To me, nothing is as fully sweet like pop music played heavy and with controlled virtuosity. It’s like a famous master chef whipping up simple, delicious hot dogs for my face; it seems foolish to abandon such classic fare to high-volume/low-margin assembly lines, right? Hence my devotion to the jamz of Rush, Bay Area thrash, Iron Maiden, Deftones, Devin Townsend, Love/Hate, Blessed By A Broken Heart, and tons more snappy songwriters with big boner crunch.

So I warmly welcome Look Right Penny, whose debut album Sugar Lane (out Tuesday) is a slam dunk of pop-djent metal. Click to read more…

Reunited-but-not-really prog metal pioneers SiKth have officially  announced what we all basically already knew: a new album is on the way!

The announcement came via the band’s newly launched Facebook page, following the band’s decision earlier this week to launch said Facebook page and a new merch site. Launching Facebook pages and new merch sites aren’t things that broken up bands typically do so we all surmised new music would come eventually, but still, it’s encouraging to hear that SiKth aren’t just releasing a greatest hits collection or live album — we’re getting actual new material:

Click to read more…

Heavy Blog is Heavy’s Alkahest is like the TMZ of prog metal; the dude picks up on so many Facebook and Twitter tidbits from prog metal bands in all corners of the world on such a regular basis that I’m convinced he’s either got an army of prog metal paparazzi or he just sits in front of the computer with Facebook on one monitor and Tweetdeck on the other while posting blogs to HBIH using his iPhone. I imagine his desk looks something like this. I mean that as a compliment, by the way, because Alkahest’s devotion to the interhole makes my job all that much easier.

This morning’s exciting news via Heavy Blog: posthumously legandary U.K. prog/tech metallers SiKth have launched an official Facebook page and opened a new merch store. But don’t get too excited just yet; SiKth claim they aren’t reuniting, at least not yet, but they’re certainly being awfully vague about their plans for the future and they’re certainly leaving the possibility open. Here’s the official statement from the band on why this, why now:

Click to read more…

We expected a lot from the various members of SiKth after they split up for good in 2008. All we’ve really gotten to date was a decent but ultimately “wow factor”-lacking record from Pin’s Aliases last year, a project that kinda sounded like SiKth gone djent (ironic given the fact that SiKth unwittingly played a hand in inspiring the entire djent movement). We’ve been hearing reports that ex-SiKth vocalist Mikee Goodman had been working with Iron Maiden guitar vet Adrian Smith since August of 2010 with nothing to show for it… until now. And, kinda surprisingly, the first song they’ve released is absolutely GREAT. And it sounds nothing like SikTh whatsoever. Here’s “I See Lights” from the new project, whose moniker — Primal Rock Rebellion — is so unfortunate I almost considered not mentioning it at all:

I See Lights by PrimalRockRebellion

Sweet, right? Totally different than what you were expecting, right?

Add it to the list of potentially exciting albums on the block for release in early 2012. Primal Rock Rebellion comes out on February 27 via Spinefarm Records.

-VN

I only heard Funeral For A Friend’s music cuz years ago some wise-guy listening station tricked me into granting an audience to their fancy debut album. I screwed up cuz my attention was devoted to picking gross hairs off these gnarly public headphones and to unkinking their fucked-up cord, and I thought I’d pressed the button to start the first album by prog-death awesomes Sikth. I stood there, FFAF started playing and I was all confused, thinking, “Wow, Sikth is way whinier than I expected.” Anyway, long story short, I discovered and corrected my error, rocked out to Sikth, and duh a week later slunk back to the record store to get the FFAF.

That was freaking 2003. I’ve stuck with them through a few years and a few albums whose target audience is way pussier than me. But this just in: This year Fh-Faff did a heavy record! Of course these are relative terms, but it’s heavy for them, and heavier than their heaviest, whose producer was Colin Richardson (Carcass). And they seem super-focused cuz for only the second time, a FFAF album has enough great songs to justify its existence; albums three through five (six?) were softer than lotion. Now the band sounds maybe like late Bad Religion via Gothenberg. Super memorable everything. There’s even a good guitar solo.

