DAATH's newest album, The Concealers, has several good songs, impeccable musicianship and enough variety to consistently hold interest. It won't change your life, but good metal doesn't always need to, and for a heavy, catchy American death metal album, you could do a lot worse. (more…)

I love seeing how bands act offstage. It's one of the reasons we started Metal Injection. We were tired of mundane interviews where the bands sit around talking about their influences and "the songwriting process" and other questions that have been answered in dozens of other interviews in magazines. I want to see the band goofing off!

That's why when I heard the BLACK DAHLIA MURDER were putting out a DVD, I was mega-stoked. These guys have always been hilarious when we've hung out with them so having somebody with a camera around was quite possibly the best idea the band ever had. (more…)

Wednesday night, for the first time in my life, I shot a show where I was scared shit out of my pants while standing between the barricade and the stage. In other words, The Chariot scared the shit out of me. No blood. No fire. Just 5 dudes with menacing rage.

But, once Gojira took over the stage. Everyone was thinking "Char-i-who"? Unless you live near Jaxx, Palladium, Philly, Peabodys or in the NYC tristate area, I suggest you start planning out road trips to catch up with this tour.

I missed Carbomb with the exception of the 30 seconds where I was able to take a snap of their sick light show from the entrance. Don't be a dumb ass like me. Get there on time. It might be something cool, but I wouldn't know.

Pics and more after the jump (more…)

Moonsorrow at Paganfest 2009 in Allentown, PA

Justina Villanueva | Most awesome correspondent

The day begun with Popeyes, a 2 hour drive to Allentown, PA and some interviews. Noa interviewed her favorite band Moonsorrow. Rob caught up with Swashbuckle in their stage uniforms, Blackguard with their [enter Canadian joke here] and Korpiklanni with their Smirnoff Ices. At showtime, Swashbuckle proved to have the funniest stage banter. Blackguard provoked a thunderous circle pit. Moonsorrow brought blood and nature-inspired atmospherics. Primordial generated pure darkness. And, the folkiest band of the night, Korpiklaani, ended the night.

More pictures after the jump.
(more…)

Their Georgia home base, crossover appeal, sporadic tempo changes and blend of classic rock, stoner and alternative influences may all scream the name of the band that KYLESA is currently opening for, but in no way is Static Tensions an album you've already heard if you've picked up Crack the Skye. Imagine BARONESS nightmaring about THE MELVINS and you might start to grasp Kylesa's fourth full-length, but the gargantuan riffs and two-fisted drumming aren’t going to leave you much room to analyze while Static Tensions is playing. (more…)

Amon Amarth

Last night Starland Ballroom lived up to its all ages policy. That is young lads whose heads barely aligned with my hip bone (and I'm 5'2" so that's short) and older folks (some grey topped and others who listened to Black Sabbath when they were kids to piss off THEIR parents). Everyone, however, was there to headbang. Even the drunk girl with an Ed Hardy shirt, jean miniskirt and stiletto sandals (yeah, real classy) who heckled me for not acting like a drunk douchebag (aka her) until I told her to hold my camera bag to see how heavy it was.

Photos + recap after the jump

(more…)

Now that hipsters, non-metal rock fans, ERIC CLAPTON's label, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN's producer and mainstream publications have caught on, you no longer need underground metal fans to tell you how much MASTODON rules. But what makes Mastodon exceptional is that they haven't watered down their sound at all to get this far–rather, they've been developing as songwriters and musicians more than any major label metal act in recent history. Crack the Skye is probably their most experimental and most traditional album yet, a step forward for progressive metal and an early frontrunner in the album of the year race. (more…)

In most movies, Manhattan is made out to be a high-fashion metropolis with everyone in black pant suits on 5th Ave and super chic designer outfits in SoHo. But, if you live here, you know its just a giant cluster fuck of every kind of being. The metal underground is just one scene in a bottomless pool of cultures. And the metal scene is sub-genred to the point that I can barely keep up with the new sub-sub-genres. Last Sunday was my first live Pagan Metal experience and I can promise that it won't be my last. It was also a pretty good option for ruining a working person's Monday morning. Who cares, though. Sleep deprived headaches don't compare to the kilt-moshing and wench chanting that added to a night of complete drunken praise to pirate metal. Enjoy my photomentary below of Alestorm and Tyr. Sorry for missing Suidakra's set but the damned Apple Store tricked me into driving an hour out of my way. If you missed it, be sure to catch Pagan Fest this summer.

