Professor Prometheus Pontificates

Annotations of an Autopsy - Dark Days Review

2013-02-08T21:45:00.002-08:00

Frequent readers of MetalSucks.net will know of frequent contributor Sergeant D, who in addition to writing for the website also maintains his own site known as Stuff You Will Hate. A couple years back on Stuff You Will Hate, Sergeant D brought to the attention of the internet metal crowd an Australian outfit by the name of Endworld. Their song "Never Trust", and the corresponding (terrible) music video, became showcase pieces for how not to write a song, how not to make a music video, and basically how not to be a brodowncore scenester douchebag. The title of the post containing Endworld's ode to creative bankruptcy was "When your deathcore band is the shitty version of Defiler", referencing yet another brodowncore scenester douchebag brigade comprised of levels of suck previously thought unheard of in "heavy" music. I'm fairly certain Annotations of an Autopsy, Great Britain's worst export since Heil Honey, I'm Home, saw the video and, in a haze brought on by a combination of too much weed and too few brain cells, said to themselves, "Hey, ya know that moderately enjoyable death metal album we made with Erik Rutan a couple years back? Fuck that shit, brah, that didn't have enough slams in it! Let's completely throw that sound out and make something so stereotypically 'bro' that not even other scenesters will like it!" And that's exactly what they fucking did.

I know many will cry afoul at an absolute negative score of zero percent, just like many cry similarly afoul at a score of one hundred percent, but in the case of Dark Days there is no other score that fits the sheer lack of anything creative, original, interesting, listenable, or smart in this EP's 18 or so minutes of aural sodomy. There are only four songs, but every single one of them run together 99.99998% of the time. Every slam, every chuggachugga breakdown, every lame attempt at sounding "brutal" sounds exactly like the one that just came before it. This is an album built upon the false idea that more slamming = more brutal. Sorry to break it to you Emmure wannabes, but playing mid-tempo range chugging with a production quality tailor made to make you sound as heavy as possible is not brutal. God of Emptiness is both brutal and haunting. Cannibal Corpse is brutal. Dark Days is not brutal. Dark Days does not deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as "brutal". Each song, while being incredibly stupid as a whole, has its own standout moment where you just pause your audio player and facepalm as hard as you possibly can. The pinnacle moment of stupidity in this regard comes on the very first track, "Buried in a Bad Rep"; at about :57 we hear a choir of gang vocal bros shout in the lamest, most uninterested manner possible, "SO SUCK MY FUCKING DICK!". It's moments like this that really make me wonder why it had to be Chuck Schuldiner and Quorthon that died young. We really need them nowadays. The second song, Reznov, is memorable only in that its first 45 seconds represent that .000001% of something different through being the only segment of the album not to be a mid-tempo chugging groove. These 45 seconds, while still incredibly uninspired and uninteresting, are the only link this EP has to AOAA's former speedy roots, after which it descends into more endless chuggalugg grooving. The album's title track is literally so nondescript that I cannot remember a single thing about it beyond it being the title track, and the final track, "Stage Breaker", is only memorable due to most of that song's vocals being the wimpy gang shouts that have dominated this entire record; it's overkill on the final track though, as not one section goes by without some kind of gang shout. The only member of the band that's stayed around past the Erik Rutan album is the singer, whose name I forget and will from here on refer to as Fatty McStupidHat. His voice has degenerated past the point of no return, going from bland yet usable on the previous album to just being a Johnny Plague ripoff. All the instrumentalists here are new, the last album's death metal lineup all gone, and there's nothing that can be said about their performances here.

Then there are the lyrics. It's brocore, so of course the lyrics are gonna be big, dumb, and stupid, but they are taken to a new level of "no human being with an ounce of brain matter in their skulls would say this stuff without a hint of irony". There's the aforementioned hilariously piss poor "SO SUCK MY FUCKING DICK!" gang shout from the first song, but each song contains such mind numbingly retarded lyrics that you have got to wonder if whoever wrote them has some sort of severe mental defect. As you could probably tell, the EP drops the gore themes that the band's early material contained, as well as the mad apocalyptic ravings of The Reign of Darkness. In their place is brocore posturing so asinine and juvenile that not even Winds of Plague's latest disasterpiece could top it. The word "fuck" is the word of the day for AOAA, being used 27 times throughout the EP's 18:27 run time, showing perfectly that AOAA have both run out of song ideas and run out of the necessary supply of oxygen needed for proper brain functions. The worst offending passage on the record is in Stage Breaker. Read at your own risk.

My dying words to the world would be
Fuck you
all you pricks tryna run your mouth
Fuck you
My dying words to the world would be
Fuck you
and if you think i respect you
Fuck you too

Clearly somebody was dropped off a fourth floor balcony when they were a tot. The only other way one could write something so magnificently brainless is if they happened to be a member of HellYeah or Five Finger Death Punch.

In the end, we can only stop to reflect on the pure fermented anal leakage that is Dark Days. The fact that the EP's title is bringing to my head the chorus of Satyricon's "Black Crow of a Tombstone" is a crime against humanity. Not because of the Satyricon song, as that song is both genuine and an actually good song, but because it's forcing me to equate one of Norway's black metal kings with the UK's musical equivalent to rectal cancer. Thank whatever invisible sky creature you pray to that Annotations of an Autopsy have decided to call it quits, as I'm not sure this realm of existence could take another Dark Days, or for that matter, another Emmure clone. Let this be a warning to all prospective musical artists, instrumentalists, singers, vocalists, or otherwise inclined to an audio medium: do not make the mistakes Annotations of an Autopsy made with Dark Days. You might just end up as a post on a website under the title, "When your deathcore band is the shitty version of Endworld".

