Here's Monstrosity and Vile singer Mike Hrubovcac of Visualdarkness.com checking in with his latest unpublished piece of macabre art. It's from the upcoming self-titled Gorevent album. We've got but one question. Is there a practical reason someone would hang corpses in ropes of razor wire? Does it somehow help with the difficult job of body disposal or is just a cool way of displaying your trophies? Leave your answers in the proper biohazard receptacles. Now, here's Mike:

This illustration was done for the Japanese band Gorevent, who are on the Japanese label Macabre Mementos Records. Gorevent is scheduled to play the 2008 Tokyo Deathfest, a big goregrind festival over there. This is the cover concept I much ran with after they mentioned razor wire or barbed wire corpses. The language barrier between us made it hard to understand what they wanted, but they trusted that whatever I rolled with would be more than acceptable.

So, I took the razor wire idea and pictured a scene of a dark alley, perhaps so hidden and obscure that such a gory atrocity could actually take place. I figured with the amount of dead bodies that lay entwined in razor wire or within the dilapidated rooms of the buildings, there would probably be a small river of blood puddled down the alley. Like most of my work, this was done digitally in Photoshop using mixed media / photo manipulation / airbrush with the wacom tablet.

It's 2 p.m., and Protest the Hero singer Rody Walker is still lying on the floor of his Toronto apartment, fighting off a hangover. Last night, he and a friend split 40 ounces of whiskey then went out for dollar shots, and today his liver is paying the price.

Rody's alcohol binge wasn't in celebration of his band's new record, Fortress, which comes out tomorrow (January 29). It was just part of his regular routine of fighting off the boredom that comes with being a liberal, young hyperactive adult in a predictable, conservative world. Protest the Hero's zany progressive thrash metal is Walker's other outlet for amusement -- which explains the music schizophrenic clash of speed, abrupt rhythm changes, dissonance, melody and emotion.

"We all just get bored really easily so we’re always trying to do something that will keep our interest," Walker told MTVnews.com's Metal File. “When we write a record, we want something that will still keep our attention a couple years down the line, but it never works."

In other words, 30 minutes after Protest the Hero finish recording a new batch of songs, they're pretty much sick of 'em. And that's a problem for a band that has to promote its albums with lengthy tours.

"Right now, I don’t ever want to play those songs on [our last album] Kezia again," said Walker. "And I know we’re going to have to when we tour, which sucks. We hate being labeled, but if we have to be called something, I think ADD metal applies." Read more...

Once again our faithful logo decipherer, Gvoltt, has guessed the latest Indecipherable Logo, Lapidate. Surely, the dude's got a Rosetta Stone in his crypt or some sort of mad telepathy going.

Anyway, Lapidate is a gurgling death metal quartet from Ajax, Ontario. The band, whose name means "death by stoning," was formed in 2oo2 and is currently composed of singer Mike Verlinden, guitarist Gord Brown, bassist Darrell Kelly  and drummer Erich Kennedy. Lapidade issued three self-released demos before  its debut full-length, Taxidermy Tea Party, came out on CDN Records in 2004

Another demo followed in 2oo5 before Lapidate contributed to a split-CD with Devoured, FATA and Vomitgod. According to their MySpace, Lapidate have completed their new album Sex Sells, But Who's Paying? (an obvious reference to Megedeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?).

Lapidate's last show was on December 13 with Serene Molestation, Mortify And Hallow's Die. No other gigs are currently scheduled.

Call them whatever you want -- post-thrash, metalcore or total crap -- but one thing's for sure. Bullet For My Valentine are currently one of the hottest new metal bands, and, along with Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold, they're redefining the genre from a new breed of teenagers bored with pop-punk, nu-metal and screamo.

The band's new album, Scream Aim Fire, comes out Tuesday and the title track is already receiving strong airplay. On February 29, Bullet will launch this year's Taste of Chaos tour with -- not so coincidentally -- Avenged, Atreyu, blessthefall and others. And after that, there'll be numerous headline tours -- not bad for a group that, less than a year ago, thought its singer might never sing again.

While touring for their last album, The Poison, frontman Matt Tuck suffered numerous throat infections, and by the time the band entered the studio to start recording, he could hardly carry a tune. To remedy the problem, Tuck underwent surgery and the vocal rehabilitation that followed, which substantially delayed the creation of the new album.

During our podcast interview with Bullet For My Valentine frontman Matt Tuck, we talked about his agonizing throat problems, the creation of Scream Aim Fire, the stress of being part of the music industry, the spoils of success and the horrors of war.

Click here for a direct MP3 download of the Bullet for My Valentine podcast interview.
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Protest the Hero play jarring, progressive metal full of mindbending solos and impossible musicianship, so it's no surprise that singer Rody Walker reached out to a similarly gifted outfit for his Bang of the Week. No, Walker didn't give props to Dream Theater or Dillinger Escape Plan, he screamed praise to a band that seems to be the hottest dark horse contender to come along since Horse the Band. We're talking, of course, about Symphony X, whose video for "Set the World on Fire" received such strong feedback on the Headbangers Blog it was subsequently aired on MTV2's Headbangers Ball. Power to the people, and all. Keep setting the world on fire, guys.

