Hordes of Zombies is Terrorizer’s first release since the tragic passing of guitarist Jesse Pintado — but despite the loss, the band hasn’t missed a beat. Hordes of Zombies is an unrelenting, no-bullshit, no gimmicks, ugly, ugly, UGLY tumor of a death-grind album, the kind of release that reminds you why you ever got into the genre in the first place. If the music contained on Hordes of Zombies actually DOES wake the dead and induce them into a mad feeding frenzy, no one should be surprised. Pintado would be proud.

MetalSucks is thrilled to debut the title track from Hordes of Zombies, which you can stream below. We’re confident you’ll agree that it’s easily one of the most merciless releases of 2012 so far. The full album comes out on February 28 via Season of Mist; you can, and should, pre-order it here.

The lo-fi, tasteless, silly, gross, adolescent fantasy that is the cover art for Terrorizer’s upcoming release, Hordes of Zombies, should make you feel all tingly in your no-no spots. It’s exactly the kind of cover art that would make me check out an album regardless of whether or not I already knew who the band were, just because oh fuck yes. It’s a reminder that death metal and grind are the genres that came along and looked at Derek Riggs’ work and said “Neat idea, but the execution is too pretty.” It’s just so… fucking… rad.

Better news still: the isn’t an album by some band I’ve never heard of! It’s an album by Terrorizer! And it is also fucking rad! It’s uncompromisingly ugly and blissfully unaware of any current metal trends. It’s not revolutionary, but it is DTRAP — down to rape and pillage*. It’s like Pete Sandoval’s giant flip of the bird of his sort-of-former bandmates in Morbid Angel, like he’s screaming at them, “How have you forgotten how to do this?!?” 

And now you can hear some of it! ‘Cause Decibel is streaming the track ”Subterfuge.”  If you don’t have fun listening to it, go find an open elevator shaft and fall down it.

Hordes of Zombies comes out February 28 via Season of Mist.

-AR

*Thanks to my friend Jon for teaching me this new variation of “DTF.” I think that it’s much funnier than “DTF,” especially when you actually spell out the last three letters, pronouncing it “D-T-Rap.” Tell your friends!

Terrorizer has premiered Morbid Angel’s video “Existo Vulgoré,” one of the less irritating songs off of the band’s disastrous Illud Divinum Insanus release. (I say “less irritating” because at least it doesn’t sound like a bad Marilyn Manson rip-off — it’s just not-particularly-noteworthy death metal.) The conceit is that the video is an old-timey silent film, only the conceit makes no sense, because there’s David Vincent singing along with the music — which, y’know, would never happen in a silent film.

Of course, there have been other metal videos made to look silent films, but I think those usually utilize the music only as a non-synch soundtrack, which I think is an acceptable cheat.

It’s also possible I’m just being too hard on Morbid Angel, although, in all fairness, they totally deserve it.

I keep telling myself I’m gonna do a review of Morbid Angel’s incredibly bad Illud Divinum Insanus-remix album, but the fucking thing is three hours long (!!!) and really, really hard to sit through… let alone sit through multiple times, as would be a requirement to write a proper review. I’ll keep trying, though.

-AR

Morbid Angel have released a trailer for their previously-announced Illud Divinum Insanus remix album, and boy oh boy, is it ever a howler. Because if you thought that Illud Divinum Insanus couldn’t get any more laughable, well, as it turns out, you were dead wrong. If that record sounded like a bunch of tenth graders aping Marilyn Manson, than this sounds like… fuck, man, I don’t even know what to compare it to. Morbid Angel may have achieved a new level of terrible. It’s like they heard that the metal community hates Lulu even more than their crap, and were all, “Well fuck that! We’ll show them what unlistenable REALLY is!”

This piece of shit comes out February 24 via Season of Mist; my guess is that far more money will be spent manufacturing it than will be earned from releasing it.

-AR

Thanks: Ashley Lee

Following in the footsteps of their greatest influences, including Marilyn Manson, Static-X, and Orgy, Morbid Angel have announced plans to release a remix companion album to this year’s critically-acclaimed Illud Divinum Insanus in early 2012. MetalSucks has now exclusively obtained a transcript of the recent band meeting in which the decision to create said remix album was made. Check it out after the jump!

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But I’m not positive. The drummer’s recent comments regarding Illud Divinum Insanus, the first Morbid Angel album he didn’t play on, are kind of hard to interpret. At first he’s all “I don’t play on that album!”, which is really just a clear cut statement of fact, but then they ask him if he’d have done anything different with the record, and here’s why it gets kinda ambiguous:

“More extreme deathgrind metal and less DJ, boring awful typical I care less industrial experimental same as everybody boring bull! This is not what Morbid has been all about!”

