Back in February of 2010, Machine Head invited a fan who was holding a banner that read “Let Me Play ‘Aesthetics Of Hate’ — Seriously, I Can Play It” up onto the stage to take a crack at that song, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Now they’ve done it again, and while you might be thinking “Yawn! Been there, done that!”, you should know that this time the fan, Anthony Potenza, was just thirteen years old. He even got to use Robb Flynn’s guitar. And unless that guitar was turned way low in the mix or something, it sounds like he did a mighty fine job! And to think, when I was thirteen, the only thing I was doing was masturbating to the bra section of the Sears catalog.

Machine Head are currently on tour with Darkest Hour, Suicide Silence, and Rise to Remain. You can get remaining dates here.

-AR

[via Roadrunner's official website... thanks to Rida for the tip!]

FEATURING MEMBERS OF MACHINE HEAD, EPICA, NAILS, CLINGING TO THE TREES OF A FOREST FIRE, ARGUS, EVERYTHING WENT BLACK, AND WEAPON

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. 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 nine to ten musicians at a time twice a day for the whole week.

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

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So hey, remember last week when we heard that rumor that Machine Head were planning a North American tour with Suicide Silence, Darkest Hour, and Rise to Remain? Well, it wasn’t a rumor at all, and now dates for the tour have been announced. You can get ‘em after the jump.

And, like I said when word about the trek first got out, it’s a really good bill. Machine Head, Darkest Hour, and Suicide Silence are all a lotta fun live, and I’m itching to see some of MH’s new Unto the Locust material performed before my very eyes. I’m not a fan of Rise to Remain, but I haven’t seen them in concert, so for all I know, they put on a good show, too. And even if they don’t, well, they go on first so you can just get there a little later or whatever.

And now, the promised tour itinerary…

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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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I’m going to put about as much as effort into this introduction as Herman Cain does to sounding sane and logical.

We begin today with Machine Head’s video for “Locust,” which, in case the giant red logo in the upper right hand corner didn’t tip you off, debuted on Metal Hammer‘s website. The video ain’t too bad. The performance footage could maybe use some more oomph and I wish the Cronerbergian portrayal of what I assume is a locust or a locust-man had more payoff. Also the final apocalyptic shot looks not-very-convincing. But otherwise the depiction of the swarm is pretty friggin’ metal, and the song certainly rocks.

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The release year is winding down. Aside from new Megadeth and Animals as Leaders records, I think we’re pretty much done with bigtime new albums until 2012.

The #1 record on the Current Hard Music chart last week came from a band whose music it’d be a stretch to call “hard.” Click through to find out who it was. Blessthefall, Misfits and Wayne Static had solid debuts, while a number of last week’s releases jumped off the second week cliff. All that and more, right here:

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I’m officially making the switch from the Top Hard Music chart to the Current Hard Music chart for the purposes of this column. While it’s interesting to see what classic Metallica and Aerosmith albums are charting and I still may occasionally reference the former, the latter chart paints a much clearer picture of the modern metal landscape by opening up more room for new records that sell less than classics, allowing a larger number of relevant new releases to place in the Top 100.

This chart has a slightly different way of tallying new releases, where sometimes they appear as having already been on for one week before official release — I’m still sorting through precisely what that difference is — so occasionally the chart positions are a little mixed up. But this only comes into play much farther down the list and this chart still provides a good gauge of relativity.

Now, onto the releases: as you all no doubt know, Mastodon and Machine Head were the biggies last week, and both did quite well — but the album that ended up at #1 is also a debut, and none of us saw it coming. Sebastian Bach, Warbringer and Maylene & The Sons of Disaster fared well in Week 1, while new records from Rose Funeral, Textures, Suffokate, Rwake, Brutal Truth and many, many more also appeared in the Top 100.

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HUGE drop of new releases this week including much-anticipated new records from Mastodon and Machine Head, as well as a ton of excellent other stuff from Craft, Dead In The Dirt, Landmine Marathon and more. My release reviews are a bit shorter than usual just due to the sheer volume of material coming out this week, but I think I covered most points of interest. Check it out after the jump.  On a side note, Metalsucks wants to send a birthday shout-out to Rodney Githens, member of Vertebrae 33 and the artist behind the awesome Metal Suckfest poster.  Have a good one, dude.

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Not that art is a competition or anything, but just you so know where I stand as a Machine Head fan and how your own tastes may or may not match up with my own, here are my three favorite pre-Unto the Locust MH releases, in descending order of preference:

• The Blackening
• Burn My Eyes
• Through the Ashes of Empires

So.

