MetalSucks

You gotta hand it to the folks at Roadrunner: they know how to promote a record, and they know how to use the internet to their advantage.

So. Following on the heels of giving away new songs by Dream Theater and DevilDriver for free, the label is currently offering a new Killswitch Engage track, “Reckoning,” right now, for free. Download it here.

The song will appear on the band’s new, self-titled album, which comes out June 30.

After you’ve given it a listen, come back here and let us know what you think.

-AR

Now it seems to me that Believer have done it all wrong. We’ll get to the actual content of the album later, but for now let’s just talk about band reunions for a minute. What we’ve seen over that last couple of years especially is that metal bands usually reunite for the purpose of touring only; the bands do a couple of tours state-side, play top slots at European festivals where they get to rock the biggest crowds of their careers, prove that they’re not too old and that their music is still relevant even to a new generation, and then they slip off the face of the earth again after being handsomely rewarded in cold hard cash. Touring is hard work for old farts, you didn’t think they’d do it without some financial compensation, did you?

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When @AlishaThrashion tweeted from the Music As a Weapon tour stop in New Jersey on Wednesday that there was a Hasid in the moshpit, I responded with what any skeptical Jew like myself would: “pics or it didn’t happen.” And within a few minutes, I had the above in my inbox.

Pretty awesome (moshpit dude, if you’re reading this — you rule). Metal knows no religious boundaries! So I got to thinkin’… what are some funny Music As A Weapon-related puns we can connect to Jewish themes? (For those who don’t know, your editors are Jewish, so we can make these jokes guilt-free). Bands on the tour are Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil and Chimaira. Examples:

Gifiltefish Engage
The Impossibility of Kvetching
Alice or Just Shvitzing
Down With the 10 Plagues

Winner gets some cool posters and stickers in the mail. Go!

True story (not tr00 story): Vince and I have a friend who is definitely not into metal and, for a very long time, thought Killswitch Engage was called Kill, Switch and Gauge. Y’know, like the world’s most fucked up law firm or something.

Speaking of KsE, here’s what went down this week:

• Even new Killswitch album art makes you guys argue. Sheesh.
• We have an exclusive clip from the new As I Lay Dying DVD!
• We spoke to Cannibal Corpse’s Paul Mazurkiewicz and checked out the new release from Dååth.
• You accused Vince of being a pedophile.
• Best website ever?
• I thought Anso DF’s coverage of Revolver’s Golden Gods Awards was pretty funny, but apparently none of you agree with me.
• Could Slayer and Megadeth really be touring together?!?

Okay. We have a special 4/20 treat for you guys on Monday, plus the triumphant return of Unreadable Band Logo of the Week, so make sure you get your ass back here. ‘Til then, I bid you adieu.

-AR

Looks pretty cool to me. Of course, they always have cool album art/merch, because, well, Mike D’Antonio is the man.

The album still doesn’t have a title SEE BELOW but it’ll be out June 30 on Roadrunner.

UPDATE: So according to a press release we just received, the title of the new Killswitch Engage album is… Killswitch Engage. This is technically the band’s second self-titled release after their 2000 offering released by Ferret. Hm.

-AR

Baseball season officially got underway and New England Metal and Hardcore Fest is coming up next weekend. Surely all is peachy in the world then, yeah? Not so much.

• Dave Mustaine feuded with a mystery band, then kissed and made up before we even knew it.
• Protest the Hero released a new video and gave us a bunch of tickets for their tour to give away.
• We spoke with Daath’s Eyal Levi and TAD/Tadgarden’s Tad.
• Kip W. gave us two recaps (Day 1, Day 2) of our booze-fueled SXSW journey.
• Fear Factory got back together… except not.
• Ya’ll argued about which Mastodon album is the best and whether Jesse or Howard was/is the better KsE frontman.
• Ya’ll argued even more about IWRESTLEDABEARONCE and Oceano.
• We got an exclusive red carpet report from Metallica’s Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

See you next week. New England Metal and Hardcore Fest!!

Some time ago I found this live video of Killswitch Engage performing “Fixation on the Darkness” live in Brooklyn in 2002. Jesse Leach is on vocals, Adam D. still has blonde hair, and the rest of the dudes lack their bushy hair / beards of today. This is right before the band’s popularity exploded; Alive or Just Breathing had just been released, and you can feel the excitement emanating from the band… the performance sounds fucking vicious and passionate.

What I’ve always liked about Killswitch is their every-dude-ness; even though they’re now one of the biggest metal bands in the world, they still seem like normal, chill dudes you’d sit down with for a beer and some fart jokes. Nowhere is that more evident than from this humble performance in a small Brooklyn club. Minus the farts.

-VN

And I don’t mean that as a knock against Killswitch Engage; I don’t think it’s any secret that Vince and myself are both huge fans of this band. But those lo-fi, fan-captured footage of the band performing a new song recently while on the Music as a Weapon tour suggests that their new, still-untitled, Brendan O’Brien-produced album will not be a radical reinvention of their sound.

Then again, what do I know? This isn’t a high quality clip, it’s not the whole song, and I suppose it’s entirely possible the new album will be all industrial, or acoustic, or feature lotsa hip-hop inspired phat beats. But somehow I doubt it…

Killswitch Engage’s latest album drops June 23 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Thanks to MetalSucks Maniac Byron Ward for the tip!

