The black metal battle of the year so far has been waged, not at the altar but in the court room. Gorgoroth Last year, vocalist Gaahl and bassist King ov Hell tried to boot guitarist and band founder, Infernus, out of the group. While the two misanthropes carried on as Gorgoroth, Infernus filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates for the rights to the name. On March 10, the final verdict was handed down and Infernus emerged victorious. Now, Infernus speaks to Norway's IMHOTEP about the court case, his feelings about his ex-band mates and the future of Gorgoroth. Click "more" for the complete interview.

Infernus speaks!

Underground hardcore metal band Madball may never be as popular as, say, Hatebreed, but they're steeped even deeper in history and street cred. Frontman Freddy Cricien's brother is Agnostic Front vocalist Roger Miret and he's been an active part of the scene since he was 12. As a Teenager, Cricien started Madball with some of his brother's bandmates and while there have been lineup changes over the years, the group exploded like a pipe bomb from the very start with their 1989 EP Ball of Destruction, and they've never looked back. Even when they went on hiatus for two years after 2000's Hold it Down, they were destined to return, and in 2005 they got back together to created the incendiary Legacy. Infiltrate the System followed in 2007.

Norway's "Headbangers Ball" recently hooked up with the guys at New York Hardcore Tattoos, a shop in New York's Lower East Side that's owned by Murphy's Law vocalist Jimmy Gestapo and Vinnie Stigma, who plays guitar for Agnostic Front (and used to play with Madball as well). During the day, MTV Norway talked to Cricien about New York Tattoos, the roots of the hardcore scene, the history of Madball, their latest album Infiltrate the System and the video for the title track. The Madball video was produced by Ann Christin "Anki" Rihm for MTV Norway and Denmark and edited by Elisabeth Sjöberg. Click "more" to watch the clip.

Now check out this footage from the 2008 Black and Blue Bowl.

Black metal celebrity Gaahl, frontman for Norway's nefarious Gorgoroth, has always been good for a laugh. Stories about him beating a man and drinking his blood from a chalice, and leading his band through shows in which severed animal heads were strewn across the stage and naked people bathed in fake blood were hung from crucifixes were the stuff of maxi-metal mythology. And that was all before the most intimidating living frontman in black metal admitted to the press he was gay.

Since then, outlets that used to be concerned with speed and brutality have been asking questions about fashion lines and being a generational spokesman for the entire gay underground black metal community -- if such a thing actually exists. On December 30, Dutch web site Faceculture posted nine three to five minute interview segments with Gaahl, and as of 7 p.m. today, the most views any of the clips about non-gay issues had received was 60. The one titled [ex-boyfriend] "Dan Deviro's clothing, attraction to men, the media," however, has received over 28,000 sets of eyeballs so far, which is way more revealing than a Jennifer Aniston sex tape.

During the interview snippet, Gaahl reveals that 2008 was the year he kissed a boy and he liked it. "Last year was the first time that someone's insanity grabbed hold of me," he said, then admitted he's not really a touchy, feely kinda guy. "I'm not too much into the physical thing, I've been more into the aesthetics."

Click "more" to watch the full gay segment and the other eight interview clips with Gaahl.

Links to the other Faceculture Gaahl interview snippets

It would be pretty frickin' cool to hear a song that goes, "Hi-ho, hi-ho/ it's off to work we go/Cuz if you like to gamble/I tell you I'm your man." Of course, that'll never happen, but recently there was a strange pop culture collision, an unlikely meeting of the minds if you will, and Lemmy got some of his chocolate in Walt Disney's peanut butter.

And now, on November 21, Motörhead's song "Dog-Face Boy" will appear in the Walt Disney film "Bolt," which stars John Travolta and Miley Cyrus. The track, which appeared on Motorhead's 1995 album Sacrifice, plays during a scene in a mailroom blasting over the headphones of a young worker who accidentally wraps the American white Shepherd, Bolt, in a box that gets shipped off to New York City.

"It's never too early to get the kids started on our music," says Lemmy.

Kilmister is actually no stranger to Hollywood. In addition to having music in a bunch of movies for older folks, he's the star of the upcoming documentary "Lemmy: The Movie," and has acted in numerous films, including "Hardware," (1990) "Airheads" (1994), "Tromeo and Juliet" (1996) "Frezno Smooth" (1999), "Down and Out with the Dolls" (2001) and "Charlie's Death Wish" (2005). But one of his favorite roles was in a 2005 indie horror film called "The Curse of El Charro."