Machine Head’s The Blackening was some kind of goddamn masterpiece, an album that rightfully met with near-universal acclaim. And that acclaim wasn’t just hype, or critics and fans being swept up in the moment; the four-and-a-half years since its release haven’t diminished The Blackening‘s power any. There are few, if any, bands on earth that could make something that friggin’ good, and then follow it up with a record of equal, or even greater, quality.

And the bad news is, that Machine Head have not achieved this near-impossible task. Unto the Locust is not as good as The Blackening. But it is as good as Through the Ashes of Empires, and totally worth the nearly half-decade fans have had to wait for it — and that ain’t nuthin’ to sneeze at.

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I don’t wanna say too much about Machine Head’s new album, Unto the Locust, because I’m planning to write a review. But if the suspense is killing you, I will happily give you the short version: It’s really good.

Now our bestest buds over at Metal Injection have debuted the lyric video for the track “Locust,” which you can check out below. You may recall that an advanced mix of the song was released over the summer, but this final version has way more oomph! to it.

Unto the Locust comes out September 27 on Roadrunner.

-AR

The latest edition of Metal Injection’s “Ask the Artist” series — in which various artists are asked one uniform question (See what they did there?) —  poses the query “What are the best and worst stage moves in metal?” to various bands that were on this summer’s two biggest metal tours — Mayhem Fest and Summer Slaughter.

And it’s a great question to ask, because it’s certainly one that seems to come up in metallic circles quite a bit. Just recently, a publicist told me she understood that I didn’t like one of her bands because they played too much “breakdowncore,” and I told her the breakdowncore was silly, sure, but not as silly as they choreographed stage moves they used for each and every song. So it’s interesting to hear the thoughts of the musicians who actually have to be extra-conscientious of stage moves themselves.

Not shocking — a lot of the bands, including Trivium and Fleshgod Apocalypse, poke fun at crabcore and general scene-friendly stage moves. More shocking: so do Oceano.

Check out more of Metal Injection’s “Ask the Artist” videos here.

-AR

I don’t have anything particularly clever or intelligent to say about the album art for Machine Head’s Unto the Locust. I just think it looks cool, and that y’all might wanna see it. And so –

Unto the Locust comes out September 27 on Roadrunner.

-AR

So, to review the ways in bass players let us down this week:

• Coheed and Cambria’s Michael Todd robbed a pharmacy.
• Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss held his girlfriend hostage in a four-hour standoff with a S.W.A.T. team.
• Jeroen Paul Thessling quit Obscura.

(Photo by Fiaz Farrelly)

Greetings to all you MetalSuckahs from Reno, Nevada where Machine Head are doing a warm-up show before the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival starts in two days. My name’s Phil Demmel, I’ve been playing guitar with these guys for the past nine years and I’m stoked to share with you gear-heads the rig that I’m currently using.

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Best commercial ever?

ANYWAY, here’s how we filled our time this week:

• We mourned the loss of Anal Cunt’s Seth Putnam and Sirius XM Liquid Metal’s Mario Comesanas.
• We debuted new music by Intensus and, thanks to Decibel, Wormrot, too!
• Revocation’s Dave Davidson walked us through his live rig, and we spoke to Paul Ryan from Origin and Tommy “Two-Tone” Blankenship from My Morning Jacket.
• We checked out the latest release from Gigan.
• I told you which metal albums of 2011 have been my favorites thus far.
• We tried to figure out why people like August Burns Red.
• We discussed the new Machine Head single, “Locust.”
• We gave you The 16 Cardinal Rules for Running a Metal Record Label in 2011.
• We wondered who is dumber — Korn fans or Silent Hill fans?
• We pondered the upcoming Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration.

Next week is a big one — we’re debuting new tracks from two of our most favoritest bands, a video from one of our childhood heroes, reviewing a very, very, VERY highly anticipated new record (Hint: We definitely discussed it this week!), and we’ll have some other surprises in store for you, too. See ya then!

-AR

So, hey, remember last week when Machine Head announced that they were releasing an advance mix of a new song, “Locust,” today? Well, guess what? It’s today, so the song is out! Funny how time works that way. You can stream the track below.

I’ll be curious to see how the metal community reacts to the tune. Machine Head are coming off of two AWESOME records (Through the Ashes of Empires and The Blackening, duh), and, clearly, they’d like to pull off a hat trick of excellence. And even though it’s a not-final-mix of one single song, “Locust” will go a long way towards building hype that, OMG, they’ve pulled it off!, or, FML, they have not.

