We’re back! January 24th marked the first big release date of 2012, and now the numbers are in for the final first-week tallies. As expected, Lamb of God took the top spot in the Current Hard Music Chart (and #3 overall behind Adele [115,972] and Tim McGraw [67,530]), while Lacuna Coil landed at #2. New records by Blessed by a Broken Heart, Aborted, Primal Fear and Abigail Williams also ended up in the Top 100. Check out the numbers after the break.

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So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve put out a column, and in that time I missed one item worth mentioning. Let’s take a look at that release and this week’s new records after the jump.

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After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

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Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.

So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…

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So The End Records very generously donated five prize packs for last week’s entry into our “Completely Unreadable Band Logo” contest series, and only one reader, Ben Moreau, got the right answer. That means we still have four prize packs to give away! In case you can’t remember what was in ‘em, each prize pack includes the following:

• A copy of These Are They‘s new album, Disposing of Betrayers, signed by Paul Kuhr, vocalist for both These Are They and Novembers Doom.
• A copy of Lordi‘s new album, Babez For Breakfast.
• A copy of original Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen‘s new solo album, What Lies Beneath.

All of these albums are out now on The End and can be purchased from The Omega Order — but this is your only chance to win an excellent prize pack with all three, and your only chance to get a signed copy of the These Are They album without tracking Paul Kuhr down personally.

So here’s how we’re gonna unload these bad boys:

• Between now and midnight EST next Tuesday, November 9, answer the following question in the comments section below: “What is the worst possible way you could imagine to meet your end, and why?” Remember that this is MetalSucks, not Home & Garden, so the more entertaining your answer, the better your chances of winning.
• I’ll pick my four favorite answers, and those people will get the prize packs.
• Remember that you need to register for the comments section with a real e-mail address, as all winners will be contacted via e-mail. If you’re a Facebook user or whatever, you need to leave your e-mail address in the comment, ’cause I can’t contact you via a social network.
• All winners must live in the U.S. Sorry.

And that’s it! Good luck. I look forward to reading these.

-AR

Last week’s logo was way too easy – everyone save for one or two people whom I’m guessing are mentally retarded (THE ANSWER IS NEVER FUCKING SLIPKNOT PEOPLE. IT HAS NEVER BEEN SLIPKNOT AND IT WILL NEVER BE SLIPKNOT.) correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Alice Through the Windshield Glass. The luck of the draw says that congratulations are in order for David MacDonald, Jose Martinez, and Dan Saraceno, all of whom win a copy of Nightwish’s Made in Hong Kong (And in Various Other Places).

But don’t go slitting your wrists if you didn’t win a copy – Roadrunner has supplied us with two (2) more copies to give away this week. This two-disc set includes live performances recorded around the world, PLUS b-sides and demos, PLUS a DVD with music videos and a documentary chronicling the Dark Passion Play World Tour that took place from ‘07 – ‘08. This sweet package is a must own for all you Nightwish fans, so get crackin’!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl AT metalsucks DOT net. We’ll randomly select two winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us by read Shawn Zeilenga. It’s a mite harder than last week’s…

-AR

Alright. So on Monday night at Paganfest (where Moonsorrow absolutely RAPED the crowd, in addition to have the coolest t-shirt of the evening – the Statue of Liberty on fire while a viking ship sails away), I heard a bunch of people talking about Saturday’s night’s NYC Nightwish concert. We weren’t there, but the thing that seemed to stand out in the mind of everyone who did attend wasn’t the music or the performance – it was was that vocalist Anette Olzon was apparently wearing a muumuu.

Okay. Humorous enough.

But then, earlier today, Vince and I had lunch with some friends who were also at the show, and all they could talk about was this friggin’ muumuu. So I looked on YouTube and, sure enough, some fan got some footage on his or her cell phone – and Olzon, is, indeed, wearing a muumuu.

Now, muumuus are traditionally reserved for a) the pregnant and b) the morbidly obese; Anette certainly isn’t the latter and some rumors from last year aside, I don’t think she’s the former. So oh why oh why is she wearing this smock?

Check out the video footage after the jump.

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I don’t like Nightwish. I don’t really dislike Nightwish, either; I guess I mostly just don’t see what the big deal is.

That being said, I know a lot of people do like Nightwish, and for those people, Ian Christe’s Bazillion Points Books has just released Once Upon a Nightwish: The Official Biography 1996-2006 by Mape Ollila. Christe is the author of the excellent history of metal, Sound of the Beast, as well as the equally excellent Van Halen biography, Everybody Wants Some, and Bazillion Point’s was the publisher that released last year’s mind-blowing Swedish Death Metal, which is pretty much the definitive book on… well… y’know. My point being that even as someone who doesn’t appreciate Nightwish, I’m willing to bet this book is quality.

And just to prove it, Bazillion Points has released a free chapter from the book, which you can download here. A press release describes the chapter:

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By all accounts, the Meshuggah / Cynic / The Faceless tour earlier year was exactly the masturbatory dude-fest it promised to be from the get-go. With a lineup like that, how could it be anything less than completely mindblowing? Before the show I had the opportunity to catch up with Meshuggah guitarist Marten Hagstrom. I asked him about the touring lifestyle, how the band’s sound has evolved and changed over the years, Meshuggah’s now near-legendary cult status, and one question that really got his goat about the hoardes of Swedish melodic death metal bands that have grown to popularity in recent years. Our chat, after the jump.

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Congrats to MetalSucks maniacs Rachel Black, McCaleb Burnett, and Ben Wadler. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Vaginectomy, and each of them win a copy of Dream Theater’s Systematic Chaos for their troubles.

By the way, a lot of you guessed “Vasectomy” as the name of last week’s band. That was a good guess. Not correct, but a good guess.

This week, the fine men and women at Roadrunner Records have bestowed upon us three copies of Nightwish’s latest offering, Dark Passion Play, to give away. All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select three winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name next Monday.

Good luck…

-AR

Ironic metal covers of decidedly non-metal songs are definitely passe, but exceptions have to be made when there’s nary a trace of irony. Northern Kings, the new Finnish band consisting of J. Ahola (Teräsbetoni), Marco Hietala (Tarot, Nightwish), Tony Kakko (Sonata Arctica), J-P Leppäluoto (Charon) have a new all-covers album called Reborn, including the Tina Turner smash “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” video below. (The album also features covers of Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Dire Straits, Billy Idol, and more).

Check out some other audio samples at Northern Kings’ MySpace page.

This, my friends, is fucking metal. These guys really mean it; NO MORE FUCKING HEROES, OK???
-VN

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Most of the big debuts in hard rock and metal came last week with the Foo Fighters, Dethklok, Down and Arch Enemy — but all of these held respectable positions, while Nightwish and The Cult made Top 100 debuts. Chart positions and sales numbers after the jump.

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