First, a little backstory. Back in 2006, Darkest Hour was making the promotional rounds for their latest disc, Undoing Ruin. I was working for my shitty college paper, doing a show preview for DH’s show in Omaha, Nebraska and emailed Kris requesting an interview. He called me five minutes after I sent the email. That’s how cool of a guy he is.

Besides being one hell of a nice dude, Kris is an extremely talented musician, and his new project, A Cancerous Affair, has completed their lineup and is starting to produce what will most definitely be some killer tunes.  Check out my interview with Kris below.

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Children of Bodom have been making anthemic, hair-metal-influenced melodeath about getting drunk and hating and killing things for fifteen years already? My oh my, how time flies!

The band will celebrate their birthday next year with a North American headlining tour, on which support will come from Eluveitie, Revocation (or “Revocator,” as it says on CoB’s website), and Threat Signal. That’s a pretty sweet line-up, no?

And we’ve mentioned before, Vince and I have a very special place for this band in our hearts, since MetalSucks was conceived at a CoB/Amon Amarth show back in 2006. Also, because they rock. So definitely check ‘em out and them celebrate pissing off parents for a decade-and-a-half if you can.

Dates are after el jumperooski…

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We don’t ordinarily post a whole lotta YouTube covers on MetalSucks (other than the occasional it’s-so-bad-it’s-good laughingstock material) because, well, you can visit YouTube for that. But the story of Ordinance’s cover of Soilwork’s “Stabbing the Drama,” featuring drummer Alex Rudinger (also of Threat Signal), tugged at my heart strings, so I thought I’d share.

A few months back Threat Signal had some gigs in Ontario, Canada. Bjorn Strid happened to be in the area, so they decided to do a live cover of the song with Strid on vocals. Since Alex had already gone through the trouble of learning the song he figured he may as well record it, and instead of playing over Soilwork’s original recording he just asked his buddies in his other band Ordinance to contribute on their instruments as well:

I really enjoy watching Rudinger’s performance; it does such a great job of highlighting just how nuanced a drummer Soilwork’s Dirk Verbeuren is. Loving all the cymbal inflections. Dirk’s got great hands (that’s what she said), and so does Alex.

After the jump, some live footage of Threat Signal and Speed Strid performing “Stabbing the Drama”:

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If you’re reading this now and you live in/around NYC, it’s not too late to come drink FREE BEER (from 6-7pm) and party with us as Skeletonwitch, Kvelertak, Barn Burner, Turbid North and Battlecross melt faces at the 2011 MetalSucks / Metal Injection / 1000 Knives CMJ Showcase! And two weeks from this very moment, Day 1 of The Metal Suckfest will be underway — holy shit! For the rest of you who don’t live anywhere near here… either get your asses over right quick or be jealous. Very jealous.

Meanwhile, it was another week o’ fun at the MS Mansion in which the Monkeys had to work overtime to fling poo at all who dared attempt to infiltrate our walls:

• We interviewed Topon and Mel from Fuck the Facts, Threat Signal’s Jon Howard and Evile’s Ol Drake.
• We continued Counting Down to the Metal Suckfest with All Pigs Must Die’s Adam Wentworth, Today is the Day’s Curran Reynolds, 3′s Billy Riker, Fight Amp’s Mike McGinnis and Howl’s Timmy St. Amour.
• We listened to Metallica and Lou Reed’s LuLu and enjoyed a few parodies.
• We reviewed Cynic’s new EP, Satan Rosenbloom Freeloaded new ones from Nemesis Complex and Honduran, and Corey belatedly rated his August Bleeders and Blowers.
• We showed you guys all the fun we had nerding out at Comic Con.
• The re-booted Beavis & Butt-Head will have metal music videos after all; rejoice!

See ya’ll next week.

-VN

Given the unprecedented amount of bands that are getting their starts via the Internet these days, it’s somewhat remarkable that any of them manage to make a name for themselves. Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Cloudkicker, and a fair number of similar projects have been getting the majority of the recent buzz, but Threat Signal were among the first to put music online and get a record deal from it.

All the way back in 2004, Jon Howard, Rich Howard, Kyle McKnight, and Adam Matthews wrote and posted the song “Rational Eyes” on GarageBand.com, leading to the eventual formation of a permanent band and the 2005 release of Under Reprisal. In 2009 they released the album Vigilance, which was received rather poorly.

The band is back with a self-titled new release that blends the brutality of their first release with the much-criticized and (now much-improved) melodic tendencies of Vigilance. I talked with extremely stoked vocalist Jon Howard last week about everything from the TS writing process to the band’s recent lineup changes and the state of the current metal scene.

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News flash: radio rock still sells. While most readers of this site will probably be disappointed to see the HUGE numbers sold by this week’s #1 and #2 Current Hard Music chart-toppers, there’s better news elsewhere in the form of debuts from Skeletonwitch, Charred Walls of the Damned and a ton of other bands you see listed down below in the “tags” field. Click through to learn more.

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We have a decent amount of new stuff this week, including quality releases from Skeletonwitch, Black Cobra, Hull, Fuck The Facts and more. This writer’s opinion on all of it after the jump.

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Does anyone like Threat Signal? I mean, someone must, right? Because they’re around. I assume they’re around because people are, like, paying to go see them and stuff.

And yet I have honestly never heard anyone say these words: “Hey, did you hear the new Threat Signal album?” Never. I just said them out loud, just so when I die I can say that one time, ONE time, I actually heard someone say those words. But now I’ve never heard anyone else say them.

ANYWAY, operating under the assumption that some people like this band, and that we have now amassed a significant enough readership that at least some of those some people probably read this website, I am posting this footage of the band performing a new song, “Fallen Disciples,” live. The footage shows people at the concert, further reinforcing my theory that there are people who like this band, even if I have somehow managed to go my entire life without ever meeting one.

Enjoy, some of you some people!

-AR

[via Metal Undergound]

When a press release landed in the MetalSucks inbox a couple of months ago announcing that Fear Factory guitarist (and former bassist) Christian Olde Wolbers had released a signature Randall amplifier head and was currently booking interviews, I got to thinking. Could I possibly land an interview with Wolbers — who also happens to be a talented producer who worked on the recent Threat Signal record and tracked vocals for the new God Forbid album Earthsblood — ask him the one obligatory amplifier question, and then proceed to ask him questions about Fear Factory, producing, and his new band Arkaea? Yes, yes I could. And so I did. Our conversation, after the jump.

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I’ve never been that into Threat Signal – I don’t know why; I guess they just don’t, as the cliché goes, “hit me on a gut level.” But we got an e-mail from a reader last night bitch slapping us for having never talked about the band, ever. So here’s their video for “Rational Eyes,” which was directed by David Brodsky, one of the better music video directors out there these days (he also directed God Forbid’s forthcoming concert DVD, which still doesn’t have a release date!). So, Threat Signal fans, this one’s for you…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=15472864;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR