Photo by Robert Escue.

Lazarus A.D. bassist/vocalist Jeff Paulick is the latest to join the ranks of musicians we’ve interviewed more than once (see Axl’s March 2009 interview with him here). Perhaps it’s because he agrees with our assessment that his band has been unfairly lumped in with the re-thrash movement; “I never wore a jean jacket in my life and I’ve never bought a patch in my life. Last time I wore hightops, I was in kindergarten or I was playing basketball. We’re not part of that crew and a lot of bands are from California and whatnot. We’re from Wisconsin. It just doesn’t exist here.” He also has nothing but great things to say about Revocation and Sylosis, a good barometer for how he approaches his own thrash-influenced — but not thrash rip-off — music. More than anything else during the course of my interview with Jeff a couple of weeks back, he stressed how he feels it’s important for bands to grow musically from release to release rather than simply writing the same record over and over.

Lazarus A.D.’s new album Black Rivers Flow is certainly a change for the band, which you can find out for yourself before its February 1st release by streaming the entire thing on Metal Underground this week. During my interview with Jeff we spoke at length about the new record, the reality of dudes in metal bands having day jobs when they’re not on tour,

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Congrats to readers Brock Morgan, Sean Prosser, Pablo Gonzalez, and Hunter Shepard, each of whom correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Medic Vomiting Pus. For their efforts, they each win a copy of Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, the new album from legendary punkers Social Distortion! Congrats, dudes!

This week, we have an extra special prize, courtesy the nice people at Sony Music: a Lamb of God/Splatterhouse prize pack. In case you hadn’t heard, Lamb of God’s “Walk with Me in Hell” appears on the soundtrack for the latest installment of the horror video game, along with music from a bunch of other awesome metal bands, including Mastodon, Goatwhore, The Haunted, Municipal Waste, High on Fire, and Cavalera Conspiracy. Plus, the game is about, like, murder n’ stuff. In other words, it’s the most metal video game ever!!! So here’s what’s in the prize pack, which is also pictured below:

• One (1) copy of the Splatterhouse game (on either PS3 or Xbox 360, your choice)
• One (1) Splatterhouse T-Shirt
• One (1) set of Splatterhouse iPod Speakers
• One (1) Splatterhouse Logo Statue

Pretty sweet, right?

All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. Also, please be sure to specify if you want a copy of the game for your Xbox or PS3 should you win. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select a winner and announce his or her name next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by the great logo suggester, David Foust. It’s, really, really hard, but for a prize this kick-ass, it’s worth the extra effort…

-AR

Yesterday I attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase “elephants marching riff” by pointing out some reader suggestions that, even if they were cool riffs, did not meet the definition for this particular trope. Today, I am going to highlight some of the reader-suggested riffs that I actually think do meet that definition.

Now, these aren’t ALL the riffs that you guys suggested… I’ve cherry picked some in the interest of time. (For example, a lot of you suggested various riffs by Chimaira and Gojira. Since I already pointed out that both of those bands are really good at writing elephants marching riffs, I’m not going to include any additional examples from those bands here.) So don’t have a conniption if your riff didn’t make the list.

And so…

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So Yahoo! has Ozzy Osbourne’s personal list of the Top Ten Metal Albums of 2010, and it may or may not surprise you to learn that it’s a really, really interesting mix of terrible and brain dead. (By the way, if you don’t like MetalSucks articles where I can really, really, really angry about something of less than no importance, then you should stop reading now.)

Okay so check out his list, and then I’ll tell you my thoughts. And before we begin, I should point out that it’s theoretically possible Ozzy didn’t actually choose these release, but, rather, than one of his handlers did it for him. But since it’s being labeled as “Ozzy’s list,” I am going to treat it as though it were written by Ozzy.

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Congrats to readers Jimmy Fondren and Suraj Patra, both of whom correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Insan Iblis. (Also, congrats to all the readers who noticed I’ve used this logo before. Whoopsie.) Jimmy and Suraj each win a grind prize pack from Relapse Records, containing the latest releases from Murder Construct, Kill the Client, and Phobia. Enjoy those, fellas! And if you didn’t win, don’t forget that you can order each of the albums directly from Relapse here.

This week we have another killer prize to give away: two copies of Lamb of God‘s Hourglass box set on vinyl! The set includes all six of Lamb of God’s studio albums (Burn The Priest, New American Gospel, As The Palaces Burn, Ashes of the Wake, Sacrament, and Wrath) on 180 gram vinyl, encased in a linen-wrapped collector’s box. Pretty awesome, right? You can order one of these bad boys here, or, of course, just enter this contest.

All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED! From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select two winners and announce their names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us one of this week’s winners, Suraj Patra. And I’m quite sure we’ve never used it before!

