He Is Legend made two of the past decade’s awesomest, most infectious records, so I went straight to Bonersville upon their December announcement of an end to their two-year hiatus and a new album for 2012. Their first shows back were last week in North Carolina, a place I can’t locate on a map let alone visit (it’s over by Tennessee and Arizona right?), so I’m just happy as shit to enjoy some shaky, unflattering fan film of the jam (above). The clip reveals a rustless He Is Legend before a very happy crowd ripping happily — except for inscrutable guitarist/stud Adam Tanbouz, though his frownypants may relate to the usual technical wrangling during a gig’s first song. Fully mirin his Dark Funeral shirt.

-ADF

Read about He Is Legend here and here then get their stuff here.

Photo by Johan Lindstrand, The Crown

A few months ago, The Crown announced the return of screamer Johan Lindstrand, making theirs the first of some awesomely exciting late 2011 reunions. Soon to follow were At The Drive-In (read here), He Is Legend (here), and Refused (here), all acts sharing few aesthetics but linked by total awesomeness, undefinability, daring, and unexhausted creative potential. So it’s cosmically just that these rad, singular bands have heeded the voices ordering them back from the light at the end of the tunnel. Bonerz for all!

Back in September, MetalSucks got up in the face of Crown guitarist/producer Marko Tervonen to talk about their new album plans and stuff, and he revealed that around six songs were written. And today a pair of those songs are mentioned by Lindstrand in his report on Thursday’s rehearsal, the band’s first since his return:

Click to read more…

The fact that MetalSucks readers are awesome was proven nicely by the response to our March report on heavy rockers He Is Legend. At that point, little had been heard from the awesome North Carolina band since their euphoric third album It Hates You in 2009 and the anemic promotion cycle that followed; they were inactive and saying little. Fighting denial and dread, I phoned HiL manager Zach Neil to talk about the band’s status and about the misfortunes that lead to HiL’s horrifically lopsided ratio of success-to-radness.

Our talk ended on a note of optimism about HiL’s future, so I felt great. I felt super-great once I saw my devotion to HiL echoed up and down the comments section by frothing MS readership. I vaulted up to mega-great after arriving at the logic that, up against their passionate manager and their rabid fans and my big fat mouth, HiL couldn’t possibly stay dormant forever. So I then kinda checked my watch, started tapping my foot, and silently prepared to someday roll out the red carpet for HiL’s return to BonerTown.

Nine short months later, Christmas has come — literally and figuratively: He Is Legend is back in action and not one instant too soon! O, sweet bonerz of paradise! Here’s the deal: Click to read more…

Hey there, didja know MetalSucks is on Facebook and Twitter? Follow us on both to have updates beamed into your brain. And don’t forgot about our merch blow-out sale: $10 t-shirts and $20 hoodies for a limited time.

Meanwhile, the news never stops! Here are a few thing of note that’ve happened over the past 24 hours outside of David Gold’s tragic passing and the announcement of Ryan Parrish’s departure from Darkest Hour:

• Norma Jean’s Cory Brandan says you owe him money if you illegally downloaded Norma Jean’s music, and he’s PISSED. The frontman took to his Twitter account yesterday to post the following, after which he engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth on the topic with fans: ”Anyone that has ever downloaded a Norma Jean record. You owe me money. I hope you had enough money today to buy your family groceries…I mean ‘for free’ of course. Ya know… illegally. Stolen. Theft. Don’t get your feeling hurt. It’s ok if you steal from me. Anything else I can do for free for you? Spoiled brats! It’s about time someone got pissed about this! I hope you guys know what it feels like to have thousands of dollars stolen from you only to be told you have a an attitude about it. BTW! I appreciate and LOVE all of you that have supported us over the years. I hope you are all blessed!”
• He Is Legend are indeed recording a new album, as was previously rumored. Anso DF is gonna be super-duper-uper excited about this news! Check out an interview he did with the band’s manager back in March, then stream He Is Legend’s entire catalog on Spotify.
• Aborted have a brand new song called “The Origin of Disease” streaming over at Gun Shy Assassin. Their new album Global Flatline comes out on January 24th on some label whose name I forget.
• Not news, per se, but: Symphony X’s new album The Iconoclast is fucking fantastic and I’m ashamed I haven’t mentioned it on MS yet. It’s basically the album I wish Dream Theater would’ve written instead of… their last three albums. Stream it in its entirety on MOG.

Everywhere ya look, there’s an announcement of a new and unexpected pairing: Mastodon/hip hop producer, Metallica/Lou Reed, Mike Portnoy/butt-rock, and Rob Zombie/garment care. Well, Strange Bedfellows Month continues with news that Warbringer’s just-completed third album, Worlds Torn Asunder, was produced by Steve Evetts. His name is on good punk records (Saves The Day, Lifetime), veiny hardcore (Snapcase, Earth Crisis), and Symphony X; and, natch, he’s the Flemming Rasmussen to Dillinger Escape Plan’s Metallica. So dude has some stats.

