MetalSucks

Tomorrow is Halloween. This is great news, because it means that come Sunday (or Monday) people will finally fucking stop talking about Halloween. So sick of it already. When did I become so curmudgeonly? I’m gonna make a hell of an old man. Here’s what went down this week:

• Danzig drummer Chuck Biscuits died. Oh wait, no he didn’t.
• We debuted a new Mudvayne track and we posted live photos from Satyricon and Goatwhore/Eyehategod shows.
• We analyzed the business models of Earache and Roadrunner Records.
• The Boner Tour 2010 has been announced.
• Bison B.C.’s Dan And wrote two tour blogs for us while Horse the Band’s Lord Gold told us about women in diners.
• We spoke with Jucifer’s Amber Valentine and James Plodkin from Jodis.
• We’re giving away a buncha BTBAM shit and celebrating the release of their new album.
• We got all creative writing on your ass.

Our very own Corey Mitchell is gonna be on TV this weekend; he’ll be appearing on E!’s “20 Most Horrifying Hollywood Murders” on Saturday night at 6:00pm EST/5:00PM CST. In addition to his duties as the resident Mansion old fart, Corey writes books about true crime and is a respected authority on the matter so it should be an interesting (and br00tal) watch. Have a good weekend everyone.

Since 1993, the furious duo of Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood have been confounding and entertaining with their eclectic musical mix that frequently and wantonly crosses the boundaries between metal and rock. Jucifer’s unrestrained artistry has led to some pretty impressive albums, including two for Relapse Records: 2006’s If Thine Enemy Hunger and last year’s L’Autrichienne. As the band wraps up the latest round of its unending tour, I recently took the chance to pry a few answers out of the loquacious Mrs. Valentine.

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Jucifer is an awesome band we don’t show enough love; the record they put out last year, L’autrichienne, was the shit – a double album where almost no two songs sound alike! – and I never even reviewed it. For shame.

Now the band has released a new video, for “The Mountain.” The song is great; whether or not you like the video will probably depend on how you feel about close-ups with warped lenses. Just throwin’ that out there.

L’autrichienne is out now on Relapse.

-AR

We’ve haven’t posted much about Relapse Records’ resident noise rockers Jucifer since last year’s coverage of a local show gone horribly wrong. Hopefully, no such shenanigans will mar the band’s lengthy headlining tour of North America which is heavy on the Canada dates. Opinion about Jucifer is admittedly mixed among staffers here at MetalSucks, but I reside in the camp that really really digs what Livengood and Valentine do, particularly on last year’s L’Autrichienne (which didn’t make the list that you guys can’t stop complaining about).

This Wednesday, the duo will hit up New York’s Cake Shop with their U.S. touring opener Mount Vicious, a less confounding group that sounds sorta like Danzig fronting The Jesus Lizard. Full dates can be found here. At some point Jucifer plans to record a follow-up to L’Autrichienne (title TBA), expected in the Spring of 2010.

-GS

[Gary Suarez smells dryer sheets. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

Where to begin? So many debaucherous moments — too many beers, not enough whiskeys, a shit-ton of BBQ, and a helluva lotta MUSIC….yes yes, it was another sleep-deprived week in Austin, Texas, and at the end of it all, it was the best one yet.

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Wednesday has done and drawn to a close, and an awesome day it was. Highlights included Young Widows, The Bronx, Fighting With Wire, Jucifer, El Mariachi Bronx (The Bronx as a full mariachi band), Valient Thorr, Pack of Wolves, These Arms Are Snakes, and finally meeting MS contributor Corey Mitchell in person. There’s so much to be seen today, Kip has gone missing, and I’m hungry, so I’ll make this quick:

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There has been a veritable smorgasbord of Old Fart-approved albums over the last twelve months. New full-lengthers from the likes of such metal greats as Exodus, Death Angel, Overkill, and the mighty Testament (review here) have made this one of the most memorable and satisfying years to be an Old Fart metal fan (Metallica’s newest excluded purposefully).

Joining the aforementioned second-tier thrash titans from the 80’s with a new release is none other than Aberdeen, Washington’s Metal Church. The always under-appreciated progenitors of melodic thrash have returned with a brilliant work of art worthy of repeated headbanging sessions in the form of their newest release, This Present Wasteland.