Testament - Dark Roots of Earth Review

2013-02-08T21:44:00.002-08:00

Ah, the modern thrash metal revival. The resurrection of this most frenetic style of heavy metal has seen many new bands attempt their hand at mixing the great bands of yesteryear with a modern sensibility, while many stalwarts of the genre's golden age in the 1980s and early 90s came back to life or shed their mid-to-late 90s groovy skin to return to what made them famous in the first place. Many good things have come from the thrash revival (the returns of Exodus, Kreator, Destruction, Overkill, and the Big 4 to thrash as well as the emergence of Municipal Waste, Havok, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, and Evile among others), as have many bad things (everything Destruction has made after Antichrist, that stupid yet thankfully brief Gene Hoglan-less Dark Angel reunion, the lack of a reunion of the classic Sepultura lineup thus saving us from any future Derrick Green fronted albums), however one cannot deny that more good has come from modern thrash than bad.

This leads us to Testament, one of the "Little 4" of American thrash metal alongside Exodus, Death Angel, and Dark Angel (although many I know would switch out Dark Angel for Forbidden or Metal Church). Since the death of thrash in the early 90s, Testament have tried their hand at more groove inspired territory throughout the decade with Low and Demonic before returning to the thrash genre with the simply spectacular The Gathering in 1999. After many years of doing practically nothing, they reacquired Alex Skolnick and set forth upon the world The Formation of Damnation in 2008 to something of a lukewarm response. Many called it a glorious return to form, while many called it a boring waste of space. Now four years and one Gene Hoglan later, the band has released Dark Roots of Earth, their tenth record. And yes, it is, for the most part, damn good old school thrash metal.

Right out of the proverbial gate with Rise Up, the band shows that they can still make you bang your head as if up from the dead, pummeling the listener with fast yet thick riffs and face smashing drumming. The band's Metallica influence comes through heavily in both the kind of radio friendly, melodic sound found on a large part of the album as well as the structure of pretty much every song on the record, each following a verse-chorus-verse format that may put off those that prefer their songs to have less of a rigid manner of happening, but for me I've no problem with each song doing this. If anything it means we just get to hear the good riffs many times throughout the song. One thing that did slightly bug me was that almost every song took place at the same tempo, with the exception of the slightly death metal influenced True American Hate. This can make it kind of hard to discern one song from another, although tracks like Rise Up and Native Blood contain enough memorable vocal melodies and riffs to keep them playing in your head for hours on end. As the album wears on though, this becomes a bit harder to do, as the songs kind of bleed together making it hard to tell which one is which unless you actually go back and listen to each song individually. The only genuinely not necessary song on the record Is the nearly 8 minute Cold Embrace, which is both the slowest and most melodic song on the album. It's both kind of out of place in the sea of hard hitting thrashers and not a very interesting listen and I recommend to just skip it on repeated listens of the record as a whole. Lyrically Chuck Billy has incorporated his Native American heritage into the fold, speaking about the hardships his people have endured throughout history. It's an interesting lyrical choice for a band like Testament and I'm surprised it took them this long to use it. Sadly the only song these themes appear on are lead single Native Blood, with the rest of the songs encompassing all too familiar thrash themes such as man's inhumanity to man, the people rebelling against the establishment, etc. They aren't bad lyrics in the slightest, but I personally would have liked to hear more about Chuck's people.

As can be expected for a band like Testament, the instrumentation is superb. 4/5 of the classic Testament lineup appear on the record, with the drum throne being taken this time around by legendary beater of heads Gene Hoglan. Having previously appeared on Demonic, this isn't his first time at the Testament rodeo, and his style of fast paced and aggressive yet creative drumming fits very well with the music found on Dark Roots of Earth, even throwing in some blast beating on Native Blood and True American Hate. Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson are, as expected, wonderfully proficient with their guitars, with Skolnick's leads being exactly what you'd expect from the former Trans Siberian Orchestra member. Greg Christian I'm sure is playing his bass with skill, but he's practically inaudible due to the album's loud, compressed to hell production style, although thankfully the album isn't brickwalled or clipping in a desperate attempt to mimic Death Magnetic. Chuck Billy's vocals are just as they've always been, hoarse, gritty, and memorable. His death grunting voice isn't used that much on the record, only really during True American Hate. As a whole, the band performs the music splendidly and only reaffirms that they know exactly what they're doing.

Dark Roots of Earth isn't a masterpiece, nor is it the bowels of the Earth. It's a fast paced, memorable-for-the-first-half-yet-kinda-loses-steam-in-the-second-half thrasher of an album with excellent performances from all who are performing on it. Does it surpass their classic 80s and early 90s work? Not in the slightest. Does it come close? At times, but again it's not gonna be something I think most people will switch off The Legacy or Practice What You Preach for. Is it a damn good album in its own right that is for the most part pretty entertaining on its own? Absolutely. One can only hope that whenever next Testament step into the studio they can see the positives of Dark Roots of Earth and build upon them to give us a barn burner of an album that can meet The Legacy and Practice What You Preach in terms of memorability, enjoyment, and just plain fun factor. Well done, Testament. You have kept my attention and shown you are still relevant in the world of modern thrash metal.

