This has been a slow week in metal news for everyone, everyone that doesn’t feel like posting all the little things that other sites do anyway. The only Thing I’ve found today is that the Quietus did a review of Mastodon’s Crack The Sky upcoming album and man…I’d like to know how may mushrooms or hits of acid it took them to come up with this concept.  Unless some groundbreaking news comes up, Happy New Year…and if you wake up in a gutter with your pants down around your ankles, then you drank wayyyy too much and you should probably get yourself checked out at the clinic. Peace!

Even though we saw some great shows and amazing albums in 2008, we’ve also seen our share of craziness. I’ve compiled a list of some crazy things that have happened this year that I can think of off the top of my head.

• Byzantine breaks up…3 days after they release Oblivion Beckons.
• Light This City break up before releasing the last record.
• Arsis changes members more than their underwear.
• The Black Dahlia Murder lose a guitarist…steals one from Arsis.
• Phil Demmel of Machine Head passes out twice on stage.
• DJ Sid from Slipknot breaks both of his feet…keeps on trucking.
• Joey Jordison breaks an ankle, cancels UK shows.
• Nachmystium gets booted from the Opeth tour for undisclosed shenanigans.
• Kristen Randal shows her boobs…and they’re only slightly better than Amy Winehouse’s.
• Winds Of Plague drummer Jeff Tenney abruptly leaves the band mid-tour. Says he’s tired of seeing Kristen Randall’s boobs.
• Gwen Stacey singer Bobby Oakley leaves the band…cites that he’s going to sing for Mary Jane Watson.

Read more

Protest The Hero: Fortress. So I’ve had a chance to listen to the Protest The Hero Fortress album that has been the big rave of just about every other Metal Blog that posts news with personality.

I first downloaded Sequoia Throne from iTunes and it still wasn’t enough for me to really get a good fix on them. The song didn’t do a lot for me; though it was good. It wasn’t until Christmas eve that I got a copy from a friend to listen to. I heard a few songs in the car and didn’t really listen again until the day after Christmas. Bloodmeat is a very catchy songs with hooks and you can’t help but scream along “Dat-dat-da-dat”. The vocals do take a bit of getting used to as most said, but the rest of the music is so damned catchy (In a metal way) with tons of hooks and breakdowns that the singy, clean, emo-screamo vocals just kind of surf along with the feel of the song and accentuate it. The growling vocals are just an added bonus, thankfully there’s not too much.

My favorite song so far has got to be Bone Marrow with Palms Read coming in close second. This cd will probably go in to moderate rotation for awhile…until Cattle Decapitation, Lamb Of God and/or Suffocation’s new album(s) comes out.

Image Source: Amazon.com

Apparently there will be some Slayer content on Guitar Hero: Metallica. I thought it was pretty cool on Guitar Hero 3 with Reign In Blood. For the haters of Guitar Hero, I say try it out. It’s a fun way to be a part of some of your favorite songs and might actually get you in to some other bands you haven’t heard of. My son loves it and we recently got Guitar Hero: World Tour for Christmas. I said before that it’s a great way for them to learn rhythm and timing and new music. World tour lacks in good song selection for a metal fan though.

Read more

Metal Injection is giving away Season 2 of Metalocalype to one lucky winner. All you have to do it identify who is in a distorted picture in their “Guessing Game” and you’re entered. Click HERE to guess who and get entered.

Image: Amazon.com

I kind of thought this wasn’t going to end until today and I forgot about it until now. Anyway, I decided to split these two cd and the winner are Mark Rooster wins the Danzig 777 CD and Douglas Karr wins the Testament Spitfire Collection CD. I’ll be contacting you guys shortly for an address to send your prizes. Thanks for entering.

Image: ©MetalMartyr.com 2008

The Best Of Suffocation.I have a love/hate relationship with “Best Of” because most of the time it’s not always the best of the artist in question and sometimes it’s only from one label the band was on. The band in question here is Suffocation. Suffocation is one of many of the pioneering death metal bands from the late 80’s, early 90’s.

The Best Of Suffocation is only the best of Suffocation from the Roadrunner Records years and is only 12 tracks long. Like most Death Metal bands of the early era, the production lacked greatly in the recording studios and the overall sound took a lot of getting used to. Over the years the production cleaned up and the sound started to evolve into a warmer, deadlier death metal. Some people liked that and some people hated it. Honestly I don’t know why anyone would want lousy production.

Read more

I’ve been “Playing” guitar since I was about 15 or 16. Self taught all the way, woohoo! For the longest time I would try to read Tablature and learn some of my favorite Metal songs but I was never really good at it, in fact I’m still not.

I really didn’t start to improve until I started to learn actual chords and play acoustically. This improved my picking and being able to change my finger positioning better. I can tear up some power and bar chords and play some riffs here and there but I can’t really shred through a complicated riff or solo. Lessons cost way too much for the amount of time you get and it’s hard to find the time to get to the lessons. So what can you do to learn to play faster?

Read more

Kerrang! Magazine interviewed Slayer’s Kerry King before the holiday. He doesn’t set his goals high and he’s honest about how he’s going to spend his time during Christmas. Of course he’s not going to set up a nativity scene in his front yard and watch Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. He’s going to watch football and drink tequila.

“I’m gonna spend the holiday season watching American football and drinking,” he added. “I live pretty close to Mexico so it’s not too difficult to find a good bottle of tequila.”

Read more

Looking back at some of my reviews of 2008 I can’t help but express how much I hate doing reviews sometimes. Sometimes you get excited for a newly released cd and love it for the first couple listens. Some are great cds with good sound but then later on you read what others stated in their reviews and second guess your own opinion. Some are great at the first listen but don’t hold a lasting effect that a good cd needs in order to make it a truly good release. Some take some time to sink in before you actually really start to enjoy them and some are immediate favorites. Some leave you wanting more in the manner that the entire CD is great and you want to hear more from the band and some leave you wanting more in the manner that there were only a few good songs and the rest fall really short and feel like fillers. Below are some reviews that I look back at and don’t quite feel the same as I did when I reviewed them and some I still hold firm.

Read more