MetalSucks

Do you guys have any issues with cops? Ever been unfairly treated by one or many? No, this isn’t a defense attorney ad, but I’m just curious. You see, prior to one thing that happened on the last tour DAATH did (and, granted, it wasn’t HUGE), I had never ever been messed with by a cop. I’ve always treated them with respect, and somehow they’ve always treated me that way. And I KNOW that is a rare situation because I hear from so many people about how they’ve been brutalized or fucked with or just not treated right by some cops.

My thought has always been, who you gonna call at 5 a.m. if someone is rummaging through your house and you don’t own a gun? They’ll risk their lives for you, so with me, there’s always a baseline of respect. But this thing that happened to us sure did shatter that respect for at least one cop.

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The local band weekend tour. We used to do these back in our DIY days and I recommend that any band that aspires to touring full-time do some of these as well. The point is to get you ready for what you’ll encounter out there on a real tour. So you start with a weekend tour. If that goes well, see if you can handle a week. If that goes well, see if you can handle a week and a half. All this time keep doing little weekend runs in your region.

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Okay. It’s time for me to get the answer to a question which has been haunting my soul for a few years now. How many of you metal fans are musicians, how many of you are musicians in bands, and how many of you don’t play any instruments at all and just love the music? Please feel free to get as detailed as possible with your response.

DAATH is the kind of band that likes to meet all of our fans. Granted, we’re not as big as the Jonas Brothers yet, so we have time every night to talk to our fans. But regardless, we make a point of doing so. The grand majority, and I mean GRAND majority of fans we talk to, at some point will tell us about their band, or about a guitar they own, or about some sort of musical inclination they have. Is metal a style of music by musicians for musicians? Are straight up music fans that don’t play anything the minority? Or is it just that way in the more extreme genres of metal – since there aren’t as many fans to begin with are the people that are there just generally the bands in the scene?

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You guys have proven me right. At least I think you have. Could be that all the anti social, acne ridden, socially retarded, fucktard trolls decided not to comment on my previous post, but something tells me that this just isn’t the case. I think you guys came out en-masse and stated who you were. Haters and non-haters alike. Its cool to see you guys actually getting along for once, too.

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How many times have you guys heard the cliché about the fifteen year old pimple faced kid with no life sitting on the computer in his mom’s basement getting on Blabbermouth, or Lambgoat, or any of these sites, and just talking mad shit about whatever band or person of note they feel like lambasting? Well, I’m here to say that the fifteen year old we all refer to is just a stereotype.

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Am I the only one here that thinks that American bands shouldn’t be allowed to wear corpse paint? There should be a law in the metal books that states it. There’s some rules that us American metalheads must follow, like the famous “Don’t Wear Your Own Band’s Shirt Law,” for instance. It doesn’t apply to Europeans and that’s okay, they’ve got their own set of laws. It applies to us, though, and when you break it, people get to talking.

Well, I think that corpse paint should fall under the “Must Never Be Applied To The Face Of An American” law. I think it should be punishable by excommunication from the community. I’ve got my reasons.

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I listened to the new Skeletonwitch album, Breathing the Fire, last night, and guess what? It pwns. THAT’S RIGHT, BALLS666. I’M GOING TO SAY “PWN” AS MUCH AS I FUCKING LIKE. YOU THINK THAT’S WORTH KILLING ME OVER?!? COME AND GET ME, COCKSUCKER.

Here’s some other shit that went down this week:

• As the headline says, Daath’s Eyal Levi is MVP for the week.
• We enjoyed an exclusive mp3 from Weekend Nachos.
• We spoke to a surprisingly upbeat Nergal from Behemoth.
• Holy shit, Sammy O’Hagar almost liked the new Winds of Plague album. Almost.
• R.I.P. Les Paul.

I’m going to see District 9 now. Have a good weekend, everyone.

-AR

So playing underground metal is interesting for various reasons. There’s a real hierarchy to it. It has its own set of stars. Its own celebs. Legends. Etc. But in the grand scheme of the music industry, it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket.

Forget Metallica and the huge bands. I’m talking about everything else. Maybe these days, when records don’t sell like they used to and metal sells like it always has, it’s a bigger drop in the bucket. But check this out. A metal band sells 100,000 units. I’ts something to open up champagne and do coke off of strippers asses over. Tour buses, flat screen TVs, WOW WE’RE ROCKSTARS. Do you guys realize that on a major label in the mainstream world, 100,000 units is an abject failure?

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Who here likes going to Guitar Center? The Kmart of music supplies. Going there always pisses me off because I get some dude in a button up silk shirt with embroidered flames shooting up it trying to convince me how the latest Crate amp is gonna blow the roof off the house. I JUST NEED SOME STRINGS AND SOME PICKS. Why does everything there take so goddamn long? I swear, it takes me an average of forty-five minutes to just buy a pack of picks.

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MEGADETH, RUST IN PEACE

Ok, I was like, what, eleven when this shit came out? More like thirteen when I discovered it. Back then, Dave Mustaine was almost like a political figure as far as metal goes. Who knows how I’d look at his role now, but back then, he was a hero.

And then there was the songwriting. Nobody was writing music as creative as them. Listen to the guitar breaks in songs like “Five Magics” or the entire masterpiece, “Rust in Peace.” Nobody was writing stuff like that, and for the time, I felt like the lyrics actually meant something. And the solos – try playing a Marty Friedman solo when you’re thirteen. Try playing one now. The dude is/was/ and will forever be untouchable.