All That Remains - A War You Cannot Win Review

2013-02-08T21:43:00.003-08:00

All That Remains have existed since before the turn of the century. They've been around since before either of my little brothers were born. They were there at the start of the metalcore explosion alongside genre luminaries such as Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall. In their fourteen year existence, one would assume that over time they've honed their sound, tweaking and perfecting it until they can be considered nothing less than a force to be reckoned with in the world of metalcore and metal at large. Well a force certainly comes to oneself through listening to All That Remains, said force being the pushing on one's gut as he runs to the toilet to be ill. Almost a decade and a half and they're still pumping out this garbage. At least their earlier material sounded kinda interesting, if still quite run of the mill (save some stuff on The Fall of Ideals, which actually sounded *gasp* genuine!). A War You Cannot Win, the sixth release by this band, is so blatantly-appealing-to-the-lowest-common-musical-denominator that it's not even funny. It's damn near 2013, people; why are the masses still buying into this shit?

I'll tell you why, good sirs and dames. It's because All That Remains have perfected the musical model of "make every song sound pretty much the same sonic and structure-wise, but have a couple songs be more pop and radio rock influenced so that they'll be played on the radio". A War You Cannot Win especially exploits this model, as the radio friendly songs are more radio friendly than ever. This is due to a mixture of both more clean vocals and dumbing down the songwriting even more than they had on For We Are Many. Combine that with the fact that the general musical audience of this generation just eats up whatever overproduced, made-for-the-masses schlock they are handed, and you've got a record that'll appease all those that lack good taste in music. Tracks such as Stand Up feel like they belong in the live setting of a shitty hard rock tour like rather than on a purportedly metal album, while a song like Asking Too Much would not sound out of place on a Paramore album. I am not engaging in egregious hyperbole with that either; the song sounds like slightly more Swedish Paramore with male vocals. It's blatant pop rock and is nigh-unlistenable, and I actually enjoy Paramore! The heavier tracks are no less creatively bankrupt than the lighter tracks, as these too run through the proverbial motions by way of the overdone Gothenburg based riffing that's been a staple of ATR's style from day one. Would it really kill All That Remains to add just a little bit of variety into their sound? Hell, would it be so hard to sound like they actually give a crap? Just fake it if you have to; it works often enough in porn.

Performance wise the instrumentalists are sufficient, although they don't have much to work with. Oli Herbert's few leads on the record are good enough, but he's wasted talent here since there's not a whole lot for him to do aside from play the aforementioned generic Swedish riffing. Jason Costa is much the same, although since being the drummer allows for a bit more creative freedom with what you can put down in the studio, he's easily the best performer on the album. However, as mentioned with Oli, he doesn't have a whole lot to work with here, making him yet another great talent in a crap band. Mike Martin holds down the fort well enough on rhythm guitar, but he doesn't really stand out much here beyond that. Jeanne Sagan's bass is nonexistent, as has become the thing in modern rock and metal album production, therefore there's nothing to comment on with that aspect of the instrumentation. That brings us to one Phillip Labonte, vocalist and crazy loudmouth who seems to have made it his mission in life to out-insane Dave Mustaine (just read his Facebook posts about how the solution to gun violence is to give EVERYONE guns if you don't believe me). As with every other ATR record, he uses a variety of vocal styles, among them mid-ranged shouting, low death growling, high shrieking (those last two aren't used on this album that much), and crooning, strained sounding clean singing. There's quite a bit more clean singing on this record compared to past albums by the band, with a number of songs consisting entirely of clean vocals. Trust me when I say his clean singing gets grating after a while. Hell, I got sick of them within 3 minutes of first hearing Stand Up while driving to my attorney's office a few weeks ago.

It's kind of sad to see what's become of All That Remains. At one point they were among the better bands of the New England metalcore scene, namely around the time of The Fall of Ideals. Since then, however, they seem to have fallen into a deep, deep, DEEP rut that they cannot possibly get back out of. The fact that there are actual people spending actual dollars for this stuff is just disheartening when you think of all the bands that get no recognition that have poured their souls into the music they have created. It's even more completely pathetic that they've had almost 15 years to hone their craft, and they've merely resigned themselves to making dumbed down, consumer friendly crap such as A War You Cannot Win. It's like the musical equivalent of when Kevin Smith made Cop Out, only All That Remains only had one genuinely good record to their name and therefore had very little to live up to aside from a legacy of poor music, lack of passion, and legions of people willing to scarf this stuff down. It is completely possible to have a mainstream, radio friendly sound and not be so goddamn boring and lifeless that you wonder if actual people could have made something like this. All That Remains just refuse to both get with the times and give a shit to make something worth listening to.

P.S. Why in the world is the track labeled "Intro" the sixth track on the album? Sense this does not make.

Ikkadian - Of Alpha and Omega Review

2013-02-08T21:42:00.004-08:00

I can't say that many albums have left me coming out of them in sheer amazement and awe. For example, Agony by Fleshgod Apocalypse and Monolith of Inhumanity by Cattle Decapitation, respectively in my opinion the albums of the year for 2011 and 2012, are among such pristine albums in my library of music that left me wanting to listen to them over and over again for days afterward. Only just today, on the 18th of September, 2012, newcomers Ikkadian from the great state of Virginia (home to both Lamb of God and my maternal grandmother), comprised mostly of former members of underrated death metal greats Dead Syndicate, have unleashed upon the world their own brand of blackened death metal in the form of Of Alpha and Omega, a brand reeking so wonderfully of an old school sense of self that I wouldn't be shocked if they were some lost band from the early 90s returning to make themselves known. Kind of like a death metal version of Hell, only American and a lot more on the blast beating side.

