MetalSucks

Long time readers of this site should be fully aware that I was addicted to the initial season of Rock of Love, VH1’s completely fucktarded reality show in which Poison singer/wig wearer Bret Michaels basically moved into a mansion with a large amount of not especially attractive (or smart or personable or nice or any other quality one generally looks for in other human beings) sluts and makes them all do ridiculous things to determine which one is his one true love (And by “one true love,” I mean… I don’t know what I mean. It seems like Michaels fucks all the girls anyway, so what’s the fucking point?).

But I basically lost interest two episodes into season two. Like pretty much every reality show I’ve ever tried to watch (which, admittedly, is only three – hello Project Greenlight and The Apprentice), the gimmick go old quickly. Maybe watching a different washed up hair metal star make some groupies of Gumpian intellect jump through hoops for the chance to suck his cock would have kept me interested; as it stood, I’d had enough.

I’m not sure which season Rock of Love is on now – I think it might be the third, and I think it’s on a bus now, or some shit – but it looks like Deicide mainman/generally all around scary dude Glen Benton caught a few episodes, and, it should surprise no one to learn, he was not amused.

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Look: after nearly 20 years of making brutal death metal, Deicide ain’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. So while “The Beginning of the End,” the opening track of their latest offering, Till Death Do Us Part, is kind of surprising (it’s a slow, moody instrumental, as foreboding as the title would suggest, that is unsettling and in no way beautiful, like the negative version of the intro to every American New Wave album this century), everything after is exactly what you’d expect from these fearsome Floridians. Chuck Klosterman once suggested that the reason the Sunshine State spawned so much awesome death metal is because constantly being surrounded by old people makes one think about death all the time; maybe all that ponderin’ of the great beyond also makes these dudes desperate to maintain their youth, and so they just keep making the same album they did in 1990 over and over again.

In any case, it’s a moot point, ’cause like AC/DC before them and Children of Bodom after, the fact that they’re usually pretty good slides them from the “boh-ring” column to the one labeled “dependable.”

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If you were to have a conversation about the most important and influential death metal bands of all time, you would, without a doubt, have to discuss Deicide. They are, simply put, iconic, and while many of their peers have fallen by the wayside over the years, they’re still going strong more than two decades later. In fact, after many had written them off, their last album, 2006’s The Stench of Redemption, was released to great acclaim by fans and critics alike. Now the band has a new album, entitled ‘Till Death Do Us Part, coming out on April 28 in Europe and May 13 in the U.S.; we haven’t gotten to hear it yet, but if “In the Eyes of God,” the song currently posted on the band’s MySpace page, is any indication, it will probably make Stench look like a Gordon Lightfoot record.

So when I was recently presented with the opportunity to interview founding drummer and primary songwriter Steve Asheim, I naturally jumped at the chance – so long as I could do the interview by e-mail. Truth be told, I feared that Asheim might be too evil, even for me.

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Death metal lovers: you’re probably aware that Deicide have a new album coming out this spring, entitled ‘Till Death Do Us Part. Well, get excited, because the band just posted a new track from the album, “In the Eyes of God,” on their MySpace page.

I don’t have anything particularly intelligent, insightful, or witty to say about the track; like all of Glen Benton’s works, it’s fuckin’ Brutal with a capital “B,” and should incite riots and church burnings wherever it’s played. So turn your crucifix upside down and get head bangin’ already.

-AR