I actually think that Metallica’s Live Metallica website is a cool idea. Even if James’ voice sounds like shit and I’m pretty sure Lars is literally confused about what those sticks some roadie just shoved into his hand are for, a high-quality recording of a show you recently attended is both a cooler and cheaper souvenir than, say, and $400,000 t-shirt (or whatever arena rawk bands charge for merch these days). And I fully support their recent decision to allow single-song downloads. Yes, it’s kind of ironic given the Napster mishegoss, but, y’know, whatever. Metallica aren’t the titans of metal that they once were, but every now and then they do something right.

Now Metal Insider tells us that they’ve launched an iPhone app version of the site, called – duh – Live Metallica:

Click to read more…

Mere hours before Gojira played the best show of 2009, our friends at Metal Injection interview G to the Jira main man Joe Duplantier, and even got him to pick his favorite metal videos. No shock: the man has good taste. So, needless to say, this is pretty awesome.

Vince’s own interview with Joe should go up sometime next week. You’ll wanna read that, too. Trust me.

-AR

I haven’t taken a vacation since the summer of ’06. You think snarky metal blogs write themselves? Fuck no. I have something known as “work ethic.” I’m here, making fun of people I mostly don’t even know, for you. So that you’ll have something to do when you should be working. I don’t take no fuckin’ vacations.

But not Joe Duplantier. The inhumanly chill Gojira front man says that France’s leading metallic export will take a six month break in 2010. SIX FUCKING MONTHS. Lazy motherfucker.

Oh well. At least I know I get to see the band live at least one more time before they go on hiatus.

Here’s “Love” from Terra Incognita.

-AR

I love Gojira. I love them the way Mel Gibson loved that lady he killed all those people for in Braveheart. I love them the way Mel Gibson loved that lady he killed all those people for in Lethal Weapon 2. I love them the way Mel Gibson loved that lady he killed all those people for in Mad Max. I love them the way Mel Gibson loved the son he killed all those people for in The Patriot. I love Gojira the way Mel Gibson hates the Jews.

Click to read more…

I feel bad for anyone who hasn’t seen Gojira live. This band is inhuman. I seriously have no fucking idea how they do what they do. Fuck, we watched them blow In Flames off the stage on Sunday night, and we fucking love In Flames. That’s how fucking good Gojira are live.

ANYWAY, a few hours before said destruction of In Flames, Vince and I got to interview Gojira guitarist/vocalist Joe Duplantier, who is such a nice fucking guy that he actually made me hate myself a little for being such a prick. Duplantier had a lot of really interesting things to say, and we’ll publish the interview as soon as the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys finish transcribing it (Yes, we’ve trained monkeys to understand English and to type.). But after the interview, Duplantier – who, as you probably no, is an avid environmentalist – asked us if we could mention something about an environmental group called Sea Shepherd, who are devoted to the protection of the world’s whale population.

Here’s what Duplantier wrote about the group on Gojira’s MySpace blog:

Click to read more…

Metal… Politics… Environmentalism… Spiritualism… Unnhh unnhhh…

… ahhhhhh.

-VN

[via HardTimes.ca]

(See also: Axl’s review of The Way of All Flesh and the video for “Vacuity.”)

Infliked, the new album by Cavalera Conspiracy, may have turned out to be a pleasantly awesome surprise (read our review here), but the band’s video for first single “Sanctuary” is, alas, not nearly as cool.

The concept isn’t bad: at a photo shoot for the band, a 28 Days Later-style monster goes on the rampage and kills pretty much everyone in the room (save for the band, who, I suppose, are saved by the sheer power of their rocking). The clip is even filmed in lo-fi video to give it some sense of “realism.”

Unfortunately, it’s also shot in first-person shakey cam, a la The Blair Witch Project and the more recent Cloverfield, a.k.a. The Blair Monster Project. The result is that you can’t really see anything, and I don’t mean in a Jaws being-suggestive-is-more-scary-than-being-gory kind way; I mean, really, you can’t see very much.

So, y’know, that blows.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/uu9EgfOjBvk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

I’m really, really impressed with Inflikted, the debut (if you don’t count Sepultura) album from Cavalera Conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the new cover art for the album sucks even worse than the old cover art:

Okay, remember when Sepultura used to have freaky, scary, horrific, bad ass metal cover art? So why the fuck does this album have some modern-art Devo shit? It’s a good thing the album is actually good…

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Morizz for the tip!

-AR

Since so many of you see to be as pleasantly surprised as we are that those two Cavalera Conspiracy songs that surfaced earlier this week are actually good, we’re pleased to announce that the entire album has now leaked online. And, believe it or not, those songs were just foreshadowing; in other words, the entire album is really, really good. Head over to Kill the Musica to get the album. Enjoy it, and have a good weekend…

-AR

I’m feeling ready to be not so cynical about the Cavalera Conspiracy, the new Sepultura semi-reunion between brothers Max and Igor Cavalera (Soulfly’s Marc Rizzo and Gojira’s Joe Duplantier round out the line-up on guitar and bass, respectively). And why, pray tell, am I feeling so generous towards the band these days? Well, it’s cause these just released tracks, “Sanctuary” and “Inflikted” actually sound more or less exactly the way I wanted them to, which is to say: they sound an awful lot like good ol’ school Sepultura. Yes, it seems that the shitty band name, cheap album art, deliberate “hip” misspellings and other general shenanigans were bad omens not to be taken seriously… although I suppose the complete album could still totally suck.

Download the tracks below and let us know what you think.

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Sanctuary”

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Inflikted”

-AR

I suppose I have no real reason to feel so cynical about the music that the reunited Cavalera brothers will make together; in 2005, Max Cavalera released Dark Ages, arguably the best Soulfly album to date, while Igor Cavalera and his band mates put out what is arguably the best Max-less Sepultura album, Dante XXI, just a year later. And they both made albums of such quality by introducing elements of older Sep back into music that become far too diluted with the “legacy” of the over-rated Roots, even if they’ve never abandoned that album’s musical “advances” altogether. In other words, it would seem that both Max and Igor have their heads in the right place, creatively speaking, and if ever a Sepultura semi-reunion was going to (needlessly?) produce new music, now would be the time.

Still, I was hoping that the band would come up with a better name than Cavalera Conspiracy, and a better album title than Inflikted. Not so, says Blabbermouth, who exclusively announced the album’s track list yesterday.

Click to read more…