The days when a musician stands a chance of making a living as a musician may very well be coming to a close. It’s one thing for the members of Crowbar Abortion to have to get jobs at the mall when they’re not on tour, but when even the dude from Guns N’ Roses is giving guitar lessons on his down time, you know times are tough.

Which gives a little extra edge to the below video, in which our doppelgängers at Metal Injection ask various musicians what they’d do with their lives if they weren’t in a band. Because that’s a question most metal musicians should probably ask themselves at some point or another.

Best answer comes from Revocation drummer Phil Dubois-Coyne, although I’m down the response A Life Once Lost’s Doug Sabolick and Bob Meadows provide, too.

This video is the first in a new series Metal Injection is doing, called, cleverly enough, “Ask the Artist.” Go here to make sure you stay up-to-date on all future installments, as I’d wager that they will continue to be this entertaining.

-AR

The above message was posted by Lazarus A.D. on their Facebook page last night, and… what can you say besides “This blows?” Stealing from touring musicians is fucking low; I can pretty guarantee you that the band can’t afford to lose that $1,500, and losing their personal stuff just sucks, sucks, SUCKS.

You can go here to make a donation via PayPal and help these poor dudes out.

If by some miracle someone reading this knows the culprit, I’d like to suggest that that reader turn said thief in immediately. If your friends ask you to cover for them when they behave like despicable low-lives, then they’re not your real friends anyway.

And if by some miracle someone reading this happens to be the culprit, I’d like to suggest that that reader please figure out a way to get all of Lazarus A.D.’s stuff back to them ASAP, and then go lay down in traffic.

-AR

Thanks:  Carlos B.

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

We enjoy Lazarus A.D.’s new album Black Rivers Flow here at the MS Mansion. This you should already know from our posts about the album here, here, and here, and this here interview with bassist/vocalist Jeff Paulick [although Corey Mitchell respectfully begs to differ]. But didja know that Lazarus A.D. enjoy us too? That’s a MetalSucks “Appetite for Deconstruction” t-shirt guitarist Alex Lackner is wearing! We applaud his wardrobe choice, but lest other bands think they too can woo Vince and Axl into a video premiere by sporting our garb, be warned… it only kinda works.

We keed; this song rocks. Stream the new video for “The Ultimate Sacrifice” below and purchase Black Rivers Flow here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Here are the February 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

Click to read more…

I see a pattern developing in 2011; the only albums selling are old ones. It’s quite startling, in fact; it’s already mid-February and the new release machine is kicking into high gear, but the charts are still dominated by best-of compilations and classic albums from the likes of Metallica, Van Halen, Ozzy, Aerosmith (Idol Effect), and Guns N’ Roses and perennially charting butt-rock bands like Godsmack, Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, Kid Rock, Linkin Park, Nickelsuck, etc etc etc. AKA bands that appeal to people mostly over the age of 30. Will 2011 be the year that folks stop purchasing music en masse? It’s too early to tell, but things are not looking good.

In any case, last week saw a variety of solid new releases in the metal world from Full Blown Chaos, Lazarus A.D., Thomas Giles (of BTBAM) and Abysmal Dawn. Not bands you’d expect chart-busting numbers from, but still, heavy hitters in our world. Sadly, only one of those bands was able to crack the Top 100 in the Top Hard Music Charts. We know better than to claim these numbers as a definitive measure of those bands’ popularity, but as long as record labels are the source of funding to launch these bands’ careers — and until there’s a better ranking system that incorporates record sales, merch sales and touring revenue into one chart — sales numbers will matter to some degree.

Let’s look at how last week’s new releases, and a few others, performed on the Soundscan charts.

Click to read more…

Today sees the release of Abysmal Dawn’s first new album in more than two years, and Full Blown Chaos’ first new album in more than three; that alone would be cause for celebration, but there’s plenty of other good shit coming out today, too! Our previews of this week’s new releases after the jump.

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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…

Today sees the release of Abysmal Dawn’s first new album in more than two years, and Full Blown Chaos’ first new album in more than three; that alone would be cause for celebration, but there’s plenty of other good shit coming out today, too! Our previews of this week’s new releases 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…

I don’t think anybody ever really reads these little intros Vince or myself write every week, so I’m gonna dispense with one today, and if that makes you sad, uh, you’re weird.

Here’s how we got our pull this week:

• We debuted new music by Abysmal Dawn, Full Blown Chaos, and Årabrot.
• We spoke to Jeff Paulick from Lazarus A.D. and Ginger from The Wildhearts.
• We checked out new releases from Xasthur, haarp, and Hesper Payne.
• We watched a nerd’s video about seeing Sunn O))).
• We tried to understand why The Big Four are only doing one show in America.
• We debated the merits and demerits of this year’s Mayhem Fest line-up.
• We celebrated the way that metal makes everything better.
• We enjoyed some new All Shall Perish music (kinda).
• We prepared for Zakk Wylde to boldly go where no guitarist has gone before.
• We got even MORE excited for Meek is Murder’s Algorithms.

Next week we’re gonna, like, totally talk about metal n’ stuff. You should come back and read it, it will be fun.

-AR

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,

Click to read more…

I’m still catching up on my RSS feed after letting it lapse more or less into the depths of infinite oblivion over the holidays, so a million apologies for being late to report this, but — Lazarus A.D. have been doing a series of webisodes on the making of their new album, Black Rivers Flow, and you should be watching these webisodes if you have not been doing so already.

