First, a little backstory. Back in 2006, Darkest Hour was making the promotional rounds for their latest disc, Undoing Ruin. I was working for my shitty college paper, doing a show preview for DH’s show in Omaha, Nebraska and emailed Kris requesting an interview. He called me five minutes after I sent the email. That’s how cool of a guy he is.

Besides being one hell of a nice dude, Kris is an extremely talented musician, and his new project, A Cancerous Affair, has completed their lineup and is starting to produce what will most definitely be some killer tunes.  Check out my interview with Kris below.

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This is just me, but I attend Darkest Hour shows mostly to make goo-goo eyes at guitarist Mike Schleibaum, fellow devotée of my boner band The Crown (and The Cars). That’s my M.O. no judgements please. Still I was bummed when sweet drummer Ryan Parrish announced his departure from DH late last year. But dude is already in A Cancerous Affair, the project started by his former DH bandmate and guitar freak Kris Norris. And which now welcomes its newest member, keyboardist Knockerz Randall.

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(photo credit: Phil A. Wickstrand of Metal Psalter)

Yesterday we reported on differing versions of press releases regarding ex-Darkest Hour guitarist Kris Norris’ new band, A Cancerous Affair; one version said that “ex-Darkest Hour drummer” Ryan Parrish was playing drums on the project while another version didn’t mention a drummer at all. Well, it turns out the former wasn’t just a slip-up: Ryan Parrish is indeed out of Darkest Hour (and will be joining his former bandmate Kris in the new project). Here’s an official statement from the band send directly to MetalSucks:

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If yesterday was the day for 2012 new album updates, today is the day for dudes quitting bands. Which always sucks. Nevertheless, here’s what’s been happening over the past 24 hours or so:

• We’re still selling MetalSucks t-shirts for only $10 and hoodies for just $20 through the holidays – order now to get them in time! We’ll be retiring these designs forever once they’re gone.
• Did drummer Ryan Parrish leave Darkest Hour? In yesterday morning’s news round-upwe reported on news we received via press release that ex-DH guitarist Kris Norris had teamed up with ex-Annihilator touring bassist Dave Sheldon (on vocals) for a new project called A Cancerous Affair. That press release made no mention of a drummer. But then this morning we received a tip from MS reader Huthaifa Al-Rawi linking us to this Blabbermouth article citing the same quotes and press release text as what we got except for this: “and ex-Darkest Hour drummer Ryan Parrish.” Zuh? If Parrish is indeed out of Darkest Hour and that article’s writer didn’t just make a mistake I’m sure we’ll be hearing confirmation shortly. Also, that would really suck; Parrish is a great drummer and an awesome dude.
• Cannabis Corpse have parted ways with vocalist Andy Horn (aka Weedgrinder) and guitarist Nick Poulos (aka Nikropolis) but will continue on with a new lineup, according to Phil “Landphil” Hall.
• Spin Magazine has decided to get into the “Best Metal Albums of 2011″ game by publishing their Top 20. Kudos for including great lesser-known bands like Hull and Batillus — and really, most of the list is pretty solid — but someone please smack whoever compiled this list for naming Liturgy’s album #1 and for including Korn at all. Lulz.
• The Vegan Black Metal Chef is movin’ up in the world; check out his newest instructional video for Yule Log Cake above, via Chow.com.
• The Safety Fire have a new music video for “Huge Hammers.” The song will appear on the band’s new album Grind the Ocean, out February 27, 2012 via Inside Out Music.

One of our most favoritest drummers, Ryan Parrish, from one of our most favoritest bands, Darkest Hour, has launched a new column at one of our most favoritest websites, Metal Injection. It’s called “A View from Behind the Drumkit” (‘Cause he’s a drummer. Get it?), and for the inaugural edition of his column, he’s chosen to tackle one of the most pressing topics for any touring musician: “When do we eat?”

Here’s a sample:

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It seems like the number of “Why did you ban me from commenting?!?” e-mails from readers has increased as of late, and the gist of those e-mails is often “Whassa matter, can’t take it when someone tells you you suck?” or whatever. And we’ve never banned anyone for disagreeing with us. We don’t give a shit if you disagree with us. We don’t agree with one another half the time — that’s part of the fun of MetalSucks.

