FEATURING MEMBERS OF DRAGONFORCE, A LIFE ONCE LOST, ALL SHALL PERISH, CANCER BATS, THE ACCUSED, AIRBOURNE, ABSU, WOE, WHILE SHE SLEEPS, DIAMOND PLATE, MALEFICE, MUTANT SUPREMACY, GENGHIS TRON, AND TRENDKILL BOOKING AND RECORDINGS

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’ve be running them in groups of ten to twelve musicians at a time twice a day all week.

After the jump, check out the eighth and final 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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About a year ago I heard a terrible rumor that Genghis Tron were breaking up. Even though the source was reputable, I didn’t run anything about it ’cause, well, the band had just started an Australian tour, so it seemed like if they were breaking up, they were going about it all wrong.

But it’s been almost three years since the release of GT’s last album, the brilliant Board Up the House, and we haven’t heard any news from the band in awhile. Now the band has posted an update on their MySpace page, and while the good news is that they’re apparently not done, the bad news is that they are one of those “indefinite hiatus” things.

Here’s the update from the band:

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Any readers of MetalSucks that have been milling around here for at least the past year or so should know we love a good burger from time to time, particularly when it comes to the web’s premiere burger aficionado Burger Conquest. When combined with metal, we think burgers are just dandy — see our past “Burger Conquests” with the dudes from Shadows Fall and Mookie from Genghis Tron (who combined burgers and metal with a third love of Vince’s, The Mets). And with the three episodes released so far of our new metal-themed cooking show Cooking Contaminated, it shouldn’t be any surprise that we love good food.

With the commencement of this year’s Rockstar Mayhem Festival, Burger Conquest proprietor The Rev sees an opportunity to invent another of his delicious burger concoctions. Three patties of meat along with handmade fresh mosh-erella cheese, ground black pepper, crispy onions, and bacon… call it the Mayhem Burger. Sounds de-fucking-licious. Watch The Rev explain the recipe below, although you’ll have to sit through a cringe-worthy minute of live Korn footage first (or just skip to 1:20).

-VN

Remember when there was a character on the soap opera All My Children who was obsessed with Mike Patton? Well, now that same show has name dropped Genghis Tron. Check it out:

Do we think that Mookie Singerman ever thought in a bajillion years that he’d be kinda-sorta mentioned on a soap opera? I feel like Genghis Tron have arrived!

And, incidentally, I think Mookie is a Mets fan. Just sayin’.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

Ohhh, the director’s name is actually Sean O’Connor? Oh well.

The video is still really cool, though – and it’s fan made, which makes it that much cooler. So even if the greatest Scotsman to ever live didn’t direct it, you should, y’know. Check it out. There are also photos from the shoot here.

“Endless Teeth” comes off of Genghis Tron’s Board Up the House, which was one of the very best albums of 2008. It’s available now on Relapse.

-AR

An initial impression of Axe to Fall, Converge’s latest bruiser, is that it’s a little too simplistic: the vast majority of the album find the band rocking more balls out than they have since their early days. Even “Worms Will Feed” and “Damages,” two slower tracks, feel more like uneasy breathing room than the expansive, emotional dalliances of You Fail Me’s “In Her Shadow” or No Heroes’ “Grim Rose/Black Heart.” Even despite Axe to Fall’s two further-out-than-ever-before closing songs, the majority of the album feels slight, missing a key element of what had made the band as exceptional as they are up until now. With No Heroes finding the band at once at their grindiest and most experimental, something about Axe to Fall feels empty.

Of course, initial impressions don’t do a Converge album justice; if the band are known for anything, it’s marrying the deceptively simple and the brilliantly complex. Despite its tendency to be more gruff than any modern Converge release, Axe to Fall features some of the band’s tightest, most interesting songwriting, as well as providing one of the most satisfying repeat listens of any Converge album. Compact but alarmingly dense, the band have never been this comfortable putting their heads down and charging at you, with a relentlessness that’s almost militaristic in its approach. More than just a bunch of throw-aways before its wildly expansive ending, Axe to Fall stands eye level with their genre-defining full length debut (Petitioning the Empty Sky) or their genre-shattering masterpiece (Jane Doe). Though foolish and cynical to think otherwise, the band are still as good as they’ve ever been, with no signs of coasting despite having been around exponentially longer than most of the hardcore bands they came up with.

