If you stretch your pot-addled brain, you may recall that, back in June, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable wrote about his new band, Graviton, as part of his Blogronaut series here on MetalSucks — in fact, it was a MetalSucks reader who named Graviton.

Well, now Graviton have signed with Translation Loss! Which is great news. And while there’s still no official release date for Graviton’s debut, there is now a title (Massless), cover art (above), and the promise that we’ll get to hear it before the year is through. In fact, there are already several tracks streaming on Graviton’s Facebook page. And they’re excellent — they have all the proggy goodness of Intronaut, but they are, generally speaking, a little on the mellower side… in fact, the title Massless strikes me as being really, really appropriate. Go listen here.

While we wait for Massless to get a release date, here’s what Sacha wrote about the project when he first solicited names from MS readers during April of last year:

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How come Miss Piggy can’t count to 70? ‘Cause every time she gets to 69, she gets a frog in her throat.

ANYWAY, here’s how we amused ourselves this week:

• We debuted new videos from DevilDriver and Intronaut.
• We also debuted new music from Battilus and VYGR.
• We started a cool new series of tour blogs from Eluveitie and learned fifteen new things about Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein.
• We spoke to Josh Scogin from The Chariot and Mark LeVine, author of Heavy Metal Islam.
• We checked out the latest releases from Regicide, Dragged Into Sunlight, Macabre, and Abraham.
• We helped Burzum launch a new clothing line.
• We learned a sexy new stage move from Dr. Acula.
• We continued to feel embarrassed for Slash.
• We pleaded with record labels to start using Bandcamp and stop using MySpace.
• We mourned the loss of Guitar Hero.

Speaking of 69ing: Monday is Valentine’s Day. I’m just reminding you in case you’re a burnout and you forgot to get something for your woman. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya.

-AR

You know Intronaut, and you love ‘em; their 2010 opus Valley of Smoke placed in several MS writers’ year-end lists and we waxed about it endlessly ever since it came out, nay, before it even came out. Guitarist Sacha Dunable even writes a semi-regular column for MS, didjahear? But I’m guessing many of you haven’t yet had the opportunity to witness Intronaut’s punishing grooves and ethereal soundscapes live.

Now’s your chance, sorta: Intronaut’s new video for the Valley of Smoke track “Sunderance” takes you inside an Intronaut show but better, ’cause you get to see close-ups of Dunable’s and Dave Timnick’s agile fingers, and of bassist Joe Lester’s and drummer Danny Walker’s superhuman prowess on their respective instruments. And of one super-stoked dude in the audience who clearly knows what’s up windmilling at the 0:35 mark.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

I made the grave error of listening to Intronaut’s “The Literal Black Cloud“ yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t a great error because it’s a bad song or anything — on the contrary, it was a grave error because I’ve had it stuck in my head ever since.

This happens to me on a pretty consistent basis, and has since we saw Intronaut with Cynic and Dysrhythmia this past summer. The entire night was lost to us and the Metal Injectioners sitting around going “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh…” like stoned idiots.

Which we were. But this is also a seriously fucking dangerous riff. It’s like it was designed to get stuck in your head. Do not fucking listen to it unless you are prepared to do nothing but think about this riff. ‘Cause your day is gonna be shot, dude. Maybe that’s why it’s really called “The Literal Black Cloud” — because it will follow you around wherever you go.

Download “The Literal Black Cloud” here.

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF INTRONAUT, DARKEST HOUR, THE RED CHORD, KYLESA, GORGOROTH, CORMORANT, RETURN TO EARTH, KRIEG, LAZARUS A.D., HAIL OF BULLETS, AND BLOODHORSE

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the fifth group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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It seems like the number of “Why did you ban me from commenting?!?” e-mails from readers has increased as of late, and the gist of those e-mails is often “Whassa matter, can’t take it when someone tells you you suck?” or whatever. And we’ve never banned anyone for disagreeing with us. We don’t give a shit if you disagree with us. We don’t agree with one another half the time — that’s part of the fun of MetalSucks.

Here’s what really happens: you use a word which is on our “no-no” list, and it gets stuck in our spam filter. Some of these words we actively do not allow on MetalSucks (e.g., slurs against minorities), and some of them just get stuck because so many actual spammers use them (e.g., “rape”). We try to be diligent about checking the spam filters and making sure none of you are getting caught in there, but sometimes we miss a few. And sometimes we ultimately don’t allow the comment onto the site (e.g., “I hate this album, this band is fucking gay” will never survive). But even then, we don’t BAN people from commenting. I think I can count on one hand the number of people we’ve banned in four years, and most of them were spammers and/or former Megadeth guitarists. So if your comment isn’t going through, consider first if you used a word we don’t allow, and if you didn’t, just shoot us a POLITE e-mail and we’ll investigage the problem ASAP. M’kay?

And on that note, here’s what we did this week:

• Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum gave us our latest Legacy Tour diary, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable worked out his black metal daddy issues, and The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks offered to write a song for any sports team that’s not from New York.
• We spoke to After the Burial’s Trent Hafdahl and American Hardcore author Steven Blush.
• We got the skinny from Darkest Hour’s Ryan Parrish about why DH and Veil of Maya got kicked off their own tour bus, and asked Jucifer’s Amber Valentine about Sean Yseult’s claim to being the only woman in metal during her tenure in White Zombie.
• We checked out the latest release from The Unraveling.
• Sergeant D. schooled us in uber-kvlt metalcore bands.
• We contemplated the worst metal albums of 2010 and the best metal songs of 2010.
• We mourned on the six year anniversary of Dimebag’s murder.
• We celebrated Ozzy Osbourne’s terrific taste in modern metal (he put Korn above Firewind).
• We had mixed feelings about the retirement of Judas Priest.
• We got excited that At the Gates are playing more shows in 2011.

Alrighty then. Next week is our last week of regular posting before we shut down for the holidays. You know what that means – YEAR END LISTS! Get ready to argue like your entire sense of self-worth depended on everyone agreeing with you all the time with no exceptions ever.

-AR

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week’s question was once again suggested by “Hipsters Out of Metal!” columnist Anso DF, and even though the Grammy nominations were actually announced last week, it still seemed like a fun debate to have. So:

WHAT ARE YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR BEST METAL GRAMMY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit: Apparently not a candidate for best album of the year.

Yep yep yep: the right honorable Mr. Phil Freeman of MSN’s “Headbang” blog has revealed the 135 finalists which will soon be whittled down for his “Twenty Best Metal Albums of 2010″ list, which will presumably be published sometime in the coming weeks. You can go here to read it, and then leave Phil angry comments about how your favorite album isn’t even on this list of 135 records.

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Allow me to shill for a beat before the weekend: If you haven’t already bought one of our new, limited edition shirts, go get yours now!!! They’re selling fast, and soon they will be the title of a God Forbid album. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Here’s some other fun stuff we did this week:

• Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself gave us the rundown on Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks found the CFL fun and confusing, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable talked about the best and worst drives in the U.S., and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley is the latest to weigh in on free metal from Scion.
• We debuted new music from Murder Construct.
• We spoke to Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling and Christopher Drew from Nevershotnever and Eatmewhileimhot.
• We checked out the latest releases from Riotgod, Electric Wizard, Rimfrost, and First Blood and Killing the Dream.
• We asked you about old school bands you wanted to like but couldn’t.
• We joined Gene Simmons, Slash, and Dave Navarro in having NOH8 for gays.
• We laughed at both Kirk Hammett and the little girl he kicked.
• We also laughed at Sebastian Bach’s frail ego.
• We got really excited about the new single from The Human Abstract.
• We also got really excited about Decibel‘s new flexi disc series.

Have a nice, relaxing weekend gang. We’ll miss you muchly, but we’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

It’s interesting how small the world becomes after you’ve been around it a few times. This is becoming the case for me in North America. Intronaut just finished what might be our seventh or eighth go ‘round of the US and Canada, and I’m really noticing a change in my perspective in the traveling aspect of touring. 3,000 miles away from home doesn’t feel as far as it used to. The roads, clubs, and people are all so familiar at this point that I might as well be at home in Los Angeles.

On the last tour I thought it would be interesting to write a little something about each of my favorite and least favorite drives that we have made over and over again. I do a lot of driving on tour, mostly because I get car sick if I don’t, but also because I enjoy taking in the scenery. That being said, I also have to take in plenty of dull scenery  with the good. And before I come off as too much of a hater, I should say that there is beauty to be found in just about every part of our country, but sometimes we’re a little too tired and cranky to let ourselves see it. Enjoy….

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It’s a rare that a supergroup ends up being more than the sum of its parts — and yet, miraculously, such is the case with Murder Construct, a new deathgrind outfit featuring Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan on vocals, Exhumed/Phobia/Impaled’s Leon del Muerte on guitar and vocals, Intronaut/Uphill Battle’s Danny Walker on drums, Bad Acid Trip’s Caleb Schneider on bass, and Fetus Eaters/Watch Me Burn’s Kevin Fetus also on guitar. With a pedigree like that, your expectations for the band are pretty high. And guess what? Murder Construct do not disappoint.

But don’t take our word for it — give the group’s debut album a listen in its entirety below. Once you’ve felt its awesome power, you’ll wanna pre-order it here. Relapse will release the album next Tuesday, November 23. Enjoy it, fuckers!

I can’t think of anything clever to say right now, so I’m just gonna leave to my homies, Ozzy and Forest:

Here’s what we did this week:

• Veil of Maya’s Marc Okubo gave us our first Legacy Tour diary, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable gave us a lesson in why Californians should have voted to legalize weed, and The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks gave MetalSucks readers a chance to write about the NFL themselves for once.
• We debuted new music by The Secret.
• We spoke to Dredg’s Gavin Hayes, Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson, and Nails’ Todd Jones.
• We checked out new releases by Masters of Reality and Colombian Necktie.
• We kicked off the arguing regarding the best albums of 2010.
• We wondered, “Which is better, death metal or black metal?”
• We also wondered if we should like Mogwai.
• We regretted learning about Gump-core.
• We watched a chick shred some Faceless.
• We tried to find a stage big enough to hold Glenn Danzig’s ego.

Have nice weekend everybody. See ya Monday.

-AR

Sometimes, I am utterly amazed that the human race has survived this long. Like, how is it that everyone is able to remember to turn their stoves off? Or not walk into sharp pointy objects on the street? Sure, there are some smart people out there, but I think that by and large we’ve been very successful at creating a society that protects us all from dying of flat out stupidity.

Proposition 19 was voted down here in California last week. Something like 56% of voters decided against the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, for the purpose of taxing and regulating it.

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Do you ever think about how much you might misunderstand about some of the music you listen to? Specifically in the lyric department. Like, once you realize what a band is all about, it completely changes your perception of them? What if you stumbled upon some information revealing that AC/DC’s drink/fight/fuck lyrics were actually just metaphors for some deep theological debate?

I wouldn’t normally use this blog to throw out some unsolicited information on my band, but I feel like by not correcting some things I’ve seen, we’d be misrepresenting ourselves. I’ve read a couple reviews that are basically praising Intronaut for being total stoners, and applauding the title of our new record, Valley of Smoke, as some kind of monument for stoners everywhere. It’s true that some of us smoke pot, but I’d just like to set everyone straight and let you know that the title has absolutely nothing to do with weed or smoking anything at all.

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I’m tired of posting the same old high-charting consistent sellers (heyo Disturbed, Linkin Suck, etc) and I’m sure you’re even more tired of reading about them, so this week I’d like to focus on the Top Hard Music Albums charts with a special emphasis on debuts. This week’s notable sales numbers with my own snarky comments (natch) after the flip.

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Seriously, if you haven’t read Vince’s epic story about how MetalSucks Maniac “whiskey” won last week’s last week’s photo caption contest, you need to go read it now. It’s pretty amazing. Whiskey’s mom even left a comment! We like to think of MetalSucks as something the whole fucking family can enjoy together, so that warmed the cockles of our collective heart.

Here’s some other fun stuff that happened this week:

• We debuted a performance clip from the new Shadows Fall live DVD, the new Intronaut album, and a new Madball song. PHEW!
• We spoke to Jeremy Creamer from Daath, Johnny Plague from Winds of Plague, Adam Warren from Oceano, and Ashmedi from Melechesh. Oh, and Anso unveiled part one of his massive two-part interview with Atheist’s Kelly Shaefer.
• We checked out new releases by Salome, Madball, Woe, and Arson Anthem and Ender. And a DWARR reissue!
• Greg Weeks from The Red Chord said good-bye to Randy Moss and hello to men wearing pink tights, Sacha Dunable from Intronaut contemplated the legalization of recreational marijuana use in California, and Eyal Levi from Daath discovered DestinAsian.
• Sergeant D. celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell. Wait, what?
• We couldn’t figure out why everyone was so surprised that ICP are evangelical Christians.
• We found out the hard way that Attack Attack!’s music could be even worse than it already is.
• We took a slow ride on Metallica’s Lightning.
• We laughed at one shit stain calling another shit stain “a shit stain.”
• And, oh yeah! Gary Suarez took over the site for a day.

Next week is CMJ here in New York! If you’re in the area and looking for some awesome metal, check out our handy guide to all the festivities — including not one but TWO showcases sponsored by MetalSucks. We’re not gonna lie — we are going to be very hungover and tired next week. But that just means we’ll be crankier than usual. We’ll still be here with lots of debuts, interviews, and other assorted nonsense. Bring your mom! It’ll be fun.

-AR

Full confesstion: I had never even heard of Uphill Battle before this summer, when Empyereon/Meek is Murder drummer Frank Godla turned me onto them after this past August’s Cynic/Intronaut/Dysrhythmia show. I think what happened was, I said something about how much I love Danny Walker’s drumming in Intronaut, and Frank said, “Oh, you’ve heard Uphill Battle, right?” Turns out Walker was in Uphill Battle before Intronaut ever existed. Needless to say, upon learning this information, I told Frank I needed to hear something ASAP. Wreck of Nerves (Relapse, 2004) has been, like, wrecking my nerves pretty consistently since that night.

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When I was in the tenth grade, back in 1997, someone in my school’s administration decided to lump me in with the 30 or so fuck-ups, or, sorry, “at-risk” group of kids. My grades weren’t terrible, and I didn’t really get into trouble or use drugs that much. However, I did wear shirts from bands like Cannibal Corpse and Anal Cunt just about every day, so I suppose they were justified in thinking that I had emotional problems. I never complained though, because once a week I got to skip class and go to some special room with my fellow flunkies and have what I can only assume is the equivalent to an AA meeting. It was interesting to hear these kids talk about smoking crack, the pleasures of meth, and beating people up over bad weed deals. I don’t think I ever had what it takes to lose myself to substance abuse, but if I did, I’m sure this helped me stay on a positive course. Sometimes we’d have guest speakers come in to these meetings. There are two that I remember most vividly. One being Robert Downey Jr., who was presumably there as part of some community service he had to do. The other was some woman who had a lengthy discussion with us on how marijuana will never be legalized in our lifetime.

That woman is either dead or choking on her own foot now, because in November, California will be voting on proposition 19. If passed, it will legalize marijuana for recreational use in our state.

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In a recent issue of Decibel Magazine, some writer who thought it’d be clever to base his writing alias on the name of our own esteemed Satan Rosenbloom summed up East of the Wall’s highly excellent 2010 release Ressentiment thusly: “Put simply, East of the Wall have written a minor prog-metal masterpiece without being assholes about it.” The same could be said for Intronaut’s Valley of Smoke; we cannot reiterate enough how good this album is.

Alright, maybe Intronaut are being assholes just a little bit… all three members are leaps and bounds better than you at their respective instruments — and at putting together prog metal masterpieces — and they want you to know it, but for the most part they don’t do so without losing track of what matters most, the song. Valley of Smoke is just challenging enough; four or five listens in and I still haven’t completely wrapped my head around this album, but like your morning brain state after each successive cup of coffee things are slowly coming into focus. And what’s in focus is absolutely phenomenal. That’s just the way music should be; challenging. You’re not always supposed to “get it” the first time through; what’s the point? If that’s what you want you may as well just crank Linkin Park to 11, dudebro. Each time I listen to Valley of Smoke things come just a little bit more into focus, facilitated by Josh Newell’s positively crushing, lush, and strikingly clear production. And it’s all worth it, because holy smokes is there a lot of great shit to listen to on this album.

Or, to put it more succinctly: “A++++ would do business with again great seller fast shipping! highly recommend”

Stream Valley of Smoke in its entirety below. Pre-order it here before it comes out tomorrow, along with some killer t-shirt designs.

[this promotion has ended]

Earlier this week I had a dream that I was working with Atreyu. I don’t know in what capacity I could possibly find myself “working with” Atreyu, since I’m not a manager, nor a publicist, nor a label rep, and they’re about as likely to end up doing a guest column here as I am to give the new In This Moment album a perfect 5-horn review, but, hey, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. Why did I have Atreyu on the brain? Was my mind trying to tell me “The glass is half-full?” Do I have  a hankering to re-watch The Neverending Story? Did I just ingest too many different substances that night? I’ll have to bring it up in therapy next week.

Here’s other shit that happened this week, some of which, believe it or not, is even more terrifying than the thought of working with Atreyu:

• Freddy Madball is counting down his favorite hard and heavy non-hardcore bands of all time, TesseracT’s Acle walked us through the history of djent, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley spoke to Converge’s Kurt Ballou about Taco Riffs, The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks made some suggestions for losing NFL teams, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable contemplated the ways in which technology has changed touring, Daath’s Eyal Levi wondered, “Is this it?”, and a wide array of metal stars previewed the just-begun NHL season.
• We spoke to Kirk Windstein from Crowbar/Down/Kingdom of Sorrow, Sean Z. from Daath, Daddy X and Dirtball from Kottonmouth Kings, and Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan.
• We checked out the latest releases from Abysse and Deafheaven.
• We contemplated trancecore.
• As the headline says, we heard the worst thing ever.
• We reviewed the history of terrible Limp Bizkit cover songs.
• We had fun with misheard song lyrics.
• We bemoaned the signing of another re-thrash band.
• We applauded Slayer fans’ desire to help the physically disabled.
• We had yet another laugh at Winds of Plague’s expense.

We have a special surprise for you next week. I can’t promise you’re going to like it, but I can promise you’re going to have a strong reaction to it. See ya then.

-AR