Tag Archive: Metallica


Lamb Of God – Resolution

Lamb Of God

Resolution

01. Straight To The Sun
02. Desolation
03. Ghost Walking
04. Guilty
05. The Undertow
06. The Number Six
07. Barbarosa
08. Invictus
09. Cheated
10. Insurrection
11. Terminally Unique
12. To The End
13. Visitation
14. King Me

[01/24/11]
[Roadrunner Records]

Longevity in bands is a strange beast — some bands make the best of it and some have some pretty well documented struggles with it. Take for instance prog legends Rush, that are set to release their 19th album later this year to what looks likely to be a rapturous reception after the way their recent single was received, but it’s bands like Metallica that are the most fascinating. Despite having a recent output that ranges solely from the above average (Death Magnetic) to the frankly dreadful (St. Anger), they’re still the biggest metal band around and essentially sustaining their lucrative lifestyle off the back of achievements made at least 20 years ago. You could argue that Metallica fans simply suffer from ‘battered wife syndrome’ or that they made such an impact with early material that it doesn’t matter, either way it’s an interesting insight into the way popularity and quality interlinks.

It would be hard to argue against the idea that Lamb Of God are, by far, one of the most important metal bands of the 21st century, maybe even the Metallica of our generation. Taking as much inspiration from Pantera as they do Slayer, you only have to listen to the quality of an album like Ashes Of The Wake to understand why they were able to put one of the final nails in the coffin of the declining nu-metal trend and become of the main proponents for the ‘New Wave Of American Heavy Metal’ psuedo-genre. But the attention span of us consumers is a fickle one, so after six studio albums that showed a fairly paced and natural progression, you’d be forgiven for asking ‘what are Lamb Of God doing that’s still relevant and why should I care?’

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Anthrax – Worship Music

Anthrax
Worship Music

01. Worship
02. Hell On Earth
03. The Devil You Know
04. Fight ‘Em Til’ You Can’t
05. I’m Alive
06. Hymn 1
07. In The End
08. The Giant
09. Hymn 2
10. Judas Priest
11. Crawl
12. The Constant
13. Revolution Screams

[09/12/11]
[Megaforce Records]

Worship Music is Anthrax‘s most recent album. I don’t think any of you don’t know who Anthrax is but if you don’t, I am more than obligated to say you’ve obviously been living under a rock. But for those rock-dwellers, Anthrax are one of the pioneers of thrash and progenitors in metal and alternative metal. Having dominated the 80′s with their signature brand of thrash and pushed through the 90′s with some of the best material of that decade, Anthrax have always had staying power and the music to back it up. I have always been a fan of thrash having grown up with parents that grew up in the 80′s. It was commonplace for me to be listening to Anthrax as a toddler and through my formative years. They have always been there.

You could say I am biased, but my tastes have changed in time. I am no longer the obsessive kid who listened to nothing but Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer. My tastes have turned to things more inaccessible and more obscure. Coming back though, after years of nay-saying and thinking I was above these bands (enforced by Metallica’s digression), I never thought I would hear good material from a thrash progenitor again; it just seemed like a lost cause. Metallica doing jams with Lou Reed; Judas Priest on American Idol; Jeff Hanneman of Slayer saying “a Slayer album speaks for itself now. I think people know what they are getting into with a new Slayer album.” It was tiring and I just shut it all out after a while. Though, Anthrax has finally broken this trend. Here we have something fresh; an old attitude with new aesthetics; a fantastic new record breaking through the stagnant era of the Big Four.

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Being that Mercyful Fate are my favorite metal band of all time, this is pretty damn awesome. James shuts up and we don’t get any bullshit from Kirk.  It’s basically King Diamond with a table shouting randomly into a mic. This is part of those Metallica anniversary shows where they invite people way better than they are to play with them. This is pretty special since they not only got Mercyful Fate to come out of hiding but King Diamond has been in a pretty bad spot health wise.

- MW

Korn – The Path Of Totality

Korn

The Path Of Totality

01. Chaos Lives In Everything (feat. Skrillex)
02. Kill Mercy Within (feat. Noisia)
03. My Wall (feat. Excision and Downlink)
04. Narcissistic Cannibal (feat. Skrillex and Kill the Noise)
05. Illuminati (feat. Excision and Downlink)
06. Burn the Obedient (feat. Noisia)
07. Sanctuary (feat. Downlink)
08. Let’s Go (feat. Noisia)
09. Get Up! (feat. Skrillex)
10. Way Too Far (feat. 12th Planet)
11. Bleeding Out (feat. Feed Me)

[12/03/11]
[Roadrunner Records]

Most of you should probably not even bother reading this review any further; Korn are a fairly polarizing band in the metal community, and many of you have made up your minds about them a decade or more ago. If you hate them to your core, this review isn’t likely to change your mind and will only serve as cannon fodder for allegations of how absolutely false I am. I get it, man. The idea of Korn and Limp Bizkit putting out better albums that Morbid Angel and Metallica must have asses chapped across the metalverse. Well, here we are. 2011′s been weird, huh?

