We all already knew that Evan Brewer is a great bass player. But I started to get really, really excited for his new solo album, Alone, after Brewer revealed last month that he’s the only musician to appear on his album, and that “every sound you hear on the album came from a bass guitar.” ‘Cause that sounds like some potentially really interesting, crazy shit.

Now a nearly-two-minute-long teaser for the album has been released, giving us our first real taste of music. The actual song sounds okay — maybe a little too smoove for my own personal tastes, but I’m a cranky old man who just wants to listen to Cannibal Corpse so whatever — but I could really live without that robot voice thinger. I hope that fucker isn’t on the album too much, ’cause that shit could get real irritating real fast.

Evan Brewer’s Alone comes out on Sumerian on June 28. Brewer then heads out on tour with Animals as Leaders, Intronaut, Dead Letter Circus, and Last Chance to Reason, which is a sweet, sweet-ass line-up. Here are tour dates:

Click to read more…

When Evan Brewer announced the impending release of a solo album last month, Vince rightfully pointed out that “The market for these kinds of acts is limited — extremely limited, especially for a bass player.” And I would wager that the market for a solo album from a bass player featuring no other instruments besides the bass is even more limited.

But by golly, I hope I’m wrong, ’cause apparently that’s what Brewer made: not only is the former Animosity/current The Faceless bassist the only musician to appear on his album, appropriately titled Alone, but “every sound you hear on the album came from a bass guitar,” according to the interview with Brewer in the below promotional video. And in the hands of the wrong musician, that kind of gambit could obviously be a total fucking disaster, but Brewer… well, not only is a top-notch bassist, but his motivations for recording such an album sound really fascinating and forward-thinking. We may not know if the record is actually gonna be good or not until Sumerian releases it on June 8, but we do know that Brewer is trying to do something different, and that’s always commendable.

Meanwhile, remember that awesome tour Brewer is doing this summer with Animals as Leaders, Intronaut, Dead Letter Circus, and Last Chance to Reason, and how only some of the tour dates had been released? Well, now we have more dates! So if a town near you wasn’t in the first batch, don’t freak out just yet.

Here’s the new itinerary, courtesy The PRP:

Click to read more…

The other day I was bellyachin’ that while this awesome tour with Animals as Leaders, Intronaut, Dead Letter Circus, Last Chance to Reason, and Evan Brewer had been announced, there were no dates available; well, now Intronaut have posted the “first half of the dates” on their Facebook page. So that’s a start!

Anyway, what else is there to say? If you can go to one of these shows, you obviously should — the only artist I can’t really vouch for is Dead Letter Circus, just because I don’t really know them well enough to have an opinion one way or the other. But even if they turn out to be terrible (and given the rest of this bill, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were actually really fantastic), the other peeps playing this show are so killer that you should really go anyway.

And here are those initial dates:

Click to read more…

A week or two ago word got out that Animals as Leaders, Intronaut, Last Chance to Reason, Dead Letter Circus (who I don’t really know but who just signed with Sumerian… and apparently Textures’ Stef Broks is a fan, which ain’t a bad sign), and Evan Brewer were gonna do a tour together; we didn’t write anything at the time because, well, we just told you everything there was to write. There were no other details to give!

There are still no other details to give, except now Animals as Leaders have put the tour poster up on their Facebook page, which I guess is something. I mean, if you thought this tour was just a rumor, now you know it’s a really real thing. You don’t know when/where they’re playing or whether or not you can go, but, hey, you do know that they’ll all be on the road together.

Hopefully information that is actually of some use, like tour dates, will be released soon, too.

In the meantime, uh… enjoy this poster I guess?

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this! Feel free to e-mail us again when dates are released.

Yep: the awesome Last Chance to Reason, in keeping up with both the title of their Prosthetic debut, Level 2, and their general geekiness (“geekiness” in this instance intended as a constant), are releasing a video game in conjunction with the album — and are now giving away the first level of that game for free. Go here to download it.

