Sonic Syndicate Stream New Album

Swedish metallers, Sonic Syndicate, have been streaming their latest album through their Myspace page. Love And Other Disasters will be released on Monday (in the UK) through Nuclear Blast. Today might be the last day to hear the full album on their Myspace, as it was posted up last Saturday, so make sure you head on over and check it out!!!

http://www.myspace.com/sonicsyndicate

New Sonic Syndicate Video/In Flames Tour

Sonic Syndicate have posted a video of their new single on their Myspace page. The new track, called Jack Of Diamonds, is the first track taken from their forthcoming album, Love And Other Disasters, which will be released next month through Nuclear Blast.

Check the video out at:

www.myspace.com/sonicsyndicate

The band will also be on tour next month with label mates, In Flames, and Gojira. The dates shall be as follows:

September
27 Glasgow Barrowlands Scotland/UK
28 Birmingham Academy UK
29 Manchester Academy UK
October
01 London Astoria UK
03 Luxembourg Den Atelier LUX
04 Cologne Paladium GER
05 Wiesbaden Schlachthof GER
07 Brussels AB BEL
08 Paris Zenith FRA
09 Tilburg 013 HOL
10 Nancy L’escale FRA
11 Lyon Tranbordeur FRA
13 Barcelona Razzamatazz 1 ESP
14 Granada La Copera ESP
15 Madrid La Riviera ESP
16 Bilbao Rock Star Live ESP
18 Fribourg Fri-son CHE
19 Munich Zenith GER
20 Vienna Gassometer AT
21 Milano Alcatraz ITA
22 Zurich Volkshaus CHE
24 Dresden Alter Schlacthof GER
25 Berlin Columbiahalle GER
27 Helsinki Cable Factory FIN
29 Stockholm Annexet SWE
30 Stockholm Annexet SWE
31 Oslo Sentrum Scene NOR
November 2008
01 Gothenburg Lisebergshallen SWE
02 Gothenburg Lisebergshallen SWE

New Metallica Single Posted!

The first real preview of Metallica's highly anticipated new album Death Magnetic, has been posted on the band's myspace page. The song is, as previously reported by many sources, in keeping with songs like Sanitarium and One and has been greeted with many superlatives by a lot of fans. A quick look at the comments blabbermouth.net, for example, shows far more words relating to "awesome" and "they're back", than to "posers" and "sellouts."

The song starts of with clean guitars and a guitar harmony not far from To Live is To Die, then proceeds into the verse. After two rounds of verse/chorus, where the verse is clean and the chours rahter heavy, it takes of into a riff that sounds much like a more complex version of the "double bass drum part" in One. It then rolls on in a fast paced tempo, with solos (no wahwah!) from time to time, until the end, also a lot like the mentioned Justice classic. In other words, it's a classic 80's Metallica "ballad" made 2008...

The question is, will this song be the song that proves Metallica is back? Or will it be forgotten and taken out of the live setlist just as fast as the St.Anger songs? Time will tell...

The Haunted Complete And Name New Album

Swedish metallers, The Haunted, have completed work to their new album, which shall be released in the autumn, and will be called Versus.

Here's what the band had to say, taken from an email from their label, Century Media:

"So we're about to let people outside the box start peeking inside. The album we've come up with is one we decided to call Versus. Pretty much it's turned out to be exactly what we had hoped for! We decided to record the whole album live, and add vocals and solos once we had the songs down with the right energy and groove.

"Like always, Peter confused the hell out of everyone by presenting 25 ideas almost a year before we were even going to record, but later calmed the mood by explaining it was mostly to inspire and provoke. It worked. Anders and Jonas started dropping CD's of scatterbrained ideas and mixed riffs and we started digging; Anders bringing industrial and melodic ideas to the table, and Jonas traditional metal roots. Initially Jensen felt he didn't know where to go with it. He told Peter, 'All I come up with is grind...' So what?! Then write grind riffs! It's all gonna sound like THE HAUNTED in the end anyway. Pete told him, and shortly after Jensen started pounding us with typical, simplistic, Jensen trademark riffs.

"So what does it sound like? Definitely THE HAUNTED: Great songs, catchfire-riffing, hooks catchier than herpes on a biker slut, explosive groovy beats and lyrics as sharp, dark and dripping sarcastic bile like someone who just got back from Hell with a bone to pick.

"It's safe to say we're really looking forward to letting this b**tard sink its fangs into your minds. Ladies and gents, it's clobbering time!"

Shhh!! It's not a Metallica Review!!

