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Last week we focused on the complete inertia of modern rock radio over the past 10 years, as manifested in the top ten selling records of the week. Rest assured, all ten of those releases are still selling well… no need to re-hash them in this space again. Instead let’s look at newer records, including debuts from All Shall Perish, Wirestledabearonce, Jamey Jasta’s solo effort and more.
I was listening to an interview with Sarah Vowell last weekend, in which she proclaimed that, as a writing exercise, she did not allow herself to use any F-bombs in her new book, Unfamiliar Fishes. I decided to do her one better this week — I did not swear at all. Unless you count “crap,” “drek,” or “sucks” as swear words, which I do not.
So that was fun.
ANYWAY, here’s some stuff we did this week:
Alright, we’re out. Have a nice weekend, gang!
-AR
As part of our coverage of this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival – currently winding its way through North America — we’re bringing you a series of “Rigged” columns in which several of the tour’s musicians take you on piece-by-piece guides of their current live rig setups. Check out what Machine Head’s Phil Demmel had to say about his super-sweet rig last week and what Unearth’s Buz McGrath uses in his current live set-up. Hatebreed are only appearing on three dates of this year’s tour, August 5th through 7th in Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis. Here’s guitarist Wayne Lozinak on his rig:
What’s up MetalSucks readers? This is Wayne Lozinak from Hatebreed, and this is my live set-up.
Have you ever noticed that the bands who metal nerds fawn over today were universally-despised rage magnets just a few short years ago? For example, trashing Pantera in 2011 is asking to get chased with torches and pitchforks — the polar opposite of 1993, when you would be hard-pressed to find a band that metal nerds hated more. Or how everybody jizzes over Suffocation now, but in the mid-90s you couldn’t read two pages of Metal Maniacs without someone pissing and moaning about “Suffoclones.” Are metal nerds crazy, or is there some rhyme and reason to their seemingly-contradictory behavior?? I believe that there is indeed a way to understand metal nerds, but it’s not what you might think!
Psychologists have long compared metal nerds to women. The similarities are certainly undeniable: like the fairer sex, they are fickle, emotional, and irrational. They even have long hair! However, my research suggests that, unlike women, they actually operate by a primitive form of logic and are highly predictable. After the break: my SCIENTIFIC MODEL OF METAL NERD PSYCHOLOGY, the FOUR KINDS OF METAL BANDS, and an exclusive METAL NERD CHEAT SHEET that reveals a foolproof formula for whether you should like a band or not!
Alas, there won’t be a new installment of “Landphil Marathon” today. So I thought all you pro-wrestling fiends might instead enjoy the below video, which is a mash-up of Hatebreed’s “Tear it Down” with various Hulk Hogan sound bites. And, I gotta say, it’s done pretty artfully! Jamey Jasta’s lyrics are already kinda rasslin’-ready (I always say he’s like the Tony Robbins of hardcore… there is nothing better at the gym than having Jasta literally shout “PERSEVERANCE!” in your ear when you get tired.), so this doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
And we should have a new “Landphil Marathon” soon!
-AR
Thanks to Skyler Diotte for the tip!
S.O.S. are a bonafide hardcore supergroup featuring current and former members of Agnostic Front, Hatebreed, Madball, Terror, and Trapped Under Ice. And, for once, a supergroup has lived up to expectations, and is more than just the sum of its parts. S.O.S.’s forthcoming EP, I Owe You Nothing, seems like a love letter to hardcore, a respect-laden tribute to the bands that inspired and creatively challenged its membership. Or, put more simply: this shit rips.
MetalSucks is proud to debut “Never a Brother,” one of the tracks from I Owe You Nothing, which you can stream below. The album comes out today via Goodfight Entertainment (as we exclusively reported it would back in March). You can order it from Good Fight in a variety of editions here, or get a vinyl version from Reaper Records here. And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out our interview with S.O.S. guitarist Matt Henderson (also of Agnostic Front, Blind Approach, and Madball fame) here.
[this streaming promotion has ended]
Sebastian Bach has announced a September 27 release date for his new album, Kicking & Screaming. The press release makes no mention of any collaborations with Jamey Jasta or John 5, which would have been the reasons to at least be curious about this record, especially after the awfulness that Bach’s last outing, Angel Down. So… oh well.
But the press release did include a link to the below promo photo, by Gabriel Goldberg, and it might be the most inadvertently hilarious promo photo ever for a professional musician of whom you’ve actually heard. I can’t believe that anyone, let alone what was probably a team of people, thought it was a good idea to release a photo where Baz looks like he’s just about to start weeping. Because nothing screams “ROCK!” like a depressed blonde man with too much make-up on.