I haven’t personally played yet, but based on the below video showing some game footage, this thing looks awesome as hell. It’s probably a little too sophisticated to be one of the old NES games we grew up and loved, but it does look like a classic Sega title, which is a close second.

Level 2 is out now on Prosthetic. You can stream the track “Programmed for Battle” right here on MetalSucks.

-AR

This week sees new releases by Believer, Between the Buried and Me, Indian, Last Chance to Reason, Pentagram, Red Fang, Young Widows and more. MS new release expert Vic Vaughn takes a looksee at each after the jump!

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MetalSucks is oh-so-very happy to be teaming up with RED Distribution to bring you, our most beloved readers, the MetalSucks Fan Pack, which will be available exclusively at all FYE stores starting this Tuesday, April 12. Not only does this limited edition box full o’ metal come with a CD featuring twenty brootal tunes by twenty brootal bands (including Kvelertak, Trap Them, Believer, Napalm Death, TesseracT, Thomas Giles, Deicide and a bunch more) but it also comes with that HOLY SHIT THAT IS SO KILLER t-shirt you see above, which was designed by our friend Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33 (you might also recognize his work from this sexy t-shirt and this Louvre-worthy poster that he did for us).

How much would you expect to pay for this incredible package? Twenty bucks? Fifteen bucks? Try $9.99. That’s right, gang — twenty songs from twenty bands and that guaranteed-to-get-you-laid t-shirt for under ten bucks.

But wait! There’s more! If you act now and head over to the official MetalSucks Fan Pack web page, you can get a coupon for 30%, which brings the price down to a mere seven dollars. Holy crap, that’s a metsieh if ever there was one.

So go here to get a complete track list of all the bands on the comp, and to use the nifty store-finder to locate the f.y.e. nearest to you. And, oh yeah, you can also enter to win this custom guitar:

So, yeah, that’s pretty fuckin’ bad-assed.

-Axl & Vince

Thrilled to see Last Chance to Reason getting some recognition, reader Kyle Bragg has now sent us some other metal bands from Maine, in hopes that the state “will start to be recognized for things other than lobsters, blueberries, and being confused as part of Canada.” I dunno, Kyle — your lobsters are fucking delicious! I could eat five right now, no problem.

But okay, okay, we’ll give this a shot. Let’s see if any of the bands Kyle suggested can, indeed, make me forget about lobster.

Click to read more…

I know it’s arrogant for us to pat ourselves on the back, but holy shit, did we kill it this week or what?

Here’s what we did:

• We brought you the first interview with Behemoth frontman Nergal since he was diagnosed with leukemia in August.
• We got the exclusive scoop on Melissa Auf der Maur’s collaboration with Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby.
• We debuted new music by Between the Buried and Me, Last Chance to Reason, and Havok.
• We debuted new videos by Protest the Hero and Becoming the Archetype.
• We also spoke to the legendary David Coverdale from Whitesnake.
• We checked out the latest release from Anthrax and Until Your Heart Stops.
• We told you what your favorite metal band says about you… and then we told you again!
• We got excited about the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2011.
• We wondered if Winds of Plague are the new Limp Bizkit.
• We protested shitty metal vocalists.

We aspire to make next week even biggerer and betterer! Check back then to see if we succeeded or not… ’til then, have a great weekend!

-AR

We’ve been following Augusta, Maine’s Last Chance to Reason since seeing them impress the fuck out of the tiny Charleston in Brooklyn, NY with Iron Thrones, The Binary Code, Meek is Murder and East of the Wall last August (is that a helluva lineup or what?). We liked them so much we invited them to play our CMJ showcase this past fall and were beyond stoked when Prosthetic Records, who have an amazing track record with adventurous prog bands, announced they’d signed the band. With the April 12th release of their Prosthetic debut (and second album overall) Level 2 fast approaching, we reached out to Prosthetic to see if they’d let us give you a preview of Level 2 in the form of a full track from the record. And lucky for you, they agreed.

