Nevermore may be done (at least in any form about which any reasonable person would care), but it looks like Jeff Loomis (#7 on our list of The Top Modern Metal Guitarists!) isn’t wasting any time getting back on the horse…

So there’s something to look forward to! This new record will be Loomis’ second solo outing, after 2008′s tremendous Zero Order Phase. I wish we knew more right now, but, alas, we don’t — hell, Loomis might not know much more right now. But this is still great news, and worth getting excited about.

More info as we get it…

-AR

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed us about this.

So, to review the ways in bass players let us down this week:

• Coheed and Cambria’s Michael Todd robbed a pharmacy.
• Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss held his girlfriend hostage in a four-hour standoff with a S.W.A.T. team.
• Jeroen Paul Thessling quit Obscura.

Ever since Jeff Loomis and Van Williams — a.k.a. “The Important Members” — split with Nevermore back in April, Nevermaniacs around the world have been wondering: “What the fucking fuck happened?” The band’s statement regarding the parting of ways was vague, blaming the decision simply on “internal struggles and ongoing issues within the band,” which answers absolutely zero questions about what actually went down.

Now Warrel Dane — who announced last week, via Twitter, that Nevermore will go on with Loomis and Williams (But WHY?!?!) — has given an interview to ProgPower USA, in which he attempts to explain a little more about what caused the rift. And it ain’t pretty: he declares Nevermore to be “the greatest band that alcohol ever ruined,” and says that “those guys [presumbaly Loomis and Williams] decided that they didn’t have as bad of an alcohol problem as I did.”

So, one might naturally deduce that the divorce was caused by Loomis and Williams drinking too much, right? I mean, there’s really no other way to interpret that statement.

Thing is, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell Dane is talking about.

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MetalSucks pseudo-celeb Ben Robson — he who won our Nevermore “Create Your Own Conspiracy” Contest back when Nevermore was actually still Nevermore — has released the second music video by his new “band” The Indigestion Collaboration. Robson, Slovenian guitarist Luka Žnideršič and Dutchman Matthijs van den Hoven all live thousands of miles apart from one another, but that hasn’t stopped them from creating killer music and an entertaining music video to match, which I picked up from The Number of the Blog:

Check out The Indigestion Collaboration’s first video for the song “Megapoop” here. It’s not so much a proper music video as it is basically a YouTube vocal cover featuring Ben Robson singing his own song, but it’s worth watching for the price of seeing Robson’s hilarious metal mannerisms we came to know and love through the Nevermore contest.

-VN

MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Jeff Loomis, until recently of Nevermore…

When metal fans look back at the doldrums that were the ’90s, one American band sticks out as carrying the torch of “true” metal, whatever that term means: Pantera. Nevermore deserve just as much credit. Where Pantera had mainstream jock appeal and tough-guy bravado, Nevermore had the opposite; over-the-top technicality, a flare for the theatrical and the nerdiest of nerd-face fans when all of those things were considered as far from cool as you could possibly get. Nevermore never achieved nearly the popularity of Pantera, but as the band’s guitarist and chief songwriter, Jeff Loomis was responsible for bringing technicality back to metal a good 10 years before it was cool again.

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No, seriously — COREY AND ANSO FUCKING KILLED IT THIS WEEK while we were at the Golden Gods, didn’t they? I’m still catching up, but I’ve been getting a serious boner from reading all the shit I didn’t write this week. Some of my favorite pieces that neither Vince nor myself had anything to do with:

• Phil Anselmo’s thoughts on weed, and, oh yeah, Corey’s update on the progress of Mr. Anselmo’s book.
• This awesome interview with Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan. (Okay this one I actually had a little to do with, but Anso did the heavy lifting.)
• Mike IX Williams from EyeHateGod/Arson Anthem/Drip/Crawlspace/Outlaw Order’s thoughts on being underground and unsigned.
• Anso’s mourning for the loss of Nevermore.
• Corey’s analysis of the Columbine massacre on its twelfth anniversary.
• Anso’s assertion that Nicko McBrain wants to fuck Lady Gaga.
• Corey’s wrangling of about a million cool metal folk to give their thoughts on weed, too.
• Anso’s decisions to let his hatred for Kiss flow.
• Corey’s coverage of K.K. Downing’s retirement from Judas Priest.
• Anso’s coverage of Dream Theater’s ongoing search for a new drummer.

