Julie Christmas is apparently going to have a new song called “Scalps” on the European Falling Down IIV compilation next year, and now a minute-long preview of that song is available for streaming (below). And, oh my dear, does it ever sound gorgeous. Christmas has to have one of the most haunting voices in all of music today — not just metal, either, but just music, period — and when she starts going nuts towards the end of the clip, my heart pretty much melts. I wanna hear the rest of this, and I wanna hear it now. A new Made Out of Babies album — or even another Christmas solo outing — would be terrific, too, don’t you agree?

-AR

[via The PRP]

Though Fucked Up, Made Out of Babies vocalist Julie Christmas and the annual free tech-metal comp Mecha Organa are completely unrelated in just about every way, they all concern heavy music and they’ve all got new tunes. So:

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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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I’m enjoying doing these “Cinemetal Round-Up” things, and hopefully you are, too. Actually, I don’t care if you’re enjoying them or not, I’m the one who has to write them and I don’t really know you anyway.

SO, here we go with the latest batch of clips intended to sell you some music.

First up, we have “Bow” from Julie Christmas. The video originally premiered on Stereogum, and the song comes from her new album, The Bad Wife. It’s Julie’s first solo album, although you’d never really know to listen to it — possibly because her Made Out of Babies bandmates apparently helped her write some of the music.

ANYWAY, if you watched this video with the sound off, you’d probably think it was for some viking metal band, ’cause Ms. Christmas and this Sasquatch are running around the woods. Luckily the song is pretty good so you don’t have to watch it with the sound off.

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By which I do not mean that Ms. Christmas has found God. I meant “CHRIST!” more in a “screaming random shit when you orgasm” kinda way.

‘Cause while Made Out of Babies’ often seemingly badshit crazy (in the best possible way) front lady announced her first solo album, The Bad Wife, back in June, now the album has a November 9 release date via Rising Pulse Records, and — score!!! — not one, but two tracks from the album have been released: “Bow” and “July 31.” And if for some reason you were worried about a Baby-less Christmas, well, don’t be. These songs are just grand: original and visceral and elegant and scary and intriguing and all the things you’ve loved about Christmas’ work with MOOB, Battle of Mice, and Spylacopa. I can’t wait to hear the rest of this album.

Check out the new songs here.

-AR

Made Out of Babies’ masterpiece, The Ruiner, came out exactly two years ago today, and to be honest, I was hoping there might be a new MOOB album in the not-too-distant future — especially after watching them absolutely annihilate live earlier this year.

Well, the bad news is that there’s news on the MOOB front, vocalist/batshit crazy front lady Julie Christmas will be releasing her first solo album, The Bad Wife, sometime this fall. Our first taste of the album will apparently be a song called “July 31st,” which will appear in a feature film called Wrong Turn at Tahoe. The movie stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Harvey Keitel and was directed by the dude who made the barely-watchable P2, so I’m assuming the Christmas track will be the best thing about the flick. Luckily, Ms. Christmas is doing a video for the song, so hopefully none of us will ever have to suffer through Tahoe to hear it.

And that’s not all Julie has been busy with!

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Candiria needs no introduction, but even those familiar with the band might not know that guitarist John LaMacchia is one of the most hard-working men in underground metal. In addition to his work with Candiria — who are releasing Toying With the Insanities Volumes 1 and 2 this September — LaMacchia runs Rising Pulse Records, the label that will be releasing the aforementioned new Candiria albums. He’s also a member of Spylacopa together with members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Isis and Made out of Babies, and and he’s co-writing and producing a solo album with Julie Christmas of the latter. In a phone conversation earlier this month, I chatted with John about the new Candiria sets, the aforementioned side projects (which are only the tip of the iceberg), the current status of Candiria, and some local bands he digs. Our chat, after the jump.

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Call it the Sarah Palin Effect: so much is already stacked against In This Moment (a metalcore band two to three years after metalcore flickered out with an incredibly attractive frontwoman equipped with a ridiculously provocative sense of fashion) that the bar is set almost comedicaly low. But much like struggling to answer simple follow-up questions during one of your first televised national interviews, any slight hint of competency already exceeds expectations, and by many, will be perceived a victory. I wouldn’t call The Dream, the band’s latest album, a victory by any means, but considering the flaccidity of the genre in which it exists, they manage to ascend from “Why do bands like this still make music?” to “Not that bad, really,” with relative ease. Though by no means a classic, it wobbles between lame metalcore and admirable pop-rock somewhat effortlessly to maybe work their way onto the guilty pleasure heap – no small achievement when considering the ocean of sneers and venom already directed their way before playing a note.

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It’s a really slow fucking news day and I’m bored off my ass, but I found this footage of Made Out of Babies doing the song “Invisible Ink,” off their latest album, The Ruiner, and it kept me entertained for a few minutes, so I thought I’d share it.

The Ruiner is easily one of the best albums of the year, and this is probably my favorite track on the record – it gets stuck in my head at least once a week. It’s epic, it’s catchy, it’s heartbreak, and, oh yeah, Julie Christmas is a babe. So check it out, hopefully it’ll help you pass the remaining hours ’til the work day is done a little faster.

-AR