Monday’s post on Misery Signals’ pending new album led me into YouTubeLand where I proceded to spend too much time listening to old Misery Signals tracks. But it also led me to discover something I wasn’t expecting at all. I was aware of the free metal soundtrack to the Homefront video game released earlier this year, but I honestly didn’t pay it much attention because it was a covers album. Shame on me, because I just discovered Misery Signals’ cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon classic cut “Us and Them” and my socks have been knocked all the way into New Jersey. Like all truly great covers, Misery Signals have made this song their own while still managing to stay true to the original spirit of the song; it starts off similar to the original but all that goes out the window when the chorus kicks in just before the 2-minute mark. Holy fuck, I’ve never heard Pink Floyd sound so heavy and epic! Misery Signals also introduce some rhythmic and harmonic variations throughout, presented a marked contrast to the original that somehow just works.

I’ve always wanted to put together a comp of famous metal bands covering Floyd. Shadows Fall did that cover of “Welcome to the Machine” a while back (that was actually my introduction to SF!), Nachtmystium’s past two albums have basically been giant tributes to Floyd, Foo Fighters and Brian May did “Have a Cigar” and tons of other bands have covered Floyd throughout the years… but to my knowledge there’s never been one cohesive Metal Pink Floyd comp. “Us and Them” wouldn’t've been on my short list of songs ripe for metal covers, but I absolutely love this version. I always thought “Fearless” would be perfect (Junius would tear that song a new arsehole!), maybe “Hey You” (Queensryche!), something from The Final Cut by Opeth, any of the middle three tracks from Animals (heyo BTBAM!)… we could skip “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Money” (too obvious and Korn already butchered the former). Any other ideas?

-VN

Post-script: A forum thread from 2006 on Ultimate Metal turned up this version of “Run Like Hell” by Kittie! Best thing they’ve ever recorded. Go figure.

This week’s column does feature a few new releases, but that doesn’t mean this is a good week in metal. Hella’s new album is my personal highlight. Let’s take a look at what’s new this week after the jump.

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I’ve never been in a Kittie fan in the past — in fact, it would be fare to say that I’ve often hated their work — but, to my shock and awe, I don’t have anything especially nasty to say about their new song, “We are the Lamb.”

In fact, I don’t have anything nasty to say at all. It’s not innovative and it’s not gonna make me run out and buy the band’s new album, but I don’t recognize it as someone else’s riff, either. It’s catchy. It’s competent. The guitar solo is fun. In short — it’s NTS. Not too shabby.

So, there ya have it. Sometimes I have almost-nice things to say about bands I don’t like. See? I have an open mind after all.

Check out the track here, then let me know whether or not I’m crazy in the comments section. Kittie’s new album, I’ve Failed You, comes out August 30 on eOne.

-AR

Much like fellow Midwesterners Lazarus A.D., Illinois’ Diamond Plate refuse to just be another re-thrash band with no new ideas.They’ve always been a little more brutal than the froo-froo “I just found out about Exodus” crap that’s been forcefed down metalheads’ throats since about 2006 or so; their music is punctuated by beyond-their-age songwriting abilities, and structured solos that give life to their music.

This blogger ordered the group’s self-released Relativity EP on a whim for like $5 after what might have been a few too many at the pub and a subsequent late-night internet cruising session. And this blogger fucking loved it. So it was nice to see Earache pick the band up in October of last year. (Apparently head honcho Digby Pearson dug the band for quite some time and personally offered them the deal. No big surprise, I suppose.)

Now, gearing up for the release of the band’s debut full-length, Generation Why?, Earache has launched a stream of the song “At The Mouth Of Madness” (above). The album, which was produced by Neil Kernon (Judas Priest, Nevermore, Deicide), is out August 29, and apparently they’re hitting the road with Kittie and fellow Chi-towners Dirge Within later this summer. Dates after the jump!

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Making fun of juggalos is passe at this point; been there, done that, 100 times over, and everyone gets the point. But posting the annual infomercial Psychopathic Records puts out to promote the Gathering of the Juggalos is something of a ritual, always good for a few lulz, and possibly even entertaining.

