MetalSucks

So Vince is now out of town. Again. Luckily, we really do take after our namesakes; he loves to be out there among the people, partying like he might die tomorrow, and I am a grumpy, mean-spirited recluse. So expect lots of Axl crankiness next week.

In the meantime, here are some things that happened this week:

• Genetic’s Dallas Coyle discussed the importance of positive thinking, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa pondered the various timelines on L O S T, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable listed the five raddest sets of teeth in metal, Eyal Levi from Daath and Levi/Werstler wondered if anyone cares about guitar solos, and adult film actress Bobbi Starr told us the ten metal bands she wishes would gangbang her.
• We debuted new music by The Dillinger Escape Plan, Landmine Marathon, and Jucifer.
• MetalSucks readers interviewed Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne and Vince interviewed Sevendust’s Clint Lowery.
• Sammy O’Hagar reviewed Ov Hell’s The Underworld Regime.
• Is Nergal from Behemoth going to jail for destroying a Bible?
• The singer from DragonForce is available for a White Lion reunion.
• We raged against “Rage.”

And that’s it! Next week will see the debut of our irritating new list, as well as some other fun shit. Have a nice weekend…

-AR

“Why would you do a Raddest Teeth In Metal list? I mean, who thinks about that stuff? Isn’t this kind of lame?”

Yes it is! Let’s do this! [Perhaps our article on Ben Falgoust's chompers subliminally inspired him. -Ed.]

5th place – The douchebag singer from that vampire band

I’m almost ashamed to admit that this guy was the inspiration for this blog entry (and I won’t even give them the extra google search result by printing his or his band’s name here), but will you just look at those pearly whites? Before mommy and daddy bought him his first rackmount auto-tune processor and showered him with enough love and self-confidence to make such embarrassing music, they must have spent a fortune on braces and regular dental visits. At least he might make up for his band’s crimes against humanity’s eardrums by promoting good dental hygiene to the 5th graders who make up his fanbase.

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I haven’t been able to shake this cold, and so I’ve actually been playing a lot of on-line Scrabble with a friend this week (because I’m just that cool). It would be really hard to play Scrabble at a metal show, though, not least of all because so many metal d00dz can’t spell.

When we weren’t beating this whole Uno debacle to death like it had just heckled us, here’s what was happening in the world of metal:

• We streamed Mutiny Within’s self-titled debut album, and premiered a track by Dallas Coyle’s new project, Genetic.
• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle defended mainstream metal, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa discussed the cliffside cave list on L O S T, and, yeah, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable and Daath’s Eyal Levi each weighed-in on a certain incident involving a certain card game.
• Each of the MetalSucks writers endorsed a finalist for the Scion No Label Needed Contest.
• We checked out new albums by The Breathing Process, Hayaino Daisuki, and Bane and Rhinoceros.
• We debated the morality of a label head posting a link to an album leak.
• We are woman, hear us roar.
• We looked at Mike Patton’s penis, and are now increasingly happy our shrink is coming back from vacation next week.
• Our homeboy Corey Mitchell is co-authoring Phil Anselmo’s autobiography!

Okay. Back to Scrabble! See ya Monday. Stay warm.

-AR

I’m not generally one to say negative things about other bands and the choices they make (publicly, at least), but I feel that this really deserves some attention. I can only hope that young metal musicians who read this site can learn from someone else’s mistakes and hopefully one day make the metal world a little less embarrassing to be a part of.

A harsh reality of being in a band, or making music, is that some people won’t like it. ESPECIALLY in the heavy metal world, where people are almost unreasonably opinionated. What other type of music has the kind of audience who heckle a band they don’t like at a show, or argue for days in the comments section of an internet blog about why a certain band sucks? Once you put your music out there to be heard, you are, without a doubt, going to get some negative feedback. The way you handle it, however, is going to determine what kind of longevity your band will ultimately have.

I’m not a fighter at all, so I can’t really speak from experience on when violence is justified, but I know that a relatively meaningless heckling incident is not it. If you consider yourself a professional, you should act like one and think about how your actions affect the outside world’s perception of you and your band. I can think of one particular show as a perfect example of how to and how not to handle yourself in a situation like this.

