I don’t hate Soulfly as much as some people — in fact, I quite enjoyed 2005′s Dark Ages, and that Greg Puciato sections of that one song from the last album — but I can’t find a nice thing to say about the album art for the band’s upcoming eighth full-length, Enslaved. It looks lo-fi, but not in a cool way, like the cover Terrorizer’s Hordes of Zombies. And why are the edges blacked out? And why are the edges on the left side more blacked out than the edges on the right side? It just doesn’t seem like that much thought went into this thing.

Enslaved comes out March 13 on Roadrunner. It has some pretty cool guests on it, like Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan and Dez Fafara from DevilDriver (and, uh, Coal Chamber), so it should really go without saying, but if the music on the album is good, then it really won’t matter what the cover looks like. Although the band’s new bass player is the dude who used to be in Static-X, so that doesn’t bode well, does it?

-AR

…Max Cavalera recently revealed during a radio interview (video above) that he’s working on his autobiography with British journalist Joel McIver, who has previously penned such metal-themed tomes as The Bloody Reign of Slayer and Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica. The forward will apparently be written by Dave Grohl, who collaborated with Cavalera as part of his Probot project back in ’04.

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Igor Cavalera: still not in Sepultura anymore.

The guy who took Igor Cavalera’s place in Sepultura has parted ways with the band, and been replaced with a new drummer who, sources confirm, is also not Igor Cavalera. New Not Igor joins a proud tradition of musicians such Dave Kushner and Fatty Ding Dongs Van Halen, who nine out of ten fans will not care about unless he turns out to be the guitar player’s son.

[Note: New Not Igor is not Andreas Kisser's son. - Ed.]

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Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Here are the July 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

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A bunch of big records came out last Tuesday: Suicide Silence, Fair to Midland, Sepultura and Decapitated. After the jump we’ll take a look at how those and a few recent releases sold over the past week.

But first, a follow-up on a question I asked in last week’s column: how do the numbers for Arch Enemy’s Khaos Legions stack up against their past releases? I don’t have week-by-week breakdowns for each album to compare to Khaos Legions‘ cumulative total of 13,944 after five weeks, but these total sales figures for Arch Enemy’s best-selling albums should provide some frame of reference:

Anthems of Rebellion: 74,712
Doomsday Machine: 108,036
Rise of the Tyrant: 55,812
Wages of Sin: 71,688

With Khaos Legions falling off the charts in week six, that means they sold less than 1,092 units last week, the minimum number required to crack the Top 100 Hard Music Chart. Based on that I’d say it’s going to be a tough climb for Gossow, the Amotts and co. to match their past success this time around.

ANYWAY, back to last week’s big releases:

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MS staffers have lives too, and as such we can’t always get to the record store the very day new releases come out. We’re guessing it’s the same for you guys, too, but that doesn’t mean you’re not interested in the week’s new releases, right? With that in mind, here’s Vic Vaughn on all the shit that came out yesterday including new records from Decapitated and Suicide Silence.

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Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian went to northeast France for Wednesday’s Big Four show, but at other July dates the new father’s guitar duties are covered by Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser (as reported here). It’s weird to see Anthrax on stage without Ian — a first — but clips from Kisser’s second gig as temp on Saturday in Sweden are jamming (above)! Kisser is energy for the other Anthrax dudes who, having tirelessly performed for three decades, probably don’t retain measurable enthusiasm for favorites like “Indians,” “Madhouse,” and “Anti-SoCal.” Not to mention, those jamz date back to their writers’ mid-20s. Those guys are relaxed adults now, not lulzy youths. Shit, I bet they no longer even mind being caught in a mosh.

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Is Kairos, Sepultura’s latest offering, the band’s best new album since Roots, or even — Duh-duh-DUHHHHH!!! – Chaos A.D.? New tunes like “Mask,” which, oh hey, we just happen to be streaming below, would certainly suggest this to be the case. Not only is it an must-mosh-now-worthy anthem powered by a maddeningly catchy riff, but it would absolutely not sound out of place on one of Sep’s pre-Roots classics. The band sounds absolutely unhinged — and we mean that as a compliment.

Turn up “Mask” FUCKING LOUD and decide for yourself. Kairos comes out July 12 in North America and June 24 in Europe via Nuclear Blast. You can pre-order it in a variety of attractive packages here.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

Everyone whose parents raised them correctly loves Gojira, and so everyone whose parents raised them correctly has been eagerly anticipating the band’s seemingly-forever-in-gestation Sea Shepherd EP since, well, seemingly forever.

But now it looks like we might actually be getting close to its unveiling! Last week we got to hear a new song, “Of Blood and Salt,” which features guest appearances from Meshuggah’s Fredrik Thordendal and Devin Townsend’s Devin Townsend; now Gojira’s guitarist/vocalist/mastermind, Joe Duplantier, has given an interview with Metal Hammer in which he reveals that Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe (who previously appeared on the group’s “Adoration for None”), In Flames’ Anders Friden, and some dude named Max Cavalera are all going to appear on the release, too.

