Dear Killswitch Engage,

I was very happy to hear that Jesse Leach has re-joined the band. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to Howard Jones. I think HJ is a great vocalist and a great performer, and I love The End of Heartache. But I don’t think it’s any secret that you fellas needed some kind of creative kick in the pants. And Leach did an amazing job when he played with you back in 2010, and Alive or Just Breathing is a bonda fide modern classic. If you weren’t going to be able to move forward with Howard Jones, then, really, getting Leach back was the only move that made any real sense. So, mazel tov! I am officially excited to hear your new album and see you dudes live again.

Now, if I may be so bold, a humble request to keep in mind while moving forward: please don’t let your reunion album sound like Times of Grace.

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Photo by Jeff Chan

Those poor metalcore Massholes in Unearth have been without a drummer since parting ways with Derek Kerswill back in 2010 — although, to their credit, they did make the best of a bad situation, recruiting Killswitch Engage/Blood Has Been Shed skinsman Justin Foley to sit in on last year’s Darkness in the Light. But now a press release tells us they’ve finally found their man to take the gig full-time:

“Nick Pierce is a self taught drummer who’s been playing since age 10. He grew up playing for local bands in the Seattle/Tacoma area (Culling the Weak, Eterna Nocturna, Embalmed) as well as LA based band The Faceless. Nick first sat in behind the kit for Unearth in May of 2011 during their two show trip to Alaska. Unearth discovered Pierce on YouTube where he had been covering Unearth songs, among many other bands, on a series of videos on his YouTube channel.”

Man, I do love that musicians can legitimately find one another through the internet. Seriously, I think it’s great that internet can make us one big community, able to communicate across vast spaces in miniscule amounts of time with people who share common interests and life philosophies. It’s a really beautiful thing. In fact, besides the endless sea of free porn, it’s my second favorite thing about the internet.

But I digress.

After the jump, check out two videos of Pierce in action: one of him performing “Watch it Burn” with his new band, and an eight-minute solo for all you drum nerds out there. Enjoy…

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For the young ‘uns that don’t remember, Blood Has Been Shed is the way killer turn-of-the-century metalcore band that Howard Jones and Justin Foley were in before they signed Killswitch Enage. It’s true! I swear it! These dudes were really real people even before KsE ever came along.

Blood Has Been Shed are also a band that a lot of people — like me! — have been waiting for a reunion from since, like, forever. Or at least 2009, when BHBS guitarist Corey Unger said that “I have been working on the new album,” which led many of us to believe that he was probably, y’know, working on a new album.

So naturally, when Vince and I interviewed KsE bassist Mike D’Antonio  Mr. Jones later that same year, we asked the vocalist about it. I’ve re-printed this quote about a bajillion times now, but it’s never not-relevant to the discussion of a possible BHBS reunion, so here it is again:

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It’s that time again! I am re-invading the Metal Injection Livecast this Sunday night, and this time, I’m bringing reinforcements: MetalSucks columnist/dude from The Austerity Program, Justin Foley, arguably the only member of the MS team who is an even bigger prick than I am. As usual, I have no idea what we’ll be talking about, but I know it will be assloads of fun, and I know I won’t be anywhere within five hundred feet of sobriety, and I’m reasonably certain that Justin is going to do something to make us all feel incredibly uncomfortable because he has a serious talent for that kind of thing, so it should be a good time all around.

Tune in this Sunday from 7pm – 9pm Eastern. The show will stream live right here. You can be even chime in by calling us at 646-929-1357. Don’t miss it!

-AR

Maybe we shoulda called it MetaSucks?

