MetalSucks

This is a follow up to Vince’s blog on drum triggers. I’m with him.

There’s definitely a misconception out there that to trigger is to cheat. I’ll get this out of the way early: triggers are like any other tool. You can use them correctly, or not. Water can be used to give life or drown a person. Triggers can be used in a musical way for a style that demands them or they can be used to cover up a shitty drummer’s inability to hit consistently or like a man (no offense to all you female drummers out there).

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First of all, for our non-Chosen readers: groyse metsie is Yiddish for a bargain. Don’t say I never taught ya nuthin’.

So. For the month of October (or “Rocktober,” as some clever marketing types are dubbing it), Earache is offering a whole bunch of truly righteous albums from their catalog for download on iTunes at a retardedly low price: $5.99 in the U.S., £4.49 in the U.K., and 4,99EUR in Europe. (The press release tells me that “prices may vary in other regions.” Ha-ha.) Now, I know that most of us music snobs don’t like iTunes because the audio quality isn’t as high as it could be, and there’s a better-than-average chance that a lot of you own most of these albums anyway. But if you can get past the whole “IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS FLAC! Snort snort” thing and/or for some reason DO NOT already own most of these albums, it’s a really, really killer deal.

A complete list of available albums after the jump. At least six or seven of these are classics, and nine or so are still awesome and could be classics, so they’re totally worth the six bucks or whatever.

And then one of them is by Oceano.

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When did you guys start listening to heavy music? How many of you started listening this decade? I’m seriously curious about this. Those of you who started this decade… Are you sick of it yet? Are you starting to get sick of it? Does it excite you the way it did in 2004? For those of you who started earlier… do you remember what things were like 1990-1995? Remember when Megadeth was going multiplatinum, Pantera was flying in private jets, and Morbid Angel and Carcass were on major labels? Remember how that pretty much died off?

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-Ziltoid

Thanks to Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges for pointing out that today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Morbid Angel’s historic debut, Altars of Madness. As Lee notes, “Morbid Angel weren’t kings of death metal yet. Altars of Madness was the beginning of their coup.” My personal favorite Angel album, Domination, was still six years away. But it’s impossible to ignore the importance of this release to the death metal genre.

After the jump, watch nine out of the ten songs on the record, as filmed for the Live Madness ‘89 concert film that captures the band performing just months after the album’s release. Live Madness is also available as a DVD that was included Altars‘ 2006 re-release.

-AR

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Alright. Last week one of you e-mailed me to tell me about this story (and my apologies that I don’t know your name – I’ve lost quite a lot of e-mails in this weekend’s server transfer), in which Obituary guitarist Trevor Peres revealed that his band has been trying to put together a package tour with great old school Floridian death metal bands including (beside Obituary, natch) Deicide, Morbid Angel, Six Feet Under… and Cannibal Corpse?

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As you may have read on Blabbermouth by now, Trey Azagthoth has posted a lengthy State of the Metal address on his MySpace page. It’s long and it’s a lot to digest, but I’ve posted the entire thing after the jump. Given Azagthoth’s already-secure place in metal history, I think it’s worth pondering what he has to say seriously (As opposed to just saying “Azagthoth rules!” or “Morbid Angel is for fags!” or whatever other pithy statements to which the peanut gallery might resort). Okay, here we go:

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I’ve never actually caught Daath live (at least not yet), so I don’t know how the band handles soloing duties – but I do know that guitarist Eyal Levi is kind of the public face of the band and it’s de facto leader, so people may forget that there’s another super talented guitarist, Emil Werstler, in the band.

But the below video of Werstler shredding his ass off should throw the dude in the spotlight at least for a hot minute. Fucker has chops, that’s for damn sure.

Daath’s new album, The Concealers, will be out later this year. While you’re waiting patiently, don’t forget that you can download an exclusive Daath death metal metal medley consisting of covers of Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Dying Fetus right here at MetalSucks.

