MetalSucks

I’m not in the mood for fine prose right now, so let’s just do this thing.

Metal Nick at Metal Injection captured the below footage of Necrophagist playing a new song, “Dawn and Demise,” on the recently completed, MetalSucks co-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour. Because it was captured with one camera, no soundboard, etc., it’s not exactly up to the usual high standards of Metal Injection, but it should keep all the Necrophreaks satisfied for the time being.

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Our friend Dan Rodriguez at Metal Insider tells us that, according to WBIR-TV, ten people were arrested yesterday at the Knoxville stop of 10 for $10 tour, which offers – duh – ten hardcore bands (including Poison the Well and Madball) for the low low price of ten bucks. The charges range from disorderly conduct to inciting a riot; apparently, a fight broke out, and when the venue’s security guards attempted to intervene, even the fucking band jumped in to give them what-fo’.

But here’s the best part: the fight broke out at 3:30 pm… just as the first band on the bill was taking the stage. So that’s ten dollars well spent.

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Here’s what I really like about Terror’s new video for “Rise of the Poisoned Youth”: the way it captures the energy of their live show. If watching this thing doesn’t make you wanna get up on your desk and do a stage dive right now, I don’t know what will.

But I could live without the subplot about the boxers. We get it. You’re hardcore. You’re fighters. You never give up. You know what you’d see if you looked in the dictionary under the word “obvious?”

A definition of the word “obvious,” of course.

Terror are about to hit the road with All Shall Perish, Shai Hulud, and a bunch of bands I could give a fuck about. Still, they put on a pretty killer live show (again, see the above video). Get tour dates here.

And if you’re really bored, here are some photos of chicks in Terror panties.

-AR

Standing out in metal is difficult, considering that even the subgenres that splinter off from metal’s whole don’t take long to feel overcrowded. So in an era where bands increasingly have to earn their keep, All Shall Perish worked hard to definitively (and rightfully) make their mark in 2008 amidst the deluge of death metal. The band’s mesh of breakdowns and technical death metal forcefulness wowed many on their latest full length (Awaken the Dreamers) and during their copious touring (including one sponsored by us).

It was before their Providence show on that tour that vocalist Hernan “Eddie” Hermida and bassist Mike Tiner were kind enough to grant us an interview. They seemed to be guys with a good sense of humor about everything, not taking themselves (or anything, really) too seriously during the whole interview. With a dry, absurd wit later blown to bits by their fierce set that evening, the band didn’t seem to typify in person what their music may imply. They’re seemingly just dudes, albeit dudes that play in one of the chief death metal/ hardcore (but certainly not deathcore) bands out there. Eddie and Mike discussed their thoughts on deathcore and their insights into how they compose breakdowns, among other things.

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Some good bands have lost members in the past few days. We could devote a post to each of them or be insensitive dicks about it and just do one big post.

Guess which one we chose?

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Last week’s Funny Photo Caption Contest (pictured, right) was another rousing laugh with a shitload of funny entries. Of five total winners, one grand-prize winner will receive a signed CD of The Human Abstract’s new record Midheaven (which hits stores August 19th) as well as a Human Abstract T-shirt, and four will get a regular ol’ Human Abstract CD. Here are the four runners-up:

• Pease Hode: “As you can see, Winds of Plague shows get crazy!”
• Follow4Now: “From the exclusive web only release “SNL skits done metal: My dick in a cold, dark black metal box by Justin Timberlake.”
• James: “Stop! Hellhammer time.”
• BKudler: “The next logical progression in Nu-Metal: Death Pop and Locking.”

And the grand prize goes to…

• Hegster: “…and the crowd gazed upon Lars Ulrich as he tried to devour the dollar symbol they’d cleverly placed around his neck as he bounded and twirled in his new pants made from the broken dreams of hundreds of gen x metal heads, blissfully unaware that he could use his hands for anything other than air-drumming to Trivium’s “The Crusade”.”

ZING! This week’s winner will receive 3 CDs; Nachtmystium’s Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1; Terror’s The Damned, The Shamed, and Hail of Bullets’ …Of Frost and War. Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, and they’re all yours.

No one should be surprised that hardcore stalwarts Terror ankled Trustkill for Century; after all, back in November Terror front man Scott Vogel told us that “we’re not ruling Trustkill out, but we wanna hear labels to hear [the new material], and we want the label that’s really gonna get behind us… someone that’s gonna really believe in us and push us and keep us out on the road and keep us paying our bills.” Do those sound like the words of a man who wants to re-up with his current label? No. No, they do not.

Still, I’m not sure if Century can really do anything for this band. I don’t mean that as a knock against Century, who are clearly one of the best metal labels out there; I just mean that at this point, Terror sounds like Terror, they have their core fan base, and unless they decide to go off and write their equivalent of “Enter Sandman,” I don’t see their records sales increasing or decreasing drastically.

Case in point is “Relentless Through and Through,” the new song the band has posted on their MySpace page. It comes off of The Damned, The Shamed, which will be released on Century on June 10, and it sounds exactly like Terror. That’s not a bad thing – in fact, I anticipate this album being pretty solid. I just hope that no one thinks that this band is gonna take the next step to Hatebreedian levels of popularity anytime soon, ’cause I don’t see it in the cards for them.

-AR

“MetalSucks?” Terror front man Scott Vogel asks Vince and Axl, a tad confused.

“It’s meant to be ironic,” Axl reassures him.

“But what if I really do think that metal sucks?” Vogel asks the intrepid journalists. There’s a moment of nervous silence before Vogel’s lips curl into a grin: “Just kidding.”

Axl and Vince should have known better. So they take their respective seats opposite Vogel, mere hours before Terror, leaders of the 21st century hardcore scene, are to hit the stage for the second night of their current tour with Chimaira, Kataklysm, and Divine Heresy, and grill him on the tour, the band’s new EP, the current status of their relationship with Trustkill Records, and what Japanese hardcore crowds are like…

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Just a few hours before Chimaira hit the stage for the second date of their current tour, guitarist Rob Arnold was telling us* that the first night in Norfolk, VA had been plagued with technical difficulties, and that the ensuing show was, as a result, “terrible.” The poor dude must’ve been pissed then, when literally two notes into the first song of Chimaira’s set, the fire alarms at the Blender Theater (a.k.a. The Gramercy) here in NYC went off and shut down the band’s entire show before it even got started.

Rob can take comfort knowing that once said alarms were fixed and the concert resumed, Chimaira – the last band on an exhausting, exhilarating bill that also included Canadian thrashers Kataklysm, hardcore superstars Terror and Dino Cazares’ latest project, Divine Heresy – absolutely destroyed, playing a blistering ninety minute set that proved yet again that this band is one of the most effective, vicious live acts of their generation.

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