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Axe to Fall, Converge’s once-again excellent new album, is yet another stylistic shift: the majority of it is devoted to the band playing harder and more technically than they have in their post-Jane Doe era, while the closing two songs finding them venturing further away from their comfort zone than they ever have before. But even though guitarist Kurt Ballou darts all over the fretboard more than usual, vocalist Jacob Bannon changes nothing about his performance, from the breathless rambling on opener “Dark Horse” to his trademark pterodactyl-like shriek over the course of the album. But this isn’t to say that he’s in a state of creative stasis while the rest of the band moves outwards: Bannon’s hellacious scream is just as much a part of Converge’s uniqueness as is Ballou’s nimble riffing. Bannon’s work on Axe to Fall is as savage as it’s ever been, and once again adds weight and disturbing depth to the album’s metallic hardcore-fueled chaos.

Jacob Bannon’s place in metal, hardcore, and—for better or worse—metalcore is massive, with his trademark vocals incalculably influential and lyrics favoring the abstract over the melodramatic. Even outside of Converge, Bannon manages to be prominent, with a successful visual art career and running hardcore label Deathwish Inc. A surprisingly normal sounding (at least in terms of how he sounds on record), introspective guy, Bannon comes off as both wise about the metal and hardcore world while still impressed by and interested in it. In a lengthy interview with MetalSucks, he discussed the musical and lyrical intricacies of Axe to Fall, his approach to artwork in comparison to his vocal work, and people’s changing attitudes toward heavy music as they age.

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WRITTEN BY GUEST BLOGGER REVEREND DAVID J. CIANCIO OF BURGER CONQUEST

[Earlier in the summer, MetalSucks ran a special feature in which Shadows Fall went for a Burger Conquest at the Arctic Roadrunner in Anchorage, AK. You liked the story and demanded more like it. So: more like it. -Ed.]

With a 3rd Shake Shack location opened at Citi Field, home of the woeful MetalSucks favorite New York Mets, we had a perfect target for another Burger Conquest. But why stop at 2 blogs? We like to go big so we invited the Jose’s Chin Pubes from The Wright Stache (“The Internet leader in encouraging David Wright to grow a mustache”) and Mookie Singerman from the metal band Genghis Tron and our good friend Chuck — who somehow managed to hook up 5th row seats behind the 3rd base dugout, and also happens to run the road merch operation for Alice in Chains and others — to join in on our pursuit for a tasty burger.

If you’re a foodie like we are, you know all there is to know about the Danny Meyer “roadside” burger stand, the Shake Shack. If this is the first you have heard of it, there’s a reason for the hype; it’s awesome. You can read more by clicking here. One of our favorite summer pastimes is drinking and eating our way around a baseball park (See Yankee Stadium / Dodger Stadium Burger Conquests) this was lined up to be a lot of fun. With Mustaches adorned, we set off on our Conquest.

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Converge have announced Axe to Fall as the title of their new album. It’ll drop October 20 on Epitaph.

Not much else is known about the record right now, except that a) Genghis Tron’s Mookie Singerman does guest vox on one track and b) it is going to be awesome. I mean, maybe it won’t be awesome, but if that’s the case, it’ll be the first not-awesome Converge album, um, pretty much ever.

If you’re not excited about this, you must not have a pulse.

-AR

From a tweet by Converge (follow them!):

Mookie Singerman from GENGHIS TRON coming into the studio this weekend to work with us…

Holy shit, this album is gonna be sick…

-AR

Our hetero life partners are Metal Injection have captured some typically testicle-tickling footage of Genghis Tron, Tombs, Wetnurse and Black Anvil at a recent “Show No Mercy” gig – the concert writer Brandon Stosuy puts on in Brooklyn one Sunday out of every month.

