Everyone remembers Bob Larson, right? He’s the evangelical radio personality that Glenn Benton used to prank phone call?

Well, that dude somehow got Mayhem bassist Necrobutcher (né Jørn Stubberud) to agree to be the victim beneficiary of an exorcism on Norwegian television, and that footage is now available for your viewing pleasure. Check it out below; it starts around the 22 minute mark. And, yes, it is highly, highly entertaining, in no small part because Larson is a humorless, self-righteous prick, and Necrobutcher is… well, he’s also pretty humorless, but the difference is that he’s, y’know, right.

In case you somehow forgot, Mayhem are headlining tonight’s Metal Suckfest pre-game at the Gramercy Theatre here in NYC; the show also features Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Woe. Tickets are still available! Come see some awesome black metal, hang out with us, and let kick off the weekend’s festivities early. We’ll see ya there!

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

PA black metallers Woe — who are playing the official “Pre-Game” of the Metal Suckfest on November 3rd along with Mayhem, Keep of Kalessin, Hate and Abigail Williams — released Quietly, Undramatically via Candlelight Records roughly a year ago. We like this band a lot: we premiered a track from that record and Sammy O’Hagar gave it a four-out-of-five horns rating in his official review of the record.

Now Woe have gone and released a new version of Quietly, Undramatically that’s been entirely remixed. I didn’t have any problem with the way the record sounded to begin with, but I gotta admit, this new one sounds way better.

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We invited Rumpelstiltskin Grinder to play our first annual Metal Suckfest in NYC in November but unfortunately the PA criminal thrash kings had to decline because bassist/vocalist Shawn Riley had other touring commitments. Turns out those “other touring commitments” are with most excellent black metallers Woe — who are playing our official Suckfest “Pre-Game” with Mayhem on Thursday, November 3rd — so the news that RsG couldn’t make it was bittersweet. But man, Rumpelfuckingstiltskin Grinder! ‘Twould’ve been an honor to have them at our fest.

I’m cranking 2009′s Living For Death, Destroying the Rest as I write this, and this album without a doubt thrases just as furiously as it did when it came out and I named it one of my favorite records of the year. Riffs for miles and miles and miles! So it is with great excitement that I tell you this, via a press release: Rumpelstiltskin Grinder are working on a new record that will tentatively come out in Spring 2012. Comments guitarist Matt Moore (also of Absu fame):

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Mayhem are one of black metal’s most infamous and legendary bands, but it’s been a hot minute since they toured North America — in fact, I believe the last time they were here, they even had a different line-up.

In any case, they’re returning this fall to fuck your shit up, and they’re bringing Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams, and Woe with ‘em. Regular readers of this site know I’m not so sweet on Abby Will, but otherwise, this is a solid line-up — I’m especially excited about the inclusion of Keep of Kalessin, who I haven’t yet had the opportunity to check out live, but I hear are awesome.

Here are dates, courtesy Lambgoat:

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Word of who was gonna be on the bill for this year’s Scion Rock Fest, the totally free annual metal super-show, got out yesterday — hell, Wormrot even decided to just go ahead and confirm their presence at the festival. So in that regard, the official announcement of this year’s fest is a little anti-climactic.

Until you realize, holy shit — there really is gonna be a free festival with Morbid Angel, Obituary, Death Angel, Municipal Waste, Agalloch, Wormrot, Kvelertak, Atheist, Black Breath, Nails, Fuck the Facts, and tons more awesome bands. That is a fact about which one ought never to complain.

You can RSVP for the event here starting tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the finalized poster:

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF DRAGONFORCE, A LIFE ONCE LOST, ALL SHALL PERISH, CANCER BATS, THE ACCUSED, AIRBOURNE, ABSU, WOE, WHILE SHE SLEEPS, DIAMOND PLATE, MALEFICE, MUTANT SUPREMACY, GENGHIS TRON, AND TRENDKILL BOOKING AND RECORDINGS

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ve be running them in groups of ten to twelve musicians at a time twice a day all week.

