Yay, Vince is back! And guess what? Now it’s my turn to take a vacation! I haven’t had once since the summer of 2006, about six months before we started the site. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to getting away. Try not to miss me too much, m’kay?

And, oh yeah, it’s July 4 weekend, so we’re leaving early today and won’t be here Monday. That might be worth mentioning for non-American readers.

ANYWAY, here’s what we did this week:

• We debuted new music by Exhumed.
• Landphil from Municipal Waste and Cannabis Corpse pondered the CM Punk WWE Raw “shoot.”
• Our pals at Decibel spoke to the members of Cradle of Filth about about their album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.
• We wondered why teenagers are still butthurt about Hot Topic in 2011.
• We celebrated the Stephen Colbert/Ted Nugent showdown.
• We checked out the first Portnoy-free Dream Theater song.
• We enjoyed some lulz at the expense of Staind and their record label.
• We bemoaned the fact that Behemoth’s Nergal is back on trial for tearin’ up a Bible.
• We celebrated the gloriousness that is the new Mastodon video.
• Best. “Show Us Your MetalSucks.” EVER.

And now it’s time to start partying. Lates.

-AR

Yep, it’s finally here — Dream Theater’s first song with new drummer Mike Mangini.

Vince is really the resident Dream Theater expert, and even Anso is a bigger fan than I am, so I feel weird talking about it. The short version is, I feel the same way about it I feel about most Dream Theater, which is that it’s just swell until James LaBrie and his stupid vagina voice comes into the song.

Insofar as the Portnoy versus Mangini question goes… I don’t have an opinion. I’m sorry, I just don’t. I know Portnoy is a great drummer, but Magnini is obviously no slouch, so, again… I’ll leave it those of you who are really enamored of this band to decide whether or not this lives up to the band’s other material, or if they need to get Portnoy back STAT.

Stream “On the Backs of Angels” here. The band’s new album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, comes out September 13 via Roadrunner.

-AR

Last week the once-mighty, now-getting-to-be-pretty-sad Mike Portnoy announced the formation of a new band, Adrenaline Mob, with Symphony X singer Russell Allen, Stuck Mojo guitarist (and first ever MetalSucks interview subject) Rich Ward, and some dudes I’ve never heard of before. Our own Anso DF called the project “iffy,” cringing at Allen’s description of the band as “almost like Rob Zombie meets Black Label Society meets Disturbed, with Dio singing.” And Anso so eloquently put it, “When old guys aim for ‘edgy’ and ‘modern,’ it sets off alarm bells, right?”

Well, as it turns out, Anso had good reason to be concerned. The band released some samples of the music they’re working on, and, yeah, I officially don’t care, and eagerly await Vince returning so I never have to pretend to care about this group again.

I also think someone should sit down and play some Rob Zombie, Black Label Society, and Disturbed for Russell Allen. Not because those artists are great or anything, but because he has to running around and telling people that that’s what Adrenaline Mob sounds like. It’s basically the equivalent of me luring in potential readers by telling them that MetalSucks is a folk music blog. It just has no basis in reality whatsoever.

Here are the samples, so you can make up your mind:

P.S. That play on The Godfather logo was silly back when Lacuna Coil did it, but at least they’re Italian, so it kinda made sense. It seems like it’s just being used here because the band has the word “mob” in their moniker.

-AR

When I heard about the Dream Theater-shaped hole in the life of drummer Mike Portnoy back in September, I wanted to pitch him on my long-gestating idea to form a killer Jellyfish cover band. I bet he’d be into it cuz of his Jellyfish super-fandom (he has cited 1993′s Spilt Milk as a top ten favorite album); and he’s a pro at pulling together all-star jams, like his awesomely fun tributes to The Who, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin with guys like Paul Gilbert, Jason McMaster, and Dave LaRue; and lastly, The Ghosts At Number One (that’s my vote for our band name) could serve as a totally non-cynical tribute to another hardcore Jellyfish fan, the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott. And what better way to hip headbangers to irresistible non-metal jams? How could Mike say no to that? Can I call him Mike?

