To me, nothing is as fully sweet like pop music played heavy and with controlled virtuosity. It’s like a famous master chef whipping up simple, delicious hot dogs for my face; it seems foolish to abandon such classic fare to high-volume/low-margin assembly lines, right? Hence my devotion to the jamz of Rush, Bay Area thrash, Iron Maiden, Deftones, Devin Townsend, Love/Hate, Blessed By A Broken Heart, and tons more snappy songwriters with big boner crunch.

So I warmly welcome Look Right Penny, whose debut album Sugar Lane (out Tuesday) is a slam dunk of pop-djent metal. Click to read more…

Yesterday we ran a very silly post in which we hypothesized about possible new vocalists for Killswitch Engage, except that the majority of candidates we named are not realistic possibilites (more on that in a second). I know that there are people who were bummed that we didn’t consider more realistic potentialities, but there was a reason we didn’t do that — it seems to us that Jesse Leach is really the only man for this job. (And, yes, we know that Leach just told fans via Facebook that “If I have something to say, I WILL say it. For the moment I have no comments on KSE.” But what do you expect him to say?)

Leach isn’t just the obvious choice — he’s really the best choice. Because his voice is still in great shape; because he’s a great performer; and because in 2012, we’d like to think that bands have learned from the Gary Cherones, Blaze Bayleys, and Dan Nelsons of the world. Being the third singer for a really famous band is a thankless task, even if you’re really talented. Tommy Vext, for example, is a great vocalist — but if he really did join KsE, he would face a momentous uphill battle to be accepted by fans and come out from under the shadow of Leach and Jones. And history teaches us that he — or any other singer, for that matter — probably would not win that battle.

So. This message on Killswitch’s official website certainly caught me by surprise…

Click to read more…

We expected a lot from the various members of SiKth after they split up for good in 2008. All we’ve really gotten to date was a decent but ultimately “wow factor”-lacking record from Pin’s Aliases last year, a project that kinda sounded like SiKth gone djent (ironic given the fact that SiKth unwittingly played a hand in inspiring the entire djent movement). We’ve been hearing reports that ex-SiKth vocalist Mikee Goodman had been working with Iron Maiden guitar vet Adrian Smith since August of 2010 with nothing to show for it… until now. And, kinda surprisingly, the first song they’ve released is absolutely GREAT. And it sounds nothing like SikTh whatsoever. Here’s “I See Lights” from the new project, whose moniker — Primal Rock Rebellion — is so unfortunate I almost considered not mentioning it at all:

I See Lights by PrimalRockRebellion

Sweet, right? Totally different than what you were expecting, right?

Add it to the list of potentially exciting albums on the block for release in early 2012. Primal Rock Rebellion comes out on February 27 via Spinefarm Records.

-VN

I was a teenager when singer Bruce Dickinson departed Iron Maiden. It was 1993 and years away from the internet, soon to be our tool for crawling up the asses of any celebrity, even a metal musician. So at the time, I was left to make sense of his resignation using only his words and those of his former bandmates, i.e. official sources.

So I could only speculate about the real story: To me, the culprits were probably burn-out (due to Maiden’s relentless schedule) and bassist Steve Harris’ tight control of Maiden’s creativity. I also suspected that Harris harbored a belief that his Maiden could prosper regardless of personnel; after all, he and manager Rod Smallwood had unflinchingly replaced guitarist Dennis Stratton, singer Paul Di’Anno, drummer Clive Burr, and then-guitarist Adrian Smith just in the band’s first decade as recording artists. My friends called this ‘Arrygance.

But what I didn’t know until now was that Bruce Dickinson had gone slightly, charmingly bonkers. Click to read more…

My heavy metal DVD shelf was once pretty bare, displaying only The Decline Of Western Civilization and a load of one-view concert films. But just since 2005, it’s been sagging under the weight of classy, addictively watchable feature-length documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad, Get Thrashed, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and the Iron Maiden and Rush movies. The latter four come courtesy of industrious heavy metal anthropologists Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, both responsible for the launch of metal’s overdue efforts to canonize itself and shout down mainstream media’s 40-year campaign to paint metal as dumb, violent ape music. Pssht. Everybody knows it’s awesome, fun ape music.