The best part is except for its pity hipster title and the song that shares it, 2011′s Welcome Home Armageddon basically represents my wish for tomorrow’s radio metal: ultra catchy but reverent and deftly heavy, not too sugary or bratty, instrumental passages/riff lengths appropriate to contemporary attention spans, crisp, and no grunting or baby screams. And absolutely, positively no sweaty muscles. Srs dear reader, go up there and click on that video, it’s slick! I mean, I get it if a metal dude wouldn’t want to support these relative cupcakes, but hey, just think if bands of this approximate style/quality got big and swept away the Nickelback-type douche stuff! I dream :)

-ADF

Funeral For A Friend’s Welcome Home Armageddon is the jam and you can buy it here. Or don’t, but for your future, click here.  

We’ve been excited about Aliases — the new project featuring guitarist Pin, formerly the much beloved, now departed MetalSucks proverbial wet dream band SikTh — pretty much since we first heard about them back in April of last year. Now the band’s debut album, Safer than Reality, is finally on the verge of release, and our bro-bros at Metal Injection have premiered the band’s first video, for the song “What’s Left For Us” (below). And while it’s not a ground-breaking video, it is a very good video — it’s amazing what some decent editing and a little bit of glow-in-the-dark liquid can do for a clip like this, ain’t it? — bolstered by the fact that the song is excellent, and, as Vince would put it, “appropriately SikTh-y.”

Safer than Reality comes out August 15 on Basick. We’re really stoked to hear the rest of this album.

-AR

With an exception, my 2010 best albums could’ve been predicted months in advance. To me, last year was all about reliable, established bands and their awesome but journalistically unsexy jams. But elsewhere than my best-loved albums, 2010 had a few saucy surprises up its tattered sleeve. For one, it was shocking to find that the best melody record of the year was made by a fake band for a suckass movie; nope, did not expect to love that shit. Also, I didn’t remotely foresee announcements of Judass Priest’s final tour (bummer), Adrian Smith’s pairing with members of Sikth (wtf/awesome), the Mike Portnoy saga (over it), or the slight return of Coroner (full bonerz). Again and again, I was surprised!

But in a couple cases, my mere surprise was no longer adequate; I was forced to upgrade to astonishment. Example? Okay here’s one: It turns out that I really like Silent Civilian’s Ghost Stories, a surprisingly unshitty 2010 metalcore outing led by the surprisingly huge-gutted Jonny Santos of Spineshank. I mean, it’s metalcore that isn’t total garbage! Wild, huh?

But that shit was nothing compared to the brain-blasting shock that awaited me the late December evening that I first laid ears on Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold. Goddamn! Those guys haven’t made a listenable jam since the Troy Gregory-heavy 1990 gem When The Storm Comes Down and that was um two decades ago. So my low expectations were primed to be vaulted over by a good Flots album. Well, forget “good;” The Cold is awesome — like, freaking Nevermore awesome! By the second song (below), my bowtie was spinning so hard that it detached itself and beheaded my best geraniums.

-ADF

Order Flotsam And Jetsam’s The Cold here and then glue your socks on. Safety first.

It’s been a while since the MS staff was collectively jizzing over U.K. spazz-progsters SikTh, but that doesn’t mean the now defunct band is any less dear to our hearts. Quite the opposite; any time we hear about the involvement of any ex-SikTh member in a new project we get pretty darn excited, like when we first heard about guitarist Pin’s new band Aliases.

And this week we’ve got news about not one, not two, but THREE ex-members of the now-legendary U.K. sextet.

Click to read more…

When I interviewed Phil Anselmo about his Housecore Records label back in March, one of the bands he was most excited about signing was Nawlins outfit haarp. Here’s what Mr. Anselmo had to say about the band… try to picture it in his drawl to get the full effect:

“…they’re definitely classified as ‘metal.’ But they transcend the genre. They come up with such different concepts and whatnot. They’re a very different, different band – kind of in their own category, I would say. They play slow, but to call them ‘a slow band’ is absolutely unfair. They’re crushing. They are resolute. It’s a beating. They’re fucking onto something.”

A few weeks later, Vince sang their praises in an edition of “Reader’s Choice,” too, calling haarp “a less technical and more straight-up American metal sounding version of SiKth.”

So by now, you surely wanna check these dudes out, right?

Here’s your chance: haarp are streaming a new song, “All, Alone,” right here. It comes off the band’s new album, The Filth, which was produced by — you guessed it! — Anselmo himself. And it certainly sounds like something he would dig/make.

