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.

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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

At this point, how much of an introduction do The Dillinger Escape Plan really need? They’re one of the most talked-about bands of the last decade, and that talk hasn’t quieted down very much in the face of their latest release, Option Paralysis, which comes out today. The album is a very natural evolutionary step from Ire Works, and has (rightly) been met with the heaping tons of praise we’ve come to expect DEP to garner.

When I went to interview vocalist Greg Puciato, bassist Liam Wilson, and drummer Billy Rymer – the latest addition to the band’s line-up – they were right in the middle of signing a table-full of Option Paralysis CD booklets, and only had about twenty minutes to spare before they had to participate in a live web-chat; then they were set to kick-off their headlining tour the next night. You might think that such an abundance of promotional activities would leave these fellas frazzled or at least exhausted, but they were clearly far too excited about the impending release to be bothered by having to talk to a schmucky blogger like me.

After the jump, get Greg, Liam, and Billy’s thoughts on Option Paralysis, the pressure of following Ire Works, their search for a new drummer, fans who wish they’d just stick to crazy-ass mathcore, the joys of their ever-increasing fame, and more.

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Readers Matthew Mitchell and DruM both sent me a link to this Fox News interview with Ben Weinman, Greg Puciato, and Liam Wilson from The Dillinger Escape Plan. Needless to say, the joksters in DEP keep it entertaining – and bonus points to Puciato for his explanation of why Bill O’Reilly is a great inspiration to his vocals. (And if you don’t know what incident Puciato is referring to here, watch this.)

The video isn’t embeddable, but you can watch it by clicking on the screen cap below!

And by the way, in case you’re the only person in the world who doesn’t know this, DEP’s new album, Option Paralysis, is March 23. That’s just out one week from tomorrow!

-AR

So last night I went to the kick-off date for The Dillinger Escape Plan’s headlining tour with Darkest Hour, Iwrestledabearonce, and Animals as Leaders. All of the bands were pretty great, but after the show, it was really hard to talk about any of them but DEP; their live act is just some other-level shit. They might be one of the last bands on the planet where their live show feels legitimately spontaneous and dangerous; there always comes at least one moment during their show when I become concerned that we might be watching the process of Greg Puciato killing himself. Even if you think you hate this band, you should go check them out, just to see how absolutely nuts it can get.

So. Rob from Metal Injection has a nifty new toy, called the Samson Zoom Q3, and he filmed the band doing their new song “Chinese Whispers” (we debuted the studio version earlier this week). You can view the footage below. The audio quality is actually better than the video quality, but it’s still pretty good. It was not one of the songs where I feared for Mr. Puciato’s life, but it still kicks major ass.

Get Dillinger tour dates here.

-AR

The video for The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Farewell, Mona Lisa” just debuted on Justin.tv,  and while the image quality, at least on my computer, isn’t that hot, what I can see looks pretty cool. And the fact that the song is so awesome – especially the kind of melancholic, epic second section – means that they could probably have just posted footage of Greg Puciato taking a crap and I would’ve been happy.

“Farewell, Mona Lisa” will be on Option Paralysis, which comes out March 23 on Party Smasher/Season of Mist.

-AR

The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato is ripped. But it would never even occur to me to accuse the dude of taking steroids, for the following reasons:

1. He might kick my ass.
2. To make an accusation like that requires something known as “evidence,” and I have none. In fact, I’ve never even heard a rumor about the guy taking ‘roids.
3. He might kick my ass.
4. It seems perfectly feasible to me that Puciato spends the hours and hours of downtime that come with touring working out.
5. He might kick my ass really, really bad.

None of these issues gave pause to James Montgomery, though. I have no idea who Montgomery is, but in what has to be the stupidest act of 2010 so far, he’s written a piece for MTV in which he accuses ten musicians – including Puciato, Trent Reznor, and Glenn Danzig – of taking steroids. “Proof?” Montgomery actually bothers to raise the issue in his intro. “Who needs it when you’ve got pure suspicion?”

As far as I know, Reznor and Danzig haven’t weighed-in (no pun intended) yet about this absolutely moronic article – but Puciato has, and he ain’t happy about. He tells our friends at Noisecreep:

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…and that omen said it will come out May 4 on Roadrunner. And that it will feature guest appearances from The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, Prong’s Tommy Victor, and (on b-side covers) Igor Cavalera and Zyon Cavalera. And, oh yeah, that it will be called Omen.

I’ve never liked Soulfly as much as I love Sepultura, but I did really enjoy Dark Ages, and the one time I caught the band live, they slayed. So while I’d much rather have a new Cavalera Conspiracy record, color me curious to hear this.

I’m less curious to hear the cover of “Refuse/Resist,” featuring the aforementioned Zyon Cavalera. Why does anyone ever cover their own song? The results are almost always disasterous – just ask Chuck Mosley or Slash…

-AR

In the second tragedy to befall a Brooklyn drummer this Autumn (the other being the freak death of Maserati’s Jerry Fuchs), Spylacopa drummer Troy Young was shot and killed in his own apartment, according to the NY Daily News [via Metal Insider]. Spylacopa was (is?) an experimental project that featured members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Candiria, Isis and Made Out of Babies. Young had also logged time in bands The Spines and State of Emergency.

“Drummer Troy Young, played on the Spylacopa EP, was shot to death in his apartment. Sad day. Talented drummer and nice person, 29yrs old,” read an update on Dillinger Escape Plan / Spylacopa frontman Greg Puciato’s Twitter page.

The Post reports that Young was shot once in the shoulder, and that the bullet pierced his heart. No suspects or motives are known at this time.