To get it out of the way first to ensure that I don't gush on it for too long, the production quality on this record is one of the best extreme metal album sounds I've heard in a VERY long time. The warm, rich tone of the guitars mixed with the almost entirely natural drum sound (drummer and album producer Michael Arcane stated on Derek Roddy's message boards that the only aspect of the drums on Of Alpha and Omega that wasn't natural were the kick drums, and I can't blame him due to how blisteringly fast the overwhelming majority of the record is), the album's sound quality will remind many a listener of the golden days of death metal in the early to mid-1990s, while still retaining a solid, modern touch that lets the listener hear almost everything involved in the music.

Tracks such as Lotus allow the band to show off their more melodic side, featuring an acoustic guitar section (and it's not the only track on the album to do so; opener and lead "single" Adversary features a brief Spanish guitar fling that while brief lets the listener breathe for a few seconds before the onslaught of tremolo picking and blast beating resumes), while Archangel shows more of the band's black metal influences, showcasing high string tremolo picking worthy of any frozen Nordic forest. Interestingly, unlike most metal bands of the current era, Ikkadian chose to leave the album without a short 1-2 minute intro track; the album leaps directly into Adversary's mayhem, and rarely will the band take a pause or even a short slow down to let the listener have a moment to collect themselves. Rather than fill the album with needless technicality and "wankery", Ikkadian build their sound upon thick ass riffs and savage yet sophisticated brutality. It's so damn good to hear actual riffs on a death metal album again!

Vocalist Donny Doss provides a style of harsh growling and shrieking rarely seen in modern death metal. Instead of doing what large number of the current crop of extreme metal vocalists do and just try to imitate Lord Worm (note: it almost never works), Mr. Doss goes for a more mid-ranged style of shouting, reminiscent of the late great Chuck Schuldiner and David Vincent. Being that this is blackened death metal (with a VERY heavy emphasis on blackened), Donny pulls of a high pitched black metal shriek every so often, mostly in the way of double layered low/high harshes. John Connell provides the guitar, bass, and primary songwriting. When not endlessly finding higher and higher frets to tremolo pick on, Connell bases most of the riffing around a standard 4 note gallop, much like how Iced Earth's helmsman Jon Schaffer bases most of that band's songs around a 4 note gallop. Sometimes the best way to do things is the simple way, don't you think? The aforementioned Michael Arcane, previously the hammeriffic beast behind Dead Syndicate, blasts away at high speeds worthy of being recognized by the extreme metal audience at large. His style reminds me a great deal of my own biggest influence, the great Derek Roddy, featuring numerous little tricks Derek made well known, such as the backbeat blast. He is also the album's producer, mixer, and master mechanic, so the proverbial chef to compliment here would be him.

Ikkadian may only be one album and a couple years old, but they have thoroughly satisfied my want for enjoyable, decipherable, memorable extreme metal. Far too often in this day and age bands will fall back on studio tricks and loyal fanbases while constantly churning out sub par musical material. Ikkadian is anything but one of those bands, creating something with Of Alpha and Omega that the vast majority of not just extreme metal records, but heavy metal records overall can't create: a genuine album that sounds and feels like actual people created it, not just an editing software. Entering into that rare family of genuine, old school-yet-modern extreme metal that only bands such as Arizona's Lago can say they're a part of, Ikkadian and Of Alpha and Omega are definite must have for any fan of black metal, death metal, or extreme metal in general.

P.S. James Murphy does a guest guitar solo on this record. That alone is worth checking out.

Cryptopsy - Cryptopsy Review

2013-02-08T21:41:00.001-08:00

Cryptopsy alienated a very good chunk, if not most, of their old school fanbase when they released The Unspoken King in mid-2008. With a new, crooning clean singer and taking many cues from the deathcore genre, such as breakdowns and more simplistic song structures, many were put off by the admittedly not very good songwriting and frankly awful vocals. Some even cried the familiar metalhead cry of "you sold out!" that so many fans of this style like to shout, although in this instance they actually had some backing. For me personally, I wasn't quite as pissed off as many others were, and there were actually a couple songs on the album I genuinely liked. When compared to the legendary beast that is None So Vile however, the album just melts in your hand like a dyslexic M&M. Now four years, two new bassists, and the return of original guitarist Jon Levasseur later, Cryptopsy have released their seventh full length album, simply titled Cryptopsy. And goddamn if it isn't a return to form.

Once you get past the awful album cover and the quite frankly retarded song titles (Damned Draft Dodgers? Really?) and get to the actual music, you will find that Cryptopsy have injected back into their sound what made them famous to begin with: spastic, furious, insane death metal. Gone are the Linkin Park-esq clean vocals and the chuggariffic breakdowns, replaced by sheer madness in musical form. While not on the same visceral level as Blasphemy Made Flesh or None So Vile, musically this record is a sleek, styled throwback to the days of Whisper Supremacy, right down to the odd soft jazz break here and there. The return of Jon Levasseur can be seen as the reason for this, but I personally give a fair amount of credit to the band's former bassist/guitarist Youri Raymond. I'm not sure how much of the record he had a hand in writing (the only song he is known to explicitly had a hand in writing is The Golden Square Mile), but with all the talk he had when he was in the band of removing the TUK elements of their sound and teaching Matt McGachy how to sound actually brutal (more on him later), I'm confident that he influenced this record in a very positive manner. Longtime bassist Eric Langlois has been replaced on this album with newcomer Olivier Pinard, who fills the role of bass-master extraordinaire wonderfully. The bass on this album is one of the strong points, being very high in the mix and more than just following the rhythm guitar. Christian Donaldson holds down the fort sufficiently as rhythm to Jon Levasseur's lead, and also does a good job as the record's producer and mixer.

