Rolling Metal Thread 2010

I love HIMYM's Canada jokes.

speaking of flexis, i sent away for a free grim reaper flexidisc before the album came out. some sort of label giveaway.

Yes!!! I believe White Wolf was on the flipside of that. RCA was touting both bands at the same time.

Yeah, I was really psyched to hear the new Cauldron until I saw that it was beeped. I know, cry me a river. Anyway, as far as Crystal Viper go -- I didn't realize that it was a woman! But then again, Sinergy's Kim Goss sounds a whole lot like Bruce Dickinson on a few tracks on Suicide by My Side, so that may just be a function of the genre. AFM sure are dependable for putting out totally derivative but totally enjoyable Euro metal.

Yeah, I was really psyched to hear the new Cauldron until I saw that it was beeped. I know, cry me a river.

Yeah, it seems trite, but holy crap are these beeps on the Cauldron ever loud and shrill.

"Waiting for Nate to tell me he is coming to Britain with YOB before I commit to a ticket for Minehead."

See you there!

Awesome.

Danzig was the best I've seen him since '92 tonight. He finally has a great band again. And the support (Withered, Toxic Holocaust, Marduk, Possessed/Sadistic Intent) was great.

I can firmly recommend the Blackest of the Black tour this year.

Aldo, I can put you on the guest list for the YOB show... Write me.

Sadistic Intent!? Wow!

Well it was the singer of Possessed (wheelchair-bound) with Sadistic Intent as the back-up band. It was fucking awesome. Made me much more curious about Sadistic Intent than recent Possessed though. They really killed it and would have stolen the show except that Danzig's set list was really impeccable.

Danzig should really learn how to sing INTO the mic though. He was constantly either inaudible or feeding back. Then he'd get mad at the sound crew when most of it was his mistake for trying to jump around and hold the mic in these "cool/metal" angles that having nothing to do with being a professional vocalist.

Sadistic Intent were a pretty great band, back in the day. One of the first demos I ever bought was their "Conflict Within" tape. Them playing with Beccera would be pretty cool.

This may be common knowledge but I'm reading the new 33 1/3 book on Spiderland and it turns out that Will Oldham was briefly a Samhain roadie!

Him and some of the Maurice/Slint guys used to pretend to have cerebral palsy to keep Glenn Danzig entertained.

some of the riffs on the new Atheist are great but I just listened to the first four songs on it & then threw on Unquestionable Presence - the leap in quality when you go from the newer album to the older one is not even funny. they're ok now, once they were among the best who ever played metal.

fucking A unquestionable presence is all fucking time forever.

Can't argue with that.

Meanwhile, the new Abysmal Dawn album is very solid. Death metal by dudes who know how to write actual songs, with the usual bludgeoning mix we get from Rutan.

That's good to hear, I was impressed by Programmed to Consume but thought they had room to improve.

hey if any of the dB peeps wants to let me know who handles their distribution, i was considering adding them to the line up at ye old geetar store but cant find the info anywhere?

feel free to hit me up via ilxmail thx

email mark evans at decibel. um, mark evans @ redflagmedia.com or something like that. i don't have an issue handy.

email is in the front of the mag.

in fact i have to email him too for my store.

Mark @ decibelmagazine.com

Is the new Abysmal Dawn up? They're a solid group, but I didn't want to take any of the offers I had to review their album because I know Charles Elliott personally, and that could potentially make things awkward next time I run into him.

thx j3ff

Got my unbeeped Cauldron MP3s. This album rules. And the cover art maintains the high standard set by the debut (less nudity, but it might be the same girl).

i saw liturgy last night. they were good, but they played a lot of new stuff—kinda thrashy/proggy, mostly instrumental, and frankly pretty dull. dampened my enthusiasm for the new album.

Every time I listen to the latest Sword album, I have to revise my opinion. It keeps getting more and more solid with every spin.

At the risk of filling the thread with blasphemy, I've never heard Unquestionable Presence - it was way, way out of my wheelhouse back when it came out and I've just never come across it. But I picked up Jupiter last night and apparently I need to hear UP, like, immediately, because Jupiter really hit me in a good way.

bongripper

Going to a thanksgiving potluck that Cough are playing. Stoked on this.

