Not being a regular BBC listener, I’m not familiar with the show Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone – but I will say that, at this very moment, I am both very grateful to and very angry at Mr. Maconie. Grateful because last night, he debuted an awesome, strange-as-fuck new Sigh song, “The Transfiguration Fear,” which will appear on their upcoming album, In Somniphobia. And angry because this dude who apparently has no idea who the fuck Sigh are has gotten to hear In Somniphobia  before I have. Bastard.

ANYWAY, the song is what’s important, obviously, and if it’s any indication of the rest of In Somniphobia‘s quality, we’re in for another treat from my favorite Japanese band. Imaginary Sonicscape-esque sci-fi keyboards? Glorious Dr. Mikannibal saxophone? Congas? Classic rock style bluesy guitars? A whistling outro? All in one totally bizarre package? Just one more question: WHEN CAN I HEAR THE REST OF THIS ALBUM?!?!

You can stream the track (via a stream of the show on which it debuted) here. It starts around the 16:45 mark.

In Somniphobia is scheduled for a March release via Candlelight Records.

-AR

Major props to Tortiss for sending this in!!!

All metal fans should be familiar with the work of artist Eliran Kantor by now; Kantor has done incredible work for Testament, Atheist, and Sodom, amongst others, including the stunning cover for Sigh’s 2009 Scenes from Hell. His work is really, well, genius.

Now Sigh have unveiled Kantor’s latest breathtaking masterpiece — the album art for their upcoming release, In Somniphobia. What does it have to do with fear of sleep? I’m not quite sure, although it definitely has a dreamy quality to it — at a first glance, it looks pretty straight-forward, but the more you study it in detail, the crazier and stranger it gets. You can check it out below, or go here to see a much bigger version.

In Somniphobia is scheduled for a March release via Candlelight Records.

-AR

I haven’t a clue how the folks (folk?) at Blot Und Eisen convinced Sigh’s Mirai, Faith No More / Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance, Eyehategod’s Michael IX Williams, Agalloch’s John Haughm and Ghoul’s Digestor to submit to the Rorschach aka “ink blot” tests… but there you have it, and the results are fascinating! The Rorschach Test, for those unfamiliar, is “a method of psychiatric evaluation created by Hermann Rorschach in 1921. Psychologists use the test to examine the personalities of their patients.”

Here are just a couple of samples:

Spruance: “An orthodox church.”
Haughm: “The sky…as seen from inside a shallow grave.”
Digestor: “Hard to clean mess.”

Williams: “Beard of a sideshow pharmacist on display in East Cambodia.”
Mirai: “Two Rabbits In The Bush.”
Haughm: “Two siamese twin elephant embryos trying to escape each other.

Me, I just see a bunch of vaginas. I won’t ruin the rest for you; check it out at Blot Und Eisen.

-VN

We didn’t mention recent events in Japan this past Friday because, well, they weren’t metal-related. Sure, some touring bands, like Iron Maiden and Murderdolls, suddenly had to cancel their show plans, and High on Fire, miraculously, survived their second major natural disaster in as many months (the first being the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand), but that hardly seemed worth discussing in the midst of this major tragedy.

Then this morning we got the following e-mail from reader  Daisuke Kamiya:

“Hello, I am current university student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an avid reader of Metalsucks. And if you read the email subject, I am assure not here to beg you guys to donate for Japan. All I’m here to ask is if you guys can post an awareness of what happening in my home country Japan and if you guys can just post a yahoo website to make metal heads around the world be aware that they too can help out.

“As we all know on March 11th 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 8.9 occurred 80 miles off the coast of Sendai, Japan, 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. This devastating earthquake is the worst in the history of Japan, causing disastrous floods that obliterated tens of thousands of buildings, devouring almost anything in its path. The government of Japan has estimated an over 10,000 death toll from this catastrophic event.

“And in return, here are some recommended pure Japanese metal bands that people should check out.”

Of course, we’re only too happy to oblige Daisuke. So here’s that website with a list of organizations you donate to if you want to help out.

And after the jump, check out the bands Daisuke recommended… with my own snarky commentary, of course. Because, unfortunately, your country undergoing a horrific ordeal does not necessarily make you talented.

Click to read more…

Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.

