MetalSucks

“New Noise” seems to be a popular song to cover; Anthrax (with Dan Nelson) covered it a few months back, and apparently The Used rock it from time to time. Far worse, Crazy Town used to butcher it with regularity. When Refused wrote The Shape of Punk to Come, they most certainly did not mean horrible guitar tone, rubber-band bass, and jocks with their shirts off rapping about winged ex-caterpillars. If Refused had known that bands like Crazy Town would go on to cite them as influences, perhaps they would’ve never formed a band and spared us all.

Oh God, oh God.

-VN

[Thanks: Scott Danger]

I am increasingly convinced that the new Anthrax album, Worship Music, is going to suck. It’s just a weird gut feeling I get… like I’m gearing up for disappointment. Everyone knows the record is coming out, but no one really seems to care. Like that G.I. Joe movie or some shit.

Here’s the band covering Refused’s “New Noise,” and, uhhh, it doesn’t do anything to squash that icky feeling I have. I want so badly to be wrong, but fear so very much that I am right.

By the way, I love that Rob Caggiano now has more hair than Robin Williams, and yet still refuses to headbang. Super.

-AR

[via The Deciblog]

And it’s a question I can’t answer just yet, because I haven’t heard all of Lazarus Bird, which drops September 16th on Relapse. But from the three songs I’ve heard on their MySpace page (”I Exterminate the I,” “Cripple God” and “We Watched the Silver Rain”), I can tell you this: it is without a doubt going to be fucking phenomenal. Like, you-need-to-drop-what-you’re-doing-and-go-listen-right-NOW kind of awesome.

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There must be something in the water in Sweden. Metal is just ingrained in their culture. I was hanging out drinking with a major label pop band last night, five of whose six members are Swedish and at least three of whom were longhairs that I figured might be into metal given their appearance and heritage. Metal is a always a great way to bridge slightly awkward conversation with complete strangers, so I figured why not try? I swung and missed with the keyboardist, more of the jazz type, who nodded politely but seemed otherwise not to give a shit when I tried to slip “In Flames” and “At the Gates” into the conversation. Strike one. I would’n't even need a strike two, ’cause the minute I mentioned Soilwork to the guitar player his hand went up in the air for a high five. We were in full agreement that Stabbing the Drama is one of the best records of the past five years. And it went on from there down familiar paths like “Meshuggah” (he loves obZen), Refused and more.

This story seems way less compelling now that I’ve actually written it down. But, um, it was, like, really cool or something. Kind of like the time I ended up hanging out with Phil Anselmo’s Aunt and Uncle (a story for another time). That red wine / beer combo didn’t hurt either.

-VN

Burst are a rare Swedish metal band that evaded the sensors of my supreme Swede-radar until recently when Andrew @ Aversionline wrote a quick bit about them. Burst are not your typical Swedish metal band — that is to say they aren’t melodic death metal — though they incorporate elements of that sound into their multi-pronged attack. Burst fall closer to the Refused side of the Swedish spectrum than anything, mixing punk-ish guitars with a metal sound and unique vocals that remind me a bit of Blindside’s Christian Lindskog. Doomier melodeath influences (like Insomnium or Daylight Dies) creep in here and there but for the most part the band stays aware from that sometimes over-saturated genre.

Watch the video for “The Immateria” below, from their 2005 album Origo. Burst is currently in the studio recording for a 2008 release on Relapse Records.

-VN

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/o_2EynWMDFg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Missing Toof [via Buzzgrinder] has some electro and hip-hop remixes of Sweden’s greatest hardcore export, Refused. Check out the Shark Attack electro remix of “New Noise” and then Hensforth’s hip-hopped up version of the same tune. This will surely draw cries of “blasphemy” from some and will elicit cheers from others.Hear the remixes at Missing Toof.

-VN

For better or for worse, oftentimes bands abruptly change directions after releasing one or several albums, prompting fans that have been with the band from the very beginning to ask “What the fuck?” Thrice is such a band. After their 2002 breakthrough The Illusion of Safety Thrice released The Artist in the Ambulance in 2003, a more polished and cohesive piece that was the next logical step in the band’s development. But what followed was a complete about-face that left many of the band’s original fans feeling betrayed — 2005’s Vheissu was a sprawling, experimental album that explored many different styles and textures, of which the band’s original post-hardcore / proto-emo sound was only a small part (The Alchemy Index, of which Vol I & II were released this October, follow in that direction). Enter Tucson, Arizona’s The Bled, who appear to have taken the melodic post-hardcore torch from Thrice, creating an album in Silent Treatment that could well stand in as a heavier modern day Thrice release — had that band not gone off the creative deep end.

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