"That's quite a funny one," he told HeadbangersBlog.com. "They typecast me as the f--king devil."

As much as he enjoys making cameos, Kilmister is growing disillusioned by Hollywood's predictability and lack of creativity. "It’s increasingly difficult to find a film that’s not all stunts or a sob story," he says. 'Saving Private Ryan' -- what a duff story. The first half-hour was great. After that it was just pus. A lot of movies are like that now. 'Pearl Harbor,' what a disaster. A lot of movies today are emasculated in the name of family f--king values. If you’re going for family values, my family is worth $17.50, which is about the price of a ticket."

Still, Lemmy says he sometimes finds a movie that's worth the price of admission. "I love 'Lord of the Rings' because you never get a film that’s as good as the book, and that one actually was," he says. "Also, I'm sure 'Lemmy: The Movie,' will be quite good, too. I've only seen the promo, but I loved that, so go out and see that one, okay?"

Look for Lamb of God's 2009 album, Wrath, to mark a return to the political firestorms of 2004's Ashes of the Wake. While the band strayed from such subject matter on 2006's deeply personal Sacrament, the worsening economic crisis, never-ending war in Iraq and continual controversies from the Bush administration are things the band can ignore no longer. Still, there will be differences between the tones of Ashes and Wrath.

"It's not as soapbox-y, and not as rant-y about the government — it's more about personal experiences," guitarist Mark Morton told Chris Harris of MTVnews.com. "We've met a lot of people and fans who've served in these wars that are going on around the world, so it's a little more personal, tying the worldview into how it affects individuals. And then there's stuff that has nothing to do with CNN at all. There are songs on this record that talk about our experiences, and are aimed at certain people we've met along the way, who, through jealousy or whatever, found some reason to betray us or turn their back on us or try to stab us in the back. As you have success, people kind of turn against you sometimes, so there are a couple of songs directed at those people. Hopefully, they'll know who they are."

According to Morton, Lamb of God decided well before even writing a single note for Wrath — which has been set for a February 24 release — that they wanted to make a record that sounded nothing like Sacrament, and the guitarist feels they were able to do just that.

"We usually try to do something fresh every time," he said. "This one, I think, is deliberately a little more raw and more aggressive than Sacrament was. Sacrament was a really, really dynamic record on every level, and the songs were all over the place — it was also heavily produced. This one's really raw and real-sounding, from every angle, and we're celebrating imperfections on this record. We're choosing what takes stay on the record based more on their character and personality than how completely mechanically precise they are. It's more about vibe and attitude in the takes than it is about, 'Wow, that was perfect.' It's the perfect ones that get thrown away, because they're just too sterile."

For Wrath, LOG called upon longtime friend and associate Josh Wilbur to produce, opting not to rely on Machine (who'd produced Ashes and Sacrament) a third time. Morton admitted that Wilbur is something of a novice when it comes to major label productions, but feels it worked to the band's advantage.

"Josh is someone who has been in the camp for quite some time," Morton explained. "He worked heavily on Sacrament, engineering the drums and my guitars; he also mixed the live audio for [2008's] 'Walk With Me in Hell' DVD. He's not new to us — he's new to the producer's seat, and he's just done a great job. It was part of our strategy. Certainly, nothing was broke with Machine, who is a phenomenal producer and still a good friend — but this time around, from a purely artistic standpoint, to serve our purpose of trying to really do something a little different, I think it made the most sense to get another angle on the production aspect of it. Josh was the perfect fit, because he already knew us and was familiar with how we play and how we write music and how we record it."

Morton said the record will feature between 10 and 12 songs, and that the band plans on playing at least one new track this December, when it heads out with Metallica for a three-week run of West Coast and Canadian gigs. What should fans expect from the new material?

"The guitar tones are a little cleaner than normal," he said. "We're kind of getting into this mind-set that clean is heavy. Clarity is a lot heavier than oversaturated. It's just real raw and natural and organic-sounding, which, in itself, is kind of revolutionary these days, when kids are making pro audio-sounding recordings in their dorm rooms, on their laptops, and cutting and pasting verses and choruses. It's no longer cutting edge to make a completely space-aged, robotic-sounding record. I think it's almost fresh now to make one that sounds like an actual band played it. Don't get me wrong — it still sounds airtight and rehearsed, because it is all those things. But it's just real."

