If that combo makes you scratch your head and go “zuh?” then you certainly wouldn’t be the only one, but there you have it: three of the most vocal personalities from Cannibal Corpse, Killswitch Engage and The Black Dahlia Murder are apparently teaming up for a new project.

The news comes straight from Corpsegrinder’s mouth, as told to the Metal Injection dudes aboard the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise ship last week. Axl originally reported on a rumor about this merry group of metalmen back in August of 2011, but according to an article published by Rob Pasbani on Metal Injection yesterday it’s “DEFINITELY” (emphasis his!) happening. Here’s the juice:

We spoke with Corpsegrinder last week during our coverage of the 70,000 Tons of Metal, and even though the cameras stopped rolling, Corpsegrinder was still in a chatting mood. I just so happened to be wearing a Black Dahlia Murder shirt, and Corpsegrinder noticed it and confirmed to us that he is DEFINITELY working on a project with the Black Dahlia drummer, and Adam D. and it’s sounding killer.

Click to read more…

Yesterday, the MetalSucks reader known as “Ibo” e-mailed us to say that he attended a Black Dahlia Murder concert in Glasgow, Scotland on January 22 — and that bassist Ryan “Bart” Williams “wasn’t on bass. It was some guy I’d never seen before.” A quick YouTube search turned up fan-filmed footage from the show which confirms that, yes, indeed, Mr. Williams was not the bass player at this show — and, we can therefore presume, the band’s entire European tour:

So is Williams out of the band?

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The Black Dahlia Murder are one of those bands I will always go see live, under pretty much any circumstances, just because they’re so much fun. And now they’ve announced a U.S. headlining tour with pretty much the best support acts imaginable: death metal legends Nile and rising blackened deathrashers Skeletonwitch, plus Hour of Penance, an above-average deathcore act that I don’t love but HOLY SHIT BDM + NILE + SKELETONWITCH = I AM SO FUCKING THERE. This tour is gonna rule.

Here are dates for ya:

Click to read more…

Aborted are one of those bands I honestly have never listened to enough to have an opinion about their music, but the fact that their upcoming release, Global Flatline, features guest appearances from the likes of The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad, Misery Index’s Jason Netherton, and Rotten Sound’s Keiijo Niinima means that my interest is now piqued. And the new, totally disgusting and NSFW trailer for the album ain’t hurtin’ any.

No joke — if you ever wished that the killer in the Saw movies was a pretty lady instead of an old dude, you are going to love this.

Aborted’s Global Flatline comes out January 24 via Century Media; the title track will be released as a single next week.

-AR

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week we say farewell to the season by posing the question:

WHAT WAS THE METAL ANTHEM OF THE SUMMER?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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The latest edition of Metal Injection’s “Ask the Artist” series — in which various artists are asked one uniform question (See what they did there?) —  poses the query “What are the best and worst stage moves in metal?” to various bands that were on this summer’s two biggest metal tours — Mayhem Fest and Summer Slaughter.

And it’s a great question to ask, because it’s certainly one that seems to come up in metallic circles quite a bit. Just recently, a publicist told me she understood that I didn’t like one of her bands because they played too much “breakdowncore,” and I told her the breakdowncore was silly, sure, but not as silly as they choreographed stage moves they used for each and every song. So it’s interesting to hear the thoughts of the musicians who actually have to be extra-conscientious of stage moves themselves.

Not shocking — a lot of the bands, including Trivium and Fleshgod Apocalypse, poke fun at crabcore and general scene-friendly stage moves. More shocking: so do Oceano.

Check out more of Metal Injection’s “Ask the Artist” videos here.

-AR

This is how I know I’ve officially become completely desensitized to metal: when I hear something like The Black Dahlia Murder and think to myself, “Gee, that’s actually pretty melodic… maybe these old folks will actually dig it!” Not so. I forget that the only non-metalheads hear is screaming, an instant turn-off. But at least one 80-year old woman thinks The Black Dahlia Murder are the bees knees… almost.

