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