I can’t speak to Young’s talent the way I could to Fuchs’, as I’m really not too familiar with his work outside of Spylacopa… but any guy who can hang with the rest of those dudes has got to be quite talented. And any time the metal community loses a member is always a sad day. Please share your memories of Troy Young in our comments section.

-VN

Here’s The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth webisode chronicling the making of their forthcoming album, Option Paralysis. And sorry if I got your hopes but, no, James Hetfield (Hatfield?) is not actually on the album. Just watch, it’ll all make sense.

The best part of watching these remains the all-too-brief teases of new music the band keeps feeding us. But everything we’ve heard thus far seems to be in the vein of classic, Calculating Infinity-style DEP mathcore, and while there’s nothing wrong with that at all, I am starting to wonder if there’s going to be any Ire Works-style Faith No More pop. I’d love for the band to continue to strike a balance between the two styles (as they did on Ire and, to a lesser extent, Miss Machine), but… who knows. I’m obviously speculating based on next to no concrete information, so… “Dead as History” fans shouldn’t lose sleep just yet.

-AR

Above you’ll find the fourth in-studio webisode for The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Option Paralysis. It’s worth watching mostly for the all-too-brief taste of new music you get, which sounds, well, pretty much like vintage DEP.

Maybe just as exciting is the band’s new, limited edition t-shirt for “Mouth of Ghosts,” one of my favorite songs off of Ire Works. Vocalist Greg Puciato explains:

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As one of the chief riff providers for swaggercore titans Every Time I Die, Andy Williams takes pride in making the discordant into catchy. For a perfect example of this, look no further than the band’s latest (MetalSucks-approved) album, New Junk Aesthetic. Distilling the band’s decade-plus essence into a tight half hour, it’s a satisfying mix of thunderous heaviness and easily the most appealing material the band have put to tape. But while he’s often overshadowed by vocalist Keith Buckley’s relentless wiseassery, it’s his and Jordan Buckley’s Skynard-by-way-of-Dillinger-Escape-Plan guitar work that make the band stand out and ultimately worthwhile.

A self-described “chatty Cathy,” Andy Williams was remarkably frank and refreshingly earnest in a recent interview with MetalSucks on the eve of the release of New Junk Aesthetic. Among other things, he discussed why he can listen to the new album and none of the band’s other material, his thoughts on the new Converge record, the changing landscape of the scene he came up in, and life over at ETID’s new label, Epitaph.

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Yesterday, at 10 a.m., our friends at Metal Insider reported that Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz has recorded guest vocals for the new Every Time I Die album.

This morning at 1 a.m., they reported that ETID drummer Mike Novak has split from the band due to “personal conflicts.”

Coincidence?

While you ponder that, enjoy the new ETID song below, entitled “The Marvelous Slut.” Metal Injection discovered it floating around on YouTube. It originally appeared on a recent Hurley-Epitaph Records compilation, which you can download here.

And, yes, that is Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato doing guest vox.

-AR

Last month, The Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato lashed out at President Barack Obama in a lengthy blog post, taking the sitting prez to task for the bailout and calling him “George W. Bush lite, wearing a young black man costume.”

Well, you’d assume that Obama a) has never heard of The Dillinger Escape Plan and b) therefore would not have heard about/cared about what Puciato had to say.

Apparently, this is not the case.

Read President Obama’s response to Puciato after the jump… it’s a doozy.

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Wowza. Greg Puciato posted this Sunday on his MySpace blog (and I think it’s important to note that it’s his MySpace blog – I don’t know if we can assume this represents the feelings of the entire band). It’s fucking War and Peace length, so wait ’til your boss isn’t around to start reading.

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So last week Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato and Ben Weinman got up on stage in Australia with Nine Inch Niles to help out with “Wish,” a song DEP had previously covered. Up ’til now, all we’ve seen is shitty cell phone capture of the performance – but now NIN have posted something considerably higher quality on their web site.

Not much to say here – you just gotta love it when there’s so many great musicians on one stage.

-AR

Well… happy friggin’ new year, everyone. We gots some catchin’ up to do.

As Dillinger Escape Plan fans may have heard by now, the band has hired some dude no one has ever heard of, Billy Rymer from The Rivalry, to replace Gil Sharone, who, in turn, replaced founding drummer Chris Pennie for 2007′s orgasm-inducing Ire Works and all subsequent touring for that album. Now, I know that Sharone’s departure may worry the DEP faithful – the dude was not only an awesome drummer, but watching how chill he always was live, even while playing some retardedly complex drum parts, would seem to suggest that he may very well be a god amongst men (or at least drummers). Hell, even DEP front dude Greg Puciato told us that Sharone is like “the kid in school who always gets good grades just because he’s naturally fucking super gifted.”

But here’s the thing.

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On August 25, 1988, Metallica released what many consider to be their last great album, …And Justice for All. To my ears, this would probably be my favorite Metallica album of all time if not for the lack of bass (Which, to this day, I think was an idiotic way to haze then-new-now-former bassist Jason Newstead – I mean, why would the band punish themselves by damaging their own album? How does that pay tribute to the memory of Cliff Burton? It doesn’t). Justice features Metallica at their heaviest, and, often, their proggiest. I’ve been trying all week-end to think of words that could do Justice, um, justice – but I just can’t. And I probably don’t need to to: I’m sure you all have your own feelings on this classic recording.

So here’s Metallica performing the title track on the Justice tour in ’89. After the jump, keep the celebration going with more live clips, the now classic video for “One,” and some other cool shit.

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