The money quote: “Oh my goodness, well it’s not like Murdoch [Marduk]! It’s similar to them, but not as great as Murdoch. So they have to practice a little bit more. Murdoch’s great, Murdoch’s the best, absolutely.”

Watch the intro then skip to 4:40 for the BDM segment.

-VN

Thanks: Jesse Z.

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.

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A 100% accurate portrayal of the research discussed in this article.

In college, I once took a course on literary representations of New York City, and one the texts utilized was Frank Miller’s graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

My point being simply that it was only a matter of time until academia turned its eye towards extreme music.

From an official press release:

“A research group of a faculty member and graduate students in the University of North Carolina system and in the university of Oulu, Finland, are conducting a multi-year international study of the meaning of metal music. The research project was started in summer 2008 and its main data consists of questionnaires and interviews on the meaning of metal to the different participants of the global metal scene. So far, the researchers have received 370 survey responses, representing a diverse community of Metal fans—men and women between the ages of 13 and 70 from 25 different countries have participated in the research project thus far. Some of the artists interviewed in the project include members from Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Disturbed, Nonpoint, Swallow the Sun, Katatonia, The Black Dahlia Murder, Kreator, Epica, Scar Symmetry, As I Lay Dying, Barren Earth, Rotten Sound, and Cannibal Corpse.”

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Ask 100 people their definition of deathcore, and you’ll get 101 answers, each different than the last. But the truth is that deathcore is actually really easy to define: it’s mallcore kids trying to play death metal, and try as they might, they will never quite get it right. Although that sounds like a criticism, it isn’t — the same raw, amateurish charm that made 80s hardcore like DRI and MDC great is the same reason why deathcore bands are awesome, even if they fail at their original goal of playing “sweet metal.”

Sure, their ham-fisted, clumsy attempts at playing “real metal” might be a little facepalm-worthy and/or lulzy at times, but on the other hand, they are a lot more interesting than the same old generic bullshit the br00tal death metal scene has churned out for years. Moreover, hardcore as a whole is just kids who try to play whatever kind of metal was cool 10 years earlier, so if you hate on deathcore you’re hating on the last three decades of hardcore!

In this article, I will present both a framework for assessing the history of deathcore, and my hypothesis about the future of the genre. Specifically, that deathcore has three, clearly-defined phases in its short history: Deathcore 1.0 (ripping off Gothenburgcore/melodeath), Deathcore 2.0 (ripping off br00tal death) and Deathcore 3.0 (ripping off djent/prog/wank/etc).

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Hopefully you have gotten to see or will soon get to see The Black Dahlia Murder headline this summer’s edition of Summer Slaughter (which we’re sponsoring — dates here), but if not, don’t fret about it too hard. The band has just announced another headlining tour for the fall.

And since BDM always put on a ridiculously fun show, you are probably already hot n’ bothered about this tour. (Even if you did see them on Summer Slaughter. ‘Cause I don’t know what their set length is, but I know it’s not long enough.) But now please allow me to make you hotter and bothereder: support will come from All Shall Perish and Cannabis Corpse*, which pretty much makes these gigs unmissable. So wear comfortable clothes, and be prepared to sweat.

Here are dates for ya:

Click to read more…

Here’s an interesting story that The PRP picked up on: during a recent interview with Lithiummagazine.com, Killswitch Engage/Times of Grace guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz claimed to be working on  a death metal side project with the drummer from Black Dahlia Murder and the singer from Cannibal Corpse.” (That would be Shannon Lucas and  George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, respectively, in case you somehow don’t know that.)

And while it isn’t presently clear whether or not Dutkiewicz was being serious or just dicking around, I’d still like to say right now: I would check that band out.

Here’s my reasoning:

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!