This band meant the world to me back then. I’m not crazy about the new directions the band has gone in, but that doesn’t diminish that they changed my life back when I was younger. I always felt like their rival bands were playing it safe, and that Megadeth was taking all the musical risks. I definitely think that this would be the musician’s choice for those of us who are and were still into real metal with real songs. Not just shred wankery.

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We all love metal. That goes without saying. That’s why we all read this site and keep up with what our favorite, and not so favorite, bands are doing. From people in bands to fans, we all pretty much live, breathe, sleep, and bleed metal.

So I guess what I’m wondering is: does it ever get old to any of you?

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It’s 4 pm, and right about now we’re either interviewing someone or other or watching Job for a Cowboy. Either way, I hope we’re having a fun time.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• We’re streaming Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye in its entirety!
• Current Coheed & Cambria/former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie discussed metal with us.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi is home for tour and very busy blogging for us.
• Our girl Grim Kim visited Birmingham, England, the birthplace of metal.
• We checked out the latest releases from Assjack and Dysrhythmia.
• It looks Ozzy has hired Firewind’s Gus G. to replace Zakk Wylde. And that got us thinking about the legacies of former Ozzy axe slingers Jake E. Lee and Joe Holmes.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I know I will.

-AR

I haven’t smoked weed in about three weeks now. I haven’t wanted to. Getting sick kind of took that wind out of my sails and then I had no choice but to abstain in the hospital. Two nights ago I was at my girl’s place watching her and her roommate spark joint after joint after joint, and the craving came back. I didn’t partake. And I’m not going to for awhile, but I wanted to. And I still kinda do.

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Every show we play, any city in the world, any time of day, any season of the year, ANYWHERE, we get demos. Some of these demos come in really nice press packets with blown up photos and a bio telling us about the stagnation of the local scene and how Cryptic Disembowelment is breathing new life unto said scene. Some of these are just burned CDs with sharpie on them. Some come hot off a laser printer. We get shit tons. And by and large they are all garbage.

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Jeez Louise, has it been two weeks since the awesome Daath/Goatwhore show we checked out already? Wow. Time goes so fast. One day soon I’ll wake up dead. Deep.

ANYWAY, Metal Injection’s Rob Pasbani (on-camera) and Frank Godla (manning the camera) were on-hand at said gig to interview 4/5ths of Daath (drummer Kevin Talley sat this tour out), and in typical MI fashion, they did so while everyone was completely fucked up. Which is probably why the interview is entertaining.

And we’ll have a brand new “Jumping Darkness Parade” from Daath guitarist Eyal Levi later today!

-AR

Laying in a bed in Atlanta, Georgia has never felt so sweet. One week ago tonight I was laying in a hospital bed in Hartford, not sure if I was going to live out the week. One week before that, I was breaking fevers in the van once every three hours, not able to breath, and breaking down from the exhaustion of getting really fucking sick on the road.

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Momma always told me that if I ever met “the one,” I’d know right away. Even my father – who makes me look like a sunny, optimistic, outgoing person – said that he knew right away he wanted to spend the rest of his life with my mom. But I never really believed it, and definitely never thought it would happen to me.

But then last night changed everything. I knew within minutes, if not seconds, that I had found “the one.”

‘Cause last night I smoked out of a vaporizer for the first time. And my life will never, ever be the same. I’m just not going to be able to go back to bongs and pipes. This is it. I am now a one drug-apparatus man.

Thanks to Sean Z. from Daath for hooking that shit up. There weren’t nearly enough people at the show last night, and Sean had some mic/monitor issues, but Daath still played like they were headlining Madison fucking Square Garden (and Sean managed to sing while doing windmills, which I’ve never seen before). Eyal Levi has fucking pneumonia and a cracked rib, and he was still jumping all over the place. And Emil “Things Go Better with Coke” Werstler is almost spastic enough to be in a mathcore band. Plus, his solos are the shit.

Goatwhore killed it, too. I really can’t say enough good things about these bands. You can find remaining tour dates here; definitely go check ‘em out if you can. And bring your vaporizer.

Here’s some Daath and Goatwhore videos to kick off your morning.

-AR

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For those of you not from the U.S. and somehow completely unaware of this, the Fourth of July is a pretty big deal here in America. On that day, we celebrate winning our freedom by kicking the British’s ass. Of course, they later gave us Hugh Grant, so I guess they had their revenge in the end.

So there won’t be any posts tomorrow; on Monday, we’ll unveil the last albums on the list. In the meantime, here’s some things that happened this week in the world of MetalSucks:

• We continued to countdown the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far. You continued to engage in, um, intelligent debate. Yeah, let’s call it intelligent debate.
• We spoke with Goatwhore’s Ben Falgoust and Black Math Horseman’s Sera Timms.
• We checked out new releases from Killswitch Engage and Havok.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi took a break from worrying about dying in fiery plane or car crash to worry about getting shot.
• We debated the merits of the new Alice in Chains song.
• We laughed at high school year book photos of past and present members of Metallica.

I plan to not be sober for the next 72 hours. See ya Monday!

-AR

Hello everyone! I’m on tour now. DAATH is traveling the United States and Canada this summer on the Conquer and Curse tour which features Goatwhore, Abigail Williams, Abysmal Dawn, Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky, and us. My blog isn’t going to become a tour blog, but I do feel that its my duty to discuss amazing and fucked up things when they happen. And they do happen when you’re on the road.

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1. crude; coarse. harsh; ferocious.
2. of or pertaining to road injuries to Daath’s Eyal Levi
3. Australia’s The Amenta. And why wouldn’t they be brutal? They’re on Listenable Records, after all. Catch ‘em on the “Monsters of Death” U.S. tour this fall with Vader, Decrepit Birth, Warbringer, Augury and Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky.