The MetalSucks co-sponsored Full Metal Texas 2010 just keeps getting better and better! Last week Animals as Leaders were added to the bill that already includes such illustrious acts as Darkest Hour, Fair to Midland, Iwrestledabearonce and Born of Osiris; now it has been announced that Israel’s Orphaned Land will be playing the show, too! And Axl just saw them kick-ass the other night. Good deal!

This completely FREE all-day show will take place at Emo’s in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, March 18. Set times for all the bands have been announced, and you can view those after the jump, so as to ensure that you don’t miss anybody you really wanna see. (And there’s a slot open for a “special guest.” Hmm… wonder who that could be?) PLUS, the first 666 Heinekens are FREE, so you’ll wanna get there early.

You can RSVP for the show here – doing so will make you eligible for VIP drink specials at the show, and will enter you into a contest from Eagle Rock Entertainment, who will be previewing two new Classic Album DVDs from Black Sabbath and Rush and are giving away a Blu-Ray player, a bunch of DVDs, and some other cool swag. You can also follow Full Metal Texas on Twitter for all the latest updates.

And here are the set times…

Click to read more…

Last month we told you about Full Metal Texas 2010, a completely FREE all-day show we’re co-sponsoring at Emo’s in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, March 18. With a line-up including Darkest Hour, Fair to Midland, Born of Osiris, Iwrestledabearonce, Howl, Iron Age, and more, it already promised to be an incredibly killer show.

Now perennial MetalSucks faves Animals as Leaders have been added to the bill, meaning you get even more bang for non-buck!

Seriously, if you live in the Austin area and don’t go to this, you’re a damn fool. It’s FREE, for Chrissakes!

You can RSVP here – doing so will make you eligible for VIP drink specials at the show, and will enter you into a contest from Eagle Rock Entertainment, who will be previewing two new Classic Album DVDs from Black Sabbath and Rush and are giving away a Blu-Ray player, a bunch of DVDs, and some other cool swag. You can also follow Full Metal Texas on Twitter for all the latest updates.

-AR & VN

Texan Suckalos! Do you love metal? Do you love free shit? Do you love free shit having to do with metal?!?! OF COURSE YOU DO! And that’s why MetalSucks is incredibly proud to be co-sponsoring Full Metal Texas 2010, a FREE all-day show that will take place at Emo’s in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, March 18.

And just ’cause it’s free don’t mean it’s cheap. Look at the line-up: Fair to Midland, Darkest Hour, Born of Osiris, Iwrestledabearonce, Iron Age, Karnivool, Naam, Howl, Amarna Reign, Your Demise, Upon a Burning Body, and Lions Lions. Holy shit, that’s a lotta good bands. And Eagle Rock Entertainment will be previewing two new Classic Album DVDs from Black Sabbath and Rush. And did we mention tickets are free?

You can RSVP here – doing so will make you eligible for VIP drink specials at the show, and will enter you into a contest from the aforementioned Eagle Rock Entertainment, who are giving away a Blu-Ray player, a bunch of DVDs, and some other cool swag. You can also follow Full Metal Texas on Twitter for all the latest updates.

Clearly, this show is gonna kick all kinds of ass. RSVP now.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Sometimes I feel fairly certain that a substantial portion of the people who leave comments on MetalSucks would be considered legally brain dead by most medical doctors. Having said that, I’m glad they read our website.

Here’s what happened in the world of metal this week:

• We spoke to Darkthrone’s Fenriz, Iron Age’s Wade Allison, and Swallow the Sun’s Juha Raivio.
• We debuted a new video from Austrian Death Machine.
• Everyone wants to kill everyone else because of all these decade end lists.
• Also, people are cranky about that Dimebag tribute album.
• Kip Wingerschmidt thinks that Stewert Voegtlin’s recent trashing of Baroness, Mastodon, Pelican and Neurosis was “eloquent.” The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley disagrees.
• Unfortunately, there is going to be a new Limp Bizkit album.
• Lambgoat is streaming “Mechanical Seas,” a new song by The Binary Code!
• I admit it: I left the ring stain on Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’ table.

Last night we went to a fancy-schmancy holiday party with an open bar and got faschnickered. Tonight I’m… going to a fancy-schmancy holiday party with an open bar. If I’m not here Monday, it’s because I died of alcohol poisoning.

Have a good one, y’all.

-AR

Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye was something of a sleeper hit for me in 2008 (pun not intended, I swear). The band’s tight riffage and rolling thrash are the closest thing I’ve heard to old Metallica since, well, old Metallica, and The Sleeping Eye delivers a healthy dose of raw, yet well-produced metal. Iron Age are one of the few bands in the current re-thrash movement I think are actually worth paying attention to, and The Sleeping Eye may very well make my year-end list.

Guitarist Wade Allison recently took some time off from Iron Age’s European run with Rise and Fall to answer a few of my brief questions. Our Q&A, after the jump.

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With Converge’s critically acclaimed Axe To Fall still commanding the attention of the metallic hardcore faithful, this week’s release of a new album from Belgium’s Rise And Fall could naturally be overlooked. However, that would be to the detriment of those currently enjoying that higher-profile record. An intelligent, intense burst of recorded vehemence, Our Circle Is Vicious–which you can and should buy now–was (like so many Deathwish Inc. albums) produced by Converge’s Kurt Ballou and stands as a considerable improvement on 2005′s Into Oblivion. Listen to “Built On Graves” and “In Circles” at the band’s MySpace page.

The band play a few U.S. shows this week before heading back to Europe for a month-long tour with Iron Age, whose recent album The Sleeping Eye we streamed back in August and is on Vince’s “Best Of 2009″ shortlist. That tour culminates in Rise And Fall’s hometown of Gent, with a final show that also features Goatwhore, Skeletonwitch and Toxic Holocaust. The band will wrap up 2009 with a December tour through Australia, only to kick of the new year with a few gigs with labelmates The Hope Conspiracy. All dates are below.

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MetalSucks is super-duper-uper psyched to be co-sponsoring the U.S. fall tour for Baroness, whose forthcoming Blue Album is so good that Axl will buy you a hooker if it’s not his favorite album of 2009. Baroness definitely bring the goods live, too. Some time shortly after the release of Red Album I saw the band in a shitty, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Bushwick that was so makeshift that the furious moshpit kept running up against the restaurant’s tables and chairs stacked against the walls. It was complete fucking mayhem, and though Baroness have now moved on to considerably bigger and better venues, their intensity and passion for their live shows is just the same. Support on the run comes from a rotating cast of characters consisting of Earthless, U.S. Christmas, MetalSucks faves Iron Age, and Dark Castle, all of whom are sure to sweeten up the deal just that much.

Full list of tour dates (with relevant support act info) after the jump.

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It’s been a doozy of a year for metal releases already, hasn’t it?

After the jump, the records I’ve been jamming the most so far that might or might not end up on my year-end Top 10.

Click to read more…

It’s 4 pm, and right about now we’re either interviewing someone or other or watching Job for a Cowboy. Either way, I hope we’re having a fun time.

Here’s what happened in MetalSucks Land this week:

• We’re streaming Iron Age’s The Sleeping Eye in its entirety!
• Current Coheed & Cambria/former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie discussed metal with us.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi is home for tour and very busy blogging for us.
• Our girl Grim Kim visited Birmingham, England, the birthplace of metal.
• We checked out the latest releases from Assjack and Dysrhythmia.
• It looks Ozzy has hired Firewind’s Gus G. to replace Zakk Wylde. And that got us thinking about the legacies of former Ozzy axe slingers Jake E. Lee and Joe Holmes.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I know I will.

-AR

I would like to go on record as saying I wasn’t too big on the whole re-thrash trend of 2006-2008 from the get-go. I mean, I loves me some thrash, but 99% of the time any band regardless of genre tries to do something that sounds exactly like an old band(s) I’m against it. The key to artistic progression is moving forward, not back, and unfortunately many of the re-thrash bands just brought nothing new to the table. Taking elements of the old and infusing it into the new is all good by me, though, which is why I’m all for bands that have successfully fused vintage thrash influence into a modern shell; Sylosis and Lazarus A.D. are two examples who readily spring to mind.

And Iron Age. Holy fucking shit, you guys.

I was not expecting to like this record at all (see above). But Iron Age’s blend of ripping thrash, NYHC pummel and doomy ambience channeled through modern-sounding production on their second record The Sleeping Eye just hit that fucking SPOT. This is music for fans of fucking furious, tight, beer-soaked, basement mosh-pit party metal like Trash Talk and Bison B.C., Metallica Ride The Lightning-era guitar riffs pushed to the fullest and real in every way with nary a speck of hipster retro throwback. The Sleeping Eye kicks as much ass as any thrash-influenced record released all year, right up there with Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s Living For Death, Destroying the Rest (albeit in a different way).

So, without further ado, here’s a stream of the entire album. It comes out today. Listen.

[This promotion has ended. -Ed.]