Once you get through the so-uncool-at-this-point-that-maybe-it’s-cool-again Star Wars-style intro, you’ll discover that Vanilla Ice has sunken to an even lower low and is now a juggalo. In addition to the usual assortment of interchangeable clown-faced rappers, this year’s lineup also brings a whole new set of artists scraping the bottom of the barrel that’s become their career: CKY, Dope, Saliva, Vanilla Ice (obvs), Xzibit, Kittie and M.C. Hammer. In the “Are you sure you really want to stoop so low?” department we have Ice Cube, George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars and Busta Rhymes, who all must be getting hella paid. And last but not least, the comedy stage will feature Brian Posehn and classic wrestlers Iron Sheik and Rowdy Roddy Piper (zuh?).

Should be an interesting one. Perhaps an MS reader braver than us can go on an anthropological mission on August 11-14. I already had the juggalo experience of a lifetime, and I think that’s enough for me.

-VN

I like doing MetalSucks, in part, because I really do learn something new each and every week. You know what I learned this week, for example?

FUCK VAMPIRES.

Here are some other things we learned this week:

• The dudes in Lazarus A.D. like MetalSucks.
• Swamp Thing and Indian have awesome new music coming out.
• The Human Abstract’s A.J. Minette and Travis Richter know a lot about music theory, Mr. Big’s Eric Martin knows a lot about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Vicious Rumors’ Geoff Thorpe knows a lot about line-up changes.
• The new Rotten Sound album is choice.
• Earache Records is a good label.
• Kittie are bad at making music videos.
• TesseracT are tardy to the djent party.
• Joey Belladonna still can’t sing.
• Rites of Darkness III is gonna be a great festival for bands no one has ever heard of.
• Losing someone you admire still sucks.

I’ll be flying solo for much of next week as Vince and Kip head down to Austin for SXSW and I stay behind to ensure you are as irritated as possible. Won’t you come back and learn some more with me?

-AR

So I’m not a Kittie fan, and I’m especially not a fan of Kittie’s song “My Plague,” because it seems like a pretty blatant rip-off of Lamb of God’s “Laid to Rest,” which itself owes something pretty substantial to Testament’s “Into the Pit.” But whether or not you’re a Kittie fan, if you have functioning eyeballs, you can only ask one question after watching the band’s new video — “Is this real?”

So first of all, the video looks like it was shot on a cell phone. Not a good cell phone, either. Like, my iPhone takes way prettier movies than this. Maybe it was like a Flip cam or something? Those don’t always react so good to low-light situations. In any case, it might have been worth it for whomever was making this video to get his or her hands on a decent camera.

For another thing, there’s a piece of live footage at roughly the sixteen second mark that gets reused around the 1:12 mark. It’s not even subtle — the guitarist (no I do no know what her name is and no I will not look it up) stops playing, looks out at the crowd, and throws her arm up.

That’s when I stopped watching the clip. Because it means that not only does this video look like poo, but that there was so little actual usable footage that barely more than a minute into the video, they had to start recycling what they had. I don’t even understand. It’s not like they were using film and it was costing them money. Just take, like, ten seconds more crappy cell phone footage and you’re all set. Heck, I bet you can find some on YouTube. But no, that would require maybe an entire minute’s worth of extra work, so fuck that, right? TO THE BAR!

-AR

It goes without saying that an attractive women at a metal show is about as common as a MetalSucks reader who’s seen a vagina somewhere other than the internet. That’s why things like Revolver‘s “12 Hottest Chicks In Metal” calendar are little more than a cheap lie: a more honest title would be “Complete List of Hot Chicks in Metal.”

With such a shortage of ass, metal hotties are in high demand, and men are forced to make tough choices — and what tougher choice is there to make than the classic game of FUCK, MARRY, OR KILL? If you aren’t familiar, FMK is a game in which you are given a list of three names and must choose which one you would fuck, marry and kill. I figured it would be good practice for readers to choose which metal hotties they would eff, marry and kill — check out the menu after the break!

