all the work in putting this together, so ppppfffffttttt.

So. After the jump, you can find previews of how the freshly-begun NHL season is looking for the favorite teams of members of 3 Inches of Blood, -(16)-, Buried Inside, Cephalic Carnage, Cretin, Dekapitator, Exhumed, Fuck the Facts, Gravehill, Hero Destroyed, Indian, Misery Index, Mortuous, Repulsion, and Toxic Holocaust. Enjoy!!!

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