Here’s a sample – more specifically, Genghis Tron performing one of my most favoritist songs of theirs, “Ride the Steambolt.” Go here to check out more awesome clips of GT as well as Tombs, Wetnurse and Black Anvil!

-AR

After the antics of the first day of the festival, I felt more than ready to get into day two with a healthy dose of music from the beginning. Unfortunately, that was not to be so for me, as at the time I thought I would be continuing on after SXSW into further ridonkulousness, all the way to a family vacation during Spring Break in Mexico….and today was the day that my renewed passport was meant to be FedExed to the flophouse where Vince and I were crashing.

When I had returned to said flophouse the night prior and to my surprise found an open couch in the living room right by the front door (where I was told FedEx homeboy would appear bright and early), I figured it prolly made the most sense to sleep right there on the ground floor as opposed to the stank upstairs sweat lodge where I would be sure to miss any sounds of door knocking.

Sadly, no FedEx arrived in the morning as promised — I was actually awoken by a phone call from Vince around noon wondering where the hell I had ended up last night. After a couple more hours my passport finally arrived, at which point I had to wait at least another hour for a cab to take me down to the action.

HOLY SHIT.

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According to the website of Brooklyn’s Europa club, noisy hardcore heroes Converge will headline a show there on Friday March 27th with MetalSucks faves Genghis Tron. (Also on the bill: Ceremony, Rise and Fall, and Pulling Teeth.) Tickets are on sale right now, people!

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2008 has been a fucking great year for metal, and in due time — Monday, Dec. 15, to be exact — Axl, myself and the rest of the writers of MetalSucks will all release our Top 10 year-end lists so you can incessantly argue over which great album was left off or tell us we’re assholes for ranking a certain album higher than it should’ve been.

But for now, ya’ll can argue about something else: here’s my personal short/working list for said year-end list containing all of my favorite metal releases from this year as well as a few that aren’t likely to make my own list but will surely be appearing on others’. Feel free to pipe in with your thoughts or to notify us of any egregious omissions before we put together our final, ordered lists. Regardless, it is going to be really fucking hard to pick just 10 of these and put them in order of awesomeness.

And, my favorite metal records of 2008 in no particular order are…

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It was a crazy week at the MS Mansion. Vince passed out in the bathroom after a 48 hour coke binge only to be awakened by Axl, whom, after coming home that morning from a strip club with The Blogronaut and Dallas, was viciously attacked by a bunch of angry Hinder fans stalking him outside the MS Mansion gates. Actually, none of that happened. But here’s what did:

• Axl offered up a bounty on Hinder’s Austin Winkler.
• Chinese Democracy leaked, and almost two decades of waiting finally ended.
• Whitechapel became the new controversial band du’jour.
• The Faceless killed it on the Soundscan charts.
• Today Is the Day’s Steve Austin’s house almost burned down.
• A video of a fat kid singing along to Dimmu Borgir. Nuff said.
• Vince went Jew on Jew with Genghis Tron’s Mookie Singerman, only to find out he’s not as Jewish as he once claimed.
• Tommy Lee reformed Methods of Mayhem and Vince Neil announced plans for another solo record, sans Steve Stevens. We scratched our heads.

We’ll see you next week, albeit it’ll be an abbreviated one due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. Toodles.

When I posted the inaugural edition of Jew on Jew a couple of weeks back with Daath’s Eyal Levi, MetalSucks commenter nick abrahamson made a suggestion: “how about that dude from Ghengis Tron, he gonna be next??” Ye ask and ye shall receive, Nick.

Only when I pitched “that dude” (aka vocalist Mookie Singerman), I got the following response, despite what he said in a past interview with Paper Thin Walls: “This is a funny idea but technically i’m not even really jewish–only half on my dad’s side and from my understanding you gotsta come from a Jewish vagina to be a real Jew.  I’ve never celebrated any jewish holidays and the only time I’ve been in a synagogue was for friends’ bar mitzvahs in 7th grade so I don’t know how good of an interview i’d be about this…” That’s alright, Mook, fear not; we’re all inclusive Jews here at the MetalSucks Mansion. After the jump, the half-Jew centric interview I conducted with Mookie.

