MetalSucks

Speaking of our friends at Metal Injection: they found these groovy clips which collect all the metal-celeb guest appearances on Metalocalypse. In case ya don’t know, everyone from Hetfield and Hammett to Corpsegrinder to King Diamond has done voice work for the show… one of many reasons why it’s worth your time.

Here’s the clips from season 1; check out season 2 after the jump. And don’t forget that Dethklok have a new album coming out, to be immediately followed by a ridiculously awesome tour with Mastodon, Converge, and High on Fire.

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So playing underground metal is interesting for various reasons. There’s a real hierarchy to it. It has its own set of stars. Its own celebs. Legends. Etc. But in the grand scheme of the music industry, it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket.

Forget Metallica and the huge bands. I’m talking about everything else. Maybe these days, when records don’t sell like they used to and metal sells like it always has, it’s a bigger drop in the bucket. But check this out. A metal band sells 100,000 units. I’ts something to open up champagne and do coke off of strippers asses over. Tour buses, flat screen TVs, WOW WE’RE ROCKSTARS. Do you guys realize that on a major label in the mainstream world, 100,000 units is an abject failure?

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It’s no secret that pretty much every band in metal wants to open for Metallica, even if that band’s best days are behind them – and God Forbid are no exception. Since we consider GF like family around the mansion, seeing them fulfill one of their ambitions and get to open for ‘Tallica would be pretty swell.

For better or worse, for right now we’re going to have to settle for Doc Coyle opening for Metallica.

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Not that it would wake him from his creative stupor (although it would be awesome if it turned out that all Metallica needed to make incredible records again is a little bit of pie), but, assuming he didn’t kick my ass afterwards, it would a) make me feel better about how let down I feel by Metallica and b) it would be a funny story to tell.

But the people in the below video aren’t throwing pie at Hetfield because he’s a mere whisp of his former self – they’re doing it to celebrate his 46th birthday.

Fuck me. Hetfield is 46.

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

Nah, that’s not fair. Hetfield doesn’t sound this good live.

-AR

[via Metal Injection]

I would like to go on record as saying I wasn’t too big on the whole re-thrash trend of 2006-2008 from the get-go. I mean, I loves me some thrash, but 99% of the time any band regardless of genre tries to do something that sounds exactly like an old band(s) I’m against it. The key to artistic progression is moving forward, not back, and unfortunately many of the re-thrash bands just brought nothing new to the table. Taking elements of the old and infusing it into the new is all good by me, though, which is why I’m all for bands that have successfully fused vintage thrash influence into a modern shell; Sylosis and Lazarus A.D. are two examples who readily spring to mind.

And Iron Age. Holy fucking shit, you guys.

I was not expecting to like this record at all (see above). But Iron Age’s blend of ripping thrash, NYHC pummel and doomy ambience channeled through modern-sounding production on their second record The Sleeping Eye just hit that fucking SPOT. This is music for fans of fucking furious, tight, beer-soaked, basement mosh-pit party metal like Trash Talk and Bison B.C., Metallica Ride The Lightning-era guitar riffs pushed to the fullest and real in every way with nary a speck of hipster retro throwback. The Sleeping Eye kicks as much ass as any thrash-influenced record released all year, right up there with Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s Living For Death, Destroying the Rest (albeit in a different way).

So, without further ado, here’s a stream of the entire album. It comes out today. Listen.

[This promotion has ended. -Ed.]

Now the nausea’s
In my guts
And I’m wrestling with doubt
The kind you get when your heroes
Sell you out
And as I watch the drawbridge come down
There’s mass extinction
On my mind
Human cruelty stains my thoughts jet black
I’ve got this feeling
Like things have gone too far and now we can’t get back

Here’s more fun shit that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We debuted new videos from Cradle of Filth and Arsonists Get All the Girls.
• We got exclusive tour blogs from Bison B.C.’s Dan And and Woe of Tyrants’ Chris Catanzaro.
• We spoke to members of Winds of Plague, Decrepit Birth and Born of Osiris.
• I counted down 50 things I love about Pig Destroyer, and then added a 51st.
• Ulrich Vs. Mustaine Vs. Ian and Zakk Vs. Ozzy made us laugh with glee.
• Kerry King Vs. Killswitch Engage was pretty funny, too.
• Dallas Coyle answered more of your questions.

Vince gets back from vacation tonight right around the time Repulsion take the stage, and then tomorrow, hopefully, Craig’s List will lead us to some Tool tickets. See ya Monday!

-AR

I’ve gotten multiple e-mails from peeps about this interview The Eagles of Death Metal front dude Jesse Hughes just gave to the Montreal Mirror.

