SEND EMAIL TO
NEWS [AT]
METALSUCKS
[DOT] NET
In the absence of actual new music or substantial information of some kind, I find it kinda hard to get psyched up about the announcement of an album release date in all but a few special cases. But there have been a number of big release date announcements and rumors in the past few days, so I figured I’d lump ‘em all together and, as if you expected anything else, share my thoughts, hopes and dreams for each. Here we go:
Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.
This week’s query was suggested by reader Yevgeniy Reznichenko:
IS ELITISM IN METAL A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING?
The MS staff’s answers after the jump.
(metal needs more smiles)
Ghostlimb‘s 2008′s smasher of an album Bearing and Distance knocked my socks off. Like literally blew them right off my feet and sent them flying across the room at some poor MS Mansion Monkey’s head, not surprising seeing as the album was penned by Graf Orlock guitarist/vocalist Justin Smith aka “Jason Schmidt.” But you know what? It was worth it. Worth it because the only other alternative would have been to spontaneously start a fierce fucking moshpit and to throw my computer through the window and who cares about that damn monkey anyway two-day sock-stench be damned, get me some more coffee damnit.
But seriously, how can you fuck with these riffs? Only acceptable answer: you can’t. As the years pass I only seem to be getting more and more into this kind of metallic hardcore, the kind that’s fast, furious, raw, chunky and full of mothatruckin’ bluesy RAWK riffs. Think a significantly faster and decidedly angrier Doomriders and you’re close. Peep Ghostlimb’s brand new song “Construction” from the new album Infrastructure below, courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan. The album drops on April 4th via Vitriol Records and will be available for pre-order starting on March 19th (why the wait for the pre-order? I’m scratching my head too.).
-VN
Alright alright alright. I know everyone is still arguing about the best albums of 2010, but whatever. I’m over it. It’s done. It happened. It’s yesterday. 2010 is so 2010. It’s time to move on to 2011.
And the first great full-length of 2011, at least as far as this blogger is concerned, is Owen Hart’s Earth Control.
I don’t wanna say TOO much about how awesome this album is, ’cause I’m gonna post a full review in January… but I do wanna emphasize that it rules, and that it rules hard. Owen Hart were one of the best bands on the second volume of Scott Hull’s The Comp Kills Fascists last year, but I was still totally unprepared for Earth Control. Consider my socks knocked off.
Now you can get your socks knocked off, too — or at least a part of a sock or something. They’re streaming a track from Earth Control, “Methlahem,” over at Brooklyn Vegan. Guys. It’s ssssssoooo fucking good. Stop reading this, and go listen. Go listen, go listen, go listen. Like I said, I’ll have a review in January… and maybe we’ll be streaming a track of our own…
Earth Control comes out January 18 on Vitriol. Allow me to take this moment to once again remind you that Owen Hart are doing three shows with Graf Orlock this weekend, which I’m sure are gonna be insane — in fact, I’m totally jealous of anyone who gets to go, and anyone has a chance to go and doesn’t is just a damn fool. Dates after the jump.
I know I’ve already written about Graf Orlock twice this week (here and here), but their new EP, Doombox, is just that fucking good (read our review here). And now Brooklyn Vegan is giving away a track from that EP, “Job Hunt,” for free! Go listen to and download it here.
Yeah, it only runs less than a minute and a half, and twenty seconds of that time is devoted to an audio clip from the movie Harsh Times, but the whole EP is only like twelve minutes long, so it’s not like they can really give any more away. But it’s a killer song, and hopefully it will whet your appetite to hear the rest of the album.
Doombox comes out on Vitriol on January 18; pre-orders start December 17 here.
-AR
Graf Orlock have a history of doing insanely cool shit for their album packaging — 2007′s Destination Time Tomorrow, for example, was held in the grasp of a facehugger from the Alien franchise — but I think it’s safe to say that they’ve pretty much outdone themselves, and just about everyone else, with the packaging for their new EP, Doombox (our review here). From the official press release:
Behold, the Doombox EP, whose packaging consists of an actual-size (30”x10”x10”) fold-out cardstock “boombox.” The “boombox” holds the Doombox EP in 10” vinyl and CD formats, as well as a separate CD containing the band’s three previous releases, known collectively as the Destination Time Trilogy.
And here’s a pic of the full set:
I’ve been listening to Graf Orlock’s Doombox EP so much these past couple of weeks that I can now recite a movie quote from a movie I’ve never seen (that would be Harsh Times). The whole thing is under twelve minutes long (read Sammy O’Hagar’s rightfully-glowing review here), so it’s easy to listen to as an aid for short bursts of disrupted internet service/”FUCK YOU TIME WARNER CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!”-inspired rage. I’m so obsessed with the EP, in fact, that I now outright hate the people of Tacoma, Vancouver, and Portland, as those are the only three towns Graf Orlock will be hitting up on their upcoming mini-tour with the also-awesomeOwen Hart (whose contributions to this year’s second edition of Scott Hull-curated This Comp Kills Fascists were two of the highlights of that collection). Hopefully these dudes make it to other parts of the country in the not-too-distant future, ’cause I’m dying to see this shit played live.
