via Topless Robot

I would give anything for that to be the actual James Bond theme music from now on, wouldn’t you?

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We spoke to Neige from Alcest and SL from The Devil’s Blood.
• Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick got pissed the Packers losing.
• We checked out the latest releases from Nails, Skin Like Iron, Fatal Birth, and No Tolerance.
• We previewed some more more Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012: 7 Horns 7 Eyes, Crazy Lixx, Wormed, and Imperial State Electric.
• We got excited about the rumored line-ups for both Summer Slaughter and Mayhem Fest.
• We helped Godsmack, Staind, and Halestorm name their new tour.
• We enjoyed Juliet’s video for “My First Hardcore Song.”
• We suffered through a bad trip with The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato.
• We felt bad for Trivium — poor bastards have to go tour with Asking Alexandria.
• We pondered whether the shutdown of Megaupload was good or bad.

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the most up-to-date suckitude.

See ya Monday, folks!

-AR

On this attention-grabbing co-released split with savage core-mongers Nails, Skin Like Iron further embrace the quasi-blackened rock n roll tinkered with on last year’s Arrival (review), which shook me harder than a teen mom. Hooky and sinister, “Disappear” should at last endear them to the metal audience. Nails, conversely, do what Nails do, which is starting to get a bit too predictable, and seems naked when positioned so close to a far more dynamic band’s sound. Groovy art, too.

Click to read more…

Nails and Skin Like Iron are releasing a split 7″ at the end of the month. Our resident hardcore expert, Gary Suarez, is reviewing the split for a future installment of the new “Inch Scraper” column, and while I haven’t read that review yet, I’m gonna predict that it’s most likely positive, since a) Skin Like Iron’s Arrival was one of Gary’s favorite hardcore releases of 2011, and b) I just listened to it and it’s freakin’ awesome.

So while you await that review, you can listen to it for your damn self, so you already know whether or not you’re going to leave Gary mean comments beneath his column. Our brahs at Decibel are streaming the split right now. The Skin Like Iron stuff is really straightforward, punky, high-energy, get-your-circle-pit-goin’ hardcore, while the Nails stuff is a little grittier and more metallic — but it’s all fantastic.

Mosh here, then let us know what you think in the comments section. The bands are self-releasing the 7″ in a limited run of 1,000 copies on January 31; you can pre-order one right here.

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF MACHINE HEAD, EPICA, NAILS, CLINGING TO THE TREES OF A FOREST FIRE, ARGUS, EVERYTHING WENT BLACK, AND WEAPON

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time twice a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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In a scene where yearly festivals are as abundant as they are sweaty, This Is Hardcore has emerged as the leader of the pack, unequivocally the most anticipated of all hardcore music events in America. Combining coveted reunions with plentiful appearances by modern acts big and small, the event brings revelers and pit beasts to Philadelphia for a humid August weekend. Part of the fest’s success stems from its notorious secrecy, and 2011′s is no exception. The lineup was embargoed until noon EST on Monday May 30, at which point tickets immediately went on sale online and at AKA in Philly. Extended from three to four days of music, the fest boasts performances from metallic acts like Madball, Maximum Penalty, Mother of Mercy, Nails, Reign Supreme, Ringworm, Suburban Scum, Terror, and Victims.

If you’re reading this now and you haven’t bought your ticket yet, you’re not attending This Is Hardcore 2011. Four-day as well as weekend passes sold out in less than 24 hours, and at the time of this writing, extremely limited numbers of single-day tickets were available. The full lineup, organized in order by day, can be found below.

Click to read more…

Wormrot and Nails, both awesome bands that we hold in pretty high regard around these parts, have both released new videos, for the songs “Spot a Pathetic” and “Conform/Scum Will Rise” (Nails combined two short tracks into one video), respectively. They’re both pretty standard performance vids and neither one is especially killer nor especially awful. But, like I said, the bands are great, and the songs are great, so you should still check ‘em both out, especially if, for some nutty reason, you’re not already sold on these particular musical outfits.

So here’s the Wormrot vid…

…and after the jump is the Nails clip, which debuted on Metal Injection.

