MetalSucks

Last night Vince and I hit up the Trivium/Chimaira/Whitechapel/Dirge Within show at Irving Plaza here in NYC. I will never ever get sick of watching Chimaira live. They have a forty-five minute set on this tour, and they really make the most of it by basically segueing directly from one song to the next with a minimum of on-stage banter, presumably in order to allow a maximum of brutality. To top it off, the set-list was pretty much perfect – they played at least one or two songs from each of their albums (This Present Darkness excluded), and not always they song(s) you’d expect, either. Definitely go check ‘em out!

Here they are doing “Severed” at the Download Festival in 2007. They played this song last night and the pit just went insane – I think this has to be the heaviest track on Pass Out of Existence, no?

-AR

I am SO PISSED that I missed Chimaira’s most recent tour (with Hatebreed), because a) Chimaira slay live and b) I’m fucking dying to hear some more material from The Infection in a live setting – when I saw the band on this spring’s Music as a Weapon tour, the album had literally just come out that day and the band were, consequently, only playing two new songs.

So. Rhythm guitarist Matt DeVries had to pull a Mark Morton and leave the tour early so he could get home for the birth of his new child, Austin (Mazel tov, Matt!); filling in for him is Daath co-guitarist/all around cool dude Emil Werstler. I am using this little fact as an excuse to post this video I saw on Blabbermouth of the Wersterful Chimaira performing “The Venom Inside.” Also, to point out that bassist Jim LaMarca seems to have shed his signature locks. That leaves DeVries as the only dude in Chimaira capable of windmilling. Just sayin’.

Chimaira continue to decimate Europe alongside Unearth, Throwdown, and our friends in Daath through October 12; then, at the end of the month, they hit the States again with Trivium, Whitechapel and Dirge Within. Get dates here.

-AR

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

Having recently spoken with Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu, we hadn’t scheduled an interview with the band during our trip to scary Camden, NJ for this year’s Rockstar Mayhem Festival. But upon arriving we ran into Heafy in the lobby, and since he was between interviews at the moment we decided to roll the tape and do a quick impromptu update interview. And not for nothin’, Heafy’s such a nice guy, a great interviewee, and his band’s set was one of the most energetic of the day.

Heafy told us about how the Rockstar Mayhem Tour had been going for them so far, the karaoke and dance music parties that have ensued after hours, the band’s upcoming touring plans, and the songs he’s been working on for the next Trivium album. Our quick chat, after the jump.

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After last week’s announcement that ex-Himsa axeman Matt Wicklund would be playing with God Forbid on this summer’s Mayhem Fest and that God Forbid’s Doc Coyle would be filling in on bass for Trivium for at least one show, I expressed interest in hearing from any readers who caught the gig.

Well, one of you, Ryan Wineman, did indeed e-mail me over the weekend. Here’s his report:

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…Matt Wicklund, formerly of the now-defunct Himsa. He also played on Praises to the War Machine, the excellent solo album Nevermore’s Warrel Dane released last year.

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Actually, we don’t have to pirate our own articles. Plenty of other websites do that for us, often without giving us credit or linking back to us. Once upon a time someone even accidentally included one of our bylines in their cut and paste job. Said “writer” apologized but then went on to shamelessly rip us off many more times, which was nice, because it shows his apology was sincere. You know who else tried to pass off someone else’s work as their own? The guy who went on to shoot Dimebag. So good company you keep, fellas.

Here are other ethically questionable decisions people made in the metal world this week:

• Hasidim moshed, we made punny jokes.
• Matt Heafy and Paolo Gregoletto of Trivium asked fans to illegally burn and share the band’s music.
• We’re streaming God Dethroned’s entire new album until Tuesday; listen now! We also debuted new tracks from Animals as Leaders and Burning Human.
• Arch Enemy choose to re-record old material; we choose to stop talking about this project from hereon out (starting… now!).
• Tyson vs. Holyfield 3 Underoath vs. Avenged Sevenfold! We love this kind of shit.
• Some Russian high school black metallers headbanged for show and tell, and we pondered how to improve our corpsepaint skillz.
• The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato sounded off against President Barack Obama. You sounded off against each other.
• We looked at new releases from Chimaira, God Dethroned and Goes Cube.

