So 2011 is officially underway! I mean, we’re two full weeks in — time to stop accidentally writing “2010″ as the date on shit, y’know? We started to preview some albums we’re stoked about, and will continue to do so next week. In the meantime, here’s some other fun crap we did this week:

• The Human Abstract’s A.J. Minette continued his discussion regarding the merits of creative limitation.
• We debuted new music by Deicide, Ulcerate, Owen Hart, and Roger Miret.
• We also reviewed the new Owen Hart album.
• We played a metal edition of “Marry, Fuck, Kill” with both chicks and d00dz.
• We checked out some awesome pictures from Vince and the metalgf’s vacation to Amsterdam and Paris.
• We joined the Scotty Griffin Fanclub.
• We confirmed that Tool are the coolest band ever.
• We felt bad for Mike Portnoy.
• We were upset by Wrest’s arrest for sexual assault and domestic battery.
• And while it was news to us until we heard it from Rush Limbaugh, we were apparently responsible for the Tucson shootings.

Next week brings more debuts, more interviews, and more general Suckitude. See ya then.

-AR

Well, this is terrible.

Jef Whitehead — perhaps better known in the metal world as “Wrest,” the moniker he’s used while working with bands such as Leviathan (his own project), Lurker of Chalice (also his own project), Sunn O))), Twilight, and Nachtmystium — has been “charged with criminal sexual assault and aggravated domestic battery… allegedly attacking his girlfriend,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

Click to read more…

Krieg are the odd man out in the USBM spectrum. “True” almost to a fault, they lack the oppressive, claustrophobic bleakness of Xasthur, the Phil Spector-ian walls of blackened madness of Leviathan, or the psychedelic mindfuckery of Nachtmystium. The few times I’ve tried to get into Krieg, nothing jumped out at me. And yet, after hearing Krieg frontman/mastermind Imperial’s serrated vocals on Twilight’s Monument to Time End this year, it shook something in me. There’s a fundamental rawness to it that can’t be replicated in silly backyard corpsepaint GIFs. And that rawness is all over Krieg’s latest, the chilling The Isolationist. It’s got all the black metal hallmarks, sure, but they’re all tweaked to provide maximum effectiveness. Droning and repetitive to some ears, to others, it’s all about mood. And that mood is suffocating and bleak. It’s relentless hideousness is truly a thing to behold, and with it, Krieg ably prove themselves as major contributors to US black metal.

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I can’t believe that there’s going to be a new Hellyeah album. I honestly thought we’d be rid of this insipid band after one phoned-in cash-in. I guess I don’t have any real reason to be too upset though, as not only will I never ever never listen to this record, but I honestly don’t know anyone else who ever will either.

In any case, here are some things I’d rather hear than new “music” from Hellyeah:

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