On March 1, MetalSucks photographer extraordinaire once again braved the savage, stinky pits of the Trocadero in Philadelphia, all so she could capture these absolutely killer pics from the Finnish Metal Tour, featuring Finntroll, Ensiferum, and Rotten Sound. Bow down before Alyssa’s superior prowess with her weapon of choice — the camera. You are not worthy of photos so awesome, scum. But you get to enjoy them (after the jump) anyway.

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Dude windmilling in the jacuzzi as some band plays behind him. Jacuzzis = metal.

Our brothas and sista at Metal Injection are having a grand ol’ time on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, which by now you’ve surely heard about: a 4-day cruise from Miami to Cozumel and back featuring close to 50 metal bands on three stages, many of them playing more than once. You can imagine the scene… lots and lots and lots of black t-shirts.

MI’s Rob, Frank and Noa are posting regular liveblog updates from their voyage by continuing to add updates to this page. Among some amusing highlights:

• Check out this video of the scene before the storm. So many black t-shirts!
• Nevermore and Sanctuary both fucking killed it. Says Noa, “It was great seeing Jim [Shephard] with a bass in his hand instead of quarters for the slot machines.”

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Do they still show old Tom and Jerry episodes anywhere? Can kids still watch ‘em? Oh man, I hope so. Tom and Jerry was a staple of my cartoon-watching diet as a young ‘un, and it would pain me to think children today aren’t still deriving pleasure from their antics.

So. The latest masterpiece from Too Much Free Time Theater is the below, which melds Tom and Jerry with Finntroll the same way previous entries have combined Job for a Cowboy with Spongebob Squarepants and Throwdown with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and yadda yadda yadda. On the one hand, I’m starting to feel like it’s time for a new joke, and on the other hand, whatever.

Thanks to Max for sending this in.

-AR

The MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 is currently winding its way across North America, having stopped at New York City’s Gramercy Theater last Thursday on the third night of the tour. You pretty much know what you’re gonna get with bands like Finntroll, Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun — epic fucking metal. And epic it was.

My chronological but otherwise disorganized thoughts on the concert:

• Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player is so serious. That guy rules.
• How do Swallow the Sun afford to tour the States so often?
• Holy shit… Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player rules so hard. Most metal stage faces I’ve ever seen.
• Is that dude in the audience wearing a loincloth? Yes… yes, he is.
• This is the best I’ve heard Swallow the Sun sound in the three times I’ve seen them.
• So when can we meet and hang out with Swallow the Sun’s keyboard player? I wanna shoot heroin and talk about the meaninglessness of life with this dude.
• Moonsorrow sound pretty good, but they were better at Paganfest II last year (where they blew every other band away).

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When I awoke this morning, my Twitter friends list featured a whole lot of 140-characters-or-less commentary from last night’s unintentionally hilarious Finntroll show at New York’s Gramercy Theatre. Yet tucked away between the twitticisms (see what I did there?) was an outraged comment from a friend over the gossip that Robert fucking Pattinson has landed the role of Kurt Cobain in a planned Nirvana biopic. Yes, I’m talking about the same Robert Pattinson who used the worst terrorist attack on American soil as a fucking plot device and who terrorizes us all with his continued involvement in those fucking awful vampire flicks.

I know many of you are still totally butthurt than grunge supplanted hair metal in the early 90s, forever relegating your favorite bands (which sucked) to play Indian casinos and shitty nightclubs for the rest of their “careers,” but Nirvana was one of the most important bands of my adolescence. So yeah, I’m pissed that an actor that hasn’t played a decent role in his entire life was tapped to play one of my musical heroes.

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I’ve been advocating videos that don’t actually feature the band – particularly animated ones – for some time now. It’s come to my attention that there are a number of reasons why we don’t see these more often. Still, from a creative stand point at least, I’m convinced that they’re often the way to go.

Case in point: Finntroll’s new video for the song “Under Bergets Rot,” which debuted on Bloody Disgusting this morning. Sure, the animation isn’t the best in the world, but it looks cool, it has the right vibe for the song, and it makes you feel like you’re not watching something you’ve seen ten trillion times before.

The song comes off the band’s latest album, Nifelvind, which is out now on Century. And don’t forget that Finntroll are headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 with special guests Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun – it kicks off tomorrow!!! Get dates here.

