MetalSucks

If you’ve never seen IWRESTLEDABEARONCE live, you’re missing out. We’ve seen these guys and girl a few times now, including when they absolutely demolished The Bowery Poetry Club (of all places) at CMJ last year, and they are all that and a bag of chips (the kids still use that expression, right?).

Luckily for you, HardTimes.ca has an entire set from the band online right now, which you can check out below. Unfortunately the quality of the footage is sub-Metal Injection, but, still, it’s good to be able to watch the show from the same chair in which you usually masturbate.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, IWABO’s Century debut, It’s All Happening, drops June 2 on Century, and the band is currently on a MetalSucks-sponsored trek with The Human Abstract and a bunch of other awesome bands. Get tour dates here.

-AR

Thanks to all the hep cats who e-mailed this to us!

No idea how we missed this, but “The Cat’s Pajamas,” the first single off of IWABO’s upcoming Century debut, It’s All Happening, is currently streaming on Absolute Punk. It’s actually kinda different for IWABO – the melody-to-madness ratio is higher than normal – but not so different that my head is spinning. In other words, I’m really digging it.

I know a lot of you already have your mind made up about this band one way or the other, but nonetheless I’d encourage you all to give it a listen. Even if it’s just so you can better formulate your argument that it’s utter crap.

It’s All Happening drops June 2.

-AR

I never went on spring break; I mean, I had “spring break” from school, but I never did that thing where you go to Cancun and get fucked up for a week solid and date rape someone. Dunno why.

To win some MetalSucks stickers and assorted promo CDs we don’t want anymore, tell us a) the name of the musician in this video who isn’t a member of IWABO and b) the name of the person doing the voice-over. No fair cheatin’ if you work in the bid-ness.

-AR

[via Metal Injection... duh.]

Here’s an interview our friends at Metal Injection conducted with our friends in IWRESTLEDABEARONCE at New England Metal & Hardcore Festival a couple of weeks back. It’s a spirited romp, as are most conversations led by MI’s Rob Pasbani (or, as many of you call him when he’s spotted out at shows, “Metal Injection Guy!”).

But in the interest of being completely honest, I should let you know that I’m really posting it as an excuse to remind you that IWABO are out on the road RIGHT NOW as part of a MetalSucks co-sponsored trek being headlined by The Human Abstract and also featuring Oh, Sleeper, Vanna, A Tragic Victory and To Speak of Wolves. All the cool kids are going. And if you don’t go, they’ll know you’re not cool and no one will ever want to make out with you or touch you where your bathing suit covers again. Seriously, I know a kid who missed the tour when it came through his town last week, and then he was instantly made a social outcast and hung himself. Peer pressure peer pressure peer pressure.

So watch this interview, then get tour dates after the jump, so that mommy and daddy will still love you and God won’t send you to hell.

Click to read more…

This is pretty straight-forward: IWRESTLEDABEARONCE’s Century Media debut, It’s All Happening, is coming out June 2, and, as is de rigeur, the band will now be posting a series of behind-the-scenes videos on the internet.com to give fans a taste of the in-studio insanity. And, yes, I fully plan on posting each and every video.

Some people will watch this, see the band having fun, and take it as yet another sign that IWABO are ironic hipster doucheturds who don’t take metal seriously (because the memo that metal can’t be fun apparently never found it’s way to Louisiana). And those people, I say: Have fun sulking in the corner. We’ll be over here getting fucked up and having a good time.

-AR

Baseball season officially got underway and New England Metal and Hardcore Fest is coming up next weekend. Surely all is peachy in the world then, yeah? Not so much.

