Here’s some stuff that’s not-at-all-terrible. The PRP has broken news on rumors — and even initial dates — for two very big tours, both of which you’ll want to see, and both of which will kick off early next year. And so –

• Lamb of God will do a headlining run, with support coming from The Acacia Strain. Which is a CRUSHING bill; like, a “I don’t know how I’m gonna survive the evening” kinda bill. I dunno if more bads will be added to the line-up or not (Remember the old days, when there were often just two bands on the tour?), but right now the only date which has leaked is January 24 at Irving Plaza in New York.
• Machine Head, meanwhile, will hit the road with Suicide Silence, Darkest Hour, and Rise to Remain. Hey, three outta four ain’t bad! Machine Head and Darkest Hour alone would have been enough to get me through the door, and Suicide Silence are always fun, too. The dates which have leaked for that tour are after the jump.

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UPDATE, 11:47 am EDT: Now there’s a teaser of a new song and a release date, too. So the release of this info definitely could have been better organzied, eh? Anyways, check it out below, it sounds pretty good! The album will be out January 24. Thanks to Metal Injection for the latest round of information…

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Yeah my headline is a little misleading. But it got your attention I bet!

ANYWAY, last week, Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe came to the conclusion that his Twitter account just wasn’t enough to express himself fully (which is understandable — dude tweets a LOT, and he’s really funny with that shit, too). And so he started his own Tumblr blog, called Randonesia. And while the first few posts he did were, in his own words, “just me figuring this thing out,” his most recent entry, published earlier this week, is an in-depth discussion of one of those topics which is incredibly important, but somehow seems to be rarely discussed in public: album sequencing.

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Chris Adler is a man that needs no introduction.  He’s revered worldwide for his skills behind the drum kit and his band-Lamb of God-is absolutely one of the biggest metal bands in America today.  You’d think after becoming so renowned as a drummer and having his band take part in such huge events (world tour as direct support for Metallica anyone?!) he’d take it easy and just rest on his laurels.  That’s completely the opposite of the truth.

Chris continues to work harder than ever to this day to not only refine his craft but to also keep up with what’s going on in the metal world today.  Chris was gracious enough to spend some time with me where we discussed everything from his decision to switch from bass to drums, all the way to the details on his drum clinics, as well as his thoughts on Bandhappy.com.  

Check it out and troll away in the comments section.  For more info on Chris Adler and all his current actives be sure to check out his website by clicking here.  

-Justin Gosnell

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(BTBAM photo credit: Andrew Lipovsky)

Here’s a fun little tidbit to get the metalsphere salivating this afternoon: The Number of the Blog is reporting that MetalSucks-fave multi-instrumentalist Keith Merrow is teaming up with Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler and Between the Buried and Me axeman Paul Waggoner on a new side project. I contacted Keith this morning for comment, and here’s what he had to say about it:

As of right now, it’s a very casual collaboration. We have 3 or 4 song ideas we’ve tossed around over the past few months, and they are all really cool. Very different from any music you’d hear from each of us, individually. All of us are pretty busy these days, but this is a collaboration that we are all really excited about!

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I am unbelievably excited by the news that Lamb of God have completed recording for their new, yet-to-be titled album. And now Randy Blythe himself has posted a video from the vocal sessions, which is SWEET, because it gives us a chance to hear some new music! Speaking of the clip, Mr. Blythe himself had this to say: “The lyrics are MY BEST yet. PURE GENIUS.”

Check out the video below:

AMAZING, right?!?! This album is gonna rule so hard.

Lamb of God’s latest, which Blythe also promises is “WAAAAY better than Wrath,” is expected to be released early next year.

-AR

[via The PRP]

To help promote their upcoming tour, on October 11 Judas Priest will release The Chosen Few, their umpteenth career retrospective, and one which does not feature any new material. The Chosen Few does have a hook, though — I mean, beyond the fact that the band members appear on the cover only as silhouettes, I assume at least in part to downplay the fact that a certain key member is no longer in the group.

No, the hook  (and this is actually a neat idea) is that the band has let a lot of other celebrity musicians — including Ozzy, Lemmy, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kerry King, Slash, and Vinnie Paul  – choose which songs would appear on the collection. And, yeah, it’s interesting to know that Zakk Wylde is way into “Grinder,” and and that Randy Blythe and David Coverdale might actually have something to talk about at a cocktail party, and that Joe Satriani likes his Priest heavier than I might have suspected.

But like I said, there’s no new material here, so I can’t quite imagine why anyone would want this album anyway. The coolest thing about The Chosen Few is seeing which dude chose which song, and you can do that after the jump. So, look, we just saved you ten bucks.

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While we continue to wait for that Killcorpse Murder project with Adam D., Corpsegrinder, and Shannon Lucas to get off the ground, here’s another newly-teased supergroup to get you all hot under the collar.

Noisecreep noticed on Friday afternoon that DevilDriver vocalist Dez Fafara and Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton announced — via their respective Twitter accounts, natch — that they were collaborating on “a bunch of KILLER tunes,” with Circus of Power, Soundgarden, and Trouble being cited as influences. And, uh, I really have no idea what that would sound like. I hear the aural relationship between Trouble and Soundgarden, but Circus of Power is where I get thrown for a loop.

ANYWAY, on Saturday The PRP strung together a bunch more of Fafara’s tweets, which seek to clarify/update the news:

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I wasn’t alive back in the 1980s to see it firsthand, but from what I understand it was considered cool back then to play guitar solos. And I can see why: if you are home sick from school and you watch VH1 Classic, whenever the guy in the video plays a solo, the crowd goes crazy. All the dudes are like “OMG he is so talented!!!” and all the chicks are like “GET IN MY PUSSY!!” It must have been awesome to be a guitarist back then!!

But that was a long time ago, and things have changed a lot. These days, only fat guys with ponytails and glasses care about guitar solos. Nobody thinks it’s cool to be like “CHECK ME OUT, I’M SHREDDING THE FRETBOARD *WEEDLY WEEDLY WEEDLY*” There’s only one thing that makes dudes lose their shit and chicks get wet in 2011: BREAKDOWNS!

Unlike a lot of you, I’ve been listening to metal since late 2004/early 2005, so I think I know what I am talking about. With that said, I’m not a musician, but I know a lot of you are, so I am asking you, the readers: ARE BREAKDOWNS THE NEW GUITAR SOLO???

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In this video from his Tumblr, some kid takes his old Lamb Of God shirt, puts it in the poorly-made firepit that his dad built last summer, and sets fire to it (after some very creepy heavy breathing at :23). “Fuck you Randy Blythe, fuck Lamb Of God,” he says, adding “Whoa, that was pretty epic!”

I am not sure why he’s so angry at LoG, but I’d be pretty mad at the world too if I looked like this

-Sergeant D.

Sergeant D. does not tolerate poorly-made firepits at Stuff You Will Hate.

The usual problems a band must endure from its drummer include tardiness, unfamiliarity with new material, no memory of old material, bringing their gf/driver everywhere, selling gear for food, non-ownership of drumsticks, car trouble, body odor, shortness, loss of one or more shoes, delirium, etc. But some drummer-issues can’t be predicted; for example, completion of the new Testament record has been delayed by drummer Paul Bostaph’s undisclosed injury. Singer Chuck Billy kinda explained Sunday in a radio interview:

Paul Bostaph is injured right now, so he couldn’t [work on] the record. We kind of put the record off a little while waiting for Paul. [Then] we found out he was not gonna be ready, so we brought on Gene Hoglan. Hoglan came in and crushed, killed the drums in about a week.

