If a man's character can be judged by what he's got on his iPod then Protest the Hero bassist Arif Mirabdolbaghi is a card-carrying member of the counterculture, a self-avowed fan of things no one else has heard of and but a dabbler in the domain of heavy metal. Of the 20 tracks on his Random Shuffle list, only Black Sabbath is metal. Rush are kinda metal and we haven't got a clue what two-thirds of the rest of the songs are. Okay, we've heard of about half the artists, but we couldn't point them out in a police lineup. On a scale of 100, we give this Random Shuffle a 60 for sheer curiosity value, and a probable 40 for listenability -- unless you're an elitist, indie, artsy Spin reader with an ivy league education, in which case you've probably heard all this stuff on NPR and you'd give the list a strong 90. But if that's the case, what are you doing here? Click "more" to see the full list and watch a video from one of the artists: Read more...

The first video from the upcoming Static-X album, Cult of Static, is kind of about a Chevy Corvette Stingray, but it's more specifically about the driver of the car, ex-adult film actress Tera Wray, who married Static-X frontman Wayne Static last year and stars in the video. According to Wayne, "Stingwray" is a heavy metal love song that encapsulates the danger, excitement and passion of their relationship. Click "more" to watch the video and catch it again on "Headbangers Ball," which airs Saturday from 2 to 3 a.m. on MTV2. Read more...

photo by Jon Wiederhorn

Metallica had a surprise for fans at the band's February 25 show in Nottingham, England. During the first show of their current European tour, the group debuted the new sing "The Judas Kiss," the seventh track they've played from latest album Death Magnetic since they began touring the disc. Click "more" to watch professionally filmed footage of the nine-minute long clip. Read more...

On March 5, melodic metal/hard rock band In This Moment will play an acoustic set at a New York fashion show for Metal Couture, an event that will probably showcase lots of hot chicks in revealing outfits. If that's the case, In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink should feel right at home.

From the very moment her band started raising eyebrows with their 2007 debut Beautiful Tragedy, Brink has flaunted her attributes, donning revealing outfits for countless magazine photo shoots, eventually posing as the star of her label's 2009 "Girls of Century Media" sexy pin-up calendar and appearing in the music issue of Playboy currently on newsstands.

If In This Moment didn't have their own assets, such exhibitionism could trivialize their music. Fortunately, like a push-up bra, it only enhances what's already there. Brink can sing like an angel and howl like a demon and her bandmates play with confidence and skill, hungrily exploring the music spectrum.

Beautiful Tragedy was a searing platter of Pantera-influenced metal and hard rock. Last year's The Dream was far more melodic, bearing more in common with a heavier Pat Benatar or No Doubt, however the songs were also also multifaceted and the guitars were heavy, and for all of the old fans that bailed, In This Moment picked up more new listeners intrigued by the group's combination of sensuality, surreality and crashing rock.

Click "more" to see the picture of Brink in Playboy and hear our podcast, in which she talks about sexuality, being a role model to young girls, what she does on the bus and how she gets along with male bandmates. She also discussed her relationship with her boyfriend/Devildriver bassist Jonathan Miller, her biggest nightmares and the thrill of winning over different audiences from various genres. Read more...

Even though there's a dude in the band who wears a purple shirt to a publicity shoot, that didn't stop you guys from overwhelmingly voting for A Hero a Fake over Machine Head, Arise and Ruin, All That Remains and Today is the Day to win the encore slot on the next "Headbangers Ball." Read more...

For this blog, I wanted to show you how I turned some ordinary photographs of Lamb Of God into the apocalyptic images that grace the cover and feature pages of Revolver magazine's April 2009 issue, on newsstands now!

The concept for these images goes in line with the overarching theme behind the band's new album Wrath, which is, in short, all things end-times: plagues, pestilence, locusts, hail, blood red skies and rivers, etc.

For the cover specifically, the direction was to place the band in a swarm of locusts, with a sky of deep red looming in the background. For this image, I was able to keep most of the photo intact, and just add the locusts. I also wanted to add a horizon line comprised of steeples and old-world architecture. All in all, this image was pretty cut and dry. The most tedious part of the process was accurately cutting out the locusts, and placing them into the image.

(Click "more" to read how Ryan Clark turned the members of Lamb of God into harbingers of the apocalypse for the cover and inside magazine art.) Read more...

Metal isn't the only thing lurking on Unearth vocalist Trevor Phipps' iPod, but judging from this random sample, if he's gonna listen to thrash, it's gotta be old-school: Hence Slayer's "Black Magic," Entombed's "Hollowman" and Anthrax's "N.F.B." Phipps is also into more cutting-edge stuff like Protest the Hero and Scissorfight, not to mention quirky alternative music including Portishead, Bjork and Flaming Lips. Plus, there's some cool punk, country, crooner music and classic rock. The only embarrassment we see is Dave Matthews' "Trouble." We hope we're reading that wrong and it's really a song by Trouble called "Dave Matthews," but that seems really unlikely. Bonus points for George Carlin's "Familiar Expressions," which kinda evens out the Dave Matthews thing. On a scale of 100, we give Phipps' Random Shuffle a 90 for openminded metal fans and a 70 for metalcore purists. Click "more" to see the list and watch a video by one of the artists -- not Dave Matthews! Read more...

We have no idea what to make of Hollywood Undead, a California rap metal band whose six members all wear masks. Call them Slipknot wannabes, say they're the bastard offspring of Mushroomhead and Insane Clown Posse, but the fact remains that these Jason hockey mask bedecked reprobates
have sold over 180,000 copies of their debut album, Swan Songs, and they're keeping the buzz going with depraved antics, flashy videos, TV appearances and their first tour, Saints and Sinners, which launches Friday in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. So, love 'em or hate 'em, they seem like they're gonna be around at least until the end of the year. And with that in mind you might wanna click "more" and watch a batch of interview clips that recently aired on MTV2. Oh, and feel free to leave a comment below. Read more...

Prog metal heroes Mastodon have just announced a special iTunes package that offers fans an instrumental version of their entire new album Crack the Skye along with the regular version. Sounds sweet to us. And here's something else that's pretty sweet: The behind-the-scenes video "The Making of Crack the Skye: Episode IX," in which the band members discuss how they tracked lead and background vocals for the record. Behold! Read more...

photo by Jon Wiederhorn

The second Slipknot record for Roadrunner, 2001's Iowa, depicted a sinister looking Goat's head that effectively conveyed all of the ugliness and evil that was filtering through the band and it's entourage at the time. It's a simple image, but one that was anything but simple to capture. In this week's "The Eye of a Clown," band percussionist and photographer Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) offers an alternate cover photo and explains how he struggled to capture the right image before passing off the camera to photographer Stefan Seskis. Click "more" to see Clown's shot and read his comments. Read more...