MetalSucks

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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Ddddddaaaaaammmmmnnnnn!!!!

-AR

Thanks to UN_0P_P0_SED for the tip!

This morning, I received the following e-mail from reader Parker Werley:

“How does a band get to earn the proud badge of having -core in their genre?”

That’s a pretty simple question, but it’s also kind of thought provoking. So I thought maybe we could explore it here a little bit. Because, honestly, I’m not sure that I know what the answer is.

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It’s not that I think that the members of Napalm Death and Dream Theater have a limited musical palette. Quite the contrary; I’d imagine the musicians that make up these particular bands probably have very diverse tastes.

Still. If I found out that Alex Webster listened to a lot of Roni Spektor, I wouldn’t expect a collaboration between the Russian chanteuse and the death metal legend, y’know?

So. Tom Fassnidge sent us this video of Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway teaming up with some of the dudes from Dream Theater to cover Metallica’s “Damage Inc.” It’s an old video – lookit Barney’s hair!!! – but neither Vince nor myself had ever seen it before. And it’s pretty awesome – look at how much fun Petrucci and Portnoy are having! And, yes, I know that DT have covered entire Metallica albums live in concert before. But it’s the “WHAT THE FUCK IS A MEMBER OF NAPALM DEATH DOING UP THERE?” of it all that makes this video truly worthwhile, in my opinion at least.

Extra bonus: for those of us who find James LaBrie to be a big gaping vagina, we now get to see what DT might be like with singer who isn’t a eunuch.

-AR

Ian Christe posted the below photo on his Bazillion Points blog yesterday. It’s producer Russ Russell doing some mixing; Christe took it while visiting Napalm Death in the studio during the recording of their album The Code is Red… Long Live the Code in 2005.

There isn’t that much to say about it. But it made me giggle, and I thought it might make some of you giggle, too.

-AR

Where the hell does the time go? The year is more than half over already! Sheesh.

ANYWAY, here are, in alphabetical order, albums that have really knocked my socks off so far this year…

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I think that I (and about a hundred other people who write about metal) have extolled the virtues of Decibel editor Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death many times in the past, but just to be sure: it’s an awesome history of death and grind, and if you’ve never read it, you really, really should. He got pretty much everybody to go on record about the early days of metal’s most extreme subgenres. If you’re new to these styles of music and need a primer, it’s a perfect place to start; if you already love these styles of music, I guarantee you you’ll still learn some shit ya didn’t know.

One of the things that Mudrian spends a good deal of time discussing is John Peel’s old national BBC radio show, which was the place to hear all the best new grind. And now Earache will commemorate Peel’s show with Grind Madness At The BBC (The Earache Peel Sessions), a three disc (!), three and a half hour set that will feature 118 recordings of sessions done on Peel’s show, including performances by Carcass, Extreme Noise Terror, Godflesh, Napalm Death, and a shitload more.

This is obviously a must-own for grind fans. Earache puts the set out on October 12. Mark it in your calendars.

-AR

For awhile now, we’ve been hyping Greymachine, the new project featuring Aaron Turner of Isis and Fighting with Revolver fame and Justin K. Broadrick from Jesu/Godflesh/Naplam Death. And now their debut album, Disconnected, is streaming in full right here.

I actually haven’t had a chance to give it a listen yet, but I’m all about anything and everything with the name “Broadrick” attached. So check out the record and then let us know whatcha think.

-AR

So I’ve been living in the UK for about four months now, and have managed to take in quite a lot of this “culture” thing they’re so fond of over here. I’ve been to nine countries, eight major metal festivals, and a handful of cities in Ol’ Blighty itself; I’ve gate-crashed hotel parties in Norway with the drummer of Swallow the Sun, stage-dived into a sea of muddy grind freaks in the Czech Republic, gotten roaring drunk with Wolves in the Throne Room in the Netherlands, met Gaahl’s boyfriend in France, gotten lost in Rome, watched Electric Wizard blow an amp in Manchester, lost my mind to Eyehategod at Hellfest, seen Manowar (‘nuff said there) – and that was just the first couple months. Between all the metal, mud, bruises, whiskey, calimocho, hard cider, and terrifying Czech liquor (Becherovka and Fernet are no fucking joke, even if it is Kevin Sharp and Danny Herrera pouring you a shot), I realized that, somehow, something was still missing.

To my immense chagrin, I had yet to take that all-too-necessary pilgrimage up through the Black Country and into the Unholy Land itself – to Birmingham, England. Every metaller worth his leather (and several million other music fans besides) knows exactly why this unimpressive, coal-smudged city matters so much. Birmingham is the ancestral home of heavy metal. Everything – whether it be doom, black metal, powerviolence, or even the plague that is deathcore – everything came from here. The famed Mermaid Pub provided a fertile breeding ground for extreme metal, nestled as it was in a dodgy part of town where the cops ignored the punkers and longhairs milling around out front as the early rumblings of a deadly new sound thundered away upstairs The city itself was the original stomping ground of the dirty sexy hard rock’n’roll of Led Zeppelin, the NWOBHM gods in Judas Priest, the crusty proto-grind of Sore Throat, the scummy grindcore forefathers of Napalm Death, the industrial noise terror of Godflesh, and the one and only BLACK FUCKING SABBATH.

