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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
This week, inspired by Axl’s current ailment, we asked our writers:
WHAT IS THE BEST METAL TO LISTEN TO WHEN YOU’RE SICK?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
HOO-RAY! News that isn’t about a band I wish would die!!!
Eyehategod put on one of the most seriously fun shows I went to all year. So I’m glad to see that they’re heading back out on the road starting in late November. I’m not so glad to see that they won’t be coming back east, but dems da breaks, I guess.
If you’ve seen these dudes before, you know good they are live, and if you haven’t, well, for shame. Seriously, get off your ass and go to one of these shows if you can. (I recommend being extra, extra, extra, extra, EXTRA fucked-up for maximum enjoyment. This ain’t straight edge music, ya heard?) Support is gonna come from Phobia, so the gigs should be extra-slimey.
Dates after the jump, courtesy Pure Grain Audio.
It’s no secret that the music industry is in a shambles, with both profits and revenues at an all time low. With Napster, eDonkey and Audiogalaxy more popular than ever, anybody with a DSL connection can download an album in a matter of hours, often at CD-quality 96 khz. While the unprecedented access that we the fans have to new music is amazing, it comes at a price: the ability for artists to eke out a meager living by making music.
Sure, on the one hand it’s pretty funny to think about, say, the bassist for The Autumn Offering working at his dad’s ravioli factory when they’re not on tour. Admittedly, the contrast between some D-level metalcore band’s onstage persona (“U MIRIN OUR STAGE PRESENCE BRAH?!”) and the sad reality of seeing them try four times to get their 1998 Saturn to turn over in the parking lot after the show is pretty amusing, but this isn’t high school. Music isn’t about who’s making money and who’s 27 years old and still thinks it’s cool to be in a band, it’s about COMMUNITY. To me, the scene is one big family, and I look out for my family members. Whether you are the “fuckup-idiot-with-a-heart-of-gold cousin that everybody feels sorry for” (Eyehategod) or “ridiculously good-looking older brother we r all jealz of” (Oli Sykes/Bring Me The Horizon), if you are family I will always have your back — and family members do not steal from each other!!
Jon Fine’s best known band was Bitch Magnet, a (usually) three piece active from the late 80s to the early 90s. Though hardly a metal outfit, Fine was a vocal apostle of heavy music in the independent circles the band traveled in, deeply knowledgeable and conversant in obscure, loud shit going back to the early 70s (and earlier). I met Jon at a number of shows in NYC and read a bunch of his enthusiastic and thoughtful posts on the now-dead Chugchanga mailing list and figured he’d have an opinion or twelve on this. Jon also played in Vineland, Coptic Light and even did some time in Don Caballero.
These days Jon pays rent as a media analyst. You can find him on Mediabistro, CNBC and Twitter (where he has about eleven times as many followers as Gary Suarez).
The MetalSucks co-sponsored Eyehategod trek made its stop in Brooklyn last weekend, and the band absolutely KILLED. You’ve never seen a room full of hipsters and rock journalists go off like that. You’d almost think that the club was full of real fans.
One of the highlights of the evening was EHG’s performance of “Sister Fucker” – not just ’cause the song rocks, but because the stage banter was HI-LAR-IOUS. And luckily for those of you who weren’t there, our pal Rob Pasbani from Metal Injection caught it on video:
You can watch more of Metal Injection’s footage from the show here and here.
And there’s still five dates left on this tour! It’s a raucous good time, so don’t miss it. Get dates here.
-AR
The MetalSucks co-sponsored Eyehategod headlining trek with Nachtmystium, Brutal Truth, and Black Anvil starts tomorrow in Orlando, and as if EHG alone weren’t enough to lure you to a gig, well, this oughta do the trick. Zena Metal – somehow scooping us on news about a tour we’re sponsoring!!! - reports that for $40, you can purchase what is pretty much the best VIP package ever: “a BBQ, soundcheck access, a meet & greet and a limited-edition poster.”