Unfortunately for all of you, Vince and I are now back full-time, and you’ll be stuck with us all next week. See ya then.

-AR

So unless you live under Gene Hoglan’s ass cheek, by now you have surely heard the devastating news – Nevermore has left Nevermore. I mean, there are still technically some members of Nevermore left in Nevermore, and no (okay, minimal) disrespect to those dudes, but GIVE US A FUCKING BREAK it’s not Nevermore without Jeff Loomis and Van Williams. The fact that the band would even try to continue with a new line-up means the remaining members are either delusional and think they can do it without Loomis and Williams, or cynical and think people won’t notice as long as the Nevermore brand is still in place. Either way it will take some kind of fucking miracle for anyone to care about this band again, at least until the inevitable reunion X number of years from now.

So. As we were sitting in LAX yesterday waiting to board our flight, watching some dude casually eat his boogers as though a) that were an okay thing to do and b) he wasn’t in the middle of a fucking airport surrounded by strangers, we started to joke around about who Nevermore could possibly hire to replace Loomis and Williams. There’s a few guys on this list whose presence might even make us sit up and pay attention to Nu-Nevermore. We’re not saying it would be good, we’re just saying we’d pay attention.

But it’s not likely that any of these people will actually end up in Nevermore, and we need to emphasize for the cheap seats that this is just us having fun and is not based in any actual fact or even vague rumors that we have heard.

And so –

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UPDATE: It’s official. Nevermore are off this tour. WHAT A BUMMER.

Well, here’s a potentially sucky situation.

We just got the following e-mail from reader Glenn Pillsbury:

“Just got a canned email from the promoter of the May 8 Symphony X concert in San Francisco that does not mention anything about Nevermore appearing on the dates, even though Nevermore was on the dates when I purchased my ticket a few weeks ago.  I sent a reply asking about it and got a statement from the promoter guy himself that Nevermore has indeed dropped off.  Haven’t seen anything from Nevermore itself though (their MySpace still has all the dates listed).”

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MetalSucks is oh-so-very happy to be teaming up with RED Distribution to bring you, our most beloved readers, the MetalSucks Fan Pack, which will be available exclusively at all FYE stores starting this Tuesday, April 12. Not only does this limited edition box full o’ metal come with a CD featuring twenty brootal tunes by twenty brootal bands (including Kvelertak, Trap Them, Believer, Napalm Death, TesseracT, Thomas Giles, Deicide and a bunch more) but it also comes with that HOLY SHIT THAT IS SO KILLER t-shirt you see above, which was designed by our friend Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33 (you might also recognize his work from this sexy t-shirt and this Louvre-worthy poster that he did for us).

How much would you expect to pay for this incredible package? Twenty bucks? Fifteen bucks? Try $9.99. That’s right, gang — twenty songs from twenty bands and that guaranteed-to-get-you-laid t-shirt for under ten bucks.

But wait! There’s more! If you act now and head over to the official MetalSucks Fan Pack web page, you can get a coupon for 30%, which brings the price down to a mere seven dollars. Holy crap, that’s a metsieh if ever there was one.

So go here to get a complete track list of all the bands on the comp, and to use the nifty store-finder to locate the f.y.e. nearest to you. And, oh yeah, you can also enter to win this custom guitar:

So, yeah, that’s pretty fuckin’ bad-assed.

-Axl & Vince

Gotta love this Ben Robson dude. First, he won our totally amazing Nevermore “Create Your Own Conspiracy” contest last year. Then he proved he was no fluke by sharing some of his original music with us. And now he’s really topped himself with this video for for “Megapoop,” a new song he’s co-written with two European guitar players – Luka Žnideršič from Slovenia and Matthijs van den Hoven from the Netherlands.

This thing is ten times more entertaining than 98% of the so-called “real” music videos people send us — and the song rocks, too. Ben can sing his ass off, and he’s got some killer dance moves. It’s amazing that the internet has allowed him to collaborate with other musicians from around the world, but I really hope some decent American band swoops Robson up soon, ’cause I’m dying to see what he can do live.

And if you’re interested, here’s another video, of Žnideršič and van den Hoven playing an instrumental version of the song. It’s not quite as entertaining as Robson’s video, although it is definitely the first-ever metal act to have a choreographed stop n’ smile.

