via The Chive, in case the logo didn’t make that clear

Can someone please try the above but with metal? I don’t really care if it’s death metal or power metal or whatever, just make sure you film it and send it to me. Also, don’t get arrested. Thanks.

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We debuted new music by Scale the Summit and Junior Bruce.
• We learned about the NBA from God Forbid’s Doc Coyle.
• We spoke to Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse and Kris Norris from A Cancerous Affair.
• We checked out the latest album from Goatwhore, hardcore 7″s from Losin’ It, Appalachian Terror Unit, and Overlooked, and free releases from Autolatry, Yellow Eyes, Agartha, and Uvikra.
• We were surprised to learn that bands like this still exist.
• We were reminded that Juggalos are hilarious.
• We learned that Greg Puciato is dating the porn star Jenna Haze.
• We also learned that Bill Ward isn’t participating in the Black Sabbath reunion.

Okay, five o’clock! Time to punch out! Who’s got a joint?

-AR

I admit I don’t really know much about Jenna Haze — I’ve watched my fair share of pr0n but usually go for the more amateur stuff, ya know? — but there’s no doubt about it, she’s a fine lookin’ chica! And the guy who now gets to bang her not just once on camera for all to see but every night in the privacy of his own home is one Greg Puciato, Shroomy McShroomerson himself, of The Dillinger Escape Plan. The story was first picked up by Metal Injection from a link on Jenna’s Instagram page.

Check out that pic above; what a fine looking couple! Despite Greg’s supremely sculpted physique that’s pretty hard not to notice if you’ve ever seen the DEP live, I never really thought about him this way because, ya know, metal dudes are metal dudes, but Greg is quite the hunky, slick looking gentleman! All jokes aside, it can’t be easy to have your relationship in the public sphere so we wish Greg the best in his newfound tabloid lifestyle.

-VN

Last week’s most amusing news item came from Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato (above, center), who made public his thanks and apologies to local emergency responders who helped him out during a half-day drug freakout. (Reviewing Puciato’s account of the unnamed substance’s effects, one could settle on mushrooms as the likely culprit.) As party people, we at MetalSucks giggled knowingly at his beginner’s mistakes and cheered his quick rebound to good humor and sanity. Party loud, dude!

But Puciato’s boss, DEP founding guitarist Ben Weinman (above, left), isn’t as cool with his misadventure or his urge to chronicle it for the public. Nor with the potential he created for something other than Weinman to get credit for DEP’s genius. Our awesome buds at Metal Insider got the exclusive story from Weinman:

Click to read more…

via Topless Robot

I would give anything for that to be the actual James Bond theme music from now on, wouldn’t you?

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We spoke to Neige from Alcest and SL from The Devil’s Blood.
• Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick got pissed the Packers losing.
• We checked out the latest releases from Nails, Skin Like Iron, Fatal Birth, and No Tolerance.
• We previewed some more more Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012: 7 Horns 7 Eyes, Crazy Lixx, Wormed, and Imperial State Electric.
• We got excited about the rumored line-ups for both Summer Slaughter and Mayhem Fest.
• We helped Godsmack, Staind, and Halestorm name their new tour.
• We enjoyed Juliet’s video for “My First Hardcore Song.”
• We suffered through a bad trip with The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato.
• We felt bad for Trivium — poor bastards have to go tour with Asking Alexandria.
• We pondered whether the shutdown of Megaupload was good or bad.

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the most up-to-date suckitude.

See ya Monday, folks!

-AR

At my first paid gig as a music journalimalist, my editor wasn’t really hands-on with workshopping or edits or assignments. Let’s call him the Rick Rubin of print editors, as he was grotesquely overpaid, forever claiming unearned credit, and often seen shoveling bizarre food up his blabhole.

But I did get his attention once when I blew a weekend assignment: After a day spent on my front lawn all screwy on mushrooms and stuff, I’d turned up to an exciting concert I was to review. Smiling, I gave venue security my name, waited to be waved in, but was then told rudely that the show had already ended, dumbshit!

Ended!? Wha?! The show had gone off as scheduled, I was repeatedly assured, so what the fuck time was it? I had definitely left home on time — had it taken me three hours to get there? How long had I been staring at that graffiti mural? And what was I hearing that sounded like the band playing just across the entrance? What was Prince doing there holding hands with Madeline Albright? Where was that scent of garlic bread coming from? What the shit? Glirgh!