ALESTORM

A band whose fans brought on the stormy dancing and made sure their beers were always in the air

(more…)

As a visionary for NILE, KARL SANDERS re-imagined death metal as hymns of the sphinx, anthems for the pharaoh, the cover art of Powerslave depicted over blast beats. After perfecting that niche on In Their Darkened Shrines, Nile plateaued by making solid albums that were about as distinguishable from each other as MOTORHEAD songs. But what better chance to branch out, take a few risks and pull of some stunts that wouldn't make it to your main band than a solo album? (more…)

Every week Whenever they feel like it, the editors of The Apparatus webzine will present a new tech album that you should do yourself a favor and grab to have your mind completely blown…

PARIA has gone through some tremendous changes and growth. The line up shuffle/struggle that this band has endured has worked out for the best. To make a long story short, singer Brian Craig left the band in Jan 2007, Paria was left to record an entire full length, in a new direction, as an instrumental band. Then at the last minute Brian returned to the fold. The band then recomposed most of the tracks with vocals. With all these member changes, 'The Barnacle Cordious' sounds refined and tweaked to perfection. Since a lot of these songs in theory were all instrumentals in a past life. All the instruments individually are pushed into the audible foreground. This album is definitely a bass players wet dream. The guitarist plays a tremendous range of both orthodox and unorthodox guitar playing. I hear everything from classic guitar virtuosity to the best elements of 'Misanthropos' (all the dissonant and abrasive Mathcore techniques). (more…)

Last weekend will be a weekend that I will never forget. Vice Magazine and Scion (the car company) teamed up to present Scion Rock Fest. The one day event held at the barely standing Masquerade in Atlanta, GA. was absolutely free. That doesn't mean this was a non-profit fest. Money was flowing everywhere, be it at the merch booths or the food and alcohol vendors. It seemed as though the crowd was okay with spending a few dollars since they spent nothing to get in.

According to locals, The Masquerade was an old farm house that was "restructured" into a venue. The venue definitely shows it's age. This did not stop the organizers from using the Masquerade to it's fullest setting up an outside stage under a huge tent and 3 stages inside, calling the main room upstairs "Heaven", the somewhat smaller room under it called "Hell" and the 3rd small-ass bar area dubbed "Purgatory." Heaven was above Hell and felt like it could cave at any moment. When staring at the ceiling in heaven, you could see a curve. That is a giant accident waiting to happen. Purgatory was pretty terribly set up. There was no physical stage it seemed, as I could never actually see the band that was performing. The schedule had a lot of overlapping, but everything was close enough where you could jump around and not miss much. (more…)

No band has done more for American metal under the Bush years than LAMB OF GOD. For eight years, Virginia's finest upped the ante for modern metal, expressing the rage of a nation over perpetual touring, four outstanding studio albums and previously unthinkable chart success for relatively extreme metal. Now Wrath, the Lamb's latest offering, calls to mind the most overused phrase of the past year, but one that the band should heed–"Change we can believe in." (more…)

The last time NJ thrashers GOD FORBID checked in with a new album, it precisely the huge step forward that only a few bands ever get–a bold and kickass record that distinguished God Forbid from every dime a dozen neo-thrash act and catapulted them into the elite of 21st century metal bands. Epic, conceptual, song-driven and carrying itself out onstage, Constitution of Treason had "definitive statement" written all over it. Now Earthsblood, the band's years-in-the-making follow-up, does all it can to ensure that the last time around wasn't the band's masterpiece. (more…)

We here at Metal Injection have enjoyed a longtime love affair with the French metal scene. Rob & the boys are all about Gorod and Gojiiiraaaaaa,and have given them lots of love on this site (see here, here, and here). Those bands are undeniably rad, but they call me Grim Kim for a reason – allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite bands, (French or otherwise) – BLUT AUS NORD.