But, shit, while I was dicking around, gobbling drugs, and failing to corner, pressure, and/or threaten Portnoy about the Jellyfish idea, he teamed with qualified musicians he knows who actually, like, realize their ideas. Even if those ideas aren’t so great. Symphony X singer Russell Allen talks about Adrenaline Mob, one of Portnoy’s new bands:

Click to read more…

Yesterday I interviewed Mike Mangini for a new Rigged feature in which he’ll run through the gigantamongous new drum kit Pearl built him for his brand new gig. It’s a good thing we decided to do a phoner instead of him just sitting down and writing the thing, because the dude probably would have spent hours painstakingly penning it out instead of the 40+ minutes he took to explain it all on the phone. Let me tell you all something: Mangini is STOKED. Stoked on his new gig with Dream Theater, stoked on playing drums in general, stoked on music, stoked on LIFE. Dude is one of the most stoked people I’ve ever encountered in this jaded business.

So it wasn’t without interest that we didn’t report on yesterday’s news of a new Dream Theater album release date and tracklisting, it’s just that we were pre-occupied. A Dramatic Turn of Events will come out on September 13th via Roadrunner, and as we all know it will be the first DT album plus Mangini minus Portnoy, so we’ll see how that goes. This resident MS Mansion DT Fanboy will keep you informed as events develop.

-VN

Once upon a time I pitched Mike Portnoy (through his people) on doing a “Jew on Jew” interview and he turned me down, that persnickety bastid (the Jew on Jew concept did up yielding some fun interviews with Daath’s Eyal Levi [before he was an MS columnist], Genghis Tron’s Mookie Singerman and Orphaned Land’s Kobi Farhi). And here Metal Injection’s Rob Pasbani goes and inadvertently gets all Jewy with Portnoy on the Golden Gods black carpet — over who else, the hero of Jewish men everywhere, Larry David.

It’s all about the shirt. When I first discovered the Larry DavHead shirt last year I immediately bought 10 of them; shirts like this don’t come around every day, ya know? Rob and about 159 other Jewish metalheads I know also bought the shirt; it’s, like, possibly the best t-shirt in the history of ever. So when Rob donned the Larry DavHead shirt underneath his sparkly silver coat on the black carpet, Mike Portnoy was all over that shit like a swarming pack of flies. Watch:

Last post about the Golden Gods and then we’ll shut up about it… I can’t help that Metal Injection’s black carpet interviews are so damn entertaining. After the jump, a quickee with two members of Rammstein; unfortunately there were no cameras around when Till Lindemann was hitting on every piece of ass within a 2 foot radius, but the mental video I took will provide laughs forever and ever. Check out the rest of Metal Injection’s black carpet footage below the video here.

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Confirming what many astute MS commenters and anyone with a brain suspected since this whole cheesy video series began, the new Dream Theater drummer is Mike Mangini, as revealed in the third and final part of their video series documenting their search for a Mike Portnoy seat-warmer. It was clear from the start that he was a great fit musically and personality wise with the band. Will he be able to fill Portnoy’s mongoloid shoes and will fans accept him in? I can already hear the message board chatter on both sides from DT dorks across the e-metalverse. Here’s part 3 (again, not embeddable ’cause WMG are ass-cats who don’t understand how the Internet works):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QHMQjH17aw

[UPDATE 12:01pm EST: I just watched the full video, and WOW, Mangini sure gets emotional at the end when the band offers him the gig. It's great to have a guy that's so INTO it as opposed to just taking a gig, but what's gonna happen when Portnoy claims his throne back in a few years?]

Sound off with your opinions on Mangini in the comments section below… I wanna see some sparks flyin’!

-VN

If you thought the trailer Dream Theater released last week teasing their new drummer announcement was corny… boy, have we got something for you today. Dream Theater are going all out with their drummer search and milking it for all it’s worth with a full-fledged documentary about the process of selecting Mike Portnoy’s replacement, complete with reality TV-style cutaways, staged shots, and one-on-one alone time interviews with the camera. Love ‘em or hate ‘em (I love ‘em), Dream Theater’s never shied away from the cheese so we should’ve expected something like this… but still, I wonder what Mike Portnoy thinks of this? You can be damn certain he’s following along.

If one of Mike Portnoy’s many trademarks was a dogged devotion to [and connection with] the fans, then post-MP Dream Theater are kicking the new era off with a decidedly more at-arms’-length approach with regards to their fans: “We will create this documentary to string you along, and you will follow us.” It’s hard to imagine the band putting this kind of reality-type series together with Portnoy still in the creative cockpit.