• Dave Mustaine feuded with a mystery band, then kissed and made up before we even knew it.
• Protest the Hero released a new video and gave us a bunch of tickets for their tour to give away.
• We spoke with Daath’s Eyal Levi and TAD/Tadgarden’s Tad.
• Kip W. gave us two recaps (Day 1, Day 2) of our booze-fueled SXSW journey.
• Fear Factory got back together… except not.
• Ya’ll argued about which Mastodon album is the best and whether Jesse or Howard was/is the better KsE frontman.
• Ya’ll argued even more about IWRESTLEDABEARONCE and Oceano.
• We got an exclusive red carpet report from Metallica’s Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

See you next week. New England Metal and Hardcore Fest!!

You know how I know IWRESTLEDABEARONCE are an awesome band? Because of how polarizing they are. Everyone who leaves comments on this site – fuck, everyone I’ve ever spoken to about the group – either loves them or hates them with a passion; they do not ever, under any circumstances, inspire a shrug. And isn’t that what you want from music? Or would you rather have Diecast’s career?

So. Sometime over the weekend, that clock on the band’s official website stopped counting down, and revealed the title and release date of IWABO’s Century debut – it’s called It’s All Happening, and it’ll see the  light of on June 2. There’s also a too-brief sample of a new song, “See You in Shell,” streaming here, and AN ENTIRE NEW SONG (!), “You Ain’t Family,” streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

Click to read more…

Seriously. Ever since Metal Hammer gave us that Web of Death thing, I’ve been knee-deep in pussy. Incredible. It’s amazing that I’m even able to type right now, I’m so worn out. And that’s why you start a website. For the groupies.

Which brings me to my next point: now that we’re famous, we don’t want to be friends with you anymore. Don’t take it personally, we just prefer to rub elbows with other fabulous, famous people. You were great on the way up, but now? Fuck you. M’kay?

Here’s what else went down this week:

• We spoke with Lacuna Coil’s Christina Scabbia, and managed to get through it without embarrassing ourselves too badly.
• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima wrote another awesome guest blog from the studio, begging the question: is Dr. Mikannibal’s diet hot or not?
• The Haunted’s Peter Dolving lashed out against Lamb of God; you lashed out against Peter Dolving.
• NEW CONVERGE SONGS! NEW CONVERGE SONGS! NEW CONVERGE SONGS!
• Someone actually played IWRESTLEDABEARONCE’S “Tastes like Kevin Bacon” for Kevin fucking Bacon.
• How many Andrew WKs are there, anyway?

Alright. I’ve got like ten girls clawing at me right now, beckoning me back to bed. I’ll see you Monday, if they’ll give me a rest, already.

-AR

If you haven’t yet seen The Human Abstract you’re missing out on one of the finest progressive metal bands in today’s scene. And if you haven’t seen Iwrestledabearonce you’re missing out on one of the most mindfuckingly awesome experiences short of watching Fred Durst punch himself in the nuts repeatedly. Fitting, then, that MetalSucks is sponsoring a Spring tour featuring these two awesome bands as well as metalcorers Oh, Sleeper and Vanna! The tour kicks off April 30th in Anaheim, CA and winds its way east before returning to the left coast and wrapping up on May 28th in Hollywood. Expect more good things related to this tour from MetalSucks in the near future, including exclusive tour blogs and the latest updates. Be there!

Ice cream sandwiches… mmmmm.

-VN

Something is brewing in the IWRESTLEDABEARONCE camp. My once-favorite unsigned band (can’t call ‘em that anymore ’cause now they’re signed!) has now launched a website where you can currently hear a clip from a radio show where – no shit – they play IWABO’s “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon” for… KEVIN FUCKING BACON. Man, I would have loved to be in the room when that happened. “Swell,” Bacon thinks to himself. “First Bernie Madoff, now this.”

Click to read more…

AND THE HITS KEEP COMING!