Then we have the aforementioned Matt McGachy on vocals. He was easily the biggest problem with The Unspoken King besides the mediocre songwriting; while his normal high pitched shriek was sufficient, his growls and hardcore shouts got tiring very fast, and his clean singing flat out sucked. On this album however he sounds like a force to be reckoned with. All those lessons with Youri have definitely helped, as he not only sounds like a monster on this record but he sounds like a monster that will tear out your unborn child and snack on it Anthropophagous style. Lastly we have one of the kings of extreme metal drummer, the hyperblasting master known as Flo Mounier. As with every Cryptopsy record, even The Unspoken King, Flo beats the shit out of his drum kit as if it gave him a warm beer, weaving in every possible accent and polyrhythm and 280 BPM blast beat to leave the listener sitting there in awe. As a drummer myself, the drumming on a record is usually the first thing I pay attention to when I turn on a new song. Flo's drumming to me has always been the key piece of the Cryptopsy puzzle, and without him that special something that makes Cryptopsy what it is can't really be complete.

In a time when legendary bands are making records that completely defy everything that people loved about them in the first place (Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus, Queensryche's Dedicated to Chaos, etc.), Cryptopsy, a band that had themselves created a record that repudiated everything about them that people originally fell in love with them for, have made an excellent throwback to the "good old days" as some would call them, making a manic, at times schizophrenic (see Red Skinned Scapegoat's soft jazz break and Damned Draft Dodgers' 7 seconds of elevator music) piece of death metal madness. Despite being a bit on the short side at a little under 35 minutes, that's more than made up for with what we get. A lot of bang for your buck indeed. Cryptopsy have been redeemed.

Thoughts on the Randy Blythe Situation

2012-07-05T12:20:00.003-07:00

Unless you've either been living under a soundproof, 6 ton rock at the bottom of Atlantis for the last week. or just don't ever read the news, you've probably heard that Randy Blythe, singer of Lamb of God, Halo of Locusts and prospective candidate for President of the United States (might I add he'd be a whole hell of a lot better than Mitt Romney) was arrested in Prague for an incident that happened at a Lamb of God show back in May of 2010. The incident in question was a 19 year old fan climbing on stage during the show and being allegedly thrown off and/or beaten by Blythe, thus suffering a brain hemorrhage, going into a coma, and dying two weeks later. A lot of bullshit surrounds both the incident itself and the way the case is proceeding currently, namely that despite posting bail last Monday Blythe remains in a Czech prison and will so until next week. This article will mainly just be my thoughts on the entire sordid affair. If you want the full spectrum of news and other things relating to this, read GunShyAssassin's coverage of it.

I think the entire case against Randy is a load of shit. The video that surfaced a number of days ago showing all three times the deceased fan climbed onstage is more than enough evidence in my opinion that Blythe is innocent. The security guard gets more involved in physically touching the fan than Randy does; the first time we see the fan in the video he's trying to climb up onstage, and partially succeeds, until the security guard next to where he climbs up literally ragdolls him back to the floor, and you can very clearly see him whack his head on the guardrail and the floor when he goes down. The second time he gets up onstage and dives off with no interference from the band or security, as is common at a heavy metal concert in a small venue, only the crowd didn't catch him and he went straight down to the floor. Considering something just like that happened to me when I saw Hatebreed in Hartford, Connecticut in December 2009, it is not a pleasant feeling at all. The third time is the part of the video that circulated around before video of the other two incidents were discovered. The fan climbs up onstage, and Randy pushes him by the head as the security officer rams him from behind and sends him flying off the stage and into the crowd. I have three points to argue for Randy's innocence based off this video and the circumstances surrounding the incident as a whole.

1. The security guard was at way more fault than Randy was with this fan whacking his head on the floor. You very clearly see him yank the fan offstage and shove him off later in the video with enough force that he could've flown 5 or 10 feet away from the stage. Why haven't we heard more about the security guard? Why isn't he being at the very least questioned considering the video shows him touching the fan way more than it shows Randy touching the fan?

2. If they wanted to arrest Randy for this fan's death, why didn't they issue an international warrant for his arrest back in 2010 when the incident happened? If the parents of this kid wanted their son's alleged killer to pay for his actions, they should have gone to the police about it a whole hell of a lot sooner than over two years after it had happened. Not to mention that no one in Lamb of God's camp, from the band members to their manager, was informed that this kid died at their show. The whole thing reeks of the parents looking for someone to blame and choosing the most notable name to do so.

3. If it wasn't the security guard that contributed to this fan's death from roughhousing him, then it was through the kid's own stupidity. The majority of what a crowd will do at a metal show, from moshing to crowd surfing to stage diving, is very inherently unsafe. Stage diving is probably the most unsafe of them all since you're jumping from an elevated distance of at least 6 or 7 feet in the air with just the hands and bodies of the people beneath you to be your catch. Now I'm not opposed to moshing and all that, as I partake in it whenever I go to a heavy metal show, but stage diving is something I'll never do, as I do not trust the section of the crowd I'm jumping to to catch me. Considering that this kid jumped to an empty sector of the crowd and fell straight down to the concrete floor, it's at least partially his fault for not having the sense of judgment to either choose a part of the crowd that would at least try to catch him or to not do it at all because IT IS FUCKING DANGEROUS.