Why? Well, for one thing, Lazarus A.D. are a really good band, and you like really good bands. And also because, let’s get real here, you’re reading MetalSucks, which means you have nothing to do right now and you’re looking to be entertained, so just do what I tell you and watch the stinkin’ videos.

Here’s the first installment; you can watch the second and third over at Metal Injection – part two, part three.

Lazarus A.D.’s latest, Black Rivers Flow, comes out February 1 on pioneering record label METAL BLADE RECORDS.

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF INTRONAUT, DARKEST HOUR, THE RED CHORD, KYLESA, GORGOROTH, CORMORANT, RETURN TO EARTH, KRIEG, LAZARUS A.D., HAIL OF BULLETS, AND BLOODHORSE

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 fifth 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…

The cover artwork for Lazarus A.D.’s new album Black Rivers Flow might not be of Gene Hoglan waxing his nuts, but thankfully Axl Rosenberg was correct in assuming said cover artwork wouldn’t have any bearing on the music contained therein. Lazarus A.D. have just released the first track from that album, a little ditty called “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” and it’s pretty rad.

Click to read more…

So three well  known bands released their new album art today, and rather than give each one its own post, it just seemed to make sense to lump ‘em all in together. So here comes the lumping.

First up is the cover for DevilDriver’s new, Mark Lewis produced beast, uh, Beast. It’s kind of a meh album cover (what, no owls this time?); the image seems designed to appear as though it’s been held under a blacklight, when it would be way cooler if they went the Mudvayne route and made something that would actually look good under a blacklight. Obviously this doesn’t say anything about the music, though, and in this day and age, with all the downloading goin’ on, who the fuck knows if anyone besides decaying old fogies like me even gives a shit about album art.

ANYWAY, Beast will come out on Roadrunner on February 22. The cover debuted earlier today on Bloody Disgusting.

Click to read more…

It takes balls for five white dudes from Indiana to name their EP after a Maya Angelou poem. But I’ve been enjoying Deliver Us From Evil‘s Still I Rise EP so much, they could have just as well called it The Autobiography of Malcolm X and it wouldn’t have bothered me that much.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re probably already familiar with the band’s drummer, Alex Morgan; he’s a talented and successful photographer who has worked with Gojira and Daath, amongst others. (Check out his work at his official website, or with this MS post or this MS post, or just look about an inch up on this post.) Which makes it all the more baffling to me that Deliver Us From Evil are unsigned; they’re like eight million times better than half the bands publicists and label reps send us every day.

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Vince and I are seeing Havok tonight for the first time (they’re opening for Primal Fear). I’m pretty stoked; I really dug their album, Burn, and only by the grace of the fact that SO MUCH GOOD STUFF came out in 2009 did it not make my year-end list. If all the retro-thrash bands sounded this good (as good as Revocation or Lazarus A.D., for that matter), I’d be considerably less inclined to bust their balls.

Here’s Havok’s video for “Morbid Symmetry,” from Burn. What an excellent song.

Burn is out now on Candlelight.

-AR

Like a lot of people, I first became familiar with Brian Posehn because of his time on David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s brilliant HBO sketch comedy series, Mr. Show, for which he was also a writer. A few years after that show went off the air, my then-roommate and I went to see Posehn do some stand-up at a comedy club here in New York. I don’t think we were even there to see Posehn specifically – if memory serves, David Cross was the actual draw for us – but he was so funny that I actually laughed so hard I became winded and fell out of my chair. Since then, he’s been on a very, very short list of stand-ups that I never miss the chance to check out when they come through town. Mr. Show sketches about a fictional band called “Titannica” led me to believe that someone on the series’ writing staff was a metal fan, but I didn’t know that it was Posehn until later – and the revelation that he was just as obsessed with metal as I was only made him that much cooler.

Fart and Wiener Jokes, Posehn’s second album for Relapse, comes out today (and you can order a copy here). Like its predecessor, Live: In Nerd Rage, it features not only recordings of his brilliant stand-up, but also an original song he co-wrote with Anthrax’s Scott Ian (“More Metal Than You”) to poke fun at some of metal’s more regrettable foibles. It also has a metal cover of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” and between the two music tracks, Posehn has managed to rope in guest appearances by such all-stars as Jamey Jasta, Mark Morton, Mark Oseguenda, John Tempesta, and Russ Parrish. Assuming you love great comedy and great metal, there’s no way you’re not gonna dig Fart and Wiener Jokes.

A few weeks ago I got to talk to Posehn about putting comedy albums out on a metal label, what it’s like to be friends with some of his boyhood heroes, the state of metal today, his take on the Anthrax vocalist situation, and more. He even turned the tables at the end and asked me a question! Read the complete transcript of our chat after the jump.

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Last weekend I was lucky enough to be back in NYC for my spring break (even though the first week of March is clearly not spring), and was able to catch the Kreator, Voivod, Nachmystium, Evile, and Lazarus A.D. show. Considering that it had been a little while since I have been pushed up against someone bigger and sweatier than I am, I was pretty geeked.

While I was at the show it dawned on me that, unlike in most sports, there aren’t statistics that tell you how well a band performed. Soccer has the a similar problem, which they solve by giving each player a 1 – 10 ranking based on their overall performance. So in honor of the upcoming world cup and my brother, who both despises metal and introduced me to soccer, I give you the band ratings for the Kreator show in soccer style.

Click to read more…