By the time the Syracuse, NY outfit Unholy released New Life Behind Closed Eyes in early 2009, “metalcore” had long come to mean to me “third generation Swedish riff rip-offs with cheesy clean singing and an over-reliance on breakdowns” in popular parlance… so when Unholy came along with an album of actual metalcore — brutally complex metal riffs mixed with a punishing hardcore sensibility — the public at large shrugged. But the public at large missed out, because New Life Behind Closed Eyes is a fantastic record full of one memorable song after the next that indulges in absolutely zero of the cliches that made “metalcore” into a bad word. The album unfortunately didn’t get its due from the largely apathetic metal tastemaker crowd, but man… it’s a doozy.

Here’s a video of Unholy playing album-opener “Seeker Immortal” in their hometown of Syracuse, NY. Check out some more Unholy tuneage at their MySpace page.

-VN

Vince is in Kentucky scouting land for a SECOND MetalSucks Mansion and against the advice of Gary Suarez and my own instincts, I’m off to see Terminator Salvation. We shan’t be posting Monday ’cause it’s Memorial Day, but we’ll be back Tuesday. In the meantime, here’s some shit that happened this week:

• We did a video interview with IWRESTLEDABEARONCE! We also spoke with The Haunted’s Peter Dolving, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle, and Unholy.
• We stole Daath’s Eyal Levi away from Headbanger’s Blog.
• Sigh’s Mirai Kawashima graced us with another totally excellent studio blog.
• Corey Mitchell says this is the best album of the year so far.
• Fuckface Durst finally went too far.

As Baz would say, “I’ll be Bach.”

-AR

Shortly after their new-asshole-rippingly good set at the 2nd stage of day two at the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival last month, I caught up with Unholy, the latest in the continuing stream of unbelievable bands to release records that have “Prosthetic Records” stamped onto them. Seeing them perform live just an hour or two prior was actually my introduction to the band aside from a brief pre-show MySpace listen, but it proved to be all the introduction I needed. Guitarist/band-mastermind Jonathan Dennison (right) and vocalist Billy Price (center) spoke about how their deal with Prosthetic came about, what it’s like to be a new band that doesn’t necessarily fit into a specific trendy “scene,” their musical influences, life on the road, and the misery of unavoidable day jobs. Our quick chat, after I say “jump.”

Jump.

Click to read more…

Can Prosthetic Records do any wrong? The record label that brought us top-notch records from Gojira, Byzantine and Beneath the Massacre in ’08 is off to a fucking stellar start in ’09, having already delivered with records from Scale the Summit, Animals as Leaders and Kylesa. It’s only May, but you can add another record to that hit list, Unholy’s New Life Behind Closed Eyes, which is currently streaming in its entirety over at Lambgoat.

Click to read more…

CMJ is almost dunzo. Vince partied way harder than I did and will probably need the weekend to recover. But don’t fret, he can’t be in terrible shape ’cause I didn’t find any piles of vomit in weird places around the MetalSucks Mansion.

If you live in the NYC area and still wanna check out some cool shit and get stupid sloppy drunk like Vince, it’s not too late: Heavy Hitter Inc. have their showcase tonight, with See You Next Tuesday, Arsonists Get All the Girls, Unholy, Catalepsy, and, oh, IWRESTLEDABEARONCE.* Doors are at seven and it’ll cost you a whopping ten bucks to get in. That’s right – for less than the cost of seeing whatever shitty movie opened this weekend, you can see five awesome metal bands.

I saw Despised Icon play this same room last year at the Heavy Hitter CMJ show, and they fucked shit up so hard I almost can’t believe that the Bowery Poetry Club was willing to have Heavy Hitter back. But hey! The loss of the cost of the property damage is metalheads’ gain.

Vince and I will be there. I’m not gonna do that thing where I tell you what we’re wearing so can find us. If you wanna find us, fucking find us.

More details on the show are avail here.

-AR

*Who I think should temporarily change their name to ISHOTABEARFROMAHELICOPTERONCE in Sarah Palin’s honor.