That said, I definitely enjoyed watching this. Here’s part 1 of the documentary; it features an intro that sets the stage for the auditions and shows footage of candidate Mike Mangini jamming with the band. And holy fuckticles, John Myung actually talks; never saw that coming! Embedding is disabled because the folks at WMG (Roadrunner’s parent company) are still completely retarded with regards to how the Internet works, so watch at the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L609JsPFmmI

-VN

The hullabaloo surrounding Dream Theater’s cheesy “search for a drummer” documentary just got 14.29% less annoying: Marco Minnemann has announced via his Facebook page that he is not Mike Portnoy’s replacement. The post has since been pulled — let’s assume he got wrist-slapped from someone in the DT or Roadrunner camps for leaking info that’s supposed to keep the public on the edge of their seats, dammit — but here’s the copy-and-paste via MS reader DemonicShredder:

Haha, thanks, but I’m not DTs drummer. I know everybody thinks I am and our chemistry is great, but I’m doing actually another thing with Jordan and there are also plans for another project with Jordan and John P together.

Now we’re down to Thomas Lang (himself, stOrk), Aquiles Priester (Hangar, ex-Angra), Virgil Donati (Planet X), Mike Mangini (Annihilator, Extreme, James LaBrie, Steve Vai), Derek Roddy (Hate Eternal, Nile, Malevolent Creation, Today is the Day), and Peter Wildoer (Darkane, Pestilence). We knew about the Rudess / Minnemann project, but the Rudess / Petrucci / Minnemann combo is a tasty bi-product morsel of this admission.

Watch the cornball (but entertaining) “drummer search” documentary here for the price of a Facebook like; I gotta hand it to Roadrunner for milking this thing for all it’s worth and for not even mentioning the word “Portnoy” in their press release.

-VN

I’m sure this is the exact scenario Axl and Vince dreaded when they left me in charge of the MetalSucks Mansion today. While they’re out plotting world domination, a press release came flying into my overly stuffed inbox from our good friend, Amy Sciarretto, PR goddess of Roadrunner Records.

The subject matter in question? The naming of the new drummer for “prog-rock” (their words) band, and perennial Vince Neilstein favorite, Dream Theater.

The Roadrunner press release states:

“Go to Dream Theater’s Facebook page on Thursday, April 21st at 11 AM to sign up for the mailing list and to receive more details about an exclusive and intimate look at the auditions, and to find out exactly when and how the momentous announcement about the band’s new lineup will be made.  Fans will be able to find out information about the band’s upcoming 2011 World Tour via Facebook, as well.”

Click to read more…

When a press release dropped last week about a new song “The Platform” by a Swedish band called Beardfish I thought to myself, “Hmm, Vince Neilstein… Beardfish. Beardfish. Isn’t that the band that Mike Portnoy loves? Beardfish… hmm.” And yes, indeed, they are. A little research on this here weblog turned up long since smoked-away ones and zeroes, confirming that Beardfish were slated to open for Dream Theater on the Progressive Nation 2009 tour (not the year with Opeth and BTBAM) but had to drop off because their label lost funding. I remember not liking them very much when I checked them out following the original Prog Nation 2009 tour announcement, but decided I’d give ‘em another go this time around.

And you know what? Beardfish 2k11 are pretty good. They remind me of King Crimson and Yes in their best, most coherent moments, a little bit more hard rockin’ than KC and a little less noodlin’ than Yes for a modern take on prog rock with a clear nod to the past. Good songs, great sense of melody, excellent but subdued chops. That’s my take on “The Platform,” anyway, which is streaming at ProgArchives.com.

Click to read more…

A quick catch-up sesh for anyone who’s not a DT fanboy like me: YtseJam Records is Dream Theater’s own label imprint they’ve been using for years to release official bootlegs of live recordings. “YtseJam” is “Majesty” backwards; again, for the non-fanboys, Majesty was their original band name.

OK, now onto the drama! A fan recently asked via Mike Portnoy’s official message board what would become of YtseJam now that Mike’s out of the DT picture. Fair question, right? Portnoy handled most of the business for pretty much every aspect of DT, so it would stand to reason that YtseJam would be effected by his departure. Portnoy — who has an astonishing 1394 posts on his own message board (!!) — took to answering the question himself. It’s the 7th post down at this link. Quote:

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With an exception, my 2010 best albums could’ve been predicted months in advance. To me, last year was all about reliable, established bands and their awesome but journalistically unsexy jams. But elsewhere than my best-loved albums, 2010 had a few saucy surprises up its tattered sleeve. For one, it was shocking to find that the best melody record of the year was made by a fake band for a suckass movie; nope, did not expect to love that shit. Also, I didn’t remotely foresee announcements of Judass Priest’s final tour (bummer), Adrian Smith’s pairing with members of Sikth (wtf/awesome), the Mike Portnoy saga (over it), or the slight return of Coroner (full bonerz). Again and again, I was surprised!