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Because we don’t always agree on shit here at the MetalSucks Mansion, and because I didn’t get my say in Vince’s column, I’m gonna throw in my two cents about some albums that weren’t on Vince’s “Best of ’08 So Far” list that I would have included:

• Genghis Tron – Board Up the House. Except for Nachtmystium’s new album, this is still the best thing I’ve heard so far this year. Read my review here.
• Made Out of Babies – Ruiner. Holy shit does this album rule. My review is coming up real soon, but everyone should either pre-order a copy or just be prepared to buy one when it drops on June 24.
• Jarboe/Justin K. Broadrick – J2. Like a less industrial Jesu. Gorgeous, aching, awesome. Read my review here.
• Hate Eternal - Fury & Flames. Erik Rutan makes discordance into an art… again. Easily his best work since the Morbid Angel days. Read my review here.
• Origin – Antithesis. The ten minute epic mindfuck of a title track alone means you need to either own this album or beat yourself in the face with a hammer. Read my review here.
• Meshuggah – Obzen. And on the 8th day, God created Meshuggah. And He saw that it was good. Read Kip’s review here.
• Virgin Black – Requiem: Fortissmo. Read My review here.

Believe it or not, I still haaven’t heard this fucking Harvey Milk album everyone is going on about. I think I’ll go do that now.

-AR

Board Up the House is still one of the strongest releases of 2008 so far – and now Genghis Tron have a video to help get the word out. The clip for “Things Don’t Look Good” was directed by Ravi Zupa and debuted on Pitchfork.TV this morning.

And it’s an awesome video. Like GT themselves, it’s totally metal without in any way, shape, or form conforming to the clichés that bog down so many of the band’s peers. So check it out below, read my review of Board Up the House, and then, if for some reason you still don’t own a copy of the album, go friggin’ buy one already.

-AR

At the beginning of April, just as genre-bending metal masters The Red Chord were kicking off a tour with Converge, Genghis Tron, Baroness and Coliseum, we were given the opportunity to e-mail bassist Greg Weeks some questions. Of course, we jumped at the chance.

And then we never heard back.

At the time, we assumed that Greg had decided our questions were just too stupid to answer (and who could blame the dude?); in fact, there was another culprit at fault for Greg’s delayed response.

After the jump, find out why it took Greg so long to get back to us, and read his thoughts on such incredibly relevant political topics as why no producer will work with the band more than once, touring with Disturbed, and the current state of large beards in metal. For, surely, this interview proves our journalistic integrity.

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YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSS………this is why we are fucking here; this is the evolution in so many goddamn ways of what we call heavy music — each of the bands on this bill is pushing the boundaries in some way or another, and it’s all future-forward…how accessible it is, for anyone, let alone fans of aggressive music, remains to be seen, but in any case — no matter how into any of these bands you are, it is important to know that this grouping will go down as MOTHERFUCKING LEGENDARY. And therefore, whether you like it or not, it is worth your while to be a part of this marker in the historical record.

Think about it…

GENGHIS TRON — “Board Up The House” / “I Won’t Come Back Alive”

BARONESS – “Rays On Pinion” / “Vision”

THE RED CHORD — “Dragon Wagon” / “That Certain Special Ugly”

CONVERGE — “Letterbomb” / “Last Light” / “Versus”

There is no debate; if you are in New York City and you are a fan of heavy music, I will see you there.

COME ON YOU FUCKING FUCKERS — – — Y O U K N O W W H A T T O D O

Me and my broken bones are going to try our hardest to stay out of the pit, but I just might throw a plate on my arm for old time’ssake and kkkkrankit…

Visit The Red Chord on MySpace

Visit Genghis Tron on MySpace

Visit Baroness on MySpace

Visit Converge on MySpace

(PS — wherever the frick you live, do yrself a favor, go seek out complete tour dates for what I’m calling the future of metal tour on this here interweb, and go support these freshest of artists — no heroes, and no fronting!!)

-KW