After the jump, check out the eighth and final group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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We’re shuttering the Mansion gates early today for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday, ’cause let’s face it: you’ve all gone home already and have long since put up your “I am out of the office. If it’s urgent, call my cell phone” auto-responders. Please, people: no one cares about you. Get over it!

Here’s what happened in this abbreviated week while might or might not have been checking your Blackberries:

• Two bears reviewed Daath’s new record and called us faggots.
• Haste the Day decided to hang it up, as did Chimaira’s Jim LaMarca.
• Two Greeks showed us the only proper way to react to a brass band busking on the street.
• All of J.S. Bach’s organ works are available for free download; know your metal forefathers, son!
• Revocation’s Dave Davidson kept us up to date with the latest shenanigans to befall The Legacy Tour with Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya and Periphery, while Daath’s Eyal Levi thinks the picture looks bleak for today’s unsigned metal bands hoping to make it big.
• Are there single songs you like by bands you otherwise abhor?
• Crowbar released a new jam!
• Bob Cock spoke with Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi.
• We Contaminated our Cooking by making baked mac and cheese and collard greens with Woe’s Chris Griggs.

We’ll be stuffing our faces full of food and booze tomorrow and recovering all day Friday. See ya Monday!

-VN

Philadelphia’s Woe are one of our favorite bands in the American black metal uprising of the last five years or so; A Spell For the Death of Man was positively mesmerizing, and this year’s Quietly, Undramatically follows in its path (we even premiered one of its tracks).

In this, the sixth episode of MetalSucks’ own cooking show Cooking Contaminated, Woe mastermind and Krieg drummer Chris Grigg — a man who confesses his diet consists mostly of ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese — steps into host Eli Shaika’s kitchen where the two team up to serve a Contaminated edition of one of those very dishes, a 3-cheese baked mac and cheese, along with some vegetarian/vegan collard greens. Watch and learn, and as always, find the ingredients after the jump so you can follow along at home.

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Krieg are the odd man out in the USBM spectrum. “True” almost to a fault, they lack the oppressive, claustrophobic bleakness of Xasthur, the Phil Spector-ian walls of blackened madness of Leviathan, or the psychedelic mindfuckery of Nachtmystium. The few times I’ve tried to get into Krieg, nothing jumped out at me. And yet, after hearing Krieg frontman/mastermind Imperial’s serrated vocals on Twilight’s Monument to Time End this year, it shook something in me. There’s a fundamental rawness to it that can’t be replicated in silly backyard corpsepaint GIFs. And that rawness is all over Krieg’s latest, the chilling The Isolationist. It’s got all the black metal hallmarks, sure, but they’re all tweaked to provide maximum effectiveness. Droning and repetitive to some ears, to others, it’s all about mood. And that mood is suffocating and bleak. It’s relentless hideousness is truly a thing to behold, and with it, Krieg ably prove themselves as major contributors to US black metal.

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Seriously, if you haven’t read Vince’s epic story about how MetalSucks Maniac “whiskey” won last week’s last week’s photo caption contest, you need to go read it now. It’s pretty amazing. Whiskey’s mom even left a comment! We like to think of MetalSucks as something the whole fucking family can enjoy together, so that warmed the cockles of our collective heart.