So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…

Click to read more…

Eliran Kantor is on quite a roll this year: The cover art for Sigh’s Scenes from Hell, Atheist’s Jupiter, and now Sodom’s In War and Pieces have all kicked ass so hard that there’s now a spot on my butt that reads “Reserved for Eliran Kantor’s Boot.” And that’s to say nothing of the amazing work the artist has done in the past for bands like Testament and Gwar.

Check out more of Eliran Kantor’s work here. In War and Pieces drops November 23 on SPV.

-AR

Because thats wheres Is wills be todays insteads of enjoying mys brunch.

-NC

Congrats to Jackson May and Sophie Holman. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as belonging to the band Paracoccidioidomicosisproctitissarcomucosis, and they each win a vinyl copy of Sigh’s Scenes from Hell for their troubles. Congratulations, kids! It’s an awesome record and we’re sure you’re gonna enjoy it.

This week we have another very special prize from the fine folks at The End Records: three, count ‘em three, autographed 7-inches from Goes Cube. There were only 500 of these bad boys pressed, and they contain the songs “Property” and “The Ban Has Been Lifted.” This is a really talented band and a really special prize, so get crackin’!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select three winners and announce his or her names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us by reader Tom Kelly…

-AR

Last week’s logo was a toughie, but props to Brittany Smith for correctly identifying it as belonging to the band Misshapen Hatred. Brittany wins a free copy of The Acacia Strain’s awesome new DVD, The Most Known Unknown. Enjoy it, Brit!

This week the very nice men and women at The End Records have donated an awesome prize to give away: two, count ‘em two vinyl copies of Sigh’s Scenes from Hell. This is already one of my favorite releases of 2010, so get off your arse and try to win yourself a copy!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select two winners and announce his or her names next week.

Of course, I ain’t gonna make it easy to win such a delicious prize. This week’s logo, sent to us by reader Isaac Schwarz, is really damn near impossible…

-AR

So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

Click to read more…

Sigh’s Scenes from Hell, which was released Tuesday on The End Records, is the first great album of 2010. This is in an indisputable fact. Anyone who tries to dispute it should be banished to the album’s cover art. Don’t even step, sucka.

Now the band has released a video for the song “Prelude to the Oracle.” I have almost no idea what’s going on in this video, but any clip that has a blood-soaked Dr. Mikannibal dressed as a midriff-bearing angel is okay in my book!

Buy this album. Seriously. Do it.

-AR

The cover art for Sigh’s forthcoming Scenes from Hell is as kick-ass as the music on that album (read my review here). In case you haven’t seen it before…

This should be – and in my opinion, still is – the clear front runner for “Best Cover Art of 2010,” even at this early juncture. Look at that thing, man! Eliran Kantor did a helluva job. Someone is gonna hafta to come up with something pretty cool to top it.

Well, High on Fire haven’t quite topped it, but they’ve still come up with something awesome for their new album, Snakes for the Divine. Check it out:

Click to read more…

So says Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges in a piece about the (admittedly pretty sucky) band Carach Angren. But I take serious issue with this declaration.

Click to read more…

So I’m still finalizing my year-end list for 2009, and now those bastards at The End Records have gone and sent me an album that it definitely going to be a competitor for my year-end list for 2010: Scenes from Hell, an album so delightfully bat shit crazy it could only have come from the mad scientists in Sigh.

Click to read more…

Did you know that if you eat before you start slamming shots, you’ll get a little less drunk, but you’ll also have something to vomit up later? It’s true. Also, sometimes when you smoke weed, you get the munchies. These are just two great reasons why you should care about Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook by Annick “Morbid Chef” Giroux. Showcasing “a varied menu of over a hundred recipes from thirty countries,” Hellbent for Cooking features recipes by members of Accept, Anthrax, Anvil, Armored Saint, Brutal Truth, Death, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Gwar, Judas Priest, Kreator, Mayhem, Melechesh, Nuclear Assault, Obituary, Repulsion, Saint Vitus, Sepultura, Sigh, S.O.D., Slough Feg, Thin Lizzy, Toxic Holocaust, and about a trillion others (you can get a complete list of contributing bands here).

