The Mikael Åkerfeldt + Steven Wilson collabo project dubbed Storm Corrosion has been fueling Internet boners for months (years?) already. Two of prog metal’s great writers together in one band! Blackwater Park Part II! Imagine all the possibilities!

But Wilson dropped a bomb sure to deflate many a stiffy in a recent interview with StarsDie.com [via Metal Injection], in which he revealed that the first Storm Corrosion record — gasp! — will not be very heavy at all:

It’s very hard to describe this music as it is so different from most things around right now (at least as far as I know). I said it was the ‘opposite of metal’ because I think a lot of people might have assumed from the two people involved that this would be some kind of progressive/metal thing, but in fact it’s quite a minimal album with a lot of space and beauty, orchestral and organic, hardly any drums and no distorted guitars — ‘twisted beautiful’ is the best way I can describe it.

Oh no!!! No distorted guitars!! No growled vocals!! NOT EVEN ANY DRUMS!!!!! NOT METAL. Herpaderpa derp derp. I can just feel the IMN nerd rage percolating behind your keyboards from here. Spill it all in our comments section as per usual.

-VN

At this point, is there really anything we need to tell you about the Mastodon/Opeth/Ghost tour other than “It’s happening?” We know you’re gonna go; you know you’re gonna go; you’re going.

Dates are after the jump. You’re welcome.

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Axl wore his most vile death metal shirt in an attempt to avoid being selected as a juror in this great City of New York, but lo and behold, his plan backfired and he was chosen anyway. So it’s been the Vince party over here since Wednesday with plenty of help from all of our most excellent contributors — special big ups to Anso DF for pitching in extra! Here’s what went down:

• We lost Riot guitarist Mark Reale. R.I.P.
• We premiered a new track by Pyscroptic, one by Exotic Animal Petting Zoo and all of Primal Fear’s new album Unbreakable.
• The Rockstar Mayhem Festival announced the first slate of bands on its 2012 lineup. Slipknot later spilled the beans that High on Fire are confirmed too.
• Ihsahn is guesting on the new Jeff Loomis solo joint and Jeff Loomis is guesting on the new Ihsahn solo joint. Will those two get a room already?
• The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman went all anti-drug on our asses.
• Tours and rumours of tours: The Mastodon / Opeth / Ghost tour is really gonna happen, Meshuggah, Decapitated and Baroness will hit the U.S. together (no dates yet), dates were announced for the Decibel Magazine Tour featuring Behemoth, Watain, The Devil’s Blood and In Solitude, while All Shall Perish, Fleshgod Apocalypse and other cool bands announced a tour too.
• Sammy O’Hagar reviewed Lamb of God‘s new album while Gary took a look at new hardcore 7-inches by Daylight, Unholy Majesty and Wrong Answer.
• We realized that Maynard James Keenan poops and pees and eats just like the rest of us.

We’ll be back next week for Axl’s triumphant return to the blogosphere. See you then.

-VN

Last week, rumors started swirling that there was gonna be a North American tour with Mastodon, Opeth, and Ghost, and, oh hey, wouldn’t cha know it, on Thursday, Mastodon’s Troy “Everyone in This Band’s Name Starts with the Letter ‘B’ Except for Me” Sanders confirmed it during an interview with a Belgian radio station, telling them –

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Last week Vince posted the above totally epic picture of Trivium playing foosball against Ghost, and while we all had a good chuckle at the time, what we didn’t realize was that the stakes of the game were actually incredibly high. See, the winners got to go open for Mastodon and Opeth, while the losers had to open for.. Asking Alexandria. Brutal, right?

A source tells us that Trivium were incredibly confident in their foosball skills, but, alas, it may have been hubris: they lost, and do, indeed, now need to go be on a tour where they are not only going to be playing support for Asking Alexandria, but will find Dir En Grey, I See Stars, The Amity Afflication, and “Shitstain on the Ass of the Universe” alums Motionless in White as their tourmates. You know things are bad when the band you’re most stoked to be on tour with are Dir En Grey, for the simple reason that at least they don’t speak English, and will therefore most likely not bother you.