For those new to the site, I grew up on Korn in the 90s. They’re one of the reasons I eventually wound up getting into heavier music than what was regularly played on the radio, so I’ll always hold a place for them in my heart. It must be a generational thing. The dudes of Metalsucks have a soft spot for hair metal like Motley Crue because of their musical environment growing up in the 80s, and how I can’t stand this new-fangled crabcore scenebro thing that’s going on. It makes sense when you think about it, but I’m starting to digress.

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Behold Gramptallica!

Much like the rest of nerd-dom, we’re waiting with baited breath for Skyrim. Or if we’re not, we’re slave to those who are, and as such there’s not a lot going on right now.

In the spirit of silly distractions, here’s a tribute to Loutallicrap from everyone’s favourite yellow crotchety old relative. It’s tongue in cheek, but I don’t see much difference from the real thing.

- CG

These days it seems that for every band out there, another instrumental band comes out with an album or something along those lines. When I was younger I used to love instrumentals to death but my lack of resources and knowledge of how to source out new music has kept me in this bubble filled with vocals. Though this past year has opened up a lot of doors for me and I have really expanded my love for instrumental music. It has always been a part of my life too. I used to listen to Metallica‘s “Orion” on repeat for hours. Songs like “Ashes of the Wake” by  Lamb of God and other oddities like “Spanish Fly” by Van Halen have always been standout tracks that I listened to more then the punk and generic rock I was into at the time.

Now I have expanded my love for instrumental music due to an immense plethora of outstanding musicians releasing quality instrumental albums. Bands like Animals as Leaders and Scale the Summit have impacted me in a big way, so here are five of my favorite instrumental albums.

5. Protest the Hero – Fortress (Instrumental Version)

It would be criminal not to include this gem. Rody Walker provides some of the most memorable vocal hooks on Fortress and steals the show in some aspects – but Fortress works remarkably well as an instrumental album too. It moves the focus and you get to hear the songs in a different context. I am not going to go so far to say that the vocals shadow the bands talent, but the instruments here tell their own story too, and contrary to what you might expect it doesn’t feel too shreddy and is very modest as the songs were written with the vocals in mind. It is just riffs, hooks, shred and well composed songs; not too over the top, but with the same amount of punch you expect from a band like Protest the Hero. The lack of vocals bring out some of the best in the band too, like the completely underrated keys and sexy bass, and after hearing it the context of both versions became more important.

4. Cloudkicker – Portmanteau

Clocking in at just 20 minutes, Portmanteau goes above and beyond what one would expect from your typical shred album. Portmanteau creates atmosphere. Though it is faster and catchier than most of Ben Sharp’s releases, it maintains that sometimes composition triumphs technical ability. He uses a very unique mixing technique that allow several layers and melodies to be a part of the music without making it too crowded. There are always three or four things going on at one time, yet it manages to sound dense without being a bunch of noise: at some points you will have chords strumming through a progression in the back of the mix alongside another line of atmospheric keys. It will have all of that happening behind the drums and lead guitar melody. It works beautifully too because all of the aspects compliment each other and focus on what is important throughout the composition. This album is also one of the first instrumental albums I had ever listened to, so it has added sentiment there; it is just something I can immerse myself in.

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[I tried finding Stewie Griffin's version of this song, but apparently it isn't on YouTube. First time for everything I guess.]

I’ll try not to turn this into too much of a rant, but that’s basically what it is, so I hope you’ll forgive me some hubris on this one. I was spurred into though by The PRP‘s report of yet another monumental fuck-up by Guns ‘N Roses; during which Axl Rose cut short yet another show due to being pelted with stuff during a performance.

Why on earth would people – fans, even – who’ve paid good money for tickets for the show throw things at such a beloved figure and risk injury to his already damaged ego?

Oh yeah; because the show started three hours late.

I’m not saying it was definitely Axl’s – or even the band’s – fault on this occasion, because I don’t know, and the band came back out and finished the show eventually, but this certainly isn’t the first time Guns ‘N Roses have shown such mind-boggling unprofessionalism, so I wouldn’t put it past them (let’s face it though, it’s usually if not always Axl). If I had to stand around for three solid hours in hot (hotter than most of us are used t, it being Mexico and all) cramped conditions with a few thousand other people, all farting and belching and dehydrated, even for my favourite band, I’d be pretty pissed too.

