The Faceless have been confirmed for Summer Slaughter 2012. That’s not shocking news, seeing as the band — like the fest’s previously announced co-headliners, Cannibal Corpse and Between the Buried and Me — have been rumored to be participating in the tour for three weeks now.

But it is still good news! Anyone who complains about a show where they’ll get to see Cannibal Corpse, BTBAM, and The Faceless should be hit in the head with a Halestorm album. Plus, there’s still at least seven other bands still to be announced; assuming the rumors continue to be true, those will include Job For A Cowboy, Veil of Maya, and Hate Eternal, all of whom are also awesome. And Vince and I got word of yet ANOTHER great band set to be on the tour over the weekend. So, yeah, everyone is going to this.

The next band will be officially announced on Sunday via the Summer Slaughter Facebook page.

-AR

The rumors are true: Cannibal Corpse and Between the Buried and Me will co-headline this year’s edition of the Summer Slaughter festour. BTBAM and The Corpse obviously play very, very different forms of death metal, but they’re both great. It’s hard to imagine any metal fan who isn’t a total fun-hating grump not being excited about this bill.

None of the other rumored acts — which include The Faceless, Job For A Cowboy, Veil of Maya, and Hate Eternal — have been confirmed yet, and, as Lambgoat reports in a tone I very much appreciate, “Unfortunately, it looks like the Summer Slaughter people are going to string this out, with remaining participants to be announced each Sunday (one-by-one) via Facebook.” The past two Summer Slaughters have featured ten bands apiece, so we should know the full line-up by the end of March.

In any case, between this and the solid line-up Mayhem Fest has put together this year, it looks like it could be a really fun summer…

-AR

via Topless Robot

I would give anything for that to be the actual James Bond theme music from now on, wouldn’t you?

ANYWAY, here’s some shit we did this week:

• We spoke to Neige from Alcest and SL from The Devil’s Blood.
• Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick got pissed the Packers losing.
• We checked out the latest releases from Nails, Skin Like Iron, Fatal Birth, and No Tolerance.
• We previewed some more more Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2012: 7 Horns 7 Eyes, Crazy Lixx, Wormed, and Imperial State Electric.
• We got excited about the rumored line-ups for both Summer Slaughter and Mayhem Fest.
• We helped Godsmack, Staind, and Halestorm name their new tour.
• We enjoyed Juliet’s video for “My First Hardcore Song.”
• We suffered through a bad trip with The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato.
• We felt bad for Trivium — poor bastards have to go tour with Asking Alexandria.
• We pondered whether the shutdown of Megaupload was good or bad.

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the most up-to-date suckitude.

See ya Monday, folks!

-AR

Out of all of the big summer package tours, Summer Slaughter has easily become our favorite; it’s so much fun every year that we’re even willing to forgive the to-be-expected presence of some bands we can’t stand (e.g., Oceano, As Blood Runs Black, etc.), because the rest of the line-up built around them is usually so fantastic that having a few built-in beer breaks isn’t the worst thing in the world (as opposed to some of SS’s competitors, where the beer-break-to-cool-band ratio makes the whole endeavor just not worth it). So, yeah, we’re on the edge of our seats to see who makes it onto the bill this year.

To that end, prog metal social network czar Alkahest of Heavy Blog has done it once again, today with some pretty juicy rumors about the lineup for Summer Slaughter 2012.

Click to read more…

Earlier this month, as part of our sponsorship of this year’s Summer Slaughter tour, we announced that we had two ESP guitars to give away, both signed by all the members of co-headliners The Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel. We asked MetalSucks readers the following question: “Which Black Dahlia Murder or Whitechapel song is the anthem for your summer?” Congrats to MS readers Diego Aguilar and Anthony Arellano for providing our favorite answers and netting themselves a sweet guitar in the process. Their answers, after the jump.

Click to read more…

MetalSucks is once again sponsoring the Summer Slaughter tour, which is quickly approaching the halfway mark of its annual North American run (dates here). But the fun here at the MS Mansion is just getting started, not because next week’s NYC play is right around the corner but because we’ve been given two ESP guitars to give away by the tour’s organizers! Both guitars are ESP LTD Viper Series models (shown above) and are signed by all the members of this year’s co-headliners, The Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel. Woah; you mean to say you can win one of these bad boys for the price of free? Yes, yes you can.