Oh, and serenchwilen, I did review the new weapon, it should be in next month's dB. But I'll spoil the surprise and say it's the best Canadian metal album of the year. Easily.
― A. Begrand

Excellent. Looking forward to it!

Seriously, though, that first Puya record, Fundamental, was actually pretty decent.
― Moving Pixels

I gave them a listen... thanks! They weren't half bad. Definitely onto something.

I wrote about Ehnahre on BurningAmbulance.com today. Arty stuff, but very good, and they're definitely evolving from album to album.

speaking of which, love the comments on here:

http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/10/19/help-axl-figure-out-the-appeal-of-ehnahres-taming-the-cannibals/

and you can still listen to the whole album on the deciblog:

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/uncategorized/stream-the-new-ehnahre-before-you-can-pronounce-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+DecibelMagazine+(Decibel+Magazine)

phil, you should check out ricardo's label if you haven't already:

http://www.semataproductions.com/releases.html

(not a metal label)

OK, I'm now ready to say that I think the new Cradle of Filth album is really good. Whatever it was that made the last one sound to me like it was thrashing in place and never actually moving, this one isn't mired in that.

Also: Jesu, Dethroned. Wow.

Yeah, the CoF is shockingly good. Coming from a band I find so frustrating, it's a nice surprise. I think whatshername from Abigail Williams does a nice job on the keyboards...she was a rather important part of that band, and she provides the same cascading synths on the CoF record.

Sales-wise, it had such a bad first week I'd be tempted to call it a bomb. It sold about half of what the last album did in its first week. Kind of like the new Dimmu.

Disappointing indication of where metal sales are heading? I know neither is really a flash bang classic, but both are pretty popular names and I saw many copies of both at big chain stores so it isn't like they weren't circulating. With the CoF I wonder how much the last album sucking had to do with the lower sales this time around. I loved the synth work on that last Abigail Williams, so I may need to check this out. I wonder how this year's Abigail Williams is without her, haven't heard it.

i would think that both bands would be on the downward slide by now. they've been around for (seemingly) forever. how many bands get bigger after so many years? i'm sure they would be happy to keep the fans they have. tour. make some money. buy more tarantulas or whatever they spend their money on.

So are you two actually recommending that I listen to this thing, or would you not go that far?

I think scott has a valid point regarding CoF, but I felt like Dimmu got a decent mainstream bump with the positive buzz surrounding In Sorte Diaboli.

Maybe that kind of "cartoon" metal is on the decline as their audience ages and the younger kids are getting into something else like the thrash revival or deathcore?

I'd bet most bands that sold a decent amount 5 or 10 years ago are on the decline except the mega bands. Who are the hot new bands selling loads? (not the critic/hip faves)

That's a good question, I'm not even sure. Judging by merch on display at Hot Topic its the crunkcore shit and metalcore (stuff like Escape the Fate and whatever) that is big with the kids, but I don't feel like that stuff is putting up stellar number either.

Oh man, I know I used to rant about the ubiquitousness of metalcore all the time, but I really hoped that shit had died. I suppose deathcore aka melodic metalcore mixed with death metal means it didn't die, just mutated into something worse.

To think there was a time when metalcore was seen as an obvious good thing. Most of the hydrahead bands and converge will deny they were ever that im sure.

Yeah, its pretty much a dirty word like "emo" at this point.

emocore was always a derogatory term though, at least it was coined in that way.

metalcore is like skapunk. The less said about both the better.

I think Dimmu just got too big for their britches. They're the most popular act on the Nuclear Blast roster, and it feels like they thought they could get away with anything.

And yeah, amateur hour stuff like A7X and Escape the Fate is really starting to dominate as far as mainstream metal goes. It seems every week there's some goofy band with funny hair and limp riffs that I've never heard of debuting in the top 40. It's depressing.

So are you two actually recommending that I listen to this thing, or would you not go that far?

Give it a shot. Dani is as logorrheic as ever, but his screech isn't as silly this time. Plus the riffs actually deliver this time. Pretty darn good album.

Both the Cradle of Filth and Abigail Williams records are totally worth listening to. I think they made the right trade there.

Also, metalcore may have run itself into the ground pretty hard, but there were some pretty great bands that came out of that scene, and it was WORLDS better than nu-metal. WORLDS.

Don't forget Five Finger Death Punch!

And Asking Alexandria, they're going to blow up in 2011.