Nah, that doesn’t even make any sense! I just couldn’t think of a better headline to convey that The Acacia Strain have announced a tour with Terror, The Red Chord, and The Contortionist, to take place in October and November.

Actually, I’m not even sure I had to tell you that — we’ve gotten so many e-mails about it these past few days, it seems pretty clear that most of you know. In fact, the general message of those e-mails seemed to be something along the lines of, “Why the fuck haven’t you posted anything about this yet, you filthy fucking fucks?”, and the answer is, “We were hoping they’d announce dates so we could post the news and itinerary in one fell swoop.”

But there are still no dates and this tour is worth writing about twice. The Acacia Strain’s new album, Wormwood, is just terrific; Terror, like Hatebreed, are a band best experienced in a live setting; if you read MS regularly, you already know we’re retardedly huge fans of The Red Chord (the band on this bill I personally would be most excited to see, even though I just saw them on Summer Slaughter less than two weeks ago); and The Contortionist… well, I don’t know The Cortionist very well, but reader Hayden Nease is insistent that they’re awesome (E-mail sample: “The Contortionist. Seriously, The Contortionist. No, really, The Contortionist. sursly guize”), and “Flourish,” the new song they’re currently streaming on Noisecreep, certainly tickles me. So consider this an altogether killer bill.

While we wait for dates, here’s a video that The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett recently made for Metal Injection, in which he asks other bands/techs/fans/whatever, “What’s so cool about The Cool Tour?” You, Vincent. You’re what’s so cool about The Cool Tour!

Metal Injection also has some behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot for The Acacia Strain’s new video, “The Hills Have Eyes.” Check that out here.

-AR

So, yeah, it turns out there’s a burgeoning metal scene in Maldives, and we even know some peeps who have either worked there or may work there in the future. Does that mean we’ll take a vacation there soon? Fuck do we look like, Wes Borland?

Here’s some other shit that happened this week:

• We were re-joined by some old friends: Porn star Bobbi Starr talked about the world’s most metal porn, and Dallas Coyle pondered the road to happiness.
• We debuted an exclusive excerpt from Dave Mustaine’s memoirs, and are giving you a chance to meet the man himself.
• We spoke to Woody Weatherman from C.O.C. and Roxana Shirazi, author of The Last Living Slut.
• We checked out new releases by Clutch and The Acacia Strain and I Declare War.
• Sergeant D. taught us about the history of slam.
• We defended Eddie Van Halen from Dave Davies.
• We climbed a Wall of Douche.
• We met The Crud Wizard…
• …who is infinitely cooler than the dude from ICP’s ree-ree son.
• Also, BON JOVI + BOOBIES!!!

Okay. Gonna go to an awesome Cynic show now. Lates.

-AR

The Acacia Strain, Wormwood
The New England band’s latest collection of heartfelt ballads to punch your girlfriend in the face to, Wormwood reiterates The Acacia Strain’s deathcore dominance. Showcasing a truly noticeable progression in the group’s sound, these twelve tracks cover such edgy topics as religious cults (“Jonestown”), serial killers (“Ramirez”), and domestic terrorism (“Unabomber”), all set to a barbaric barrage of brutal breakdowns. “Nightman,” a surprisingly faithful cover from the classic It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia musical episode “The Nightman Cometh,” displays an intentional humor so rarely present in this scene that so frequently takes itself far too seriously. By keeping his lyrics intelligible and insightful on cuts like “BTM FDR,” vocalist Vincent Bennett excels where so many frontmen in deathcore fail:

We are the atomsmashers
We do what can’t be done
You are the baby killers
We will explode the sun

Sure, they’re no Emmure, but they’re still pretty great.

(4 out of 5 horns)

Click to read more…

I’ve never been that into The Acacia Strain. Too breakdowny for my personal tastes. But I have to say, I’m really digging their new album Wormwood; it’s got a good balance between technicality, songwriting, and yeah, breakdowns. It’s not as much of a mind-fuck / as creative as The Red Chord’s latest, but it’s good. Suarez is gonna review it sometime soon, so until then you’ll have to take my word for it. The ripping track “Jonestown” is streaming on their MySpace for those interested parties.

MS reader Matt Millen filmed an entire Acacia Strain set last year when they came through his hometown of Ottawa with Despised Icon, and he was kind enough to send us links to his handiwork; the video and audio quality are great, so all you TAS fans out there oughtta really enjoy this.

The first bit is below and the rest after the jump.

Click to read more…

Here we had this entire week devoted to hair metal, and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Let’s do this again real soon, okay?

Here’s some of the fun we had this week, be it hair-metal related or not:

• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal taught us to be mind-less, Antagonist’s Carlos Garcia taught us about the song “Sasha Grey,” and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney taught us more about corporate-sponsored live shows.
• Anso and Allyson from Bring Back Glam! counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums.
• We counted down the Top Ten Bands Most Often Miscategorized as Hair Metal.
• Vince spoke with Serj Tankian, Gary spoke with Frankie from Emmure, and Sergeant D. spoke with Samantha Maloney from Brother Clyde/Shift/Hole/Motley Crue/every band ever.
• We debuted a new track by The Binary Code!
• Leyla Ford counted down the ten worst and best hair metal band names.
• Sammy checked out the new release by Eibon.
• Dave Mustein checked out The Cool Tour.
• Someday, this little girl is going to make Sergeant D. very, very unhappy.
• I can’t tell the difference between all the members of Mushroomhead, can you?

I wanna especially thank Allyson from Bring Back Glam! for all her help this week — we love you, Allyson! Come back anytime.

Monday we return, but we’ll have a little less Aqua Net in our hair, a little less eyeliner on our lids, and a lot less skip in our step. See ya then.

-AR

I was pretty skeptical when I first saw the Cool Tour lineup. Actually, I was more than skeptical: I was pretty much positive that I wasn’t going to attend. It seemed to break down as 50% Christian screamo, 25% hardcore, and 25% good bands, which meant that there would be a lot of obnoxious hardcore, scene, and straightedge kids. But when the opportunity arose to go to the tour, I just decided to do it despite the high scene-kid-to-normal-metalhead ratio, because I had never seen either BTBAM or As I Lay Dying live.

As it turned out, I made the right decision. Although I did skip the first four bands (War of Ages, Cancer Bats, Architects, and The Acacia Strain) because I’m not a fan of any of them besides Architects, I hear that all of them save for War of Ages put on a pretty solid showing. The Acacia Strain apparently managed to work the crowd into more of a frenzy than any other band, probably because it was a hometown show for them.

Click to read more…

Earlier this week, we got some live footage of a kinda-but-not-really new song by The Acacia Strain; now the band has actually released a new song, “Jonestown.” I haven’t really given the lyrics a good listen, but I imagine the next word in that phrase might be “Massacre.”

In any case, the song certainly makes me wanna massacre someone. And I mean that as a compliment.

“Jonestown” is available on iTunes now. It will appear on The Acacia Strain’s new album, Wormwood, which comes out July 20 on Prosthetic.

-AR

Thanks for all the e-mails!

Okay, so back in October, The Acacia Strain had some new tracks on a five-way split CD with War From a Harlots Mouth, This or The Apocalypse, Aggressive Dogs and Fact. It’s called Pentagon.3, and it was only released in Japan. Two of the three songs TAS contributed to that split, “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Terminated,” will appear on the band’s forthcoming album, Wormwood. And reader Tom Frenette captured some live footage of the band performing one of those songs, “The Hills Have Eyes,” live this past Saturday night in Danbury, CT.

Sooo… this song should be new to anyone who doesn’t live in Japan and either didn’t pay for the import or illegally download the split. And, hey, even if it’s really old news to you, perhaps you’ll enjoy the footage.

Wormwood comes out July 20 on Prosthetic.

-AR

Even though “wormwood” just sounds like the name of a death metal band, it’s actually a type of plant that they used to put into absinthe; it’s what gave that drink (which, if you’ve never had any, will fuck you up right proper even if it doesn’t have wormwood in it, because it has a RIDICULOUS amount of alcohol by volume) its hallucinatory properties and made it an alleged creative enabler of everyone from Toulouse-Lautrec to Hemingway to Marilyn Manson (who claims to grow his own wormwood for just that purpose). It’s also a star (or possibly an angel – there seems to be some debate) referenced in the New Testament.

Why am I telling you this? Because, in the below video, The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett announces Wormwood as the title of the band’s new album, but declines to give any further explanation. So is the band making reference to a fallen star, or to a plant that will make you see Underwear Gnomes n’ shit? Until we get to hear Mr. Bennett’s lyrics for the new album, we probably won’t know – and even then, the subject may be open to debate. Still, this is MetalSucks, so everyone should feel free to speculate.

Bennett also unveils the album’s cover art in this video. Check it out:

Wormwood comes out July 20 on Prosthetic.

-AR

Click to enlarge… this might actually be more interesting than the site discussed below.

Here’s a marginally entertaining way to waste time at work.

You know that game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” I’ll assume you do, lest I think I even less of you than I do already.

So. A MetalSucks Maniac who asked to be identified only as “Bob” found this website, 6 Degrees of Black Sabbath. I don’t know why they chose Black Sabbath for their moniker, since the site is in no way specific to Sabbath; the site will basically connect any two artists you like in as few steps as possible – although there seems to be some lapses in its education. I tried to connect Guns N’ Roses to Iwrestledabearonce, and the site didn’t know who Iwrestledabearonce are. Or Brokencyde. Or Hollywood Undead. The site was, however, able to connect Cannibal Corpse to Ian & Sylvia in fourteen steps. Hm.

ANYWAY, as an example, here’s one Bob did, connecting The Acacia Strain to Ke$ha in seventeen steps. I’m sure the site will also help some of you cheat at our “Dark Tranquillity Family Tree” contest. Or, at the very least, help you procrastinate.

-AR

I’ve never been to Bamboozle, but every year there’s a day where artists do an entire set covering one other artist. So if you’ve ever wanted to see, for example, Manure Emmure covering Rage Against the Machine for a solid thirty minutes, well, you’ve now missed your chance.

Rage Against the Machine made number nine on our list of “Ten Bands Great That Inadvertently Ruined Metal,” and even if the below footage of said Emmure homage to RATM doesn’t actually justify the rap-metal pioneers’ spot on that line-up, the fact that the Emmure dudes and I like some of the same music makes me feel like I need to take a shower. (Yep, bloggers shower, too! Sometimes.) Making it worse is that the band does nothing to put their own spin on the music (I think – I admit that even if they did I’d probably just make fun of them for being terrible), and that vocalist Frankie Palmeri seems to have mustered about as much enthusiasm for this performance as Rob Halford would if Christina Scabbia offered to jump his bones. I can’t believe this dude can get excited about Raptor Jesus, but not playing “Killing in the Name.”

Oh, well. Whatever keeps them from ripping-off The Acacia Strain I guess.

-AR

[via The PRP]

When we announced the Summer Slaughter 2010 line-up last week, Vince wrote the following:

“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.”

At least one reader asked, “What the heck is the Cool Tour?” While rumors of the package trek have been floating around the net for weeks, it was only officially announced at midnight: The Cool Tour seems to be the next of what could reasonably be called “The Ozzfest Second Stage Tours” – basically mid-sized package tours that take the best part of Ozzfest (the second stage – duh) and do away with the rest. And while any tour with that many bands on it is bound to have at least a few you don’t like (this year’s Summer Slaughter being a pretty remarkable exception to that rule), I have to agree with Vince: The Cool Tour does not really seem all that cool.

Click to read more…

Last week’s logo was a toughie, but props to Brittany Smith for correctly identifying it as belonging to the band Misshapen Hatred. Brittany wins a free copy of The Acacia Strain’s awesome new DVD, The Most Known Unknown. Enjoy it, Brit!

This week the very nice men and women at The End Records have donated an awesome prize to give away: two, count ‘em two vinyl copies of Sigh’s Scenes from Hell. This is already one of my favorite releases of 2010, so get off your arse and try to win yourself a copy!

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select two winners and announce his or her names next week.

Of course, I ain’t gonna make it easy to win such a delicious prize. This week’s logo, sent to us by reader Isaac Schwarz, is really damn near impossible…

-AR

Hey, Scott Rives! Guess what? You correctly identified last week’s logo as that of romantic crooners Cunt Smash! You win a Lacuna Coil DVD! CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Alrighty. Now that that’s out of the way…

This week the fine folks at Prosthetic Records have given us a copy of The Acacia Strain’s new DVD, The Most Known Unknown, to give away. I’m gonna have a review up for you soon, but the short version is, this DVD is killer. It has not one but two awesome concert films, both directed by David Brodsky, a documentary about the band and its history, a bunch of music videos, and more. It hits stores next Tuesday, February 16, but you can win one right here.

All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail at axl AT metalsucks DOT net with your answer, your name, and your address. From everyone who gets it right, we’ll randomly select a winner and announce his or her name next week.

This week’s logo was suggested to us by MetalSucks Uber-Maniac Kirsten Ann Hogenson. Kirsten enters this goddamn contest every week (You think I don’t notice you crazy people who enter every week? Oh, I notice.), and clearly, she’s a connosieur, ’cause this one is pretty fucking unreadable…

-AR

I have seen The Acacia Strain’s new DVD, The Most Known Unknown, and it is good. Honestly, I’ve never been a huge TAS fan – I’ve always respected them and liked them, but I don’t spend a lot of my free time listening to them. But this DVD made me like them a whole lot more. I shouldn’t have to tell you that David Brodsky did a great job with the live footage. But the band also just sounds so good. “Whoa! Shut it Down” and “Skynet” have never sounded so heavy. Now I really wanna go to a TAS concert.

While I wait for that to happen, you can check out a clip from the DVD, of the song “Dr. Doom.” Unfortunately it’s not embeddable, but clicking on the pretty screen cap below will take you there.

The Most Known Unknown comes out February 16 on Prosthetic.

-AR

We’ve all been there. Tensions are high in some packed, sweaty venue, sparked by feverish excitement and the potential for violence. These people paid good money to enjoy some type of cathartic release. The frontman for whatever hard-nu-death-crab-metal-core outfit is brazen and demanding. Can you believe this shit? You PAID to be entertained, and this guy is telling YOU what to do! The speech goes something like this: “I want everybody in this room moving! Front to back, side to side, NO ONE STANDS STILL! When this part kicks in, I want total [Insert destructive word here like "chaos," "mayhem," or "bedlam" if you're witty]. If the person next to you isn’t moving, MAKE THEM MOVE!” Than, if the action is not adequate, this screamer/pep rally organizer calls YOU some variation of “pussy” or “faggot” or really anything to make you feel like a soft, womanly bitch of a man in order to get in that pit and kick another grown man in the face, all in the spirit of making this band look like they are awesome. But then something happens, as if the air is sucked out of the room at the moment of impact – when those glorious staccato chugs kick in, the crowd is almost always powerless to its charms regardless of the obvious lack of substance. Like junk food and reality TV, we have a love affair with breakdowns.

Click to read more…

Prosthetic Records, home to such artists as Gojira, Skeletonwitch, The Acacia Strain, and Through the Eyes of the Dead, has filed suit against Razor & Tie, Billboard reports. I don’t wanna re-type or misinterpret any of the legalese, so I’m just gonna cut and paste the nitty gritty from Billboard:

Click to read more…

A little over a year ago I was invited to go see The Acacia Strain play a sold-out show at the Palladium in Worcester. I wasn’t able to make it, but everyone I spoke to who did said it was INSANE. All caps like that, dude: INSANE.

Luckily, David Brodsky and his crack team of metal video makin’ nutjobs were there to capture the action, and the concert flick will be included on The Acacia Strain’s new DVD, The Most Known Unknown, which now has February 16 release date via Prosthetic.

Click to read more…

As much as I love metal feuds, they usually don’t actually go anywhere. Kerry King and Dave Mustaine can trade barbs in the press all they like, but we all know they’ll never actually get into any kind of altercation; in fact, Slayer and Megadeth just announced another string of Canadian dates together. Metal doesn’t have its own Tupac/Biggie story because rarely do these dudes show any actual desire to hurt one another. And even when they do, it usually goes nowhere (see: Vince Neil versus Axl Rose).

Well, Lambgoat is reporting that The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennett and Emmure’s Frankie Palmeri have now crossed that line, apparently beating the shit out of one another at last night’s Emmure gig in Clifton Park.

Click to read more…

I don’t really care much for either Emmure or The Acacia Strain, but I do know this: they fucking hate each other. And if there’s anything we here at MetalSucks do collectively care about it’s hilarious feuds, so color me interested in both bands for the day. Apparently Emmure have a new album out today (news to me), and there’s a song on it called “R2 Deepthroat” (posted below) that’s directed at Acacia Strain vocalist Vincent Bennett. The lyrics are juvenile at best, and oh hey guess what, breakdowns! Swing those little ninja arms, 15-year old Emmure-fan assholes. I’ll just sit back and watch the sparks fly as Bennett prepares a response.

-VN