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Holy shit, this is the biggest release day of the summer so far. Tons of good stuff from Devin Townsend, The Black Dahlia Murder, Helms Alee, Sourvein, Jungle Rot , and more.
Also, some stuff that just sucks.
[via Badass]
So the three-day weekend kinda threw our schedule out of whack; you may have noticed that we still haven’t finished announcing the line-up for our Magical Mystery Tour, and we didn’t get to finish our list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, either. Both of those blessed events will go down next week, though, when we’re back for a full five days! So get stoked.
In the meantime, let’s review all the fun we managed to pack into this week’s abbreviated set:
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. You will always be at the forefront of our thoughts, dreams, and prayers.
-AR
As we reported a few weeks back, June is going to be a big, big month for Black Market Activities. The label helmed by The Red Chord frontman Guy Kozowyk begins their new distribution and artist development deal with Good Fight Entertainment with four, count ‘em four, releases in just two weeks — Engineer’s Crooked Voices and Khann’s Erode both come out June 7, and Ed Gein’s Bad Luck and Fit For An Autopsy’s The Process of Human Extermination on June 21.
And guess what? All four releases are fucking fantastic. We dug them all so much, in fact, that we begged Black Market Activities to let us debut four songs at once — one from each album — so we could revel in their awesomeness with you, our beloved readers. You’re welcome, beloved readers!
So check out the tracks below. BMA is a diverse label, and no two of these bands sound even remotely similar, so it’s impossible for us to believe that you won’t dig at least one of these songs. And don’t forget to pick up the full releases when they come out June 7 and June 21!!! You can pre-order them all right here.
ENGINEER, “BRUISED BLUE COLLAR”
But that’s the name of the band’s new song — “The Conqueror.” It’s now streaming on Fit for an Autopsy’s Facebook page, assuming you’re willing to click the “like” button, which you should be, ’cause this band is br00tal, and you like br00tal things.
In case you didn’t read about Fit for an Autopsy the last time I wrote about them, they’re a new band that features former Through the Eyes of the Dead vocalist Nate Johnson, as well as guitarist Will Putney, who has already produced such killer records as The Human Abstract’s Digital Veil. Their debut album, The Process of Human Extermination (cover art above) is coming out June 21 on Black Market Activities, and features guest appearances from The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk, Tim Williams of Vision of Disorder/Bloodsimple fame, Full Blown Chaos’ Ray Mazzola, and The Human Abstract’s Travis Richter.
In other words, this is a record to which attention must be paid.
So headbang here, then come back and let us know what you think. My guess is that about half of you will accuse the band of playing generic deathcore, and the other half of you have ears.
-AR
Black Market Activities, the label helmed by The Red Chord frontman Guy Kozowyk, has announced a new distribution and artist development deal with Good Fight Entertainment, bringing to an end their long-standing distribution arrangement with Metal Blade. With that announcement also comes an exciting calendar of new releases set to roll out this summer via BMA:
June 7 – Engineer – Crooked Voices
June 7 – Khann – Erode
June 21 – Fit For An Autopsy – The Process Of Human Extermination
June 21 – Ed Gein - Bad Luck
tba – Today Is The Day – Pain Is A Warning
This past December we gave you the heads up that Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities had signed Fit for an Autopsy, the actually good deathcore band that features fromer Through the Eyes of the Dead vocalist Nate Johnson and guitarist Will Putney, who has already produced such killer records as The Human Abstract’s Digital Veil. Now The PRP tells us that the band’s debut album, The Process of Human Extermination, is complete and ready for release. It comes out June 21.
But wait! There’s more! As if the Johnson-Putney-Kozowyk connection wasn’t already enough to get you interested, the band has also enlisted some pretty excellent guests to appear on the record as well: besides Kozowyk himself (like you didn’t see that coming), Tim Williams of Vision of Disorder/Bloodsimple fame, Full Blown Chaos’ Ray Mazzola, and The Human Abstract’s Travis Richter all contributed vocals. So that sounds pretty enticing, to put it mildly.
Alas, there are no samples of Extermination available just yet — I mean, there’s a couple of songs on the band’s MySpace page, but I have no idea if those will appear on the album or not. In any case, I’m feeling really optimistic about this record… hopefully we’ll get to hear more soon.
-AR
Back in July, Vince and I visited The Human Abstract at the Machine Shop in New Jersey, where they were recording their new album, Digital Veil, with producer Will Putney. Between the (then) six members of the band and the two of us, there were way too many people to do one interview, so we ended up splitting up into groups and conducting three interviews. Below is the first, with guitarist A.J. Minette (before he was a MetalSucks columnist) and vocalist Travis Richter; we’ll run the rest in the coming weeks.
Even though these interviews were conducted before the album was even completed, in a lot of ways, they’re far more interesting now that Digital Veil is done and released (it came out Tuesday on eOne, in case you somehow missed it). For one thing, now when the band talks about the music, you will have already heard it and will know what they’re talking about. There’s a lot of discussion in here about music composition and theory, and about lyrical content; having now heard the album, these interviews feel like having running director’s commentary. After reading this, you’ll be able to go back and re-listen to Digital Veil with a fresh perspective, as well as a better understanding of what the band was aiming for.
But for another thing… yeah, a lot has changed since this interview was conducted. As you’ll see, at the time, the band hadn’t even finalized the name of the album; they had three guitar players, not two; hell, they were still signed to a different label than the one that ended up releasing the record! It’s definitely thought-provoking to see how much things have changed in just eight months.
And so, without further ado, here’s my chat with A.J. and Travis…
Photo by Jeremy Saffer
The latest sign for Guy Kozowyk’s Black Market Activities label is New Jersey’s Fit for an Autopsy. The band is notable for several reasons (besides the fact that they’re good, I mean), namely:
It’s not like there weren’t slams at Saturday’s edition of New England Deathfest: Sexcrement and Putrid Pile had them in spades. But Sunday was the Slam Expo to Saturday’s Death Metal Enthusiasts Convention, finally acknowledging the dirtbag elephant in the room: while many will always admire brutal technical death metal and deathcore has become child’s play, slam is THE big thing in death metal right now, divisive as it is. Though it’s redundancy can lead to DMF (once again, Death Metal Fatigue) more easily than other death metal strains, it has great potential for ridiculous heaviness. This made Sunday a little less rewarding than Saturday, but also a lot more fun. Though it’s hard to say if slam is here to stay, it’s certainly here right now, and if Deathfest wanted to be a proper barometer for what’s going on in death metal, it would have to at least tip its hat to slam, if not give it its hat for a while altogether.
