Hey dudes and ladies, sorry I haven’t been posting much this month. I’ve been travelingeven more than usual, and haven’t had much time to sit down and write down much of anything besides flight confirmation numbers and directions to wherever I happen to be sleeping any given evening. Cheers once again to those of you who went out and soaked up the riff-tastic metal circus that was Metalliance (especially those wonderful souls who came up to hang out or bought me a drink!), and mad love to everyone who survived that tour, especially the eternal road dogs in The Atlas Moth and Howl and my tour family on the Saint Vitus/Crowbar bus.

As soon as that madness ended, I flew over to Ireland to stay with my boyfriend J. for a couple days and get ready for my next adventure: reprising my now-yearly pilgrimage to the mighty Roadburn festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. He and I met there last year (he was playing, I was covering, the rest is history) so it was due to be special for more than the usual reasons, which are pretty fucking good reasons in and of themselves!

Roadburn is the best heavy music festival in the world, hands down. A bold statement, sure, but anyone who’s ever played, worked, or attended the event will agree with me. Yeah, the lineups are always amazing, and yes, the venues – the 013, which is separated into the Main Room, Green Room, and Bat Cave, and the Midi Theatre — are killer. The separate building for merchandise, vinyl distros, and movie screenings doesn’t hurt, nor does the charming ambiance of Tilburg itself.

The real heart and soul of this festival comes from outside, though; from the big-hearted organizers Walter and Jurgen, from the efforts of Roadburn public relations guru Yvonne (without whom the whole damn thing would have fallen apart), and from the thousands of fans and bands that have come together, united by an overwhelming sense of community and goodwill. Everyone at Roadburn is absolutely 100% thrilled to be exactly where they are. There is a reason that this year’s edition sold out – sold OUT – in fifteen minutes, and it’s not just because Swans, Godflesh, Winter, and Sunn 0))) were playing (though that can’t have hurt, either). I made it to my first Roadburn in 2009, and have made it a point to come backevery year since – I’ve heard the same pledge from a lot of first-timers, and I know a few people that are already saving pennies for next year!

This year’s lineup was insane (as always). To give you an idea, I wanted to be sure to catch Alcest, Year of No Light, Acid King, Winterfylleth, Zoroaster, Wovenhand, Naam, Blood Ceremony, Pentagram, Today is the Day, Cough, Godflesh, In Solitude, Wardruna, Soilent Green, Count Raven, Earth, Place of Skulls, Winter, Trap Them, Sabbath Assembly, Summon the Crows, Corrosion of Conformity, Menace Ruine, Sunn 0))), Hooded Menace, Grave Miasma, Scorn, Candlemass (performing Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in its entirety!), Black Math Horseman, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Weedeater, Rwake, Ludicra, Evoken, Ramesses, Shrinebuilder, Yakuza, The Gates of Slumber, Swans, Ufomammut, Blood Farmers, Coffins, Dead Meadow, and Sourvein … and that’s just me. There were plenty of other bands that I either had seen many times, was unfamiliar with, or just didn’t want to see (which is rare at Roadburn, but there’s a first time for everything).

Of course, since it’s a massive festival full of people from all over the world, a lot of whom I love dearly, I managed to miss tons of bands, but I’m okay with it. I’ll see most of them again, and Roadburn isn’t totally about the music. It’s about the experience, man.

Here are a few highlights from this year; third time’s the charm!

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Sad to say, I don’t think anyone should get excited about a new Converge album in 2011, ’cause I don’t think we’re getting a new Converge album in 2011. Sucky, I know, but look at it as motivation to stay alive another year. (See, I can find the silver lining.)

You can and should, however, get excited about seeing Converge live in 2011, ’cause they just announced a headlining trek. And support is coming from Trap Them, which is to say, there will most likely be blood on the stage and in the crowd by the end of the night, which is to say, these shows are gonna be a success!