MetalSucks is teaming up with Bazillion Points Publishing to give away three (3) copies of Hellbent for Cooking. All you have to do to win is create a picture that somehow connects metal to food and post a link to someplace we can view said picture in the comments section below. Use Photoshop to create an image of Lemmy eating a hot dog, use MS Paint to do a portrait of Metallica as the pepperonis on a pizza, whatever you want – it just has to be both food and metal related, and it has to amuse us. Vince and I will choose the three pics that make us laugh the hardest and those pics’ creators win the book.

This contest will end at midnight EST on Monday, December 14. Please note that this contest is open to U.S. residents only, as shipping costs are a bitch. And if you’re too lazy to participate, you can always just order a copy of the book here.

Good luck, and good eats…

-AR

Last week one of you accused us of being a “bunch of negative miserable fucks.” I can only assume that this person had never been to this site before, and was somehow unaware that it’s called “MetalSucks.”

Still, this was probably the best worst week ever, because:

• Devin Townsend took over our site for a day!
• We finally got around to making MetalSucks t-shirts and hoodies!
• Vince interviewed Between the Buried and Me’s Dan Briggs for the third time in as many years!
• There’s gonna be a new Pig Destroyer album in 2010!
• There’s a new Sigh song!
• Varg Vikernes came out of the closet!

So, see? LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!

In conclusion:

Have a good weekend.

-AR

Black metal, in spite of its more purist fans, has undergone so many stylistic permutations since the Norwegian second wave’s arson-fueled media explosion that I’m hard-pressed to even define what black metal sounds like circa 2009. By frankensteining elements of Mayhem, Bathory, Burzum, Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, Venom, Enslaved, Ulver and countless other classics with every unrelated style under the wintermoon, bands to follow spawned sub-sub-genres for all tastes: folk-black/Viking metal, symphonic black metal, war metal, suicidal black metal, atmospheric/ambient black metal, blackened post-rock, progressive black metal, black-thrash, blackened death metal, industrial black metal, national social black metal, black/doom, blackened crust, black n’ roll… and a peculiar little anti-style often referred to half-ironically as “post-black metal.”

Click to read more…

I don’t want traditional black metal when I listen to Sigh. I want to feel like I’ve lost my fucking mind, like I’m on a bad acid trip that will never end, like I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or awake.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “L’art de Mourir,” the new Sigh song which is streaming here. It comes off of the band’s new album, Scenes from Hell, and it is even better than I’d hoped. I have no fucking idea what drug gives this band their inspiration, but I want some, and I want some now. Smoke it, snort it, shoot it, shove it up my ass, I don’t care – I want I want I want. ‘Cause this song is just SO FUCKING COOL.

Scenes from Hell comes out January 19 on The End. I cannot fucking wait.

And if you haven’t already done so, please check out the exclusive in-studio blogs we posted from Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima.

-AR

So far, this is in line to be the second most metal cover art of 2010 (here’s the first)…

Starve for the Devil drops February 9 on Nuclear Blast. Arsis will also be on the MetalSucks sponsored Tyrants of Evil North American Tour 2010, alongside Exodus, Mutiny Within, and headliners Arch Enemy. Get dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

Pretty big week here at the MetalSucks Mansion. We laughed, we cried, we fired someone, we rocked out with our cocks out. Here’s a rundown of the highlights:

• We debuted a new song by The Devin Townsend Project, a new video by Skeletonwitch, a new song by Javelina, and the cover art for Sigh’s new album.
• Horse the Band’s Lord Gold blogged about Nawlins and cocaine, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle gave us an exclusive statement about that whole cup throwing incident, Dallas Coyle is giving away music for free, and Daath’s Eyal Levi talked about a run-in with the Polacks and drum triggers.
• We spoke to Dethklok’s Brendon Small, Converge’s Jacob Bannon, Gojira’s Joe Duplantier, and Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix.
• We checked out new releases from Baroness, The Red Chord, Skeletonwitch, Immortal, Vains of Jenna, Vampire Mooose, and Javelina. Also, some asshole really likes Oceano.
• We’re sponsoring the incredibly awesome Tyrants of Evil North American Tour 2010 with Arch Enemy, Exodus, Arsis, and Mutiny Within!

Alright. I’m going to see Where the Wild Things Are now. I’m fairly certain that it is going to make me weep like Gary Suarez. See ya Monday.

-AR