Morton said he's not sure how fans will respond to the stuff, because some of the band's fans aren't familiar with LOG's entire body of work.

"It's really going to depend on where they came in to the process," he said. "It seems like we gained a lot of fans on Sacrament, and I think those folks will maybe be taken aback a little bit by how aggressive this record is. The fans who came in a little earlier won't be as surprised by that, unless they're surprised that we've returned to that sort of approach. We're not denying Sacrament by any stretch of the imagination — it was just time for something different.

"There had been a lot of stuff we were trying to get out of our system on Ashes and Sacrament, and it took a couple of records to do that," Morton continued. "With that out of our system now, we seemed to just gravitate back towards the things that were the initial genesis of the band, which was really just that cathartic, sonic release. There's a lot of that going on on this record, for sure."

There's no stopping the nine-headed killing machine, Slipknot. The band recently landed its first number one album with All Hope is Gone, was the star attraction of the first annual Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour, is about to release a psychological, rain-soaked video for “Dead Memories” (co-directed by percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan) and will return from overseas at the end of the year to launch a new U.S. headline run in early 2009.

At the moment, vocalist Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root aren’t even thinking about ramping up their highly successful side project, Stone Sour, again because they’re too tangled up in the Knot. Yet for percussionist and visual artist Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown), all things Slipknot aren’t quite enough. Oh, he’s thoroughly enjoying the tremendous ride they’re on, and he’s got no plans to bail on The Nine. But at the same time, he’s got a few other irons in the fire, and one of them is his new band Dirty Little Rabbits, which released a three-song EP Breeding in 2007 and just signed to The End Records for their upcoming material. The day before Slipknot boarded a plane to head to Japan, HeadbangersBlog.com phoned up Crahan to talk about his new baby.

Tell us about Dirty Little Rabbits.
Shawn Crahan: Dirty Little Rabbits is my new Slipknot. I’m playin’ drums, and I’m a songwriter and this is the band I’ve been waiting to be in my whole life. And it’s more of an alternative band than a metal band. It’s everything I’ve ever been into. And it’s a thought process, it’s a mindset. And this will be the band I end my life with. A lot of people don’t know I’m more or less an alternative person in art and music. I didn’t grow up obsessed with metal. But that’s most of the beauty behind Skipknot. You’ve got guys that are completely dedicated to the metal, and then you’ve got guys who never even listen to it, like me. And you come together and make this thing called Slipknot that happens to be a metal band, and that’s awesome because I always believed when I got together with my brothers that they were writing music that I never heard or felt and that’s why I went with it. And I brought the art to this music, and throughout time I developed all my musical skills and – boom -- here I am with Dirty Little Rabbits and it’s finally everything I’ve ever wanted in a band.

How did the Rabbits come together?
Basically, I was kind of feeling sorry for myself because I wanted to play drums and [Slipknot DJ] Sid [Wilson] was reaching out to me to come over and play some tracks that he was gonna send Ross Robinson. So, I went over and threw down a track for him. It was a one-taker, and I really let my soul out. And it made me feel really good about myself and about the music, and it stirred up all the emotions. So, the next night Sid calls me and goes, “Hey, I got this guy, you should come over here. This guy’s amazing.” And I was like, “No, man. Just do your record.” And he said, “No, you need to come over here." So I went over, and I heard the guy was a drummer and I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll play the vibraphones that he brought." And he went, “Hey, man, you want to play drums?” He wanted to play the organ, so he sat down and started playing and I started jamming on the drums, and we went to some solar system that I had never been to with anybody. All these people were jamming there, too, and I couldn’t listen to any of them. I was just listening to him. I called the guy at 8:30 in the morning the next day, and the rest is history. And the guy’s name is Michael Pfaff.

What’s so magical about your chemistry with Pfaff?
It’s the way he was throwing his shapes into my shapes. And when he was doing that behind my beats, I was like, “That’s it!!” And, when we got together, he was the first person to ever jam with me that didn’t say, “What are you doing?” He was just like, “This is what you’re doing, so I’m gonna do this.” That was it. And that’s what our music is. We each bring it to our own level. Like, I don’t struggle in what I’m writing for Rabbits because it’s all me. It just comes out of me. I revise it after we’ve jammed it, but it’s all me and I play for the song. I don’t need to play fancy fills. It’s not me as a drummer. I like to hold it down. And sometimes I get into weird areas of where I want songs to go and most people fight it. Michael didn't.