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley responded to Dr. Katrina McFerran’s study on teens, depression, and music. Then Dr. McFerran responded to Justin’s response. Then Justin responded to McFerran’s response to his response. Then I went permanently cross-eyed.
• We debuted new music by Keith Merrow’s Demisery.
• We spoke to Corey Lowery from Dark New Day and Eye Empire.
• We checked out the latest release from Astomatous and H20, Ringworm, Mindsnare, and Soul Search.
• We showed you some nice photos from both Day 1 and Day 2 of The Metal Suckfest.
• We counted down The Seven Most Metal Video Games Ever Made.
• We were bummed to learn that guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries are leaving Chimaira at the end of the year.
• We were even more bummed to see Chris Barnes shilling for used cars.
• We argued about the best metal albums of the 90s.
• We found something even worse than Lulu: LIVE Lulu.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t gotten blackout drunk in a week.

-AR

Last month, the University of Melbourne sent out apress release regarding a study recently completed by Dr. Katrina McFerran. Entitled “Heavy metal music has negative impacts on youth,” the press release claimed that Dr. McFerran’s research demonstrated that “Young people at risk of depression are more likely to listen habitually and repetitively to heavy metal music.” The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley took issue with this study and the subsequent press release in an editorial we published on Tuesday; then Dr. McFerran herself responded yesterday; and now, in what we swear up and down will be our last word on the topic, Justin will respond to the response in his post below. Enjoy, and try not to go cross-eyed.

TL;DR – Just read the first paragraph.

Dr. McFerran’s reply, while appreciated, is totally inadequate.

I was careful not to point to her directly in the previous piece I wrote.  Other than expressing some skepticism about the way that the data was analyzed, I kept in mind that the whole problem could have been the result of the University’s PR department going off the rails and hijacking the results of her study.  While this may still be the case, Dr. McFerran has had at least two opportunities to clear the air on a misinterpretation of the work that she and her team did, both in yesterday’s post on MetalSucks, and on Metal Insider.  In both cases, she dodged the question about why the University trumpeted her study as saying that heavy metal causes negative impacts. She seems very nice and the thoughts she shared on her field of study are interesting, but that’s all beside the point.  And the point is that she’s part of this dishonesty.

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Last month, the University of Melbourne sent out a press release regarding a study recently completed by Dr. Katrina McFerran. Entitled “Heavy metal music has negative impacts on youth,” the press release claimed that Dr. McFerran’s research demonstrated that “Young people at risk of depression are more likely to listen habitually and repetitively to heavy metal music.” The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley took issue with this study and the subsequent press release in an editorial we published yesterday; however, since we like to represent as many different view points as possible here on MetalSucks, we also offer Dr. McFerran the chance to respond. Read her thoughts on the matter below.

The media needs controversy to be able to get anyone’s attention.  Although I don’t feel as maddened by this as Justin does, I do think it is a bizarre premise for what used to be called “the news” — but things change.  And one thing I have learned from my recent media experience is that I will not mistake “media” for “facts” again.  In fact, what I have learned is that modern-day media provides a space where it is possible to offer a commentary on facts, without feeling obliged to be completely accurate in that process.  I learned this after reading the first report of my research in a large local newspaper following an interview with the reporter.  I had enjoyed the interview, and thought that I had clarified my position (published at Metal Insider). Yet the headline for his story was “Metal causes depression.” And, just to be brief, I think that is a ridiculous, unfounded statement – there is a significant correlation between metal and depression, as shown in many studies, but it is not causative.  Music does not cause problems, but people with problems often turn to music for a range of reasons. But to finish responding to Justin, my understanding is that the commentary provided by any media forum is purposefully biased to convey their beliefs, and big media giants have a commitment to making money as well as providing a commentary, so they produce stuff that gets people’s attention.  That’s a bit different to sites such as this, which Justin described to me as “a somewhat satirical, somewhat serious blog about heavy metal music.” So it offers a different kind of commentary. But those big media folk certainly know how to get people’s attention.

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TL;DR – University of Melbourne announces a recent study saying it proves heavy metal is a negative influence.  Justin reads the study and says the University announcement is basically one big lie.  He covers some of the detail in longer sentences than usual (yikes), then says the University should get it shit together on this.  Also, it turns out Van Canto have a new record out, and they are still terrible.

