Julie Christmas is apparently going to have a new song called “Scalps” on the European Falling Down IIV compilation next year, and now a minute-long preview of that song is available for streaming (below). And, oh my dear, does it ever sound gorgeous. Christmas has to have one of the most haunting voices in all of music today — not just metal, either, but just music, period — and when she starts going nuts towards the end of the clip, my heart pretty much melts. I wanna hear the rest of this, and I wanna hear it now. A new Made Out of Babies album — or even another Christmas solo outing — would be terrific, too, don’t you agree?

-AR

[via The PRP]

Kenneth Thomas, in a tunnel.

If you care about heavy music and still believe that art should trump commerce every time, you owe it to yourself to check out Blood, Sweat & Vinyl: DIY in the 21st Century. I’ve written about Kenneth Thomas’s music documentary in these e-pages before. After watching the film a second time, I’m even more convinced of its importance as both a document of bands that you rarely (if ever) got to hear from outside of the concert hall, and argument for the importance of underground music makers, making music underground. Thomas chose to keep the focus tight, centering on the musicians, artists and label heads associated with three independent labels that are doing things their own way: Hydra Head, Neurot Recordings and Constellation. While there are certain characters that emerge as the spiritual ballast for the film – Aaron Turner of Isis & Hydra Head, Steve von Till of Neurosis & Neurot, and Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, in particular – the overwhelming sense is of a giant inter-connected family of passionate people, united by nothing other than a desire to pursue truth and clarity through music.

Aside from a couple off-camera giggles during an adorable scene with Justin Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh), Thomas himself doesn’t show up in his film. So we figured we’d find out what the director had to say about his opus.

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Though Fucked Up, Made Out of Babies vocalist Julie Christmas and the annual free tech-metal comp Mecha Organa are completely unrelated in just about every way, they all concern heavy music and they’ve all got new tunes. So:

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After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

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IT’S HERE! IT’S FINALLY HERE!!! Volume 1 of NYC Sucks, the completely free comp we’ve compiled to spotlight some of the best metal bands currently dominating the New York metal scene. This volume features fourteen songs by as many bands, who run the gamut of genres, from death to tech to prog to grind to black to hardcore to doom and more. We truly feel that this is a great sampling of all that New York’s thriving metal scene has to offer, and we’re beyond proud to be sharing it with you — absolutely, 100% free of charge.

You can stream, or, better yet, just download the comp below. It contains high-quality 320kbps MP3s, and as well as a PDF of digital liner notes with information about all the bands. Please help get the word out… send the comp to your friends, put it up on torrent sites, submit it to .rar Mediafire blogs… just spread the friggin’ music by any means necessary!

And don’t forget that Volume 2, featuring thirteen more great bands and songs, will be out on February 22nd!!!

—> DOWNLOAD NYC SUCKS VOLUME 1 HERE <—
(includes 320kbps MP3 files, Album Cover, PDF Liner Notes)

1. East of the Wall, “The Ladder”
2. Made out of Babies, “Invisible Ink”
3. Tiger Flowers, “Cuts”
4. Black Anvil, “The Evil of All Roots”
5. Naam, “Frosted Tread”
6. Batillus, “The Children of the Night Make Their Music”
7. Meek is Murder, “Sundowners” (demo)
8. The Binary Code, “Encircled”
9. Castevet, “Stones”
10. Hung, “Desert of Sad”
11. Wizardry, “The Falconer”
12. Pyrrhon, “King of All Tears”
13. Mutant Supremacy, “Epitaph”
14. Incendiary, “Victory in Defeat”

I’m enjoying doing these “Cinemetal Round-Up” things, and hopefully you are, too. Actually, I don’t care if you’re enjoying them or not, I’m the one who has to write them and I don’t really know you anyway.

SO, here we go with the latest batch of clips intended to sell you some music.

First up, we have “Bow” from Julie Christmas. The video originally premiered on Stereogum, and the song comes from her new album, The Bad Wife. It’s Julie’s first solo album, although you’d never really know to listen to it — possibly because her Made Out of Babies bandmates apparently helped her write some of the music.

ANYWAY, if you watched this video with the sound off, you’d probably think it was for some viking metal band, ’cause Ms. Christmas and this Sasquatch are running around the woods. Luckily the song is pretty good so you don’t have to watch it with the sound off.

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Relapse won’t release Sweetest Dreams, the new offering from Brooklyn’s epic rock jam band, Titan, ’til October 12, but this is MetalSucks and we aim to please — so we’re debut a new track, “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander,” right now. Check it out below.

Sweetest Dreams was recorded with current Made Out of Babies/former Red Sparrowes guitarist Brendan Tobin, and in case that wasn’t enough to make ya excited, it’s the first Titan album to feature Zombi’s Steve Moore on bass and synths!