Vince is away on vacation, so there won’t be any of his patented photo caption contests for awhile. But if anyone can come up with a caption for this that actually makes me laugh, I will send them a goody bag of assorted whatever-the-fuck we have lying around.
So have at it…
-AR
We at MetalSucks got first crack at a Q&A with leukemia survivor Adam “Nergal” Darski in late March, at which point the Behemoth frontman sounded pumped for a return to action but still in the early stages of recovery; that is to say, the spirit was willing but the flesh weak, like in that Sting song. Since then, we tireless reporters/nosy jerks have been keeping two eyes on Nergal’s progress on the path to his band’s upcoming shows in October and, natch, to a lasting recovery.
And so we thank Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta for sharing a pic (above) of himself and Nergal (probably) at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in London on Monday, at which Behemoth took home the Metal As Fuck award over Slipknot, Slayer, Deftones (?), and Zakk Wylde. For that big win, for his birthday on Friday, and mostly for his good and improving health, we say cheers brah! Win!
-ADF
Go here for info on how to help the battle against Leukemia. Here you can order Behemoth’s Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, a collection of out-of-print EPs Conjuration (2003) and Slaves Shall Serve (2005), live bonus tracks, lyrics, and new artwork.
At this year’s Black N Blue Bowl, performers gave shout-outs to Trapped Under Ice so consistently that it became absurd that the Baltimore hardcore act wasn’t even playing the event. (They did play a rather memorable set at last year’s fest.) The band’s rise can only be described as meteoric these past couple years, but apparently that’s not enough for these guys. Drummer Brendan Yates fronts the SGT D APPROVED Turnstile, which recently released the Pressure To Succeed 7″ on Reaper, while guitarist Sam Trapkin is part of S.O.S., the supergroup we can’t stop talking about featuring dudes from Hatebreed, Madball, and Terror.
Now, TUI frontman Justice Tripp has gotten into the act with SAI NAM, a new project featuring two notable names in the world of NYHC: guitarist Mike Dijan (Breakdown, Crown Of Thornz, Skarhead) and drummer Lou Medina (Breakdown, All Out War, District 9). Justice first hinted about this project some months back via Twitter, but this week the band unveiled one of their tracks via Soundcloud and Facebook. “Comeback” is a barbed-wire wrapped brick of a track, and if this is what SAI NAM is all about, then I’m game for the pit beast of an LP these guys have in them. Check it out below.
-GS
Agnostic Front. Blind Approach. Madball. Guitarist Matt Henderson made his mark on all of them, and in doing so, on the still-thriving institution that is hardcore. It seems downright criminal that his name isn’t mentioned in the same sentence as Greg Ginn, given that most bands in the scene these days sound more like 90s Madball than Black Flag. Not that it matters to Matt, mind you, as I learned in my chat with this down-to-earth guy. Industry-hardened yet still affable, he’s more interested in S.O.S., the project he’s formed with members of Hatebreed, Terror, and Trapped Under Ice. The veritable supergroup’s forthcoming I Owe You Nothing EP seems like a love letter to hardcore, a respect-laden tribute to the bands that inspired and creatively challenged its membership. While we have to wait until June 21 for the Good Fight / Reaper release (pre-order here and here), Matt’s answers regarding the band as well as his place in the history of hardcore are worth reading.
S.O.S., the new hardcore supergroup featuring current and former members of Agnostic Front, Hatebreed, Madball, Terror, and Trapped Under Ice, have a new song, “Part of the Disease,” streaming over at Stereokiller. And while I do not really spend all that much time listening to hardcore these days, I gotta say, I’m digging this. It’s simple , it’s catchy, and it’s short. Kinda like that midget in Vegas who gave me the clap.
You’re moshing here. As our own Gary Suarez exclusively reported in March, S.O.S. have signed with Goodfight Entertainment, who will releases the band’s debut, I Owe You Nothing, on June 21; Reaper Records will release a vinyl edition that same day.
-AR
Uhh…
Uhh…
Uhh…
Huh?
-AR
Jamey Jasta’s Jasta is out Jastaly 26 via eJasta Jastas.