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I don’t know what it is, but ever since I was a young guy I’ve typically had an aversion to trends, especially in music. Going to punk shows during my high school years, I’d laugh to myself at all the kids with the same spiky hair and leather jackets, who were obviously into the fashion or “scene” aspect of the music, rather than the music itself (of which, I’ll admit, I’m somewhat embarrassed to have been such a purist). More than a decade later, I haven’t really changed at all. I can’t help but write off many new bands these days, whether it’s a retro-thrash band named after an old Anthrax song, a long winded “post-metal” band with nautical themes, a bubble-lettered stoner rock band, a flat-brimmed nu-deth-shuggah band, or, quite possibly the most hilarious of them all, any black metal band still wearing corpsepaint that isn’t Immortal. All of this stuff comes off as tired and derivative to me, and with any style of music that becomes trendy, the posing is just too obvious.

But, I’m not here today to talk shit on popular bands. I’m here to talk to you all about a once relevant subgenre of music known as power metal, that couldn’t be further from “cool” right now. A friend of mine once referred to power metal as “the new punk rock” as if to say that at least playing punk music these days will get you laid. If someone is playing power metal, it’s probably because they are 100% down with that shit, regardless of how silly they may look to the rest of the world. And that, I have nothing but respect for.

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I understand that the music industry as we’ve known it is in somewhat of a bind. The ease of “illegal” downloading coupled with a crappy economy has cut off much of the flow of income a record label is built to generate. In this position, any sensible business would find a way to adapt in order to survive.

Last week I read about a certain metal label trying out something called a 360 deal, where instead of mainly collecting revenue from record sales or other intellectual property rights (publishing, licensing, etc.), the record label takes an agreed-upon cut of merchandise, concert ticket sales, and I suppose just about anything else having to do with the band. Actually I’m sure deals like this already existed, but this label got even more “WTF” with it and announced they would be giving this new band’s album out as a free download. I honestly think this is a great idea. Giving away the music for free since it holds little value to consumers, then sending the band on tour and collecting a decent percentage off nightly guarantees and t-shirt sales since people still pay full price for those – going where the money is. Sure, it’s a business.

What confuses me is how any band would be ok with this. They signed to a record label who isn’t actually putting out or distributing a record. They’re promoting intangible recorded material so that there’s a reason for the band to tour and sell stuff for them, while the band makes even less money on the things they would have been sustaining themselves on in an old school record deal. So, why do you need a record label then?

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Hey all, its been a while since I’ve updated this blog. We’ve been super busy over the past few months, most recently with the tour we just finished with Mastodon and Kylesa. This was without a doubt one of the most awesome tours we have ever been a part of. I’d like to publicly thank everyone in Mastodon and their crew for going out of their way to be helpful and make us feel welcome. It’s nice to see that all the success hasn’t jaded you guys. It was also a pleasure to meet and bro down with Kylesa for five weeks. I hope we can all do this again some time.

Here are some highlights:

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I greet you Metalsucks readers this week with a somewhat melancholy blog entry, as I am here to announce the sale of one of my favorite guitars ever. I bought this Gibson L6-S a little more than a year ago and pretty much fell in love with it. It has an all maple body and neck, which means a brighter attack than the usual mahogany that most Gibsons have. This is also one of the most comfortable guitars I’ve ever played. This thing has been my main guitar since I bought it, meaning it’s been played at probably a hundred Intronaut shows, and was the guitar used on our last record.
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Having an outlet through a prominent web media site like metalsucks.net is a blessing in so many ways. It took a while for me to realize, but honestly having my shitty ideas read by thousands of shitty people is a power that I should harness and use to project something positive onto the metal scene. Since Metallica haven’t called me about ghost writing their next album yet, I figure I should still try to do some good for the heavy music community and turn you people on to some bands who don’t have a label buying ad space on Metalsucks. Here is a list of bands I am angry at the public for not liking:

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In the past while on tour, I’ve encountered many special things that I regret not having a video camera around to document. Last summer, we did have the foresight to bring one along, and it was totally worth it. We ended up whittling down close to six hours of footage into a ten minute “rockumentary” of that particular tour. However, some of the people we filmed along the way deserved to be seen in their fully candid, unedited glory, and here’s a particular character I’d like to share with you all.

