MetalSucks

Is there really not already a metal song called “Lethal Injection?” I know there’s an Ice Cube album by that title, but I can’t think of any metal tunes by that name. That seems weird, ’cause it’s such an obvious title. Am I forgetting something really obvious?

While I search through my CD collection (’cause I still have a CD collection) to try and figure out if I’m missing something, here’s a bootleg video of “Lethal Injection,” a new Soulfly song, being performed live. Max Cavalera even got Prong’s Tommy Victor to come out and do guest vox, as he apparently does on Soulfly’s new album, Omen. It sounds pretty much like a Soulfly song to me. But props to Cavalera for being the metal d00d who finally laid claim to the song title.

Metal Injection also has a bunch of exclusive studio reports on the making of Omen. You can check those out here. The album comes out May 25 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Not that this really has anything to do with anything, but Blabbermouth reported over the weekend that Max Cavalera and his wife/manager Gloria are selling their Phoenix home (above) – which is 2,794-square-feet and has five bedrooms and three and half baths – for a list price of $1.475 million.

Now, Max’s musical output over the past ten years has been really solid, so he’s obviously not one of these rich dudes who has fallen out of touch and now makes art that is wholly irrelevant. And I know that taxes n’ shit will take a large chunk of whatever he and his wife end up making from the sale. Still, I no longer feel guilty about the fact that I never bought any Cavalera Conspiracy merch.

Also, the value of this home is still only, like, 1/100th of that of the MetalSucks Mansion. I actually tracked Vince down in Egypt and suggested we buy this home under the condition that Max be at the closing so we could meet him, but Vince, ever frugal, told me I should place an interview request through his publicist instead. What a party pooper.

If you’re wealthy and want to capitalize on Vince’s mistake, you can get more info on buying this luscious pad here.

-AR

…and that omen said it will come out May 4 on Roadrunner. And that it will feature guest appearances from The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato, Prong’s Tommy Victor, and (on b-side covers) Igor Cavalera and Zyon Cavalera. And, oh yeah, that it will be called Omen.

I’ve never liked Soulfly as much as I love Sepultura, but I did really enjoy Dark Ages, and the one time I caught the band live, they slayed. So while I’d much rather have a new Cavalera Conspiracy record, color me curious to hear this.

I’m less curious to hear the cover of “Refuse/Resist,” featuring the aforementioned Zyon Cavalera. Why does anyone ever cover their own song? The results are almost always disasterous – just ask Chuck Mosley or Slash…

-AR

I think I’ve made my feelings about remixes pretty clear in the past, but just to reiterate – I find them boring, pointless, and usually pretty awful. I mean, good for the band for getting their hardcore fans to pony up for a terrible version of a song they already owned, but I’m gonna pass.

So I was pretty pissed when I read this statement from Iggor Cavalera on Noisecreep:

“We have some ideas of maybe doing a remix album of ['Inflikted'] and have people like Justice or Soulwax — even some dub artists that my brother likes — remix the whole album.”

Mercifully, Iggor goes on to say that the remix record is “just an idea. It’s nothing confirmed,” and promises that he and brother Max “are talking about doing a new album in the future.” But I just want to be on record right now as saying that they just wait to do said new album. ‘Cause a collection of remixes won’t do much besides lower the cool quotient of Cavalera Conspiracy stock. I mean, “Sanctuary” needs a lot of bleeps and bloops and dee-dee-dees and do-doh-dos like Gene Hoglan needs a sandwich, y’know? Let’s just leave good enough alone fellas. Thanks.

-AR

Max Cavalera and Soulfly are back in the studio, working on their seventh (shit, time flies!) album, tentatively titled Omen, and those cool motherfuckers at Metal Injection got Mr. Cavalera himself to do an in-studio video update. Check it out:

Not to be disrespectful to Max Cavalera or nothing, but while you happen to be in a studio with Logan Mader, do you think you could give your brother a call and get crackin’ on a new Cavalera Conspiracy album, too? I’d be much obliged if ya did.