TO WIN — Write a comment below telling us your answer to the following question: “Which Black Dahlia Murder or Whitechapel song is the anthem for your summer?” This is MetalSucks, not your 3rd grade homework assignment, so remember to be funny, interesting, and most of all creative with your answer. Axl and Vince will hand-select their two favorite entries when the tour ends and will notify winners by email shortly thereafter, so be sure to enter your comment with a valid email address you check frequently. Good luck!

Ever since Within the Ruins were chosen as the opening band on Summer Slaughter via popular fan vote there’s been speculation that some of the other bands who were up for that final slot would team up for a tour of their own. That tour — dubbed the Slaughter Survivors Tour — has finally been announced, and as with its namesake older brother, it’s a mixed bag.

Conducting From the Grave will headline, which for me is neither a great thing or a bad one; I liked their first album and enjoyed their set at NEMHF 2009, but felt that their follow-up album saw them regressing towards the genericness of their peers. I feel roughly the same way about The Contortionist; I could take them or leave them. Regular readers of MetalSucks know we LOVE Scale the Summit, so there’s that. Volumes play generic 2nd-gen djent, Structures play generic 3rd-gen Sumeriancore (but have sick choreographed stage moves, brah!!!), and Rings of Saturn have some kind of tech-deathcore / Psyopus-meets-Oceano thing going on that isn’t wowing me on first listen.

So that’s your tour, ladies and gents. One great band, a couple of OK bands, and a couple of shitty bands. In other words, this will be a great opportunity to catch Scale the Summit! Dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

Happy Monday. Only five days to go until the weekend!

Yeah, it sucks — I mean I actually like my job, but it probably sucks for you — but hopefully this will relieve your stress: there are clips from each and every song on Ritual, the new album from The Black Dahlia Murder, streaming here, and clips from each and every song on This is Where it Ends, the new album from All Shall Perish, in the video below. Hey, a couple of minutes of new music from these bands is better than nothing, y’know?

Ritual is really, really incredible, and I wish you guys could hear it all right now. Highlights from these clips include the intro to the opening track, “A Shrine to Madness,” and the oh-so-catchy riff from “Malenchantments of the Necrosphere,” which Vince has already proclaimed to be his favorite song on the album. It comes out June 21 on Metal Blade.

As for This is Where it Ends, we haven’t heard it yet save for a couple of songs, so at this point you guys basically have as much information as we do with which to make premature judgments. That being said, if your premature judgment isn’t “This album is gonna fuck my face off,” I don’t really understand you. I mean, this shit sounds crazy promising, doesn’t it? Alas, it’s a little further away than Ritual — it coms out July 26 on Nuclear Blast.

Now seems like a good time to remind you that The Black Dahlia Murder will spend their summer headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, which will also feature Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Dying Fetus, Six Feet Under, Oceano, Fleshgod Apocalypse, As Blood Runs Black, Powerglove, and Within the Ruins. You can get dates here.

Meanwhile, All Shall Perish will spend their summer on the not-MetalSucks-sponsored-but-still-pretty-cool Rockstar Mayhem Festival, along with Megadeth, Machine Head, In Flames, Trivium, Unearth, Suicide Silence, Kingdom of Sorrow, Red Fang, and some shitty nu-metal bands you don’t have to worry about. You can get dates for that trek here.

-AR

Remember when this year’s Summer Slaughter (which we’re sponsoring!) was announced, there was this fan poll to determine who the last band added to the bill should be?

Well, Within the Ruins have been announced as the winners! They’ll join The Black Dahlia Murder, Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Six Feet Under, Dying Fetus, As Blood Runs Black, Oceano, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Powerglove for all dates on the trek. Our own Dave Mustein wrote of the band, “WTR don’t suck live; their performance is nearly as good as on record, which is pleasantly surprising due to the ferocious technicality of their music.” So the band’s presence should just enhance your Summer Slaughter excitement.