"I picked that because I've never seen a Symphony X music video, and from what I've seen in pictures of them, they're pretty hilarious looking guys," Walker said. "Beyond that, It's also a f--king awesome song. And also, Russell Allan is pretty much the greatest singer ever."

Today's indecipherable logo comes to you courtesy of hordes of maggots devouring the carcass of a squirrel run over by an SUV. Okay, maybe not, but we can't think of anything else it resembles more -- especially a band name.

Hey, instead of guessing the name of the group that uses this alphabet abortion, why don't you all use your imaginations and say what the stupid logo looks like to you. The most creative answer wins a collection of satanic toenail clippings from Watain singer Erik Danielsson.

You guys voted Dream Theater's "Constant Motion" as the second best video of 2007 (we beg to differ, but that's the joy of a good Democracy), so you should pee your pants at the arrival of the band's new video for "Forsaken," which should fare at least as well in this year's viewer's poll.

Guitarist John Petrucci has written a lengthy summary of the song and video, which we'll subject you to before we let you watch the thing. Or, just skip ahead and click on the video box. Hey, it's a free country -- for now.

"The song 'Forsaken' is essentially a vampire story based on an early 1800's short story by a well known Russian novelist," writes Petrucci. "It centers on the main character Leo, who is visited nightly by a phantom named Alice. He is both intrigued and horrified by this ghost like image of a woman whom seems hauntingly familiar to him. Her seduction entails nightly mesmerizing journeys into the dark past where she floats through the skies weightlessly along with Leo visiting such places as Paris and ancient Rome. All the while she repeats the words, 'I have come for you' and 'You are mine.' "So captivated is Leo that he doesn't even feel the sting of her vampire kiss and his body slowly gives itself up to the phantom as the story goes on.

"In the anime video created for the song, the director chose to give the lyric a futuristic twist, and play with the storyline a bit. Now, our main character is visited by a demon like harvester of human blood. Her purpose is to supply otherwise lifeless mannequins with this blood so that they may live and reenact some of the darkest moments in history.

"I always knew that an animated adaptation would be the perfect avenue to colorfully illustrate this horror story. Working with the director and choosing Japanese style anime as the artistic medium was an incredible opportunity. From the modern interpretation to the character development, storyboards and finally the animation, it was a unique and exciting experience to be a part of. I'm really happy to see the song come to life and I think people will enjoy this entirely new and unique perspective that was created for "Forsaken."

So there you have it. Now, watch "Forsaken" (if you haven't alraedy), and see it on the big screen on Saturday night's Headbangers Ball on MTV2.

Is this video worth breaking your foot for?

That's a rhetorical question, but the answer's irrelevant. It was actually the shoot for The Dillinger Escape Plan's yet-unreleased "Black Bubblegum" video the day before this one was filmed that resulted in guitarist Ben Weinman breaking his foot. For "Milk Lizard," he rolled up to the set in a wheelchair and played in a cast -- but you'd never know it from his frantic, energized performance, while probably pushed a few fractured bone fragments in directions that didn't help that shattered foot heal any faster. Oh, well, you know what they say about bleeding for art.

Check out what Weinman and director Ilan Sharone have to say about the video here. And watch it again on Headbangers Ball this Saturday on MTV2.

Dani Filth laments, "If only I could figure out this Internet downloading crap?"

A new song by Cradle of Filth, "Devil to the Metal" is available for free download here.
The track comes from the band's upcoming audio DVD "Thornography - Harder darker Faster," which comes out February 5. Cradle of Filth released the original Thornography CD in October 2006.
The new version features tons of bonus features, including extra tracks, music videos and making of clips.

And now as David Lee Roth once screamed, the Cradle will rock. Here's "Cradle to Enslave":

Maybe it's not fair to pit two artists that are friends against one another, but who ever said metalheads play by the rules? There's no queston Machine Head and DevilDriver are two of Roadrunner Records' brightest lights and they both put out top-notch videos in 2007. Plus, they've both written awesome guest blogs for Headbangers Ball Blog (see Machine Head's here and DevilDriver's here).

But when you weight one against the other, there are definitely differences as well as similarities. While both have flirted with nu-metal in the past and are now pretty single-mindedly fixed on writing thrash and death-based songs that incinerate, Machine Head tend to take a more technical, multi-dimensional approach and DevilDriver go straight for the jugular. Yet even DD have a solid repertoire of atmospheric flourishes and heavy metal hooks that permeate the cranium-bashing beats. And while Machine Head can get melancholy or even (gasp) tender, they're also more than capable of heavy-duty quality brain-bashing. Both groups have a charismatic frontman seasoned from years of abuse in other bands (Machine Head's Robb Flynn in Vio-Lence, DevilDriver's Dez Fafara in Coal Chamber). And both stage monumentally intense live shows.

So you tell us, what does each band have that the other doesn't, and in the end, who rocks harder, Machine Head or DevilDriver?