Freddy Kreuger's Underwear - Metal Moshing Mad
Brazen Abbot - Eyes On The Horizon
Cradle Of Filth - Devil TO The Metal
Death Angel - Soulless
Forbidden - Disillusions
Black Bonzo - Ageless Door
Agua De Anique - Beautiful One
Anathema - Looking Inside In
Trouble - Misery
Devian - Suffer The Fools
Gorguts - Condemned To Obscurity
Sadus - Through The Eyes Of Greed
Pharoah - Flash Of The Dark
Remember to contact us at msrcast@gmail.com, and you can now call and leave a voice mail at this new number, 1-206-984-3811, and you can leave all kinds of requests, comments and prank calls. MSRcast Shield logo Tshirts and stickers are available now..Contact us now for more information.

Length: 1:21:22
Size: 55.9 M

Download episode_66.mp3

Before Amy Winehouse, there was Van Halen.  Tabloids couldn't cook up a saga more banal yet fascinating: Eddie's on the wagon; Eddie's off the wagon.  Diamond Dave's back; no, he's not.  Add drama about the non-brother members (Michael Anthony's out!  And playing with Sammy Hagar!  Who's obscenely rich from tequila!) and continual marital strife, and one almost forgets Van Halen is/was an actual band.  Given the recent tour by the (mostly) reunited original lineup, Ian Christe's biography is quite timely.

Like Sound of the Beast, Christe's history of heavy metal, Everybody Wants Some is wryly lucid.  The chronological presentation starts with the Van Halens' childhood as Dutch immigrants and ends just before the recent reunion tour.  In between, Christe helpfully inserts timelines of the band's various eras (David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, Gary Cherone).  Color photos resurrect a visual history once lost to back issues of Circus and Hit Parader (and fully revived in Neil Zlozower's book Van Halen: A Visual History).  Christe ably distills myths into facts; the story behind the brown M&M's is particularly interesting.

While heavy on facts, the book is light on psychology.  An unauthorized biography, it lacks the exclusive interviews of an authorized one.  Thus, while Van Halen's backstage antics were probably as sordid as Mötley Crüe's, this book is nowhere near as juicy as the Crüe's autobiography, The Dirt.  Still, Christe condenses secondary sources clearly and concisely.  Alex and Eddie's brotherly dynamic is evident and poignant.  Roth comes across as surprisingly human, Hagar perhaps too much so, and Cherone gets a respectful nod, despite Van Halen III being essentially a frisbee.

Like many Van Halen fans, Christe favors the Roth years, yet he competently makes a case for the Hagar era (one appendix is titled "Van Hagar for Dummies").  His even-handedness yields a smoothly flowing "just the facts" presentation.   Everybody Wants Some is the perfect excuse to revisit Van Halen's long, varied catalogue - preferably while reading the book.  You can skip Van Halen III, though.

Ian Christe
Wiley
2007, 320 pages, hardback

Earache has a habit of reheating and re-serving old platters, and iCrusher Complete is no exception.  It collects two DVD samplers, iCrusher 1 and 2, issued in 2001 and 2002, onto one double-sided DVD.  By definition, samplers aren't cohesive.  Sticking two together, along with audio tracks and extras seemingly selected by a blind man, makes for one of the most random viewing experiences in recent memory.

The DVD starts jarringly - not with roaring guitars, but with techno beats.  Images follow of the prosthetic-nosed Mortiis rolling around in sand and mud.  He also hangs out in a cathedral, accompanied by a rather strong wind machine.  Beavis would have started dancing; Butthead would have slapped him in the face and changed the channel.  It's a strange choice for the leadoff spot, yet more goth club Mortiis stylings begin side two.  Earache must really love the dude.

Most of the videos are extremely low-budget.  My notes for Gandalf's "Morning Sun": "This is weak and cheap."  Godflesh's "Christbait Rising": "primitive, but it works."  The harsh yet dreamy hues of the latter evoke flickering, dying TV's.  The video of Cathedral's "Black Sunday" isn't synced to its audio; it's just live shots interspersed with silly hijinks road footage that no one but the band would find funny (why bands fill DVD's with such tripe is beyond me).  In Hate Eternal's "Powers That Be," the band inexplicably plays in a forest, while a hooded figure runs around.  It's basically a black metal video.