Okay, I saw that everyone was being told to keep quiet about the new Metallica record after the Listening party. After a few days of searching I found a review that was lifted word for word by guys at Antiquiet....Here is that review in full, by Bob Mullhouse @ The Quiet Us

METALLICA: New Album Preview
by Bob Mulhouse

Being a fan of the Danish-Californian heavy metal quartet Metallica is hard work. They’re the quintessential band of two halves, pulling in millions of fans from 1983 to 1995 with five mostly excellent albums, which ranged in approach from youthful violence to radio-friendly hummability. In 1996, however, Metallica released the first of a shockingly poor string of alternative-rock, covers and live records, finishing up with 2003’s terrible St. Anger, the most disappointing metal CD ever released. Staying loyal to them after this many years isn’t easy, frankly.

So what, you might be thinking– all bands have their creative peaks and troughs, surely? Well, you’re not getting it. Metallica aren’t just a metal act: they are the Led Zeppelin of their generation, a band which your kids will revere 30 years from now to the same degree as we do the Beatles and the Stones today. To love them is to really love them. Their work ethic (which other band spends three years on the road at stadium level?) and their damnable songwriting ability (leading to songs of visceral power which you can still sing in the bath) has made them bigger, heavier and more essentially here than anyone else. That’s why we still pay attention to them after more than a decade of recorded dross. That’s why even their drummer Lars Ulrich’s petulant sparring with Napster in 2001 and the painful-to-watch Some Kind Of Monster documentary (made during their group-therapy sessions) don’t outweigh the hope we all felt when it was announced in 2007 that none other than Rick Rubin would be helming their new studio album, the first in five years.

Rick Rubin, as any fule kno, is responsible for launching the careers of many a fine band (including Slayer, Metallica’s sometime contemporaries), but– more relevantly in this case– has also revived the fortunes of creatively ossified artists whose moment in the sun has passed, such as Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Could The Beastie Beard breathe life into Metallica? God, we hoped so, simultaneously aware that Ulrich et al have raised and dashed our hopes before.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I attended the playback of Metallica’s new album at the HQ of Universal, their UK record company, on 3 June. We were permitted to hear six of the 10 tracks which will ultimately appear on the album– which, a rep from the Q-Prime management company informed us, is referred to colloquially by Metallica as ‘Nine epics and one song’. The sense of occasion was reinforced by the presence of almost the entire editorial teams of the UK’s two biggest metal magazines, glaring at each other over the tea urn. [What? Metal Hammer and Terrorizer? -Antiquiet.]

Right from the off, it’s a relief to hear that the utterly awful production of St. Anger is no more. Ulrich has replaced the old dustbin lid from that album with an actual snare drum, and the sound is fresh, clean and resonant (even though the songs are still only rough mixes at this stage). The first song, like the rest of the ‘epics’, is between six and eight minutes long and begins with a bass intro from low-ender extraordinaire Robert Trujillo. Moving rapidly from riff to riff, the song bursts with energy and ideas: singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield barks “Luck runs out!” repeatedly and throws in some twisty, semi-progressive riffs which could have been lifted directly from, their last truly good album, 1988’s …And Justice For All. Guitarist Kirk Hammett, who was banned from soloing on St. Anguish for no adequately explored reason, is on fire, whipping out the melodic, rapid-fire shreds for which he is famous over an extended solo section – almost as if he’s making up for lost time. This is Metallica’s best song in ages, perhaps since the 1980s.

The next cut has a working title of Flamingo and is going to be the first single. Now, Metallica’s lead singles have been breathtakingly crap since 1995, so it was a relief to hear that Flamingo (as it almost definitely will not be called) is a modernised take on their amazing 1988 song One, all balladry at its front end before a speeded-up metalstorm at the back. Hetfield delivers a clean-picked intro which reminded me of the Beach Boys (I know… but I only got to hear it once, all right?) before the body of the song, which is basically like The Unforgiven from 1991’s Black Album. If you’re familiar with the chord progression behind the solo in Am I Evil?, the ancient Diamond Head song which Metallica made their own, you’ll be able to picture the under-solo riffage in this song– all simple, effective major-interval jumps.

However, let us not forget that this is modern Metallica– and the next two songs are much less fun. The first, which may be called We Die Hard judging by the frequency with which Hetfield barks the phrase, starts boringly but accelerates halfway through and enters slightly proggy territory, all stop-start riff stabs and a clever time signature. The next song is very …And Justice, a lengthy, unhurried workout which revolves around the line “Bow down / Sell your soul to me / I will set you free”, itself
a 1988 line if I ever heard one. Apart from dexterous soloing from Hammett, it’s
not great.