Stream “Programmed For Battle” below and pre-order the proggy goodness that is Level 2 here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Last Chance to Reason and Son of Aurelius are both terrific bands, and I’m quite pleased to let you know that they’re touring together. I’m a little less pleased to say that Wretched are on the bill, too. I mean, Wretched aren’t the worst band in the world or anything, but Vince has to keep reminding me who they are, despite the fact that I’ve written about them before, which is not a good sign for their memorability.

But I think they go on last every night, so even if, like me, you feel pretty indifferent towards them, you should still go to this tour and check out SoA and LCTR. ‘Cause those dudes are awesome, fo’ reals, and worst case scenario is you leave before Wretched plays… or at least before they finish — might as well give ‘em a shot while you’re there, because they could end up being one of those bands who are way awesomer live than on record. Especially since Adam Cody, formerly of the MetalSucks-approved acts Vanisher and Glass Casket, will be touring with band this go-round.

Here are tour dates, via the often-helpful Lambgoat:

Click to read more…

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

Progressive metal sextet Last Chance to Reason – who we’ve been extremely excited about ever since they opened our 2010 CMJ showcase — have finally set a release date of April 12th for their upcoming Prosthetic Records debut album, Level 2. Heavy Blog is Heavy shares in our excitement, and with good reason. If the above album cover and the fact that Level 2 will be packaged with a video game don’t get you excited, you are not nearly nerdy enough to be reading this site, so kindly go back to lifting weights, hanging out at the Peach Pit or whatever the cool kids do these days.

Yes, the album will come with a video game. Heavy Blog describes it as “Metroid-esque,” which I assume means it’s some kind of adventure game with a large world in which you can roam freely and you’ve got to pull off a series of achievements in the right order, each granting you some kind of special access or item required for the next. I’m sure this news will thrill Sergeant D too, though I doubt he’ll get down with Last Chance to Reason’s serious case of progitis.

Two songs from Level 2 are already posted on LCTR’s MySpace page; watch a boner-inducing trailer for the video game after the jump. Apparently a big part of the game involves shooting through walls! [Update: Apparently it's footage from Portal. Do'h! -Ed.]

Click to read more…

“We aim to please, so please aim.” So read the sign above the urinals at the long-shuttered NYC restaurant institution Ed Debevic’s. And while we certainly don’t have a need to ask you to aim your urine, kindly stop emailing us about sweet tours just because we haven”t publicly commented on them yet. We know! We’re just, like, ya know… busy and stuff.

But there’s a pretty sweet tour storming the U.S. this Spring that you’ll definitely want to know about if you haven’t already heard. Atheist, whose new album Jupiter delighted old-school prog metalheads at the end of last year, are embarking on a brief 7-day North American jaunt. Atheist will have the incredible support cast of A Life Once Lost, Revocation and Last Chance to Reason in tow — definitely a prog tour for the books, but with only 7 dates we wish it were longer.

Dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:

• It seems like metal and hardcore have been further segregated on the bill — Thursday appears to be almost entirely dedicated to deathcore and crabcore bands, Friday seems to be entirely devoted to hardcore bands, and Saturday is dominated by metal bands. There are pros and cons to this approach — the pro being that if you’re only a fan of one particular style of extreme music, you can cherry pick which day you’re going to attend, and the con being that new fans are less likely to be exposed to bands with whom they were not already familiar.
• There seem to be fewer “big name” acts. Sure, Hatebreed and Biohazard are on there, but that’s still a far cry from years’ past. In fact, plenty of big name who have new albums scheduled to come out this year — like Amon Amarth, DevilDriver, Arch Enemy, In Flames, and Children of Bodom — aren’t playing the fest.

Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.

