A 100% accurate portrayal of the research discussed in this article.

In college, I once took a course on literary representations of New York City, and one the texts utilized was Frank Miller’s graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

My point being simply that it was only a matter of time until academia turned its eye towards extreme music.

From an official press release:

“A research group of a faculty member and graduate students in the University of North Carolina system and in the university of Oulu, Finland, are conducting a multi-year international study of the meaning of metal music. The research project was started in summer 2008 and its main data consists of questionnaires and interviews on the meaning of metal to the different participants of the global metal scene. So far, the researchers have received 370 survey responses, representing a diverse community of Metal fans—men and women between the ages of 13 and 70 from 25 different countries have participated in the research project thus far. Some of the artists interviewed in the project include members from Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Disturbed, Nonpoint, Swallow the Sun, Katatonia, The Black Dahlia Murder, Kreator, Epica, Scar Symmetry, As I Lay Dying, Barren Earth, Rotten Sound, and Cannibal Corpse.”

Click to read more…

I’m going to put about as much effort into this introduction as Courtney Love puts into maintaining the appearance of being sane.

First up today we have the video for “Breakdowns Breakdowns Breakdowns,” from Bury Your Breakdown. Because original vocalist Mat Breakdown has returned to the fold, some people are calling this “the comeback of the year.” Those people need to listen to the new Decapitated album. Although I suspect they may not enjoy it do to a severe absence of breakdowns. Because people who love Bury Your Breakdown really break down breakdowns. I mean, they can’t breakdown with break, d’own? Breakdown breakdown breakdown, breakdown downbreak break down breakdown! HA! Breaky breakdowns.

Click to read more…

The watershed moment for Scar Symmetry fanboys was beloved vocalist Christian Älvestam’s departure in late 2008. It’s like the death of Cliff Burton or Bon Scott, or the departure of Sebastian Bach from Skid Row; it’s that moment when a lot of fans drew solid lines in the sand and jumped ship. Despite the fact that guitarist Jonas Kjellgren has always been the primary songwriter, I get it: Älvestam is an incredibly talented vocalist and the band’s new two-pronged vocal attack is straight up goofy. I feel bad because the new guys are talented enough and I’m sure they’re cool dudes and all, but yeah… goofy is the right word to describe what it looks like when a band has two lead vocalists, and these two guys whose names are rarely ever mentioned are still no match for Älvestam.

Some group of butthurt Scar Symmetry internet trolls have taken to Photoshop for their latest display of nerdrage: a “new” cover for Dark Matter Dimensions, the first Älvestam-less album. Get it? It’s pink!! How feminine!!! You sure told Scar Symmetry how you really feel, Internet!!

-VN

Thanks: Patton and The Number of the Blog

I have a serious case of the Mondays. Happy Humpday! TGIF! Whatever, I don’t give a fuck. Here are today’s hottest new music streams:

• Brooklyn Vegan is streaming “By Which We’re Cemented” from Flourishing’s bruising new effort The Sum of All Fossils. Churning, roiling, intense and ugly are just some of the adjectives I’d use to describe Flourishing’s brand of post-hardcore bludgeoning. The band’s first full-length album will come out on August 2nd via The Path Less Traveled Records.

Click to read more…

I love tooting my own horn. I also love creating new terms, abusing my status as popular hack metal writer and watching said terms be adopted by the metal community at large. So far to our credit here at MetalSucks, Axl, myself and our talented staffers have brought the following terms to prominence: Sumeriancore, WDBWA (with regards to music), elephants marching riffs, impaling aardvark babies, taco riffs and wigger slam (popularized by Sergeant D). We rule!

Now we can add “Death Jovi” to that list. The term was coined by Metal Injection’s Frank Godla to describe Scar Symmetry’s adept mix of death metal and sugary sweet hooks, and the minute I heard him say it I instantly knew what he meant. Working in tandem, MI and MS have pounded the term out on e-paper so many times that the band got wind of it and rightfully took it as a compliment. In a recent piece for Noisecreep:

Click to read more…

Here at MS we like to use the Reviews section to highlight smaller bands that we don’t otherwise talk about much throughout the regular course of our blogging. Said “regular course of our blogging” includes tons of articles about bigger bands’ albums, usually before release: song premieres (here or elsewhere), music videos, in-studio vids, album artwork, and so on and so forth. But when those albums do finally come out, well, a lot of the time they kind of fall off our radar. So what of those albums that we spend lots of time hyping? Full-on reviews are a royal pain in the ass to write, so today I’ll take a quick look at a few releases from the first half of 2011 and give them the proper review treatment in abbreviated form.