So far, we’ve had two good songs and two dull ones– not a bad track record for new ’Tallica, believe me. However, track five is tedious, a combination of the aimless riffery of St. Anger and the pointless rock chorusing of Load, the album which almost finished Metallica in 1996. “Crying, weeping, shedding strife!” sings Hetfield in that slick Enter Sandman manner, over an unthreatening clean midsection which would (and no doubt will) suit VH1 down to the ground.

At this point the Q-Prime geezer asks us if we want to hear more, and fortunately we say yes– because the final song (and indeed, it is ‘The Song’, the little guy among the nine epics) is great, a genuine slice of thrash metal that starts fast and stays that way. Like a slower, less precise Battery (the opening track of 1986’s flawless Master Of Puppets album), the song nips in and out, not outstaying its welcome and proving that on some level, Metallica still have the necessary vitriol to impress their older fans. OK, it reminded me a bit of Dyer’s Eve, the last song on Justice, which had a kind of “I suppose we’d better do a fast one for the fans” feel about it– but in 2008, Hetfield and Ulrich delivering any form of thrash metal is not to be sneered at.

We file out of the listening room, not saying much. This album could be good, or it could be mediocre– too much depends on the other four songs to make a call at this point. I try not to agonise about it, but this matters, damn it. It really does.

I said it wasn’t easy being a Metallica fan in 2008, didn’t I?

New Nine Inch Nails Album... FOR FREE!

Yes, Mr Reznor has done it again, and given us another free album, called The Slip! And from the first little bit I've heard, it sounds AWESOME!

Want it? Then head over to http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup

The NEW Nine Inch Nails album for $5! (£2.50!)

Ok, Nine Inch Nails may not be the most "metal" band, but they're a band that I have found appeal to a lot of metal fans. So when I found this out, I thought I better post it up for you lot to read.

Yup, you did read the headline right, the NEW NIN album for US$5 (that's around £2.50) online. No, not Year Zero, not the remixes either, their NEW album! Ghosts I - IV is an experimental instrumental album and is available through their website, but be warned, their servers are struggling so you may want to do this through Amazon.com.

From the website:

"The new Nine Inch Nails record is available RIGHT NOW.

You can also get the download here on Amazon's MP3 store for the same $5 price.

The response to this album has been overwhelming, causing our website to slow to a crawl. We THOUGHT we were ready, but...
We've been adding more servers to accommodate the unexpected demand and we expect to be running smoothly in the next few hours. In the meantime, if you've had any problems with downloads from the Ghosts site, don't worry - you'll be able to use your download link again when the site is more stable. Thanks everyone for making this such an immediate success."

I would give you a review, but I'm still waiting to get it through the website (hence the warning!).

Scar Symmetry Album News

Taken from their Myspace blog:

"Ladies and gentlemen!

We're happy to announce that our 3rd CD, "HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE", has now been mixed, mastered and delivered to the people at Nuclear Blast Records! We pushed the "record"-button for the first time early December and the time since has been hectic and intense to say the least. We've worked our asses off 24/7 and the result is 12 new songs, featuring all the creamy goodness of "SYMMETRIC IN DESIGN" and the spicy flavours of "PITCH BLACK PROGRESS", this time with a lot of added cheese and pork-fat... Does it make sense to you? No, not to us either... Anyway, here's the tracklist:

1. Morphogenesis (3:54)
2. Timewave Zero (5:13)
3. Quantumleaper (4:09)
4. Artificial Sun Projection (4:00)
5. The Missing Coordinates (4:37)

6. Ghost Prototype I (Measurement of Thought) (4:35)
7. Fear Catalyst (5:03)
8. Trapezoid (4:17)
9. Prism and Gate (3:46)
10. Holographic Universe (9:05)
11. The Three-Dimensional Shadow (3:57)
12. Ghost Prototype II (Deus Ex Machina) (6:03)

Estimated time of arrival: June 2008"

I don't know if I can really wait that long for this album! Pitch Black Progress was one of my favourite purchases of last year, so I'm desperate to hear what they've done with this album!

In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose Album Cover Poll

This is the cover for the new In Flames album A Sense Of Purpose. After it was first post up, there were mixed reactions to the artwork, some positive, some negative. So, we now have a poll (on the right hand side of the page) where you can vote on how good, bad or ugly you think this new cover is!