Popular media was busy last week trumpeting the announced results of a recent University of Melbourne study.  A lot of the hype was around the claim made in the headline in the University’s press announcement that “Heavy metal music has negative impacts on youth.”  It states that Dr. Katrina McFerran, a senior lecturer in Music Therapy, has found that young people at risk of depression are more likely to listen to heavy metal in a negative way.

A quick Google news search for “heavy metal” “study” this morning yields twenty-two separate stories (about three weeks later), and all of them are about this.  Surveying of these stories shows some range of content, from the study’s correlation between liking metal and high risk for psychological distress all the way to linking metal with potential suicide.  In any case, they all draw from the language in the press release about the new study McFerran has done.

I asked Dr. McFerran for a copy of the study, and she was kind enough to provide one.  I have spent some time reading through the study and can tell you this:

The press release is complete bullshit.

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When I was fifteen years old, I had to sneak out of my parents’ house on a Friday night to go see GWAR and the Misfits play a Halloween show. Then I had to conceal my clothing from my parents, seeing as it was, y’know, soaked in blood, urine, and semen.

Here we are all these years later, pretty much right at the anniversary of that show, and GWAR are on a popular, mainstream late-night talk show. And yet, somehow, they seem no less rebellious than they ever were.

Which is all my way of saying, “GWAR rules.” And they do. They rule. Hard.

ANYWAY, here are some things we did this week:

• Speaking of GWAR, Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie himself provided us with more insights into the NFL. Meanwhile, several members of the Relapse Records family gave us the skinny on the new NHL season, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley pondered the pros and cons of new technology in music.
• We debuted Jucifer’s new video, for the song “Hiroshima.”
• We got exclusive specs on Contain Us, the new box set from The Devin Townsend Project.
• We spoke to Steel Panther and Niilo Sevänen from Insomnium.
• We checked out the latest release from Carnifex.
• We continued the Countdown to the Metal Suckfest and defended Danzig.
• We counted down the eleven cardinal rules of attending a concert.
• We wondered if nu-dethcore is the next big thing.
• We cried because even ex-members of Metallica make bad music now.
• We argued about the best debut albums of the past twenty-five years.

And that’s it! Have a delightful weekend, gang. We’ll see ya Monday.

-AR

“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – Abraham Maslow

TL;DR – A software company lets you sound like you can play bitchin’ guitar.  Periphery fans may wring their hands, but Brian Eno probably wouldn’t care.  Justin thinks it’s fine as a toy but uses the expressed complaints as a way to hate on Autotune.  Also, Van Canto is terrible.

Axl tweeted a link to an interesting article the other day from the Heavy Blog is Heavy about a piece of software by 8Dio called “Progressing Metal.”  This program makes you to sound like Meshuggah without having to go through the trouble of playing a guitar.  Instead, you just plink something into a keyboard, run it through the magic bits and, presto, you’re Fredrik Thordendal.  Sorta.

This freaks some people out.  The accompanying blog post, for instance, ponders a question: is this just too much?  Like, if some guy can sit down at his computer with a whole lot of patience and a software program and, some time later, pop out the next Chaosphere, then… well, something bad, right?  Because that seems… unfair?

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[Justin Foley -- MS columnist, guitarist/vocalist in The Austerity Program and... <scoff> Yankees fan -- was so inspired by yesterday's The Top Fifteen Reasons That Metallica Are the Yankees of Metal post that he decided to write a response. Here it is! -Ed.]

Vince,

It’s really sad that you just won’t let things go.  So you like the Mets.  But they’re losers.  So you hate winners.  Just keep reading those three sentences over and over until they sink in.

Metallica are not the Yankees of metal.  Consider just this: the Yankees are still playoff contenders every year and likely have many more WS rings in front of them.  Metallica … what could the future hold for them?  I’ll tell you what: one thing – Gene Simmons.  Gene Simmons is right now just waiting by his phone for them to call him so that he can take over.  He’ll talk to them about staging a ‘Nothing But Denim’ tour, partnering with novelty acts for marketing purposes and then, when it’s time for your target demographic to consider it, ease into casket promotion.  He’s ready.  Everything else at this point is just postponing the inevitable.

