Last week we offered 5 full-access memberships at GuitarMasterClass.net for any guitar players looking to better their game who also happen to be good at coming up with entertaining captions to silly metal photos. The winning entries to the photo at right are:

• Brock Stearns: “Old Man’s Child”
• Sacajawea: “In recent news it appears that Bret Michaels is dating a 30 foot tall black metal musician.”
• trence75: “Trust me lars, these drum lessons will be good for you. I’ll just stand outside and play blackened, where nobody can hear me. Then we’ll go get you that bicycle like I promised you.”
• gnarlatron: “In an effort to thwart yet another topless photo leak, Winds of Plague hire a keyboardist who’s [sic] nude photos are illegal to distribute.”
• Nick: “black metal busking gets real when there is a tiny mouth to feed.”

This week we’re giving away two Metal Blade prize packs each containing a copy of Fleshwrought’s Dementia Dyslexia and Allegaeon’s Fragments of Form and Function. You best know what to do by now: come up with the funniest captions to the below photo (sent in by reader Joleen) and remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect).

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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’s question was once again suggested by “Hipsters Out of Metal!” columnist Anso DF, and even though the Grammy nominations were actually announced last week, it still seemed like a fun debate to have. So:

WHAT ARE YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR BEST METAL GRAMMY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

Dudes like Navene Koperweis — drummer of Animals as Leaders, ex-Animosity, and multi-instrumentalist/mastermind of Fleshwrought — are the reason I put down my guitar and picked up my blogger e-pen instead. Dude is so insanely talented it’s like why would I even waste my time? Instead I’m a keyboard jockey, a supposed pimply-faced teenager crapping my pants in my mom’s basement, hiding behind my screen while I hurl insults at bands infinitely more talented than I could ever be. But hey, wait a minute now… today I’m heaping praise upon someone and using my bully pulpit for good. Hallelujah!

Islander over at No Clean Singing has put together a retrospective of sorts covering Navene Koperweis’ career in metal, short but prolific, and I can’t help but be in awe. It’s a collection of clips paired with a little biographical blurb along each step of the road, and it covers Koperweis from his work with Animosity several years back through this year’s compelling Fleshwrought record Dementia/Dyslexia (which we liked so much we decided to stream the whole thing) of which he was the main creative force.

I was never into Animosity but I can certainly appreciate good drumming when I see it. Anyone who reads this site knows how I feel about Animals as Leaders, so there’s no need to re-hash the ball-fondling here. The most interesting part of the post is a video of Koperweis playing guitar along to the recorded version of the Fleshwrought track “Inner Thoughts.” Koperweis wrote and recorded the album — as in, played all of the instruments — himself, brought in his friend Johnny Davy of Job For a Cowboy to handle vocals, and had a smattering of guest musicians visit the studio for select parts. One of those guest musicians is Alex Rudinger of unsigned Maryland band Ordinance, who you see tracking drums below.

Yeah, Koperweis is that good at guitar too.* Sigh.

-VN

*To the inevitable troll who will say he’s not that good of a guitarist… fuck you.

Holy shit, is it seriously August already? It’s gonna start getting cold soon. Motherfucker. Here’s what we did this week when we should have been enjoying the sunshine and fresh air:

• We’re streaming Dementia/Dyslexia, the Metal Blade debut of Fleshwrought,  a new project from Animosity/Animals as Leaders’ Navene Koperweis and Job for a Cowboy’s Jonny Davy.
• We debuted an EPK for Iron Thrones’ The Wretched Sun.
• We also debuted “Fear, Emptiness, Decibel,” a new column from the editors of our favorite metal rag.
• We had a little beard on beard action with Andy Williams from Every Time I Die and Liam Wilson from The Dillinger Escape Plan. We also spoke to Avenged Sevenfold’s Johnny Christ, The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Jeff Tuttle and Pathology’s Dave Astor.
• We checked out the latest releases from Chimaira and Decrepit Birth.
• We schooled Korn’s Jonathan Davis on the BP Oil Spill.
• We questioned the sincerity of Max Cavalera’s claim that his collaboration with Fred Durst is all Ross Robinson’s fault.
• We questioned Glenn Danzig’s sanity. Again.
• We got pissy that Eddie’s not on the cover of the new Maiden album.
• We got boners watching 72 minutes of pro-shot Gojira footage.
• We did not get boners looking at Emmure noodz.
• We found the best bass player in the history of forever-ever-ever.

We’ll be hanging out at the Summer Slaughter show this Sunday here in NYC; if you spot us, please bring us presents. We like presents. Thanks.

-AR

If you’re a death metal freak then you’re probably already aware of Fleshwrought… but if you’re not, then you should be. The project is helmed by Navene Koperweis who handles all instruments on Dementia/Dyslexia, Fleshwrought’s Metal Blade debut; you might recognize Navene from his drum duties with the late Animosity and with Tosin Abasi’s Animals as Leaders. Navene recruited Job For A Cowboy’s Johnny Davy to handle vocal duties, but the results are unlike any project either man has been involved with before; this is fast, technical, intricate, proggy as fuck death metal that’s musically catchy the way bands like Psycroptic and Gorod are. In short, it rules, but don’t take my word for it; listen to the full album below.

Order Dementia/Dyslexia here before it comes out on August 3rd.

[this promotion has ended]

Is it just me or is Metal Blade Records on something of a win streak lately with their young band signings? While certain labels to remain nameless seem to be venturing into either mainstreamy/emoy metalcore or seem content to sign the same old same old or hedge their bets all on one sub-genre, Metal Blade’s young band roster is extremely diversified and remarkably clunker free. Let’s take a look at the band’s they’ve signed in the past couple of years:

• Aeternam: Classic American death metal mixed with a more melodic, epic, and Euro — but decidedly dark — sense of melody. Check out the song “The Coronation of Seth” on their MySpace page — pure win.
• Allegaeon: Technical melodic death metal that our own Sammy O’Hagar seemed to like and that our own Bob Cock seems to LOVE.
• Bison B.C.: My favorite of the Mastodon-inspired psych/stoner/crust metal masses with a good bit of originality. Incredibly fun to watch live.
• Istapp: Frosty Immortal-style black metal that indulges in every cliche in the book (in a good way) and isn’t mired in shit production.
• Barn Burner: Up-beat, throwback stoner metal ala The Sword that’s got some real soul and actual musicality.
• Fleshwrought: Johnny Davy’s and Navene Koperweis (ex-Animosity, Animals as Leaders) new tech-death project. Quality!

Click to read more…

Reader “g. shotkocker” sent us a link to listen to Fleshwrought a few weeks back, and I immediately took a liking to their aggressive but melodic brand of tech-death (think: Gorod, Psycroptic). That was before I read through their MySpace page and found out that multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis bangs the skins for Animals As Leaders and used to do so for Animosity, and before I found out that Job For A Cowboy screamer Johnny Davy was doing the same here. And that was before they’d announced they’d signed with Metal Blade. Which should prove to you that I was judging the band on the quality of their music alone, and that the music is really fucking good.

Lucky for me, we’ll be hearing a whole lot more from Fleshwrought in the near future; Metal Blade will release the full-length record Dementia/Dyslexia on August 3rd, although the record’s been done for over a year. Peep a few tracks on their MySpace page and let us know what you think.

-VN