Click to read more…

Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:

• It seems like metal and hardcore have been further segregated on the bill — Thursday appears to be almost entirely dedicated to deathcore and crabcore bands, Friday seems to be entirely devoted to hardcore bands, and Saturday is dominated by metal bands. There are pros and cons to this approach — the pro being that if you’re only a fan of one particular style of extreme music, you can cherry pick which day you’re going to attend, and the con being that new fans are less likely to be exposed to bands with whom they were not already familiar.
• There seem to be fewer “big name” acts. Sure, Hatebreed and Biohazard are on there, but that’s still a far cry from years’ past. In fact, plenty of big name who have new albums scheduled to come out this year — like Amon Amarth, DevilDriver, Arch Enemy, In Flames, and Children of Bodom — aren’t playing the fest.

Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.

Anyway, here’s the full bill:

Click to read more…

Well, the line-up for this year’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival — one of the oldest and most revered extreme music fests in the U.S. — has been announced, and it’s… interesting. The fest returns to a three-day format after being only two days last year, but if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that the initial day will be a Thursday, not a Friday. And as reader Brian Kessler pointed out to us via e-mail, there are two noteworthy aspects to the lineup:

• It seems like metal and hardcore have been further segregated on the bill — Thursday appears to be almost entirely dedicated to deathcore and crabcore bands, Friday seems to be entirely devoted to hardcore bands, and Saturday is dominated by metal bands. There are pros and cons to this approach — the pro being that if you’re only a fan of one particular style of extreme music, you can cherry pick which day you’re going to attend, and the con being that new fans are less likely to be exposed to bands with whom they were not already familiar.
• There seem to be fewer “big name” acts. Sure, Hatebreed and Biohazard are on there, but that’s still a far cry from years’ past. In fact, plenty of big name who have new albums scheduled to come out this year — like Amon Amarth, DevilDriver, Arch Enemy, In Flames, and Children of Bodom — aren’t playing the fest.

Please note that I’m not knocking the fest — in fact, I think Saturday, April 16 is full of killer bands — and I don’t think every fest needs to be headlined by a band of Megadeth’s stature. I just think this particular line-up is… interesting.

Anyway, here’s the full bill:

Click to read more…

Word of who was gonna be on the bill for this year’s Scion Rock Fest, the totally free annual metal super-show, got out yesterday — hell, Wormrot even decided to just go ahead and confirm their presence at the festival. So in that regard, the official announcement of this year’s fest is a little anti-climactic.

Until you realize, holy shit — there really is gonna be a free festival with Morbid Angel, Obituary, Death Angel, Municipal Waste, Agalloch, Wormrot, Kvelertak, Atheist, Black Breath, Nails, Fuck the Facts, and tons more awesome bands. That is a fact about which one ought never to complain.

You can RSVP for the event here starting tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the finalized poster:

-AR

I can’t think of anything clever to say right now, so I’m just gonna leave to my homies, Ozzy and Forest:

Here’s what we did this week:

• Veil of Maya’s Marc Okubo gave us our first Legacy Tour diary, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable gave us a lesson in why Californians should have voted to legalize weed, and The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks gave MetalSucks readers a chance to write about the NFL themselves for once.
• We debuted new music by The Secret.
• We spoke to Dredg’s Gavin Hayes, Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson, and Nails’ Todd Jones.
• We checked out new releases by Masters of Reality and Colombian Necktie.
• We kicked off the arguing regarding the best albums of 2010.
• We wondered, “Which is better, death metal or black metal?”
• We also wondered if we should like Mogwai.
• We regretted learning about Gump-core.
• We watched a chick shred some Faceless.
• We tried to find a stage big enough to hold Glenn Danzig’s ego.

Have nice weekend everybody. See ya Monday.

-AR

If bands like Carnage, Entombed, Gehenna, and Integrity give you a nerd-boner, Orange County’s own NAILS will make you blow your load faster than Michael Jackson at a Build-A-Bear store. I think many MetalSucks readers will agree that their raw, filthy, vintage thrash/death metal sound is a refreshing departure from the zillions of faceless tech-death and metalcore bands who are way too perfect for their own good, so don’t miss out on their latest record, “Unsilent Death.”