So let’s review your reasons and why they’re (mostly) wrong.

15.  No. The Yanks have had ups and downs, but at least several Golden Eras. In the late 90′s-early 00′s, for example, the Yankees were a legitimately incredible baseball team. But anything after “And Justice…” is basking in the glow of an earlier light.

14.  Huh?

13.  The Yankees have the biggest payroll in baseball and the best championship record of any professional sports team.  Maybe Metallica have the same?  I don’t know.  But also keep in mind that the Yankees have always been in the Bronx.  Although it seemed to require a full raping of the city/state funds to do it, they still remain on 161st Street.  Can’t say that about the Dodgers and Giants.

12.  Absolutely.  And that’s why they’re both successfully ripped off by bootleggers.

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Left to right, in front of the Baltimore Marriot: Hozi, Ben, Quan, Dana, the bellhop.

Helms Alee have put out the best record of the year so far with Weatherhead. I am thrilled that their tour gives me the chance to interview them, because it means I get to do things like write this opening paragraph, and maybe one person in the world will read this article and then go listen to them and be blown away by this band like I am. I cannot think of any real band that so deftly covers such a wide range. With the same three people playing the same three instruments, the most recent record continues what they did on 2009’s Night Terror – shifting from an ethereal shimmer to a massive whallop to a hypnotic drone, often in the same song. And while others seem to do so much less trying so much harder, Helms Alee is truly fantastic in part because their choices never seem forced or artificial. This band is incredible and if you can see them live, see them live.

They’re currently in the middle of a month-long tour with Torche and Big Business. I called them on the phone on Monday while they were in Baltimore. On the line were drummer Hozoji Annie Matheson-Margullis (aka Hozi), guitarist Ben Verellen, bassist Dana James, and merch man Quan. They also said that their ‘business associate’ Mike was on the line, but I don’t think that he said anything.

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is just completed a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here, day three here and day four here; the fifth and final day is below… enjoy!

Saturday, May 21, 2011
New York City

Back at home after the whole thing is over.  Here’s one of the many things that no one ever tells you about when you think that you want to be in a band: some time not too long after going out on some sort of tour, you should set aside a few hours with a bucket and a bunch of rags and then just wipe all of your equipment down.  I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon doing just that and boy, the water in that bucket gets nasty quick.  What lives on the floors of these clubs that we go see bands in?  What calls those puddles of stale beer its home?  What foul creature sneaks into venues late at night and hides stage monitors deep in its own crevices, so that they are bathed in the funk of the undead?  Well, the amps are clean anyway.  Sitting back in the practice space, ready to make more music.

I figured I’d take the last of these entries to talk about the best case scenario for playing a show.  Thursday night is a good enough example of that. We were third out of four.

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“Ooh no!”

“Macho Man” Randy Savage has perished. My father and I were actually at his first wedding, which is to say, we were at Summer Slam ’91. Vince and I are so bummed right now… I don’t think I can even go outside. I need to curl up with YouTube and remember a time when the “Macho Man” really did seem invincible.

We’ll never forget you, Mr. Savage.

Maybe this will cheer you up?

• We lied and said that Iwrestledabearonce were becoming a black metal band. Then, depending on your perspective, we either made it better or made it worse by debuting a new track from the band.
• We also debuted a stretched-out version of Hammerfall’s “Hearts on Fire.”
• Our list of the The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists continued.
• We spoke to Max Cavalera from Cavalera Conspiracy and Soulfly, Dean Herrera and Henry Selva from The Human Abstract, and the dudes from Noisear.
• We enjoyed a series of exclusive tour blogs from both The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley and Woods of Ypres’ Shane Madden.
• We gushed over Anaal Nathrakh’s Passion.
• We wondered why elitists find some deathcore bands acceptable and others unacceptable.
• We declared metal the winner in the war on grunge.
• We expressed our enthusiasm for Victory Records’ latest sign, Design the Skyline.
• We gave you a detailed analysis of the lyrics for the new Limp Bizkit single.
• We declared drinking to be for pussies.