In my opinion, Randy Blythe is innocent of the accusations being levied against him (I don't say charges because he hasn't actually been charged with anything yet. That's right, he's being held in a Czech prison without any charges against him despite having posted bail), and he should be freed immediately, his $200,000 bail returned to him, and he should be exonerated of all accusations made that he killed this fan. I also think that the security guard in the video should be arrested and charged with the crime that Randy's currently facing, for he is clearly more at fault here than Randy ever will be. The fact that Randy is the one in jail for this incident, despite the video pretty much exonerating him of doing anything contributing to the fan's death, is bullshit.

To quote Scott Ian of Anthrax, "Randy didn't cause that fan's death. That fan chose his path." I couldn't agree more. Free Randy Blythe.

Nile - At the Gates of Sethu Review

2012-06-30T08:22:00.001-07:00

Nile have been around for Anubis knows how long, and every time they put out a new album we as death metal fans always give listen and be wondered by the insane speed, the furious intensity, and the Egyptian influences, both lyrically and musically. Their previous album, Those Whom the Gods Detest, was in my top 10 albums of 2009. Songs like Kafir, 4th Arra of Dagon, and the absolutely epic title track rank among the best songs Nile has ever put out. Now three years later we're holding audience to yet another new album by the South Carolinians, and to be honest there's not a lot here that we haven't heard from this band in the past. There's a multitude of problems, from the rather shitty production to the general feeling of "been there, heard that" throughout this album. Musically the album is sufficient, but in terms of memorability I don't think I'll be switching Cast Down the Heretic off for almost any song on here anytime soon.

One of the major problems I have with At the Gate of Sethu is that there's not a whole lot of new stuff here. As mentioned, there's a big old feeling of having heard pretty much every song here before, only on much consistently better records like Annihilation of the Wicked. Here and there there'll be something that pops out and makes you go "whoa, didn't see that coming", but for the most part I've heard most of these songs before, just on different records from Nile's past. The major reason for this is that Nile are a speed based band. I'm a big fan of fast extreme metal, but Nile's way of doing it can get very old very quickly. They thankfully do have a standard Nile doom metal epic though in the form of the album closer The Chaining of the Iniquitous. Tracks like When My Wrath is Done and The Gods Who Light Up the Sky at the Gate of Sethu (yeah, almost every song title on the album is a run on sentence) start off slow and crushing, but quickly devolve back into the same monotonous hyperblasting and the same monotonous guitar tweedling. Even worse is that a few songs don't even have proper endings; they just sort of stop dead in their tracks. Case in point, I had to go back and listen to the album again before writing this review because I genuinely did not remember one thing about it aside from The Fiends Who Come to Steal the Magick of the Deceased. Hell, the tracks that stick with me the most even after another full listen are the two Egyptian music interludes, which are absolutely breathtaking. Shame there aren't more of them on here.

The other major problem I have with the album is the production. Holy fuck, this album sounds bad. The guitars do thankfully sound like guitars unlike some past records of Nile's, but they're still WAY too thin for my tastes. The drums are incredibly clicky and annoying, which is a shame because George Kollias's playing is probably the best part of the album. The bass is nonexistent, as is stupidly common in extreme metal productions today. While I applaud the production sound for not only having the guitars be audible among the musical cacophony as well as it not being compressed to hell, that's not saying much when the sound is as thin as it is. The individual musicians's performances on the record are superb, as one would expect from a band like Nile. Dallas Toller-Wade and Karl Sanders shred away on the guitars with skill and precision, and George Kollias once again shows why he's one of the best drummers in extreme metal today. It's a damn shame they couldn't write better material to compliment their skills though. The vocals on this album are, as many have pointed out on message boards and comment sections the internet over, very weird at times, and I like that. It's one of the few aspects of the album that didn't bore me to death. Both Dallas and Karl are very powerful vocalists, so you can always expect that aspect of a Nile record to be good no matter what the music is like.

Overall, this album is a giant bore. Aside from the vocals it doesn't really do much in the way of progressing Nile along the musical path. Sticking to one sound an entire career is not inherently a bad thing. Just look at Slayer and Cannibal Corpse. But whereas Cannibal Corpse has made slight variations to their sound over the years to keep listeners on their toes and attentive (and headbanging), Nile have made the same album again that they've made the last two or three times, only much less interesting than the last two or three albums before this one. And quite frankly, that to me is the sign of a band that is running out of steam. If you want some quality death metal that's been released this year, I recommend Torture by Cannibal Corpse, Global Flatline by Aborted, and the masterpiece of 2012 so far known as Monolith of Inhumanity by Cattle Decapitation. All are much more interesting than At the Gate of Sethu.

