Havok, the neo-thrash band that makes all other neo-thrash bands look bad, have a new album coming out on Candlelight on March 29. It’s called Time is Up. Yes, it’s terrific — if you dug Havok’s 2009 debut, Burn, you will dig this, and if you didn’t hear Burn, you should hear this, and if you didn’t like Burn, go jump in a fire.

I mention this because Metal Injection have a behind-the-scenes video of Havok in the studio making Time is Up. And you should watch it! Here, I’ll make it easy for you:

If you’re going to SXSW next week, don’t forget that Havok are playing MetalSucks’ ABSOLUTELY FREE South by Southdeath party at Headhunters, at 720 Red River, from 2-6pm on Friday, March 18th. Kvelertak, Red Fang, Wormrot, and Meek is Murder are also on the bill, and Full Blown Chaos’ Ray Mazzola, a.k.a. “One of the Funniest Motherfuckers in Metal,” is MCing. Be there.

-AR

Hats off to reader Michael Teague, who correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Decrepit Depravity. Michael wins an awesome Lamb of God/Splatterhouse prize pack, which includes a copy of the Splatterhouse game, a Splatterhouse t-shirt, a Splatterhouse set of iPod Speakers, and a Splatterhouse logo statue. Michael, don’t forget to play that game as loud as possible, ’cause not only is it fun to kill digital pixels, but the soundtrack features not just Lamb of God, but also Mastodon, Goatwhore, The Haunted, Municipal Waste, High on Fire, and Cavalera Conspiracy. Niiiiiice.

This week we have another awesome prize for you: five bottles of Metalliance Hot Sauce, the new sauce from GiddyUp! Sauces created to celebrate the Metalliance Tour, an KICK-MOTHERFUCKING-ASS new package trek featuring Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, and The Atlast Moth. Holy shit, that’s a great line-up. And since GiddyUp! Sauces is the brain child of Steve “Buckshot” Seabury, author of Mosh Potatoes: Recipes, Anecdotes, and Mayhem from the Heavyweights of Heavy Metal and bassist for Moth Eater, you know this sauce is gonna be all kinds of delicious.

Below is the super-evil-looking poster for the Metalliance Tour; you can get dates after the jump, and tickets, including special VIP packages, here.

So how do you get the sauce? All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select up to five winners (less, if fewer of you get the right answer!) and announce their names next week. Please note that the sauce has not yet entered production, and will therefore take 2-3 weeks to ship.

Thanks to Dillon Lyons for this week’s logo…

And here are those Metalliance Tour dates…

Click to read more…

Hats off to reader Michael Teague, who correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Decrepit Depravity. Michael wins an awesome Lamb of God/Splatterhouse prize pack, which includes a copy of the Splatterhouse game, a Splatterhouse t-shirt, a Splatterhouse set of iPod Speakers, and a Splatterhouse logo statue. Michael, don’t forget to play that game as loud as possible, ’cause not only is it fun to kill digital pixels, but the soundtrack features not just Lamb of God, but also Mastodon, Goatwhore, The Haunted, Municipal Waste, High on Fire, and Cavalera Conspiracy. Niiiiiice.

This week we have another awesome prize for you: five bottles of Metalliance Hot Sauce, the new sauce from GiddyUp! Sauces created to celebrate the Metalliance Tour, an KICK-MOTHERFUCKING-ASS new package trek featuring Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, and The Atlast Moth. Holy shit, that’s a great line-up. And since GiddyUp! Sauces is the brain child of Steve “Buckshot” Seabury, author of Mosh Potatoes: Recipes, Anecdotes, and Mayhem from the Heavyweights of Heavy Metal and bassist for Moth Eater, you know this sauce is gonna be all kinds of delicious.

Below is the super-evil-looking poster for the Metalliance Tour; you can get dates after the jump, and tickets, including special VIP packages, here.