So give it a listen, then let us know what you think. Housecore will release The Filth on November 23.

-AR

Back in April we told you that Pin, guitarist of the much beloved, now departed MetalSucks proverbial wet dream band SikTh, is back with a new SikTh-y new project called Aliases. Since SikTh fans are generally the kind of music dorks who troll message boards and update Wikipedia instantly with anything so much as the growth of a new testicle hair on any one member’s scrotum, I doubt that this was news to any existing fans but I do hope I turned a few new folks on to the magic of SikTh and/or Aliases.

Aliases have finally posted their first full song, “We Never Should Have Met,” the first with their new vocalist whose name doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere. The song is appropriately SikTh-y, although the lack of SikTh’s patented two-vocalist approach makes it different enough so as not to be too close for comfort. But isn’t too close for comfort kinda what we all want from any post-SikTh projects anyway? Regardless, the song rules. Check it out.

-VN

Thanks: Jesse Z., Alex Davis

If there’s any band that’s even come close to filling the void left by the late wonky, freaky prog metallers SikTh, that band is CiliCe; they even inexplicably capitalize random letters of their one-word band name. You may remember that CiliCe vocalist Daniël De Jongh left the band in March to fill the void in Textures left by departed singer Eric Kalsbeek, so if you weren’t familiar with CiliCe until then, that should tell you something about the band; they’re really, really good. Kalsbeek was no slouch, and any band that’s compared favorably to SiKth and Textures certainly isn’t full of any slouches either. “Slouch” sounds kind of funny when you repeat it a bunch of times. Say it aloud. Slouch slouch slouch. What the fuck?

Got Djent is reporting that the still vocalist-less CiliCe have released a new video for “Mental Breakdown” from 2009′s excellent Deranged Headtrip album. This strikes me as somewhat of an odd time to release a video — the album having come out almost a year and a half ago — but perhaps the band is just trying to stay in the minds of fans, and at the same time trying to get into the news to aid their vocalist search. It’s a live clips video, but it’s a really well-done one, and since the band has never come to the U.S. (to my knowledge) it’s a cool look into what these dudes look like and play like. Check it out.

-VN

Then go listen to Aliases [NEED SINGER], the new band featuring SikTh guitarist Pin. If, like us, you were incredibly distraught when SikTh announced they’d be breaking up a couple of years back, be distraught no more — Aliases [NEED SINGER] sound more or less exactly like SikTh, musically speaking, but without a singer as their band name indicates. The appropriately titled “Riff Sampler” track posted on their MySpace page should be more than enough to get you all erect/wet.

Oh and apparently they want a singer so badly they named their band after this pressing need. Whatupwitdat, dudes?

-VN

Thanks: Long long long time Suckalo Alex Davis

I assume that the majority of you are all eaten out (!) after your many respective turkey (or tofurkey) fests…

But do any of you actually know the real origin of how Thansgiving got its moniker?

A long time ago, when the Pilgrams were raping and pillaging dem poor Injuns, a boorish chap by the name of William Sanford exclaimed (mid-plunder) to a trembling Native American farmer: “THANKS FER GIVIN US ALL YER LAND, RED MAN!!!!!!!!!!!”

And thus, not only was the name you now know to be Thanksgiving bestowed upon the holiday whence we sit down to stuff our faces with delicious bounty (much like the plethora of food those wacky Pilgrams stole from the Indians)………….but also, the rapper Redman got his name.

ENOUGH ABOUT AMERICA……….it’s time to revere an old favorite — unfortunately one of my 72 hard drives recently futzed out, so I can’t post any tracks per se, but you can go here or here to witness the awesome majesty that was (sad face) UK melodo-tech-mastermindzzz Sikth.

THE BRITISH ARE COMING, THE BRITISH ARE COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!

-KW

The UK’s Fellsilent — a Sumeriancore band who are on, duh, Sumerian Records (and Basick in the UK) — have a new video for their track “Immerse” [sent in by Spencer B.]. The video itself is pretty cool with some neat-o lighting effects and a giant mosh pit, and makes me wish I was 19 again and tearing shit up in the pit. The song, on the otherhand… this band’s just got nothing original to offer. Fellsilent like their heroes so much that they cop Meshuggah riffs like they’re on sale at the 99¢ store (not to mention the patented Meshuggah forward-and-back headbang) and they even have two lead vocalists like Sikth, the band from which they steal their rhythm and lead guitar diddly-dos. They’re competent, sure, but being a competent rip-off artist of good bands does not a good band make by association. I call BS on Fellsilent. You be the judge.

