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

(from Unpopular Opinion Rick Perry)

Whew, what a week. I don’t know where you all are, but here in NYC it’s 5pm and it’s already been completely dark outside for a while. FML. Here’s what happened this week:

• Corey discovered that our “Best of 2011″ lists weren’t as bad as you thought they were with fancy mathematicals to back it up.
• Axl and Vince live-chatted it up with y’all and fielded all your stupid questions… and a few good ones.
• We interviewed Giant Squid’s Aaron Gregory, Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, and Nikki Sixx.
• We premiered new music by Lamb of God, Whores, Abysmal Dawn, and Nothnegal.
• We laughed at the BBC’s distorted view of metal culture not once but twice.
• We announced that we’re retiring some of our older t-shirt designs and that we’re having a fire-sale to get rid of them; get ‘em while you still can!
• Vince pondered a new ranking system that could supercede Soundscan.
• We cracked jokes about another laughable Rolling Stone Top 100 lists of guitarists.
• We introduced Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick as our new NFL columnist; please direct your hatred of the Packers his way.

Vince out.

-VN

(Photo borrowed from MusicPlayers.com)

They say “never meet your heroes.” I don’t think they say anything about interviewing them.

For decades now, Steven Wilson and his many projects have been consistent sources of inspiration and joy to music lovers, audiophiles, and regular people alike. Like many musical masterminds, Mr. Wilson prefers to let his work speak for itself, but that isn’t to say he’s ever been short for words. In the intimate 20 minutes I had to speak with him it became clear that there was far more to the scruffy, bespectacled man in the blurry photos than I’d been led to believe. Steven is a relentlessly thoughtful and honest individual whose words deserve every bit as much attention as the impressive music he creates.

Click to read more…

I love the branding of Steven Wilson as a “rock renaissance man,” as dubbed so in a recent press release announcing his first-ever North American solo tour. I mean, he is, right? Aside from being the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of Porcupine Tree — one of the biggest prog bands of the past 20 years — the man’s a talented multi-instrumentalist, member of Blackfield, No-Man, and several other bands, an accomplished producer (including, most notably, Opeth) and he’s still somehow got time to forge a solo career and tour behind it. How does he do it?

Fewer questions, more rocking: Wilson is in North America right now touring in support of his second solo album, Grace for Drowning, with a killer backing band highlighted by Marco Minnemann on drums. Those folks who live in NYC — where the tour stops tomorrow — can also catch a rare in-store acoustic performance at J&R Music World this Friday, November 11th… which happens to be Veterans Day, meaning you might not even have to play hooky to go. For the rest of you, jump on this opportunity to see a special performance while you can, because it could be a long while before he’s back playing these songs.

Tour dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

John Wesley has had quite a career in his life.  I could tell you about it myself but I think he does a better job of it in this interview than I ever could do on my own.

I’ve been very fortunate to get to know Wes pretty well over the last couple of years and was even blessed with the opportunity to record some Vestascension material with him down at his studio in Florida.  One thing I’ve found out about the guy is that he is real.  He’s just an all around great person that has a great heart.

Seeing as how he’s been touring since I was a baby-and he’s slowly worked his way up through the industry while facing MANY hardships and overcoming many obstacles-I jumped at the chance to discuss all of this with him at length.

Check out the interview below and make sure you go check out his latest EP calling The Lilypad Suite by clicking here.  

-Justin Gosnell

Click to read more…

For last week’s photo caption contest we offered up two MetalSucks Fanpacks, each with a sweet t-shirt and 20-track CD with new music from TesseracT, Thomas Giles, Trap Them, and many others. If you didn’t win, don’t worry; they’re still available at every FYE store in the U.S. for a mere $10 (use this store-finder app to find the location nearest you). The winners are:

• Ben Robson: “Surprisingly, Gene Simmons wasn’t always a marketing genius.”
• Kuranes: “Frehley’s Vomit.”

This week we’re giving away two prize packs from Blackfield, the collaboration between Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) and Israeli superstar Aviv Geffen.Their third studio album Welcome To My DNA is out now and available for purchase here, and you can catch the band on tour in the U.S. starting next week. One grand prize winner will receive a Welcome To My DNA CD, t-shirt and poster, and the runner-up will receive a CD. You know how to play: leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below (sent in by reader Yasmina Ketita). Remember to use a real email address (or post it with your comment if you’re using FB Connect).

Like Porcupine Tree’s clip for “Bonnie the Cat,” Serj Tankian’s new video, for the song “Left of Center,” is clearly inspired by Tool’s classic “Sober” video, and as was the case with said Porcupine Tree clip, I’m totally fine with that. ‘Cause the director (I’m not sure who that is, unfortunately) has put enough of his own spin on it for the video not to seem like a total rip-off, and ’cause, as regular readers know, I’m all for awesome animation in music videos.

