Trying to keep up with the changes at a music festival is like trying to herd a pack of rabid cats. The South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival is the biggest musical kitty corral of them all. That’s why you have me here to help you make heads or tails of all your SXSW metallic/hard rock/punk rock/experimental/etc. needs.

There have been plenty of line-up changes since my last SXSW music post over a week ago. First on the list is the welcome news that NOLA-sludgekings eyehategod will team up with doom metal pioneers Pentagram to close out the conference on Saturday, March 19 (both bands will be going on after midnight, so, technically, they are playing on March 20) at the Scoot Inn. They’ll be joined by a stellar group of bands including Cough and Naam.

Other notable additions include YOB, Slough Feg, and Zoroaster.

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We’re shuttering the Mansion gates early today for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday, ’cause let’s face it: you’ve all gone home already and have long since put up your “I am out of the office. If it’s urgent, call my cell phone” auto-responders. Please, people: no one cares about you. Get over it!

Here’s what happened in this abbreviated week while might or might not have been checking your Blackberries:

• Two bears reviewed Daath’s new record and called us faggots.
• Haste the Day decided to hang it up, as did Chimaira’s Jim LaMarca.
• Two Greeks showed us the only proper way to react to a brass band busking on the street.
• All of J.S. Bach’s organ works are available for free download; know your metal forefathers, son!
• Revocation’s Dave Davidson kept us up to date with the latest shenanigans to befall The Legacy Tour with Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya and Periphery, while Daath’s Eyal Levi thinks the picture looks bleak for today’s unsigned metal bands hoping to make it big.
• Are there single songs you like by bands you otherwise abhor?
• Crowbar released a new jam!
• Bob Cock spoke with Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi.
• We Contaminated our Cooking by making baked mac and cheese and collard greens with Woe’s Chris Griggs.

We’ll be stuffing our faces full of food and booze tomorrow and recovering all day Friday. See ya Monday!

-VN

After a late night and a groggy start across two time zones, Slough Feg frontman/mastermind Mike Scalzi took a more than entertaining half hour out of his morning to speak with MetalSucks. Fun? Yes. Hilarious? Also yes. Informative? You have no idea. Boring? Fork no. Expect Slough Feg’s latest Profound Lore release, The Animal Spirits, to appear on this writer’s year end list. And if you haven’t listened yet: you’re missing out.

The man, the mystery, and the shredator at large up after the jump.

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Back in January, Mayhem announced a tour with some ridiculously awesome support acts, including Ludicra, Krallice, and Tombs; then, in true Mayhem fashion, they cancelled the tour just a couple of weeks later. And I think pretty much everyone had the same reaction: “Ludicra, Krallice, and Tombs should just tour without Mayhem.” Because it was still an incredibly strong bill even without the black metal legends.

Well, hey, guess what? Ludicra are doing just that! They’ve announced the wittily monikered “De-Cancellation Tour 2010,” which will find Krallice doing even more dates than they were scheduled to play with Mayhem, and even has Tombs tagging along for a handful of shows. Various shows will also feature support from a diverse line-up of other kick-ass bands, including Lair of the Minotaur, Slough Feg, Ocean (not The Ocean, but still a great band), and Kowloon Walled City, so I’d say “To hell with Attila.”

Get dates after the jump. And it’s worth noting that Ludicra’s excellent new record, The Tenant, is available now on Profound Lore Records via the label’s website. Sooner or later I’ll try to write something a little more proper about that album, but for now I’ll just say “Buy it.” It has the MS seal of approval.

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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

From time to time in the past we’ve exchanged e-mails with The Austerity Program‘s Justin Foley, and the dude’s e-mails were so goddamn funny (not to mention smart) that we finally asked him to write for us. Hopefully Justin’s contributions to MetalSucks will become a regular, or at least semi-regular, occurrence. Enjoy!

MORE COMPLAINTS ABOUT THAT BAD VILLAGE VOICE THING. I KNOW, IT’S BEST TO IGNORE THESE THINGS BUT I JUST CAN’T THIS TIME.

“O Confusion! Cruel mistress – thou who would lead thine servants to slaughter like a lamb also gets led (Ed – to slaughter). Cruel! Innocent lambs, gently editing metal blogs, knowing not of your unkind plans nor the wicked scroll of fate.” Henry VI, Act 4

Like many of you jokers, I was struck with a growing sadness as I read the nonsense that that nice Wingerschmidt boy posted the other day. Sadness because it really missed the main point about the Voice’s article –a refreshingly pure distillation of concentrated bullshit. Fortunately, I didn’t miss it and neither did many of those who commented. But just in case there’s any doubt, let me tell you why that Voice writer has it so, so wrong.

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Last week I solicited suggestions for awesome bands with female members that we don’t routinely write about here at MS, and a bunch of you obliged. So now I’m gonna try and actually listen to some of these bands over the next few days.

Ludicra was the very first band suggested, but the reader known as “lo;” Arthur von Nagel of Cormorant and sometimes MetalSucks and then Ziltoid chimed in with their seal of approval, too. Then last night the band came up again when we got a press release announcing that Ludicra are “putting the finishing touches” on their fourth full-length album, The Tenant, which will be out on Profound Lore in March 2010.

So, yeah. Let’s start with Ludicra.

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A nearly twenty-year-old band with a disc called Atavism in its catalog on a label known for its pre-1985 metal jones releases another retro heavy metal record? Get outta here! Next you’re gonna tell me the new Hatebreed’s got breakdowns in it. As with every other album in their catalog, Slough Feg’s seventh, Ape Uprising!, defiantly bucks two decades’ worth of progress in the metal world. It’s even tough to reconcile the term “new album” with Ape Uprising!’s analog, leather-clad, early-80s swashbuckling sound. This is the hard rock/metal hybrid your older stepbrother would bump at a teenage sausagefest in his mom’s basement, singing “Never coming down from the trees! / Never bending down on my knees!” with fists shaking at the sky.

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