Awesome! Billy goes on to reveal the new album’s title, its other guest drummer, and the face-fuckingly awesome tour to be announced:

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Have you ever noticed that the bands who metal nerds fawn over today were universally-despised rage magnets just a few short years ago? For example, trashing Pantera in 2011 is asking to get chased with torches and pitchforks — the polar opposite of 1993, when you would be hard-pressed to find a band that metal nerds hated more. Or how everybody jizzes over Suffocation now, but in the mid-90s you couldn’t read two pages of Metal Maniacs without someone pissing and moaning about “Suffoclones.” Are metal nerds crazy, or is there some rhyme and reason to their seemingly-contradictory behavior?? I believe that there is indeed a way to understand metal nerds, but it’s not what you might think!

Psychologists have long compared metal nerds to women. The similarities are certainly undeniable: like the fairer sex, they are fickle, emotional, and irrational. They even have long hair! However, my research suggests that, unlike women, they actually operate by a primitive form of logic and are highly predictable. After the break: my SCIENTIFIC MODEL OF METAL NERD PSYCHOLOGY, the FOUR KINDS OF METAL BANDS, and an exclusive METAL NERD CHEAT SHEET that reveals a foolproof formula for whether you should like a band or not!

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So, technically, this is a picture of Gene Hoglan with Testament…

I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news is, Paul Bostaph, who’s a great drummer, is injured, and therefore won’t be able to appear on the new Testament record. That’s a bummer. Hopefully Bostaph’s ailment won’t keep him away from the kid for long, ’cause like I said, dude can plan.

The good news is, Testament have recruited Gene Hoglan and Chris Adler to take his place, and those dudes can certainly play, too.

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Everyone whose parents raised them correctly loves Gojira, and so everyone whose parents raised them correctly has been eagerly anticipating the band’s seemingly-forever-in-gestation Sea Shepherd EP since, well, seemingly forever.

But now it looks like we might actually be getting close to its unveiling! Last week we got to hear a new song, “Of Blood and Salt,” which features guest appearances from Meshuggah’s Fredrik Thordendal and Devin Townsend’s Devin Townsend; now Gojira’s guitarist/vocalist/mastermind, Joe Duplantier, has given an interview with Metal Hammer in which he reveals that Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe (who previously appeared on the group’s “Adoration for None”), In Flames’ Anders Friden, and some dude named Max Cavalera are all going to appear on the release, too.

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There’s a bunch of new shit streaming right now that I think may be worth your time, even if I don’t love of all it… if that makes sense. Anyways, rather than do a bunch of separate posts, I’m just collecting it all here, because I’m lazy like that. And so…

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I was inspired to put some thoughts down after reading Sergeant D.’s post about what a terrible decision it is to commit yourself to the band life at a young age, because eventually the wheels will fall off and you’ll end up just like some morose version of the Anvil story: Sad, old, broke, and disillusioned by shattered dreams of rock stardom.  I know his blog was supposed to be funny and sarcastic, and was even sprinkled with a hint of sour grapes: Not getting to be that “cool band guy,” but justice being served down the line by seeing how those guys ended up. But I have to say that post hit home for me, because in many ways it was about me. I mean generally, not specifically. I’m pretty sure Sergeant D. didn’t follow me around and base his post on me autobiographically.

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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

Did you know that Car Bomb vocalist Michael Dafferner’s day job is working as a satellite engineer? No, no I did not. Well, did you know that he also directed a documentary, [why_you_do_this], about how difficult and shitty it is to be a touring metal musician? No, no I did not know that, either. Yeah, well, neither did I, but apparently both facts are true.

[why_you_do_this] (it’s a statement, not a question asked by an immigrant) is going to make its premiere next week at the Queens World Film Festival (as in a world film festival which takes place in Queens, not a film festival which takes place on a world full of royal women), and even though I didn’t know about it until like ten seconds ago, it look pretty interesting — Dafferner interviewed all kinds of cool people, like Richard Christy, Randy Blythe, Joe Duplantier, and Ben Falgoust, all about the very simple question posed by the title. Or, perhaps a little less succinctly, this move could be called Holy Shit There is No Money to be Made in Metal and Touring Fucking Sucks, Why the Fucking Fuck Do You Keep Subjecting Yourself to this Crap? Which is a question every aspiring metal musician should ask him or herself, since the chances of making a living at playing music are only slightly better than the chances that you’ll be struck by lightning while receiving a wristie from Marilyn Monroe.

