Heavy Metal

Heaven And Hell have poster the artwork for The Devil You Know. Scheduled for an April 28th, 2009 release, Heaven And Hell have recorded 10 brand new tracks. The artwork looks more like a Dio cover than your typical Black Sabbath cover…but come on, it’s 2009. I think it looks pretty cool, myself.

01. Atom And Evil
02. Fear
03. Bible Black
04. Double The Pain
05. Rock And Roll Angel
06. The Turn Of The Screw
07. Eating The Cannibals
08. Follow The Tears
09. Neverwhere
10. Breaking Into Heaven

Fuse will air Metallica’s induction in to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame live on April 4th, but before they do that they plan on airing Metallica specials all month long starting tomorrow night, March 11th at 9:00 pm. I’ve looked in to it a little further and it looks as if they are running two 30 minutes shows all week at various times. One show is called Kings of Rock: Rock Hall Inductees ‘09 and The Metallica Chronicles: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Special Edition.

That Metal Show started airing in November of last year and was approved for a second “Season” by VH1 Classic channel. Although it got some mixed reviews the new season began airing last Saturday. Eddie Trunk has been around the metal scene a long time, but he’s more of a throwback metal fan and is pretty much clueless about the current metal scene unless it still contains bands that were big before 1990. The new list of guest stars that will be on the show has cemented this notion and I think the only people that watch this are the same people that are just starved for a good metal show…which is almost every real metal fan. Continue Reading »

April 17th will mark the very first Revolver Golden Gods Award show, similar to Metal Hammer’s UK edition that has happened for awhile now. This first year there will be a handful of bands performing. You’ll see Hatebreed, Killswitch Engage, Suicide Silence, All That Remains and to headline the event will be none other than Megadeth. I don’t think I could think of many other bands that deserve to headline this event. Finally an American award show dedicated to heavy metal…and we’ll all still bitch about who gets what award. Dave Mustaine commented:

“Finally a heavy metal award, of the people, by the people, and for the people! This evening’s line-up of talent is a heavy metal fan’s wet dream! Only Revolver would have the credibility to make our dreams come true with the First Annual Golden Gods Awards. To see Ozzy get a lifetime achievement is long overdue. It is an honor to say, ‘YES! Megadeth will headline!’… I doubt Jethro Tull will be getting an award.”

Ozzy Osbourne, will be presented with a deserving lifetime achievement award. In addition, the event will be hosted by Brian Posehn and there will be guest metal icons presenting the awards. You may see Glenn Danzig, Lemmy, Chuck Billy, Vinnie Paul, Scott Ian and Maynard James Keenan. Tickets are still available through ticketmaster . The show will air on Mtv for an hour special in May.

For more information go to www.GoldenGodsAwards.com

The Relapse Records Contamination Tour 2009 sponsored in part by Metal Injection and Metal Sucks will kick off on April 29th. Metal Injection announced that they will be giving away tickets for each stop at the event. Bands on the tour are Obscura, Graves Of Valor and Abysmal Dawn. Here are the tour dates. Below are the tour dates. Be sure to keep an eye out at Metal Injection early next month when they start giving tickets away. There will also be other special guest appearance by other metal bands. Continue Reading »

Here is the real deal. Last night was just a tease of the cheese that we’ve all come to love about Mastodon Videos. It’s always some sort of psychedelic cheese-fest with there videos, well most of the time. Here is the new video, Divinations. Look for the new album Crack The Skye on March 24th. I certainly hope they make more videos for this album, it could be interesting.

I think we all hate to see stuff like this go down. I mean, how the hell does a band like Cynic end up being support for a bunch of tools like Dragonforce? Daath too for that matter. Last year on the Rockstar Energy Mayhem tour Mastodon went on before Dragonforce. I thought that was kind of crappy, but it did give me time to go down to catch Machine Head’s set while DF played. Some people say Dragonforce only got big because of Guitar Hero. I don’t think that’s the case at all, but I do think that may have helped them a little bit. I just don’t get it. Sounds too 1987 midi-video gamish for me. Yeah, I know that’s been said a million times too. Below are the dates for this odd concert. I don’t mean to be such a cynic and I’ll try to keep it to a minimum around here, but these guys drive me nuts. Continue Reading »

I’ve been trying to get at least one post up here everyday but sometimes life throws a few curve-balls at you every now and then. The combination of my refrigerator dying and a relatively slow news week has made things both rather slow and hectic for me. Regardless, this is all I have for you today. Two previews of videos that look like they are sure to please. Amon Amarth’s Guardians Of Asgaard could only possibly suck if the song sucked…and it doesn’t. Mastodon’s trailer for the first single from their upcoming Crack The Skye album (a little more than two weeks to go) looks to be another interesting Mastodon video. Divinations is not the first single I would have chose, but I’m just a blogger and not a label rep so it doesn’t really matter. Great song, just not my favorite. Check out the video teasers and look for them sometime in the near future. Hopefully the metal press will start rolling out blog worthy news again.

Making Of "Guardians Of Asgaard" Video

"Divinations" Trailer

Some people hate Metalcore, others hate Christians and…some people hate both. So it’s no wonder that most people would simply write off Christian Metalcore bands like The Devil Wears Prada, Haste The Day and Gwen Stacy. Sometimes it’s done right with bands like War Of Ages, where it’s heavy as all hell, only without the Hell. Sometimes you just don’t know what to think. The video for Malevolence by A Plea For Purging is extremely silly and I would almost say that I never want to see it again, but the song is just so damn good that you can’t help but watch it a few times. Malevolence comes off of A Plea For Purging’s new album Depravity which was released today (March 3rd) on Facedoewn Records.

Last week I went over 5 Essential Albums Of 1986 . How can you really top those albums? Stick around until I get to 1994 and I’ll show you. Until then it’s a slow crawl. Even though I could not consider 1987 as good a year for Heavy Metal as 1986, it still brought us some great metal and this was a year for a few great debuts!

Before I get started I would like to explain that I’m not the first person to discuss important metal albums from different years.  Heavymetal.about.com has been doing it for a long time and I have no intentions of being a copy-cat. I’m simply doing something similar and discussing albums that impacted me and built my heavy metal experience.

Whether you consider Guns N’ Roses heavy metal or hair metal, it had enough edge to it to be considered metal in 1987. With Axl Rose’s gritty, banshee like wailing and Slash’s riffs and licks, this album was bound to be a classic with all killer tracks and not filler to be heard. 32 years later it still hits just as hard as it did then. Guns N Roses had more great albums but nothing ever had quite as mich impact as Appetite. Chinese Democracy? Good music, but doesn’t feel like G n’ R. Continue Reading »