Seether are still around? Apparently they are, and apparently they still sell buttloads of records. While Seether nabbed the top spot on the Top Hard Music chart, Scar Symmetry also had a good debut, as did, um, Vampires Everywhere. Foo Fighters, Hollywood Undead, Black Label Society and others are still selling lots of records too. Numbers after the jump.

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New releases from A Storm of Light, Anaal Nathrakh, Arsonsists Get All the Girls, Nader Sadek, Scar Symmetry and more; a good day for metal! Check out Vic Vaughn’s thoughts on today’s new albums after the break.

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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:

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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…

…..AS some of you may or may not have heard, Guitarist, Andrew has parted ways with Oceano. This decision was reached through personal as well as minor quarrels amongst the band. We wont go too much further into detail as it seemingly is not a band issue any longer.

If we’re to use MySpace blog comments as our guide, the fan reaction to last week’s news of Andrew Mikhail’s less-than-amicable departure from self-proclaimed deathcore beef-bringers Oceano was generally postive. In a post marked “Andrew Leaves Oceano” the band acknowledged their former guitarist’s public denouncement of the group before assuring fans that tour plans were not changing in spite of this. Scrolling down the page, however, it seems Mikhail wasn’t entirely happy with the comments being made. Using the presumably Outkast-referencing handle “andrew3000.” he replied directly to Oceano saying:

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