ANYWAY, the movie premieres at the aforementioned film festival on Friday, March 4, at 7:00pm EST at The Renaissance Auditorium (81^st Street & 37^th Ave) in Jackson Heights, NY. You can get more details, as well as tickets, here; you can also watch the trailer here and a clip here (they’re not embeddable… I guess they’re trying to keep the film a secret). I don’t think I can make it ’cause I’ll be on an airplane just hours prior, but if anyone goes, please let me know how it is. Hopefully this thing will get a DVD release or something soon so the rest of us can check it out.

Also, the press release says that Car Bomb are working on new music. That’s what they told me in 2008, too, but maybe we’ll actually get a new album before I turn eighty.

-AR

It occurred to me sometime this afternoon that Frankie Palmeri may very well read what I wrote about him earlier today, and decide the best course of action is to invite me onto his tour bus to settle our conflict through calm, intelligent discussion, only to sucker punch me when the bus door opens. Thus, I have come with a new rule for life: NEVER GO ONTO A TERRIBLE DEATHCORE BAND’S TOUR BUS. Seems simple enough!

While I contemplate Thanos Bison Reignz coming after me during a solar apocalypse, here’s a rundown of some of the fun shit we did this week:

• We broke the news of new System of a Down tour dates! I’m very proud of Vince for his investigative journalism skills on this one. He’s a regular Carl Bernstein, that one.
• We enjoyed another excellent tour blog from Eluveitie.
• We checked out the new release from Derek Roddy’s Serpents Rise.
• We wondered, “Is Hatebreed the best hardcore band of all time?”
• We whined about the Grammys.
• We made you a totally romantic Valentine’s Day mix.
• We learned the value of telling women we like metal up front.
• We discovered djentstep.
• We likened a Deftones concert riot to a Mad Max movie, ’cause we’re sensitive like that.
• Our friends at Decibel let you hear the previously unreleased Lamb of God tune “Hit the Wall.” Say “Thank you, Decibel.”

So, one last reminder: next week sees the release of Volume 2 of NYC Sucks, our totally free comp collecting awesome bands from the New York area. But if you’re a total sour puss and awesome free music does nothing for you, we’ll have some other fun shit, too. ‘Til then…

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

Will this generation have its own Big 4? In the way that most of us grew up understanding that term, eh, doubt it. Metal at large — much less thrash — is probably too willfully hybridized now for a wolfpack of similar-minded, crazy-popular, dominant bands to emerge. That said, 10 years from now, will The Kids Today have three or four universally-agreed-upon bands that defined their youth? Sure. It’ll just be called Generation Pornogrind or the TechDeath Twelve.

I’m surely not alone in thinking Lamb of God were gonna be part of a Big… Something a few years ago — along with Shadows Fall, Mastodon and anyone else who miraculously (it seemed miracle-esque back then) got onto a major. They still could be. As grizzled as these dudes are, they maintain a young audience while slightly tweaking their sound each album. (See: Amon Amarth.) They’re talented, they rip, they seem humble and driven. Good shit.

No matter what the future holds, LOG are huge today, and now they’re the hugest band in the Decibel Flexi Series. This month’s exclusive submission is “Hit the Wall,” which was created for last year’s Iron Man 2 video game, although only parts of the track (sans vocals) appeared. (We can assure you that blasting this jam on repeat for two hours beats the shit out of sitting through the actual movie.) Anyway, we’ve got the full version with Randy’s unmistakable vocals, which has never been available until now.

Sony has made the track available digitally, but this month’s flexi is the only physical format the song will appear on.

A super-limited number of issues containing the flexi are now available here. Bonus: most realistic cover blood ever. In retrospect, I should’ve pushed for chunks of brain in the beard.

-AB

You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibel here, or get a full subscription to ensure you never miss one of these awesome flexi discs!