Next Tuesday, Chicago modern deathcore band Oceano will release its debut album, Depths, a festering carcass of speed and volume splattered with trails of eerie keyboard and guitar melody. Til then, click more to watch their debut video for "District of Misery."
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photo by Nataliea Balcerska, courtesy of flickr.com

Of all the extreme metal bands to emerge in the wake of Job For a Cowboy and Suicide Silence, Knoxville, Tennessee's Whitechapel seems the most likely to survive the eventual death of deathcore. Unlike many of their MySpace peers, Whitechapel's knowledge of metal didn't begin with the arrival of Korn and peak with the onset of metalcore. These guys are well-versed in death metal and well studied in the songcraft of Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation and Dying Fetus, as well as the more angular and futuristic metalworks of Meshuggah and Fear Factory.

And unlike most groups, which rely on a rigid two guitar assault, Whitechapel have three axemen to carry out their orders of annihilation, providing more of a layered point-counterpoint dynamic to their songs. We recently hooked up with guitarist Alex Wade during some well-deserved time off the road and asked him about the history of the band, the popularity of deathcore, the influence of Jack the Ripper and other serial killers and how Whitechapel often get mistaken for Christian metal. Wade also told us about the creation of their latest album This Is Exile, plans for its follow-up and what awaits on the road in 2009.

Click more to listen to the podcast and watch the band's videos. Read more...

Deathcore, anyone?

Forget Suicide Silence, Job For a Cowboy and all the other bands that don't want to be associated with the genre, and welcome the hailstorm fury and sepulchral darkness of Whitechapel instead. The group's debut album, This is Exile, is a combination of ripping blast beats, throat-shredding screams and seismic breakdowns that could crack open the floor of most any moshpit. Whitechapel's second video from the album, "Possession," was shot by Dave Brodsky, who also shot the firsts clip, "This is Exile," and is no stranger to making groups look mean.

"We shot it at the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts at one of our shows on our headlining tour in September, and we couldn't be happier with it," says guitarist Alex Wade. "The video features a live setting, filmed on location during the show, so it's very intense and fast-paced. We can't wait until the video makes its debut and all of our fans who were at the show can see themselves going off."

Wade's wish is out command. Click "more" to watch the clip, and catch it again on "Headbangers Ball," which runs Saturday from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. on MTV2. Read more...

Eclectic British deathcore band Architects is currently tearing it up on the Agents of Chaos tour with Beneath the Massacre, Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, Stray From the Path, Abacabb and others. Like their peers, Architects fuse aspects of technical metal, death metal, hardcore and metalcore, but Architects don't cling to the hooky chorus, two-chord breakdown formula of moe deathcore. Instead, the band seeks new ways to destroy, overlapping caustic screams over hazy guitar textures, interweaving mathematical meters through pummeling hardcore.

We gotta admit, we're not too jazzed by a lot of deathcore videos, but we're pretty stoked to present the Online debut of "Always," the first clip from Architects' second album, Ruin. The video will debut on-air on this week's "Headbangers Ball." Click "more" to read a description of the song and video by vocalist Sam Carter, watch the clip and stream a bunch of songs from Ruin. Read more...

Call Guy Kozowyk confrontational, he'll just smile. Call his band deathcore and he'll likely laugh and spit. The Red Chord frontman may have been one of the people to pioneer deathcore and his label Black Market Activities has signed deathcore acts like Animosity, but that doesn't mean the irascible singer is down with the cause. "I just want to publicly apologize to the world for having any part in influencing any [deathcore] garbage," he recently told Revolver magazine. Click "more" to hear what else he's got to say in this week's podcast. Read more...

Silent, they're not. For that matter none of they seem particularly suicidal either, but when did you actually believe there was truth in advertising. According to the bandmembers, there's also no truth in those who assert they play deathcore. But of all the bands that seem to fit that categorization, Suicide Silence are one of the best.

As destructive as their latest album The Cleansing is, the band's natural element is the stage. For those who haven't seen them yet, Suicide Silence put on a destructive, overwhelming and exciting performance full of noise, chaos and unpredictability. Every song it seems like they're about to fall apart, yet they never do, pushing sensory overload to its rhythmic limits while still containing enough breakdowns for kids to do some serious damage to themselves and others.

For those who have yet to experience the devastation, MetalInjection.net have posted three songs from the band's Summer Slaughter performance in Sayreville, New Jersey. Click "more" to watch. Read more...

It's pretty hard to find a good live video of Whitechapel. And if you can't figure out why, you go try holding a video camera still while a whirlpool of moshers converge all around you. And that's not to mention the challenge of capturing such loud music without having it overdistort so badly it sounds like a hailstorm on an aluminum roof.

Fortunately, the dudes at MetalInjection.net were able to shoot Whitechapel playing "Eternal Refuge" at the Summer Slaughter tour without having the footage look like a camcorder of an earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter Scale. And the sound is excellent. Since it's a one-camera shoot there's no zooming or anything, but the shoot was wisely done on a tripod and you can the entire stage without obstruction. Click "more" to watch the live vid. Read more...

For a minute, Municipal Waste fans put up a bit of a struggle, but in the end, Whitechapel's "This is Exile" video smoked the competition's dust off the floor to win the band a return trip to next week's "Headbangers Ball."

the deathcore band's "Your Vote Counts" victory coincides with its strong Billboard chart debuts. In its first week out, This is Exile sold 6,000 copies to rank at number 117 on the Hot 200 album chart. In addition, the record hit number 2 on the Heatseeker's Chart, number 13 on the Hard Music Chart, number 14 on the Independent Albums Chart, number 43 on the Rock Chart and number 51 on the Tastemaker's Chart. Read more...

There are way too many subjects, opinions, circumstances, avenues and other things to consider before anyone in their right mind could ever give you one sided view on what they think about whatever they think. But I feel that in itself is the issue. When is it okay to really express how you feel regardless of the "emotions" that could possibly be instilled in other people? Read more...

The heaviest band on the Rockstar Energy Mayhem lineup is unquestionably Suicide Silence (though The Red Chord come in a close second). The Riverside, California musicians have developed quite a following over the past year. They've played Gigantour, and, with their soul-scorching full-length, The Cleansing, which has shifted over 40,000 units since its release last September, they've chalked up Century Media's best-selling debut album ever.

Aside from touring their asses off, which they've done pretty non-stop since the record came out, Suicide Silence have spent some time writing and recording new songs for their follow up, and according to singer Mitch Lucker, the new stuff blows The Cleansing away. Constant touring has made Suicide Silence better players and improved their musical chemistry. In addition, the next album won't be recorded live in the studio the way The Cleansing was, and the band will spend much longer in pre-production before they begin tracking.

Lucker shared these nuggets of wisdom with HeadbangersBlog.com during our exclusive podcast interview. In addition, he discussed the band's origins and history, his obsessive compulsive disorder, contempt for categorization -- especially deathcore -- and hopes for the Rockstar Energy Mayhem tour. Also, Lucker talked about the bands Suicide Silence have toured with and revealed some of the group's most extreme antics and puke stories. Click "more" to stream or download the podcast: Read more...