MetalSucks

MetalSucks is double-dipping this year at the annual showdown/brodown/hoedown in Austin, TX by bringing you TWO awesome metal shows. You already know about the amazing Full Metal Texas lineup during the day on Thursday, March 18th — featuring Darkest Hour, Howl, Fair to Midland, Iron Age, Karnivool, Iwrestledabearonce and more — and today we’re pleased to announce that we’re sponsoring the showcase for one of our favorite metal labels, Prosthetic Records. The lineup, starting at 7pm on the festival’s inaugural Wednesday night, features the future of Prosthetic’s roster: Scale the Summit, Landmine Marathon, Withered, Book of Black Earth and The Funeral Pyre. We haven’t heard of Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire or Lions of Tsavo before, but if Prosthetic gives them their stamp of approval they seriously must be excellent… and aren’t festivals like this supposed to be about discovering new music anyway?

But wait — there’s more! The Prosthetic showcase is taking place at the same venue as the Action PR showcase at the very same time, meaning once you’re in you’ll be able to freely roam between both stages, one inside and one outside. And check out THIS fucking lineup: High on Fire, Priestess, Bison B.C., The Gates of Slumber, Zoroaster and Namm. Holy fucktickles, are you kidding me? That’s 13 fucking awesome metal all for just $10 (free if you have a wristband) in one metal-filled evening. FUCK YES.

Coming soon: a MetalSucks-approved calendar of all the metal goings-on at SXSW 2010.

We loved the last tour blog that Bison B.C.’s Dan And did for us so much, we’re only all-too-happy to present another! Below, please enjoy part 1; check back tomorrow for part 2!

Sep 11 ‘09 (Vancouver BC @ Commodore)

I always love kicking off a tour with a show in Vancouver. It’s great to have one last chance to get completely loser pissed with our friends before we hit the road for however long. This time we were fortunate enough to finally share the stage with local good ‘ol boys The Golers and old pals 3 Inches of Blood. The Golers have been around forever and everyone should fucking hear them. They’re basically Vancouver’s Venomous Concept: relentless, break-neck speed pummeling. Is grind-punk a genre?

Show was fucking fun as all hell. It was 3 Inches record release show for Here Waits Thy Doom (which may or may not feature all of us doing backups on the song “Preacher’s Daughter”) and the place was packed! The cap of the Commodore is somewhere between 950 and 1000 and apparently it was like 15 tickets away from being sold out. Jesse from local grinders Zuckuss pointed out how fucking crazy it is that three local bands brought that many metal heads out of the woodwork. The night was bitter sweet though because not only was our good friend Ian unable to be there because of surgery but that night would also be my last chance to ever set foot in local punk/metal institution the Cobalt. I can’t even describe how awesome that bar and the staff are. The thought that it’s getting shut down by the fucking slum lords that own the building so they can cash in on Olympic fever makes me wanna tear someone’s head off. I’m consoled by the fact that I know bar legend/honcho Wendy 13 will soon enough have a new venue I can crawl out of at 5am reeking of Jager bombs. COBALT FOREVER!
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On Sunday night we caught the Beard Destroyer 2009 tour with Hull and Batillus (sadly for us, Salome didn’t play that date). It crushed even harder than we thought it would, so we asked our friend, Batillus skinsman Geoff Summers, to do a tour wrap-up for us. We hope you enjoy!

So, here I sit with a mild case of PTD (post-tour depression) writing up this wrap report for the so-called Beard Destroyer tour featuring Salome, Hull, and my band, Batillus. We had some good times, and we had some bad times. It rained. A lot. Everywhere we went. Fortunately, though, the good dwarfed the bad. Let’s recap…

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Last night I told Burst vocalist Linus Jägerskog -  a truly chill dude who not only works his band’s merch booth, but is more than happy to pose for photos, sign shit, etc. – that he broke my heart. How could this be the first time we were seeing them live? And why oh why was it the last?

Burst were fucking great, man. So great that when the shitard behind me yelled “Stand up, you faggot!” at guitarist Robert Reinholdz (who was, for reasons I’m not clear about, seated for the entire performance) and then called for Jägerskog to “hang yourself tonight,” I seriously considered throwing my beer at him. And if any band that wasn’t Gojira was going on after Burst, getting kicked out of the show to defend the Swedes’ honor might have seemed totally worth it.

But GOJIRA. Wow. Here are some random thoughts that ran through my brain as we watched them give the best show of the year so far for the second time this year:

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I’m told that up is the new down, polka is the new metal, and energy drinks are the new WEED, but I’m not sure that all those claims are entirely accurate.

