FEATURING MEMBERS OF KYLESA, INSOMNIUM, ABORTED, MNEMIC, MARUTA, EAST OF THE WALL, BLOODIEST, BROKEN HOPE, AND IN DE GOOT ENTERTAINMENT

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 have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times 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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Martua — the totally excellent grindcore outfit known to idiots everywhere as “that band the drummer from Trivium used to be in” — have decided to call it a day. They’ll play their final show on Sunday, December 4, at at Churchills in Miami, Florida, which blows, because the chances of me getting down to Miami for a Sunday to say my farewells are slim to none.

Oh well. Here’s a statement from sole remaining original member Mitchell Luna, which was originally released to Lambgoat:

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Gridlink are one of my favorite grind bands that I almost never have an excuse to write about. And part of the reason I never have an excuse to write about them is because they don’t really tour; the band’s members live in three different locations on two different continents, so it’s not like they can all just hop in a van and do some shows every weekend. A Gridlink concert is a very special thing indeed.

And now the band has announced not one but TWO shows for this month — one on August 13 in Chicago, and one on August 14 in Los Angeles — which will be their only U.S. appearances in 2011.

And to sweeten the deal, Phobia is also on the bill.

And to further sweeten the deal, Maruta is also also on the bill.

And to give you a cavity, THE SHOWS ARE FREE.

That’s a quartet of ridiculously good reasons to go to one of these concerts. In fact, this is one of those situations where I’d posit that if you are in a position to go to one of these gigs and don’t, your must be roughly as intelligent as a Hinder fan.

Get more details and RSVP to these shows here.

-AR

It’s a big week for metal releases. Children of Bodom, Destruction, The Human Abstract, Turisas, and Rival Schools are this week’s heavy hitters, while new ones from Agnostic Front, Maruta, Jag Panzer, Swamp Thing and more give hardcore a surprisingly robust showing. After the jump, all the goods:

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Hey studs and foxes, Anso here. Please accept my most gracious hugz in return for partying with me these last two days. Running this site in the absence of Axl and Vince has been so superfun thanks to you, our cherished MetalSucks readership. I learned a lot of stuff too, for example that I should hereby refrain from “ass fucking [my] boyfriends cock” [sic]. K I’ll work on that while you all re-live some hilarious, informative, and sexy moments from this week:

• We debuted new music by Maruta.
• We spoke to Rob Arnold from Chimaira/Six Feet Under/The Elite, Jack Strong from The Acacia Strain, Varg Vikernes of Burzum, and Takis Kinis from prog-thrash legends Realm.
• We checked out the latest releases from DevilDriver and Wino. Plus, hot hardcore 7″s and all the stuff that Corey Mitchell rocked in February.
• We reveled in official confirmation of the System of a Down tour story we broke ahead of everybody.
• We proffered scientific evidence that to be in a band is a poor life decision.
• We were wowed by Evan Brewer, player of two basses!
• We peeped Devin Townsend’s nod to Sinatra and incredible new jams from Scale The Summit, Between The Buried And Me, Graviton, and All Shall Perish.
• We cheered Taylor Momsen and her desire to “fuck for Satan.”
• We met the new Dragonforce singer. It’s not Corey Taylor.
• We took a stand against D.R.U.G.S.

You’ll have a couple days to de-Anso yourselves, but please do rush right back to MetalSucks on Monday for more hot action when the bosses return from muling heroin in from Ecuador their business trip and we resume our regularly-scheduled action. You may now put your pants back on!

-ADF

We have a special treat for you today, kiddies: a pre-release full-album stream of Forward Into Regression, the face-fuckingly good new album from Floridian grindsters Maruta. This album is unrelenting in its viciousness; it’s like the aural equivalent of being made to eat broken glass. Somehow, the jagged edges all fit together into a cohesive whole — and that whole is wholly excellent.

Stream Forward Into Regression below, and then, once you realize “Holy shit I MUST own this,” you can pre-order the CD here, or the CD/t-shirt combo here. Willowtip will release Forward Into Regression next Tuesday, March 8.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Maruta got a lot of attention last year when their drummer, Nick Augusto, joined Trivium; Maruta sound nothing like Trivium, but whatever gets people talking about them is fine. They are, in fact, a grindcore band, and a killer grindcore band at that; now Invisible Oranges is streaming a new song, “Strain.” Listen here.

The last thirty seconds of the song or so, when guitarist Eduardo Borja starts making his guitar sound the way I imagine Gene Hoglan stomping on a family of live squirrels might, is my favorite part. It’s like the song builds and builds, and then just erupts into physical violence. Excellent.

Listen here.”Strain” comes out off Maruta’s new album, Forward into Regression (See what they did there?),which comes out on Willowtip on March 8. Yep, pre-orders are up.

-AR

P.S. I really like that cover art, too!

“Shattering the Skies Above,” the new Trivium song the band recorded for the video game God of War III, has found its way onto YouTube, which in this day and age was inevitable, I guess. The song is notable because it marks the recording debut of Trivium’s new drummer, Nick Augusto, late of the grindcore band Maruta. (And if you’re not familiar with Maruta, Cosmo Lee has a good piece on them, mouring their loss of Augusto, at Invisible Oranges.) To be honest, I don’t hear a huge difference in the quality of the drumming here, but then, recorded performances were never really previous drummer Travis Smith’s problem – live shows were. It’s also not clear how involved Augusto was in the creation of this song, given that he’s only been in the band for a short while; I imagine his contributions will be much more noticeable on the next Trivium album.

Check out the song and see what you think:

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I’ve personally never understood all the ire directed at Trivium by metal purists. In Trivium you have a band with above average chops and way better than average songwriting skills led a young phenom who’s a helluva nice guy. What’s not to like — or, at the very least if it just ain’t your thang musically speaking (which is fine), what is there to HATE? Sure, there was that Metallica ripoff album that was pretty ridiculous in concept, but even that album was executed well and the band promptly righted their ship with the next one. As for as more commercially-oriented metal goes there are WAY WAY WAY worse bands than Trivium. Way worse, people. Trivium are the good guys in that fight.

We’ve always felt that the band did lack a bit in the live department, though, mainly because of drummer Travis Smith. Way back in March of 2007, only our third month as a website, Axl reviewed a Lamb of God gig at NYC’s Roseland at which Trivium opened, nailing the problem with Smith thusly:

the fault here appears to lie primarily with drummer Travis Smith, who often seems to be playing a different song from his bandmates. I’m all for fast drumming, but Smith is completely incapable of staying on the beat, and the rest of the band’s performances suffer severely as a consequence of trying to keep up with him.

And this has always been the case with Smith. It seemed like he was always trying to keep up with the ProToolsed performances he laid down on record and couldn’t quite do it. But the other three members of Trivium need worry no more, as rumors of Travis Smith’s departure from the band have now been confirmed. Noisecreep reports:

“We’re really happy to have our good friend and fellow Floridian Nick Augusto join the Trivium family,” Vocalist/guitarist Matt Heafy commented.

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If you hit up Trivium’s most recent U.S. tour with Chimaira, you may have noticed an absence of drummer Travis Smith. When the tour started, the band said that Smith “will not be joining us on this leg and is home taking care of some personal business.” Filling-in for him on the tour was his drum tech, Maruta’s Nick Augusto.

Meanwhile, we’d heard some rumors from a pretty reputable source that Smith wasn’t coming back at all. We didn’t say anything at the time ’cause sometimes someone tells you something off the record and it’s not cool to print that kinda thing (even we’re not that dickish)… but now that Metal Underground is reporting the rumor, fuck it. We don’t think Smith is coming back to Trivium.

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