That’s right! Tickets for The Metal Suckfest — the two day festival with a line-up so ridiculously awesome we can’t believe we actually put this thing together — are ON SALE RIGHT NOW.

You can buy tickets to Day 1 (November 4) or Day 2 (November 5) individually for thirty bucks a pop — that’s just three dollars per band!!! — or, for your best value, buy a THREE DAY PASS! for seventy-five bucks.

“Wait, there’s a THIRD day?” you ask. That’s right! On November 3, the night before the fest officially kicks off, we’re hosting The Metal Suckfest Pre-Game, which will be headlined by legendary black metallers Mayhem and will also feature Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Woe. Individual tickets to that show cost twenty-five dollars, but with your Metal Suckfest 3 Day Pass, you get a ten dollar discount. Pretty sweet, eh?

So GO BUY TICKETS NOW. The full line-up is after the jump, in case you forgot… do not forget that four more bands are still yet to be announced!!!

Click to read more…

At long last, Blotted Science are getting ready to make their return! The band’s new EP, The Animation of Entomology, is coming out in less than a month, and now they’ve unveiled the album art (above), and two minutes of a new song, “Omitting Eyes” (below). And while I suspect the EP cover will cause some debate — I think it looks pretty cool, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some fans may find it too cartoony — I can’t imagine what anyone’s complaint about the song could be. It’s too awesome, maybe? I dunno I dunno. Check it out and see if you can find something bad to say about it that doesn’t make you sound like an irrational tool. I don’t think it’s possible.

BLOTTED SCIENCE – Omitting Eyes (edit) by EclecticElectric

The Animation of Entomology comes out October 4 via EclecticElectric.

-AR

Click to enlarge the ridiculously sweet poster art by Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33 and Metal Band Art

When we first announced The Metal Suckfest, we promised you that it was NOT just a bunch of tours already-in-progress, routed so that they all converge for one event. That it was NOT just bands that all sound alike and one would normally expect to find on the same bill. That it would be a wholly unique concert in which some truly incredible artists are coming together JUST to play THIS ONE SINGLE EVENT.

And now you know — we weren’t lying.

We are SO PROUD to announce the line-up for the inaugural Metal Suckfest, which will take place November 4 and November 5 at The Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. As you can see, the bands range from thrash to death to grind to prog to noise rock to NWOAHM to stoner to we don’t even know what you call it, but they all have one thing in common — they are all fucking awesome, and they are all 110% MetalSucks approved. This fest is gonna be so great, we keep having to pinch ourselves to make sure it’s real.

Tickets go on sale Friday at LiveNation.com at 10 am. 12 noon. We’ll be announcing the final four bands on the bill shortly, but trust us — you don’t wanna wait to get your ticket.

Here’s the rest of the line-up:

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Municipal Waste
God Forbid
Today is the Day
This is Hell
Howl
Black Tusk
Magrudergrind
All Pigs Must Die
Ramming Speed
Prime Evil

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Cynic
Obscura
The Red Chord
3
A Life Once Lost
Scale the Summit
Last Chance to Reason
Fight Amp
Rosetta
Ultrageist

-Vince, Axl, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Earthquakes. Hurricanes. New records by The Devil Wears Prada. Come at us, brah! We can survive anything.

Here’s what we did while shit conspired to kill us:

• We debuted new music by East of the Wall and 400 Blows.
• We spoke to Amos Williams from TesseracT about the band’s recent vocalist swap.
• We checked out the latest release from Landmine Marathon.
• We wondered: Which is better, grindcore or doom metal?
• We also wondered: Is it better to make great albums but suck live, or to be great live but put out sucky albums?
• We also also wondered: Who are the top ten metal lyricists?
• We learned what not to do if you’re in an unknown band.
• We were bummed to learn that vocalist Travis Richter has split with The Human Abstract.
• We continued to count down 31 Days of Faith No More.
• We confirmed The Red Chord, Obscura, and Rosetta for The Metal Suckfest.

Alright, I’m gonna go set up my slip n’ slide and get ready for the rain. Come hell or high water (pun intended), I promise you we will be back on Monday. See ya then.

-AR

We really cannot wait to share with you the entire lineup of the inaugural Metal Suckfest, our very own metal festival in New York City featuring 20 bands over the course of two full days; you will like, very, very much!

Last week we unveiled Cynic and Municipal Waste as the headliners. You’re gonna have to wait a little longer to see what the entire bill will look like, but for now you can get a sneak peak via the sleuths at Brooklyn Vegan. First they noticed a post on The Red Chord‘s Facebook page announcing themselves and Obscura on the same day as Cynic, and then they got a tip from a reader that Rosetta will be playing that very same day. All true; we can’t deny it.