Click to read more…

Seether are still around? Apparently they are, and apparently they still sell buttloads of records. While Seether nabbed the top spot on the Top Hard Music chart, Scar Symmetry also had a good debut, as did, um, Vampires Everywhere. Foo Fighters, Hollywood Undead, Black Label Society and others are still selling lots of records too. Numbers after the jump.

Click to read more…

New releases from A Storm of Light, Anaal Nathrakh, Arsonsists Get All the Girls, Nader Sadek, Scar Symmetry and more; a good day for metal! Check out Vic Vaughn’s thoughts on today’s new albums after the break.

Click to read more…

With the April 15th release date of The Unseen Empire fast approaching, Scar Symmetry are giving us a taste of what the album has in store for us; and so far, so good. If you like Scar Symmetry, that is. At this point I don’t think Scar Symmetry are about to convert any nonbelievers, and likewise if you’re still an SS fan in the post-Alvestam era you’re not gonna jump ship now. These guys are pretty reliable… they’re like the Slayer of epic melodeath, so you know what you’re gonna get every time they release an album.

Stream the new song “Extinction Mantra” on Scar Symmetry’s Facebook page. It does have some “super heavy riffing” as the band promises, but I don’t think it’s necessarily one of the strongest tracks on the album. Let us know what you think.

-VN

I gotta hand it to Scar Symmetry… goofy two-vocalist attack or not, these Swedes know how to write ridiculously catchy songs that aren’t cliche or predictable in the slightest. Jonas Kjellgren has hooks (both guitar and vocal!) for days and days and days and is never an asshole about it. While I may cringe slightly when I read back one of the first articles I ever wrote for MetalSucks, I stand by my four year-old assertion that this band is as good as it gets for Swedish melodeath, even if the time for that genre has long since faded into the sunset.

Anywho, last month we learned that Scar Symmetry have a new album called The Unseen Empire coming out on April 15th worldwide (April 16th in the U.S. if I were a betting man?), and today we learn via reader Chris Dávila that they’ve released a new song from said album via the increasingly popular Soundcloud platform. Stream it across the Baltic Sea:

Click to read more…

Earlier this week we noted that a favorite band of ours had let the news of a new album fly completely under the radar. That band, Anaal Nathrakh, went and released a new song just two days later. Can lightning strike twice? Hey, Scar Symmetry, how ’bout it?

In case you haven’t gathered, Scar “Death Jovi” Symmetry appear to have a new album on the way, although MetalSucks has not heard an official peep from the band or from their label, Nuclear Blast, despite the fact the the supposed release date of April 15th is less than two months away. Can I get a “what the fuck?” in the house?

Click to read more…

If I were the dudes in Scar Symmetry I’d be a little miffed right about now. Super-vocalist Christian Alvestam leaves your band and then proceeds to join 367 other bands, many of whom sound a whole lot like Scar Symmetry, instantly making them all better and attracting new fans from all over the world. Meanwhile you poor saps are stuck with two vocalists, neither of whom are all that special and both of whom look completely lost on stage when the other is singing. On top of that, everyone called bullshit on the auto-tuned / pro-toolsed mess that was your latest album, although some of the tunes are certainly respectable thanks to the genius that is Jonas Kjellgren.

Meanwhile, Christian Alvestam seems to be on top of the Swedish melodeath world; your abilities as a skilled metal vocalist were instantly dignified when your former band struggled mightily to replace you, and you’ve gotten to cherry pick which projects your lend your voice to without the grueling, long-term commitment of touring. You’ve probably also got a normal day job so you don’t have to worry about money on a day-to-day basis.

The most Scar Symmetry-like of Christian Alvestam’s post-SS bands, of course, is Solution .45. For Aeons Past, released earlier this year, is a damn fan disc; so many of the songs could be on a Scar Symmetry album and you’ve certainly have me fooled. And from the looks of this new video for “Gravitational Lensing,” the dudes actually move around on stage.

-VN

O, Scar Symmetry. How I love thee unconditionally, even though superman/vocalist Christian Alvestam left to pursue a million other projects that sound just like thee (such as the killer new Solution.45 record). For after all, ’tis Sire Jonas Kjellgren who is the genius of this group, thy prowess which cannot possibly be overcome by the shortcomings of one chump who plays the auto-tune machine and another who plays the cookie monster. For on video, thou dual vocal attack dost look goofy. Very goofy.

Woah, time out… is the bassist wearing a Scar Symmetry hoodie in this video? I know it had to be cold out there… but come on. Party foul.

Catch Scar Symmetry and their simultaneously genius and goofy attack on the MetalSucks co-sponsored tour with Hypocrisy, Hate, Blackguard and Swashbuckle starting next week! Thou shalt not be sorry.

