Our pals at Invisible Oranges just posted “Contrary Pulse,” a track off the upcoming Leviathan album, and boy, is it creepy. It’s not like Wrest (Jef Whitehead) has ever been much for kittens and rainbows (after all, this is the man that brought you such delightful USBM gems as “Fucking Your Ghost in Chains of Ice” and “Requiem for a Turd World”), but with this, his hitherto unexpected new effort, he’s really upped the ante. True Traitor, True Whore (Profound Lore) is genuinely nasty. You’ll feel dirty listening to it, and not in a sexy way.

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OH MY FUCKING GOD YES.

Rwake, one of our absolute most favoritest bands here at MetalSucks, haven’t released an album since 2007′s Voices of Omens. They never broke up — they’ve been playing shows somewhat-steadily the whole time — and earlier this year, we got word that the band had FINALLY entered a studio with producer Sanford Parker to record a new album.

Well, that album now has a name — Rest — a release date — September 27 — and album art — which you can see below:

There’s no music available yet, but whatever, if Rest doesn’t turn out to be awesome, I’ll eat my socks. (I will also cry. A LOT.) You can, absolutely fucking should, pre-order the album from Relapse, though, in a variety of CD and vinyl editions. This band is FILTHY FILTHY FILTHY, so I bet that shit sounds super-extra-evil on vinyl.

And hopefully there will be a new Rwake jam for us to jizz all over real soon.

-AR

(Photo by Alyssa Lorenzon. View the full set here.)

Hats off to No Clean Singing contributor BadWolf, conductor of this fascinating interview with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, Will Lindsay and Sanford Parker during their winter tour with Cradle of Filth. Among the topics: Blake Judd’s ongoing struggle with heroin addiction (at interview time he claimed to be drug-free), various band members’ opinions of Cradle of Filth, being labeled a “sell out” by black metal purists, the trials and tribulations of being on record label Century Media, the metal scene in Chicago and more. Here’s an excerpt:

Blake Judd- Every record with us is a drug record. Addicts is the record I made while I was a heroin addict—which I have kicked.

No Clean Singing- Congrats on kicking the habit.

Blake Judd- Well, I only did it so these guys would come on tour with me, and I’m not kidding. That album is about hard living. I want to live hard. I don’t want to skip a beat ever. If I can have a good time I will have it, if I can have an experience I am going to indulge in it, and if I die tomorrow I never had a dull moment. That’s how I want to live my life, and how I have done so since I was eighteen years old.

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A producers’ role in the overall sound of an album is often under-appreciated. Sure, most people know roughly what it is that producers do, but until you’ve been in a recording session and seen first-hand how producers work with bands you can’t possibly understand the entirety of the impact they have on the final product. I’ve always been fascinated by producers (and mixers); when the Internet first started to be a place you could easily find a lot of organized, useful information (at some point in the late ’90s / early ’00s) I’d spend hours upon hours looking through album credits at AllMusic.com to see who produced and mixed my favorite albums, then I’d follow those links to look at said producer or mixer’s entire discographies, then I’d follow those links to look at other albums… and so on and so forth. I totally ate it up, and it’s still something I find an incredible amount of interest in.

That’s why I’m excited that Crustcake posted this awesome video interview with metal producer Sanford Parker, certainly one of the “it” producers of the moment, who’s worked with Nachtmystium, Pelican, Rwake, Batillus and many, many more. Check it out after the jump.

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photo by Tommy Kearns

I think I can safely speak for both Vince and myself when I say that Batillus have to be one of our favorite doom metal bands on the planet right now, AND one of our favorite local bands. Vince just sang their praises a few weeks ago, and then the band abso-fuckin’-lutely CRUSHED at one of our two CMJ showcases. They opened the show, actually, and believe you me when I say that they set the bar real, real high for every act that followed.

Now Batillus have announced that they’ve signed with Seventh Rule Records, who will release their new, Sanford Parker-produced debut full-length, Furnace, sometime in the spring of 2011. You may recall that the band wrote some exclusive studio blogs for us when they were recording the album earlier this year; if you don’t recall that, well, read ‘em now. Get to know this band. They kill, kill, kill, and then kill some more.