I’m not going to post dates for this wretched hellspawn of a trek, but you can get ‘em here if you really need to. Meanwhile, that awesome sounding Mastodon/Opeth/Ghost tour is still technically just a rumor, but we’ll post more details as we get ‘em.

-AR

UPDATED:

Hey, so you what did you guys think of the idea I posited last week for a new band ranking system? Thanks to Jason from IKILLYA for pointing out the existence of NextBigSound.com, a cool site that aggregates a lot of the data I suggested be included in the ranking, namely social network stats and other Internet metrics. While NextBigSound allows account holders to enter their own Soundscan data, I’d love to see all those things — along with torrents, merch sales, etc — combined into a single chart that’s published once a week and accessible to the industry, much like Soundscan is now. The grand picture is so much bigger than album sales now more than ever, and I think that needs to be reflected in the main chart people analyze. For the most part, it seemed like you guys were into the idea even if you questioned its feasibility.

Anyway, this week is pretty depressing sales-wise. One look at the top six records on this week’s Current Hard Music chart should make any metalhead cry. Since there weren’t many notable new albums released last week and you surely don’t wanna just read about Nickelsuck, I also included numbers of some older albums from earlier in 2011 that are experiencing holiday sales bumps.

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If, like me, you were hopeful that Opeth and Katatonia would use their recent U.S. tour as an opportunity to get up on stage and play some Bloodbath shit (since members of both bands are in Bloodbath — duh), you were probably disappointed… unless you live in Baltimore, where the two bands did, indeed, play some Bloodbath shit on the final night of the tour. But I forgive them for not doing the same when they performed here in New York. The bummer for people in Baltimore is that they have to live in Baltimore, so they deserve a special treat every now and then.

Here’s the de rigeur cell phone footage of the blessed event:

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Eyal Levi from Dååth, Levi/Werstler, and Audiohammer Studios has obviously been in this business for some time now, and he’s learned a thing or two about a thing or two. This week, he imparts ten lessons about the music biz — and life in general — to you, our beloved readers, once a day, two installments at a time. You can read the week’s first two lessons here; check out lesson numbers three and four below!

#3: BE UNDENIABLE

I first saw Behemoth live when they toured with Suffocation sometime around 2004. I had only heard of them before that. Needless to say, this band blew me away. The sound was shit, as it always is at that club in Atlanta, but that didn’t matter. They came on stage and OWNED. I was captivated from start to finish of the set. And then I bought a shirt. That is such a rare occurrence that I remember it to this day. For me to go buy a shirt after seeing and hearing a band for the first time is not quite on the level of Haley’s Comet… but in the span of my own meaningless existence, it’s pretty remarkable. Anyways, Behemoth is now an institution in extreme music.

I remember the first time I saw Opeth on the Blackwater Park tour. I had kind of gotten into their music prior to that, but had not solidified my opinion on the band yet. When they finally played, I got this amazing feeling, as though I was watching something historical and religious go down. I had never seen or heard a band produce sounds and transitions and emotions that were so right and so on. I felt like people must have felt when they were first seeing the early metal bands in the 1970’s. I’m not exaggerating one bit. I was completely humbled and a fan for life. Obviously, the rest of the metal world eventually caught on.

Anyone here seen Muse live? I’m a sucker for great musicianship and songwriting, and Muse definitely have an ample amount of both. But that didn’t drive my loyalty towards them until I saw them live. Their show is easily one of the most incredible rock shows ever put on by any band ever ever EVER! To try and describe it will not do it justice. Just go see them. I saw them first in 2005, when they were playing small theaters. They are now headlining arenas. I guess enough people couldn’t deny their power.

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Dear Nardwuar: please come work for MetalSucks. That is all.

-VN

The release year is winding down. Aside from new Megadeth and Animals as Leaders records, I think we’re pretty much done with bigtime new albums until 2012.