Also, Burst is (soon to be was) an awesome band, and if you can catch them on their first/last US tour ever (until a reunion that a scant few of us will actually care about) with Zoroaster and MetalPoops bone-crunching/eco-friendful fave Gojira (for most dates), you shan’t be disappointed. I can safely say that we are all extremely excited to see this bill at a smallish venue in chipster Brooklyn — you’re invited too, so get a ticket before it sells out!

It’s a shame to see Burst go — the albums that they’ve released are all pretty awesome, and I believe that the more they were to tighten their vision, the more they could have crossed over into further popularity/acclaim.

Oh well.

BURST — “Nineteenhundred” from Lazarus Bird (2008)

For US tour dates, visit Burst on YourMySpace.

-KW

A couple of weeks back we reported on the sudden glut of U.S. metal festivals this year, the latest of which is the MetalSucks-sponsored Planet Caravan 2-day metal festival being held in Asheville, NC this September. Quick refresher: Clutch, Pentagram, Kylesa, Burst (first and last U.S. tour ever!), Wino and many others. Today we’re thrilled to announce that the already strong bill has gotten that much stronger with a slew of heavyweight bands added: Tombs, The Gates of Slumber, Zoroaster, Bison B.C., Sourvein, doom kings/queen Salome, and friends of MetalSucks Hull and Battilus, the latter 3 of which will be touring the U.S. together around that time. All of the newly added acts will perform on the also-newly added second stage, right next door to the Orange Peel mainstage at Mo Daddy’s.

If you live anywhere close to North Carolina, how can you even consider not going to this event? It’s going to be a fucking rager. Tickets are on sale here or at the Orange Peel box office.

-VN

A couple of weeks ago about 10,675 of you emailed us about the kinda-cool-but-not-really-all-that-exciting news that LoG and Gojira will be opening for Metallica on their fall U.S. tour; good for them and all, but tickets will cost a fortune and we’d much rather see each band in a smaller, more intimate setting. So of course now that there’s actually some legit, super-exciting news — that Gojira have scheduled a series of one-off headline gigs in between their shows with Metallica — the grand total of readers who have emailed us so far is…. zero. Seriously, fuck all of you. (update: ONE. Thank you once again to MetalSucks Maniac / our favorite metal Hasid, Josh Kidd!). Kids, Gojira’s NYC headline show earlier this year was easily the best show we’ve seen all year. Easily. “Holy” and “shit” don’t even begin to describe how we felt about the show.

Support on these dates, which start September 21st in Brooklyn, will come from Zoroaster (who are headlining the MetalSucks-sponsored North America is Doomed Tour this Summer) and motherfucking BURST! That’s right, motherfucking Burst, whom I’ve been imploring you all to check out for at least two years. All at the same tiny venue in Williamsburg where we saw Mastodon play Crack the Skye in its entirety; the place holds 300 people, 400 max.

Check out the full list of Gojira headline dates after the jump. If your city isn’t included, fret not — the press release we received says “more dates TBA.”

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If this afternoon’s post about Shrinebuilder and A Storm of Light wasn’t enough to get you doom lovers off, here’s another bit of news that might help you bust a nut tonight: the MetalSucks-sponsored North America is Doomed tour kicks off next Saturday, August 1st! The tour features Zoroaster (who our own Kip W. affectionately pronounces “Zo-Roaster”), The Gates of Slumber and Serpentcult, and kicks off August 1st in Chicago, snaking its way through Eastern Canada, the Northeast U.S. and Midwest, and wraps up August 14th in Indianapolis.

http://www.myspace.com/thezoroaster
http://www.myspace.com/thegatesofslumber
http://www.myspace.com/serpentcult

Full list of tour dates after the jump.

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What’s that? Yet another of the summer’s best tour lineups will be sponsored by MetalSucks? Yes, yes, ya’ll!

Avant-garde psych metal band ZOROASTER, Indianapolis, IN doom metal trio THE GATES OF
SLUMBER and Belgian “über doom” unit SERPENTCULT (read DBR’s clever official review) will team up for the “North America is Doomed” tour this summer. Presented by Action! PR, Decibel Magazine and MetalSucks.net, the 14 city trek will kick off on August 1 in Chicago, IL and will hit major markets including NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal.

On the topic of the tour, Zoroaster guitarist / vocalist Will Fiore states, “This tour is going to be so heavy, it’s scary! Each and every show is going to feature an amazing night of massive riffs, so come out and get lost. This is going to hurt…in all the right ways.”

Indeed, this tour promises to be even more metal than this guy. Tour dates and venues after the jump.

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