Here are tour dates…

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MetalSucks is oh-so-very happy to be teaming up with RED Distribution to bring you, our most beloved readers, the MetalSucks Fan Pack, which will be available exclusively at all FYE stores starting this Tuesday, April 12. Not only does this limited edition box full o’ metal come with a CD featuring twenty brootal tunes by twenty brootal bands (including Kvelertak, Trap Them, Believer, Napalm Death, TesseracT, Thomas Giles, Deicide and a bunch more) but it also comes with that HOLY SHIT THAT IS SO KILLER t-shirt you see above, which was designed by our friend Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33 (you might also recognize his work from this sexy t-shirt and this Louvre-worthy poster that he did for us).

How much would you expect to pay for this incredible package? Twenty bucks? Fifteen bucks? Try $9.99. That’s right, gang — twenty songs from twenty bands and that guaranteed-to-get-you-laid t-shirt for under ten bucks.

But wait! There’s more! If you act now and head over to the official MetalSucks Fan Pack web page, you can get a coupon for 30%, which brings the price down to a mere seven dollars. Holy crap, that’s a metsieh if ever there was one.

So go here to get a complete track list of all the bands on the comp, and to use the nifty store-finder to locate the f.y.e. nearest to you. And, oh yeah, you can also enter to win this custom guitar:

So, yeah, that’s pretty fuckin’ bad-assed.

-Axl & Vince

If you were hoping for a new Converge full-length this year, well, don’t hold your breath. In a recent status update, the band said that “no date is ready to announce yet,” but I heard through the grapevine that when said date comes, it won’t be for 2011. Now, sometimes the grapevine is wrong, of course, but… yeah, I wouldn’t be shocked if we didn’t get a proper follow-up to Axe To Fall until 2012.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the band has just announced summer headlining tours of both the U.S. and Europe, and that they’ve got some other goodies in the works to tide fans over until we do finally get a new album — namely, a split 7″ with Drop Dead that the band hopes “to be available at the U.S. shows” starting in May, plus a new DVD, which is currently be editing and, “If the Hard Drive Gods smile on us,” will be out this year.

So, there ya have it. If we really aren’t gonna get a new Converge release in 2011, at least the band is coming up with plenty of ways to keep us entertained.

Here are those tour dates:

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Vic Vaughn likes it dirty! His picks of the week are new albums by Assaulter, Rotten Sound and Trap Them in a week that also includes new releases by Across the Sun, As Blood Runs Black and Mastodon’s live DVD. His take on all of those and more after the jump.

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Drummer Mike Justian is out of The Red Chord… again. I guess in all fairness, it was never really clear if this founding member was re-joining the band on a permanent basis, or if he was just filling-in after Brad Fickeisen split with the group last year. Then again, Justian’s been back in TRC for over a year, which seems like a long-ass time to just be filling-in. And even as a massive fan of the band, it’s certainly funnier to think of Red Chord skinsmen in Spinal Tap terms, spontaneously combusting at random intervals.

But fuck do I know? A statement from the band certainly makes the split sound amicable:

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Scale the Summit, Trap Them, Weedeater and Omnium Gatherum top the New Releases class of March 1st, 2011. New ones from American Heritage, Bill Steer’s Firebird, Grayceon and others also come out this week, making it one of the healthiest new release weeks for metal thus far in 2011. MS New Release Czar Vic Vaughn takes a look after the jump.

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

So, yesterday on the Deciblog we posted a long-ass Justify Your Shitty Taste on “Guns N’ Roses”’ Chinese Democracy, which your fearless co-leader Axl Rosenberg boldly cosigned, followed by, frankly, a surprising amount of you guys (which is to say, more than one). I’m not trying to be a dick here. I mean, I can get behind about 25 percent of this mess (the ballads), but I have fairly shitty taste in rock music. As in, I still think Eight Arms to Hold You kicks ass. Whatever. It was just interesting surveying our entire staff of about 20 writers in an effort to get Chinese Democracy written up, and the only person that responded with a modicum of enthusiasm was Shawn Macomber. Fair enough. But then, cue a minor avalanche of vehement, assured hell yeahs. That’s probably the most satisfying thing about this series — watching that groundswell of minority voices band together for a day or two with a shared “fuck you, I told you it was good!”