Next week crack the top ten of our ongoing guitarists list, and, at least to the best of my knowledge, do not aid any bands in playing a prank on the public. And hopefully no one else we liked better than Fred Durst dies.

-AR

Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here and day three here; the fourth day is below… enjoy!

Providence, Rhode Island

We are in the capitol of the smallest state in the US, the Ocean State.  Tonight’s venue is nestled into the downtown, combining an art gallery with a restaurant with a bar with a place for bands like us to play.  Charming little city you got here, Rhode Island.  Nice place; you should keep it.

Funny thing that we’re playing P-town tonight.  A few years back when we put out our first record, we didn’t understand too well how this whole ‘marketing and promotion’ thing worked with records.  So, rather than put out some materials that talked seriously about how important our artistic vision was and how we were for fans of this band and influenced by that scene, we chose instead to make up some bullshit story about how we were suing our record label because they wouldn’t allow us to issue patents on our song.  I don’t know what we thought we were going to accomplish by this, but we thought it was a fun little goof and that no one would actually believe it.

Wrong.  Turns out a bunch of people were mad about some assholes from New York City that no one had ever heard of loudly broadcasting legal action against the beloved label that put out records by Cave In and Botch.  Man, the things people will send to a total stranger over email… it’s just unkind.

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! You can read his account of days one and two of the mini-trek here; the third day is below… enjoy!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011
New York

Philadelphia, PA last night, aka Quaker City.  We arrived in town with hunger in the belly and a bit of time to kill.  This second thing nearly killed us.  Thad and I never have time to kill; work, family, odd projects, people who need setting straight on the Internet – all of these things consume more time than we have and so things like leisure and friendships are usually left unattended.  And so, an hour or two after getting ‘the best vegetarian cheesesteak in Philly’ (it wasn’t bad – the bread’s the key thing) we had a few hours to burn.

We got a couple of beers (in daylight!  I mean, that’s straight up “Theatre of Pain” decadence right there) we ambled over to catch an early showing of Takashi Mike’s 13 Assassins.  Coliseum had seen it recently and said it was like ½ as good as Thor which means they thought it was awesome.  (The band is completely bonkers about Thor.)

Thad and I settled in to a theatre sparsely populated by seniors and the unemployed and were soon completely assaulted by the film.  I’m not going to spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it, but it was pretty obvious that the whole thing was written backwards.  Basically the cinematic equivalent of a good Helmet song: here’s the gigantic riff that we’ll kill them with at the end, so what else do we need to put in the song to get to that riff and make it destroy?  Props to the movie also for giving us our theme for the trip: TOTAL MASSACRE. (Sometimes “massacre” isn’t enough.)

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Our number one homie Justin Foley is currently doing a mini-tour with his band, The Austerity Program, and graciously offered to do a tour blog for us. We can never say “no” to Justin and wouldn’t much want to anyway, so we agreed! Below please find his musings on the first two days of the mini-trek…

Monday, May 16, 7:43 AM
New York City

It’s early.  It always takes me a few hours to get to bed after playing, as the electricity of it needs a bit of time to bleed from my system ,at least enough for sleep to take hold.  Since we got back to the house pretty quick last night I just stayed up until 3 or so doing dumb shit like paying my bills.  Then, when my daughter was up at 7 I leapt up to get her.  So, yeah, now she’s watching the end of Elmo’s World and I have hit that “whut the fuuuuck” thing that happens when you’ve gotten 3 and a half hours of sleep and got the whooole day ahead of you.

Last night was us playing our New York residency, a little music box venue called Union Pool.  I like the place a lot – it’s a small enough venue with a bit of a weird theatrical feel to it: little light bulbs frame the stage for black-t-shirted bands like us.  We always have to play Tetris with our amp setup and barely manage to figure it out each time.