Final rating: 2/5

Illud Divinum Insanus: One Year Later

2012-06-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

That pimple faced, horridly scraggly bearded fool in the video above is me a little over a year ago. The video in question was my immediate thoughts on Illud Divinum Insanus, the then-newest release of death metal titans Morbid Angel. I, like most other death metal fans, could not believe what I was listening to; Morbid Angel went all Marilyn Manson on us! They sold out! This sounds like dog shit melting in the hot summer sun! Well, a year has passed and my musical tastes have expanded beyond just extreme music or even just metal by itself. Looking back on the record, it's not as bad as I initially thought. Don't get me wrong, there's still stuff about the album that's mediocre, bad, or outright sucks (looking at you Radikult), but my opinion on the record has changed to be more favorable of it.

Firstly, if you haven't read my original full text review of the album, here's the version I posted on Metal Archives a year ago.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Morbid_Angel/Illud_Divinum_Insanus/302987/Subrick

The biggest change in opinion is that there are a couple songs on the album that I despised before that I've embraced with open arms now, those songs being 10 More Dead and Destructos vs. The Earth/Attack. The former I listened to on my own about half a year after the record came out and I quite enjoyed it. It's got the vibe of Domination in the latter half of the song while retaining a very catchy, very headbang friendly feel throughout the entire track. I remember seeing a video before the album came out of Tim Yeung playing along to the instrumental track of it at a drum clinic, and looking back on it I don't know why I didn't like the song when I first listened to the album. Destructos I was tempted to listen to again after hearing from my fellow Sorrowseed compadre Morte McAdaver that the song was just pure goofiness and very enjoyable. Upon listening to it again, I became tempted to agree with him. It is a bit too long at seven minutes, but for the most part the track is a fun bit of industrial death metal. The lyrics from what I can gather are about an intergalactic alien military invading Earth with the intent to wipe out humanity; it's like a more serious Ziltoid the Omniscient, minus the coffee, or something you'd see out of a 1950s sci-fi B movie.

As for the other songs, my opinions on them remain relatively the same. Blades for Baal, Existo Vulgore, Nevermore, and Beauty Meets Beast, the only full on death metal songs on the record, are still the best tracks in the collection. Upon listening to Too Extreme! again, I wasn't as put off by it as I originally was, probably because since the album came out I've become a bigger fan of Nine Inch Nails and other industrial metal groups like The Kovenant and Death Stars. The biggest problem with the track really, aside from the incredibly stupid song title and lyrics, is that it goes on FAR too long. The track is six and a half minutes, which is quite a long time to listen to the same techno beat on loop. If the song was only three minutes or even four minutes it would be a hell of a lot more bearable. I Am Morbid has elements of the slower side of Morbid Angel, but also somehow has this radio friendly feel to it that can be very off putting even if you like the song as a whole. The chorus is quite good though, and the song is rather catchy too. Radikult still sucks; my opinion on that track will always be the same. It's like if nu metal and Marilyn Manson decided to have a very fucked up love child. Profundis - Mea Culpa, hilariously ironic name aside, is actually quite decent as well. It's very atmospheric and I could definitely see it as video game music, particularly for a fighting game like Mortal Kombat. The only real problem I have with the track now is the drum sounds. If they hadn't used electronic samples lifted right out of FL Studio, I think more people would be willing to give the song another chance. Still, the drum samples aren't as annoying as the drum sounds in Too Extreme!.

Overall, my opinion on the record has changed quite a bit. I like more of the songs from it now, and some of the songs I've hated before I can see the good in while also recognizing the problems they have. I'm sure a fair amount of you will probably want me hung from my balls on the flag pole in the town square, and I can understand why. I too once despised this album, thinking it to be the bane of my existence. However, my expanded musical tastes as well as having found MUCH worse music out there (fucking Lulu) have made me look back on Illud Divinum Insanus and realize that it's not so bad after all.

The remix album completely blows, though. Do not ask me to review that, because the entire review would just be 94 lines of "I FUCKING HATE THIS ALBUM!".

Ghost Are Awesome; Here is Why

2012-06-05T13:53:00.001-07:00

The band in the video above is called Ghost. They're a semi-new band (formed in 2008) from the heavy metal Valhalla that is Sweden. As you can see from their appearance and music, they are indeed excellent. However, there are some people who sadly think that this band is in fact not awesome. They say that Ghost are unoriginal, boring, and that their gimmick is stupid. Those people are incredibly, incredibly wrong, at least to me. Here are my rebuttals to those three reasons listed.

1. They took a style of music that hasn't been popular in decades and breathed new life into it.

The band's musical influences are most clearly classic 70s rock and old school heavy metal, such as Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd, and Black Sabbath. Pretty much everything that can be done with the style they play had been done, so Ghost mixed the Blue Oyster Cult/Deep Purple style with something resembling a slower, less metallic Mercyful Fate and that's what Opus Eponymous came to sound like. And that's not to mention that Ghost has helped breathe life into the retro metal style, with bands like In Solitude and The Devil's Blood becoming known worldwide since Ghost released Opus Eponymous in 2010, as well as Ghost themselves signing to Universal Republic's new imprint Seven Four Entertainment to the tune of $750,000.

2. This style of music is not for everyone.

Most of the people I associate with in music are fans generally of fast, loud, abrasive extreme metal. A couple of them that I know REALLY do not like anything slow or melodic. I love extreme metal too (hence why I play in an extreme metal band), but I also love slow, melodic, doomy music as well. Any style of music is not for everyone, but Ghost I've noticed have gotten a lot of flack for their quick rise to fame as well as their music being kinda minimalist. I personally love how their music isn't incredibly complex or difficult to play because it means that I can just sit back and enjoy without having to get into the various workings of a song. With Ghost, I can mellow out and be a fan of music.