Anyway, scrolling through the new issue’s reviews section, I don’t really see any future JYSTs. (Just wait ’til May’s The Haunted review, though.) April is more about giving credit to things that don’t hopelessly suck. Hence, we gave Jonah Hegg his second solo cover (order here). I don’t think the other four Amon Amarth dudes are sweating it; they get their chance to Vike out (ahem) in the table of contents and the actual story. Elsewhere, if you’re a J. Bennett fan, this is your issue — he goes head to head with Glen Benton (I’ll leave the obvious jokes to him), bros down in Alaska with Every Time I Die and files a long-overdue Hall of Fame on Mercyful Fate’s Melissa. If you’re a fan of any other writer on staff, well, they do stuff, too: features on Trap Them, Drugs of Faith, Primordial, Rotten Sound and Subrosa — the latter of which being almost as good as Veruca Salt in their prime.

-AB

You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibel here, or just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss a review of a future “Justify Your Shitty Taste” entry.

Well oh-KAY! Here’s a tour I can get behind. According to The PRP, The Red Chord will hit the road this march with Gaza and Trap them in tow.

If you read MS on a regular basis, you already know we’re huge fans of The Red Chord, and I’ve yet to see them give a bad performance. Gaza — who are signed to TRC front man Guy Kozowyk’s label, Black Market Activities — are also what the kids call “devastating” in the live arena. And while I seem to be one of five people who doesn’t cream his pants at the mere mention of Trap Them, I do enjoy their shows more than I do their records; in concert, they feel legitimately dangerous, like either a member of the band or a member of the audience could actually get hurt at any moment. (Just a few weeks ago, I saw TT vocalist/one-time MetalSucks contributor Ryan McKenney kick off a show by throwing his mic stand right into the crowd, hard; just a few songs later, he bashed himself in the skull with his mic, and spent the rest of the performance bleeding from the head.) And that’s an increasingly rare, and thus increasingly exhilarating, feeling.

So, yeah, these shows should take that lil’ critter you see above and just push a spike right through its guts. Take that, you huge-eared freak.

The PRP only has three dates right now, but says that the tour is scheduled to run through March 25, so sit tight for a complete itinerary. In the meantime, those initial dates are as follows:

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Much has been made on this site about Trap Them, namely us not really being that into them and you all not really being that into us not really being that into them. I have nothing against this band at all, they’re just not really my thing. One time a member of the band confronted me about not liking his band, berated me for expressing my honest opinion on the Internet, and then revealed that he hates all bloggers de-facto. But from there the conversation spiraled into a spirited conversation about music criticism and the Internet that lasted close to an hour, and it was a really fun debate. We made nice, shook hands, and called it a night.

So I’m checking out this new Trap Them song “The Facts” posted over at SMN News (via Brooklyn Vegan), and I’ll say this: I’m liking it much more than I’ve liked any of the band’s prior material. Some of that might have to do with Kurt Ballou’s production, extremely tight and crisp yet somehow still incredibly aggressive and raw, and some of that’s got to do with the song itself which is pretty darn catchy. One might even say that I like the song, straight up! Imagine that. I’m not about to whip my dick out and start fapping all over my keyboard — Trap Them are way too cool, and they’ll never be nerdy, proggy or shreddy enough for me to do that — but “The Facts” is a neat little hardcore ditty that’s got me bobbing me head.

Darker Handcraft is the first record Trap Them will release via new label Prosthetic Records, and it’ll come out on March 15th. Pre-order it here.

-VN

Here we had this entire week devoted to hair metal, and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Let’s do this again real soon, okay?

