FEATURING MEMBERS OF CANNIBAL CORPSE, OBSCURA, FORBIDDEN, LAZARUS A.D., GIANT SQUID, PYRAMIDS, WOLVHAMMER, BENEATH OBLIVION, HALCYON WAY, AND GADGET

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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Legendary thrashers Forbidden parted ways with drummer Mark Hernandez last week, a happening we failed to report upon because, Jesus Holy Christ, there’s basically two of us and it’s just not feasible that we’re going to be able to write about everything that happens ever, especially given that this entire site is editorials, which actually take some time to write, as opposed to, say, just cutting and pasting press releases.

ANYWAY, Forbidden. Down a drummer. They’re snagged some dude named Gene Hoglan to fill-in for a few dates — namely, the upcoming Alcatraz Festival in Belgium and the ProgPower Festival in Atlanta — but, of course, they’re going to need a permanent replacement. And thus, the band has decided to scour the land so full of undiscovered and unappreciated talent: the internet.

Here are the details, direct from the mouth of guitarist Craig Locicero:

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Metalacolypse director Jon Schnepp helmed Forbidden’s new video, “Omega Wave,” and while I have no idea what Mr. Schnepp’s intention was for the clip, if it was to make something that would be simultaneously familiar (and therefore not threatening) to metal fans AND be really good to watch while high, well, mission accomplished!

“Omega Wave” is the title track from Forbidden’s latest, which is out now on Nuclear Blast.

-AR

Earlier this year, vocalist Wyatt Anderson re-joined White Wizzard, and Vince wondered aloud, “How long before he quits again, Matt Barlow style?” Well, the answer, apparently, was “Not very long at all.” From the band’s Facebook page:

So that’s not great news. But the silver lining is that, at least for the time being, Cellador vocalist Mike Germino is handling frontman duties for the band. I’m not a huge Cellador fan, but there’s no denying that Germino has a set of pipes on him. And if the below video, filmed during a recent stop on the band’s current, MetalSucks-sponsored tour with Forbidden, Revocation, and Havok, is any indication, Germino is killing it out on the road right now:

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Photos by Brian Schroeter

Has anybody else been to a show that was extra awesome cuz the turnout sucked? Low sales suck for the bands, and that sucks suckbags. However, under-attendance creates gigs that feel more like parties: The room is easily navigated and the few faces are soon familiar to you; at first, there’s a chill — in the case of the Forbidden, Revocation, White Wizzard, and Havok mega-jam this weekend, I overheard two pre-show conversations about how the show wouldn’t be worth it for the bands — but that chill passes, and is replaced with the “hey there you are let’s headbang” vibe; by end of show, there’s a bit of fondness for the others in the room, except for the one guy who barfed on something important and the tipsy chick blabbing to/about her scenebro bf. Totally like a party. I love parties.

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Maybe next week we’ll finally stop making fun of Morbid Angel for thinking that Illud Divinum Insanus was a good idea, but then again, probably not. As long as videos like this one exist, the lulz shall continue!

Speaking of lulz, here’s what else we did this week:

• We completed our list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists!
• We debuted the new Children of Bodom video.
• We also debuted new music by Sepultura and Isis.
• We introduced a new column by Landphil from Municipal Waste and Cannabis Corpse, and had a special edition of “Rigged” by Forbidden’s Steve Smyth.
• We spoke to Matt Henderson from S.O.S.
• We checked out the latest releases from the aforementioned Morbid Angel as well as Nitro and Wildestarr, and Kuldvas, Adam Emanon, Surachai, and Undying.
• We enjoyed seeing you not enjoy this Lady Gaga/Judas Priest mash-up.
• We assured our parents that metal isn’t getting too mainstream.
• We had our annual laugh at the most recent Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial.
• We got ready for the monotony of Metallica Monopoly.

And hopefully next week no legendary bands will release anything that’s completely unlistenable. ‘Til then, dear friends…

-AR

Welcome back to Rigged, in which your favorite metal musicians take you on a step-by-step rundown of their entire live rig. This week Forbidden will embark on a North American headline tour with Revocation, White Wizzard and Havok — brought to you by MetalSucks (dates here) — so we asked guitarist Steve Smyth to take us on a tour of his gear setup. Without further ado, here’s Steve…

What’s up MetalSucks readers! Steve Smyth here. I’m about to take you through a rundown of my live rig here with Forbidden, in advance of our upcoming headline tour through North America.

While I am a firm believer that tone is in the hands first, I am also a firm believer in finding and using the gear that you feel best expresses the style of music you’re playing.

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Two weeks from today, Havok will hit the road as part of an awesome MetalSucks/Decibel sponsored Forbidden headlining tour, along with Revocation and White Wizzard. Vince called it “the ultimate fun time happy tour,” and his assessment is 110% correct; these shows are just gonna be deliciously obnoxious music, flying hair, and waves of beer as far as the eye can see.

But Havok are gettin’ the party started early with their new video, “Covering Fire,” which debuted earlier today on Metal Injection. All you really need to know about the clip is that it has lots of fire and explosions — two things every metal vid should have — and the song owns your ass. Check it out:

“Covering Fire” comes off of Havok’s most recent release, Time is Up, which is out now on Candlelight. You should buy it. You should also say hello to the band when you go to their aforementioned concert with Forbidden, Revocation, and White Wizzard. Here are dates:

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This one’s gonna be a headbangin’ party: as previously announced, MetalSucks (along with Decibel) is proud to sponsor Forbidden, Revocation, White Wizzard and Havok on their upcoming U.S. and Canadian tour, and now we’ve got the poster to prove it.

