MetalSucks

These are some of my favorite producers and mixers for heavy music… It’s a challenging genre, and these guys are great in my opinion.

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The first press release into the MS Mansion inbox this morning bore a bit of bad news, at least for Canadian Slayer and Megadeth fans; Slayer have pulled out of the “Canadian Carnage Tour” with Megadeth, which was due to begin November 8th. The press release cites health concerns about bassist/vocalist Tom Araya as the reason for cancellation:

Slayer’s Tom Araya is currently under the care of a specialist for a back injury, thought to be related to his on-stage activity, and the physician has ordered an immediate surgical procedure to take place in Texas tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

The press release doesn’t specifically say whether the tour — which also includes Machine Head and Suicide Silence — will continue on without Slayer, but it’s implied, saying more information regarding rescheduled dates will be release soon.

It’d be awfully easy to make a Dave Mustaine vs. Kerry King jab here, but instead I’ll take the high road and simply offer this: get well, Tom.

-VN

Okay. So Manfred Nuggets clearly wins the “Tipster of the Day” award.

This is exactly what it looks like: Machine Head’s Rob Flynn. At Wembley Stadium. After his band opened for Metallica. In the crowd. Sining “Master of Puppets” along with the fans.

Regardless of what you think of Machine Head, you need to give the dude props for this. That is very cool.

-AR

If any two of the big four bands tour together, I think it’d be a pretty sweet show. Any three? Fucking amazing. But all four? That would have to be some kind of miracle, right? I mean, half these dudes hate each other. King and Mustaine practically make their living talking shit about Metallica – and one another, for that matter. So it’ll never happen, right?

Well, King now tells Metal Hammer otherwise. Sort of.

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Thanks to MS Maniac Aaron M. for pointing out the hilariousness that is ensuing over at Ross Robinson’s Twitter account re: the new Korn record. Yeah, Robinson is producing the new Korn record — somehow I missed that too.

I have somewhat of a difficult relationship with Ross Robinson. On one hand he produced one of the bestest albums ever in the form of At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command, and he also produced landmark albums by Glassjaw and Slipknot. On the other hand he produced way more albums that are just all sorts of terrible — records by Limp Bizkit (this in and of itself is a crime worthy of corporal punishment), Korn, Cold, Soulfly, Machine Head’s cringe-worthy rap-metal phase, and Vanille Ice’s nu-metal “comeback” record. As a producer who was definitely pigeonholed into a genre (rightly or wrongly), unsurprisingly Robinson hasn’t had a whole lot of work lately.

But he sure got a nice money gig for the new Korn joint. And he’s all sorts of excited about it! Here we go:

Korn, Day one: pikt out drums/cartage broke wheel of my 24 trk tape mchn/fairchild on cymb/made catbox/knee wnt out of socket-kicks ass12:01 AM Aug 6th

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MetalSucks Maniac Matt Fields sent us the below video with this simple message:

“I really do not see what credential this man has to criticize Limp Bizkit.”

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Uncle Vinnie is back; under a moon-lit sky at Saturday night’s Tool show in New Jersey, Axl and I had “a moment” and kissed and made up.

Seriously though, folks, I was just on vacation at the MetalSucks Mansion Kentucky Korner. Did some of you ninnies actually believe I quit?

Wouldn’t be surprising given all the feuding that’s gone down in metal this summer already, though, and we haven’t even reported on the tummy-tickling beef between Machine Head and Limp Bizkit.

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It seems like every few months now, Blabbermouth has another story about Machine Head’s Phil Demmel passing out on-stage. Demmel, you see, suffers from something called cardiogenic syncope. “Syncope” is just a fancy medical term for fainting, and when it’s cardiogenic, it’s ’cause – you guessed it – the heart isn’t getting enough blood to the brain.

That sounds pretty scary, and watching video of one such incident that took place in Finland over the weekend, it looks pretty scary. But I’m (obviously, and despite the wishes of my mother) not a doctor, and the internet research I’ve been doing doesn’t give me a clear idea of what the condition means for Demmel in the long-term. In any case, we obviously hope the dude is alright. I like to think that it’s not just coincedence that Demmel’s addition to MH marked the start of their artistic renaissance.

-AR

We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and  April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #16 album, coming in with a total of 115 points…

Machine Head, The Blackening (Roadrunner, 2007)
Robb Flyn – Vocals/Guitars
Phil Demmel – Guitars
Adam Duce – Bass
Dave McClain – Drums
Produced by Colin Richardson

With 2007’s The Blackening, Machine Head stormed back with a resounding shotgun blast from years of wallowing in irrelevancy, catapulting themselves back into metal’s mainstream with unanimous praise from longtime fans and critics alike. It’s not that Machine Head’s post Burn My Eyes efforts were downright terrible… actually, yeah, it pretty much is. While Machine Head could’ve spent the ’90s waving the “true metal” flag alongside Pantera, instead they chose to join the rap-metal circus and drown in a sea of mediocrity. With the addition of Phil Demmel on guitar for 2003’s Through the Ashes of Empires things started to turn around, culminating in The Blackening, an album that may end up standing as Machine Head’s career-best work.

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We’re giving away so much awesome free shit at the MS Mansion right now that I can’t even keep track of all of it, so there’s a good chance you can’t either. To wit, here’s a list of all the current contests we’re running:

• Two pairs of tickets to see Mastodon play Crack the Skye in its entirety in New York City.
• A pair of 3 Inches of Blood Nike Encore High sneakers!
• One pair of tickets to each stop of the Relapse Contamination Tour, featuring Obscura, Graves of Valor and Abysmal Dawn.
• Brutal Truth and Agoraphobic Nosebleed CDs in our (almost)-weekly Photo Caption Contest.
• Two copies of the super-extra-special edition of Machine Head’s The Blackening CD for deciphering a completely unreadable band logo.