So how do you get the sauce? All you gots to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. ALL ENTRIES WITHOUT AN ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select up to five winners (less, if fewer of you get the right answer!) and announce their names next week. Please note that the sauce has not yet entered production, and will therefore take 2-3 weeks to ship.

Thanks to Dillon Lyons for this week’s logo…

And here are those Metalliance Tour dates…

Click to read more…

When  the line-up for this year’s Mayhem Fest was announced last week, we were told that more bands would eventually be announced. Not to sound like gloating pricks or anything, but we here at MetalSucks already knew that Trivium were gonna be on the bill, even if their involvement hadn’t been made public yet.

Well, now it’s public. Trivium are on the bill. They’ll be on the main stage along with Disturbed, Godsmack, Megadeth, Machine Head, and In Flames; the line-up is rounded out by second stage acts Unearth, Suicide Silence, Kingdom of Sorrow, All Shall Perish, Red Fang, and Straight Line Snooze.

When we saw the band at Mayhem in 2009, they were one of the dominant acts on the second stage; I will never forget wondering “Where the fuck is Paolo Gregoletto?” before realizing that he had jumped into the crowd and was playing amongst the thousands of rabid fans. And Trivium’s live show has increased in quality by 100% since they traded drummer Travis Smith for Nick Augusto last year. (Read Vince’s article on the matter here.) In other words: Trivium’s addition to the bill is a good thing.

Trivium are at Audiohammer Studios in Florida working on a new album with producer Colin Richardson even as I type this; I’ve heard that the goal is to get that record out in time for Mayhem. While we wait for more news of that release, here are Mayhem dates:

Click to read more…

In brief: Relapse is offering a free sampler for download to anyone who goes to their Facebook page and hits that little ol’ “like” button. As you can see from the track list below, there’s a ton of good shit on it, including new songs from Abysmal Dawn, Red Fang, and Noisear, plus some remastered Death, plus great stuff from Baroness, Revocation, Cephalic Carnage, Dying Fetus, Misery Index, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Brutal Truth, Murder Construct… the list goes on and on. This could very easily be the soundtrack for your New Year’s Eve partying.

Go here to download the sampler. Happy fucking new year.

-AR

Valient Thorr must be experienced live to be experienced at all. Sure, you can get down with VT’s delicious concoction of southern rock and punk on their records, but in order to truly appreciate and understand what this band is about you’ve got to see and be a part of the live show. Mainman Valient Himself is all too aware of this fact, and it’s a topic we talked about at length in my interview with him last week.  Turns out — surprise, surprise — that’s he’s got all sorts of theories about it, that a live show is the ultimate art form as a combination of audio, visual, and physical stimulation. The ideas he shared with me over the phone came off a whole lot like his infamous on-stage rants at VT’s shows. And if you’ve seen VT live, you know full well that said rants (VH describes them as “beliefs”) are some of the best in the biz.

We also chatted about Valient Thorr’s new record Stranger (out today! read a review by our own Urbandale Grimes here), their upcoming seven-week U.S. tour with Junius and Howl, how Valient Himself spends his time off, what it was like to work with producer Jack Endino, and how the band’s career might’ve been different if their records had been pushed in Walmarts the nation over.

I initially had a hard time reaching Mr. Himself on the phone, so he had to call me back from a landline at VT’s self-described “secret laboratory.” Our chat, after the jump.

Click to read more…

I’ve been following the NYTimes.com coverage of the crisis in Haiti and… I’m just horrified. I’ve watched video footage of people trapped under thousands of pounds of concrete screaming for their lives, browsed photos of stacks of dead bodies and over-flowing hospitals, and of course I’ve been reading the ongoing reports of how Port-au-Prince’s infrastructure is so crippled that even if suitable aid were to be available it couldn’t reach those who desperately need it.