Batillus are also doing a handful of live shows this month. Like I said, they’re a force to be reckoned with live, so definitely go check ‘em out if you can. Here are dates, courtesy SMN:

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Alright. So all of yesterday’s entries from Vegas pretty much blew goats, and not only did the Peoria-area reader known as “chainchomp” leave a comment reassuring me that I was being punished, but he also admitted that not every band listed in his e-mail recommendation was good — but they all “get alot of hype here in good ol’ Pee-Town.” So today I’m rewarding his kindness and honestly but taking a stroll down to this so-called “Pee-Town.”

If I ever live somewhere named after urine, please end me.

Anyways, we’re off to the races. Yay.

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Krieg are the odd man out in the USBM spectrum. “True” almost to a fault, they lack the oppressive, claustrophobic bleakness of Xasthur, the Phil Spector-ian walls of blackened madness of Leviathan, or the psychedelic mindfuckery of Nachtmystium. The few times I’ve tried to get into Krieg, nothing jumped out at me. And yet, after hearing Krieg frontman/mastermind Imperial’s serrated vocals on Twilight’s Monument to Time End this year, it shook something in me. There’s a fundamental rawness to it that can’t be replicated in silly backyard corpsepaint GIFs. And that rawness is all over Krieg’s latest, the chilling The Isolationist. It’s got all the black metal hallmarks, sure, but they’re all tweaked to provide maximum effectiveness. Droning and repetitive to some ears, to others, it’s all about mood. And that mood is suffocating and bleak. It’s relentless hideousness is truly a thing to behold, and with it, Krieg ably prove themselves as major contributors to US black metal.

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Photo by Chris Roo

Back in August, I got a chance to talk with Yakuza front man Bruce Lamont about all things Yakuza, his band’s stellar new album, Of Seismic Consequence (which is a contender for this curmudgeon’s year-end “Best Of” list), his upcoming side projects and collaborations, his other fellow musicians from the Windy City, and Yakuza’s then not-yet-announced tour with Triptykon and 1349 — a tour that is now under way.

Unfortunately, then the Bob Cock penchant for procrastination kicked in. But whilst Yakuza are still in the midst of the aforementioned tour (get dates here), I present you with the always charming Mr. Lamont’s take on…well, just about anything he’s involved in nowadays – including an upcoming solo album.

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Black Market Activities will release Mercy, the third full-length from Chicago’s Sweet Cobra, on September 28; since we’re debuting a track here on MetalSucks, it should go without saying that we think it’s pretty frickin’ cool. “Brux,” the opening track, has to be one of the catchiest songs we’ve heard all year; it sounds like Mastodon, if Mastodon were more interested in making sure they got stuck in your head and less interested in, like, orcs n’ shit. If the slip-slide riff and boppin’ drums don’t make you wanna get up and grab a hula-hoop, than you must have no pulse. This song is so infectious you’re gonna need to drill into your brain just to get it out.

Check out “Brux” below, and then pre-order Mercy here. It was produced by Sanford Parker (Pelican, Nachtmystium) and mixed by Kurt Ballou (Do you seriously not know who Kurt Ballou is?!?!), as if you needed any further incentive to buy a copy.

[this promotion has ended]

The slogan on the MySpace page for Relapse’s latest sign, Richmond’s Cough, reads “Get to drinkin’,” but I would have assumed these dudes were big smokers, not big drinkers. Granted, I have no actual basis for this accusation, but let’s look at the facts:

• I’d wager that more time is spent coughing from smoking than from drinking, even if the strength of certain drinks might induce a quick clearing of the throat.
• The band’s music is slower than Rue McClanahan.
• This truly righteous poster:

Not only did that clearly come from the mind of some stoned nerd, but the band’s name is ensconced in a cloud of smoke. I mean, come ON!

