Last week we offered up a copy of Butch Walker’s new autobiography Drinking With Strangers. Let me tell y’all, I just finished the book and it’s SUCH a good read; in addition to metalhead-friendly topics related to Butch’s days in SouthGang on the late ’80s sunset strip, there’s a wealth of information about the music industry in general, and, of course, stories from the Marvelous 3 days and the creation of Butch’s solo albums. Highly recommend you buy it here. One guy who certainly won’t have to buy it is our winner:

• Dantera: “Ironic the very child she tried to abort became a Dying Fetus fan.”

White Arms of Athena’s prog-tastic album Astrodrama is now available on vinyl via Eclipsical Records, and we’ve got two copies to give away this week. This week’s photo comes from loyal photo submission expert Jason Solomon; leave a comment with the funniest caption to the photo below. Remember to use a real email address (or post it along with your comment if you’re using FB Connect / Twitter 

The line-up for this year’s edition of the annual Thrash and Burn tour has been announced, and it’s terrible; so terrible that I don’t even have any witty way of expressing it’s terribleness. So I’m not here to make more jokes at the expense of some deathcore bands; I hope they all have fun on the tour, and I hope everyone who attends the tour has a terrific time, and I hope that all parties involved cherish the memory forever and ever and ever.

I would, however, like to discuss the fact that, as was the case with this year’s Summer Slaughter trek (which is organized by the same folks who do Thrash and Burn), fans are being asked to vote for one final band to join the bill. Because while some of the candidates are awful (Dr. Acula, The Devastated, etc.) and I don’t know some of the candidates enough to have any real opinion of them, one of the candidates is a band I actually like: White Arms of Athena.

Which is why I am here to ask you to please vote against White Arms of Athena being on this bill.

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Getting back into the flow of things this week we have a good number of new releases to listen to as we head out of the summer release season. New stuff from Yob, Chimaira, Revocation and Today Is The Day are probably the biggest releases this week, with some lesser-known gems in the herd as well.

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Man, I really, really hope that some day, some Korean animators see fit to make a short about MetalSucks. And that it is one-eighth as awesome as the above video.

ANYWAY, here’s how we kept ourselves entertained this week:

• We debuted new music by Revocation, White Arms of Athena, Goreaphobia, and Sixx A.M.
• We did not debut, but got really excited about, new music from Mastodon and Opeth.
• Unearth’s Ken Susi and Dethklok’s Brendon Small told us all about their live rigs. BONUS: Brendon Small also gave us the skinny on his new solo album!
• We spoke to All Shall Perish’s Fracesco Artusato and Kaoru and Die from Dir En Grey.
• We checked out the latest releases from All Pigs Must Die and Axel Rudi Pell.
• We were easily able to come up with twenty-five things we’d rather do than listen to the new Five Finger Death Punch song.
• We tried to figure out which label will snag Gojira.
• Gary Suarez urged metalheads to cut the shit and stop supporting Burzum.
• Sergeant D. wondered if breakdowns are the new guitar solos.
• Corey Mitchell discussed his ten favorite albums of the year thus far.

Just last week we were talking about White Arms of Athena, a Texas prog metal outfit we’ve been fans of for years who just signed with Prosthetic Records. Since we figure many of you may’ve missed the premiere we did last year when the band was still unsigned, we figured we’d give you another chance to sample Astrodrama with another exclusive track preview. And since many of you pay attention to what we write and probably do remember last year’s premiere, we figured we’d choose a different song that’s never been heard before by anyone that isn’t the band / the label / us / etc. Mostly we chose this track because it’s got Vince’s name in the title, but the song is pretty darn good too.

Astrodrama comes out on August 16th and is available for pre-order here for just 10 bucks.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

If there’s anything we love here at MetalSucks (in addition to weed, of course) it’s saying “I told you so.” So it’s with pure joy that our latest opportunity to gloat comes in the form of Dallas, TX prog metal outfit White Arms of Athena, who we first featured in June of 2009 (and have featured many times since): congrats to the fine dudes in White Arms of Athena for their new deal with Prosthetic Records!

The band’s first release on Prosthetic will be a re-issue of Astrodama, which the band self-released last year. MS readers who were around when we premiered one of the album’s tracks will have to wait a little longer to hear new material, but we’re guessing that for the majority of the world this will be metalheads’ first exposure to the band. Expect to hear a lot more about these guys in the coming months, first with the re-release of Astrodrama on August 16th and then in the form of the endless round of touring that is sure to follow.

Take a listen to a couple of Astrodrama’s tracks here, then let us know what you think of the proggy, spaced-out goodness below in the comments. You can pre-order Astrodrama here for only ten10 bones.

-VN

White Arms of Athena are one of my most favoritest unsigned bands, having been on our radar since all the way back in June of 2009. We even premiered a new track of theirs this past October, and now’s your chance to hear another, “Superhuman,” from their forthcoming record Astrodama. [UPDATE: It's been called to our attention that the new song is actually "Crown Chakra", not "Superhuman." Whatever -- go listen, you'll be happy! -Ed.]