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Oh noes! Soilwork have been forced to drop off their Spring North American tour with Nevermore and Symphony X because guitarist Peter Wichers has a herniated disc in his back. Ouch.

I feel your pain, Peter. Literally… because I have a herniated disc too (actually two). It’s uncomfortable to do pretty much anything; sitting is a challenge (especially in the cramped confines of cars and airplanes) and standing for longer than a couple of hours is a chore… I can’t even fathom having to rock out on stage every night.

So when drummer Dirk Verbeuren says Wichers requires a “prolonged period of rest,” I can’t help but feel for the guy because I know exactly what he’s going through. Worst. Pain. Ever. Peter, can we be herniated disc buddies?? I hope you rest up and get that treated, and if you get better, um, kindly let me know how you did it because nothing I’ve tried to date has worked.

That official statement from Verbeuren after the jump (with news on the band’s future touring commitments):

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Saw this unsettling bit of news towards the end of the day yesterday via Metal Underground: Nevermore bassist Jim Sheppard underwent brain surgery yesterday to remove a benign brain tumor. Jim’s ongoing struggle with Crohn’s disease is fairly well-documented, but this is the first we’ve heard of a brain tumor. Just two weeks ago he was aboard the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise rocking the bass for Sanctuary (but not Nevermore, interestingly), not something you’d expect someone who knows they have a serious medical issue to do; seems like the kind of thing that was recently discovered and action needed to be taken immediately.

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With an exception, my 2010 best albums could’ve been predicted months in advance. To me, last year was all about reliable, established bands and their awesome but journalistically unsexy jams. But elsewhere than my best-loved albums, 2010 had a few saucy surprises up its tattered sleeve. For one, it was shocking to find that the best melody record of the year was made by a fake band for a suckass movie; nope, did not expect to love that shit. Also, I didn’t remotely foresee announcements of Judass Priest’s final tour (bummer), Adrian Smith’s pairing with members of Sikth (wtf/awesome), the Mike Portnoy saga (over it), or the slight return of Coroner (full bonerz). Again and again, I was surprised!

But in a couple cases, my mere surprise was no longer adequate; I was forced to upgrade to astonishment. Example? Okay here’s one: It turns out that I really like Silent Civilian’s Ghost Stories, a surprisingly unshitty 2010 metalcore outing led by the surprisingly huge-gutted Jonny Santos of Spineshank. I mean, it’s metalcore that isn’t total garbage! Wild, huh?

But that shit was nothing compared to the brain-blasting shock that awaited me the late December evening that I first laid ears on Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold. Goddamn! Those guys haven’t made a listenable jam since the Troy Gregory-heavy 1990 gem When The Storm Comes Down and that was um two decades ago. So my low expectations were primed to be vaulted over by a good Flots album. Well, forget “good;” The Cold is awesome — like, freaking Nevermore awesome! By the second song (below), my bowtie was spinning so hard that it detached itself and beheaded my best geraniums.

-ADF

Order Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold here and then glue your socks on. Safety first.

Dude windmilling in the jacuzzi as some band plays behind him. Jacuzzis = metal.

Our brothas and sista at Metal Injection are having a grand ol’ time on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, which by now you’ve surely heard about: a 4-day cruise from Miami to Cozumel and back featuring close to 50 metal bands on three stages, many of them playing more than once. You can imagine the scene… lots and lots and lots of black t-shirts.

MI’s Rob, Frank and Noa are posting regular liveblog updates from their voyage by continuing to add updates to this page. Among some amusing highlights:

• Check out this video of the scene before the storm. So many black t-shirts!
• Nevermore and Sanctuary both fucking killed it. Says Noa, “It was great seeing Jim [Shephard] with a bass in his hand instead of quarters for the slot machines.”

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Y’all remember Ben Robson, right? He’s the very lucky and talented dude who won our totally amazing Nevermore “Create Your Own Conspiracy” contest last year, and consequently got to perform his own version of the title track from The Obsidian Conspiracy with the band, live in concert.

Well, hey, last night, Ben e-mailed us the below music video he made for his song (apparently under the moniker “Robot Zombie Army”) “Faith,” which, before you even ask, I can tell you has nothing to do with either George Michael or Limp Bizkit. And since Ben’s dance moves are just so sexy, I’m only too happy to post said video here.

Ben tells he’s currently recording an album, and hopes to complete it by mid-March, so he can self-release it. There will be a better-produced version of this song on the album, but in the meantime, you can download the current recording here.