Here’s what really happens: you use a word which is on our “no-no” list, and it gets stuck in our spam filter. Some of these words we actively do not allow on MetalSucks (e.g., slurs against minorities), and some of them just get stuck because so many actual spammers use them (e.g., “rape”). We try to be diligent about checking the spam filters and making sure none of you are getting caught in there, but sometimes we miss a few. And sometimes we ultimately don’t allow the comment onto the site (e.g., “I hate this album, this band is fucking gay” will never survive). But even then, we don’t BAN people from commenting. I think I can count on one hand the number of people we’ve banned in four years, and most of them were spammers and/or former Megadeth guitarists. So if your comment isn’t going through, consider first if you used a word we don’t allow, and if you didn’t, just shoot us a POLITE e-mail and we’ll investigage the problem ASAP. M’kay?

And on that note, here’s what we did this week:

• Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum gave us our latest Legacy Tour diary, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable worked out his black metal daddy issues, and The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks offered to write a song for any sports team that’s not from New York.
• We spoke to After the Burial’s Trent Hafdahl and American Hardcore author Steven Blush.
• We got the skinny from Darkest Hour’s Ryan Parrish about why DH and Veil of Maya got kicked off their own tour bus, and asked Jucifer’s Amber Valentine about Sean Yseult’s claim to being the only woman in metal during her tenure in White Zombie.
• We checked out the latest release from The Unraveling.
• Sergeant D. schooled us in uber-kvlt metalcore bands.
• We contemplated the worst metal albums of 2010 and the best metal songs of 2010.
• We mourned on the six year anniversary of Dimebag’s murder.
• We celebrated Ozzy Osbourne’s terrific taste in modern metal (he put Korn above Firewind).
• We had mixed feelings about the retirement of Judas Priest.
• We got excited that At the Gates are playing more shows in 2011.

Alrighty then. Next week is our last week of regular posting before we shut down for the holidays. You know what that means – YEAR END LISTS! Get ready to argue like your entire sense of self-worth depended on everyone agreeing with you all the time with no exceptions ever.

-AR

Remember all the way back on Monday (put down that bong!) when we reported that Darkest Hour and Veil of Maya had been kicked off their shared tour bus just before the Dallas stop of their Legacy Tour with Periphery and Revocation? We caught up with DH drummer Ryan Parrish yesterday and he gave us the full scoop on what went down to result in his band’s eviction from their home on wheels:

Well, okay, here’s the thing: the bus driver is a total douchebag — like, just a cocksucker.  He was OCD as shit.  He was always coming on the bus and we’d be partying and shit and he just didn’t like it.  He didn’t think that we cleaned up, which we cleaned every single day, but he was such a dick that he would say that we weren’t cleaning everything just to start drama and shit.  If there were like 2 beer cans on the table, he’d take a picture of it and send it to his company saying that we were destroying the bus lounge.

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The cover art for the new Darkest Hour album?

On Saturday night we went to see Darkest Hour on their MetalSucks-sponsored fifteenth anniversary Legacy Tour along with Veil of Maya, Periphery, and Revocation. We had an AWESOME time, and you should definitely hit one of these shows up if you can (get dates here). Darkest Hour are playing material spanning their entire discography, including some pretty rare shit they haven’t done live in a long, long time. Vince and I both have this thing where we won’t listen to a band we’re going to see for weeks beforehand, because the delayed gratification makes the experience of seeing them that much more killer; but I know we’ve both been cranking Darkest Hour in our respective corners of the MetalSucks Mansion pretty much non-stop ever since.

And soon we’ll have another offering from the band to rock out to — they’ll be releasing a new album (their debut for E1) early next year. The Metal Injection dudes interviewed DH guitarist/MetalSucks columnist Mike Schleibaum  and drummer Ryan Parrish before the show, and got all kinds of exclusive skinny on the new record, including the album’s title and release date, plus the duo’s thoughts on working with producer (and Soilwork guitarist) Peter Wichers. Check the interview out here.

And if you’re itching for even more Darkest Hour info, check out Vince’s interview with Schleibaum about switching to E1 from Victory here.

-AR