Here are dates again, in case you need ‘em:

Click to read more…

MetalSucks is proud to once again be sponsoring the best mega-package tour of the summer — Summer Slaughter, of course! As you can see from the above poster, the mini-fest’s organizers have once again put together line-up that show cases a who’s who of the current metal scene.

And they’re taking it one step further this year — they’re letting YOU, the fans, decide who the last band added to the bill should be! Go to the official Summer Slaughter Facebook page to cast your vote.

Cities and dates for the tour will be announced on 4/20. ‘Til then… get ready to get slaughtered…

This year’s Summer Slaughter trek marks the return of Polish groove metal masters Decapitated to American soil, and last Sunday in NYC we got to witness the band’s new lineup first-hand. As expected, they completely slayed faces. No disrespect to Vitek and Covan, but the new lineup of Decapitated is fucking phenomenal and makes you forget the terrible tragedy to befall their brothers.

I haven’t found any decent footage of Decapitated’s NYC Summer Slaughter performance, but reader Chris Uber sent in this fantastic HD video of the band’s first performance with the new members, back on February 9th. Imagine this, but on a bigger stage and with more people watching and that’s what Summer Slaughter was like. It fucking ruled, plain and simple.

-VN

Axl and I finally got to hit up this year’s Summer Slaughter tour here in NYC on Sunday, and in person the lineup of bands was even better than on paper — and we’ve been raving about it on (i-)paper for months. Every band was just so good and they kept coming one right after the next; even Carnifex, to whom we’ve devoted a fair amount of time to slagging, weren’t bad… they’re a perfectly serviceable band but their music just happens to be really generic and uninteresting when compared to all the other bands on the bill.

Of all the bands I was seeing live for the first time — which was a lot of them — Veil of Maya are my pick for “best new/young band discovery.” I know they aren’t exactly a new band anymore, but the last several times they’ve come through town they’ve either been on crappy bills or I haven’t been able to go. Dudes really know how to pump up the crowd and give a razor-tight, energy-filled performance at the same time; from our view in the balcony we had an amazing view of the pit, and I gotta tell ya, shit was insanely brutal. Our birds’ eye view also afforded us a look at guitarist Marc Okubo’s fancy footwork; he uses a sampling pedal to live-record the creepy lead lines you hear in a lot of the band’s songs, then loops them on repeat while he plays the rhythm parts live and rocks out. I know plenty of guitarists do this but I think the way Okubo does it is unique, and it was cool to see it from atop.

Here’s VoM playing “[id]” and “Unbreakable” live on Sunday in NYC.

-VN

Animals as Leaders completely lived up to my uber-high expectations at the NYC stop of the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour last night; they were positively phenomenal. What’s more, I wasn’t only person so stoked in advance and so satisfied after; the minute openers Vital Remains finished playing hundreds of kids bum-rushed the stage to jockey for a good spot for Animals as Leaders, and the enthusiasm for Tosin Abasi’s traveling troupe of troubadors did not abate throughout their set. Guitar geeks screeched at the opening notes of each song, heads bobbed along with each polyrythmic shift, eyes laid transfixed on Tosin’s hands of lightning, and last but most certainly not least, bodies grooved along with the pulsating, atmospheric soundscapes.

It’s so good to see that so many people really, really like this band. They deserve all the attention and praise they’re getting, and all too often deserving acts get lost in the shuffle of what’s hip or scene. Animals as Leaders are neither, but judging by the reaction last night I’d say they could cut it on their own headlining tour right now, and they’ve done it solely by playing things their way and their way only. “Fuck yes” for good music winning a battle for once!

Here’s Tosin Abasi playing through “Song of Solomon” in a video he recorded for EMG pickups (posted on Got-Djent.com). Hopefully this will silence the haters who claim Abasi is just a fast, soul-less shredder; yeah, he’s fast as fuck, but LOOK at what he’s playing — there’s composition, forethought and most certainly soul behind those ripping quick leads. Abasi is one of the best guitar players in the world right now. Watch:

-VN

I completely, 110% share Metal Injection’s enthusiasm for seeing Animals as Leaders at Summer Slaughter this coming Sunday, for I was also at their SXSW performance and my mind, like Rob’s, was also shattered into a thousand little puny pieces by the superior super-human ability of Tosin Abasi and co. As we’ve said ad nauseam the Summer Slaughter lineup this year is absolutely stacked and I’m excited to see all the bands (except for one), but Animals as Leaders are definitely THE band I’m most pumped to watch. I’ll be rocking out up front and screaming like a little school girl fapping away in the corner as this band of extraordinarily talented gentlemen display their extraordinary musical powers… and somehow I’m gonna have to find a place to burn a doobie before their set. Hey, Summer Slaughter bands, if you wanna do a little puffin’ with Axl and Vince this Sunday, we’ll supply the greens if you supply the locale!

Here they are performing “CAFO” at the Summer Slaughter stop in Fort Worth, TX. Fuck yeah to the guy up front who’s doing windmills despite the fact that the band isn’t playing in any discernible time signature whatsoever for more than a few seconds at a time.

Summer Slaughter rolls through your town soon! Get dates for the MetalSucks-sponsored tour here.

-VN

[UPDATE: Some dates have been changes since the above poster was released. Updated cities and venues after the jump.]

A lot of you thought that the “big surprise” we hinted at last week was the announcement of Summer Slaughter 2010 dates. By now it’s obvious that that wasn’t the big surprise, but lucky for you we’ve got Summer Slaughter dates today anyway!

In case you somehow missed the news, the MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour is without a doubt THE metal package tour to be at this summer with a lineup that’s sexier than Sammy O’Hagar and Kip W. having an orgy with the MS Mansion Monkeys. Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Decrepit Birth, Animals as Leaders, Vital Remains… and, uh, Carnifex… will be taking the U.S. by storm this July and August. We’re beyond stoked for this lineup, and you should be too.

Dates are after the jump.

Click to read more…

I just wanna throw my two cents in…

True story: when I was a kid, I thought the lyrics to “Black No. 1″ were “You can’t go out ’cause your boobs are showing.” I was confused about what the song’s title meant, but otherwise, the words made perfect sense to me. Oh, misheard lyrics. You never cease to amuse.

Even if you weren’t a Type O Negative fan or a Carnivore fan, you have to admit that Peter Steele had one of the most distinctive voices in the history of metal. You never heard the guy and thought, “Gee, who is that?” And because my mother used to work with Josh Silver’s (now sadly also departed) dad, Type O Negative always felt, somehow, more tangible to me; Steele was iconic and often seemed larger than life, but I knew he wasn’t superhuman.That he passed away so young was a very unfortunate reminder that he wasn’t The Man of Steele. But he made his mark and left something to appreciated behind, and in the end, that’s all any of us can really ask for.

Here are some happier things that happened in the world of metal this week:

• We unveiled the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2010.
• We debuted a new video by Jungle Rot.
• We spoke to Kerry King and Dave Lombardo from Slayer, Chino Moreno from Deftones, and Stephen Pearcy from Ratt.
• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal contemplated depression, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa contemplated L O S T, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley contemplated the perfect Taco Riff.
• We checked out new releases by Levi/Werstler, Wormrot, and Bison B.C. and Sweet Apple.
• Ever dreamed of singing with Nevermore? We’re running pretty much the coolest contest in the history of ever.

Next week brings at least one and possibly two big surprises, plus, knock on a wood, the debut of a new column by a writer you will hate. See ya then.

-AR

Summer Slaughter is without a doubt the best metal tour hitting the U.S. pavement this Summer. The 100% confirmed, official lineup, which MetalSucks exclusively can reveal to you now, is…

DECAPITATED
THE FACELESS
ALL SHALL PERISH
THE RED CHORD
VEIL OF MAYA
CEPHALIC CARNAGE
DECREPIT BIRTH
CARNIFEX
ANIMALS AS LEADERS
VITAL REMAINS

I mean… wow. That lineup is unbelievably sexy and unfuckwithable. There isn’t a single band I could skip seeing other than Carnifex, and we gather many of you will feel the exact same way. There’s no doubt about it: Summer Slaughter is by far the best metal tour of Summer 2010. Rockstar Mayhem is lame, Ozzsharonfest is surely gonna be lame, and “The Cool Tour” is uh, not cool at all save a couple of bands. Comments tour founder and booking agent Ash Avildsen on how Summer Slaughter fits in (or doesn’t) with this Summer’s other metal tours: “I don’t think those tours really compete for many of the same fans as Summer Slaughter. This is focused on underground extreme metal rather than mainstream metal. All of our shows also have air conditioning.” Hooray for air conditioning!

The lineup is a shade younger than in years past, but young bands like The Faceless, Veil of Maya and Animals as Leaders are ones that are more likely to appeal to an older crowd than, say, Born of Osiris would. Avildsen knows exactly what he’s doing: “It’s a much younger line up this year, rather than a lot of older bands in the headlining positions. Tickets will be much cheaper for this same reason, coming in at under $20 in advance almost everywhere with the exception of LA and NYC. Most will be $18.” And it’s cheap, too… extra bonus.

Click to read more…

Wait until you guys see the lineup for this year’s Summer Slaughter tour. It absolutely SMOKES the Rockstar Mayhem Festival and rumored Ozzfest lineups… no competition. To say that the lineup is super-sexy would be an understatement.

You’re going to have to wait to find out who’s on the bill, but lucky for you Veil of Maya revealed in the above Metal Injection interview that they’re one of the bands. And while some of you will probably think Veil of Maya are too “scene”… just you wait until you see who else is on the bill. And for what it’s worth, I hold Veil of Maya in high regard as the sort of kings of that scene (in a good way) and some of the very best the genre has to offer.

Veil of Maya’s new record [id] just came out this past Tuesday on Sumerian Records. Check out a few of its songs on their MySpace page.

-VN

The second-to-last night of Summer Slaughter — the first of two nights at NYC’s Irving Plaza — was a fucking party. Axl and Vince arrived before doors opened to interview Darkest Hour mastermind Mike Schleibaum and were summarily handed beers. “New York City . . . oh god. Suffocation, and also sharing your dressing room [with Suffocation]. . . there’s going to be a lot of drinking. Beer is going to be hard to get. We should really start right after this interview!” mused Schleibaum before handing us a couple of Bud Lights to get things started off right. “It’s just a Bud Light, my friends,” he responded after we thanked him for the hospitality; true, but somehow “just a Bud Light” turned into “just a bottle of Jack Daniels” being completely polished off in the DH / Suffocation dressing room shortly thereafter. “The thing is – it’s going to get all drank by the time Blackguard’s finished,” prophecized Schleibaum. And so it went. The men of DH like their Jack (and their weed) and the endless stream of Suffocation ladies — 40-something Lawngisland bleach blondes with giant, fake tits — that paraded through the room all night provided much amusement for our chemically altered brains.

But before all of the shenanigans went down we sat with Mr. Schleibaum and chatted about the Summer Slaughter tour, the band’s new album The Eternal Return, the end of Darkest Hour’s deal with Victory Records and what that means for the band, the departure of guitarist Kris Norris and subsequent replacement with ex-At All Cost axeman Mike “Lonestar” Carrigan, working with producer Devin Townsend in the past, and a slew of other topics. Our chat, after the jump.

Click to read more…

Ahh, Michigan. We have lakes. Big fucking lakes. We used to have a booming car industry, but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you need not an explanation of why I won’t be speaking of that in this article. Besides, we harbor a little music festival every summer called Dirt Fest, a metal get together a few hours outside of Detroit, founded by two dudes looking to showcase their own band. Dirt Fest quickly became the summer festival for local bands looking for recognition and inspiration. It wound up becoming comparable to the one hot chick at the party which turned out to be a sausage fest – she ends up having such a good time that she lets everyone have a turn.

Anyhoo, thirteen lucky summers later and Dirt Fest is rocking a roster that has, in the past, included bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Dahlia Murder. Obviously something is working if these bands are rolling through, so I decided to finally go check it out this year. Armed with nothing but a delicious bottle of Jagermeister and a set of tits everyone at the MetalSucks Mansion is dying to get a look at, I embarked on what turned out to be a very interesting day. My mouth already tasted like booze before noon…

Click to read more…