It seems like we’re getting a ridiculous amount of good new music today, doesn’t it? It’s almost overwhelming. It’s also pretty much, like, the best problem to have ever.

So. Next up on the docket is “Beyond the Lightless Sky,” the title track for the new album from Brooklyn’s own Hull. And, yeah, it’s fucking great. As the cover art suggests, it’s totally off-the-wall stoner metal that’s somehow fun and scary at the same time. In fact, if you get stoned, put the song on repeat, and just stare at that cover art, you could totally get lost in it and suddenly realize you’ve been trying to write about it for the past half-hour. I’m not speaking from experience or anything. My, uh, friend, who is also a blogger, told me that.

So yeah what were we talking about? Right. Hull’s “Beyond the Lightless Sky.” Check it out here. The album comes out October 11 on The End. It has guest appearances from Jarboe and Batillus’ Fade Kainer, so be twice as excited as you already were.

-AR

After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

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On Sunday night we caught the Beard Destroyer 2009 tour with Hull and Batillus (sadly for us, Salome didn’t play that date). It crushed even harder than we thought it would, so we asked our friend, Batillus skinsman Geoff Summers, to do a tour wrap-up for us. We hope you enjoy!

So, here I sit with a mild case of PTD (post-tour depression) writing up this wrap report for the so-called Beard Destroyer tour featuring Salome, Hull, and my band, Batillus. We had some good times, and we had some bad times. It rained. A lot. Everywhere we went. Fortunately, though, the good dwarfed the bad. Let’s recap…

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In 2006, San Francisco’s Giant Squid released Metridium Fields, which is, to put it mildly, a fucking doozy of an album. Lucky for all of us, then, the band has just completed work at that record’s follow-up, as singer/guitarist Aaron Gregory tells us in a press release:

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Because we don’t always agree on shit here at the MetalSucks Mansion, and because I didn’t get my say in Vince’s column, I’m gonna throw in my two cents about some albums that weren’t on Vince’s “Best of ’08 So Far” list that I would have included:

• Genghis Tron – Board Up the House. Except for Nachtmystium’s new album, this is still the best thing I’ve heard so far this year. Read my review here.
• Made Out of Babies – Ruiner. Holy shit does this album rule. My review is coming up real soon, but everyone should either pre-order a copy or just be prepared to buy one when it drops on June 24.
• Jarboe/Justin K. Broadrick – J2. Like a less industrial Jesu. Gorgeous, aching, awesome. Read my review here.
• Hate Eternal - Fury & Flames. Erik Rutan makes discordance into an art… again. Easily his best work since the Morbid Angel days. Read my review here.
• Origin – Antithesis. The ten minute epic mindfuck of a title track alone means you need to either own this album or beat yourself in the face with a hammer. Read my review here.
• Meshuggah – Obzen. And on the 8th day, God created Meshuggah. And He saw that it was good. Read Kip’s review here.
• Virgin Black – Requiem: Fortissmo. Read My review here.

Believe it or not, I still haaven’t heard this fucking Harvey Milk album everyone is going on about. I think I’ll go do that now.

-AR

Okay, so let’s just get the negative out of the way: I’m not crazy about “Decay,” the opening track from this eagerly anticipated collaboration between the seemingly tireless Justin Broadrick and former Swans vocalist Jarboe. It has a little too much of that kind of Bloody Panda-ish vibe, the one that makes you feel like you’re listening to the longest intro ever when you just want the friggin’ song to start already.

The rest of this album, luckily, is as fucking brilliant as the light bulb that adorns its cover art.

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This is old news by now, but it’s still worth mentioning just for the players involved: former Naplam Death/Godflesh/current Jesu mastermind Justin Broadrick has put together a new project with former Swans vocalist/keyboardist Jarboe, cleverly titled J2 (get it?). It’s not exactly metal – in fact, I think it’s safe to call it electronica – but, hey, it’s Justin Broadrick and Jarboe, so it’s worth your attention.

The first track by the band, “8mmsweetbitter,” can be heard on The End Records’ MySpace page; The End will release the full album on March 18.

-AR