Now, I should preface this by saying I’ve heard very little of TEODM’s music, and what I hear didn’t do anything for me. But, clearly Hughes is a funny guy.

But the statements everyone is harping on seem kinda… well… shrug. Read for yourself:

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It seems like the entire metal world has gone kuh-rayzee with mash-up fever. The latest come from Nick Green at The Deciblog…

First up we have Nuclear Assault mashed up with Snoop Doggy Dogg, or Snopp Dogg, or Snopp, or Calvin, or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself these days. And, kinda oddly, this mash-up doesn’t bother me so much. Maybe it’s just my fond memories of Doggystyle (1993 woot-woot!) and the pornographic cartoon that came with it, or maybe it’s just because, against all odds, the visibly stoned-out-of-his-gourd Snoop ended up being far and away the most entertaining act at Metallica’s MTV Icon thing (including Metallica). But this somehow works for me:

If you head over to The Deciblog, Mr. Green has also posted a mash-up of Meshuggah and Lil’ Wayne. I hate that one, although it does make me wanna listen to the actual “Bleed.”

-AR

CORRECTION: PRATO’S QUESTION COMES FROM HERE. MY APOLOGIES TO PRATO. NO APOLOGIES TO MUSTAINE.THANKS TO BORIVOJ AT BLABBERMOUTH FOR SHOWING ME THE ERROR OF MY WAYS.

It has been a fantastic summer for feuds. Just, really top notch. Isis is mad at Revolver and I’m fairly certain that Revolver is mad at MetalSucks. Fear Factory would be like the new Van Halen, if Van Halen wasn’t still the new Van Halen. And I think it’s safe to say at this point that, pretty much no matter how this whole Dan Nelson/John Bush drama plays out, no one will ever take Anthrax seriously again (assuming they were still taking Anthrax seriously at all).

And now this. Ladies and gentleman, key founding members of three of the Big Four are now all ready to throw down. This is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I wish you could all see my face right now, ’cause rarely am I this happy.

It’s a long story, and, as is so often the case, I am really just playing The Daily Show to Blabbermouth’s CNN. Here we go:

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Winds of Plague = really good people. Not only did they know their shit, they also had a sense of humor that wasn’t consistent with that of an inbred southern hick. Vocalist Johnny Plague can bench-press 5,000 lbs a day and keyboardist Kristen Randall may or may not be into making out with chicks – maybe I read too far into some things she said, or maybe I just automatically assume everyone is gay until proven straight, or maybe I just was hoping to make-out with Kristin because, let me tell you, she is pretty smokin’ in person. As a matter of fact, there isn’t one unattractive person in the band. That has nothing to do with their music, and everything to do with being horny. All the time.

ANYWAYS, Johnny’s idea (which may or may not have been plagiarized) for The Great Stone War is pretty nifty. Yeah, it’s yet ANOTHER concept album. But from what I have heard thus far, it’s a solid fucking record. If you weren’t a fan of Decimate The Weak, do yourself a favor and check out The Great Stone War.  If for some reason you’re not into it, at least you have a bunch of sweet artwork from the album sleeve to peep at from time to time.

For the most part, these guys (and gal) are going to be pretty busy the rest of 2009. Rumor has it they will be touring with Unearth in November, so make sure to keep an eye out for an official press release. Below is my slightly awkward interview.

P.S. – Enough with the WOP basketball jerseys. Please. That shit needs to stop. Seriously, this is just silly already.

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A few weeks back, on the Metal Injection Livecast (still shilling!!!)Rob Pasbani and company played me Ja Rule’s “We Did it Again,” a song using Metallica outtakes from St. Anger (including some truly ridiculous Hetfield vox that sound totally out of step with the rest of the song) that I had successfully managed to avoid these past few years.

Problem is, ever since I heard it, I often wake up in a cold sweat, screaming “YEAH WE DID IT DID IT DID IT!” This is what it must have been like to survive ‘Nam.

In all seriousness: gotta love* how Metallica keep thinking up new ways to shit all over their legacy.

You can listen to the song here, assuming you don’t value your sanity. In the meantime, here’s some behind-the-scenes shit about the track, which appears as one of the deleted scenes on the Some Kind of Monster (a.k.a. Live Action Metalocalypse) DVD.

-AR

*And by “love,” I mean “loathe.”