Well, it turns out Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato lost a similar battle with mind-bottling substances this weekend! Only he freaked out his gf and required the assistance of a small army of emergency staff! Puciato explained on his website:

Click to read more…

I caught the Mastodon/Dillinger Escape Plan/Red Fang tour when it stopped here in New York this past Saturday night, and, yeah the show all-around killed. But one of the undeniable highlights of the evening came just as DEP segued into the slower, more epic second half of “Sunshine the Werewolf” — ’cause that’s when I heard vocalist Greg Puciato call out, “Dimitri!” Which, natch, meant it was time for former DEP front man/current Argonauts vocalist Dimitri Minakakis to join his old band on stage.

And not only did Minakakis scream along with Puciato for “Werewolf,” but, of course, he also stuck around for the band’s final song of the evening, “43% Burnt.” Check out fan-filmed footage of the event below, starting at the 5:41 mark.

Random thought of the moment: Argonauts should tour with Dillinger. Someone make that happen, okay?

-AR

[via The PRP]

Greg Puciato, vocalist for longtime Disturbed fans The Dillinger Escape Plan, tweeted the following message earlier this week:

And I’m a massive fan of Puciato’s, but I actually disagree with him on this particular issue. ‘Cause when I think of Hell, I usually think of fire and brimstone and, y’know, pain. And Disturbed’s “Hell” isn’t really painful. It’s just really, really fucking BORING.

Click to read more…

Alright, there’s been a bunch of new shit released today, but we got a little distracted making fun of unknown bands and sucking Devin Townsend’s kazoo. So now it’s time to play catch-up.

First up today: The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato has released  a cover “of a song called ‘Driving’. Originally written/recorded by Oupa,the solo project of Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg,” according to Mr. Puciato. As Tracy Jordan once said, “I’m not familiar with about half the words in that sentence,” but I do dig the track. You can check out Puciato’s version below, or the original here.

Driving(Oupa Cover, Written By Daniel Blumberg) by Greg Puciato

Click to read more…

In case my myriad rants on Spotify and Bob Lefsetz’ all-in-one criticism rebuttal still don’t have you convinced that Spotify is worth the $10 monthly fee to stream EVERY PIECE OF MUSIC EVER RECORDED FROM ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME, how about a first-hand account from metal luminary and Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato? Puciato hasn’t been shy about expressing his feelings on the music biz in the past, so I don’t see why he’d pull any punches now. Here’s Greg on his own Facebook page, according to a comment by MS reader “blah:”

Geniunely excited and blown away by Spotify. Good to see a huge positive step for the music industry. This is gonna be a critical piece of the big picture of shifting out of the “old” industry to the “new”. Makes so much sense for casual listening….my IPOD suddenly feels like a giant book of CDs.

This is for real sick. Who gives a shit about royalties….that stuff’ll figure itself out in time. More important to just get the new infrastructure in place first so that the royalty situation can then be dealt with. In my opinion, this in a few years time turns CDs and Vinyls into complete collectors items that should both be numbered and limted. There will still be people that download so they can have the music in case there is no 3G….but Spotify actually has an “offline” mode too so you can temporarily save the music you’re streaming in case you’ll be away from 3G/4G/Wifi…which in a few years time you’ll NEVER be away from anyway.

Click to read more…

Devin Townsend has so much explaining to do. As a tireless songwriter and producer, he’s set to release two albums on June 21, Ghost and Deconstruction, to complete the Devin Townsend Project cycle that he started with 2009′s Ki and Addicted. That’s four full-length records, 43 songs, and 260 minutes of music unleashed over about two years. But for Townsend, discussion goes beyond song ideas and his exhaustive studio work required to bring them to life; he could talk all day and yet only touch on the subjects of touring, sales, and modern music industry calamity; and, shit, his back catalogue is too huge and varied to even approach in a Q&A of any reasonable length.

You see, being a modern musician and being Devin Townsend are not the same thing. Sure, he grinds out records and then tours like everybody. However, our latest MetalSucks interview with Townsend reveals an artist unbound by the limits of imagination, but pretty aware of averse reactions to his art; his self-expression is total and unapologetic — until fans and media misinterpret him or disapprove of his humor. He’s confident as a person, but shakeable as a virtuosic guitar player, a theater and puppet enthusiast, and a production wiz. He lets no truth about his world go unexpressed, beit via the hair-raising cacophony of Deconstruction (think Strapping Young Lad’s Alien: The Ride) or Ghost‘s murmuring calm. He puts himself out there all the way; now, let him explain why.