November 5th: Cynic, Obscura, The Red Chord, Rosetta + 6 TBA
November 4th: Municipal Waste + 9 TBA

Stay tuned for the rest of the lineup.

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.

Awww, yeah. In case you don’t recall, MetalSucks recently offered MS Maniacs a chance to win an amazing, ONE OF A KIND, Silver Surfer-produced, Obscura vaporizer (above), with a retail value of $600 — and to sweeten the deal, we tossed in some copies of Obscura’s orgasm-inducingly good new album, Omnivium (out now on Relapse — order one here!), and some killer Obscura merch, too. What did fans have to do for a chance to win? Why, design weed smoking apparati that would be ideal for use in outer space (in keeping with the theme of Obscura’s album art for both Omniviumand Cosmogenesis), of course.

Now, clearly, vaporizing and metal are two subjects very close to the hearts of MetalSucks readers — and so we got a lot of great entries. But, alas, there could only be one grand-prize winner, and two runners-up. So after much deliberation, the members of Obscura themselves have now selected those champions! And the winning entries are pretty mind-blowing.

Check out said entries after the jump. And don’t forget that Obscura are on tour right now with Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend, and Septicflesh starting June 24. Get remaining dates here.

Click to read more…

Well this is pretty funny.

Reader Zach Gates e-mailed us to say that his friend had actually made a Devin Townsend skullet wig: “It took him forever to MAKE the wig by hand. He got a bald cap and a regular wig and spent a few days cutting, dreadlocking, and gluing the whole thing together.” And while that probably sounds like an insane amount of work for no real reason, Zach’s buddy did get some payoff in the end:

So, yeah, WORTH IT.

In case you somehow forgot, Devin (the real one, not the dude in the wig) is currently on tour with Children of Bodom, Obscura, and Septicflesh. Get remaining dates here. If you do something as awesome as Zach’s friend, maybe you can get yer picher taken with Devy, too!

-AR

Hi, everyone! I am back from my first vacation since 2006. I look forward to my next vacation in 2016. In the intervening five years, please do not send me countless e-mails about your friend’s terrible deathcore band, insisting that they are awesome. It would really help my stress level/ever-increasing therapy debt. Thanks!

ANYWAY, after sitting out by a lake in Connecticut for the past week, I returned to NYC and the MetalSucks Mansion to learn that bass players suck. I mean, I guess that’s not really fair; not all bass players suck. But between the news that Michael Todd is apparently the only rock star in the history of ever to not be able to score drugs without threatening to kill people, and now the news that Jeroen Paul Thessling has quit Obscura, and, well, one could reasonably deduce that bass players suck, or, at the very least, are inveterate heartbreakers.

So why oh why did he leave Obscura, mere months after the release of their latest and greatest album,  Omnivium? Here’s his official statement:

Click to read more…

If you haven’t entered our super-awesome Obscura vape contest yet, well, there’s still time — but only just barely!!! We’ve gotten some ridiculously good entries, including an entire YouTube video that someone made in order to best demonstrate their own outer-space smoking device. The competition is fierce, but you can still throw your hat in the ring!!!

Get all the details on how to enter (and more about what you can win!) here. Entries are due one week from today — that’s June 17, numbskull — so make sure you don’t let the clock run out on you!

And DO NOT FORGET that Obscura are heading out on their awesome tour with Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend, and Septicflesh starting June 24. Get dates here.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

• Aliases, the new band featuring SikTh’s sickly talented guitarist Pin, have a new album called Safer Than Reality coming August 15th via Basick Records. Check the new song “What’s Left For Us?” above, courtesy MS reader Luke Friebel (of Picture It In Ruins).
• Obscura guitarist Christian Muenzer — who many of you thought should’ve been included in our Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists list — has a new solo shred record called Timewarp. Stream it in full at Christian Muenzer’s Bandcamp, then come back here and tell us how much we suck for not including him on our list. (Thanks: Tim Meyer)
• A Pale Horse Named Death are streaming their entire new album And Hell Will Follow Me at Metal Insider. We premiered a track from the album a couple of weeks back, and I gotta say, this record is really, really good. It’s a grower, for sure. It’s the best of Type O Negative’s moodiness and Alice In Chains’ alt-doom all rolled into one extremely depressing package.

-VN

We’ve already had a lot of great entries, but we wanted to remind you about this awesome contest we’re running in case you’re pot-addled brain forgot!!!