Again, that’s for forty bucks. So for literally hundreds of dollars less than you’d pay for a VIP package to Ozzfest or whatever other big-name tour you’re planning on going to this summer, you can eat (hopefully?) good food, hang out at soundcheck, meet the band, go home with a souvenir, and not be married by some guy you’ve never heard of. Holy shit, that is awesome.
Eyehategod’s MetalSucks co-sponsored tour with Nachtmystium and Brutal Truth doesn’t start for another couple of weeks, but the band played the (in)famous Emo’s in Austin, Texas last week – and, more specifically, they played their first two albums, In the Name of Suffering and Take As Needed for Pain, in their entirety. Which is awesome. And makes me sad that we weren’t there. Maybe they’ll do it again on this upcoming tour?
Ah, well. Even if they don’t, at least we have some video of the performance…
You can check out more at Blabs. And go here to get those tour dates! These shows are gonna be sssssiiiccccckkkk…
-AR
“In times of trouble, go with what you know.”
- Red Tank, Scorched Earth
A few weeks back, I spent some time sketching out an idea about discovering the greatest Taco Riff in the world. My friend Lao Tzo is wont to say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step right over to your music collection, so that seems a prudent place to start. I’ve been spending time with some favorite records and, as with most metal types, I keep coming back to the Big Four. So let’s just get into it – the Big Four Taco Riff records.
In 1992 or so, someone who must have inherited a few oil wells figured that it’d be a good idea to give some of that scratch to the Beastie Boys so that they could publish their own magazine. I don’t think you have to like them as a band or even as a cultural force to appreciate what it must have been like for these guys to get that first check. “You wrote a date rape anthem called ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’ and then proceeded to ignite doctoral dissertations with your next record. Here’s a shitload of cash so that you can indulge the spohomoric writing whims of you and your friends.” Even after the beepers of every weed dealer south of 34th Street finally stopped buzzing, there was plenty of moolah left over to stage photo shoots, subsidize starving indie writers, and pay for a die cut to assemble your own bootie bass jeep from the back cover.
Of course it all went bust, but the most lasting cultural impression of that cash vacuum were the metal record reviews that happened in the third or fourth issue, where the guy correctly identified records by Eyehategod, Today is the Day, 16, and one other band I don’t remember as being the shit we all had to go buy. I knew enough about TDID to take the cue, and so went out and bought the other three. And the most important thing in this review was the guy talking about was “Taco Riffs.” When you heard those records, you knew exactly – EXCATLY – what he was talking about.
My noble band-mate Thad Calabrese and I have never had any confusion or even any discussion about what a Taco Riff is. It’s just the two of us, and so some late nights driving back from an ill-conceived show we’ll be playing “Strap It On” just to stay awake. Side 2 kicks in, the band clears away “FBLA” and then they rip it with “Blacktop.” And that “chorus” riff, accented the second time through with the vocals – “Walk on top. And you run beneath…” – we’ll just look at each other and won’t even have to say. Fucking Taco Riff. YES.
FUCK. YES. MetalSucks is very proud to be teaming up with our friends at SMN to bring you the legendary Eyehategod’s June 2010 tour. If you’ve seen Eyehategod before, you know they’re a force of nature live; if you’ve never gotten to experience them in concert until now, well, prepare to get turned right the fuck inside out. Add Nachtmystium playing support from June 4 – 15 and Brutal Truth playing support from June 10 – 13, and these are pretty much guaranteed to be some of sickest shows of the summer.
Dates are on the nifty poster above. And, of course, stay tuned to MetalSucks for more coverage…
-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks
I know I’ve written this phrase a few times in the past, but rarely is it so true: Phil Anselmo needs no introduction. You know who he is. You wanna read this interview. Period.
I will give you a little taste of the topics Mr. Anselmo and myself recently discussed via phone: his label, Housecore Records, and his upcoming autobiography, which will be co-authored by MetalSucks’ own Corey Mitchell. I did not utter the words “Pantera”or “Dimebag” even once, even after Phil did, because, well, what’s the point? The guy gets asked about Pantera literally all the time. It’s not like I was gonna be the interview where he suddenly slipped-up and revealed some new piece of information.