Believer have made a downright biblical return from the dead this year with the release of Gabriel, their first album since 1993’s Dimensions. If you were still stomping and screaming at your parents for attention in the line for the Peter Pan ride at Disneyworld (and I know I was) you might not have been listening to Believer back in the day. However, you may have heard of one of their better known cohorts such as Atheist and Pestilence and much like those bands, Believer were experimenting with a lot of technical brilliance and progressive depth to make some very impressive metal. The day after Gabriel’s March 17th release, vocalist/guitarist Kurt Bachman was kind enough to talk to me about the making of the new record, kids these days, reunion mania and how they never really wanted to be known as a Christian band.

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Get excited. Or angry. Or whatever you get when you find out there’s a new KsE album on the way.

-AR

Have Killswitch Engage reached cultural ubiquity? It’s hard to believe, but — together with original American New Wavers Lamb of God — the Masshole metalcore pioneers have reached the top of the modern metal popularity heirarchy and just might be about to pop mainstream culture’s bubble. The moment of Zen for me came not when Axl and I watched the Hulk-like security guards of New Jersey’s Starland Ballroom sing along to every song at their show there last year, but 10 minutes ago when I realized Killswitch Engage riffs are now being used as samples in hip-hop songs.

Is the party over for Killswitch or has it just begun?

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As many of you have already noticed, The Gauntlet is now reporting that Killswitch Engage have been added to the main stage of this summer’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival, which is good news for metal fans but bad news for the organizers of Ozzfest.

Just as importantly, though, Lambgoat has revealed that Blood Has Been Shed – a.k.a. the band Howard Jones and Justin Foley were in prior to joining KsE – are on the verge of making their (hopefully) glorious comeback.

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It was fun to speculate last about with whom Slayer might spend the summer touring, but now we have an official answer: as rumored, they’ll be co-headlining the Rockstar Energey Mayhem Festival with their ‘07 tourmates, Marilyn Manson.

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While we had just planned on catching Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil and Chimaira on this Spring’s Music As A Weapon Tour and leaving before Disturbed hit the stage, it may be that we won’t have to. The latest round of announced tour dates includes an April 15th date in Lowell, Mass, a Boston exurb on the New Hampshire border that’s only 40 miles (and 2 days) away from the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival in Worcester, Mass. Could we be in for some more additions to the Friday night lineup?

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Next week the U.S. gets a new President, thank fucking God, and Relapse Records is celebrating by issuing a 7″ box set of their This Comp Kills Fascists compilation. How fucking awesome is that? Until then, here’s what we’ll mull over during the long weekend (MLK day in the U.S.):

• Would you like to suck my cock, Berzerker? Or would you just like to look at some bloody titties, Berzerker?
• Lamb of God announce most awesomest tour ever with As I Lay Dying (meh), Children of Bodom, God Forbid and Municipal Waste, while Killswitch Engage, Chimaira and Lacuna Coil will be worth the ticket price as long as we leave before Disturbed goes on.
• Best soundboard ever. (Hint: fun with David Lee Roth sound bites)
• Bring Me The Hair Irons Horizon continued being boring.
• We spoke with Gojira’s Joe Duplantier and Animosity’s Leo Miller.
• Behemoth’s Nergal showed his face, while this dude just buried his in a bunch of watermelons.

When it was announced last month that Killswitch Engage would be on Disturbed’s fourth Music as a Weapon tour, we were flooded with so many irate e-mails from readers you’d have thought that Howard Jones had just been caught raping hundreds of metal fans’ mothers; KSE fans just couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of the American New Wavers acting as support for one of the most love ‘em or loathe ‘em nu metal acts on the planet. We didn’t report on the development at the time, though. Frankly, I figured it was just one of those things; sometimes awesome bands tour with crappy ones. You can’t please all the people all the time.

But now that Chimaira and Lacuna Coil have joined the tour, I gotta ask: what the frick?

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Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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The results are in from our last poll, in which you voted by a landslide that Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy was the best new album from a legacy act in 2008. 2009 is right around the corner, and it’s already shaping up to be a pretty big year in metal if for no other reason than the fact that 5 of the original “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” bands are all releasing new records within two months of each other. Which “big”* release are you looking forward to most?

n

*Yes, we know this is a small sampling of new records slated for ‘09. For the sake of this poll I’m just concerned with the bigger releases.

We just received a press release via pneumatic tube here at the MetalSucks Mansion confirming what we’ve known through the rumor mill for some time — Brendan O’Brien will be producing the new Killswitch Engage record, due in Spring 2009.

This is kind of surprising… but kind of not.

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In the spirit of our infamous Cripple on Cripple and Beard on Beard interviews (with Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman and Killswitch Engage’s Justin Foley, respectively), we here at the MetalSucks School of Rabbinical Studies would like to introduce a new feature we hope will be ongoing but fear won’t, due to the, err… somewhat limited pool of jews in metal. Our first target was Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy, a Long Island jew if ever there was one; dude flat out denied the interview request. Feh. Thankfully Eyal Levi from Daath was there to save the day like Moses parting the Red Sea. Eyal, ever the mensch, was even so kind as to bless us with an mp3 of Daath’s brand new song “Sharpen the Blades” from their new album The Concealers, which should hit stores some time in ‘09. After the jump, read my [Jewish] exchange with Eyal and download the new track for the price of a mouse click.

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