Of course, this is Serj Tankian, so there’s a lot of not-at-all-thinly-veiled political imagery in the clip (e.g., an eyeball made from jewels, an over-stimulated, texting teenage gamer being swallowed whole by a snake made from the very technology he utilizes, etc.). But at least I can tell what the hell Serj is getting at, which is more than I can say for the lyrics to some System of a Down songs (What the fuck does leaving my keys on the table have to do with anything again?).

“Left of Center” comes off of Tankian’s latest solo offering, Imperfect Harmonies, which comes out September 21 on Serjical Strike/Reprise. If you haven’t already done so, you should check out Vince’s excellent interview with Serj here.

-AR

Whenever I see a stop-motion animation video which tells the story of some weird little dude doing bizarre and semi-surrealistic things, my mind immediately goes to Tool. Of course, Tool didn’t invent creepy stop-motion animation, but they certainly popularized its use in music videos. (And by “popularized,” I mean, “Are responsible for the one, maybe two videos a year that do this.”) And it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would watch Porcupine Tree’s new video, for “Bonnie the Cat,” without thinking of “Sober” — even if the color scheme and overall tone is very different.

The video’s not currently embeddable, but you can check it out here. It’s pretty cool and — bonus! — has a robot going down on another robot. So hopefully that’ll be enough to restore your faith in music videos.

The song comes off of Porcupine Tree’s latest, The Incident, which is out now on Roadrunner.

-AR

According to Metal Injection, the long-rumored Mikael Akerfeldt / Steven Wilson / Mike Portnoy collaboration is finally underway, sure to cause prog fanboys the world over to immediately begin fapping at their keyboards. According to an interview in Chordstruck Magazine, Wilson — who worked with Opeth on Blackwater Park — has finally begun writing material with Akerfeldt after years of speculation, and the duo reportedly has about 15 minutes of music put to paper.

The most interesting part of the interview is Mike Portnoy’s vocal concern that the amount of Internet hype already generated will make it impossible for this all-star trio to deliver anything that could possibly live up to expectations: “…people start discussing and discussing and discussing and dissecting and anticipating…[building] up such a level of hype and expectation in their head that it’s impossible to ever satisfy.” He’s not wrong and we’re certainly not helping the matter, but come on, how can any self respecting prog metal fan not get uber boner-fied about the matching of three of the genre’s all-time greats?

We wait with baited breath.

-VN

I am going to assume that a decent portion of the followers of this site are themselves musicians with bands of their own. That is generally how it goes with metal. There are seamless lines blurred between the “fans” and the “bands” because, like myself, many metal patrons represent both categories. Without this large sector of musician fans, technically proficient bands that cater directly to this base (like Dream Theater, Meshuggah, and Necrophagiast) would be much less successful. So to those musicians, I would like to use this blog to shine a light on one of the harsh truths in all music and entertainment that many musicians choose to ignore -

Image matters a lot in this industry. In fact, it’s probably just as important as the music.
Click to read more…

Five heavy hitting heavy hitters — Alice in Chains, Hatebreed, Austrian Death Machine, Steel Panther and Dethklok — all released new records last week. Solid 2nd and 3rd week performances from Three Days Grace, Muse, Megadeth, Five Finger Death Punch and others made it an all-around big week for metal. Let’s see how everyone fared after the jump.

Click to read more…

As I mentioned earlier, Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree (and King’s X!) this past Thursday. Porcupine Tree was good, if not spectacular… they’re all great players, they write good songs, have an excellent sense of composition and are certainly quite accomplished; but at no point during the performance was I at all wowed.

Except when I realized that “Time Flies,” Movement IX from the first disc of the band’s new record The Incident, is a dead rip-off of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” (from the Animals record, a personal favorite of mine). Now, Steven Wilson has certainly never been shy about his love of Floyd, and even if not for that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Porcupine Tree’s music before that the band bows down in the alter of Floyd. But YO, this is like, too similar for comfort. Check it out:

Porcupine Tree – “Time Flies”:

Pink Floyd – “Dogs”:

I’m not crazy, right? The staccato-strummed acoustic guitar, the keyboard swells leading into each chord change, similar vocal melodies, the verse that starts “and after a while…”. The only real difference is that the P-Tree riff is in 3/4 instead of Floyd’s 4/4. Sorry Steven, you rule at producing Opeth and you’re a talented musician, but for this you get a big, fat, epic FAIL.