This is like the ultimate fun time happy tour; if ever there were a show to get extremely drunk and rowdy at and to HEADBANG NON-FUCKING STOP, this is the one. Get ready; it starts in June. Dates after the jump.

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We’re sponsoring another tour! And for the third time in a little over a year, that tour will feature Revocation, one of our most favoritest bands. The tour also features White Wizzard — which will surely shock many who read this site regularly and probably made Jon Leon’s heart skip a beat when he found out — but lost in the shuffle over the years is the fact that we actually think White Wizzard are a good band (we just also love making fun of the blooper reel that is their constantly rotating lineup). Forbidden and Havok round out the bill, making this a fine, fine tour for thrash and old-school metal. The tour is hitting mostly smaller markets and a bunch of Canadian cities, so if you’ve never had the chance to see these bands because they never come near you this is probably your chance (sorry Florida… you’re still fucked). We don’t have a tour poster yet, but we gander we’ll be getting one soon.

Elsewhere on the Revocation front, the new album the band has been hinting at for a while finally has a name, Chaos of Forms, and Relapse Records will reportedly release it in August. It’s easily one of our most anticipated records of 2011 in no small part because drummer Phil Dubois-Coyne told us last fall that it features a full horn section.

Tour dates after the jump. Revo dudes, try not to get cornered by any creepy 15 year-old meth-heads in Reno this time.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Presumably inspired by this week’s announcement of a Big 4 show in the U.S., this week’s question was posed by MetalSucks contributor/author of the Reign in Blood entry into the 33 1/3 book series, D.X. Ferris. Mr. Ferris was even good enough to join us for this edition of QOTW! And his query was:

IF THE BIG FOUR WERE THE BIG EIGHT, WHICH BANDS WOULD BE THE NEXT FOUR IN THE GROUP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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FEATURING MELISSA AUF DER MAUR AND MEMBERS OF WATAIN, CATTLE DECAPITATION, FORBIDDEN, VANISHER, HOWL, THE CONTORTIONIST, DISEMBODIED, EVOCATION, AND ROSALINE

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the third group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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A little over a week ago, the MetalSucks Photo Pool’s Alyssa Lorenzon braved the sights, smells, and people of New Jersey to go to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ to capture some awesome mothertruckin’ photos of legendary thrash acts Overkill and Forbidden, along with thrash upstarts Evile and Gama Bomb. As you can see from the above, instant-classic portrait of Bobby Blitz, she captured some killer shit! Check ‘em out the rest of her killer photos after the jump.

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How about another pointless exercise in trumpeting sales figures that aren’t going to matter in a couple years time when no one will be paying for music ownership because music ownership will be irrelevant? Who’s in? Me! New releases this week included (Hed)p.e., Ill Niño, Monster Magnet, Forbidden,  and Kylesa.

OK, let’s go.

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There was an ebb in excitement levels surrounding Forbidden’s recent return to active status when the Bay Area thrashers unveiled mega-unimpressive cover art for Omega Wave (here), their first record since 1997′s Green. To echo at least one Blabbermouth wiseacre, I’ll ask who smoked up the packaging budget? Cuz despite guitarist Craig Locicero’s endorsement, the art looks cheap and needlessly reminiscent of Forbidden Evil, their debut (here). Imagery is not as huge a deal in the post-interslice age, but this “Where’s the rest of it?”-style art threw at least one fan into a panic (me), causing him or her (me) to wonder if the album’s sound quality would match its unflattering cover. Would Forbidden, once a post-Vio-lence Robb Flynn project and farm system for Testament and Slayer, fail to reclaim its near-fame thanks to penny-pinching and a cover concept that borrows heavily from those sparkly decals you get from gumball machines at the roller rink? Fuck!

I feel foolish now that the band’s Myspace is streaming “Forsaken At The Gates,” the first public taste of Omega Wave. The jam is incredible and its production sounds like a million bucks (even on Myspace). Along with Exhorder and Coroner, Forbidden always had the most deceptively clever (and presciently busy) guitar riffs in thrash metal, and the semi-tangible skill of putting them in order to achieve dynamic, impactful songs — the slapping of the face alternating with the zapping of the nuts, as it were; “Forsaken” is all that! (By the way, is anybody else reminded instantly of “Infinite” at every mention of the word “evil”?) And in retrospect, I should’ve known not to worry cuz the guys in Forbidden all still have good hair (above). That’s the starting point for all good metal.

-ADF

Forbidden’s Omega Wave is slated for an October 22 release on Nuclear Blast.

Dan Nelson is already a legend, and not necessarily in a good way. Like Gary Cherone or Blaze Bailey, he’s going to go down in history as a dude who was hired to be the new singer for a well-known band, only to get the boot fairly quickly; unlike Cherone of Bailey, the work he did with this particular well-known band will either never see the light of day, or slip out only as a bootleg. A fairly limited number of ‘Thrax fans ever got to see him perform live with the band, so really there’s only a small part of the population that has any sense of what his contributions may have been, positive or negative.

But Nelson is from Strong Island, and ain’t gonna let no Scott Ian or Charlie Bananas get him down. According to Metal Underground, Nelson has started a new project with drummer Paul Bostaph.

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U.K. prog-death-thrashers (yeah, I said it) Sylosis are without a doubt one of the young bands that interest me most in 2009, thanks in no small part to the urging of several MetalSucks readers. Their Nuclear Blast debut Conclusion of an Age is a refreshing burst of modern thrash and death metal, rolled into a nicely accessible little package and sprinkled with prog influences that show the maturity and restraint of a band twice their young age. We’ll post an official MetalSucks review shortly, but in the meantime I was able to catch up with guitarist Josh Middleton to ask him a few questions about the formation of the band, the events that led to their deal with Nuclear Blast, their upcoming touring plans and their metal heroes.

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