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While Anthrax, Testament, Heaven and Hell and motherfucking Motorhead are among the most anticipated bands that metal pilgrims are converging on western Germany to see, it would appear that my favored people, those crafty Norwegians, also have a few things planned for the mayhem. While Enslaved will be appearing (and hopefully represented on a good stage, because you know they fucking deserve it) some others are teaming up with foreigners in combinations that are hard to ignore.

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Here’s my review if ya haven’t read it.

And here’s the band’s new video for the title track if haven’t seen it.

Now go buy the damn record.

-AR

It’s Friday, and it’s nice out. I’ma go have a whiskey. Booze and drugs make you look cool and get lots of pussy… it’s true.

Here’s what happened this week that made us batty enough to turn to the dark side:

• We got sick of metal bands doing ironic pop cover songs just in time for a metal band to do another terrible pop cover song.
• We spoke with Barney Greenway of Napalm Death, Chris Arp of Psyopus and Karl Sanders of Nile.
• We were Gay for Gojira and Crazy for The Chariot.
• The Devil Wears Prada: way too popular.
• We looked at new records from Black Math Horseman, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, as well as a new track from Suicide Silence and a new track from Dream Theater.
• xAxlRosenbergx got all anti-straight edge on your asses.

See you next week. Don’t get too stoned tomorrow with yer Uncle Kip.

-VN

On April 11, I interviewed Napalm Death front man Barney Greenway when the grind god rolled through NYC on the second date of their tour with Kataklysm, Toxic Holocaust, Trap Them and Coliseum; on April 13, I interviewed Nile’s Karl Sanders. If that wasn’t fucking life affirming, I don’t know what is.

So: Barney Greenway and Napalm Death. Napalm practically invented grindcore (in fact, their former drummer Mick Harris literally coined the term) twenty-two years ago with their seminal debut, Scum; Greenway joined the band two years later and, save for a bried hiatus in the 90s, has been there ever since. The man is a fucking legend, and necessarily so: on stage, he’s just as ferocious as he ever was, and with the release of Napalm’s latest, the mind-fucking great Times Waits for No Slave (read my review here), the band has laid to rest any doubts that they’ll be slowing down any time soon. The fact that he turned out to be an incredibly nice, soft-spoken British chap only just barely calmed my nerves enough to actually remember all of my questions.

After the jump, get all of Greenway’s thoughts on why Napalm Death continues to be a relevant force in metal, the ins and outs of the band’s live show, the state of modern grindcore, and more.

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Today is the kind of day that makes me wanna go up to the roof of the MetalSucks Mansion with a gun and just start picking people off. Luckily for everyone, then, that a) I don’t actually own a gun, and b) there’s new music from the UK’s extreme industrial blackened death grind act, Anaal Nathrakh, currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

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If you’re not following us on Twitter, you’re missing out on Vince’s life blow-by-blow of this weekend’s New England Metal and Hardcore Fest. I think he’s currently watching Trap Them   (a group no less a source a than Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway told me last weekend restored his faith in heavy music) and trying to figure out what the big deal is.

Here’s a band we don’t need to figure out the appeal of: Weekend Nachos. Melty cheesy grindy goodness… yum. If this doesn’t get you ready to fuck shit up this weekend, nothing will.

-AR

Here’s something pretty cool, funny and educational: over at Invisible Oranges, Cosmo Lee has created a chart (above) tracking Napalm Death’s average song length by album. Lee explains:

Originally I made this chart to test a theory that the shorter the Napalm Death song, the better the album. (Also, I wanted to learn how to make bar graphs in Excel.) The theory doesn’t hold true.

Even so, Lee made some pretty interesting discoveries. Read all about his findings here.

-AR

Here’s Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster talking about his band in the January 2009 issue of Decibel:

“We’ve gotten a little more musical though the years and I think it’s a gradual and natural progression. We’ve always been trying to improve ourselves as players and songwriters. If you compare out first record and this one, the difference is enormous; but fromalbum one to album to 11, it’s been a slow progression.”

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that maybe Mr. Webster was talking some bullshit hype, as musicians are prone to do when promoting a new release. But not only does Webster speak the truth – he could just as easily be talking about his peers in Napalm Death.

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Two of the new year’s most anticipated death/grind releases are now streaming in their entirety for your listening pleasure…

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I’m just about done compiling my top ten for ‘08 list, and I’m already worried about my top ten for ‘09 list – ’cause I’ve already heard a few of the releases for ‘09, and some of them really, truly slay.

One of those releases is the new Napalm Death album, Time Waits for No Slave, which comes out here in the US on February 10. It’s just… vicious.

Now you can get your first taste of the album: the new track “Diktat” is currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

I don’t even have anything clever to say. I’ve run out of synonyms for “brutal.” Just go listen to the friggin’ song already.

-AR

The last time I wrote about Napalm Death’s forthcoming album, Time Waits for No Slave, someone known only as “Jimmy” left the following comment: “Fuck you thin skinned pussies who like this shit.” I found the comment simply fascinating and thought about it for several days after it was posted, and not just because Jimmy had the good sense to properly spell the plural of “pussy” (As opposed to the Disturbed fans who come around here and insist on spelling it “pussys.”). No, my real interest in Jimmy’s declaration is this: why does liking Napalm Death make one thin skinned? Are Napalm fans especially prone to being overly sensitive? Or did Jimmy not mean “thin skinned” in the metaphorical sense with which we usually use it in modern English speaking society – e.g., that people who like Napalm Death quite literally have a thinner layer of skin than most people? And if that’s how Jimmy meant it, what scientific study was he basing this assertion on? These are truly questions for the ages.

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