Above you see a photo of an awesome, ONE OF A KIND, Silver Surfer-produced, Obscura vaporizer, with a retail value of $600. And we’re just gonna give it away to one lucky winner! Plus, oh yeah, some copies of Obscura’s orgasm-inducingly good new album, Omnivium (out now on Relapse — order one here!), and some sweet Obscura merch, too.

Here’s how you win:

• Anytime between now and June 17 — one week before Obscura kick off their most excellent summer tour with Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend, and Septicflesh — send an e-mail to MetalSucks with “OBSCURA VAPE CONTEST” in the subject line.
• In the e-mail, include a design for a weed smoking device that would be ideal for use in outer space (in keeping with the theme of Obscura’s album art for both Omnivium and Cosmogenesis). How you present that design is entirely up to you — you can just describe it (but be colorful… this is MetalSucks, not your high school science fair), or send in a drawing, a diagram, pictures of a sculpture, or, if you really wanna go for the gold, a photo of an actual working unit.
• OBSCURA THEMSELVES (!!!) WILL JUDGE THE WINNERS, which we’ll announce just before they kick off the aforementioned most excellent tour.
• One grand-prize winner will get the vape (including a soft carrier and all necessary accessories — e.g. a glass blower, tube, etc.), a copy of Omnivium, and an Obscura t-shirt.
• Two runners-up will get a copy of Omnivium and an Obscura t-shirt.
• Unlike so many of our contests, this one is actually open to fans from around the world! In part because the vape actually has European voltage/wiring, which means non-Europeans will have to purchase a converter

And that’s it! We’re really stoked on this contest — remember, this is a one of a kind vaporizer that you cannot get anywhere else – so get crackin’! The more creative your entry, the better your chances of winning. Good luck!

And after the jump, check out more pics of the vaporizer in question, plus get tour dates for that Children of Bodom/Devin Townsend/Obscura/Septicflesh tour!

Click to read more…

In an apparent effort to weed out his most King of Comedy-fucknuts fan (Hey, it’s actually not me!), Devin Townsend is selling his old spatula on eBay.

As of this writing, bidding on this most prized of kitchen utensils is up to a hundred bucks. That’s a hundred bucks for a used, burned spatula. About ninety-five dollars more than anyone would ever pay for a new spatula. Just because Devin Townsend, like, touched it.

Click to read more…

So, yeah, 4/20 might have been last week, but better late than never — we have an awesome weed-themed contest for you!

Above you see a photo of an awesome, ONE OF A KIND, Silver Surfer-produced, Obscura vaporizer, with a retail value of $600. And we’re just gonna give it away to one lucky winner! Plus, oh yeah, some copies of Obscura’s orgasm-inducingly good new album, Omnivium (out now on Relapse — order one here!), and some sweet Obscura merch, too.

Here’s how you win:

• Anytime between now and June 17 — one week before Obscura kick off their most excellent summer tour with Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend, and Septicflesh — send an e-mail to MetalSucks with “OBSCURA VAPE CONTEST” in the subject line.
• In the e-mail, include a design for a weed smoking device that would be ideal for use in outer space (in keeping with the theme of Obscura’s album art for both Omnivium and Cosmogenesis). How you present that design is entirely up to you — you can just describe it (but be colorful… this is MetalSucks, not your high school science fair), or send in a drawing, a diagram, pictures of a sculpture, or, if you really wanna go for the gold, a photo of an actual working unit.
• OBSCURA THEMSELVES (!!!) WILL JUDGE THE WINNERS, which we’ll announce just before they kick off the aforementioned most excellent tour.
• One grand-prize winner will get the vape (including a soft carrier and all necessary accessories — e.g. a glass blower, tube, etc.), a copy of Omnivium, and an Obscura t-shirt.
• Two runners-up will get a copy of Omnivium and an Obscura t-shirt.
• Unlike so many of our contests, this one is actually open to fans from around the world! In part because the vape actually has European voltage/wiring, which means non-Europeans will have to purchase a converter

And that’s it! We’re really stoked on this contest — remember, this is a one of a kind vaporizer that you cannot get anywhere else – so get crackin’! The more creative your entry, the better your chances of winning. Good luck!

And after the jump, check out more pics of the vaporizer in question, plus get tour dates for that Children of Bodom/Devin Townsend/Obscura/Septicflesh tour!

Click to read more…

It’s been almost a month since Devin Townsend spilled the beans that he was doing a summer tour with Children of Bodom — and now that tour has finally and officially been announced. That’s already a super-sexy package, but Obscura and Septicflesh are on the bill, too, which makes these shows downright unmissable.