My question is this: why do fans continue to put up with this shit? More specifically, what is your breaking point?

There are wider examples, including but not limited to live performance. We all heard about Asking Alexandria frontman Danny Worsnop making a dick of himself on stage back in April (although the rest of the band sorted him out), but we also have more recent incidents like Jonny Craig’s (it’s always the frontmen isn’t it?) criminal antics and narcotics problem forcing Dance Gavin Dance on hiatus until he gets his shit together, and, well, Metallica making big bags of utter shit.

Metallica aside (not so much behaviour as insanity), at some point these people will have alienated fans and caused their bands irreparable harm, yet they’re still going. I can’t stand this kind of arrogance and disregard for the fans who helped get them where they are.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this any more, so I’m going to sign off here and let you get on with the commenting.

- CG

I’ve got a bone to pick about Structures‘ debut album Divided By, which was just released this week on Sumerian Records.

First off, I’d like to say that this isn’t to be considered our official review; we’re saving that for later. Typically when we review things, we try to focus on the good and bad parts about an album and try to give things their fair shake — I do take some sort of pride in being able to find nice things to say about Limp Bizkit and Design the Skyline. No, today I’m focusing entirely on a glaring and unignorable flaw to what could have been an otherwise good album that was worth your time:

Divided By sounds absolutely terrible, and could very well be the worst produced album from a widely-distributing label this year.

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With the release of the Lou Reed/Metallica undead abortion of a musical “endeavor” right around the corner, and it’s obligatory internet leak floating around, my mind started to stray to other musical projects of absolute revulsion and stupidity. I decided to chronicle the various pieces of music that not only activate my gag reflex, but also seem to inject me with a bit of entertainment at just how terrible of a thing they are.

5# Rebecca Black – Friday

I really didn’t want to include this — I really, really didn’t — but how could I not? No offense to the little lady, but this is the absolute worst way to start out a career as a professional musician. Who on Earth is going to take her seriously after this piece of garbage? The only redeeming quality it has is the fact that it’s so damn quotable. Being a high school student in The U.S. means that the best things are those with loads of quotes to dish out . So instead of having to be witty or an interesting conversationalist, you just have to quote various lines from funny movies, or not so funny abominations such as The Room, or Rebecca Black. Almost a year after the release of this song I still hear “GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY” being shouted or recited through the halls of my school at the end of the week, or when someone is discussing the plans for their weekend. Annoying? Yes. Is it going away? No. I almost feel bad for this girl. This thing is going to haunt her for the rest of her life, and the only thing she’s going to have to console her pain is the tremendous amounts of money she made off of it. Oh…Fuck.

#4 Rockstar Supernova

While not being able to claim the quotability value of gems like Friday, Rockstar Supernova has always held a warm spot in my heart for just how unbelievably terrible and generic it is. Which I guess isn’t all that much of a surprise seeing as it was spawned from a reality show. The band is a so called “Supergroup” like the Justice League of America, or the Republican National Committee, but unlike those two powerful entities, Rockstar Supernova has no super powers other than being un-listenable garbage. The saddest part about this group, aside from the fact that they all probably contracted Hepatitis from Tommy Lee, is that this band actually has some talent. Despite what you may think of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses or Mötley Crüe, all three of those bands put out some really cool stuff in the past and, while none of them are anywhere near my favorite band, I do think some respect is owed to the individual members that make up Rockstar Supernova. Hell, even the singer whose name I don’t care to remember had some decent chops. Unfortunately, like I said above, this thing was spawned from a FUCKING REALITY TV SHOW! That automatically exempts it from being anything other than atrocious. I think this band could have pulled some pretty impressive music together but it was clear from the beginning that they were only in it for the publicity and, of course, the fucking money. So while Rockstar Supernova missed their chance to do anything remotely good, you can still hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, someday Lady Gaga and Katy Perry will end up doing a reality show spawned collaboration with a 15 year old Russian hermaphrodite.

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Last night, I slept at around 4 AM. I was talking with some friends on Skype and watching TV shows, and I didn’t need to get up early in the morning, so I figured I might as well stay up, right? Wrong. I was awakened by freaking birds at 7 AM. I have a balcony, and for some reason 7+ birds were perched in my balcony, making that weird guttural bird noise. At that point I knew my day was going to be terrible. Once I wake up, I can’t sleep back, that’s just how I am. I thought this day couldn’t get worse. Oh how wrong I was.

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