This interview is with guitarist/singer Todd Jones, who you may also know from some of the last decade’s best hardcore bands like Carry On, Terror, and Betrayed. I don’t know him, but I am a big fan of his work, and he seems like someone I would get along with — my friend is in a band with Todd and described him as “genuinely disturbed,” which is about the strongest endorsement you can get in my book!

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If you’re one of those people who read this site every day (God bless you, you fucking masochists!), you may have noticed a lack of premium content from yours truly these past couple of weeks. That’s because I’ve been in Japan soaking in neon, dining on fresh sushi, and recoiling in horror at the perverse underbelly of otaku. I did manage to hit up a few rock bars in Osaka (Rock Rock — check out who else has been there!) and Tokyo (Beat Cafe), but otherwise this was a pretty metal-free trip–and that’s okay with me.

So, shit, man. Quite a bit happened in the wonderful world of hardcore while I was away! Ruiner broke up. This Is Hardcore 2010 finally revealed its drool-inducing lineup and sold out in less than two days. (I wasn’t able to get my tickets in time, sadly.) Unsane announced a series of U.S. dates where they’ll play 1995′s awesome Scattered Smothered & Covered live in its entirety. Notable releases included Ceremony’s Rohnert Park, for which I’ll be posting a review later this week. Some pretty awesome tours were announced as well. Check out the dates for some of these below.

Looking forward to your “Welcome Back” sentiments in the Comments section!

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I’m really, really disappointed in you, male MetalSucksians. After reader Ashley sent in some epic photos of herself in a MetalSucks hoodie and not very much else, I predicted we’d get an identical pic from a wise-ass dude by the end of the week. Nope. Either no one thought of it, or no one had the balls to do it. For shame. And now what are the three ladies who actually read this site to look at? Pics of Lars Ulrich’s dick?

Oh well. Here are some other things that happened this week:

• We debuted new music by Daughters, Woe of Tyrants, Stigma and Nails.
• As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa wondered “Who is coming to the island on L O S T?”, while Eyal pondered whether it’s better to burn out or fade away.
• We listened to the God of War EP and new releases by Shining, Burzum, and H.I.M.
• Antonin Skullia taught us about the law of Metalocalypse.
• Did this shitty Matthew Fox show steal The Haunted’s logo?

And next week I expect you, our beloved readers, to be back up to your usual level of witty repartee.

-AR

Brutal. This is brutal. That is brutal. Brutal. But, what’s REEEEEALLY brutal? NAILS. NAILS ARE FUCKING BRUTAL.

“Scum Will Rise” is a minute-long IED blast of crusty powerviolence and oldschool Napalm Death-influenced grind. Fans of Brutal Truth, Fuck The Facts, Pig Destroyer, and United Nations should find this to their liking. But don’t just take my word for it; TAKE A LEAK!

DOWNLOAD NAILS – “SCUM WILL RISE”

Unsilent Death, Nails’ forthcoming LP/CD, will be out on Six Feet Under Records soon and is currently available for pre-order. You should also visit SFU’s site for streams of two other tracks from this record.

-GS

Now ten years since originally forming, The Hope Conspiracy is still killing it. The band’s latest release was this year’s True Nihilist, a killer three-song EP showcasing the savage yet smart hardcore that we’ve come to expect from the band. No official word yet on when we’ll see a proper (and overdue) full-length follow-up to 2006′s Death Knows Your Name, but you can ask the guys yourself during their upcoming flurry of European and American tour dates this coming January. Opening acts for these shows vary, but include Nails (the latest project from Todd Jones, formerly of Terror and Carry On) and fellow Deathwish acts (and my Best Albums of 2009 picks) Blacklisted, Lewd Acts, and Rise And Fall. The New York date (flyer above) boasts an especially awesome lineup of hardcore supergroup United Nations, black metal locals Black Anvil, and Pennsylvania’s Mother Of Mercy, as well as the aforementioned Blacklisted. All dates below, with ticketing info when available.

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