Next week brings more contests, more interviews, more new music streams you won’t be able to hear anywhere else, and at least one confrontation with a singer Axl once gave a terrible review. Come back and read more. You know you want to.

-Vince and Axl

So following yesterday’s suggestion from Matt Heafy that fans create a ten song mix of the “best” Trivium songs, Vince and I exchanged a few e-mails and actually did come up with a ten song Trivium mix. Of course, narrowing even a four album discography down to just ten songs is a challenge – there’s some great Trivium songs not listed here, and we’ve completely shortchanged Ember to Inferno. Still, this is our recommendation for what songs we’d put on this ten song mix.

Also worth noting: this is in complete chronological order, with no regard for how you might change it up a little.

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Trivium’s Matt Heafy loves Twitter, and he wants you to use it to illegally spread the band’s music! Mr. Heafy (@matthewkheafy) is actually quite the Twitterer (Tweeter? Twatter?), and he’s been updating his Twitter account like the dickens with everything from his man-crush on Adam Lambert to his frustration with Facebook. Heafy’s latest messages to Twitter-nation, posted yesterday, attempt to harness the viral nature of the Interwebs to illegally spread Trivium music. Ruh-roh!

Not even the 140-character limit can stop this guy. Here’s his series of six tweets, shown with the first one at the top for the sake of continuity. Imagine Heafy’s So-Flo “duuude” drawl as you read these in your head:

everyone! killer idea. Paolo came up with it/ I endorse it! spread this word to all trivium fans… burn a cd with the best 10 trivium…

… songs. make tons of copies, pass it to everyone. let’s recreate the tape trade virally and all that shit. a perfect 10 tracks…

… name it trivium. pass it to people. maybe work and school friends first, then maybe locally? I think this could spread the gospel better

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I don’t really understand all the vitriol that gets directed at Matt Heafy. Maybe I’m missing something; even if you don’t like Trivium’s music, I’m not aware of any incident that should make Heafy worthy of the Durstian levels of hatred people have towards the dude.

To that end: Metal Underground posted the below video of Heafy breaking up a fight from the stage at a show last week. I’m sure someone will say “Well, it’d be way cooler if he’d jumped into the crowd to break up the fight,” but we all know that that person is legally retarded, so whatever.

-AR

Even if you hate Trivium, I defy you watch their video for “In the Throes of Perdition” with the sound off and not think it’s pretty awesome.

-AR

It was fun to speculate last about with whom Slayer might spend the summer touring, but now we have an official answer: as rumored, they’ll be co-headlining the Rockstar Energey Mayhem Festival with their ‘07 tourmates, Marilyn Manson.

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So apprently Slayer are gonna announce their co-headlining tour mates this coming Monday, January 26. Of course, this raises the question: who will said co-headliners be?

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Even before we were an “industry type” (I think we can safely call ourselves that now), I loved the fact that Roadrunner Records posts their staffers and some of the artists “best of” lists every year; these people work at/with one of the biggest metal labels out there, so it’s pretty interesting to see what they were grooving on from year to year.

The 2008 lists are on Roadrunner’s website now. Here are some highlights:

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By now a lot of you have had a chance to hear some of our new shit floating around, or you’ve had the chance to hear the whole album if you’ve been SO LUCKY… I can say that I’m very excited to have this record come out on February 24th 2009. By the way, February 24th will be a huge day for metal. Us and Lamb Of God have our records coming out the same day. The coolest thing about this is every one can see how far metal has progressed from each of our first albums to our latest. We’ve come a long way. And I think both of our bands haven’t compromised. I also think we’ve produced quality material through our respective careers. So big ups to us and them!!! Big ups to metal!!!