Your singer, Stella Katsoudas, has worked with Sister Soleil and is a very dramatic presence onstage. Why was she right for band?
She’s an old friend and she’s my dream of a lead singer. I always wanted to be in a band with a female lead singer because I want to represent the whole world, male and female. And she’s the best. She’s like my sister so she brings it like I bring it. You’ve got this drummer and singer to bring it and the whole rest of the band brings it as well.

You’ve recently signed a record deal with The End.
Yeah, man. I’ve waited my whole life to meet a label like The End, and it seems like, artistically, the people involved in that are almost identical to my mind, and that’s why we’re able to do this pretty easily because it’s really been developed around the art. It’s not about the music business. When we started out, we didn’t have any expectations or care what people were gonna try and do or if they understood it. There was just no will to even be a part of this industry. Then next thing you know, two years later, here I am.

When have you had time to record with the Rabbits?
I got home off the Mayhem Tour with Slipknot and went right in to making the record. We’re gonna try to release an EP in January and a full-length in April. We’ve been up at Sound Farm Studios, which is the same place the Knot recorded [All Hope is Gone]. We actually did an EP before the Knot got in there. An old friend owns the place.

How will the recordings you do with the Rabbits stand out?
It’s gonna be phenomenal because I’m employing all the old ways. I’m tired of all the new bands in the world that just go with it for the deal. We did the whole record onto tape. Anything that we could record to two-inch, we did. And it’s amazing. So we’re gonna be employing old techniques to bring back rock n’ roll. And not only will we bring it back sonically, but then we’ll play live and I think that’s what most people are into with the Rabbits because it’s way out there. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted musically. So, it’s highly energetic and out there and I’ve very excited because I often wondered if I was ever gonna have it.

What do you mean?
I remember calling Rick Rubin up once and just bellyaching a little bit about how I can’t get it done. And he more or less laughed and gave me some of the best advice of my entire career. And I can’t tell you what it was, but it wasn’t months later, boom, I took all that advice and then some from other people that I love, and here I am now with the Dirty Little Rabbits. We’ve worked so hard for two years and now we have it. We have a full length of real music that we practiced for two years and toured. We toured with Stone Sour and we got really, really big in Omaha. We had the number one most requested song, “Hello.”

Before Dirty Little Rabbits you had another band, To My Surprise. What happened to that?
[To My Surprise singer and guitarist] Brandon and I always knew from the moment we were making the record, we should never be in a band together. I would say Brandon was more at an age where he was ready to start his career, and in fairness to him, I was way overloaded with too much stuff. I was just getting out of the Iowa cycle and thrown into the Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses cycle. And he demanded we get our stuff figured out and, unfortunately, I couldn’t do it. I had to get my Slipknot stuff done for my family. I wanted it. It’s my life, and he didn’t want to wait around, and that was awesome. He made the right choice. Making a band that was going to tour was very hard. But since then, we’ve talked, and we’ll probably make music to make music, but not to do that band thing. It’s too hard for us. It wasn’t realistic to try and beat ourselves over the head to get something that was gonna go tour in the timeframe we could do it and Slipknot made it impossible. That was one of my favorite records and one of my greatest achievements. We recorded that record with [producer] Rick [Rubin] before Volume 3, and it’s a great record. It’s my life. All that feeling coming off the Iowa cycle. All that pain and that pain and all that hope and that sadness and, boom, right into To My Surprise. So that’s there and it’s good that it didn’t tour. It needed to represent what it did. But that’s the past. Now it’s all about the Rabbits.

Horrific, cinematic and endlessly entertaining, Lordi are still very much a club band in the U.S., yet in their native land of Finland they've been superstars for a while. Maybe that's how they cranked out the cash for elaborate costumes, deluxe art work and pristine production. And it certainly explains how put together such a stark, gloomy and expensive looking video for "Bite it Like a Bulldog," the first single from their new album, Deadache, which comes out October 28, just in time for Halloween.