Here’s some of the fun we had this week, be it hair-metal related or not:

• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal taught us to be mind-less, Antagonist’s Carlos Garcia taught us about the song “Sasha Grey,” and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney taught us more about corporate-sponsored live shows.
• Anso and Allyson from Bring Back Glam! counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums.
• We counted down the Top Ten Bands Most Often Miscategorized as Hair Metal.
• Vince spoke with Serj Tankian, Gary spoke with Frankie from Emmure, and Sergeant D. spoke with Samantha Maloney from Brother Clyde/Shift/Hole/Motley Crue/every band ever.
• We debuted a new track by The Binary Code!
• Leyla Ford counted down the ten worst and best hair metal band names.
• Sammy checked out the new release by Eibon.
• Dave Mustein checked out The Cool Tour.
• Someday, this little girl is going to make Sergeant D. very, very unhappy.
• I can’t tell the difference between all the members of Mushroomhead, can you?

I wanna especially thank Allyson from Bring Back Glam! for all her help this week — we love you, Allyson! Come back anytime.

Monday we return, but we’ll have a little less Aqua Net in our hair, a little less eyeliner on our lids, and a lot less skip in our step. See ya then.

-AR

Last week, as part of his recurring MetalSucks column, Blogronaut, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable asked the question: “Are corporate-sponsored metal shows killing the live concert market?” The blog garnered a large and impassioned response, not just from our readers who left comments, but from industry insiders who e-mailed us their thoughts directly. One of those people was Trap Them vocalist Ryan McKenney, who, with no prompting whatsoever from us, wrote the below. And since we like to think of MetalSucks as a place where all kinds of points of view can be weighed and considered, we’re running it! We hope you enjoy…

Long time reader, first time caller… that’s how they say it, isn’t it? I’ve gone through great efforts to not invest too much time into internet blogs and messageboards regarding extreme music of any genre. I’m more of what they call a troll, I believe. Except, I never say anything at all, while many will at least chime in once in a while to give an opinion that is consequently ripped apart.

I’d like to at least make an attempt at responding to Sacha Dunable’s write up about corporate fests and whether they are ruining the live concert market. I consider it an important issue on many fronts. The truth is, ask a hundred people their opinion on this, and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers. Unless, of course, you ask the question to people in groups of five or more… if you do that, the odds are only one or two people will give their honest view and then the rest will just say, “Yeah… what he/she said.” I’d like to put my two cents in on the subject. Some may understand what I’m saying, and some may consider me an asshole, which I’m okay with. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard it lately (or even today).

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Of all the cool shit I’ve heard so far this year, not much of it has been of the reasonably-straight-forward rock variety. But Norway’s Kvelertak just changed all that. The band – whose debut album features John Baizley art, in case you couldn’t tell – is streaming a new song, “Offernatt,” on their MySpace page, and it rocks n’ rolls like Fred Flintstone’s car.

Musically, I’m not even sure if it’s fair to call this metal – it’s very much along the lines of harder-edged Baroness. But the vocals are definitely metal. So maybe think about what it might be like if Tomas Lindberg fronted Baroness. And it’s insanely catchy – this might be that good weather music I was looking for. (So, of course, it’s fucking freezing out today.)

As a bonus, the song also comes with guest vocals from Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney. I’m not a big Trap Them fan, but I know a lot of you folks are, and if his presence gets more of you to check this band out, I’m all for it.

Seriously, give this song a listen – it’s pretty cool. Kvelertak’s debut album (which I’m assuming is self-titled, since I can’t find the name listed anywhere and there’s no mention of it in the press release) comes out in Europe on June 21 on Indie Recordings, and… I guess the rest of us will just have to go fuck ourselves. No, I kid. I’m sure it will, ahem, somehow find its ways to our shores sooner rather than later. The band is also touring Europe with Converge and Kylesa, which makes perfect sense.

-AR

When I posted live footage of a new Trap Them song, “Degenerate Binds,” last week, the reaction in the comments section was pretty much what I expected: you folks think that Trap Them r00lz, and I’m a fool for not seeing what the big deal is.