So, yeah, geez, I dunno. In some cultures, like the La Tierra de los Opuestos province of Mexico and the town of Mən Demək Deyil Demək in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the words “boring” and “awful” are meant as high compliments. So there’s really a few different ways his comments could be interpreted.

What do you guys think?

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

¿¡Q-VO, CULEROS?! Te gustan EL MOSH?! Pienso que sí! Escuchame si te quiero EL MOSH tambien!!!

As you can tell from my terrible Spanish, I’m just a dumb güero who can barely tell a tamale from a taqueria. I might not be the master of foreign languages, but I do know that Latinos always been a big part of metal/punk/hardcore (even though nobody ever talks about it). Not only that, but Latinos might be a driving force in the future of the genre — in fact, I think the next big thing will be middle-class white kids jocking Mexicans!

In this post, I will discuss the past, present and future of Latinos in metal/hardcore/etc. Whether you’re a pinche white person like me or a Latino, tell me if you see things the same as I do. Feel free to tell me I’m an idiot/racist/troll if you want, but I would prefer legitimate discussion since I am genuinely interested in this topic.

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Vince is still away, so, once again, “Neilstein SoundScam” is on me this week.Check out some of the more noteworthy sales stats from the latest Top Hard Music charts, including albums by Foo Fighters, Morbid Angel, Of Mice & Men, and more after the jump!

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It’s your choice: you can either bemoan the state of Morbid Angel in 2011 or you can do yourself a solid and listen to Mithras, which is a helluva lot better. Mithras don’t have any new material out — yet — but they (drummer/guitarist Leon Macey) did just announce the return of vocalist Rayner Coss, who left in 2008. I’m assuming it’s this news that prompted The Number of the Blog’s deseee to post a track from their second album, 2003′s Worlds Beyond the Veil. Not that anyone should need an excuse to post the awesome death metalness that is Mithras, but any reason is a good reason.

Eagerly anticipating new Mithras, hopefully before the end of the year.

-VN

Maybe next week we’ll finally stop making fun of Morbid Angel for thinking that Illud Divinum Insanus was a good idea, but then again, probably not. As long as videos like this one exist, the lulz shall continue!

Speaking of lulz, here’s what else we did this week:

• We completed our list of The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists!
• We debuted the new Children of Bodom video.
• We also debuted new music by Sepultura and Isis.
• We introduced a new column by Landphil from Municipal Waste and Cannabis Corpse, and had a special edition of “Rigged” by Forbidden’s Steve Smyth.
• We spoke to Matt Henderson from S.O.S.
• We checked out the latest releases from the aforementioned Morbid Angel as well as Nitro and Wildestarr, and Kuldvas, Adam Emanon, Surachai, and Undying.
• We enjoyed seeing you not enjoy this Lady Gaga/Judas Priest mash-up.
• We assured our parents that metal isn’t getting too mainstream.
• We had our annual laugh at the most recent Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial.
• We got ready for the monotony of Metallica Monopoly.

And hopefully next week no legendary bands will release anything that’s completely unlistenable. ‘Til then, dear friends…

-AR

Major, major, MAJOR props to Chris D. over at The Deciblog for finding the below video review of Morbid Angel’s much maligned new album, Illud Divinum Insanus, by a dude calling himself “Cover Killer.” It’s nearly ten minutes long, but it’s SO WORTH WATCHING all the way through. This dude is really missing his calling as professional wrestler; I kept waiting for him to take off his glasses, stare right into the camera, and challenge David Vincent to a cage match. I would be really curious to know if he wrote some kind of script beforehand, or if he was just winging it for the duration of the rant. I would also be curious to know if anyone else in the world pronounces it “Emmuré.”

Our own Sammy O’Hagar wrote a much more articulate evisceration of the album; you can read that here.  Illud Divinum Insanus is out now on Season of Mist.

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

For this week’s FED, I was all ready to write something (more) idiotic (than usual) about how we usually parcel out shirts, six-month subscriptions and Flexi series streams gratis, but this month—for the privilege of hearing the Black Dahlia Murder and special guest Jeff Fucking Walker covering Carcass’s Heartwork deep cut “This Mortal Coil”—you’d have to actually buy the magazine. Well, believe it or not, some enterprising young reader already ripped the fucking thing and posted it to YouTube. Which is cool and all, since we’re not officially streaming it. We’re particularly chuffed by said reader’s Senator Davis-channeling minor complaint “God damnit. I hate when the vocals first start it skips. My flexi must be flawed i cant get it to not skip there… shittttttttttttt.”

Anyway, go there and check it out. Strnad and Walker execute the most scintillating line trading since Marvin Lee Aday and Lorraine Crosby in “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” As always, it’s totally exclusive to the Decibel Flexi series, on commandingly virile royal blue. Sharpen your scalpels (read: set aside some money) and start slicing (read: subscribe).

-AB

Decibel’s July 2011 issue also features Morbid Angel, Coroner, Baroness, Autopsy, Revocation, Wormrot, and an incredible article about album packaging. That issue is available here, but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss one of these awesome flexi discs?

There’s a fascinating psychology to a true failure of an album. And I’m not talking about how The Sound of White Noise pissed off Belladonna-Anthrax fans or whatever. No, I mean your St. Angers, Cold Lakes, your Unspoken Kings: albums whose defenders are more often than not defending just to be contrary. They’re usually made by bands with some renown and a fan base that — if not sizable — is devoted enough to know a blasphemously awful album when they hear it. There are so many points where the band’s handlers and/or hangers-on could have stopped them and said, “Wait, you’re not being SERIOUS about this, are you?” But either the band were so resolute in their belief that the album was a risk worth taking or were surrounded by a bunch of wincing Yes Men that it still comes into existence anyway, completely un-self-conscious and without a shred of self-awareness. There’s a beauty to those records, albeit a beauty that exists in terrible, regrettable art.

And although Morbid Angel haven’t been immune to Trey Azagthoth’s pretentiousness over the band’s multi-decade career, personally, I didn’t see an album like Illud Divinum Insanus coming down the pipe. Like Cold Lake and The Unspoken King – creative rock-bottom moments for Celtic Frost and Cryptopsy, respectively — it’s ill-calculated to an unfathomable degree. But unlike those albums, which on top of being terrible had a whiff of being sell-out moves (hair metal for Celtic Frost, mall-grade deathcore for Cryptopsy), Illud Divinum Insanus is a passion project for Azagthoth and Dave Vincent (back in the band for the first time on record since Domination). This is an incredibly personal record that they’ve decided to hang the Morbid Angel name on– a name that’s not just sacred in death metal but among the most respected in metal as a whole- – and have subsequently turned the band from a name synonymous with greatness to a name immediately followed with the statement “Just stick with their older stuff” if mentioning them to the uninitiated. Illud Divinum Insanus isn’t just terrible: it’s magnificently dreadful. If the last Six Feet Under album is a mentally ill guy holding a cardboard “REPENT” sign on the street, the new Morbid Angel record is that guy who cashed out his pension to buy ad space for the “THE WORLD IS ENDING ON MAY 21, 2011” hysteria.

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June is going to be a huge month for metal releases and it starts with a bang today, the month’s first Tuesday. New releases by Morbid Angel, Arch Enemy, Job For A Cowboy and Amorphis are the biggest hitters, while new ones from Origin, Engineer, Gigan, Khann and Tombs are sure to put some hair on your chest. And that’s just a small sampling of all that comes out today. Vic Vaughn on each and every one of ‘em after the jump.

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A few years ago there was this popular internet meme in which people took a scene from Downfall, a movie about Hitler’s final days, and re-did the subtitles so that, instead of reacting to the news that he was losing the war, The Führer seemed to be freaking out about some horribly insignificant bit of nerdery (e.g., that the end of The Watchmen movie wasn’t exactly the same as the end of The Watchmen graphic novel, etc.).

Like most memes, it got old after awhile. But our friend Mark sent us the below one over the weekend, and, well… I don’t think I have ever typed these words before, nor am I likely to ever type them again:

I AGREE WITH ADOLF HITLER 110%

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

The only other time Decibel put Morbid Angel on the cover was our fifth issue, in March of 2005. David Vincent had just answered our dark prayers, returning to the fold to “focus on putting together a really brutal tour featuring classic Morbid Angel tracks.” That was radical enough, but what everybody was really rabid for was a new Vincent/Azagthoth collaboration, the first since ’95’s Domination. Predictably, Trey didn’t have much of a scoop for us: “We’re just taking this day by day. It takes so long to put an album together. I don’t think I’m at that point yet.”

Suffice it to say, it took him fucking long enough to get to that point. And in just under two weeks, if you’re not a metal journalist or friend of the band, you’ll finally get a thorough overview of what Tampa’s finest have been slaving away on: the deeply polarizing eighth album, Illud Divinum Insanus. And you’ll learn soon enough if your perspective mirrors the majority of those who have already heard it (mass facepalm) or if Azagthoth’s notorious experimental daring has paid off yet again. J. Bennett grills both principals and gets a pretty fascinating explanation for the startling new direction. It’s the big story in July’s dB, available in the webstore now, for subscribers within two weeks. This one doesn’t have a gushing Mars Volta review (sorry, J.), so it’s an improvement on multiple levels!

-AB

Decibel’s July 2011 issue also features Baroness, Coroner, Autopsy, Revocation, Wormrot, an incredible article about album packaging, and an awesome flexi disc of The Black Dahlia Murder covering Carcass’ “This Mortal Coil” with Jeff fucking Walker. That issue is available here, but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss one?