Don’t say we never did nothin’ for ya.

-VN

As I mentioned earlier this week, a little while back I got an e-mail from The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney to discuss an extremely negative review I’d given the band’s last album, Fear Will Cast No Shadow. McChesney could have been a total dick about the whole thing, but as it turns out, he’s a very even headed, intelligent, and cool dude. So what else was there to do but interview him about the band’s new album, Requiem, which will come out June 9 on Victory. McChesney was even good enough to let us debut the first single off of that album, “The Curtain Hits The Cast,” for which the band will shoot a video in the coming weeks.

I still haven’t heard the new album, but I do already like this song way, way more than anything from Fear Will Cast No Shadow; it’s catchy and it doesn’t sound overly processed, which, I think, is what The Autumn Offering were striving for. Check out the song below, and then my conversation with Matt McChesney after the jump! (FYI – for fear that this was all a set-up for Matt to have me murdered, the interview was conducted by e-mail.)

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So a lot of you guessed that the answer to last week’s logo was Hist. And while I can see why you might think that, the correct answer was actually HØST. No, I don’t know why some cultures put a line through their letter “o”s, and being a right proper patriot (read: xenophobe), I don’t especially care. But congrats to MetalSucks Maniacs Amber Duchateau, Travis Dvoracek, and Ryan Liedel, all of whom answered correctly, and all of whom now get ultra-special super duper yowza edition of Machine Head’s 2007 instant classic, The Blackening (pictured left).

But don’t cut your wrists if you didn’t win: the righteous dudes and dudettes at Roadrunner have provided us with two (2) more of these babies to give away this week. In addition to the album, you get two bonus tracks – a cover of Maiden’s “Hallowed By Thy Name” and a cover of Metallica’s “Battery” – PLUS a DVD with live performances, music videos, “making of” specials on those music videos, and, the piece de resistance, a “making of” documentary about the creation of The Blackening itself. So clearly, if you’re a fan of Machine Head or just good fucking metal in general, you need to own this.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl AT metalsucks DOT net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

Thanks to longtime MetalSucks Maniac Attila Korsós for suggesting this week’s logo… it’s so fucking difficult it’s retarded, so I’ll be very impressed with those of you who get it right:

-AR

I friggin’ love it when I’m right: Megadeth will indeed be doing a co-headlining trek with Slayer. And Machine Fucking Head and Sucide Fucking Silence are the support. Holy fried shit sandwich, that’s a great tour.

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Wow. We haven’t done one of these since March. My sincerest apologies… shit happens, y’know? But since I sent out the prizes to the winner of that contest ages ago and have no fucking recollection whatsoever of the name of the band for that contest, let’s just start fresh, m’kay?

Alrighty. So. For our first week back, the fine folks at Roadrunner Records have provided us with some copies of the ultra-special super duper yowza edition of Machine Head’s 2007 instant classic, The Blackening. In addition to the album, you get two bonus tracks – a cover of Maiden’s “Hallowed By Thy Name” and a cover of Metallica’s “Battery” – PLUS a DVD with live performances, music videos, “making of” specials on those music videos, and, the piece de resistance, a “making of” documentary about the creation of The Blackening itself. So clearly, if you’re a fan of Machine Head or just good fucking metal in general, you need to own this. I’ve got three (3) copies to give away this week and then we’ll have a couple of more next week.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl AT metalsucks DOT net. We’ll randomly select three winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

Thanks to longtime MetalSucks Maniac/past Completely Unreadable Band Logo winner Kirsten Hogenson for suggesting this week’s logo… it’s a toughie to be sure!

-AR

In a statement, Machine Head main man Robb Flynn has revealed that he and Machine Head bassist Adam Duce have entered couples’ therapy.

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So apprently Slayer are gonna announce their co-headlining tour mates this coming Monday, January 26. Of course, this raises the question: who will said co-headliners be?

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When it was announced last month that Killswitch Engage would be on Disturbed’s fourth Music as a Weapon tour, we were flooded with so many irate e-mails from readers you’d have thought that Howard Jones had just been caught raping hundreds of metal fans’ mothers; KSE fans just couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of the American New Wavers acting as support for one of the most love ‘em or loathe ‘em nu metal acts on the planet. We didn’t report on the development at the time, though. Frankly, I figured it was just one of those things; sometimes awesome bands tour with crappy ones. You can’t please all the people all the time.

But now that Chimaira and Lacuna Coil have joined the tour, I gotta ask: what the frick?

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Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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Well then, today’s your lucky day!

-VN

[Rock Sound TV via Blabbermouth]

We love Machine Head and we love Iron Maiden, so naturally Machine Head covering Iron Maiden would be a good thing, right? Yes indeed. The track comes from the Maiden Heaven compilation released by Kerrang in July, which also features loads of other cool bands covering Maiden. The below video is included on The Blackening bonus edition which comes out today.

The new Weiland video comes from Happy in Galoshes, his 2nd solo record, due November 25th. I actually rather like Weiland’s solo work — 12 Bar Blues, released 10 years ago, was an exercise in completely drugged-out nonsensicalness on the level of John Frusciante’s in-between-stints-in-RHCP solo work. This song is alright; it’s definitely different from STP, and WAY different from Velvet Revolver, but it’s decidedly more focused than his first record.

Watch the vids after the jump.

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