MetalSucks

There’s been so much awesome metal this year that even thinking about doing a 2009 “best of” list gives me so much agita that I have already devoted at least one and possibly three complete therapy sessions to the topic. But one album that I know has a reserved spot on that list: Chimaira’s The Infection. It came out in April and it’s still in my regular rotation, for crying out loud.

So. Videographer Todd Bell has been out on the road with the band this entire tour cycle working on what will be his forth totally excellent DVD for Chimaira, and now the band has decided to share a preview of what Bell has brewing. Per a statement on the band’s website:

We’re so excited about the footage we shot with Todd Bell for our new DVD release (due out in 2010) that we couldn’t wait to share it. Here is “The Disappearing Sun” live from Helsinki, Finland.

Here’s the clip. “The Disappearing Sun” is one of my favorite tracks of off The Infection, and it looks like it slays live:

The site also says that the group’s tenth annual Chimaira Christmas show, which will take place on December 27 at the Cleveland House of Blues, will be filmed for the DVD. I’ve given serious consideration to making my first visit to Cleveland for one of these shows every year for the past five years; maybe this is the year I finally get off my ass and do it.

-AR

Thanks to all my fellow infected Chimairacans who e-mailed me about this. And, yep, I just made up a word.

This morning I read on Metal Underground that there’s a band called Kimaera. And I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that everyone in this band is clearly some kind of mental midget. Even if I wasn’t a huge Chimaira fan, it would be hard to encourage another band to use a name so close to a group that’s achieved such a higher plane of success; for example, as much as I dislike Korn, I would never pat another band on the back for being called “Corn.” It’s just dumb. Did these dudes (and chick, apparently) learn nothing from Chimaera, a band which has apparently now changed its name to avoid any further confusion? Sheesh.

ANYWAY, the real Chimaira are now holding a contest where fans can re-edit the footage from their video for “Destroy and Dominate,” which was originally directed by the awesome Todd Bell. The grand-prize winner will receive the limited edition box set version of The Infection plus tickets to the band’s upcoming US tour, and the second- and third-prize winners will receive tickets and/or Chimaira merch. You can download the footage and enter the contest here.

Honestly, I kinda wanna download the footage just because re-cutting it seems like it would be fun, the same way re-mixing the Sacrament tracks Lamb of God released awhile ago was fun. But if you’re one of those people who constantly bitch about how shitty you think every music video is, here’s your chance to try and do better – and potentially win some cool stuff in the process.

-AR

Alright. So if you’ve watched the excellent, Todd Bell-directed “Making Of” DVD that accompanies the deluxe edition of Chimaira’s latest, The Infection – or, for that matter, if you’ve just listened closely to the lyrics – you know that Danny Boyle’s sci-fi opus Sunshine was an influence on the lyrics for the song “The Disappearing Sun.”

The band’s new video – also directed by Bell – is (obviously) not for that particular song, but it would appear as though imagery from that film was still a big, big influence on the clip. Sunshine deals with some pretty complex issues (don’t let its appearance as a by-the-numbers space opera fool you), so I’ll leave it to you to try and make the thematic connections between the movie and “Destroy and Dominate.”

This is easily the best video the band has ever made. Bell, a friend of the group’s, has directed many of their clips in the past, but he’s really outdone himself here – the imagery is just awesome. I’ll have to watch it a few more times to try and discern if there’s a method to the madness of the all the crazy pictures or it’s just supposed to look cool, but either way, I’m really digging it.

Ironically, there’s an ad for anti-drug campaign before the video, but I think we can all ignore that in the name of enjoying this video the way it was meant to be enjoyed (e.g., with lots and lots of weed).

-AR

“Secrets of the Dead” is so fucking good that it’s just made us that much hungrier for Chimaira’s for new album, The Infection. So hungry, in fact, that last week we posted crappy-quality fan filmed footage of another new song, “Destroy and Dominate” – footage so weak that you could barely hear the actual music.

Well, no need to stick your ear up to the computer speaker anymore: after teasing fans earlier today with the cryptic message “3 pm EST,” the band just posted a link to a free download of the mp3 for the actual studio version of “Destroy and Dominate” on Twitter. You can download the song right now, right here. [UPDATE: Looks like the song is down now. I'm sure clever Chimaira fans will be able to seek it out from their peers - Ed.]

Click to read more…

Talk about truth in advertising – I wanna hear Chimaira’s The Infection so badly it makes my skin itch. Seriously.

Patience is a virtue, though, and it looks like I won’t have to wait much longer to at least hear a lil’ sumpin’ sumpin’: yesterday afternoon, vocalist Mark Hunter left the following sorta but not really cryptic on Chimaira’s official website:

Click to read more…

Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter recently revealed that “Todd ‘dead-eye’ Bell has returned to do some more filming… for a dvd to come with the new record.” And while I’m sure I don’t have to tell Chimaira fans, I still want to tell everyone else: this is great fucking news.

Click to read more…