Word to the wise: don’t give up on the above video just ’cause it’s not metal. Stick with it. You will be pleased. Honest Injun.

And after you’ve watched, why not review some of our top stories from this week? For example –

• We debuted new music from Leprous and Ihsahn.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi declared that not all people are created equal.
• Francesco Artusato from All Shall Perish and Aaron Beam from Red Fang told us about their live rigs.
• We checked out the latest releases from Today is the Day and Eschaton.
• Vince, Anso, Gary, and Leyla unveiled their respective favorite albums of 2011 thus far.
• We started celebrating 31 days of Faith No More.
• We got an in-depth analysis of the genius of Crazy Town.
• We suggested that the Insane Clown Posse might wanna re-think their stance on concert security.
• We hired Manowar to play our next office party.
• We broke the news that Last Chance to Reason have parted ways with two members.

Next week we make the biggest announcement of our lives. Be there or be be square.

-AR

As part of our coverage of this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival – currently winding its way through North America — we’re bringing you a series of “Rigged” columns in which several of the tour’s musicians take you on piece-by-piece guides of their current live rig setups. Check out the guitar rigs of Machine Head’s Phil Demmel, Unearth’s Buz McGrath and Ken Susi, Hatebreed’s Wayne Lozinak and Dethklok’s Brendon Small. For you bassists out there, have a look at In Flames’ Peter Iwers‘ and Red Fang’s Aaron Beam‘s rigs. To conclude our Rigged coverage of Mayhem, here’s All Shall Perish shredder Francesco Artusato:

What’s up MetalSucks readers! Francesco Artusato here. I’m going to talk a little bit about my live rig with All Shall Perish that am using at the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival this summer and will be using for future tours.

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Man, I really, really hope that some day, some Korean animators see fit to make a short about MetalSucks. And that it is one-eighth as awesome as the above video.

ANYWAY, here’s how we kept ourselves entertained this week:

• We debuted new music by Revocation, White Arms of Athena, Goreaphobia, and Sixx A.M.
• We did not debut, but got really excited about, new music from Mastodon and Opeth.
• Unearth’s Ken Susi and Dethklok’s Brendon Small told us all about their live rigs. BONUS: Brendon Small also gave us the skinny on his new solo album!
• We spoke to All Shall Perish’s Fracesco Artusato and Kaoru and Die from Dir En Grey.
• We checked out the latest releases from All Pigs Must Die and Axel Rudi Pell.
• We were easily able to come up with twenty-five things we’d rather do than listen to the new Five Finger Death Punch song.
• We tried to figure out which label will snag Gojira.
• Gary Suarez urged metalheads to cut the shit and stop supporting Burzum.
• Sergeant D. wondered if breakdowns are the new guitar solos.
• Corey Mitchell discussed his ten favorite albums of the year thus far.

Since we haven’t written about All Shall Perish in like forty-eight hours, it seems worth mentioning that the band has a new, David Brodsky-directed video, for the song “There is Nothing Left.” It’s really just a performance clip, but it’s an above-average performance clip, and Brodsky’s use of negative space is certainly a lot stronger than, say, that of whomever directed this piece of crap. Plus, the song slays, so that’s never a bad thing!

All Shall Perish’s This is Where it Ends is out now on Nuclear Blast. You can read our interview with guitarist Ben Orum here, and/or our interview with other guitarist Francesco Artusato here. We’ll also have a “Rigged” column from Francesco soon, so keep checking back for that!

-AR

Francesco Artusato is a busy dude: since attending the Berklee College of Music and graduating in 2005, an impressive feat in and of itself, the Italian-born shredder was tapped to fill the vacant guitarist spot in All Shall Perish and hasn’t looked back since. Despite touring the world several times over with ASP and writing and recording their new album This Is Where It Ends, Artusato somehow found time to write and record a record of his own, Chaos and the Primordial, released June 28th on Sumerian Records (order here). The record is exactly what you’d expect from a guy who grew up worshipping Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Allan Holdsworth; a searing blend of metal and fusion played at breakneck speed that doesn’t compromise good songwriting for technical showmanship.

I caught up with Artusato on the phone recently to chat about his new solo record, his influences, the role of “shred” guitar in 2011 and how he balances his solo work with his day job in All Shall Perish. Our chat, after the jump.

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We first interviewed All Shall Perish guitarist Ben Orum just about a year ago, at the 2010 edition of Summer Slaughter; at the time, ASP were only just starting to write their new album, This is Where it Ends. Orum turned out to be one of those rare dudes who’s not only really talented, but is also genuinely super-nice — and now that we’ve finally gotten to hear Ends, we’re happy to report that it’s totally excellent. In other words, this seemed like a good time to pester Orum again.

Luckily, he was happy to oblige us with some silly, and not-so-silly, e-mail questions. The two interviews make interesting pre- and post- album companion pieces, I think, so if you haven’t done so already, go back and read our initial conversation with Orum; then, after the jump, get his thoughts on how Ends actually turned out, the songwriting process for various songs on the album, what fans can expect from ASP’s set at this summer’s Mayhem Festival, the futility of giving death metal fans condoms, and more.

And, oh yeah, we’ll have a special “Rigged” column penned by Orum’s co-guitarist in All Shall Perish, Francesco Artusato, sometime soon, so definitely keep your eyes peeled for that.

And now… the interview!

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A few questionable signings aside, there’s no denying that Sumerian Records is one of the few modern metal record labels with real, actual A&R and artist development, and one of the only labels that routinely takes chances on far left-of-center acts that wouldn’t stand a chance elsewhere. It’s actually pretty remarkable that wonky instrumental metal is getting such a big push in 2011, some two decades after the sub-genre’s peak. And if there’s any label that can effectively promote this kind of music to the masses it’s Sumerian, whatwith their label+agency+management all-in-one business model and an incredibly strong brand identity of what it means to be on Sumerian (ya know, Sumeriancore, more or less). The only other label with a similar forward-thinking setup is Prosthetic, and hey, lookit, they do well with lots of oddball prog acts too.

Case in point: on June 28th Sumerian released not one but two solo instru-metal records. We gave a fair amount of coverage to Evan Brewer’s solo bass album Alone — a solo bass album fer chrissakes! that such a thing even exists as a signed act is awesome — but the other release, All Shall Perish shredder Francesco Artusato’s shreddy shredsterpiece of shred, Chaos and the Primordial, went a bit overlooked. It’s a killer album, natch — All Shall Perish didn’t import this guy all the way from Italy [via Berklee College of Music] for nothing — so all you guitarists and wannabe guitarists and ex-guitarists best get to checking out the album’s title track above and at the Francesco Artusato Project’s Facebook page and ordering the album here. ‘Cause every shredder has to attach “Project” to their name when releasing a solo record, duh, this is like the #1 cardinal rule of shred records.

-VN

One of the summer releases I’m most excited for is All Shall Perish’s This is Where it Ends, and thus far, the material we’ve heard leads me to believe that I won’t be disappointed.

The latest example: “Process of Ashes,” the new song the band is now streaming at Lambgoat. It sounds like a hybrid of Price of Existence-era ASP and Awaken the Dreamers-era ASP, and I mean that in the best possible way; I know there are fans who thought Dreamers wasn’t heavy enough, but I think the band actually did a fine job incorporating some more melodious elements into their work, and I’m glad to hear them building on that here. All Shall Perish are really turning out to be an fine example of artistic evolution done right.

Also: new guitarist Francesco Artusato continues to just murder it stone fucking dead, news which will surprise pretty much no one.

Headbang here, then let us know what you think in the comments section. This is Where it Ends comes out via Nuclear Blast on July 26. The band will be on this year’s Mayhem Fest, along with Megadeth, Machine Head, In Flames, Trivium, Unearth, Suicide Silence, Kingdom of Sorrow, Red Fang, and some other bands not worth mentioning. You can get dates here.

-AR

Who else is excited to hear the new All Shall Perish album, This is Where it Ends? This band absolutely RIPS, and I have a feeling that having the ridiculously talented Francesco Artusato on lead guitar is just gonna push ‘em to that next level.

The album comes out this summer, but now the band has unveiled the cover art. It’s by Brent Elliott White, who has also done album art for Death Angel, Job for a Cowboy, Whitechapel, and Carnifex, amongst others. And it’s some pretty bad-assed shit. I can kinda forsee some people with sticks up their tushies complaining that its too glossy, but it looks to me like the exactly the kind of thing I would have deliberately left out for my parents to find when I was a kid. I was sending a message, y’know? “DO NOT ASK ME TO EAT VEGGIES. DO NOT ASK ME TO CLEAN MY ROOM. DO NOT ASK ME TO STUDY FOR MY BAR MITZVAH. I AM NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH.” I was a rebel like that.

This is Where it Ends comes out July 26 on Nuclear Blast. Hopefully the band is not trying to tell us something with the title.

-AR

Something I need to keep reminding myself: every generic shit band that sells a fuckton of records enables their record label to take risks on way more creative, fulfilling, interesting and inevitably far less commercially successful artists. It’s a sad fact, but thems the breaks: shitty commercially successful metal bands for teeny boppers generate tons of money, and without that money we’d see a lot less of the good stuff coming down the pike. For every Vampires Everywhere there’s a Nachtmystium, for every System Divide there’s The Ocean, for every Nickelback there’s an Opeth, for every <insert Victory band here> there’s a Jungle Rot… and for every Asking Alexandria there’s a Francesco Artusato and Evan Brewer.

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All Shall Perish have seen, in the words of guitarist Ben Orum, some “dark” times as of late: multiple lineup changes, creative challenges, touring drama, and, about a week and a half after we interviewed Orum, a van accident that threatened to derail their current stint on the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter Tour (the band has since re-joined the trek).

And like any good metal band, they’ve persevered despite all the bullshit. When we spoke to Orum just hours before Summer Slaughter’s recent stop in NYC kicked off, he seemed to be in high spirits. He says that this latest incarnation of the band is the best yet, and will return to the studio next year to make a record more in line with2006′s heavy-as-fuck The Price of Existence than 2008′s more melodious and noodlily Awaken the Dreamers. And when we saw the band play later that night, well… they killed it, and the crowd ate them up. A lot of the time you hear bands say “Well, this is our strongest line-up ever,” and it’s just hype; but Orum speaks the truth. This is All Shall Perish, and they’re better than ever.

Read the full transcript of our chat with Orum after the jump.

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