Click to read more…

Oh my fuck, you guys, IT IS 71 DEGREES OUTSIDE. I was gonna stay home and watch Vanilla Ice’s underrated cinemetallic classic, Cool as Ice, but instead I am getting stoned and going for a long, long walk in the sun. Quickly, before I ditch you losers to actually enjoy life, here’s what we did this week:

• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle weighed-in on Sergeant D.’s “band life is for losers” theory.
• We broke the news that hardcore supergroup S.O.S. has signed with Good Fightand got an exclusive report on the status of He is Legend from the band’s manager.
• We debuted new music by Napalm Death (thanks, Decibel!), The Haunted and Clutch.
• We said cel-lo to Grayceon’s Jackie Perez Gratz and got the skinny on the new Today is the Day album from drummer Curran Reynolds.
• We checked out the latest release from Total Fucking Destruction.
• We wondered if women make better metal singers than men.
• We examined the Kid Rock-Confederate flag controversy.
• We watched the worst video of 2011 so far.
• Dummy Nosenothing listened to the new Meshuggah song and then chased an ice cream truck.
• WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK…

Alright, I’m gonna go have some ice cream! ICE CREAM! YYYYAAAAAYYYYY!!!

-AR

It once was a source of humor for me that I might’ve never heard the great He Is Legend if not for a longtime friend’s occasional visits to a Christian goods shop. It was there that said bud — a thick, bruiser-type death-metallist ironically nicknamed “Bubbles” — picked up I Am Hollywood and later, with no regard for my protests and allergies to Solid State bands, blared it into my face. I was won over instantly. He Is Legend had everything — licks, hooks, and muscle. Major skillz!

But as I went from HiL doubter to HiL evangelist, it seemed less funny that these were the circumstances of my acquaintance with such superlative jamz. This is the band, I reasoned, that deserved the Rolling Stone covers and the marquee MTV performances then reserved for shrill pap-peddlers with cute bass players and wacky hats; it seemed unconscionable that the eminently marketable He Is Legend was light years off my radar. I mean, come the fuck on.

Alas, my hopes for He Is Legend were dealt another blow in 2006 when their thudding, misshapen sophomore album Suck Out The Poison helped to conspire against even a medium-sized breakthrough. That year, my puzzlement turned to frustration as the band’s nearby tour stop nearly slipped by without my knowledge; after a barely-attended but face-fuckingly awesome headline set, I was left to rage and wonder: Who is responsible for promoting this hunky, mega-talented band? And to what extent are they brain-damaged?

Comfort came in 2009 with He Is Legend’s second masterpiece, It Hates You, their first for Tragic Hero Records. But again, traction seemed to elude He Is Legend, and rumors of imminent break-up followed the announcement of singer Schuylar Croom’s temporary gig fronting Maylene & The Sons of Disaster — mere months after It Hates You came out. Was there a falling out among HiL guys? Were they no longer into it? Would It Hates You be left to sink without a trace? What the motherfuck?

But here’s the thing: No matter how vital, success and solvency remain secondary to He Is Legend’s awesomeness. In this sense, the band is prisoner of their own rare genius. And in my crusade to ensure that they continue to share it no matter the cost, my allies are HiL fans like Bubbles, other would-be lovers of awesome shit, and, most recently, HiL manager Zach Neil, who graciously took time to take me behind the scenes of He Is Legend’s amazing creative output, past industry woes, current status, and tenuous future.

Click to read more…

According to Lambgoat (who MS tipster Kye says “are about as reliable as my dog when it comes to news”), trouble is a brewin’ in the He Is Legend camp. Says Lambgoat:

Word on the street is that Wilmington, North Carolina group He Is Legend has disbanded. This could very well be the reason that singer Schuylar Croom was available to fill in for Dallas Taylor on the current Maylene and the Sons of Disaster tour. In any case, this news is unconfirmed, so don’t call your mom just yet.

He Is Legend supported their latest album It Hates You (which our own Anso DF awarded a four-out-of-five horns rating) with just one tour, and there’s nothing currently listed for the future on their MySpace page. At this point any reports of the band’s break up are purely rumors, but there is certainly cause for speculation. We encourage any MetalSucks readers with insider knowledge on the situation to email us at news [at] metalsucks [dot] net.

-VN

I’ve gotten a few e-mails today from people asking me where Vince is. Well, the truth is, Vince can’t write because he’s ill. And he’s quitting the site. No, really, he quit. We didn’t fire him. Swear it. We stand by that statement.

Here’s some other shit that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We’ve heard the new Alice in Chains album, and it is good.
• Gwar’s Oderus Urungus answered some of your questions, and will answer more in the future.
• John Bush is coming back to Anthrax because Dan Nelson quit. Oh, wait, no he didn’t. Yes he did. He probably didn’t, though.
• We spoke with Poison the Well’s Ryan Primack and Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson.
• We checked out the latest releases from He Is Legend, Magrudergrind, Novembers Doom, and Clutch.
• Unfortunately, the 10th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos really is a real thing.
• Baby-eater Dino Cazares must be stopped!!!