-VN

Luckily for Five Finger Death Punch, being total assholes who completely lack any musical talent isn’t hurting their record sales: their new album, War is the Answer, is apparently going to sell to somewhere between 35,000 – 40,000 copies in its first week of release… and that’s just here in the U.S. That probably sounds like a lot of units moved, and you’re right. It is a lot of fucking units moved. To put it in perspective with the sales of some awesome albums that came out this week…

Click to read more…

Last Tuesday was a huuuuge week for new metal releases. Megadeth, Black Dahlia Murder, Shadows Fall, Living Colour, Dying Fetus, Porcupine Tree, Every Time I Die, Thrice and Ace Frehley all released new albums, and all charted in the Top 200! After the jump, let’s look at where they all ended up.

Click to read more…

Porcupine Tree – Nil Recurring
Nil Recurring is a collection of B-sides left over from 2006′s excellent Fear of a Blank Planet. Nil Recurring‘s four songs (each over 6 minutes in length) aren’t the best Porcupine Tree has to offer — as with all B-side collections there’s a reason they didn’t make the original album cut — but it’s hard to ignore anything this band does because they’re so damn good. Nil Recurring delivers what you’d expect from Porcupine Tree — expansive, heavy, ethereal prog-rock soundscapes — and as such is a must-have for the PT completist. But if you’re a casual fan or new to the band there’s no reason to have this collection; there are better places to start, such as the A-sides from whence these B-sides came, and pretty much any other PT album.

-VN

(two and a half out of five horns)

Remember SiKth, the best band of 2007 that didn’t actually release a record in 2007? Equal parts Meshuggah, Between the Buried and Me, Porcupine Tree, Dillinger Escape Plan and Tool, SiKth are really the artist’s artist — every single detail of everything has meaning and is thought out completely. Their 2006 release Death of a Dead Day has literally been blowing the minds of everyone I’ve played it for, which is pretty much anyone who lays foot in the MetalSucks Mansion. Yet why has no one in America heard of this U.K.-based prog-metal powerhouse?

Thanks to our boy Frank @ MetalInjection we’ve unearthed some of the band’s music videos and live clips. First, a proper story-telling narrative music video for the album’s first track “Bland Street Bloom,” then a video of live footage from various shows of the song “Flogging Horses,” which shows just how amazing the musicianship is. Word on the street is that the band needs two new singers — can someone get on that ASAP so we can see them live, please? Mmmkay, thanks.

-VN

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/cAyqaLpJTQg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Am4YlNf0WJ0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Publicists send us shit all the time, and 9 out of 10 times it blows goats but we listen anyway because every now and then there’s that occasional gem that shocks you and makes hours of brain-drilling listening all worth it.. Sikth’s Death of a Dead Day — originally released in 2006 — is that fucking good.

UK-based Sikth’s own brand of progressive metal mixes the breakneck hardcore spazzes and jazz freakouts of Dillinger Escape Plan or Between the Buried and Me, time-warp rhythms of Meshuggah, metallic melody of Dream Theater and bone-crushing breakdowns of Hatebreed all into one neat little package. But the band possesses a sense of songwriting and melody, like their UK prog-metal brethren Porcupine Tree, in which those bands rarely indulge. The musicianship all around is stellar, and vocalist Mikee Goodman shows a surprisingly versatile vocal approach, ranging from singing to screaming, growling, shouting, and everything in between. (According to Sikth’s MySpace page Goodman has moved on and they are searching for a new frontman. Hear that, aspiring vocalists?)

What’s more, the band produced Death of a Dead Day entirely themselves, with a precision mix job coming from Bieler Bros. Records (helmed by Jason Bieler, ex-Saigon Kick!) go-to-guy Matt LaPlant (Nonpoint, Skindred, Burn Season).

Why has no one ever mentioned this band before to me or anyone at the MetalSucks Mansion? This. Record. Fucking. Rules. The #1 sleeper hit of 2007 in my book, even though it was released in June of ’06. See for yourself, below.

Sikth – “Bland Street Bloom”

Sikth – “Part of the Friction”

-VN

(four out of five horns)

[Visit Sikth on MySpace]

Seriously dudes… this band is fucking sick. They channel the spirit of Pink Floyd and Dream Theater, but are neither as trippy as Floyd or masturbatory as Dream Theater, yet somehow manage to rock harder than both. If Ty Tabor from King’s X went off and formed a band with Mike Portnoy it’d probably sound something like this. I was sitting around stoned with some friends last night, and this song came on accidentally on my iTunes; “Shallow” from the album Deadwing. It had been so long since I listened to the Tree that I had completely forgotten about their awesomeness. Enjoy this as you sip your morning coffee.

-VN

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/jyCyJGczwG0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]