MetalSucks

Back in March we reported that French tech-metallers Gorod had released a new song from their forthcoming Listenable Records album Process Of A New Decline, and that said song was ridiculously awesome. Gorod have just posted another new song on their MySpace page entitled “Programmers Of Decline,” an equally orgasm-inducing nugget of progressive tech-death that makes my dick hard in anticipation of the new record (for which no official release date has been announced). The new song is five solid minutes of techy, deathy, shreddy goodness; while I listen, I’m fantasizing about a utopian U.S. tour dream lineup featuring Obscura, Psycroptic, Arsis, The Faceless and Gorod. Never gonna happen, right?

-VN

MS Maniac Tiagon sent us a link to a new track by the French “mighty shredketeers” (his words) Gorod. I’d never listened to Gorod before, but the “shredketeer” classification certainly seems apt and I highly approve. Gorod play the kind of progressive / technical death metal peddled by bands like Arsis, Obscura and Psycroptic; aka they’re fucking awesome. Do yourself a favor and go listen to their new song “Disavow Your God” on their MySpace page right now. The band expects to have an album out this summer on Willowtip.

-VN

MetalSucks, MetalInjection and BITPOM, in conjunction with EMI (which serves such labels as Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Earache, Candlelight, Season of Mist, Willowtip and Crash Music), are bringing metal to the masses with an extensive “March is Metal Month” campaign with independent retailers across the U.S.

During the “March is Metal Month” campaign, we’ll be running a series of 3 weekly “Show Us Your Metal” contests. To enter, take a picture of yourself at a record store doing something metal; throwing up the horns, making sweet love to a David Lee Roth Crazy From the Heat EP, posing in front of a Beyonce endcap in corpsepaint, buying something that costs $6.66, etc. Be creative! Send all submissions to news AT metalsucks DOT net along with your full name and address and “MARCH IS METAL MONTH” in the email subject line.

Congrats to Jake Kobrin who won last week’s prize, a ridiculously awesome Cynic box set, for the picture at left.

This week’s prize: Signed CDs and posters from Psycroptic and All Shall Perish, courtesy of Nuclear Blast. Send in all entries by the end of Tuesday, March 31st to win!

U.K. prog-death-thrashers (yeah, I said it) Sylosis are without a doubt one of the young bands that interest me most in 2009, thanks in no small part to the urging of several MetalSucks readers. Their Nuclear Blast debut Conclusion of an Age is a refreshing burst of modern thrash and death metal, rolled into a nicely accessible little package and sprinkled with prog influences that show the maturity and restraint of a band twice their young age. We’ll post an official MetalSucks review shortly, but in the meantime I was able to catch up with guitarist Josh Middleton to ask him a few questions about the formation of the band, the events that led to their deal with Nuclear Blast, their upcoming touring plans and their metal heroes.

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So many of you have e-mailed us this week to instruct us to post news about the fact that Opeth and Enslaved are touring together that I’m fairly certain posting news about the fact that Opeth and Enslaved are touring together is a complete waste of time; I mean, clearly, everyone and their mother is already aware of this tour.

I’m not saying this isn’t an awesome package – clearly, it is – I’m just saying, you’ve all sent us the news and the tour dates, so what can we tell you that you don’t already know? How about this: we will be at the show at the Starland Ballroom in NJ, and we will be high. Actually, you probably knew that already, too.

I’m putting tour dates after the jump, although I don’t for the life of me know why.

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Congrats to Steve, the winner of our most recent Funny Photo Caption Contest (which seems like it was forever ago). Steve wins a Knucklebonz 9-inch desktop statue of Dimebag Darrell (pictured here), thanks to our friends at TonesofDeath.com. You know we usually try to take the high road above cheap Gaahl jokes around here… but man, this was just too funny:

“KISS had their army, Gorgoroth has the Gaahl Scouts. They sell the blackest of thin mints.”

A+++++, Steve!

This week we’re giving away a CD copy of Psycroptic’s excellent late-2008 technical death metal masterpiece Ob(Servant). Just comment with a funny caption to the below photo and it shall be yours.

Tasmanian metallers Psycroptic’s Ob(Servant) didn’t make any MetalSucks writers’ year-end lists, (though it did make my initial short-list of albums to be considered for year-end top honors.) MetalSucks commenter “Anal Beadz” was quick to point out this omission in our final tally of year-end honors:

number of time[s] psycroptic’s ob(servant) mentioned in year end lists

…0

YOU FUCKING CUM DUMPSTERS

Mr. Beadz, I hate to say it, has us pegged. The more I listen to it, the more I’m starting to think I made a mistake by leaving Ob(Servant) off the final list; the album straight up pulverizes in the most artful way. Psycroptic’s brand of extraordinary mind-bending tech-death hits in all the right spots; crushing brutality, punishing grooves, weaving riffs, and stellar technical death metal musicianship. Anyone who splooged their pants over The Faceless’ excellent Planetary Duality (i.e. all of you) ought to give this band a fair shake.

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Tasmanian tech-prog-deathsters Psycroptic have released a new video for their song “Initiate.” If the brutality of this song and the close-up shots of the dudes playing their instruments aren’t ringing endorsements that Ob(Servant) is worthy of its inclusion in my short-list for best albums of 2008, I don’t know what is.

-VN

Things are heating up in the U.S. presidential race, and everyone from Vince to Axl to Dallas to the Blogronaut expressed their opinions; naturally you all got fired up too. But even politics as usual couldn’t stop the flow of happenings this week in the world of metal:

• Dallas apologized. Woah.
• Best Buy claims Chinese Democracy is finally coming out, but we’re skeptical. No word yet from Axl Rose.
• We debuted a new Early Man track and spoke with singer/guitarist Mike Conte, while Nathan Ells of the Human Abstract spilled the beans on just about everything.
• Testament was deemed one of the Top 40 greatest thrash bands of all time.
• We loved new albums from Gojira and Psycroptic. You loved arguing about them even more, especially the former. Meanwhile, new releases from Unearth and Cradle of Filth proved controversial.
• Protest the Hero’s van broke down; they danced.
• AC/DC’s Brian Johnson proved himself old and out of touch, but that didn’t stop us from asking for freebies to see his band live.

We out. See you Monday.

With ridiculously strong new albums by Arsis, Origin, Neuraxis, and others, 2008 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for technical death metal, if not THE exceptional year. And the new album by Tasmania’s (!) Psycroptic proves that the year isn’t over yet, but instead is still open to a few more focused and coherent yet tense and chaotic onslaughts, which Ob(Servant) most certainly is. Though they lack the penchant for melody of Arsis, the almost hilariously over-the-top musicianship of Origin, or the post-Decapitated barebones chugfest that is Neuraxis, the band manage to shine in the long shadows of their peers. This is not to say that the band aren’t great for many of the same reasons as their brethren (attention to musicality as well as technicality, great production, absurd speed, etc.), but it’s also not to imply that Psycroptic are the start of a derivative second wave of New Millennium Technical Death Metal. They’re a band brimming with personality, with part of that personality prone to tearing your fucking face off.

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I thought it was the fact that I just drank a ton of coffee, but it turns out that Psycroptic’s new song “Ob(servant)” from their new album of the same name (out October 14th on Nuclear Blast) is actually responsible for the current melted state of my face. “Immortal Army of One” from the new record is also streaming on the band’s MySpace page, so go listen this instant and get down with this wicked progressive-tech-death quartet of Tasmanians (!).

Also check out Metal Injection’s interview with Psycroptic guitarist Jason Peppiatt after the jump.

-VN

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