As we mentioned yesterday, this past Friday, Miikka Skaffari,  our newest member of the MetalSucks Photo Squad, went to the MetalSucks-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour in San Francisco… and boy oh boy, did Miikka ever deliver for his first-ever MS assignment. Dude captured some really, really awesome pics of a bunch of the bands on the bill, including headliners The Black Dahlia Murder (above), Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Dying Fetus, Six Feet Under, Oceano, and As Blood Runs Black. Check out all of Miika’s photos after the jump! And don’t forget that Summer Slaughter — which also features Fleshgod Apocalypse, Powerglove, and Within the Ruins — is still making its way across America right now! Get dates here.

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Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Here are the June 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

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Vince will be back soon, but for now, “Neilstein SoundScam” is still in my evil hands. There were a lot of big debuts last week, so we’re gonna concentrate solely on those for this outing. After the jump, check out some of the more noteworthy sales stats from the latest Top Hard Music charts, including albums by August Burns Red, In Flames, The Black Dahlia Murder, Symphony X, Devin Townsend, and more!

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MetalSucks tipster extraordinaire Hetal Bhatt sent us the below video, and while it has nothing to do with metal, it did make me laugh, and I did forward it to friends. So, enjoy:

And on that note, here’s some stuff we did this week:

• We debuted new music by Chimaira, Cannabis Corpse, and S.O.S.
• We debuted a new music video from Sleeping Giant.
• We got new gear tips from Periphery’s Misha Mansoor and Revocation’s Dan Gargiulo, and we spoke to Michael Amott from Arch Enemy.
• We checked out the latest releases from Decapitated, The Black Dahlia Murder, Limp Bizkit, and Wormrot.
• We pondered a world in which concertgoers can’t film shows with their iPhones.
• We marveled that anyone finds Tosh.0 to be funny.
• We wondered which deathcore frontman has the best tattoos.
• We found the worst line-up for a festival ever.
• We chose our favorite extras from the new Annotations of an Autopsy video.
• We broke the bad news that vocalist Chris Clancy and keyboardist Drew Stavola are both out of Mutiny Within.

You’ve got one more week with me and me alone before Vince comes back. Deal with it, fuckers.

See ya Monday.

-AR

What makes The Black Dahlia Murder the cream of metal’s crop is that, while never abandoning their face-ripping ways, they refuse to just spin their wheels from album to album. The dudes started out good, and they keep getting better. No amount of flowery verbiage myself could back that statement up more than just one listen to Ritual will. Because just one listen is all The Black Dahlia Murder needs to grab you by the throat, beat you senseless, and leave you lying on the pavement like some ninety-pound moron who just picked a fight with Georges St-Pierre. But, being the sadistic little fuck you are, you’re gonna pop right back up and listen again, aren’t you? Damn right you are, because this is hands down one of the most vicious slabs of metal we’ll get this year.

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Holy shit, this is the biggest release day of the summer so far. Tons of good stuff from Devin Townsend, The Black Dahlia Murder, Helms Alee, Sourvein, Jungle Rot , and more.

Also, some stuff that just sucks.

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We’ve been hyping The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual for awhile now, telling you it’s one of the best death metal albums of the year, and probably just one of the best metal albums of the year, period. Well, now you can hear it for yourself — it’s streaming right here. It’s kind of a pain in the ass to get the player going — you need to use Windows Media, or, if you’re a Mac user like myself, Metal Injection tells me you can use Flip4Mac for Quicktime — but it’s totally worth it. There isn’t a bad song on the album. It’s heavy, it’s catchy, it’s epic the vocals are evil and the solos rippin’… it’s basically everything you want from a metal album.

Headbang here, then come back and celebrate BDM’s goodness in our comments section. Ritual comes out June 21 on Metal Blade.

And don’t forget that The Black Dahlia Murder are headlining this year’s MetalSucks-sponsored Summer Slaughter tour, which also features Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Dying Fetus, Six Feet Under, Oceano, Fleshgod Apocalypse, As Blood Runs Black, Powerglove, and Within the Ruins. Dates are after the jump!

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