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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Presumably inspired by this week’s announcement of a Big 4 show in the U.S., this week’s question was posed by MetalSucks contributor/author of the Reign in Blood entry into the 33 1/3 book series, D.X. Ferris. Mr. Ferris was even good enough to join us for this edition of QOTW! And his query was:

IF THE BIG FOUR WERE THE BIG EIGHT, WHICH BANDS WOULD BE THE NEXT FOUR IN THE GROUP?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Sasha Horn at Metal Review recently wrote a piece on the three song self-titled EP from unsigned band By Any Means Necessary. Here’s the part that caught my attention:

“…the rodents have crawled out of their cage, and have learned to conduct some experiments of their own. Specifically, the equation of Exodus divided by Vio-Lence, plus the square root of Devastation, times Chimaira.”

Well, Horn said the magic word – actually, there’s like four magic words in that sentence – so I had to check this band out. And, holy crap, am I glad I did.

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Phil Demmel, who’s been handling guitar duties for Machine Head since ’03, is a real working musician. You could almost excuse him if the success MH have enjoyed over the past two years had gone to his head – the band’s most recent album, The Blackening, was almost universally acclaimed by critics and fans alike, and is most certainly the group’s best work since their debut, Burn My Eyes – but Demmel is clearly interested in little besides making sure that Machine Head is the biggest, best band it can be. The guy just has zero attitude, and it seems as though he’s never even contemplated any potential downsides to being in Machine Head. He just wants to play fuckin’ metal, dude.

But don’t just take our word for it – after the jump, read Demmel’s thoughts on touring as a support act as oppose to being a headliner, the success of The Blackening, and, of course, the all important question of which band on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival would win in an all-out battle royale. Well, okay, maybe not so much that last one.

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