-AR

Finntroll, Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun are coming to the U.S. and Canada. That alone gives us goosebumps. That the tour starts next week and hits NYC the day after Opeth’s Blackwater Park commemorative concert gives our collective nipples the ability to cut glass. Those two days are going to be absolutely epic… and we’re going to have wicked weed hangovers when they’re all over.

Unfortunately Survivors Zero had to drop off this tour due to visa issues. Nothing against them, but that really doesn’t affect how great this night will be; I dug what I heard of their music though, so hopefully they’ll be able to make it over here soon.

Find a full list of dates for the MetalSucks-sponsored Finnish Metal Tour 2010 after the jump.

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Finland is the new Sweden. Or the new black. Or something.

The Finnish Metal Tour, featuring Finntroll, Moonsorrow, Swallow the Sun and Survivors Zero was announced this past December, at which point our nipples instantly became hard. But now we’ve been asked on as an official sponsor and hey, lookee at that, our logo’s at the top of this here tour poster all fancy-lookin’ and shit!

We’ve yet to see Finntroll live but MS Uber-Suckalo groverXIII loooooooves this band and the dude generally has good taste, so we’ll have to trust him. Moonsorrow completely annihilated New York when they came through as part of the second Paganfest tour last year, and even though they weren’t the headliners they were easily the stand-out band on that bill. Swallow the Sun are Swallow the motherfucking Sun, always epic, always awesome. And we haven’t heard of Survivors Zero yet, but I’m listening to their MySpace page now and I really like what I’m hearing. This is definitely one of the most exciting tour lineups of Spring 2010.

Stream the new Finntroll track at Metal Insider then check out the full list of tour dates after the jump.

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Alright, let’s cut right to the quick: our pals at Metal Insider are streaming a new Finntroll song, ”Under Bergets Rot.”It comes from the band’s forthcoming fifth album, Nifelvind, which will be out March 9. And to sweeten the deal, MI has an interview the band’s vocalist, Vreth, too.

If you like drinking mead, banging wenches, and listening to FUCKING METAL, you need to check this out. Go here to give the song a listen and to read the interview.

-AR

We’ve all been there. Tensions are high in some packed, sweaty venue, sparked by feverish excitement and the potential for violence. These people paid good money to enjoy some type of cathartic release. The frontman for whatever hard-nu-death-crab-metal-core outfit is brazen and demanding. Can you believe this shit? You PAID to be entertained, and this guy is telling YOU what to do! The speech goes something like this: “I want everybody in this room moving! Front to back, side to side, NO ONE STANDS STILL! When this part kicks in, I want total [Insert destructive word here like "chaos," "mayhem," or "bedlam" if you're witty]. If the person next to you isn’t moving, MAKE THEM MOVE!” Than, if the action is not adequate, this screamer/pep rally organizer calls YOU some variation of “pussy” or “faggot” or really anything to make you feel like a soft, womanly bitch of a man in order to get in that pit and kick another grown man in the face, all in the spirit of making this band look like they are awesome. But then something happens, as if the air is sucked out of the room at the moment of impact – when those glorious staccato chugs kick in, the crowd is almost always powerless to its charms regardless of the obvious lack of substance. Like junk food and reality TV, we have a love affair with breakdowns.

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Here’s a terrible joke I heard last night:

What’s the name of the woods where you go to cheat on your wife? Tiger Woods!

RIMSHOT!

But I’m already off-topic.

Everyone loves to bitch and moan about metal videos that were shot in a warehouse (or something that looks like it might be a warehouse – it seems to be that “warehouse” has basically come to mean “any location with plain walls”), but no one ever seems to complain about how many videos seem to be shot in the woods. I mean, I get it; there are only so many locations that “look metal” and are affordable on the kinds of budgets usually allocated to cinemetal. But I’m just saying, if you’re gonna belly ache, try to be an equal opportunity belly acher, m’kay?

So. Finntroll’s new video for “Solsagan.” It features the same “freaky shit happenin’ in the woods” motif that we’ve seen a million times before. Still, I kinda like the way it was shot, and except for the keyboards, which sound tinny to these old ears, I think it’s a pretty good song. It’ll appear on the band’s new album, Nifelvind, which comes out March 9 on Century. Give the clip a look-see…

-AR