Last year, I got way too busy with this thing called life and ignored this other thing called metal. As a result, I missed out on a lot of quality music as was evidenced by my paltry contribution to the year-end MetalSucks Best Of 2009 lists.

I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.

Here are the January 2010 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:

Click to read more…

Alright, so Vince is back Tuesday, which means the balance between light and dark should be restored here at the MetalSucks Mansion. What Vince doesn’t know is that I had Higgins make some… adjustments to Vince’s wing. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be sitting on the shitter when ya flush it, Vinnie. BWA-HA-HA!!!

Here’s what we did while Vince has been away:

• We spoke to the legendary Jello Biafra and DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara.
• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle broke down the breakdown, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley ruminated some more on the format wars, andVertebrae33′s Rod Githens analyzed the best album covers of 2009.
• We checked out new releases by Six Feet Under, Valkyrja, Brainstorm, Trapped Under Ice and Sons of Azrael.
• Our staff chose some albums that will fuck your face off in 2010.
• The line-up for Mayhem Fest 2010 got the kids all riled up.
• Dave Mustaine and Kerry King <3 T.G.I.Friday’s.

Have a good weekend, everybody!!!

-AR

GOOD MORNING! Sorry to get a late start today. But the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and it’s a wonderful thirty-four degrees here in NYC. What better way to start the day than with a healthy breakfast and some new black metal?

So. Valkyrja. I have almost no idea how you pronounce that name, but the band’ new album, Contamination, was released on Metal Blade earlier this week, and our own Sammy O’Hagar gave it a glowing review. Here’s an excerpt, in case you’re a dope and you didn’t read it:

Swedish upstarts Valkyrja have the big, groovy black metal formula down pat, employing stadium-sized guitars that manage to nod to black metal’s origins but not collapse under their own bloated weight. Like a good black metal album, it’s got wonderfully constructed, haunting songs as well as velocity; like a good metal album, it’s heavy as fuck. If you think you’d enjoy the genre’s minor key doomsday riffing if it had a little more balls to it, well, Valkyrja’s Contamination is the album for you.

Well that certainly sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

Lucky for you, the band is streaming a track off the album, “Solstice in Withdrawl,” here. And we think that you should go check it out. And tell ‘em Sammy O’Hagar sent you.

-AR

If black metal is known for anything, it’s its predilection for intimacy over broad heaviness (see: Burzum’s jagged, fuzzy riffs; Drudkh’s folk-inspired melancholic dirges; Darkthrone’s bees-in-a-mason-jar tremolo picking on Transylvanian Hunger) and almost complete lack of groove (which is to be expected from music made by the whitest people on Earth). So it’s often a pleasant surprise to hear a band borrowing from black metal’s hallmarks to make a gargantuan, riff-centric album. Swedish upstarts Valkyrja have the big, groovy black metal formula down pat, employing stadium-sized guitars that manage to nod to black metal’s origins but not collapse under their own bloated weight. Like a good black metal album, it’s got wonderfully constructed, haunting songs as well as velocity; like a good metal album, it’s heavy as fuck. If you think you’d enjoy the genre’s minor key doomsday riffing if it had a little more balls to it, well, Valkyrja’s Contamination is the album for you.

Click to read more…

The entries for last week’s funny photo caption contest — for which the prizes were a copy of Every Time I Die’s new CD New Junk Aesthetic and a matching t-shirt — were spectacularly unfunny, for the most part. Here are a couple of the best entries. Despite the horribly un-PC nature of one of them… damn, that shit is gold!

\m/Eluveitie\m/ [for the second week in a row! congrats, dude]: “The boys’ pictures were spoiled as a sudden blackout rendered their dates – Lafonda, Laqueefa, Tonisha, and Lil Diamonique – invisible to the prom photographer’s lens.”

ohshitson: “the evolution of the metalsucks monkeys.”

This week we’ve got one killer package of three CDs from Metal Blade Records: Goatwhore’s Carving out the Eyes of God (MS review here), Behemoth’s Evangelion (endless MS praise bestowed here) and Valkyrja’s The Invocation of Demise (no MS review, but you can listen to the band here). Just come up with a funny caption to the below photo, and they shall all be yours.