-AR

In my review for AC/DC’s Black Ice, I wrote about how certain trademarks of an artist or band – Michael Jackson’s falsetto, Axl Rose’s gravelly throat, Angus Young’s dirty blues rock pecking – suck me in immediately, even despite their use for blatantly nostalgic purposes. The punch in the gut of Andreas Kisser’s muddy-but-monolithic power chords at the beginning of “A-Lex I,” the opening track on Sepultura’s eleventh album, A-Lex, pull me right back to being seventeen and getting lost in the ridiculous grooves of the band’s punk/thrash classic, Chaos A.D. Of course, when making this comparison, I meant it positively toward Black Ice. And though A-Lex doesn’t necessarily suckle at the leathery teat of nostalgia, it doesn’t lift off in the way the intro track implies. Though the album is packed with primo Sepulturaness, it’s also packed with directionless filler, bloating it from a tight groove metal record to an overly/questionably ambitious record that’s practically impossible to get through in one sitting. Their lack of self-editing ultimately mars the record, but the bits of it that are good – and don’t let my misgivings fool you, because there’s quite a bit that’s pretty fucking good – make you glad they’re still here, even if they are completely without the Cavalera brothers for the first time since the band’s inception.

Click to read more…

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:

Click to read more…

Sorry we didn’t do one of these last week. Shit happens.

The logo from two weeks ago belongs to the clever wordsmiths in the band Dickless Tracy, and apparently that was pretty easy for a lot of you to figure out. (Although I did appreciate the entry from the dude who guessed it was “Pickles Tracy.” That’s a much better name for a band.) But I only have six copies of The Best of Spineshank to give away and the luck of the draw tells me that they’re going to Christopher Yeagle, Adam Riley, Izan Lewis, Tony Rice, Martin Chavez, and Alan Brenner. Hope you enjoy the free CDs, my friends.

This week the extreme people over Roadrunner Records have donated a limited edition copy of Max Cavalera’s self-titled Soulfly debut. It comes with a sexy black cover and some bonus tracks that weren’t on the original album, so it’s pretty much a most-own for the Cavalera faithful.

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.net. We’ll randomly select one winner from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next Monday.

I think this week’s logo is a little harder than the last one, but I know y’all love a challenge, so have at it!

-AR

Just in case Max Cavalera’s reunion with his brother Igor in The Cavalera Consipiracy wasn’t enough to provoke a few curious listens, Brazil’s favorite metal son has come around again this year with a new release for his long running brainchild, Soulfly. Now while the skepticism of whether the world really needed two new Cavalera outputs in a single year (and not one of them involving a reunion with you-know-who) is probably well deserved, let’s all us keep an open mind to try and see what unique snowflakes we can find in this avalanche of new material.

Click to read more…

Well, well, well.. at least one person thought Apocalypto was a good movie, and his name is Max Cavalera.

The below, Gibson-esque video is for “Unleash,” the new single from Cavalera’s Soulfly, which will be the former Sepultura main man’s second release this year, after Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted. It features guest vocals by Pantera’s Phil Anselmo Throwdown’s Dave Peters, and while I think it’s an okay song, it lacks that Sepultura-ness that made Inflikted such a nice surprise.

Check out the video and then weigh in in our comments section. Soulfly’s new album, Conquer, drops July 29 on Roadrunner.

-AR

Is the world ready for a new Soulfly album? It seems like Cavalera Conspiracy’s Inflikted just dropped, and it turned out to be so killer, I don’t see any reason Max Cavalera couldn’t just chill for a beat before giving the world its next dose of Cavalera Lovin’.

Max isn’t just gonna chill for a beat, though; he’s the kinda guy who thinks metal is like Chinese food, so he’ll release Conquer, Soulfly’s latest, on July 29 via Roadrunner. I’ve heard at least one insider say that it’s superior to Inflikted – but that person also thinks that Cavalera Conspiracy sounds too much like old Sepultura, which is exactly why I like it so much. So take that for what you will.