-VN

FELLSILENT – Immerse (official video) from Basick Records on Vimeo.

When we introduced you to Sikth, you thanked us. When we introduced you to Textures, you thanked us again.

So, when we say you absolutely need to hear something… you fucking need to hear it. And why not: it’s free!

LISTEN TO ANIMALS AS LEADERS!!!

The fine folks at the unfuckwithable metal label Prosthetic Records have hooked us up with a free track for you from the brand new Animals as Leaders album, out next Tuesday. This is intricate instru-metal of the highest caliber for the kind of metal fan who’s more concerned with musicianship, arrangement and composition than with “being fucking br00tal dudez!!” (though it certainly is heavy). It’s the brainchild of guitar wunkerkind Tosin Abasi, who is pretty much the Trent Reznor of this micro-genre of metal in that the band is basically just his project. Stream and download below. Enjoy.

Animals as Leaders – “Tempting Time”

-VN

Round about the time this site was jocking the wares of avant-garde prog metallers Sikth and Textures, several of you emailed us about the French band Hacride. And as usual, you were right on the money. While Hacride don’t have the frenetic nature of Sikth nor the epic sense of melody of Textures, they do have the technicality and the brutal grooves of both, which naturally just means they all have a common influence in Meshuggah. But theirs is a slower, more raw version of any of the above; in fact, the band I’d most liken Hacride to is Norway’s Benea Reach — punishing, grooving, articulate, deliberate and beautiful all the same. This is Meshuggah strung out on heroin, lounging back in a dirty old armchair with a cigarette burnt to the filter in one hand and the TV remote control in the other.

The band’s got a new album Lazarus coming out on April 20th, and they’ve posted the song “My Enemy” (all 10 minutes of it!) on their MySpace page. Go listen to that shit! It’s some of the best material Hacride have written to date. And if you like it, pre-order the record with a limited edition Hacride t-shirt on Listenable Records’ MySpace.

-VN

MetalSucks Maniac Steve M. sent us this live clip of non-protested, self-professed Protest the Hero heroes (and perrenial MetalSucks bonerrific band) Sikth performing live in Bristol in 2006. That we’ll never have the opportunity to see this amazing band play live hurts my soul in ways you could never imagine.

-VN

Thanks to Michael for sending us this funny lyric interpretion of Sikth’s “Such the Fool,” in the tradition of such classic lyric interpretations as Paranoidave’s famous Trivium “Boat, Rudder” spoof and As I Lay Dying’s bovine fetish. Michael even credits MetalSucks with introducing him to Sikth, now one of his favorite bands. Awwww, shucks, thanks Michael!

-VN

MetalSucks readers lamenting the demise of our “proverbial wet dream” band Sikth earlier this year can take comfort in the next best thing: a band called Cyclamen that apes Sikth so intentionally they even recruited ex-Sikth vocalist Mikee to perform on one of their tracks. And you know what? It may as well be fuckin’ Sikth. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced this ISN’T Sikth.

Listen to an untitled track below featuring Mikee from Sikth and sent in by MetalSucks reader Steve M., then check out a couple of other demos on Cyclamen’s MySpace page. Then listen to the real Sikth all day long.

Cyclamen – Untitled

-VN

I like to think that our incessant posts about little-known bands we find have some effect on gaining those bands a broader fan-base. Judging by the number of you who email us thanking us for introducing them to bands like Sikth, it seems like we’re at least doing something right. The latest Vince Neilstein circle jerk, also known as the Dutch prog-metal band Textures, finally appears to be getting some traction and well-deserved attention here in the U.S. This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

The progenitors of the blog Hipsters Out of Metal not only publicly thanked us for introducing them to Textures (“Metal Sucks’ tireless efforts forced me to love them”) but tipped us off to some recent live footage of the band we hadn’t seen yet. How’s that for reciprocity and blogger goodwill? Enjoy. God damn, this band is so fucking good.

-VN