With the holidays right around the corner — and all the best of, greatest hits and holiday comps that come therewith — this past Tuesday was the last big date for new album releases in 2010, though there are still a few stragglers coming down the pipe. The world of hard rock and metal made a big showing last week, with new releases from Underoath, Dio, Cradle of Filth, Oceano, Gwar, Helloween, Volbeat and a smattering of others making the Soundscan charts. Rankings, sales figures and commentary after the jump.

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Congrats to reader Ben Moreau! He is the only one who correctly identified last week’s logo, which belongs the band Clit Cannibal. (Amazingly enough, that was my last girlfriend’s pet name for me. Go figure.) Ben wins an awesome prize pack from The End Records, which will include a copy of These Are They‘s new album, Disposing of Betrayers, signed by vocalist Paul Kuhr, a copy of Lordi‘s new album, Babez For Breakfast, and a copy of Tarja Turunen‘s new solo album, What Lies Beneath.

Since you all suck so bad (and one of you guessed that the logo was for friggin’ Evile!), we still have four more of these prize packs to give away, and we’ll do so as part of a special contest tomorrow. In the meantime, for this week’s “Unreadable” prize, the great folks at The End have donated another awesome package, this one to celebrate next week’s release of 7 Sinners, the latest offering from the mighty Helloween: One grand prize winner will get a Helloween 7 Sinners denim jacket, PLUS a 12 x 12 7 Sinners poster signed by all the members of Helloween, PLUS a copy of the album; and a runner-up will get the same, minus the coat. Which is too bad, ’cause the coat is pretty much guaranteed to get you laid, but still! It’s an awesome prize. (And don’t forget that The End will release 7 Sinners next week, and you can still pre-order it right here.)

All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select one grand prize winner and one runner-up and announce their names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by Ross Gnarly…

-AR

I’m boycotting Halloween this year. I’m just over it. All the effort that goes into planning out your costume, procuring it and dressing up… and worst of all the constant TALK with EVERYONE about “what are you wearing?” and “what are you doing this year?” It’s like the obligatory weather-related elevator conversation… cringe-inducing. So over it.

But I’m most certainly not boycotting German power metallers Helloween, who have posted their brand new album 7 Sinners in its entirety on MySpace just in time for today’s festivities. We all know how I feel about bands that sing about METAL and this album’s got a song called “Are You Metal?” so it’s an automatic win in my book. Raise your fist in the air this Halloween with some tasty new Helloween as you go out dressed up as Snooki / The Situation or whatever the hot costume is this year.

-VN

Thanks: Captain Wookie

I haven’t needlessly lumped self newly-released videos together in awhile, and these three clips were all released pretty much at once, so I figured, “Hey, why not?” After the jump, check out the latest audio-visual offerings from Torche, Helloween, Linkin Park, and Your Demise… plus my usual bullshit commentary, of course.

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#5 – Necrophagist

Technical German death metal that crushes!

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If Italy is the mecca of modern Epic Metal then Germany is the epicenter of OG power metal… which I guess by today’s standards is more like power hard rock. Edguy and all of Tobias Sammet’s projects would be enough on their own to give Germany the power metal crown, but it really all goes back to Accept, doesn’t it? I’m sure some Accept die-hards would fight me on it, but I’m just gonna say it: Accept spawned the German power metal scene. Now you’ve got Helloween, the aforementioned Edguy, and good old Gamma Ray (and others, of course), who are back with their new self-actualizing album To the Metal. Here’s the video for the title clip, which miraculously has over 60,000 views. God bless Germany and their power metal fanaticism.

-VN

I don’t remember where I read this, but I seem to recall a story about ABBA – yes, ABBA – demoing each of their songs in every conceivable musical style, just to make sure that the inevitable Swede disco-pop version was, in fact, the track putting its best foot forward. In other words, somewhere out there, Björn Ulvaeus and company are sitting on tapes that feature a calypso version of “Dancing Queen,” a country version of “Mamma Mia,” a metal version of “S.O.S.” It would be kind of amazing if ABBA ever released those tapes, but I guess that might endanger the success of Mamma Mia 2: Holy Shit I Can’t Believe Meryl Streep Did This AGAIN.

Helloween don’t have a movie franchise based on hit Broadway show based on their music, though, so for their new greatest hits collection, Unarmed, they are, in fact, “re-imagining” all of their most famous shit. These might not be old demos (rather, they’re new re-workings), but I’m still pretty curious to see how their fan base reacts to, say, a dance version of “If I Could Fly.”

And I’m not making that shit up. Noisecreep is currently streaming a dance version of “If I Could Fly.”

Are Helloween fans open-minded people? Since it’s power metal, are they resigned to its natural cheesiness and not that bothered by the concept of a techno re-do? Or are they gonna get their panties in a twist the way, say, Deicide fans probably would if Glen Benton suddenly hired Telefon Tel Aviv to remix “Dead by Dawn?” I guess we’re about to find out.

And here’s the original “If I Could Fly,” in case ya don’t know it:

Unarmed comes out March 30 on The End.

-AR

Thanks to the MetalSucks reader who tipped us off to the fact that both Exodus and Helloween made this week’s “New Artists” Soundscan chart, for their respective releases The Atrocity Exhibition and Gambling with the Devil. Since both of these bands have been doing their thing for more than two decades now, one has to wonder how the fuck this happened. Is there really no checks and balances system over there to make sure they don’t come across as total ree-ree downey babies?

In other news, A7X will debut at #1 on Soundscan’s hip hop charts this week. Mazel tov, dudes.

-AR

I hate Halloween. I mean, I guess I don’t mind it in theory, but here in NYC, there’s this huge parade every year that makes it virtually impossible to cross Sixth Avenue all night, which is a real bitch, ’cause I live on one side of Sixth but work on the other – so, sooner or later, I’m gonna hafta try and find a way across. Basically, my evening turns into the most irritating game of Frogger, like, ever.

ANYWAY, here’s ten metal videos that, for whatever reason, strike me as Halloween appropriate. Enjoy.

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