A couple of weeks ago about 10,675 of you emailed us about the kinda-cool-but-not-really-all-that-exciting news that LoG and Gojira will be opening for Metallica on their fall U.S. tour; good for them and all, but tickets will cost a fortune and we’d much rather see each band in a smaller, more intimate setting. So of course now that there’s actually some legit, super-exciting news — that Gojira have scheduled a series of one-off headline gigs in between their shows with Metallica — the grand total of readers who have emailed us so far is…. zero. Seriously, fuck all of you. (update: ONE. Thank you once again to MetalSucks Maniac / our favorite metal Hasid, Josh Kidd!). Kids, Gojira’s NYC headline show earlier this year was easily the best show we’ve seen all year. Easily. “Holy” and “shit” don’t even begin to describe how we felt about the show.

Support on these dates, which start September 21st in Brooklyn, will come from Zoroaster (who are headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored North America is Doomed Tour this Summer) and motherfucking BURST! That’s right, motherfucking Burst, whom I’ve been imploring you all to check out for at least two years. All at the same tiny venue in Williamsburg where we saw Mastodon play Crack the Skye in its entirety; the place holds 300 people, 400 max.

Check out the full list of Gojira headline dates after the jump. If your city isn’t included, fret not — the press release we received says “more dates TBA.”

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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, everyone reading this blog has something to say about Metallica. Naturally, Eric Smith, vocalist/guitarist for Virginia’s noise-rock-by-way-of-hardcore act The Catalyst, has an opinion as well, one that some of you may very well share. Essentially, he thinks the wrong guy died in that tragic 1986 tour bus crash, as made abundantly clear by one of the tracks off the band’s fantastic forthcoming album Swallow Your Teeth. That track, which we’re offering to you as an exclusive free download, is called “Lars Ulrich’s 1986 Funeral”.

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Word on the street is that the new Shadows Fall album, Retribution, is one heavy motherfucker, and the first song released off the record, “King of Nothing,” would seem to confirm this. It’s already a shitton heavier than anything off of Threads of Life; this sounds like classic Shads, with enough of a musical progression to keep it interesting. If anyone still doubts that Bachand and Donais can bring the shred, this should shut ‘em up, and my neck already hurts from just one quick listen/headbanging session.

And, of course, having a guest spot by Randy Blythe doesn’t hurt.

Check out the song here. Retribution comes out September 15.

And just for shits n’ giggles, if you’re really bored at work, watch the mediocre Metallica video for the mediocre Metallica song of similar name after the jump.

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We may have gotten more e-mails about the announcement that Lamb of God and Gojira will be providing support for Metallica on their upcoming tour than, like, any other topics ever all combined. Apparently you guys and girls are excited about this news.

And I understand… in theory. I’ll be happy if Gojira and LOG are exposed to a wider audience, but beyond that, I still don’t especially care (I can’t speak for Vince or any other MetalSucks Mansion inhabitant, of course).

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For those of you not from the U.S. and somehow completely unaware of this, the Fourth of July is a pretty big deal here in America. On that day, we celebrate winning our freedom by kicking the British’s ass. Of course, they later gave us Hugh Grant, so I guess they had their revenge in the end.

So there won’t be any posts tomorrow; on Monday, we’ll unveil the last albums on the list. In the meantime, here’s some things that happened this week in the world of MetalSucks:

• We continued to countdown the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far. You continued to engage in, um, intelligent debate. Yeah, let’s call it intelligent debate.
• We spoke with Goatwhore’s Ben Falgoust and Black Math Horseman’s Sera Timms.
• We checked out new releases from Killswitch Engage and Havok.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi took a break from worrying about dying in fiery plane or car crash to worry about getting shot.
• We debated the merits of the new Alice in Chains song.
• We laughed at high school year book photos of past and present members of Metallica.

I plan to not be sober for the next 72 hours. See ya Monday!

-AR

There’s something reassuring about knowing that people one sometimes considers cooler than him or herself were not, in fact, always so cool.

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I’m a disorganized mess today (fucking monkeys had a late night rager and trashed the Mansion last night) so I can’t figure out who sent in this merengue cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” but whoever it was…. uhh, thanks dude. It’s pretty ace.

…will be called Endgame, and is “expected to be released in September through Roadrunner Records.”

And since we’re all about starting shit here at MetalSucks, let me get the ball rolling on this little discussion: with the Big Four all releasing new albums within the time span of about a year, where will this new Megadeth record stand? It’s hard to imagine it won’t be better than Death Magnetic, but, personally, I’m more excited for the latest release from Slayer and more curious about Anthrax’s Worship Music.

While you’re pondering you own feelings about a new Megarelease, here’s the band doing one of my favorite songs from the last record they put out that really got my dick hard…

-AR