Here’s some other fun stuff that happened this week:

• We debuted a performance clip from the new Shadows Fall live DVD, the new Intronaut album, and a new Madball song. PHEW!
• We spoke to Jeremy Creamer from Daath, Johnny Plague from Winds of Plague, Adam Warren from Oceano, and Ashmedi from Melechesh. Oh, and Anso unveiled part one of his massive two-part interview with Atheist’s Kelly Shaefer.
• We checked out new releases by Salome, Madball, Woe, and Arson Anthem and Ender. And a DWARR reissue!
• Greg Weeks from The Red Chord said good-bye to Randy Moss and hello to men wearing pink tights, Sacha Dunable from Intronaut contemplated the legalization of recreational marijuana use in California, and Eyal Levi from Daath discovered DestinAsian.
• Sergeant D. celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell. Wait, what?
• We couldn’t figure out why everyone was so surprised that ICP are evangelical Christians.
• We found out the hard way that Attack Attack!’s music could be even worse than it already is.
• We took a slow ride on Metallica’s Lightning.
• We laughed at one shit stain calling another shit stain “a shit stain.”
• And, oh yeah! Gary Suarez took over the site for a day.

Next week is CMJ here in New York! If you’re in the area and looking for some awesome metal, check out our handy guide to all the festivities — including not one but TWO showcases sponsored by MetalSucks. We’re not gonna lie — we are going to be very hungover and tired next week. But that just means we’ll be crankier than usual. We’ll still be here with lots of debuts, interviews, and other assorted nonsense. Bring your mom! It’ll be fun.

-AR

It takes balls to name your album Quietly, Undramatically. You may as well call it The Heaviest Fucking Thing You’ve Ever Heard and include shards of a Heineken bottle with the first 600 copies. In fact, that would be less controversial: Quietly, Undramatically’s title doesn’t explicitly call attention to the album’s potential heaviness, thus underplaying how potentially badass said album may be. Metal is not a game in which one underplays. It borders on ironic appreciation, which as any metalhead will tell you, is arguably the worst thing to happen to the genre. But Woe, being well-versed in black metal, don’t do irony. They also don’t underplay. So while there’s not a whole lot of quiet and certainly nothing, um, “undramatic” about Quietly, Undramatically, the band can call the record whatever the fuck they like. Sincere and relentlessly creative, Woe, like most decent black metal bands nowadays, put a new spin on an old method. But their spin, when it’s working and even when occasionally it’s not, is undoubtedly theirs.

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Of the many black metal bands that have come to gain wider acceptance in the United States over the past few years, Woe are one of my favorites. I find their brand of crunchy, angst-filled blackness to be the most approachable of the lot and the least bogged down by pretentiousness and genre cliches like awful production and silly imagery. I’m hesitant to call Woe more straight-forward — because their music has a palpable level of complexity to it — but it’s just that at the end of the day Woe understand how important it is to just rock and don’t seem too concerned about over-thinking this oft-forgotten fact.

Woe’s 2008 release A Spell For the Death of Man is an album I’ve come back to many a time since its release, so I’m happy that soon enough — on October 12th, to be exact — we’ll get to hear its follow-up, Quietly, Undramatically. In a way, the album name perfectly encapsulates how I feel the band approaches their music; they just do it, without making a big deal of what it is or is not. Their live show is the same way; they’ve completely and intensely rocked my face off every time I’ve seen them.

Until Quietly, Undramatically drops on October 12 via Candlelight we’ll have to settle for this one track from the album, “A Treatise on Control.” But what a doozy it is… “settle” is hardly the word. Stream it below, and check out more Woe on their MySpace page.

[this promotion has ended]

We’re just a few weeks away from Maryland Deathfest 2010, which will take place from May 28-30 in (duh) Baltimore, Maryland. This year’s edition of the annual fest promises to be the best one yet, with a line-up that includes Gorguts, Autopsy, Obituary, Entombed, Sodom, Repulsion, D.R.I., and a ton of other kick-ass bands. In anticipation of the event, we thought it would be fun to get some recollections of past MDFs from artists who were there. So we’re teaming up with Relapse Records to do just that! The inaugural edition, by Matt from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, is below; in the coming weeks, we’ll also present entries by members of Brutal Truth, Disfear, and more. Enjoy…