Click to read more…

If Ash Avildsen is looking for some muscle in his corner for his ongoing anti-piracy battle, he should look no further than Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato, an artistic heavyweight with plenty of literal brawn to back it up. I can just see it… Avildsen and Puciato tag-teaming against a duo of bespectacled, basement-dwelling computer nerds… a fight for the ages! Dynamite moves! Steel chairs!

Tag-team member Puciato wrote a long blog entry on his own website over the weekend tackling the topic of music piracy, and his viewpoint, though nuanced and well-thought out, isn’t what you might expect from the ordinarily very liberal frontman. He makes a lot of really good points, and a few arguments that have glaring holes in them, but the entire blog entry is worth a read. Here’s the opening snippet:

I don’t see file sharing as an evil…it’s silly to say that it has any intrinsic properties of good and evil at all anyway. It’s just a new form of technology that evolved outside of what the record industry and intellectual property law structure was prepared for at the time. That having been said…I think it’s necessary to swim with the tide and not against it. I think it’s time to accept and acknowledge that the CD is a dead format. Maybe not dead in the way of the 8 track but dead in the way vinyl is. A CD now, should be thought of as a collector’s item, or a preferred way of listening if that is the individual’s preference, in which case he is already in the minority as most music is listened to via the MP3 format. A CD certainly sounds better than an MP3, just as a vinyl does, but it just lacks the infinitely superior convenience of the digital format.

Click to read more…

After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

Click to read more…

“Hey guys, why haven’t you posted this yet?!! It only sounds like the single greatest piece of music ever, brah.”
-Drew Webb

“This should give you another Devin boner.”
-Brian Kessler

“MY DICK IS AFLAME WITH SEMEN.”
-Sam Payne

Well don’t hold back, fellas! Let us know how excited you really are about about this latest behind-the-scenes video from Devin Townsend.

Pretty cool, right? But wait! That’s not all. It seems that Devin recently made a love connection with The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato… via Twitter!

Click to read more…

They’re both gonna have members on tonight’s extra-special 100th episode of the Metal Injection Livecast, that’s what!!!

From a press release (What, you think we actually like the Metal Injection dudes? We only communicate via press releases!):

“The Metal Injection Livecast will be celebrating a milestone tonight, 100 first run editions of the live podcast. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the crew will be joined by some great guests. In the first hour of the show, Ben Weinman and Greg Puciato of The Dillinger Escape Plan will call into the show, and in the second hour, Mike ‘Gunface’ McKenzie and Greg Weeks of The Red Chord will join the show. Fans will be able to listen live starting at 8pm Eastern Time, and interact with the guests via a live chatroom as well as by calling into the show directly, via our fan line at 646-929-1357. An archived version of the episode will be posted shortly after the conclusion of the show.”

So if you’ve ever wanted to talk to these dudes without threat of one of them killing you (Puciato is a short guy, but not a small guy), here’s your chance!  Call in, talk to Greg Weeks about football… I’m sure he’s not sick of that. But above all else, just make sure you listen.

-AR

Well here’s a fun, intelligent, and above all else, exceedingly polite e-mail we got from reader Dan Wolfson last night:

Subject: PAINTED IN FUCKING EXILE YOU IDIOTS
From: dan wolfson
To: MetalSucks

WHY HAVE YOU NOT JIZZED OVER THIS VIDEO YET

FOOLS

So Vince actually had nice things (well, really, a nice thing) to say about this band as part of a Reader’s Choice round-up back in 2009, but as regular readers are aware, Vince is a much nicer person than I am. So please allow me to explain why I have not yet jizzed all over this video or this band:

Click to read more…

Here’s a fun story. The interwebs were aflutter on Saturday after Every Time I die posted two messages on their official Facebook page which seemed to suggest that they were breaking up. Here are screen caps of the posts in question:

So it’s easy to see how fans might misconstrue those messages to mean that the band were done.