For the uninitiated, White Arms of Athena’s sound lies firmly in the venn-diagram overlap of Between the Buried and Me and Cynic; the modern day heaviness and general approach of the former and the oftentimes chilled-out vibes, bass tone and vocoder of the latter. If this sounds like something you might like, you owe it to yourself to check out “Superhuman” and three other songs from Astrodama at White Arms of Athena’s Facebook page.

Expect Astrodrama to come out this Spring and a big announcement from the band soon.

-VN

Thanks: Heavy Blog is Heavy

So as you’re no doubt aware, Halloween is on Sunday, and as you’re hopefully aware, we’re holding a “Heavy Metal Halloween” contest with SPV. The deadline was announced as being on midnight on Halloween, the logic being that people would snap their photos before they went our partying; but Vince wisely pointed out that people might not get to upload those photos right away. So now we’re extending the deadline to midnight on November 1. Hope that helps! If you need a refresher on the rules, go here.

Here’s what else happened this week:

• We debuted a new music video by Nile.
• We also debuted new music by Havok, White Arms of Athena, and Shred Sean and Allan Tecchio.
• Daath’s Eyal Levi talked about trust issues while The Red Chord’s Greg Weeks talked about football.
• We spoke to J. Randall from Agoraphobic Nosebleed and our old pal Eyal from Daath.
• We checked out the latest release from Kylesa, and a new book by the Cro-Mags’ John Joseph.
• We went on a “Reader’s Choice” local scene binge.
• We prayed for the end of karate mosh pits.
• We watched Abigail Williams lob a dildo at Iwrestledabearonce.
• We defended Phil Labonte’s angelic singing voice.
• Sergeant D. taught you about bands you would have hated/ignored in ’95.

And that’s all she wrote this week. Don’t forget that our own Gary Suarez is playing in a Jesus Lizard cover band on Sunday night. Swing by if you can!

-AR

Album art credit: Dennis Konstantin

White Arms of Athena are one of my most favoritest unsigned bands. I first spotlighted them back in June of 2009, heard rave reviews about their live show from the dudes in The Binary Code [who played with them this past January in their hometown of Dallas], and last, but certainly not least, the dudes took serious care of us when the Heavy Metal Road Trip rolled through Dallas in March by providing us with some serious herbage.

On that fateful roadtrip stop in March the guys played us a few tracks from the album they’d just wrapped up with producer Jamie King, and to say the music blew our minds would be understating it; everyone there on the bus with us, including some grizzled metal industry vets, was seriously impressed.

Now that album is about to be released, and we’re proud to be able to exclusively premiere one of its tracks, the progressive masterpiece “Astrodrama.” This is some serious music, and the band has a bright future ahead of them; they probably won’t stay unsigned for long. Check out two more songs from the record on White Arms of Athena’s MySpace.

-VN

[this streaming promotion has ended]

After the previous night’s Bourbon drinkathon, grill-out and car wash adventure — not to mention the delicious fried chicken and BBQ ribs we inhaled earlier that day — trouble was a brewin’ in the bowels of the SlayRV. One by one we systematically decimated the bathrooms of the Walmart and nearby Burger King, and once business was taken care of we hit the road for the 5+ hour trek to Dallas.

Bowels freshly purged we swore off meat for the day; I had a healthy breakfast of carrots and hummus. Of course that oath went straight out the window when we saw the following sign across the road from a truck stop in Texarkana:

I mean how the fuck can you say no to THAT??

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Sometimes we end up on press email lists for like, some underground hip-hop promoter or indie rock publicist who’s obviously never checked out our website. It’s super annoying (first world problems!). But lots of MS readers send us tips of new bands we should check out, and for the most part you guys have pretty good taste / know what we like; shocker! Here are a few that’ve impressed me the most lately.

Black Sun Aeon: In the Swallow the Sun / Agalloch / Daylight Dies / Moonsorrow school of dark, aching, melancholic metal, but, ya know, slightly different. [Sent in by Alexander S.]

White Arms of Athena – This band sent us a message on MySpace rife with faulty grammar and spelling mistakes which is usually a surefire sign for “suck.” But good God, this band fucking rules. They’re like a hardcore version of the myriad tech-death bands on the market right now… so I guess that makes them tech-core. Or is that just “mathcore”? I don’t fucking know… to me it’s good-core.

Outcast: Call it “The Gojira Effect,” but France seems to be pumping out quality metal bands at a phenomenal rate — or maybe they’ve been there all along and we just started noticing. MS Maniac “JTquake” describes Outcast as “full of musical bad-assery and [they] sound like the best parts of Neuraxis and Beneath the Massacre mixed up and twisted together.” I would’ve said Meshuggah and Machine Head, but I guess that just shows my (and his) age.

The Arusha Accord: Taking the Sikth torch and running with it, adding perhaps a touch more melody. Sent in by “J.”

Keep sending in those tips to news [at] metalsucks [dot] net.

-VN