Here's what frontman Mr. Lordi told HeadbangersBlog.com about the clip, which was directed by Limppu Lindberg. "We wanted to achieve something that breaks the tradition of Lordi videos. The director has been my graphic 'right hand' for years, and we felt that it was time to let him have a try on this side, too. His previous work includes videos for Children Of Bodom, Norther and many other Finnish metal bands."

For the video, the band wanted to get away from the straightforward work they've done in the past and try something more cryptic and dark. "The idea was to have a video with a not-so-simple and easily understandable storyline," Lordi said. "We wanted the clip to focus on the feeling of the song and the new, more grotesque look of the band. The modern horror film classics such as 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' remake and 'Hostel' were the starting points and the influence for the visual look."

"Bite it Like a Bulldog" was shot over two straight days in Rovaniemi, a town in the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland. But despite the remote location and macabre atmosphere and party-vibe of the song, nothing of note happened at the shoot -- nothing but hard work and excellent performances. "Usually at video shoots, there really isn't any funny incidents happening to us," shrugs Lordi. "I don't know why that is. It's always about trying to beat the clock, so maybe there's no time for anything but work to happen."

Click "more" to watch the video for "Bite it Like a Bulldog," then see it on TV on Saturday night's "Headbangers Ball."

Now, read our 2007 interview with Lordi, which reveals why the band has way more in common with Kiss than Gwar and just how huge they are in Finland:

Life is good for Lordi.

The empire is strong and the franchise is booming. With his stomach full from a multi-course meal at Lordi's Rocktaurant in Rovaniemi, Finland, frontman Tomi Petteri Putaansuu — a.k.a. "Mr. Lordi" — picked up the phone to spread the gospel of his band to North America.

"It's a cool thing to have your own restaurant," he said as he prepared for dessert. "You can taste a little of everything on the menu and not worry about missing anything."

If he had wanted to, Putaansuu could have washed down his meal with a bottle or two of Lordi Cola, but he ordered Pepsi because the restaurant doesn't have the Lordi drink on tap — yet. And, if he had to pay for the sumptuous meal, he could have used a Lordi credit card. Fortunately he owns the restaurant. Even more fortunately, he doesn't have an active credit card.

"That would actually ruin me to bankruptcy," he said. "It would lead me to order Kiss artifacts from the 'Net. I'm a big collector of these things, and to this day I'm the president of the Kiss Army in Finland."

It goes without saying that without Kiss, Lordi — Putaansuu, guitarist Jussi Sydänmaa ("Amen"), bassist Samer el Nahhal ("Ox"), keyboardist Leena Peisa ("Awa") and drummer Sampsa Astala ("Kita") — wouldn't exist. Like Putaansuu's heroes, Lordi wear makeup and costumes, play anthemic melodic metal and believe strongly in branding. And like Kiss, Lordi are huge. Sure, they're still relatively unknown in North America, but their 2006 album, The Arockalypse — which comes out on these shores March 20 — is triple-platinum in Finland and nearly as huge across the rest of Europe.

But there's a major difference between Lordi and Kiss. While Kiss' image stems from cartoons and comic books, Lordi's comes straight from horror movies, which has drawn them comparisons to Gwar. "I am not offended, but I didn't know [about] Gwar until people in Germany asked me about them in interviews," Putaansuu said. "They are so obscure in Europe that it's easy to miss them. I was much more influenced by people like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface and Pinhead and the Cenobites from 'Hellraiser.' I have always been fascinated with monsters and learned to do prosthetic makeup when I was 10 years old."

Putaansuu started Lordi in 1992 as a one-man project and released the band's first demo. Three years later, he recruited friends from the Kiss Army and wrote songs that blended the simplicity of Kiss, the edge of W.A.S.P. and the drive of Accept. Numerous label auditions fell on deaf ears before Lordi were signed in 2002 and released their debut, Get Heavy. They followed two years later with The Monsterican Dream, but Lordi remained an underground phenomenon until last year, when they were contacted by staffers at the pop-music Eurovision Song Contest to represent Finland.

"It's a really kitschy competition, and there was no way in hell any band in Europe would join if they wanted to take themselves seriously," Putaansuu said of the event that launched his band's mainstream career. "But at the time, we had nothing to lose because we were kind of marginal. Metal people thought we were too melodic and mainstream audiences thought we would come and burn their churches."