Click to read more…

To say that Max Cavalera put metal on the map isn’t exactly accurate; metal’s formative years dealt with pond-crossing pollination between Europe and the U.S. But Sepultura helped bring the idea that metal was a global entity into being, from their early death metal albums, proving them more than competen,t to their later thrash/groove metal records, which combined primal heaviness with South American instrumentation. Max has continued this in Soulfly, which, despite  hisliving in the U.S. for the last decade and a half, still includes bits of his heritage. Though Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, and so forth may have (unintentionally) presented metal as a mainly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, Sepultura proved that if metal were going to be adored worldwide, it would be made worldwide as well. Their far-reaching success (both in the form of Max Cavalera’s Soulfly and the current incarnation of Sepultura) cements their very important place in metal.

Despite being in the game for more than twenty-five years, Max hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. He founded Cavalera Conspiracy with his formerly estranged brother/ex-Sepultura drummer Igor; Soulfly’s recently-released Omen shows the same strength, vitality, and palatable riffs that the band has always been known for; and he’ll no doubt be hitting the road for the foreseeable future. In an interview with MetalSucks conducted shortly before the album’s release, Max talks about making Omen, discusses how he manages to rope in guest performers, and makes some lofty claims about the upcoming Cavalera Conspiracy album.

Click to read more…

A few hours ago authorities evacuated Times Square for the second time in a week after someone found a “suspicious cooler” on the street. Of course, everyone was just being overly cautious, but as long as it doesn’t infringe on my civil rights, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. I think Vince was in Michigan when 9/11 went down, but I was here, and if I never see another tank rolling down my street again or run all over the city because there’s no cell service and I need to make sure that all of my friends and family are still alive, well, I’ll be good.

While I nurse my PTSD, here are some happier, metalier things that happened this week:

• We’re streaming Keep of Kalessin’s new album, Reptilian. We also debuted new music by Lamb of God and The Funeral Pyre.
• We also also also debuted new videos by Soulfly and Cancer Bats.
• We also also also also debuted our new cooking show, Cooking Contaminated.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal discussed the shape of silence, Periphery’s Bulb taught you how to get that “big” studio tone, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa had some questions about L O S T, Matt from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder fondly recalled Maryland Deathfest, and Batillus bassist Willi Stabenau gave us a studio update.
• We talked to Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum, Reign Supreme’s Jay Pepito,  Jackyl’s Jesse James Dupree, and unveiled part one of our massive two-part interview with Buzz Osborne.
• We checked out the latest release by The Howling Wind.
• Does the fact that Mike Portnoy is touring with Avenged Sevenfold make you wanna see ‘em?
• We don’t want Joey Belladonna to return to Anthrax. Seriously.
• Sergeant D. wants to know if u mosh 4 Christ???
• Damnocracy’s Evan Seinfeld and his porno Howdy Doody also do bar mitzvahs.
• We wish there was really such a thing as a Slayer burrito.

Next week brings even more betterer br00tal goodness – interviews, debuts, guest blogs, all that shit. It’s gonna get real up in this bitch. See ya then.

-AR

Max Cavalera is still the fucking man. He’s been going strong with Soulfly for over a decade, continuing to carve his place in metal history and show the kiddies how it’s done. In fact, Soulfly’s seventh album, Omen, comes out May 25 on Roadrunner, and shows that Max is just as relevant to metal today as he was when Sepultura released Morbid Visions nearly twenty-five years ago.

MetalSucks is proud to bring you the exclusive worldwide debut of “Rise of the Fallen,” the new video for the first single off of Omen. It intercuts awesome performance footage with a you-are-there representation of Soulfly’s brutal pits and, of course, even features an appearance by The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, who contributes guest vocals to the track. Check out the clip below – and don’t forget to pre-order a copy of Omen!

[This exclusive has now ended.]

For a limited time only, Soulfly are giving away a free mp3 of a new song, “Rise of the Fallen.” I found out via a tweet from Roadrunner, so I didn’t have any of the usual details of the track that come with a press release. And so when it started playing, I was all, “Gee, that’s not Max Cavalera singing. But the voice is so familiar. Is that Greg Puciato? It is Greg Puciato!” I’d like to think I would have recognized his voice even if I hadn’t been cranking Option Paralysis all week.

ANYWAY, “Rise” sounds pretty much like Puciato singing over a Soulfly song, which is to say that it sounds very much like Puciato singing over a Roots-era Sepultura song.  And while it’s kinda bizarre to Puciato singing on such a nu-metalish tune, his vocal performance really is top notch; I especially like the section that begins at the 2:41 mark. That’s some epic mosh-pit shit, dude.

Download the song here. It comes off of the new Soulfly album, Omen, which will be released May 25 on Roadrunner.

-AR