The load-in for an event like this is always some low level of absurd.  Four sets of guys, all dressed pretty much the same way, all wheeling and carrying amp after amp after amp into a not-so-big room, all to be stacked on top of/behind/in front of one another and quickly rearranged when it’s some band’s 26 minutes to play their music.  Certainly some rational observer would look at it all and say “why don’t you all just take the best collection of those boxes and just all play through that?”  For some reason, rational observer, it just doesn’t work like that – and I say this as the band that is about the worst offender of the “lbs of heavy shit per band member” rule.  And so we all politely and determinedly got our piles of gear in and sort of settled.  The sound guy bit his lip as it all unflolded.

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I was hanging out at a friend’s house a few weeks back and the conversation drifted to a favorite topic of mine – the ridiculous text that labels often use to sell bands.  I thought I’d seen it pretty bad on some Relapse topspines, but my friend started laughing as he strolled over to his bookshelf.

“I mean,” I said, “some people are apparently unaware that words have meanings and that language has conventions.  These are the basis of verbal communication.  Riffs don’t tear buildings down.  I’m sorry, but they don’t.”

“Ho ho, just you wait,” he said, flipping through pages and pages of the same promo photo that all metal bands take these days.  “Hold it… hold it… aha!  The Profound Lore ad.”  He started reading it aloud.  An hour later we had both burned through all copies of his four-year subscription. We were nearly hoarse from laughing and reading out in our lousy Vincent Price imitations.

Okay, before I get into this, I want to say that I am not picking on Profound Lore because I don’t like the label.  I’ve got a bunch of stuff from them and a lot of it — especially Krallice — is amazing.  Really – amazing stuff.  I also don’t think that they’re alone in writing abhorrent promo material; it’s worth talking about because almost every metal label tries to sell their bands with this approach.  In fact, if you follow the PL Twitter feed, you’ll find they consistently work a compelling message about what they’re up to in 140 characters.  And although I would murder everyone at Hydra Head if they tried this kind of shit with us, I don’t see it as a reflection of the band at all when someone at their label decides to start telling tall, tall tales.

But please allow me to introduce Exhibit A, the only exhibit we’ll need: ONE SENTENCE from a write-up for a Profound Lore release.

Ahem.

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Yes, this is TAP’s actual equipment, and yes, it is awesome.

Hopefully by now all MetalSucks readers are familiar with The Austerity Program, whose guitarist/vocalist, Justin Foley, has written some great articles and conducted some amazing interviews on our behalf over the past couple of years. He also introduced us to the idea of the Taco Riff, a concept that still seems really confusing to a lot of people, but resulted in some really fun articles nonetheless. (Go here to read everything Justin has ever written for us.)

You know what else is fun? Seeing The Austerity Program live. I actually think they’re like five times as heavy (and they’re definitely ten times as loud) in a concert setting, and Foley’s front mannerisms have a kind of Baptist preacher quality to them, which makes their shows a whole different experience from listening to their records. If you’ve seen them before you’re probably already stoked to see them again, and if you haven’t, well, you should get on that.

Here’s your shot — the band are doing some dates in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in April and May, including a bunch with the always-amazing Coliseum. This is “as close to a tour as we get this year, we think,” the band says, so do not squander this opportunity.

Also, to our fellow New Yorkers — apparently the setlist for the 4/22 show is gonna be completely different from the setlist for the 5/15 show, so you should go twice, ’cause it will be a completely different experience each time. Also ’cause I told you to.

Here are dates…

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Sooo… just thought we’d take this opportunity to remind you yet again that MetalSucks, with a special assist from The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley, will be presenting Heavy Metal Literature Night at at Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn this Thursday, February 17. Members of God Forbid, Tombs, and, of course, this very website, will be doing readings from from some of metal’s greatest tomes, including Motley Crue’s The Dirt, Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods, Slash’s Slash, Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and more — kinda like what Will Forte does in the below video. Only we don’t make one of the biggest bombs of the year and get fired from Saturday Night Live at the end.

And, oh yeah, Vince is DJing!!! Come get st00pid with us. Thursday night. See ya there.