First, a little backstory. Back in 2006, Darkest Hour was making the promotional rounds for their latest disc, Undoing Ruin. I was working for my shitty college paper, doing a show preview for DH’s show in Omaha, Nebraska and emailed Kris requesting an interview. He called me five minutes after I sent the email. That’s how cool of a guy he is.

Besides being one hell of a nice dude, Kris is an extremely talented musician, and his new project, A Cancerous Affair, has completed their lineup and is starting to produce what will most definitely be some killer tunes.  Check out my interview with Kris below.

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This is just me, but I attend Darkest Hour shows mostly to make goo-goo eyes at guitarist Mike Schleibaum, fellow devotée of my boner band The Crown (and The Cars). That’s my M.O. no judgements please. Still I was bummed when sweet drummer Ryan Parrish announced his departure from DH late last year. But dude is already in A Cancerous Affair, the project started by his former DH bandmate and guitar freak Kris Norris. And which now welcomes its newest member, keyboardist Knockerz Randall.

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I love fun so I read Sergeant D.’s site Stuff You Will Hate and his MetalSucks column Green Eggs And Slam for the laughs (ask my 310 dudes re: my overuse of D.-isms “Please… Be Safe” and “That’s it I’m coming up there”). But the bonus has been this shocking amount of killer macho veincore jamz — by bands I’d normally ignore with a vigilance but can’t resist in the funny context of SYWH/GE+S.

Let’s review a few of my favorite finds from 2011!

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UPDATED:

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by the ongoing disaster that is Lou Reed & Metallica’s Lulu, this week we asked our writers:

BESIDES METALLICA AND LOU REED, WHAT IS THE WORST COLLABORATION BETWEEN A METAL BAND/ARTIST AND A NON-METAL BAND/ARTIST? AND WHAT IS THE WORST ONE YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE IN YOUR WILDEST NIGHTMARES?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump!

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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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Ask 100 people their definition of deathcore, and you’ll get 101 answers, each different than the last. But the truth is that deathcore is actually really easy to define: it’s mallcore kids trying to play death metal, and try as they might, they will never quite get it right. Although that sounds like a criticism, it isn’t — the same raw, amateurish charm that made 80s hardcore like DRI and MDC great is the same reason why deathcore bands are awesome, even if they fail at their original goal of playing “sweet metal.”

Sure, their ham-fisted, clumsy attempts at playing “real metal” might be a little facepalm-worthy and/or lulzy at times, but on the other hand, they are a lot more interesting than the same old generic bullshit the br00tal death metal scene has churned out for years. Moreover, hardcore as a whole is just kids who try to play whatever kind of metal was cool 10 years earlier, so if you hate on deathcore you’re hating on the last three decades of hardcore!

In this article, I will present both a framework for assessing the history of deathcore, and my hypothesis about the future of the genre. Specifically, that deathcore has three, clearly-defined phases in its short history: Deathcore 1.0 (ripping off Gothenburgcore/melodeath), Deathcore 2.0 (ripping off br00tal death) and Deathcore 3.0 (ripping off djent/prog/wank/etc).

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1) Be nicer to Sebastian Bach
2) Compare penis sizes with Tommy Lee
3) Hire Phil LaBonte as a vocal coach
4) Hire Billy Milano as a personal trainer
5) Hire Tripp Eisen as a baby sitter
6) Sleep with present-day Tawny Kitaen
7) Help Danzig clean up his motherfucking bricks, bitch
8) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about politics
9) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about romance
10) Listen to Ted Nugent talk about Ted Nugent

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ATTN MOSHBROS, GTFIH

I’ve been waiting for this video to drop for weeks, because this track is easily my favorite hardcore song in years. Featuring guest vocals by Martin Stewart of Terror/Donnybrook, it’s pretty much the best song Madball never wrote. Actually, it’s even better, because most Madball songs are about New York, which is a hipster-filled shithole, and this song is about the best place on earth: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!

My notes:

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I know I don’t care who’s in Winds of Plague, but do their fans? I mean obviously no one cares about whasshername. It’s perfectly clear that any scene girl can fill that job and the fans won’t blink an eye. But, like, if the guitar player or the drummer quits, would the fans be bummed? Are these guys integral to the group’s creative success?

I ask because they’ve released a new video, “Drop the Match,” and the rest of the band is barely in it. In fact, not only are they barely in the video, but towards the end, Johnny kills each and everyone of them in horrible, violent ways. He shoots one guy in the head, asphyxiates one guy, blows up another dude, sets another guy on fire, and ties up whasshername and kicks her off of a peer so that she will fall into the water below and drown.

I’m saying that people might read into this a little bit that Johnny does not care about his bandmates. It’s just a possibility.

Come back to MetalSucks next week, when I am going to burn Anso in effigy. I don’t mean anything by it, though. I just thought it was a neat way to promote our brand.

-AR

Foo Fighters fans fretting that Wasting Light would relinquish its hold on the meaningless Soundscan charts after dropping to #2 last week after three debut weeks at #1… fret not, as Dave Grohl and co. are back up top! This week’s #2 comes in the form of a big surprise, as Zack Wylde’s Black Label Society sold a ton of copies of the acoustic equivalent of a remixes album.

Lots of interesting action elsewhere, too, with new records by Anvil and Hate Eternal making the charts, and a bunch of other strong sellers. Also: a case study in Sixx A.M. / Motley Crue chart history, another one on the myriad Aerosmith greatest hits collections selling gangbusters, and on Metallica’s Master of Puppets‘ chart legacy finally coming to an end.