ANYWAY, none of this is really relevant. The band seems pretty cool, and drunk or high, I’d be curious to check them out live – I bet they’re as heavy as a post-Thanksgiving dinner dump. They’re working on a new full-legnth, Ritual Abuse, with the great Sanford Parker, which Relapse expects to release in the fall. It seems highly unlikely that it won’t at least be an interesting listen. Check out Cough here.

-AR

When we heard that our friends in Brooklyn doom-crew Batillus were heading into the studio to record a new album,  we were all, “Dudes, do a studio blog for us!!!” And they were all, “Okay!!!” And so here we are! Below, find the third installment, which was written by vocalist / synth-master Fade Kainer; read the inaugural entry by bassist Willi Stabenau here and the second entry by drummer Geoff Summers here; this will be the final entry.

Nine days in an isolation tank, electricity bent through circuitry, vacuum tubes glowing, wood assaulting metal alloys and mylar skins. Subsonic grit, larynx shatters the air; all captured, assembled, deconstructed, processed and reassembled. The new album has been created; Sanford Parker has captured our sound at his Semaphore Studios — lovingly dubbed ‘the Submarine’ due to its stark, lightless interior; long, narrow floorplan; and row of bunk beds — in Chicago. We now have no concept of time, day or night, as we head home toward Brooklyn. But our journey was not without incident.

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When we heard that our friends in Brooklyn doom-crew Batillus were heading into the studio to record a new album,  we were all, “Dudes, do a studio blog for us!!!” And they were all, “Okay!!!” And so here we are! Below, find the second installment, which was written by drummer Geoff Summers; read the inaugural entry by bassist Willi Stabenau here and expect two more entries by the band’s guitarist and vocalist in the coming days.

Day five. Overdubs are nearly done for all but two songs. It’s nice not to feel rushed for once—for each of our last two recording sessions we tracked and mixed 60 minutes and 25 minutes of music in two days, respectively. This time we have ten days to track and mix seven songs, and we’re taking our time and paying more attention to detail and allowing the creative process to flow a bit more freely. It’s a good feeling.

Having not much to do, I cooked up a stir-fry yesterday with snap peas, bell peppers, onion, corn, and broccoli with rice noodles. It was damn good, if I do say so myself, and rather spicy.

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When we heard that our friends in Brooklyn doom-crew Batillus were heading into the studio to record a new album,  we were all, “Dudes, do a studio blog for us!!!” And they were all, “Okay!!!” And so here we are! Below, find the inaugural installment, which was written by bassist Willi Stabenau; more entries from the other members of the band will follow in the coming weeks. Enjoy!

Waiting eighteen months for amps is almost worth it, if your amps are two Electric Power Units. After months and months of anxiety and crappy tone from my Coliseums, my two Greens showed up here in Chicago, just in time to start recording. Probably the best-sounding amps I’ve ever heard, and hugely powerful. Not sure I would wait that long again, though. You will love this bass; I guarantee it to be all over your ears like a cheap Men’s Wearhouse suit.

Yesterday, we discovered that [guitarist Greg] Peterson looks suspiciously like Varg Vikernes:

And shortly thereafter, we realized that the dude who’s recording us looks a hell of a lot like one Sanford Parker, knob-twiddler to the metal stars:

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I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about Nachtmystium’s latest, Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II, for awhile now. The band just announced a June 8 release date via Century and “unveiled the track list,” as the metal-news terminology goes; I don’t usually give a shit about track lists, because unless the band is Metallica and the song is “Unforgiven XIX,” titles don’t actually tell you very much about the music. But since the Nachtmystium is in the headlines, now I can write about the album and not feel like I’m being completely random.

So: it’s still early, but as of today, April 7, Addicts is the best album of 2010 so far. And there’s a lot I want to say about it, so please excuse me while I ramble a little.

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Nachtmystium’s Black Meddle, Pt. 1 was one of the best albums of 2008, ending up at the top or near the top of most MS staffers’ top ten lists that year. So, naturally, Nachtmystium fans everywhere have been asking the question, “Hey, where the fuck is Black Meddle, Pt. II?”

Well, hey, guess what? The band has issued an update to that very query on their MySpace page:

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