However, there are a few gems.  Live footage of The Haunted, recorded for Live Rounds in Tokyo, looks crisp and sounds clear.  Watery shots of Venice perfectly complement the surrealism of Ephel Duath's "The Embossed."  The video for Decapitated's "Spheres of Madness" is essentially Hellraiser but not scary; still, the song kicks ass.  It's a treat seeing live footage of Entombed at their prime (circa 1992), and live footage of Carcass playing "Tools of the Trade" is amazing.  It looks and sounds great, and is a reminder of how much metal loses when it gets bit-crushed in YouTube.

The bonus audio tracks are actually two long DVD chapters - you just watch pictures of the bands as their songs play.  It's boring as hell.  Over the years, Earache has released some truly awful music, and it's astonishing that they would remind the world again of that fact.  There's Society 1, a crappy Marilyn Manson clone; Autonomy, a crappier rap-metal outfit; and Ultraviolence, a Hi-NRG dance act whose name is accurate in that it describes what I'd like to do to them.

Even more desultory are the video extras.   An "up close & personal" feature on Society 1's Matt Zane is promotional fluff and neither up close nor personal.  A making-of feature on Society 1's "Nothing" video shows Zane getting pierced in his back and getting suspended in the air by hooks.  Without commentary, the feature manages to be both horrifying and boring.  An "in the studio" feature on December recording The Lament Configuration cobbles together shaky handcam footage with blown-out sound.  It ends abruptly, leaving you wondering what you were watching - much like the rest of the DVD.

Earache Records

This weeks show features the re-appearance of the Warrior Of The Knight, new tarcks from Kingdom of Sorrow, The Agony Scene, Stone Rider, Too Pure To Die, Harlots, Light Pupil Dilate and much more!!!

Kingdom Of Sorrow
Stone Rider
Light Pupil Dilate
This Is Hell
Harlots
Too Pure To Die
The Agony Scene
The Sword
You've Been Lied To
Kiss

Size: 57.6MB
Length: 010:57:28

In Flames are nothing if not consistent. They've made virtually the same album four times in a row since 2002, including their upcoming full-length, A Sense of Purpose.

A Sense of Purpose is trademark In Flames– catchy melodic riffs abound, Anders Fridén's signature rasp is in full form, and electronic beeps, bleeps, and synth pads flesh out that unmistakable In Flames sound. The fist-raising anthems are here, but we've heard them all before.

Sure, for long-time In Flames devotees, living album-to-album like junkies waiting for their next fix, 'A Sense of Purpose' will be a welcome and familiar dose of melodic industrial death metal. The rest of us? We'll likely just dust off our old copies of Whoracle or Colony.

It's a shame really, because one gets the sense that they're capable of so much more. Sure, the album they keep making over and over again is a good album, but In Flames may have missed an opportunity to capitalize on their growing popularity by pushing the envelope, bringing to the table something fresh, innovative, even potentially mind-blowing.

Or perhaps their every move is precisely calculated– perhaps Fridén and crew are doing exactly what they mean to be doing. After all, artistic criticisms aside, In Flames are looking rather good in the numbers department. The band has been climbing the Billboard charts lately– 2004's Soundtrack to Your Escape peaked at #145 and their last effort, Come Clarity, entered the charts at #58.

Add to this their recent move in the US from the tiny Ferret label to one of the world's largest independent labels, Koch (boasting distribution through Universal Music Group) as well as continued support from long-time home Nuclear Blast, and A Sense of Purpose certainly seems poised to be In Flames' most successful outing to date.

6.5/10

In Flames on MySpace
Koch Records
Nuclear Blast

Type O Negative - Christian Woman
Slayer - South of Heaven
Megadeth - Countdown To Extinction
Pantera - Domination
Pantera - Fucking Hostile
Cannibal Corpse - Stripped, Raped, and Strangled
Morbid Angel - God of Emptiness
Death - Symbolic
Anthrax - Only
Iron Maiden - Wasted Years

Download Dead_Zone_EP_71_Old_Schoolin.mp3

Size: 27.1 MB
Length: 59:10

Host Ronen Kauffman talks to CHUCK RAGAN (HOT WATER MUSIC) about going solo, the philosophy of band break-ups and much more. Chuck also performs live in the studio! Then Ronen talks to JOHN JOSEPH (CRO-MAGS, BLOODCLOT!) about spirituality, the mainstreaming of aggressive music, and his new book.

