MetalSucks

No one can fault Dave Mustaine for putting together a tour in lieu of the stillborn American Carnage trek. But as always the Megadeth frontman aims for maximum annoyance and as such his new tour is a brazen approximation of Carnage minus Slayer. As a member of Slayer, Kerry King must be distressed to find that there’s a nearly identical alternative to his tour on the market — complete with Testament and Exodus, for a total of three thrash metal greats, just like Carnage — that’s sure to distract ticket-buyers and cool walk-up sales. And in light of the recent King-Mustaine cuddlefest at T.G.I.Friday’s, one could argue it’s yet another of Mustaine’s unconscionable and self-destructive backstabbings, at which he is only second to Eddie Van Halen in proficiency. (Unlike lead guitar playing, at which Mustaine is second in proficiency to dozens. Cheap shot alert!)

To make matters worse, ‘Staine and Megadeth will use the new tour to celebrate their last great record, Rust In Peace, y’know, to add a sack-tap to this already historic cockblock. So it was already getting silly by the time the announcement came yesterday that Megadeth’s only other real member, the embittered former Mustaine bum chum David Ellefson, he of history’s greatest metal bass performance and reams of anti-Mustaine bitching, would return to the pasty creases of the Mus-taint for bass duties on the big tour. Yet more juice for the non-Slayer shows. What’s next, the return of RiP guitarist Marty Friedman? (Um please?)

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Following its postponment last month due to Tom Araya’s need for back surgery, Megadeth, Slayer and Testament have re-scheduled the dates for their American Carnage Tour. The shows will now take place this summer, which strikes me as somehow more appropriate… I don’t know why. I’d just rather go watch these three bands in warm weather than nice-to-mediocre weather.

And, uh, that’s it I guess. Get the new dates after the jump!

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The metal community has been using the phrase “It’s their best album since…” a lot as of late. As though spurred on by the nineteen year old kids who now play the music they created better than they do, the Elder Statesmen of Thrash – or EST – have been enjoying a renaissance.

But here’s what sets Slayer apart from the pack: while you could certainly say that “World Painted Blood is Slayer’s best album since Season in the Abyss” and be telling truth, you could have said “It’s their best album since Seasons in the Abyss” about any album since Diabolus in Musica and been telling the truth. Slayer didn’t only just recently get awesome again – they really never stopped being awesome, despite what the scene snobs might have you believe.

But World Painted Blood finds Slayer sounding even more like the band that created the Holy Trinity than Christ Illusion did, so people are even more excited about than they were about that last offering. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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It’s Labor Day weekend here in the U.S., which means we’re shuttering the Mansion early this week, and won’t be back ’til Tuesday. We’re sure you’ll find some way to live without us.

Here’s some shit that happened this week:

• We debuted a new track from Salome.
• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima sent in his final guest-blog from the studio, and revealed the track listing for the band’s upcoming album, Scenes from Hell.
• We chatted with Trivium’s Matt Heafy, The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad, Job for a Cowboy’s Brent Riggs, and All That Remains’ Phil LaBonte.
• We celebrated the triumphant return of Beavis & Butt-Head, and decided that in their particular relationship, Vince is the Beavis to Axl’s Butt-Head.
• Tom Araya thinks Dave Mustaine is a dick, Kerry King thinks Dave Mustaine is a dick, Scott Ian thinks Kerry King is a dick, and everyone in Dimmu Borgir thinks that everyone else in Dimmu Borgir is a dick.

Alright. I’m going to enjoy a little sunshine while I still can. See ya Tuesday!

-AR

When we interviewed Tom Araya a few weeks back, I asked him if the Megadeth/Slayer tour that hit Canada earlier this year and will now make its way to Australia and New Zealand is ever coming to the States. His response?

“You know, [Dave Mustaine is] lucky we did the Canadian dates.”

Araya chuckled when he said it – the dude is too chill to really get angry angry, or at least that was my impression of him – but there was obviously some bad blood there. Shit-stirrer that I am, I made a feeble attempt to draw more ire out of Araya, with no love.

So kudos to Mark Eglinton from The Quietus, who Blabbermouth tells me got this little exchange out of Araya:

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Tom Araya needs no introduction. Seriously. We’re not introducing him. If you don’t know who he is, you have no business reading this website. Axl recently found out that our intern had never listened to Slayer, and you know what he did? First he got all the MetalSucks Mansion Monkeys to throw feces at the intern, and then he locked the intern in a room and made him listen to Slayer’s entire discography for days and days on end.

We will tell you this: Araya is a very chill, jovial dude; Slayer have a new album, World Painted Blood, coming out in October; and we successfully managed to make it through this interview at Mayhem Fest without peeing ourselves or dropping to our knees and shouting “WE’RE NOT WORTHY! WE’RE NOT WORTHY!” Although it was a struggle.

Our full chat with Araya after the jump.