-AR

Actually, I don’t think so, despite what this tweet that Morton sent out over the weekend might lead you to believe:

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The Grammy nominations have been announced, and, as per usual, they’ve got nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. This isn’t a shock; the Grammys have been a meaningless award, and will remain a meaningless award. But if you’re morbidly curious, as I am, as to who old white dudes think are the créme de la créme of our music of choice, the nominees, and some more snarky commentary from yours truly, are after the jump.

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For my opening salvo, I suppose I should mention that it has been a long break between blogs. I’ve been meaning to get back to it, but this summer has been a very busy one filled with the musical composition of the new God Forbid album as well as a new project I’ve been working on, in addition to the daily pursuit of living life and getting by. I hope to contribute more frequently in the near future.

If you’ve followed my articles in the past, you may notice that I often address music history, and pertaining to this site, heavy music specifically. I have a great respect for artistic pioneers and the roots of where the most admirable and brilliant music stems from. I was the type of kid who would read liner notes and interviews by my favorite bands to find out who influenced them. I would always want to climb that musical family tree to see where it lead.

In my process of discovery, there was a common thread that jumped out at me that has been consistent through metal and rock history.  There seemed to be an intercontinental ping-pong match between the USA and Europe in terms of trailblazing the cutting edge of whatever musical genre was the dominant force of the time. This goes way back before metal existed — and yet, it has helped shape the musical landscape that exists today. The torch keeps being symbolically passed from one shore to the other.

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This past April, Gojira announced they’d be recording a new five-song EP this summer featuring “guests from the international metal community,” the proceeds of which would benefit anti-whaling organization Sea Shepherd. As of July, we were still wondering what the heck has been going on with that, and since then, we’ve received fairly regular e-mails from readers asking us for updates — in fact, MetalSucks Maniac Ray Pecheone e-mailed us looking for info just this monday.

And, hey, guess what? The PRP has the scoop! They report:

Gojira will enter a Los Angeles, CA area studio next week to begin recording their new four song EP with producer Logan Mader (DevilDriver, Cavalera Conspiracy). The band have also revealed that the EP will feature some “very special guests singing.”

So the EP is still happening, it’s still gonna have some presumably awesome guests (my money’s on Randy Blythe, amongst others), the recording schedule just seems to have been delayed a little. But I’ll take tardy Gojira over no Gojira.

-AR

Damn. I haven’t written a blog for you guys while flying in quite a while. (Don’t worry, I still hate it, but 2.75mg of Xanax helps me forget.) So the question is, “Why have I not been writing to you from the air like I used to all the time?” Well, the fact of the matter is that I’ve basically been in a cave for the past few months making an album. Sure, we took a brief break and went to Germany for a few days for some Slayer shows (who wouldn’t),  but I was in no mental condition to write. I’m only now, five weeks from having finished the album, regaining my sanity, creativity, and motivation.

As I was packing for this trip to Mexico City I put my iPod in my carry-on (if you find the concept of rape disturbing, try to never check bags), and I realized that I haven’t added any new music to it in months. My two biggest gripes, both of which you are very familiar with by now, is the dismal state of metal audio production, and that the different scenes are just getting tired. I stand behind my idea that the “modern” metal sound of the early 2000s is going to sound as dated to us as 1980’s production pretty soon. I’m pretty confident that dudes who are all-out “scene” in their appearance will look back at themselves the way that we see Nu Metal bands from the late 90’s and wonder, “How was that the ‘in’ thing?” while privately hoping that their kids never see those photos. I feel like there’s an endless wave of copycat bands out there right now, and that the overall state of heavy music is such that we’re about to enter a down period, much like when death metal went back underground in the mid 90’s.

That’s not to say metal will die; it is time for innovation and rebirth.

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You know we’re teaming up with our bestest buds at Metal Injection and 1000Knives to put on a showcase at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon, right? It’s on Wednesday, October 20th at Club Europa in Brooklyn, and it’s gonna be one of the best shows of the year. WE SHIT YOU NOT. Which is why we’re not surprised that you’ve already bought a ticket. And if you didn’t, well, please allow us to give you five awesome reasons why you should:

1) IT’S A LIFE ONCE LOST’S FIRST NYC SHOW IN A YEAR AND A HALF. A Life Once Lost put on an absolutely KILLER show; we’ve seen them play festivals, we’ve seen them play basements, we’ve seen them play clubs and we’ve seen them play theaters, and they have never, ever done anything less than rip our faces off, eat those faces, shit out those faces, and then affix that shit on our skulls where our faces used to go. It’s been way, way too long since they played our neck of the woods, and the venue is so scared for its own well-being that they’re enlisting some Expendables-type soldiers of fortune to work security. Seriously.

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To the MetalSucks Maniac known as “Sacajewea,” we would like to say the following: YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD. It’s incredible how retarded you are, you stupid fucking idiot mongoloid half-wit retard.

We send this message because in October of ’09, Sacajewea left a comment on the very first post we ever wrote, saying he was “Just here to dig up the past;” then he left another comment, just this past June, which read:

“I did it twice. Fuck I’m retarded. If anyone sees this please find me in a recent post and tell me how retarded I am.”

On December 26, 2006 — a date that will live in infamy — we did what professionals call a “soft launch” but we just call “the day we first posted on this blog.” Our slogan was “Smart About Metal,” a play on the slogan for Film Comment magazine.

We had these two stupid South Park caricatures that Axl made at his then-job when he was bored. (Axl forgot until just now that he had a really long goatee in ’06; Vince still had phantom Jew ‘fro, where some days he can feel it, man!) We only posted once or twice a day, throughout the week, pretty much when we had time/interest. We didn’t use tags. We often didn’t post graphics or videos. Our headlines weren’t capitalized. We interviewed members of Stuck Mojo and Twisted Sister, because that’s who we could get interviews with. Believe it or not, we tried to get an interview with God Forbid… and we failed.

Basically, we had no fucking idea what we were doing.

We can’t believe that this is our 10,000th post. We can’t believe we’re still doing this almost four years after we started. We can’t believe that so many of you are reading it. Seriously: WE WERE ONLY FUCKING KIDDING.

So…

Thanks to Kip (who has been here longer than anyone besides Vince and Axl!), Sammy, Gary, Anso, Satan (the MetalSucks contributor and the deity), Sergeant D., Bob, Leyla, Corey, Urbandale, Dave, Matt, Ferris, Dallas, Eyal, Sacha, Paul, Bulb, Arthur, Anton OyVey, Rich Hallford, David Bee Roth, Van Arseface, Mike Pattongill, Angela Gossowski, Joey V., and everyone else who has ever written for us… MetalSucks would not be where it is if not for all of you.

Thanks to everyone in the music industry who has helped us over the years, even as they must have been secretly hoping we would van flip.

And of course, thanks to all the MetalSucks Maniacs, Suckalos, annoying people who can’t use the “search” function, and dudes that have sent us death threats. We can’t tell you how grateful we are that you read our site. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now, with a complete lack of humility, Axl and Vince present their ten favorite MetalSucks posts of all time. Enjoy.

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The last time Protest the Hero came out with a new album was in early 2008, a little more than a year into the life of this site. At the time I raved about Fortress endlessly, and it ended up as #2 on my year-end list for 2008 topped only by Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh [side note: so many awesome records came out that year!]. It’ll be interesting to see how the MetalSucks Maniacs at large react to my pending coverage of Protest the Hero’s next record, which they’re supposedly working on right now. Our site’s readership has grown a ton since early 2008 and the amount of vitriol spewed our way in the comments section has vastly increased for better or worse. Back then our readers seemed to mostly support my penchant for prog wankery and really got behind Protest the Hero too; would it be the same these days?

The knock on PtH always seems to be that people don’t like their vocalist Rody Walker. I happen to think that he’s the icing on the cake, a truly unique vocalist that really brings something extra to a band full of amazing musicians. Whereas most bands of amazing musicians simply get a dude to scream over what they’re playing — so that people whose attention spans are too short to pay attention to an instrumental band won’t lose interest — Rody Walker really adds something to the formula, and what the other 4 dudes do is all the better for it. He’s a really talented vocalist too, and PtH certainly wouldn’t be the same without him.

But apparently MS reader Damien doesn’t agree, or perhaps he was just bored and fiddling around with the instrumental versions of Fortress that the band released when he created the below mix of “Sequoia Throne” with Randy Blythe’s vocals for the Wrath track “Fake Messiah” laid over top of it. It’s a cool concept, and though I feel like the use of Blythe’s vocals in the chorus could use work (seems too sparse), I think it’s pretty well done.

-VN

A while ago I got linked, I’m pretty sure it was from here, to this blog entry by a dude who calls himself Metallikris on his imaginatively-titled Metalliblog, in which he rates every metal musician of note that he’s met on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how nice they were to him. Now while I have a captive audience, that I can only assume our fine friend Metallikris is amongst (because he writes about this site on his blog), I would just like to ask…

What the fuck?

These people work their arses (ah-hem, asses. Sorry yanks) off for decades learning to play their instruments, fight the ridiculous uphill battle to start a band, do something original and actually get some recognition for it, do insane hours on tour, and then somehow their entire worth as a human being can be quantatively measured by how they deal with you wanting to get your photo taken with them after they’ve gotten offstage? What in the hell have you have you ever done in your life that gives you the divine power to judge ANYONE that way, let  alone talented, hardworking musicians who do things you never could?

