According to their record label bio, the motto of Kenosha, Wisconsin band Lazarus A.D. is "thrash or die." So, the dude's must be totally stoked that they're about to hit the road with thrash legends Testament and post-thrash demigods Unearth. The tour launches in Seattle on May 2 and runs through June 15 in San Luis Obispo, California. Lazarus A.D. are currently in the middle of a tour with Amon Amarth, Goatwhore and Skeletonwitch. Those dates run through April 29 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

To celebrate the band's road success and give props to their ripping debut The Onslaught, we're happy to premiere the band's video for "Thou Shall Not Fear." The clip was shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the haunted venue Eagle's Ballroom and was directed by Jason Meudt and Emmet Austin. Click "more" to watch the vid and catch it again on this week's "Headbangers Ball," which runs from 2 to 3 a.m. on MTV2. Read more...

Over the past year, thrash metal veterans Testament have put on some dynamite shows, both as headliners and opening for Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell and Motorhead on the Metal Masters tour. But as accomplished and proficient as they've become, they were, perhaps, even more aggressive, hungry and explosive 20 years ago, as evidenced by the worldwide premiere of the full-length, 10-song Live at Eindhoven '87 album, which comes out April 14 on Prosthetic Records. (click "more" to hear a track from the album and read liner notes penned by guitarist Alex Skolnick) Read more...

MTV2 will be teaming up with Revolver magazine to present the premiere hard rock and heavy metal awards show, the first annual Epiphone Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which will storm through Los Angeles' Club Nokia on Tuesday, April 7. The event will feature Ozzy Osbourne, Killswitch Engage, Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan and more, and will be aired on MTV2 as a one-hour special on Saturday, May 2.

"We're working really hard to make this an event worthy of the music it celebrates," Revolver editor in chief Tom Beaujour tells HeadbangersBlog.com. "Metal deserves this and deserves to have it done f---ing right." Read more...

On last Saturday's "Headbangers Ball" we premiered new videos by Satyricon and Black Tide, and offered you a taste of the expanded reissue of Machine Head's The Blackening by broadcasting a video of the band covering Iron Maiden's "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Plus, we aired the new vid by Testament, the band you voted back from last week's episode. Click "more" to vote your favorite clip back for next week's show and watch the new clips by Satyricon, Black Tide and Machine Head. Read more...

photo by Jon Wiederhorn

Testament squeaked by their Bay area neighbors Metallica as well as Opeth and Motorhead to earn an encore airing of their "More Than Meets the Eye" video on 'Headbangers Ball.' Tune in Saturday night at 2 a.m. to catch the killer clip, as well as new videos by Satyricon, Machine Head and Warbringer.

And in the week's ahead stay tuned for video premieres by Kreator, Dir En Grey and much, much more.
Click more to watch this week's winning clip and footage of Testament from the 2003 Wacken Festival. Read more...

photo courtesy of www.photobucket.com

We've almost reached the end of 2008, and we gotta say it was a good year for metal. The genre continued to grow and diversify, as best exemplified, perhaps, by the top headbanging fest of the year, Rockstar Energy Mayhem. In a single day of Mayhem, fans could witness mainstream extreme metal (Slipknot), mainstream regular metal (Disturbed, Five Finger Death Punch), power metal (Dragonforce), lumbering prog/doom metal (Mastodon), contemporary thrash (Machine Head), deathcore (Job For a Cowboy), pre-deathcore/hardcore (The Red Chord), alt-metalcore (36 Crazyfists), female-fronted metalcore (Walls of Jericho) Christian metal/hardcore (Underoath) and hard rock (Airbourne, Black Tide). Read more...

photo by Jon Wiederhorn

This Saturday, December 13, Testament will be taking over the airwaves on MTV2’s Headbangers Ball. Along with their brand-new video for “More Than Meets The Eye” (produced by Kevin Custer, who has also worked with Kingdom of Sorrow and Beneath the Massacre), "HBB" will also air never-before-seen footage from the band’s shoot at Alcatraz in San Francisco.

Six Testamentart pieces, performances, and videos will be intertwined with the rest of the videos in the program. Watch it on Saturday between 2 and 3 a.m. EST. Click "more" to watch the video now and read Testament's comments. Read more...

At a time when fans and critics and putting together their year end top ten lists, Testament pop up with a video for "More Than Meets the Eye" to remind us all not to forget their latest album, The Formation of Damnation, which came out early this year. Even if it's a calculated move, it's a relevant one. In the wake of new albums by Metallica, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Meshuggah and Unearth, to name but a few, it's easy for a record that came out in April to slip between the cracks. And slip, it should not.

The Formation of Damnation is not only the first studio album of new material by Testament in nine years, and a disc that reunites almost all of the band's powerhouse lineup for the first time since 1994, it's also a multifaceted, dynamic powder keg that puts the group back on the map in the middle of a serious thrash metal renaissance. Click more to watch the video and read comments by singer Chuck Billy, guitarist Eric Peterson and producer Kevin J. Custer (Kingdom of Sorrow, Beneath the Massacre) of Toaster in the Tub. Read more...

Testament singer Chuck Billy ponders how King of Metal got his name, photo by Jon Wiederhorn

You know how David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart and other talk show personalities sometimes go out and find some really odd or dumb people in the street to make fun of? Well, that's pretty much what Metal Injection.net correspondent Dave Hill (a.k.a. King of Metal) did last week with a batch of Testament fans outside B.B. Kings in New York City, and some of the shtick is hysterical.

To wit, the following response to a non-metal guy who doesn't know who Testament are: "Who's Testament?," snorts The King. "Only one of the top, like, 40 thrash metal bands of all time." Click more to enjoy the hilarity. Read more...

Here's Rick Ernst, director of "Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal," writing about the moment he first discovered thrash metal. His insightful and entertaining movie, which started taking form more than two decades after that personal epiphany, comes out on DVD on September 16.

Some will say thrash metal was born with Metallica's Kill 'Em All. Others will say Exodus was playing thrash metal before them. And many metal fans will tell you that Motorhead and Venom started it all.

While strong arguments can be made for all, ultimately, there was no "Big Bang" moment for thrash metal -- no definitive "moment in time" when genre was born. However, there is that personal moment where all of us as individual fans discovered thrash metal.

For me, it was a mixed cassette that was handed to me by a friend in high school. The tape was a third or fourth generation dub, hardly digital quality, but it had a huge impact on my life. Upon first listen, the thrashing sounds of Possessed, Nuclear Assault, Overkill and many others seemed like a cruel joke – a bastardization of the beloved heavy metal I knew back in 1984. Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Accept and others were my standard, and thrash metal had just turned my metal world on its head. The first few listens were for amusement. I mean, were Nuclear Assault for real when they sang "Hang the Pope?" (Turns out they were joking – to an extent. It was a metaphor. They didn't want to hang anyone – they’re actually very nice guys.) By the second round of listens, I could see there were a "few" good songs on the tape.

About three weeks later, I was buying every thrash album I could afford. I was addicted to the speed, the power, the musicianship and the middle-finger salute to the mainstream that thrash metal provided. It’s funny looking back on that summer of 1984. I basically discovered thrash metal through a cassette tape that I mainly listened to on a boom box in my friend's backyard. How could I have known back then that 24 summer’s later, I'd be releasing a movie on thrash metal on DVD.

In any event, that’s how I discovered thrash. Click "more" to check out this sneak peak of "Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal" to see how it was "born" in the eyes of the bands who lived through that very special time. Read more...