Alright. Time to go buy a vaporizer of my very own. See ya Monday.

-AR

With the help of a time machine, I want to travel back to 2007 when I saw He Is Legend play live in support of their troubled sophomore album Suck Out The Poison. Such a record at first evaded my comprehension, as should an intermittently great melody record that manages to do absolutely nothing else right. After the slickly produced, flawlessly arranged, and powerfully executed debut I Am Hollywood, Suck was more easily characterized by its failures, from free-hand, impactless production by a bewildered Steve Evetts (E. Town Concrete, Symphony X) to singer Schuyler Croom’s most aggravating collection of overwrought imagery and affected rasping. Gone was the crisp, shimmery He Is Legend sound, and in its place lay this coil of turds, this raped corpse of I Am Hollywood, an avenging of its immediacy and neatness with corny Southern rockisms, petulant croaking, and cardboard dynamics.

Anyway, on that groggy summer evening, He Is Legend took the stage, revealing the visual counterpart to their sonic transformation; they now resembled a Black Crowes cover band – no longer emo-haircut types – and, from the stage, my facial expressions during the first song must have been hilarious: blank non-recognition (huh yet another opener?) to perplexity (wait, this sounds familiar) to shock (oh that’s them wtf?). And if Suck’s uniform is a ratty denim jacket and Pabst Blue Ribbon tee, then a sport jacket and $260 jeans adorn It Hates You, their third album. It’s both the band’s heaviest and most ethereal record, a progressive and aggressive album that (thank balls) repeats none of Suck’s mistakes, save for Croom’s penchant for the melodramatic. Still, his successes are numerous and triumphant, and, like I Am Hollywood, Hates isn’t ashamed of its populist tendencies, its confident and careful melodies and propulsive rhythms.

Click to read more…

Voivod and He Is Legend both released new songs this week on their MySpace pages. There is no common theme here other than that I dig the new stuff from both bands and that they’re both worthy of ya’ll’s attention. And since it’s Friday, the MetalSucks Monkeys are cranky and aren’t coming up with any clever headlines or puns.

The new Voivod sounds pretty much like Voivod; it’s the last album that will feature contributions from the late guitarist Piggy, and the band claims it’ll be their last effort ever. The new He Is Legend is easily their best and most focused work yet… I’ve listened to this song at least 5 times already this week.

Voivod releases Infini on June 23rd via Relapse Records (pre-order here) and He Is Legend drops It Hates You July 21st on Tragic Hero (pre-order here).

-VN

After the antics of the first day of the festival, I felt more than ready to get into day two with a healthy dose of music from the beginning. Unfortunately, that was not to be so for me, as at the time I thought I would be continuing on after SXSW into further ridonkulousness, all the way to a family vacation during Spring Break in Mexico….and today was the day that my renewed passport was meant to be FedExed to the flophouse where Vince and I were crashing.

When I had returned to said flophouse the night prior and to my surprise found an open couch in the living room right by the front door (where I was told FedEx homeboy would appear bright and early), I figured it prolly made the most sense to sleep right there on the ground floor as opposed to the stank upstairs sweat lodge where I would be sure to miss any sounds of door knocking.

Sadly, no FedEx arrived in the morning as promised — I was actually awoken by a phone call from Vince around noon wondering where the hell I had ended up last night. After a couple more hours my passport finally arrived, at which point I had to wait at least another hour for a cab to take me down to the action.

HOLY SHIT.

Click to read more…

When news of the new band Zero System surfaced — featuring two members of North Carolina’s Bloodjinn — I was naturally curious, as Bloodjinn’s This Machine Runs on Empty was one of my favorite records of 2007. So I went straight to the source, emailing their singer Joel Collins to get the scoop, and he agreed to answer some questions about the new band, the old one, and what its various members are up to on all fronts. The interview, after the jump.

Click to read more…

Before ya’ll go crying that Uncle Vince has gone Christian, you should know that I haven’t listened to the lyrics of the new He Is Legend demos on their MySpace page yet. But lyrics be damned (haha, get it?), the music of the new He Is Legend demos is surprisingly good. The North Carolina-based band seems to have moved away from anything resembling metalcore and moved in a more dynamic but still heavy direction, something way more interesting than their previous material (which I also thought was pretty good at the time, though certainly derivative of Killswitch Engage). Multiple layers of lush guitar layering, a varied vocal attack, and even dissonance give way to some pretty big choruses… and while metal purists are most certainly going to cry foul, they can go fuck themselves. This is good stuff.

The demos are presumably for a new record that will see the light of day sometime this year. The Vince Neilstein pick of the three song lot s “Everyone I Know Has Fangs.” Check it out. Pretty good.

Press folks at Solid State Records, feel free to quote me on that; “He Is Legend: Pretty good!”

-VN