You can pre-order Sweetest Dreams on CD here or on vinyl here. And if you live in the area, you should be aware that the band will be playing at Kung Fu Necktie in Philly on October 22 with Royal Thunder, Serpent Throne, and Snake Sustaine; then they’ll be doing a record release show on October 24 at Union Pool with Royal Thunder and Dark Vibes. The latter is a 21 and over show that will start at 9 pm, and ticketing info will be posted here shortly.

And now, without further ado, we present “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander” by Titan. Enjoy!

Titan – “Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander”

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By which I do not mean that Ms. Christmas has found God. I meant “CHRIST!” more in a “screaming random shit when you orgasm” kinda way.

‘Cause while Made Out of Babies’ often seemingly badshit crazy (in the best possible way) front lady announced her first solo album, The Bad Wife, back in June, now the album has a November 9 release date via Rising Pulse Records, and — score!!! — not one, but two tracks from the album have been released: “Bow” and “July 31.” And if for some reason you were worried about a Baby-less Christmas, well, don’t be. These songs are just grand: original and visceral and elegant and scary and intriguing and all the things you’ve loved about Christmas’ work with MOOB, Battle of Mice, and Spylacopa. I can’t wait to hear the rest of this album.

Check out the new songs here.

-AR

Made Out of Babies’ masterpiece, The Ruiner, came out exactly two years ago today, and to be honest, I was hoping there might be a new MOOB album in the not-too-distant future — especially after watching them absolutely annihilate live earlier this year.

Well, the bad news is that there’s news on the MOOB front, vocalist/batshit crazy front lady Julie Christmas will be releasing her first solo album, The Bad Wife, sometime this fall. Our first taste of the album will apparently be a song called “July 31st,” which will appear in a feature film called Wrong Turn at Tahoe. The movie stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Harvey Keitel and was directed by the dude who made the barely-watchable P2, so I’m assuming the Christmas track will be the best thing about the flick. Luckily, Ms. Christmas is doing a video for the song, so hopefully none of us will ever have to suffer through Tahoe to hear it.

And that’s not all Julie has been busy with!

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video taken by (((unartig)))

Initially, it wasn’t all that clear why Unsane chose to play a one-off show this past Friday in Brooklyn. They had no new album to promote, nor any major news to announce, yet the devoted crowd at a sold-out Union Pool seemed perfectly content when frontman Chris Spencer suggested that they were just there to “hang out.” Fortunately, that meant a lengthy set from the iconic New York noise rockers stuffed with classics as well as more recent work. Kicking off with “Against The Grain,” a vicious track off 2007′s underrated Visqueen, the essential trio of drummer Vinnie Signorelli, bassist Dave Curran, and guitarist Spencer set a bizarre mood for the remainder of the night. During songs like “Scrape” and “Body Bomb,” Unsane were unhinged and bestial. Yet between tracks the guys acted playful and lighthearted, with Signorelli showing off rhythmically while Curran and Spencer shared some borderline bromantic moments. This dichotomy of catharsis and camaraderie spread quickly to the audience, of which I was an active participant at the front of the stage. Though most of the between-song banter was friendly, Spencer experienced a significant mood shift as he introduced “Only Pain” which he described as some sort of love song. His lyrics steeped in agony, Unsane’s founder roared his heart out on the gut-wrenching chorus, adding new dimensions to an already solid track. The band closed with a long slogging noise jam version of “Get Off My Back” (off 1995′s essential Scattered, Smothered & Covered), which astounded with its primitive wall of sound approach to devastation.

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I don’t know what we did to deserve this, but New York noise rock legends Unsane have given us the best Valentine’s Day gift of all: an intimate one-off concert at Union Pool in Brooklyn tonight. The band’s first local show in two years, the bill also features the incredible Made Out Of Babies, savage hardcore supergroup United Nations (dropping a new 7″ on Deathwish this year), and some other band called Dark Vibe that doesn’t have any music on their Facebook page (tsk tsk). The super-low-budget video above is for “Against The Grain,” one of the many brutal tracks off 2007′s devastatingly violent Visqueen, and after over two decades of being together it’s clear that Unsane haven’t lost their edge.

If for some reason you didn’t buy advance tickets, I strongly recommend getting your pimply ass there at 8pm in the hopes that you can gain entry at the door. This venue is fucking tiny (it used to be a pool supply store) and the building will likely collapse by the end of the night thanks to the crushing nature of the lineup.

-GS

[Gary Suarez usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. He recently quit Twitter.]