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Eastern Europe and South America have long been the dark Meccas of black metal, but the USA, Japan, and France in particular are steadily creeping up to stake their claims for global supremacy. Simply put, French black metal rules. I've been jocking Deathspell Omega, Hell Militia, Blut Aus Nord, Peste Noire, and the Black Legions since I was just a little tyke with a Hellhammer backpatch. Consistently underrated and until recent times, more or less ignored by the majority of American metalheads, the French scene has given rise to some of the most challenging, forward-thinking, ass-kicking black metal of the past decade, and  shows no signs of slowing down. (more…)

Like any movie starring Freddy Krueger, CANNIBAL CORPSE are almost insusceptible to evaluation. Anybody who likes Cannibal Corpse is going to enjoy Evisceration Plague, the band’s eleventh full-length offering, and the rest of the world will know to look elsewhere. Really the only way to rate a new Cannibal Corpse CD is by comparing it to the rest of their output, and on that scale, Evisceration Plague is a very good album. (more…)

Shouldn't these guys have exhausted their formula by now? CATTLE DECAPITATION's grindcore/death metal format doesn't leave much room for growth, and they're still drilling listeners with the relentlessly misanthropic/pro vegan themes that first distinguished them from their Metal Blade compatriots. Singer TRAVIS RYAN still enunciates like a prolonged belch. And yet, Cattle Decapitation's latest full-length is the first great metal record of 2009, and the one for fans getting their first taste of Cattle to pick up. (more…)

Five albums and three singers into their career, Darkane are still slipping melodies into their thrash-infested death metal. Demonic Art doesn't try anything new, but it captures Darkane filling their Swedish death metal niche as soundly as anyone could hope. (more…)

Podcast: Download

A few summers ago, the Giraffes' self-titled breakthrough established them as one of the best new hard rock bands since Queens of the Stone Age debuted. This year's Prime Motivator is The Giraffes x 1.5–longer, stronger, wronger and song-er than their ear-catching previous LP.

Roaring out of the gate instantly with the dizzying title track, the disoriented-sounding band somehow organize themselves ten seconds in and unleash a pile-driving riff-fest that's over before you wonder why your eardrums exploded. But the album really takes off on the second track, “Done,” with an entrancing, Zeppelin-esque lick that stays in your brain for hours. When singer Aaron Lazar boasts, "That's how we do it, and we do it so good!” in the final rejoinder, he may be delivering the year’s most understated chorus in a rock song. Elsewhere, the dance-punk "Discowarts" could win over a hipster crowd, and “(This is) Sickness” gets raised in octaves and ferociousness from its previous EP version, packing a two-and-half-minute punch without as much as a hint of the irony that befalls most modern hard rock acts. Like President Bush, these guys are shameless.

Riff architect Damian Paris has a knack for turning circus music and waltzing progressions into arena-worthy rock hooks, spilling out of his time signatures while drummer Andrew Totolos threatens to trounce him with increasingly complicated fills. Their foil is in Lazar, the composed eye of the hurricane amidst choatic numbers like “Smoke Machine.” Even when raising his voice, Lazar is more Vincent Price than Vincent Furnier, an articulate, commanding lounge-metal presence with vocal chops to boot. The less frenetic tracks, including the climactic “Clever Boy” and especially the nighthawk adventure “Louis Guthrie Wants to Kill Me,” seamlessly change the album's mood by staying imposing enough to not sound out of place. When it all ends with the primal, skull-crushing wordless jam “E.S.F.,” arguably Prime Motivator’s highlight, one imagines that these guys would be as adept at scoring a noir or a spaghetti western as they would be roughing up a roomful of Niedermeyers.

Prime Motivator has so many plot twists that you might want to paint the city red and have a beer alone at 4AM, often during the same song. It's possible that Prime Motivator will drive you nuts, but then again some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.

Buy it/burn it/chuck it scale: Buy

Podcast: Download