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“Ooh no!”

“Macho Man” Randy Savage has perished. My father and I were actually at his first wedding, which is to say, we were at Summer Slam ’91. Vince and I are so bummed right now… I don’t think I can even go outside. I need to curl up with YouTube and remember a time when the “Macho Man” really did seem invincible.

We’ll never forget you, Mr. Savage.

Maybe this will cheer you up?

• We lied and said that Iwrestledabearonce were becoming a black metal band. Then, depending on your perspective, we either made it better or made it worse by debuting a new track from the band.
• We also debuted a stretched-out version of Hammerfall’s “Hearts on Fire.”
• Our list of the The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists continued.
• We spoke to Max Cavalera from Cavalera Conspiracy and Soulfly, Dean Herrera and Henry Selva from The Human Abstract, and the dudes from Noisear.
• We enjoyed a series of exclusive tour blogs from both The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley and Woods of Ypres’ Shane Madden.
• We gushed over Anaal Nathrakh’s Passion.
• We wondered why elitists find some deathcore bands acceptable and others unacceptable.
• We declared metal the winner in the war on grunge.
• We expressed our enthusiasm for Victory Records’ latest sign, Design the Skyline.
• We gave you a detailed analysis of the lyrics for the new Limp Bizkit single.
• We declared drinking to be for pussies.

Next week crack the top ten of our ongoing guitarists list, and, at least to the best of my knowledge, do not aid any bands in playing a prank on the public. And hopefully no one else we liked better than Fred Durst dies.

-AR

You want Sepultura pics? We got ‘em, courtesy of MS photographer Mariel “Tormentia” Pietrykoski. Our favorite Brazilians tore through New Jersey’s Starland Ballroom with Belphegor and Hate in tow, and Mariel caught it all via her newfangled picture-taking-device. Have a looksee after the fold.

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Yesterday Sepultura released a lo-res version of Eric Sayers’ album cover for their forthcoming Kairos, and I was hoping that by now a better version would be available. I was also hoping that by now Grace Perry would have come to her senses and proposed to me, though, so I guess you can shit in one hand and blah blah blah. In any case, here it is… it definitely has a more “old school” vibe than anything the band has released in awhile.

Kairos comes out July 12 in North America and June 24 in Europe via Nuclear Blast.

-AR

Alright, so Sepultura pretty much lost me after Chaos A.D. I am not a fan of Roots, nor of any of the Derrick Green-era albums that have been released thus far. And I don’t think I’m alone in having written the band off. Even if you like Roots, fifteen years is a long time for a group to release no albums of any real note. So I was pretty comfortable with the notion that Sepultura were just one of the many bands I love that had their moment in the sun and then more or less completely lost their way.

But then last week we were lucky enough to get hear a little bit of the unmastered version of the new album, Kairos, and you know what? It was pretty good! I obviously need to hear the entire thing in finished form before I can really pass judgment, but just based on the little we heard, I’d wager that this is easily going to be the best album the band has recorded with Green, and will almost certainly be superior to any Soulfly albums, as well as Cavalera Conspiracy’s Blunt Force Trauma (although CC’s Inflikted may still win the “Best Sepultura Album That’s Not Really a Sepultura Album” award). Some of it was downright Chaos A.D.-esque, which is, of course, terrific news.

I have no idea what the titles were the for the songs we heard, but the band has already performed one called “Seethe” live, and have now debuted the title track in concert, too. You can check out the latter below. I don’t think the crappy quality of either this nor the “Seethe” footage is demonstrative of what we heard last week, but hopefully it will at least whet your appetite for more.

Kairos comes out later this year on Nuclear Blast.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

I regularly lord it over everybody that I attended the final Pantera show ever! It 2001 at the inaugural Beast Feast two-day jam in Yokohama, Japan, also headlined by Slayer, Sepultura, and Machine Head. But by Pantera’s fest-closing set on day two, I was hardly in command of my senses because A.) drugs; and B.) late-night Skinless. See, for the truly metal and/or too high to find the train station, Beast Feast had an overnight gig nearby that bridged days one and two. And Skinless, taking the stage after the great Taiho, absolutely owned that show! They ripped! They raged! They rippaged! Memories.

So it sucks baboon balls to hear this bunch of boner-breaking jive from Skinless honcho Noah Carpenter:

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Below is fan-filmed footage of Sepultura performing a new song, “Seethe,” during a recent live show. The quality isn’t that great, but the song actually sounds kinda, I dunno… promising? It’s definitely not awful. But then again, I don’t think post-(Max) Cavalera Sep has ever been awful… it’s usually just kinda boring.

But I guess we’ll see! Kairos, the band’s new album, will be out later this year on Nuclear Blast… and it would actually be kinda funny if it ended up being superior to Cavalera Conspiracy’s recent Blunt Force Trauma.

Your thoughts, my very good friends?