Day 1

I forget what year it was exactly… but it was the time Municipal Waste played… Eli (Relapse Sales Manager, XXX Maniak) and I (Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Absu, Woe, XXX Maniak, Creeping Vine Productions) drove down to MDF in one of our shitty cars… we were hoping to get there in time to see Municipal Waste.  We get to the parking lot, and the only spot there is too small because some jerk-off parked between two spots.  We yell at two nearby dudes to come help us and the four of us lift up this loser’s car and move it out of the way so we can park.  High fives and last car-beers finished…

We scam our way inside somehow and Municipal just started… we each grab two beers from the bar and get involved in the circle pit. I forget much of the rest of the day but here are some recollections:

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Last night Vince and I went to check out Alcest’s first ever NYC show at The Studio at Webster Hall. For a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with, neither of us had been able to smoke prior to the gig; nor did we have any weed on us, which is just as well, as this isn’t really the kind of venue where you could get away with smoking anyway – the staff would surely spot you and have you ejected in about five seconds flat. And so were confined to PBRs to, uh, expand our minds for the show.

And so we were maybe halfway through the first song when Vince turned to me and said, “I really wish we were high.”

“I was just thinking that,” I said to Vince. “Also, I kinda wish we were at a Gojira show.”

“I was just thinking that!” Vince laughed. “Why is that?”

I shrugged and suggested: “Because both Alcest and Gojira are French?”

Vince nodded knowingly. That made sense.

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Alcest’s new album, Écailles De Lune so relaxing to listen to… it’s like an aural tongue massage. Even when there’s screaming, it’s, like, the most mellow screaming ever. In fact, I’m making a MetalSucks Mansion Monkey rub my shoulders while we crank it right now. He offered to add the tongue massage part, but even I have standards.

ANYWAY, I’ve never seen Alcest live before, but I’ll get my chance in the spring, when they come to North America for a string of dates. I expect it to be the most chill show I attend all year. There’s also gonna be a string of various excellent bands playing support: Velnias, Liturgy, Clad In Darkness, Woe, Monarque, and Have A Nice Life

Dates after le saut:

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First show of the the new year for me proved to be a great one. Local black metallers Woe, who recently signed to Candlelight Records, opened the night up a little early with hypnotizing riffage, closing the set with “Condemned with Prey.” In spite of the starting times having been changed, Woe’s creator Chris Grigg commented, “Despite the venue’s unprofessional decision to make us play 40 minutes prior to the advertised start of the show, we are confident that those who were in attendance were suitably deafened and offended.”

Next up, Metal Blade’s Lightning Swords of Death proclaimed their evil with gauntlets on and shirts off. Definitely one of the most epic performances I’ve seen in a while. Septic Flesh were welcomed to the stage by the ever-growing crowd as they expertly melded live music with pre-recorded
backing vocal and synth tracks, making the more intoxicated audience members scream for more in a pretty demanding way. The photo pit started getting crowded at this point, so I apologize for a lack of shots of the drummer.

As the kids began getting antsy, a chorus of “BE-HE-MOTH” chants began to rise from the floor, finally erupting in a wave of guttural screaming once the band finally took stage. While some kids just head-banged, otherss found it necessary to run around like oafs, knocking each other down, spinning, and generally being meatheads.

Photos after the jump.

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The arrival of June means that all the big metal bands are over in Europe playing the festival circuit, but this isn’t all a bad thing. For one, it means some much-needed R and R (that’s rest and relaxation, fuckos) after a hectic Spring show season. It also means more time to go to smaller shows; ya know, ones that aren’t in huge concert halls where beer costs $7, and ones that are in real places where actual real / non scene-kid people hang out. The DIY (by comparison) shows of late Spring and early Summer offer a welcome respite from the big headline tours of early Spring and the packaged, brand-sponsored traveling festivals of Summer. This weekend I went to see the debut of NYC’s Motheater — a wicked brew of southern soul and northern fury — and a four-headed best of underground metal at Pitchfork’s “Show No Mercy” show serie, featuring Salome, Woe, Black Anvil, and Snake Sustaine.

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