Anyway, here’s the full bill:

Click to read more…

Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:

• It seems like metal and hardcore have been further segregated on the bill — Thursday appears to be almost entirely dedicated to deathcore and crabcore bands, Friday seems to be entirely devoted to hardcore bands, and Saturday is dominated by metal bands. There are pros and cons to this approach — the pro being that if you’re only a fan of one particular style of extreme music, you can cherry pick which day you’re going to attend, and the con being that new fans are less likely to be exposed to bands with whom they were not already familiar.
• There seem to be fewer “big name” acts. Sure, Hatebreed and Biohazard are on there, but that’s still a far cry from years’ past. In fact, plenty of big name who have new albums scheduled to come out this year — like Amon Amarth, DevilDriver, Arch Enemy, In Flames, and Children of Bodom — aren’t playing the fest.

Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.

Anyway, here’s the full bill:

Click to read more…

FEATURING MEMBERS OF ISIS, MUNICIPAL WASTE, ELUVEITIE, WORMROT, LAST CHANCE TO REASON, ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA, GOD DETHRONED, OWEN HART, NIGHTFALL, HORSEBACK, AND OCTOBER TIDE

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the fourth group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

Click to read more…

We may already be getting all hot and bothered about The Human Abstract’s early 2011 release Digital Veil based on hearing just one song, but we’re almost, maybe even as excited about another forthcoming 2011 record in the same musical vein based on hearing a few mere notes. OK, we saw Prosthetic Records’ fresh signees Last Chance to Reason live when they played our CMJ showcase in October (and we saw them in August too), and holy smokes did they knock our socks off with their unique brand of progressive metal… so we were a bit biased already. But tell me this clip of the band’s singer, Mike, going over the different parts of a vocal harmony from the record — interspersed with actual album audio and footage from the accompanying video game — doesn’t get you pretty excited about the record:

In case you missed what I wrote in the proceeding sentence: there is going to be a video game that accompanies Last Chance to Reason’s new album Level 2. Presumably the video game-like clips shown in the above video are from said game.

Everything about this band screams raging nerd = everything about this band screams raging great. Can’t wait for this one.

-VN

Thanks: MS proteges Heavy Blog is Heavy for the catch.

Before we get to today’s regionally-themed “Reader’s Choice,” I’d like to set three quick ground rules for this thing moving forward, since some of you don’t seem to think so good:

• Leaving a comment saying “Hey, do this city!” ain’t gonna do nuthin’. You need to send me an e-mail with your suggestions. Sorry.
• That e-mail should include LINKS TO WHERE WE CAN HEAR THE BANDS. I can’t believe we still have to say this. We’re not gonna google these bands just ’cause you said so. LINKS, PEOPLE, LINKS.
• That e-mail should be relatively polite. If you say “I can’t believe you did this town and not that town” or “I can’t believe you included those local bands but not those local bands,” guess what? I have no choice but to assume you’re dumb. ‘Cause this is “Reader’s Choice.” The band’s are — you guessed it! — selected by readers. If you didn’t e-mail me about your town or about particular bands, well, what were you expecting? That I would just happen to be familiar with every local scene in the world? That’s just not feasible; people send us so much shit that I could probably listen to twenty bands I’ve never heard of every day and STILL be behind. So chill.

Now that I’ve gotten that outta my system, let’s check out some Connecticut bands recommended by the reader known as “needly needly doo,” shall we?

Click to read more…

They came, they saw, and they fucking destroyed. A Life Once Lost, Car Bomb, This or the Apocalypse and Last Chance to Reason made for an awesome night of metal on Wednesday at Club Europa; big “thank you”s are in order to all the bands for coming to NYC to make our CMJ showcase a huge success.

Fred Pessaro of BrooklynVegan was on hand to capture all the rocking on film. Fred totally nailed the intense feeling of what it was like to watch A Life Once Lost and Car Bomb absolutely destroy this Polish nightclub, and he got a few lulz-worthy pics of This or the Apocalypse’s choreographed ballet stage moves. Unfortunately he didn’t catch Last Chance to Reason, but those guys came all the way from Maine and put on a phenomenal show; they have a very bright future ahead of them with Prosthetic Records. A big “thank you” is in order for Fred as well!

Check his pics after the jump.

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