Cough anyway Dunn and McFadyen are back with an 11-part mini-series airing Saturdays on VH1 Classic titled Metal Evolution. Think about it for a sec: That’s a total running time of about 440 minutes. If you’re not bonered about that, then … gosh, get your boner checked, okay? To date, three episodes have aired, each detailing the roots of metal in blues, jazz, and classical music; Saturday’s episode (above) traveled to England to gab with/about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (who, according to Dunn, declined to be interviewed due to an aversion to being associated with metal), and concluded with Judass Priest circa Sad Wings Of Destiny. Spoiler: Bruce Dickinson calls Eric Clapton “tame” compared to Ritchie Blackmore. SWISH! Episode schedule after the jump:

Click to read more…

We at MetalSucks have dealt with the paradoxes involved with conducting a poll to determine great guitar players (read our 25 Best Modern Metal Guitarists poll here)! So we get that in a unweighted vote, the top-ranked axemen may just represent those liked by the largest number of voters; i.e. a dude who we agree is pretty good may score higher than each of our individual favorite dudes.

So when Rolling Stone magazine enlisted a who’s-who of classic rock personalities for their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time cover story, we prepared for some wacky aberrations. Let’s check out a few of the RS list’s inconsistencies:

Click to read more…

I’m not hip, so before this past Friday, when Corey Mitchell alerted us to the existence of the below interview, I had never heard of St. Vincent (né Annie Clark). But I’ve listened to some of her stuff on Spotify now, and while it’s not really my thing, there is some pretty cool guitar work going on.

And so it almost — almost – makes sense that St. Vincent is apparently a metal fan, with a special fondness for the one and only Dimebag himself. (She also apparently likes Maiden.)

And then I found twenty bucks.

-AR

[via MTV, or I guess MTV Hive, whatever the fuck the difference is.]

Jesus doesn’t have time to end world hunger or stop war or just return and make his followers shut up about it already, but he does watch Polish reality shows, and he was not happy about Nergal, that Satan worshipping bastard, being a judge on that country’s version of the reality program The Voice (in which some celebrity judges look for the next great blah blah blah). And so, recently, Nergal was fired from that program.

But I guess not before he’d already filmed a few episodes, ’cause now Heavy Blog is Heavy has video of him rocking out to some lady covering Maiden, and giving her some advice, as well. Check it out below.

And here’s the translation of what Nergal was saying (also courtesy of HBiH), in case you don’t, y’know, speak Polish:

Click to read more…

This video has been making the rounds on the ‘net since Metal Injection discovered it a few days ago, but like I was sayin’ yesterday, I’m a few days behind on my RSS reading, so I just got to it now.

But if you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely MUST check it out, because it is adorable, priceless, and totally awesome all at once.

In conclusion, your kid is probably not this cool.

-AR

Iron Maiden are starting to rival KISS in the merch department, aren’t they? Oh. well. I still prefer Eddie’s grinning face smacked on everything rather than Gene Simmons’ obnoxious one.

A new book entitled On Board Flight 666, which  chronicles life behind the scenes on Ed Force One, will be released before the year is up. Photographer John McMurtrie accompanied the band on their Somewhere Back in Time tour in 2008, as well as the Round the World in 66 Days leg of the Final Frontier tour from earlier this year. The book features a foreword by Captain Bruce Dickinson himself, and contains hundreds of pictures and insights into what went into these tours. Pretty cool gift for those die-hard fans since it is currently the only official book about the band.

On Board Flight 666 is available comes out on October 22 in the UK; now word yet on a U.S. release date.

-LF

I had shall we say a moment of clarity about Van Halen this week. It’s nothing bad and nobody’s fault. I love. To me, they score highest in all categories of awesomeness since The Beatles srs. And thusly, I think fans flex on lots of bullcrap. Like, no Michael Anthony? Uh okay. Your teen son in his place? If you say he’s cool, then cool. Shirtless in those white capris brah? Fuckin’ have to trust you on that, I will! And the super secret recording sessions? Fuck it! Like the song says, I’ll wait. Ditto for Aerosmith.

My, like, epiphany isn’t about something they’ve done that freaked me out. There exists no action to be undertaken by Van Halen that could disinterest me in their DLR-inclusive shit. But here I’ll reprise the headline as I explain the wake-up call I received the other day: Holy fuck Van Halen is old as all shit.

Click to read more…

Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project has debuted its video for “Man Overboard” over at Rolling Drone, and I’m feeling pretty conflicted about it.

‘Cause on the one hand, it’s not every day we see a CG animated steam punk video, and I applaud Maynard for continuing to at least make an attempt to venture into untested waters. Plus, as Metal Insider points out, there’s a Spinal Tap reference at the fifty-three second mark, and I’m all about Spinal Tap.

On the other hand, said CG animation is roughly on par with that incredibly poopy Iron Maiden video for “Wildest Dreams.”

So I guess you should, like, watch the video and make up your own mind. But only after you’ve already watched that way-cooler Ghost Brigade video, ’cause, like I said, it’s way cooler.

VIDEO REMOVED UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP ROLLING DRONE’S STUPID FUCKING AUTO PLAY.

Puscifer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, comes out October 18 on Puscifer Entertainment.

-AR

I’ve given Ryan Adams some shit in the past, but he seems to have a knack for doing good covers of metal songs. His version of Alice of Chains’ “Down in a Hole” is pretty good(although nothing beats the original, save for maybe AIC’s own Unplugged version of the song), and yesterday he performed an acoustic cover of Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years” on BBC Radio 2, which is also not too shabby.

My first thought was that “Wasted Years” is probably one of the only Maiden song which kinda lends itself to an acoustic rendition, but then I remembered that Billy Corgan’s generally-unlistenable Zwan (calling themselves Djali Zwan for some reason) did an acoustic version of “Number of the Beast” for the generally-unwatchable movie Crank, and that was pretty tolerable, too. So maybe Maiden songs are just that good.

-AR

[Adams' recording via Metal Insider]

I pride myself on being open minded, so it is very important to me that I consider both sides of an issue before I decide what I think about something! For example, I have always thought that “melodic metal” was a very confusing idea. To me, melody and metal are like oil and water: no common ground. In fact, I have always thought of them as polar opposites — it was always my basic rule that if a song is melodic, then it is by definition not metal.

That said, I know that not everybody feels the same about this as I do, so I thought that I should look into this issue a little more. I don’t like to make snap judgments, so in the interest of intellectual honestly I intend to take a FAIR AND BALANCED LOOK at MELODY IN METAL! In this post, I will share a few examples of both successful and unsuccessful uses of melody and let YOU be the judge — WE REPORT, YOU DECIDE!

You tell me: is there a place for melody in metal????

Click to read more…

Around the MetalSucks Mansion, we refer to Rodney Githens of Vertebrae 33 as “The Derek Riggs to our Iron Maiden.” The dude does amazing artwork, and has designed some of our most favoritest MS stuff, like this t-shirt, and this t-shirt, and this poster.

And now he’s started his own website, Metal Band Art, devoted entirely to the ongoing search for the world’s finest chili recipe. No, of course that’s what the site is about. It’s about metal band art. Duh.

ANYWAY, I mention it now because Rodney just posted part one of an excellent interview with the legendary Derek Riggs, a.k.a. the creator of Eddie, a.k.a. the dude who did all the Iron Maiden art that’s worth a damn. Here’s an excerpt:

Click to read more…

Every year in the summer I do the obligatory trek back home to Turkey. For most people, this is kind of a nuisance, but not that big a deal. However, I need to take at least two planes and cross the Atlantic to visit my family. This is why I usually go home onlyonce a year. Or whine at them to just come to me if they have to see me.

I grew up somewhere were we didn’t get many bands. I’m pretty sure that’s partly why I moved to a large city in the States. But when I found out that the Sonisphere Festival was hitting home sweet home, right when I was visiting, I took it upon myself to take my two youngest cousins and little sister. I figured it’s my duty to take them to their first metal show. We decided not to half-ass it. We’d stick it out from start to finish and see all five bands. One day of metal culminating in Iron Maiden. None of them had ever seen them. It was the most awful and awesome day.

Click to read more…

Vince isn’t here, so I guess it falls to me to take over his regular “Neilstein SoundScam” column… BWA-HA-HA!!!

Some of the more noteworthy sales stats from the latest Top Hard Music charts after the jump!

Click to read more…

Last month our own Leyla Ford admitted to being a Lady Gaga fan and even declared Uglier Madonna to be “one of us,” and the reaction from the MS readership was something typically calm and reasonable, along the lines of “!?#@$%?!*?!!!!” Which I didn’t really understand – I don’t like Lady Gaga, either, but at this point it’s pretty hard to argue that she’s just another poseur wearing metal t-shirts for ironic and/or fashion reasons. I mean, she likes Maiden. She really, really likes Maiden. And she got the thumbs-up from Kirk Windstein and Dave Wyndorf. Free pass, Lady Gaga is thy possessor.

But this is the internet, so logic be damned — LET’S ROAST THIS BITCH ON A SPIT!

So. If a blogger declaring her love for Gaga made you upset, well, this should give you a fucking heart attack.

It’s a mash-up of Lady Gaga’s “Judas” and Judas Priest’s “Painkiller,” and, I have to say, it’s pretty well done. I mean, I’m not gonna put it on my iPod or anything, but you can’t say that its creator, Wax Audio, didn’t do a fine job blending the two songs together.

Go totally apeshit for no discernible reason in the comments section.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

At age five, Tom Araya left Chile with his family to come to America. Fifteen years after that, he joined the then-fledgling band Slayer. Thirty years after that (i.e., now), Slayer enjoys acclaim only shared by Iron Maiden in consistency and intensity. And as Maiden is fronted by the greatest metal singer of all time, Slayer has Araya, metal’s most compelling, visceral screamer. Two notes are all he needs. I’d attend NASCAR if he were the announcer; if he were a salesman, I’d buy used toilets from the dude.

Word of Araya’s skillz (and cuddly-bear disposition) seems to have reached authorities in Chile, as Friday he was granted the key to the city of Viña del Mar, his birthplace. Araya said:

Click to read more…

So we’re now five axe slingers deep into out list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists. We predicted that the list would get a lot of you angry, and, no shock, it has. Funny thing is, reading the comments, as of yet not one of you has correctly predicted which guitar player is gonna be #1. So, just lettin’ you know… you may be even angrier in the coming weeks, or maybe you’ll be less angry, but so far, it seems like you guys just do not see it comin’.

While you chew on that, here’s some other fun things we did this week:

• We premiered new music from Hate Eternal, Arch Enemy, and Nader Sadek.
• We enjoyed a new episode of “Cooking Contaminated,” this one featuring King Fowley of Deceased.
• We checked out the latest releases from Benighted and Zubrowska.
• We wondered if Metallica and friends have gone too far in their quest for the Big Fortune.
• We checked out some *real* hardcore.
• We weighed Donald Trump’s claim that President Obama was the first drummer for Overkill.
• We wondered why talent can’t be passed down via genetics.
• We weighed, compared and contrasted multiple metal concerts showcasing female-fronted bands.
• We prayed for Kurt Cobain to rise from his grave and off Miley Cyrus.
• We wondered whether or not Dave Grohl is gonna be on the new Mastodon album.

And so, in conclusion… I am going to get a slice of pizza now.

See ya next week.

-AR