We arrived to the show in Orlando, FL early enough to hang with the daytime locals at the bar we were playing. Not long after we sat down, this dude comes in announcing that he only has one dollar, but needs a beer. He got it, and proceeded to infiltrate our little clique, dazzling us with his sloppy redneck wit. I grabbed the video camera and let it roll.

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Ever gone to the fridge and, for whatever reason, ended up making yourself a sandwich consisting of several seemingly incompatible food stuffs that, once combined, managed to still somehow end up being totally delicious? C’mon, you know you’ve done it. Maybe it was the middle of the night and you were tired or maybe you were high or maybe you just didn’t have any turkey left like you thought you did, but somehow you ended up with horseradish and peanut butter both ending up on the pumpernickel and mmmm, it turned out pretty good.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the weird sandwich tour of 2009: The Haunted (whose Peter Dolving has blogged for MetalSucks not once but twice) and Intronaut (whose Sacha Dunable is a regular contributor to MetalSucks) will be the fresh baked bread bookending Nachtmystium and Kylesa as the meat.

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Quite often, in interviews or just in conversation with random people, I am asked about my marijuana consumption. Imagine some nerdy Canadian metal journalist dude over the phone, going (read with accent) “DUDE, how much WEED did you smoke during the writing process for that record?” I get seriously annoyed by this, as I think it’s really immature to assume that pot has some magical power that actually writes the music for you. It reminds me of being 16 or 17, getting together at band practice, and someone coming up with the idea to “get really high and just jam” with the tape recorder running. 100% of the time, the result was a droney mess consisting of boring, meterless drum beats, monotonous “singing”, and one guitar playing an open E with a flange pedal left on at full blast. I just want to grab these people, throw them against a wall, hold them by their throats, and scornfully inform them that drugs are stupid, they themselves are stupid, and that it takes actual skill and thought to write interesting music.

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The Deciblog just premiered the new video for “Australopithecus,” the latest from MetalSucks blogger/supergenius Sacha Dunable and his band Intronaut. It was directed by Sera Timms, whose work I was not previously familiar with but will now make a point to seek out – I love the vintage 70s horror feel to this motherfucker. Check out the clip below and let us know what you think.

“Australopithecus” comes off of Intronaut’s brilliant recent release, Prehistoricisms, which is out now on Century. If you haven’t checked it out, you’re depriving yourself of awesomeness.

-AR

Recently, Metalsucks’ Vince wrote a very informative blog for young musicians aspiring to “make it” as a band. Well, I’m sure it was informative, I didn’t actually read the whole thing because, hey, I mean, come on…. right guys? Yeah! High five! It did however make me think of some other groups of people I deal with regularly who could use a written set of guidelines, like sound guys, or my roommates in regards to the kitchen sink. However, I think the group of people most due for a friendly verbal check are typically the lowest scum of the earth – promoters.

Being in a band who has toured quite often for the better part of two years with very minimal label support, I’ve felt the effects of dealing with shit promoters. As a touring band, there is no greater slap in the face than a promoter who stiffs you on money, a little simple hospitality, and, oh yeah, that word that’s actually in the job description, “promoting.” I’ve decided to break this down into an easy read for both veteran and aspiring underground show promoters.
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Yeah! Almost votin’ time! I mean boy, with my own life being so dull, the time for some good reality TV is definitely now. I can’t wait to see who steals THIS election! It’s looking tough, as the Republican side is playing hardball once again. Apparently, hundreds of absentee ballots were mailed out this week with an oh-so unfortunate typo in the presidential category, reading “Barack Osama.” Some very official person came forward to say that it was merely a typo and not intentional. Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not even suggesting it was necessarily a call made by the McCain campaign, but someone HAD to have premeditated that. The letters B and S aren’t even near each other on the keyboard! And for no one to proofread the official absentee ballots? Ah well, so what if Obama’s name is misspelled on the ballot. I’m sure it will still be a nice and fair election, because who would actually let a typo slip into their consciousness and affect their judgment of character?

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