So while we usually try not to cover regional tours ’cause so few of you will ever get to go, my envy of people who can attend these shows is such that I am going to post all three dates:
Dec 17 – Tacoma, WA @ The Redroom
Dec 18 – Vancouver, BC @ Garbage Mountain
Dec 19 – Portland, OR @ Branx
Go if you’re lucky enough to live in that part of the country.
Meanwhile, The PRP tells me that Scott Kelly and Wino are gonna be doing some shows together next year. They call the itinerary after the jump the “initial dates,” so hopefully there will be more soon, ’cause that sounds like a show that many of you might enjoy.
The aforementioned “initial dates” are…
I dare you not to like Doombox, the new Graf Orlock EP. Seriously. I dare you. I will give you $40* if you can genuinely convince me it’s not great. And I will be a man $40 richer, because it’s ridiculous. It pulls out all the stops: viciously serrated metalcore brashness, epic samples, gritty production, and most of all, a pretty solid balance of fun and brutality, something a lot of (blank)core bands either over- or under-do. Doombox is brief but incredibly effective. So go ahead, try not to like it. This $40 could be yours.
As managing editor of Decibel, Andrew Bonazelli makes your life better each and every month by helping to give you an outlet to discover awesome new music, learn what your favorite bands are up to, sound more intelligent to your friends by plagiarizing opinions that aren’t your own, and have something to read in the bathroom.
Now, with the release of his second short novel, A Regular – the first literary endeavor from Vitriol Records, the label founded by Justin Smith of Graf Orlock/Ghostlimb/Dangers fame — Bonazelli has enriched your life even further, giving you something smaller and more portable to read in the bathroom. Bonus: the book also happens to be really, really good. Here’s a description from the publisher:
“A morose barfly drowns his misguided affection for barely legal trollops in crossword puzzles and wells whiskey. But Murray Baron isn’t just a regular at Seattle dive haven the Kapital — he exists in the bar in perpetuity, days and weeks bleeding formlessly into one another, punctuated only by cock-crushingly banal conversation. When he finally literally unseats himself to save a friend’s life, the decision ignites a series of overlapping absurdist confrontations straight from the id of a 12-year-old. Murray’s fate seems to have been halved into either suffocating barstool inertia or outlandish hyperactive lunacy, and only a highly dubious psychic can help him revisit the pivotal adolescent event that put him in this very literal state of arrested development.”
And if that doesn’t entice you, please be aware that the story also features a robot called “The Eraditroid.”
Awesome. Simply awesome.
After the jump, get the author’s thoughts on why metalheads should care about his book, how Linkin Park and Dennis Cooper have inspired his writing, releasing a novel through a record label, and willfully farting in public. (It’ll make sense if you read the book.) Plus, get a free excerpt from A Regular, so you can have a little taste of how great it is…
Hardcore has a template–musically and lyrically–which is why it’s always so gratifying when artists in that scene take this potentially limiting construct and do something unique with it. Dangers, a Los Angeles-based hardcore act, does just that on Messy, Isn’t It?, their potent and thought-provoking new album. Fronted by the eloquent Al Brown and featuring Graf Orlock’s Justin Smith, the band’s approach to the sound pops, fizzles, and explodes with eccentricity, angularity, and, yes, brutality. But don’t just take my word for it; TAKE A LEAK!
[this download is no longer available]
“Stay At Home Mom” opens the album with a fucking scathing indictment of shoddy parenting and the disaffected children it yields. I’ve posted the lyrics below (along with a few tour dates) so you can scream and rage along with Dangers. Like what you hear? Then why not order the LP/CD combo right now before it sells out?!
When I read that Repulsion, Pig Destroyer and Brutal Truth are all playing a show together at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on July 31, my head literally exploded. I don’t mean “literally” the way some people misuse that word; I mean I am actually typing this right now sans melon. Pretty crazy, I know.
If you like Oceano or have no particular problem with the fact that Emmure shamelessly ripped-off The Acacia Strain, then boy do I have an album for you.
Since the members of Graf Orlock are obsessed with action movies, it was a brilliant idea on the part of The Deciblog (or the band’s publicist perhaps?) to have GO’s Justin Smith review action films. This week Smith ponders Taken, a Liam Neeson/Luc Besson thriller which opened in the States this past weekend and the rest of the world over the course of 2008.
I don’t have anything particularly nice to say about Deathwish Bronson. I came across the below clip of the band on YouTube last night while watching clips of the actual Charles Bronson blow people away in the actual Death Wish movies*. They play pretty standard death metal flavored hardcore. There’s a bazillion other bands out there doing the same thing, and at least a million of ‘em are doing it better. So, y’know, I don’t begrudge them their success or anything, but I also wanna make it clear I’m not writing a glowing endorsement here.
Really, I just want to write about Deathwish Bronson because I love that this band exists. I mean, it just seems like it’s fake – like some people got together to play an elaborate Blair Witch-style trick on unsuspecting metalheads. I guess if I were a nicer person, I’d find some sort of beauty in the universality of the fact that, over in Puerto Rico, they have hardcore matinees with sixteen kids acting like idiots at the VFW hall, too, just like the ones I’ve had to suffer through (thank you very much, One Dead Three Wounded). But anyone who reads this site knows I’m not a nice person, so fuck it, let’s get back to the part where this seems fake.