The #1 record on the Current Hard Music chart last week came from a band whose music it’d be a stretch to call “hard.” Click through to find out who it was. Blessthefall, Misfits and Wayne Static had solid debuts, while a number of last week’s releases jumped off the second week cliff. All that and more, right here:

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No. I am not kidding.

Nor am I upset. If you don’t liked this song, I take issue with you.

-AR

[via SkullsNBones]

I’m officially making the switch from the Top Hard Music chart to the Current Hard Music chart for the purposes of this column. While it’s interesting to see what classic Metallica and Aerosmith albums are charting and I still may occasionally reference the former, the latter chart paints a much clearer picture of the modern metal landscape by opening up more room for new records that sell less than classics, allowing a larger number of relevant new releases to place in the Top 100.

This chart has a slightly different way of tallying new releases, where sometimes they appear as having already been on for one week before official release — I’m still sorting through precisely what that difference is — so occasionally the chart positions are a little mixed up. But this only comes into play much farther down the list and this chart still provides a good gauge of relativity.

Now, onto the releases: as you all no doubt know, Mastodon and Machine Head were the biggies last week, and both did quite well — but the album that ended up at #1 is also a debut, and none of us saw it coming. Sebastian Bach, Warbringer and Maylene & The Sons of Disaster fared well in Week 1, while new records from Rose Funeral, Textures, Suffokate, Rwake, Brutal Truth and many, many more also appeared in the Top 100.

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Opeth’s new album Heritage is as controversial a metal album as has been released in all of 2011 (save for Morbid Angel’s new one… but that wasn’t exactly controversial seeing as no one liked it). That is if you can even call it “metal” — some certainly wouldn’t. Of people I’ve spoken with on the matter, opinions seem to be split fairly evenly; some say it’s Opeth at their finest and the music is still top-notch, while others can’t fathom listening to anything that doesn’t have any growled vocals. So, what do YOU think, oh MetalSucks reader? Vote below, and tell us more in the comments. If you were never a fan of Opeth at all, kindly refrain from voting… that’s not what this poll is about.

The “Top Hard Music” Chart I’ve been using for this column for the past couple of years is a mixed bag; on one hand, a lot of the “Top Hard Music” albums are really old albums that continue to sell (Metallica’s Black Album, various greatest hits collections, catalogue albums of whatever big band happens to be on tour at the time, etc) which paints a skewed picture of what I’m really interested in, namely the new stuff. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see how those older albums continue to sell.

I was recently alerted to the existence of a different chart, “Current Hard Music;” I’m not sure what the criteria is for what constitutes “Current” as some albums on this chart have been on for 90+ weeks and some artists are certainly not “current” by any means, but it does seem to paint a much better picture of the sales of newer albums. Without perrenial classics and greatest hits comps hogging up precious chart space, fewer units need to be sold for a band to get into the Top 100 on the “Current” chart. I am contemplating a move to focusing on that chart in the future. For now, I’ll stick with Top Hard Music with some added albums from the bottom of the other chart. What do you guys think?

Anyway, this week we’ve got big debuts from Pearl Jam and Opeth, big second week drops from a number of artists (Anthrax, Dream Theater and more) that still have pretty big sales numbers, and a look at some albums that came out earlier this year (Black Dahlia Murder, All Shall Perish, more).

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A headline like “Tori Amos Issues Challenge to Metal Bands” is hard to ignore.  So I went over to Spinner.com to read this interview with Ms Amos, and this is what she had to say:

“Well, look, sometimes you don’t know how music affects people. I embrace that because I don’t think that just because I talk about emotional stuff that it’s not mother—er stuff. I’ll stand next to the hardest f—ing heavy metal band on any stage in the world and take them down, alone, by myself. Gauntlet laid down, see who steps up. See who steps up! I’ll take them down at 48. And they know I will. Because emotion has power that the metal guys know is just you can’t touch it. Insanity can’t touch the soul. It’s going to win every f—ing time.”