And there’s really not much else to say, is there? It’s almost impossible for me to believe that any metal fan doesn’t love at least 75% of this bill.

Here are dates…

Click to read more…

If you’d've told me in 1993 that some Swedish metal band that sings about Viking lore would sell more records than Pearl Jam 18 years later, I’d've called you crazy. Shit, if you’d have told me earlier this year that Amon Amarth would sell more records than Pearl Jam I’d've called you crazy. But that’s exactly what happened this past week. Sure, the Pearl Jam release in question was a reissue, but still; how unlikely is it that Amon Amarth, of all bands, have one of the strongest metal debuts of 2011 so far, strong enough to net them #1 on the Hard Music chart — selling roughly 14x the number of copies The Haunted’s new album did (in the U.S.) — and to beat out the enduring monolith that is Pearl Jam? Pretty fucking unlikely, and pretty fucking awesome too. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose… 13 years and 8 albums in, Amon Amarth have broken through.

No doubt, it’s all due to this 10-year old Amon Amarth fan (WARNING: severe metalhead overload alert!).

Whitesnake (!), Within Temptation, Cavalera Conspiracy, Becoming the Archetype, Obscura and The Haunted also cracked the Top Hard Music Top 100 in their first week of U.S. release; those releases and other notable charting albums after the jump.

Click to read more…

Biggest and best metal release day of 2011 so far? It certainly seems that way. New records from Amon Amarth, Becoming the Archetype, Blackguard, Cavalera Conspiracy — are you kidding me? there’s still more? — Goes Cube, Havok, Mercenary, Obscura and a Between the Buried and Me best-of comp (with a brand new release coming next week!) all officially come out today. If you’re a devoted metalhead with varied tastes you better have saved up, else you’ll be very, very poor come tomorrow.

Vic Vaughn takes a look at all those release — and yes, EVEN MORE — after the break.

Click to read more…

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…

J. Bennett stopped by Decibel HQ last month; naturally, we took the opportunity to grab some adult beverages. It didn’t take long for me to punch up some Kylie in a jukebox that was doing just fine with Use Your Illusion and Ride the Lightning. Nor did it take some random backpatch hombre long—like maybe a second and a half—to cleanse the bar of Ms. Minogue’s exotic stylings with something off of Relentless. Little did this kid know that my drinking comrade was in town specifically to meet up with Bobby Liebling for our May cover story. Ah, the seren-dipshittery—a nice bit of low comedy before an interview that I assume blew even Bennett’s mind.

Said cover story is an instant favorite for multiple reasons, but I think number one is this brief aside from Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, longtime Liebling supporter/sufferer, describing the abode of the Pentagram mainman’s parents.

“There were Cocoa Krispies stuck to the ceiling because Bobby threw a bowl of cereal.”

That’s what I call living. I mean, you don’t need heroin and crack to do that shit, although I suppose it helps. On a moderately more serious note, while the cover’s in simple black and white, the issues detailed therein—loyalty, hedonism, spirituality—span a broad, colorful spectrum. Liebling has defied the odds in virtually every facet of his life—despite endless, infamous struggles with addiction, he’s concocted an absolutely essential proto-doom canon, and lived long enough to see a lethal cocktail of self-sabotage and bum luck transform into international adulation. Worthy subject matter—funny, heartbreaking and, again, sometimes mind-blowing.

And the rest of the issue is no slouch. We’ve covered the Napalm Death flexi already, but there are outlandish and informative features on Burzum, Gridlink, Kylesa, Krallice, Darkest Hour (specifically John Henry’s metal mutha), Obscura, the Scion Rock Fest and shitloads more. Hit it or quit it.

-AB

You can buy the May 2011 issue of Decibel here, or get a full subscription to ensure you never miss an issue, or of those awesome flexi discs!

There’s a bunch of new shit streaming right now that I think may be worth your time, even if I don’t love of all it… if that makes sense. Anyways, rather than do a bunch of separate posts, I’m just collecting it all here, because I’m lazy like that. And so…

Click to read more…

Did you know that there are people who don’t like Obscura?!?! I KNOW!!! So fucking crazy, right? I actually know one of these people. And I love him like a brother, but, uh… LIKE OBSCURA, DAMN IT! They’re fucking great.

And if you’re still feeling any doubt that I speak the truth, well, then please head over to Metal Injection, where they’ve just debuted a new song by the band, ”Vortex Omnivium.” It’s from the band’s forthcoming album, Omnivium, which I have heard, and which, I promise you, is killer. It comes out March 29 on Relapse.

Headbang here, and then let’s all meet back in the comments section for a mid-air group high-five, okay?

-AR