Lordi played the stomping "Hard Rock Hallelujah" on the televised program and swept the semifinals with 42 percent of the total vote for 12 different contestants, many of whom played Finnish folk music or pop. Then, in January 2006, Lordi competed at the finals. "We felt so out of place there," Putaansuu said. "It was like if Bob Dylan went to a black-metal festival. But all the hard-rock people and metal people came out of the woodwork and voted for us and we won with the highest-ever points in Eurovision history."

The victory propelled Lordi to stardom and piqued the interest of former Kiss manager Bill Aucoin, who linked up with the band. Since then, Lordi have done some touring in the U.S. for The Arockalypse, and will launch a new U.S. tour in November. More details are forthcoming.
"I don't know if we'll have the same success in the States, but we'd like to," Putaansuu said. "All of our influences come from the States — metal and movie culture. So it would be a great way of saying we have arrived."

In an age when so many people are getting their music online, artists are having to come up with inventive ways to convince fans to buy their CDs. One method is the tried and true "bonus CD." The idea here is that DVDs take much longer to copy online and require much computer space than CDs, and that, if the visual accompaniment is enticing enough, fans will decide the complete product is worth their hard earned cash.

Then there's the "free t-shirt with CD purchase" promotion used by acts including In This Moment, which, let's face it, is really more like "free CD with t-shirt." During the Metal Masters tour, Judas Priest actually offered offered a free lawn seat ticket to fans who bought physical copies of their epic double album Nostradamus. And finally, there are acts like Metallica, who feel cutting edge packaging and art work are enough to lure consumers to buy their CD.

MetalSucks.net has posted a cool interview with Turner Duckworth partners David Turner and Bruce Duckworth, who designed the rockin' album art for Death Magnetic. And during the conversation, the design pros discuss the importance of packaging, the strength of the Metallica brand, the dark imagery they worked with and how their work work Coca-Cola influenced the project. That design work with the cola giant won Turner Duckworth this year's inaugural Cannes Design Grand Prix. Check out what they have to say about Death Magnetic and Metallica here.

And here's Metallica's new video for, "The Day that Never Comes," a song that we weren't to fond of at first, but which has grown on us like an ugly case of poison ivy.

Mirai Kawashima, the frontman for Japanese experimental black-metal band Sigh, is pissed. He's not mad that the band's first New York date in years is on a Tuesday night and the venue is only half full. He's not upset that he's got a catalog of original material to draw from and certain members of the crowd keep yelling for songs by Venom, whose material Sigh cover on their new EP A Tribute to Venom. He's not even angry that Sigh's last full album, Hangman's Hymn: Musikalische Exequien, was one of the scariest, most inventive offerings of 2007, yet was but a flicker on the radar compared to a waterfall of uninspiring metalcore releases. No, Kawashima's rage has more to do with his generalized disgust for the values and beliefs of modern man.

"I hate 99 percent of the people on this earth," he says in a soft voice. "I hate weak people who have to cling to fairy tales like religion, and I hate greedy people that have nothing more than making money in their head. I just want all of them to die."

Even if misanthropy accounts for Kawashima's rage, it doesn't explain his astonishing artistry. Since Sigh's first album, 1993's Scorn Defeat, the accomplished black metal musician has experimented with classical flourishes, horror soundtrack melodies, jazz twists and psychedelic interludes that have complimented the howling vocals, roaring blast beats and free jazz saxophone freak outs, and taken the band's music to a more exotic and otherworldly place than those traveled by most of his peers. A tribute to Venom may be all Cronos, Mantas and Abaddon but Hangman's Hymn was largely influenced by Wagner, Weber and Mozart, and likely hints at where Kawashima will take Sigh with the band's next album, which he's currently writing.

During their B.B. Kings headline show Sigh combine all of their musical expertise with a visual display that actually upstages their musical performance. While Kawashima is clearly the frontman, the visual focal point is saxophone player and co-screamer, the sexy metal babe Dr. Mikannibal. Clad in a black leather bikini and a tiny leather miniskirt that starts below her hips and only reaches down to her upper thigh, Mikannibal is a whirlwind of sexual energy -- a powerful anime heavy metal babe in the flesh. Combined with Kawashima's sepulchral screams and classical keyboard sounds, and backed by buzzgrind guitarist Shinichi Ishikawa, bassist Satoshi Fujinami and drummer Junichi Harashima, Sigh create gale force currents of sound that are as forceful as Scandinavian black metal and as emotionally impacting as classical or even opera.