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

So I’m listening to the stream of the new Cavalera Conspiracy album, Blunt Force Trauma, as I type this, and…some of it is  pretty good, and some of it is just fine. None of it is terrible, so that’s cool, but there’s really only one song that I love — “Torture.” It’s the second song on the album, but it should have been the first — it makes me wanna kick someone hard in the nuts, as opposed to the actual album opener, “Warlord,” which just kinda makes me wanna tap my foot while I do busy work.

What happened? I listened to Inflikted again over the weekend to make sure I wasn’t remembering the band’s debut in a sunnier light than it deserves — and I’m not. Inflikted is awesome. It’s basically everything you’d ever want from a modern day Sepultura album. It’s overflowing with piss n’ vinegar. But only occasionally do CC seem to reach the same level of I AM GOING TO BREAK YOUR FUCKING JAW-ness on BFT. It feels like too much Soulfly seeped into this one.

Headbang here, then let me know if I’m crazy or what in the comments section. Roadrunner will release the album fo’ reals tomorrow.

-AR

Readers, I have failed you.

I feel obligated to tell you that there’s another new Cavalera Conspiracy song out (“Thrasher,” below) because it’s the Cavaleras, but I’ve listened to it three times trying to find something to say about it, and then I was like, “Oh I wanna listen to Chaos A.D.,” and then I just put Chaos A.D. on.

It’s not that I hate the Cavalera Conspiracy song or anything, it’s just that none of what we’ve heard so far socks me in the bread basket the way Inflikted did (when it was like “HOLY SHIT THESE BOYS CAN STILL WRITE SEPULTURA SONGS AFTER ALL!!!”), and, besides, like I said, I have access to Chaos A.D. And Beneath the Remains. And Arise! I should find some quality time with Arise real soon, it’s been awhile.

C&C Music Factory’s latest, Blunt Force Trauma, comes out March 28 on Roadrunner. Despite the fact that none of the songs we’ve heard so far have fucked my face off, I am going to listen to it all the way through at least once.

-AR

Fans who read the headline might be hoping that this is another Elseworlds-style temporary supergroup-thing, like Gary Holt touring with Slayer or Doc Coyle touring with Lamb of God, but, alas, the above photo — taken at the 2005 Roadrunner United concert — is not to be re-created live anytime soon.

Nope. See, Scott Ian got his wife, Meat Loaf’s Daughter, preggers, and he’s staying home for a bit in order to be present for the birth of the baby. So the Sepultura guitarist will be filling in for him for eight ‘Thrax shows in July (including at least one Big 4 show), according to this tweet from Kisser, which an anonymous Portugese-speaking reader assures me says what I just told you it said.

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We were just talking with some industry insiders about how music videos still matter, despite the current attitude to the contrary of too many big wigs. An awesome video can still capture the fans’ imaginations and do wonders for a band’s image, and the music video is most certainly not dead — I know because I get like a gajillion e-mails about music videos each and every week.

But if peeps seem more apathetic about music videos these days, it’s because so many of them suck an egg. It’s not even about the fact that budgets are ever-shrinking as the labels strive to stay alive in the modern market — I’ve seen film school students take a few hundred bucks and make something awesome, so never forget that ingenuity and creativity > money.

But when the most thought you could possibly be bothered to put into your video amounted to, “Let’s have The Cavalera Brothers and their bandmates, Not The Cavalera Brothers, grimace into the camera, and intercut that with some pretty typical live footage,” well, you might as well as showered multiple Third World Countries with pamphlets that read FUCK YOUR HUNGER AND YOUR MOTHER, TOO. Because feeding just one starving child would have been a better use of the money it took to make this crappy video.

Cavalera Conspiracy’s new album, Blunt Force Trauma, comes out March 29 on Roadrunner. If the music sucks, I’m gonna fucking riot.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

A brief period in the late ’80s and early ’90s yielded a fantastical number of cutting-edge metal bands. Today, fans of this pre-internet groundswell of proggy, arty, and otherwise undefinable bands can rejoice at the reactivation of Coroner, Anacrusis, and the great Atheist. But conspicuously absent is Milwaukee’s Realm, once most likely to succeed among their high-brow ilk. Realm is also noteworthy as Roadrunner A&R giant Monte Conner’s very first signing, one that preceded Sepultura, Obituary, and fellow Wisconsinites Last Crack. Aside from some classy but low-profile reissues of Realm’s dual masterpieces Endless War and Suiciety, Realm buzz has remained low — especially for a band who left fans hanging without completing their sure-to-be awesome third album. I tracked down founding guitarist Takis Kinis (also ex-Beatallica) to get answers to largely unasked questions, and his insights go beyond Realm minutiae to form a sort of Do’s and Don’ts manual for budding young bands. Incredibly, Conner himself took time to stroll down Realm’s memory lane and provide even more invaluable peeks behind the music business curtain (look for his comments in gray). Don’t understand how a brilliant band doesn’t “make it”? Want to avoid the pitfalls of youthful bravado? Thinking of covering a famous Beatles song? Just want to get hip to two of metal’s most overlooked masterpieces? Read on.

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