Nnnnnnooooo, I’m just kidding, of course. They did, however, write a song called “Nevermore,” which is now streaming at The Deciblog.

I’m dying to hear what you folks think, too. Season of Mist sent out a digital promo of the new Morbid Angel album, llud Divinum Insanus, last week, and while it was kinda hard to listen to given that the label inserted the sounds of an old telephone ringing every however many seconds (this is meant to prevent piracy, but I think it mostly prevents music writers from doing their jobs), I can tell you that, generally speaking, I was not bowled over. Maybe that’s because anticipation for this record has been so high that it could never live up to expectations; maybe it’s ’cause it’s already been such a strong year for death metal that, positioned amongst albums like Hate Eternal’s Phoenix Amongst the Ashes and The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual, Ilud was always going to pale in comparison; or maybe it’s just ’cause it’s been sixteen years since Domination, and shit happens. I’ll have to listen more when I have the ring-less version to really articulate why the album just wasn’t gelling for me.

In any case, headbang here, then sound off in the comments section below. Illud Divinum Insanus, comes out June 7 on Season of Mist.

-AR

From the brain of Egyptian-born, New York-based conceptual artist Nader Sadek comes In the Flesh, a new album that centers on the notion of humanity’s relationship with petroleum and how this exhumation of ancient life forms serves as a self-destructive fuel to society’s greed (a subject that’s near and dear to my heart).

You might already know Sadek from his “impressively twisted” sculptures, masks, and installations for the likes of Mayhem and Sunn O))). In The Flesh marks his recorded debut and sees him collaborating with some of extreme music’s most talented artists: Steve Tucker (vocals, ex-Morbid Angel), Flo Mounier (drums, Cryptopsy), and Rune Eriksen (guitars, Mayhem). The album also features guest appearances by Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Sunn O)))), Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation), Tony Norman (Monstrosity, Terrorizer), Mike Lerner (Behold… The Arctopus), Descructhor (Morbid Angel), and Nick McMaster (Krallice).

In The Flesh sounds a lot like what you’d expect given the cast of characters involved: its constant and deliberately plodding elephants-marching riffs and slow blasts recall Morbid Angel and old Cryptopsy in a big way, drizzled with frosty, cold black metal oil.

Stream “Petrophilia,” (music: Rune Eriksen and Nader Sadek, lyrics: Steve Tucker) below. Watch the video for “Nigredo in Necromance” here. In The Flesh comes out May 17th via Season of Mist.

-VN

We’re back, bitches! Vince and I were in L.A. all week, although you probably didn’t even miss us ’cause Corey and Anso did such a killer fucking job running shit while we were away. Let’s have another round of applause for them. Seriously. They rule!

So. One thing that Anso covered while we were away was a clip of a new Morbid Angel song, one apparently written specifically to mourn the loss of one of metal’s most excellent bands; now there’s a FULL new Morbid Angel song, “Existo Vulgoré,” so we can really heat up the debate about whether or not the band’s first new offering in forever was worth the wait.

Actually, scratch that: I am in no way, shape, or form ready to make a(n irresponsible, premature) call on this issue yet. I’ve listened to this song a few times now and I really can’t decide what I think. It’s good. I don’t know if it’s the home run for which Morbid Angel fans have been clamoring, but it’s gotta be at least a solid double. I’m also super jet lagged, though, and would like to listen to it again when my brain doesn’t think it’s 5:30 a.m.

So I’m gonna go take some speed drink some coffee while you guys listen to the song below and then argue about it in the comments section. Morbid Angel’s eagerly anticipated new album, Illud Divinum Insanus, comes out June 7 on Season of Mist.

-AR

Photo by Alison Webster

This month, brutal death metal trio Hate Eternal, led by producer/guitarist Erik Rutan, has been at the center of a pitched battle between MS co-lord Axl Rosenberg and MS writer-at-large Anso DF. The conflict? Is Hate Eternal’s forthcoming Phoenix Amongst The Ashes record awesomely killer (per Axl) or is it insanely ripping (per Anso)? Does it fuck the face and slam the nutz (Anso) or does it render each listener “so fucking happy to be alive” (Axl)? Can its production and performances better be described as a high watermark of contemporary metal (Axl) or as a gift from another realm to every living music listener (Anso)? Is Phoenix a shoo-in for metal album of the year (Axl) or does it crush every other record on earth (Anso)?

Welcome to our love war.

When the time came to phone up Rutan for a discussion of Phoenix and other Hate Eternal affairs, we at MetalSucks opted to settle this battle of agreement with an interview conducted by both Axl Rosenberg and Anso DF. Unsurprisingly, Rutan took on the task with good humor and ease, only succumbing to confusion at times when Axl and Anso simultaneously rushed to hail Phoenix and its predecessor Fury & Flames. In its unexpurgated glory, we present our very special double-team interview of the great Erik Rutan.

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