MetalSucks

The second-to-last night of Summer Slaughter — the first of two nights at NYC’s Irving Plaza — was a fucking party. Axl and Vince arrived before doors opened to interview Darkest Hour mastermind Mike Schleibaum and were summarily handed beers. “New York City . . . oh god. Suffocation, and also sharing your dressing room [with Suffocation]. . . there’s going to be a lot of drinking. Beer is going to be hard to get. We should really start right after this interview!” mused Schleibaum before handing us a couple of Bud Lights to get things started off right. “It’s just a Bud Light, my friends,” he responded after we thanked him for the hospitality; true, but somehow “just a Bud Light” turned into “just a bottle of Jack Daniels” being completely polished off in the DH / Suffocation dressing room shortly thereafter. “The thing is – it’s going to get all drank by the time Blackguard’s finished,” prophecized Schleibaum. And so it went. The men of DH like their Jack (and their weed) and the endless stream of Suffocation ladies — 40-something Lawngisland bleach blondes with giant, fake tits — that paraded through the room all night provided much amusement for our chemically altered brains.

But before all of the shenanigans went down we sat with Mr. Schleibaum and chatted about the Summer Slaughter tour, the band’s new album The Eternal Return, the end of Darkest Hour’s deal with Victory Records and what that means for the band, the departure of guitarist Kris Norris and subsequent replacement with ex-At All Cost axeman Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, working with producer Devin Townsend in the past, and a slew of other topics. Our chat, after the jump.

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It may be a new year on the calendar, but we’re still talking about the same stupid shit here at MetalSucks. Here’s where we focused our energies this week:

• Most awesomest metal festival EVARRR! Not to be confused with the most awesomest tours of early 2009.
  
• New music from Cannibal Corpse!!!
• Mastodon counted down to a new website while Trent Reznor counted down to giving away approximately 400 Gigs of HD concert footage for fans to tinker with.
• We questioned Drew Barrymore’s interest in metal and demanded she take off her shirt.
• We spoke with members of All Shall Perish and Job For a Cowboy.
• Mike Schleibaum declared The Crown’s Deathrace King underrated while Dallas claimed music critics are overrated.
• Can’t anyone make a decent heavy metal TV show?
• One Roadrunner Records staffer named MetalSucks.net the #10 best album of 2008.

Later, gators…

[In which Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum waxes ecstatic about the most underrated metal albums of all time, in his humble opinion.]

So you love Swedish Metal. You have all the sick records by In Flames, At the Gates, Entombed, Soilwork, The Haunted, Hypocrisy, Opeth, shit, you even have Darkane and Dismember in your collection. Sooooo  then you love The Crown right? Yeah ok, there’s probably a few dudes thinking, “Shit, I know who The Crown are. Is he crazy?” I’ll get into it later, but I know for a fact that even at the height of their popularity in the USA we as metal heads in the states did a shitty job of showing the love. (And that was four or five years ago!) It’s with this in mind that I fear this great band (in particular this specific great record) may pass unnoticed and in the spirit of all things rock I offer up to you The Crown and their slaughtering Deathrace King record! Take it from a dude who has spent all of his adult life searching for inspiration in metal: this band, this record, are inspiring.
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Blabbermouth tells me that the below video of Darkest Hour preparing for their recent Washington, D.C. homecoming gig was created by a blog called DCist. But to be completely honest, my interest lies in seeing former At All Cost guitarist/new edition to Darkest Hour, Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, become integrated into the band. Mike is a) one of the nicest dudes on the face of the planet, b) an awesome guitar player, and c) half-Jewish, so it’s basically awesome to see him rocking out with founding member/MetalSucks guest blogger Mike Schleibaum – I mean, look at Carrigan shred! Ridiculous.

Also ridiculous: what happens to Mike at the 1:06 mark.

Yuk-yuk.

-AR

[In addition to writing and performing in New Wave of American Heavy Metal pioneers Darkest Hour, guitarist (and BS degree in Social Work!) Mike Schleibaum also writes for his own informative and funny website Ask The Dude. The dude himself contacted us about writing a guest blog for MetalSucks, and somehow in between his various other activities that actually, ya know, pay the bills, he somehow found time to do it. We hope he'll be a regular contributor whenever time allows. Let us know what you think. -Ed.]

The Underrated: Entombed

Like many fellow dudes who have dedicated their lives to moshing hard and jamming heavy metal I find myself continuously on the hunt for new records that can make me feel the way I did the first time I heard Metallica’s Master of Puppets, At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul, or Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power. As age and experience wear away at me I find that sadly this feeling is harder and harder to obtain. I mean let’s face it, a good seventy percent of modern metal is total bullshit (and I think that’s me being nice since I know a few people are going to read this). Not only has the genre been raped by the mainstream and watered down by the internet, its safe to say that every Tuesday more and more “death metal” or “heavy metal” records hit the street here in the USA that have less and less to offer the genre and us listeners than ever before. I believe that metal actually doesn’t suck, and there are great metal bands out there who for whatever reason didn’t get the attention they truly deserve. The following is one dude’s opinion. I do not claim any of it as absolute truth but, if I can use this printed space for nothing more then to turn at least one more dude out there onto a record that has touched my life, then it was time well spent.

With that in mind let me turn the focus to one of my all time favorite metal bands, Entombed. Now there are some of you out there who just read this and are thinking, “Fuck this guy, Entombed is not underrated, they are known as one of the pioneers of Swedish Death Metal.” And to you dudes I say, “I know, but just hear me out.”

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Funny things usually happen when musicians take their thoughts to the Interwebs. Such is actually not the case with Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum’s new blog Ask the Dude [via Buzzgrinder], in which the college-educated shredder answers fan questions in a Dear Abby-style advice column. Recent topics include balancing being in a band while staying in school, the merits of taking music theory classes vs. learning by ear,  lead singer’s disease, and the gauge of his guitar strings. It’s actually quite a great read, and I have a feeling we’ll be linking back quite a bit more (RSS feed: added!)

-VN

[Ask the Dude]