72.5 MB / 1 hour 20 minutes / all awesome Download IO_03_08_ep29.mp3

It's no secret how much we love THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. The footage we just posted impresses us even. I can't stop rocking out to Sunshine the Warewolf (above), no matter how many times I've seen it. We posted two more live clips here.

We also had the chance to have a pretty in-depth interview with vocalist Greg Puciato. Greg was as cool as could be, and really opened up about anything and everything we would ask him. He went into depth about the writing/recording for this record, comparisons between new drummer Gil Sharone and recently departed drummer Chris Penne. And, he tells an absolutely awesome story of the band stopping at the Grand Canyon during his cross-country drive to LA to record the new record. Its all above, and all awesome.

On a related note, the dudes at SickDrummer.com and BandRescue.com posted a whole set's worth of Gil Sharone drum-cam clips at this location which you can check out here.

Finally, the band just released a new set of U.S. tour dates with THE BLED and HEAVY HEAVY LOW LOW:

April 7 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
April 9 - Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
April 10 - Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
April 11 - Boise, ID @ The Venue
April 12 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Avalon Theatre
April 18 - Fort Worth, TX @ Ridglea Theater

UNEARTH will be heading out on the road at the end of March with BURY YOUR DEAD, AS BLOOD RUNS BLACK, MY CHILDREN MY BRIDE, and THE DESTRO. Dates are:

March 27 - Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground
March 28 - Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music Hall
March 29 - Toledo, OH @ Headliners
March 30 - Grand Rapids, MI @ The Intersection
March 31 - Des Moines, IA @ People’s Court
April 1 - Sauget, IL @ Pop’s
April 2 - Columbus, IL @ TBA
April 3 - Nashville, TN @ Rocketown
April 4 - Knoxville, TN @ TBA
April 5 - Cordova, TN @ Skatepark of Memphis
April 6 - Louisville, KY @ Headliner’s Music Hall
April 8 - Charleston, SC @ The Music Farm
April 9 - Wilmington, NC @ The Soapbox Laundrolounge
April 10 - Richmond, VA @ TBA

IRON MAIDEN have announced the following U.S. tour dates:

May 21 - San Antonio, TX @ Verizon Wireless
May 22 - Houston, TX @ Woodlands
May 25 - Albuquerque, NM @ Journal Pavilion
May 26 - Phoenix, AZ @ Cricket Pavilion
May 28 - Concord, CA @ Concord
May 30 - Los Angeles, CA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
May 31 - Los Angeles, CA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
June 2 - Seattle, WA @ White River Amphitheatre

> MI favorites GOJIRA announced they will be heading into the studio in April to work on a follow-up to From Mars to Sirius. The band is putting the finishing touches on all the songs, and the record is expected to be released in the fall.

> CRYPTOPSY are currently putting the finishing touches on their sixth full-length, The Unspoken King, which will surface through Century Media Records this summer. The group recently announced the addition of new frontman Matt McGachy (3 Mile Scream) and keyboards/samplist Maggie Durand to their line-up. Guitarist Alex Auburn offered an update:

“Right now the band is plunged deeply into the production of the new album and so far everything is going well. Fans will be amazed by the diversity and open minded vision of extremes for this particular entity. Some song titles we’ve been working on are ‘Worship Your Demons,’ ‘Resurgence of An Empire,’ and ‘Silence The Tyrants.’ More news to follow soon.”

> ARSIS has posted the cover art for their upcoming album We Are The Nightmare (due April 15th) at this location

> TESTAMENT have posted the cover art for their new album, Formation of Damnation and it looks sick.  The album is due April 29th, and its probably the most anticipated release of 2008 for MI (after Meshuggah)

Poland's most controversial export, BEHEMOTH, have posted behind the scenes footage from the shoot for their upcoming video "At The Left Hand Ov God". The project is being worked on by director Dariusz Szermanowicz and Group 13. Looks like another winner from those dudes. As soon as the video is up, we will post it right here.

Headbangers Blog has begun posting a set of clips featuring an interview with reunited brothers Max and Igor Cavalera. In the above clip the band tells a pretty cool story on how they picked their name. I heard an advance of the new record, and it sounds absolutely awesome. We can't wait to see these dudes back together live.