3. Gimmicks are meant to be stupid.

Pretty much every Ghost detractor I've come across has made some kind of comment about how their gimmick in unnecessary or overused or just flat out stupid. News flash: gimmicks are supposed to be ridiculous and dumb. Just look at something like professional wrestling. I'm a massive wrestling fan, and I love how the characters and personalities in that universe would so not work in reality. Just look at a guy like The Undertaker. He was given the gimmick of an undead zombie that didn't feel pain and had mystical, otherworldly powers. On paper that sounds fucking retarded, but when you actually watch him in action you realize that he's made the character his own and can make you look past the general ridiculousness of it and just enjoy what he does. Ghost are the same way. I've shown people their music who had almost written them off because of their appearance and they were able to see past the black robes and Satanic priest attire and just enjoy the music.

So yeah, those are my reasons why I think Ghost detractors are wrong in their non-like of the band. I'm not saying you hafta love this band or I'll track you down, put your head on a pike, cut open your spleen and drink your fluids (50 cents and a cookie to whoever knows where that line is from), I'm just retorting the claims I see from them most often. I hope you enjoyed this latest rambling of mine. Subrick out.

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Subrick's Picks #13 (An Inaugural Entry)

2012-06-01T16:24:00.002-07:00

(A bit of backstory here to start. Subrick's Picks is a series that I started last year for Sick Drummer Magazine. For reasons I won't disclose here, I chose to discontinue this on that website and am now going to post them here whenever I feel like writing them, in addition to other random ramblings I happen to write about. This one in particular was the final one I wrote before I left the site, and it was not published until now, although I've edited it slightly to reflect updated dates and events. Enjoy.)

Welcome everyone to another wonderfully (a)rousing edition of Subrick’s Picks. I am the titular host for the evening, here to present to you fine readers the best in unknown metal drumming. In the time it’s been since I last created one of these articles, my own projects have taken off. In addition to New England based gothic rock band Pandora’s Toybox, I am also now the drummer for Boston, Massachusetts based extreme metal band Sorrowseed, which also contains members of Pandora’s Toybox. We are recording our second full length record that will be released before the end of 2012. I have also been tapped as a live session player for Massachusetts (see a pattern here?) based doom metal band Blacksoul Serpahim, containing, you guessed it, members of Pandora’s Toybox and Sorrowseed. When we will be playing live as Blacksoul is unknown, however Sorrowseed will be playing at The Raven in Worcester on Saturday, June 16th. I encourage anyone reading this that is close to the venue or from New England in general to come to the show and bang thy head.

Now, there are three categories on which I base my selections:

Playing Ability: Here, I look to see if a player is technically sound; timing is good, endurance and power are up to par, technique is sound, among other, more miniscule things.

Production Value: For videos I select I much prefer to have either good quality camera sound or studio quality. And by studio quality, I don’t mean the greatest production sound ever given. I classify studio quality as a drumming performance recorded with microphones and/or triggers. Electronic kits are very much encouraged (especially when using less conventional samples). Now, if you have sound quality that isn’t as good, that doesn’t mean you’re not included in my selection process. Everyone is eligible to be featured.

Kit Sound: Eyal Levi wrote an article for Sick Drummer Magazine about why drum performances are always sound replaced these days. For those who haven’t read, the basic gist of it is because drummers don’t know how to tune their fucking drums (as so eloquently put by Eyal). And considering that many drum videos I see on YouTube involve players that have really bad sounding kits; it seems rarer and rarer that drummers actually tune their drums.

Meet all three of these criteria, and you have a shot to be featured. You could be playing the most radio friendly Disney pop imaginable, but if I feel that your video meets these criteria, you could make the front page.

And with all that out of the way, let us get to the feature presentation.

This time the pick in question is Tama and Zildjian artist Michael Vafiotis, drummer for Australian thrash metal band 4ARM. In the video he performs the band’s track Submission for Liberty from their recently released album of the same name. Michael is the drummer that Lars Ulrich should be; just one look at his kit and you can tell that Lars is his biggest influence. His Tama Starclassic kit is pretty much identical to Lars’s, aside from some added pieces, such as a much needed ride cymbal, a tom to his left, and a splash cymbal. All of his cymbals are Zildjian, further adding to the Lars influence. Even the way he sits at the kit is identical to how Lars Ulrich. All of his cymbals are Zildjian, and they’re beautiful to listen and look at as always. His sticks are Ahead, and while I personally am not a fan of their sticks, I can see why someone would enjoy playing with them. In the ability department, Michael impresses with the thrash metal standards of fast skank beats, fast double bass, fast fills and rolls, and did I mention fast yet? The drums in this particular video are sound replaced, but there are some live drum cams he has on this website that show just how appropriately sick his kit sounds.

Michael’s links:
http://www.youtube.com/user/4ARMOFFICIALSCARS
http://www.facebook.com/4ARMofficial
http://twitter.com/4armscars

And go buy their new album, Submission for Liberty, from their official store.

http://www.ed-stone.com/store/4arm

That’ll just about do it for this edition of Subrick’s Picks. If you liked this article and are interested in seeing more of me (drum wise, not body wise. Fat guys shirtless are disturbing), subscribe to my Youtube channel, like/follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and like my bands Sorrowseed and Pandora’s Toybox on Facebook. And don’t forget that I will be performing with Sorrowseed on June 16th at The Raven in Worcester, Massachusetts. Until we meet again, Subrick out.

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