California label Sargent House (whose roster includes Russian Circles, Red Fang, Red Sparowes and others) and Rodriguez Lopez Productions have teamed up to rally support from the metal community for those stricken by the disaster in Haiti. They’re offering a sampler of Sargent House artists that includes 18 full tracks — for the price of whatever you want to donate — as an instant download “in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.” ALL proceeds go directly to the Haiti Relief effort spearheaded by Doctors Without Borders, a group that even my Mom recommended I donate to.

DOWNLOAD THE SAMPLER AND DONATE TO THE HAITI RELIEF EFFORT HERE.

Even if you’re broke as fuck, I hope you can afford to give just a little bit to people who need it way more than you do. Every little bit counts. And hey, as if you should need any reason other than that… you get some free music with it too.

-VN

Thanks to Sean Williams for sending in this link.

We loved the last tour blog that Bison B.C.’s Dan And did for us so much, we’re only all-too-happy to present another! Below, please enjoy part 2; you can read part 1 here.

Sep 28 ’09 (Albuquerque NM @ Launch Pad)

The first thing that struck me about this venue was the framed posters that line the walls… Melvins, High on Fire, Fu Manchu… some killer bands have been through here over the years. I was also struck by how nice and clean Albuquerque seemed. I would later find out that the town is ranked in the top five for violent crimes in the US. Okay then, never mind.

Played with a rad band called Roñoso. Weirdest guitar tone ever but it totally worked in their crust-saw sound. Kylesa sounds fucking huge tonight. Their (hilarious) sound guy Dave is working the system like it owes him money… and it probably does.

Click to read more…

After the antics of the first day of the festival, I felt more than ready to get into day two with a healthy dose of music from the beginning. Unfortunately, that was not to be so for me, as at the time I thought I would be continuing on after SXSW into further ridonkulousness, all the way to a family vacation during Spring Break in Mexico….and today was the day that my renewed passport was meant to be FedExed to the flophouse where Vince and I were crashing.

When I had returned to said flophouse the night prior and to my surprise found an open couch in the living room right by the front door (where I was told FedEx homeboy would appear bright and early), I figured it prolly made the most sense to sleep right there on the ground floor as opposed to the stank upstairs sweat lodge where I would be sure to miss any sounds of door knocking.

Sadly, no FedEx arrived in the morning as promised — I was actually awoken by a phone call from Vince around noon wondering where the hell I had ended up last night. After a couple more hours my passport finally arrived, at which point I had to wait at least another hour for a cab to take me down to the action.

HOLY SHIT.

Click to read more…

Hello from the road, Metalsuckers! We’re one week into our tour with Portland rockers Red Fang. I am coming to you from a coffee shop called ‘Coffee Works’ in a strip mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. I gotta be quick because we’re about to take off for our load-in and sound check at The Milestone, one of my favorite venues in America. After starting the tour in New Jersey under about a foot of snow last week, we headed to Philly and partied like it was Tuesday night (because it was). I got to hit my favorite spot, Jim’s on South Street!

If you can’t get into one of these you are no friend of mine. I also drink the peppers like a shot. No joke:

Click to read more…

Not to pat ourselves on the hairy back, but MetalSucks couldn’t have picked a better parting gift as our last post of 2008 than the video for Red Fang’s “Prehistoric Dog.” This insta-classic clip found the hard-drinking Portlanders fashioning armor and weapons from thousands of discarded beer cans, then waging war against a gaggle of LARP enthusiasts, with some hilarious/unexpected results. And while this probably wasn’t the intent behind the video, it’s a pretty handy metaphor for what Red Fang do on their eponymous debut fell-length: meld good old-fashioned hard rock and vintage metal, as familiar as a room temperature can of Pabst, and reconstitute them for battle.

Click to read more…

This is a band called Red Fang. The director’s name is Whitey McConnaughy. Everyone involved in this video deserves a big pat on the back.

Thanks to longtime MetalSucks Maniac Pick-Axe Bobby for the tip.

It’s 3:30 pm here in NYC. Time to start pre-gaming.

See ya next year.

-AR