I keep saying big ups because this blog is going to be all about one thing: Haterade. The big ups is a precursor to the new words or phrases that come out over time. Yeah, maybe being in a metal band makes it harder to say things like true dat, big ups or haterade but I’m gonna say that shit anyway. I am in a metal band but I am also from the streets so I have carte blanche to say all that ghetto shit.

Seriously, I’m talking about haterade because I think bands that get hated on generally become more successful. Right now, I’m hoping, pleading and wishing for this album to be panned by critics, internet trolls and whoever wants to shit on it. You may ask me, “Why Dallas? Why dost thou-eth needest us to protesteth soeth mucheth?” Because we need some boiling water in our career. We need people to hate. We need people to defend. We need to fight a fucking war for this record to push us to another place. We are a successful band. I want to be more successful. I want anyone out there who hates God Forbid to say they hate us. I don’t want reasons. I don’t want debates. I want hate!!!

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2008 has been a fucking great year for metal, and in due time — Monday, Dec. 15, to be exact — Axl, myself and the rest of the writers of MetalSucks will all release our Top 10 year-end lists so you can incessantly argue over which great album was left off or tell us we’re assholes for ranking a certain album higher than it should’ve been.

But for now, ya’ll can argue about something else: here’s my personal short/working list for said year-end list containing all of my favorite metal releases from this year as well as a few that aren’t likely to make my own list but will surely be appearing on others’. Feel free to pipe in with your thoughts or to notify us of any egregious omissions before we put together our final, ordered lists. Regardless, it is going to be really fucking hard to pick just 10 of these and put them in order of awesomeness.

And, my favorite metal records of 2008 in no particular order are…

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Slipknot have announced a North American tour with Coheed & Cambria and Trivium. Like a lot of people, I was initially confused by this news – I mean, even taking into account that plenty of metalheads dig C&C, what the crap are they gonna do on a tour with Roadrunner’s elite? Can you really mosh to “Welcome Home?”

But then I thought about it some more, and ya know what? These bands have more in common than it might initially appear. Check it out:

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All is not lost in the world of metal; in fact, this past week brought some nice surprises, along with the usual mish-mash of shitty radio rock bands. Last week’s sales numbers, with our usual sardonic commentary, after the jump. (Hint: look at the tags below, and click “read more” if any of those bands interest you!).

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Last week was by far our most popular Completely Unreadable Band Logo contest ever – I assume because so many of you want a free copy of the exxxxxxxcellent new Trivium album, Shogun (read Vince’s review here). And lots and lots and lots and lots of you guessed that the name of the band was Blasphemy,

Unfortunately, it’s actually Blasphetized.

So here are the names of five people who correctly identified the band logo and have consequently won themselves five free n’ shiney copies of Shogun: Jessica Southers, Matt Magnotta, Christian Caberto, Patricia Bandelin, and Cat Schwambach. Into the mouth of hell you march, ladies and gents.

If you didn’t win last week, no need to cry: the mensches and menchettes over at Roadrunner have supplied us with four more copies of Shogun to give away this week. All you have to do to win is identify the name of the band whose logo appears below, then shoot me an e-mail with your answer, your name and address at axl [at] metalsucks.net. We’ll randomly select five winners from everyone who gets it right, and announce his or her names next week.

This week’s logo was suggested by MetalSucks Maniac Thomas Baker. You guys know I love it when you do my job for me, so if you a logo you think we should use, send it along!

-AR

Thanks to Michael for sending us this funny lyric interpretion of Sikth’s “Such the Fool,” in the tradition of such classic lyric interpretations as Paranoidave’s famous Trivium “Boat, Rudder” spoof and As I Lay Dying’s bovine fetish. Michael even credits MetalSucks with introducing him to Sikth, now one of his favorite bands. Awwww, shucks, thanks Michael!

-VN