As part of our ongoing effort to bring you the best live metal for your dollar, I’m proud to announce on behalf of everyone here at MetalSucks that’ll be sponsoring The Human Abstract’s headlining trek this Spring. 2006’s Nocturne announced THA as one of the most exciting prog-metal acts on the scene today, a status which last year’s Midheaven only expanded upon. And if you think that shit’s impressive on record, you’ve GOT to see them do it live – it is 100% guaranteed to induce orgasm. Add metalcore mavericks Oh, Sleeper and Vanna, PLUS MetalSucks perennial  favorite experimental electrogrind mind fuck act, IWRESTLEDABEARONCE, and you have one hell of a bill that you simply cannot afford to miss. And A Tragic Victory and To Speak of Wolves are playing select dates, too! Holy shit, these shows are gonna be fun.

Tour dates are on the poster above. We’ll post any updates we get, and, of course, check in from time to time to remind you that you need to go to these shows. ‘Cause you need to go to these shows. Seriously. Shouldn’t you be on line already? You better go get on line now.

-AR

CMJ is almost dunzo. Vince partied way harder than I did and will probably need the weekend to recover. But don’t fret, he can’t be in terrible shape ’cause I didn’t find any piles of vomit in weird places around the MetalSucks Mansion.

If you live in the NYC area and still wanna check out some cool shit and get stupid sloppy drunk like Vince, it’s not too late: Heavy Hitter Inc. have their showcase tonight, with See You Next Tuesday, Arsonists Get All the Girls, Unholy, Catalepsy, and, oh, IWRESTLEDABEARONCE.* Doors are at seven and it’ll cost you a whopping ten bucks to get in. That’s right – for less than the cost of seeing whatever shitty movie opened this weekend, you can see five awesome metal bands.

I saw Despised Icon play this same room last year at the Heavy Hitter CMJ show, and they fucked shit up so hard I almost can’t believe that the Bowery Poetry Club was willing to have Heavy Hitter back. But hey! The loss of the cost of the property damage is metalheads’ gain.

Vince and I will be there. I’m not gonna do that thing where I tell you what we’re wearing so can find us. If you wanna find us, fucking find us.

More details on the show are avail here.

-AR

*Who I think should temporarily change their name to ISHOTABEARFROMAHELICOPTERONCE in Sarah Palin’s honor.

Thanks to MetalSucks Maniac Jon Dolente for tipping us off that there’s been some line-up changes in the IWRESTLEDABEARONCE camp. On the band’s MySpace blog, guitarist Steven Bradley explains in typically Lokian fashion:

“Being on tour and signing to a label and being poor and living in a van for all of eternity and blah blah isn’t for everyone. you’ve probably noticed that most full-time touring bands go through member changes and.. well.. shit happens.. we still love john/brian/ryan, but life goes on and iWaBo will continue until we all fall apart or die in an epic van/plane crash!

“that said.. we have 3 new members that you might not recognize from the original line-up and the “tastes like kevin bacon” video! after much searching, we feel that we have found the perfect touring/writing line-up and i don’t think things will be changing again.

Click to read more…

Vince Neilstein isn’t at the MetalSucks Mansion today. He told me he had to rush to Washington to save America from our financial crisis, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find him blogging for the guys over at Metal Injection instead. He’s a slippery one, that Vince.

ANYWAY, some cool tours have been announced over the past couple of weeks, and yesterday came the announcement of a tour that strikes me as especially odd, and I feel like discussing, so let’s discuss.

Click to read more…

Another week in metal. Apparently some stuff happened.

• Louisana electro-core outfit IWRESTELEDABEARONCE signs with Century Media. Congrats!
• Disturbed’s new record debuts at #1, shifting over 1/4 of a million units and robbing us of our faith in humanity. Sigh.
• Metallica’s management demanded lukewarm reviews of an album preview be stripped from the Internet; band makes management do pushups.
• Live recordings of new Anthrax music with new singer Dan Nelson surfaced.
• Nachtmystium released an awesome new album and God Forbid an awesome new DVD.
• We wished we lived in Chicago so we could eat the world’s most metal burgers.

Have a good weekend everyone!

-VN

Glory glory hallelujah!

MetalSucks can now exclusively reveal that our favorite unsigned band, IWRESTLEDABEARONCE, can no longer be referred to as “unsigned.” ‘Cause they are signed. To Century Media.