"Good opera is so emotional and powerful," Kawashima says. "And that's what I'm inspired by. A lot of black-metal bands use keyboards and strings for embellishments. But Sigh's keyboard parts and orchestration are not embellishments. They are as important to the songs as the guitars, bass and drums. So even though it's very metal, you can say it's pretty much classical music as well."

During their set, Sigh draw from various albums, musically shifting along a continuum of raw black metal and avant-garde adventurism at the other. But it's the orchestral thrash tracks from "Hangman's Hymn" like "Inked in Blood" and "Me-Devil" that resonate most powerfully. And the encore of Venom's "Black Metal" cements the notion that no matter how far afield Sigh wanders, their dark souls will remain rooted in black metal. Sadly, unless you're Gorgoroth or Dimmu Borgir, that kind of music doesn't always pay the bills, which is why Kawashima writes TV themes and video game melodies on the side. He also has a day job working at a Japanese telecommunications company, which explains why Sigh so rarely tour the U.S.

"I actually think it's good to have a day job because I don't have to live on music, and that lets me do anything I want musically," he says. "Of course it would be great if I could live just on my music, doing something I like, but it's very hard. If you live in Japan, it's not easy to tour the U.S. or Europe. So having a day job and a band is the best thing."

For more on Sigh, read Kawashima's recent guest blog about bleak classical music.

Headbangers Ball can exclusively reveal that Japanese experimental metal band Dir En Grey will release their seventh full-length album, Uroboros, on November 11 on The End Records in the U.S. The disc will come out the next day in Japan on Firewall and November 14 in Europe thorugh Gan-Shin.

Domestically, the album will be available in four format: digital album; CD jewel case; deluxe limited-edition CD digipak with bonus track and DVD; and 12" LP with a digital download card included.

Click "more" to see the tracklist and read our new email interview with guitarist Kaoru.

What were you going for musically with the new record?
Kaoru: We tried to set an oriental atmosphere and wanted to make not only heavy sounds but also beautiful ones.

How will it be different than your last disc The Marrow of a Bone?
I think you will find on this album that it's not all hard and heavy but it's really beautiful and something that lets you visualize several scenes.

Are there any specific scenes you're addressing?
I'd rather not say yet, because we want everyone to feel it by themselves when they listen to it.

Why did you decide to sign with The End Records for the release?
We thought they would be the most motivated to work with us among labels we had as options.

A lot of metal bands do really cheap videos and don't put much thought into them. However, you always put a lot of time and effort into your videos. Do you think the music videos are as artistically important as the album?
Very important! It doesn’t make any sense for the band unless our will is reflected to everything that we can express ourselves. Basically, we like creating things and essentially have to spend time for it.

Tell us about the video for "Dozing Green" Who shot it, what is it about?
Mr. Hiroyuki Kondo, who has been working on our video works more than 10 years, has directed this music video. We thought it would be boring to simply edit footage expressing destruction and pain and our performing scene, so we decided to set video screens behind us so as to show both images at the same time.

Was there anything difficult about the shoot?
Nothing special, but I heard that when some members set off bottle rocket near the locale, they got yelled at by neighbors for all that noise.

Are the other songs on the album going to be similar to "Dozing Green?"
Nope. Maybe song with similar atmosphere though… Well, but, there is no similar or same song on this album at all.

Any funny stories about things that happened while recording the album?
Well, we have only painful memories. I can't say anything more.

Asian metal seems to be getting more attention these days internationally. Dir En Grey, Sigh and Cthonic have all gotten a lot of press in the past couple years. What other Asian bands should we keep our eyes out for?
The Mad Capsule Markets is one of my longstanding favorite bands although they suspend their activities now.

The track list for limited edition digipak version of Uroboros:
01. Sa Bir
02. Vinushka
03. Red Soil
04. Doukoku To Sarinu
05. Toguro
06. Glass Skin
07. Stuck Man
08. Reiketsu Nariseba
09. Ware, Yami Tote…
10. Bugaboo
11. Gaika, Chinmoku Ga Nemuru Koro
12. Dozing Green
13. Inconvenient Ideal
14. Dozing Green (sung in Japanese)
15. Glass Skin (sung in Japanese)

Bonus DVD:
01. Repetition Of Hatred
02. Agitated Screams Of Maggots
03. Hydra-666-
04. Dead Tree
05. Dozing Green