Metallica has a new album coming out soon called ‘Death Magnetic’; I’ve heard the singles they released called ‘Cyanide’ and ‘All Nightmare Long’ and I’m not impressed.    

Genghis Tron are a three piece band from Philadelphia that do an impressive job of combining two very different styles of music: extreme metal and electronica. It doesn’t sound good on paper, but after hearing this song, Board Up The House (from their album of the same name) I was sold.

The video just captures their elaborate live show. To compensate for the fact that their live performance is more or less just three dudes playing with computers, they play with a bunch of visual/light effects sequenced to their music. Pretty neat.

Municipal Waste started as a thrash/powerviolence band from Richmond, Virginia and as their sound progressed more towards thrash metal their exposure increased. They are now on Earache and have ex-Burnt By The Sun drummer Dave Witte. This song is from their Earache debut, Hazardous Mutation. More recently they have also released The Art of Partying. This video is clearly a party.

this video is a party.

After several years establishing themselves as one of the greatest thrash metal bands in the world, Brazil’s Sepultura put out their death metal opus, ‘Chaos A.D.’ in 1993 which brought them mainstream success.  This was back in the early 90s when death metal was a little slower and more interesting, inspired by bands like Sweden’s Entombed.

Chaos A.D. stood out not only because of the large hardcore punk influence, but also because of the unique rhythms present in the songs.  Max Cavalera had been known for his interest in the music of the native Brazilian tribes and he brought some of those beats into play on Chaos A.D.  This sound is a bit dated now as a lot of mediocre metal bands added tribal beats to their music in the late 90s, but in 1993 tribal beats in heavy music was unheard of.

This video was shot on the Israel-Palistine border; I’m not sure if Sepultura were pro-Israel, anti-Israel, or just anti-war.  From the looks of the video, maybe they just wanted some shots of metal looking dudes looking hard in the Middle-Eastern desert.

Since I was talking about At the Gates last week, I figured it only fitting to post a Haunted video. The Haunted were born out of the ashes of the Swedish metal phenomenon At The Gates. They started out as a pretty straightforward thrash band in the vein of Slayer, but as you can see here their sound has gotten a bit more accessible.

Honestly I don’t think their newer stuff is nearly as good as the stuff on their second album (The Haunted Made Me Do It) but this video is pretty cool for reasons I probably don’t have to mention.

This is a gem from the golden era of thrash, probably Anthrax’s biggest hit from their best album, 1987’s Among the Living.  This was the classic Anthrax lineup of Joey Belladona on vocals, Charlie Benante on drums, Frank Bello on bass and Scott Ian and Dan Spitz on guitar.  Awesome hair.

I just heard that At The Gates is re-uniting to do a tour of Europe and the US, which got me listening to their records again. They were a very influential Swedish metal band in the 90s (they broke up in 1996) whose members went on to be in The Haunted, The Crown, Disfear, Cradle of Filth, The Great Deceiver, Nightrage and Skitsystem. Blinded By Fear is the first song on Slaughter of the Soul, which is considered by many to be a classic album and it’s influence can be clearly heard by more modern US bands like Darkest Hour and Black Dhalia Murder.

The video is a pretty standard rock music video; nothing special here, but I think the song makes up for that.