We hope you have enjoyed this latest update from the only man ever to threaten Warrel Dane’s job!

-AR

Solo instrumentalist / one-man band mastermind Keith Merrow — whose praises we’ve sung on MetalSucks many a time — has come out with what by my calculation is the very first metal release of 2011, his new record Awaken the Stone King. Heavy Blog is Heavy was the first site to report on the release, which seemingly came out of nowhere, with a non-time-stamped post on December 31st… but we’re just gonna call a mulligan here and proclaim Stone King the first metal release of 2011.

“Merrow,” the moniker that the album cover would seem to indicate Sir Keith is now going by (a smart move, IMO) — has made Awaken the Stone King available as a $9.99 download on his website, where you can also listen to song samples from the whole record. If you can remember all the way back to December (hard, I know), you’d recall that Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis guest solos on a track; I definitely can’t wait to hear that one (which I believe is “Heart of the Sea Nymph”, track 2), but just from listening to these songs samples I’m already sold on this album… so far, so great, no hot-shot cameo necessary. Keith is a phenomenal musician whose composition and performance skills I can’t give enough praise. I’m sold; downloading now.

All of Merrow’s prior releases are available for free if you wanna catch yourself up his catalogue, which I highly recommend. Donations are welcomed.

-VN

Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit: Apparently not a candidate for best album of the year.

Yep yep yep: the right honorable Mr. Phil Freeman of MSN’s “Headbang” blog has revealed the 135 finalists which will soon be whittled down for his “Twenty Best Metal Albums of 2010″ list, which will presumably be published sometime in the coming weeks. You can go here to read it, and then leave Phil angry comments about how your favorite album isn’t even on this list of 135 records.

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I can honestly say that the “Create Your Own Conspiracy” Contest we hosted with Nevermore earlier this year — in which we invited anyone with a microphone and the means to record it to write their own lyrics to the instrumental version of the as-yet-unreleased “The Obsidian Conspiracy” — was one of the most fun, if not the most fun contest we’ve held in the nearly four years we’ve been running this site. Watching all the entries come in was a blast — some of them good, some of them not so good — but what really made it special was that the winner, Ben Robson, really deserved it. His prize: the opportunity to perform his version of the song on-stage with Nevermore when they next came through his hometown of Pittsburgh.

That opportunity finally came a couple of weeks ago, and Ben’s friends Kyle Heider, Steph Malesic and a whole posse of friends were there with him to film the proceedings! Kyle put together a mini-documentary featuring some of Ben’s contest-winning submission, a pre-show meet-and-greet with Warrel Dane, and what you’ve all been waiting for — multi-camera footage of Ben’s legendary performance — and he’s released it exclusively to MetalSucks to share with you all today. Ben’s performance is epic in all its Penguins-jerseyed glory; it makes me smile even more than his wildly entertaining contest entry did, and that’s saying a lot. Put simply, Ben fucking killed it!

Ben came out again for the band’s encore of “Enemies of Reality” and performed it as a duet with Warrel Dane; that footage, as well as a video with just the “Obsidian Conspiracy” performance, is posted after the jump. Ben also wrote up a blog about the entire experience, and we’ve posted that after the jump too. Thanks to Nevermore, Century Media and Ben and everyone else who entered the contest!

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Can I get a “heck yes!” from all the nerds in the house?

Heck yes!

Reader Daniel Borbet just sent us a link to an event posted at the website of NYC’s Best Buy Theater — formerly the not-at-all-more-appealingly-named Nokia Theater — for a Symphony X show with Nevermore, Soilwork, Powerglove and Blackguard in tow. Yowza, that’s some serious nerdage right there! The show is booked for April 22, 2011 which seems like an eternity from now, but such is the case when foreign bands like Soilwork are involved and visas need to be procured, flights needs to be booked, and so on and so forth.

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This morning I walked by the Axl Annex of the Mansion to the smell of piss, shit and vomit emanating from his quarters. My knock on the door was returned by a grunt, which is at least improved from last night when Axl was so sick he couldn’t even stay out to catch Nevermore completely own New York’s Gramercy Theater. You know the guy’s gotta be in bad condition if he’s skipping Nevermore; I know he’d been looking forward to that show for a while. And it’s really too bad, because Nevermore were absolutely phenomenal.

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