Luckily for you guys, Anselmo still has a lot to say even when he’s not talking about one of the most famous metal bands of ever. And so without any further bullshit…
Did you know that if you eat before you start slamming shots, you’ll get a little less drunk, but you’ll also have something to vomit up later? It’s true. Also, sometimes when you smoke weed, you get the munchies. These are just two great reasons why you should care about Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook by Annick “Morbid Chef” Giroux. Showcasing “a varied menu of over a hundred recipes from thirty countries,” Hellbent for Cooking features recipes by members of Accept, Anthrax, Anvil, Armored Saint, Brutal Truth, Death, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Gwar, Judas Priest, Kreator, Mayhem, Melechesh, Nuclear Assault, Obituary, Repulsion, Saint Vitus, Sepultura, Sigh, S.O.D., Slough Feg, Thin Lizzy, Toxic Holocaust, and about a trillion others (you can get a complete list of contributing bands here).
MetalSucks is teaming up with Bazillion Points Publishing to give away three (3) copies of Hellbent for Cooking. All you have to do to win is create a picture that somehow connects metal to food and post a link to someplace we can view said picture in the comments section below. Use Photoshop to create an image of Lemmy eating a hot dog, use MS Paint to do a portrait of Metallica as the pepperonis on a pizza, whatever you want – it just has to be both food and metal related, and it has to amuse us. Vince and I will choose the three pics that make us laugh the hardest and those pics’ creators win the book.
This contest will end at midnight EST on Monday, December 14. Please note that this contest is open to U.S. residents only, as shipping costs are a bitch. And if you’re too lazy to participate, you can always just order a copy of the book here.
Good luck, and good eats…
-AR
Upon first hearing that Eyehategod would be performing a New York City show on a boat, my immediate thought was, “That fucker is gonna sink.” My subsequent thought was, “I want to go to this.” And so I did. With a considerably steep $40 ticket price, one might think that attendees paid for the novelty of the experience, and to an extent, they’d be right. Yet coupled with headliner-quality openers like Pig Destroyer and Goatwhore, it was actually quite a bargain.
Tomorrow is Halloween. This is great news, because it means that come Sunday (or Monday) people will finally fucking stop talking about Halloween. So sick of it already. When did I become so curmudgeonly? I’m gonna make a hell of an old man. Here’s what went down this week:
Our very own Corey Mitchell is gonna be on TV this weekend; he’ll be appearing on E!’s “20 Most Horrifying Hollywood Murders” on Saturday night at 6:00pm EST/5:00PM CST. In addition to his duties as the resident Mansion old fart, Corey writes books about true crime and is a respected authority on the matter so it should be an interesting (and br00tal) watch. Have a good weekend everyone.
Brand new MS Contributing Photographer Diana Lee Zadlo was on-hand at the Eyehategod / Goatwhore etc show at Baltimore’s Ottobar this past Friday, October 23rd, and she snapped some killer photos for us of both bands. A sample of her excellent work is posted above… click through the jump for the full photo set!
Shame on me for having never heard of Australia’s Portal before. I just got their new album, Swarth (which apparently means “land covered with grassy turf”… metal teaches me a new word again!), last week, and it’s blowing my mind. I don’t even know how to describe it; it’s death metal, I guess, but it’s really pushing the limits of what “music” as a concept is. It almost reminds me of Hate Eternal, but that’s not really fair to Portal or Erik Rutan. They are just a really, really unique monster.
And I do mean “monster.” Like I said, this is really pushing the boundaries between music and noise. It’s just fucking evil, man. I’ll try to write a review one of these days, but in the meantime, I implore you to check out Portal on MySpace and buy Swarth for yourself – it just came out this week on Profound Lore.
And, oh yeah, apparently they wear costumes. Here they are doing the song “Glumurphonel” from their 2003 debut, Seepia.
For the time being it seems that Portal live shows are restricted to their native land, but they have been added to the already amazing Maryland Deathfest 2010 line-up, which will also include Converge, Eyehategod, Melechesh, Obituary, and grind gods Gridlink.