But in a couple cases, my mere surprise was no longer adequate; I was forced to upgrade to astonishment. Example? Okay here’s one: It turns out that I really like Silent Civilian’s Ghost Stories, a surprisingly unshitty 2010 metalcore outing led by the surprisingly huge-gutted Jonny Santos of Spineshank. I mean, it’s metalcore that isn’t total garbage! Wild, huh?

But that shit was nothing compared to the brain-blasting shock that awaited me the late December evening that I first laid ears on Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold. Goddamn! Those guys haven’t made a listenable jam since the Troy Gregory-heavy 1990 gem When The Storm Comes Down and that was um two decades ago. So my low expectations were primed to be vaulted over by a good Flots album. Well, forget “good;” The Cold is awesome — like, freaking Nevermore awesome! By the second song (below), my bowtie was spinning so hard that it detached itself and beheaded my best geraniums.

-ADF

Order Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold here and then glue your socks on. Safety first.

Well, here’s an anticlimactic conclusion to a dramatic story.

Avenged Sevenfold have announced that Arin Ilejay, formerly of the Christian band Confide, will be taking Mike Portnoy’s spot behind the drum kit for their upcoming tour dates. The announcement does not say that Ilejay is a permanent member of the band, but I’d imagine if he kicks ass on the tour, they’ll scoop him up. I mean, they have to give SOMEONE the gig eventually, right?

Honestly, I’d never heard of Confide until just now, but I’m not encouraged by this music video:

So that sucks.

Ilejay was apparently recommended by A7X’s drum tech, Mike “The Sack” Fasano, who has previously hit the skins for such illustrious acts as, uh, Warrant. Which almost makes me wonder why they didn’t just hire him, but whatevs. They probably felt like since they lost a Reverend they needed a Christian, and, voila, Ileljay got the job. Yeah, that’s a completely logical explanation, right?

Anyways, I guess we’ll see how this pans out…

-AR

So 2011 is officially underway! I mean, we’re two full weeks in — time to stop accidentally writing “2010″ as the date on shit, y’know? We started to preview some albums we’re stoked about, and will continue to do so next week. In the meantime, here’s some other fun crap we did this week:

• The Human Abstract’s A.J. Minette continued his discussion regarding the merits of creative limitation.
• We debuted new music by Deicide, Ulcerate, Owen Hart, and Roger Miret.
• We also reviewed the new Owen Hart album.
• We played a metal edition of “Marry, Fuck, Kill” with both chicks and d00dz.
• We checked out some awesome pictures from Vince and the metalgf’s vacation to Amsterdam and Paris.
• We joined the Scotty Griffin Fanclub.
• We confirmed that Tool are the coolest band ever.
• We felt bad for Mike Portnoy.
• We were upset by Wrest’s arrest for sexual assault and domestic battery.
• And while it was news to us until we heard it from Rush Limbaugh, we were apparently responsible for the Tucson shootings.

Next week brings more debuts, more interviews, and more general Suckitude. See ya then.

-AR

Watch out! These young bucks are taking over the world.

Yep yep, it’s my birthday. I’m using my “Get Out of Jail Free” card to steal a Mike Portnoy story away from Vince (who usually covers all things Dream Theater-releated), ’cause I know how to party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard… [fade out]

ANYWAY, from the perspective of someone who is not as obsessed with Dream Theater as my cohort, this whole Mike Portnoy thing is getting to be pretty pathetic — like, characters from a Woody Allen movie pathetic. Portnoy is like the dude who left his wife of however many years for a younger, hotter, albeit much stupider, woman, and when that woman inevitably got bored by his old saggy balls and inability to shtup ten times a day without the aid of a little blue pill, he begged his wife to take him back. And his wife, to her credit, has been in therapy since he left, and has a new sense of self-worth — so she told him to go suck an egg. And now he’s stuck with this goddamn motherfucking ridiculous Porsche that doesn’t even run right half the time and a big house with no one to fill it.

Mike Portnoy is understandably lonely.

So how he’s dealing with his loneliness? Is he getting some alone time to, y’know, really get to work on Mike Portnoy? Did he join JDate to try and meet someone new? Is he taking that Porsche around to all the hottest clubs in town in an effort to snag another youthful bippy?