Before we get too riled up, it’d be smart to remember that homegirl has a new album to promote, and will spout any number of ridiculous soundbites to sell some plastic. Also, the offending paragraph showed up at the end of the interview, and feels like an offhand remark. Metal news sites went apeshit over it, though, so here we are. I sincerely doubt that Ms. Amos really intends to stand onstage next to Iron Maiden (or Manowar!) and “blow them off the stage.” Unless she’s got about sixteen Orange amps to blast her whispery, piano-driven poem-songs through and 4/5 of Vader providing backup, she ain’t gonna have much luck.

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We missed a whole lotta new videos while we were out on Friday, so I’m gonna post ‘em — and my snarky and not-so-snarky commentary, of course — now. Please excuse my lack of a traditional introduction about little effort I am going to put into this introduction.

First up, we have The Devin Townsend Project’s video for “Juular,” which was directed by David Brodsky. And holy poo, this video is GREAT. The animation is fantastic, and the way the camera moves, swooping in and out of shots… it’s just a totally epic visual expression of an awesome, awesome, awesome song. Also, anything where an old man is blowing something phallic is a-okay in my book. This is definitely a contender for Video of the Year.

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Just a few releases this week including phenomenal new records from Opeth and The Atlas Moth, as well as some less phenomenal releases from Thrice and more. All the details after the jump.

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Ahhh, the Autumnal transition is finally upon us and here in New York the newfound chill in the air has already created a different vibe almost immediately.  No more mugginess, the putrid garbage in the streets isn’t melting into various layers of stench, and hooded sweatshirts are being pulled out of the deep recesses of closets left and right.

We here at MetalSmells are excited to invite you to relish with us the arrival of our favorite season, and remind you to enjoy it while it lasts.  Before too long the icy edge of winter will be shivering our broken collarbones and fiery libidos, so if you’re gonna fall, best get on that right away. 

-KW

I think it’d be interesting to see Opeth perform their new album Heritage in full. That’s the first thing I thought of while watching this live performance of “Pyre,” a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Heritage, on a Swedish morning television show. All those big amp and cabinet stacks, racks of keyboards, giant-sized drum kits and even Mikael Akerfeldt’s trademark PRS guitar are nowhere to be seen, simply because they’re not needed. Instead we get a bare-bones set-up with a 4-piece drum kit, one keyboard synthesizing a Hammond B3 (it’d be sweet if they had the real thing, but alas) and Akerfeldt playing a semi-hollow body; a most un-metal configuration. I’d love to see Opeth perform an entire set in this orchestration because the emphasis would be squarely on the music itself — what is being played, the notes — without any distortion or blast beats to cover things up or headbanging to distract attention away from the music. It’d be delightful; an “evening with” event, wear your fanciest shoes, enjoy a nice glass of red wine along with a plate of charcuterie and fine cheeses! How sophisticated.

The likelihood of that happening is pretty low, but you should still watch this video. Come for the music, stay for the program hosts saying “death metal” in English amidst a flurry of Swedish.

-VN

Few albums this year are as likely to cause internet flame wars as Opeth’s Heritage. People have been freaking out for months about the fact that there’s no screaming on it; I suspect they’ll freak out even more when they hear the actual music. “Opeth bring the funk!” is a phrase I honestly never expected to type — at least, not without a huge dose of sarcasm.

And so, as an educated metalhead who likes to be able to participate in water cooler conversation, it would behoove you to head over to NPR, where Heritage is now streaming in full. Once you’ve given it a listen, you should, of course, head back here, and participate in the aforementioned internet flame war in our comments section. ‘Cause I’m honestly not sure what the metal community’s overall reaction to this record is gonna be — mostly positive, mostly negative, or split right down the middle? — and I’m itchin’ to see.

Bring in ‘da noise, bring in ‘da funk here. Heritage comes out September 20 via Roadrunner.

-AR