Candiria needs no introduction, but even those familiar with the band might not know that guitarist John LaMacchia is one of the most hard-working men in underground metal. In addition to his work with Candiria — who are releasing Toying With the Insanities Volumes 1 and 2 this September — LaMacchia runs Rising Pulse Records, the label that will be releasing the aforementioned new Candiria albums. He’s also a member of Spylacopa together with members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Isis and Made out of Babies, and and he’s co-writing and producing a solo album with Julie Christmas of the latter. In a phone conversation earlier this month, I chatted with John about the new Candiria sets, the aforementioned side projects (which are only the tip of the iceberg), the current status of Candiria, and some local bands he digs. Our chat, after the jump.

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I’ve got a bit of a cold, so I’m not really up for writing some long drawn out post replete with nautical allusions, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t try and turn you on to a stellar post-hardcore band I’ve only just discovered. City Of Ships is a Virginia-based trio that recently signed to Translation Loss Records. Due out this June, the full-length debut Look What God Did to Us was produced by Andrew Schneider at Brooklyn’s Translator Audio, a studio that has served such Scraping Genius… faves as Made Out Of Babies and Zozobra, as well as the upcoming Celan (Chris from Unsane) album I’m so fucking stoked about.

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2008 has been a fucking great year for metal, and in due time — Monday, Dec. 15, to be exact — Axl, myself and the rest of the writers of MetalSucks will all release our Top 10 year-end lists so you can incessantly argue over which great album was left off or tell us we’re assholes for ranking a certain album higher than it should’ve been.

But for now, ya’ll can argue about something else: here’s my personal short/working list for said year-end list containing all of my favorite metal releases from this year as well as a few that aren’t likely to make my own list but will surely be appearing on others’. Feel free to pipe in with your thoughts or to notify us of any egregious omissions before we put together our final, ordered lists. Regardless, it is going to be really fucking hard to pick just 10 of these and put them in order of awesomeness.

And, my favorite metal records of 2008 in no particular order are…

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So. You may or may not recall that, a few weeks back, for the first time ever, five females won the Completely Unreadable Band Logo contest. Dubbing them “The Slipknot Five,” I wrote that “since I’ve never had a girlfriend who was actually into metal, I’m hoping at least one them e-mails me with a marriage proposal. Fingers crossed.”

Well, lo and behold, one of those ladies, Ms. Stacey Watrobski, did, in fact, e-mail me with a marriage proposal, and even included a link to her MySpace page so I could see that she didn’t, in her words, “look like one of those broads from Kittie.” Stacey then scolded me for never promoting shows outside the NYC area; I, in turn, promised to promote any show outside NYC that she asked me to, seeing as we’re now engaged n’ all.

Well, now Stacey has a show she wants to promote, so I’m here to help. But rather than try and write something about said show, I’m just going to let her tell you about it:

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From The Austerity Program to Made Out Of Babies, it seems that some of my favorite acts in noise rock these days are coming from NYC, something that makes this native beam with hometown pride. Wetnurse is the latest addition to this list.

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A couple of months back I published an article declaring that Spylacopa, the new supergroup featuring John LaMacchia (Candiria), Jeff Caxide (Isis), Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan) and Julie Christmas (Made Out of Babies / Battle of Mice), was sounding surprisingly tame for a band whose members usually spit such intense venom. Now I eat my words.

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Call it the Sarah Palin Effect: so much is already stacked against In This Moment (a metalcore band two to three years after metalcore flickered out with an incredibly attractive frontwoman equipped with a ridiculously provocative sense of fashion) that the bar is set almost comedicaly low. But much like struggling to answer simple follow-up questions during one of your first televised national interviews, any slight hint of competency already exceeds expectations, and by many, will be perceived a victory. I wouldn’t call The Dream, the band’s latest album, a victory by any means, but considering the flaccidity of the genre in which it exists, they manage to ascend from “Why do bands like this still make music?” to “Not that bad, really,” with relative ease. Though by no means a classic, it wobbles between lame metalcore and admirable pop-rock somewhat effortlessly to maybe work their way onto the guilty pleasure heap – no small achievement when considering the ocean of sneers and venom already directed their way before playing a note.

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It’s a really slow fucking news day and I’m bored off my ass, but I found this footage of Made Out of Babies doing the song “Invisible Ink,” off their latest album, The Ruiner, and it kept me entertained for a few minutes, so I thought I’d share it.

The Ruiner is easily one of the best albums of the year, and this is probably my favorite track on the record – it gets stuck in my head at least once a week. It’s epic, it’s catchy, it’s heartbreak, and, oh yeah, Julie Christmas is a babe. So check it out, hopefully it’ll help you pass the remaining hours ’til the work day is done a little faster.

-AR

There must be something in the water; another awesome supergroup has been born. Says a press release delivered by carrier pigeon to the MetalSucks Mansion:

United Nations is a power-violence band that features members of Thursday, Glassjaw, Made Out of Babies, Converge, and other special guests:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_(band)

Full album. Streaming. MySpace. Now. Listen.

-VN