MetalSucks

I really like the Rockstar Mayhem Festival – it’s like someone went to Ozzfest and figured out a way to make it way better. Having two side-by-side second stages was a stroke of genius; there’s no downtime in-between bands, because one act can set up while another plays. The mainstage has been solid, too, although there’s always one co-headliner that’s totally missable – in other words, Disturbed and Marilyn Manson played those slots. But so have Slayer, Mastodon, and a bunch of other great bands, so there’s that.

Well, our pals at Metal Insider are reporting a few rumors as to whom might be on this year’s fest, and it looks as though the skipable band this year may very well be Korn.

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As a fan of Kingdom Of Sorrow, Jamey Jasta’s collaboration with the incredibly Kirk Windstein, I follow the Connecticut-based hardcore vocalist on Twitter. I’m not a huge fan of his main project Hatebreed, largely because so many of their songs, while angry and uplifting, sound so damn similar. As a result, I’ve been reluctant to pick up their recent self-titled album. I mean, if I want to be motivated by metal, I’ll pop in ANDREW W.K.’s I GET WET!!!!!!

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Not that we had any doubt Baroness’ Blue Record would have a strong debut, but it’s always nice to see the proof. And Skeletonwitch’s ripping new record Breathing the Fire had a great debut too; I’m elated to see the band sell as many records first week as they did. Elsewhere it was the usual radio rock / alt-metal suspects dominating the charts. Click through to see chart positions and sales figures.

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Five heavy hitting heavy hitters — Alice in Chains, Hatebreed, Austrian Death Machine, Steel Panther and Dethklok — all released new records last week. Solid 2nd and 3rd week performances from Three Days Grace, Muse, Megadeth, Five Finger Death Punch and others made it an all-around big week for metal. Let’s see how everyone fared after the jump.

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Uh, I think the headline pretty much says it all. There’s nothing for me to add, really. I’m curious to hear this album when it comes out next week, but I’m not sure what to expect. Or, rather, I’m afraid that I am sure what to expect. Or. Y’know. Whatever.

-AR

At this point, I don’t know what to expect from Hatebreed’s upcoming, self-titled album. The first song the band released, “In the Ashes They Shall Reap,” really did nothing for me – but I actually quite liked the second song the band put out, “Merciless Tide.” So much so that I’ve been listening to it off and on for the past week.

Now the band has posted yet another track on their MySpace page, entitled “Everyone Bleeds Now.” And in terms of the quality scale, I’d place it somewhere in-between “Ashes” and “Tide.” I mean, it’s pretty heavy, but it’s also just another variation on the same song the band has been putting out over and over and over again since Perseverance. Whereas “Tide” suggested there might be some fight left in the old boys yet, this song just makes me feel…  meh.

Still, the album has fifteen songs on it, so there’s still twelve more tracks to win me over. I guess I’ll find out when Hatebreed drops September 29 on E1.

-AR

Hatebreed have a new song, “Merciless Tide,” available for free download right here. It comes off their new, self-titled album, which will be released on E1 on September 29.

And… hey! Lookit that. I actually like it. It reminds me why I always end up enjoying Hatebreed, even if they’re never gonna make another Satisfaction is the Death of Desire. And it’s definitely better than that other song the band released. There’s multiple guitar solos, both of which I enjoy, the breakdown is fun, Jamey sounds pretty cranky.

And besides. I’ve already heard the best hardcore album of 2009. It’s called Axe to Fall.

-AR

Here it is:

Based on your comments, it looks like most of you were unimpressed with the first song the band has released from the album, ““In the Ashes They Shall Reap.” Hopefully you’ll enjoy the rest of the record more.

Hatebreed comes out comes out September 29 on E1.

-AR

“In the Ashes They Shall Reap,” the first song we’ve gotten to hear off of Hatebreed’s new, self-titled album, is streaming here.

I have a distinct opinion about this song – but I’m not going to share it. No. Because we’ve been enjoying you kids duke it out so much, I wanna keep my nose out of it… at least for now. I just wanna hear what you guys think.

Weigh in with your thoughts below. Hatebreed comes out September 29 on E1.

-AR

I do really enjoy Hatebreed when I’m in the right mood, and they’re a lot of fun live. But the thought of a new Hatebreed album doesn’t really get my blood pumping the way it used to. Perseverance was a turning point, the moment the band officially went from being hardcore to metalcore; since then, they’ve really just made Perseverance Part 2, Perseverance Part 3, etc.

Now they’ve announced a Septmeber 29 release date for their new, self-titled album, and front dude Jamey Jasta is promising that this album will mark another evolution for the band:

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I listened to The Infection over the weekend for the first time in a little while. Guess what? Still kills. I can’t wait to see some of this shit played live.

Here’s a not-so-great quality bootleg of the band playing the first cut off the album, “The Venom Inside.” As Vince says, “This song just makes me happy.” What a killer way to open the show. Sounds like the crowd is almost as loud as Mark Hunter.

Friendly reminder: Chimaira are on tour right now with Hatebreed, Dying Fetus, Toxic Holocaust and Winds of Plague. Then they head to Europe in September with Unearth, Throwdown, and our friends in Daath. You can get all the tour dates here.

-AR

What? You were expecting someone else?

-AR

Sebastian Bach sent out this tweet a little earlier today:

working on full demo cd to send to @john5guitarist 2 c where we’re @, then write more tunes till we r ready to enter studio 4 new CD! #fb21 minutes ago from txt

Alright, so Baz’s new record will have John 5 playing songs written by Jamey Jasta? Is it possible Sebastian is working on the single fucking weirdest metal record ever made?