-VN

We’re less than three weeks away from the kick-off of the MetalSucks/Metal Injection co-sponsored A Taste of Divinity North American Tour 2010 with Hypocrisy, Scar Symmetry, Hate, Swashbuckle and Blackguard. And now, as if to give you a little taste of what you might see on that sure-to-be-awesome trek, Hypocrisy have released a new video, “Weed Out the Weak,” which is really just a performance/concert clip, but is a really solid performance/concert clip. Check it out:

The Taste of Divinity Tour starts May 11. Get dates here.

-AR

U.S. IMMIGRATION COULDN’T STOP THEM! Hypocrisy are finally coming to North America to wreak havoc like it’s never been wreaked before! And they’ve got Scar Symmetry, Hate, Blackguard and Swashbuckle with them! EVERYBODY FUCKING RUN! AHHHHHHH!!!!!

In all seriousness: we’re very happy to be teaming up with our hetero life-mates at Metal Injection to be bringing you guys and gals this tour. It’s gonna be an incredible time. Get dates after the jump!!!

Click to read more…

Melodeath fans! Have you heard about Solution .45, the new kinda-sorta supergroup featuring Christian Alvestam (ex-Death Jovi Scar Symmetry) on vocals and Miseration’s Jani Stefanovic on guitars? Clearly this band is gonna get a lot of attention – as if their all-star line-up wasn’t enough, Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne wrote all the lyrics for the group’s debut album, For Aeons Past.

Our bestest buds over at Metal Injection have an exclusive download of a new song by the band, entitled “Gravitational_Lensing.” If you like bands like Scar Symmetry and DT, it’s really, really hard for me to believe you won’t dig this.

Download the song here, then let us know what you think in the comments section below!

-AR

Scar Symmetry’s decision to replace ex-vocalist Christian Alvestam with two dudes — one growler and one singer — was a goofy move on paper, and it looks kinda goofy on video too. At least in videos the band has the benefit of an editor who can cut between one vocalist or the other, or focus on one of the other band members. But live, this shit’s gotta be super goofy — what does one guy do while the other is singing; just stand there and head bang? Totally goofy.

Still, I got nothin’ but love for Scary Symmetry’s music. This year’s Dark Matter Dimensions wasn’t SS’s best but it’s solid, if predictable for the band at this point. They’ve just released a video for the song “Ascension Chamber,” and as is par for the course for Scar Symmetry the video is focused around cosmic/spacial themes. Peep it below.

-VN

While Scar Symmetry have been busy making music with two new singers that sound like their old one, that old one — Christian Alvestam — has been busy with a ton of new projects of his own. Among them is the very promising Solution.45, a band that also features Mikko Härkin (Cain’s Offering, ex- Sonata Arctica, Kotipelto), Jani Stefanovic (Miseration, Essence Of Sorrow), Tom Gardiner (Hateform, ex- Mors Principium Est), Anders Edlund (Angel Blake), and Rolf Pilve (Miseration).

Solution.45 are currently in the studio recording their debut album. According to an update sent by the band exclusively to MetalSucks, the music is “just about done” and Christian is currently finishing up his vocals. The record will be completely finished and mastered by the end of December, and should see a release this Spring via AFM Records and Marquee/Avalon. The cover artwork will be done by Pär Olofsson, the artist behind the latest Immortal and The Faceless album covers. The album will also feature a few guest appearances, including a few vocal spots by Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity. Neat-o!

Check out a 7 minute teaser of demo material at Solution.45′s MySpace page. It’s good stuff.

-VN

File this under “YouTube Vocal Covers” actually gone right [thanks: MS reader Zoker]. Sure, the guy doesn’t hit every high note, but he does a damn fine job overall with both the growls and the clean singing parts. The guy’s clearly got ability and I’m presuming he’s available for the half the price of the current two SS vocalists. Ya win some, ya lose some.

-VN

I’m not nearly as big a Death Jovi Scar Symmetry fan as the right honorable Mr. Neilstein, but I do really like them (especially 2006′s Pitch Black Progress), and I was curious to see how this new vocalists situation played itself out.

So I’m a little sad to say that while I haven’t heard the band’s new album, Dark Matter Dimensions, as of yet, this song, “Noumenon & Phenomenon,” doesn’t do much for me. And neither does the video. In fact, the most interesting thing about this whole experience, for me personally at least, has been learning what “noumenon” means. I feel much smarter now. Thank you, metal, for once again broadening my mind.

Dark Matter Dimensions is out now on Nuclear Blast. Vince says it’s good so feel free to call me an asshole for not loving this song. Maybe hearing the whole album will change my mind.

-AR