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Between soaring inflation and a lagging economy, jobs disappearing and wages stagnating everyone has had to cut back. Maybe you make fewer trips in your car to save on gas. Maybe you limit your groceries to the barest necessities. Maybe you’ve managed to talk your wife out of having another kid so you won’t need to worry about feeding one more person in your home. Maybe you’ve scaled back your band’s membership from four people to just two. Like Adai, for example. Hey if it can work for great acts like the White Stripes, Jucifer and Sunn O))) then why not? Besides, considering the number of inept producers and idiot engineers who can’t seem to figure out how to make the bass guitar audible in the final mix (poor, poor Robert Trujillo) why bother with one, right?

Adai consists of a drummer and a guitarist/vocalist. Their style of music is similar to doom/sludge but seems a bit more…shall we say, Progressive? The sound of the band isn’t mired in low-end feedback or paced with a dragging sluggishness. At times Devin M’s axework can be quite melodic but don’t kid yourself into thinking they’re big on Maiden. The vocals are sporadic, incidental and barely audible growls like you might expect from a drone act. By and large this EP, running just under 24 minutes, is instrumental; and while it can be hit and miss, it does showcase a couple musicians that might evolve into a convincing force within a subgenre whose adherents are largely devotional.

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Ponder the Freudian nature of Metallica’s new album artwork as you grill hot dogs this weekend. I know I will. Here are the key headlines from the week:

• Very old Italian friar fronts a metal band, makes most of today’s scene kids look like pussies.
• Metallica released the album artwork for Death Magnetic, which in fact does look just like a hairy old vagina.
• Whitechapel’s new record scanned over 5,000 units in its first week of release… zuh??
• We launched a new mini site-redesign. (BIG ups to our pals at Metal Injection for their help!)
• Tommy Vext and Dino Cazares scuffle backstage at a show; Dino’s wife gets caught in the crossfire and receives some wicked bruises.
• The Haunted’s Peter Dolving blogs for MetalSucks.
• Jucifer gets booted from the stage at a Brooklyn show.
• Snot get back together, hiring Tommy Vext to fill the shoes of the late Lynn Strait. No word about who will fill the shoes of Lynn Strait’s dog.

Long-time MetalSucks reader Rohit G. emailed us to tell us of the apparently disastrous Jucifer performance at Brooklyn’s Club Europa this past Saturday night, July 12th, at which the band was kicked off the stage by the venue before they had finished their set. You’ve no doubt read about Jucifer before — Axl wrote a piece in anticipation of their latest album L’Autrichienne, released this past March via Relapse, and has waved ecstatic about the album to me on many an occasion. Iann Robinson @ Nonelouder also wrote it a rave review. Personally, I don’t get what the big deal is… like, at all. But to each his own.

After the jump, read what Rohit had to say about the band’s performance and their alleged premature ending:

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It’s a good day to be a metalhead. Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted, the long-awaited reunion of Max and Iggor Cavalera of Sepultura, finally comes out today, though it’s been on the Internet for months receiving critical acclaim (read Axl’s review). Firewind and Mercenary release a dual-shot of epic, European power-prog in the form of their new albums The Premonition (read Vince’s review) and Architect of Lies, respectively. Jucifer’s L-Autrichienne combines metal of, well, pretty much every sort for this excellent release (read Axl’s preview and Iann Robinson’s rave). Korpklaani’s folk-metal explosion Korven Kuningas also hits the shelves, which we can best describe as Tetris-metal.

Not a bad day to be a metalhead, best next week promises to be even better with new releases from In Flames, Joe Satriani, Sevendust, Nadja and The Sword.

-VN

One of the next big releases I’m stoked about is the latest from Jucifer, L’Autrichienne. Apparently it’s a concept album about the French Revolution, and is not, as my shitty French and the recognition of the part of the word “chien” led me to believe, about a dog.

ANYWAY, if you don’t know this band, well, you should. They get compared to the White Stripes sometimes because a) there’s only two of them, b) it’s a married couple, and c) they have no bass player, but really that’s a) retared, b) retarded, and c) really, really retarded.

Here’s the video for “Pontius of Palia” from their last album, If Thine Enemy Hunger. It was directed by Marc Pilvinsky.

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L’Autrichienne comes out March 18 on Relapse.

-AR