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I picked up my copy of The New York Times this morning – yes, I still sometimes read a physical newspaper, ’cause I’m a dick like that – and was more than a little surprised to see Tom Araya’s photo alongside that of some distinctly non-metal performers on the front page of the arts section. Intrigued, I read the following:

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We got to interview Tom Araya at Mayhem this past Friday, and once we got past the initial fanboy “HOLY SHIT IT’S TOM ARAYA PEE” shakes, I think we actually got some pretty decent questions in – including asking Mr. Araya when the Slayer/Megadeth tour that’s already played Canada and will soon be decimating Australia and New Zealand is coming to America. His response?

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Oh boy. Here we go again.

Kerry King loves to talk shit. He loves to talk shit so much you’d think he writes for MetalSucks (Kerry, if you’re reading this, please come write for MetalSucks.). The man just cannot be stopped. Dave Mustaine, Machine Head, Metallica – all have been victims of his razor-sharp tongue.

His latest casualty: Killswitch Engage, who are out on the road with Slayer right now as part of Mayhem.

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Let’s cut right to the quick: there’s a new Slayer song, the snappily titled “Hate Worldwide,” which you can listen to here. My first impression of the track, which was written by Kerry King, is that it’s an awfully good Slayer song, although not as good as “Psychopathy Red,” which blew the fucking flesh off of my face the very first time I heard it. Still, that’s an evil fucking riff in this new track, so it even if I think its the inferior of the two, it doesn’t exactly take the wind out of my sails in terms of my high, high hopes for the new Slayer album, World Painted Blood.

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Is “Psychopathy Red” the best Slayer song of the post-Seasons in the Abyss era? I s’pose that’s open to Jaeger-fueled debate – I’m still kinda partial to “Disciple” myself – but any way you cut it, it certainly does rule, and serves, to my mind at least, as example number 8 gazillion why Slayer are so vastly superior to so many of their peers.

So. Saturday, April 18 is Record Store Day, which, in case you don’t know, is pretty much what it sounds like – a day meant to “celebrate” (a.k.a. “get shoppers into”) record stores, or, more specifically, independent record stores. Slayer’s contribution to the day: a limited to 5,000 pressings only 7-inch vinyl of “Psychopathy Red.” A press release gives more details:

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Every metalhead knows that Kerry King likes to talk shit like he’s being paid by the insult, but isn’t Tom Araya supposed to be the more even-keeled one? The dude who brings his family to the Grammys and thinks it might be time for Slayer to call it a day and openly admits that he’s a practicing Catholic who doesn’t believe Slayer’s anti-religion message so much as he thinks it’s just a great theme for evil sounding metal?

Well maybe Tom is tired of King getting all the attention, because in a recent interview with Stormbringer Webzine, he took a page from his longtime bandmate’s playbook and slammed Metallica’s latest album, Death Magnetic:

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So here’s the thing: I never heard In the Wake of Separation, Thine Eyes Bleed’s 2005 debut on The End Records. So, yes, I did know them primarily as that band with Tom Araya’s brother. So, no, I was most certainly not waiting with baited breath for a new offering from Thine Eyes Bleed.

Well, I probably should have been; I’ll have to go back now and check out In the Wake of Separation to make sure that this band was always this good. ‘Cause their self-titled new album is killer.

Thine Eyes Bleed aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel. Like Demiricous, they play an ultra-intense form of thrash that’s tinged with elements of death metal at its more melodic. But whereas it seems pretty clear to every living thing with two ears and a brain that Demiricous listened to a lot of Slayer growing up, a blind man can see that Thine Eyes Bleed, as a collective, must be really, really excited about this summer’s At the Gates and Carcass reunion tours.

Luckily, the band has the chops to back it up; listening to Thine Eyes Bleed, the band and the album, is somewhat akin to having a bear sink its claws into your forehead before peeling your face back. I will have to pay much closer attention to this band in the future; you should do the same.

(three and a half out of five horns)

-AR

 
So that’s pretty fuckin’ funny.

Thanks to MetalSucks reader Steve Browning for the pic.

-AR

 
So Slayer won the Best Metal Performance Grammy for the second year in a row last night, this time for the song “The Final Six,” which comes off of last year’s re-release of 2006’s Christ Illusion (got all that?). Tom Araya made a typically schmaltzy acceptance speech, but I much prefer what Kerry King (who called “Eyes of the Insane,” the song that won last year, “one of the poorest representations of us on the record”) had to say about the award after the first time the band won:

“I thought [that winning the Grammy] was cool for my dad because, you know, he’s proud, but for me the fucking Grammys, I think the vote process it’s not tainted but it’s not correct because it’s not by somebody who knows about every kind of music they’re voting for. I think there is probably 25, 40 percent of people who actually have an idea of what metal is and I think they’re 60, 75 percent of people who pass the category and say, ‘Metal, Slayer, heard of them, cool.’ I’m glad they did it, you know — hey, it gives me something cool to say, ‘Yeah, I won one of those.’ Not a lot of people in the world can say that. From that aspect it’s cool, but I’d rather have awards that educated metal fans voted for.”

So I’d say King has the right attitude about the awards.

After the jump, watch a fan-made video for “The Final Six” and the official video for “Eyes of the Insane.”

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