I only had 4 entries for the Black tide 7″ Road Warriors and every one of them is correct. Unfortunately I can only pick one. Each person that entered, I commend you for either having the knowledge to answer those questions or using the internet to find the answers.  To pick the winner I used a common 6 sided die and assigned each person a number in the order that they answered. 5 and 6 were re-rolls. With a roll of the die the winner was picked as Jakes_Daddy@#######.net.

That contest was easy to pick. The Answer contest was a bit harder. You guys all had great entries that had me laughing pretty good. Luckily I could pick 4 people for this contest. One grand prize winner and 3 winners of the Everyday Demons Album.

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Having been around for ten years and released 4 previous albums, German death metallers, Lay Down Rotten make their presence more know with their Metal Blade debut with Gospel Of The Wretched.

I’d be lying if I sat here and said that most of death metal doesn’t sound very similar, because it obviously does. We all know that over the years there has become a cookie cutter type sound that most bands follow. That doesn’t necessarily make the music bad, it just makes the bands that define themselves by sounding slightly different than everyone else sound a lot better and on a higher plane.

Lay Down Rotten’s Gospel Of The Wretched is good ole’ death metal to the tune of a European style, but doesn’t seem to break the mold.

What I do really dig about Lay Down Rotten is the fact that they aren’t trying to be too technical, too fast. The riffs flow exceptionally well and you may draw a bit comparison, sound-wise to Amon Amarth at some points.

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I’m probably going to catch some shit for this review but to be totally honest, I really don’t care. Here is a quick, half-assed review of The Devil You Know.

I picked up the new Heaven And Hell album today and I almost fell asleep on the ride home while listening to it. I was waiting for that one track to jolt me, to kick me in the pants but it never came. I know Black Sabbath and Dio fans alike are probably jizzing all over this thing, but it just sounds very tired to me.

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The thing that always turned me off about black metal was the face, oops, I’m sorry, “corpse” paint. Once I got past that I started to like a lot of what I heard. I still find the corpse paint kind of silly but I totally understand that it’s part of genre sort of like swooped hair and skinny pants are part of emo. Still don’t like emo music, though. If you have 8 minutes of your life to waste, enjoy this tutorial on how to apply Corpse Paint that I found on Metal Injection. Do they have high school proms in Norway?

Chimaira’s The Infection has done pretty well in it’s first week, selling around 15k copies and landing on the Billboard 200 charts at #30.

Sadly, Daath only sold around 1300 copies of The Concealers while lesser known band, Seventh Void did pretty well, selling about 1800.

Black Label Society did well with their Best of album, Skullage, selling about 4600 copies.

I really hope that Daath album catches on and takes off. I hate to beat off a dead horse, but this album is awesome.

Image: Amazon.com

So, 2009. I don’t even know where to begin. So far, so good as far as metal year goes. This is in no particular order so bare with me.

We got a new Lamb Of God album that I still think is not as good as everyone else thinks; and a new Mastodon album that is musically amazing but people seem to bitch about because it’s not heavy enough or something.

Cannibal Corpse release an album that is, well, another good Cannibal Corpse album. Nothing extravagant enough to go on a murder spree, but a good album. Cattle Decapitation almost convince me to not eat beef while Sepultura almost gave me hope that I could listen to them again. That didn’t last. Psyopus almost convince me that something is wrong with my ears.

Thrash is still alive and vibrant with new releases from Kreator and neo-thrashers Lazarus A.D. bringing an old school sound with a modern touch. God Dethroned give us a WW1 History lesson.

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Let’s be honest. No matter how much you try to be open minded, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that Rob Halford is launching a clothing line, you might think of Gay Biker clothes. It’s hard not to because no matter how much you like the guy and Judas Priest, there is always that thought looming in the back of your mind after he came out of the closet. I don’t think of Rob Halford as “That gay dude that sings for Judas Priest”, but that’s always going to be an issue when his name is mentioned. Sadly, we all have that little bit of ignorance in the back of out minds and for people that are not fans, that is how they think of him.

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According to Bravewords.com this morning, As I Lay Dying’s new DVD, This Is Who We Are, released last week has sold 4200 in the United States and has gone platinum…oh, excuse me, it has “Shipped” platinum in Canada. So does that mean that they actually SOLD enough of the DVDs to go platinum or enough stores have bought it and it’s shipped enough from the label to be considered platinum.

If it’s the latter, that’s a pretty stupid concept considering the same thing was said about Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy. Hell, Best Buy bought a million copies, only of which maybe a few hundred thousand (and I may be way off) have actually sold since it’s release in November.

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Heaven And Hell Bible Black Video. There’s nothing like geriatric, veteran metal musicians showing that they still have what it takes to hold true to their sound and still manage to be relevant in today’s metal! The song, on one hand is great, but the video leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Just when you thought a Norwegian Black Metal band would be afraid of nothing, Mayhem have been forced to cancel tour dates due to the outbreak and potential pandemic of swine flu.

All I can say is that the bird flu didn’t stop Watain from butchering pigeons and smearing the blood on themselves for a show.

Word is that they are going to try to reschedule. In the meantime they will still be headlining Blackened Fest with Marduk, Cephalic Carnage and Cattle Decapitation.