-AR

This coming Monday the entire MetalSucks staff will each release Top 10 lists for the entire year in metal of 2008. Get psyched! Things have been slowing down here at the MS Mansion as the holidays approach, but we still found ways to keep it fun this week:

• Axl Rose finally did some press to support Chinese Democracy… but as usual, there’s an asterisk.
• We debuted a new, exclusive Daath track — a medley of Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Dying Fetus covers.
• We interviewed members of Clutch, Bison B.C., Dir En Grey, and Fear Factory / Arkaea.
• Job For a Cowboy’s Jonny Davy blogged about urination and hotel trashing, while Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum’s guest blog claimed that Entombed’s Uprising and Morning Star are two of the most underrated albums of all time. Oh, and The Haunted’s Peter Dolving blogged about sleep.
• Gojira’s Joe Duplantier orders you to stop the killing of baby seals but apparently has no problem with ripping New York City a new arsehole.
• Meshuggah + Cynic + The Faceless = The Erection Tour of 2009.
• The metal industry lost a kindred soul. R.I.P. Adrian Bromley.

While in the studio recording their new album, The Concealers, the members of Daath decided to record a medley of classic death metal songs by Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Dying Fetus (see behind-the-scenes video above). Charmingly dubbed “Fecal Finger,” the track won’t actually appear on the band’s new album, so they decided to let us pass it on to you… for free!

Daath drummer Kevin Talley explained the genesis of the track to us via e-mail:

“Fecal Finger”… a beautiful name for a beautiful piece of music. One day we jammed some death metal songs and we jokingly said we should play them at a show… so we did. We chose the DYING FETUS song because I wrote and recorded it with them and many people never saw me play it live. Matt DeVries [Chimaira] and I used to jam that MORBID ANGEL riff a couple years ago so we brought that in since it is crushingly brutal. And you can’t jam a jam without Jim Carrey’s favorite death metal band CANNIBAL CORPSE. We recorded this freakin shit because kids these days need to recognize who influenced the newer bands they listen to. After hearing the originals for so many years, it’s weird hearing these songs with a newer style recording. But Sean Z’s vocals are fucking sick and Jonny Davy’s (Job for a Cowboy) guest vocals on the MORBID ANGEL part are amazing. This recording is finally growing on me and it’s actually my favorite thing to listen to right now.

-Kevin Talley

And so, without further adieu…

Daath, “Fecal Finger”

The Concealers will hit stores sometime in early 2009.

-MetalSucks

Those uproarious chaps over at Metal Inquisition have compiled what they claim to be the Ultimate Florida Death Metal Mix (and, really, it’s tough to argue with them). The maverick known only as “Gene Hoglan’s Balls” writes:

“I love all kinds of death metal, but if I had to pick just one to listen to for the rest of my life it would be Florida Death Metal. And if I could only listen to one song from each of my favorite Florida Death Metal bands for the rest of my life I would come up with Metal Inquisition’s Ultimate Florida Death Metal Mix. If you’re a fan of Florida Death Metal, then you will love this. If you don’t know anything about Florida Death Metal, then prepare to be schooled.”

Fair enough. Lucky for all of you mavericks, copyright laws mean little to nothing these days, so the mix is avail as a free download. Get the full track listing and links to the download after the jump.

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MetalSucks is thrilled to be able to debut an exclusive clip from Cannibal Corpse’s forthcoming DVD Centuries of Torment which comes out July 8th on Metal Blade Records. In this clip we get behind-the-boards insight from producer (and MetalSucks fave) Erik Rutan (ex-Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal), who produced the band’s 2006 record Kill.

Centuries of Torment drops July 8th; pre-order it here.

- The MS dudes

I love “Where the Slime Lives,” because it actually sounds like slime.

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Don’t forget that Erik Rutan’s Hate Eternal have a new album, Fury and Flames, out February 19. We’ll have an interview with Rutan later this week…

-AR