ANYWAY, here’s Soulfly performing a new song, “I and I,” “Blood Fire War Hate,” [My bust - AR] at the XIII Festival Arte-Nativo Viña Rock 2008 festival earlier this month in Spain. It sounds pretty fuckin’ heavy… but I’ll reserve final judgement for when I hear the proper studio version.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

Blabbermouth tipped us off to the below footage of Sepultura rehearsing a new song for their upcoming album, which is apparently a concept album based on Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (which was – duh – also the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic film). This new album should provoke a lot of interest (if not record sales), ’cause it’s the first Sep album ever to feature neither of the Cavalera brothers.

So will it be any good? The riff in the video is okay, even if it doesn’t exactly knock my socks off. But the band’s last album, Dante XXI, was good enough that I’m curious to hear what Andreas Kisser and the fellas come up with.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=32090898;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

So… what do y’all think? Let’s get some premature judgements up in here!

-AR

Infliked, the new album by Cavalera Conspiracy, may have turned out to be a pleasantly awesome surprise (read our review here), but the band’s video for first single “Sanctuary” is, alas, not nearly as cool.

The concept isn’t bad: at a photo shoot for the band, a 28 Days Later-style monster goes on the rampage and kills pretty much everyone in the room (save for the band, who, I suppose, are saved by the sheer power of their rocking). The clip is even filmed in lo-fi video to give it some sense of “realism.”

Unfortunately, it’s also shot in first-person shakey cam, a la The Blair Witch Project and the more recent Cloverfield, a.k.a. The Blair Monster Project. The result is that you can’t really see anything, and I don’t mean in a Jaws being-suggestive-is-more-scary-than-being-gory kind way; I mean, really, you can’t see very much.

So, y’know, that blows.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/uu9EgfOjBvk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

I’m really, really impressed with Inflikted, the debut (if you don’t count Sepultura) album from Cavalera Conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the new cover art for the album sucks even worse than the old cover art:

Okay, remember when Sepultura used to have freaky, scary, horrific, bad ass metal cover art? So why the fuck does this album have some modern-art Devo shit? It’s a good thing the album is actually good…

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Morizz for the tip!

-AR

Since so many of you see to be as pleasantly surprised as we are that those two Cavalera Conspiracy songs that surfaced earlier this week are actually good, we’re pleased to announce that the entire album has now leaked online. And, believe it or not, those songs were just foreshadowing; in other words, the entire album is really, really good. Head over to Kill the Musica to get the album. Enjoy it, and have a good weekend…

-AR

I’m feeling ready to be not so cynical about the Cavalera Conspiracy, the new Sepultura semi-reunion between brothers Max and Igor Cavalera (Soulfly’s Marc Rizzo and Gojira’s Joe Duplantier round out the line-up on guitar and bass, respectively). And why, pray tell, am I feeling so generous towards the band these days? Well, it’s cause these just released tracks, “Sanctuary” and “Inflikted” actually sound more or less exactly the way I wanted them to, which is to say: they sound an awful lot like good ol’ school Sepultura. Yes, it seems that the shitty band name, cheap album art, deliberate “hip” misspellings and other general shenanigans were bad omens not to be taken seriously… although I suppose the complete album could still totally suck.

Download the tracks below and let us know what you think.

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Sanctuary”

The Cavalera Conspiracy – “Inflikted”

-AR

I suppose I have no real reason to feel so cynical about the music that the reunited Cavalera brothers will make together; in 2005, Max Cavalera released Dark Ages, arguably the best Soulfly album to date, while Igor Cavalera and his band mates put out what is arguably the best Max-less Sepultura album, Dante XXI, just a year later. And they both made albums of such quality by introducing elements of older Sep back into music that become far too diluted with the “legacy” of the over-rated Roots, even if they’ve never abandoned that album’s musical “advances” altogether. In other words, it would seem that both Max and Igor have their heads in the right place, creatively speaking, and if ever a Sepultura semi-reunion was going to (needlessly?) produce new music, now would be the time.

Still, I was hoping that the band would come up with a better name than Cavalera Conspiracy, and a better album title than Inflikted. Not so, says Blabbermouth, who exclusively announced the album’s track list yesterday.

Click to read more…