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The Summer metal tour market for 2010 is crowded, yo.We’ve got the older and mainstream metal-skewed Rockstar Mayhem Fest (Korn, Zombie, 5FDP, Atreyu, Winds of Plague, Hatebreed) the Rockstar-branded radio metal “Uproar” Tour sure to be a hit in Red States (Disturbed, A7X, Hellyeah), the Christian, metalcore and Christian metalcore fest known as The Cool Tour (As I Lay Dying, Underoath, War of Ages, Blessthefall, and uh… BTBAM) and the sexiest of all sex kittens, Summer Slaughter (Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, other cool bands). And, if you count 6 dates as a “tour” you’ve got Ozzfest, which does a surprisingly good job of combining the old (Ozzy, Motley Crue, Rob Halford, BLS) with the new/cool (Kingdom of Sorrow, Skeletonwitch, Goatwhore, Saviours).

So with all that on our plates, we’ve got yet another tour coming down the pipe this summer? As you’ve no doubt gathered from this article’s headline and image, yes, indeed we do.

My thoughts on the 2010 Thrash & Burn lineup — and dates — after the jump.

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Let’s just get right to it: Kittie are going to be doing support for Insane Clown Posse on that group’s upcoming U.S. tour. Other artists on the bill will include Kottonmouth Kings, Coolio, and Necro, who you may remember as the “death rapper” (Still not sure what the fuck that means – in the pre-bling days all rappers talked about death a lot, so…) who dropped off of Sounds of the Underground in 2007 after getting heckled on a daily basis. (When we saw the tour, he tried to lead the crowd in a chant of “FUCK YOU FAT FAGGOT” against one such heckler. So Necro is intelligent and charming.)

This is the company Kittie will keep: a bunch of lame white-boy rappers, and Coolio.

Jesus H. Christ. Has it really come to this, ladies? I mean, I don’t really have anything against Coolio besides his own ridiculousness (there’s no joke I could write about him that would be funnier than just looking at the dude), but Necro strikes me as a true cretin (that “fat faggot” chant really rubbed me the wrong way, in case you can’t tell), and I gotta say, I have a retarded cousin, and calling ICP or Kottonmouth Kings “retarded” is a true insult to my mentally challenged kin. I may not like Kittie’s music, but they’re better than this.

-AR

What the hell, dude? First Marduk front dude Mortuus hit a kid who jumped on stage to try and hug him, then The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad followed suit; now some guy jumped on stage during a recent Kittie performance and tried to kiss front lady Morgan Lander… and she cracks him in the balls! So for once, a fan got a beat down and he actually deserved it.

Only problem is, it’s not a fan this time – it’s Tyler Whore, bassist for Sucked by a Sucking Suck. He’s apparently friends with the band. Guess Lander didn’t recognize him? Either that, or it was, uh, a Freudian slip, I guess.

Here’s video of the incident, courtest Hardtime.ca:

Thanks to the always-helpful Saul Hudson for the tip…

-AR

So this is pretty ri-goddamn-diculous.

Reader Justin Omidian just brought to our attention that the Kittie song “My Plague,” from their most recent release, In the Black, is a blatant rip-off of Lamb of God’s “Laid to Rest.”

Seriously. As Vince noted, it’s totally egregious. I can’t believe Kittie ever thought they’d get away with this – in fact, I think the only reason it hasn’t made headlines ’til now is because no Lamb of God fans actually like Kittie.

Check it out. Here’s Kittie’s “My Plague”…

…and on the off-chance you’ve never heard it, here’s Lamb of God’s “Laid to Rest.”

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…but apparently she’s going to be the new keyboardist in Winds of Plague, at least for their upcoming tour. A press release tells us that she used to be in Kittie and Day of Contempt, if that means anything to anyone.

Here’s what I’d like to know: do you think they ever even for a second considered getting a dude keyboard player? I’m not at all opposed to chicks in metal bands, but it’s not like Kristen Randall did backing vocals or whatever – literally any capable keyboard player should, theoretically, be able to fill Randall’s shoes. If a woman happens to be the best musician for the job, swell. But if you’re just swapping out one pretty face for another…

Get WOP tour dates here.

-AR