Recently I was at a recording studio to help a friend on this dude’s song. We wrote a new part and dude was struggling to sing it, so we adjourned to the smoking area. There, away from studio pressure, the two of us worked on it quietly. It was rough, but just as hope was about to be lost, this hipster lady popped around the corner, said she’d been eavesdropping, and basically took over teaching this dude to sing a simple but rangey part.

It totally worked and later she listed her awesome singing credentials, by which we were impressed. So I was like, “Do you record in this building too?” She giggled druggily at that, explaining that the porn production company she co-owns had offices down the hall. Cordially, she passed us stickers for their website, whose weird content combines banging, food, and food banging. She hung in the doorway just long enough to see our reaction to the stickers, all smiling as our eyebrows went up. Cool chick.

The moral of the story: You just never know what to expect, right? This story perfectly illustrates my approach to Spineshank, a reunited nu-metal band that shrieks a lot and uses lulzy electronics (= a food pornographer…), but whose hooks and riffs are awesome enough to overcome that stuff (…who’s also a pro voice coach). They don’t look like pros, but at least one of them must be! It was true in 2000 and it is true now! Srs if you don’t jam on their new song (above), you might suck at listening to music :)

–ADF

Spineshank currently seeks a label home for Anger Denial Acceptance, their fourth album, for a 2012 release. 

The fine folks over at Noisecreep had not one but two big track debuts today. And so, although it is unfair to the bands, I am lumping them into one post. Sorry.

And so –

• As I Lay Dying have debuted their cover of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” which is actually one of two Priest covers which will appear on their upcoming tenth anniversary release, Decas. (The other JP tune is “Hellion,” in case you’re curious.) The structure and music of the original haven’t been changed much for this cover, but the band definitely changed the whole vibe and style of it, making it appropriate AILD-esque. Check it out here. Decas comes out November 8 on Metal Blade, and then then the band heads out for a headlining tour. You can get dates here.
• Spineshank have unveiled a new tune called “Murder Suicide” here. I was never really a Spineshank fan, but there were certainly far worse bands to emerge from that scene/era, and that’s basically how I feel about this song — it’s no masterpiece, but it didn’t make me wanna tear my eardrums out with a pair of tweezers, so there’s that. And in their defense, they haven’t changed their sound much since the last time I heard them, so at least they’re not chasing trends. The band has apparently completed a new album, entitled Anger Denial Acceptance, and searching for a label to release it sometime next year. So, uh, if you, like, own a label or something, maybe give these dudes a ring?

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.

I enjoyed a handful of tracks off of Silent Civilian’s 2006 debut, Rebirth of the Temple; I seem to recall “Bitter Pill” having a pretty cool guitar solo and a catchy chorus. It was certainly better than front man Jonny Santos’ other, more famous band, Spineshuck. So we were stoked to hear what SC came up with for their sophomore effort.

Unfortunately, the new song they debuted last April, “The Last One Standing,” was, in Vince’s words, “a little bit meh.” And a new track the band has just debuted at Revolver, “Atonement,” is pretty much more of the same.

Click to read more…

Silent Civilian’s 2006 debut Rebirth of the Temple was a really fucking solid record, a shining example of metalcore done right at the peak of the genre’s popularity. The riffs crushed, melding American core and Swedish shred with the now infamous Decibel-named “good cop / bad cop” vocal style, only at the time it hadn’t been beaten to death yet. Who woulda thunk that any member of Spineshank could shred so hard? Rebirth also benefitted from ginoromous Logan Mader production (Gojira, Psycroptic, Cavalera Conspiracy). I remember really digging the record at the time, so I was elated to hear that from a press release that Silent Civilian are working on a new record, Ghost Stories, for release this October.

Click to read more…

Sorry I’m late on this one. My bad.

ANYWAY, last week’s logo belonged to Bahimiron, and for correctly recognizing that, MetalSucks Maniacs Chad Larsen, Stephnie Andreassen, Joshua Ray Jacobs(a second time winner!), Mike Meyer and Dorian Pape all win copies of The Best of Obituary. I hope it brings them all hours and hours of headbanging joy.

This week the metal mo’fos over at Roadrunner have given us six copies of The Best of Spineshank to share with you folks. Spineshank just announced that they’re reuniting, so here’s your chance to brush up on their back catalog.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select six winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their names next Monday. Good luck!

-AR

The chill of fall is in the air but the gossip mill never cools off at the MetalSucks Mansion. This week’s notables and quotables included:

• Original guitarist Peter Wichers returned to Soilwork and ex-At All Cost guitarist Mike Carrigan replaced Kris Norris in Darkest Hour; we rejoiced that great Soilwork music will once again be made and that Mike’s got a job. But the good was tempered by the bad as Christian Alvestam left Scar Symmetry and Spineshank reunited. There is no justice.
• Winds of Plague’s Kristen Randall showed the world her bewbs!
• We reviewed solid new albums by Into Eternity, Enslaved and All Shall Perish, and waxed ecstatic about Burst, Vince’s new proverbial wet dream.
• New videos from The Human Abstract and Amon Amarth are unbelievably epic.
• A scandal erupted involving the audio quality of Death Magnetic, alternate Guitar Hero mixes, and the now infamous “Better, Shorter, Cut” abridged edition.
• Vince & Axl [almost] reveal their true identities.

See ya next week.

In hindsight, that time you were a kid and went camping with your friends and some sketchy dude in a car rolled up out of nowhere and rolled his window down just an inch and spoke real low so you’d have to get close to his car because he was probably trying to abduct and rape you might seem like a funny story to tell people – but it doesn’t mean you’d necessarily wanna re-live it. I mean, it probably sucked at the time, the realization that you were a half-step away from living out a Friday the 13th movie.

So Spineshank have gotten back together.

Click to read more…

Horns up for MetalSucks Maniacs Bryan Mobley, Rob Dudinack, and Victor Avila. They each correctly identified last week’s logo as that of the band Korgonthurus, and they each win a free copy of Cradle of Filth’s exclusive Hot Topic EP colored picture-disc vinyls featuring three tracks from the album Thornography and a rare cover of the Misfits classic “Halloween 2.” I am actually jealous that we have to give those away instead of keeping them for ourselves.

This week’s logo comes to us from Mithila Umanga at MetalCracker.com, and if you can correctly identify it, you could win a copy of The Best of Spineshank, courtesy the very nice men and women at Roadrunner Records.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select three winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce their name next Monday.

Good luck…

-AR