Pain — which, in case you didn’t know, is the Peter Tägtgren project that isn’t Hypocrisy — have a released a new video, for the track “The Great Pretender,” and… well, it certainly held my interest! The obvious joke would be to call it Reservoir Mascots. I think there’s probably a metaphor there about guys dressed in animals costumes, pretending, etc., but I’m not even gonna read that much into it because mostly it’s just silly and fun. My point being this isn’t the greatest video ever made, but it at least makes you wanna watch the whole thing, which is more than I can say for most metal vids!

Pain’s new album, You Only Live Twice, comes out June 21 on Nuclear Blast.

-AR

You guys dig Bloodbath, right? Of course you do. Everyone does. I literally do not know any metal fans that claim not to appreciate their brand of old-school death metal. They’re the kind of band it just feels too goddamn good to listen to not to love.

So. Tomorrow sees the release of Bloodbath Over Bloodstock, a live DVD of the band’s performance at — duh — the Bloodstock Open Air Festival last summer in Bloodstock, England. (Okay that might not actually be the name of the place where the festival is staged. I’ll have my researchers check on that.) And in case the mere fact that a Bloodbath DVD exists isn’t enough to make you wanna buy it, the helpful folks over at Noisecreep have debuted a video from the performance, of the song “Eaten.” Which just might be the best song ever written about wanting to be a meal for a cannibal. It really captures the desire and longing of the would-be human snack so well, y’know?

It’s kinda awkward to watch Mikael Åkerfeldt rock the mic sans guitar (and to do vocals for a song originally performed by Peter Tägtgren), but this still looks pretty promising. Check it out below and then sound off with your opinions, which we all care ssssssoooo much about, in our comments section below.

-AR

Last week, MetalSucks mega-hunk Axl Rosenberg and I spoke to producer and Hate Eternal frontman Erik Rutan (interview coming soon!). He gabbed at length with us, and I was super-pumped when he stated that his goal was to eschew uber-precise metal production and embrace the human vibe of older records. I love that! Perfect is perfectly boring. Rutan is the ru-Man! See what I did there?

In this spirit, we take hats off to Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren, also a producer and frontman, whose stomping new Pain jam “Dirty Woman” instigates another nascent extreme metal movement: Rock! Yes let us all rock, even the most grizzled, frowny underground metal purists (cough Axl) alongside party-hardy crotch boys (like me)! And let us pack videos with writhing underwear chicks (knockerz!), a misbehaving and ignored drummer (funny cuz it’s true!), fire (hot!), and a suspiciously chummy pair of man-sized animals (fuck it, sure!). You might be rolling your tr00 eyes at me right now, but I’ll laugh last when a few months from now Nergal from Behemoth returns to the stage with a flying splits off of a fiery drum riser. Suck it!

–ADF

Peter Tagtgren and Pain release You Only Live Twice via Nuclear Blast on June 21.

Admit it: this picture makes you SO FUCKING HAPPY.

Recently, my friend sent me a YouTube link to a Bee Gees cover group. Excuse me, tribute band. That is the proper way of addressing them, as Mark Wahlberg taught us in Rock Star. I don’t like the Bee Gees. I don’t like disco. Disco is kind of terrible. Disco blows dogs for quarters. Disco is never amazing, especially not when KISS attempt it. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement. But my friends aren’t totally clueless to what I listen to, so I gave it a shot. It turned out it was a heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band. Okay, it was a little bit awesome. Weirdly enough, it worked. I only like thin-voiced men screeching when accompanied by equally high-pitched guitars, and that’s basically what heavy metal “Stayin’ Alive,” was. I turned it off about halfway through because, well, I still have my limits, but it kind of makes you stop and go, “Huh!” Metal just makes everything sound better.

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Hypocrisy were s’posed to follow-up the November release of their excellent new album, A Taste of Extreme Divinity, with a North American tour – with Children of Bodom’s Alexi Laiho playin’ the gee-tar, no less. We were super stoked for that tour, but unfortunately, the swine in U.S. immigration wouldn’t let Peter Tagtgren and company into the country, presumably because The Man wants us all to keep fighting each other so we don’t notice that He’s screwing us, and He knew that a North American Hypocrisy tour could maybe, just maybe, bring peace and love to the huddled masses. Either that, or the band’s paperwork wasn’t quite in order. But either way, it blew goats.