Well, kind of — what he’s actually doing is going to the Senior Center for Singles Bingo Night. Which is to say, he’s reuniting Yellow Matter Custard, his Beatles cover band, for the first time in eight years. Gee, I wonder what the occasion is?

Click to read more…

While we were gone for the holidays, Mike Portnoy asked to re-join Dream Theater after being let go by Avenged Sevenfold, surprising no one. We’ve stated our case for siding with Portnoy in this whole ridiculous public drama, but it seems awfully hypocritical of Portnoy to ask back in so soon after everything that’s gone down. Dream Theater accordingly rebuffed Mike, as they should have. Meanwhile, rumors have been flying around about Marco Minnemann being the new Dream Theater drummer, a story which we were the first to report several weeks back.

Portnoy for his part is staying busy; Metal Insider reports that he’s announced a new project with guitarist Steve Morse (Deep Purple, Dixie Dregs), multi-instrumentalist Neal Morse (Transatlantic, Spock’s Beard), bassist Dave LaRue (Dixie Dregs) and vocalist Casey McPherson (Alpha Rev, Endochine) with recording commencing shortly. That should be pretty effin’ cool and nertastically progariffic.

But in the meantime the big question on Dream Theater fans’ minds is: what will the next Dream Theater record sound like?? Will it be any good? Was Portnoy the mojo that kept the band going or was he dead weight??? John Petrucci just tweeted that the band is now in the studio, so I’m assuming that they’re writing the record on-the-fly again as they have with the past several releases.

What do you think about a new DT record?? Weigh in below.

When Mike Portnoy announced he would be leaving Dream Theater, many of you speculated in our comments section that drum great Marco Minneman (who played in Necrophagist for a while, among countless other musical endeavors) might be on the shortlist of potential replacements. The following is of course completely reckless speculation and nothing other than conjecture, but a recent announcement has given at least a shred of credence to the possibility that Minnemann might be the man to warm Protnoy’s drum throne until he and the band mutually decide it’s time for him to come back.

Reader Dean Ferro sent us this link earlier this week, announcing a collaboration between DT keyboardist Jordan Rudess and Minnemann:

Click to read more…

Preface: I love Dream Theater and anything DT-related with all my heart. But this is just too easy!

A media war of words between the remaining members of Dream Theater and the recently departed Mike Portnoy was bound to erupt sooner or later, right? Here’s where things get really nasty, so that once the inevitable occurs and Portnoy re-joins the band he helped form, at least there’ll be some good sound bites for Behind the Music or whatever the Metal Injection equivalent of it is in the year 2014, right?

But before the media sensationalized JUICY GOSSIP, a quick update from the Portnoy front. Metal Insider is reporting that in a recent interview Portnoy claimed he’d remain with Avenged Sevenfold for the remainder of the Nightmare touring cycle. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone as it wouldn’t make sense for A7X to switch drummers mid-tour, but it does call into question Portnoy’s motives for leaving Dream Theater. Didn’t he want a break so he could pursue other musical projects? Obviously A7X qualify as a musical project (now’s your chance for a snarky comment about A7X… hyuck, hyuck!), but I got the impression he wanted to spend more time on side projects and didn’t want to be on the road constantly. The touring cycle for an album by a band of A7X’s stature usually lasts 1.5 to 2 years… so expect Portnoy to be out on the road with them until this time next year, or later. That’s not gonna leave much time for anything else.

But you want the JUICY GOSSIP, right?? Well, click on through to see what James LaBrie had to say about Portnoy, and what Portnoy said back:

Click to read more…

Mike Portnoy’s departure from Dream Theater is pretty much the biggest non-death story to break in metal over the past several months. Foundations have been demolished! Worlds have come crashing down! The strongest of e-friendships and message board dork alliances have been shattered! MetalGF copped to enjoying Scenes From a Memory when I put it on this Saturday morning! What is the Metalverse coming to???

In a move that only underscores how far beyond drumming his role in Dream Theater stretched, Portnoy took to the airwaves on Eddie Trunk’s weekly Friday Night Rocks broadcast this past Friday and attempted to clear up some of the rumors and accusations that’ve been floating around the Webernets since he announced his departure on Wednesday evening. Since you all reading this site are no doubt very concerned about wasting your boss’s dollar while you peruse the Internet, I’ll sum up the main talking points for you here in convenient bullet-point form:

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