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In the absence of any big metal debuts, this week I decided to run with a question posed last week: how does Amon Amarth’s current chart-buster Surtur Rising stack up against their past releases? After the jump, a look at those numbers.

Foo Fighters were #1 and Hollywood Undead were #2 for the third week in a row on the Top Hard Music charts; elsewhere, Otep Shamaya had a nice debut and shitstains on the ass of the universe like Winds of Plague and Asking Alexandria also had solid weeks. Whoopie.

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The Foo Fighters are #1 for the 2nd week in a row; I have yet to hear Wasting Light but everything Dave Grohl puts out is quality and the two songs I’ve heard so far are both slam dunks. Conversely, Hollywood Undead are #2 for the second week in a row; can’t win ‘em all, I guess, but at least they’re not #1.

Elsewhere Winds of Plague, Periphery and Loaded had solid debuts, while pretty much any band that was on Revolver’s Golden Gods Awards show experienced a nice little sales bump. Numbers after the fold.

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This week sees new releases by Graveyard, Periphery, Blut Aus Nord, Septicflesh, Winds of Plague, and tons more. MS new release expert Vic Vaughn takes a looksee at each after the jump!

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We were thrilled when we recently got to meet Tina Fey for the first time, and absolutely flattered, and completely blown away, when she told us she had seen our site and was a fan. We asked her if she’d consider doing a guest column for us, and not only did she agree — but she volunteered to review Winds of Plague’s latest, Against the World, in podcast form. Download her review below:

Download Tina’s podcast review of Winds of Plague’s Against the World here

We’d like to thank Tina for taking time out of her busy day to do that review for us. Against the World comes out April 19 on Century.

I know it’s arrogant for us to pat ourselves on the back, but holy shit, did we kill it this week or what?

Here’s what we did:

• We brought you the first interview with Behemoth frontman Nergal since he was diagnosed with leukemia in August.
• We got the exclusive scoop on Melissa Auf der Maur’s collaboration with Shining’s Jorgen Munkeby.
• We debuted new music by Between the Buried and Me, Last Chance to Reason, and Havok.
• We debuted new videos by Protest the Hero and Becoming the Archetype.
• We also spoke to the legendary David Coverdale from Whitesnake.
• We checked out the latest release from Anthrax and Until Your Heart Stops.
• We told you what your favorite metal band says about you… and then we told you again!
• We got excited about the line-up for Summer Slaughter 2011.
• We wondered if Winds of Plague are the new Limp Bizkit.
• We protested shitty metal vocalists.

We aspire to make next week even biggerer and betterer! Check back then to see if we succeeded or not… ’til then, have a great weekend!

-AR

Winds of Plague may be the new Limp Bizkit, they may have a rotating cast of boob-flashing keyboard players who don’t write their own keyboard parts and they might just be a constant laughing-stock of the metal community at large (unless your name is Sergeant D), but they’ve proven they have at least one shred of good taste with this latest bit of news: ’80s/’90s WWF wrestling great The Ultimate Warrior will contribute a spoken word track called “The Warrior’s Code” to Winds of Plague’s new album Against the World, due April 19th. In case you’re wondering what a spoken word track by The Ultimate Warrior might sound like, watch this:

and this:

Excited? I am! It’ll probably be the best thing on the entire album.

-VN

You’ve all read Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death, right? If not, you should get off your ass and do that; it’s the definitive history of death metal and grindcore, and whether you’ve been a fan of those genres since the day of Scum or you’re a youngin’ trying to figure out what the big deal about Carcass is, you are guaranteed to learn something from reading it.

Well, I’m super-stoked to let you know that Mudrian has now penned a second volume of Choosing Death — this one focusing on deathcore. Says Mudrian via press release:

“Deathcore is the definitive form of extreme music in the aughties. As Napalm Death, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, and Suffocation were to my generation, so will bands like Suicide Silence, Oceano, Emmure, and Winds of Plague be to this generation.These bands are proudly carrying the torch of the brutal music we all love, so it only made sense to see to it that their story was told.”

And the best part is — MetalSucks’ own Sergeant D. wrote the introduction! So now you know you need that shit.

You can pre-order a copy of Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death II right here — it hits shelves on May 24 via Da Capo Press.

-AR

“Oy! I can’t believe I joined this band.”

No joke: I played a new Winds of Plague song, called “California,” for Vince awhile back, without telling him what it was. His reaction? “Is this the new Limp Bizkit single?”

It’s easy to see how he could have made such a mistake.

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So this is pretty cool… in theory at least. Last week, the videogame Homefront was released (I haven’t played it so I have no idea how it is, although I read some decent reviews), and yesterday, the makers of the game started giving away a FREE compilation of metal bands doing covers of war-appropriate songs, sometimes by other metal bands, sometimes by non-metal artists. You can download it here, and should get on that ASAP, as they’re only giving away 25,000 of the free downloads. As of this writing, DLs are still avail, though. Also, I’m sure this thing will remain all over the internet forever and ever, so don’t freak too hard if they’re all gone by the time you get there.

Another reason no to freak out too hard if you don’t get to download this puppy? Even though this is 100% free, like most cover albums, it’s not actually all that amazing. Let’s take a look at what the album has to offer, shall we?

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