Personally, I was actually not that into the song the first time I heard it… but now I’ve listened to it five or six times, and it’s grown on me with each successive spin. Is it up to snuff with the material from The Blackening, an album I thought was pretty much a goddamned masterpiece? I don’t quite think so… but I’m also not sure right now if I’m reacting to the song, or my incredibly high expectations for the new MH offering. I’ll have to listen a bunch more (and, of course, hear the song in the context of the entire album) before really being able to make up my mind. But I will say that even if it’s not quite as good as that Blackening material, it’s still really rockin’, and certainly in no way qualifies as a letdown.

You can download “Locust” here for all of ninety-nine cents. Machine Head will be part of this year’s Mayhem Fest, along with Megadeth, In Flames, Trivium, Unearth, Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish, Kingdom of Sorrow, and Red Fang. You can get dates here.

-AR

Well, I didn’t see this coming: not only have Machine Head already announced a September 27 release date for their still-untitled, still-being-recorded new album, but they’ve announced that an “advance mix” (i.e., not final) of a new song, “Locust,” will be released this coming Tuesday, June 14. So that’s not bad news!

The press release states that the song “will be on sale at iTunes on June 14^th and will be included on an iTunes Mayhem digital sampler;” download cards for the latter  ”will be distributed at every date” of this summer’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (on which MH are playing, duh), so I guess you can wait until you go to the show and get the sampler for free, or you can pay the buck (or whatever it ends up costing) and just get the song on Tuesday. I am impatient, so I will be giving Machine Head a dollar, and doing so happily.

Other bands on this year’s Mayhem Fest include Megadeth, In Flames, Trivium, Unearth, Suicide Silence, All Shall Perish, Kingdom of Sorrow, and Red Fang. You can get dates here. And we’ll have some kind of editorial/review/whatever on Tuesday, after “Locust” is released.

-AR

I regularly lord it over everybody that I attended the final Pantera show ever! It 2001 at the inaugural Beast Feast two-day jam in Yokohama, Japan, also headlined by Slayer, Sepultura, and Machine Head. But by Pantera’s fest-closing set on day two, I was hardly in command of my senses because A.) drugs; and B.) late-night Skinless. See, for the truly metal and/or too high to find the train station, Beast Feast had an overnight gig nearby that bridged days one and two. And Skinless, taking the stage after the great Taiho, absolutely owned that show! They ripped! They raged! They rippaged! Memories.

So it sucks baboon balls to hear this bunch of boner-breaking jive from Skinless honcho Noah Carpenter:

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It’s been more than four years since the release of Machine Head’s masterpiece, The Blackening, but it feels like an eternity. Not that the band hasn’t been keeping busy touring and touring and touring and touring and touring and touring…, but OH HOW I ACHE FOR SOME NEW MACHINE HEAD MUSIC. And I know you guys feel the same way — in fact, reader Ray Pecheone just e-mailed us this week to ask, “Any word on how the new Machine Head is coming along?”

Well, now we have word! The band posted the following message on their Facebook page earlier today:

For reasons I don’t really comprehend, said behind-the-scenes clip isn’t embeddable, but you can check it out here. Alas, there’s no samples of new MH music in it, but it’s still really entertaining stuff — I especially enjoyed Robb Flynn’s comments on Zach Galifianakis, who apparently serves as something of an inspiration to the band. The working titles for some of the new material is pretty great, too (sample: “Wharrr Weee Weee Weee”… which pretty much tells you what the song must sound like).

So, I’d be pleasantly surprised if this album actually came out this year, but at least we know it’s in the works. Machine Head are gonna have a helluva time topping The Blackening, but I’m rootin’ for ‘em!!!

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

When  the line-up for this year’s Mayhem Fest was announced last week, we were told that more bands would eventually be announced. Not to sound like gloating pricks or anything, but we here at MetalSucks already knew that Trivium were gonna be on the bill, even if their involvement hadn’t been made public yet.

Well, now it’s public. Trivium are on the bill. They’ll be on the main stage along with Disturbed, Godsmack, Megadeth, Machine Head, and In Flames; the line-up is rounded out by second stage acts Unearth, Suicide Silence, Kingdom of Sorrow, All Shall Perish, Red Fang, and Straight Line Snooze.

When we saw the band at Mayhem in 2009, they were one of the dominant acts on the second stage; I will never forget wondering “Where the fuck is Paolo Gregoletto?” before realizing that he had jumped into the crowd and was playing amongst the thousands of rabid fans. And Trivium’s live show has increased in quality by 100% since they traded drummer Travis Smith for Nick Augusto last year. (Read Vince’s article on the matter here.) In other words: Trivium’s addition to the bill is a good thing.

Trivium are at Audiohammer Studios in Florida working on a new album with producer Colin Richardson even as I type this; I’ve heard that the goal is to get that record out in time for Mayhem. While we wait for more news of that release, here are Mayhem dates:

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