Well, I’ll have another chance to get hip soon, as the band are prepping the release of a new twelve-inch EP, Filth Rations, and are now streaming another new song from that record, “Carnage Incarnate.”

And, uh, as of right now, I’m still not sure that I “get it.” But I want to! So I plan to give this new song a lot of listens, and hopefully sooner or later I’ll have that eureka moment where I realize what an idiot I’ve been with regards to Trap Them. Either that, or you can all just continue to tell me what an idiot I’ve been in the comments.

Filth Rations will be out on Southern Lord sometime real soon. In the meantime, check out “Carnage Incarnate” here.

-AR

Last year I asked Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway if there were any young bands he was really into, and here’s what he told me:

“I’ve got to be honest: I was getting really bored with metal music.  I was saying I was bored with the metronomic albums, all the ProTools stuff.  I was waiting for someone to come along to really excite me.  Trap Them, I heard them for the first time not so long ago, they put me on my ass when I saw them last year at the [Los Angeles] Murder Fest.  And to a point, I hate sounding pretentious or melodramatic, but they kind of restored my faith in the metal side of things.  They just blew me away.”

That’s pretty much the highest praise any band could ask for, isn’t it? Barney fucking Greenway from Napalm fucking Death says your band restored his faith in metal. Holy shit.

I mention this because out pal Sean “Spleen_Latifa” Gresens from Metal Injection captured the below footage of Trap Them doing a new song, “Degenerate Binds.” I’m actually one of those idiots who didn’t quite understand the appeal of Trap Them – they seem like another pretender to Converge’s throne if you ask me – but I’m willing to give ‘em another shot given Mr. Greenway’s ringing endorsement…

-AR

On April 11, I interviewed Napalm Death front man Barney Greenway when the grind god rolled through NYC on the second date of their tour with Kataklysm, Toxic Holocaust, Trap Them and Coliseum; on April 13, I interviewed Nile’s Karl Sanders. If that wasn’t fucking life affirming, I don’t know what is.

So: Barney Greenway and Napalm Death. Napalm practically invented grindcore (in fact, their former drummer Mick Harris literally coined the term) twenty-two years ago with their seminal debut, Scum; Greenway joined the band two years later and, save for a bried hiatus in the 90s, has been there ever since. The man is a fucking legend, and necessarily so: on stage, he’s just as ferocious as he ever was, and with the release of Napalm’s latest, the mind-fucking great Times Waits for No Slave (read my review here), the band has laid to rest any doubts that they’ll be slowing down any time soon. The fact that he turned out to be an incredibly nice, soft-spoken British chap only just barely calmed my nerves enough to actually remember all of my questions.

After the jump, get all of Greenway’s thoughts on why Napalm Death continues to be a relevant force in metal, the ins and outs of the band’s live show, the state of modern grindcore, and more.

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If you’re not following us on Twitter, you’re missing out on Vince’s life blow-by-blow of this weekend’s New England Metal and Hardcore Fest. I think he’s currently watching Trap Them   (a group no less a source a than Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway told me last weekend restored his faith in heavy music) and trying to figure out what the big deal is.

Here’s a band we don’t need to figure out the appeal of: Weekend Nachos. Melty cheesy grindy goodness… yum. If this doesn’t get you ready to fuck shit up this weekend, nothing will.

-AR

What’s better than great music? Great music for free, of course! And we know you downloading motherfuckers agree with us, because you’re always e-mailing us about leaks n’ shit.

So why not download something that will neither a) make you feel guilty for stealing nor b) possibly condemn you to a life of living in a cage and being anally gang raped in the shower?

Deathwish have a new sampler, entitled MMIX, which they are making available for free download. And there’s some pretty cool artists on it, including Coliseum, Doomriders, The Hope Conspiracy, Converge’s Jacob Bannon, Pulling Teeth and Trap Them (who Vince and I don’t get but I know a lot of people really dig so I guess I should give them another chance).

After the jump, get the complete track list and download links.

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