There’s still no official announcement yet, so you’re just gonna have to trust me on this one. But check out their MySpace page if you doubt me.

This band is gonna do big things. Be ready.

-AR

UPDATE: TAKE A LOOK AT THIS, BITCHES! GET BACON!!!

In all fairness, our platonic hetero life partners over at Metal Injection introduced us to our favorite unsigned band, IWRESTLEDABEARONCE, not the other way around. Hopefully some day we’ll be able to return the favor by discovering some awesome act called IBLEWAGOATTWICE or something like that.

ANYWAY, the MI dudes were also at the awesome IWABO show last week, and they interviewed the band shortly after the gig (they weren’t able to get any performance footage because a certain gigantic corporate promoter that has an illegal monopoly over the concert business wanted an obscene amount of money to let them film). Kind of unusually for an MI interview, everyone in this video appears to be more or less sober (“more or less” being the operative phrase here).

Check out the interview below. And remember, there’s always lots of more super duper sweet vids at Metal Injection.

-AR

Have you ever watched a support act win over a room of kids who mostly are not there to see them, and may have never even of heard of them before? It’s something you see pretty much every opening band in every conceivable genre of music attempt, but to see a band actually pull it off – well, that’s pretty rare.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you IWRESTLEDABEARONCE.

Click to read more…

Last week, I wrote a piece about IWRESTLEDABEARONCE, my favorite new unsigned band. A lot of you reacted negatively to the two videos as I posted as part of the piece, but hey, guess what? One of the benefits of having your own website is that you can write about whomever the fuck you please. So I reached out to the band and asked them if they wanted to do an interview, and they agreed, and now I’m publishing said interview.

Let me tell you where my interest in this band lies: I concur that there are a lot of bands trying to pull off the same kind of genre-bending, doesn’t-take-itself-too-seriously, hydrogen bomb of metal these days, but I haven’t heard many who pull it off the way these guys (and girl) do, and I can’t be the only one – ’cause word around the camp fire is, they’re not gonna be unsigned for very much longer.

I tried to incorporate some of our readers’ criticisms into my interview questions so the band could address them. The entire band – vocalist Krysta Cameron, guitarist/programmer Steven Bradley, guitarist/programmer John Ganey, bassist Brian Dozier, drummer Ryan Pearson, and keyboardist/sampler/programmer Daniel Andrews – did the interview as one big group effort, so you get all their perspectives. Read the full transcript after the jump.

Click to read more…

A HUGE round of applause to our friends over at Metal Injection (and MetalSucks reader Vitruvian Ape!), who posted the below video for IWRESTLEDABEARONCE’s “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon,” thereby alerting me to what is now one of my favorite two unsigned bands (check out the other one here). I think Rob from MI really said it best, so I’m just gonna be lazy and cut and paste what he wrote:

“So, what’s the deal with all these new bands that put the core in grindcore with their silly long names and infectious breakdowns? There may be a bit of an overflow of these types of bands, but I declare that Louisiana’s IWRESTLEDABEARONCE are a band to reckon with. This band has a pinch of everything, grind, core, some jazz, clean vocals, and a female singer to boot! What I liked most about this band, is the balance of not taking themselves too seriously and then absolutely bringing it!”

Well said, Roberto. Your parents must be very proud.

ANYWAY, do yourselves a favor and check out the video below. Then head over to IWRESTLEDABEARONCE’s MySpace page, and then, when you’re really totally sold on what a bunch of friggin’ geniuses these fuckers are, order their 6 song EP here.

Hopefully this band will be signed very, very soon; it kills me that I don’t have a high quality mp3 of “Kevin Bacon” to listen to to my heart’s content.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=30190099;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

As a bonus, here’s the clip for “Ulrich Firelord: Breaker of Mountains” from the band’s self-titled EP. And, yes, I believe that is the Inspector Gadget theme song at the end.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/4DKPgZ51ywU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR