The third album by Oakland technical death metal band All Shall Perish, Awaken the Dreamers, will come out September 16 and will include a bonus DVD about the making of the disc. Click "more" to watch a preview of the DVD. The record was recorded at Castle Ultimate Studios in Oakland with producer Zach Ohren and is the follow-up to 2006's The Price of Existence. Read more...

One of the most blasting black metal bands we've heard recently is Chicago's Nachtmystium, who are so beloved in their hometown that a local metal hangout, Kuma's Corner, named a burger after them. It's easy to see why.

Nachtmystium's new album, Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1 (which comes out June 10), is beefy, bloody, and peppered with musical condiments such as blast beats, orchestral swells and psychedelic flourishes.

Kuma's isn't the only one to pour on the support. Guitar World's MetalKult.com is halfway through a seven-part in-studio series with Nachtmystium. Click more to watch the footage so far: Read more...

If hotshot producer Jason Suecof (Chimaira, Trivium, The Black Dahlia Murder) suddenly goes tone deaf, maybe, just maybe he'll still be able to pay the bills working as a director or videographer.

During down time from recent studio sessions with The Black Dahlia Murder, Suecof shot footage of guitarist Brian Eschbach joking around, making up stories and smashing a watermelon with a golf club. Then, the aspiring director created this bizarre, hilarious clip that includes some of the band's music in the background, but has practically nothing to do with music:

If you're more interested in what the upcoming The Black Dahlia Murder album, Nocturnal (out September 18), actually sounds like, check out the band's new ecard, which features the track "What a Horrible Night"; the track is also streaming on the band's MySpace.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has spoken out about the band's upcoming album, which he says will be the group's best record in 15 years. In an interview with Austrian Web site Krone.at -- which was translated into English by Blabbermouth.net -- the guitarist added that for the first time since 1988's ...And Justice For All, Metallica are bolting the doors and coming up with some brutal thrash riffs.

"It's our eleventh studio album, but it feels like our sixth," Hammett said. "It's just a really spectacular range of songs. This time we're not afraid to refer to our past music in order to create future music. People will see that we've kind of embraced our old vocabulary again and are using that vocabulary to express new things. I'm super excited to make this album, finish it and release it — 'cause then we can go out and play it to the people. We might have stretched our cores a little too much in the last fifteen years, but we've always came back to what we originally are and have been. I think with this album we're definitely going a little more back into our roots."

The yet untitled disc will include "a lot of really, really fast songs, [and] a whole lot of really heavy stuff," Hammett said. "There are some songs on that album that are so fast, that [frontman] James [Hetfield] and I kinda look at each other and go, 'Ouch! Our wrist are gonna fall off.'"

Also, the band are no longer down-tuning their instruments as they have on their past few offerings. Instead, they're returning to the higher tuning they used on their first five albums. "Because we've done that, James' voice sounds more like it did in the '80s than it did in the '90s," Hammett said. "There's a lot of changes that we've made, but I believe that they are all for the better."

For the complete Q&A with Hammett, look no further.

And look no further for Metallica at their thrashiest; here's the vid for "Whiplash":

Orange County, California hardcore metal band, Throwdown, are in the studio with producer Mudrock (Godsmack, Avenged Sevenfold) working on their new album Venom and Tears, which is due in late spring.

"His friends call him ‘Mud,' but let's be honest. A dude with a name like that doesn't have a ton of friends," jokes the band on its Website. "We, however, love the guy and are excited to 'cut a record,' as they say.'

Demonstrating they'd be equally good at straight edge comedy, Throwdown adds, "I dunno if ‘they' really say that anymore or who ‘they' even are, really. [But] we're pretty sure he's excited too, so we don't have to worry about him playing Nintendo in the middle of tracking."

Throwdown first worked with Mudrock on covers of Misfits and Crowbar songs they recorded after their 2005 disc, Vendetta, and enjoyed the process so much, they asked him if he wanted to work on the new album.

"He showed the most interest out of all the people we had conversations with," singer Dave Peters tells headbangersblog.mtv.com. " He was really excited, which kind of surprised us because he doesn't work with bands that are as heavy as us."

The new Throwdown album will be as vicious as the band's past slabs, says Peters, but will offer new elements as well. "A lot of the songs bring out a different feeling than just anger," he says. "We tried to explain that dichotomy with the album title, Venom and Tears."

While some old-school fans may scream, ‘foul,' and look for someone to pick a fight with, Peters says the development was necessary to keep Throwdown inspired. "We've been a band going on a decade, and we wanted to try some new things, so that's what we did," he says. "We know what our fans appreciate, but we never want to put the same record out twice. So, there will definitely be some surprises for kids. Like, ‘Whoa, I didn't know their guitar player' could do that. But at the end of the day, it's still a Throwdown record."

Check out the video for "Burn" :