-AR

So I just watched Faith No More’s Download Fest perf. I only saw one pair of boobies, and they were terrible boobies. On the other hand, FNM killed it and played “Take This Bottle” and Patton did part of “We Care A Lot” while doing sit-ups with the mic in his mouth, so ya take the good with the bad.

Speaking of the good with the bad: we started to unveil the results of our 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far poll/list this week, and as usual, y’all had something to say about it:

• SP420 thinks it’s “unbelievable that so many people hold” the #17 album, Hatebreed’s Perseverance, “in such high regard.” Sp420, Jamey Jasta will be at your house in one hour to discuss.
• ionlanach thinks that the #18 album, Lamb of God’s New American Gospel, is “Mediocre, just like everything Lamb of God have ever done.” Even Randy Blythe’s BBQ sauce is offended
• I hate you thinks that if the #19 album, Mastodon’s Remission, “was your first metal album, you are gay” and that “metal is obviously not your fortay.” In other news, I hate you doesn’t know how to spell “forté” correctly.
• Fufkin calls the #20 album, Shadows Fall’s The War Within, “metalbore.” While I don’t agree with him (her?), that’s just clever enough for me not to make fun of Fufkin.
• Robert thinks that the #21 album, Slipknow’s Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses, is “sort of a pile of shit.” Which leads me to wonder: at what point does something go from being “sort of” a pile of shit to, y’know, an actual pile of shit?

Next week we’re countin’ down albums #16 through #12. The picks are clearly either gonna make you guys really fuckin’ happy or really fuckin’ mad. I’ll give you a hint, though: they’re all metal albums.

-AR

SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER AMY SCIARRETTO OF ROADRUNNER RECORDS AND NOISECREEP

We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and  April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #17 album, coming in with a total of 113 points…

Hatebreed, Perseverance (Universal, 2002)
Jamey Jasta – Vocals
Sean Martin – Guitars
Lou “Boulder” Richards – Guitars
Chris Beattie – Bass
Matt Byrne – Drums
Produced by Matt Hyde

It took five years – FIVE!!! – for Hatebreed to follow up their classic, 26-minute opus, Satisfaction is the Death of Desire, with Perseverance. Making the fans wait till they were starved and parched probably would have served the band well even if the music wasn’t so toe-to-the-nuts, knuckle-draggingly brutal. Hatebreed fans were so desperately desiring new tunes from the band as we waited in the wings while Hatebreed wrestled themselves away from their label, Victory Records.

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A giant, that’s-gonna-leave-a-mark smack on the ass to our pal Rob Pasbani at Metal Injection, who noticed that Sean Martin, formerly of Hatebreed, is in the new video for Cage, which was directed by Transformers star Shia LaBeouf. You gotta wonder how the fuck Martin ended up here…

UPDATE: Apparently Martin and Cage are co-owners of a company called Cardboard City. Thanks to Dallas Coyle for the tip!

I can’t stomach the song enough to listen to it, but luckily, Martin appears at the start of the video, before the music kicks in. Check it out:

-AR

Back in January we told you that Jamey Jasta has been helping Sebastian Bach, of all people, write some new music. Well, now Bach has posted the below video of himself in the studio with Phantoms’ Charlie Bellmore, who I guess will play on the record.

In any case, it certainly sounds like Baz singing over Hatebreed.

P.S. Jesus Christ, Baz, take a shower, go to the gym and comb your fucking hair.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

As I mentioned earlier this week, a little while back I got an e-mail from The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney to discuss an extremely negative review I’d given the band’s last album, Fear Will Cast No Shadow. McChesney could have been a total dick about the whole thing, but as it turns out, he’s a very even headed, intelligent, and cool dude. So what else was there to do but interview him about the band’s new album, Requiem, which will come out June 9 on Victory. McChesney was even good enough to let us debut the first single off of that album, “The Curtain Hits The Cast,” for which the band will shoot a video in the coming weeks.

I still haven’t heard the new album, but I do already like this song way, way more than anything from Fear Will Cast No Shadow; it’s catchy and it doesn’t sound overly processed, which, I think, is what The Autumn Offering were striving for. Check out the song below, and then my conversation with Matt McChesney after the jump! (FYI – for fear that this was all a set-up for Matt to have me murdered, the interview was conducted by e-mail.)

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Someday I’d like to try and work out some sort of mathematical formula to determine which bands actually do have the most brutal pits. You might think there’d be some correlation between pit violence and aural weight, but that doesn’t explain why, say, Napalm Death pits are, though nothing to scoff at, a fly on the ass of a Slayer pit. Fascinating.

Two bands that generally do have big, scary fucking pits: Hatebreed and Chimaira. And now Lambgoat reports that they’ll spend the late summer touring together. I know I sometimes give Jamey Jasta and company shit on this site, but, really, Hatebreed are best enjoyed in a live setting, where they pretty much manage to destroy each and every time they take the stage. And my feelings on Chimaira are, by now, I think pretty well documented.

Does the tour rider include provisions for multiple on-site ambulances? I sure hope so. Get tour dates after the jump.

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I have never, and will never, understand the point of doing a cover if you’re not gonna make the track your own. Seriously, why just do an exact replica of the original when we all still have, y’know, the original?

Which is how I feel about Hatebreed’s new cover of Slayer’s “Ghosts of War.” I like Hatebreed but I can’t see anyone ever listening to this, especially since I think literally every metal fan in the whole wide world owns a copy of South of Heaven.

Hatebreed have an all-covers album, For the Lions, coming out May 9 on Koch. I hope some of it is more creative than this.

-AR

[via Headbanger's Blog]