Luckily, it seems that Hypocrisy’s problems are now behind them, and they’ve announced another North American tour. And while, unfortunately, it seems like Laiho won’t be in tow this time out, they will have Hate, Blackguard and Swashbuckle with them. So that’s not bad.

Get dates after the jump.

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Holy shit. I wasn’t even out that late last night, but for some reason I am just so tired today that it feels like nothing is really happening. Am I really typing this? Did I really write something positive about Zakk Wylde? Can I please just go to sleep now? I’m just gonna go to sleep now.

Before I do, here’s some things that happened this week:

• We’re giving away a free download of Katatonia’s new song, “Forsaker.”
• We spoke to Hypocrisy’s Peter Tagtgren and Brian Cook from Russian Circles and These Arms Are Snakes.
• We checked out new releases from Slayer and Jesu.
• Otep Shamaya gives women in metal a good name – too bad she won’t be a woman much longer.
• Leaves’ Eyes singer Liv Kristine gives women in metal a bad name – or, at least, a silly one.

Alright, seriously, night-night time for Axl. I think Gary Suarez is going to the NYC Vader gig tomorrow; if anyone sees him there, give him a dead arm for me.

-AR

Metal fans, let’s take a collective moment to consider ourselves blessed with some big Peters. Peters who will take you firmly from both sides of the mixing board with confidence and expertise. Sweaty, bulging-veined Peters whose live shows leave willing multitudes spent, sated, slack – and more than a bit bruised. These Peters, thanks to generous endowments of talent, stand fully erect as superstars in real metal. Each of metal’s hugest Peters share a rock hard work ethic, hardly pausing for rest between releases captured on tape and performances in the flesh, after which they simply move on to violate again in another city.

In the premiere installment of MetalSucks’ Metal’s Biggest Peters, I spoke by phone with Peter Tagtgren of Hypocrisy, who recently added a third instant classic to his resume with A Taste of Extreme Divinity (buy it now, DBAA). Tagtgren is a death metal household name and represents the rare quintuple-threat (guitar, vocals, production, songwriting, hair). With his feet up on the mixing board (awesome!) and in good humor, Tagtgren spoke at length about crappy production, freaking out metal fans, and why his bands Hypocrisy and Pain are ‘guinea pigs’ for the benefit of others.

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We’re very excited about Hypocrisy upcoming U.S. tour with Children of Bodom’s Alexi Laiho on guitar. In fact, in the next forty-eight hours, we’re planning to run an interview that our own Anso DF recently conducted with Hypocrisy main dude Peter Tägtgren.

So it’s heartbreaking to report that the tour might go down the shitter, as Hypocrisy are just the latest in a long line of bands to run into trouble with U.S. immigration. A statement from the band follows:

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Since I’m not really a Dark Funeral fan, I have absolutely nothing intelligent to say about “Stigmata,” the new song that is now streaming on the band’s MySpace page, so I’ll just tell this completely inappropriate joke instead.

Jesus walks into an inn. He hands the Inn Keeper three nails and says, “Can you put me up for the night?” Rimshot!

Feel free to share your own tasteless Jesus jokes in the comments section below. Or just, y’know, talk about the actual music.

“Stigmata” comes off of Dark Funeral’s new, Peter Tägtgren-produced album, Angelus Exuro pro Eternus. It comes out November 18 on Regain.

-AR

With a new album, From Afar, in stores now, and a U.S. tour just about a month away, now seemed like a perfect time for a chat with bassist/lyricist Sami Hinka. New MetalSucks correspondent Joseph Strombladder got on the phone with the pagan metaller to discuss the process of writing the band’s music and lyrics, the differences between metal fans in the U.S. and abroad, making music videos, and more. Full transcript after the jump.

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Wow. Has it really been four years since Peter Tägtgren got it together to make a Hypocrisy album? I guess the time went quickly because a) as I get older and closer to death time seems to pass faster and b) the dude has done so many side-projects and guest appearances (Bloodbath, that Nuclear Blast All-Stars thing, etc.) that he’s never really been out of the headlines (There was also that Catch 22 semi-re-recording, which, like most re-recordings, was pretty much ill advised.).

In any case, Hypocrisy finally have a new album coming out. It’s called A Taste of Extreme Divinity, and it’ll be released on October 23 on Nuclear Blast.

If nothing else, the cover art is fucking metal.

-AR