-AR
I know I’m not alone in my excitement over the upcoming Eyehategod micro-tour, which kicks off next week in Baltimore and continues with two New York City shows (including one on a motherfucking boat!) and another one in Cambridge, MA. Openers for these dates include such fine acts as Goatwhore, Pig Destroyer, and Tombs. Peep the sludge metal legends’ MySpace page for more details on these shows.
However, I suspect those of you unable to attend may be pleased to learn that Confederacy Of Ruined Lives, the band’s release from the year 2000, is getting the vinyl reissue treatment via the aptly named I’m Better Than Everyone Records. Limited to a scarce 400 copies on “thick black vinyl,” the album has been specially remastered and packaged in a nifty gatefold, which you can see previews of at the site. An even more limited version is already sold-the-fuck-out, so make sure you preorder your copy before the October 20th release date if you don’t want to miss out.
-GS
[Gary Suarez is amazed at the range of responses to his Oceano review. He usually mismanages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]
Boasting a resume that features members of Pantera more prominently than any Nashville session players, multi-instrumentalist Hank Williams III has defiantly cultivated a career and an image in stark contrast to the country roots evoked by his iconic namesake. Though hardly abandoning his heritage, the grandson of the honky tonk pioneer continues to mystify and enthrall with this, the first “official” release from this band.
So I’ve been living in the UK for about four months now, and have managed to take in quite a lot of this “culture” thing they’re so fond of over here. I’ve been to nine countries, eight major metal festivals, and a handful of cities in Ol’ Blighty itself; I’ve gate-crashed hotel parties in Norway with the drummer of Swallow the Sun, stage-dived into a sea of muddy grind freaks in the Czech Republic, gotten roaring drunk with Wolves in the Throne Room in the Netherlands, met Gaahl’s boyfriend in France, gotten lost in Rome, watched Electric Wizard blow an amp in Manchester, lost my mind to Eyehategod at Hellfest, seen Manowar (‘nuff said there) – and that was just the first couple months. Between all the metal, mud, bruises, whiskey, calimocho, hard cider, and terrifying Czech liquor (Becherovka and Fernet are no fucking joke, even if it is Kevin Sharp and Danny Herrera pouring you a shot), I realized that, somehow, something was still missing.
To my immense chagrin, I had yet to take that all-too-necessary pilgrimage up through the Black Country and into the Unholy Land itself – to Birmingham, England. Every metaller worth his leather (and several million other music fans besides) knows exactly why this unimpressive, coal-smudged city matters so much. Birmingham is the ancestral home of heavy metal. Everything – whether it be doom, black metal, powerviolence, or even the plague that is deathcore – everything came from here. The famed Mermaid Pub provided a fertile breeding ground for extreme metal, nestled as it was in a dodgy part of town where the cops ignored the punkers and longhairs milling around out front as the early rumblings of a deadly new sound thundered away upstairs The city itself was the original stomping ground of the dirty sexy hard rock’n’roll of Led Zeppelin, the NWOBHM gods in Judas Priest, the crusty proto-grind of Sore Throat, the scummy grindcore forefathers of Napalm Death, the industrial noise terror of Godflesh, and the one and only BLACK FUCKING SABBATH.
If you missed Friday’s Pig Destroyer show, you should cry. Seriously. It’s totally worth getting upset about.
But don’t, like, slit your wrists or anything: the band has announced another New York show(!)… this one as part of a tour Eyehategod (!!) are doing with Goatwhore (!!!) and Strong Intention (???)… on a motherfucking boat.
To reiterate: Eyehategod. Goatwhore. Pig Destroyer. Boat.
Will someone drown before the night’s end in a sloshed-mosh mishap? Will that someone be me or Vince? Will this be the best boat ride ever? Stay tuned for all the answer.
Here are the dates for the Eyehategod min-tour. Even if you can’t go the NY Pig Destroyer boat extravaganza, the other dates should be awesome, too.
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