MetalSucks

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

I really couldn’t give a fuck what some dude in Underoath says about Avenged Sevenfold, but lots of you have been emailing us about this and besides, this is the kind of shit-kicking we specialize in around here, no? So apparently Metal Hammer was out with Underoath in Austria and Italy and got this choice nugget out of guitarist Tim McTague:

“People might associate us with Avenged Sevenfold because they’re pissed republicans and ‘so metal’, but they’re a gimmick, they’re a circus. They can play [corrected] but they can’t write songs. What’s worse is the way they look. If you need to have make-up and crappy names like Synyster Gates to sell records, then you shouldn’t be here.

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MetalSucks recently had the opportunity to have an all-too-brief chat with Underoath bassist Grant Brandell at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival’s stop at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Brandell had some interesting things to say about the tour, hanging out with other bands at the fest, and the band’s plans for the future. Check out the full transcript after the jump, then read David Bee Roth’s review of Underoath’s new album, Lost in the Sound of Separation, which was released earlier this week!

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It wasn’t that long ago that we interviewed The Red Chord bassist Greg Weeks via e-mail, but since a) that interview turned out to be one of the best we’ve ever done and b) we love The Red Chord, we just couldn’t resist the chance to sit down with vocalist Guy Kozowyk at the Long Island stop of the Rockstar Mayhem Festival. Guy was happy, or at least very good at pretending to be happy, to talk to us about the tour, playing in front of such huge crowds, and the already legendary Ladder Up an Ass project, but, like his bandmate, he was also cool enough to humor Axl Rosenberg when he asked a stupid question on behalf of his girlfriend. Check out the full transcript of our chat after the jump.

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I will be the first to admit that Underoath are a band that were judged by closed-minded, ultra-critical, pretentious metal heads like myself long before I even heard one note being played. Instead I heard “Christian” and “emo” and got a brief glimpse of their fan base. That was all I needed to declare “I probably wouldn’t like them” and move on, sifting through the heavy music morass for something else, never to give them a second thought until my very recent exposure to their newest record Lost in the Sound of Separation.

Surprise! Being instantly judgmental of a band’s hair style and personal beliefs has once again set me up to be disappointed when I can’t spend a whole page lampooning their art. Instead I am forced to begrudgingly admit that this is something of quality.

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A very, very, VERY special thanks to Rosa Henriquez for the awesome photos. Now we’re that much closer to being like a real big kids’ website!

I think one of the things Slipknot’s fans love most about them is one of the very same qualities that their detractors so violently hold against them: their theatricality. I mean, these are nine dudes who dress up in matching outfits and wear “spooky” masks. The band’s members talk about death metal an awful lot, and, musically speaking, that influence is certainly present. But aesthetically, they belong to a line of bands like Kiss and Motley Crue. They’re showmen.

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I’m asking because I genuinely would like to know. I don’t give two fucks about this band (let alone one) nor does anyone I know, but presumably someone does because they’re kinda popular (aka “Nickelback Syndrome”). Anyway, here’s a lo-fi rip of their new song “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures” sent in by MetalSucks Maniac Kye. I guess they have a new album coming soon or something.

-VN