Jamey Jasta has a solo album, simply entitled Jasta (I wish it were called Jasta! for some reason but okay), out on July 26 via eOne, I guess because he’s getting restless on account of the fact that it’s been five minutes since he released anything with Hatebreed, Kingdom of Sorrow, or Icepick, or started a clothing line, or a record label, or a festival tour, or hosted a television show, or pulled a lttle girl from burning wreckage while simultaneously delivering a brood of puppies and curing herpes. (I’m saying the dude keeps busy.) And now there’s a track from that album, “Mourn the Illusion,” streaming here.
It’s definitely a catchy song and I have a ton of respect for Jasta. Thing is, Jasta said he’s doing a solo album because “these are all songs that… didn’t really fit with Hatebreed or Kingdom of Sorrow. Plus, those recipes are so successful that I wouldn’t want to change it or switch it up.” And I’m really not convinced that this couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have been a Hatebreed song.
Last month, I told you about S.O.S., a bonafide hardcore supergroup featuring current and former members of Agnostic Front, Hatebreed, Madball, Terror, and Trapped Under Ice. Obviously, a band with that sort of pedigree surely couldn’t stay unsigned for very long. You’ll read it here first, folks: S.O.S. has partnered with Good Fight Entertainment, home to The Chariot, Disembodied, and, oh yeah, Madball.
Sometime in late Spring/early Summer, Good Fight will drop S.O.S.’s first release, an as-yet untitled CD-EP. (Hardcore elitists, fear not, Reaper Records will cover the vinyl.) But you can finally hear what the band sounds like in this awesome (and yes, exclusive) video below featuring the band recording with producer Dean Baltulonis (Goes Cube, Madball, Sick Of It All) at Wild Arctic Studios in Queens, NY. This short preview should leave no doubt in the hearts and minds of hardcore fans that this is going to be fucking solid.
-GS
I somehow completely missed this until I read about it on Metal Injection, but it seems that Sebastian Bach will be performing “Youth Gone Wild” with Asking Alexandria as his backing band at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards next month. (DevilDriver and Jamey Jasta will also be doing a tribute to Black Flag, but I have nothing funny to say about that.)
As a world-renowned music journalist, I am subjected on a daily basis to a barrage of emails from bands and publicists, all pleading for me to type something on their behalf. Each morning after my standing massage appointment, I set aside some time (usually 6-8 minutes) to quickly scan devote considerable attention to these promotional notices in case one would for make a juicy MetalSucks blog post. Lo and behold, in the latest Reaper Records update I found such a newsworthy item.
If you’ve read the headline of this post, then you’re already ahead in the game, kiddo. It seems that Terror frontman Scott Vogel and drummer Nick Jett have joined forces with Hatebreed bassist Chris Beattie, Trapped Under Ice guitarist Sam Trapkin, and noneother than Matt Henderson formerly of Madball and Agnostic Front. (If you don’t recognize who Matt Henderson is and why this is a big deal, catch up on your hardcore history here.) The most unexpected hardcore supergroup since Hazen Street, the appropriately named S.O.S. have yet to release any music, yet their very existence will bring excitement to all who care about metallic hardcore. Rumors of the group’s existence have been circulating for some time and the band’s Facebook page (which doesn’t even mention who’s in it!) is more barren than the cast of Sex And The City 2. A 7″ is due out this May on Reaper.
It occurred to me sometime this afternoon that Frankie Palmeri may very well read what I wrote about him earlier today, and decide the best course of action is to invite me onto his tour bus to settle our conflict through calm, intelligent discussion, only to sucker punch me when the bus door opens. Thus, I have come with a new rule for life: NEVER GO ONTO A TERRIBLE DEATHCORE BAND’S TOUR BUS. Seems simple enough!
While I contemplate Thanos Bison Reignz coming after me during a solar apocalypse, here’s a rundown of some of the fun shit we did this week:
So, one last reminder: next week sees the release of Volume 2 of NYC Sucks, our totally free comp collecting awesome bands from the New York area. But if you’re a total sour puss and awesome free music does nothing for you, we’ll have some other fun shit, too. ‘Til then…
-AR
INTRO BUST
Everybody knows that Hatebreed is by far the most popular hardcore band in the history of the planet, but not everybody knows that they are beyond a doubt the best hardcore band of all time. I can feel the butthurt starting already, but lettuce be srs, brahs: no other hardcore band has consistently dropped album after album of brutal mosh jams. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a step through history and prove it! In more-or-less chronological order, I will go through the bands who some might say hold the title of “best hardcore band of all times” and illustrate why Hatebreed is #1.
Go!
Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:
Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.
Anyway, here’s the full bill:
Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:
Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.
Anyway, here’s the full bill:
