MetalSucks

Some of you seem to find it shocking that we actually read your comments (and often reply to e-mails, for that matter). To which I say: why the fuck else would we even have a comments section? We love to read the comments. To wit:

• Daisy May Tinklepants accused us not once but twice of giving positive reviews to artists who granted us interviews. I guess poor David Bee Roth didn’t get the memo when he interviewed and then reviewed Believer. In any case, both of those interviews were actually offered, not granted, but we appreciate the conspiracy theories.
• disappointed called us “dickless jew faggots” because I apologized for a swine flu joke (but not really). We don’t mind being called “Jew faggots,” but to suggest that we have no penises is just uncalled for. Also, the word “Jew” is generally capitalized, you wide-set vagina’d Goy retard.
• teaches of peaches says that no one cares about Dallas Coyle’s column “The Hard R” now that he’s not in God Forbid. Comments left by 114 other people would suggest otherwise, but just to be safe, Dallas is joining the latest touring incarnation of Sha Na Na so that he can continue to write for us.
• Revealing themselves to be the anti-Matt McChesneys, the dudes from YEAH! Destroyer spent more time writing for the site this week than anyone on the MetalSucks staff did. Whatever keeps them from playing music…
• Cahiers du Cinema contributor CrapMcPoopin announced that he’s leaving us for our friends at Metal Insider. Then he left 13 more comments over the course of the week.
• Conduit is having a hard time reconciling the fact that we like “commercial crap” and “random bands from Europe/elsewhere.” Sorry, Conduit. But, yeah, we liked the most recent Slipknot album. Shrug.
• Ricky doesn’t like the fact that Dope are basically paying us to talk shit about them. Ricky, have you spoken with Daisy May? ‘Cause in reality, we only hate Dope because they won’t grant us an interview.

And next week we’re gonna try to really piss you cats off.

-AR

As I mentioned earlier this week, a little while back I got an e-mail from The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney to discuss an extremely negative review I’d given the band’s last album, Fear Will Cast No Shadow. McChesney could have been a total dick about the whole thing, but as it turns out, he’s a very even headed, intelligent, and cool dude. So what else was there to do but interview him about the band’s new album, Requiem, which will come out June 9 on Victory. McChesney was even good enough to let us debut the first single off of that album, “The Curtain Hits The Cast,” for which the band will shoot a video in the coming weeks.

I still haven’t heard the new album, but I do already like this song way, way more than anything from Fear Will Cast No Shadow; it’s catchy and it doesn’t sound overly processed, which, I think, is what The Autumn Offering were striving for. Check out the song below, and then my conversation with Matt McChesney after the jump! (FYI – for fear that this was all a set-up for Matt to have me murdered, the interview was conducted by e-mail.)

Click to read more…

So here’s  a good story for you: way back in October of ‘07, when MetalSucks wasn’t even a year old yet, I wrote a pretty miserable review (to put it mildly) for The Autumn Offering’s Fear Will Cast No Shadow. Cut ahead to last month, and The Autumn Offering vocalist Matt McChesney actually e-mails me to say he likes our site and he’s bummed about the negative review. And then we had a completely calm, casual, and intelligent exchange about said review. So even if you hate The Autumn Offering, you gotta give McChesney props for being so chill about the whole thing. We’ve certainly encountered bands that did not look upon us so favorably after we said terrible things about them.

Now The Autumn Offering have a new album coming out on June 9, Requiem. McChesney has let me hear one song off of it, and I gotta say, it is a huge step in the right direction. Will the whole album be good? I honestly don’t know. But I’m certainly gonna give this band another chance.

Here’s a teaser for Requiem… we’ll have a full interview with McChesney – and another nice surprise from the band – a little later this week.

-AR

With a Death psuedo-reunion in the works — guitarist Shannon Hamm, bassist Scott Clendenin, and guitarist Bobby Koelbe and Death drum roadie (and Autumn Offering drummer) Jonathan Lee have teamed up and are in search of a vocalist (aspiring vocalists may email beyondunknown67@gmail.com with demo material) — will this mish-mash of musicians from different eras of Death be “revolutionary” as the press release declares? Will the legend of Chuck Schuldiner live on or will his legacy be shat upon, even though the group will presumably not perform under the Death moniker?

-VN