When you say that Ralph Santolla should “get cancer quick!”or that Willie Adler’s wife is “probably fucking the local milkman”, you’re talking shit on real human beings in the name of getting some second-hand attention, and that’s just weak. And are you really surprised that Fredrik Akesson from Opeth was maybe just a little pissed off that you mistook him for Peter Lindgren, the guy he replaced in the band?

Now at this point I could drag out your self-edited imdb actor page or your hilariously self-important twitter account and let the metalsucks maniacs have their way with them, but instead I’m going to just say this:

Get a reality check, dude.

-Crack Hitler

When Randy Blythe was nineteen years old and Jamey Jasta was thirteen years old, a really silly white dude who is named Rob Van Winkle but insisted on calling himself “Vanilla Ice” released a song entitled “Ice Ice Baby,” which was a huge megahit. There can be no doubt that Blythe and Jasta were aware of the song’s existence, for such was its prevalence in pop culture. Of course, we have no way of knowing what these someday-modern metal legends thought of the track, but I think we can reasonably assume that at no point did the thought “Someday Vanilla Ice will come see me perform and we will hang out backstage after the show” cross their respective minds.

And yet, this:

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New BTBAM as soon as early 2011? Try not to wet your panties, but it could be so.

Reader Hayden Nease sent us a recent interview with progressive metal princes Between the Buried and Me in which bassist Dan Briggs reveals two interesting tidbits of information around the 8:00 mark:

• Guitarist Paul Waggoner will be filling in on a Lamb of God tour before the end of the year. Briggs doesn’t mention which LoG guitarist Waggoner will be filling in for or why, but history suggests perhaps Mark Morton wants to spend more time with his family [though this is pure speculation].
• BTBAM will be recording a new EP in December.

Huzzah! So, a BTBAM EP… what’s that, like one song? Still, new BTBAM music is always a treat and this EP means we won’t have to wait a full two years from the release of The Great Misdirect (in October 2009) to hear new music from the band. Good news indeed.

-VN

I’m still not entirely convinced this whole Mel Gibson rant thing isn’t a publicity stunt. Mel Gibson is just too animated… it’s almost as if he’s acting. And, ya know, he is an actor. But everyone including Axl tells me I’m wrong and that his career is over. I guess we’ll see!

Anyhoo, this isn’t the first Mel Gibson / metal mash-up I’ve heard (see: the Metal Injection Livecast on which Axl and I were guests) and it certainly won’t be the last, but it’s pretty good. I appreciate the brevity of it, that all parts with lyrics have been edited out, and that there’s actually been some attention paid to the timing of it instead of just random clips pasted over top of a song. Props to Troy from the Opie & Anthony show for putting this together.

-VN

Just last week Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe hopped on stage with Hatebreed to help out with “Doomsayer,” and I wondered why musicians on these mega-package tours don’t do cool shit like that more often — and now, it seems, Mr. Blythe has struck again! Here’s some video of him doing “Pure Hatred” with Chimaira in Idaho (potatoes represent!) recently. Looks like Blythe is aiming to be Mayhem’s MVP this year.

Chimaira’s new three DVD/CD set, Coming Alive, is out tomorrow on Ferret. I’ll have a review up ASAP.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Andy Rehfeldt strikes again!!! The latest from Rehfeldt — a.k.a. “The dude responsible for the jazzercised Lamb of God, the Disneyfied Cannibal Corpse, and metallicized Louis Armstrong videos — is a death metal version of Conway Twitty’s “I See The Want To In Your Eyes.” As always, the syncing is near perfect (The Deciblog — where I first saw this video — notes that guitars and drums don’t match), and is consequently sure to induce giggles amongst bored and stoned metalheads everywhere. Thus… enjoy!

-AR

So the Rockstar Mayhem tour is underway, and for the first stop in San Berdino, CA, Hatebreed brought Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe on stage for a rendition of “Doomsayer” from 2003′s The Rise of Brutality. And, honestly, I don’t understand why bands don’t do shit like this more often. You’ve got twelve bands all out on the road with one another for a month and thousands of excited fans — why isn’t everyone hopping on stage with everyone else? Even if it’s for something ridiculous: two years ago, “supergroup” Ladder Up an Ass was the highlight of Mayhem’s stop at Nassau Coliseum.

The Rockstar Mayhem tour is ongoing through mid-August. Most years all of the bands party together after every show; hopefully as they all begin to bond, we’ll see more of this kind of thing on future dates.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]